Inkdeath

5. FENOGLIO FEELS SORRY FOR HIMSELF

Fenoglio was lying in bed, as he had so often in these last few weeks. Or was it months? It didn't matter. Morosely, he looked up at the fairies' nests above his head. They had all been abandoned except one, which poured out a constant stream of chattering and giggling. It shimmered in iridescent colors like a patch of oil on water. Orpheus's doing! The fairies in this world were blue, for heaven's sake! It said so in black and white in his book. What did that idiot think he was doing, creating fairies in all the colors of the rainbow? And to make it even worse, the rainbow-colored fairies drove away the blue ones wherever they went. Rainbow-colored fairies, spotted brownies, and apparently there were some four-armed glass men around the place, too. Fenoglio's head ached at the mere thought of it. And not an hour passed when he didn't think of it, and wonder what Orpheus was writing now in his fine big house, where he held court as if he were the most important man in Ombra!

Fenoglio sent Rosenquartz to spy on the place almost every day, but it couldn't be said that the glass man showed much talent for the job. Far from it. Fenoglio also suspected that Rosenquartz sometimes stole off to Seamstresses' Alley to chase glass women instead of going to Orpheus's house. Your fault, Fenoglio, he told himself grumpily, you should have written a little more sense of duty into their glass heads. Which is not, I am afraid, the only thing you omitted to do…

He was reaching for the jug of red wine standing by his bed to comfort himself for this depressing fact when a small, rather breathless figure appeared at the skylight above. At last. Rosenquartz's limbs, usually pale pink, had turned carmine. Glass men couldn't sweat. They just changed color if they'd been making a strenuous effort, another rule that Fenoglio himself had made, although with the best will in the world he couldn't now say why. But what did the foolish fellow think he was doing, clambering over the rooftops like that, with limbs that would smash if the stupid creature so much as fell off a table? A glass man certainly wasn't the ideal spy, but then again their small size made them very inconspicuous – and, fragile as their limbs were, their transparency undoubtedly came in useful on secret reconnaissance missions.

"Well, what's he writing? Come on, out with it!" Fenoglio picked up the jug and made his way over to the glass man barefoot. Rosenquartz demanded a thimbleful of red wine in return for his spying activities, which – as he never tired of emphasizing – were not among the standard duties of a glass man, and thus called for extra payment. The thimble of wine wasn't too high a price, Fenoglio had to admit, but then so far Rosenquartz hadn't found out very much, and in addition the wine disagreed with him. It made him even more contrary than usual – and had him belching for hours on end.

"Can't I even get my breath back before making my report?" he snapped.

That was Rosenquartz for you: contrary. And always so quick to take offense!

"You're breathing now, aren't you? And you can obviously talk as well!" Fenoglio plucked the glass man off the thread that he had fastened to the skylight so that Rosenquartz could let himself down from it and carried him over to the table. He'd exchanged his writing desk for it in the marketplace.

"I repeat," he said, giving Rosenquartz his thimbleful from the wine jug, "what is he writing?"

Rosenquartz sniffed the wine and wrinkled his nose, which was now dark red, "Your wine is getting worse and worse!" he observed in injured tones. "I ought to ask for some other kind of fee!"

Annoyed, Fenoglio removed the thimble from his glass hands. "You haven't even earned this one yet!" he thundered. "Admit it, once again you haven't found anything out. Not the least little thing."

The glass man folded his arms. "Oh, haven't I?"

It was enough to drive a man crazy. And you couldn't even shake him for fear of breaking off an arm or even his head.

Looking grim, Fenoglio put the thimble back on the table.

Rosenquartz dipped his finger in and licked the wine off it. "He's written himself another treasure."

"What, yet again? For heaven's sake, he goes through more silver than the Milksop!" It always annoyed Fenoglio that he hadn't thought of that idea himself. On the other hand, he'd have needed someone to read his words aloud and turn them into jingling coins, and he wasn't sure whether Meggie or her father would have lent their tongues to something so prosaic. "Right. A treasure. What else?"

