Goldie was dreaming. She knew it was a dream because Blessed Guardian Hope was there, a plump figure in a black cloak and black boxy hat, with the punishment chains coiled like pythons around her waist.
‘You’re supposed to be dead,’ whispered Goldie. ‘You died in the Great Storm.’
Guardian Hope smiled and pulled a thin silver chain from the pocket of her robes. She held it up to the light. Then she began to thread it, bit by bit, between Goldie’s ribs and around her heart . . .
Goldie No One
Goldie opened her mouth to cry out – and just in time remembered where she was. She bit the inside of her cheek until the dream faded, and leaned back in the narrow doorway. It was almost morning, and all around her the streets of Spoke were waking up.
The Piglet had made landfall the night before, after three days at sea. They had been a dreadful three days. From dawn to dusk, Goldie hid in the dinghy, with nothing to eat except some hard biscuits that she found under the seat, along with a sealed jar of water. In the evenings, she watched helplessly as Smudge carried her friends up on deck, fed them, took them to the stinking toilet in the stern, then drugged them again and carried them back below.
At night she slipped out of the dinghy, stretching her aching limbs and wishing that she could steal some of the two men’s food. But she dared not do anything that might betray the presence of a third child on board the Piglet.
When at last they had sailed into Spoke Harbour and Goldie saw its dim outline, looking exactly as it did in the engravings, she could hardly believe it. She had imagined that she and her friends were being carried somewhere so far away and so strange that they would never find their way home again. But here they were, still on the Faroon Peninsula, a few hundred miles down the coast from Jewel!
Her spirits rose. And when Cord and Smudge loaded Toadspit’s and Bonnie’s limp bodies onto a horse-drawn cart and drove off into the city, she grabbed a useful-looking coil of rope from the deck and followed them.
Although it was late, the footpaths of Spoke were crammed with people. Goldie dodged past them, trying not to lose the cart. Up the narrow streets she went, and away from the harbour, until the smell of the sea was left behind and the houses crowded around her like curious aunts.
The cart stopped halfway up a hill, outside a bread shop. The shop appeared to be closed, but when Cord rapped sharply on the door, a light came on. Goldie caught her breath. Was she about to see the mysterious Harrow?
But whoever came to the door did not show themselves. Instead, Smudge carried the children into the shop, then he and Cord came out and drove away. The door shut behind them. The light went out.
Goldie sank back onto the nearest step and let out the breath she hadn’t realised she was holding. Her friends were still unconscious, so she could do nothing tonight except keep watch – and make sure that she was not seen by whoever was in the bread shop.
In the doorway opposite, something moved. Goldie froze, wondering if Harrow had set guards up and down the street. But then she heard a young boy grunt drowsily, and a bare foot slid out and rested on the cobblestones, as limp as old cabbage.
Goldie peered into the shadows. She couldn’t see anything much of the boy, except that he was ragged, filthy and fast asleep. In fact, now that she looked more closely, several other doorways were also occupied by sleeping children, some of them alone, some in pairs.
After three days and nights in the Piglet’s dinghy, Goldie was nearly as dirty as the boy opposite. She settled back against the door and rested her head on her knees, hoping that anyone who saw her would think she was just another homeless girl, trying to keep out of the wind.
She meant to stay awake. But although she was hungry, and the step beneath her was hard, she was so tired that she fell asleep almost straight away.
She had wild and terrible dreams. Pa crawled up the hill towards her, chased by something that she couldn’t bear to look at. Ma wept droplets of blood. Guardian Hope threaded the silver chain through her ribs and around her heart, over and over again.
When Goldie woke up the second time, the street was bustling, the children in the other doorways had disappeared and her stomach was groaning with hunger.
But the dreams lingered, as heavy as stone inside her. Pa crawled up the hill . . .
Tears prickled Goldie’s eyes and she brushed them away. ‘What I need,’ she told herself firmly, ‘is a plan.’
The first thing she must do was get a sense of the neighbourhood – the back entrances, the dead ends, the directions that danger might come from. Then she must work out how to break into the bread shop. And then she must find something to eat.
She paused and, like a faithful dog, her thoughts returned to Ma and Pa. How she wished she could go to them, right now! How she wished—
No. She shook her head. She couldn’t go home. She wouldn’t go home, not until she could take Bonnie and Toadspit with her. And that might never happen if she didn’t stop worrying about Ma and Pa!
In the back of her mind, a little voice whispered, If Goldie Roth can’t stop worrying, then you must stop being Goldie Roth.
Goldie frowned. For as long as she could remember she had heard this little voice. It seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her, and until six months ago she had followed its wisdom without question. It was the little voice that had urged her to run away. It had shown her how to navigate the strange, shifting rooms of the Museum of Dunt, and had helped her save Jewel from invasion.
But over the last few months she had got out of the habit of trusting it. All it did was urge her to follow her destiny and become Fifth Keeper, and she could not do that without hurting her parents.
Now, however, she needed its help. She nodded, realising that the little voice was right. Somehow she must stop being Goldie Roth . . .
She was reluctant to leave the front of the bread shop unguarded, but she had little choice – there were things that she must do before nightfall. And besides, everything so far had happened under cover of darkness. She didn’t think that Harrow and his men would give their game away by showing themselves in daylight.
‘I’ll be back,’ she whispered, wishing that Toadspit and Bonnie could hear her. ‘I’ll be back tonight to get you out of there.’
