Iain Banks - Inversions

We entered the hidden chamber from a low doorway we each had to stoop under (I placed my hand on the Doctor’s head to lower her head. Her hair felt sleek and smooth). The place smelled of something sharp and noxious, and of burned flesh. My breathing seemed to be quite beyond my control, the odours forcing their way into my nostrils and down into my lungs.

The tall, wide space was lit by a motley collection of ancient oil lamps which threw a sickly blue-green glow over a variety of vats, tubs, tables and other instruments and containers — some in human shape — none of which I cared to inspect too closely, though all of them attracted my wide-open eyes like suns attract flowers. Additional light came from a tall brazier positioned underneath a hanging cylindrical chimney. The brazier stood by a chair made from hoops of iron which entirely enclosed a pale, thin and naked man, who appeared to be unconscious. The entire frame of this chair had been swivelled over on an outer cradle so that the man appeared caught in the act of performing a forward somersault, resting on his knees in mid-air, his back parallel with the grid of a broad light-well grille above.

The chief torturer Nolieti stood between this apparatus and a broad workbench covered with various metal bowls, jars and bottles and a collection of instruments that might have originated in the workplaces of a mason, a carpenter, a butcher and a surgeon. Nolieti was shaking his broad, scarred grey head. His rough and sinewy hands were on his hips and his glare was fastened on the withered form of the encaged man. Below the metal contraption enclosing the unfortunate fellow stood a broad square tray of stone with a drain hole at one corner. Dark fluid like blood had splattered there. Long white shapes in the darkness might have been teeth.

Nolieti turned round when he heard us approach. “About fucking time,” he spat, fixing his stare on first me, then the Doctor and then Unoure (who, I noticed, as the Doctor stuffed her kerchief back into a pocket in her jacket, was making a show of folding the black blindfold he had been told to use on her).

“My fault,” the Doctor said in a matter-of-fact manner, stepping past Nolieti. She bent down at the man’s rear. She grimaced, nose wrinkling, then came to the side of the apparatus and with one hand on the iron hoops of the frame-chair brought it squeaking and complaining round until the man was in a more conventional sitting position. The fellow looked in a terrible state. His face was grey, his skin was burned in places, and his mouth and jaw had collapsed. Little rivulets of blood had dried under each of his ears. The Doctor put her hand through the iron hoops and tried to open one of the man’s eyes. He made a terrible, low groaning sound. There was a sort of sucking, tearing noise and the man gave a plaintive moan like a kind of distant scream before settling into a ragged, rhythmic, bubbling noise that might have been breathing.

The Doctor bent forward to peer into the man’s face and I heard her give a small gasp.

Nolieti snorted. “Looking for these?” he asked the Doctor, and flourished a small bowl at her.

The Doctor barely glanced at the bowl, but smiled thinly at the torturer. She rotated the iron chair to its previous position and went back to look at the caged man’s rear. She pulled away some blood-soaked rags and gave another grimace. I thanked the gods that he was pointing away from me and prayed that whatever the Doctor might have to do would not require my assistance.

“What seems to be the problem?” the Doctor asked Nolieti, who seemed momentarily nonplussed.

“Well,” the chief torturer said after a pause. “He won’t stop bleeding out his arse, will he?”

The Doctor nodded. “You must have let your pokers get too cold,” she said casually, squatting and opening her bag and laying it by the side of the stone drain-tray.

Nolieti went to the Doctor’s side and bent down over her. “How it happened isn’t any of your fucking business, woman,” he said into her ear. “Your business is to get this fucker well enough to be questioned so he can tell us what the King needs to know.”

“ Does the King know?” the Doctor asked, looking up, an expression of innocent interest on her face. “Did he order this? Does he even know of the existence of this unfortunate? Or was it guard commander Adlain who thought the Kingdom would fall unless this poor devil suffered?”

Nolieti stood up. “None of that is your business,” he said sullenly. “Just do your job and get out.” He bent down again and stuck his mouth by her ear. “And never you mind the King or the guard commander. I’m king down here, and I say you’d best attend to your own business and leave me to mine.”

“But it is my business,” the Doctor said evenly, ignoring the threatening bulk of the man poised over her. “If I know what was done to him, and how it was done, I might be better able to treat him.”

“Oh, I could show you, Doctor,” the chief torturer said, looking up at his assistant and winking. “And we have special treats we save just for the ladies, don’t we, Unoure?”

“Well, we haven’t time to flirt,” the Doctor said with a steely smile. “Just tell me what you did to this poor wretch.”

Nolieti’s eyes narrowed. He stood up and withdrew a poker from the brazier in a cloud of sparks. Its yellowglowing tip was broad, like the blade of a small flat spade. “Latterly, we did him with this,” Nolieti said with a smile, his face lit by the soft yellow-orange glow.

The Doctor looked at the poker, then at the torturer. She squatted and touched something at the encaged man’s rear.

“Was he bleeding badly?” she asked.

“Like a man pissing,” the chief torturer said, winking at his assistant again. Unoure quickly nodded and laughed.

“Better leave this in, then,” the Doctor muttered. She rose. “I’m sure it’s good you enjoy your job so, chief torturer,” she said. “However, I think you’ve killed this one.”

“You’re the doctor, you heal him!” Nolieti said, stepping back towards her, brandishing the orange-red poker. I do not think he intended to threaten the Doctor, but I saw her right hand begin to drop towards the boot where her old dagger was sheathed.

She looked up at the torturer, past the glowing metal rod. “I’ll give him something that might revive him, but he may well have given you all he ever will. Don’t blame me if he dies.”

“Oh, but I will,” Nolieti said quietly, thrusting the poker back into the brazier. Cinders splashed to the flag stones. “You make sure he lives, woman. You make sure he’s fit to talk or the King’ll hear you couldn’t do your job.”

“The King will hear anyway, no doubt,” the Doctor said, smiling at me. I smiled nervously back. “And guard commander Adlain, too,” she added, “perhaps from me.” She swung the man in the cage-chair back upright and opened a vial in her bag, wiped a wooden spatula round the inside of the vial and then, opening the bloody mess that was the man’s mouth, applied some of the ointment to his gums. He moaned again.

The Doctor stood watching him for a moment, then stepped to the brazier and put the spatula into it. The wood flamed and spluttered. She looked at her hands, then at Nolieti. “Do you have any water down here? I mean clean water.”

The chief torturer nodded at Unoure, who disappeared into the shadows for a while before bringing a bowl which the Doctor washed her hands in. She was wiping them clean on the kerchief which had been her blindfold when the man in the chair cage gave a terrible screech of agony, shook violently for a few moments, then stiffened suddenly and finally went limp. The Doctor stepped towards him and went to put her hand to his neck but she was knocked aside by Nolieti, who gave an angry, anguished shout of his own and reached through the iron hoops to place his finger on the pulse-point on the neck which the Doctor has taught me is the best place to test the beat of a man’s vitality.