Septimus Heap 4 : Queste(26)

Ephaniah Grebe nodded and squeaked something. Then he pushed his thick bottle-glass spectacles up onto the top of his head. Beneath the spectacles, Jenna saw a pair of sparkling, decidedly human, green eyes and she relaxed. Beetle began to apologize once more but Ephaniah Grebe held up his hand to stop him, wriggled off his stool and bowed deeply to Jenna. Then he took a long silver box from his pocket.

Inside the box was an index of hundreds of small white cards. Ephaniah Grebe leafed swiftly through it, took a card and laid it on the table. He beckoned Jenna and Beetle forward and pointed to a well-thumbed card. It said: DO NOT BE

AFRAID. I AM HUMAN.

“Oh. What…happened?” asked Jenna.

Another, equally well-thumbed card took its place: PERMANENT RAT HEX. AMBUSHED AGE 14 BY DARKE

HEX DIARY AND DARKE RAT REBUS IN WILD BOOK STORE.

Beetle gulped. He had never asked what had befallen Ephaniah, but he wasn’t surprised. He had always wondered what would happen if two Darke books got together and ganged up on him.

Another card: WITCH MOTHER MORWENNA SAVED ME. NOW PARTIAL HEX ONLY. He held out his hands, which were human—although Jenna thought the nails looked strangely long and thin, a little like rat claws.

Beetle realized he had not introduced Jenna. “Ephaniah,” he said, “this is Princess Jenna.”

Ephaniah Grebe bowed and, after some frantic leafing through the index, he placed an unused, pristine white card on the table: WELCOME, YOUR MAJESTY.

It was followed by another, well-thumbed card: WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?

In answer, Beetle laid his roll of silk on the table and unrolled it. He groaned, horrified at the sodden mash of paper that lay in its folds. He realized that he had been so busy comforting Jenna that he had not really taken in the enormous damage caused by not only the collision, but also the water. The ink had run, most of the pencil markings were rubbed off, and many of the fragile pieces were now stuck together. It reminded Beetle of the papier-mâché mix he used to play with at his nursery school.

Ephaniah Grebe made a long aaaah

kind of sound, more like a concerned sheep than a rat, Beetle thought. The Conservation Scribe pulled his bottle-glass spectacles back down onto his long nose and peered at the disaster. Soon another card was placed on the table: WHAT

IS IT?

And so Beetle explained as best he could what it was and how the papers had come to be in such a bad state. While he was speaking Jenna looked more and more agitated until she burst out, “Please, Mr. Grebe. Say you can put them all back together again. Please.”

Another card on the table: IT IS DIFFICULT.

Then, seeing Jenna’s face fall, another: NOT IMPOSSIBLE.

“Those pieces of paper are my only chance of ever seeing my brother again,” said Jenna simply.

Ephaniah Grebe’s eyebrows were raised in surprise and he put his head to one side in a way that reminded Jenna—rather comfortingly—of Stanley. He reached for a pad and a pencil and wrote: I will do my utmost. I promise.

“Thank you, Mr. Grebe,” said Jenna. “Thank you!”

They left Ephaniah Grebe poking at the sodden mess with a pair of tweezers. As they left the cellar, Jenna turned back for a last look at the precious fragments—and nearly screamed once more. Snaking out from under Ephaniah Grebe’s voluminous white robes was a long, giant pink rat’s tail.

Beetle was heading fast through the cellars. “We’ve gotta run,” he said as Jenna caught up with him. “Miss Djinn will be out any minute now.” Jenna nodded. Together they raced back through the cellars, shot up the stairs—and were just in time to see a smiling Jillie Djinn emerging from the interview room, followed by a grinning Merrin Meredith.

The Chief Hermetic Scribe’s smile faded as she saw Beetle emerge at the back of the Manuscriptorium. “What are you doing away from your post again?” she demanded. And then, noticing Jenna, a little irritably, “Good afternoon, Princess Jenna. We are honored to see you so very many times in one day. Can I help you?”

“No, thank you, Miss Djinn,” Jenna replied in her Princess voice. “Your Inspection Clerk, Beetle, has already been most helpful. We are sorry to have kept him from his post. Naturally, Beetle ensured that it was not left unattended. We will take our leave now, as we have important business to attend to.”

