Yet again, we had failed to protect achild.This was inexcusable.
As I approached Jeremiah and Hans, awaiting my arrival in the corridor, I kept my tone clipped. It had been a long fucking day, and the veneer that disguised my fury was wearing paper-thin.
“Status?”
“Still not talking.”
I cracked my knuckles. “Yeah, well. He will be. Soon enough.”
I had received the summons from my lieutenants shortly after wrapping up the debriefing with Commander Ka. We had reviewed the Ithreacean Guard’s reports in-depth, as well as everything my cadre had managed to gather thus far, so that Hanjae could run the information up to High General Demitrovic and, unfortunately, the Lord of Embers as soon as possible.
While my men were spread out and scouring the streets for the multiple suspects we’d identified, I had attempted to cross-reference the reports from Ithreac with all others we’d received. I was looking for patterns, for context, for anything—fucking anything—we might have missed. Because wehadto be missing something.
Something about these disappearances just didn’t make sense. It wasn’t adding up.
At first, I was pleased when Jer’s mail sprite arrived letting me know we had multiple suspects in hand and the others would be apprehended within an hour. We already had eyes on them. That relief quickly faded when I read on, realizing this wasn’t just an update, but a request for backup. They were calling me in for interrogation support against one of the accused.
Selwyn fucking Skielg.
I was familiar with this slippery bastard. I had been building a dossier on him for months now.
Lauded as one of the most respected dealers of jewelry and fine art in Atlas, Selwyn Skielg had friends in high places. He was well known to the noblesse as their favorite rags-to-riches story—their token example to point and claim: “Surely, anyone could acquire the wealth and power we were born with. If only these poor peasants would just try hard enough!”
Because Skielg was said to be a self-made man, the second son of a lowly farmhand who had made his way to Sophrosyne to study Earth arcana. In just a few short years of study, Selwyn had grown adept enough in his craft to set off on a new business venture, hunting down the rarest veins of ore and precious gemstones throughout the Red Valleys of Ithreac.
But in the Shadows, whispers suggested that his obscene wealth had been both built and bolstered by the Atlassian black markets. A flesh trader, if reports were to be believed.
When I took apart Alistair Corvus’ mind piece by piece last year, Skielg was amongst the accomplices named, which put him under our surveillance. Unfortunately, the bastard was smarter than he looked, and we had yet to catch him in the act. And like his friend Alistair, Skielg had been placed at the scene of the crime, confirmed by not one but two separate informants, yet he claimed to have no memory of the Conduit he stood accused of snatching from the streets.
Even under the skillful inquisition of my cadre, the wealthy tradesman had given up nothing, which was both atypical and concerning. They were very well-trained, after all. I’d made sure of it.
But on these very rare occasions where my men failed to produce the results needed to get the job done, that was where I came in.
As I rolled my neck and straightened my spine, I wished I could say I took no pleasure in what I was about to do. I wished I could say I felt no sense of anticipation or purpose as I set my jaw, Jeremiah and Hans rattling off the details of everything they knew, everything they’d learned thus far—which, again, was a whole lot ofnothing.
I wished I could tell you my skin wasn’t buzzing, that I wasn’t about toenjoythis.
But if I could speak such pleasantries into truth, I wouldn’t be the man my cadre had to summon when interrogations went south. I wouldn’t be the last-ditch effort before turning to the Aetherborne and requesting the assistance of the Overseer himself. And I wouldn’t be known as the penultimate nightmare: the one called in to do what the others couldn’t stomach.
I nodded along with a touch of impatience as my men concluded their summaries, spinning one dagger between fingers before sliding it back into the holster at my hip.
“Alright. Thank you. That’s all I need to know,” I informed them, cracking my knuckles again as I spoke. “Hans, I want you to monitor the other interrogations. Darcy is still a bit green and may need support. Jer, keep an eye on Quinn and wait for news from Anaïs on the last of these fuckers, but stay close. I’ll call you in if you’re needed.”
It was vehemently against the protocol of the Elder Guard to conduct this sort of interrogation on your own. In truth, it was against protocol to conduct this sort of interrogation at all: we were oath and honor bound to the Aetherborne and their stances of neutrality, peace, and due process. The Elders did not approve the use of force or violence to mete out justice within their city-state…but High General Demitrovic did.
Still, even the general’s standards demanded a second body in the room any time a foreign prisoner was detained, for obvious reasons.
My lieutenants, knowing better, simply stood aside and let me go to work.
The damp air had grown thick and heavy with the scent of blood and Shadows. Over an hour deep into this interrogation, and Selwyn Skielg had not yet broken.
It had only taken a matter of minutes to get the leering, grotesque-looking bastardtalking,at least.One look at me and the coward started rattling off names of co-conspirators so fast it was laughable—my reputation preceded me, especially among his ilk. But most of the bullshit he’d spewed at the start was false—the sort of confessions that those as vile as he practiced and memorized to cover their asses, should they ever get caught.
And so, I got to work.
I had carved a great deal of useful information out of my pound of Skielg’s flesh thus far—details that would prove invaluable to my cadre’s private efforts. But every time we returned to the subject matter at hand, my prisoner’s eyes went blank, acting as though he had no idea what I was talking about.
An hour was a very long time to spend in these catacombs, and even I had my limits. Skielg was pushing them.