Goblin Secrets

Scene I

ZOMBAY EMERGED FROM THE FOG.

Rownie stared. He had never left the city before. It had always surrounded him. He had never seen it from the outside. He had never arrived in Zombay, until now.

Lights burned through the fog-filled dark. Constellations of lanterns and candles shone in uncountable windows. Street lamps—rare in Southside but common in Northside—cast warm light across cold paving stones.

The Clock Tower glowed above all. A glass moon ticked across a stained-glass sky on each face, illuminated from behind with lanterns, serving as a lighthouse to any barges sailing beneath the Fiddleway Bridge at night.

Semele drove them into Southside, into the medley of buildings built up over each other. Houses jutted out at strange angles, tethered with iron chains or buttressed with driftwood logs hammered into the brick and plaster to keep them from toppling over sideways. The misshapen mess loomed over them.

Rownie breathed more easily. He took in a lungful of Southside dust. It was comforting. It was home. Still, he kept careful watch for Graba’s shack, knowing that it might be anywhere at all.

Gearwork hooves smacked the road at regular intervals. A few lonely street lamps lit either side of the lane.

“Are we near to Borrow Street?” Semele asked. “I am thinking that we are, but I would like to be sure.”

“We’re crossing it now,” Rownie said.

Semele jerked the reins to the left, and Horace made a precise left turn. The wagon nearly tipped over. Rownie grabbed the bench to keep from flying off, and almost flew off anyway when the wagon settled back onto all four wheels with a crunching sound. Essa and Thomas made angry noises inside.

“Thank you,” said Semele, unconcerned. “We have not far to go now, yes.”

Rownie examined the familiar streets and avenues around them, trying to guess at their destination. “Where are we headed?” he asked.

“Home,” said Semele. She drove through the entrance gate of the Fiddleway Bridge. “It is no small thing that we are showing you our home and inviting you to stay with us. It is not something that we very often do.”

They drove as far as the middle of the bridge, and then Semele tugged the reins and pulled the wagon to a short, sharp stop.

“I cannot hear any other feet or wheels, in either direction,” she said, “but please be taking a look around to see if there is someone nearby who might be watching us.”

Rownie looked. He saw only fog and the empty causeway. The windows of the shops and houses on either side of the bridge were all shuttered and dark. It was very late. The Fiddleway slept.

“I don’t see anyone else,” he reported.

“That is a good thing,” Semele said. She steered the mule and the wagon into a small alley on the upstream side. Then she made another turn, and pulled up in front of a featureless stone wall.

“Please open the stable doors, yes,” she told Rownie.

Rownie stared at the wall in front of them. “I don’t see any stable doors,” he said.

“I invite you to see them,” said Semele, and now he did. He couldn’t see how he had missed them the first time.

Rownie climbed down, unlatched the tall pair of doors, and pulled them open. Semele drove the wagon through, and Rownie shut both doors behind them. The orange coal-glow of the mule’s belly cast the only light inside. Rownie couldn’t see much more than stone walls and old straw.

Essa stumbled out through the back of the wagon. “Home,” she said. “Good. Somewhere there’s a bed that isn’t a hammock, and I’m going to find it.”

“Not so fast, not so fast,” Thomas called from inside. “We must return the masks to their places. The rest of the unloading can wait for tomorrow, but these should be properly cared for before anyone retreats to their own bed and blankets. Please show the boy where his own masks belong.”

Essa stumbled back into the wagon, grumbling, and came out again with an armful of masks. The fox was among them, and also the giant that Rownie had briefly worn on the wagon stage.

“Here,” Essa mumbled. “Take these two, and follow me.”

Rownie took the giant and the fox, carrying one in each hand. Essa held the princess mask, and the hero mask, and a few others besides. She also had the half mask that Patch had worn that morning, which seemed a very long time ago to Rownie—years and centuries ago. Much had happened since.

He followed Essa through a passageway to an iron staircase. The staircase led both up and down. “We’re going up!” Essa called behind her, from somewhere above.

“What’s down?” Rownie asked. They were on the Fiddleway, and Rownie didn’t think that a bridge could actually have a downstairs.

“Barracks,” said Essa, “all the way down the central pylon. People used to keep watch here for pirates and such, but now they don’t bother. Some bits of the bridge still have skinny little windows for shooting things out of.”

Rownie heard gearwork, turning and clanking against itself. He could almost hear Graba’s legs in the noise. He could almost see her in the dim shadows. He almost felt her talon-toes opening and closing nearby. He was angry at Graba for her curses and birds, for Patch falling down and farther down, and he was afraid of Graba, and he was angry for being afraid and upset with himself for having made Graba upset with him. He pushed all of those feelings into a small and heavy lump of clay inside his chest, and then he tried to ignore the lump.

The staircase led up into a vast, towering space. Gears and springs, weights and pendulums all filled the center of it, turning slowly and interlocking. Crates and a jumbled mess of cloth and carpentry covered the floor. Rownie saw open wardrobes full of costumes, a workbench with all manner of tools, and several bookshelves. This was just as astonishing as anything else—Rownie had never before seen so many books together.

Lanterns burned high overhead, illuminating huge circles of stained glass built into the four stone walls. Each circle showed a city skyline and a gray moon, half full. The sight was familiar, only now Rownie saw it from the inside out. He stared. His mouth was open. He didn’t notice.

He stood inside the Clock Tower.

Scene II

“THIS WAY,” ESSA CALLED over her shoulder. “Try not to get bonked by any moving bits of clock as you go.” Rownie followed her, dazed.

It was then that he noticed the masks.

They covered both the upstream and the downstream walls. Rownie saw heroes and ladies, villains and charmers, nursemaids and gentry. He saw animal masks made of fur, feathers, and scaly lizard skins bristling with teeth. Most had been carved out of wood or shaped in plaster, but he also saw masks made of tin and polished copper, gleaming in the lantern light. He saw thin, translucent masks made of beetles’ wings and carapaces, and wild masks made of bright feathers. He saw long-nosed tricksters and ghoulish false faces. Hundreds and hundreds of masks hung from nails by lengths of string, and every one of them seemed to be watching Rownie as he watched them.

Essa led him to an open space and an empty nail on the wall. “Okay, the giant goes there,” she said.

Rownie looked at the nail. It was high up, higher than he could reach. Essa handed him a long pole with a hook on the end. He carefully hooked the giant mask to the pole, lifted it up to the level of the nail, and got it to stay there.

“Good,” Essa said. “The fox goes over there, near the books.” Somehow she managed to point with one hand without dropping everything she carried. “You should be able to find it. The bunks are near the pantry. Feel free to snack before bed, if you’re hungry, but don’t eat too much of the dried fish or Thomas will have an extremely eloquent fit about how we are likely to starve if we ever need to hide out here for months and months—which does happen sometimes.”

She went the opposite way, moving along the upstream wall and hanging up her own masks one by one. Rownie set off toward the bookshelves on the downstream side. He ducked underneath a ratcheting piece of tree-size machinery.

I’m inside the Clock Tower, he said to himself, still astonished. The troupe lives inside the clock. A place he had always known had turned itself inside out and become something mysterious and strange.

Something about this also bothered him and itched at his memory. He couldn’t think of what it might be.

The masks all stared at him with empty eyeholes or painted eyes. Rownie tried to stare back. He was good at staring contests. You had to have a good stare in a household of Grubs. But there were too many masks for him to meet all of their gazes, and he had to look where he was going to avoid being battered about by the tower’s workings. This staring contest could not be won.

He found a place for the fox. It was low to the ground, so he didn’t need a pole to put it back. He looped the mask’s string over the nail and set it against the wall.

The fox mask moved. It lifted away from the wall and pulled against the string that held it there. Then it settled back into place.

Rownie took a step back. He stared. The fox stayed where it was and stared back at him. Rownie watched it awhile longer. He started to doubt that he had actually seen it move in the first place.

