Information, however, drifted through them all, but imperceptibly, like a drop of ink thinning into water. And so it was with word of the Grand Steward’s poisoning, and the drudges that had been forced to kill one another. An anger was building, but it was invisible to the casual eye. It burned unnoticed, like a spice that is undetectable in the first spoonful of potage, but which gradually builds its fire on the tongue.
The first symptoms of it might have been spotted among the errand boys, those flitters, skulkers and coin-snatchers. The sharp of eye might have noticed that they were a little more given to gaggles, and to suddenly pedalling away at the sound of a stranger’s step. Those who succeeded in surprising them might even catch one with his fingers to his face, apparently pulling at the skin below his eyes in a strange and grotesque way.
But the mighty of Caverna had far more to worry about than the whispers of drudge children, and so this, like many other important changes, went unnoticed. Had they known that some of said children were now carefully eavesdropping on their private conversations and reading their messages, they might have felt differently.
‘So the Court are mostly stabbing each other up.’ The sandy-headed errand boy gave a small shrug. ‘Old Childersin’s had four attempts against his life. Not a scratch on him, though – didn’t even tear his gloves. But his enemies are all dying like flies. You heard of the Ganderblacks? All vanished, down to the tiniest tot. Folks say they was devoured body and soul by this wild black Wine they were trying to brew. All that was left behind was their clothes, hair, fingernails and little heaps of scented blue powder.’
Neverfell nodded, and mentally added the information to a growing list of details. Over the last few days a steady trickle of errand boys had turned up at the crèche to report events at Court, and in particular the doings of Maxim Childersin. They had all been recruited by Erstwhile, who had told them she was a scarred relation of his, helping him investigate, and that they should leave all new information with her.
To judge by their reports, Childersin was securing his position and settling old scores. With a worried pang she thought of Zouelle living in the lions’ den.
‘What about Enquirer Treble? We heard rumours somebody killed her with a predatory pâté.’
‘Nah, though somebody had a good try. Twelfth time somebody tried to kill her since the Grand Steward died. This one left her blind for a day and turned her hair white. It was one of her own men that went for her, they say. Never found out who he was working for. But she’s back on her feet, and it don’t seem to have slowed her down much.
‘There’s one other thing. You were asking about the Facesmith Appeline? Well, I know somebody who knows somebody who knows something about her. Only he’s terrified. He says that he’ll talk to you person to person, only he wants twenty-five eggs and his name kept out of it.’
Neverfell’s heart leaped uncertainly, like a fawn in a rolling boat. On Erstwhile’s advice, she had hoarded her little supply of preserved eggs to use as bribes, and subsisted on a thin gruel made from barley and moth-grubs like everybody else, even though the diet left her exhausted and dull-witted with hunger. Even so, her egg supply was now severely diminished.
‘I can’t manage that many,’ she answered, trying not to sound too keen, ‘but I might be able to get them in a week or so.’
The errand boy shook his head. ‘Has to be today. Tomorrow he sets off with a delving team for the wild tunnels.’
Neverfell weighed the risks, but her instincts were hammering at her to take the chance. ‘Today I can offer an ounce of Nocteric. That’s worth much more than twenty-five eggs.’ She had found a little pouch of the spice at the bottom of the pack the palace servants had given her, evidently intended as a valuable to trade when in extremis.
The boy drew in a breath through his teeth. ‘Nocteric? If it’s stolen, it’s traceable. I don’t know if he will be happy with that.’ He hesitated. ‘Look, you better come talk to him yourself. I can’t spend all day running messages between you.’
Neverfell hesitated for a moment, but only a moment.
‘All right.’
Soon the pair of them were out on the drudge thoroughfares, amid the rush of the shift-change crowds. Neverfell wondered what her guide would think of her if he could see through her mask and realize how close to breaking she was all the time. The last time Neverfell had visited Drudgery, the sight of it had struck her mind like a fist, bruising and shattering. Now that she was living in it, she realized why none of her pursuers had expected her to flee to the Undercity.
