by Sam Hooker
“I said I was sorry,” said Sloot.
“That’s why Mrs. Knife needs directions to Carpathia,” said Myrtle, her eyes going wide. “She’s a … goblin?”
It made absolutely no sense, but nothing else did either. There were other things that didn’t add up as well.
“The border guards,” said Sloot. “They couldn’t see across the border either. It was like … in their eyes, the universe ceased to exist across that line. I stepped over into Carpathia and they couldn’t see me anymore.”
“Vere the guards goblins?”
“No, human. Well, formerly.”
Bartleby furrowed his brow and stroked his chin with his long, black fingernails.
“Goblins have no magic,” said Bartleby. “Othervise, I’d say that a goblin vizard probably reanimated them. That vould account for their blindness to Carpathia.”
“It was probably Gregor who reanimated them,” said Nicoleta. “Is he a goblin too, then?”
“I doubt it,” said Bartleby. “That is to say, he vasn’t a goblin the last time I saw him.”
“The last …” Myrtle opted to end her sentence with a quizzical look instead of words, which can be tedious in this sort of situation.
“Ve change bodies every so often. Necromancers, I mean. Vhen they vear out, ve just take over another.”
“That’s awful!” said Nicoleta.
“That’s life.” Bartleby shrugged.
“No, it isn’t! It’s exactly the opposite!”
“If it’s any consolation, I only take over the bodies of really bad people. This guy vas a serial arsonist,” he said, thumping his chest.
“It’s still not great,” said Nicoleta with a grimace.
“Tell that to all the people whose houses he never burned down.”
Sloot could see an uncomfortable silence coming from a mile away. Farther, even. It was really too bad there was no money in it. He’d have profited handsomely from this one.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Myrtle after a while. “For now, it’s imperative that we warn Vlad.”
“Warn Vlad?” asked Nicoleta.
“Unless a new hole opens in the Dark, there’s only one way for the goblins to cross into Carpathia. Vlad has to invite them in.”
“I thought that vas vampires.”
“Same principle,” said Myrtle, “only vampires aren’t as smart as goblins.”
“Vampires are cool,” said Bartleby reproachfully.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Nicoleta. “Oh!”
“Vhat?”
“I’ve just figured something out.”
“Vhat?”
“The Serpent of the Sky,” said Nicoleta. “Constellations are used for navigation!”
Sloot gasped. “If the goblins control their own constellation, they might not need an invitation!”
Nicoleta began pacing around the room. “We need to get to Carpathia to warn Vlad! What’s the fastest way?”
“I don’t have to walk again, do I?” asked Sloot.
“No,” said Myrtle. “I just have to stop hiding you.”
“Hiding me? What do you—”
“There,” said Myrtle, making a gesture that could be considered obscene if it didn’t have the flourish on the end. “That should do it. Everyone hold hands, it shouldn’t be long now.”
Lucille
Sloot figured that he should get used to Myrtle being right about everything. Demons who could foretell the future generally were, and she was his girlfriend to boot.
“Where have you been?” asked Roman. He was brandishing Sloot’s shrunken head at him, an off-putting maneuver that could hardly have been made more disconcerting. Unless perhaps Roman had glued doll eyes over Sloot’s stitched-up sockets. Sloot silently chided himself for allowing that idea to pop into his head, and was thankful that the dead didn’t dream.
“He’s been with me,” said Myrtle.
“We needed him here,” said Roman.
“He was needed at home as well,” Myrtle spat. “Where do you get off summoning him every five minutes?”
“I’m his spymaster,” said Roman. “And what gives you the right to keep him from his duty to Carpathia?”
“I’m his girlfriend!”
“Since vhen is Sloot a spy?” asked Bartleby.
“Silence!” boomed Vlad, in the way that only a warrior of her stature can.
“Your Dominance!” shouted Nicoleta, who prostrated herself in an incredibly uncomfortable-looking curtsy.
