After walking for some three hundred yards, the party came to a doorway with writing over it in some strange script. Billy, Reave and the Rainman were bundled inside, pushed down a corridor and into a stone-floored room where another of the apemen sat behind a high wooden desk. He looked up as the room filled with people, and barked at Billy’s captors.
‘What’s this? What’s this?’
‘Prisoners, Uruk sir. Wandering without papers.’
‘No papers? No papers?’
He climbed down from his stool and came out from behind the desk. He jabbed at Billy with a thick stubby finger.
‘Where’s your papers, filth?’
‘I don’t have no papers. I only just arrived in the city.’
The finger jabbed again.
‘Arrived? Arrived? How you arrive? You couldn’t pass Black Gate without papers.’
‘We came out of the nothings, a disrupter got us and we finished up here. We don’t even know where we are.’
The Uruk’s small red eyes narrowed and he peered intensely at Billy. He paced up and down. One of the group that had brought in Reave shuffled his feet and coughed.
‘The Eight. P’raps we should report this to the Eight.’
The Uruk sprang across the room and punched the one who had spoken.
‘Eight? Eight? I’m the Uruk for this section. I say what gets reported to the Eight.’
The Shirik wiped blood from his mouth and spat.
‘You won’t be Uruk for long if one of the Eight found out you’d not been telling things they wanted to know, you’d have the skin taken off you, and the flesh, too.’
The Uruk flashed round and kicked the Shirik hard in the groin. With a scream, the Shirik dropped to his knees. The Uruk swung his ironshod boot at the Shirik’s head and the Shirik rolled over and lay still. The Uruk faced the other Shiriks.
‘See that? See that? That’s what’ll happen to any others of you filth who talk fancy.’
He turned back to Billy, Reave and the Rainman.
‘No papers, come from the nothings. What tale you scum trying to give me? The Eight going to hear about you. They’ll deal with your tales.’
He swung round on the Shiriks.
‘Six of you process them, and the rest back on patrol. Jump, I said!’
Billy, Reave and the Rainman were released from their manacles and hastily stripped. Their clothes and possessions were stacked on the Uruk’s desk. He prodded the heap.
‘We keep this for the Eight. Take them down.’
The three of them had their manacles replaced, this time with their arms in front of them instead of behind their backs, and were marched naked into another corridor. The guards in front of them stopped at an arched doorway, and one of them unlocked a huge door of dark wood studded with iron nails.
They descended a winding stone staircase with guards in front of them and behind. Narrow corridors radiated out from the foot of the stairs, and the three were pushed and kicked down one of them. The leading guard unlocked another door, this time a steel one with a small peephole in it, and they were all thrown into the same narrow cell.
The cell was about six feet wide and ten feet long. Its walls were made of the same granite, and in places it ran with slimy dampness. There were no windows in the cell, and the only light came from a yellow globe high up in the door. The floor was covered with damp straw, and an open drain ran along the far wall. Reave flopped to the ground.
‘We really did it this time.’
Billy and the Rainman sat down as well. Billy tugged in frustration at his manacles, and winced as the metal bit into his wrists.
‘If we only knew where the hell we were.’
He glanced at the Rainman.
‘You got any idea what this place is?’
The Rainman shook his head.
‘I never seen anything like this. It’s not the usual stasis town. This looks like something different, something I ain’t even heard about before. We’re in trouble, boys.’
Reave slumped against the wall.
‘You can say that again.’
A rat scuttled down the drain, and wriggled through the little opening where the drain continued into the next cell.
‘We’ve really got to get out of here.’
‘Yeah, but how?’
‘Fuck knows.’
They lapsed into thought, and Billy’s attention kept going to the hole through which the rat had gone. He stooped over, and knelt down beside the foul smelling gutter.
‘Hello, hello in there.’
There was a grunt from the other side of the hole, and then a blunt hairy hand was thrust through the space. It grabbed one of Billy’s hands and tried to drag it into the next cell. Billy tugged it free, and looked round at the others.
‘Don’t look as though we’re going to get any help from that direction.’
A glum silence fell over Billy, Reave and the Rainman. They slumped on the damp straw. The chill began to get to them. Reave watched his legs slowly turn blue, and very soon, all three’s teeth had begun to chatter uncontrollably.
‘Dear god, how long do we stay stuck in here?’
Billy jumped to his feet and hammered on the door with his fists.
‘Hey out there. What the fuck’s happening?’
His fist made little more than a dull thud on the thick wood of the door, and no sound came from the outside. Frustratedly he beat on the door and then sank to the floor.
‘We’ve fucked up good.’
The other two shuddered and nodded.
The gloomy silence descended again. Only the occasional rustle of the straw punctuated their paranoia. Reave remembered Miss Ettie’s. It was worlds away.
The lights of memory dimmed as the blackness of cold and despair closed around Reave. They wouldn’t be wandering heroes. They’d blown it and wound up in a filthy cell. They’d lost the bet for fortune, adventure and experience.
Just as Reave had decided that he was a loser, a familiar voice echoed from outside the cell.
‘… And you, shiteater, under para 4, section 1, a registered minstrel gets himself into all and any public administration buildings. Here’s my fucking card, so open the door, Got it?’
Billy’s and Reave’s heads both snapped up.
‘The Minstrel Boy, here?’
They jumped up and stood by the door. More voices came from outside.
‘Not possible. No one goes into cell till Ghâshnákh come to interrogate.’
‘And it says in the Code that I go anywhere.’
‘Not possible.’
‘Shirik Precinct Houses come under the public administration order of the Ghâshnákh. Right?’
‘Yes?’
‘So Shirik Precinct Houses are public administration buildings? Right?’
‘Yes?’
‘So minstrels, and namely me, gets to go where I like in public administration buildings. That means Shirik buildings, so open up.’
‘It’s against regulations.’
‘If you don’t, it’s against the Code, and I’ll report it.’
‘Code?’
‘Code.’
‘But regulations …’
‘Look at it this way, scumbag. If you break the Code it’s a hanging deal, and that’s it. The regulations, the worst thing that can happen to you is a flogging. Know what I mean? Make it easy on yourself.’
‘But …’
‘Ever thought about it, piggio? Hanging, I mean, how it must feel and all, swinging away and choking, your hands tied behind your back, and just nothing you can do about it.’
There was a reluctant scraping of keys in the door, and it swung inwards. It was a very different Minstrel Boy who stepped into the cell.
The thin white face was hidden behind huge black multi-faceted glasses that made him look like he had the eyes of some grotesque insect. The halo of hair was still there, but it had been dyed white. He wore a dark green lizard-skin frock coat over a black ruffled shirt, velvet trousers and high black boots with silver fastenings. The silver guitar hung from a heavy strap inlaid with coloured stones.