Grizelda

by Margaret Taylor

  “This is an emergency. Grizelda has been taken by the gendarmes!”

  The Mechanic’s arm, which had been raised to throw, slowly lowered. “What sort of trick is this?”

  “I’m telling the truth! Chairman!”

  The Chairman motioned the Mechanic to sit down. “Tell us everything you can.”

  Chapter 29

  Grizelda and Toby sat side-by-side leaning against the wall as the hours passed. Neither of them spoke. Geddy finally fell asleep, but Grizelda couldn’t even imagine sleeping. Every now and then somebody ran past the door, a sign that something important was happening outside, but they never came into the warden’s office. They seemed somehow disconnected from the rest of the outside world. Finally Grizelda broke the silence.

  “It must be nearly dawn by now,” she said. What that implied – that executions usually took place at daybreak – she did not say.

  But Toby was staring down into his lap.

  “It’s so unfair.”

  What could be possibly mean?

  “I mean, all you ever did was try to help. Whatever those witches did, you didn’t do it, and now you’re going to get hurt for it.”

  She knew she couldn’t speak. If she did, it would all crack and she would start crying. She laid an arm around his shoulders, tried to look encouraging.

  The door opened.

  As Grizelda hastened to hide Tunya’s light back in her pocket and Toby picked up Geddy, a gendarme walked in. It was time. It was odd that he had come alone. Gendarmes usually worked in pairs. Silently, he beckoned them to come.

  They got up with difficulty, stiff from the long night’s vigil. Geddy woke up but he had the sense to keep quiet. Toby put him in his pocket. Grizelda took Toby’s hand.

  The gendarme beckoned again, and they stepped out into the hall with him. In the better light, Grizelda recognized him. It was that secretary who had fled the office in terror the night before. Strange that they would send him to come fetch the condemned, but that didn’t really matter at this point, did it?

  He had a funny, uncomfortable look on his face. “They’ve – come to a decision. You’re to be executed.”

  It was what she already knew. Her disastrous adventure with the Undergrounders was coming to an end. He motioned to them stiffly.

  “In front of me, where I can see you.”

  So began the long march to the firing range. Never for a moment did Grizelda let go of Toby’s hand. She’d made a resolution last night to go out looking good, on this the last march she was ever going to make, and she was going to keep it. She straightened her back and lifted her chin, and knew without looking that Toby beside her was doing the same. He squeezed her hand, and that was a great comfort. Every gendarme they passed she dared to look them in the eyes.

  See who your government’s going to kill now? What are you going to do about it?

  They were going the wrong way.

  Not that she knew much about the geography of the upper part of Promontory, but she knew for certain that downhill was the wrong way to go. Toby looked at her, but she was just as confused as he was. The secretary explained nothing to them, only calling out orders to them which way to turn as they went deeper and deeper into the prison. She guessed that nobody stopped them because they were with a Promontory official, even if he was just a secretary.

  With a shock, Grizelda realized where they were. The entrance to the cell blocks. Nobody else was around. The secretary called a stop.

  “I’m going to turn my back now. Whatever you do after that, I can say I didn’t see it. I’d go for the first one on the left if I were you, though.”

  Without explaining any more, he turned away. Toby and Grizelda looked at each other. It only took them a moment to decide. They ran.

  It was the most terrifying run of their lives. They stumbled pell-mell down the stairs of the cell blocks, expecting every moment to be overtaken by gendarmes. But nobody came. Geddy hung out of Toby’s pocket, calling directions, and Grizelda was counting the levels in her head, too. When they got to the first level where she knew there was a hole, they turned sharply left. There weren’t any gendarmes guarding it, either, but there wasn’t any time to think about that. They ran straight through the hole, and then to Grizelda’s infinite relief, they were in the goblin tunnels.

  A green light appeared over their heads.

  “I’ve been waiting for you!” It was Laricia. “This way!”

