City of Lies (11 page)

She scratched her arm, wondering if there were fleas in the blanket that Pounce had given her, and looked at the letters again.

They must mean
some
thing. Toadspit wouldn’t have left a message unless it was important.

“Green cat,” she whispered, gazing at the fire. “Green … cat.”

And then it came to her. Her first day in Spoke—the day when she saw the man in the horse mask and the old woman selling meat scraps. And a cloak as green as a parrot …

She traced the letters again. But this time, with her pulse thundering in her ears, she added words.

GREEN CLOAK. CAT MASK.

On the other side of the little room, the fire sputtered and flared. The cat blinked in a satisfied way, as if Goldie were a kitten that had at last done something clever.

“I’m going to find her. I’m going to find that woman,” whispered Goldie, so quietly that she could barely hear her own voice.

Then she scrubbed out the words she had written, wrapped herself in the blanket and lay back down, impatient for the morning.

Why was it, wondered Sinew, that the museum saved its worst shiftings and shufflings for midnight or later? Here he was, sitting on the long balcony of the Lady’s Mile, playing the sliding notes of the First Song on his harp and yawning so hugely that he thought he might split in half.

He could hear Herro Dan in the hall below him, stroking the wall and singing the same strange tune, a tune that came from the very beginning of time, before there were human throats to shape it.
“Ho oh oh-oh,”
sang the old man.
“Mm mm oh oh oh-oh oh.”

All around the keepers, the rooms surged and fretted. The
tall-masted sailing ships that lay stranded on their sides in Rough Tom groaned, as if their planks were being torn apart by a storm. In Old Mine Shafts, the ground gaped in a dozen new fissures. A flood of wild music poured up from deep within the earth, as hot as lava.

Broo sat at Sinew’s elbow, his little white head cocked to one side, his single black ear pricked. Strange things were stirring in the Museum of Dunt, things that surprised even Herro Dan and Olga Ciavolga. Whatever was happening to the children, the museum
really
didn’t like it.

But the First Song was a powerful tool, and before long the wild music and the rooms began to settle. Sinew played for a few minutes more, then laid down his harp, leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.

“That was a bad one,” he murmured to Broo. He yawned. “I hope Morg finds the children soon. I know they’re brave and resourceful, but I can’t help worrying about them—”

A growl interrupted him—a growl far too deep and threatening to have come from a little white dog. Before he even opened his eyes, Sinew knew what he would see.

Back in the early days of Dunt, idle-cats, slommerkins and brizzlehounds had roamed the peninsula, causing the new settlers to tremble in their beds. But that was five hundred years ago, and the idle-cats and slommerkins were long gone, hunted to extinction.

The brizzlehounds were gone too, every single one of
them—except for Broo. He did not look dangerous, not when he was small. But when he was big …

Sinew gazed up at the great black hound that loomed above him. “What’s the matter?” he said quickly.

Broo’s nostrils flared. His ruby-red eyes flashed. His voice, when he spoke, was like the rumble of approaching thunder. “I smell something. Something GGGGRRRR-ROTTEN!”

Sinew jumped to his feet, his tiredness forgotten. “Where?” he said. The smell hit him like a bucket of slops, and he pinched his nose in disgust. “Great whistling pigs! You’re right, it’s awful.”

He leaned over the balcony. “Dan,” he shouted. “What’s that stink?”

Herro Dan sniffed the air, and his eyes widened with shock.

“What?” said Sinew. “What is it?”

The old man shook his head. “I don’t believe it! Where’d it come from? Musta been tucked away in a corner somewhere, sleepin’ all these hundreds of years—”

“What?”

But it was Broo who answered. Every hair on his back was bristling, and his eyes glowed with rage. “It is a SLOMMERKIN! There is a SLOMMERRRRRRKIN loose in the museum!”

G
oldie and the cat emerged from the sewers next morning to find that everything had changed. The streets of Spoke were festooned with flags and banners and thronged with people. No one was going to work. Instead, they hung around the food carts buying revolting-looking drinks, and pies made in the shape of tiny coffins.

Most of the street signs had disappeared, and the ones that were left had been turned around or swapped. An underground kitchen had a notice above its door saying
BARBER
. A barber’s shop was made up to look like a kitchen. As Goldie
walked past, a masked man darted out and thrust a cake into her hand.

“Some breakfast for you, boy,” he said.

Goldie inspected the cake. It looked nice enough. She took a bite and immediately spat it out again. “There’s hair in it!”

“No there’s not,” said the man. And he trotted back into his shop, chortling loudly.

Nearly everyone Goldie saw was wearing a mask, and many of them wore huge, elaborate costumes as well. A group of people dressed as the Seven Gods capered in the middle of the road. Great Wooden attacked passersby with a papier-mâché hammer. The Weeping Lady laughed. The Black Ox (which was really just two boys in costume) lay down in the middle of the street and rolled on its back like a puppy.

They’re mocking the Gods!
Goldie thought nervously.
And none of them are even flicking their fingers!

But gradually she realized that what Pounce had told her was right. During the Festival, everything was turned back to front and upside down. Women were disguised as men and men were disguised as women. They staged pretend battles in the street, or walked everywhere backward, or dressed as plague victims and collapsed on the cobblestones, groaning horribly. They fell in love with stray dogs, and when the dogs barked at them, they cried, “Oh, my beloved, how sweetly you sing!”

