Grizelda (16 page)

“Where does he live?”

“In a flat above a warehouse. Near the Fish
Market.”

“I think … I think the sewers follow the same
lines as the big streets.” She chewed her lip, working out the
details. “Yes! You can get to Jamin underground! Follow me!” She
ran off down the tunnel.

“Wait! Where are you going?” He stumbled
after her blindly. He hadn’t gotten a few yards before he hit his
head on a pipe.

“Ow! How can you
see
down here?” the
boy said, rubbing his head.

She’d taken her sight for granted, but this
boy fresh from the surface was bumbling about like a bat in the
daytime. She must have gotten used to the dark, going part goblin
spending all this time underground.

“It kind of helps that I’m short. Here, just
step where I step.” Grizelda held out her hand.

The boy took it and she took off, leading him
on a chase through the underbelly of Lonnes. She had no trouble
ducking the pipes and skirting the holes and streams, but the boy
crashed along behind her like a wounded animal. She knew he
couldn’t see a thing of her, so they communicated through her hand,
her using the slightest of pressures to guide him one way or
another. It was enough information for him to manage to stumble
along, bent over, too big for these tunnels.

Finally, Grizelda stopped.

“I think we’re under the Fish Market now,”
she said.

The boy poked his head out a nearby drain for
a quick look around, then pulled it back in, excited. “It’s over
there! I can see Jamin’s flat from here!”

“Then run, before somebody sees you!” She
urged him on.

“Hold on.” He dropped back down. “Did you say
you were in trouble with the gendarmes, too?”

“I … You’re not going to turn me in, are
you?” She realized as she said it that she was echoing his own
words.

“My name’s Toby Dunnag.” He held out his hand
to shake.

“I’m just Grizelda,” confused that he should
suddenly be friendly when she had all but admitted she was
wanted.

“I’m with this organization,” Toby said. “I
think they’d really like to meet you. We think the Committees of
Public Safety have gone too far.” His eyes sparkled. “We’re
revolutionaries.”

It was painful just to look at him. She
started to back away. “I don’t dare. I’ve already done too much,
talking to you here.”

“We meet under the Trebuchet, on Rue de
Calle. Every Monday night.”

“I can’t.” Oh, if only she’d never heard the
word exile. “I’m following these rules, but I can’t explain them to
you. I’m sorry.”

The boy called Toby gave her a look that she
couldn’t quite read. Disappointment mixed with something else. She
couldn’t bear to look at it. She turned away and melted into the
shadows.

She retraced her steps back to the goblin
city, dejected. Around her, the last shreds of the pig iron riot
were dissipating. Clusters of angry goblins hung around in the
streets here and there, yelling at other clusters, while the city
police urged them to go home. Grizelda didn’t pay them much
attention.

Somebody wanted to do something about the
Committees of Public Safety. They were making people disappear in
the middle of the night while they said they were protecting
Corvain from the Auks and sorcerers. And she could do nothing to
help. She felt guilty even breaking the rules this time – hadn’t
the goblins saved her life by hiding her from Promontory?

And then another, bleaker thought. The
Committee had been right to drag her away. Traitor to the
Republic.

She went through the laundry antechamber
without even looking up. Crome had returned while she was gone, and
when she got to the work floor, he gave her a stare, long and hard,
but he didn’t say anything. Deciding it might be best not to say
anything back, she plopped herself down at her workbench and
resumed her work.

After his fruitless meeting with the officer
in charge of personnel, Mant went to bother Mrs. Ursinus. She was
the woman in charge of the female prisoners’ belongings. Probably
not very helpful for tracking down a disappeared prisoner, but he
was getting desperate. Nobody in this prison seemed to know what
they were doing. And the longer he took, the greater his chances
somebody would find out this Grizelda girl was missing and cost him
his job.

He walked up to Mrs. Ursinus’s desk without
ceremony and said, “ I need to see what you confiscated from a
Grizelda on November the 20
^th
.”

