Inkdeath (Inkworld 3)

So the two of them were competing to see who could be closest to the Adder. At the moment Orpheus seemed to hold the better cards, but perhaps that could be changed.

"What are you talking about, Orpheus?" said Mo, without looking up from his work.

He tasted sweet revenge on his tongue. "The Adderhead need feel grateful to no one but the Piper. I was careless. I ran straight into their arms. You had nothing at all to do with it."

"What?" Piqued, Orpheus fiddled with his glasses.

"That’s exactly how I’ll tell the tale to the Adderhead. As soon as he’s had a good sleep." Mo cut through the leather and imagined that he was cutting the web Orpheus had spun around him.

The Piper narrowed his eyes, as if that would help him see more clearly what game the Bluejay was playing. The Bluejay isn’t here, Piper, thought Mo. But how could you understand that?

"Careful, bookbinder!" Orpheus took a clumsy step toward him. His voice was almost cracking. "Use your silver tongue to spread lies about me and I’ll have it cut out on the spot!"

"Oh yes? By whom?"

Mo looked directly at the Piper.

"I don’t want to see my daughter in this castle," he said softly. "I don’t want anyone looking for her after the Bluejay is dead."

The Piper returned his glance—and smiled. "That’s a promise. The Bluejay has no daughter," he said. "And he’ll keep his tongue, too. So long as it speaks the right words."

Orpheus bit his lips so hard that they turned as pale as his skin. Then he moved close to Mo’s side.

"I’ll write new words!" he hissed in his ear. "Words that will make you writhe like a worm on the hook!"

"Write what you like," replied Mo, cutting through the leather again.

The bookbinder wouldn’t feel the words.

CHAPTER 72

So MANY TEARS

She was crying! Jacopo had never heard his mother cry before. Not even when they brought his father back from the forest, dead. He hadn’t cried then, either, but that was different.

Should he call down to her? He kneeled on the edge of the shaft and stared into the darkness. He couldn’t see her, only hear her. The weeping sounded terrible. It scared him. His mother didn’t cry. His mother was always strong, always proud. She didn’t take him in her arms like Brianna. Brianna hugged him even when he’d been cruel to her. "It’s because you look like your father!" the maids in the kitchen said. "Brianna was in love with your father! " She was still in love with him. She had a coin with his picture on it in the bag at her belt, she sometimes kissed it in secret, and she wrote his name on the walls. She wrote it in the air and in the dust. She was so stupid.

The sobbing down below grew even more violent, and Jacopo put his hands over his ears. It sounded as if his mother were breaking into small pieces, such tiny pieces that no one would ever be able to put her together again. But he wanted to keep her!

"Your grandfather will take you with him," said the servants. "Back to the Castle of Night, so that you can play with his son." But Jacopo didn’t want to go to the Castle of Night. He wanted to go back to Ombra. That was his castle. And he was frightened of his grandfather, who stank and gasped for air, and had skin so spongy you were scared you might dig holes in it with your fingers.

It must be all wet with her tears down there. She sounded as if she’d soon be drowning in them! No wonder she was so sad. She couldn’t read any books in the darkness, and his mother wasn’t happy without books. She loved nothing so much.

She loved them far more than him, but never mind that. He didn’t want her marrying Four-Eyes all the same. Jacopo hated Four-Eyes. His voice was like melted sugar on your skin.

He liked the Bluejay. And the Fire-Dancer. But soon they’d both be dead. Orpheus was going to feed the Fire-Dancer to the Night-Mare, and as soon as the Bluejay had finished the new book they’d flay him. His grandfather had once made him watch a man being flayed alive. Jacopo had hidden away from the victim’s screams in the farthest corner of his heart, but he had still heard them there. It was quiet. His mother had stopped crying. Had she cried herself to death?

The guards took no notice of him as he bent far over the edge of the black shaft.

"Mother?"

The word didn’t pass his lips easily. He never called her Mother. It was as Her Ugliness that he thought of her. But nOW she had been crying.

"Jacopo?"

She was still alive.

"Is the Bluejay dead?"

"Not yet. He’s binding the book."

"Where is Brianna?"

"In one of the cages." He was jealous of Brianna. Violante liked Brianna better than him. She was allowed to sleep with his mother, who talked to her much more often than she talked to him, her son. But Brianna comforted him, too, when he’d hurt himself, or when the Milksop’s men taunted him about his dead father. And she was very beautiful.

"Orpheus—" he began, but one of the guards grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to his feet.

"That’s enough chatter!" he said. "Get out."

Jacopo tried to wriggle free, but it was no good.

"Let her out!" he shouted, beating his fists against the man’s armed chest. "Let her out this minute!"

But the soldier only laughed.

"Hark at him, will you!" he said to the other guard. "Mind you don’t end up in that cell yourself, midget. Your grandfather has a son now. So his grandson doesn’t count for much, especially when he’s Cosimo’s brat and his mother is thick as thieves with the Bluejay."

He pushed Jacopo away so roughly that he fell over, and Jacopo wished he could make flames come out of his hands, like the Fire-Dancer, or kill them all with a sword, the way the Bluejay had killed so many men.

"Jacopo?" he heard his mother call from down below, but when he turned back to the edge of the shaft the soldiers barred his way.

"Get out, I tell you!" one of them snapped. "Or I’ll tell Four-Eyes to feed you to the Night-Mare. I bet you’re not half as tough as the illuminator they’re keeping in reserve for it."

Jacopo kicked the man’s knee as hard as he could and escaped before the other guard could grab hold of him.

The passages down which he stumbled were so dark that he saw a thousand monsters in the shadows. It had been better when there was fire burning on all the walls, much better. Where was he to go? Back to the room where they’d locked him in with his mother? No, there were beetles there that crawled into your nose and ears. Orpheus had sent them. He’d told the boy so himself, laughing. Jacopo had changed his clothes three times already to get rid of the beetles, but he could still feel them everywhere.

Perhaps he ought to go to the cage where Brianna was? No, the Night-Mare was outside it. Jacopo crouched on the stone floor and buried his face in his hands. He wished them all to hell, Orpheus and the Piper and his grandfather. He wanted to be like the Bluejay and the Black Prince — and then he’d kill them all. Every last one of them. That’d soon stop them laughing. And then he’d sit on the throne of Ombra and attack the Castle of Night, just like his father. But he would conquer it and take all its silver to Ombra, and the strolling players would sing songs about him, and he’d make them put on a show at the castle every day, just for him, and the Fire-Dancer would write his name in the sky, and his mother would curtsy to him, and he’d marry a girl as beautiful as Brianna. .