‘. . . taking effect?’
A hand was waved in front of Neverfell’s face. She blinked hard, startled by the blurred collage of light and looming faces. Reflexively she reached up to bat away a lantern that was
almost touching her cheek. Stony faces regarded her without a smile or flicker, the lanternlight picking out their chipped teeth, the pockmarks on their skin, the pale ticks and squiggles of scars.
Hands gripped her shoulders and arms, holding her still.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered. They glanced at each other, their faces shifting not a hair.
Drudges
, she thought.
They’re all drudges. But who are they?
And where am I? How did I get here? The last thing I remember is talking to the Kleptomancer . . .
‘They’re here already!’ somebody was screaming. There was a terrible battering sound from somewhere nearby, and bellows demanding admittance.
‘We have to go,’ snapped a man who was holding her by the collar. ‘Now!’ Half a dozen hands abruptly released her, so that she almost lost her balance, and her strange
captors sprinted as one to a small door on the opposite wall. They vanished into it, a couple of them casting glances over their shoulder at Neverfell as they departed, then slammed the door behind
them. Neverfell could hear four or five bolts being thrown.
Before she could react to this, a larger door a few yards away from her suddenly burst open, and the room filled with armed men. Neverfell backed away, almost tripping over a stool, but there
was nowhere to flee or hide.
‘There!’ The leader of the new arrivals seized her by the arm, and held up his lantern next to her face. ‘Yes, look! It’s her. We’ve found her. At last. Secure the
area! See if you can find the others! Break down that door over there, and see where it goes.’
‘What’s she got in her hand?’
Neverfell stared down, and noticed that she was gripping a tiny wooden cup, the inside stained dark. There was a dusky taste in Neverfell’s mouth as well that seemed familiar.
The cup was snatched from her grasp, turned over, sniffed. ‘Damn it! She’s drunk something. Let’s get her to a physician quickly in case it’s poison. Childersin will have
our hides if he loses her to death just when he needs her.’
Childersin.
That word was enough to penetrate her stupor. These men worked for Childersin. She had been captured by Childersin’s men. Stunned by this realization, she heard titbits
of the conversation around her.
‘Looks like they cleaned out, took everything. I guess they gave up and abandoned her at the end.’
‘All right, everybody out! The rest don’t matter. We’ve got what we came for.’
There was a sword in every hand. There was nowhere to run. She was grabbed under the armpits and dragged out of the room down passage after passage.
Why am I here?
Neverfell tried to remember but slid off a sleek blankness in her memory, like a cat failing to scale a wall of polished marble. Her hands were grimier than she had ever
seen them, their nails broken, the skin covered with nicks and scars she could not recollect. Her hair was still dyed black, but now it almost reached down to her waist. There was a tangled
bracelet of twine round one wrist.
‘Quick! Get her out of here. The Enquiry are coming. The last thing we want is them trying to grab her from us. Go!’
The group burst out on to a Drudgery thoroughfare, and Neverfell made a belated and doomed attempt to break free. She felt sick and unsteady. When she closed her eyes to blink, she could see
purple spirals rising and rising against the darkness of her eyelids.
Without ceremony, she was bundled into a closed sedan, not unlike those used to transport Cartographers. She heard locks turn and chains jingle, and the door resisted her attempts to barge it
with her shoulder.
I was talking to the Kleptomancer
, Neverfell thought desperately. She could recall only the first half of the conversation, after which her memories simply faded out. Even the part she
could remember felt strange and flat. She could recollect everything she had said and done, but not her reasons.
I had the start of a plan – I know I did. That’s why I went running off to find the Kleptomancer. And I was trying really hard not to think about it . . . and now I don’t
know what it was.
What was the plan? And how did it go this badly wrong?
‘Hey!’ She thumped the inside walls of the sedan. ‘Hey! Call the Enquiry! It’s Neverfell! I’m in here!’ Her voice sounded hoarse and rough, and she doubted
anybody heard. Although she knew that if she fell into the hands of the Enquiry things would probably not go well for her, she was suddenly gripped by a wild desire to stop Maxim Childersin
winning, by any means necessary. But nobody answered.
