‘Trekking endlessly into an endless wasteland.’ John sighed.

‘And fading,’ Simon added helpfully.

‘It’s true, the cleric and Nicodemus are both getting pretty faint,’ Elton said. ‘You could probably get work as ghosts. You look kinda like someone could push a stick through you without causing too many problems.’

We kept heading out into the wastes, without a map or any direction other than the one that Mia’s prayer had squeezed out of the Man Jesus. Water began to run low, rations lower.

‘Another morning rolls around. No breakfast. More belt tightening.’ Elton threw some dice to see if anything bad wandered our way. I rather looked forward to a monster hoving into view: it would be a bit of excitement, and plus we could eat it. A self-delivering meal. But nothing came. ‘Be right back.’ Elton drained his coke and headed off to the loo.

The moment the door closed behind him, Mia reached for the cylinder he’d set on the table.

‘Mia!’ I hissed. I had to admit, though, that the thing had been tempting me all morning. There’s nothing like being told you can’t touch something to make you want to touch it.

‘It’s nothing. Just a flexible tube.’ She fiddled with it, getting the compulsion out of her hands.

‘Make sure you put it back in exactly the same place,’ John hissed.

‘And quickly!’ Simon pointed at the door as if Elton was about to burst back through it at any moment.

‘Oh . . .’ Mia looked up, frowning.

‘What? Have . . .’

She held out her hands. Somehow, she had contrived to stick her index fingers into either end of the tube. Across the landing came the sound of a toilet flushing.

‘Quick! Put it back!’

‘I . . . It’s stuck!’ Mia appeared to be tugging, the tube stretching and narrowing between her fingers.

‘Stop messing about,’ Simon snarled.

‘I’m not. It won’t come off! I’m stuck—’

The door opened and Elton walked in, grinning from ear to ear. ‘I love it when a plan comes together.’ He sat down and picked up his notes. ‘The ground starts to shake. Small stones dance on the hardpan. Dust lifts around your ankles. You feel the vibrations through the soles of your boots. The ground starts to break. The— Yes, Fineous?’

Simon lowered his hand. ‘Fineous starts to run.’

‘In any particular direction?’

‘Away?’

‘It’s happening all around, as far as you can see.’

‘Fineous stays where he is, then, and starts to limber up in preparation for running.’

‘Fine. The ground starts to heave and all around you, in a vast circle, a wall of reddish brown stone rises, shedding earth. And as you spin to take it all in you see a tower emerging at the centre, maybe quarter of a mile from you. A great stone spike. It’s already a hundred feet high.’

‘Can we get over this wall?’ Simon asked.

‘By the time you reach it, it’s over your head.’

‘I could climb it?’

‘It stops growing with a jolt, like a bolt being slammed home. The tower is still rising behind you. The wall is twenty yards high. Sheer stone.’

‘Can you get this damn thing off me?’ Mia thrust her hands toward me, the tube still taut between straining fingers. ‘It’s freaking me out.’

‘Stop pulling,’ John said. ‘I remember now. I’ve seen these before. Chinese finger traps.’

‘You could have said earlier!’ I shook my head.

‘Hey, I was up all night snogging.’ John grinned. ‘And, besides, the one I saw didn’t look the same.’

‘Alright. I don’t care. How do I get out?’ Mia had stopped pulling.

‘That I don’t remember,’ John said.

I took Mia’s hands, glad of the excuse, holding them with more familiarity than I would have before the party. ‘Well . . .’ I could see how the weave of the material tightened the tube about her fingertips. ‘It’s not like there are many options . . .’

‘Scissors!’ Mia said.

‘Hey! No scissors!’ Elton started from his chair.

‘I . . . Try pushing your fingers together,’ I suggested.

‘Together? But I . . . Oh!’ Mia followed my suggestion even as she objected to it, and in moments she was free.

‘Fineous will try to climb the wall.’ Simon reached for his dice.

‘Sure.’ Elton nodded. ‘But there is a gate about fifty yards to the right of you.’ He drew a circle for the wall. A smaller one inside for the tower. And added a door to both.

‘I’ll go to the door,’ John said. The rest of us followed.

