A Face Like Glass (55 page)

‘If she had any sense,’ one of them murmured, ‘she would have fled to one of our rivals, instead of heading into a deadend set of tunnels and leaving herself with nowhere . . .
to . . . go.’ His voice trailed away.

They had just turned a corner, and were now gazing down the stretch of tunnel that included the doors to the laboratories. Every single one of these doors was now open. Half a dozen barrels
stood in the corridor, and the floor was a cat’s cradle of criss-crossing and interlocking lines, sigils and circles, hastily drawn in chalk.

The Childersins stared as their vintner minds struggled to grasp what they were seeing. All their pet projects, minor, major and misbegotten, had been rolled out into the corridor. All the Wines
were awake and feral, the scruffy sigils barely holding them in check, and already they were sensing each other and bristling. The air was thick, and rasped against the Childersins’ cheeks
like paper. A careless step into this danger zone might be enough to set all the Wines lashing out blindly, and if half a dozen True Wines started to fight they would tear holes in reality like
cats in a paper bag.

Beyond the barrels and the curtain of quivering light, they could just make out the kneeling figure of Zouelle, adding some finishing touches in chalk.

‘Zouelle!’

She looked up, scrambled to her feet and fled, just in time to evade a crossbow bolt that chipped the wall behind her and ricocheted down the tunnel.

‘ZOUELLE!’

Zouelle did not stop running until she reached the Morning Room. There she fastened the door behind her, and took a moment to recover her breath.

She had made good use of her half an hour, but had been hoping it would take the rest of the family longer to get home. However, her efforts in the corridor would hold them back for now. Her
only worry was that Uncle Maxim would manage to evade the Enquiry and return to the townhouse. He would have a much better chance of undoing the damage she had done, and taming the Wines.

Hurry, Neverfell
, she thought.
Hurry.

Meanwhile, Neverfell herself was making all haste through the Grand Steward’s secret escape route, while her escorts helped fill the gaps in her memories.

‘So Master Grandible is alive?’ Neverfell could barely speak for relief.

‘Yes,’ confirmed one of her companions. ‘He used a hidden exit to escape – I believe it was one that you discovered.’

‘The rabbit hole,’ whispered Neverfell. ‘That wonderful rabbit!’

The twisting route led at last past a dusty brocade throne, next to a great bottle of water, and a chest of provisions worth a king’s ransom. Evidently these were laid down in case the
Grand Steward had found himself hiding for some time.

Beside them had been placed a rough cloak with a hood and a pair of good boots in Neverfell’s size. These were handed to her and she donned them quickly.

‘Take this as well.’ The nearest servant opened the chest and pulled out a small teardrop-shaped vial. ‘Perfume, just in case you need to win somebody over in a hurry. It will
irresistibly draw people to you.’

‘Though they might wonder why I’m holding my nose,’ whispered Neverfell, but pocketed it anyway.

The passage ended in a hatch, and once she and her three guides had dropped down through it they found themselves in a little-used thoroughfare, the horse dung on its rough road stale and
dry.

‘Do you remember what we’re doing now, miss?’ one of the servant women asked gently.

‘Yes . . .’ Neverfell scraped at her memory to see if she knew the woman’s name, and found to her joy that she did. ‘It’s Clarelle, isn’t it? Yes, I do.
We’re going to the Doldrums. We’re going to make sure the route there is clear for the drudges.’

Thankfully, they encountered next to nobody as they strode hastily along the byways. However, all the while the twisting tunnels brought Neverfell echoes of the sounds of conflict – cries,
metallic clashes, rumblings that sounded worryingly like rockfalls.
I caused that. Did I cause that?
She could not decide how to feel about it. Instead she thought of Zouelle waiting in the
Morning Room and trying to hold off the rest of her family, and all the people counting upon her to scout out the Doldrums.

They weaved through the Samphire district, and edged along the Octopus, until a broad thoroughfare came to a sudden stop. It had been blocked off by a solid wall of heavy stone blocks, thickly
mortared round the edges so that no air could squeak past.

‘That must be it,’ Neverfell said aloud. ‘The old entrance to the Doldrums.’ She bit her lip as she examined it. Battering down the wall would make a lot of noise, but
she had chosen this option rather than asking her allies to battle their way into the Doldrums through Madame Appeline’s abode. That would inevitably have involved bloodshed, and she had
already caused enough of that.

‘Somebody’s coming,’ murmured Clarelle. Neverfell pulled up her hood just in time as half a dozen girls sprinted round the corner and continued running. They wore simple white
dresses, their hair tied neatly back, and Neverfell recognized them as Putty Girls belonging to Madame Appeline. A few seconds later, a handful of men in cream-coloured livery came racing round the
corner.

‘Ah, let them go. It’s Appeline we were told to find. And it looks like she must have escaped.’ The men turned and walked back the way they had come.

‘That’s the livery of the de Meina sisters,’ whispered one of Neverfell’s guides. ‘The Facesmiths. After you denounced Madame Appeline in the Hall of the Gentles, I
suppose they thought they had a good excuse to attack her.’ Neverfell could well believe it, as she recalled how bitterly the Facesmith sisters had spoken about Madame Appeline.

Neverfell directed a quick glance at her companions, then set off after the men, at a discreet distance. Just as she suspected, their path took them to the front door of Madame Appeline’s
abode.

The aforementioned door, however, was now off its hinges, having suffered some splintering impact. A long timber lying before it had evidently been used as a battering ram. There was a
substantial crowd outside, not all of them wearing the livery of the de Meina household. This mob, however, seemed to have expended most of its energy, and was in the process of drifting away. A
few of its members were having to be helped hence, sporting what looked like crossbow wounds, testimony to Madame Appeline’s security measures.

