The culprit had to be found, and quickly. If not, some day he might infiltrate the palace, this time in the role of assassin. Besides, the Grand Steward could never afford to be made to look
foolish or weak, or the rest of the Court would start sniffing like hounds at a blood trail.
‘Cancel all my audiences for the day – I shall be changing my schedule. Have my sedan made ready. Also my travelling mask, twenty guards, Master Calmnus and a food taster.’ He
hesitated. Memories of the previous day floated back to him murkily, like images seen through smudged and distorting glass. ‘The newest food taster.’
Neverfell was rattled out of bed by a thunderous knocking after what felt like only an hour’s sleep. Unfamiliar bed, unfamiliar room. She pulled an unfamiliar dress over
her head, and staggered to the door. It opened on to an unfamiliar corridor full of unfamiliar and very animated people.
‘She’s awake!’ Strange hands grabbed her by the collar, dragged her to a long, low breakfast room, dropped a bowl of lentil soup in front of her and pushed a spoon in her hand.
Somebody else started tugging a brush painfully through her hair.
‘You’ve been summoned by the Grand Steward. We have five minutes to get you ready.’ Seated next to her on the bench was a lean, hollow-eyed woman with a trace of moustache, who
smelt of scented smoke. Neverfell vaguely remembered her being introduced the previous day as Food Taster-in-Chief Leodora. ‘I hadn’t expected you to be called to attend on him so soon
– I’ll have to go through the rules with you quickly. Are you listening?’
Neverfell nodded, albeit at an angle because the brusher was battling a particularly stubborn tangle. Fragments of the previous day were drifting back to her limp, shocked brain. She was in the
tasters’ quarters. These people hurrying her shoes on to her feet and knotting her brown sash of office too tightly round her waist were her colleagues. Most of them were wearing Faces of
careful unconcern, belied by the urgency of their actions, and the way their eyes strayed again and again to her face.
I’m not executed
, she thought with dazed curiosity and surprise.
Look. Look at all my limbs, all still stuck on.
‘Don’t speak in his presence unless you’re asked a question and he gives you permission. If you talk to him, call him “Your Excellency”. Keep your eyes lowered.
Only take a tiny piece when you’re tasting, and never use your fingers, always the pins or forks they give you, so they can see for sure you’ve put it in your mouth.
‘Don’t go wandering off, or talking to people. Try to avoid making friends with anybody who is not a food taster. Lots of people at Court will try to win you over, but it does not
look good if you seem to be taking sides.
‘The most important thing to remember is this: the food we receive in this dining hall has been checked by the Chancery of Safety. Apart from the food and drink you test for the Grand
Steward when you are on duty, you must eat and drink
nothing
that does not come from this hall. Don’t even drink the water from the fountains.’
Neverfell swallowed her mouthful of soup. ‘In case . . . it contains poison?’ she hazarded.
Leodora shook her head. ‘In case it contains a poison antidote. It is an old way of tricking a lord into thinking that food is safe when it is not. A food taster eats something without ill
effect, so the lord eats it . . . and dies.’ The older woman reached out, and pulled Neverfell’s hand away from her mouth, stopping her from anxiously nibbling at her own fingertips.
‘Don’t bite your nails. Sometimes they even try to slip antidotes into the water we use to wash our hands.’
The full extent of Neverfell’s new responsibilities suddenly yawned open before her. Life and death. As her eye crept across the ranks of the other tasters it crossed her mind that all of
them looked rather ill, and none of them looked very old.
The butterflies only returned as she was being hurried out through an arch to a colonnade where a large sedan stood waiting, flanked by six bearers and a dozen armed guards.
She assumed that she would be walking along behind the sedan, but instead the door was opened for her. Gingerly she climbed in.
She was almost surprised to find that the person inside was
man-sized. Her imagination had distorted the Grand Steward overnight, so that she remembered him as a monumental shadow with one coldly gazing silver eye.
Once again she found herself caught in the icy light of the Grand Steward’s gaze. Today, however, it was the right eye that regarded her. His face was divided neatly down the middle, the
left hand side covered by a close-fitting white velvet mask. His glassy hair poured over the collar of his bear-fur coat.
With a jolt, Neverfell remembered the warning in the mysterious note that she had read the night before.
