by Joel Ross
“The wha—? The where?” Ji shook his head. “You’ll what?”
“The city?” Sally asked, lowering her fists.
“Yes.” Proctor stroked his beard. “That’s the most elegant solution.”
“You’ll claim that you hired Butler away from Primstone Manor,” Roz said, smoothing her dress nervously. “And that you sent him ahead, to prepare for your arrival. To explain his . . . disappearance.”
“Is that what I’ll do?” Proctor asked.
“Then nobody will know you killed him! And you’ll get everything you wanted.”
“What a bright young lady,” Proctor told Roz. “I’ll do precisely as you suggest. Thank you, Miss Rozario.”
“You’re welc—” She stopped herself. “That is, I beg your pardon, but you should be ashamed of yourself.”
“I feel no shame,” he told her. “Only duty. And my duty is to keep you away from the manor, so you won’t tell tales. Plus I know exactly how to use you.”
“H-how?” Ji asked, frowning at Proctor’s boots, too sickened by the murder to feel relief at the news.
“Now I won’t need to arrange other servants for Master Brace,” Proctor said, not quite answering the question. “You’ll do quite nicely. We’ll leave tomorrow for my town house in the city. I can’t trust you at the manor, so you’ll spend the night in the goblin pen.”
“You can’t lock us in here!” Sally said.
Proctor chuckled again. “For the greater good, there is nothing I cannot do.”
13
JI STOOD WITH Sally and Roz in the entrance of the ruined temple and watched the goblins pull the gate shut with a slam, closing them inside the pen.
Outside the fence, Proctor tugged a chain onto an iron hook. The clink of the metal chilled Ji’s blood. Locked in with goblins and the dead.
“If the children escape before I return,” Proctor told the goblins through the fence, “you will pay with your lives.”
The one-eyed goblin said, “We will ka-eep them in the pen.”
“And one more thing, if it’s not too much to ask?”
The goblin’s belly-arms waved aimlessly. “Yes, my lord?”
“Try not to eat them,” Proctor said merrily, before strolling into the evening.
The goblins chuffed, and one stared at Ji—maybe hungrily, maybe sympathetically. Ji turned away, looking toward the horizon. A few stars twinkled cheerily, and Ji hated them. It was easy to twinkle if you were safe in the sky. He sat on a log and closed his eyes. Then he opened them. Because every time he closed his eyes, he saw Butler’s body jouncing down the ramp.
He grabbed a handful of pebbles and tossed one at the fence.
“Everything kind of worked out, didn’t it?” Sally said, plopping down beside him.
“Not for Butler,” Roz said, tugging at the strap of her handbag.
Sally gave a shudder. “Yeah. But I mean . . . now we’re going to the city.”
“We’re going to the city without our stuff,” Ji told her. “Proctor won’t let us into the manor.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Yeah,” Ji said. “Oh.”
“So we can’t pay for Chibo?”
“Not unless you have a ruby in your pocket.”
Worry lines appeared between Sally’s eyebrows. “The tapestry weavers won’t sell Chibo for nothing.”
“Really? You think? Of course they won’t. That’s the reason we did all of this. That’s the entire—” Ji hurled a pebble against the wall of the ruined temple. “Aaargh!”
“O-o-oh,” Sally said slowly. “I guess that part didn’t work out, huh?”
“Yeah,” he told her. “And neither did the part where Proctor is a grinning maniac who’d cut our throats just to check if his dagger’s sharp.”
Sally tugged at her bracelet. “I’m pretty sure it’s sharp.”
A breeze rattled through the bamboo garden, and the goblins chuffed and chewed at the trough. A knot of dread tightened in Ji’s stomach. How were they going to save Chibo? How were they going to save themselves?
“Have you a plan?” Roz asked, moving to sit on Ji’s other side.
Ji frowned. “You mean, do I have a plan?”
“That’s what I asked.”
“No, you said, ‘Have you a plan?’”
Roz flushed. “It’s the same thing.”
“Maybe for nobles.”
“Don’t be a jerk,” Sally told Ji.
He tossed a pebble at the ground. “We have to get into the chimney tomorrow, before we leave.”
“How?” Sally asked.
