Inkspell

39. ANOTHER MESSENGER

The Adderhead and his men-at-arms had disappeared when Fenoglio came out of the gate of the Inner Castle. Good, thought Fenoglio. He'll be fuming with rage on his long ride home! The thought of it made him smile. A number of men were waiting in the Outer Courtyard. It was easy to guess their trade from their blackened hands, even though no doubt they had scrubbed them thoroughly for their prince. The entire population of Smiths' Alley in Ombra seemed to have come up to the castle. You forge the words, I'll have the swords forged. Many, many swords. Had Cosimo's preparations for his war begun already? If so, it's time I set to work on my words, Fenoglio told himself.

As he turned into Cobblers' Alley he thought for a moment that he heard steps behind him, but when he turned there was only a one-legged beggar hobbling laboriously past him. At every other step the beggar's crutch slipped in the filth lying among the houses – pig dung, vegetable refuse, stinking puddles of whatever fluids people tipped out of their windows. Well, there'll soon be cripples enough, thought Fenoglio as he walked on toward Minerva's house. You could call war a cripple factory… What kind of idea was that? Were doubts of Cosimo's plans stirring in his elated mind? Oh, let it alone…

By all the letters of the alphabet, I'm certainly not going to miss this climb once I'm living in the castle, he thought as he toiled up the stairway to his room. I must just remember to ask Cosimo not, on any account, to give me quarters in one of the towers. The climb up to Balbulus's workshop was bad enough! "Oh, so these few steps are too steep for you, but you trust yourself to go to war in your old age, do you?" said a quiet, mocking voice inside him. It always spoke up at the most inappropriate moments, but Fenoglio had plenty of practice in ignoring it.

Rosenquartz wasn't there. Presumably he had climbed out of the window again to visit the glass man working for the scribe who lived over the road in Bakers' Alley. The fairies all seemed to have flown away, too. It was quiet in Fenoglio's room, unusually quiet. He sat down on his bed, sighing. He didn't know why, but he couldn't help thinking of his grandchildren and the way they used to fill his house with noise and laughter. So what? he thought, feeling angry with himself. Minerva's children make just the same kind of noise, and think how often you've sent them packing down to the yard because it was too much for you!

Footsteps came up the stairs. Well, speak of the devil…! He didn't feel like telling stories, not at the moment. He had to pack his things and then break the news gently to Minerva that she must look around for a new lodger.

"Go away!" he called to whoever was at the door. "Go and tease the pigs or chickens in the yard! The Inkweaver doesn't have time just now. He's moving to the castle."

The door swung open all the same, but not to reveal two children's faces. A man stood there – a man with a blotched face and slightly protuberant eyes. Fenoglio had never seen him before, yet he seemed strangely familiar. His leather trousers were patched and dirty, but the color of his cloak made Fenoglio's heart beat faster. It was the Adderhead's silvery gray.

"What's the idea?" he asked brusquely, getting to his feet, but the stranger was already through the doorway. He stood there with his legs spread, his grin as ugly as his face itself, but it was the sight of his companion that made Fenoglio's old knees feel weak. Basta was smiling at him like a long-lost friend. He, too, wore the silver of the Adderhead.

"Bad luck again! Talk about terrible luck!" said Basta, looking around the room. "The girl's not here. And there we go stalking you all the way from the castle, quiet as cats, thinking we'll catch two birds with one stone, and now it's just one ugly old raven in our trap. Never mind, at least one is something. Can't expect too much of Lady Fortune, can we? After all, she sent you to the castle at just the right time. I recognized your ugly tortoise face at once, but you didn't even see me, did you?"

No, Fenoglio hadn't seen him. Should he have looked closely at every man standing behind the Adderhead? Yes – if you'd had your wits about you, Fenoglio, he told himself, that's exactly what you'd have done! How could you forget that Basta's back? Wasn't what happened to Mortimer warning enough?

"Well, what a surprise! Basta! How did you escape the Shadow?" he said out loud, moving unobtrusively backward until he could feel the bed behind him. Ever since a man in the house next door had his throat cut in his sleep, he had slept with a knife under his pillow, although he wasn't sure if it was still there.

"Sorry, but he must have overlooked me, shut up in that cage as I was," purred Basta in his catlike voice, "Capricorn wasn't so lucky, but Mortola is still around, and she's told our old friend the Adderhead about the three birds we're after. Dangerous sorcerers who kill with words," Basta slowly came toward Fenoglio. "Who do you think those birds are?"

