“ARE YOU SURE?” Ji asked, his stomach sinking.
“Of course I’m sure,” Sally growled. “I saw them.”
“So we can’t get out.”
Then we stay here! Nin said, as the ant lion that had crawled onto Ji’s sleeve waved its antennae.
“Here is bad,” Ji told Nin. “They’ll find us here.”
The ant lion roared faintly, like a mouse snoring. You smell?
Ji ignored the tiny Nin and climbed the stone pile. He didn’t have time for weirdness. If they didn’t escape soon, the guards would find them—and then the queen would skewer them on the water tree. He peered between the leaves and saw search beams sweeping the palace grounds from watchtowers on the inner wall.
“Don’t pick on Ji just because he’s a fish,” Chibo told Nin.
We don’t mean that! We mean do you smell an airscent, sweet like syrup?
Sally lifted her snout. “Very faint? Like boiling marmalade?”
That smell, yes! Just came on the breeze, honeyed and sugary.
“We don’t need pastry,” Ji said. “We need—”
“It’s goblins,” Sally growled at him. “It smells like the bone crypt.”
Burrowdiggers, Nin agreed. Fourarms. We can’t peek-see them, but they smell nearby. And if there’s goblins—
“I could kiss you!” Ji told the ant lion on his sleeve. “You clever ogre.”
“You can’t kiss them,” Sally said. “They don’t have lips.”
“What’s so clever?” Chibo asked Ji.
“We can hide underground until the coast is clear.”
“Hide in goblin tunnels?” Chibo asked, his green eyes widening. “Don’t they eat people?”
“Do you have a better idea?” Ji asked him.
“Actually, yes,” Chibo fluted. “You should all grow wings.”
“We can’t depend on goblins,” Roz rumbled. “The last time we appealed to them for help, they betrayed us.”
“The last time,” Ji said, “we were human.”
“Good point.” She scratched her horn inside her hood. “Perhaps they’ll more happily come to the aid of nonhumans.”
“The soldiers won’t stop searching for us, though,” Sally growled. “They’ll know we’re still inside the walls.”
“She’s right,” Roz said. “Eventually, they’ll check the goblin burrows.”
Ji jumped down from the stone pile. “Not if they think we’re gone.”
“What are you going to do?” Sally asked.
“Cheat,” he told her.
He grabbed a big round stone in both hands. He grunted with effort, waddled toward Roz, and dropped it at her feet.
She picked it up one-handed. “And what shall I do with this?”
“The nearest watchtower is a hundred yards that way.” Ji pointed toward the wall. “How’s your throwing arm?”
“Oh, of course!” Roz said. “Shall I aim for the searchlights?”
“Yeah, take out the lanterns,” he said.
Roz stepped closer to the hedge and eyed the distant tower. She tossed the stone in her hand, took two steps backward . . . then paused. “Privacy, if you please.”
“Oh, right.” Ji nodded. “C’mon everyone, other side of the tree.”
“I don’t mind Sally and Chibo,” Roz said. “Or Nin, of course.”
“What?” Ji gaped at her. “Just me?”
Roz gave him a governess-y look. “Would you like me to throw rocks or not?”
“Fine,” Ji grumbled, and scuffed to the other side of the tree.
He couldn’t even see the watchtower from there. Stupid privacy. And why just him? Well, maybe because Chibo was just a kid, Sally was a girl, and Nin was an ogre. But still. He picked bark from the tree and heard Roz throw the stone. Then nothing. She must’ve missed. The stone pile clicked as she grabbed another rock.
“Aim this time,” he told her.
“Hush,” she said.
Chibo came around the tree. “I can’t see anyway. But if Roz misses, I can always fly over and drop rocks onto—”
A shout erupted from the wall.
“Direct hit!” Sally growled. “One more lantern, Roz.”
A trumpet sounded at the watchtower. Another trumpet answered from farther along the wall, and horses galloped in the darkness. Roz threw another rock and must’ve hit the second lantern, because she laughed in triumph.
“The soldiers are hopping around like fleas on a cricket,” Sally purred. “They think we’re attacking, or escaping, or something-ing.”
“What now, Ji?” Roz asked.
“Get a few more rocks,” Ji said, “and throw them over the wall. So they’ll think we’re on the other side. Not yet, though.”
The trumpet sounded again as the soldiers marched and shouted. After a cavalry troop passed, Roz asked, “Now?”
“Not yet.”
Ji closed his eyes and imagined the guards standing in the dark, confused and nervous, scanning the shadows for strange beasts. He imagined them clasping their weapons nervously, deafened by the blare of trumpets.
“We can’t stay here much longer,” Roz said.
“You also can’t rush a good lie.” Ji waited a minute, then said, “Now! Lob one over the wall.”
Roz threw a stone. “Consider it lobbed.”
“Is anything happening, Sal?” Ji asked, looking into the tree overhead.
“Lots,” she said from the branches. “But nothing new.”
“Throw two more.” He waited while Roz hurled two stones. “Now two more.”
“Still nothing new,” Sally reported. “They’re just—” A creak sounded in the night. “They’re opening the gate! They think we’re outside the wall!”
And that is why they call him Sneakyji, Nin said.
“Nobody calls him Sneakyji except you,” Chibo said.
“Whenever it’s safe,” Ji told Sally, “take us to the goblins.”
She scanned for guards, then prowled into the darkness like a tiger cub on the warpath. Ji took Chibo’s elbow and followed, trying not to flinch at the soldiers shouting in the distance.
