A Face Like Glass

by Frances Hardinge

  You’re not my mother

  You’re not my mother

  You’re not my mother

  ‘You’re not my mother!’ Neverfell lashed out wildly, scarcely knowing whether she meant to wound or to parry. ‘Take off her Face!’ The shard drew a long oblique line upward, and almost entirely missed. Almost, except for the very, very tip, which just nicked the chin of Madame Appeline’s precious alabaster face, causing a tiny pearl of blood to swell. The Facesmith gave a wail of utter horror, clapped a hand to her chin, and leaped backwards.

  It was a leap too far, and in the wrong direction. Directly behind Madame Appeline lay the largest of the traps, monstrous mouth agape. Neverfell had just enough time to see the Facesmith fall sprawling into its maw before its upper jaw descended, the fine teeth meshing like two combs locking together.

  An eerie silence fell. In spite of everything, Neverfell’s conscience smote her, and she tried to prise the jaws apart, but in vain. After years fed on grubs, the trap had found prey worth its maw, and it sat there intractable, wearing a grin wider than any the Facesmith had ever designed. There were no signs of life from within.

  Neverfell ventured slowly back into the hidden room once more, and stared around her at the hundreds of sketches. They were pictures of pain, but also strength, tenderness, endurance, love.

  She was looking at me. The love in all these Faces . . . it was meant for me.

  Neverfell took down one of the pictures of her mother, and placed it carefully in her pocket.

  The front runners of the drudge army met up with Neverfell just as she was scampering back to her post by Madame Appeline’s broken front door. To her delight, Erstwhile was among them. He was gruff as ever when she nearly squeezed him in two with a hug.

  ‘It worked,’ he summarized curtly.

  It had been, Neverfell now remembered, the part of the plan that had caused the most heated debate. There was simply no way to bring hundreds of drudges to the Doldrums without somebody noticing, even if the Court was in chaos. The plan that was finally concocted was audacious in the extreme. Instead of trying to sneak up from Drudgery, the drudge masses would rise and pretend to attack the palace. Then the drudge army would let itself be ‘put to rout’ and ‘flee’ . . . towards the Doldrums, in just the direction they had wished to go in the first place.

  ‘They fell for it,’ Erstwhile pronounced with pride. ‘Half the Court – the half that isn’t tearing itself apart right now – is holed up in the palace, hiding. And when we ran away, they thought they’d won. Nobody tried to stop us. They even put up barricades behind us! So now if anybody wants to chase us they got to come through those first.’

  ‘Did . . .’ Neverfell scarcely wanted to ask the question. ‘Did anyone get hurt?’

  Erstwhile looked stony again, then gave her shoulder a short, slightly painful punch. ‘It’s a war, Nev. Everyone knew the odds. And we only lost a couple out of four hundred. Just take us to your precious sky so it’s all worth it.’

  Four hundred drudges and their children, all trusting in my plan. Neverfell did not know whether to be staggered that there were so many, or saddened that there were not more. This was not even one-tenth of the population of Drudgery. The others had agreed to rebel, but had not been willing to leave Caverna for the hazards of the unknown overground. I suppose not everybody can bear to give up everything they have ever known, however bad their life is.

  The passage beyond the hidden room took a number of twists before coming to a dead halt with a trapdoor set in the roof. When Neverfell pushed this up, she came out under the breakfast table in the Morning Room.

  ‘Zouelle!’ Neverfell ran to fling her arms round her friend. ‘You’re here! You did it!’

  ‘Neverfell!’ Zouelle returned the hug. ‘You took so long I thought you’d been caught! My family still haven’t found a way through the hazards I set up in the corridor, but it’s only a matter of time. Let’s hope it’s long enough.’

  Drudges of all sizes and ages were pouring out from beneath the breakfast table now, and peering around the room. The white tablecloth, the pristine silver and the crystal dishes only earned a brief glance, however. All eyes were fixed on the ceiling immediately above the table.

  Zouelle had unscrewed the large, blue glass hemisphere that had fitted into the ceiling, and left it on the table. In its place could be seen a round hole, some three feet wide, from which a mousey-grey radiance was emitting.

