CHAPTER 6
SAD OMBRA
Farid had told Meggie how difficult it was to get into Ombra now, and she had passed on everything he said to Mo. "The guards aren’t the harmless fools who used to stand there. If they ask you what you are doing in Ombra, think hard before you answer. Whatever they demand, you must stay humble and submissive. They don’t search many people. Sometimes you may even be lucky and they’ll just wave you through!"
They weren’t lucky. The guards stopped them, and Meggie felt like clinging to Mo when one of the soldiers gestured to him to dismount and brusquely asked to see a sample of his craft. While the guard looked at the book of her mother’s drawings, Meggie Wondered in alarm whether she already knew the face under the Open helmet from her imprisonment in the Castle of Night, and whether he would find the knife hidden in Mo’s belt. They might kill him just for that knife. No one was allowed to carry weapons except the occupiers from Argenta, but Battista had made the belt so well that even the suspicious hands of the guard at the gate could find nothing wrong with it.
Meggie was glad Mo had the knife with him as they rode through the ironbound gates, past the lances of the guards, and into the city that now belonged to the Adderhead.
She hadn’t been in Ombra since she and Dustfinger first set out for the secret camp of the Motley Folk. It seemed an eternity ago that she had run through the streets with Resa’s letter telling her that Mortola had shot her father. For a moment she pressed her face against Mo’s back, so happy that he was back with her, alive and well. At last she would be able to show him what she’d told him so much about: Balbulus’s workshop and the Laughing Prince’s books. For one precious moment she forgot all her fears, and it seemed as if the Inkworld belonged only to him and her.
Mo liked Ombra. Meggie could see it in his face, from the way he looked around, reining in his horse again and again to look down the streets. Although it was impossible to ignore the mark left on the city by the occupying forces, Ombra was still what the stonemasons had made of it when they first carved its gates, columns, and arches. Their works of art couldn’t be carried away and broken up —for then they’d be worth no more than the paving stones in the street. So stone flowers still grew under the windows and balconies of Ombra, tendrils twined around columns and cornices, and faces stuck tongues out of grotesquely distorted mouths from the sand-colored walls, weeping stony tears. But the Laughing Prince’s coat of arms was defaced everywhere, and you could recognize the lion on it only from what was left of its mane.
"The street on the right leads to the marketplace!" Meggie whispered to Mo, and he nodded like a sleepwalker. Very likely be was hearing, in his mind, the words that had once told him about the scene now surrounding him as he rode on. Meggie had heard about the Inkworld only from her mother, but Mo had read Fenoglio’s book countless times as he tried again and again to find Resa among the words.
"Is it the way you imagined it?" she asked him quietly.
"Yes," Mo whispered back. "Yes and no.
There was a crowd of people in the marketplace, just as if the peace-loving Laughing Prince still ruled Ombra —except that there were hardly any men to be seen, and you could stop and watch entertainers again. For the Milksop allowed strolling players into the city, although only it was whispered if they were prepared to spy for him.
Mo rode his horse past a crowd of children. There were many children in Ombra, even though their fathers were dead. Meggie saw a torch whirling through the air above the small heads two, three, four torches — and sparks fading and going out in the cold air. Farid? she wondered although she knew he’d done no more fire-eating since Dustfinger’s death. But Mo suddenly pulled his hood down over his forehead, and then she, too, saw the familiar well-oiled face with its constant smile.
Sootbird.