She looked up at him with an odd expression.
Mrs. Ursinus was the only employee of the prison who scared him
almost as much as Lieutenant Calding. There wasn’t hostility in her
look, not exactly. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything. She was
too calm. She looked him in the eye, like none of his other
subordinates dared.

Without giving him a hint as to what she was
thinking, she said, “All right, Warden,” and went into the back
room.

She came out a little while later with an
envelope, which she set on the table. Instead of handing it over to
Mant, she opened the envelope in front of him, drawing out a pair
of scissors.

“She didn’t have anything else on her?”

“No, Warden.” There was that same, steady
look.

Well, he might as well give it a shot.
“There’s a possibility that her denunciation papers drifted in
here. Could you go into the back room and look for them?”

“We’re not in charge of denunciations, sir.”
And was that a hint of defiance in those eyes? No, he was imagining
things, creeping himself out over nothing.

Like that time Calding wanted to use torture
on the girl, remember? The same one who was gone missing now. That
weird light in Calding’s expression…

Mant forced himself to focus. “I know that,”
he said. “But the people who are supposed to be in charge of
denunciations don’t have it.”

“We don’t keep the denunciations,” she
reiterated. “Where would I look?”

“I don’t know. Just look.”

She shrugged and went into the back room. She
was gone a long time. Mant stood there and waited, shifting his
weight, trying to ease his feet that were getting sore. Finally,
she came back with a paper in her hand.

“We do have this concerning a Grizelda. Will
it help?”

“Let me have it.”

She stopped a minute, then gave it to him. He
eagerly unfolded the paper and scanned it for its contents. Praise
the Republic, something had gone right. Yes, this would help, it
was the denunciation itself! He thanked her hastily and left. As
soon as he was out in the hallway, he opened it again and began to
read.

My name is Meaven Godey. I am of sound mind
as I tell this and I am a law-abiding citizen of the Republic of
Lonnes. On Friday, November 17, I walked into Hesslehamer’s Charity
Workshop intending to buy some thread…

As he read on, the words in front of him
filled him with more and more horror. Good God, she really
was
a sorceress.

Chapter 15

When the workbell finally rang, Grizelda got
up and prepared to go as usual. Her foot hit something crinkly. It
was the packet from the Chairman. She’d hidden it there under her
bench when she came in. She stole a quick glance at Crome – he
wasn’t looking. She took it up to her room quickly and threw it
under the covers.

She forgot about it for a while as she ate a
hurried dinner in the cafeteria, avoiding the hate-filled stares of
the goblins. Her mind was more on that boy she’d met in the sewers.
If only she could join him and his revolutionaries! Plus, she had
to worry about the possibility there would be another riot. So far,
peace still held, but the goblins’ glares seemed to be even worse
than usual.

The spy was still there. He hovered about two
blocks behind her as she walked home.

When she went up to her room, not exchanging
any friendly conversation with Crome as she passed him, the
squarish lump in her covers was still there, waiting for her. She
sat down on her mattress and pulled back the wrappings again. Roc’s
egg blue on one side and bleached-bone white on the other. This was
wrong. This was what got her into trouble in the first place, and
got all the girls at the shop in trouble because of her.
Traitor
to the Republic.
She should never even have ducked into that
commissary in the first place.

But this paper was
perfect
. Better
than anything she had ever had at the shop. She bit her lip. Up
here in her room, there was nobody there to see her betray the
revolution. Be one of the Auks’ helpers. Freak.

Decided, she took up a sheet and folded it,
made a few careful snips with her scissors. It unfolded into a
snowflake. It felt so good to be working again, creating something
with her hands more important than darned socks. She took out
another sheet, cut it up in just the right places, and made a paper
chain. After a moment’s hesitation, she took out a third sheet and
began to fold it.

Under her fingers working swift and precise,
a form started to emerge: that of a tiny foal, perfectly realistic
from its hooves up to the creases that made its ears. She set it
down on the ground and waited. For a moment it just lay there. Then
it began to move.

