Inkdeath

12. BACK IN THE SERVICE OF ORPHEUS

Of course, the city gates of Ombra were closed when Farid finally rode his stubborn donkey around the last bend in the road. A thin crescent moon shone down on the castle towers, and the guards were passing the time by throwing stones at the bones dangling from the gallows outside the city walls. The Milksop had left some skeletons hanging there; though, to spare his sensitive nose, the gallows were no longer in use. Presumably he thought that gallows left empty were too reassuring a sight for his subjects.

"Well, well, who comes here?" grunted one of the guards, a tall, thin fellow propping himself on his spear as if his legs alone wouldn't carry him. "Take a look at this laddie!" he added, roughly seizing Farid's reins. "Riding around all on his own in the middle of the night! Aren't you afraid the Bluejay will steal that donkey from under your skinny behind? After all, he had to leave his horse up at the castle today, so he could do with your donkey. And you he'll feed to the Black Prince's bear!"

"I've heard the bear eats nothing but men-at-arms because they crunch so nicely in his jaws." As a precaution, Farid's hand went to his knife. He felt too tired to be humble – and perhaps it made him lightly reckless to know that the Bluejay had managed to get out of the Milksop's castle safe and sound. Yes, he, too, found himself calling Silvertongue by that name more and more often, although Meggie was always cross if she heard him.

"Ho, ho, hark at the lad, will you, Rizzo?" called the guard to the other man on duty. "Maybe he stole the donkey himself to sell to the sausage-maker in Butchers' Alley before the poor beast drops dead under him!"

Rizzo came closer, smiling unpleasantly, and raised his lance until the ugly spearhead was pointing straight at Farid's chest. "I know this fellow," he said. He had two missing front teeth, which made him hiss like a snake. "Saw him breathing fire once or twice in the marketplace. Aren't you the one they say learned his trade from the Fire-Dancer?"

"Yes. What about it?" Farid's stomach muscles contracted. They always did when Dustfinger was mentioned.

"What about it?" Rizzo prodded him with the spearhead. "Get off your decrepit donkey and give us a bit of a show. Maybe we'll let you into the city afterward."

They did finally open the gates – after he had turned night into day for almost an hour for their pleasure, making the fire grow flowers as he had learned to do from Dustfinger. Farid still loved the flames, even though the crackling of their voices reminded him only too painfully of the man who had taught him all about them. But he no longer made them dance in public, he did it only for himself. The flames were all that was left to him of Dustfinger, and sometimes, when he missed him so much that his heart was numb with longing, he wrote his name in fire on a wall somewhere in Ombra and stared at the letters until they went out, leaving him alone, just as Dustfinger had left him alone.

Now that Ombra had lost its menfolk, it was usually as quiet as a city of the dead by night. Tonight, however, Farid ran into several troops of soldiers. The Bluejay had stirred them up like a wasps' nest and they were still buzzing around, as if that would bring the bold intruder back. Lowering his head, Farid dragged the donkey past them, and was glad when he finally reached Orpheus's house.

It was a magnificent building, one of the finest in Ombra, and the only one on this unrestful night with candlelight still shining through the windows. Torches burned at the entrance – Orpheus lived in constant terror of thieves – and their flickering light brought to life the stone gargoyles above the gate. Farid always shuddered to see them stare down with their bulging eyes, their mouths wide open, their nostrils distended, looking as if they were about to snort in his face. He tried to put the torches to sleep with a whisper, as Dustfinger often did, but the fire wasn't listening to him. That happened more and more often now – as if to remind him that a pupil whose master was dead was a pupil forever.

He was so tired. The dogs barked at him as he led the donkey across the yard to its stable. Back again. Back in the service of Orpheus. He would so much rather have rested his head in Meggie's lap or sat by the fire with Silvertongue and the Black Prince. But for Dustfinger's sake he always came back here. Again and again.

