Bondage and Freedom
The Night Watch let out a sigh of relief when they heard their prisoner’s surrender, and began the interrogation.
“Why were you following us?” Lum demanded.
The rat-demon shrugged. “You kill our leader and still you ask this? You try to take half the city from us and still you ask this?”
Afet looked at Lum and back at the rat. “Hold on, let’s back up. What’s your name, and who do you work for?”
“My name it won’t hurt you to have. Alzith. And the Alley Lords work for nobody but ourselves.”
“The Alley Lords? Who’s that?”
Alzith laughed. “You ARE wet under the ears, aren’t you?” he answered, unhelpfully. Heluk growled and pressed the knife against the rat’s neck. “Right, right, but first you tell me what I get from helping you.”
Lum answered. “You get turned over to the town guard for justice; as for that, I cannot vouch for them. Ozgun?”
Ozgun nodded uncomfortably. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Then why should I talk? Surely my head will be in the dust by tomorrow whether I talk or not.”
“If you answer our questions, we will tell the guards of your cooperation,” Afet said. But Alzith just laughed again.
“A cooperative thief is still a thief, yes? Where you are from, are the city patrol merciful on thieves? No, no – if I talk, it’s for freedom or nothing.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Lum said. “We don’t even know if you have anything to offer, and we don’t have the power to let you free if we wanted to. Which we don’t.”
“Oh, too bad! And all that I have to tell you as well. Why even now I could save your lives. For a few minutes, anyway,I can still save your lives.”
“What are you talking about?” Afet asked.
“Oh, to think that if you’d not killed Squim we’d have had new recruits in two weeks.”
Korythis blanched. “Guys, he might be right.” She pulled Lum and Afet aside, while Heluk guarded the prisoner. “I’ve heard about high-country demons that can shapeshift; their demon-taint is spread through wounds, they say. If he’s telling the truth, we could be in trouble.”
They talked it over, and decided to confer with Ozgun in the hallway. Afet and Heluk stayed behind, trying to coax more information out of their prisoner.
“You said back there that we worked for the gray f-ers,” Afet said. “Who are you talking about?”
For the first time, the rat’s composure broke a little. “What do you mean who am I talking about?”
“Just what I said. We don’t know who they are.”
“You? You don’t --? Ah! But then, why did you attack Squim at the market?”
“He was killing merchants, and we were defending them. Why was he killing merchants?”
“Why, to get the olostium that the – but you really know none of this?”
Afet sighed, and Heluk said biting off each word, “No. We. Don’t. Why don’t you tell us?”
“Right, right. I guess telling you of the enemy does us only good, does it not? Three months ago then the Gray Men arrived in Southspur, and quiet they were at first, and we only watched, only waited and watched. But they soon began taking over, killing any Lords sent to do work in Southspur. And they began killing honest merchants in the area for no reason, no reason, and sucking their souls from their bodies.” Alzith shivered.
“Sucking their souls?” prompted Afet.
“Yes! Well, we never saw it happen, I should say, but bodies in Southspur were found, well, melting, melting like wax or like ice, and gray as stone. One I myself found stuffed in an alley, with no face left to it, and we watched it all day, and before nightfall the body was gone, all melted away entire.”
“Eww!” Afet made a face.
“You see why we tried to stop them then!” Alzith insisted. “They endanger the city!”
“Right,” Heluk grinned. “And you don’t?”
“Not a bit! No, nothing like that we don’t. Murder isn’t our game, friend! We just, well, we protect the people of the city, the merchants and the glassblowers, from any harm. Like fires or robberies or such – but no, that’s not where our talk leads for now, not until I have my promise.”
