Rufus Snugg strode through the passages of System A with an air of deliberate violence, like a man walking to a duel, or perhaps to a drinking game. He wore a starched white shirt with a red cravat, a black woolen coat and pants, a black cape trimmed in silver, and brightly-polished leather shoes. His curly red hair was carefully brushed, and his face freshly shaved. Jonathan, shuffling rather less dramatically beside the young merchant prince, even caught a tasteful whiff of cologne. Rufus had evidently decided to look and smell his very best for his latest triumph—or his own messy death.

  From the huge finery chamber ahead in System B, Jonathan could both hear and feel a low, thrumming rumble. It was overlaid with the voices of many people, but compared to the deep monotone drone they sounded like the chirping of birds. The rumble reached through his feet and into his bones. It was the mighty, awful chorus of Progress.

  The tunnel opened into the finery, and Jonathan gazed at the source of the drone.

  At the center of the cavernous space, set apart from the ranks of fining eggs with their exhaust pipes twisting toward the ceiling, was an entirely different kind of machine. Its forward body was a long cylinder, surmounted by a tall smokestack. At the very front of the cylinder was a large numeral “1,” plated in gold. A cab at the rear rose slightly above the massive cylinder, with windows paned in real glass revealing an interior studded with valves, levers, and strange instruments. Eight wheels – four large and four small—were arranged on either side of the machine, with the larger wheels to the rear. The massive steel hulk of the body gleamed even in the comparatively dim light of the oil lamps and torches that lit the fining chamber. Behind the main engine was a smaller wagon, also on wheels, piled high with coal, and behind that were five long, wheeled cars with open, flat beds. This conjoined procession of vehicles rested on sturdy steel rails, bound at regular intervals with strips of oak planking. Scores of human and goblin workers—and scores more black-clad mercenaries wearing the Snugg insignia—were scattered around it in attitudes of hushed awe, like worshippers before some eldritch idol.

  A shiver ran down Jonathan’s back as he contemplated what this machine–and its sister, waiting in Hog Hurst—represented. This was not the product of a single craftsman, or even a well-staffed workshop. It was not the passion project of some mad inventor, beavering away in an obscure basement. It was the output of hundreds of men and women working in tight coordination for tens of thousands of hours. Six discarded prototypes had preceded it. There had been deadly accidents—exploded boilers, illnesses from the smoke, steel plates dropped on the legs or arms of unfortunate men. The steel alone was worth more than several Carolese duchies. It was beyond the reach of kings and emperors. Only the combined labor and concentrated capital of a multi-national trading concern could have created a machine like this, and its existence would transform the nature of trade, transport, and warfare. A profit would be expected.

  The principal investor, and the man whose family stood to profit the most, paused next to Jonathan, gazing profoundly at the metal beast he had dreamed and the small army he had assembled to make it real. Rufus Snugg’s expression was some admixture of awe, ambition, and unshakeable self-confidence. A hush fell over the assembled workers as he drew near his creation.

  Rufus examined his reflection in the polished steel of the boiler. He adjusted his cravat slightly.

  “I think,” he said with dramatic understatement, “that I should like to have lunch in Hog Hurst. How far is it to Hog Hurst, Mr. Miller?” The faces of all in the great finery chamber were turned to watch this bit of theatre. A faint smile twitched involuntarily at the corners of Rufus’s mouth.

  Jonathan rolled his eyes slightly. “One hundred and ten miles, Mr. Snugg,” he supplied. Then, reading Rufus’s slightly crestfallen look, he raised his voice and added: “The horse, running on the Eldenway in fair weather, couldn’t cover one hundred and ten miles before lunch. It’s ”

  Rufus’s face brightened noticeably, and he gave a broad smile. “Right you are, Mr. Miller,” he proclaimed for the crowd. He drew out his pocket-watch and looked at it, idly twisting the wind for further dramatic effect. “It’s nearly eight o’clock. By noon, you and I will have accomplished the impossible. All aboard.”

  He lightly ascended the short ladder into the first car, which had a boxy compartment and a bank of glass-paned windows, partly open. The cars behind were simpler, outfitted with rows of unadorned benches and protected only by waist-high barriers. Ranks of mercenaries, standing in orderly rows next to each car, began to file aboard. Each man carried a long gun, a large pack, and a broad sword at his belt. They wore brightly-polished breastplates, but no other armor.

  Aside from the shuffle of the soldiers filing onto the cars, the crowd was nearly silent.

  Jonathan climbed up into the coach behind Rufus. Inside were four round tables of dark-stained oak, each surrounded by several chairs. Both the tables and chairs were bolted to the floor of the car. Rufus was already seated at one, nibbling at a bun. Seeing Jonathan, he waved him over and gestured at a chair. At another table nearby sat Arthur and several other goblins, chattering and scribbling notes on sheets of paper. Gunnar von Boof, the chemist, occupied a third table, joining in the chatter and argument with the goblins. His long gray hair was tied back in a ponytail, and his enormous mustache was carefully brushed.

  “Will you take some tea with me, Jonathan?” inquired Rufus. “Of course you will.” Retrieving a cup and saucer from a small cabinet near at hand—also bolted down—he poured hot tea from a metal flask and gently pushed it across the tabletop. Jonathan dutifully sipped at the tea, looking closely at Rufus.

  “Why are we taking two hundred soldiers with us to lunch?” he asked. “I thought this was just a test run.”

  Rufus shrugged. “It’s a better test if we carry a load—and I don’t need twenty tons of steel in Hog Hurst right now.”

  “But you need two full companies of your best mercenaries?”

  “What luncheon isn’t improved by overwhelming military force? Now look, Jonathan, don’t be difficult. Focus on the positive: We’re about to make history. Cyrus Stoat’s intellectual heirs will write about this day in tones of hushed reverence a generation from now. Perhaps it will be adapted into a fiction play, and one day you and I shall be represented on stage by more attractive men than ourselves.”

  There was a terrific, blasting whistle from the front of the machine.

  “It needs a name,” remarked Rufus.

  Jonathan thought about that.

  “Steel serpent?” suggested Gunnar, from his table nearby.

