Museum of Thieves (12 page)

.

t was as if the boulder itself had come to life. The brizzlehound loomed up, huge and black and terrible. Its eyes glowed red in the lantern light.

For a moment, Goldie couldn’t move or speak.
Someone save me!
she thought desperately.
Toadspit! Help!

But there was no sound from behind her at all.

He’s gone
.
He’s run away and left me here.

Somehow that thought brought the strength back into her bones. And with it came the determination that she would
not stand helplessly, waiting to die. She
would not!

She took a shaky step backwards. The shadows cast by the lantern crawled around her. The brizzlehound opened its awful jaws – and
spoke
, in a voice that rumbled like a distant rockfall.

‘I have been waiting for you.’

Goldie was so frightened that she could hardly breathe. She gripped the lantern harder. If she threw it – if she threw it into the brizzlehound’s mouth . . . She was so close that she could hardly miss. She would throw the lantern, and then she would run, back up the long, lightless tunnel with her hands stretched out in front of her and her ears straining for sounds of pursuit . . .

No, don’t think about that! Just do it!

She licked her lips. ‘Say something else,’ she whispered to the great beast. ‘Open your mouth.’

The brizzlehound cocked its head.

‘Do not be afraid,’ said a voice from behind Goldie.

Goldie almost sobbed with relief. Olga Ciavolga!
If anyone could save her it was Olga—

‘It is only Broo.’

‘
What
?’ Goldie swung around and stared at the old woman. Then she turned back and blinked at the monster in front of her. ‘
Broo
?’

‘Did you not know me?’ said the brizzlehound.

‘N-no!’

The brizzlehound took a huge, swaying step towards her. He was so big that his eyes were on a level with hers, and he moved with a terrible grace. He was completely black, except for one white ear.

‘Do you know me now?’ he rumbled.

‘N-not really.’

The great hound looked so disappointed that Goldie felt she must add something more. ‘I-I expect it’s b-because you couldn’t talk when you were small.’

Broo nodded thoughtfully. ‘That is the nature of brizzlehounds. Sometimes we are big and sometimes we are small. When we are small, we speak with our tails and our ears and the hackles on our backs. And when we are big . . .’

He fell silent. Goldie stared at him in awe.

Behind her, Olga Ciavolga said, ‘Toadspit? Why did you not tell her it is Broo? What is this game you are playing?’

‘It was just a joke,’ muttered Toadspit, who was still there after all. ‘Because she’s new—’

‘You were new here once,’ said Olga Ciavolga coldly. ‘And I do not remember anyone playing jokes on you. Tsk! There are dangers enough in the museum without you making more for your amusement. Go! I am ashamed of you.’

Toadspit tried to say something, but the old woman wouldn’t let him. ‘Go!’ she snapped again.

The boy’s footsteps echoed back up the tunnel. Then Olga Ciavolga was standing beside Goldie in the flickering light. ‘You see,’ she said. ‘There is nothing to be afraid of.’

‘I— I thought brizzlehounds were—’ Goldie was about to say ‘make-believe’, but that sounded rude when one of them was standing right in front of her. So instead she said, ‘I thought all the brizzlehounds were gone.’

‘And so they are. All of the great hounds gone, except for Broo,’ said Olga Ciavolga. She reached out and stroked the giant head. ‘Now lead the way, my friend. There are things we must show this child.’

The brizzlehound’s body almost filled the narrow tunnel, but he turned around in a single fluid motion that took Goldie’s breath away. As they wended their way downwards between the rocky walls, she edged closer to Olga Ciavolga.

‘Is he really tame?’ she whispered.

‘Tame?’ said Olga Ciavolga. ‘No brizzlehound is ever tame. He is wild and bold and he has his own way of seeing the world. But if you treat him with respect he will not harm you.’

‘Where did he come from?’

‘I stole him from a circus.’

‘But there hasn’t been a circus in Jewel for hundreds of years!’

Olga Ciavolga gave one of her rare smiles. ‘Some of us are older than we look.’

Goldie’s head swam. She remembered what Toadspit had said. ‘Is Broo a thief too?’

‘Ah, yes. He is a stealer of lives. In the circus he killed a man who tormented him cruelly. They were going to shoot him, but I stole him and brought him here.’

It was hard for Goldie to act normally when there was a stealer of lives so close in front of her. But after a while her heart slowed almost to its normal rate and the clammy feeling in the palms of her hands went away. She gave a little hiccup of scared laughter and wished that Favour could see her, walking behind a real live brizzlehound.

It was warmer in the tunnel now, but the air was still dry. They had been going down for so long that it seemed they must be approaching the centre of the earth. And then, suddenly, the tunnel opened up, and they were walking across the floor of a cavern. Olga Ciavolga turned the flame of her lantern up high.

Goldie gasped. The walls of the cavern were lined with human bones. There were thigh bones stacked from floor to ceiling, and arm bones crisscrossed in intricate patterns. There were ribs and backbones and pelvic bones, and skulls piled one on top of the other like loaves of bread, with a lacework of finger bones between them.

‘This,’ said Herro Dan’s voice right behind her, ‘is the Place of Rememberin’.’

‘Oh!’ Goldie spun around. ‘I didn’t know you were there!’

