How could the drudges rise up against bullies like the foreman? Rebels needed to look at each other and see their own anger reflected, and know that their feeling was part of a greater tide. But
any drudge who glanced at his fellows would see only calm, tame Faces waiting for orders.
Neverfell could feel the muscles of her face tighten and move. There was a tingling sensation in her skin and a buzzing feeling in her chest. Yes, she knew what this was. She remembered
Childersin talking to her, telling her that she was . . . angry.
Neverfell found a large, dank piece of sacking and wrapped it around herself to conceal her pyjamas, and to shroud her hair and face. Only then did she dare the narrow tunnels,
where she soon found herself stifled and bruised by a mass of hurrying, pressing, unwashed bodies.
The reek of rot and the chamberpot was overwhelming, and she soon realized why. Occasional grilles beneath her feet looked down into caverns full of heaped waste of all sorts, being shovelled by
masked drudges into a ravine where yet another river rushed, presumably so that it could be carried out of Caverna. Amid the waste stood fine mesh cages the height of a man, their insides boiling
and crawling with motion. Thousands of moths and grubs gorged and fattened on dung, not knowing they were destined to feed the lanterns of Caverna.
Through narrow arches, she saw long low dormitories crammed with sleeping figures and soaked with glaring green light from the unshaded trap-lanterns. She glimpsed crèches where babies
were laid out a dozen to a bed, whilst among them strode the crèche nurses, wearing masks of the docile Faces the infants were permitted to learn. Everybody around her was short, a lot of
the adults not much taller than she was. Many of the children walked oddly, their legs buckling inwards so their knees knocked, and they shook with coughs that seemed too large for them.
You wanted to know how everything worked
, said the relentless voice in Neverfell’s head.
And now you do.
She felt as if she were looking at a river, a flood of brown and grey clothes, seething with matching foam-pale faces. And that was how everybody else saw the drudges, one great mindless force
of nature that could be harnessed to turn treadmills and bear away rubbish and nourish the whole city.
And yet there was a life to this Undercity, she realized, a life belied by the drab monotony of the naked stone and blank faces. As the air shook with the thunder of grinding millstones, lunging
pump pistons and rattling treadmills, sometimes she heard strains of song trained to follow their rhythm, like man-size footsteps scampering between the long strides of giants. She started to hear
the differences in the tunes of the stone xylophones with their coded signals, some urgent, some leisurely, some almost jaunty. She began to notice the subtle hand mimes the drudges used to
communicate over the din, the way they clasped hands in greeting, barely bothering to glance at each other’s immobile faces.
In among the dun-coloured river of drudges, she saw a flash of purple. Reflexively, she flattened herself against a wall, and peered through the crowd. Yes, there was a figure ahead, dressed in
the unmistakable colours of an Enquirer. He was standing in the very middle of the corridor, so that the human river was forced to part to pass him, and appeared to be scanning the flow. Now and
then he reached out and casually caught at an arm, forcing somebody to stop. Those he halted were nearly all girls of Neverfell’s build and height.
Neverfell caught fragments of sentences.
‘. . . girl with red hair . . . a face like glass . . .’
The Enquiry had moved fast. They must have realized that Neverfell had been spirited down the ember chute, and had started searching Drudgery.
Neverfell knotted her fingers, thinking hard. There was nothing to stop her striding forward right now to place herself in the hands of the Enquiry, and demand that they take her back to the
Grand Steward’s palace. Nothing, that is, but the memory of plunging into icy water whilst in an Enquiry cage, and the warning that Zouelle had given her.
Neverfell, on no account let yourself fall into the hands of the Enquiry, or you will be tortured into confessing all kinds of things.
Somebody in the Enquiry had tried to kill her, and for all she knew it might be the man in front of her. If she placed herself in his hands down here in Drudgery, it would be child’s play
for him to dispose of her and cover his tracks. And even if he did hand her over to his superiors alive, what then? She would be in the power of Enquirer Treble, who distrusted her and wanted to
torture the ‘truth’ out of her.
Keeping close to the wall to avoid notice, Neverfell turned about and headed back along the corridor. Seeing a dented and discarded pail, she picked it up, hoping it would make her look as if
she were heading somewhere on an errand. It was full of a greenish slime, the lingering trace of stagnant water, so she scooped up handfuls of it and used it to daub her hair, and conceal its
bright colour.