  Rufus shook his head. “Too destructive. This is a device of progress, not of annihilation.”

  “People-mover?” offered Jonathan.

  “Have you been drinking again?”

  There was another shrieking blast from up front.

  Jonathan sighed. “Why don’t you tell me the name you’ve already thought of.”

  Rufus settled back in the chair. “Landphoenix,” he proclaimed, drawing out the words slowly.

  There was a long silence in the room, and a faint, badly-stifled snort from inside Jonathan’s satchel. Even the goblins, chattering at the next table, looked up with raised eyebrows.

  “Well, alright,” said Rufus at last, looking crestfallen. “I can’t have brilliant ideas every minute of the day.”

  “Look, it’s more like a wagon train than anything else,” observed Jonathan. “You don’t have to go inventing a new word for absolutely everything. Just call it a train for now, until you come up with something better.”

  With a jolt that threw Jonathan face down on the table and Rufus backward in his chair, the deck beneath them started to move forward. It had none of the bouncing clop of a horse-drawn wagon, but neither did it have the smooth, flowing glide of a riverboat. There was a regular clicking vibration that slowly increased in frequency as the train picked up speed. Jonathan looked out the window and saw the dark interior of the finery chamber start to slide past, and with it the faces of the silent crowd of human and goblin workers.

  The silence outside the train was suddenly broken, as one young man wearing dirty overalls and a leather cap gave a whooping yell. It was a wordless exclamation of surprise and triumph and defiance. He whooped again, and pulled the cap off his head, waving it in the air as Rufus Snugg grinned at him through the open window of the car. Jonathan saw with surprise that tears streamed openly down the young man’s face. Then others nearby picked up the cue, and the cry spread throughout the finery. Hats were ripped off and thrown in the air; men and women grabbed each other and danced; and some of the goblins among them were seized and tossed into the air with the hats, laughing and squealing.

  But the celebrating work crews were soon left behind. The tunnel outside grew dark as they passed out of the finery, and then abruptly exploded into light as the puffing locomotive pulled its cars out into the daylight of Devi Valley. They were already moving faster than Jonathan had imagined possible. He found he was gripping the top of the table to brace himself against an imagined impact. Rufus gently reached across the surface and loosened his fingers.

  “If we crash, then no amount of gripping that table will save you, Jonathan,” he said. “But we’re not going to crash.”

  Outside, they continued to accelerate. The train soon entered the little settlement of Beatrice where the tracks passed through it. Snugg guards stood at the road crossings, warning away curious workers and clerks from the warehouses and workshops. The cheering and whooping continued here, too, as men and women who had labored for more than a year in the valley, hearing unfulfilled rumors of some great project, suddenly beheld it fully-formed and roaringly alive.

  “The bridge is next,” said Rufus quietly. “Our lives are in the hands of mathematicians now.”

  Jonathan swallowed hard and gripped the table again.

  “Stop tormenting that table, Mr. Miller,” trilled Arthur from the next table over. “It’s more in danger of you pulling it up out of the floor than we are of the bridge collapsing. We’ve run hundreds of load tests and simulations. Every inch of that bridge has been inspected and inspected again. It can hold ten times the load we’re about to put on it. Your life is safe in the hands of mathematics.”

  There was a subtle change in the sound of the rails beneath them, becoming hollow and slightly higher-pitched. Jonathan looked out the window and saw the Upper East Branch flowing beneath them, and his face grew pale. But they did not fall. In what felt like the blink of an eye the river was behind them and the train had resumed its basso ostinato back on land.

  “How fast are we going?” Jonathan inquired in a shaky voice.

  Arthur replied again. “We think she can make thirty miles in an hour on the flat,” he said. “But we’ll take it slow going up the ridgeline.”

  “Going up…” Jonathan gulped. He moved over to the other side of the train, even as it took a curve in the track, pushing him up against the glass. Above him, the western ridge of Devi Valley reared up, and the floor became noticeably pitched as the locomotive started to take the traversing incline.

  “Come back to your seat, Jonathan,” said Rufus with an indulgent smile. “I’ll have need of your services once we reach Hog Hurst, and I can’t have you laid up with a broken leg.”

  Jonathan staggered back to his seat, even as the pitch became steeper and the valley floor began to drop away below them. The roaring throb of the locomotive ahead echoed through the car like some captive volcano. He found himself leaning backward, as if to help push the enormous load up the side of the tall ridge. But it did not need his help. The locomotive lifted them up and up, into the sky above the river and the settlement. He found that his fear left him, and he pressed with fascination against the windows. The valley and settlement grew rapidly more distant, shrinking to the size of a child’s toy as the locomotive and its cars hurtled up the traverse.

  There were several switch-backs before the track neared the peak of the long, broken ridgeline. And then, quite abruptly, pitch darkness descended on the train car. In the horrid, timeless black, Jonathan froze, a scream welling up in his throat. But before it could escape, he remembered the short tunnel at the top of the ridge. Even as he did, the light returned, and they were on the other side, descending the long traverses on the eastern slope of the ridge. The deep forests of the frontier stretched out below them, broken only by the series of sharp ridges and valleys of which Devi Valley was just one among many. The throbbing roar of the steam locomotive ahead of them continued without pause, but it was augmented by the screech of brake pads as the engineers tamed the awful downward force of gravity on the heavy steel vehicle.

  “I’m glad that’s over!” Jonathan bellowed at Rufus over the noise.

  “There are four more ridges to cross before the track makes a flat run through the forest!” Rufus shouted in return. Jonathan’s face went pale.

  The ascent and descent of the ridges gradually became less terrifying, and by the time they descended the fourth ridge, Jonathan began to find the whole thing rather pedestrian. The train stopped after perhaps an hour for a brief inspection of the boiler, brakes, and couplings. Jonathan, stretching his legs during the break, was surprised to find two goblins along with the human engineer in the cab of the locomotive. He commented on this to Gunnar.

  “Oh, they’re marvelous, your Quiet Ones,” replied Gunnar, giving his gray mustache a playful twitch. “You didn’t oversell them a bit. The rank-and-file work well enough—and about twice as long and hard as humans, if they’re motivated—but the of the grayskins have a knack for engineering and chemistry that puts Gretchen and me both to shame. In six months, they’ve picked up most of what took me thirty years of study and practice to learn. Gretchen says the same. And I’ll swear on anything you like, some of them already knew half of it. It’s like they’re… well, like they’re engineered for engineering.”

