"There!" says Iris, smiling at me as she hands the half-empty goblet to her daughter. "Isn't it so much better now?"

I roll my eyes, force saliva, and spit. I'm not aiming at Iris, I'm just trying to clean the taste from my tongue—but her smile slips. "Hey now, I didn't give you permission to do that. No spitting. Do you understand?"

I bite my tongue before I succumb to the impulse to tell her where to shove it. I want to be rid of these ropes. There are things waiting outside in the dark, learning once again how bones and sinews are articulated, and I don't want to be tied up down here when they arrive. Her words of binding slide over and past me, like a fishing line with rotten, unappetizing bait, but if I really was the Eater of Souls they'd sink into my inner ears like barbed-wire kisses. The only way out of here is to convince Iris that her little ritual worked: I'll just have to pretend. "I—understand," I croak after a brief pause, and it's not hard to sound utterly unlike myself. "Mistress."

The fat, happy smile begins to steal back across her face. "Here are your orders. You will serve the goals and rules of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh. You will not attack or attempt to damage any of the Brotherhood, under penalty of the binding I hold over you. You will not reveal your true nature to anyone outside the Brotherhood without my permission. And you will inform me at once if you suspect you are under suspicion. Do you understand?"

That's a no-brainer: "Yes, Mistress," I say, looking her in the eyes. Her face has an unhealthy greenish sheen to it, as if there's an ethereal light source behind me. She's really sucking this up.

"Good." She nods to her minions. "Untie him."

They bend over the black cords that bind me, and as they loosen I feel a very strange sensation in my chest—a gathering sensitivity, an awareness of the darkness around me. The ropes, part of the ritual apparatus prepared by the Brotherhood of the Skull for their own purposes so long ago, held their own geas: it made me feel weak. But now they're gone, the sense of strangeness redoubles. I'm an alien in my own body. It's very disturbing.

"Can you stand?" Iris asks me.

"I'll try." First I try to sit up, using my left arm as a lever. It's clumsy and I'm physically unbalanced, and my right arm is still throbbing distantly—but I succeed. Throwing a leg out sideways I crab round, then lean forward and (with a silent apology) slide across the back of the mummified sleeper under the counterpane. Is it my imagination or do they twitch, and push back at me? I don't stop to find out, but continue, sliding my feet towards the floor. It's like standing for the first time after being bedridden with a fever. At first it takes all my energy, and I nearly black out: everything goes gray for a few seconds, and there is a buzzing and chittering in my ears. But then my head clears, and I find I feel fine. I feel fine: and the feeling extends beyond me, beyond the walls of the crypt, out into the damp soil and among the tree roots and into the cavities encysted in the ground, their occupants now waking from their long slumber. "I'm standing," I say, swaying slightly.