And what of those five years that had been hers before she was apprenticed? She could recall almost nothing of them. She had tried a thousand times, but for the greater part that section of her memory was as featureless and numb as scar tissue. Sometimes, just sometimes, she convinced herself that she could remember stray images or impressions, but she could not describe them properly or make sense of them.

Darkness. A luminous coil of purple smoke rising around her and upward. A bitterness on her tongue. These were her only memories of her lost past, if memories they truly were.

Nobody’s mind ever remains a blank page, however carefully they are locked away from the world. In the case of Neverfell, she had made her mind into a scrapbook, busy filling it with the fragments, stories, rumors, and reports she could scavenge from talking to the delivery boys who came to pick up cheeses or drop off milk and supplies, and failing that, the wild scribblings of her own imagination.

By the time she had reached the giddy age of twelve-probably, she knew everything about Caverna that could be learned through nothing more than sharp ears, a good memory, tireless questioning, and an overactive imagination. She knew of the glittering Court, teetering always on the tightrope of the Grand Steward’s whims. She knew of the great ceaseless camel trains that crossed the desert to bring wagonloads of provisions to Caverna, and carry away tiny portions of luxuries created by Caverna’s master Craftsmen, each worth more than his weight in diamonds. The overground had its own makers of delicacies, but only in Caverna were there masters of the Craft, capable of making wines that rewrote the subtle book of memory, cheeses that brought visions, spices that sharpened the senses, perfumes that ensnared the mind, and balms that slowed aging to a crawl.

Hearsay, however, was no substitute for a real live visitor.

“When is she coming? Can I make the tea? Did you see I swept the floors and fed grubs to all the lanterns? I can serve the tea, can’t I? Shall I fetch the dates?” Questions were too big and wild for Neverfell’s mind to rein, and they always escaped her, usually in packs of six. Questions annoyed Master Grandible, and she could feel them annoying him, but somehow she could never help it. Even his grim, warning silences just filled her with a desperate urge to fill them. “Can I—”

“No!”

Neverfell flinched back. She lived in a quiet, pragmatic terror of those rare times when her persistence or puppy-clumsiness pushed Master Grandible into true anger. Though she had developed something of an instinct for his moods, nothing ever showed in his face, which remained grimly static and weatherworn like a door knocker. When his temper snapped, it did so in an instant and did not right itself for days.