Grizelda (7 page)

The gendarme shrank back. “Yes, sir.”

The noise of their discussion had woken some
of the shadow-prisoners in the nearby cells. Like dead leaves
stirred up by the wind, they rustled to each other.
She’s gone –
who all knows – she’s gone – keep this hushed up – she’s gone,
she’s gone
.

Mant ignored the softly rising wind around
him. As there was nothing more he could do here, he turned and
left.

Chapter 6

There was a fat lamp in the middle of the
room, a thick hacked-off piece of rope burning smokily in a tray of
grease. Every few seconds the fat sputtered and sent a flare of
light licking up the wall, orange gleams against the darkness.

Grizelda was held, less than gently, by a
pair of anonymous goblins. The difference between her height and
theirs forced her into an uncomfortable sort of crouch that made
her legs ache. It was all she could do to crane her head back and
see what was going on. Chairman Grendel sat cross-legged at the
other end of the ceremony room, his seven foremen in a semicircle
behind him. The lamp lit them from below, turned their faces into
gargoyle’s faces, still as statues. Laundryman Crome lurked in the
corner, not part of the action. Every minute or so, he checked his
watch.

Four candles were arranged around the lamp in
a square – north, south, east, and west. As if an afterthought, a
small bundle wrapped in red cloth lay at the chairman’s feet. He
took it up and unwrapped it.

Grizelda watched him with apprehension. She
hadn’t been coached for this. Just like with the trial, the summons
had come suddenly. She was waiting in her broom closet in the
government building, for lack of a better place to put her, when a
goblin in uniform opened the door and took her deep into the back
of the building, without any explanation. Somewhere far in the
back, smelling of dust and not fitted with the electric lights, was
this strange place, the ceremony room. The delegation was already
waiting for her when she got there. She had no idea what they were
going to do to her.

The Chairman finished unwrapping the package.
Inside was a hammer and a small jar. He held out the hammer as if
for her to take it.

The two goblins exerted a sudden force on
Grizelda’s shoulders to compel her down. She found herself kneeling
before she knew what had happened. She shook her head, trying to
regain her bearings. The goblins let go of her and withdrew to the
back of the room.

Again the Chairman held out the hammer. This
time she took it, and since he didn’t give her any other cue, she
turned it over in her hands. It was much heavier than it looked
like it should be. It didn’t seem like it was used for actual work,
because it was carved all over with that goblinish script she’d
seen in the old tunnels and on the archway to the Union Hall. The
handle looked like bone, but it couldn’t have been, not for that
weight.

“Do you know what this is?”

The Chairman’s voice surprised her, much
lower and not so weary as it had been in the Union Hall. She shook
her head.

“This is the hammer of the goblins. It was
made five hundred years ago, when the first goblins settled under
Lonnes. We’ve been here much longer than your silly Auk
occupation.”

He seemed to be expecting a reply, but she
couldn’t think of anything to say. Why he should be showing her
this hammer was beyond her. She moved it around in her hands
uncomfortably.

“Do you consent to join the Goblin Union of
Lonnes?”

She looked up. “What?”

“We’re offering you citizenship. That is the
sentence of the Council of Foremen.”

Up to this point the foremen had been
watching the proceedings with a statue-like impassivity, but now
one of them turned his head a degree and looked at her. The
sharpness of that look made her wince. She started to doubt whether
this Council’s sentence was entirely the Council’s idea, or if it
was the Chairman’s.

“Um … yes?” she said, not sure whether what
she said was a good idea or not.

The chairman’s expression did not give her
any clue. “You know that goblins never go above the surface of the
ground. You’ll be expected to abide by this law. You are forbidden
to speak with any ogres, and especially from discussing the inside
of the Union Hall. Forget your old customs, your old allegiances.
The Union will be your home now indefinitely.”

A little weakly, she nodded.

“Then it is done.” And unscrewing the lid of
the little jar, he took out a pinch of powder and threw some on
each of the candles in quick succession. One – two – three – four.
The candles flared up bright and white where the powder touched,
then died back down.