“How would I know?” Ji snapped. “I just— We risked everything to get that loot, and now it’s worthless.”
They sat in silence for a while, until the one-eyed goblin brought them blankets. Roz thanked it politely, but Ji muttered, “Yeah, thanks for sending that little goblin to tell on us.”
“Is that why one of ’em ran out?” Sally asked.
“I’m pretty sure,” Ji told her.
The one-eyed goblin hunched closer. It raised its belly-arms and started barking and woofling, but Ji didn’t even try to decipher the words between all the ka-ka-ka’s. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t speak Goblish.”
“That’s not Goblish,” Roz told him. “Don’t be rude. Our goblin friend is saying that at first they worried they’d get in trouble if they let us in. Then they worried they’d get in trouble if they fought to keep us out. Then they worried they’d get in trouble if they didn’t tell on us. And they are extremely frightened of getting in trouble.”
“Humans po-kaing around in burrow?” The one-eyed goblin shook its head. “Very bad. But everything is aka-ceptable now. Only you are in trouble.”
“Yeah,” Ji said. “Everything’s great.”
After the goblin hunched away, Ji and the others sat around for a while longer. Then Sally headed inside while Ji and Roz stayed on the log, throwing pebbles at a tree stump. Roz hit the target every time, which was pretty annoying.
A night heron flew past, and the sweet scent from the bone crypt made Ji’s stomach rumble. He knew he should apologize to Roz for making fun of how she talked—and for getting her into this—but he didn’t want to.
When the breeze turned cold, they went inside. Three bonfires now burned in the big dirt-floored room, and Sally crouched beside one in a corner.
“Maybe we should sleep in shifts,” she said. “In case they get hungry.”
“They’re not going to eat us,” Roz told her.
“They might nibble.”
Ji rubbed his aching shoulder. “Let’s get some sleep. We’ll find a way to grab the loot in the morning.”
“If that doesn’t work,” Sally said, squinting into the fire, “maybe I can win the money in a tournament. Like archery or jousting or something.”
“You’ve never shot an arrow in your life—and you’ve never even seen a joust.”
“How hard can it be?” she asked. “I can ride. I can hold a lance.”
“I suspect,” Roz said, “that one might need training. And armor. And a horse.”
“Like I keep telling you,” Ji said, “you’re not a knight. You’re not even a squire.”
“I’ll wear a disguise,” Sally told him.
Ji glanced at Roz, then said, “That’ll be our backup plan.”
“Cool,” Sally said.
The sweet scent rose again, and Ji’s mouth watered. Maybe goblins preferred to eat humans dipped in jam. He pulled his blanket to his chin and closed his eyes, but he couldn’t stop thinking about that dagger thunking into Butler’s chest.
“Will you read to us?” he asked Roz.
“Oh!” Sally said. “You have that book!”
“I always have a book,” Roz said. “For precisely this situation.”
Ji laughed. “Being locked in a goblin pen by a doolally proctor?”
“Exactly.” Roz rummaged in her beaded handbag for her book. “This is a collection of Ti-Lin-Su’s zozolog
y essays. There are sections on ogres and hobgoblins and—”
“Aren’t hobgoblins just little goblins?” Sally asked.
“No, they’re not even related. Only the names are similar, like . . . ‘eggs’ and ‘eggplants.’”
“Or butts and buttons,” Ji said. “I thought hobgoblins were just goblins with more . . . hob.”
Roz shot him a governess-y look. “Here’s something Ti-Lin-Su wrote about her ‘outstanding question.’”
“I remember that,” Sally said. “Why do dragons gather gems?”
“Almost exactly,” Roz said, and started reading a poem about a dragon brooding over a treasure hoard.
Ji watched the fire flicker as he listened. Roz’s voice soothed the fear from his heart. The words of the poem tumbled around him. He closed his eyes again, and that time he saw a wingless dragon curled around a heap of jewels, flames blazing from her eyes as knights approached. . . .
A scritch-scritch scraped across Ji’s reverie. He woke with a start and realized that he’d been dreaming.
More scritching came from deeper inside the bone crypt.
Ji peered through half-closed eyes and saw four goblins squatting at the top of the ramp beside a totem pole, while three others woofled farther down. The rest of the goblins stood in rows beneath the shrines. None of them moved. They just stood there perfectly still, like statues. It was so creepy that goose bumps rose on Ji’s arms.
