Dark to light and light to dark
Three black carriages, three white carts
What brings us together is what pulls us apart
Gone our brother, gone our home
Gone—Ioanna Gika
"Move off into the trees to the right," Firefox instructs, helping the pregnant woman down a slope. "Some of the Adderhead's men will be waiting on us farther ahead." The freed prisoners move after a nod from Mo, making their way toward the trees with as little sound as possible.
"A little late for that, Firefox," Basta calls. "We're already here." He comes out of the foliage on the left with a group of men behind him. None wear the Adder's silver, but that's to be expected. If these men die, no one will be able to say for sure that the Adderhead had broken his promise. Firefox straightens and takes his knife out, meeting Basta's gaze fearlessly.
"Do you know why Capricorn kept you around, Basta?" He makes his way to the front of the group, standing proudly. "Because you were like a trained dog that followed all his commands without question. You were as loyal as any hound. Do you know why he kept me around?"
"Your clear complexion," Julianne asks dryly, nudging Meggie behind her.
"Because I'm not scared of a little fire." Basta brings a hand up to his cheek, but Firefox is staring at the scarred arms Basta always keeps hidden. "Do you remember the day you got your scars, pup? Do you remember how the fire seemed to aim for you rather than just that man's house?" Firefox's smile is a cold thing, baring his teeth.
"I remember." Basta pulls a sword from his belt, fingers tight around the leather-covered grip. He raises the hand that holds his knife and his men start forward, taking their sweet time. Firefox moves forward to meet them, joined by a few of the remaining prisoners and a dark-skinned man that bolts from the right of the road with a bear hot on his heels.
There's a series of war cries as a few more men join them on the muddy road, strolling players loyal to the Black Prince. Most don't have weapons, but they're burning with determination as they clash with the men-at-arms. Julianne jumps onto the back of the nearest soldier, scratching and biting until he's driven to the ground and she can deliver a right hook that would make Rocky proud.
A hand clutches the nape of her neck, throwing her to the ground with little care. He reaches for her again, but jerks back when his sleeve catches fire, flailing to put it out. A burning branch connects with his temple, knocking him out. Julianne glances up at her savior, grinning savagely when she finds Dustfinger holding out a hand.
"About time you showed up," she calls to him over the noise.
"You know me," he calls back. "If my entrance isn't dramatic, then what's the point?" He pulls her to her feet and presses a kiss against her lips worthy of a Jane Austen novel, the sounds of battle fading for just that moment. With his lips on hers and his arm around her waist, she doesn't feel the cold prickles of rainfall or hear the sounds of men dying.
"Could you two wait until later for that," Resa shouts. They pull apart with breathless gasps, still holding each other tightly. That emotion is in his eyes again, the one Julianne can feel wrapping round her heart like a living thing, flowers blooming and colorful.
"I love you."
"I love you, too," she says, wide-eyed. Dustfinger looks ready to say something, but then Firefox is rolling against his legs after a particularly strong punch, staring up at them in incredulity. "Perhaps we should save any other declarations for after the fight?"
"Good idea." It doesn't stop him from kissing her again, a soft thing like flower petals drifting across her lips. "Go kick some ass, little bird."
"Ditto." They help Firefox back to his feet and join the fray, fire blazing over the ground in an attempt to drive the men-at-arms back. "Any ideas on how to win this?"
"Kill Basta," Firefox says, almost shouting to be heard. They gaze to where the thin man is standing on the other side of the flames, Basta watching the fire the way someone else might watch a coiling snake. Julianne follows the man's gaze to a dead man that's fallen into the fire, extinguishing the flames beneath him despite how Farid tries to bring them back. Another man falls on top of the first, keeping the fire there suppressed.
"Oh, my God…." Basta's grinning as he starts forward, using the dead men as a bridge over the flames with his gaze focused solely on Farid. "Farid!" The boy can't hear her over the rain and battle, clutching Meggie's hand and using the other to wield a knife. "Farid, move!" Time slows to almost a standstill; the rain glittering in firelight, Basta's empty hand, a blade in an unguarded back.
