A series of scratches sounded all it once. The sour reek of sulfur barged in to rub shoulders with mould and rusted metal, and a trio of fish-oil lanterns sputtered to life. The band found themselves surrounded by scrawny kobold children—five of them, by Clay’s count—each of them wearing a pair of soot-smeared goggles, which dimmed the glow of their bright yellow eyes. Two of them were holding knives.
Fender—presumably their father—crouched opposite the door. He was no taller than Matrick’s waist, and looked like nothing so much as a scraggly rat standing on its hind legs. He was wearing goggles as well, and also, unbelievably, the exact same pyjamas as Moog, except he had a tasselled cap and pointed slippers to match. He was also hoisting a loaded crossbow with the safety sprung and three long bolts glinting in the dim light.
“Maiden’s Mercy, Fender.” Gabe raised his hands slowly. “Put that thing away.”
“Is nice, yes?” The kobold gave the crossbow a loving pat, which rattled the bolts and set the trigger wire trembling. Clay went rigid, Gabriel flinched, while Moog and Matrick each tried to place themselves in front of the other and ended up in an awkward embrace.
“Fender!” shouted Gabriel.
“Sorry me, sorry me.” The kobold set the weapon aside without resetting the safety, which prompted Clay to wonder if he even knew it existed. He pushed the goggles up onto his forehead, his yellow eyes glowing bright in the gloom. “Why come you now? Is late night. Fender and chittens were sleep-dreaming.”
Clay squinted into the shadows, assessing the room. The place was a hovel, but not the cozy hovel of the sort inhabited by poets and scribes, crammed with bookshelves, candles, and antique curios. Nor was it the sparse kind of hovel, occupied by little more than a ragged blanket and a straw-stuffed mattress: It was a kobold’s hovel, and that meant shithole.
He caught sight of several small nests in the far corner of the room, presumably what Fender and his children (or chittens, as the kobold called them) employed as beds. The rest of the cramped space was given over to what could best be described as entirely useless junk. Among the many pointless treasures was an old bronze helmet with the skull staved in, the tarnished silver frame of a broken mirror, a box of assorted cutlery, and dozens of jars and cans filled to spilling with copper pennies, brass buttons, and just about anything else that might catch a kobold’s eye.
Gabe swiped a strand of dirty blond hair from his eyes. “I left some money with you a while back. A big bag of coins.”
The kobold cocked its head, wrinkling its pink nose and twitching its mangled whiskers. “Shiny?”
“Yes, shiny. Lots of shiny, for you to keep safe while I was gone, remember?”
“Yes, yes. Fender remembers. Fender hope Good Gabe Good fall in hole and die. That way shiny keep to Fender.” Despite the ugly sentiment, the kobold’s words carried no animosity at all, just plain old wishful thinking.
Clay flashed Gabriel a skeptical glance. “A friend of yours, huh?”
“I didn’t fall in a hole, Fender. Sorry.”
The kobold sniffed. “Too bad.”
“Yeah. Well, no, but—” Gabriel faltered. “Listen, I need the shiny, okay? All of it. Can you get it for me, please?”
“Yes, yes. You wait.” He scurried away, bounding over the crossbow and scaling the hovel’s crumbling plaster wall with alarming dexterity before disappearing through a hole in the ceiling.
While he was gone Clay took a moment to survey the kobolds’ dingy quarters. He made his way toward the back, picking his way carefully around piles of rubbish. He saw a rusted brazier topped by a charred metal grille that served double duty as both a cooking appliance and a heat source. There were two tin buckets, one for discarded bones and offal, and a second whose contents made the first bucket look appetizing by comparison. A scrap of breeze-blown rag served as a curtain for what was either a window or a sizable hole in the wall.
He looked again at the nests crowding one corner. They were made primarily of straw and cloth scraps, but each had been decorated by its occupant according to their taste. Oddly, one of them was festooned with bent knives and broken arrow shafts. When Clay knelt to examine it, one of Fender’s so-called chittens yelped and leapt inside it, then bared its teeth at Clay and hissed.
“His name is Shortknife,” said Gabriel. “He’s a bit … strange.”
Clay stood and backed off slowly. “You know their names?” he asked.
Gabriel nodded. “That’s Cowlick, Boneriddle, Sharptongue,” he pointed each out as he named them, and then glanced down at the one nuzzling his leg. “And this is Shyeye.”
“Since when are you on a first-name basis with bloody kobolds?” asked Matrick.
“And why trust one with your shin—” Clay caught himself before the word shiny left his mouth, but barely. “With holding on to coin?” he finished.
“You’ve seen kobold lairs,” said Gabriel. “They hoard any-and everything that glitters, and they never spend it.”
True enough, Clay had to admit. Kobolds might be filthy, but most were filthy rich. The concept of coins as currency was utterly lost on them. If something didn’t shine, gleam, or sparkle, then it held little value outside of bartering for something that did. You could trade a brass ring to a kobold in exchange for a healthy horse and the kobold would think it came out on top.
“I met Fender a few years back,” Gabriel explained. “I had a gig to drive a clan of urskin from part of the sewer, and there turned out to be more of them than my employer let on. A lot more. Fender and Oozilk hid me for a while. They even helped cure me of a poison the frogmen used on their arrows.”
“Oozilk?” Moog asked.
“His wife,” said Gabriel, and then cast around as if only now realizing she wasn’t there.
Clay heard a thud overhead. Bits of plaster and chips of rotted wood rained down. Followed by the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor above them.
“Anyway, I solved their urskin problem, and then vouched for them when they made the move from sewer to city, so I guess you could say we trust one another. Before heading out for Coverdale I left everything I’d earned these past few years with Fender.”
Everything he’d earned came plummeting through the hole in the roof, thankfully contained in a tied-off sack that landed with a heavily clinking thump. Fender came down after it, dangling by his claws for a moment before dropping lightly onto the sack. He sprang off it, and dragged it with two hands across the grimy floor. The chitten named Shortknife watched it greedily, the way a human child might watch an elaborate dessert paraded out after supper.
“Shiny here,” Fender grumbled, abandoning his burden at Gabriel’s feet.
Gabe found half a smile somewhere. “Thank you, Fender. Hey, where is Oozilk?”
“Not here,” the kobold said quickly. “Gone.”
“Gone?” And there went the half smile. “Gone where?”
Fender made a groaning sound that reminded Clay of the one Griff made whenever Clay ordered the little dog off the bed. The kobold’s torch-bright eyes seemed to gutter when he spoke next. “Oozilk get in fight-scrap at give-take.”
“Give-take?” asked Moog.
“The market,” said Gabriel distractedly. “She got in a fight at the market. Go on, Fender. When was this?”
“Ah, year back, year back. Oozilk tooth-bite merchant-man, merchant-man send club-goons, club-goons take Oozilk. Fender try and fight-scrap club-goons, but they make warning: Take Oozilk, or take chittens. So Oozilk gone.”
“Gone where?” Gabriel asked. “Where did they take her? Back to the sewer?”
“No sewer,” answered Fender, then pointed a crooked finger at the south wall, beyond which lay the sluggish river and the colossal arena floating upon it. “To noise-bowl.”
Clay was only half-surprised to see the carriage still waiting for them when he and his bandmates emerged from the alley. The driver looked just as relieved to see them, since his akra were growing restless. Both of them were bright red now, and whining like chicks awaiting the worm.