William Alexander - Goblin Secrets

“Yes, sir,” said Vass. “It is.” She looked at Rownie. There was something new in her face. “Graba hates rivals,” she said. “She hates them. I’ll have to leave Southside anyway, someday, just as soon as I learn enough witchwork from her. There used to be lots of witchworkers in Southside, but now there’s only her. She makes certain that there’s only ever her.” The glass-seeming surface of her voice cracked. She spoke as though she wanted Rownie to understand. “I need somewhere else to go. I’ll go north. The Mayor already promised me a house of my own. A grand house. I won’t have to sleep on straw. I won’t have to climb through windows. I won’t have to run errands for Graba, not ever again. All I had to do for it was tell the Mayor about you.”

“So you see,” said the Mayor, turning to address Rownie directly, “it would be best to avoid the southern half of the city until after the floods have come and gone, and obviously the bridge cannot grant sanctuary in this case. In the meantime I offer you employment and a place in my household. It is a great honor to serve as a member of the Lord Mayor’s Troupe. They have their own stage in my house, you know, and it is far more grand than that little goblin platform you walked on recently. Do you understand what an honor this is?”

Rownie started laughing. He couldn’t help it. He tried not to, and that set off a rapid cascade of hiccups.

The Mayor’s smile slipped a little. He took a few more bites of goose. Vass stared at Rownie as though he had turned into some sort of fish. The three actors continued their pantomime without noticing anything else.

“I do understand,” Rownie said, between hiccups. “You want it to happen. You want Southside to drown, so you can make it like Northside, and just another part of Northside. You arrested everybody who ever wore a mask—even me—to make sure Southside will drown.”

The Mayor struck Rownie with one ring-covered hand. It hurt.

“I speak for this city, child,” he said. His voice was cold. “I do. No one is going to wear a piece of plaster and pretend to speak for Zombay. No one is going to negotiate on behalf of Zombay—not to armies or to diplomats or to the River itself—unless I appoint them to do so. That is my office. I will uphold it, and you will show proper respect. Do not pretend to be other than you are.”

“What am I, then?” Rownie asked. It was an honest question.

The Mayor did not answer, and Vass did not answer, because something smacked against the side of the railcar. The Mayor moved a red curtain away from one long window. Lantern light from inside the car illuminated the curved brick of the tunnel outside.

Birds flew through the tunnel, surrounding them, overtaking them. Pigeon wings knocked against the window’s glass.

The Mayor looked annoyed. Vass looked terrified. Her eyes were wide circles. “It’s her,” she said. “She’s coming for us. She won’t let us get across.”

“It’s only birds,” said the Mayor. But pigeons flew by in dozens and droves now. The railcar shuddered as they threw themselves between the wheels and the track.

Rownie should have been scared. He wasn’t. He stopped thinking about the birds, because the crowned mask of Northside had slipped from the lead actor’s face. That face was as familiar to Rownie as any could be.

The railcar shook and slid to a halt. The lights inside sputtered and went out.

“Rowan?” Rownie asked in the dark.

THE MAYOR SHOUTED SOMETHING. Rownie heard him, but he did not listen, and he did not notice what the Mayor said.

Vass chanted. A single lantern bloomed on the wall. She took it down. The Mayor gave orders to the Guard Captain, who drew his sword and used it to shatter a window. Rownie ignored them all. He stared at Rowan. Rowan stared at nothing. The loose strap of the mask was down around his neck. The mask itself sat empty over his chest. The play had been interrupted, and now none of the three players moved.

The Mayor put a chair under the broken window and ordered the Captain through. The Captain climbed through. He pulled Rownie behind him.

Rownie fought. He yelled. He put everything he had, and everything he had ever had, into pulling in the opposite direction. He shouted his brother’s name, which was his own name made tall, and Rowan went on staring at nothing in a calm and empty sort of way. Rownie went on fighting, but it did not matter. The sleeve of his dust-colored coat ripped as the Guard Captain pulled him through the empty space where the window used to be, out into the tunnel. The ground underfoot was thick with dead birds.

The Captain of the Guard called back to the Mayor and told him that the tunnel was empty, and that the wheels of the railcar were so caked with bird pieces that they could not be made to turn again. The only way back into Northside would be to walk there.

The Mayor climbed out the broken window. Vass went with him. She carried the single lantern she had spoken to.

By that lantern light, Rownie saw Graba.

Graba perched on her talons, on the railcar’s roof. She climbed down with one long step, followed by another. She loomed over them with her legs extended, until it seemed that the space of the tunnel was made out of Graba and only existed to suit her purposes.

The Captain of the Guard raised his sword. Graba spoke to him in a low chant. “Your workings are broken. Your sight, it is broken. Your vision is filled with the sight of its breaking.” She said this as though it were already true, and it became true as she said it. Springs sprung and gears shattered in the glass workings of his eyes. He cried out, stumbling, and dropped the sword.

He also dropped his grip on Rownie’s arm. Rownie crept slowly back toward the wreckage of the railcar.

“There, there,” said Graba, as though comforting the Captain. She reached with one talon and knocked him against the tunnel wall. He slid down, his hands covering his broken eyes.

Graba turned to Vass and the Mayor. She looked at Vass as though deciding whether or not she might be edible. “Hello, granddaughter,” she said. “Hello, little rival.”

Vass stood very straight. “Hello, Graba,” she said. Her voice sounded cracked and fragile, but it also sounded brave. “I’m not your grandchild. None of us ever were.”

“But you are ,” said Graba. She reached for Vass with one hand to tuck a lock of hair away from her face and behind one ear. The hair fell forward again. “What else could you be? I took you in, all of you, when you had no one else. I made you a home when your elders had drowned or starved or run off without you, abandoning all of you. Who else might you belong to, now, if not your Graba?”

Vass held up her chin. “Thank you for that. But I’m still not your grandchild.”

Graba gave her a long, considering look, and crossed both arms in front of her. “I’m thinking that you may be right in this,” she said, her voice full of wonder and hurt. “You may not be mine any longer. Go on to Northside, then. Make the Mayor keep his promises, and make him suffer if he doesn’t give you that house of your own. You’ve made this choice, so make it a sticky one. No good will come of it if you go wavering—not from him, and not at all from me.”

The Mayor chose that moment to speak up in an affronted and important-sounding voice. “Do not refer to me as though I were not here, witchworker.”

Graba smiled. She looked delighted. She looked as though she had just crunched her teeth down on the tastiest egg imaginable.