A Face Like Glass (47 page)

‘But it wasn’t the victims who were poisoned, Erstwhile! It was the murderers. The poison made them go mad and kill the person dearest to them, suddenly and for no good reason. But
the person closest to the Grand Steward
was
the Grand Steward, because there were two of him. So when somebody put the poison in his moth biscuit both halves of him went mad and started
trying to kill each other.’

For a long while Erstwhile had no words. He did not care about the Grand Steward one speck. His mind was full of images of drudge wives, drudge parents, drudge children, coming home and being
suddenly attacked by those they loved and trusted most.

‘It’s the worst,’ was all he could say. ‘It’s all we have down here, each other. All treading the same wheel, shoulder to shoulder. It’s one thing murdering
us. But . . . using us to kill each other, that’s . . .’ He ran his fingernails through his hair and scrabbled it haywire. ‘I changed my mind. All those things you said about
taking down Maxim Childersin. If there’s half a pebble I can throw into the scales of that, I’m in. I don’t care if he’s got the world in a goblet, I want to see his head on
a spike. And I bet I can find others down here who will see things the same way.’

‘You mean, you’re going to tell people about it? Is that safe?’

‘I won’t tell anybody who you are, just about the poison. And no –’ Erstwhile shook his head stonily – ‘even that isn’t safe. But we need help,
don’t we? We got to take some chances.’

A few moments later he threw Neverfell a hesitant glance.

‘That frog-face. You couldn’t teach it to me, could you? Maybe I’d like to have a Face for being angry after all.’

At first glance, every drudge seemed like any other. They took great pains to make sure it seemed so. Over centuries, anybody who looked like they might become a leader or
spokesperson had disappeared into the cells of the Enquiry. And so they had learned how to impersonate a faceless mass.

Information, however, drifted through them all, but imperceptibly, like a drop of ink thinning into water. And so it was with word of the Grand Steward’s poisoning, and the drudges that
had been forced to kill one another. An anger was building, but it was invisible to the casual eye. It burned unnoticed, like a spice that is undetectable in the first spoonful of potage, but which
gradually builds its fire on the tongue.

The first symptoms of it might have been spotted among the errand boys, those flitters, skulkers and coin-snatchers. The sharp of eye might have noticed that they were a little more given to
gaggles, and to suddenly pedalling away at the sound of a stranger’s step. Those who succeeded in surprising them might even catch one with his fingers to his face, apparently pulling at the
skin below his eyes in a strange and grotesque way.

But the mighty of Caverna had far more to worry about than the whispers of drudge children, and so this, like many other important changes, went unnoticed. Had they known that some of said
children were now carefully eavesdropping on their private conversations and reading their messages, they might have felt differently.

‘So the Court are mostly stabbing each other up.’ The sandy-headed errand boy gave a small shrug. ‘Old Childersin’s had four attempts against his life.
Not a scratch on him, though – didn’t even tear his gloves. But his enemies are all dying like flies. You heard of the Ganderblacks? All vanished, down to the tiniest tot. Folks say
they was devoured body and soul by this wild black Wine they were trying to brew. All that was left behind was their clothes, hair, fingernails and little heaps of scented blue powder.’

Neverfell nodded, and mentally added the information to a growing list of details. Over the last few days a steady trickle of errand boys had turned up at the crèche to report events at
Court, and in particular the doings of Maxim Childersin. They had all been recruited by Erstwhile, who had told them she was a scarred relation of his, helping him investigate, and that they should
leave all new information with her.

To judge by their reports, Childersin was securing his position and settling old scores. With a worried pang she thought of Zouelle living in the lions’ den.

‘What about Enquirer Treble? We heard rumours somebody killed her with a predatory pâté.’

‘Nah, though somebody had a good try. Twelfth time somebody tried to kill her since the Grand Steward died. This one left her blind for a day and turned her hair white. It was one of her
own men that went for her, they say. Never found out who he was working for. But she’s back on her feet, and it don’t seem to have slowed her down much.

‘There’s one other thing. You were asking about the Facesmith Appeline? Well, I know somebody who knows somebody who knows something about her. Only he’s terrified. He says
that he’ll talk to you person to person, only he wants twenty-five eggs and his name kept out of it.’

Neverfell’s heart leaped uncertainly, like a fawn in a rolling boat. On Erstwhile’s advice, she had hoarded her little supply of preserved eggs to use as bribes, and subsisted on a
thin gruel made from barley and moth-grubs like everybody else, even though the diet left her exhausted and dull-witted with hunger. Even so, her egg supply was now severely diminished.

‘I can’t manage that many,’ she answered, trying not to sound too keen, ‘but I might be able to get them in a week or so.’

The errand boy shook his head. ‘Has to be today. Tomorrow he sets off with a delving team for the wild tunnels.’

Neverfell weighed the risks, but her instincts were hammering at her to take the chance. ‘Today I can offer an ounce of Nocteric. That’s worth much more than twenty-five eggs.’
She had found a little pouch of the spice at the bottom of the pack the palace servants had given her, evidently intended as a valuable to trade when in extremis.

The boy drew in a breath through his teeth. ‘Nocteric? If it’s stolen, it’s traceable. I don’t know if he will be happy with that.’ He hesitated. ‘Look, you
better come talk to him yourself. I can’t spend all day running messages between you.’

Neverfell hesitated for a moment, but only a moment.

‘All right.’

Soon the pair of them were out on the drudge thoroughfares, amid the rush of the shift-change crowds. Neverfell wondered what her guide would think of her if he could see through her mask and
realize how close to breaking she was all the time. The last time Neverfell had visited Drudgery, the sight of it had struck her mind like a fist, bruising and shattering. Now that she was living
in it, she realized why none of her pursuers had expected her to flee to the Undercity.

