"And Brianna?" Silvertongue spoke her name, and Dustfinger could already see his daughter standing there in the night, turning her face away as she usually did when he came close to her. "Your daughter is here, but you hardly dare look at her. Shall I show you Brianna, too?"
"Yes," said Dustfinger softly, "show me Brianna."
Silvertongue cleared his throat, as if to make sure that his voice was at its full strength. "There's nothing written about your daughter in Fenoglio's book, except for her name and a few words about the small child that she isn't anymore. So I can only say what everyone can see about her."
Dustfinger's heart contracted, as if afraid of the words that were coming. His daughter, his daughter who was a stranger to him.
"Brianna has inherited her mother's beauty, but everyone who sets eyes on her thinks of you, too." Silvertongue spoke the words carefully, as if plucking every one of them out of the night, assembling Brianna's face out of the stars. "There's fire in her hair and in her heart, and when she looks in the mirror she thinks of her father…"
And bears him a grudge for coming back from the dead without bringing Cosimo, too, thought Dustfinger. Hush, he wanted to tell Silvertongue, forget my daughter. Tell me more about Roxane instead. But he kept silent, and Silvertongue went on.
"Brianna is so much more grown-up than Meggie, but sometimes she looks like a lost child whose own beauty seems uncanny to her. She has her mother's grace and her beautiful voice – even the Prince's bear listens when Brianna sings – but all her songs are sad, saying that those we love will be lost someday."
Dustfinger felt tears on his face. He had forgotten how they felt, so cool on his skin. He wiped them away with his hot fingers.
But Silvertongue went on, his voice as gentle as if he were speaking of his own daughter. "She looks at you when she thinks you won't notice. She follows you with her eyes as if looking for herself in your face. And no doubt she wishes both of us would tell her what it's like among the dead, and whether we saw Cosimo there."
"I saw two of him," said Dustfinger softly. "I expect she'd gladly exchange me for either of them."
He turned and looked down at the lake.
"What is it?" asked Silvertongue.
Without a word, Dustfinger pointed down. A fiery serpent was crawling through the night. Torches. The waiting was over. The guards on the bridge began to move. One of them ran back to the castle to take the news to Violante.
The Adderhead was coming.
55. THE WRONG TIME
"Is he your latest?" asked Man.
"Hard to say," God replied, peering into the Newt's eyes.
"He might have been here a while. Some things take an awful
lot of work. But others – they just seem to turn up, somehow.
All ready-made. Very odd."
Ted Hughes, "The Playmate," from The Dreamfighter
Dustfinger saw the torches down in the forest. Of course. The Adderhead feared daylight. Damn it all, the ink was too thick again.
"Rosenquartz!" Fenoglio wiped the pen on his sleeve and looked around in search of the glass man. Walls made of branches elaborately woven together, the writing-board Doria had made him, his bed of leaves and moss, the candle that Farid kept relighting for him when the wind blew it out – but no Rosenquartz.
Very likely he and Jasper hadn't yet given up hope of finding glass women, even up here. After all, Farid had been fool enough to tell them he'd seen at least two – "as pretty as fairies," the idiot had added! Ever since then, the two glass men had been clambering around in the branches so eagerly that it was only a question of time when they would break their silly necks. Stupid creatures.
Well, never mind. Fenoglio dipped his pen back into the thick ink. He must just make do with things as they were. He loved his new perch for writing, so high that his world was truly at his feet, even if the glass man kept playing truant and it was terribly cold at night. Nowhere before had he felt so strongly that the words were coming to him as if of their own accord.
Yes, he'd write the Bluejay his very best song up here in the crown of a tree. What place could be more suitable? The last picture the flames showed Farid had been reassuring: Dustfinger behind the castle battlements, Mortimer asleep… it could only mean that the Adderhead hadn't reached the castle yet. Well, how could he, Fenoglio? he thought with satisfaction. You broke his coach wheel in the middle of the darkest part of the forest. That should hold up the Silver Prince for at least two days, if not more. Plenty of time for writing, now that the words loved him again.
"Rosenquartz!" If I have to call him once more, thought Fenoglio, I personally am going to throw him out of this tree.
"I'm not hard of hearing, thank you very much. Far from it. I hear better than you." The glass man emerged from the darkness so suddenly that Fenoglio left a large blot of ink on the paper right beside the Adderhead's name. Well, he hoped that was a good omen. Rosenquartz dipped a thin twig in the ink and started stirring without a word of apology, without a word to explain where he had been. Concentrate, Fenoglio. Forget the glass man. Write.
And the words came. They came easily. The Adderhead was on his way back to the castle where he had once paid court to Violante's mother, and his immortality was a burden to him. In his swollen hands he held the White Book that tormented him worse than his own torturers could have done. But soon there would be an end to it, because his daughter was going to hand over the man who had done all this to him. How sweet revenge would taste when the Bluejay had cured the book and his own rotting flesh! Dream of your revenge, Silver Prince, thought Fenoglio as lie wrote down the Adderhead's dark thoughts. Think of nothing but your revenge – and forget that you've never trusted your daughter!
"Well, fancy that, he's writing!" The words were only a whisper, but the Adderhead's face, so clear a moment ago that Fenoglio could have touched it, blurred and changed into the face of Signora Loredan. Meggie was with her. Why wasn't the child asleep? It didn't surprise Fenoglio in the least that her deranged great-aunt clambered around the branches by night, very likely in pursuit of every shining moth, but Meggie – she was tired to death after insisting on climbing the trunk with Doria instead of being pulled up like the children.
"Yes, he's writing," he growled. "And he'd probably have finished long ago if people didn't keep interrupting him the whole time."
"What do you mean, the whole time?" replied Loredan. She sounded aggressive again, and she looked so silly in the three dresses she was wearing, one on top of the other. It was amazing she could find so many in her considerable size. Luckily, Battista had been able to make jackets for the children out of the monstrous garment she'd been wearing when she had stumbled into Fenoglio's world.
"Elinor -" Meggie tried to interrupt her, but no one could ever stop that busy tongue, as Fenoglio had discovered by now.
"The whole time, he says!" Now she was letting wax from her candle drop onto the paper, too! "Is he hard at work day and night making sure the children don't fall out of these damn nests, is he climbing up and down this wretched tree to bring up something to eat? Is he repairing the walls so that the wind doesn't kill us all, is he keeping watch? No, but people are interrupting him the whole time."
Splash. Another drop of candle wax. And what a nerve she had, leaning over to look at the words he'd just written. "This really doesn't sound bad," she informed Meggie, as if Fenoglio had dissolved into the cold forest air before their eyes. "No, not at all bad."
It was beyond belief.
Now Rosenquartz, too, was bending over his lines, wrinkling up his glassy forehead so much that it looked as if water were tracing folds there.