For all its thousands of trap-lanterns, the Drudgery air was close and choking. There was the smothering odour of unwashed skin, and the reeks from the great buzzing caverns where the waste of Caverna was heaped, sorted and washed away, or the livestock caves where herds of hay-fed goats and cows shivered in the green light, and stared wild-eyed at the dripping walls.
The cramped closeness drove her near to madness. Like everybody else in the drudge crowds she had to squeeze and cram past other bodies, until she felt like part of a sprawl of maggots.
‘Up here.’ At last the guide jerked a discreet thumb upward, and Neverfell obediently scrambled up a rope through a crack in the ceiling. It opened into a small hollow ridged like the space inside a fist, with a rough shelf either side of the crack. A grey-faced, broad-nosed drudge man about forty years old was sitting there on one side with his knees drawn up to his chin. His hands were so covered in scars they might have been gloved in spider’s webs.
Carefully, Neverfell hauled herself up to sit on the other shelf. If this is a trick, said the part of Neverfell that had learned from life at Court, then you’ll be caught like a rat up here. The fact that the other man seemed just as nervous as she was did nothing to reassure her.
The negotiation was brief, and after a pause the Nocteric was accepted.
‘Tomorrow I’m off with a digging team to the wild tunnels,’ he explained in a mutter. ‘Want something to leave with my family, pay their way if I don’t come back.’
‘Tell them to keep it in its box till they’re ready to sell it,’ Neverfell whispered back, ‘Now – you know something about Madame Appeline?’
The delver nodded slowly. ‘It happened quite a few years ago, back when I was one of a team digging out the Octopus. Do you know where that is?’
‘Yes. It’s near the Doldrums, isn’t it?’ Neverfell could not prevent her hands tightening on her knees in excitement. She remembered Zouelle telling her that the Octopus and the Samphire Districts were both being excavated at the time of the mysterious influenza epidemic. ‘Was that about seven years ago?’
‘Yes – I suppose it would be about that.’ The delver sounded a little surprised. ‘Well, they were driving us to finish the Octopus fast so they could use it to link all these other districts, so we were hauling carts of rubble out of there till even the horses looked fit to buckle. All to be hauled up to the surface and scattered, the usual.
‘One day when I was bringing back an empty cart past Toveknock, that used to be the turning into the Doldrums, this lady in a worn-out velvet cape and a kindly sort of Face beckoned me over. She told me that there had been a rockfall in her tunnels, but that she had it all propped up safe and didn’t want to report it or she’d have Cartographers tramping all over her rooms. She said she just wanted to get rid of the rocks, and would pay to have it done on the quiet.
‘I said yes.’ The man clasped and unclasped his fretted hands. ‘I think maybe I said it because of the Face she had on. Made me feel like I’d just found out I had a long-lost daughter who needed my help. So every day, after I should have gone off shift, I’d take up the cart one more time and pull into the Doldrums. The rubble would be ready and waiting in pails, and I’d load up my cart, and take her rocks away to dump with the rest. Never got caught doing it.’
‘And that was Madame Appeline?’
‘That was her. She paid me well, so I didn’t ask questions. Even though I knew the rubb
le never came from a rockslide.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Sure as teeth are teeth. It wasn’t cracked and crumbled the way it would be if it had just caved in; it was chiselled and broken up, like it had been torn out by a drill. There was too much of it as well. If there had been a rockfall of that size, well, we might not have heard it with all the drilling we were doing, but the Cartographers would have noticed.’
‘So you mean . . . you weren’t the only ones digging,’ said Neverfell, her mouth dry and her mind whirling. Digging without official permission was one of the most serious crimes in Caverna. The wrong passage in the wrong place could collapse, flood or asphyxiate large portions of the city. ‘So that’s why you don’t want anybody to know you were mixed up in this.’
