Inkspell

20. VISITORS FROM THE WRONG SIDE OF THE FOREST

First of all Meggie looked for the birds' nests that Resa had described, and sure enough, there they were, clinging just below the battlements like blisters on the walls. Birds with yellow breasts shot out of the entrance holes. Like flakes of gold dancing in the sun, Resa had said, and she was right. The sky above Meggie seemed to be covered with swirling gold, all in honor of the princely birthday. More and more people surged through the gateway, although there was already a milling crowd in the courtyard. Stalls had been set up within the walls, in front of the stables and the huts where the blacksmiths, grooms, and everyone else employed in the castle lived and worked. Today, as theprince was inviting his subjects to celebrate with him the birthday of his grandson and royal heir, food and drink was free. "Very generous, I'm sure," Mo would probably have whispered. "Food and drink from their own fields, won by the labor of their own hands." Mo did not particularly like castles. But that was the way of Fenoglio's world: The land on which the peasants toiled belonged to the Laughing Prince who was now the Prince of Sighs, so a large part of the harvest was his, too, and he dressed in silk and velvet, while his peasants wore much-mended smocks that scratched the skin.

Despina had wound her thin arms around Fenoglio's neck when they passed the guards at the gate, but at the sight of the first entertainers she quickly slipped off his back. One of them had stretched his rope between the battlements, and was walking high up there in the air, moving more lightly than a spider on its silver thread. His clothes were blue as the sky above him, for blue was the color of the tightrope-walkers; Meggie's mother had told her that, too. If only Resa had been here! The Motley Folk were everywhere among the stalls: pipers and jugglers, knife-throwers, strong men, animal-tamers, contortionists, actors, clowns. Right in front of the wall Meggie saw a fire-eater, yes, black and red was their costume, and for a moment she thought it was Dustfinger, but when the man turned he was a stranger with an unscarred face, and the smile with which he bowed to the people around him was not at all like Dustfinger's.

But he must be here, if he's really back, thought Meggie, as she looked around for him. Why did she feel so disappointed? As if she didn't know. It was Farid she really missed. And if

Dustfinger wasn't here, she supposed it would be no use looking for Farid, either.

"Come along, Meggie!" Despina pronounced her name as if it was going to take her tongue some time to get used to it. She pulled Meggie over to a stall selling sweet cakes dripping with honey Even today those cakes had to be paid for. The trader selling them was keeping a close eye on his wares, but luckily Fenoglio had a few coins on him. Despina's thin fingers were sticky when she put them into Meggie's hand again. She looked around, wide-eyed, and kept stopping, but Fenoglio impatiently waved them on, past a wooden platform decked with flowers and evergreen branches, rising above the stalls. The black banners flying from the castle battlements and towers overhead hung here as well, to the right and left of three thrones on the platform. The backs of the seats were embroidered with the emblem of the weeping lion.

"Why three thrones, I ask myself?" Fenoglio whispered to Meggie as he urged her and the children on. "The Prince of Sighs himself won't be showing his face, anyway. Come along, we're late already." With a firm step, he turned his back on the busy scene in the Outer Courtyard and made his way to the Inner Ring of the castle walls. The gate toward which he was moving was not quite as tall as the one in the Outer Ring, but it, too, looked forbidding, and so did the guards who crossed their spears as Fenoglio approached them. "As if they didn't know me!" he whispered crossly to Meggie. "But we have to play the same game every time. Tell the prince that Fenoglio the poet is here!" he said, raising his voice, as the two children pressed close to him and stared at the spears as if looking for dried blood on their points.

"Is the prince expecting you?" The guard who spoke seemed to still be very young, judging by what could be seen of his face under his helmet.

"Of course he is!" snapped Fenoglio. "And if he has to wait any longer I'll blame it on you, Anselmo. What's more, if you want me to write you a few fine-sounding words, as you did last month" – here the guard cast a nervous glance at his fellow sentry, but the latter pretended not to have heard and looked up at the tightrope-walker – "then," Fenoglio concluded, lowering his voice, "I shall keep you waiting in your own turn. I'm an old man, and God knows I have better things to do than cool my heels here in front of your spear."

All that could be seen of Anselmo's face turned as red as the sour wine that Fenoglio had drunk beside the strolling players' fire. However, he did not move his spear aside. "The fact is, Inkweaver, we have visitors," he said in an undertone.

"Visitors? What are you talking about?"

But Anselmo wasn't looking at Fenoglio anymore.

The gate behind him opened, creaking, as if its own weight were too heavy for it. Meggie drew Despina aside; Fenoglio took Ivo's hand. Soldiers rode into the Outer Courtyard, armed horsemen, their cloaks silvery gray, like the greaves they wore on their legs, and the emblem on their breasts was not the Laughing Prince's. It showed a viper's slender body rearing up in search of prey, and Meggie recognized it at once. This was the Adderhead's coat of arms.

Nothing moved in the Outer Courtyard now. All was silent as the grave. The entertainers, even the blue-clad tightrope-walker high above on his rope, were all forgotten. Resa had told Meggie exactly what the Adderhead's emblem looked like; she had seen it often enough at close quarters. Envoys from the Castle of Night had been welcome guests in Capricorn's fortress. Many of the farms set on fire by Capricorn's men, so rumor said at the time, had been burned down on the Adderhead's orders.

