A Face Like Glass (24 page)

She was just stepping out into a courtyard when something jumped on to her shoulder, tickling her face with fur and curling a rough but delicate tail round her throat. She gave a squeal of
shock, and turned her head to find her nose almost touching a tiny, pinkish, flattened face, framed by wild white hair.

‘Monkey!’ she squeaked in glee as much as surprise. ‘A real monkey!’ It was no bigger than a small cat, and wore a blue sequinned jacket and a tiny black velvet cap with
a trailing blue feather. Neverfell instantly loved its clever black fingers and the mournful puckering of its pale brows. When it doffed its cap and turned its lips inside out in a broad, fearless
grin, she burst out laughing.

‘You startled me! Oh no, no, thank you!’ Neverfell had to put up a hand to dissuade it from pushing half a meringue into her mouth with its spare hand. ‘No, I can’t,
sorry! I’m not allowed to eat strange cake. Where did you come from, anyway?’ Looking around her, she could see no sign of the monkey’s owner. Her small passenger decided that her
moment of distraction was a good time to clamber over her face. ‘Stop that!’ hissed Neverfell, through laughter and fur. ‘I’m on a secret mission, and there are enough
people staring at me without monkeys pushing meringue in my ear . . . OW!’

The monkey leaped down from Neverfell’s shoulder and bounded away into the darkness, one of its fists still gripping the few red hairs that it had yanked without warning from her head.

‘Fine!’ she called after it. ‘That’s the last time you get to ride on my shoulder!’

Unsurprisingly there was no answer, and Neverfell decided to hurry on before anything else jumped on her and pulled her hair out.

This was a world full of strange, lofty and gorgeous denizens. Ladies drifted by in ermine, with damask trains six feet long. A pair of Cartographers capered unsteadily past wearing earmuffs and
padlocked gags, occasionally miming to each other or waving weird structures made of wire. Now and then Neverfell pinched her nose hard as some statuesque lady or lord drifted past trailing a
subtle reek of Perfume. One glittering lady emitted a faint buzz as she passed, which confused Neverfell until she realized that her black and gold hair ornaments were made of live wasps, their
stings removed.

Many of the courtiers, she noticed now, had their own monkeys with them, usually dressed in their household’s livery. Watching a white-backed monkey teeter by with a silver tray of tiny
cakes, Neverfell remembered Zouelle telling her that since courtiers were allowed no servants inside the palace, for fear of them bringing in their own assassins and soldiers, many instead brought
monkeys that had been trained to act as small, hairy attendants.

Neverfell was not blind to the way she was gathering gazes like spider threads. Time and again richly dressed figures glided coolly past her, only for the clop of their tread and swish of their
clothes to cease a few paces later, a tingle on the back of Neverfell’s neck telling her that they had halted to watch her go. Ruff rustled against ruff as heads drew close to whisper.
Neverfell was surprised to find herself thinking wistfully of her mask. Nonetheless, she took care to peer at every beautifully presented Face that passed.

Sooner or later she would see a Face that stirred her heart strangely in the way that Madame Appeline’s haggard smile had. Any courtier wearing a Face from the Tragedy Range would be a
customer of Madame Appeline, and might know where the Facesmith might be found.

Following Neverfell should have been easy. She was distinctive, undisguised and guileless, and since she kept glancing over her shoulder at the wonders of the Court her
unsuspected shadow had ample opportunity to observe her thoughts and intentions writ large across her face.

Soon, however, he was learning an important lesson. Being able to read somebody’s thoughts is all very well, but if they have the attention span of a summer-addled gnat this does not
necessarily help you guess what they will do next.

Neverfell’s face could be read like a book, and what the book said was this:

Wonder where this corridor goes . . . I’d probably better keep an eye out for any sign of danger . . . Ooh, look at the llama! Let’s run across and stare at its knees! Actually,
llamas are scary, so let’s back off – everybody’s watching me and maybe I should go and talk to the stringy-looking woman with the warts on her – wait a minute, are those
dates on the table? Mmm, dates. But I’m not allowed to eat them. So I’ll climb up on to this balcony instead!

Her zigzags were tantalizing. Sometimes it seemed that she was about to veer off into the lonelier corridors where a cry could be muffled with ease, but a moment later she would gallop back into
the thick of the throngs. Still he followed and remained alert, for experience had taught him that opportunities could come suddenly, and patience was usually rewarded.

