Inkspell

22. TEN YEARS

Dustfinger was leaning against the castle wall, behind the stalls where people were crowding. The aroma of honey and hot chestnuts rose to his nostrils, and high above him went the tightrope-walker whose blue figure, from a distance, reminded him so much of Cloud-Dancer. He was holding a long pole with tiny birds sitting on it, birds as red as drops of blood, and when the dancer changed direction – stepping lightly, as if standing on a swaying rope was the most natural thing in the world – the birds flew up and fluttered around him, twittering shrilly. The marten on Dustfinger's shoulder looked up at them and licked his lips. He was still very young, smaller and more delicate than Gwin, not half as likely to bite, and most important of all he didn't fear fire. Absently, Dustfinger tickled his horned head. He had caught him behind the stable soon after his arrival at Roxane's house, when the marten was trying to stalk her chickens, and had called him Jink, because of the way he jinked as he moved, dodging and darting before jumping up at Dustfinger so suddenly that he almost knocked him over. Are you crazy? he had asked himself when he lured the animal to him with a fresh egg. He's a marten. How do you know that it makes any difference to Death what name he bears? But he'd kept Jink all the same. Perhaps he had left all his fears behind in the other world: his fears, his loneliness, his ill fortune…

Jink learned fast; he was soon leaping through the flames as if he'd been doing it all his life. It would be easy to earn a few coins with him at the markets – with him and the boy.

The marten nuzzled Dustfinger's cheek. Some acrobats were building a human tower in front of the empty platform that still awaited the birthday boy. Farid had tried persuading Dustfinger to perform, too, but he didn't want people staring at him today. He wanted to stare himself, see his fill of all he'd missed for so long. So he was not in fire-eater's costume, either, but wore Roxane's dead husband's clothes, which she had given him. They had obviously been almost the same size. Poor fellow: Neither Orpheus nor Silvertongue could bring him back from where he was now.

"Why don't you earn the money today for a change?" he had asked Farid. The boy had turned first red and then white as chalk with pride – and shot away into the turmoil. He was a quick learner. Only a tiny morsel of the fiery honey, and Farid was talking to the flames as if he'd been born with their language on his tongue. Of course, they didn't yet spring from the ground when the boy snapped his fingers as readily as for Dustfinger himself, but when Farid called to the fire in a low voice it would speak to him – condescendingly, sometimes with mockery, but still it answered him.

"Oh, but he is your son!" Roxane had said when Farid had drawn a bucket of water from the well early in the morning, cursing, to cool his burned fingers. "He's not," Dustfinger had replied – and had seen in her eyes that she didn't believe him.

Before they set off for the castle, he had practiced a couple of tricks with Farid, and Jehan had watched. But when Dustfinger beckoned the boy closer, he ran away. Farid had laughed out loud at him for it, but Dustfinger put his hand over Farid's mouth. "The fire devoured his father, have you forgotten?" he had whispered, and Farid bowed his head, ashamed.

How proudly he stood there among the other entertainers! Dustfinger pushed his own way past the stalls to get a better view. Farid had taken off his shirt as Dustfinger himself sometimes did – burning cloth was more dangerous than a small burn on the skin, and you could easily protect your naked body against the licking tongues of fire with grease. The boy put on a good act, such a good one that even the traders stared at him spellbound, and Dustfinger took his chance to free a few fairies from the cages where they had been imprisoned, to be sold to some fool as lucky charms. No wonder Roxane suspects you of being his father, he told himself. Your chest swells with pride when you look at him. Next to Farid, a couple of clowns were exchanging broad jokes, to his right the Black Prince was wrestling with his bear, but all the same more and more people stopped to look at the boy standing there playing with fire, oblivious of all around him. Dustfinger watched as Sootbird lowered his torches and looked enviously their way. He'd never learn. He was still as poor a fire-eater as he'd been ten years ago.

Farid bowed, and a shower of coins fell into the wooden bowl that Roxane had given him. He glanced proudly at Dustfinger, as hungry for praise as a dog for a bone, and when Dustfinger clapped his hands he flushed red with delight. What a child he still was, even though he had proudly shown Dustfinger the first stubble on his chin a few months ago!