Julianne had been wrong, her sister's scream is far worse than the sound of a stupid quill.
Meggie drops to her knees in the mud, sobbing and clutching at Farid's still body. Beside her, heartbroken and ravaged with guilt, Dustfinger is standing with a hand outstretched and fire caressing his fingers. The flames writhe like angry snakes, curling through the air towards Basta, but Mo reaches him first and drives the stolen blade though Basta's middle with an enraged howl.
Julianne and Resa drop to the ground, Resa comforting her daughter while Julianne rests a hand against Farid's cold cheek. She aches for him to smile up at her, ask her why she's so worried, but his expression is slack and his eyes are glassy. The White Women won't be coming to claim him, he's already gone.
Julianne doesn't remember the rest of the fight, but she has a vague idea of strong arms leading her out of the raid and into a cold place that smells of decay. She blinks and suddenly she's in a cavern, resting against Dustfinger's chest and staring down at an unmoving body that used to be filled to the brim with life.
"You'd like him back, too, wouldn't you?"
"He'll never come back," Meggie whispers. Her eyes are dull when they turn to Dustfinger, glossy with tears but lacking any of the youthful enthusiasm Julianne has grown so used to seeing. It's as if Farid has taken that with him.
"There's a story I know," Dustfinger says, just as quiet as earlier. He's got Julianne's hands cradled in his own, staring at her palms as though they hold all the secrets of the universe. She wonders what those lines on her palms mean, if her lifeline is long or cut short, then she wonders how to explain all of this to her son.
"What kind of story?"
"It's about the White Women." He bends forward and wipes some soot off Farid's brow, hand so gentle like he's afraid the boy will shatter. "Why don't you go and ask Roxane about it? Tell her I'm going to find out if the story is true." There's hesitation in his voice, like he's trying to find the right words to string together. "And remind her of my promise, won't you? That I'll always find my way back to her."
"Farid's already gone, so how are you going to talk to the White Women?"
"I have my ways, Princess." Julianne can't see his face, but she knows by Meggie's expression that he's wearing that strange not-smile of his. It's a sad twist to his lips that used to confuse Julianne, but now she understands it too well. It's a smile full of longing and heartache. "Please, Meggie, do as I say. And tell…. Tell Roxane that I love her."
Meggie's lips twist to the side but she stands all the same, leaving the cavern in search of Roxane. Julianne waits a moment until she can no longer hear little feet before she turns in Dustfinger's arms to look up at him. There are tears in his lashes, gathered like diamonds and wet against his cheeks.
"You should go with her, but…. But I want to talk to you first."
"More declarations," she asks, trying for sarcasm and missing just shy of the mark. He smiles all the same, a tired smile that makes the breath catch in her throat. "Do you remember that afternoon back in my story that we spent exploring an old castle?"
"Yes, I don't think I'll ever forget it." She nods slowly, gaze trained on his face. If she looks away, he might vanish like mist in sunlight. "That was the first time I looked at you and realized that you were beautiful." He reaches out and tugs on an errant lock of her hair, rubbing it between his fingers reverently. "We kissed that day."
"I agonized over that kiss for days afterwards. It was the first one that actually meant something and I couldn't understand it." She shakes her head slowly, cupping his face in her hands. He looks so wary like this, so tired. "We told each other ghost stories in that castle."
"I remember."
"You told me about the White Women and one of the stories almost made me cry." She sucks in a deep breath but it doesn't help to steady herself. "You're going to see if that story's true, aren't you? You're going to leave us."
"Farid deserves to live a long life, little bird. It's my fault that he's dead." She wants to scream and beat at his chest like she did back in the Secret Camp, but she just doesn't have the energy. She draws him into a kiss instead, soft and lingering until her lungs burn and her head's spinning. "I meant what I said, you know. I will find a way back."
"You're too stubborn not to." He laughs softly, breath warm as it washes over her. She rubs her nose along his own, then kisses him again. It's a goodbye kiss, tinged with all the sad things she can't bring herself to stay, with one last plea that he doesn't do this. She knows he will, though, so she says nothing.
