William Alexander - Goblin Secrets

Thomas went on. “If we hear the slightest rumors about unChanged actors, we will of course find you immediately.”

Rownie took a breath. He had been holding it. He hadn’t noticed. He wouldn’t have to run. The old goblin wasn’t about to turn him in.

“Do so,” said the Captain. “I have further business here, but my officers will happily escort you to a proscribed area at this time.”

“Certainly, sir,” said Thomas, with politeness and courtesy. “Certainly.”

The Guard-boots made precise turns, and surrounded them. Rownie heard Thomas climb up into the driving seat. A gearworked mule unfolded itself at the front of the wagon. Rownie could see coal glowing red in its belly.

They use coal , he thought, horrified.

The mule began to trot. Rownie’s hiding place was moving, and now he had nowhere to go. There were Guard-boots in every direction he looked.

A hatch opened in the wagon floor above him. Several pairs of hands reached down, caught him, and pulled him inside.

GEARWORKS CLANKED. Wooden wheels clacked. The wagon lurched forward, and the hatch in the floor fell shut. Rownie rolled away from the hatch and the grasping hands. They let go of him.

He looked up. The first thing he saw was the dragon.

The fire-breathing puppet hung down from ropes tied to the ceiling, and it pitched as the wagon moved along uneven streets. The wheels went over a bump, and the dragon lurched down at Rownie, as though trying to bite his face. Lantern light glinted on sharp, brass teeth.

He knew it was a puppet. He could see that most of it was plaster and paper on a wooden frame. But he couldn’t help flattening himself against the floor and throwing up his arms around his face.

He lowered his hands when nothing happened. The dragon puppet swayed above him. That was all it did.

Four goblins also stood above him.

One was the tall, bald goblin who had juggled fire. He looked at Rownie like he couldn’t quite decide what Rownie was. Another wore rough clothes stained with grease and sawdust. She had long, dark hair pulled behind her head and tied with a string—though most of it had escaped the string. The third was the one who had carried a pile of costumes through the rain a few moments ago, and wore more than one set of costumes herself. She had spiky hair. She gave a little wave with one hand.

The fourth was Semele, who had offered him tea underneath the stage, and offered him welcome.

All of them had pointed ears and very large eyes—though Semele squinted with her large eyes through small spectacles. Their faces were freckled with greens and browns.

“Hello, Rownie,” said Semele. “I am glad that you found us again, yes.”

Rownie was not entirely glad that he had found them again. He felt nervous and unsettled. He sat up, and looked around, and was not reassured. Props and masks and musical instruments rattled in crates and made strange noises as they knocked against each other. Lantern light cast oddly shaped shadows, and the shadows rocked back and forth as the wagon moved. Everything around him was unsettling. It smelled like old clothes and paper.

“Hello,” Rownie said, quietly and cautiously.

The tall, bald goblin said nothing. The one with the work-stained clothes also said nothing.

“They never say anything,” said the goblin with spiky hair. Her voice was high, and her words jumped around like grasshoppers. “Patch never says very much, anyway. He’s Patch. The tall one. She’s Nonny. She really doesn’t ever say anything. I’m Essa. We shared a stage last night, when I played Jack and you were trying to keep a giant mask from slipping off your head.”

Rownie meant to protest that the giant mask had been in no danger at all of slipping off his head, and that he had worn it very well, thank you—but instead he said something else.

“You use coal.” He did not mean to say that, but it bothered him enough to make his mouth say it without permission. He knew what made automatons move. He knew where coal came from. “The gearworked mule runs on coal.”

“Fish-heart coal!” Essa protested. “We only use fish hearts to make Horace go. It takes several dozen to get a decent blaze going, but the fishmongers down by the docks sell them in bulk, and they work almost as well as the stuff made out of . . . larger hearts.”

“Really?” Rownie asked. He didn’t know fish hearts were flammable.

“Really,” said Essa.

“Who’s Horace?” Rownie asked.

“Horace is the mule,” Essa told him.

“It is?” Patch asked. Nonny also looked confused. This was clearly news to them as well.

“Yes,” Essa said. “I named it today. It needs a name, and I think it looks like a Horace.”

Semele shushed everyone. “I am thinking that we should speak softly now. The Guard are marching alongside us, and the walls are not thick. Please sit down, yes.”

Everyone sat down, except for Rownie, who was already sitting on the floor.

Patch stared at the wall in a dour and gloomy sort of way, as though he expected the Guard to arrest them regardless of what they said or did.

Nonny sat on a crate and patiently began to fold a piece of paper into different shapes. She made it crane-shaped, and then lizard-shaped, and then gear-shaped. Rownie recognized the writing on the paper. It was a copy of the notice advertising Tamlin Theatre, the one he had seen on the bridge.

Essa sat down, started fidgeting, stood up again, and climbed one of the cabinets nailed to the wagon wall. There she hung upside down by her knees and hummed a tune to herself.

Semele took off her spectacles, wiped them with a rag, and put them on again.

The wagon stopped. Essa stopped humming. Everyone listened.

Outside, Thomas shouted something brief.

“Is he calling for help?” Essa whispered. It was a very loud whisper. “I think maybe he just called for help.” She reached into an open crate and carefully unsheathed a stage sword. “I couldn’t really hear him, though. He might have said ‘Bang, fallen dromedary.’ It kind of sounded like that. What sort of signal do you think that is?”

“I do not think he spoke of dromedaries,” said Semele. “I am thinking that he said ‘The Changed call for sanctuary,’ which signifies that we are at the litchfield gates.”

Essa groaned. Patch sighed. Nonny folded the piece of paper into a mask shape.

“Do we really need to sleep in the litchfield?” Essa asked. “The best thing about coming home to Zombay is having a better place to stay than litchfields or crossroads or crossroads inside litchfields.”

Semele shook her head. “The Guard marched us here,” she said. “It is not safe to go home and show them where home is.”

Rownie understood very little of the conversation, though he listened carefully. He sifted words through his head like fine dust through his hands, and he caught what he could. As the youngest he was used to piecing together his understanding from snatches of overheard conversations, and the rest he set carefully aside on the shelf in the back of his mind.

Metal shrieked against metal somewhere outside. Rownie didn’t know what the noise was. He didn’t think it was Graba’s leg. He didn’t think so. It sounded like a gate fighting against its own hinges.

The wagon started up again, and this time there was no sound of accompanying Guard-boots. It rode over an even rougher surface than the Southside streets, and everyone inside braced themselves against the walls and floor. They went over an especially violent bump, and Rownie bit the tip of his tongue when the impact knocked his teeth together. It hurt, but he didn’t cry out. He tensed up his face with the effort of not crying out.