For all its thousands of trap-lanterns, the Drudgery air was close and choking. There was the smothering odour of unwashed skin, and the reeks from the great buzzing caverns where the waste of
Caverna was heaped, sorted and washed away, or the livestock caves where herds of hay-fed goats and cows shivered in the green light, and stared wild-eyed at the dripping walls.

The cramped closeness drove her near to madness. Like everybody else in the drudge crowds she had to squeeze and cram past other bodies, until she felt like part of a sprawl of maggots.

‘Up here.’ At last the guide jerked a discreet thumb upward, and Neverfell obediently scrambled up a rope through a crack in the ceiling. It opened into a small hollow ridged like
the space inside a fist, with a rough shelf either side of the crack. A grey-faced, broad-nosed drudge man about forty years old was sitting there on one side with his knees drawn up to his chin.
His hands were so covered in scars they might have been gloved in spider’s webs.

Carefully, Neverfell hauled herself up to sit on the other shelf.
If this is a trick
, said the part of Neverfell that had learned from life at Court,
then you’ll be caught like a
rat up here.
The fact that the other man seemed just as nervous as she was did nothing to reassure her.

The negotiation was brief, and after a pause the Nocteric was accepted.

‘Tomorrow I’m off with a digging team to the wild tunnels,’ he explained in a mutter. ‘Want something to leave with my family, pay their way if I don’t come
back.’

‘Tell them to keep it in its box till they’re ready to sell it,’ Neverfell whispered back, ‘Now – you know something about Madame Appeline?’

The delver nodded slowly. ‘It happened quite a few years ago, back when I was one of a team digging out the Octopus. Do you know where that is?’

‘Yes. It’s near the Doldrums, isn’t it?’ Neverfell could not prevent her hands tightening on her knees in excitement. She remembered Zouelle telling her that the Octopus
and the Samphire Districts were both being excavated at the time of the mysterious influenza epidemic. ‘Was that about seven years ago?’

‘Yes – I suppose it would be about that.’ The delver sounded a little surprised. ‘Well, they were driving us to finish the Octopus fast so they could use it to link all
these other districts, so we were hauling carts of rubble out of there till even the horses looked fit to buckle. All to be hauled up to the surface and scattered, the usual.

‘One day when I was bringing back an empty cart past Toveknock, that used to be the turning into the Doldrums, this lady in a worn-out velvet cape and a kindly sort of Face beckoned me
over. She told me that there had been a rockfall in her tunnels, but that she had it all propped up safe and didn’t want to report it or she’d have Cartographers tramping all over her
rooms. She said she just wanted to get rid of the rocks, and would pay to have it done on the quiet.

‘I said yes.’ The man clasped and unclasped his fretted hands. ‘I think maybe I said it because of the Face she had on. Made me feel like I’d just found out I had a
long-lost daughter who needed my help. So every day, after I should have gone off shift, I’d take up the cart one more time and pull into the Doldrums. The rubble would be ready and waiting
in pails, and I’d load up my cart, and take her rocks away to dump with the rest. Never got caught doing it.’

‘And that was Madame Appeline?’

‘That was her. She paid me well, so I didn’t ask questions. Even though I knew the rubble never came from a rockslide.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Sure as teeth are teeth. It wasn’t cracked and crumbled the way it would be if it had just caved in; it was chiselled and broken up, like it had been torn out by a drill. There was
too much of it as well. If there had been a rockfall of that size, well, we might not have heard it with all the drilling we were doing, but the Cartographers would have noticed.’

‘So you mean . . . you weren’t the only ones digging,’ said Neverfell, her mouth dry and her mind whirling. Digging without official permission was one of the most serious
crimes in Caverna. The wrong passage in the wrong place could collapse, flood or asphyxiate large portions of the city. ‘So that’s why you don’t want anybody to know you were
mixed up in this.’

‘It’s not just the law that worries me.’ The delver glanced down through the aperture between them, as if fearful of seeing faces staring up past his boots. ‘The last
day, when I was due to collect the final payment, I was took ill with rasp-lung, and had to send my brother-in-law with the cart instead. He never came home. They found him dead, his chest crushed.
Everybody decided the cartwheel must have gone over him, and maybe it did, but I think it had help. Most people can’t tell drudges apart, you see. I think that wheel was meant for me, to stop
me telling what I knew. And so I held my peace and took jobs as a delver in the wilds, hoping those that killed him never found out they got the wrong man.’

Neverfell said nothing, but placed a hand either side of her head. She felt like she needed to hold it in place until everything inside it stopped moving.

‘When did all this happen?’ she asked in a whisper. ‘It was before the Doldrums influenza, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. The outbreak slowed down our work in the Octopus badly. We lost lots of Cartographers, you see. You know the way they swarm? There was something about the Doldrums that was drawing
lots of them there, and when the flu broke out six of them died straight off.’

‘Did they ever say what was pulling them to the Doldrums?’ It was all Neverfell could do to contain her excitement.

‘Probably.’ Even with his limited repertoire of Faces, Neverfell was sure that the delver would be giving her a ‘funny look’ if he could. ‘But I didn’t ask
and I certainly didn’t listen. Cartographers are always happy to tell you everything they know.
Everything.
That’s the problem.’ By this point, he was shifting nervously in
his seat. ‘Look, I done my part. You’ll give me the spice? That’ll do, won’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Neverfell distantly. ‘Yes. That’ll do. And you’re right. You shouldn’t let them find out you’re alive. I . . . I’ve got to go now. My
head’s full.’ Without further ado, she handed him the small pouch of Nocteric, and dropped down through the crack back into the passage below, where her errand-boy guide was waiting for
her.

She followed him in a daze. Digging in the Doldrums, that somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to keep secret. Illegal digging, seven years ago.