A scream woke Janu from his stupor. A scream, and someone’s grip suddenly tightening on his injured arm. He jerked upright with a cry of pain and almost headbutted Galnai.

She let go of his arm and raised her hands in apology. Her face was pale and drawn, and tension drew her shoulders up around her neck. Heketas rocked back and forth in the gloom behind her, his knees drawn up to his chin, his hands wrapped around the back of his head.

‘Who screamed?’ Janu asked. His arm throbbed with pain, burning through fresh bandages where Galnai had squeezed it. ‘Was it me?’

Galnai shook her head. Only then did Janu take full stock of their surroundings. Behind him, their small, dark room was closed off with a thick wooden door. Iron bars formed a small window at head height. Someone moved around behind it, making small clinking and thudding noises with what might have been tools, or perhaps their confiscated items.

Ilarion wasn’t in the cell with them.

Clarity burned through Janu’s mind. The guards, their capture, the cell, the screams...

‘What are they doing to him?’ he asked.

The muscles of Galnai’s jaw worked before she spoke, and she balled her fists again – this time without Janu’s arm in their grip. Beyond the paleness of her face, which Janu had initially mistaken for fear, a deep rage boiled in her eyes.

At length, she said, ‘Pulling his nails.’ She scratched the material of her trousers with her thumbnail as if to reassure herself it was still attached. ‘They’ve only just started. But they won’t stop.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they’re bloody idiots, that’s why.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘They see a khunuchanian face in the bowels of their palace, they assume it’s a spy. So they want information.’

If they didn’t get it from Ilarion, they would try to get it from Galnai. But from the look on her face, she hadn’t got as far as considering that possibility yet.

Slowly, unsure if he would be able to move without feeling faint again, Janu got to his feet. Pain shot through his left leg and set his vision swimming, but he blinked it away. He swallowed a rush of nausea. Galnai had bandaged his leg as well, and soaked both bandages with water, unless that was his own sweat.

Janu trudged over to the cell door and peered through the bars. They were at the end of a long corridor of cells, with no sign of Ilarion. The movement he had heard might have been from further along, where the corridor opened up onto a room with desks and benches. The closest desk held an array of torture implements angled, he was sure, precisely so they could see them from their cell. Either that or the noise had come from one of the two guards standing to each side of the door. Janu could just about make out their shoulders if he moved his face close to the wood.

He stared down the length of the corridor, wondering when the next scream would come, wondering what it would mean if it never did.

At a noise from behind him, Janu turned. Galnai had stood and begun the pace the cell like an angry cat. From the grazes on her knuckles, she had already tried fighting her way out – from the grip of the guards or through the cell door, or both. Janu’s tired brain cycled through a dozen vague ideas for escape so threadbare that he couldn’t even put words to the images. Nothing would work. They had nothing. They were stuck here. They were doomed.

Another scream cut through the prison. Janu’s hair stood on end. Animal fear tightened his gut.

Galnai launched herself past Janu, sending him staggering against the wall, and shoulder-barged the door. ‘Assholes!’ she shouted, followed by something more colourfully offensive. ‘He doesn’t have anything to give you. We don’t work for Khunuchan. They cut my bloody ear off. Why would I want anything to do with the place?’

‘Quiet in there!’ one of the guards commanded in a weary voice. He added, ‘Stupid woman,’ half under his breath, but was lucky that Galnai had already paced back from the door and didn’t hear him.

Janu closed his eyes and leaned back against the cool stone of the wall. The coolness was deceptive – leaning his arm against it burned just as much as dragon fire.

Dragon fire. Damn the day he had started working with dragons. Damn the day he had stolen his first egg. Look what it had all led to. He couldn’t even rest safe in the knowledge that his family would be cared for. He hadn’t paid off the landlord yet. They would be homeless and clueless. Worse. A shudder passed through him and his breath spiked. The palace would connect him to them. They would all pay the price for this. He knew it in his gut. There was no vengeance like imperial vengeance.

He drew a hand over the unscorched side of his face. If only he had told the dragons they couldn’t do it. That the first task, kidnapping the princess and Nazagin, had been enough. That they were dragon thieves, not the sort of thieves who broke into estates and navigated traps and vaults.

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How could he get them out of this? He kept going over the question, even though there was no hope. He couldn’t help it.

Steps sounded in the distance. Janu stepped up to the window again to see a new guard walking towards them. He sneered at Janu when he noticed his attention, then turned to address the two guards at the door.

‘Bring the traitor,’ he said. ‘That one has his sentence. It’s to be carried out immediately.’

The guard on the left acknowledged the order and began unlocking the door, but the one on the right asked, ‘Do they not need information from him?’

‘Pah. He betrayed his country, and his post. That’s all the information they need. Everything else about him is worthless.’

‘My post?’ Heketas had been curled up as far into the corner as he could get, but now he snapped his head towards the door with a new light in his eyes. ‘What post is that? The one you didn’t bloody want me for anymore? I was proud in that job. Bloody proud. And you just threw me out. Screw the lot of you. Betraying my bloody post. It was you what betrayed me!’