"Oh, he's certainly writing something, but he doesn't seem very pleased with it. Did I tell you before that he has two glass men working for him now? You remember the four-armed one he was boasting of all over town?" Rosenquartz lowered his voice as if his next words were too terrible to be spoken. "They say he threw him at the wall in a rage! Everyone in Ombra's heard about it, but Orpheus pays well" – Fenoglio ignored the glass man's reproachful gaze as he made this remark – "so now he has these two brothers working for him, Jasper and Ironstone. The elder brother's a monster! He -"

"Two? What does that fool want two glass men for? Is he so busy mucking about with my story that one isn't enough to sharpen his quills for him?" Fenoglio felt anger turning his stomach, although it was good news that the four-armed glass man had come to grief. Perhaps it was beginning to dawn on Orpheus that his creations weren't worth the paper he wrote them on.

"Good. Tell me more."

Rosenquartz said nothing. He had folded his arms with an injured expression. He didn't like being interrupted.

"Good God, don't be so coy about it!" Fenoglio pushed the wine a little closer to him. "What else is he writing? Exotic new prey for the Milksop to hunt? Horned lapdogs for the ladies at court? Or maybe he's decided my world could do with some spotted dwarves?"

Rosenquartz dipped his finger in the wine again. "You'll have to buy me new trousers," he remarked. "I tore these with all that horrible climbing about. They're worn out anyway. It's all right for you to go around however you please, but I didn't come to live with humans just to be worse dressed than my cousins in the forest."

There were days when Fenoglio would gladly have snapped the glass man in half. "Trousers? Why would I be interested in your trousers?" he asked tartly.

Rosenquartz took a deep draught from the thimble – and spat the wine out on to his glass feet. "Pure vinegar!" he said crossly. "Did I get bones thrown at me for this? Did I make my way through pigeon droppings and over broken tiles for this? Don't look so skeptical. That Ironstone threw chicken bones at me when he caught me looking at Orpheus's papers! He tried to push me out the window!"

Sighing, he wiped the wine off his feet. "Very well. There was something about horned wild boar, but I could hardly decipher it, and then something else about singing fish – pretty silly stuff, if you ask me – and quite a lot about the White Women. Four-Eyes is obviously collecting everything the strolling players sing about them -"

"Yes, yes, all Ombra knows! Did it take you so long just to find that out?" Fenoglio buried his face in his hands. The wine really wasn't much good. His head seemed heavier every day. Damn it!

Rosenquartz took another mouthful, even though he made a face as he swallowed it. That glass idiot! He'd have another bellyache by tomorrow, if not sooner. "Well, never mind that. This is my last report!" he announced between belches. "I'm never going spying again! Not as long as that Ironstone works there. He's as strong as a brownie, and they say he's already broken the arms off at least two glass men!"

"Yes, yes, all right. You're a terrible spy anyway," muttered Fenoglio as he staggered back to his bed. "Admit it, you're far keener to chase the glass women in Seamstresses' Alley. Just don't think I don't know about it!"

With a groan, he lay down on his straw mattress and stared up at the empty fairies' nests. Was there any more wretched existence than the life of a writer who had run out of words? Was there a worse fate than having to watch someone else twist your own words, adding colorful touches – in very bad taste – to the world you'd made? No room in the castle for him now as court poet, no chest full of fine clothes, no horse of his own – no, he was back in the little room in Minerva's attic. And it was a marvel that she'd taken him in again, considering that his words and songs had made sure she had no husband now, and no father for her children. All Ombra knew what part Fenoglio had played in Cosimo's war. It was amazing they hadn't hauled him out of bed yet and killed him, but no doubt the women of Ombra had their hands too full keeping starvation at bay. "Where else would you go?" was all Minerva had said when she opened her door to find him standing there. "They don't need a poet up at the castle now. I suppose they'll be singing the Piper's songs in future." And there, of course, she was right. The Milksop loved the silver-nosed man's bloodthirsty verses – when he wasn't composing a few poorly rhymed lines himself, all about his hunting prowess.

