Inkdeath

16. THE PIPER'S OFFER

At last. Here they came. Trumpets rang out in a fanfare l from the city gates, an arrogant metallic sound. Just like the man it announced, Fenoglio thought. The Milksop – the common people always found the most suitable names. He couldn't have thought of a better one himself, but then he hadn't invented this pallid upstart, either! Not even the Adderhead had his arrival announced by long-stemmed trumpets, but his pigeon-chested brother-in-law had only to ride around the castle and they struck up.

Fenoglio drew Minerva's children closer to his side. Despina didn't mind at all, but her brother wriggled out of Fenoglio's grasp and climbed up, nimble as a squirrel, to a ledge on the wall where he would have a view down the street along which they'd soon be coming. The Milksop and his retinue, also known to the townsfolk as his pack of hounds. Had the Adder's brother-in-law already been told that almost all the women of Ombra were waiting for him at the castle gate? Yes, surely.

Why is the Piper counting our children? That was the question that had brought them here. They had already called it out to the guards, whose faces were unmoved and who had merely lowered their spears in the direction of the angry women. But the women hadn't gone home, all the same.

It was Friday, the day when the hunt rode out, and the crowd had been waiting hours for the return of their new master, who from the moment of his arrival had set about killing all the game in the Wayless Wood. Once again his servants would be carrying dozens of bloodstained partridges, wild boar, deer, and hares through the streets of starving Ombra, past women who hardly knew where to find food for the next day. That was why Fenoglio hardly ever went out of doors, and even less on Fridays than on any other day of the week, but curiosity had brought him here today. Curiosity – a tiresome feeling!

"Fenoglio," Minerva had said, "can you look after Despina and Ivo? I have to go to the castle. We're all going. We want to make them tell us why the Piper is counting our children."

You know why, Fenoglio wanted to say. But the desperation on Minerva's face silenced him. Let them hope their children weren't wanted for the silver mines, he told himself. Leave it to the Milksop and the Piper to take their hope away.

Oh, how tired he was of all this! He'd tried his hand at writing again yesterday, roused to anger by the arrogant smile with which the Piper rode into Ombra. He had picked up one of the sharpened pens that the glass man still placed encouragingly in front of him, sat down in front of a blank sheet of paper, and after an hour of waiting in vain told Rosenquartz off for buying paper that anyone could see was made of old trousers.

Ah, Fenoglio, he wondered, how many more stupid excuses will you think up for the way you've turned into an old man with no power over words anymore?

Yes, he admitted it. He wanted to be master of this story, strongly as he had denied it after Cosimo's death. More and more often these days he set to work with pen and ink in search of the old magic – usually while the glass man was snoring in his fairy nest, because it was too embarrassing to have Rosenquartz as a witness of his failure. He tried it when Minerva had to give the children soup tasting little better than dishwater, when the horrible rainbow-colored fairies jabbered away in their nest at the tops of their voices, keeping him awake, or when one of his creations – like the Piper yesterday – reminded him of the days when he had woven this world out of letters, intoxicated by his own skill with words.

But the paper stayed blank – as if all the words had stolen away to Orpheus, just because he took them and savored them on his tongue. Had life ever tasted so bitter before?

In Fenoglio's gloomy mood he had even played with the idea of going back to that village in the other world, such a peaceful, well-fed place, so wonderfully free of fairies and stirring events, back to his grandchildren, who must be missing his stories. (And what fabulous stories he'd be able to tell them now!) But where could the words be found that would take him back? Certainly not in his empty old head, and he could hardly ask Orpheus to write them for him. He hadn't sunk as low as that yet.

Despina tugged at his sleeve. Cosimo had given him the tunic he was wearing, but it, too, was moth-eaten now and as dusty as his brain that wouldn't think. What was he doing here outside this damn castle? The sight of it depressed him. Why wasn't he lying in bed?

"Fenoglio? Is it true that when people dig silver out of the ground they spit blood on it?" Despina's voice still reminded him of a little bird's. "Ivo says I'm just the right size for the tunnels where they find most of the silver."

Damn the boy! Why did he tell his little sister such stories?

"How often have I told you not to believe a word your brother says?" Fenoglio tucked Despina's thick black hair back behind her ears and looked accusingly at Ivo. Poor fatherless little thing.