  Jonathan regarded the goblins in the cab of the locomotive, chattering in excitement with the human engineer. Then his gaze drifted back to the cars, where hundreds of black-clad Snugg mercenaries were stretching their legs and checking their weapons.

  “What are all the soldiers for?” he asked Gunnar.

  Jonathan fancied the chemist’s eyes grew sad. “Couldn’t say,” he replied with a shrug. “You’d better ask Rufus.”

  After five minutes, the train crew satisfied that their vehicle was fit to continue the trip, the engineer hollered the passengers aboard and the train jolted forward again. The passage was straighter and flatter now, cutting through endless miles of forests, winding around the base of ridges, and leaping over small rivers. Jonathan, sitting quietly in the forward car with Rufus and the others, was mesmerized by the trees whipping by thirty feet from the track.

  “I wish Merrily were here to see this,” he whispered to himself. And he imagined that she

  here, sitting at the table with him and Rufus, sharing their amazement at this miracle. He imagined reaching across the table to put his hand on hers, and being destroyed with love, all over again, by her green eyes and bright smile. The vision so was real, he found to his surprise that he had actually reached across the table and taken Rufus Snugg’s hand.

  He drew back in embarrassment, even as Rufus gave him a quizzical smile and a raised eyebrow. But his employer said nothing else, and the moment passed out into the speeding blur of the trees. There was a rumble of thunder, and Jonathan noticed that the sky had grown dark with clouds. Rain began to patter on the windows of the coach. Merrily was not here; not a ghost, not a shadow, not a variation. She was gone.

  At eleven fifty-three, by Rufus Snugg’s gold pocket watch, the train pulled into the enormous Snugg warehouse in Hog Hurst. It came to rest next to a nearly identical locomotive emblazoned with a gold “2” on the forward face of its boiler. The mercenaries disembarked and filed off through the rain toward one of the cavernous barracks at the waterfront. Rufus, Gunnar, and Jonathan walked to the public house and had an impossible lunch.

  ???

  After lunch, Jonathan discovered that Rufus Snugg intended to seize the coal mines in the Gray Kingdom. He reached this conclusion when, upon emerging from Hog Hurst’s finest dining establishment into a driving rain, he observed that the two hundred mercenaries who had begun their day in Devi Valley were now riding in barges across the Green River.

  “You lied to me!” he snapped at Rufus, immediately upon witnessing the river crossing.

  “I did no such thing,” replied Jonathan’s employer urbanely, pushing out the hood of his umbrella to shield them both from the rain. “I simply declined to elaborate.”

  “You can’t do this!” Jonathan blundered on. “Haven’t Arthur and his crews proven themselves?”

  Rufus nodded. “They have indeed, Jonathan. I’m grateful for their help, and they have been paid properly and fairly for their services. But the fact is that the coal shipments from the Gray Kingdom have stopped entirely. Without that coal, there’s no fining at Devi Valley and no fuel for the steam engine that you rode—not to mention no coal to sell to the people of Green Bridge to keep them warm this winter. No deposits anywhere in the Neighbor Kingdoms are remotely as rich or as accessible as the ones lying fallow in the ground twenty-five miles west of here. The Gray Kingdom appears to have disintegrated entirely; the reports from our caravans are gruesome.”

  Jonathan found, to his surprise, that his face was flushed and his voice quavered. He stepped away from Rufus, instantly drenching himself in the downpour. “They’re lying!” he shouted, despite the discomfort. Passing villagers turned to look at him in surprise, though Rufus maintained an unflappable calm. Near the Snugg factor house, a man in a trim gray suit began hurrying toward them, despite the foul weather. But Jonathan paid no attention to anyone but Rufus. “They’re lying!” he repeated. “The caravanners want you to go in and take over so they don’t have to deal with the goblins! Your people hate them because of how they look and how they talk. But it’s not fair, Rufus. Simon’s been teaching them something better than what they were before. It doesn’t have to end like this.”

  “If Simon were still there,” replied Rufus, walking briskly toward the waterfront, “then I’m certain it wouldn’t have ended like this. He was a man you could do business with. But there’s no one like him left, and my time and patience have run out. Come along if you like, and you’ll see what they’ve become.”

  A desperate thought struck Jonathan’s brain, conveyed perhaps by the impact of a particularly brilliant raindrop. “What if I went there first?” he blurted. “I could make a deal with them. So the goblins would let you in for a while, and you wouldn’t need to attack them.”

  Rufus’s pace didn’t slow. “I’ll go as high as five percent,” he said flatly over his shoulder, continuing his path toward the waterfront. “Net of all costs. But Jonathan, no one there will listen to you. You’re wasting your time.”

  “Just give me two days!”

  “We march on foot to the Gray Kingdom, immediately,” said Rufus firmly as they came to the docks. There was a tinge of sadness in his voice. “I won’t wait for you—but you needn’t wait for me, either. There’s still a post station on the other side of the river, and they might have a horse. If you can reach the Gray Kingdom first, you’re welcome to do whatever you think you must. If there’s anything left of you when we arrive, I’ll have all my horses and all my men try to put you back together again.”

  The man in the gray suit—now rapidly become darker with rainwater—was drawing closer, waving at them both. Jonathan, recognizing a bureaucratic distraction when he saw one, sprinted for Fisher’s Dock. There, despite the relentless march of progress, Jeremiah Fisher still spent his days in the alternate pursuits of fishing and napping in his hut, while pretending to rent out canoes. Hearing contented snores from inside the hut, Jonathan flung a silver coin in the boot at the door, heaved a canoe off the rack, and splashed it into the water.

  Behind him, the man in the gray suit reached Rufus Snugg, somewhat out of breath. He sheltered gratefully under the umbrella.

  “Message for Mr. Miller, sir!” he huffed. “Straight from head office in Green Bridge!”

  Rufus shrugged. “The boy’s on a quest. But you may catch him still if you dare. There are several more canoes.”

