Ryan saw the hate in Masst’s eyes and it scared him. ‘Mate, you’ve got to believe me, I only met her a couple of days ago! How was I to know?’

Masst wasn’t listening. ‘The Legate must be told,’ he said. ‘The Herdworld must be told! Our vigilance will be remembered, our actions rewarded. And, yes.’ He placed a hand menacingly on Ryan’s shoulder. ‘Our vengeance must be shared.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Ace felt feeling return to her limbs slowly, in vicious fits and starts, as the Ratts dragged her through the tunnel that ran beneath the desert. It was cold, the sweat drenching her back that of one waking from a nightmare. Glowing stones were set into the roof at regular intervals, just enough light to make the shadows ahead look more frightening still.

Finally the Ratts stopped beside a door made from beaten iron, adorned with finely crafted figures, squat and powerful; Ace thought at first they were embracing, passionately intertwined. But, no, they were fighting, killing, tearing each other apart. Was it the dim flicker of the light that made the figures seem to dance and tremble, and sent iron blood surging from the open wounds?

The door swung open, soundlessly, and before Ace could react she was pushed through it into a vast chamber hollowed from solid rock. Perfumed smoke filled the air, cloying and conspiring with the shadows to confuse her senses. The door slammed closed behind her, the echo like a fist battering her ears. She felt a deep, instinctual fear, a sense that some past nightmare, buried for so long, was now running her close.

It seemed she was alone, for now, anyway; no doubt the thing that had brought her here wanted to increase her apprehension. Ace forced herself to stay calm, to do what she’d always used to do alongside the Doctor – assess the space, check for best-option exits and for anything she could use for a weapon. She badly wanted to cough on the smothering incense but was damned if she’d give anyone the satisfaction of knowing they’d got to her.

Looking about, it was like being in some kind of alien castle. Two dozen scarlet pennants – strips of rich, heavy fabric, three metres wide – hung down from a roof lost in shadow until they almost brushed the polished stone floor. An ornate throne that looked to have been carved from some colossal ivory tusk reared up into the space from the middle of a wide, circular dais edged with a sinister sculpture – carved, gleaming figures frozen in the midst of writhing agony, twisted, broken, screaming.

Exits? She couldn’t see any. Weapons? None. What little furniture there had been extruded from the space. But perhaps she could climb the pennants, perhaps there was a gallery hidden above, somewhere she could escape to …