A Face Like Glass (20 page)

A few yards away from her, however, sat a chest of tortoiseshell wood, its catch towards her.

Neverfell turned to face the desk once more, hoping for guidance, but the threesome seated behind it had settled into an eerie stillness, all wearing the same stony, immovable Face. Again,
Neverfell had the uncanny feeling that she was the only living thing in the room.

‘Do you want me to open it?’

There was no response. Warily she tiptoed over to it, and dropped to her knees. The latch was cold beneath her fingertips. Her shadow lolled over the chest’s lid. And she knew, as she
always knew such things, that she had to open it, whether she liked it or not. Even now that dark oblong of the unknown within it was tugging at her hands.

She clicked the catch back and opened the chest. It was dark within, but seemed to be empty. Then she glimpsed movement inside, a dark, frail scuttle. She shuffled to one side to let the light
from behind her fall on the chest, just in time to see two long, eyelash-thin wisps appear above the rim, waving in a questing, predatory fashion. The next instant the owner of these wisps leaped
on to the back of her hand.

‘Ow!’ A vicious stab of pain shot through Neverfell’s wrist. It was a full-grown cavern spider, large enough to span her hand with its legs, and it had bitten her just where
her glove ended. She dashed the spider off reflexively with her other hand, and was repelled to see two crushed legs left behind. A warning tickle in her collar sent her slapping at her neck and
shoulders, only to feel another bite in her ankle. Another spider on her skirt, another on her right arm, and more crawling out of the box.

Neverfell staggered away from the chest, swatting, slapping and shaking herself, yelping each time the spiders got inside her clothes and their mandibles found flesh. It was a good five minutes
before she slumped exhausted near the foot of one of the pillars, covered with bites but at last satisfied that she was free from her many-legged attackers.

Recovering her breath, she looked up towards the seated threesome and the unspeaking figure behind them.

On the desk before the woman sat something on a bone-china plate. It was squat, round and marble white, with little pleats and plumes of pink icing.

‘Do you like cake?’ asked the woman, still in her deep, molten voice. ‘This has raspberries in it.’

Neverfell stared at it with uncertainty and dread. Somehow the cake was more confusing and alarming than the spiders.
Yes, ma’am, I like raspberry cake, only I like it better with no
poison or scorpions in it.

‘It is just cake,’ the woman reassured her. ‘You can choose to take it. Or . . .’

Or?

Slowly, Neverfell turned her head, and found that the spider chest had gone. At some point while she had been freeing herself of their scuttling forms, it had been removed and replaced with a
smaller box of red teak, carved with zigzag patterns.

If it’s really just cake, then it’s safe. Why would she lie? If they want me dead, they can just have me executed. All I need to do is take the cake.

And yet somehow Neverfell found herself edging hesitantly towards the chest. She rubbed her hands down her dress to wipe the sweat from her palms, then reached trembling fingers to unfasten the
mysterious box.

The lid flipped back, and a silver snake slithered out with dainty menace. Neverfell sprang to her feet and sprinted away. There was a low whistle from a darkened corner of the room, and the
escapee turned about and skimmed its way towards the sound in a silent slalom.

When it showed no sign of returning, Neverfell dared to peer out from behind the pillar where she had been hiding.

The raspberry cake still sat before the motionless interrogators. In the place of the snake box was a finely carved ivory cask. Nobody said a word. The question hung in the air. The cake . . .
or . . .

I don’t want to see what’s in it, I don’t want to, I don’t, I . . . oh no.

The third cask was filled with greyish crystals that flared into searing flame as soon as she opened the box, followed by a sour and choking smoke which sandpapered her throat, and left her eyes
sightless for ten minutes afterwards.

The fourth box held what looked a lot like human eyes.

The fifth box was empty, but covered in a glistening moist veneer that soaked through her gloves and burned her skin when she touched it, and left her fingers swelling even after she tore off
her gloves.

The sixth was a music box that started playing once open, each note making a different tooth vibrate so painfully she thought they might shatter.

An hour later, Neverfell was hunched on the floor, tear-streaked, stung, bitten, singed and nauseous, shoulders jumping with sob after sob. She was still having trouble seeing, particularly
through her right eye. Once again, she was in the deathly hush between boxes. Soon she would have to brace herself, look up and see the next box . . .

There was no box. The cake had vanished from the table as well. All three of the interrogators had turned their heads, and were regarding the stony figure on the throne. Now the silence had a
waiting air, like the flex of a cavern spider’s legs before its leap.

The girl was genuine. The Grand Steward no longer had any doubt.

Every time she reached for a box he had seen the fizzling of indecision, the war of fear with optimism, the tremors of compulsion and the insatiable hunger of curiosity. And it seemed unlikely
that any Facesmith had primed her with an expression appropriate for situations like dodging a Skimberslithe Whip-Adder whilst being offered cake.

However, her face had shown him far more than this. Watching her expression, he could almost feel the cold of the tiles through the soles of her satin shoes. As her nervous gaze flitted around
the antechamber, for the first time in centuries he noticed his own pearly frescoes and saw them through fresh eyes. The incense in the air suddenly had a smell, and as her gaze travelled the room,
colours bloomed for a second through the grey.

Possibilities flooded his mind. If he kept her close by, how many more things could he see through her eyes, hear through her ears, experience through her taste buds?

