Inkdeath

45. WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN

Roxane found the plants exactly where Fenoglio had described: in the entrance of a brownie burrow where Elfbane set his snares. And Meggie, holding Despina's hand, watched again as the words that she had only just read became reality.

The leaves and flowers defied the cold wind, as if the fairies had planted them so that they could dream of summer when they saw them. But the smell rising from the flowers was the odor of decomposition and decay, and it had given the plant its name: deathbud. The flowers were put on graves to placate the White Women.

Roxane brushed the moths off the leaves, dug up two plants, and left two others, for fear of angering the wood-elves. Then she hurried back to the cave, where the White Women were already standing at the Black Prince's side, grated the roots, brewed them using the method Resa had described to her, and spooned the hot liquid into the Prince's mouth. He was already very weak, yet what they had hardly dared to hope for happened: The brew lessened the effect of the poison, lulled it to sleep, and brought back the strength of life.

And the White Women disappeared, as if Death had called them to another place.

Those last sentences had been easy to read, but many anxious hours passed before they, too, became reality. The poison was not giving in without a struggle, and the White Women came and went. Roxane strewed herbs to keep them away, as she had learned to do from Nettle, but the pale faces kept appearing again, barely visible against the gray walls of the cave, and a time came when Meggie felt they were looking not just at the Prince but at her, too.

Don't we know you? their eyes seemed to ask. Didn't your voice protect the man who has twice been ours? Meggie returned their glance for little longer than it takes to draw a breath, yet she immediately felt the longing that Mo had spoken of: longing for a place that lay far beyond all words. She took a step toward the White Women to feel their cool hands on her beating heart, to let them wipe away all her fear and pain, but other hands held her back, warm, firm hands.

"Meggie, for heaven's sake don't look at them!" Elinor murmured. "Come on, let's get you out into the fresh air. Why, you're as pale as those creatures themselves!"

And she wouldn't take no for an answer, but led Meggie outside to where the robbers were consulting together and the children played under the trees, as if they had forgotten what was going on in the cave. The grass was white with hoarfrost, white as the figures waiting for the Black Prince, but the spell of the White Women was broken as soon as Meggie heard the children's laughter. They were throwing fir cones for the marten and shouting as he chased them. Life seemed so much stronger than death, death so much stronger than life. Like the ebb and flow of the tide.

Resa was standing outside the cave, too, wrapping her arms around herself for warmth, although the Strong Man had put a rabbit-skin cloak over her shoulders. "Have you seen Snapper?" she asked Elinor. "Or Gecko and his magpie?"

Battista joined them. He looked exhausted. This was the first time he had left the Prince's side. "They've gone," he said. "Snapper, Gecko, and ten others. They went after the Bluejay as soon as it was clear that the Prince wasn't likely to be able to follow him."

"But Snapper hates Mo!" Resa's voice was so loud that several robbers turned to look at her, and even the children paused their game. "Why would he want to help him?"

"I'm afraid he has no intention of helping him," Battista replied quietly. "He's been telling the others he's going because the Bluejay plans to betray us and make his own bargain with Violante. And he said your husband hasn't told us the whole truth about the White Book."

"What kind of truth?" Resa's voice was failing her.

"Snapper says," Battista replied quietly, "that the Book doesn't just make its owner immortal, it makes him immensely rich. That sounds a lot more tempting to most of our men than immortality. They'd betray their own mothers for a book like that. So why, they ask themselves, wouldn't the Bluejay plan on doing the same to us?"

"But that's all lies! The Book makes its owner immortal, nothing more." Meggie didn't care that her voice was rising. Let them all hear her, all of them putting their heads together, whispering about her father!

Elfbane turned to her, an unpleasant smile on his thin face. "Oh yes? And how would you know that, little witch? Didn't your father keep it a secret from you that the Book was making the Adderhead's flesh rot on his bones?"

"What if he did?" Elinor asked Elfbane angrily, putting a protective arm around Meggie. "She still knows one thing: She can certainly trust her father more than a poisoner. Because who else poisoned the Prince if not your beloved Snapper?"

There was a rather unfriendly murmuring among the robbers, and Battista drew Elinor over to his side.

"Mind what you say!" he whispered to her. "Not all Snapper's friends went with him. And if you ask me, poison doesn't sound much like Snapper. A knife, yes, but poison…"

"Oh no? Then who else would it be?" Elinor retorted.

Resa looked up at the sky as if the answer might be found there. "Did Gecko take his magpie with him?" she asked.