Meggie held Despina close as the men-at-arms rode by them. Their breastplates glinted in the sun. It looked as if not even a bolt from a crossbow could pierce that armor, let alone a poor man's arrow. Two men rode at their head: one was a redhead, in armor like the soldiers following him but resplendent in a cloak of foxtails, while the other was wearing a green robe shot with silver that was fine enough for any prince. However, what everyone noticed about him first was not that robe but his nose; unlike ordinary noses of flesh and blood, it was made of silver.

"Look at that couple! What a team!" Fenoglio whispered to Meggie, as the two men rode side by side through the silent crowd. "Both of them my creations, and both once Capricorn's men. Your mother may have told you about them. Firefox was Capricorn's deputy, the Piper was his minstrel. But the silver nose wasn't my idea. Nor the fact that they escaped Cosimo's soldiers when he attacked Capricorn's fortress and now serve the Adderhead."

It was still eerily silent in the courtyard. There was no sound but the clatter of hooves, the snorting horses, the clank of armor, weapons, and spears – curiously loud, as if the sounds were caught between the high walls like birds.

The Adderhead himself was one of the last to ride in. There was no mistaking him. "He looks like a butcher," Resa had said. "A butcher in princely clothes, with his love of killing written all over his coarse face." The horse he rode was white, heavily built like its master, and almost entirely hidden by a caparison patterned with the snake emblem. The Adderhead himself wore a black robe embroidered with silver flowers. His skin was tanned by the sun, his sparse hair was gray, his mouth curiously small – a lipless slit in his coarse, clean-shaven face. Everything about him seemed heavy and fleshy: his arms and legs, his thick neck, his broad nose. Unlike those richer subjects of the Laughing Prince who were now standing in the courtyard, he wore no jewelry, no heavy chains around his neck, no rings set with precious stones on his fat fingers. But gems sparkled in the corners of his nostrils, red as drops of blood, and on the middle finger of his left hand, over his glove, he wore the silver ring he used for sealing death warrants. His eyes, narrow under lids folded like a salamander's, darted restlessly around the courtyard. They seemed to linger for a split second, like a lizard's sticky tongue, on everything they saw: the strolling players, the tightrope-walker overhead, the rich merchants waiting beside the empty, flower-decked platform, submissively bowing their heads when his glance rested on them. Nothing seemed to escape those salamander eyes, nothing at all: no child pressing his face into his mother's apron in alarm, no beautiful woman, no man glaring up at him with hostility. Yet he reined in his horse in front of only one person in the crowd.

"Well, well, so here's the king of the strolling players! Last time I saw you, your head was in the pillory in my castle courtyard. And when are you going to honor us with another visit?" The Adderhead's voice rang out through the silent courtyard. It sounded very deep, as if it came from the black interior of his stout body. Meggie instinctively moved closer to Fenoglio's side. But the Black Prince bowed, so deeply that the bow turned to mockery. "I'm sorry," he said, loud enough for everyone to hear, "but I'm afraid my bear didn't care for your hospitality. He says the pillory was rather tight for his neck."

Meggie saw the Adderhead's mouth twist into an unpleasant smile. "Well, I could keep a rope ready for your next visit – a rope that will fit perfectly, and a gallows of oak strong enough even for such a fat old bear as yours," he said.

The Black Prince turned to his bear and pretended to discuss it with him. "Sorry again," he said, as the bear threw its paws around his neck, grunting, "the bear says he likes the south, but your shadow lies too dark over it. He won't come until the Bluejay pays you the honor of a visit, too."

A soft whisper ran through the crowd – and was silenced when the Adderhead turned in his saddle and let his lizardlike gaze move over those standing around him.

"And furthermore," the Prince continued in a loud voice, "the bear would like to know why you don't make the Piper trot along behind your horse on a silver chain, as such a good, tame minstrel should?"

The Piper wrenched his horse around, but before he could urge it toward the Black Prince the Adderhead raised a hand. "I will let you know just as soon as the Bluejay is my guest!" he said, while the silver-nosed man reluctantly rode back to his place. "And believe me, that will be before long. I've already ordered the gallows to be built." Then he spurred his horse, and the men-at-arms rode on again. It seemed an eternity before the last of them had disappeared through the gateway.

"Yes, off you ride!" whispered Fenoglio, as the castle courtyard gradually filled with carefree noise again. "Viewing this place as if it would all soon be his, thinking he can spread his power through my world like a running sore and play a part I never wrote for him…"

The guard's spear abruptly silenced him. "Very well, poet!" said Anselmo. "You can go in now. Off with you!"

"Off with you?" thundered Fenoglio. "Is that any way to speak to the prince's poet? Listen," he told the two children, "you'd better stay here. Don't eat too much cake. And don't go too close to the fire-eater, because he's useless at his job, and leave the Black Prince's bear alone. Understand?"

The two of them nodded and ran straight to the nearest cake stall. But Fenoglio took Meggie's hand and strode past the guards with her, his head held high.

"Fenoglio," she asked in a low voice as the gate closed behind them and the noise of the Outer Courtyard died away, "who is the Bluejay?"

It was cool behind the great gate, as if winter had built itself a nest here. Trees shaded a wide courtyard, the air was fragrant with the scent of roses and other flowers whose names Meggie didn't know, and a stone basin of water, round as the moon, reflected the part of the castle in which the Laughing Prince lived.

"Oh, he doesn't exist!" was all Fenoglio would say, as he impatiently beckoned her on. "But I'll explain all that later. Come along now. We must take the Laughing Prince my verses at last, or I won't be his court poet anymore."