Grizelda (17 page)

Actually, she really did break her exile, but
she wasn’t going to go into that just yet.

“Grizelda! What were you doing? That’s not
safe!”

She was pretty sure she was going to get a
headache. “Honestly, Geddy, I won’t do it again. I was trying to
get away from the riot, and then there was this strange boy … I
don’t really want to talk about it, not here.” She rubbed her head
again.

“I’ll help.”

Kricker was sitting forward earnestly.
Grizelda and Geddy both looked at him in astonishment.

“When you’re out walking, I’ll shadow you on
my rat.” He was looking more serious now than Grizelda could ever
recall seeing him.

Ordinarily, it would have been amusing to
think that Kricker, who was about six inches tall, was going to
provide her an armed guard. Yet with everything that was going on,
the idea was sounding really attractive to her.
“Kricker, I think I’ll take you up on that.”

That night, a strange sound woke Grizelda up,
something like a small, hard impact on the door of her room. She
lay, eyes open in the dark, waiting for it to come again. For a
while nothing happened.

Then,
tok!
There it was again.

She got up off her mattress, pulling the
covers back behind her, and opened the door. There was barely
enough light to see by in the corridor, just a weird glow from some
of the machines downstairs that had electric gauges that stayed on
all night. As far as she could tell, there was nobody there.

She stepped out into the corridor, treading
carefully so as not to wake Crome in the room across the way. Then
she found out what had been making that noise – with her foot. She
trod on a small stone in the dark, and as she was pulling back,
another one nipped her ankle. She hissed and clapped her hand over
it. A shape downstairs winced apologetically.

He’s not much of a murderer if he can’t
even hit me on purpose.
She crept the rest of the way
downstairs, and the figure that had been lurking there stepped into
the light of one of the machines. Mechanic Lenk.

“Look what you did!” she said, and pointed to
her ankle, where blood was starting to soak through the sock. “What
are you doing here? How did you get in? I sure hope this is
something important!”

The mechanic looked chagrined. “I’m so
sorry,” he said. “I was trying to wake you without waking the
Laundryman. I have something dreadfully important to tell you.”

She put her hands on her hips, still furious
at him. Lenk, who had just decided he was going to vote for Nelin
and not Chairman Grendel in the election. He had a lot of nerve
coming in here to tell her about anything! But the Mechanic looked
like he had just seen a ghost. By degrees her anger was replaced by
a terrible doubt.

“I just got back from … a Striker meeting.”
He put his hand up. “No, don’t, Grizelda, I don’t want to talk
about that right now. The thing is I heard something that the
goblins may not let you know about.”

He paused, as if getting himself ready for
what came next. “Good God, Grizelda, if Nelin gets elected in
January, he plans to have you retried and executed!”

The news made her stumble a little. She found
an even space on one of the machines and sat down.

Mechanic Lenk crouched by her, worried. “What
are you going to do about it?”

“Do about it?
I
can’t do anything
about it! I’m the ogre seamstress!” She looked up at him, feeling
suddenly helpless. “Mechanic, how can you be with them?”

“Well, if I leave now, they’re going to
know
something’s up!”

“You’ve got to help me, Lenk.”

“What can I do? I’m a scientist. I give
people advice. I can’t get involved in this sort of thing.”

“Are you afraid that you won’t be safe? That
Nelin and his gang will go after you, too?”

“That’s not it at all,” he said, with a look
that meant that was exactly it. “Really, Grizelda, my hands are
tied. Doing something now would be disastrous. It wouldn’t
help.”

“Do something?” Grizelda glared at him.
“Mechanic, how have the ratrider attacks been the last few
days?”

He was confused. “There’s … hardly been
anything for days. But what does that have to do with–”

“You figure out why,” Grizelda said. “Now go
away.”

Mr. Bavar had been ill at ease ever since he
had received the letter with the hammer, scroll, and sword seal on
it. Industry, scholarship, and unity. The post was banned to
goblins, but the goblin-king, or chairman, or whatever they were
calling them these days, had his channels. Bavar, of all people,
should know that.

