A Face Like Glass (43 page)

‘And drink your Wine.’ Neverfell felt a strange, disorientating sense of buoyancy, as if the floor had dropped away beneath her and left her floating. ‘It was all about the Wine,
wasn’t it? Everything, all of this, just so I would drink the Wine, and not remember doing it.’

Neverfell remembered Enquirer Treble towering over her and berating her, belligerent and unswerving.

You consumed some kind of antidote before this tasting. Didn’t you?

‘Oh no,’ she whispered. ‘Tell me there wasn’t! Tell me there wasn’t an antidote in the Wine you gave me!’

‘I didn’t know what would happen!’ wailed Zouelle. ‘I just had my orders, my part to play. I only worked out the bit about the antidote after the trifle tasting. And then
it was too late, and the Grand Steward was dead, and there were bodies all over the audience chamber covered in blood. It’s . . . I’ve seen dead people before. A few. But they look
different when it’s my fault. They look like they know, and I keep seeing them when I close my eyes.’

‘But it’s not your fault, if you didn’t know. Listen, Zouelle, we have to tell somebody about this! If Madame Appeline really did poison the Grand Steward, and you’re the
only person who knows, you’re in terrible danger! We could tell your Uncle M—’

‘Shh!’ Zouelle held up a warning hand. There was a faint sound of a step outside in the corridor, and then a knock on the door.

‘Zouelle?’ It was the voice of Maxim Childersin. Neverfell’s heart gave a lurch of relief, and she was just opening her mouth to answer when Zouelle caught at her arm and shook
her head vigorously.

What’s wrong?
Neverfell mouthed.

Zouelle had one finger pressed against her lips in an injunction to silence, and wore a small, pleading smile. No. 144, Delicate Appeal of the Shell-less Fledgeling. She gestured to Neverfell to
hide behind one of the larger barrels by the wall, and Neverfell reluctantly obliged.

‘Come in,’ Zouelle called out. The door opened, and Maxim Childersin’s lean figure stepped into the room, treading with meticulous care. He too wore a black and silver apron,
rings and a rune-encrusted amulet. Glancing around him, he raised an eyebrow at the restlessness of the Wines and the fragments of broken glass scattering the floor.

‘My dear girl,’ he said, ‘we all wish to throw our failed experiments at the ground from time to time, but we try not to do so. And how did you let your Wine projects get so
wild? If they become any louder, they may start noticing each other. And then where would we be?’

‘I am very sorry, Uncle Maxim.’ Within an instant, Zouelle’s manner had completely changed, her hysteria and tremulousness falling away like a discarded shawl. She now had the
clear and careful tones of a well-rehearsed schoolgirl about to recite poetry. ‘I had just finished working on that blend I was talking about and at the last moment I . . . thought better of
it and threw it away from me. It smashed and woke up the other Wines, so I thought I would wait by the wall until they calmed down.’

‘Ah, so you have thought better of removing your memories? I am very glad to hear that.’ Maxim Childersin twinkled a smile at his favourite niece as he advanced carefully across the
room. Now and then he stopped to chant under his breath in the direction of the Wines, rolling each ‘r’ so that it was a soothing purr. ‘I agreed to your request to do so, of
course, and would have let you go back to the Beaumoreau Academy to play games for a few more years, but I would have been disappointed.’

Zouelle smiled blandly, discreetly retethering her runaway braid. Her eyes did not as much as flicker to Neverfell’s hiding place. Again there was something eerie about her complete
transformation.

‘A little courage now is all it takes,’ Maxim added kindly. ‘If you can learn to stomach what has passed without running away from it, nothing else that you ever do will be as
hard. Murder is like romance. It is only our first that overwhelms us. Next time it will be easier, and I promise that I will not make you work with our Facesmith friend again.’

Neverfell silently gaped as one last red-hot penny finally dropped. Why had she imagined that Madame Appeline was the only mastermind of this scheme? Why had she thought that Zouelle would take
orders from a Facesmith she hated? Why had she not wondered where Madam Appeline would find a strong forgetfulness Wine with a poison antidote artfully woven into it?

