“It’s very noble,” Molly said. She felt relieved that the prince was giving up his courtship, and amused as well, and somewhat sad. “Girls like poems better than dead dragons and magic swords,” she offered. “I always did, anyway, when I was a girl. The reason I ran off with Cully—”

But Prince Lír interrupted her, saying firmly, “No, do not give me hope. I must learn to live without hope, as my father does, and perhaps we will understand each other at last.” He dug into his pockets, and Molly heard paper crackling. “Actually, I’ve already written a few poems about it‌—‌hope and her, and so on. You might look them over if you wanted to.”

“I’d be very pleased,” Molly said. “But will you never go out again, then, to fight with black knights and ride through rings of fire?” The words were meant teasingly, but she found as she spoke that she would have been a little sorry if it were so, for his adventures had made him much handsomer and taken off a lot of weight, and given him, besides, a hint of the musky fragrance of death that clings to all heroes. But the prince shook his head, looking almost embarrassed.

“Oh, I suppose I’ll keep my hand in,” he muttered. “But it wouldn’t be for the show of it, or for her to find out. It was like that at first, but you get into the habit of rescuing people, breaking enchantments, challenging the wicked duke in fair combat‌—‌it’s hard to give up being a hero, once you get used to it. Do you like the first poem?”

“It certainly has a lot of feeling,” she said. “Can you really rhyme ‘bloomed’ and ‘ruined’?”

“It needs a bit of smoothing out,” Prince Lír admitted. “‘Miracle’ is the word I’m worried about.”

“I was wondering about ‘grackle’ myself.”

“No, the spelling. Is it one r and two ls, or the other way round?”

“One r, anyway, I think,” Molly said. “Schmendrick”‌—‌for the magician had just stooped through the doorway—”how many rs in ‘miracle’?”

“Two,” he answered wearily. “It has the same root as ‘mirror.’” Molly ladled him out a bowl of broth, and he sat down at the table. His eyes were hard and cloudy as jade, and one of the lids was twitching.

“I can’t do this very much longer,” he said slowly. “It isn’t this horrible place and it isn’t having to be listening for him all the time‌—‌I’m getting rather good at that‌—‌it’s the wretched cheapjack flummery he has me perform for him, hours on end‌—‌all night last night. I wouldn’t mind if he asked for the real magic, or even for simple conjuring, but it’s always the rings and the goldfish, the cards and the scarves and the string, exactly as it was in the Midnight Carnival. I can’t do it. Not much more.”

“But that was what he wanted you for,” Molly protested. “If he wanted real magic, he’d have kept the old magician, that Mabruk.” Schmendrick raised his head and gave her a look that was almost amused. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said. “Besides it’s only for a little while, until we find the way to the Red Bull that the cat told me about.”