Jonathan slipped on a wet rock, feeling his heart race as, for a moment, his legs dangled out into the lethal emptiness to his left. His hand caught a protrusion in the rock and he held on desperately, his tailbone landing with a jolting thud on the lip of the shelf. He sat there for a moment, stunned to still be alive, until Fiond reached down a hand and gently drew him back up to his feet.
“Do not hurry to your death, Jonathan,” she advised in her deep, quiet, colorful voice. “He will come for all of us soon.”
They edged higher along the ridge, their pace slowing as the path grew even more treacherous.
At the top of the escarpment was a narrow plateau with a patch of thicker pine forest. The companions moved through it cautiously, feeling their way in the gathering dusk toward a rocky peak above the band of forest. From the base of the mountain this morning, Jonathan had spotted what he took to be the cave opening described by Guillam Brousseui in his final interrogation. It had looked, then, like a modest labor to reach it. Now, under the dark and dripping pine boughs, leagues from any other human being, the howling wind in the high forest summoned strange and terrible specters from his imagination.
It was plain enough they were not alone here. Scattered around the forest floor was evidence of a local hunter: unbleached bones, rabbit snares, and the occasional discarded tool. There were, too, strange totems in the dim, arboreal gloom around them. Woven circles of sticks dotted the forest floor at random, varying in size from the length of Jonathan’s thumb to the full height of Fiond. Each reminded him uncomfortably of some primal ancestor of the Unbroken Circle of the Ecclesia. In the dreary murk of the pine forest they took on a sinister aspect, like gateways into some darker reflection of the world.
They ascended out of the pine forest and came to the peak. And there, waiting for them, was a cave. It was perhaps thirty feet wide, and descended sharply downward into the heart of the mountain. An overhanging slab of rock protected it partially from the elements, and a thin wisp of smoke emerged from within. Water from the downpour around them flowed freely into its mouth, and a spring-fed stream poured over one edge of the overhang into the depths of the cavern. The sound of dripping and flowing water could be heard even over the noise of the rainstorm.
It was plain that someone lived here, after a fashion. More woven circles dotted the rocky landscape around the cave, as well as several racks for curing animal skins and a small smoking hut for meat.
“Please leave me alone.”
Jonathan jumped, his heart accelerating. He could not at first identify the source of the words, though he recognized the sound of the voice.
“Simon? Where are you?”
“Go away. Leave me alone.”
He motioned for Fiond and The Gizzard to stay behind, then advanced slowly toward the cave opening.
“Where are you, Simon?”
There was silence, but staring closely at the stone wall behind the overhang Jonathan picked out the form of the little goblin. His skin, nearly the same color as the gray rock and glistening from the rain, was unadorned with any clothing. His head was bare. He was huddled against the rock wall, apparently for shelter against the rainstorm.
Jonathan found, having come all this way, that he suddenly had no clue what to say to Simon, erstwhile King of the Goblins. He decided to begin with the absurdly pedestrian.
“Lousy weather to be outside,” he remarked. Simon did not answer.
“It’s been raining,” he added, “more or less non-stop—wherever I go—for the last nine months. I really expect we’re due for a change in the weather any moment now.”
The weather did not oblige, and neither did Simon.
“But, just in case the world intends to go on raining on me, perhaps we could step inside where it’s drier?”
Simon turned slightly, and Jonathan caught the glint of light reflected in his dark eyes.
“It’s flooded,” he said shortly, nodding at the cave.
Jonathan blinked and thought about that.
“We have canvas and blankets. We can make a shelter.” He stepped into the slightly-less-drenched area beneath the ledge, and to his surprise Simon scuttled away from him. Jonathan stayed back, not wanting to further spook the little grayskin.
“How did you find me?” asked Simon. There was only the dullest spark of curiosity in his voice, and even that was tinged with hopeless resignation.
“The man you helped when he came here—Guillam Brousseui. He drew a map.”
“Very well. I shall have to move again. did you find me?”
Jonathan took off his heavy pack and leaned it carefully against the wall, then slumped down next to it. His legs burned from the day-long climb. He drew out a small tin flask and loosened the stopper.
“Beer?” he suggested, handing it to Simon. Simon said nothing, but looked intently at the flask.
Jonathan shrugged and took a sip, setting it on the stone floor beneath the overhang. Then he rummaged around in the sack, drawing out a carefully-wrapped loaf of hard traveling bread. He cut off several slices, then added a few slabs of hard cheese and smoked pork. He took a bite, and then, ignoring the sharp craving in his stomach, carefully placed it on a sheet of cloth and set it between him and Simon. Simon stared at the sandwich even more intently. Then he cautiously approached and sat down within arm’s reach of the food. He picked it up gingerly, took a bite, and closed his eyes in evident satisfaction. But then he set the sandwich down again and regarded Jonathan coldly.
“I came here to be alone.” There was a flat, slightly acidic tone to his voice.
Jonathan nodded. “I can see that. I can see, but I can’t understand. There are a great many of us who would like to know why. The Gizzard is here with me. He’d like to know. And all the rest of your people, who are hurting without you. They’d like to know too.”
Simon picked up the sandwich and took another bite, staring out at the driving rain and the desolate, rocky slope that was, apparently, his new home.
“I’m afraid both you and he have come a long way just to be disappointed, Jonathan,” he said between bites.
“Why is that?”
“Because I’m not going back.”
Jonathan was quiet for a time, and then took a long breath.
“I’d like to know why, Simon. I think you owe that to the people you left behind.”
Simon took another bite of the sandwich and looked at the stony ground between his knees. His shoulders slumped forward, and his head bowed. He said nothing.
“You told me once,” came another voice, “that I should ask more questions like ‘why’. You said it is the most important question.” Simon looked up, and Jonathan turned. There, standing in the rain at the edge of the yawning cave opening, was The Gizzard. He walked beneath the overhang and sat down in front of Simon.
“Why?” he repeated.
“Because,” said Simon, in a voice so quiet as to be almost inaudible under the sound of the rain, “I want to live.”
“Everyone lives,” replied The Gizzard, “and everyone dies. You’ll die sooner out here alone on the top of a mountain then back in the Gray Kingdom, and the buzzards will pick at your guts and ants will feed their baby ants with your brains. At least back there, you have me to take care of you for a little while.”
Simon shook his head wearily. “I know my story. I remember now. If I go back to the Gray Kingdom or the human lands, my life ends—very soon after. That path is stretched out in front of me, as plain as any road you could walk on. But I don’t want to walk it.
