City of Lies (5 page)

The younger boy grinned and pushed his white hair out of his eyes. Pounce blew on his cold hands. “I reckon they should pay us as much as they pay a grown-up,” he said. “More, prob’ly. Snotties make better spies than grown-ups. Specially street snotties. We’s as good as invisible, ain’t we, Mousie? We could lie right down in the middle of the Spice Market and die of ’unger, and no one’d notice till our corpsies started to stink.”

The white-haired boy pointed to the arm of his jacket, where it sagged under the weight of a dozen sleeping mice.

“Yeah, I s’pose
they’d
notice,” said Pounce. “Greedy little beggars. They’d prob’ly chew our fingers off before we was even cold.”

Mouse’s eyes widened and he laughed in silent delight. Pounce felt a tiny patch of warmth in the pit of his belly. “Well, anyway, we ain’t gunna die of ’unger this week, thanks to Harrow and Flense,” he muttered gruffly.

Mouse pointed to his sleeve again.

“Yeah yeah,” said Pounce. “And thanks to the sprats.” He patted the other boy on the arm, careful not to disturb the mice. “You and them does a good job. There’s lotsa times we woulda starved without your fortune-tellin’ tricks.”

A line appeared on Mouse’s forehead. Pounce held up his hands in mock apology. “All right, so they’s not tricks. They’s real. They just
looks
like tricks.”

Across the street, old Warble had been serving behind the counter of his bread shop. Now he came to the door, scratching nervously at one of his hairy eyebrows.

“Here, make out like ya’s asleep,” whispered Pounce, dropping his head onto his knees and watching through his fingers.

Beside him, Mouse began to snore gently. But as soon as Warble disappeared back into his shop, the little boy frowned, as if he’d only just realized what they were doing here. He pointed to the shop, then to his own mouth.

“What?” said Pounce, deliberately misunderstanding him. “You ’ungry?”

Mouse made a wiping gesture, as if to say of course he was hungry, he was always hungry, but that wasn’t important right now. He pointed to the bread shop again, and smiled and held out his hands. He tapped Pounce’s shoulder, then his own.

Pounce sighed. “Look, Mousie. Ya can’t be soft, all right? I
know
old Warble gives us leftovers when he’s got ’em. But that’s not the point, see? The point is, Flense is payin’ me to keep an eye on ’im.”

Mouse pulled a face and drew his finger across his throat.

“Nah, nothin’ like that,” said Pounce quickly. “No one’s gunna get ’urt. Flense is expectin’ an important delivery, that’s all, and she wants to make sure it arrives safely. She don’t trust no one, see. No one except Harrow. It’s a wonder she ain’t sittin’ ’ere ’erself, givin’ orders.”

He sniffed, trying to think of some way of distracting Mouse. He didn’t usually bring his friend on jobs like this one, but there’d been a lot of rain lately, and he was worried that the old sewer where they lived might flood, or even collapse. He didn’t like to leave Mouse there on his own, just in case.

Truth was, Warble might well end up with his throat slit—that was the way things usually ended with Harrow’s mob. But it was none of Pounce’s business, and none of Mouse’s either, however kind the old bread-shop man had been to them. You couldn’t be soft, not in this world. Not if you wanted to survive.

“Well now,” he whispered. “Let’s you and me think about what we saw.” He nodded toward the shop door. “He was nervous, did ya see that? Did ya see how ’e took out ’is snot rag and wiped ’is forehead? As if maybe ’e was expectin’ someone, and wasn’t real ’appy about it? That’s what I’ll tell Flense when I report back. Harrow likes details like that. He says they make all the difference, and that’s why ’e hires me, ’cos I’m a noticer, and noticers are rare birds.”

To Pounce’s relief, Mouse laughed his silent laugh again, and flapped his skinny arms.

“What?” said Pounce, pretending to scowl. “Ya don’t reckon I’m a rare bird?”

Mouse shook his head.

