4.82: Interrogation

Talbot’s party didn’t run too long, which was good, because we were busy. Kylie had to do homework, and I had to lord over her the fact that I didn’t have any homework.

We’d barely settled in when there was a knock at the door. Kylie leapt up, answered it, and froze. “Can I help you?” she asked testily.

I rushed to join her. Outside were two sekuranti in traditional pink. Not Saina’s bodyguards; strangers. A guy as tall and wide as the door with hands that could probably cover my entire head lurked behind a smaller man. He glared from under bushy brows. He had the Sekura Refujeyo crest tattooed on his goddamned throat.

The shorter man looked much more approachable. He wore a pink tie, a jaunty little hat and a friendly smile. “Hello,” he said. “Would you two happen to be, ah…” he consulted a tablet… “Kylie, and Kayden James?”

“Why?” I asked.

“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Kylie said.

“Didn’t mean to imply that you did! We’re not here to detain anyone. We just have a few questions for you.”

“About what?” I asked.

“You two are acquaintances of Cheryl Castor, yes?”

Kylie and I exchanged a glance. What could he possibly want with Cheryl?

“We know her,” I admitted.

“Do you know where the might be?”

“No.” It was technically the truth, but barely. I mean, I knew where she was half an hour ago – with us, at Talbot’s party. But I had no idea where she was now. So I wasn’t lying.

“Is she okay?” Kylie asked. “Did something happen?”

“That’s what we’d like to determine,” the man said. “If you’d just come with us, we have a room prepared for a discussion. Or, if it makes you more comfortable, we can do it right he – ”

“No,” I said quickly. “We’ll come with you.” There wasn’t anything incriminating in our room, now that I’d passed my key stuff on to Cheryl, but there were plenty of weird things. It was unusual that these two random sekuranti would poke around and find Max’s journals in his old office space and even more unlikely that they’d think anything of it, but why tempt fate? “Just, um. First.” I whipped out my tablet and started drafting a quick message to Saina, Alania and Malas, telling them where we were going. I didn’t think we were about to be Disappeared by Refujeyo’s police force, but I’d been dragged into enough meetings with mysterious government figures to start taking precautions.

The man didn’t seem offended by the precaution. “I’m Inquisitor Kurt Hagan,” he said. I nearly dropped the tablet; beside me, I felt Kylie stiffen. The Inquisition were the ruling council of Sekura Refujeyo; the security branch’s equivalent of the school’s High Council, or the lawmakers’ Grand Circle. Why was an Inquisitor here, asking random students about a random apprentice?

“And, um, you?” I asked the huge tank of a man, trying not to sound terrified.

He glared at me for several seconds. Finally, he grunted, “Ralphie.”

“Right,” I muttered. ‘Ralphie’ didn’t seem like enough to identify anyone, but telling people that we were going with a fucking Inquisitor should be enough if anyone needed to track down what happened to us. Not that I was expecting that.

The pair lead us down a few corridors, towards an empty classroom. They didn’t try to separate us, or take us out of the familiar parts of the school, which I was grateful for; I would’ve refused either of those things.

It was one of the smaller classrooms, about the size of a large office, used for classes with less than ten students and not much need for demonstration space. The few desks in it had mostly been pushed to the side, leaving one in the middle of the room furnished with four chairs (two sitting opposite the other two), a little microphone and sound recorder, and a small teapot. Ralphie poured and served four cups of tea while Inquisitor Hagan gestured for us to sit down. His hands dwarfed the little teapot.

I stared down into my tea and reflected briefly that three years ago or so, this would have been the scariest thing I could imagine. Well, second scariest – the scariest would’ve been losing control of my curse and killing or maiming my family. But being a cursed kid getting lead off by an actual real life Inquisitor and a big guard? I’d had so many nightmares about that. The nemaganti thought the Inquisition had been disbanded generations ago, but I’d still had nightmares about it.

Now, it was mostly confusing. And annoying. Whatever beef they had with Cheryl, it didn’t involve us, and with no information I was definitely on her side by default.

“How well do you two know Miss Castor?” Inquisitor Hagan asked.

I shrugged. “Well enough, I guess?”

“She’s in our coven,” Kylie explained.

Inquisitor Hagan looked a little surprised. Ralphie’s eyebrows shot way up. I figured that the Inquisitor was probably a legacy mage and Ralphie had been raised by nemaganti. People didn’t just admit to being in covens. In Refujeyo, we were supposed to assimilate and be a bit embarrassed by our origins. In the nemaganti world, it was like claiming to be part of a terrorist cell.

“R-right,” the Inquisitor said. “When did you last see her?”

“What do you want to talk to her about?” I asked.

“Nothing you need to worry about. When did you last see her?”

Kylie and I exchanged a glance.

“At the party today,” I said. “It was, um…”

“Maybe a couple of hours ago?” Kylie suggested. “I didn’t look at the time.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That sounds about right.” It had been about half an hour ago.

“What and where was this party?”

“It was my boyfriend’s birthday,” Kylie said. “In Alta Foresto.”

“How did Miss Castor seem? Was she excited? Nervous? Jumpy? Did she – ?”

