Inkdeath (Inkworld 3)

Jacopo put out his hand, and Orpheus dropped a coin bearing his grandfather’s head into it.

The little hand stayed open, demanding more. "I want three."

Orpheus snarled with annoyance, and Jacopo clutched the book a little more firmly.

Greedy little bastard. Orpheus dropped two more coins into the child’s hand, and Jacopo was quick to close his fingers over them. "That’s for one day."

"One day?"

Oss trudged toward them. His toes were sticking out of his boots; he was always needing new boots for his elephantine feet. Too bad. Let him go barefoot for a while.

"Your tent is ready, my lord."

Jacopo stuffed the coins into the bag at his own belt and held out the book to Orpheus with a gracious expression.

"Three silver coins, three days!" said Orpheus, taking the book. "And now get out before I change my mind."

Jacopo ducked, but the next moment he remembered whose grandson he was.

"That’s no way to talk to me, Four-Eyes!" he cried shrilly, stomping on Orpheus’s foot so hard that he screamed. The soldiers who were sitting under the trees, freezing in the cold, laughed, and Jacopo stalked away like a shrunken copy of the Adderhead.

Orpheus felt the blood shoot to his face. "What kind of bodyguard are you?" he snapped at Oss. "Can’t you even protect me from a six-year-old?"

With that, he limped toward his tent.

Oss had lit an oil lamp and spread a bearskin on the cold forest floor, but Orpheus missed his own house the moment he stepped inside. "All because of Mortimer and his stupid robber games!" he grumbled as he sat down on the bearskin in a bad temper. "I’ll send him to hell, and Dustfinger with him. From all I hear, those two seem to be inseparable these days. And if there isn’t any hell in this world, well, I’ll write one especially for them. Even Dustfinger won’t like that kind of fire!"

Write. . . He avidly opened the book he had bargained for with that avaricious little devil. Bears, brownies, fairies . . . the child was right, these were children’s stories. It wouldn’t be easy to read something out of them to tempt the Adderhead, who was sure to summon him soon, for who else was going to help him pass the sleepless night?

More brownies. The old man seemed to have a soft spot for them. A very sentimental story about a glass woman in love. . . another featuring a nymph madly in love with a prince . . . For heaven’s sake, even Jacopo could hardly be expected to take much interest in that. Was a robber at least mentioned somewhere? Or, if not that, a blue jay calling? Yes, that would do it: He could step into the Adderhead’s tent and, with just a few words, read the enemy he’d been hunting so long into his presence. But instead he found woodpeckers, nightingales, even a talking sparrow — no blue jay.

Curse it, curse it, curse it! He hoped his three silver coins had been a good investment. Nose-Nipper. . . hmm, that at least sounded like a creature he could use to get back at the boy. But wait a moment! There, where the forest was at its darkest.

Orpheus’s lips formed the words soundlessly . . . and where not even the brownies ventured out to search for mushrooms.

"This camp is a very uncomfortable place to stay, master!" Ironstone was suddenly there beside him, looking gloomy. "How long do you think we’ll be traveling?"

The glass man was getting grayer every day. Perhaps he missed quarreling with that treacherous brother of his. Or maybe it was because he kept catching wood lice and maggots and eating them with obvious relish.

"Don’t disturb me!" Orpheus snapped at him. "Can’t you see I’m reading? And what’s that leg clinging to your jacket? Haven’t I told you not to eat insects? Do you want me to chase you away into the forest to join the wild glass men?"

"No. No, I really don’t! I won’t let another word pass my lips, Your Grace — and no insects, either!" Ironstone bowed three times. (How Orpheus loved his servility!)

"Just one more question. Is that the book that was stolen from you?"

"No, unfortunately — only its little brother," replied Orpheus without looking up.

"And now for heaven’s sake shut up!"

. . . and where not even the brownies ventured out to search for mushrooms, he read on, lived the blackest of all shadows, the worst of all nameless terrors. Night-Mare it was now called, but once it had borne a human name, for Night-Mares are human souls so evil that the White Women cannot wash the wickedness from their hearts, and send them back again. . .

Orpheus raised his head. "Well, well, what a dark story!" he murmured. "What was the old man thinking of? Had that ghastly imp annoyed him so much that he set out to sing him a very special lullaby? This sounds rather as if Jacopo’s grandfather might like it, too. Yes." Once again he bent over the pages on which Balbulus had painted a shadow with black fingers reaching through the letters on the page. "Oh yes, fabulous!" he whispered. "Ironstone, bring me pen and paper — and quick, or I’ll feed you to one of the horses."

The glass man obeyed eagerly, and Orpheus set to work. Half a sentence stolen here, a few words there, a snippet plucked from the next page to link them. Fenoglio’s words. Written with a rather lighter touch than in Inkheart — you almost thought you could hear the old man chuckling — but the music was the same.

So why shouldn’t the words from this story act like those from the other book — the one so shamefully stolen from him?

"Yes. Yes, that sounds just like the old man’s work!" whispered Orpheus as the paper soaked up the ink. "But it needs a little more color. . . ." He was leafing through the illuminated pages, looking for the right words, when the glass man suddenly gave a shrill scream and scurried into hiding behind his hand.

There was a magpie in the opening of the tent.

Alarmed, Ironstone clutched Orpheus’s sleeve (he was brave only when dealing with smaller specimens of his own kind), and Orpheus’s hope that this might be just an ordinary magpie was dashed as soon as the bird opened her beak.

"Get out!" she spat at the glass man, and Ironstone scurried outside on his thin, spidery legs, although the Adderhead’s men threw acorns and fairy-nuts at him.

Mortola. Of course Orpheus had known she’d turn up again sooner or later, but why couldn’t it have been later? A magpie, he thought as she hopped toward him. If I could turn myself into an animal or a bird, I’d make sure to choose something more impressive. How bedraggled she looked. Presumably a marten had been after her, or a fox. A pity it hadn’t eaten her. "What are you doing here?" she snapped. "Did I say anything about offering your services to the Adderhead?"

She sounded completely crazy, apart from the fact that her harsh voice lost all its terrors when it came out of a yellow beak. Your story’s finished, Mortola, thought Orpheus. Over. Whereas mine is only just beginning. . . .

"Why are you sitting staring at me like that? Did he believe what you told him about his daughter and the Bluejay? Well, come on, out with it!" She pecked angrily at a beetle that had wandered into the tent, crunching it up so noisily that Orpheus felt sick.

"Oh yes, yes," he said, irritated. "Of course he believed me. I was very convincing."

"Good." The Magpie fluttered up onto the books that Orpheus had stolen from the library and peered down on what he had been writing. "What’s all this? Has the Adderhead ordered a unicorn from you, too?"