A face was looking down at me as I came round. A handsome face with blank eyes. The face started to say something. Then it combusted and melted away, and I realised it was just a dream. And I awoke properly, into a world that was nothing but pain.
'Enough. Don't kill him,' said a voice. Another voice laughed, and a tremor of acute agony peeled through my forebrain, lungs and gut.
'Enough, I said! Locke!'
A mild, disappointed curse. The agony receded, and I was left with numbness and throbbing background pain.
I was spreadeagled, my wrists and ankles bitten by the manacles that locked me to a massive hardwood cross. They'd taken my equipment, harness, hood, earpiece, and everything else except the leggings of my bodyglove and my boots. What could only be dried blood caked my lips, mouth, chin and throat, and fresh blood still drooled from my nose.
I opened my eyes. A meaty fist was holding my inquisitorial rosette in front of my face.
'Recognise this, Eisenhorn?'
I spat blood.
'Thought you'd wile your way in among us and then produce this crest and make us all cower in fear?'
Urisel Glaw took the rosette away and peered down into my face.
'Doesn't work that way with the House of Glaw. We're not afraid of your kind.'
'Then you… are very foolish indeed/ I said.
He slammed my head back into the cross with an open-palmed blow to my forehead.
"You think your friends are going to help you? We've rounded them all up. They're just down the cell-block yonder.'
'I'm perfectly serious,' I said. 'Others know I'm here. And you really don't want to be messing with a servant of the Inquisition, no matter how much at your mercy you think he is/
Glaw hunched down in front of me, his hands steepled. 'Don't worry. I don't underestimate the Inquisition. I'm just not afraid of it. Now, there are some questions I'd like answers to…'
He got up and moved back. I saw the filthy stone of the cell-chamber we were in, a double-locked hatch up in one corner at the head of a flight of stone steps. Lord Oberon Glaw and the obscura pipe-smoker from the library room stood at the foot of the steps, watching intently. The ship master, Gorgone Locke, sat astride a dirty wooden bench near by. He wore some strange apparatus on his right hand, a glove of segmented metal that ended each digit with a needle-like spike.
'You've got it wrong, Glaw. It's you who will provide the answers/
Urisel Glaw nodded to Locke, who got up and moved towards me, flexing the needle glove.
'That is a strousine neural scourge. Our friend Mr Locke is quite an expert in its application. We were delighted when he volunteered to run this interrogation/
Locke grabbed me by the throat with his bare hand, twisted my head up and his gloved fist disappeared out of my field of view below.
A second later, and cold lances of pain threaded my lungs and heart, and my windpipe went into spasm. I began to choke.
'Educated man like you knows all about pressure points/ Locke said, conversationally. 'So do the strousii. But they like to do more than tap them – they like to burn them out. I studied with one of their sacred torturers for a year or so. This grip, for example, the one that's choking you. It's also paralysing your respiratory system, and stopping your heart/
I could barely hear him. Blood was dramming in my ears and explosive light and colour patterns were fogging my vision.
He withdrew his glove. The pain and choking stopped.
'Just like that, I can stop your heart. Burst your brain. Blind you. So play along/
With all the strength I could muster, I smiled and told him his sister had particularly commended my love-making skills over his.
The glove gripped my face and needles lanced into my cheeks. I blacked out again for a moment.
'… haven't killed him!' I heard Locke hiss as consciousness swam back. Dull pain oozed through my face.
'Look at him! Look at him! Where's that cocksure smile now, you little bastard?'
I didn't answer.
Locke leaned close so his brow pressed against mine and his eyes were all I could see. 'Needlework,' he snarled, his foul, obscura-flavoured breath swamping my gasping mouth. 'I just lanced a few points in your face. You'll never smile again/