‘It’s not just the law that worries me.’ The delver glanced down through the aperture between them, as if fearful of seeing faces staring up past his boots. ‘The last day, when I was due to collect the final payment, I was took ill with rasp-lung, and had to send my brother-in-law with the cart instead. He never came home. They found him dead, his chest crushed. Everybody decided the cartwheel must have gone over him, and maybe it did, but I think it had help. Most people can’t tell drudges apart, you see. I think that wheel was meant for me, to stop me telling what I knew. And so I held my peace and took jobs as a delver in the wilds, hoping those that killed him never found out they got the wrong man.’
Neverfell said nothing, but placed a hand either side of her head. She felt like she needed to hold it in place until everything inside it stopped moving.
‘When did all this happen?’ she asked in a whisper. ‘It was before the Doldrums influenza, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes. The outbreak slowed down our work in the Octopus badly. We lost lots of Cartographers, you see. You know the way they swarm? There was something about the Doldrums that was drawing lots of them there, and when the flu broke out six of them died straight off.’
‘Did they ever say what was pulling them to the Doldrums?’ It was all Neverfell could do to contain her excitement.
‘Probably.’ Even with his limited repertoire of Faces, Neverfell was sure that the delver would be giving her a ‘funny look’ if he could. ‘But I didn’t ask and I certainly didn’t listen. Cartographers are always happy to tell you everything they know. Everything. That’s the problem.’ By this point, he was shifting nervously in his seat. ‘Look, I done my part. You’ll give me the spice? That’ll do, won’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Neverfell distantly. ‘Yes. That’ll do. And you’re right. You shouldn’t let them find out you’re alive. I . . . I’ve got to go now. My head’s full.’ Without further ado, she handed him the small pouch of Nocteric, and dropped down through the crack back into the passage below, where her errand-boy guide was waiting for her.
She followed him in a daze. Digging in the Doldrums, that somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to keep secret. Illegal digging, seven years ago.
Seven years. Always seven years. Everything happened seven years ago.
The bat-squeakers fretting about the Undiscovered Passage. The influenza in the Doldrums. Madame Appeline buying dresses for a child. The large anonymous reward suddenly offered for the Kleptomancer. And Neverfell’s own sudden appearance in Grandible’s tunnels with no memories. All seven years ago.
What if all these things were part of the same big secret? What if something happened seven years ago that nobody was supposed to know about, something to do with me? Perhaps I knew about it – perhaps that’s why somebody took away all my memories. Perhaps that’s even why somebody tried to kill me in the Enquiry cell, just in case I remembered anything about it.
Now Neverfell could feel a pounding in her head, as if behind some door of the mind her forgotten memories were trying to beat their way out.
The truth was locked in her head somewhere. What secret could be so dangerous that somebody would be willing to kill her to stop her remembering it? And who had been trying to murder her?
For seven years she had been safe in Grandible’s tunnels. Perhaps her hidden enemies had not known where she was, or perhaps she had simply been beyond their reach. Then she had erupted from her haven and let her face be discovered, and somebody had seen her, or heard a description of a red-haired outsider girl of about thirteen years, and known who she must be.
And so somebody had tried to murder her in her cage, before she could tell the Enquiry anything. And shortly after this attempt had failed . . . Maxim Childersin had suddenly come to buy her. Perhaps this was not coincidence. What if he had not been motivated by compassion, or a desire to save his niece? What if he was the one who had tried to have her murdered, and had only decided to buy her so that he would have an opportunity to silence her permanently?
But then he saw me. And he realized I could fit into his plans. And that’s when he started trying to find out whether I remembered anything, or whether it was safe to keep me alive.
Neverfell recalled the questions he had asked at the time. What have you told the Enquiry? How much do you remember before Grandible’s tunnels?
And that reprise Wine he gave me back in his study must have been a test, Neverfell realized. He wanted to find out whether anybody else could use that kind of Wine to bring back my memories. If the reprise had helped me remember things, I wonder if I would have left that room alive . . .
