by Holly Lisle
“You forget that you had dinner with Gellas Tomersin that night. We’ll question him, too.”
“Of course you will. And you’ll discover that his story matches with mine.”
“I’m sure we will. And I’m sure that, when you’ve been subjected to spelled interrogation, your story will match our agent’s. You cannot lie under spelled interrogation.”
Solander spread his hands wide. “Then interrogate me.”
“We’re giving you a chance to tell us what we want to know without interrogation. You are stolti, and of the highest family. If you simply agree to tell us what we wish to know, and if you cooperate with our further investigations, we’ll offer you limited immunity, and you won’t be subject to full prosecution for anything you’ve done. At worst you’ll have to step down from your position in Research and accept a period of house confinement.”
“I’m innocent,” Solander said. “And the friends that you want me to give you in exchange for this bargain of yours are innocent as well.”
Wraith felt his stomach knot. They knew Solander was a connection to him—and they suspected Wraith of something much worse than concealing information. They suspected him of harboring his own private army and planning the overthrow of the Empire.
They were, for the moment, being quite polite about how they dealt with him, considering what they believed to be true about him. They were about to be less gentle with Solander, however.
“For the record, then, you refuse this last offer of leniency on our part for cooperation on yours?”
“I do,” Solander said. “I have done nothing wrong, my friends have done nothing wrong, and I will not sell anyone to you to protect myself from your lies. The truth will be my protection.”
Which all sounded very noble, and Wraith had to admire the presentation—but the fact was, Solander was lying. He was guilty. And spelled interrogation was going to prove that to everyone. Solander was giving up a chance to protect himself, but he wouldn’t be able to protect Wraith, or Jess, or Velyn, or the Kaan, or the rebels in the Order of Resonance. It would all come out, and he would be stripped of his citizenship and banished anyway.
And then the image of Solander vanished.
Wraith, who had been prepared to see the spell cast and to see Solander confessing everything that had happened from the day that Wraith had run through his gate to elude pursuers, instead found himself facing a blank dais.
And the members of the Silent Inquest turned and looked at him.
“You can just imagine what he told us,” Master Omwi said.
Wraith tipped his head and his brow furrowed. “Pardon me, gentlemen, but I thought the purpose of making a live record of the interrogation was so that viewers wouldn’t have to imagine.” He put his hand to his chin and stared off at nothing. “All I can imagine,” he said at last, “is that you discovered exactly what he said you would discover—that is, nothing. And that, hoping I would think you discovered something more, you brought me here, showed me the part of the interrogation that took place prior to spellcasting and that could therefore only be subjective, and counted on my concern for my friend to put some sort of pressure on me to tell you whatever it is you want to hear.”
“We have proof of what you’ve been doing from a number of unrelated sources. What you have now is an opportunity. If you are honest with us, you will save the life of your friend, who otherwise will be stripped of his stolti class, created a parvoi, and executed for treason along with anyone else we can connect with him.”
Wraith couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “The man is innocent. You couldn’t even get proof of treason with spelled interrogation, which from everything I’ve heard, and everything everyone else has heard, is completely and perfectly accurate. If you had proof of his treason, you would have used that part of the interrogation. So why are you telling me that unless I tell you what you want to hear, you’re going to execute him?”
The Masters looked at each other, and finally Master Omwi said, “Because we have reason to believe that he has found a way to lie under spelled interrogation. That, in fact, he can do everything our agent told us he could do, and more—and that he used some of this new magic to subvert the course of our investigation. Though it was never considered a genuine possibility, the Silent Inquest nonetheless maintained a law in our annals that anyone who lied under spelled interrogation would be executed.”
Wraith stood up. “What you’re telling me now doesn’t make sense. You’re claiming that if I tell you he lied—a thing that you cannot prove— you’ll spare his life. If, however, I tell you the truth—which is that he told you the truth—you’ll execute him for treason.”
“We know he lied,” Omwi said. “In spite of the fact that we never use spelled interrogation on our own agents, we made an exception in this case. Following Solander’s interrogation, when he demonstrated that everything he’d told us had been true, we brought Borlen Haiff in and questioned him under spellbond. And he proved that everything he told us had been true.”
Wraith considered that for a moment. “Ah. And now you need to know which one is lying to you, and you think I’ll tell you that my friend Solander is the liar. Well, you’re at least interesting in your insanity.”
Omwi managed a thin smile. “We have a little sense of humor over the strangeness of our own predicament, Master Gellas—but not much. Our humor won’t extend very far in any direction if we do not get some cooperation. And quickly. Let me tell you what we are currently doing. We have located your longtime lover Velyn Artis-Tanquin where you apparently had her hidden. She is now on her way here, along with the men you charged with hiding her. We have a fine collection of your associates already in holding cells—men and women from the Order of Resonance, various actors you have employed over the years, a handful of assistants, prop managers, lighting specialists, set designers, and costumers that you have employed on a regular basis since bringing your first heretical play to the stage. We have already interrogated some of them. We plan to interrogate others. We are still awaiting the arrival of Jess Covitach-Artis, whom we are having some difficulty locating—this in spite of the fact that her assistant is one of our people.”
