A Face Like Glass

by Frances Hardinge

  The Perfume spattered over Maxim Childersin’s head and shoulders. There was the tiniest pause, and then a scuffle of motion. Other figures appeared at the bottom of the shaft, squeaking and gabbling, goggle-clad and groping. They scrambled up after Maxim Childersin, seizing his ankles and coat-tails, pulling him down off the ladder.

  Zouelle felt her heart beat harshly as she watched her mentor disappear beneath a heap of Cartographers, his hands flailing at the mirrored sides of the shaft and failing to find a grip. As she started to climb again, her hands slippery with perspiration, she wondered how many Cartographers her Uncle Maxim had killed to hide this shaft, and whether those below had any notion of it.

  She was not sure that they would care in any case, even after having just seen him cut down some of their number. Cartographers had no room in their mind for malice or revenge. They would not hate him, or try to hurt him.

  They only wanted to talk to him.

  Caverna was falling apart.

  Enquirer Treble knew it, in every nerve and fibre of her body. She heard it in every fleeting chaotic echo that the twisting tunnels brought to her. She felt it in the tremors of the ground as distant battles let loose with their heaviest weapons, or dissolved into stampede. She found it in every report that floated to her, like scraps of a tattered banner. And still she stormed and shouted and fought the chaos, delaying the moment of utter collapse, forcing her underlings for just a little longer to be more afraid of her than of the descending anarchy.

  ‘How could you lose an entire rebel army?’

  Nobody had an answer. They could only report the facts. The drudge horde had been successfully chased from the palace gates. They had been successfully contained within a set of middle-city passages as planned. Their routes back to Drudgery had been successfully cut off. And then, within an hour, all four hundred of them had disappeared.

  ‘Well – send scouts! Send a group of . . .’

  Treble trailed off mid-sentence. She had, of course, been about to suggest sending a set of drudge runners out into the tunnels to report on proceedings. A fine plan in any situation where the drudges themselves were not the problem.

  With every passing moment, she became more and more aware of the thousand ways in which the running of Caverna had relied upon the silent toil of the drudges. Over and over she tried to do or arrange some simple thing, to order a message sent, or debris cleared away, or rubble brought up from the mines to create a barricade, or provisions fetched, only to remember that drudges were not at her disposal. She felt like an amputee, reaching out reflexively with an arm she no longer had.

  The drudges, the invisible machinery of Caverna, had ground to a halt. Nobody was clearing away the wreckage of battle or hauling up water. Nobody was bringing up grubs for the lanterns, some of which even now were starting to dim and flicker. And when the stifling darkness came, the Court factions would still be tearing each other apart like fighting ferrets.

  ‘Go there yourself, and take two men with you. Drudges do not melt away like chocolate. I want a report within half an hour!’

  Her men departed, and she guessed that even now they were considering changing their allegiance as soon as they left the palace, if indeed they were not already in the pay of somebody else. She felt a sudden need to be alone, to clear her head for a moment in the one room where fear did not choke the air like smoke. When she reached the Grand Steward’s audience chamber, she found it unguarded and pushed open the door.

  All around the walls, the lanterns glimmered into faint life, and the white walls and pillars gleamed like those of a tomb. A tomb for the Grand Steward, and perhaps a tomb for Caverna too.

  How did he manage it? How did he keep track of a hundred threads, plots, patterns, conspiracies for so many centuries? Perhaps I am a fool, thinking I can hold together his city after his death.

  Motion caught her eye, and she realized that the sharpened pendulums that had been installed to defend the throne were swinging to and fro across the room with silken swishes, just as they had on the day of the Grand Steward’s death. At the far end of the room, she heard the sound of somebody slowly exhaling a carefully held breath. A distant lantern flared into life and showed her that there was a figure sitting on the throne. He was clad from head to foot in scaled armour, his face hidden by a goggled mask. It was the Kleptomancer, and he held a strange bow levelled directly at her chest.

