Inkdeath

13. A KNIFE THROUGH THE HEART

At least he didn't tell you to go for the physician!" Jasper was doing his best to cheer up Farid, who was carrying him down the steep stairs to the kitchen. Yes indeed, the physician who lived beyond the city gate. Orpheus had sent Farid there only a few days ago. If you went to fetch him at night he threw logs of wood at you, or came to the door brandishing one of the pairs of pincers he used to draw teeth.

"Stomachache! Headache!" said Farid crossly. "Cheeseface has been overeating again, that's all!"

"Three roast gold-mockers filled with chocolate, fairy-nuts roasted in honey, and half a suckling pig stuffed with chestnuts," said Jasper, counting it up. Then he ducked in alarm as he saw Jink by the kitchen door. The marten made Jasper nervous, even though Farid kept assuring him that while martens did like to chase glass men, they never, ever ate them.

There was only one maid still in the kitchen. Farid stopped in the doorway when he saw it was Brianna. That was all he needed. She was scrubbing the pots and pans from supper, her beautiful face gray with exhaustion. The working day began for Orpheus's maids before sunrise and often didn't end until the moon was high in the sky. Orpheus himself made a tour of inspection of the whole house every morning, looking for cobwebs and dust, a speck on one of the mirrors that hung everywhere, a tarnished silver spoon, or a shirt that still showed a dirty mark after laundering. If he found anything, he would deduct a sum from all the maids' paltry wages on the spot. And he almost always did find something.

"What do you want?" Brianna turned, wiping her wet hands on her apron.

"Orpheus has a stomachache," muttered Farid, without looking at her. "I'm to make him some tea."

Brianna went to one of the kitchen dressers and took an earthenware jar off the top shelf. Farid didn't know which way to look as she poured hot water on the herbs. Her hair was the same color as her father's, but wavy, and it shone in the candlelight like the red-gold rings that the Governor liked to wear on his thin fingers. The strolling players sang songs about Dustfinger's daughter and her broken heart.

"Why are you staring like that?" She took a sudden step toward him. Her voice was so cutting that Farid instinctively flinched back. "Yes, I look like him, don't I?"

It was as if, all through the silence of the last few weeks, she had been sharpening her words until they were knives that she could thrust through his heart.

"You don't look in the least like him. I keep telling my mother so. You're only some good-for-nothing layabout who playacted that he was my father's son, keeping up the pretense so long that in the end my father thought he had to die for you!"

Every word a knife, and Farid felt them piercing his heart.

Brianna's eyes were not like her father's. She had her mother's eyes, and they looked at Farid with the same hostility as Roxane's. He wanted to hit her to silence her beautiful mouth. But she resembled Dustfinger too much.

"You're a demon, an evil spirit bringing nothing but bad luck." She handed him the ready-brewed tea. "There, take Orpheus that. And tell him his stomach would feel better if he didn't eat so much."

Farid's hands trembled as he took the mug.

"You don't know anything about it!" he said hoarsely. "Nothing at all. I didn't want him to bring me back. Being dead felt much better."

But Brianna only looked at him with her mother's eyes. And her father's face.

And Farid stumbled back up to Orpheus's room with the hot tea while Jasper stroked his hair with his tiny glass hand, full of pity.