"Y'know, once you get past the novelty of manipulating pictures on a magic mirror, the fucking shine wears off this game pretty quickly. I'm also sure I've seen people throw real birds at real pigs for fun in some isolated villages. Are you sure millions of people play this?" Sharinta asked.

McKenzie took the phone back. "Like I say, it's a different planet."

"It must be. Seriously, you can't tell me that you give people a magical device that grants access to all the wisdom of all the ages of your world, and they use it for that?" Sharinta said, then laughed.

At that moment, the sonorous tolling of the bells rang out across the city, seven times.

"Sounds like you're up, oh peerless assassin." Sharinta said.

"Yep," McKenzie agreed, calling the waitress over and handing her a gold coin. "Keep the change," he said.

"Thank you. I hope you're both very happy together." She bobbed her head, then left.

"I'm so not making that joke again," McKenzie said.

"Joke? But darling, I thought we had our lives all planned out!" Sharinta said, then cackled.

"Exactly," McKenzie said. "See you back at what I'll generously refer to as our secret HQ, I s'pose."

"Hah!" Sharinta snorted. "I'll fucking go back there when the curse makes me. As for right now, I'm officially your backup. I shall be backing you up from that more interesting looking inn over the square, by which I mean drinking, dancing and flirting. If you're not out in half an hour, assume I've got company and, y'know, manage on your own somehow." She nodded her head towards the sound of music.

"Fair dos," McKenzie shrugged.

"Want me to look after your phone and gun?" Sharinta asked.

"Not if you're intending to get hammered and go on the pull, Shar, no." McKenzie shook his head. "If anyone tries to take them off of me, they'll regret it."

"Okay. Knock 'em dead, hero," Sharinta said, inwardly grinning.

"Har har," McKenzie responded, got up, and headed for the Unsheathed Dagger.

The rain had eased to almost nothing, but the massive slabs that paved the square were still slick with precipitation. McKenzie went carefully, as he didn't want to fall and land on his arse just before an interview to be a ruthless villain.

There was no obvious security outside the door, which was to all intents and purposes an entirely normal, red-painted door. McKenzie thought he detected a very faint magical presence to it as he walked up the stairs, but he had no idea what it was there to do.

"Well then," he said to himself - he couldn't suppress a slight feeling of nervousness - and knocked firmly three times.

He didn't particularly care about Lemuel's mission: he would've been more than happy to blow it off and go to the pub with Sharinta. He did, however, care about getting and staying on Jadhara's good side, at least until he'd figured out if her apparent knowledge of Shakespeare was just some sort of bizarre coincidence or if she did, after all, have a door in the back of her wardrobe that led back to Earth (in which case Lemuel was due for a fucking shock).

That thought put a slight smile on his face, which turned to an expression of confusion when the door was opened not by some sort of shadowy, black-robed figure but by a short but phenomenally well-endowed girl wearing a few scraps of frilly white silk and not one whole hell of a lot else, although presumably the bodice-level scraps of silk had some form of structural integrity built-in, because they were holding in quite a lot.

"Shit a brick," McKenzie said. "Have I got the wrong door? "

"That depends, sir," the girl said, tucking a loose strand of hair - bright red, and lots of it - behind her ear.

"Unsheathed Dagger, yeah?" McKenzie asked.

"It is indeed, sir," the girl confirmed. "Please, come in."

"Right." McKenzie walked in. The girl closed the door behind him.

The lobby of the inn was a study in marble, red velvet upholstery and partially dressed women. The nature of the place immediately clicked for McKenzie. Unsheathed Dagger. Hilarious.

"This is a knockin' shop!" He said, as subtle as ever.

"I see you are a man of perspicacity," said another voice, with more than a hint of sarcasm. This one belonged to a woman who was fully dressed, slightly older than the dozen or so girls draped over the furniture like silken-clad scatter cushions, and walking down the stairs. She looked vaguely familiar, for some reason.

"Possibly, although to be honest I'd need a dictionary to give you a definitive answer to that one," McKenzie answered.

"Yira, a drink for our guest," the woman said to one of the girls who was holding wine and glasses at the ready.

"I'll pass," McKenzie said – this was important, after all. "I'm goin' to take a wild guess that this is your place?"

"It is. My name is Madam Listra," she answered him. As soon as she said it McKenzie realised why he'd thought she was vaguely familiar: Listra looked a lot like Captain Jahistra. From the same place, he assumed.

