Neverfell remembered Enquirer Treble towering over her and berating her, belligerent and unswerving.
You consumed some kind of antidote before this tasting. Didn’t you?
‘Oh no,’ she whispered. ‘Tell me there wasn’t! Tell me there wasn’t an antidote in the Wine you gave me!’
‘I didn’t know what would happen!’ wailed Zouelle. ‘I just had my orders, my part to play. I only worked out the bit about the antidote after the trifle tasting. And then it was too late, and the Grand Steward was dead, and there were bodies all over the audience chamber covered in blood. It’s . . . I’ve seen dead people before. A few. But they look different when it’s my fault. They look like they know, and I keep seeing them when I close my eyes.’
‘But it’s not your fault, if you didn’t know. Listen, Zouelle, we have to tell somebody about this! If Madame Appeline really did poison the Grand Steward, and you’re the only person who knows, you’re in terrible danger! We could tell your Uncle M—’
‘Shh!’ Zouelle held up a warning hand. There was a faint sound of a step outside in the corridor, and then a knock on the door.
‘Zouelle?’ It was the voice of Maxim Childersin. Neverfell’s heart gave a lurch of relief, and she was just opening her mouth to answer when Zouelle caught at her arm and shook her head vigorously.
What’s wrong? Neverfell mouthed.
Zouelle had one finger pressed against her lips in an injunction to silence, and wore a small, pleading smile. No. 144, Delicate Appeal of the Shell-less Fledgeling. She gestured to Neverfell to hide behind one of the larger barrels by the wall, and Neverfell reluctantly obliged.
‘Come in,’ Zouelle called out. The door opened, and Maxim Childersin’s lean figure stepped into the room, treading with meticulous care. He too wore a black and silver apron, rings and a rune-encrusted amulet. Glancing around him, he raised an eyebrow at the restlessness of the Wines and the fragments of broken glass scattering the floor.
‘My dear girl,’ he said, ‘we all wish to throw our failed experiments at the ground from time to time, but we try not to do so. And how did you let your Wine projects get so wild? If they become any louder, they may start noticing each other. And then where would we be?’
‘I am very sorry, Uncle Maxim.’ Within an instant, Zouelle’s manner had completely changed, her hysteria and tremulousness falling away like a discarded shawl. She now had the clear and careful tones of a well-rehearsed schoolgirl about to recite poetry. ‘I had just finished working on that blend I was talking about and at the last moment I . . . thought better of it and threw it away from me. It smashed and woke up the other Wines, so I thought I would wait by the wall until they calmed down.’
‘Ah, so you have thought better of removing your memories? I am very glad to hear that.’ Maxim Childersin twinkled a smile at his favourite niece as he advanced carefully across the room. Now and then he stopped to chant under his breath in the direction of the Wines, rolling each ‘r’ so that it was a soothing purr. ‘I agreed to your request to do so, of course, and would have let you go back to the Beaumoreau Academy to play games for a few more years, but I would have been disappointed.’
Zouelle smiled blandly, discreetly retethering her runaway braid. Her eyes did not as much as flicker to Neverfell’s hiding place. Again there was something eerie about her complete transformation.
‘A little courage now is all it takes,’ Maxim added kindly. ‘If you can learn to stomach what has passed without running away from it, nothing else that you ever do will be as hard. Murder is like romance. It is only our first that overwhelms us. Next time it will be easier, and I promise that I will not make you work with our Facesmith friend again.’
Neverfell silently gaped as one last red-hot penny finally dropped. Why had she imagined that Madame Appeline was the only mastermind of this scheme? Why had she thought that Zouelle would take orders from a Facesmith she hated? Why had she not wondered where Madam Appeline would find a strong forgetfulness Wine with a poison antidote artfully woven into it?
She felt as if she were standing in a dim room, and watching every lantern around her extinguish, one by one, leaving her to darkness and solitary stifling. Nobody was to be trusted. The plan that had ensnared her had been the brainchild of her protector, Maxim Childersin.
The Master of Craft
Neverfell’s mind felt stretched, like a frog trying to swallow a dinner plate. But they’re enemies, she thought stupidly. Master Childersin and Madame Appeline hate each other, everybody knows that.
No, answered the wiser, cooler part of her head, that’s what they wanted everybody to think. What better way to hide a secret alliance?
Maxim Childersin. When had he seen the potential in a half-mad girl with no capacity to lie? Had there been any real pity in his heart when he first visited her in the Enquiry’s cell, or even then had his mind been seeing the potential, and throwing out the first tendrils of plans?
Through the bars he had laid eyes on a face like glass, somebody who could not lie without it being obvious. And he had seen a way of using that very fact to tell the greatest of lies.
Of course, thought Neverfell as the truth unfolded in her mind. He couldn’t just murder the Grand Steward in an obvious way, or the Enquiry would have taken over. He had to make the death look natural. So he needed somebody to swear blind that the Grand Steward couldn’t have been poisoned, somebody that everyone else couldn’t help but believe.
‘I wanted to talk to you about Neverfell,’ Zouelle was saying, and Neverfell was jerked back into awareness by the mention of her own name.
‘Indeed?’
‘I wonder if perhaps she should stay somewhere else for a bit,’ Zouelle declared with perfect sangfroid. ‘Perhaps take up her apprenticeship with Cheesemaster Grandible again. The family has a lot of sensitive things to discuss now that we are on a war footing, and, whilst well-intentioned, Neverfell is not very good at keeping secrets. Also, she seems to be getting restless.’