The other man kicked the door shut with his boot.

"Mortola?" Fenoglio tried to make his voice mocking and supercilious, but it sounded more like the croak of a dying raven. "Wasn't it Mortola who had you put in the cage to be fed to the Shadow?"

Basta just shrugged his shoulders and flung back his silver-gray cloak. Of course, he had his knife. A brand-new one, it seemed, finer than any he'd ever had in the other world and undoubtedly just as sharp.

"Yes, not very nice of her," he said as his fingers caressed the handle of the knife. "But she's really sorry. Come on, then, do you know what birds we're after? Let me help you a little. We've already wrung the neck of one of them – the one that sang loudest."

Fenoglio let himself drop onto the bed, without – or so he hoped – any expression on his face. "I assume you mean Mortimer," he said, slowly pushing his hand under the pillow.

"Quite right!" Basta smiled. "You should have been there when Mortola shot him. Just the way she used to shoot the crows who stole the seed from her fields." The memory made his smile even nastier. How well Fenoglio knew what was going on in his black heart! After all, he had made up Basta, just as he had made up Cosimo and his angelic smile. Basta had always liked describing his own and other people's abominable deeds in detail. His companion didn't seem to be so talkative. He was looking around Fenoglio's room with a bored expression. A good thing the glass man wasn't there; it was so easy to smash him.

"But we're not going to shoot you." Basta came a little closer to Fenoglio, his face as intent as that of a stalking cat. "We'll probably hang you until your tongue is sticking out of your poor old mouth."

"How very imaginative!" said Fenoglio, moving his fingers farther and farther under the pillow. "But you know what will happen then. You'll die, too."

Basta's smile disappeared as suddenly as a mouse scurrying into its hole. "Oh yes!" he hissed unpleasantly, as his hand instinctively went to the amulet at his throat. "I almost forgot. You believe you made me up, right? And what about him?" He pointed to the other man. "That's Slasher. Did you make him up, too? He sometimes worked for Capricorn, after all. Many of the old fire-raisers wear the Adder's silver now, although some of us think it was more fun under Capricorn. All those fine folk in the Castle of Night…!" He spat scornfully at Fenoglio's feet. "It's no coincidence that the Adderhead has a snake on his coat of arms. He wants you to crawl on your belly to him, that's what our noble lord and master likes. But never mind, he pays well! Hey, Slasher!" he addressed his still-silent companion. "What do you think, does the old fellow look as if he made you up?"

Slasher's ugly face twisted. "If so, he made a bad job of it, eh?"

"You're right there." Basta laughed. "I'd say he deserves a taste of our knives just for the face he gave you, right?"

Slasher. Yes, indeed, he'd invented Slasher, too. Fenoglio felt sick to his stomach when he remembered why he'd given the man that name.

"Out with it, old man!" Basta leaned so close that Fenogliosmelled his peppermint-scented breath. "Where's the girl? Tell us and we may let you live a little longer. We'll send the child after her father first. I'm sure she's longing to see him. They were so fond of each other, those two. Come on, where is she? Spit it out!" He slowly drew the knife from his belt. Its blade was long and slightly curved. Fenoglio swallowed as if to force down his fear. He pushed his hand yet farther under the pillow, but all his fingertips met was a piece of bread, probably hidden there by Rosenquartz. Just as well, he thought. What good would a knife have done? Basta would have run me through before I even got a proper hold on it, not to mention Slasher. He felt the sweat running into his eyes.

"Hey, Basta, I know you like the sound of your own voice, but let's get going and take him with us." Slasher spoke in croaking tones, like the toads in the hills by night. Of course, that was how Fenoglio had described him: Slasher, the man with the voice of a toad. "We can question him later. We have to follow the others now," he urged Basta. "Who knows what this dead prince will do next? Suppose he doesn't let us out of his accursed gate? Suppose he sends his soldiers after us? The others must be miles ahead by now!"

With a regretful sigh, Basta put the knife back in his belt. "Yes, very well, you're right," he said in surly tones. "I need to take my time with this sort of thing. Questioning people is an art, a real art." He roughly seized Fenoglio's arm, pulled him to his feet, and pushed him toward the door. "Just like old times, eh?" he snarled in his ear. "I took you out of your own house once before, remember? Put on as good an act as you did then and you'll go on breathing a little longer. And if we pass that woman feeding pigs in the yard, tell her we're taking you to see an old girlfriend of yours, understand?"

