Managing death

'I wouldn't do that if I was you.' The voice is unfamiliar, clipped and rasping, certainly not Jacob's. Cold metal brushes my cheek. 'Don't move if you want to keep your eyes.'

I freeze. The knife travels down my face, drawing blood here and there. I try and shift. Nothing. Something's damping my abilities here. I guess that's how Mr D was contained here. Yes, this room has to go.

Time for some bluster. 'You're going to have to work harder than that if you want to frighten me with a knife.'

'I will, really I will.' He sounds amused.

I turn my head as far around to the right as I am able and nod at the candles behind me. 'You've certainly picked an intimate setting for a… Well, what is this? A torture session?'

There's a wry exhalation, almost a laugh, and a hand passes in front of my face. It's lined with scars all across the palm. 'You RMs. You really think you know it all.'

'I tend to find it's the Ankous with the problem, Mr Rillman.'

There is a definite intake of breath. I don't know whether it's an act or not, but he sounds genuinely surprised. 'Where did you hear that name? I thought they had forgotten me.'

'Oh, around the traps. You're quite a popular bloke here. Mr D talks of you with a great deal of fondness.'

'That shit ground my name out of the company's history. You will not speak of him again.' He strikes the back of my head, hard enough that I bite my tongue, and see stars.

'OK, I won't. Just tell me: why are you trying to kill me?'

'Oh, you're something of an experiment, Mr de Selby. A new RM, first in living memory. Who would have believed it?' Rillman says. 'We both know there are deaths, and then there are deaths.'

'How did you do it?' I ask, my tongue swollen and bloody in my mouth. 'How did you die and come back?'

Rillman snorts. 'Does it offend you? After all, you've done it. All you RMs must, death is the only way to win at the Negotiation. It is the single requisite, wouldn't you say?'

Rillman walks around to face me. There's something not quite right about his features. He's hiding them from me. They're waxy, and his hair doesn't look quite real. Now I think of it, Jacob had something of that look about him, too. Rillman smiles tightly and, slips back behind me, where I can't turn my head to follow. He's just a blur back there, a blur holding sharp things.

'Look, I know you failed an Orpheus Manoeuvre. But that -'

Something strikes me hard in the back of the head again. Next, I realise I've come to, I can't tell how much time has passed but it can't be much. Rillman walks in circles around me, agitated. He steps in close, almost enough for me to headbutt him. He slides the knife across my cheek.

'You will not talk about that. I did not fail. I was betrayed. Ask your Mr D. Here you will not talk about anything.'

'What the fuck do you want?'

'All in good time.'

He lifts the knife from my cheek. Drives it into the meat just above my knee. And God help me, I scream. Not that it does any good.

'Knives don't need to terrify, they just need a good cutting edge or a point, or in this case, both.'

Blood and spittle run down my chin. 'Can't we just… What do you want?'

He pulls the knife out of my knee, and slams the pommel into my jaw.

'I want you to shut up.'

I spit more blood, and a tooth. My mouth is a mess, I have to keep spitting or I will choke, but it doesn't stop me from straining against the ropes binding me here. It doesn't stop me from growling in his face. 'This is my region. You come in here and threaten me.'

I'm almost convincing.

I try to shift again, damping field be damned. I'm desperate. I need to get out of here. But there is a cold hand, a pressure sitting in the back of my mind. Not that different to the force that held me in the Tethys.

Rillman lowers his waxen face towards mine, and smiles. 'Every emperor, every RM, can be destroyed. You must know that now. You must know that nowhere is safe for you and your kind.'

'Then kill me.' I lift my neck to him. 'Just get it over and done with.'

'Oh, if it was that easy, I would.'

And he's right. Already my wounds are healing; there is less blood in my mouth. The flesh of my leg is drawing together.

The phone in my pocket starts ringing, I'm amazed that I can get a signal in here, but there you go. 'They're going to start looking for me,' I say.

Rillman nods, reaches into my pocket and pulls out the phone. After two stomps of his left boot the phone's in pieces on the floor. 'Yes, and I am sure that the broom cupboard is the first place they'll look. They're not going to worry about you for several hours. I have time.'

He swings a fist into my ribs. Things break. Things tear. I'm choking on my own blood again. For a while I can't see anything. Rillman is right; this could go on for a while. My nature is such that I can take a lot of pain.

'She was mine. And I lost her. Of course, you can't understand that, because you didn't. You cheated. You stumbled and pratfalled and somehow, you called your love back.' Another blow to the side of my head. 'Fourteen years of marriage. Do you not understand? What do you know of that kind of love?'

More teeth are loosened. Blood chokes my throat.

What do I know of love? I think of Lissa. Wonder if I'll ever see her again. I haven't spent enough time with her, not nearly enough. There is so much we haven't done together. Things we haven't experienced. Christ, I want to marry her.

I don't care if it's unwise for RMs to marry. I don't care if it's the stupidest thing in the world. She's my girl. Mine.

'Why are you grinning?' Rillman demands.

'What do I know of love? I got her back. I got her back, you prick.'

There's another couple of punches. More pain. A knife is jammed into my spine and left there.

When the pain dulls, and I can breathe again, I lift my head. 'What do you want, Rillman?'

'Agony, isn't it? And with the way you heal I don't need to be delicate.'

He pulls out another knife, pale as moonlight, and as narrow as a regular dinner knife. He grabs my left pinkie finger. I struggle against him, but he is stronger than I am, and the ropes that bind me are tight. 'This knife isn't steel,' he says, 'but something I picked up in the Deepest Dark. Let's see how it works.'

He pushes the blade over, and then into, my pinkie finger, hard. Skin and bone part in a swift and agonising jolt. I feel the cracking of that bone through my entire body. I scream. And I scream. And I scream until something tears in my throat.

'Oh, we have so much more fun ahead, believe me.' I struggle, my bonds tighten, and Rillman lets me; so confident that I can't escape.

He brings the knife towards my cheek.

But this time I'm ready for him. I swing my head up against his skull. Bone cracks into bone. Rillman goes down hard.

He groans. I rock backwards and forwards in my chair, and then I'm tipping over, landing on Rillman. I crack my skull into his head, again and again. His knife is next to him on the floor. I slide over towards it, grab it with a hand sticky with blood and cut at my bindings.

The knife's damn sharp. I'm free in a moment and I stagger to my feet. Rillman groans again. And I kick him in the head. Once. Twice. I bend down and rest the knife against his face. There's a rather large part of me taking too much delight in this.

'Oh, we have so much fun ahead, believe me.' I try and reach the other knife in my back, but can't.

I find my finger on the floor. The little thing's twitching. I wonder whether, if I left it alone long enough, it would grow a new me. I push it against my wound and finger and hand begin to reconnect. It's agony, but I'll be whole again soon.