City of Lies - Lian Tanner [15]
In the back of her mind, the little voice whispered, Don’t go far!
Again Goldie hesitated. What if the little voice was right? What if …
Her stomach gurgled with hunger. The smell of battered meat scraps and hot pies made her head swim.
She took one last look at the woman in the green cloak and cat mask and turned away. “I’ll be back by nightfall,” she whispered. “Nothing will happen before then. I’ll get them out tonight.”
The brass band wasn’t at all what Goldie had been expecting. There were six musicians plus a bandmaster, and she had seldom seen a more mismatched bunch of people. They were tall and short, men and women, hairy and clean-shaven. They wore ill-fitting striped suits and shuffled around a fountain in the middle of a stone-flagged plaza. Their music rose and fell in waves, sometimes stopping right in the middle of a tune, then starting up again with all the instruments out of time.
The bandmaster was a small man with a freckled scalp who waved his baton in the air and bellowed to the watching crowd. Goldie could just hear his voice above the music. It was accompanied by an oddly familiar clanking sound.
“If you please, herroen and frowen! A crust of bread for our breakfast, or a sausage. Feed the hungry and the Seven Gods will ignore you for a whole year!”
Goldie flicked her fingers. The Seven Gods were known for their unpredictable tempers. Attracting their attention—even hearing someone mention their names—could be a dangerous business. Flicking your fingers was a polite way of saying, “Please don’t bother yourself with me, Great Wooden. Go and help someone else.”
A woman in the watching crowd held up a cooked chicken. “Hoy!” she shouted, and she threw the chicken toward the band.
Immediately the musicians stopped playing and surged forward in a mass. But they were slow and clumsy, and a ragged girl darted out of the crowd and grabbed the chicken from under the hairy trumpeter’s nose.
The band members groaned. The crowd parted. And now at last Goldie could see what was causing that horrible clanking sound. The musicians wore shackles around their ankles, and a heavy chain that linked them together and scraped against the cobblestones as they walked.
Goldie shivered, remembering the punishment chains that still haunted her dreams.
There was another shout from the crowd. Quite a few people were throwing food now. Sausages, wheels of cheese, a whole stuffed goose tumbled through the air.
The musicians lurched this way and that, grabbing frantically. The one-eyed bombardon player managed to catch a string of sausages. The tall trombonist reached over everyone’s head to snatch up a cheese. But the stuffed goose, and a great deal more, was lost to the darting boys and girls.
Goldie’s mouth watered. Almost before she knew what she was doing, she found herself elbowing her way into the pack of children. They glanced sideways at her but said nothing. Their mouths were wet with grease. They sucked their fingers and grinned at each other.
“A goose,” Goldie whispered. “I could eat a whole goose.”
Someone in the crowd threw a pie, but it was too far away to bother with. Next there came a flurry of little fried cakes, then some oranges. The children got most of them.
Goldie inched forward, waiting for the right moment. And then she saw it. A leg of roast mutton sailed through the air toward the bandmaster. He gathered up his chain, so that he would have room to leap.…
Quick as a gull, Goldie dived in front of him and snatched the mutton from his grasping hands. “Noooo!” he wailed as she darted away with her prize.
The meat was still hot, and dripping with rosemary and olive oil. It smelled better than anything Goldie had ever smelled in her life. Carefully she carried it up onto the fountain, hacked off a slice with Toadspit’s knife and stuffed it into her mouth, beneath the mask. She closed her eyes, to savor it better.…
When she opened them again, the gray-spotted cat from the ship was standing in front of