The woman came up beside Dustfinger and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Who’s this?” she asked, sizing up Farid in much the same way as he had looked at her. “One of your many secrets?
A son I don’t know about?”
Farid felt the blood rise to his face. Dustfinger’s son. He liked the idea. Unobtrusively, he stole a look at the strange boy. Who was his father?
“My son?” Dustfinger affectionately caressed the woman’s face. “What an idea! No, Farid’s a fire-eater. He was my apprentice for a while, and now he thinks I can’t manage without him. Indeed, he’s so sure of it that he follows me everywhere, however far he has to go.”
“Oh, stop it!” Farid’s voice sounded angrier than he had intended. “I’m here to warn you! But I can go away again if you like.”
“Take it easy!” Dustfinger held him firmly by the arm as he turned to go. “Heavens above, I forgot how quickly you take offense. Warn me? Warn me of what?” “Basta.”
The woman’s hand flew to her mouth when he said that name – and Farid began to tell his story, describing everything that had happened since Dustfinger disappeared from that remote road in the mountains as if he had never existed. When he had finished, Dustfinger asked just one question. “So Basta has the book?”
Farid dug his toes into the hard earth and nodded. “Yes,” he muttered ruefully. “He put his knife to my throat. What was I to do?”
“Basta?” The woman reached for Dustfinger’s hand. “He’s still alive, then?”
Dustfinger just nodded. Then he looked at Farid again. “Do you believe he’s here now? Do you think Orpheus has read him here?”
Farid shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know! When I got away from him he shouted after me that he’d be revenged on Silvertongue, too. But Silvertongue doesn’t believe it, he says Basta was just in a rage. . ”
Dustfinger looked at the gate, which was still standing open.
“Yes, Basta says a lot of things when he’s in a rage,” he murmured. Then he sighed and trod out a few sparks that were still glowing on the ground in front of him.
“Bad news,” he said softly. “Nothing but bad news. All we need now is for you to have brought Gwin with you.”
Thank heaven it was dark. Lies weren’t nearly as easily spotted in the dark as by day. Farid did his best to sound as surprised as possible. “Gwin? Oh no! No, I didn’t bring him with me. You said he was to stay there. And Meggie said so, too – she said I mustn’t bring him.”
“Clever girl!” Dustfinger’s sigh of relief went to Farid’s heart. “You left the marten behind?”
The woman shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe it. “I always thought you loved that little monster more than any other living creature.”
“Oh, you know my faithless heart!” replied Dustfinger, but his light-hearted tone of voice couldn’t deceive even Farid. “Are you hungry?” he asked the boy. “How long have you been here?” Farid cleared his throat; his lie about Gwin was like a splinter lodged in it. “For four days,”
he managed to say. “The strolling players gave us something to eat, but I’m still hungry, all the same. . ”
“Us?” Dustfinger’s voice suddenly sounded distrustful. “Silvertongue’s daughter. Meggie. She came with me.”
“She’s here?” Dustfinger looked at him in astonishment.
Then he groaned and pushed the hair back from his forehead. “Oh, how pleased her father will be! Not to mention her mother. Did you by any chance bring anyone else, too?” Farid shook his head.
“Where is she now?”
“With the old man.” Farid jerked his head back the way he had come. “He’s living near the castle.
We met him in the strolling players’ camp. Meggie was very glad to see him. She was going to look for him, anyway, to get him to take her back. I think she’s homesick…”
“What old man? Who the devil are you talking about now?” “Well, that writer! The one with the face like a tortoise – you remember, you ran away from him back then in –”
“Yes, yes, all right!” Dustfinger put his hand over Farid’s mouth as if he didn’t want to hear another word, and stared toward the place where, somewhere in the darkness, the walls of Ombra lay hidden. “Heavens above, what next?” he murmured. “Is t h a t .. is it more bad news?”
Farid hardly dared to ask. Dustfinger looked away, but all the same Farid had seen his smile. “Oh yes,” he said. “I suppose there never was a boy who brought so much bad news all at once. And in the middle of the night, too. What do we do with bearers of bad tidings, Roxane?” Roxane. So that was her name. For a moment Farid thought she would suggest sending him away. But then she shrugged. “We feed them, what else?” she said. “Even if this one doesn’t look too starved.”
Chapter 17 – A Present for Capricorn
“If he has been my father’s enemy, I like him still less!” exclaimed the now really anxious girl. “Will you not speak to him, Major Heyward, that I may hear his tones? Foolish though it may be, you have often heard me avow my faith in the tones of the human voice!”
– J. Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans
Evening drew on, night fell, and no one came to unlock Elinor’s cellar. They sat there in silence among tubes of tomato puree, cans of ravioli, and all the other provisions stacked on the shelves around them – trying not to see the fear on one another’s faces.
“My house isn’t all that large!” said Elinor once, breaking the silence. “By now even that fool Basta should have realized that Meggie really isn’t here.”
No one replied. Resa was clinging to Mortimer as if that would protect him from Basta’s knife, and Darius was cleaning his already spotless glasses for the hundredth time. By the time footsteps finally approached the cellar door, Elinor’s watch had stopped. Memories flooded into her weary mind as she rose, with difficulty, from the container of olive oil on which she had been sitting – memories of blank, windowless walls and musty straw. Her cellar was a more comfortable prison than Capricorn’s sheds, let alone the crypt under his church, but the same man opened the door – and Elinor was just as much afraid of Basta in her own house.
When she had last seen him, he had been a prisoner himself, shut up in a cage by the master he adored. Had he forgotten that? How had Mortola persuaded him to serve her again in spite of it?
The stupid idea of asking Basta didn’t even cross Elinor’s mind. She gave herself the answer: because a dog needs a master. Basta had the man built like a wardrobe with him when he came to fetch them. There were four of them, after all, and Basta remembered only too well the day when Dustfinger had escaped him. “Well, Silvertongue, I’m sorry it’s taken some time,” he said in his soft, catlike voice, as he pushed Mortimer down the corridor to Elinor’s library. “But Mortola just couldn’t decide what kind of revenge to take, now that your witchy daughter really has run for it.”
“And what has she thought up?” asked Elinor, although she was afraid of the answer. Basta was only too willing to tell her. “Well, first she was going to shoot you all and sink you in the lake, although we told her just burying you somewhere under the bushes out there would do. But then she decided it would be too merciful to let you die knowing the little witch has gotten away from her. No, Mortola really didn’t fancy that idea.”