Luckily, at least Violante sent for Fenoglio now and then, never guessing, of course, that he brought her words stolen from poets in another world. But Her Ugliness didn't pay particularly well. The Adderhead's own daughter was poorer than the new governor's court ladies, so Fenoglio also worked as a scribe in the marketplace, which naturally had Rosenquartz telling anyone who would listen how low his master had sunk. But who paid any attention to a glass man's chirping little voice? Let the silly transparent fellow talk! Fenoglio had forsworn words forever, no matter how invitingly Rosenquartz laid a blank piece of parchment on the table every evening. He was never going to write a single word again – except those he stole from others and the dry, bloodless twaddle he had to put down on paper or parchment for wills, sales agreements, and similar stuff. The time for living words was over. They were deceitful, murderous, bloodsucking monsters, black as ink and bringing nothing but misfortune. He wasn't going to help them do it anymore, not he. A walk through the streets of Ombra, empty of men these days, and he needed a whole jug of wine to keep off the gloom that had deprived him of any zest for life since Cosimo's defeat.

Beardless boys, decrepit old men, cripples and beggars, traveling merchants who hadn't yet heard that there wasn't a copper coin to be made in Ombra now, or who did business with those leeches up in the castle – that was what you saw these days in the once lively streets. Women with eyes reddened from weeping, fatherless children, men from beyond the forest hoping to find a young widow or an abandoned workshop here… and soldiers. Yes, there were plenty of soldiers in Ombra. They took what they wanted, day after day, night after night. No house was safe from them. They called it compensation for war crimes, and they had a point. After all, Cosimo had been the attacker – Cosimo, his most beautiful and innocent creation (or so, at least, Fenoglio had thought). Now he lay dead in a sarcophagus in the crypt beneath the castle. Minerva claimed that Violante went down there every day, officially to mourn her dead husband but really – so people whispered – to meet her informers. They said Her Ugliness didn't even have to pay her spies. Hatred of the Milksop brought them to her by the dozen. Of course. You had only to look at the fellow – that perfumed, pigeon-breasted hangman, governor only by the grace of his brother-in-law, the Adderhead. If you painted a face on an egg, it would bear a striking resemblance to him. And no, Fenoglio hadn't made him up. Once again, the story had produced the Milksop entirely by itself.

As his first official act, he had ordered a document to be hung up by the castle gates, listing the punishments that would be meted out in Ombra for various crimes from now on – with pictures, so that those who couldn't read would know what threatened them, too. The loss of an eye for this offense, the loss of a hand for that one, whippings, the pillory, branding, blinding. Fenoglio looked away whenever he passed that notice, and when he was out with Minerva's children he put his hand over their eyes if they had to cross the marketplace, where most of the punishments were inflicted (although Ivo always wanted to peek). Of course they could still hear the screams.

Luckily, there weren't too many offenders left to be punished in this city without men. Many of the women had left with their children, traveling far away from the Wayless Wood that no longer protected them from the prince who ruled on the other side of it, the immortal Adderhead.

And yes, Fenoglio thought, that had undoubtedly been his idea. But more and more rumors were being heard all the time, whispering that the Adderhead took little pleasure in his immortality.

There was a knock at the door. Who could that be? Oh, the devil, was he forgetting everything these days? Of course! Where was the damn note that crow had brought yesterday evening? Rosenquartz had been scared to death when he'd suddenly seen the bird perching on the skylight. Mortimer was coming to Ombra. Today! And wasn't he, Fenoglio, supposed to meet him outside the castle gates? This visit was a reckless notion. There were "Wanted" posters up for the Bluejay on every street corner. Fortunately, the picture on them didn't look the least like Mortimer, but all the same… Another knock.

