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The little touch-lamp clicked on. A man entered the room holding a clipboard, trailing smoke. There was a long scar running across the bridge of his nose and down one cheek, and a second one that dropped down from it in a hook, in faint triplicate, like three consecutive letter Js. Cat claws, it looked like, had done that. A run-in with a Mauvian at some point, perhaps. The tip of his lit cigarette glowed in the darkness in counterpoint to the touch-lamp, red rather than pale, diffuse white. His cigarettes had a clove smell.

A woman filtered in behind him, and stood behind his chair when he sat across the table from Hvergelmir. She was small, with a square face and a fluffy jabot that shone gray in the dim. She had a tool box tucked under one arm. Neither of them looked friendly or interested in being here.

“Lieutenant Incarnadine, this one’s name, please.”

“Hvergelmir, Knight of the Cosmos, captain.”

“Good,” he said, staring at her with gray eyes deep as tunnels. “Let’s begin.”



It was dark in the old dungeons, with all the dank moldiness she’d have expected of an old, slightly mildewy castle. Off in the distance, down the winding stair, Hvergelmir could hear the quiet, steady drip and plop of water leaking in and puddling from somewhere: constant and ageless; drip, drip, drip. Medical bag slung over her shoulder and clamshells of food stacked in her arms, she had no way of carrying a torch or reaching for a banister; but there was none, so down she went in the gloom anyway, following the pale gold of light, far, far below.

The dungeons at Camelot had endured throughout the ages, awaiting their knight’s return: they endured still. There were four prisoners here, now, waiting in their cells.



“I’m a non-combatant. I told you.”

“Yes,” Captain Sarcite agreed, “for the moment. I’m aware of that. Do you know what it means to be a non-combatant in the middle of a war zone, Cosmos knight? A real war zone?”

It means you’re not going to take me at my word, she thought — but he looked at her with his eyes, hollow and piercing within limbal rings, and answered his own question: “It means absolutely nothing.”

She sank back in her chair. This was the part she hated; facing someone who didn’t look at her and see a human being, but an enemy. Someone who didn’t need to know circumstances or motives. Someone who, to all appearances, against all sense, had no interest in decreasing overall casualties or negotiating an armistice.

Sarcite leaned back too. If he was at ease, it was hard to tell; he sat with a straight and even posture, the glowing tip of his cigarette distracting from everything else on his face except his eyes. There was no missing his eyes. They stared through her, never swerving.

He kept his gaze on her even as he reached out onto the table with one hand. She looked down to see: his fingers closed around one of the heavy bangle bracelets they’d removed when they cuffed her, and had left sitting on the table. Zircon had taken one of them earlier, she remembered. Another few had gone with a young lieutenant who’d entered the room the day before, as well as the earrings straight from out of her ears. (“I’ve got a date tonight,” she’d said blithely, hooking them through her own earlobes. “I’m going to wear these. They’ll look cute on me.”) Sarcite slid the bangle in his hands across the table, letting the drag of metal on wood scrape loudly in the silent air. He lowered his cigarette to it and tapped ash off the end, into the open circle of rose gold, like it was an ash tray — then lifted it to his lips again.

“The Moon,” he began quietly, folding his hands over the table. “You’ve been there. Describe it to me.”

She blinked. No one had asked her anything about the Moon before, or whether she’d been there. She hadn’t mentioned it during any of her interrogations, it hadn’t been a topic.

“I haven’t been to the Moon,” she lied.



The prisoner in the first cell was curled up on his side, nursing his injury. The manacles here were old, but could keep him securely from trying to bolt when she unlocked the door and swung it wide. In this case, though, the boy wasn’t going anywhere; he was sick with fever and unlikely to get far, even if he’d managed to break his shackles and run for the door. His injury was still infected. There was a chance he wouldn’t survive.

He looked up at her approach, but didn’t speak. She wasn’t sure how aware this one was of his surroundings.

Down the row of cells, another prisoner’s voice rang out. “Hey b***h, waggle your a** down this way!” It echoed a few times, like the speaker might’ve found himself an appreciative audience in someone else, but there was only silence from the rest of them. “Hey b***h,” he tried again, “I’m starving!”

When she didn’t respond — not that she could — rather than being undeterred, this egged him on. He began a more elaborate discussion which she tried to ignore while she changed the sick lieutenant’s bandages. The shouted conversation began with something like, “Hey b***h, I’m so hungry I could eat,” followed by the details of things he could eat that weren’t particularly related to nutrition, plus his prediction of how much she would enjoy it if he did, then derailing into further anecdotes expounding on his expertise in the general subject area.

