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  the ground. ‘These two stay here until Dustfinger arrives to confirm their story. He’ll soon tell us if this is only a harmless bookbinder or that robber you’re always going on about. Dustfinger knows your husband too, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ replied Resa softly. ‘He’s known him longer than he’s known me.’

  Mo turned his head, and whispered Meggie’s name.

  ‘Meggie? Is that your name?’ The Prince pushed the bear’s muzzle away as the animal sniffed the bread again.

  ‘It’s our daughter’s name.’

  ‘You have a daughter? How old is she?’ The bear rolled on his back for his belly to be scratched, as if he were a dog.

  ‘Thirteen.’

  ‘Thirteen? Almost the same age as Dustfinger’s daughter.’

  Dustfinger’s daughter? He’d never said anything to her about any daughter.

  ‘So why are you all still standing around?’ the Prince snapped at the others. ‘Bring fresh water! Can’t you see he’s feverish?’

  The two women hurried away, relieved, or so it seemed to Resa, to have a good reason to leave the cave. But the men stood around indecisively.

  ‘Suppose it really is him, though, Prince?’ asked the thin man. ‘And suppose the Adderhead hears about him before Dustfinger gets here?’ He coughed so hard that he had to press his hand to his chest.

  ‘Suppose he’s who? The Bluejay? Nonsense! There’s probably no such man, and even if there is, since when have we given up people who are on our own side? And suppose the songs are true, and he’s protected your women and your children …’

  ‘Songs are never true.’ The two-fingered man’s eyebrows were as dark as if he had blackened them with soot. ‘He’s probably no better than any other highwayman, a murderer greedy for gold, nothing more …’

  ‘Perhaps, or perhaps not,’ retorted the Prince. ‘I see only an injured man and a woman asking for our help.’

  The men did not reply, but the glances they cast Mo were still hostile.

  ‘Now get out, and hurry up about it!’ the Prince said angrily. ‘How’s he to get better with you staring at him like that? Or do you think his wife likes your ugly mugs? Go and make yourselves useful, there’s plenty of work outside.’

  And they did go, sullenly slouching away like men who had not done what they came to do.

  ‘He isn’t the Bluejay!’ Resa whispered, when they had left.

  ‘Very likely not!’ The Prince stroked his bear’s round ears. ‘But I’m afraid our friends out there are convinced he is. And the Adder has put a high price on the Bluejay’s head.’

  ‘A high price?’ Resa looked at the entrance to the cave. Two of the men were still standing there. ‘They’ll come back,’ she whispered, ‘and try to take him away after all.’

  But the Black Prince shook his head.

  ‘Not while I’m here. And I’ll stay until Dustfinger arrives. Nettle said you’d sent him a message, so I expect he’ll soon be here to tell them you’re not lying, won’t he?’

  The women came back with a basin of water. Resa dipped a scrap of fabric in it to cool Mo’s brow. The pregnant woman leaned over her and put a few dried flowers in her lap. ‘Here,’ she whispered. ‘Put this on his heart. It brings luck.’

  Resa stroked the dried flower-heads. ‘They obey you,’ she said to the Prince, when the women had gone again. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, because they’ve chosen me as their leader,’ replied the Prince. ‘And because I’m a very good knife-thrower.’

  33

  Fairydeath

  The wind this evening, so eagerly playing

  Sounds like blades that someone is swinging –

  On the instrument of the trees densely growing …

  Montale,

  Poems

  At first Dustfinger didn’t believe Farid when he told him what he had seen and heard in Fenoglio’s room. Even the old man couldn’t be crazy enough to meddle with Death’s handiwork. But then, that same day, a couple of women buying herbs from Roxane had the same story to tell as the boy: Cosimo the Fair had come back, they said, back from the dead.

  ‘Women say the White Women fell so deeply in love with him that at last they let him go,’ said Roxane. ‘And men say he’d just been hiding from his ugly wife for a while.’

