The army enhanced with my runes is the true nobility of our country.

  ~Napoleon Bonaparte

  After dinner, Gregorios fetched a soul coffin out of a closet where he had left it two days before. He hated the little prisons, but they served a necessary purpose. So he forced down the memories of dark imprisonment they always triggered, even though his had been a different form of incarceration.

  “Let’s see if we know the right questions now,” he said as he placed it on a table in the living room.

  “Wait, who’s in there?” Sarah asked.

  “A facetaker I captured on a remote island,” Gregorios said. “Involved in a clandestine soul gathering operation. She and one of her assistants got in my way. That’s where I got that temporary host. I believe her activities are somehow tied to Mai Luan.”

  He flipped the coffin open to reveal two soulmasks. They had been dispossessed only about a week, so were almost full size. They had faded from shimmering translucence to gray, but the rainbow mist hadn’t withdrawn, and still floated with only slightly muted colors.

  Over time, dispossessed souls would shrink, eventually to the size of china doll faces, their misty tendrils drawn inside as the soul faded into a hibernation-like state. People were not intended to live dispossessed, and most minds broke down quickly in the forced solitude of soul coffins.

  Sarah grimaced and rubbed her arms. She had seen coffins like this in that vault below Alterego. It was a good sign that she already disliked them.

  Gregorios set aside the soulmask of the man he knew only as Curly, whose damaged body he had just left in the medical bay. The soulmask felt cool and unresponsive.

  As Sarah and Tomas leaned closer, he set his internal defenses, then carefully extracted the second soulmask. The rainbow mist of her soul latched onto his arm and her nevron slammed against his, but rebounded against his already activated core.

  Dalal was a dangerous adversary, but in her dispossessed state she could not hope to overpower him. Her Spirit was a respectable A5, but even with a strong body, she’d never defeat him one-on-one. After the initial assault, her will subsided and she hung docile in his hand.

  “Who is that?” Sarah asked.

  “A bad person,” Tomas whispered, then motioned her to silence.

  “Well Dalal, how are you feeling?” Gregorios asked.

  “You know better than anyone how I feel.”

  Her shrunken lips twitched and her voice sounded no louder than a high-pitched whisper. Although lacking the physical form needed to produce speech, soulmasks held the power to project limited sound.

  “Indeed. How long you get to enjoy that state is up to you.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Information, of course. How much does the council know of your activities?”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Give me a body and I'll explain everything.”

  “You’ll remain dispossessed until I believe you’ve shared in good faith.”

  “Then you get nothing.”

  “So be it.”

  He moved her over the coffin and she quickly added, “Know that my actions were sanctioned.”

  “Including your involvement with the hekha?”

  “Why such an interest? I told you I didn’t have Eirene.”

  “She turned up elsewhere.”

  “Where is she? I haven’t seen her in decades.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  Soft, helium-high laughter rang from her soulmask as it expanded slightly. When she spoke her voice came stronger. “You’ve lost her again so soon?”

  Gregorios forced down a flash of irritation. “Where would a council-sanctioned facetaker acquire a couple occans and a gang of charlies?”

  “Surprised, no?” Dalal asked. “That must tear at you like daggers. So much work to find her and now the council has taken her away again.”

  “So it was on council orders?”

  Curly, who had lain quiet on the table, twitched and his face brightened a bit. His whisper-voice spoke for the first time. “The council does not command everything.”

  “Silence, you fool,” Dalal said.

  Gregorios banged her soulmask against the side of the coffin in warning and focused on Curly. “You assume to know the will of the council?”

  Curly’s laughter rippled into the air. “Those old fools think they’re in control. They see only shadows of truth.”

  “Your lies are making matters worse,” Dalal said.

  “I’m tired of sharing that prison with you,” Curly replied. “I will speak on condition of freedom. They cannot stop us anyway.”

  More and more interesting, Gregorios thought.

  Sarah spoke up. “You said ‘we’ let them believe they’re in control. You’re not referring to Dalal, are you?”

  “Dalal is but a tool of the master like the rest.”

  “Shut up,” Dalal’s voice was almost a shout and her will struck at Gregorios again in a futile gesture of anger. Something Curly was saying terrified her.

  Sarah leaned a little closer. “You’re hekha, aren’t you?”

  “How can you know that? Who are you?”

  Tomas looked just as surprised as Gregorios felt. Sarah was a new player, how did she figure it out before the rest of them? Curly’s body had not worn power runes and Gregorios had dismissed the man as a simple servant.

  Gregorios lifted Curly’s soulmask to look into his half-sphere eyes. “Tell me what your group’s done with my wife, or I swear you’ll suffer like no embodied soul ever has.”

  He directed a pulse of his nevron against the soulmask and purple fire danced along the outer edges of the floating rainbow mist. It jerked and coiled up closer to the soulmask. Even the dispossessed could feel pain.

  “It wasn’t us,” Curly assured him quickly.

  Sarah shook her head. “Now you’re contradicting yourself. First you said the council doesn’t know, that your group is secretly in control. Now you’re saying you’re not responsible after all.”

  “You cannot speak of this,” Dalal said. “Gregorios, your threats are meaningless. Eirene was taken recently, no? After we were imprisoned here. We know nothing of current events. You must speak with the council.”

  “I plan to,” Gregorios replied. “And I’ll discuss with them the full extent of your activities. They may decide to ask a few questions themselves.”

  With that threat hanging over them, he returned both soulmasks to the coffin and latched it shut.

  Tomas hugged Sarah. “You were awesome.”

  “I don’t like liars.”

  “I think you ended the interrogation early,” Tomas said. “We should pull everything out of them.”

  “We don’t have time,” Gregorios said. “I’ve heard enough. There’s always hekha plotting against the council or trying to unleash plague on the world. Our top priority is finding Eirene, and I got the clues I need.” He forced calm over his growing fear for her. “I cannot allow them to lock her away again. You don’t know what that does to a person.”

  He trailed off as shadows of remembered horror shook him, but those were not his worst fears. Hekha could do far worse to Eirene than kill her.

  “Then what will you do?” Sarah asked.

  “Somehow the council’s involved. That’s where I need to find the answers.”

  “You can’t go to them,” Tomas said. “You’re still most wanted on the rogue list.”

  “I can go to one.”

  “Who?”

  “The one they’ll never expect me to approach.” He took a deep breath, focusing on the need to find Eirene. That need settled his thought, firmed his resolve.

  “We’re going to Los Angeles.”