‘There’s an old man standing before it. Brown robe, long reddish beard. It’d probably be white if it wasn’t covered in dust.’

‘Where are we?’ I asked. ‘I ask the guy.’

‘You, young man,’ Elton did a querulous old voice, ‘are at the Tower of Tricks.’

‘Got it.’ Simon reached for the pieces of paper. ‘Two. Sicker. Fort. It’s Tower of Tricks. I told you he loves anagrams.’

‘We need to get these two cured.’ John pointed at Mia and me. ‘How can we do that?’

‘Just leave. Nothing that you do not desire can leave with you.’

‘That’s it. We can just walk out of here and leave our woes behind us?’

Elton nodded, the tentative movement of an old man with a dust-laden beard. He gestured with one hand toward the imagined door.

‘Ohhh kaaaaaay . . .’ John pushed the lead figure representing his warrior toward the door.

‘Wait.’ Mia reached out to stop him. ‘It can’t be this easy.’

‘It is the Tower of Tricks . . .’ I said. ‘It could be this easy.’

‘Or . . .’ Mia tapped the table. ‘There could be a trick to leaving. Like the finger trap. When I tried the obvious way, I just got held harder. I had to push deeper in to get out.’ She turned to Elton. ‘I ask the old guy whether the door in the wall will really let us out, or if we need to go into the Tower of Tricks to get free.’

Elton creaked out an answer in his old man’s voice. ‘You’re already in the Tower. We all are. We were born in it and nobody ever gets out of it alive.’

‘And that?’ Mia tapped the circle at the centre of the map. ‘If we go in there, can we come out again and leave our disease behind us?’

Elton shrugged. ‘You can try. If you emerge from the physical tower that you can see, you will be shriven, free of all curses and evils set upon you. But the Tower will not want to let go of you once you step inside. Nobody escapes that building without sacrifice, and often the sacrifice is greater than the benefit they sought. It’s a trick . . . you see.’ He manufactured an apologetic smile.

‘Well.’ I pushed the figure representing Nicodemus forward. ‘Mia and I have to go in.’ I looked at her. ‘Coming?’ It was more than an invitation to pit herself against a tower full of fiendish traps. ‘Are you with me, Mia?’

A smile. One of those small, wicked grins of hers that lit me up. ‘Sure.’ She advanced her priest and at the same time pressed her leg against mine under the table.

A foolish grin spread across my face. ‘Perhaps you guys should wait outside?’

John rolled his eyes and pushed his warrior forward. ‘One for all.’

‘And all for one,’ Simon said with less enthusiasm. He pushed Fineous to the rear of our little group.

The afternoon progressed with us working our way up the tower through ever more fiendish death traps. Hours escaped, but we didn’t. Though we did rise steadily higher.

‘You’ve got a gift for death traps, Elton.’ John crossed off the supplies he’d used up helping us escape the last one, a black sphere that pursued us, devouring everything it touched except the walls of the tower itself. We finally figured that as it ate, it grew, and we proceeded to feed it everything we could spare, and quite a lot that we couldn’t, until it became too large to fit through the doorways and could be left behind.

‘How far up this tower are we?’ I asked.

Elton shrugged.

‘You said there were windows,’ Simon said. ‘Fineous looks out of one. Carefully!’

‘You’re careful enough to avoid being beheaded by one of the steel rings that encircle the tower and rise and fall at speed. The tower stretches up above you, until it’s lost in the clouds.’

‘Shit.’

‘Maybe we’re doing it wrong,’ Mia said. ‘The old man said nobody leaves without sacrifice.’

‘I’ve sacrificed loads!’ John pointed irritably to the dozen items crossed off his character sheet.

‘Maybe it wants more?’ Mia suggested. ‘Perhaps if the traps had got us, then that would have counted. Maybe we should just say that we’re ready to make the sacrifice?’

‘Really?’ Elton used his old voice and produced the figure he had used for the man at the gate, now setting it behind Mia.

‘I guess . . .’ She looked around at us.

We grunted our agreement.

‘“On your heads be it,” the old man says. He raises both arms and darkness swirls around you.’ Elton rolled his dice in secret. ‘John, you need to go downstairs for a bit. Go bother Baggage.’