City of Lies - Lian Tanner [29]
“I’m going to find her. I’m going to find that woman,” whispered Goldie, so quietly that she could barely hear her own voice.
Then she scrubbed out the words she had written, wrapped herself in the blanket and lay back down, impatient for the morning.
Why was it, wondered Sinew, that the museum saved its worst shiftings and shufflings for midnight or later? Here he was, sitting on the long balcony of the Lady’s Mile, playing the sliding notes of the First Song on his harp and yawning so hugely that he thought he might split in half.
He could hear Herro Dan in the hall below him, stroking the wall and singing the same strange tune, a tune that came from the very beginning of time, before there were human throats to shape it. “Ho oh oh-oh,” sang the old man. “Mm mm oh oh oh-oh oh.”
All around the keepers, the rooms surged and fretted. The tall-masted sailing ships that lay stranded on their sides in Rough Tom groaned, as if their planks were being torn apart by a storm. In Old Mine Shafts, the ground gaped in a dozen new fissures. A flood of wild music poured up from deep within the earth, as hot as lava.
Broo sat at Sinew’s elbow, his little white head cocked to one side, his single black ear pricked. Strange things were stirring in the Museum of Dunt, things that surprised even Herro Dan and Olga Ciavolga. Whatever was happening to the children, the museum really didn’t like it.
But the First Song was a powerful tool, and before long the wild music and the rooms began to settle. Sinew played for a few minutes more, then laid down his harp, leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.
“That was a bad one,” he murmured to Broo. He yawned. “I hope Morg finds the children soon. I know they’re brave and resourceful, but I can’t help worrying about them—”
A growl interrupted him—a growl far too deep and threatening to have come from a little white dog. Before he even opened his eyes, Sinew knew what he would see.
Back in the early days of Dunt, idle-cats, slommerkins and brizzlehounds had roamed the peninsula, causing the new settlers to tremble in their beds. But that was five hundred years ago, and the idle-cats and slommerkins were long gone, hunted to extinction.
The brizzlehounds were gone too, every single one of them—except for Broo. He did not look dangerous, not when he was small. But when he was big …
Sinew gazed up at the great black hound that loomed above him. “What’s the matter?” he said quickly.
Broo’s nostrils flared. His ruby-red eyes flashed. His voice, when he spoke, was like the rumble of approaching thunder. “I smell something. Something GGGGRRRR-ROTTEN!”
Sinew jumped to his feet, his tiredness forgotten. “Where?” he said. The smell hit him like a bucket of slops, and he pinched his nose in disgust. “Great whistling pigs! You’re right, it’s awful.”
He leaned over the balcony. “Dan,” he shouted. “What’s that stink?”
Herro Dan sniffed the air, and his eyes widened with shock.
“What?” said Sinew. “What is it?”
The old man shook his head. “I don’t believe it! Where’d it come from? Musta been tucked away in a corner somewhere, sleepin’ all these hundreds of years—”
“What?”
But it was Broo who answered. Every hair on his back was bristling, and his eyes glowed with rage. “It is a SLOMMERKIN! There is a SLOMMERRRRRRKIN loose in the museum!”
Goldie and the cat emerged from the sewers next morning to find that everything had changed. The streets of Spoke were festooned with flags and banners and thronged with people. No one was going to work. Instead, they hung around the food carts buying revolting-looking drinks, and pies made in the shape of tiny coffins.
Most of the street signs had disappeared, and the ones that were left had been turned around or swapped. An underground kitchen had a notice above its door saying BARBER. A barber’s shop was made up to look like a kitchen. As Goldie walked past, a masked man darted out and thrust a cake into her hand.
“Some breakfast