Gath looked up. “I agree to what he wants, Mom.”
“You do? Why?”
“I’m not quite sure yet, but I know it must be all right.”
“Er, thank you, dear.”
Quiet Stalker spoke. Kneeling behind the young leader, grayhaired Giant Feller interpreted.
“Says friend of Death Bird friend of all goblins.”
Inos was not a subject of the imperor. She was his ally, but there was nothing in the treaty about making war on his enemies. “Am friend of goblins,” she agreed.
“Asks if also friend of imperor?”
“Yes.”
She feared that remark would be suicidal, but it wasn’t. Goblins admired courage above all and apparently bravado also. Nodding in approval, Quiet Stalker spoke again.
“Asks if know imperor?” Giant Feller explained. “Met him long ago. Very old man now.”
Even before that answer was translated, she saw that it was wrong. Odd-shaped eyes glinted suspiciously in the firelight. “Is dead! Young imperor now. ”
That should hardly be a shock—Emshandar had been in his nineties—but now the goblins would wonder why she had not known.
“Forgot! Met young imperor long ago, too. Was only child.” She could have said that Gath had seen Shandie in a vision the previous summer, but she was certainly not going to.
She didn’t understand that episode herself.
Quiet Stalker said something too fast for her to guess at, and there was a brief exchange of remarks around the bonfire. No one seemed to argue with the young leader. Then the older man translated the decision.
“Sun rises, send to Death Bird, send children.”
That was a real relief, and the best result she could hope for. Death Bird had a smattering of impish culture, and if there was any shred of hope for her and the twins in this new goblin kingdom, then it was with the goblin king himself, Rap’s old friend. But there was more to come.
“This night, lies with Quiet Stalker.” Giant Feller’s finger pointed at Kadie.
Inos and Kadie said, “No!” in one voice. The goblins grinned.
Gath whispered, “Mom!” urgently.
“You chief woman Krasnegar,” Giant Feller said. “Say want friendship. Order daughter sleep with goblin chief! Make good friendship.” He was barely translating now, just repeating Quiet Stalker’s words in a clearer pronunciation.
So Inos would have to try her royal occult glamour on the whole goblin high command. She drew a deep breath—
At her feet, Gath raised a skinny pale arm. “Let man speak!” The chiefs guffawed, but Quiet Stalker nodded with a gleam of anticipation.
“Pink one speak.”
“Krasnegar women are very wild,” Gath said, staring in tently across the fire. “My sister is very, very wild! Can the goblin chief tame this girl?”
Giant Feller had trouble passing this on, and when he did, the chiefs all rolled on the ground with mirth.
Very quietly in the hubbub, and without looking round, Gath said, “You can do it, Kadie. They haven’t noticed.”
Noticed what? Inos stared angrily at the blood on the back of his head and wondered if the blow had knocked out his wits. A fourteen-year-old boy must know what sort of sleep was intended, surely? He couldn’t be that innocent! Then she glanced down at Kadie, but her face was so white and rigid that it conveyed nothing at all, a china doll bundled in a fur cloak. She looked years younger than she had that morning when she interrupted the council meeting.
“Give orders, chief woman!”
Inos felt a whirl of faintness. Once she had expected to be married off to a goblin and the prospect had so repelled her that she had contemplated suicide. She could not abandon her daughter to this abomination without a fight . . .
Suddenly Gath was shouting in true guttural goblin. “Am man, give orders! Hear treaty?” He waved at Kadie. “Lies with Quiet Stalker only. No others. No help! Say if can tame her?”
The chiefs were following his jabber better than Inos could. How had he learned their tongue so fast?
“Can tame!” Quiet Stalker insisted, leering.
“Take girl, then.” Wave at Kadie, then Inos—”Old woman sleep alone.” Wave at all three with three fingers—”See sun, go to Death Bird. All of us!” Again three fingers. “Are friends? Is treaty?” A whispered aside: “Trust me, Kadie!”
