City of Lies (6 page)

She buried her own jacket and her smock in the pile of rags. She buried the coil of rope too, so that it would be there when she needed it. Then she set out to learn everything she could about the streets around the bread shop.

This part of Spoke was a winding, confusing place. The cobblestones underfoot reminded Goldie of Jewel, and there were little shrines here and there to Great Wooden or Bald Thoke, or one of the other Seven Gods. But everything else was different. The streets were narrower. The gutters were smellier. The buildings were made of wood instead of bluestone, and there was a brass bell hanging on every corner, with a sign above it saying
IN CASE OF FIRE
.

By the time Goldie made her way back to the bread shop, she had a rusty iron lever tucked inside her waistband, a bent wire in her pocket and a clear picture in her mind of which streets and alleys offered an escape route and which could
easily become traps. Even more important, she had learned that the bread shop did not have a rear entrance. If she was to break in, she must do it through the front.

The morning was well under way by now, and the shop was packed with customers. Goldie leaned against the wall opposite, watching the comings and goings through half-closed eyes. The lock on the shop door looked new, but she thought she could pick it.

The scent of freshly baked bread drifted across the street toward her, and she licked her lips. She could smell sausages too. She pushed herself away from the wall and headed down the hill, wishing she had some money.

Don’t go far
, whispered the little voice in the back of her mind.

Goldie hesitated, looking over her shoulder at the bread shop and wondering if perhaps she should stay after all. But she was so hungry by now that she felt slightly dizzy. “I have to find something to eat,” she said, “or I’ll be useless.”

And she kept going down the hill.

As the street flattened out, it grew noisier and more crowded. Goldie stared around, fascinated. Six months after the defeat of the Blessed Guardians, many of Jewel’s citizens still lived their lives behind closed doors and didn’t dare raise their voices in case someone noticed them. But here in Spoke, people seemed to
want
to be noticed.

A landlady sat on her doorstep, shouting at one of her
boarders. “Where have you been all night? Wipe your feet before you go inside. And where’s your rent? Don’t smile at me, you rogue. I can’t live on a smile, now, can I?”

A knife sharpener was setting up his wheel on the footpath. Above his head a woman leaned out an upper-story window and hung clothes on a washing line strung across the street.

Goldie heard a shout. “Hey, Sparky! Getting in early for the Festival?”

She spun around. A cook was lounging on the top step of an underground kitchen, taking sly swigs from the bottle in his pocket. And on the other side of the road—

Goldie blinked. On the other side of the road was a man wearing a mask in the shape of a horse’s head.

“Yep,” cried the man in the mask. “You gotta be ready.” His muffled voice sounded as if he was grinning. “Oooh, feel that fizzing in the air? Quick, ask me how many wives I’ve got.”

The cook chuckled. “How many wives you got?”

“Three,” cried Sparky. “And all of them as fat as pumpkins.”

They both roared with laughter, and the horse man danced away up the street.

Now that Goldie had spotted the first mask, they seemed to be everywhere. Some of them were plain, but most were covered in sequins or fur or the scales of fish. She passed a stall that sold nothing but masks, and it was doing a roaring trade.

A little way past the stall she found a plain half-mask lying forgotten on the footpath. She picked it up and tied the strings behind her head, then inspected herself in the nearest window. She looked like a boy. A homeless, anonymous boy.

No one …

A snatch of song caught her attention. An old woman selling meat scraps fried in batter was singing about a girl who fell in love with a bear. Her customers joined in the chorus.

“And her children were hairy

And terribly scary

They say …”

Despite her hunger and her worries, Goldie felt her heart lift. Spoke reminded her of the Museum of Dunt. It buzzed with life and energy, and she had no idea what was around the next corner. This was what a city
should
be like!

Somewhere nearby, a brass band began to play. As Goldie turned toward the music, she saw a flash of color, as bright as a parrot, and a short woman wearing a green woolen cloak and a cat mask pushed roughly past her.

The bright green cloak and the cat mask were no stranger than the other sights Goldie had come across that morning. But something made her turn and watch the woman as she elbowed her way up the street.

In the back of her mind, the little voice whispered,
Don’t go far!

Again Goldie hesitated. What if the little voice was right? What if …

Her stomach gurgled with hunger. The smell of battered meat scraps and hot pies made her head swim.

She took one last look at the woman in the green cloak and cat mask and turned away. “I’ll be back by nightfall,” she whispered. “Nothing will happen before then. I’ll get them out tonight.”

T
he brass band wasn’t at all what Goldie had been expecting. There were six musicians plus a bandmaster, and she had seldom seen a more mismatched bunch of people. They were tall and short, men and women, hairy and clean-shaven. They wore ill-fitting striped suits and shuffled around a fountain in the middle of a stone-flagged plaza. Their music rose and fell in waves, sometimes stopping right in the middle of a tune, then starting up again with all the instruments out of time.

The bandmaster was a small man with a freckled scalp
who waved his baton in the air and bellowed to the watching crowd. Goldie could just hear his voice above the music. It was accompanied by an oddly familiar clanking sound.

“If you please, herroen and frowen! A crust of bread for our breakfast, or a sausage. Feed the hungry and the Seven Gods will ignore you for a whole year!”

Goldie flicked her fingers. The Seven Gods were known for their unpredictable tempers. Attracting their attention—even hearing someone mention their names—could be a dangerous business. Flicking your fingers was a polite way of saying, “
Please
don’t bother yourself with me, Great Wooden. Go and help someone else.”

A woman in the watching crowd held up a cooked chicken. “Hoy!” she shouted, and she threw the chicken toward the band.

Immediately the musicians stopped playing and surged forward in a mass. But they were slow and clumsy, and a ragged girl darted out of the crowd and grabbed the chicken from under the hairy trumpeter’s nose.

