Inkdeath (Inkworld #3)

He’s back! said Gwin’s bristling coat as he jumped up on her breast, but Roxane didn’t understand. She pushed the marten away when she saw how dark it still was outside, but he persisted, hissing at her and scratching at the door. Of course, she thought at once of the patrols that the Milksop was only too likely to send to isolated farms at night. Heart thudding, she reached for the knife that lay under her pillow and threw on her dress, while the marten pawed more and more impatiently at the door.

Luckily, he hadn’t yet woken Jehan. Her son was fast asleep. Her goose wasn’t giving the alarm, either. . . which was strange.

Barefoot, she went to the door, knife in hand, and listened, but there was nothing to be heard outside, and when she cautiously went out into the open air she felt as if she heard the night itself breathing deeply and regularly, like someone asleep. The stars shone down on her like flowers made of light, and their beauty hurt her weary heart.

"Roxane . . ."

The marten shot past her.

It couldn’t be true. The dead did not come back, even when they had promised they would. But the figure emerging from the shadows near the stable was so very familiar.

Gwin hissed when he saw the other marten sitting on his master’s shoulder.

"Roxane." He spoke her name as if he wanted to savor it on his tongue, like something he hadn’t tasted for a long time.

It was a dream, one of the dreams she had almost every night. Dreams in which she saw his face so clearly that she touched it in her sleep, and next day her fingers still remembered his skin. Even when he put his arms around her, carefully, as if he wasn’t sure whether he had forgotten how to hold her, she didn’t move — because her hands did not believe they would really feel him, her arms did not believe they could hold him again. But her eyes could see him. Her ears heard him breathing. Her skin felt his, as warm as if the fire were inside him, after he had been so terribly cold.

He had kept his promise. And even if he was coming to her only in a dream, it was better than nothing . . . so much better.

"Roxane! Look at me. Look at me." He took her face between his hands, caressed her cheek, wiped away the tears she so often felt on her skin when she woke. And only then did she draw him close to her, let her hands tell her that she wasn’t just embracing a ghost. It couldn’t be true. She wept as she pressed her face to his. She wanted to hit him for having left her for the boy’s sake, for all the pain she had already felt on his account, so much pain, but her heart gave her away, as it had the first time he came back. It always gave her away.

"What is it?" He kissed her once more.

The scars. They were gone, as if the White Women had washed them away before sending him back to life.

She took his hands and laid them against his cheeks.

"Well, who’d have thought it!" he said, stroking his own skin with his fingers as if it were a stranger’s. "They’ve really gone! Basta wouldn’t like that at all."

Why had they let him go? Who had paid the price for him, as he had paid it for the boy?

Why did she ask? He was back. That was all that mattered, back from the place from which there was no return. Where all the others were. Her daughter, the father of her son, Cosimo . . . so many dead. But he had come back. Even if she saw in his eyes that, this time, he had been so far away that something of him was still left there.

"How long will you stay this time?" she whispered.

He did not answer at once. Gwin rubbed his head against his neck and looked at him, as if he, too, wanted to know the answer.

"As long as Death allows," he replied at last, and placed her hand on his beating heart.

"What does that mean?" she whispered.

But he closed her mouth with a kiss.

CHAPTER 28

A NEW SONG

"The Bluejay’s come back from the dead!" It was Doria who brought the Black Prince the news. The boy stumbled into his tent just before dawn, so breathless that he could hardly get the words out. "A moss-woman saw him. By the Hollow Trees where the healers bury their dead. She says he’s brought the Fire-Dancer back, too.

Please! May I tell Meggie?"

Incredible words. Far too wonderful to be true. All the same, the Black Prince set off at once for the place where the Hollow Trees grew after making Doria promise not to tell anyone else what he had told him: neither Meggie nor her mother, neither Snapper nor any of the other robbers, not even his own brother, who was lying outside by the fire, fast asleep.

"But they say the Piper’s heard about it, too!" the boy faltered.

"That’s unfortunate," replied the Prince. "Let’s hope I find him before the Piper does."

He rode fast, so fast that the bear was soon snorting with disapproval as he trotted along beside him. Why such haste? For a foolish hope? Why did his heart always insist on believing that there was a light in all the darkness? Where did he keep getting new hope from, after he had been disappointed countless times? You have the heart of a child, Prince. Hadn’t Dustfinger always told him so? And he’s brought the Fire-Dancer back, too. It couldn’t be true. Such things happened only in songs, and in the stories that mothers told their children in the evening to drive away nighttime fears.

Hope can make you careless; he should have known that, too. The Black Prince didn’t see the soldiers until they emerged ahead of him through the trees. A good number of them. He counted ten. They had a moss-woman with them, her thin neck already rubbed sore by the rope on which they were pulling her along. Presumably they had caught her to make her lead them to the Hollow Trees, for hardly anyone knew the place where the healers buried their dead. They themselves, so rumor said, made sure that all the paths to it were hidden by undergrowth. But after helping Roxane to take Dustfinger there, the Black Prince knew the way.

It was a sacred place, but in her fear the moss-woman had indeed led the men-at-arms the right way. The crowns of the dead trees could already be seen in the distance. They rose, as gray as if morning had stripped them bare, among the oaks, which were still autumnal gold, and the Prince prayed the Bluejay wasn’t there.

Better to be with the White Women than in the Piper’s hands.

Three men-at-arms came upon him from behind, swords in their hands. The moss-woman sank to her knees as her captors drew their own swords and turned to their new quarry. The bear reared up on his hind legs and bared his teeth. The horses shied, and two of the soldiers retreated, but there were still a great many of them—

too many for a knife and a pair of claws.

"Well, guess what! Obviously the Piper’s not the only one stupid enough to believe moss-women’s gossip!" Their leader was almost as pale as the White Women, and his face was sprinkled with freckles. "The Black Prince, none other! There was I cursing my luck, sent riding into this damn forest to catch a ghost, and who should stumble into my path but his black brother! The price on your head isn’t as high as the price for the Bluejay, but it’ll make us all rich men!"

"You’re wrong there. Touch him and you’ll be dead men instead."

And his voice wakens the dead from sleep and makes the wolf lie down with the lamb. . . . The Bluejay stepped out from behind a beech tree as naturally as if he had been waiting for the soldiers there. Don’t call me Bluejay; it’s only a name from the songs! He had said that to the Prince so often, but what else was he to call him?