Inkdeath (Inkworld 3)

But that didn’t interest Farid. He no more belonged to the robbers than he had to Orpheus. He didn’t even belong to Meggie. He belonged with only one person, and he had to keep away from him, for fear of bringing him to his death.

Darkness was just falling, and the robbers were still smoking meat and stretching skins between the trees, when Gwin came scurrying out of the forest. Farid thought the marten was Jink until he saw the graying muzzle. Yes, it was Gwin all right.

Since Dustfinger’s death he had looked at Farid like an enemy, but tonight he nibbled his calves the way he used to when he wanted to play, and chattered until Farid followed him.

The marten was quick, too quick even for Farid, who could Outrun most people, but Gwin kept stopping to wait for him with his tail twitching impatiently, leaving Farid to follow as fast as the darkness allowed, because he knew who had sent the marten.

They found Dustfinger where the castle walls became the city boundary of Ombra and the mountainside on which the city stood rose so steeply that no other houses could stand there. Nothing but thorny bushes covered the slope, and the castle wall towered up without any windows, forbidding as a clenched fist, broken by only a few barred slits that let just enough air into the dungeons for the prisoners not to stifle to death before they were executed. No one stayed long in the castle dungeons of Ombra. Sentences were quickly passed and executions quickly carried out. Why feed someone for long if you were going to hang him anyway? The date of the Bluejay’s death depended only on the judge who was coming from the far side of the forest especially for him. Five days, so the whisper went, it would take the Adderhead five days to reach Ombra in his black-draped coach—and no one knew whether the Bluejay would live as long as a single day after his arrival.

Dustfinger stood with his shoulders back against the wall and his head bent, as if he were listening. The deep shadows cast by the castle made him invisible to the guards pacing back and forth on the battlements.

Dustfinger turned only when Gwin bounded toward him. Farid looked anxiously up at the guards before running to him, but they weren’t looking for a boy, or a man on his own. One man wouldn’t be able to set the Bluejay free. No, the Milksop’s soldiers were watching for the arrival of many men, men coming out of the nearby forest or using ropes to help them down the steep slope above the castle — although the Piper must know that even the Black Prince wouldn’t venture to storm Ombra Castle.

The sky above the towers shone with the dark green Of Sootbird’s fire. The Milksop was celebrating. The Piper had ordered all the minstrels among the strolling players to compose songs about his own cunning and the defeat of the Bluejay, but very few had obeyed. Most of them kept silent, and their silence sang another song — a song of the sadness in Ombra and the tears of the women who had their children back but had lost their hope.

"Well, what do you think of Sootbird’s fire?" Dustfinger whispered as Farid came to lean against the castle wall beside him. "Our friend has learned a few things, wouldn’t you say?"

"He’s still useless!" Farid whispered back, and Dustfinger smiled, but his face grew grave again as he looked up at the windowless walls.

"It’s nearly midnight," he said quietly. "At this time the Piper likes to show prisoners his hospitality with fists, clubs, and boots." He laid his hands on the wall and passed them over it, as if the stones could tell him what was going on in the cells behind them. "He’s not with him yet," he whispered. "But it won’t be long now."

"How do you know?" Sometimes it seemed to Farid as if someone else had come back from the dead, not the man he had known.

"Well, Silvertongue, Bluejay, whatever you like to call him. . . "

Dustfinger whispered. "Since his voice brought me back I’ve known what he feels as if Death had transplanted his heart into my breast. Now, catch me a fairy, or the Piper will half kill him before sunrise. Bring me one of the rainbow-colored kind. Orpheus has given them his own vanity, which comes in handy. You can get them to do anything for a few compliments."

The fairy was soon found. Orpheus’s fairies were all over the place, and although winter didn’t make them as drowsy as Fenoglio’s blue fairies, it was child’s play to pluck one from her nest at this hour of the night. She bit Farid, but he blew in her face as Dustfinger had taught him, until she was gasping for air and forgot all about biting. Dustfinger whispered something to her, and next moment the tiny thing was fluttering up to the barred slits in the wall and disappearing through one of them.

"What did you tell her?" Above them, Sootbird’s venomous fire went on devouring the night. It swallowed up the sky, the stars, and the moon, and the smoke hanging in the air was so acrid that Farid’s eyes were streaming.

"Oh, just that I promised the Bluejay I’d send the most beautiful fairy of all to visit him in his dark dungeon. And by way of thanks she’ll whisper him the news that the Adderhead will reach Ombra in five days’ time, even if the moss-women pave his way here with curses and that, meanwhile, we’ll try to keep the Piper’s mind occupied, so that he can’t spend too much time beating up his prisoners." Dustfinger clenched his left hand into a fist. "You haven’t yet asked me why I sent for you," he said, blowing gently into the fist he had made. "I thought you might like to see this."

He laid his fist against the castle wall, and fiery spiders scuttled out from between his fingers. They hurried up the stones, more and more of them, as many as if they had been born there in Dustfinger’s hand.

"The Piper’s afraid of spiders," he whispered. "He fears them more than swords and knives, and if these creep into his fine clothes he may forget, just for a while, how much he enjoys beating his prisoners at night."

Farid clenched his own fist. "How do you make them?"

"I don’t know—which, I’m afraid, means I can’t teach you. Any more than I can teach you this." Dustfinger placed his hands together. Farid heard him whispering, but he couldn’t make out the words. When a fiery blue jay flew out of Dustfinger’s hands and soared into the night sky on wings of blue-and-white fire, he felt a pang of envy like a wasp sting.

"Oh, show me!" he whispered. "Please! Let me try, at least!"

Dustfinger looked at him thoughtfully. One of the guards above them was raising the alarm. The fiery spiders had reached the castle battlements. "Death taught me the trick of it, Farid," he said softly.

"Well? So I was dead, too, like you, although not for so long!"

Dustfinger laughed. He laughed so loudly that a sentry looked down, and he quickly drew Farid back with him into the blackest shadows.

"You’re right. I’d quite forgotten!" he whispered as the guards on the wall shouted in confusion and shot arrows at the fiery jay. The arrows smoldered and went out among its feathers. "Very well, copy me! Try this."

Farid quickly curved his fingers, feeling the excitement he always felt when he was going to learn something new about fire. It wasn’t easy to repeat the strange words that Dustfinger whispered, and Farid’s heart leaped when he really did feel a fiery tingling between his fingers. Next moment spiders were swarming all over the wall from his hand, too, their burning bodies hurrying up the stones like an army of sparks. He smiled proudly at Dustfinger. But when he tried the blue jay, only a few pale moths fluttered out from between his fingers.