“She was fine,” I snapped. “She was at a party and she seemed fine. Look, we’d be able to help a lot more if we knew what this was about. Is her master looking for her or something?”

The Inquisitor and Ralphie exchanged a glance.

“He’ll certainly feel better when we find her,” Inquisitor Hagan said. “Kayden, how much do you know about runes?”

“Um. A bit?”

“Your old runecrafting teacher says that you were quite a skilled students. And that you’ve demonstrated an interest in some non-standard runic languages as well.”

“I guess? I was better at potions. What’s this got to do with anything?”

“Do you two remember when Miss Surya got hurt in the Pit last semester?” Ralphie asked, in the first complete sentence I’d heard from him. “You were both there, right?”

“Yeah, it was awful,” Kylie said.

“Do you know much about the runes used to control the Pit?” he asked me.

“Sorry, what?” I said.

Kylie leaned forward. “If you’re seriously suggesting that Kayden had anything to do with that – ”

“He’s not suggesting any such thing,” the Inquisitor said, raising his hands in a pacifying gesture. “Obviously Mr James isn’t involved in that. He was in the Pit at the time. That would be a massive risk.”

“And a great way to throw off suspicion,” Ralphie growled.

“Nobody’s going to put themselves in the Pit with damaged safety controls on purpose to throw off suspicion for something they have no reason to think they’ll be suspected of in the first place,” Inquisitor Hagan said. “He’s obviously not involved.” To us, he continued, “but we would like to know if you saw Cheryl Castor at all around that time.”

I tried to think back. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m pretty sure she wasn’t on campus at all around then.”

“Wasn’t on campus, or you didn’t see her?”

“Well, usually when she’s here we meet up, so…”

“So if she was on campus and didn’t see you, that would be suspicious behaviour?”

“What? Of course not! People get busy!”

“She doesn’t always see us, actually,” Kylie corrected me. “She organised that whole thing with the Initiates without us, remember?”

“So she’s controlled things in your coven behind your back before,” the Inquisitor said. “Good to confirm. Mr James, did Miss Castor ever ask you to help her with runes?”

“Um, no. I don’t think so. Wait, do you think she sabotaged the Pit?!”

The two sekuranti exchanged a glance.

“Interesting conclusion to come to right away,” Ralphie said. “Do you know anything about it?”

“It’s not an interesting – you obviously think she did it! Well, she didn’t!”

“Which she is free to explain in her trial after we find her,” the Inquisitor said. “But that’ll be up to Skolala, or more likely Politikala Refujeyo, for a case like this. Our job is simply to find her.”

“And if she was here a couple of hours ago, she won’t get far,” Ralphie said. “Also, she definitely did it.”

“Oh, yes. The evidence is undeniable. There are a very limited number of spells that can mold ancient stone in such a precise way, and of course there’s her history of political agitation. Threatening the High Council and soforth.”

“She never threatened the High Council!” I protested.

“Really? We’ve all read the transcripts.”

“These two were part of that, too,” Ralphie said.

“Now, that’s not fair. The testimony in the transcript is that Mr Ericson, Miss Yuan, and these two were taken completely by surprise. The High Council believes that claim and I for one trust the High Council’s judgement. Don’t you?”

Ralphie huffed.

To us, the Inquisitor said, “I know she’s manipulated you before. But we’re going to put a stop to it.”

“Nobody’s manipulated us,” I snapped. “And Cheryl would never do anything like that. She’s just not the type of person to go around breaking safety features to hurt people.”

“And yet she hates the school, doesn’t she? She’d love to see it embarrassed, yes?”

“She doesn’t hate Sekura Refujeyo,” I said. “She helped some initiates take one complaint to the Council.”

“A complaint where the state of the Pit, as well as Miss Surya getting hurt, was very advantageous to her, yes?”

“So you think she… what? Just decided to sabotage a piece of the school and put people in danger in case it turned out to be a good thing to tease the Council about later? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t think anything, Mr James. I just keep people safe; you, the school, and her. Anything else is for the courtroom. Now, in your opinion, who are Miss Castor’s closest friends outside of Refujeyo? Who do you think she relies on the most?”

“I have no idea,” I said.

“And you, Miss Kylie?”

“I don’t know either. She doesn’t really talk about that kind of thing to us.”

“If you’re going to be deliberately unhelpful,” Ralphie said, “then we have to consider – ”

“They’re not involved, Ralphie, they’re just having a hard time with the fact that their friend is a terrorist. It happens to the best of us. Miss Castor has a young daughter, yes?”

I felt my blood turn to ice. “Y-yes.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“No.” Technically the truth – Cheryl had left holly with her brother, but I had no idea where he lived. “She never brings Holly to Refujeyo.”

“Probably to keep her out of the crossfire when she’s caught. She’s never mentioned commonfolk friends to you? Talked about which of her family members she’s closest to?”

“No, we never talk about that kind of thing.”

“Hmm. Well, thank you for your time, both of you. We’ll contact you if we have any more questions.”

Kylie stood up. “Sorry we couldn’t be more helpful,” she said, insincerely.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Inquisitor Hagan said with a reassuring smile. “Both of you were extremely helpful.”