“You see,” the commissar warbled, “I promised to bring back some new toys from the Shrieking Meat Bazaar for little Greenteeth. Oh, and I did, my sweet lump, I did. He’ll be aching to try them out, and from the way you have behaved at dinner, I suspect you don’t like pain.” Niloch raised a hand as I began my desperate protests. “No, no, do not be foolish, darling one. I’m sure you’re in a hurry to prove me wrong, but we cannot start tonight when you’re weary from your travels. That would dull the piquancy of the thing, would it not? Tired flesh is insensitive flesh.” He raised a hand. Instantly, I was surrounded by burned apes. Their rough fingers closed on my arms and lifted me from my stone seat. “We will begin when the morning beacons are lit, or just a little before,” Niloch said. “I have not had a conversation orchestrated by my beloved Greenteeth for some time. It will be a joyful day.” The commissar patted the thing and it showed its teeth in an even wider grin, until I thought the whole top of its head might fall off and roll away. “Until the morning, then. Take him to his chamber.”

I was dragged deep into Gravejaw House, past weeping animals and scarred servants with empty expressions, then shackled to the walls of a bare, dank stone room. The slaves’ torches reflected from floor and walls slick with various liquids, only a few of which were obviously blood. Just before my captors left me, I heard something screech in a nearby room, a shrill, ragged sound that wasn’t anywhere near human. I was pretty sure it was another guest being softened up for a session with the commissar and his pal Greenteeth.

The door closed. I heard the heavy bolt being thrown. I thrashed in my chains but could barely move them, let alone break them. With the torches gone, darkness filled the room, a blackness close to absolute.

eighteen

a darkness like death