Inkspell

Meggie just nodded. She didn’t know how she felt. Afraid?



Angry? Desperate? There didn’t seem to be any word to describe the state of her heart. Silently, she took Despina and Ivo by the hand and set off home with them. Her knees hurt, and she was limping, but nonetheless she hurried along the alleys so fast that the children could hardly keep up.



“Now!” She uttered just that one word as she hobbled into Fenoglio’s room. “Let me read it now.



At once.” Her voice shook, and she had to lean against the bare wall because her grazed knees were trembling. Indeed, everything in her and about her was trembling.



“What’s happened?” Fenoglio was sitting at his desk. The parchment lying before him was covered with words. Rosenquartz stood beside him with a dripping pen in his hand, looking at Meggie in astonishment.



“We must do it now!” she cried. “This minute! They just rode into the middle of the crowd – into all those people!”



“Ah, so the soldiers are here already. Well, I told you we must hurry. Who was leading them?



Firefox?”



“No, it was the Piper.” Meggie went over to the bed and sat down on it. Suddenly, she felt only fear, as if she were back kneeling among the toppled stalls again, and her fury had run out of steam. “There are so many of them!” she whispered. “It’s too late! What could Cosimo do against them?”



“You just leave that to me!” Fenoglio took the pen from the glass man’s hand and began writing again. “The Laughing Prince has many soldiers, too, and they’ll follow Cosimo once he’s back. Of course, it would have been better if you’d read him here while his father was still alive. The Laughing Prince was in too much of a hurry to die, but that can’t be helped now! Other things can be, though.” With his brow furrowed, he read through what he had written, crossed out a word here, added one there, and then waved his hand to the glass man. “Sand, Rosenquartz, hurry up!”



Meggie pulled up her skirt and looked at her injured knees.



One of them was beginning to swell. “But are you sure it will really be any better with Cosimo?”



she asked in a low voice. “From what Her Ugliness said about him, it didn’t sound like it.”



“Of course it will be better! What kind of question is that? Cosimo is one of the good characters and always was, never mind what Violante says. Anyway, when you read this aloud you’ll be bringing a new version of him here. An improved version, we might say.”



“But .. but why does there have to be a new prince here at all?” Meggie passed her sleeve over her tearstained face. The clank of armor was still echoing in her ears, the snorting and whinnying, the screaming – the screams of people who wore no armor.



“What can be better than a prince who does what we want?” Fenoglio took another sheet of parchment. “Just a few more lines,” he murmured. “I’ve almost finished. Oh, curse it, how I hate writing on parchment. I hope you ordered more paper, Rosenquartz.”



“Of course I did, long ago,” replied the glass man huffily. “But there haven’t been any deliveries for ages. The paper mill’s on the other side of the forest, remember?”



“Yes, a pity.” Fenoglio wrinkled his nose. “Very inconvenient, to be sure.”



“Fenoglio, listen to me, will you? Why don’t we read that robber here instead of Cosimo?” Meggie pulled down her skirt over her knees again. “You know – the robber in your songs! The Bluejay!”



Fenoglio laughed out loud. “The Bluejay? Good heavens! I’d like to see your face if– but joking aside, no – absolutely not! A robber’s not fit to rule, Meggie. Robin Hood didn’t become king!



Robbers are good for stirring up trouble, that’s all. I couldn’t even put the Black Prince on the throne here. This world is ruled by royalty, not robbers, entertainers, or peasants. That’s the way I made it, and I assure you it’s a royal prince we need.”



Rosenquartz sharpened another quill and dipped it in the ink, and Fenoglio began writing again.



“Yes,” Meggie heard him whispering. “Yes, this will sound wonderful when you read it aloud.



What a surprise for the Adder head! He thinks he can do what he likes in my world, do exactly as he pleases, but he’s wrong. He’ll play the part I give him and no other!”



Meggie rose from the bed and limped over to the window. It had begun to rain again; the sky was weeping as silently as the people in the marketplace. And the Adderhead’s banner was already being hoisted above the castle.



Chapter 30 - Cosimo



“Yes,” said Abhorsen. “I am a necromancer, but not of the common kind. Where others of the art raise the dead, I lay them back to rest …”



– Garth Nix, Sabriel



It was dark when Fenoglio finally put aside his pen. All was still in the alley below. It had been quiet there all day, as if the people had fled indoors like mice hiding from the cat.



“Have you finished?” asked Meggie, as Fenoglio leaned back and rubbed his weary eyes. Her voice sounded faint and afraid, not like a voice that could awaken a prince and bring him to life, but after all, she had already made a monster rise from Fenoglio’s words, even if that was long ago – and Mo, not she, had read the very last words.



Mo. After what had happened in the marketplace, she missed him more than ever.



“Yes, I’ve finished!” Fenoglio sounded as pleased with himself as he had in Capricorn’s village, when he and Meggie between them first planned a way to alter his story. All had ended well that time, but now .. now she was in the story herself. Did that make Fenoglio’s words stronger or weaker? Meggie had told him about Orpheus’s rule – that it was better to use only words that were in the story already – but Fenoglio had just dismissed the idea. “Nonsense. Remember how we wrote a happy ending before for the Steadfast Tin Soldier? Did I stop to make sure I was using only words out of his own story? No, I didn’t. Perhaps that rule applies to people like this man Orpheus, people who venture to mess around with other writers’ stories, but surely not for an author setting out to change his own!”



Meggie hoped he was right.



Fenoglio had crossed out a good deal, but his handwriting had indeed become more legible.



Meggie looked along the lines. Yes, this time they were Fenoglio’s own words, not stolen from any other writer…



“Good, isn’t it?” He dipped a piece of bread in the soup that Minerva had brought up for them hours ago and looked expectantly at Meggie. Of course the soup was cold. Neither of them could have even thought of eating until now, and Rosenquartz was the only one who had drunk some of the soup. It had made his whole body change color, until Fenoglio firmly took his tiny spoon away from him and asked if he wanted to kill himself.



“Leave that alone, Rosenquartz!” he now added sternly, as the glass man reached a transparent finger out to his dish again. “You’ve had quite enough! You know you can’t digest human food.



Do you want me to have to take you back to that physician who almost broke off your nose last time?”



“Eating sand all the time is so boring!” complained the glass man, withdrawing his finger with an injured air. “And the sand you bring me isn’t particularly tasty, either.”