There were still things that did not make sense, however. Childersin had wanted to keep her alive so that she could play her part in the murder of the Grand Steward, and yet somebody had sent the glisserblind assassin after her while she was living in the tasters’ quarters. Not Childersin, then, surely. Was she facing more than one unconnected enemy, then? Or a team of enemies not quite pulling together?
And what is it that they don’t want me to remember? What is it that I know but don’t know?
Suddenly Neverfell was jerked back into self-awareness. Following her guide through a particular arched alley, she felt the current of the crowd suddenly stop, tug forward and then rear backwards, amid cries of consternation and confusion. Suddenly she was the squished filling in a people sandwich, her masked face buried in somebody’s back as they tried to recoil through her.
‘Cartographers!’ was the cry. ‘Cartographers coming! Back! Back up!’ But there was no backing up into the oblivious surge of people behind. Panic leaped for Neverfell’s throat like a hunting hound.
‘Down!’ shouted somebody else, and the crush messily collapsed to their knees, those that could covering their heads with their arms, and lay as still and low as possible. Next thing Neverfell knew there were other figures scrambling through the tunnel over the prone forms, paying no attention to whether their boots found purchase on rocks or faces. These figures gabbled, clicked and whistled as they went, some gripping strange devices or wearing bulging eyepieces. Somebody’s knee rested heavily on Neverfell’s shoulder for a moment, and a boot-toe scraped painfully against her ear.
Next moment the mad scrabblers were gone, further up the passage. The crowd that could not part for the Cartographers or retreat before them had laid itself down to let them pass overhead.
Gingerly and slowly the crowd rose to its feet again, stranger helping stranger, and the flow continued. Neverfell got up groggily. Somehow being thrown down and half trampled had jolted her thoughts into a better order, and just for a single dizzy moment she wondered how she could arrange for the same thing to happen every time she was stuck for inspiration.
When she staggered bruised into the crèche, her arm was instantly grabbed by Erstwhile, who frogmarched her to a corner.
‘You mad little moth! Where you been? What were you thinking, wandering around Drudgery? And no note left for me, nothing! I am this close, this close, to giving up on you—’
‘I’m sorry, Erstwhile, I’m really sorry!’ Neverfell snatched off her mask for a moment to show him that she meant it. ‘I know it was dangerous, but there was something I had to chase up. And do you know w
hat? I caught it.’ Moving to her own cot, Neverfell pulled back the straw mattress and pulled out the Cartographer disguise hidden inside.
‘Caught it? What’s that meant to mean?’
‘It means that something important happened seven years ago, and I’m almost certain I know what it was. I think I know how I got into Caverna, why I couldn’t be allowed to remember it, why the Doldrums were sealed off, and why the Childersins are never out of clock.
‘If I’m right, then I know what we have to do. But I need to be sure I’m right first. Erstwhile – where are the nearest excavations? The easiest ones to reach from here?’
Erstwhile drew his breath in through his teeth, evidently disliking the direction the conversation was going. ‘Probably the ones out at Perilous Jut. Why?’
Neverfell held up her goggles, and examined her tiny, yellow reflection in one lens. ‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘I need to talk to the Cartographers.’
That Way Lies Madness
Few Cavernans chose to wander into the places where new tunnels were being mined. Why would they? Why risk the perils of chokedamp and firedamp seeping from a newly opened crack, let alone the collapse of untried passages? Why endure the noise, rubble and unsmoothed floors? And last but not least, why venture to a place where there was such a risk of running into loose Cartographers?
Erstwhile’s muttered complaints on these themes were bitter and increasingly inventive, but to Neverfell’s surprise he insisted on accompanying her anyway.
They only met a couple of people en route, and those covered their ears or retreated at the sight of Neverfell’s Cartographer-like garb and butterfly-covered sextant. When it came to excavations, Cartographers were a necessary evil. Only they could tell you whether your nice new shaft would collapse unexpectedly, or weaken a set of passages above it, or unexpectedly join an underground river and drown everybody.