Shadowcloaks Read online

  “Lucinda,” she supplies, nodding in the traditional paladin way, even though she isn’t all knighted up and dangerous-looking.

  “Come, Lucinda! Come, CupufTea! I will introduce you to o’ families.”

  He whistles shrilly and starts marching us toward the fire pit, now bustling with movement and life. The little ones trail behind us as we walk, bickering incessantly. I ignore them at first as Grafnuk points out various features of the cave to Lucinda, things I’ve already noted. Then I realize the goblings are picking teams.

  The largest of the children is arguing vehemently for Lucinda. “I want pretty one,” he says. “She’s strong.” His crooked tooth wobbles when he talks, and he puts a finger up to hold it in place.

  “That’s because she’s big and stupid,” says the little one who bit me. She licks her lips. “Like you.”

  Crooktooth tackles Biter and this devolves into another wrestling match, until Grafnuk whistles again.

  “You can have the big, stupid one,” Biter taunts as Crooktooth withdraws.

  Crooktooth seems confused. “You want the little one?” he fires back. “He’s ee’n same size ez p’pa!”

  “Moves like smoke,” Biter argues. “Me an’ him could steal yer pants right off yer bum.”

  Crooktooth seems unconvinced, glaring at Lucinda and me as if trying to solve one of life’s intractable problems.

  At the fire pit, the coals have been stoked, and a green paste is simmering over them in a small cauldron. To the side, there is a large, wooden breadboard piled high with thin, green cakes flecked with black spots.

  “Flatbread,” Lucinda says when she sees me looking.

  “Noti,” Grafnuk corrects. He whistles again, this time more shrilly. In seconds there are seventeen goblins assembled, including Grafnuk and the kids. They stand according to age and family while Grafnuk introduces them, each suddenly as still as death, irises wide in the gloom, their small, black eyes trained on us.

  “Two families here,” he explains. “My sister-in-law, Aisha, and her husband Trig, and their children Gloomluck, Scrape, Kiri, Tug, and Garnuk.”

  As they’re introduced, each one moves in some slight way to signify they are the person being referred to. It’s both subtle and effective. Trig, the other father, turns his head sideways, in profile, so that I can see the shape of his ear. The goblings bob their heads or show their teeth, depending on whether they’re girls or boys. Except Kiri. She shows her teeth when she should be bobbing her head. She’s the one who bit me.

  Then Grafnuk introduces his own family, his wife Davaria, his daughters Laraf, Ardiel, and Soldiel, and his sons Tunkill, Trup, and Crooktooth, whose name actually is “Crooktooth.”

  Davaria is taller than the other goblins, and her children are also larger than Aisha’s. Not pure-blood? When she steps forward, she greets us with a human gesture, by taking Lucinda’s hand in her own and welcoming her to Three-Caves-Hold.

  “I am sorry for your troubles, but grateful you have come,” she says. “We see few visitors, and fewer foreigners.”

  Lucinda tries not to look at me rubbing my gobling-bitten arm. “Your husband is a brave man,” she says gratefully.

  Before Davaria can reply, an old goblin woman butts in between them, scowling and staring at Lucinda from toe to noggin with nothing but contempt. She glares at me in the same manner. She has the iron-thin look of someone who has passed her life in bitter labor.

  “Uma Ownie,” Davaria hisses. “Please do not embarrass us!”

  “Embarrass?” the old woman says, raising her voice. “In front of humans? This is our home. In our home we use our customs!”

  Davaria’s face flushes but Ownie cackles and chants. “Feast. Feast. Feast. My children, a feast!”

  Suddenly, the children are in motion, and then the adults. There’s a wild rush to the table, savage tearing of the green flat bread, piles of steamy, green paste being shoveled into tiny mouths. It happens so fast that I am taken unawares. The food looks good, and then it is gone. The smell of dried, green snow peas ground together with nuts lingers in the air.

  Davaria doesn’t eat either, standing with us in our shocked silence. There are tears in her eyes.

  #

  For the rest of the day we work on empty stomachs, scraping wolf hides that are now strung out on racks. I see a few mink and muskrat pelts, but not many. Mostly just wolf hides.

