At last there was only one left, and with a sense of desperation Neverfell realized that he was packing up his easel and preparing to leave like his fellows. Taking courage in her hands and throwing caution to the winds, Neverfell ran after him and clutched at his sleeve.
‘Excuse me – don’t go! I’m looking for somebody. Another Cartographer.’ She was very much aware that there was no hourglass here, and no Erstwhile to twist her ears if she started to go Cartographic.
The man turned, and looked down at her. He was not old, but his eyes had a drained, stained look, like used drinking glasses.
‘Maybe you’re looking for me. I am another Cartographer.’ There was an odd sort of breathy rattle in his voice, like a flute made of husks. ‘There are lots of Cartographers I’m not.’
Neverfell pushed hastily on, before his comments had time to make sense. ‘No – it’s a particular one. He’s sort of a Cartographer and sort of not. About this tall, with a drudge face, though he might be wearing a big, armoured—’
‘Oh, you mean the Kleptomancer,’ answered the stranger promptly.
Neverfell was thrown on to the back foot. ‘You know him?’
‘We all do. But I’m sorry, he’s not a Cartographer. Not really. If you want “another Cartographer”, you’ll have to look somewhere else.’
Neverfell had started to turn away when his words sank in properly.
‘And . . . if I’m not looking for “another Cartographer”? If I’m looking for the Kleptomancer instead?’
‘Him?’ The Cartographer gave a smile that might have suited him twenty years earlier, but now looked like a glint on a greasy knife. ‘Oh, he’s up there.’
He pointed directly upward at the ceiling, and Neverfell felt an unexpected surge of panic, hostility and rage.
‘You’re lying! You’re trying to trick me!’ Her face went hot and without knowing why she could hear her voice rise sharply to a shriek. ‘It’s a ceiling! It’s just a ceiling! You want me to look at it so that I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I have to get out of here!’ She gasped for air, astonished by her own outburst.
The Cartographer did not seem upset at all, but stood there shaking with silent laughter. At last he rocked forward on to the balls of his feet and peered down into Neverfell’s face.
‘That,’ he whistled, ‘is just what your mind wants you to think. Look. Up.’
With these words, he turned and walked away. And in spite of a thousand thoughts trying to haul back on the reins in panic, Neverfell slowly raised her head and looked up.
Her mind had lied when it had told her there was a ceiling directly above. There was not. She had not been walking along a low-roofed passage, but along the base of a narrow ravine some thirty feet high. Some ten or so feet above her head, she could see the folded forms of sleeping bats hanging in clusters from the juts and shelves of the ravine walls. Halfway up, something peculiar happened. There were more sleeping bats further up the walls, but they were hanging upward from their perches, not downward.
Far above her, Neverfell could see the Kleptomancer. He was dressed in his drudge clothes, his face ill-lit but just visible. He was upside down, standing as easily on the ceiling as if it had been a floor. In his arms he held a bizarre metallic bow with half a dozen levers, and he was levelling it directly at her head.
‘Who are you?’ he asked. There was no mistaking his still-water voice. Today Neverfell thought the waters might have piranhas in them.
Neverfell remembered her disguise, and hastened to push back her hair to show her face. ‘It’s me! You remember me? My hair used to be red.’ A moment later she remembered that the last time he had seen her she had been fleeing his lair in a stolen suit, shortly before cutting his wire and stranding him. ‘Don’t shoot! We need to talk!’
‘The outsider girl,’ breathed the Kleptomancer. ‘The one everybody talks about. The food taster. The fugitive. How do you know who I am?’ His posture did not relax a jot; indeed he seemed to be cranking one of the handles on his bow.
‘You stole me from the Grand Steward after his challenge – don’t you remember?’
The cranking stopped, the Kleptomancer’s hand hovering on the handle irresolutely.
‘You’re the item I stole from the Cabinet of Curiosities?’ He sounded surprised, confused and suspicious. ‘But you’re not a Cameleopard!’
‘No.’ Neverfell was not sure what else to say. ‘Er . . . no, I’m not?’ Too late it occurred to her that, with his continual memory wipes, the Kleptomancer might not remember their first encounter.
