yellowed parchment. But her eyes were still piercing, and made Orpheus bow his head like a boy being scolded.
‘How – how do you do that?’ he stammered. ‘Fenoglio’s book says nothing about shape-shifters! Only about Night-Mares and—’
‘Fenoglio! What does he know?’ Mortola plucked a feather off her black dress. ‘Everything changes shape in this world, only most have to die first. But there are ways and means –’ and as she spoke she carefully dropped the seeds she had picked up into a leather bag – ‘for people to free themselves from their own shapes without any need for the White Women.’
‘Really?’ Orpheus immediately began wondering what kind of possibilities that opened up for this story, but Mortola didn’t give him any time to think it over.
‘You’ve settled into this world in fine style, haven’t you?’ she murmured, looking up at his house. ‘Four-Eyes, the milky-bearded merchant from across the sea, who trades in unicorns and dwarves and can read every wish of the new lord of Ombra in his eyes – well, I thought to myself, bless me if that isn’t my dear friend Orpheus! He’s obviously managed to read himself here. And you’ve even brought that nasty dog along with you.’
Cerberus bared his teeth, but Ironstone was still trembling. Glass men really were absurd creatures. And to think Fenoglio was proud of them!
‘What do you want?’ Orpheus did his best to sound cool and superior, not like the frightened little boy he became only too easily in Mortola’s presence. She still terrified him, he had to admit it.
Footsteps echoed through the night, presumably from one of the patrols sent out by the Piper to comb Ombra in case the Black Prince found some way of freeing his noble fellow-fighter after all.
‘Do you always welcome your guests outside the door?’ hissed Mortola. ‘Come on, time we went in!’
Orpheus had to bring the bronze knocker down on the wood three times before Oss opened the door. He blinked sleepily down at Mortola.
‘Is this that wardrobe-man from the other world or a new one?’ asked Mortola, pushing her way past Oss with her skirts rustling.
‘A new one,’ muttered Orpheus, whose mind was still trying to work out whether it was a good thing she was back or not. Wasn’t she supposed to be dead? But it was becoming clearer all the time that you couldn’t rely on Death in this world. Which was both reassuring and alarming.
He took Mortola, not to his study, but into the reception room. The old woman looked around as if everything in it was hers. No, very likely it wasn’t a good thing she was back. And what did she want of him? He could imagine: Mortimer. For sure she still wanted to kill him. Mortola didn’t abandon such plans easily – particularly not where her son’s murderer was concerned. In this case, however, other people looked like they were ahead of her in line.
‘So now the bookbinder really is the Bluejay!’ she remarked, as if Orpheus had spoken his thoughts out loud. ‘How many more ridiculous songs are they going to sing about him? Hailing him as their saviour … as if we hadn’t brought him to this world in the first place! And the Adderhead, instead of hunting him down after he killed his best men on Mount Adder, blames Mortola for his escape, and for the way the flesh is rotting on his own bones. I knew at once it must be the White Book. Silvertongue is wily, but his innocent look deceives them all, and the Adder handed me, not him, over to the torturers, to get the name of the poison. I still feel the pain of it today, but I outwitted them – I made them bring me seeds and herbs, saying I’d brew them an antidote for their master. Instead I made myself wings to fly away. I listened to the wind and to the gossip in marketplaces to find the bookbinder, and I discovered he really was playing the robber, and the Black Prince had found him a hiding place. It was a good hiding place, too, but I found it all the same.’ Mortola pursed her lips while she spoke, as if she felt she still had a beak. ‘How I had to control myself not to peck his eyes out when I saw him again! There’s no hurry, Mortola, I thought. Being in a hurry has spoilt your fine revenge once already. Sprinkle a few poisonous berries in his food, leaving him to writhe like a worm and die slowly enough for you to enjoy your revenge. But some stupid crow pecked the berries out of his dish, and the next time I tried it the bear snapped at me with his stinking muzzle and pulled out two of my tail feathers. I tried again in the camp where the Black Prince took them – him and his daughter and that deceitful maid – but the wrong man ate from that dish. Poisonous fungi, they said, he’s eaten poisonous fungi!’
Mortola laughed, and Orpheus shuddered when he saw her fingers curving as if they were still clinging to a branch. ‘It’s like a jinx! Nothing can kill him, neither poison nor a bullet. It’s as if everything in this world were bent on protecting him – every stone, every animal, even the shadows among the trees! The Bluejay! Death itself let him go, and did a deal with him for the Fire-Dancer. Oh, very impressive! But at what price? He hasn’t told even his wife the price, only Mortola knows it! No one pays any attention to the magpie in the tree, but she hears everything – what the trees whisper at night, what spiders write in damp branches with their silver threads: they say that Death will take the Bluejay and his daughter if he doesn’t deliver the Adderhead’s life before winter ends. And they say the Adder’s own daughter plans to help the Jay to write the three words in the White Book.’
