Inkdeath (Inkworld 3)

Sometime, Mortimer, he thought, the nights will overshadow the days. Nights of blood. Peaceful days — days when Meggie showed him everything she had only been able to tell him about in the tower of the Castle of Night. Nymphs with scaly skins dwelling in blossom-covered pools, footprints of giants long gone, flowers that whispered when you touched them, trees growing right up to the sky, moss-women who appeared between their roots as if they had peeled away from the bark. . .

Peaceful days. Nights of blood.

They did what they could to cover up the traces of the fight and left, taking the horses with them. There was a note of fear in the stammered thanks of the village women as they left. They’d seen with their own eyes that their allies knew as much about killing as their enemies did.

Snapper rode back to the robbers’ camp with the horses and most of the men. The camp was moved almost daily. At present it was in a dark ravine that became hardly any lighter even by day. They would send for Roxane to tend the wounded, while Mo went back to where Resa and Meggie were sleeping at the deserted farm. The Prince had found it for them, because Resa didn’t want to stay in the robbers’ camp, and Meggie, too, longed for a house to live in after all those homeless weeks.

The Black Prince accompanied Mo, as he so often did. "Of course. The Bluejay never travels without a retinue," mocked Snapper before they parted company. Mo, whose heart was still racing from all the killing, could have dragged him off his horse for that, but the Prince restrained him.

They traveled on foot. It meant a painfully long walk for their tired limbs, but their footprints were harder to follow than a trail left by horses’ hooves. And the farm must be kept safe, for everything Mo loved was waiting there.

The house, and the dilapidated farm buildings, always appeared among the trees as unexpectedly as if someone had dropped and lost them there. There was no trace now of the fields where food for the farm had once been grown, and the path that used to lead to the nearest village had disappeared long ago. The forest had swallowed up everything. Here it was no longer called the Wayless Wood, the name it bore south of Ombra. Here the forest had as many names as there were local villages: the Fairy Forest, the Dark Wood, the Moss-Women’s Wood. If the Strong Man was to be believed, the place where the Bluejay’s hideout lay was called Larkwood.

"Larkwood? Nonsense" was Meggie’s response to that. "The Strong Man calls everything after birds! He even gives birds’ names to the fairies, although they can’t stand the birds. Battista says it’s called the Wood of Lights, which suits it much better. Did you ever see so many glowworms and fire-elves in a wood? And all those fireflies that sit in the treetops at night..

Whatever the name of the wood, Mo was always captivated afresh by the peace and quiet under its trees. It reminded him that this, too, was a part of the Inkworld, as much a part of it as the Milksop’s soldiers. The first of the morning sun was filtering through the branches, dappling the trees with pale gold, and the fairies were dancing as if intoxicated in the cold autumn sunlight. They fluttered into the bear’s furry face until he hit out at them, and the Prince held one of the little creatures to his ear, smiling as if he could understand what its sharp, shrill little voice was saying. Had the other world been like this? Why could he hardly remember? Had life there been the same beguiling mixture of darkness and light, cruelty and beauty. . . so much beauty that it sometimes almost made you drunk?

The Black Prince had the farm guarded by his men day and night.

Gecko was one of the guards today. As Mo and the Prince came through the trees, he emerged from the ruined pigsty, a morose expression on his face. Gecko was always on the move. He was a small man whose slightly protuberant eyes had earned him his name. One of his tame crows was perched on his shoulder. The Prince used the crows as messengers, but most of the time they stole for Gecko from the markets; the amount they could carry away in their beaks always amazed Mo.

When he saw the blood on their clothes, Gecko turned pale. But the shadows of the Inkworld had obviously left the isolated farm untouched again last night.

Mo almost fell over his own feet with weariness as he walked toward the well. The Prince reached for his arm, although he, too, was swaying with exhaustion.

"It was a close shave this time," he said quietly, as if the peace were an illusion that could be shattered by his voice. "If we’re not more careful the soldiers will be waiting for us in the next village. The price the Adderhead has set on your head is high enough to buy all of Ombra. I can hardly trust my own men anymore, and by this time even the children in the villages recognize you. Perhaps you ought to lie low here for a while." Mo shooed away the fairies whirring in the air above the well, then let the wooden bucket down. "Nonsense. They recognize you, too."

The water in the depths below shone as if the moon were hiding there from morning.

Like the well outside Merlin’s cottage, thought Mo as he cooled his face with the clear water and cleaned the cut that a soldier had given him on his forearm. All we need now is for Archimedes to fly up on my shoulder, while Wart comes stumbling out of the wood.

"What are you smiling at?" The Black Prince leaned on the edge of the well beside Mo, while his bear lumbered around, snuffling, on ground that was wet with dew.

"A story I once read." Mo put the bucket of water down for the bear. "I’ll tell it to you sometime. It’s a good story, even though it has a sad ending."

But the Prince shook his head and passed his hand over his tired face. "If it ends sadly I don’t want to hear it."

Gecko wasn’t the only man who had been guarding the sleeping farm. Mo smiled when Battista stepped out of the tumbledown barn. Battista had no great opinion of fighting, but Mo liked him and the Strong Man best of all the robbers, and he found it easier to go out at night if one of them was watching over Resa and Meggie. Battista still did his clown act at fairs, even when his audience had hardly a penny to spare.

"We don’t want them forgetting how to laugh altogether!" he said when Snapper mocked him for it. He liked to hide his pockmarked face behind the masks he made for himself: laughing masks, weeping masks, whatever he felt like at the time. But when he joined Mo at the well he handed him not a mask but a bundle of black clothes.

"A very good morning to you, Bluejay," he said, with the same deep bow that he made to his audience. "Sorry I took rather a long time with your order, but I ran out of thread. Like everything else, it’s hard to get in Ombra. But luckily Gecko here," he added, bowing in the man’s direction, "sent one of his black-feathered friends off to steal me a few reels from one of the market traders. Thanks to our new governor, they’re still rich."

"Black clothes?" The Prince looked inquiringly at Mo. "What for?"

"A bookbinder’s garments. Binding books is still my trade, or have you forgotten?

What’s more, black is good camouflage by night. As for this," said Mo, stripping off his bloodstained shirt, "I’d better dye it black, too, or I can’t very well wear it again."

The Prince looked at him thoughtfully. "I’ll say it again, even though you don’t want to listen. Lie low here for a few days. Forget the outside world, just as the world has forgotten this farm."