Fenoglio just nodded. Minerva wouldn't believe a word of it, but perhaps she might fetch help.

Basta's hand was already on the door handle when footsteps came upstairs again. The old wood creaked and groaned. The children. For heaven's sake! But it was not a child's voice that spoke outside the door.

"Inkweaver?"

Basta cast an anxious glance at Slasher, but Fenoglio had recognized the voice: It was Cloud-Dancer, the former tightrope-walker, who had brought him messages from the Black Prince many times before. He'd be no help, not with his stiff leg! But what news brought him here? Had the Black Prince heard anything of Meggie?

Basta waved Slasher over to the left of the door and stationed himself to the right. Then he gave Fenoglio a sign and drew the knife from his belt again.

Fenoglio opened the door. It was so low that he always had to duck his head coming in. There stood Cloud-Dancer, rubbing his knee. "Bloody stairs!" he swore. "Steep and falling apart. I'm just glad you're in and I don't have to climb them again. Here." He looked around as if the old house had ears and reached into the leather bag that had carried so many letters from place to place. "The girl who's staying with you sends you this." He held out a piece of paper folded several times. It looked like a page from Meggie’s notebook. Meggie hated to tear pages out of a book, and she'd have been reluctant to take one out of this notebook in particular; her father had bound it for her. So the message must be very important – and Basta would take it from him at once.

"Well, here you are, then!" Cloud-Dancer impatiently held the folded paper in front of his nose. "Any idea how fast I hurried to bring you this?"

Reluctantly, Fenoglio put out his hand. He knew just one thing: Basta must not see Meggie's message. Never. His fingers closed around the paper so tightly that none of it was visible.

"And listen!" Cloud-Dancer went on quietly. "The Adderhead has attacked the Secret Camp. Dustfinger -"

Fenoglio shook his head, almost imperceptibly. "Fine. Thank you very much, but the fact is I have visitors just now," he said, desperately trying to convey what he couldn't say in words with his eyes. He rolled them to right and left, as if they could act as fingers pointing to where Basta and Slasher were waiting behind the door.

Cloud-Dancer took a step back.

"Run!" cried Fenoglio and leaped out of the doorway. Cloud-Dancer almost fell downstairs as Fenoglio made his way past him, but then he stumbled. Fenoglio was sliding, rather than running, down the stairs. He didn't turn until he had reached the bottom. He heard Basta cursing behind him, and Slasher's croaking voice. He heard the children in the yard screaming with fright, and from somewhere came Minerva's voice, but by then he was running past the sheds and the lines where her freshly washed laundry hung. A pig ran between his legs, making him stumble and fall in the mud, and when he got up he saw that Cloud-Dancer hadn't been as fast as he was. How could he be, with his stiff leg? Basta had taken him by the collar, while Slasher pushed Minerva aside as she tried to bar his way with a rake. Fenoglio ducked down, first behind an empty barrel, then behind the pigs' trough, and crawled over to one of the sheds on all fours.

Despina.

She was staring at him in astonishment. He laid his finger on his lips, crawled on, forced his way past a couple of planks, and squeezed into the place where Minerva's children had their hideout. He only just fitted in – the place wasn't meant for old men who were beginning to put on weight around the hips. The two children came here when they didn't want to go to bed or weren't keen to work. They hadn't shown their hiding place to anyone but Fenoglio, as proof of friendship – and in return for a good ghost story.

He heard Cloud-Dancer scream, he heard Basta roaring something, and Minerva weeping. He almost crawled back to them, but fear paralyzed him. And what could he do against Basta's knife and the sword that hung from Slasher's belt? He leaned against the wooden wall of the shed, heard the pigs grunting and rooting about in the ground. Meggie’s message swam before his eyes; the sheet of paper was dirty with the mud he'd crawled through, but he could still decipher what she had written.

"I don't know!" he heard Cloud-Dancer scream. "I don't know what she wrote on it. I can't read!" Brave Cloud-Dancer. He probably did know, all the same. He usually had people tell him what their messages said.

