A Face Like Glass (29 page)

Now was the moment. He leaped forward, sword raised. Or now would have been the moment if another gleaming figure had not, at this very instant, erupted without warning from the gaping blackness
of the ember chute.

It was a foot shorter than the killer, but stocky and surprisingly agile. It parried the descending blade with a forearm, and the killer was surprised to hear a metallic clang instead of a
shriek of pain. The next moment the odd figure had punched the assassin in the face with shocking force and accuracy, and the assassin realized that it too could see in the dark.

The blow knocked him back a couple of feet, and then he saw the stocky figure lift one arm and level it at him. There seemed to be something bulky jutting from its hand. Reflexively, the killer
raised his sword and lunged forward to attack.

During the long second of his lunge, the assassin thought he saw his own body and that of his new enemy grow brighter still, as if both were living more fiercely in that lethal moment. Before
his sword could bite anything but air, a supernova went off in his chest, and suddenly he found he was not leaping forward any more. The floor hit him in the back hard. Then the world and all its
lightless lights went out quietly and left him to darkness, like a dying trap-lantern.

Meanwhile the stocky figure paid no attention to his fallen attacker. Instead he flung a broad, metal-clad arm round the injured girl as she struggled to her feet, and tumbled backwards into the
darkness of the ember chute, dragging her with him.

There was a descending and fading scream from the chute. The ember-chute doors, which had flung back on their hinges, swung slowly to and clicked against each other. And then, all over Caverna,
the clocks gave a hiccup of their cogs as they chimelessly chimed the hour of naught.

When Neverfell came round, she found that she was shivering. She was lying on something hard and flat, and for some reason she seemed to be wet. Her hair was plastered to her
face, and chill dribbles had run in at the collar of her pyjamas.

The memory of her kidnap returned to her, like an army of soldiers marching out of mist. The glisserblinds, the pursuit through the dark, chaotic sounds around her, being gripped round her
middle and plummeting through a choking blackness that smelt like ash . . . Gingerly she opened her eyes a crack, and peered out between the damp strands of her hair.

She appeared to be lying on a large table, against the wall of a reasonably sizeable cavern. The ceiling was low and strung with hooks, from which hung a veritable forest of tools, flasks,
baskets and sacks, so that her view of the far wall was obstructed. From one hook hung an armoured suit made up of tiny diamond-shaped scales, and further off she could just make out the hanging
swell of a tattered hammock of thick wool and sacking. On another table not far away was what looked like a set of alchemist’s equipment, a huddle of bulge-bellied glass flasks and flimsy
scales loaded with gold and scarlet powders.

From the other side of the room Neverfell could hear faint squeaks and creaks. Her teeth were chattering, but her curiosity was stronger than anything else. As quietly as she could, she lowered
herself down from the table, and crept slowly in the direction of the sounds, taking care not to nudge the hanging tools and sacks or put too much weight on her injured ankle.

Just ahead, she could see a lantern resting on the ground. Somebody was standing next to it, the upper half of his body concealed behind a rack of hanging grain sacks and cooking pots. She could
just make out gloved hands unfastening the clasps on a metal suit, prising the armour apart and letting it fall to the floor, to reveal surprisingly drab, brown, work-a-day clothes underneath. Then
something large and round was lowered to the ground where it rang like a gong, rolled a little and glared up at her with two droplet-spattered goggles.

She recognized it in an instant from description. It was the Kleptomancer’s helmet.

His hands, now ungloved, were pulling something out of a pocket with a tremulous eagerness. It was a letter, sealed with a strange and elaborate design in purple wax. The figure crouched,
holding the letter close to the lantern, and Neverfell saw the Kleptomancer properly for the first time.

She had been braced for a headless man. She would not have been surprised by searing eyes, aquiline mockery or twitching insanity. In fact, she had been ready for anything except
ordinariness.

The face upward-lit by the measly trap was wide-jawed and clean-shaven, with a high forehead so that the eyes, nose and mouth seemed crowded in the lower part of it. His eyes were small, his
nose short and blunt, his hair nut-brown and close-cropped. It was not a face that would stand out from a crowd. Indeed, given his height, most crowds would have swallowed him altogether.

His expression was perfectly blank. Perhaps there was something a little too even about the central line of his mouth. There were no rises, falls, curls and valleys, just a perfectly straight
line. It was not cruel or hard, but level as the surface of still water.

The only remarkable feature was his eyes, the irises of which were black and lightless. As she watched, Neverfell saw him squint at the letter, and rub impatiently at his eyes with the heel of
his hand.

The dead black irises had to mean that he had been taking Nocteric to help him see in the dark. Neverfell had never used it, but knew a little about it. They said that one of the common
after-effects was snow-freckle, a symptom that flecked your eyes with white and left you with half-blind, mottled sight for an hour or so. If she was right, the Kleptomancer was squinting because
his eyes were starting to freckle. Perhaps this could work in her favour.

Stealthily she approached, taking pains to stay outside the lantern’s halo of light. As she watched, he pulled out a pair of tinted spectacles with triangular lenses and tried peering
through them at the letter, then gave a short hiss of annoyance. Slapping his letter down on the floor, he ventured uncertainly into the darkness, one arm raised to protect his head from the
hanging tools. Ducking to peer, Neverfell could just about see him rummaging in a distant bag, pulling out several pairs of curious-looking goggles.

Neverfell had planned to wait until the Kleptomancer’s sight had thickened further before making her move, but the sight of the unattended letter was too much for her. Holding her breath,
she slipped forward as quietly as possible, snatched up the letter and limped stealthily back into the shadows.