Farid let Jink climb out of the rucksack onto his shoulder and looked up at the stars as if he could find Dustfinger's scarred face there. Why didn't he appear to him in a dream and tell him how to bring him back? Didn't the dead sometimes do that for those they loved? Or did Dustfinger come only to Roxane, as he had promised, and to his daughter? No, if Brianna was visited by any dead man it was Cosimo. The other maids said she whispered his name in her sleep and sometimes put out her hand to him, as if he were lying beside her.

Perhaps he doesn't appear to me in my dreams because he knows I'm afraid of ghosts, thought Farid as he climbed the steps to the back door. The main entrance of the house, which led straight out into the square, was of course reserved for Orpheus himself and his fine customers. Servants, strolling players, and deliverymen had to plow through the muck in the yard and ring the bell at the modest little door hidden at the back of the house.

Farid rang three times, but nothing stirred. By all the demons of the desert, where was that Chunk? He had nothing to do but open a door now and then. Or was he snoring away like a dog outside Orpheus's bedroom door again?

However, when the bolt was finally pushed aside it wasn't Oss who let him in but Brianna. Dustfinger's daughter had been working for Orpheus for two weeks now, but presumably Cheeseface had no idea whose daughter was doing his laundry and scrubbing his pots. Orpheus was so blind.

Without a word, Brianna held the door open, and Farid was equally silent as he passed her. There were no words between them except those that went unspoken: My father died for you. He left us alone for you, only for you. Brianna blamed him for every tear her mother shed. She had told him so in a low voice after their first day together in the service of Orpheus. "For every single tear!" Yet again, he thought he felt her glance on the back of his neck like a curse when lie turned his back to her.

"Where've you been all this time?" Oss seized him as he was stealing away to the place in the cellar where he slept. Jink hissed and ran off. Last time Oss kicked the marten he had almost broken Jink's ribs. "He's been asking for you a hundred times over! Made me search every damn alleyway. I haven't had a wink of sleep all night because of you!"

"So? You sleep enough as it is!"

The Chunk hit him in the face. "Less of your cheek! Go on, your master's waiting for you."

One of the maids came toward them on the stairs. She blushed as she made her way past Farid. What was her name? Dana? A nice girl, she'd often slipped him a delicious piece of meat when Oss had stolen his food, and Farid had kissed her in the kitchen a few times for that. But she wasn't half as beautiful as Meggie. Or Brianna.

"I just hope he'll let me give you a good hiding!" Oss whispered before knocking on the door of Orpheus's study.

That was what Orpheus called the room, although he spent far less time studying in it than groping under one of the maids' skirts, or stuffing himself with the lavish dishes his cook had to prepare for him at any time of day or night. Tonight, however, he really was sitting at his desk, head bent over a sheet of paper, while his two glass men were arguing under their breath over whether it was better to stir ink to the left or the right. They were brothers called Jasper and Ironstone, and as different as day and night. Ironstone, the elder, loved lecturing his younger brother and ordering him about. Farid often wanted to wring his glass neck. He himself had two older brothers; they'd been one of the reasons why he had run away from home and joined a band of robbers.

"Shut up!" Orpheus snapped at the quarreling glass men. "What ridiculous creatures you are! Stir to the left, stir to the right – just make sure you don't spatter my whole desk with ink again while you're stirring."

Ironstone looked accusingly at Jasper – of course! If anyone had spattered Orpheus's desk with ink, it had to be his little brother. But he preserved a grim silence as Orpheus put pen to paper again.

"Farid, you really must learn to read!" How often had Meggie told him that? And, with some difficulty, she had taught him a few letters of the alphabet. B for bear, R for robber ("Look, Farid, there's a letter R in your name, too"), M for Meggie, F for fire (wasn't it wonderful that his name began with the same letter?), and D… D for Dustfinger. He always got the rest mixed up. How were you supposed to remember those funny little things with their scrawled lines stretching every which way? AOUIMTNP… it gave him a headache just to look at them. But yes, he must learn to read, he must. How else was he ever to find out whether Orpheus was really trying to write Dustfinger back?

