Ghoulish Song (9781442427310) (2 page)

Once she had fetched the water, Kaile took every last loaf out of the oven. Then she went quickly through the very clean public room, around the tall tables, and over the rope-woven rugs to open the front door. The domini men stood on the doorstep, waiting. They were four old sailors who rarely spoke. They had no beards, and they had no
teeth except for the single copper set they shared between them whenever they ordered food—which was rarely. Mostly they drank light ale and played domini. Their fingers were like tree roots reaching down from the riverbank. Their skin was hard clay. Their domini tiles were yellowed bone, and they would keep up the game from now until closing time, when Mother would kick them out.

None of them thanked Kaile when she let them in, and they did not thank her when she poured ale for each at their usual table. They did not seem to notice her. They only noticed domini tiles.

Kaile wound up the gearwork charms beside each doorway, and hummed along with the jangling music they made. The charms were meant to keep illness, death, and malicious gossip away from the household.

She opened window shutters, and then lit a few lamps. Polished copper sheets behind the lamps broke their light into pieces and scattered those pieces around the room. She set the fresh breakfast pastries on the countertop—the ones that had escaped smelling like tin smoke—and stood behind them to wait for the breakfast crowd.

Familiar faces from the neighborhood stopped by for a bite, and Kaile sold them pastries. They stopped in for a quiet sip of a cold drink, and she sold them light ale. They stood at tables, or sat on the rope-woven rugs. They wore
knit sweaters and coats stuffed with guzzard down because it was a cold morning.

Most of the patrons were rock-movers. This was the most common occupation in Broken Wall. They hauled the huge stones of the old city wall with levers and pulleys and gearwork and sweat to wherever those stones might be needed to build something else.

A small group of coalmakers came in for a drink. Their aprons and fingers were stained, and everyone else in the public room kept their distance from them. Coal came from hearts, removed and set to burning. Kaile sold them ale and tried not to stare at the stains on their fingers and aprons.

A few barge sailors came in with their hair in long braids. Kaile sold them each something to eat, and something to drink. She conducted the ordinary business of the morning, relieved by the familiar routine of it all, content that the day might turn out to be an ordinary day—notwithstanding the Inspection, and the panic, and the ruined slag of that tin whistle.

The public door opened again, and then it ceased to be an ordinary day.

A goblin strode over the threshold. He wore a trim gray beard, walked with a cane, and carried himself like a gentleman, even though he was clearly one of the Changed. He had very large eyes. His ears stuck out sideways from
his head. He looked to be shorter than Kaile, though Kaile couldn't tell how tall the goblin really was underneath the enormity of his big black hat.

The old goblin looked around, nodded to the domini, men who were openly staring at him, and then recognized Kaile as someone who, for the moment at least, was in charge. He bowed to her with a flourish of his hat.

“Young lady,” he said. The way he said it made it mean “lady who is young in years,” and not “little girl.” Kaile was impressed. She had only ever heard “young lady” mean “little girl.”

“Welcome,” she told the goblin, even though she wasn't sure that he would actually be welcome here, according to Mother or Father. But just at that moment, on that particular morning, it would be okay with her if goblins stole away the Snotfish and forced him into a hundred years of servitude, doing whatever goblins made stolen children do.

The goblin introduced himself. “I am the First Player of an acting troupe,” he said, “the finest in all of Zombay.” (Kaile couldn't tell if he meant that the
troupe
was the finest in the city, or that
he
was.) “We would be honored to perform for the entertainment and delight of your patrons. All the payment we ask is a hot meal, and whatever donations we earn from the crowd. There will be music, and mummery, and even masks.”

Kaile imagined what her mother's reaction to this might be, and then tried not to imagine it. “I'm sorry,” she told the goblin. “This isn't really the best day for a show. And the last time we had actors performing in here, the Guard tried to arrest them all. They broke furniture, and our oven. We had to spend days carrying clay up from the riverbanks to patch the oven.”

The goblin made a sympathetic noise. “And what became of those unfortunate performers, do you know?”

“I don't,” said Kaile. “One escaped through the kitchen. All the others were escorted out the front.”

“I see,” the goblin said. “I am merely curious about the fate of our predecessors. But I can assure you that
my
troupe has license to legally perform, without fear of harassment or arrest.” He paused. “Well, truthfully, without fear of
arrest
. We are sometimes harassed, but we have very little fear of arrest. Hardly so much as a tremor of fear.”

He smiled bravely, as if to show his courageous willingness to put on a show for the Broken Wall despite whatever dangers it might bring.

Kaile smiled back at him, but she also shook her head. Mother would bake her into a pie, and do it badly, and then throw the pie away as guzzard-feed. “We really couldn't,” she told him. “Not today. Maybe another time.”

The goblin nodded. “I understand, of course,” he said, and swept off his hat to bow again.

Astonishing things fell out of the hat.

The first was a small mask with a pointy nose. The second was a gray flute carved out of bone. The third was a metal box. He quickly snatched up the mask and the flute, but the box he nudged with the tip of his boot, as though by accident. It snapped open. A copper flower, fashioned out of tiny filaments of gearwork, grew up from the box. The petals clicked against each other as it bloomed. Then it wilted. Each petal fell with a small clatter. The bare stem reached around the floor in an embarrassed sort of way, gathered up the petals, and closed the box lid over itself.

The goblin apologized, picked up the box, and hid it back inside his hat.

Kaile clapped. She couldn't help it. The domini men also clapped, all four of them, and Kaile had never seen them react to anything that was not their own tower of tiles.

