"You ugly little snake!" The Piper's noseless voice sounded even stranger when he raised it. "So the Milksop was right! You're hand in glove with that pack of robbers. What do you want? The throne of Ombra, and perhaps your father's, too?"
Violante's face was as still as if Balbulus had painted it. "I want just one thing," she replied. "I want to deliver the Bluejay to my father intact, so that he can still be useful to him. And in return for that service I will indeed demand the throne of Ombra.
Why not? I have ten times more right to it than the Milksop."
The soldier who removed Mo's chains was the boy who had opened the sarcophagus for him in Cosimo's vault. "I'm sorry!" he murmured as he tied him up. He didn't pull the rope very tight around Mo's arms, which were chafed and sore, but it still hurt, and all the time Mo never took his eyes off Violante. He could hear Snapper's hoarse voice in his ears only too clearly. She'll sell you for the throne of Ombra.
"Where are you taking him?" The Piper spat in the face of the soldier tying him up. "Even if you hide him with the giants, I'll find you!"
"Oh, I've no intention of hiding him," replied Violante with composure. "I shall take him to my mother's castle. My father knows the way. And if he is to agree to my conditions, he must go there. I'm sure you'll tell him that."
She'll sell you.
Violante's glance moved over Mo as indifferently as if they had never met before. The Piper kicked Mo with his bound legs as Violante's soldiers led him out of the cell, but what was a kick compared to the iron-studded stick he had been about to use?
"You're a dead man, Bluejay!" he shouted after him before one of Violante's soldiers gagged him. "Dead!"
Not yet, Mo wanted to reply. Not yet.
A maid was waiting outside the barred door. Only when Mo passed her did he see that it was Brianna. So Violante really had taken her back. She nodded to him before following her mistress. Three guards lay unconscious in the passage. Violante stepped over them and followed the corridor down which Mo had been brought, to a narrow tunnel branching off to the left. Tullio hurried ahead, and her soldiers followed in silence, with Mo between them.
Her mother's castle…
Whatever Violante's intentions, he was very thankful to her that he still had the use of his legs.
The tunnel seemed endless. How did the Adderhead's daughter know so much about the secret ways around this castle?
"I read about this tunnel." Violante turned to him as if she had heard his thoughts. Or perhaps he was thinking out loud, after all those hours alone in the dark?
"Fortunately for us, I am the only person who uses the castle library," Violante went on. How she was looking at him – as if to determine whether he still trusted her! Oh yes, she was like her father. She loved the game of fear and power, just as the Adderhead did, the constant measuring of her strength against others, even to the point of death. So why did he still trust her all the same, in spite of his helplessness?
Two more tunnels branched off into the darkness, just as narrow as the first. When Tullio looked inquiringly at her, Violante pointed without hesitation to the one on the left. She was a strange woman, so much older than her years. Such coldness, such self-control. Never forget whose daughter she is. The Black Prince had so often urged Mo to remember that, and he was beginning to understand the warning better now. Violante was surrounded by the same aura of cruelty that he had felt in the company of her father, the same impatience with others, the same belief that she was cleverer than most people, better… more important.
"Your Highness?" It was the soldier behind Mo. They all treated their mistress with great respect. "What about your son?"
Violante did not turn as she replied. "Jacopo stays here. He'd only give us away." Her voice was cold. Did you have to learn from your own parents how to love your child? If so, he supposed it was no wonder the Adderhead's daughter didn't know much about it.
Mo felt wind on his face. Air that smelled of more than just earth. The tunnel was getting wider. He heard rushing water, and as they came out into the open he saw Ombra high above him. Snow was falling from the black sky, and the river glinted beyond almost leafless bushes. Horses were waiting by the bank, guarded by a soldier, but a boy was holding a knife to the soldier's neck. Farid. Dustfinger stood beside him, sparks in his snow-dusted hair, the two martens at his feet.
When Violante's soldiers aimed their crossbows at him, he only smiled. "Where are you taking your prisoner, Adder's daughter?" he asked. "I'm the shadow he brought back from the dead with him, and his shadow follows him wherever he goes."
Tullio hid behind Violante's black skirts as if he were afraid Dustfinger would send him up in flames at any moment. But Violante signaled to her soldiers to lower their crossbows. Brianna just looked at her father.
"He's not my prisoner," said Violante. "But I don't want my father hearing that from one of his countless spies. Hence the bonds. Shall I remove them all the same, Bluejay?"
She brought out a knife from under her cloak. Mo exchanged a glance with Dustfinger. He was glad to see him, although his heart still had to accustom itself to that feeling. The sight of Dustfinger had filled him with very different emotions for too many years. But since Death had touched them both they seemed to be made of the same flesh. And the same story. Perhaps there was only a single story anyway?
Don't trust her! said Dustfinger's glance. And Mo knew that the Fire-Dancer would read Mo's own unspoken answer in his face: I must.
'I'll keep the bonds on," he said, and Violante hid the knife among the folds of her dress again. Snowflakes clung to its black fabric like tiny feathers.
"I am taking the Bluejay to the castle where my mother grew up," she said. "I can protect him there. Here I can't."
"The Castle in the Lake?" Dustfinger took a bag from his belt and gave it to Farid. "That's a long way. A good four days' ride on horseback."
"You've heard of the castle?"
"Who hasn't? But it was abandoned many years ago. Have you ever been there?"
Violante's chin jutted so defiantly that she reminded Mo of Meggie again. "No, I never have, but I remember all my mother told me about it, and I've read everything that's ever been written about the castle. I know it better than if I had been there."
Dustfinger merely looked at her. Then he shrugged his shoulders. "If you say so. The Piper isn't there – that's one good thing, and it's said to be easy to defend." He scrutinized Violante's young soldiers as if counting their years of life. "Yes, very likely the Bluejay will be safer there."
The snowflakes settling on Mo's bound hands cooled his sore skin. He would hardly be able to use them unless he could move them more freely, at least at night. "And you're sure your father will follow us to the castle?" His voice sounded as if the despair of the dungeon still clung to it.
Violante smiled. "Oh yes, indeed he will. He'll follow you anywhere. And he will bring the White Book with him."
The White Book. The snow fell as if to paint the whole world as white as its empty pages. Winter had come. Your heartbeats are numbered, Mortimer, he told himself. And Meggie's. Meggie's… How could he still love this world in spite of everything? How was it that his eyes couldn't see enough of the distant trees, so much taller than the trees he had climbed as a boy, and his gaze sought fairies and glass men as if they'd always been a part of his world? Remember, Mortimer, there was once a very different world, a voice whispered inside him. But whatever it whispered, it was wasting its time. Even his own name sounded strange and unreal, and he knew that if there had been a hand trying to close Fenoglio's book forever, he would have stopped it.