“That’s not difficult.” Dustfinger let his eyes wander to Fenoglio. So they called him Inkweaver here. How contented he looked, the man who had written Dustfinger’s death. A knife in the back, plunged so deep that it found his heart, that was what Fenoglio had planned for him. Dustfinger instinctively reached to touch the spot between his shoulder blades. Yes, he had read them already, after all, Fenoglio’s deadly words, one night in the other world when he had been lying awake, trying in vain to conjure up Roxane’s face in his memory. You can’t go back! He had kept hearing Meggie’s voice saying those words. ” One of Capricorn’s men is waiting for you in the book.

They want to kill Gwin, and you try to help him, so they kill you instead. ” He had taken the book out of his backpack with trembling fingers, had opened it and searched the pages for his death.

And then he’d read what it said there in black and white, over and over again. After that he had decided to leave Gwin behind if he should ever come back here. . Dustfinger stroked Jink’s bushy tail. No, perhaps it had not been a good idea to catch another marten.

“What’s the matter? You look as if the hangman had given you the nod all of a sudden.” The Black Prince put an arm around his shoulders, while his bear sniffed curiously at Dustfinger’s backpack. “The boy must have told you how we picked him up in the forest? He was in a state of great agitation, said he was here to warn you. And when he said of whom, many of my men’s hands went to their knives.”

Basta. Dustfinger ran a finger over his scarred cheek. “Yes, he’s probably back, too.” “With his master?”

“No, Capricorn’s dead. I saw him die myself.”

The Black Prince put his hand in his bear’s mouth and tickled its tongue. “Well, that’s good news.

And there wouldn’t be much for him to come back to, just a few charred walls. Only old Nettle sometimes goes there. She swears you can’t find better yarrow anywhere than in the fire-raisers’ old fortress.”

Dustfinger saw Fenoglio glancing his way. Meggie was looking in the same direction, too. He quickly turned his back on them.

“We have a camp near there now – you’ll remember the old brownies’ caves,” the Prince went on, lowering his voice. “Since Cosimo smoked out the fire-raisers those caves have made a good shelter again. Only the strolling players know about them. The old and frail, cripples, women tired of living on the road with their children – they can all stay and rest there for a while. I tell you what, the Secret Camp would be a good place for you to tell me your story! The one you say is so hard to believe. I’ve often been there for the bear’s sake. He gets grouchy when he spends too long between city walls. Roxane can tell you how to find the place; she knows her way around the forest almost as well as you by now.”

“I know the old brownie caves,” said Dustfinger. He had hidden from Capricorn’s men there many times, but he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to tell the Prince about the last ten years.

“Six torches!” Farid was beside him again, wiping soot off his fingers on his trousers. “I juggled with six torches and I didn’t drop one. I think she liked it.”

Dustfinger suppressed a smile. “Very likely.” Two of the strolling players had drawn the Prince aside. Dustfinger wasn’t sure whether he knew them, but he turned his back, to be on the safe side.

“Did you know everyone’s talking about you?” Farid’s eyes were round as coins with excitement.

“They’re all saying you’re back. And I think some of them have recognized you.”

“Oh, have they?” Dustfinger looked uneasily around. His daughter was still standing behind the little prince’s chair. He hadn’t told Farid about her. It was bad enough having the boy jealous of Roxane.

“They say there was never a fire-eater to match you! The other one there, Sootbird they call him”

– Farid put a piece of bread in Jink’s mouth – “he asked about you, but I didn’t know if you wanted to meet him. He’s really bad at it, he doesn’t know how to do anything – but he says he knows you. Is that right?”

“Yes, but all the same I’d rather not meet him.” Dustfinger turned. The tightrope-walker had come down from his rope at last. CloudDancer was talking to him and pointing Dustfinger’s way. Time to disappear. He would be happy to see them all again, but not here, and not today. .

“I’ve had enough of this,” he told Farid. “You stay and earn us a few more coins. I’ll be at Roxane’s if you want me.”

Up on the platform, Her Ugliness was handing her son a gold-embroidered purse. The child put his plump hand into it and threw the entertainers some coins. They hastily bent to pick them out of the dust. But Dustfinger cast a last look at the Black Prince and went away.

What would Roxane say when she heard that he hadn’t exchanged a single word with his daughter? He knew the answer. She would laugh. She knew only too well what a coward he could be.

Chapter 23 – Cold and White

I am like a goldsmith hammering day and night

Just so I can extend pain

Into a gold ornament as thin as a cicada’s wing.

– Xi Murong, “Poetry’s Value,” Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry

There they were again. Mo felt them coming closer, he saw them even though his eyes were closed – White Women, their faces so pale, their eyes colorless and cold. That was all there was in the world, white shadows in the dark and the pain in his breast, red pain. Every breath brought it back. Breathing. Hadn’t it once been perfectly easy? Now it was difficult, as difficult as if they had buried him already, heaping earth on his breast, on the pain burning and throbbing there. He couldn’t move. His body was useless, a burning prison. He wanted to open his eyes, but his lids weighed down as heavily as if they were made of stone. Everything was lost. Only words remained: pain, fear, death. White words. No color in them, no life. Only the pain was red.

Is this death? Mo wondered. This void, full of faint shadows? Sometimes he thought he felt the fingers of the pale women reaching into his agonized breast as if to crush his heart. Their breath wafted over his hot face, and they were whispering a name, but it was not the name he remembered as his own. Bluejay, they whispered.

Their voices seemed to be made of cold yearning, nothing but cold yearning. It’s easy, they whispered, you don’t even have to open your eyes. No more pain, no darkness. Stand up, they whispered, it’s time to go, and they entwined their white fingers with his. Their fingers were wonderfully cool on his burning skin.

But the other voice wouldn’t let him go. Indistinct, barely audible, as if it came from far, far away, it penetrated the whispering. It sounded strange, almost discordant among the whispering shadows. Be quiet, he wanted to tell it with his tongue of stone. Be quiet, please, let me go! For nothing but that voice kept him imprisoned in the burning house that was his body. But the voice went on.

He knew it, but where from? He couldn’t remember. It was long ago that he had last heard it, too long ago. .

Chapter 24 – In Elinor’s Cellar

The lofty bookshelves sag

Under thousands of sleeping souls

Silence, hopeful