A few seconds later she heard a crash. Then there came the sound of hurried, blundering steps and a cacophony of jangling tools as if someone were pushing through them at speed.

Neverfell pulled herself up into the hammock in the nick of time, and hung silently in its belly as the Kleptomancer pushed past, in the direction of the table where he had left her. A moment
later, she heard his voice for the first time.

‘Where are you?’ It was a shout, but a strangely passionless one, and his voice had a slight roughness, as if it had gathered fluff through lack of use. ‘I know you have my
letter.’

She had to wait. If she could only wait, his sight would dim further, and she would have a chance of making her escape.

The light where she lay was very poor, but with difficulty she could just make out the words written on the front.

To be opened after the successful completion of Operation M331.

Stealthily she broke the seal, and peered at the contents until her eyes ached:

Immediately imbibe blend 4ZZ to erase days 17670 to 17691 and blend 8HH to revive day 35839. Discover all you can from item. Observe rupture for two
days. Once all information gleaned, return item exactly as found. Next letter will arrive in three days’ time.

Elsewhere in the room, she could still hear the Kleptomancer crashing around, looking for her. As she listened, however, the attempts seemed to grow more sluggish and
desultory. Perhaps he was giving up. Perhaps the snow-freckle was setting in. Perhaps this was her chance to try to escape.

Very gingerly, she let herself down from her hammock, and began edging along the wall, looking for a way out. After a short while she was rewarded by the sight of two double doors. From behind
them issued a steady, soulless roar. A taut, thick wire entered the room through the crack where the doors met, and slanted down to tether to an iron ring fixed to the floor. The floor around it
was glossy with puddles.

Now or never. She pulled the doors open. The roar became deafening, and a fine spray frosted the skin of Neverfell’s face. Her heart plummeted. She was staring at a solid wall of mashing,
white water, a waterfall that could demolish her as easily as a hippopotamus stepping on an ant. There was no escape that way.

She closed the doors again and spun round, only to find that the Kleptomancer had emerged from the hanging clutter behind her. Perhaps he had heard the waterfall’s roar suddenly grow
louder as she opened the door.

‘Give me my letter.’ His voice matched the steady line of his mouth, level as still water. Still water wasn’t cruel, and wasn’t kind. It didn’t care whether you
swam or drowned.

‘These are orders, aren’t they?’ Neverfell tried to snatch back her wits and courage. ‘Somebody’s giving you orders! Somebody sent you to murder me with snakes
– or steal me – or kidnap me! Tell me what’s going on or . . . or I’ll eat the letter!’

The Kleptomancer took a step forward, and Neverfell stuffed the letter into her mouth.

‘’Et back!’ she shouted, somewhat unclearly. ‘I’ll shtart chewin’!’ There was a pause, and then to her enormous relief he receded a few steps. Slowly,
heart pounding, Neverfell prised the now slightly damp letter out of her mouth. The thief’s face was still as blank as stone, and Neverfell’s world lurched as she suddenly realized how
much danger she was in. She had seen the true and secret face of the Kleptomancer. How could he afford to let her live to speak of it?

Then, all at once, one of the strange phrases in the letter leaped to her mind and began to make sense.

‘
Return item exactly as found
. The letter says
return item exactly as found
! The item’s me, isn’t it? You have to return me as found! So, if you hurt me,
you’ll get into trouble with your master!’ She dodged a sudden snatch by the Kleptomancer, and darted away at a high-speed lollop. Yes, his aim was now clearly suffering.

‘I’m not trying to hurt you!’ he shouted after her. ‘I just saved your life! Now stop all this . . . running!’

Glancing back at the thief, Neverfell could see him standing in the lantern light, his expression still blank as new slate, one hand rubbing, bemused, at the back of his neck. For the first time
it occurred to Neverfell that perhaps he did not know what to do with stolen goods that did not stay where he put them, but instead screamed, ran around and threatened to eat his correspondence.
Perhaps he did not really know what to do with people at all.

‘You put glisserblinds through my keyhole!’ she squeaked. ‘What kind of saving is that?’

‘That was the assassin, not me. He was about to kill you – until I stole you.’

Now that Neverfell thought about it, she did remember a scuffle just before she had been dragged down the chute, something that might have been a struggle between two people.

‘Prove it!’ she shrilled.

‘Think about it!’ he shouted back. ‘If I wanted you dead, why are you still alive? I have had plenty of chances to kill you.’

He had rather a good point. Neverfell hesitated still, daunted by the Kleptomancer’s chillingly stony countenance, and then her mind cleared and she understood the reason for it. It was
not an attempt to snub or intimidate her at all. She had seen that very Face dozens of times, each time linked to the memory of quiet but busy brooms, bowed heads, soft and attentive treads, hands
held out for coins . . .

For once, Neverfell managed to bite back an exclamation of surprise. The famous Kleptomancer, subject of a hundred paintings and poems, was a drudge. He had been wearing a stonily implacable
face because it was one of the very few his caste was allowed.

‘How did you know the assassin was coming for me?’ she asked instead, still wary of approaching.

‘Two days ago you went for a walk through the palace.’ He was scanning the shadow, trying to work out where she was. ‘I was following you. So was he. I saw him. He didn’t
see me. I started following him and his monkey instead to see if he had a good plan for reaching you. He did. So . . . I let him go ahead with it. I let him put out the lights, deal with the guards
and get everybody out of the way for me.’

‘He nearly killed me!’ squeaked Neverfell. ‘How did you know I would still be alive when you got there?’

The Kleptomancer gave a small shrug. ‘Alive, preferable. Dead . . . easier to carry. And not as loud,’ he added with a hint of real feeling.

Neverfell did not feel reassured. ‘Why did you steal me? Who sent you?’