Tallah

She was led to a small room where a fireplace dominated one side of the wall. Someone had lit the hearth and added thick logs to last throughout the night. One narrow window showed the dark outside, though Mertle assumed it would open onto a sheer drop if her orientation served well.

A large round ashwood table dominated the centre. It had fur-dressed chairs arrayed around it, one of them significantly larger than the rest. A carafe of wine, sweaty with condensation, and four pewter mugs sat on a simple metal tray.

Most importantly, this did not look at all like a holding cell or an interrogation chamber, or at least, as she imagined them to be.

“Make yourself comfortable. I need a quill and some paper.” Quistis showed her inside and excused herself.

The door closed and Mertle did not hear a key turning in the lock.

Barlo had disappeared down a different corridor than the one leading here. Mertle expected that he’d be present as well for the conversation though the vanadal had muttered he had other business to attend to.

A walk around the room didn’t immediately show any spy holes or fake walls. It was all just… a normal guard room. She saw signs of personal effects having been taken away, the scuffs on the floor where soldiers would rest their halberds, coat racks shiny with use, indentations in the chair coverings, a box of cards atop the mantelpiece.

She couldn’t sit down to wait quietly, so instead she paced. Part gnawing suspicion, part act of worry for her lover’s safety. It was pleasantly warm and she was thirsty from the walk to here, but couldn’t bring herself to trust the wine laid out. On old instinct, she rotated the mugs.

The door opened quietly and someone new walked in. A woman, ashen-haired and thin as a blade, wearing the white uniform of the Storm Guard. She stopped for a moment upon seeing Mertle pacing by the window.

“Oh, you’re here already. Good. Have a seat.” Her voice had a sticky-sweet affectation and an accent that Mertle had only heard on the more well-groomed clients seeking her work. Aztroa?

“Uh… Hello?” she replied, certainty slipping away from her. “I’m waiting for Captain Quistis—”

“I’m aware. Sit down. Please. Pacing gets on my nerves.”

There was an edge to the words. Not a threat exactly, but something that promised it could become a threat.

She took the closest chair and sat quickly, awkwardly. The woman sat one chair away from her, not quite opposite, but close enough to be within reach. She poured two cups of wine and took one herself to drain in one long chug.

“Bloody warm in here,” she complained as she poured herself a second. “It gets a bit nippy outside, and the guards get ready to burn the place down to keep warm. Ridiculous.”

Mertle smiled, uncertain of what contribution was expected of her. She accepted the second cup of wine gratefully but did not drink. It was, indeed, very warm in the room. Beads of sweat ran down her back.

“Uh… can you tell me what this is all about?” She kept her voice meek and laced her fingers around the mug, avoiding looking the woman in the eye. “Is Sil… Uh… Is she in trouble? Is she alright?”

“Sil? Who’s that?”

Mertle swallowed a lump and tried to sound as confused as she was starting to feel, “The… woman Captain Quistis showed me?”

“Oh. That.” The woman shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t care about that.” After another long draw of her drink, she set the mug down and smiled in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with any humour or kindness. It was like watching someone unsheathe a blade. “What I care about is learning why you and Lady Tianna of Aieni Holding have both taken to visiting the Sisters of Mercy just about every other day, at very similar times. And, of course, it’d make me very happy to know what dealings have been going on between the two of you.”

The door opened again before Mertle had a chance to compose any sort of reply or reaction to this shift in expectations. She’d been careful! Every precaution taken. Every route studied. Every… oh. It seemed she hadn’t accounted for every eye dogging Tianna’s steps. Someone had keener sight than she.

“Ah, Rumi, I see you’ve already introduced yourself,” Quistis said by way of greeting.

She hadn’t but Mertle knew the name and fitted the face to Sil’s account of their meeting. So, someone to be wary of. She tried not to stiffen as Quistis laid down her paper and inkwell on the table, along with a short thin-bladed sword that was unmistakably Tallah’s.

“Thought you would’ve been done with the executions by now,” the captain admonished Rumi. She sat, huffed, and reached over for the wine. “Not a pleasant show to come back to.”

“The lordling had more confessions to pour out. His mistress tried cutting several deals.” She turned those glacial eyes on Mertle and offered up her weaponized smile. “My apologies to the lady Mergara if it upset her.”

“They had anything interesting to add?”

“Couple more people to take the swing, yes. None that we weren’t already aware of. Lads are kicking down doors and I expect I’ll be working late tonight.”

Quistis scrunched up her nose and sipped the wine with obvious disgust. So, Rumi was a torturer, if the state of the wretch was anything to go by. Mertle took quick inventory of what she’d seen on the man and her pulse quickened.

“Umm, I’m sorry but… Sil?”

They ignored her.

“The informant?” Quistis drank more, sighed, and arranged her papers.

“Kept our word. Didn’t touch a hair on her.”

It was getting hotter in the room and the cup’s chill against Mertle’s fingers only made her throat itchier with thirst. Quistis finished her drink and then poured herself the last of the carafe. She gave Rumi a level look, one eyebrow slightly raised above her glasses.

“What did you do to her?”

“Nothing.”

“What are you doing to her?”

A noncommittal shrug and wonderfully sly grin that looked to have taken a lot of practice. Mertle could almost smell the blood on Rumi and the hairs on the back of her neck rose as she spoke. “Nothing. I’m not touching a hair on her.” The torturer offered a grin made of perfectly straight white teeth. “I’m sticking her in a gibbet. They should be done pinning it on the wall next to… that’s not quit right. Above the Agora. Yes, she’ll have a lovely view to think on everything she’s confessed.”