"But you can tell me where she is, can't you?" That was Basta's voice. "Out with it. Is she with Dustfinger? You whispered his name to the old man!"

"I don't know!" He screamed again, and Minerva wept louder than ever and shouted for help, her voice echoing back from the narrow houses.

"The Adderhead's men have taken them all away, my parents and the strolling players," Fenoglio read. "Dustfinger is following… the Spelt-Mill…" The letters blurred as he looked at them. Yet again he heard screaming out there. He bit his knuckles so hard that they began to bleed. "Write something, Fenoglio. Save them. Write…" It was as if he could hear Meggie's voice. Another scream. No. No, he couldn't just sit here. He crawled out, on and on, until he could rise to his feet.

Basta was still holding Cloud-Dancer in a firm grip, pressing him back against the wall of the house. The old tightrope-walker's shirt was slit and bloody, and Slasher was standing in front of him with a knife in his hand. Where was Minerva? She was nowhere to be seen, but Despina and Ivo were there, in hiding near the sheds, watching what one man can do to another. With a smile on his lips.

"Basta!" Fenoglio took a step forward. He put all his rage and all his fear into his voice and held Meggie's close-written sheet of paper up in the air.

Basta turned with assumed surprise. "Oh, there you are!" he called. "With the pigs. I might have known it. You'd better bring us that letter before Slasher finishes slicing up your friend here."

"You'll have to fetch it yourselves."

"Why?" Slasher laughed. "You can read it to us, can't you?"

Yes. He could. Fenoglio stood there at his wits' end. Where were all the lies, the clever lies that usually sprang to his lips so easily? Cloud-Dancer was staring at him, his face twisted with pain and fear – and suddenly, as if he couldn't stand the fear a moment longer, he tore himself away from Basta and ran toward Fenoglio. He ran fast in spite of his stiff knee, but Basta's knife was faster – so much faster. It went straight into Cloud-Dancer's back, just as the Adderhead's arrow had pierced the gold-mocker's breast. The tightrope-walker fell in the mud, and Fenoglio, standing there, began to tremble. He was trembling so much that Meggie's letter slipped out of his hand and fluttered to the ground. But Cloud-Dancer lay there unmoving, his face in the dirt. Despina came out of hiding, hard as Ivo tried to haul her back, and stared wide-eyed at the motionless figure lying before Fenoglio's feet. It was quiet in the yard, very quiet.

"Read it out, scribbler!"

Fenoglio raised his head. Basta stood there in front of him, holding the knife that had been sticking into Cloud-Dancer's back just now. Fenoglio stared at the blood on the bright blade and at Meggie's message. In Basta's hand. Without thinking, he clenched his fists. He struck Basta in the chest as if neither the knife nor Slasher existed. Basta staggered back, anger and astonishment on his face. He fell over a bucket full of weeds that Minerva had been pulling out of her vegetable plots. Cursing, he got to his feet. "Don't do that again, old man!" he spat. "I'm telling you for the last time, read that out!"

But Fenoglio had snatched Minerva's pitchfork from the dirty straw piled up outside the pigsty. "Murderer!" he whispered, pointing the crudely forged prongs at Basta. What had happened to his voice? "Murderer, murderer!" he repeated, louder and louder, and he thrust the pitchfork at the place in Basta's breast where his black heart beat.

Basta retreated, his face distorted with rage.

"Slasher!" he roared. "Slasher, come here and get that damn fork away from him!"

But Slasher had gone beyond the houses, sword in hand, and was listening. Horses' hooves were clattering along the alley outside. "We must go, Basta!" he called. "Cosimo's guards are on their way!"

Basta stared at Fenoglio, his narrowed eyes full of hate. "We'll meet again, old man!" he whispered. "And next time you'll be lying in the dirt in front of me, like him." He stepped heedlessly over the motionless Cloud-Dancer. "As for this," he said, tucking Meggie’s letter under his belt, "Mortola will read it to me.

Who'd have thought that the third little bird would write telling us where to find her in her own fair hand? And we'll pick up the fire-eater for free into the bargain!"

"Come on, quickly, Basta!" Slasher beckoned impatiently.

"What are you bothered about? You think they'll string us up because there's one less strolling player in the world?" replied Basta calmly, but he turned away from Fenoglio. He waved to him one last time before disappearing among the houses.

