Valkyrie saw the way the light hit something metal on the back of Tanith’s hand, and she realised with a lurch in her stomach that Tanith’s hands had been nailed to the armrests.
She wanted to cry out and tears came to her eyes. She saw two more nails. They were thick and looked long and old, and had been hammered through Tanith’s collarbones to keep her upright in the chair. A fifth nail entered Tanith’s right leg just above the knee and drove down and through her left, pinning them together.
Kenspeckle was talking again, but Valkyrie wasn’t listening to the words. She stared at her friend. She couldn’t breathe. She was suddenly too hot in the ventilation shaft and it was tight, far too tight, and close. She had to get out. She had to back out the way she had come, and she had to smash down that door and rip that Remnant out of Kenspeckle’s body. It was the only thing to do. It was the only thing that mattered.
Valkyrie tried moving backwards, the anger churning. It was bubbling, boiling, rising in her throat. She wasn’t moving. She couldn’t move backwards. Panic mixed with anger and fuelled it, and a small voice somewhere in Valkyrie’s mind told her to calm down, but she wasn’t listening.
She moved on, crawling, moving quickly, grunting, not caring if that thing that was not Kenspeckle Grouse could hear her or not. And then there was no more ground and Valkyrie was suddenly sliding downwards. She cursed as she went, trying to snag an intersecting crawlspace, but only succeeded in taking a rat’s nest with her. The rats squealed beneath and beside her and she lashed out, trying to throw them off. Her head struck stone. Her body twisted.
Below her, brightness and heat.
She tumbled through the gap and fell about a metre. There was another gap directly below it and she reached out instinctively, spreading her arms and legs and jamming herself over the opening, stopping herself from falling through to the room below.
Valkyrie looked down on to a large wooden table, and the partially inflated skin of the Hollow Man that lay upon it.
Another Hollow Man lumbered into view, carrying a bucket of slop and what looked like entrails. It didn’t look up and Valkyrie didn’t make a sound. It went to the furnace built into the wall, the only source of light in the room, and opened the metal grille above the flames. Spilling some and not caring, the Hollow Man poured the slop into the furnace. Valkyrie’s muscles were beginning to ache.
The Hollow Man picked up a large pair of bellows, its heavy hands clumsy and awkward, and poked the tip through the hole at the top of the furnace. It pulled the handles apart, sucking in the foul gases, and Valkyrie watched it shuffle over to the table. It jammed the tip into the skin and the bellows wheezed, and the skin inflated a little more. The Hollow Man picked up a large needle and sewed, making sure the gases wouldn’t escape.
Valkyrie’s arms were trembling. Her legs wouldn’t betray her, but her arms were about to go. She looked back down at the Hollow Man as it picked up the bellows and returned to the furnace. She felt something heavy move in her hair and she flinched, her arms giving way. She fell through the opening and hit the table.
She heard the bellows drop and lay flat on her back, holding her breath. The partially inflated Hollow Man lay beside her, blocking her from view. She didn’t know how good a Hollow Man’s eyesight was, but in this gloom she hoped it wasn’t any better than hers.
Valkyrie gritted her teeth when she felt the rat in her hair again. Every ounce of her wanted to tear it away, but she stayed still, even when it crawled out on to her chest. It sat for a moment and then leaped on to the Hollow Man’s skin. She heard it jump to the ground and scamper away. A second later she heard the bellows being picked up. She let out her breath and raised herself up a bit, just enough to make sure that she wasn’t being tricked.
And then the Hollow Man skin turned its half-inflated head to her.
She felt rough hands on her and then she was hauled off her knees and thrown against the wall. A fist crunched into her ribs and she cried out. Something crashed into the side of her head and she went stumbling, tripping over a discarded chair and falling painfully to the hard ground.
Her eyes wouldn’t open. She tried crawling away, but her ankle was grabbed and she was pulled back. She knocked her chin against the floor and tasted blood. She turned over, lashing out a kick at knee-height. Her boot hit the Hollow Man’s leg and it was soft, but there was no knee to break. The grip on her ankle was released and she covered up, waiting in the darkness for the next blow. It found its way above her raised knees and below her elbows, dropping straight down on to her belly, and the breath left her. She tried to roll over, but those hands were on her again, those coarse, clumsy fingers, and she was yanked to her feet and sent stumbling blindly. Her hip struck something, the edge of the table, and Valkyrie folded and sank to her knees.
Her eyes opened a crack. All she could see was a blurred murkiness. She closed them. She couldn’t breathe. She heard the whispering of papery skin behind her and she launched herself backwards. She collided with the Hollow Man, but she’d misjudged the angle and she felt it stagger but not fall. She tucked her head in as she rolled, came up in a crouch, her stomach muscles still not allowing her to straighten. She felt tears on her face and tasted blood and vomit.
She moved, staying low, stepping away from the Hollow Man’s footsteps. Her hands were held out in front and she concentrated on feeling the air against her skin. Immediately, she felt the draughts, the heat from the furnace pushing through the room, rising up through the gap from which she had fallen. She stood on something and nearly tripped. The bellows maybe. The furnace was behind her. A blast of heat, uncomfortable on her back.
The air shifted and she felt the Hollow Man’s movements, felt it lurching through the streams of clogging warmth, disrupting them as it came. It was close and unsubtle, coming head-on, and she used the air, drawing it in to her and then pushing, hard. It collided with the Hollow Man and drove it back, out of her sensory range. She heard it crash against the table.
Valkyrie rubbed her eyes before attempting to open them. They still stung, but it was bearable. The tears turned everything to a blur. She wiped her face with her sleeve and blinked rapidly. The Hollow Man came into focus. It was on the ground, crawling towards her, its own sewing needle sticking out of its lower back. Its legs were already half-deflated, the green gas slowly escaping through the puncture wound.
Valkyrie stepped sideways to avoid its grab. She went to the chair, righted it and sat with a groan. She worked at getting her breathing under control as she watched the Hollow Man change direction and crawl over. By the time she was taking deep breaths again and her eyes had stopped watering, the Hollow Man’s flat, outstretched fingers were centimetres away from her foot. It had stopped moving.
Valkyrie stood and spat, trying to get rid of the foul taste in her mouth. She crossed to the door and opened it, making sure there was no one around, and eased out. As she hurried down the flame-licked corridor, she felt the pain, but ignored it, just like she ignored the part of herself that wanted to hunker down and cry. She focused on the other part, the part that revelled in her triumph. Another fight that she’d won. Another battle where she hadn’t died.
She moved through the junction and found stairs leading up. She listened for a few seconds, made sure no one was going to surprise her, and ascended. The stairs curled around a thick column of stone like a vine around a sapling. Valkyrie reached the top and kept moving in what she decided was a southerly direction. She came to a corner and Billy-Ray Sanguine