Neverfell staggered away from the chest, swatting, slapping and shaking herself, yelping each time the spiders got inside her clothes and their mandibles found flesh. It was a good five minutes before she slumped exhausted near the foot of one of the pillars, covered with bites but at last satisfied that she was free from her many-legged attackers.
Recovering her breath, she looked up towards the seated threesome and the unspeaking figure behind them.
On the desk before the woman sat something on a bone-china plate. It was squat, round and marble white, with little pleats and plumes of pink icing.
‘Do you like cake?’ asked the woman, still in her deep, molten voice. ‘This has raspberries in it.’
Neverfell stared at it with uncertainty and dread. Somehow the cake was more confusing and alarming than the spiders. Yes, ma’am, I like raspberry cake, only I like it better with no poison or scorpions in it.
‘It is just cake,’ the woman reassured her. ‘You can choose to take it. Or . . .’
Or?
Slowly, Neverfell turned her head, and found that the spider chest had gone. At some point while she had been freeing herself of their scuttling forms, it had been removed and replaced with a smaller box of red teak, carved with zigzag patterns.
If it’s really just cake, then it’s safe. Why would she lie? If they want me dead, they can just have me executed. All I need to do is take the cake.
And yet somehow Neverfell found herself edging hesitantly towards the chest. She rubbed her hands down her dress to wipe the sweat from her palms, then reached trembling fingers to unfasten the mysterious box.
The lid flipped back, and a silver snake slithered out with dainty menace. Neverfell sprang to her feet and sprinted away. There was a low whistle from a darkened corner of the room, and the escapee turned about and skimmed its way towards the sound in a silent slalom.
When it showed no sign of returning, Neverfell dared to peer out from behind the pillar where she had been hiding.
The raspberry cake still sat before the motionless interrogators. In the place of the snake box was a finely carved ivory cask. Nobody said a word. The question hung in the air. The cake . . . or . . .
I don’t want to see what’s in it, I don’t want to, I don’t, I . . . oh no.
The third cask was filled with greyish crystals that flared into searing flame as soon as she opened the box, followed by a sour and choking smoke which sandpapered her throat, and left her eyes sightless for ten minutes afterwards.
The fourth box held what looked a lot like human eyes.
The fifth box was empty, but covered in a glistening moist veneer that soaked through her gloves and burned her skin when she touched it, and left her fingers swelling even after she tore off her gloves.
The sixth was a music box that started playing once open, each note making a different tooth vibrate so painfully she thought they might shatter.
An hour later, Neverfell was hunched on the floor, tear-streaked, stung, bitten, singed and nauseous, shoulders jumping with sob after sob. She was still having trouble seeing, particularly through her right eye. Once again, she was in the deathly hush between boxes. Soon she would have to brace herself, look up and see the next box . . .
There was no box. The cake had vanished from the table as well. All three of the interrogators had turned their heads, and were regarding the stony figure on the throne. Now the silence had a waiting air, like the flex of a cavern spider’s legs before its leap.
The girl was genuine. The Grand Steward no longer had any doubt.
Every time she reached for a box he had seen the fizzling of indecision, the war of fear with optimism, the tremors of compulsion and the insatiable hunger of curiosity. And it seemed unlikely that any Facesmith had primed her with an expression appropriate for situations like dodging a Skimberslithe Whip-Adder whilst being offered cake.
However, her face had shown him far more than this. Watching her expression, he could almost feel the cold of the tiles through the soles of her satin shoes. As her nervous gaze flitted around the antechamber, for the first time in centuries he noticed his own pearly frescoes and saw them through fresh eyes. The incense in the air suddenly had a smell, and as her gaze travelled the room, colours bloomed for a second through the grey.
Possibilities flooded his mind. If he kept her close by, how many more things could he see through her eyes, hear through her ears, experience through her taste buds?