  The man in the gray suit looked carefully at the small army crossing the Green River, at the heavy rain clouds, and then at the shrinking figure of Jonathan Miller paddling out into the broad, turgid expanse of water, still swollen with spring snowmelt from the high northern peaks.

  “I expect,” he concluded, “that it will wait.” With that, he turned back to the factor house.

  ???

  Jonathan pounded along the forest road to the Gray Kingdom on an unfamiliar horse, his whole body drenched by the cold rain despite a heavy oilskin cloak. He had commandeered the horse, the cloak, a sack of bread and apples, and a small cask of beer at the Snugg post station on the west bank. Devi remained safe and dry inside his oilskin pack, having made a sort of a nest in one of his spare shoes.

  Even as Jonathan clung on to the galloping animal and struggled with numb fingers on the reins, his mind spun wildly through what he might find in the Gray Kingdom and how he might save the goblins from extermination by Rufus Snugg. But lurking beneath these surface worries, irrational but persistent, was the same haunting, panicked fear that had tormented him ceaselessly since the nightmare moment in October when he’d received Merrily’s letter. This deeper sickness demanded his attention, turning him away from the Gray Kingdom and the abstractions of justice. Merrily had loved him one day, and left him the next. It was more real than anything else, and yet also maddeningly unreal. Why had she changed? Rolly died. Why had Rolly died? Because the zealot “Father” had killed him. Why had Father killed Rolly? Because some Crown Knight called Richard—whoever that was—had talked or tricked him into it.

  Why did Sir Richard want Rolland Gorp dead? Where was he now? No one knew. Jonathan’s mind thrashed against the walls of unknowns and impossibilities that caged him in.

  “This can’t be real,” he muttered to himself, struggling to keep the rain out of his eyes and cling to the horse.

  “Ye’d be’er bet it’s real,” came Devi’s muffled voice from inside the pack. “If ye cain’t come ta’ grips wi’ tha’, Jonathan Miller, then we’s all proper feched. What ye ‘ave yet ta’ grasp yer meaty fingers roun’ is tha’ what yer eyeballs ‘re seein’ ‘t’ain’t that’s real.”

  Jonathan had no good response to that, and so he made none.

  By dusk, he reached what was left of the Gray Kingdom.

  Once, not long ago, he had been stopped at the border by small, polite, and slightly officious guards. Now there was no one. He simply pushed aside the flimsy barrier that separated the human world from the goblins and walked on into a tableau of sad devastation.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The small, sturdy huts above-ground were gray and empty. Many had been burned; others had been pulled down. Trash and carcasses rotted in the streets. Many of the corpses were animals, but some were the small, limp, childlike forms of goblins. The open-air kitchens and communal dining halls were looted and empty, their tools and supplies scattered. The sounds of screaming, hooting, and chanting could be heard dimly amid the ruins and in the woods beyond, but their sources were not immediately visible.

  A movement caught his attention out of the corner of one eye, and he spun his head to face it. A pair of grayskins, entirely naked, were dragging another of their number feet-first toward the edge of the settlement. The victim was still semi-conscious, bloodied but struggling feebly and mumbling.

  Jonathan bounded toward them, shouting and raising his hands up and away from his body to make himself look bigger. The two naked goblins screeched, dropped their captive’s feet, and instantly scampered away into the ruins. Jonathan knelt next to their bloodied victim, and his heart sank. There was a long, ugly gash in her left flank, just below the armpit. Blood gushed from the wound. Already her hands had gone limp and her eyes were vacant.

  Not knowing what else to do, he picked up the little body and carried it on through the ruins, the borrowed horse trailing along after him by its lead line.

  At first, he had no clear picture of where to go. Then he remembered the sprawling work site at the edge of the settlement. He picked his way carefully through the trash, bodies, and rubble of the Gray Kingdom, until eventually he emerged in the mile-long clearing with its strange towers and scaffolding.

  Drawing close, he blinked in surprise. There was now a rough wooden stockade surrounding the clearing where the goblins’ secret construction project had been underway. The stockade was studded with low, sturdy towers at regular intervals. A space had been cleared of buildings and debris around the walls, though here and there in the open space lay the bodies of more goblins, riddled with small, sharp arrows. The walls were devoid of torches or lamps, but in the dusk light Jonathan could just make out the diminutive forms of grayskins patrolling the rough parapets. Even as he took this in, there were shouts of alarm, and more small humanoids popped up onto the nearest towers. Their bows were drawn, and they were quite clearly pointed at him.

  “Wait!” he shouted in desperation. “Don’t shoot me! I have one of yours!”

  There was a soft murmur of voices from the tower as Jonathan held his ground, shivering in the rain. After several minutes, a taller figure appeared on the tower, looking down at him. It was wearing a heavy smock against the rain, and Jonathan could make out no details. Then the figure spoke a sharp word to the goblins on the tower and disappeared.

  A small gate in the wall nearby opened slowly. Goblins bearing torches emerged. Unlike the others out in the ruined settlement, these were dressed in Uellish-style shirt and hose, though they too wore heavy cloaks against the rain. They scampered over to Jonathan and surrounded him. Both he and the horse shrank back, expecting to be assaulted. But to his surprise, their hands were gentle, guiding him insistently toward the gate.

  Standing inside was his mother.

  Jonathan gaped like an idiot, but Alice Miller just smiled and put her arm around his shoulders.

  “It’s good to see you too, boy. You could have written a few more letters. Now why don’t you hand over that poor departed body to her friends, stable your horse, and let’s get out of this rain.”

  ???

  Jonathan’s reunion with his mother was somber.

  “It’s all gone to madness,” she said, matter-of-factly. Jonathan, listening, sipped at a cup of soup, warming his feat in a large pot of hot water. He wore his one set of dry clothes, and a wool blanket was draped around his shoulders. They sat together in the single human-sized guest house within the walls of the enclave. Devi, to his surprise, had emerged from her secluded hideout in his pack and was snuggled up against a cup of hot tea.