  “They’ve grown very bold this year,” Davaria says, sweating next to us. “Grafnuk and Trig were afraid to take the children out, but the meat was gone and the flour-paste low. I dinna say it, but Grafnuk was very glad to find you two. They said you made their work very easy. Both packs were half-broken when they arrived.”

  “Both?” I ask with interest.

  “There are always two,” she says quietly, switching her grip on the scraper and changing her angle slightly as she pulls it across the hide. “Grafnuk watches them on frozen nights from the tall pines outside our den. The larger pack he calls ‘Shadowcloaks.’ They have black fur with occasional rings of white. They are an old pack, and very insular. The ‘Greycloaks’ are a smaller pack, new to the area, but they have larger frames and their fur blends with the snow. They aren’t as smart, but they’re heavier. You attracted the attention of both packs. They must have been very hungry.”

  “He slaughtered both packs?” Lucinda asks, incredulous.

  “Oh, no. He must not kill them all,” Davaria says. “That would be foolish. But someone must cull the wolves. Next winter will be easier for us. There will be more game in the forest.”

  She stops scraping the sodden flesh from the hide to tie back black hair that intrudes on her vision. Not only is she tall for a goblin, I realize, but her face isn’t nearly so impish as those of the others. With her hair tied back, Davaria looks almost human, her face longer, like mine or Lucinda’s.

  “Davaria,” I say quietly, “was your father human?”

  Lucinda looks at me sharply, a reprimand for being rude, but I don’t care. This seems to be their way.

  Davaria doesn’t look up for long moments, long, green muscles in her bare arms and shoulders gone back to straining against the tacked hide and scraper blade. Then she nods.

  “A traveler, passing through these parts with two friends. They took shelter in our den and he fell in love with my mother. When his friends moved on, my father chose to stay. It is a story we tell the children often when Uma Ownie is out visiting other dens.” Davaria pauses, grinning. “Perhaps this is why Kiri fancies you, CupufTea. Perhaps she thinks you will stay.”

  Her brief smile disappears. “But the intervening winters were not kind to my father. He was twice as fierce as any goblin, but his body was weak, not accustomed to hardship. He died checking traps, caught unawares in a late winter storm much like this one.”

  “And Aisha?”

  “Half-sister. Younger.”

  She tells us about Ownie’s second lover, also dead.

  I’m amazed at the compassion in her words. She tells us of growing up step-daughter to Aisha’s father, of M’ma Ownie’s love for humans turning bitter. The constant winter struggle for survival. I can see the cave life better now. My early-morning prowl first suggested that the den had everything it needed. Now I understand that it is barely enough, and the display is nothing more than a show of bravery for the children.

  Until the wolf meat.

  Davaria can guess what I am thinking. She smiles at me. “I am sorry for the troubles that bring you to our world of ice and snow, CupufTea. I am sorry that you must still your beating heart while the storm outside makes unsafe your journey. But I am grateful that we met. You have given hope to our family, and not just for the food. Do not tell the men I told you this. They are too proud to say it, but this our hold needed hope, and you have brought it.”

  I sigh inside. It is not comforting to think that Carmen’s misfortunes are a boon to others.

  “Does wolf meat taste good?” Lucinda asks Davaria, changing the
subject.

  The half-goblin woman lifts her eyebrow expressively. “Does carrion taste good?”

  “Not even when it’s cooked,” I say, knowing all the same that the question is rhetorical.

  #

  At lunch I fight for a helping of M’ma Ownie’s pit-roasted carcass, and Lucinda does too, but we aren’t happy about it. You’d think being buried all night beneath a mound of coals with carrots, onions, and other pungent herbs would improve the taste, but it does not. While it is tender and falls off the bones like Barkus’s beef rib roast, it does not recommend itself, despite M’ma Ownie’s best effort.

  Still, it blunts the hunger.

  We choke it down, pinched between hand-sized folds of blackish-green flatbread, trying not to vomit. The flatbread might actually be quite good if not ruined by the other, more stringent fare, but it is too sparse to really help.

  “Next time, I vote we get attacked by a herd of deer,” I say.

  The goblins look at me, confused, but Lucinda laughs, nearly barfing, and I decide against telling any jokes for a while.

