"Yesterday! He said so yesterday!" she exclaimed. "You wait and see, Bella, he's back, that's what he said. Who else would have set the mill ablaze? Who else talks to fire? He didn't get a wink of sleep all night. He was worried, but you're all right, aren't you? What's the matter with your leg?"
Dustfinger put a finger to his mouth, but Meggie saw that he was smiling. "It could be better," he said quietly. "And you talk as fast as ever, Bella, but could you take us to the Barn Owl now?"
"Yes, yes, of course!" Bella sounded slightly injured. "I suppose you have that horrible marten in there?" she inquired, with a distrustful look at Dustfinger's backpack. "Don't you go letting him out."
"Of course not," Dustfinger assured her, casting a glance at Farid, which obviously warned him to say nothing about the second marten asleep in his own backpack.
Without another word, the old woman beckoned them to follow her down a dark, unadorned colonnade. She took small, hasty footsteps, as if she were a squirrel wearing a long dress of coarsely woven fabric. "A good thing you came around the back way," she said in a lowered voice as she led them past a series of closed doors. "I'm afraid the Adderhead has ears even here now, but luckily he doesn't pay his informers well enough for them to work in the wing where we treat infectious cases. I hope you gave those two enough of the leaves?"
"Yes, indeed." Dustfinger nodded, but Meggie saw that he looked around uneasily and inconspicuously put another of the leaves that he had given them into his own mouth. Not until they passed the fragile figures sunning themselves in the courtyard around which the colonnade ran did Meggie realize just where Dustfinger had brought them. It was an infirmary. Farid put his hand to his mouth in horror when they met an old man who looked as pale as if Death had come for him long ago, and he replied to the man's toothless smile with only a frightened nod.
"Don't look as if you were about to fall down dead!" Dustfinger whispered to him, although he didn't look particularly comfortable here, either. "Your fingers will be well tended here, and moreover we'll be relatively safe, which is more than can be said for many places on this side of the forest."
"Yes, if there's one thing the Adderhead fears," added Bella in knowing tones, "it's death and the diseases that lead to it. All the same, you shouldn't let either the patients or the nurses here see more of you than they must. If there's one thing I've learned in life it's never to trust anyone. Except the Barn Owl, of course."
"And what about me, Bella?" asked Dustfinger.
"You least of all!" was her only reply. She stopped at a plain wooden door. "It's a pity your face is so unmistakable," she told Dustfinger, low-voiced, "or you could have put on a show for our patients. Nothing does the sick more good than a little pleasure." Then she knocked on the door and, with a nod, stepped aside.
The room on the other side of the door was dark, for the only window was half hidden behind stacks of books. It was the kind of room Mo would have loved. He liked books to look as if someone had only just put them down. Quite unlike Elinor, he saw nothing wrong in leaving them lying there open, waiting for the next reader. The Barn Owl seemed to feel the same. He could hardly be spotted among all those piled books – a small man with shortsighted eyes and broad hands. He looked to Meggie like a mole, except that his hair was gray.
"Didn't I say so?" He knocked two books off their stacks as he hurried toward Dustfinger. "He's back," I said, but they wouldn't believe it. Obviously, the White Women are letting more and more of the dead come back to life these days!"
The two men embraced. Then the Barn Owl took a step back and looked Dustfinger thoroughly up and down. The physician was an old man, older than Fenoglio, but his eyes were as young as Farid's. "You look all right," he commented, pleased. "Except for your leg. What's the matter with it? Did you get that injury at the mill? One of my women healers was taken up to the castle yesterday to tend two men bitten by fire. She brought back a strange story about an ambush and a horned marten that spits fire…"
Up to the castle? Instinctively, Meggie moved toward the physician. "Did she see the prisoners, too?" she interrupted him. "They would just have been taken there – strolling players, men and women. My mother and father are with them."
The Barn Owl looked at her sympathetically. "Are you the girl that the Black Prince's men told me about? Your father -"
"- is the man they take for the Bluejay." Dustfinger finished the sentence. "Do you know how he and the other prisoners are?"
Before the Barn Owl could answer, a girl put her head around the door. She stared at the strangers in alarm. Her eyes lingered on Meggie so long that finally the Barn Owl cleared his throat.
"What is it, Carla?" he asked.
The girl bit her pale lips nervously. "I'm to ask if we have any eyebright left," she said timidly.
"Of course. Go to Bella and she'll give you some, but now leave us alone."
The girl disappeared with a hasty nod, but she left the door open. Sighing, the Barn Owl closed it and then bolted it, too. "Where were we? Oh yes, the prisoners. The physician responsible for the dungeons is looking after them. He's useless at his job, but who else could stand it up there? Instead of healing the sick he has to preside over whippings and lashings. Luckily, they're not letting him near your father, and the Adderhead's own physician isn't going to soil his fingers on a prisoner, so my best woman healer goes up to the castle every day to tend him."
"How is my father?" Meggie tried not to sound like a little girl holding back her tears with difficulty, but she didn't entirely succeed.
"He's badly wounded, but I think you know that?"
Meggie nodded. And the tears came again, flowing and flowing as if to wash it all out of her heart: her grief, her longing, her fear. Farid put his arm around her shoulders, but that just reminded her of Mo even more – of all the years he had protected her and held her close. And now that he was in trouble, she wasn't with him.
"He's lost a great deal of blood, and he's still weak, but he's doing well – much better, anyway, than we let the Adderhead know." You could tell from the Barn Owl's voice that he often had to talk to people who were anxious about those they loved. "My healer has advised him not to let anyone notice, to give us more time. But at the moment there really is nothing for you to worry about."
Meggie's heart soared. It will be all right, something inside her said – for the first time since Dustfinger had given her Resa's note. Everything will be all right! Feeling embarrassed, she wiped the tears off her face.
"The weapon that wounded your father – my healer says it must be a terrible thing," the Barn Owl continued. "I hope the Adderhead's armorers are not working on some diabolical invention in secret!"
"No, that weapon was from a very different place." And nothing good comes from that place, said Dustfinger's face, but Meggie didn't want to think of what a rifle could do to this world just now. Her thoughts were with Mo.
"My father," she told the Barn Owl, "would like this room very much. He loves books, and yours are really beautiful. Although he'd probably tell you that some of them needed rebinding, and that one won't live much longer if you don't soon do something about the beetles eating it."
The Barn Owl picked up the book she had pointed out and caressed the pages just as Mo always did. "The Bluejay loves books?" he asked. "Unusual for a robber."
"He's not a robber," said Meggie. "He's a doctor like you, only he heals books instead of people."