"I love you, Julianne."
"I love you, too." She doesn't pull back right away, fingers still tangled up in his tunic when she gets to her feet. He looks so raw as he kneels beside Farid, like someone's hollowed him out and left him to rot in this dank cavern. She pries her fingers loose and takes a reluctant step back. "Be careful, Dustfinger."
"Always, little bird." She moves out of the cavern and into a short hall that leads farther into the labyrinth of old stones and dark things. She doesn't go far, sliding down the cold wall to the floor and waiting. In the cavern, she can hear Dustfinger's voice coaxing flames into life, then he's talking to someone in a voice pitched too low for her to make out the words.
The silence that follows is what really breaks her, the dam failing and all her tears flowing out.
Roxanne comes barreling up the slope and past where Julianne is weeping, coming to a sudden standstill in the archway with Resa and Meggie skidding to a stop behind her. Julianne knows what they'll find in there and she can't stand to see it herself, burying her fingers in her hair and digging her nails in.
"Meggie!" Farid's voice confirms what she already knows, that Dustfinger is gone and cold while Farid breathes again. The story had been true or maybe Dustfinger is a bit of a silvertongue himself. Either way, he's not here. "What happened," he cries, voice filled with horror and accusation in equal measure. "What have you done? What did you do to him?"
Julianne starts when a hand touches her shoulder, head snapping up to find Mo standing over her. The Black Prince is a few feet away, staring into the cavern with a few curious faces peering over his shoulders. She doesn't care about the others, she just wants her Mo. She flings herself upward into his arms, clutching him tightly as if afraid he'll leave her, too.
"He's gone," she whispers, voice trembling and cracking. "Dustfinger's gone." Mo's hold is an iron band meant to keep bad things away, but those bad things have crept in all the same.
"Go away," Farid's shouting. "All of you leave! Why isn't he breathing?" Mo urges her to walk with him to the entrance of the cavern, then his breath sucks in sharply and whistles past clenched teeth at what he must see.
"No one did anything to him, Farid," Meggie says. "It was the White Women. We saw them, he summoned them himself."
"You're lying! Why would he do something like that?" Julianne glances up but doesn't move out of the safety of her father's arms, taking in Roxane's name burning on the wall and the two children clinging to each other on the floor. Roxane has Dustfinger's head in her lap, one finger tracing the pale lines of his scars.
"Tell them the story," Julianne says hoarsely. "Help them understand." Roxane meets her gaze and there's a bone-deep pain there that Julianne understands all too well. She nods slowly, still tracing the contours of Dustfinger's face like a gentle touch can bring him back to them.
"There's a story that the strolling players tell their children," she says, without looking at any of them. "About a fire-eater whose son the White Women took. In his despair he remembered something that was said about them: They fear fire, yet long for its warmth. So he decided to summon them by his art and ask them to give him back his son. It worked. He summoned them with fire, he made it dance and sing for them, and they did not deliver his son to death but gave him back his life. However, they took the fire-eater with them, and he never came back."
"He told me that the fire-eater had to live with the White Women forever, until the end of time, and make fire dance for them." Roxane picks up one of Dustfinger's hands and kisses the soot-blackened fingertips. Julianne moves over to her slowly, kneeling beside her to take Dustfinger's left hand in hers. His fingers are cold and stiff and they no longer smell of the fire-elves' honey.
"He's always loved that story. He said it was so beautiful that there must be a grain of truth in it. Leave it to him to be right this time." Roxane shakes her head and heaves out a choked sob. "He was wrong about one thing, though. He'll never return despite any promise."
"You were dead, Farid," Meggie explains gently. "Dustfinger brought you back."
It's late morning by the time Meggie and Farid coax Julianne into moving somewhere else, drawing her away into a new gallery where the smell of earth isn't so strong. That's where they tell her their plan, to bring Orpheus here so that man can learn from Fenoglio how to bring Dustfinger back to them.
