Even now there was a lurking feeling that she had, for a moment, been shown something wonderful, a hint to a colossal puzzle that would unravel and help her understand the world. She still had a
sense of how rock felt, what it meant to have silver and copper in your veins. She could feel the tug of the unseen caves, the urge to leave her prints in caverns never before trodden by man . .
.
Now it was obvious why there was an hourglass outside the Cartographer’s door. More than five minutes’ conversation with him was just too dangerous.
‘So.’ The Grand Steward startled her out of her own thoughts. ‘How much of that did you understand?’
Neverfell struggled to answer, remembering the importance of ‘not seeming a fool’. So many of the Cartographer’s phrases, which had seemed so lucid, now collapsed into nonsense
under the cold light of sanity. Neverfell no longer understood what ‘melancholy basalt’ was, or why it was important to ‘sing three degrees of silver’. However, parts of his
speech lingered, and made some murky sense.
‘Er . . . the Cartographers have been searching the area with . . . with weasels and spoon meters . . .’ Neverfell creased her brow. ‘And now they think the only way he could
have got in was up a . . . waste chute?’
‘That was also my understanding of Master Harpsicalian’s words.’ Enquirer Treble was resting her fingertips on her forehead, as if trying to keep the contents steady.
‘And mine,’ muttered the Grand Steward, as incredulously as if the Kleptomancer had been accused of crawling out of a teapot spout. ‘I see. So our thief squeezed his way up two
hundred foot of sheer shaft, slithery with every kind of rot and foulness, in spite of all the downwards-pointing metal spikes designed to stop anybody or anything doing exactly that. And since the
fumes of those places are deadly and no trap-lanterns will grow there, he presumably did it without needing to breathe.’
‘My apologies, Your Excellency.’ Enquirer Treble seemed wary of rising too far out of a bow. ‘But it would seem that the Cartographers have found no other way that he can have
entered.’
‘And his escape seems equally implausible,’ continued the Grand Steward. ‘If I have understood Master Harpsicalian’s babblings, the criminal escaped through an underwater
tunnel leading from the lagoon. An escape route that would require him to hold his breath for ten minutes, then dive down through a forty-foot waterfall into a fast-moving river.’
There was a long pause.
‘I am rather assuming that nobody here seriously thinks the man drowned in that river,’ the Grand Steward remarked.
‘Not unless his ghost returned later to recover the cheese pieces from the storeroom where he had hidden them,’ answered Enquirer Treble. ‘There is no sign of them now. And, as
for drowning, we suspect his suit was probably airtight, perhaps even equipped with its own air supply. Some of the Cartographers have developed suits a lot like that for exploring caves filled
with water.’
‘That is interesting.’ The Grand Steward’s single eye did not precisely change expression, but something in its pale fire brightened and intensified. ‘Treble, this man
may be a Cartographer. It might explain his knowledge of hidden ways. Make discreet enquiries, but the Cartographers themselves must not know of our suspicion, or word may reach our
thief.’
When Treble had bowed and departed to pass on orders, Neverfell spent a few moments biting back a question, until as usual it escaped her.
‘What’s wrong with the Cartographer? There’s something upsetting him, isn’t there? Like there’s an itch he can’t scratch.’
The Grand Steward turned his cold eye upon her, then gave a curt but approving nod. ‘The Cartographers are restless of late,’ he confirmed. ‘Excitable. Unpredictable. They have
not been this bad since the madness over the Undiscovered Passage.’
‘Undiscovered Passage?’
‘An obsession of theirs. You know, I suppose, that some Cartographers deliberately learn to squeak and hear like bats – they believe that they can use the squeak echoes to tell the
shape of tunnels all around them, the way bats do but with much greater accuracy. About seven years ago all these bat-squeakers became convinced that they had sensed a new tunnel, one that had
never been noticed before.
‘They seemed to believe it ran deep into the heart of Caverna, and yet was on no map. No wider than two cubits, straight as a harp string and very, very long. They insisted that there was
something wrong with it – that it only had one end. And then, before they could work out where it was, it vanished again. The obsession filtered through to the rest of the Cartographers, like
smoke seeping under a door, and they went demented hunting it for a time. They calmed after a while, but never completely gave up their search for it.’