Never joke with Right-Eye. Never waste words. Never try to lie to him. Never look like a fool.
Easier said than done. Neverfell was just deciding that the only way to obey these instructions was to say nothing when the Grand Steward spoke, and destroyed that plan entirely.
‘The view bores my eye.’ His voice was a low, creaking note, and Neverfell had a sense of great effort, as if each word was a vast bell that had to be hauled and swung to be sounded.
‘Look out for me, and tell me of anything interesting that we pass.’
The Grand Steward was seated to Neverfell’s left, his open eye angled towards her. The window on his side was firmly shuttered, while hers was open.
The sedan shambled into motion, and she tried to describe what she saw, stumbling where she did not know the words. She tried all the time to keep her speech plain.
Never waste words.
As
time passed, however, she could not be sure whether he was even listening.
Neverfell started to understand.
She
was the view. She was the window on to the world. Through her and with her he saw cobbled fords through underground streams, ossuary doorways
decorated with a thousand human bones, ladies pausing to have stone dust brushed out of their coats. She knew that she was making the golds bright, the shadows black, the reds vivid, and she could
feel his gaze like a draught.
‘Your questions bother me,’ he snapped at one point.
‘I haven’t asked any!’ exclaimed Neverfell in panic.
‘No, and I see them loitering like pedlars behind the door. Ask them and be rid of them. Quickly!’
‘What’s happened to Master Childersin?’ It was the foremost question in Neverfell’s mind.
‘Acquitted of disrupting the banquet on purpose, in the light of your evidence. Found guilty however of introducing a disruptive individual into the proceedings. Given a chance to save his
skin by passing ownership of you on to me, an opportunity he did not allow to go stale. Freed for now, sent home, told that there is a rope round his neck that can be pulled taut if he
stumbles.’
Neverfell felt some of her anxiety melt into relief. Her rash and desperate gamble had not been in vain after all. ‘And his family – are they still in trouble?’ Zouelle’s
pale face was vivid in her memory.
‘There are heavy black marks against their name,’ the Grand Steward answered coolly, ‘and another small slip will damn them, but they will be safe enough if they are not
fools.’
‘And they haven’t been taken over by the Ganderblacks?’
‘No. Next question!’
The Childersins were out of immediate danger, and Maxim had returned to his family, which surely meant that the persecution of Zouelle would be brought to a halt. Neverfell let out a breath, and
at last could turn her mind to her own situation.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘Today we are hunting for the Kleptomancer, and those who can help us find him. Enough questions – we arrive.’
Peering out through the window, Neverfell realized that she was back in the long lagoon cavern where the banquet had taken place. The sedan was very carefully lowered into a boat, which was
skulled across to the island. A number of figures were waiting on the other side, and Neverfell felt her skin crawl as she recognized the purple garments that marked them out as Enquirers. Their
leader hurried to the sedan to give her report, and to her horror Neverfell recognized Enquirer Treble, who had been her interrogator back at the hanging cells. Today the Enquirer was wearing Face
No. 312, A Guardian at the Grey Gates, a grave and impressive expression designed to make her look formidable, reliable and respectful all at once.
‘We have a clearer picture of the crime now, Your Excellency.’ Enquirer Treble was doing an excellent job of keeping her eye from straying to Neverfell, which was probably just as
well. ‘The only time the Stackfalter Sturton was unwatched was whilst it was locked away in an ice room mere yards from this cavern, so as to lower it to the perfect temperature for
consumption. The door was guarded, so it was believed to be safe.
‘It would seem the thief tunnelled down into the ice room from a little-used store cave directly above it. In the storeroom we found these.’ She held up some grimy beakers, and a
tiny, fragile pair of apothecary’s scales. ‘Whoever he is, he knows his Edible Alchemy. We think he mixed some cunning combination of Gnat-wine, Crathepepper and Shrieking
Bladdercheese. Whatever it was, it ate through two yards of stone like boiling water through chocolate.
‘We also found this down in the ice room.’ She held up a slender metal implement with fork prongs at one end and a handle four feet long. ‘We believe he cut the Sturton up into
pieces, and then used this fork to push them up through the hole. No doubt when this was done he was planning to climb back up himself and make away with his prize.’