Rosenquartz stayed where he was, beside his thimble. A glass man wasn't even any good at opening doors! Fenoglio felt sure Orpheus didn't have to open his door for himself. Apparently, his new bodyguard was so large he could hardly get through the city gate. Bodyguard! If I ever do write again, thought Fenoglio, I'll get Meggie to read me a giant here, and we'll see what the Calf's-Head has to say about that.

The knocking was getting rather impatient.

"Coming, coming!" Fenoglio stumbled over an empty wine jug as he looked for his trousers. Laboriously, he climbed into them. How his bones ached! The hell with old age. Why hadn't he written a story in which people were young forever? Because it would be boring, he thought as he hopped over to the door, one leg in the scratchy trousers. Deadly boring.

"Sorry, Mortimer!" he called. "The glass man forgot to wake me up at the right time!"

Behind him, Rosenquartz began protesting, but the voice that replied to him outside wasn't Mortimer's – even if it was almost as beautiful as his. Orpheus. Talk of the devil! What did he want here? Come to complain that Rosenquartz had been in his house spying? If anyone has a reason to complain, I do, thought Fenoglio. After all, it's my story he's plundering and distorting! Miserable Calf's-Head, Milkface, Bullfrog, Whippersnapper… Fenoglio had many names for Orpheus, none of them flattering.

Wasn't it bad enough that he kept sending Farid to bother him? Did he have to come himself? He was sure to ask thousands of stupid questions again. Your own fault, Fenoglio! How often he'd cursed himself for the words he'd written in the mine at Meggie's urging: So he called on another, younger man, Orpheus by name – skilled in letters, even if he could not yet handle them with the mastery of Fenoglio himself- and decided to instruct him in his art, as every master does at some time. For a while Orpheus should play with words in his place, seduce and lie with them, create and destroy, banish and restore – while Fenoglio waited for his weariness to pass, for his pleasure in words to reawaken, and then he would send Orpheus back to the world from which he had summoned him, to keep his story alive with new words never used before.

"I ought to write him back where he came from!" Fenoglio growled as he kicked the empty jug out of his way. "Right now!"

"Write? Did I hear you say write?" Rosenquartz asked ironically behind him. He was back to his normal color. Fenoglio threw a dry crust of bread at him, but it missed Rosenquartz's pale pink head by more than a hand's breadth, and the glass man gave a sympathetic sigh.

"Fenoglio? Fenoglio, I know you're in there! Open the door." God, how he hated that voice. Planting words in his story like weeds. His own words!

"No, I'm not here!" growled Fenoglio. "Not for you, Calf's- Head!"

Fenoglio, is Death a man or a woman? Were the White Women once living human beings? Fenoglio, how am I to bring Dustfinger back if you can't even tell me the simplest rules of this world? Enough of his questions. For God's sake, who had asked him to bring Dustfinger back? If everything had gone the way Fenoglio had originally written it, the man would have been dead long ago in any case. And as for "the simplest rules," since when, might he ask, were life and death simple? Hang it all (and there was more than enough hanging in Ombra these days anyway), how was he supposed to know how everything worked, in this or any other world? He'd never thought much about death or what came after it. Why bother? While you were alive, why would death interest you? And once you were dead – well, presumably you weren't interested in anything anymore.

"Of course he's there! Fenoglio?" That was Minerva's voice. Damn it, the Calf's-Head had roped her in to help him. Cunning. At least Orpheus was far from stupid.

Fenoglio hid the empty wine jugs under the bed, forced his other leg into his trousers, and unbolted the door.

"So there you are!" Minerva inspected him disapprovingly from his uncombed head to his bare feet. "I told your visitor you were at home." How sad she looked. Weary, too. These days she was working in the castle kitchen, where Fenoglio had asked Violante to find her a job. But the Milksop had a preference for feasting by night, so Minerva often didn't get home until the early hours of the morning. Very likely she'd drop dead of exhaustion someday and leave her poor children orphans. It was a wretched situation. What had become of his wonderful Ombra?

