Inkdeath (31 page)

Mo stopped under one of the oak trees. Their branches stretched above the camp like a sky made of wood and yellowing leaves. He held Meggie’s hand and ran his forefinger over it as if he were surprised to find how large it was now — yet her hands were still so much slimmer than his. A girl’s hands. . .

"The Piper will kill you."

"No, he won’t. But if he tries I’ll be happy to show him how sharp a bookbinder’s knife is. Battista is going to sew me a place to hide a knife again, and believe me, I’ll be very happy if that child-murderer gives me an opportunity to try it out on him."

Hatred fell over his face like a shadow. The Bluejay.

"The knife won’t be any help. He’ll kill you just the same. She sounded stupid. Like a defiant child. But she was so afraid for him.

"Three children are dead, Meggie. Go to Doria and ask him to tell you again how they herded them together. They’ll kill them all if the Bluejay doesn’t give himself up!"

The Bluejay. He sounded as if he meant someone else. How dim did he think she was?

"It’s not your story, Mo! Let the Black Prince save the children."

"How? The Piper will kill them all if he tries." There was so much fury in his eyes.

And for the first time Meggie realized that Mo wasn’t riding to the castle only to save the living children, but also to avenge the dead. That idea frightened her even more.

"Yes, I see. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps there really isn’t any other way," she said.

"But at least let me come with you! So that I can help you. Like in the Castle of Night!" It seemed only yesterday that Firefox had pushed her into Mo’s cell. Had he forgotten how glad he’d been to have her with him? Had he forgotten that it was she, with some help from Fenoglio, who had saved him?

No, she was sure he hadn’t. But Meggie had only to look at him to know that in spite of everything he would go alone this time. All alone.

"Do you remember the robber stories I used to tell you?" he asked.

"Of course. They all end badly."

‘And why? It’s always the same. Because the robber wants to protect someone he loves, and they kill him for that. Right?"

Oh, he was so clever. Had he said the same thing to her mother? But I know him better than Resa, thought Meggie, and I know far more stories than she does. "What about the highwayman poem?" she asked. Elinor had read it to her countless times.

She could still hear her sighing, "Oh, Meggie, why don’t you read it aloud for a change? We don’t have to mention it to your father, but I’d just love to see that highwayman galloping through my house!"

Mo smoothed the hair back from her forehead. "What about it?"

"The girl he loves warns him about the soldiers, and he escapes! Daughters can do that kind of thing, too."

"Yes, indeed! Daughters are very good at rescuing their fathers. No one knows that better than me." He had to smile. She loved his smile. Suppose she never saw it again? "But don’t you remember how the poem ends for the girl, too?" he added.

Of course Meggie remembered. Her musket shattered the moonlight, shattered her breast in the moonlight. And in the end the soldiers killed the highwayman after all.

And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

"Meggie. . . "

She turned her back to him. She didn’t want to look at him anymore. She didn’t want to feel afraid for him anymore. She simply wanted to be angry with him, that was all.

Just as she was angry with Farid, angry with Resa. Loving someone merely meant pain. Nothing but pain.

"Meggie!" Mo took her shoulders and turned her around. "Suppose I don’t ride to Ombra — how would you like the song they’d sing then? And one morning the Bluejay disappeared and was never seen again. But the children of Ombra died on the other side of the forest, like their fathers, and the Adderhead reigned for all eternity because of the White Book that the Bluejay had bound for him."

Yes, he was right. That was a terrible song, yet Meggie knew one that would be even worse: But the Bluejay rode to the castle to save the children of Ombra and died there. And although the Fire-Dancer wrote his name in the sky with fiery letters so that the stars whisper it every night, his daughter never saw him again.

That was how it would turn out, yes. But Mo was listening to a different song.

"Fenoglio’s not going to write us a happy ending this time, Meggie!" he said. "I’ll have to write it myself, but with actions instead of words. Only the Bluejay can save the children. Only he can write the three words in the White Book."

She still didn’t look at him. She didn’t want to hear what he was saying. But Mo went on in the voice she loved so much, the voice that had sung her to sleep, comforted her when she was sick, and told her stories about the mother who had disappeared.