He’d found it in his desk when he sat down to
work that morning in the Warden’s office. Afraid to open it up and
read it when Mr. Mant might come walking in any moment, he stuffed
it into the inside pocket of his vest and spent most of the day
carrying it around that way. That night, he waited until Marissa
was asleep, then crept out of their little bedroom and took the
letter to the kitchen. He lit a lamp, then turned it down low
enough that it gave out barely enough light to read by.

Dear Mr. Lars Bavar:

It has come to my attention that the
political situation topside is deteriorating again. Even at the
best of times the Union has not gotten along with the present
government as well as we had with the Aukish monarchy, but
conditions now are looking serious. In these uncertain times, I
thought it was appropriate to remind you of our agreement.

How could Bavar forget? He thought about it
every day. He’d been a stripling of an office clerk at twenty-one,
barely out of school, barely able to make enough money to survive.
He’d had no credentials whatsoever. When the secretary job opened
up at Promontory, the offer of a forged letter of recommendation
was too good to pass up.

In return, he would have to do the
goblin-king a favor some day; the time or the place was
unspecified. Whenever or wherever Grendel chose to call it in.

The time may be coming soon for you to hold
up your end of the bargain.

Chairman Grendel

The People’s Goblin Union of Lonnes

Bavar realized his hands were shaking.
Carefully he fed the letter to the lantern until nothing was left.
Then he put out the light.

Chapter 16

It started with a pickpocket. A street urchin
materialized out of an alley somewhere at the juncture between
Liberty District and South District. He was a boy of about eleven,
with dirty clothes and black hair that stuck up every which-a-way.
He slid up to a well-to-do lady walking alone and bumped into
her.

“Sorry,” he muttered, and ran off.

The lady started screaming at the top of her
lungs. She didn’t run after the boy, she just pointed at him and
screamed. Soon the people around her saw what was wrong – the boy,
picking up speed now, had a purse clutched in his hand.

Joey Phillips was a new gendarme recruit,
barely out of training and eager to prove himself. He had a head
full of patriotic ideas about the new Republic and his gun rested
awkwardly in his hands. He still got pimples. He’d been pretending
to lean casually against a wall on the corner where he was
stationed, keeping an eye on the citizens. When he heard the
screaming, he shouted in what he hoped was an authoritative way and
ran in pursuit.

The urchin looked back, but only for an
instant. He was flying down the street. But Joey, with his longer
legs, was catching up to him. In a crash, he had the boy against a
wall and was wrestling with him, trying to get him pinioned. The
boy was stronger than he looked, and it was a hard fight. He tried
to buck the gendarme and doubled over.
Snick!
Out of
nowhere, there was a knife in the kid’s hand, six inches long and
wicked.

Joey panicked. The gun was fired before he
even thought about it. The boy jerked, then slid limply out of his
arms.

Joey looked up and realized that a crowd of
citizens had gathered around them.

“Sir?”

The gendarme who stepped into Mant’s office
looked pale. Mant recognized him – it was that guy Whatshisname,
the one who had first discovered the missing prisoner. Could it
really have been only a week or so ago? Instead of risking using
the wrong name on the man, Mant made a gesture that meant he had
permission to speak.

“It’s one of our own, sir. He’s been torn to
pieces by a mob.”

Mant spilled his coffee. “What? When did this
happen?”

“It was a new recruit by the name of
Phillips. He was on patrol in the South District area. We can’t get
a straight answer from the citizens why they did it.”

“Literally torn to pieces?”

The gendarme looked like one trapped in a
nightmare. “No, sir. One of the citizens in the crowd was a
cobbler. He … went back home and … got his tools …” He stopped,
unable to continue.

Mant waited for the man to compose
himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “He– I knew
Phillips.”

Anderson. That was his name.

“Anderson,” said Mant. “Maybe you should take
the rest of the day off.”

Anderson nodded, silent. Then something
occurred to Mant.