“Ah,” said Jillie Djinn, feeling somehow wrong-footed once more, but not sure why. She gave a small half bow and watched the nearest scribe to the door jump down from his stool and hold the door open for Jenna, who swept out in the manner of Marcia Overstrand. Jillie Djinn turned to Beetle. “In that case, Beetle, now that the Princess no longer requires your services you can spend the rest of the afternoon showing our new trainee scribe the ropes.”

“What?” gasped Beetle.

From behind the voluminous blue silk robes of his new boss, Merrin Meredith made a rude sign at Beetle. Beetle very nearly returned it but stopped himself just in time.

“B—but he hasn’t taken the exams yet,” Beetle could not help protesting.

“It is not your place, Mr. Beetle, to suggest the criteria I apply when appointing my scribes,” Jillie Djinn replied icily.

“You

may well have needed to take the Manuscriptorium examinations, but Daniel has shown enough knowledge to convince me that the examinations would serve no purpose whatsoever in the selection process. Now, I would be grateful if you would do as I have requested and take our new scribe on his induction tour. You have one hour and thirty-three minutes.

I suggest you make a start. I shall leave it to your own initiative to decide where.”

Beetle grinned. He knew exactly where he would make a start—the Wild Book Store.





20


REUNITE

T hat evening another gale came

in from the Port. It howled up the river, whisking slates off roofs and making everyone irritable and edgy.

Septimus was marooned in the Wizard Tower under the eagle eye of Marcia Overstrand. He was beginning the complicated preparations for his first Projection, which was an important milestone in an Apprentice’s studies. A first Projection traditionally involved the Apprentice choosing a small domestic item and then trying to Project a realistic image of this object inside the communal areas of the Tower in the hope that it was believable enough to pass for the real thing. All Projections

were mirror images of the original but, providing the Apprentice was careful not to choose something with lettering on it, this did not usually matter. Sometimes a seemingly innocuous “broom” would be propped up in a dark corner, a small

“ornament” would sit high up on an inaccessible window ledge or a new “cloak” would hang in the closet. Throughout the time of the first Projection, an air of excitement would pervade the Tower as the Wizards, busy pretending they were doing something entirely different, went around prodding all manner of suspicious objects—and taking bets on what exactly the Apprentice would Project.

With Septimus shut away in the Projection

room, Marcia made a start on removing the traces of Spit Fyre from the yard—or rather, she got Catchpole to do it for her. However, by that evening Catchpole had locked himself in the Old Spells cupboard and would not come out.

Exasperated, Marcia sent a message to Hildegarde, the sub-Wizard on door duty at the Palace, to come to the Wizard Tower straightaway.

Hildegarde arrived windswept and out of breath, having run all along Wizard Way, thrilled that at last she had received the summons to the Wizard Tower that she had long wished for. But instead of being offered a post as an Ordinary Wizard, Hildegarde was given a large broom and an even larger bucket. Hildegarde, determined as ever, rolled up her sleeves and got to work, telling herself sternly that any job at the Wizard Tower brought her one step nearer to her dream. The next morning Hildegarde was Terry Tarsal’s first customer. She bought a sturdy pair of waterproof boots.

With the eagle-eyed Hildegarde gone from the Palace, Merrin began to get cocky. He no longer crept along the corridors but walked with a swagger. Twice he nearly bumped into Jenna coming unexpectedly around a corner. The second time he was tempted to walk past her and see if she noticed, but at the last moment he thought better of it and hid behind a curtain.

Jenna may well not have noticed Merrin even if he had walked past her. She was too preoccupied thinking about Nicko and the map. Unable to keep away from the Manuscriptorium, she stopped by to see Beetle at least twice a day. Beetle had mixed feelings about this. He loved to see her but every time the door went ping—or rather, pi-ing, in the particular way he was convinced it did only when pushed by Jenna—he braced himself to tell her that there was no news from Ephaniah Grebe. But on the third day that Jenna came by, Beetle did have news—and it was not good.

It was late in the afternoon and the dark clouds made it feel even later. Beetle had just lit a candle and placed it on his desk. He was getting ready to do the last round of the day—the LockingUp round—when pi-ing, the door flew open and Jenna was blown in. She pushed the door closed, pulled her windswept hair from out of her eyes, jammed her gold circlet securely down on her head and, with an anxious look, said, “Any news?”

Beetle had been dreading this moment. “Well, yes…but, um, not good news, I’m afraid. This note was on my desk this morning.”