City of Lies - Lian Tanner [0]
Text copyright © 2011 by Lian Tanner
Jacket art copyright © 2011 by Jon Foster
Interior illustrations copyright © 2011 by Sebastian Ciaffaglione
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover by Allen & Unwin Pty. Ltd., Sydney, in 2011.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tanner, Lian.
City of lies / Lian Tanner — 1st American ed.
p. cm. — (The keepers trilogy; bk. 2)
Summary: Twelve-year-old Goldie, impulsive and bold, relies on her skills as a liar and a thief to try to rescue her captured friends from the child-stealers running rampant in the City of Spoke.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89696-5 [1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction.
2. Kidnapping—Fiction. 3. Robbers and outlaws—Fiction. 4. Fantasy.] I. Title.
PZ7.T16187Cit 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010048579
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment
and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Cast of Characters
A Message from the Museum
The Child-Stealers
To the Docks
Return of a Traitor
The Piglet
Pounce
Goldie No One
The Bandmaster
The Museum of Dunt
The White-Haired Boy
Great Danger
A Message from Toadspit
The Festival of Lies
Found!
A Black Feather
Harrow’s Business
Rescue
The Fortune
Flense
Trapped
Too Much Water
At the Last Minute, a Lady of High Birth
Something Has Happened to the Children.…
Warrior Princess
A Day and a Night
The Hunters
The Shark Nursery
Fifth Keeper
Meanwhile, Back in Jewel …
Acknowledgments
About the Author
The ancient tale of Frisia, crown princess of Merne, is a curious one. There was a time when people knew it only as a children’s story. Now, of course, it is famous, because it played such an important part in the life of Goldie Roth, Fifth Keeper of the Museum of Dunt.
Frisia was a warrior princess, a brilliant archer and swords-woman and a natural leader. She lived in what was, at the time, one of the most dangerous places in the world—the royal court of Merne.
In those days, the court was full of plots and vicious intrigues. At the center of most of them was the king’s physician, an ambitious woman who was secretly in the pay of Graf von Nagel, the rebel warlord. This physician, helped by members of the royal guard, carried out several assassination attempts on Frisia and her father, the king.
Frisia survived these plots to lead a tiny army against von Nagel and his followers. The result of the ensuing battle has never been clear. Some say that von Nagel was defeated, and died with Frisia’s sword through his heart. Others say that it was the princess who died, and that her body was carried away by the beasts of the field, who had risen up to fight beside her.
No one knows what happened to the physician.
—from The Museum of Dunt: A Hidden History
The scream woke Goldie Roth from a deep sleep. She sat bolt upright, thinking for a moment that she was back in the terrible events of six months ago, with the city of Jewel on the brink of invasion and her friend Toadspit about to be murdered in front of her eyes.
Then she heard Ma’s quiet voice in the next room, and she knew that Pa had had another nightmare. She slipped out of bed, threw a dressing gown over her shoulders and hurried into her parents’ room. “Pa?” she said. “Are you all right?”
Pa smiled weakly