Wraith started at that, and Omwi smiled. “Ah. So you’ve met Agent Jethis.”
Wraith thought about his discussion regarding Jess with the hostile Patr and nodded thoughtfully. “I didn’t like him. So he betrayed her, too.”
“Betrayed her? Not at all. She is apparently innocent of any wrong-doing—but we can always use her as leverage if we need to. No—Agent Jethis merely told us interesting things about you. In fact, he gave us a recording of a conversation he had with you that has been most helpful in pointing us in the direction of people we needed to bring in.”
Wraith knew he hadn’t said anything of a sensitive nature to Patr Jethis. But he also knew that he had said many incriminating things to Jess. What if Patr truly did love Jess? What if he’d obtained a copy of that conversation, but had protected Jess by finding some way to make the incriminating discussion sound like it had taken place with Patr instead?
The Silent Inquest knew about the Kaan. They would find out about everything else; either Velyn would arrive and tell everything she knew to get herself out of trouble and get even with him, or the Kaan and the Order of Resonance would, under spellbond, reveal an absolutely horrifying list of treasonous acts against the Empire.
“You have nothing, then, that you wish to volunteer?” Master Omwi asked.
“No.”
The Master nodded, and out of the shadows that surrounded the room, burly guards stepped forward. Before Wraith could move, they clamped his wrists into heavy white-metal manacles, and marched him forward onto the dais where moments before Solander’s image had stood.
“Certain you don’t wish to talk to us voluntarily?” the Master asked.
“Quite,” Wraith said.
“Your choice,” Master Omwi said.
The guards stepped away fro
m him, and from overhead, the light of a spellshield shimmered to life. Wraith considered walking through it, but decided that if these people didn’t know magic didn’t touch him, he would be best off to let them think it did.
“Your name,” Omwi asked.
“Gellas Tomersin,” Wraith said.
“Your class.”
“Stolti. Artis family.”
“Your occupation.”
“Theater manager and producer of plays.”
“The identity of Vincalis.”
“I don’t know.”
Silence. Wraith could see nothing beyond the wall of brilliant light that poured down around him. But he could hear well enough. “Check the settings,” Omwi whispered, “and increase them by twenty percent.”
“Yes, Master.”
The light got brighter. “The identity of Vincalis.”
“I don’t know.” Wraith had a hard time not smiling as he answered the questions. He knew this sort of interrogation to be hell on the people who had to undergo it. Those who had offered testimony on only minor matters reported headaches for days afterward, and confusion, and feelings of dread. But he might as well have been standing on a sunny beach enjoying the breeze. As far as interrogation went, he could take this forever.
“He has to know,” a voice Wraith didn’t recognize murmured, and Omwi responded with a grunt and the muttered, “I would have thought so.”
“Where is Velyn Artis-Tanquin?”
“I don’t know,” Wraith said.
“Damnall, you know he knows that!” someone else yelled. “It isn’t working on him, either!”
“No magic use coming from him,” a voice from high up and off to the left said. “I have us at five hundred luns right now, and all my dials are clear—he’s taking everything we’re running through him.”
“But he knows where Velyn Artis-Tanquin is, because we know where she is and he’s the one who sent her there.”
Wraith felt a sudden dread. Jess’s assistant was one of these people. Solander’s assistant had been one of these people. Which of his assistants was the spy?
“All the way to the top,” Omwi yelled. “Four thousand luns, and if that cooks his brain out of his skull, we’ll apologize to his next of kin.”
“Yes, Master Omwi.”
The light grew so brilliant that Wraith could no longer see his hands at the end of his arms—could no longer see his arms, for that matter. He closed his eyes, but the light came through his eyelids. As a form of interrogation, this became a bit more real, he thought.
“Is Velyn Artis-Tanquin on Bair’s Island?” Omwi asked.
How to answer? That was where she was, and they obviously knew it—he would be giving them nothing that they didn’t already have if he admitted this. Then he might be able to win their faith in the rest of his lies. They might think the increased power was working where the lesser dose hadn’t. “Yes,” he said.
“Good. Who is your main underground contact?”
“What’s the underground?” Wraith asked.
He heard a snarl of inarticulate fury from somewhere out in the darkness.
Omwi said, “Who is Vincalis?”
“Master of Transports Camus Pindolin,” Wraith said promptly.
“Turn it off,” Omwi said, and his voice was filled with disgust. The light vanished abruptly, but Wraith still couldn’t see.
“Good attempt,” Omwi added. “Unfortunately for you, Pindolin is one of ours. And we know you’re involved in the underground, because one of your regular contacts is one of ours, too.”