Past the hedge, Sally loped toward a stone bridge that linked the servants’ quarters and the stables. Halfway there, she raised a hand—well, a paw—and stopped. A breeze rustled the trees, and Roz set the urn onto the stone path with a clunk.
“Shh!” Sally said.
“Sorry,” Roz whispered.
Sally sniffed the air. “This way.”
She veered off the path, slunk between red-barked bushes, then slipped into the wide arch beneath the bridge. Without the moons-light, the darkness turned inky black. A stony grinding sounded, and the syrupy scent was thick in the air.
“A little light?” Ji whispered to Chibo.
Chibo’s wings slid from beneath his backpack and glowed a soft emerald. The first thing Ji saw was a wrought-iron gate, wide open in the stone wall. The second was two goblins squatting over a clay bowl, grinding the contents with their fists.
“What a lovely evening,” Roz rumbled to the goblins. “We’re so pleased to meet Kultultul in the city!”
The goblins bared their teeth. “We are ka-honored to meet you,” one said, then peered from Roz to Sally to Chibo. “Whatever you may be.”
“I, um, I am Miss Rozario Songarza.”
“I’m Chibo. I have wings.”
“What he means is ‘pleased to meet you,’” Ji said.
“Oh, right!” Chibo said. “Very pleased!”
“We’re hoping,” Roz said, “that you can spare a moment to chat.”
The smaller goblin took its hands from the bowl. “There is a ka-risis in the palace tonight?”
“A crisis?” Roz said. “Well, erm . . . “
“Aka-tually,” Ji said, “that’s why we’re here. We need to hide from the ka-risis.”
The other goblin hunched toward Ji. “You are not human.”
“Not exactly, no,” Ji agreed, and bared his teeth politely.
“The humans are hunting you,” the first goblin said.
“Yeah,” Ji said.
“They are ka-illers. If we help you, they will ka-ill us.”
“Only if they find out,” Ji said.
“We are affiliated with the—” Roz made a sound like a boulder clearing its throat. “If that helps?”
“What?” Ji blinked at her. “Huh?”
That is how you say “ogre” in Ogrish, Nin said. It means “the People.”
The goblin chuffed and its belly-arms waved them toward the gate. “Please, step inside! Ka-reful of your horn, Miss Ka-zario.”
Roz thanked the goblin and lumbered toward the burrow, ducking her head at the entrance. “Very kind,” she said. “I’ve always found Kultultul to be excellent hosts. . . .”
“How does Roz know the word for ogre?” Ji asked Sally, taking Chibo’s arm.
“Nin told her while you were snaffling the cloaks.”
Chibo squinted. “So ‘goblin’ means ‘people’ and ‘ogre’ also means ‘people’?”
“And ‘sprite,’ too, I bet,” Sally growled.
“No,” Chibo said as they entered the burrow. “‘Sprite’ means ‘flying people.’”
Torches flickered on the walls of an earthen hall, illuminating nooks filled with heaps of bark and soap and beetle wings. A honeycomb glistened in one goblin shrine, and Ji caught sight of knotted bootlaces in another.
“Sheesh,” Chibo said, his wings glowing brighter. “I can’t see in here even more than I can’t see out there.”
“At least we’re safe for now,” Ji said.
Sally nudged him. “Except we’re surrounded by goblins.”
He followed her big-eyed gaze and saw a dozen goblins hunching toward them from deeper in the burrow. The light glinted on their pale, wrinkly skin, and the shovel-claws at the end of their muscular shoulder-arms looked like weapons.
Ji gulped, but Roz simply lumbered forward, spouting polite greetings and flowery compliments. Ji moved to join her—then paused. “Maybe we should let Roz handle the politeness.”
“I’m totally polite!” Chibo said.
“For a bratty little brother,” Sally said.
One of Chibo’s wings flicked at Sally.
“Whoa!” she said, ducking beneath the shimmering green light. “You almost got me.”
“I can sort of feel my way around with my wings,” he said, making them shrink and grow and curve and sparkle.
The green light shone on fire pits and log benches, and Nin said, Just like the oldgood days, Sneakyji.
“What?”
When we thought you were the cutemost thing we ever peeked, Nin explained. But you’re not a doorbell compared to Sallynx.
“I’m not a doorbell!” Sally snarled, brushing an ant lion with her tail.
The ant lion gave a tiny roar. Prettysweet, buttersoft, and toothless!
“Wait,” Ji said, as a memory sparked. He stared at the ant lions riding on Chibo’s backpack. “‘Buttersoft and toothless?’ I’ve heard that before. What do you mean, just like the olddays?”
When we first peeked you, sleepylittle above the bone crypt. In goblin pen.
Ji’s breath caught. “That was real? That was you at Primstone? That wasn’t a dream? You were there?”
The ant lions shook their manes in what looked like insectile amusement. You thought we were a dream?
“No way! What were you doing at Primstone?”
Traveling to city from mountains, of course, Nin said as the ant lions scurried higher on the backpack. Through burrowtunnels.
Ji rubbed his stinging eyes. “Ogres travel in goblin tunnels? Don’t the goblins get mad?”
We work together, Nin said. For years now.
“Jiyong!” Roz rumbled, hurrying toward them. “We need to hide!”
“Hide?” Chibo asked, peering nearsightedly at her. “Why?”
“Now!” she snapped.
“Ka-wickly!” The goblins woofled, and a dozen belly-arms pointed toward a side tunnel. “Into that ka-vern!”