“I may not know how or why I’ve come to be alive, though I very much doubt it’s the same reason or manner as any of the rest of you. I know things that I shouldn’t know, and I’ve forgotten things no one would ever forget. But how or why I live, I don’t want it to stop. Living alone on the top of a mountain is better than not living at all.”
Jonathan stared blankly at the stone at his feet. Simon’s fear was as hard as that stone, and as unforgiving. He couldn’t argue with stone.
There was a movement at his feet, and Devi appeared.
“‘T’ain’t sweet ta’ live longer’n yer s’pposed ta’,” she said in her thin, piping voice. “Ta’ ‘ave yer life stretched out long an’ unnachr’l—tha’s a curse, no’ a gift. Ta’ live year after year, wishin’ ye’d died when ‘twas right; ‘ta look back an’ wish ye ‘ad another chance ta’ make pairfect that moment ye’re given ta’ perfect; tha’s a fate worse than death, nay jokin’. An wha’
fate, in the end, but jess one point o’ view? Ev’rthin’ is real, Simon. Ye should know that well as I do. Ev’ry choice, ev’ry consequence, ev’ry path no’ taken—is real. What ye call ‘fate’ is jess the dimness o’ yer own seein’. Do ye want to live the’ long years ‘ere, on this mountaintop, knowin’ ye’ve slipped into a path where ev’rythin’ is wrong and i’s all yer fault? Where ye’ve lost the thread o’ wha’s right an’ good an’ leads ta’ th’ pairfection o’ yer whole life—jess ‘cause yer afraid o’ the length o’ the time ye’ve got ta pairfect?”
Simon stared at her in a kind of wonder and recognition.
“Ah,” she concluded, “would rather ‘ave one pairfect moment than a lifetime knowin’ I got it wrong. An’ believe ye me, mister King o’ th’ Goblins, ah speak from pers’nal experience ‘ere. Now, if ye’ve got it in ye ta’ admit that was wrong, then none o’ us’ll speak o’ it again, and we’ll come up wi’ some deep an’ metaphysical story about why ye came out here. Broodin’ on a prophecy er somesuch.”
They sat in silence, brooding together beneath the shelter of the stone. Simon looked out at the leaden sky, and past it, staring out into stars that no one else could see. His lips moved slightly, as if he were speaking to some hidden thing. Then he stopped and his eyes focused on Jonathan. He stood up.
“I was wrong,” he said simply. “I choose to be perfect, and I choose to die.”
“Somebody,” added The Gizzard, “get this man some pants.”
???
“Please don’t kill me, Miss Snipe.”
She shrugged.
“Why ever should I kill you, Mr. Miller? I have people to do that sort of thing. They’re much better at it than I am. I can make an appointment for you, if you like.” She consulted a small book on the desk. “How about Wednesday after lunch?”
Jonathan blinked and swallowed. He turned to look at Simon and The Gizzard seated on chairs next to him before Miss Snipe’s desk. The two goblins smiled encouragingly, but offered little assistance.
“Please don’t delegate my murder either. If you’ll just hear me out, you’ll understand why leaving me alive is to your advantage.”
“You have thirty seconds.” She turned her gaze to the large grandfather clock in one corner of the office. “Go.”
He used two seconds for a deep breath.
“You’ve got two big problems, Miss Snipe.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “One, Giant-men; and two, the Republican Guard. And you’ve got one other little problem, but I know it’s bothering you: Rolland Gorp. You’ve got an intuition, deep down, that at least two of these three things are connected to each other—but you don’t know which two they are. Give me one week, and I’ll tell you how they fit together, and why, and what to do about it. If I don’t, you can have Special Operations cut out my liver, or whatever they do.”
“Time,” she said flatly. “Now, Mr. Miller, what makes you think you can find out in one week what Cyrus Stoat hasn’t in nine months?”
“Three things,” he said. “One: I’m luckier than he is. Two: I haven’t lost my mind. And three: I have a lead.”
She stared at him, her eyes narrowed, calculating.
“Three days,” she concluded. “You have three days. I know you know better than to run. Put your affairs in order. Write some letters. Go see your wife; she’s a regular at the Cathedral of Saint Bob these days. But bring me answers by sundown on the sixth of June, Mr. Miller—or I’ll put your name down in my appointment book.”
???
The next morning dawned gray and sodden, with cold rain pouring from a dark and forbidding sky. Jonathan got up before dawn in the house he’d once shared with Merrily. He washed thoroughly and shaved his face. His mind wandered to what would happen today, and then he winced, nicking his skin slightly at the jawline. Once the bleeding had stopped, he rinsed his face again, put on a fresh woolen suit and a smart red cravat, and ate a cold bowl of porridge for breakfast.
Tiny snores could be heard from Devi, tucked away in her nest in his battered traveling pack. He smiled wearily as he ate. Simon and The Gizzard had departed the previous night to rejoin Fiond in an abandoned barn several miles outside Green Bridge, leaving him only with the snarf to aid his investigation. But at first light, Jonathan slipped out of the empty house, leaving her behind, and went to the Cathedral of Saint Bob for the Terce. Devi, he felt, would vaguely disapprove of this errand.
He found Merrily seated in one of the rear pews, and sat down beside her. She wore a simple, unassuming shirt and hose, and her hair was long and somewhat disheveled. Her face was not made up, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. A convulsion gripped his heart, and the monument of his certainty wavered.
“Hello, Merrily,” he said softly. What else was there to say?
“Hello, Jonny,” she replied.
They sat in silence for a long while, as he struggled with what to say next.
“I’ve missed you,” he said finally. She looked hard at the back of the pew in front of her, and said nothing.
“I heard you went back to Uellodon,” he added. “I’m glad you returned.”
“That was five months ago,” she said flatly.
“I… I got the feeling you didn’t want to see me. So I left you alone.” He looked down at his hands. “But I wanted to see you. I’ve missed you so much, since you’ve been gone.”
She looked at the back of the pew, and said nothing.
He took a deep, shuddering breath. The choir at the front of the church began to sing a new tune. It was an attractive, simple hymn in four-part harmony. Jonathan knew instinctively that it would haunt him for years to come.
“I’m leaving Green Bridge in a few days,” he said, searching for some excuse to make noise. It wasn’t exactly true, but close enough. “I have some business for Miss Snipe.” He thought about it further, not wanting to taint this conversation with lies. “I could have some messages delivered in Hog Hurst if you’d like,” he added.
She shook her head. “No. I have nothing for anyone there.”
