Museum of Thieves Page 13

  ‘What are they doing?’ whispered Goldie.

  ‘I do not know, but they carry coils of rope and wooden planks. I do not like the look of it. Stay here. Do not make a sound.’

  Olga Ciavolga hurried out of the office. Goldie heard her say loudly, ‘What is the meaning of this? What do you think you are doing?’

  ‘We are on the Seven’s business,’ said a voice that Goldie recognised as Guardian Hope’s. ‘So you had best keep out of our way, old woman.’ Her voice rose. ‘Pay attention, under-colleagues! I want this done quickly and I want it done properly. You, you and you. Hammer duty.’

  There was a rustle of robes and a shuffling of feet. Goldie pressed herself close to the floor and peeped around the corner of the desk.

  She couldn’t see Olga Ciavolga, but the corridor was full of young Guardians. They seemed to be laying planks in a horizontal line along the wall at waist height, each one touching the one that came before it.

  Goldie heard a cry of outrage, and Olga Ciavolga strode into sight, her eyes blazing. ‘I do not believe it! You are trying to stop the rooms moving! You fools, you will kill us all!’

  ‘We are simply following the orders of the Fugleman,’ said Guardian Hope.

  ‘Be damned to the Fugleman!’ said Olga Ciavolga. There was a gasp of horror from the Guardians, but the old woman took no notice. ‘Your master has no authority here! The museum answers only to the Protector!’

  Guardian Hope shook her head pityingly. ‘My master answers to the Seven Gods. They are greater than any earthly authority.’

  She crooked her finger and two of the young Guardians hurried to her side. ‘Get rid of this obstacle,’ she snapped. ‘Lock her in the office.’

  Goldie ducked back beneath the desk. She could hear Olga Ciavolga struggling, then the door banged shut and the key turned in the lock. A moment later, the hammering began.

  It seemed to Goldie that, when the first blow fell, the museum cried with outrage, just as Olga Ciavolga had done, but a hundred thousand times greater. She found herself holding her breath, waiting for what would come next.

  A second hammer blow fell – then a third.

  The whole museum shuddered.

  ‘Quickly!’ whispered Olga Ciavolga. ‘Help me, child!’

  Goldie scrambled out from underneath the desk and put her hand on the wall. The wild music exploded around her. She tried to sing, but the music drowned out her voice. She sang louder, and louder still, until at last she could hear herself. From somewhere deep within the museum, Toadspit’s voice joined with hers and Olga Ciavolga’s.

  I wonder if he can guess what the hammering is, she thought. I wonder if Broo and Morg are back yet, and if they’re all right—

  And then she was swept away by the maelstrom, and there was no time or space to think about anything. The wild music crashed in upon her from every side. Her voice rode it like a tiny boat on a monstrous ocean. She could feel herself bobbing and spinning and nearly sinking, over and over again.

  At one point, both Olga Ciavolga and Toadspit ran out of breath at the same time. The music surged up wilder than ever. Goldie clung to it by a thread of sound. She could no longer see the office. She could no longer hear anything except those deep, terrible notes.

  But just when she thought she couldn’t hold on for a second longer, Olga Ciavolga’s voice rang out again. Goldie grabbed it like a lifeline. Then Toadspit was back too, unseen but singing for all he was worth. Gradually the wild music wove itself to their song and began to settle.

  Olga Ciavolga took her hand off the wall. Beads of sweat stood out on her forehead. ‘We have held it for now,’ she said. ‘But I fear it will not last.’

  Outside the door, the hammers rang. The museum twitched like a giant tormented by swamp flies.

  ‘Can’t they feel it?’ said Goldie. ‘Can’t they hear the wild music?’

  ‘Apparently not,’ said Olga Ciavolga. ‘But even if they did, I fear they would continue. There is wickedness behind this.’

  She took her kerchief out of her pocket and tied it around her neck. Then she hurried over to the desk and began to pull out the drawers one by one.

  ‘If the war rooms were on the move before,’ she said, ‘they will be seething now. Sinew was right after all. We must get Dan out before it is too late.’

  She scooped a handful of gold sovereigns out of each drawer and dropped them into her pockets. Goldie looked at the locked door. ‘How will we get out of here?’