The cat stalked through it all with an air of calm superiority. But the nameless streets and the noisy, surging crowds soon had Goldie completely lost. She stopped on a corner and stared around in frustration.

“I’m trying to find the street where I saw that mask stall,” she said to the cat.

The cat gazed up at her. “Hhhhow?”

“Exactly. How?” said Goldie, who was growing used to the odd way the cat talked to her. “Everything’s changed. I can’t trust
any
thing!”

In the back of her mind, the little voice whispered,
This way
.

Goldie smiled. It was true that she couldn’t trust anything in this mad city while the Festival lasted. But she could trust what was inside her.

This way
, whispered the little voice again, and within ten minutes it had led her where she wanted to go.

The street in question was even more crowded than it had been the day before yesterday. A man sat in a second-story window, banging saucepans with a giant spoon. The noise was awful. “Maestro!” screamed the crowd. “More, more!”

Several people offered Goldie delicious-looking cakes and drinks, but she refused them all. She and the cat walked up and down the street twice before they found the stall they were looking for.

There was a crush of people around it, grabbing at the
different sorts of masks that were for sale. Quignog, horse, dog, cockerel, slommerkin … and
cat
. The buyers shouted and laughed at each other. An argument erupted between a dog and a slommerkin. Goldie squeezed past them and found herself pressed against a wooden table.

The young woman who owned the stall was holding on to it, trying to stop it from wobbling. People thrust coins at her and she snatched at them one-handed. The coins fell past her fingers and rolled to the ground.

“Roughly now,” she cried, her voice anxious. “Jiggle the table, please, and throw your money anywhere you like. Don’t worry about me and my livelihood.”

Goldie stared at her. Why was she saying such things? Surely she didn’t mean them!

Then she realized. Everything the stall owner said was a lie. She was really begging her customers to be careful.

But her customers took no notice. They pushed and jostled and bumped. The table rocked. The pile of dog masks teetered … and fell.

They were only papier-mâché, and they would have been crushed underfoot in an instant. But Goldie dived toward them and grabbed them just in time. She was pressed from every side, but she kept hold of the masks until she could pile them safely back on the table.

The stall owner flashed her a worried smile. “Curses on you, boy. That was
badly
done.”

“What?” said Goldie. “Oh.” Of course, the woman was
thanking
her in a back-to-front sort of way.

Goldie grinned and ducked under the table, digging between the cobblestones for the coins that had fallen there. When she had a handful, she dropped them in the woman’s pocket and went back for more.

At last all the masks were sold. The stall owner stepped away from her table with a sigh of relief. “By the Seven,” she said, “that was even quieter than last year. They’re a well-behaved lot, the citizens of Spoke. Never create a moment of trouble for us working folk.”

Goldie laughed and handed over the rest of the coins. The woman’s teeth showed in a wide smile beneath her mask. “Whereas you, boy,” she said, “are a scoundrel. The worst I’ve met for some time.”

Her dark hair had tumbled out of its combs and she pinned it back as she talked. “Now, how can I help
you
? I suppose you’d really hate a tartlet?”

“No—I mean, yes,” said Goldie.

The young woman rummaged in a paper bag and pulled out two tartlets. The pastry was bright green, and the filling appeared to be made from dead spiders. She handed one of them to Goldie, who stared at it, remembering the hairy cake.

But the stall owner was biting into her own tartlet with obvious satisfaction. “Disgusting,” she murmured.

Goldie took a tiny bite. The green pastry was sweet and crumbly. The dead spider jam melted on her tongue. “Mm,” she said. “That’s—um—really horrible.”

The woman beamed at her. The cat wound its gaunt body around her legs, peering up hopefully.

“Is that gorgeous-looking creature with you?” said the woman. She dug in the paper bag and pulled out another tartlet. “Here,” she said to the cat, tearing the tartlet in half and dropping one of the pieces on the ground. “You’ll hate this. Not a drop of cream in it.”

The cat crouched over the morsel, lapping at the cream and purring loudly. Goldie tried to work out how she could ask for help, when everything she said had to be a lie.

But before she could gather her thoughts, the woman grabbed her arm. “Stay where you are! It’s not Dreamers!” And she pulled Goldie to one side, just in time to avoid three girls who were dancing down the street.

Their clothes were ragged and their faces were thin, but the girls laughed and flirted with invisible companions, as if they were at a grand ball. The air around them fizzed.

Everyone in the street stopped what they were doing and watched with looks of envy on their faces. The cat’s head turned from side to side, as if it could see things that no one else could see.

“Who are they?” said Goldie as the girls danced past.

“They’re not caught up in a Big Lie, poor things,” the
young woman said with a sigh. “Someone asked the wrong question, they gave
completely
the wrong answer, and now look at them. For a day and a night the city hasn’t woven them into the skein of its dreams. They’ve escaped their normal life of luxury and pleasure and gone somewhere
horribly
boring.”

One of the girls nearly bumped into a coffin-cake stall, but the stall owner took her arm and gently pushed her toward the middle of the street. She danced away without looking at him.

“Can’t they see us?” said Goldie.

“Oh yes,” said the young woman airily. “They can see everything that’s going on around them. A Big Lie isn’t the least bit convincing when you’re in it. I’d hate to catch one, myself.”