Inkheart (45 page)

Anxiety, joy, anger, pain, love — it was all plain to see, written on his brow, even when he tried to hide it, just as he was now trying not to ask the question that must have been on the tip of his tongue ever since he saw Farid approaching.

"Your daughter's all right," said Farid. "And she got your message, though she's shut up on the top floor of Capricorn's house. But Gwin is a wonderful climber, even better than Dustfinger, and that's saying something." He heard Silvertongue breathe a sigh of relief, as if all the cares in the world had lifted from his shoulders.

"I've even brought an answer." Farid took Gwin out of the backpack, held him firmly by the tail, and untied Meggie's note from his collar. Silvertongue unfolded the paper as carefully as if he feared his fingers might wipe away the words. "An endpaper," he murmured. "She must have torn it out of a book."

"What does she say?"

"Have you tried to read it?"

Farid shook his head and took a piece of bread out of his pants pocket. Gwin had earned a reward. But the marten had disappeared, probably to catch up on his long-overdue daytime sleep.

"You can't read, is that it?"

"No."

"Well, not many people could read this anyway. It's the same secret writing that I used. As you saw, not even Elinor can decipher it." Silvertongue smoothed out the paper. It was a dull yellow like desert sand. He read — and then suddenly raised his head. "Good heavens!" he murmured.

"Imagine that!"

"Imagine what?" Farid bit into the bread he had been keeping for the marten. It was stale; they'd have to steal some more soon.

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"Meggie can do it, too!" Silvertongue shook his head incredulously and stared at the note in his hand.

Farid propped one elbow on the grass. "I know. They're all talking about it — I heard them. They say she can work magic like you, and now Capricorn doesn't have to wait for you anymore. He doesn't need you now."

Silvertongue looked at him as if this idea hadn't yet crossed his mind. "True," he murmured.

"Now they'll never let her go. Not of their own accord." He stared at the words his daughter had written on the paper. To Farid they looked like the tracks left by snakes slithering across the sand.

"What else does she say?"

"They've caught Dustfinger and Meggie's to read someone out of the book to come . . . and kill him. Tomorrow, when it gets dark." He lowered the note and ran his hand through his hair.

"Yes, I heard about that, too." Farid pulled up a blade of grass and tore it into tiny pieces. "It seems they've locked him in the crypt under the church. What else is in that note? Doesn't your daughter say who it is she's to bring out for Capricorn?"

Silvertongue shook his head, but Farid saw that he knew more about it than he was saying.

"Come on, you can tell me! Some kind of executioner, am I right? A man who knows all about cutting off heads."

Silvertongue acted as if he hadn't heard him.

"I saw something like that once," said Farid, "so it's all right for you to tell me about it. If the executioner is good with a sword it's all over quite fast."

Silvertongue looked at him for a moment, astonished, and then shook his head. "It's not an executioner," he said. "At least, not a man with a sword. Not a man at all."

Farid turned pale. "Not a man?"

Silvertongue shook his head. It was some time before he went on. "They call him the Shadow,"

he said in an expressionless voice. "I don't remember the exact words describing him in the book. All I know is that I pictured him to myself as a figure made completely of burning ashes, red and gray. And without a face."

Farid stared at him. For a moment he wished he hadn't asked.

"They — they're all looking forward to this execution," he said in a faltering voice. "Those Black Jackets are in a really good mood. They're going to kill the woman Dustfinger was visiting as well. Because she tried to find the book for him." He burrowed his bare toes into the earth.

Dustfinger had tried to get him used to wearing shoes because of the snakes, but when you wore shoes you felt as if someone was pinching your toes, so in the end he'd thrown them on the fire.

"What woman? One of Capricorn's maids?" Silvertongue looked at him with a gleam in his eyes.

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Farid nodded. He rubbed his toes. They were covered with ant bites. "She can't talk. Dumb as a sand fly. Dustfinger has a photo of her in his backpack. She's probably helped him quite often.

And I think he's in love with her."

