CHAPTER 6

SAD OMBRA

Farid had told Meggie how difficult it was to get into Ombra now, and she had passed on everything he said to Mo. "The guards aren’t the harmless fools who used to stand there. If they ask you what you are doing in Ombra, think hard before you answer. Whatever they demand, you must stay humble and submissive. They don’t search many people. Sometimes you may even be lucky and they’ll just wave you through!"

They weren’t lucky. The guards stopped them, and Meggie felt like clinging to Mo when one of the soldiers gestured to him to dismount and brusquely asked to see a sample of his craft. While the guard looked at the book of her mother’s drawings, Meggie Wondered in alarm whether she already knew the face under the Open helmet from her imprisonment in the Castle of Night, and whether he would find the knife hidden in Mo’s belt. They might kill him just for that knife. No one was allowed to carry weapons except the occupiers from Argenta, but Battista had made the belt so well that even the suspicious hands of the guard at the gate could find nothing wrong with it.

Meggie was glad Mo had the knife with him as they rode through the ironbound gates, past the lances of the guards, and into the city that now belonged to the Adderhead.

She hadn’t been in Ombra since she and Dustfinger first set out for the secret camp of the Motley Folk. It seemed an eternity ago that she had run through the streets with Resa’s letter telling her that Mortola had shot her father. For a moment she pressed her face against Mo’s back, so happy that he was back with her, alive and well. At last she would be able to show him what she’d told him so much about: Balbulus’s workshop and the Laughing Prince’s books. For one precious moment she forgot all her fears, and it seemed as if the Inkworld belonged only to him and her.

Mo liked Ombra. Meggie could see it in his face, from the way he looked around, reining in his horse again and again to look down the streets. Although it was impossible to ignore the mark left on the city by the occupying forces, Ombra was still what the stonemasons had made of it when they first carved its gates, columns, and arches. Their works of art couldn’t be carried away and broken up —for then they’d be worth no more than the paving stones in the street. So stone flowers still grew under the windows and balconies of Ombra, tendrils twined around columns and cornices, and faces stuck tongues out of grotesquely distorted mouths from the sand-colored walls, weeping stony tears. But the Laughing Prince’s coat of arms was defaced everywhere, and you could recognize the lion on it only from what was left of its mane.

"The street on the right leads to the marketplace!" Meggie whispered to Mo, and he nodded like a sleepwalker. Very likely be was hearing, in his mind, the words that had once told him about the scene now surrounding him as he rode on. Meggie had heard about the Inkworld only from her mother, but Mo had read Fenoglio’s book countless times as he tried again and again to find Resa among the words.

"Is it the way you imagined it?" she asked him quietly.

"Yes," Mo whispered back. "Yes and no.

There was a crowd of people in the marketplace, just as if the peace-loving Laughing Prince still ruled Ombra —except that there were hardly any men to be seen, and you could stop and watch entertainers again. For the Milksop allowed strolling players into the city, although only it was whispered if they were prepared to spy for him.

Mo rode his horse past a crowd of children. There were many children in Ombra, even though their fathers were dead. Meggie saw a torch whirling through the air above the small heads two, three, four torches — and sparks fading and going out in the cold air. Farid? she wondered although she knew he’d done no more fire-eating since Dustfinger’s death. But Mo suddenly pulled his hood down over his forehead, and then she, too, saw the familiar well-oiled face with its constant smile.

Sootbird.

Meggie’s fingers closed on Mo’s cloak, but her father rode on, as if the man who had betrayed him once already wasn’t there at all. More than a dozen strolling players had lost their lives because Sootbird had revealed the whereabouts of the secret camp, and M0 himself had almost been among the dead. Everyone in Lombrica knew that Sootbird went in and out of the Castle of Night, that he’d been paid for his treachery in silver by the Piper himself and was now also on excellent terms with the Milksop, yet there he stood in Ombra’s marketplace, smiling, unrivaled now that Dustfinger was dead and Farid had lost his enthusiasm for fire-eating.

Oh yes, Ombra certainly had new masters. Nothing could have made that clearer to Meggie than Sootbird’s smug, masklike face. It was said that the Adderhead’s alchemists had taught him certain things, and that what he played with now was dark fire, wily and deadly like the powders he used to tame it. The Strong Man had told Meggie that its smoke beguiled the senses, making Sootbird’s spectators think they were watching the greatest fire-eater on earth.

Whatever the truth of that was, the children of Ombra clapped. The torches didn’t fly half as high in the air as they had for Dustfinger or Farid, but for a while the show made them forget their sad mothers and the work waiting at home.

"Mo, please!" Meggie quickly turned her face away as Sootbird looked in her direction. "Let’s turn back! Suppose he recognizes you?"

They were going to close the gates, then the two of them would be hunted through the streets like rats in a trap!

But Mo just shook his head very slightly as he reined in his horse behind one of the market stalls. "Don’t worry, Sootbird is far too busy keeping the fire away from his pretty face!" he whispered to Meggie. "But let’s dismount. We won’t be so conspicuous on foot."

The horse shied when Mo led it into the crowd, but he soothed it in a quiet voice.

Meggie saw a juggler who had once followed the Black Prince among the stalls.

Many of the strolling players had changed sides now that the Milksop was filling their pockets. These were not bad times for them, and the market traders did good business, too. The women of Ombra couldn’t afford any of the wares for sale, but with the money they had extorted, the Milksop and his friends bought costly fabrics, jewelry, weapons, and delicacies with names that Fenoglio himself might not know.

You could even buy horses here.

Mo looked around at the bustling, colorful throng as if he didn’t want to miss a single face or any of the wares offered for sale, but finally his gaze turned to the towers rising high above the tiled rooftops and lingered there. Meggie’s heart constricted.

He was still determined to go to the castle, and she cursed herself for ever telling him about Balbulus and his art.

She almost stopped breathing when they passed a "Wanted" poster for the Bluejay, but Mo just cast a glance of amusement at the picture and ran his hand through his dark hair, which he now wore short like a peasant. Perhaps he thought his carefree attitude would soothe Meggie, but it didn’t. It frightened her. When he acted like that, he was the Bluejay, a stranger with her father’s face.

Suppose one of the soldiers who had guarded him in the Castle of Night was here?

Wasn’t that one staring at them? And the minstrel woman over there — didn’t she look like one of the women who had gone out through the gates of the Castle of Night with them? Move away, Mo! she thought, willing him to walk on with her through one of the arches, into a street — any streetjust to be out of sight of all those eyes. Two children clutched her skirt and held out their dirty hands, begging. Meggie smiled at them helplessly. She didn’t have any money, not a coin. How hungry they looked! A soldier made his way through the crush and roughly pushed the beggar children aside. If only we Were in there with Balbulus, thought Meggie —and stumbled into Mo as he abruptly stopped.