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She'd ordered no sounds around her chosen first interrogation for half an hour. The General stood outside where he was kept, cloaked in Barbary to silence even her own breathing. At the end of that time, she entered a step into the so called room with its mirrors and paint. Like a spectre, she made no sound in moving.

I disapprove the mirrors here. Even covered. They should be broken or removed. Covered is not enough. Not when we have former allies who can travel through them. Former. Capricious. Barbary slunk off her shoulders. Schörl rapped her cane loudly on the floor in a rhythmic, well known sequence-

" –··–· ·· "

Then she approached, wordless at first, to crouch by his chained form on the floor. Warm, slender fingers pushed firm along his cheek and jaw, uncaring of the damage from lieutenants fists that marked bruising and split skin. She used her thumb to trace his lips, toying with the rough texture of some days growth of a beard and mustache. "Valhalla of Jupiter."

"You've answered questions for some other officers. I hope you will answer me. Let's be friends, you and I? "

"Your answers will determine what you earn. You can earn a lot from me. Will you talk with me a while?"

"Meek do my ears seek refuge, Mild do my lips open for." The General held hand steady in spite of his flinches and pulls. "You haven't earned a question yet."

"We are not animals, you and I, not supposed. But you bray like one, and lower yourself a notch. That isn't how you start our conversation. Precision. " Schörl lifted her fingers so that her nails were visible, "These are precise instruments. Demonstration. "

The other hand gripped at his neck, up behind the jaw bone so that he couldn't thrash. The first she pushed thumbnail of into the skin above his brow. It didn't stop, pushed it down to the very bone. Then drew it across with patient aplomb, carving skin and frontalis muscle. Deep so that it took hesitant seconds for the blood to well into the wound, before it would sheet down and blind the eye on that side.

"Let's start again." Letting him go, "Let's start where your interest lies. I have many people to see today. Describe 'Ganymede' to me, precisely, and I will see if I know them to be able to answer your question in turn. Mild. Meek."

" '-sadly stand his comrades, in vain the hounds weary their throats with barking and pursue his shadow or bay at the clouds, ' " Mozley's translations had been replaced with Shackleton Bailey's some time since, but it was enough of a reference to please her. "You are kept how you keep yourself, winged eagle of Zeus. You rage, you resist, you kneel to Jupiter and not to our most excellent beloved. You have the wrong fealty, the untrusted aims. You would try to escape. Hunter with hounds. Fitting you seek the Phrygian hunter for that. But I don't remember any Princely sons of Tros of Dardania. So is Ganymede a boy? Am I looking for a boy? Tell me, tell me. "

" You must, you must, " The general shifted along the floor, seeking along each of his chained hands with delicate flutters of her own. First the Left, then the Right, looking for where the callouses marked most heavily. The one most marked was the dominant. She reiterated her directive, cool, voice perfectly unperturbed by his demand, "Meek do my ears seek refuge, Mild do my lips open for."

He sits at the Right hand in power. She lifted away from him, still listening, but harvesting peels from the painted clouds and balloons before she returned. Her expression was all pleasant, sweet question and expectation.

Laurelite found the creature first. The corruption failed; the corruption was from the hands of one of the very General-Queens. A blonde, white bodice as with most. Red and Black, black lace. Little slip of a thing. Yes, I believe we do have that one here. But you're not answering. Schörl sucked against the back of her teeth in mock rue of his silence. "You're not answering. If you won't speak like a man, you'll scream like an eagle. And then we'll try this again. "

"I have time. I have patience, " She lifted one of the paint chips- faded sky blues and cloud whites on the edges sharp. Then she jammed it under the nail of his right thumb. It wasn't a bamboo splinter, but it worked just as well. It could brittle-break there to fever his blood in a few days. She continued down the line of fingers, lifting a piece of colored sky to show him before stabbing it into the soft, sensitive skin beneath the nails. Mangle the dominant hand, the precious one. "I'll put the sky back in your claws, eagle. "

"Now. Describe to me every inch you can of Ganymede. Down to every mole. Tell me all about what this person looks like, and I will be able to look for them. Maybe I could bring them here for a visit. Wouldn't that be nice. Let's be..."

