“Are you afraid of idle chatter? Perhaps you are not the man we thought you were. Perhaps you are unsuited to be our representative outside the Temple.”
“Then who will take my place?” Wreath answered icily. “You? If all my post required was a staggering expertise at fawning, then you’d be welcome to it.”
“How dare you!” Craven practically screeched.
Wreath took a sudden step towards him and Craven stumbled over his own robe to get away.
“Enough!” growled the High Priest. “Solomon, you’re concerned that these rumours will reach unwelcome ears, yes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Such a concern is reasonable, but I can assure you, you need not worry. The Necromancer Order is stronger now than it was during the war with Mevolent. We are more than capable of dealing with trouble, should it arise.”
“With respect, sir, this is more than mere trouble. Forgive the melodrama of what I am about to say, but if the news that we are preparing for the Passage were to reach whatever corner of the world he has secluded himself in, Lord Vile will return to destroy us all.”
“In that case,” High Priest Tenebrae said with a patient smile, “we need to be sure that Valkyrie Cain is strong enough to kill him for us, now don’t we?”
“Hey, Val,” the mud said.
“Hey, Tanith,” Valkyrie said back. “You’ve got something on your face…”
Tanith’s mud-covered features broke into a small smile. “Ghastly already made that joke when he brought me the flowers.”
“That was nice of him,” Valkyrie said. She pulled up the only chair in the room, and sat. “How are your hands?”
Tanith raised them for Valkyrie to see. They were heavily bandaged and wrapped in plastic so that the mud wouldn’t get in. “The Professor says they’ll be fine in a few days. The doctors in the Sanctuary soaked the bandages in something I never heard of to heal the wounds. The Professor inspected them the moment I was transferred here. He said they’d do the job. All this mud is for the swelling and the, you know, the trauma. I’ll be fine, he says. He’s doing everything he can to make up for it.”
“He blames himself,” Valkyrie said. “Even though he couldn’t do anything to stop the Remnant, and even though he can’t remember one thing about it, he still blames himself.”
“I’m not surprised,” Tanith said. “I mean, I know it wasn’t him that did this to me. But it used his face and it had his voice, and I don’t know…I think there’s a part of me that hates him for it.”
“But you’re here,” frowned Valkyrie. “If a part of you hates him, wouldn’t you have wanted to stay in the Sanctuary, away from him?”
“I’m a practical girl, Val, and the practical side of my brain pretty much tells the stupid side what to do. So I’m cool here.”
She shrugged and winced and Valkyrie noticed the bandages on her shoulders.
“How are you?” she asked.
“I just told you.”
“No, you told me how your injuries are.”
“All right then, I’m doing OK actually. The pain wasn’t really any worse than the White Cleaver stabbing me in the back, but the White Cleaver didn’t talk, you know? That Remnant thing in the Professor just would not shut up.”
“Tanith, you were tortured.”
“Everyone gets tortured these days. Skulduggery was tortured by Serpine, who then turned around and did that red right-hand thing at you. Then Skulduggery was tortured again by the Faceless Ones. I figured it was my turn, you know? You’re not part of the team if you haven’t been tortured – that’s what I always say. Well, I’ll be saying that from now on anyway.”
Valkyrie stood there, feeling stupid and awkward. Tanith had been put through hell and Valkyrie didn’t have the first idea how to talk to her about it. The pain was evident in her friend’s eyes, no matter how hard she tried to hide it. Valkyrie searched clumsily for the words she needed, but they weren’t coming to her.
“What are they going to do with the Remnant?” Tanith asked, breaking the silence.
“We’ve handed it over to Wreath,” Valkyrie told her and Tanith’s face soured.
“Why does he want it?”
“Well, technically, the Soul Catcher is his and he asked for it back. He just wants to study it for a while, now that it actually contains something. He’ll bring the Remnant back to the Midnight Hotel when he’s done.”
“I don’t know how you can trust that guy, Val.”
“He’s helped me a lot over the last year. He’s helped all of us.”
Tanith looked like she was about to argue and then there was a beep from somewhere overhead, and she groaned. “Just when you get comfortable.”
Tanith gripped the edges of the tub and rose out of it, moving stiffly. The mud covered her completely as she reached her arm out. Valkyrie grabbed her elbow with both hands to make sure she didn’t slip and helped her into a white bathrobe. Tanith wiped her face clean with a towel.
There was a knock on the door. Valkyrie looked over her shoulder to find Skulduggery standing in the doorway.
“Tanith,” he said. “You’re looking great.”
“And I’m ready to go,” Tanith said.
“Is that so?”
“You give me my sword back and I’m right behind you.”
Before Skulduggery could answer, Tanith’s left leg buckled and Valkyrie grabbed her as she fell, guiding her to the chair.
“Bloody hell,” Tanith growled. “That hurts.”
“Tanith…” Skulduggery began.
“You want to know if I learned anything, right?” she said, pain lending her words an edge. “You want to know if Sanguine or any of them let something slip in all their gloating? They didn’t. They kept me shackled in a room and then they gave me to the Professor. Forgive me, but there are patches of the last twelve hours that are a little fuzzy.”
“They didn’t mention any names? Places? Times?”
“The Remnant in the Professor talked about a lot of stuff. Mainly about how happy he was to have finally found a friend.”
Skulduggery nodded slowly. “OK. All right, thank you.”
“But what does it matter? We have the Desolation Engine, right?”
“We do, but I’d have liked to have known their target. If they can’t take it down with the bomb, they might try some other way.”
“Or they’re all running,” Tanith said. “Let’s face it – none of these guys are great team players. They’re all in it for their own reasons, so the moment the big plan goes wrong, I think they’re going to split.”
“That is possible. It’s also very likely.”
“If