He looked around for the rest of the troupe and saw Semele and Thomas carry a mask between them. Rownie didn’t recognize this one. It was carved out of stone, and had braided riverweed for hair. Swirling, painted lines of blue and brown covered the face. Rownie followed the two goblins to the center of the upstream wall, where they set the stone mask.

“This is the River,” said Semele. “This is what we lost and left Zombay to find.”

Rownie watched to see if it would move. It did not, but it looked as though it might move at any time. “A mask of the River?” he asked.

“No,” said Semele. “It is the River, and also a mask. We needed to speak to the River, to give it a face and a name, so that we could ask it not to drown us with floodwaters. That was how it started, yes. This is the very first mask that I made.”

Essa came to join them. They all watched the oldest mask while it did not move.

“Our craft and calling still has certain obligations,” Thomas said. He spoke more quietly than he usually did. “It has from the very beginning, when those obligations were the whole of the craft. To ignore that part and purpose would be to lose the rest.”

“What obligations?” Rownie asked without looking away from the mask that was also the River.

“To speak for the city,” said Essa. “All of it. Northside, Southside, and the whole long length of the Fiddleway between them.” She held up a wooden box and opened it. Inside was the city, carved from a solid block of wood and into the shape of a face. Half of the mask followed the winding sense of Southside and the other half obeyed the straight lines of the north. The bridge of the nose was the Clock Tower, where they all stood, and the small clock tocked and ticked in unison with the tower around them.

“Nonny made it,” Essa said, “so Nonny really should be the one to open the box and say ‘Ta-da!’ or at least have a ta-da sort of look on her face, but she isn’t here. Ta-da.”

“We have always carved a new mask of the city, to speak for the city when the floods come,” said Semele. “Zombay is a new place each time, you see.”

“That’s what you want Rowan to do?” Rownie asked. “Speak for the city?”

“Yes,” said Semele. “This is why we taught him and why we are trying to find him. This is why everyone is trying to find him.”

“Who wears the River, then?” Rownie asked.

“No one,” said Thomas. “Absolutely no one. The River isn’t a mask you can wear. Not any longer. It would wear you instead, if you tried. Much too old and much too strong. It would fill up an actor until they drowned in it.”

“But it listens,” said Semele. “Sometimes it will listen. And it might be that it will listen to you, Rownie, if you put on the mask of Zombay. Try it now.”

“Me?” Rownie asked.

“You,” Thomas answered. “We have been teaching your older brother how to do this, but you do have a bit of talent yourself.”

Rownie lifted the city mask and set it carefully over his own face. He pulled the string above his ears and behind his head. Through the eyeholes, he saw the others watching him, expectant. It made the back of his neck itch. He tried to swallow, but his throat was dry.

“Repeat after me,” Thomas whispered. “Zombay River, oldest roadway, canyon carving, hear me.”

Rownie looked up at the great River mask. Its eyeholes were dark, and he could see nothing through them. He wondered what would happen if he tossed a pebble through and how far it would fall and whether or not there would be a splash when it hit. He understood how someone could drown in that mask—and that the mask would not notice them as they drowned.

He repeated the line. “Zombay River, oldest roadway, canyon carving, hear me.”

Nothing happened, and nothing continued to happen after that.

“Oh well,” said Thomas. “Not to worry. Your brother should be able to manage, and we should be able to find him. Or else we might possibly track down another unChanged actor whom the Mayor has not yet arrested.” He probably meant to sound comforting and optimistic, but he did not. Rownie took off the city mask and set it back inside its wooden box.

“Why can’t you do it?” he asked. He felt small and emptied out. He felt as though he should be better at this than he actually was. “Why does it have to be somebody unChanged?”

“We have done this,” Thomas said. “Many times. But the city of Zombay currently excludes us, and we cannot speak for a place if we are not ourselves welcome there. This makes it very tempting to just sit back and let the floods do as they please, let me tell you. We, who have polished our craft to its very finest gleam, are now unable to perform the task that gave birth to that craft. But I am still fond of this unwelcoming place, and we still have our old obligations. So we teach our craft to someone who is welcome here and who knows their way around both sides of the city and the bridge in between.”

Rownie thought he was that sort of person, but apparently he was not—or maybe he did not know enough. Thomas took off his hat, took out the Iron Emperor mask, and went down the length of the wall to find an empty space for it. He found one and put it there. Then the mask moved. A shudder of movement rippled through the other masks as well, and each one began to strain forward against strings, straps, and nails.

Scene III

THE IRON EMPEROR PULLED HARD enough to break its string. It fell. Then it stood up again. The air beneath the mask hardened into a body dressed in royal robes. It held a metal scepter in its hands.

“Well,” Thomas said. “This is unsettling.”

The mask revenant tilted its plaster face to one side, and regarded the goblin in silence.

“What would you, old vizard?” Thomas demanded to know. He rapped the tip of his cane against the stone floor with an impatient clacking noise.

The mask drew closer, gliding over the surface of the floor. It raised the scepter and struck.

Thomas moved quickly enough to keep his head, but not quickly enough to keep his hat. The scepter knocked it to the floor, and struck again. This time Thomas drew his cane-sword and parried.

“I made you myself!” the old goblin roared. “I have played you many times to perfection! If you have any fighting skill, it is by my own instruction that you have it. And I will thank you not to heap further abuse upon my hat.”

The Iron Emperor answered by knocking Thomas’s cane-sword aside. The blade bounced away across the floor. The mask-figure shoved Thomas over backward with its free hand, and then it removed its own face. There was nothing behind the place where the mask used to be.

It reached down to mask Thomas with itself.

Rownie was already running and shouting. He reached Thomas’s sword and snatched it up, but before he could put the weapon to any kind of use, the imperial mask shattered into several plaster pieces. Its body faded, the air softening until nothing stood there. The crown struck the floor, clattered and rolled, and then was still.

Nonny came up the staircase with a sling in her hand, and Patch came limping behind her. Rownie cheered to see the both of them, a wordless shout of happiness and relief. She had found Patch. Nonny had found him. Graba hadn’t killed him with her birds.

“Thank you, my dear Nonny!” Thomas said as he climbed to his feet. “I am so very much obliged, and my heart sings to see you both safely here. However, I really do wish you had not smashed that mask. That plaster had soaked up well over a century of theatrical brilliance, and as I recall it was not an easy thing to make.”

“Shut it, scowly trousers!” Essa came sprinting from the other end of the tower and knocked both Patch and Nonny to the ground with a tackling hug. Patch held his leg and winced. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” said Essa. “Are you hurt? Is it bad? Are you actually drowned and you just came back to haunt us? I hope not. I would hate it if you said even less than you usually do.”

“Not dead,” Patch grunted. “Just soggy. Found driftwood to hold on to.”

A bird mask, now embodied, swooped above them and flew among the whirling cogs and levers of the clock. Another followed.

Thomas scowled. “Does anyone have the slightest idea why this might be happening?” he asked. “Anyone? And, Rownie, I will have my sword back, thank you kindly. You were very brave to reach for it, but please wait until we’ve trained you in the use of swordplay before you start swinging one of these about.”

Rownie handed over the blade. “I get to learn swordplay?” he asked, his voice hushed and reverent. This was quite possibly the most magnificent thing that anyone had ever said to him.

“Yes, of course,” said Thomas, impatient. “It is a skill that actors must have. Epic combat unfolds in a great many of our performances.”

“And this means that a great many of our masks know how to fight, yes,” said Semele. “That is not currently a helpful thing.”

More masks pulled forward, snapping their strings or yanking their nails from the walls. The air beneath them thickened into bodies, and embodied masks surged through the tower. Only the River remained in its place.

Another armed mask revenant approached the troupe. It seemed to be smiling at first, its carved expression light and jovial—but then the face tilted, and from that angle the same mask took on a look of sober intensity. It held a curved sword.

“This is Bidou,” Thomas announced. “I will face him.” The old goblin brandished his own blade with a flick of his wrist, and stood ready. His pride had clearly suffered in his earlier duel.

“Weapons,” Essa said. “The rest of us need some. Rownie, there’s a crate of sharp things right over there, and you should help me fetch them please.”

