A Face Like Glass (51 page)

‘I better not have to look after those babies,’ he muttered.

Neverfell drifted out of the crèche with a tattered shawl wrapped around her head, her hair straggled over her face, her arms and bare feet thickly grimed. With luck she
would look like just another drudge girl coming back from a visit to the crèche to peep in on an infant brother or sister. She could only hope that any lookouts left to watch for her would
be lulled by the sight of a solitary figure in her uniform and mask sitting in the main crèche and surveying the sleeping babes.

She was listening out for one particular thing, and it was not long before she heard it.

‘Cartographers!’ A call of panic and warning.

Neverfell was standing in one of the wider thoroughfares, supported by clusters of floor-to-ceiling pillars where stalagmites and stalactites had met and combined. As the cry went up, the river
of drudges magically parted down the middle, everybody flattening themselves against the walls. A few seconds later, three whooping, leaping figures raced through, bouncing off the chalky-white
pillars.

Once again, the Cartographers were on the move. Something had happened, changed or appeared, calling them to it as irresistibly as a plug calls water. Even now, Cartographers all over Drudgery
would be twitching, raising their heads to stare, feeling the pull and passing on the word to each other.

Before the division down the middle of the passage could close up again and fill with people, Neverfell broke from the recoiling crowds and took off after the three figures. It did not matter
what was calling to the Cartographers. What mattered was that it was probably calling to all of them.

Right now she dearly wanted to speak with the most elusive man in Caverna. She did not know where the Kleptomancer had made his new lair, but she knew that he was or had been a Cartographer. She
could only hope that he would be drawn to these geographical peculiarities like all other Cartographers in Drudgery.

Following the Cartographers was no easy matter, however. They scrambled willy-nilly, caring nothing for scratches, scrapes and bruises from misjudged drops. They waded through chest-deep pools
and slithered up and down shafts until Neverfell lost all sense of where she was.

At last they reached a rather dull-looking tunnel in rough-chiselled grey-brown rock, where they all stopped dead and simply stared upward.

Soaked and cold, Neverfell settled herself down in a dark corner and tried not to let her teeth chatter too loudly. It was eerie watching them all staring rapt at nothing, pausing only to take
notes, make chalk marks on the walls and fiddle with machinery.

At nothing?
From time to time she was tempted to let her gaze creep upward towards the object of their fascination, and every time she felt an odd little thrill of panic.
That’s
silly
, her mind told her firmly.
You don’t have to look. There’s just a low and lumpy ceiling. Nothing to see.

Within minutes another Cartographer turned up, dragging an enormous metal spirit level that struck sparks off the rocky floor. Over the next hour Neverfell saw their numbers swell to nine. Then,
one at a time, they seemed to lose interest and wandered away without a word.

At last there was only one left, and with a sense of desperation Neverfell realized that he was packing up his easel and preparing to leave like his fellows. Taking courage in her hands and
throwing caution to the winds, Neverfell ran after him and clutched at his sleeve.

‘Excuse me – don’t go! I’m looking for somebody. Another Cartographer.’ She was very much aware that there was no hourglass here, and no Erstwhile to twist her ears
if she started to go Cartographic.

The man turned, and looked down at her. He was not old, but his eyes had a drained, stained look, like used drinking glasses.

‘Maybe you’re looking for me. I
am
another Cartographer.’ There was an odd sort of breathy rattle in his voice, like a flute made of husks. ‘There are lots of
Cartographers I’m not.’

Neverfell pushed hastily on, before his comments had time to make sense. ‘No – it’s a particular one. He’s sort of a Cartographer and sort of not. About this tall, with a
drudge face, though he might be wearing a big, armoured—’

‘Oh, you mean the Kleptomancer,’ answered the stranger promptly.

Neverfell was thrown on to the back foot. ‘You know him?’

‘We all do. But I’m sorry, he’s not a Cartographer. Not really. If you want “another Cartographer”, you’ll have to look somewhere else.’

