Inkdeath

54. THE WHITE WHISPERING

From the tower battlements, Dustfinger looked down on a lake as black as night, where the reflection of the castle swam in a sea of stars. The wind passing over his unscarred face was cold from the snow of the surrounding mountains, and Dustfinger relished life as if he were tasting it for the first time. The longing it brought, and the desire. All the bitterness, all the sweetness, even if it was only for a while, never for more than a while, everything gained and lost, lost and found again.

Even the blackness of the trees intoxicated him with joy. The night blackened them as if to prove once and for all that this world was nothing but ink. And didn't the snow on the mountain peaks look like paper?

Even so…

Above his head the moon burned a silver hole in the night, and the stars surrounded it like fire-elves. Dustfinger tried to remember whether he had seen the moon in the realm of the dead, too. Perhaps. Why did death make life taste so much sweeter? Why could the heart love only what it could also lose? Why? Why…?

The White Women knew some of the answers, but they hadn't told him all of them. Later, they had whispered when they let him go. Another time. You will often come to us. And often go again.

Gwin sat on the battlements with him, listening uneasily to the lapping of the water. The marten didn't like the castle. Behind him, Silvertongue stirred in his sleep. Without a word, the two of them had decided to sleep up here on the tower behind the battlements, even though it was cold. Dustfinger didn't like sleeping in closed rooms, and Silvertongue seemed to feel the same. Although perhaps he slept up here only because Violante roamed the painted rooms even at night – as restlessly as if she were looking for her dead mother, or as if her sleeplessness would hasten the Adder's arrival. Did any daughter ever wait so impatiently to kill her father?

Violante was not the only one who couldn't sleep. Her illuminator was sitting in the room full of dead books, trying to teach his left hand the art that his right had once mastered so superbly. He sat there hour after hour, at a desk that Brianna had dusted for him, forcing his unpracticed fingers to trace leaves and tendrils, birds and tiny faces, while the useless stump of his right wrist held down the parchment he had, with forethought, brought with him.

"Shall I find you a glass man in the forest?" Dustfinger had asked him, but Balbulus had only shaken his head.

"I don't work with glass men," he replied morosely. "They're too liable to leave their footprints all over my pictures!"

Silvertongue slept uneasily. Sleep brought him no peace, and it seemed worse tonight than the nights before. Most likely, they were with him again. When the White Women slipped into your dreams you didn't see them. They came to Silvertongue more often than to Dustfinger himself, as if to make sure that the Bluejay didn't forget the bargain he had struck with their mistress, the Great Shape-Changer who made all things wither and blossom, grow and decay.

They were with him now, their cool fingers stroking his heart. Dustfinger could feel it as if it were his own. Let him sleep, he thought. Let him rest from the fear that day brings him: fear for himself, fear for his daughter, fear that he's done the wrong thing. Leave him alone.

He went over to him and placed his hand on his breast. Silvertongue woke with a start, pale-faced. Yes, they had been with him, and Dustfinger made fire dance on his fingers. He knew the chill that those visitors left behind. It was fresh and clear, pure as snow, but it both froze and burned the heart.

"What were they whispering this time? 'Bluejay, immortality is very close'?"

Silvertongue pushed aside the fur under which he was sleeping. His hands shook as if he had been holding them too long in cold water.

Dustfinger let the fire grow, and then gently pressed his hand to the other man's heart again. "Better?"

Silvertongue nodded. He did not push the hand away, even though it was still hotter than human skin. "Did they pour fire into your veins to bring you back to life?" Farid had asked Dustfinger. "Perhaps," he had replied. The idea pleased him.

"Heavens, they must really love you," he said when Silvertongue got to his feet, still drowsy. "Unfortunately, they sometimes forget that their love always leads to death."

"Yes. Yes, they forget that. Thank you for waking me." Silvertongue went over to the battlements and looked out into the night. "'He's coming, Bluejay.' That's what they were whispering this time. 'He's coming.' But" – he turned and looked at Dustfinger – "they said the Piper was preparing the way for him. What do you think they mean by that?"

"Whatever it means," said Dustfinger, stepping to his side, "the Piper will have to cross the bridge, like his master, so we'll see him coming in good time." It still struck Dustfinger as strange that he could speak the Piper's name without feeling fear. But it seemed as if he had left his fears behind with the dead forever.

