“Do you remember me?” he heard Cosimo ask. “Was I a stern father?”

Jacopo merely shrugged.

“Oh yes, you were very stern!” Her Ugliness replied on the child’s behalf. “You took away his hounds when he acted like this. And his horse.”

She was clever, cleverer than Fenoglio had expected. He went quietly toward the door. It was a good thing he’d soon be living at the castle. He must keep an eye on Violante, or she’d soon be filling the blank of Cosimo’s memory to her own liking – as if stuffing a newly prepared turkey.

When the servants opened the great door he saw Cosimo abstractedly smiling at his wife. He’s grateful to her, thought Fenoglio, grateful to her for filling his emptiness with her words, but he doesn’t love her.

And of course that’s another thing you never thought of, Fenoglio, he told himself reproachfully as he walked through the Inner Courtyard. Why didn’t you write a word about Cosimo loving his wife? Didn’t you tell Meggie the story, long ago, about the flower maiden who gave her heart to the wrong man? What are stories for if we don’t learn from them? Well, at least Violante loved Cosimo. You only had to look at her to see it. That was something, after all. .

On the other hand .. Violante’s maid, the girl with the beautiful hair, Brianna, who Meggie said was Dustfinger’s daughter – hadn’t she seemed equally enraptured when she looked at Cosimo?

And Cosimo himself – hadn’t he looked at the maid more often than at his wife? Oh, never mind, thought Fenoglio. There’ll soon be more important matters at stake than love. Far more important matters ..

Chapter 39 – Another Messenger

The strongest memory is weaker than the palest ink.

– Chinese proverb

The Adderhead and his men-at-arms had disappeared when Fenoglio came out of the gate of the Inner Castle. Good, thought Fenoglio. He’ll be fuming with rage on his long ride home! The thought of it made him smile. A number of men were waiting in the Outer Courtyard. It was easy to guess their trade from their blackened hands, even though no doubt they had scrubbed them thoroughly for their prince. The entire population of Smiths’ Alley in Ombra seemed to have come up to the castle. You forge the words, I’ll have the swords forged. Many, many swords. Had Cosimo’s preparations for his war begun already? If so, it’s time I set to work on my words, Fenoglio told himself.

As he turned into Cobblers’ Alley he thought for a moment that he heard steps behind him, but when he turned there was only a one-legged beggar hobbling laboriously past him. At every other step the beggar’s crutch slipped in the filth lying among the houses – pig dung, vegetable refuse, stinking puddles of whatever fluids people tipped out of their windows. Well, there’ll soon be cripples enough, thought Fenoglio as he walked on toward Minerva’s house. You could call war a cripple factory. .

What kind of idea was that? Were doubts of Cosimo’s plans stirring in his elated mind? Oh, let it alone. .

By all the letters of the alphabet, I’m certainly not going to miss this climb once I’m living in the castle, he thought as he toiled up the stairway to his room. I must just remember to ask Cosimo not, on any account, to give me quarters in one of the towers. The climb up to Balbulus’s workshop was bad enough! “Oh, so these few steps are too steep for you, but you trust yourself to go to war in your old age, do you?” said a quiet, mocking voice inside him. It always spoke up at the most inappropriate moments, but Fenoglio had plenty of practice in ignoring it.

Rosenquartz wasn’t there. Presumably he had climbed out of the window again to visit the glass man working for the scribe who lived over the road in Bakers’ Alley. The fairies all seemed to have flown away, too. It was quiet in Fenoglio’s room, unusually quiet. He sat down on his bed, sighing. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t help thinking of his grandchildren and the way they used to fill his house with noise and laughter. So what? He thought, feeling angry with himself.

Minerva’s children make just the same kind of noise, and think how often you’ve sent them packing down to the yard because it was too much for you!

Footsteps came up the stairs. Well, speak of the devil. . ! He didn’t feel like telling stories, not at the moment. He had to pack his things and then break the news gently to Minerva that she must look around for a new lodger.

“Go away!” he called to whoever was at the door. “Go and tease the pigs or chickens in the yard!

The Inkweaver doesn’t have time just now. He’s moving to the castle.”

The door swung open all the same, but not to reveal two children’s faces. A man stood there – a man with a blotched face and slightly protuberant eyes. Fenoglio had never seen him before, yet he seemed strangely familiar. His leather trousers were patched and dirty, but the color of his cloak made Fenoglio’s heart beat faster. It was the Adderhead’s silvery gray.

“What’s the idea?” he asked brusquely, getting to his feet, but the stranger was already through the doorway. He stood there with his legs spread, his grin as ugly as his face itself, but it was the sight of his companion that made Fenoglio’s old knees feel weak. Basta was smiling at him like a long-lost friend. He, too, wore the silver of the Adderhead.

“Bad luck again! Talk about terrible luck!” said Basta, looking around the room. “The girl’s not here. And there we go stalking you all the way from the castle, quiet as cats, thinking we’ll catch two birds with one stone, and now it’s just one ugly old raven in our trap. Never mind, at least one is something. Can’t expect too much of Lady Fortune, can we? After all, she sent you to the castle at just the right time. I recognized your ugly tortoise face at once, but you didn’t even see me, did you?”

No, Fenoglio hadn’t seen him. Should he have looked closely at every man standing behind the Adderhead? Yes – if you’d had your wits about you, Fenoglio, he told himself, that’s exactly what you’d have done! How could you forget that Basta’s back? Wasn’t what happened to Mortimer warning enough?

“Well, what a surprise! Basta! How did you escape the Shadow?” he said out loud, moving unobtrusively backward until he could feel the bed behind him. Ever since a man in the house next door had his throat cut in his sleep, he had slept with a knife under his pillow, although he wasn’t sure if it was still there.

“Sorry, but he must have overlooked me, shut up in that cage as I was,” purred Basta in his catlike voice. “Capricorn wasn’t so lucky, but Mortola is still around, and she’s told our old friend the Adderhead about the three birds we’re after. Dangerous sorcerers who kill with words.”

Basta slowly came toward Fenoglio. “Who do you think those birds are?”

The other man kicked the door shut with his boot.

“Mortola?” Fenoglio tried to make his voice mocking and supercilious, but it sounded more like the croak of a dying raven. “Wasn’t it Mortola who had you put in the cage to be fed to the Shadow?”

Basta just shrugged his shoulders and flung back his silvergray cloak. Of course, he had his knife.

A brand-new one, it seemed, finer than any he’d ever had in the other world and undoubtedly just as sharp.

“Yes, not very nice of her,” he said as his fingers caressed the handle of the knife. “But she’s really sorry. Come on, then, do you know what birds we’re after? Let me help you a little. We’ve already wrung the neck of one of them–the one that sang loudest.”