"I just want you to promise me something," he said. "You and your mother must look after each other while I’m gone. The two of you can’t go back. There’s no trusting Orpheus’s words!

But the Prince will protect you, and so will the Strong Man. He’s promised me on his brother’s life, and he’s certainly a much better protector than I am. Do you hear, Meggie? Whatever happens stay with the robbers. Don’t go to Ombra, and don’t follow me to the Castle of Night if they take me there! I wouldn’t be able to think straight if I found out that you two were in danger. Promise me!"

Meggie bowed her head so that he wouldn’t read her answer in her eyes. No. No, she wasn’t going to make him any promises. And she was sure Resa hadn’t, either. Or had she? Meggie glanced over at her mother. She looked terribly sad. The Strong Man was beside her. Unlike Meggie, he had forgiven Resa once Mo had come back safe and sound.

"Meggie, please listen to me!" Usually, Mo began making jokes when he thought the mood was getting too serious, but obviously that had changed, too. His voice sounded as serious and down-to-earth as if he were discussing a school trip with her.

"If I don’t come back," he said, "you must get Fenoglio to write words to take you and your mother home to Elinor in our old world. He can’t have forgotten how to do it entirely, after all. Then you can read his words and take the three of you back, you and Resa — and your brother."

"Brother? I want a sister,"

"Ah, do you?" Now he was smiling after all. "Good. I want another daughter, too.

My first has grown too big to be picked up in my arms.

They looked at each other, and there were so many words that Meggie wanted to say, but not one that really expressed what she was feeling.

"Who’s going to take the letter to the castle?" she asked quietly.

"We don’t know yet," replied Mo. "It won’t be easy to find someone who’ll be allowed access to Violante."

Three days to go from the time Her Ugliness would get the letter and the Piper would accept the terms. Meggie hugged him as hard as she used to when she was a small child. "Please, Mo!" she said softly. "Don’t go! Please! Let’s all go back. Resa was right!"

"Go back? Meggie! Go back now, just when it’s getting exciting?" he whispered to her. So he hadn’t changed so very much after all. He still cracked jokes when he thought things were getting too serious. She loved him so much.

Mo took her face between his hands. He looked at her as if he were going to say something to her, and for a moment Meggie thought she read in his eyes that he was as frightened for her sake as she was for his.

"Believe me, Meggie!" he said. "I’m also riding to that castle to protect you.

Someday you’ll understand that. Didn’t the two of us already know in the Castle of Night that I was binding the White Book for the Adderhead only to write those three words in it some time in the future?" Meggie shook her head so hard that Mo hugged her again.

"Yes, Meggie!" he said quietly. "Yes, we did."

Darius read wonderfully, although in his mouth the words sounded very different from the way Mortimer would have read them (and of course very different again from the voice of Orpheus, that defiler of books). Perhaps Darius’s art was most like Meggie’s. He read with the innocence of a child, and it seemed to Elinor as if, for the first time, she saw the boy he had once been a thin, bespectacled boy who loved books as passionately as she did, but with the difference that for him the pages came to life. Darius’s voice was not as full and beautiful as Mortimer’s, nor did it have the enthusiasm that lent Orpheus’s voice its power. No, Darius took the words on his tongue as carefully as if they might break apart there, might lose their meaning if they were spoken in too loud and firm a tone. All the sadness of the world lay in Darius’s voice: the magic of the weak, the quiet and cautious, and their knowledge of the pitiless minds of the strong.

The music of Orpheus’s words amazed Elinor as much as on the day she’d first heard him read them. Those words didn’t sound at all like the work of the vain fool who had thrown her books at the library walls. Well) that’s because he stole them from someone else, thought Elinor, and then she thought of nothing more at all.

Darius’s tongue didn’t stumble once—perhaps because this time not fear but love made him read. He opened the door between the letters on the page so gently that Elinor felt as if they were stealing into Fenoglio’s world like two children slipping into a forbidden room.

When she suddenly found a wall behind her she dared not believe what her fingers were feeling. At first you think it’s a dream. Wasn’t that how Resa had described it?

