City of Lies - Lian Tanner [14]
By the time Goldie made her way back to the bread shop, she had a rusty iron lever tucked inside her waistband, a bent wire in her pocket and a clear picture in her mind of which streets and alleys offered an escape route and which could easily become traps. Even more important, she had learned that the bread shop did not have a rear entrance. If she was to break in, she must do it through the front.
The morning was well under way by now, and the shop was packed with customers. Goldie leaned against the wall opposite, watching the comings and goings through half-closed eyes. The lock on the shop door looked new, but she thought she could pick it.
The scent of freshly baked bread drifted across the street toward her, and she licked her lips. She could smell sausages too. She pushed herself away from the wall and headed down the hill, wishing she had some money.
Don’t go far, whispered the little voice in the back of her mind.
Goldie hesitated, looking over her shoulder at the bread shop and wondering if perhaps she should stay after all. But she was so hungry by now that she felt slightly dizzy. “I have to find something to eat,” she said, “or I’ll be useless.”
And she kept going down the hill.
As the street flattened out, it grew noisier and more crowded. Goldie stared around, fascinated. Six months after the defeat of the Blessed Guardians, many of Jewel’s citizens still lived their lives behind closed doors and didn’t dare raise their voices in case someone noticed them. But here in Spoke, people seemed to want to be noticed.
A landlady sat on her doorstep, shouting at one of her boarders. “Where have you been all night? Wipe your feet before you go inside. And where’s your rent? Don’t smile at me, you rogue. I can’t live on a smile, now, can I?”
A knife sharpener was setting up his wheel on the footpath. Above his head a woman leaned out an upper-story window and hung clothes on a washing line strung across the street.
Goldie heard a shout. “Hey, Sparky! Getting in early for the Festival?”
She spun around. A cook was lounging on the top step of an underground kitchen, taking sly swigs from the bottle in his pocket. And on the other side of the road—
Goldie blinked. On the other side of the road was a man wearing a mask in the shape of a horse’s head.
“Yep,” cried the man in the mask. “You gotta be ready.” His muffled voice sounded as if he was grinning. “Oooh, feel that fizzing in the air? Quick, ask me how many wives I’ve got.”
The cook chuckled. “How many wives you got?”
“Three,” cried Sparky. “And all of them as fat as pumpkins.”
They both roared with laughter, and the horse man danced away up the street.
Now that Goldie had spotted the first mask, they seemed to be everywhere. Some of them were plain, but most were covered in sequins or fur or the scales of fish. She passed a stall that sold nothing but masks, and it was doing a roaring trade.
A little way past the stall she found a plain half-mask lying forgotten on the footpath. She picked it up and tied the strings behind her head, then inspected herself in the nearest window. She looked like a boy. A homeless, anonymous boy.
No one …
A snatch of song caught her attention. An old woman selling meat scraps fried in batter was singing about a girl who fell in love with a bear. Her customers joined in the chorus.
“And her children were hairy
And terribly scary
They say …”
Despite her hunger and her worries, Goldie felt her heart lift. Spoke reminded her of the Museum of Dunt. It buzzed with life and energy, and she had no idea what was around the next corner. This was what a city should be like!
Somewhere nearby, a brass band began to play. As Goldie turned toward the music, she saw a flash of color, as bright as a parrot, and a short woman wearing a green woolen cloak and a cat mask pushed roughly past her.
The bright green cloak and the cat mask were no stranger than the other sights Goldie had come across that morning.