‘Hmm. That . . . would explain how you escaped my hideout, wired across the river and ran away. I was rather confused by that when I read my notes. So. Why have you come after me?’
Neverfell could just make out the very point of the crossbow bolt, gleaming like a star. If that star disappears, she thought, that means he has fired and I’m dead. I wonder if I’ll have time to notice it’s gone before I’m gone too.
‘Because I need help, and you’re probably the cleverest person I’ve ever met,’ she answered, her heart flip-flopping like a landed fish. ‘You were the one who explained everything to me – that people who plan really well can’t cope with people like you and me, the ones who do things that make no sense. They have to stamp us out or control us, or they’d always be worrying about us doing something weird, something they don’t see coming.
‘The Enquiry and the Council are both really scared of the way you can turn up wherever you like, only right now they’re too busy fighting each other to chase you down. But if I die or get captured then one of them gets an advantage over the other one. Which means that soon their war would be over, and the winner would be able to go after you.
‘And I think that’s why you haven’t shot me yet. Because the longer I’m running around alive and free, the longer everybody else is distracted. In fact, I think maybe you won’t shoot me at all.’
The Kleptomancer hesitated, then flicked a few levers so that the bow’s tension released with a hiss. He attached it to a hook on his belt, from which it hung upward. Then he took a large coil of rope from round his arm, tied one end to a spike of rock in the wall, and started trying to throw the coil towards Neverfell. The first couple of times the coil of rope descended only part of the way before falling back up to land on the ceiling at the Kleptomancer’s feet. The third time it reached down to the midway point and kept falling, tumbling loose so that its end brushed the ground just in front of Neverfell.
‘Tie it fast,’ called the thief. Neverfell knotted it securely around an outcrop, and started to climb.
Clambering up the rope was an eerie experience. When she reached the midpoint she was no longer hauling herself upward, she was abruptly tumbling headfirst. Fortunately the Kleptomancer caught her before she concussed herself, and lowered her to the stone ceiling that was now suddenly a floor. She disentangled her limbs and struggled into a sitting position, to find the Kleptomancer staring at her unnervingly.
‘I stole you,’ he said speculatively. ‘Was it just the once?’
‘I think so. Why?’
‘Hmm. Did you used to be smaller? About so high?’ He held out his hand three and a half feet above what now appeared to be the ground.
‘Er . . . yes? Um . . . some years ago?’ Neverfell was not sure what more to say. ‘That’s . . . normal, isn’t it? People getting bigger?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ The Kleptomancer seemed to be peering through her, trying to bring something into focus, then he shook his head and gave it up. ‘Never mind. What matters is that until recently you were Childersin’s pawn. Part of his plan to poison the Grand Steward. And now you’ve run from him. I suppose you are hoping I will hide you?’
‘Oh no! I want you to help me topple Master Childersin, break hundreds of laws and save as many people as will trust me.’ Perhaps it was just a fit of Cartography, or the effect of falling through an up-down glitch, but Neverfell found herself grinning like a lunatic. ‘I’m not j
ust asking for help. I’m offering you the biggest distraction Caverna has ever seen.’
‘Topple Childersin? You?’ It might have been Neverfell’s imagination, but she thought she caught a touch of amusement amid the incredulity. ‘You could not topple a tower of scones before somebody stopped you. Your face betrays you at every step—’
‘You know, that’s a really beautiful bow,’ Neverfell interrupted suddenly. ‘Did you make it?’
‘Found it, mended it, modified it,’ was the curt reply.
‘I love machines.’ Neverfell’s rational mind told her that she was babbling and should shut up, but it had also lied to her about there being a ceiling, so she decided to ignore it. ‘Everybody keeps telling me that my big talent is having a face like glass. But that’s not a talent, is it? It’s the opposite. It’s something I can’t stop doing. I leak my thoughts. Everybody can see what I’m planning.
‘No, what I’m really good at is machines. A machine is sort of like magic. You spend ages planning it out, and put all the cogs in place, and then bing! You pull a lever and away it goes. And the amazing bit is that the person who pulls the lever to start it doesn’t need to understand how it works. They don’t even need to know what’s going to happen.
