Museum of Thieves

by Lian Tanner

  No! thought Goldie.

  ‘No!’ said Toadspit.

  ‘NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!’

  The sudden roar, right in Goldie’s ear, almost deafened her. ‘Broo, stop!’ she cried, but she was too late. The brizzlehound had leaped over her head and was bounding towards the militiamen, bellowing his fury. His teeth were bared and his hackles stood up like spikes. Above his head flapped Morg, a black harbinger of death.

  When they saw those twin awful sights bearing down on them, most of the militiamen froze in their tracks. Only the lieutenant marshal seemed to keep his head. His hand shook, but he raised his rifle. Goldie saw his finger tighten on the trigger.

  ‘No!’ shouted Sinew, and he threw himself at the lieutenant marshal. The gun went off. The bullet flew harmlessly past Broo’s ear.

  The sound of the shot seemed to bring the other militiamen to their senses. They raised their guns. But before they could take aim, Broo was upon them, his great teeth snapping.

  He mowed the militiamen down like grass. They screamed and tumbled over one another trying to escape. But Morg was waiting for them, with her sharp beak and her tearing claws and the shadow of her wings falling across them like a shroud.

  ‘Broo! Morg! Don’t hurt them!’ shouted Sinew. Goldie could only just hear his voice above the chaos.

  And then, suddenly, she heard another shot. It echoed strangely, cutting through all the shouting and screaming. Time slowed down. The bullet seemed to hang in the air for many seconds before it hit its mark.

  Goldie felt herself stand up and walk out from behind the broken cabinets. She could see the Fugleman. In the midst of all the scrambling, he was completely still. His sword was sheathed and he held a militia rifle pressed against his shoulder. He was smiling.

  She began to run. Toadspit was running beside her, but the air was as thick as treacle, and they couldn’t move fast enough.

  She felt a cry of despair well up in her chest. She saw Sinew’s mouth open in a horrified shout. She saw Morg flap frantically up towards the rafters, leaving a dozen feathers drifting through the air like black snow.

  She saw Broo flinch – and falter. She saw him snap one last desperate time at the nearest militiaman.

  She saw him fall.

  .

  oldie knelt on the floor beside the great body of the brizzlehound. Toadspit and Sinew knelt beside her. All around them, people were shouting with shock and relief. Blessed Guardians and gazetteers pounded the Fugleman on the back. Militiamen scrambled to recover their rifles and their dignity.

  Goldie hardly noticed them. Tears poured down her face and mingled with the blood that pooled around the brizzlehound’s head. She stroked Broo’s ear with a shaky hand. Her chest felt hollow, as if something big and important had been torn out of it. The sound of the shot still echoed inside her.

  ‘He was just trying to protect us,’ whispered Toadspit. He looked up at Sinew, the tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘Why did they have to shoot him?’

  Sinew shook his head helplessly. He lifted one of the enormous paws and held it in both hands. On the floor beside him, his harp sobbed.

  Goldie rested her hand on Broo’s neck. She was amazed now that she had once been afraid of him. Toadspit was right. All he had ever wanted to do was protect them.

  Above her head, a voice said, ‘Your Honour! Look! There are children here! And they are unchained!’

  For a moment, Goldie didn’t understand what the voice was talking about. By the time she looked up, there was a circle of appalled faces staring down at her and Toadspit. The Fugleman was shaking his head sorrowfully.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘This is what happens to children when they are not properly protected. Look at them. Look at their wild hair and filthy, desperate faces. Look at the scratches on their arms and legs. How could this have happened? How could they be here, unchained and unsupervised?’ He paused. ‘Well, I will tell you. This one—’ He pointed an immaculate finger at Goldie. ‘This is the girl who ran away from the Great Hall on the day of the bombing!’

  A shocked murmur ran through the watching gazetteers. They scribbled frantically in their notebooks. Goldie looked down at her hands. What did it matter if she had run away? What did anything matter? Didn’t they understand that Broo was dead?

  ‘Guardian Hope!’ called the Fugleman. ‘Are you there?’

  With a flurry of importance, Guardian Hope pushed her way into the circle, closely followed by another Guardian, a stocky, red-faced man whom Goldie had never seen before.

  ‘Oh no!’ groaned Toadspit.

  ‘Guardian Virtue,’ said the Fugleman to the stocky man. ‘Is this the boy?’

