City of Lies - Lian Tanner [32]
“No. I mean, yes. I mean—”
The stall owner laughed. “Well. I haven’t seen her at all since she bought that mask. I haven’t seen her several times, in fact. That green cloak really blends into the background, doesn’t it?” She narrowed her eyes. “Why are you looking for her?”
“She’s a—a friend.”
“Mm, you’d better be careless then, boy. I get the feeling she’s the sort who’d treat a street snotty gently. Very gently.”
Goldie was suddenly breathless. “Do you know where I can find her?”
“Don’t bother trying that warren of streets at the bottom of Temple Hill. There’s no bootmaker there, and even if there was, I’ve never seen her talking to him.”
“Thank you,” said Goldie. The young woman’s eyes twinkled behind her mask. “I mean—I mean, curse you. Really really curse you!”
“One bad turn deserves another,” said the woman.
The streets at the bottom of Temple Hill were the poorest that Goldie had ever seen. Old wooden houses rose up on either side of her like rotting teeth. The gutters were choked with rubbish, and most of the watergas lamps were broken. There were fire bells on every corner, as decrepit as the houses.
The Festival was even wilder here than in the rest of the city. Goldie and the cat pressed themselves against a wall as a horde of masked children raced past, letting off fizgigs and throwing thunderflashes onto the cobblestones. The cat hissed and arched its back with every explosion.
A man dressed as Bald Thoke chased after the children, bellowing at the top of his lungs. Goldie automatically flicked her fingers, even though it was the Festival and she didn’t have to. All around her, ragged men and women sang and laughed.
The shop Goldie was looking for had a sign out front saying HOT PUDDINGS. But there were shoes in the window, and the bootmaker was sitting on the doorstep in his apron, plaiting a piece of leather. He was a solid man in a fish mask, with thin hair plastered to his oversized head.
Now that Goldie was here, she wasn’t sure what to do. She stopped in a boarded-up doorway. “No sign of the woman,” she whispered to the cat. “How do we find her?”
“Ddddown,” said the cat, lowering itself onto its haunches.
“You mean just sit here and wait for her to turn up?”
The cat purred.
“She might not come for days,” said Goldie, “and we haven’t got that long. Bonnie and Toadspit might be …”
She stopped. The thought of what might happen to her friends if she delayed was too awful to say out loud.
In the back of her mind, the little voice whispered, She will come if she is called.
Goldie shook her head. She didn’t even know the woman’s name. How could she call her? No, there must be a better way of finding her.
She heard a cry from the end of the street. It was the horde of children again, racing toward her. The cat hissed angrily and dived between the boards into the darkness of the house behind them. Goldie pressed herself back as far as she could, not wanting to be whacked by flying arms and legs.
But as the children passed, the heat of their excitement washed over her, and before she knew what she was doing, she had stepped out and thrown herself into their midst. Immediately she was swept up by the crowd. Thunderflashes exploded around her. Fizgigs sparkled. Bald Thoke roared. The children screamed at the tops of their voices, and Goldie screamed with them.
She had no idea how long she ran with that mad company. She tore blindly through the streets, forgetting the cat, forgetting everything she had come to do. Her heart pounded with excitement. Her blood sang with the joy of the Festival. For the first time in days she was warm.
When she at last dropped out, whooping for breath and laughing so hard that she had to lean against the nearest wall to stop herself from falling over, the morning was past, the afternoon was half gone, and she knew how to find the woman in the green cloak.
She will come if she is called.…
But that was not all that had changed. While she was running, she had felt a wildness surrounding her, as exhilarating and dangerous as life itself.