Fenoglio thought he heard voices, the clink of weapons, but perhaps it was something else. He kneeled down beside Cloud-Dancer, turned him gently on his back, and put his ear to his chest – as if he hadn't seen death in his face some moments ago. He sensed the two children coming up beside him. Despina put her hand on his shoulder. It was slim and light as a leaf.

"Is he dead?" she whispered.

"You can see he is," said her brother.

"Will the White Women come to fetch him now?"

Fenoglio shook his head. "No, he's going to them of his own accord," he answered quietly. "You can see that. He's gone already. But they'll welcome him to their White Castle. It's built of bones but very beautiful. There's a courtyard in that castle, full of fragrant flowers, with a tightrope made of moonlight stretched across it just for Cloud-Dancer…" The words came easily: beautiful, comforting words, but were they really true? Fenoglio didn't know. He had never taken any interest in what came after death, either in this world or the other one. Probably just silence, silence without a single word of comfort.

Minerva came stumbling back from the alley, a cut on her forehead. The physician who lived on the corner was with her, and two other women, their faces pale with fear. Despina ran to her mother, but Ivo stayed beside Fenoglio.

"No one would come." Minerva sobbed as she fell to her knees beside the dead man. "They were all afraid. Every one of them!"

"Cloud-Dancer," murmured the physician. Bone-knitter, he was often called, Stonecutter, Piss-Prophet, and sometimes, when he had lost a patient, Angel of Death. "Only a week ago he was asking if I knew anything that would do the pain in his knee good."

Fenoglio remembered seeing the physician with the Black Prince. Should he tell him what Cloud-Dancer had said about the Secret Camp? Could he trust him? No, it was better to trust no one. Nothing and no one. The Adderhead had many spies. Fenoglio straightened up. Never before had he felt so old, so very old that it seemed as if he couldn't survive another single day. The mill that Meggie had mentioned in her letter, where the devil was it? The name had sounded familiar… Well, of course it did; he himself had described it in one of the last chapters of Inkheart. The miller was no friend to the Adderhead, even though his mill stood near the Castle of Night, in a dark valley south of the Wayless Wood.

"Minerva," he asked, "how long does it take a mounted man to get from here to the Castle of Night?"

"Two days for sure, if he's not going to ruin his horse," replied Minerva quietly.

Two days, if not less, before Basta found out what was in Meggie’s letter. If he rode to the Castle of Night with it, that was. But he's sure to do that, thought Fenoglio. Basta can't read, so he will take the letter to Mortola, and the Magpie is sure to be at the Castle of Night. Yes, there were probably two days to go before Mortola would read what Meggie had said and send Basta to the mill. Where Meggie might already be waiting… Fenoglio sighed. Two days. Perhaps that would be enough to get a warning to her, but not to write the words she hoped he would send – words to save her parents.

Write something, Fenoglio. Write…

As if it were so simple! Meggie, Cosimo, they all wanted words from him. It was easy for them to talk. You needed time to find the right words, and enough time was exactly what he didn't have!

"Minerva, tell Rosenquartz I have to go to the castle," said Fenoglio. Suddenly, lie felt dreadfully tired. "Tell him I'll fetch him later."

Minerva stroked Despina's hair – the girl was sobbing into her skirt – and nodded. "Yes, you go to the castle!" she said huskily. "Go and tell Cosimo to send soldiers after those murderers. By God, I'll be in the front row to watch them hang!"

"Hang? What are you talking about?" The physician ran a hand through his sparse hair and looked sadly down at the dead man. "Cloud-Dancer was one of the strolling players. No one gets hanged for stabbing a strolling player. There's a harsher penalty for killing a hare in the forest."

Ivo looked incredulously at Fenoglio. "Will they really not punish them?"

What was he to tell the boy? No, it was a fact. No one would punish them. Perhaps the Black Prince might someday, or the man who had taken to wearing the Bluejay's mask, but Cosimo wouldn't send a single soldier after Basta. The Motley Folk were all outlaws, in Lombrica and Argenta alike. Subject to none, protected by none. But Cosimo will give me a horseman if I ask him, thought Fenoglio, a fast horseman who can warn Meggie of Basta. "Write something, Fenoglio. Save them! Write something that will set them all free and kill the Adderhead…" Yes, by God, he would. He'd write rousing songs for Cosimo and powerful words for Meggie. And then her voice could help this story to find a good ending at last.