༺ 𓆩 Chapter 55 — The Right Way of an Interrogation 𓆪 ༻
「Translator — Creator」
᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃
Isaac held a question.
The three pillars by which city of Bern was being eaten away.
The Marquis Dietrich. Mayor Baris. The Weissmann.
The Marquis and the mayor were n who had, by slow degrees, built their standing within the city. The Marquis, by coming and going as inspector through Goethe and making the acquaintance of the principal figures of the city council; Mayor Baris, by piling up an enormous fortune and earning the credit of the guilds.
Having built friendly bonds with the rchants who stood as the pillars of Bern, the two of them had co at last to lay the grand design of swallowing the city whole. The matter had been set down in the records of the forebears, and was not hard to foresee.
Then where had this band who called themselves Weissmann sprung from?
Who were these n, that they had, of a sudden, seized hold of the slums and the wastewater quarter, and even reached their hand as far as the Marquis and the mayor? Had these things co about in the few months Isaac had been away? Or had they been moving steadily in the shadow, and only now shown themselves?
Whichever it was, they were of a different make from any common gang.
"You are Isaac von Goethe?"
Even shut into the deepest solitary cell beneath the manse, where no ray of light reached, the would-be assassin held his bearing high. Hidden under that shabby cloak he had not been clearly seen, but his appearance was a tidy thing. A trim mustache, his short hair drawn back. His beard had been clean-shaven, kept by regular hand.
"Yes. I am Isaac von Goethe."
Isaac drew a chair up before the man and sat down.
About both the man's wrists were bound cuffs. Within the cuffs there was dizithrium. Dizithrium was an ore that bore the property of scattering mana.
Set beside the swordsman taken at the brothel of the slums, this one knew how to wield aura in a proper fashion. So at the least such a binding was needed.
"The Marquis judged it wrongly. The slip was sent in truth by you, my young lord. Was it not?"
"Just so."
"Will you now put to torture?"
The would-be assassin asked it without expression. He bore the look of one to whom such a turn was no stranger.
"That, I am thinking on."
"Whatever it is you expect, you shall not have what you wish from ."
"You speak with rather sure confidence."
"Have you heard of the chamber of the heart?"
"The chamber of the heart?"
"Just as the words say. A chamber that lies within the heart. n of my sort each hold such a chamber. When the flesh is in tornt, we step inside it and hide."
"An interesting tale. Go on."
Isaac folded his arms and t the man's words.
"My master died under torture. First his tongue was cut out. Next his ears were cut off. Then his nose was cut off, and his two eyes were carved out, and his fingers were cut off, one by one. Ten of his toes besides, and then his stones were taken too. For three days he lived so. And he gave forth not a single sound of pain. Indeed, at the going of him, he was smiling."
"To so, that would be a tale to be set as an example."
"No, my master was not the sort of man to be set as an example. By my guess, he was tumbling among naked won in that chamber of the heart of his. He had always said as much. To keep the chamber of the heart firm, one must set within it what one loves."
"Then I may put it to the test in you? How firm a chamber of the heart you have?"
"Yes. I had thought my turn would co, one day. I had not thought it would co in such a sorry margin of the world. Co, then, if you would. Begin."
The man let out a sigh.
"Before that, there are a few things I would ask of you."
"Are you, perhaps, a fool, my young lord? Knowing that I shall not give you what you wish, you an to bind thus and put to torture, do you not?"
"Why did you not kill the captain of the guard? There is a great swelling at the side of his head, but you struck him with the flat of the blade, not the edge. Why?"
"What manner of trifling question is this? It would sha the asker."
"Trifling though it is, you may answer it."
"For there was no reason to kill him."
The man answered with a shrug, as though it were the plainest thing.
"Then one thing more. When you ran upon , you used aura. The mont my blade was broken you drew the aura back. Why? At that mont you could have killed ."
At Isaac's question, the man let out a sigh of disbelief.
"You are, in truth, a fool. I had set hopes upon you, hearing you had sent the slip to the Marquis in your own person. Argh."
"Answer."
Carlson set his grip hard upon the man's shoulder. Bound by dizithrium, the man could not call up aura to shield himself.
"Sir, my shoulder shall co apart. Set such pain upon and I shall, like a hermit crab, step into my chamber of the heart."
"As often as you wish. Then I shall burst that chamber, kick your backside, and drag you out."
"From the first crossing of blades I had marked it. A man of spirit. I like you. Hkk, that hurts, that hurts."