Where could she go? Who could she turn to now?
Erstwhile. She had to find Erstwhile.
Erstwhile had told her that he lived in Sallow’s Elbow. There were no passage signs or signposts, so when she was at some distance from the Enquirer she dared to ask for directions. She
was afraid that doing so might show her up as one unfamiliar to the Undercity, but she had no choice, and tugged at a drudge woman’s sleeve.
‘Sallow’s Elbow?’ She made her voice a hoarse whisper, to disguise it.
‘Third left to the crossways, follow the ladder straight up, carry on straight ahead over three bridges, cross the scoot slope and the lock,’ came the whispered answer. The woman did
not look at her, but gave Neverfell a couple of quick and companionable pats on the arm before passing on.
When Neverfell found Sallow’s Elbow, she could not mistake it. The passage had broadened, and at a certain point it twisted sharply back on itself. In the crook of the elbow, she noticed
that the wall was pocked with hollows about three or four feet across, each of which had a blanket or piece of loose fabric roughly pinned over it like a curtain. In some cases she could see a
grubby hand or unshod foot dangling out from beneath the cloth.
As she reached the elbow, one of the curtains was pulled aside, and a boy of about her own age groggily scrambled out.
‘Excuse me!’ She caught at his sleeve before he could disappear into the people-river. ‘I’m looking for Erstwhile.’
He turned and slapped at a black-and-white chequered rag that hung in front of one of the hollows.
‘Rise and shine, Erstwhile. Your girlfriend’s come to take you to the opera,’ he called, before disappearing off down the tunnel.
The cloth was snatched back, and Erstwhile stared up at Neverfell, his face flushed with sleep and creased from resting against his collar. His expression deadened and took on the polite blank
look so many other drudges wore, and Neverfell’s heart sank.
‘What the sickness are you doing here?’
‘You told me to come here! You said I could if I was in trouble—’
‘I told you to send messages here, not come yourself! This isn’t a place for you!’ He scrambled out and stood defensively in front of his curtained chamber, trying to pull the
rag across surreptitiously to protect it from sight. It was hopeless, and he gave up and pulled the cloth back. ‘Well, go on, then, have a good goggle! Enjoying your tour of Drudgery, are
you?’
The hollow behind the curtain was barely two feet deep. The only objects inside were a tin cup, a worn and lumpy satchel, some clothes folded to serve as a pillow, and his precious unicycle. Far
too late, she saw the reason for his stony anger. He had not wanted her to see that he lived like this, perched in a wall dimple like a glow-worm.
Neverfell wanted to burst into tears. ‘I didn’t
decide
to come here! I was stolen by the Kleptomancer, and had to escape using one of his suits. And now Drudgery is crawling
with Enquirers, and if they catch me their leader will want to torture me. I can’t let them find me, Erstwhile!
‘I came looking for you because it was that or give up. You’re the only person in the Drudgery I can trust. You’re one of the few people in the whole of Caverna I can
trust.’
Erstwhile’s expression changed to a look of keen alertness, as if he were expecting her to say more. Neverfell guessed that it was not what he was feeling, but was as close as he could
get. In any case, at least he was no longer stonily ground-gazing.
‘You stupid little hen,’ he muttered. ‘Didn’t I tell you you were out of your depth? Didn’t I say you’d end up neck-deep in trouble if you went to Court?
Stolen by the Kleptomancer – how did you manage that?’
‘Oh . . . he’s mad, and it’s all about ruptures and threads and ants . . . and everyone thought it was the cameleopard . . .’
‘Still crazy as a squirrel, aren’t you?’ Erstwhile threw a glance up and down the tunnel, then tugged a ragged cloth out of his ‘pillow’ and handed it to Neverfell.
‘Wrap that round your head, and pull it forward so it hangs down over your face. Now, come on, follow me! Sharpish!’
Following Erstwhile, Neverfell was almost glad she had not been eating well. He thought nothing of squeezing through fissures she had barely noticed before, or wriggling fish-like through the
narrowest of holes.
‘This is the route I always take up out of the Undercity when I’m – oh, pepper it!’ Erstwhile halted abruptly. ‘Back! Into the crevice! They’ve got an
Enquirer waiting at the bottom of the ladders!’ They scrambled back the way they had come, until there was no purple in sight.
