"They owe us a favour, don't they? They may as well pay it back."

"Have you decided on a target?"

"Oh, yes," said the man with the golden eyes, smiling.

hey moved quickly under the City, reaching the first junction in just over twenty minutes. Serpine guided them left, and after another ten minutes of walking they came to a ladder.

"Here we are," he said, "just like I promised. This is where we part ways, yes?"

"No," Skulduggery said, "actually, it's not."

"Then the least you can do is take this glove off," Serpine said, holding out his right hand. "If we're discovered, I need to be able to defend myself."

"You have us," Skulduggery said. "You don't need anything else."

Serpine glared at him but said nothing, and Skulduggery motioned to the ladder. Muttering, Serpine went first, pushing aside the covering at the top. Valkyrie came up last, emerging into darkness. Serpine was close by, searching for a switch.

"Be ready," he whispered. "It's around here... aha."

There was a soft, almost inaudible click, and a crack of light spilled into the black. Skulduggery moved straight to it, opening the door further. Standing in the corridor with his back to them was a Redhood, scythe held by his side. Skulduggery swung both hands towards the Redhood's head. He didn't make contact but the air rippled and the Redhood stumbled. Valkyrie gestured and the scythe flew backwards into her hands as the Redhood fell into Skulduggery's. She'd seen him use that trick before, delivering an instant concussion that knocked the target out cold. Quiet and immediate and very effective. Skulduggery dragged the Redhood's sleeping form into the darkness and they left him there, then stepped out into the corridor, Serpine giving directions as they went.

They passed a corner, approached another and slowed at Skulduggery's hand signal.

Footsteps.

She watched Skulduggery standing there with his back against the wall, his body completely relaxed as the footsteps got louder. Then a door opened somewhere behind Valkyrie. Her eyes widened. Another set of footsteps now, from the opposite direction. Serpine, in between them, grinned like he was enjoying the dilemma. Valkyrie crept to the corner. The footsteps of Skulduggery's target grew even louder. Valkyrie's target was almost upon her.

She didn't look round as Skulduggery pounced. Whoever had emerged from that corridor didn't even get a chance to cry out. She heard scuffling, and a gasp. Skulduggery had him in a choke of some kind. Valkyrie hadn't the first idea how she was going to subdue her target.

A sorcerer rounded the corner and Valkyrie hit him, a punch to the face that rattled her arm and twisted her wrist. The sorcerer fell back, mouth opening to shout and she pushed at the air. His head cracked against the wall and he dropped, and she kicked him in the jaw on the way down.

"Stealthy," said Serpine as he passed her. He took hold of the sorcerer's ankles and dragged him from the corridor.

Valkyrie glared at him. Her wrist was hurting but she didn't rub it. She didn't want to give him another reason to gloat.

They passed a door she recognised, a door that led to the dungeons. Her reflection was down there. She bit her lip, forcing herself to continue past it. First the Sceptre, then the reflection. They moved slower now, more deliberately, taking extra care not to make a sound.

"We're here," Serpine whispered.

Skulduggery and Valkyrie took a peek. The throne room lay beyond a grand doorway, and two Redhoods stood guard. By Mevolent's throne there was a small table, and upon that table a cup or a chalice of some kind. It was all very medieval. The glass case containing the Sceptre stood exactly as she had remembered not that she'd expected it to have moved. But with their luck lately...

Serpine turned to them. "All right," he whispered. "I got you to the Sceptre. I fulfilled my end of the bargain. Now you fulfil yours."

Skulduggery shook his head. "We're not letting you go until we're out of here."

"That wasn't the deal. You promised me freedom."

"And what's to stop you from alerting Mevolent to our presence? I'm sure it'd do a lot to repair your special friendship."

Serpine's eyes were narrow. "Fine," he said. "But this regulator. Remove it."

"After."

"No. Not after. Now. You don't trust me? I don't trust you. I killed your wife and child. They may not have been the wife and child you knew, but they're close enough. What's to stop you from leaving me here, twisting on the ground in pain? I'm sure you'd be able to make a clean getaway if everyone was distracted by my screams."

Skulduggery looked at him for a moment. "Fair enough," he said.

Serpine parted his shirt, and Valkyrie used the black slate to detach the disc. She put both in her pocket as Serpine rebuttoned. "Thank you," he said. "I feel so much better."

