City of Lies - Lian Tanner [41]
The rope snapped tight around the table leg. As Goldie paid it out, she imagined Bonnie sinking down and down—past the drainpipes, past the third-story window. She imagined a faceless man—Harrow—waiting at the bottom.…
Stop it! she told herself. Don’t think like that!
Quicker than she had hoped, the rope jerked three times and went slack. Toadspit raced to the window and peered down. “She’s there!”
There was a shout from the stairwell. Goldie darted across to the doorway. Cord was roaring above the sound of the fighting, “Where’s the fire, you drunken idjits? Show me. I don’t believe yez.”
Goldie ran back to the window. “Quick! They’ll be here in a minute. You take the rope. I’ll climb down.”
Toadspit whipped the end of the rope away from the table and tied it around the iron curlicue. Then he wrapped his legs around it and began to clamber down it as fast as he could. As he sank out of sight, Goldie scrambled over the sill and dragged the window shut behind her.
The climb down was even worse than the climb up. Her fingers were slippery with nerves, and she kept expecting to hear a roar of anger from the fifth-floor window. She imagined a knife flashing out and slicing through the rope, and Toadspit crashing onto the roof below.
“Stop scaring yourself,” she whispered. “Just think about what you’re doing. Here, this drainpipe. Then swing your foot across—there’s a hole in the wood somewhere. No, not that one, that one crumbles. Ah, that one—”
She was just passing the third story when she heard the sound she had been dreading. Above her head, a window scraped open. “There they are!” shouted Cord. “One of ’em’s ’alfway down the rope. Quick, Smudge, grab it! Pull ’im back up!”
There was a frantic shout from Toadspit as the rope started to rise.
“No!” cried Goldie. “Morg! Morg! Help!”
The slaughterbird came down from the sky like a visitation from the Seven Gods. Her great wings beat at the open window. Her claws tore at Smudge’s arm. He screamed and let go of the rope.
Goldie scrambled down the face of the building as fast as she could in the darkness. It seemed to take forever, but at last she felt the roof of the lean-to under her feet. She sprang down onto the packing cases, and then to the ground.
And there were Toadspit and Bonnie, with the cat standing guard over them. “Come on!” cried Goldie, grabbing her boots.
And the three children and the cat ran for their lives.
“Where are we going?” panted Toadspit.
“Down near the harbor. Are they following us?”
Toadspit looked over his shoulder. “No sign of them. Morg’ll keep them busy.” He laughed shakily. “Good old Morg.”
They ran and ran until they were heaving for breath. By then they were only four or five blocks from the harbor and it had begun to rain. Most of the revelers had disappeared from the streets. The cobblestones were black and slippery underfoot.
Goldie heard a flurry of wings overhead. “Morg!” hissed Toadspit. He held up his arm, and the slaughterbird fell out of the sky like a patch of night. Toadspit bit his lip at the sudden weight, but his face glowed. “You found us. You and Goldie both.”
“And the cat,” said Goldie.
“Ffffound,” agreed the cat, rubbing its wet body against Goldie’s legs.
“We’d better get off the streets as soon as we can,” said Toadspit.
Goldie nodded. “The sewers. We’ll go there. I don’t know anywhere else that’s safe.”
Morg ruffled her feathers and glared down at the cat. “Sa-a-a-a-a-a-afe.”
By the time they reached the entrance to the sewers they were soaked through. Morg wouldn’t go in with them, though Toadspit spent several minutes trying to persuade her. She perched on a pile of fallen bricks, then clacked her beak and flew off into the night.
Toadspit watched her go with a mournful expression on his face. “I expect she’s hungry,” he said. “I hope she finds something to eat.”
All three children were shivering, but Goldie lingered in the tunnel entrance. “There are two boys living here,” she whispered. “Pounce and Mouse. Pounce is the older one. Don’t believe anything he