Battista nodded. "Yes, luckily. The children are scared of it."

"With good reason." Resa looked up at the sky again, and then at Battista. "What exactly does Snapper mean to do?" she asked. "Tell me."

Battista just shrugged wearily. "I don't know. Maybe he's going to try to steal the Book from the Adderhead before he reaches the Castle in the Lake. Or maybe he's going straight there to get it for himself after the Bluejay has written the three words in it. Whatever his plan is, there's nothing we can do. The children need us, and until the Prince gets better he needs us, too. Remember, Dustfinger is with the Bluejay. Snapper won't have an easy time of it with the pair of them! Now forgive me, but I must go back to the Prince."

Snapper won't have an easy time of it with the pair of them! Yes, but what if he really did steal the White Book from the Adderhead on the way, and the Adderhead arrived at the Castle in the Lake knowing that even the Bluejay couldn't help him now? Wouldn't he kill Mo then and there? And even if Mo did get a chance to write those three words on the blank pages… what if Snapper poisoned him afterward, as ruthlessly as he'd presumably poisoned the Prince, just to get his hands on the Book?

What if, what if… Those questions kept Meggie awake even when all had long been sleeping around her, and finally she got up to go and see how the Black Prince was.

He was sleeping. The White Women had gone, but his dark face was still as gray as if their hands had bleached his skin. Minerva and Roxane were taking turns sitting at his side, and Fenoglio was with them, as if he must watch over his own words if they were to remain effective.

Fenoglio… Fenoglio could write again.

What did the sheets of paper he had hidden under his clothes say?

"Why did you make up the Bluejay for your robber songs, why didn't you just write about the Black Prince?" Meggie had asked him long ago.

"Because the Prince was tired," Fenoglio had replied. "The Black Prince needed the Bluejay as much as the poor people who whispered his name at night. The Prince had been part of this world for too long to believe it could really be changed. And his men never doubted that he was flesh and blood like them. They're not nearly so sure about your father. Do you understand now?"

Meggie understood only too well. But Mo was flesh and blood, and she was sure that Snapper didn't doubt it. When she returned to the sleepers, Darius had taken two of the children onto his lap and was quietly telling them a story. The little ones often woke him in the middle of the night because he knew how to drive away their bad dreams with stories, and Darius patiently resigned himself to his task. He liked Fenoglio's world, although it probably frightened him more than Elinor – but would he change it with his voice if Fenoglio asked him to? Would he read aloud what Meggie herself might not want to?

What was on the sheets of paper that Fenoglio had hidden so hastily from her and Elinor?

What did they say?

Co and look, Meggie, she told herself. You won't be able to sleep anyway.

As she went around behind the wall marking off the place where Fenoglio slept, she heard Rosenquartz's quiet snoring. His master was sitting with the Black Prince, but the glass man lay on the clothes under which Fenoglio had hidden the written pages. Meggie carefully picked him up, surprised as usual to feel how cold his transparent limbs were, and laid him on the cushion that Fenoglio had brought with him from Ombra. Yes, the pages were still exactly where he had hidden them from Elinor and her. There were more than a dozen, covered with words written in haste – scraps of sentences, questions, snippets of ideas that most likely made no sense to anyone but their author: The pen or the sword? Who does Violante love? Careful, the Piper… Who writes the three words? Meggie couldn't decipher all of it, but on the very first page, in capital letters, were the words that made her heart beat faster: THE SONG OF THE BLUEJAY.

"Just ideas, Meggie, as I told you. Only questions and ideas."

Fenoglio's voice made her spin around in such alarm that she almost dropped the pages on the sleeping Rosenquartz.

"The Prince is rather better," said Fenoglio, as if she had come to him to hear that. "It really does look as if my words have kept someone alive for once, instead of killing them. But then again, perhaps he's only alive because this story thinks he can still be useful to it. How would I know?" He sat down beside Meggie with a sigh and gently took what he had written from her hand.

"Your words saved Mo, too, before all this," she said.

"Yes, maybe." Fenoglio brushed his hand over the dry ink as if that would dust the words free of anything harmful. "All the same, you don't trust them now any more than I do, do you?"

He was right. She had learned both to love and to fear the words.

"Why 'The Song of the Bluejay'?" she asked softly. "You can't write any more about him! He's my father now! Make up a new hero. I'm sure you can invent one. But let Mo be Mo again, just Mo and no one else."

Fenoglio looked at her thoughtfully. "Are you sure that's what your father himself wants? Or don't you mind about that?"