‘Could that passage be the way the Kleptomancer sneaked in and out?’
‘The Cartographers think not. And perhaps it does not even exist outside their delusions.’
‘So if they never found any new trace of the tunnel, why are they restless now?’
‘Nobody knows. Perhaps they do not know themselves.’
Neverfell contemplated this whilst the Grand Steward continued talking to Enquirer Treble.
‘So what else do we know of this man?’
‘The thief is short,’ she answered, ‘but not a child – he has been operating for a long time. His activities were first reported ten years ago, but he only became
notorious seven years ago, when a very sizeable reward was offered for his capture. Anonymously, it would seem. We also have a list of all those thefts for which he is believed to be responsible.
There . . . does not seem to be any pattern, Your Excellency.’
‘See if you can find out who offered that reward,’ instructed the Grand Steward. ‘What else can we deduce about him? This is a thief who will risk his life to steal a truckle
of Stackfalter Sturton. What does this tell us?’
‘He really likes cheese?’ Neverfell suggested, then clapped both hands over her mouth when everybody glared at her.
‘Spoken like a cheesemaker,’ responded the Enquirer with cool disdain.
‘But . . .’ Neverfell could not suppress her thoughts. ‘But he must
know
a little about cheese. Or about this cheese, anyway. You see, when a Sturton is ripening
it’s very important to turn it often, but after it’s ripe and sliced, you have to poke it with a gold needle regularly to let it vent. So he must be doing that, at the very
least.’
‘What makes you so sure?’ snapped the Enquirer.
‘Um . . . well, if he hadn’t, I think somebody would have heard the explosion,’ Neverfell explained meekly.
‘He may have let them detonate in the wild tunnels, where none would hear them,’ the Enquirer responded dismissively. ‘It is plain from our records that the Kleptomancer cares
little for the things he steals. Most of the time he destroys them or casts them aside as soon as he has them. The theft is all that matters to him. The disruption he causes. The notoriety it gains
him. The challenge.’
‘Why don’t you challenge him to steal something, then? You could lie in wait and grab him.’ Neverfell looked round, and found that the Grand Steward’s cold right eye was
fixed upon her. ‘Oh! Um . . . I mean . . . why don’t you challenge him to steal something,
Your Excellency
.’
The Enquirer froze her with a glance of weary contempt. ‘If the man is clever enough to mix Luxuries without blowing off his own head, then he is intelligent enough to spot such an obvious
trap.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Neverfell paused, trying to organize the squirrel-dance of her thoughts. ‘But people do walk into traps, don’t they? When it’s the right bait.
They just can’t help it, even when they know it’s a trap.’
‘Not everybody opens a box when they know it will blow up in their face,’ the Enquirer suggested icily, and Neverfell reddened.
‘You are wrong, Treble,’ said the Grand Steward speculatively, his eye still on Neverfell. ‘Everybody has a box they cannot help but open, even if they are almost certain it is a
trap. Everybody has something they cannot resist. It is just a matter of finding the right box and the right bait for each person. And for this thief I think we must bait the trap with something
odd enough to pique his sense of theatre, something unique.
‘Our next stop will be the Cabinet of Curiosities.’
The Grand Steward’s sedan was carried through the Avenue of Marvels, where ancient fossilized fish with narrow snouts grinned toothily from the rock of the wall, and down
the Street of Dry Tears, where solitary drop-shaped crystals hung suspended from nigh-invisible threads. At last they came to two green doors, just wide enough when open for the sedan to be carried
within.
The Cabinet of Curiosities was, in fact, a set of rooms filled with wonders of the world. The Grand Steward’s hunger for anything that would break his boredom was well-known in the
overground world, and so explorers would travel distant lands and take deadly risks just to bring him back something extraordinary enough to amuse him for a little while. Small wonder, for any man
who could deliver a novelty worthy of the Grand Steward’s notice was paid a king’s ransom.
Each object within had, at one time, stirred in his mind some spark of curiosity, and a fleeting sense that the world was marvellous and not always predictable. Each time, however, the interest
had burned itself out leaving only the bland grey ashes of boredom, and the new novelty was sent to join its fellows in the Cabinet of Curiosities. The Cabinet was, in fact, nothing more or less
than a testament to the Grand Steward’s all-consuming, all-annihilating boredom, and he had not set foot in it for over fifty years.
