Grizelda (14 page)

There was scattered applause, a few
whoops.

“And … oh.” He pushed up his glasses and
squinted at the paper. “We wish to inform you that the collapsed
mineshaft in Section B is still off-limits as a safety hazard.”

Finally he threw down the clipboard in
frustration and shouted up at the ceiling, “It’s too damn dark in
here to read a thing!”

The lights started to go up.

“No, not
now!
I just finished!”

The lights dimmed again. The messenger picked
up his clipboard with a look of disgust. “The People’s Acting
Troupe, with tonight’s enlightenment.” He stalked off stage.

To polite applause and a couple of groans,
eight goblins in stylized miner’s outfits marched in solemnly and
lined up on either side of the stage. There was a silence. Grizelda
could hear goblins settling and a cough.

“O, goblins!” the first group of four
intoned,

“People of the rocks and stones,

Keepers of the secrets of the earth,

Long may you work and prosper.”

To which the second four of the miners
replied:

“This tale is a warning

To those who are not wary

When they undertake to plunge

The secrets of the earth.”

What
was
this? It didn’t really rhyme,
and it wasn’t really sung, either, more like an atonal chant that
the goblin actors kept calling out to each other. They didn’t even
move
. Just like everything else Grizelda knew about goblins,
it was about as far removed from fun as logically possible.

Grizelda gave up on them after the first
three verses. An undercurrent of noise was running below the
actor’s droning, goblins speaking with each other as loud as they
dared, getting up and sitting down. There were even a few snores.
Bored, she started fiddling around with her seat. She discovered
that the back would lean back if she pushed it and the arms moved
up and down like levers. There was a little compartment underneath
one of the arms that, after she had figured out how to open it, she
found contained a couple of hard round balls…

“It’s horrible, isn’t it?” came a voice at
her feet.

Grizelda jumped. She looked around to see who
had spoken, then she caught sight of a characteristic shock of
orange hair. Kricker was sitting cross-legged under her seat.

“To tell the truth, I wasn’t really paying
attention,” she whispered down at him. The goblin down the row
didn’t seem to notice. Actually, he seemed to be asleep.

“Nobody ever does,” Kricker said. He
stretched his neck out, trying to get a better view of the
proceedings. “What’s it about this time?”

“Remembering to wear your helmet or
something, I think. Do you want me to lift you up so you can see
better?”

“Oh, no, that’s okay. I mean, really, that’s
okay. I’m just fine down here.”

Grizelda thought it was a bit odd that he’d
answered so hastily and had now scooted himself two or three body
lengths away from the balcony edge. Maybe she had better change the
subject.

“Kricker, I met this strange ratrider lady
today. She was riding a bat and she got furious when she found out
I was watching her.”

“Oh.” Kricker burst into such a broad grin
that she wondered what could possibly be so funny.

“That would be Laricia.” He tapped his head.
“You could say she’s a touch … batty.”

Apparently he thought it was hilarious, which
made her irritated. “Is it really so funny that she’s trying to
tame a bat? I mean, she was really upset–”

She was interrupted by a messenger who came
running straight up the ramp to the actors’ platform and into their
midst, cutting off the performance. Several of them gave him
reproachful looks. The crowd’s murmur rose and the guard at the
foot of the stage put a hand on his baton.

“What’s this all about, Comrade?” Chairman
Grendel said.

“Message from Yves, Chairman,” the messenger
said, breathless. “They just announced that the township will move
its business to the goblins under Whithall unless we agree to drop
our price to, uh…” He swallowed. “…three-quarters of theirs,
Chairman.”

“Why couldn’t you wait to tell me this in
private?”

But the Chairman’s comment was drowned in a
furor. There were boos from everywhere, cries like “They can’t do
this!” and “That’s extortion!” From the vague shapes moving in the
dark, Grizelda could tell the goblins were agitated, starting to
leave their seats. Several seats down from her, the old goblin’s
head jerked up with a start and he looked around in confusion.

