Inkdeath

40. A NEW CAGE

This time they came earlier than on the nights before. Night was only just falling outside. Not that it was ever light in Mo's cell, but night brought a different kind of darkness, and with it came the Piper. Mo sat up as straight as he could in chains, and prepared to be kicked and struck. If only he hadn't felt so stupid, so infinitely stupid. The fool who of his own free will had stumbled into his enemies' net. Not a robber anymore, not a bookbinder, only a fool.

The cells in the dungeons of Ombra were no more comfortable than the cells in the tower of the Castle of Night. In these dark holes, hardly high enough for a man to stand up, the same fear lurked as in all dungeons. Yes, the fear was back. It had been waiting for him at the gates; it had almost choked him when the Milksop's men had bound his hands.

Captured. Helpless…

Think about the children, Mortimer! Only the memory of their faces soothed him when he cursed himself for what he had done and endured the blows and kicks that the night brought with it. Dustfinger's fire at least made the Piper leave him in peace from time to time, but it also infuriated Silvernose more and more. In his mind Mo still heard the voice of the fairy who had fluttered up onto his shoulder that first night. He still saw the fiery spiders scuttering into the Piper's velvet garments. Mo had laughed at him for the panic in his face – but he had paid for that, several times.

Two more days, Mortimer, two days and two nights. Then the Adderhead will arrive. And then what? Yes, he was a fool to hope he might yet be able to give Death and her pale daughters what they demanded.

Would Resa realize that he had also ridden to the castle for Meggie's sake when the White Women came for their daughter? Would she understand that he hadn't told her anything about it so that fear for Meggie wouldn't eat away at her own heart?

The two soldiers who entered his cell had soot on their hands and faces. They always came in pairs, but where was their silver-snouted master? Without a word, they hauled Mo to his feet. The chains were heavy and cut into his skin.

"The Piper's going to be visiting you in another cell today!" they muttered to him. "One that your friend's fire can't find."

They went farther down, down, and down, past holes from which the smell of rotting flesh rose. Once Mo thought he saw a fiery snake creeping through the darkness, but one of his guards hit him when he turned to look at it.

The cell into which they pushed him was much larger than the one he had been kept in before. There was dried blood on the walls, and the air was both cold and musty.

The Piper kept him waiting, and when he finally arrived, followed by two more soldiers, he, too, had soot on his face. The men who had dragged Mo here made way respectfully for their master, but Mo saw how anxiously they looked around – as if they were waiting for Dustfinger's fiery spiders to crawl out of the walls any minute now. Mo could sense Dustfinger searching for him. It was as if his thoughts were putting out feelers for Mo, but the dungeons in Ombra lay almost as deep as those in the Castle of Night.

Perhaps tonight he would use the knife that Battista had sewn into the hem of his shirt – although his hands hurt so much that he probably wouldn't even be able to hold it, let alone stab with it. But it felt good to have it with him when the fear became unbearable. The fear and the hatred.

"Your fire-eating friend is getting bolder all the time, but that won't help you tonight, Bluejay. I'm tired of it!" The Piper's face was white under the soot that blackened even his silver nose. One of the soldiers hit Mo in the face. Two more days…

The Piper looked at his soot-smeared gloves with distaste. "All Ombra is laughing at me. 'Look at the Piper,' they whisper. 'The Fire-Dancer is running rings around his men, and the Black Prince is hiding the children from him! The Bluejay will save us after all.' Well, enough of that! When I've finished with you tonight they won't think so anymore."

He came so close to Mo that his nose was almost prodding his enemy's face. "What about it? Don't you want to use your wonderful voice to call for help? Call all your ragged friends, the Prince and his bear, the Fire-Dancer – or how about Violante? Her hairy servant is always on my heels, snooping, and hardly an hour goes by without her telling me that you're no use to her father unless you're alive. But these days her father is nowhere near as terrifying as he used to be. You've made sure of that yourself."

Violante. Mo had seen her only once, when they were dragging him off his horse in the castle courtyard. How could he have been stupid enough to believe she'd be able to protect him? He was lost. And Meggie with him. Despair rose in him, such black despair that he felt sick, and the Piper smiled.

"Ah, you're afraid. I like that. I ought to write a song about it. But from now on the only songs sung will be about me – dark songs, the kind I enjoy. Very dark."

With a foolish grin, one of the soldiers went up to Mo holding a stick studded with iron.

" 'The Bluejay will run away from them again!' That's what they say!" The Piper took a step back. "But you're never going to run away from anything anymore. From now on you're going to crawl, Bluejay. Crawl to me."

The two men who had brought him here seized Mo. They forced him up against the bloodstained wall, while the third man raised the iron-studded stick. The Piper stroked his silver nose.

