A Face Like Glass Read Online Free PDF Page B

bored of Madame Appeline.
    ‘I can’t sit around nattering all day.’ He dropped the crushed eggshells into Neverfell’s hand. ‘You shouldn’t be sitting around like a great lump either.
You’ve got your precious banquet cheese to prepare, haven’t you?’
    The approach of a grand banquet always sent a shiver through the tunnels of Caverna. In some parts, masked perfumiers might be letting a single droplet of a pearly fluid fall
into a vast aviary to see how many of their canaries swooned with the fumes. Elsewhere, furriers would be carefully skinning dozens of moles to produce gloves from their tiny pelts. A thousand
little luxuries were being tested with trepidation to discover which were too ordinary for the Court, and which too exquisite to be survivable.
    As far as Grandible and Neverfell were concerned, the banquet meant one thing – the debut of the great Stackfalter Sturton. It was a cheese of monstrous proportions, weighing as much as
Neverfell herself. Sturtons were known for the peculiarity of the visions they induced. They had a habit of showing people truths that they knew already but still needed to be told, because they
had forgotten them or refused to see them. Sturtons were also notoriously difficult to craft successfully and without fatalities, so Grandible and Neverfell dedicated all their energies to making
the Stackfalter Sturton ready for its great moment. It might as well have been a bride being groomed for a wedding.
    Every day the Stackfalter Sturton’s dappled white-and-apricot hide had to be painted with a mixture of primrose oil and musk, and its long, fine mosses groomed with a careful brush. More
importantly, the great cheese had to be turned over every one hundred and forty-one minutes and, since it was about three cubits across, this required two people and a great deal of huffing. Every
one hundred and forty-one minutes, therefore, both Neverfell and Grandible needed to be awake.
    In the sunless world of Caverna there were no days or nights as such, but everybody by mutual consent used the same twenty-five-hour clock. In order to make sure that there was always somebody
awake in the cheese tunnels, Grandible and Neverfell always slept different shifts, or ‘kept different clocks’ to use the common phrase. Grandible generally slept from seven until
thirteen o’clock, and Neverfell from twenty-one until four. One person, however, could not hope to turn the Sturton alone.
    After about three days of sleeping no more than two hours at a time, both of them started to come unsprung. To make matters worse, other orders poured in shortly before the banquet. Those in the
highest circles had heard of the great Sturton debut, and suddenly Grandible’s wares were fashionable. There were small orders from countless illustrious-sounding ladies, including Madame
Appeline, who asked only for a small package of Zephurta’s Whim. Even though the lady seemed to have given up on her request for the Sturton, Neverfell clung to hope like a drowner.
    ‘Can’t we just send a crumb or two of Sturton to Madame Appeline? Please? Can we? We can send her some of the sample truckle!’ Beside the great Sturton sat a smaller replica,
like the lumpy egg of some ill-constructed bird. This would be opened before the Sturton was sent out to glory, just to make sure that the paste of the cheese was everything it should be.
    ‘No.’
    Eventually things reached crisis point. The other cheeses had noticed their attendants’ favouritism and started to complain at their neglect. Angry bries went on an ooze offensive. One
Popping Quimp triggered unexpectedly and had bounced and crackled halfway down the tunnel before Neverfell could leap on it with a damp towel and smother the flames. Even Grandible’s stolen
moments of slumber were interrupted by the sound of Neverfell shrieking for assistance or desperately swatting butter-flies.
    ‘Master, Master, can I take apart the mangle? Because then we can