“It wasn’t personal. It was her job as a Sword advocate.”
He ignores me. “In light of this new information regarding Agnes Moon, her being thirdborn, I have some questions for you, Roselle. It’d be more appropriate to ask them in the secure surroundings of an interrogation cell in Census.” He raises his hand to my mouth. His thumb brushes my cheek, skimming over the scab there. It’s still sore from Hawthorne wrestling me to the floor. “I’d like the chance to taste your blood.” I pull away.
Four military policemen approach us. A dark blue armband, bearing an emblem of a golden sword over a black shield, encircles each soldier’s left arm. “Roselle Sword,” the lead MP addresses me, “you’ve been found in violation of code 47257. You’re ordered to come with us.”
I know the code he’s referring to. I violated it just a few hours ago. It’s called brandishing. I’m not allowed to ignite my fusionblade in noncombat or non-training situations. I don’t resist when cuffs restrain my wrists.
Agent Crow scowls at the MP. “I have reason to suspect this soldier has information regarding an investigation into thirdborns.”
“She violated code. She gets a couple nights in the cooler. You can visit her there, at the detention center, and ask your questions. Contact her commanding officer if you want to make arrangements to see her.”
Agent Crow’s eyebrows slash together. “I cannot possibly ask the kind of questions that I need to ask in your facility. This is classified information.” They ignore him. I’m relieved of my weapon by the youngest of the soldiers.
The one in charge is a middle-aged man with the lined face of someone who has seen a lot. The creases around his mouth deepen. “Then I guess you’re gonna have to wait until she gets out,” he says. “Oh, but her regiment is scheduled to go active in less than forty-eight hours.” He snaps his fingers, like the thought only just occurred to him. “You’ll have to follow her to the battlefield to get your answers.” He leans closer to Agent Crow. “But then, men like you don’t fight when your enemy has a weapon and can fight back, do you?”
Agent Crow gives him an icy stare. “You’ll live to regret this.” The dark lines by his eyes bunch together.
“I’ve lived to regret a lot of decisions, Census. This ain’t one of ’em.”
“Who’s your commanding officer?” Agent Crow demands.
“Commander Aslanbek,” he replies in a bored tone. I bet a lot of people ask him that, hoping to intimidate him. “Say your good-byes. You can see her in a few months when she gets back from active duty.”
My smile for Agent Crow is forced, intended to make him believe that I don’t fear him. Right now, it’s the best I can do. I’d been waiting for the MPs to arrive and arrest me since lunchtime, but I hadn’t known I’d be grateful to see them.
“Don’t get comfortable, Roselle,” Agent Crow murmurs.
I don’t respond as the soldiers march me out and onto a heartwood.
Chapter 12
Detention
We travel almost all the way down the Tree’s trunk to the detention center on the second level. The lead MP scans his moniker at the steel doors. One thick door opens. Inside is a small antechamber with a glass divider to a larger area. We walk to the glass. Behind it, a lone guard waits.
“One for detention. Detainee was quiet,” the lead MP says to the female guard on duty behind the glass. “No additional charges to assess, Tula.” The guard, in possession of my generic fusionblade, deposits the weapon into a phloem. The air-powered pipeline sweeps it away.
“Scan her over to us,” Tula replies without inflection.
The lead MP takes me to the panel on the wall. My cuffs are taken off and my moniker is scanned. A piece of the glass that separates this room from the rest of the facility descends into the floor. “Step through,” the lead MP orders. I obey, passing through a laser that scans my entire body. On the other side, I look at the glass, which projects my complete body-image scan. I can see all my vital organs and the moniker chip inside my hand. The missing piece in the glass ascends from the floor and seals shut.
“Present your hands,” Tula orders. I do as she says, and she cuffs my wrists in front of me. We walk a few steps to another guard. “One for cell 685.” She lets me go and returns to her post.
I’m remanded into the custody of an older guard with thinning hair. He leads me away and scans me through several corridors to a hallway of individual cells. He opens one and indicates that I should enter. I do. He formally reads me my sentence of forty-five hours’ confinement. The officer takes off my cuffs and leaves, closing the cell door behind him. Sinking wearily onto the bottom bunk of a stack five high, I cover my eyes with my hands, thanking whatever providence allowed me to escape Agent Crow for a third time.
“Brandishing is sort of an asinine thing to get arrested for,” a lilting feminine voice informs me from a bunk above mine. I thought I was alone. She sticks her head over the side of her berth, two pallets up, and looks down at me. “Are you thickheaded or something? Why would you threaten some heathens with a sword in front of everyone? I can think of better ways to get your point across.”
“I find that being direct works for me,” I reply.
She snorts. “Being direct here isn’t the best strategy.” Her black hair falls around her face. She has a line of star tattoos over each of her eyebrows. “It gets you thrown in the cooler faster than you can say ‘St. Sismode Sword.’ Would you look at that? I just said your name, and I didn’t even mean to. It’s just a saying we have here.”
“It’s a stupid saying,” I mutter.
“Aye, maybe ’tis at that, but I’m not wrong about what I said. Brandishing is a threat for the slow-witted. Never threaten. Promise—in private—and back it up with something more than words.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Flannigan, but my friends call me Flan.”
“What are you here for, Flannigan?” I ask.
“Ah, this and that, if you know what I mean.”
“No, I’m fairly slow-witted, so you’ll have to explain it to me.”
“I get things. Things people need. Useful things.”
“You’re a thief?”
“I’m a privateer,” she retorts. Her hand hangs over the bunk, showing her Stone-Fated moniker.
“Those stars above your eyebrows, what do they mean?” I ask.
“I fell in love with the night.” They look as if they’re ascending over the peaks of her eyebrows, like rising stars over mountains. “I have a business proposition for you.”
“A what?”
“I need your assistance. In return, I’ll be indebted to you until such time as I can return the favor.”
“Why would I need the services of a failed privateer?”
“I’m very good at what I do.” She narrows her eyes at my insult.
I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with her. “If you’re such an exemplary privateer, why is it that you’re locked up in a cell?”
“I wanted to get caught.” She sniffs and looks at her black-painted fingernails.
I think she must be joking, but her expression doesn’t change. “Why would you want to get caught?”
She climbs down from her perch and stands by my bunk, waiting for me to move over. I grudgingly scoot to the wall and she lies beside me, her black hair covering mine. “I wanted to get locked up because it’ll give me time to figure out a strategy to escape,” she whispers.
The thought of escaping this existence is a tempting one. I have no idea where I’d go, but anywhere seems better than here, within reach of Agent Crow. “Why would detention be any easier to escape than your air-barracks?”
“It isn’t, but I needed a place to hide.”
“From whom?”
“Monsters in black coats.”