The foal shook its head as if emerging from a
nap and looked around. Slowly, tentatively, it stretched its legs
out and tried to get them under itself. After a few tries, it
succeeded in getting up. The first few steps were wobbly, but it
gained confidence, and before long it was prancing across the
paint-chipped floor.

Grizelda realized what she’d done, then
guiltily snatched it up and tore it in half.

The first thing Grizelda noticed when she
stepped outside the next morning was that about half of the goblins
were wearing green armbands. Some of them were walking, but mostly
they stood around self-consciously in clumps, holding themselves in
such a way that the green strips of cloth knotted around their
upper arms were as prominent as possible. The bandless goblins had
to push past them in the street to get anywhere.

She had gotten up determined to go seek out
Lenk first thing and ask him some questions. There were so many
things she needed answers about – the shadowy figure she kept
seeing following her, the disturbance in the Union Hall about pig
iron prices and the resulting riot. That boy she’d met in the
sewers was on her mind, too, but she didn’t dare ask him about
that. Now she hesitated. She wouldn’t be at all surprised if these
bands were connected with some new way the goblins were going to
make life hell for her.

Cautiously, she shut the laundry door behind
her. The green-banded goblins didn’t look like they were making any
moves. She adopted her usual eye-avoiding, businesslike shuffle and
hoped matters would stay that way.

Then she saw a familiar figure down the
street from her, walking quickly. Overjoyed, she went running after
him.

“Mechanic Lenk!”

The figure slowed, seeming somewhat unwilling
to let her catch up to him.

“Mechanic Lenk, I’m so glad I found you,” she
said, out of breath. “I’ve got so many things to ask you. What are
these bands? What do they mean?”

He was standing awkwardly, she realized,
facing sort of sideways to her, and looking highly
uncomfortable.

“Mechanic Lenk?”

“It means they’re Strikers,” he managed.

“Strikers?”

“Goblins voting for Miner Nelin.”

He shifted position, and Grizelda saw why he
had been standing so oddly. There was a green band tied to his left
arm, just above the elbow. She stepped back with a cry of
dismay.

Oh, Lenk, too?

“Mechanic, you
helped
me!”

“Grizelda, it’s complicated.” He stepped
forward, made a gesture that was supposed to mean conciliation. She
stepped back.

“There are things like poverty and
exploitation and the price of pig iron. Cooperation between the
Unions. You’ve got to understand. We’re suffering under Chairman
Grendel because he won’t do anything.”

“No, I don’t understand!” She was almost
shouting, the fact that she was out in the street where all the
goblins could listen totally forgotten. “Miner Nelin’s such a
horrible person!”

“But he’s … right,” Mechanic Lenk said,
sounding miserable.

The ratriders noticed the change in her mood
when she went to work that day. Geddy and Kricker were there,
sitting on the top of the sewing machine, hidden from the goblin
workers by the perennial clouds of steam that filled the laundry
room’s air. Tunya was not there. She had long since declared she
didn’t want anything to do with “that silly ogre girl” and stopped
coming to visit.

Grizelda wouldn’t talk to them, even after
Geddy had tried repeatedly to make conversation. Geddy and Kricker
exchanged concerned looks over her head, but she didn’t feel up to
doing anything about it. She was just too bewildered by all the
events that had happened recently and wanted to fall into the nice,
safe routine of her work for a while and not think.

Finally Geddy said, “All right, Grizelda,
what’s going on?”

The remark startled her. What was going on?
Where should she start?

“Geddy, Kricker, I’m so scared,” she
whispered.

“What is it?” Geddy said. Kricker leaned in
closer to listen.

She took a furtive look around the work floor
first. It was becoming a habit. “Somebody’s following me and I
don’t know why,” she began. “I don’t know what it is he wants. I
see him on the street, always a little behind me. I don’t like the
way the other goblins are looking at me. There’s been a riot about
pig iron.” She had an urge to drop her head in her hands, but she
couldn’t do that out here on the work floor. It turned into a quick
duck and a rub of her forehead. “Yesterday I almost broke my
exile.”