  Instead, I ignore the taste and focus on the roasting crevice they pull the carcass from with blunted meat hooks. It’s easily large enough for me to crawl into, and then be buried in hot coal and flaming ash. Something to think about. The old ballads and bedtime stories don’t help, either, because there is more to this fire circle than meets the eye.

  Nor does it help that M’ma Ownie watches Lucinda and me without blinking, without chewing a single bite, silent as a venomous snake, except to mutter the occasional insult about smoke-stealers and rotten lilies, whatever that means.

  Afternoon passes slowly, tainted by the bitter aftertaste of lunch, the timbre of the chores to be done, and the knowledge of snow mounding against the cave entrance.

  We help the kids feed the bears, tossing raw wolf meat to them. Grafnuk says that the bears normally sleep through winter and that it takes a special incense to wake them for the hunt. He says they’ll waste away, unable to sleep, if you don’t feed them something afterward. I think he just doesn’t like the idea of having hungry stone bears around his children.

  The bears, it seems, do not like wolf meat either, but when Gloomluck and Scrape stab the meat with long sticks and start to pull it away, both bears snarl and get down to business. We wash our hands at the snowbank, which has been clawed away partially so that a little more light and air can penetrate.

  Then we do other chores. We work hard to earn our keep.

  #

  At dinner, M’ma Ownie tries to block Lucinda from the food during the free-for-all rush, knowing it’s futile to try and stop me. She doesn’t count on Lucinda’s prodigious reach, though, a mistake many a Black Cat patron has made. Lucinda grabs a piece of meat, reaching right past M’ma Ownie, seizing it with her bare hands and wolfing it down right in front of the old goblin. When M’ma Ownie turns to walk away, Lucinda follows her and gets in her face again. She makes a show of chewing, emphasizing to M’ma Ownie that she resents the rough treatment but isn’t going to let it stop her. “I’m going to live,” it says. Demanding respect has always been one of Lucinda’s strengths, but I think she’s been picking up tips from Davaria.

  As soon as Lucinda does this the room gets quiet. Even the children stop eating, though they all cover their own food with protective little claws.

  M’ma Ownie sneers. “You don’t think we’ve eaten your kind before? You think my kin will stand with you when the lights go out?” She cackles, dry leaves taking fire. “In the dark, you won’t know where to swing that beastly sword.”

  Never mind that we haven’t even seen Lucinda’s sword since passing out in snowdrifts.

  “Try it, M’ma Ownie,” Lucinda growls. A light flickers on her scarred arm, going white-hot. It flares with Lucinda’s righteous anger. “You think it’ll be dark when you come for me?”

  M’ma Ownie stares at Lucinda, so close that I’d have a tough time putting the blade of my dagger—if I could even find it—between the two of them. Lucinda is taller, but M’ma Ownie is standing on a rocky outcrop that looks suspiciously like a chair, and one of her pointy teeth rests against the tip of Lucinda’s nose. Neither move. Ownie sniffs Lucinda, tossing her head each time as she inhales and then brings her face eye-level to Lucinda again. Her eyes narrow and widen, as if trying out Lucinda’s appearance in varying shades of vision.

  “M’ma?” Grafnuk says in a gruff but deferential voice. “The children were hungry. These guests brought us food, and they worked hard today.”

  I wouldn’t say M’ma Ownie backs down, but suddenly she’s not in Lucinda’s face anymore. She’s scampering about the fire, preparing another god-awful bowl of meat-soup drippings for herself.

  She’s not finished with me, though. I can hear the creak of her knees as she later approaches me from behind. “My daughter’s husband calls you ‘Wolftooth.’ Says yer quick like shadow. Eager.”

  She is testing me. “I have been called many things,” I say, gagging down the rest of my meal before turning to face her. She doesn’t stare at me as long as she stared at Lucinda, but it is long enough.

  Life continues like this, Kiri following me through my assigned chores, M’ma Ownie abusing us for being fat humans during mealtimes, and the rest of the family watching with bated breath.

  The next evening, Lucinda gets up her courage to ask the big question. “Davaria, why are there so many rumors about goblins eating people?”

  Davaria looks into her bowl. Aisha looks at her mother, M’ma Ownie. But Trig looks at Lucinda directly, without rancor in his voice. “Because we do.”