‘I want to put together a plan just like that machine. And that’s your sort of plan, isn’t it? That’s why I’m here.’
There was a long and meaningful pause before the Kleptomancer spoke again.
‘Do you know what the date and hour is right now?’
‘Why?’ Neverfell stared at him perplexed.
‘You’ll need to make a note of it,’ said the thief. ‘We are about to have a very important conversation, and later you will want to know exactly – exactly – when it started.’
Here is a piece that falls between the chapters, like a coin between paving stones. It is a slice of silence in the middle of the melody.
It is a rough and ragged spot, like the frill of stubs where pages have been torn out. There is no point looking for them. They are gone.
Trust Yourself
‘. . . taking effect?’
A hand was waved in front of Neverfell’s face. She blinked hard, startled by the blurred collage of light and looming faces. Reflexively she reached up to bat away a lantern that was almost touching her cheek. Stony faces regarded her without a smile or flicker, the lanternlight picking out their chipped teeth, the pockmarks on their skin, the pale ticks and squiggles of scars. Hands gripped her shoulders and arms, holding her still.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered. They glanced at each other, their faces shifting not a hair. Drudges, she thought. They’re all drudges. But who are they?
And where am I? How did I get here? The last thing I remember is talking to the Kleptomancer . . .
‘They’re here already!’ somebody was screaming. There was a terrible battering sound from somewhere nearby, and bellows demanding admittance.
‘We have to go,’ snapped a man who was holding her by the collar. ‘Now!’ Half a dozen hands abruptly released her, so that she almost lost her balance, and her strange captors sprinted as one to a small door on the opposite wall. They vanished into it, a couple of them casting glances over their shoulder at Neverfell as they departed, then slammed the door behind them. Neverfell could hear four or five bolts being thrown.
Before she could react to this, a larger door a few yards away from her suddenly burst open, and the room filled with armed men. Neverfell backed away, almost tripping over a stool, but there was nowhere to flee or hide.
‘There!’ The leader of the new arrivals seized her by the arm, and held up his lantern next to her face. ‘Yes, look! It’s her. We’ve found her. At last. Secure the area! See if you can find the others! Break down that door over there, and see where it goes.’
‘What’s she got in her hand?’
Neverfell stared down, and noticed that she was gripping a tiny wooden cup, the inside stained dark. There was a dusky taste in Neverfell’s mouth as well that seemed familiar.
The cup was snatched from her grasp, turned over, sniffed. ‘Damn it! She’s drunk something. Let’s get her to a physician quickly in case it’s poison. Childersin will have our hides if he loses her to death just when he needs her.’
Childersin. That word was enough to penetrate her stupor. These men worked for Childersin. She had been captured by Childersin’s men. Stunned by this realization, she heard titbits of the conversation around her.
‘Looks like they cleaned out, took everything. I guess they gave up and abandoned her at the end.’
‘All right, everybody out! The rest don’t matter. We’ve got what we came for.’
There was a sword in every hand. There was nowhere to run. She was grabbed under the armpits and dragged out of the room down passage after passage.
Why am I here? Neverfell tried to remember but slid off a sleek blankness in her memory, like a cat failing to scale a wall of polished marble. Her hands were grimier than she had ever seen them, their nails broken, the skin covered with nicks and scars she could not recollect. Her hair was still dyed black, but now it almost reached down to her waist. There was a tangled bracelet of twine round one wrist.
‘Quick! Get her out of here. The Enquiry are coming. The last thing we want is them trying to grab her from us. Go!’
The group burst out on to a Drudgery thoroughfare, and Neverfell made a belated and doomed attempt to break free. She felt sick and unsteady. When she closed her eyes to blink, she could see purple spirals rising and rising against the darkness of her eyelids.
Without ceremony, she was bundled into a closed sedan, not unlike those used to transport Cartographers. She heard locks turn and chains jingle, and the door resisted her attempts to barge it with her shoulder.
I was talking to the Kleptomancer, Neverfell thought desperately. She could recall only the first half of the conversation, after which her memories simply faded out. Even the part she could remember felt strange and flat. She could recollect everything she had said and done, but not her reasons.
