Grizelda (26 page)

“Holes, sir.”

“Yes?”

“The goblin tunnels that used to run under
the old fort. We’d boarded up the places where they intersected
with our own excavations, but apparently, over the years, the
boards have … decayed.”

“You mean the whole place is run through like
a cheese?”

Calding said it more to himself than to
Whatshisname. Horrified, he was already running through the
implications–

“May I have a word?”

Cold fear ran through him as he turned
around. There before him stood Implication Number One: Mr. Paxon,
the inspector from the Committees of Public Safety.

“We’re already conducting a thorough search
of the area!” Whatshisname squeaked, and fled. Calding was left to
face Paxon alone. He coughed in order to delay speaking.

“Would you care to explain the situation in
your own words, Warden?” said Paxon. “The men at the Committee will
want to know.”

Finally Calding found his tongue. “With all
due respect, Warden Mant left this prison in a state of ruin. A
system this broken takes time to repair…”

“And yet Warden Mant let one prisoner
disappear,” Mr. Paxon said with an edge in his voice. “You? How
many were in custody on that level?”

“Ninety-five, I believe, sir,” Calding said
stiffly.

“The men of the Committee are going to wonder
if this was intentional.”

“My career is at stake. I understand,” said
Calding.

“Rather more than that,” said Paxon. “You
might get labeled as a Royalist sympathizer.”

Unbidden, Calding’s thoughts flew to the Auk
execution blocks he’d seen as a child. No, there was no more of
that anymore, that was the whole
point
. Rather, there was
the firing squad out in the courtyard…

He swallowed. “My life?”

Paxon smiled, but it wasn’t a friendly smile.
“Precisely. So shape up. I don’t want to bear the Committee bad
news.”

Grizelda didn’t sleep well that night. Well,
what remained of the night by the time she’d dragged herself back
to the laundry. She lay awake on her mattress for a while, stewing
over the breakout. Finally sometime in the early morning she
couldn’t stand it anymore.

She sat up, threw back the covers, fumbled
around under her mattress in the dark until her hand hit the stack
of Grendel’s paper. Her throat tight, she yanked it out. She tried
to tear the package in half, but of course that didn’t work.
Instead she tucked it under her arm. She wanted to slam the door
behind her as she left the room, but there was the ever-present
danger of waking Crome across the way. For a moment she waited. No
sound came from the room where he slept.

Once outside, she stormed through the silent
streets of the goblin city. The smell of motor oil was thick in the
air. Only half the electric lights in the ceiling were on, to
simulate night. No goblins out right now. She took the pass up to
the Lonnes sewers.

There she stood on the bank. She had once
thought her magic was a harmless hobby. That’s what she had told
Elisabet the day they discovered her power. As long as nobody from
the government found out, she could go on making her paper toys at
the shop, and nobody would be hurt. Harmless? It had cost her
everything. Her old life, her chance to ever see sunshine again.
Now Toby’s friendship, too.

She drew the stack of papers out from under
her arm and threw them into the water.

I’ll never be a witch again,
she
thought.
I promise.

Chapter 25

Grizelda stayed shut up in her room for the
rest of that morning. After a while, the sounds of the workday
starting drifted up to her through the floorboards. The deep rumble
of the washing machines, the voices of workers. They must have
missed her at work, but Crome did not come to call her down. She
stayed curled up in her blankets, in her own tight cell of
misery.

Then she heard a familiar voice.

“Hey.”

“Go away, Geddy. I want to be alone.” She
threw the blanket over her head and dug herself deeper into her
cocoon.

“Fine, then. I won’t leave until you tell me
what it is.”

Grizelda sat up. It was true. Geddy had
planted himself on top of a paint can and it didn’t look like he
had any intention of moving. She sighed and threw back the covers.
Here we go again.
If Geddy wanted to talk, he was going to
talk, no matter what she had to say about it.

“Only yesterday was a total disaster, that’s
all,” she said.