Now, however, everything was different, for he had his strange young food taster by his side. She had never seen such marvels before, and under her eye the curiosities came to life again. He saw
anew the mummified body of King Arupet with gems the size of dove’s eggs in his eye sockets; the horn of a giant narwhal; a dragonfly the length of a man’s arm trapped in amber; the
stuffed corpse of a three-headed calf; the skeleton of a man so holy that tiny wings had grown from his shoulders; a singed round rock said to be a thunderbolt. She seemed particularly fascinated
by the pale plaster death masks of famous poets, their eyes closed and cheeks slack. He saw her curiosity building, like a geyser waiting to erupt.
The curator of the Cabinet nearly crippled himself in his haste to approach the Grand Steward and offer his trembling bows.
‘Yes, yes,’ the Grand Steward responded wearily. ‘Keep that girl out of my way and answer her questions, will you?’
The girl was insatiable, capering about like a mad monkey, peering into the cases at roc’s eggs and rhino hides. Then she halted, gaped and moved slowly to stand before the lean, towering
figure of a stuffed animal some eighteen feet tall. She stared transfixed at its tawny fur and tortoiseshell blotches, its soft horn-stubs and handlebar ears, its stilt legs and the mane-fringe
down the back of its telescope neck.
‘What have you done to this horse?’ Her voice was audible to the Grand Steward even from the other side of the room. ‘Did it die from having its neck stretched too
far?’
‘Ah, no, miss, that is a cameleopard, our newest acquisition, a quite remarkable creature from the sun-baked plains . . .’ The curator began his explanation, but Neverfell seemed to
be paying little attention to his words. She was stooping to peer at the turnip-bulges of the cameleopard’s ankles, and sniff at its broad, dark, cloven hoofs. The Grand Steward suddenly
realized that she was trying to find the smell of grass on its feet.
‘So why is it that tall, then?’ Neverfell’s voice floated relentlessly across the dark, attic-like room. ‘Does the sun make animals grow, the way it makes plants grow?
Are there other creatures as tall as that up there? What about people? Does it make them grow too? Is that why I’m tall for my age?’
‘Ahem . . .’ The curator sounded somewhat out of his depth. ‘No, no, I scarcely think so . . . by all accounts sunlight is a withering and dangerous business. I . . . I believe
the cameleopard’s neck is stretched by, ah, reaching for high leaves . . .’
‘So is it born with a short neck, and does it just get longer from stretching? If I kept stretching up to bite leaves would my neck get longer? I always reach for things with my right hand
– why isn’t my right arm longer than my left one? That doesn’t make sense!’
Contrary to the curator’s hopes, she was showing no obvious sign of running out of questions. Instead she was scampering over to peer at several towering suits of armour from distant
lands, sometimes holding out an arm to compare its length to an enamelled gauntlet.
‘And look! These
do
look like they were made for giants. So perhaps the sun really does make all overground people extra large!’
The Grand Steward managed to drag his eye from the caperings of his new taster. He was, after all, there for a reason.
‘Take a note.’ One of his scribes rushed to his side with pen and paper. ‘Let it be known that the Stewardship of Caverna has challenged the so-called Kleptomancer to
demonstrate his skill and courage by stealing one of the Grand Steward’s Curiosities before three days pass. Let it also be known that a space will be put aside for the stuffed and mounted
remains of said Kleptomancer, so that the gentles of Court may gawp at him after his inevitable arrest and execution.’
But which Curiosity should he challenge the Kleptomancer to steal? How should he bait the trap? His eye wandered back to the cameleopard that had so fascinated Neverfell. Tall, unwieldy,
difficult for a thief to manoeuvre down chutes at speed . . .
‘Change that a little,’ he muttered to his scribe. ‘Instead of “one of the Curiosities”, write “the Latest and Greatest Curiosity to come into the Grand
Steward’s possession”.’
The Kleptomancer would need to ask questions in order to find out which was the last item in the Cabinet to be presented to the Grand Steward, and perhaps he could be caught doing so. And, even
if that trap failed, the mysterious thief would still be faced with the task of stealing a rigid, eighteen-foot-tall monstrosity.