"Okay then. The scope for oh-so-amusing double entendres and ribald innuendo is practically limitless in this situation, so let me just say this plainly. I was asked to come here by a woman, whose name may or may not be Jadhara. She is not a member of your staff, although I'll bet you know who I mean. If she referred to me at all by name, it would have been 'Monday', although 'idiot' is frankly just as likely: our initial meeting was kinda hectic. This is with regard to a business arrangement of the type not normally transacted here by the usual patrons with the usual employees in the usual way. This is different. Now there exists the possibility that this is a total wind-up on her part, and you don't know anything about this: but, since I'm not sporting nearly as much bling as your normal customers, arrived on foot without an entourage of servants and yet was admitted without the merest trace of even a raised eyebrow in surprise, I'm leanin' towards the notion that you're expecting me," McKenzie said.

Listra looked at him levelly.

"You are correct," she said. "Hennara - take our guest through the Black Door." You could hear the capitals.

McKenzie exhaled in relief. "I'm so glad you said that," he admitted. "Woulda looked a right numpty if I'd gone through all that and you had no idea what I was on about."

"Indeed," Listra said.

"If you'd follow me, sir?" The short girl with the impressive cleavage appeared beside him.

"Lead on, MacDuff," McKenzie said, just in case, but nobody reacted with familiarity. Mind you, since he didn't know if that really was an actual line from Macbeth it wasn't the most rigorous test anyway.

"Good luck, Mr. Monday," Listra said.

McKenzie nodded to her. "Thanks." He turned to leave.

"Wait!" Listra said.

McKenzie stopped moving. "What?"

Listra handed him a sealed envelope. "Open this, once you have passed through the Black Door and stand within. I am directed to inform you that no deviation from instructions will be permitted, and if it is opened too early, you will fail."

"Thank you. Has anyone ever mentioned that you have a slight predilection towards melodrama, Madam Listra?" McKenzie asked, as he took the envelope.

"Not twice," Listra replied smoothly.

McKenzie snorted with laughter. "Good response."

McKenzie looked at the envelope. On the front, it said 'Read me last'.

Hennara led him through a door at the far corner of the lobby, where she took a candle lantern from the wall and lit it. From there she led him down some stairs, along a corridor, down some more stairs and then did a very sharp left turn which led them, as advertised, to a Black Door.

"Thanks," McKenzie said. "Well, it's certainly a black door. Not quite sure why it's a Black Door with emphasis, though."

The girl looked at him. "Begging your pardon, sir, but you don't strike me as the usual sort as normally turns up here in similar circumstances. They's normally a bit, well, scarier if you gather my meaning, and-" she said, then stopped.

"Go on," McKenzie said, smiled, and forcibly ignored the implication that he wasn't scary. "I won't tell anyone you let the Secrets Of The Black Door With Portentious Emphasis slip."

"The other girls say not everyone comes out again, sir," Hennara told him. "In fact they say most people don't come out again sir. In actual fact, sir, well, they couldn't definitely tell me of anyone coming out again, sir, although some of the older girls said they was told that people have, but they was the sort of people that you'd rather didn't come out again, sir."

"This your first time doing this, Hennara?" McKenzie asked her.

"Yes sir," Hennara replied. "I've been taught the way down, but I never been through sir. Girls only does it once each, sir."

"That's interesting. Thanks Hennara," McKenzie said, eyeing the apparently deadly wooden portal. "Well, I'm sure that most people just exited out of The Black Backdoor, possibly through The Gift Shop Of Doom or something. Back you go, don't worry about me."

"I have to show you in, sir. Madam Listra and her friend were most insistent on that point, sir," Hennara said, retrieving a key on a golden chain from around her neck. It didn't come out of it's hiding place willingly, and McKenzie had to hold the lantern for her as she performed some readjustments.

As fascinating as the key retrieval operation was, McKenzie didn't miss the slip. Hennara didn't strike him as the sort of subtle type that would insert misleading fake mistakes into her speech.

"Listra's friend come round here often?" He asked.

Hennara paused in the act of bending over towards the lock, and blushed red. "I misspoke, sir."

"Don't worry," McKenzie told her. "I won't tell anyone if you don't."

The Black Door clicked open and swung gently inwards. It was, he noted, extremely sturdy, and the walls around it were a good foot thick, too. Inside was a small, windowless chamber with another door opposite. Apart from four candles set in sconces, one per wall, it was empty. The floor was smooth stone, as was the ceiling, and the door across the way was metallic.