It was a hasty ride, and she was jolted so badly that she probably would have thrown up if there had been anything in her stomach. At last the door opened, and she was pulled out into a crisp
white room. The friezes looked familiar, and she guessed that she was probably somewhere in the palace.
Here she was pulled about by panicky physicians, who examined her eyes, tongue and ears, and tutted over the fleabites on her skin, before poking her gently with needles to make sure she could
feel them. They gave her emetics that made her retch hopelessly, then forced water into her mouth through a funnel, so that she ended up spluttering with her clothing drenched.
When she finally recovered her breath, she realized that there was another figure in the room, watching discreetly from a chair by the wall. She wiped the water from her face, pushed back her
hair and defiantly tried to straighten, so that she was less of a crushed, grubby wreck. The time for trying to hide her face was over. She was tired of games.
‘I’m very glad to see you, Neverfell,’ said Maxim Childersin. He was wearing a silvery, high-collared coat that glittered and made Neverfell think of the Grand Steward.
‘I never would have guessed that you would lead us such a merry chase. It has to be said that Drudgery was
not
my first guess for your hiding place.’
‘How did you find me?’ croaked Neverfell.
‘Ah.’ Maxim Childersin reached into his pocket, and pulled out a few letters. ‘That is rather easily answered.’ He unfolded one of them and held it up for her to see. The
writing was a charcoal scrawl, but was unmistakably in Neverfell’s own hand.
Neverfell’s eye strayed to the top of the page, and her heart plummeted into a well that had no bottom.
DEAR ZOUELLE
, began the letter,
IF YOU ARE REALLY IN THAT MUCH DANGER, OF COURSE YOU MUST FLEE AND HIDE WITH US. READ
THIS LETTER CAREFULLY AND BURN IT AFTERWARDS. I AM HIDING OUT IN THE STOREROOM OF THE GRUB-GRINDING MILL IN THE FLOTSAM DISTRICT . . .
Neverfell could not remember writing the letter, but it was definitely in her own handwriting.
‘Loyalty,’ Maxim Childersin said quietly. ‘It always was your greatest weakness. And your strange compulsion to trust your friends, over and over again.’ He folded the
letter and put it away. ‘But you must understand that Zouelle is also loyal, and at the end of the day her loyalty to her family will always win out.’
He’s lying
, thought Neverfell desperately.
I don’t believe it. Zouelle didn’t trick me into telling her where I was so she could betray me to him. He stole the
letters. It’s a lie.
Maxim Childersin watched her face, his impassivity coloured by a hint of sympathy.
But
, thought Neverfell suddenly,
why should she think that sympathy was real? It was just another
lie, something he had put on like a hat
.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and sounded as if he meant it. ‘But as Zouelle’s friend you should at least be happy that she made the right decision in terms of her own
career. I have now officially named her as my heir.’ The little smiles came and went in his mouth, like moray eels peering out from a crack in search of prey. ‘It must be some
consolation, though, that Master Grandible remained loyal to you till the end.’
‘The . . . the end?’ whispered Neverfell.
‘Yes. I suppose you know that he did everything in his power to make everybody think that you were hiding in his tunnels? I daresay he must have been trying to protect you by drawing
attention away from you. He held out against the Enquiry’s forces far longer than anybody expected, and even when they finally broke in he refused to be taken alive. We don’t know which
combination of cheeses he used to blow up the support pillars and collapse his own tunnels.’ He sighed. ‘The Enquiry are still digging through the rubble.’
Neverfell felt her throat tighten, and her hands close into fists.
I tried so hard to protect Master Grandible, but I still brought destruction on him after all . . .
‘Ah.’ Master Childersin glanced at the clock. ‘I fear I cannot stay to talk for long. After all, we both have less than an hour to prepare for the grand hearing, do we
not?’
‘
What?
’
Neverfell could only think of one hearing Maxim Childersin could mean, and that was the hearing to decide once and for all whether the Grand Steward’s death had been foul play.
But the
hearing’s two months away
–
it can’t be today. Because if it is today . . . I’ve lost two months. Forgotten them completely.
