But that didn’t interest Farid. He no more belonged to the robbers than he had to Orpheus. He didn’t even belong to Meggie. He belonged with only one person, and he had to keep away from him, for fear of bringing him to his death.
Darkness was just falling, and the robbers were still smoking meat and stretching skins between the trees, when Gwin came scurrying out of the forest. Farid thought the marten was Jink until he saw the graying muzzle. Yes, it was Gwin all right.
Since Dustfinger’s death he had looked at Farid like an enemy, but tonight he nibbled his calves the way he used to when he wanted to play, and chattered until Farid followed him.
The marten was quick, too quick even for Farid, who could Outrun most people, but Gwin kept stopping to wait for him with his tail twitching impatiently, leaving Farid to follow as fast as the darkness allowed, because he knew who had sent the marten.
They found Dustfinger where the castle walls became the city boundary of Ombra and the mountainside on which the city stood rose so steeply that no other houses could stand there. Nothing but thorny bushes covered the slope, and the castle wall towered up without any windows, forbidding as a clenched fist, broken by only a few barred slits that let just enough air into the dungeons for the prisoners not to stifle to death before they were executed. No one stayed long in the castle dungeons of Ombra. Sentences were quickly passed and executions quickly carried out. Why feed someone for long if you were going to hang him anyway? The date of the Bluejay’s death depended only on the judge who was coming from the far side of the forest especially for him. Five days, so the whisper went, it would take the Adderhead five days to reach Ombra in his black-draped coach—and no one knew whether the Bluejay would live as long as a single day after his arrival.
Dustfinger stood with his shoulders back against the wall and his head bent, as if he were listening. The deep shadows cast by the castle made him invisible to the guards pacing back and forth on the battlements.
Dustfinger turned only when Gwin bounded toward him. Farid looked anxiously up at the guards before running to him, but they weren’t looking for a boy, or a man on his own. One man wouldn’t be able to set the Bluejay free. No, the Milksop’s soldiers were watching for the arrival of many men, men coming out of the nearby forest or using ropes to help them down the steep slope above the castle — although the Piper must know that even the Black Prince wouldn’t venture to storm Ombra Castle.
The sky above the towers shone with the dark green Of Sootbird’s fire. The Milksop was celebrating. The Piper had ordered all the minstrels among the strolling players to compose songs about his own cunning and the defeat of the Bluejay, but very few had obeyed. Most of them kept silent, and their silence sang another song — a song of the sadness in Ombra and the tears of the women who had their children back but had lost their hope.
"Well, what do you think of Sootbird’s fire?" Dustfinger whispered as Farid came to lean against the castle wall beside him. "Our friend has learned a few things, wouldn’t you say?"
"He’s still useless!" Farid whispered back, and Dustfinger smiled, but his face grew grave again as he looked up at the windowless walls.
"It’s nearly midnight," he said quietly. "At this time the Piper likes to show prisoners his hospitality with fists, clubs, and boots." He laid his hands on the wall and passed them over it, as if the stones could tell him what was going on in the cells behind them. "He’s not with him yet," he whispered. "But it won’t be long now."
"How do you know?" Sometimes it seemed to Farid as if someone else had come back from the dead, not the man he had known.