City of Lies (17 page)

Beside her, the cat’s tail switched back and forth.

Goldie’s nose told her that the yard hadn’t been used by humans for years. It stank of wet feathers and fur. Of tiny battles. Of winter hunger, and the sudden spurt of hot blood.

Her ears told her … nothing at all.

Her skin prickled. A place that smelled like this should be full of small sounds. The patter of paws. The sleepy shuffle of birds. The squeal of unexpected death.

Instead, an unnatural stillness hung over the stableyard, as
if the creatures that normally lived here were holding their breath, waiting for some greater predator to leave.

What were they afraid of, she wondered. Her? The cat? Or …

“There’s someone else here, isn’t there?” she whispered to the cat. “Where are they? Can you show me?”

The cat bumped against her, then stalked away across the yard. Goldie followed, putting her feet down heel-to-silent-toe, the way she had learned in the museum. The first row of horse stalls loomed up, then the second. Goldie crept along the back of them, wondering where the cat was taking her.

Then she saw it—the faintest of lights shining through a grating.

She touched the back of the stall with her fingertips and felt a vibration, as if someone had grown tired of standing still and was shifting from one foot to the other. She stood on tiptoe and peeped through the grating.

The first thing she saw was a lantern. It hung from the ceiling of the stall, its light almost totally hidden by iron shutters. In the single faint beam that remained, Goldie could just make out a shadowy figure.

A
familiar
figure wearing a green cloak and a cat mask.

It was Flense.

Goldie could have cried with disappointment. All her hopes for a quick journey home crashed to the ground.
There was no ship leaving for Jewel. There was no safe passage. Pounce had betrayed them.

The woman moved her feet again. “Come on,” she whispered. “Where are you, brats? Come on.”

When Goldie heard that voice, her wrist began to burn as if there were a silver cuff rubbing against it. Her skin crawled.

No
, she thought.
No, it’s not possible.…

“By the Black Ox!” murmured the woman. “Where
are
they?” She pushed her mask up onto her forehead and rubbed her eyes. Her cloak swirled. The narrow beam of the lantern fell across her face.

Goldie blinked. The stableyard swam around her, as if the world had tipped on its axis. The cat mask winked malevolently.

A cat …

But it was not the memory of the fortune that made Goldie tremble. Nor was it Pounce’s treachery. She crept away from the stalls, her whole body cold with shock. The cat leaped over the wall ahead of her, and she followed it, stumbling around the block and down the deserted street to where her friends were waiting.

She could feel Toadspit’s eyes on her as she approached. “It’s a trap, isn’t it,” he whispered.

Goldie nodded. Swallowed. Touched her mask. Could hardly believe what she had seen.

“What?” whispered Toadspit. “Tell me.”

“The woman in the green cloak. Flense. The one who’s running things for Harrow. She’s—she’s—”

“Ffffoul!” spat the cat, whipping its tail from side to side.

“She’s—”

“
Tell
me!”

Goldie took a shaky breath. “She’s
Blessed Guardian Hope
!”

T
oadspit and Bonnie stared at Goldie in horror.

Blessed Guardian Hope, the woman who had tried to sell Goldie into slavery! The woman who, along with the Fugleman, had nearly destroyed Jewel.

“But she’s dead!” said Bonnie. “She drowned six months ago, her and the Fugleman.”

“Shhhhh! No one ever found their bodies.”

“No, but—”

“We have to get away from here,” said Goldie. “She’ll realize something’s wrong soon and come looking for us.”

“Where can we go?” said Bonnie.

Toadspit scowled. “Back to the sewers. I’m going to wring Pounce’s neck.”

“We could still try the wharves,” said Goldie. “Maybe there really are ships leaving for Jewel. Maybe that bit was true.”

“How will we know if they’re safe?” said Bonnie.

Goldie and Toadspit looked at each other. “We won’t,” said Toadspit. “Not if Harrow’s
really
got people all over the place.”

“We’ll have to go by land,” said Goldie. “It’ll take a lot longer—”

“You want us to
walk
?” Bonnie’s voice rose in a squeal of disbelief. “All the way to
Jewel
?”

“Shhhhhhh!” hissed Toadspit and Goldie together.

But it was too late. In the still of the night, Bonnie’s voice rang out like a signal. There was a shout from inside the stableyard—and feet pounded out the gate toward them.

The children turned and ran. Back past the empty houses with their gaping windows. Around a corner. Across a gushing stream—a leap almost too much for Bonnie. Past a junkyard, past a row of boarded-up shops, with the cat galloping beside them, its tail high, its ears flat against its skull.

As they ran, a single question rattled in Goldie’s head like a pebble in a tin.
What was Guardian Hope doing here?

Most of the streetlamps in this part of town were broken, and there were places where it was so dark that Goldie could
barely see five steps in front of her. Once she nearly ran straight into a wall.
Watch out!
cried the little voice, and she swerved just in time, with a cry of warning to the others.

They ran down street after street. They ducked around corners and dived through alleyways. But try as they would, they could not lose their pursuers. Before long, Goldie’s heart felt as if it might explode in her chest.

She saw a narrow lane between two buildings. The cat leaped into it, and the three children followed. Behind them, someone howled with excitement, like a dog that has sighted a hare.

At the end of the lane, Goldie looked around wildly. “Which way?” she said to the cat.

In the wall beside her, a battered tin door swung open. A small hand beckoned urgently.

“Mouse!”