Quiet Stalker nodded vigorously. “Is treaty! Are friends.” He sprang to his feet and made a swashbuckling leap over the fire, then hauled Gath to his feet and embraced him to confirm the deal. Inos watched in frozen horror as her son pushed his sister toward the green horror—and Kadie went. How could she possibly trust Gath’s prescience this far? He was only a child, he did not know. Kadie seemed to trust him, but she was no older.
“No, Gath!” Inos lurched forward to intervene. Gath turned and grabbed her, but he staggered giddily, and they both almost fell.
“It’s all right, Mom,” he whispered hoarsely, leaning hard on her. His eyes were wild and brilliant, close to hysteria. “Remember Ollialo? My birthday gift to Kadie?”
The rapier? What good was that, five hundred leagues away in Krasnegar? The kid’s brains had been addled! He was crazy. With no sign of effort, the young goblin leader had lifted Kadie and headed for the sheds—a child in thick furs being carried off by a muscular savage in almost nothing.
“Idiot!” Inos cried, struggling to free herself from Gath’s tight embrace. He clamped a hand over her mouth, and again they both teetered off balance. He must be hallucinating that Kadie had come wearing her sword, concealed below her robe. But Inos had watched Kadie put that cloak on and knew perfectly well that she was not armed with as much as a nail file. And even if Kadie had sneaked the rapier by her, the goblins would have seen the scabbard protruding below the hem.
Quiet Stalker stopped at a ladder that led up to the hayloft. He set Kadie down. She moved aside, bowing. Apparently she had guessed the correct goblin etiquette, because he went clambering up ahead of her. Inos expected her to run then, but she began to climb submissively after the goblin.
Gath removed his hand from his mother’s mouth.” ‘Sawright, Mom!”
The rest of the chiefs were scrambling to their feet, the social evening completed.
“Woman sleep there!” Giant Feller commanded, pointing to the shed where the shovels and barrows were stored. “Kadie!” Inos cried, as her daughter vanished into the darkness behind Quiet Stalker.
“Clothes, Mom!” Gath begged, still clinging to her. “You took my clothes away! Help me, I’m frozen.” Shivering, he tried to whisper in her ear and his voice broke, half crying, half laughing. “It’s all right, Mom, all right! She has her sword! I know you can’t see it, because it’s a magic sword, Mom!”
Gods have pity! He was mad.
And he kept on raving in a wild whisper, his voice lurching between boyish treble and a manly tenor she had not heard before. “She’s worn it every day since I gave it to her, and nobody ever notices it unless she wants them to and we thought it was great fun that you never noticed she was going around with a real sword on all the time and I set it up so that only one goblin gets her tonight—”
“What? You’re crazy. How do you know—”
“Watch! She drives him back with the sword and he breaks his neck and the others all make a big fuss but they accept it and the three of us all sleep safely together and everything’s all right and who cares what happens to these murdering brutes?”
Sheer madness, but not surprising. He had cracked under the strain, was all. He was only a child. She shook him, and he was not too big for her to shake. ”Stop it, Gath! Control yourself ! Now, tell me how you knew how to speak goblin like that.”
He blinked, and his eyes filled with tears. “Huh? Oh, if I spoke in impish then Giant Feller repeated it in goblin, right? So I just said what he was going to say. It’ll be all right, Mom!”
More insanity. How could he foresee something and then stop it happening?
“There!” Gath said. “Told you!”
Inos whirled to stare again at that black opening that had swallowed her daughter. Suddenly Quiet Stalker came into view—wearing nothing, his back to her, moving backward. It was over in an instant. He kept on retreating until he stepped on air. He back-flipped out the doorway with a shriek and fell clear to the ground. The other goblins were busily dressing themselves again and they only looked up when they heard the scream. A moment later Kadie appeared at the top of the ladder, hands on hips, staring down in triumph. There was no sign of a sword, although she had discarded her cloak.
Quiet Stalker had landed on his head. Inos had seen that. Now all the goblins had rushed over, hiding the body, shouting in fury. She stared at Gath’s idiotic grin. Her daughter had just killed a man.