  Neverfell clambered unsteadily on the table, and peered up into the hole. The shaft soared up and up, a faint glimmer telling her that the walls were mirrored. It ended at the furthest point in a tiny dull coin of light.

  Sky. I can see the sky.

  Her spirits took off like a flock of doves, and she almost expected to see them spiral upward towards that dim luminescence in a flurry of white wings. The sense of relief was so intense that she almost collapsed. Only then did she realize that she had been secretly fearing that she had been wrong about everything, and that she might find herself looking up into a nest of trap-lanterns like those above Madame Appeline’s grove.

  She looked around at her waiting allies, who all seemed to be holding their breath.

  ‘It’s the way,’ she said huskily. ‘It’s open. I don’t think the sun’s up yet, but . . . I can just about see the sky. Look! See for yourself !’

  Instantly there was a crush of people around Neverfell wanting to crane and peer up the shaft.

  ‘What’s that smell?’ whispered one of them.

  ‘Overground.’ Neverfell could feel a smile trying to split her face. ‘Freedom.’

  ‘Nev – we got to hurry!’ Erstwhile gestured to a machine that three drudges were manoeuvring out of the floor hatch. It looked like a cross between a tripod, a crossbow and a multi-pronged grappling hook. ‘You sure this contraption is going to work?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Neverfell stared at it. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Don’t you remember? The last reprise must still be taking effect.’ Zouelle passed her another vial of Wine. ‘Drink this – that should sort it out.’

  Neverfell downed the Wine, and then stared at the device with dawning realization and glee. ‘Oooh! I built this! Hee hee hee hee!’

  ‘You’re really not reassuring me, Nev,’ growled Erstwhile.

  ‘No, no, it’ll be fine.’ Neverfell grabbed the contraption and started erecting it on its tripod on the table, directly under the hole. ‘Ah . . . probably. Shaft’s a bit wider than I thought, but, um, the prongs are probably long enough. As long as I get everything symmetrical.’ She checked the inbuilt spirit level, propped one tripod leg with a piece of rag and squinted up the shaft again. ‘Got the rope? Good. Tie it to the thingy. Here we go!’

  She pulled a trigger, and six steel strings loosed and thrummed at once. The central bolt was fired upward, unfolding its four prongs as it went, and dragging the rope up with it. Neverfell could hear the shrieks of the prong-tips scraping against the mirrored walls. After the shrieking stopped there was a pause, then a clattering clang. She gave the rope several good yanks, and the grappling device failed to tumble down on her head.

  ‘I think it’s worked. I think it’s hooked on to the top!’

  Erstwhile scrambled on to the table and grabbed the rope. ‘If I fall down, it wasn’t,’ he muttered, and started to climb. After what seemed an age, Neverfell felt a signal of three short tugs on the rope. A rope ladder was tied to the end of the rope, and after a second the unseen Erstwhile started to haul it up.

  Three more tugs on the ladder. Erstwhile had made it secure.

  ‘Everybody – line up and start climbing!’ called out Zouelle. ‘We don’t know how long we have.’

  Maxim Childersin was having the most frustrating day he could ever remember in his unnaturally long life.

  It had started badly, with the Enquiry’s insistence that the hearing be held considerably before his family’s usual hour of rising, throwing his entire schedule into disorder. He rather su
spected that Treble had arranged this on purpose. She seemed to do everything in her power to annoy him, not least by her repeated refusal to be assassinated.

  His irritability at missing breakfast and his usual dose of morning light, however, had been eclipsed by everything that had happened since. Try as he might, he still could not quite understand how the hearing had ended in such utter disaster. He felt like a chess-master who, two moves from achieving checkmate, suddenly sees a live kitten dropped on to the middle of the board, scattering pieces.

  There must be some way to pull everything back, he told himself as he cleaned his sword and returned it to its scabbard. There must be a way to recover from this. I know there is. Nine times out of ten, defeat is in the mind.

  Defeat had certainly been in the minds of a host of his allies that he had encountered fleeing from the Hall of the Gentles. It had required all his charisma and some discreet use of Perfume to rally them. Now at least they seemed to have regained their composure, and it was with a substantial honour guard that he now walked the increasingly dangerous thoroughfares. The coterie of Enquirers who had just tried to arrest him had fared badly.