They continued interrogating him about the gray men. He’d fought against the gray men only once, and in a group. His job had been to snipe from the rooftops – but as soon as the battle began, a cloud of darkness had covered the street below, and he’d heard screams, and then the surviving Alley Lords had all fled. They’d recently heard a rumor that the Gray Men required a mystic substance called olostium, and that a merchant would be smuggling it into the fair today. But when they’d attacked the merchant, a figure in a colorful robe had splashed “magic waters” on them, forcing them to take their true form – “And then you attacked us and killed two Lords, and you don’t expect revenge?”
Meanwhile, Korythis and Lum spoke with Ozgun in the corridors. “Look,” said Ozgun. “This isn’t usually my field, this interrogation thing. And I guess if you think it’s best – well, whatever you want to do to handle this, I’ll back you up on. Damn, but I wish Nurallah was here!”
Lum frowned. “You mean that if we want to let him free, we can do so? Won’t he just go killing more people?”
“That’s a good point, I guess. But I don’t really know how interrogations work. You’re right, though – I can’t just let you let him go free.”
“What would happen if he escaped?” asked Korythis.
“Hmm…right. I guess I couldn’t do anything about it then. But maybe I better not be in there. You’ll tell me what he says, right?”
Lum and Korythis agreed to do so. “Well, let me get you some deputizing papers written up. They’ll let you carry weapons without having them peacebonded. I’ll be back soon!” He trotted off down the hall, and Lum and Korythis rejoined their friends.
“You made up your minds?” Alzith asked.
“Perhaps. Tell us what sort of information you offer.”
“I’ll tell you what you’re facing in the next few weeks, and how to, ah, avoid the recruitment if you want.”
“What about the Alley Lords? Where are they located?”
Alzith pretended to think about it for a minute. “Listen, they gotta know I’m in here by now, and they’ll probably tear me apart anyway if you let me go, cuz they’ll figure I’ll talk. And they’re right. I can tell you where they are and who’s in charge.”
“How do we know he won’t just go back and join them?” Heluk asked Lum. Alzith laughed.
“Go back? Do you not hear what I’m saying? They’ll kill me if I go back! No, you let me go and I’m gone, out of the city for good. Go get set up in Manzikert or somewhere.”
Lum looked troubled. “I don’t trust you to keep your demontaint to yourself. How can I trust you?”
Alzith sighed. “Look, I can offer you my word and nothing more, can I? Except this: I got no interest in spreading it, it’s too much trouble and too high-profile. And you caught me once, what’s to keep you from catching me again? I want far away and low-profile.”
The companions talked amongst themselves, and finally agreed that on Alzith’s oath that he’d leave the city, never return, and never attack or infect another person with his taint, they’d look the other way while he escaped.
“Right,” he said. “Then your time’s running out. You got maybe fifteen minutes to eat some fresh belladonna if you want to not be like me come full moon next.”
“Belladonna?” Lum said. “Where can we find that?”
Afet ribbed the cleric. “Not one for beauty, are you? I’ll be back in a minute.” She went out into the hallway and flagged down a guard. “You! It’s an emergency – find the nearest apothecary that caters to women and purchase as much belladonna as you can. Ozgun will vouch for us, but be quick!” The guard, awed by the young man’s presence, bowed hastily and ran down the stairs to the front of the barracks. Afet returned to the room.
While they waited for the guard’s return, they asked more questions, and found out that the Alley Lords were quartered in the Lover’s Tower in the north part of town; that (according to Alzith) they tried to avoid violence as being too high-profile; and that they never showed their rat forms if they could help it. The water thrown on them had apparently contained magically enhanced belladonna. He also told them a warehouse in Southspur where the gray men were headquartered.
They extracted the oath once more from the rat, and finally untied his silver chains. He sauntered over to the room’s shuttered window and opened it. “Thanks,” he said; “You may want to have a physic handy when you eat the herbs.” Winking, he transformed into a rat, and in seconds had disappeared out the window and up onto the roof.
The belladonna arrived shortly thereafter. Lum, Heluk, and Afet all ate a handful; although it made Afet violently ill, the others shrugged off its effects. They hoped it worked.