She set off across the tower floor. Rownie followed. He tried to watch out for moving gears and flying masks and also other sorts of masks, but that was too much to watch out for so mostly he just ran.

Essa found the crate she wanted and pushed it over. Metal rang against stone as a great big mess of weaponry spilled out. “Grab a halberd,” she said.

Rownie thought she had said “Graba” at first, and looked wildly around—but then he pieced together what she had actually said. “What’s a halberd?”

“If an ax and a spear had babies, they would be halberds,” Essa told him. “It’s a pokey-pokey weapon for convincing things that are taller than you to stay back, please. Here’s one.” She handed it to Rownie and grabbed another.

A bird mask swooped down at her on silent, newly solid wings. Rownie shouted a warning. Then the mask broke apart in midflight. Essa ducked as pieces of it fell around her head.

“Nonny!” Thomas roared from across the tower. “Please do not break any more of our masks!”

“Especially not that one over there!” said Essa, pointing. “It’s my favorite!”

“Which one?” Rownie asked. It was difficult to pick one mask out of the roiling chaos. “The blue one?”

“No, the one next to it, the one named Semmerling. Doesn’t it look like a Semmerling to you? That blue one might also be my favorite, though. See its eyebrows? Those really are fantastic eyebrows. Oh, hey, be careful of the giant.”

She shoved Rownie to the right and leaped to the left. A giant boot came crashing down between them.

Rownie looked up. The mask he had worn looked down. It reached for him with new and giant hands. Rownie swung wildly with his halberd, tripped, stumbled, and rolled out of the way. Giant fingers grasped at the empty air above him.

Rownie picked himself up and slashed at the giant’s boots, but the boots were thick and tough—or at least made of air pretending to be thick and tough—and the halberd only scuffed one.

“I bet you can’t turn into a burnbug!” Rownie called up to the giant.

The giant ignored the taunt and reached for him again, to crush him or to eat him or else replace Rownie’s face with its own and play at being a boy who had once played a giant. Rownie didn’t bother running away. Its legs were very much longer than his, and it would catch him if he ran. Instead he took three steps backward.

The giant followed. A swinging, tree-size piece of clock swung into it and knocked the mask away from its imagined shoulders.

The giant body faded. The giant mask fell. Rownie caught it before it hit the ground. He looked up, grinning—but everyone else was busy, and no one had noticed his victory.

Rownie saw Patch throw juggling knives through ghostly mask-bodies, convincing the masks that the bodies were not actually there, and then catching each mask as it fell.

He saw Nonny fire her sling in the air, trying to keep the bird masks away without breaking them.

He saw Essa face off against her favorites.

He heard Thomas roar invectives in the midst of his own duel.

He heard Semele keep several masks at bay with old and heavy words.

Rownie set the giant mask carefully down on the floor, hefted his halberd, and went to help Semele. He had to swing his way through many phantom mask-bodies to reach her.

Semele ended her chant, and dozens of masks clattered to the floor in a wide circle.

“This is an excellent curse we are fighting,” she said. “This is a curse to be commended and admired. The bond between mask and performer has been twisted, and now they wish to play those who have played them.”

“Why are so many of them after you?” Rownie asked. The words came out of him in a wheeze—his halberd was unwieldy, and his arms were starting to hurt. “Have you played them all?”

“No,” said Semele. “I wrote them all, and many I have also carved.”

Rownie swung at two long-nosed masks given bodies by this commendable curse—and then he remembered how the curse had been made and delivered. It’s a present of welcoming home, Graba had said to Vass when she gave her the errand.

“I know whose curse this is,” he said.

“So do I, yes,” said Semele. A pigeon perched above them, on the workings of the clock. Semele spoke to it. “I see you there,” she called. “I see you wearing the bird, as you wear the grubby children of your household.”

The pigeon flapped its wings, and hooted.

Semele crossed her arms and sniffed. She did not seem concerned. “Child-thief? You do not care much for your charges while you have them—only when they are taken from you, when anything is taken from you. And you might have come yourself, yes. You send a sending instead, hiding inside birds and bullying us with our own masks. You might have come yourself to face me.”

The pigeon gave an unpigeonlike shriek, and dove down at Semele.

“I do not have time for you,” said Semele. “I did not come home to Zombay for you.” She waved one hand, dismissing the bird. It flew away upward, shrieking, and vanished among the highest pieces of interlocking clockworks.

Rownie didn’t have time to be impressed. The mask revenants massed together into a silent crowd of bright colors and grotesque shapes, and they came for Semele. Some of the masks were hinged at the mouths and eyelids. These opened wide their eyes and gnashed their teeth. Semele sent most of them back with charms, and Rownie fought with the rest. He poked his halberd up at a ghoulish false face.

“I can break this curse,” Rownie said, just as soon as he could pause and spare the breath. “I know where it is.” He knew where Vass had put it.

“Then go,” Semele told him. “I will hold them off, yes, while you go.”

Rownie went.

Scene IV

IT WAS NOT EASY TO HURRY with a halberd. Rownie stumbled, and almost fell over. He realized that he might lose an arm or a leg or a head if he did fall. The ax at the end of the pole was very sharp. He dropped the thing with a clatter and a crash, leaving it behind, even though many embodied masks stood between him and the staircase. There were too many to fight. He dodged instead. He tried not to be dazzled or distracted by the sudden movements of dancing and fighting and bold colors and swirling shapes in all corners of his vision. He made for the stairs, reached them, and went down.

It was dark in the stables, with Horace all folded up and hiding the coal-glow. Rownie felt his way along the wall, found the door, and undid the latch. He went out into the fog. He went through the alley and up the stone steps to the front doors of the Clock Tower. The doors were sealed and shut. The chains had long ago rusted together, and could not be unlocked.

Tied among these thick and thickly rusting chains, Rownie found a leather bag. Smoke poured out of it, of a darker shade than the fog. He didn’t want to touch it. He wished that he had kept the halberd, so he could poke at the thing from a distance or at least carry it away on the end of a long pole. But he didn’t have a halberd. He only had his hands.

Rownie took a deep breath, took the curse bag with both hands, and ripped it away from the Clock Tower doors.

He expected the thing to be hot and burning. It wasn’t. The curse bag was cold, and the cold burned him.

He turned around and looked for the nearest space between buildings where he could toss the bag down and into the River—flowing water was the very best way to wash off a curse—and then he stopped.

The fox mask stood before him, directly before him. It wore a fine suit, with leather gloves and leather boots. The fox nodded, polite, a gentleman’s greeting.

It did not attack him. It did not peel away its own fox face to mask Rownie with. It did not come any closer. Instead the fox stood aside, and gestured with one gloved paw.

Rownie went cautiously in that direction. He crossed the street, holding the curse bag as though it were an egg or a fallen, fledgling bird. The coldness of it hurt. It seeped into the bones of his fingers and made his hands feel as though they were no longer his.

The fox followed him.

Together they went down an alleyway on the downstream side, farther away from the Clock Tower. Rownie reached over the edge of the low stone wall and dropped the curse bag. It fell into the fog, and into the River, and was gone. Rownie hoped that the River didn’t mind. He rubbed his hands together to chase away the cold, and they started to feel like they belonged to him again.

“Thanks,” he said to the fox—but the fox was not there. The empty mask lay faceup on the stones beside him. Rownie picked it up. He wore it around his neck by the string, without putting it on.

Back inside the Clock Tower, many masks lay scattered on the floor. Rownie glanced at the upstream clock face, and saw that the moon was setting. Night was ending. The morning would be here soon.

He found the rest of the troupe where they had taken refuge among the bookshelves.

“Well done, Rownie,” Semele said.

“Yes, very well done,” said Thomas, poking cautiously at a fallen mask with his cane-sword. “I am curious to know what it is you actually did, of course, but I can wait.”

Essa set her halberd aside and picked up the mask with the excellent eyebrows. “That was very strange,” she said. “I got a little bit in character whenever one of my masks came close to me, and that made it really hard to fight when they were the weepy sorts of characters who made me feel like swooning.”