"You'll need your hands for the Book, Bluejay. But why would the Adder mind if I break your legs? And even if he did… as I was saying, the Adderhead's not what he used to be."

Lost.

Oh God. Meggie, he thought. Had he ever told her such a terrible story as this? "No, Mo, no fairy tales!" she always used to say when she was little. "They're much too sad." Not as sad as this one.

"What a pity my father was unable to hear your little speech for himself, Piper." Violante did not raise her voice much, but the Piper whipped around as if she had shouted at him. The soldier with the silly grin lowered the stick, and the others retreated, making way for the Adderhead's daughter. Violante was almost invisible in the black dress she wore. How could they call her ugly? At this moment Mo felt he had never seen a more beautiful face. He hoped the Piper didn't notice how his legs were trembling. He grudged the silver-nosed man that satisfaction.

A small, furry face appeared beside Violante. Tullio. Had he fetched her? Her Ugliness had half a dozen of her beardless soldiers with her, too. They looked so young and vulnerable compared to the Piper's men, but their young hands held crossbows, weapons to be respected even by seasoned men-at-arms.

But the Piper quickly recovered.

"What do you want here?" he snarled at Violante. "I'm only making sure your precious prisoner doesn't fly the coop again. It's bad enough for his fiery friend to make us all a laughingstock. Your father's not going to like that one bit."

"And you are not going to like what I'm about to do." There was no emotion at all in Violante's voice. "Tie them up!" she ordered her soldiers. "Take the chains off the Bluejay and tie him up, too, but so that he can still ride."

The Piper reached for his sword, but three of Violante's young men overpowered him and dragged him down. Mo could physically feel their hatred for the man. They'd happily have killed the Piper, he saw it on their young faces, and obviously the Piper's men saw it, too, for they let themselves be tied up without resisting.

"You ugly little snake!" The Piper's noseless voice sounded even stranger when he raised it. "So the Milksop was right! You're hand in glove with that pack of robbers. What do you want? The throne of Ombra, and perhaps your father's, too?"

Violante's face was as still as if Balbulus had painted it. "I want just one thing," she replied. "I want to deliver the Bluejay to my father intact, so that he can still be useful to him. And in return for that service I will indeed demand the throne of Ombra.

Why not? I have ten times more right to it than the Milksop."

The soldier who removed Mo's chains was the boy who had opened the sarcophagus for him in Cosimo's vault. "I'm sorry!" he murmured as he tied him up. He didn't pull the rope very tight around Mo's arms, which were chafed and sore, but it still hurt, and all the time Mo never took his eyes off Violante. He could hear Snapper's hoarse voice in his ears only too clearly. She'll sell you for the throne of Ombra.

"Where are you taking him?" The Piper spat in the face of the soldier tying him up. "Even if you hide him with the giants, I'll find you!"

"Oh, I've no intention of hiding him," replied Violante with composure. "I shall take him to my mother's castle. My father knows the way. And if he is to agree to my conditions, he must go there. I'm sure you'll tell him that."

She'll sell you.

Violante's glance moved over Mo as indifferently as if they had never met before. The Piper kicked Mo with his bound legs as Violante's soldiers led him out of the cell, but what was a kick compared to the iron-studded stick he had been about to use?

"You're a dead man, Bluejay!" he shouted after him before one of Violante's soldiers gagged him. "Dead!"

Not yet, Mo wanted to reply. Not yet.

A maid was waiting outside the barred door. Only when Mo passed her did he see that it was Brianna. So Violante really had taken her back. She nodded to him before following her mistress. Three guards lay unconscious in the passage. Violante stepped over them and followed the corridor down which Mo had been brought, to a narrow tunnel branching off to the left. Tullio hurried ahead, and her soldiers followed in silence, with Mo between them.

Her mother's castle…

Whatever Violante's intentions, he was very thankful to her that he still had the use of his legs.

The tunnel seemed endless. How did the Adderhead's daughter know so much about the secret ways around this castle?

"I read about this tunnel." Violante turned to him as if she had heard his thoughts. Or perhaps he was thinking out loud, after all those hours alone in the dark?

"Fortunately for us, I am the only person who uses the castle library," Violante went on. How she was looking at him – as if to determine whether he still trusted her! Oh yes, she was like her father. She loved the game of fear and power, just as the Adderhead did, the constant measuring of her strength against others, even to the point of death. So why did he still trust her all the same, in spite of his helplessness?

Two more tunnels branched off into the darkness, just as narrow as the first. When Tullio looked inquiringly at her, Violante pointed without hesitation to the one on the left. She was a strange woman, so much older than her years. Such coldness, such self-control. Never forget whose daughter she is. The Black Prince had so often urged Mo to remember that, and he was beginning to understand the warning better now. Violante was surrounded by the same aura of cruelty that he had felt in the company of her father, the same impatience with others, the same belief that she was cleverer than most people, better… more important.

