She shook her head. She had a job to do and a limited amount of time to do it in. She walked through a street that led to her right. The street curved and she was walking on sand that had blown in from the vast expanses of the dry valley around the city. The sand was a deep gold.

She walked for a few minutes, careful to move in a relatively straight line so she could be sure of finding her way back. Ghastly had claimed that her clothes would regulate her temperature no matter what, but something wasn’t working. She was perspiring. A trickle of sweat rolled down her face. She took off her coat and left it at a corner as a marker, and felt the sun on her bare shoulders. She opened her top to let the air in, but whatever breeze there may have been was being blocked by the labyrinth of streets. Then she turned another corner and saw the body.

It sat on the ground, propped up against the wall. Its chest was a gaping hole, the insides long since dried up. The head was smooth and featureless. This had been the body of the man called Batu, a body that had been commandeered by the last Faceless One to come through the portal. There was no sign of life in it now though. To the Faceless Ones, human bodies were mere vessels to be used and discarded. Batu’s body was nothing more than a leaky old boat or a rusted car. So much for his masterplan to become a god.

The body was holding something in its right hand, a bone, most of it covered by rags. Valkyrie didn’t want to imagine that it might be one of Skulduggery’s. She was desperate to call out his name, but the idea of breaking this eerie silence repelled her. She didn’t know what else to do though. She could spend months checking this city without finding him. No. No, the portal would have opened somewhere in Skulduggery’s vicinity. He was nearby. He had to be.

Valkyrie headed back the way she’d come, scooping up her coat and walking fast. She got back to the alley where the portal had delivered her. She followed it as far as she could, until the alley led into a cave. She dropped her coat again and summoned a flame into her hand. Then she stepped out of the sun into pitch-black.

As she walked, she saw shelves carved from the walls and a table that had once been a boulder. There were large areas of the cave where she didn’t even need the flame – the windows had been constructed to drink in the sunlight and spread it around. The cave ended at a wall. As Valkyrie turned to go back, she saw a bone in the dirt and beside it stone steps, leading up. She climbed them.