Authors: Adrian Howell
Raider shook his head frantically.
“You want to go for a third?!” cried Terry, making a credible show of hysteria.
Raider cursed at her loudly in reply. Terry punched him twice in the face, bloodying his mouth and nose, and then added several more blows to his chest and stomach.
“The king is my lord, my father, my protector,” wheezed Raider, eyes closed and coughing blood. “The king is–”
Raider screamed again as Terry brought the finger total to three.
Having been on the receiving end of this sort of attention myself, I knew that the problem with the common approach was that it relied too much on physical pain. Not that pain wasn’t serious persuasion, especially in the hands of a dedicated interrogator, but it wasn’t pain that broke me years ago in the little metal room where Ed Regis and I first met.
I stopped Terry before she hit Raider again. “Let’s try to keep him conscious,” I suggested.
Then I turned to Raider. “You’ll have to forgive my hot-tempered partner,” I said to him mildly. “Terry has been itching for a lead like you for months.”
“You’ll get nothing from me!” spat Raider, breathing heavily. “I am the loyal servant of King Divine.”
“You’re a fool and a father,” I countered. “I remember what you said to me about trust, Raider. I trusted you with my sister’s life. Now you’ll trust me with Marion’s. Her life for Catherine’s location. I hope for Marion’s sake that you’ll agree to a fair trade.”
“You bastard,” breathed Raider, horrified. “Marion is innocent. How could you bring a child into this?”
“Don’t lecture me about using children,” I replied callously. “You used Alia to get yourself off the camera crew and then marched her all around Lumina so you could continue your mapping mission. You can think of King Divine as your father as much as you like, but you had better not forget who your real family is.”
Raider silently glared at me. I could feel the hatred burning in his eyes.
“My sister likes Marion a lot,” I continued, “but don’t imagine for a second that I won’t kill her if you love her less than the adopted daughter of your King Divine. A king, I might add, who thinks nothing of putting you and Marion in harm’s way.”
Raider still remained silent.
“Fine,” I said, turning to Terry, “bring Marion down, please.” Then I looked into Raider’s eyes again, saying, “I want you to watch her die.”
Terry started for the stairs. She made five and a half steps before Raider frantically cried out, “Wait!”
Terry stopped.
“Wait, please,” begged Raider. “You can’t! You can’t do this!”
“No, you’re the one who can’t, Raider,” Terry reminded him. “We can. And we will.”
Terry started to turn toward the stairs again, but Raider shouted, “No! Wait, goddamn it! Do you really think it’s just a simple matter of knocking on King Divine’s door?”
“You know where his door is,” I said. “You’re going to tell us.”
“Nobody has a direct line to the king, Adrian,” said Raider. “The shippers only know their small parts of the road.”
“You are not a shipper!” said Terry. Returning to Raider’s side, she grabbed his broken fingers and played with them in a way that made him groan loudly. “You’re inner circle, Raider. You called your king up on a phone!”
“Is that what you want?” gasped Raider. “A phone call?! Yes, I can call him up in an emergency. That doesn’t mean I know where he lives!”
Terry kept her hand resting lightly on Raider’s broken fingers. “You were delivering Adrian to him.”
“You’re insane!” cried Raider. “You think I know his home address? All I know is the Royal Gate. That’s where my ticket stops.”
“What’s the Royal Gate?” I asked.
Raider looked at me, wide-eyed.
Terry jerked Raider’s hand again. “Answer him!”
Wincing in pain, Raider mumbled through clenched teeth, “It’s the guard post where the High Seraphim check and finalize transport for those who seek an audience with the king. I was delivering you there so that we could be escorted in. The king is invisible, Tiffany or Terry or whatever the hell your name is! The king is untouchable!”
Terry released her grip on Raider’s fingers.
“What do you think?” I asked her.
“I think he could be telling the truth,” Terry said thoughtfully. “King Divine probably wouldn’t send out spies that could lead assassins directly back to him.”
“You’re damn right he wouldn’t!” snapped Raider. “The only way anyone meets the king is through the High Seraphim at the Royal Gate. You think a phantom train is going to get you through King Divine’s personal guard?”
“No,” I replied. “But I think we’ll settle for the location of the Royal Gate and the names of your contacts in the High Seraphim.”