“Whereas I remain filled to the very brim of my hat with tragic intensity,” said Thomas. “Excuse me, please.” The old goblin left for some other part of the tower.

“Best we not disturb him for a good long while,” said Semele. “We should put these masks back where they belong, and perhaps chain them in place . . . but the task can wait for morning, yes. It will require care. Some of them should only be handled with the left hand, and we will first have to gather many lengths of short, stout chain. We should wait, to be sure of doing it properly. To bed now, yes.”

The troupe stumbled toward several small bunks near the pantry shelves. Rownie went with them. He found a bed of his own. He took off his coat, because the bed already had blankets. Both his folded coat and the fox mask he stashed underneath the bunk.

Rownie was tired beyond tired, but he did not sleep. Not yet. His thoughts spun like the workings at the center of the Clock Tower—always moving, always turning, never still.

He wondered what Graba might know about Rowan and his whereabouts, what sort of hints and inklings she might have. He wondered how he could possibly get her to tell him what she knew. Graba did not share, but she did bargain, and Rownie had gone on many market errands for her. He knew how to bargain. To offer a deal he needed to have something Graba wanted—and he had one thing that she did.

He made a choice, and after that he slept.

Scene V

MORNING LIGHT CREPT THROUGH the downstream clock face. A stained-glass sun ticked upward from the very edge of a glass horizon.

Rownie woke after just a few hours’ sleep. The rest of the troupe still seemed to be unconscious. He heard snores and saw lumps of blankets on the other bunks. He couldn’t tell who was snoring. It might have been Essa.

He sat up on the edge of his bed. The masks still lay on the floor where they had fallen. Rownie put on his coat, picked up the fox mask, and found himself a breakfast of dried fruit and cold flatbread in the pantry. It felt strange to take the food. It felt like stealing, even though he knew that it wasn’t, even though Essa had told him that it was perfectly fine to snack from the pantry cupboards. In Graba’s household, every hungry mouth was on its own.

He sat on the floor, chewing shriveled fruit pieces with the fox face on his knee, and he wondered where Graba might have moved her household. He needed to find her—or to find someone else who could find her.

He had a message for Graba.

Rownie stood and tucked the fox mask inside his coat. This also felt like stealing. He told himself that it was only borrowing, and hoped he would have the chance to bring it back. Besides, the fox had followed him last night, all on its own.

He took in a long breath, and headed for the staircase.

“Good morning to you, Rownie,” said Semele, before he had gotten very far.

Rownie jumped. “Morning,” he said, nervous and guilty feeling.

Semele did not look as though she had slept. She picked up a fallen mask and considered it sadly.

“Cracked all the way through,” she said. “It is not a hopeful sign to see this one broken. We carved it from a block of alder, offered willingly by a living tree. Cypress is best for mask making, but alder is also good, and a very fine wood for boats and bridges. The Fiddleway has wooden bones of alder wood, in among the stone.”

Rownie reached for the broken mask. Semele handed it to him. The face looked simple at first, unadorned and without expression—but then he saw a smile when he held it at one angle and a thoughtful frown when held another way. The eyes also changed, seeming to close at a downward tilt.

“What’s it a mask of?” he asked.

“This is the UnChanged Child,” Semele told him, “though it is changed now by breaking. By tradition this is the very first face a new maskmaker attempts, and the very last face to be mastered.”

“But you didn’t start with this one,” Rownie said, remembering.

“No,” said Semele. “I began with the River, and worked in stone. I am a fair bit older than most traditions are.”

Rownie gave her back the UnChanged Child. “I’m sorry it’s broken,” he said.

“This is no fault of yours,” she told him. “I mean that truly, yes.”

“Thanks,” Rownie said, “but all of this might still be mine to fix. I think I can help find my brother, or at least get a little news about him.”

Semele nodded. “Take good care of the fox. It is old, that one.”

“I will,” Rownie promised, and felt sheepish about concealing the fox in his coat. “Wish me luck.”

“Break your face,” Semele said, with sincerity and kindness. “That means luck,” she added. “I do not actually remember why it means this, but it does.” She gave another mournful look at the broken face in her hands.

“Oh,” said Rownie. “Good, then.”

Outside it rained in sudden spurts and starts. The sun peered out from behind clouds, as though shy. Then it hid itself again, and again the sky rained. All the ordinary traffic of the Fiddleway kept their heads down. Beasts and persons, both gearworked and not, seemed to see only their own feet in front of them. They paid no notice to the boy who emerged from an alleyway and climbed the stone steps of the Clock Tower.

A single pigeon stood perched on the rusting chains. Rownie had hoped to find one there. It pecked at the chains with a little tap-tap noise. It looked confused. It looked as though it wondered where the curse bag had gone.

“I took it,” Rownie told the bird. “I broke it. Tell Graba, if you have a little piece of Graba in your head. Tell her I broke the curse, and you can tell her something else besides.”

The bird stretched both wings and scratched underneath one of them with its beak. It acted like it didn’t notice Rownie and could not be bothered to notice him.

“It doesn’t have any of Graba,” said Vass, behind him. “It has a piece of me instead.”

Rownie turned around. He stood like a giant and stayed where he was. It helped that he stood a few steps above Vass, on the stair. This brought them eye to eye.

“You broke her curse?” she asked, marveling at him. “She is going to make a birdcage out of your skin and bones, and keep only the ugliest birds inside you, and she won’t ever clean out the cage, either.”

Rownie ignored her smugness. “I have a message for Graba,” he said. “You can deliver it—in person, or with birds, or with whatever else you use to send messages.”

Vass almost laughed at him. “Tell me your message, sir,” she said, bemused and still smug.

Rownie stood like a giant. He stood like Rowan. He was not embarrassed. Vass could laugh just as long as she liked, and it would not matter to him. Not very much.

“Tell her to meet me at the Southside Rail Station.” The station might be in Southside, but it felt like Northside. It followed different rules. In the station she might be out of her element—less terrifying, less strong.

Vass saw that Rownie was serious, and she looked less bemused. “When?” she asked.

“Now,” Rownie said. “I’m on my way now. I’ll meet her there.” He still didn’t know where Graba had moved her household, but he did not need to know. Graba could come to him instead.

Vass watched Rownie carefully. Something shifted behind her eyes. She nodded and spoke with something a very little bit like respect. “I’ll pass your message on,” she said.

“Thank you,” said Rownie. He turned away and went down the steps.

Vass called after him. “She hates to lose anything that she thinks is hers. You know that. She won’t let you get away from her again.”

“She can try,” Rownie said, and he almost laughed. He remembered what it had felt like to cast a mask-charm at the Floating Market. You will not catch me, he had told the Grubs, and he had made it true. He still had the fox with him. He could still avoid being caught.

Rownie crossed the bridge. He passed dueling fiddlers as he stepped into Southside and smelled Southside dust. He walked between the fiddlers, through the music of their duel. Neither one seemed to be winning.

He passed members of the Guard as they marched. It was strange to see so many of them in Southside. Here they moved slowly, with many stops and adjustments of direction. It was common knowledge that the Guard hated Southside—all of Southside—with its curved, winding streets and unusual angles. They much preferred the precision of Northside avenues, over which they could always move quickly.

Unlike the Guard, Rownie understood these winding streets. The soles of his feet spoke their language. He could move quickly in Southside.

He passed pigeons, many pigeons. The birds watched him sideways, and he nodded to each of them.

“The rail station,” he said. “Tell her I’ll meet her there.”

The birds made hooting noises, and flapped their wings. Rownie thought that they heard him and understood him—but he couldn’t be sure of it, so he told the same thing to every new pigeon that he saw. The rail station. Tell her. Tell Graba.

Rownie came to the old station gate, and slipped through the bars. He went in as though he knew where he was going, as though he had every right to haunt that place, as though he were something to be afraid of. He almost believed that these things were true.

