FROM HIS HIDING spot in the bamboo garden, Ji eyed the ruined temple inside the sturdy fence of the goblin pen. Torches flickered in the dusk, and his breath caught when he saw the gate wide open beside a row of wheelbarrows. If the fence wasn’t keeping the goblins in their pen, what was?
Then he saw motion near a rickety trough beside the temple. Two goblins wearing dingy collars stuffed food into their mouths with their spindly belly-arms, while a third hunched forward to join them. Watching goblins walk made Ji’s stomach twist. Their legs bent in unexpected places. As far as he was concerned, two was a perfectly good number of knees.
Sally peered at the open gate. “Why don’t they just leave?”
“And go where?” Roz asked. “They’re a hundred leagues from the goblin lands, and they don’t exactly blend in. If they escaped, they’d be caught in days.”
“Let’s distract them,” Ji whispered, “then sneak in.”
“That’s cheating,” Sally said.
“What do you think we should do?”
She wielded her shovel like a sword. “Vanquish them.”
“What?”
“Vanquish means beat.”
“I know what it means!” Ji said. “That’s not the point!”
“We should face them in open combat.” She nodded firmly. “That’s the only honorable way.”
“There are a hundred more of them inside the pen!”
“There are nine more,” Roz said. “I checked the estate books this afternoon. There are exactly twelve goblins at Primstone.”
“Even if there were only three,” Ji said, “we couldn’t chase them off.”
“It can’t hurt to try,” Sally said, with a jab of her shovel.
“Actually, that’s exactly what it could do,” Ji told her. “Especially if they eat us.”
“Better to lose with honor than win without.”
“No!” Ji said. “No, it’s not! Where do you get these doolally ideas?”
“That’s not doolally, that’s what all the squires think!”
“Then the next time you see all the squires, tell them I said they’re doolally.”
Sally lowered her shovel. “I hate sneaking around.”
“Sneaking around is going to save your brother’s life,” he reminded her. “We’ll sneak through the bone crypts and kill the flower. Then we’ll get to the city, sell our loot, and free Chibo. Done.”
“Fine,” Sally said. “But how are you going to distract the goblins? Ghost noises?”
“They were owl noises!” Ji rubbed his shoulder. “Maybe we should . . . I don’t know. Start a fire?”
Sally looked dubious. “A fire would attract too much attention.”
“Roz could throw rocks.”
“She does have a deadly arm,” Sally said. “She throws like a catapult wearing a beaded handbag.”
“Yeah, and then—” Ji stopped, as a pink shape drifted through the dusk light. “Roz!”
She’d left the cover of the bamboo garden and was walking openly toward the goblins, her pale dress impossible to miss in the light of the flickering torches.
“See?” Sally said, trotting after her. “Even Roz knows we should charge.”
“She’s not charging,” Ji said. “She’s strolling.”
Then he swore under his breath and followed, his mind whirling with half-formed excuses. But what kind of excuse worked with a goblin?
Roz marched through the open gate into the pen. The three goblins at the trough turned, beady eyes narrowing and shoulder-arms pawing the air. Ji’s throat shriveled in fear. He wanted to run away, but instead he trotted closer to Roz.
“Good evening,” Roz said, stopping in front of the goblins. “My name is Rozario. I’m very pleased to meet you, and on such a lovely night! I do enjoy these autumn sunsets, don’t you?”
Three sets of belly-arms waved; then a one-eyed goblin wearing a copper collar shuffled closer to Roz.
“Ka-lo,” the goblin said in a gravelly voice. “Miss Ka-zario.”
“And, uh, ka-lo to you, too.” Roz curtsied, slightly unsteady. “W-what a nice home!”
“Not a home,” the goblin said. “A pen.”
“Oh!” Roz said, gulping. “Yes. I’m s-sorry.”
The other goblins hunched forward, and Sally stepped beside Roz, looking small and fierce. Ji wanted to keep his distance, but he slunk to Roz’s other side, suddenly wishing he had a shovel of his own.
“But underground, where you dig, is th-that more of a home?” Roz asked, her voice fake-bright. “I’m sure you burrow deep, all the way to the, um, secret heart of the earth, where only the bravest Kultultul dare to venture.”