  Crazy stories, thought Dustfinger, but not half as crazy as the truth.

  The women had nothing to say about Brianna. He didn’t like to think of her up at the castle. No one knew what might happen there next. It seemed that the Piper was still in Ombra with half a dozen men-at-arms. Cosimo had sent the rest of them out of the city, and they were waiting outside the walls for their own lord’s arrival. For there was a widespread rumour that the Adderhead would come in person to see this prince who had risen from the dead. He wasn’t going to accept the idea of Cosimo’s taking the throne from his grandson again so easily.

  ‘I’ll ride to Ombra myself and see how she is,’ said Roxane. ‘They probably wouldn’t even let you through the Outer Gate. But there’s something else you can do for me.’

  The women had not come just for the herbs and to pass on the gossip about Cosimo. They had brought Roxane an order from Nettle, who was in Ombra treating two sick children in the dyers’ quarter. She needed a root of fairydeath, dangerous medicine which killed as often as it cured. The old woman hadn’t said for what poor devil she needed the root. ‘Just that it’s a man at the Secret Camp who’s injured, and Nettle is going back there this evening,’ said Roxane. ‘And another thing … Cloud-Dancer was with her. It seems he’s carrying a message for you.’

  ‘A message? For me?’

  ‘Yes, from a woman.’ Roxane looked at him for a moment, and then went into the house to get the root.

  ‘You’re going to Ombra?’ Farid was there behind Dustfinger so suddenly that he jumped.

  ‘I am, and Roxane is riding to the castle,’ he said. ‘So you stay here to keep an eye on Jehan.’

  ‘And who’s going to keep an eye on you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes.’ What a look Farid was giving him! And the marten too. ‘To stop it happening.’ Farid spoke so softly that Dustfinger could hardly hear him. ‘Stop what it says in the book.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ The boy was watching him as anxiously as if he might fall down dead any minute. Dustfinger had to suppress a smile, although it was his own death they were discussing. ‘Did Meggie tell you about it?’

  Farid nodded.

  ‘Very well. Forget it, do you hear me? The words are written. Maybe they’ll come true, maybe not.’

  But Farid shook his head so vigorously that his black hair fell over his forehead. ‘No!’ he said. ‘No, they won’t come true! I swear it. I swear it by the djinns that howl in the desert and the ghosts that eat the dead, I swear it by everything I fear!’

  Dustfinger looked thoughtfully at him. ‘You crazy boy!’ he said. ‘But I like your oath. We’d better leave Gwin here, then, and you can keep him!’

  Gwin did not approve. He bit Dustfinger’s hand when he was put on his chain, snapped at his fingers, and chattered even more angrily when Jink got into his master’s rucksack.

  ‘You’re taking the new marten with you and the old one must be put on the chain?’ asked Roxane, when she came back to them with the root for Nettle.

  ‘Yes. Because someone said he’d bring me bad luck.’

  ‘Since when have you believed that kind of thing?’

  Indeed, since when? Since I met an old man who claims to have made you and me up, thought Dustfinger. Gwin was still hissing; he had seldom seen the marten so angry. Without a word he took the chain off Gwin’s collar again. And ignored Farid’s look of alarm.

  All the way to Ombra Gwin sat on Farid’s shoulders, as if to show Dustfinger that he hadn’t forgiven him yet. And the moment Jink put his nose out of the rucksack, Gwin bared his teeth and snarled so menacingly that Farid had to hold his muzzle shut a couple of times.

  The gallows outsid
e the city gates were empty; only a few ravens were perched on the wooden beams. Even though Cosimo was back, Her Ugliness was still administering justice in Ombra, just as she had done in his father’s lifetime, and she did not think well of hangings – perhaps because, as a child, she had seen too many men dangling from a rope with their tongues blue and their faces bloated.

  ‘Listen,’ Dustfinger said to Farid as they stopped beneath the gallows, ‘while I take Nettle the root and ask Cloud-Dancer for the message I’m told he has for me, you go and find Meggie. I must talk to her.’