In several places up and down the hill there were enclosed passages that led to the next street. Halfway along one of them, Goldie found a rubbish yard with piles of rags and rotting gazettes, and empty tins of olive oil stacked nearly as high as a house.
She sorted through the rags until she found a pair of old britches and a jacket with one arm. The britches were too big so she tied a string around her waist to hold them up. She unpinned her bird brooch and was about to slip it into her pocket when she paused. She ran her fingers over the outstretched wings and thought about Auntie Praise.
She had never met her aunt – Praise Koch disappeared at the age of sixteen and was never seen again. But Ma sometimes talked sadly about her, saying how brave she had been, and how Goldie was just like her.
Goldie swallowed, and pinned the brooch inside her collar, where it would not be noticed. She rubbed her boots in the oily muck that covered the ground, and smeared some of that same muck on her face. Then she took out Toadspit’s knife and sawed off her hair until it was as short as a boy’s.
By the time she had finished, she felt different.
Sharper.
Lighter.
Fiercer.
‘I am no longer Goldie Roth, who has sick parents and a chain around her heart,’ she whispered. ‘I’m Goldie No One. No parents. No bad dreams. Just two friends to rescue and take home.’
She buried her own jacket and her smock in the pile of rags. She buried the coil of rope too, so that it would be there when she needed it. Then she set out to learn everything she could about the streets around the bread shop.
This part of Spoke was a winding, confusing place. The cobblestones underfoot reminded Goldie of Jewel, and there were little shrines here and there to Great Wooden or Bald Thoke, or one of the other Seven Gods. But everything else was different. The streets were narrower. The gutters were smellier. The buildings were made of wood instead of bluestone, and there was a brass bell hanging on every corner, with a sign above it, saying, IN CASE OF FIRE.
By the time Goldie made her way back to the bread shop, she had a rusty iron lever tucked inside her waistband, a bent wire in her pocket, and a clear picture in her mind of which streets and alleys offered an escape route, and which could easily become a trap. Even more important, she had learned that the bread shop did not have a rear entrance. If she was to break in, she must do it through the front.
The morning was well underway by now, and the shop was packed with customers. Goldie leaned against the wall opposite, watching the comings and goings through half-closed eyes. The lock on the shop door looked new, but she thought she could pick it.
The scent of newly baked bread drifted across the street towards her, and she licked her lips. She could smell sausages too. She pushed herself away from the wall and headed down the hill, wishing she had some money.
Don’t go far, whispered the little voice in the back of her mind.
Goldie hesitated, looking over her shoulder at the bread shop and wondering if perhaps she should stay after all. But she was so hungry by now that she felt slightly dizzy. ‘I have to find something to eat,’ she said, ‘or I’ll be useless.’
And she kept going down the hill.
As the street flattened out, it grew noisier and more crowded. Goldie stared around, fascinated. Six months after the defeat of the Blessed Guardians, many of Jewel’s citizens still lived their lives behind closed doors and didn’t dare raise their voices in case someone noticed them. But here in Spoke, people seemed to want to be noticed.
A landlady sat on her doorstep, shouting at one of her boarders. ‘Where have you been all night? Wipe your feet before you go inside. And where’s your rent? Don’t smile at me, you rogue. I can’t live on a smile, now can I?’
A knife sharpener was setting up his wheel on the footpath. Above his head a woman leaned out an upper-storey window and hung clothes on a washing line strung across the street.
Goldie heard a shout. ‘Hey, Sparky! Getting in early for the Festival?’
She spun around. A cook was lounging on the top step of an underground kitchen, taking sly swigs from the bottle in his pocket. And on the other side of the road—
Goldie blinked. On the other side of the road was a man wearing a mask in the shape of a horse’s head.
‘Yep,’ cried the man in the mask. ‘You gotta be ready.’ His muffled voice sounded as if he was grinning. ‘Oooh, feel that fizzing in the air? Quick, ask me how many wives I’ve got.’
The cook chuckled. ‘How many wives you got?’
‘Three,’ cried Sparky. ‘And all of them as fat as pumpkins.’
They both roared with laughter, and the horse man danced away up the street.
Now that Goldie had spotted the first mask, they seemed to be everywhere. Some of them were plain, but most were covered in sequins or fur or the scales of a fish. She passed a stall that sold nothing else, and it was doing a roaring trade.
A little way past the stall she found a plain half-mask lying forgotten on the footpath. She picked it up and tied the strings behind her head, then inspected herself in the nearest window. She looked like a boy. A homeless, anonymous boy.
No one . . .
A snatch of song caught her attention. An old woman selling meat scraps fried in batter was singing about a girl who fell in love with a bear. Her customers joined in the chorus.
‘And her children were hairy
And terribly scary
They say . . .’
Despite her hunger and her worries, Goldie felt her heart lift. Spoke reminded her of the Museum of Dunt. It buzzed with life and energy, and she had no idea what was around the next corner. This was what a city should be like!
Somewhere nearby, a brass band began to play. As Goldie turned towards the music, she saw a flash of colour, as bright as a parrot, and a short woman wearing a green woollen cloak and a cat mask pushed roughly past her.
The bright green cloak and the cat mask were no stranger than the other sights Goldie had come across that morning. But something made her turn and watch the woman as she elbowed her way up the street.
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.’