Chapter Fourteen: Try To Catch and Get Caught
Andrew Sparrow let out a puff from his cigar. It wasn't a habit he generally indulged in but today he was in the mood to celebrate. Business had been going well lately, very well.
He and Crane had been stealing and selling paintings all over the world at a pace they could normally only dream of. People just seemed to be extra eager to get their hands on priceless paintings these days and Sparrow and Crane were happy to provide.
At this point not even Artemis Fowl could bother Sparrow. He had recently learned that the assassin Crane had hired to go after him had not only failed at her mission but had also managed to get herself killed. Sparrow wasn't clear on the details but he presumed that Fowl's massive bodyguard had been the one to take care of her. It was no matter though, Fowl had been particularly inactive lately and now they were saved from having to pay the assassin's fee.
Just then Crane came in looking rather anxious. "We have a call on the phone."
Sparrow quirked an eyebrow. "So? Just pick it up, it's not going to bite."
"No you idiot, not the regular phone, the other phone."
Sparrow immediately straightened and put out his cigar. This was bound to be important. Several months ago he and Crane had received an extremely unusual-looking video phone in the mail. Since then they had received only three calls on it but they had all been well worth their while. Somehow the person who called always seemed to know in great detail what deals they were in the middle of and would tell them exactly where they should make their next move. Sparrow and Crane didn't know who it was that always called them, but they had made a great deal of money thanks to him.
Crane picked up the phone and turned on the screen. There on it were the same mysterious eyes that they always saw and always seemed to have such a hypnotic effect on them. Sparrow and Crane sat down to await their instructions.
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Holly had always been proud of her LEP record but she had recently discovered that the good reputation that went with it did have its disadvantages. She had hoped to be able to get more information about the Jalingers at some of the criminal hot spots of Haven's seedier districts but, as she had discovered throughout the past week, any information that might have helped her tended to dry up when Holly got there. If she was lucky that would be all that would happen but today Holly Short was not getting much by way of luck.
She was currently hanging upside-down from the ceiling of a charming condemned building waiting for a pack of stupid but strong goblins to decide what to do with her. The plus side of this situation was that it gave her time to reflect. If she survived this ordeal it would come in handy to recall what she had done wrong at a later date.
It probably would have been a good idea to have worn a disguise, all cops whether they were currently on the force or not tended to create an air of distrust and Holly had an especially impressive record for getting such people as her current captures thrown in prison. It also might have helped if she had had a better plan of action than "wing it" for how she would get the information she was looking for. As it was that day, Holly had only been able to manage fifteen minutes before she had been ganged up on, tied up, and hung in her current position.
Holly began mentally cursing herself for her stupidity in taking Estella's suggestion that they split up. However she soon stopped her self-berating, right now she had to focus if she wanted to escape.
Holly examined her bindings, they seemed to be made of freshly shed goblin skin. She knew she wouldn't be able to just wriggle out of them but they would probably be fairly easy to cut if she could just reach file she had in her pocket. She craned her neck and looked back to the three goblins arguing in the corner, they still seemed to be unsure of what to do with her. Holly smirked, apparently she wasn't the only one who had gone into action without having a thorough plan.
"I say we fry her!" said the largest of the three. He conjured up a fireball in his hand to illustrate his point.
"Idiot!" exclaimed another. "If the LEP find her burned to a crisp they'll know it had to be goblins that did her in!"
"So what if they know?" scoffed the third who'd been feeling left out. "She deserves what she's got coming to her and it would teach those LEP goons not to mess with us."
Holly smiled slightly grimly, it seemed her captures were suitably preoccupied. She turned her attention back to cutting herself free.
"But what does it matter if they find out it was us? That won't scare them away it'll make them throw us in jail. I don't want to wind up in Howler's Peak."
"You know what I think Malvis? I think you're just a wimp! I had to serve a fifty year sentence up at the Peak and do you see me whining about it?"
