Grizelda (5 page)

The alarm seared through the air like a hot
poker, tearing Grizelda out of her spell. She had to move,
now.
The work floor was all in a tumult, the goblins
pointing and crawling all over themselves to get a better look.
Some of them were streaming up a couple of staircases in the back
of the room, and she had no doubt but that they knew some way to
get from there to where she was.

She looked both ways, trying to decide
whether to go back the way they’d come or go forward. Then she did
a double take. The ratriders had vanished! What– But she had no
time to worry about them now. With the alarm blaring in her ears
and running out of time, she chose to run forward.

Either she made the wrong choice or the
goblins had her surrounded, because she didn’t get far before she
heard their footsteps coming up the hall in front of her. They
would be on her in not very long. Turning back would just take her
back to the work floor.

She threw herself against the wall and closed
her eyes, tried to control her gasping. There were plenty of
shadows here. More than enough. She tried to concentrate on them,
but every time she felt on the brink of success, an image of slimy
webbed hands filled her head. She couldn’t do it. She could never
do it when she was under pressure.

Something tugged at the hem of her skirt and
her eyes snapped open.

Goblins. They were ringed in a semicircle
around her. Their bony bodies writhed as they fought each other to
touch her with their webbed hands, screaming gibberish in some
goblinish tongue. She screamed and threw her arms up over her
head.

No, not gibberish. Slowly it dawned on her,
hunched over on the floor, that the goblins were speaking perfectly
normal Corvanian.

“What do you think you’re doing here? This is
goblin territory!”

“Yeah! There are laws about this!”

“Go back where you came from, Ogreling!”

“Wait!” A voice with an air of command cut
across the rest. The hubbub died down. Grizelda, however, was not
keen on getting up and seeing this goblin, so she stayed hunched
where she was. She listened as deliberate, squashy footsteps
advanced towards her.

“No, let’s not send her home. I have a better
idea.”

A cold hand seized her by the chin and pulled
her up.

She shuddered in disgust and shoved the hand
away from her. She opened her eyes. A goblin was standing in front
of her, as slitty-eyed and squashed-faced as the others. He
grinned.

“The dictators aren’t so high and mighty now,
are they?”

She stood there, breathing hard, watching
him. Like a trapped rabbit, waiting for the goblin’s next move. It
wasn’t long in coming: his hand came down a second time.

“Hello, what’s this?” He reached out and
easily snapped a spool off her sleeve.

“That’s mine,” was what she tried to say, but
it didn’t come out very intelligibly.

“What?” The space where his eyebrows would
have been raised, the picture of pious concern. There was a bubble
of laughter behind him.

She swallowed. “That’s mine.”

The goblin held the spool up to the
furnace-light and inspected it. “I knew it! Goblin made! That spool
belongs to us, girl.” He stood back, spread his arms wide. “Why
don’t we take them
all
back?”

A savage cheer went up and the semicircle of
goblins rushed at her. Over the uproar she almost didn’t hear the
new, furious voice at the back of the tunnel.

“What the hell’s going on, Nelin?”

For a long while, Grizelda did not dare to
look. She kept her arms up to protect her face while the cheer
ebbed away and a disappointed muttering took its place. Still she
waited, but the blows she anticipated from the goblin mob did not
come. Slowly, she raised her head.

Two goblins had come jogging up the tunnel.
The one in front was approaching a sprint as he came towards their
semicircle. The goblins did not part way for him but forced him to
push his way through. He spared just a glance at Grizelda, then
turned all his attention to their ringleader.

The posture of the goblin who had been
taunting her oozed contempt – the folded arms, the sly smirk, the
studiously casual way he dropped all his weight to one side. “Oh.
You’re not about to do something rash, Mechanic Lenk, are you?” he
told the newcomer.

“I said, what the hell’s going on here?” The
question came out as a growl.

The other goblin retreated a bit and deigned
to answer his question. “There’s an ogre what’s trespassing on our
tunnels. I’m dealing with her.”