Toadspit grabbed Goldie’s arm. “No. We can’t trust him.”

“They didn’t go this way, Cord,” shouted a voice from the mouth of the lane. “I’m not right on their tail. Woohoo!”

Goldie wrenched her arm out of Toadspit’s grasp and leaped for the doorway, with Bonnie right behind her. Toadspit hesitated, then jumped after them.

They raced through the derelict rooms and down a flight of stone stairs to a small damp cellar. In front of them was the entrance to a tunnel with a barred gate across it. Goldie could hear running water.

“Another—old sewer?” gasped Toadspit.

Mouse nodded.

“Is there a way—out—the other end? No lies!”

The little boy nodded again.

The gate was rusted into position, but there was a gap that Bonnie and Mouse could slip through easily. It was more of a struggle for the two older children. Goldie heard Smudge’s heavy feet pounding down the stairs toward them.

“Quick,” she said, and she squeezed through the gate after Toadspit.

The tunnel was pitch-black and narrow. The children felt their way down it, sliding their hands over the brick walls and brushing spiderwebs from their faces. They had not gone more than ten paces when the tunnel turned a corner. They hurried around it—and ran straight into a rockfall.

Mouse yelped. Toadspit and Bonnie shouted with the shock of it. Goldie fumbled at the pile of rocks and broken bricks, trying to find a way past them. But they filled the tunnel from top to bottom. There was no escape.

She leaned against the wall, trying to catch her breath. Toadspit turned on Mouse. “It’s a trap,” he snarled. “You brought us here on purpose.”

Somewhere near Goldie’s feet, the cat hissed a warning.

“Listen,” whispered Bonnie. “It’s Smudge. He’s trying to get through the gate!”

Smudge grunted and swore, but the gap was too small and the gate would not open wider to let him past. After a minute or two he gave up. Goldie heard him shout. “Hey, Cord. I think I ain’t got ’em trapped.”

There was an answering shout from Cord. “How many?”

“I didn’t see four.”

Cord’s feet thumped down the stairs, and the glow of a lantern seeped into the tunnel. “Ha! They don’t keep multiplyin’.”

“Where’s Flense got to?” said Smudge. “Don’t tell her that it were me who caught ’em!”

Bonnie was shivering. Goldie put her arms around the younger girl. “Don’t worry, Princess Frisia,” she whispered, “Morg’ll find us. She’ll get into the building somehow. She’ll chase them away.”

Toadspit grunted. “They’ll be expecting her this time.”

“We’re not going to give up, are we?” said Bonnie.

“No,” whispered Goldie. “Harrow’s far too dangerous.”

Mouse nodded and drew his finger across his throat in a gesture that made her skin crawl.

“Goldie, are you
sure
it was Guardian Hope you saw?” whispered Toadspit. “It doesn’t make sense. What would she be doing here? Why would she be working for someone like Harrow?”

“I don’t know—” Goldie stopped. All the things she had
seen and heard over the last few days tumbled through her head, making unexpected patterns.…

She let go of Bonnie. “The bomb!”

“What bomb?” whispered Bonnie. “You mean the one in the Fugleman’s office?”

“Yes. That was Harrow. At least, someone told me it was. But why would he do such a thing?” The patterns shifted. The bits clicked into place like pins in a padlock.
“Who gained from it?”

“No one,” said Toadspit.

Goldie shook her head. “Don’t you remember? Before the bombing, there was a rumor that the Protector was going to halve the number of Blessed Guardians. And everyone was really pleased. But
after
the bombing, they were so frightened that they wanted
more
Guardians, not fewer. They almost doubled their numbers overnight.”

“But—” said Toadspit.

“Listen,” breathed Goldie. “
Guardian Hope
is Flense. I saw her! So who’s Harrow? Who would she work for? Who is the
only
person Guardian Hope would work for?”

For a moment there was complete silence except for the sound of running water. Then Toadspit said, in a shocked voice, “It’s—it’s the Fugleman! It must be. He’s still alive. He had Bonnie stolen.
He bombed his own office!
”

At the entrance to the tunnel, someone cleared their
throat. Iron shutters scraped and lantern light splashed across the children’s faces.

The blood froze in Goldie’s veins.

“Well, well,” said Guardian Hope. “Have you noticed, Cord, how these old sewers magnify the slightest whisper? If a person happened to be listening, a person could hear the most
interesting
things.”

The Fugleman was having trouble with all this humility. It rubbed against his skin like sacking. He loathed it.

He loathed the dungeons too. And so, last night, he had set out to persuade his guards to let him sleep in the office for a change. He had smiled his charming smile, and twisted the truth this way and that like toffee. Before five minutes had passed, the guards were smiling back at him. Before ten minutes, they thought the whole sleeping-in-the-office thing was their idea.

It was wonderfully easy when he put his mind to it.

As a result, he was dozing in a comfortable chair when the runner from the semaphore station arrived. He heard his guards jerk upright. He raised his own head more slowly.

“Your Honor,” said the runner. “An urgent message has come through.” She thrust an envelope into his hand.

The message was coded, of course, like all the others he had received. It was a simple code, one that he had worked out with Guardian Hope several weeks ago.

Think we have found children
meant
Have brats under lock and key
.

Closing in on villains
meant
All goes according to plan, no one suspects us
.

They had allowed for things to go wrong. But he had never seriously expected to see the message that now lay before him.

Children not sighted since last report. Believe they are still alive, but extremely ill. Please advise
.