  ‘I knew you would come here sooner or later.’ The intruder’s voice was perfectly level, like a glass of still water. ‘Like an old hunting dog to bay on your master’s grave.’

  After dodging so many murderous blades, Treble cursed herself for letting herself be caught off guard and without a weapon in her hand. No grovelling, she resolved. I have stormed my way through life; I can storm my way out of it.

  ‘I have no time to talk to thieves or assassins,’ she said. ‘Either kill me or surrender.’

  ‘I had a third option in mind,’ said the Kleptomancer. ‘I would like to help you save Caverna. You can hear her dying screams. So can I.’

  ‘And what can you do?’ The hopelessness of the situation descended upon Treble, folding its dark wings around her. ‘A madman with a bow, who cannot even remember his own name.’

  ‘You are the only person trying to keep order,’ answered the thief, ‘but you have everything upside down. You face rebellion from the drudges, and you try to crush and terrify them back into submission. You face disorder from the Court, and you try to reason with the courtiers, to bring them back into line.

  ‘Those drudges that still remain in Caverna have tasted rebellion and have nothing to lose but lives filled with misery. Fear will no longer work. You must bargain with them. The courtiers are crazed with their own greed and rivalry. Reason will no longer work. You must terrify them.’

  ‘How?’ The Enquirer could hardly bear to see a thief defiling her master’s throne, but there was something so calm in his words she could not quite cast them aside as the babblings of a maniac. ‘How should I bargain with these drudges?’

  ‘Talking to them would be a good start. You will hear their demands soon enough.’

  ‘And how should I terrify the Court?’ Pride prevented Treble from admitting how sadly the Enquiry was diminished in numbers.

  ‘By threatening them with something more terrible than the drudge rising, more dangerous than their rivals, more heartless than Childersin and all the other would-be tyrants. Me.

  ‘Enquirer, right now I have two dozen ways of destroying everybody in the city. I have spent ten years putting them in place a scrap at a time, in between meaningless thefts and shallow shows. At this moment the water-lifting belts do not turn because I have sabotaged them, nor shall they unless I choose to repair them. The palace servants have confided to me all the secret measures put in place by the late Grand Steward, including those that would lay waste to all within. Furthermore, I may not have gunpowder, but I scarcely need it when I have True Cheese. Right now I have wedges of Stackfalter Sturton placed deep in rocky walls where, if they explode, they shall flood whole districts with poison gases, and water from the underground rivers.’

  ‘You would not do these things!’ Enquirer Treble was driven by outrage to take several steps towards the throned figure, in spite of the levelled bow, in spite of the swinging pendulums. ‘If you destroy Caverna, you destroy yourself, and Drudgery from which you came!’

  ‘Enquirer Treble, I am what you have called me. A madman. That fact is well known. The Court will believe such threats from me as they would from few others. Drudgery, as I have said, has nothing to lose and everything to gain. And now I will tell you what is happening out in the city that you cannot see. I will tell you who is fighting whom, and how they can be stopped. I will even carry your messages to them. And, faced with our ultimatum, they will crumble.’

  ‘Our . . . ultimatum?’ Enquirer Treble had halted just before the swing of the pendulums, and against her face she could feel the breeze of their passing. A gulf
of madness was opening at her feet, but there was no other path available to her.

  ‘Yes, ours. The last Grand Steward could be murdered because he could be found. I do not intend to be found. This is the only time I shall sit in this throne, the only time I shall give orders in person. Which means that I shall need somebody to run my city for me, and carry out my commands. You will be my face, my voice and my hands.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because you are halfway honest, Enquirer, and it has not killed you yet. Because when you came into this room, it was not to try out the throne. Because you will fight a fight long after it becomes hopeless. And because I can predict you. And that is how I know that you will leave me now, go to your room and read the packet of orders I have prepared for you.’

  Treble would have liked to defy his expectations, but in truth she was overwhelmed by a surge of relief. She had, she now realized, entered that room in the hopeless hope of receiving orders that would give shape to her life once more. Now she had them.