The Southside Rail Station was empty, save for pigeons, and for Rownie. Dusty, cloudy sunlight came through the glass panes of the ceiling. It slid down over the brass finish of abandoned railcars, and fell on the curved rust of wrought-iron benches. Pigeons swooped down from the dangling clocks and passed through the dusty light, circling, silent.

“Graba!” Rownie called out into the wide and dusty air. “I have words for you! Come hear them yourself!”

Tell me about my brother, he said silently. Come and tell me anything at all about Rowan, in exchange for the chance to catch me. Come help me find him.

At first only silence answered. The light faded, and raindrops pattered against the glass overhead. Then gearwork noise echoed throughout the station, bouncing back and forth between stone floors and columns. He thought the sound might be Graba’s legs making their long strides through a station corridor, but it wasn’t.

A single railcar drove through the tunnel at the far side of the station and came to a halt on the track only a few paces from where Rownie stood. It was an actual, working, gleaming railcar. Thick curtains covered long glass windows on the inside. The mirrored brass finish had been polished and scrubbed, so there was hardly any tarnish on it anywhere.

Rownie stared at the splendid thing. He took a few steps closer. How did it get here? he wondered. They must have pumped the water out of the whole tunnel.

The railcar doors opened. The Captain of the Guard stepped down to the platform. Vass followed behind him. She wore no expression on her face at all.

“Rownie of Southside,” the Captain said. “The Lord Mayor of all Zombay would speak with you.”

Scene VI

ROWNIE WAS UNPREPARED for this turn of events. He stared at the Captain of the Guard with his mouth hanging open.

The Captain marched forward. His boots rang out against the polished stone floor. His irises tocked and ticked in small, perfect circles as he focused on Rownie and bore down on him. The Captain took hold of Rownie’s arms and steered him toward the railcar before Rownie could even think about slipping on the fox mask and declaring himself uncatchable.

“You are not under arrest,” the Captain said. “You are suspected of having broken lawful edicts of this city, but you are not under arrest. The Lord Mayor would speak with you.”

“He’s telling the truth,” said Vass.

Rownie glared at her. “I gave you a message for Graba.”

Vass nodded. “And it would be so much worse for you if she were here instead,” she told him. Her voice was cold. Her face was cold. Both were glass-smooth and offered nothing to hold on to.

She went back inside the railcar. The Captain of the Guard pushed Rownie through the doorway after her, and shut the door behind them all.

Gold lanterns burned inside. Red cloth covered the floor, the windows, and the far wall in hanging curtains. A long dining table took up most of the space, and a sumptuous meal of roast goose and fresh fruit took up most of the table. Rownie could smell the crispy goose skin. He had never in his life eaten goose, but at that moment he very much wanted to try it.

Chefs had refletched the bird and posed it upright. Its wings stretched out to their full span across the table. Both the wings and neck had been filled with tiny filaments of gearwork. The wings flapped slowly back and forth. The beak opened and sang a little tune. It was pretty. It did not sound much like a goose.

The Lord Mayor of Zombay cut chest meat from this seemingly live bird, and took a bite.

Rownie stared. The Mayor smiled at him from behind his trim beard and his chins. He only looked a little bit like his statue. He was not a very wide man, but he did have a few extra chins.

Vass sat down beside the Lord Mayor as though she had every right to be there, or anywhere else that she might choose.

“Welcome, young sir,” said the Mayor. He wore many rings. They knocked together when he moved his hands—and his hands were always moving. “I would like to offer you employment in my own private troupe of actors.”

As he spoke, the railcar shuddered and moved. Rownie felt it slide over rails and down into the tunnel, down under the River, down in a long, straight line toward Northside. The cooked goose flapped its wings and sang another song.

Rownie thought about the Mayor’s words. He tried to make them make any kind of sense. “Your own what?”

“My own private troupe,” the Mayor said again. “I have a few of them here with me.” He clapped his hands. The red curtains at the front of the railcar opened to reveal a small stage. Three performers stood, bowed, and began to tell a story in dumb show. They were all three masked. One mask had been painted with sharp, straight lines, like a tattooed map of Northside, and crowned with a coronet of small towers—Zombay towers, not as they currently stood, but as they used to stand. The mask wore a stern and kingly expression. The other two masks looked like fish.

Rownie forgot about how tasty the goose must be, and he almost forgot how absurd it was that Vass sat beside the Lord Mayor of Zombay. “You outlawed acting!” he shouted. He tried to keep his voice down. He couldn’t. “How can you have a troupe of your own, and a stage of your own, when you just outlawed them all?”

The secret play continued to unfold. The three performers didn’t seem to notice or mind that their audience was talking among themselves rather than paying proper attention. They went on telling their silent story, indifferent to whomever might be watching.

“It is true,” said the Mayor. His rings knocked together. “I did outlaw the theater. But just because a thing is not good for everyone doesn’t mean that I should not still enjoy it, if I can.” He winked. “Have an almond.”

He tossed Rownie a small, spiced nut. Rownie caught it. Outrage boiled up inside him, but he tried to swallow it down. Shouting at the Lord Mayor was probably not a clever thing to do, especially under the cold and ticking watchfulness of the Guard Captain, so Rownie ate the almond instead. He chewed it furiously until there was nothing left.

The Mayor continued with his meal and offered nothing more to Rownie. Vass ate a few grapes and also offered nothing. The railcar moved smoothly on its track, somewhere underneath the River.

“Floods are coming, you know,” the Mayor said. He said it to Vass and not to Rownie.

“I know they are, sir,” said Vass.

“They are expected to fill the ravine entirely and rise up as high as Southside—which is, of course, lower and closer to the River. The damage will be very severe.” The Mayor shook his head, and his chins, at the tragedy. “I am doing what I can to prepare. I am pulling together enough funds to rebuild, after the flooding has come and gone. We will return the city to its days of glory, and we will help Southside recover—and help to make it a more orderly place.”

“That is very good of you, sir,” said Vass. She ate another grape. Rownie found it impossible to tell whether she was pandering to the Mayor or honestly agreeing with him or possibly making fun of him. Her voice and her face were still glass-smooth.

“Thank you,” said the Mayor. “I do what I can. But meanwhile, before the devastation comes, it would be sensible to be in Northside. We should remain high out of reach of the coming floods—most especially since I have masked performers to address the River on behalf of the north.” He waved one hand at the stage and at the actors, without actually looking in their direction. “You understand this, of course,” he said to Vass. “It is why you came to me.”

“Yes, sir,” said Vass. “It is.” She looked at Rownie. There was something new in her face. “Graba hates rivals,” she said. “She hates them. I’ll have to leave Southside anyway, someday, just as soon as I learn enough witchwork from her. There used to be lots of witchworkers in Southside, but now there’s only her. She makes certain that there’s only ever her.” The glass-seeming surface of her voice cracked. She spoke as though she wanted Rownie to understand. “I need somewhere else to go. I’ll go north. The Mayor already promised me a house of my own. A grand house. I won’t have to sleep on straw. I won’t have to climb through windows. I won’t have to run errands for Graba, not ever again. All I had to do for it was tell the Mayor about you.”

“So you see,” said the Mayor, turning to address Rownie directly, “it would be best to avoid the southern half of the city until after the floods have come and gone, and obviously the bridge cannot grant sanctuary in this case. In the meantime I offer you employment and a place in my household. It is a great honor to serve as a member of the Lord Mayor’s Troupe. They have their own stage in my house, you know, and it is far more grand than that little goblin platform you walked on recently. Do you understand what an honor this is?”

Rownie started laughing. He couldn’t help it. He tried not to, and that set off a rapid cascade of hiccups.

The Mayor’s smile slipped a little. He took a few more bites of goose. Vass stared at Rownie as though he had turned into some sort of fish. The three actors continued their pantomime without noticing anything else.

“I do understand,” Rownie said, between hiccups. “You want it to happen. You want Southside to drown, so you can make it like Northside, and just another part of Northside. You arrested everybody who ever wore a mask—even me—to make sure Southside will drown.”

The Mayor struck Rownie with one ring-covered hand. It hurt.

