City of Lies (15 page)

“Toadspit,” she hissed. “It’s
me
!”

Toadspit stepped, fierce-eyed, from behind the door. He was clutching the legs of a chair and his face was hollow with strain, but when he saw Goldie he managed a desperate grin. “You took long enough to get here.”

Bonnie slipped past him. “Goldie! Toadspit said you’d find us. Did you get the message? Did you understand it? Toadspit said you would.”

There was no time to talk. Goldie seized the younger girl’s hand and pulled her toward the stairs. “Come on, Princess Frisia. Your troops are keeping the enemy busy down below.”

They pelted up the staircase with the noise of the mob howling at their heels. When they reached the top floor, Goldie grabbed the rope from the iron curlicue and uncoiled it.

“Will it hold two of us?” said Toadspit. “Bonnie can’t manage by herself.”

“Yes I can,” said Bonnie.

“No you can’t,” said Toadspit.

“Don’t argue,” said Goldie. “Bonnie, we’ll send you down first. Then Toadspit, then me.”

She dragged the rope over to the table and wrapped it around one of the legs to anchor it. Then she tied the end around Bonnie’s waist. The younger girl’s face was stiff with fright, but she said nothing.

“Toadspit and I’ll pay out the rope as you go,” said Goldie. “When you get to the bottom, you’ll see some packing cases. Untie the knot—like this, see? And jerk the rope three times so we know you’re safe.”

Bonnie nodded, shivering. Goldie grinned at her. “Go on, Princess. See you at the bottom. Don’t worry, we won’t let you fall.”

She and Toadspit held the loose end of the rope while Bonnie climbed out the window. The younger girl gulped, then closed her eyes and let go of the sill.

The rope snapped tight around the table leg. As Goldie paid it out, she imagined Bonnie sinking down and down—past the drainpipes, past the third-story window. She imagined a faceless man—
Harrow
—waiting at the bottom.…

Stop it!
she told herself.
Don’t think like that!

Quicker than she had hoped, the rope jerked three times and went slack. Toadspit raced to the window and peered down. “She’s there!”

There was a shout from the stairwell. Goldie darted across to the doorway. Cord was roaring above the sound of the fighting, “Where’s the fire, you drunken idjits? Show me. I don’t believe yez.”

Goldie ran back to the window. “Quick! They’ll be here in a minute. You take the rope. I’ll climb down.”

Toadspit whipped the end of the rope away from the table and tied it around the iron curlicue. Then he wrapped his legs around it and began to clamber down it as fast as he could. As he sank out of sight, Goldie scrambled over the sill and dragged the window shut behind her.

The climb down was even worse than the climb up. Her fingers were slippery with nerves, and she kept expecting to hear a roar of anger from the fifth-floor window. She imagined a knife flashing out and slicing through the rope, and Toadspit crashing onto the roof below.

“Stop scaring yourself,” she whispered. “Just think about what you’re doing. Here, this drainpipe. Then swing your foot across—there’s a hole in the wood somewhere. No, not that one, that one crumbles. Ah,
that
one—”

She was just passing the third story when she heard the sound she had been dreading. Above her head, a window scraped open. “There they are!” shouted Cord. “One of ’em’s ’alfway down the rope. Quick, Smudge, grab it! Pull ’im back up!”

There was a frantic shout from Toadspit as the rope started to rise.

“No!” cried Goldie. “Morg!
Morg!
Help!”

The slaughterbird came down from the sky like a visitation from the Seven Gods. Her great wings beat at the open
window. Her claws tore at Smudge’s arm. He screamed and let go of the rope.

Goldie scrambled down the face of the building as fast as she could in the darkness. It seemed to take forever, but at last she felt the roof of the lean-to under her feet. She sprang down onto the packing cases, and then to the ground.

And there were Toadspit and Bonnie, with the cat standing guard over them. “Come
on
!” cried Goldie, grabbing her boots.

And the three children and the cat ran for their lives.

“W
here are we going?” panted Toadspit.

“Down near the harbor. Are they following us?”

