Albert looked up, at the top of the wall again, but he could see nothing—nothing at all. Just a blank expanse of endless black night, as empty and desolate as their chances of getting out of this.

Marcus was gone. And they were finished.

28

‘Maggots! Worms! Filthy curs!’

Ucho was playing the Amazing Rainbow Man again. His eyes bulged out and his brow was knotted and twisted as he paced furiously up and down.

It had been roughly an hour since everything had fallen apart and Marcus had abandoned them to be caught. In that time, Albert, Colby and the others had had their hands bound behind their backs, been marched out of the Pit and brought here—a small dark room inside the barracks. The Interrogation Room, one of their captors had called it, although it wasn’t much of a room, just a cordoned-off section. There were chairs and a table on one side, and some more chairs on the other. That was it. Minutes after they had been brought in here and shoved on to chairs at the table, Ucho had showed up—wild-haired and wilder-eyed, virtually foaming at the mouth—saying he would conduct the interrogation himself, and had immediately got down to the business of letting them know exactly which lower life forms they most reminded him of. His was a rich and colourful technique, especially with the visual aid the changing hues of his face so generously provided, but it wasn’t exactly result-oriented, mused Albert. He had yet to ask them a single question. That minor detail apart, one had to admire the man’s vocabulary. He hadn’t repeated himself once.

‘Lice! Turncoats! Traitors!’

They were at the table, watching him march up and down in front of them. Albert glanced at the others. They were looking straight ahead, serious-faced and silent. Nobody had said a word since their capture, but then, there hadn’t been much opportunity. Especially now.

‘Conspirators! Anarchists! Double agents!’

It was in the midst of one such round of vitriol that the soldier walked in. Ucho turned, glaring at him, the free flow of adjectives from his mouth continuing unchecked, so it was no longer clear whom he was addressing.

‘Vermin! Cockroach! Idiot!’

‘Sir—’ began the man.

But Ucho was unstoppable, an abuse-spreading force of nature. ‘Dung-head! Snail slime! Rat! What do you want?’

The question came out so naturally, so much a part of the expletives that preceded it, that it was a moment or two before the visitor realized he was expected to answer.

‘You’re needed in the Square, sir,’ he said after a short pause, during which Ucho directed a few more words at them, some of which Albert had never heard before.

With a Herculean display of self-control, Ucho stopped himself mid-sentence to glower at the man. ‘What? What?’

‘Sir, the count—’ began the soldier.