Dustfinger was making his way past two farmers haggling over a couple of piglets when the gate to the Inner Castle opened again – this time not, as before, for the Adderhead, when Dustfinger himself had only just managed to hide from the Piper's searching glance behind a cake stall. No. Obviously, the birthday boy himself was finally appearing at his own festivities – and his mother would accompany the child, with her maidservant. How fast his foolish heart was suddenly beating! "She has your hair," Roxane had said, "and my eyes."

The prince's pipers made the most of their big scene. Proud as turkey-cocks they stood there, long-stemmed trumpets held aloft in the air. The strolling players, being their own masters, disapproved without exception of musicians who sold their art to a single lord. In exchange, the pipers were better dressed, not in Motley array like the players on the road, but in their prince's colors. For the pipers of the Prince of Sighs, that meant green and gold. His daughter-in-law wore black. Cosimo the Fair had been dead for barely a year, but his young widow would certainly have been courted by several suitors already, in spite of the mark, dark as a burn, that disfigured her face. The crowd came thronging around the platform as soon as Violante and her son had taken their seats. Dustfinger had to climb on an empty barrel to catch a glimpse of her maidservant beyond all those heads and bodies.

Brianna was standing behind the boy. Despite her bright hair, she was like her mother. The dress she wore made her look very grown-up, yet Dustfinger still saw in her face traces of the little girl who had tried to snatch burning torches from his hand or stamped her foot angrily when he wouldn't let her catch the sparks he brought raining down from the sky.

Ten years. Ten years he'd spent in the wrong story. Ten years in which Death had taken one of his daughters, leaving behind nothing but memories as pale and indistinct as if she had never lived at all, while his other daughter had grown up, laughing and weeping through all those years, and he had not been there. Hypocrite! he told himself, unable to take his eyes from Brianna's face. Are you trying to tell yourself you were a devoted father before Silvertongue lured you into his story?

Cosimo's son laughed out loud. His stubby finger pointed first at one, then at another of the entertainers, and he caught the flowers that the women players threw him. How old was he? Five? Six?

Brianna had been the same age when Silvertongue's voice had enticed him away. She had only come up to his elbow, and she'd weighed so little that he scarcely noticed when she climbed up on his back. When he forgot time yet again and stayed away for weeks on end, in places with names she had never heard, she used to hit him with her little fists and throw the presents he brought her at his feet. Then she would slip out of bed the same night to retrieve them after all: colored ribbons as soft as rabbit fur, fabric flowers to put in her hair, little pipes that could imitate the song of a lark or the hoot of an owl. She had never told him so, of course, she was proud – even prouder than her mother – but he always knew where she put the presents – in a bag among her clothes. Did she still have it?

She had kept his presents, yes, but they could never bring a smile to her face when he had stayed away for a long time. Only fire could do that, and for a moment – a seductive moment – Dustfinger was tempted to step out of the gaping crowd, take his place among the other entertainers performing tricks for the prince's grandson, and summon fire just for his daughter's sake. But he stood where he was, invisible behind the throng, watching her smooth back her hair with the palm of her hand in the same way as her mother did so often, unobtrusively rubbing her nose and shifting from foot to foot, as if she'd much rather be dancing down there than standing stiffly here.

"Eat him, bear! Eat him up this minute! So he really is back, but do you think he's planning to go and see an old friend?"

Dustfinger spun around so suddenly that he almost fell off the barrel where he was still standing. The Black Prince was looking up at him, with his bear behind him. Dustfinger had hoped to meet him here, surrounded by strangers, rather than in the strolling players' camp, where there were too many who would ask where he had been… The two of them had known each other since they were the same age as the prince's grandson enthroned in his chair on the platform – the orphaned sons of strolling players, adult before their time, and Dustfinger had missed that black face almost as much as Roxane's.

"So will he really eat me if I get off this barrel?"

The Prince laughed. His laughter sounded almost as carefree as in the old days. "Maybe. After all, he's noticed that I really do have a grudge against you for not coming to see me. And didn't you scorch his fur last time you two met?"

Jink crouched on Dustfinger's shoulder as he jumped off the barrel, chattering excitedly in his ear. "Don't worry, the bear doesn't eat your sort!" Dustfinger whispered to him – and hugged the Prince as hard as if a single embrace could make up for ten years.

"You still smell more of bear than man."