"Snippets, nothing but snippets!" Orpheus pushed Jasper aside with a curse as the glass man came up to sprinkle sand over the fresh ink. Grimly, he tore the sheet of paper he had been writing on into tiny scraps. Farid was used to that sight. Orpheus was seldom satisfied with what he put down on paper. He crumpled up what he had written, tore it in pieces, threw it on the fire with a curse, bullied the glass men, and drank too much. But when he succeeded he was even more unbearable. He puffed himself up like a bullfrog, stalked proudly through Ombra like a newly crowned king, kissed the maids with his moist, complacent lips, and let everyone know he had no equal. "Let them call the old man Inkweaver!" he shouted, loudly enough to be heard all over the house. "It suits him. He's nothing but a craftsman, while I… I am an enchanter! Ink-Enchanter, that's what they ought to call me. That's what they will call me someday!"

But tonight, yet again, the enchantment didn't seem to be working. "Toad-twaddle! Goose-cackle! Leaden words!" he said angrily without raising his head. "Just a mush of words, that's what you're smearing the paper with today, Orpheus: a watery, unseasoned, tasteless, slimy mush of words!"

The two glass men hastily scrambled down the legs of the desk and began picking up the shreds of paper.

"My lord, the boy is back." No one could sound more servile than Oss. His voice bowed to Orpheus as readily as his massive body, but his fingers held the nape of Farid's neck in a steely grip.

Orpheus turned, his face like thunder, and stared at Farid as if he had finally pinpointed the reason for his failure. "Where the devil have you been? With Fenoglio all this time? Or helping your girlfriend's father to steal into the castle and out again? Oh yes, I've heard about his latest exploit. Presumably they'll be singing the first bad songs about it tomorrow. That fool of a bookbinder really does play the ridiculous part the old man wrote him with touching enthusiasm." Envy and contempt mingled in Orpheus's voice, as they so often did when he spoke of Silvertongue.

"He's not playing a part. He is the Bluejay." Farid trod on Oss's foot hard enough to make him let go of his neck, and when the man tried to grab it again he pushed him away. With a grunt, the Chunk raised his big fist, but a glance from Orpheus halted him.

"Oh, really? Have you joined the ranks of his admirers, too?" He put a clean sheet of paper on his desk and stared at it, as though that could fill it with the right words. "Jasper, what are you doing down there?" he snapped at the glass man. "How often do I have to tell you two that the maids can sweep up scraps of paper. Sharpen me another pen!"

Farid picked up Jasper, put him on the desk, and earned a grateful smile. The younger glass man had to do all the unpleasant jobs – that was how his brother had fixed it – and sharpening pens was the most unpleasant of all, because the tiny blade they used slipped very easily. Only a few days ago it had cut deeply into Jasper's matchstick-thin arm, and Farid had discovered that glass men bleed like humans. Jasper's blood was transparent, of course. It had dripped onto Orpheus's paper like liquid glass, and Ironstone had slapped his little brother's face and called him a clumsy fool. For that, Farid had mixed some beer with the sand Ironstone ate. Since then Ironstone's limbs, usually clear as water (and he had been very proud of that), had been as yellow as horse's piss.

Orpheus went to the window. "If you stay out and about so long again," he said to Farid over his shoulder, "I'll tell Oss to beat you like a dog."

The Chunk smiled, and Farid cursed silently as he contemplated them both. But Orpheus was still looking up at the black night sky with a morose expression. "Would you believe it?" he said. "That old fool Fenoglio didn't even go to the trouble of naming the stars in this world. No wonder I keep running out of words! What's the moon called here? You'd think his senile old brain might at least have bothered about that, but no! He just called it 'the moon,' as if it were the same moon we saw from our windows in the other world."

"Perhaps it really is the same moon. It was in my story, too," said Farid.