Hennara went about the business of lighting the candles in the room. As she did so, the Black Door swung shut. It had been gloss-painted wood on the outside: on the inside, it was as metallic as the other door.

The candles, once lit, gave enough light to see that the envelope he'd been given wasn't, as hinted, the only one. There was another on the floor, larger. This one was unmarked. McKenzie picked it up and opened it.

Somewhere beyond the door lies a chamber, in which you will find a star-shaped sapphire. Bring it to us, and you may be admitted to our ranks. Take the girl with you.

Shit, McKenzie thought.

He opened the one Listra had given him. McKenzie was no handwriting expert, but this one was plainly from a different hand.

The message was brief. The girl's life is in no danger unless you decide it is. The doors are airtight. Once more into the breach, Monday. No question who that was from, then. McKenzie folded it up and pocketed it.

"You're about to have kind of a shitty evening," he said to Hennara, and showed her the first letter.

"I don't have my letters in that script, sir," Hennara said, after glancing at it. She then looked at McKenzie with a worried expression.

"Um, yeah. Okay, so this is the deal, apparently. There's a bit of shiny blue bling beyond that door somewheres that this says I gotta get. It also says to take you with me," McKenzie explained. "Sorry. I promise you'll be fine."

Hennara looked terrified, as well she might. "Please, sir, I beg you, don't make me go through there."

"I sort of have to, sorry. This is too important for me to fuck it up by-" He started, then stopped.

Was it? No, it wasn't. Right that minute, McKenzie didn't have it in him to mess with someone's life. Either they'd let him slide on the 'take the girl' bit, or he'd find Jadhara another way.

"Know what? Fuck 'em. You can go back up. Put the kettle on, would you? Milk one sugar," he said.

Hennara's expression blossomed into one of relief, until she turned to go back out.

"Sir? There ain't no handle nor no keyhole neither, sir," Hennara said.

McKenzie confirmed this with a look. "Hmm. Stand back a bit."

He delivered the door a bone-jarring kick, which made it rattle a little bit. A bit of dust trickled out from around the frame.

As he did so, the other door unlocked with an audible click and swung open with a slight creak.

"Trying to hint at something?" McKenzie said to the room in general.

"Sir, please, I ain't got the nerve to go through that other door, sir," Hennara said.

"Relax," he said, judging the door and the frame with a critical eye. "This'll take maybe two minutes."

Before he could line up another kick, though, he became aware of a hissing sound. Hennara coughed.

"What is it?" She asked, coughing.

McKenzie sniffed the air, then coughed.

"The smell of someone being an utter twat," he said. "It's gas!"

He belted the door a couple more times, but it was obvious that it was going to stand up to him long enough for Hennara to lose the race against the gas. The candles began to burn with a slightly green tinge.

"We're out of options." He said. "Through the other door, sharpish!"

"Sir! Please!" Hennara wasn't budging.

"Through!" McKenzie grabbed Hennara by the arm and dragged her through into the darkness beyond the door, then shut it behind them both with a slam.

Hennara coughed a few more times and then settled into choked sounding sobs.

"Deep breaths," McKenzie said. "Breathe out as much as possible before you breathe in. Clear your lungs." He didn't know if she listened or not. She'd lost her candle, or at least it had gone out.

"I don't wanna be here!" Hennara moaned piteously, then returned to crying.

Oh for fuck's sake... McKenzie thought to himself. He dug his phone out and turned the torch on.

"What's that!?" Hennara yelped.

"A light," McKenzie replied unhelpfully.

"Is it magic? Are you a mage, sir? Oh, do say you can get us out of here, sir!" Hennara's emotions, it seemed, had a pretty tight turning circle. She went from despairing to hopeful in milliseconds.

"'Might aswell be yes', 'no' and 'yes'," McKenzie answered her questions in order. "Listen to me, Hennara. I will get you out of this alive and in one piece. Human beings are fucking brilliant in stressful situations as long as they stay calm, stay careful and use their heads. If we weren't, there wouldn't be fucking millions of us all over the planet, would there? Think you can do that? Even two out of three is a good start."

Hennara seemed to calm down, and in the pale light from the phone flash McKenzie saw her nodding.

"Not strictly speakin' human, sir," Hennara said, in a small voice. "But I'll try anyways, sir."

"You don't look much like an elf," McKenzie said.

