"I thought you had the memory of an elephant," Solomon replied, taking a step forward, "but I suppose it's too much to ask of a man without a brain to remember things clearly." He looked at Valkyrie. "I was believing misinformation for almost a year before Ghastly set me straight," he told her, and this time there was genuine, if resigned, amusement in the curl of his mouth. "Something I said, apparently."

He took another step, the flat palm of his hand sliding along the wall. He didn't trace the carvings; he didn't think he could handle that right now. But he felt them, under his touch, and knew they were there even as he tried to extend the rest of his awareness outward.

There wasn't any need to look at Valkyrie's soul to feel it. Or either of the others. In this small corridor, the four of them together washed against the magic that had made it and seemed to light it up. It was lit up something like a fractured, rainbow disco ball, true, but it was lit. Solomon found, with a touch of surprise, that he almost didn't need guidance at all. So he kept walking.

"Of course," he continued blithely, hardly even really thinking about what he was saying except that he needed to say something, "that begs the question that if Skulduggery's the man without a brain, what does that make the rest of us? I think Valkyrie's a given, but would you rather be the cowardly lion or the man without a heart, Bespoke?"