A Face Like Glass

by Frances Hardinge

  But why do so? Who would want to do anything of the sort? Left-Eye reached for a pattern that would explain it all . . . and found one.

  The Kleptomancer was nothing but a cat’s paw. Left-Eye saw it all now. The thief was a tool in the hands of one who wanted to distract Left-Eye from his own plans, to keep him confused, obsessed, helpless. And who would know that the Kleptomancer’s game would have such an extreme effect upon Left-Eye? Only one person.

  With a series of quick signals, Left-Eye gave the order for all Right-Eye’s remaining advisors to be executed.

  Right-Eye must have been plotting against him for years, nursing dark and resentful thoughts from his half of the skull. No doubt he had hidden all his schemes amid those tiresome reams of dull thoughts and schedules that he knew Left-Eye would never examine properly. Now Right-Eye was weakening him, ready to strike, so Left-Eye had no choice but to strike first.

  The first advisor was neatly decapitated before anybody really realized what was happening. The second had time to offer up a scream and plaintively raise his hands before he was cut down. When the Grand Steward’s left hand made the same gesture a third time, however, and pointed at Enquirer Treble, she leaped back in time to draw her sword and defect a blade with her own.

  ‘Hold! That’s an order!’ The tone of authority was enough to make the guards hesitate, confused into forgetting for a moment that Treble was not in their chain of command, and had a good deal less authority whilst Left-Eye was awake. She took advantage of the moment to pluck a pouch from her belt and throw it to the floor where it burst, white powder spattering the tiles.

  The guards jumped back in alarm, suspecting some attack, and a moment later everybody’s eyes were streaming.

  ‘Your Excellency!’ called out Treble. ‘Your advisors appeal to you!’

  As the stinging scent of the spilt powder reached the throne, the Grand Steward’s right eye flicked open.

  There was none of the usual easing into consciousness, sliding on his body like a glove. Instead Right-Eye was suddenly rudely awake and aware that he was under attack. He was not alone in his own skull, and the other thing in there with him was no longer recognizable as a part of him. Rather it seemed like a vast, maddened bat, beating at him with black wings of unreason and dragging claws across his thoughts.

  His guards were attacking Treble, who was defending herself as best she could. What were they doing?

  ‘Stop!’

  They halted, looking utterly bewildered. They were staring towards his left-hand side, and he realized that his left hand must be signalling orders to them. He looked down, and was infuriated by the fact that, as always, he could only see his right side, not the actions of his left. He reached across and seized his left hand to stop it gesturing.

  ‘Stand down! All of you! Enquirer Treble, your report . . .’

  But Enquirer Treble was given no opportunity to deliver her report. Before anybody could do anything, the Grand Steward’s left hand escaped from his right, and the next moment he felt a searing line slashed across his right knuckles. It took Right-Eye a second to realize that his left hand had triggered the secret mechanism in its ring, and used the needle that sprang out to attack his right hand.

  That needle was one of the few weapons sharp enough to pierce his skin, which centuries of carefully applied oils had left dragon-scale-tough. He was immune to the poison that tipped it, and the pain was nothing, for he had long since exhausted pain’s power to distract or enthral him. What shocked him was the sudden, twisting realization that Left-Eye had gone completely mad, and had to be destroyed.

  ‘Guards! Your bows! Aim for my left side! My left eye! The left side of my throat!’

  Neverfell tumbled backwards off her chair, numbly staring at the Grand Steward, her skin not so much crawling as sprinting. Everything was wrong with him now. The two halves of his countenance seemed to be striving for different Faces, his mouth lopsidedly agape, his eyes struggling to look in different directions. As she watched, his left hand clawed open a secret panel in the arm of the throne, and pulled out a bodkin that seemed to be made of pale gold. A moment later both china-white hands were gripping the hilt of the bodkin as the Grand Steward wrestled with himself, writhing on the throne like a seizure victim.