“Laundryman, you may take her.”

The laundryman stepped forward, engaging in
the ceremony for the first time. What should have been a smooth
operation of taking her hand was hung up as he shuffled around to
get onto her other side. For the first time Grizelda realized that
his right arm was shriveled. It was smaller than the other arm and
curled up on itself uselessly like a chicken’s wing. Alarmed and
more than a little revolted, she tried to move away, but the
Laundryman’s good hand was strong. He seized her roughly and
marched her out of the room. He didn’t give a word or even a glance
to anybody there.

He took her at a rapid pace down the back
halls of the government building. That touch was giving her
goosebumps. There was a goblin, a creepy, knobbly, joint-bendy
goblin, and he was walking right there next to her. And yet his
skin wasn’t slimy, and he’d probably just helped save her life.

“Laundryman Crome?” she said, trying
surreptitiously to free herself.

“Shut up. Walk faster.”

They kept going. The halls were empty. There
was no other sound than her own hurried, uncertain footsteps, and
the slightly squashy sound of his webbed feet. After a few more
tries, Grizelda found she couldn’t get herself disengaged. She gave
it up and turned to him again.

“Laundryman Crome, I wanted to– to thank you.
For taking me.”

Laundryman Crome gave her a sidelong look out
of his slitty eyes. Then he made a low, gravelly sound that might
have been a laugh, or might have been him clearing his throat.
“Heh. Don’t think it was on your account.”

He kept on going, and refused to speak to her
for the rest of the journey.

When they had gotten out of the government
building and onto the street, Grizelda could tell that word of the
Council’s ruling had gotten out ahead of them. Disapproval was
reflected in every goblin’s face. When she and the laundryman came
near, they would cut off their conversations and stare at them.
Some even made the point of crossing over to the other side of the
street. Crome curled his lip at them. Mortified, Grizelda kept her
eyes on the ground.

After what seemed like a long time, Crome
stopped at a door. The storefront it belonged to was a lot like the
other buildings in the goblin city, all weird angles and twisted
shapes, with a second story that hung out farther than the first.
After fitting his key in the lock and twisting it, Crome led her
through an anteroom, full of sacks, cubbies, and a ledger. They
crossed another door, and they were on the main work floor.

The room was a mess of stacks of sodden
clothes, clangs, the shouts of workers, and looming shapes that
made ominous sloshing sounds. Puffs of white steam came out of the
machines’ vents, adding to a haze that hung over everything.

Grizelda was just beginning to get reconciled
to the fact that she was breathing pea soup when Crome called to
her.

“Over here.”

He was already halfway across the floor.
Grizelda picked her way past the puddles and pipes running across
the floor to catch up to him. In her hurry, and her care to keep
her eyes down for obstacles, she didn’t see the worker with the
basket of clothes until she had bumped straight into him.

The just-dried clothes spilled out in a fan
into one of the puddles. The worker launched into a tirade,
berating her for her clumsiness and how much work she had just
ruined.
Way to make a great first impression,
she thought.
She could only mutter a hasty apology and sidle past.

Crome was already waiting for her, his good
arm akimbo, at a machine that vaguely resembled a sewing machine.
At least, she could recognize the arm and the needle part. But how
the goblin sitting at it was making it go was beyond her. He calmly
hemmed a shirt without taking any notice of either of them.

“Do you know how to work a sewing machine?”
Crome asked.

“Where’s the foot pedal?” she said.

Crome ignored her and reached across the
worker to pick up a small metal dish. It resembled a
saltcellar.

“Good. Veldam, you’ll go to the wringer
tomorrow.”

Veldam shrugged and kept on working.

Grizelda’s attention was pulled in several
directions at once. She was still trying to work out how the sewing
machine worked while at the same time she wondered why on Earth
they would keep a saltcellar in the laundry room. Another
disturbing thought occurred to her, too.
Understaffed? But
Laundryman Crome already has a seamstress.

