Meggie just sat there and stared at the old woman. What was she talking about?

“Why are you looking at me like that, so surprised?” asked Nettle. “Do you think the Adderhead sent his men here for a few old strolling players and pregnant women, or for the Black Prince?

Nonsense. The Black Prince never hid from the Adder yet. No. Someone slipped off to the Castle of Night and whispered in the Adderhead’s ear that the Bluejay was lying wounded in the strolling players’ Secret Camp and could easily be picked up, along with the poor players who were hiding him.

It will have been someone who knows the camp and has surely been paid good silver for his treachery. The Adderhead will make a great spectacle of the execution, the Inkweaver will write a touching song about it, and perhaps someone else will soon wear the feathered mask, for they’ll go on singing those songs long after your father’s dead and buried behind the Castle of Night.”

Meggie heard her own blood surging through her veins.

“What scar are you talking about?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

“Why, the scar on his left arm! Surely you must know it? The songs say that the Adderhead’s hounds bit the Bluejay there when he was hunting their master’s White Stags. . ”

Fenoglio. What had he done?

Meggie covered her mouth with her hand. She once again heard Fenoglio’s voice on the spiral staircase as they were going down from Balbulus’s workshop: ” I like to base my characters on real people. Not every writer does that, but in my experience it makes them more lifelike! Facial expressions, gestures, the way someone walks, a voice, perhaps a birthmark or a scar – I steal something here, something there, and then they begin to breathe, until anyone hearing or reading about them thinks they can touch them! I didn’t have a wide choice for the Bluejay… ”

Mo. Fenoglio had taken her father as his model.

Meggie stared at the sleeping child. She, too, had often slept like that, with her head in Mo’s lap.

“Meggie’s father is the Bluejay?” Farid, beside her, uttered an incredulous laugh. “What nonsense! Silvertongue can’t even bring himself to kill a rabbit. You mark my words, Meggie, the Adderhead will soon realize that, and then he’ll let him go. Come on!” He rose to his feet and offered her his hand. “We must start out or we’ll never catch up with Dustfinger!”

“You’re going after him now?” Nettle shook her head at such folly, while Meggie laid the little girl’s head down on the grass. “Keep going south if you miss his trail in the dark,” said CloudDancer. “Due south, and then you’ll reach the road sometime. But beware of wolves. There are many wolves in these parts.”

Farid just nodded. “I have fire with me,” he said, making a spark dance on the palm of his hand.

CloudDancer grinned. “Well done! Perhaps you really are Dustfinger’s son, as Roxane suspects!”

“Who knows?” was all Farid would reply, and he led Meggie away with him.

She followed him into the dark trees, feeling numb. A robber! She could think of nothing else. He had made Mo into a robber, a part of his story! At that moment she hated Fenoglio just as much as Dustfinger did.

Chapter 38 – An Audience for Fenoglio

“Lady Cora,” he said, “sometimes one has to do things which are unpalatable. When great issues are involved one can’t toy with the situation in silk gloves. No. We are making history.”

– Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

Fenoglio was pacing up and down his room. Seven steps to the window, seven back to the door.

Meggie had gone, and there was no one who could tell him if she’d found her father still alive.

What an appalling muddle! Whenever he began to hope he was getting things under control again, something happened that did not remotely suit his plans. Perhaps another man really did exist somewhere – a diabolical storyteller who was continuing his tale, giving it new twists and turns, unpredictable and unpleasant developments, moving his characters as if they were chessmen, or simply placing new ones who had nothing to do with his own story on the chessboard!

And still Cosimo had sent no messenger. Well, I must exercise a little more patience, Fenoglio told himself. He’s only just ascended his throne, and I’m sure he has a great deal to do. All his subjects wanting to see him, petitioners, widows, orphans, his administrators, gamekeepers, his son, his wife .. “Oh, nonsense! I’m the one he should have sent for first of all!” Fenoglio uttered the words so angrily that he was startled by the sound of his own voice. “I, the man who brought him back to life, who made him in the first place!”

He went to the window and looked up at the castle. The Adderhead’s banner flew from the left-hand tower. Yes, the Adderhead was in Ombra and must have ridden like the devil to see in person his son-in-law, newly back from the dead. He hadn’t brought Firefox with him this time; no doubt the man was busy looting or murdering elsewhere on his master’s behalf, but the Piper was still abroad in the streets of Ombra, always with a few men-at-arms in his wake. What did they want here? Did the Adderhead still seriously hope to place his grandson on the throne? No, Cosimo would never allow it.

For a moment Fenoglio forgot his dark mood, and a smile stole over his face. Ah, if he could only have told the Adderhead who had wrecked his fine plans! A writer! How that would have angered him! They had given him an unpleasant surprise – he with his words, Meggie with her voice. .

Poor Meggie .. poor Mortimer . .

How pleadingly she had looked at him. And what a farcical performance he had put on for her!

Yet how could the poor thing have thought for a moment that he could help her father, when he himself hadn’t even brought Mortimer here? Quite apart from the fact that Mortimer wasn’t one of his creations in the first place. But that look of hers! He simply had not the heart to let her leave without any hope at all!

Rosenquartz was sitting on the desk with his transparent legs crossed, throwing bread crumbs at the fairies.

“Stop that!” Fenoglio snapped. “Do you want them to grab you by the legs and try throwing you out of the window again? I won’t save you this time, believe you me. I won’t even sweep you up when you’re a little pile of broken glass down there in the pigs’ muck. The garbage collector can shovel you into his barrow instead.”

“That’s right, take your bad temper out on me!” The glass man turned his back on Fenoglio. “It won’t make Cosimo summon you any sooner, though!”

Here, unfortunately, he was right. Fenoglio went to the window. In the streets below, the excitement over Cosimo’s return had died down, and perhaps the Adderhead’s presence had cast a damper on it, too. People were going about their business again, the pigs were rooting about among the trash, children were chasing one another around the close-packed houses, and now and then an armed soldier made his way through the crowd. There were clearly more soldiers around than usual in Ombra now. Cosimo was obviously having them patrol the city, perhaps to prevent the men-at-arms from riding his subjects down again just because they were in the way. Yes, Cosimo will see to everything, thought Fenoglio. He’ll be a good prince, insofar as any princes are good. Who knows, perhaps he’ll even allow the strolling players back into Ombra on ordinary market days soon.