The sheer amount of courage that it would have taken to refer to Vlad’s visage as “haggard” could not reasonably be housed within any single person. Unless perhaps that single person happened to be a horde of screaming berserkers who’d been zoned as a single person, for rent control purposes—a request which no landlord would likely be brave enough to refuse. It was safer to say that Vlad obviously hadn’t slept in quite a while, and that the work she’d been putting into her scowl was really paying off. She sat, as was her custom, in her armor on her dragon throne, her massive sword resting on her lap.
No, not resting. Biding its time.
“You’re looking, er,” said Sloot, desperately wishing he’d chosen any other words to start that sentence, “formidable, your Dominance.”
“Enough flattery,” said Vlad, her voice echoing throughout the throne room. “Tell me everything you know about this Domnitor.”
“Long may he reign,” said Sloot.
What erupted from Vlad was not a mere roar of fury. It was the distillation of mortal danger to anything or anyone within sword’s reach. The frighteningly sharp steel, which probably had a name like Gutcleaver or Lungpopper or Lucille, passed through Sloot in a way that—were he still of the corporeal persuasion—would have left him to quiver for half a minute or so, before one half of him slid from the other. His blood would have puddled impressively on the floor, no doubt.
“Ow!” shouted Bartleby. A chunk of stone exploded from the floor beneath Sloot when Lucille struck it. It careened off Bartleby’s head, leaving a hole behind his ear you could’ve used for carrying lunch money for five or six people. A thick coagulation of very old black blood began lazily pooling in the wound.
“You dare praise another lord in my hall?” bellowed Vlad.
Sloot apologized, or at least had every intention of doing so. His voice, it seemed, was too terrified to abandon the safety of his insubstantial throat.
“If it pleases Your Dominance,” said Roman, “this is Sloot Peril, or rather the ghost of he who formerly was. He was Your Dominance’s deepest spy within the borders of the Old Country, and no doubt cannot restrain himself from regurgitating the praise of the southern despot, no more than he could have restrained himself in life from breathing in his sleep.”
Vlad considered Sloot, her wide-eyed fury refusing to abate before it had slaughtered something.
“Blaspheme again in my hall,” shouted Vlad, no doubt fully aware that she had not relented an iota of fury, “and I will find a way to murder you further, wretched ghost!”
“Er, ahem, yes, Your Dominance,” Sloot stammered.
“I’m sure it could be done,” said Nicoleta, her analytical nature running rough-shod over any shred of pity she might have felt for Sloot just then. “I imagine the Lebendervlad could drag him through one of the Black Smilers and—”
“Thank you, Nicoleta,” said Roman, a tinge of nervousness in the chuckle that followed. “We’d prefer not to see Sloot obliterated by Vlad’s spectral ancestors, I think?”
The Lebendervlad were the thirty-six Vlads the Invader to come before the current one. They were all quite dead, but by use of a system of horrific icons known as Black Smilers—skulls of fallen enemies stuffed with demonic larva—they were able to take on semi-corporeal forms and fight with the living Vlad. That was how they passed along their extreme martial prowess, thus making Vlad the Invader the most deadly warrior anywhere in the world.
“It could be done, that’s all.” Ni
coleta’s upper lip cornered in a sneer and her eyes bulged in Roman’s direction. “Pardon my simple scientific curiosity,” the look seemed to say, though with far more sarcasm than necessary.
Once Sloot was convinced that he was in no imminent danger of being ripped apart by former heads of the Carpathian state, he found himself eagerly reporting everything that he knew about the Domnitor, long may he ... well. You know.
It wasn’t until he’d been droning at length about the subversion of the Domnitor’s taxable interest in the Three Bells Shipping Company—which, as all in attendance were aware to some degree, was operated primarily to the benefit of the Serpents of the Earth—that he had a revelation. He stopped mid-sentence.
“It doesn’t make sense,” said Sloot.
“Of course it doesn’t make sense,” said Roman. “Why anybody in their right mind would thank the Domnitor for a ninety-percent-across-the-board tax rate defies all logic.”