"Rubbish, of course it was different!" Orpheus turned to the window again, as if he had to explain to the entire world out there how badly made it was. "'Fenoglio,' I ask him," he went on in the self-satisfied voice that Ironstone always listened to devoutly, as if it were announcing truths never heard before, "is Death a woman or a man in this world? Or is it perhaps just a door through which you pass into quite a different story, one that you yourself unfortunately omitted to write?' 'How do I know?' he says. How does he know? Who else knows if he doesn't? He doesn't tell us in his book, anyway."

In his book… Ironstone, who had climbed up onto the windowsill to join Orpheus, cast a reverent glance at the desk where the last copy of Inkheart lay beside the sheet of paper on which Orpheus had been writing. Farid wasn't sure whether the glass man really understood that his entire world, himself included, had presumably slipped out of that same book. It usually lay there open, for when Orpheus was writing he kept leafing through it with restless fingers in search of the right words. He never used a single word that couldn't be found in Inkheart, for he was firmly convinced that only words from Fenoglio's story could learn to breathe in this world. Others were just ink on paper.

"'Fenoglio,' I ask, 'are the White Women only servants?'" Orpheus went on, as Ironstone hung on every word from his soft – too soft – lips. "'Do the dead stay with them, or do the White Women take them somewhere else?' 'I expect so,' the old fool replies. 'I once told Minerva's children about a castle made of bones to comfort them for Cloud-Dancer's death, but I was only talking off the cuff.' Off the cuff! Huh!"

"The old fool!" repeated Ironstone like an echo, but in his reedy, glass man's voice it was not a very impressive sound.

Orpheus turned and went back to his desk. "With all your roaming around, I hope at least you didn't forget to tell Mortimer I want to talk to him? Or was he too busy playing the hero?"

"He says there's nothing to talk about. He says he doesn't know anything about the White Women except what everyone knows."

"Oh, wonderful!" Orpheus reached for one of the pens that Jasper had sharpened so laboriously and snapped it in two. "Did you at least ask whether he still sees them sometimes?"

"I'm sure he does." Jasper's voice was as delicate as his limbs. "Once the White Women have touched someone they never let him go. Or so the moss-women say."

"I know that!" said Orpheus impatiently. "I tried questioning a moss-woman about that rumor, but the nasty creature wouldn't talk about it. She just stared at me with her mousy eyes and said I eat too much rich food and drink too much wine!"

"They talk to the fairies," Jasper said. "And fairies talk to glass men. Although not all of them," he added with a sidelong glance at his brother. "I've heard that the moss-women tell another tale of the White Women, too. They say they can be summoned by anyone whose heart they've already touched with their cold fingers."

"Oh, indeed?" Orpheus looked thoughtfully at the glass man. "I hadn't heard that one before."

"And it's not true! I've tried summoning them!" said Farid. "Again and again!"

"You! How often do I have to explain that you died much too quickly?" Orpheus snapped contemptuously at him. "You were in a great hurry to die and just as great a hurry to come back. What's more, you're such a poor catch that I'd assume they don't even remember you! No, you're not the person to do it." He went to the window again. "Go and make me some tea!" he told Farid without turning. "I have to think."

"What kind of tea?"

Farid put Jasper on his shoulder. He took the little man with him whenever he could, to keep him safe from his big brother. Sometimes, when Orpheus didn't need either of them because he was taking his pleasure with one of the maids, or seeing his tailor for yet another fitting of some new clothes – which could last hours – Farid took Jasper with him to Seamstresses' Alley, where the glass women helped to thread the dressmakers' needles, tread seams smooth with their tiny feet, and tack lace to costly silk. For Farid had now also learned that glass men don't just bleed, they fall in love, too, and Jasper was head over heels in love with a girl who had pale yellow limbs. He was only too fond of watching her in secret through her mistress's workshop window.

"What kind of tea? How should I know? Something good for a stomachache," replied Orpheus crossly. "I've had a pain in my belly all day as if there were stag beetles in it. How am I supposed to get anything sensible down on paper in that state?"

Of course. Orpheus always complained of a stomachache or a headache when his writing wasn't going well. I hope his belly torments him all night, thought Farid as he closed the study door behind him. I hope it plagues him until he writes something for Dustfinger at last.