City of Lies (8 page)

I am dust in the moonlight. I am a forgotten dream. I am nothing.…

Her mind began to drift outward, until she could sense every nearby scrap of life, big and small, awake and asleep. There was the cat, crouched beside the counter, its pulse beating with a feral hunger. There were rats and cowbeetles in the walls, and cockroaches going about their secret business. And somewhere in the rooms behind the shop, four human hearts—two adults and two children—tolled out the slow rhythms of midnight.

Goldie listened to those rhythms carefully. The children must be Bonnie and Toadspit. But who were the adults? Was Harrow here? She remembered how the bandmaster had shrunk in fear at the name, and her throat clenched. But at the same time she felt a bubble of anger. The people of Jewel used to shrink like that, whenever the Blessed Guardians passed by. Goldie had hated it then, and she hated it now.

I bet Harrow likes making people afraid
, she thought.
I bet he likes squashing people. Well, he’s not going to squash me!

She opened her eyes. The bread shop dozed around her, heavy with the smell of yeast. There were flagstones under
her feet and, at the back of the shop, a small square doorway. Like a shadow, Goldie drifted toward it. The cat slipped out from behind the counter and prowled after her.

The first room she came to held an enormous brick oven. There were no windows, and it was so dark that she had to feel her way around the walls, avoiding the stacks of empty tins.

The next room was a kitchen and scullery. The heartbeats were closer now. Goldie crept toward them—then stopped, uncertain.

“Why is everyone sleeping so peacefully?” she whispered to the cat. “Shouldn’t someone be keeping watch over the prisoners? Shouldn’t Toadspit be trying to escape? Maybe he’s still unconscious!”

The cat sneered at her, as if it knew something she didn’t.

And suddenly it struck Goldie that the bread shop didn’t feel at all like a place with stolen children in it. Instead, it felt … 
relieved
, as if something dangerous had happened, but now it was over and done with, and the shop’s inhabitants could relax again.

She slid into the first bedroom, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach.
I am nothing. I am the memory of a cooling oven.…

On one side of the iron-framed bed, a woman was snoring, her mouth open and a frayed bedcap covering her hair.
Next to her, the bread-shop man, his eyebrows dusted with flour, mumbled in his dreams.

Goldie left them sleeping and stole into the next room, where the two children lay in bunks. She peered hopefully at them—

But they were strangers.

The sinking feeling grew worse. She tried to push it away; Bonnie and Toadspit must be here somewhere; they
must
be! Perhaps they were imprisoned behind a very thick door, and that was why she couldn’t feel them.…

The last three rooms were storerooms. The first and the second had no windows and were not locked. Goldie stood in the darkness, listening to her own breathing. One room to go.

She hardly dared approach it. She saw the heavy door with the bolt on the outside, and her hopes rose and fell in sickening swoops.

She slid the bolt back.

She eased the door open.

Unlike the others, the third storeroom had a tiny window. But the gaslight that filtered in from outside showed nothing but bare walls and a number of empty burlap bags strewn willy-nilly across the floor, as if someone had thrown them down in a temper.

Goldie slumped back against the door. She felt like crying.
Somewhere outside the window a dog barked, but she hardly heard it. She could no longer ignore the awful truth. Bonnie and Toadspit were not here. They must have been moved while she was walking around the city.

“Idiot!” she whispered fiercely, wishing that she had listened more carefully to the little voice. “You’ve lost them!”

The gray-spotted cat slunk past her into the room. “What am I supposed to do now, cat?” whispered Goldie, wishing that Broo were here, instead of this unfriendly creature.

The cat ignored her. It stared at the burlap sacks, its tail twitching from side to side. In the far corner of the room, something scratched at the floor. The cat’s head swiveled toward it.

The scratching sound came again. The cat’s bony hindquarters began to tremble. It inched across the floor on silent paws. It sprang. There was a squeak of terror, then nothing.

Goldie swallowed, trying not to think about what might have happened to her friends. The cat sidled past her, a small, limp corpse dangling from its jaws.

“He wants
what
?” said the Protector.

The captain of militia cleared his throat. “He wants to help, Your Grace. Sorry to bother you at this time of night,
but one of the guards told him about the children going missing, and he reckons he might be able to find them. I thought you’d want to know as soon as possible.”

The Protector pushed her hair out of her eyes. She should have been in bed hours ago, but she could not sleep for worry about the missing children. And now there was this ridiculous offer from the Fugleman. “He’s in a prison cell!” she snapped. “How could he possibly find
anything
? Except perhaps for bedbugs.”

“He says he’s got contacts, Your Grace. People he’s worked with all over the peninsula, and in the Southern Archipelago too. They’re not a nice bunch—he admits he’s been a bad boy. But that’s all the better, Your Grace. If it’s criminals or slavers who’ve taken the children, then who better to find them than other criminals and slavers?”

The Protector felt the old anger welling up inside her. “Tell the Fugleman—the
ex
-Fugleman—that we do not need—”

She forced herself to stop. Perhaps she should not be so hasty. After all, Sinew’s inquiries had come to nothing, and so had hers.…

“Why is he offering this?” she said. “What does he want? Money? Or is he trying to worm his way back into favor?”