"Why shouldn't I tell her? She asked me!" Ivo was at the age when he despised even comforting lies. "I don't expect they'll take you," he said, leaning down to his sister. "Girls die too quickly. But they'll take me and Beppo and Lino, and even Mungus, although he limps. The Piper will take us all. And then they'll bring us back dead just like our -"

Despina put her hand over his mouth quickly, as if her father might come back to life if only her brother didn't speak the bad word. Fenoglio could happily have seized and shaken the boy, but Despina would only have burst into tears on the spot. Did all little sisters adore their brothers?

"That's enough! Stop upsetting your sister!" he snapped at Ivo. "The Piper's here to catch the Bluejay. Not for anything else. And to ask the Milksop why he isn't sending more silver to the Castle of Night."

"Oh yes? Then why are they counting us?" The boy had grown up in the last few weeks. As if grief had wiped away the childishness on his face. At the tender age of ten, Ivo was now the man of the family – even if Fenoglio sometimes tried to lift the burden of that responsibility off his thin shoulders. The boy worked with the dyers, helped to pull wet fabric through the stinking vats day in, day out, and brought the smell home with him in the evening. But he earned more with that work than Fenoglio did as a scribe in the marketplace.

"They're going to kill us all!" he went on unmoved, his eyes fixed on the guards, who were still pointing their spears at the waiting women. "And they'll tear the Bluejay to pieces, like they did last week with the strolling player who threw rotten vegetables at the Governor. They fed the pieces to the hounds."

"Ivo!" This was too much. Fenoglio tried to grab him by the ears, but the boy was too quick for him and ran away before he could get a hold. However, his sister stood there squeezing Fenoglio's hand as tightly as if there were nothing else for her to cling to in this shattered world.

"They won't catch him, will they?" Despina's little voice was so timid that Fenoglio had to bend down to hear what she was saying. "The bear protects the Bluejay now as well as the Black Prince, doesn't he?"

"Of course!" Fenoglio stroked her jet-black hair again. The sound of hoofbeats was coming up the street, echoing among the houses, with voices chatting as casually as if they scorned the silence of the women waiting there, while the sun sank behind the surrounding hills and turned the roofs of Ombra red. The noble lords were late coming back from the pleasures of the hunt today, their silver-embroidered garments spattered with blood, their bored hearts comfortably aroused by killing. Death could indeed be a great entertainer – when it was someone else's death.

The women crowded closer together. The guards drove them back from the gates, but they stayed outside the castle walls: old women, young women, mothers, daughters, grandmothers. Minerva was one of those in front. She had grown thin in the last few weeks. Fenoglio's story, that man-eating monster, was eating her alive. But Minerva had smiled when she heard that the Bluejay had gone to see some books in the castle and ridden away unscathed.

"He will save us!" she had whispered. In the evenings she sang, low-voiced, the songs going around Ombra, and very bad songs they were. About the White Hand and the Black Hand of Justice, the Jay and the Prince… a bookbinder and a knife- thrower against the Piper and his army of fire-raising men-at-arms. But why not? After all, didn't that sound like a good story?

Fenoglio picked up Despina as the soldiers escorting the hunting party rode by. Strolling players followed them down the street: pipers, drummers, jugglers, brownie-tamers, and of course Sootbird, who wasn't going to miss any fun, even if – so they said – he felt ill at the sight of people being blinded and quartered. Then came the hounds, dappled like the light in the Wayless Wood, with the kennel-boys who made sure the dogs were hungry on the day of the hunt, and finally the hunters, led by the Milksop, a skinny figure on a horse much too large for him. He was as ugly as his sister was said to be beautiful, with a pointed nose that seemed too short for his face and a wide, pinched mouth. No one knew why the Adderhead had made him, of all men, lord of Ombra. Perhaps it had been at the request of his sister, who, after all, had given the Silver Prince his first son. But Fenoglio suspected it was more likely that the Adderhead had chosen his puny brother-in-law because he could be sure the Milksop would never rise against him.

What a feeble character, thought Fenoglio scornfully as the Milksop rode by with a supercilious expression on his face. Obviously, this story was now filling even leading roles with cheap supporting actors.