I had the start of a plan – I know I did. That’s why I went running off to find the Kleptomancer. And I was trying really hard not to think about it . . . and now I don’t know what it was.
What was the plan? And how did it go this badly wrong?
‘Hey!’ She thumped the inside walls of the sedan. ‘Hey! Call the Enquiry! It’s Neverfell! I’m in here!’ Her voice sounded hoarse and rough, and she doubted anybody heard. Although she knew that if she fell into the hands of the Enquiry things would probably not go well for her, she was suddenly gripped by a wild desire to stop Maxim Childersin winning, by any means necessary. But nobody answered.
It was a hasty ride, and she was jolted so badly that she probably would have thrown up if there had been anything in her stomach. At last the door opened, and she was pulled out into a crisp white room. The friezes looked familiar, and she guessed that she was probably somewhere in the palace.
Here she was pulled about by panicky physicians, who examined her eyes, tongue and ears, and tutted over the fleabites on her skin, before poking her gently with needles to make sure she could feel them. They gave her emetics that made her retch hopelessly, then forced water into her mouth through a funnel, so that she ended up spluttering with her clothing drenched.
When she finally recovered her breath, she realized that there was another figure in the room, watching discreetly from a chair by the wall. She wiped the water from her face, pushed back her hair and defiantly tried to straighten, so that she was less of a crushed, grubby wreck. The time for trying to hide her face was over. She was tired of games.
‘I’m very glad to see you, Neverfell,’ said Maxim Childersin. He was wearing a silvery, high-collared coat that glittered and made Neverfell think of the Grand Steward. ‘I never would have guessed that you would lead us such a merry chase. It has to be said that Drudgery was not my first guess for your hiding place.’
‘How did you find me??
?? croaked Neverfell.
‘Ah.’ Maxim Childersin reached into his pocket, and pulled out a few letters. ‘That is rather easily answered.’ He unfolded one of them and held it up for her to see. The writing was a charcoal scrawl, but was unmistakably in Neverfell’s own hand.
Neverfell’s eye strayed to the top of the page, and her heart plummeted into a well that had no bottom.
DEAR ZOUELLE, began the letter, IF YOU ARE REALLY IN THAT MUCH DANGER, OF COURSE YOU MUST FLEE AND HIDE WITH US. READ THIS LETTER CAREFULLY AND BURN IT AFTERWARDS. I AM HIDING OUT IN THE STOREROOM OF THE GRUB-GRINDING MILL IN THE FLOTSAM DISTRICT . . .
Neverfell could not remember writing the letter, but it was definitely in her own handwriting.
‘Loyalty,’ Maxim Childersin said quietly. ‘It always was your greatest weakness. And your strange compulsion to trust your friends, over and over again.’ He folded the letter and put it away. ‘But you must understand that Zouelle is also loyal, and at the end of the day her loyalty to her family will always win out.’
He’s lying, thought Neverfell desperately. I don’t believe it. Zouelle didn’t trick me into telling her where I was so she could betray me to him. He stole the letters. It’s a lie.
Maxim Childersin watched her face, his impassivity coloured by a hint of sympathy. But, thought Neverfell suddenly, why should she think that sympathy was real? It was just another lie, something he had put on like a hat.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and sounded as if he meant it. ‘But as Zouelle’s friend you should at least be happy that she made the right decision in terms of her own career. I have now officially named her as my heir.’ The little smiles came and went in his mouth, like moray eels peering out from a crack in search of prey. ‘It must be some consolation, though, that Master Grandible remained loyal to you till the end.’
‘The . . . the end?’ whispered Neverfell.
‘Yes. I suppose you know that he did everything in his power to make everybody think that you were hiding in his tunnels? I daresay he must have been trying to protect you by drawing attention away from you. He held out against the Enquiry’s forces far longer than anybody expected, and even when they finally broke in he refused to be taken alive. We don’t know which combination of cheeses he used to blow up the support pillars and collapse his own tunnels.’ He sighed. ‘The Enquiry are still digging through the rubble.’