Meggie leaned forward over the laden table. She spoke the words as if she were reading them aloud again. "My father will bind you a book!" she said, so quietly that apart from the Adderhead no one, except perhaps his doll-like wife, could hear her. "He will bind it for you with my help, a book with five hundred blank pages. He will cover it with wood and leather, he will give it brass clasps, and you will write your name on the first page in your own hand. In token of thanks, however, you will let him go, and with him all whose lives he asks for, and you will hide the book in a place known only to you, for hear this: As long as that book exists you will be immortal. Nothing will be able to kill you, no disease, no weapon – as long as the book remains intact."
"Indeed!" The Adderhead's bloodshot eyes were staring at her. His breath smelled sweetish, as if he had been drinking wine that was too heavy. "And suppose someone burns it or tears it up? Parchment doesn't last like silver."
"You will have to take good care of it," replied Meggie quietly – and it will kill you all the same, she added in her thoughts. She felt as if she were hearing her own voice reading Fenoglio's words again (and how good they had tasted!): But there was that one thing the girl did not tell the Adderhead: The book not only made him immortal but could kill him, too, if someone only wrote three words on its white pages, and those words were: heart, spell, death.
"What's she whispering?" Mortola had risen to her feet. She leaned her bony hands on the table. "Don't listen to her!" she told the Adderhead. "She's a witch and a liar! How often do I have to tell you? Kill her – her and her father – before they kill you! The old man probably wrote all her words for her, the old man I told you about!"
For the first time the Adderhead turned to look at Mortola, and Meggie briefly feared that he might believe her after all. But then she saw the anger in his face. "Be quiet!" he snapped at the Magpie. "Capricorn may have listened to you, but he's gone, like the Shadow who made him powerful, and you are tolerated at this court only because you have rendered me certain services! But I don't want to hear any more of your drivel about silver tongues and old men who can bring written words to life. Not another word out of you, or I'll send you back to where you once came from – in the kitchen with the maids."
Mortola turned as white as if she had no blood left in her veins.
"I warned you!" she said hoarsely. "Don't forget it!" Then, stony-faced, she sat down again. Basta cast her an anxious glance, but Mortola took no notice of him. She just stared at Meggie with such venom that she felt those eyes were burning a hole in her face.
The Adderhead, however, speared one of the tiny roasted birds lying on a silver platter in front of him with his knife and put it between his lips with relish. Obviously, his angry exchange with Mortola had given him an appetite. "Did I understand you correctly? You yourself would help your father with the work?" he asked, as he spat out the little bones into the hand of a servant who hastily stepped forward. "Does that mean he has taught a daughter his craft, as a master craftsman usually teaches his sons? Surely you know that such a thing is forbidden in my realm?"
Meggie looked at him fearlessly. Even these words had been written by Fenoglio, every one of them, and she knew what the Adderhead was going to say next, because she had read that, too.
"If a craftsman of Argenta breaks that law, my pretty child," he went on, "I usually have his right hand chopped off. But, very well, I'll make an exception in your case, since it's to my own advantage."
He's going to do it, thought Meggie. He's going to let me see Mo just as Fenoglio planned. Happiness emboldened her. "My mother," she said, although Fenoglio had not written anything about that, "she could help, too. Then it would be done even faster."
"No, no!" The Adderhead smiled with delight, as if the disappointment in Meggie's eyes tasted better than all the delicacies on silver dishes before him. "Your mother stays in her dungeon, as a little incentive for the two of you to work quickly." He signaled impatiently to Firefox. "What are you waiting for? Take her to her father! And tell the librarian to set to work this very night, to provide everything a bookbinder needs for his work."
"Take her to her father?" Firefox gripped Meggie's arm, but he did not take a step. "You surely don't believe her witchy nonsense?"
Meggie almost forgot to breathe. She had not read these words aloud; not one of them was written by Fenoglio. What would happen now? Not a foot moved in the hall; even the servants stood still exactly where they were, and you could feel the silence. But Firefox went on. "A book to hold Death captive in its pages? Only a child would believe such a story, and this child has thought it up to save her father. Mortola's right. Hang him now, before we become the laughingstock of the peasants! Capricorn would have done it long ago."
"Capricorn?" The Adderhead spat out the name like one of the delicate bones he had spat into the servant's hand. He did not look at Firefox as he spoke, but his thick fingers clenched into a fist on the table. "Since Mortola came back I've heard that name very often. But as far as I know Capricorn is dead – even his personal witch and poisoner couldn't prevent that – and you, Firefox, have obviously forgotten who your new master is. I am the Adderhead! My family has ruled this land for more than seven generations, while your old master was only the bastard son of a soot-blackened smith! You were a fire-raiser, a murderer, no more, and I've made you my herald. A little more gratitude is called for, I think, or do you want to look for a new master?"
Firefox's face turned almost as red as his hair. "No, Your Grace," he said almost inaudibly. "No, I don't."
"Good!" The Adderhead impaled another bird on his knife. They were waiting in their silver dish, piled up like chestnuts. "Then do as I said. Take the girl to her father and make sure he soon sets to work. Have you brought that physician, as I ordered? The Barn Owl?"
Firefox nodded, without looking at his master.
"Good. Let him visit her father to tend him twice a day. We want our prisoner to be fit and well, understand?"
"I understand," said Firefox hoarsely.
He looked neither to right nor left as he led Meggie out of the hall. All eyes followed her – and avoided her own eyes when they met theirs. Witch. That was what they had called her before, back in Capricorn's village. Perhaps it was true. At that moment she felt powerful, as powerful as if the whole Inkworld obeyed her voice. They are taking me to Mo, she thought. They are taking me to him, and that will be the beginning of the end for the Adderhead.
But when the servants had closed the doors of the hall behind them, a soldier barred Firefox's way.
"Mortola has a message for you," he said. "You're to search the girl for a sheet of paper or anything else with writing on it. She says you should look in her sleeves first. She hid something there once before."
Before Meggie fully realized what was happening, Firefox took hold of her and roughly pushed up her sleeves. Finding nothing there, he was about to put his hands inside her dress, but Meggie pushed them away and took out the parchment herself. Firefox tore it from her fingers, stared at the written letters for a moment with the baffled look of a man who couldn't read, and then, without a word, handed the parchment to the soldier.
Meggie felt dizzy with fear as he led her on. Suppose Mortola showed the letter to the Adderhead? Suppose, suppose…?
"Get moving!" growled Firefox, pushing her up a flight of stairs. As if numbed, Meggie stumbled up the steep steps. Fenoglio, she thought, Fenoglio, help me. Mortola knows about our plan.
"Stop!" Firefox brutally grabbed her by the hair. Four men-at-arms were on guard outside a door with three bolts over it. A nod of the head from Firefox told them to open it.