It hadn't been difficult for Farid to explore the village. There were lots of boys there no older than him. They washed the cars for the Black Jackets, cleaned their boots and their guns, delivered love letters. He'd delivered love letters himself in that other life. He hadn't had to clean boots, but weapons, yes — and he'd had to shovel camel dung. Polishing cars was much lighter work.

Silvertongue looked up at the sky. Tiny clouds were drifting by, pale as a heron's feathers, ruffled like acacia flowers. Clouds often passed across this sky. Farid liked that. The desert sky he had known before was always empty.

"Tomorrow," murmured Silvertongue. "What am I to do? How am I going to get her out of Capricorn's house? Perhaps I can get in somehow by night. I'd need one of those black suits the

—"

"I've brought you one." Farid took first the jacket, then the pants out of the backpack. "Stole them off a clothesline. And a dress for Elinor."

Silvertongue looked at him with such obvious admiration that Farid blushed. "What an extraordinary fellow you are! Perhaps I should ask
you
how I'm going to get Meggie out of this village."

Farid smiled awkwardly and looked at his toes. Ask him? No one had ever asked him for his ideas before. He had always been the scout, the tracker dog. Others had made the plans for robberies, raids, revenge. You didn't ask the dog's opinion. You beat the dog if he didn't obey.

"There are only two of us, and there are at least twenty of them down there," he said. "It won't be easy. .. "

Silvertongue looked over at their campsite and the woman asleep under the trees. "Aren't you counting Elinor? You should! She's much fiercer than I am, and just at the moment she is very, very angry."

Farid had to smile. "All right, three!" he said. "Three against twenty."

"Yes, I know, that doesn't sound good." Silvertongue stood up, sighing. "Come on, let's tell Elinor what you've found out," he said, but Farid stayed where he was in the grass. He picked up one of the dry branches lying everywhere. First-class firewood. There was any amount of it here. In his old life people would have gone a long, long way for wood like this. They'd have given good money for it. Farid looked at the wood rubbed his finger over the rough bark, and looked at Capricorn's village.

"We could get fire to help us," he said.

Silvertongue looked at him blankly. "What do you mean?"

Farid picked up another stick, and another. He heaped them all up, all the dry twigs and branches. "Dustfinger showed me how to tame fire. It's like Gwin: It bites if you don't know how to handle it, but if you treat it properly it does as you want. That's what Dustfinger taught me. If we use it at the right time, in the right place .. "

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Silvertongue bent down, picked up one of the branches, and weighed it in his hand. "And how are you going to control it once you've got a fire going? It hasn't rained for ages. The hills will be ablaze before you know it."

Farid shrugged. "Only if the wind blows the wrong way."

But Silvertongue shook his head. "No," he said firmly. "I won't play with fire in these hills unless I can't think of anything else. Let's steal into the village tonight. Maybe we can get past the guards. Maybe they know each other so little they'll think I'm one of them. After all, we managed to slip through their fingers once, so maybe we can do it again."

"That's a lot of
maybes,"
said Farid.

"I know!" replied Silvertongue. "I know."

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Chapter 45 – Telling Lies to Basta

"If ye see the laird, tell him what ye hear; tell him this makes the twelve hunner and
nineteen time that Jennet Clouston has called down the curse on him and his house, byre
and stable, man, guest and master, wife, miss, or bairn — black, black be their fall."

–
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Kidnapped

It
took Fenoglio only a few words to persuade the guard outside the door that he had to speak to Basta at once. The old man was a gifted liar. He could spin stories out of thin air faster than a spider spins its web.

"What do you want, old man?" asked Basta when he was standing in the doorway. He had brought the tin soldier. "Here, little witch!" he said to Meggie, handing her the soldier.
"I'd
have thrown it on the fire, but nobody here listens to me these days."

The tin soldier started at the word
fire.
His mustache bristled, and his eyes looked so alarmed it touched Meggie's heart. When she put her hands protectively around him she thought she felt his heart beating. She remembered the end of his story;
The soldier melted. The next day when
the maid emptied the stove, she found a little tin heart, which was all that was left of him.

