No, the dippers were no problem. He did his best for them when he could. Life itself had beaten them so hard that they had no strength left to beat up anyone else. That was helpful. When people found out that you were a goblin, all you could expect was trouble.

He remembered what the people in the villages had shouted at him when he was small and the word would be followed by a stone.

Goblin. It was a word with an ox-train-load of baggage. It didn’t matter what you said or did, or made, the train ran right over you. He’d shown them the things he’d built, and the stones had smashed them while the villagers screamed at him like hunting hawks and shouted more words.

That had stopped on the day Pastor Oats rode gently into town, if a bunch of hovels and one street of stamped mud could be called a town, and he had brought… forgiveness. But on that day, no one had wanted to be forgiven.

In the darkness, Concrete the troll, who was so gooned out on Slab, Slice, Sleek and Slump, and who would even snort iron filings if Nutt didn’t stop him, whimpered on his mattress.

Nutt lit a fresh candle and wound up his home-made dribbling aid. It whirred away happily, and made the flame go horizontal. He paid attention to his work. A good dribbler never turned the candle when he dribbled; candles in the wild, as it were, almost never dripped in more than one direction, which was away from the draught. No wonder the wizards liked the ones he made; there was something disconcerting about a candle that appeared to have dribbled in every direction at once. It could put a man off his stroke[5].

He worked fast, and was putting the nineteenth well-dribbled candle in the delivery basket when he heard the clank of a tin can being bowled along the stone floor of the passage.

‘Good morning, Mister Trev,’ he said, without looking up. A moment later an empty tin can landed in front of him, on end, with no more ceremony than a jigsaw piece falling into place.

‘How did you know it was me, Gobbo?’

‘Your leitmotif, Mister Trev. And I’d prefer Nutt, thank you.’

‘What’s one o’ them motifs?’ said the voice behind him.

‘It is a repeated theme or chord associated with a particular person or place, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt, carefully placing two more warm candles in the basket. ‘I was referring to your love of kicking a tin can about. You seem in good spirits, sir. How went the day?’

‘You what?’

‘Did Fortune favour Dimwell last night?’

‘What are you on about?’

Nutt pulled back further. It could be dangerous not to fit in, not to be helpful, not to be careful. ‘Did you win, sir?’

‘Nah. Another no-score draw. Waste of time, really. But it was only a friendly. Nobody died.’ Trev looked at the full baskets of realistically dribbled candles.

‘That’s a shitload you’ve done there, kid,’ he said kindly.

Nutt hesitated again, and then said, very carefully, ‘Despite the scatological reference, you approve of the large but unspecified number of candles that I have dribbled for you?’

‘Blimey, what was that all about, Gobbo?’

Frantically, Nutt sought for an acceptable translation. ‘I done okay?’ he ventured.

Trev slapped him on the back. ‘Yeah! Good job! Respect! But you gotta learn to speak more proper, you know. You wu’nt last five minutes down our way. You’d probably get a half-brick heaved at yer.’

‘That has, I mean ’as been known to… ’appen,’ said Nutt, concentrating.

‘I never seen why people make such a to-do,’ said Trev generously. ‘So there were all those big battles? So what? It was a long time ago and a long way away, right, an’ it’s not like the trolls and dwarfs weren’t as bad as you lot, ain’t I right? I mean, goblins? What was that all about? You lot jus’ cut throats and nicked stuff, right? That’s practically civilized in some streets round here.’

Probably, Nutt thought. No one could have been neutral when the Dark War had engulfed Far Uberwald. Maybe there had been true evil there, but apparently the evil was, oddly enough, always on the other side. Perhaps it was contagious. Somehow, in all the confusing histories that had been sung or written, the goblins were down as nasty cowardly little bastards who collected their own earwax and were always on the other side. Alas, when the time came to write their story down, his people hadn’t even had a pencil.

Smile at people. Like them. Be helpful. Accumulate worth. He liked Trev. He was good at liking people. When you clearly liked people, they were slightly more inclined to like you. Every little helped.

Trev, though, seemed genuinely unfussed about history, and had recognized that having someone in the vats who not only did not try to eat the tallow but also did most of his work for him and, at that, did it better than he could be bothered to do it himself, was an asset worth protecting. Besides, he was congenially lazy, except when it came to foot-the-ball, and bigotry took too much effort. Trev never made too much effort. Trev went through life on primrose paths.

‘Master Smeems came looking for you,’ said Nutt. ‘I sorted it all out.’

‘Ta,’ said Trev, and that was that. No questions. He liked Trev.

But the boy was standing there, just staring at him, as if trying to work him out.

‘Tell you what,’ Trev said. ‘Come on up to the Night Kitchen and we’ll scrounge breakfast, okay?’

‘Oh no, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt, almost dropping a candle. ‘I don’t think, sorry, fink, I ought to.’

‘Come on, who’s going to know? And there’s a fat girl up there who cooks great stuff. Best food you ever tasted.’

Nutt hesitated. Always agree, always be helpful, always be becoming, never frighten anyone.

‘I fink I will come with you,’ he said.

There’s a lot to be said for scrubbing a frying pan until you can see your face in it, especially if you’ve been entertaining ideas of gently tapping someone on the head with it. Glenda was not in the mood for Trev when he came up the stone steps, kissed her on the back of the neck and said cheerfully, ‘ ’ullo, darlin’, what’s hot tonight?’

‘Nothing for the likes of you, Trevor Likely,’ she said, batting him away with the pan, ‘and you can keep your hands to yourself, thank you!’

‘Not bin keeping somethin’ warm for your best man?’

Glenda sighed. ‘There’s bubble and squeak in the warming oven and don’t say a word if anyone catches you,’ she said.

‘Just the job for a man who’s bin workin’ like a slave all night!’ said Trev, patting her far too familiarly and heading for the ovens.

‘You’ve been at the football!’ snapped Glenda. ‘You’re always at the football! And what kind of working do you call that?’

The boy laughed, and she glared at his companion, who backed away quickly as though from armour-piercing eyes.

‘And you boys ought to wash before you come up here,’ she went on, glad of a target that didn’t grin and blow kisses at her. ‘This is a food-preparation area!’

Nutt swallowed. This was the longest conversation he’d ever had with a female apart from Ladyship and Miss Healstether and he hadn’t even said anything.

‘I assure you, I bath regularly,’ he protested.

‘But you’re grey!’

‘Well, some people are black and some people are white,’ said Nutt, almost in tears. Oh, why had he, why had he left the vats? It was nice and uncomplicated down there, and quiet, too, when Concrete hadn’t been on the ferrous oxide.

‘It doesn’t work like that. You’re not a zombie, are you? I know they do their best, and none of us can help how we die, but I’m not having all that trouble again. Anyone might get their finger in the soup, but rolling around in the bottom of the bowl? That’s not right.’

‘I am alive, miss,’ said Nutt helplessly.

‘Yes, but a live what, that’s what I’d like to know.’