Parabolis (21 page)

Sir Thomas Grail emerged alone from the marshal’s building along the Northern Wall.

“Champion Linhelm is in a meeting with the Bene-seneschal. I’ve been sent in his stead to oversee the inquisition.”

The sentinels opened the back of the prisoner’s trailer. Sitting inside with his arms shackled behind him was Dale. The prisoner squinted as he looked out into the noon sunlight.

“Out,” said Sentinel Walsh.

“He’s not an Emmainite,” observed Thomas.

“He’s affiliated with the Samaeli.”

“I already told you—” Dale began, but was quickly squelched.

“Quiet! You’ll have your chance to make a statement. Not here. Not now.”

“Then hurry up! Get me to the judge! Who’s in charge around here?”

Sentinel Walsh punched him in the gut.

“I said quiet!”

“That’s not necessary,” said Thomas. “Please conduct yourself with more restraint. You are on sacred ground.”

“Just take us below.”

“You intend to join us?” asked Thomas.

“This is our prisoner. We intend to conduct the investigation ourselves.”

Thomas noticed Sentinel Gabriel Helell was carrying a large leather medical bag. “From my understanding, the Mizraheen Treaty states—”

“Get the marshal,” Sentinel Walsh curtly injected. “We don’t have time for a history lesson.”

“Like I said, he is occupied with other matters. I’m here to oversee the inquisition.”

“Listen Sir Grail, we are looking into over two dozen assassinations. Some of the most influential figures around the world have been murdered. Now this prisoner may have vital information regarding what we believe is a conspiracy. The longer you keep us from accessing that information the further you jeopardize this investigation. Get out of the way and let us do our job.”

After a momentary hesitation, Thomas signaled for a fellow templar standing guard to escort them into the holding cells below.

“I will relay your urgency to Champion Linhelm,” he said. “Do not proceed until I return.”

Then he departed for the North Wall.

Dale and the sentinels were taken through the stone doors of the rounded building. The walls were decorated with more reliefs—the Lords of Emmaus, their judging eyes, cold and colorless. A spiral staircase led them underground into a deceptively long hall. At the end of the hall was a door that led to the holding cells below the templar barracks.

Dale was led into a small room and he was shoved into a chair. His wrists and ankles were shackled to it. The sentinels spoke briefly with the templar outside of the room to reassure him that they were following protocol.

The sentinels entered with the templar. Sentinel Walsh removed his coat and rolled up his sleeves. As he paced, he fixed his beady eyes on Dale.

“I don’t understand what I’m doing here,” said Dale.

“You don’t understand?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You’re here because you’re a Samaeli sleeper agent.”

Dale shook his head in disbelief.

“A what?”

“Tell us when you became activated. And then you can tell us your role in these assassinations. What’s your interest in the Machina Investment Group? What is your agenda? Why are you in the city?”

“I was born here, you idiot.”

Sentinel Walsh reared back and threw a punch at Dale. At the last second, Dale turned and recoiled to make the strike a glancing one. The sentinel then punched him in the stomach. Strapped to the chair, Dale could do little to avoid the second blow.

“Just because you’re a citizen, it doesn’t make you innocent. Only a citizen can commit treason. Your contact with the Samaeli and the fact that you’re not dead either makes you a liar or one of them. If you’re lying, you’re a fool. If one of them, you’re a traitor. We think you’re a traitor. And traitors have one thing waiting for them—the gallows, unless you’re willing to cooperate. Now tell us about these killings, your role in them, and disclose the location of the Samaeli.”

“I don’t know! How many times do I have to say it? You have the wrong guy. Yes. I saw the Samaeli because the Fat Fox forced me to open the breaker. I had no idea what was being transported. I didn’t know what they were when I saw them. I never even heard of the Samaeli until someone told me. That’s it. The whole thing, I wanted no part of it. That’s all I know.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Sentinel Helell walked up from behind Dale and drove a syringe into the side of his neck. As his vision blurred, Dale’s last cohesive thought was,
I can’t believe I’m being poisoned again.
This time he did not black out. But as the drug took full effect, Dale wished he had. Unlike the effects of somnidrone, whatever was injected in him put him into a heightened, sensory nightmare. It was as if the drug stripped Dale’s body of its ability to acclimate and dull its senses—the very ability to make living tolerable. Under the drug’s influence, the clothing was heavy, scratchy; the shackles cut on his wrists and weighed down on his ankles; the sentinels’ voices were like shrill screams. Everything was spiked to extremes. With no reprieve, Dale’s mind began to fragment. Time seemed to pass in staccato. He blinked and he was no longer in a chair. Instead, he hung from the ceiling, shackled by the wrists, naked.