  “The longer Simon was gone,” Alice continued, “the more the Gray Kingdom began to split apart. The veneer of civilization was only paper thin on most of these people, but they held in reverence like a prophet—or even a god. With Simon out of the picture, the likes of Globclaw drew more and more to their side, promising they’d go back to the good old days of living in filth and depravity, stealing anything they could carry, and killing and eating anything they could chew. I’m not exaggerating. His theory of social organization, if you can call it that, is that it is in the nature of the goblin to be vicious, and so it is good that he be as vicious as possible.”

  “That sounds like a philosopher who Merrily used to tell me about.” He winced in physical pain, even speaking her name.

  “There’s very little philosophical going on in here anymore,” Alice went on. “Those that wanted to live in the way Simon taught have withdrawn inside these walls. The Quiet Ones that are left keep them busy on the construction site. Most of the youngsters made it, which is a great many small blessings. But the whole population here behind the walls are a very small minority, and we’re surrounded on all sides by savages. The Snugg caravans have stopped coming, and we’re quickly running out of food. When that happens, even the goblins here inside the walls will have about twelve hours before they go completely insane and start eating each other. And likely us.”

  “Why haven’t you left? And why don’t you leave now?”

  She gave him a look that he knew well. It was same withering, silent retort that followed when as a child he made a proclamation of such outrageous nonsense that mere words could not convey the depth of her disapproval. He had seen it the time he informed his mother, one day in early June at age seven, that he and Merrily would spend the summer rafting on the Green River all the way down to the Gulf of Carelon, and could she please pack some bacon.

  “Alright,” he said. “I get it. You think there’s still hope for them, and you don’t want to leave. But mother, listen. There are two companies of heavily-armed Snugg soldiers coming here, right now. They mean to take over the coal mines, and I can’t imagine they’ll stop there. There’s going to be fighting. I’d hoped to work out a deal, but there’s no one to deal with. So it would be better if you slipped out of here—”

  She interrupted him. “You could talk to The Gizzard.”

  “‘Ee’s a prat,” scoffed Devi. But Jonathan caught her eyeing him, in the way she did when she thought there was an important decision in the offing.

  Jonathan narrowed his eyes at Devi and turned back to his mother. “Is he here?”

  “He turned up a few weeks ago. I recognized him outside the walls. I’m not sure what he’s up to, but he hasn’t tried to get in. He was running around outside with a couple of the Quiet Ones. I think they were spying on Grobglaw’s tribe over in the old Bloody Teeth caves. I thought I spotted him a few times since then, but I can’t be sure. It was only at night. There was some very large animal with him. A bear, maybe, but it doesn’t move like any bear I’ve seen. If he’s out there, he’s certainly

  like a feral.”

  Jonathan stood up purposefully, casting aside the blanket and straightening his back. “I have to find The Gizzard,” he proclaimed. “He may be the only one who can talk some sense into Globclaw before the Snugg soldiers show up. We only have hours left. Devi—”

  Jonathan made for the door as he was speaking, but forgot that he was standing in a bucket of hot water. He fell on his face, only narrowly saving himself from a broken nose by throwing an arm in front of himself as he tumbled.

  “Devi,” he mumbled into his elbow, “saddle up.”

  Devi hopped onto his back.

  ???

  Outside the walls again, Jonathan walked cautiously through the shattered ruins of the Gray Kingdom. He grasped a stout stick in one hand and an oil lantern in the other, and watched the lengthening shadows closely. The light was fading rapidly, and the rain showed no signs of letting up. It would, he hope, at least slow down Rufus Snugg on the road to the east. But it made Jonathan’s desperate search through the burned and destroyed buildings that much more miserable.

  He slowly became aware of shapes moving in the shadows, following along after him. They did not yet approach, but nor were they figments of his imagination.

  “Where is The Gizzard!” he shouted at the creeping shadows.

  “I dinnay think these ones speak Uellish sa’ good,” muttered Devi from her sheltered pouch on his sash.

  The shadows grew in number, and he began to see the glint of his lamplight reflected in many eyes. They were on all sides of him.

  “Tell me where The Gizzard is!” he shouted again. The crawling shadows gave no indication that they understood him, but they continued to thicken in number. He began to see the squat-headed, humanoid forms of goblins clustering around his torchlight. They licked their lips and chattered at one another, no longer bothering to stay back.

  “Ah think we shoulda brought more friens’,” remarked Devi nervously.

  “You know how this all ends, right?” asked Jonathan. “You would have told me if I were about to do something that was going to get us both killed, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’ dinnay work like tha,” she said huffily. “Ah cain’t jess flip through a book an’ see what yer s’pposed ta’ do a’ every secon’ of yer life.”

  “Some help foresight is,” he muttered, starting to back away from the advancing swarm of goblins. “This is looking like one of the branches where I die unpleasantly.”

  Devi hopped to the ground, drawing her steel, needle-like lance.

  “Ye can never tell ‘til ye get ta’ th’ en’ of it,” she commented cryptically.

  The goblins swarmed forward, and Jonathan swung his stick and lamp wildly around him. His attackers dodged nimbly out of the way, hissing and waving crude weapons with menace. He saw that their hats were festooned with bones, rotting meat, and trash. One had an improvised crown of eyeballs impaled on spiky thorns.

  They surged forward again, and Devi charged into their midst. There was a ruckus of screaming and stabbing in the direction of her wild charge—but Jonathan was left alone, and goblins were on all sides. He flailed again wildly, swinging his stick—

  There was a flash of steel, flowing through the air at goblin head-height. A swath of attackers dropped limply to the ground. Some enormous shape burst through their ranks, smashing and stamping. Jonathan retreated in horror at the thing. In the dim light he could not see its features, but they were plainly enormous in proportion. The huge bar of steel swung again, and five goblins went flying backward, separated into numerous sub-goblin parts. Jonathan crawled backward, huddling against the crumbling corner of a decaying wooden hut. The massive attacker danced and whirled, smashed and beat amidst the swarming horde of goblins. In the light of his fallen torch he saw that it was clad in metal. There was something much smaller clinging to the top of it, cackling madly and loosing its own hail of arrows.

  In a minute it was over. The survivors melted back into the shadows, and the behemoth turned to where Jonathan cowered. It was humanoid, clad all in steel, and wielding a steel sword that must have been ten feet long. It flipped the sword into a sheath slung low across its back and took off the enormous steel helmet.