"That's right, no one listens to you anymore. I can see that for myself!" Fenoglio looked sympathetically at Basta, as a father might look at his son — which in a way he was. "And that's why I wanted a word with you." He lowered his voice and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. "I'm offering you a deal."

"A deal?" Basta scrutinized him with a mixture of wariness and arrogance.

"Yes, a deal," repeated Fenoglio softly. "I'm bored here! I'm a scribbler, as you so aptly put it, I need paper to live on much as other people need bread and wine and so forth. Bring me some paper, Basta, and I'll help you to get those keys back. You remember — the keys that the Magpie took away from you."

Basta took out his knife. When he snapped it open the tin soldier began trembling so much that the bayonet slipped from his tiny hands. "How?" asked Basta, cleaning his fingernails with the tip of the knife.

Fenoglio bent down to him. "I'll write you a magic charm to put a hex on Mortola — a hex that will keep her in bed for weeks and give you time to show Capricorn you are the rightful keeper of the keys. Of course, that kind of charm doesn't work instantly, it needs time, but believe you me, when it does start to take effect. ." Fenoglio raised his eyebrows meaningfully.

But Basta only wrinkled his nose in scorn. "I've already tried with spiders. And parsley and salt.

The old woman's proof against them all."

"Parsley and spiders!" Fenoglio laughed quietly. "What a fool you are, Basta! I'm not talking about children's magic. I mean the magic of the written word. Nothing is more powerful for good or evil, I do assure you." Fenoglio lowered his voice to a whisper. "I made you yourself out of words and letters, Basta! You and Capricorn."

Basta flinched. Fear and hatred are closely linked, and Meggie saw both on his face. He believed the old man. He believed every word of it. "You're a sorcerer!" he muttered. "You and the girl
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alike — you both ought to be burned like those accursed books, and her father, too." He quickly spat three times at the old man's feet.

"Ah, spitting! What's that supposed to prevent? The evil eye?" Fenoglio mocked him. "That notion of burning us isn't a very new idea, Basta, but then you never were fond of new ideas.

Well, are we in business or aren't we?"

Basta stared at the tin soldier until Meggie hid him behind her back. "Very well!" he growled.

"But I will check what you've been scribbling every day, understand?"

How are you going to do that, thought Meggie, when you can't read? Basta looked at her as if he had heard her thoughts. "I know one of the maids," he said. "She'll read it to me, so don't try any tricks, right?"

"Of course not!" Fenoglio nodded energetically. "Oh yes, and a pen would be a good idea, too. A black one if possible."

Basta brought the pen and a whole stack of white typing paper. Fenoglio sat down at the table with a purposeful look, put the first sheet of paper in front of him, folded it, and then tore it neatly into nine parts. He wrote five letters on each piece. They were ornate, barely legible, and always the same. Then he carefully folded these notes, spat once on each, handed them to Basta, and told him to hide them as he told him. "Three where she sleeps, three where she eats, and three where she works. Then, after three days and three nights, the desired effect will set in. But should the accursed woman find even one of the notes, the magic will instantly turn against
you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Basta stared at Fenoglio's notes as if they would strike him with plague on the spot.

"Best to hide them where she won't find them!" was all Fenoglio replied as he propelled Basta toward the door.

"If it doesn't work, old man," growled Basta before he closed the door behind him, "I will decorate your face to match Dustfinger's." Then he was gone, and Fenoglio leaned against the closed door with a satisfied smile.

"But it won't work!" whispered Meggie.

"So? Three days are a long time," replied Fenoglio, sitting down at the table again. "And I hope we won't need that long. After all, we want to prevent an execution tomorrow evening, don't we?"

He spent the rest of the day alternately staring into space and writing like a man possessed.

More and more of the white sheets were covered with his large handwriting, scrawled impatiently over the paper. Meggie didn't disturb him. She sat by the window with the tin soldier, looking at the hills and wondering exactly where Mo was hiding among all the branches and leaves there. The tin soldier sat beside her, his legs stretched straight out in front of him, looking with fear in his eyes at the world that was so entirely new to him. Perhaps he was thinking of the paper ballerina he loved so much, or perhaps he wasn't thinking at all. He said not a single word.