And that was before the totem pole turned and looked at him.
Panic clawed at Ji’s mind, and terror chewed his heart. That was not a totem pole! That was not a totem! That was not a pole!
That was an ogre.
An actual ogre stood twenty feet away, as tall as a grown woman, with bull-like shoulders and hefty arms. A dull purple cloak was draped across the creature’s chest, and the firelight glowed on its shiny red face and bright yellow hair.
White horns sprouted from its wrinkled red forehead, and its mouth was so full of fangs that they seemed to be jostling for room on its gums.
Dull yellow eyes fixed on Ji. He didn’t yelp. He didn’t twitch. His heart quit beating and his lungs withered into a couple of raisins.
The ogre prowled toward him, its red calves and leathery feet stomping closer. Its toes were tipped with talons. Ji watched through his eyelashes, pretending he was asleep.
“Never peeked a human this close,” it growled, peering down at Ji. Its voice sounded like a boulder rolling across a tombstone. “So sleepylittle.”
“Ka-eep quiet!” one of the goblins urged. “Don’t wake him!”
Don’t wake me, Ji prayed. Don’t wake me, don’t wake me. Don’t look at me. Don’t touch me. I’m not even here.
“But it’s just”—a red hand stretched toward Ji, and another grinding noise sounded—“a doorbell! It’s the cutemost thing I ever peeked!”
“Humans are not ka-utemost,” the goblin said. “They are ka-illers.”
“Ka-illers,” another goblin agreed.
“Look at that prettysweet face!” the ogre crooned, and reached to touch Ji’s cheek. “Buttersoft and toothless!”
Darkness swirled in Ji’s vision, and he felt himself on the verge of fainting.
“Nin.” A rough voice sounded from the ramp, so deep that Ji felt reverberations in his bones. “Come.”
The ogre turned from Ji. “Have you peekseen? It’s a doorbell!”
“Stay away from them, Nin,” the deep voice said. “Stay hidden. Until the time comes.”
The ogre looked at Ji with its terrible fanged face. Ji looked back through his eyelashes, dizzy with terror. And then, quick as a snake, the ogre touched Ji’s cheek with a claw. Its leathery red fist snuffed every light in the world.
When Ji’s eyes sprang open, the ogre was gone. He’d been dreaming. He exhaled in relief. It had just been a nightmare, a terrible nightmare.
Roz and Sally slept peacefully beside him in the warmth of the bonfire. Four goblins squatted at the ramp, with three more farther down, and there was no totem pole in sight.
Meanwhile, the rest of the goblins stood in neat rows. Completely still. For once even their belly-arms were motionless. Which was pretty creepy unless they were standing at attention or—
“Oh,” Ji whispered. They were sleeping.
Goblins slept standing up. Weird. And in straight rows, too. Three rows, with three goblins in each row. No, one row was longer, with four goblins. As the memory of his nightmare faded, he started to drift off—then a realization hit him like a ton of boots.
Three rows of three goblins, plus one extra . . .
That made ten goblins.
Plus four squatted at the ramp, with three farther down.
Seventeen goblins.
And the scritch-scritch in the bone crypt sounded like more than one goblin digging. It sounded like a dozen, but what did Ji know about scritches? Still, he knew that there were at least eighteen goblins in the pen—and Roz said there were only twelve total at Primstone Manor.
So where had the other six come from? What were they doing?
Ji pulled the blanket to his chin. Who cared about all that? Forget the weird dream, forget those weird goblins. He needed to focus on sneaking into the manor and grabbing the loot. He couldn’t buy Chibo’s freedom without the stuff from the chimney. So he’d get the stuff from the chimney—whatever it took.
14
JI WOKE TO the sound of the chain rattling at the fence.
“Hey.” Sally kicked Ji’s sandal. “Get up.”
“Muh,” Ji told her, and pulled his blanket higher.
“Proctor’s outside with a carriage,” Roz said. “It’s morning. Well, it’s dawn. It’s almost morning. You’re a deep sleeper.”
“Not usually,” Sally said.
“Did you wake in the night?” Roz asked.