"Fenoglio!" Orpheus pushed past Minerva with that ghastly, innocent smile he always had ready as camouflage. Of course he'd brought notes with him again, notes full of questions. How did he pay for the fine clothes he wore? Fenoglio himself had never worn such clothes, not even in his days of glory as court poet. Ah, he thought, but you forgot the treasures he's writing for himself, didn't you, Fenoglio?

Without a word Minerva went down the steep staircase again, and a man made his way through Fenoglio's door behind Orpheus. Even ducking his head, he almost got stuck in the doorway. Aha, the legendary bodyguard. There was even less space in Fenoglio's modest little room with this huge meatball inside it.

Farid, on the other hand, didn't take up much space, although so far he had played a big part in the story. Farid, Dustfinger's angel of death… He followed his new master through the door hesitantly, as if ashamed to be keeping such company.

"Well now, Fenoglio, I'm truly sorry," said Orpheus, his supercilious smile giving the lie to his words, "but I'm afraid I've found a few more inconsistencies."

Inconsistencies!

"I've sent Farid here before with my questions, but you gave him some very strange answers." Looking portentous, he straightened his glasses and brought the book out from under his heavy velvet coat. Yes, that Calf's-Head had brought Fenoglio's book with him into the world of the story it told: the very last copy of Inkheart. But had he given it back to him, the author? Oh no. "I'm sorry, Fenoglio," was all he had said, with the arrogant expression that he had mastered so perfectly. (Orpheus had been quick to abandon the mask of a diligent student.) "I'm sorry, but this book is mine. Or do you seriously claim that an author is the rightful owner of every copy of his books?" Puffed-up, milk-faced young upstart! What a way to speak to him, Fenoglio, the creator of everything around Orpheus himself, even the air he breathed!

"Are you after me again for information on Death?" Fenoglio squeezed his feet into his worn old boots. "Why? So that you can go telling this poor boy you'll bring Dustfinger back from the White Women, just to keep him in your service?"

Farid tightened his lips. Dustfinger's marten blinked sleepily on his shoulder – or was this a different animal?

"What nonsense you talk!" Orpheus sounded distinctly peeved – he took offense very easily. "Do I look as if I have any trouble finding servants? I have six maids, a bodyguard, a cook, and the boy. You know very well it's not just for the boy I want to bring Dustfinger back. He belongs in this story. It's not half as good without him, it's a flower without petals, a night without stars -"

"A forest without trees?" Fenoglio muttered.

Orpheus turned as red as a beet. It was so amusing to make fun of the arrogant fop – one of the few pleasures Fenoglio still had left.

"You're drunk, old man!" Orpheus spat. His voice could sound very unpleasant.

"Drunk or not, I still know a hundred times more about words than you do. You trade at second hand. You unravel whatever you can find and knit it up again as if a story were a pair of old socks! So don't you tell me what part Dustfinger ought to play in this one. Perhaps you remember I had him dead once already, before he decided to go with the White Women! What do you think you're doing, coming here to lecture me about my own story? Take a look at that, why don't you?" Furiously, he pointed to the shimmering fairies' nest above his bed. "Rainbow-colored fairies! Ever since they built their horrible nest up there I've had the most appalling dreams! And they steal the blue fairies' stocks of winter provisions!"

"So?" Orpheus shrugged his plump shoulders. "They look pretty, all the same, don't they? I thought it was so tedious for all fairies to be blue."

"Did you, indeed?" Fenoglio's voice rose to such volume that one of the colorful fairies interrupted her constant chatter and peered out of her gaudy nest. "Then write your own world! This one's mine, understand? Mine! I'm sick and tired of your meddling with it. I admit I've made some mistakes in my life, but writing you here was far and away the worst of them!"

Bored, Orpheus inspected his fingernails. They were bitten to the quick. "I'm not listening to any more of this!" he said in a menacingly soft voice. "All that stuff about 'you wrote me here,' 'she read me here' – nonsense! I'm the one who does the reading and writing around here now. The only one. The words don't obey you anymore, old man. It's a long time since they did, and you know it!"