‘Any sign of the Facesmith?’ one of them shouted.

‘No,’ came the call from within. ‘We’ve searched everywhere. She’s not here.’

‘Get the Putty Girls to tell you where she is!’

‘Too late. They’ve all run away.’

As Neverfell watched from round the corner, the last of the triumphant force finally departed, some of it carrying away familiar-looking furniture. In the end there were no further sounds of
life issuing from beyond the broken door.

‘Miss Neverfell?’ Clarelle brought Neverfell out of her own thoughts. ‘I should go back to the forces at the gate and tell them the way is clear.’

‘Yes,’ answered Neverfell absently, and then realized what she was staring at. ‘Yes! Clearer than we expected. We don’t have to bash down the wall into the Doldrums after
all. We can go in this way, through the secret door.’

After a quick conversation, it was decided that Neverfell would remain by the broken entrance, to keep an eye on it and make sure the route through Madame Appeline’s tunnels remained
clear. The other two servants would retrace their steps through the thoroughfares, so that they could stand as lookout at different junctions in the Octopus, and bring warning if a large and
hostile armed force approached from the direction of the palace. Neverfell took up her position just outside the shattered door, whilst the two servants disappeared back the way they had come.

Standing so near to the door was an eerie experience. Neverfell was not close enough to see much through the splintered gap, but she could make out the gradual darkening as the trap-lanterns
within let themselves fade, one by one. It was like watching a creature die, and gradually lose the sparks of life. It filled her with a pity and fear, and made her wish that the last faint glimmer
of light at the far end of the corridor would die out and be done.

In spite of herself, Neverfell drew closer to the door, even fingered the ravaged wood. Looking down the corridor, she could see the shattered remains of the door to the reception room, and
through that the shattered remains of the door into Madame Appeline’s grove. The far end of the corridor and the reception room were swathed in darkness, but as she stared and blinked it
seemed to Neverfell that the distant murk of the grove was less inkily black than it should have been.

Slowly she realized what this meant. Somewhere in the depths of these devastated tunnels, a trap-lantern was still softly glowing and glowing. This could mean only one thing. Someone down there
was breathing.

Of course the raiders didn’t find Madame Appeline. How stupid of me. They didn’t know she had a secret passage. She could have slipped through the hidden door,
waited until they’d finished shouting and looting, then come back.

It was strange, but, staring down the corridor to the tiny, almost imperceptible glimmer of light, Neverfell felt afraid in a way that she had not while facing down Maxim Childersin, or
testifying before the Hall of the Gentles. She still felt a sense of connection to Madame Appeline, of linked destiny. Before it had seemed like a bright rope she could cling to, or perhaps even
climb to reach somewhere she belonged. Now she knew of the Facesmith’s betrayal the sense of connection was haunted, twisted, a black chain leading away from her down the shadowy corridor
ahead.

It almost seemed to be pulling at her, reeling her in. She was just telling herself that there was no reason to venture in alone, that she could wait there on lookout until reinforcements came,
when another thought hit her like a brick.

Zouelle.

If Madame Appeline was down there in the darkness, the Facesmith would not wish to dare the streets where she might meet prowling mobs sent by her rivals. Instead, sooner or later, she would
flee to her close and secret ally, Maxim Childersin. She would make haste down the secret passageway to the Morning Room, and there she would find a girl she despised. A girl she could blame for
her own denunciation before the Hall of the Gentles. Zouelle Childersin, alone, undefended and unsuspecting.

Perhaps she had already had that idea. She could be heading for the secret room and the passage beyond at this very moment . . .

Neverfell wiped her perspiring palms on her clothes, and stepped forward into the corridor. Running off to find the other servants would waste valuable time and leave the area unguarded. The
black chain of inevitability hauled her in, step after step.

As she advanced, the few surviving traps glimmered into life and showed her scenes of devastation. The table in the reception room was overturned, the floor crunchy with broken crockery.
Neverfell stooped for a trap-lantern and took it with her.

The sight of the once beautiful grove clutched at her heart. Nearly all the millennia-old crystal-trees had been shattered, leaving nothing but kaleidoscopic stumps like broken tusks, and
glistening shards scattering the moss carpet. She stooped and picked up one long shard. It was cloudy cream and rose in colouration, streaked like an expensive sweet. It was narrow, sharp and cold
in her hand. Neverfell did not know if it made her feel more safe or less.

At one point, she passed yet another broken door, and glimpsed through it into one of Madame Appeline’s treasured galleries, half the alabaster masks still hovering sublime in their lines,
the others lying on the ground like so many skittles.

She passed on, and did not notice the furthest of the pale faces let out the breath it had been holding, and slip silently from the line.

It was difficult to find the stairway, so spidery-fine was its outline, but at last her lanternlight gleamed upon the ivy-like whorls. Heart in her mouth, Neverfell climbed the spiral stairs,
the metal ringing slightly under her feet. Only then did it occur to Neverfell that she was re-enacting her motions from her dream-that-had-not-been a dream, on the day of the betrayal.

She did not hear another set of feet walking carefully through the shattered grove behind her, making sure that they did not crunch on the fragments of crystal.

As she reached the top, all around her a faint glow started to bloom. She stepped forward on to the gallery, which proved to be a long, metal balcony fixed to the wall, just six feet or so below
the roof of the cavern. Clustering on the gallery, the ceiling and the upper parts of the wall were the largest trap-lanterns that Neverfell had ever seen. One of them was about nine feet across,
its crusty skin glowing just enough for her to make out the pale rings and honey-coloured blotches. No wonder the false sky of the grove had blazed so brightly, and no wonder it had taken the Putty
Girls so much puff to keep them shining.