"Nice."

Never lose your temper. Never flag in being calm. Schörl did not frown. Did not sigh. She looked at the knight, with his desperation and curling. Establish the parameters of pattern. Check. Subject resists, buying into presumed ignorance, Check. Destroy expectations and unsettle subject to no clear method of discerning true unknown questions against known ones.

The General moved from his right hand to opposite him. Opposite where he nearly touched the ground and left his blood as medium for painting on the floor. She put her finger into the blood, drawing what was upside down with contemplative precision a symbol- lobed loops of a heart that ended in a bolt shape.

Then she rose without word and didn't pause in applying the same treatment of jammed and sharp paint chips under every nail of the left hand. "Meek do my ears seek refuge, Mild do my lips open for."

Dared you hope the right hand didn't know what the left was doing? That I am fool only in my rank and would not demand to know what officers come before have done? The Questions they ask, the way in which your were captured, all the things I could of what was around you. You have no room for hopes. You will have no hope. Not as long as it is me here, instead of some other officer.

After the application to his left hand, the General returned to a waiting, patient, quiet position in front of his screams and his paroxysms. She did not change position until he was done, barely blinking. Neither pleasure nor pain were indicated on her expression, which remained a conversationally concerned and pleasant.

"I cannot help you if you do not help me." For that, you must answer me.

"No more silence, now. Describe Ganymede to me. Every feature you see in your mind to the last. There's nothing harmful in that- in telling me what I already know. No harm for you, no harm for me, no harm for Ganymede. Just talking. You chose the subject, remember? Answer and we can move on."

"Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem. But there is no martyrdom here." She said it evenly. Endearing. Seven billion humans on the earth, infinitesimal in mediocrity the missing of some twenty? fifty? one hundred? At any given point in the deaths of senshi and knights. 500 people die every year in every big city by just murder. But you expect to light fires. Humans don't even care that there is suffering in other states and countries until they need the philanthropy to feel better or it inconveniences their grocery prices from 3$ for strawberries to 5$.

Estimations of 100 octillion stars in the universe, and they're every one dead. Just this one is left, boy. Oh, it is a significant place, to be sure. But you miss the bigger picture of that- Metallia has already long since won. This is the cyclical stamping out of the waking locusts from under the crust. And she knew it would happen, she waited. She waits. 70 years in the average life of a man, that is like her sighing. You don't begin to understand 'disposable' or 'endure'.

There was no argument- bandying of ideology created too clear an oppositional presence compared to the simplicities of the 'I help you - you help me' and self-imposition of necessity of punishment protocols.

'Magic' and all doesn't change one very pertinent, very potent fact, handsome. All that power and strength we all have for war, but we are all still come from human bodies and human physiology. One skilled interrogator of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, 4 months and all the world-over research in interrogation, torture, behavior modification and coercion can break any mind through its own physiology. There's no magic in what happens to the brain itself, or the identity, or all higher reasoning where your ideals sit ephemeral. "Just talking costs nothing, but you refuse to be cordial. I cannot help you."

"Our time for questions is done for now." Inquisition records, I hear, the human body can take seven to ten minutes of high intensity pain before passing out. I expect you'll do better, soldier. You're doing very well so far.

The position she would prefer to put him in could be dangerous for the warnings of hands and escape magics, but that was easily fixed by making another silent round of Valhalla's hands to dislocate the digits from their joints one by one. If it couldn't be, there was nothing lost except the sad opportunity to test out a modern Scavenger's Daughter that used modern nylon climping straps and winches. It could be run by the General-Queen.
The advantages of oxygen deprivation would help to addle the Jupiter Knight's wits and resolve.

Very good. Hasn't even messed his trousers yet. She gave a concilliatory pat-patting of hand over his now red bandage. First days and fierce fires. They do not disappoint.

Then held out her hand and drew on his energy reserves. "Go to sleep, Valhalla, among your heroic dead."

You fight it very well, but even that is ultimately in our power.