‘Is there another way up out of Drudgery?’ whispered Neverfell.
‘Only a handful. And if they’re blocking this route they’ll be doing the same with the others. No, they’re cordoning off Drudgery. And they’re doing all this to
find you?’
‘I think so. Or maybe the Kleptomancer.’
‘Enquirers in Drudgery. That’s always bad.’ Erstwhile gave her a brief sideways glance. ‘We only see ’em when they think somebody they’re after is hiding down
here. And then they do everything they can to make us dig him out and hand him over. Beatings, disappearances. And if that doesn’t work . . . they cut off everybody’s eggs.’
Neverfell gaped. ‘They cut off everybody’s legs?’
‘No! Eggs! Eggs!’ As Neverfell gave a relieved snort, Erstwhile glanced at her, his expression becoming briefly stony once more. ‘It’s all right for you to smirk,
you’ve always had as many eggs as you want. Don’t you know that if you don’t get enough eggs down here, you grow up bow-legged and stunted, with lungs like two old
socks?’
Stunned, Neverfell recalled all the times that Erstwhile had asked for favours to be repaid in eggs. She had assumed he just liked them.
‘I didn’t know,’ she said very quietly.
‘It’s not the way it is up there,’ Erstwhile continued bitterly. ‘When Enquirers turn up in Drudgery, it’s never to protect
us
. When they’re chasing up
something that affects the courtiers and makers, then we see them here beating down doors. But not when drudges get murdered, no, then we can go rot. You don’t see them roaming the streets
after rehearsals.’
‘Rehearsals?’ There was something menacing in the very blandness and innocence of the word.
‘We call ’em that. It’s a little joke of ours.’ Erstwhile’s voice was about as humorous as a rockfall. ‘See, Court assassinations are important business.
Wouldn’t want to mess up your lines on the night, would you? So courtiers come down here to practise, because they know nobody misses drudges. Nobody except other drudges and they don’t
count. They try out new poisons, let would-be assassins show off what they can do, practise blade moves or group tactics.’
‘They kill people? They just kill them? Innocent people?’
‘Just drudges,’ Erstwhile said, the nonchalance of his tone heavy and hollow as a two-ton bell. ‘We can usually spot ’em – a run of weird murders all alike, or
suicides, or accidents, or sometimes a “disease outbreak” where everybody dies the same way. That’s what goes down on the paperwork, but
we
know.
‘It’s been happening again, just lately. “Domestic murders”, drudges killing drudges – that’s what the record says. Me? I say somebody’s rehearsing. I
can feel it in my bones.’
Neverfell had no answer. In her mind she looked out across the tangled vista of the Undercity and felt only numb. There was too much to feel strongly about, she was stretched too thin, so she
could not quite feel anything about anything.
Erstwhile glanced at her as they passed a trap-lantern, then paused to peer.
‘I guess you’re not such a fuzzy baby bird any more,’ he murmured gruffly. ‘Got something in your head now, have you? Seen some things?’
Neverfell nodded. ‘You can see that? I’ve . . . changed? How bad is it?’
‘Yes, you’ve changed, all right. Your eyes look deeper. Is that bad? I don’t think that’s bad. Don’t know that your owners will agree, though. You’re planning
to run back to them again, aren’t you? Instead of going back to Grandible?’
Neverfell paused, then slowly nodded. ‘I think I have to. There are things I need to know, about myself and my past. And I can’t go back to that life with Grandible. It’s like
a baby shoe. It doesn’t fit me any more. In fact, I don’t think it really fitted me for a very long time, and I was getting all scrunched up living inside it.’
Erstwhile gave a vaguely dismissive sound in his throat, but did not argue. ‘It’s going to be ticklish as lice getting you back up there, if we can’t go through the
Enquiry,’ he muttered. ‘But let’s think.’
As they talked, it became clear that getting into Drudgery was rather easier than getting out of it. Plummeting down an ember or waste chute from the upper strata of Caverna was easy enough.
Climbing back up them was all but impossible, if one did not happen to be the Kleptomancer.
‘Dozens of shafts,’ muttered Erstwhile, ‘but they’re all
down
shafts. Nothing is really expected to travel
up
from Drudgery except drudges. Once we’ve
washed our hands.’