  The audience chamber spent a few seconds agape, and then collapsed into chaos. There had always been a crack running down the middle of the Grand Steward’s personal guard and coterie of advisors. Now, without more ado, this household broke neatly in two. The guards who had attacked Enquirer Treble ceased to do so, but instantly had to defend her from another three guards who were still trying to obey Left-Eye’s last orders. One of Right-Eye’s favoured advisors produced an illegal garotte from a bracelet and made a spirited attempt to strangle one of Left-Eye’s interpreters. Suddenly an uneasy alliance had dissolved. Now was the moment to settle all grievances.

  Whilst everybody was screaming orders and counter-orders, a crossbow bolt hit the Grand Steward in the left shoulder. It did not bury itself deep, but did cause him to jerk and fall off his throne. An instant later two more hit, this time in his right leg and just below his right collarbone.

  ‘Stop it!’ screamed Treble. ‘Are you all mad? Stop shooting at the Grand Steward!’

  ‘Which one?’ called a guard, gripping a loaded and trembling bow.

  ‘Either of him!’ bellowed Treble. ‘Put your bows up! All of you! Everybody stop killing everybody!’

  The Grand Steward was on the ground amid the wreckage of the jelly, rolling over and over as he fought himself. He had spent centuries developing defences against attack, and he knew his way past all of them. He knew all his own tactics, the weak places in his armour, the creases where his toughened skin was most susceptible to a blade. When at last the bodkin fell from his hands and skittered away, he pummelled himself, each hand clawing at the opposite side of his face, pulling loose fistfuls of glassy hair.

  ‘Stop him!’ shouted Treble, her cry echoed by a number of others.

  But nobody could stop him. Nobody could go near him, for none of them trusted each other with him any more. Anybody who took a step towards him was instantly the focus of a dozen bows, and found their vista glittering with sword tips. Besides this, the Grand Master’s thrashing had triggered half a dozen traps, all designed to prevent enemies from getting too close to the throne and its occupant. A curtain of metallic gauze had fallen between him and the furore, its poisoned barbs gleaming in the pearly light. Some parts of the floor fell away, gleaming tiles tumbling into the blackness below. Steel pendulums swung from side to side with a sound like tearing silk and venom-tipped darts thrummed from one wall to the other.

  Beneath the Grand Steward a pool began to spread, but at first not everyone guessed it was blood, for it was translucent and gleamed like glass. At last he collapsed on to his back, his struggles weakening, both frost-like eyes fixed upon the ceiling. He was shuddering, and appeared to be going into some kind of a fit, as if the two halves of his nature had given up on their physical fight and retreated inside his head to continue their battle.

  ‘Physicians! Bring in the physicians!’ But both halves of the Grand Steward favoured different physicians, and as a furious debate broke out over which could be trusted swords were drawn again, and the fight resumed.

  So it was that only one person actually approached the Grand Steward during the confusion, for she was on the right side of the swinging traps, and of neither faction.

  In the ash-filled labyrinths of the Grand Steward’s mind, a war raged. One half felt that it was fighting a terrible, ice-cold, logical monster that strangled it like a boa constrictor, its monstrous scales rattling dully like chains. The other half knew only that it battled a phantom of shadow and madness that knew no shape and melted in his grasp.

  And then suddenly, deep in the core of him that was both Right-Eye, Left-Eye and neither, it came to the Grand Steward that he was dying. The body he had known for so long was cooling, numbing, passing
from his control, like a demoralized army deserting in dribs and drabs under cover of night after a lost battle. No, sighed that greater soul as his two halves wrestled, mad with hate. Must it be this now? Must it be this forever? An unending, slow numbing in a dying mind?

  There was still some sight in his eyes, but everything was hazy now. Staring up, he found that his view of the ceiling’s delicate carvings was blocked by a blot. A blot with red hair and a pale, thin face.

  Small hands were trying to staunch his wounds. They were not doing it very well. They had made a knot out of a taster’s sash and were pressing it hard against the worst wound in his flank.

  Her face was upside down, but he could still make out her expression, and it filled him with a pang of curiosity. It was so long since he had seen such an expression that it took a while for him to recognize it as pity. Yes, it was true pity, without superiority or disdain. Just pain felt for pain. How strange it looked!

