William Alexander - Goblin Secrets

“Why are so many of them after you ?” Rownie asked. The words came out of him in a wheeze—his halberd was unwieldy, and his arms were starting to hurt. “Have you played them all?”

“No,” said Semele. “I wrote them all, and many I have also carved.”

Rownie swung at two long-nosed masks given bodies by this commendable curse—and then he remembered how the curse had been made and delivered. It’s a present of welcoming home , Graba had said to Vass when she gave her the errand.

“I know whose curse this is,” he said.

“So do I, yes,” said Semele. A pigeon perched above them, on the workings of the clock. Semele spoke to it. “I see you there,” she called. “I see you wearing the bird, as you wear the grubby children of your household.”

The pigeon flapped its wings, and hooted.

Semele crossed her arms and sniffed. She did not seem concerned. “Child-thief? You do not care much for your charges while you have them—only when they are taken from you, when anything is taken from you. And you might have come yourself, yes. You send a sending instead, hiding inside birds and bullying us with our own masks. You might have come yourself to face me.”

The pigeon gave an unpigeonlike shriek, and dove down at Semele.

“I do not have time for you,” said Semele. “I did not come home to Zombay for you.” She waved one hand, dismissing the bird. It flew away upward, shrieking, and vanished among the highest pieces of interlocking clockworks.

Rownie didn’t have time to be impressed. The mask revenants massed together into a silent crowd of bright colors and grotesque shapes, and they came for Semele. Some of the masks were hinged at the mouths and eyelids. These opened wide their eyes and gnashed their teeth. Semele sent most of them back with charms, and Rownie fought with the rest. He poked his halberd up at a ghoulish false face.

“I can break this curse,” Rownie said, just as soon as he could pause and spare the breath. “I know where it is.” He knew where Vass had put it.

“Then go,” Semele told him. “I will hold them off, yes, while you go.”

Rownie went.

IT WAS NOT EASY TO HURRY with a halberd. Rownie stumbled, and almost fell over. He realized that he might lose an arm or a leg or a head if he did fall. The ax at the end of the pole was very sharp. He dropped the thing with a clatter and a crash, leaving it behind, even though many embodied masks stood between him and the staircase. There were too many to fight. He dodged instead. He tried not to be dazzled or distracted by the sudden movements of dancing and fighting and bold colors and swirling shapes in all corners of his vision. He made for the stairs, reached them, and went down.

It was dark in the stables, with Horace all folded up and hiding the coal-glow. Rownie felt his way along the wall, found the door, and undid the latch. He went out into the fog. He went through the alley and up the stone steps to the front doors of the Clock Tower. The doors were sealed and shut. The chains had long ago rusted together, and could not be unlocked.

Tied among these thick and thickly rusting chains, Rownie found a leather bag. Smoke poured out of it, of a darker shade than the fog. He didn’t want to touch it. He wished that he had kept the halberd, so he could poke at the thing from a distance or at least carry it away on the end of a long pole. But he didn’t have a halberd. He only had his hands.

Rownie took a deep breath, took the curse bag with both hands, and ripped it away from the Clock Tower doors.

He expected the thing to be hot and burning. It wasn’t. The curse bag was cold, and the cold burned him.

He turned around and looked for the nearest space between buildings where he could toss the bag down and into the River—flowing water was the very best way to wash off a curse—and then he stopped.

The fox mask stood before him, directly before him. It wore a fine suit, with leather gloves and leather boots. The fox nodded, polite, a gentleman’s greeting.

It did not attack him. It did not peel away its own fox face to mask Rownie with. It did not come any closer. Instead the fox stood aside, and gestured with one gloved paw.

Rownie went cautiously in that direction. He crossed the street, holding the curse bag as though it were an egg or a fallen, fledgling bird. The coldness of it hurt. It seeped into the bones of his fingers and made his hands feel as though they were no longer his.

The fox followed him.

Together they went down an alleyway on the downstream side, farther away from the Clock Tower. Rownie reached over the edge of the low stone wall and dropped the curse bag. It fell into the fog, and into the River, and was gone. Rownie hoped that the River didn’t mind. He rubbed his hands together to chase away the cold, and they started to feel like they belonged to him again.

“Thanks,” he said to the fox—but the fox was not there. The empty mask lay faceup on the stones beside him. Rownie picked it up. He wore it around his neck by the string, without putting it on.

Back inside the Clock Tower, many masks lay scattered on the floor. Rownie glanced at the upstream clock face, and saw that the moon was setting. Night was ending. The morning would be here soon.

He found the rest of the troupe where they had taken refuge among the bookshelves.

“Well done, Rownie,” Semele said.

“Yes, very well done,” said Thomas, poking cautiously at a fallen mask with his cane-sword. “I am curious to know what it is you actually did, of course, but I can wait.”

Essa set her halberd aside and picked up the mask with the excellent eyebrows. “That was very strange,” she said. “I got a little bit in character whenever one of my masks came close to me, and that made it really hard to fight when they were the weepy sorts of characters who made me feel like swooning.”

“Whereas I remain filled to the very brim of my hat with tragic intensity,” said Thomas. “Excuse me, please.” The old goblin left for some other part of the tower.

“Best we not disturb him for a good long while,” said Semele. “We should put these masks back where they belong, and perhaps chain them in place . . . but the task can wait for morning, yes. It will require care. Some of them should only be handled with the left hand, and we will first have to gather many lengths of short, stout chain. We should wait, to be sure of doing it properly. To bed now, yes.”

The troupe stumbled toward several small bunks near the pantry shelves. Rownie went with them. He found a bed of his own. He took off his coat, because the bed already had blankets. Both his folded coat and the fox mask he stashed underneath the bunk.

Rownie was tired beyond tired, but he did not sleep. Not yet. His thoughts spun like the workings at the center of the Clock Tower—always moving, always turning, never still.

He wondered what Graba might know about Rowan and his whereabouts, what sort of hints and inklings she might have. He wondered how he could possibly get her to tell him what she knew. Graba did not share, but she did bargain , and Rownie had gone on many market errands for her. He knew how to bargain. To offer a deal he needed to have something Graba wanted—and he had one thing that she did.

He made a choice, and after that he slept.

MORNING LIGHT CREPT THROUGH the downstream clock face. A stained-glass sun ticked upward from the very edge of a glass horizon.