“I speak for this city, child,” he said. His voice was cold. “I do. No one is going to wear a piece of plaster and pretend to speak for Zombay. No one is going to negotiate on behalf of Zombay—not to armies or to diplomats or to the River itself—unless I appoint them to do so. That is my office. I will uphold it, and you will show proper respect. Do not pretend to be other than you are.”

“What am I, then?” Rownie asked. It was an honest question.

The Mayor did not answer, and Vass did not answer, because something smacked against the side of the railcar. The Mayor moved a red curtain away from one long window. Lantern light from inside the car illuminated the curved brick of the tunnel outside.

Birds flew through the tunnel, surrounding them, overtaking them. Pigeon wings knocked against the window’s glass.

The Mayor looked annoyed. Vass looked terrified. Her eyes were wide circles. “It’s her,” she said. “She’s coming for us. She won’t let us get across.”

“It’s only birds,” said the Mayor. But pigeons flew by in dozens and droves now. The railcar shuddered as they threw themselves between the wheels and the track.

Rownie should have been scared. He wasn’t. He stopped thinking about the birds, because the crowned mask of Northside had slipped from the lead actor’s face. That face was as familiar to Rownie as any could be.

The railcar shook and slid to a halt. The lights inside sputtered and went out.

“Rowan?” Rownie asked in the dark.

Scene VII

THE MAYOR SHOUTED SOMETHING. Rownie heard him, but he did not listen, and he did not notice what the Mayor said.

Vass chanted. A single lantern bloomed on the wall. She took it down. The Mayor gave orders to the Guard Captain, who drew his sword and used it to shatter a window. Rownie ignored them all. He stared at Rowan. Rowan stared at nothing. The loose strap of the mask was down around his neck. The mask itself sat empty over his chest. The play had been interrupted, and now none of the three players moved.

The Mayor put a chair under the broken window and ordered the Captain through. The Captain climbed through. He pulled Rownie behind him.

Rownie fought. He yelled. He put everything he had, and everything he had ever had, into pulling in the opposite direction. He shouted his brother’s name, which was his own name made tall, and Rowan went on staring at nothing in a calm and empty sort of way. Rownie went on fighting, but it did not matter. The sleeve of his dust-colored coat ripped as the Guard Captain pulled him through the empty space where the window used to be, out into the tunnel. The ground underfoot was thick with dead birds.

The Captain of the Guard called back to the Mayor and told him that the tunnel was empty, and that the wheels of the railcar were so caked with bird pieces that they could not be made to turn again. The only way back into Northside would be to walk there.

The Mayor climbed out the broken window. Vass went with him. She carried the single lantern she had spoken to.

By that lantern light, Rownie saw Graba.

Graba perched on her talons, on the railcar’s roof. She climbed down with one long step, followed by another. She loomed over them with her legs extended, until it seemed that the space of the tunnel was made out of Graba and only existed to suit her purposes.

The Captain of the Guard raised his sword. Graba spoke to him in a low chant. “Your workings are broken. Your sight, it is broken. Your vision is filled with the sight of its breaking.” She said this as though it were already true, and it became true as she said it. Springs sprung and gears shattered in the glass workings of his eyes. He cried out, stumbling, and dropped the sword.

He also dropped his grip on Rownie’s arm. Rownie crept slowly back toward the wreckage of the railcar.

“There, there,” said Graba, as though comforting the Captain. She reached with one talon and knocked him against the tunnel wall. He slid down, his hands covering his broken eyes.

Graba turned to Vass and the Mayor. She looked at Vass as though deciding whether or not she might be edible. “Hello, granddaughter,” she said. “Hello, little rival.”

Vass stood very straight. “Hello, Graba,” she said. Her voice sounded cracked and fragile, but it also sounded brave. “I’m not your grandchild. None of us ever were.”

“But you are,” said Graba. She reached for Vass with one hand to tuck a lock of hair away from her face and behind one ear. The hair fell forward again. “What else could you be? I took you in, all of you, when you had no one else. I made you a home when your elders had drowned or starved or run off without you, abandoning all of you. Who else might you belong to, now, if not your Graba?”

Vass held up her chin. “Thank you for that. But I’m still not your grandchild.”

Graba gave her a long, considering look, and crossed both arms in front of her. “I’m thinking that you may be right in this,” she said, her voice full of wonder and hurt. “You may not be mine any longer. Go on to Northside, then. Make the Mayor keep his promises, and make him suffer if he doesn’t give you that house of your own. You’ve made this choice, so make it a sticky one. No good will come of it if you go wavering—not from him, and not at all from me.”

The Mayor chose that moment to speak up in an affronted and important-sounding voice. “Do not refer to me as though I were not here, witchworker.”

Graba smiled. She looked delighted. She looked as though she had just crunched her teeth down on the tastiest egg imaginable.

“The Mayor is not here,” Graba told Vass. “I would hurt him if he were here—and then he would never make good on his bright promises to you. This is my gift, and it will be my last one. To enjoy it, you should be running. The whole of this tunnel will fill up with floodwater, and very soon. The floods are coming. They are coming today.”

Graba leaned forward and squinted hard with her squinty eye. “You should tell his mayorship that even if the River wipes Southside as clean as an uncarved gravestone, I will still make sure and certain he never, ever rebuilds it to his liking. Southside is mine. Tell him I said so, now. I would tell him myself, but he is not here. I would hurt him very much if he were here. I would set beautiful curses on him.”

The Mayor sputtered in his outrage. Vass put the lit lantern in his hand. “Please start running, sir,” she said. “You aren’t here. You shouldn’t be here.” He sputtered further. Then he turned and ran away northward, into the dark of the tunnel.

Vass paused. She looked at Rownie. Rownie wasn’t sure what she meant by that look. Then Vass helped the Guard Captain to his feet, and the two of them followed the Mayor. All three vanished down the tunnel’s throat.

Rownie remained in the dark, with Graba. He tried to remember how to breathe.

Scene VIII

GRABA SPOKE IN A VERY LOW CHANT. The brick and stone of the tunnel’s wall began to glow green, like the color of young burnbugs. In that green glow she looked down at Rownie as though examining a piece of market fruit for fungus and rot. She smelled familiar, a musty and feathery smell.

“You have a message for me, runt?” she asked. The air between them stretched as tight and tense as fiddle strings.

Rownie felt fear, bone-deep and burning. He did not run. He knew that there could be no running from Graba, with no hiding places in the tunnel and her long legs striding easily behind him. He showed Graba that he would not run, and he gave his message.

“I wanted your help to find Rowan,” he said, “but then I found him. He’s in the railcar. He didn’t move, and he didn’t know me when I shouted. He just stood there, all empty-looking, and I don’t know what’s wrong. Please help him. I’ll come back with you. I’ll be your grandchild again.”

He tried to stand like a giant.

Graba stood like Graba, and grunted. “You still smell like thieving and tin.”

“I haven’t Changed,” Rownie told her. “I’m not a goblin. I’m not a Changeling. I’ll come back.”

Graba reached up with one talon, took hold of the railcar, and ripped away the front of it. Metal shrieked against metal as she tore it apart. Rownie flinched. It was a painful thing to hear.

The three actors did not react to the sight or the sound of Graba’s coming. She nudged the two in fish masks aside with her foot, and then squinted at the third.

The Northside mask still dangled from Rowan’s neck. Graba plucked it from him, dropped it on the tunnel floor, and stepped on it. Rowan did not seem to notice. He stood very still, and looked away at nothing much.

“What’s wrong with him?” Rownie asked.

Graba tore open the front of Rowan’s shirt. A red scar, sharp and clean, ran down his chest. Rownie knew what that meant. He tried very hard not to know what that meant. The world changed shape around him, and this new shape was not what it was supposed to be. Graba scowled and spat.

“Puppet,” she said. “His mayorship thought he could talk to floods with puppets. He’s more a fool than he deserves to be, now.”

“Can you help?” Rownie asked. “Can you give him back what they took?”