Toadspit looked over his shoulder. “No sign of them. Morg’ll keep them busy.” He laughed shakily. “Good old Morg.”

They ran and ran until they were heaving for breath. By then they were only four or five blocks from the harbor and it had begun to rain. Most of the revelers had disappeared from the streets. The cobblestones were black and slippery underfoot.

Goldie heard a flurry of wings overhead. “Morg!” hissed Toadspit. He held up his arm, and the slaughterbird fell out of the sky like a patch of night. Toadspit bit his lip at the sudden weight, but his face glowed. “You found us. You and Goldie both.”

“And the cat,” said Goldie.

“Ffffound,” agreed the cat, rubbing its wet body against Goldie’s legs.

“We’d better get off the streets as soon as we can,” said Toadspit.

Goldie nodded. “The sewers. We’ll go there. I don’t know anywhere else that’s safe.”

Morg ruffled her feathers and glared down at the cat. “Sa-a-a-a-a-a-afe.”

By the time they reached the entrance to the sewers they were soaked through. Morg wouldn’t go in with them, though Toadspit spent several minutes trying to persuade her. She perched on a pile of fallen bricks, then clacked her beak and flew off into the night.

Toadspit watched her go with a mournful expression on his face. “I expect she’s hungry,” he said. “I hope she finds something to eat.”

All three children were shivering, but Goldie lingered in the tunnel entrance. “There are two boys living here,” she whispered. “Pounce and Mouse. Pounce is the older one. Don’t believe anything he says. Don’t believe anything
anyone
says, from now on. It’s the Festival of Lies and everything is back to front.” She stopped, then said, “Oh yes, and you have to talk in lies, too.”

“Even when we’re talking to each other?” whispered Bonnie.

“Not when it’s just us,” said Goldie. “But when there are other people around I think we’d better. Unless we’re touching an animal. Then we can tell the truth.”

The cat led the way into the tunnel, which was even darker than Goldie remembered. She gritted her teeth and felt her way along the slimy walls, with Bonnie clinging to her jacket and Toadspit bringing up the rear. The dripping sound was louder tonight, and she could hear water gurgling through underground cisterns somewhere nearby.

When she thought they had gone approximately halfway, she stopped and called out softly. “Pounce? Mouse? Are you there?”

There was no answer, but Goldie thought she could hear someone breathing. “Pounce?” she said. “Is that you?”

“Nah,” said Pounce’s rough voice. “It’s the bogeyman.”

A tinderbox scraped, and a yellow light sprang up. Directly in front of the three children, hanging in midair like a phantom, was a hairy snout, with long silver tusks and little wicked glinting eyes.

Bonnie squeaked with fright. Toadspit leaped forward to stand in front of her.

“I know that’s not you, Pounce,” hissed Goldie.

There was a moment’s silence; then Pounce moved the lantern so that Goldie could see his skinny arms. “What do ya think this is, a boardin’ouse?” he said. He turned his back on them and began to walk up the tunnel.

Goldie hurried after him. “I knew you’d be pleased to see us.”

“Yeah,” muttered Pounce. “Whoopee.”

They turned the corner, and he lifted the blanket to one side. “No one there, Mousie,” he said. “Just ghoulies and gobblings.”

Mouse smiled when he saw Goldie, and the cat rubbed itself against him, purring. Toadspit and Bonnie eyed the two boys uncertainly; then Toadspit pushed his sister toward the fire and crouched next to her.

There was an old kettle perched on the edge of the fireplace. Mouse wedged it in among the coals, dug out two tin mugs and put a trickle of brown powder in each one.

Pounce leaned against the wall with his arms folded. “You give ’em everythin’ we got, Mousie,” he said sourly. “They’re welcome guests, they are. They can stay as long as they like.”

Mouse grinned. Goldie said, “We’ll be here for weeks, Pounce, you’ll see. We’ll be back tomorrow night, sure as anything. We’re never going home if we can help it.”