Sentinel Walsh had in his hand a cat o’ nine tails. He vanished behind him. There was a crack. Dale cried out. The sting turned to a burn. The sentinel re-appeared. He asked some questions. Dale couldn’t understand the questions. Disoriented and writhing in pain, Dale blurted out things to try to make the whole thing stop. He didn’t know what he was saying. The incoherent babbling did not satisfy the sentinels. Another crack. And another. More questions. More random babbling. More lashings. Then suddenly the lashes stopped. Both sentinels were in Dale’s face, a stalactite of saliva hanging from his chin.

“What did you say?”

They struggled to get his attention.

“Hey! Did you say Enlil Fairchild?”

It was a name Dale had heard while under the spell of somnidrone the night before. He wasn’t aware he had slipped the name or why.

“What about him?” the sentinels continued. “Did he hire the Samaeli? Is he the next mark?”

Norman slapped him.

Just then, Champion Alaric Linhelm came barging through the door with Sir Thomas Grail.

“What in the Maker’s name do you think you’re doing?” Alaric shouted.

There was a lot of shouting.

The sentinels were cornered and stripped of the whip and their medical bag.

“Don’t come in here and tell me how to do my job when you failed at your own!” Sentinel Walsh shouted. “You’re in over your head, templar. Let us get the answers we need from our prisoner and—”

“This man ceased to be your prisoner when you brought him here! I must remind you, Sentinel, that you are on sovereign ground. Ground under the dominion of the Holy Order of the Benesanti. In accordance with the Mizraheen Treaty, the authority of the Republic is abnegated within these temple walls. That means this is no longer your prisoner. He’s mine.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Beg all you want. But do it on your soil. Thomas, show them out.”

“Yes, m’lord.”

“This isn’t over, templar. You’ll be hearing from the Command Directorate.”

When they were ushered out, Alaric approached the half-conscious Dale.

“M’lord…forgive me,” stammered the templar guard who had been watching the inquisition from afar. “I didn’t know—”

With his good eye still fixed on Dale, Alaric addressed the templar guard. “Summon a cleric. Get him cleaned up and properly treated. If this one dies of an infection, you’ll be hanging from this ceiling.”

“Yes, m’lord.”

“And I want a full report of what he disclosed to those barbarians.”

“Yes, m’lord.”

Alaric stormed out.

The templar guard released Dale from the chains and gently laid him down on the stone floor. Then he injected him with a tranquilizer.

Dale was on his stomach, lying on a cot. He was groggy and shirtless. A damp towel had been placed on his wounds. It did nothing to ease the throbbing, burning sensation. When he gathered his wits about him, he sat up and looked around. It was another holding cell—concrete walls, an iron door, a wire-guarded light on the ceiling, a washbasin and faucet beside the cot, and a toilet along the far wall.

He heard whistling from the next cell over.

Dale sighed. “Shit.”

The whistling stopped.

“You all right in there?”

“No. Who are you?”

“You can call me Charles Valkyrie. You?”

“Dale.”

“Well met, Dale. Wish it were under different circumstances.”

“What day is it?”

“The evening of the third.”

There was still time before the Harvest Festival but time was running out. And he still had to make sure the Shawls had heeded his warning and were long departed from Carnaval City. He then had to get word to Darius at the Ancile.

Dale got up and began a close examination of his cell. Starting with the door, he worked his way looking high and low throughout the cell. Other than a food hatch in the door that could only be opened from the outside, there was no sign of structural vulnerability. Dale sat back on the cot, put his head in his hands, and sighed deeply.

“Man, I feel like shit.”

“You got the serum.”

“Serum?”