  For a moment, he felt a sting of the same for her. Pain for pain. Pity for everything that would inevitably happen to her after his passing.

  The world before his eyes fogged and extinguished, but now the maze of his mind was less dark than it had been. For the first time it seemed to him that he was not alone in there, that there was something gambolling at his side now like a monkey, something that was not the two great beasts of his consciousness, weakening under each other’s claws. It prattled and had a face that changed like flame, and it led him to a room where he was to be tested.

  In the great audience chamber he stood before an empty throne of marble, and stared down at the box he was challenged to open. He knew from long experience that such boxes only held horrors, but the capering companion at his side whispered that there might instead be miracles. He knelt, lifted the box and opened the lid the tiniest crack to peer inside.

  Through that narrow aperture he glimpsed, not skulking, stale nightmares, but blue eternities. Suddenly the song of the trapped flower was in his ears again, but now it no longer sounded mournful and imprisoned but free and jubilant.

  In an instant he saw the delusion of his five hundred years. He was not looking into a box; he was looking out of one. All these centuries his mind, his body, his world had been a box of horrors.

  He took one last breath, then pushed open the lid of his prison and escaped.

  Spoils

  Silence spread across the chamber like a dark pool. Every head turned to stare at the unmoving figure. It was as if they had lived all their lives at the mercy of a perilous but tireless ocean, and it had hushed and vanished in an instant, leaving stony chasms, and dripping abysses full of flailing, dying sea-beasts. Even the empty throne and the power it represented could not yet draw away their eyes.

  Neverfell crouched shivering by the side of the Grand Steward, knowing only that her fingers could find no trace of a pulse in his chest. It seemed to her that at the last he had smiled at her very slightly, and that smile still hovered on his face.

  It was during this silence that the twin doors to the audience chamber swung open to admit a stream of purple. Half a dozen Enquirers strode in, the two rearmost perfumiers with silk blindfolds. The crowd parted for them, revealing the body of the Grand Steward and the small figure crouched over him. Neverfell was suddenly very aware of the glassy blood gleaming on her hands and thimbles like varnish. The Enquirers faltered and halted, staring, then looked to Enquirer Treble.

  ‘He’s not breathing,’ Neverfell whispered. Her voice seemed to have shrivelled to nothing. ‘There’s no pulse – I tried to stop the bleeding . . .’

  Treble strode forward to join the new arrivals, and nobody tried to stop her. Suddenly she was not a solitary, out-of-breath woman with a sword. She was an authority figure with reinforcements.

  ‘Somebody turn off those pendulums!’ she snapped, her voice hoarse from her attempts to shout over the chaos. Several white-clad servants sprinted to hidden catches, and the razor-sharp pendulums ceased to slice the air. ‘Physicians! His Excellency needs attention!’ The two physicians hesitated, glancing apprehensively at each other’s bodyguard. ‘Oh, spite’s bite! Go and attend to His Excellency – both of you! If either of you sees the other doing anything odd or untoward, report it to me immediately. You, guards! Train your weapons on the doctors. Be ready for my word to shoot. And let nobody enter or leave this chamber! Everybody else, stay exactly where you are. You will all be questioned in time.’

  Shocked out of their statue-like paralysis, both guards and physicians showed nervous signs of obeying. Neverfell shuffled backwards on her knees as the doctors approached, unable to take her eyes from the fallen man, his glassy hair splayed out across the mosaic in a shimmering fan. She rubbed her fingers with her handkerchief, but they still had a sticky, pearly gloss to them. No one said anything to her, but from time to time carefully expressionless glances were thrown her way.

  Is it my fault? Did I make it worse?

  The doctors seemed reluctant to start their investigation, and Neverfell was just close enough to see their hands shaking.

  ‘Your Excellency – forgive this liberty . . .’ muttered one of them, apparently afraid even to touch their honoured patient without permission.

  ‘You might wish to make haste,’ Treble remarked icily. ‘After all, the Grand Steward gave orders that in the event of his death all his physicians and tasters were to be executed. Something to give you a little incentive to keep him alive.’ She was still recovering her breath, and took a moment to wipe her brow with her sleeve.