Malvis gritted his teeth and shook his head. Sometimes hanging out with ex-cons just wasn't worth the street-cred it gave you. "I'm not saying we should wimp out on bumping her off I'm just saying we shouldn't make it so obvious that we were the ones who did it. That way we can still give the LEP a good scare but stay out of the slammer."
The larger goblin, whose name happened to be Eil, looked thoughtful for a moment, a feat most difficult for a goblin of his intellectual levels. Finally, he made his decision. "Alright, so we won't scorch her, but I want final say on how we do get rid of her, got it?"
The smallest of the group, a young up-and-comer goblin named Cyrep, would have liked to throw in booming support of the new plan so that he might gain some points with his elders but soon found that a new development would need to take precedence.
"But Eil, she's gone!"
The three hurried over to where Holly had been hanging just moments before. All that was left were the shreds of the skin they had tied her in. Eil smacked his forehead and started to hunt around the hideout.
Holly had hoped to be able to escape from the building while the goblins continued their argument but had found herself without enough time to do so as their fight had settled down. The only thing she'd been able to do was climb up a broken wall and wedge herself in a corner, hoping the goblins would be too dense to think of looking up.
Suddenly Malvis snapped his head toward an opening in one of the boarded up windows.
"There!" he said, point toward the hole. "I just saw a shadow, she must have gotten outside."
Holly breathed a quiet sigh of relief as Eil and Cyrep charged outside and prepared herself to jump down. But her sigh was soon gasped back in as she realized that Malvis was still in the room, and was staring right at her. Holly braced herself for the call that would bring the other two goblins back into the room but it never came.
"You can come down now Miss Short."
Holly stared at the goblin who stared right back. It didn't seem like he was trying to trick her but he might have been unusually intelligent for a goblin. In the end Holly's stiff joints were the deciding factor and she cautiously climbed down to the floor. Still it didn't seem that Malvis was going to try anything sneaky, in fact he looked down-right innocent now. She stared at him questioningly.
"I've heard you've been looking for information about some secret society lately," he said. "Is it the Jalingers you're worried about?"
Holly's eyes went wide. "How do you know? Do you know something about them?"
"I'll tell you soon but first we need to get out of here. Those two idiots won't be gone much longer. Follow me."
Holly hesitated for a moment but then quickly went after him as he left the room. To her surprise the goblin uncovered a hidden tunnel opening in the floor of the building and beaconed for her to follow. Holly took a deep breath and stepped through the opening. It was possible that this was all a trap but she wasn't about to give up on the first decent lead she'd been able to find.
After a few minutes of crawling in the dark Holly was glad to see a light ahead of her. Soon the tunnel widened into a small cavern and she was able to stand up again. The light she had seen turned out to be coming from a nuclear battery-powered lantern that Malvis had turned on.
Holly looked around the chamber, although there wasn't much to see. The walls were all still made of earth and it was completely barren aside from the lantern and a few other tunnel holes she could see in the walls.
"We had the dwarves among us make this cavern for our meeting," said Malvis fidgeting slightly. "We wanted to make sure you would be safe when I spoke to you but we didn't want you to see our actual headquarters in case things went poorly."
Holly stared at the goblin in shock as the pieces fell into place.
"You're a Jalinger aren't you?" she said as she started to slowly back away. Holly wasn't sure what she was going to do but she wanted to at least have some distance between them before he could make any sort of attack.
Malvis sensed her apprehension and raised his hands innocently. "You have nothing to worry about Miss Short. I just want to talk to you."
Holly narrowed her eyes, she wasn't about to trust him but if she was careful she knew she might be able to get some information from him. "Fine then, talk. Just make sure you don't get any closer to me."
The goblin sighed and sat down. "Well to start with my name is Malvis and I'm a Jalinger."
"Hi Malvis."