"I'm not, sir. Dwarf, sir. Also there's not as many of us around as there is humans, sir," Hennara informed him.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

This was McKenzie's first dwarf. She wasn't ridiculously short, and, with the obvious exception of her cleavage, was normally proportioned. Maybe she was tall for a dwarf, and that was why she was working in a brothel instead of singing hi-ho hi-ho in a mine somewhere.

"Yeah, well, I'm sure the point still stands. Applies to intelligent bipedal species with opposable thumbs in general. You ready to have a look around?" McKenzie asked.

"Yes," Hennara said quietly.

"Right then."

McKenzie shone the light around. They were in a long, wide room - a vague glint from out of the darkness hinted at the existence of another of the metal doors directly across. The floor started out smooth like the previous chamber, but after a yard or so was floored with odd-sized, irregular slabs, each of which had a different marking engraved into it. There was also a pervading sense of magic radiating from the floor.

"I get it," McKenzie said. "This is one of those 'figure out which slabs are safe' things. I'm already bored."

"Sir?"

"Never mind. Also call me M-, no, actually, as you were, sir'll have to do. Stay put where you are and don't touch anythin', okay?"

"Yes sir."

McKenzie went along the first row of slabs and looked at the markings on top of each. They looked vaguely like letters, although presumably they weren't otherwise the knack he'd somehow managed to copy from Callena, all those months ago, would render them legible. At any rate, no two of them looked the same.

"These make any sense to you, Hennara?" He asked her.

"No sir." She replied.

"Ah well then." McKenzie went back along the row and stamped his foot on each slab in turn. They all fell away, impacting on something beneath with metallic clangs. McKenzie shone his torch downwards: maybe ten metres of empty air, and then a veritable forest of rusty spikes. He got down on his front and angled the light under the floor: not a single slab had anything supporting it. That'd explain why he could feel magic.

Still, he'd found a method which worked. All he had to do was eliminate the slabs which were intended to fall by stamping on them. He thus eliminated the second row of slabs and then, by stretching slightly, all of their erstwhile neighbours, too. He couldn't reach any farther, and nothing was staying up.

Well that's that idea buggered then, he thought.

There was a series of stony, ceramic-sounding clunks as the slabs he'd stamped on came tumbling back upwards and slotted together again.

"Oh!" Hennara exclaimed.

"Auto reset, apparently. Handy for someone," McKenzie commented. Not so much for me, though, he added internally.

"How do we get across, sir?" Hennara asked.

McKenzie made no reply, except to knock out a few of the slabs again and peer through the hole.

"Thought so. Have you across in no time," he said, and then jumped calmly through the hole.

Hennara screamed. She heard a thump, followed by a metallic creaking noise, and then some heartfelt expletives from the stranger. There then followed a truly disturbing scream, but it wasn't the stranger's voice - it sounded almost like the noise she recalled from her girlhood as her father sharpened axe blades in his forge. It was followed by a metallic snapping noise, then by another curse, and then the stones flitted back up into place and the sounds were muted.

She was left alone in the dark. Even the muted noises faded. She devoutly wished she'd listened to her brother's advice, stayed at home and accepted an arranged marriage.

The stranger must be dead.

"Sir?" She whispered, then gathered her courage. "Sir?" She called, louder.

Someone would come for her soon, once they realised that the bizarre stranger, like so many before him, wasn't coming out again. None of the girls had ever mentioned that she would be in danger.

But then again, she hadn't been here very long, and some of the girls could play cruel tricks.

Then there was a splintering crash and the sound of stone smashing against stone.

"Ow," she heard the stranger's voice, with a sense of tremendous relief. Then came the noise of boots scrabbling against stone, a grunt of effort, and then a faint light shone out of the darkness.

"Sir?" Hennara called. "Be you alive?"

"Yep," the stranger replied. "Just covered in flakes of fucking rust. I'm sending Jadhara a goddamned dry cleaning bill after this. Stay put for the minute."

There was a sudden flash.

Hennara yelped. "What was that?"

"Just taking a picture of these spikes for twitt-, oh, never mind," he replied.

Hennara heard a creaking noise, followed by a wooden rattling, and then the stranger's light became brighter as he walked back toward her. As he came closer, the light revealed how he was managing it.

"Wooden gantry - lowered by ropes at the other end." McKenzie told Hennara. "Thought I could make out some rigging when I shone my light underneath, which made me think it was worth checking out - turned out it was ropes holding a counterweight to keep it up near the roof. It's totally safe, across you come."

Hennara shook her head.

