A Face Like Glass (10 page)

There was no time for a plan. As the door began to open, Neverfell threw herself at the gap, doubled over in the hope of pushing past the new arrival’s legs. In the event, her non-plan
very nearly worked. She plunged forward, headbutted the thigh of the manservant at the door, and her momentum carried her on past him . . . or would have done had he not reached out reflexively and
grabbed her collar.

She fought and failed, but he managed to hook his spare arm round her waist, and suddenly she was no longer touching the ground. Her loosened mask fell to the ground. She was caught. She was
done for.

But
, came the wild thought,
I can still save Master Grandible. I can still undo what I did.

And so, before her arms could be pinned, Neverfell crammed the crumb of Sturton in her mouth. She felt it crumble and melt on her tongue, and this was the last thing she knew before the world
exploded.

It burst apart, and it turned out that it had always been made of music. Not music for the ear, but notes of pure soul and haunting memory. She had no body, and yet she sensed that her nose was
a cathedral where a choir was singing full-throatedly, and her mouth a nation with its own history and legends of staggering beauty.

And then she had a body again, or so it seemed, and she was staggering through a woodland where trees wept soft sap and whispered, and light pooled and puddled like honey, and her ankles tangled
in lush stems and a mist of blue flowers that reached up to her waist. All the while there was a warming sense of a presence beside her.

Then the vision was gone. She was back in Madame Appeline’s grove, and hanging limp from the grip of the man who had captured her. Her mask lay at her feet. In the false woodland all
around her stood the other auditioners, the Putty Girls, and Madame Appeline herself. They wore a wide range of expressions, but none of them meant anything. Their Faces were frozen, forgotten, as
they all stared at Neverfell’s exposed face.

It was too much. The eyes were too much. Neverfell was not used to being looked at, let alone by so many all at once. She clenched her own eyes tight, but she could still feel
the stares, cold and hard against her skin like a wall of marbles. The stunned silence was dissolving now, and from all sides she could hear cries of alarm, and desperate, frightened questions.

‘Cover its face!’ came a scream. ‘Stop it doing that!’

‘Impossible!’ somebody else croaked, in tones of utter shock. ‘Impossible!’ It sounded a little like Madame Appeline.

From all around came the sour smell of fear, and it filled her like a gas, searing away her self-control. Like the rabbit she had tried so hard to catch, she went limp for a moment in the grip
of her captor. The next instant she flung herself into desperate, thrashing, unthinking struggles. Through a fog of terror she heard a yelp of surprise, and felt raked skin under her
fingernails.

‘Quick, wrap it in this!’ The breath was knocked out of Neverfell as she was wrestled to the ground, legs flailing. Something soft and heavy was flapped on top of her, smothering her
face and pinning her arms. It took her maddened mind a second or two to realize that somebody was rolling her up in some of the moss-carpet that covered the floor of the grove. Fear of unforgiving
gazes immediately gave way to a much more practical fear of suffocation.

Neverfell wanted to beg, to apologize, to scream at them to stop, but she was beyond words and nobody could have heard her through her mouthful of carpet. She was manhandled and hefted until she
was sagging doubled up over something, probably the shoulder of one of her captors. Only fragments of words reached her.

‘. . . in the world is it?’

‘. . . how did it get in?’

‘. . . how was it doing that?’

‘. . . the Enquiry—’

‘. . . Enquiry will deal with it—’

Whoever was carrying her was running, and his shoulder jogged into her stomach with every step until she thought she would throw up. She was flung on to something flat that lurched and creaked
to the clopping of a horse’s hoofs. She screeched, whimpered and struggled pointlessly, trying to crane back her head enough to give herself a bit more air. The life, breath and wits were
being smothered out of her, and terror rose up like a black fountain and swallowed her whole.

For a long time, there was no thought, no sanity, only rough screams bottle-necking in her throat, and panic like a white fire in the blood. Then a numb darkness fell around
her. When she came to, she was lying sprawled, her cheek pressed against something cold and hard. Terror had left her mind as empty as a scooped gourd.

What had happened? Why? Where? She could not remember. Perhaps she had broken cheeses. Perhaps Master Grandible would be angry.

Neverfell sat up groggily, and knocked her head against something hard-edged. She steadied it with her hand, and it proved to be a slowly swaying trap-lantern with a sullen glow within. She
breathed on it a few times to give it air. It quickly flushed into full radiance, showing where she was.

Neverfell was in an onion-shaped cage of black iron some five feet across, with bars that bulged outwards at the sides and met at the top. A tin chamber pot and a wooden bowl of water sat beside
her. The trap-lantern hung from the ceiling of the cage, and the cage itself hung suspended from a barely visible pulley by a long, thick chain. A couple of feet below the grille of the floor, she
could make out the glimmer of black, rippleless water. The cage was suspended above a subterranean canal flanked by two high walls. Running along the wall furthest from her was a wooden jetty a
foot or so above the level of the water.

She was in more than trouble, she realized hazily. She was in prison. What had she done to bring her here? A stubborn little spark suddenly flared up in her, and told her that whatever she had
done had not been bad enough for
this
.

Her cage was revolving very slowly in response to her motions, and she could see that to her left and right there were other cages hanging above the water. Most of them were empty, but in a few
she could see stirring bundles of cloth and life. One offered a long, low despairing bleat that sounded barely human. Another was just a round of sullen back and straggling hair. At either end of
the jetty she could just make out what looked like a purple-clad guard standing to attention with a halberd.

‘Hello?’ Her voice was tiny and hoarse. ‘Hello?’