  After Treble had departed, the Kleptomancer sat for a while longer on the throne of white, considering the situation carefully.

  ‘Yes,’ he said to himself at last. ‘Yes, I believe I can see how things will go. Everything is secure. My new hunting dog is good enough that she will bring all the hares to ground.’

  It was done, then. He had completed his most recent objective, and was now permitted to open yet another of the letters he had left for himself. Pulling it out of his pocket, he broke the seal, opened it and read.

  If you are reading this, you have successfully stolen Caverna. Your Great Plan has reached fruition. Enjoy the rewards of your success. Incidentally, your sanity is probably a ruin, and you should avoid drinking any more True Wine for the rest of your life.

  He examined the letter for secret postscripts, held it to the light, shook it and peered at the seal, but it yielded no further information. For a long, long time he sat there staring at it.

  So that was my Great Plan?

  Here he was, unexpectedly at the end of all his machinations. He stared unseeing at the paper in his hand, realization slowly unfolding in his breast like a rose.

  Of course. This was why he had become a master thief, to achieve this theft of thefts, this masterpiece of larceny. All the time, fascinating and terrible Caverna had been his goal. Whilst other Cartographers had sighed in vain after the beauty of her treacherous geography, he had decided to win her with cunning and threats.

  All along Caverna had been his opponent and his prize, and she had never suspected it for a moment. He had fooled her, fought her and defeated her. She would be furious, no doubt, would hate him, rail against him and look for ways to destroy him, but he had outmanoeuvred her and now she had no choice but to play things his way. Unlike her earlier favourites, he was her lord, not a plaything to be tossed aside when she was bored.

  And yet, for the first time in ten years, he found himself at something of a loss.

  I have succeeded. I have won. I rule the city.

  I wonder what I was planning to do with it?

  The pearly light grew brighter and brighter as Neverfell climbed. She did not let herself look up yet, but she could now see the creases in her grimed knuckles, with a starkness that had never been possible by traplight. The air was cold and fresh, and sang in her ears.

  Out, beat her heart. Out, out, out.

  ‘No traps . . .’ Somebody above her was panicking. ‘There’s no traps . . .’ And of course there were no traps in the glassy shaft.

  ‘We don’t need them!’ she shouted upward, hearing her voice echo tinnily. ‘We’ll never need them again! Haven’t you noticed? You’re breathing! Breathing!’ She was filling her own lungs again and again, feeling a rush of air so fresh that it prickled in her chest and across the skin of her face.

  A strange noise echoed from above, a liquid, metallic string of notes, ending in a long and eerie whistle.

  ‘What’s that sound?’ went up the whisper, and there were a few terrified gasps. Something warm was running down Neverfell’s cheek, and she realized that it was a tear.

  ‘A bird,’ she whispered. ‘It’s a bird. A wild bird, singing.’

  Somewhere above a giant was sighing, yawning and then roaring. The drudges in the shaft dissolved into a clamour of dismay.

  ‘It’s the wind!’ Neverfell was blind, mad, hungry for the overground, and it was all she could do not to tear her way past the others on the ladder. ‘Come on! I’ll show it to you! I’ll show it to you all!’

  And then the dull grey light was growing brighter, and the ladder ran out, and she was climbing out of the mouth of a rocky spout on to a plain of rubble. Above her was no-roof, and no-roof, and no-roof, up and up and up until she wanted to scream for joy, and above that the great lead and silver sky-billows went rolling slow as smoke and vast as a hundred mountains. In among it a little piece of bright silver was washed and tumbled like a fingernail clipping, and she knew it was the moon. All around misshapen rocks lurched and leaned, as if they were craning for a better look at the fugitives. Some rose in unsteady posts and lintels, showing that they were the last crumbling remains of walls long since tumbled and worn away. To one side loomed the huge black mass of the mountain, carving a great expanse out of the sky.

  ‘Look! It’s . . . it’s . . . look!’