"Both of you stay here," Skulduggery said, and crept to the doorway. He gently nudged the air, and the cup across the room toppled off the table. The Redhoods turned at the noise so Skulduggery stepped through the doorway and immediately rose silently into the air until Valkyrie couldn't see him any more. One of the Redhoods started walking over to the table while the other resumed his normal stance. Valkyrie kept out of sight for the next minute, then risked another peek. Satisfied that there was nothing suspicious going on, the Redhood had rejoined his colleague. They stood within arm's length of each other, scythes in hand and held upright.

Another minute passed, and just as Valkyrie was beginning to wonder if Skulduggery had got himself stuck in a chandelier or something, he came swooping down behind them, legs swinging, and caught both Redhoods in the back of the head. He continued the move into a flip as they sprawled, scythes clattering to the floor. They didn't get up. Valkyrie and Serpine hurried in.

"Apologies," Skulduggery said as he landed. "That was unforgivably showy of me."

"Got the job done," Valkyrie said, finding it impossible not to smile.

Skulduggery's gun leaped into his hand. "Not one more step," he warned.

Serpine turned, a chuckle on his lips, an arm's length away from the glass case. "I was just making sure there weren't any tripwires," he said. "For your information, it doesn't look like there are."

"Much obliged," Skulduggery said. "Now move away."

Serpine held up his hands in surrender and did as he was instructed. Skulduggery holstered the gun and Valkyrie followed him to the case.

"How do we open it?" she asked.

Skulduggery clicked his fingers, summoning a ball of fire into his palm.

Serpine frowned. "I hope you don't think you're going to burn through it. This is protected by an Arietti Sigil."

"Which forms the strongest seal in existence," Skulduggery murmured. His hand moved, manipulating the flames, and Valkyrie watched the fireball shrink, but grow hotter as it did so.

"Fire has no effect on it," Serpine said. "There is nothing that will break this seal. I thought you knew some way past it."

The fire constricted to the size of a golf ball, and then smaller, to the size of a marble. It hovered in space, cupped by Skulduggery's hand, and then his forefinger straightened and the fire moved up along it. With the white-hot fireball balanced on his fingertip, Skulduggery scorched a broken triangle on to the glass.

"You don't know how to break the Arietti Sigil," he told Serpine. "But I do."

"Impossible. If anyone had found a way to break it, we would all know."

"You forget," Skulduggery said, adding to the sigil as he spoke, "we're not from around here. Where we're from, the secret to getting by the Arietti Sigil was revealed decades ago. By Arietti himself."

The sigil complete, Skulduggery extinguished the flame and stepped back. The scorch marks sizzled.

Serpine folded his arms. "It doesn't seem to be working."

"Give it a moment," Skulduggery answered. "Wait for the melting to stop and the form to settle."

There was a sound, the pat pat pat of bare feet running, and Valkyrie looked round as Eliza Scorn ran into the room.

"Blasphemers! " she screeched as she hurled daggers of red light towards them. "Heathens! "

Valkyrie dived to the floor, thankful that years of living like a nutcase had robbed Scorn of her aim. The madwoman wasn't wearing her chains, probably for the first time in years, so she ran forward and back like a rabbit on the road, eyes burning with the intense energy of a zealot. Skulduggery swept his arm wide and she screamed as she flew into the wall, but then scrambled up again like the pain meant nothing, and came forward.

Valkyrie sprang to meet her, ducking another badly aimed dagger and lashing out with her shadows. Scorn went staggering and Valkyrie crashed into her, driving her back, sending half a dozen elbows into her face until one of them found its target. Scorn slumped in her arms, suddenly quiet. Valkyrie laid her on the ground, breathing fast, listening out for alarms. She glanced back at Skulduggery and Serpine. Amazingly, astoundingly, it looked like they had got away with it.

"Get your hands off my wife," Baron Vengeous snarled from the doorway.

Ah.

He ran at her and Valkyrie tried backing up but he was much too fast. Her feet left the floor and there was a hand round her throat and she was still moving back, and all she could see were his eyes and his gritted teeth and the only thought that flashed through her mind was how much better he had looked with a beard. Then Skulduggery collided with him and Valkyrie fell, gasping. Serpine grabbed her, hauled her up.

"The glove," he said quickly. "Get it off me."

She coughed, tried to push him away but he held on.

"Skulduggery can't take Vengeous alone," he said. "He needs my help."

"I'll help him," Valkyrie said, finding her voice.

