interrogation2

“The In­ter­ro­ga­tion part 2”

Af­ter fin­ish­ing a rough cir­cle of ar­cane sym­bols the male Pelosian chants a few words sum­mon­ing a misty, in­dis­tinct hu­manoid form float­ing gen­tly with­in the chalk mark­s.

Speak­ing clear­ly with no­tice­able in­dig­na­tion “C­i­t­i­zen Hyr­mi­na, I am Dyrk­ius Reeseus, Third Tail, Am­phipo­lis Pi­geon. Your at­tempt to com­pel my hon­esty has failed. No mat­ter: I will de­brief you truth­ful­ly and will­ing­ly. Had I not been in­ter­dict­ed these past few days, I would have been able to do so ear­li­er.”

Un­fazed by Dyrk­ius’ at­tempt­ed seiz­ing of the ini­tia­tive, Hyr­mi­na asks “Do you have a writ?”

“In my belt pock­et.”

With a nod from Hyr­mi­na one of the guards sheaths his sword, re­trieves the writ, shows it first to Hyr­mi­na then to the misty fig­ure. Which a few mo­ments lat­ter gives a dis­tinct nod.

Sat­is­fied, Hyr­mi­na con­tin­ues the in­ter­ro­ga­tion with Ione. “And you? What brings you to this fine province?”

“Ione of Sari­a. I’m in Scu­pi Prov­ince be­cause it is far away from The Em­pire. Al­so, I’ve heard in­ter­est­ing ru­mors about for­mer res­i­dents.”

“Very cu­ri­ous. Sari­a? It is not fa­mil­iar to me, part of the Em­pire? And ex­act­ly what ru­mors?”

“No, it is an in­de­pen­dent city-s­tate, town re­al­ly, in the N. Wild­land­s. That Vervigis once had a lab in the bad­lands West of here.”

Rais­ing an eye­brow to­wards Ian at that last re­mark. “Ian Ikase, cor­rupt­ing the young and in­no­cent with tales of fame and for­tune are we? But for now I’m far more in­ter­est­ed in how you came to be wear­ing Cit­i­zen The­be’s ar­mor?”

Ian smiles broad­ly but re­mains silen­t.

“Well, we’ll get back to that. Ione, thank you for your co­op­er­a­tion. Please es­cort her away.” A guard gen­tly stands Ione up and walks her out of the room.

“Now, you three, quite a ways from the Dune Sea trade routes would­n’t you agree?”

Djin­n, Qazir, and Tariq re­spond with their names and “to hunt”, “seek­ing the wis­dom of Na­ture”, “with my cous­in”.

Hyr­mi­na asks in­to de­tails of what ships they trav­eled on where they stayed, when and for how long. All of which she seems to con­firm with the ghost­ly fig­ure who nods af­fir­ma­tion to each in­quiry.

Ap­peased, she asks of no one in par­tic­u­lar. “Sand­men do not leave sur­vivors. Yet you live. Why? And how? Do you have some abil­i­ty to ab­jure their pow­ers or drive them away?”

First again Dyrk­ius an­swers “I do not know why they at­tacked, and I have not found enough ev­i­dence to form a strong hy­poth­e­sis. I have some abil­i­ty to drive away any foe. And as for be­ing alive, I am sur­prised by that my­self.”

Tariq and Djinn con­tin­ue to pro­vide min­i­mal, al­most de­fi­ant an­swer­s, “I do not”, “I know not”. Al­though, in a mo­ment of hon­est con­fu­sion re­gard­ing the sand­men Tariq shrugs and says “They seem to come from nowhere, and to re­turn there again when their killing was done.”

“And what about you Thukir­i? Does your kin­ship with the desert ex­tend to sand­men?”

“Well, to be pre­cise, I don’t be­lieve these “sand­men”, as you la­bel them, ev­er did at­tack me. I fell vic­tim to the hye­na men’s am­bush. Some time lat­er I opened my eyes to Djinn cut­ting the ropes that had bound me. Dead hye­na men lay strewn hap­haz­ard­ly about in the tell­tale fash­ion of bat­tle. I my­self nev­er saw the sand­men. It is rea­son­able to as­sume that they nev­er saw me, and were there­fore un­con­cerned as to my fate.”

“Where were you head­ing when the sand­men at­tacked you?”

“This I do not know. The hye­na men were trans­port­ing us some­where, but the des­ti­na­tion is un­known to me. More­over, as I was un­con­scious for the en­tire time they were car­ry­ing us, I have no idea how long, or in what di­rec­tion we were trav­el­ing.”

Djinn adds “North, we were tak­en North for two or three days.”

Out­side the sand­storm sub­sides and the room bright­ens con­sid­er­ably. Work­ers in oth­er rooms start sweep­ing away the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed sand dust kick­ing up clouds of it. Caus­ing the fe­male guard to sneeze and cough for a minute. The misty fig­ure fades. The male Pelosian moves to re­cast his spell but Hyr­mi­na waves him away.

Fo­cus­ing on the Babrem “Where is the hye­na men’s cam­p? How many run with this pack? What brought them this far south?”

Tariq, “I do not know. They am­bushed us among some ru­in­s, in the desert. I was wound­ed, very near death. I know noth­ing oth­er than I was cap­tured.” Shrugs again.

“I al­so do not know. All I can say is that the “ru­in­s” ap­peared to be nat­u­ral. A large for­est of top­pled and bro­ken tree trunks as hard as stone.” of­fers Qazir.