Raider shook his head. “You will never get that from me.”
“Why not?” I scoffed. “According to you, we’d never get past them anyway.”
“Because I serve my king,” he said. Then he looked me in the eyes and repeated with more resolve than I thought he had left, “I will never betray my king.”
“Too bad for Marion,” I said pitilessly. “But I guess you had to choose one of them, right?”
Raider glared at me with bloodshot eyes. “I love my daughter, Adrian. I love her like the sun and the moon but King Divine is my lord. King Divine is my god! Do you really think I would turn on my own god?”
I shook my head. “I don’t care about your pitiful excuse for a god, Raider. But I want Catherine. Give me Randal’s child and yours will be spared. That isn’t an unreasonable exchange.”
Raider shook his head.
Terry looked like she was about to do something painful to him again, but this time I beat her to it, slamming my fist down onto Raider’s damaged hand.
Grabbing Raider by the front of his shirt, I hissed into his ear, “Do you honestly think I’m just going to kill Marion? Think again! I’ll make her death last a week! You’ll watch, Raider, as I cut pieces from her! I’ll shove the parts down your throat! I’ll bathe you in her blood!”
“Goddamn it, Adrian! I can’t tell you!” hollered Raider, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I can’t betray my king any more than I already have! I can’t! I can’t!”
I released his shirt and took a step back, breathing heavily. Raider stared off into space as he continued whimpering about his king. He looked as lost as Alia did on her worst days.
I turned to Terry, feeling sick to my stomach. “I think we need a short timeout.”
Terry looked at me questioningly.
“I want to talk to you and Ed Regis upstairs,” I said.
Terry shook her head. “We can’t just leave him down here alone, Adrian.”
I understood Terry’s concern but I doubted Raider’s conversion was strong enough for him to pull off a suicide like the ones at Wood-claw. Besides, we would hear it if his chair fell over.
Just in case, however, I said to Raider, “If we find you dead in here when we return, Marion will join you. And if there’s an afterlife, you can ask her how long it took for her to die.”
Terry and I went back up to the living room, where we found Ed Regis standing at the window.
Turning around to face us, he said, “I’m afraid Marion came running down when she first heard her father screaming. Fortunately Alia caught her and hauled her back.”
I would deal with the fallout of that later. I asked Ed Regis, “Have you been listening in?”
Ed Regis shook his head. “I couldn’t make out most of your conversation after you closed the door. How is it going?”
Terry briefly explained.
“The RG,” said Ed Regis, nodding. “So that was the Royal Gate that the Angel Wolves were talking about. We need to find out where it is.”
“That’s the problem,” I said. “I don’t think we’re going to get anything more out of Raider. I mean, if he won’t tell us to save his own kid, then he’s insane. And if he’s insane, we can’t trust anything he says.”
“That’s assuming he believed your threat, Adrian,” Ed Regis pointed out.
“True,” I admitted, and then asked Terry, “Do you think he believed me?”
“You did sound pretty convincing,” said Terry. “But I still don’t think he’s insane. He’s just converted.”
“Conversion is a type of insanity as far as I’m concerned,” I said.
“Fine,” said Terry, shrugging, “then he’s insane. But that doesn’t change the fact that he has information we need.”
“Many converted people put their master above or at least equal to their families,” said Ed Regis, probably speaking from direct experience. “Forcing Raider to reveal the location of this Royal Gate could break his mind.”
“I don’t care about Raider’s mind,” said Terry. “If he’s really not going to tell us, then he’s not worth anything more to us anyway. We might as well kill him and be done with.”
“I don’t care about him either, Terry,” I said. “But do you really want to take Marion down there and bleed her in front of Raider?”
“I thought
you
were going to do that.”
I gave her a disbelieving stare. “You’re joking, right?”
Terry stared right back.
“Ed Regis?” I said, hoping that he might restore some sanity to our conversation.
“This is your mission, Adrian,” Ed Regis reminded me. “You said you’d do anything to get Cindy back.”
“Almost anything!” I countered. “That doesn’t include torturing second graders. Raider is right. Marion is innocent.”