He looked at her sharply. “You’ve changed, Merrily. Sort of; some part of you has changed. It’s the part you’re wearing on the outside right now.” His gaze drifted back down to his toes, and his voice softened to nearly a whisper. “But I believe—”
“There isn’t,” she interrupted. “There’s no part of me, deep down, that is still who I was, and still loves you. Give up that hope. I’ve grown up, Jonathan. I expect you have as well. But whoever you are, I’m not the same person that said yes. Maybe it was the moment, or the music, or something else, but I said something up on that balcony that I never meant to say, and never should have said. And now here we are, paying for that mistake.”
She took his hand and looked him full in the face. “I’m sorry, Jonny. I’m really sorry. But I don’t love you. I don’t think I love anyone… any person,” she added lamely.
There was a whisper in the air around her.
He took another deep breath, trying to control his face and stop the tears. He shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them and looked back at her.
“Do you suppose,” he said, “there’s another me that got it right? That asked the right question at the right time, and did the right things, so that this moment came out differently? Do you suppose in that moment when I made the wrong decision, some other me did it better, and went off and lived some other life? And… well, do you suppose some other you might love that other Jonathan?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Jonny. Those are questions neither of us can ever answer.”
He nodded slightly, then stood up. “I think there is,” he said. “It makes it easier to live this life, knowing some other me came out alright.” He thought for a moment longer. “You left a few things in our home,” he added. “I haven’t been living there. But I paid the rent, hoping, I guess… well. Hoping it would be different. The things you left are there, in the bedroom. If you haven’t fetched them by the time I leave the city, I’ll have them taken away.”
He started to turn, then paused a moment longer.
“I love you, Merrily,” he said. And then he switched to the fey-tongue, the language of their childhood and youth, and of the strange people of the forest who drifted through their shared memories. “”
As he walked away, he felt something drift toward him on its own, just for a moment. But he gave no sign, and did not turn back. It was better that way.
He found a quiet alley a few blocks away and sat down on the ground and wept, cleansed by the endless rain.
???
“Wha’s yer lead?” Devi asked, tucked again into the pouch in his sash. The snarf woman rode cheerfully out in the open, unheeding of the grim, inevitable downpour.
“What lead?” replied Jonathan, giving his umbrella a shake.
“ The one ye told the Snipe woman ye had.”
“I lied. I don’t have a lead.”
“Yer dead,” announced his miniature companion.
“I’m not dead yet.”
“Then where’r we goin’?”
“To Cyrus Stoat’s office.”
“Why?”
“To find a lead.”
At Peacock Hall, Jonathan rushed to Cyrus’s office, heedless of protests from the outraged historians he shoved aside in the narrow stairwells and corridors. He paused a moment outside the familiar shabby oak door. Its surface was dinged and chipped—by, he liked to imagine, the assaults of scores of dissatisfied Applied History students of semesters past.
“Wha’ d’ye expect ta’ find in thar?” inquired Devi as he stared reflectively at the closed portal.
“A mad professor with a new prosthetic,” replied Jonathan succinctly. “And a good run of luck.” He banged on the door. There was no answer.
“Yer luck’s run out, ah’m afeared,” commented Devi.
“I can do without the running commentary,” he snapped in reply. He tried the handle, but found that it was locked. Muttering a curse, he pounded on the door, but no one answered.
Jonathan spent the rest of that day in a damp, fruitless meander around the Charter City of Green Bridge. He returned to William Hall and asked a few questions of the Billies; but Captain Vigg wasn’t about either, and the sergeant on duty at the front desk was singularly unhelpful. He wandered through Redbun Hall, eventually visiting Rolly’s old office, and found that it had been cleaned up and assigned to a new graduate student. He descended to the servant’s quarters beneath the home of the mathematicians, hoping to interview the cleaning staff. But none was willing to speak with him about the murder, and so he walked home, dejected, through the rain.
The small bundle of Merrily’s possessions was untouched.
On the fifth of June, Jonathan returned to the Cathedral of Saint Bob, but found that he hadn’t the courage to go inside. He went on to Beatrice Snugg’s old house at Number 12, Upper Pie Street, but someone else lived there now. He returned to Peacock Hall, but Cyrus Stoat’s door was once again firmly shut and locked. Crossing the square to Queen Anne’s makeshift court at Bastings Hall, he discovered that the guards would not let him go any higher than the market on the ground floor.
A snatch of music echoing through the hall tugged at his memory, and to his surprise he was briefly transported to that wonderful, terrible night in Uellodon.
He shook his head, feeling the agony of loss and of what should have been overtake him. He fled Bastings Hall, and fled the music.
Finally at a complete loss, he sat down with Devi on Three Fish Bridge, looking across the span at the grand houses and tall towers on Farley Island. A heavy rain poured down relentlessly on both of them, only marginally redirected by Jonathan’s bulky umbrella.
“Do you suppose she’ll really kill me?” he asked. “I mean, it’s murder. There’s the law to consider.”
Devi gave a minute shrug. “Ah dinnay Veridia Snipe t’all. But folk talk o’ her like she’d do it.”
He sighed, and stretched his back, looking toward the gray curtain where, beyond the clouds, the sun was setting over the river.
“I’ve failed at absolutely everything,” he observed. “Everything I’ve tried—total failure. Marriage, business, solving mysteries… there’s not actually anything I’ve been any good at. Even that business with the chandelier was mostly just physics.”
“Mebbe try writin’,” Devi suggested.
He took a deep breath. “Won’t get to write much if Special Operations drops me in the river tomorrow night.” He looked up at the perpetual precipitation of the sky. “At least I’ll already be wet.”
She gave him a quizzical, uncertain look, just this side of concerned.
“Ye kin a’ least write a letter ta’ yer ma.”
He went back to the empty house on Warbling Way, and spent the evening doing just that.
???
On the morning of the sixth of June, Jonathan made one more effort to find Cyrus Stoat. Returning to Peacock Hall, he wearily ascended the dark, narrow stairs, and slouched resignedly down the corridor to the historian’s office. The sounds of clashing swords and shouts reached his ears from the practice yard outside Peacock, but otherwise the hall was quiet. He rattled the doorknob, waiting for more failure to greet him.
The door opened. After a moment of shock, Jonathan nervously poked his head inside.
“Cyrus?”
There was no answer.
Cyrus’s office had an air of barely-restrained madness. The remains of several meals lingered, decomposing, on a side table. The sleeping-cot in one corner was a disheveled mess. Jonathan suddenly wondered if Cyrus ever went home, or if he even had a home. A healthy, well-kept Hexastrid stood placidly on the sill of the open window. It was a single beacon of order in a landscape of neglect.