And this was exactly what somebody wanted him to think and feel. It was too tempting. It was too neat, this strange creature falling into his path mere days after the death of his favourite food
taster. Somebody was counting on his inability to resist. The coldly logical Right-Eye would not have hesitated in the face of suspicions. One small signal to the guards, and Neverfell’s
story would have reached a smothered end in seconds.

But it was Left-Eye who was awake at this moment, and he found reasons to delay. Over the centuries he had used the test of the boxes a few times. You could tell a lot about a person from noting
when they gave up and stopped opening boxes. Ordinary people opened the first and then no more. Optimists and slow learners might open three or four. Those who thought it might be a test of
hardiness sometimes opened five or six. But all of them had stopped opening boxes eventually. All but one.

What sort of a person would keep on opening boxes until they ran out? An idiot, obviously, but a special kind of idiot.

The girl seemed to sense the wavering of the invisible scales in which her destiny hung. It was painful to look at her, and it had been a while since he had known pain. The world prickled with
pins and needles as if the blood were flowing back into it. She watched him with mute terror as he gave a series of small gestures, and the guards clipped neatly forward to take her away.

As soon as he had made the decision, he felt a sting of doubt. It seemed for a moment that he tasted something bittersweet on his tongue, as if he had just sipped something pleasant but
poisonous.

‘Where are we going?’

The guards would not answer Neverfell’s questions, but escorted her through ornamental corridor after ornamental corridor, her eyes and mind too bleary to appreciate them. She was not dead
yet, but perhaps they had a special execution ground for people who turned down the Grand Steward’s cake.

What’s wrong with me? Why didn’t I take the cake?

Because I knew I needed a miracle to get out of all this alive. Cake is nice, but it isn’t a miracle. And so I had to hope that the whole box game wasn’t a cruel joke with no
right answers, and that maybe, just maybe, one of those boxes had a miracle in it, a way out. I just had to hope.

Ahead of her, the guard rapped on a gilded door, which was opened by a woman with faded features.

‘Food tasters’ quarters?’ The guard passed her a scroll, which she read with a Face of polite surprise. ‘New recruit for you.’

Conversation took place around Neverfell, and some remarks were even addressed to her, but the sentences might as well have been birdsong for all the sense she could make of them. All she could
think of was two of the words she had just heard.

New recruit.
Being recruited meant not being killed. That was all she knew or needed to know. Numbly she shook hands that were offered to her, and let palace servants in white show her
down a narrow passage to a little box-like chamber where a small canopy bed awaited her.

Left alone in the room, she let herself drop full length on to the bed, only to find this a considerably less comfortable experience than she was expecting. There was something angular under the
covers, and even as she pulled them back she knew what she would find.

Nestled upon the sheet was a small box, tiled in ivory and ebony. Neverfell crumpled and buried her face in the pillow, shaking with sobs.

It was all a trick
, she thought in despair.
They wanted me to think they’d decided not to execute me, but the box test is still going on, and there will just be more and more
boxes forever until one of them kills me or I go mad, or . . .

She sat up and snatched the box, meaning to throw it away from her, but the impulse to open it was too strong.
This time it might not be snakes. If I just open enough boxes, one of them might
be different . . .

The catch gave a small click as she unfastened it. It was almost entirely empty, but for a small roll of paper that fell out on to the sheet. Neverfell unrolled it and read the writing upon
it.

You have won favour with Left-Eye but Right-Eye will be harder to convince. Never joke with Right-Eye. Never waste words. Never try to lie to him.
Never look like a fool.

At one o’clock, the ever-logical Right-Eye Grand Steward woke up to discover that during his sleep his left-eyed counterpart had executed three of his advisors for
treason, ordered the creation of a new carp pool and banned limericks. Worse still, no progress had been made in tracking down the Kleptomancer, and of the two people believed to be his
accomplices, both had been released from prison and one had been appointed food taster. Right-Eye was not amused. He had known for centuries that he could trust nobody but himself. Now he was
seriously starting to wonder about himself.

Left-Eye Grand Steward always did things for reasons, and Right-Eye could usually even remember what they were, but they made no sense to him. It was like trying to decipher pictures scrawled by
a madman. This girl Neverfell had been made a food taster because . . . something to do with a poison rainbow? A firework? A spiderweb turned inside out? It was as if the two halves of his mind
were drifting further apart with time, and losing any ability to understand each other. Nowadays, on those rare occasions when both were awake, it felt as if there were two people crammed into his
skull, and his left hand sometimes made strange gestures without explanation.

He called for his spymasters, and asked for their report on the investigation into the theft of the Stackfalter Sturton. The results were disappointing. Somewhere between the kitchens and the
banqueting hall, the cheese had simply vanished from beneath its silver dish cover, despite the armed guard placed around it.

‘We will have more information soon,’ was the promise.

‘When? When he steals the very beards from your chins? You will have information soon? It is “soon”
now
. Very soon it will be “later”.’

But even these words were an effort for him. He could make these grim men tremble so easily, but what was the point? The failure of others was tiring, too tiring to be worth words. Nowadays he
said little, but sat coldly watching his underlings fail, and fail, until he felt driven to execute them through utter weariness and disgust.

He would need to involve himself in the investigation. Until now this thief had not dared to steal from the Grand Steward or trespass upon his property. He had been a distraction for the
courtiers, a bogey to keep them on edge. This latest theft had changed everything. The Kleptomancer had successfully slipped through all the defences of a grand banquet, and stolen a dish from the
Grand Steward’s personal store in the most ostentatious manner possible.