  ‘It is, Your Honour,’ said Guardian Virtue, peering eagerly down at Toadspit. ‘He’s a runaway too, name of Cautionary Hahn. His parents are locked up in the House of Repentance at this very moment.’

  Cautionary? Goldie looked at Toadspit in astonishment. He was staring at the floor, his face set and angry.

  ‘Dear me!’ said Guardian Virtue, his Adam’s apple bobbing with excitement. ‘I can hardly bear to look at the boy! Such a mess he’s got himself into! Riddled with purple fever, no doubt, and only Great Wooden knows what else. He’s a risk to himself and everyone around him!’

  Toadspit’s head snapped up. ‘It’s not us that’s the risk!’ He glared at Guardian Virtue and the Fugleman. ‘It’s you! You’re murderers, the lot of you! And if you don’t leave the museum alone there’ll be worse things in Jewel than purple fever!’

  The Fugleman didn’t seem to hear him. ‘Here we have two children,’ he said loudly. ‘Both of them criminals. Both of them obviously mentally disturbed—’

  ‘We’re not mentally disturbed!’ cried Goldie. ‘We’re trying to warn you—’

  At that moment, under her hand, something twitched. She jerked back in shock. Broo’s head lifted slightly from the floor – then slumped down again.

  Goldie’s heart seemed to leap in her chest. ‘He’s alive!’ she whispered. At least she meant it to be a whisper, but in her excitement it came out louder. ‘Sinew! Toadspit! He’s alive!’

  There was a split second of horrified silence – then the room erupted. The gazetteers and Blessed Guardians fell over each other in their desire to get away. The militiamen bellowed instructions.

  ‘The brute’s alive!’

  ‘Finish it off, quickly! Don’t take any chances!’

  ‘Give it a bullet in the head!’

  Toadspit threw himself across Broo’s body. ‘Leave him alone!’ he shouted. ‘If you touch him I’ll kill you!’

  ‘Someone get this boy out of the way,’ yelled the lieutenant marshal.

  Toadspit kicked and fought, but the militiamen picked him up as if he was a baby. They picked Goldie up too, and carried her a short distance away.

  Sinew was not so easily moved. He stood astride Broo. ‘This,’ he cried, ‘is the last living brizzlehound! If you kill him, you will set terrible forces in motion. You will condemn the city and everyone in it to death.’

  The Fugleman threw back his head and laughed. ‘The last living brizzlehound? In that case, we won’t just kill it, we’ll have it stuffed and mounted and displayed in the Great Hall!’

  Goldie felt a ball of red-hot rage well up inside her. ‘I hate you!’ she muttered through clenched teeth. ‘I hate you!’

  The Fugleman laughed again. The militiamen raised their rifles and aimed at Broo. Goldie jammed her eyes shut, unable to watch.

  But before the militiamen could fire, the air shuddered. The floorboards shook. Goldie’s eyes snapped open. The watergas lamps were flickering horribly, and for a moment she thought they’d go out altogether. But slowly – oh, so slowly – they came back to brightness.

  Good! thought Goldie. No one could miss a shift like THAT!

  She was right. The militiamen were looking at each other in confusion. The gazetteers and the Blessed Guardians muttered anxiously.

  ‘Your Honour,’ said
Sinew, bleak-faced. ‘You have to stop this, now. You must leave the museum and let me take care of the brizzlehound, or we will all perish.’

  For a moment, Goldie thought that the Fugleman was listening. But then he smiled and turned to the gazetteers. ‘A small earth tremor, nothing more. Be sure to tell your readers that it is nothing to worry about.’

  He turned back to the militiamen. ‘As for the brizzlehound, perhaps it is more useful alive, for now at least. Truss it up before it recovers consciousness and tie it to the railings outside my old office. We’ll have a public execution tomorrow.’

  Sinew began to protest again, but the Fugleman interrupted him. ‘Take this man away,’ he said. ‘Gag him so he can’t keep spouting his nonsense, and put him on the lowest level of the House of Repentance.’

  A group of militiamen rushed at Sinew and seized him. He struggled, his face wild with rage and despair, but they tied him, gagged him and dragged him away. Goldie saw one of them pick up his harp and carry it after the others, like an uneasy trophy.