Quistis sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose, almost disappointed. “Just cut her throat and be done with it. Let’s not remind people of every smear story they’ve ever heard about the empire.”

“Nuh-uh. Commander’s orders. I am not to touch her. She’s volunteered information—for outrageous money—and is to be imprisoned with dignity.” She spat out the word. “He never specified the shape of the cage. Or the place. And I’m letting her keep the fine clothes the lordling bought for her. That’s enough dignity preserved, don’t you think?”

“More than she deserves, yes.” There was just the barest hint of approval in Quistis’s voice. “Just have a crier belting out the crimes for a few days. I don’t want Valen to think we’re being absurd. You don’t want to imagine the paperwork Diogron’s going to demand.”

“I could have her sitting on a stake and make a show of it as I deal with her entire household. How do you think the High Lord would react to that, given their crime?”

Quistis looked green and scowled, “Must you? Really, must you?” She finally turned to Mertle and smiled apologetically, shaking with a final outburst of revulsion. “Apologies, lady Mergara.”

“Mertle, please. I prefer Mertle. My Mergara blood is in Beril, not here.”

“Apologies, Mertle. This is an old issue finally put to bed and… doesn’t matter. Not your concern.” She placed a hand on a rolled up scroll and tapped her fingers on the seal. “This has what I can tell you of your friend. But I’d first like you to start from the beginning and tell me everything about this Sil, as promised.”

“Is she alright?”

“To the extent of my knowledge, yes. Or she was, at least, when we had last sight of her.”

Mertle breathed out a slow sigh of relief and sagged in her chair, her shoulders drooping with relief. She took a chance on the wine and found it merely sour and somewhat lukewarm. Neither of the two took much interest that she drank, or seemed to wait for any reaction on her part. The wine was decent, albeit watered down, the kind of cheap swill the taverns of the Agora served on their bad days. Not something to get drunk on.

Sweat plastered her clothes to her skin and it was a challenge resisting the urge to undo some of her buttons.

“From the beginning, Mertle,” Quistis said as she dipped her quill in ink. A traditionalist, like Tallah.

Mertle had seen many scribes using the mechanical pens that the Enginarium produced, so a quill was an odd choice. This one was well-used and ruffled.

“You are here of your own accord and have not been coerced by myself or any member of the Valen constabulary or the eternal empire’s Storm Guard contingent. Can you please confirm this in the presence of my witness?” Quistis’s tone was all business, no emotion.

Rumi watched her with the intense gaze of one that counted the heartbeats between answers and observed every twitch and tremor.

“I confirm that, yes. I just want to know what this is all about.” She sat up straighter and offered up her best eager smile, the one she reserved for human clients just before she told them what her work would cost. “But… shouldn’t your witness be someone that’s not answering to you? Seems rather pointless otherwise.”

“I’m a special liaison to Valen,” Rumi answered before Quistis finished writing. They’d been through this dance before, if the lack of reaction was anything to go by. “I report to the empress herself and function as a check on my colleagues. My impartiality is assured.”

Hardly. Mertle hadn’t quite forgotten why the torturer was in the room with her. It was getting easier by the moment to withstand that piercing gaze. There was something aelir in her bearing. Might she be a demi? No. But she watched like an aelir’matar would.

It brought a cold shiver of dread on the soft caress of an old memory. Sitting very much just like now, in a deep, narrow room beneath a nameless Olden, answering the Sarrinare aelir’matar’s questions. Hesitation earned her the crop. It had been just as suffocatingly warm there with the fire burning beneath the poison’s cauldron. She had gagged on the fumes and muddled her answers. The crop caught her across the cheek, the sting bringing tears to her eyes. The warning was deliberate: one more mistake and the next strike would go for the eye. Her mistress was displeased—

“Mertle? Are you feeling ill?”

She blinked away the memory and rose back into the moment.

“It’s too warm. Can we crack open a window?” She was sweating hard and drank again, the dregs of the wine warm now and… rather sweet?

Quistis’s look of worry hardened back into professional interest. “This low they’re bolted shut. Security.”

Something in her insides revolted and gurgled unhappily. The wine burned in her stomach and she looked down into the cup. They’d all drank. And she chose her cup.

Rumi wore an expression like a dray about to pounce. “I’d say we’re good to start, captain.”

They’d had her drink truth serum! The taste made sense. Summer wasp venom, distilled into drops, masked by the pewter and the low quality of the wine. The heat and the stalling, the way in which both women had drunk deeply.

Humans were civilised. They laid traps.

It burned in her chest, and it was all she could do to keep it down. Vomit scorched the back of her throat as instinct insisted on a purge. With some effort, she resisted.

Purge the venom if you can, but never in audience. To purge is to invite suspicion. You will learn to use the truth as your shield instead.

“I’m sorry. I think the wine isn’t agreeing with me.” It was hard to lie. The hooks were in her and the intention to mislead caused agony, a spike in her heartbeat that would be hard to disguise.

Right after ingestion is when the venom is at its most potent, as it starts breaking down in the furnace of your stomach. The aelir’matar’s voice whispered in her ear with malicious delight. What is your name?

“What is your full name?” Quistis’s words overlaid over the cruel memory. Mertle looked up into two wolfish expressions.

“Servant,” she answered both voices. “I have earned no name.”