staircase to the basement.
Then, still without a word of explanation, he was thrust into a dank hole
smelling of dry rot and full of things to stumble over to shiver, and wonder why
they had brought him here, and gnaw his paint-stained fingers while he waited
for dawn …
* * *
“Wake up, you Wrigglie scum? The Lord wants to talk to you-“
Lalo surfaced, groaning, from a dream in which he had been taken prisoner and
dragged through the night until… Something hit him hard in the ribs and he
opened his eyes.
It was morning, and it had not been a dream. He saw flaking white-washed walls,
and splintered crates and furniture heaped on the bare earth of the floor. It
was not a prison then. A little pallid light filtered down to him through one
barred window set high in the wall.
He forced himself to sit up and face his tormentors.
“Quag!”
At Lalo’s exclamation, the Hell-Hound’s pitted-leather face became, if possible,
a richer shade of terra cotta, and his eyes slid away from the painter’s gaze.
Lalo followed the look to the doorway, and suddenly began to understand what
power had brought him here, though he was as far as ever from comprehending why.
Coricidius hunched in the doorway like a sick eagle, with his cloak clutched
around him against the early morning chill, and a face like curdled milk. He
eyed Lalo sourly, hawked and spat, and then stepped stiffly into the room.
“My Lord, am I under arrest? I’ve done nothing-why have you brought me here?”
babbled Lalo.
“I want to commission some portraits …” The lined face twitched with the