  “Come out, Jonathan Miller,” said a resonant, colorful female voice.

  Jonathan, seeing little choice but to obey, crawled out of the crumbling hut. He stood up, and as he did, Devi drew next to his feet. They both looked up in awe.

  “Fiond?” he asked in disbelief.

  The blonde giantess, drawn up to her full twelve feet of height, looked down at him and smiled. Riding in a peculiar basket attached to her steel helm was a familiar goblin face. It gave him a toothy smile.

  “I heard you went looking for me,” smirked The Gizzard in his deranged lilt. “Lucky you found both of us. In another ten seconds you’d have made a tasty dinner for every goblin within a quarter mile of here. Let’s vamoose before they come back with more friends. This lady’s metal skin will turn a hundred arrows, but the rest of us won’t fit inside it with her unless she eats us first.”

  Devi scampered up Jonathan’s leg and back to sit on his shoulder, and Jonathan was momentarily struck by the odd similarity—he with a small companion at his shoulder, both staring up at larger-scale versions of themselves in Fiond and The Gizzard. But there was little time for bemused contemplation, as the screeching and howling of the dispersed grayskins began to draw closer again.

  “Back to the enclave,” announced Jonathan abruptly.

  Fiond shook her massive head. “Not yet. Follow.” She turned and stalked off into the darkness, placing her helmet—still surmounted, in his basket, by The Gizzard—back on her head. Jonathan, with no real alternative, trotted after her.

  They did not have far to go. Fiond stopped outside the charred remains of a burned hut and knocked three times on what was left of one brick wall that still stood precariously. Two female goblins emerged hesitantly from the ruin, followed by eight miniature versions of both sexes. Their clothes were filthy and their caps mostly barren—but they took off the caps and, to Jonathan’s surprise, gave halting curtsies. The youngsters behind them stared up at the Giant-woman with wide, amazed eyes.

  “Come,” said Fiond. “Run, or you will die here.” Already, the screeching and growling of feral goblins was close at hand. Fiond and The Gizzard set out into the ruins, trailing Jonathan, Devi, and the ten refugees. Fiond was plainly leading them toward the walled enclave around the sprawling construction site. But before they had gone far, scampering gray forms emerged from the ruins around them, brandishing wicked knives, clubs, and bows.

  “Run!” bellowed Fiond, already drawing her enormous greatsword. Picking up her pace, she swept the sword in wide arcs left and right, clearing a swath in the advancing attackers and sending pieces of them flying in all directions. The females and children sprinted desperately behind her on their shorter legs. Two of the children lagged behind; Jonathan bent down and scooped them up as he ran. When a break in the attackers appeared ahead, Fiond dropped back, mopping up their pursuers even as the refugees dashed forward. For a few desperate moments Jonathan thought she had abandoned them, but then she thundered back to the lead, satisfied that the danger behind was cleared for now. The Gizzard, perched on her head and cackling wildly, shot arrows from his little bow with glee, picking off any of his cousins who drew too close to the fleeing party. Jonathan couldn’t quite tell, but it appeared he might be singing.

  When they neared the walls, Fiond did hang back, keeping several large trees between her and the sightlines of the defenders above. The ten goblin refugees scampered forward, and the gates opened slightly to admit them. Jonathan remained behind as well.

  “Why don’t you go in?” he asked. “It’s safer there.”

  She shrugged laconically. “I am a monster.”

  “She thinks they’ll shoot at her,” filled in The Gizzard, “and try to kill her with spears and knives.” Fiond turned her steps away from the walled enclave, back into the ruins and forest. “I told her that the goblins in there aren’t like the ones out here. They’re more like big-men, and act all soft and squishy like Men in their Man-cities. But she said it didn’t make any difference.”

  “How did you two come to be together?” Jonathan asked. The snarling and howling of feral goblins had died down, but the occasional muttering and deranged outburst could still be heard in the night around them.

  The Gizzard took a moment to gather his thoughts before answering. “I was out questing for King Simon, and I saw her in the forest. That was before the Quiet Ones started hiding out in their walls and Globclaw took over the rest of the tribes. I thought maybe she would know where King Simon was, so I tracked her down. She was going to cut me in half and scoop out my skull to use for a bowl to eat a soup made of the rest of me, seasoned with a little garlic and sage and slow-roasted over an open fire, but I explained that I was a knight errand on a holy quest, and if she ate me then my heart would be inside her and not in the right place where it’s supposed to be”—he still hadn’t taken a breath—“and I’d come back as a holy ghost and imprecate her.”

  Jonathan, trotting alongside Fiond, took that in.

  “I dinnay think,” observed Devi, “‘at ye used quite tha’ right word thar.”

  “Which one?” inquired The Gizzard from atop Fiond’s head.

  “Please,” said Jonathan; and then he repeated, “

  do not answer that question.”

  They slipped out of the ruins of the Gray Kingdom, and Fiond stopped after perhaps ten minutes at a shallow bowl in the forest floor. Her campsite was much as Jonathan remembered, but a large hole had been dug out in the bank near her tent, and a few more amenities of settled life had appeared. There was a clothesline, and a small stream had been diverted through the shallower end of the bowl to provide fresh water.

  “Rest here,” instructed Fiond. “Tomorrow will bring new problems.”

  ???

  Jonathan was awaked in the early morning hours by the rattle and crack of gunshots. He knew instantly what they meant. Rolling out from beneath the ledge that had sheltered him through the night, he sprang to his feet and grabbed his pack. Not bothering to wake The Gizzard or Fiond, he dashed off into the forest in the direction of the gunshots. Then, thinking better of walking straight into a battle, he angled off to the east, hoping to strike the trade road from Hog Hurst some distance away from the fighting and then loop back to Rufus’s command.

  The shooting intensified as he ran, and he began to hear the hoarse shouts of combat orders and massed killing. They were overlaid with higher-pitched squeals and screams of goblin voices. Jonathan picked up his pace, dashing recklessly through the forest, leaping over logs and streams, allowing low-hanging branches to whip him in the face.