  Davaria jumps in, unwilling to let such an indictment go unexplained. “Winters are very hard. If someone dies—accident or exposure—” she specifies, “Giranna doesn’t ordain they should be lost, does he? They are part of the life-cycle. They nourish us.”

  I am both horrified and intrigued. I have always assumed the rumors were either grotesquely true or patently false. But here they are admitting to cannibalism, however practical.

  “Just in bad winters?” Lucinda asks.

  Davaria seems embarrassed by her own admission. She looks away, at her husband, Grafnuk, who stirs his bowl.

  “Someone always dies first,” he says quietly. “There is no killing.”

  Aisha and Trig seem less worried about this concept. They eat dinner without pause.

  Lucinda’s face is pale, drained of what little color it’s had all winter. “How can you live like this? How can you eat your families and friends? Year after year? Especially when it doesn’t have to be this way? With a small shipment of grain from the valleys, you could eat like kings all winter. Many would trade for these furs you trap, or for the knowledge to make your noti bread. Or better yet, settle your own farmsteads and live where the food is plentiful.”

  Trig, who rarely speaks, answers this. I notice that his face is darker than the others, like he has blood from the great goblin tribes of the burning North.

  “How do you think we’d be received?” he asks. “Trading or living in this valley of plenty? How fairly do you think they’d trade with the gloki?” He uses the native word for goblin, one that humans mostly ignore.

  Aisha joins him. “The few that come here cringe at our teeth and skin. They spit on our hospitality. They try to cheat us.”

  It’s a fair point, and no use pointing out that Lucinda and I have done exactly the opposite. Lucinda and I have long been the exceptions among our people, and living on the fringe can be hard. It makes you appreciate certain things.

  Trig’s question hangs in the air, unanswered and unrefuted for long seconds.

  “We are thankful for your hospitality,” Lucinda says weakly, drawing the same conclusion but unwilling to give up.

  “Fah!” M’ma Ownie spits. The saliva runs down Lucinda’s face, thick and brown, the color of her meat stew. “It isn’t our lifestyle that corrupts, but yours. What of you humans? How often have your petty squabbles
consumed the lives of so many innocents? How many times has your greed for money and power left corpses in the streets to be eaten by crows and vultures? Tell me. Is that way better?”

  “Mother!” Davaria says.

  “I don’t understand,” Lucinda says, her anger tempered by awareness that we are not on equal footing here.

  M’ma Ownie watches her, and when Lucinda doesn’t react more than this, she scoffs. “No, you wouldn’t,” the old crone retorts.

  Slowly, Lucinda wipes her face on her sleeve. “How is my lifestyle a corruption? I’ve always given my excess to the orphans, anything I can spare. I’ve killed assassins. I love. There is no corruption in that.”

  M’ma Ownie ignores Lucinda’s arguments. “What happens when your people prosper?” she demands. “Acquire too much knowledge, wealth, and arrogance?”

  “That certainly isn’t happening in Ector,” I mutter to myself. Nobody hears me but my little biter, Kiri, who is sitting close again, clutching the beads they braid into each other’s hair.

  “They are humbled?” Lucinda guesses.

  “Humbled?” M’ma Ownie croaks. “Is that what you call death and suffering? Too much grain in the granary brings rats and brigands, pestilence, war, and death, until all that’s left are the ravens and crows, gouging at the eyes of the corpses.”

  The description bothers Lucinda. Her spine is stiff, her jaw clenched, and her head drawn back at this image of birds picking at the corpses.

  “You tell me which way is corrupt, girl,” the old goblin croons. “The world that grows beyond its bounds and collapses into chaos, or the one that regulates itself naturally? We use what we need and submit to nature,” she snorts. “Your kind bathes in the chaos of war and greed.”

  There is a certain logic to it. Pan’s existence invites Tenebrous. This is the age-old war, pride to rise above the rest, pride to inflict one’s viewpoint on the world. Humans that moan about cruelty, but invite it themselves. “Nightshade eats Paladin eats Nightshade,” I whisper.

  M’ma Ownie gives me a sharp look that says I’ve hit the nail on the head, but Lucinda rallies, throwing me an exasperated expression. You’ve missed the point!