  She spread her arms as if she were a plant soaking up the sky. Then she became aware that everybody else around her was hunkering down to the ground, staring about them like hutch-bred rabbits. None of them looked at the sky. None of them dared look more than ten feet away from them. All kept their eyes fixed on the ground.

  ‘Neverfell . . .’ Zouelle was crouched beside her, clutching at her sleeve, her eyes also fixed upon the ground. ‘Is this . . . is this your overground?’

  Neverfell choked back the exultant laugh that had been forming in her lungs. With a wrench, she suddenly saw this dark, looming landscape as her friends did, her friends who were flinching from the incomprehensible wind and the chill gaze of the moon.

  ‘No – just a bit of it. Just the start. It gets better.’ She raised her voice. ‘You have to follow me. Downhill, this way. And we have to go fast. Whatever happens in Caverna – whoever takes over – somebody will come after us. Somebody will want to stop us escaping.’

  Progress was slow. Drudges clung to one another, staring about each other, and Neverfell was aware that a few had turned back, preferring to climb back down into the depths of the underground city. She could not stop them. They were thrown into panic by the rough cries of crows, the booming of buzzards, every mysterious grating and whistle that echoed among the crags.

  The light all around was getting brighter, and something inside her chest started to swell until she felt it might float her aloft like a balloon. Colours were showing in the rocks that cracked and crumbled underfoot. There was an amber glow in the sky ahead now, a gleaming crust on the underbellies of the clouds.

  ‘Everybody! Put on your smoked glasses!’

  There was much fumbling in packs, and suddenly hundreds of drudges and palace servants wore spectacles with round, dark lenses. It was part of the preparations made for every fugitive, for who knew how tender, cave-dwelling eyes would deal with true daylight?

  And then the first spear of sunlight showed over the rippled horizon, and everybody forgot to flee or cower. The eastern sky lazily paled to peach, with frills of white cloud lost in it, and the wind ceased its restless roaring, freshened and found purpose. The dark and ominous rocks slowly flushed with purples, dark reds, dull golds, blue-greys. Birds were black bullets, too fast to be seen, and air was wide and wild and had somewhere to be in a hurry. There were scents of baked dust and dry dew and the hot-cold smells of a world awakening.

  The slope laid itself out before them, jagged as a toothline, descending towards the foothills and then the blue and gold dunes, and somewhere beyond them the world where the trees waved and the brooks ran and the seas champed at the
bits of the shores.

  And Neverfell led the way down the slope at a run. She slithered and stumbled and fell and recovered and galloped and leaped and there was no wall to stop her and no roof to bang her head. Above her the pale sky was turning fiercely blue like a mermaid’s eye. The wind ran with her, its roaring as loud as the breath in her ears.

  Epilogue

  By the oasis west of Mount Cusp, young Pelrun the goatherd met with a strange pilgrimage. He knew at once that they belonged to the little people who lived beneath the mountain, for they were small, pale and had faces like dolls. All wore discs of dark glass on their eyes, and held cloth shields on sticks over their heads to keep off the sun. They spoke only their own strange tongue, but he cut the fruit from some prickly pears and gave it to them to show he meant no harm. The little people tasted the soft pink fruit, and though their countenances were as stone several of them wept, he knew not why.

  He brought them to his village, and one among the fairies, a golden-haired maiden who was taller than the rest, used signs and mime to trade a vial of rare Wine for camels, water, cloaks, and guides across the desert. Pelrun himself travelled with the strangers as far as the grassy plains.

  At the time he did not know whom he was escorting. Later, many would speak of Zouelle the Vintner and Grandible the Cheesemaster, the first Craftsmen to leave their home among the little people and bring their magical Crafts to the overground for others to learn. Pelrun saw only that these fairies were uncommonly fascinated by common things, that they could spend hours raptly gazing at a butterfly, or cupping handfuls of stream water as if the sparkles were jewels.

  One thing struck him as strange above all else. Among these fairy folk there travelled a young human girl with flame-red hair who gabbled happily with the little people but seemed to know no human tongue. He guessed that she must have been stolen by the fairies very young, and raised by them as one of their own.