Grizelda (29 page)

“Sir, we haven’t caught anybody yet from the
north–”

He noticed the warden was busy, trailed off,
and slid away.

How organized
, she thought bitterly.
This officer-turned-warden must have really worked at this.
Yep,
not incompetent like the old warden.

He took her to an office. So, no ordinary
interrogation dungeon for her. It was ordinary-looking, neat and
tidy, maybe dangerously neat and tidy. There were two desks, the
larger of which was empty. At the smaller one sat a secretary,
writing. When the warden entered he looked up in terror.

“
Out.
”

The secretary skattled out of the room,
sending several sheets of paper flying in his wake.

The warden closed the door. Grizelda heard a
lock click, then he took his seat, leaving her standing in the
middle of the room. He steepled his fingers in the gesture she
remembered all too well.

“Grizelda No-name, sweatshop worker, arrested
for making an unnatural paper doll on 20 November.” He spoke as if
reciting off a list. The note of contempt in his voice didn’t seem
quite genuine. “I remember you, all right. Who’s the other
one?”

Grizelda had known she was going to have to
speak. But at that moment all the stories she’d prepared on the
march up here flew out of her mind. She swallowed.

“I – I don’t know him,” she said finally.

“What were you doing in those goblin
tunnels?”

“I dunno,” she said, a little defensively. “I
was exploring.”

“Underground?”

“I was exploring underground.”

He got up, trying his very best to look
leisurely, but there was a fire burning in his eyes. “I can get
Chairman Grendel to tell me everything, you know. There’s no point.
I’ll send a message down to him right now.”

He
knew!
For a panicky moment,
Grizelda tried to figure out what she was going to do now. Then
something occurred to her. If Grendel was Chairman of the People’s
Goblin Union of Lonnes, surely people must know his name above the
surface as well as below. The warden was making an educated guess,
trying to get her to betray something.

She was afraid she’d already hesitated too
long, but she said, “Who’s Chairman Grendel?”

It was hard to tell if she’d fooled him. He
started to pace, never looking at her. He poked into drawers,
twirled a pen from his desk, anything to avoid eye contact.

“That boy, is he part of your
organization?”

“There is no organization.”

“What’s your agenda?”

“I’m not in an organization.”

“Can you give me names? How many are
you?”

“I’m not in an organization!” It came out a
little too vehemently, enough to make him pause in his track around
the office. She went on.

“I worked alone. That paper doll, that was
just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve been sabotaging the government
for years.”

Then maybe she was imagining it, but she
thought she detected something he’d been doing his best to hide
since he recognized her. Raw fear. That man could not sit still. He
wouldn’t look at her. Men his age had been brought up to be
terrified of the spellcasters. But he collected himself.

“What’s his name?”

“Robin Goodfellow!” She spat, but to her
disappointment, he was out of range.

“This is pointless,” the warden said, making
another circle around her. Now it was a paperweight he picked up,
passing it from hand to hand. “Whoever is working with you, they’re
all doomed. We have gendarmes posted at every entrance to the
holding cells. You can’t help them. But you still have a chance to
help yourself. If you tell me something, a name, a place, I can
arrange to have you cleared.”

Yeah, right.

“No, you won’t,” she said.

“You’ll be free. Nothing on your record.”

Her fists clenched. She hated him. The first
time he’d interrogated her, he’d offered to let her off if she made
a written confession then, too. Now he was offering to let her off
if she turned in her friends, and he was expecting a different
answer.

“As long as the Committees are in charge of
the government, I wouldn’t be free.”

“What do you want, then? The life of your
friend?”

“Yes,” she wanted to say, but she forced
herself not to. “I told you, I’ve never seen him before.”

“He’ll confess to everything, you know.
There’s no point.”

“No, he won’t. He doesn’t have anything to
say.”

“The penalty for treason is the firing
squad.”

“I don’t care.”

“Even if we kill your friend, too?”

“I’ve never seen him before. He had nothing
to do with it.”