  This reminder seemed to have the desired effect. With new eagerness leather bags were opened, pearly ointments smeared on the Grand Steward’s nostrils and lips, burning censers wafted above his face, sigils drawn on his palms in a lurid yellow paste.

  Neverfell was also shaken by the Enquirer’s words, despite her fog of weariness and shock. The Grand Steward’s tasters were to be executed after his death. Whatever Treble had said about saving him, Neverfell was sure she had watched the Grand Steward die. Now it seemed he was to drag her after him.

  ‘Close the doors!’ commanded Treble as she paced, sword still in her hand. ‘Nobody leaves. When the Grand Steward recovers, he will pass judgment on all who act rashly at this moment. Physicians, report! Any progress?’

  The physicians gave a guilty jump. Their bags were now all but empty, and they seemed to be pouring something into the Grand Steward’s ear through the point of a tapering seashell, with a shakiness that looked a good deal like panic.

  ‘Ah . . . no, that is yes,’ spluttered one. ‘Ah, some promising avenues . . . more time, please, more time!’

  Time was given, and each second passed with the heavy tread of one who drags a body. But still there was no motion from the patient, and at last the physicians withdrew their trembling hands from the Grand Steward’s glassy form.

  ‘Enquirer . . .’ One doctor spoke up, his tones muted, terrified. ‘We have tried everything . . . every restorative including phoenix blood . . . our instruments detect not the slightest lingering trace of animatic essence . . . not even an ant-stamp of a pulse . . .’

  There was a deathly hush, followed by a murmur of incredulity and fear.

  Enquirer Treble’s step faltered. For a long moment she stood irresolute, breathing quickly, gripping her sword as if she wished to cut the physician’s words out of the air. Then the tip of her blade slowly drooped.

  ‘Peace be with him, and may his works linger long,’ she muttered, before rallying herself. ‘Everybody stay where you are! The Grand Steward has been assassinated, and every single one of you is now under Enquiry!’

  ‘Assassinated?’ The head guard’s exclamation was echoed by others around the room. ‘But His Excellency stabbed himself to death!’

  ‘Yes, after going completely insane without warning,’ retorted Treble. ‘There is malice at work here – poison or Perfume – and I intend to uncover it. Enquirers, to me!’

  The air still bristling with tension, the Enquiry’s
enquiry began. Statements were taken. The Enquiry’s perfumiers moved slowly around the room, drawing in deep breaths through their large, sensitive noses, and sniffed at each cringing witness in turn. Pockets and pouches were turned out, clothing searched for hidden cavities, and the remaining food and drink tested on willing and unwilling volunteers.

  The perfumiers were certain that the only Perfume that had been used in the chamber was the powder that had been thrown down to wake Right-Eye, and which contained nothing that would have caused anybody to go mad. Nobody who had tried the desserts showed any sign of trying to stab themselves.

  ‘No Perfume, so it must be poison,’ Enquirer Treble kept reciting under her breath. ‘It must be. Not in the desserts, then . . . but perhaps something else, something that has been consumed in its entirety, so that no trace remains to be tested – ah! I have it! The moth biscuits for damping the taste! Most of the biscuit would have been eaten in one mouthful by the Grand Steward, except for a tiny piece which would have been fed to . . . you.’

  The last word was spoken with soft menace. Neverfell, who was leaning against the wall and letting her mind fog, opened her eyes and saw that a pair of boots had stopped in front of her. Her eyes travelled up a set of purple robes, and found Enquirer Treble looking down at her with an expression of cool loathing.

  ‘Always you. Again and again, everything seems to lead back to you. Why is that?’ The Enquirer slowly lowered herself to her haunches, so that she was on an eye level with Neverfell. In another person this might have been a friendly gesture, an attempt to seem less intimidating. In this case, however, it made Neverfell think of a cat lowering its head to peer into a mousehole. ‘You consumed some kind of antidote before this tasting. Didn’t you?’