“No,” said Graba. “And I won’t be taking you back, either. You might be mine again, but I no longer need you. No time now to teach you enough to be useful, and Graba knows better than playing with puppets. The River won’t dance on a puppeteer’s strings, so none of the floodings can now be avoided.”

She climbed up and over what was left of the railcar.

“Help him!” Rownie shouted after her. She had to be able to help him. She could reshape the world with her words. She was herself a force of nature. She was Graba.

“Run away, runt,” she called back. “Run back to Semele. Run away from the River. I’ll be carrying my home to higher ground, now, and herding most of Southside with me.” The squeak of her leg receded as she made her way back up the tunnel.

The curved brick walls still glowed from Graba’s chant. By their light Rownie picked his way through the wrecked railcar. He came to stand beside his brother, who did not notice him there.

“Rowan?”

Silence.

“It’s me.”

More silence filled the space around them. Rownie breathed cold silence into his lungs. He stood and stared at his brother, just stared, there in the tunnel underneath the River, under the place where they had always thrown pebbles. He searched Rowan’s face for any flickering sign of recognition or welcome. He couldn’t tell what he saw there. He didn’t know whether any slight movement of the eyes or mouth meant anything at all.

Rownie felt like he was the one who had been hollowed out.

Water dripped down from between the bricks in the curved ceiling. It dripped faster. A droplet struck the side of Rownie’s face. He forced himself to move. He took his brother’s hand and led him out of the railcar wreckage. Rowan followed easily, without resisting, without any will of his own.

Rownie went back for the other two, the ones in fish masks. He pushed them northward. “Go,” he said. “Start running. Don’t stop until you’re out of the tunnel, and after that find some stairs to climb.” They listened to him. He hoped they could both outrun the flood.

Rownie and Rowan went south. They edged around the side of the railcar, stepping over broken birds and broken glass. Air moved through the tunnel’s throat in a low moan. Rownie couldn’t tell what sorts of things it said.

They moved around the circumference of pits and holes where the dirt had caved in beside the tracks. The air around them smelled like wet, dead dogs and rotting fish. Rownie heard splashing from the largest pit. He didn’t look over the edge, but he did call down to whatever splashed there.

“The floods are coming,” he said to the pit and the ghouls and the diggers. “Take care. Floods are coming.” Maybe they heard him. Maybe every haunting thing dug itself to safety, out of the River’s reach—if any place could be out of the River’s reach.

Drips from the ceiling came more frequently now. Water seeped between bricks. Rivulets ran through the dirt under the track and grew wider. The dirt disappeared. The rails disappeared. There was only water, up to their ankles and then to their knees. The burnbug light from Graba’s chant began to fade.

Rownie and his brother trudged through the rising water. They moved slowly. Rownie didn’t think they could make it all the way back to Southside before the tunnel flooded entirely. He didn’t know what to do. He felt useless and helpless and small. He felt like he needed to be something other than himself, so he took out the fox mask and put it on.

In the fading, failing light, Rownie saw the tunnel around them through fox eyes.

He saw a door in the tunnel wall. He remembered what Essa had told him about the Clock Tower stairs: that the staircase went all the way through the central pylon, down and farther down.

“I know my way,” he said to Rowan, “and I can guess at yours.” He still couldn’t remember the rest of that speech, but he knew as much as he needed to. He pushed through the tunnel, moving as a fox might move, and pulling his brother behind him.

They reached the door. It was locked. This didn’t matter much, because the lock was also rusted through and broken. Wood and metal complained when Rownie pushed, but the door still opened. In the dark behind it Rownie found an iron staircase. He found the handrail and shook it hard. Nothing broke or came loose. It didn’t seem to be too badly rusted.

Rownie and Rowan climbed the iron staircase, up and farther up.

They passed rooms that used to be barracks, now empty. Small amounts of cloudy sunlight crept in through narrow windows. The light seemed bright and blinding after the gloom of the tunnel.

Rownie was angry now. The momentum of anger pushed him forward. His skin was angry and his bones were angry and his heart was angry at the vertical scar on Rowan’s chest, where Rowan’s heart used to be.

They climbed up through the center of the Fiddleway, up into the Clock Tower. Rownie led his brother out among the masks and the tree-size gears and pendulums, out beneath the clock faces of stained glass.

He pulled the fox mask from his face and shouted for help.

Scene IX

SEMELE CAME OUT FROM behind the bookshelves. Essa jumped down from somewhere overhead. Patch limped from the pantry, with Nonny helping him. Thomas approached with his cane’s tip clacking against the tower floor.

“You found your brother!” the old goblin said. He whipped his cane through the air. It made a celebratory swishing sound. “Magnificent! However did you manage it? Never mind, never mind, tell us the tale over some refreshment. Welcome back to us, young Rowan. Your timing is absolutely flawless.”

Rownie said nothing. Rowan said nothing. Semele was the first to notice the two different sorts of nothing that they said.

“Hush,” she said to Thomas. “Hush.”

She lifted a torn corner of Rowan’s shirt, and then set it back in place to cover the scar.

“He doesn’t know who I am,” Rownie told her. He felt his anger drain away. He didn’t want it to go. He fought to keep it. Anger kept him moving. It kept him warm. But now words fell out of his mouth like cold pebbles. “He just stands there with his ribs all empty and he doesn’t know me.”

Semele took his hand and shook her head. “He does remember you,” she said. “To be heartless is to be without his will, but not without himself. He is still there. He still knows all that he knew.” Her voice grew softer and more careful. “But intention and volition have been taken. He has no momentum beyond what others give him.”

“Can we find his heart?” Rownie asked. “Can we put it back?”

Semele did not say no. She did not need to. She did not say anything else.

Rownie shook his head. This was not true. He would not let it be true.

“He looks very calm,” said Essa, clearly trying to help and not knowing how. “Heartlessness doesn’t look too unpleasant.”

“He’s a puppet,” said Thomas, disgusted and sad. “May the Mayor eat rancid liver paste, and suffer crippling pains. The floods are coming, and the city has no one to speak for it.”

“The floods are coming right now, actually,” said Essa. “I would have said so earlier, and I was on my way down here to say so, but then it seemed rude to interrupt because Rownie’s brother got his heart taken away, and I am so very sorry about that. But now I need to tell you that the floods are here already. You can see the water rising from the upstream clock face.”

“You can also hear it,” said Semele. “Listen.”

A sound like endless and ongoing thunder filled the space around them. It grew louder. It came from the waters beneath the bridge, and it came from the oldest mask. Floating hair of braided riverweed moved in a mane around that mask.

Thomas whacked the floor twice with his cane. “Places, everyone!” he roared. “Essa, back up the winding stair with you. Ring the tower bells, if those old things are still capable of ringing. Anyone who hears that sound, and remembers what the sound is for, will head for the hills. Nonny, help me throw a few sandbags behind the tower doors. Locks and chains won’t keep the River out if it rises this far. Patch, come and help us if your injury will allow it—or else keep us company if it will not. Rownie . . .” Thomas paused, and then shook his head. “Rownie, look after your brother.”

“What if the whole bridge comes crashing down?” Essa asked.

“This bridge has stood for a very long time,” said Thomas.

“Because people keep rebuilding it!” Essa countered. “Not because it never falls down! It does fall down sometimes!”

Thomas hit the floor again with the tip of his cane, as if to demonstrate that it was solid. “Places, everyone!” he roared again. Then he whispered to Semele. “A chant or a charm to help hold these stones together might not be amiss.”

“I suppose that would be useful, yes,” said Semele.

“You inspire great confidence,” said Thomas. “I’ll compose my last words while we stack sandbags.”

Everyone moved, except for Rownie and his heartless brother. Rowan seemed perfectly content to stand in place, whether or not the bridge came crashing down beneath them.

“Are you listening?” Rownie asked him. “Can you hear what we’re saying? Do you know what’s going on?” He poked Rowan’s arm and got no reaction. He kicked his brother in the shin, and got no reaction from that either—and then he really wished that he hadn’t kicked him. He felt his own heart slam against his rib cage, as though it wanted to get as far away from this place as it possibly could.

