Out of the Darkness

A couple of days later, Istvan got summoned out of the camp for another interrogation with Lammi, the forensic sorcerer. By then, some of his bruises had turned truly spectacular colors. His ribs looked like a sunset. His face was no bargain, either. When he made his way into Lammi’s tent-ducking through the flap hurt, too-the mage’s jaw dropped. “By the stars!” she exclaimed in her good Gyongyosian. “What happened to you?”

No matter how well she spoke his language, Istvan didn’t like to hear her use such oaths-what regard would the stars have for a foreigner like her? He answered as he’d answered the guard: “Nothing.”

Lammi shook her head. “A little more nothing like that and they would lay you on a pyre. Now-tell me at once what happened to you.”

“Nothing,” Istvan repeated.

“You are a stubborn man. I have seen that,” she said. “But you know I have ways to get answers from you.”

“Nothing happened,” Istvan said. As he’d expected, his command of his senses disappeared. Lammi might have miscalculated there. Taking away his senses took away his pain, too, the first relief he’d had from it since the fights. And she’d robbed him often enough, he was starting to get used to it. He didn’t mistake her voice for that of the stars any more.

Presently, she brought him back to himself. “You are a very stubborn man,” she said.

“Thank you,” he answered, — which made her blink.

She needed a moment to rally. “I think,” she said, “we would do well not to send you back to your barracks.” She picked up a crystal and spoke into it in Kuusaman, which Istvan didn’t understand. Whoever was on the other end of the etheric connection answered in the same language. The crystal flared, then went inert. Lammi looked back to Istvan. “Corporal Kun, it seems, is also sporting bruises. How did that happen?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, and waited to go back to the unworld of no sight, no hearing, no smell, no taste, no touch. He looked forward to losing the sense of touch once more: indeed he did.

Lammi made an exasperated noise. “How can we find and punish the men who beat you if you will not tell us who they are?”

“What men?” Istvan said. The forensic sorcerer made another, louder, exasperated noise. With a shrug, Istvan went on, “I told you, nothing happened.”

“Aye, that is what you told me,” Lammi agreed. “And I am telling you once more, Sergeant, that, had a little more of such nothing happened, you would now be dead, and we would not be having this discussion.” Istvan shrugged again. She was probably-no, certainly-right. She glowered at him. “We will be removing you from the captives’ camp for your own protection. You do understand that?”

With one more shrug, Istvan answered, “You are the captors. I am the captive. You can do as you like with me. If you do too much, and word gets back to Gyongyos, your own captives will suffer.”

The Kuusaman mage drummed her fingers on her notepad. She muttered something in her own tongue, then translated it into Gyongyosian: “Very difficult, too.” Istvan inclined his head, as at another compliment. That made Lammi mutter again. When she returned to Gyongyosian once more, she said, “Very well, Sergeant. If you will not discuss this, you will not. Let us turn to something else, then.”

“You are the captor,” Istvan repeated.

“I do wonder,” Lammi murmured. Istvan understood the words, but not everything behind them. She gathered herself and went on, “You have a scar on your left hand, Sergeant.”

Istvan had been afraid in a physical sense of what the Kuusamans might do to him. Now, for the first time in the interrogation, he knew real terror. He had to force a one-word answer out through numb lips: “Aye.”

“Sergeant Kun, your comrade, has an identical scar,” Lammi continued.

“Does he?” Istvan said, shrugging yet again. “I hadn’t noticed.”

The world disappeared once more. Lammi, he remembered, knew when he lied. After some endless-but, happily, also painless-time, she allowed him to return to the sensible world. “I point out,” she said, “that one of the men who was slain in the unfortunate incident, a certain,”-she checked her notes-”a certain Szonyi, aye, had an identical scar, duly noted on his identity documents. He too was a comrade of yours.”

“He was,” Istvan said. He couldn’t very well deny it. Saying anything else- such as how much he missed his friend-would have just given Lammi another handle on him.

She waited for something more. When it didn’t come, she shrugged and said, “How do you explain these three identical scars, Sergeant?”

“We all got them at the same time in Unkerlant,” Istvan said. Again, he said no more. He fought against trembling. His heart pounded in his chest. He would sooner have gone through a dozen beatings than this.

Lammi peered at him through her spectacles. Try as he would to hide it, he feared she saw his agitation. “Why?” she asked softly.