turned to face them as I glided behind a sapling growing up between two boulders. It wasn’t much cover.
A couple of the auras were familiar. My goblin graffiti artists were back. And they’d brought friends.
To pick a fight? It was hard to imagine. As full-blooded magical creatures, they had to sense Zav in the cave. Unlike Dob, he wasn’t doing anything to hide his aura.
A few of the goblins shuffled down the slope, coming closer. Two females and two males came into view, stopped, and pointed at me and my tree. Then they pointed at one another. One of the females was pointed at more often, and she threw up her hands and walked closer. The elected speaker?
I activated my translation charm and hoped she understood English. If she didn’t, I would be able to understand her, but unless they had similar devices, they wouldn’t understand me.
“Mythic Murderer,” the female goblin said in guttural English, stopping about ten paces from my tree.
I hadn’t drawn Fezzik, but she glanced toward my thigh, so she knew about the weapon.
“You can call me Val.”
Goblins higher up the slope and hidden by the foliage chattered to each other too softly for my charm to pick out their words.
“I am called Work Leader Golgitha. I was chosen by my slightly cowardly kin to tell you about the dragon.”
My ears perked up. “The silver dragon?”
“Yes.” Golgitha glanced toward the cave opening—Zav must have sensed the goblins out here, but he hadn’t come out yet. “Do you seek him?”
“Yes.” I saw no reason to make a secret of that.
“He sleeps sometimes in the woods out here, but he has also been seen frequently in the water factory.”
“Water factory? Oh, the Tolt Water Treatment Facility?”
I’d biked out to it once years ago. It was at the end of the Tolt Pipeline Trail, which we weren’t that far from now. I was positive the old logging roads winding through the area could take us to it. It had been locked up the time I’d reached it, and I assumed the public wasn’t invited inside for tours. If memory served, the facility oversaw a big reservoir farther back in the foothills that supplied a lot of the water for the city.
An uneasy feeling wound through my gut as her words sank in. The water-treatment facility would be the kind of place a terrorist wanting to wreak havoc on Seattle might target. But would a dragon from another world think to mess with the city’s water supply? Maybe.
“It is a large building with many tanks and pipes of water rushing through,” Golgitha said. “I have been inside a couple of times at night on acquisitions quests.”
I gathered that meant stealing tools and materials that might be useful for goblin projects.
“But not recently. Several days ago, one of our acquisitions teams did not come back. We believe the dragon killed or captured them.” Golgitha shook her head, her full lips, yellow eyes, and bulbous nose forming a grimmer expression than I was used to seeing from goblins. “Most likely, he killed them. Their kind believe goblins have no worth.”
“I think dragons feel that way about everybody who’s not a dragon.”
“Not everybody.” Golgitha squinted at me. “You are part elf?”
“Yes, but half human too. Zav tells me humans are vermin.”
She mouthed “Zav” as if she couldn’t believe I’d called him by such an ignoble moniker, but she didn’t otherwise comment on it. “Yes, then perhaps you understand. The silver dragon hides his aura, but we have seen him flying in and out of that place. Once, he was carrying a human in his talons.”
“How long ago?”
“Three days, perhaps.”
That was when the joggers had disappeared.
“Do you have any idea what he’s doing inside?” I asked. “Just storing captives or something else? And how has nobody from the city noticed him? There’s a staff that works there, right? I’m sure it’s not completely automated.”
Actually, I wasn’t sure of that. I remembered seeing a utilities truck parked there the time I’d ridden close, but it was possible everything was automated these days and someone only came out if there was a problem. It wasn’t as if we were that far from the city.
Golgitha shook her head. “We do not know. We have discussed putting together a team to look for our missing comrades when the dragon is not there, but we worry about traps. Dragons are not as clever as goblins—” she said that with a straight face, and I imagined an eavesdropping Zav rearing up