‘I was genuinely worried, you know. I thought you might actually succeed in evading me until after the hearing was over. But it seems you were let down by your allies. Your huddle of
drudge friends abandoned you at the last moment, didn’t they?’
Neverfell gritted her teeth.
Erstwhile wouldn’t abandon me. What happened to him? Please don’t let anything have happened to him . . .
‘I wish we had more time to talk,’ Childersin was continuing. ‘There are lots of things I would love to know.
Was
it you who was trying to order several dozen pairs of
smoked glasses, the tripod, the spirit level, the crossbow and all that rope? And is it true that you were seen talking to the Kleptomancer? They . . . found his body at last. I expect you heard
about that.’
Neverfell felt herself blanch and start shaking.
‘Ah. It would seem you had not. So you really did manage to ally with him? I must say I’m impressed. If it makes you feel any better, I am having him embalmed and placed in the
Cabinet of Curiosities. A master of his talents deserves no less.’
‘You wouldn’t dare let me testify.’ Neverfell felt calm, warm and full of light. She was very, very angry, and her fears melted away like wool in a furnace. ‘Not
now.’
‘Oh yes, I would. Why not? You will walk into that hall before the entire Court and you will tell them – with all the conviction of sincerity – that there is no way you could
possibly have consumed an antidote whilst working as a taster for the Grand Steward. You will tell them you ate and drank nothing at Madame Appeline’s, and that nobody could have dosed you
during your sleep because you had locked the guestroom door from the inside. You will confirm everything I have been saying all this time.’
‘So you’re going to Wine me, aren’t you?’ Neverfell said flatly. After all her struggles to defend her memory, the inevitability felt particularly cruel.
‘Yes. I am afraid I must. You will forget everything that has happened since the day of the Grand Steward’s death. We will need a story to explain such extensive amnesia, of course.
Let me see . . . no doubt the kidnappers who have been holding you for the last two months must have decided to wipe your memories of your captivity, so that you could not identify them, but
underestimated the strength of the Wine they forced on you. When you were rescued, you were in a state of shock, so that you only came to your senses just before the hearing . . . Does that not
sound plausible?’
It did. Neverfell swallowed drily.
‘To tell the truth,’ continued Childersin, ‘I am reluctant to do this. Over a relatively short period you seem to have developed into rather an interesting and formidable young
person. The Wine is being brought over now, and after you drink it you will go back to being sweet, trusting, helpless . . . Well, you remember how you were. The person you are now will cease to
exist. So I wanted to drop by one last time, just to say goodbye.’ He smiled sadly, and turned to leave.
‘I see.’ Neverfell’s chest felt tight. ‘Master Childersin?’
Childersin paused mid-stride on his way to the door, gloves draped over his hand.
‘What is it, Neverfell?’
‘You won’t win, Master Childersin. I won’t let you.’
‘You don’t have a plan,’ Childersin said very gently. ‘You don’t have any allies. You don’t have your freedom. And very soon you won’t even remember why
you might want to cause trouble for me anyway.’
‘I am going to stop you, though.’ Neverfell felt heat rising from her chest to her face, and with it a wash of strange strength. ‘I will, somehow. Look at me, Master
Childersin. Look in my face and tell me I’m bluffing.’
Childersin looked at her for a long moment. He did not tell her she was bluffing. He did not tell her anything. In the end he shook his head slightly, and left without a single word.
After Childersin and the physicians had departed, a group of female servants in Childersin livery entered, bearing a ceramic bath, buckets of soft water, and crumbly cakes of
soap wrapped in pink leaves. Neverfell watched them peel off her clothes with an odd sense of distance. It was so much like her first arrival at the Childersin household, and so different. Back
then she had felt as if she were being rescued. Now she saw exactly what was happening. The Childersin family were cleaning and polishing a tool. Soon they would wash her memory as well, and there
she would be, innocent, doe-eyed and grateful to all of them.
The Childersin maids were not meeting her eye, she noticed. Whenever their gaze touched her face by chance, they physically flinched and looked away. She could only assume that her face was
currently too painful to look at, just as it had been when she was first thrown into an Enquiry cell.