"You have to find your reflection, don't you? Dammit, we don't have much time before the whole Palace is alerted. I know Harmony gave you the key to this glove! You'd have to be prepared for all eventualities!"

Vengeous threw Skulduggery against the wall and started slamming fists into his head and body. It was all Skulduggery could do to stay standing.

Valkyrie took the key from her pocket, passed it over Serpine's wrist, feeling the glove beneath her palm. After a moment something clicked, and Serpine pulled his hand free. It glistened, as red and raw as the day the skin had just been stripped off it. The look of pure joy on Serpine's face was disturbing.

"Help Skulduggery," Valkyrie ordered.

He looked at her with those mocking emerald eyes, and smiled. "But of course," he said.

She forced herself to leave them, and took the door that led to the dungeons.

There weren't any Redhoods guarding the dungeons. Instead, there were men in filthy overalls, dozing on chairs. She slammed them into walls and took their keys, then carried on, checking each cell until she found her reflection.

Valkyrie froze. The first thing she noticed was that the fingers of its right hand were missing. Its brown shirt was caked in dried blood.

"I'm here," Valkyrie said, her voice soft.

The reflection raised its head, and Valkyrie stopped breathing. Its left eye was gone, that side of its face swollen and bruised.

"What happened?" she managed to ask.

"They weren't happy with you," the reflection said, "so they took it out on me."

"Are you...? Did it hurt?"

"Yes."

"What? Why didn't you shut off the pain?"

"I'm afraid it can't," came Meritorious's voice from the cell opposite. "From what your reflection has told me, it has bypassed so many of its original parameters that it has lost the ability to differentiate between simulated pain and actual pain."

Valkyrie tried to keep the horror at bay. "But... but you're fine now. I mean, you are, right?"

"Actually, no," the reflection said. "I'm in agony."

Valkyrie looked back at Meritorious, who shrugged. "Just because it's not screaming and crying doesn't mean it doesn't feel its injuries. It needs to be returned to its mirror so it can heal."

Her legs suddenly leaden, Valkyrie hunkered down by the reflection and fitted the key into the shackles with shaking hands. Once the chains fell, she helped the reflection to stand. "Can you walk?"

"I can," it replied. "But please, don't move fast."

They moved slowly out of the cell. Valkyrie looked in at Meritorious. "We'll be back-"

"Don't tell me," he interrupted. "I don't want to know what your plans are. The less I know, the less they can torture out of me. Go. Hurry."

She nodded, and took the reflection back the way she had come. And then Alexander Remit was standing in front of them.

"I know what you're thinking," he said. "You're thinking, Oh, hell. And you're right to think that. You know how cold you've suddenly become? That's because you're realising that this was a huge mistake."

"Or it could be the draught."

The reflection nodded. "These dungeons are quite draughty."

"And the reflection makes a joke," Remit said. "You weren't joking earlier, were you? When we had our fun? Eh? Didn't hear you making any jokes, then. Mostly I heard screaming. But then you're not like any reflection I've ever seen. You could almost pass for human. You certainly screamed like a human."

Valkyrie let the reflection lean against the wall, and she walked towards Remit slowly.

"Your friends upstairs are about to be horribly killed," he said, circling her, "and there's no one coming to rescue you this time."

She moved around him. "Who says I need rescuing? I slapped you around the place once before I can do it again."

"You hit me when I wasn't ready."

"You tried attacking me from behind."

He shook his head. "No. You're trying to goad me into doing something rash. Not this time. This time, you're the one who falls, and I'm the one who stands over you making smart comments."

"I doubt you'd be up to it."

He laughed. "I'm sorry, you're insulting my intelligence? Did you really think this would work? A second incursion into the Palace? Even now, our lord and master Mevolent is being roused from sleep. How did you expect to survive? How did you expect to escape? The Resistance doesn't even have a Teleporter of its own to get you out of here. If that isn't the height of stupidity, I don't know what is."

"You want to know what the height of stupidity is?" Valkyrie asked. "It's getting so wrapped up in one little argument that you completely and totally forget that the person you're arguing with isn't alone."

The reflection stepped up behind Remit and pressed the pain regulator into his back. There was a crack and the smell of ozone and Remit jerked and fell to his knees.

Valkyrie kept her finger on the black slate. He had been right, though. The Resistance didn't have a Teleporter of their own to get them all out of the Palace. But, as she wrapped one arm round her reflection and curled her fingers in Remit's hair, now they didn't need one.