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disapprovingly from his uncombed head to his bare feet. "I told your visitor you were at home." How sad she looked. Weary, too. These days she was working in the castle kitchen, where Fenoglio had asked Violante to find her a job. But the Milksop had a preference for feasting by night, so Minerva often didn’t get home until the early hours of the morning. Very likely she’d drop dead of exhaustion someday and leave her poor children orphans. It was a wretched situation. What had become of his wonderful Ombra?

    "Fenoglio!" Orpheus pushed past Minerva with that ghastly, innocent smile he always had ready as camouflage. Of course he’d brought notes with him again, notes full of questions. How did he pay for the fine clothes he wore? Fenoglio himself had never worn such clothes, not even in his days of glory as court poet. Ah, he thought, but you forgot the treasures he’s writing for himself didn’t you, Fenoglio?

    Without a word Minerva went down the steep staircase again, and a man made his way through Fenoglio’s door behind Orpheus. Even ducking his head, he almost got stuck in the doorway. Aha, the legendary bodyguard. There was even less space in Fenoglio’s modest little room with this huge meatball inside it.

    Farid, on the other hand, didn’t take up much space, although so far he had played a big part in the story. Farid, Dustfinger’s angel of death - . . He followed his new master through the door hesitantly, as if ashamed to be keeping such company.

    "Well now, Fenoglio, I’m truly sorry," said Orpheus, his supercilious smile giving the lie to his words, "but I’m afraid I’ve found a few more inconsistencies."

    Inconsistencies!

    "I’ve sent Farid here before with my questions, but you gave him some very strange answers. Looking portentous, he straightened his glasses and brought the book out from under his heavy velvet coat. Yes, that Calf’s-Head had brought Fenoglio’s book with him into the world of the story it told: the very last copy of Ink heart. But had he given it back to him, the author? Oh no. "I’m sorry, Fenoglio," was all he had said, with the arrogant expression that he had mastered so perfectly. (Orpheus had been quick to abandon the mask of a diligent student.) "I’m sorry, but this book is mine.
    Or do you seriously claim that an author is the rightful owner of every copy of his books?" Puffed-up, milk-faced young upstart! What a way to speak to him, Fenoglio, the creator of everything around Orpheus himself, even the air he breathed!

    "Are you after me again for information on Death?" Fenoglio squeezed his feet into his worn old boots. "Why? So that you can go telling this poor boy you’ll bring Dustfinger back from the White Women, just to keep him in your service?"

    Farid tightened his lips. Dustfinger’s marten blinked sleepily on his shoulder — or was this a different animal?

    "What nonsense you talk!" Orpheus sounded distinctly peeved — he took offense very easily. "Do I look as if I have any trouble finding servants? I have six maids, a bodyguard, a cook, and the boy. You know very well it’s not just for the boy I want to bring Dustfinger back. He belongs in this story. It’s not half as good without him, it’s a flower without petals, a night without stars— ‘A forest without trees?" Fenoglio muttered. Orpheus turned as red as a beet. It was so amusing to make fun of the arrogant fop — one of the few pleasures Fenoglio still had left.

    "You’re drunk, old man!" Orpheus spat. His voice could sound very unpleasant.

    "Drunk or not, I still know a hundred times more about words than you do. You trade at second hand. You unravel whatever you can find and knit it up again as if a story were a pair of old socks! So don’t you tell me what part Dustfinger ought to play in this one. Perhaps you remember I had him dead once already, before he decided to go with the White Women! What do you think you’re doing, coming here to lecture me about my own