A scary red mask flashed into Ji’s mind, but the image slipped away. He yawned and said, “Yeah, I had a nightmare.”
“And couldn’t get back to sleep?”
“Well, I tried counting goblins, but it didn’t help.”
“Use sheep next time,” Sally said.
“I stopped at eighteen,” he told them.
For a moment, Roz just peered at him—then her eyes widened. “Wait, are you saying . . . Eighteen? You counted eighteen goblins?”
“Yup.”
“Actual, genuine goblins?”
“Well they weren’t fake, Roz! Yeah, there are at least eighteen goblins in here, and probably more. They dig all night.”
“How can there be more than twelve?” Roz shot a nervous glance toward the ramp. “Where did they come from? What are they digging?”
“I don’t know,” Ji said, “and I don’t care. Goblins don’t matter. The only thing that matters is our loot. Nothing else. We need to clean out the chimney before we leave.”
“How?” Roz asked. “Proctor won’t let us near the manor.”
“I spent all night thinking of a plan.”
“Oh, thank summer!” she said. “What shall we do?”
“Beg,” he said.
“Great plan,” Sally said. “What happens if he says no?”
“Then when we get close to the manor, I’ll distract Proctor and you’ll run to the chimney and stuff everything in a sack.”
“What shall I do?” Roz asked.
“Convince Proctor not to stab me for distracting him.”
Roz’s forehead furrowed. “Ah.”
“That’s not much better than begging,” Sally said.
“It’s short and simple,” Ji told her. “Like you.”
Sally didn’t have a chance to bonk Ji with her shovel, because three figures suddenly entered the pen: Lady Nosey, Lord Pickle, and Proctor’s valet, a bald guy the size of a well-fed mountain range.
“Your burro awaits,” Pickle told Roz.
“Poor animal,” Nosey muttered.
“I b-beg your pardon?” Roz asked Pickle.
“Your burro,” Pickle told her.
<
br /> The valet dragged Ji outside, and he blinked in the dawn light. A coach waited just past the gate, painted red with gold trim, drawn by a team of four horses. A coachman sat in the box seat while Proctor leaned against a door, through which Brace was peeking.
“We’ll arrive at the city in two days if we don’t dillydally,” Proctor announced heartily. “Come, my children! Lord Nichol, Lady Posey, join Master Brace inside the coach. Miss Roz, you shall ride upon this noble steed.” He gestured to a saddled burro standing behind the coach. “And the servants will lead you.”
Roz narrowed her eyes at Proctor. “You’re making them walk to the city?”
Proctor didn’t bother answering her. He merely chuckled and opened the coach door for Nosey and Pickle while the bald valet lifted Roz onto the burro’s saddle and gave Sally the lead.
“Just our luck,” Sally muttered. “We’re stuck with Gongong.”
“Is Gongong the burro or the valet?” Ji asked.
The valet lifted a hand to whack Ji. “My name is Mr. Ioso, guttersnipe.”
“Mysterioso?” Ji asked. He almost said Mysterioso Guttersnipe, which was an awesome name, but he didn’t want to push it.
“Mr. Ioso,” the bald valet said, and for some reason didn’t actually whack Ji.
Instead, he grabbed a strap and stepped onto a running board. He stood there, clinging to the outside of the coach, keeping a wary eye on Ji and the others.
“What’s wrong with Gongong?” Roz asked, nervously stroking the burro’s neck.
“Just don’t laugh,” Sally told her.
“Um, Mr. Ioso?” Ji asked. “Can I run to the manor to grab my buttons and thread?”
“No,” Mr. Ioso said.
“I’ll serve Master Brace better,” Ji said, “if I have all my stuff.”
“There’s thread in the city,” Mr. Ioso said.
“Please?” Ji asked. “You won’t even know I’m gone.”
“Ask one more time,” Mr. Ioso said, “and I’ll pop your head off like a cork.”
The coach jerked forward, creaking and swaying. Sally clicked her tongue and followed with Gongong the burro. Ji trotted quickly to her side. He didn’t know much about burros, but he knew enough to stay away from the kicky end.
“Okay, new plan,” he told Roz under his breath, as the coach rumbled loudly twenty feet in front of them.