  The militiamen who were left behind raised their guns again and aimed them at Broo. Several of the Blessed Guardians edged forward to offer ropes.

  ‘Tie the beast securely, mind,’ said the Fugleman, ‘and strap its jaws so it cannot bite. If it tries to escape, shoot it.’

  ‘No!’ cried Goldie. ‘Don’t you dare!’

  ‘What will we do with these children, Your Honour?’ said the lieutenant marshal.

  Goldie glanced at Toadspit. She could feel the anger radiating from him, the same anger that was burning in her own body, as hot as a furnace.

  ‘Ah yes, the children.’ The Fugleman raised his voice so that everyone could hear him. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, these children may be criminals, they may be mentally disturbed, but we still take our responsibilities to them seriously. My Blessed Guardians will look after them as if they were their own. May the Seven Gods go with them and soothe their troubled souls.’

  The Guardians in the crowd murmured approval. The gazetteers and the militiamen flicked their fingers.

  May the Seven Gods go with YOU! prayed Goldie savagely. And, for the first time in her life, she didn’t flick her fingers.

  ‘As for me,’ continued the Fugleman, ‘my duty leads me into many dark places, but this may be one of the darkest. Tonight I will accompany the militia to this Dirty Gate. We will take the secret army by surprise. In the name of the Seven, we will destroy these murderous bombers who threaten our beautiful city!’

  ‘Three cheers for the Fugleman!’ shouted the lieutenant marshal. ‘Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!’

  The militiamen and the Blessed Guardians joined in enthusiastically. The gazetteers stopped writing for long enough to bang their notebooks against their legs and stamp their feet.

  Under cover of the noise, the Fugleman bent down. Goldie heard him murmur to Guardian Hope and Guardian Virtue, ‘Take the brats to Care. I want them locked up so securely that they’ll never get away again.’

  Guardian Hope unhooked the punishment chains from around her waist and snapped them onto Goldie’s wrists. ‘Come along,’ she said. ‘And don’t give me any trouble.’

  Goldie glanced at Toadspit. Her fingers flicked out a message. ‘Must stop Fugleman! Must save Broo! Escape somehow!’

  Toadspit’s fingers twitched in response. ‘Agree! Meet – meet Fugleman’s old office! Midnight!’

  ‘Make way!’ cried Guardian Hope. ‘Make way for the mentally disturbed child!’

  The gazetteers and Blessed Guardians made way. At the last minute, just before she was swallowed up by the crowd, Goldie turned back towards Toadspit and wiggled her fingers as if she was waving goodbye. ‘Agree. Fugleman’s old office. Midnight!’

  In a small tent beyond the Dirty Gate, Olga Ciavolga was lying on her side, her arms and legs tied, her eyes closed. Herro Dan sat next to her, his fingers entwined with hers.

  ‘You awake?’ he whispered.

  She squeezed his hand, but didn’t open her eyes.

  ‘I’ve been thinkin’. ’Bout when we was kids. First time I ever saw you, steppin’ down off that great big boat as if you was a princess.’

  Olga Ciavolga snorted under her breath. ‘A ragged, underfed princess. With fleas.’

  A moment’s silence. Then Herro Dan sighed. ‘We’ve come a long way, you and me.’

  At that, Olga Ciavolga’s eyes opened and she glared up at him. ‘Is this my funeral speech you are practising? Do you think I will go to my coffin so easily? We are not finished yet!’

  Despite the danger that surrounded them, and the pain of his broken leg, Herro Dan found himself smiling.

  ‘Why are we not singing?’ demanded Olga Ciavolga. ‘Must we leave all the work to Sinew and the children?’

  Herro Dan had been singing under his breath for a day and a night, and still he could feel the wild music rising. But he nodded. ‘Ho oh oh-oh. Mm mm oh oh oh-oh oh—’ he began. Olga Ciavolga’s voice joined his. ‘Mm oh oh oh-oh—’

  Suddenly the whole world seemed to – shudder.

  Herro Dan’s mouth fell open. The song stuck in his throat like a fishbone. He looked at Olga Ciavolga and saw his own fear reflected in her eyes.

  There was a heavy footstep outside the tent, and the flap was dragged back. A soldier ducked his head and walked in. Olga Ciavolga’s kerchief hung half out of his pocket.

