‘Tullio will take you down. But don’t expect too much – you’ll find no one but the dead there. Tell me, Brianna,’ she added (ugly Violante, cruel Violante), ‘were you disappointed when the Bluejay brought your father and not Cosimo back from the dead?’
Brianna bent her head. Violante had never been able to find out whether she loved her father or not. ‘I would very much like to go down to the vault,’ she said quietly. ‘If you’ll allow me.’
Violante nodded to Tullio, and he took Brianna’s hand.
‘Three more days and everything will be all right,’ said Violante, when Brianna was at the door. ‘Injustice is not immortal. It can’t be!’
Brianna nodded, as abstractedly as if she hadn’t been listening. ‘Send for me,’ she said again.
Then she was gone, and Violante was already missing her as the door closed. So? she thought. Is there any feeling you understand better? Losing people and missing them – that’s what your life consists of.
She folded up the Bluejay’s letter and went over to the tapestry that had hung in her bedchamber since she first slept there at the age of seven. It showed a unicorn hunt, woven in a time when unicorns had been creatures of fantasy and were not carried dead through Ombra after a hunt. But even the unicorns of fantasy had had to die. Innocence doesn’t live long in any world. Ever since Violante had met the Bluejay the unicorn had reminded her of him. She had seen the same innocence in his face.
How are you going to protect him, Violante? How?
Wasn’t it the same in all stories? Women didn’t protect the unicorns. They brought them to their death.
The guards at her door looked tired, but they hastily straightened their backs when she came out. Child soldiers. They both had small siblings down in the dungeon.
‘Wake the Piper!’ she told them. ‘Tell him I have important news for my father.’
Her father. The word never failed to take effect, but none tasted more unpleasant to her. Just six letters, and she felt small and weak and so ugly that people avoided looking at her. She remembered her seventh birthday only too well. It was the only day when her father had obviously been happy to have such an unattractive child. ‘A good revenge!’ he had told her mother. ‘Giving my ugliest daughter to my enemy’s handsome son for his wife.’
Father.
When would there be no one she had to call father any more?
She pressed the Bluejay’s letter to her heart.
Soon.
34
Burnt Words
Time seemed to have just gone, in big clumps, or all the day was happening at once, or something, I was wondering so hard about what was to come, I was watching so hard the differences from our normal days. I wished I had more time to think, before she went right down, all the way down; my mind was going breathless, trying to get all its thinking done.
Margo Lanagan,
Black Juice
They were setting off at sunrise. The Piper had accepted Mo’s conditions: the children of Ombra would be set free as soon as the Bluejay kept his promise and handed himself over to the Adderhead’s daughter. Some of the robbers were going to disguise themselves as women and wait outside the castle with the mothers, and Dustfinger would accompany Mo to Ombra as a fiery warning to the Piper. But the Bluejay would ride into the castle alone.
Don’t call him that, Meggie, she told herself.
There were only a few hours now until dawn. The Black Prince was sitting by the fire, wide awake, with Battista and Dustfinger, who didn’t appear to need any sleep at all now that he was back from the dead. Farid was sitting beside him, of course, and Roxane. But Dustfinger’s daughter had moved into Ombra Castle. Violante had taken Brianna back on the morning when the Piper had announced his agreement with the Bluejay.
Mo wasn’t sitting by the fire with them. He had gone to lie down and get some sleep, and Resa was with him. How could he sleep tonight? The Strong Man was sitting outside the tent as if he must at least keep watch over the Bluejay.
‘You should sleep too, Meggie,’ Mo had told her when he saw her sitting a little way from the others under the trees, but Meggie had only shaken her head. It was rainy, and her clothes were as damp and chilly as her hair, but it wasn’t much better inside the tents, and she didn’t want to lie there with the rain telling her how the Piper would greet her father.
‘Meggie?’ Doria sat down in the wet grass beside her. His hair was wavy from the rain. ‘Are you riding to Ombra too?’
She nodded. Farid glanced at them.
‘I’ll steal into the castle as soon as your father has ridden through the door, I promise you,’ said Doria. ‘And Dustfinger will stay near the castle too. We’ll protect him.’
‘What are you saying?’ Meggie’s voice sounded sharper than she had intended. ‘You can’t protect him, not just the two of you! The Piper will kill him. Are you thinking, she’s only a girl, tell her lies to comfort her? I was with my father in the Castle of Night. I’ve faced the Adderhead. They’ll kill him!’
Doria did not reply. He stayed silent for a long time, and she felt sorry she’d snapped at him like that. She wanted to say so, but she too remained silent, her head bent so that he wouldn’t see the tears she’d been holding back for hours. What he’d said had started them flowing. And now he’d be thinking, she’s a girl, she cries.
She felt Doria’s hand on her hair. He was stroking it as gently as if to wipe away the rain. ‘He won’t kill him,’ he whispered to her. ‘The Piper is far too frightened of the Adderhead for that!’
