Grizelda (6 page)

The police officer pulled Grizelda in the
other direction. “You go in the back way.”

He led her into a much smaller tunnel off to
the side of the large, carved one. Inside it was dark. She felt the
floor slope upward under her feet. The low murmur of thousands of
voices seemed to be coming from somewhere very far off. Then she
realized it was coming through the wall. Only a few feet of stone
separated her from thousands of goblins.

What was she on trial for? Sorcery? What were
they going to do to her?

The officer turned back to her and all at
once slapped a hand to his head.

“Aw, gee, I forgot the cuffs!”

He grabbed her wrists distractedly, looked up
the ramp, then back at her wrists. He sighed. “Just keep your hands
behind your back. Don’t touch anything. You walk in front of me,
not too fast, not too slow. Now go! You’ve on!”

The ramp was so narrow they had a brief
struggle to get Grizelda in front. She looked back to the officer
for assurance; he gave her a gentle nudge. For what seemed like the
umpteenth time that day, she told herself to have courage. What
could they do to her, really? A lot. She tried not to think about
that as she clasped her hands behind her back, lifted her chin, and
marched up the ramp.

She winced as a bright light splashed down on
her. Her march turned into a blind fumble. She couldn’t make out
much more than the dim outline of the ramp below her feet, but she
kept going. A murmur went up all around her, above and below.

All at once the ramp beneath her turned into
empty space. She’d been about to make another step but she checked
it, reeling frantically. She stepped backwards a few paces just to
get away from that ledge.

Slowly, the light-dazzle faded, and she could
make out the rows and rows of faces, all around her. She was
standing on a platform in the center of a giant sphere. They must
have carved it straight out of the rock, she realized. It was as
big as a stadium, with risers below her and balconies above, and
every one of those seats was filled with a goblin watching her.
Oh, God.
She swallowed. She felt terribly exposed up there
on a platform in the middle of empty space, all the worse because
it was without railings.

She remembered she was supposed to be on
trial and put her head back down. Still, she couldn’t help sneaking
horrified sidelong glances now and then at all those green upturned
faces.

“How kind–” A raised voice struggled to be
heard over the excitement of the crowd. Grizelda looked where the
voice was coming from. There was an important-looking balcony set
apart from the rest of the seats where eight goblins sat at a
table, quills and glasses of water set before them.

The goblin in the middle stood. “Citizens!
Comrades!” he repeated, but it had no effect on the crowd.

So this was the Chairman Grendel? He didn’t
look nearly as terrible as Grizelda had imagined. Or that great,
for that matter. He was a diminished goblin, bespectacled and borne
down with age. There was something about him that spoke of a great
tiredness.

He banged a book down hard against the table.
Finally the crowd quieted down.

“As I was
saying
, how kind of you to
finally show up. Let’s get started, shall we?” He cleared his
throat. “Members of the Goblin Union, you are here on grave
business. A trespasser has been found on our land. Her presence
here goes against all our most ancient laws. For it, she must stand
trial.”

So it was trespassing. She’d heard the
goblins were clannish. And they had strange customs. Who knew what
sort of a punishment they gave for trespassing?

“Presiding over this trial will be Foreman
Shad of Mining, Sections A-F…”

The goblin at the far left of the table stood
up.

“Foreman Denco of Manufacturing … Foreman
Badambal of Culture … Foreman Ranshin of Ogre Relations…”

The Chairman named all seven of his foremen
in turn, until they were all standing at the table behind him.

The Chairman had been speaking to the
audience, but now he turned around to address his foremen. “In your
decision, preserve the interests of the worker and the goblin way
of life. This court is now in session.”

On cue, all the goblins in the room let out a
shout, a sort of a cross between
huagh!
and
hoy!
that
took Grizelda by surprise. She winced. It wasn’t raucous at all;
every throat was synchronized so the noise reverberated around the
hall like a thunderclap.

“Would the prisoner like to make a
statement?”