"They'll obey me again! And the first thing I'll write will be a return ticket for you!"

"Oh yes? And who's going to read these fabulous words? As far as I'm aware, you need someone to read them aloud for you. Unlike me."

"Well?" Fenoglio came so close that Orpheus's farsighted eyes blinked at him in annoyance. "I'll ask Mortimer! They don't call him Silvertongue for nothing, even if he goes by another name these days. Ask the boy! If it weren't for Mortimer, he'd still be in the desert shoveling camel dung."

"Mortimer!" Orpheus produced a derisive smile, although with some difficulty. "Is your head buried so deep in your wine jug that you don't know what's going on in this world of yours? He's not doing any reading now. The bookbinder prefers to play the outlaw these days – the role you created especially for him."

The bodyguard uttered a grunt, probably meant to be something like laughter. What a ghastly fellow! Had Fenoglio himself written him into the story or had Orpheus? Fenoglio scrutinized the muscleman for a moment, irritated, and then turned back to his master.

"I did not make it especially for him!" he said. "It's the other way around: I used Mortimer as my pattern for the character… and from all I hear, he plays his part well. But that doesn't mean the Bluejay no longer has a silver tongue. Not to mention his gifted daughter."

"Oh yes? And do you know where he is?" Orpheus asked almost casually. He was staring at his fingernails again, while his bodyguard had set to work on what was left of Fenoglio's breakfast.

"Indeed I do. He's coming -" Fenoglio fell abruptly silent as the boy suddenly came up and clapped his hand over the old man's mouth. Why did he keep forgetting the lad's name? Because you're going senile, Fenoglio, he said to himself, that's why.

"No one knows where the Bluejay is!" How reproachfully Farid's black eyes were looking at Fenoglio! "No one!"

Of course. Damn drunken old fool that he was! How could he have forgotten that Orpheus turned green with jealousy whenever he heard Mortimer's name, or that he went in and out of the Milksop's castle all the time? Fenoglio could have bitten off his tongue.

But Orpheus smiled. "Don't look so alarmed, old man! So the bookbinder's coming here. Bold of him. Does he want to make the songs that sing of his daring come true before they hang him? Because that's how he'll meet his end, like all heroes. We both know that, don't we? Don't worry, I don't intend to hand him over ripe for the gallows. Others will do that. No, I just want to talk to him about the White Women. There aren't many who have survived a meeting with them; that's why I really would like a word with him. There are some very interesting rumors about such survivors."

'I'll tell him if I see him," replied Fenoglio brusquely. "But I can't think that he will want to talk to you. After all, I don't suppose he'd ever have met the White Women at all if you hadn't been so willing to read him here for Mortola. Rosenquartz!" He strode to the door with as much dignity as was possible in his shabby boots. "I have some errands to run. See our guests out, and mind you keep away from that marten!"

Fenoglio stumbled down the staircase to the yard almost as fast as he had on the day when Basta had paid him a visit. Mortimer would be waiting outside the castle gates already! Suppose Orpheus found him there when he went to the castle to tell the Milksop what he had heard? The Bluejay was the Governor's mortal enemy.

The boy caught up with him halfway downstairs. Farid. Yes, that was the name. Of course. Going senile, for sure.

"Is Silvertongue really coming here?" he whispered breathlessly. "Don't worry, Orpheus won't give him away. Not yet! But Ombra is far too dangerous for him! Is he bringing Meggie with him?"

"Farid!" Orpheus was looking down at them from the top of the stairs as if he were the king of the Inkworld. "If the old fool doesn't tell Mortimer I want to speak to him, then you do it. Understand?"

Old fool, thought Fenoglio. O ye gods of words, give them back to me so that I can get this damned Calf's-Head out of my story!

He wanted to give Orpheus a suitably cutting answer, but not even his tongue could find the right words now, and the boy impatiently hauled him away.