  He grinned at Herro Dan. ‘How yoo doink?’ he said in his heavy accent. ‘Yoo havink a nice holiday? Plenty of sleep? Goot food?’ He laughed. ‘If yoo go back home, tell dem about dis nice place, dey all want to kom here. Am I right? Yes? Ha ha!’

  He poked Herro Dan with his shoe. Herro Dan didn’t respond. He and Olga Ciavolga had known soldiers like this when they were children. They had been all over Furuuna in those days, looting and killing with no thought for kindness or mercy. From what he had seen here, nothing had changed.

  He closed his eyes. He knew that the song was useless, that the museum was no longer listening. But Olga Ciavolga was right. They must not give up. He began to sing again, so quietly that the sound didn’t pass his lips.

  ‘Whachoo doink?’ said the soldier. ‘You sleepink? You dreamink about your girlfriend here? Yoo dream while yoo can. Yoo dream plenty. Because tomorrow—’

  He walked back to the flap of the tent. ‘Tomorrow we gonna shoochoo. Yoo and de old lady. At first light we gonna shoochoo both.’

  .

  he massive gate swung shut behind Goldie. The iron bar fell into place with a clang that echoed around the cobblestoned yard. It was barely dusk in the world outside, but here, within the high walls of Care, the air was dark and gloomy.

  ‘Don’t dawdle!’ said Guardian Hope, jerking at the punishment chains. ‘I’ve got more important things to do than hang around while you look at the scenery.’

  Goldie stumbled towards the tall building that loomed at the far end of the yard. At first glance it seemed welcoming. The light in the entrance was soft and warm, and the house itself had sweetly curved balconies and high, elegant windows. But as Goldie came closer she saw that those windows were crisscrossed with bars, and the balconies topped with broken glass.

  A cold despair gripped her heart. She put her hand in her pocket and her fingers closed around the little blue bird. I have to escape. I WILL escape! I WILL!

  Guardian Hope marched her up the steps and in the front door like an executioner taking a prisoner to the gallows. There was another Guardian sitting in the foyer. He was completely bald, and he squatted behind his desk like a toad.

  ‘Golden Roth, runaway,’ snapped Guardian Hope. ‘Chain both legs. No privileges.’ She unfastened the punishment chains. Then, without another glance at Goldie, she left.

  The next half hour was a blur. Goldie was marched out of the foyer and down one long corridor after another, sometimes by one Blessed Guardian, sometimes by two. Along the way, she stopped being Goldie Roth and became Number 67: Runaway.

  At the end of one corridor she was pushed into
a dank concrete room and told to take her clothes off. As she did so, the little voice in the back of her mind whispered, The scissors.

  Goldie fumbled with her smock, as if she was having trouble getting her arm out of the sleeve. One of the Guardians grabbed her and pulled the smock this way and that, all the while complaining about how clumsy children were. Under cover of the fuss, Goldie palmed the scissors, the way Herro Dan had taught her.

  She was pushed under a cold shower and scrubbed until her skin hurt, but she kept the scissors hidden in her hand all the while. It was just as well she did. When she was dry at last, and clean, her own clothes were taken away and she was given a grey smock and leggings that smelled as if they had been worn by a hundred children, every one of whom had died of unhappiness.

  ‘Ooh, look, this is nice,’ said one of the Blessed Guardians, holding up Goldie’s blue enamel brooch.

  ‘That’s mine!’ said Goldie.

  ‘Correction,’ said the Blessed Guardian, ‘it was yours. Fly away, little bird!’ And she dropped the brooch into the pocket of her robes. Then she held out Goldie’s compass. ‘This is yours too, I suppose? Well, you can have this one back. Not that it’ll do you much good in here.’

  And she snorted with loud, ugly laughter and continued snorting on and off all the way down yet another corridor, until they came to a solid wooden door with a great black bolt across it.

  The Guardian shot the bolt back and pushed the door open. ‘Silence!’ she shouted, although there was not a sound coming from the room. ‘No talking! Eyes down if you want to keep your privileges!’

  The room was long and there were twenty or more beds lined up around the edges. Most of them seemed to be occupied. The Blessed Guardian marched Goldie between them, gripping the back of her neck so that she couldn’t look left or right. Halfway down the room, she stopped and pushed Goldie towards an empty bed with grey sheets and blankets. ‘Welcome to your new home,’ she said, and snorted with laughter again.