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within a few minutes.

    "Good. Excellent! It would complicate matters if the old man took to liking words better than wine again! His last notions led to nothing but hopeless confusion Orpheus picked up the reins and looked at the sky. It was going to be another rainy day, gray and dismal as the faces of the people of Ombra. "Masked robbers, books of immortality, a prince returning from the dead!" Shaking his head, he rode his horse toward the path to Ombra. "Who knows what he’d have thought up next! Better for Fenoglio to drink away what few wits he has left. I’ll see to his story myself After all, I understand it a great deal better than he does."

    Farid had stopped listening as he dragged his donkey out of the bushes. Let Cheeseface talk away. Farid didn’t care who wrote the words to bring Dustfinger back, just so long as he did come back in the end! Even if the whole wretched story went to hell in the process.

    As usual, the donkey tried to bite Farid when he swung himself up onto its bony back. Cheeseface was riding one of the finest horses in Ombra. Despite his pudgy figure, he was a good horseman but, of course, miserly as he was, he’d bought only a donkey for Farid, a vicious animal so old that its head was bald. Even two donkeys couldn’t have carried the Chunk, so Oss trotted along beside Orpheus like an overgrown dog, his face sweating with the effort of running up and down the narrow paths through the hills around Ombra.

    "Good. So Fenoglio isn’t writing anymore." Orpheus liked to think out loud. It sometimes seemed as if he couldn’t put his ideas in order unless he heard his own voice at the same time. "But where do all the stories about the Bluejay come from, then? The widows he protects, silver left on poor folk’s doorsteps, poached meat on the plates of fatherless children. . . Is all that really Mo’s own doing, or did Fenoglio write a few words by way of giving him a helping hand?"

    A cart came toward them. Cursing, Orpheus turned his horse toward the thorny bushes, and the Chunk stared up with a silly grin at the two boys kneeling in the cart, hands tied behind their backs, faces pinched with fear. One of them had eyes even brighter than Meggie’s, and neither was older than Farid. Of course not. If they’d been older they would have gone with Cosimo on the disastrous expedition against the Adderhead that got all the men killed, and they’d be dead by now, too. But presumably that was no comfort to them this morning. Their bodies would be visible from Ombra, a dreadful example to all who were tempted by hunger to go poaching.

    Did people die on the gallows too quickly for the White Women to come? Farid instinctively put his hand to his back, where Basta’s knife had gone in. They hadn’t come to him, had they? He didn’t remember. He didn’t even remember the pain, only Meggie’s face when he regained consciousness, and how he had turned to see Dustfinger lying there. . . . "Why don’t you just write that they come and take me away instead of him?" he had asked Orpheus, who merely laughed out loud. "You?
    Do you seriously think the White Women would exchange the Fire-Dancer for a rascally thief like you? No, we’ll have to offer them tastier bait than that."

    The bags of silver jogged up and down beside Orpheus’s saddle as he spurred his horse on, and Oss’s face was so red with effort that it looked as if it would explode on his fleshy neck any moment now.

    Curses on Cheeseface! Yes, Meggie had better send him back to his own world, thought Farid as he dug his heels into the donkey’s sides. And the sooner the better!
    But who was going to write the words for her? And who but Orpheus could bring Dustfinger back from the dead?

    He’ll never come back, a voice whispered inside him. Dustfinger is dead, Farid.
    Dead.

    So? he snapped back at the quiet voice. What does that mean in this world? I came back, didn’t I?

    If only he could remember the way.

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