Orpheus slept poorly that night. He dreamed of birds, hundreds of birds, but when dawn came and Ombra emerged from the shadows of night like a pale fruit, he went to the window of his bedroom full of new confidence.
"Good morning to you, Bluejay!" he said under his breath, eyes turned to the towers of the castle. "I hope you passed a sleepless night! I daresay you still think the roles in this story have been cast by now, but you've played its hero long enough. Curtain up, Act Two: Enter Orpheus. In what part? The part of the villain, of course. Isn't that always the best role in a play?"
38. A GREETING TO THE PIPER
There was a smell of Time in the air tonight… What did Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like, it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box-lids, and rain.
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
Farid wasn't with the party when the Bluejay rode to Ombra Castle. "You're staying in the camp." Dustfinger didn't have to say any more to make Farid worry about causing his death again, and the fear was like a hand clutching his throat. The Strong Man waited among the empty tents with him, because the Black Prince refused to believe that he could pass for a woman. They sat there for many hours, but when Meggie and the others at last came back, Dustfinger wasn't with them, any more than the Bluejay was.
"Where is he?" The Black Prince was the only person Farid dared to ask, although his face was so grave that even the bear didn't venture near him.
"Where the Bluejay is," replied the Prince, and when he saw Farid's look of dismay he added, "No, not in the dungeon. I mean near him, that's all. Death has bound those two together, and nothing but Death is going to part them again."
Near him.
Farid looked at the tent where Meggie slept. He thought he could hear her crying, but he dared not go to her. She hadn't yet forgiven him for persuading her father to do that deal with Orpheus, and Doria was sitting outside her tent. He was to be found near Meggie a good deal too often for Farid's liking, but luckily he appeared to understand as little about girls as his strong brother.
The men back from Ombra were sitting around the fire, heads bent. Some of them didn't even take off the women's clothes they had been wearing, but the Black Prince gave them no time to drown their fears for the future in wine. He sent them out hunting. They would need good stocks of provisions if they were to hide the children of Ombra from the Piper: dried meat, warm furs.
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.
"Well, Silvertongue, Bluejay, whatever you like to call him…" Dustfinger whispered. "Since his voice brought me back I've known what he feels as if Death had transplanted his heart into my breast. Now, catch me a fairy, or the Piper will half kill him before sunrise. Bring me one of the rainbow-colored kind. Orpheus has given them his own vanity, which comes in handy. You can get them to do anything for a few compliments."
The fairy was soon found. Orpheus's fairies were all over the place, and although winter didn't make them as drowsy as Fenoglio's blue fairies, it was child's play to pluck one from her nest at this hour of the night. She bit Farid, but he blew in her face as Dustfinger had taught him, until she was gasping for air and forgot all about biting. Dustfinger whispered something to her, and next moment the tiny thing was fluttering up to the barred slits in the wall and disappearing through one of them.
"What did you tell her?" Above them, Sootbird's venomous fire went on devouring the night. It swallowed up the sky, the stars, and the moon, and the smoke hanging in the air was so acrid that Farid's eyes were streaming.
"Oh, just that I promised the Bluejay I'd send the most beautiful fairy of all to visit him in his dark dungeon. And by way of thanks she'll whisper him the news that the Adderhead will reach Ombra in five days' time, even if the moss-women pave his way here with curses and that, meanwhile, we'll try to keep the Piper's mind occupied, so that he can't spend too much time beating up his prisoners." Dustfinger clenched his left hand into a fist. "You haven't yet asked me why I sent for you," he said, blowing gently into the fist he had made. "I thought you might like to see this."