The band members groaned. The crowd parted. And now at last Goldie could see what was causing that horrible clanking sound. The musicians wore shackles around their ankles, and a heavy chain that linked them together and scraped against the cobblestones as they walked.

Goldie shivered, remembering the punishment chains that still haunted her dreams.

There was another shout from the crowd. Quite a few people were throwing food now. Sausages, wheels of cheese, a
whole stuffed goose
tumbled through the air.

The musicians lurched this way and that, grabbing frantically. The one-eyed bombardon player managed to catch a string of sausages. The tall trombonist reached over everyone’s head to snatch up a cheese. But the stuffed goose, and a great deal more, was lost to the darting boys and girls.

Goldie’s mouth watered. Almost before she knew what she was doing, she found herself elbowing her way into the pack of children. They glanced sideways at her but said nothing. Their mouths were wet with grease. They sucked their fingers and grinned at each other.

“A goose,” Goldie whispered. “I could eat a whole goose.”

Someone in the crowd threw a pie, but it was too far away to bother with. Next there came a flurry of little fried cakes, then some oranges. The children got most of them.

Goldie inched forward, waiting for the right moment. And then she saw it. A leg of roast mutton sailed through the air toward the bandmaster. He gathered up his chain, so that he would have room to leap.…

Quick as a gull, Goldie dived in front of him and snatched the mutton from his grasping hands. “Noooo!” he wailed as she darted away with her prize.

The meat was still hot, and dripping with rosemary and olive oil. It smelled better than anything Goldie had ever
smelled in her life. Carefully she carried it up onto the fountain, hacked off a slice with Toadspit’s knife and stuffed it into her mouth, beneath the mask. She closed her eyes, to savor it better.…

When she opened them again, the gray-spotted cat from the ship was standing in front of her. Its ribs stuck out like the hoops of a barrel. Its wild eyes were fixed on the mutton.

“Do you want some?” said Goldie. She cut another slice and held it out. The cat’s nose twitched, but it did not move.

Goldie shrugged, too hungry to be patient. “I’ll eat it if you don’t want it.”

The wild eyes glared at her. There was nothing soft in their depths, nothing but distrust and hunger, but Goldie found herself suddenly thinking of the museum, and of Broo, the brizzlehound. She bit her lip and placed the piece of mutton beside her foot. There was a flash of movement, too quick to follow, and both cat and mutton were gone.

She cut another slice for herself. Mutton grease ran down her chin, and she wiped it off and licked her fingers. She heard a groan. The music had stopped and the bandmaster was staring up at her, his face sagging with misery.

The mutton turned to ashes in Goldie’s mouth. She flushed and tried to look away, but the man’s unhappy gaze held her. She could hear Olga Ciavolga’s voice in her ear, as clearly as if the old woman sat beside her.

“To move quietly, to be quick of hand and eye, that is a gift.
If you use it to hurt other people, even in a small way, you betray yourself and everyone around you.”

Like all the keepers of the Museum of Dunt, Olga Ciavolga was a thief. But she had very strict rules about when it was all right to steal and when it was not. And this was not.

With a sigh, Goldie climbed down from the fountain and pushed her way through the crowd, which was thinner now. Most of the food had been thrown and people were wandering away. The children had raced off, chucking oranges at each other.

“We’ll be here again tomorrow, herroen and frowen,” said the bandmaster wearily. “Don’t forget. Feed the hungry, the Seven Gods will ignore you, blah blah blah.” He sounded as if he didn’t expect anyone to feed him ever again.

The musicians tucked their instruments under their arms and began to shuffle across the plaza. Goldie hurried after them. “Um, Herro—” she said.

The bandmaster’s face sagged even farther. “Come to gloat, have you, lad? Come to wave my rightful breakfast under my nose—”

Goldie held the mutton out to him. He broke off, blinking. “You’re right, Herro, it’s yours,” she muttered, trying to sound like a boy.

The bandmaster stared at her as if he thought it might be a trick. She thrust the mutton into his hands and turned away before she could change her mind.

“Wait,” mumbled the bandmaster.

Goldie looked back at him. He had already bitten a mouthful of meat straight off the leg and was chewing desperately, as if he hadn’t eaten for days. The bombardon player was patting him on the back and trying to sneak pieces of mutton. He batted her hands away and beckoned to Goldie.

“Come here, come here, lad. Don’t be afraid.”

As Goldie retraced her steps, the musicians stared at her. “Am I right in thinking you have a knife?” said the bandmaster, wiping his mouth on his striped sleeve.

Goldie nodded.

The bandmaster made a stiff little bow. “Would you be so good as to cut a slice for each of my companions here? And—ah—another slice for yourself?”

Goldie didn’t wait to be asked twice. While the bandmaster held the mutton steady, she whipped out her knife and cut off several big chunks.

“Ah—perhaps a little smaller,” said the bandmaster hastily. “My companions have eaten this morning, after all, and I have not.”

“Sorry,” said Goldie, and she cut the chunks into pieces.

“Yes, yes, that’s better,” said the bandmaster, watching the meat hungrily. “And some for you—good, good. And now I believe it is my turn again. Yes, definitely my turn.”

With his mouth full, he said, “Would you care to walk
with us? We must not be late, but I am curious—” He broke off and licked his lips. “Mm, that is truly the sweetest mutton I have tasted for years. Hardly mutton at all. I suspect it was lamb only yesterday, prancing in the fields beside its doting mother. Are you too busy eating, or could you cut me another slice?”

“Where are you going, Herro?” said Goldie, hacking at the meat as they walked. “Why are you—um—” She pointed to the chains.

The bandmaster peered at her. “You’re not from around here? Well, that would explain your generosity. I have never heard of one of the street snotties giving back a prize before. And
such
a prize!”