"But you can tell me where she is, can't you?" That was Basta's voice. "Out with it. Is she with Dustfinger? You whispered his name to the old man!"
"I don't know!" He screamed again, and Minerva wept louder than ever and shouted for help, her voice echoing back from the narrow houses.
"The Adderhead's men have taken them all away, my parents and the strolling players," Fenoglio read. "Dustfinger is following… the Spelt-Mill…" The letters blurred as he looked at them. Yet again he heard screaming out there. He bit his knuckles so hard that they began to bleed. "Write something, Fenoglio. Save them. Write…" It was as if he could hear Meggie's voice. Another scream. No. No, he couldn't just sit here. He crawled out, on and on, until he could rise to his feet.
Basta was still holding Cloud-Dancer in a firm grip, pressing him back against the wall of the house. The old tightrope-walker's shirt was slit and bloody, and Slasher was standing in front of him with a knife in his hand. Where was Minerva? She was nowhere to be seen, but Despina and Ivo were there, in hiding near the sheds, watching what one man can do to another. With a smile on his lips.
"Basta!" Fenoglio took a step forward. He put all his rage and all his fear into his voice and held Meggie's close-written sheet of paper up in the air.
Basta turned with assumed surprise. "Oh, there you are!" he called. "With the pigs. I might have known it. You'd better bring us that letter before Slasher finishes slicing up your friend here."
"You'll have to fetch it yourselves."
"Why?" Slasher laughed. "You can read it to us, can't you?"
Yes. He could. Fenoglio stood there at his wits' end. Where were all the lies, the clever lies that usually sprang to his lips so easily? Cloud-Dancer was staring at him, his face twisted with pain and fear – and suddenly, as if he couldn't stand the fear a moment longer, he tore himself away from Basta and ran toward Fenoglio. He ran fast in spite of his stiff knee, but Basta's knife was faster – so much faster. It went straight into Cloud-Dancer's back, just as the Adderhead's arrow had pierced the gold-mocker's breast. The tightrope-walker fell in the mud, and Fenoglio, standing there, began to tremble. He was trembling so much that Meggie's letter slipped out of his hand and fluttered to the ground. But Cloud-Dancer lay there unmoving, his face in the dirt. Despina came out of hiding, hard as Ivo tried to haul her back, and stared wide-eyed at the motionless figure lying before Fenoglio's feet. It was quiet in the yard, very quiet.
"Read it out, scribbler!"
Fenoglio raised his head. Basta stood there in front of him, holding the knife that had been sticking into Cloud-Dancer's back just now. Fenoglio stared at the blood on the bright blade and at Meggie's message. In Basta's hand. Without thinking, he clenched his fists. He struck Basta in the chest as if neither the knife nor Slasher existed. Basta staggered back, anger and astonishment on his face. He fell over a bucket full of weeds that Minerva had been pulling out of her vegetable plots. Cursing, he got to his feet. "Don't do that again, old man!" he spat. "I'm telling you for the last time, read that out!"
But Fenoglio had snatched Minerva's pitchfork from the dirty straw piled up outside the pigsty. "Murderer!" he whispered, pointing the crudely forged prongs at Basta. What had happened to his voice? "Murderer, murderer!" he repeated, louder and louder, and he thrust the pitchfork at the place in Basta's breast where his black heart beat.
Basta retreated, his face distorted with rage.
"Slasher!" he roared. "Slasher, come here and get that damn fork away from him!"
But Slasher had gone beyond the houses, sword in hand, and was listening. Horses' hooves were clattering along the alley outside. "We must go, Basta!" he called. "Cosimo's guards are on their way!"
Basta stared at Fenoglio, his narrowed eyes full of hate. "We'll meet again, old man!" he whispered. "And next time you'll be lying in the dirt in front of me, like him." He stepped heedlessly over the motionless Cloud-Dancer. "As for this," he said, tucking Meggie’s letter under his belt, "Mortola will read it to me.
Who'd have thought that the third little bird would write telling us where to find her in her own fair hand? And we'll pick up the fire-eater for free into the bargain!"
"Come on, quickly, Basta!" Slasher beckoned impatiently.
"What are you bothered about? You think they'll string us up because there's one less strolling player in the world?" replied Basta calmly, but he turned away from Fenoglio. He waved to him one last time before disappearing among the houses.
Fenoglio thought he heard voices, the clink of weapons, but perhaps it was something else. He kneeled down beside Cloud-Dancer, turned him gently on his back, and put his ear to his chest – as if he hadn't seen death in his face some moments ago. He sensed the two children coming up beside him. Despina put her hand on his shoulder. It was slim and light as a leaf.
"Is he dead?" she whispered.
"You can see he is," said her brother.
"Will the White Women come to fetch him now?"
Fenoglio shook his head. "No, he's going to them of his own accord," he answered quietly. "You can see that. He's gone already. But they'll welcome him to their White Castle. It's built of bones but very beautiful. There's a courtyard in that castle, full of fragrant flowers, with a tightrope made of moonlight stretched across it just for Cloud-Dancer…" The words came easily: beautiful, comforting words, but were they really true? Fenoglio didn't know. He had never taken any interest in what came after death, either in this world or the other one. Probably just silence, silence without a single word of comfort.
Minerva came stumbling back from the alley, a cut on her forehead. The physician who lived on the corner was with her, and two other women, their faces pale with fear. Despina ran to her mother, but Ivo stayed beside Fenoglio.
"No one would come." Minerva sobbed as she fell to her knees beside the dead man. "They were all afraid. Every one of them!"
"Cloud-Dancer," murmured the physician. Bone-knitter, he was often called, Stonecutter, Piss-Prophet, and sometimes, when he had lost a patient, Angel of Death. "Only a week ago he was asking if I knew anything that would do the pain in his knee good."
Fenoglio remembered seeing the physician with the Black Prince. Should he tell him what Cloud-Dancer had said about the Secret Camp? Could he trust him? No, it was better to trust no one. Nothing and no one. The Adderhead had many spies. Fenoglio straightened up. Never before had he felt so old, so very old that it seemed as if he couldn't survive another single day. The mill that Meggie had mentioned in her letter, where the devil was it? The name had sounded familiar… Well, of course it did; he himself had described it in one of the last chapters of Inkheart. The miller was no friend to the Adderhead, even though his mill stood near the Castle of Night, in a dark valley south of the Wayless Wood.
"Minerva," he asked, "how long does it take a mounted man to get from here to the Castle of Night?"
"Two days for sure, if he's not going to ruin his horse," replied Minerva quietly.
Two days, if not less, before Basta found out what was in Meggie’s letter. If he rode to the Castle of Night with it, that was. But he's sure to do that, thought Fenoglio. Basta can't read, so he will take the letter to Mortola, and the Magpie is sure to be at the Castle of Night. Yes, there were probably two days to go before Mortola would read what Meggie had said and send Basta to the mill. Where Meggie might already be waiting… Fenoglio sighed. Two days. Perhaps that would be enough to get a warning to her, but not to write the words she hoped he would send – words to save her parents.
Write something, Fenoglio. Write…