The one-eyed goblin made a coughing noise, and three more goblins shambled from the archway in the fake temple, their collars glinting in the torchlight.
Sally shifted her grip on her shovel and Ji got ready to grab Roz and drag her to safety. Maybe he wasn’t good at battling evil, but he’d mastered the art of running away.
The one-eyed goblin didn’t attack, though. It ground its teeth and said, “Than-ka you, Miss Ka-zario. Our tunnels are deep. You are polite. Very good ka-manners.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“And you loo-ka very tasty,” the goblin continued.
“Hey!” Ji said, his hands clenching into fists. “Back off, beaver-face.”
“Or we’ll vanquish you,” Sally growled, raising her shovel.
The goblins cringed, making pitiful barking sounds, and Roz stepped forward and told them, “I’m very sorry. My friends are sorry, too. They didn’t mean to startle you.” She shot a quick glare at Ji. “Did you?”
“Uh, what?” Ji said, squinting in confusion. “He said you’re tasty.”
The goblins peered at him nervously—like they were afraid of him—and a little one raised all four arms in surrender.
“That’s a compliment!” Roz whispered to Ji. “Goblins like politeness and manners!”
“Manners? Them?”
“That’s what I read in the book,” she told him. “That’s my plan.”
He gaped at her. Her plan was to ask politely?
“Now apologize properly!” she said, giving him an un-Roz-like glare.
“I—I didn’t mean to startle you,” Ji told the goblins, with a tentative bow. “I’m very sorry. I beg your pardon. Please excuse me?”
After a moment, the little goblin lowered its hands, and Roz smiled at the one-eyed goblin. “You are polite, too,” she said.
“Very good ka-manners,” Ji said, trying to help.
The goblin bared its front teeth—and in a flash of panic, Ji thought that it was about to gnaw his eyeballs out. But the goblin didn’t attack. Instead it sort of cocked its head, and a different explanation occurred to him.
Maybe that was a goblin smile.
So he bared his own front teeth, and the goblins made another barking sound, a happier one. They were laughing! He snapped his teeth tentatively, and they woofled again. Which didn’t sound polite to Ji, mocking his tiny human teeth . . . but it was better than eyeball gnawing.
“We wonder,” Roz told the possibly smiling goblins, “if you’d be so kind as to let us into your burrow. We would be very grateful.”
The goblins stopped woofling and started muttering to one another in Goblish. One of them shook its head. Another waved its belly-arms. It looked like they were arguing about what to do with Ji and the others. Let them into the burrow, or cook them in a creamy worm sauce?
“Ka-vel?” the one-eyed goblin asked Sally, as the muttering continued.
“Hello, Kavel,” Sally said, and bowed stiffly. “I’m Sally.”
The goblin chuffed. “Beg sorry. I mean, why you are holding a ka-shovel?”
“Oh, this?” She propped the shovel onto her shoulder. “Yeah, well, um, the truth is that I was pla—”
Ji’s heart clenched: she was going to say, I was planning to club goblins with it. “She loves to dig!” he blurted. “She’s a massive fan of diggery. Tunnels, burrows, lairs, dens. There’s nothing Sally loves more than a hole in the ground. And that’s why we came, to see your digging. Nobody digs better than, uh, Kultultul, right?”
“Kultultul,” the goblin agreed.
“Sally is eager to see what you’ve done,” Roz told it. “Isn’t that so, Sally?”
Sally frowned, unwilling to lie. “Well, that’s not the main reason—”
“You want to get inside, though, right?” Ji interrupted.
“That’s true!” Sally said. “I do want to get inside.”
The one-eyed goblin turned to the others and chuffed in Goblish. After a few final woofles, the other goblins waved their belly-arms toward the entrance to the fake ruined temple, inviting Ji, Roz, and Sally to enter. A bubble of triumph expanded in Ji’s chest: they’d done it! They were heading into the bone crypts!
Then the bubble popped.
They were heading into the bone crypts. That was a terrible idea!
But Sally was already marching into the temple, her shoulders square and her chin high. Stupid bravery. And Roz strolled along behind her, skirt swishing, saying “please” and “thank you” a hundred times.