by City of Lies
“Yeah, go on.”
The ship heaved and slapped against the waves. As Cord worked the tiller, the sleeve of his coat fell back, and Goldie saw a bloodstained bandage.
Beneath the tarpaulin, her hands twitched out a message in the silent code of fingertalk. That’s who Bonnie stabbed with arrow.
Toadspit nodded. His eyes flickered back to his sister’s bruises.
When Smudge returned, he was carrying a different piece of wood. He held it up for Bonnie to inspect. “It’s a fake nameplate, see?” he said, as happily as if she were a friend, rather than a child he had stolen. “When we was in Jewel we was the Black Bob, but now we’s the Piglet. Ain’t that clever? Who’s gunna think of lookin’ for the good old Piglet? No one, that’s who.” He grunted with satisfaction. “It were my idea, weren’t it, Cord?” he shouted to the smaller man.
Out of the corner of her eye, Goldie saw something move. She nudged Toadspit. The gray-spotted cat that had darted across their path on the wharf was slinking around one of the barrels. It was a huge, gaunt, wild-looking creature with torn ears and a bony skull, and when it saw Smudge, it bared its fangs in a silent hiss.
Smudge leaped backward, an expression of horror on his face. “Where’d that thing come from? What’s it doin’ on the Piglet?”
“Musta come with us from Spoke.” The sharp-faced man, Cord, sniggered. “What’s the matter, Smudge? You’re not scared of that old fleabag, are ya?”
“Course not,” said Smudge quickly. He retreated another step, tucking his fists into his armpits. “It’s just—um—you remember Harrow’s fightin’ dog? Great big monster of a thing? A coupla months ago he set it onto that cat, for a bit of a laugh. And—” He lowered his voice. “And the cat killed it! I seen it with me own eyes! They reckon—they reckon it’s a demon cat. They reckon it can see things that ain’t there.”
Cord’s snigger turned to a snarl. “Don’t be more of a idjit than ya have to. Find out the snotty’s name.”
Without moving, Smudge mumbled, “Hey, snotty. What’s yer name?”
Bonnie sat up very straight. “My name is—Princess Frisia.” In the dinghy, Toadspit smiled bleakly.
Smudge made a clumsy bow, still keeping an eye on the cat. “Pleased to meet ya, Princess.”
“Oh, for Bald Thoke’s sake!” shouted Cord. “You’re a moron, Smudge. What are ya? A moron. Find out ’er real name.”
“That is my real name,” said Bonnie. She glared up at Smudge. “Why did you steal me? My father the king will be very angry.”
Smudge looked confused for a moment. Then Goldie saw a cunning expression slide across his big face. “We didn’t steal ya. Yer ma and pa sold ya to us.”
“That’s not true!” cried Bonnie.
“Well, course it’s not,” said Smudge, sounding surprised at her protest. “I’m practicin’ for the Festival.”
Under the tarpaulin, Toadspit’s fingers flashed a message. What festival?
Goldie shook her head. Don’t know.
“If she won’t tell ya her name,” Cord shouted, “take ’er below.”
Bonnie pressed herself against the mast. “I’m not going back down there.”
“You have to,” said Smudge. “ ’E’s the boss, so ya gotta do what ’e says.”
“He’s not my boss,” said Bonnie. “And I like it better up here.”
“Aw, come on, Princess. You’ll get me into trouble.” The big man took a step toward her, but the cat hissed at him and he quickly backed away again. “Um—Cord?”
Cord jerked his head in disgust. “Do I ’ave to do everything meself? Yeah, course I do.” He beckoned furiously to Smudge, who lumbered over to take the tiller.
Beside Goldie, Toadspit gritted his teeth.
Cord was clearly not the least bit afraid of the cat. He marched straight past it, aiming a kick at it on the way. But the cat was not afraid either. It twisted away from the kick and leaped up onto the nearest coil of rope. Its back bristled. Its long claws snaked out and raked Cord’s hand.
Cord swore loudly. “Scratch me, would ya? Ya little—!”
“Told ya it was a demon,” shouted Smudge.
“That ain’t no demon,” hissed Cord, snatching an iron bar from a nearby barrel. “And I’ll prove it.”
There was a flurry of movement as Bonnie scrambled to her feet and launched herself at him. “Don’t you dare!” she cried, kicking his ankles and punching his chest with her bound fists. “Don’t you dare hurt that poor cat!”
