Inkspell

65. LORD OF THE STORY

Fenoglio was wandering among the dead when the robbers found him. Night fell, but he did not know what night it was. Nor could he remember how many days had passed since he rode out of the gates of Ombra with Cosimo. He knew only one thing: They were all dead. Minerva's husband, his neighbor, the father of the boy who had so often begged him for a story. All dead. And he himself would very likely have been dead, too, if his horse hadn't shied and thrown him. He had crawled away into the trees, to hide there like an animal and watch the slaughter.

Since the departure of the Adderhead's soldiers he had been stumbling from one corpse to the next, cursing himself, cursing his story, cursing the world he had created. When he felt the hand on his shoulder he actually thought for a moment that

Cosimo had risen from the dead yet again, but it was the Black Prince standing behind him.

"What are you doing here?" he snarled at him and the men with him. "Do you want to die, too? Go away and hide, and leave me in peace." He struck his brow. His damned head that had invented them all, and with them all the misfortune they were wading through like black, stinking water! He fell on his knees beside a dead man whose open eyes were staring at the sky, and blamed himself furiously – himself, the Adderhead, Cosimo and his haste – and then suddenly fell silent when he saw Dustfinger standing next to the Prince.

"You!" he stammered and got to his feet again, swaying. "You're still alive! You're not dead yet, even though I wrote it that way." He took Dustfinger's arm and clutched it tightly.

"Yes, disappointing, isn't it?" replied Dustfinger, shaking off Fenoglio's hand roughly. "Is it any comfort to you that no doubt, but for Farid, I'd have been lying as dead and cold as these men? After all, you didn't foresee him."

Farid? Oh yes, the boy plucked by Mortimer from his desert story. He was standing beside Dustfinger and staring at Fenoglio with murder in his eyes. No, the boy really did not belong here. Whoever had sent him to protect Dustfinger, it hadn't been him, Fenoglio! But that was the wretched part of the whole business! With everyone interfering in his story, how could it turn out well?

"I can't find Cosimo!" he muttered. "I've been looking for him for hours. Have any of you seen him?"

"Firefox has had his body taken away," the Prince replied. "I expect they'll put it on public display so that this time no one can claim he's still alive."

Fenoglio stared at him until the bear began to growl. Then he shook his head again and again. "I don't understand it!" he stammered. "How could it happen? Didn't Meggie read what I wrote for her? Didn't Roxane find her?" He looked despairingly at Dustfinger. How well he remembered the day he had described his death! A good scene, one of the best he'd ever written.

"Oh yes, Roxane gave Meggie the letter. Ask her yourself if you don't believe me. Although I don't think she'll feel much like talking at the moment." Dustfinger pointed to the woman walking among the corpses. Roxane. The beautiful Roxane. She bent over the dead, looked into their faces, and finally kneeled down beside a man whom a White Woman was approaching. She quickly put her hands over his ears, bent over his face, and gestured to the two robbers who were following her with torches in their hands. No, she would certainly not feel much like talking just now.

Dustfinger looked at him. Why that reproachful expression? Fenoglio wanted to snap at him. After all, I invented your wife, too! But he bit back the words. "Very well. So Roxane gave Meggie the letter," he said instead. "But did Meggie read it?"

Dustfinger looked at him with great dislike. "She tried to, but the Adderhead had her taken to the Castle of Night that very evening."

"Oh God!" Fenoglio looked around. The dead faces of Cosimo's men stared at him. "So that's it!" he cried. "I thought all this had happened only because Cosimo wanted to set off too soon, but no! The words, my wonderful words… Meggie can't have read them, or everything would have been all right!"

"Nothing would have been all right!" Dustfinger's voice was so cutting that Fenoglio involuntarily flinched. "Not a man of all these lying here would be dead if you hadn't brought Cosimo back!"

The Prince and his men stared at Dustfinger, unable to make anything of this. Of course, they had no idea what he was talking about. But obviously Dustfinger knew only too well. Meggie had told him about Cosimo. Or had it been the boy?

"Why are you staring at him like that?" Farid challenged the robbers, ranging himself at Dustfinger's side. "It was exactly as he says! Fenoglio brought Cosimo back from the dead. I was there myself."

How the fools flinched away! Only the Black Prince looked thoughtfully at Fenoglio.

"What nonsense!" Fenoglio said. "No one comes back to this world from the dead! Think what a crowd there'd be! I made a new Cosimo, a brand-new one, and everything would have turned out well if Meggie hadn't been interrupted while she read! My Cosimo would have been a wonderful ruler, a -"

Before he could say any more, the Prince's black hand came down over his mouth. "That's enough," he said. "Enough talking while the dead lie here around us. Your Cosimo is dead, wherever he came from, and the man they take for the Bluejay because of your songs may well be dead soon, too. You seem to enjoy playing with Death, Inkweaver."

Fenoglio tried to protest, but the Black Prince had already turned to his men. "Go on looking for the wounded!" he told them. "And hurry! It's time we got off this road."

They found barely two dozen survivors. Two dozen among hundreds of dead. When the robbers set off again with the wounded men, Fenoglio staggered after them in silence without asking where they were going. "The old man is following us!" he heard Dustfinger tell the Prince. "Where else would he go?" was all the Prince replied – and Dustfinger said nothing. But he kept well away from Fenoglio, as if he were Death itself.