‘What?’ Orpheus had been only half listening. He knew Mortola’s hate-filled tirades, endless and self-glorifying, but he pricked up his ears at that last remark. Violante in league with the Bluejay? Yes, it made sense. Of course! That was why Mortimer had handed himself over expressly to her! He might have known it. That paragon of virtue hadn’t let himself be made prisoner only out of nobility of mind. The noble robber was intent on murder.
Orpheus began pacing up and down, while Mortola went on uttering curses in so hoarse a voice that the words sounded hardly human.
Violante – Orpheus had offered her his services as soon as he had settled in Ombra, but she had rejected them, saying that she already had a poet … not very nice of her.
‘Oh yes, he plans to kill the Adder! Stole into the castle like a marten into a poultry yard! Even the fairies sing about it as they do their silly dances, but only the magpie listens!’ Mortola bent double. Even her coughing sounded like a croak. She was crazy! How she looked at him, with her pupils so black and fixed that they looked more like the eyes of a bird than of a human being. Orpheus shuddered.
‘Yes, yes, I know his plans!’ she whispered. ‘And I tell myself: Mortola, let him live, hard as that is for you. Kill his wife, or even better the daughter he dotes on, and flutter up on to his shoulder when he hears the news, so that you can hear his heart breaking. But let him live until the Adderhead gives him the White Book, because the Adder too must die for all the pain he gave me. And should the Silver Prince really be stupid enough to let his worst enemy lay hands on the Book that can kill him, all the better! The magpie will be there, and not the Bluejay but Mortola will write those three words. Yes, I know what they are. And Death will take both the Bluejay and the Adderhead, and in return for such rich pickings will finally give back what that accursed bookbinder took from me with his silver tongue – my son!’
What the devil? Orpheus nearly choked on the wine he had just raised to his lips. The old witch was still dreaming of Capricorn’s return! Well, why not, since first Cosimo and then Dustfinger had come back from the dead? But he could think of more interesting turns for this story to take than the return of Mortola’s fire-raising son.
‘You really believe the Adderhead will bring the White Book here?’ Ah, he felt there were great things in the offing, developments full of promise. Maybe all was not lost, even if Dustfinger had stolen Fenoglio’s book from him. There were other ways to play a significant part in this story. The Adderhead in Ombra! What possibilities that opened up …
‘Of course he’ll come! The Adder is more of a fool than most people think.’ Mortola sat down on one of the chairs that stood ready for Orpheus’s distingu
ished clients. The wind blew through the unglazed windows and made the candles flicker. Shadows danced like black birds on the whitewashed walls.
‘So will the Silver Prince let the bookbinder outwit him for the second time?’ Orpheus himself was surprised by the hatred in his voice. To his astonishment, he realized that he now wished for Mortimer’s death almost as passionately as Mortola. ‘Even Dustfinger runs after him these days!’ he uttered. ‘Obviously Death has made him forget what that hero once did to him!’ He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes, as if he could wipe away the memory of Dustfinger’s cold face. Yes, that was the only reason why Dustfinger had turned against him! Because Mortimer had bewitched him with his accursed voice. He bewitched them all. It was to be hoped that the Piper would cut his tongue out before they quartered him. He wanted to watch as the Milksop’s hounds tore him to pieces, as the Piper sliced up his skin and his noble heart. Oh, if only he could have written that song about the Bluejay!
Mortola’s coughing brought Orpheus back from his bloodthirsty dreams.
‘It’s only too easy to swallow these seeds!’ she gasped, bent double in the chair, her hands clutching the arms like claws. ‘You have to put them under your tongue, but they’re slippery little things, and if too many of them go astray and down to your stomach, the bird sometimes comes back when you haven’t summoned it.’ She jerked her head like the magpie, opened her mouth as if it were a beak and pressed her fingers to her pale lips.
‘Listen!’ she managed to say as the fit shook her again. ‘I want you to go to the castle as soon as the Adderhead reaches Ombra, and warn him against his daughter! Tell him to ask Balbulus the illuminator how many books about the Bluejay Violante has ordered from him. Convince him that his daughter is obsessed with his worst enemy and will do all in her power to save him. Tell him in the finest words you can think up. Use your voice, the way Silvertongue will try to use his. You’re very keen on boasting that your voice is more impressive than Mortimer’s! Prove it!’
Mortola retched – and spat another seed out into the palm of her hand.