"Seriously, it's fine. The ropes actually look quite new, I think they were replaced recently. The wood is solid," McKenzie explained.

Hennara held her hand out.

"Really?" McKenzie sighed. "Fine." He took her hand: she immediately latched onto his arm and clung to it like a particularly buxom limpet.

Once on the other side, McKenzie disengaged her death grip and opened the door a crack.

The phone light didn't make anything immediately visible except for a slice of smooth stone floor. McKenzie cursed the fact that he hadn't packed a decent torch for the bank job all those months ago.

"Fuck it," he said. "Stand back away from the door, Hennara. By the wall, out of the way."

Hennara moved to comply. McKenzie opened the door.

"Ding dong. Avon calling," he said. There was no response. He hadn't expected one. Shining the light around just illuminated a featureless floor, although, just as in the last chamber, there was the sense of magic.

"Stay where you are," he instructed Hennara. "I'm gonna have a look around."

McKenzie stepped into the room and was immediately stung on the neck by something.

"Ow!" He said, and slapped reflexively at his neck. Biting insects couldn't pierce his skin any better than anything else could, but, as with all forms of physical assault, McKenzie felt the pain.

"What is it?" Hennara asked.

"Fuckin' mosquito or something bit me," he replied, and carried on. He was bitten again. "Bloody things," he grumbled.

This time, though, he heard the metallic tinkling noise by his feet. He aimed the light towards the floor, where something glinted. A needle, it looked like, with a bit of fluff on the end. No: a dart from a blowpipe.

McKenzie drew his pistol.

"Hennara?" He asked.

"Yes sir?"

"Really stay where you are."

"Yes sir."

McKenzie held the phone up next to the gun and started sweeping it around, searching for his attacker in the darkness. The realisation dawned that, in the dark, whoever was lurking in here with a blowpipe could easily circumvent him to get to Hennara. McKenzie started to backtrack, and was immediately shot at again. It struck him on the left temple - McKenzie froze, then whipped the pistol round, but could see nothing.

Another backwards step rewarded him with another dart. "Ow!" He swore, and crouched down, desperately trying to pierce the darkness with his inadequate light.

"Listen, dickhead," he said into the darkness. "You're gonna be here a long time trying to get me with that fucking blowpipe. Piss off now and I won't splatter your brains all over whatever's behind you when I see you. Deal?"

There was no reply, but neither were there any darts. Why didn't he fire? Stock still and holding a light, McKenzie presented an ideal target.

"Is there someone in there, sir?" Hennara asked.

"Looking increasingly less likely," McKenzie told her.

He backed toward the door, and another dart fired. That confirmed it.

"Right then," he said, holstered the pistol, and sighed.

On his way across the chamber, he reckoned he was blowpiped about eighty-five times. Halfway across the darts were replaced with crossbow bolts, and, finally, whirling blades of serrated steel that smacked into him painfully. McKenzie hunched up around the phone and kept going until he got to the other side, keeping up a steady stream of vituperation as he went.

As he approached the opposite door, the assault ceased.

"Sir! Sir! What's happening?" Hennara shouted, sounding worried.

"Annoying things!" McKenzie replied. "Stay put for now!" And shut up, he added mentally.

There were three levers next to the door. McKenzie pulled them all down, producing three reliable-sounding clunks.

He strolled back to get Hennara, in a considerably less sunny mood than he had been before being shot at with a wide selection of sharp objects.

"Come on," he said brusquely.

"Is it safe?" She asked.

"Yes," he replied.

Hennara immediately came through the door and clamped herself round him again.

"Seriously, is it really necessary to cut off the circulation in my arm?" He asked her. Hennara drew away from him.

"Sorry, sir," she said, in a small voice, then sniffed.

You're being an arsehole, McKenzie told himself.

"It's okay. Here, give me your hand. Watch your step, there's pointy things all over the floor. You're doing brilliantly. I'm just not the most patient bloke in the world, sorry," he assured her. "Let's see what's through door number three."

The third chamber proved to contain a bright magical light on the ceiling, two conjoined pits in the floor, and a rather unpleasant smell. McKenzie turned off the phone's light, but didn't put it away - at least not until he'd taken a photo of the absolutely enormous snake which was coiled up in the bottom of the pit, staring unblinking up at him. He wasn't an expert on reptiles by any stretch of the imagination, but he'd visited his share of zoos and the monster in the bottom of the first pit was way bigger than an anaconda.

Hennara gave vent to a predictable response: she screamed.