A chill ran through Goldie. Cord swore again and dropped the iron bar. He grabbed Bonnie by the scruff of the neck, his thin face purple with fury. “Ya little ratbag,” he snarled. “It’s time ya learned some respect!”
“Careful, boss,” said Smudge uneasily. “Harrow won’t like it if ya damage the goods.”
“Harrow told us to get a snotty, and we did,” growled Cord. “It’s not our fault if she gets a bit mashed up on the way ’ome!” And he raised his fist.
Goldie had almost stopped breathing. She grasped the edge of the tarpaulin, ready to leap out of the dinghy.
But Toadspit’s hands were again flashing in fingertalk. Stay here. Need someone they don’t know about. Keep this for me!
He thrust his folding knife into her pocket. Then he pushed past her and tumbled out onto the deck.
To the two men, it must have seemed as if he had dropped from the sky. He leaped over the barrels and tore his sister away from Cord before the sharp-faced man knew what was happening.
“Toadspit!” cried Bonnie, and she threw her bound hands around her brother’s neck.
To Goldie’s relief, the sudden appearance of a fourth person shocked Cord out of his mad rage. He leaned back against the rail, breathing heavily. “Well, well, looks like we got two snotties, Smudge, instead of one. We’ll ’ave to search the bilges. There might be a whole gaggle of ’em down there, hatchin’ out like goslings.” He chortled nastily. “You and me’s gunna be in Harrow’s good books.”
“We’re not going anywhere with you,” snarled Toadspit.
“I don’t see that ya got a choice in the matter,” said Cord. “Unless ya fancy a very long swim.”
He swaggered toward the boy. Goldie sucked in a sharp breath, but Toadspit backed quickly out of reach.
Bonnie stuck her tongue out at Cord. “You might as well give up now,” she said. “My brother kills people like you.”
“Shush, Bonnie!” hissed Toadspit.
“Bonnie?” said Cord sarcastically. “I thought she was some sorta princess.”
Goldie huddled in the dinghy, clutching her bird brooch and shivering with helpless anger. She saw Smudge tie the tiller in place. She watched as he took a brown bottle from his pocket, poured liquid onto a kerchief and crept up behind Toadspit. She caught a whiff of something cloying and strong.
Toadspit must have smelled it at almost the same time, because he let go of Bonnie and whirled around. But he was too slow. Smudge wrapped his big arms around the boy and clamped the kerchief over his nose. Toadspit struggled and kicked, then went limp.
“What’ve you done to him?” shouted Bonnie, and she attacked Smudge, trying to drag her unconscious brother from his arms. Goldie’s muscles ached with the desire to leap out of the dinghy and help, but she did not move.
“Here, gimme that muck, Smudge,” said Cord, grabbing Bonnie from behind. “I’ve ’ad enough of snotties. We’re gunna keep ’em asleep for the rest of the voyage.”
He held the kerchief over Bonnie’s face until she too went limp. Then he handed her to Smudge, who slung both children across his shoulders and carried them below. The cat watched from behind a barrel, its tail whipping from side to side.
Slowly, Goldie let the edge of the tarpaulin fall back into place. A drop of salt water trickled down her forehead, and she wiped it away. She was still shivering, but her anger was beginning to wear off, and she felt stunned by what had just happened.
She was all alone now. No one knew whe
re she was. If Toadspit and Bonnie were to be rescued, she must do it entirely by herself—and the only thing she had to help her was a folding knife.
The thought was almost too much for her. What could she do against a man as violent as Cord? Where were her friends being taken, and why? Who was the mysterious Harrow?
And how will Ma and Pa get on without me?
Something twisted painfully in her chest. She could not turn back, she knew that. She must try to put her parents out of her mind until Toadspit and Bonnie were safe again.
But as the Piglet plunged through the waves, heading for an unknown destination, Goldie felt as if a part of her were trying to fly in the opposite direction.
In a narrow street in one of the poorer parts of the city of Spoke, two boys were sitting on a stone step, watching the shop opposite. The older boy, Pounce, had his scabby arms wrapped around his knees, trying to keep out the cold wind that was blowing up from the harbor. He would have given up ages ago if it wasn’t for the money that Harrow’s underling, Flense, had promised him.
“One thing I’ll say about Harrow’s mob,” he whispered to his friend, “is that they pays well. Not like most people. Most people try and fob us off with a two-week-old pie that’d ’ave us spewin’ in the gutter if we was thick enough to eat it. And they expect us to be grateful.”
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.”
Goldie 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.