‘Badly? They’re not exactly terrific at the moment.’ Dalip watched the candle flicker again. Someone else had entered the room. So let them work for it, since they were going to thrash him and he was completely defenceless.

He spun around and kicked the candle away, out of its molten wax socket and into the dark. The flame stretched, tore, and was extinguished. He could just about remember where the chair was. He took a shuffling step towards it, and another. Something hard tapped his shin, and he crouched down, turning the chair legs so he could pick it up one-handed by its back.

He listened very carefully. Now he’d stopped moving, there was no sound. The darkness was total. Or was it? Every time he’d looked at the candle, he’d ruined his night sight. With that distraction gone, he could make out – dimly, but there all the same – an inconstant rectangle of light. The door.

The light occulted, right to left. Someone had walked in front of him.

He hefted the chair as he stood, and it scraped on the floor. He stepped right, and the air rushed past him. Now he could hear and smell his attacker. He swung around, let go of the chair, and as it connected with the hidden figure, there was an audible grunt of pain.

The chair clattered away, and he made for the door, not directly, but off to one side. His broken, melted boots crunched on the gritty floor, and running with both hands tied behind him made him step more heavily.

He felt, rather than saw, the wall ahead, the deadness of sound and the absence of space. He slowed, turned, bounced off it with his shoulder, and squatted down again.

‘Enough,’ said a woman’s voice, high and imperious.

But it wasn’t enough. The door was at the end of a short tunnel, and he rolled around the corner and headed, crab-like, for it.

Something heavy and fast-moving tapped his skull and he went down. His ankles were lifted and pulled, and he was dragged back into the centre of the room. A light came on, high above him, up on the wall. Then another. And another. All around him, the flames seem to leap from candle to candle until he was surrounded by a soft orange glow.

Someone took Dalip’s shoulder and turned him on his back, none too gently, either. A man, heavy-set and smelling of piss, stood close by his feet, while another, a thin man with a thin, silver-topped cane was by his head.

The room was shaped like a drum, a perfect cylinder, except that high up were rings of open balconies, each ring illuminated by the candles. A gloved hand draped over the lowest balcony’s rail.

‘Enough,’ she repeated.