She heard a murmur of conversation, then a door set in the wall opened and three figures stepped out on to the jetty, all clad in deep amethyst tones. Two were men, but the foremost was a woman
with steel-grey hair. She had a stern jaw, a surprisingly athletic stride and a Face that combined austerity, authority and cold scrutiny.
Nothing escapes my all-penetrating eye
, said the
Face, and Neverfell hastily bowed her head.

‘Do you know who I am?’ The woman had a voice like a cheesewire. Neverfell shook her head, keeping her hands raised to hide her own hideousness. ‘I am Enquirer Treble. You have
been placed under Enquiry. Do you understand me?’

Neverfell gave a whimper as memory of her misadventures finally began to seep back into her head. This was no ordinary arrest. The Enquiry were the Grand Steward’s special law enforcers
for peculiar or dangerous cases.

‘If you wish to live – if you wish to
wish
to live – you must answer our questions truthfully. Now – how did you get in? Are there any more of you?’

‘Any more . . .’
Any more of what?
‘No, there’s . . . only me. I just went to an audition. They gave me a dress—’

‘Gave you a dress? Who?’

Neverfell’s skin burned. She thought of Zouelle’s beautiful smile, and Borcas’s soft, pink nervousness. She couldn’t bring herself to betray them, but did not know how to
lie. She hid her face in her hands.

‘Come now! It is obvious what you are and where you come from. Who are your masters?’

She could not reveal that either. What danger would she bring to Master Grandible if she did?

‘Tell me! Who let you into Caverna? How many of you are there? Why were you infiltrating Madame Appeline’s auditions? What is your name? Whose assassin are you?’

Neverfell continued numbly shaking her head. Half the questions meant nothing to her. At the word assassin, however, her breath caught in her throat. Overcome with fear and outrage she jumped to
her feet and clutched at the bars, no longer concerned with covering her face.

‘I’m not an assassin! I never wanted to hurt anybody! Never!’

The effect on the Enquirer was instantaneous and striking. There was no change of expression, but the woman leaped backwards with such energy that her back collided with the wall. For a few
moments she stared rigidly at Neverfell, then fumbled a purple handkerchief free from a pocket and began dabbing at her own forehead.

‘How dare you?’ she exclaimed. ‘Stop doing that! Put on something more appropriate! Immediately!’

‘What?’

‘Stop it!’ It sounded as if the Enquirer were on the verge of losing control.

‘Stop what?’ Neverfell demanded helplessly.

Enquirer Treble bristled for a couple of seconds, then made a gesture. One of the men who had entered with her stepped towards the wall, where Neverfell could just make out a large crank handle.
He began turning the handle, and almost immediately Neverfell’s cage began a jolting descent.

‘Unless you cooperate—’

‘Stop it!’ shrieked Neverfell as the bottom of the cage dipped into the surface of the canal, and water started spilling in between the bars. She scrambled up the lantern chain to
pull herself out of the water, clinging to the top of the cage.

The cage, however, continued its jerky descent into the canal, and Neverfell’s clamberings availed her nothing. Icy water claimed her feet, her calves, her knees, her thighs. When it
finally ceased its descent, the cage was all but submerged. With her head pressed against the roof, Neverfell’s chin was only just above the water.

‘One more turn of this handle—’ called out the Enquirer.

‘I don’t understand!’ Neverfell erupted, through sheer desperation. ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about! I don’t understand why I’m
here! I don’t understand what I’ve done, or what I’m doing! So how am I supposed to stop it?’

While she sobbed and shivered, Neverfell could just about make out parts of a murmured discussion taking place on the jetty.

‘. . . how can we hold a sensible interrogation with something that looks like . . .’

‘. . . a face like glass . . .’

‘. . . mask back, perhaps?’

‘. . . no, we cannot study this properly if it is covered . . .’

After a long pause, Neverfell heard the sound of the crank handle being turned once again. To her numb relief, however, the cage did not descend, but was hauled up to its previous position,
water streaming out between its bars.

Enquirer Treble disappeared through the nearest door, then emerged once more and clipped sharply over, gripping what looked like a frying pan with a nine-foot handle.

‘Here. Take this.’ Refusing to look at Neverfell directly, the woman extended the ‘frying pan’ until it was touching against the bars of Neverfell’s cage. Looking
down, Neverfell saw that something dark and square was resting in the ‘pan’. She lifted it out carefully with slick and shaking hands. ‘Take some time to put yourself in order.
When you have a Face fit to be seen I will come back and speak with you again.’

The pan withdrew, and the Enquirer retreated behind her door once more. Neverfell was left staring at the object in her wet hands. It had a wooden border. The side currently uppermost was
covered in dark brown felt, but she could feel that the underside had the cold smoothness of glass. Her fingers started to tremble as she realized what she had been given.

Neverfell was holding a mirror. If she turned it over, she would see at last the horror that Master Grandible had decided to hide from the world. She would see the face that made people break
into a sweat and flee.

She recalled the phrase she had heard muttered on the jetty.
A face like glass
. What did that mean? Perhaps her skin was transparent. Perhaps anybody looking at her could see the pulsing
of her blood vessels, and the grin of her skull, and her eyeballs through the lids. Perhaps that was why everybody ran away.

She couldn’t look. She wouldn’t look. She watched with a fascinated sense of helplessness as her hands slowly, tremulously turned over the mirror to present her for the first time
with her reflection.

For a little age she stood staring at the image in the glass. The hungry traplight beside her brightened, but she barely registered that it was doing so only because she was heaving in breath
after rapid breath. The reflection in the glass moved a little and she flinched from head to foot. Then she gave a scream that seemed to tear right up through her like a thumbnail through a blade
of grass.

The mirror shattered when it struck the floor, but that was not enough. The lantern struck sparks off the bars and then swung wildly, its light and shadow tipping giddily, the little trap
snapping blindly at the air as its world tilted. The barred door rattled and jumped under a torrent of kicks.