THE SETTING SUN cast long shadows across the Forbidden Palace, and darkness gathered in a quiet cobblestone street between the inner and outer walls. A zither strummed, streetlamps flickered, and a raccoon dog barked.
Nothing moved . . . until a furry blur rose from a rectangular drain in the gutter. Sally scanned the street, then bounded away. A moment later, she perched atop the canal wall, her ears swiveling.
“All clear,” she growled.
Beneath her, Ji strained to pull Nin’s urn through the drain while Roz pushed from below. Ji rolled the urn a few feet, giving Roz privacy while she squeezed through—then Chibo soared into the street from the drain, giggling madly.
“I’m flying!” he fluted. “Wa-hoo!”
“Snuff your lights!” Ji hissed. “And shut your ricehole!”
“Sorry!” Chibo’s wings darkened, and he landed beside Roz. “What now?”
Ji’s neck prickled with nervous sweat. The street was quiet, but danger lurked around every corner. He frowned at the sunset, then considered the high steeple of a building in front of them.
“Sal!” he said, pointing. “You want to climb that for a better look?”
“I’ve got this,” she growled. “C’mon!” She led them behind the steepled building and through a courtyard, then bounded onto a low roof. “Follow me from down there.”
We miss the toproofs, Nin said. We like chimneys.
“There’s a word for that,” Ji said.
You mean . . . “chimneyfond”?
“No,” Ji said. “I mean ‘weird.’”
Sally scampered along the eaves, as quick and confident as a gecko on a lumpy wall. Then she paused and raised one paw: stop. At her signal, Roz halted, hugging Nin’s urn while Ji squeezed Chibo’s arm.
After a breathless minute, Sally lowered her paw. She leaped to the ground and loped into a park. She led them along a path past a pond covered with floating flowers. Lotus blossoms perfumed the air. Fireflies twirled and danced around three statues on a pedestal rising from the water.
“We’re almost there,” Sally purred, landing on the branch of a plum blossom tree. “Two hundred yards to the outer wall, then we’ll hit the city streets.”
“Can you find Ti-Lin-Su’s house?” Ji asked Roz.
“Yes, I believe so,” Roz said. “Though two hundred yards is a problem.”
“Two hundred yards is nothing,” Chibo said, in his piping voice. “I mean, because I can—”
“Fly?” Sally knocked him on the bald head. “Can you fly? I had no idea you could fly, because you haven’t mentioned it a hundred times!”
A rocky crrrrrrrrrt sounded from the pond.
Ji spun toward the noise but didn’t see anything alarming; just fireflies swooping and water lapping. Then another crrrt sounded. A shadow moved across the statues on the pedestal in the pond, and Ji’s blood turned to ice.
“War-warriors!” he stammered. “There!”
“What?” Sally leaped protectively in front of him. “Where?”
“There!” he said, pointing at the statues. “Pond, look!”
Clay heads swiveled on clay necks with a scraping crrrrrt, and clay feet tore free of the pedestal. Clay arms lifted clay tomahawks, and then the three warriors turned toward the plum blossom tree.
The statues were terra-cotta warriors . . . . and they were waking up.
Shock gripped Ji’s heart. Terror chained his feet to the ground. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t look away.
The warriors slow-marched from the pedestal—and splashed into the pond. All three disappeared underwater. Ripples spread, and the lotus flowers shivered and twirled, closer and closer to the shore.
Then three jaguar-head helmets broke the surface.
“Run, run!” Ji yelped, backpedaling. “Chibo, into the air. Sally, get us out of here!”
The terra-cotta warriors trooped from the pond, shedding water. A lotus flower clung to one warrior’s expressionless face, but that didn’t make him any less scary.
“Roz!” Ji glanced over his shoulder as he raced away. “If they get too close, smash them or—”
The flower-faced warrior swiped at an avocado tree with its tomahawk, to clear a path. The trunk exploded into splinters, and the warrior didn’t even pause—it just stomped slowly onward.
“Forget smashing!” Ji told Roz. “If they get too close, run faster!”
The avocado tree crashed into a lamppost. Glass shattered and oil spilled and Sally glanced over her furry shoulder. “Fire,” she yowled. “They started a fire!”
Fastrun! Nin urged. Fastrun faster!
The thudding footsteps of the terra-cotta warriors sounded behind them. Chibo flew closely overhead, while Ji and Roz raced after Sally—who darted suddenly into an open doorway.
“Ji!” she yelled, emerging with a spear and a sword. “Catch!”
She tossed the sword to Ji. It chopped through the air like a meat cleaver aimed at a chicken’s neck.
Ji dodged sideways and yelped. “Hey!”
Roz caught the sword by the blade, a foot from Ji’s face. If it hadn’t been for her troll skin, she would’ve sliced her fingers off. She spun the sword, grabbed the hilt, and hefted Nin’s urn higher on her hip with her other hand.
“What are we supposed to do with this, Sally?” she asked.
“We need weapons!” Sally called over her shoulder, loping away from the terra-cotta warriors.
“I prefer a teakettle.”
“Don’t be doolally! What if—” Sally’s spear snagged in a bush. She tripped over the haft and tumbled onto her face. “Waaaa!”
After she scrambled back to her feet and kicked the spear, they raced from the outbuildings toward a wooded section of the Forbidden Palace. Roz tossed the sword aside, and nobody said anything about weapons again.
A quiet moons-lit meadow stretched in front of them, with prayer flags fluttering. Ji didn’t see any peacocks this time—but he heard the terra-cotta warriors crashing through the trees. He and Chibo scrambled down a sage-covered hillside behind Sally, then blundered into a stony field dotted with mulberry bushes.
