Beauty and the Beasts
Leaving the tasters’ chambers was a good deal like entering a dream, and after a few paces into the courtyard beyond Neverfell was gazing around her with a dream-like lack of fear. A corridor lined in midnight-blue velvet, studded with pearls for stars, led on to a broad tunnel coloured in dull, pre-dawn violet. This opened out on to a set of rooms where dawnlike streaks of pink and gold streaked the ceiling, followed by courtyards that glittered with gilt, quartz and tiny crystal mirrors, illuminated by hundreds of gold-painted lanterns decorated with stylized suns. The Grand Steward is the sun, it seemed to be saying. When you walk towards the heart of the palace, you walk into the day.
She was just stepping out into a courtyard when something jumped on to her shoulder, tickling her face with fur and curling a rough but delicate tail round her throat. She gave a squeal of shock, and turned her head to find her nose almost touching a tiny, pinkish, flattened face, framed by wild white hair.
‘Monkey!’ she squeaked in glee as much as surprise. ‘A real monkey!’ It was no bigger than a small cat, and wore a blue sequinned jacket and a tiny black velvet cap with a trailing blue feather. Neverfell instantly loved its clever black fingers and the mournful puckering of its pale brows. When it doffed its cap and turned its lips inside out in a broad, fearless grin, she burst out laughing.
‘You startled me! Oh no, no, thank you!’ Neverfell had to put up a hand to dissuade it from pushing half a meringue into her mouth with its spare hand. ‘No, I can’t, sorry! I’m not allowed to eat strange cake. Where did you come from, anyway?’ Looking around her, she could see no sign of the monkey’s owner. Her small passenger decided that her moment of distraction was a good time to clamber over her face. ‘Stop that!’ hissed Neverfell, through laughter and fur. ‘I’m on a secret mission, and there are enough people staring at me without monkeys pushing meringue in my ear . . . OW!’
The monkey leaped down from Neverfell’s shoulder and bounded away into the darkness, one of its fists still gripping the few red hairs that it had yanked without warning from her head.
‘Fine!’ she called after it. ‘That’s the last time you get to ride on my shoulder!’
Unsurprisingly there was no answer, and Neverfell decided to hurry on before anything else jumped on her and pulled her hair out.
This was a world full of strange, lofty and gorgeous denizens. Ladies drifted by in ermine, with damask trains six feet long. A pair of Cartographers capered unsteadily past wearing earmuffs and padlocked gags, occasionally miming to each other or waving weird structures made of wire. Now and then Neverfell pinched her nose hard as some statuesque lady or lord drifted past trailing a subtle reek of Perfume. One glittering lady emitted a faint buzz as she passed, which confused Neverfell until she realized that her black and gold hair ornaments were made of live wasps, their stings removed.
Many of the courtiers, she noticed now, had their own monkeys with them, usually dressed in their household’s livery. Watching a white-backed monkey teeter by with a silver tray of tiny cakes, Neverfell remembered Zouelle telling her that since courtiers were allowed no servants inside the palace, for fear of them bringing in their own assassins and soldiers, many instead brought monkeys that had been trained to act as small, hairy attendants.
Neverfell was not blind to the way she was gathering gazes like spider threads. Time and again richly dressed figures glided coolly past her, only for the clop of their tread and swish of their clothes to cease a few paces later, a tingle on the back of Neverfell’s neck telling her that they had halted to watch her go. Ruff rustled against ruff as heads drew close to whisper. Neverfell was surprised to find herself thinking wistfully of her mask. Nonetheless, she took care to peer at every beautifully presented Face that passed.
Sooner or later she would see a Face that stirred her heart strangely in the way that Madame Appeline’s haggard smile had. Any courtier wearing a Face from the Tragedy Range would be a customer of Madame Appeline, and might know where the Facesmith might be found.
Following Neverfell should have been easy. She was distinctive, undisguised and guileless, and since she kept glancing over her shoulder at the wonders of the Court her unsuspected shadow had ample opportunity to observe her thoughts and intentions writ large across her face.
Soon, however, he was learning an important lesson. Being able to read somebody’s thoughts is all very well, but if they have the attention span of a summer-addled gnat this does not necessarily help you guess what they will do next.
Neverfell’s face could be read like a book, and what the book said was this:
Wonder where this corridor goes . . . I’d probably better keep an eye out for any sign of danger . . . Ooh, look at the llama! Let’s run across and stare at its knees! Actually, llamas are scary, so let’s back off – everybody’s watching me and maybe I should go and talk to the stringy-looking woman with the warts on her – wait a minute, are those dates on the table? Mmm, dates. But I’m not allowed to eat them. So I’ll climb up on to this balcony instead!
