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Sermander, in these late, great days of the Vespuccian State, had the finest military career his family could buy him—one of the old Command Families, with a real name. Do him credit, though: he had spent another fat half-dozen years purchasing even more status on his own.
     
    In the War, he had flown (or so he said) a ram-fighter against the Shirker States. Certainly at the launching ceremony nine—no, twelve—weeks ago, his chest had been ablaze with ribbons. I was glad Eleva was not there to see him in his glory. Five confirmed kills, three probables. Feats of arms against clumsy blimps, fragile biplanes. He was only here in this dungeon only because he had not thought quite quickly enough to buy himself into favor with the current regime. Being too slow on that kind of uptake clearly defines one as a threat to national security. So, he had been volunteered for the Asperance expedition.
     
    As for flying the starclipper to this place, even the Lieutenant had admitted with a chuckle that the computer was the best pilot aboard.
     
    Nevertheless, he had not been too bad a fellow, for an officer. A cheerful cynic, the only one of seventeen crew members who had ever spoken directly to me outside the line of duty. I had come to like him, in a way. Those who actually knew what they were doing, he left strictly alone to do it. That is what constitutes a good officer these days.
     
    The Lieutenant was a good officer.
     
    “This sky-demon is the great-grandfather of all sky-demons!” I announced, with as much enthusiasm as my weakened body would let me muster, “I am only his humble apprentice—but he is sick. He needs help!”
     
    “He does, indeed.” A nod from beneath the hood, then that eerie, hackle-raising whisper again. “This may be arranged. Able are you to stand?”
     
    “Not in here.”
     
    The hooded figure backed out, straightened.
     
    Its companions reached in swiftly to drag me out by the armpits to my feet. Agony tore through my right leg as I set weight on my much-abused foot. I bit my lower lip, choking back nausea. Tears squeezed from between my tightly-closed eyelids as the priests half-carried me across the narrow corridor, propping me against a comparatively dry wall where sooty cobwebs powdered my excrement-soaked uniform. I clung, breathing heavily, to a torch-sconce, my heart hammering like a machinegun.
     
    They slid the Lieutenant’s body out of the cell.
     
    He moaned, even fought them weakly, trying to speak. Restraining him with a surprising gentleness, one of the hooded figures extracted a relatively clean swatch of the ubiquitous burlap material from its robe, dabbed at the Lieutenant’s enormous pustulent wound until fresh blood broke through the crust. A new rag was then wrapped around his arm.
     
    “Nothing can be done for this one ... ” the hooded figure whispered chillingly (was it the same one I had spoken with in the cell, or was this another one?) then, to my relief, added, “ ... here.”
     
    Fighting dizziness, I croaked, “Then let us go where something can!”
     
    They nodded; it almost amounted to a bow. The trip upward through seemingly endless underground corridors—there was no sign of the Bailiff nor of any other castle personnel—was a hazy purgatorial nightmare, reminiscent of the period, eons ago in some sense, of my daily torture-sessions. My foot was now three times its normal size, swollen up to the knee. I was queasy, half-conscious, weak. Terribly weak.
     
    It seemed to be a busy place, this dungeon. Screaming issued out of every cross-corridor, pitiable moaning, the rattle of chains in their wall-rings. The priests looked at one another whenever this happened, their faces hidden from me in the shadows of their cowls, then looked resolutely straight ahead. The endless upward march went on.
     
    I did manage distantly to wonder if it were day or night outside. This was no trivial matter on Sca, where all life was active during the well-lit