And this was exactly what somebody wanted him to think and feel. It was too tempting. It was too neat, this strange creature falling into his path mere days after the death of his favourite food taster. Somebody was counting on his inability to resist. The coldly logical Right-Eye would not have hesitated in the face of suspicions. One small signal to the guards, and Neverfell’s story would have reached a smothered end in seconds.
But it was Left-Eye who was awake at this moment, and he found reasons to delay. Over the centuries he had used the test of the boxes a few times. You could tell a lot about a person from noting when they gave up and stopped opening boxes. Ordinary people opened the first and then no more. Optimists and slow learners might open three or four. Those who thought it might be a test of hardiness sometimes opened five or six. But all of them had stopped opening boxes eventually. All but one.
What sort of a person would keep on opening boxes until they ran out? An idiot, obviously, but a special kind of idiot.
The girl seemed to sense the wavering of the invisible scales in which her destiny hung. It was painful to look at her, and it had been a while since he had known pain. The world prickled with pins and needles as if the blood were flowing back into it. She watched him with mute terror as he gave a series of small gestures, and the guards clipped neatly forward to take her away.
As soon as he had made the decision, he felt a sting of doubt. It seemed for a moment that he tasted something bittersweet on his tongue, as if he had just sipped something pleasant but poisonous.
‘Where are we going?’
The guards would not answer Neverfell’s questions, but escorted her through ornamental corridor after ornamental corridor, her eyes and mind too bleary to appreciate them. She was not dead yet, but perhaps they had a special execution ground for people who turned down the Grand Steward’s cake.
What’s wrong with me? Why didn’t I take the cake?
Because I knew I needed a miracle to get out of all this alive. Cake is nice, but it isn’t a miracle. And so I had to hope that the whole box game wasn’t a cruel joke with no right answers, and that maybe, just maybe, one of those boxes had a miracle in it, a way out. I just had to hope.
Ahead of her, the guard rapped on a gilded door, which was opened by a woman with faded features.
‘Food tasters’ quarters?’ The guard passed her a scroll, which she read with a Face of polite surprise. ‘New recruit for you.’
Conversation took place around Neverfell, and some remarks were even addressed to her, but the sentences might as well have been birdsong for all the sense she could make of them. All she could think of was two of the words she had just heard.
New recruit. Being recruited meant not being killed. That was all she knew or needed to know. Numbly she shook hands that were offered to her, and let palace servants in white show her down a narrow passage to a little box-like chamber where a small canopy bed awaited her.
Left alone in the room, she let herself drop full length on to the bed, only to find this a considerably less comfortable experience than she was expecting. There was something angular under the covers, and even as she pulled them back she knew what she would find.
Nestled upon the sheet was a small box, tiled in ivory and ebony. Neverfell crumpled and buried her face in the pillow, shaking with sobs.
It was all a trick, she thought in despair. They wanted me to think they’d decided not to execute me, but the box test is still going on, and there will just be more and more boxes forever until one of them kills me or I go mad,
or . . .
She sat up and snatched the box, meaning to throw it away from her, but the impulse to open it was too strong. This time it might not be snakes. If I just open enough boxes, one of them might be different . . .
The catch gave a small click as she unfastened it. It was almost entirely empty, but for a small roll of paper that fell out on to the sheet. Neverfell unrolled it and read the writing upon it.
You have won favour with Left-Eye but Right-Eye will be harder to convince. Never joke with Right-Eye. Never waste words. Never try to lie to him. Never look like a fool.
Good luck,
A friend
Curiosity and the Cat Burglar
At one o’clock, the ever-logical Right-Eye Grand Steward woke up to discover that during his sleep his left-eyed counterpart had executed three of his advisors for treason, ordered the creation of a new carp pool and banned limericks. Worse still, no progress had been made in tracking down the Kleptomancer, and of the two people believed to be his accomplices, both had been released from prison and one had been appointed food taster. Right-Eye was not amused. He had known for centuries that he could trust nobody but himself. Now he was seriously starting to wonder about himself.
