by Conrad Mason
Secrets. Knowledge. Power. It was the lifeblood of Port Fayt. He knew that now, and he knew that it was the only strength he’d ever have. He was no troll, with a chest like a barrel and a jaw like a jutting cliff face. He was a goblin, and goblins had to use cunning to make ends meet.
Now he was telling Elijah of his own secret. Of his girl, and what had happened between them. How she was going to have a baby. Jeb’s baby.
Elijah’s face lit up. This is wonderful news. We must celebrate. He was bigger and stronger than Jeb, his arms already taut and muscled from long days at the docks, working as a stevedore, carting barrels of dragon grease from the Northern Wastes, crates of wyrm scales from the Flatland Duchies, bottles of blackwine from Garran. His skin was darkened from the sunshine, his hands worn and his face a little wrinkled, but his eyes were bright and full of life, and when he smiled it was like looking through a window to a better place – a place where you could be honest and truthful and good.
Jeb hated Elijah and wanted him all to himself, both at the same time.
It’s not like that, Jeb had explained. It’s complicated.
You don’t love her? asked Elijah.
Maybe he did. But Jeb was a coward. He couldn’t let his parents find out about the child. His father would beat him, or worse. I’m going to end it with her, he said. I’m going to forget it ever happened.
The way Elijah looked at him then, his eyes so cold, his mouth a thin line. It burned in his memory. She can’t forget, Elijah told him.
The words twisted Jeb’s gut. He’d thought Elijah would understand. Elijah, of all people.
Elijah, his brother.
No. No, it can’t be true.
And yet Joseph knew that it was. He could feel Jeb resisting him, but it was no good. Here, now, his mind belonged to Joseph.
My uncle’s mind. Jeb the Snitch is my uncle.
Joseph felt sick. He didn’t want to know any more. He could sense, somehow, that there was something worse coming – something terrible. He wanted to turn away. But now a third memory surged up like a tidal wave, and engulfed him.
A few months later. Jeb had hardly spoken to his brother since the day he’d told him about the baby. He’d been so busy. The petty crooks on the docks had begun to call him ‘The Snitch’, but he knew so much now – a few secrets here, a few dark truths there – that no one dared touch him. Jeb the Snitch. He liked the sound of it. It was all going so well.
Until the day he walked past the house with the green front door, and heard laughter inside. He crept to the window and saw the girl sitting at the table, and opposite her Elijah, both of them smiling, practically shining with joy. Her belly was swollen. Inside it, he knew, was a child. His child.
He knocked at the door, and when Elijah opened it, he demanded to know what was happening.
They went back to the tavern. Their tavern, the one they always came to, though it was the first time in months. The last time too, though he didn’t know it then.
Elijah explained. After Jeb had ended it with the girl Elijah had gone to see her, to give her money. Money from his own pocket, that he’d earned as a stevedore, to help her with the baby.
Idiot, Jeb thought. For a goblin to make a living with his muscles.
Elijah had begun to visit, at first just to make sure she was all right, that she would be able to look after the baby on her own. Then for more than that. They had fallen in love.
He told Jeb not to worry about it, that it didn’t concern him. He was going to live with her, help look after the baby and do his best to make her happy.
You can’t, Jeb hissed. Think what Father would say. For Thalin’s sake, you’re a goblin and she’s a human.
That didn’t stop you, said Elijah.
It’s different. I would never have lived with her. What next – will you marry her?
Elijah’s eyes went cold again, and his jaw set. He was sorry he hadn’t told Jeb sooner, and even sorrier that Jeb didn’t understand.
What about me? said Jeb. You took her from me.
You gave her up, Elijah told him. You tossed her aside. You never loved her.
Maybe it was true. Maybe he’d just wanted her, in the same way he wanted ducats, and power and respect. But still … His own brother. His perfect brother, whom everybody loved, who had just stolen her away.
He leaned forward across the table. He was angry, and he only had one card left to play. He told Elijah to stay away from her, or he would tell their mother and father.
Elijah shook his head. There was no coldness left in those eyes now, only sorrow, perhaps even pity. Goodbye, he said. If you ever need me, I’ll be with Eleanor.
With Eleanor and Joseph.
