But in the name of the most holy, Mosca, of all the people you could have taken up with, why Eponymous Clent?"

Because I’d been hoarding words for years, buying them from pedlars and carving them secretly on to bits of bark so I wouldn’t forget them, and then he turned up using words like ‘epiphany’ and ‘amaranth’. Because I heard him talking in the marketplace, laying out sentences like a merchant rolling out rich silks. Because he made words and ideas dance like flames and something that was damp and dying came alive in my mind, the way it hadn’t since they burned my father’s books. Because he walked into Chough with stories from exciting places tangled around him like maypole streamers . . .

Mosca shrugged. "He’s got a way with words.

Auteur: Frances Hardinge