Inkdeath (Inkworld 3)

"Oh yes, she can. If the Bluejay has told her the three words." His voice really did sound astonishingly composed. Good, Orpheus, very good.

"Ah, those three words.., so you’ve heard about them, too. Well, you are right. She could get them out of him under torture. Although I would expect him to say nothing for a very long time.., and he could always give her the wrong words."

"Your daughter doesn’t have to torture the Bluejay. She’s in league with him."

Yes!

Orpheus saw, from the disfigured face, that such an idea really hadn’t occurred to the Silver Prince yet. Ah, this game was fun. This was just the part he wanted to play.

They’d soon all be sticking to his cunning tongue like flies on flypaper.

The Adderhead remained silent for an agonizingly long time.

"Interesting," he said at last. "Violante’s mother had a weakness for strolling players.

I’m sure a robber would have taken her fancy just as much. But Violante is not like her mother. She’s like me, although she doesn’t care to hear people say so.

"Oh, I have no doubt of that, Your Highness!" Orpheus injected just enough deference into his voice. "But why has the illuminator who works in this castle had to do nothing but illustrate songs about the Bluejay for over a year? Your daughter has sold her jewels to pay for paints. She’s obsessed by that robber he dominates her mind. Ask Balbulus! Ask him how often she sits in the library staring at the pictures he’s painted of the man! And ask yourself, how is it possible for the Bluejav to have escaped from this castle twice in the last few weeks?"

"I can’t ask Balbulus anything." The Adderhead’s voice seemed made for this black-draped hall. "The Piper is having him hunted out of town at this very moment. He cut off his right hand first."

That really did silence Orpheus for a moment. His right hand. Instinctively, he touched his own writing hand. "Why. . . er. . . if I may ask, Your Highness, why did he do that?" he managed in a thread of a voice.

"Why? Because my daughter thought highly of his art, and I hope the stump of his wrist will make it clear to her how very angry I am. For Balbulus will of course take refuge with her. Where else would he go?"

"Indeed. How clever of you." Orpheus involuntarily moved his fingers as if to reassure himself that they were still there. He had run out of words; his brain was a blank sheet of paper and his tongue a dried-up pen.

"Shall I let you in on a secret?" The Adderhead licked his cracked lips. "I like what my daughter has done! I can’t allow it, but it pleases me. She doesn’t care for being ordered around. Neither the Piper nor my pheasant-murdering brother-in-law"— here he cast a look of disgust at the Milksop — "has realized that. As for the Bluejay, it may well be that Violante is only pretending to him that she will protect him. She’s wily. She knows as well as I do that it’s easy to trick heroes. You just have to make a hero believe you’re on the side of what’s right and just, and he’ll go trotting after you like a lamb to the slaughter. But in the end Violante will sell me her noble robber.

For the crown of Ombra. And who knows . . . perhaps I really will let her have it."

The Milksop was looking straight ahead as fixedly as if he hadn’t heard those last words spoken by his overlord and brother-in-law. However, the Adderhead leaned back and patted his bloated thighs. "I think your tongue is mine, Four-Eyes," he said.

"Any last words before you’re left as mute as a fish?

The Milksop smiled unpleasantly, and Orpheus’s lips began to tremble as if they already felt the pincers. No. No, this couldn’t be happening. He hadn’t found his way into this story just to end up a mute beggar in the streets of Ombra.

He gave the Adderhead what he hoped was an enigmatic smile and clasped his hands behind his back. Orpheus knew that this posture made him look rather imposing; he had rehearsed it often enough in front of the mirror. But now he needed words.

Words that would cast ripples in this story, circling outward like stones thrown into still water.

He lowered his voice as he began to speak again. A word weighs more heavily if it is softly uttered.

"Very well, then these are my last words, Your Highness, but rest assured that they will also be the last words you remember when the White Women come for you. I swear to you by my tongue that your daughter plans to kill you. She hates you, and YOU underestimate her romantic weakness for the Bluejay. She wants the throne for him, and for herself. That’s the only reason why she freed him. Robbers and princes’

daughters have always been a dangerous mixture."

The words grew in the dark hall as if they had a shadow. And the Adderhead’s hooded gaze rested on Orpheus as if to poison him with its own evil.

"But that’s ridiculous!" The Milksop’s voice made him sound like an injured child.

"Violante is little more than a girl, and an ugly one at that. She’d never dare turn against you!"

"Of course she would!" For the first time the Adderhead’s voice rose, and the Milksop compressed his narrow lips in alarm. "Violante is fearless, unlike my other daughters. Ugly, but fearless. And very cunning . . . like this man." Once again his eyes, clouded with pain, turned to Orpheus.

"You’re a viper like me, am I right? Poison runs in our veins, not blood. It consumes us, too, but it is deadly only to others. It also runs in Violante’s veins, so she will betray the Bluejay, whatever else she may intend at the moment." The Adderhead laughed, but it turned into a cough. He struggled for breath, gasping as if water were filling his lungs, but when the Milksop bent over him in concern he pushed him roughly away. "What do you want?" he spat at his brother-in-law. "I’m immortal, remember?" And he laughed again, a wheezing, gasping laugh. Then the lizard eyes moved back to Orpheus.

"I like you, milk-faced viper. You seem much more like a member of my family than that fellow." With an impatient gesture, he thrust the Milksop aside. "But he has a beautiful sister, so one has to take the brother on with her. Do you have a sister as well? Or can you be of use to me in some other way?"

This is going well, thought Orpheus. Very well indeed! Now I’ll soon be weaving my own thread through the fabric of this storyand what color will I choose? Gold?

Black? Maybe bloodred?

"Oh," he said, casting a weary glance at his fingernails— another effective trick, as the mirror had shown him. "I can be useful to you in many ways. Ask your brotherin-law. I make dreams come true. I tailor things to your own wishes."

Careful, Orpheus, you don’t have the book back yet. What are you promising?

"Oh, a magician, are you?" The contempt in the Adderhead’s voice was a warning.

"No, I wouldn’t call it that," Orpheus was quick to reply. "Let’s just say my art is black. As black as ink."

Ink! Of course, Orpheus! he told himself.

Why hadn’t he thought of that before? Dustfinger had stolen his favorite book from him, it was true, but Fenoglio had written others. Why wouldn’t the old man’s words still work even if they didn’t come from Inkheart? Where were the Bluejay songs that Violante was said to have collected so carefully? Didn’t people say she’d ordered Balbulus to fill several books with them?