Dustfinger couldn’t help smiling, and Farid returned his smile. "Do you. . . do you have to go away again?" He looked as anxious as if he feared the White Women were already waiting.
"No," said Dustfinger, smiling again. "No, not for a while, I think."
Farid. He’d ask the fire to write that name in his heart as well. Roxane. Brianna.
Farid. And Gwin, of course.
CHAPTER 80
OMBRA
When the Black Prince took the children back to Ombra, snow lay on the battlements above the city wall, but the women threw flowers they had made out of scraps of fabric cut from old clothes. The lion emblem waved from the city towers again, but now his paw was laid on a book with blank pages, and his mane was made of fire.
The Milksop had gone. He had fled from the giant, not to Ombra, but straight to the Castle of Night and his sister’s arms, and Violante had returned to take possession of the city and prepare it for the return of its children.
Meggie was standing with Elinor, Darius, and Fenoglio in the square outside the castle gates as the mothers hugged their Sons and daughters, and Violante, speaking from the battlements, thanked the Black Prince and the Bluejay for saving them.
"You know what, Meggie?" Fenoglio whispered to her, as Violante had provisions from the castle kitchens distributed to the women. "Maybe Her Ugliness will fall in love with the Black Prince someday. After all, he was the Bluejay before your father took the part, and Violante was more in love with the role than the man anyway!"
Oh, Fenoglio! He was just the same as ever. Although the giant had gone back to his mountains, he had completely restored the old man’s self-confidence.
The Bluejay had not come to Ombra. Mo and Resa had stayed behind at the farm where they had once lived. "Let the Bluejay go back to where he came from," he had told the Prince. "Into the strolling players’ songs." They were singing them everywhere already: how the Jay and the Fire-Dancer, all by themselves, had defeated the Adderhead and the Piper with all their men. . . .
"Please, Battista," Mo had said, "why don’t you, at least, write a song telling the true story? About the people who helped the Jay and the Fire-Dancer. About the swift and the boy!"
Battista had promised Mo to write a song like that, but Fenoglio only shook his head.
"No one will sing it, Meggie. People don’t like their heroes to need help, particularly not from women and children."
No doubt he was right. Perhaps that meant Violante would have a hard time on the throne of Ombra, although all its people were cheering her today. Jacopo stood beside his mother. He looked more like a small copy of his father every day, but all the same he still reminded Meggie even more of his sinister grandfather. She shuddered to think how ready Jacopo had been to deliver the Adderhead up to Death even though that had been the saving of Mo.
Another widow now ruled the country on the far side of the forest, and she, too, had a son and was taking care of the throne for him. Meggie knew that Violante expected war, but no one wanted to think of that today. This day belonged to the children who had come home. Not one of them was missing, and the strolling players sang about Farid’s fire, the tree full of nests, and the giant who had so mysteriously come out of the mountains at just the right moment.
"I’ll miss him," Elinor had whispered as he disappeared among the trees, and Meggie felt the same. She would never forget how the Inkworld was reflected on his skin, or how light-footed he was when he strode away, so gentle in such a big body.