Inkdeath (Inkworld 3)

I can—"

"I’m not afraid of words anymore," Dustfinger interrupted impatiently. "Neither yours nor Fenoglio’s. And neither of you was able to dictate how I’d die. Have you forgotten that?" He reached into the air, and a burning torch grew from his hand.

"Bring me the book," he said, giving it to Farid. "Bring everything he’s written.

Every word."

Farid nodded. He was back. Dustfinger was back!

"You must take the list, too!" Jasper’s voice was as slight as his limbs. "The list he made me draw up. Of all the words Fenoglio used! I’m as far as the letter F."

"Ah, not a bad idea! A list. Thank you, glass man." Dustfinger smiled. No, his smile hadn’t changed. Farid was so glad he hadn’t left that behind with the White Women.

He put Jasper on his shoulder and went to the stairs. Jink ran after him. Orpheus tried to bar his way, but he flinched back when the torch left his glasses clouded and its flame singed his silk shirt. Oss was braver than his master, but in response to a whisper from Dustfinger the torch reached out to him with fiery hands, and before Oss had recovered from his fright Farid was past him. Agile as a gazelle, he leaped up the stairs, his heart full of happiness and the taste of sweet revenge on his tongue.

"Jasper!" Orpheus called after him. "I’m going to smash you into such tiny splinters that no one will even be able to see what color you were!"

The glass man dug his fingers into Farid’s shoulder, but he didn’t turn around.

"As for you, you lying little camel-driver" — Orpheus’s voice broke — "I’ll make you disappear into a story full of horrible things specially written for you!"

The threat halted Farid for a moment, but then he heard Dustfinger’s voice.

"Take care with your threats, Orpheus. If anything ever happens to the boy, or if he suddenly disappears — the fate you clearly intended for him this time — then I’ll come to visit you again. And as you know, I never go anywhere without fire."

"It was for you!" Farid heard Orpheus shouting. "I did it all for you! Is this the thanks I get?"

Ironstone hurled furious abuse at Farid and his younger brother as soon as he realized what they were looking for in his master’s study. But Jasper, unmoved, helped Farid to find first the book and then every scrap of paper that Orpheus had ever written on.

Ironstone threw sand and sharp pens at them, he wished every imaginable disease that can afflict a glass man on Jasper, and finally flung himself heroically on the last sheet of paper that Jasper was rolling up on Orpheus’s desk, but Farid merely pushed him roughly aside.

"Traitor!" shrieked Ironstone at his brother as Farid closed the door of the study behind him. "I hope you’re smashed into a thousand pieces!" But Jasper did not turn back, any more than he had at the threats made by Orpheus.

Dustfinger was already waiting at the front door of the house.

"Where are they?" asked Farid anxiously as he hurried toward him. There was no sign of Orpheus or Oss, but he could hear their angry voices.

"In the cellar," said Dustfinger. "I lost a little fire on the stairs. We’ll be well into the forest before it goes out."

Farid nodded, and turned as one of the maids appeared at the top of the stairs, but it wasn’t Brianna.

"My daughter left," said Dustfinger, as if he had read Farid’s thoughts. "And I doubt if she’ll be coming back to this house."

"She hates me!" Farid stammered. "Why did she help me?"

Dustfinger opened the door, and the martens scurried out. "Perhaps she likes Orpheus even less than you," he said.

CHAPTER 30

SOOTBIRD’S FIRE

Fenoglio was happy. He was happy even though Jvo and Despina had taken it into their heads to drag him off to the marketplace, where Sootbird was giving yet another show. The criers had been announcing it for days, and naturally Minerva wasn’t letting the children go alone. The Milksop had had a platform specially made so that everyone could watch his court fire-eater’s incompetent performance. Did they hope such things would make the people forget that the Fire-Dancer was back? Never mind, not even Sootbird could cast a shadow over Fenoglio’s cheerful mood. His heart hadn’t been so light since he had set off with Cosimo for the Castle of Night.

And he wasn’t going to think of what had happened after that; no, that chapter was closed. His story had struck up a new song, and whose doing was that? His own!

Who else had brought the Bluejay into the story, the man who had run rings around the Piper and the Milksop and brought the Fire-Dancer back from the dead? What a character! Orpheus’s creations were grotesque by comparison: garishly colored fairies, dead unicorns, dwarves with a blue tinge to their hair. Yes, that Calf’s-Head could bring such creatures into being, but only he, Fenoglio, could think up men like the Black Prince and the Bluejay. Well he had to admit that only Mortimer had made the Bluejay flesh and blood. But the words had come first, all the same, and it was he who had written them, every single one!

"Ivo! Despina!" Where were they, damn it? It was easier to catch Orpheus’s rainbow-colored fairies than those children! Hadn’t he told them not to run too far ahead?

Children were swarming all over the street, coming out of all the houses to forget, at least for an hour or so, the burdens the world had laid on their frail shoulders. It was no fun being a child in these dark times. The boys had become men too young, and the girls found their mothers’ sadness hard to bear.

At first Minerva hadn’t wanted to let Ivo and Despina go. There were too many soldiers in town, and too much work waiting at home, but Fenoglio had won her over, although he didn’t like the thought of the stink that Sootbird would be spreading again. On a day when he was so happy, however, he wanted the children to be happy, too, and while Sootbird put on his pathetic show he would simply dream of Dustfinger breathing fire in Ombra’s marketplace in the near future. Or he would imagine the Bluejay riding into Ombra and chasing the Milksop out of the gates like a mangy dog, knocking the silver nose off the Piper’s face, and then, together with the Black Prince, founding a realm of justice, ruled by the people! Or perhaps not entirely. This world hadn’t reached that point yet, but never mind. It would be wonderful, it would move all hearts, and he, Fenoglio, had set the story on the course that would save it when he had written the first song about the Bluejay. In the end he’d done everything right! Well, perhaps Cosimo had been a mistake, but where would the excitement be in a story if it wasn’t dark from time to time?

"Inkweaver! Where are you?" Ivo was waving to him impatiently. Did the boy think an old man could just wriggle like an eel through this tide of children’s bodies?

Despina turned and smiled in relief when Fenoglio waved to her. But then her little head disappeared among all the others again.

"Ivo!" called Fenoglio. "Ivo, keep an eye on your sister, can’t you?"

Good heavens, he’d never known how many children there were in Ombra! Many of them were dragging their smaller brothers and sisters along after them as they flocked to the marketplace. Fenoglio was the only grown man to be seen, and few of the mothers had come. No doubt most of the children had stolen away on the sly —