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"The arm will heal," she said as she bound up the wound But the bird would never leave Resa now Silvertongue knew that as --well as Dustfinger

The Piper had done his best to send the Bluejay after his master to his death He had wounded him in the shoulder and on the left arm, but in the end he alone had followed the Adderhead, and Dustfinger made the fire consume both his body and his master’s

Pale-faced, Violante stood at Silvertongue’s side as the Adderhead and the Piper turned to ashes She looked younger, as if she had shed a few years in the cell where her father had flung her almost as forlorn as a child yet when she turned away at last fro her father, she put her ar like that before Everyone still disliked Jacopo, though he had saved theue with his soft heart felt the saer saw it in his face

There were still a dozen of Violante’s child-soldiers alive They found theone, like the White Women

Only their abandoned tents still stood on the banks of the lake, with the black coach and a few riderless horses Jacopo clai fish had come up from the lake and eaten soe Neither Silvertongue nor Violante believed hie and found a few shie as linden leaves So they didn’t take the bridge, but left the Castle in the Lake by the tunnel dohich the Piper had co when they stepped out into the open, and the castle disappeared behind the into the whiteness The world around them was as still as if it had used up all words, as if all the tales there were to tell in this world had now been told Dustfinger found Orpheus’s tracks in the frozen ue looked at the trees into which they disappeared as if he could still hear Orpheus’s voice inside him

"I wish he were dead," he said quietly

"A clever wish," replied Dustfinger "But I’m afraid it’s too late to make it come true" He had looked for Orpheus after the Piper was dead, but his rooht this cold ht at heart But the darkness re its part of the story

They caught soh weakened by his wounds, Silvertongue was in a hurry At least let’s save our daughters

"The Black Prince will have been looking after Meggie," Dustfinger told him, but the anxiety was still on his face as they rode farther and farther south

They were a silent cohts and memories Only Jacopo so as ever "I’ry" "I’m thirsty" "When e be there?" "Do you think the Milksop has killed the children and the robbers?" His h often abstractedly The Castle in the Lake had spun a bond between theest strand of it was the fact that Jacopo had done what his mother intended to do when she rode to the castle The Adderhead was dead But Dustfinger felt sure that, all the same, Violante would feel her father behind her like a shadow all her life and very likely Her Ugliness knew it herself by now

Silvertongue took the Bluejay aith hi side by side, and not for the first tier wondered whether they were only two sides of the same man Whatever the ansas, the bookbinder loved this world as ht, when they stopped to rest under a tree with furry yellow catkins falling froh Resa had thrown the last of the seeds into the lake She changed shape in her sleep and flew up into the flowering branches, where er saw her sitting there he woke Silvertongue, and they waited under the tree together until the swift flen again at dawn and turned back into a woman there between them

"What will become of the child?" she asked, full of dread

"It will dreaue replied Just as the bookbinder dreamed of the robber, and the robber of the bookbinder, and the Fire-Dancer dreamed of the flames and the minstrel woman who could dance like them Perhaps, after all, this world was made of dreams, and an old man had merely found the words for them

Resa hen they caer discovered the Strong Man’s sign outside the entrance, drawn on the rocks in soot, and buriedunderneath was abrother