A Face Like Glass (34 page)

‘Your Excellency,’ Childersin cut in quickly, ‘it would be possible to blend a Wine tailored to remove only this child’s memories of Drudgery, but it would take time
– weeks, in fact. We could tackle the matter more clumsily and give her a Wine guaranteed to erase her memories of a specific time period, but then we run a high risk of wiping her
recollection of the Kleptomancer. After all, we do not know the precise time that she left her kidnapper’s lair. If I may make a suggestion, fixing her features may be a task for a
Facesmith.’

Right-Eye was suddenly bitterly weary of Childersin’s suave explanations. ‘You have seven hours to fix this child’s face, by whatever means you see fit. At nineteen
o’clock several grand confections and desserts will reach perfection, and will be brought to me for a grand tasting. If the girl’s face is not mended by that time . . .’ The
unspoken end of his threat hung in the air like freezing fog.

As the child Neverfell was led from the room, Right-Eye felt as though the wave of life had gone out again, leaving him again a beach of dead gems.

It was a long time since he had felt so awake. The girl’s smile of unfeigned admiration and joy had thrown into shadow centuries of carefully tailored compliments and flattering portraits.
Perhaps, whenever things grow painfully dull, I could do something to summon that look in her face again. Little concessions for the drudges, maybe? A package of extra food now and then? Or
safety ropes for the younger climbers?

While he was considering this, Enquirer Treble arrived, her Face a mixture of self-importance, deference and bulldog watchfulness, to report on the latest findings in the Kleptomancer case.

‘My people have located the lair described by the girl,’ she explained. ‘It was abandoned.’ Neither Treble nor the Grand Steward pretended surprise at the master
thief’s escape. ‘At least now we may have some insight into the workings of his mind . . . providing Neverfell’s story is true.’ Like everybody else at Court, the Enquiry
had originally assumed that Neverfell had been stolen in response to the Grand Steward’s challenge. They were still getting to grips with the notion of ‘divination by theft’.

‘Does her account hold water?’

‘So far. It certainly explains what we found in and around the tasters’ quarters. Aside from the dead guards, there was the corpse by the ember chute. A lean man with
Nocteric-stained eyes and a large crossbow bolt through his chest – perhaps the glisserblind assassin she describes. He has been identified as Tybalt Prane, otherwise known in certain circles
as . . . the Zookeeper.’

‘A killer for hire,’ muttered Right-Eye, ‘and whoever paid him still lives. Somebody wants that girl dead. And I cannot permit her to die, not while she is our best chance of
identifying the Kleptomancer. No, nobody can be allowed to end her life yet, not even myself. Treble, do you remember our previous conversations on the subject of my . . . counterpart?’

‘Yes, Your Excellency.’

Although it would be an overstatement to say that Right-Eye liked Treble, he did not completely dislike her. In her he saw some of his own impatience with failure, and the gleaming rails of a
ruthless and well-ordered mind. Even her brute ambition had something healthy and direct about it. Her standing at Court was always far lower when Left-Eye was in control.

‘My other self is . . . unpredictable.’ The Grand Steward unhooked a pouch from his belt, and passed it to the Enquirer. The contents were harmless, but its scent so violently
invigorating that it would wake all but the dead. ‘If there should come an emergency – should my counterpart make a decision in which you believe I would wish to be involved –
throw the pouch to the floor and I will wake. For example, should he decide on impulse to execute the child Neverfell, whom I have very good reasons for keeping alive, I should be woken. You
understand?’

‘Perfectly, Your Excellency,’ answered Treble, dropping a low bow. She did not dare to look up at the slack and sleeping left half of her master, turned away and obscured by shadow.
She had the uncanny feeling it might be listening, with inscrutable but mischievous intent.

Neverfell was tired, so very tired. Waiting in her room to learn of her fate, her mind kept dropping away into sleep for numb instants no longer than a blink. Next moment her
thoughts would jar her awake again, thrashing and crashing and clattering like a monstrous waterwheel, turning and turning without end or purpose. She jerked and stared and barely knew where she
was, dream pieces floating like iceberg shards across her half-waking mind.

Neverfell had pushed through to the other side of ordinary tiredness, and now she was too tired to fall asleep properly. She was out of clock, maybe further out of clock than she had ever been
before. She could feel her mind pulling loose like knitting, the neat stitches of her artificial days unravelling to become one mangled thread.

It was almost a relief when at last she received a knock on the door and was told that Zouelle Childersin was waiting in the parlour to speak to her.

When Neverfell entered, Zouelle rose immediately and put her arms round her in a big-sister hug. The kindness of the gesture was too much. Neverfell wanted to cry, but everything that had
happened made a big awkward lump in her throat, and all that came out was small frog-like noises. Then, when she recovered her voice, she found herself gabbling out the whole tale of the attempted
glisserblind murder, the kidnap by the Kleptomancer and her adventures in the Undercity. Zouelle listened all the while, wearing the warm and comforting Face 334, A Placid Glow in a Homely
Hearth.

‘And now my face is spoilt, Zouelle!’ Neverfell finished. ‘And if nobody mends it the Grand Steward will execute us all! I don’t know what to do! I don’t want them
to take away my memories—’

‘Shhh.’ Zouelle squeezed her hand. ‘Now, listen to me. Nobody’s going to take your memories away. You’re going to be taught a bit of face control, that’s all,
just to smooth out the disillusionment. Uncle Maxim has sent me to take you to a Facesmith, and I’ve persuaded him to let me choose which one.

‘Get ready as fast as you can, Neverfell. We’re going to see Madame Appeline.’

