Inkdeath (Inkworld 3)

He clambered over the dead men, took the silver-gray cloak from one of them, put on the other man’s helmet. Maybe the disguise would spare him the killing if he met any more of them.

The next corridor looked familiar, but there were no guards in sight. The wolf loped on, but Mo stopped outside a door and pushed it open.

The dead books. The Lost Library.

He lowered his sword and went in. Dustfinger’s sparks glowed in here, too, burning the smell of mold and decay out of the air. Books. He leaned the bloodstained sword against the wall stroked their stained spines, and felt the burden of the words lifting from his shoulders. He was not the Bluejay, not Silvertongue, just Mortimer.

Orpheus had written nothing about the bookbinder. Mo picked up a book. Poor thing, it was a wreck. He took up another and then another and heard a rustling sound. His hand immediately went to his sword, and Orpheus’s words reached for his heart again.

A few piles of books fell over. An arm pushed its way past all the printed corpses, followed by a second arm, without a hand. Balbulus.

"Ah, it’s you they’re looking for!" He straightened up, ink on the fingers of his left hand. "Since I hid in here from the Piper, not a soldier’s come through this door until today. I expect the moldy smell keeps them away. But today there’ve been two here already. They’ve certainly kept a better watch on you than on me! So, how did you escape them?"

"With the help of fire and feathers," said Mo, leaning his sword against the wall again. He didn’t want to remember. He wanted to forget the Bluejay, just for a few moments, and find happiness instead of misery among parchment and leather-bound covers.

Balbulus followed his glance. No doubt he saw the longing in it. "I’ve found a few books that are still good for something. Do you want to see them?"

Mo listened for sounds outside. The wolf was silent, but he thought he heard voices.

No. They died away again.

Just for a few moments, then.

Balbulus gave him a book not much bigger than his hand. It had a few holes nibbled in it, but it had obviously escaped mildew. The binding was very well made. His fingers had missed leafing through written pages so much. His eyes were so hungry for words that carried him away, instead of capturing and controlling him. How very much his hand wanted to hold a knife that cut not flesh but paper.

"What’s that?" whispered Balbulus.

It had turned dark. The fire on the walls had gone out, and Mo couldn’t see the book in his hands anymore.

"Silvertongue?"

He turned.

Dustfinger stood in the doorway, a shadow rimmed with fire.

"I’ve been talking to Orpheus." His voice sounded different. The composure that death had left in him was gone. His old desperation, almost forgotten by both of them, was back.

"What’s happened?"

Dustfinger lured fire back out of the darkness and made it build a cage among the books, a cage with a girl in tears inside it.

Brianna. Mo saw on Dustfinger’s face the same fear he had so often felt himself.

Flesh of his flesh. Child. Such a powerful word. The most powerful of all.

Dustfinger had only to look at him, and Mo read it all in his eyes: the Night-Mare watching his daughter, the price he would have to pay to ransom her.

"So?" Mo listened for sounds outside. "Are the soldiers already out there?"

"I haven’t laid the trail yet."

Mo sensed Dustfinger’s fear sharply, as if Meggie were the girl in the cage, as if it were her weeping that came out of the fire.

"What are you waiting for? Lead them here!" he said. "It’s time my hands bound a book again — even if the job must never be finished. Let them capture the bookbinder, not the Bluejay. They won’t notice the difference. And I’ll banish the Bluejay forever, bury him deep in the dungeon cell below, with the words that Orpheus wrote."

Dustfinger breathed into the darkness, and instead of the cage the fire formed the sign that Mo had imprinted on the spines of so many books: a unicorn’s head. "If that’s what you want," he said quietly. "But if you’re playing the bookbinder again, then what part is mine?"

"Your daughter’s rescuer," said Mo. "My wife’s protector. Resa has gone to look for the White Book. Help her to find it, and bring it to me.

So that I can write the end in it, he thought. Three words, that’s all it takes. And suddenly a thought occurred to him and made him smile in all the darkness. Orpheus had not written anything at all about Resa, not a single binding word. Who else had he forgotten?

CHAPTER 68

BACK

Roxane was singing again. For the children who couldn’t sleep for fear of the Milksop. And everything Meggie had ever heard about her voice was true. Even the tree seemed to be listening to her, the birds in its topmost branches, the animals living among its roots, the stars in the dark sky. There was so much comfort in Roxane’s voice, although what she sang was often sad, and Meggie heard her longing for Dustfinger in every word. It was a comfort to hear about longing, even if it filled her heart to the brim. Longing for sleep free of fear, and carefree days, for firm ground underfoot, a full stomach, the streets of Ombra, mothers . . . and fathers.

Meggie was sitting high up in the tree, outside the nest where Fenoglio had sat writing. She didn’t know whom to worry about first: Fenoglio and the Black Prince; Farid, who had followed the giant with Battista; or Doria, who had climbed down again to find out if the Milksop had really left. She tried not even to think of her parents, but suddenly Roxane began the song about the Bluejay that Meggie loved most, because it described his captivity in the Castle of Night with his daughter.

Some of the songs were more heroic, but only this one also spoke of her father, and it was her father she missed. Mo? she would so much have liked to ask, putting her head on his shoulder. Do you think the giant is taking Fenoglio to his children as a toy? Do you think he’ll tread on Farid and Battista and crush them if they try to rescue the Prince? Do you think anyone can love two boys with just one heart? Have you seen Resa? And how are you, Mo, how are you?

"Has the Bluejay killed the Adderhead yet?" one of the children had asked Elinor only yesterday. "Will he come back soon to save us from the Milksop?"

"Of course he will!" Elinor had replied, glancing at Meggie. Of course.

"The boy’s not back yet," she heard Elfbane say to Woodenfoot down below her.

"Shall I go and look for him?"

"Why do that?" replied Woodenfoot, lowering his voice. "He’ll come back if he can.

And if he doesn’t, then they’ve caught him. I’m sure the soldiers are down there somewhere. I just hope Battista will be careful when he comes back himself."

"How can he be careful?" asked Elfbane, with a grim laugh. "The giant behind him, the Milksop in front of him, and the Prince probably dead. We’ll soon be striking up our own last song, and it won’t sound half as good as the songs Roxane sings."

Meggie buried her face in her arms. Don’t think about it, Meggie, she told herself, just don’t think about it. Listen to Roxane. Dream that everything will be all right.

That they’ll all come back safe and sound: Mo, Resa, Fenoglio, the Black Prince, Farid and Doria. What does the Milksop do to prisoners? No, don’t think about it, don’t ask such questions.