“Ah.” Geddy scratched his nose, as if
searching for something tactful to say next. “Jamin’s furious with
you, you know.”

That came as a surprise. “Why?”

“He thinks it was your fault Toby stayed
back. You talked him into it somehow.”

“No, I stayed back because
he
did– Oh,
argh!” She got up and started walking around the room in
frustration. “This is so complicated!”

“Which brings me to my next point,” Geddy
said. “I’m furious with you, too.”

“What, you think I should have gone to
Salinaca, too?” she shot at him.

“You’re not safe here.” Geddy stood up on his
can. “You never were, but now people will be after you. The
goblin’s election will be on New Year’s Day, and if Miner Nelin
wins, there’ll be no safe haven for you. Nowhere.”

“People are
dying
up there! Why should
I be safe and cozy in Salinaca when maybe there’s something I can
do about it here?”

“I don’t want you to get hurt,
Grizelda.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore!” She put her hand up. She
started pacing again, unable to look at him.

Finally she stopped. Ratriders were made out
of magic, maybe they would understand. There certainly wasn’t
anybody else she could tell.

“Geddy, Toby found out I’m a witch.”

“You really are a witch?” He was surprised,
yes, but she thought she saw a flaring out of something else. A
keen interest, as if he was doing research for his book about ogre
customs.

“I can’t do much,” she said. “I can turn
invisible when the light’s bad and I can make these stupid little
paper toys.” She turned and flopped herself down, cross-legged, on
the mattress. “It was so stupid the way I got caught. The girls all
knew, see. But they loved them. I got careless and I was making
this paper doll in the middle of the day and … a customer walked in
on me. She took one look and walked right back out again. Three
days later the gendarmes came for me in the middle of the night.”
Her head was bowed.

“You should hold on to that magic, Griz. It’s
precious.”

She looked at him.

“I think the ratriders are losing it. That’s
my theory I keep talking about. Something happened when we followed
you into the city. Iron stopped hurting us, and salt’s probably
soon to follow. We turned mortal and…” Geddy grimaced, trying to
find the words. “Fey aren’t supposed to feel human things. You
know, grief and, well, … love. It’s scary. About the only magic we
can do anymore is skleining. So keep all the magic you can.”

It was a little while before Grizelda spoke.
“I had no idea.”

Geddy sat there on the can, embarrassed
now.

“Would … would you like me to make you a
paper thing?”

She reached under her mattress. Then, with a
sick feeling, she realized that only hours before she’d thrown all
her folding paper into the Lonnes sewers. She started searching
harder, desperately. Maybe she’d missed a piece and it was still
stuck in the back…

Before she found anything, Geddy spoke. “Not
as much as I would like to extract a promise from you not to be
involved in any more of the Underground’s activities.”

He couldn’t. They were her purpose now, the
Underground. Those dozen or so kids and what they could do had been
occupying all her waking thoughts for weeks. To give up resisting
the government, the Committees…

“Just for the time being,” he said, when he
saw her look. “All hell will have broken loose up there by now, so
you should wait until things calm down. Wait to see how the
election goes. Then … maybe.”

He didn’t seem pleased about even that small
concession, that maybe she could return when it was safer. She
thought about it. She didn’t want to leave.

“Corvain’s been oppressed for two hundred and
eleven years,” she said. “I suppose it can wait for another week or
two.”

Though he admitted it to nobody, Calding was
terrified. Those next few days after the breakout, he spent most of
his time walking through the halls hardly aware of the world around
him, with a sense that if he ever stopped moving something black
that hovered just out of sight would catch up to him. His job hung
by a thread. More than his job. There had to be something he could
do.

When he should have been coming up with a
solution, he could not help returning over and over again to the
dreadful tax of the Auks. The great black birds … the platform …
blood… The revolution was supposed to have put an
end
to all
of that. So why did he feel like feathered wings were constantly
just behind him?

Eventually, though, he returned to his
office.

“I’ve come to a decision, Mr. Bavar.”