She was clever, even if she was totally crazy, and it was surely best to let her believe she could go on acting as if she were his mistress, although all that retching made him feel so unwell he could almost have spat out his own wine. Orpheus brushed a little dust off his elaborately embroidered sleeves. His clothes, his house, all the maids … how could the old woman be blind enough to think he’d ever serve her again? As if he’d come into this world to carry out other people’s plans! No, here he served only himself. So he had sworn.
‘It doesn’t sound a bad idea.’ Orpheus was taking great pains to keep his tone of voice as deferential as usual. ‘But what about all the Bluejay’s noble friends? He won’t be hoping for support from Violante alone. What about the Black Prince?’ And Dustfinger, he added silently, but he did not speak the name. He was going to take his own revenge on Dustfinger.
‘The Black Prince, yes. Another high-minded idiot. My son had trouble with him from time to time himself.’ Mortola put the seed she had spat out away with the others. ‘I’ll take care of him. Him and Silvertongue’s daughter. That girl’s almost as dangerous as her father.’
‘Nonsense!’ Orpheus poured himself more wine. Wine made him braver.
Mortola inspected him scornfully. Yes, she obviously still thought him a subservient fool. All the better. She rubbed her thin arms, shuddering as if the feathers were trying to pierce through her skin again.
‘What about the old man? The one who, they say, wrote Silvertongue’s daughter the words I took from her in the Castle of Night? Is he still writing foolhardy recklessness into the Bluejay’s heart?’
‘No, Fenoglio isn’t writing any more. All the same, I’d have no objection if you killed him. Far from it – he’s a terrible know-all.’
Mortola nodded, but she didn’t really seem to be listening any more. ‘I must go,’ she said, rising unsteadily from her chair. ‘Your house is as musty as a dungeon.’
Oss was lying outside the door when Mortola opened it. ‘So this is your bodyguard?’ she asked. ‘You don’t seem to have many enemies.’
Orpheus slept poorly that night. He dreamt of birds, hundreds of birds, but when dawn came and Ombra emerged from the shadows of night like a pale fruit, he went to the window of his bedroom full of new confidence.
‘Good morning to you, Bluejay!’ he said under his breath, eyes turned to the towers of the castle. ‘I hope you passed a sleepless night! I dare say you still think the roles in this story have been cast by now, but you’ve played its hero long enough. Curtain up, Act Two: enter Orpheus. In what part? The part of the villain, of course. Isn’t that always the best role in a play?’
38
A Greeting to the Piper
There was a smell of Time in the air tonight. […] What did Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like, it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box-lids, and rain.
Ray Bradbury,
The Martian Chronicles
Farid wasn’t with the party when the Bluejay rode to Ombra Castle. ‘You’re staying in the camp.’ Dustfinger didn’t have to say any more to make Farid worry about causing his death again, and the fear was like a hand clutching his throat. The Strong Man waited among the empty tents with him, because the Black Prince refused to believe that he could pass for a woman. They sat there for many hours, but when Meggie and the others at last came back Dustfinger wasn’t with them, any more than the Bluejay was.
‘Where is he?’ The Black Prince was the only person Farid dared to ask, although his face was so grave that even the bear didn’t venture near him.
‘Where the Bluejay is,’ replied the Prince, and when he saw Farid’s look of dismay he added, ‘No, not in the dungeon. I mean near him, that’s all. Death has bound those two together, and nothing but death is going to part them again.’
Near him.
Farid looked at the tent where Meggie slept. He thought he could hear her crying, but he dared not go to her. She hadn’t yet forgiven him for persuading her father to do that deal with Orpheus, and Doria was sitting outside her tent. He was to be found near Meggie a good deal too often for Farid’s liking, but luckily he appeared to understand as little about girls as his strong brother.
The men back from Ombra were sitting around the fire, heads bent. Some of them didn’t even take off the women’s clothes they had been wearing, but the Black Prince gave them no time to drown their fears for the future in wine. He sent them out hunting. They would need good stocks of provisions if they were to hide the children of Ombra from the Piper: dried meat, warm furs.
But that didn’t interest Farid. He no more belonged to the robbers than he had to Orpheus. He didn’t even belong to Meggie. He belonged with only one person, and he had to keep away from him, for fear of bringing him to his death.
Darkness was just falling, and the robbers were still smoking meat and stretching skins between the trees, when Gwin came scurrying out of the forest. Farid thought the marten was Jink until he saw the greying muzzle. Yes, it was Gwin all right. Since Dustfinger’s death he had looked at Farid like an enemy, but tonight he nibbled his calves the way he used to when he wanted to play, and chattered until Farid followed him.
