THE WAGON STOOD IN AN OPEN stretch of grass, surrounded by graves. The gravestones were all worn and crooked, like teeth badly cared for. A single tree twisted its branches through the air nearby. Rownie could see crypts, mausoleums, and monuments packed close together near the gate, at the other end of the field where important people were buried. It looked like a small and separate city unto itself.

The rain had stopped. The clouds had broken up, and now they moved quickly. The sun was low in the sky. The air smelled like fresh mud.

“We’re spending the night here?” Rownie asked the others. Old ropes dangled from the gnarled and unfriendly looking tree. It was a hangman’s tree.

“We are, yes,” said Semele. “Tamlin cannot stay anywhere overnight within the proper city limits. Most of us, along with other sorts of Changed, camp far outside the city entirely—but we can also sleep in places that are not actually considered to be places. This is a place where living people come to visit dead people, so it will work very well as somewhere in-between and not exactly one thing or another thing.”

“Oh,” said Rownie. “What’s a Tamlin?”

“It is a more polite word than ‘goblin,’” said Semele.

“Oh,” said Rownie. “I heard that the sun will burn you up if you stay too long in one place.”

“Not so,” said Semele, “though we would become sunburned.”

The goblins began to bustle. They set up clotheslines and hung wet costumes up to dry. They built a fire and used it to boil a kettle of water. Rownie kept out of their way. He watched, and he wondered whether this was in any way a safe place to be. Not that he was accustomed to safety, but at least he knew the ways that Grubs and Graba were dangerous—or he used to believe that he knew. He thought about Grubs squinting at him with Graba’s look and calling to him with Graba’s voice. He remembered how little he actually knew about them, or their dangers.

After their bustling, the goblins all gathered together. Semele poured tea. Thomas brought out the bread basket.

“Let us see what sort of supper we can make from the materials at hand,” he said. “We have dried things and pickled things—preserved for emergencies against our starvation—and we have bread that young Kaile offered us at the Broken Wall, which was very kind of her. However, the whole of our provisions will make an unbecoming meal for artists of our stature and accomplishment.”

“Ate wild rat last winter,” said Patch.

“That was unbecoming also,” said Thomas.

“I kind of liked rat,” said Essa.

Thomas made a harrumphing noise. He took the basket around to each member of the troupe. The gentleman’s cane he carried stuck into the muddy ground a little as he walked, and he had to pull it free with every step.