“No, not that,” said Sloot, although hearing Roman phrase it like that did make it seem a bit excessive. “I meant the plot to kidnap the Domnitor.”
“Of course it makes sense,” said Roman. “You’ve obviously not spent a lot of time thinking about the intricacies of global domination! Anyone who had their blade to the throat of the Domnitor, may he live long enough to fall into Her Dominance’s clutches, would control the Old Country, and with it most of the shipping routes on this side of the world.”
“True,” said Sloot, “but not for Mrs. Knife. She already controls the Old Country.”
“Not entirely,” said Roman. “Controlling the Domnitor would solidify her claim.”
“But she doesn’t care about that,” said Sloot. “She only wants to come here, and she can’t. She needs directions.”
“That’s the weird part,” said Nicoleta. “The only thing that makes any sense—despite the fact that it makes no sense at all—is that Mrs. Knife is a goblin.”
“What?” Roman guffawed, a bit too forcefully in a way that seemed suspicious. “That’s ridiculous!”
“Ve thought so too,” said Bartleby, “but vhy else vould she need directions to leave the Old Country? It only makes sense if her sight vas cloaked by the Dark, like the goblins.”
“How do you know so much about the Dark?” asked Roman, his face a morass of panic and incredulity.
“I’m a very old necromancer,” said Bartleby. “Well, not very old. For a necromancer.” He preened. A large glob of coagulated blood dripped from his head wound and went splat on the floor.
“Do you need to have that looked at?” asked Nicoleta.
“It vill be fine.”
“It looks like it took out a chunk of your brain.”
“I’m not really using it,” said Bartleby with a shrug. “Necromancy’s a lot like possession that vay.”
Roman turned a questioning glance to Vlad. She returned a nearly imperceptible nod, the sort that was all the rage with stoics, according to Arthur.
Roman sighed. “To be clear, I wasn’t happy about keeping you in the dark for as long as we have. No pun intended.”
“That figures,” said Myrtle. “Roman’s been working an angle! Pardon me while I drag my complete and utter lack of surprise out to Obvious Street. They’re having a parade for it.”
“It’s top secret information,” Roman declared in an over-enunciated sort of way.
“Top secret, eh? Wave at the parade as it goes by, will you? Or would you like to be the grand marshal?”
“Are you quite finished?” asked Roman, his hands resting on his hips.
“You shouldn’t wait for that,” said Myrtle. “There’s a brass band coming, and they’re trumpeting a new arrangement about how you’ve always got some double-dealing in the works. Honestly, have you ever dealt fairly with us?”
“Silence,” said Vlad. She didn’t shout this time, but her hand moved to Lucille in a not-so-subtle, just-give-me-a-reason way.
“Sorry, Your Dominance.” Myrtle had the look of a demon who wasn’t quite positive she couldn’t be slain by this particular mortal’s sword. “Enlighten us, spymaster.”
“Thank you,” said Roman, sparing no sanctimony. “Thousands of years ago, before Carpathia was unified by Vlad the First, or the Old Country was called by its proper name, there was a war between the goblins and the dwarves.”
“Ve know,” said Bartleby. “The dvarves von and cast the goblins into the Dark.”
“That wasn’t all they cast into the Dark,” said Roman, apparently having reserved a measure of smarm for such an eventuality. “Do you know why the dwarves waged war on the goblins?”
“Vouldn’t you?”
Roman started to unfold a lesser-known tidbit of early history that most of the historians of their time, being human, turned a blind eye toward. Before humans came along and developed advanced concepts of ownership, replete with complicated real estate commission structures and tiered marketing scams, the mortal races all got along fairly well. Part of the reason for the widespread harmony was the fairies, who outnumbered everyone else combined.
“I know about fairies,” said Nicoleta. “Carpathia’s full of them, though you can’t often see them. They pout a lot.”
“That’s because life’s not fair,” said Roman.
“All of the fairies are perpetually pouting because life isn’t fair?” asked Sloot.