At the man's words Carlson set the more weight into his grip. The man twisted his body away and kicked his legs. Yet there was nothing of tension to be found in him.
"All right. All right. What grand questions are these. The reason I did not kill you, my young lord, is plainly that to kill you was not my charge. Is that not obvious? And to kill you and so draw the anger of the Margrave is the more vexing besides."
"Is that so?"
Isaac nodded and rose from the chair.
"What? Done already?"
"I find myself tired today."
Isaac yawned and stretched.
He had spent the night assassinating Baris, putting the swordsman Carlson had brought in to questioning, facing his father, and turning aside an attempt upon a life. Two days without a wink of sleep had left his head no longer in a state for sharp thinking.
"Now then. What manner of bastards have I fallen among?"
The man let out a dry laugh.
"You two. Keep close watch. Carlson."
Isaac set two of the guards as wardens at the door and took Carlson out with him from the underground prison.
"What do you make of him?"
Isaac asked it as they walked the garden. The outside air, taken in, did at least bring a asure of clearness back to his head. In the window of the Margrave's private study, the light yet burned. The Margrave must have marked the commotion well enough, but it seed he had chosen to seem to know nothing of it and to leave the matter in Isaac's hand. He had, after all, heard Isaac's declaration that was not quite a declaration, to show himself unsuited to the seat of heir.
"That he ca to put down the swordsman I took, that is past question, my lord."
"Yet he ant to avoid any unneeded killing. He had room to spare in him, and a tongue in his head besides. To address at once as my young lord says that he had been near to noble company. A man who has given his blade to so noble house, perhaps?"
"It may be so, my lord."
Carlson nodded. The two of them took a turn or two about the garden in silence.
That an assassin would co to silence the swordsman, this Isaac had known. But the man was rather other than what Isaac had foreseen.
‘Weissmann becos the more curious to .’
Neither the swordsman Carlson had taken nor the assassin who had slipped in to put that swordsman down looked to be a man who would open his mouth lightly. The swordsman, less smooth-tongued than the assassin, had thrown out curses and abuses, but had not spoken a single word of any matter that counted. By what ans could a gang's chief, who had taken the wastewater quarter rely by strength of arms, hold such close-mouthed n as his hand and foot? A gang, in the end, was also a kind of trader. They were lesser than rcenaries in their craft, but they too sold the strength of arms in their hand for their bread. And yet, with their lives in peril, these n would not open their mouths. There was sothing here beyond the plain pursuit of gain.
"I am not certain. But."
Carlson, who had been walking quietly at Isaac's back, opened his mouth.
"Hm?"
"That swordsman's manner of the blade, my lord. I have seen the like before."
"Have you, now? Where?"
"It had been much altered, but it was kin to the swordsmanship used by the bodyguards of the Republic, my lord."
Carlson set forth what he knew of the bodyguards' swordsmanship of the Republic.
In the Republic, magical arms had been so advanced that heavy armor was no longer favored. A direct hit from arms like a hand-cannon would pierce armor either way. To wear an armor that could ward magic, on the other hand, was to wear sothing that ran to the cost of a fair manor in the Republic's capital. Where this was the case, n chose rather to set down shield and armor and to take up a swordsmanship that put weight upon attack.
"You are sure?"
If what Carlson said held, it would beco much easier to make Isaac's reckoning of Weissmann's purpose and Weissmann's circumstances. If the head of Weissmann were a man out of the Republic, a fair portion of the puzzle would be filled in.
"It is not from the swordsmanship alone, my lord. The matter of the chamber of the heart of which the assassin spoke was the deciding turn."
"Why so?"
"After the Revolutionary Party of the Republic put the king down, the party broke into many factions, my lord. Street-fights and works of espionage were no rare matter. The chamber of the heart is, on the one hand, the foundation of the aura-disciplines of the knights of the Republic, but at the sa ti it is also a guard against torture. They train so that they will open their mouths to no manner of pain. The true na is the inward refuge. Among themselves they speak of it as the chamber of the heart. Most n know not what it is, nor of its bond with the Revolutionary Party."
What Carlson set forth had been nothing that Isaac had ever read in the histories. In histories like The History of the Continental Wars, all that had been written was a brief line that the Republic, after putting down the king and taking up a republican governnt, had been drawn into wars by the resistance of the feudal states about it.
"How is it you know such a thing?"