Left-Eye Grand Steward always did things for reasons, and Right-Eye could usually even remember what they were, but they made no sense to him. It was like trying to decipher pictures scrawled by a madman. This girl Neverfell had been made a food taster because . . . something to do with a poison rainbow? A firework? A spiderweb turned inside out? It was as if the two halves of his mind were drifting further apart with time, and losing any ability to understand each other. Nowadays, on those rare occasions when both were awake, it felt as if there were two people crammed into his skull, and his left hand sometimes made strange gestures without explanation.
He called for his spymasters, and asked for their report on the investigation into the theft of the Stackfalter Sturton. The results were disappointing. Somewhere between the kitchens and the banqueting hall, the cheese had simply vanished from beneath its silver dish cover, despite the armed guard placed around it.
‘We will have more information soon,’ was the promise.
‘When? When he steals the very beards from your chins? You will have information soon? It is “soon” now. Very soon it will be “later”.’
But even these words were an effort for him. He could make these grim men tremble so easily, but what was the point? The failure of others was tiring, too tiring to be worth words. Nowadays he said little, but sat coldly watching his underlings fail, and fail, until he felt driven to execute them through utter weariness and disgust.
He would need to involve himself in the investigation. Until now this thief had not dared to steal from the Grand Steward or trespass upon his property. He had been a distraction for the courtiers, a bogey to keep them on edge. This latest theft had changed everything. The Kleptomancer had successfully slipped through all the defences of a grand banquet, and stolen a dish from the Grand Steward’s personal store in the most ostentatious manner possible.
The culprit had to be found, and quickly. If not, some day he might infiltrate the palace, this time in the role of assassin. Besides, the Grand Steward could never afford to be made to look foolish or weak, or the rest of the Court would start sniffing like hounds at a blood trail.
‘Cancel all my audiences for the day – I shall be changing my schedule. Have my sedan made ready. Also my travelling mask, twenty guards, Master Calmnus and a food taster.’ He hesitated. Memories of the previous day floated back to him murkily, like images seen through smudged and distorting glass. ‘The newest food taster.’
Neverfell was rattled out of bed by a thunderous knocking after what felt like only an hour’s sleep. Unfamiliar bed, unfamiliar room. She pulled an unfamiliar dress over her head, and staggered to the door. It opened on to an unfamiliar corridor full of unfamiliar and very animated people.
‘She’s awake!’ Strange hands grabbed her by the collar, dragged her to a long, low breakfast room, dropped a bowl of lentil soup in front of her and pushed a spoon in her hand. Somebody else started tugging a brush painfully through her hair.
‘You’ve been summoned by the Grand Steward. We have five minutes to get you ready.’ Seated next to her on the bench was a lean, hollow-eyed woman with a trace of moustache, who smelt of scented smoke. Neverfell vaguely remembered her being introduced the previous day as Food Taster-in-Chief Leodora. ‘I hadn’t expected you to be called to attend on him so soon – I’ll have to go through the rules with you quickly. Are you listening?’
Neverfell nodded, albeit at an angle because the brusher was battling a particularly stubborn tangle. Fragments of the previous day were drifting back to her limp, shocked brain. She was in the tasters’ quarters. These people hurrying her shoes on to her feet and knotting her brown sash of office too tightly round her waist were her colleagues. Most of them were wearing Faces of careful unconcern, belied by the urgency of their actions, and the way their eyes strayed again and again to her face.
I’m not executed, she thought with dazed curiosity and surprise. Look. Look at all my limbs, all still stuck on.
‘Don’t speak in his presence unless you’re asked a question and he gives you permission. If you talk to him, call him “Your Excellency”. Keep your eyes lowered. Only take a tiny piece when you’re tasting, and never use your fingers, always the pins or forks they give you, so they can see for sure you’ve put it in your mouth.