“Wait. Before you go, tell Lieutenant Calding
to come in here.”

When Calding came in, Mant asked the
secretary Bavar to leave. His secretary, who had been oddly
preoccupied today, got up and left the room without saying a word.
As soon as they were alone Mant turned his attention to the
lieutenant.

“I don’t know, Mr. Calding, if you’ve heard
about the killing yet. It was one of our own.”

“I – no, sir. I didn’t.” As usual, Mant had
to wonder whether the look of surprise on the lieutenant’s face was
feigned or real.

“I don’t know all the details yet. I don’t
need to tell you that this has serious implications for the prison.
The timing could not be worse, with the Committee of Public Safety
coming in for its annual evaluation the day after tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.” There was a question in Calding’s
eyes, but he was acting too polite to ask it.

Damn, the man was good at his job. So
organized. Terrific actor. That was what had Mant worried.

Time for the hard part, now. “I need to know
I have your full support in this,” Mant said.

The faintest intake of breath, stifled shock.
“Warden, you’re my ranking officer–”

“I know,” Mant said. “Probably you’re
wholeheartedly in support of the way I run this prison. If you are,
everything’s fine. But whatever it is you privately think, I need
you to have my back these next few weeks.”

“Of course, sir.”

Mant could only hope he was serious.

A red band. A red band on Laundryman Crome.
Grizelda rubbed her eyes, thinking somehow they were failing her.
She’d just gotten up, bleary from her middle-of-the-night
conference with the Mechanic, and on the stairs she’d caught sight
of Crome, who was already up and about. The red band hung slackly
around his bad arm. When he saw her looking at him he turned
defensively.

“I know what you’re about to say, and don’t
you even think about it!” he warned her.

Well, she sure didn’t know what she was about
to say. She decided she didn’t want to deal with it right then.

But what she saw on the streets made her wake
up quickly. All the goblins, not just the Strikers now, had bands.
The ones who didn’t have green ones yesterday were wearing red ones
today. It was like a bizarre Christmas parade, though somehow
Grizelda didn’t see goblins getting into the Christmas spirit. More
important, all the goblins, both red and green, seemed to be taking
greater interest in her than before. Instead of shunning her as
usual, they watched her keenly, as if to see what her next move
would be. Some even made half-joking attempts to follow her. She
quickened her pace to the cafeteria.

But her vexation did not stop there. The
goblin equivalent of a titter went up as she entered the room.
Heads turned.

Here we go again.

Before she had gotten more than a few paces
inside, someone tapped her on the shoulder.

“We want to know where your band is,” said
the goblin. She noticed he was one of the green-banded ones. “We
thought you were a Loyalist.”

“Oh, is that what they mean?” She tried to
push past him to the oatmeal line, but another green-banded goblin
caught her by the shoulder.

“You haven’t answered our question yet. Why
don’t you get a red band for the ogre-loving Chairman?”

“I don’t want a stupid band!”

“Ooh.” The two goblins looked at each other
meaningfully. They were a couple of Nelin’s cronies, clearly. Bunch
of scumbags.

“Don’t tell me you’re a Striker,” the first
one said.

“An ogre Striker!” There were several
snickers from the crowd. Everybody in the cafeteria was watching
her now.

“Girl, if you had any idea what Nelin had in
store for you–”

All at once she curled her lip and snarled at
them. They stumbled back, a little surprised at her ferocity. A
change went through the air, as if the goblins eating breakfast
realized for the first time that she stood head and shoulders
taller than anybody else in the room. With a new-found timidity,
the two Strikers allowed her to pass.

That day was difficult for Grizelda. After a
few hours, the goblins got over their fear of her somewhat and
started following her around, clawing at the air and making
snarling noises at her. When she fixed them with a hard look, they
would usually stop. She had almost preferred it when they ignored
her. It was some consolation when she saw Lenk walking glumly by at
lunchtime with no band at all, but not much.

So Lenk didn’t have the guts to stand up for
her. All right. She was tired of lying here hiding with the
goblins.
She
was going to do something.