The prisoner she was treating made no attempts to protest while she redressed his wounds, or when she examined the pus that was still weeping from between his stitches. He groaned and rested his head on her shoulder.

“I knew it,” he coughed quietly against her collarbone, his voice weak. “I’m going to die with that a*****e for company. This sucks.”

She smiled into her scarf and continued working. When it was done, she gave him his antibiotics and helped him get down some food. He thanked her.

Dying people had a tendency to be grateful to anyone kind. That close to death, there was always a yearning for Mother’s reassuring hand.



“Haven’t you?” Sarcite asked, not looking away. He didn’t seem to blink at all. “The information we have from our other prisoners says differently.”

This is a test, she thought. A test. There’s no way he could know whether I’ve been to the Moon. There’s no reason anyone else would say I’d been there. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t.”

“Do you regularly lie, Knight of the Cosmos?”

“I’m sorry?”

“When our people come to visit you, do you lie to them?”

“No, I’ve never —”

“Do you believe lying is wrong? Do you believe it’s alright to tell a lie in the service of a noble cause?”

She frowned. “I don’t lie to them,” she insisted.

He tilted his wrist back, then flicked his lit cigarette across the table at her chest. It struck her collarbone with a momentary sizzle, bounced off her skin one more time, then rolled down the outside of her dress to her feet. She tried to jump, to get away, but the chains held her secure to her chair. With her limited range of motion, she kicked at it before it could light her dress on fire. It rolled about a foot away and glowed ominously.

“So you see, we both missed our aim,” he said, and reached in his breast pocket for another cigarette. “Tell me about the Moon.”



The prisoner in the second cell was a woman. She had a face like a brick — nose broken twice, at least — and the remains of a rumpled gray sort of a cravat still fastened stubbornly around her neck. She could’ve removed it, to be more comfortable; her chains gave her that much freedom of moment. But she didn’t. Some people were like that. Or maybe it was just that it helped, when you were locked in a cell, to be able to have things that made you feel like yourself.

Whichever it was, Hvergelmir didn’t try to take it from her.

She was healthy, so Hvergelmir only offered her food: the outstretched clamshell of camp fare, no plasticware. Nothing that could be slightly weaponized. It wasn’t needed, anyway. Everything in the clamshell was finger food.

The prisoner took two bites, then looked up.

“Bet you people don’t eat this s**t you’re feeding us,” she said.

Hvergelmir looked back at her for a moment, silent; then she tugged down her scarf to show the long, hungerless lines of her scars.

I don’t.



Captain Sarcite’s companion was warm and animated, if you compared her to Sarcite. Objectively speaking, though, Hvergelmir would’ve classified Lieutenant Incarnadine in the Dry and Distant category, were Sarcite not hunkered down on the descriptors like he’d lent his name to them personally. Neither of them was exactly a bucket of cheer. Incarnadine just had a little more life in her. A little less classy disgust.

“I don’t know about the Moon.”

Sarcite didn’t look away. “Lieutenant,” he said.

“Sir?”

“Do you think Hvergelmir of the Cosmos knows about the Moon?”

“Says she collects information, sir. Says she talks to people. Seems like someone like that ought to know a little something, at least. I think she knows a hell of a lot she’s not saying.”

“So you think she’s lying.”

“Like the Grand ******** Odalisque, sir.”

“Good. Thank you.”

“Sir?”

He frowned. “The last time, she shifted out of the way and I missed my mark.”

Incarnadine smiled. It was the first thing about her that caught the light. “I did see her shift, sir. A real distinct shifting.”

“Fine. Nail her feet to the floor.”

The lieutenant set her tool box on the table and began unlatching it.



The man in the third cell seemed, if nothing else, completely aware that Hvergelmir was going to be his best opportunity for entertainment for the rest of the day. The only other visitor any of them could really expect was Royal Knight Camelot, and he was their regular fixture for the duration of their imprisonment; any fun to be had of him had probably already run dry by this point. She, on the other hand, was a less frequent face. The highlight of his day.

Despite the limitations of his chains, he did his absolute best to stir a reaction from her in their short time together. When she got close enough to open the clamshell of food and give it to him, he made a hard grab in her direction to try and grope anything he could catch hold of — she twisted away again, taking the food with her. He laughed and said he was only joking, tried it again when she made another move to hand the food over. On the third time he tilted his head at her in some gross mockery of friendship and took the clamshell without any bad behavior.