‘Tsk, he is showing off,’ said Olga Ciavolga. ‘What do you think you are doing, Dan, frightening the child?’

‘She weren’t frightened, were you, lass?’

Goldie looked at the old man’s smiling face. ‘A little bit.’

‘Ah well, no harm done. Keeps you on your toes,’ he said.

‘We are not here to talk about toes,’ said Olga Ciavolga severely. ‘We are telling her about the museum.’

With that, all of Goldie’s frustration came flooding back. ‘But
why
?’ she burst out. ‘
Why
are you telling me? Why did you bring me here? Toadspit said that maybe I could help, but I don’t know what that
means
!’

Herro Dan sighed. ‘You’re right, lass, it’s time we told you.’ He cleared his throat as if he was about to begin a story. ‘There was a time, long ago, when the Faroon Peninsula was known as Furuuna.’

Furuunaaaaaaaaaaa . . .
The word seemed to echo around the cave and linger in the corners, as if the bones recognised it and didn’t want to let it go.

‘Back then,’ said Herro Dan, ‘the Place of Rememberin’ was sacred. Whenever someone died, their body was given to the slaughterbirds. Then their bones was brought here and stacked in rows so they’d never be forgotten, even when everyone who knew ’em was gone.’

‘The hill keeps them,’ rumbled the brizzlehound. ‘The hill keeps everything.’

‘The museum was built five hundred years ago,’ continued Herro Dan, ‘to hide the Place of Rememberin’ from those who would’ve destroyed it. There were only a few rooms then, and nothin’ in ’em but bronze tools and old coins. But as the years passed, and the people of the city started fillin’ up the vacant lots and banishin’ the animals, the museum started growin’.’

‘It became a refuge for all the wild things,’ said Olga Ciavolga. ‘All the things the city did not want.’

‘The hill keeps them,’ rumbled the brizzlehound again. ‘The hill keeps everything.’

Herro Dan laid his hand on one of the skulls. It was yellow with age, and its eye sockets were woven shut with spider webs. ‘But you can’t hold wild things in one place. And they won’t be tied down. That’s why the rooms shift like they do. And if ever the museum or its keepers are under threat, they shift even more. This is their last stronghold and they won’t stand quiet and see it destroyed.’

The brizzlehound growled suddenly – a sound so fierce that it made Goldie’s heart skip a beat. ‘The museum is under threat GRRRNOOOOW! I can SMELL it!’

Herro Dan nodded. ‘We know there’s somethin’ comin’ – some sorta trouble. The museum can feel it. But we dunno what the trouble is or where it’s comin’ from. And that makes things tricky.’ He looked directly at Goldie. ‘You see, lass, there’s great wonders hidden in this place, but there’s terrible things too, things that shouldn’t be disturbed.’

‘Like what’s in Old Scratch,’ whispered Goldie.

‘Worse than Old Scratch,’ said Herro Dan. ‘Much worse. And if the museum gets
too
restless, there’s a danger that some of those things’ll break out into the city . . .’

On either side of him the bones seemed to shiver in the lantern light. Goldie swallowed, trying not to think of Ma and Pa trapped in the House of Repentance with
terrible things
stalking through the streets towards them.

‘This is why we do our best to keep the rooms calm,’ said Olga Ciavolga. ‘Sinew plays his harp. Dan and Toadspit and I sing. We protect the museum, and we protect the city as well. But despite all our efforts, things are getting worse. The museum knows that something bad is coming.’

‘The bombing?’ said Goldie.

‘We think that is a part of it,’ said Olga Ciavolga. ‘But there is a greater danger that is still hidden from us. Sinew is doing his best to track it down.’

‘And when he finds it,’ said Herro Dan, ‘well, then we fight. That’s where you can help us, lass.’

‘To
fight
?’ squeaked Goldie. ‘I don’t know how!’

‘There’s fightin’ and there’s fightin’,’ said Herro Dan. ‘How many folks d’you know who question what the Blessed Guardians say?’

‘Lots of people,’ said Goldie. ‘Everyone I know moans about them in secret.’

‘Oh, in secret! We’re all bold in secret. But to do it out in the open, that takes rare courage.’

Goldie wanted to believe the old man, but she couldn’t. ‘It wasn’t courage,’ she said. ‘I just couldn’t bear it any more. The way they try to squash everyone into the same shape. The way everyone talks so meekly around them, and never dares say what they think. I hate them.’

‘And so you became a runaway,’ said Olga Ciavolga. ‘And a thief.’

‘Yes.’ Goldie blushed. ‘Toadspit said that only a . . . a thief can find their way through the museum.’

‘That is true,’ said Olga Ciavolga. ‘We are not sure why. Perhaps there is a wildness in thieves that speaks to the wildness that is here. Perhaps a thief sees the secret paths, the hidden places.’

She looked hard at Goldie. ‘Listen to me carefully, child.
I do not wish to glorify theft.
There are people in this world who think they are better than others, or deserve more. People who would rob their grandmother of her last coin and laugh as they did it. I have no time for such people. To move quietly, to be quick of hand and eye, that is a gift. If you use it to hurt others, even in a small way, you betray yourself and everyone around you.’

She paused. ‘But there’s
some
things—’ prompted Herro Dan.