Little Joseph.
Everything lurched, and Joseph dropped to his knees, choking. His head spun. The wooden spoon fell from his fingers and clattered on the floor.
No. Please, no.
The strangest thing – Jeb hadn’t even lied to him. His father was alive, had been all along. He just wasn’t the person Joseph had thought he was.
His father stood two feet away, staggering, clutching his head. Jeb the Snitch. Who had once been just Jeb.
Jeb Grubb.
All Joseph’s memories, everything he had locked away, every precious moment with the goblin he’d thought was his father – his uncle, Elijah Grubb – all of them rushed through his head in a torrent, redefined by the truth. The horrible, awful truth. The truth he’d fought so hard to uncover.
He barely looked up as Jeb stumbled forward, replaced the ordinary wooden spoon with the real one, his pistol still trained on Joseph. On his son.
‘I didn’t recognize yer at first,’ muttered Jeb. ‘Reckoned you’d died long ago, along wi’ your ma. You got some o’ yer old man’s wits about yer, that’s for sure. Using a wand, like you were some sort o’ magician …’ He tucked the wooden spoon in his pocket. ‘Well, the fun’s over now. Eli’s gone. Eleanor too. Just you left.’
Joseph closed his eyes, squeezing them tight to stop the tears from falling. This was it. The end. Everything he’d thought he’d known was wrong, and the life he was about to lose seemed to belong to a stranger.
The son of the Snitch. Surely he deserved to die.
He would never see Elijah again. The goblin who had raised him, who cared for him even when he knew what Joseph was – the child of a monster. It racked his heart with love and pain. He would never again see Tabs. Or Newton. Or Frank, or Paddy.
So be it. They were better off without him anyway.
He was ready. Ready for the gunshot to pierce his body and for the life to leave it.
And the shot never came.
‘Get up, for Thalin’s sake,’ snapped Jeb. ‘I ain’t goin’ to kill yer.’
Joseph opened his eyes and saw the goblin stuff the pistol in his pocket.
‘Not yet, anyhow. I’ve got plans for you, son.’
Chapter Twenty-three
The stench of griffin bile filled Tabitha’s nostrils, making her head swim. She pulled her neckerchief up to cover her nose.
The shapeshifters were striding so fast she had to hurry to keep up. If their injuries were still bothering them, they weren’t showing it. People scrambled to get out of the way, casting nervous glances at those strange eyes and torn whitecoat uniforms, coat tails flapping like the wings of avenging seraphs.
The cat breathed in deep and nodded. ‘The air smells foul. Just like Hoake’s boots. Very good, little girl – let us hope your theory is correct.’
‘For your sake,’ added the spider, her voice a whisper.
‘I’m right,’ said Tabitha. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’
At the end of the road they came to a large whitewashed wall with a set of heavy wooden gates, where the smell was so strong you could practically taste it. Tabitha drew a pair of knives from her bandolier, flicked them around her thumbs and caught them again. She was ready.
‘Here it is,’ said the big man. ‘I’ll knock.’
>
The double doors were made out of thick wood, but not thick enough. There was a scraping, sucking sound as the big man became a horse. It seemed so natural Tabitha almost forgot to be surprised. His clothing ripped apart and fell in pieces to the cobbles, and he spun, smashing at the doors with his back hooves.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
At the last blow, the doors gave way in a shower of splinters.
‘Shall we?’ said the cat.
But Tabitha was already leaping through. Three goblins looked up, startled, from a game of triominoes. They wore leather suits head to toe, covered in metal plates. As if that could protect them. Tabitha was on them in an instant, and her fury surged into her arms and legs. She landed a hefty kick on the nearest goblin’s chest, sending him sprawling back in his chair. The next had a cutlass half-drawn, but she slammed her elbow hard into his chin, and his jaw clamped shut with a click of teeth as he fell too, scattering triominoes to the ground.
The spider had the third, her long pale fingers around the goblin’s throat, lifting him off the ground. ‘Where is Jeb the Snitch?’ she hissed.
The goblin fought for breath. His nose was made out of wood and held on with a piece of twine. He was the ugliest of the three, which was no mean feat.
‘He’th gone,’ the goblin lisped. ‘With a filthy mongrel boy.’