The pits were very deep - the snake couldn't get out. It probably wasn't supposed to, because it was guarding the star-shaped blue sapphire that had been referred to in the first letter. It was allowed a little space to exercise, though: the pit next door could be slithered into via a small opening just big enough for the snake to fit through, giving the whole arrangement the appearance of a figure-of-eight that had been stretched apart nearly to breaking point. The sapphire had been placed inside a metal cage which was mounted on the snake pit wall, near the floor. The builders of the place hadn't intended it to be difficult to get down there: the first pit had a ladder built into the side, although the second didn't. It also had a door, which appeared to be the only exit. Possibly to add the proper ambience, both pits were liberally strewn with a selection of bones. McKenzie wasn't an anthropologist, but the only skulls he could see were human, so it was a fair bet the other bits were too.

Have a fucking gander at the bad boy guarding this bit of bling I've been told to get, McKenzie tweeted the picture.

"How do you get the jewel?" Hennara asked, having calmed down and backed away from the edge of the pit.

McKenzie still didn't know what the proper solution to the first two chambers was, or even what they were supposed to test, really. He'd twigged to this the minute he'd clapped eyes on it, though.

"It's a test of cruelty," McKenzie said.

"Beg pardon, sir?"

"This room. It's supposed to separate your average double-hard bastard with highly advanced problem solving skills from your real, dyed-in-the-wool ruthless nutter. I suspect they're looking for the latter," McKenzie said.

"How so, sir?" Hennara asked. "I mean, how does it work?"

"Pretty fucking simple," McKenzie replied. "You get two big holes, join 'em up a little bit, and put a badass motherfucking snake in one of them along with the jackpot and the only exit. Then you tell your putative nutter to get hold of said jackpot and take it through said exit, and you give him the very thing that only a really psycho bad guy would consider using in order to get the fuckin' job done."

Hennara was backing away even more. "What's that, sir?" She asked.

"You," McKenzie said.

"Me, sir? I don't know anything about snakes, sir," Hennara replied.

"You don't need to. You're supposed to be bait, Hennara. You go in the other pit, the snake goes in after you, and bingo, the path is clear to the shiny and the exit. All you have to do is sacrifice the life of the innocent girl you've spent the past little while looking after. Yeah, that's a nutcase filter and a half, alright," McKenzie said.

"Erm-" Hennara started, glancing back towards the door.

McKenzie turned around. "What? Oh calm down, I'm not going to do it, for God's sake. They can fuck off."

Hennara exhaled in relief, although she still looked a little wild eyed. "So what are you going to do?"

McKenzie thought. "Don't really wanna kill the snake," he said. "It's just an animal, and it hasn't done shit to me. Doesn't really deserve to die."

"Begging your pardon, sir, but I doubt the snake feels the same way about us," Hennara replied.

McKenzie looked at her. "Blimey, Hennara, was that a joke? You're getting the hang of this unflappable-under-pressure thing, well done."

Hennara managed a brief curtsey. McKenzie laughed.

"So anyways, this is how we'll play it. I'll go down into the other pit and punch out Mr. Snakey's lights. While I'm doing that, you think you can climb down the ladder there, grab the shiny thing, hightail it out the door and then wait for me? I shouldn't be ages, if he gives me any shit I'll have to put aside my delicate environmentalist sensibilities and take him out," McKenzie explained.

Hennara's chin dropped.

"Yes or no will do, Hennara," McKenzie prompted her.

Hennara nodded.

"Not bein' funny, Hennara, but a verbal answer would be nice."

"I think so. I'll try."

"I'll take that as a yes. Okay then. On three?"

Hennara nodded again.

"Awesome. Let's do this. One, two, three!" McKenzie jumped calmly down into the other pit.

The next few moments were fairly horrific, but not for the reasons McKenzie expected. He landed heavily and somewhat awkwardly, wrenching his left knee, but ignored the pain and moved up back against the wall of the pit so the snake could only come at him from in front. The snake, however, had no interest in him. Instead it lunged for Hennara, who, for some inexplicable reason, had followed him down into the wrong pit.

She didn't have time to scream - the snake's jaws fastened around her side, and then it whipped it's coils around her to squeeze the life from her.

"Hennara!" McKenzie shouted, and leapt forward. What the fuck was she thinking of?

"I'm on the ladder now!" She shouted back.

That didn't register for a moment. McKenzie made a grab for the snake, with the intention of trying to prise it off the girl. His hands, though, passed through the snake as if it were insubstantial smoke.

