He held Toralk’s gaze again, and the office’s silence seemed to buzz about his ears with the weight of the dozens of things which weren’t being said. Enough ugly things had been strewn about in the AEF’s wake to destroy a score of senior officers’ careers, after all, and Mahrkrai and Toralk knew it as well as Harshu did. How much additional damage could one more…irregularity do?
But that wasn’t really the point, and Harshu knew Toralk understood that, as well.
“All right,” the two thousand said, turning his attention back to Mahrkrai. “Before we do anything else, we definitely need to wring Thalmayr dry and find out what the hells really happened in Thermyn. Let’s get Brychar in here so I can give him the bad news and discuss Thalmayr’s interrogation with him personally. Once we’ve done that, I’ll have a better idea of what to do next.”
* * *
“Good morning, Hundred Thalmayr,” the smartly uniformed Ransaran said, laying his briefcase on the table and opening it to withdraw a PC. “My name is Tamdaran, Brychar Tamdaran. I’m on Two Thousand Harshu’s intelligence staff, and I have a few questions to ask you.”
“Questions?” Hadrign Thalmayr shifted uneasily from the other side of the table. “What sort of questions?”
“There are a few points which Two Thousand Harshu would like clarified,” Tamdaran replied, and brushed his fingers across the PC’s surface. “And, for your information, and pursuant to the requirements of the Articles of War, I’m notifying you that I’ve just activated verifier and recording spellware.”
Thalmayr stopped shifting and froze. His remaining hand locked on his wrist stump in his lap under the concealing tabletop, and his eyes narrowed.
“Verifier spells? Why?”
“Hundred Thalmayr,” Tamdaran said patiently, “you’ve just reported that troops under your command have mutinied when we’re in a de facto state of war. That’s a capital offense, as I’m sure you’re aware. Obviously, the Two Thousand doesn’t want there to be any ambiguity when he convenes the court-martial himself or sends his recommendation for one further up the chain of command.”
The Ransaran watched Thalmayr relax ever so slightly and kept his own expression bland and thoughtful. Tamdaran intended to be as objective as possible in his questioning, but he’d read Thalmayr’s written report carefully. Carefully enough that he was already confident of where his questions were going to lead. That confidence sharpened the edge of his own bitter disappointment in Mayrkos Harshu, yet the two thousand had ordered him to get to the truth, whatever that truth might be. If Tamdaran was right-if Two Thousand Harshu was right-about what had really happened at Fort Ghartoun, the consequences for Harshu would be devastating, but he’d instructed Tamdaran to write up his own independent report of this interrogation for the Inspector General and the Judge Advocate’s Corps. And that, in a strange way, proved that despite the way the two thousand had sacrificed the Kerellian Accords and Articles of War in the name of expediency, he was ultimately true to them in the end.
And if Brychar Tamdaran could help drop kick a prick like Thalmayr into the dragon pit along the way, so much the better.
“Now, Hundred,” he said briskly, bringing up his own copy of Thalmayr’s report, “let’s go through this from the beginning. You say the first intimation you had that Fifty Ulthar and Fifty Sarma were conspiring against you came when-”
* * *
“So there it is,” Mayrkos Harshu said grimly, looking across the steaming cup of bitterblack at Klayrman Toralk. He held the cup in his right hand and tapped his left index finger on the sarkolis crystal on the breakfast table between them. Sunlight streamed in through the chansyu hut’s window, pooling in the crystal’s heart with eye-hurting intensity. “The bastard tried to weasel out of it, but his lies started coming unglued from almost the very first question. Brychar got it all out of him in the end. And it’s all verified, all true.”
Toralk’s own cup sat on the table beside his plate, and he felt no temptation to touch either of them. The acid-churning lump in his stomach saw to that.
“The only thing I can say on his behalf-not in his defense, because I don’t think anything could constitute a defense-is that he seems to genuinely believe the Sharonians were deliberately torturing him and trying to ‘steal’ his mind. Apparently, the fact that the Sharonian healers at Fort Ghartoun testified under verifier that they’d only been doing their best to help him wasn’t sufficient to convince him. So he decided to return the favor and spent the next several weeks systematically beating them to death one inch at a time. From the sound of things, he’d’ve been doing even worse than that if his senior healer hadn’t refused to patch them up between sessions. He tried to emphasize the fact that he wasn’t really trying to kill them-after all, they’d’ve been dead long ago if that was what he’d wanted! — but the real reason for his ‘restraint’ was that he didn’t want them to die and deprive him of his entertainment any sooner than he could help.”
Harshu’s eyes were as bleak and grim as Toralk felt, but he sipped from his bitterblack cup and unlike the Air Force officer, he’d cleaned his plate. Of course, he’d had a bit longer to think about it, Toralk supposed.
“It’s impossible to be certain of everything that happened at this stage,” the two thousand continued, lowering his cup again. “I think Brychar’s pieced it together accurately, but all the verifier spell can really tell us is whether or not Thalmayr believes he’s telling the truth, not necessarily what the truth actually is. I’ll see to it that you get a complete transcript of the interview, but I’ll warn you now that he’s about as self-serving-and as able to convince himself that what he wants to be true has to be true-as a man could possibly be.”
“Are you saying he’s one of those…what-do-you-call-them…‘sociopathic liars,’ Sir? Or that he’s so delusional he genuinely doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong?”
“I think he’ll lie his arse off to stay out of the pit come dragon-feeding time.” Harshu’s tone was as hard as his expression. “Whether that makes him a ‘sociopath’ or not is another question. But while I’m godsdamned sure he feels justified in his own mind, there’s no question that he understands damned well that nobody else is likely to agree with him. And unfortunately”-for the first time, the two thousand looked away from his breakfast guest-“the fact that he headed for Karys rather than Mahritha and didn’t say a word to anyone about it on the way through or send any reports back up-chain suggests two things to me.
“First, he may claim he kept his mouth shut because he didn’t want to spread any confusion or panic, but that’s as full of dragon shit as everything else he’s said. The truth is, he hoped like hell he’d be able to cover up what he’d been doing. He wanted me to hear his version, and he wanted me to hear it before anything could force my hand when it came time to deal with it. If Ulthar and Sarma’s actions had become general knowledge before he got here, I’d’ve had to set the official wheels in motion before he had an opportunity to spin the story in his favor. As far as I’m concerned, that’s proof he damned well knows he’s violated the Articles of War left, right, and center, however ‘justified’ he might have felt. An effort to conceal is pretty strong evidence of guilt.”