"I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. I’ll never be able to write again. It brings nothing but misfortune, and there’s enough of that here already."

What a coward he was. Too cowardly for the truth. Why didn’t he tell her that the words had abandoned him, that she was asking the wrong man? But Resa seemed to know it anyway. He saw so many emotions mingled on her face: anger, disappointment, fear — and defiance. Like her daughter, thought Fenoglio again. So uncompromising, so strong. Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn’t break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out, very slowly. That was what it was doing to Minerva. . . .

"Very well." Resa was in control of her voice, although it shook. "Then I’ll go to Orpheus. He can write unicorns into this world; he brought us all here. Why shouldn’t he be able to send us home again, too?"

If you can pay him, thought Fenoglio, but he didn’t say it aloud. Orpheus would send her packing. He saved his words for the ladies and gentLimen in the castle who paid for his expensive clothes and his maids. No, she’d have to stay, and so would Mortimer and Meggie —and a good thing, too, because who else was going to read his words, supposing they did obey him again someday? And who was to kill the Adderhead if not the Bluejay?

Yes, they had to stay. It was better that way.

"Off you go to Orpheus, then," he said. "And I wish you luck with him." He turned his back to her, so that he wouldn’t have to see the despair in her eyes any longer.

Did he detect a trace of contempt there, too? "But you’d better not ride back in the dark" he added. "The roads are more dangerous every day."

Then he left her. Minerva would be waiting with supper. He didn’t turn back. He knew only too well how Resa would be gazing after him. Exactly like her daughter. .

. .

CHAPTER 17

THE WRONG FEAR

Mo had spent two whole days and nights with Battista and the Black Prince looking for a place where a hundred or more children could be hidden. With the bear’s help, they had finally found a cave. But it was a long way off. The mountainside where the cave lay concealed was steep and almost impassable, especially for children’s feet, and a pack of wolves roamed the ravine next to it, but there was some hope that neither the Milksop’s hounds nor the Piper would find them therc. Not a great deal of hope, but for the first time in many days Mo’s heart felt a little lighter.

Hope. Nothing is more intoxicating And hardly any hope Was Sweeter than the prospect of giving the Piper an unpleasant surprise and humiliating him in front of his immortal master.

They wouldn’t have to hide all the children, of course, but many, very many of them, must be hidden. If all went according to plan, Ombra would soon be not just without men but almost entirely without children, and the Piper would have to go from one remote farm to another if he wanted to steal any, hoping the Black Prince’s men hadn’t been there ahead of him helping the women to hide their little ones.

Yes, much would be gained if they succeeded in getting the children of Ombra to safety, and Mo was almost in high spirits as they returned to the camp. But when Meggie came to meet him with anxiety on her face, that mood was gone at once.

Obviously, there was more bad news.

Meggie’s voice shook as she told him about the deal the Piper had offered the women of Ombra. The Bluejay in exchange for your children. The Black Prince didn’t have to tell Mo what that meant. Instead of helping to hide the children, he himself would have to hide from every woman who had a child of the right age.

"You’d better take to living in the trees!" hiccupped Gecko. He was drunk, presumably on the wine they had stolen only last week from a couple of the Milksop’s friends out hunting. "After all, you can fly up there. Don’t folk say that’s how you escaped from Balbulus’s workshop?"

Mo would happily have punched his drunken mouth, but Meggie reached for his hand, and the anger that sprang up in him so quickly these days ebbed away when he saw the fear on his daughter’s face.

"What will you do now, Mo?" she whispered.

What indeed? He didn’t know the answer. All he knew was that he would rather ride to the Castle of Night and surrender than hide. He quickly turned away so that Meggie wouldn’t read his thoughts on his face, but she knew him so well. Too well.

"Perhaps Resa’s right after all!" she whispered to him, while Gecko stared at them with bloodshot eyes, and even the Black Prince couldn’t conceal his anxiety.

"Perhaps," she added, almost inaudibly, "we really ought to go back home to Elinor, Mo!"

She’d heard him and Resa quarreling.

Involuntarily, he looked around for Resa, but he couldn’t see her anywhere.

What will you do now, Mo?

Yes, what indeed? How was the last song about the Bluejay to go? But they never caught the Jay, however hard they looked for him. He disappeared without trace, as if he had never been. However, he left the Book behind, the White Book that he had bound for the Adderhead, and with it the Adder’s immortal tyranny. No, that must not be the last song. No? What, then? But one day a mother, fearing for her children, gave the Bluejay away. And he died the worst of all deaths ever suffered by any man in the Castle of Night. Was that a better end to the story? Was there any better end at all?

"Come along!" Battista put an arm around his shoulders. "I suggest we get drunk to drown this news. If the others have left any of the Milksop’s wine, that is. Forget the Piper, forget the Adderhead, drown them all in good red wine."

But Mo didn’t feel like drinking, even if the wine silenced the voice he kept hearing inside himself since his quarrel with Resa. I don’t want to go back, it said. No, not yet.

Gecko staggered back to the fire and pushed in between Snapper and Elfbane.

They’d soon start fighting again; they always did when they were drunk.

"I’m going to get some sleep. That clears the head better than Wine," said the Black Prince. "We’ll talk tomorrow."

The bear lay down outside his master’s tent and looked at Mo.

Tomorrow.

What now, Mortimer?

It was getting colder every day. His breath was white vapor hanging in the air as he looked around for Resa again. Where was she? He’d picked her a flower with a shallow cup, pale blue, a species she hadn’t yet drawn. Fairyglass, people called it, because it collected so much morning dew in its soft petals that the fairies used it as a mirror.

"Meggie, have you seen your mother?" he asked.

But Meggie didn’t reply. Doria had brought her some of the wild boar that was roasting over the fire. It looked like a particularly good piece of meat. The boy whispered something to her. Was it his imagination, or had a rosy flush just risen to his daughter’s face? In any case, she hadn’t heard his question.

"Meggie, do you know where Resa is?" Mo repeated, taking great care not to smile when Doria cast him a quick and rather anxious glance. He was a good-looking lad, a little smaller than Farid, but stronger. Presumably he was wondering whether the songs about the Bluejay told the truth when they said he guarded his daughter like the apple of his eye. No, more like the finest of all books, thought Mo, and I sincerely hope you’re not going to give her as much grief as Farid, because if you do the Bluejay will feed you to the Prince’s bear without the slightest hesitation!