"Nearly there!" Hennara shouted.

McKenzie waved his arms through the snake-image again. Now he stopped and concentrated, he could tell it radiated magic: McKenzie had assumed that was all coming from the light.

"I've got the jewel! Come on, sir!" Hennara called.

"Yeah, it's alright, don't worry. Fake snake," he told her. Hennara gasped as he appeared to stride - well, limp - through the undulating coils of the feasting snake and into the other pit.

"It's an illusion!" Hennara said. "What's it eating?"

"Oh, nothin'," McKenzie answered quickly, before she looked.

"You knew all along!" Hennara said.

Didn't have a fucking clue, McKenzie thought. "Of course. Obvious, really," he said out loud.

Hennara handed him the sapphire.

"Thanks," he said. "Shall we?" He indicated the door. "Might've been a fake snake, but it still fuckin' mings in here. I'm totally impressed, by the way. You didn't go all to bits and you were all ready to make a daring escape past a giant snake. Told you you were good in a crisis. You just didn't know it yet."

"Thank you sir," Hennara replied.

Beyond the door was an entirely normal set of stairs, lit with entirely normal candles, leading upwards. McKenzie peered carefully at it just in case, and went first, but fiendish traps completely failed to spring into devastating action.

There then followed an equally normal corridor, which turned back around to, presumably, pass back over the top of the trap chambers, a few more stairs, and then a door, which opened into what could only be described as a boudoir which had been partially repurposed as an office. Listra was seated at a table, writing.

"Hello again," she said, not looking up. "Well done, Hennara. Take the rest of today and tomorrow off - and remember the conversation we had about discretion."

"Yes Madam Listra," she responded, then addressed McKenzie. "Thank you, sir, for your kindness. I dare say there's many as would have not been so considerate of a frightened girl and would have pushed me into that pit without a second thought."

"In which case you would have been fine anyway, I suspect," McKenzie said.

"Mr. Monday is correct," Listra said.

"Even so, sir." Hennara gave him a hug, which was kind of surprising, then pulled his head down to kiss him on the cheek, which was even more so. "Thank you. I hope to see you again, sir, in better circumstances - and to say a proper thank you, if Madam Listra should assent to it."

"Um, well, it was nothin', really," McKenzie managed to say.

"Mr. Monday and I have business to attend to, Hennara. Along with you now, girl," Listra said, in a dismissal. Hennara bobbed her head and disappeared out of the other door.

Listra sighed. "Sit down, Mr. Monday. From the state of you I can only presume you would appreciate the rest."

"True that," McKenzie replied, and lowered himself onto a delicate looking sofa-thing next to the door he'd just come through. "Do I give this to you?" He held up the sapphire.

"No," Listra responded, ceased her writing, and looked at him. "You do realise you failed, don't you Mr. Monday?"

"Hennara ain't dead and I've got the shiny blue stone from the snake pit. It's lookin' like the opposite of failed to me," he replied.

"Mr. Monday, I've ordered the clean up of a great many corpses from underneath this establishment, calmed down a dozen or more girls who thought they were dead, and seen only two men and one woman emerge from that door. Do you know what I've never seen?" Listra asked.

McKenzie shook his head.

"I have never seen the girl come out - they come back a different way, in the usual course of things. I suspect even if I had, they would not have given every indication of having developed an attachment to their captor," Listra told him.

"It's called Stockholm Syndrome, where I'm from. It happens. Anyway, it wasn't like that, I gave her the chance to go back, I only had to take her along in the first place because of your fucking gas chamber. Which was a really shitty thing to do, by the way," McKenzie said. "In fact the whole thing is more than a bit on the shitty side, from the girl's point of view. I don't even wanna guess what goes on upstairs here but I'll bet when girls sign up to work they don't expect to be fucked in quite that way."

"You are making my point for me, Mr. Monday, albeit crudely," Listra said, as she dribbled some wax on what she had written and thunked a seal down onto it: there was a tiny magical surge as she did so. "The whole point of this exercise is that you kill the girl. They are not looking for heroes, Mr. Monday. They are looking for people who are dead inside."

"That's what I thought," McKenzie shrugged. "Well, they'll have to settle for a borderline nutcase, won't they?"

Listra sagged visibly, then turned an impatient glare on McKenzie.

"They are also probably looking for people with a bit of subtlety," she said.