"And you smell of fire. Now tell me, where've you been?" The

Black Prince held Dustfinger at arm's length and looked at him as if he could read in his face everything that had happened during his friend's absence. "So the fire-raisers didn't string you up, then, as many folk say. You look too healthy for that. What about the other story – that the Adderhead locked you up in his dankest dungeon? Or did you turn yourself into a tree for a while, as some songs say, a tree with burning leaves deep in the Wayless Wood?"

Dustfinger smiled. "I'd have liked that. But I assure you, even you wouldn't believe the real story."

A whisper ran through the crowd. Looking over all the heads, Dustfinger saw Farid, red in the face, acknowledging their applause. Her Ugliness's son was clapping so hard that he almost fell off his chair. But Farid was searching the throng for Dustfinger's face. He smiled at the boy – and sensed that the Black Prince was looking at him thoughtfully.

"So the boy really is yours?" he said. "No, don't worry, I'll ask no more questions. I know you like to have your secrets, and I don't suppose that has changed much. All the same, I want to hear the story you spoke of, sometime. And you owe us a performance, too. We can all do with something to cheer us up. Times are bad, even on this side of the forest, though it may not seem so today…"

"Yes, so I've heard already. And the Adderhead obviously doesn't love you any better than before. What have you done, to make him threaten you with the gallows? Did the bear take one of his stags?" Dustfinger stroked Jink's bristling fur. The marten never took his eyes off the bear.

"Oh, believe me, the Adderhead scarcely guesses half of what I do, or I'd have been dangling from the battlements of the Castle of Night long ago!"

"Oh yes?" The tightrope-walker was sitting on his rope above them, surrounded by his birds and swinging his legs, as if the milling crowd down below had nothing to do with him. "Prince, I don't like that look in your eye," said Dustfinger, looking up at the men walking the rope. "You'd do better not to provoke the Adderhead anymore, or he'll have you hunted down just as he's hunted others. And then you won't be safe on this side of the forest, either!"

Someone was pulling at his sleeve. Dustfinger turned so abruptly that Farid flinched back in alarm. "I'm sorry!" he stammered, nodding rather uncertainly to the Prince. "But Meggie's here. With Fenoglio!" He sounded as excited as if he had met the Laughing Prince in person.

"Where?" Dustfinger looked around, but Farid had eyes only for the bear, who had affectionately placed his muzzle on the Black Prince's head. The Prince smiled and pushed the bear's muzzle away.

"Where?" Dustfinger repeated impatiently. For Fenoglio was the very last person he wanted to meet.

"Over there, just behind the platform!"

Dustfinger looked the way Farid's finger was pointing. Sure enough, there was the old man, with two children, just as he had first seen him. Silvertongue's daughter stood beside him. She had grown tall – and even more like her mother. Dustfinger uttered a quiet curse. What were those two after, here in his story? They had as little to do with it as he had to do with theirs. Oh yes? mocked a voice inside him. The old man won't see it that way. Did you forget he claims to have created everything here?

"I don't want to see him," he told Farid. "Bad luck clings to that old man, and worse than bad luck, too, mark my words."

"Is the boy talking about the Inkweaver?" The Prince came so close to Dustfinger's side that the marten hissed at him. "What do you have against him? He writes good songs."

"He writes other things as well." And who knows what he's already written about you, Dustfinger added in his mind. A few well-chosen words, Prince, and you're a dead man!

Farid was still looking at the girl. "What about Meggie? Don't you want to see her, either?" His voice sounded husky with disappointment. "She asked how you were."

"Give her my regards. She'll understand. Off you go, then! I can see you're still in love with her. How was it you once described her eyes? Little pieces of the sky!"

Farid blushed scarlet. "Stop it!" he said angrily.

But Dustfinger took him by the shoulders and turned him around. "Go on!" he said, "Give her my regards, but tell her to keep my name out of her magic mouth, understand?"

Farid cast a last glance at the bear, nodded – and strolled back to the girl very slowly, as if to show that he wasn't in any hurry to reach her. She was going to great pains herself not to look his way too often, as she fidgeted awkwardly with the sleeves of her dress. She looked as if she belonged here, a maidservant from a not particularly prosperous home, perhaps the daughter of a farmer or a craftsman. Well, her father was indeed a craftsman, wasn't he? If one with special talents. Perhaps she was looking around rather too freely. Girls here usually kept their heads bent – and sometimes they were already married by her age. Did his daughter Brianna have anything like that in mind? Roxane hadn't said so.