As expected, the fine ladies and gentlemen had brought back plenty of game: partridges dangling from the poles to which the grooms had tied them like fruit that had just fallen, halt a dozen of the deer he had thought up especially for this world, with reddish-brown coats that were still as dappled as a fawn's even in old age (not that these animals had been particularly old), hares, stags, wild boars…

The women of Ombra stared at the slaughtered game expressionlessly. Many put a telltale hand to their empty stomachs or glanced at their ever-hungry children waiting in doorways for their mothers.

And then – then they carried the unicorn past.

Damn that Cheeseface!

There were no unicorns in Fenoglio's world, but Orpheus had written one here just so that the Milksop could kill it. Fenoglio quickly put his hand over Despina's eyes when they carried it by, its white coat pierced and bloodstained. Rosenquartz had told him not quite a week ago about the Milksop's commission. The fee for it had been high, and all Ombra had wondered what distant country Four-Eyes had brought that fairy-tale creature from.

A unicorn! What stories could have been told about it! But the Milksop wasn't paying for stories, quite apart from the fact that Orpheus couldn't have written them. He did it with my words, thought Fenoglio. With my words! He felt fury clenched like a stone in his belly. If he only had the money to hire a couple of thieves to steal the book that supplied that parasite with words! His own book! Or if, at least, he could have written a few treasures for himself! But he couldn't manage even that – he, Fenoglio, formerly court poet to Cosimo the Fair and creator of this once-magnificent world! Tears of self-pity came to his eyes, and he imagined them carrying Orpheus past, stabbed and bloodstained like the unicorn. Oh yes!

"Why are you counting our children? We want you to stop it!"

Minerva's voice brought Fenoglio out of his vengeful daydreams. When she saw her mother step in front of the horses, Despina wound her thin little arms so tightly around his neck that he could hardly breathe. Had Minerva lost her wits? Did she want her children to be not just fatherless but motherless, too?

A woman riding just behind the Milksop pointed her gloved finger at Minerva with her bare feet and shabby dress. The guards moved toward her with their spears.

For heaven's sake, Minerva! Fenoglio's heart was in his mouth. Despina began crying, but it wasn't her sobs that made Minerva stumble back. Unnoticed, the Piper had appeared on the battlements above the gateway.

"You ask why we're counting your children?" he called down to the women.

As always, he was magnificently dressed. Even the Milksop looked like a mere valet by comparison. He stood on the battlements shimmering like a peacock with four crossbowmen beside him. Perhaps he had been up there for some time, watching to see how his master's brother-in-law would deal with the women waiting for him. His hoarse voice carried a long way in the silence that suddenly fell on Ombra.

"We count everything that's ours!" he cried, "Sheep, cows, chickens, women, children, men – not that you have many of those left – fields, barns, stables, houses. We count every tree in your forest. After all, the Adderhead likes to know what he's ruling over."

His silver nose still looked like a beak in the middle of his face. There were tales saying that the Adderhead had ordered a silver heart to be made for his herald, too, but Fenoglio felt sure there was still a human heart beating in the Piper's breast. Nothing was more cruel than a heart made of flesh and blood, because it knew what gives pain.

"You don't want them for the mines?" The woman who spoke up this time did not step forward like Minerva but hid among the others. The Piper did not answer at once. He examined his fingernails. The Piper was proud of his pink nails. They were as well manicured as a woman's, just as Fenoglio had described them. In spite of everything, it was still exciting to see his characters acting exactly as he had imagined.

You soak them in rose water every evening, you villain, thought Fenoglio, as Despina stared at the Piper like a bird staring at the cat that wants to eat it. And you wear them as long as the nails of the ladies who keep the Milksop company.

"For the mines? What a delightful idea!"

It was so quiet now that the silver-nosed man didn't even have to raise his voice. In the setting sun his shadow fell over the women, long and black. Very effective, Fenoglio thought. And how stupid the Milksop looked. The Piper was keeping him waiting outside his own gates like a servant. What a scene. But this one wasn't his own invention…

"Ah, I understand! You think that's why the Adderhead sent me here!" The Piper leaned his hands on the wall and looked down from the battlements, like a beast of prey wondering whether the Milksop or one of the women would taste better. "No, no. I'm here to catch a bird, and you all know the color of its feathers. Although, as I hear, he was black as a raven during his last impudent exploit. As soon as that bird is caught, I'll be riding back to the other side of the forest. Isn't that so, Governor?"

