Inkdeath (Inkworld 3)

He saw it all so clearly in his mind’s eye as he sat there, in the darkness that protected his grandfather’s eyes. He saw it as clearly as the pictures that Balbulus had painted for him.

There would be a book about him. Jacopo. A book as magnificent as the one about the Bluejay. Not empty and moldy like. . .

Jacopo raised his head.

. . . the White Book.

Yes. Why not? That’d certainly make them laugh on the other side of their faces!

Jacopo stood up. It would be easy. He must just make sure his grandfather didn’t notice that it was gone at once. He’d better leave another book in its place. But which?

He rested his hands on his trembling knees.

Orpheus had had his books taken away, and his mother’s were all gone, too. But there were other books in this castle, sick books, as sick as his grandfather’s. They were in the room where the Bluejay had been caught.

It was a long way there, and Jacopo got lost a couple of times, but finally the smell of decay guided him the same smell that surrounded his grandfather—and so did the sooty trail, barely visible in the light of his torch, laid by the Fire-Dancer to give the Bluejay away. Why had he done it? For silver, like Sootbird? What would he buy with the silver? A castle? A woman? A horse?

"Trust your friends even less than your enemies, Jacopo." That was what his grandfather had taught him. "There are no such things as friends. Not for a prince."

At one time his grandfather often used to talk to him, but that was long ago. He has a son now, Jacopo.

He chose a book that wasn’t too big — the White Book was not very big, either—

and put it under his tunic.

There were two guards outside his grandfather’s bed-chamber. So he was back from seeing the Bluejay? Perhaps he’d killed him already? No, the new book couldn’t be finished yet. Such things took a long time, Balbulus had told him so. But when it was finished, his grandfather was going to make the Bluejay scream, and either marry off his mother to Four-Eyes or leave her in that cell until she broke into tiny little pieces.

And they would take Jacopo to the Castle of Night with them.

Jacopo straightened his clothes and wiped the tears from his eyes. He hadn’t even noticed them. They blurred everything, the guards and the light of their torches.

Stupid. Crying was stupid.

"I want to see my grandfather!"

How they grinned at one another! The Bluejay would kill them all. Every man of them.

"He’s asleep. Get out."

"He can’t sleep, you idiot!" Jacopo’s shrill voice rose. Only a few months ago he would have stamped his foot, but he’d learned that that didn’t work particularly well.

"Thumbling sent me. I’m to take him his sleeping medicine."

The guards exchanged uncertain glances. Luckily, he was cleverer than any of them.

Much cleverer.

"Very well, in you go!" growled one of them. "But mind you don’t start carrying on about your mother to him, because if you do I’ll chuck you into that cell with my own hands, understand?"

You’re a dead man, thought Jacopo as he walked past the guard. Dead. Dead. Dead.

Don’t you know that yet? Oh, how good this felt!

"What do you want?" His grandfather was sitting on the bed with two servants beside him, wiping the fairy blood off his legs. His eyelids were heavy from the poppy juice he took when he wanted to sleep. And why shouldn’t he sleep now? The Bluejay was caught and was binding Death into another book for him.

"What are you going to do to the Bluejay when he’s finished?" Jacopo knew exactly what kinds of stories his grandfather liked to tell.

The Adderhead laughed and impatiently waved the servants away. Bowing and scraping, they made their way to the door.

"Maybe you do take after me, even if you look like your father." The Adderhead let himself drop on his side, groaning. "What would you do to him first?" His tongue was already as heavy as his eyelids.

"I don’t know. Pull out his fingernails?"

Jacopo went over to the bed. There it was, the cushion that the Adderhead always had with him. To prop up his sick flesh, they said. But Jacopo knew better. He’d often seen his grandfather put his hand under the heavy fabric to feel the leather binding with his fingers. Once he had even caught a glimpse of the blood-soaked covers. No one paid any attention to what a child saw. Not even the Adderhead, who trusted no one but himself.

"His fingernails? Hm. Painful, yes. I hope my son will get ideas like that once he’s your age. Although why does a man need a son when he’s immortal? I ask myself that question more and more frequently. Why does a man need a wife? Or daughters.

. . ."

The last words were barely audible. The Adderhead opened his mouth, and a snore came out. The lizardlike eyelids closed, and his left hand clutched the cushion in which his death was hidden, But Jacopo had small, slender hands, not at all like his grandfather’s. Very carefully, he undid the ribbons tying the fabric, put his fingers inside the cushion, and took out the Book, the White Book — although it really should be called the Red Book now. His grandfather turned his head, and his breath rattled in his sleep. Jacopo reached under his tunic for the volume he had taken from the Lost Library and exchanged it for its red twin.

"My grandfather’s asleep," he told the guards when he came out of the room. "And you’d better not wake him or he’ll pull out all your fingernails."

CHAPTER 73

THE NIGHT-MARE

Resa had flown away to Silvertongue in the Hall of a Thousand Windows. "The bird will never leave you again, Resa!"

Dustfinger had warned her, but she had put the seeds into her mouth all the same.

He had had great difficulty in dragging her out of the bedchamber before the Silver Prince came back. The despair in her face went to his heart. They had not found the White Book, and both of them knew what that meant: It wasn’t the Adderhead who would die, but the Bluejay by the hand of the Piper, Thumbling, or the White Women coming for him because he hadn’t been able to pay the price Death demanded for his life.

Resa had flown to him so that Silvertongue would not be alone when he died. Or did she still hope for some miracle to save him? Perhaps. Dustfinger had not told her that Death was going to take him again, too and then her daughter.

"If you don’t find the Book," Silvertongue had whispered to him before sending him away to lay the fiery trail for the Piper, "then at least let us try to save our daughters."

Our daughters . . . Dustfinger knew where to find Brianna, but how was he to protect Meggie from the Piper or the White Women themselves?

Of course the Piper’s men had tried to hold him fast once he’d led them to the Bluejay, but it was easy to escape them. They were still looking for him, but the darkness in the castle hid the Adderhead’s enemies as well as eased the pain in his eyes.

Orpheus seemed very sure that his black dog was enough to guard Brianna. Two torches burned beside the cage where she sat, crouching like a captive bird. But there was no soldier on guard. The real guard lurked somewhere in the shadows, in a place that the torchlight didn’t reach.

How in the world had Orpheus managed to tame it?

"Don’t forget, he read it out of a book," Silvertongue had said. "A book for children, too, although I’m not sure that Fenoglio made the Night-Mare any less dangerous because of that. But it’s made of words, and I’m sure that Orpheus himself used words to make it obey him. Just a few rearranged words, a couple of slightly twisted sentences, and the terror in the night becomes an obedient dog."