Excerpt from Inversions by Iain M. Banks, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"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 yellow-glowing 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.

The chief torturer stood there, quivering, while his assistant gazed on with an expression of apprehension and terror. The Doctor's look was one of grimly contemptuous amusement. Then Nolieti spun round and stabbed a finger at her. "You!" he hissed at her. "You killed him. You didn't want him to live!"

The Doctor looked unconcerned, and continued drying her hands (though it seemed to me that they were both already dry, and shaking). "I am sworn to save life, chief torturer, not to take it," she said reasonably. "I leave that to others."

"What was in that stuff?" the chief torturer said, quickly squatting to wrench open the Doctor's bag. He pulled out the open vial she had taken the ointment from and brandished it in her face. "This. What is it?"

"A stimulant," she said, and dipped a finger into the vial, displaying a small fold of the soft brown gel on her finger tip so that it glinted in the light of the brazier. "Would you like to try it?" She moved the finger towards Nolieti's mouth.

Copyright © 2000 by Iain M. Banks