There was a pantry in the corner of the north-west-western addendum buttery of the dilapidated hall called copper ring. Inside this unassuming closet space, there was little more than moldy, drooping cupboards, full of fetid jars of decade-pickled nightshade fruits. Maybe there was also a burlap sack of withered grain tucked into a corner that had been fouled by rodents long ago.

But that pantry also had a secret, which is an unusual thing for a pantry to have; until one considered just who was most likely to have built it in the first place. So really in a way, the hidden stairwell behind the back false shelf made a lot of sense.

Would it surprise anyone that it was goblin hands that had riddled the palace walls with furtive passages, or with covert chambers too? Maybe it was goblin nature to obsessively take the ordinary, and find ways to make it fun. Surely, it was a goblin’s idea to dig that winding stair, deep into the dungeons below. But if it had been, tonight it was probably an elf’s fault that someone had to guard it.

Harvel was in deep trouble. The palace was locked down, and that was very bad for business.

He stood at the foot of a drunken, corkscrew stone ascent and huddled shoulder to shoulder with the nervous soldier he’d been bribing for weeks. She was missing teeth where a marsh-grease monitor lizard had smashed her in the face, sometime early in her career. The hairs at her temples was growing in strands of gray, and the colors on her tabard were a combination of ‘none’ and ‘rusty brown’.

“It doesn’t matter what you want or what you say, I can’t get any,” the woman hissed. Her voice would let out little whistles as she spoke through the gaps in her bite.

Harvel slicked back his oily, straight hair in frustration. He pulled a gleaming silver royal from his pocket and pressed it into the soldier’s hand. He guided her fingers to wrap around the coin. “Surely, there’s some way. Every door has a keyhole, every fortress still gets bugs. Just talk to your friend in the cullers, that’s all I ask.”

The soldier hesitated. Her face twisted in dismay, but her swamp-gray eyes kept drawing back to the coin. “There are gobs who’ve still got stashes lyin’ about. Why’ve you got to get through so bad?”

Slowly despite her protests, the woman’s hand moved towards her pocket. Shining metal tarnished honor most of all; that was just how it worked, wasn’t it?

A smile broke out on Harvel’s face as he sighed in relief. His long fingers reached under his jacket coat and withdrew a stiff little roll of parchment, tied strenuously tight with firm knots of string and a bead of sealing wax. “While you’re here, it just so happens I’m concerned about my grandmother,” the spy lied unashamedly. He waggled the missive under his accomplice’s nose. “I worry about her so. Will you see that this gets out, when the product comes in?”

The soldier gulped. She knew how the game was played, and she’d been serving for a long while. For most of that time she’d believed that a little bit of smuggling never hurt anyone. Besides, every professional army had always needed a certain number of entrepreneurs like her. And she’d run her racket honest enough for a criminal. A gob could make perfectly good coin running basic contraband, without ever rustling their conscience. But now? Looking at that letter, she knew that it was more important than any of the cheap vices that Harvel was asking her to deliver.

She was starting to fear what she had gotten into.

“[What Was That]?” the soldier startled.

Harvel’s head swiveled about. Then he raised an eyebrow and scoffed. “What was what?” he chuckled.

“Don’t be stupid,” the woman hissed. She pinched her own ear and tugged at it. “I mean [What Was That]. Now I’ve got [Jitters], plus I [Smell Trouble] coming.”

His laugh died. He’d heard it too. The echoes of it were far and faint, but [Eavesdrop] caught a familiar sound rising in the distance. He tried to disbelieve it. It was unmistakable.

“Go, go!” growled the soldier. She shoved at Harvel, hard.

“Everything’s locked. Where am I gonna go? Tell me there’s another fucking tunnel, Cuin.”

“I don’t know!” the woman panicked.

Harvel glanced towards the spiraled ascent. Neither of the two goblins suggested the way upwards as an option.

“Boot-scat. Can’t you call it in? Find out what he’s doing here?”

“Whaddya mean, him? It’s him, him? He’s real? I thought that was a joke.”

“Use the thing!”

“I can’t talk through my end, it don’t work that way. It’s just an alarm!”

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Slap, thump. Slap, thump. Slap, thump.

“Hey kid,” wheezed Rhode Mortimer Irving as his great hulking body filled the entire frame of the doorway. “Seriously, I can’t fit easy through these tunnels. Why are you taking me literally the smallest way. Dang.”

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The little page Eintirp-Wan was sulking. The Hero had demanded she put her very cool knife away, so she had pushed ahead impatiently. But the homunculus was too big, he kept getting stuck. How should she have known that would happen? He should try being smaller.

Eintirp stopped with a loud groan. They were already almost at the kinda-secret stairwell (as opposed to the super-secret one). The page tapped her grandmother’s [Moon-Song Bird], and it flew ahead, illuminating a pair of unfamiliar goblins. Eintirp waved at them, and turned around to help the Hero through.

Goodman Irving slid down onto his butt to get low. Then he got frustrated and passed his crutches through first (even though they nearly tipped Eintirp over). Heaving like a fat person in summertime, the Hero turned sideways and tipped a bit, his huge hands and brutish fingers gripping the stone on the other side to pull his body through the door.