Neverfell had started to turn away when his words sank in properly.

‘And . . . if I’m not looking for “another Cartographer”? If I’m looking for the Kleptomancer instead?’

‘Him?’ The Cartographer gave a smile that might have suited him twenty years earlier, but now looked like a glint on a greasy knife. ‘Oh, he’s up there.’

He pointed directly upward at the ceiling, and Neverfell felt an unexpected surge of panic, hostility and rage.

‘You’re lying! You’re trying to trick me!’ Her face went hot and without knowing why she could hear her voice rise sharply to a shriek. ‘It’s a ceiling!
It’s just a ceiling! You want me to look at it so that I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I have to get out of here!’ She gasped for air, astonished by her own outburst.

The Cartographer did not seem upset at all, but stood there shaking with silent laughter. At last he rocked forward on to the balls of his feet and peered down into Neverfell’s face.

‘That,’ he whistled, ‘is just what your mind wants you to think. Look. Up.’

With these words, he turned and walked away. And in spite of a thousand thoughts trying to haul back on the reins in panic, Neverfell slowly raised her head and looked up.

Her mind had lied when it had told her there was a ceiling directly above. There was not. She had not been walking along a low-roofed passage, but along the base of a narrow ravine some thirty
feet high. Some ten or so feet above her head, she could see the folded forms of sleeping bats hanging in clusters from the juts and shelves of the ravine walls. Halfway up, something peculiar
happened. There were more sleeping bats further up the walls, but they were hanging upward from their perches, not downward.

Far above her, Neverfell could see the Kleptomancer. He was dressed in his drudge clothes, his face ill-lit but just visible. He was upside down, standing as easily on the ceiling as if it had
been a floor. In his arms he held a bizarre metallic bow with half a dozen levers, and he was levelling it directly at her head.

‘Who are you?’ he asked. There was no mistaking his still-water voice. Today Neverfell thought the waters might have piranhas in them.

Neverfell remembered her disguise, and hastened to push back her hair to show her face. ‘It’s me! You remember me? My hair used to be red.’ A moment later she remembered that
the last time he had seen her she had been fleeing his lair in a stolen suit, shortly before cutting his wire and stranding him. ‘Don’t shoot! We need to talk!’

‘The outsider girl,’ breathed the Kleptomancer. ‘The one everybody talks about. The food taster. The fugitive. How do you know who I am?’ His posture did not relax a jot;
indeed he seemed to be cranking one of the handles on his bow.

‘You stole me from the Grand Steward after his challenge – don’t you remember?’

The cranking stopped, the Kleptomancer’s hand hovering on the handle irresolutely.

‘You’re the item I stole from the Cabinet of Curiosities?’ He sounded surprised, confused and suspicious. ‘But you’re not a Cameleopard!’

‘No.’ Neverfell was not sure what else to say. ‘Er . . . no, I’m not?’ Too late it occurred to her that, with his continual memory wipes, the Kleptomancer might not
remember their first encounter.

‘Hmm. That . . . would explain how you escaped my hideout, wired across the river and ran away. I was rather confused by that when I read my notes. So. Why have you come after
me?’

Neverfell could just make out the very point of the crossbow bolt, gleaming like a star.
If that star disappears
, she thought,
that means he has fired and I’m dead. I wonder if
I’ll have time to notice it’s gone before I’m gone too.

‘Because I need help, and you’re probably the cleverest person I’ve ever met,’ she answered, her heart flip-flopping like a landed fish. ‘You were the one who
explained everything to me – that people who plan really well can’t cope with people like you and me, the ones who do things that make no sense. They have to stamp us out or control us,
or they’d always be worrying about us doing something weird, something they don’t see coming.

‘The Enquiry and the Council are both really scared of the way you can turn up wherever you like, only right now they’re too busy fighting each other to chase you down. But if I die
or get captured then one of them gets an advantage over the other one. Which means that soon their war would be over, and the winner would be able to go after you.

