A Face Like Glass (48 page)

Seven years. Always seven years. Everything happened seven years ago.

The bat-squeakers fretting about the Undiscovered Passage. The influenza in the Doldrums. Madame Appeline buying dresses for a child. The large anonymous reward suddenly offered for the
Kleptomancer. And Neverfell’s own sudden appearance in Grandible’s tunnels with no memories. All seven years ago.

What if all these things were part of the same big secret? What if something happened seven years ago that nobody was supposed to know about, something to do with me? Perhaps I knew about it
– perhaps that’s why somebody took away all my memories. Perhaps that’s even why somebody tried to kill me in the Enquiry cell, just in case I remembered anything about
it.

Now Neverfell could feel a pounding in her head, as if behind some door of the mind her forgotten memories were trying to beat their way out.

The truth was locked in her head somewhere. What secret could be so dangerous that somebody would be willing to kill her to stop her remembering it? And who
had
been trying to murder
her?

For seven years she had been safe in Grandible’s tunnels. Perhaps her hidden enemies had not known where she was, or perhaps she had simply been beyond their reach. Then she had erupted
from her haven and let her face be discovered, and somebody had seen her, or heard a description of a red-haired outsider girl of about thirteen years, and known who she must be.

And so somebody had tried to murder her in her cage, before she could tell the Enquiry anything. And shortly after this attempt had failed . . . Maxim Childersin had suddenly come to buy her.
Perhaps this was not coincidence. What if he had not been motivated by compassion, or a desire to save his niece? What if he was the one who had tried to have her murdered, and had only decided to
buy her so that he would have an opportunity to silence her permanently?

But then he
saw
me. And he realized I could fit into his plans. And that’s when he started trying to find out whether I remembered anything, or whether it was safe to keep me
alive.

Neverfell recalled the questions he had asked at the time.
What have you told the Enquiry? How much do you remember before Grandible’s tunnels?

And that reprise Wine he gave me back in his study must have been a test
, Neverfell realized.
He wanted to find out whether anybody else could use that kind of Wine to bring back my
memories. If the reprise had helped me remember things, I wonder if I would have left that room alive . . .

There were still things that did not make sense, however. Childersin had wanted to keep her alive so that she could play her part in the murder of the Grand Steward, and yet somebody had sent
the glisserblind assassin after her while she was living in the tasters’ quarters. Not Childersin, then, surely. Was she facing more than one unconnected enemy, then? Or a team of enemies not
quite pulling together?

And what is it that they don’t want me to remember? What is it that I know but don’t know?

Suddenly Neverfell was jerked back into self-awareness. Following her guide through a particular arched alley, she felt the current of the crowd suddenly stop, tug forward and then rear
backwards, amid cries of consternation and confusion. Suddenly she was the squished filling in a people sandwich, her masked face buried in somebody’s back as they tried to recoil through
her.

‘Cartographers!’ was the cry. ‘Cartographers coming! Back! Back up!’ But there was no backing up into the oblivious surge of people behind. Panic leaped for
Neverfell’s throat like a hunting hound.

‘Down!’ shouted somebody else, and the crush messily collapsed to their knees, those that could covering their heads with their arms, and lay as still and low as possible. Next thing
Neverfell knew there were other figures scrambling through the tunnel over the prone forms, paying no attention to whether their boots found purchase on rocks or faces. These figures gabbled,
clicked and whistled as they went, some gripping strange devices or wearing bulging eyepieces. Somebody’s knee rested heavily on Neverfell’s shoulder for a moment, and a boot-toe
scraped painfully against her ear.

Next moment the mad scrabblers were gone, further up the passage. The crowd that could not part for the Cartographers or retreat before them had laid itself down to let them pass overhead.

Gingerly and slowly the crowd rose to its feet again, stranger helping stranger, and the flow continued. Neverfell got up groggily. Somehow being thrown down and half trampled had jolted her
thoughts into a better order, and just for a single dizzy moment she wondered how she could arrange for the same thing to happen every time she was stuck for inspiration.