She felt as if she were standing in a dim room, and watching every lantern around her extinguish, one by one, leaving her to darkness and solitary stifling. Nobody was to be trusted. The plan
that had ensnared her had been the brainchild of her protector, Maxim Childersin.

Neverfell’s mind felt stretched, like a frog trying to swallow a dinner plate.
But they’re enemies
, she thought stupidly.
Master Childersin and Madame
Appeline hate each other, everybody knows that.

No
, answered the wiser, cooler part of her head,
that’s what they wanted everybody to think. What better way to hide a secret alliance?

Maxim Childersin. When had he seen the potential in a half-mad girl with no capacity to lie? Had there been any real pity in his heart when he first visited her in the Enquiry’s cell, or
even then had his mind been seeing the potential, and throwing out the first tendrils of plans?

Through the bars he had laid eyes on a face like glass, somebody who could not lie without it being obvious. And he had seen a way of using that very fact to tell the greatest of lies.

Of course
, thought Neverfell as the truth unfolded in her mind.
He couldn’t just murder the Grand Steward in an obvious way, or the Enquiry would have taken over. He had to make
the death look natural. So he needed somebody to swear blind that the Grand Steward couldn’t have been poisoned, somebody that everyone else couldn’t help but believe.

‘I wanted to talk to you about Neverfell,’ Zouelle was saying, and Neverfell was jerked back into awareness by the mention of her own name.

‘Indeed?’

‘I wonder if perhaps she should stay somewhere else for a bit,’ Zouelle declared with perfect sangfroid. ‘Perhaps take up her apprenticeship with Cheesemaster Grandible again.
The family has a lot of sensitive things to discuss now that we are on a war footing, and, whilst well-intentioned, Neverfell is not very good at keeping secrets. Also, she seems to be getting
restless.’

‘Yes.’ Childersin had covered the broken vial with a handkerchief, showing the same tender reverence one might offer a dead but beloved pet. ‘I had noticed that. However I do
not think we can let her out of our sight, and if Grandible had her back in his care I doubt he would relinquish her again. Remember, in two months’ time the Enquiry will have finished their
investigation into the Grand Steward’s death. There will be a hearing before the entire Court, and we will need Neverfell to testify again. We cannot afford to let her be kidnapped,
assassinated or taken beyond our reach before then.’

Neverfell did pause to wonder whether he would feel very differently about her being assassinated after the hearing. She had a queasy suspicion that she would not like the answer.

‘However,’ mused Childersin, ‘you are right that her restlessness is a problem. She needs to be distracted, diverted, made to feel that she is not in a prison. Perhaps some
small outings in the carriage to see local beauty spots, or to say farewell to her fellow tasters? I will arrange something. For now, I shall leave you to finish calming your Wines.’

When he had left the room and his footsteps had faded, Zouelle finally closed her eyes and leaned back against the door.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Neverfell.

‘I . . . lied to Uncle Maxim,’ croaked Zouelle, and there was no mistaking the stunned terror in her tone. ‘I lied to him. I never dared to do so before, never thought I could
without him noticing. Perhaps he did notice. Perhaps he’s playing a game with me.’

‘Or maybe he’s too busy with all his other games to suspect you,’ answered Neverfell, hoping she sounded reassuring. ‘So all this time he’s been working with Madame
Appeline? For how long?’

‘Years, I think.’ Zouelle shook her head slowly. ‘I didn’t know, not until he told me that I had to work with her to make you drink the Wine. They’re . . . I think
they’re more than just allies. But nobody else in the family knows. I’m the only one he told, the only one he trusted enough . . .