‘But he hates my father! Hate is sometimes stronger than fear! And if the Piper doesn’t kill him, then the Milksop will do it, or the Adderhead himself. He’ll never get out of that castle alive, never!’
How her hands were shaking – as if all her fear was in her fingers. But Doria clasped them so firmly in his own hands that they couldn’t shake any more. He had strong hands, although his fingers weren’t much longer than her own. Farid’s hands were slender by comparison.
‘Farid says you saved your father once with words when he was wounded. He says you did it just with words.’
Yes, but she had no words this time.
Words …
‘What is it?’ Doria let go of her hands and looked at her with a question in his eyes. Farid was still watching them, but Meggie ignored him. She planted a kiss on Doria’s cheek. ‘Thank you!’ she said, quickly getting to her feet.
Of course he didn’t understand what she was thanking him for. Words. The words that Orpheus had written! How could she have forgotten them?
She ran through the wet grass to the tent where her parents were sleeping. Mo will be terribly angry, she thought, but he’ll live! Hadn’t she read what would happen next into this story more than once already? It was time to do it again, even if that meant it wouldn’t end as Mo wanted. The Black Prince would just have to tell the rest of it. He’d find a way to make it turn out well, even without the Bluejay’s aid. For the Bluejay must leave – before her father died with him.
The Strong Man had nodded off. His head had sunk on to his chest, and he was snoring slightly as Meggie crept past him.
Her mother was awake. She had been crying.
‘I need to talk to you!’ Meggie whispered to her. ‘Please!’
Mo was fast asleep. Resa cast a glance at his sleeping face and then followed Meggie outside. They still weren’t speaking to each other very much. Meggie found it impossible to forget that night among the graves. Yet now she was about to do exactly what her mother had intended when she rode to Ombra in secret.
‘If it’s about tomorrow,’ said Resa, taking her hand, ‘don’t tell anyone, but I’m going to Ombra with them, even though your father doesn’t want me to. I want at least to be near him when he rides into the castle …’
‘He’s not going to ride into the castle.’
Rain was still falling through the fading leaves as if the trees were shedding tears, and Meggie longed for Elinor’s garden. The
rain sounded so peaceful there. Here it whispered of nothing but death and danger. ‘I’m going to read the words.’
Dustfinger turned, and for a moment Meggie was afraid he could see what she planned to do in her face and tell Mo, but he turned away again and kissed Roxane’s black hair.
‘What words?’ Resa looked at her blankly.
‘The words Orpheus wrote for you!’ The words for which Mo almost died, she wanted to add. Now they would save his life.
Resa looked back at the tent where Mo was sleeping. ‘I don’t have them any more,’ she said. ‘I burnt them when your father didn’t come back.’
No.
‘They couldn’t have protected him anyway!’
A glass man appeared among dripping wet nettles, pale green, like many of the glass men who still lived in the forest. He sneezed and scurried away in alarm at the sight of Meggie and Resa.
Her mother placed her hands on Meggie’s shoulders. ‘He didn’t want to come with us, Meggie! He told Orpheus to write something just for us. Your father wants to stay, even now, and neither you nor I can force him to go back. He’d never forgive us.’
Resa tried to stroke her daughter’s wet hair back from her forehead, but Meggie pushed her hand away. It couldn’t be true. She was lying. Mo would never stay here without his wife and daughter … would he?
‘And perhaps he’s right. Perhaps everything will turn out well,’ said her mother quietly. ‘And one day we’ll be telling Elinor how your father saved the children of Ombra.’ Resa’s voice didn’t sound half as hopeful as her words. ‘Bluejay,’ she whispered as she glanced at the men sitting by the fire. ‘The first present your father ever gave me was a bookmark made of bluejay feathers. Isn’t that strange?’
Meggie didn’t answer. And Resa caressed her wet face once more and went back to the tent.
Burnt.
It was still dark, but a few freezing fairies were already beginning to dance. Mo would soon be setting out, and there was nothing that could stop him. Nothing.
Battista was sitting alone between the roots of the great oak which the guards climbed at night. You could see almost as far as Ombra from its highest branches. He was making a new mask. Meggie saw the blue feathers in his lap and knew who would soon be wearing it.
‘Battista?’ Meggie knelt down beside him. The ground was cold and damp, but the moss among the roots was as soft as the cushions in Elinor’s house.
He looked at her, his eyes full of sympathy. His glance was even more comforting than Doria’s hands. ‘Ah, the Bluejay’s daughter,’ he said in the voice that the Strong Man called Battista’s marketplace voice. ‘What a beautiful sight at such a dark hour. I’ve sewn your father a good place to hide a sharp knife. Can a poor strolling player ease your heart in some other way?’
