CHAPTER XVI (16)- Interrogation

Kizu awoke on a metal cot. He felt horrible. Every portion of him ached. Reaching out through his bond, he felt Mort. Safe and sound, and only a couple kilometers away from him.

Kizu’s head pounded as he pushed himself into a sitting position. The room he was in was small and divided by metal bars. There was a bucket in the corner and a small window overhead, also barred, that let in beams of sunlight.

“Welcome back to the land of the living.”

Kizu whipped his head around and immediately regretted it. Once his vision stopped swimming all about him, he saw a bald man leering at him from behind the bars. Gray scales crested the crown of his scalp, and his yellow eyes were slitted like a predator’s. Tainted, like Harvey, but similarities to his jovial friend ended at his race. This man’s gut strained against a gray and black uniform that Kizu found vaguely familiar from the last week’s party. He twirled an ivory wand in his fat, sausage-like fingers. Some sort of constable, clearly.

“How long was I asleep for?” Kizu asked.

The man stopped twirling the wand and pointed it at Kizu’s head.

“This is your only warning,” the man said. He glowered at Kizu.

“My warning?” But before Kizu could press him further, the man’s wrist twitched, and a beam of green light smacked into Kizu’s face. It felt harmless, barely even a tickle. Kizu opened his mouth to ask what the constable had done. Or, at least, he tried to open his mouth. He reached up and touched his face. Uninterrupted flesh stretched across where his lips would usually be. All that moving his jaw accomplished was stretching out that skin.

He tried to scream, but all he managed was a terrified hum. He took rapid breaths through his nose while his eyes bulged. His mind flipped between different cures for the hex. He knew a few different brews, but he needed equipment. Equipment he didn’t have. His bag was missing.

“Oh, stop harassing the poor kid.” Another constable walked in from around the corner. He was leaner than his partner and looked bored more than anything. Unlike his partner, he was human. He flicked his wand at Kizu’s face and, blessedly, returned it to normal.

Kizu gasped and clutched at his lips.

“Okay kid, listen to us,” the human constable said, walking up to the bars. “What you did yesterday was absolutely unacceptable. Do you understand?”

Kizu blinked. “You mean breaking curfew?”

The other constable exploded. “Arrogant little shit! You think playing dumb will get you out of this? We found you writhing in a puddle of your own piss after a security ward booted you into the street. You’ve got some fines to pay for breaking and entering. And if you can’t pay ‘em with cash, you’ll pay ‘em with time served.”

“It was my family’s villa though.”

The leaner man sighed. “Lying about it won’t get you anywhere. The security ward wouldn’t have booted you if you were their blood. And besides, the boy whose family owns the villa came out and told us he’d never seen you before in his life.”

Kizu stared at them. “Well, since you’ve decided I’m in the wrong, what do I need to do now?”

“You need to pay the fine.” The bigger constable seemed irritated about repeating himself.

“I have no money.”

“And your parents?”

“You’re welcome to contact them. My father’s name is Kaga Kubou.”

The Tainted constable laughed humorlessly. “How long do you plan to yank us around by our bits? What, are you a troubled orphan down on his luck? Looking for some fancy trinkets to pawn? At least tell us your sob story. Come on, now, we know you’ve got one. Kids like you love to spill ‘em. You feel sorry for yourself, right? And you think we should feel sorry for you, too.”

Kizu didn’t answer. Both lies and the truth seemed equally useless. Instead, he figured he might as well try to shift the conversation to a useful subject.

“It’s daylight,” he said, stating the obvious fact. “Will I have a trial?”

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“We just need to process the paperwork,” the lean man said. “The boy at the villa mentioned pressing charges, but we still need to verify his position in the household.”

“After that, the case is open and shut.” The Tainted constable leered. “As in, open up the prison, shove you inside, and shut the door behind you.”

Kizu wondered if Finn could actually get this around their parents. They were very busy people and would probably leave something like a failed break-in for him to handle. What sort of lie would Finn need to make up to explain Kizu’s disappearance? Honestly, probably not much of one.

“And the academy? Will they be notified?”

“If you give us your actual name,” the human constable said. “Then I’d be happy to report your situation to them.”