“What am I, then? A scrawny old pigeon, with molty
feathers and crusty bits round its eyes? I s’pose yer gunna creep up behind me and whack me with a stick, and roast my corpsie over a fire, like we did to that pigeon the other day.”

Mouse grinned and rubbed his tummy.

For as long as Pounce could remember, there hadn’t been enough to eat. It was worse in winter, when the cold made your belly stick to your backbone.

“Tell ya what, Mousie,” he said. “One day I’m gunna find somethin’ that Flense and Harrow
really
want. Not just a little spyin’ job like this one. Somethin’ big and important. Somethin’ they’ll pay lots and lots of money for. And then you and me’s gunna rent a room. A proper room, with a fireplace. And we’s gunna sit by the fire and eat pigeons all day long. Just think of it, eh? The grease runnin’ down our chins. Our bellies so fat we can’t ’ardly stand up.”

Mouse closed his eyes and licked his lips as if he could already taste the pigeons.

A fierce protectiveness welled up inside Pounce.
I’ll do it, too
, he told himself grimly.
I don’t care what it is, or who it ’urts, just as long as Harrow’ll pay good money for it
.

Aloud he said, “It’s you and me against the world, Mousie. We don’t need no one else. You remember that. You stick with your mate Pounce, and he’ll get ya all the pigeons you want.”

G
oldie was dreaming. She knew it was a dream because Blessed Guardian Hope was there, a plump figure in a black cloak and black boxy hat, with the punishment chains coiled like pythons around her waist.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” whispered Goldie. “You died in the Great Storm.”

Guardian Hope smiled and pulled a thin silver chain from the pocket of her robes. She held it up to the light. Then she began to thread it, bit by bit, between Goldie’s ribs and around her heart.…

Goldie opened her mouth to cry out—and just in time remembered where she was. She bit the inside of her cheek until the dream faded, and leaned back in the narrow doorway. It was almost morning, and all around her the streets of Spoke were waking up.

The
Piglet
had made landfall the night before, after three days at sea. They had been a dreadful three days. From dawn to dusk, Goldie hid in the dinghy, with nothing to eat except some hard biscuits that she found under the seat, along with a sealed jar of water. In the evenings, she watched helplessly as Smudge carried her friends up on deck, fed them, took them to the stinking toilet in the stern, then drugged them again and carried them back below.

At night she slipped out of the dinghy, stretching her aching limbs and wishing that she could steal some of the two men’s food. But she dared not do anything that might betray the presence of a
third
child on board the
Piglet
.

When at last they had sailed into Spoke Harbor and Goldie saw its dim outline, looking exactly as it did in the engravings, she could hardly believe it. She had imagined that she and her friends were being carried somewhere so far away and so strange that they would never find their way home again. But here they were, still on the Faroon Peninsula, a few hundred miles down the coast from Jewel!

Her spirits rose. And when Cord and Smudge loaded Toadspit’s and Bonnie’s limp bodies onto a horse-drawn cart
and drove off into the city, she grabbed a useful-looking coil of rope from the deck and followed them.

Although it was late, the footpaths of Spoke were crammed with people. Goldie dodged past them, trying not to lose the cart. Up the narrow streets she went, and away from the harbor, until the smell of the sea was left behind and the houses crowded around her like curious aunts.

The cart stopped halfway up a hill, outside a bread shop. The shop appeared to be closed, but when Cord rapped sharply on the door, a light came on. Goldie caught her breath. Was she about to see the mysterious Harrow?

But whoever came to the door did not show themselves. Instead, Smudge carried the children into the shop; then he and Cord came out and drove away. The door shut behind them. The light went out.

Goldie sank back onto the nearest step and let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Her friends were still unconscious, so she could do nothing tonight except keep watch—and make sure that she was not seen by whoever was in the bread shop.

