In front of him, a burly, important-looking man with a cir­clet.

 

A impres­sive pearl­stone hel­met with four astrate gems sits on his desk. The gems look like two rows of eyes. Between the hel­met and the red cape, Gil guesses the man is Libri’s satrap.

sits behind a clut­tered desk and scrib­bles onto a sheet of paper.

The man pays Gil no heed, absorbed in his paper­work, but Gil hides his face anyway—he had been cry­ing a lit­tle when the bag was over his head. He wipes the tears away and glances around the room.

Important-looking Man
At ease, hoplites. What is your name, boy?

Gil tells him.

Important-looking Man
Gil. Do you know who I am?
Gil
Are you … the satrap?
Impe­r­ial Hoplite
Boy! You will address Satrap Nim­rod as sir!

The satrap holds up a hand dis­mis­sively, smiles and scrib­bles a final note. Then he looks Gil squarely in the eye. He has scar run­ning down his cheek like a thin teardrop.

Satrap Nim­rod
I am the gov­er­nor of Libri. Do you know why you are here?
Gil
I … sir, I think there’s been a mistake—where is Kiddu?
Satrap Nim­rod
The girl? Is that her name? She will be ques­tioned shortly. Now let me explain, Gil. My hoplite says you were on the wall of the Cir­cus at the time of the attack. The chain bind­ing the Cir­cus’ prized lamashu, which attacked our sol­diers, was bro­ken. We find this—

He tosses a flask on the desk. Gil looks down at his lap, gri­mac­ing.

Satrap Nim­rod
With­er­ing tinc­ture. No use pre­tend­ing, we know you had it. You can’t buy that legally, which tells me you’ve been med­dling in the black mar­ket. Do you know who the pri­mary buy­ers of with­er­ing tinc­ture are?

The ques­tion hangs in the air for a moment, as Satrap Nim­rod stud­ies Gil’s reac­tion. Gil con­tin­ues star­ing at his lap.

Satrap Nim­rod
Ter­ror­ists, who use it to sab­o­tage our pearl­stone armor. They buy it from sym­pa­thiz­ers on our side of the Wall. Now Gil, I can see you’re not a native. I’d like to think that you weren’t a sym­pa­thizer col­lab­o­rat­ing with the mys­tics.

 

Gil
I’m not a sym­pa­thizer! And they’re not my col­lab­o­ra­tors! I’ve never even seen a mys­tic before!

Nim­rod holds up a hand and clears his throat. Gil holds his tongue, which seems to stick to the top of his mouth.

Satrap Nim­rod
I’d like to think that you had some other rea­son for set­ting those lamashu free, some rea­son, any rea­son at all, other than sow­ing the seeds of chaos while your col­lab­o­ra­tors killed my men and torched my town. But as I was about to say:

Unfor­tu­nately, I am not in a posi­tion to take chances tonight. My city is burn­ing. You will tell me every­thing you know about these mys­tics, and the native resis­tance that clearly sup­ports them. Don’t tell me some fable about a leg­endary hid­den city in the moun­tains. I want to know where they’re hid­ing in the desert. If you’re forth­com­ing, you’ll be impris­oned until a later date when you can stand trial. If you are not forth­com­ing, you will be inter­ro­gated until you are. Is that under­stood?

It feels as if some­one had punched Gil in the stom­ach. He knows exactly what inter­ro­ga­tion means. He leans over on his lap and tries to stop him­self from throw­ing up again.

He looks up at the satrap, as earnestly as he can.

Gil
You have to lis­ten to me, sir. We’re not ter­ror­ists. We had no idea the mys­tics were going to attack tonight. The only rea­son we set the lamashu free is because … we’re mem­bers of Bes­tial Lib­er­a­tion.

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