Perhaps he doesn't appear to me in my dreams because he knows I'm afraid of ghosts, thought Farid as he climbed the steps to the back door. The main entrance of the house, which led straight out into the square, was of course reserved for Orpheus himself and his fine customers. Servants, strolling players, and deliverymen had to plow through the muck in the yard and ring the bell at the modest little door hidden at the back of the house.
Farid rang three times, but nothing stirred. By all the demons of the desert, where was that Chunk? He had nothing to do but open a door now and then. Or was he snoring away like a dog outside Orpheus's bedroom door again?
However, when the bolt was finally pushed aside it wasn't Oss who let him in but Brianna. Dustfinger's daughter had been working for Orpheus for two weeks now, but presumably Cheeseface had no idea whose daughter was doing his laundry and scrubbing his pots. Orpheus was so blind.
Without a word, Brianna held the door open, and Farid was equally silent as he passed her. There were no words between them except those that went unspoken: My father died for you. He left us alone for you, only for you. Brianna blamed him for every tear her mother shed. She had told him so in a low voice after their first day together in the service of Orpheus. "For every single tear!" Yet again, he thought he felt her glance on the back of his neck like a curse when lie turned his back to her.
"Where've you been all this time?" Oss seized him as he was stealing away to the place in the cellar where he slept. Jink hissed and ran off. Last time Oss kicked the marten he had almost broken Jink's ribs. "He's been asking for you a hundred times over! Made me search every damn alleyway. I haven't had a wink of sleep all night because of you!"
"So? You sleep enough as it is!"
The Chunk hit him in the face. "Less of your cheek! Go on, your master's waiting for you."
One of the maids came toward them on the stairs. She blushed as she made her way past Farid. What was her name? Dana? A nice girl, she'd often slipped him a delicious piece of meat when Oss had stolen his food, and Farid had kissed her in the kitchen a few times for that. But she wasn't half as beautiful as Meggie. Or Brianna.
"I just hope he'll let me give you a good hiding!" Oss whispered before knocking on the door of Orpheus's study.
That was what Orpheus called the room, although he spent far less time studying in it than groping under one of the maids' skirts, or stuffing himself with the lavish dishes his cook had to prepare for him at any time of day or night. Tonight, however, he really was sitting at his desk, head bent over a sheet of paper, while his two glass men were arguing under their breath over whether it was better to stir ink to the left or the right. They were brothers called Jasper and Ironstone, and as different as day and night. Ironstone, the elder, loved lecturing his younger brother and ordering him about. Farid often wanted to wring his glass neck. He himself had two older brothers; they'd been one of the reasons why he had run away from home and joined a band of robbers.
"Shut up!" Orpheus snapped at the quarreling glass men. "What ridiculous creatures you are! Stir to the left, stir to the right – just make sure you don't spatter my whole desk with ink again while you're stirring."
Ironstone looked accusingly at Jasper – of course! If anyone had spattered Orpheus's desk with ink, it had to be his little brother. But he preserved a grim silence as Orpheus put pen to paper again.
"Farid, you really must learn to read!" How often had Meggie told him that? And, with some difficulty, she had taught him a few letters of the alphabet. B for bear, R for robber ("Look, Farid, there's a letter R in your name, too"), M for Meggie, F for fire (wasn't it wonderful that his name began with the same letter?), and D… D for Dustfinger. He always got the rest mixed up. How were you supposed to remember those funny little things with their scrawled lines stretching every which way? AOUIMTNP… it gave him a headache just to look at them. But yes, he must learn to read, he must. How else was he ever to find out whether Orpheus was really trying to write Dustfinger back?
"Snippets, nothing but snippets!" Orpheus pushed Jasper aside with a curse as the glass man came up to sprinkle sand over the fresh ink. Grimly, he tore the sheet of paper he had been writing on into tiny scraps. Farid was used to that sight. Orpheus was seldom satisfied with what he put down on paper. He crumpled up what he had written, tore it in pieces, threw it on the fire with a curse, bullied the glass men, and drank too much. But when he succeeded he was even more unbearable. He puffed himself up like a bullfrog, stalked proudly through Ombra like a newly crowned king, kissed the maids with his moist, complacent lips, and let everyone know he had no equal. "Let them call the old man Inkweaver!" he shouted, loudly enough to be heard all over the house. "It suits him. He's nothing but a craftsman, while I… I am an enchanter! Ink-Enchanter, that's what they ought to call me. That's what they will call me someday!"
But tonight, yet again, the enchantment didn't seem to be working. "Toad-twaddle! Goose-cackle! Leaden words!" he said angrily without raising his head. "Just a mush of words, that's what you're smearing the paper with today, Orpheus: a watery, unseasoned, tasteless, slimy mush of words!"
The two glass men hastily scrambled down the legs of the desk and began picking up the shreds of paper.
"My lord, the boy is back." No one could sound more servile than Oss. His voice bowed to Orpheus as readily as his massive body, but his fingers held the nape of Farid's neck in a steely grip.
Orpheus turned, his face like thunder, and stared at Farid as if he had finally pinpointed the reason for his failure. "Where the devil have you been? With Fenoglio all this time? Or helping your girlfriend's father to steal into the castle and out again? Oh yes, I've heard about his latest exploit. Presumably they'll be singing the first bad songs about it tomorrow. That fool of a bookbinder really does play the ridiculous part the old man wrote him with touching enthusiasm." Envy and contempt mingled in Orpheus's voice, as they so often did when he spoke of Silvertongue.
"He's not playing a part. He is the Bluejay." Farid trod on Oss's foot hard enough to make him let go of his neck, and when the man tried to grab it again he pushed him away. With a grunt, the Chunk raised his big fist, but a glance from Orpheus halted him.
"Oh, really? Have you joined the ranks of his admirers, too?" He put a clean sheet of paper on his desk and stared at it, as though that could fill it with the right words. "Jasper, what are you doing down there?" he snapped at the glass man. "How often do I have to tell you two that the maids can sweep up scraps of paper. Sharpen me another pen!"
Farid picked up Jasper, put him on the desk, and earned a grateful smile. The younger glass man had to do all the unpleasant jobs – that was how his brother had fixed it – and sharpening pens was the most unpleasant of all, because the tiny blade they used slipped very easily. Only a few days ago it had cut deeply into Jasper's matchstick-thin arm, and Farid had discovered that glass men bleed like humans. Jasper's blood was transparent, of course. It had dripped onto Orpheus's paper like liquid glass, and Ironstone had slapped his little brother's face and called him a clumsy fool. For that, Farid had mixed some beer with the sand Ironstone ate. Since then Ironstone's limbs, usually clear as water (and he had been very proud of that), had been as yellow as horse's piss.
Orpheus went to the window. "If you stay out and about so long again," he said to Farid over his shoulder, "I'll tell Oss to beat you like a dog."