Cinder Bound

4 - Salted Slugs: Tavlen

The interrogation room was a level above the manor's dungeon. It was small, made smaller still by a partition wall they had inset with one of Ilina's mirrors. The reflective glass allowed them to watch the room without being watched in turn; a useful espionage tool, they'd found over the years.

Telei sprawled in the only chair in the cramped space. He was short but broad, with olive-brown skin puckered with scars. He grinned at Tavlen as he entered (a child eager to show off his new toy) and the old talon-scratch over his lips snagged in the smile.

Tavlen didn't smile back. How Telei could insist on wearing such wildly coloured wools when he was trained in stealth and camouflage was beyond the army's comprehension. Today's shirt consisted of orange and green triangles; he was a miscoloured checkerboard cleaved and repieced with pockets.

Fent, in a more sensible red cotton and black trousers, hovered behind Telei; his notebook at the ready. "You smell much nicer, Unyielding," Fent whispered.

Tavlen shook out his damp hair and rounded them both to lean against the wall by the mirror. Fent had coerced him to wash off the cages (an activity unbecoming a court dragon).

That was the problem with interrogating someone else's informant. Any thread of intel Nim could glean from his stay was a thread to a rope he could slip around their necks.

Beyond the glass, Nim and Jeha were separated by a small table. Tavlen settled himself in to study their progress.

The vulture sat on a precarious stool that had one leg shorter than the others. He rocked his middle-aged booze-belly back and forth, an annoying tap of wood on wood. The fidgeting wasn't anxious, just... aggravated in the way of a bureaucrat whose time was being wasted.

Wasting time wasn't an interrogation strategy Tavlen was familiar with. If it counted as a strategy at all.

The questions Jeha focused on were irritatingly irrelevant: childhood, lifestyle, finance. Like Nim had arrived for a job interview and his bandaged, two-fingered hand on the table between them had been an unfortunate lapse in hospitality on their end.

The young dragon-skin asked his useless questions in an even-keeled, slowly-enunciated tone and took careful notes. For all his Court timbre, he had the hunched, skeletal look of a kid who'd barely eaten in his growing years. Long fingers, sharp chin, no facial hair; skin too close to his bones and hoodless eyes that refused to look across the table.

Tavlen silently slid the vent above the mirror closed, muffling the interrogation beyond. "How old did you say this kid was?" he asked.

Telei shrugged. "His papers said early twenties."

Fent snorted (in this interim of banality, the Worm had dedicated himself to reorganising the bookmarks in his notes). "He looks half that."

"You have to see his eyes," Lyra's voice came softly from the alcove's entrance at their back. "You look inside him and he's more coffin than kid."

Fent and Telei startled at her silent entrance, which amused Tavlen. He'd left the door open for her in the first place; cases with magic intrigued Lyra like little else.

"Golden Dragon," Telei whispered her title with a note of awe. "It's an honour."

Lyra studied the interrogation through the grey-tinted glass in answer, her expression guarded by her cloak.

The dragoness was seen by few and spoke to even fewer. She found explaining herself to people outside her circle taxing; and rarely found the expense of expanding her circle worthwhile.

Unfortunately, as Tavlen's army grew, her absence made her somewhat of a legend. Most only saw her in full drake-skin when she was called to battle, which lent a note of wonder to the space she vacated to avoid notice in the first place.