Her zigzags were tantalizing. Sometimes it seemed that she was about to veer off into the lonelier corridors where a cry could be muffled with ease, but a moment later she would gallop back into the thick of the throngs. Still he followed and remained alert, for experience had taught him that opportunities could come suddenly, and patience was usually rewarded.
At last Neverfell discovered a courtyard that seemed on first glance to be thronged with giants. The great figures were evenly spaced and some twelve feet tall, heads bowed as they strained to bear the weight of the ceiling on their shoulders. On closer inspection these proved to be cunningly carved and decorated pillars running from floor to ceiling, faces set in grimaces as if they really were struggling to hold up the tons of rock above.
Shorter human figures drifted among them, admiring the painted canvases leaning against the walls, listening to the musicians who plied their instruments softly in corners, spending a moment here and there to hear the efforts of a poet. Although Neverfell did not know it, this was a place where artists, musicians and providers of more curious services gathered in the hope of earning themselves powerful patrons.
Two dozen heads turned as she broke into an impulsive sprint. By the time she halted in front of a silver-clad noblewoman, both of the latter’s male companions had their hands on their sword hilts.
‘Excuse me! I – that’s such a lovely Face you were wearing just then. It was so sad and strange and . . . like one of those paintings of the moon or something.’ Neverfell saw the lady’s shoulders relax very slightly, her eyes moving rapidly and with interest over Neverfell’s own face. ‘I just wanted to ask where it came from. Is it one of Madame Appeline’s?’
‘How clever of you!’ The silver-painted mouth of the woman smiled. She stepped forward, and the chain-mail mesh of her long dress chimed as she did so. Bodkins glittered in her hair. ‘Yes, a sweet little Face from the Tragedy Range, but tweaked to suit me. I can never bear to take a Face from a range without having it adjusted.’ She drifted closer, and curled a grey-gloved hand companionably but firmly through Neverfell’s arm. ‘You must be His Excellency’s new food taster, am I right?’
Neverfell nodded, a little daunted to find her fame so well established.
‘Then we simply must take a little promenade. I’ll tell you where I get all my Faces, but you really must share your Face secrets with me in return.’ The lady raised her paradribble, and held it over both Neverfell’s head and her own. ‘How did you manage such extraordinary effects? Is it true that you’re an outsider?’
‘I . . . I think so.’ Neverfell answered hesitantly. ‘I don’t really remember. I’m sorry, I don’t have any Face secrets, just runaway features. I can’t control them. But I really want to talk to Madame Appeline. Do you know where I could find her?’
‘No.’ Her companion gave a speculative silver smile. ‘No, but if you are looking for Facesmiths I can do better than that.’
Neverfell was led to two women seated by an obsidian fountain that spewed crystal arcs of rose water into a star-shaped pool. As soon as they noticed her approach, both women started to their feet, one dropping her sketch pad. Neverfell recognized them instantly as the two Facesmiths who had been staring at her during the banquet.
Introductions were made. The silvery lady, Lady Adamant, belonged to a celebrated chocolate family. The two Facesmiths were sisters, Simpria and Snia de Meina. The silver lady gave the two sisters a meaningful smile as she took her leave, and was rewarded by an equally meaningful nod of acknowledgement.
‘How very charming it is to meet you!’ Snia was dumpier than her sister, with wide, watery eyes and a thick voice that made Neverfell think of fudge. She was wearing a Face that looked sleek and expensive, the warmth of her smile tempered with a regal dreaminess. ‘We were just talking about you today . . .’
‘. . . and wondering who we needed to bribe to get to meet you . . .’ interjected tall, hoarse, red-faced Simpria with a laugh. Her Face was also clearly top of the range, but more experimental than her sister’s, a daring mixture of magnanimity, wry confidence and peckishness.
‘. . . but here you are. Now, you probably didn’t notice us, but at the last banquet . . .’
‘Yes!’ Neverfell beamed. ‘You were both staring at me! And then you drew lots of pictures of me, and you went purple and fell over!’
The sister’s faces froze for the merest second before they managed an indulgent laugh.
‘Well, since you mention the drawings, my dear, do you mind if I . . . ?’ Snia recovered her sketchbook from the ground, and hovered her pencil hopefully above it. ‘Just while we are talking.’
‘I don’t mind at all.’
Snia’s pencil began skating furiously across the page, while her watery eyes flitted over Neverfell’s face.
‘So.’ Simpria took over the conversation. ‘Lady Adamant said that you wanted to speak to a Facesmith.’
‘Well, yes,’ admitted Neverfell. ‘I asked her about Madame Appeline.’
