Inkdeath

55. THE WRONG TIME

Dustfinger saw the torches down in the forest. Of course. The Adderhead feared daylight. Damn it all, the ink was too thick again.

"Rosenquartz!" Fenoglio wiped the pen on his sleeve and looked around in search of the glass man. Walls made of branches elaborately woven together, the writing-board Doria had made him, his bed of leaves and moss, the candle that Farid kept relighting for him when the wind blew it out – but no Rosenquartz.

Very likely he and Jasper hadn't yet given up hope of finding glass women, even up here. After all, Farid had been fool enough to tell them he'd seen at least two – "as pretty as fairies," the idiot had added! Ever since then, the two glass men had been clambering around in the branches so eagerly that it was only a question of time when they would break their silly necks. Stupid creatures.

Well, never mind. Fenoglio dipped his pen back into the thick ink. He must just make do with things as they were. He loved his new perch for writing, so high that his world was truly at his feet, even if the glass man kept playing truant and it was terribly cold at night. Nowhere before had he felt so strongly that the words were coming to him as if of their own accord.

Yes, he'd write the Bluejay his very best song up here in the crown of a tree. What place could be more suitable? The last picture the flames showed Farid had been reassuring: Dustfinger behind the castle battlements, Mortimer asleep… it could only mean that the Adderhead hadn't reached the castle yet. Well, how could he, Fenoglio? he thought with satisfaction. You broke his coach wheel in the middle of the darkest part of the forest. That should hold up the Silver Prince for at least two days, if not more. Plenty of time for writing, now that the words loved him again.

"Rosenquartz!" If I have to call him once more, thought Fenoglio, I personally am going to throw him out of this tree.

"I'm not hard of hearing, thank you very much. Far from it. I hear better than you." The glass man emerged from the darkness so suddenly that Fenoglio left a large blot of ink on the paper right beside the Adderhead's name. Well, he hoped that was a good omen. Rosenquartz dipped a thin twig in the ink and started stirring without a word of apology, without a word to explain where he had been. Concentrate, Fenoglio. Forget the glass man. Write.

And the words came. They came easily. The Adderhead was on his way back to the castle where he had once paid court to Violante's mother, and his immortality was a burden to him. In his swollen hands he held the White Book that tormented him worse than his own torturers could have done. But soon there would be an end to it, because his daughter was going to hand over the man who had done all this to him. How sweet revenge would taste when the Bluejay had cured the book and his own rotting flesh! Dream of your revenge, Silver Prince, thought Fenoglio as lie wrote down the Adderhead's dark thoughts. Think of nothing but your revenge – and forget that you've never trusted your daughter!

"Well, fancy that, he's writing!" The words were only a whisper, but the Adderhead's face, so clear a moment ago that Fenoglio could have touched it, blurred and changed into the face of Signora Loredan. Meggie was with her. Why wasn't the child asleep? It didn't surprise Fenoglio in the least that her deranged great-aunt clambered around the branches by night, very likely in pursuit of every shining moth, but Meggie – she was tired to death after insisting on climbing the trunk with Doria instead of being pulled up like the children.

"Yes, he's writing," he growled. "And he'd probably have finished long ago if people didn't keep interrupting him the whole time."

"What do you mean, the whole time?" replied Loredan. She sounded aggressive again, and she looked so silly in the three dresses she was wearing, one on top of the other. It was amazing she could find so many in her considerable size. Luckily, Battista had been able to make jackets for the children out of the monstrous garment she'd been wearing when she had stumbled into Fenoglio's world.

"Elinor -" Meggie tried to interrupt her, but no one could ever stop that busy tongue, as Fenoglio had discovered by now.

"The whole time, he says!" Now she was letting wax from her candle drop onto the paper, too! "Is he hard at work day and night making sure the children don't fall out of these damn nests, is he climbing up and down this wretched tree to bring up something to eat? Is he repairing the walls so that the wind doesn't kill us all, is he keeping watch? No, but people are interrupting him the whole time."

Splash. Another drop of candle wax. And what a nerve she had, leaning over to look at the words he'd just written. "This really doesn't sound bad," she informed Meggie, as if Fenoglio had dissolved into the cold forest air before their eyes. "No, not at all bad."

It was beyond belief.

Now Rosenquartz, too, was bending over his lines, wrinkling up his glassy forehead so much that it looked as if water were tracing folds there.

"Oh, and do you, by any chance, want to deliver your opinion as well before I go on writing?" Fenoglio asked him sharply. "Anything in particular you fancy? You want me to put a heroic glass man into the story, or a fat woman who always knows best and will drive the Adderhead to such distraction that he'll hand himself over to the White Women of his own free will? That would be one solution, I suppose."

Meggie came up to him and put her hand on his shoulder. "You don't know how much longer you'll need, do you?" Her voice sounded so desolate. Not at all like a voice that had already changed this world several times.

"It won't be long now." Fenoglio took great care to sound confident. "The words are coming. They -"

He fell silent.

From outside came the hoarse, long-drawn-out cry of a falcon. Again and again. The guards' alarm signal. Oh no.

The nest into which Fenoglio had settled hung over a branch broader than any street in Ombra, but once again he felt dizzy when he climbed down the ladder Doria had made him so that he wouldn't have to let himself down on a rope. On the Black Prince's orders, ropes woven by the robbers from bark and climbing plants had been stretched everywhere. In addition, the tree itself had so many air-roots and branches hanging down that there was always something to hold on to. Yet none of that could make you forget the deep void yawning under the slippery boughs. The fact is, Fenoglio, you're no squirrel, he told himself as he clung to a few woody shoots and peered down. But for an old man, you're not doing too badly up here.

"They're hauling in the ropes!" Signora Loredan, unlike him, was surprisingly agile as she moved through the air along the wooden paths.