"It's not something I'm ashamed of Miss Short," he said hotly. "The Jalingers saved me. I was just some trouble-maker goblin doing stupid things to get a reputation in my gang. I would have wound up at Howler's Peak if they hadn't found me and helped me reform."
Holly scoffed. She had learned about the Jalingers in her history class. They hadn't been anything good. All they had ever done was cause violence, death, and destruction. Either this goblin was trying to play her for a fool or the Jalingers had taken to brainwashing their second generation of recruits.
"I know the reputation my group has," Malvis said nervously, "but there's a lot you don't understand. No one on the outside really knows what happened within the Jalingers during the first revolution. They never wanted to kill anyone but they were taken over from the inside."
Holly quirked an eyebrow, "Oh, really?"
"Look, I can tell you don't believe me so I'll leave out any specific names but this is something you need to hear." He took a deep breath. "Most history classes these days will tell you that the Jalingers had two leaders who eventually brought about the shameful massacre but that's not true. At least it wasn't at first.
"My mentors have told me that when the group first formed there was no real leader. There were only people who generally organized the meetings and kept track of any plans. The group as a whole would determine and agree upon any course of action. This system worked well for a while; everyone in the Jalingers wanted to keep things peaceful among themselves so they were generally open-minded and ready to compromise. The trouble was that when they began to gain more and more members there had to be multiple meetings in separate areas and things got difficult to manage. It was then that Evergreen and Camilla joined."
Holly sucked in her breath at the mention of what were perhaps the two most notorious names in fairy history. She had learned about them long before she had gone to school from her grandfather. He had survived the war and dealt with his trauma by ranting angrily about the Jalingers' two "evil, heartless leaders who deserved nothing less than the immediate execution they had received." Holly edged a bit closer to Malvis. She didn't want to admit it but she was beginning to get a bit drawn in by what he was saying.
"Well, those two were able to work together to manipulate the rest of the Jalingers into letting them take charge of things. They had a very deep hatred of the mud men and wanted to make the Jalingers more aggressive so that they could go to the surface more quickly. It's not known for sure but we generally believe that Camilla and Evergreen wished to take complete control of the Lower Elements and then use that power to destroy the humans."
"Well that makes sense in a twisted sort of way," said Holly. "But if the Jalingers were originally so peaceful why did they let those two psychos take power and then let them keep it?"
"Evergreen and Camilla were very clever. As they gained more authority and respect among the Jalingers they started to subtly change the group's values. Soon they had almost everyone convinced that the peaceful route they had wanted wouldn't work and that the acts of violence they committed were necessary if the Jalingers ever wanted to be able to go back to the open air that was rightful theirs."
Malvis sighed, the whole historical account seemed to be very painful for him to relate. "Well, you know that they were eventually overthrown and the group was dissolved. However, some of the Jalingers' youngest members still retained the ideals that had originally caused the group to form. Many years later they came together and began to pick up the pieces. Now the Jalingers everything they were supposed to be and all we want is to be able to show ourselves above ground without fear. Our new leader has sworn that the People shall never again be hurt because of us."
Malvis fell silent, allowing Holly to take everything in. For her part the elf wasn't sure what to think. She knew she had no reason to believe what the goblin had said but her gut told her that he was being honest. Of course she wasn't about to drop her suspicions but now there were other things to consider. The fact that he had spoken to her about all this, and considering that the cavern they were in had been dug for this specific reason Malvis probably was speaking to her on the Jalingers orders, seemed to be a good sign. If the group were up to its old tricks they would have probably just had her killed so as to avoid having their resurrection become publicly known.
Holly noticed that Malvis was still waiting for her to give him some sort of response so she racked hr brain for something neutral to say. "Why did the Jalingers keep their same name when they re-formed? It seems like that would just be asking for trouble."
Malvis smiled proudly. "We thought about changing it but decided to keep it so that we could prove something to the world. We know how shameful our history is but we want to rise above that and show everyone who the Jalingers really are. Plus, this way, no one will be able to accuse us of hiding from our past."
