Kit sobbed. It was a shock, in the stillness of the space, to hear him cry. Zita immediately grasped his hands, but he pushed her off. Tom stood warily near.

‘Shall kill me …’

‘Who?’

‘Her.’ Kit swallowed, and his Adam’s apple stood out in his throat.

A light dawned in Tom’s mind. ‘The … black space, the disc. What’s in there? What do you think’s in there?’

Zita looked alarmed.

‘I … I done it,’ sobbed Kit once more. ‘I made it.’

‘Did what?’ Tom remembered the tenderness with which Jack, hundreds of years ago, had stroked Kit’s hair. ‘Made what?’

Kit controlled himself. ‘He could not take one of the Good Folk on his own. How could he? And she sware revenge.’

‘Who did? Who did, Kit?’

With a great wrench, Kit raised himself up. He was trembling. ‘I done it. I took the Captive. And the Captive hath sworn vengeance on me; an’ she find me, she shall slay me.’ He gripped the sides of his head with his hands.

‘I thought so!’ Zita gasped. ‘I felt it in the darkness. There’s something there, kept there, all tied up.’

‘So he’s put us in here to be killed by him or by the Captive,’ said Tom. ‘All of us.’

Death if they stayed; death if they left.

Suddenly, he half-dragged Kit to the windowsill and, ignoring his cries of protest and Zita’s warnings, scrambled onto the ledge, holding Kit tightly, grabbed the lamp resting there and, taking a deep breath, leapt into the blackness.

As he fell, Tom had no time to think about what they might meet on the ground.

In the end, it was almost instantaneous. One minute he was falling; the next he was sprawled on soft earth. He’d landed with Kit, and the two of them had rolled over for a second or two, before coming to a standstill.

Half a second later, there was a thud beside them, and the glow of a dim lamp.

‘Well, luckily I was always rather good at that sort of thing,’ came Zita’s voice, and Tom was glad to hear it. ‘Escaping out of the dorm and all that.’

‘Anyone hurt?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Tom. Kit merely groaned.

‘We’ll have to drag him,’ said Zita. ‘We can manage him between us.’

Behind them was the outline of a sheer stone building, and they could just see a space where the window had been.

The cold was now biting. Huddled together, they kept Kit in between the two of them. Tom’s right side was almost numb. They held the lamps in their outer hands. The rays did not help much, but they moved in a small circle of orange that was almost cheerful compared to the blackness outside it.

‘How do we know which direction to go in?’

‘I’ll have to send myself.’

‘Zita! You can’t.’