Nearest and Dearest
Grandible huffed as he turned a particularly obstreperous Whingeing Bluepepper, the clamped cheese wheezing and sneezing out clouds of chalk-blue powder in complaint. Every time he used Neverfell’s clamp-and-mangle turning machine, it made him more aware of the silence in his tunnels. There was no red-haired sprite to scamper along beside him now, her babble as bothersome as an itch. The prattle that had cluttered his days had been swept away in one motion, leaving them stark and empty.
He had known the first moment he laid eyes on Neverfell’s face that she was an outsider. After tiring of the Court’s venomous deceit, he had looked at her and seen at last somebody who could not lie to him, somebody he could trust. And so he had decided to hide her and protect her from the rest of Caverna, for he knew that her guileless face would leave her helpless among the city dwellers, like a duckling in a den of cats.
But Neverfell had not been happy in the cheese tunnels. She had grown too fast and moved too fast, and there had never been enough room for her. He had not told her she came from outside, for why torture her with thoughts of a sky she could never see? In spite of all his pains, though, the forgotten sky had called to her, and he had always known it. Would things have been different if he had told Neverfell the truth?
Wishes are thorns, he told himself sharply. They do us no good, just stick into our skin and hurt us.
Just as he was reflecting on the silence, however, it was broken. The entrance bell jangled, and then with increased ferocity jangled a second time.
He took down a heavily spiked morning star from a hook, and slouched through the tunnels to his front door. He pulled back the little peep-hatch, and directed a lowering look into the passage beyond.
It quickly became clear that there were two people standing outside, both striving to place their face at the peephole. Thus he had only a view of an angry eye and a very insistent chin.
‘What do you want?’
The reply was an enraged duet, all of it extremely loud and, as a consequence, only partly comprehensible.
‘. . . sent by Maxim Childersin of the Council . . .’
‘. . . Enquirer Treble sends her best respects . . .’
‘. . . anything you can tell us about the whereabouts of your ex-apprentice Neverfell . . .’
‘. . . fled from the Childersin carriage . . .’
‘. . . afraid for her safety and would very much like to talk . . .’
‘. . . to the safety of Enquiry headquarters to talk . . .’
‘Lost her, have you?’ interrupted Grandible. ‘Careless. And suppose she did run back to me, the way you seem to think. What makes you think I’d hand her over to the likes of you? Either of you?’
There was a pause, then the duet resumed, the tone far colder and more formal.
‘Cheesemaster Grandible, by the power entrusted in me, I demand that you open . . .’
‘. . . a warrant to search your premises . . .’
Grandible’s broad, yellow-stained thumb flipped a switch, and the duet gave way to coughing. He could just about see the two figures staggering away, clutching at their noses and streaming eyes. Clearly neither was a match for the scent of an over-ripe Plinkton Hummerbud. He slammed the peephole shut.
Neverfell had run away. He did not need to know her reasons; it was enough to know that she had apparently fled both the Council and the Enquiry. Furthermore, he was all too aware that both messengers would now be convinced that Neverfell had indeed reached him and was tucked away inside his cheese tunnels.
Let them think that. The long-awaited siege of his tunnels was coming after all, as he had always known it would. He was ready for them. And if both the Enquiry and the Council put all their efforts into besieging his tunnels then that might buy more time for Neverfell, wherever she was.
‘Grandible did what?’ Treble stared at her scorched and reeking messenger. ‘Then ten to one the girl is inside. How did she bypass our checkpoints? Can the girl tunnel through solid rock? Never mind. Divert men from the search and lay siege to that insolent milk-curdler. We cannot have anybody defying the Enquiry with such disdain.’
‘Grandible did what?’ Madame Appeline sat bolt upright, and only relaxed again when her companion ran absent-minded fingers through the black waves of her hair.
‘He has sealed himself in, and is firing jets of Spitting Jess acid at anybody who comes near his door. They have cut off his water and deliveries, but it is fairly plain that he has laid down supplies. It sounds as if he may have the girl hidden, but . . . I wonder. It may be that he is trying to draw attention and manpower away from her real hiding place.
‘I do not intend to lay siege to Grandible’s tunnels – the Enquiry will do that for us, if I know Treble. My men will be continuing the hunt for her elsewhere.’
‘You promised me that you could keep her under control,’ accused Madame Appeline. ‘You said there was no danger, that whatever happened—’
‘And I will. I will keep your secrets safe, Vesperta. Trust me.’ Maxim Childersin smiled.
Quietly and for the thousandth time, Madame Appeline cursed herself. Every one of Maxim Childersin’s small, dark smiles she had carefully designed for him at one time or another, to suit his face and his character. And now these smiles had more power over her than anything else in the world. It was humiliating, a Facesmith caught on a hook of her own devising.
‘I think,’ mused Childersin, ‘that we should spread the word that Grandible’s tunnels are under siege far and wide. That, if nothing else, may persuade her to come out of hiding. Her greatest weakness is her desire to protect her friends . . .’