"How… noble of you." Holly said slowly.
Malvis sighed again. "Ms. Short, we're no trying to convert you to our cause. We just want you to understand that we're different now and to leave us alone. Please don't tell the world about us, they're not ready to know. Can you do that for us?"
"Look Malvis," she said rather irritably, "your story is a very nice one but I think you can understand why I can't just take your word for it that the Jalingers have gone straight. I'm going to have to continue my investigations and aside from all that I still have a case to solve."
"You mean the mystery of Ms. Lunos' missing father? There's no need to worry about that, as I'm sure you've guessed he's with us. It's entirely of his own free will; he decided to join the Jalingers again after one of our members approached him."
"Well I'm going to have to see him for myself to make sure of that," said Holly.
"I'm sure we can arrange that," said Malvis with a smile. "I'll let you know as soon as possible. In the meantime I have to go, my 'gang' is probably wondering where I am."
He pointed at a tunnel in the cavern. "You should take that one. It'll take you out of the goblin territory."
"I think I'll take my chances on the first tunnel," she said dryly. "At least I know where that one lets out."
Malvis shrugged and disappeared into one of the other tunnels. Once she was sure he was gone Holly went up her own tunnel, ready to get out of that dirt hole and back to her headquarters as quickly as possible.
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Unbeknownst to Holly she was not the only one in a rush to get to her detective agency. Foaly had arrived only minutes before her. He breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing his favorite elf; he had some very important news for her.
However before Foaly could even greet her Holly, between gasps for breath, began to tell him what had happened.
"So what are you going to do?" he asked once she had finished.
Holly flopped into a near-by chair and tried to sort through her thoughts. Foaly had always had a knack for getting to the point right away but for once she wished he hadn't. It had now been almost two months since Estella had first come to her and Mulch and in that time the case hadn't gotten any simpler. It seemed that at every turn she made things got more complicated. Now even the Jalingers' history, something she had taken for granted that she knew, had shifted before her eyes. Still, despite all this Holly knew she had to see this thing through to the end. She wouldn't be able to live with herself if she didn't.
Holly sighed; sometimes having high morals could be a real pain in the arse. "I suppose I'm going to have to have to wait for Malvis to contact me again. I don't what else I can do in the meantime."
Foaly was about to respond when Mulch burst in looking very frazzled. He began to speak hurriedly to Foaly but Holly was too engrossed in her thoughts to listen.
If only there were some source she could go to about all this for help. Some place where she could find all the answers she needed. Suddenly it dawned on her.
"Of course!" she said to herself excitedly. Holly started to head out of the room but a shout from Mulch stopped her in her tracks.
"Have you heard one word I've said?" he called angrily. "The Jalingers have Estella!"
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A/N: Sorry to leave you off on that cliffhanger but it was really the best chapter break I had available. You guys have no idea how thrilled I am with this story now. All the hard stuff is over and the plot developments have me at the edge of my seat. (Which is kind of pathetic considering I'm the author but I've got goose bumps now anyway). It's not just the plot that has me so excited but the general existence of this story. My goals for it right now are that it gets to be at least one hundred pages, gets one hundred reviews (that's just one of my dreams not one of those unsubtle hints that litter some of my earlier, more immature author's notes), and that it gets to be at least twenty chapters all of which seem likely to come true! Also it will be a huge achievement for me to finish this story. It is the longest, deepest, and most complex thing I've ever written. Thank you all for your encouragement.
As always I'm sorry for the delay but I'm afraid it's not going to get any better. My life is generally a very stressful one and I'm grateful whenever I have the chance to deal with writing. However I do promise that I will try to take advantage of winter break and work hard on chapter fifteen and post it as soon as possible.
Thank you once again dear readers, I could have never done all this without you.
(And also I want to thank my awesome, larger-than-life beta readers Elflover and Inkheart. This story would probably suck without you.)