  The light zipped off down the tunnel, and they ran after it. Grizelda was too overwhelmed to take in what had just happened, so she didn’t even try. She focused on the rhythm of running, the walls, ceilings, rooms, Toby beside her, the light up ahead, leading the way…

  Then all at once they burst into the meeting cave. A cheer went up and all the Undergrounders rushed forward to meet them. The next few minutes were spent in a confusion of hugging and congratulating.

  “Geddy’s okay!” Kricker cried.

  Toby took Geddy out of his pocket and the three of them, Geddy, Tunya, and Kricker, slapped each other on the back. Katarin started fussing over Toby’s black eye and his gingerly held arm, even though he kept telling her he was fine.

  Grizelda was in the middle of telling Solander her story when she noticed there was somebody else in the tunnel besides the Undergrounders. It was Mechanic Lenk, standing in the back, arms folded, not participating in the merriment. She trailed off.

  “First of all, you hit me a right good one.”

  She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Then Toby saw him, too. When he realized he was in the presence of a goblin he reacted somewhat like an elephant when confronted with a mouse.

  “But I’m glad to see you’re all right,” he said. The anger dropped from his face, though he still looked stern.

  “What happened?” she finally managed.

  He motioned for them to sit, and they sat down on a couple of boxes. The Undergrounders saw them and went quiet.

  “I told the Chairman. At the intermission I went to him and told him I suspected you were doing something dangerous. I didn’t know what, or where, and we didn’t know what we were going to do until this lady showed up.” He nodded to Laricia.

  Grizelda turned to Laricia. “How did you get the guards away from that hole?”

  But Laricia shook her head. “All I did was carry the message. There was a guy at Promontory who owed the Chairman a favor. He made an arrangement with him to have you let go.”

  Grizelda was on her feet before she could think. “I have to go down to the Chairman!”

  Toby also leapt up, looking like he wanted to help but didn’t know how. It was the Mechanic who held her back, his gnarled hands wiry but not hurting her.

  “Are you crazy?” he said. “The cat’s already out of the bag – they’ll tear you to pieces on sight–”

  “But the election’s today–” A grim silence fell.

  “He’s probably going to lose. Yes.” When it seemed she was out of danger of bolting, the Mechanic let go of her. “He said he would have come up here, but he has business of his own to attend to before the vote. And you can’t go down there.”

  “I’ll never get to thank him.”

  There was a pause. Lenk drew a breath. “Grendel is a person who … he knows how to call in his favors. Not always legally. He helped me get my job, and Lord knows what he did for that secretary. What I mean is, if you mean to pay him back, you’ll probably get the chance.”

  While Grizelda was digesting this, Jamin came over. “I’m sorry to break this up, but you two need to go pretty soon. Sun’s about to rise.”

  Toby just looked at him, but Grizelda already knew what he meant.

  “It’s not safe for you here anymore,” Jamin explained. “We’ve already got everything in place because of the breakout – here, take it.” He gave them a coat wadded up with things inside it. “As soon as word gets out, they’re going to set up search patrols. You have to get to the train station before then. Sorry, Toby.” />
  Jamin looked genuinely contrite, but Toby got up and stalked in a furious little circle, ignoring him. Automatically his hand strayed up to his hair, swiping it back.

  “I couldn’t help!” he cried.

  “I know, Toby.” Grizelda tried to lay a hand on his shoulder, but it was pushed away. “I’m the same way. I mean, I’m going to miss everybody and everything…”

  “Actually…”

  Geddy was looking down, shifting his weight. Finally he spoke.

  “I was wondering. Can I come with you?”

  They both just looked at him.

  “I mean, it would be a chance to study a whole new race of ogres – humans.” There was a pause. “And I hear that Salinaca City is a big university town.”

  Grizelda couldn’t help smiling. “If that’s what you want, then of course you can come with us.” She scooped him up and put him on her shoulder. “Toby, please.”

  “How many people are there still in there?”

  Grizelda wondered that, too. It was terrible, this leaving. All she could say to help him was the hard truth.