‘Vesperta Appeline? Why did you want to speak to her?’ There was an edge to Simpria’s voice, and Neverfell remembered that Erstwhile had told her that all the other Facesmiths hated Madame Appeline.
‘Um . . .’ Neverfell spent a whole second trying to think of a good story, then gave up. ‘I met her in the cheese tunnels, and she seemed kind, but then I broke into her house and now I don’t know if she’s angry, and I wanted to talk to her to find out more about her. Is it true that you and all the other Facesmiths hate her?’
‘Oh, dear me!’ Simpria laughed, a little too merrily. ‘Hate indeed! What a term. No, no. Nobody would waste hate on that upstart! After all, nobody comes from nowhere. If she does not speak of her past, then she has a past that does not bear speaking of.’ She nodded knowingly. ‘And one can make guesses.’
Neverfell felt a throb of excitement. ‘You know something about her past?’
Beside her, Snia was making occasional tutting noises, and Neverfell was vaguely aware that the ground around their feet was now littered with torn-out, half-finished sketches.
‘Nothing has ever been proven against her,’ Simpria admitted, ‘but there are one or two things I do know. She used to live in the Doldrums, a terrible district full of grub-driers, fossil-glossers and cut-price Cartographers, where nobody asks any questions.’ She leaned forward, a confiding smile on her radish-red face. ‘Well, over the year before she brought out her Tragedy Range, she ran up debts. Odd debts. For one thing, she was buying more food than she needed for herself and her one Putty Girl. Then there were all the tiny samples of Delicacies she kept buying – particularly Wine.’
It crossed Neverfell’s mind that Madame Simpria must have done quite a lot of running around interrogating tradesmen to find out so much about somebody ‘beneath her notice’.
‘And then there were the dresses.’
‘Dresses?’
‘Yes. Little dresses for a girl so high.’ Simpria held out her hand some three and a half feet above the ground. ‘Far too small for her Putty Girl. Do you see what that means?’
Neverfell stared at her wide-eyed as the tall Facesmith leaned forward confidentially.
‘Somewhere in the dingy mole hole of hers,’ whispered Simpria, ‘she must have been hiding a child.’
Neverfell felt as if her world were exploding. Again the fantastical explanation, the impossible possibility, glimmered at her through the gloom, this time brighter than before.
‘. . . and if she was hiding it,’ Simpria continued, ‘there must have been something shameful about it. Perhaps it was a child from some forbidden and disgraceful love, or a clandestine marriage. The father was probably a criminal, or the lowest sort of drudge. Or, worse still, perhaps the child was ugly.’ Her mouth spread in a smile. ‘Can you imagine the disgrace of that? A Facesmith with a child whose face was beyond the power of her art to rescue.’
Snia gave a muffled sound of anguish and frustration as she ripped out yet another page from her sketchbook. ‘My dear child,’ she said through clenched teeth, ‘do you think that you could try to hold the same expression for more than half a second?’
Neverfell barely heard her. ‘What happened to the little girl?’
‘Nobody knows.’ Simpria arched her brows. ‘By the time Vesperta Appeline moved to her rich new apartments near the Court, there was no such child in her household. But I suppose the poor thing might have died in the influenza epidemic.’
‘Influenza? But that’s a disease, isn’t it?’ Neverfell was perplexed. ‘Aren’t we supposed to be safe from diseases in Caverna? Isn’t that one of the reasons outsiders aren’t allowed in?’
‘Oh indeed!’ agreed Simpria. ‘There were no end of investigations afterwards to find out how the influenza entered Caverna, but they never found an answer. In the end, they walled off the whole district, with the sick inside. To this day, nobody is allowed to dig their way into the Doldrums in case the disease is still lurking inside.
Neverfell felt a queasy horror at the thought of the influenza sufferers, sealed into homes which had become tombs, waiting for their water to run out and their trap-lanterns to fail.
‘Those in the Doldrums who remained well were quarantined,’ Simpria went on, ‘until everyone was certain they were not infected. By then, however, a lot of people had died. Versperta Appeline’s own Putty Girl was one of the first to go. Alas! Such a pretty girl, only sixteen. Green eyes. Madame Appeline always chooses Putty Girls with green eyes like her own when she can.’
Green eyes. Green eyes like hers. Green eyes like mine. Could it really be? Could Madame Appeline be my . . .
But I’m an outsider and she isn’t! It doesn’t make sense! Unless . . .
‘You said Madame Appeline came from nowhere, didn’t you? Could she . . . could she have come from outside Caverna?’
She turned to find that the two sisters were no longer listening to her. They were both stooped over the scattered sketches, each directing the occasional, rapid glance at Neverfell.