  He struck the trade road, and found it empty, though there were obvious signs of the passage of many men. He turned west, making better time along the well-kept path.

  “I’s too late,” said Devi sadly from the flap of his satchel. “They’s already well on.” Then she disappeared into the depths of her shelter.

  He found Rufus Snugg perched on horseback, surveying by the gray light of a rainy dawn the unfolding carnage in the Gray Kingdom. He was surrounded by an aide and two armed riders. The fighting had moved away from the eastern border, and the sounds of it could be heard on all sides to the west. Rufus wore a crisp black suit beneath his oilskin cloak and a broad-brimmed hat against the rain. His two bodyguards drew pistols as Jonathan approached, too winded to speak immediately and hunched over. They leveled the guns at his body. But Rufus, noticing the movement, swiftly reached out a hand to each man’s shoulder and jerked them back, sending two booming shots harmlessly up into the treetops.

  “One of ours,” he said tersely to the soldiers. Then he turned the horse and maneuvered it over to Jonathan, looked down at him for a moment, and slithered awkwardly to ground. The aide followed some distance behind.

  “Now you see how it is,” he remarked sadly.

  Jonathan, still heaving, struggled to stand up. “There are still…” he gasped, “still some left… who will talk to you. They’re in the walls by the big clearing. My… mother… is with them. She can… negotiate.”

  Rufus blinked and raised his head in surprise, but adjusted himself quickly.

  “That information was missing from my reports,” he mused. “Very well, Jonathan. I have no reason to doubt you. We’ll mop up the settlement first, and then see if you’re correct.”

  Jonathan sank against a tree just off the road, listening numbly to the regular explosions of gunfire and screams of dying goblins from out in the shattered ruin. He thought of what this place had looked like nine months ago, and found that his cheeks were not only wet from the rain.

  “Mr. Miller,” came a voice. He looked up, finding that Rufus’s aide had addressed him. The aide was a middle-aged man, and wore a tidy gray suit. He was wrapped heavily in an oilskin cloak against the rain. It was, in fact, the same Snugg functionary who had tried to flag down Jonathan at the docks yesterday; one of the Green Bridge couriers, he thought.

  “There’s a message for you from the district office.”

  “I can’t read it now,” he said, waving one hand distractedly. “I’ll need a cryptographer back at the office in Hog Hurst.”

  The gray-suited man shook his head. “Oral delivery only, Mr. Miller. You’re to return to Green Bridge at once. Veridia Snipe’s personal orders. She’s captured a spy, and wants you present at the interrogation.”

  “Why me?” he asked.

  The man shrugged. “Miss Snipe doesn’t explain her reasons to me, Mr. Miller.”

  “You’d better go, Jonathan,” advised Rufus. “She barely explains herself to me, and in theory she’s an employee of my family.” He turned to the aide. “Who is this spy, then?”

  “It’s classified,” replied the aide huffily, glancing at Jonathan with disdain.

  “I own this operation,” snapped Rufus, his eyes suddenly flashing. “I own those clothes you’re wearing, and the horse you’re riding, and the contracts on the mercenaries who are standing around here wishing they didn’t draw bodyguard duty, and everything else within fifty miles of here that’s worth owning. If you don’t answer my question, I’ll have Special Operations ship you to Pour Vaille in a barrel of fish.”

  “The prisoner was a Brassen. He gave his name as Guillam Brousseui, but didn’t say much else. He was quite agitated when they brought him in. Raving and thrashing about like a madman.”

  “You were there when they brought him in?” asked Rufus in surprise.

  “I am the Special Operations department, sir,” replied the man in the gray suit with a touch of frost in his voice. “And I shall be sure to note in my report this management violation of Security Protocol Fourteen, disclosure of classified intelligence in the presence of non-qualified personnel.”

  Rufus began to argue back, but Jonathan had stopped listening.

  , he repeated in his mind. Then he jumped to his feet.

  “Don’t kill the goblins inside the walls, Rufus,” he snapped. “And don’t kill my mother.” This last he shouted over his shoulder, already dashing off into the forest.

  He arrived back at Fiond’s campsite, heaving for air after another long sprint, and sat down to catch his breath. Fiond and The Gizzard came and sat on logs in front of him, waiting curiously to see what he might say.

  “Your friend,” said Jonathan to Fiond when he could speak again. “The one you were looking for back in October, after you lost track of him. You told me his name, then. Tell me again.”

  Fiond turned her head to one side curiously.

  “Guillam,” she stated.

  “And he was one of the companions of Sir Richard of Enderly?”

  She nodded again. “Guillam was friend of Sir Richard. They travelled together to my home. Long travel. Then we followed Sir Richard here. Gray people took friend Guillam.” She nodded at The Gizzard, who smiled pleasantly.

  “Pack your camp and follow me,” Jonathan instructed. “I know where your friend is—and Guillam Brousseui is going to tell me all about Sir Richard of Enderly.”

  ???

  G: Never have I met a woman eviler than you.

  INT: I think you will find that I am not evil, Monsieur Brousseui; nor even heartless. I have a son of my own, and I love him as you love your daughter. But good or evil, I am responsible for the outcomes around me. Remember, if it makes you feel better, that I am on your side. Enjoy the accommodations.

  Scribe, come with me.

  Jonathan followed Miss Snipe out of the interview chamber with its fake iron maiden, silently trailing after her as she stalked from the holding cells back to her office above one of the cavernous Snugg warehouses in the trade quarter. A nurse waited expectantly in the small, sparsely-decorated entry hall, holding a bundle that moved and fussed slightly. She handed the infant Marius to Miss Snipe, who took her son without breaking stride or speaking a word. Jonathan followed her upstairs to her office, where she shut the door behind him, sat down at her desk, and calmly unbuttoned her starched white shirt. Without the slightest self-consciousness, she began to nurse the baby while also scratching notes on a loose sheaf of paper.

  Jonathan waited patiently, studiously keeping his eyes at her face level.

  “Guillam Brousseui has not been truthful with us,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “On what points?” asked Jonathan. His feet were already itching to be gone, but he knew he had to finish this conversation with Veridia—whether or not she sacked him at the end of it, or killed him.

