Cerberus cowered behind his legs, and Ironstone was trembling so pitifully that his limbs clattered like china in a picnic basket.
But the magpie went on growing. Feathers became black clothes, gray hair pinned severely back, fingers hastily counting the seeds that the bird’s beak had spat out onto the steps. Mortola looked older than Orpheus remembered her, much older. Her shoulders were hunched, even when she stood up. Her fingers curled over like the claws of a bird, her face was gaunt under the high cheekbones, and her skin was the color of yellowed parchment. But her eyes were still piercing and made Orpheus bow his head like a boy being scolded.
"How—how do you do that?" he stammered. "Fenoglio’s book says nothing about shape-shifters! Only about Night-Mares and—" "Fenoglio! What does he know?"
Mortola plucked a feather off her black dress. "Everything changes shape in this world, only most have to die first. But there are ways and means"— and as she spoke she carefully dropped the seeds she had picked up into a leather bag — "for people to free themselves from their own shapes without any need for the White Women."
"Really?" Orpheus immediately began wondering what kind of possibilities that opened up for this story, but Mortola didn’t give him any time to think it over.
"You’ve settled into this world in fine style, haven’t you?" she murmured, looking up at his house. "Four-Eyes, the milky-bearded merchant from across the sea, who trades in unicorns and dwarves and can read every wish of the new lord of Ombra in his eyes — well, I thought to myself, bless me if that isn’t my dear friend Orpheus!
He’s obviously managed to read himself here. And you’ve even brought that nasty dog along with you.
Cerberus bared his teeth, but Ironstone was still trembling. Glass men really were absurd creatures. And to think FenogliO was proud of them!
"What do you want?" Orpheus did his best to sound cool and superior, not like the frightened little boy he became only too easily in Mortola’s presence. She still terrified him, he had to admit it.
Footsteps echoed through the night, presumably from one of the patrols sent out by the Piper to comb Ombra in case the Black Prince found some way of freeing his noble fellow-fighter after all.
"Do you always welcome your guests outside the door?" hissed Mortola. "Come on, time we went in!"
Orpheus had to bring the bronze knocker down on the wood three times before Oss opened the door. He blinked sleepily down at Mortola.
"Is this that wardrobe-man from the other world or a new one?" asked Mortola, pushing her way past Oss with her skirts rustling.
"A new one," muttered Orpheus, whose mind was still trying to work out whether it was a good thing she was back or not. Wasn’t she supposed to be dead? But it was becoming clearer all the time that you couldn’t rely on Death in this world. Which was both reassuring and alarming.
He took Mortola, not to his study, but into the reception room. The old woman looked around as if everything in it were hers. No, very likely it wasn’t a good thing she was back. And what did she want of him? He could imagine: Mortimer. For sure she still wanted to kill him. Mortola didn’t abandon such plans easily — particularly not where her son’s murderer was concerned. In this case, however, it looked like other people were ahead of her in line.
"So now the bookbinder really is the Bluejay!" she remarked, as if Orpheus had spoken his thoughts out loud. "How many more ridiculous songs are they going to sing about him? Hailing him as their savior.., as if we hadn’t brought him to this world in the first place! And the Adderhead, instead of hunting him down after he killed his best men on Mount Adder, blames Mortola for his escape and for the way the flesh is rotting on his own bones. I knew at once it must be the White Book.
Silvertongue is wily, but his innocent look deceives them all, and the Adder handed me, not him, over to the torturers, to get the name of the poison. I still feel the pain of it today, but I outwitted them — I made them bring me seeds and herbs, saying I’d brew them an antidote for their master. Instead I made myself wings to fly away. I listened to the wind and to the gossip in marketplaces to find the bookbinder, and I discovered he really was playing the robber, and the Black Prince had found him a hiding place. It was a good hiding place, too, but I found it all the same." Mortola pursed her lips while she spoke, as if she felt she still had a beak. "How I had to control myself not to peck out his eyes when I saw him again! There’s no hurry, Mortola, I thought. Being in a hurry has spoiled your fine revenge once already.
Sprinkle a few poisonous berries in his food, leaving him to writhe like a worm and die slowly enough for you to enjoy your revenge. But some stupid crow pecked the berries out of his dish, and the next time I tried it the bear snapped at me with his stinking muzzle and pulled out two of my tail feathers. I tried again in the camp where the Black Prince took them him and his daughter and that deceitful maid—but the wrong man ate from that dish. ‘Poisonous fungi,’ they said, ‘he’s eaten poisonous fungi!’"
Mortola laughed, and Orpheus shuddered when he saw her fingers curving as if they were still clinging to a branch. "It’s like a jinx! Nothing can kill him, neither poison nor a bullet. It’s as if everything in this world were bent on protecting him every stone, every animal, even the shadows among the trees! The Bluejay! Death itself let him go, and did a deal with him for the Fire-Dancer. Oh, very impressive! But at what price? He hasn’t told even his wife the price, only Mortola knows it! No one pays any attention to the Magpie in the tree, but she hears everything — what the trees whisper at night, what spiders write in damp branches with their silver threads: They say that Death will take the Bluejay and his daughter if he doesn’t deliver the Adderhead’s life before winter ends. And they say the Adder’s own daughter plans to help the Jay to write the three words in the White Book."
"What?" Orpheus had been only half listening. He knew Mortola’s hate-filled tirades, endless and self-glorifying, but he pricked up his ears at that last remark. Violante in league with the Bluejay? Yes, it made sense. Of course! That was why Mortimer had handed himself over expressly to her! He might have known it. That paragon of virtue hadn’t let himself be made prisoner only out of nobility of mind. The noble robber was intent on murder, Orpheus began pacing up and down, while Mortola went on uttering curses in so hoarse a voice that the words sounded hardly human.
Violante — Orpheus had offered her his services as soon as he had settled in Ombra, but she had rejected them, saying that she already had a poet. . . not very nice of her.
"Oh yes, he plans to kill the Adder! Stole into the castle like a marten into a poultry yard! Even the fairies sing about it as they do their silly dances, but only the Magpie listens!" Mortola bent double. Even her coughing sounded like a croak. She was crazy! How she looked at him, with her pupils so black and fixed that they looked more like the eyes of a bird than of a human being. Orpheus shuddered.
"Yes, yes, I know his plans!" she whispered. "And I tell myself: Mortola, let him live, hard as that is for you. Kill his wife, or even better the daughter he dotes on, and flutter up onto his shoulder when he hears the news, so that you can hear his heart breaking. But let him live until the Adderhead gives him the White Book, because the Adder, too, must die for all the pain he gave me. And should the Silver Prince really be stupid enough to let his worst enemy lay hands on the Book that can kill him, all the better! The Magpie will be there, and not the Bluejay but Mortola will write those three words. Yes, I know what they are. And Death will take both the Bluejay and the Adderhead, and in return for such rich pickings will finally give back what that accursed bookbinder took from me with his silver tongue—my son!"