A Face Like Glass Read Online Free PDF Page A

was not always very rewarding.
    For the next week, Neverfell was a menace. She could concentrate on nothing. She spooned elk’s spittle on to a Barkbent round instead of reindeer tears, and it protested
with a flood of acid steam, scalding her arm scarlet. She forgot to move the Liquorish Lazars down from the shelf near the cooling pipes, and only remembered them when they started juddering
against the wood.
    Strange and wonderful Madame Appeline had said that she might be able to devise a Face for Neverfell that would make her less hideous. The thought filled her with a warm surge of hope, but then
she remembered the Facesmith’s ominous words about the Court and this was replaced by a turbulent and queasy sense of dread. Master Grandible was so stonily immovable, she could no more
imagine anything happening to him than she could visualize living without the rocky ceiling that crowned her world. But the Facesmith had hinted that by hiding away from the Court he was putting
himself in danger and letting others plot against him. Could it be true? He had not been ready with an answer. Could anybody harm her master in his impregnable dairy castle?
    ‘What’s got into you?’ Grandible growled.
    And Neverfell could give him no answer, for she did not know what had got into her. But into her it had decidedly got, for now in the cooking pot of her thoughts she could feel it simmering,
sending up a bubble-string of excitement. She had half an idea, she had a seed of a plan, though perhaps it was untrue to say that she had it, for she felt rather as if it had her. For once,
however, she had a wispy thought that she had not confided to Grandible, for the simple reason that she did not quite know what it was or what to say about it.
    ‘You see?’ Grandible growled. ‘One look at that woman’s world, one whiff . . . it’s an infection. You’ve a fever now, and you’ll be lucky if
that’s all you get.’ He did not treat her as an invalid, though, and, in fact, seemed determined to keep Neverfell as busy as possible.
    Could Neverfell trust Madame Appeline? Again and again her mind strayed back to the last Face she had seen her wearing, the tired and loving expression without gloss. Try as she might, she could
not believe it was nothing but an empty mask.
    You couldn’t invent a Face like that without feeling it , she told herself.
    The thought was still at the forefront of her mind three days later when Erstwhile dropped by to deliver several barrels of fresh milk, a vat of clean dove feathers and six
bottles of lavender water that had been used to wash a dead man’s feet. Erstwhile was a scrawny, slightly pockmarked delivery boy, and the most regular visitor to Grandible’s tunnels.
He was about a year older than Neverfell, although two inches shorter, and was often willing to spend time with her and answer her questions, albeit in a rather lordly way. Neverfell suspected that
he rather liked seeing her hanging on his every word and knowing that his visits were important to somebody.
    ‘Erstwhile – what do you know about Madame Appeline?’ The question was out almost before he had sat down.
    Erstwhile did not have any angry or annoyed expressions. Worker and drudge-class families were never taught such Faces, for it was assumed they did not need them. Nonetheless Neverfell noticed
his shoulders stiffen and sensed that she had offended him. He had arrived full of pride and ready to tell her something, and now she had put his nose out of joint by asking about somebody else. He
thawed slightly, however, when she brought him a cup of ginger tea.
    ‘Here – look at this.’ He brandished something in front of her face for an instant, just long enough for her to see that it was a small, yellowing painting of an overground
scene, then hid it back in his coat. ‘I have to deliver it to a trader in the Crumbles, but I’ll let you look at it for three eggs.’
    When Neverfell brought him three preserved eggs,