It was half past thirteen. In the audience chamber a silence born of tension settled. The Grand Steward eased back in his great throne, his right eye turning this way and that,
making a last-minute inspection of the hall. Then, slowly, almost reluctantly, his right eyelid drooped and closed.

The instant lid touched lid, his left eye sprang open. The servants were too well-trained to flinch, but many of them felt a cold clutch at their heart every time they witnessed the Grand
Steward changing his internal guard. He moved his left shoulder slightly, easing out stiffness from twelve and a half hours of inaction, then stretched his left arm and flexed his left fingers.

All around him, the chamber was now in motion. Advisors whom Right-Eye valued were retreating, many carrying scrolls bearing newly stamped orders. Passing them in the doorway were
Left-Eye’s favoured attendants, those who had dedicated long decades to interpreting his tiny gestures, and those whom he had chosen for his own inscrutable, peculiar reasons.

Right-Eye had left his thoughts and conclusions neatly ordered at the front of his mind, ready for his alter ego, like so many carefully written pages. As usual, Left-Eye tore through them like
a breeze, scattering and discarding most as irrelevant, and chasing a few that interested him.

The ‘rehearsals’ did not bother him as they had his counterpart. Nothing interested him but the new information about the Kleptomancer.

Left-Eye had an uncanny gift for guessing at the secret schemes of others. He noticed a thousand little signs and self-betrayals and saw the pattern behind them, like a fortune teller reading
shapes in tea leaves.

But, if the girl was to be believed, this Kleptomancer had made an art of confusing such tea-leaf reading. He created false patterns, scattered misleading clues. He deceived himself in order to
deceive others. How could you detect the opposite of a pattern? Left-Eye’s mind flinched from the idea, but then began compulsively trying to turn itself inside out in an attempt to
understand the Kleptomancer.

The Kleptomancer, the Kleptomancer. Like a needle stitching over and over in the same place, Left-Eye’s mind struggled with the problem, knotting and tangling itself as it went.

In another cavern-room, a note sat snugly in a hidden pocket. It had already been read and reread many times.

My dearest comrade,

I hate repeating myself, and this is the last time I shall do so. You will oblige me by instantly ceasing all attempts against the life of young Neverfell.
Please do not bore me with denials or explanations. Simply desist. You are quite aware of the value I place on that young person, and the plans that her murder would jeopardize. Rest assured, the
memories of her early life are buried too deep to surface and threaten you.

We have much to discuss. An opportunity has arisen that we cannot afford to waste, one that will open the door for all our plans. I will need your help, however, if we are
to take advantage of it. Delay is now a luxury we cannot afford. An investigation has been launched into certain curious murders in Drudgery, and it would be unfortunate if it were given time to
discover anything important.

Regards,

Your respectful friend

It was dangerous to think about Caverna, but he did so anyway, lying on the rocky ledge that tonight served him as a bed, with his hands clasped behind his head. As he tried to
corral all the information he had gathered, he almost imagined that he could see Caverna’s needle-toothed smile hanging in the darkness.

‘What are you preparing for, my love?’ he asked aloud. ‘What is it that you know? Something is about to happen. You are excited. I can tell.’

His goggled suit sat beside him like a sentry, and he glanced at it now and then to remind himself who he was. Trying to understand Caverna was an invitation to madness, and he needed all his
strength to resist it. Again and again he felt Cartographic thoughts breaking against his mind like waves, trying to find weaknesses in his defences and seep inside.

For three hours he had been staring at the opposite wall of the cavern in which he lay. The change in its appearance had been very slow, so slow that a normal man would have missed it, but he
was sure that the central crack had widened, the ceiling risen and some of the stalactites reduced in size, like claws retracted into a cat’s paw.

The Cartographers were right. Caverna was readying herself to move, to grow.

Then map me
, came the relentless voice in his head.
Draw up the changes in all their glory. Worship me.

No, my love
, he answered silently.
I will find out what you are doing without scattering my wits on the ground for you to trample. I will not bow to you.

Zouelle and Neverfell were escorted out through the great palace gates to a smart little low-slung carriage pulled by two short but stocky white horses, belled and tasselled.
Zouelle put a white fur wrap round Neverfell’s shoulders.

‘You’re trembling like a moth’s wing,’ she remarked as the carriage set off.

‘I’m really out of clock,’ Neverfell explained. ‘It often leaves me feeling cold – I don’t know why. And hungry.’ Everything had an unreal look, and
sometimes voices seemed to be floating past her, rather than passing through her ears and into her brain. The bobbing of the horses’ heads threatened to hypnotize her. ‘Does that ever
happen to you?’

‘Not really,’ confessed Zouelle. ‘I’m a Childersin. We’re never out of clock, remember?’

‘But I guess I’m frightened too,’ went on Neverfell, ‘I don’t know what to say to Madame Appeline. Won’t she be angry with me, for breaking into her
storeroom?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Zouelle narrowed her eyes speculatively. ‘There isn’t a Facesmith in Caverna who wouldn’t give a hundred smiles for the chance to study
your face in their own time. No, I think she’ll welcome us in . . . which means that while she’s fixing your face we’ll have a chance to talk to her and her girls, and find out
more about her, won’t we?’

When they finally reached the door to Madame Appeline’s abode, however, Neverfell felt a few flutters of apprehension fluttering in her stomach. She was almost glad of her tiredness, which
numbed the edge of her anxiety.

They were clearly expected. The door swung open as they approached. On the other side of the door was a Putty Girl a little older than Zouelle who smiled sweetly but blandly, took their wraps
and showed them into the reception room with the table and chandelier, and through the opposite door into the grove.

The brightness stung Neverfell’s eyes. For a moment her senses swam, and she seemed to hear a drone of insects, and smell fresh sap. When she blinked her vision clear again, before her
stood Madame Appeline.