‘So why did he change his plans?’
‘We think he had no choice.’ The Enquirer cast a glance across at Neverfell. ‘After . . . somebody spilt the Ganderblack Wine, the servants panicked and decided to bring in the
Sturton half an hour earlier than planned. The thief must have heard somebody unlocking the door, and realized that the only place he could hide in time was under the Sturton’s dish
cover.’
‘Then . . . it wasn’t my fault!’ Neverfell interrupted jubilantly. ‘I didn’t help the Kleptomancer’s plan – I interrupted it!’
‘So it would seem,’ conceded Enquirer Treble, with a good deal of reluctance.
‘Have you discovered how this thief managed to infiltrate the storerooms in the first place?’ enquired the Grand Steward. ‘Or, for that matter, how he managed to escape after
diving into the lagoon?’
‘The Cartographers have been looking into it,’ Treble answered promptly, ‘and we have summoned Master Harpsicalian to explain their findings. He is not . . . safe, but he is
better than most of the others. He awaits the honour of your attention.’
‘Have him brought here.’
There was a rattle, and Neverfell saw another sedan chair being hefted unsteadily towards them. It was unlike the one in which she sat in almost every way. For one thing, it had no windows, and
its door was covered in heavy-looking bolts and padlocks, so that it looked more like a giant strongbox than a means of transport. Even the dark wood from which it was made had a gleaming solidity
to it. Even more curious, on the frame next to the door an hourglass was affixed on a central pivot.
‘You have another question,’ the Grand Steward prompted her, as one of his men began pulling back the bolts.
‘Who’s in the box?’ Neverfell was trying hard not to bite her nails.
‘A Cartographer.’
Neverfell recollected Zouelle’s warning at the banquet. Cartographers suffered from a contagious insanity. They were useful, many of them brilliant, but anybody who talked to them ran the
risk of going bogglingly insane.
The door opened, and the guard immediately stepped to one side, and revolved the hourglass on its pivot so that sand started to pour down through its narrow heart.
A man stepped out, swaying and bobbing in a frenzy of courtesy. Immediately there was a sniff of the wrong about him, and Neverfell felt herself tensing. She could see all the guards doing the
same. His tea-coloured eyes were unusually large, and seemed to wobble slightly in their sockets. His belt bristled with strange gadgets, and a device strapped to his head gave a resounding click
every ten seconds, causing him to jerk slightly.
He was wearing Face 33, Acknowledgement of Gallantry, a mild smile suitable when one had been passed the sugar at important functions. It did not fit the situation, and that made Neverfell
nervous, just as it would have done if he had been wearing his jacket backwards or socks on his hands.
‘Master Harpsicalion, I wish to know all you have discovered about the late infiltration into the storerooms over there,’ declared the Grand Steward without preamble. ‘I want
to know how the intruder got in, where he came from and where he escaped to.’ His eye was on the timer, and he spoke with a new harsh urgency. ‘Speak! Be quick!’
‘Ahhh.’ The strange figure let out a long breath, let in a long breath, and then started to speak in a surprisingly crisp and sane-sounding tone. ‘Well, of course I am
summarizing the findings of my more skilled peers, but I understand from Peckletter that for some time –’ jerk – ‘there’s been a waterlogged channel in the
granitelanes . . .’
He had a wonderfully crystalline way of talking. His voice rose and fell and took you with it, up spiral staircases you did not know were there and down sudden shafts and into unsuspected
corridors until you lost track of time and –
‘. . . batwise scutterblack so we hadn’t time to wind up properly with elbow-mandator before we could gauge the reverberation and the earth-hiccups—’
‘Time’s up!’ shouted the guard as the last grains of the hourglass tumbled into the base. The Cartographer was still talking, but the guard pushed him firmly back through the
door and closed it behind him.
There was a small pause while eighteen people recovered their breath and started untwisting their brains, a curiously painful process.
The Cartographer had been talking for five minutes. For the last three of those, Neverfell now realized, he had been saying very little that made ordinary sense. Worryingly, at the time, she had
felt that she understood him perfectly. Her mind had been pulled out from the shores of sanity by the current of the Cartographer’s words, and hauling herself back was a wrench.