The entire process of eating, for him, turned into a gross pantomime of sexual activity with her as his captive audience. She waited in discomfited silence, watching him scoop down his food, ready to have the clamshell container handed back as soon as possible so she could leave. When she stepped forward to retrieve it, one hand extended in expectation, he spat a huge mouthful of chewed-up food down the front of her dress.

“Now ******** off, you flap-jawed ******** —”

The door to his cell slammed shut behind her with a high-pitched rusty creak that — mercifully — drowned out a moment’s talking.



The long iron nails were loose through the tops of her feet — the skin and muscle gave, horrifyingly and agonizingly — but driven firmly through and down into the wood floor. The pain was so incredible that it was almost enough incentive not to flinch when Sarcite flicked a cigarette at her face. It bounced again, struck her chest, daubed her skin with heat, and dropped the rest of the way to the floor. This time, luckily, the lit cigarette butt rolled safely away on its own. She couldn’t have helped it along.

“Tell me about the Moon,” he said again, lighting another cigarette. The scent of cloves was thick and sickening in the air.

Her throat was raw from screaming and tight from crying. “The capitol of the Silver Millennium,” she croaked out desperately. Incarnadine was already selecting the correct length of nails to attach Hvergelmir’s hands to her chair. “The Queen and her daughter lived there.”

He took a long drag, then tapped the breathable end of the cigarette against his forehead in an unconvincing show of impatience. “When I say ‘tell me about the Moon,’ I’m not asking if it’s round and white and the Sun shines off it. I don’t need you to tell me what I know about the Moon. Tell me. About. The Moon.”



The captain was in the last cell, his visit the worst. They kept him partly drugged, to stop him teleporting to safety, but it didn’t show in his eyes. Maybe it was the sedatives, but he looked right through her — gray eyes like punctures in white cloth, ringed nearly black at the edges in a way that gave them depth. His eyes didn’t track her movements, and he betrayed no grogginess: it looked more like he had just elected not to participate in interacting with her. His face was cold and implacable.



“You’ll now admit you’ve been to the Moon.”

Incarnadine was lining up a nail with her hand. “Yes!” Hvergelmir blurted out, just before she could swing the hammer. “I’ve been to the Moon!”

“And lied.”

“I lied about it,” she stammered, eyes pinned on the nail. It was like a bee crawling her skin, though it didn’t move from its spot. Neither did she — she was frozen in place. “I’ve been there, I’ve seen it!”

Sarcite nodded. “Lieutenant.”

“Sir.” Incarnadine nodded back in response, temporarily lowering the nail.

“What did you see? In detail.”

Hurriedly, swallowing every few words, she stuttered out a description of the Moon Palace: its old white ruins, the faded garden, the view of Earth. There wasn’t much to describe — she hadn’t been inside — but he wrote it all down.

When she was finished, he took a long drag on his cigarette, and said, “Tell me how you got there.”


She tried to offer him the food she’d brought. Without shifting his gaze, he took the clamshell from her hand and set it aside. His face, faint in the weak light filtering in from the dungeon window, was marked to one side by cat claws scarred into a sequence of three intersecting Js.


Her skin was freckled red with remembered heat, streaked slick with tears. The white of her dress was polka-dotted now with ash stains, and she had no information left to give about the Moon if they’d wanted it.

Sarcite had made sure. One of the cigarette butts had made it successfully into her lap and caught her dress on fire. He’d let it burn a hole around her knee and start to sear her kneecap before he’d taken her at her desperately screaming word and let the lieutenant put the flame out. In the struggle from the fire, she’d done a number on her feet, still nailed to ground; the pain was nearly bringing her to vomit.



Hvergelmir frowned and picked up the clamshell where he’d discarded it, held it out to him again. This time, he looked up at her — looked directly at her — and pushed it back into her hands.

She shook her head at him, pleading with her eyes.

His gaze, staring back, was neither placid nor resigned; neither afraid nor angry. There was revulsion there, and nothing else.

She took a step back.

In all her visits, the captain never said a word.



“I remember you,” Sarcite said, getting up and pushing his chair in. “The girl with the smiley face.”

She looked up, weeping with wordless, disconsolate noises.

“You had an oath then, too. It didn’t do s**t for any of us.”