It was a fine plan, and gave a painful twist to the cords of Madame Appeline’s heart. She knew that Maxim Childersin did consider loyalty a weakness, or at least all loyalty that was not to family. She wanted to know that his first loyalty was to her, and she begrudged every hour he spent with the Childersins, every moment he spent thinking about them or for that matter anybody else. Sometimes she felt she would like to engulf him like a trap-lantern, and never share him with anyone or anything else again, not even the light. Even his obsession with ruling Caverna pained her, as if the city were a woman, and a rival.
On another day, Neverfell’s Cartographer garb might have drawn more attention on the long, winding tunnel down from Musselband to Drudgery. Of late, however, the Cartographers’ mood had changed from restless to downright skittish. They had been appearing in unexpected and inexplicable mobs, gabbling of shifts and changes, of Twisters and Tweaks, of Westerleaps and Southerslides. They seemed irresistibly drawn by certain places, where they gathered to stare at walls, or lay their ears against floors. Thus loose Cartographers were becoming a more familiar sight, and people avoided Neverfell but did not seem to marvel at her.
Once in Drudgery, Erstwhile led Neverfell through a baffling labyrinth of ‘short cuts’, most of them mere cracks and crannies that she could barely squeeze through, until Neverfell felt as if she must have been scraped even thinner than before, like a knife whetted between stones.
Deep in the bowels of the Undercity, they arrived at last at their chosen base of operations. Neverfell had realized quickly that there was only so long she could spend as a wandering Cartographer before somebody captured her and tucked her into a box. However there was one other profession in Caverna that spent most of their time wearing masks.
The crèche matron was clearly suspicious of the grimy bandages that had been hastily used to conceal Neverfell’s features, but quiet words were had and a bargain struck. Seven eggs were handed over in exchange for a set of wooden masks.
‘All right,’ whispered the matron as she tucked the eggs in her apron pocket. ‘You can stay here and work as a nurse, but if there’s anything fishy in this I want to know nothing about it. Understand?’
Her new young recruit nodded, gripping the wooden training masks. As she looked at them, she felt an eerie feeling in the pit of her stomach. Here were all Erstwhile’s expressions, carefully carved. They had always seemed so entirely his that it felt wrong to see them set out in smooth, impersonal pinewood.
She looked up to see Erstwhile making ready to depart.
‘Holing up here is a good plan,’ he conceded grudgingly. ‘Just stay put, and keep your head down.’
‘You be careful too. If we’re right, and those recent murders really were rehearsals, then somebody might be looking out for people asking questions about them.’
‘Oh, we’re right,’ Erstwhile muttered grimly. ‘Don’t care what old woman Treble says. I’m sure of it. Sure as I’ve got eyes and teeth. And don’t you worry about me.’ With that he was on his rusty unicycle once more, and skimming away down the tunnel.
In the long craggy crèche itself the silence was uncanny. From row upon row of tiny beds stared a hundred small faces, barely blinking, some plum-pink crumpled newborns, some with a down of wispy hair on their heads, some even old enough to sit up, but all with no more expression than a row of buttons. There were no baby-cries for food, light or company.
The only sounds were the faint murmuring of baby breath, and the clip of the nurses’ tread as they walked between the beds in their wooden masks. As they drew near each bed the babies stared up at the mask, their small features struggling to imitate it. Those that succeeded were the first to receive milk from the nurses’ pewter bottles, those that failed were denied milk until they did better. Occasionally the nurses even stopped to help prod infant features into the right positions, as if they were moulding very delicate clay.
None of the other nurses reacted to the arrival of a new recruit among them, and only somebody with sharp eyes could have noticed that this newest nurse was younger than the others, or that the hair in her fat pigtail was freshly dyed.
Straddling his unicycle, Erstwhile skimmed and dodged through the alleys of Drudgery. The unicycle was almost a part of him, his other legs. He could halt in an instant, twist on a penny, hop sideways like a starling, and at the moment he was in a flood of other boys doing the same. The errand boys swooped like sparrows, and called to each other in passing trills, whistles or slaps on the back.
There were Enquirers loose in Drudgery. This was to be expected. What did surprise him was that there were not more. Previously, after Neverfell had been kidnapped by the Kleptomancer, the Enquiry had turned out in force, and had clearly been men with a mission. This time there were a few checkpoints, a few pointed questions and a high reward offered, nothing more.
Good. The bloodhounds don’t know she’s down here. But Childersin is a different kettle of scorpions. Who knows what that sly old dog is doing? He’ll have spies down here. Drudge spies. Listening out for word of Neverfell. And listening out for people asking just the sort of questions I’ve got to ask right now.
Skim, skim, sparrow hop, screech. A grin, a chatter with a treadmill trudger.
‘Murder of Seb Blink?’ The trudger shook his head slowly, his eyes grey and heavy with twelve hours of watching wooden boards rolling and rolling beneath his feet. ‘No, no mystery there. Brother killed him. Pushed him into the mill race just down from Greep’s Dolor. Saw it myself, me and twenty others, while we were treading board. Took us all by surprise, though – they seemed so close.’
Flit, weave, veer and squeak to a halt. Drinking water at a drip pool, gossiping with the girls washing the dust out of their hair.
