Skulduggery turned. “Yes. I told you it was Vile’s ghost that was giving the armour purpose. In a way, that’s true, once you accept that Vile’s ghost is my subconscious. The armour is imitating me. Or it’s imitating how I used to be, at any rate.”

“You’re Lord Vile.”

“Yes. Sorry, I should have told you.”

“You killed Ghastly’s mother.”

“Among others, yes. He doesn’t know, obviously.”

“Stop talking like that!” she roared. “Stop talking so normal!”

“What would you prefer? Sobbing? Wailing? Maybe some more silence? Regret never won a war, Valkyrie, and ‘sorry’ isn’t a big enough word for what I’m feeling. I’ve spent my life since then trying to make up for it, but I’ll never make up for it. The things I did were unspeakably evil, but for those few years, I didn’t care.”

“You… you told me you did terrible things.”

“I did.”

“I didn’t think they’d be so…”

“I know. We can talk about this later.” He turned back to Tenebrae. “If my subconscious is controlling the armour, and the armour wants to kill your Death Bringer, then why haven’t you killed me?”

“Well,” Tenebrae said, “let’s face it, I might be wrong. The armour might be operating completely independently of you – it might have gained a higher degree of sentience. In that case, killing you would deprive me of a valuable asset in taking it down. The second reason and, quite honestly, the most pertinent, is that I don’t know how to kill you. If I try, a bungled attempt on your life might redirect the armour against me. And I have no intention of dying before the Passage is brought about. Not when I’m this close.”

“So you’ve been hoping that Melancholia brings about the Passage before Vile gets to her? That’s your whole strategy? You’ve been hoping?”

“The centuries have changed all of us, Skulduggery. As Cleric Wreath delights in pointing out, we Necromancers are used to sitting back and not actually doing anything. We’re a very lazy lot, now that I think about it.”

“No,” Skulduggery said, “you’ve waited too long for this lunatic scheme of yours to come true. You wouldn’t leave anything to chance.”