A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge Read Free Book Online Page B

different, so that the Face Madame Appeline creates won’t match the
taste!
    We can send an extra cheese to the banquet, one that will split and fill the whole room with stinging steam! That way everybody will have to run away and nobody will see the Face Madame
Appeline has prepared!
    Fortunately she had just enough common sense to see the flaws in these plans before presenting them to Cheesemaster Grandible. There was not enough Sturton to give to everybody without breaking
into the big truckle, there was not enough time to make and ripen a suitable ‘decoy cheese’, and it was just possible that blinding the Grand Steward and his privileged nobles with
poison cheese steam would not greatly improve Master Grandible’s position.
    In among the flood of ideas and imaginings, however, a couple of thoughts bubbled and bobbed to the surface again and again. Why had Master Grandible been so angry at her suggestion that she
talk to people and take the blame? He had been frightened at the idea of her speaking with Madame Appeline from the start. Was there some secret that her careless words might give away?
    By the time she dared to reappear, Master Grandible had staggered back to tend to the Sturton once more, his racking coughs just audible in the distance, and Neverfell was
reluctant to disturb him. To judge from the papers on his desk, however, he was translating all his fears into action. The traps and precautions he had already laid in place were nothing compared
to those he now seemed to be preparing. To judge by the scrawled maps on his desk, he was planning a series of heavy doors sub-dividing his district, so that if he found himself under siege he
could fall back and fall back, forcing his imagined enemies to break in through door after door.
    The door that stood between his tunnels and the rest of Caverna was now covered with new padlocks in addition to the original locks, and as usual there was no sign of the keys. Are those
locks to keep enemies out , thought Neverfell, or me in?
    She also found a list of new duties with her name at the top, and gawped in alarm as her eye ran down it. Evidently the fortification project was taking all Grandible’s time, so he had
passed most of his customary tasks on to her. The scrawled entry ‘Stckftr brush rabbt milk once daily’ was explained when a small crate arrived at the appointed time containing one
quivering, wild-eyed rabbit, not best pleased by Neverfell’s inquisitive but innocent decision to shake the box before opening it.
    The rabbit’s pale coat was patchy as though it had been pulling out its own fur through nerves or boredom. But when it twitched its buttonhole nostrils at Neverfell she felt a surge of
love for it in the way that only the lonely can. To judge by the long scratches its hind claws left on her forearms when she tried to hug it, however, the feeling was not mutual.
    The Sturton had to be brushed with rabbit milk. How did you milk rabbits? Neverfell knew something of the way cows, sheep and goats were milked. How different could it be?
    ‘Don’t – Hold still – Oh, you dratted, pink-eyed . . . Oh, come back, sweetheart! I didn’t mean it!’
    Neverfell knelt on the stone floor, peering under the long wooden shelf affixed to the wall of the passage. Along the top of the shelf a row of crimson-veined Pulp Cheddars gently perspired.
Underneath the shelf, a pale shape flattened itself to the floor like a slumped souffé, long ears flush to its back, pink eyes dark and empty with fear.
    She was not much wiser about how one went about milking a rabbit, but she was considerably wiser when it came to ways not to do it. For example, she was now aware that even though rabbit-bellies
hung very close to the ground, they were very resistant to being lifted into a croquet-hoop shape so that one could slip a bucket under them. Furthermore, she was now better educated about the
power of a rabbit’s jump, the sharpness of its claws and the