  ‘Pff!’ said Olga Ciavolga. ‘Those imbeciles know nothing about this place!’

  She patted her bulging pockets, then strode over to the corner of the room and sank to her knees with a grunt. She lifted the edge of the carpet. Underneath it was a trapdoor.

  ‘This tunnel will take us to the back rooms,’ she said. ‘We have not used it for many years, so it will be full of dust and spiders.’ She looked hard at Goldie. ‘But I do not imagine that a girl who has been through the Dirty Gate will be stopped by a few spiders.’

  Olga Ciavolga was right. There were spiders in the tunnel, and not just a few. Goldie couldn’t see them, but the strands of broken webs clung to her face, and whenever the hammering paused she thought she could hear brittle legs scuttling up and down the walls.

  Her skin crawled and she pushed the webs away with a shudder. A little way ahead of her, Olga Ciavolga’s dry old voice was like an anchor in the darkness.

  ‘The people of Jewel,’ said Olga Ciavolga, ‘treat their children like delicate flowers. They think they will not survive without constant protection. But there are parts of the world where young boys and girls spend weeks at a time with no company except a herd of goats. They chase away wolves. They take care of themselves, and they take care of the herd.’

  She stopped. Goldie could hear the hammers, behind her now, rapping and tapping like someone knocking at a distant door.

  ‘Fools!’ muttered Olga Ciavolga. ‘Imbeciles!’

  She began to shuffle forward again. ‘And so, when hard times come – as they always do in the end – those children are resourceful and brave. If they have to walk from one end of the country to the other, carrying their baby brothers and sisters, they will do it. If they have to hide during the day and travel at night to avoid soldiers, they will do it. They do not give up easily.’

  The tunnel took a sharp right-hand turn, and for a moment the old woman’s voice was lost. Something dropped onto Goldie’s arm, and she opened her mouth to yelp – and thought of those children carrying their baby brothers and sisters through the night – and closed her mouth and kept going.

  She rounded the corner in time to hear Olga Ciavolga murmur, ‘Of course, I am not saying that it is a good thing to give children such heavy responsibilities. They must be allowed to have a childhood. But they must also be allowed to find their courage and their wisdom, and learn when to stand and when to run away. After all, if they are not permitted to climb the trees, how will they ever see the great and wonderful world that lies before them – aha, we are here!’

  She stopped short and began to fumble with a latch in the roof of the tunnel. There was a shout, then someone grabbed the trapdoor and dragged it open from above. Toadspit peered down at them, Morg on his shoulder.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he said. ‘Why did you use the tunnel? What’s that hammering sound? Why is—?’

  A huge dark head nudged him aside. ‘Someone is doing bad things to the museum,’ rumbled the gravelly voice of the brizzlehound. ‘Can I go and kill them?’

  .

  lga Ciavolga would not let them go through the Dirty Gate with her. Toadspit protested, but Goldie could tell that he was as relieved as she was.

  ‘You must wait for Sinew,’ the old woman said. ‘When he comes, tell him where I have gone. Tell him I will return as soon as possible, and Dan with me.’

  ‘What if they—’ Goldie bit her lip. ‘What if they shoot you?’

  ‘I understand the minds of these soldiers,’ said Olga Ciavol
ga. ‘I do not think they will hurt me. And if the Protector acts quickly to stop the Blessed Guardians, the war rooms will calm down and the soldiers will become less dangerous.’

  ‘Why will you not let me stop the Blessed Guardians?’ complained Broo. ‘I would not kill them if you did not want me to. I would merely pick them up and chew them a little. And when I put them down again, they would run away.’

  ‘And then they would come back with nets and guns,’ said Olga Ciavolga, ‘to capture the last living brizzlehound. No, my dear, they do not know of your existence, and that is as it should be. We will leave this particular battle to the Protector.’

  She scratched Broo behind the ear, and stroked Morg’s black feathers. Then she smiled at Goldie and Toadspit. ‘You are bold children and your hearts are good,’ she said. ‘But you must both learn to think before you act. Whatever happens, remember that there is always a choice. Think of the consequences, and then do what you must.’

  She turned away – and turned back again. ‘Tell Sinew he is not to come after me, whatever happens. He is needed here.’