“You can set up your stage on the long table at the end of the room,” she said. She was in charge of the public room, at that moment at least, so it was her decision to make. “But not until the afternoon.” The Guard Captain usually came to conduct his Inspection in the morning, and Father always took his shift during the midday crowd. Both should be over and done with by the afternoon. “Make sure
it's me standing here at the counter when you come back, before you get started.”

The old goblin winked. He seemed a trustworthy conspirator. “We will.”

“And promise me you won't cause a ruckus and break the oven.”

“The oven will suffer no damage from us,” the goblin said—and more than said. He almost sang the words to make them more than just a promise, to change the shape of the world around them. Then he left.

Kaile heard domini tiles clack against each other. The day seemed ordinary again. She went back into the kitchen.

“Is the Captain here?” Mother asked. “The very best bread is in that basket, there by the door. That's the stuff to give him, if he's here.”

“He isn't,” Kaile told her, “but I'm running out of pastries. And I think it's Father's turn at the counter.”

Mother grunted, handed over a tray of pastries, and disappeared behind the curve of the oven.

KAILE TOOK HER MIDDAY
break outside, by the road, sitting on a broken piece of wall. She munched a pastry and watched people go by. She knew most of them, and most of them knew her. There was Old Jibb, who lost a leg to a dropped stone and had it replaced with one long, coiled spring. There was Brunip, who always walked with weights strapped to his left arm to balance out the mighty weight of his right arm, which was iron and bulky. Brunip took care of his arm, and scrubbed each individual piece every morning to keep the rust out. It glinted, shiny, when he lifted it to wave. Kaile waved back.

Rock-moving was dangerous. Many movers had replaced lost parts of themselves with gearworked fingers and toes. Their new bits were always makeshift and strangely shaped, pieced together out of salvage from old clocks or the rail station yard. Only the Guard Captain's hands looked like the hands he used to have. Only the
Guard used gearworked legs that would actually fit into boots.

Snotfish was several sorts of idiot for wanting to join the Guard, and get his feet replaced when they didn't need to be.

The Guard Captain—whose gearwork eyes always ticked in a cold, constant circle—was not here yet. The Inspection hadn't happened yet. It should have, by now. Goblins were coming to put on a show in the public room, and how had that ever seemed like a good idea?

Kaile frowned as she finished her pastry. It had too much redseed spice in it, which overwhelmed all the other tastes that should have been there.

She looked up and down the street for the Guard, or the goblin. She saw neither. The street was empty now, almost empty, which was a strange thing for this time of day.

Father opened the door and called for Kaile. Inside she went, nervous about goblins, nervous about Mother, and very nervous about the Captain of the Guard.

Hungry patrons stood thick around the counter when the goblins returned, so Kaile didn't notice them at first. Five goblins came carrying boxes and crates filled with instruments, costumes, and masks. They made a makeshift stage at the far end of the room without checking in with Kaile,
without giving her a chance to say,
Wait just a moment, the Inspection hasn't happened yet, so this whole business is no longer a good idea, if it ever was a good idea.
Then the juggling began, and it was too late to put a stop to it all.

The Snotfish crept out from underneath the counter. He had clearly been crying. His face looked like it was full of the stuff of his nickname.

“Those are goblins,” he said, amazed. “The bald one's juggling.”

“That's right,” said Kaile. “Now please go away.”

“Goblins
steal
you,” said the Snotfish, with reverence and awe. “They steal you and turn you into a
ghoul
, with icky gray skin and no hair and no shadow, so then they'll have a whole army of ghouls and one day the Guard and the goblin ghoul army will
fight
and the Guard will have slings and crossbows built into one arm and swords built into the other arm that stick out like
this
when they move their hand like
this
”—he took an experimental swing; Kaile moved quickly, and rescued a pitcher of ale from her brother's sword-arm—“and they'll cut off seven ghoul-heads all at once, like
this
, and you'll get your head cut off because you'll be a ghoul, because they'll get you, because you let them in here!”

“Go away
now
, Snotfish.”

He swung his imagined sword at her. “Ha!” he said, and ran under a table. That was fine. It was an empty table.

The juggler tossed green scarves in the air. He juggled the scarves in a swirling pattern that made him look like a tree in a windstorm. Then he started swapping out the green leaves for yellow and red ones to make autumn leaves. Then all of the scarves vanished, and he started to juggle metal bugs. The bugs flew buzzing in different directions, and they seemed reluctant to be juggled—one in particular kept trying to fly away from his grasp.

Patrons cheered—some for the juggler, and some for the bug—but Kaile couldn't pay too much attention. Too many people around her wanted ale and bread and meat pastries and sweet pastries. She brought them what they asked for. She glanced at the juggler every now and then to make sure he didn't knock over a lamp. She glanced at the front door, looking for the Guard Captain. She glanced at the kitchen door, looking for Mother. The afternoon was quickly passing by, and the Inspection had not happened yet.

A new sound startled her. The old goblin with the big black hat had begun to play a bandore. Kaile paused. She listened. She couldn't help it.

At first the notes sounded like laughter, like a quick series of rippling jokes. But under and around all that joke and tease was a slower, stronger current of music so overwhelmingly sad that Kaile almost left the room to
get away from that bottomless feeling. It reminded her of Grandfather.

Kaile remembered how Grandfather would always play a tune in the morning before taking his bandore to his customary spot on the Fiddleway Bridge—a great big thing that spanned the ravine between the northern and southern halves of Zombay. Many houses and shops stood on that bridge, and the Clock Tower of Zombay stood over all the rest.