He closed the door behind him and turned to
face the little man who had been Warden Mant’s secretary and was
now his own. Bavar squeaked at the sudden entrance and dropped his
pen. Calding waited until he had retrieved it from under the
desk.

“This latest incident has revealed glaring
inadequacies in the prison system. Glaring. I’ve…” He trailed off
and put a hand to his throat, a gesture that was fast becoming
habitual since the breakout. “I’ve decided to liquidate the
contents of the cells and start over from the ground up.”

There was a silence. When Calding looked over
to see what was the matter, he caught Bavar staring at him,
openmouthed. The secretary quickly snatched it shut again.

“You’re going to kill them all?” he said.

“Don’t call it killing. Liquidate.” Even in
here he could not seem to sit still. He moved restlessly about the
room, poking into drawers, picking up a big glass paperweight and
examining it. “I want you to write up a general memo to all the
officers, all the staff…”

“Sir?”

“What?”

Bavar hesitated. “Well, if we send out a
memo, there’s a good chance word will get out.”

“Well, it would hardly do to send out a press
release, would it?”

There was another silence.

“Now what?” Calding snapped. He couldn’t
concentrate, his temper was frayed to the limit. If there was
anybody of all the staff at Promontory he could lash out at, it was
the secretary. Yet when there should have been fear in Bavar’s
face, there was something else, almost a challenge.

“Using all these people as bait?”

Calding planted his hands on the edge of the
secretary’s desk and stood over him. “Is there a problem, Mr.
Bavar?”

“No, sir,” Bavar said quietly.

A few days passed and Grizelda had nothing to
do with the Lonnes Underground. It was so strange to have only her
work at the laundry to attend to. She fell into a routine centered
around the bell to start work, bell for lunch, bell to stop and go
home. Always she kept her head down, avoiding the attention of the
goblins. For the most part they left her alone.

She got occasional communiqués from the
ratriders, who still went to the meetings. Word of the breakout had
gotten out to the public, and the Committees had ordered a heavy
search out for those responsible. The Underground was scattered,
keeping low. Toby had gone deeper into hiding, hardly ever straying
from Jamin’s flat. Times weren’t great for the Underground, but
still, she longed to be with them.

One morning she noticed a sign tacked up
outside the cafeteria, on top of all the red and green election
posters. By the time she got to it, it looked slightly the worse
for wear, having been pawed at by dozens of goblin hands, leaving
trailing, grayish marks on the surface. One of the corners was
curling up where the tack had fallen out, obscuring the text. She
pushed it back.

Announcement: Chairman Grendel will

engage Miner Nelin in a political debate

this Sunday, Dec. 31.

This message by pronouncement

of the Council of Foremen.

A goblin passing by sneered at her.
“Chairman’s last stand, don’t you think, Ogreface?”

She turned around and glared at him.
Apparently he still remembered she was dangerous, because he backed
off.

It was so hard, this waiting. She got so
frustrated at the hours of repetitive work at the laundry, and she
wanted to snap at Crome, but she didn’t dare break the fragile
stalemate that had sprung up between them since the morning when he
changed the color of his band. So she held her tongue.

Sooner or later it was going to drive her
nuts.

One day, she packed up at the end of work,
fuming as usual. As soon as she went outside, something pounced
onto her head from above.

“Does it always take you so long to get out
here?”

She yelped and flailed at it, then she saw it
was only a bat. Apollo, to be exact, with Laricia on his back. She
kept up the fluttering inches from her head.

“What? I just–”

“Never mind!” said Laricia. “What matters is
what just happened topside!”

Grizelda lowered her hands.

“The warden of Promontory is going to kill
all of the prisoners. Somebody got a hold of a memo–”

“
What?
”

“It’s in the newspaper. The Undergrounders
are holding an emergency meeting. Come on!” She turned as if to
lead the way.

“Wait!” Grizelda said.

Laricia circled back to her, though from her
expression it was clear she was impatient.