‘And I think that’s why you haven’t shot me yet. Because the longer I’m running around alive and free, the longer everybody else is distracted. In fact, I think maybe you
won’t shoot me at all.’

The Kleptomancer hesitated, then flicked a few levers so that the bow’s tension released with a hiss. He attached it to a hook on his belt, from which it hung upward. Then he took a large
coil of rope from round his arm, tied one end to a spike of rock in the wall, and started trying to throw the coil towards Neverfell. The first couple of times the coil of rope descended only part
of the way before falling back up to land on the ceiling at the Kleptomancer’s feet. The third time it reached down to the midway point and kept falling, tumbling loose so that its end
brushed the ground just in front of Neverfell.

‘Tie it fast,’ called the thief. Neverfell knotted it securely around an outcrop, and started to climb.

Clambering up the rope was an eerie experience. When she reached the midpoint she was no longer hauling herself upward, she was abruptly tumbling headfirst. Fortunately the Kleptomancer caught
her before she concussed herself, and lowered her to the stone ceiling that was now suddenly a floor. She disentangled her limbs and struggled into a sitting position, to find the Kleptomancer
staring at her unnervingly.

‘I stole you,’ he said speculatively. ‘Was it just the once?’

‘I think so. Why?’

‘Hmm. Did you used to be smaller? About so high?’ He held out his hand three and a half feet above what now appeared to be the ground.

‘Er . . . yes? Um . . . some years ago?’ Neverfell was not sure what more to say. ‘That’s . . . normal, isn’t it? People getting bigger?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ The Kleptomancer seemed to be peering through her, trying to bring something into focus, then he shook his head and gave it up. ‘Never mind. What matters
is that until recently you were Childersin’s pawn. Part of his plan to poison the Grand Steward. And now you’ve run from him. I suppose you are hoping I will hide you?’

‘Oh no! I want you to help me topple Master Childersin, break hundreds of laws and save as many people as will trust me.’ Perhaps it was just a fit of Cartography, or the effect of
falling through an up-down glitch, but Neverfell found herself grinning like a lunatic. ‘I’m not just asking for help. I’m offering you the biggest distraction Caverna has ever
seen.’

‘Topple Childersin? You?’ It might have been Neverfell’s imagination, but she thought she caught a touch of amusement amid the incredulity. ‘You could not topple a tower
of scones before somebody stopped you. Your face betrays you at every step—’

‘You know, that’s a really beautiful bow,’ Neverfell interrupted suddenly. ‘Did you make it?’

‘Found it, mended it, modified it,’ was the curt reply.

‘I love machines.’ Neverfell’s rational mind told her that she was babbling and should shut up, but it had also lied to her about there being a ceiling, so she decided to
ignore it. ‘Everybody keeps telling me that my big talent is having a face like glass. But that’s not a talent, is it? It’s the opposite. It’s something I can’t stop
doing. I leak my thoughts. Everybody can see what I’m planning.

‘No, what I’m really good at is
machines.
A machine is sort of like magic. You spend ages planning it out, and put all the cogs in place, and then
bing
! You pull a
lever and away it goes. And the amazing bit is that the person who pulls the lever to start it doesn’t need to understand how it works.
They don’t even need to know what’s
going to happen.

‘I want to put together a plan just like that machine. And that’s
your
sort of plan, isn’t it? That’s why I’m here.’

There was a long and meaningful pause before the Kleptomancer spoke again.

‘Do you know what the date and hour is right now?’

‘Why?’ Neverfell stared at him perplexed.

‘You’ll need to make a note of it,’ said the thief. ‘We are about to have a very important conversation, and later you will want to know exactly –
exactly
– when it started.’

Here is a piece that falls between the chapters, like a coin between paving stones. It is a slice of silence in the middle
of the melody.

It is a rough and ragged spot, like the frill of stubs where pages have been torn out. There is no point looking for them. They are gone.