"Orpheus is the one that threatened you all and teamed up with the Magpie, right," she checks. Meggie nods, fingertips white where she grasps a sheet of torn notebook paper. "And you two want to bring that creep here?" Another nod and Julianne has to sit in silence for a moment to decide how to approach this. On the one hand she knows it's totally batshit insane and the guy will betray them the first chance he gets, but on the other hand she doesn't want to raise her son without Dustfinger.
"Juli," Meggie asks. Julianne holds up a finger, still forcing her brain to work after the endless hours spent in the dark. How the hell are they going to explain this to the others, to Mo? How…. Well, shit.
"If this guy tries to double cross us, I call dibs on kicking his ass from here to Kingdom Come. Understood?"
"I'll hold him down for you," Farid says earnestly, clutching Dustfinger's pack to his chest. That sight is what really changes her mind, the heartache so clear in the boy's eyes that mirrors the pain in her chest. She can't deny him this chance to get Dustfinger back.
"Alright, get to reading, Meggs." Meggie nods solemnly, settling down beside Dustfinger's crumpled blanket and the oil lamp she'd stolen from Firefox. The man had grumbled and stalked away when Meggie had snatched it out of his hand, but he hadn't argued after Farid had given him a glare. Julianne sits between the pair, one hand between Meggie's shoulder blades and the other squeezing Farid's nape.
"One day, when Death had taken much prey again," began Meggie," Fenoglio the great poet decided to write no more. He was tired of words and their seductive power. He had had enough of the way they cheated and scorned him and kept silent when they should have spoken. So he called on another, younger man, Orpheus by name—skilled in letters, even if he could not yet handle them with the mastery of Fenoglio himself—and decided to instruct him in his art, as every master does at some time. For a while Orpheus should play with words in his place, seduce and lie with them, create and destroy, banish and restore—while Fenoglio waited for his weariness to pass, for his pleasure in words to reawaken, and then he would send Orpheus back to the world from which he had summoned him, to keep his story alive with new words never used before."
The gallery is unearthly quiet, the trio holding their breath in anticipation, and then the sound of footsteps can be heard, coming closer until a man is revealed in the warm glow of the oil lamp. He's stuffing something under his jacket, looking entirely unprepared as Farid jumps up from the floor.
"Orpheus!" Orpheus. She had expected someone entirely different from the moon-faced man standing just a few feet away, dressed in an ill-fitting suit with his fair hair brushed back from his face.
"How did you get here," Orpheus asks, surprised. He studies Farid and then flicks his gaze to where the Folchart girls are still sitting. His voice has the same musical cadence that Meggie's and Mo's do, impressive and unfitting of such an unimpressive man. "This must be the Inkworld. I knew I could do it!" Orpheus runs a hand over a damp wall, looking so self-satisfied that Julianne's tempted to kick him. "This must be one of the passages below the castle of Ombra."
"It's an old mine in the Adderhead's territory," Julianne says, taking vindictive pleasure in popping this man's bubble. Orpheus turns as the girls stand, taking them in with a sneer.
"Who are you?"
"The woman that's going to blacken your eye if you don't stop looking so snotty." Meggie steps into the light with narrowed eyes, her hands clenched into fists. She must be feeling the same surge of hatred that Julianne is, seeing this coward who betrayed their parents to murderers.
"How are Elinor and Darius," she demands to know, just as haughty as she'd sounded in the banquet hall. "If you've done anything to them, I'll set the Prince's bear on you." Orpheus looks nonplussed at the threats, eyes turning hard the longer he stares at them.
"You must be that girl who supposedly read herself here," he says. "And you must be the elder sister that ran away from college. Basta told me about you, he said you're little more than an enticement."
"I'll have you know that my sister is the only minstrel allowed in the Laughing Prince's castle! She's also been known to cause grievous bodily harm with cleaning instruments, so mind your tongue! After what you did to our father, you should feel lucky that she hasn't hit you over the head yet." Orpheus blushes a vivid red and his sneer turns into a scowl.