The warden stopped circling, and the two of
them stared each other in the face. Grizelda hated him so much she
couldn’t stand it. She hated everything about him – the way he
looked so ordinary but for the light in his eyes, the precision,
the way the collar of his uniform was just a tiny bit rumpled. The
way he was constantly moving.

His grip slackened and he dropped the
paperweight.

“Bugger!” It rolled off into a corner and he
flapped his hand as if he’d been burned.

She was sure of it now. He was afraid of her.
He was terrified of sorcerers, of her power, just like everybody
old enough to remember the Auks and the blood tax was. Like Toby
was afraid of her. She struggled to keep her voice even.

“Do you really want to kill me?” she
said.

Then she kept silent and let him imagine what
that meant. Maybe she really did act alone. Maybe she had in store
for him some retribution from beyond the grave so powerful that it
was beyond his comprehension.

He managed to hold his own in the staring
contest for several seconds. Then he turned away with a jerk. “All
right, you have earned this. I’m going to apply the question to you
personally. I’m leaving you here, alone in the dark, so you can
think about it. When I come back, I’ll come with equipment.”

She refused to answer.

“Think about it.”

The warden crossed the room. He turned down
the wall lamp bit by bit, watching her all the while. She stared
back at him, conceding nothing. Only a gutter remained, then it
went out. When he opened the door he stood there a moment, as if
puzzled. Then he shut it and all was blackness.

As soon as Grizelda was certain he was no
longer watching she groped her way to a wall and leaned against it,
gasping. She had won.

Chapter 28

“Kricker, you did it!” Tunya said as they
sped away from the gendarmes.

“Did what?”

He said it weakly, not really paying
attention. Now that the crisis was over it was all coming back. The
swaying of the ground. The nausea. He was starting to shake so bad
he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to hold onto the reins.

“Got over your fear of heights,” she
said.

He looked over at her. “What are you talking
about? I’m terrified out of my wits.”

“But you tried to rescue me anyway…”

There was a very long silence. A couple of
times Tunya started to say something but didn’t manage it.

Finally, she said, “Kricker, I’ve been a
total shrew–”

“I called you Frizzface!” he said, astonished
that
she
should be apologizing to
him
.

There was another silence.

“Do you want to call it even?”

He nodded.

The Undergrounders had all huddled around a
lantern in the meeting cave, surrounded by the bits of equipment
for the mission they were now never going to use. All of them were
there – except for Grizelda, Toby, Kricker, and Tunya. The waiting
had gotten so that exhaustion blotted out everything else, even
fear. Katarin had a dark, vindicated look. Every few minutes one of
the ratriders flew out to search the tunnels for the missing
Undergrounders and ratriders, or flew back in to tell them what
they’d seen. Nothing.

Nobody wanted to be the first to speak. If
they opened their mouths, they would have to voice the fear that
each of them was secretly thinking.

Laricia flew back in from her turn on the
search.

“Any sign of them?” said Jamin.

“No.” She landed on a pile of coats and
climbed off her bat. “Apollo’s exhausted. I can’t go out
again.”

Jamin indicated a place by the lantern and
she sat down, taking off her goggles and rubbing her face.

After a moment she said, “Grizelda and Toby
were scheduled to enter the cells at the same place Geddy and I got
attacked. I’ve been up and down the entire route and there was
nobody.”

Now she’d said it aloud. She waited a moment,
trying to be gentle.

“We may have to call off the search.”

People sagged, put their heads in their
hands. They almost didn’t see the streaks of color as Tunya and
Kricker, one after another, shot into the meeting cave.

“We got attacked by gendarmes! What’s going
on?”

Jamin leapt to his feet. “Have either of you
seen Grizelda or the bourgeois?”

Tunya shook her head. Jamin sighed and sat
down.

They landed in the same place as Laricia.
While Kricker crawled off his bat, looking exhausted, Tunya said,
“We thought something was wrong, that’s why we came to the meeting
cave–”

“The breakout was a trap,” Solander
explained. “They were waiting for us at all the entrances. We know
for sure they took Geddy prisoner, and it looks like the bourgeois
and Grizelda, too.”