Joseph.
‘Where did they go?’
‘How in the bleeding blue thea thould I know?’ snapped the goblin. He squirmed in the spider’s grip. ‘They went off into the thity.’
Tabitha felt panic surging up inside her. Too late. If they’d just got here a little sooner, maybe—
‘Don’t lie to me,’ said the spider.
The goblin’s eyes went wide as the fingers pressed harder into his throat. ‘Gaaaaah! Not lying! I thwear!’ The fingers released. ‘Well, maybe a bit,’ said the goblin. ‘They did go off, but then … then they came back.’
*
Past the griffin cages, past beady eyes glinting. Up a flight of steps to a stone corridor lined with leather suits that hung from pegs. Joseph followed his father in a daze.
‘Put this on.’ A leather suit was thrust at him. He shook his head. ‘Please yerself.’ Jeb pulled on a suit of his own, swept off his silver tricorne and pulled up a leather hood in its place. For a moment, that face reminded Joseph of Arabella Wyrmwood, the shrivelled old witch who had tried to destroy Port Fayt. But no – Jeb was even worse than her. At least she’d believed in something, and died for it. Jeb believed in nothing but himself.
Six years. Six years he’d had to find Joseph, to tell him the truth and claim his son. And instead he’d left Eleanor to die, left Joseph to be adopted by Mr Lightly, who hated all goblins and Joseph most of all. Not even through malice – just because he didn’t care.
Elijah’s gentle voice came back to him. There’s a little bit of demon and a little bit of seraph in everyone, Joseph. Don’t let anyone tell you different.
Was it Joseph he’d been thinking of, when he’d spoken those words?
His mother, a seraph if ever there was one. And his father, Jeb the Snitch. The most hateful creature in all the world. Joseph’s chest tightened all over again at the thought of the goblin who had cared for him, when even his own father wouldn’t.
‘The men who killed my uncle …’ he said. His voice sounded strange and distant, like someone else’s.
‘That weren’t my fault,’ snapped Jeb, hustling Joseph along the corridor towards a heavy, round iron door. ‘Weren’t nothing to do with him being a goblin, neither. I owed ’em money, that’s all, and I couldn’t pay. Those idiots reckoned they could hurt me by killing Elijah. They didn’t know we hadn’t spoken in years.’
So it was Jeb’s fault. Everything was his fault.
Jeb set a key in the lock, turned it and pushed the door open. Then he grabbed Joseph by the collar and shoved him through.
If the stench was bad before, here it was a hundred times worse. It smelled not just of bile, and blood and dung. It smelled of death. Jeb locked the door, made a big show of breathing it in, and let out a sigh of satisfaction.
‘Know what I smell?’ he said. His pointed teeth flashed in a grin. ‘Ducats.’
They were on a raised wooden walkway that ran all the way around an enormous room filled with gigantic metal vats. Jeb pushed Joseph forwards with the end of his pistol.
‘Welcome to the dragon’s lair,’ said Jeb. ‘Just a little joke o’ mine. Dragons love treasure, see? And there’s treasure here, I can tell yer.’ He pointed to a set of metal doors below. ‘The milking rooms are through there. That’s our main trade, see. But it ain’t just bile a griffin’s good for. When they die, there’s rich pickings to be had. Griffin feathers, for instance.’ He pointed to a pile of greasy black feathers beside one of the vats, each over a foot long, being picked at and cleaned by a pair of suited goblins. ‘Plenty of idiots’ll pay good money for ’em. Griffin talons too.’ He pointed at a goblin trundling a cart full of rattling ebony claws. ‘And o’ course, last but not least, griffin blood.’
They stopped above the largest of the vats, which was covered with a lid like a saucepan. Jeb pulled at a lever beside the walkway, and the lid lifted with a creak. Underneath it a red liquid shimmered like oil, coursing with magic.