“A chemical compound designed to extract truth. That’s what they stuck you with. A closely guarded secret even within the SSC. Consider yourself lucky, kid. A cat to the back is a hell of a lot worse without it. Although you do pay for that numbing with a piece of your mind.”

It was true. As much as Dale tried to command his mind to focus, he could not do it. The part of him that was aware of the gravity of the situation urged him on.
Think. Think. How do you get out of here?
But another part of him, still awakening from the drug’s effects, betrayed him, ushering him towards passivity. His mind and body kept telling him to lie down. It was all so tedious—the burden, the problem solving, the lethargy.

“So what brings you here, Dale?”

Conversation. Dale gave no reply to Valkyrie’s question.
I have neither time nor the energy to talk to this guy.
He got up again and, without much hope, began to look around his cell. Undaunted, Charles Valkyrie proceeded with a one-way conversation.

“Probably some hogwash reason, right? I was caught selling elf ears to local apothecaries as karis truffles. In case you don’t know, elf ears are common mushrooms virtually identical to the truffle variant found in the Wilds Deep. Of course, the mushrooms lack the healing properties of its identical counterpart. But it’s a chance to quadruple profits. Anyway, never thought swindling folk could be mistaken for terrorism but hey, if you’re an Emmainite, you’re as good as a Shaldean in this part of the world.”

“You an Emmainite?” asked Dale, as he continued his half-hearted search for some exploitable weakness in his confines.

“Why else would I be stuck here?”

Dale thought of all the Emmainites he saw on his raids into suspected Shaldean burrows during his time with the Republican Guard. He wondered if his neighbor looked like any of the men he’d killed in the name of service.

“‘Charles Valkyrie’ doesn’t sound very Emmainite.”

Charles chuckled. “You got me there. I was born Sayeed Errai. Left the name when I left my home. You? You got a family name?”

“Sunday.”

“Dale Sunday. That doesn’t sound Emmainite either.”

“It’s not.”

“Well, it’s not Ka’eedish or Drashalmec. You even Lorean?”

“I’m half-Albian, half-Meredian. Full Grovish.”

“The Shaldea don’t recruit peaches. What the hell you doing down here?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. They think I know something about some assassinations.”

“You’re an assassin?”

“As much as you’re a terrorist.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“You’re telling me.”

Dale gave up the futile search. He sat back down on the cot and buried his head in his hands. He thought about Uncle Turkish, Auntie Cora Tess, Mosaic. War was at hand putting the lives of his loved ones in peril, and he was locked in a cell. The feeling of helplessness welled into anger. He felt betrayed by the State Security Command, by the Republic for which he had made great sacrifices. The irony of being locked up by the very Republic he was trying to save wasn’t lost on him. Despair set in.
What if I never get out of here?
Dying, caged like an animal.
He wondered if this was reparation for the lives he took. Maybe he wasn’t so innocent after all. Maybe this was a fitting way to pay for the crimes he had committed.

He rummaged through his pockets looking for a smoke and found the copy of
The Walgorende’s Last Stand
. On the inside of the cover was his name written in his twelve-year-old hand. It was faded, the ink bled and dried. He wondered what that little boy would think if he knew where he would end up thirteen years later. He turned to the first page and started reading.

A Mystic king about to be executed by a mage awaited his fate in a dungeon cell. How fitting, thought Dale, reading about a man in a dungeon while sitting in a dungeon himself. The king prays.

Deliver me from this spellbound world, the filth, the fog, the appetites, the noise. Deliver me from my flesh and bones born unto slow decay, this murky dream and the darkening days. And remember me, my Maker, when you come in your Kingdom that I may be with you in paradise when I wake.

As if his life were synched to the narrative, just as the executioners entered the dungeon to fetch the Mystic king, Dale heard a heavy door down the corridor open and close. He stopped reading and waited, listening as the voices and footsteps neared his cell. They stopped just outside of his door. Keys rustled. Dale set the book down. The sound of a click followed the sliding of a steel bolt. The door swung open and standing in the threshold was Sir Thomas Grail.

“Dale Sunday,” he said, crossing his arms. “Upon examination, you have been deemed a saboteur.”