They were all silent, as if waiting with one
desperate hope that Grizelda and Toby might come running into the
cave, demanding to know what was going on. They didn’t come.

Finally Laricia said, “You do know she’s been
living with the goblins, don’t you?”

There were expressions of amazement from the
Undergrounders. “I just sort of thought she lived in the sewers,
you know?” said Stevry.

Laricia shook her head. “Their chairman,
Chairman Grendel, favors her. I don’t know why. I wouldn’t let him
know what she’s been up to for any other reason, but … it may be
time to ask him for help.”

“What could a goblin do?” said Katarin.

“It’s worth a shot.”

Jamin nodded, and the other Undergrounders
gave their approval, too.

“Right.” She stood up and pulled down her
goggles. “I’ll need to borrow somebody else’s bat. Apollo won’t
make it.”

Wearily Kricker waved at his own bat. Laricia
nodded, mounted him and flew off.

Grizelda must have fallen asleep, because she
awoke to the sound of a commotion in the corridor. There were
grunts, then the thud of a body hitting the wall. The door slammed
open and a tangle of limbs was flung inside. Just as quickly, it
slammed shut again.

She rushed over to where she thought she’d
seen the body land. “Toby?”

“Grizelda? I can’t see a thing.”

All at once she remembered the dull glow in
her bodice pocket. Tunya’s lantern-stick. She pulled it out and the
room was awash in green light. Toby was on the floor, painfully
pulling himself to a sitting position. He looked awful. His hair
and clothes were all in disarray, one of his eyes was swelling
shut, and he was cradling his arm.

“Oh, my God! Did they torture you?”

She knelt and put a hand on his bad wrist. It
didn’t feel broken. Already there were bruises coming up, lurid in
this strange light. Oh, poor Toby!

“No. They just beat me up a little.” He tried
to pull her off him, but she wouldn’t let go. “What about you?”

“Nothing. Just questions,” she said.

He leaned on her like an old man over to the
warden’s chair. How strange to be this close to Toby, who usually
refused to speak to her. He sat down, wincing, then put his hand in
his shirt pocket.

“What’s that?” she said, already guessing the
answer but hoping she was wrong.

“They let me have Geddy back when they were
done. I don’t think he’s okay, though…”

He drew the tiny figure out of his pocket and
set it on the desk. Geddy lay curled up, not moving. When she saw
it, her throat tightened.

“Geddy?” she said softly.

“Hoarfrost’s dead.”

It was muffled, but the voice was definitely
Geddy’s, alive. At least something was okay, here at the end of the
road. Toby looked at her, questioning.

“That was his bat,” she explained. “Geddy,
are you okay?”

“What kind of a ratrider am I? I got
caught.”

“So did we, Geddy.” She was trying to be as
gentle as possible. She set Tunya’s lantern down on the desk and
knelt so he was at her eye level. Something was clearly wrong with
him, but she couldn’t tell what.

“You don’t understand, do you? Ratriders
don’t
get
caught.” He sat up and looked at her for the first
time. “It’s like what I was telling you, the getting less
pixie-like. I can’t sklein anymore!”

Toby was now utterly confused. Grizelda
didn’t completely understand either, but she thought she saw the
beginning of it. They’d gotten too human. Too much time being near
her and her friends, too much time caring about human things.
Skleining was the only magic they had left.

“Oh, Geddy. I’m so sorry.”

“And that’s not the whole of it. They saw me,
Griz. After two hundred years, I’m the one to break the covenant of
secrecy. If they get the location of the ratrider grotto out of me,
they’ll wipe us out like vermin.”

Geddy folded his arms and looked down. Toby
turned to her.

“You didn’t tell them anything, did you?” he
said.

“Of course not!” Grizelda was surprised to
find, even at this hour, she managed to be annoyed he would even
ask.
Then she realized there wasn’t any accusation in his
voice. “The warden, he told me he was coming back for torture
equipment, but he hasn’t yet.”

“They told me they were going to kill
us.”