A Face Like Glass (44 page)

‘We can’t just run away from him. There aren’t any half measures – that’s not how it works. Unless we’re playing his game, we’ll never be safe unless
we
destroy
him
.’

‘Destroy him?’ Neverfell again felt a shock like a whiplash. ‘You want to destroy your uncle?’

‘No, I don’t. He’s been my best friend all my life. But I
know
him, and if we’re going against him it’s all or nothing. We have to destroy him, one way or
another. But we can’t just go to the Enquiry and tell what we know. They’d only arrest us, and then one of Uncle Maxim’s spies in the Enquiry would have us murdered. We’ll
have to think of something else.

‘But first of all, right now, we have to get you out of here before anybody else in the family sees your face and realizes how much you know. Or we’re both dead.’

Less than two hours later, Zouelle Childersin was standing at one of the balconies of the family’s townhouse, watching a carriage being made ready. To look at her, nobody
would have guessed that her mind was an anthill of agitation.

If Uncle Maxim finds out I had in a part in this, there’ll be no forgiveness this time. Even if I escaped to Neverfell’s overground, would I really be safe from him?

The overground was still an ominous mystery to her. Neverfell had tried to describe it, but Zouelle still had no clear idea that was not taken from poems or painted landscapes. The idea of the
sky baffled and terrified her. Even when she tried to imagine air above air above air, something in her mind kept trying to put a roof on it. In Neverfell’s face, though, she had seen
something that made her also feel for a moment as if she had been holding her breath all her life without knowing it.

Her mind was abruptly dragged from such thoughts, however, as she observed a slight figure emerging from the front door below. It was dressed in a burgundy dress and veil, and it walked
nervously to the carriage where as usual several Childersin servants were waiting as an escort.

Ironically, putting Neverfell in a veil had been the Childersins’ idea. They had insisted upon it so that potential assassins at the palace would not guess at her identity, and little
thought that it was the only thing preventing them from seeing the rebellion on the face of their young guest. Her all-too distinctive hair was tucked up under a burgundy-coloured turban, and her
skinny frame padded out with extra layers of clothing, so that she could be more easily mistaken for one of the young Childersin girls.

As Zouelle watched, the slender figure below looked up at her, and raised one hand in a timid wave. Wearing her best pussycat smile, Zouelle gave a small, answering nod. It was not simply a
salute. It was a signal to let Neverfell know that Zouelle’s own mission had been successful, that she had tracked down Erstwhile and delivered a note from Neverfell into his hands.

. . . when the Childersins take me to the palace I will try to jump from the carriage and escape. If I do not come and find you, then I have been caught, and Zouelle and me are done for. If
that happens, tell the Enquiry that the Grand Steward was poisoned, and I was tricked into taking an antidote . . .

Good luck, Neverfell
, Zouelle thought, feeling suddenly powerless and exhausted.

Neverfell saw the signal with a pang of relief. At least now Erstwhile would be aware of her plans.

Through the veil, everything around her looked wine-coloured and hazy, albeit studded with occasional stitched flowers. It was such a fragile barrier that Neverfell was afraid every instant that
somebody would glimpse her features through it, and realize that her heart was straining with every beat, like a prisoner yanking at his leg chain.

She climbed into the carriage, trying not to shake. Like most in Caverna, it was an open carriage, since closed roofs could jam against sloping walls and stalagmites. Two footmen in the very
front, to control the horses. Two guards perched on the very back, watching behind. And Neverfell in the middle. Perhaps it would be possible to jump out after all, if she picked her moment, and
get a few seconds’ head start before any of them noticed.

Neverfell glanced up at the balcony again, in time to see Zouelle give her a small wave. And then the blonde girl stiffened, fingers freezing mid-gesture.

Neverfell followed Zouelle’s gaze, and saw Maxim Childersin stepping out of the front door. She watched in mute horror as he walked over, and climbed into the carriage beside her.

‘The palace demands my presence, it would seem.’ Out of the corner of her eye, Neverfell could see the clasping of his long-fingered gloves with the tapering fingers. ‘And I
thought this might offer a good opportunity for us to have a little talk, Neverfell.’

He knows no he doesn’t he’d never have let me out of the house if he did or perhaps he does and it’s a cat-and-mouse game . . .

She said nothing as the carriage lurched into motion, keeping her head ducked down, watching her veil stirring with her own breath.

‘Now, I do hope that you are not going to be surly,’ he went on, the tiniest hint of reproof in his voice. ‘If I might say so, your openness and generosity of spirit have
always been your best and most redeeming qualities. But I think I know what is going through your head.’

Neverfell closed her eyes tight and hoped with all her heart that he did not.

‘You are still upset about our conversation at breakfast, are you not?’

Neverfell breathed again, opened her eyes and risked a small, hesitant nod.

‘You really did have some fanciful notion of escaping out into the wild overground, didn’t you?’ Childersin’s voice was sadly kind. How hard it was not to believe in that
sad kindness! ‘Perhaps you still feel like an outsider here, and you fancy that you will find “your own kind” out there? Perhaps a tribe of redheads with a love of licking walls?
I am a little hurt by that, Neverfell. I thought we had offered you a family.’

The thoroughfare was busier now. Occasionally the carriage slowed to pass another cart, the horses snuffing as their shaggy flanks brushed the arching walls, and each time Neverfell cast a
glance about her, wondering if this was the opportunity she needed. But each time she was coldly aware of how quickly she would be caught if she jumped.

‘Never mind,’ said Childersin. He patted her hand, and with a strength of mind that amazed her Neverfell managed not to flinch. ‘Here is what we will do. When our family are
masters of a substantial part of the overground, I will put aside a portion of it just for you. Perhaps a little island nation or something. We will have the best artists paint it for you, so that
you can see what it looks like, and the inhabitants will send you gifts of tribute and letters. It will be all yours. You can choose their governor and change their laws if you like.’