"I can see that for myself!" growled Fenoglio. They were hauling up all the ropes that went down to the foot of the tree. That boded no good.

Farid came climbing down to them. He often joined the guards posted by the Black Prince in the top branches of the tree. Heavens, how could any human being climb like that? The boy was almost as good at it as his marten.

"Torches! They're coming closer!" he said breathlessly. "And do you hear the dog barking?" He looked accusingly at Fenoglio. "Didn't you say no one knew about this tree? Didn't you claim it had been forgotten, and the nests with it?"

Blaming him. Of course. Something goes wrong, and it's all Fenoglio's fault!

"Well? Dogs find forgotten places, too!" he snapped at the boy. "Why not ask who wiped out our tracks? Where's the Black Prince?"

"Down on the ground with his bear. Trying to hide him. The stupid creature just refuses to be hauled up!"

Fenoglio listened. Sure enough, he heard dogs. Damn it, damn it, damn it!

"So what about it?" Of course Signora Loredan was acting as if none of it bothered her at all. "They can't get us down, can they? A tree like this must be easy to defend!"

"They can starve us out, though."

Farid understood more about situations like this, and Elinor Loredan suddenly looked rather anxious after all. And who was she staring at?

"Ah, so now I'm your last hope again, is that right?" Fenoglio imitated her voice. "Write something, Fenoglio, go on! It can't be all that difficult!"

The children clambered out of the nests where they slept. They ran along the branches as if they were meadow footpaths, peering down in alarm. They looked like pretty beetles in the gigantic tree. Poor little things.

Despina ran to Fenoglio. "They can't get up the tree, can they?"

Her brother just looked at him.

"Of course not," said Fenoglio, although Ivo's eyes accused him of lying. Ivo was spending more and more time with Roxane's son, Jehan, these days. The two boys got on well. They both knew too much about the world for lads of their age.

Farid took Meggie's arm. "Battista says we ought to get the children into the top nests. Will you help me?"

Of course she nodded – she still liked him far too much – but Fenoglio held her back. "Meggie stays here. I might need her."

Naturally, Farid immediately knew what he was talking about. In his black eyes Fenoglio saw the reborn Cosimo riding through the streets of Ombra and the dead men lying among the trees in the Wayless Wood.

"We don't need your words!" said the boy. "I'll send fire raining down on them if they try to climb up!"

Fire? An alarming word in a forest.

"Well, perhaps I can think of something better," said Fenoglio, and sensed Meggie's desperate eyes on him. What about my father? they asked. Yes, what about him? Which set of words was more urgent now? Damn it, damn it, damn it!

A few of the children began crying, and below him Fenoglio saw the torches that Farid had mentioned. They shone in the night like fire-elves but with far more menace.

Farid led Despina and Ivo away with him. The other children followed. Darius went to them, his thin hair untidy from sleep, and took the small hands that reached out in search of his. He glanced in concern at Elinor, but she just stood there staring darkly at the depths below, her hands clenched into fists.

"Let them come!" she said fiercely, her voice shaking. "I hope the bear will eat them all! I hope those men who hunt children will all be hacked to pieces!"

A lunatic of a woman, but she took the words right out of Fenoglio's mouth. Meggie's eyes were still fixed on him.

"Why are you looking at me like that? What am I supposed to do, Meggie?" he asked. "This story is telling itself in two places again. Which of them needs the words more urgently? Am I supposed to grow a second head, or -?"

He stopped abruptly.

Signora Loredan was still firing off a salvo of curses at the ground below. "Child murderers! Vermin! Cockroaches in armor! You ought to be crushed underfoot!"

"What was that you just said?" Fenoglio sounded more brusque than he had intended.

Elinor looked at him blankly.

Crushed underfoot…! Fenoglio stared at the torches down below. "Yes!" he whispered. "Yes. It could be rather dangerous. But how am I to…?"

He turned and swiftly climbed the ladder to his nest again. The nest where the words were hatched out. That was the place for him now.

But of course Loredan followed him.

"You have an idea?"

He did, and he certainly wasn't going to let her know that, once again, she had given it to him. "I have an idea, that's right. Meggie, be ready, please."

Rosenquartz handed him a pen. He was afraid; Fenoglio saw it in his glass face. It was a deeper pink than usual. Or had he been sneaking wine again? For the two glass men were now eating grated bark like their wild cousins, and the result was a little green mingling with Rosenquartz's pale pink. Not a very good color combination.

Fenoglio put a blank sheet of paper on the board that Doria had so cleverly cut to size for him. For heaven's sake, he'd never yet managed to write two stories at once!

"What about my father, Fenoglio?" Meggie kneeled down beside him. She looked so desperate!

"He still has time." Fenoglio dipped his pen in the ink. "Get Farid to look into the fire if you're worried, but I can assure you

it's not easy to repair a coach wheel in a hurry. The Adderhead won't be at the castle for a day or so at most. And I promise, as soon as I've dealt with what's going on here I'll get back to writing the words for the Bluejay. Don't look so sad! How are you going to help him if the Milksop shoots us all out of this tree? Now, give me the book. You know the one I mean."

He knew where to look. He had described them at the very beginning, in the third or fourth chapter.

"Come on, tell us!" Loredan's voice was quivering with impatience. "What are you going to do?" She came closer to get a look at the book, but Fenoglio slammed it shut in front of her nose.

"Be quiet!" he thundered, not that that made any difference to the noise coming in from outside. Was the Milksop here already?

Write, Fenoglio.

He closed his eyes. He could see him already. Very clearly. How exciting – given a task like this, writing was twice as much fun!

"What I mean is -"

"Elinor, do keep quiet!" he heard Meggie say.

And then the words came. Yes, this nest was a good place to write in.