  “This time we have to leave.”

  Toby sagged in defeat.

  Then it was time for them to say their final goodbyes. The ratriders she thanked for everything they had done to help, especially Laricia. Kricker was the most sorry to see Geddy go, but when they had parted, he went back to stand next to Tunya. Grizelda couldn’t help but wonder, yet again. Kricker and Tunya? Nah, it couldn’t be.

  She shook hands with the Mechanic; she felt too awkward to do anything else.

  “I think Nelin is going to get the war that he wants,” he said. “This is the last time we’ll see each other before we’re enemies. I’d walk with you to the exit, but, well, the sun’s about to rise.”

  She gave warm goodbyes to everybody in the Underground. She hugged Solander and Katarin. Toby even managed a relatively amicable parting with Jamin. Then Grizelda said goodbye to everybody all over again. She knew she was delaying, but she didn’t care. Finally Jamin reminded them that they needed to hurry up.

  They got their things together and they left.

  Calding meant to get back to his prisoners, but dealing with the Promontory sting operation kept him occupied at every turn. Something was wrong. Gendarmes kept coming back to him telling him they’d found nobody. A couple of them had even apparently gone mad: they complained of being attacked by mysterious flying little people. He was in the middle of arguing with them when that secretary burst in, breathless, looking panic-stricken.

  “It’s the prisoners, Warden! The door to your office has been bashed in and they’re gone!”

  There was no point in stopping to think; he immediately sprang into action. He dropped his conversation and military-jogged with Mr. Bavar back to the office. It was true. The door was broken, hanging off its hinges. Calding stepped over it to get inside. Bavar hung back, looking concerned. The two youths were nowhere to be seen.

  He didn’t even know what to think about this new development. He was still trying to decide when Lieutenant Whatshisname showed up. He looked a little taken aback at the door, but he stepped over it and saluted.

  “Warden Calding?”

  “What now?”

  “There’s someone from the Committees of Public Safety here to see you, sir.”

  There was a whispering in the goblins’ Union Hall. The voting for the annual chairmancy election was supposed to have taken place first thing in the morning. Dutifully all the citizens of the Union had assembled in the hall, like they did for all their great meetings, but still the Chairman had not come. The minutes stretched into half an hour. Miner Nelin half-jokingly suggested that the Chairman had fled the scene rather than face a rout, but nobody much laughed. When Mechanic Lenk took his seat late, the goblins around him didn’t even notice.

  There were other things to worry about. There were rumors flying about, some of them concerning the Chairman, some of them not. A midnight break-in at the government building. The ogre-child had disappeared. Some sort of fight at the debates. Many goblins were convinced the Chairman was somehow connected to it all, though they weren’t sure how.

  The murmuring rose. The Chairman had appeared. He came in at the end of the Foremen’s balcony, and calmly stepped past the seat that was waiting for him and came up to the edge.

  “I regret to announce that there has been a change of plans for today.”

  The goblins responded in outrage, thinking he was going to cancel the election. It took him a long time to get a word in.

  “For reasons that you are probably already beginning to find out, I have decided to resign. I am withdrawing my name from the ballot. You may still cast your ballots if you wish, though there is no longer much point.”

  He started to withdraw. But Miner Nelin stood up from his seat in the audience and shouted.

  “What’s this all about, Chairman?”

  The Chairman stopped, turned around, and returned to the edge. “All right, you want to know why I’m resigning. If the state of politics is such that I have to sneak around to help Seamstress Grizelda flee the country, I’ve clearly gotten too old for it. My congratulations, Miner Nelin. Good hunting with your war.”

  There was a moment’s stunned silence, then the room exploded in confusion of equal measure to the pig iron riot. For a few moments, it seemed like anything could happen.

  “Quiet!” It was the Mechanic who called for order this time, since nobody seemed quite sure who was chairman. Only respect for his position made the crowd finally quiet down.