"That boy's good. Better than Sootbird already." The Prince put out his hand to the marten – and withdrew it when Jink bared his tiny teeth.

"That's not difficult." Dustfinger let his eyes wander to

Fenoglio. So they called him Inkweaver here. How contented he looked, the man who had written Dustfinger's death. A knife in the back, plunged so deep that it found his heart, that was what Fenoglio had planned for him. Dustfinger instinctively reached to touch the spot between his shoulder blades. Yes, he had read them already, after all, Fenoglio's deadly words, one night in the other world when he had been lying awake, trying in vain to conjure up Roxane's face in his memory. You can't go back! He had kept hearing Meggie's voice saying those words. "One of Capricorn's men is waiting for you in the book. They want to kill Gwin, and you try to help him, so they kill you instead." He had taken the book out of his backpack with trembling fingers, had opened it and searched the pages for his death. And then he'd read what it said there in black and white, over and over again. After that he had decided to leave Gwin behind if he should ever come back here… Dustfinger stroked Jink's bushy tail. No, perhaps it had not been a good idea to catch another marten.

"What's the matter? You look as if the hangman had given you the nod all of a sudden." The Black Prince put an arm around his shoulders, while his bear sniffed curiously at Dustfinger's backpack. "The boy must have told you how we picked him up in the forest? He was in a state of great agitation, said he was here to warn you. And when he said of whom, many of my men's hands went to their knives."

Basta. Dustfinger ran a finger over his scarred cheek. "Yes, he's probably back, too."

"With his master?"

"No, Capricorn's dead. I saw him die myself."

The Black Prince put his hand in his bear's mouth and tickled its tongue. "Well, that's good news. And there wouldn't be much for him to come back to, just a few charred walls. Only old Nettle sometimes goes there. She swears you can't find better yarrow anywhere than in the fire-raisers' old fortress."

Dustfinger saw Fenoglio glancing his way. Meggie was looking in the same direction, too. He quickly turned his back on them.

"We have a camp near there now – you'll remember the old brownies' caves," the Prince went on, lowering his voice. "Since Cosimo smoked out the fire-raisers those caves have made a good shelter again. Only the strolling players know about them. The old and frail, cripples, women tired of living on the road with their children – they can all stay and rest there for a while. I tell you what, the Secret Camp would be a good place for you to tell me your story! The one you say is so hard to believe. I've often been there for the bear's sake. He gets grouchy when he spends too long between city walls. Roxane can tell you how to find the place; she knows her way around the forest almost as well as you by now."

"I know the old brownie caves," said Dustfinger. He had hidden from Capricorn's men there many times, but he wasn't sure that he really wanted to tell the Prince about the last ten years.

"Six torches!" Farid was beside him again, wiping soot off his fingers on his trousers. "I juggled with six torches and I didn't drop one. I think she liked it."

Dustfinger suppressed a smile. "Very likely." Two of the strolling players had drawn the Prince aside. Dustfinger wasn't sure whether he knew them, but he turned his back, to be on the safe side.

"Did you know everyone's talking about you?" Farid's eyes were round as coins with excitement. "They're all saying you're back. And I think some of them have recognized you."

"Oh, have they?" Dustfinger looked uneasily around. His daughter was still standing behind the little prince's chair. He hadn't told Farid about her. It was bad enough having the boy jealous of Roxane.

"They say there was never a fire-eater to match you! The other one there, Sootbird they call him" – Farid put a piece of bread in Jink's mouth – "he asked about you, but I didn't know if you wanted to meet him. He's really bad at it, he doesn't know how to do anything – but he says he knows you. Is that right?"

"Yes, but all the same I'd rather not meet him." Dustfinger turned. The tightrope-walker had come down from his rope at last. Cloud-Dancer was talking to him and pointing Dustfinger's way. Time to disappear. He would be happy to see them all again, but not here, and not today…

"I've had enough of this," he told Farid. "You stay and earn us a few more coins. I'll be at Roxane's if you want me."

Up on the platform, Her Ugliness was handing her son a gold-embroidered purse. The child put his plump hand into it and threw the entertainers some coins. They hastily bent to pick them out of the dust. But Dustfinger cast a last look at the Black Prince and went away.

What would Roxane say when she heard that he hadn't exchanged a single word with his daughter? He knew the answer. She would laugh. She knew only too well what a coward he could be.