"I’ve read about it," replied Mo.
The happiness in her voice moved him, and he wondered, not for the first time, how it was that the book that had told him so much about fire-elves and giants said so little about the Adderhead’s daughter. To Fenoglio, Violante had been only a minor character, an ugly, unhappy little girl, nothing more. Perhaps you could learn from her how small parts can be made into major roles if you play them in your own way.
Violante seemed to have forgotten that he was standing beside her. Indeed, she seemed to have forgotten everything, even that she had come here to kill her father.
She was looking at the castle as if she hoped to see her mother appear on the battlements at any moment. But at last she turned abruptly.
"Four of you stay by the watchtowers!" she ordered her soldiers. "The rest come with me. But ride slowly if you don’t want the sound of your horses’ hooves to entice the fishes. My mother used to tell me how they’d pulled dozens of men down from the bridge."
An uneasy murmur rose among her soldiers. They really were little more than children.
But Violante took no notice. She picked up her skirts, black like everything Mo had ever seen her wear, and let Brianna help her
Up onto her horse. "You’ll see," she said. "I know this castle better than if I’d lived here. I’ve studied all the books there are about it. I know its ground plan and all its secrets."
"Has your father ever been here?" Dustfinger asked the question just as it had formed in Mo’s mind, too.
Violante picked up her reins. "Only once," she said, without looking at Dustfinger.
"When he was courting my mother. But that’s a long time ago. All the same, he’s sure to remember that no one can take this castle."
She turned her horse. "Come, Brianna," she said, and rode j toward the bridge. But her horse shied back when it saw the stone path across the water. Without a word, Dustfinger brought his mount to Violante’s side, took the reins from her hand, and led her horse onto the bridge behind his. The sound of their hooves echoed over the water as Violante’s men followed him.
Mo was the last to ride onto the bridge. Suddenly, the whole world seemed to be made of water. Mist drifted into his face, and the castle swam on the lake before him like a dark dream: towers, battlements, bridges, oriels, windowless walls with the wind and the water eating at them. The bridge seemed to go on forever, and the gate to which it led looked out of reach, but at last it began to grow larger with every step his horse took. The towers and wails filled the sky like a menacing song, and Mo saw dark shadows glide through the water, like watchdogs picking up the scent of their coming.
"What did the castle look like, Mo?" he heard Meggie asking. "Describe it!"
What would he say? He looked up at the towers, as many of them as if a new one grew every year, at the maze of oriels and bridges and the stone griffin above the gateway. "It didn’t look like a happy ending, Meggie," he heard himself reply. "It looked like a place from which no one ever comes back."
CHAPTER 47
THE ROLE OF WOMEN
Men’s clothes. Resa had stolen them from the sleeping Elfbane: a pair of trousers and a long, warm shirt. Very likely they were his pride and joy. Few of the robbers owned more than what they wore on their backs, but over the next few days she was going to needthose clothes more than Elfbane.
It was long ago that the Inkworld had forced Resa to wear men’s clothing, yet as soon as she put on the rough trousers the memory came back as if it were only yesterday. She remembered how often the knife had scratched her scalp as she cut her hair short, and how her throat had hurt from the constant attempt to make her voice sound deeper. This time she’d just pin up her hair, and presumably she wouldn’t have to pretend to be a man, but trousers were so much more practical than a dress on overgrown paths, and she would have to take such paths if she wanted to follow Mo.
"Promise me!" He had never asked her more fervently for anything. "Promise me you’ll both stay in hiding, never mind what happens, never mind what you hear. And if it all goes wrong" — (what a clever way of getting around saying if I die)— "then Meggie must try to read the two of you back."
Back where? To Elinor’s house, where every nook and cranny reminded her of him, and his workshop stood in the garden? Quite apart from the fact that Elinor herself was on this side of the letters now. But Mo didn’t know that, any more than he knew she had burned the words that Orpheus had written.
No. There was no going back home without him. If Mo died in the Inkworld, then so would she.., hoping that the White Women would take her to wherever he was.
Dark thoughts, Resa, she told herself, placing her hand on her belly. It was so long since Meggie had been growing in there, but her fingers still remembered — all the days when she had felt her body in vain, and then the moment when she suddenly sensed the baby moving under her skin. There was no moment like it, and she could hardly wait to feel the tiny feet kicking below her ribs, the child inside her turning and stretching. It couldn’t be long now. If only she didn’t have to feel so anxious about the child’s father.
"Come along, let’s go looking for him, to warn him about the Magpie and Snapper!"
she whispered to her unborn child. "We’ve been standing back and watching for too long. From now on we’ll play our part, even if Fenoglio hasn’t written us one.
Only Roxane knew what she was planning, no one else. Not Elinor, not Meggie.
They’d both have wanted to come, too. But she must go alone, although that would make Meggie angry with her once again. She still hadn’t entirely forgiven Resa for riding to Orpheus, or for that night in the graveyard. Meggie didn’t forgive easily when her father’s well-being was at stake. He was the only one she always forgave.
Resa took Fenoglio’s book out from under the blanket beneath which she slept. She had asked Battista to make a leather bag for it, of course without telling him that he himself, more than likely, had been born between its pages. "That’s a strange book,"
he had remarked. "What scribe writes such ugly letters? And what kind of binding is that? Had the bookbinder run out of leather?"
She wasn’t sure what Dustfinger would have said about her plan. It still touched her that he had entrusted the book to her. But now she must do as she thought right.
She looked across the cave at her daughter. Meggie was sleeping beside Farid, but Doria slept only a little farther off, his face turned toward her. Orpheus’s former glass man lay beside him, the boy’s hand over him like a blanket. How young Meggie still looked in her sleep! Resa almost bent down to push the hair back from her daughter’s forehead. It still hurt to think of all the years she had spent away from her, it hurt so much, Hurry up, Resa, she told herself. Day is already beginning to dawn outside. Soon they’d all be awake, and then they wouldn’t let her leave.
Elinor murmured something in her sleep as Resa slipped past her, and the guard at the cave entrance glanced her way when she went around behind the wall that Fenoglio had built, as if to ward off the world he himself had made. He and his glass man were snoring in competition, like a bear and a grasshopper. Rosenquartz’s tiny fingers were black with ink, and the sheet of Paper beside him was covered with freshly written words, but nearly all of them had been crossed out.