"As I keep telling people, I don't so subtle," McKenzie told her. "You'd think it'd be obvious, really."

"Oh it is. It is deeply obvious," Listra said, glaring. "If you would stop and think for a moment, you would realise that I am trying to tell you something."

McKenzie stopped and thought for a moment. "Nah, sorry, I'm just getting 'pissed off woman'," he said. "Believe me, if anyone would recognise that it's me."

"My friend Jadhara failed to put across quite how irritating you can be," Listra said. "Since you 'don't do subtle', I'll have to do blunt. Do you think that everyone gets handed a second letter with a few helpful pointers on it?"

Oh, McKenzie clicked. He dug out Jadhara's letter.

"Into the fire, please, Monday," Listra said. McKenzie obliged. "For I don't know what reason, Jadhara wanted you to get through this, even though she did not think you to be the type of person that would. She anticipated what your reaction to the circumstances of this test might be, so she had me pass you that note, to put you at your ease."

"It didn't exactly do that," McKenzie objected.

Listra waved the distinction aside. "Without Jadhara's note, you would have reacted badly to the test. Possibly violently. You may have kicked your way back out of the door and left here in a temper: Jadhara informs me you are not the simple human you appear to be."

McKenzie decided not to take issue with 'simple'. "She say why she bothered, at all?"

"She did not," Listra answered.

"Figures. Nobody seems to say what they mean in this fuckin' town," McKenzie huffed.

"A mode of behaviour you would be wise to adopt, if you want your interview to not end with your death. The people you seek employment with are not tolerant of loose ends. Allow me to put this simply: lie," Listra advised him.

"About?" He asked.

Listra sighed again. "About what happened just now. It will not be possible to conceal the fact that you chose not to sacrifice Hennara to the snake: my girls gossip, it is a fact of life. You will have to invent a plausible explanation for your actions there. Additionally, I have not written in my report," she tapped the sealed letter, "that you negotiated the Treacherous Tiles by spreading your weight out-"

"Oh, so that's how it's done," McKenzie said.

"-and passed through the Chamber of Missiles by moving so slowly that you did not set off any of the machines," Listra finished.

"Right. Slowly. That'd make sense." McKenzie nodded.

"This letter is, to put it mildly, light on detail. You will need to fill in the blanks with lies," Listra said.

"Lies. Gotcha."

"At midnight, take it, with the jewel, to the address on the front. Do not try to open it - it is magically sealed. They will know," Listra said, handing him the report.

That explained the slight bit of magic he'd sensed.

"At midnight." McKenzie gave a wry smile. "Cliché much?"

"They have a slight predilection towards melodrama," Listra informed him, deadpan.

McKenzie smiled wryly and gave a snort of laughter. "Another good response." He took the letter and pocketed it with the jewel, then looked at his watch reflexively, and recalled that it was essentially useless here until he actually remembered to time how long it took between each ringing of the bells.

"They rung eight bells yet?" He asked, getting up.

"No," Listra informed him. "You were in and out in no time, I'll give you that."

"Not necessarily the best compliment to be paid by someone who runs a brothel," McKenzie noted.

Listra did not smile.

"Sorry. Poor taste," McKenzie said. "Thank you, Lis-, Madam Listra, for your help. I'll do my best to lie convincingly."

"Do. It may cost me in blood if this deception ever comes to light," Listra said. "Thank you for treating Hennara with kindness. Administering the test is not a pleasant business, and I am glad that she wasn't unduly alarmed."

"Not a problem," McKenzie told her. "I'll see myself out."

"Before you do - and please leave via the tradesman's entrance, by the way - I am certain that a 'proper thank you' awaits you in Hennara's chambers, top floor, third door on the left, if you are so inclined. I trust that isn't too subtle an inference for you to understand?" Listra informed him.

"Touting for business?" McKenzie asked.

"You will recall that she is released from her paid duties until the day after tomorrow," Listra reminded him.

"I'm sure it's my loss. Tell her I wish her well - and to grass me up as the cruellest bastard that ever dragged a poor innocent girl through an assassin's aptitude test, if anyone asks."

"I certainly shall," Listra said. "Goodbye, Mr. Monday."

"Thanks again," McKenzie said, and left. The door opened out onto the silk-and-girl clad lobby.

"Tradesman's entrance?" He asked. "And no jokes, please."

One of the girls pointed. McKenzie smiled and headed for the indicated door.

Well, he tweeted, as he crossed the square afterwards to find Sharinta, I think I passed the physical.