  A change of plan is needed, that is all. A bloodier one, perhaps, but that cannot be helped. We are in too deep to falter. I must rally the rest of my allies, so they do not go to ground, or make cowardly deals to escape justice.

  The first people he had to bring into line, of course, were his family. If not, they would doubtless cut each other’s throats in a fit of ambition.

  He was pleasantly surprised to see that the mob besieging his townhouse was considerably smaller than he was expecting, with no sign of the formidable Enquiry forces, whom he could only assume were busy dealing with the overall chaos. The besiegers were considerably more surprised to be attacked from behind by a superior force, led by the man they had expected to be skulking inside the townhouse.

  By the time the battle was over, the little street no longer looked like an idyll. Plaster was cracked, swing-seats shattered, and bloodstains marred the sugar-sparkle of the housefronts. Childersin stepped over the prone figures that strewed his porch, and gave a coded rap on the door.

  His family were overwhelmed to see him and had a hundred things to report. The news that Zouelle was in the house, however, set him striding down the passage towards the laboratories and the Morning Room.

  Upon seeing Zouelle’s handiwork in the corridor, he was filled at once with acute pride and intense disappointment. As he had always hoped, his young heir was showing every sign of being a cunning contriver and a remarkable and audacious vintner. However she had ultimately failed to display what he prized above all things – family loyalty.

  It was easier to enrage Wines than to calm them. It was easier to create mayhem than to impose order. But Maxim Childersin had been alive for many centuries, and had taught Zouelle everything she knew.

  Gently he began to advance a little at a time, performing the calming incantations, leaving his family to chain and roll away the subdued barrels one by one, so that they could follow. He had pressing matters to discuss with his favourite niece.

  In a steady stream, the drudges poured out of the floor hatch, and up the rope ladder into the shaft. Time was of the essence, so they could not wait for one to reach the top before the next started climbing. Neverfell’s heart lurched every time the ladder creaked. It was the strongest rope ladder they had been able to find, and even now she wondered if it could cope with so many drudges all climbing it at once.

  Not all the climbers were drudges either. Still wearing their neat, serviceable Faces, the palace servants had quietly turned up en masse, taken their place in the queue and disappeared up the ladder. To Neverfell’s colossal relief, Cheesemaster Grandible had also appeared, wincing at the bright light and toting a sack of his tenderest cheeses as gently as if they were infants.

  Was she still angry with him? No, somewhere along the line her anger had fallen away, like a forgotten coin tumbling from her pocket. As his grim gaze came to rest on her face, however, she felt her cheeks burn.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said in answer to the unasked, for there was no time for explanations. ‘Yes. My face is spoilt.’

  Grandible’s jowl wobbled and creased. Then, for the first time that Neverfell could remember, he changed to a Face she had never seen before, a frown more ferocious and alarming than either of the others.

  ‘Who the shambles told you that?’ he barked. ‘Spoilt? I’ll spoil them.’ He took hold of her chin and examined her. ‘A bit sadder, maybe. A bit wiser. But nothing rotten. You’re just growing yourself a rind at last. Still a good cheese.’

  Neverfell’s eyes misted over, so that she barely saw Cheesemaster Grandible as he vanished up the ladder.

  ‘Oh no!’ Zouelle had her ear pressed to the door that led back to towards the Childersin household. ‘I can hear my Uncle Maxim! I thought the Enquiry were supposed to arrest him! Why is he here? That block I set up might hold off the others, but it won’t slow him down for long. Everybody climb faster!’

  ‘They can’t climb any faster!’ protested Neverfell. Many were carrying babies or infants in satchels or papooses, while others bore crippled or elderly relations piggyback as they climbed.

  Her words were barely out when there came a sound of confusion from the tunnel below the floor hatch. Instead of clambering out at a careful pace, drudges were suddenly scrambling up into the room with every sign of haste and panic.

  ‘What is it?’ Neverfell caught at the arm of one of the errand boys. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Map-freaks,’ he gasped. ‘There’s map-freaks creeping in behind us, don’t know where they came from. Dozens of them. Weaving and singing and waving things. We’re piling up furniture behind us to block their way, but they just keep coming . . .’