Books and papers littered the surface of Cyrus’s desk, though some effort had been made at least to sort them into similarly-sized piles. The topmost in each pile were covered with disorganized scribbles, rubbings of strange symbols, and ripped out pages from books, annotated in the professor’s spidery script. Jonathan bent over the table, setting Devi gently on its surface and quickly scanning the piles.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
One rubbing in particular caught his eye. It was a large parchment, draped over a quarter of the desk, depicting a circle with a disfigured cross in its center. A note at the bottom read: “Ghorpol Ossa, second deep.” Jonathan looked at the rubbing closely for a moment, but then his eye slid to a paper next to it. With a shock, he recognized the name written at the bottom, and snatched it up. Devi trotted over and peered curiously at the writing.
It was from Rolly. There was no cipher; it was in plain Uellish.
My dear Cyrus,
It seems I am dead. If this were a good Thom Verasee novel, I would leave you a note with some brilliant clue to lead you to my murderer. Unfortunately, the future is a cipher unknown to me; I have neither the scheme nor the key. I cannot tell you anything about my death. I trust you are clever enough to find a brilliant clue all on your own. If not, then you must make up for it by living a life so brilliant as to make the solution to my death unnecessary.
Professor Pie and I have been unable to complete the calculations in the transcriptions that Miss Snipe gave us. The sums balance, but they are incomplete; the smallest do not reconcile with the greatest. Wherever Snipe got those formulas, there must be more there that can help us understand. The ancients were confident that their machines worked, but the sums we have do not produce the results they describe. Pie is trying to reach Carelon with his copy of our research; I begged him to stay, but he is terrified. Ash will lead him to the answer, if it is correct, and you as well.
It may be that you will find my trust in the Advocates and faith in their goddess puzzling. If you have received these notes, then they will have told you something of their creed. Do not mistrust them, Cyrus. They are not the Ecclesia, but something far better and wiser and more real. Have faith in your senses and your reason, and Ash will lead you to the Bright Path. The feyess Sheria can tell you more, if you will listen. I regret that I cannot be there to see your face when you finally understand; that will be the finest joke of all.
Beware the Metal God. Its promises are real, but its wisdom is false. In the end, your own choice is the only one that matters.
Now it is time for me to meet you and Vicod at the Purse. This letter has grown maudlin, and I shall end it now. I expect you will never read these words; I stand a greater chance of personally visiting Professor Tentimes’ new star than dying dramatically for my craft and faith. Ah well. Raise a glass, my friend.
Yours, truly,
He stared at the letter in stunned disbelief. The paper was crisp and un-weathered, and there was no trace of fading on the ink. The handwriting was not Cyrus’s, and it had plainly been written recently. He slumped down in Cyrus’s chair, reading the note again, but was interrupted by a polite cough from nearby. Jonathan’s head snapped up.
Standing diffidently in the door was a goblin. He was unusually small, even for his diminutive race, and wore ill-fitting children’s clothing. His hat of woven sticks was decorated with the paraphernalia of the historian’s classroom: bits of chalk, several fine brushes, a pair of pencils for horns, the frame of a magnifying glass, and a collection of discarded exam pages that had been carefully folded into a variety of obscene shapes. Most unusually, he also wore a pair of spectacles.
It took Jonathan several seconds, but at last he smiled in recognition. “Gmork! Hello. Where is Cyrus?” The professor’s peculiar assistant struggled mightily with Uellish, so Jonathan took care to keep his words short and his speech slow.
Gmork thought carefully, and then sounded out the words. “Cyrus… is… at… class.” Seeing that Jonathan understood, he smiled and bobbed with pride.
Jonathan thrust out the letter from Rolly. “Where did he get this?” Gmork peered at it closely.
“Obilly Smallhat,” he answered. “In…”
He scratched his head, searching for a word. “In cave,” he finally supplied, shrugging apologetically.
“In a cave…” Jonathan’s mind raced. “Smallhat is the only suspect in Rolly’s murder. If he’s still alive and in Green Bridge, they must be holding him in jail ahead of his trial.” He looked again at the freshly-penned note, and then at Devi. “And he gave Cyrus a freshly-written note… from Rolly.”
“Thar’s somethin’ ‘ere yer missin’,” opined Devi.
“What is it?
“I dinnay. But ‘tis somethin’. An’ ‘tis missin’.”
Jonathan stood up abruptly.
“Smallhat,” he proclaimed. And he picked up Devi and dashed for the door.
Behind them, Gmork carefully watered the hexastrid, just as Cyrus had taught him.
???
At William Hall, Jonathan strode confidently up to the Billy sergeant seated behind a raised desk in the foyer. The décor was faintly shabby, in the way of police stations everywhere. Every inch of the sergeant, as he looked down at Jonathan, was suspicious. His mustache alone was so accusing, Jonathan was convinced it had cataloged his misdeeds and was already drawing up an arrest warrant all on its own.
“I want to see Obilly Smallhat, please,” he stated.
A suspicious eyebrow was raised on the suspicious face.
“What for?”
“I’m Cyrus Stoat’s assistant,” he lied. “Jonathan Miller. Professor Stoat wants me to ask a few follow-up questions of the prisoner. It’s urgent.”
“Why doesn’t he come here himself?” The mustache seemed to twitch toward him, as if it were reaching out with a pair of shackles.
“He’s in an exam.” Jonathan forced his expression to remain impassive, entitled, and slightly irritated.
The Billy squinted at him skeptically.
“This is the Queen’s business, man,” snapped Jonathan. “Would you like me to report to Captain Vigg that you’ve obstructed a royal investigation?”
The Billy sergeant took a long time writing something down in a notebook out of Jonathan’s view beneath the lip of the desk, and then slowly stood up.
“This way,” he said flatly.
Smallhat’s cell was at the back of the long cell block in the dank, dimly-lit basement of William Hall. A few prisoners could be seen in the jails on either side as Jonathan followed the policeman toward the back of the hall. A small group of visitors stood outside one: three men, speaking with someone who Jonathan could not see on the inside. He squeezed behind them in the narrow space. And then he stood at the bars to Smallhat’s prison.
“Ten minutes,” said the Billy.
“Why ten minutes?” asked Jonathan.
“Because I say ten minutes. If you want to talk longer, I can put you in the cell next to him.”
Jonathan stared for a moment at the retreating back of the officious policeman and wondered briefly what the world was coming to. Then he turned his attention to the cell’s occupant.
There was a wooden chair and a small table in the room, with an oil lamp providing light. The tabletop held a rack of lead pencils, a short, neat stack of papers, and several books. Smallhat was seated at the table, staring intently at one of the sheets of paper and periodically writing on another sheet in ink with a small quill.
