Enquirer," Neverfell said slowly, "do you really think I would have walked into this court if I didn’t have a way of getting out again?"
"What? What way?"
"I don’t know." Neverfell gave Enquirer Treble an enormous smile, as bright and mad as a sun souffé. "Do you like surprises, Enquirer? I do. Just as well, really."
It is fair to say that what happened after that was a surprise to everybody in the courtroom, including Neverfell. Somewhere high above in the shadowy, stalagmite-fanged ceiling, a trapdoor flipped open, revealing a darkened hatch. From this darkness a coil of wire whispered down, unravelling and unravelling as it fell, until the bottom end brushed the dais on which Neverfell stood. Then with a singing, metallic whine, a stocky figure in a gleaming metal suit and goggled mask dropped out of the trap and slid down the wire, to land with a jolt beside Neverfell.
"Seize . . ." began Treble. A metal-scaled arm was thrown round Neverfell’s middle. An armoured hand flicked two belt levers.
". . . that . . ." With a lurch, Neverfell was dragged aloft as the armoured figure whizzed back up the wire, carrying her with it, the whine of the mechanism rising to a screech. The dais dropped away, and she was staring down at a receding sea of frozen, upturned faces.
". . . girl!" finished the Enquirer in a deafening yell as both soaring figures disappeared upward through the hatch. The court vanished from Neverfell’s view as the trapdoor flapped shut.
She did it on purpose," hissed Treble. "I know she did. But why? Why expose Childersin, and then cause so much chaos that we cannot pursue him properly? I know him. Even now he will be looking to turn all this to his advantage. Men – be alert. He will probably try to have me assassinated any moment n—"
Enquirer Treble had a good set of instincts. Two faint, metallic scraping sounds caught her ear, one to her left and one to her right, and before her mind had even registered them as the sound of drawing swords she had already flung herself to the ground. Looking up, she saw that her two bodyguards had managed to impale each other, whilst stabbing at the place she had been a moment before. They crumpled to the ground, one even managing a surprised Face before he expired.
"Not again," snarled Treble as she clambered to her feet. "Core of the Earth! Is there anybody working for me who is actually working for me?
This was why he had become a master thief, to achieve this theft of thefts, this masterpiece of larceny. All the time, fascinating and terrible Caverna had been his goal. Whilst other Cartographers had sighed in vain after the beauty of her treacherous geography, he had decided to win her with cunning and threats.
All along Caverna had been his opponent and his prize, and she had never suspected it for a moment. He had fooled her, fought her and defeated her. She would be furious, no doubt, would hate him, rail against him and look for ways to destroy him, but he had outmanoeuvred her and now she had no choice but to play things his way. Unlike her earlier favourites, he was her lord, not a plaything to be tossed aside when she was bored.
And yet, for the first time in ten years, he found himself at something of a loss. I have succeeded. I have won. I rule the city. I wonder what I was planning to do with it?
I left you clean. Purged of all your ghosts. I am the one who has been haunted all my life. Haunted by you.
Frances HardingeYou stole my mother’s Faces," whispered Neverfell. "You stole them, and you sold them, and you walked around wearing them, and using them to make people do what you wanted. You used my mother’s Faces on me. And all the time you were her murderess or close enough. All that time you were trying to murder me.
Frances HardingeI suppose not everybody can bear to give up everything they have ever known, however bad their life is.
Frances HardingeShe felt like an amputee, reaching out reflexively with an arm she no longer had.
Frances HardingePeople's personalities took up space, he sometimes thought. When they were trapped in a house or a job or a school together, they rubbed up against each other, squeaked like balloons, and made sparks. Ryan's parents both had large, gleaming, hot-air-balloon personalities. Sometimes it was hard to fit them into the same house, and Ryan had learned the art of suddenly making himself take up less space, demand less, so that his parents were not chafing against each other as much.
Frances HardingeSuddenly he remembered Josh sitting on the motorbike and chatting with the bikers outside the pub—and he felt a throb of jealousy. It wasn't that he harbored any desire to sit on a motorbike, but...he wanted to be allowed to want to sit on a motorbike.
Frances HardingeShe dreamed of a world where books did not rot or give way to green blot, where words and ideas were not things you were despised for treasuring.
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