Chapter 80:

It took Vek pretty much the whole day to travel down to the crypts. Thankfully, Op, whoever he was, had set their meeting at the end of sunwake, so Vek didn’t have to rush. With no soldiers at the elevator bays, harassing him and denying him access, the elevator ride down to the castle’s root levels was almost pleasant.

Only almost, though. It was kind of crazy with all the movement going on. Hordes of serfs shoving into the elevators, their arms stuffed with Rajas clothes and Rajas pillows, heading who-knows-where. The Free Serf patrons really had to get a system into place to organize everybody. Not to mention the elevator’s cellarette was empty! Vek had been looking forward to finally getting a drink from it, but other serfs had beaten him to it, he guessed, and nobody had refilled it yet.

By the end of the day, Vek was hungry, tired and sick of people in his face. He’d tried to stop and eat at a Zone 3 cafeteria, but they’d argued with him about how he should be eating in his own zone and insisted that he show them papers. Papers, as if Vek carried those around anymore! In the end they’d let him in after he’d shown them the envelope of the telegraph Lady Nari had sent him – particularly her stamp across the envelope’s face. Of course all that took forever, which meant Vek had only enough time to bolt down whatever he could grab before he had to get back onto the elevator to make it to the crypts on time.

At least the crypts were empty. It was cool enough down among the roots to make Vek wish his brocaded zip shirt had sleeves, but no one was pressing their elbows into his chest, so all in all, he preferred it. And Vek didn’t have to go in too deep, did he? The telegraph said to go through three arches, then make a left, then keep going through more arches until he reached a wall…

Under the first arch, Vek almost tripped on the broad back of a root that poked out of the uneven mounds of dirt that made up the crypt floor. It was dark in here; the only light came through a fanlight window above the cusped arch door behind him. Thankfully the second arch was clear, but the third had a root cutting diagonally through it, forcing Vek to climb up and over it. He turned to his left and grimaced at the sight of even more roots. Over and up and under and through and rock-god, when would the crypt end?

By the time Vek saw the cove lights up ahead, he was already wondering what the crypts were for. Had some Rajas queen ordered the space to be built then forgotten about it? Maybe it had been too hard to keep things clear down here, what with the castle roots growing and shoving and breaking their way through everything. At least the cove lights were bright enough to show Vek a way forward. Still, when he finally got through the last arch, and stumbled into a relatively root-free alcove, his hands were scraped, and his clothes were no longer quite as clean as when he’d first put them on.

That was when he first saw the wall-stocks.

Vek stiffened. He himself had spent too much time locked up in wall-stocks to have any other reaction. He blinked at the man currently hooded and chained to the alcove wall – hands cuffed behind his back – the chain running from the cuffs through a closed loop hook on the wall – all the way to the collar around his neck. Then Vek looked at the man standing beside him.

“Op,” the man said, pointing at himself. Then he pointed at Vek. “And you can be Sat.”

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Vek looked back and forth between the two men. “What’s going on?”

“We can call it your training.”

“My training?”

“To be an interrogator, of course!”

“What – what does this have to do with interrogation?”

Vek watched as Op’s eyes grew wide. “My dear boy,” he said, gesturing around him. “This is interrogation. Now watch and learn.”

How strange, Vek thought, as he watched Op remove the sack from the man’s head. There was nothing about Op’s appearance that made him stand out. He looked like an ordinary serf. The black servie uniform, the average height, no unusual features – Vek would have passed him in a hallway without even noticing him. Even now, as Op took out a serf prod from a toolkit on the ground beside him, even now he looked normal, natural. As if there was no other way to look, no other way to be.

“Let us begin,” Op said. He tapped the serf prod against the chained man’s cheek. “This here is Reliam. He is going to tell us exactly how he first came to betray Lady Nari and the serfs.”

***

It wasn’t that bad, Vek told himself afterwards. It was just a few questions. The part when Reliam started screaming had been a little hard to watch, but he was a traitor. If anyone deserved it, a traitor did. And the interrogation had worked, hadn’t it? Reliam had given Op a list of names, almost ten serfs. Vek had his copy of the list in his pocket right now; he could feel it folded up against his leg. Nine names, nine names, nine traitors, and Vek had to go through the list and find each one.

Vek closed his eyes. He was lying stretched out on a daybed in some lower-level Rajas lounge. His hands were folded behind his head. He felt cold.

After the interrogation, Op had shown Vek where the Free Serf files were. He’d taken him through the crypt, showing him how the files filled the entire root level floor. What Vek in the dim light had thought were solid arch shafts were actually hollowed out to fit file cabinets. File upon file upon file of every single serf who’d ever participated in the Free Serf movement: the agents, the serfs of every Free Serf patron, and the serfs of every non-Free Serf patron who’d ever served as aide or spy to the Uprising.

“It’s here,” Op had told him, “that you’ll find all the information you need on those nine names.”

Nine names, nine serfs, nine other people. Look them up, find them, ask them some questions, add to their files, then tell Op. So simple. Easier than a mission, even. Vek would just one at a time ask them to follow him, then he’d lead them to the crypts, and then he’d ask them some questions. That was all. Just some questions to find out what they knew about the Promised Daughter, about Lady Ki, about other traitors…

“After we’re done, we take them to a Rajas cell,” Op had told Vek. The man had grinned then, and slapped Vek on the back. “Never thought you’d see the day, eh? When a serf would be placed in a Rajas cell?”

It was too bad that Reliam hadn’t had anything specific to say about the Promised Daughter. Not that Vek necessarily expected him to announce the Promised Daughter’s location, but still. It would have made the whole interrogation process feel a little better, a little more useful.

Not that the point was Vek’s feelings, of course. The point was to get information about traitors from traitors.

Still. It would have been nice.

Vek inhaled deeply, his eyes still closed. He was pretty worn out. It was probably best to get some sleep. He had a lot of work ahead of him.

“It’s going to be perfect,” he whispered. “It’s going to be perfect, it’s going to be perfect, it’s going to be perfect…”