Or a sempster. It was kind of hard to
tell.

Guiltily, she realized Crome was halfway
through explaining something important.

“Lay it out first thing in the morning before
starting work. You’d better check every few minutes that the ring
is unbroken, or Heaven help you.” He set the dish down. “Come, I’ll
show you where you’ll sleep.”

“But what’s the salt for?”

Crome started to climb the stairs without
replying. It was only once he was halfway up that he turned
back.

“Keeps the ratriders out. There’s still
enough of the fey in them that they can’t stand the stuff.”

Ratriders? Crome resumed climbing the stairs,
and Grizelda resignedly followed him. The stairs were metal,
oxidized with the moisture, and spiraled all the way into the
ceiling. Crome seemed to have warmed to his subject, because he
kept on talking, not looking back to see if she was listening. She
was listening, very closely.

“They sabotage our machines just for fun, you
know. Buggers would steal your nose off if you didn’t keep an eye
on it.”

So, the ratriders didn’t limit themselves to
unsuspecting young seamstresses. No wonder the goblins wanted to
keep them out.

On the second floor of the laundry there was
a hall that wouldn’t have been cramped for a goblin, but it was for
her. She had to duck slightly to go along and felt that her elbows
were constantly in danger of scraping the walls. Some of the doors
hung open and through them she caught glimpses of an office and a
room that must be where Laundryman Crome lived.

Crome led her into a little triangular space
like an attic that was obviously being used for storage. There was
a strange collection of junk in there: old shelves, rags and broken
washer tubes, empty containers. Whenever a part from the laundry
outlived its usefulness, it seemed, it was dragged up here to die.
For some reason there were a full-length mirror and a wagon wheel
in the corner. And the paint was peeling.

“This is where you’ll sleep. I’ll have a
mattress brought up.”

Then he just left her. No ceremony, no
goodbyes, nothing. Part of her was relieved to see him gone, but
part of her– Slowly she sank down, not even caring about the layer
of dust on the floor. Oh, how she missed Elisabet and Miss
Hesslehamer. She was alone, all alone, in a city of goblins who
hated her. This was all the ratriders’ fault.

A slow drip from somewhere above had leaked
down the wall and spilled across the stairs, making Calding’s going
slippery and treacherous. Each wet step shone in his lantern’s
light. He held the lantern close to him and cursed.
Damn leak
from the river.

This little investigation into the Warden’s
strange behavior required some discretion, he knew. He had not
bothered to inform anybody he was going into the cell blocks and he
had timed it so that he would not be likely to run into anybody on
the way down, either. He kept quiet and kept his lantern
half-shuttered, too.

He counted blocks until he got to the fourth
one. There, at the bottom of the stairs, he stopped. There was
nothing out of the ordinary here. He stepped forward, reading off
the engraved plates in front of the cells as he went. It didn’t
take him long to find 403. That gray-haired one’s cell.

There was nothing wrong with it. He found the
door was unlocked when he tried it, and there was no sign of any
force. No bent metal, no blast marks or strange residues that
should have been left if she really were a sorceress. It was merely
empty.

Then he realized that the cell block was not
silent. There was a sound, like a rising wind in a pile of leaves,
but it was in fact a chorus of many soft, papery voices. It was
coming from everywhere.

He turned all around, trying to find its
source. “Who are you?”

She’s gone–
the voices said.
She’s
gone – he’s going to keep this hushed up – she got away…

It was the prisoners themselves who were
speaking. He’d never seen them so agitated before. They moved about
in their cells, speaking to each other and pointing out at him. He
didn’t like the way they were looking at him.

He pushed the thought aside and strode up to
the nearest cell with all the command he could muster. The person
inside was of indeterminate age, but he guessed it was female.

“Tell me what happened here,” he
demanded.

The woman looked up. She was old, surely. She
wore a ragged dress in the Royalist style, a headscarf over natty
rolls of hair that spilled down her shoulders. He tried not to
think of hedge witches.