"Of course I do!" Meggie's voice was so sharp that Rosenquartz woke with a start. He looked around him with a bewildered expression – and fell asleep again. "But Mo certainly wouldn't want you catching him in your words like a fly in a spider's web. You're changing him!"

"Nonsense! Your father himself decided to be the Bluejay! I just wrote a few songs, and you've never read a single one of them aloud! So how would they change anything?"

Meggie bowed her head.

"Oh no!" Fenoglio looked at her, horrified. "You did read them?"

"After Mo rode to the castle. To protect him, to make him strong and invulnerable. I read them aloud every day."

"Well, who'd have thought it! Then let's hope the words in the songs work as well as those I've written for the Black Prince." Fenoglio put an arm around her shoulders, as he had often done when they were both Capricorn's prisoners – in another world, in another story. Or was it the same story after all?

"Meggie," he said quietly. "Even if you go on reading my songs aloud, even if you read them a dozen times a day – we both know they haven't made your father the Bluejay. If I'd chosen him as the model for the Piper, do you think he'd have become a murderer? Of course not! Your father is like the Black Prince! He feels for the weak. I didn't write that into his heart; it was always there! Your father didn't ride to Ombra Castle because of my words but for the children asleep out there. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps this story is changing him, but he's changing the story, too! He's telling the next part of it through what he does, Meggie, not because of what I write. Even if the right words might be able to help him…"

"Protect him, Fenoglio!" Meggie whispered. "Snapper's after him, and he hates Mo."

Fenoglio looked at her in surprise. "What do you mean? You actually want me to write something about him? Heavens, it was confusing enough when I had only my own characters to worry about!"

And you let them die without giving it a thought, Meggie told herself, but she didn't say so aloud. After all, Fenoglio had saved the Black Prince today – and he had really feared for him. What would Dustfinger have said about this sudden fit of sympathy?

Rosenquartz started snoring again.

"Hear that?" asked Fenoglio. "Can you tell me how such a ridiculously small creature can snore at such volume? Sometimes I feel like stuffing him in the inkwell overnight just to get some peace and quiet!"

"You're a terrible old man!" Meggie reached for the written pages again and ran her finger along the words jotted down there. "What does all this mean? The pen or the sword? Who writes the three words? Who does Violante love?"

"Well, those are only some of the questions to be answered as this story goes on. All good stories hide behind a tangle of questions, and it isn't easy to find out their dodges. And this story certainly has a mind of its own. But," and here Fenoglio lowered his voice as if the story itself could be eavesdropping, "if you ask the right questions it will whisper all its secrets to you. A story like this is a very talkative thing."

Fenoglio read aloud what he had written. "The pen or the sword? A very important question. But I don't know the answer yet. Perhaps it will be both. Well, however that may be… Who writes the three words? Your father let himself be taken prisoner to do that, but who knows… will the Adderhead really allow his daughter to trick him? Is Violante as clever as she thinks, and Who does Her Ugliness love? I am afraid she's fallen in love with your father. I think she fell in love with him a long time ago, before she ever met him."

"What?" Meggie looked at him in astonishment. "What are you talking about? Violante isn't much older than me and Brianna!"

"Nonsense! Not in years, perhaps, but with all the experience she's had, she's at least three times your age. And like so many princes' daughters, she has a very romantic notion of robbers. Why do you think she made Balbulus illuminate all my Bluejay songs? And now he's riding along beside her in flesh and blood. Not unromantic, is it?"

"You're dreadful!" Meggie's indignant voice woke Rosenquartz again.

"Why? I'm only explaining what would have to be taken into account if I were really to try bringing this story to a good end, although it may have had different ideas itself for some time. Suppose I'm right? Suppose Violante loves the Bluejay and your father rejects her? Will she protect him from the Adderhead all the same? What role will Dustfinger take? Will the Piper see what game Violante is playing? Questions, nothing but questions! Believe you me, this story is a labyrinth! It looks as if there were several ways to go, but only one is right, and there's a nasty surprise ready to punish you for every false step. This time, though, I'll be prepared. This time I'll see the traps it's setting me, Meggie – and I'll find the right way out. But for that I have to ask questions. For instance: Where's Mortola? I can't get that question out of my mind. And what, by all inky devils, is Orpheus up to? Questions, more and more questions… but Fenoglio is back in the game again! And he's saved the Black Prince!"

Every wrinkle in his old face expressed self-satisfaction.

Oh, he really was a terrible old man!