‘I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose his favour, Neverfell! For years I’ve known that he had plans for me. We all knew. That’s why most of the family resent me. And
now he’s actually talking to me privately about becoming his successor. Which parts of the family business he expects me to take over in a year, two years, five years. What vineyards I will
be governing, and which parts of the overground need to be claimed by our family. Which unguents and spices I should be taking so I live longer and think faster. Who needs to be removed and when so
they don’t get in my way. He’s pleased with me. He wants to make me into another him.’

‘But you don’t want that!’ Neverfell gaped at her in horror. ‘You can’t!’

‘It’s what everybody wants. I would be good at it too. Maybe I’m not ready yet, but I could learn, change, become what he wants. I know I could.’ Zouelle’s face had
returned to its habitual flutter, once more in search of the elusive Face that was nowhere in its repertoire. ‘No, Neverfell! I don’t want it! I don’t want it! I thought I did,
and I ought to, but I don’t. Not now. Maybe I never did.’

‘Then don’t do it!’ exclaimed Neverfell.

‘But what else is there for me? Without Uncle Maxim’s favour, the rest of the family will claw me apart. You saw what happened to me when they thought he was dead. And nobody else
will take me as an apprentice, because they’ll think I’m just a Childersin spy.

‘And he’s going to find out. Right now your face is one big mess of disillusionment, pain and betrayal. It’s not as bad as when you went into the secret room, but you’ve
changed and Uncle Maxim will be able to see it. He’ll know what you know and the first time you glance at me he’ll know that I told you. That’ll be the end for both of us. I
should never have told you . . . I don’t know what happened to me. I just . . . wanted to talk to somebody.’

‘And if you hadn’t you’d still be going crazy with what you know, and I’d be going crazy with what I didn’t know, and both of us would be alone. Right now,
I’m upset but I’m . . .’ Neverfell hesitated, like one stretching a limb they think might be broken. ‘I’m all right. I think I’m more all right than I have been
for ages. Great big holes of unknown are the worst thing. Before this, I didn’t know anything was wrong but I didn’t
not
know, if you see what I mean. You can go mad like that.
And if my face is spoilt now, once and for all, then it means I don’t have to worry about it any more.’

‘Neverfell,’ whispered Zouelle, ‘I . . . don’t have a plan. I always have a plan and now I don’t. What are we going to do?’

It was a good question, but even as Zouelle asked it Neverfell could feel doors opening in her own head, great big simple doors that floated silently ajar with grace and ease.

‘We’re going to escape,’ she answered.

‘Escape where? I couldn’t bear living in Drudgery or the wild tunnels . . .’

‘No. Not there. Really escape. Out. Up and out. To the overground.’

‘But that’s insane!’

‘Yes, so nobody will be expecting it.’ Neverfell gave her friend a wide, mad smile and squeezed her hands. ‘Nobody expects insane things – the Kleptomancer worked that
out. How could they guess we would run away to a place full of disease where the sun cooks you till your skin falls off?’

‘I don’t want my skin to fall off!’

‘But it isn’t really like that, Zouelle! I don’t remember it, and yet sometimes I think I do. It’s like somebody broke my memory of it and swept up the pieces, but there
are still tiny fragments, little stars of it winking at me when they catch the light. There’s a brightness out there, like nothing we have here. It’s blue, so blue it takes the lid off
your head and blows out the cobwebs and you can see forever. And there are places where you can run and run and run. And the sky isn’t just nothingness up and up and up – there are
colours, beautiful colours, and you can see the birds above swimming in it. And there’s smells up there, like . . . like . . . hope and your first surprise.

‘Everything down here is just a painting of what’s real, Zouelle. A dreg. A memory. I feel like I’m holding my breath all the time, never knowing when my lungs will just give
up. The air we’re supposed to breathe is up above – I can feel it.’

‘Neverfell, that is all very pretty, but we do not actually
have
a way out right now, do we? And even if we found one, it wouldn’t do any good. If Uncle Maxim has his way, all
the outside kingdoms will topple one by one and come under Caverna’s control –
his
control. We could walk a thousand miles and he’d send people after us. We know too much;
he wouldn’t have any choice. He would never be safe until he destroyed us.