He was missing classes. Brewing S, which was a bummer, but he was pretty sure they wouldn’t cover anything he didn’t already know; History F, which he probably would have been kicked from anyway; and Combat F, where they would be running laps again. All in all, he doubted he was missing too much.

They kept on asking him questions, but wrote off each of his answers as fibs.

“Can I at least practice my magic while I wait?” he asked when they’d finally finished questioning him. “I’m missing all of my classes, and I don’t want to fall further behind than I already am.”

They scowled at him.

“Even if I did escape - and I don’t intend to,” he hurriedly added. “Where would I go? There’s no way off the island. I’m stuck here.”

“The bars are reinforced with anti-magic enchantments. Do as you will.” They left the room, leaving him alone.

Kizu sat down cross-legged on the floor and focused. He created his anti-magic barrier, then expanded it and shrunk it down again. He practiced moving it around. If someone shot a beam spell at him, it might be more efficient to deflect it with a fist sized shield, rather than risk it breaking through a wider spread one. But he needed to get better at movement. As it was, the shield moved too lethargically. Dropping and reconstructing it was even slower.

Then he tried layering his shields. It was difficult to concentrate on two at once. If anything else distracted him even the slightest bit, one would slip away. And moving two was even slower than one.

He needed a sparring partner, he decided. He had no way of knowing how effective his shields were without someone casting spells at them. On the bright side, he thought grimly, finding a sparring partner probably wouldn’t be too difficult in prison.

Kizu was lightheaded when the constables finally returned with dinner. A cold dish of rice and chicken along with a cup of lukewarm water. Worse than mediocre, but he’d had worse in the basin. He ate it graciously.

“Make yourself comfortable,” the human constable said. “Looks like there was a slight hiccup in your paperwork. Turns out, according to the newly updated records, Kaga Finn isn’t the heir of the Kaga household. We’ll need either the head of the house or the proper heir to press charges.”

Kizu felt his body relax, releasing tension that he hadn’t known existed.

“So, I’m free to go?”

“‘Course not. Just means more waiting around. We’ll send a message to the head of the Kaga household. Hopefully we’ll have your prosecution ready by the morning.”

Kizu wondered what that meant for him. He still wasn’t quite in the clear. If his father came in person, it would no doubt mean release for him. But if his father decided to trust Finn’s judgment blindly, then he was in no better a position than before. He needed to create a more likely third option for himself.

“Why not contact the heir instead?”

The human constable sighed. “It hasn’t been fully processed yet. Until the lawyers release the finished document, the heir remains nameless.”

“He goes to the academy. You could contact them.”

“I’ll jot it down in the margins,” he said. At a look from his compatriot, he made a face back. “What? I want this paperwork done sooner than later. If the kid’s telling the truth, it might speed things up. I don’t want to have to keep ordering extra rations. He’s a nuisance where he’s at right now.”

They continued bickering as they left him in his cell. Kizu hoped he’d gotten the stone rolling enough for a bit of investigation into where - and who - he was.

Until they figured out the truth, he decided the best thing to do would be to take a nap.

He woke up as the sun was near to setting. He had nothing else to do, so he studied the cup of water the constables had given him with his dinner. Part of him wanted to see what he could do with it and attempt another daring escape. But the rational part of him held him back and told him to just be patient. Plus, there was still daylight for another hour or two. Even if he escaped, he’d get tossed back in here within minutes. He reluctantly settled in.

Freezing the cup was difficult. He felt like he’d been knocked back several steps as he only managed to create a cup of slush. He wondered what Mort had done to assist him the previous night. It must have had something to do with their bond as familiars. And if that were the case, what else could Mort accomplish?

And why hadn’t the crone told him about it?

Kizu thought back to his combat evaluation. Arclight had asked him why he hadn’t made use of his familiar in his test. At the time he’d thought she’d wanted him to throw the monkey at her, maybe have him nibble at her ankles as a distraction. But maybe she knew some use for Mort in a fight that he’d never even heard of. He resolved to ask her about it later. If he ever escaped the prison.

Eventually, he grew tired of freezing and unfreezing the cup. He stood and paced around the cell. It was cramped, barely more than three paces wide.

In the end, the intrusive thoughts won. Kizu decided that he was done waiting around. He had set things into motion earlier, and maybe he’d get lucky. But he couldn’t count on luck. Too much could go wrong. He needed to act.

It was time for a prison break.