"Your Highness?" It was the soldier behind Mo. They all treated their mistress with great respect. "What about your son?"

Violante did not turn as she replied. "Jacopo stays here. He'd only give us away." Her voice was cold. Did you have to learn from your own parents how to love your child? If so, he supposed it was no wonder the Adderhead's daughter didn't know much about it.

Mo felt wind on his face. Air that smelled of more than just earth. The tunnel was getting wider. He heard rushing water, and as they came out into the open he saw Ombra high above him. Snow was falling from the black sky, and the river glinted beyond almost leafless bushes. Horses were waiting by the bank, guarded by a soldier, but a boy was holding a knife to the soldier's neck. Farid. Dustfinger stood beside him, sparks in his snow-dusted hair, the two martens at his feet.

When Violante's soldiers aimed their crossbows at him, he only smiled. "Where are you taking your prisoner, Adder's daughter?" he asked. "I'm the shadow he brought back from the dead with him, and his shadow follows him wherever he goes."

Tullio hid behind Violante's black skirts as if he were afraid Dustfinger would send him up in flames at any moment. But Violante signaled to her soldiers to lower their crossbows. Brianna just looked at her father.

"He's not my prisoner," said Violante. "But I don't want my father hearing that from one of his countless spies. Hence the bonds. Shall I remove them all the same, Bluejay?"

She brought out a knife from under her cloak. Mo exchanged a glance with Dustfinger. He was glad to see him, although his heart still had to accustom itself to that feeling. The sight of Dustfinger had filled him with very different emotions for too many years. But since Death had touched them both they seemed to be made of the same flesh. And the same story. Perhaps there was only a single story anyway?

Don't trust her! said Dustfinger's glance. And Mo knew that the Fire-Dancer would read Mo's own unspoken answer in his face: I must.

'I'll keep the bonds on," he said, and Violante hid the knife among the folds of her dress again. Snowflakes clung to its black fabric like tiny feathers.

"I am taking the Bluejay to the castle where my mother grew up," she said. "I can protect him there. Here I can't."

"The Castle in the Lake?" Dustfinger took a bag from his belt and gave it to Farid. "That's a long way. A good four days' ride on horseback."

"You've heard of the castle?"

"Who hasn't? But it was abandoned many years ago. Have you ever been there?"

Violante's chin jutted so defiantly that she reminded Mo of Meggie again. "No, I never have, but I remember all my mother told me about it, and I've read everything that's ever been written about the castle. I know it better than if I had been there."

Dustfinger merely looked at her. Then he shrugged his shoulders. "If you say so. The Piper isn't there – that's one good thing, and it's said to be easy to defend." He scrutinized Violante's young soldiers as if counting their years of life. "Yes, very likely the Bluejay will be safer there."

The snowflakes settling on Mo's bound hands cooled his sore skin. He would hardly be able to use them unless he could move them more freely, at least at night. "And you're sure your father will follow us to the castle?" His voice sounded as if the despair of the dungeon still clung to it.

Violante smiled. "Oh yes, indeed he will. He'll follow you anywhere. And he will bring the White Book with him."

The White Book. The snow fell as if to paint the whole world as white as its empty pages. Winter had come. Your heartbeats are numbered, Mortimer, he told himself. And Meggie's. Meggie's… How could he still love this world in spite of everything? How was it that his eyes couldn't see enough of the distant trees, so much taller than the trees he had climbed as a boy, and his gaze sought fairies and glass men as if they'd always been a part of his world? Remember, Mortimer, there was once a very different world, a voice whispered inside him. But whatever it whispered, it was wasting its time. Even his own name sounded strange and unreal, and he knew that if there had been a hand trying to close Fenoglio's book forever, he would have stopped it.

"We have no horse for you, Fire-Dancer," Violante's voice was hostile. She didn't like Dustfinger. Well, he had felt just the same himself for a long time, hadn't he?

Dustfinger gave such a mocking laugh that Violante just stared at him even more coldly. "Ride on. I'll find you," he said.

He was gone even before Violante's men brought Mo a horse, and so was Farid. There were only a few sparks still left glowing in the snow where they had been standing. Mo saw the awe on the faces of Violante's soldiers – as if they had seen a ghost. And perhaps that wasn't too far off, as a name for a man who had come back from the dead.

Still nothing was moving in the castle. No sentry raised the alarm as the first of the young soldiers rode his horse into the river. No one shouted from the battlements that the Bluejay was escaping again. Ombra was asleep, and the snow covered it with a white blanket, while Dustfinger's fiery blue jays still circled above the rooftops.