Inkdeath (Inkworld 3)

Mo tried not to think of where he would be by then. He knew Just one thing: The Bluejay and the bookbinder would die the same death.

CHAPTER 8

ROXANE’S PAIN

Resa often rode over to see Roxane, although it was a long way and the roads around Ombra grew more perilous with every passing day. But the Strong Man was a good bodyguard, and Mo let her go because he knew how many years she had lived in this world already, surviving even without him and the Strong Man.

Resa and Roxane had made friends tending the wounded together in the mine below Mount Adder, and their long journey through the Wayless Wood with a dead man had only deepened their friendship. Roxane never asked why Resa had wept almost as much as she did on the night when Dustfinger struck his bargain with the White Women. They had become friends not through talking, but by sharing experiences for which there were no words.

It was Resa who had gone to Roxane by night when she heard her sobbing under the trees far from the rest of the company, Resa who had embraced and comforted her, although she knew there was no comfort for the other woman’s sorrow. She did not tell Roxane about the day when Mortola shot Mo, leaving her alone with the fear that she had lost him forever. Through all those many days and nights when she sat in a dark cave cooling his hot, feverish brow, she had only imagined how it would feel never to see him again, never to touch him again, never to hear his voice again. But the fear of pain was quite different from pain itself Mo was alive. He talked to her, slept at her side, put his arms around her. Whereas Dustfinger would never put his arms around Roxane again. Not in this life. Roxane had nothing but memories left, and perhaps memories were sometimes worse than nothing.

And she knew that Roxane was feeling that pain for the second time. The first time, so the Black Prince had told Resa, the fire didn’t even leave Roxane her dead husband’s body. Perhaps that was why she guarded Dustfinger’s body so jealously.

No one knew the place where she had taken him, to visit him when longing wouldn’t let her sleep.

It was when Mo’s fever kept returning at night, and he was sleeping badly, that Resa first rode to Roxane’s farm. She herself had often had to gather plants when she was in Mortola’s service, but only plants that killed. Roxane had taught her to find their healing sisters. She told her which leaves were good for sleeplessness which roots relieved the pain of an old wound, and that in this world it was wise to leave a dish of milk or an egg if you picked something from a tree, to please the wood-elves living in it. Many of the plants were strange to Resa, with unfamiliar odors that made her dizzy. Others she had often seen in Elinor’s garden Without guessing what power lay hidden in their inconspicuous stems and leaves. The Inkworld had taught her to see her own World more clearly and reminded her of something Mo had said long ago: "I think we should sometimes read stories where everything’s different from our world, don’t you agree? There’s nothing’s like it for teaching us to wonder why trees are green and not red, and why we have five fingers rather than six."

Of course Roxane knew a remedy for Resa’s sickness. She was just telling her what herbs would help the flow of her milk later on when Fenoglio, with Meggie and Farid, rode into the yard. Resa asked herself why the old man and her daughter wore such a guilty look on their faces. Of course she didn’t guess the reason.

Roxane put her arms around Resa as Fenoglio, his voice faltering, told them what had happened. But Resa didn’t know what to feel. Fear? Despair? Anger? Yes, anger.

That was what she felt first of all. She was angry with Mo for being so reckless.

"How could you have let him go?" she snapped at Meggie, so sharply that the Strong Man jumped. The words were out before she could regret them. But her anger stayed with her: Because Mo had gone to the castle even though he knew it was dangerous.

And because he had done it behind her back. His daughter had been allowed to come with him, but to his wife he hadn’t said a word.

Roxane stroked Resa’s hair as she began to sob. Tears of rage, tears of fear. She was tired of feeling afraid.

Afraid of knowing Roxane’s pain.

CHAPTER 9

A GIVEAWAY

A dungeon awaited him, what else? And then? Mo remembered the death that the Adderhead had promised him only too clearly. It could take days, many days and nights. The fearlessness that had been his constant corn panion over the last few weeks, the cold calm that hatred and the White Women had implanted in him they were gone as if he had never felt them. Since meeting the White Women he no longer feared Death itself. It seemed to him familiar and at times even desirable. But dying Was another matter, and so was imprisonment, which he feared almost more.

He remembered, only too well, the despair waiting behind barred doors and the silence where even your own breath Was painfully loud, every thought a torment, and where every hour tempted you simply to beat your head against the wall until You no longer heard and felt anything.

Mo had been unable to bear closed doors and windows since the days he had spent in the tower of the Castle of Night. Meggje seemed to have shed the fear of confinement like a dragonfly shedding its skin, but Resa felt as he did, and whenever fear woke one of them, they could find sleep again only in each other’s arms.

Please, not a dungeon again.

That was what made fighting so easy — you could always choose death rather than captivity.

Perhaps he could seize a sword from one of the soldiers in one of the dark corridors, far from the other guards on duty. For guards stood everywhere with the Milksop’s emblem on their chests. He had to clench his fists to keep his fingers from putting that idea into practice. Not yet, Mortimer, he told himself Another flight of steps, burning torches on both sides. Of course, they were leading him down into the depths of the castle. Dungeons always lay high above or far below. Resa had told him about the cells in the Castle of Night, so deep in the mountainside that she had often thought she wouldn’t be able to breathe in them. They weren’t pushing and hitting him yet as the soldiers there had done. Would they be more civil when it came to torturing and quartering him, too? Down and down they went, step by step. One in front of him, two behind him, breathing on the back of his neck. Now, Mortimer! Try it now! There are only three of them! Their faces were so young — children’s faces, beardless, frightened under their assumed ferocity. Since when had children been allowed to play soldiers? Always, he answered himself. They make the best soldiers because they still think they’re immortal.

Only three of them. But even if he killed them quickly they would shout, bringing more men down on him.

The stairs ended at a door. The soldier in front of him opened it. Now! What are you waiting for? Mo flexed his fingers, getting ready. His heart was beating a little faster, as if to set the pace for him.

"Bluejay." The soldier turned to him, bowed, and left. There was a look of embarrassment on his face. In surprise, Mo scrutinized the other two. Admiration, fear, respect. The same mixture that he had met with so often, the result not of anything he had done himself, but of Fenoglio’s songs. Hesitantly, he went through the open doorway and only then did he realize where they had brought him.

The vault of the princes of Ombra. Mo had read about that, too. Fenoglio had found fine words for this place of the dead, words that sounded as if the old man dreamed of lying in such a vault himself someday. But in Fenoglio’s book the most magnificent sarcophagus of all hadn’t yet been there. Candles burned at Cosimo’s feet, tall, honey-colored candles. Their perfume sweetened the air, and his stone image, lying on a bed of alabaster roses, was smiling as if in a happy dream.