“Shall we kill him?” someone right behind Wraith asked, and Wraith jumped. He still couldn’t see anything but the multicolored spots of light that swarmed in front of his eyes.
“No. I’ll bring in a few torturers from the Strithian borderlands. We can have them here in two or three days, and we’ll get what we need from him then. We should probably use the torturers on all of our prisoners—no telling which of the rest of them can withstand four thousand luns in the interrogator. We’ll run them all through the interrogator, and when we’re finished we’ll torture to get a cross-reference.”
Silence. Then, right next to his ear, Omwi’s voice. “Your gift to all of your fellow rebels, Tomersin. Because of you, now all of them will get to bleed, too.”
“It’s just me,” Wraith said.
“No, it isn’t. The interrogator didn’t work on Artis, either. But we could at least tell he was doing something to fight it. The magic never quite touched him. You …”
Silence. And the darkness. And then a hand gripping the back of his neck so hard he wanted to cry out, and someone else’s voice saying, “Keep up with me or I’ll kick you till you piss blood for a month.”
Chapter 18
Solander lay on the narrow cot in his cell, staring up at the glossy white ceiling. He could smell the sweetness of ripe fruit in the bowl beside him, and the sweat and piss of the man in the cell down the hall, the one who ranted and howled constantly and incoherently.
His shield had held, and during the spelled interrogation, he’d managed to project excellent, convincing images that ought to have demonstrated the absolute truth of his assertions.
Yet he had failed to convince someone of importance, as evidenced by the fact that he remained in captivity.
He wanted to hear some news. He wanted some word that his friends were safe, that Wraith and Jess and even Velyn remained out of the hands of the Dragons’ interrogators. Instead, he listened to Big Fly the Madman going through his endless shouted loop.
“Big FLY fall spot SPANK leaf bread BONES meat stick HOT bang GOD dog train flee big FLY fall spot SPANK—”
Every once in a while, he’d stop in the middle of the loop to drink something. Solander could hear him slopping and swallowing. No matter where he dropped out of the loop, he always restarted with “Big FLY …”
Big Fly made for an interesting form of torture, and Solander had determined early on that it was a form to which he was particularly susceptible. He hated noise, he hated nonsense, and the erratic nature of Big Fly’s lunatic ragings, stopping and starting as they did, were driving him in a quick and efficient manner to the edge of a piece of madness of his own.
So he lay on his cot, staring at the ceiling, trying not to worry about all the many things he could not change, and trying equally hard to figure out some way to get his theory of magic safely into the hands of people who would not only hide it, but if something happened to him would use it to wage war against the parasitic magic of the Dragons of the Hars Ticlarim.
Solander should have known Borlen Haiff was an agent. Borlen had been far too lazy to have come up through the ranks of junior and senior wizards. And while he had shown admirable knowledge of some narrow aspects of the field of magical power utilization, overall he didn’t seem to have even such grasp of his subject as would get him through the preliminary magical training, much less the advanced work that created assistants and associates.
A door banged open and then closed in the distance, and footsteps echoed along the hallway, moving closer. Solander narrowed his eyes to slits and made his breathing deep and even. He doubted that this charade would convince anyone who might be spying on him, and he doubted that it would offer any information or comfort to him. But he thought that if he didn’t have to talk to whichever guard was coming, he would be ahead of the game.
“Your cell, Master,” the guard said, and Solander heard the door across the hall open and close, and heard the bars that locked it shut click into place. He lay where he was, his body limp and his breathing steady, and watched. Initially all he could see was the guard’s back. “You’ll have a meal coming later,” the guard said. “I suggest you eat it, and fast. We come along to pick them up after you’ve had sufficient time. What you haven’t eaten when we return, you don’t get. For now, you’ll receive one meal a day. I’ve been instructed to tell you, too, that if you offer to cooperate, you’ll receive both larger portions and m
ore frequent meals.”
“I doubt that will be an issue.” The voice belonged to Wraith. Solander almost lost the pattern of his breathing. He didn’t want to alert Wraith to his presence until the guard was well out of the way. Wraith, careful as he was, wouldn’t blurt out anything compromising about the two of them, but Solander preferred their first communication in these foul circumstances to be between just the two of them. And whomever might be operating the viewers, of course.
“Well—I told you,” the guard said. “How you choose to use the information is your choice.”
“… spot spank leaf bread bones meat stick HOT bang GOD dog train flee BIG fly FALL spot SPANK LEAF BREAD BONES MEAT STICK HOT BANG GOD DOG TRAIN FLEE big fly fall—”
“Shut up, Stotts!” the guard bellowed, thus giving a name to Solander’s headache.
“… spot spank leaf bread bones meat stick hot bang …”
“He’ll keep you plenty of company in the meantime,” the guard said with malicious pleasure. “So you think about cooperating. Stotts drives people crazy. After a while they start to believe that they know what he’s talking about. If he gets to making sense, you better ask for a deal. Your brain will be soup if you don’t.”