“Still be­ing qui­et are we?”

Ian nod­s.

“Nine cit­i­zens are dead or miss­ing. Your si­lence is ir­rel­e­van­t. In­front of the Coun­cil to­mor­row the in­for­ma­tion will be ex­tract­ed from you.”

Ian nod­s.

“Ikase is too pre­oc­cu­pied with his tri­al please take him away so that he may con­sid­er his de­fense.” The same guard as be­fore takes him away.

“C­i­t­i­zen Dyrk­ius, can you en­light­en us re­gard­ing the hye­na men? Per­haps you hired them to at­tack the car­a­van?”

“Of course not! I’m in­sult­ed at the in­sin­u­a­tion. Cit­i­zen, I near­ly died out there. In fac­t, I’m as shocked to be alive as I am by your treat­men­t. As to your ques­tion, I do not know any­more about the hye­na men.

In bursts a fat, bald mid­dle-aged Pelosian male wear­ing priests robes and a red sash with gold trim across his chest. “Did they find it?” Look­ing at the sur­vivors. “Did you find it? The box?” See­ing their con­fused ex­pres­sions he be­gins moan­ing to him­self “O­h, they don’t have it. We’re doomed.”

“Trypho!” As­serts Hyr­mi­na.

“But, the box, the box. What are we go­ing to do?” Try­po’s foot long black “goa­tee” shak­ing with pan­ic.

“Come here let’s dis­cuss things.” Says Hyr­mi­na as she gives a sig­nal to the fe­male Pelosian who clos­es her eye­s.

Hyr­mi­na and Trypho move to the far cor­ner and have a short dis­cus­sion. Trypho leaves no less ag­i­tat­ed. With a touch on her shoul­der the Pelosian opens her eyes again.

“Ex­cuse Trypho the heat makes him a bit ex­citable. Back to busi­ness, what did you do with Cit­i­zen Thebe and Cit­i­zen Ae­son. Un­der what au­thor­i­ty did you seize their equip­men­t?

Dyrk­ius “I am sor­ry but they died in the ini­tial am­bush. We buried them as best we could. But time was of the essence if we were to sur­vive our­selves.” We took what­ev­er we thought might help us to sur­vive.”

Qazir “The dead have no con­cern for, nor need of pos­ses­sion­s. Those guards gave their lives de­fend­ing us, the mem­bers of the car­a­van; I can­not imag­ine their spir­its would then balk at giv­ing their breast­plates in ser­vice of the same cause.”

“And the oth­er mem­bers of Desert Con­dor? The sev­en oth­er guard­s.”

“My best guess is that if they did not sur­vive, their phys­i­cal forms lay buried be­neath the sands wait­ing to be re­claimed by the de­sert’s em­brace. Al­though, it is pos­si­ble that who­ev­er, or what­ev­er at­tacked the car­a­van took some or all of them pris­on­er.”

Tariq “I am sor­ry. I know of no oth­er sur­vivors of the car­a­van.”

“So, you all claim to be in­no­cent vic­tim­s? Who just hap­pened to sur­vive an am­bush while nine vet­er­an cit­i­zen­s, all the work­er­s, an­i­mal­s(save your camel), and wag­ons have con­ve­nient­ly dis­ap­peared from the face of Dirt?”

Dyrk­ius ex­claims “Ab­so­lute­ly we are in­no­cen­t! There were two dam­aged wag­on­s, their an­i­mal­s, a cou­ple camel­s, five gnomes, and about sev­en oth­er work­ers with us. All were dead. You have not found those or the oth­er wag­on­s? I lost some of my own prop­er­ty I was hop­ing to re­cov­er.”

“No, our di­vin­er was on­ly tuned to The­be’s breast­plate. Which we found dumped with Ikase and sur­round­ed by the tracks of the hye­na men lead­ing us to you four. Oth­er pa­trols found Ione just out­side of Blood Rock but no trace of the car­a­van.” Hyr­mi­na re­spond­s, un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly dis­tract­ed.

“They like­ly are all buried at the site of the am­bush. We found the wa­ter wag­on rough­ly a half night’s trav­el from the car­nage. Fa­rooq is more in­tel­li­gent than most camels and no stranger to sand­storm­s.”

“Sand­stor­m?”

“Yes, four or five days out of Scu­pi a great sand­storm sud­den­ly hit us. The wag­on mas­ter fool­ish­ly did not im­me­di­ate­ly halt the car­a­van. We be­came scat­tered. Dur­ing the chaos we were am­bushed.” An­swers Tariq.

“By gi­ants, a type I am un­fa­mil­iar with­.” Adds Djin­n.

Ig­nor­ing him and im­pai­tient­ly de­mands “Who else is work­ing with you? (Even with the hye­na men you could not have suc­cess­ful­ly at­tacked the car­a­van.)”

Stand­ing up again Dyrk­ius shouts “I have no idea what you are talk­ing about! As I told you, I am a stu­dent and a loy­al cit­i­zen of The Re­pub­lic. I refuse to say any­more. I de­mand rep­re­sen­ta­tion. I am Dyrk­ius of House Reeseus! I de­mand the re­spect I am en­ti­tled to!”

“Very well, we shall con­tin­ue to­mor­row in the Coun­cil Cham­ber­s. Till then.” Hyr­mi­na bows slight­ly and then rush­es out of the room.