Neverfell listened with stunned fascination, as if she had seen a crack appear between herself and Maxim Childersin, and deepen, pushing them apart until they were divided by a colossal ravine.
It amazed her that Childersin, for all his wit, wisdom and wiles, truly did not understand why this would not make her happy. She remembered their earlier exchange, while viewing the paintings of
his vineyards.

But what’s the point of owning them if you never see them?

What’s the point of seeing them if I don’t own them?

With a quickening of the blood, Neverfell realized that the carriage was now rattling along a thoroughfare not far from Fenugreek Circle. This was a rounded cavern where various thoroughfares
intersected, and was usually a higgledy-piggledy mess of carriages moving slowly round each other in their bid to reach the turning of their choice. If she could jump out anywhere and lose herself
in the crush, it would be at the Circle.

‘Where are we going?’ Maxim Childersin peered around. ‘Oh no, turn left here and take the long route. Avoid the Circle – it gives too many opportunities for the
assassin’s bow.’

Neverfell’s heart plunged once more, and again she started to wonder whether Maxim Childersin knew all about her plans, and was toying with her. Every time the carriage slowed, she
desperately assessed her chances of escape. Time and again there was no turning she could run down, or the way ahead was blocked with jostlers, and while she hesitated the moment passed. She knew
none of these streets, and could so easily throw away her one chance by sprinting into a dead end.

Rough cobbles stared back at her, and she was all too aware of the thinness of her flimsy shoes. For the first time she wondered whether these had been chosen deliberately to dissuade her from
running.

Finally she saw the grand approach to the palace rolling out ahead, filled with gilded sedans, and jostling paradribbles like gaily coloured mushroom clusters. Heavy rain from the day before had
found its way down crack and cranny, so that now forlorn drops were falling from the chipped ceilings. Lost rain, stained pearly pale by the ancient rock, varnishing walls and turning floors to
mirrors in its doomed quest to return to the sea and sky.

Time had run out. The last chance had gone. The carriage was pulling up at the great palace gates.

Maxim dismounted, and held out a hand to help Neverfell down. The guards flanked them. Perhaps she could break from them and sprint. But she would be obvious in this serenely gliding crowd, a
single frayed thread in an immaculate tapestry . . .

She was barely forming this thought, when all serene gliding was brought to an abrupt end. There was a crashing rumble that echoed from one side of the thoroughfare to the other. The air filled
with clouds of stone dust, and one single screamed word.

‘Rockfall!’

A second later, nobody was sane. There was scarcely a word more feared in all of Caverna. It was more terrible than darkness, more ruthless than glisserblinds. It was the awful awareness of the
massive cold weight of the mountain above, the mountain which did not care about etiquette or machinations, beauty or power.

Dignity was forgotten, for what good was dignity against several thousand tons of rock? The slow of thought cringed, staring upward for cracks spreading like black veins over the rock ceiling.
Those quicker of wit were already hurling themselves under anything that might withstand the brunt of a rocky cascade. Sedan-owners found uninvited intruders bursting in through the doors. Others
rolled under carts or flung themselves flat. Wiser souls raced to arches, counting on the masons’ skill to protect them.

The only person who did not react thus was a girl in a misshapen burgundy dress and a frothy wine-coloured veil, who suddenly found that her armed guards had thrown themselves prone. She
twitched barely a glance to and fro, before sprinting straight into the massing cloud of pale dust.

Almost immediately Neverfell found herself running blind. Rubble crunched and rolled under her feet, bruising her soles, and she could smell newly split chalk, angry flint. Her
footing slid and she dropped to one knee, grazing it, but was on her feet again next instant. If a wall had capsized, perhaps there would be a new hole she could scramble through, and at least her
entourage would be loath to run into what might be a collapsing tunnel.

Of course,
I
might be running straight into a collapsing tunnel.

She slithered down the other side of the unseen rubble heap, only to see a pallid figure loom unexpectedly from the chalky mist. It was a young woman in the all-too-familiar white garb of a
palace servant, with one hand upon an iron lever set in the wall. Neverfell had time to squawk, but not enough to avoid barrelling into her.

‘Aaaahsorry!’ Neverfell staggered, and as she strove to recover her balance the young woman took a firm grip on her collar.

‘Miss?’ she whispered. ‘Miss Neverfell?’

Neverfell could not guess what had betrayed her identity, but decided not to stay for questions. She tried to drag herself free, and her new captor gave a curt, curling whistle, a tiny rising
note like a bird’s question. A few seconds later, two more servants sprinted into view.

‘Change of plan!’ breathed the woman. ‘Breathsbait Door!’

Ignoring Neverfell’s protests, the two men gripped her under the arms, lifted her bodily off her feet and whisked her away through the settling powder cloud. The woman sped ahead, and
Neverfell saw her push her finger through a hidden ring in the wall and pull. A door-shaped expanse of the mosaic-covered wall swung open.

Before Neverfell could react, the two men hurled her through this door and closed it behind her, leaving her in a narrow corridor with the woman.

‘Shh!’ her companion hissed. ‘Your friend Erstwhile told us you needed to escape. Quiet, or they’ll find us.’

At the mention of Erstwhile’s name, Neverfell steadied herself. She was confused, but apparently among friends. Outside the door she could hear the sound of screaming, panic, rapid
footfalls, shrill whinnies of horses. Occasionally there were shouted questions, the words muffled by the door. She wondered how many of them were asking after her.

‘They will probably waste some time trying to find you under the rubble,’ whispered the servant woman. ‘Come!’