body was overpowering.
'If you don't know, I'm hardly going to tell you/ said Oberon Glaw.
He looked round at Urisel, Locke and the pipe-smoker.
'I don't think he knows anything about the true matter. But I want to be certain. Can you be trusted to work efficiently, Locke?'
Locke nodded. He approached me again, flexing the needle glove, and slid a needle into my head behind my ear.
My skull went numb. It became almost impossible to concentrate.
'My index needle is lancing right into your parieto-occipital sulcus/ Locke crooned in my ear, 'directly influencing your truth centre. You cannot lie, no matter what. What do you know of the true matter?'
'Nothing…' I stammered.
He jiggled the needle and pain ignited inside my head.
'What is your name?'
'Gregor Eisenhorn/
Where were you born?'
'DeKere's World/
Your first sexual conquest?'
'I was sixteen, a maid in the scholam…'
Your darkest fear?'
'The man with blank eyes!'
I blurted out the last. All were true, all involuntary, but that last one surprised even me.
Locke wasn't finished. He jiggled the needle, and pierced the back of my neck with others so that my body went into paralysis and ice flowed down my veins.
What do you know of the true matter?'
'Nothing!'
Without wanting to, I began to weep with the pain.
Gorgone Locke continued to question me for four hours… four hours that I know about. Beyond those I recall nothing.
I woke again, and found myself lying on a cold rockcrete floor. Lingering pain and fatigue filled every atom of my being. I could barely move. At that time in my life, I had never felt such an extremity of pain and despair. I had never felt so close to death.
'Lie still, Gregor… you're with friends…' That voice. Aemos.
I opened my eyes. Uber Aemos, my trusted savant, looked down at me with a soulful expression even his augmetic eyes couldn't hide. He was bruised about the face and his good robe was torn.
'Lay still, old friend/ he urged.
You know me, Aemos/1 said, and slowly sat up. It was quite a task. Various muscle groups refused to work, and I came close to vomiting.
I looked around blearily
I was lying on the floor of a circular rockcrete cell. There was a hatch on one side, and a cage-gated exit opposite it. Aemos was crouched near me, and Alizebeth Bequin, her gown ripped and dirty, hunched behind him, staring over at me with genuine concern. Away across the cell stood Hel-dane, arms folded, and behind him cowered the guilder Macheles and the four other Guild Sinesias envoys who had escorted us. All of them looked pale and hollow eyed as if they had been weeping. There was no sign of Betancore.
Aemos saw my look and said, 'Aegis insubstantial, before the deluge' in perfect Glossia.
Which meant Betancore had somehow avoided the sweep that had incarcerated all my other companions. A tiny fragment of good news.
I got up, mainly thanks to my determination and the support of Aemos and Bequin. I was still stripped down to my leggings and boots, and my torso, neck, arms and head were washed in my own blood and stippled with bruised micro-puncture wounds. Gorgone Locke had been thorough.
Gorgone Locke would pay.
'What do you know?' I asked them as my breath returned.
'We're as good as dead,' Heldane said frankly. 'No wonder my master leaves this kind of work to you suicidal radicals. I just wish I hadn't agreed to join you.'
Thank you for that, Heldane. Anyone else want to offer something less editorial?'
Aemos smiled. 'We're in a prison cell under the west wing, to the rear, almost under the woodlands. They burst into our quarters after you'd been gone three hours and seized us at gunpoint. I memorised a careful note of the route we were taking to this place, and have mentally compared it with Midas's map, so I'm fairly sure of our location/
'What the hell did they do to you?' Bequin asked, dabbing at wounds on my chest with a strip of cloth torn from her gown.
Wincing, I realised that was why her gown was so shredded. She had been mopping my wounds while I was unconscious. A pile of torn and blood-soaked scads of material nearby stood testament to her devotion.
They came here an hour ago and tossed you in with us. They didn't say anything,' Heldane added.
'Are you really an inquisitor, Sire Farchaval?' Macheles asked, stepping forward.
Yes, I am. My name is Eisenhorn.'
Macheles began to sob and his fellow envoys did the same.
We are dead. You have taken us to our deaths!'
I felt some pity for them. Guild Sinesias was rotten to the core, and these men were corrupt, but they were only in this predicament because I had duped them.
'Shut up!' Heldane told them.
He looked round at me, and slid a tiny something from the cuff of his body-glove. A small red capsule.
'What is it?'
'Admylladox, a ten gram dose. You look like you need it.'
'I don't use drugs,' I said.
He pushed it into my hand. 'Admylladox is a pain-killer and a mind clearer. I don't care if you do drags or not, I want that in your system if that gate opens.'
I looked at the gate.
'Why?'
'Have you never been to a pit-fight?' he said.
The Glaws had got everything out of me they could. Now they wanted me dead. Me and my party.
And that meant sport.
The gate cranked open at what must have been dawn. Thin, grey light wafted in and was almost immediately replaced by hard, bright artificial luminescence.
House Glaw militiamen in body armour burst into our cell and drove us out through the gate with force shields and psyk-whips.
We were out in the open, blinking into the light, as the gate shut behind us.
I gazed around. A vast circular amphitheatre, enclosed by a dome high above, undoubtedly
