We stood in a chamber quite black except where flashes of luminescence flared and died like levers rising and lowering. Taps and creaks and rasps played out as if they were slowly winding down. There fell a last flare of movement. Then the dark poured like pitch over my eyes. The chamber’s air lay heavy with the rancid scent of old oil and a tang of char. My ghost-sword, which outside had flared in response to the cold magic of the storm, hung inert in my hand. A ripple of soft barks, snaps, clicks, and pops spread within the room: goblin chatter.
“Gracious Melqart,” breathed Bee. “We’ve stumbled into a goblin’s den. This must be one of those illicit daytime workshops the prince’s inspectors are always searching for.”
“Cat,” said Rory in an aggrieved and alarmed tone, “many small fingers are touching me.”
“They’ll just guide you to the stairs,” said the headmaster’s assistant from the darkness. “They don’t want you in here any more than you want to be here.”
Fingers tapped up my arms to my shoulders and around my back, as if measuring me for a new riding jacket. Like most people, I knew little about goblins except that sunlight burned them, they hid themselves beneath masks and robes even under starlight, and they were shaped much like humans. They sold their wares at night markets, and their workshops were legally required to close during the day. Which meant we were standing in a place where we could all be arrested.
A voice as brittle as winter grass spoke on my left side as a hand traced my arm. “One stinks of dragons. One smells of the summer sun. This one is bound between the worlds, like her sword. There is a price.”
“You and I have already agreed on the price,” said the headmaster’s assistant. When you could not see his skin, he sounded like an ordinary man, calm but displeased.
“For these three, it is not enough.”
Bee and I had, on a few occasions, bargained with masked and veiled goblin merchants at one of the night markets. “What do you want?” I asked.
“To call on you, spiritwalker, one time, at need.”
“Cat,” whispered Bee warningly. “Be prudent.”
“Done,” I said, for, unlike Bee, I could hear very faintly a commotion in the shop, maybe even the sound of a clock falling and shattering. The soldiers had arrived.
“ Ah,” rippled down the Stygian depths of the chamber.
“That was rash,” said the headmaster’s assistant.
“It’s her other name,” said Bee.
“There’s trouble in the shop,” I said.
“We know.” The goblin’s cool grasp encircled my wrist. “This way.”
We were led to stairs. The foul breath of the undercity was exhaled in our faces. Into the noxious sewer we descended step by greasy step. The air was like a wet blanket full of rot pressed against my face. That slurping endless sigh was the sound made by oozing sludge. I could see nothing, but a channel yawned to my left like the mouth of a charnel god, or at least his outhouse.
Rory said, “Euw! Is this where the dogs bide?”
“Quiet!” murmured the headmaster’s assistant from ahead of us. “From this point forward, you must not speak. If we’re discovered, we will die, and the goblins who guide us will lose ownership of their breath.” He did not explain, and we dared not ask lest we break silence.
Descending, we left behind the sewage’s reek. Where the stairs ended, we continued in pitch-darkness along a tunnel whose pavement was smoother than any Adurnam street. The touch that guided me never pinched or slackened. The road ran straight and true, punctuated by alcoves and archways sensed as spaces of air rank with a charred scent like the ashes of a dead fire. At intervals I heard gears ticking over steadily. We would walk close and yet closer to the sound and then a gap would open to right or left with a tickle of warmth and a pressure like wind confined by a veil. With a swallow, I would pop my ears, and as we moved on, the ticking would fade.
Goblins were so legendarily ingenious that I had always doubted the impressive tales told of them could be true: Could they really breathe life into stone and metal? But these deep, smooth paths mined beneath the city made me wonder if it might be true. What had I bound myself into? What did goblins who worked in an illegal daylight workshop want? What was “ownership of breath”?
The beat of a tick-tock measure brushed my ears. To our left, a glow limned a vaulted chamber. Its depths lay smothered in darkness, but seen through arches, the front of the chamber gleamed with a milky luminescence. Creatures were lined up in ranks whose columns vanished away into the gloom beyond the aura of light. At first glance, I thought them soldiers at parade rest. But as my steps faltered and I stared, I realized they were not breathing and not human. Their slender limbs and torsos were speckled as if they were stone. Their faces were human in having lips, noses, and ears, but the hollows where they should have had eyes glistened with patches like wet velvet. Most wore sleeveless tunics woven of a fabric that might have been thread spun from fog. In the shadow-drenched depths, unseen sleepers inhaled and exhaled.
My guide hissed faintly. I looked at it. It was almost as tall as Bee, golden in color, lithe as a dancer, and not remotely human in expression, having no eyes to mark its heart and soul. Beyond it stood Bee, Rory, and their guides, but the headmaster’s assistant led the way without a guide. How could he see in blackness so complete it blinded me?
An emphatic thud sounded from the back of the chamber. A ticking ratcheted up with a groan of air as of steam being released. Mist like a cloud of fireflies chased along a murky shadow. Gears whirred. A head slewed around, and claws like edged blades winked in the pale light.
The goblin whispered, “Run.”
We ran. For the first twenty steps, I thought the gods were with us, Blessed Tanit offering sanctuary beneath her hand, Gracious Melqart a shield, Ba’al a harbor against the storm. I looked back over my shoulder.
A creature stalked out from the arches. It looked like a troll skeleton knitted out of gears and metal bars. Its head swayed as it turned to look back the way we had come, into the black pit of the far passage. If it just looked that way a moment longer we might escape into darkness.
With a dip of its head and a menace of teeth, it swung around and bounded after us with weighty tick-tock steps. A hiss of steam sprayed from its gaping mouth.
Rory stepped past me and heaved a bag at it. The bag slammed into its shoulder and knocked the creature sideways. It jolted to a stop against the wall, groaned and shook, the head rearing back before it lowered again to seek us. Rory kept spinning all the way around and with the extra force gained released the second bag. It sailed across the gap and smashed into the head. The creature toppled, hitting the wall hard, then staggered the other way, hit the opposite wall, and tumbled down. A spark spiraled up and winked out. Gears whirred busily as the creature strove to right itself.
The cursed creature was not getting my father’s precious journals.
“Cat!” cried Bee as I bolted past Rory.
“Go! I’ll follow!”
I grabbed the closest bag. Metal claws closed around the ankle of my boot. I dropped the bag on the elbow joint. The weight slammed the arm into the floor. But it was already shifting to dislodge the obstacle. The head reared up, metal jaws gaping. Teeth gleamed. A red heart of fire pulsed deep down in that throat, as if making ready to scorch me.
From far above, linked as by an intangible chain threaded through the earth, cold magic-Andevai’s storm-flared down the length of my sword. The hilt flowered; I twisted it free, and thrust the slim blade down that yawning gullet.
Combustion died. The creature sagged on a final stuttering tock tunk tick.
My heart lurched as if under a pounding of fierce hail, and my gaze hazed as a pulse not my own roared in my ears: “ Catherine!?”