City of Lies - Lian Tanner [19]
“Look for thefts,” said Olga Ciavolga, “big and small. Look for the shadow that a theft leaves on the air.”
“And if you find the children—” said Herro Dan.
“When you find them,” Sinew corrected him.
The old man nodded. “When you find ’em, do your best to help ’em. And bring ’em back safely.”
“Ba-a-a-a-ack,” croaked Morg, shifting from foot to foot to make sure that the old man scratched the right spot.
“All right then.” Herro Dan stood up and opened the kitchen door. “No point hangin’ around. Off you go.”
The bird on his shoulder bobbed her head several times. Then, with a great flurry of feathers, she launched herself out into the corridor.
As the sound of her wings faded, Sinew heaved a sigh. “That’s something, I suppose. But I wish—” He picked up his harp, and half a dozen anxious notes trickled out into the kitchen. “I wish we knew where the children were! I wish we knew what was happening to them!”
“Museum’ll tell us soon enough,” said Herro Dan. “If the rooms settle down, then the children are safe, and on their way home. But if things keep gettin’ worse—”
He stopped. All three keepers looked grimly at each other. In the basket by the stove, Broo began to whimper again and would not be comforted.
In the street outside the bread shop, everything was quiet. Goldie crouched in the darkness of the doorway, her mask firmly in place.
She had not used a picklock for six months, but her fingers had not forgotten their skill. She slid the bent wire into the keyhole above the blade of her knife and began to push the pins up, one by one. As each pin slid out of the way, she heard a faint click.
Several streets away, a man was singing loudly and drunkenly about a lost child. Goldie tried not to listen. Concentrate, she told herself.
The last pin clicked into place. Quickly she glanced up and down the street, then pushed the door. It opened a crack and stopped. The door was barred from inside.
Goldie took the iron lever from her waistband and eased it through the gap until she could feel the bar. She braced herself and pushed the lever upward. The bar rose smoothly—
Stop! hissed the little voice in the back of her mind.
Goldie stopped. She stepped away from the door for the space of five breaths, and let the night air tuck around her like a blanket. Then she gripped the lever in cold hands and started again.
This time she pushed the bar up so carefully that anyone watching would hardly have seen it move. When she came to the place where she had stopped before, she paused. She pressed her ear to the gap. She shifted the lever a hair’s width—and heard the faint scrape of a wire.
Carefully she backed the lever off and slid her makeshift picklock through the gap. There was the wire. Now, if she could just hook it in place—exactly in place—so the wire would not move while she lifted the bar—
She had it. The bar rose and slid to one side. The wire strained to move, but she would not let it. With her heart in her throat she eased the door open just far enough and squeezed through into the gloom of the bread shop.
Something brushed against her leg. She gasped and nearly let go of the wire. The gray-spotted cat glared up at her, then dashed behind the counter.
“Are you following me?” whispered Goldie. “What do you want?”
There was no answer, of course. She shrugged, hoping the cat would not make a nuisance of itself, and turned to inspect the door.
It was as she had thought. There was a row of alarm bells hanging above the lintel. She reached up and disconnected them. Then she unhooked the picklock, leaned against the door with her eyes closed and let her body and her mind settle into the stillness of the Third Method of Concealment.
Imitation of Nothingness was one of the most important things she had learned in her training as a thief. It didn’t make her invisible, but it did make her unimportant. So unimportant that even the light passed over her without stopping. As long as she moved slowly, there wasn’t one person in ten thousand who could see her.
I am dust in the