Cold Fire

“Over here!” he shouted.



“Go,” I said.



The clockmaker flipped up the counter. Rory went first, Bee after, and me at the rear.



“Thank you,” I said to the clockmaker, and I shouldered past the heavy swags. Ahead, the hem of Bee’s skirt snaked along the plank floor under a second curtain and then too many more curtains to count. It was like chasing a serpent’s tail through baffles down a hallway. An oily smell made my lips pucker. I collided with Bee as the last curtain’s weighted hem slapped down behind me.



We stood in a chamber quite black except where flashes of luminescence flared and died like levers rising and lowering. Taps and creaks and rasps played out as if they were slowly winding down. There fell a last flare of movement. Then the dark poured like pitch over my eyes. The chamber’s air lay heavy with the rancid scent of old oil and a tang of char. My ghost-sword, which outside had flared in response to the cold magic of the storm, hung inert in my hand. A ripple of soft barks, snaps, clicks, and pops spread within the room: goblin chatter.



“Gracious Melqart,” breathed Bee. “We’ve stumbled into a goblin’s den. This must be one of those illicit daytime workshops the prince’s inspectors are always searching for.”



“Cat,” said Rory in an aggrieved and alarmed tone, “many small fingers are touching me.”



“They’ll just guide you to the stairs,” said the headmaster’s assistant from the darkness. “They don’t want you in here any more than you want to be here.”



Fingers tapped up my arms to my shoulders and around my back, as if measuring me for a new riding jacket. Like most people, I knew little about goblins except that sunlight burned them, they hid themselves beneath masks and robes even under starlight, and they were shaped much like humans. They sold their wares at night markets, and their workshops were legally required to close during the day. Which meant we were standing in a place where we could all be arrested.



A voice as brittle as winter grass spoke on my left side as a hand traced my arm. “One stinks of dragons. One smells of the summer sun. This one is bound between the worlds, like her sword. There is a price.”



“You and I have already agreed on the price,” said the headmaster’s assistant. When you could not see his skin, he sounded like an ordinary man, calm but displeased.



“For these three, it is not enough.”



Bee and I had, on a few occasions, bargained with masked and veiled goblin merchants at one of the night markets. “What do you want?” I asked.



“To call on you, spiritwalker, one time, at need.”



“Cat,” whispered Bee warningly. “Be prudent.”



“Done,” I said, for, unlike Bee, I could hear very faintly a commotion in the shop, maybe even the sound of a clock falling and shattering. The soldiers had arrived.



“Ah,” rippled down the Stygian depths of the chamber.



“That was rash,” said the headmaster’s assistant.



“It’s her other name,” said Bee.



“There’s trouble in the shop,” I said.



“We know.” The goblin’s cool grasp encircled my wrist. “This way.”



We were led to stairs. The foul breath of the undercity was exhaled in our faces. Into the noxious sewer we descended step by greasy step. The air was like a wet blanket full of rot pressed against my face. That slurping endless sigh was the sound made by oozing sludge. I could see nothing, but a channel yawned to my left like the mouth of a charnel god, or at least his outhouse.



Rory said, “Euw! Is this where the dogs bide?”



“Quiet!” murmured the headmaster’s assistant from ahead of us. “From this point forward, you must not speak. If we’re discovered, we will die, and the goblins who guide us will lose ownership of their breath.” He did not explain, and we dared not ask lest we break silence.



Descending, we left behind the sewage’s reek. Where the stairs ended, we continued in pitch-darkness along a tunnel whose pavement was smoother than any Adurnam street. The touch that guided me never pinched or slackened. The road ran straight and true, punctuated by alcoves and archways sensed as spaces of air rank with a charred scent like the ashes of a dead fire. At intervals I heard gears ticking over steadily. We would walk close and yet closer to the sound and then a gap would open to right or left with a tickle of warmth and a pressure like wind confined by a veil. With a swallow, I would pop my ears, and as we moved on, the ticking would fade.



Goblins were so legendarily ingenious that I had always doubted the impressive tales told of them could be true: Could they really breathe life into stone and metal? But these deep, smooth paths mined beneath the city made me wonder if it might be true. What had I bound myself into? What did goblins who worked in an illegal daylight workshop want? What was “ownership of breath”?