Where two more terra-cotta warriors marched toward them. Weapons raised, faces blank. Unblinking, unbreathing.
Roz froze. Chibo trembled. Ji gulped . . . and Sally bounded in front of the warriors.
“You’ve got to get through me first,” she growled, raising her hackles.
She looked like an angry hamster staring down wolves, but the terra-cotta warriors didn’t even glance at her. They stomped past, shedding dirt and leaves, and marched toward the hillside. Away from Sally. Away from everyone.
“Nobody messes with the hobgoblin!” Sally crowed, and hopped around brandishing her fists.
Oh, troublebig! Nin’s voices said. Troublebig badnews! They’re not after us.
“That’s good news, Nin,” Ji told the urn.
They sniffout nonhumans, Sneakyji. They’re hunting the goblins.
“Oh, no,” Chibo gasped.
Ji rubbed his face. “We don’t know they’re after the goblins,” he said, even though they probably were. “And we’re nonhuman, too. C’mon, let’s go.”
“The goblins helped us,” Sally growled. “Abandoning them is dishonorable.”
“They’re not hunting goblins,” Ji said, looking toward the retreating Warriors. “You know they’re going to turn around any second to stomp us.”
“We’re only partly nonhuman,” Roz rumbled. “Goblins are fully nonhuman. I expect the terra-cotta warriors will exterminate them first, then return for us.”
“Let’s not wait around to find out.”
“Trouble,” Sally growled, her ears swiveling toward the sage-covered hillside.
Ji peered through the dusk at the two terra-cotta warriors plodding uphill, tomahawks rising and falling. They were leaving, which was the opposite of trouble. Then he saw a third terra-cotta warrior—the one with flowers draped across its clay face—stomping downward, toward the stony field. Toward them.
“What’s wrong with that one?” Roz asked.
“Which one?” Chibo asked. “What’s happening?”
“Old flowerface is coming after us,” Sally snarled. “A clayfighter from the pond.”
“Why?” Chibo fluted.
“I guess he decided that we’re nonhuman enough to kill.”
“Either that or he wants to give us a bouquet,” Ji said. “Piggyback time, Chibo.”
Roz hefted the urn and Ji carried Chibo, scrambling after Sally as she prowled from the field into a stand of eucalyptus trees. A flock of parrots took flight, and Chibo raised his head and peered nearsightedly toward the sound of beating wings.
“How far is the outer wall?” Ji asked.
Sally leaped onto a branch. “Not far. And there’s only a few soldiers.”
“The rest are in the city,” Ji told her. “Looking for us. Find a way out before flowerface catches us.”
Sally peered into the night, her eyes big and her ears twitching. Ji stared toward the stony field, dreading the sudden appearance of the terra-cotta warrior. Listening for the clump of clay boots but hearing shouts of alarm from higher on the mountain, as people spotted the marching warriors and the spreading fires.
“There’s a round door in the wall, covered by a grate.” Sally jumped to another branch. “Flowerface is fifty yards away, but he’s not moving anymore. He’s just standing there.”
“Perhaps he’s wavering between hunting us or the goblins,” Roz said.
“At least he’s the only one,” Sally said. “The rest of the warriors are smashing around the palace, trying to find the goblins.”
“Can we do less talking,” Ji said, slightly desperate, “and more escaping?”
There is no escape, Nin said. The clayfighters will kill all the goblins.
“We must help them,” Roz said.
“We can’t,” Ji said.
“Jiyong, there are children.”
“Goblin children,” he said. “Who cares?”
An indrawn breath sounded from the shadows of Roz’s hood. She didn’t say a word, but Ji’s face pricked with shame. And he wanted to help the goblins, he really did. But what if the queen caught them before they reached Ti-Lin-Su? Then Chibo would die and Sally would die and Roz would die—and for what?
For nothing. That wouldn’t save the goblins.
How come Sneakyji decides what we do? Nin asked. He says Missroz is smarter.
“She is,” Sally growled, still peering toward the stony field. “But Ji is a bigger jerk.”
He is your stonefriend? Nin asked, and in his mind-speak the word thrummed with meaning: a friend as solid as a mountain.
“He saved me from the tapestry weavers,” Chibo said.
“He brought me books,” Roz said, “when they were my only hope.”
Sally’s tail lashed. “He’s stone.”
An ant lion marched onto Ji’s wrist. We trust you.
“I hate you all,” Ji muttered.
“Goblins are people,” Roz told him.
“But they’re not human!”
She touched his arm. “They’re still people—like Nin. Or like us, now. They deserve better than this.”
“Like your brother Tomás deserved better,” Sally told Ji. “And my folks.”
“And me,” Chibo said.
“And all the weaver kids,” Ji said. “The ones I left behind.”
He thought about stealing boot beads at Primstone Manor. He thought about his mother’s dream of him becoming a butler. He thought about what he’d felt when he’d touched the diadem—the urge to slaughter or enslave every nonhuman—and he thought about dozens of bald kids, living and dying beneath the looms.
“Fine,” he said.
“We’ll save the goblins?” Sally asked from her branch.
“They still freak me out,” Ji told her. “They’ve got way too many knees. But you’re right. You’re all right. I left those weaver kids behind, and I’m not doing that again. I can’t do that again. This isn’t about goblins—this is about freedom.”
Sally purred. “So how do we help them?”
“We ring the black bells twice,” Ji said, “and put the warriors to sleep.”
“Better do it fast,” she said, jumping down from the tree. “Because flowerface is on the way!”