Cornelia Funke - Inkdeath

Should he call down to her? He kneeled on the edge of the shaft and stared into the darkness. He couldn't see her, only hear her. The weeping sounded terrible. It scared him. His mother didn't cry. His mother was always strong, always proud. She didn't take him in her arms like Brianna. Brianna hugged him even when he'd been cruel to her. "It's because you look like your father!" the maids in the kitchen said. "Brianna was in love with your father!" She was still in love with him. She had a coin with his picture on it in the bag at her belt, she sometimes kissed it in secret, and she wrote his name on the walls. She wrote it in the air and in the dust. She was so stupid.

The sobbing down below grew even more violent, and Jacopo put his hands over his ears. It sounded as if his mother were breaking into small pieces, such tiny pieces that no one would ever be able to put her together again. But he wanted to keep her!

"Your grandfather will take you with him," said the servants. "Back to the Castle of Night, so that you can play with his son." But Jacopo didn't want to go to the Castle of Night. He wanted to go back to Ombra. That was his castle. And he was frightened of his grandfather, who stank and gasped for air, and had skin so spongy you were scared you might dig holes in it with your fingers.

It must be all wet with her tears down there. She sounded as if she'd soon be drowning in them! No wonder she was so sad. She couldn't read any books in the darkness, and his mother wasn't happy without books. She loved nothing so much. She loved them far more than him, but never mind that. He didn't want her marrying Four-Eyes all the same. Jacopo hated Four-Eyes. His voice was like melted sugar on your skin.

He liked the Bluejay. And the Fire-Dancer. But soon they'd both be dead. Orpheus was going to feed the Fire-Dancer to the Night-Mare, and as soon as the Bluejay had finished the new book they'd flay him. His grandfather had once made him watch a man being flayed alive. Jacopo had hidden away from the victim's screams in the farthest corner of his heart, but he had still heard them there.

It was quiet. His mother had stopped crying. Had she cried herself to death?

The guards took no notice of him as he bent far over the edge of the black shaft. "Mother?"

The word didn't pass his lips easily. He never called her Mother. It was as Her Ugliness that lie thought of her. But now she had been crying.

"Jacopo?"

She was still alive.

"Is the Bluejay dead?"

"Not yet. He's binding the book."

"Where is Brianna?"

"In one of the cages." He was jealous of Brianna. Violante liked Brianna better than him. She was allowed to sleep with his mother, who talked to her much more often than she talked to him, her son. But Brianna comforted him, too, when he'd hurt himself, or when the Milksop's men taunted him about his dead father. And she was very beautiful.

"Orpheus -" he began, but one of the guards grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to his feet.

"That's enough chatter!" he said. "Get out."

Jacopo tried to wriggle free, but it was no good.

"Let her out!" he shouted, beating his fists against the man's armed chest. "Let her out this minute!"

But the soldier only laughed.

"Hark at him, will you!" he said to the other guard. "Mind you don't end up in that cell yourself, midget. Your grandfather has a son now. So his grandson doesn't count for much, especially when he's Cosimo's brat and his mother is thick as thieves with the Bluejay."

He pushed Jacopo away so roughly that he fell over, and Jacopo wished he could make flames come out of his hands, like the Fire- Dancer, or kill them all with a sword, the way the Bluejay had killed so many men.

"Jacopo?" he heard his mother call from down below, but when he turned back to the edge of the shaft the soldiers barred his way.

"Get out, I tell you!" one of them snapped. "Or I'll tell Four-Eyes to feed you to the Night-Mare. I bet you're not half as

tough as the illuminator they're keeping in reserve for it."

Jacopo kicked the man's knee as hard as he could and escaped before the other guard could grab hold of him.

The passages down which he stumbled were so dark that he saw a thousand monsters in the shadows. It had been better when there was fire burning on all the walls, much better. Where was he to go? Back to the room where they'd locked him in with his mother? No, there were beetles there that crawled into your nose and ears. Orpheus had sent them. He'd told the boy so himself, laughing. Jacopo had changed his clothes three times already to get rid of the beetles, but he could still feel them everywhere.

Perhaps he ought to go to the cage where Brianna was? No, the Night-Mare was outside it. Jacopo crouched on the stone floor and buried his face in his hands. He wished them all to hell, Orpheus and the Piper and his grandfather. He wanted to be like the Bluejay and the Black Prince – and then he'd kill them all. Every last one of them. That'd soon stop them laughing. And then he'd sit on the throne of Ombra and attack the Castle of Night, just like his father. But he would conquer it and take all its silver to Ombra, and the strolling players would sing songs about him, and he'd make them put on a show at the castle every day, just for him, and the Fire-Dancer would write his name in the sky, and his mother would curtsy to him, and he'd marry a girl as beautiful as Brianna…

He saw it all so clearly in his mind's eye as he sat there, in the darkness that protected his grandfather's eyes. He saw it as clearly as the pictures that Balbulus had painted for him.

There would be a book about him. Jacopo. A book as magnificent as the one about the Bluejay. Not empty and moldy like…

Jacopo raised his head.

… the White Book.

Yes. Why not? That'd certainly make them laugh on the other side of their faces!

Jacopo stood up. It would be easy. He must just make sure his grandfather didn't notice that it was gone at once. He'd better leave another book in its place. But which?

He rested his hands on his trembling knees.

Orpheus had had his books taken away, and his mother's were all gone, too. But there were other books in this castle, sick books, as sick as his grandfather's. They were in the room where the Bluejay had been caught.

It was a long way there, and Jacopo got lost a couple of times, but finally the smell of decay guided him – the same smell that surrounded his grandfather – and so did the sooty trail, barely visible in the light of his torch, laid by the Fire-Dancer to give the Bluejay away. Why had he done it? For silver, like Sootbird? What would he buy with the silver? A castle? A woman? A horse?

"Trust your friends even less than your enemies, Jacopo." That was what his grandfather had taught him. "There are no such things as friends. Not for a prince." At one time his grandfather often used to talk to him, but that was long ago. He has a son now, Jacopo.

He chose a book that wasn't too big – the White Book was not very big, either – and put it under his tunic.

There were two guards outside his grandfather's bedchamber. So he was back from seeing the Bluejay? Perhaps he'd killed him already? No, the new book couldn't be finished yet. Such things took a long time, Balbulus had told him so. But when it was finished, his grandfather was going to make the Bluejay scream, and either marry off his mother to Four-Eyes or leave her in that cell until she broke into tiny little pieces.

And they would take Jacopo to the Castle of Night with them.

Jacopo straightened his clothes and wiped the tears from his eyes. He hadn't even noticed them. They blurred everything, the guards and the light of their torches. Stupid. Crying was stupid.

"I want to see my grandfather!"