When she staggered bruised into the crèche, her arm was instantly grabbed by Erstwhile, who frogmarched her to a corner.

‘You mad little moth! Where you been? What were you thinking, wandering around Drudgery? And no note left for me, nothing! I am this close,
this
close, to giving up on
you—’

‘I’m sorry, Erstwhile, I’m really sorry!’ Neverfell snatched off her mask for a moment to show him that she meant it. ‘I know it was dangerous, but there was
something I had to chase up. And do you know what? I
caught
it.’ Moving to her own cot, Neverfell pulled back the straw mattress and pulled out the Cartographer disguise hidden
inside.

‘Caught it? What’s that meant to mean?’

‘It means that something important happened seven years ago, and I’m almost certain I know what it was. I think I know how I got into Caverna, why I couldn’t be allowed to
remember it, why the Doldrums were sealed off, and why the Childersins are never out of clock.

‘If I’m right, then I know what we have to do. But I need to be sure I’m right first. Erstwhile – where are the nearest excavations? The easiest ones to reach from
here?’

Erstwhile drew his breath in through his teeth, evidently disliking the direction the conversation was going. ‘Probably the ones out at Perilous Jut. Why?’

Neverfell held up her goggles, and examined her tiny, yellow reflection in one lens. ‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘I need to talk to the Cartographers.’

Few Cavernans chose to wander into the places where new tunnels were being mined. Why would they? Why risk the perils of chokedamp and firedamp seeping from a newly opened
crack, let alone the collapse of untried passages? Why endure the noise, rubble and unsmoothed floors? And last but not least, why venture to a place where there was such a risk of running into
loose Cartographers?

Erstwhile’s muttered complaints on these themes were bitter and increasingly inventive, but to Neverfell’s surprise he insisted on accompanying her anyway.

They only met a couple of people en route, and those covered their ears or retreated at the sight of Neverfell’s Cartographer-like garb and butterfly-covered sextant. When it came to
excavations, Cartographers were a necessary evil. Only they could tell you whether your nice new shaft would collapse unexpectedly, or weaken a set of passages above it, or unexpectedly join an
underground river and drown everybody.

The character of the tunnels gradually changed, the air growing colder, the chipped surfaces of the walls lighter, less tarnished by time. The muted echoes of the thoroughfares were gradually
replaced by the distinctive chip, bang and clatter of picks on stone, and the occasional sandy rattle of shale and rocks.

Before long, Neverfell and Erstwhile passed a pit pony serenely dragging a wagon full of rocks. Its driver appeared to have twists of cloth pushed into his ears. It was not clear whether this
was to protect him from the din or the words of the Cartographers. Neverfell’s crazed and goggled appearance only earned her a fleeting glance, though his gaze lingered curiously on
Erstwhile, who was walking a pace behind her.

‘You better put cloth in your ears,’ whispered Neverfell when the cart had rolled by, ‘or they’ll wonder how you’re walking along with me without going mad.’
They cut little pieces off Neverfell’s already frayed sleeves and rolled them up to make earplugs. ‘We’re going to start meeting people soon – do you think I better start
twitching and fidgeting and acting crazy?’

Erstwhile gave her a sideways glance as he chewed the cloth pieces to make them soft. ‘I don’t think you need to change a thing,’ was all he said.

Many of these tunnels were propped with timber struts, their wood dusty but unblackened. Here and there, pitched windchimes had been hung to measure the air currents, chalk marks drawn on the
walls, and names of tunnels scrawled on the floor. At last they found themselves in a long horizontal shaft, where various drudge figures seemed to be hurrying out of side passages carrying pails
of chipped rock, pouring basins of milky water down wooden fumes, or examining pale seams in the rock face ahead.

One of them noticed the two new arrivals, and gestured to gain Erstwhile’s attention.