"How is it my fault that Mortola had a score to settle with him? Obviously he's still alive and she didn't get her revenge after all." His brows furrow as he glances around him, taking in the broken ladders and piles of rubble. "I didn't read anything about a mine before I came here. I made very sure to read about the passages under the castle."
"I'm the one that read you here." Meggie's voice is so sharp that Julianne feels a bit proud. Orpheus' gaze focuses back on her, his condescending expression enough to make Julianne grind her teeth.
"You? You obviously don't know who you're talking to."
"A badly dressed version of Syndrome," Julianne quips, raising a brow. "Every Scooby-Doo villain to ever concoct an insurance scam? I can go on if those don't quite match for you."
"I don't have time for this nonsense. I've got faeries to see and strolling players to meet." He goes to leave the gallery, but Farid bars his path. The radiant smile has been replaced by something much darker.
"You're not leaving yet, Cheeseface," he snaps. "You're here because of Dustfinger." Orpheus' laugh is derisive, but Farid only narrows his eyes instead of lashing out. "You're going to help us bring him back."
"What's wrong now? Did he see that you followed him here and ran away again?"
"He's dead." That seems to take the wind out of his sails, Orpheus crumpling a little at the news. "Dustfinger is dead and that's the only reason Meggie read you here! You're going to write him back for us." A flush creeps up the back of Orpheus' pale neck, jaw working as he grinds his teeth in anger.
"She did not read me here," he snarls, enunciating each word as though talking to a slow child. Farid grabs the man's wrist and pulls him with him through the halls to the cavern where Dustfinger is still lying. Roxane had hung his cloak up to conceal him from view, but he's there. "Good heavens…." He moves farther into the room and touches a limp hand, drawing his fingers back quickly. "Is this Basta's work? Did he die for that damned marten?"
"No, he died for me."
"What the hell is going on," Roxane snaps as she rushes into the gallery. "Why is a stranger bent over Dustfinger?" Resa is hot on her heels, stopping only when she's next to Julianne and Meggie. She's glaring at Orpheus, such hatred burning in her eyes like Julianne's never seen before.
"Meggie, how did this bastard get here," she asks, voice laced with warning. Meggie doesn't say anything, hiding the notebook paper behind her back like a scolded child.
"Why is he here?"
"I was a friend of Dustfinger's," Orpheus says, stumbling over his words. "Yes, that's right. I was a good friend." Roxane gazes up and down at him, unimpressed with what she sees.
"Julianne, is he telling the truth?" Julianne steps forward and shoves Orpheus aside, forcing him away from Dustfinger's body.
"He's a good liar," she says in a cold voice. "His only purpose here is to write the words that will bring Dustfinger back." Roxane gazes between the room's occupants in disbelief, a fine tremor in her hands as she bends over Dustfinger. "Tell her, Orpheus."
"I'm the one who found the opening in the words that allowed him to come back to you," Orpheus says, much surer of himself now. "I brought him here and I'm sure I can find the words that will bring him back from the dead!" But Roxane only shakes her head, his magic voice doing little to daze her.
"No, you're just another enchanter. The only person here with a magic tongue is Meggie. If there were words that could bring Dustfinger back, then she'd have spoken them already." She draws the cloak over Dustfinger's face and blows out the small candles surrounding him.
"What are you going to do with him," Farid asks.
"I'm going to take him back to Ombra to a place where only I know. Nettle taught me how to preserve a body, so he'll look the same even after my hair is white and the children are grown. I'll keep him safe and no one will ever disturb him." Julianne clenches her jaw to keep from saying anything, her thoughts wandering of their own accord until they seem to pluck a quote out of thin air.
"And you—oh, you, who the wildest yearn for an old-time step, and the glad return," Meggie recites, as though the poem had jumped from Julianne's mind to her tongue. "Think of him faring on, as dear in the love of There as the love of Here. Think of him still as the same, I say." Meggie trails off, leaving the rest for Julianne to finish.
"He is not dead, he's just away."
The poem Julianne and Meggie recite is by James Whitcomb Riley.