The question came on Grizelda so suddenly
that she didn’t know what to say. A dozen ideas occurred to her,
but every one of them seemed likely to get her into worse trouble.
She stared back at the Chairman, tongue-tied, acutely aware that
every person in the room expected an answer. The uncomfortable
silence dragged on. Just as she was beginning to panic, the foreman
on the Chairman’s right leaned over and whispered something to him.
The Chairman nodded.

“Foreman Rogdo would like to ask the prisoner
some questions.”

Foreman Rogdo stood and walked up to the edge
of the balcony. “What is your name, ogre?”

Grizelda swallowed and found her voice at
last. “Grizelda.”

“And your occupation?” His voice was not
harsh, but there was a certain edge to it like a warning.

She tried to make herself as meek as
possible. “I’m a seamstress, sir.”

The foreman coughed. “That’s Comrade, to
you.”

“Oh,” she said, in a very small voice.

“And how did you, an outsider, come to be
found on Manufacturing Floor H?”

“It was sort of an accident–”

“Accident? If you weren’t looking for the
Goblin Union, then what were you doing underground?”

“You don’t know what it’s like up there!” She
just sort of blurted it out. “The Committees of Public Safety,
they’re sending gendarmes into people’s homes and rounding them up.
When we threw off the Auks–”

“Fugh!” Another of the foremen made a
dismissive gesture. “If you’re trying to get our sympathy by
bringing up Auks, it’s not going to work. Your people were better
off with them. At least then we had peace.”

That shut her up right away. Peace with the
Auks? Eleven years ago, before the Revolution, what had the goblins
done? Traded with them? Helped them (terrible thought) collect the
blood tax? That’s what the sorcerers had done. They’d made
themselves the Auks’ tax collectors in exchange for protection, and
now they were getting hunted down and stuck in holes by the
Committees for it.

“I … don’t know what to say to you,” she said
finally.

Oh, Grizelda, you hypocrite.

Another foreman raised his hand. “Move to
speak, Chairman.”

The chairman gave his assent with a nod.

“Are you or are you not an escaped
prisoner?”

Too shocked to reply, Grizelda stared at him.
Her silence was all the answer they needed. The foremen started
shifting and muttering to each other in their balcony.

“We can’t have this. They’ll be overrunning
our warrens in days looking for her.”

“…turn her over to the Corvanian
authorities…”

A goblin in the audience shot to his feet.
“Move to speak, Chairman!” Barely waiting long enough for
permission, he eagerly blurted out his say. “Why are we even
discussing this? She’s an ogre. They’re all pigs. She doesn’t
deserve anything better than a swift, hard punishment!”

Grizelda recognized that goblin. Nelin! She
forgot her handcuffs entirely and even her predicament as she
pointed at him. “That’s the one that tried to kill me!”

The Chairman ignored her. “Miner Nelin is
reminded that his personal political views are not the issue
here.”

“But don’t you see? We have an opportunity
here.
We
have something that the ogres want. We have a
chance to show them what we’re made of, instead of sitting back and
letting them rob us with their steel prices like you–”

“That’s enough!” and
bang!
went the
book. “This is not the time for political squabbling. Miner Nelin,
save it for the election.”

Miner Nelin sat down, furious.

The foreman named Shad raised his hand.
“Something has just occurred to me as you were … debating. We can’t
let this girl back into the presence of other ogres. She’s just
witnessed the inside of the Union Hall.”

The chairman rubbed his temples. “Hell! Whose
idea was it to bring her in here?”

“I believe it was one of the
undersecretaries,” one of the foremen said.

“It seems to me,” Foreman Shad continued,
“that our only option is to have her executed.”

“
What?
” Grizelda cried. The whole
Union Hall was in a tumult. Every goblin was yelling his own
opinion, foreman and citizen alike. The Chairman mouthed words that
nobody could hear and banged his book against the table
fruitlessly. Somewhere a chant went up: “Kill the ogre! Kill the
ogre!” It spread infectiously until the whole hall was shouting in
unison: “Kill the ogre! Kill the ogre!”

