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might impress the foolish, but it takes more than some sleight of hand and stolen alien tricks to impress me."
    Jocasta stared aghast. As everyone else did, she knew of the feud between the two, which had gone on for so long that neither seemed able to end it. But she hadn't realized the sheer, raw hatred beneath it. She watched Robert back away, edging past the zombie and almost out of the room, when Duff waved his left hand. Robert stopped, and despite his struggles, stood rooted to the spot. Blood began to trickle from his nose, then pour first from his ears, then his eyes, and with a pop! his left eyeball flew out. Then his head exploded.
    Jocasta covered her mouth.
    Duff turned back to face Maltby, who, shaking, still managed to step naked from the bed where the girl-child cowered. His head came no higher than Duff's chest, and his body, though stocky, looked small next to Duff's monolithic frame. “Very clever,” Maltby drawled. “A few motes to raise his blood pressure. Spectacular, but like everything else you do, a triumph of style over substance."
    "I'll give you simple.” Duff towered over him, face twisted with fury. “I'll ask again. Where are they?"
    "I'll give you an answer even you can understand. I don't know.” Maltby stood on tiptoe for a moment. “Now leave. I have better protection than Robert."
    "Do you?” Duff waved his left hand. “Are you going to tell me, or do I have to torture it out of you?” Duff leaned forward, peering at him.
    "Your little tricks won't work on me—ah!” The girl leapt at Maltby, her hands scrabbling at his eyes. Her nails dug in before he could get his hands up, and he screamed.
    "No,” Duff said. “Magic won't work on you. But it'll work on her. She'll ask the questions far more persuasively than I could, won't you, my dear?"
    Jocasta watched horrified as Robert's decapitated corpse climbed to its feet and lumbered toward the struggling pair.
    Robert's corpse grabbed a vase and clubbed Maltby unconscious. Robert and the girl tore at the bedsheets with nails and teeth, and made them into impromptu ropes. Then they bound the groaning mage. Jocasta watched Duff sit in a chair, working Robert's corpse by movements of the fingers on his right hand. Then he wiggled the fingers on his left hand, and the girl rolled Maltby onto his side.
    Duff motioned with his right hand, and Robert's hands locked around the girl's throat. Jocasta couldn't look away. The graininess and flickering of the picture only added in some strange way to its macabre quality. Only when the girl lay lifeless did Duff relinquish control of Robert's corpse.
    "Typical of you,” Maltby managed to speak at last, spitting bile from the side of his mouth. “You use people as if they're pawns. But what now?"
    Duff clearly dared not go too near Maltby. Jocasta guessed that the tattoos beneath Maltby's armpits were proximity-activated wards, some keyed to Duff personally. Maltby probably had reflective charms, she thought , to reflect Duff's magic. Her employer would have, after all, taken the same precautions himself.
    "What now?” Maltby groaned.
    "You'll tell me where my spells are,” Duff said.
    Maltby sighed, shook his head. “I don't know."
    "Where. Are.” Duff slapped the arm of his chair in time to each word. “The. Spells?"
    "I really don't know,” Maltby insisted.
    "Kick him,” Duff told Task. “We'll start gently, but make it harder, the more he resists."
    Sinhalese only managed a few minutes before Maltby's increasingly desperate screams drove her from the room. Jocasta felt sick herself, but she had to watch this. She had to. There might be some vital clue at the end of it.
    But by the time Sinhalese returned to Maltby's bedroom where his broken body lay like a discarded pile of rubbish on the floor, nothing had been gained from Maltby's torture. “He's dead then?” Sinhalese asked.
    "Obviously,” Duff grunted and added, “Shame his bones dissolved. It would have been a fitting end