  Then, with a whisk of coloured skirts and a clink of coins, she was gone.

  Goldie sat on the second step of Harry Mount, kicking her heels against the wood. Three steps further up, Toadspit was playing with his folding knife, palming it and making it disappear. Broo paced the floor below them with long, rippling strides.

  ‘Can I borrow your wire?’ said Goldie, after she had watched Toadspit for a while.

  Toadspit shrugged and handed over the wire that he had used to open the Dirty Gate. Goldie took the scissors and a small padlock out of her pocket.

  She liked picking locks. Olga Ciavolga had been pleased with how quickly she had learned it. ‘But you must practise whenever you have the chance,’ the old woman had said. ‘There are many locks in this city and some of them would test even me. One day your life might depend upon your ability to open them.’

  Goldie slipped one blade of the scissors into the padlock’s keyhole and turned it slightly. Then she poked the wire into the hole above the scissor blade. When she pressed upwards she could feel the five little barrels that made up the lock. She pushed at the first one and, after a moment or two, heard a tiny click.

  She got the second barrel out of the way, too, and the third. But by then the air was growing hotter, as if the whole museum was sickening with a fever, and it was too hard to concentrate.

  ‘Here,’ she said, giving Toadspit back the wire and jumping to her feet. ‘Let’s go and see what’s happening.’

  Toadspit stood up slowly, as if he had been thinking. ‘You know what I reckon? The Guardians are trying to get into the back rooms. Why else would they be nailing the museum down? They’re trying to find the Staff Only door.’

  Goldie nodded. That made sense. ‘But why?’ she said. ‘What do they want?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Broo growled softly. ‘They will GRRRRNOT come to the back rooms. I will not LET them. Even when they are in the fRRRRRont rooms they make the air smell bad.’ The hackles on his back rose so that he looked even bigger than usual. ‘And they GRRRRRHURT the museum!’

  ‘Don’t worry, Sinew and the Protector will stop them,’ said Goldie, hoping she was right.

  The two children wandered through the unsettled rooms, with Morg huddled on Toadspit’s shoulder and Broo padding a little way ahead. Every now and again the museum shuddered, and Goldie and Toadspit stopped and sang. Before long their throats and their tempers were ragged.

  Only Broo seemed unaffected by the waiting. His nostrils quivered, and he growled deep in his chest, but at the same time there was something patient about him, as if he was a coiled spring that could wait and wait until the moment came for action. And the Seven Gods help whoever stood in his way then.

  ‘Broo,’ said Goldie, who was not feeling at all patient, and wanted something else to think about, ‘how do you decide when to be big and when to be little?’

  Broo cocked his head. ‘I do not decide, any more than humans decide when to be angry or when to be happy. The big and the little decide for me. Sometimes it is a surprise, even to me.’

  ‘Which do you like better?’ said Goldie.

  The brizzlehound looked thoughtful. ‘It is agreeable to chase mice and pretend that there is no greater danger in the world. But it is also agreeable to leap upon an enemy and gnaw his bones . . . Do I have to choose? I do not think I can.’

  Goldie was going to ask more, but just then the museum shuddered again. By the time they had sung to it, in increasingly hoarse voices, she had forgotten her question.

  They were passing one of the stranded ships in Rough Tom when Broo pricked up his ears. A second later, Goldie heard a rumbling sound in the distance. A street-rig horn wailed like a lost child.

  ‘That’s the Shark!’ said Toadspit. ‘Do you reckon Herro Dan’s back?’

  Broo shook his head. ‘I would not howl so miserably if a friend had just returned from beyond the Dirty Gate.’

  ‘But you’re not the Shark,’ said Toadspit. ‘Herro Dan might be back. And Olga Ciavolga too! Let’s go and see.’

  Goldie didn’t move. ‘Olga Ciavolga told us to wait for Sinew.’

  ‘Yes, but she didn’t say where.’

  ‘She didn’t mean chasing all over the place.’

  ‘What are you talking about? We’ve already been all over the place! Sinew will find us wherever we are.’

  Goldie knew that Toadspit was right. But the heat and the worry had worn her temper to shreds, and suddenly she didn’t want to take another step. ‘Well I’m not going.’