The wind ruffled the surface of the lake. Violante's soldiers marched up and down on the bridge, and Dustfinger thought he could hear their mistress's restless footsteps up here on the battlements. Violante's footsteps – and the scratching of Balbulus's pen.

Silvertongue looked at him. "Show me Resa. The way you conjured up Violante's mother and her sisters out of the fire."

Dustfinger hesitated.

"Come on," said Silvertongue. "I know you're almost as familiar with her face as I am."

I've told Mo everything. That was what Resa had whispered to him in the dungeons of the Castle of Night. Obviously, she had not been lying. Of course not, Dustfinger told himself. She can t tell a lie any more than the man she loves can.

He traced a figure in the night and made the flames paint it.

Silvertongue instinctively put out his hand, but snatched his fingers away when the fire stung them.

"What about Meggie?" Love was written all over his face. No, he hadn't changed, whatever anyone said. He was like an open book, with his burning heart and a voice that could conjure up whatever he wanted – just as Dustfinger could conjure up images with fire.

The flames painted Meggie in the night, filling her with warm life. It looked so real that her father turned away abruptly, because his hands wanted to reach into the fire again.

"Your turn now." Dustfinger left the fiery figure standing behind the battlements.

"Mine?"

"Yes, tell me about Roxane. Live up to your name, Silvertongue."

The Bluejay smiled and leaned back against the stones. "Roxane? That's easy," he said softly. "Fenoglio has written wonderful things about her."

When he began to speak, his voice took hold of Dustfinger like a hand touching his heart. He felt the words on his skin as if they were Roxane's hands. "Dustfinger had never seen a more beautiful woman before. Her hair was as black as the night that he loved. Her eyes were the darkness under the trees, ravens' feathers, and the sooty breath of the fire. Her skin reminded him of moonlight on the wings of the fairies…"

Dustfinger closed his eyes and could hear Roxane breathing beside him. He wanted Silvertongue to go on and on until the words became flesh and blood, but Fenoglio's words soon came to an end, and Roxane was gone.

"And Brianna?" Silvertongue spoke her name, and Dustfinger could already see his daughter standing there in the night, turning her face away as she usually did when he came close to her. "Your daughter is here, but you hardly dare look at her. Shall I show you Brianna, too?"

"Yes," said Dustfinger softly, "show me Brianna."

Silvertongue cleared his throat, as if to make sure that his voice was at its full strength. "There's nothing written about your daughter in Fenoglio's book, except for her name and a few words about the small child that she isn't anymore. So I can only say what everyone can see about her."

Dustfinger's heart contracted, as if afraid of the words that were coming. His daughter, his daughter who was a stranger to him.

"Brianna has inherited her mother's beauty, but everyone who sets eyes on her thinks of you, too." Silvertongue spoke the words carefully, as if plucking every one of them out of the night, assembling Brianna's face out of the stars. "There's fire in her hair and in her heart, and when she looks in the mirror she thinks of her father…"

And bears him a grudge for coming back from the dead without bringing Cosimo, too, thought Dustfinger. Hush, he wanted to tell Silvertongue, forget my daughter. Tell me more about Roxane instead. But he kept silent, and Silvertongue went on.

"Brianna is so much more grown-up than Meggie, but sometimes she looks like a lost child whose own beauty seems uncanny to her. She has her mother's grace and her beautiful voice – even the Prince's bear listens when Brianna sings – but all her songs are sad, saying that those we love will be lost someday."

Dustfinger felt tears on his face. He had forgotten how they felt, so cool on his skin. He wiped them away with his hot fingers.

But Silvertongue went on, his voice as gentle as if he were speaking of his own daughter. "She looks at you when she thinks you won't notice. She follows you with her eyes as if looking for herself in your face. And no doubt she wishes both of us would tell her what it's like among the dead, and whether we saw Cosimo there."

"I saw two of him," said Dustfinger softly. "I expect she'd gladly exchange me for either of them."

He turned and looked down at the lake.

"What is it?" asked Silvertongue.

Without a word, Dustfinger pointed down. A fiery serpent was crawling through the night. Torches. The waiting was over. The guards on the bridge began to move. One of them ran back to the castle to take the news to Violante.

The Adderhead was coming.