‘Yes, it’s true.’ A thin girl with her head on one side twisted her wet hair to wring it out. ‘Knock Parlet killed his wife. Thirty years together, then he does for her with a mattock. They found him next to her, weeping and bleating his confession, till the Enquiry took him away.’
Swerve, duck, dodge and slow, rust specks spattering from his wheels. Helping a bent-over old woman haul a cart to the top of a sloping tunnel, while she unfolded her one big piece of news like someone shyly showing their wedding dress among its mothballs.
‘Yes, I knew Job Littletoad. Never would have thought it. Always such a doting son until . . . well, I suppose he snapped. Strange, I met him just an hour before he did it, and he was as calm as pie. But he never denied what he done, they say.’
And so on, through the crowds, picking up information the way a sparrow pecks up crumbs. He heard of murder after murder, and by the time he made his way back to the drudge crèche where he had left Neverfell, his mind felt blood-dipped.
He hopped off his unicycle, slung it over one shoulder and walked in, to be met by one of the most furious whispered arguments he had ever seen. All three of the masked nurses were gesturing a lot, to show that they were shouting at the bottom of their voices. However the argument was clearly two against one, the matron and senior nurse turning on a skinny, black-haired figure that he recognized at once as Neverfell, from the way she was twisting her hands.
‘What’s going on?’ Erstwhile started to ask in a normal tone, but was silenced by a three-way hush, and fingers pointed in the direction of the crèche, where most of the babies appeared to be asleep.
‘You said there would be no trouble!’ hissed the matron. ‘And yet within a day – mere hours – this girl was sneaking around the crèche trying to teach one of the children a new Face! Not a drudge Face at all.’
‘A horrible Face too,’ the senior nurse added. ‘Stretched, bulging eyes. I saw it before she slapped her mask back on.’
‘It won’t happen again,’ Erstwhile snapped, then grabbed Neverfell’s arm and pulled her away to a corner. ‘What goes through your head, Nev? I was only gone three hours! All you had to do was sit here with your mask on. And you took it off to frighten babies? Did they see anything except the Face you were making? Do they know who you are?’
‘No. I don’t think so,’ Neverfell answered softly. ‘I’m sorry . . . but I . . . I couldn’t bear just teaching the babies to look obedient. I wanted to give them a new Face, to use when they’re angry or upset. Only I can’t do Faces, so I sort of used my fingers to pull out the corners of my mouth, and pull down the skin under my eyes . . . oh, it makes you look like a deformed frog, but it’s something! And it’s a Face you can teach and learn really easily, without a Facesmith or masks or anything. You just pull your face about.’
‘Well, aren’t you the Lady Bountiful with your thousand faces,’ Erstwhile muttered nastily. Her words were a jagged reminder of his own limited Faces. ‘Try to remember that I’m risking my neck to keep you alive! Pranks like this will get us both killed. Now, hush up and listen to what I found out.’
With some reluctance, he went on to repeat all that he had learned of the murders in Drudgery.
‘Something smells rank in this, but I can’t figure out what it is. It looks like they really were all murders of drudges by drudges. They got confessions for two of ’em and witnesses for a lot of the others. And all the murders were done different ways as well.’
It was odd looking across and seeing Neverfell in a mask, almost like old times in the cheese tunnels. Somewhere behind the wood, though, he knew that her face was going through kaleidoscopic changes as she thought.
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed suddenly. ‘So that’s it! Listen, Erstwhile – we’ve been thinking about it the wrong way, and so has Enquirer Treble. We’ve been looking for poison victims who went mad and killed themselves, the way the Grand Steward did.
‘But it wasn’t the victims who were poisoned, Erstwhile! It was the murderers. The poison made them go mad and kill the person dearest to them, suddenly and for no good reason. But the person closest to the Grand Steward was the Grand Steward, because there were two of him. So when somebody put the poison in his moth biscuit both halves of him went mad and started trying to kill each other.’
For a long while Erstwhile had no words. He did not care about the Grand Steward one speck. His mind was full of images of drudge wives, drudge parents, drudge children, coming home and being suddenly attacked by those they loved and trusted most.
‘It’s the worst,’ was all he could say. ‘It’s all we have down here, each other. All treading the same wheel, shoulder to shoulder. It’s one thing murdering us. But . . . using us to kill each other, that’s . . .’ He ran his fingernails through his hair and scrabbled it haywire. ‘I changed my mind. All those things you said about taking down Maxim Childersin. If there’s half a pebble I can throw into the scales of that, I’m in. I don’t care if he’s got the world in a goblet, I want to see his head on a spike. And I bet I can find others down here who will see things the same way.’
‘You mean, you’re going to tell people about it? Is that safe?’
‘I won’t tell anybody who you are, just about the poison. And no –’ Erstwhile shook his head stonily – ‘even that isn’t safe. But we need help, don’t we? We got to take some chances.’
A few moments later he threw Neverfell a hesitant glance.
‘That frog-face. You couldn’t teach it to me, could you? Maybe I’d like to have a Face for being angry after all.’