Goblin Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page B

saw gold-flecked eyes staring at him from behind a pair of eyeglasses. “Well done,” the goblin, the one to whom he had given two copper coins, whispered. “Yes, it was well done. Do you need something to drink? I find lemon tea soothing after speaking to a crowd.”
    “Okay,” said Rownie. His neck started to hurt. He sat on the ground, so he wouldn’t have to hold his head at odd angles anymore. The goblin handed him a wooden mug, lacquer-smooth and filled with hot tea. He smelled it and took a sip. He tasted lemon and honey.
    “Tell me your name, yes?” the goblin said.
    Rownie glanced at her over the edge of the steaming mug. She was smiling, but he couldn’t tell what kind of smileit was. This was strange to him. He always knew exactly how the rest of Graba’s household felt, because none of them knew how to hide it. Graba herself never bothered to conceal her moods and wishes—her face was as easily readable as words spelled out in burning oil in the middle of the street. Rownie was used to that. The goblin, however, wrote her smile in a language that Rownie didn’t know and couldn’t read.
    “Rownie,” he said.
    “Hello, Rownie,” she said. “I thought that this might be your name. Mine is Semele. Yes, it is. And I am wondering whether you have heard news of your brother.”
    Rownie stared at her. He knew what she had asked him, but he didn’t understand why she had asked. “My brother Rowan?”
    “Yes, Rowan,” said Semele. “A decent young actor, that one, and he has been missing for some time. Have you heard from him?”
    “No,” Rownie said, suspicious. If he had heard from his brother, he probably wouldn’t tell anyone about it—not Graba, and certainly not goblins.
    “Well,” the goblin said, “please tell him hello if you see him. In the meanwhile, I wonder if you might be interested in remaining with us. We have many performances to make—we play at the Broken Wall tomorrow and down by the docks on the day after that—and we very certainly coulduse another voice, another pair of hands. Is this something you would like?”
    Rownie blinked. Yes, he would like to stand onstage again. Yes, definitely yes. “It might,” he said aloud, still suspicious. Living in Graba’s household had taught him to be suspicious whenever anyone offered him exactly what he wanted. “Can I watch the rest of the play first?”
    “Of course,” said Semele.
    Rownie finished his tea and set the mug on the ground. Semele pointed to the back of the wagon. Rownie half walked and half crawled underneath the stage. He emerged between the cloth’s edge and a wagon wheel.
    He could hear a fiddle and a flute from the wagon’s roof, and then singing, beautiful singing. He paused to listen, and he wondered what to do.
    He did not actually get to decide. Metal shrieked against metal. Wood and brass talons closed around him from behind.
    “Where is my gear oil, runt?” Graba hissed in Rownie’s ear.
    She lifted him up with a bird’s leg as though he weighed less than dust or a name or a crumpled scrap of paper. Then she wrapped her arm around his waist and set off with long strides.
    Rownie squirmed. Graba held him close and sniffed.
    “You smell wrong,” Graba said. “You smell like thieving and tin. You smell unsettled. Did Semele brew you Change potions?”
    “No, Graba,” he tried to say, but he couldn’t actually say it. She held him tight, and his breath came out in short gasps.
    Graba strode across the green and onto the roadway, moving fast. Rownie thought furiously about different ways he might escape or explain himself. He thought and thought and came up with nothing and more nothing.
    They passed beneath the statue of the Lord Mayor. Graba spat at his feet. They crossed the Fiddleway and passed beneath the Clock Tower. Graba spat at the foot of the tower.
    Graba strode into Southside. They passed through an open lot of hard-packed dirt and broken plaster walls. It was a place where old