“Good morning, Mr. Smallhat,” he said politely.
Smallhat looked up at him in apparent irritation.
“Mr. Miller,” he said absently, and went back to writing.
Jonathan was momentarily at a loss, but then plowed on.
“I know you’re innocent,” he continued, determined to catch Smallhat’s attention. “I know it because I know who really killed Rolly. Other people know, too. If I have anything to do with it, you won’t be hanged for a murder you didn’t commit. But to make this come out right, Mr. Smallhat, I need something from you very urgently.”
Smallhat looked up at him, smiled, and looked down at his work.
“What, exactly, is it that you need?” he asked, still focusing on the papers before him.
Jonathan pulled out the note from Rolly to Cyrus.
“Where did you get this?” he demanded, extending it through the bars.
Smallhat looked up again, and then rose to his feet and came to examine the letter.
“I wrote it,” he said. “This morning.”
Jonathan gaped. “It’s a forgery? Why?”
The goblin scholar shook his head. “Not a forgery, Mr. Miller. A decryption. It is a partly-decrypted copy of a message that Rolly left along with extensive notes on the mathematics described in a very peculiar set of documents provided to him by Veridia Snipe. I decrypted it, along with the rest of the notes, at Cyrus’s request. In fact, I gave them to him just a few hours ago.” Smallhat’s eyes narrowed slightly, and he looked up at Jonathan. “That’s where I got it. Where did get it? I gave this letter to Professor Stoat.”
“I stole it from Cyrus a few minutes ago. I’ll put it back, I promise. Why is it only partly decrypted?”
The goblin’s eyes twinkled with suppressed glee as he stared up at Jonathan in the dim cell.
“Because there is a second cipher, within the first set of text.”
Jonathan shook his head in confusion. “What do you mean?”
Smallhat went back to his desk and looked again at the two sheets of paper. “Rolly’s was an uncommon genius. The decrypted content of his letter to Professor Stoat is, indeed, a goodbye note—but within that plaintext is another cipher. Certain of the words in the plaintext were misspelled. I thought it must have been errors by Rolly when he wrote out the encrypted version, and I fixed them in the version I gave to Professor Stoat. But I was mistaken. Rolly would never make an error like that; he was as fussy about writing as he was about mathematics. The misspelled letters made out a message of their own.”
Jonathan suddenly laughed. “It’s a dusty old literary trope,” he chortled. “Thom Verasee has used it at least five times in his novels, and it has a pedigree going back hundreds of years. Rolly loved those stories. He must have thought Cyrus would see through it in half a second and spot the hidden message. He didn’t count on someone editing his work during the decryption. May I see the message?”
Smallhat looked doubtful. “Rolly meant it for Professor Stoat alone,” he said.
“Mr. Smallhat,” answered Jonathan, “if you want to be free again, you must give me that message. Cyrus isn’t well. He won’t know what to do with it. I will. And when you get out of here, you can share it with him yourself.”
“Give him the message,” came a voice from behind Jonathan, down the long hallway of cell doors. He turned to look back, but saw only the three men standing further up the corridor, outside another cell. They were about thirty feet away, and none of them seemed to have spoken.
“Give him the message, Obilly,” came the voice again. It sounded familiar to Jonathan, but he couldn’t bring to mind where he’d heard it before. “It leads back to the path.”
When he turned back to Smallhat’s cell, he found that the goblin had returned to the bars, and was holding out his sheet of paper. Words were written on it in fresh ink.
Jonathan lowered the paper. “This doesn’t make any sense,” he hissed, shaking his head in frustration. “A man with a metal face killed Rolly because of whom he loved and whom he served?”
“Because of what he would choose, Mr. Miller, and what his choice would cause.”
Jonathan whirled around. It was the same voice that had spoken earlier, instructing Mr. Smallhat to give him Rolly’s inner message. He stalked over to the nearby cell. The three men outside it drew back some distance into the shadows of the poorly-lit jail block.
The man inside the cell wore a loose brown robe of coarse cloth. His head was mostly bald, with a fringe of curly brown hair ringing the sides. His frame was broad, and as he rose to his feet Jonathan saw that he was tall, standing nearly Jonathan’s own height.
“Grygory the Pious,” Jonathan said in surprise. “Traitor of the North.”
“If you wish,” said the disgraced churchman, approaching the bars. “But it’s simply Gregory now, to my friends.”
“I don’t think I’m your friend,” replied Jonathan testily.
“You saved my life once.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. You accused me of treason. The folk of Hog Hurst were ready to lynch me on the spot, but you persuaded them to send for a royal magistrate instead.”
“And before the magistrate arrived, you escaped—only to wind up here, waiting to be hanged for your crimes.”
Gregory nodded. “Indeed. All that happens is what must happen. Your choice in Hog Hurst let me live two years longer.”
“If it had to happen, then you needn’t thank me for it.”
The prisoner smiled slightly. “I thought you had a broader view of the world, Mr. Miller. Choice is real; it is the shifting of oneself through the infinite lives of every moment. That a million Messrs Miller let me hang that day, and a million more did not, does not in the slightest reduce the power of your choice. I thank you, and I name you my friend.”
Jonathan was tempted to whisper something to himself, but he did not. It was useless. Instead he shook his head, clearing away the befuddlement of the priest’s slippery words. He held up the scrap of paper with Obilly’s translation, showing it to Gregory.
“What is this? And don’t tell me it’s a piece of paper, or a message from Rolly—or I’ll feed it to you, along with Mr. Smallhat’s writing desk. What it?”
“It is a compass, and a wheel, and a scale,” replied Gregory, drawing closer to the bars that separated them. Jonathan noticed that he wore the ubiquitous pendant of the Advocates of Ash—a small circle with crossed bars at its center. “It is a compass,” the churchman went on, “because it shows you the true path. It is a wheel because it returns you to where you began. And it is a scale because it measures what is right. But more precisely—since you are bound to object that a direct revelation of the truth of things is not
enough—it is a note from one of my brothers in the service of Ash, the Lady of Earth and Stars, to Cyrus Stoat, explaining the cause and meaning of his own death.”
Jonathan blinked. “That answer is both more and less helpful than I expected,” he remarked.
Gregory shrugged. “It is no more nor less helpful than you require. Now you will walk away from here feeling befuddled, and one of my other friends will go with you. You will spend a few hours in complete and useless misery, and then prepare yourself for a horrible death. You will make a number of choices, which, as I have explained, are more meaningful than you might believe. But don’t worry, Mr. Miller; for at least some of you, it turns out well in the end. Now go. I’ll see you at the Four Corners.”