This mechanic rounded on the one he’d called
Nelin with the fury of a whirlwind. “The police are going to be
here in about two minutes. What I want to know is why you took it
upon yourself to do God knows what to this ogre girl so bad that
one of your guys here–“ He pointed to his companion, who was
staying out of this. “–went and ran for help.”

They stood there, nose-to-nose, for several
tense seconds, sizing each other up. At last Nelin snorted.

“You’re not going to do anything about it.
You haven’t got it in you.”

“Do you want to mess with me, Nelin? Do you
really want to mess with me?”

“No. You’re the one who doesn’t want to mess.
But all right. You clean up in here and I’ll take her to the
government building.” He made for Grizelda’s wrist.

The Mechanic’s hand shot out to catch Nelin’s
arm. “
I’ll
take her.”

There was another silent staring contest.
Finally Nelin twisted his hand away. “All right. You take her.”

The Mechanic seized Grizelda by the wrist
and, putting up no more resistance than a yelp, she followed him.
He as good as dragged her out of the crowd of goblins, who gave her
some disturbingly open-toothed leers as she passed.

Once he was clear of them, he set off at a
furious pace that even she, with her longer legs, found it hard to
keep up with. That mechanic, she thought, must be about half her
height, but there was a lot of power contained in that wiry frame.
He had her in a grip like a vice that she could not have gotten
free of to save her life. The coldness of that hand – surprisingly,
it wasn’t slimy– made her want to recoil. She couldn’t.

All the while the Mechanic kept his face to
the front with a furious intensity. He muttered to himself over and
over, “This is
not
in my job description. This is
so
not in my job description…”

They made their uncomfortably brisk walk down
and down the tunnel. Grizelda was so absorbed in just keeping on
her feet that she couldn’t properly take in anything around her as
it flew past. Tunnels and more tunnels. A city – electric lights –
crowds. Avenues like chasms rising up on either side of her,
grotesque buildings as twisted as the goblins chipped out of the
stone itself.

Everywhere they went the goblins on the
street raised up a shout and came running.

The Mechanic quickened his pace – Grizelda
wouldn’t have thought it possible before – but it was no good.
Every direction they went they were chased down. Grizelda found the
Mechanic and herself surrounded by a crowd, elbowing each other to
get at her and shouting a thousand questions. The Mechanic abruptly
changed direction, dragging Grizelda along, and ducked into a side
alley.

They had a few moments’ peace in the alley,
but the crowd re-formed around them as soon as they got to the
other side.

They were on the edge of a broad, paved city
square. Over the heads of the growing crowd Grizelda could see that
it was by far the nicest part of town they had yet been to. The
stones were broad and even. There was air here. On the far side was
a low, officious-looking building that must have been the goblins’
government. The Mechanic looked at Grizelda and Grizelda looked
back. Something flashed between them – without speaking, they
agreed on what to do next. On cue they crossed the square at a dead
run, diverting their course only enough to get around the statue in
the middle.

The Mechanic shoved Grizelda in the door
first, then bundled in after her. He slammed it behind them and
leaned back, eyes closed.

Compared to the shouts of the crowd, the loud
clacking that surrounded them now was a wonderful relief. They were
in a clean, well-lit room filled with rows and rows of typewriters.
In the back there were doors that looked like they led to offices.
Goblins bustled back and forth carrying armfuls of paper.

Grizelda and the Mechanic’s peace was
short-lived. At the slam of the door, the clerks and the
paper-carriers jumped and looked up. All the typewriters were
abandoned, all the papers set down as everyone present crowded
around to pepper the two of them with questions.

“Mechanic! What’s going on out in the
square?”

“What’s that ogre doing here?”

“How did she get here?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” he said, trying
to push past them. “Let me talk to Chairman Grendel.”

“He’s in a meeting.”

“Well, get a hold of him anyway!”

One of the clerks took hold of her none too
gently. “You need to come with me.”

“But–” She looked behind her, at the goblin
mechanic who was now in the middle of a heated argument with a
couple of the clerks. She was not too willing to part with the only
goblin so far who had not tried to kill her.