At last Neverfell discovered a courtyard that seemed on first glance to be thronged with giants. The great figures were evenly spaced and some twelve feet tall, heads bowed as
they strained to bear the weight of the ceiling on their shoulders. On closer inspection these proved to be cunningly carved and decorated pillars running from floor to ceiling, faces set in
grimaces as if they really were struggling to hold up the tons of rock above.

Shorter human figures drifted among them, admiring the painted canvases leaning against the walls, listening to the musicians who plied their instruments softly in corners, spending a moment
here and there to hear the efforts of a poet. Although Neverfell did not know it, this was a place where artists, musicians and providers of more curious services gathered in the hope of earning
themselves powerful patrons.

Two dozen heads turned as she broke into an impulsive sprint. By the time she halted in front of a silver-clad noblewoman, both of the latter’s male companions had their hands on their
sword hilts.

‘Excuse me! I – that’s such a lovely Face you were wearing just then. It was so sad and strange and . . . like one of those paintings of the moon or something.’ Neverfell
saw the lady’s shoulders relax very slightly, her eyes moving rapidly and with interest over Neverfell’s own face. ‘I just wanted to ask where it came from. Is it one of Madame
Appeline’s?’

‘How clever of you!’ The silver-painted mouth of the woman smiled. She stepped forward, and the chain-mail mesh of her long dress chimed as she did so. Bodkins glittered in her hair.
‘Yes, a sweet little Face from the Tragedy Range, but tweaked to suit me. I can never bear to take a Face from a range without having it adjusted.’ She drifted closer, and curled a
grey-gloved hand companionably but firmly through Neverfell’s arm. ‘You must be His Excellency’s new food taster, am I right?’

Neverfell nodded, a little daunted to find her fame so well established.

‘Then we simply must take a little promenade. I’ll tell you where I get all my Faces, but you really must share your Face secrets with me in return.’ The lady raised her
paradribble, and held it over both Neverfell’s head and her own. ‘How did you manage such extraordinary effects? Is it true that you’re an outsider?’

‘I . . . I think so.’ Neverfell answered hesitantly. ‘I don’t really remember. I’m sorry, I don’t have any Face secrets, just runaway features. I can’t
control them. But I really want to talk to Madame Appeline. Do you know where I could find her?’

‘No.’ Her companion gave a speculative silver smile. ‘No, but if you are looking for Facesmiths I can do better than that.’

Neverfell was led to two women seated by an obsidian fountain that spewed crystal arcs of rose water into a star-shaped pool. As soon as they noticed her approach, both women started to their
feet, one dropping her sketch pad. Neverfell recognized them instantly as the two Facesmiths who had been staring at her during the banquet.

Introductions were made. The silvery lady, Lady Adamant, belonged to a celebrated chocolate family. The two Facesmiths were sisters, Simpria and Snia de Meina. The silver lady gave the two
sisters a meaningful smile as she took her leave, and was rewarded by an equally meaningful nod of acknowledgement.

‘How very charming it is to meet you!’ Snia was dumpier than her sister, with wide, watery eyes and a thick voice that made Neverfell think of fudge. She was wearing a Face that
looked sleek and expensive, the warmth of her smile tempered with a regal dreaminess. ‘We were just talking about you today . . .’

‘. . . and wondering who we needed to bribe to get to meet you . . .’ interjected tall, hoarse, red-faced Simpria with a laugh. Her Face was also clearly top of the range, but more
experimental than her sister’s, a daring mixture of magnanimity, wry confidence and peckishness.

‘. . . but here you are. Now, you probably didn’t notice us, but at the last banquet . . .’

‘Yes!’ Neverfell beamed. ‘You were both staring at me! And then
you
drew lots of pictures of me, and
you
went purple and fell over!’

The sister’s faces froze for the merest second before they managed an indulgent laugh.

‘Well, since you mention the drawings, my dear, do you mind if I . . . ?’ Snia recovered her sketchbook from the ground, and hovered her pencil hopefully above it. ‘Just while
we are talking.’

‘I don’t mind at all.’

Snia’s pencil began skating furiously across the page, while her watery eyes flitted over Neverfell’s face.

‘So.’ Simpria took over the conversation. ‘Lady Adamant said that you wanted to speak to a Facesmith.’

