Zouelle had forgotten how tiring it was listening to a Neverfell at full pace, like being bludgeoned with exclamation marks.
Frances HardingeLies can be wrung out of a witness as easily as truth. Yes, after a few hours with the Enquiry’s . . . instruments, I am sure she will be willing to swear that she had swallowed an antidote, or indeed that she had flown to the moon if that would make the pain stop. But, here and now, you can see she is telling the truth. There was no betrayal. There was no poison. There was no murder.
Frances HardingeShe is the key to this mystery, a key that I will turn, by hook or by crook.
Frances HardingeWhat would have happened if Caverna had been torn by a civil war, the two opposed leaders housed in a single body?
Frances HardingeYou see, I had been exploring the tunnels of my own mind, and my greatest idea had come to me."
"What was it?" Neverfell was fascinated.
"I do not know," the Kleptomancer answered, perfectly phlegmatically. "But I am sure I will let myself know when the time is right. You see, anybody who chases a plan, however secretively and indirectly, gives themselves away. After a while you can predict them, work out what they want. So I decided the only way to avoid this was not to know what the plan was, or even the parts of the plan, until I needed them. Nobody could predict me, because I could not predict myself. Nobody could work out what I wanted, because I did not know what I wanted.
The ladies’ fans opened with cracks like pistol shots, and were held up to block the stranger from view.
Frances HardingeHave you ever seen an anthill?" he said at last. "A machine of tiny marchers. Too much motion, you cannot make out the aims in it. But take something away from that anthill – a stone, a leaf, a dead caterpillar – and the ants scurry. You see which ones you have sabotaged, which ones are disturbed and scuttling to prop something in its place. That is what I do. That is kleptomancy. Divination by theft. Find something that is important, something on which you suspect many plans rely, and remove it. Then sit and watch. That’s why stealing you will help, even if you know nothing. Right now, the people who want to use you and the people who want you dead will be in a race to find you before the other does. People in a hurry often show their hand by mistake.
Frances HardingeI swam across the torrent of my madness, and pulled myself upon the shore of a new and better sanity.
Frances HardingeTags: madness
It draws you in. You twist your mind into new shapes. You start to understand Caverna . . . and you fall in love with her. Imagine the most beautiful woman in the world, but with tunnels as her long, tangled, snake-like hair. Her skin is dappled in trap-lantern gold and velvety black, like a tropical frog. Her eyes are cavern lagoons, bottomless and full of hunger. When she smiles, she has diamonds and sapphires for teeth, thousands of them, needle-thin."
"But that sounds like a monster!"
"She is. Caverna is terrifying. This is love, not liking. You fear her, but she is all you can think about.
His persistence allowed us to play a game, and pretend that everything can stay as it is now forever. It cannot. The events of this day have shown us what happens when you try to keep things from changing. Sooner or later the sleeplessness catches up with you, the paranoia about threats devours you and your mind betrays you even if your body does not.
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