‘Sure it was.’ The guard pulled the door open and, with his sword point flicking between Galnai and Janu to keep them in line, entered the cell. ‘That’s why you’re giving thieves guided tours around the palace. Get up.’

Heketas didn’t move, so the guard reached over and hauled him up by the arm. The man began screaming curses, bucking in the guard’s grip, but the guard just slammed the pommel of his sword into Heketas’ nose. Stunned, he staggered limply alongside the guard.

Galnai’s muscles bunched, but the guard was no fool, and kept his sword drawn and ready. So all she could do was watch, vibrating from the strain of inaction.

‘What’s his sentence?’ Janu asked.

The guard who had brought the news sneered as Heketas was brought out of the cell and his hands bound before him.

‘A punishment fit for traitors, of course,’ he said. ‘Full moon has just gone. The serpents need a good feed.’

Silence fell over the corridor, punctuated by the cell door slamming closed. Then Heketas began to wail like an infant.

Janu pressed himself against the door and shouted through the window. ‘I can tell you what you need to know! Whatever you need. You don’t need to do this.’

‘Save it, thief. Talking won’t save any of you. And it won’t unmake a traitor.’

So two of them led Heketas away, sobbing and dragging his heels along the ground. His dark, puffy face was the last Janu saw of him, and the staring intensity of his eyes haunted him for some time afterwards.

Janu sank to the floor, trailing his hands down the wood. He couldn’t help thinking of the serpent they had so closely encountered, and the fact that Heketas couldn’t swim. What a death. Drowned if not eaten.

Galnai resumed her pacing of the cell, her nostrils flaring, panting almost like an enraged horse. ‘And what are you torturing us for, if talking won’t save us, hey? Why would we talk?’

‘You’ll talk to make it stop.’ One of the guards’ faces appeared by the window, his eyes sparkling with unkind amusement. ‘Your friend’ll be yapping in no time, and then he’ll get the reward of a nice, clean death.’

A sudden movement from Galnai sent Janu leaping away. Her fist struck the metal bars of the window with a resounding crash that shook the entire door in its frame. The guard jumped away, laughing. Even with the door in the way, he couldn’t keep a nervous edge from it. He turned his back to Galnai’s stream of insults, and as he did so another scream echoed down the corridor. This was longer than the last, more drawn-out, broken into several fresh screams that rolled together, as if Ilarion were trying and failing to hold back each one.

Galnai punched the door again, to no effect. Blood caked her knuckles. Only fury registered on her face, perhaps with the shadow of some second-hand pain.

‘I’ll tell you everything you want to know,’ Janu called up to the guard. ‘Who we’re working for, why they hired us. The whole deal. Stop torturing him and I’ll give you everything you want.’ Shivers raced through him, electrifying his bones. He couldn’t stop them. Even though Ilarion’s screams had stopped, their echoes lingered in his mind.

Why was Ilarion staying quiet, anyway? What would telling them betray? The empire already knew of the dragons at Kimah-Kur. The extent of their involvement would come as no great surprise. Perhaps they were just intent on pinning some blame on Khunuchan.

The guard was staying quiet, too.

Janu slapped his good hand against the door. ‘Hey, are you listening? Hey!’

The man had just turned his head to reply when something else caught his eye. Janu had to stand again to follow his gaze through the small window.

At the end of the corridor, another guard had appeared. He wore a butcher’s apron dark with old stains and half pushed, half carried a limping Ilarion along before him.

‘You done with him already?’ the cell guard asked.

The butcher grunted and gestured to the door. ‘Just open it up, quick. They want as many hands as can make it upstairs.’

‘Problem?’ The key scraped in the lock, and the guard’s helmet blocked Janu’s view for a moment.

As soon as the door opened, the butcher threw Ilarion in. Galnai caught him – a dead weight that almost knocked her over. Somewhere above them, a heavy thud reverberated through the palace structure, and an unmistakably draconic roar sounded.

‘Sounds like it,’ the butcher said, wiping his hands as he stepped out. He took the apron off and started away from the door. ‘Sure they’ll have it handled by the time I get there. Then I’ll be back to finish the job.’

When the cell guard closed the door again, it was with a nervous glance to the ceiling. He clearly didn’t share his colleague’s calm certainty.

Janu looked to the ceiling himself, pricking his ears for every minute vibration and far-off noise. Had one of the dragon guard’s mounts broken loose, or had a rescue party come from Kimah-Kur? They surely couldn’t know about their capture, and yet...

He turned to Galnai, who had laid a pale, sweat-drenched Ilarion out on the ground.

Kneeling next to her, Janu lowered his voice and asked, ‘Can you get him into a state where he can move in a hurry? We might get a chance to make a break for it soon.’

Galnai gave the cell door a stare as if sizing it up for an attempt to body slam it from its hinges, but she didn’t get up. She nodded.

‘Don’t think there’s much we can do for him, but we can try,’ she growled. ‘And if we do get out, you’ll be helping him. I’ll need both my hands free to give those bastards hell.’