“You need to come with me,” he said with a
dangerously more insistent tone. Reluctantly, she followed him.

The clerk took her into an office, where he
handed her off to another goblin who started grilling her about the
circumstances of her sudden appearance. The questions came hard and
fast: How did she come to be underground? Was she a spy? Did she
have any connection to the steel-merchants? Grizelda had to think
hard to figure out what she was going to say. Somehow telling these
goblins that she was wanted by the Corvanian government didn’t seem
like a good idea. So she made up a story about getting lost after
wandering down a storm drain to see what it was like. She left out
the part about the ratriders, not sure if it would get her into
even more trouble.

The goblin official didn’t seem too
convinced. When she got to the part about the gang of workers that
were about to beat her to a pulp, he didn’t seem too sympathetic,
either.

“It’s not my province,” he told a messenger
who was waiting for them. “Send her to the Foreman of Ogre
Relations.”

Off they went again, down a hall that led
deeper into the building. As far as Grizelda could see, there was
nothing back here but offices. What could they have so many of them
for? Every door they passed, a goblin peeped out to get a look at
her.

The Foreman of Ogre Relations stood up the
moment she arrived at his office.

“How’d that get here?”

“I don’t know,” said the messenger. “That’s
what we’re trying to find out.”

Grizelda raised her hand. “Sir, I got
lost–”

“Well, she can’t stay here,” the foreman
interrupted. “Somebody get the Chairman!”

“He’s in a meeting.”

“Then send her to the Chief of Police! Get
her out of my office!”

The messenger took her to the Chief of Police
next, who informed them that she ought to go to the Foreman of Ogre
Relations.

In the end they made her wait in a spare room
while they decided what to do with her.

There was no furniture in the room, so
Grizelda sat down on the floor and folded her legs up under her. It
was bare save for an electric light and a lonely broom leaning in
the corner. She didn’t have much else to do now but reflect on what
sort of a pickle she was in. She had been dragged out of her home
by the police and as good as condemned to death, rescued by strange
little people and just as quickly jilted by them, and now she found
herself mired in goblin bureaucracy. She admitted to herself she
had little idea what was going on.

“She’s gone!”

Warden Mant looked up from his work. He’d
dismissed Calding less than half an hour ago, and just as he was
looking forward to settling down to get something done, now this.
The man who’d just burst into his office was nobody important, as
far as he knew. Just a gendarme. It sounded important, whatever the
fellow was talking about, but he wasn’t making much sense.

Mant set down his papers. “I’m afraid I don’t
understand.”

“Lieutenant Calding just told me to – no
matter – I was just down in the cells and the prisoner in 403 is
gone! The lock’s hanging open!”

Mant leapt from his seat. “A prisoner’s
gone?”

“I’ll show you!”

Mant rushed out of his office after the
guard, his work left in a flurry that fell, for the most part, onto
the floor. His secretary looked up with a little noise, then
frowned and kept on writing.

Chapter 5

Grizelda had not been sitting very long when
the door burst open and a young goblin in a police-looking uniform
came into the room. He didn’t spare any time for greeting.

“You’re to go on trial! Hurry!” Impatient
with her efforts to get up, he grabbed on her wrist and pulled.

“What?” She already found herself out of the
closet and running down the hall. She extracted herself from the
police officer’s grip and fell in beside him.

“What’s going on?”

“They just decided you’re to go on trial!
You’re already supposed to be there!”

“What do you mean, on trial?”

They ran out of the government building and
into the public square. On trial? She’d just escaped from one
prison and now she was going to go on trial? She gritted her teeth
when she thought of how the ratriders had abandoned her. They’d
meant
to lead her into the middle of the goblins. Now
what?

The goblins didn’t take as much notice of her
this time when she went outside – something bigger was happening.
The entire population of the goblin city, it seemed, was in the
square. They were going so slowly that at first she thought they
were not moving. But they were: slowly but surely all the goblins
were filing through an arched doorway in the side of the cavern,
high and carved with goblinish script. In that river of goblins,
nobody would have noticed two small figures standing on the
banks.