“Well, I don’t know where that puts us,” said Ed Regis, shaking his head. “Unless you’re asking me to–”
“No!” I said. “Of course not, Ed Regis.” Thinking for a moment, I suggested, “How about we take Raider to the nearest Guardian settlement and have the Knights there work on him with a proper delver?”
This time it was Terry’s turn to stare at me in disbelief. Realizing that I had missed yet another obvious fact about psionics, I braced myself.
“Delvers are impossible to accurately delve,” Terry explained to me in an exasperated tone. “They have too much control over their own thoughts. If we took Raider to the Knights, they’d do exactly what we’re doing now.”
I doubted that it would be
exactly
the same. They would use Marion for sure.
“Besides,” added Terry, “if at all possible, I don’t want to risk traveling long-distance with Raider in tow.”
Ed Regis said carefully, “Well, if you’re dead set against using the child, then your only other option is to continue trying to beat the information out of him. But I doubt you’ll succeed against a convert and experienced spy like Raider.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” I said as the thought popped into my mind. “What if we can unhinge his conversion just a little? Then maybe he’ll be willing to tell us where the Royal Gate is in return for Marion.”
“What do you mean?” asked Terry. “How do you unhinge conversion?”
I smiled grimly as I told her.
“It might work, Adrian,” Terry agreed slowly. “At least it has the virtue of never having been tried before.”
Ed Regis nodded. “I’m sure it’ll unhinge him. I just hope he doesn’t snap completely.”
Chapter 14: The Power of Truth
I asked Ed Regis to remain on lookout and took Terry back down into the basement. Hearing us enter, Raider turned his head and looked at us apprehensively, but then seemed to calm down a little when he saw that we hadn’t brought Marion.
“What now?” Raider asked defiantly. “More fingers?”
“No,” I said quietly as I walked up to him. “Just truth.”
“Truth?”
“The truth, Raider,” I repeated as Terry silently watched me. “For starters, the truth is that you are going to die in this room tonight. You’ve probably figured that out for yourself by now, but we’re not going to let you leave this place alive whether you help us or not. You already know that we’re after Catherine. This is something we can’t let you leave here with.”
“And Marion?”
“I told you to trust me,” I said. “Marion will live, but only if you help us.”
“Which I can’t,” said Raider. He stared straight into my eyes as he said resolutely, “I won’t.”
“For your king?” I asked.
“That’s right,” said Raider. “For my king.”
I had always imagined the long-term connection between master and convert to be like the thin, silky strands of a spider web spread out in a massive, worldwide pattern. Like all Angels, Raider’s memory had been altered post-conversion to make him see Randal Divine as his master. The Historian had said that this was a viable temporary solution, but I doubted such a facade would hold up against truth. After all, if you wanted to know where a line really led, all you had to do was pull on it. Nothing could ever have prepared me for what the Historian told me about Catherine. No lie, no fiction could be as powerful as the truth. It was time to give Raider the full treatment.
“I will do anything for my king,” said Raider.
“For your queen,” I corrected gently. “For your queen, Raider.”
Raider looked up at me, blinking, unable to comprehend.
“Randal Divine isn’t your master,” I said. “Your master is, and has always been, Catherine.”
Raider shook his head. “That’s absurd. It’s impossible.”
“But it’s true,” I told him. “And deep down, you know it’s true. Deep down, Raider, you’ve always known.”
Just like I had known. A man could live his entire life in denial and be all the happier for it. Truth has no mercy. Truth has no compassion, no honor, and no redemption.
“You’re lying,” said Raider, but I could already see the uncertainty in his eyes. “Cathy isn’t a Divine. The old queen forced the adoption.”
“Larissa knew what Catherine’s blood contained,” I said. “She knew Catherine would become a master someday.”
“No!” Raider shouted furiously. “No! It’s not true! Randal Divine is my king! He is my god!”
“Search your heart,” I said. “Randal is no god. He’s no king. He’s nothing but a cheap lying thug who put himself at the top of the Angels by using a child master as his shield. You owe him nothing.”
Raider was hyperventilating, his whole body shaking as he stared at me in horror.
“Tell us where the Royal Gate is, Raider,” I said soothingly. “Be free of him. Be free of your false god once and for all.”
Raider closed his eyes tightly as tears streamed down his cheeks. He looked like he was in far more pain than Terry could ever have put him through.