  Farid went red, but he nodded. Dustfinger looked at his face with amusement. ‘What’s all this? Did something besides Cosimo’s return from the dead happen on the evening when you went to see her?’

  ‘None of your business!’ muttered Farid, blushing more deeply than ever.

  A farmer, swearing profusely, was driving a cart laden with barrels towards the city gates. The oxen blocked the gateway, and the guards impatiently grabbed the reins. Dustfinger took this chance to get himself and Farid past them. ‘Bring Meggie here, all the same,’ he said as they parted on the other side of the gates. ‘And don’t get so lovesick you lose your way.’

  He watched the boy until he had disappeared among the houses. No wonder Roxane thought Farid was his son. Sometimes he suspected his own heart of thinking the same.

  34

  Cloud-Dancer’s Message

  Yes, my love,

  This world of ours bleeds

  With more pain than just the pain of love.

  Faiz Ahmed Faiz,

  ‘The love I gave you once’,

  An Elusive Dawn

  There could hardly be a worse smell in the world than the odour rising from the dyers’ vats. The acrid stench rose to Dustfinger’s nostrils even as he was making his way along the alley where the smiths plied their trade – tinkers mending pots and pans, blacksmiths shoeing horses, and on the other side of the road the armourers, who were considered superior to the other smiths and were arrogant as befitted their status. The sound of all the hammers beating on red-hot iron was almost as bad as the smell in the alley. The dyers had their hovels in the most remote part of Ombra; their stinking vats were never tolerated in the better parts of any town. But just as Dustfinger was approaching the gate separating their quarter from the rest of Ombra, a man coming out of an armourer’s workshop collided with him.

  The Piper. He was easily recognizable by his silver nose, although Dustfinger could remember the days when he had a nose of flesh and blood. Just your luck again, Dustfinger, he told himself, turning his head aside and trying to slip past Capricorn’s minstrel quickly. Of all the men in this world, that bloodhound has to cross your path. He was beginning to hope that the Piper hadn’t noticed who he had bumped into, but just as he thought he was safely past him the silver-nosed man seized his arm and swung him round.

  ‘Dustfinger!’ he said in the strained voice that had once sounded so different. It had always reminded Dustfinger of over-sweet cakes. Capricorn had loved to listen to it more than any other voice, and the same was true of the songs it sang. The Piper wrote wonderful songs about fire-raising and murder, so wonderful that they almost made you believe there was no nobler occupation than cutting throats. Did he sing the same songs for the Adderhead – or were they too coarsegrained for the silver halls of the Castle of Night?

  ‘Well, fancy that! I’m inclined to think just about everyone’s coming back from the dead these days,’ said the Piper, while the two men-at-arms with him looked covetously at the weapons displayed outside the armourers’ workshops. ‘I really thought Basta had sliced you up and then buried you years ago. Did you know he’s back too? He and the old woman, Mortola. I’m sure you remember her. The Adderhead was delighted to welcome her to his castle. You know how highly he always thought of her deadly concoctions.’

  Dustfinger hid the fear pervading his heart behind a smile. ‘Why, if it isn’t the Piper!’ he said. ‘Your new nose suits you much better than the old one. It tells everyone who your new master is, and shows that it belongs to a minstrel who can be bought for silver.’

  The Piper’s eyes had not changed. They were pale grey like the sky on a rainy day, and they stared at him with as fixed a gaze as the eyes of a bird. Dustfinger knew from Roxane how he had lost his nose, cut off by a man whose daughter he had seduced with his dark songs.

  ‘You always did have a dangerously sharp tongue, Dustfinger,’ he said. ‘It’s about time someone finally cut it out. Indeed, wasn’t that tried once, and you got away only because the Black Prince and his bear protected you? Are they still looking after you? I don’t see them anywhere.’ He looked around, his eye searching the scene.