The Milksop looked up at him and adjusted his sword, still bloodstained from the hunt. "If you say so!" he called in a voice that he could control only with difficulty. He glanced angrily at the women outside the gates, as if he'd never seen anything like them before.

"I do say so." The Piper smiled condescendingly down on the Milksop. "But on the other hand," he said, and the pause before he continued seemed endless, "if this bird should escape capture once more…" He paused again, for a long time, as if he wanted to inspect each of the waiting women thoroughly. "If any of those present here should go so far as to give him shelter and a roof over his head, warn him of our patrols, sing songs of how he pulls the wool over our eyes…" The sigh he heaved came from the depths of his breast. "Well, in that case, no doubt I'd have to take your children with me in his place, for after all, I can't go back to the Castle of Night empty-handed, can I?"

Oh, the confounded silver-nosed bastard.

Why didn't you make him more stupid, Fenoglio? Because stupid villains are so boring, he answered himself, and was ashamed of it when he saw the despair on the women's faces.

"So you see, it's entirely up to you!" The strained voice still had something of the slushy sweetness for which Capricorn had loved it so much. "Help me to catch the bird that the Adderhead longs to hear singing in his castle, and you can keep your children. Otherwise…" He wearily signed to the guards, and the Milksop, his face rigid with fury, rode toward the gates as they opened. "Otherwise, I am afraid I'll have to remember that there is indeed always a need for small hands in our silver mines."

The women were still staring at him with faces as empty of emotion as if there simply were no room in them for yet more despair.

"What are you still standing there for?" called the Piper as the servants carried the Milksop's dead game through the gateway below. "Go away! Or I'll have boiling water poured over you. Not a bad idea at all, since I'm sure you could all do with a bath."

As if numbed, the women moved back, looking up at the battlements as though the cauldrons were already heating up.

The last time Fenoglio's heart had raced like this was when the soldiers had appeared in Balbulus's workshop to take Mortimer away with them. He examined the faces of the women, the beggars crouching beside the pillory outside the castle walls, the frightened children, and fear spread through him. All the rewards set on Mortimer's head had not yet been able to buy the Silver Prince an informer in Ombra, but what now? What mother would not betray the Bluejay for her own child's sake?

A beggar pushed his way through the crowd of women, and as he limped past Fenoglio recognized him as one of the Black Prince's spies. Good, he thought. Mortimer will soon know about the deal the Piper has offered the women of Ombra. But then what?

The Milksop's hunting party was moving on through the open castle gates, and the women set off for home, heads lowered, as if already ashamed of the act of betrayal the Piper had demanded of them.

"Fenoglio?" A woman stopped in front of him. He didn't know who she was until she pushed back the scarf that she had tied over her pinned-up hair like a peasant woman.

"Resa? What are you doing here?" Fenoglio instinctively looked around in alarm, but Mortimer's wife had obviously come without her husband.

"I've been looking for you everywhere!"

Despina clung around Fenoglio's neck and stared curiously at the strange woman. "That lady looks like Meggie," she whispered to him.

"Yes, because she's Meggie's mother." Fenoglio put Despina down as Minerva came toward him. She was walking slowly, as if she felt dizzy, and Ivo ran to her and put his arm protectively around her.

"Fenoglio!" Resa took his arm. "I have to speak to you!"

What about? It couldn't be anything good.

"Minerva, you go ahead," he said. "It will be all right, wait and see," he added, but Minerva just looked at him as if he were one of her children. Then she took Despina's hand and followed her son, who was running on ahead. She walked as unsteadily as if the Piper's words were splinters of glass under her feet.

"Tell me your husband is hidden deep, deep in the forest and not planning any more idiocy like that visit to Balbulus!" Fenoglio whispered to Resa as he led her away with him into Bakers' Alley. It still smelled of fresh bread and cake there, a tormenting aroma for most of the people of Ombra, who hadn't been able to afford such delicacies for a long time.

Resa covered her hair with the scarf again and looked around as if she were afraid the Piper had come down from the battlements and was following her, but only a thin cat slunk past. Once there had been a great many pigs in the streets, too, but they had been eaten long ago, most of them up at the castle.

"I need your help!" Good God, how desperate she sounded! "You must write us home again. You owe us that! It's your songs that have put Mo in danger, and it's getting worse every day! You heard what the Piper said!"