  ‘Oh.’ Neverfell clapped her hands to her mouth. ‘Oh no! Why didn’t I think of that?’ Her eyes strayed to the blue glass hemisphere that had once covered the base of the shaft. ‘The Undiscovered Passage! We’ve just removed the seal that stopped the bat-squeakers being able to sense it! Which means now they know where it is, and that means they’ve told all the others . . . Oh, we’re going to have every Cartographer in Caverna here!’

  ‘Do we have anything to slow them down?’ called Zouelle, her ear still pressed against the door.

  ‘Perhaps I can talk to them and persuade them to go away!’ exclaimed Neverfell. ‘The palace servants gave me some Perfume. They said it would . . . oh. Draw people to me.’

  ‘That is very nice, Neverfell,’ Zouelle answered levelly, ‘but right now precisely the opposite of what we need.’

  Drudges boiled into the room, and before long it was full.

  ‘I’m the last!’ shouted a frail drudge woman finally, as she pulled herself out. ‘Close the hatch! They’re coming!’

  The hatch was closed and bolted, and dozens of willing hands turned over the breakfast table, laying it upside down on top of the hatch to hold it shut. The dresser was dragged against the door to the Childersin tunnels.

  ‘Climb! Climb!’

  Twenty people waiting to climb. Fifteen. Ten. Two.

  The trapdoor under the upturned table started to rattle and even the table jumped a little. Barely a second later, the door that led to the Childersin household shuddered in its frame, as if somebody had barged their shoulder against it.

  ‘Go!’ Zouelle shoved Neverfell towards the ladder. ‘Climb, Neverfell!’ There was no time for argument. Neverfell grabbed the ladder and started to clamber up into the shaft.

  Thus it was only Zouelle who was still in the Morning Room when the door burst inwards with a crash of falling furniture. Crystal goblets shattered, silver platters rolled across the room, and the doorway filled with Childersins, Maxim at their head.

  The Face that Uncle Maxim was wearing as he pushed his way through the wreckage of the makeshift barricade was one that Zouelle had never seen before. Instinctively she knew it was reserved for enemies of the fam
ily. It froze her to the spot, like a guilty five-year-old. But she was not five years old, nor would any concession be made for her youth.

  She had taken on one of the great chess-masters and failed. Of course she had. Now she and her accomplices would be hauled down off the ladder, and his men sent to kill those who had reached the desert. Once too often, Zouelle had tried to play a game too big for her.

  And then, just as she was thinking this, the table and several floorboards shattered, flinging up fragments, and through the jagged hole leaped Cartographers, with eyes like fire and sawdust in their hair.

  The Childersins were armed with swords and daggers. The Cartographers were armed with nothing but surprise, but really quite a lot of surprise. Thus the Childersins were, for a crucial moment, thrown on to the back foot as the mapmakers lurched towards them, buzzing and mewling, the dim light gleaming on their astrolathes.

  ‘Cut them down!’ shouted Maxim Childersin sharply. ‘Do not let them talk to you!’ As he slashed at the encroaching Cartographers with his sword, Zouelle remembered how to move, snatched at the ladder and started to climb.

  Hand after hand she climbed, expecting every moment to feel a sword through her leg or a halting hand round her ankle. Only when she felt the ladder lurch in her grip did she look down. Fifteen feet below her, she could see another figure starting to climb the ladder. It was Uncle Maxim, her dear mentor and protector. She could go no faster, because of the queue of climbers above her. The rope of the ladder was too thick for her to cut with her pocket dagger.

  ‘Neverfell! The Perfume! Drop it to me!’

  Looking up she could see Neverfell stare down at her in bemusement for a second, then fumble in her pockets. The vial dropped fast from the red-haired girl’s hand, gleaming like a raindrop, and Zouelle nearly lost her balance snatching it from the air.

  ‘Zouelle.’ Childersin’s voice was soft and reproving. ‘Do you really think my will is so weak that you can talk me round, even with Perfume?

  ‘No.’ Zouelle pulled out the stopper with shaky hands, and upended the vial so that its contents rained downwards past her. ‘But I think it will work on the Cartographers.’