Read Inkdeath for Free Online Page B

would Meggie want to see her? Because they were almost the same age? After Cosimo’s death and the massacre of Ombra’s menfolk, Her Ugliness had thrown Brianna out as a belated punishment for having favored Cosimo’s company over hers. So Brianna had come home to help Roxane in the fields at first, but now she was working for Orpheus. Just like Farid. By this time Orpheus had half a dozen maids. Farid said sarcastically that Cheeseface didn’t even have to comb his own thin hair anymore. Orpheus hired only beautiful girls, and Brianna was very beautiful, so beautiful that beside her Meggie felt like a duck next to a swan. To make it even worse, Brianna was Dustfinger’s daughter. "So? I don’t even speak to her," Farid had said when Meggie asked about her. "She hates me, just like her mother." Still, he saw Brianna almost every day.., and all the others. And it was almost two weeks since he had been to see Meggie.

    "Well, are you coming with me?" Resa was still looking inquiringly at her, and Meggie felt herself blushing as if her mother had overheard all her thoughts.

    "No" she said, "no, I think I’d rather stay here. The Strong Man will be riding with you, won’t he?"

    "Of course." The Strong Man had made it his business to protect Meggie and Resa.
    Meggie wasn’t sure whether Mo had asked him to, or whether he simply did it to show his devotion to the Bluejay.

    Resa let him help her up onto the horse. She often complained of the difficulty of riding in a dress and how she’d much rather have worn men’s clothes in this world.
    "I’ll be back before dark," she told Mo. "And maybe Roxane will have something to help you sleep better at night, too."

    Then she disappeared among the trees with the Strong Man, and Meggie was alone with Mo, just as she had been in the old days when there were only the two of them.

    "She really isn’t well!"

    "Don’t worry, Roxane will know what to do." Mo glanced at the old bakehouse that he had made into his workshop. What were those black clothes he was wearing?
    Meggie wondered. "I have to go out myself, but I’ll be back this evening. Gecko and Battista are in the stables, and the Prince is going to send Woodenfoot to be here, too, while the Strong Man’s gone. Those three will look after you better than I can."

    What was it she heard in his voice? A lie? He’d changed since Mortola all but killed him. He was more reserved and often as abstracted as if part of him had been left behind in the cave where he had almost died, or in the tower prison in the Castle of Night.

    "Where are you going? I’ll come with you." Meggie felt him start nervously as she put her arm through his. "What’s the matter?"

    "Nothing, nothing at all." He picked at his black sleeve and avoided her eyes.

    "You’ve been out with the Prince again. I saw him in the farmyard last night. What happened?"

    "It’s nothing, Meggie. Really it isn’t." He stroked her hair, an absent expression on his face, then turned and made for the bakehouse.

    "Nothing at all?" Meggie followed him. The doorway was so low that Mo had to bend his head. "Where did you get those black clothes?"

    "It’s a bookbinder’s outfit. Battista made it for me."

    He went over to the table where he worked. Some leather lay on it, a few sheets of parchment, some thread, a knife, and the slim volume into which he had bound Resa’s drawings over the last few weeks: pictures of fairies, fire-elves, and glass men, of the Black Prince and the Strong Man, Battista, and Roxane. There was one of Farid, too. The book was tied up as if Mo were taking it with him. The book, the black clothes. . .

    Oh, she knew him so well.

    "No, Mo!" Meggie snatched the book away and hid it behind her back. He might be able to deceive Resa but he couldn’t deceive her.

    "What is it?" He was trying really hard to look as if he had no idea what she meant.
    He was better at pretending than he used to be.

    "You’re planning to go to Ombra to see