“You 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.”

“I should never have told you . . . I don’t know what happened to me. I just . . . wanted to talk to somebody." "And if you hadn’t you’d still be going crazy with what you know, and I’d be going crazy with what I didn’t know, and both of us would be alone. Right now, I’m upset but I’m . . ." Neverfell hesitated, like one stretching a limb they think might be broken. "I’m all right. I think I’m more all right than I have been for ages. Great big holes of unknown are the worst thing. Before this, I didn’t know anything was wrong but I didn’t not know, if you see what I mean. You can go mad like that. And if my face is spoilt now, once and for all, then it means I don’t have to worry about it any more.”

“She’s one of my best friends, thought Neverfell, and most of the time I don’t know what is going on in her head at all.”

“But . . . I want to remember this conversation! I want to understand! I don’t want to be a toy! I don’t want to be a thing! I want to know how everything works!”

“Even if it means I have to run off and live in the wild caves with a bag over my head, I still want to know what’s going on. I need to know.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you’re sane? That you’ve always been sane? That perhaps you’re the sanest person in the city?" "I hope not," whispered Neverfell. "Because, if I’m sane, then there’s something wrong with Caverna, something horrible and sick, and nobody else has noticed. If I’m sane, then we shouldn’t be sitting around talking – we should all be clawing our way out as fast as we can." "Oh, I don’t think she’d like that," the Kleptomancer remarked, with a hint of affection in his voice. "She needs us. Without us, there is no her, after all. She is the city, not the tunnels, and so she does everything she can to keep us down here. Sometimes I even wonder whether it is only possible to create True Delicacies here because she gives them their power, as a bribe to stop us leaving. When the Grand Steward declared that nobody was allowed to enter or leave the city, I believe he became her chosen beloved. I will tell you something else, though I cannot prove it. The city grows, and not just through the effort of pick and shovel. She has been stretching, spreading and contorting to make room for us all, and I think that is why geography no longer makes sense.”

“Every time I do what you say I tumble a bit farther down this well of darkness, an' this here is a drop too deep an' too dark for me. I have to stop falling while I can still see a bit of the sky.”