Fenoglio let himself drop onto the bed, without – or so he hoped – any expression on his face. “I assume you mean Mortimer,” he said, slowly pushing his hand under the pillow.
“Quite right!” Basta smiled. “You should have been there when Mortola shot him. Just the way she used to shoot the crows who stole the seed from her fields.” The memory made his smile even nastier. How well Fenoglio knew what was going on in his black heart! After all, he had made up Basta, just as he had made up Cosimo and his angelic smile. Basta had always liked describing his own and other people’s abominable deeds in detail. His companion didn’t seem to be so talkative. He was looking around Fenoglio’s room with a bored expression. A good thing the glass man wasn’t there; it was so easy to smash him.
“But we’re not going to shoot you.” Basta came a little closer to Fenoglio, his face as intent as that of a stalking cat. “We’ll probably hang you until your tongue is sticking out of your poor old mouth.”
“How very imaginative!” said Fenoglio, moving his fingers farther and farther under the pillow.
“But you know what will happen then. You’ll die, too.”
Basta’s smile disappeared as suddenly as a mouse scurrying into its hole. “Oh yes!” he hissed unpleasantly, as his hand instinctively went to the amulet at his throat. “I almost forgot. You believe you made me up, right? And what about him?” He pointed to the other man. “That’s Slasher. Did you make him up, too? He sometimes worked for Capricorn, after all. Many of the old fire-raisers wear the Adder’s silver now, although some of us think it was more fun under Capricorn. All those fine folk in the Castle of Night. . !” He spat scornfully at Fenoglio’s feet. “It’s no coincidence that the Adderhead has a snake on his coat of arms. He wants you to crawl on your belly to him, that’s what our noble lord and master likes. But never mind, he pays well! Hey, Slasher!” he addressed his still-silent companion. “What do you think, does the old fellow look as if he made you up?”
Slasher’s ugly face twisted. “If so, he made a bad job of it, eh?”
“You’re right there.” Basta laughed. “I’d say he deserves a taste of our knives just for the face he gave you, right?”
Slasher. Yes, indeed, he’d invented Slasher, too. Fenoglio felt sick to his stomach when he remembered why he’d given the man that name.
“Out with it, old man!” Basta leaned so close that Fenoglio smelled his peppermint-scented breath. “Where’s the girl? Tell us and we may let you live a little longer. We’ll send the child after her father first. I’m sure she’s longing to see him. They were so fond of each other, those two.
Come on, where is she? Spit it out!” He slowly drew the knife from his belt. Its blade was long and slightly curved. Fenoglio swallowed as if to force down his fear. He pushed his hand yet farther under the pillow, but all his fingertips met was a piece of bread, probably hidden there by Rosenquartz. Just as well, he thought. What good would a knife have done? Basta would have run me through before I even got a proper hold on it, not to mention Slasher. He felt the sweat running into his eyes.
“Hey, Basta, I know you like the sound of your own voice, but let’s get going and take him with us.” Slasher spoke in croaking tones, like the toads in the hills by night. Of course, that was how Fenoglio had described him: Slasher, the man with the voice of a toad. “We can question him later. We have to follow the others now,” he urged Basta. “Who knows what this dead prince will do next? Suppose he doesn’t let us out of his accursed gate? Suppose he sends his soldiers after us? The others must be miles ahead by now!”
With a regretful sigh, Basta put the knife back in his belt. “Yes, very well, you’re right,” he said in surly tones. “I need to take my time with this sort of thing. Questioning people is an art, a real art.” He roughly seized Fenoglio’s arm, pulled him to his feet, and pushed him toward the door.
“Just like old times, eh?” he snarled in his ear. “I took you out of your own house once before, remember? Put on as good an act as you did then and you’ll go on breathing a little longer. And if we pass that woman feeding pigs in the yard, tell her we’re taking you to see an old girlfriend of yours, understand?”
Fenoglio just nodded. Minerva wouldn’t believe a word of it, but perhaps she might fetch help.
Basta’s hand was already on the door handle when footsteps came upstairs again. The old wood creaked and groaned. The children. For heaven’s sake! But it was not a child’s voice that spoke outside the door.
“Inkweaver?”
Basta cast an anxious glance at Slasher, but Fenoglio had recognized the voice: It was CloudDancer, the former tightropewalker, who had brought him messages from the Black Prince many times before. He’d be no help, not with his stiff leg! But what news brought him here? Had the Black Prince heard anything of Meggie?
Basta waved Slasher over to the left of the door and stationed himself to the right. Then he gave Fenoglio a sign and drew the knife from his belt again.
Fenoglio opened the door. It was so low that he always had to duck his head coming in. There stood CloudDancer, rubbing his knee. “Bloody stairs!” he swore. “Steep and falling apart. I’m just glad you’re in and I don’t have to climb them again. Here.” He looked around as if the old house had ears and reached into the leather bag that had carried so many letters from place to place. “The girl who’s staying with you sends you this.” He held out a piece of paper folded several times. It looked like a page from Meggie’s notebook. Meggie hated to tear pages out of a book, and she’d have been reluctant to take one out of this notebook in particular; her father had bound it for her. So the message must be very important – and Basta would take it from him at once.
“Well, here you are, then!” CloudDancer impatiently held the folded paper in front of his nose.
“Any idea how fast I hurried to bring you this?”
Reluctantly, Fenoglio put out his hand. He knew just one thing: Basta must not see Meggie’s message. Never. His fingers closed around the paper so tightly that none of it was visible.
“And listen!” CloudDancer went on quietly. “The Adderhead has attacked the Secret Camp.
Dustfinger –”
Fenoglio shook his head, almost imperceptibly. “Fine. Thank you very much, but the fact is I have visitors just now,” he said, desperately trying to convey what he couldn’t say in words with his eyes. He rolled them to right and left, as if they could act as fingers pointing to where Basta and Slasher were waiting behind the door.
CloudDancer took a step back.
“Run!” cried Fenoglio and leaped out of the doorway. CloudDancer almost fell downstairs as Fenoglio made his way past him, but then he stumbled. Fenoglio was sliding, rather than running, down the stairs. He didn’t turn until he had reached the bottom. He heard Basta cursing behind him, and Slasher’s croaking voice. He heard the children in the yard screaming with fright, and from somewhere came Minerva’s voice, but by then he was running past the sheds and the lines where her freshly washed laundry hung. A pig ran between his legs, making him stumble and fall in the mud, and when he got up he saw that CloudDancer hadn’t been as fast as he was. How could he be, with his stiff leg? Basta had taken him by the collar, while Slasher pushed Minerva aside as she tried to bar his way with a rake. Fenoglio ducked down, first behind an empty barrel, then behind the pigs’ trough, and crawled over to one of the sheds on all fours.