“Kricker, what’s going on? Kricker?
Kricker!”

But the ratrider had vanished. Grizelda was
getting alarmed. The crowd was churning now, and it was sounding
angrier every minute. She didn’t know what it might do. What if
they started chanting
kill the ogre
again? The messenger had
fled the stage in terror, and a few seconds later the actors a
little reluctantly followed him. The foremen in their balcony were
trying to quiet the crowd, but it accomplished nothing.

Grizelda got up and started running down the
stairs. There was a press of goblins in the aisles all around her,
only milling around at this point but getting ready to do
something. A voice carried over the crowd, one that she
recognized.

“Unite and fight! Unite and fight!”

Fists all around rose into the air as they
took up Nelin’s chant. “Unite and fight! Unite and fight!”

If she didn’t get crushed, she was going to
get suffocated. It was a struggle just to keep going in a straight
line. She didn’t even know where she was going to go yet, but she
had to keep moving. For a moment she picked a face out among the
crowd – Mechanic Lenk.

“Lenk!” she cried.

The crowd had been pushing at her, but now
she pushed back, determined to fight her way over to him. After a
minute of clawing her way through the mass of elbows, she was
afraid she’d lost him again. Then all at once she saw him, standing
on the back of a seat.

“Mechanic Lenk! What’s happening?”

“Grizelda!” His look turned to one of horror
as he recognized her.

“What are they doing?”

Then he was in among the crowd, pushing,
shoving his way over to her. “Grizelda, this is a bad place for a
human to be right now. This is going to be ugly.”

She knew that much. Something very bad was
about to happen.

“What–” she began.

“You need to go home,
now
. Get to the
door, run!”

There was such a tone of urgency in his voice
that she didn’t argue. She was tall enough she could see over the
goblins’ heads and finally she got sight of the exit. She ran.

Chapter 13

By the next morning the uproar at the Union
Hall was barely suppressed. Grizelda found out a while later that
it had finally ended when the Chairman called out the police and
sent everybody home. Though there was the outward appearance of
peace this morning, to the goblins the issue was clearly not over
yet. It wasn’t that Grizelda heard them grumbling. On the contrary,
they were dangerously silent that morning when she took her
breakfast, especially Nelin. But there was an odd charge in the
atmosphere that made her look over her shoulder every few minutes
as if expecting a knife.

The tension carried over into her work.
Workers’ hands were clumsy, and there were more accidents and
breakdowns than usual. Crome prowled about the floor like a leopard
on the hunt, searching for an excuse to lash out at somebody.
Grizelda stayed in her corner and kept her head low.

“Why don’t you all just shut up?”

Crome glared around at the room, daring
somebody to be his victim. There were several bangs and crashes as
workers jumped. Nobody had been talking. He seemed to realize he’d
made a miscalculation, but there was no imaginable way he could
back out of it. His attention settled on Grizelda.

“Ogre, what’s that?” he said, pointing down
at her workbench.

Why did he always pick on her? Grizelda
looked down. To her dismay, she found she’d sewn the body and
sleeve of a shirt together when his outburst had made her jump.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, starting to pull
it loose from the machine. “I’ll pick it out right away.”

“You’re incompetent, you know that? You’re
not good for anything.”

Chicken-winged old coot.
She bit that
back, however. She knew it was better to keep silent. Around her,
the other goblins on the work floor looked away, grateful Crome had
singled her out and not them.

“I didn’t even want to take you,” Crome
continued. “I knew you were going to be stupid and insolent, just
like all ogres.”

“Then why did you take me?” Grizelda
snapped.

Instantly she regretted what she’d said.
Crome looked more furious than she’d ever seen him before. He
clenched his one good fist over his shriveled arm and stood there,
unable to speak. He breathed in sharply as if about to say
something, then turned and walked out of the work floor.

