Grizelda by Margaret Taylor Read Free Book Online

Ogre
Relations.”
    Off they went again, down a hall that led
deeper into the building. As far as Grizelda could see, there was
nothing back here but offices. What could they have so many of them
for? Every door they passed, a goblin peeped out to get a look at
her.
    The Foreman of Ogre Relations stood up the
moment she arrived at his office.
    “How’d that get here?”
    “I don’t know,” said the messenger. “That’s
what we’re trying to find out.”
    Grizelda raised her hand. “Sir, I got
lost–”
    “Well, she can’t stay here,” the foreman
interrupted. “Somebody get the Chairman!”
    “He’s in a meeting.”
    “Then send her to the Chief of Police! Get
her out of my office!”
    The messenger took her to the Chief of Police
next, who informed them that she ought to go to the Foreman of Ogre
Relations.
    In the end they made her wait in a spare room
while they decided what to do with her.
    There was no furniture in the room, so
Grizelda sat down on the floor and folded her legs up under her. It
was bare save for an electric light and a lonely broom leaning in
the corner. She didn’t have much else to do now but reflect on what
sort of a pickle she was in. She had been dragged out of her home
by the police and as good as condemned to death, rescued by strange
little people and just as quickly jilted by them, and now she found
herself mired in goblin bureaucracy. She admitted to herself she
had little idea what was going on.
     
    “She’s gone!”
    Warden Mant looked up from his work. He’d
dismissed Calding less than half an hour ago, and just as he was
looking forward to settling down to get something done, now this.
The man who’d just burst into his office was nobody important, as
far as he knew. Just a gendarme. It sounded important, whatever the
fellow was talking about, but he wasn’t making much sense.
    Mant set down his papers. “I’m afraid I don’t
understand.”
    “Lieutenant Calding just told me to – no
matter – I was just down in the cells and the prisoner in 403 is
gone! The lock’s hanging open!”
    Mant leapt from his seat. “A prisoner’s
gone?”
    “I’ll show you!”
    Mant rushed out of his office after the
guard, his work left in a flurry that fell, for the most part, onto
the floor. His secretary looked up with a little noise, then
frowned and kept on writing.
     
     

Chapter 5
     
    Grizelda had not been sitting very long when
the door burst open and a young goblin in a police-looking uniform
came into the room. He didn’t spare any time for greeting.
    “You’re to go on trial! Hurry!” Impatient
with her efforts to get up, he grabbed on her wrist and pulled.
    “What?” She already found herself out of the
closet and running down the hall. She extracted herself from the
police officer’s grip and fell in beside him.
    “What’s going on?”
    “They just decided you’re to go on trial!
You’re already supposed to be there!”
    “What do you mean, on trial?”
    They ran out of the government building and
into the public square. On trial? She’d just escaped from one
prison and now she was going to go on trial? She gritted her teeth
when she thought of how the ratriders had abandoned her. They’d meant to lead her into the middle of the goblins. Now
what?
    The goblins didn’t take as much notice of her
this time when she went outside – something bigger was happening.
The entire population of the goblin city, it seemed, was in the
square. They were going so slowly that at first she thought they
were not moving. But they were: slowly but surely all the goblins
were filing through an arched doorway in the side of the cavern,
high and carved with goblinish script. In that river of goblins,
nobody would have noticed two small figures standing on the
banks.
    The police officer pulled Grizelda in the
other direction. “You go in the back way.”
    He led her into a much smaller tunnel off to
the side of the large, carved one. Inside it was dark. She felt