“If I pull some stitches, I’m gonna be so mad,” the hero growled as he hauled himself back off the floor. “But really. This ceiling really is built way low here. Right? I’m not imagining it?”

“Yea, ‘cause it’s for goblins,” Eintirp rolled her eyes. “Duh.”

Goodman Irving halted as he saw the guards ahead. They looked like they were arguing, but then one of them raised up a hand. The homunculus’ head slowly inclined in greeting.

“As opposed to who else?”

It was a dumb thing to ask.

Eintirp toddled back towards the Hero. “Shhh,” she beckoned. She cupped her hands around her mouth and whispered. “Sometimes we have stuff that elves is not s’posed to see. It’s secret.”

The Hero pinched his lips together and glowered thoughtfully – so maybe he wasn’t completely stupid. Then he tucked his crutches under his arm and rose to a stooped hunch.

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Harvel wore the fakest, most [Disarming Smile] that he was capable of as he watched Krevinkya’s dreadful homunculus drag itself towards him through the last section of the tunnel. The goblin spy’s knees felt weak, and there were droplets of perspiration forming at his hairline. He wondered if a rabbit ever felt like this: helplessly watching a snake crawl down its burrow.

“Halt!” called out Goode Soldier Cuin, which was technically exactly what she should do. She raised a red-hued lantern in her off-hand, and touched a cudgel at her belt with the other.

“Move aside there soldier!” cried out the little goblin as she stomped imperiously towards them. “By order of me! I got a Hero and that makes me important, that’s the rules!”

Soldier Cuin glanced at Harvel and then slowly, dubiously raised a salute. The page crisply snapped to match it.

“Oh, hey!” rumbled the monster jovially. It hid a wince as it rubbed at its side. “Harvel, right? You’re the guy that fixes the air vents! We met at breakfast, I guess a couple days ago.”

“Oh? Salt in your dish, and Ash in your soil. Y-you remember me, Ser Rhode?” the spy brightly replied.

“Of course, man. I pretty much would literally die if those things broke down,” laughed The Dreadlung. “I bet you’ve been working like crazy since I showed up.”

Harvel twitched. “What do you mean? I was just filling in for a friend, Ser. I do odd jobs here and there sometimes: help out, now and again.”

The creature leaned its weight against one side of the wall, [Bellows] heavy at work while he rested. “Really? I just figured it because I’ve seen you around a lot. Since my room is kind of tucked in the middle of nowhere –”

“Sorry Ser, you’ve seen me?” Harvel paled.

“Yea, man,” laughed the homunculus relaxedly. “I mean, come on. Because you had the green first, but you switched to the yellow and then the brown. Everybody down here wears the same exact colors every day. There’s like five people tops who change outfits around in this place.”

“How unusual, Ser,” died Harvel inside as Goodwife Cuil glared at him.

Rhode stuck out a hand towards the soldier and paused. “Hi, uh, sorry. Do I say goodmiss or goodwife when I – like, how am I supposed to know?”

Cuil stared at the reassembled, jigsaw slab of meat that was extended towards her. “It’s just a backward thing we say. Old days, it used to matter if girls was married, but it don’t matter now. Now you just look at her, and if she old you say wife, and if she young you say miss.”

The creature squinted. “Thank you, goode…miss?”

There wasn’t much room, but Harvel took what he could get. His only movement technique was basic, but it had kept him safe his whole career. One [Humble Step] took him aside, and his presence shrunk out of direct attention. The method was hardly foolproof: social stealth was always a specialized discipline, and [Humbled] levels in particular had a very specific application.

Harvel wished he could [Blend With Crowd] somehow; tap into his best level. But he needed moving figures and faces to make it work; shadows could substitute, but motion was the key.

“Okay, Cuin. Nice to meet you,” he heard. Without warning, the homonculus snapped his fingers loudly, and Harvel froze. “Ow. Damn. OW,” it roared. “Just a second, man – hold up. I’ve got a question for you.”

It sucked on its finger and thumb, and dark blood stained its lips. “Okay, that was dumb. But I wanted to ask you, man. It’s something I’ve been curious about. You called me Ser. Why’d you do that?”

Harvel blinked. “What do you mean, Ser?”

“Well it’s just… I’m not a knight, right?”

“No.”

“And I’m not an elf? Right?”

“Gods, I don’t think so,” Harvel nervously chuffed.

“Okay. So, I don’t think I understand what it means. I’m noticing that more and more, now: things I expect to be a certain way and they’re not. Now I figure Ser is something different than what I thought it was. So. What does it actually mean?”

Harvel looked up at the monster standing over him, its eyes were open, thoughtful, and kindly – and wasn’t that a terrible lie? The spy gulped, and then he told the truth. “It’s just how we talk, Ser. It’s respect. We say it to you when we know that you can hurt us and we can’t stop you.”

“Oh,” said the monster. “Oh,” it whispered.

The spy and his accomplice stood and watched in silence as the Dreadlung crawled up the stairwell. Far too tall for its canted ceiling, the great brute hauled upwards on its side like some kind of profane hermit crab retreating into its shell. It wasn’t until the last sight of its kicking, slippered foot disappeared that they broke. Harvel collapsed onto the stone floor and Cuin chewed her finger hard enough to draw blood.

“What we gonna do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”