‘Deadly,’ said Jeb. ‘Most lethal poison known to man or troll. It’ll strip the flesh from yer bones in seconds. Worth a pretty penny to the right folk, I can tell yer. And soon, I won’t need any of it.’ He turned to Joseph, holding up the spoon. His pale eyes shone with greed. ‘Them Grey Brothers told me about your visit to the Whale, how you was waving this thing around like you knew what to do with it. Got me to thinkin’. The wand might be worth a fair few ducats if I sold it, but if I was to keep it, use it myself, see, I can have anything I want, whenever I want it. Anything. I can get shot o’ this dunghole of a city. No more griffin bile. No more Grey Brothers scrounging off me, always asking for a hand-out. Just me and a giant heap o’ ducats.’ He leaned in close. ‘And now I know you can work it. So yer goin’ to teach me how. Right here, right now. Reckon if a pesky little mongrel like you can do it, anyone can.’
Joseph felt sick. He shook his head.
‘This ain’t a friendly request,’ snapped Jeb. He grabbed Joseph’s collar again, forced him out over the railing until his face hovered above the pool of blood. ‘Get talking.’
Joseph could see himself reflected in it, a mongrel boy who had lost all hope. Still, this one last thing he could do. He would never tell his father how to use the wand.
Past the griffin cages, past beady eyes glinting. Up a flight of steps. Along a corridor. Tabitha raced ahead of the shapeshifters, knives drawn.
Come on. Faster. Whatever the Snitch wanted from Joseph, he wasn’t going to get it.
Ahead was a round iron door. Tabitha skidded to a halt, stopping just short of it. ‘Break it down,’ she yelled. ‘Quickly!’
The cat and the spider were hot on her heels. The horse came last, still in animal form, hooves clattering on the stairs. He whinnied, head bent to fit under the low ceiling, then turned and kicked.
CLANG!
The hooves just bounced off. Hopeless.
‘Joseph!’ Tabitha called. ‘Joseph, are you in there?’
‘Hush now,’ said the cat. ‘We are not beaten yet. My lady?’
The spider nodded, and the next moment she had disappeared, her black clothes rustling to a heap on the floor.
‘Stand back.’
Tabitha did so, as a scuttling dark creature shot out from the empty clothes, crawled over the iron door and in through the keyhole. A moment later there was a heavy clunk and the door swung open.
Chapter Twenty-four
‘You?’ snarled Jeb.
Joseph twisted his head from the griffin blood. There, at the end of the walkway, was a girl his own age, with blue hair and blades in her hands. His heart leaped in spite of everything.
She came.
And then he was tugged away from the vat of blood as one of Tabitha’s knives went whistling past, burying itself in a wooden rafter.
‘You privy roach!’ howled Jeb. ‘Throwing stinking knives at me? Are you trying to kill me?’
‘Don’t tempt me,’ said Tabitha.
The slim figure of the cat stepped through the doorway, followed by the horse, hooves clopping, and the small dark shape of the spider, scuttling on the wooden walkway.
‘Get out, all of yer,’ spat Jeb. ‘No animals allowed. And no kids neither.’
‘So, the great Snitch is a bile trader,’ sneered the cat. ‘A repulsive industry. How fitting.’ The shapeshifter prowled forward, tracking Jeb’s every movement as though the goblin were a mouse. ‘You tricked us, Jeb. You offered us the Sword of Corin in exchange for the boy and the spoon. But the sword wasn’t there, and your drunkard Hoake locked us in and left us for dead.’
‘Tricked yer, did I?’ Jeb snarled. ‘Look who’s talking! You cheated me out o’ my wooden spoon back in Port Fayt, didn’t yer? Way I see it, we’re square.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said the cat. ‘We’ve come for our revenge.’
‘Well, you ain’t getting nothing.’
Joseph was shoved face down on the walkway, and before he could wriggle free, Jeb’s foot was on his back, pinning him.
‘Let him go!’ Tabitha yelled, but Jeb ignored her.
Joseph craned his neck to see the goblin looming above, aiming the wooden spoon like a pistol at the newcomers. ‘You best scarper, you and your hairy friends, and that mouldy-headed little girl too, or else I’ll use this wand on yer. I ain’t a magician, but I know how to use it.’
Another lie.
The cat hesitated.
Tabitha was gaping at the spoon, open-mouthed. ‘What the— How did—?’
‘Oi!’ Jeb shook the wand fiercely. ‘Get lost, I said, before I magic you all inside a cage of angry griffins.’
