Lian Tanner_Keepers Trilogy_02

by City of Lies

  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 anything!”

  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.”

  Goldie gazed after the happy dancers. So Pounce was telling the truth. The Big Lies DO exist. And there’s one gone already.

  Then the noise and the shouting erupted again, and she remembered why she was here. “I’m—I’m not looking for someone,” she said to the young woman, who had turned her back on the crowd and was beginning to dismantle her stall. “She’s not wearing a cat mask.”

  “A cat mask?” said the woman, over her shoulder. “Easy. I could probably lead you straight to her. There’s only one cat mask in the whole city.”

  For a moment Goldie’s pulse beat faster; then she remembered that the stall owner was lying. “She’s not wearing a bright green cloak either,” she said quickly. “And she’s—um—tall.” She tried to remember more about the woman who had shoved past her so roughly in the street. “And—and I think she’s probably really polite. And kind. And friendly.”

  The stall owner paused in her work. “Mm. That doesn’t ring a bell. I’ve had a few friendly customers lately, but she was one of the nicest. Tall, you say?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I mean—”

  The stall owner laughed. “Well. I haven’t seen her at all since she bought that mask. I haven’t seen her several times, in fact. That green cloak really blends into the background, doesn’t it?” She narrowed her eyes. “Why are you looking for her?”

  “She’s a—a friend.”

  “Mm, you’d better be careless then, boy. I get the feeling she’s the sort who’d treat a street snotty gently. Very gently.”

  Goldie was suddenly breathless. “Do you know where I can find her?”

  “Don’t bother trying that warren of streets at the bottom of Temple Hill. There’s no bootmaker there, and even if there was, I’ve never seen her talking to him.”

  “Thank you,” said Goldie. The young woman’s eyes twinkled behind her mask. “I mean—I mean, curse you. Really really curse you!”

  “One
bad turn deserves another,” said the woman.

  The streets at the bottom of Temple Hill were the poorest that Goldie had ever seen. Old wooden houses rose up on either side of her like rotting teeth. The gutters were choked with rubbish, and most of the watergas lamps were broken. There were fire bells on every corner, as decrepit as the houses.

  The Festival was even wilder here than in the rest of the city. Goldie and the cat pressed themselves against a wall as a horde of masked children raced past, letting off fizgigs and throwing thunderflashes onto the cobblestones. The cat hissed and arched its back with every explosion.

  A man dressed as Bald Thoke chased after the children, bellowing at the top of his lungs. Goldie automatically flicked her fingers, even though it was the Festival and she didn’t have to. All around her, ragged men and women sang and laughed.

  The shop Goldie was looking for had a sign out front saying HOT PUDDINGS. But there were shoes in the window, and the bootmaker was sitting on the doorstep in his apron, plaiting a piece of leather. He was a solid man in a fish mask, with thin hair plastered to his oversized head.

  Now that Goldie was here, she wasn’t sure what to do. She stopped in a boarded-up doorway. “No sign of the woman,” she whispered to the cat. “How do we find her?”

  “Ddddown,” said the cat, lowering itself onto its haunches.

  “You mean just sit here and wait for her to turn up?”

  The cat purred.

  “She might not come for days,” said Goldie, “and we haven’t got that long. Bonnie and Toadspit might be …”

  She stopped. The thought of what might happen to her friends if she delayed was too awful to say out loud.

  In the back of her mind, the little voice whispered, She will come if she is called.

  Goldie shook her head. She didn’t even know the woman’s name. How could she call her? No, there must be a better way of finding her.

  She heard a cry from the end of the street. It was the horde of children again, racing toward her. The cat hissed angrily and dived between the boards into the darkness of the house behind them. Goldie pressed herself back as far as she could, not wanting to be whacked by flying arms and legs.

  But as the children passed, the heat of their excitement washed over her, and before she knew what she was doing, she had stepped out and thrown herself into their midst. Immediately she was swept up by the crowd. Thunderflashes exploded around her. Fizgigs sparkled. Bald Thoke roared. The children screamed at the tops of their voices, and Goldie screamed with them.

  She had no idea how long she ran with that mad company. She tore blindly through the streets, forgetting the cat, forgetting everything she had come to do. Her heart pounded with excitement. Her blood sang with the joy of the Festival. For the first time in days she was warm.

  When she at last dropped out, whooping for breath and laughing so hard that she had to lean against the nearest wall to stop herself from falling over, the morning was past, the afternoon was half gone, and she knew how to find the woman in the green cloak.

  She will come if she is called.…

  But that was not all that had changed. While she was running, she had felt a wildness surrounding her, as exhilarating and dangerous as life itself. She could feel the echo of it even now, vibrating in her bones like the deepest notes of a pipe organ. What was more, she recognized it.

  It was the same wildness that she had felt so many times in the museum!

  As she set out across the city to where she had hidden the coil of rope and the lever, she shivered with nerves and excitement. According to Pounce, no one knew where one of the Big Lies would appear. But it was the wildness that created them, she was sure of it. It burned beneath the Festival like an underground fire, just as it burned beneath the Museum of Dunt.

  Maybe—just maybe she could use it to catch a Big Lie and beat Harrow!

