"Let them come!" she said fiercely, her voice shaking. "I hope the bear will eat them all! I hope those men who hunt children will all be hacked to pieces!"

A lunatic of a woman, but she took the words right out of Fenoglio’s mouth.

Meggie’s eyes were still fixed on him.

"Why are you looking at me like that? What am I supposed to do, Meggie?" he asked. "This story is telling itself in two places again. Which of them needs the words more urgently? Am I supposed to grow a second head, or—?"

He stopped abruptly.

Signora Loredan was still firing off a salvo of curses at the ground below. "Child murderers! Vermin! Cockroaches in armor! You ought to be crushed underfoot!"

"What was that you just said?" Fenoglio sounded more brusque than he had intended.

Elinor looked at him blankly.

Crushed underfoot . . . ! Fenoglio stared at the torches down below. "Yes!" he whispered. "Yes. It could be rather dangerous. But how am I to. . ."

He turned and swiftly climbed the ladder to his nest again. The nest where the words were hatched out. That was the place for him now.

But of course Loredan followed him.

"You have an idea?"

He did, and he certainly wasn’t going to let her know that, once again, she had given it to him. "I have an idea, that’s right. Meggie, be ready, please."

Rosenquartz handed him a pen. He was afraid; Fenoglio saw it in his glass face. It was a deeper pink than usual. Or had he been sneaking wine again? For the two glass men were now eating grated bark like their wild cousins, and the result was a little green mingling with Rosenquartz’s pale pink. Not a very good color combination.

Fenoglio put a blank sheet of paper on the board that Doria had so cleverly cut to size for him. For heaven’s sake, he’d never yet managed to write two stories at once!

"What about my father, Fenoglio?" Meggie kneeled down beside him. She looked so desperate!

"He still has time." Fenoglio dipped his pen in the ink. "Get Farid to look into the fire if you're worried, but I can assure you it’s not easy to repair a coach wheel in a hurry.

The Adderhead won’t be at the castle for a day or so at most. And I promise, as soon as I’ve dealt with what’s going on here I’ll get back to writing the words for the Bluejay. Don’t look so sad! How are you going to help him if the Milksop shoots us all out of this tree? Now, give me the book. You know the one I mean."

He knew where to look. He had described them at the very beginning, in the third or fourth chapter.

"Come on, tell us!" Loredan’s voice was quivering with impatience. "What are you going to do?" She came closer to get a look at the book, but Fenoglio slammed it shut in front of her nose.

"Be quiet!" he thundered, not that that made any difference to the noise coming in from outside. Was the Milksop here already?

Write, Fenoglio.

He closed his eyes. He could see him already. Very clearly. How exciting given a task like this, writing was twice as much fun!

"What I mean is—"

"Elinor, do keep quiet!" he heard Meggie say.

And then the words came. Yes, this nest was a good place to write in.

CHAPTER 56

FIRE AND DARKNESS

"How many did you count?"

"Nearly fifty." They were trying hard to sound casual, but Violante’s child-soldiers were frightened, and Mo wondered not for the first time whether they had ever really fought before, or if they knew about war only from the deaths of their brothers and fathers.

"Only fifty? Then he really does trust me!" There was no mistaking the triumph in Violante’s voice. The Adderhead’s daughter thought nothing of fear. It was an emotion that she was very good at suppressing one among many — and Mo read contempt in her eyes when she saw the fear on her young soldiers’ faces. But it could be seen on Brianna’s face, too, and even on Tullio’s furry features.

"Is the Milksop with him?"

The boys, as Mo still couldn’t help calling them, shook their heads.

"What about the Piper? Surely he’s brought the Piper, too, hasn’t he?"

More head-shaking. Mo exchanged a glance of surprise with Dustfinger.

"To your posts!" Violante ordered. "We’ve discussed it often enough. You don’t even let my father onto the bridge. He can send a single envoy, no more. We’ll keep him waiting for two or maybe three days. That’s what he himself does with his enemies. "He won’t like that."

"He’s not meant to like it. Now, off you all go. I want to speak to the Bluejay alone."

Violante cast Dustfinger an imperious glance. "Entirely alone."

Dustfinger did not move. Only when Mo nodded to him did he turn and leave, as silently as if he were the other man’s shadow.

Violante went over to the window. They were in the room that had once been her mother’s. On the walls, unicorns grazed peacefully among the spotted cats that Mo had often seen in the forest, and the window had a view of the aviary courtyard, with the empty cages and painted nightingales, now faded by daylight. The Adderhead seemed far, far away, in another world.

"So he hasn’t brought the Piper," said Violante. "All the better. I suppose he sent him back to the Castle of Night, to punish him for letting you escape.

"Do you really think so?" Mo examined the peacefully grazing unicorns on the walls.

They reminded him of other pictures, hunting scenes in which their white coats were pierced by lances. "Last night the White Women told me a different tale."

He could still hear them whispering: The Piper is preparing the way for him.

"Really? Well, be that as it may . . . if he’s coming after all, then we must kill him, too. We can let the others go, but not the Piper."

Was she really so sure of herself?

Violante still had her back turned to him. "I’ll have to have you bound again.

Otherwise my father isn’t likely to believe you’re really my prisoner."

"I know. Get Dustfinger to do it. He knows how to tie people up so that they can easily free themselves." He learned it from a boy my daughter’s in love with, added Mo in his mind. Where was Meggie now? With her mother, he hoped. And with the Black Prince. In safety.

"When my father is dead"— Violante spoke the word cautiously, so perhaps she wasn’t so sure of succeeding as she made out "the Milksop isn’t going to give up the throne of Ombra to me without a fight. He’ll probably get support from his sister in the Castle of Night. I hope you and I will still be allies?" For the first time she looked at him.

What was he to say? No, once your father is dead I’m going away. Was he?

Violante turned her back to him again before asking her next question. "Do you really have a wife?"

"Yes."

Princes’ daughters have a soft spot for robbers and mountebanks.

"Send her away. I’ll make you Prince of Ombra."

Mo thought he heard Dustfinger laughing. "I’m no prince, Your Highness," he replied. "I’m a robber — and a bookbinder. Two parts are more than enough for one man to play."

She turned again and scrutinized him as if she couldn’t believe he meant it seriously.