House of Many Ways (Howl's Moving Castle 3)

“Let him out,” Timminz said. “Let him speak.”

Peter nodded at Charmain. She took her hand away from the bottom of the bag and stopped doing what she hoped was her spell. Rollo instantly fell through on to the floor, where he sat spitting out milky ends of embroidery wool and old crumbs and glaring at Peter.

I really did some magic! I kept him in there! Charmain thought.

“You see what they’re like?” Rollo said angrily. “Bag a person up and fill his mouth with stale fuzz so that he can’t answer back while they tells lies about him!”

“You can answer now,” Timminz said. “Did you get a crock of gold from the lubbock for setting us at odds with the wizard?”

“How could I have done?” Rollo asked virtuously. “No kobold would be seen dead talking to a lubbock. You all know that!”

Quite a crowd of kobolds had gathered around by now—at a safe distance from Waif—and Rollo waved dramatic arms at them.

“Bear witness!” he said. “I’m victim of a pack of lies!”

“Go and search his grotto, some of you,” Timminz ordered.

Several kobolds set off at once. Rollo jumped to his feet. “I’ll go with you!” he cried out. “I’ll prove there’s nothing there!”

Rollo had gone three steps when Waif seized him by the back of his blue jacket and bumped him to the floor again. She stayed there, teeth in Rollo’s jacket, frayed tail wagging, with one ear cocked toward Charmain, as if to say, “Didn’t I do well?”

“You did wonderfully well,” Charmain told her. “Good dog.”

Rollo shouted, “Call it off! It’s hurting my back!”

“No. You can stay there until they come back from searching your grotto,” Charmain said. Rollo folded his arms and sat looking righteous and sulky. Charmain turned to Timminz. “Is it all right to ask you who wants such a big clock? While we wait,” she explained, seeing Peter shaking his head at her.

Timminz looked up at the vast pieces of clock. “Crown Prince Ludovic,” he said, with a gloomy sort of pride. “He wanted a whopper for Castel Joie.” Gloom swallowed up his pride. “He hasn’t paid us a penny yet. He never does pay. When you think how rich he is—”

He was interrupted by the kobolds coming back at a run. “Here it is!” they shouted. “Is this it? It was under his bed!”

The kobold in front was carrying the crock in both arms. It looked like an ordinary clay pottery crock, the kind someone might use to make a stew in an oven, except that it had a sort of glow around it, in faint rainbow colors.

“That’s the one,” Peter said.

“Then what do you think he did with the gold?” the kobold asked.

“What do you mean, what did I do with the gold?” Rollo demanded. “That there pot was stuffed full—” He stopped, realizing he was giving himself away.

“It isn’t now. Take a look if you don’t believe me,” the other kobold retorted. He dumped the crock down between Rollo’s outstretched legs. “This is just how we found it.”

Rollo bent to look inside the pot. He uttered a cry of grief. He plunged his hand into it and brought out a handful of dry, yellow leaves. Then he brought out another handful, and another, until he had both hands inside the empty crock and was sitting surrounded in dead leaves.

“It’s gone!” he howled. “It’s turned into dead leaves! That lubbock cheated me!”

“So you admit the lubbock paid you to make trouble?” Timminz said.

Rollo scowled up sideways at Timminz. “I don’t admit to anything, except that I’ve been robbed.”

Peter coughed. “Ahem. I’m afraid the lubbock cheated him worse than that. It laid its eggs in him as soon as his back was turned.”

There were gasps from all round. Big-nosed kobold faces stared at Rollo, pale blue with horror, noses and all, and then turned to Peter.

“It’s true. We both saw it,” Peter said.

Charmain nodded when they turned to her. “True,” she said.

“It’s a lie!” Rollo howled. “You’re pulling my leg!”