Pounce shrugged. Mouse took the kettle off the fire and poured hot water onto the powder. The smell of chocolate filled the little room. He grimaced at Goldie as if to apologize
for the fact that there were only two mugs, then gave one to Bonnie and the other to Toadspit. They wrinkled their noses at the steam and gulped the hot chocolate thankfully. The cat leaped up onto the stones beside them and closed its eyes, soaking in the warmth of the fire.

“It’s the cat from the ship,” said Bonnie. “I didn’t realize.”

“You mean it’s
not
the cat from the ship,” said Goldie.

“Oh,” said Bonnie. “Yes. I mean, no. I mean—” She shook her head in confusion.

The cat yawned. Its wet spotted fur was plastered to its body, and for the first time Goldie saw the length of its legs, the enormous paws and the deceptive stillness.

Just like an idle-cat!
she thought. Then she laughed at herself, because idle-cats were many times bigger than this and had been extinct for hundreds of years. And besides, if this were an idle-cat, it would certainly have killed them all by now.

Still, there was something uncanny about the creature, and she was amazed that she had been bold enough to pick it up.

When Toadspit finished his hot chocolate, Mouse made another one for Goldie. Then he whistled. There was a rustling sound from the pram in the corner, and the mice peeled over the side like a breaking wave and scurried up onto the boy’s shoulders. He crooned softly to them. Two of them trotted down his arm to his hand.

Bonnie leaned forward, wide-eyed. The mice sat up on their haunches and inspected her, their tiny noses twitching.

“They won’t bite her, will they?” said Toadspit.

“Course they will,” said Pounce. “They’re man-eaters, they are. They dragged an old lady in ’ere earlier, and there’s nothin’ left of ’er now but false teeth and undies.”

Toadspit rolled his eyes. Bonnie laughed and stroked one of the mice with the tip of her finger.

Goldie wrapped her hands around the hot mug. “They don’t tell fortunes.”

“Can they tell ours?” asked Bonnie.

Mouse whistled again, and the mice raced back to the pram and returned with a dozen scraps of paper. The boy rejected them one by one, until there were only three left.

The first was a picture of a cat. The second said,
too much water
. The third said,
at the last minute, a lady of high birth
.

Bonnie’s face fell. “It doesn’t—I mean, it
does
make sense.”

Mouse laughed. He picked up three of the mice and gave one to each of the children. Goldie closed her fingers around the small quivering body. “Good,” she said. “Now we can tell the truth.”

She stared at the bits of paper. “The first one—it might mean the cat’s coming with us when we leave here. Maybe that’s important for some reason.”

The cat blinked slowly and leaned closer to the fire.

“The second one is probably the sea—perhaps that’s how we’re going home. It’d be much faster than going by road.
And the third one—I think the third one must be the Protector.”

“High birth?” said Toadspit. “That means a queen, or someone like that. Royalty.”

“But we haven’t got a queen,” said Goldie. “So it
must
be the Protector. Maybe she’s going to find us!”

Bonnie’s eyes were worried. “But what about the Festival? Didn’t you say everything’s a lie? Maybe the fortune’s a lie too.”

“Is it?” said Goldie to Mouse. “Do the fortunes lie during the Festival?”

The white-haired boy cuddled one of the mice against his cheek and shook his head.

Goldie felt a surge of relief. Even without one of the Big Lies, she had managed to get her friends away from Harrow. And now they had a fortune—a true fortune. A
good
fortune!

But they were not safe yet, she reminded herself. They would not be safe until they were far away from Spoke and Harrow could no longer get his hands on them.

He’s probably out there right now, searching for us
.

And despite the warmth of the fire, she shivered at the thought of what would happen if he caught them.

Deep in the back rooms of the museum, Sinew and Broo were stalking the slommerkin. Sinew had not yet seen the creature. In fact, he had
never
seen one—they had been driven to extinction long before he was born. But he had heard about them. Heard how fast they were, how ferocious. Heard about their enormous bulk, and the way they liked to roll on their victims to soften them up for eating.

It would be a disaster if such a creature escaped into the city. And so the keeper and the brizzlehound had been on its trail for hours, following the smell that it left in its wake. Now at last they were closing in.