“He claims to be genuinely remorseful, Your Grace.”

The Protector laughed grimly. “I am sure he does. But what’s his
real
reason?”

“Maybe—maybe he’s hoping for a lighter sentence.”

“Mm. I suppose that could be it.”

“If he’s genuine, Your Grace, there’s no harm done. And his villainous friends might just be able to help.”

“And if it’s a trick?”

“Then we need to expose it as soon as possible.”

The Protector pushed her chair back. “What does he need?”

“He wants to send out lots of semaphore messages, that’s all. He says he can do it from the House of Repentance if you’ll let him into the office and give him a runner.”

“I still don’t like it.”

“He’ll be under close guard, Your Grace. And we’ll make sure that the messages are read before they are sent. We won’t give him a chance to get up to any of his nonsense.”

“I suppose—” The Protector sighed. She was feeling old. “If there’s a chance it will help find the children, then I must allow it.”

“You won’t regret it, Your Grace,” said the captain.

“I do hope not,” said the Protector. “I really do hope not.”

G
oldie spent the rest of that miserable night curled up next to the chimney of an underground kitchen. She dozed fitfully, and when the sounds of clattering saucepans echoed up from below, just before dawn, she crawled to her feet, pulled her torn jacket close and went back to the bread shop. The air was colder than ever and the hunger was as sharp as flint in her stomach.

She could see movement in the back of the shop, but the doors weren’t yet open, and the only people around were other ragged children scouring the cobblestones for crusts.

Goldie joined them and found enough to take the worst edge off her hunger. She also found the wheel marks from the horse and cart and followed them for two blocks before they were lost under a hundred other such marks.

In the back of her mind, the little voice whispered,
You’re missing something
.

Goldie returned to the shop and watched it for most of the morning, mingling with the passersby. There was no sign of the cat, and nothing happened that would lead her to her friends.

But in the back of her mind the little voice whispered again,
Missing something.…

She did her best to work out what she might have missed in her midnight search. But there was nothing, she was sure of it. Not unless you counted stacks of bread tins and empty burlap bags.

Just before midday, she gave up her vigil and set out to search the rest of the city. The streets were crowded, and she wished desperately that Toadspit were with her and that they were looking for Bonnie together. She wished too that she could talk to Olga Ciavolga, or Herro Dan, or Sinew. She felt horribly lonely and did not know what she could do in the afternoon that was any better than what she had done in the morning.

In the cellars of her mind, the little voice whispered,
Missing something.… Missing something.…

The sun was already low in the winter sky when she found herself in another plaza, a smaller one than yesterday’s. There were shops all around the edges, with canvas awnings folded back, and dark interiors. In front of the shops, cinnamon, nutmeg, peppercorns and powdered ginger spilled from their sacks. There were stone jars of honey too, and coffee and cocoa beans.

In the middle of the plaza, a crowd had gathered. Goldie wriggled through it, hoping for something to eat. Instead, she found a small boy with white hair and bare feet standing next to a rickety-looking pram. The pram had a board nailed across the top of it and was filled to the brim with scraps of paper.

A man at the front of the crowd held up a coin. “Here, lad,” he said. “Tell
my
fortune.”

The boy, who looked to be about six or seven years old, was very thin, and his feet were blue with the cold. But there was something cheerful about him that immediately raised Goldie’s battered spirits. He took the coin, slipped it into his pocket and whistled softly.

There was a rustling sound, and the pram rocked on its springs. A moment later, a white mouse with a scrap of paper between its teeth scrambled up onto the board. It was quickly followed by another mouse, and another, and another. Before long there were twelve of them lined up, each with its bit of paper. They were all pure white with little pink
eyes and pink ears, and they gazed up at the boy as if they were waiting for instructions.

He whistled again, and they dropped their bits of paper onto the board.

“Is that it?” said the man, taking a step forward.

The boy held up his hand, as if to say, “Wait.” He tipped his head to one side and stared at the bits of paper. From where Goldie stood, they looked as if they had been torn out of books and gazettes. Some of them had only one word on them; others had a whole sentence. Two of them had no words at all, only pictures, though Goldie couldn’t see what they were.

The boy moved the scraps of paper around, tossing some of them back into the pram. When he was satisfied, he nodded.

“Well,” said the man, winking at his friends, “let’s see what’s in store for me.”

He stabbed his finger at the bits of paper one by one, and read them out loud. “
Cotton socklets
—ah, that’ll be something to do with my business.” He nodded approvingly. “It’s a good start, lad. I don’t make socklets exactly, but you’ve got the cotton bit right. Now, what comes next?
Long hand
. What’s that got to do with anything? And the next one,
sick one day
. Is this supposed to make sense?”

The white-haired boy shrugged.

The man stared at the bits of paper, puzzled. Then his face
cleared, and he turned to one of his companions, who had a snub nose and an arm in splints. “Hang on, young Spider, I think it’s talking about you! Long hand, that’s close enough to arm, isn’t it?” He beamed at the crowd. “Spider’s my accountant. Broke his arm yesterday, poor sod. Those mice are smart little beggars, aren’t they?”

The crowd peered at the young man, who flushed, as if he was too shy to enjoy such attention.