Jonathan walked away, feeling every bit as befuddled as Gregory had predicted. As he passed the three men who had waited down the corridor, one of them stepped into his path. He was clean-shaven, with broad shoulders and short brown hair tied up beneath an iron cap. His face looked smooth, young, and oddly attractive; uncommon features for a veteran mercenary. A jerkin of hardened leather covered his chest, and he wore a heavy crossbow slung across his back. The other two, each dressed in a sober suit of dark wool, stood back slightly. One was Victor Hogman. The other was the man Brutus, who, with his two companions, Jonathan had met once upon a time on the road south of Hog Hurst. His scarred, brutally handsome face was unforgettable, though his clothing had improved.
Jonathan looked at Victor and Brutus in curiosity for a moment, nodded in recognition, and then returned to look at the man who stood before him.
“My name is Bear,” said the man. “And I’ll be coming with you.”
???
Bear insisted on following Jonathan as he departed William Hall, and Jonathan had little will or time to object vigorously. He was much too occupied with useless misery.
“I’m going to die tonight,” he told Bear in what he hoped was a matter-of-fact tone, as the two of them crossed the square toward Three Fish Bridge.
“Then,” replied his new companion in a tone that lapped his own on the scale of matter-of-factness, “I shall witness it.”
“The people who are going to kill me don’t like witnesses,” retorted Jonathan. “You’ll end up joining me if you stick around.”
“I’m sticking around specifically to join you,” answered Bear, cheerfully buying a hot bun from a street vendor as they passed.
“I have a six-inch-tall woman in my clothes,” Jonathan declared, determined to provoke a reaction other than placid neutrality. To prove his point, he withdrew Devi from his pack, who glared at him viciously for interrupting her nap.
Bear smiled slightly, and replied: “Mine’s bigger.” And then he tipped his iron cap slightly to Devi.
Jonathan gave up and went home to sulk. Absurdly, Bear sat quietly on a chair in the drawing room across from him, simply waiting and watching. Eventually Jonathan gave up and ignored him.
The hours of the afternoon passed slowly. He read and re-read Rolly’s decrypted note, but could make no sense of it at all. He paced the floor, racking his brain for some new piece of information that might delay Miss Snipe’s wrath that evening. But none came to him. Eventually he sat down and wrote out a rather pathetic will, leaving all his worldly possessions to Merrily. Reading it again, and realizing how poorly the bequest would be received, he ripped it up and ate the pieces.
“Any ideas?” he asked Devi and Bear in desperation.
The snarf shrugged her tiny shoulders. “The fat man in jail was right,” she opined. “Prepare yerself fer a ‘orrible death.”
“Maybe I should run,” he suggested.
“Yer not the runnin’ type, are ye, Jonathan Miller.”
He shook his head. “No. I’d just make a bollocks of it, and then the Special Operations people would be irritated when they catch up with me.”
“Well then, ye knows wha’ ye ‘ave ta’ do.”
He nodded, drawing a deep breath.
“I’d better go and see Miss Snipe.”
???
Jonathan returned to the Snugg factor house at eight o’clock, Bear still trailing behind him, with Devi tucked into the pouch on his sash. He hadn’t eaten anything, finding that he had no appetite for a final meal. When they arrived and he asked for Miss Snipe, they were not immediately escorted to her office. Rather, a burly guard sat them down in a narrow parlor on the ground floor, telling them to wait.
“Do you suppose they’ll do it here?” he asked Bear, feeling a dark whimsy come over himself.
His new companion shook his head. “Nobody commits a murder in the parlor if he can help it. Too much mess to clean up.”
The minutes dragged on, and Jonathan began to wonder if Miss Snipe had even been told of his arrival. After perhaps a quarter of an hour, a woman descended the narrow stairs to the manager’s office, pausing to give Jonathan an appraising look. She was older, wearing a severely conservative dress of gray brocade. She wore her hair tied up in a tight bun, and her face was wrinkled and pinched. Jonathan did not recognize her.
“Mr. Miller,” she said flatly. He wasn’t sure if it was meant as a greeting.
“Madame,” he replied, rising to his feet and nodding politely. “You have me at a disadvantage.” Bear rose as well.
“Nicola Snugg,” said the older woman. “I’ve followed your career as our factor with some interest. I’m sorry to hear that it’s come to an end.”
He could feel the blood draining from his face, but he clenched one fist and forced himself to remain steadily on his feet. A faint smile, possibly wicked, played at the edges of Nicola Snugg’s mouth.
“Events, Mr. Miller,” she stated obliquely, drawing away toward the door to the street. “See that you are not on the wrong side of them.”
“Which side would that be?” he asked, feeling suddenly brave. If Snugg were going to kill him tonight, he might as well get a jab or two in.
Without turning back, Nicola Snugg answered him.
“The side opposite mine.”
And then she departed.
He and Bear sat again. More minutes passed, and the feeling grew in him that Miss Snipe was engaged in a bit of deliberate torture. There began to be a great deal of activity outside the warehouse, visible to Jonathan through a broad bank of windows. Long columns of wagons were drawn up, and a small army of men and women loaded them with an assortment of boxes, crates, barrels, and other gear. There were even boats strapped to the tops of some of the piles. Another sizeable host—this one armed and uniformed—drew up alongside the workers, plainly ready to step off.
“Where could Snugg be going at this hour with an army?” he mused aloud to Bear.
“Probably,” replied the odd warrior, “they’re going to war. That’s where you go with an army, after all.”
The sun set, and the light began to dim in the broad street outside the warehouse. Jonathan watched the people at work, glad to focus his mind on something other than the impending interview with Miss Snipe. But at last one of the warehouse staff descended from above and called him up. He and Bear rose and ascended the stairs. At the top was an outdoor landing that looked down over the street below. Jonathan took a moment to glance out at the gathering horde of men and materiel. Then he took another deep breath and walked into Miss Snipe’s small office.
The windows were open to let in a draft of cooler evening air, and the infant Marcus slept quietly in a wooden crib beneath the window. Miss Snipe herself, dressed once again in a formal business suit and impeccably groomed, was busy scribbling at her desk, surrounded by neatly-ordered stacks of paper and books. Jonathan stood before her desk nervously, waiting for her to notice him. She continued writing for a time while he stood, eventually putting the quill into its stand with a visible air of regret. Then she looked up at him.