Grizelda felt like kicking her sewing
machine. This was it for sure. She’d really blown it with Crome,
and now he was going to go report her. So much for her promise to
Lenk not to step out of line. In a few minutes they would have her
up before one of the foremen and heaven knew what would happen to
her then.

Sure enough, a runner came up to the door a
short while later.

“I’m here for Seamstress Grizelda,” he
said.

The workers all drew back to allow her a
clear path to the door. She shut down her sewing machine and stood.
They looked on in silence as she passed. Was it a gesture of
respect? Hardly. They were afraid she was contagious.

“You’re to come with me to the Ministry.”

She was doomed. As she had no alternative,
she nodded.

Gravely, the runner led her outside. They
went through the Union streets at a moderate pace, not exactly
hurrying or dawdling. She tried to get a look at his expression,
but he was ahead of her and facing away, yielding nothing.

Just one week, that was how long she had
managed to last with the goblins. One week and she was beginning to
think that maybe, possibly, she had a new home. Now it was gone all
over again.

The messenger led her downtown and into the
government building. Just like last time, the room was full of
clerks clacking at their typewriters and shoving papers to and fro
pointlessly. The messenger went and spoke briefly to one of them,
who nodded. He came back and led Grizelda into the back. He rapped
on one of the doors lightly.

“Come in,” a voice inside said.

The office inside was just like any other,
tidy and nondescript. There was a picture of a cavern hanging on
the wall that must have been the goblin’s equivalent of a
landscape. But sitting at the desk was Chairman Grendel himself.
The Chairman! Then Grizelda knew she was done for.

“Ah.” The Chairman set down the report he was
reading and took off his wire-rimmed glasses.

“You may go, Comrade,” he said to the
messenger.

The messenger left, and the door closed with
a stomach-lurching
thud
.

“You already know what I’ve brought you in
here for.”

“Yes, Chairman,” she whispered. She waited
for him to get on with it, to tell her that she’d lost her job at
the laundry. That the goblins were throwing her out. Or worse, that
they’d changed their minds about the execution bit.

The Chairman twirled a quill in his fingers.
“Yesterday the Foreman of Ogre Relations notified me of a
mysterious order put in for ‘pretty paper.’ It was from you.”

What? For a moment Grizelda couldn’t
comprehend him at all. Then she remembered – yesterday, at the
commissary. This was what she was in trouble for?

“I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes on the floor.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ll take it back right
away.”

When the chairman did not reply right away,
she looked back up at him. He appeared to be hesitating. Finally he
took out a package and dumped it on the desk.

“The order came in.” He studied his pen.

This was so absolutely not what she expected
that she only stared at him, then at the package, flabbergasted.
She wasn’t sure if she was allowed to touch it.

“Well go on, open it!” He waved his hand in
irritation.

Hesitantly, she lifted the package off the
desk, tore off the brown paper wrapping. It was paper. Nearly a
whole ream of it. When she pulled out a sheet, she saw that one
side was white, the other a dazzling cobalt blue, the color of the
sky at dusk.

“The Department of Culture had some scraps
they were going to throw away. It isn’t like I went out of my way
for it.”

“Chairman, I…” She struggled to find the
words. “Thank you.”

For the first time he made eye contact,
fixing her with a sharp look. “No, I don’t think you understand. I
didn’t go out of my way.”

She looked at him, uncomprehending.

“I’m the Chairman of the People’s Goblin
Union of Lonnes. I’m not the sort of person who would go out of his
way to help an ogre, especially not publicly.”

Oh. Suddenly all the pieces fitted together
in her mind.

“I … won’t tell anyone about this paper, if
that’s what you mean, Chairman.”

He nodded slowly. “Now I think you
understand. One more thing, Seamstress Grizelda.”

She stood there, waiting for him to
speak.

“Laundryman Crome was just in here
complaining about something you’d said. I’m afraid I couldn’t hear
him clearly and was unable to take a course of disciplinary action.
Should it happen again, my hearing might improve.”

Oh. Right.

He waved her a dismissal. “You may go and get
back to work now, if you will.”