‘Well, yes,’ admitted Neverfell. ‘I asked her about Madame Appeline.’

‘Vesperta Appeline? Why did you want to speak to her?’ There was an edge to Simpria’s voice, and Neverfell remembered that Erstwhile had told her that all the other Facesmiths
hated Madame Appeline.

‘Um . . .’ Neverfell spent a whole second trying to think of a good story, then gave up. ‘I met her in the cheese tunnels, and she seemed kind, but then I broke into her house
and now I don’t know if she’s angry, and I wanted to talk to her to find out more about her. Is it true that you and all the other Facesmiths hate her?’

‘Oh, dear me!’ Simpria laughed, a little too merrily. ‘Hate indeed! What a term. No, no. Nobody would waste hate on that upstart! After all, nobody comes from nowhere. If she
does not speak of her past, then she has a past that does not bear speaking of.’ She nodded knowingly. ‘And one can make guesses.’

Neverfell felt a throb of excitement. ‘You know something about her past?’

Beside her, Snia was making occasional tutting noises, and Neverfell was vaguely aware that the ground around their feet was now littered with torn-out, half-finished sketches.

‘Nothing has ever been proven against her,’ Simpria admitted, ‘but there are one or two things I
do
know. She used to live in the Doldrums, a terrible district full of
grub-driers, fossil-glossers and cut-price Cartographers, where nobody asks any questions.’ She leaned forward, a confiding smile on her radish-red face. ‘Well, over the year before she
brought out her Tragedy Range, she ran up debts. Odd debts. For one thing, she was buying more food than she needed for herself and her one Putty Girl. Then there were all the tiny samples of
Delicacies she kept buying – particularly Wine.’

It crossed Neverfell’s mind that Madame Simpria must have done quite a lot of running around interrogating tradesmen to find out so much about somebody ‘beneath her
notice’.

‘And then there were the dresses.’

‘Dresses?’

‘Yes. Little dresses for a girl so high.’ Simpria held out her hand some three and a half feet above the ground. ‘Far too small for her Putty Girl. Do you see what that
means?’

Neverfell stared at her wide-eyed as the tall Facesmith leaned forward confidentially.

‘Somewhere in the dingy mole hole of hers,’ whispered Simpria, ‘she must have been hiding a child.’

Neverfell felt as if her world were exploding. Again the fantastical explanation, the impossible possibility, glimmered at her through the gloom, this time brighter than before.

‘. . . and if she was hiding it,’ Simpria continued, ‘there must have been something shameful about it. Perhaps it was a child from some forbidden and disgraceful love, or a
clandestine marriage. The father was probably a criminal, or the lowest sort of drudge. Or, worse still, perhaps the child was
ugly
.’ Her mouth spread in a smile. ‘Can you
imagine the disgrace of that? A Facesmith with a child whose face was beyond the power of her art to rescue.’

Snia gave a muffled sound of anguish and frustration as she ripped out yet another page from her sketchbook. ‘My dear child,’ she said through clenched teeth, ‘do you think
that you could try to hold the same expression for more than half a second?’

Neverfell barely heard her. ‘What happened to the little girl?’

‘Nobody knows.’ Simpria arched her brows. ‘By the time Vesperta Appeline moved to her rich new apartments near the Court, there was no such child in her household. But I
suppose the poor thing might have died in the influenza epidemic.’

‘Influenza? But that’s a disease, isn’t it?’ Neverfell was perplexed. ‘Aren’t we supposed to be safe from diseases in Caverna? Isn’t that one of the
reasons outsiders aren’t allowed in?’

‘Oh indeed!’ agreed Simpria. ‘There were no end of investigations afterwards to find out how the influenza entered Caverna, but they never found an answer. In the end, they
walled off the whole district, with the sick inside. To this day, nobody is allowed to dig their way into the Doldrums in case the disease is still lurking inside.

Neverfell felt a queasy horror at the thought of the influenza sufferers, sealed into homes which had become tombs, waiting for their water to run out and their trap-lanterns to fail.

‘Those in the Doldrums who remained well were quarantined,’ Simpria went on, ‘until everyone was certain they were not infected. By then, however, a lot of people had died.
Versperta Appeline’s own Putty Girl was one of the first to go. Alas! Such a pretty girl, only sixteen. Green eyes. Madame Appeline always chooses Putty Girls with green eyes like her own
when she can.’