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DUN AND PADG WERE SAT tied back-to-back on a small bench in an anteroom or cell. Dun drew breath to speak, Padg cut him off, “I swear if you say, ‘Just like old times’ again, I’ll kill you myself.”
“Do you think they’re going to kill us?”
“Whatever they’ve got in store for us sounds pretty deadly to me.”
“I don’t know, I think this is the same trial that the Grey Duchy acolytes go through.”
“And you know how many of them make it through to be Grey Duchy priesthood?” said Padg crossly, “Not many.”
“No, I know, but some of them are fine, they just don’t make priests for some reason.”
“And some of them go entirely mad. Some throw themselves off high places or fail really badly at swimming.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“Well can we make our way round to being a bit less sanguine about us being imminently killed?”
“We’re not going to be killed, stop panicking.”
The door to the room opened slowly and more guards came into the small space. Their captors growled and poked them with sticks, until Dun and Padg co-ordinated themselves enough to stand while tied together.
“Walk.”
They went out of their tiny cell down a long corridor, to a dead stop. By Dun’s Air-sense the passage end had an odd round mechanism in the centre of the wall, behind their two guards, it seemed to be a giant wheel.
“Wait.” Two guards stayed with them, two others marched off in lockstep to who knew where. The space was oddly quiet and still. No fans, no breeze, nothing. Dun could feel the breath of the nearest guard: it smelled of food cubes. Was that the time? He hadn’t noticed he felt hungry.
“Is this where the trial takes place then?” Dun asked.
“Shut. Up.”
“Chatty lot aren’t you?” said Padg.
Dun heard the thud of the end of the staff contact with some part of Padg’s body and felt him flinch. They were a little handy with those things. Dun was about to embark on a response but approaching steps in the passage stopped him. The swooping rhythm to the walk told Dun it was their current antagonist from the Grey Duchy, they still didn’t know her name. Only that she was a Questioner. She had Dun and Padg roughly stood up by the guards.
“Are you going to tell us what you’re called before you torture us?” said Padg.
A long silence answered that. Not just ignoring them. Appraising them? Dun could hear she was sniffing the air as quietly as she could manage. What was she trying to smell? Fear. She was testing the air to see if they were scared. Dun wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction, “I’m looking forward to this.” That stopped her. “What? Acolytes wait and train eons to be here. We’re here for free.”
“You’re here because we think you’re unlikely to survive,” her voice was matter of fact.
“‘We’?” Dun cocked his ears.
She replied with a choked-off laugh. “No. I ask the questions. After you’re finished.”
Dun imagined that choice of words was deliberate. He wished he’d done his due diligence now and found out what she was called before he came. Were they Grand Questioners if they were senior? They were so closeted it was difficult to get good intel on them, even if he’d bothered to ask. And the irony was, as a shaman, before discovering the transmitters and OneLove, his ability was called Foretelling. So much for that.
“I’m going to call you Chanterelle,” said Padg. ‘Chanterelle’ stopped muttering to her guard. Dun thought she was going to reply with some snark or other, but she didn’t. Instead, she clapped sharply twice. The guard nearest the end of the corridor seized the round thing and began turning it. Dun realised they had been standing in just the right place as the door, as it now obviously was, opened inwards with a hiss. The guards poked them onwards with their staves, into the room beyond.
The chamber was taller than the passage they’d just come from, but no wider and there was the strange scent of the kind of plants used for cleaning. It finished forty strides ahead of them in a dead end. The floor was smooth as marble, though not as cold. As they walked in, Dun noted that the room wasn’t as echoey as he’d have expected from something with three flat sides, at least one of which was made from something as hard as stone. In front of him as they were prodded in, the fourth wall was a soft, uneven shape: drapes perhaps?
“Sit,” said the guard nearest them.
“HOW?” said Padg.
In response one guard shoved the pole he was using between the two of them and used it as a lever below their bottoms. That forced them into an odd suspended half-squat position. The other guard pushed down on their heads, growling. When both of their behinds touched the floor, the guard grunted in approval and stepped away. The floor was too smooth for them to get enough purchase to stand.
‘Chanterelle’ clapped twice sharply again and the guards returned to her side just over the threshold of the doorway.
“No weird demands for last words?” asked Padg. She said nothing in reply. “Shame, I like that bit.”
There was a slightly too cheerful single chime in the room. A warning alarm for gaolers to withdraw. Dun shuddered. The door to the room closed with a hiss. From this side they could hear the grating of the door valve as it was sealed shut. Dun let his head flop back against Padg’s and blew out his cheeks.
“It’s okay old friend,” said Padg, “we’ve been through worse.”
“Just like old times!” said Dun. And Padg began to laugh like a drain. It nearly drowned out a faint squeaking in the ceiling above the drapes and the battering of Dun’s heart. It marred Dun’s ability to concentrate his Air-sense on the wall where the drapes were slowly parting to give way to a very cold glass surface underneath. The curtains opened fully, leaving the whole flat surface. Then everything else was drowned out by the sound of Padg screaming.
