At the bench Howl worked a good deal harder and faster than Michael, putting spells together in an expert but slapdash way. From the look on Michael’s face, most of the spells were both unusual and hard to do. But Howl would leave a spell midway and dash up to his bedroom to look after something hidden—and no doubt sinister—going on up there, and then shortly race out into the yard to tinker with a large spell out there. Sophie opened the door a crack and was rather amazed to see the elegant wizard kneeling in the mud with his long sleeves tied together behind his neck to keep them out of the way while he carefully heaved a tangle of greasy metal into a special framework of some kind.

That spell was for the King. Another overdressed and scented messenger arrived with a letter and a long, long speech in which he wondered if Howl could possibly spare time, no doubt valuably employed in other ways, to bend his powerful and ingenious mind to a small problem experienced by His Royal Majesty—to whit, how an army might get its heavy wagons through marsh and rough ground. Howl was wonderfully polite and long-winded in reply. He said no. But the messenger spoke for a further half-hour, at the end of which he and Howl bowed to one another and Howl agreed to do the spell.

“This is a bit ominous,” Howl said to Michael when the messenger had gone. “What did Suliman have to get himself lost in the Waste for? The King seems to think I’ll do instead.”

“He wasn’t as inventive as you, by all accounts,” Michael said.

“I’m too patient and too polite,” Howl said gloomily. “I should have overcharged him even more.”

Howl was equally patient and polite with customers from Porthaven, but, as Michael anxiously pointed out, the trouble was that Howl did not charge these people enough. This was after Howl had listened for an hour to the reasons why a seaman’s wife could not pay him a penny yet, and then promised a sea captain a wind spell for almost nothing. Howl eluded Michael’s arguments by giving him a magic lesson.

Sophie sewed buttons on Michael’s shirts and listened to Howl going through a spell with Michael. “I know I’m slapdash,” he was saying, “but there’s no need for you to copy me. Always read it right through, carefully, first. The shape of it should tell you a lot, whether it’s self-fulfilling, or self-discovering, or simple incantation, or mixed action and speech. When you’ve decided that, go through again and decide which bits mean what they say and which bits are put as a puzzle. You’re getting on to the more powerful kinds now. You’ll find every spell of power has at least one deliberate mistake or mystery in it to prevent accidents. You have to spot those. Now take this spell …”

Listening to Michael’s halting replies to Howl’s questions, and watching Howl scribble remarks on the paper with a strange, everlasting quill pen, Sophie realized that she could learn a lot too. It dawned on her that if Martha could discover the spell to swap herself and Lettie about at Mrs. Fairfax’s, then she ought to be able to do the same here. With a bit of luck, there might be no need to rely on Calcifer.