City of Lies - Lian Tanner [13]
When Goldie woke up the second time, the street was bustling, the children in the other doorways had disappeared, and her stomach was groaning with hunger.
But the dreams lingered, as heavy as stone inside her. Pa crawled up the hill.…
Tears prickled Goldie’s eyes and she brushed them away. “What I need,” she told herself firmly, “is a plan.”
The first thing she must do was get a sense of the neighborhood—the back entrances, the dead ends, the directions that danger might come from. Then she must work out how to break into the bread shop. And then she must find something to eat.
She paused, and like a faithful dog returning to its master, her thoughts returned to Ma and Pa. How she wished she could go to them, right now! How she wished—
No. She shook her head. She couldn’t go home. She wouldn’t go home, not until she could take Bonnie and Toadspit with her. And that might never happen if she didn’t stop worrying about Ma and Pa!
In the back of her mind, a little voice whispered, If Goldie Roth can’t stop worrying, then you must stop being Goldie Roth.
Goldie had heard this little voice all her life. It seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her, and until six months ago she had followed its wisdom without question. It was the little voice that had urged her to run away. It had shown her how to navigate the strange, shifting rooms of the Museum of Dunt, and had helped her save Jewel from invasion.
But over the last few months she had got out of the habit of trusting it. All it did was urge her to follow her destiny and become Fifth Keeper, and she could not do that without hurting her parents.
Now, however, she needed its help. She nodded. Somehow she must stop being Goldie Roth.…
She was reluctant to leave the front of the bread shop unguarded, but she had little choice—there were things that she must do before nightfall. And besides, everything so far had happened under cover of darkness. She didn’t think Harrow and his men would give their game away by showing themselves in daylight.
“I’ll be back,” she whispered, wishing that Toadspit and Bonnie could hear her. “I’ll be back tonight to get you out of there.”
In several places up and down the hill there were enclosed passages that led to the next street. Halfway along one of them, Goldie found a rubbish yard with piles of rags and rotting gazettes, and empty tins of olive oil stacked nearly as high as a house.
She sorted through the rags until she found a pair of old britches and a jacket with one arm. The britches were too big, so she tied a string around her waist to hold them up. She unpinned her bird brooch and was about to slip it into her pocket when she paused. She ran her fingers over the outstretched wings and thought about Auntie Praise.
She had never met her aunt—Praise Koch had disappeared at the age of sixteen and was never seen again. But Ma sometimes talked sadly about her, saying how brave she had been, and how Goldie was just like her.
Goldie swallowed and pinned the brooch inside her collar, where it would not be seen. She rubbed her boots in the oily muck that covered the ground and smeared some of that same muck on her face. Then she took out Toadspit’s knife and sawed off her hair until it was as short as a boy’s.
By the time she had finished, she felt different.
Sharper.
Fiercer.
Lighter.
“I am no longer Goldie Roth, who has sick parents and a chain around her heart,” she whispered. “I’m Goldie No One. No parents. No bad dreams. Just two friends to rescue and take home.”
She buried her own jacket and her smock in the pile of rags. She buried the coil of rope too, so that it would be there when she needed it. Then she set out to learn everything she could about the streets around the bread shop.
This part of Spoke was a winding, confusing place. The cobblestones underfoot reminded Goldie of Jewel, and there were little shrines here and there to Great Wooden or Bald Thoke, or one of the other Seven Gods. But everything else was different. The streets were narrower. The gutters were smellier. The buildings were made of