“That’s why they call them fairies,” said Roman. “May I continue? The rest of the mortal races gave peace with humans a try, and it would have worked out well, if it weren’t for humanity’s darkest secret.”
“Which is?”
“Most humans are easy-going and reasonable,” said Roman. “But a few of them—a few of us, rather—are right villains. They’ll do anything in the name of amassing power and wealth, even if it’s at the expense of everyone else.”
Roman went on to explain that although the fairies outnumbered everyone else, some of the more cunning humans figured out that they could use alliances to get what they wanted. The dwarves, being wise, declined the humans’ attempts to woo them. The goblins, on the other hand, were itching to get up to whatever mischief presented itself.
They were also quite literally itching, as hygiene had never caught on among the goblins. Fleas, therefore, had.
To seal the deal, a human king married his daughter to a goblin prince. Goblins have no princes, so they drew lots and the shortest straw had to pretend to be one.
The human/goblin alliance went after the fairies, teasing them mercilessly and running them out of the business of maintaining the balance. The fairies took their metaphorical ball and went home, disappearing into the woodlands to play by themselves, where they could treat each other fairly in all things. The dwarves saw the writing on the wall and holed themselves up in their mountain.
The alliance between the goblins and the villainous humans came to an end in large part because goblins aren’t very smart. But they are smart enough to know when they’re not getting their fair share. The humans had profited immensely from their combined mischief, while the goblins fought over scraps. The humans, treacherous villains that they were, refused to help the goblins go after the dwarves to secure wealth and power of their own, so there was a schism. The princess who married the goblin prince—who was now the goblin king—and several humans in her court had become saturated with goblin mischief, so they stayed with the goblins. Likewise, there were many goblins who stayed with the humans. Humans were particularly skilled in the subtle arts of getting fat and lazy, two conditions prized very highly among goblinkind.
The goblins waged war on the dwarves, who had been stockpiling weapons since they locked themselves away in their mountain. When the dwarves inevitably won the war, they killed the goblin king and banished the rest to the Dark. The princess, being human and therefore most ambitious among them, solidified her power as queen of the goblins, has ruled over them ever since. She decided to age until she was no longer young and fair, gnarling to a satisfactory point before
staring time itself in the face and giving notice that she’d not be aging any further.
“You can’t be saying what I think you’re saying,” said Nicoleta.
“If you think I’m saying everyone lived happily ever after, then you’re right.”
“I think you’re saying that ... Mrs. Knife is the queen of the goblins.”
“That she is,” said Vlad.
“How long have you known?” asked Myrtle.
“Not long,” said Roman. “I’d have told you sooner, had Sloot not been avoiding my summons.”
“We get it,” Myrtle sighed. “But how did you find all of this out?”
“Thanks to her, mostly.” Roman gestured toward Franka, who was walking into the room at that very moment, as if they’d planned it that way.
“Who’s this?” asked Myrtle.
“This is Franka,” said Sloot. “She’s with the Skeleton Key Circle. They keep track of the earthly remains of the Souls of the Serpent. After they’re dead, of course.”
“They’re not remains until they’re dead,” said Myrtle. “And you trust her?”
“You should too,” said Franka. “It will save a lot of time.”
“The Skeleton Key Circle isn’t part of the Serpents of the Earth,” said Roman, “but the two go back a long way together. Nearly to the beginning. The Circle has been keeping some interesting records.”
“We can’t trust her,” said Myrtle. “She’s in cahoots with the Serpents of the Earth! For all we know, she could be spying for Mrs. Knife.”
“She’s not,” said Roman. “They’ve killed most of the other members of the Circle, and they’re after the rest to translate the Keepers’ journals. The Circle keeps them encoded for exactly this sort of thing.”
“Oh, all right,” said Myrtle. “So she belongs to a secret order that works for another secret order hiding body parts, and now—surprise, surprise—one has decided to betray the other. I have to say, this has ‘trustworthy’ written all over it.”