  ‘Well I am!’

  ‘I don’t think you should. I think we should stay together.’

  Toadspit glowered at her. ‘Who cares what you think?’

  ‘Do not quarrel,’ said Broo. ‘If it concerns you, I will go.’ And he bounded away.

  With the brizzlehound gone, the waiting was even harder. The two children leaned against the hull of the ship, avoiding each other’s eyes. Goldie felt as if every nerve in her body was stretched to breaking point.

  ‘I hope Olga Ciavolga’s all right,’ she said.

  Toadspit let out a huff of irritation. ‘Of course she’s all right. Don’t be stupid!’

  ‘Who are you calling stupid?’

  ‘I can’t see anyone else round here, so it must be you.’

  Goldie pushed herself away from the ship and glared at him. ‘You’re the stupid one!’

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘You are!’

  ‘If you hadn’t come here,’ said Toadspit, ‘none of this would’ve happened.’

  ‘This hasn’t got anything to do with me! If you haven’t worked that out by now, you’re even dumber than I thought!’

  ‘I should set Morg onto you. She’d like a couple of juicy eyes. Plop. Plop.’

  ‘Oh, come on, you think I’m scared of Morg? Here, Morgy, come and sit on my shoulder. I’m much nicer than him!’

  ‘She doesn’t like you. She’d only like you if you were dead, wouldn’t you, Mor—’

  He broke off, the blood draining from his face. Far away, in the depths of the museum, Goldie heard something groan, as if a high wind was rising.

  ‘A-a-a-a-ah!’ Morg launched herself from Toadspit’s shoulder. At almost the same moment, the wind hit them. It wasn’t one of the Great Winds, but it was strong enough to snatch the slaughterbird out of the air and blow her past them like a bundle of black rags.

  Goldie staggered against Toadspit and they clutched each other, trying to stay upright. The wind wailed around their ears like a warning – and then it was gone.

  In the sudden silence, the two children stared at each other in horror, their argument forgotten. They both knew what the wind had tried to tell them.

  Something had happened to Olga Ciavolga.

  .

  oldie barely had time to gather her wits together before Sinew was hurrying towards them. His face was white.

/>   ‘I felt the wind,’ he said. ‘What’s happened? What are those fools doing in the front rooms? Where’s Olga Ciavolga?’

  ‘She went through the Dirty Gate,’ said Toadspit.

  ‘No!’ cried Sinew. And he turned on his heel and ran.

  ‘Wait!’ shouted Goldie. ‘She said that you mustn’t—’

  But Sinew was already gone.

  The children took off after him. Through the long rooms they ran, with Morg flapping heavily above them. Through Vermin, through Broken Bones. Up Harry Mount and down again. Through Dark Nights, Lost Children and Stony Heart.

  Several times they glimpsed Sinew ahead of them. Once the rooms shifted just as they were about to catch him, and Goldie and Toadspit found themselves on the Lady’s Mile. On the opposite side of the hall, far out of their reach, Sinew was running along an old wooden gallery that Goldie had never seen before.

  ‘Sinew!’ shouted Toadspit. ‘Stop!’

  But Sinew didn’t even turn his head.

  When at last the children stumbled, panting, up to the Dirty Gate, he was already there. His harp was slung over his shoulder and he was dragging the Gate open, inch by inch. On the other side of it, the long grass shivered, as if there was a storm coming. The air was heavy with the smell of gunpowder.

  ‘Sinew!’ cried Goldie. ‘Olga Ciavolga said you mustn’t go after her!’

  But by then Morg was flapping around their heads and Sinew’s harp strings were sobbing and his face was as dark as the coming storm. Goldie wasn’t even sure that he heard her.

  The children threw themselves against the Gate and tried to hold it closed. But Sinew was too strong for them. Gradually they were forced backwards.

  Suddenly, Toadspit stopped pushing and slipped through the widening gap. From the other side of the Dirty Gate, he glared at Sinew. ‘If you go, I’m going too!’

  Sinew stopped dead. He shook his head, like someone trying to wake up from a nightmare. ‘Don’t be stupid, Toadspit. It’s too dangerous. Besides, you’re needed here.’