No. Straight from a death sentence to a death
sentence. She’d been played with by the Committees, by ratriders…
She wanted nothing more than to sit down, to curl up and hide from
all those goblins that were demanding to have her killed. It took
all that was left of her strength just to stand there.

It took five whole minutes for the furor to
die down. The volume dropped by degrees, and as it did, Grizelda
became aware that the Chairman was in the middle of a heated
argument with Foreman Shad. The goblins did, too; and as they
realized what he was saying, they dropped off their own
conversations to listen.

“Are you out of your mind, Chairman?” said
Foreman Shad. “The girl’s a liability.”

“I don’t like murdering innocents.”

“At least put it to a vote!” The foreman
persisted.
The Chairman made a dismissive noise. “They’ll just vote to have
her killed.”

“If that’s what the people want, you have to
do
it, Chairman!”

“This court will come to order!” He banged
the book quite unnecessarily, as the room was now totally
silent.

An older goblin in the audience stood and
spoke. “Move to speak, Chairman.” When the Chairman had given him
the floor, he went on. “As it is, my laundry’s desperately
understaffed. We can’t keep up with the volume of work we get.
Adding a seamstress would free up my workers to do their real jobs.
I suggest we arrange some sort of a work-for-board arrangement with
the ogre.”

Her heart leapt. Wonderful laundry goblin, if
he got her out of this, she promised she’d never think he was slimy
again! She wasn’t sure she could trust anything she saw at this
point, but she thought she saw a look of gratitude pass between the
Chairman and this older goblin. It could have meant anything. At
any rate, the Chairman snatched on his idea instantly.

“Laundryman Crome has an excellent idea.
Comrades, it appears that this court–”

“But you still have to put it to a vote!”
insisted Shad.

Another foreman leaned forward in his seat.
“Chairman, if the officers of Promontory discover that we’re
harboring their prisoner–”

“This is outrageous!” Miner Nelin leapt to
his feet.

The chairman fixed him a glare. “This court
is adjourned.”

“What about democracy? What about standing up
to the ogres? You
sellout!
”

“I said, this court is adjourned!”

Grizelda watched with dismay as the situation
in the hall rapidly degenerated. Were they going to put it to a
vote or not? What was going to happen to her? The argument between
Nelin and the Chairman raged on as other goblins in the audience
threw in their own opinions. The foremen either expressed
indignation or offered advice. Before long half the hall was on its
feet.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder. She
turned and found the police officer standing behind her.

“Come on,” he said. “They’ll figure it out.
You’re done here.”

She gratefully let him lead her away.
Unnoticed by the crowd, they walked down the ramp and back into the
darkness below.

Calding’s footsteps trailed off, a brief
still held limply under one arm. That was Whatshisname, wasn’t it?
The fellow he’d sent to fetch up his prisoner. He was running like
all Hell was after him to the warden’s office.

He adjusted his file and waited. Sure enough,
a few seconds later, Whatshisname and the warden came down the hall
the other direction. They didn’t run now, but their determined
military hustle betrayed that they were in a hurry. By the time
they turned the corner, they were on a path that would take them to
the cell blocks.

That was odd.

There was no point in denying it. Much as
Mant would have preferred not to see it, there was the popped-open
lock right in front of him. The door was ajar and the cell behind
empty. Not a sign of force or anything.

He cursed and rubbed his forehead. The
gendarme looked on nervously, a few steps away. Torn between
keeping a respectful silence and putting in a word for himself, he
started to speak two or three times, then thought better of it.

Finally, he said, “Honestly, it wasn’t my
fault, sir–”

Mant waved at him dismissively. “Who all
knows about this?”

“Not a soul. I went straight to you.
Wait…”

Damn.

“And what is
wait
supposed to
mean?”

The gendarme did not like telling what he was
about to say. “See, it was Lieutenant Calding that sent me down to
fetch this prisoner. He’s going to be expecting an answer.”

“Well, don’t tell him this one’s gone,” Mant
said. “Make up a story – something! We’ve got to keep this hushed
up.”

“But how am I going to–”

“I still rank him here. You’re to follow my
orders and not his. Do you understand?”