alkyrie looked at Skulduggery. “He’s lying,” she said. “I now he’s lying. Tell me. Skulduggery, tell me he’s lying.”

“He can’t,” Tenebrae said.

“Shut up!” Valkyrie screamed. “Shut up! Say one more goddamn word and I’ll kill you, I swear to Jesus! Skulduggery, look at me. Look at me!”

Skulduggery raised his head, looked at her with his hollow eye sockets. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Valkyrie found herself walking backwards. “What are you talking about? What are you saying? What are you talking about? Skulduggery, he’s lying. He’s lying. Tell him he’s lying, for God’s sake. You’re not Lord Vile. You fought Lord Vile.”

“The real Lord Vile,” Tenebrae said, “and I mean the fully powered Lord Vile, would have obliterated him. That thing he fought was mere… intention. It was simply the armour. Inside, it was empty.”

“Yeah,” Valkyrie snarled. “We thought of that. Vile’s ghost. That’s what it is. Vile’s ghost is controlling it.”

Tenebrae folded his hands in the sleeves of his robe. “Vile doesn’t have a ghost. He’s not dead. Skulduggery is the one controlling it.”

“No, I think you’ll find that he isn’t.”

“Not consciously,” Tenebrae said. “Not willingly. But Lord Vile is a part of him, a part of his subconscious. Evidently, that particular part of his subconscious has… broken away from the rest.”

“What you’re talking about is ridiculous.”

“No, Valkyrie, actually it’s not. Our dear friend Skulduggery is, and let’s be honest here, a little bit insane. He spent ten months being tortured by the Faceless Ones, didn’t he? When you rescued him, was he the same well-adjusted gent you knew and loved?”

Valkyrie hesitated.

“He cracked. Don’t you see? They drove him insane. And while he seems to have recovered for the most part, he’s different, isn’t he? You rescued him, he came back, and all of a sudden we’re all talking about the Death Bringer. This is not good news for our dear friend. After all, we Necromancers called him the Death Bringer when he was Lord Vile, didn’t we? But he turned his back on all that. And now that he’s home, and we’re saying that you, his precious little Valkyrie, might turn out to be the Death Bringer, well… It’s all too much. Events conspire to bring him close to his empty old armour and all that power reawakens. His armour gains sentience, stands up. He has no more control over it than you or I have control over a stray thought.”

“But Lord Vile was… Lord Vile is evil.”

Tenebrae shrugged. “Who knows what darkness lurks in the hearts of men?”

“But he joined Mevolent. That means Skulduggery and Serpine were on the same side.”