The stones and metal workings of the Clock Tower groaned. Rownie thought he also heard music in the sound, but he couldn’t be sure. Then the flood noise grew louder. It roared and echoed in the unseen throat of the River mask.

The roar shifted something inside Rownie’s chest. An idea came to him.

“Come on,” he said. “You might not have any will or momentum, but I think I can find you some.” He took his brother’s hand and led him to the very first mask, the mask that was also the River, the mask no performer ever wore. The open mouth of the mask thundered. Rownie was very much afraid of sinking down and drowning in its bottomless eyes.

He took it from the wall. It was made of stone and very heavy. He stumbled under the weight of it.

“Rownie?” Thomas called from the other side of the tower. “Whatever you are doing, I doubt very much that it is a good idea!”

“Probably not,” Rownie answered, but he did not return the mask to its place. He looked up at his brother. “I’m going to put this on you. I really hope you don’t mind. But if anyone can keep from drowning under this, it’s you.” He climbed onto a crate and slipped the mask over Rowan’s face.

The River mask merged with Rowan’s skin. The inked and painted lines of it flowed across his face. He threw back his head, opened his mouth, and gave one wordless shout with an immense and canyon-carving voice. The sound was a bridge of water between the mountains and the sea.

Rownie jumped down from the crate and shouted against the swirling, rushing onslaught of noise. “Rowan!”

Rowan looked at him. His hair moved around his head like riverweed swept by strong currents. His eyes had become vast and full.

“Hi,” Rownie said to his brother, who was also the River. “Please don’t flood.”

“This is not a very good idea!” Thomas called as he hurried across the tower floor. “Where is the city mask? Nonny, fetch the city mask! Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. The source of all our craft seems to be underway, and no one has rehearsed for it!”

Goblins gathered. Nonny offered the mask of Zombay. Rownie took it, but he did not put it on, and he did not look away from the bottomless eyes of his brother.

“Do you remember your first line?” Thomas prompted him.

Rownie nodded. “Oldest road. Older brother. Hear me. Please don’t flood.”

“Close enough,” said Thomas. “But you should actually wear that mask if you mean to speak for the city.”

“No,” said Rownie, holding up the mask of Zombay but leaving his own face uncovered. “He has to see that it’s me. He has to know that it’s me.”

The floods pounded against the pylons of the bridge beneath them. Stone creaked against stone. The workings of the clock strained against each other with metallic noises of alarm. Thomas made exasperated noises of his own. “The next line is ‘I speak for the city, and all of the city, the north and the south and the bridge in between.’”

“Please don’t flood,” said Rownie. “For me, and for everyone else, everyone in Zombay.”

The River, who was also Rowan, reached down and poked Rownie’s nose.

“Nice mask there,” he said, with the full roar of the River in the distance of his voice.

Rownie gave him a pirate scowl. “Yours is better,” he said.

“Thanks,” said Rowan. The lines of the River mask flowed on his face. “Thanks for getting me moving.”

Rownie hugged his brother, and his brother hugged him back. “You’re welcome. Please don’t flood.”

“Heard you the first time,” said Rowan. “I’ll have to leave to manage it, though.” He spoke softly, but his voice still thundered.

Rownie wanted to argue. He didn’t. He nodded instead. “Will you ever come back?”

Rowan smiled. “You’ll know how to find me.”

The brothers stood apart. Rowan set both of his hands against the upstream wall. Water flowed from his fingertips and worked its way between the stones, weakening the mortar. Rowan pushed. Several stones tumbled out and down.

Through the open space, Rownie saw the flood. It filled most of the ravine already. Waves tore boulders and trees from the shore on either side.

“Bye,” said Rowan, his eyes vast, his hair flowing as though air were water.

“Bye,” said Rownie.

His brother jumped over the edge. He cut through the air like a fisherbird, and dove down into the surface of himself.

The troupe gathered beside Rownie. They all watched as the floodwaters calmed, slowed, diminished, and passed beneath their feet and the Fiddleway Bridge.

Scene X

ROWNIE LEFT THE CLOCK TOWER at evening, a greenish gray pebble in his only pocket. He passed several Fiddleway musicians, more than he had ever seen or heard on the bridge at once, but he was too much inside his own head to really hear the music they played.

He wanted to be alone at his pebble-throwing place, but Vass was waiting for him. She sat on the low stone wall, playing a string game with her fingers. She didn’t look up. Rownie climbed the wall and sat beside her.

“Did the Mayor give you your own house?” he asked.

“Oh yes,” said Vass. “A dusty and ghoul-haunted place right here on the Fiddleway, and it’s all my very own.”

“He promised you a house in Northside,” Rownie said.

“He did,” Vass agreed, “but he’s less happy with me now than he was—even though I got him safely through the tunnel. But I don’t really mind. I’m not so fond of Northside, and it isn’t a bad thing to live in sanctuary. Can’t arrest anyone on the bridge.”

She got one finger stuck in her string game, and tried to untangle it. She cursed. The web of string turned to ash and blew away. She cursed again, fished more string from a pouch at her belt, and started over. “Speaking of sanctuary, I wouldn’t leave the Fiddleway for a while. The Lord Mayor is unhappy with you. I’ve seen several posters with your face and name.”

“I don’t have a name,” said Rownie. “I only have my brother’s name, made small.” He said it without any bitterness, but Vass flinched at her own words turned back on her.

“I think it’s your name, now,” she said.

“Maybe.” Rownie looked out at the River, which still flowed higher than its usual custom. “Maybe it is my name.” He made it more true by saying it aloud.

Vass got her fingers stuck in the string again. She bit back a curse, and slowly untangled her fingers. She seemed to be struggling with words as much as she struggled with the string.

“I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I’m sorry I brought the Mayor and his Captain down on you. I’m sorry about Rowan. I didn’t know what they had done to him. I really didn’t know. I thought handing you over to the Mayor wouldn’t be nearly as bad as what Graba would’ve probably done to you. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

Rownie looked at her, surprised. “Thanks,” he said.

Vass looked at him, and then looked away. “It seems like Graba might actually leave you alone. Southside didn’t flood. She’ll be happy about that, as happy as she ever gets, and she knows you had some part in it. So she’ll probably let you be.”

“Good,” said Rownie. “I’m glad I don’t have to worry so much about pigeons.”

The two of them watched the River flow beneath the Fiddleway. Then Vass gave up on her string game, and climbed down from the wall. “I’ll be here if you need anything cursed or charmed,” she said.

“Good-bye, Vass,” Rownie said. “Good luck with the cursing and charming.” He almost said Break your face instead of Good luck, but he thought she might take it wrong.

Once alone, his fingers found the pebble in his coat pocket. He set it on the wall and spun it a few times, like a top. Then he threw the pebble, just to say hello. Rownie watched his brother reach up to catch it.

He climbed down from the low wall and returned to the Clock Tower, through the stable doors that Semele had invited him to see. He returned to learn mask craft and swordplay and all the rest of his new profession. He returned to eat supper.

The tower smelled like cooking. It smelled buttery and good. It reminded him that he was hungry, that hunger followed him always and buzzed behind everything he did. It reminded him that he didn’t have to fend for himself here. He took off his brother’s old coat as he climbed the stairs and found a costume rack to hang it on. It felt strange to be without it.

Someone—probably Nonny—had put a wood stove outside the pantry and propped up a long metal pipe for a chimney. Cooking smoke climbed the pipe and rose through the tower’s workings.

Thomas stood by the stove in an apron. He spooned several dollops of dough onto a flat metal skillet. Semele sat nearby with a book in her hands and her feet on a stool, toes pointed at the stove to soak up its warmth. Nonny, Patch, and Essa all sprawled on the floor, playing cards. Thomas looked up at the boy, grunted, and scooped a finished flatbread onto a plate.

“Don’t burn your fingers,” the old goblin said.

Rownie took the plate and sat down with the rest of his troupe. His fingers twitched and his mouth watered, but he waited for his supper to cool.