  “The diary is more than Sir Richard’s self-serving tales of his own adventures. I’m certain of this. Brousseui said he read it multiple times—enough to memorize parts of it. Why would he have done that if it were a simple travel log?” She looked down at her notes. “When I asked him how Sir Richard got into the temple to rescue his company without being noticed, Brousseui didn’t answer me immediately; he asked instead if I had Sir Richard’s diary. Only when I told him I did not did he give us an entirely implausible story about sneaking in disguised as a prisoner. However they accomplished their escape, it was not by that gambit. The truth must be in the diary. And his account of returning to the temple to attempt the rescue of Sir Richard is equally improbable. They must have found a secret entrance, or some other means of fooling the guards.”

  Jonathan looked at her curiously, a realization suddenly dawning in his mind.

  “Then… you believe his account of the Giant-men?”

  She snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. Guillam Brousseui is a simple man. If a simple man is going to lie, he tells a simple lie. He doesn’t reach for fantasy. Brousseui saw what he told us he saw, or at least he thinks he did.” She gestured at the map lying on her desk, filled in with details by the prisoner. “Somewhere up there in the white spaces of the map is a city full of twelve-foot-tall people who live forever and wear steel armor so thick it takes a tree trunk to pierce it. And Sir Richard of Enderly, who can apparently walk on water and has a sheet of metal bolted to his face, is leading a thousand of their best warriors to Devi Valley. Only he’s personally taken a detour to Green Bridge with the stated purpose of burning it to the ground and killing Queen Anne. If we survive this, I’ll write it up as a case study for Snugg management candidates.”

  “And,” added Jonathan, pointing at the map again, “King Simon is living alone and naked on a mountain in the wilderness beyond the Green River.”

  “And that,” agreed Miss Snipe.

  Jonathan leaned forward at the table. He had not told her about The Gizzard and Fiond, waiting for him in a hiding spot on the sparsely-populated west bank of the river.

  “I have to go and find Simon,” he said firmly.

  She waved her hand at him. “Simon is irrelevant,” she answered. “The coal mines are in our hands now. Production will be back online in a matter of days. The feral survivors have fled into the woods, and the rest of the Gray Kingdom are holed up in their little enclave. I haven’t had them executed, Mr. Miller, before you ask. They can stay in there for all I care. We’ll sell them food, as long as they have the money to pay for it.”

  Jonathan swallowed, trying to summon up some admixture of courage and wit.

  “Simon is more than a way for us to get more coal, Miss Snipe. He’s the key to saving the goblins. Without him helping them, they’ll all be like the ferals again in six months. And I know you don’t see the profit in it, Miss Snipe; I know it doesn’t hit the balance sheet. But there’s more to than money in and money out. Simon is something special, and he was making the goblins into something special. I’ve proven it to Rufus these past six months! They work around the clock, they have a knack for math and engineering, they learn like crazy, and they don’t need much to be happy—just good food and a warm cave to live in. They could be more than what they are now. Don’t they deserve a chance to be more? Shouldn’t the next generation of their children go to school, and live in a warm house in the winter, and make some money and have a little land and… and all the things that we want for ourselves?”

  She looked at him gravely across the table.

  “Why do you suppose Simon ran away?” she asked quietly.

  That brought Jonathan up short, and he thought for a time. “I don’t know,” he answered finally. “Maybe he was afraid of something. But we ought to persuade him to go back. They need him.”

  Miss Snipe gave him a long, appraising look. He could almost see the equations writing themselves out in her head, as she weighed up the variables in front of her.

  “No.” Her statement was absolute and final, in the way that only Veridia Snipe could say “no.” He couldn’t even bring himself to ask why. He just looked down at the floor and took a deep breath in.

  “It’s not our business, Mr. Miller,” she went on, sensing his need to understand. “Snugg & Co. do not make money from the long-term cultural development of a tribe of savages out over the frontier. If they want to come around to our way of things on their own, let them. If Simon wants to go back to his people, let him. But the break-even on uplifting an entire race is far too distant. And I need to go to Roosterfoot and help with the evacuation. The Republican Guard are closing in around the city, and we have too few mercenaries to hold them back. You’ll take a coach tonight. That’s all, Mr. Miller. If you’ll excuse me, I really must do something about the invasion of Devi Valley.”

  He put his hands on his neck, massaging a deep knot, and leaned forward. “Why was Rolland Gorp killed?” he asked. “Has Cyrus come up with anything?”

  She shook her head in obvious irritation. “He’s come up with a new leg, a traitorous priest, and a serious mental disorder, but nothing else. I should have known better. And none of that is your concern, Mr. Miller. I need all hands to help with the Roosterfoot evacuation, and that means your hands—as long as they’re still attached to you.”

  He rose to his feet politely and nodded his head. “As you wish, Miss Snipe,” he said placidly. “I’ll be on the coach tonight.”

  Jonathan did not get on the Roosterfoot coach that night. Instead, he waited until the sky was black and rowed a small boat across the Green River with muffled oars. On the west bank, he found his way to the remote, sheltered grove where he had left Fiond and The Gizzard. An ancient wild apple tree in full bloom draped the clearing with white flowers and an intoxicating floral scent. He gently set down his pack, and helped Devi emerge.

  Together, the four people stood under the boughs of the old apple tree. Jonathan regarded them each in turn, feeling strangely comfortable among the differently sized people.

  “I know where Simon is,” he announced. The Gizzard straightened, his eyes sparkling with excitement and questions.

  “And I know where Sir Richard is,” he added. Fiond’s eyes twinkled in the starlight, though her expression was stoic.

  “We’re going to find Simon first, and we’re going to make him go back. And when we’ve done that, we’re going to see a man with a new leg and a mental disorder about a traitorous priest, and I’m going to find Sir Richard and make him tell me why he had Rolly killed, and convince Veridia Snipe not to have me murdered for disobedience, and Merrily will love me again. In that order.”

  He looked at each of them in turn. Fiond and The Gizzard were plainly ready to be off at once, despite the hour; but Devi looked agitated and uncomfortable. Whatever foreboding haunted her thoughts, she did not share it. So Jonathan and his companions set off to the west under moonlight.