Inkdeath

79. LEAVING

The Piper's sword had cut deep into Resa's arm, but Brianna had learned a good deal from her mother, even though she liked singing to Violante better than growing herbs in stony fields.

"The arm will heal," she said as she bound up the wound. But the bird would never leave Resa now. Silvertongue knew that as well as Dustfinger.

The Piper had done his best to send the Bluejay after his master to his death. He had wounded him in the shoulder and on the left arm, but in the end he alone had followed the Adderhead, and Dustfinger made the fire consume both his body and his master's.

Pale-faced, Violante stood at Silvertongue's side as the Adderhead and the Piper turned to ashes. She looked younger, as if she had shed a few years in the cell where her father had flung her – almost as forlorn as a child – yet when she turned away at last from the fire devouring her father, she put her arm around her son. Dustfinger had never seen her do a thing like that before. Everyone still disliked Jacopo, though he had saved them all. Even Silvertongue with his soft heart felt the same, though he was ashamed of it. Dustfinger saw it in his face.

There were still a dozen of Violante's child-soldiers alive. They found them in the dungeon cells, but the Adderhead's soldiers had all gone, like the White Women. Only their abandoned tents still stood on the banks of the lake, with the black coach and a few riderless horses. Jacopo claimed that his great-grandfather's man- eating fish had come up from the lake and eaten some of the men as they ran for their lives over the bridge. Neither Silvertongue nor Violante believed him, but Dustfinger went out onto the bridge and found a few shimmering scales on the wet stones, as large as linden leaves. So they didn't take the bridge, but left the Castle in the Lake by the tunnel down which the Piper had come.

It was snowing when they stepped out into the open, and the castle disappeared behind them among the swirling snowflakes as if it were dissolving into the whiteness. The world around them was as still as if it had used up all words, as if all the tales there were to tell in this world had now been told. Dustfinger found Orpheus's tracks in the frozen mud of the bank, and Silvertongue looked at the trees into which they disappeared as if he could still hear Orpheus's voice inside him.

"I wish he were dead," he said quietly.

"A clever wish," replied Dustfinger. "But I'm afraid it's too late to make it come true." He had looked for Orpheus after the Piper was dead, but his room had been empty, like Thumbling's. The world looked so bright this cold morning. They were all so light at heart. But the darkness remained, and would go on telling its part of the story.

They caught some of the horses left behind by the Adderhead's men. Although weakened by his wounds, Silvertongue was in a hurry. At least let's save our daughters.

"The Black Prince will have been looking after Meggie," Dustfinger told him, but the anxiety was still on his face as they rode farther and farther south.

They were a silent company, all caught up in their own thoughts and memories. Only Jacopo sometimes raised his clear voice, as demanding as ever. "I'm hungry." "I'm thirsty." "When will we be there?" "Do you think the Milksop has killed the children and the robbers?" His mother always answered him, although often abstractedly. The Castle in the Lake had spun a bond between them out of shared fear and dark memories, and perhaps the strongest strand of it was the fact that Jacopo had done what his mother intended to do when she rode to the castle. The Adderhead was dead. But Dustfinger felt sure that, all the same, Violante would feel her father behind her like a shadow all her life – and very likely Her Ugliness knew it herself by now.

Silvertongue took the Bluejay away with him, too. It seemed as if the two of them were riding side by side, and not for the first time Dustfinger wondered whether they were only two sides of the same man. Whatever the answer was, the bookbinder loved this world as much as the robber did.

On the first night, when they stopped to rest under a tree with furry yellow catkins falling from its bare branches, the swift came back, although Resa had thrown the last of the seeds into the lake. She changed shape in her sleep and flew up into the flowering branches, where moonlight painted her plumage silver. When Dustfinger saw her sitting there he woke Silvertongue, and they waited under the tree together until the swift flew down again at dawn and turned back into a woman there between them.

"What will become of the child?" she asked, full of dread.

"It will dream of flying," Silvertongue replied. Just as the bookbinder dreamed of the robber, and the robber of the bookbinder, and the Fire-Dancer dreamed of the flames and the minstrel woman who could dance like them. Perhaps, after all, this world was made of dreams, and an old man had merely found the words for them.

Resa wept when they came to the cave and found it empty, but Dustfinger discovered the Strong Man's sign outside the entrance, drawn on the rocks in soot, and buried underneath was a message obviously left by Doria for his big brother. Dustfinger had heard of the tree with the nests in it that Doria described, but he had never seen it with his own eyes.

It took them two days to find the tree, and Dustfinger was the first to see the giant. He took Silvertongue's reins, and Resa put her hand to her mouth in alarm. But Violante stared at the giant like an enchanted child.

He was holding Roxane in his hand as if she, too, were a bird. Brianna turned pale at the sight of her mother between those mighty fingers, but Dustfinger dismounted and went up to the giant.

The Black Prince was standing between the giant's vast legs, with the bear beside him. He was limping as he went to meet Dustfinger, but he looked happier than he had for a long time.

"Where's Meggie?" asked Silvertongue as the Prince hugged him, and Battista pointed up into the tree. Dustfinger had never seen such a tree before, not even in the wild heart of the Wayless Wood, and he wanted to climb up to the nests at once and see the branches covered with frost-flowers where the women and children perched like birds.

Meggie's voice called her father's name, and Silvertongue went to meet her as she let herself down the trunk on a rope, as naturally as if she had always lived in the trees. But Dustfinger turned and looked up at Roxane. She whispered something to the giant, who put her down on the ground as carefully as if he believed she were made of glass. Roxane. He vowed never to forget her name again. He would ask the fire to write its letters in his heart so that not even the White Women could wash it away. Roxane. Dustfinger held her in his arms, and the giant looked down at them with eyes that seemed to reflect all the colors in the world.

"Look around," Roxane whispered to him, and Dustfinger saw Silvertongue embracing his daughter and wiping the tears off her face. He saw the bookworm woman running to Resa – how in the name of all the fairies did she come to be here? – Tullio burying his furry face in Violante's skirt, the Strong Man almost smothering Silvertongue in his bear hug… and…

Farid.

He stood there digging his toes into the newly fallen snow. He still went barefoot, and surely he'd grown taller?

Dustfinger went up to him. "I see you've taken good care of Roxane," he said. "Did the fire obey you while I was gone?"

"It always obeys me!" Yes, he had grown olden "I fought Sootbird."

"Imagine that!"

"My fire ate his fire."

"Did it indeed?"

"Yes! I climbed up on the giant and made fire rain down on Sootbird. And then the giant broke his neck."

Dustfinger couldn't help smiling, and Farid returned his smile. "Do you… do you have to go away again?" He looked as anxious as if he feared the White Women were already waiting.

"No," said Dustfinger, smiling again. "No, not for a while, I think."

Farid. He'd ask the fire to write that name in his heart as well. Roxane. Brianna. Farid. And Gwin, of course.