  Dustfinger cast a quick glance at the two men-at-arms. They were both at least a head taller than him. What would Farid say if he could see me now? he wondered. That I ought to have had him with me so that he could keep his vow? The Piper had a sword, of course, and his hand was already on the hilt. He obviously thought as little as the Black Prince did of the law forbidding strolling players to carry weapons. A good thing the smiths are hammering so loudly, thought Dustfinger, or no doubt everyone would hear my heart beating with fear.

  ‘I must be on my way,’ he said, as casually as possible. ‘Give Basta my regards when you see him, and as for burying me, he hasn’t done it yet.’ He turned – it was worth a try – but the Piper held his arm tightly.

  ‘Of course, and there’s your marten too!’ he hissed.

  Dustfinger felt Jink’s damp muzzle against his ear. It’s the wrong marten, he thought, trying to calm his racing heart. The wrong marten. But had Fenoglio ever mentioned Gwin’s name when he staged Dustfinger’s death? With the best will in the world he couldn’t remember. I’ll have to ask Basta to give me the book back so that I can look it up, he thought bitterly. He signalled to Jink to get back into the rucksack. Better not think about that.

  The Piper was still holding his arm. He wore pale leather gloves, finely stitched like a lady’s. ‘The Adderhead will soon be here,’ he told Dustfinger in an undertone. ‘He didn’t care at all for the news of his son-in-law’s strange return to life. He thinks the whole business is a wicked masquerade designed to cheat his defenceless grandson of the throne.’

  Four guards came down the street wearing the Laughing Prince’s colours: Cosimo’s colours now. Dustfinger had never in his life been so glad to see armed men. The Piper let go of his arm.

  ‘We’ll meet again soon,’ he hissed in his noseless voice.

  ‘I dare say,’ was all that Dustfinger replied. Then he quickly pushed between a couple of ragged boys standing there and staring wide-eyed at a sword, made his way past a woman showing her battered cooking pot to one of the smiths, and disappeared through the dyers’ gate.

  No one followed him. No one seized him and hauled him back. You have too many enemies, Dustfinger, he thought. He didn’t slow down until he came to the tubs from which the vapours of the liquid muck used by the dyers rose. The same miasma hung over the stream that carried the stinking brew under the city wall and down to the river. No wonder the river-nymphs were found only above the place where it flowed into the main waterway.

  In the second house Dustfinger tried, they told him where to find Nettle. The woman he had been sent to had eyes red with weeping, and was carrying a baby. Without a word, she beckoned him into her house, if a house it could be called. Nettle was bending over a little girl with red cheeks and glazed eyes. At the sight of Dustfinger she straightened up, looking grumpy.

  ‘Roxane asked me to bring you this!’

  She glanced briefly at the root, compressed her narrow lips, and nodded.

  ‘What’s wrong with the girl?’ he asked. The child’s mother had sat down by the bed again.

  Nettle shrugged. She seemed to be wearing the same moss-green garment as she had did years ago – and obviously she still liked him as little as ever.

  ‘A high fever, but she’ll survive,’ she replied. �
�It’s not half as bad as the one that killed your daughter … while her father was off jaunting around the world!’ She looked him in the face as she said that, as if to make sure that her words went home, but Dustfinger knew how to hide pain. He was almost as good at hiding pain as he was at playing with fire.

  ‘The root is dangerous,’ he said.

  ‘Do you think you have to tell me that?’ The old woman looked at him as if he had insulted her. ‘The wound it’s to heal is dangerous too. He’s a strong man or he’d be dead by now.’

  ‘Do I know him?’

  ‘You know his wife.’

  What was the old woman talking about? Dustfinger glanced at the sick child. Her small face was flushed with fever.

  ‘I heard that Roxane’s let you back into her bed again,’ said Nettle. ‘You can tell her she’s more of a fool than I thought.

  And now go round behind the house. Cloud-Dancer’s there. He can tell you more about the other woman. She gave him a message for you.’

  Cloud-Dancer was standing beside a stunted oleander bush that grew near the dyers’ huts.