89th Day of Spring
Irriari trudged into the Institute of Higher Learning for her second lesson on interrogation. It had been difficult to sleep through the daylight hours. The newer residents of Tarsin’s Boarding House were an exuberant bunch of travelers that sang and danced in their rooms. Additionally, her arm throbbed painfully where the commander had injured her the day before. A scrap of blanket had covered the wound while she slept, but today it was left open to the air. Flying to the Institute was impossible, as doing so would tear the wound open. So, after a few bells of walking across the bridges, the zith found herself standing in front of the commander’s door. She knocked loudly, perhaps a bit too loudly, but after the incident yesterday, the zith was extremely wary of the short tempered commander and his eccentric ways. She could hear his voice from under the door, so she opened it slowly. As the commander came into her field of vision, she saw that he was gesturing impatiently for her to enter the office.
As soon as she sat in the chair, the commander began speaking
“Well, what did you learn yesterday? Recite all that you can remember. Here’s to hoping that you bats have better recollections than my last pupil. He didn’t last long.”
The zith gulped quickly and recited all that she could remember, silently chastising herself for not practicing on the walk to the Institute.
“Image is important, and you can and should hone it so that you can enhance your words. I should forget everything else I’ve learned before. I’m scary to humans and I need to know as many techniques as possible, because they could be used against me.”
Irriari paused briefly, trying to remember the rest of the lengthy lecture and continued again, slower than she had before
“I should always follow up my words with another element, if they aren’t getting the desired effect.”
The commander nodded
“I’m petching shocked that you winged beasts have the capacity to learn anything other than how to eviscerate people quickly. You remembered the lesson decently, but you forgot the third lesson. You have to know yourself. If you can’t remember today’s material at the start of the next lesson, you’ll end up like my last pupil. Also, I expect that you will be able to recite the day one material as well. I told you that I refuse to train lazy fools, and I damn well meant it. Now, we can begin today’s lesson.”
The commander cleared his throat and gestured to his desk before speaking
“Do you see how clean this desk is, zith?”
Irriari nodded, though the desk was hardly clean. Just because items weren’t stacked to the ceiling and about to topple over hardly made something clean. She kept her thoughts to herself and tried her best to look impressed by the commanders skill.
“This is my planning space. You’d do well to have one too. Half of interrogation is preparing ahead of time. Take notes on your target, and make sure your gear is well maintained and ready to go. On that note, you should have extra axes, knives, poison, or whatever you’re planning to use. Then, make sure you have supplies for yourself. Carry extra food and water. You never know how long an interrogation will take. Besides, it’s always fun to eat in front of a starving victim, yeah? Just don’t eat the starving victim.”
He eyed Irriari warily with his last statement. While the commander talked a lot about ziths, she was starting to doubt that he had any real knowledge of her race. That was good, she mused. As she thought about him, the commander started up his tirade again,
“This is all assuming we’re talking about interrogation for information that someone wants to hide. I don’t deal with that chicken shyke rhetoric. If you want to hold a pleasant conversation to extract information, you can learn that from a book. After you’re sufficiently prepared, you should ready yourself to interact with prisoner. This part is easy, assuming you have your tools and methods set up. If you weren’t given time to prepare, you’ll need to extract important information from your prisoner by how they speak, look, and move. I’m not here to teach you any of that either. Lastly, you complete the interaction. Depending on the target, you can let them go or kill them. I don’t really run into many other possibilities. I suppose you could enslave them, but I don’t think they’d be too dutiful. Now, did you get all that?”
Irriari nodded. This interrogation thing was starting to sound a lot more like the dreaded ‘math’ that Sevrai had talked about. There were so many steps and things to remember. Why couldn’t she just terrify her prisoner and toy with them until they gave in?