In the doorway opposite, something moved. Goldie froze, wondering if Harrow had set guards up and down the street. But then she heard a young boy grunt drowsily, and a bare foot slid out and rested on the cobblestones, as limp as old cabbage.

Goldie peered into the shadows. She couldn’t see anything
much of the boy, except that he was ragged, filthy and fast asleep. In fact, now that she looked more closely, several other doorways were also occupied by sleeping children, some of them alone, some in pairs.

After three days and nights in the
Piglet
’s dinghy, Goldie was nearly as dirty as the boy opposite. She settled back against the door and rested her head on her knees, hoping that anyone who saw her would think she was just another homeless girl, trying to keep out of the wind.

She meant to stay awake. But although she was hungry and the step beneath her was hard, she was so tired that she fell asleep almost straightaway.

She had wild and terrible dreams. Pa crawled up the hill toward her, chased by something she couldn’t bear to look at. Ma wept droplets of blood. Guardian Hope threaded the silver chain through her ribs and around her heart, over and over again.

When Goldie woke up the second time, the street was bustling, the children in the other doorways had disappeared, and her stomach was groaning with hunger.

But the dreams lingered, as heavy as stone inside her.
Pa crawled up the hill.…

Tears prickled Goldie’s eyes and she brushed them away. “What I need,” she told herself firmly, “is a plan.”

The first thing she must do was get a sense of the neighborhood—the back entrances, the dead ends, the
directions that danger might come from. Then she must work out how to break into the bread shop. And
then
she must find something to eat.

She paused, and like a faithful dog returning to its master, her thoughts returned to Ma and Pa. How she
wished
she could go to them, right now! How she wished—

No
. She shook her head. She couldn’t go home. She
wouldn’t
go home, not until she could take Bonnie and Toadspit with her. And that might never happen if she didn’t stop worrying about Ma and Pa!

In the back of her mind, a little voice whispered,
If Goldie Roth can’t stop worrying, then you must stop being Goldie Roth
.

Goldie had heard this little voice all her life. It seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her, and until six months ago she had followed its wisdom without question. It was the little voice that had urged her to run away. It had shown her how to navigate the strange, shifting rooms of the Museum of Dunt, and had helped her save Jewel from invasion.

But over the last few months she had got out of the habit of trusting it. All it did was urge her to follow her destiny and become Fifth Keeper, and she could not do that without hurting her parents.

Now, however, she needed its help. She nodded. Somehow she must stop being Goldie Roth.…

She was reluctant to leave the front of the bread shop
unguarded, but she had little choice—there were things that she must do before nightfall. And besides, everything so far had happened under cover of darkness. She didn’t think Harrow and his men would give their game away by showing themselves in daylight.

“I’ll be back,” she whispered, wishing that Toadspit and Bonnie could hear her. “I’ll be back tonight to get you out of there.”

In several places up and down the hill there were enclosed passages that led to the next street. Halfway along one of them, Goldie found a rubbish yard with piles of rags and rotting gazettes, and empty tins of olive oil stacked nearly as high as a house.

She sorted through the rags until she found a pair of old britches and a jacket with one arm. The britches were too big, so she tied a string around her waist to hold them up. She unpinned her bird brooch and was about to slip it into her pocket when she paused. She ran her fingers over the outstretched wings and thought about Auntie Praise.

She had never met her aunt—Praise Koch had disappeared at the age of sixteen and was never seen again. But Ma sometimes talked sadly about her, saying how brave she had been, and how Goldie was just like her.

Goldie swallowed and pinned the brooch inside her collar, where it would not be seen. She rubbed her boots in the oily muck that covered the ground and smeared some of that
same muck on her face. Then she took out Toadspit’s knife and sawed off her hair until it was as short as a boy’s.

By the time she had finished, she felt different.

Sharper.

Fiercer.

Lighter.

“I am no longer Goldie Roth, who has sick parents and a chain around her heart,” she whispered. “I’m Goldie No One. No parents. No bad dreams. Just two friends to rescue and take home.”