The flame flickered with a sudden draught. A distant boom signalled a closing door. Slow, deliberate footsteps, accompanied by a metallic tapping, grew louder. Dalip stopped his pacing and straightened his spine.
The steps sounded outside of his vision. They circled him just as he’d circled the candle.
‘Pick up the chair.’
‘I’d rather stand, thank you.’
‘It’s not a request. It’s an order.’
He considered it. ‘Make me.’
‘How tiresome.’ The voice was male, cultured, urbane, and bored. So very bored.
‘Pick it up yourself. You can untie me at the same time.’ Dalip turned to face the shadow of the man. ‘What did we ever do to you?’
‘I don’t think you appreciate the gravity of your situation, young man.’
‘So why don’t you tell me? Why don’t you come where I can see you?’
‘Knowledge is power, and I’d be a fool to give you anything. Since I’m not a fool, let me tell you the way this works: I ask you questions, and you answer them.’
This wasn’t the geomancer. But the geomancer would be listening.
‘What,’ said Dalip, ‘what if I refuse?’
‘Then you will be beaten, starved, chained, and eventually◦– after a very long time◦– you will die. It doesn’t have to be that way. All that is required is your cooperation, and we can avoid that. You do want to avoid that, don’t you?’
‘I’m not keen on pain.’
‘There, that didn’t take long, did it? Sit down, and we can begin.’
He almost did. His foot reached out for the seat, to pivot it upright.
He pulled his leg back. ‘No. Do your worst.’
‘How… disappointing.’
‘You’ve not given me a reason to want to please you.’
‘Things will go badly for you. You should reconsider.’
‘Badly? They’re not exactly terrific at the moment.’ Dalip watched the candle flicker again. Someone else had entered the room. So let them work for it, since they were going to thrash him and he was completely defenceless.
He spun around and kicked the candle away, out of its molten wax socket and into the dark. The flame stretched, tore, and was extinguished. He could just about remember where the chair was. He took a shuffling step towards it, and another. Something hard tapped his shin, and he crouched down, turning the chair legs so he could pick it up one-handed by its back.
He listened very carefully. Now he’d stopped moving, there was no sound. The darkness was total. Or was it? Every time he’d looked at the candle, he’d ruined his night sight. With that distraction gone, he could make out◦– dimly, but there all the same◦– an inconstant rectangle of light. The door.
The light occulted, right to left. Someone had walked in front of him.
He hefted the chair as he stood, and it scraped on the floor. He stepped right, and the air rushed past him. Now he could hear and smell his attacker. He swung around, let go of the chair, and as it connected with the hidden figure, there was an audible grunt of pain.
The chair clattered away, and he made for the door, not directly, but off to one side. His broken, melted boots crunched on the gritty floor, and running with both hands tied behind him made him step more heavily.
He felt, rather than saw, the wall ahead, the deadness of sound and the absence of space. He slowed, turned, bounced off it with his shoulder, and squatted down again.
‘Enough,’ said a woman’s voice, high and imperious.
But it wasn’t enough. The door was at the end of a short tunnel, and he rolled around the corner and headed, crab-like, for it.
Something heavy and fast-moving tapped his skull and he went down. His ankles were lifted and pulled, and he was dragged back into the centre of the room. A light came on, high above him, up on the wall. Then another. And another. All around him, the flames seem to leap from candle to candle until he was surrounded by a soft orange glow.
Someone took Dalip’s shoulder and turned him on his back, none too gently, either. A man, heavy-set and smelling of piss, stood close by his feet, while another, a thin man with a thin, silver-topped cane was by his head.
The room was shaped like a drum, a perfect cylinder, except that high up were rings of open balconies, each ring illuminated by the candles. A gloved hand draped over the lowest balcony’s rail.
‘Enough,’ she repeated.
Dalip was hauled to his feet and dropped on the chair. He squinted, one-eyed, up at the balcony, at the woman in the white and gold dress. She inspected him down the length of her nose.
‘You’re quite brave,’ she said.
‘And you’re not,’ he managed before the silver-tipped cane swung at his head again, a sharp tap to the back of his skull that left him with a bitten tongue and blood in his mouth. He spat on the floor and glared at the wielder. ‘Why are you doing this to us?’
‘You’re going to be useful to me.’
‘You could have asked us first. We could have, I don’t know, come to some sort of deal that didn’t involve having the crap kicked out of me.’
The man with the cane drew his arm back again, but the woman raised her hand. ‘I said, enough.’ She rested an elbow on the parapet and leaned forward. Her blonde hair was caught in a net that twinkled with jewels. ‘You don’t know what it is that I want yet.’
‘Information. Knowledge, your man said. We want that too. For God’s sake, we don’t even know where we are, or why.’
‘Is that so?’ She cocked her head. ‘Are you sure you don’t have anything to tell me?’
‘What do you mean? None of us have any idea of what this place is or how we got here.’ He tried to get up, and was forced back down by the hand on his shoulder.
‘Two of you have disappeared since you came through the portal.’ She sat back. ‘And no one escapes my very talented wolves. I’ll have the truth from you, one way or another.’
Dalip tried to stand again, was forced down again. ‘You’ve already got the truth. Torturing me won’t change that.’
‘Experience tells me otherwise. Take him away and make him uncomfortable, then bring in the next one. Perhaps they’ll see more sense.’
The guard took a handful of Dalip’s hair and pulled him up and swung around, launching him in the direction of the door. Without being able to use his hands, he landed heavily on his side, and once again, his head hit something hard.
He was reeling and half-blind, and that was before they put his hood back on. The world went dark and stuffy again. He was pulled and pushed, dragged and thrown. He tripped and fell, was kicked into walls and doors, and finally pitched head-first again to the ground.
He lay there, waiting to be coerced into moving again, but there was nothing. A door banged shut behind him. A bolt worked into place. Footsteps faded.
The only way to get the hood off was to drag his face along the floor, twisting his head left and right to work it free. Eventually he reached a point where he could shake it loose and cast it aside.
He was in a tiny room, barely longer than he was tall. A slit of a window◦– more like a crack in the stonework◦– let in light and air, but not much of either. The floor was bare, and his hands were still tied.
And he had no idea how he’d ended up there. What had the woman◦– the geomancer?◦– meant when she’d intimated that he might be lying? That he knew where he was? That was preposterous. The geomancer must be wrong, or mad, or both.
He’d done nothing wrong. He’d never done anything wrong. From earliest memory to the moment the supervisor had called Stanislav’s name, and the two of them had appraised each other on the station platform: he’d always behaved, always acted honourably, always told the truth, always been kind. He’d been told that if he did those things, then he’d never know shame, that he’d never be the one in his father’s study or the headmaster’s office or the police interview room, staring at the door and thinking of what best to say to get out of trouble.