  “A word in the Chairman’s defense! By saving this girl’s life Chairman Grendel did what he thought was right. He may not have been our Union’s best chairman, but he is one of the best goblins I have known. Let him pass in peace.”

  There was utter silence as Grendel – he was only Grendel now – walked past the Chairman’s seat and stepped down from the balcony.

  The journey through the catacombs was as long and hard as the last time, but now they had to go it alone. Toby and Grizelda hiked side by side, their supplies slung over their shoulders, Geddy riding again in Toby’s pocket. A soreness was building in Grizelda’s legs already. Toby, it was clear, was in a foul mood.

  “This is awful,” he said. “I mean, what am I going to tell my folks when they see me? ‘Oh, it got a little scary and I left.’ Grandpa’s going to have a laugh.”

  Grizelda turned to him. “Actually, Toby, I’ve been thinking. Maybe we can do stuff from in Salinaca.”

  “Yeah, like what? Write pamphlets?”

  “Well, yes, actually.” She paused, her mind running ahead of her. “Or we could do … research or something for the Underground, send them back what we know. Recruit Salinacans.”

  Toby made a noncommittal sound, but he did seem to brighten a little.

  They began to pass racks of bones, and skulls leering out at her from their walls. Maybe it was because it was morning, but they seemed to Grizelda to have utterly lost their power. They moved on.

  The road ahead of them would be a hard one, she knew. What if they didn’t manage to get to the train station before the search patrols were set out? Even if they did make it, they faced days and days of sleepless, bone-jittering riding, stopping only now and then to bribe the conductor to hide them in the luggage compartment during checkpoints. Salinaca City was a huge place, Grizelda didn’t speak the language, and Toby only knew it a little. It would take incredible luck just to find out where Toby’s family was living. But they didn’t have to worry about that quite yet.

  And Grizelda knew how she was going to thank Grendel. She would thank him with her life, because that was what he had given her. She would go to Salinaca and study and grow up and see trees and all the time fight for Corvain. This exile was only temporary. Someday she would come back and walk the streets and this time there would be no headscarf. The light would hit her witch-mark for everyone to see.

  They quickened their pace as the tunnel ste
epened. Filled with a sudden urgency, they ran up the last slope and there it was, the secret exit, flooded in morning sunlight. Grizelda winced. Even though she had made the occasional foray to the surface in the last few weeks, she wasn’t used to daylight at all. But gradually her eyes adjusted and she saw there was a brilliance in the east, a rising sun that shot up the whole horizon with gold.

  She turned to Toby, and hand in hand they stepped outside.

  Special sneak preview: The Confederacy of Heaven

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. If you liked Grizelda, you might also like The Confederacy of Heaven, my second novel that will be coming out in Smashwords in the fall of 2010.

  In a post-apocalyptic Canada that hasn't seen rain in two hundred years, exile from the clan spells death. When Nasan, a junior warrior of the Rattlingbones Clan, is disgraced and cast out for a crime she didn't commit, she has other plans. She will survive alone in the wasteland of junipers and broken, haunted cities – just as soon as she figures out how. Enter Oscar, a strange bird who claims to be her spirit guide but can’t quite prove it. The rich people in the walled cities are fighting wars over water and Oscar wants to suck her into the fight. As he goes on and on about her being chosen to save the world, she begins to suspect there's a conspiracy going on.

  For more information about Confederacy, please visit my website at www.steamtrainsandghosts.wordpress.com. Here's a scene from the book in the meantime to whet your appetite:

  Nasan returned to consciousness by degrees. It was a confusing and drawn-out process. At first she thought maybe she was dead, since it was pitch dark and she couldn’t seem to move. But that couldn’t be right; Heaven was filled with the brilliance of the Stars. Then all her pain came back and she had to rule dead out.

  The pain was duller than back at the poisoned lake, but still quite there. Her side twinged each time she breathed in and there was a steady, dull throb in her arm. Her skin burned. She heard something move nearby and out of old habit tried to reach for her bow. It didn’t work well. She let out a low moan.