  It was the middle of the afternoon, and the Protector had not slept for several nights. She was about to put her head down on her desk for a short nap when the captain of militia burst into her office, gasping for breath.

  “Your Grace. The Fugleman—”

  The Protector shot upright in her chair. I knew it, she thought. He has corrupted my officers! He has escaped! In the middle of everything else—

  But the captain was smiling. “The Fugleman—he has found the children!”

  The Protector stared at him, wondering if she had fallen asleep after all and was dreaming. “He has?”

  “I have seldom seen anyone work so hard, Your Grace. He has sent out message after message, and now he has a reply! A runner came from the semaphore station just a little while ago—”

  The Protector held up her hand. “Where are they? Where are the children?”

  “In Spoke, Your Grace. The descriptions match exactly.”

  A bubble of hope welled up inside the Protector. She leaped out of her chair and strode to the door, herding the captain before her. “Send a message to the Museum of Dunt. And to Vice-Marshal Amsel. Quickly, man, get a move on. I want a company of militia ready to leave for Spoke within the hour.”

  The Protector hadn’t been to the House of Repentance since the day she ordered it closed. She had wanted to pull the whole thing down, but now she was glad she hadn’t. She liked the thought of her brother being chained up in his own dungeons.

  He wasn’t in the dungeons now, of course. His legs were shackled to a desk in the middle of the office. From the look of it, he hadn’t been getting enough sleep either.

  The Protector pushed past the militia guard. “Tell me,” she demanded, “exactly what you have discovered.”

  The Fugleman nodded eagerly. “The man who stole the children is called Harrow. I know of him by reputation; he is the worst of villains, and his men are the dregs of the peninsula—thieves, murderers and confidence tricksters!” He wiped his hand across his forehead. “However, I gather they have not harmed the children. Yet.”

  “Whereabouts in Spoke are they? Give me an address. I will send the militia after them.”

  The Fugleman looked startled. He tried to rise from his chair but was pulled back by his chains. “Your Grace, that would not be wise!”

  The militia guards took a precautionary step forward. The Protector waved them away and glared down at the prisoner. “Did I ask your opinion? The opinion of a traitor? I did not!”

  The muscles in the Fugleman’s cheek flickered, as if he was trying to control some great emotion. He bowed his head. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace,” he said in a humble voice. “But this man Harrow has spies everywhere. He is completely ruthless. If a body of militia entered Spoke, he would know it within minutes. Before they could get anywhere near the children, he would move them. He might even kill them.”

  He paused. A pulse throbbed in his temple. “If you will allow me to make a suggestion—just a suggestion, mind—perhaps my informants could attempt a rescue. It would cost money. They are villains themselves and do nothing for free. But they know the secret ways around Spoke. It will still be dangerous, I do not deny it, but there is a greater chance of success.”

  The Protector tapped her fingers on the desk, wishing she knew why her brother was being so helpful. What was he really after? Was it just a lighter sentence, or could it be something more?

  She remembered the whispers. “This would never have happened under the Blessed Guardians.” Since the children had disappeared, those whispers had grown to a steady rumble. If it became known that the Fugleman was responsible for their rescue, there was no telling what might happen.

  The trouble was, if he was right about Harrow, she had little choice but to follow his advice. Her militia were enthusiastic and loyal, and their new training program was beginning to show results. But they were not subtle, or skilled at finding out secrets. If they were put up against a villain like Harrow, in a strange city—

  She came to a decision. “Very well,” she said. “Tell your informants to go ahead with the rescue. We will pay for their h
elp. I want to be briefed every step of the way.”

  The Fugleman picked up his pen. But before he could dip it in the inkwell, the Protector bent down beside him, so close that she could smell the dungeons, the sour reek of rust and stone and old cruelties.

  “It is a long time since we hanged anyone in this city, brother,” she whispered. “But if I discover that you are playing me false, and the children are harmed as a result of it, I will string you up with my own hands.”

  I am nothing. I am the smell of leather. I am a cockroach in the walls.…

  Goldie crouched behind the counter of the bootmaker’s shop, Concealed in Nothingness. The rope was slung around her shoulder, the lever tucked in her waistband. In one pocket, she had a twist of paper containing powdered sugar, and an old tinderbox that she had begged from a street stall. In the other pocket was a bag of saltpeter, the stuff that people used to preserve meat.

  Several hours had passed since she had stepped out of the horde of children. During that time, the bootmaker had retreated from the doorstep. Now he bustled around his workbench with the fish mask pushed up onto his forehead. He had a kind face.

  Goldie drifted over to the steamed-up window … I am nothing … and touched it with an unseen finger. A clear dot showed in the middle of the glass, lit by the lanterns that were beginning to appear in the street outside. Goldie glanced at the bootmaker, then traced a single word in large letters.

  HARROW

  Outside the open door, people were dancing and singing raucous songs. But the bootmaker obviously preferred to work. He picked up a shoe, pulled it this way and that, then slipped it onto an iron last and began to smooth its sole with a rasp. Goldie waited for him to notice what she had done.

  When minutes had passed and he still hadn’t looked up, she rapped sharply on the glass. The bootmaker raised his head. “Hullo?” he said. “Someone want me?”