‘Yes.’ Childersin had covered the broken vial with a handkerchief, showing the same tender reverence one might offer a dead but beloved pet. ‘I had noticed that. However I do not think we can let her out of our sight, and if Grandible had her back in his care I doubt he would relinquish her again. Remember, in two months’ time the Enquiry will have finished their investigation into the Grand Steward’s death. There will be a hearing before the entire Court, and we will need Neverfell to testify again. We cannot afford to let her be kidnapped, assassinated or taken beyond our reach before then.’
Neverfell did pause to wonder whether he would feel very differently about her being assassinated after the hearing. She had a queasy suspicion that she would not like the answer.
‘However,’ mused Childersin, ‘you are right that her restlessness is a problem. She needs to be distracted, diverted, made to feel that she is not in a prison. Perhaps some small outings in the carriage to see local beauty spots, or to say farewell to her fellow tasters? I will arrange something. For now, I shall leave you to finish calming your Wines.’
When he had left the room and his footsteps had faded, Zouelle finally closed her eyes and leaned back against the door.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Neverfell.
‘I . . . lied to Uncle Maxim,’ croaked Zouelle, and there was no mistaking the stunned terror in her tone. ‘I lied to him. I never dared to do so before, never thought I could without him noticing. Perhaps he did notice. Perhaps he’s playing a game with me.’
‘Or maybe he’s too busy with all his other games to suspect you,’ answered Neverfell, hoping she sounded reassuring. ‘So all this time he’s been working with Madame Appeline? For how long?’
‘Years, I think.’ Zouelle shook her head slowly. ‘I didn’t know, not until he told me that I had to work with her to make you drink the Wine. They’re . . . I think they’re more than just allies. But nobody else in the family knows. I’m the only one he told, the only one he trusted enough . . .
‘But you don’t want that!’ Neverfell gaped at her in horror. ‘You can’t!’
‘It’s what everybody wants. I would be good at it too. Maybe I’m not ready yet, but I could learn, change, become what he wants. I know I could.’ Zouelle’s face had returned to its habitual flutter, once more in search of the elusive Face that was nowhere in its repertoire. ‘No, Neverfell! I don’t want it! I don’t want it! I thought I did, and I ought to, but I don’t. Not now. Maybe I never did.’
‘Then don’t do it!’ exclaimed Neverfell.
‘But what else is there for me? Without Uncle Maxim’s favour, the rest of the family will claw me apart. You saw what happened to me when they thought he was dead. And nobody else will take me as an apprentice, because they’ll think I’m just a Childersin spy.
‘And he’s going to find out. Right now your face is one big mess of disillusionment, pain and betrayal. It’s not as bad as when you went into the secret room, but you’ve changed and Uncle Maxim will be able to see it. He’ll know what you know and the first time you glance at me he’ll know that I told you. That’ll be the end for both of us. I should never have told you . . . I don’t know what happened to me. I just . . . wanted to talk to somebody.’
‘And if you hadn’t you’d still be going crazy with what you know, and I’d be going crazy with what I didn’t know, and both of us would be alone. Right now, I’m upset but I’m . . .’ Neverfell hesitated, like one stretching a limb they think might be broken. ‘I’m all right. I think I’m more all right than I have been for ages. Great big holes of unknown are the worst thing. Before this, I didn’t know anything was wrong but I didn’t not know, if you see what I mean. You can go mad like that. And if my face is spoilt now, once and for all, then it means I don’t have to worry about it any more.’
‘Neverfell,’ whispered Zouelle, ‘I . . . don’t have a plan. I always have a plan and now I don’t. What are we going to do?’
It was a good question, but even as Zouelle asked it Neverfell could feel doors opening in her own head, great big simple doors that floated silently ajar with grace and ease.
‘We’re going to escape,’ she answered.
‘Escape where? I couldn’t bear living in Drudgery or the wild tunnels . . .’
‘No. Not there. Really escape. Out. Up and out. To the overground.’
‘But that’s insane!’
‘Yes, so nobody will be expecting it.’ Neverfell gave her friend a wide, mad smile and squeezed her hands. ‘Nobody expects insane things – the Kleptomancer worked that out. How could they guess we would run away to a place full of disease where the sun cooks you till your skin falls off?’
‘I don’t want my skin to fall off!’
‘But it isn’t really like that, Zouelle! I don’t remember it, and yet sometimes I think I do. It’s like somebody broke my memory of it and swept up the pieces, but there are still tiny fragments, little stars of it winking at me when they catch the light. There’s a brightness out there, like nothing we have here. It’s blue, so blue it takes the lid off your head and blows out the cobwebs and you can see forever. And there are places where you can run and run and run. And the sky isn’t just nothingness up and up and up – there are colours, beautiful colours, and you can see the birds above swimming in it. And there’s smells up there, like . . . like . . . hope and your first surprise.
‘Everything down here is just a painting of what’s real, Zouelle. A dreg. A memory. I feel like I’m holding my breath all the time, never knowing when my lungs will just give up. The air we’re supposed to breathe is up above – I can feel it.’
‘Neverfell, that is all very pretty, but we do not actually have a way out right now, do we? And even if we found one, it wouldn’t do any good. If Uncle Maxim has his way, all the outside kingdoms will topple one by one and come under Caverna’s control – his control. We could walk a thousand miles and he’d send people after us. We know too much; he wouldn’t have any choice. He would never be safe until he destroyed us.
‘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 ba
rrier 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.’
A Face Like Glass Page 32
