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 defenseless grandson of the throne.”

Four guards came down the street wearing the Laughing Prince’s colors: Cosimo’s colors 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 daresay,” 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 vapors 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 mossgreen garment as she did ten 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 around behind the house. CloudDancer’s there. He can tell you more about the other woman. She gave him a message for you.”

CloudDancer was standing beside a stunted oleander bush that grew near the dyers’ huts.

“That poor child, did you see her?” he asked as Dustfinger came over to him. “I can’t bear to see them so sick. And the mothers .. you’d think they’d weep their eyes away. I remember how Roxane –” But here he broke off abruptly. “Sorry,” he murmured, putting his hand into the breast of his dirty tunic, “I was forgetting she was your child, too. Here, this is for you.” He brought out a note on fine, pure white paper such as Dustfinger had never seen in this world before. “A woman gave me this for you. Nettle found her and her husband in the forest, in Capricorn’s old fortress, and took them to the Secret Camp. The man’s wounded, quite badly.”

Hesitantly, Dustfinger unfolded the paper. He recognized the writing at once.

“She says she knows you. I told her you can’t read, but –”

“I can read now,” Dustfinger interrupted him. “She taught me.” How did she come to be here?

That was all he could think of as Resa’s words danced before his eyes. The paper was so crumpled that it was difficult to decipher them. Not that reading had ever come easily to him…

“Yes, she said so, too: ‘I taught him,’ she told me.” CloudDancer looked at him curiously. “Where did you get to know the woman?”

“It’s a long story.” He put the note in his backpack. “I must be off,” he said.

“We’re going back this evening, Nettle and I!” CloudDancer called after him. “Shall I tell the woman anything?”

“Yes. Tell her I’ll bring her daughter to her.”

Cosimo’s soldiers were still standing in Smiths’ Alley, assessing the merits of a sword, something an ordinary man-at-arms could never afford. There was no sign of the Piper. Brightly colored strips of fabric hung from the windows: Ombra was celebrating the return of its dead prince, but Dustfinger was in no mood to celebrate. The words in his backpack weighed heavily on him, even if he had to admit that it gave him bitter satisfaction to see that Silvertongue obviously had even less luck in this world than he, Dustfinger, had known in Silvertongue’s. Did he know what it felt like to be in the wrong story now? Or hadn’t he had time to feel anything before Mortola shot him? People were thronging the street leading up to the castle as if it were market day.

Dustfinger looked up at the towers, from which black banners still flew. What did his daughter think of the return of her mistress’s husband? Even if you were to ask Brianna, she wouldn’t tell you, he thought, turning back to the gate. It was time to get out of here before he encountered the Piper again. Or even his master . .

Meggie was already waiting with Farid under the empty gallows. The boy whispered something to her, and she laughed. By fire and ashes, thought Dustfinger, see how happy those two look, and you have to be the bearer of bad news yet again! Why is it always you? Simple, he answered himself. Bad news suits your face better than good news.

Chapter 35 – Ink-Medicine

The memory of my father is wrapped up in White paper, like sandwiches taken for a day of work. Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits Out of his hat, he drew love from his small body.

– Yehuda Amichai, “My Father”, Isibongo

Meggie stopped laughing as soon as she saw Dustfinger approaching her. Why was his face so grave? Farid had said he was happy. Was it the sight of her that made him look so grim? Was he angry with her because she had followed him into his story, and her face reminded him of years that he surely wanted to forget? “What does he want to talk to me about?” she had asked Farid.

“Probably Fenoglio,” Farid had said. “And probably Cosimo, too. He wants to know what the old man is planning!” As if she could have told Dustfinger that ..

When he stopped in front of her, there was not a sign on his face of the smile that she had always found so hard to interpret.

“Hello, Meggie,” he said. A marten blinked sleepily out of his backpack, but it wasn’t Gwin. Gwin was sitting on Farid’s shoulders and hissed as the other marten’s nose showed above Dustfinger’s shoulder.