"Stop, stop, stop!" He blamed himself often enough these days, but Fenoglio still didn't like to be blamed by others. And this accusation really was surely unjust. "I never brought Mortimer here, Orpheus did. I really couldn't foresee that my inspiration for the Bluejay would suddenly be walking around here in flesh and blood!"

"But it happened!" One of the night watchmen who lit the lanterns was coming down the street. Darkness fell fast in Ombra. Another banquet would soon be beginning in the castle, and Sootbird's fire would stink to high heaven.

"If you won't do it for me," said Resa, doing her best to sound composed, but Fenoglio could see the tears in her eyes, "then do it for Meggie… and the brother or sister she's soon going to have."

Another child? Fenoglio instinctively glanced at Resa's belly as if he could already see a new character in the story there. Was there no end to its complications?

"Fenoglio, please!"

What was he to say in reply? Should he tell her about the sheet of paper still lying blank on his table – or even admit that he liked the way her husband played the part he had written for him, that the Bluejay was his sole comfort in these dark days, the only one of his ideas that worked really well? No, better not.

"Did Mortimer send you?"

She avoided his eyes.

"Resa, does he want to leave, too?" Leave this world of mine? he added in his thoughts. My world, still magnificent even if it's in a certain amount of turmoil at the moment? For, yes, Fenoglio knew only too well that he himself still loved it, despite its darkness. Perhaps because of its darkness. No. No, that wasn't why… or was it?

"He must leave! Can't you see that?" The last of the daylight was fading from the streets. The buildings stood very close together, and it was cold and as still as if all Ombra were thinking of the Piper's threat. Shivering, Resa drew her cloak around her. "Your words… they're changing him!"

"Oh, come on. Words don't change anyone!" Fenoglio's voice sounded louder than he had intended. "Maybe my words have taught your husband things about himself he never knew before, but they were there all the time, and if he likes them now you can hardly call it my fault! Ride back, tell him what the Piper offered, say he'd better avoid anything like that visit to Balbulus in the near future, and for God's sake don't worry. He's playing his part very well! He plays it better than any of the other characters I made up, except maybe the Black Prince. Your husband is a hero in this world! What man wouldn't wish for that?"

The way she was looking at him, as if he were an old fool who didn't know what he was talking about! "You know very well how heroes end up," she said, carefully controlling her voice. "They don't have wives or children, and they don't grow old. Find yourself another man to play the hero in your story, but leave my husband out of it! You must write us all back! Tonight!"

He hardly knew where to look. Her gaze was so clear – just like her daughter's. Meggie had always looked at him like that. A candle flared into life in the window above them. His world was sinking into darkness. Night was falling – close the curtains, tomorrow the story will go on…

"I'm sorry, but I can't help you. I'll never be able to write again. It brings nothing but misfortune, and there's enough of that here already."

What a coward he was. Too cowardly for the truth. Why didn't He tell her that the words had abandoned him, that she was asking the wrong man? But Resa seemed to know it anyway. He saw so many emotions mingled on her face: anger, disappointment, fear – and defiance. Like her daughter, thought Fenoglio again. So uncompromising, so strong. Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn't break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out, very slowly. That was what it was doing to Minerva…

"Very well." Resa was in control of her voice, although it shook. "Then I'll go to Orpheus. He can write unicorns into this world; he brought us all here. Why shouldn't he be able to send us home again, too?"

If you can pay him, thought Fenoglio, but he didn't say it aloud. Orpheus would send her packing. He saved his words for the ladies and gentlemen in the castle who paid for his expensive clothes and his maids. No, she'd have to stay, and so would Mortimer and Meggie – and a good thing, too, because who else was going to read his words, supposing they did obey him again someday? And who was to kill the Adderhead if not the Bluejay?

Yes, they had to stay. It was better that way.

"Off you go to Orpheus, then," he said. "And I wish you luck with him." He turned his back to her, so that he wouldn't have to see the despair in her eyes any longer. Did he detect a trace of contempt there, too? "But you'd better not ride back in the dark," he added. "The roads are more dangerous every day."

Then he left her. Minerva would be waiting with supper. He didn't turn back. He knew only too well how Resa would be gazing after him. Exactly like her daughter…