Oss opened the door to Resa. When Farid looked past him, wondering who was knocking at such a late hour, he thought at first that the pale face emerging from the darkness was Meggie’s. She looked so like her mother now.
"Is Orpheus at home?"
Resa spoke in a low voice, as if ashamed of every word she said, and when she saw Farid behind the Chunk she lowered her head like a child caught in the act of doing something forbidden.
What did she want with Cheeseface? "Please tell him that Silvertongue’s wife has to speak to him." When Oss showed her into the entrance hail, Resa gave Farid a fleeting smile, but she avoided looking directly at him. Without a word, the Chunk indicated that she was to wait there and stomped up the stairs. Resa’s averted face told Farid that she wasn’t going to tell him the reason for her visit, so he followed Oss, hoping to hear more in Orpheus’s room.
Cheeseface was not alone when his bodyguard told him about his late-night visitor.
There were three girls with Orpheus, none of them much older than Meggie, and they had been cooing at him for hours, telling him how clever, important, and irresistible he was. The oldest was sitting on his plump knees, and Orpheus was kissing and fondling her so grossly that Farid would have liked to strike his fingers away. He was always being sent out to bring Orpheus the prettiest girls in Ombra. "What are you making such a fuss about?" he had snapped, when Farid had at first refused to serve him in such a way. "They inspire me. Haven’t you ever heard of muses? Off you go, or I’ll never find the words you want so much!" So Farid obeyed him and took the girls who looked at him in the streets and the marketplace to Orpheus’s house. And many of them did look at Farid; after all, nearly all the older boys in Ombra were either dead or served Violante. Most of them would go anywhere Farid took them for a few coins. They all had hungry brothers and sisters and mothers who needed the money. Some just wanted to be able to buy a new dress again.
"Silvertongue’s wife?" You could tell from Orpheus’s voice that he had already put away a whole bottle of heavy red wine, but his eyes still looked surprisingly clear through his thick glasses. One of the girls touched the glasses with her finger, as cautiously as if she were afraid that doing so might turn her into glass herself on the spot.
"Interesting. Bring her in. And you three, be off with you."
Orpheus pushed the girl off his knees and smoothed his clothes down. Conceited bullfrog! Farid thought, pretending to have difficulty with the cork in the new wine bottle so that Orpheus wouldn’t send him out of the room.
When Oss showed in Resa, the three girls hurried past her as if their mothers had caught them on Orpheus’s lap.
"Well, what a surprise! Do sit down!" Orpheus waved to one of the chairs that had been specially made with his initials on them and raised his eyebrows to express his surprise even further. He had rehearsed this little move, and that wasn’t the only one.
Farid had often found Orpheus practicing facial expressions in front of his mirror.
Oss closed the door, and Resa sat down hesitantly, as if not sure whether she really wanted to stay.
"I hope you didn’t come alone!" Orpheus sat down at his desk and observed his guest like a spider studying a fly. "Ombra isn’t the safest place by night, particularly not for a woman."
"I have to speak to you." Resa still kept her voice very low. "Alone," she added, with a sideways glance at Farid.
"Farid!" said Orpheus, without looking at him. "Get out. And take Jasper with you.
He’s spattered himself with ink again. Wash him."
Farid bit back the curse that was on the tip of his tongue, put the glass man on his shoulder, and went to the door. Resa lowered her head as he passed her, and he saw that her fingers were shaking as she smoothed out her plain skirt. What was she doing here?
As usual, Oss tried to trip him outside the door, but Farid was used to such practical jokes now. He had even found a way to get his revenge for them. A smile from him, and the maids in the kitchen would see to it that the Chunk’s next meal disagreed with him. Farid’s smile was so much more attractive than Oss’s.
All the same, he had to abandon any hope of listening at the door. Oss planted himself in front of it with a nasty smile. But Farid knew another place where the goings-on in Orpheus’s study could be overheard. The maids said the wife of the previous owner of the house had liked to spy on her husband from this vantage point.
Jasper glanced at Farid in alarm when, instead of taking him down to the kitchen, he made for the stairs to the next floor. However, Oss suspected nothing, since Farid often had to fetch Orpheus a clean shirt or polish his boots. Orpheus’s clothes had a room of their own, right beside his bedroom, and the spyhole was under the rails where his shirts hung. They smelled so strongly of roses and violets that Farid felt quite sick when he kneeled down under them. One of the maids had shown him the hole in the floor when she had enticed him into the dressing room for a kiss. It was no bigger than a coin, but put your ear to it and you could hear every word spoken in the study downstairs, while if you looked through it with one eye you could see Orpheus’s desk.
"Can I do it?" Orpheus was laughing as if he had never heard a more absurd question.
"There’s no doubt about that! But my words have their price, and they don’t come cheap."
"I know." Resa’s voice still faltered as if she hated every word she spoke. "I don’t have silver like the Milksop, but I can work for you."
"Work? Oh no, thank you very much, I’m not short of maidservants.
"Do you want my wedding ring? It must be worth something. Gold is rare in Ombra."
"No, keep it. I’m not short of gold and silver, either. But there’s something else Orpheus gave a little laugh. Farid knew that laugh. It boded no good.
"It really is quite amazing how things sometimes turn out!" Orpheus went on. "It certainly is. I might say you’re the very person I need."
"I don’t understand."
"Of course not. Forgive me. I’ll put it more clearly. Your husband — I don’t know just what name to give him, he has such a vast number of them, but however that may be," laughed Orpheus again as if he had made a joke that only he could appreciate, "your husband met the White Women not so long ago, and I confess I had something to do with that. It’s said he has felt their fingers on his heart already, but unfortunately he won’t talk to me about this remarkable experience."
"What does that have to do with my request?"
It struck Farid for the first time how like Meggie’s voice her mother’s was. The same pride, the same vulnerability carefully hidden behind it.
"Well, I’m sure you remember that scarcely two months ago, on Mount Adder, I swore to bring a mutual friend of ours back from the dead."
Farid’s heart began to beat so violently that he was afraid Orpheus might hear it.
"I’m still determined to keep my promise, but unfortunately I’ve discovered that it’s as difficult to find out what game Death is playing in this world as in ours. No one knows anything, no one’s saying anything, and the White Women themselves —no doubt rightly called the daughters of Death won’t appear to me wherever I look for them. Obviously, they don’t talk to any reasonably healthy mortal, even one with such extraordinary abilities as mine! I’m sure you’ve heard about the unicorn, haven’t you?"