‘Don’t go wandering off, or talking to people. Try to avoid making friends with anybody who is not a food taster. Lots of people at Court will try to win you over, but it does not look good if you seem to be taking sides.
‘The most important thing to remember is this: the food we receive in this dining hall has been checked by the Chancery of Safety. Apart from the food and drink you test for the Grand Steward when you are on duty, you must eat and drink nothing that does not come from this hall. Don’t even drink the water from the fountains.’
Neverfell swallowed her mouthful of soup. ‘In case . . . it contains poison?’ she hazarded.
Leodora shook her head. ‘In case it contains a poison antidote. It is an old way of tricking a lord into thinking that food is safe when it is not. A food taster eats something without ill effect, so the lord eats it . . . and dies.’ The older woman reached out, and pulled Neverfell’s hand away from her mouth, stopping her from anxiously nibbling at her own fingertips. ‘Don’t bite your nails. Sometimes they even try to slip antidotes into the water we use to wash our hands.’
The full extent of Neverfell’s new responsibilities suddenly yawned open before her. Life and death. As her eye crept across the ranks of the other tasters it crossed her mind that all of them looked rather ill, and none of them looked very old.
The butterflies only returned as she was being hurried out through an arch to a colonnade where a large sedan stood waiting, flanked by six bearers and a dozen armed guards. She assumed that she would be walking along behind the sedan, but instead the door was opened for her. Gingerly she climbed in.
She was almost surprised to find that the person inside was man-sized. Her imagination had distorted the Grand Steward overnight, so that she remembered him as a monumental shadow with one coldly gazing silver eye.
Once again she found herself caught in the icy light of the Grand Steward’s gaze. Today, however, it was the right eye that regarded her. His face was divided neatly down the middle, the left hand side covered by a close-fitting white velvet mask. His glassy hair poured over the collar of his bear-fur coat.
With a jolt, Neverfell remembered the warning in the mysterious note that she had read the night before.
Never joke with Right-Eye. Never waste words. Never try to lie to him. Never look like a fool.
Easier said than done. Neverfell was just deciding that the only way to obey these instructions was to say nothing when the Grand Steward spoke, and destroyed that plan entirely.
/> ‘The view bores my eye.’ His voice was a low, creaking note, and Neverfell had a sense of great effort, as if each word was a vast bell that had to be hauled and swung to be sounded. ‘Look out for me, and tell me of anything interesting that we pass.’
The Grand Steward was seated to Neverfell’s left, his open eye angled towards her. The window on his side was firmly shuttered, while hers was open.
The sedan shambled into motion, and she tried to describe what she saw, stumbling where she did not know the words. She tried all the time to keep her speech plain. Never waste words. As time passed, however, she could not be sure whether he was even listening.
Neverfell started to understand. She was the view. She was the window on to the world. Through her and with her he saw cobbled fords through underground streams, ossuary doorways decorated with a thousand human bones, ladies pausing to have stone dust brushed out of their coats. She knew that she was making the golds bright, the shadows black, the reds vivid, and she could feel his gaze like a draught.
‘Your questions bother me,’ he snapped at one point.
‘I haven’t asked any!’ exclaimed Neverfell in panic.
‘No, and I see them loitering like pedlars behind the door. Ask them and be rid of them. Quickly!’
‘What’s happened to Master Childersin?’ It was the foremost question in Neverfell’s mind.
‘Acquitted of disrupting the banquet on purpose, in the light of your evidence. Found guilty however of introducing a disruptive individual into the proceedings. Given a chance to save his skin by passing ownership of you on to me, an opportunity he did not allow to go stale. Freed for now, sent home, told that there is a rope round his neck that can be pulled taut if he stumbles.’
Neverfell felt some of her anxiety melt into relief. Her rash and desperate gamble had not been in vain after all. ‘And his family – are they still in trouble?’ Zouelle’s pale face was vivid in her memory.
A Face Like Glass Page 15