‘No, no, no use at all, all the changes far too fast to capture . . .’
‘. . . like a butterfly’s wing . . .’
‘. . . yes, just as much chance of preserving . . .’
Both halted as if struck by the same thought, then locked gazes for a few seconds. Slowly they turned back towards Neverfell, wearing identical, motherly, reassuring smiles.
‘Ye-e-es,’ purred Simpria. ‘I think perhaps . . .’ She straightened, and reached out a curious hand to touch Neverfell’s jawline. ‘About here, would you say?’
‘It would have to be done ve-e-ery carefully,’ Snia spoke softly as if Neverfell were an animal they were wary of frightening away. Something about her tone sent a tingle through Neverfell’s legs, and clouded her head with thoughts of running. ‘Mounted on a cork board, do you think?’
‘And then we could find out how it all functions,’ murmured Simpria, tilting her head on her long neck to regard Neverfell’s forehead. ‘Why it is so different. What makes it jump and change so . . .’
Neverfell flinched away from their reaching fingers and leaped to her feet.
‘You want to peel my face off to find out how it works!’ she shrilled.
Both sisters rose, carefully and slowly, perhaps still hoping they could calm Neverfell into sitting with them. Neverfell was suddenly aware of the folds in Snia’s toad-like neck, and the strong look of Simpria’s large hands.
‘Oh tish, tosh, tiddle,’ wheezed Simpria gently. ‘Not now. Not while you have a use for it. Not while you’re alive.’
‘Get away from me!’ Neverfell backed off and dodged behind one of the great, man-shaped pillars.
‘We could do so much for you,’ wheedled Snia, edging softly forward. ‘All we want in return is a signature on a piece of paper, leaving your remains to us when you die. Not even the whole body. Just one little head . . .’
Glancing round the pillar, Neverfell could see that the shouting had drawn the attention of Lady Adamant and her two male companions, and that all three were gliding in at speed, the lady’s dress chiming like a war of tiny cymbals.
Neverfell ran. She took a wild zigzag from pillar to pillar, and heard the pursuers curse as they slithered on the smooth flags, trying to change direction. She darted, dodged, skidded then sprinted flat out for the arch, ignoring the screeches of bewildered monkeys. Just as she reached it there was a sibilant tinkle to her left, and she dodged just in time as Lady Adamant leaped out with cobra-like speed and made a snatch at her sleeve. The silver glove closed on nothing, and Neverfell made it through the arch.
Neverfell careered down the nearest arcade, saw a fountain too late and splashed through it, before sprinting on her way, leaving great damp prints behind her. Too late, she realized that she had just made herself incredibly easy to follow. Panic added to her speed, but left her even more clumsy.
‘Aargh! Sorry! I’m so sorry!’ She accidentally jostled a passing servant, knocking his bowl of dried damsons to the floor. Neverfell faltered, but could not stop. A few steps later she stumbled, rucking a rug and nearly losing her footing. At the next archway she set a collection of wind chimes ringing, and startled a caged cockatoo into a screaming fit.
She could not stop to correct anything. There was no time. She continued to run, her heart beating in her head like pursuing steps.
Unbeknownst to Neverfell, however, something magical was happening in her wake. By the time Lady Adamant and her colleagues arrived half a minute later, there was no sign of the chaos Neverfell had caused. The mosaic floor was dry, the spilt food gone without trace. The rug was immaculate. The chimes were still, the cockatoo was silently and happily chewing upon a rusk, and the only sound was the meek lapping of the fountain’s disturbed water. Furthermore, the corridor seemed to be a dead end. The far arch was curtained, and a couple of food tables placed before it.
Lady Adamant summoned a white-clad servant over with an imperious silver finger. ‘I am looking for a friend of mine,’ she explained, letting her features ease into Face No. 96, Slow Dawn Seen through a Glass of Honeydew. ‘Could you tell me if a young red-haired girl in a taster’s sash ran through here just now? I am afraid she might get lost.’
‘I am sorry, ma’am, but there has been nobody here of that description. Could I assist you with anything else?’ The servant looked up at her with the same Face that all his fellows wore, bland and blank as a clean napkin. Lady Adamant dismissed him with a wave of her hand, and stalked off, only the fierce rapidity of her steps giving away her annoyance.
A short while later, however, a different set of feet trod that same corridor, more slowly and carefully than Lady Adamant had done. A different set of eyes slid over every detail, noticing the motion of the water, the cockatoo’s dropped feathers in the cage, the slight crookedness of the hastily placed tables.
The girl had passed this way, and somehow the way had closed behind her. No matter. He had arranged for something to be stolen from her, something that could be used to reach her, and she had already forgotten its loss.