A solitary candle burned on the crude mantelshelf that was no more than a long horizontal slot in the plastered wall. Sooner or later the wet wind from the high small open window would extinguish it.

“You can rot in this cell forever, if you refuse to talk,” said Rhoshamandes. “I have no compunction about starving you till you dry up like a husk, like this being was dried up, this Garekyn Zweck Brovotkin when they found him in the Siberian ice.”

Derek shut his eyes tight. And if Garekyn had survived in the ice, then Welf and Kapetria had surely survived in the ice. But bury the thought deep inside you, in that chamber they cannot reach with their conniving, larcenous powers.

Rhoshamandes slapped the computer-printed picture with the back of his hand and then let the paper float to the floor.

“You know what this is, you stubborn little miscreant! You’ve discovered Benji Mahmoud’s broadcasts! This is a printout from his website. You know what that is, too.”

Derek tried not to look at it, tried not to look at the bold and handsome face of his beloved brother Garekyn, staring out from the computer-generated portrait with the very same expression Derek had seen on his face countless times. Patience, curiosity, love. A smiling man with skin as dark as Derek’s and as Rhoshamandes had thundered: “The very same black hair with the same telltale gold streak! Do you deny it? Look at it. This is another one of you! How many of you are there out there, and what are you!”

Earlier that evening, when they had first come for him, Roland had discovered the iPod on its charger behind the refrigerator and ground it to fragments and dust in his hand. But not before tapping its screen for all sorts of intelligence as to what Derek had been listening to, and berating the humiliated Arion as a traitor under his roof.

“Old programs,” Arion had pleaded in his defense. “Just old archived programs. I gave it to him as a diversion, that’s all.”

And all had been forgiven, it seemed, before they’d spirited Derek away and to this horrid place on the edge of the European world.

“Rhosh, please, be gentle with the boy,” said the woman Allesandra. What a commanding manner she had for one so obsequious to this monster. She was as tall as Rhoshamandes was, and her face a portrait of compassion carved in stone. Her long thick hair seemed the perfect color of dust, and her skin was the color of waxen lilies. Demons, all of you.

Garekyn, Kapetria, help me. Give me the strength to hold out for your coming. Give me the strength to betray nothing.