Inkdeath (Inkworld 3)

Or do you seriously claim that an author is the rightful owner of every copy of his books?" Puffed-up, milk-faced young upstart! What a way to speak to him, Fenoglio, the creator of everything around Orpheus himself, even the air he breathed!

"Are you after me again for information on Death?" Fenoglio squeezed his feet into his worn old boots. "Why? So that you can go telling this poor boy you’ll bring Dustfinger back from the White Women, just to keep him in your service?"

Farid tightened his lips. Dustfinger’s marten blinked sleepily on his shoulder — or was this a different animal?

"What nonsense you talk!" Orpheus sounded distinctly peeved — he took offense very easily. "Do I look as if I have any trouble finding servants? I have six maids, a bodyguard, a cook, and the boy. You know very well it’s not just for the boy I want to bring Dustfinger back. He belongs in this story. It’s not half as good without him, it’s a flower without petals, a night without stars— ‘A forest without trees?" Fenoglio muttered. Orpheus turned as red as a beet. It was so amusing to make fun of the arrogant fop — one of the few pleasures Fenoglio still had left.

"You’re drunk, old man!" Orpheus spat. His voice could sound very unpleasant.

"Drunk or not, I still know a hundred times more about words than you do. You trade at second hand. You unravel whatever you can find and knit it up again as if a story were a pair of old socks! So don’t you tell me what part Dustfinger ought to play in this one. Perhaps you remember I had him dead once already, before he decided to go with the White Women! What do you think you’re doing, coming here to lecture me about my own story? Take a look at that, why don’t you?" Furiously, he pointed to the shimmering fairies’ nest above his bed. "Rainbow-colored fairies! Ever since they built their horrible nest up there I’ve had the most appalling dreams! And they steal the blue fairies’ stocks of winter provisions!"

"So?" Orpheus shrugged his plump shoulders. "They look pretty, all the same, don’t they? I thought it was so tedious for all fairies to be blue."

"Did you, indeed?" Fenoglio’s voice rose to such volume that one of the colorful fairies interrupted her constant chatter and peered out of her gaudy nest. "Then write your own world! This one’s mine, understand? Mine! I’m sick and tired of your meddling with it. I admit I’ve made some mistakes in my life, but Writing you here was far and away the worst of them!"

Bored, Orpheus inspected his fingernails. They were bitten to the quick. "I’m not listening to any more of this!" he said in a menacingly soft voice. "All that stuff about ‘you wrote me here,’ ‘she read me here’ —nonsense! I’m the one who does the reading and writing around here now. The only one. The words don’t obey you anymore, old man. It’s a long time since they did, and you know it!"

"They’ll obey me again! And the first thing I’ll write will be a return ticket for you!"

"Oh yes? And who’s going to read these fabulous words? As far as I’m aware, you need someone to read them aloud for you. Unlike me.

"Well?" Fenoglio came so close that Orpheus’s farsighted eyes blinked at him in annoyance. "I’ll ask Mortimer! They don’t call him Silvertongue for nothing, even if he goes by another name these days. Ask the boy! If it weren’t for Mortimer, he’d still be in the desert shoveling camel dung."

"Mortimer!" Orpheus produced a derisive smile, although with some difficulty. "Is your head buried so deep in your wine jug that you don’t know what’s going on in this world of yours? He’s not doing any reading now. The bookbinder prefers to play the outlaw these days — the role you created especially for him."

The bodyguard uttered a grunt, probably meant to be something like laughter. What a ghastly fellow! Had Fenoglio himself written him into the story or had Orpheus?

Fenoglio scrutinized the muscleman for a moment, irritated, and then turned back to his master.

"I did not make it especially for him!" he said. "It’s the other way around: I used Mortimer as my pattern for the character, and from all I hear, he plays his part well.

But that doesn’t mean the Bluejay no longer has a silver tongue. Not to mention his gifted daughter."

"Oh yes? And do you know where he is?" Orpheus asked almost casually. He was staring at his fingernails again, while his bodyguard had set to work on what was left of Fenoglio’s breakfast.

"Indeed I do. He’s coming—" Fenoglio fell abruptly silent as the boy suddenly came up and clapped his hand over the old man’s mouth. Why did he keep forgetting the lad’s name? Because you’re going senile, Fenoglio, he said to himself, that’s why.

"No one knows where the Bluejay is!" How reproachfully Farid’s black eyes were looking at Fenoglio! "No one!"

Of course. Damn drunken old fool that he was! How could he have forgotten that Orpheus turned green with jealousy whenever he heard Mortimer’s name, or that he went in and out of the Milksop’s castle all the time? Fenoglio could have bitten off his tongue.

But Orpheus smiled. "Don’t look so alarmed, old man! So the bookbinder’s coming here. Bold of him. Does he want to make the songs that sing of his daring come true before they hang him? Because that’s how he’ll meet his end, like all heroes. We both know that, don’t we? Don’t worry, I don’t intend to hand him over ripe for the gallows. Others will do that. No, I just want to talk to him about the White Women.

There aren’t many who have survived a meeting with them; that’s why I really would like a word with him. There are some very interesting rumors about such survivors"

"I’ll tell him if I see him," replied Fenoglio brusquely. "But I can’t think that he will want to talk to you. After all, I don’t SUppose he’d ever have met the White Women at all if you hadn’t been so willing to read him here for Mortola. Rosenquartz!" He strode to the door with as much dignity as was possible in his shabby boots. "I have some errands to run. See our guests out, and mind you keep away from that marten!"

Fenoglio stumbled down the staircase to the yard almost as fast as he had on the day when Basta had paid him a visit. Mortimer would be waiting outside the castle gates already! Suppose Orpheus found him there when he went to the castle to tell the Milksop what he had heard? The Bluejay was the Governor’s mortal enemy.

The boy caught up with him halfway downstairs. Farid. Yes, that was the name. Of course. Going senile, for sure.

"Is Silvertongue really coming here?" he whispered breathlessly. "Don’t worry, Orpheus won’t give him away. Not yet! But Ombra is far too dangerous for him! Is he bringing Meggie with him?"

"Farid!" Orpheus was looking down at them from the top of the stairs as if he were the king of the Inkworld. "If the old fool doesn’t tell Mortimer I want to speak to him, then you do it. Understand?"

Old fool, thought Fenoglio. 0 ye gods of words, give them back to me so that I can get this damned Calf’s-Head out of my story!

He wanted to give Orpheus a suitably cutting answer, but not even his tongue could find the right words now, and the boy impatiently hauled him away.