“Sit, Mr. Miller,” she commanded. “And you, Borson—you may stay, but do so quietly.” She nodded at a chair against the back wall, where Bear dutifully seated himself. Jonathan looked back at the warrior curiously, wondering how he knew Miss Snipe that she should address him with such familiarity. But then Miss Snipe cleared her throat, and he turned back to her.
“It is the sixth of June, Mr. Miller,” she observed. “Have you solved the murder of my mathematician?”
He breathed in and blinked.
“No,” he replied. “I have not. And I won’t pretend that I have any new evidence that would stand up in court. But I do have new evidence: a note from Rolly that hasn’t been seen before. It was decrypted this morning by Obilly Smallhat.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I know of it already. He gave it to Stoat. My people read it within an hour; there was nothing helpful there.”
Jonathan shook his head. “They read a dummy,” he said. “The real message was within Smallhat’s original copy, before he corrected the spelling errors. The uncorrected errors were the key to an inner cipher. I have it here.”
He handed over Smallhat’s second decryption, and waited while she read it. Marcus stirred and fussed in his sleep, but the room was otherwise deathly quiet. The light coming through the windows in Miss Snipe’s office grew dimmer.
She set the paper down gently on her table and looked up at him.
“This could be a forgery,” she pointed out. “Smallhat is highly motivated to invent something that would exonerate himself.”
“Then take back Rolly’s papers and have your own people decrypt it,” he snapped. “If an imprisoned goblin who only started learning mathematics a year ago could pull it apart, surely your cryptographers can do the same.”
She drew in a breath to retort—or perhaps simply to slay him on the spot—but was interrupted by a knock at the door. Miss Snipe let out the breath slowly, turned to Bear, and gave a slight nod. He rose to his feet silently, opened the door a crack, and then opened it slightly wider. A muttered conversation followed, inaudible to Jonathan. He sat quite still, wondering at each breath whether it would be his last.
“Professor Stoat is outside,” announced Bear. His face had an oddly pained look to it, but his voice was steady.
Miss Snipe rose silently to her feet, gathering up the sleeping Marcus. She brushed past Jonathan, Bear, and the guard, out onto the landing above the exterior stairs. Jonathan trailed along behind her, but the guard put up a hand, preventing him from exiting onto the landing. He could not see the ground below them. She descended the stairs.
“Let him through,” came the sound of Miss Snipe’s voice, sharp and commanding.
“I’m sorry,” replied another voice. It had a peculiar husky quality that Jonathan didn’t recognize, but it was indisputably Cyrus Stoat. Jonathan had spent too much time listening to that irritating voice to forget it.
“Veridia,” the voice went on. “I’m so sorry. I love you.”
There was a long pause, while Miss Snipe said nothing.
“I should never have left,” Cyrus plowed on. “There are many, many things I should never have done, and many more I should have but never did. I can’t change that. But I love you, and I love Marius, and I always have. I don’t know when exactly I started, but I’ve never stopped. Everything around me is gray and ugly without you, and everything I do is just another way to try to forget that I’ve lost you. You’re beautiful, and you’re smarter than me, and you work harder, but none of those are the reason I love you. I love you because you’re Veridia Snipe, and that is who I love.”
“This is not a good time—” she began.
“Veridia, I need you to help me,” he interrupted her. “Everything I’ve done since Ghorpol Ossa has been wrong. All those stupid and wrong things I did—I need you to forget about them for fifteen minutes and talk to me as if it were still September, before I made every mistake a man can possibly make. There’s a life in the balance, Veridia, and it’s not my life. You can help me save the life of someone who doesn’t deserve to die, and who could turn out to be a great and beautiful person. Help me—please.”
Another pause.
“No,” she said.
“No?”
“No,” she repeated firmly. “It’s too late, Cyrus. You made your choices, and I made mine. You can’t turn back the clock. Our lives go on, but they go on apart. I don’t have time now to have the rest of this conversation, but you can fill in the holes. Go, now.”
Miss Snipe turned and walked back up the stairs. She joined Jonathan and Bear at the top, and they went inside her office. She carefully replaced Marcus, still sleeping, in his crib, and seated herself at the table.
Jonathan, however, was still standing just inside the landing, facing the street below, and rooted firmly to the spot.
“Mr. Miller,” called out Miss Snipe in obvious irritation, “I’m not finished with you yet—unless you’d like to be defenestrated right here and now.”
Jonathan returned to the office, stumbling desperately toward a connection.
“Ghorpol Ossa,” he said. “I know that name.”
“” hissed Devi from inside her pouch in his sash.
He nodded. “I saw it on a charcoal rubbing in Stoat’s office this morning,” he continued.
“What about it?” asked Miss Snipe. Her voice was cold, but he could see a tiny spark of curiosity in her eyes.
“Do you know where Stoat got the rubbing?”
She sat back in the chair, watching him with an air of cool appraisal.
“He took an expedition to an old church ruin outside Roosterfoot last September. Mrs. Hunter was there as well, and several of her classmates. They took a number of wall rubbings; pre-Imperial iconography, he called it.”
Jonathan blinked. “Did you rifle his desk as well?”
“No. Well, yes, but at the time his desk was in my bedroom. And he told me about it. Where are you going with this, Mr. Miller?”
Jonathan thought furiously, perceiving for the first time in three days a way out from beneath the sword hanging over him.
“Rolly said he was killed by a man with a metal face. And Guillam Brousseui described Sir Richard of Enderly as having a metal face. He’d have no way to know what was in this letter, would he? It was double-encrypted, and Cyrus only got ahold of it this past December.”
Miss Snipe’s head gave the tiniest of nods.
“Fine,” continued Jonathan. “You told me that you’re sure Rolly was killed by Robert of Gorham, masquerading as Demiter Filtch, and that Sir Richard manipulated him into it. And you also told me that Sir Richard was claiming to be a disciple, or a prophet, or something like that. Rolly’s inner note says that the man with the metal face would kill him because of whom he served and whom he loved, and that he was a ‘vessel’ of something called the Metal God.”
As Jonathan paused to think, the room was as silent and still as the void. Miss Snipe’s eyes dug holes in his skull. He took the inner decryption back and read it again.
…
He said the words again in the fey-speech. But the Uellish word “gone” couldn’t be translated. It simply didn’t exist, and there was no analog. To the fey, everything is real, all at once. The words of the language in his head opened up a vision, and for a moment he caught the tiniest, most fleeting glimpse of the branching pathways that the fey-tongue described, of all the variations and contradictions and resolutions, and of the bright thread running through them.
He saw where it led.
“The Metal God wanted Rolly dead,” he pronounced. “And it—or a piece of it—is in Ghorpol Ossa.”
