Cornelia Funke - Inkspell

"I know!" Violante rose and glanced at the paper waiting on his desk. "Are you writing a new story? Is it about the Bluejay? You must show it to me first!" For a moment she was very much the Adderhead's daughter.

"Of course, of course," Fenoglio hastily assured her. "You'll get it before even the strolling players. And I'll write it the way you like a story best: dark, hopeless, sinister…" Cruel, too, he added silently. For Her Ugliness loved stories full of darkness. She didn't want to be told tales of good fortune and beauty, she liked to hear about death, ugly things, secrets heavy with tears. She wanted her very own world, and it had never heard of beauty and good fortune.

She was still gazing at him, with the same arrogant look that her father turned on the world. Fenoglio remembered the words he had once written about her kindred: Noble blood – for centuries the Adderhead's kin firmly believed that the blood flowing in their veins made them bolder, cleverer, stronger than all who were their subjects. The same look in their eyes for hundreds and hundreds of years, even in those of Her Ugliness, whom her noble family would happily have drowned at birth in the castle moat, like a puppy born deformed.

"The servants say Brianna's mother can sing even better than she does. They say her mother knew how to make stones weep and roses blossom with her voice." Violante patted her face, just where the birthmark had been such a fiery red only a short time ago.

"Yes, I've heard much the same," Fenoglio followed her to the door.

"They even say she sang in my father's castle, but I don't believe that. My father never let any strolling players though his gate. The nearest they came was to be hanged outside it." Yes, because there was once a rumor that your mother betrayed him with a minstrel, thought Fenoglio as he opened the door for her.

"Brianna says her mother doesn't sing anymore because she believes her voice brings great misfortune to everyone she loves. It seems that happened to Brianna's father."

"I've heard that story, too."

Violante went out into the corridor. Even at close quarters her birthmark was barely visible now. "You'll send the messenger to her tomorrow morning?"

"If that's what you want."

She looked down the dark corridor. "Brianna will never talk about her father. One of the cooks says he was a fire-eater. The way that cook tells the story, Brianna's mother was deeply in love

with him, but then one of the fire-raisers fell in love with her himself and slashed the fire-eater's face."

"Yes, I've heard that one as well!" Fenoglio looked at her thoughtfully. Dustfinger's bittersweet story was certainly very much to Violante's taste.

"She took him to a physician, the cook says, and stayed with him until his face was healed." How far away her voice sounded, as if she had lost herself among the words. Fenoglio's words. "But he left her all the same." Violante turned her face away. "Write that letter!" she said abruptly. "Write it tonight." Then she hurried away in her black dress, in such haste that it looked as if she were suddenly ashamed of coming to see him.

"Rosenquartz," said Fenoglio, closing the door behind her. "Do you think I'm only any good at making up characters who are sad or bad?"

But the glass man was still asleep beside the quill, from which ink dripped onto the empty sheet of parchment.

Fenoglio waited for Roxane in a room in the castle where petitioners were usually received, ordinary folk who came here to tell Cosimo's administrators their troubles while a scribe recorded their words on paper (parchment being far too valuable for such purposes). Then they were sent away hoping that their prince would put his mind to their concerns sometime. But under the Laughing Prince that had not been very often, except at Violante's persuasion, so his subjects had usually settled their quarrels among themselves, with or without violence, depending on their temperament and their influence in the community. It was hoped that Cosimo would change all that soon…

"What am I doing here?" murmured Fenoglio, looking around the high-ceilinged, narrow room. He had still been in bed

(in much more comfort than at Minerva's house) when Her Ugliness's messenger had appeared. Violante sent her apologies, said the man, and since he was better with words than anyone else she knew, she asked him to talk to Roxane on her behalf. That was how the powerful acted – offloading the less pleasant tasks in life onto other people. But on the other hand… he had always hoped to meet Dustfinger's wife someday. Was she really as beautiful as his description of her?

With a sigh, he dropped into the armchair generally used by one of Cosimo's administrators. Since Cosimo's return, so many petitioners had flocked to the castle that in the future they were going to be allowed to come and put their cases on only two days of the week. Their prince had weightier matters on his mind just now than the troubles of a farmer whose neighbor had stolen his pig, a cobbler who had bought poor quality leather from a dealer, or a seamstress whose husband beat her every night when he came home drunk. Of course, there was a judge in every town of any size to settle such quarrels, but most of them had a poor reputation. Folk said, on both sides of the Wayless Wood, that you'd get your rights only if you filled the judges' pockets with gold. So those who had no gold went up to the castle to appeal to their angel-faced prince, without realizing that he had more than enough to do preparing for his war.

When Roxane entered the room she had two children with her: a girl of about five and an older boy, probably Brianna's brother, Jehan – the lad who had the dubious honor of playing with Jacopo now and then. She frowned as she scrutinized the tapestries on the walls celebrating the Laughing Prince's exploits in his youth. Unicorns, dragons, White Stags… Clearly nothing had been safe from his royal spear.

"Why don't we just go into the garden?" suggested Fenoglio, noticing her expression of disapproval and quickly rising from the princely chair. If anything, she was even more beautiful than his description of her. But after all, he had sought the most wonderful of words for her when he wrote the scene in Inkheart where Dustfinger saw her for the first time. Yet all at once, now that she so suddenly stood before him in the flesh, he felt as lovelorn as a silly boy. Oh, for goodness' sake, Fenoglio! he reproached himself. You made her up, and now you're staring at her as if this was the first time in your life you'd ever seen a woman! Worst of all, Roxane seemed to notice it.

"Yes, let's go into the garden! I've heard a great deal about it, but I've never seen it," she said with a smile that cast Fenoglio into total confusion. "But first, please tell me why you want to speak to me. Your letter said only that it was about Brianna."

Why he wanted to speak to her? Huh! He cursed Violante's jealousy, Cosimo's faithless heart, and himself, too. "Let's go into the garden first," he said. Perhaps it would be easier to tell her what Her Ugliness had instructed him to say in the open air.

But of course it was not.

The boy set off in search of Jacopo as soon as they were outside, but the girl stayed with Roxane, clinging to her hand as she went from plant to plant – and Fenoglio found he couldn't utter a word.

"I know why I was summoned," said Roxane, just as he was trying for the tenth time to find the right words. "Brianna didn't tell me herself, she'd never do that. But the maid who takes Cosimo his breakfast every morning often comes to me for advice about her sick mother, and she's told me that Brianna seldom leaves his room. Not even at night."