Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke Page A

spotted dwarves?"

    Rosenquartz dipped his finger in the wine again. "You’ll have to buy me new trousers," he remarked. "I tore these with all that horrible climbing about. They’re worn out anyway. It’s all right for you to go around however you please, but I didn’t come to live with humans just to be worse dressed than my cousins in the forest."

    There were days when Fenoglio would gladly have snapped the glass man in half
    "Trousers? Why would I be interested in your trousers?" he asked tartly.

    Rosenquartz took a deep draught from the thimble and spat the wine out on to his glass feet. "Pure vinegar!" he said crossly. "Did I get bones thrown at me for this?
    Did I make my way through pigeon droppings and over broken tiles for this? Don’t look so skeptical. That Ironstone threw chicken bones at me when he caught me looking at Orpheus’s papers! He tried to push me out the window!"

    Sighing, he wiped the wine off his feet. "Very well. There was something about horned wild boar, but I could hardly decipher it, and then something else about singing fish — pretty silly stuff, if -- you ask me — and quite a lot about the White Women. Four-Eyes is obviously collecting everything the strolling players sing about them—"

    "Yes, yes, all Ombra knows! Did it take you so long just to find that out?" Fenoglio buried his face in his hands. The wine really wasn’t much good. His head seemed heavier every day. Damn it!

    Rosenquartz took another mouthful, even though he made a face as he swallowed it.
    That glass idiot! He’d have another bellyache by tomorrow, if not sooner. "Well, never mind that. This is my last report!" he announced between belches. "I’m never going spying again! Not as long as that Ironstone works there. He’s as strong as a brownie, and they say he’s already broken the arms off at least two glass men!"

    "Yes, yes, all right. You’re a terrible spy anyway," muttered Fenoglio as he staggered back to his bed. "Admit it, you’re far keener to chase the glass women in Seamstresses’ Alley. Just don’t think I don’t know about it!"

    With a groan, he lay down on his straw mattress and stared up at the empty fairies’
    nests. Was there any more wretched existence than the life of a writer who had run out of words? Was there a worse fate than having to watch someone else twist your own words, adding colorful touches — in very bad taste — to the world you’d made?
    No room in the castle for him now as court poet, no chest full of fine clothes, no horse of his own — no, he was back in the little room in Minerva’s attic. And it was a marvel that she’d taken him in again, considering that his words and songs had made sure she had no husband now, and no father for her children. All Ombra knew what part Fenoglio had played in Cosimo’s war. It was amazing they hadn’t hauled him out of bed yet and killed him, but no doubt the women of Ombra had their hands too full keeping starvation at bay. "Where else would you go?" was all Minerva had said when she opened her door to find him standing there. "They don’t need a poet up at the castle now. I suppose they’ll be singing the Piper’s songs in future." And there, of course, she was right. The Milksop loved the silver-nosed man’s bloodthirsty verses — when he wasn’t composing a few poorly rhymed lines himself, all about his hunting prowess.

    Luckily, at least Violante sent for Fenoglio now and then, never guessing, of course, that he brought her words stolen from poets in another world. But Her Ugliness didn’t pay particularly well. The Adderhead’s own daughter was poorer than the new governor’s court ladies, so Fenoglio also worked as a scribe in the marketplace, which naturally had Rosenquartz telling anyone who would listen how low his master had sunk. But who paid any attention to a glass man’s chirping little voice?
    Let the silly transparent fellow talk! Fenoglio had forsworn words forever, no matter how