‘Not here!’ the man mouthed in an exaggerated fashion, having evidently noticed Erstwhile’s earplugs. ‘Take her through there. On the left.’

Erstwhile nodded, grabbed Neverfell’s arm and led her through an arch to the left, and down a small, downward-sloping passage to a rather makeshift, ill-fitting door, to which an hourglass
had been fixed.

‘This must be where they keep their Cartographers,’ whispered Neverfell. ‘Wait here for me. It’s best if one of us is outside watching to make sure the time doesn’t
run out.’

‘No, I’d better be the one to go in,’ Erstwhile snapped suddenly. ‘You’re half mad already – you got less far to go if it comes to going crazy.’

‘Or maybe I’ve got less to lose.’ Neverfell took a deep breath, then twisted the hourglass upside down and stepped into the room before Erstwhile could object.

In the middle of the small, rounded room beyond the door, a man was sitting on a wooden chair, quite calmly. He looked about fifty years old, his thinning blond-grey hair combed neatly across
his head. He wore a thick coat trimmed with greying, damp-spiked fur, and he was no drudge, to judge by his height, and by the brightness and confidence of the smile he directed at Neverfell when
he looked up. It was a Face that might be worn by a professor pleased to see the arrival of a new student.

His feet were bare, and his long, dirty toes kept flexing against the stone floor over and over, as if they were trying to pick something up.

‘Haaah, well timed. You can help me recalculate the meridian. It has swung anticlockwise again and scattered my azimuths.’

‘I’m . . .’ Neverfell swallowed and opted for honesty. ‘I’m not a real Cartographer.’

‘I know,’ said the toe-flexer. ‘Your butterflies are in the wrong places. But you will do. Here is your end of the string. Now walk round me in a slow circle, looking at me
continually, and tell me when I look whitest.’

‘Sir, please!’ Neverfell did not want to spend her full five minutes walking in circles. ‘I want to ask you something. About the Doldrums. About passages running in and out of
them. About what happened there seven years ago.’

‘Doldrums. Dollldrrruums.’ The Cartographer first whispered the word, then breathed it slowly so that ‘dol’ became a sonorous bell chime, and rolled the ‘r’
into a drumroll. ‘Haven’t been asked about that for a while. Such a pity it was closed off. Such a beautiful Twister.’

‘What’s a Twister?’ The question was out before Neverfell could stop herself.

The man beamed at her as if by asking that she had presented him with a golden chalice completely filled with chocolate ice cream. ‘You want to know?’ he asked delightedly.
‘You really want to know?’

Neverfell suddenly had a strong feeling that perhaps she didn’t.

‘It wasn’t just the Twister, mind,’ the Cartographer went on. ‘Something else was happening there as well.’

‘Illegal digging,’ suggested Neverfell, slightly disorientated by how normal the conversation seemed to be so far. ‘Lots of Cartographers went there to find out about it. And
then they died, didn’t they?’

‘Yes. Influenza. That’s what people said.’ He was observing her closely, and there was something wrong with the way he blinked. Most blinkers didn’t close their eyes
completely, but he did, and paused an instant before opening them. Blink. Breath. Unblink. ‘Who
are
you?’ He was still smiling, but his voice suddenly had a menacing, suspicious
drawl. ‘Why are you dressed as one of us? Why are you here, asking about the Doldrums?’

All the sensible options seemed to involve lying or walking out and learning nothing more. Instead, on an impulse, Neverfell slowly lifted her goggles, so that her face could be seen by the
light of the single trap-lantern hanging from the ceiling.

‘Ahhh. You.’ The Cartographer sat back in his chair. Blink. Unblink. ‘She doesn’t like you.’

‘What? Who doesn’t?’ asked Neverfell in confusion, the image of Madame Appeline’s face springing unbidden to mind.

‘She doesn’t like you at all.’ The Cartographer put his head on one side and closed his eyes, apparently focusing on the sensation through his toes. ‘You . . .
tickle.’