Well, if this is a dream, thought Elinor, then I never intend to wake up! Her eyes greedily drank in the images suddenly flooding in on her: a square, a well, houses leaning against each other as if they were too old to stand up straight, women in long dresses (most of them very shabby), a flock of sparrows, pigeons, two thin cats, a cart and an old man shoveling garbage into it. . . . Heavens above, the stench was almost unbearable, but all the same Elinor breathed it in deeply.

Ombra! She was in Ombra! What else could her surroundings be? A woman drawing water at the well turned and looked suspiciously at the heavy dark-red velvet dress Elinor was wearing. Oh, drat it! She had rented the dress from a theatrical costume agency, along with the tunic Darius was wearing. She’d asked for "something medieval," and now here she stood looking as conspicuous as a peacock among a flock of crows!

Never mind. You’re here, Elinor! When something pulled her hair rather roughly, tears of joy came to her eyes. With a practiced move, she caught the fairy who was about to make off with a gray strand of it. How she’d missed those tiny, fluttering creatures! But hadn’t they been blue? This one shimmered in all the iridescent colors of a soap bubble. Captivated, Elinor closed her hands around her catch and examined the fairy through her fingers. The little creature looked rather sleepy. This was wonderful! When the tiny teeth dug into her thumb and the fairy escaped, Elinor laughed out loud, making two women poke their heads out of the nearby windows.

Elinor!

She clapped her hand to her mouth, but she could still feel laughter like sherbet powder fizzing on her tongue. Oh, she was so happy, so idiotically happy. She hadn’t felt like this since she was six years old and stole into her father’s library to get at the books he wouldn’t let her read. Perhaps you ought to drop dead here and now, Elinor, she told herself. At this very moment. How can things get any better?

Two men in colorful garments were crossing the square. Strolling players! They didn’t look quite as romantic as Elinor had imagined the Motley Folk, but never mind . . . they were minstrels, and a brownie was carrying their instruments. His hairy face looked so bemused when he saw her that Elinor instinctively felt her nose.

Had something happened to her face? No, surely her nose had always been that size, hadn’t it?

"Elinor?"

She turned. Darius! For heaven’s sake, she’d completely forgotten him. What was he doing under the rubbish cart?

Looking bewildered, he crawled out from between the wooden wheels and plucked a few not-very-clean blades of straw off his tunic. Oh, Darius! Of all the places in the Inkworld, he had to Land under a load of garbage! Just Like him! He was a walking disaster area. And the way he was looking around him— as if he’d fallen among thieves. Poor Darius. Wonderful Darius. He was still holding the sheet of paper with Orpheus’s words on it, but where was the bag with all the things they’d meant to bring?

Just a moment, Elinor, you were going to bring it. She looked around — and instead of the bag saw Cerberus beside her, snuffling at the strange paving stones with great interest.

"H-h-he’d have starved to death if we’d left him behind" stuttered Darius, still brushing straw off his tunic. ‘A-a-anyway I suppose he can lead us to his master, and maybe he’ll know where we can find the others."

Not a bad idea, Elinor told herself. I’d never have thought of that. But what was making him stammer again?

"Darius! You did it!" she whispered, hugging him so hard that his glasses slipped.

"Thank you! Thank you so, so much!"

"Hey, you there, where’d that dog come from?"

Cerberus pressed close to Elinor’s legs, growling. Two soldiers were facing them.

The soldiers are worse than the highwaymen. Hadn’t Resa told her that, too? Most of them will kill for fun sometime or other.

Involuntarily, Elinor took a step back, but she just came up against the wall of the house behind her.

"Well, cat got your tongues?" One of the men punched Darius in the belly with his gloved fist, so hard that he doubled up.

"What do you think you’re doing? Leave him alone!" Elinor’s voice didn’t sound half as fearless as she had hoped. "That’s my dog."

"Yours?" The soldier approaching her had only one eye. Fascinated, Elinor stared at the place where the other eye had once been. "Only princesses may keep dogs.

Trying to tell me you’re a princess?"

He drew his sword and ran the blade over Elinor’s dress. "And what sort of clothes are those? You think they make you look like a fine lady? What seamstress made that dress? She ought to be put in the pillory, so she ought!"