"Before my service at Winterband, my lord, I had lived in the Republic."
"I had heard you had long served at Winterband. Then in those days you would have been young, no? Were you, too, in the trade of an agent?"
"I was a year or two older than you, my lord. I had co of age, and the matter was such that there was no other course."
Carlson said it dryly.
"Is that so. Of interest."
"What shall you do now, my lord? If those two do not open their mouths, there shall be no thread upon Weissmann. The Marquis is to arrive at the manse within two days."
"Let us think on it."
Isaac sat upon a bench in the garden and drew a deep breath. Plainly, for the matter to run as Isaac intended, the swordsman and the assassin had to be made to speak.
Having shaken the board with the assassination of Baris, the next step was to draw Weissmann to his side or to be rid of them. After that, he would close his grip upon the Marquis' throat and take fast hold of his weak place. With that hold he could draw the Marquis about, and the Marquis would never dare set his sights upon Bern. And by use of the Marquis, he could bend Goethe's standing into a position the better, if only by a little.
Whether Weissmann would be of use to that, or of obstruction, was not for him to easily judge at present.
‘But if, as Carlson says, Weissmann holds a bond with the Revolutionary Party of the Republic…’
After his thinking, Isaac nodded.
"There may yet be a way."
***⚜***
Splash—!!!
"Hhk, hhk!"
The swordsman drew in a sharp breath at the cold water that ca pouring down upon his crown. The prison being already cold to start, the icy water set a hard chill running through him at once.
"What, what is this, you, you bastard!"
The swordsman, trembling, kept his eyes wide and glared straight before him.
When Isaac had set himself down he did not know, but he was there now, seated in a chair with one leg crossed over the other.
"It is all done."
Clatter—!!!
Isaac dropped a blood-stained falchion upon the floor.
"What, what is all done, you bastard."
"Yesterday, the owner of this blade ca to put you down. To silence you, by what one might see."
"…So?"
"……"
The swordsman's eyes shifted at once and wildly. If this were the owner of that falchion, then it belonged to the strongest among Weissmann. He had not been a man much to his liking, but the strength of him, who handled a practiced aura, had not fallen short of any common knight. In that respect, at least, the swordsman had held him in honor.
But why was this blade here? The curved blade. The blade he had treasured as a man treasures a thing. The swordsman's head went into a knot.
"S, so!"
The swordsman, his body shaking with the cold and with his bewildernt, asked it.
"……"
Yet Isaac only looked at him and did not open his mouth.
"Speak, you whelp of a thing! What of him!"
"He was put to the execution."
"…What?"
"First we took his two eyes out. We left the tongue alone, for he had to speak. Then we cut off every finger and every toe. Then his stones…"
Step by step, in a clear voice, Isaac set forth what manner of torture had been done and how. He used the assassin's own words, and made them larger.
The swordsman's face crumpled by degrees.
"You, you devil-spawn!"
"With all this chatter of the chamber of the heart, with the boast of an endurance against pain, I had been curious. How far you would hold. As it turned out, he could not hold to the end."
"You bastard, I shall tear you apart!"
The swordsman thrashed where he sat, bound to the chair. Yet he could not stir. Carlson had set his hand upon both his shoulders and was pressing him down.
"Hah. Aye. I shall own it was sowhat much. The cutting and the carving in a single night, and so he did not last long. What was it he had said? He had been so small fry co from the Revolutionary Party, who had laid so plot with the mayor Baris and the Marquis Dietrich."
"……!"
The swordsman's face turned at last to white.
That he would speak even of that, the swordsman had not so much as thought. Loath as he was to own it, the man was, within the bounds of Weissmann, the strongest. To think that such a man should fall to so cruel a torture and break faith besides.
The swordsman's face was painted with despair.
"Having heard so far, he died upon . The thing felt like a half-shat business. But, see now, what fortune for you. He was cut into pieces and so died, but you have lost only ten fingernails. And, as you can see, you are yet in fine fettle."
Isaac smiled coldly. Gooseflesh ran across the whole of the swordsman's body.
"In so book I read once that to weave a little ill feeling into a fine interrogation has a rather good effect. So I have brought one along."
Creak—!!!
With the sound of the iron grate opening, a face that the swordsman knew stepped through. It was Will.
"A fine morning, Gerald."
Clank—!!!
Bill, with a bright smile, dropped a heavy sack upon the floor. The swordsman's eyes widened.
END σϝ CHAPTER
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