The marten was quick, too quick even for Farid, who could outrun most people, but Gwin kept stopping to wait for him with his tail twitching impatiently, leaving Farid to follow as fast as the darkness allowed, because he knew who had sent the marten.
They found Dustfinger where the castle walls became the city boundary of Ombra, and the mountainside on which the city stood rose so steeply that no more houses could stand there. Nothing but thorny bushes covered the slope, and the castle wall towered up without any windows, forbidding as a clenched fist, broken by only a few barred slits that let just enough air into the dungeons for the prisoners not to stifle to death before they wer
e executed. No one stayed long in the castle dungeons of Ombra. Sentence was quickly passed and executions quickly carried out. Why feed someone for long if you were going to hang him anyway? It was only the Bluejay’s judge who was coming from the far side of the forest specially for him. Five days, so the whisper went, it would take the Adderhead five days to reach Ombra in his black-draped coach – and no one knew whether the Bluejay would live as long as a single day after his arrival.
Dustfinger stood with his shoulders back against the wall and his head bent, as if he were listening. The deep shadows cast by the castle made him invisible to the guards pacing back and forth on the battlements.
Dustfinger turned only when Gwin bounded towards him. Farid looked anxiously up at the guards before running to him, but they weren’t looking for a boy, or a man on his own. One man wouldn’t be able to set the Bluejay free. No, the Milksop’s soldiers were watching for the arrival of many men, men coming out of the nearby forest or using ropes to help them down the steep slope above the castle – although the Piper must know that even the Black Prince wouldn’t venture to storm Ombra Castle.
The sky above the towers shone with the dark green of Sootbird’s fire. The Milksop was celebrating. The Piper had ordered all the minstrels among the strolling players to compose songs about his own cunning and the defeat of the Bluejay, but very few had obeyed. Most of them kept silent, and their silence sang another song – a song of the sadness in Ombra and the tears of the women who had their children back, but had lost their hope.
‘Well, what do you think of Sootbird’s fire?’ Dustfinger whispered as Farid came to lean against the castle wall beside him. ‘Our friend has learnt a few things, wouldn’t you say?’
‘He’s still useless!’ Farid whispered back, and Dustfinger smiled, but his face grew grave again as he looked up at the windowless walls.
‘It’s nearly midnight,’ he said quietly. ‘At this time the Piper likes to show prisoners his hospitality with fists, clubs and boots.’ He laid his hands on the wall and passed them over it, as if the stones could tell him what was going on in the cells behind them. ‘He’s not with him yet,’ he whispered. ‘But it won’t be long now.’
‘How do you know?’ Sometimes it seemed to Farid as if someone else had come back from the dead, not the man he had known.
‘Well, Silvertongue, Bluejay, whatever you like to call him …’ Dustfinger whispered, ‘since his voice brought me back I’ve known what he feels as if Death had transplanted his heart into my breast. Now, catch me a fairy, or the Piper will half kill him before sunrise. Bring me one of the rainbow-coloured kind. Orpheus has given them his own vanity, which comes in handy. You can get them to do anything for a few compliments.’
The fairy was soon found. Orpheus’s fairies were all over the place, and although winter didn’t make them as drowsy as Fenoglio’s blue fairies, it was child’s play to pluck one from her nest at this hour of the night. She bit Farid, but he blew in her face as Dustfinger had taught him, until she was gasping for air and forgot all about biting. Dustfinger whispered something to her, and next moment the tiny thing was fluttering up to the barred slits in the wall and disappeared through one of them.
‘What did you tell her?’ Above them, Sootbird’s venomous fire went on devouring the night. It swallowed up the sky, the stars and the moon, and the smoke hanging in the air was so acrid that Farid’s eyes were streaming.
‘Oh, just that I promised the Bluejay I’d send the most beautiful fairy of all to visit him in his dark dungeon. And by way of thanks she’ll whisper him the news that the Adderhead will reach Ombra in five days’ time, even if the moss-women pave his way here with curses, and that meanwhile we’ll try to keep the Piper’s mind occupied, so that he can’t spend too much time beating up his prisoners.’ Dustfinger clenched his left hand into a fist. ‘You haven’t yet asked me why I sent for you,’ he said, blowing gently into the fist he had made. ‘I thought you might like to see this.’
He laid his fist against the castle wall, and fiery spiders scuttled out from between his fingers. They hurried up the stones, more and more of them, as many as if they had been born there in Dustfinger’s hand.
‘The Piper’s afraid of spiders,’ he whispered. ‘He fears them more than swords and knives, and if these creep into his fine clothes he may forget, just for a while, how much he enjoys beating his prisoners at night.’
Farid clenched his own fist. ‘How do you make them?’
Inkdeath Page 28