Meggie tried to smile. She was so tired of tears. ‘Can you sing me a song? One of the songs the Inkweaver wrote about the Bluejay? It has to be one of those! The best you know. A song full of power and …’
‘Hope?’ Battista smiled. ‘Of course. I could fancy such a song too. Even if,’ he added, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial tone, ‘even if your father doesn’t like having them sung when he’s around. But I’ll sing it so quietly that my voice won’t wake him. Let’s see, which is the right song for this dark night?’ He thoughtfully stroked the mask on his lap. It was nearly finished. ‘Yes,’ he whispered at last. ‘I know!’ And he began singing in a soft voice:
Piper, beware, your end is near,
The Adder’s power dwindles.
He writhes, he goes in mortal fear,
Nothing his strength rekindles.
Though you seek the Jay in country and town,
No sword can wound him, no hound run him down,
And when you think you’ll succeed in your quest,
You find that the bird has flown the nest.
Yes, those were the right words. Meggie got Battista to sing them to her until she could remember every line. Then she sat down a little way from everyone else, under the trees, where the firelight still kept the darkness of night away, and wrote the song down in the notebook that Mo had bound for her long ago, in that other life, after a quarrel that now seemed so strange. Meggie, you’ll lose yourself in the Inkworld. Didn’t he say something like that to her at the time? And now he himself didn’t want to leave this world; he wanted to stay here alone, without her.
Words written down in black and white. It was a long, long time since she’d read anything aloud. When did she last do it? When she brought Orpheus here? Don’t think about that, Meggie. Think of the other times, the Castle of Night, the words that helped when Mo was wounded …
Piper, beware, your end is near.
Yes, she could still do it. Meggie felt the words gathering weight on her tongue as she wove them into her surroundings …
The Adder’s power dwindles.
He writhes, he goes in mortal fear,
Nothing his strength rekindles …
She sent the words to find Mo in his sleep, made him armour out of them, armour that even the Piper and his dark master couldn’t pierce …
Though you seek the Jay in country and town,
No sword can wound him, no hound run him down,
And when you think you’ll succeed in your quest,
You find that the bird has flown the nest.
Meggie read Fenoglio’s song over and over again. Until the sun rose.
35
The Next Verse
Through this toilsome world, alas!
Once and only once I pass;
If a kindness I may show;
If a good deed I may do
To a suffering fellow man,
Let me do it while I can.
No delay, for it is plain
I shall not pass this way again.
Anonymous,
I Shall Not Pass This Way Again
It was a cold day, misty and colourless, and Ombra looked as if it were wearing a grey dress. The women had gone to the castle at daybreak, silent as the day itself, and now they were standing there and waiting without a word.
There was not a cheerful sound to be heard, no laughter, no weeping. It was simply quiet. Resa stood with the mothers as if she too were waiting for a child to come back, instead of expecting to lose her husband. Did the baby she was carrying under her aching heart sense its mother’s despair this morning? Suppose it never saw its father? Had that thought ever made Mo hesitate? She hadn’t asked him.
Meggie stood beside her, her face under such rigid control that it frightened Resa more than if she had been crying. Doria was with her, dressed as a maidservant with a headscarf over his brown hair, because boys of his age were conspicuous in Ombra now. His brother hadn’t come with them. All Battista’s skill with disguises couldn’t have made the Strong Man look like a woman, but more than a dozen robbers had been able to steal past the guards at the gate with their faces shaved, wearing stolen dresses and with scarves over their heads. Even Resa didn’t notice them among all the women. The Black Prince had told his men to go to the mothers as soon as their children were free and persuade them to bring their sons and daughters to the forest the next day, so that the robbers could hide them in case the Piper broke his word and came to take them away to the mines after all. For who was going to ransom them a second time, once the Bluejay was caught?
The Black Prince himself hadn’t come to Ombra with them. His dark face would have attracted far too much attention. Snapper, who had opposed Mo’s plan to the last, had also stayed in the camp, like Roxane and Farid. Of course Farid had wanted to go with the others, but Dustfinger had forbidden it, and after what had happened on Mount Adder Farid did not go against such orders.
Resa glanced at Meggie again. She knew that if she could find any comfort today it would be only in her daughter. Meggie was grown-up now, Resa realized that this morning. I don’t need anyone, said her face. It said so to Doria, who was still standing beside her, to her mother, and perha
ps above all to her father.
A whisper ran through the waiting crowd. Reinforcements joined the guards on the castle walls, and Violante appeared behind the battlements above the gates, so pale that it looked as if the rumours about her were true: the Adderhead’s daughter, they said, almost never left her dead husband’s castle. Resa had never seen Her Ugliness before. But of course she had heard of the mark that had disfigured her face like a brand since birth, and then faded on Cosimo’s return. It was hardly visible now, but Resa noticed that Violante’s hand instinctively went to her cheek when she saw all the women staring up at her. Her Ugliness. Had they shouted that name up to her in the past, whenever she appeared on the
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