Speaking in Uellish again, the vision disappeared abruptly.
“Do go on,” said Miss Snipe. “Why is a piece of the Metal God in Ghorpol Ossa?” He couldn’t tell if her tone was sarcastic.
“Rolly referred to Ash as some kind of goddess,” he said, fumbling toward the memory of light. “And everyone in this room knows what symbol the Advocates of Ash wear around their neck.” He turned to Bear. “Would you show us your pendant?”
Bear’s face looked surprised for the first time since Jonathan had met him.
“Come on,” he snapped. He knew this was a stretch, but hoped desperately he was right. “You must be one of them. Why else would you be hanging about with Gregory? And why else would you be following me now?”
Bear reluctantly reached beneath his breastplate and shirt, withdrawing a small silver pendant on a leather cord. It was a circle, with a pair of bars overlaid on top, crossing at right angles in the center.
“I’m well acquainted with the iconography of the Advocates,” snapped Miss Snipe. “And with Rolly’s religious beliefs. He didn’t make a secret of them to me. Why do you think there’s anything in Ghorpol Ossa but old stone and bad ideas?”
He flopped desperately into the chair. The sense of intuition pulling at his mind was still overwhelming, but the plodding facts and logic of his native language couldn’t keep pace.
“There’s a connection. I know it. I just can’t quite get to it, but I know it’s there! The wall rubbing that Cyrus brought back from Ghorpol Ossa shows exactly that symbol—only the middle part’s been scratched out. The Advocates have only popped up in the last year or so, because of Gregory’s preaching. But Ash’s symbol was in some pre-Imperial ruin that Cyrus explored. The Metal God wanted Rolly dead because of what he believed—because of Ash. They must oppose each other; or at least Sir Richard thinks they do. And Rolly’s inner note said the Metal God is waking—” he read from the note—“” He came to the weakest and flimsiest part of the extended syllogism. “Wouldn’t a defaced holy symbol of Ash in a pre-Imperial ruin make it likely that the Metal God was there?”
There was a long silence in the room, and then Miss Snipe spoke.
“That,” she said, “is fatuous nonsense. I can think of twenty better reasons Cyrus Stoat might have found a defaced quartered cross in that ruin, which have nothing to do with this alleged metallic divinity. And even if it were true, it doesn’t explain why Sir Richard thought his god wanted Rolly dead, and why he bothered to manipulate Robert of Gorham into doing it for him.”
Jonathan’s head sagged downward, and he breathed out. He added one final failure to his mental catalogue of his own deficiencies, and accepted that his life was over.
“But,” she said.
He looked up.
“You are probably correct—or at least not far off.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What do you know that I don’t?” he asked.
“I know a great many things you do not, Mr. Miller, but one, in particular, is germane. Cyrus saw and heard things in Ghorpol Ossa that he couldn’t explain. He told me about them, before we… stopped talking. There was a light, through a crack in a wall that had been closed for hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of years. There were machines, like the ones in Devi Valley. There was a voice in his head, but not only in his head; one of the other students heard it as well. Cyrus is many dreadful things, but—despite his recent behavior—a madman is not one of them. I believe he saw what he saw and heard what he heard.”
Jonathan found that he had been holding his breath, and let it out slowly.
“Then what are you going to do about it?”
“You’re fired,” she said flatly.
He gaped.
“You’ve been disloyal, dishonest, and disobedient, Mr. Miller. I cannot have that in people whom I trust with Snugg’s treasure and secrets. But you are also tenacious, motivated, and grotesquely lucky. You have an insight that I cannot replicate with mere facts and analysis. And that is too valuable an asset to discard.”
“But you said I was fired.”
She nodded. “You are, indeed, released from your duties with Snugg & Co. I will consider foregoing the customary termination protocols that we reserve for disloyal employees with sensitive information. But in exchange for withholding your justly deserved punishment, Mr. Miller, I have a very specific use for you personally.”
“What is that?”
She leaned forward, staring into his eyes with a frightful intensity.
“Finish your investigation. Find out what it is that Cyrus saw and heard in Ghorpol Ossa. Discover its connection with Sir Richard of Enderly, Rolly, and Ash. Then come back and report to me.”
Too stunned to argue, he simply nodded.
“I will be in Devi Valley,” she continued, “with several thousand of my closest and most heavily armed friends. If you think the information must reach me soonest, then go there. Otherwise, return here to Green Bridge. I rely on your judgment in this, Jonathan. There are gaps in my understanding of the situation that I must fill. Many lives and many fortunes may turn on information that I currently lack—including Merrily’s life and your own. Now go, Jonathan. Miss Borson will accompany you; she and I share a common interest in the outcome here.”
Jonathan’s head snapped over to Bear, on whose notably feminine features a faint smirk played. Then he turned back to Miss Snipe.
“Thank you Miss Snipe,” he said simply.
“Call me Veridia,” she replied. And then, to his utter shock and horror, she smiled.
???
At the bottom of the stairs, Jonathan found a small, gray figure waiting for him. It was, to his great surprise, The Gizzard. The guards on the stairs looked at the goblin suspiciously, but made no move to interfere.
“What are you doing here?” Jonathan asked. “I left you with Simon and Fiond in the old barn. It’s not safe for you here.”
The Gizzard gave him a toothy grin. “No place is safe,” he proclaimed, “but King Simon sent me here. I have a new quest.”
“Are Simon and Fiond still in the old barn where I left you?”
The Gizzard shook his head. “Simon is still there, but Fiond left. They had some kind of talk, her and Simon, and then she left. Simon said to tell you to hurry up, or you would be too late.”
Jonathan nodded. “I can leave tonight. Right now, in fact; there’s nothing for me here. But what is your new quest, The Gizzard?”
The goblin puffed himself up to his full three and a half feet proudly.
“I am going to find Merrily and tell her to check her pockets,” he said. “And then I am going to be her square.”
Jonathan thought carefully about that.
“I think,” he said finally, “that you will make an excellent square for Merrily. When you see her… stay with her. Don’t let her come to harm, The Gizzard. Do you understand? That’s what a square does. He protects his knight. Merrily is your knight now. Your quest is the most important quest in the world, and the most important thing you will do in all your life. Keep her alive. Lift her up. And let her be great.” He stood up, taking a deep breath. There was a faint odor of smoke in the night air.
“Somewhere,” he concluded, “in some branch, I get it right.”
Bear took a heavy travel pack from one of the nearby Snugg guards, hoisting it on her broad shoulders. And then she and Jonathan walked out of Green Bridge. The rain had stopped, but the stars were obscured by a growing cloud of smoke.