A Magistratum first-aider had patched Cyrus’ leg wound, and they’d shackled him to a chair in one of the refectories. He was in pain, and very frightened, which would make it easier to extract information.

Cyrus stared at me as I rolled in to face him. Nayl followed me in, but sat his ominous bulk down at the far end of the long table from Cyrus, a threat waiting to happen.

‘I… I have rights,’ Cyrus began. ‘In the eyes of Imperial Law, I have–’

‘Nothing. You are a prisoner of the Inquisition. Do not ask for or expect anything.’

‘Then I’ll tell you nothing.’

‘Again, you are mistaken. You will tell me everything I ask you to tell me. Harlon?’

From the far end of the table, Nayl began to speak. ‘His name is Ludovic Kyro, Cognitae-trained, wanted on five worlds for counts of heresy and sedition…’

Cyrus closed his eyes as the words came out. We already knew his true identity. What else did we have?

‘Tell me about Victor Zahn.’

Cyrus frowned. ‘I don’t know a Victor Zahn…’ I was watching his mind. It wasn’t the truth, but it wasn’t an outright lie either. Cyrus didn’t immediately recognise the name.

+Tell me about Victor Zahn.+

Cyrus blinked as the telepathy slapped him. My interrogative was accompanied by an image of Zahn’s corpse in the Hinterlight’s morgue, which I dropped into his mind like a slide into a magic lantern.

‘Oh Throne!’ he murmured.

‘You know him, then?’

‘He was a pupil here, years ago.’

+And Goodman Frell? And Noble Soto?+

Two more graphic images.

‘Oh, Holy! They were pupils too. This was years ago. Five or more.’

‘And you groomed them,’ said Nayl. ‘You and your staff. Groomed them like you groom all the poor strays who wind up here. Sold them on.’

‘No, this is a respectable place and–’

‘So respectable,’ I said, ‘that you wipe all your records so we can’t see them.’

Cyrus bit his lip.

‘Zahn. Frell. Soto. Who did you sell them to?’

‘T-to a merchant, as I remember.’

Lie. Bald and heavy. And well formed, not just vocally, but mentally too. A layer of mendacity cloaked Cyrus’ thoughts, like a cake of dried mud. A mind-trick, one of the many taught by the Cognitae. I had been expecting as much. For all his fear, Cyrus was still a product of that heretical institution, and therefore had to be unlocked with precision.

If I’d just burst into his mind telepathically from the outset, I might have damaged or destroyed many of his locked engrams. But now I had a solid lie out of him, and that lie revealed the way his mind-shields worked: their focus, their strengths, their inclination.

‘Who did you sell them to?’

‘I told you, a merchant. A free trader.’

+Who?+

He squealed as the psi-jab rattled his mind. He was utterly unprepared for the sharpness of it.