Inappropriate Interrogation
This interrogation wasn’t about me, per se; I was just a means to an end, a girl to humiliate.
Government House was an enormous building and though we used most of the rooms regularly, some sections we rarely needed these days. Behind the central staircase on the first floor stretched a long hallway dotted with secure doors to meeting and planning rooms we actually did still use for various purposes, some innocuous and some nefarious.
After about 700 feet, the hallway turned both left and slightly right; to the left more meeting rooms that ended in another entrance to the main council room, to the right the hallway began to decline noticeably but gradually into the historical, little used depths of the House. Even more nefarious. As natural light receded, wall lamps lit the shadowy way, the air grew cooler and the slab stone floor became rougher. For about 200 feet doors disappeared; a sharp turn to the right and they began to appear again, now heavier, darker wood with locks on the outside and numbers nailed to their centers. Room 1 started on the right followed by all odd numbers and Room 2 started on the left followed by all even numbers.
A long time ago this hallway would not have been so empty; perhaps it would have been as dark if only to intentionally intimidate those summoned to its interview rooms as it intimidated me now. Merchants from as far away as Isloch sailed here to be considered for entrance into our trading guilds or to have access rights to ports or trading routes. The evaluations were long and thorough. Merchants accused of unethical trading practices were arraigned here and anyone accused of personal crimes committed while on the island were held and interrogated here. The interrogations were intense and thorough. The successful management of an extensive empire required such unwavering stringency and discipline that it could be at times ruthless.
With our merchant days long past these rooms were little used, or so I thought. I had been summoned to Room Number 5. As I passed the closed doors of Rooms 1–4 I noticed a very thin line of light seeped out from beneath each door.
I was eighteen.
The only other person in the hall was a guard hovering listlessly by door Number 5. As I came closer and he straightened up, I recognized him as Niko, one of the junior officers in Castor and Pollux’s class. I relaxed a little but I was surprised to find him here: junior officers assigned to ships, as Niko was, were rarely on Government House guard duty, not unless they were being punished or…something else. At nineteen, Niko was handsome with dark green eyes and dark curly hair that was a smidge longer than regulation. I liked looking at him. He was kind with a temperament more reserved than reactionary; while Pollux boldly entertained a crowded room Niko held back and reflected upon everyone in it. He was easy to like and I understood why he and Castor had grown close. He was comforting. And I liked looking at him.
He opened the door and whispered: “Ride it out.”
I walked in and Niko pulled the door closed behind me. The room was small; about 600 feet all around and disarmingly bright. Light streamed in from narrow windows close to the ceiling though we were nearly entirely below ground. As my eyes adjusted, a long table appeared directly before me. Three whitebeard Councilmen sat behind it and stared silently at me. They didn’t seem to be blinking. This was a traditional interrogation and oversight formation I had only read about in the Archives: 3 interrogators asked questions and 4 observers ensured the correctness of the interrogation, negotiation or evaluation. The three interrogators were Damien in the center, and two other men of my father’s: Sylvano on his right and Maurice on his left. Behind them four senior Councilors sat on raised stools that put them above the interrogators. Lisle I knew the best but really not that much at all and Abigail I knew from the Archives; she knew right and wrong, legal and illegal, precedence and deviance above anyone else. She gave me the tiniest encouraging smile and held a hand to her solar plexus.
Breathe.
Damien by virtue of his seat in the center was the lead interrogator. Then he was in his early fifties, his hair was almost grey but still jet black in spots and in size he was neither tall nor short, fat nor slim. When he was younger he had trained as a rower but after his four years he transferred out to become an assistant to council in his home Vena, a medium sized city built along the mouth of an important river called the Ven which flowed into the Rocan Sea. Vena was just north of Scalia; the two cities were both rivals and friends as people so close usually are. Damien and my father would have met often; their partnership and Damien’s loyalty would have grown from there and his path to Government House set. While he did not have the obvious shape of a lifelong rower, his body still expressed the fitness of a man who had continued to remain somewhat active- mostly by scuttling after my father.
On the table in front of him was an open, relatively thick report book. The reason I was here was written in that book and I was very uneasy. Scared, to be honest. Someone had made a complaint, other people had already been questioned and everything had been documented in that book. I tried to hold myself together.
“Ambrose said you had some questions for me,” I said.
Damien pointed authoritatively to a single chair situated directly in front of him just a few feet from the table.
“Please,” he said, “sit.”
“What is this about?” I said. I had read in the Archives in several articles on being a Councilor that power comes from standing, not sitting. No one in this room seemed to have read them.
Damien folded his hands over the report book and rather intensely willed me to sit. We stared at each other. I didn’t like being told what to do by him but I also fought being afraid of him. This interrogation wasn’t about me, per se; I was just a means to an end, a girl to humiliate.
Lisle exhaled impatiently. He didn’t like Damien’s games. “It’s about Rowen.”
Damien pursed his lips, irritated. Rowen was under continual, relentlessly intense scrutiny and Damien had sniffed out a new way to further discredit him. It wasn’t enough to strip him of command or see for themselves his mutilations; they wanted to harm him more.
“What about Rowen?” I said.
“Sit,” Damien said. He was like a school master disciplining a pupil. He had yet to blink.
“Please,” Abigail said gently, “Ilona, would you sit? This won’t take long. We’ve received reports of… Your relationship with Rowen has been brought to our attention. Out of concern for you, we’re required to ask questions about it.”
For Abigail, I sat. Even for Lisle, I sat, because he had answered my question.
“Relationship?”
“An improper relationship,” Damien said.
“Improper?” I said, confused.
Lisle calmly intervened. “We’ve received multiple reports about Rowen’s behavior, in general and in particular. We’d like to understand what you’ve seen and heard.”
Damien picked up a pen and flipped to a page in his report book. There were forms for these things; interviews were like trade agreements. Maurice and Sylvano also poised their pens to document.
“You’re seventeen years old,” he said.
“I’ll be eighteen in four months.”
His expression grew colder. “Currently you are seventeen.”
“Yes. Shouldn’t my father be here then?”
“He gave us permission to question you. He thought you could manage fine without him. Do you need him here?”
Ambrose had of course been vague on exactly what Damien’s subject of interrogation was; he wanted me surprised. Unprepared. At a disadvantage. But Rowen as an investigatory subject wasn’t a surprise.
“No,” I said.
Ambrose had unintentionally prepared me for anything, any disadvantage.
“Right then. You’ve spent a lot of time with Rowen. Why do you spend so much time with him?”
“Define so much.”
Damien flipped through his pages and read: “At least every other day she comes to see him. She stays for a few hours and while she doesn’t seem to hide the fact, she doesn’t make a show of it either.”
“He was severely injured,” I said, “and no one else spends much time with him beyond the medical staff. I wanted to understand what happened.”
“We know what happened. Your father told us.”
“I mean after. During,” I grew uncomfortable, “what Hugo did.”
Sylvano leaned forward, curious. “Why would you want to understand that?” he said.
“I have friends, like brothers, Castor and Pollux. They’re young but they’ll be captains soon, because of the gap. And I want to know what it’s like out there; if I’m a councilor like you one day, I should know what I’m sending them into.”
The room became very somber. These men had lost brothers and sons. Even Damien fell almost respectfully quiet, but it was an act, a show of public decency. He cleared his throat, righted his ship and pushed forward his agenda.
“You understand Rowen is at fault.”
I nodded. “So does he. And he has been punished.”
“Did you spend much time with him before his defeat?” he corrected himself, “did you spend as much time with him before his defeat as you did after?”
“No.”
“But you spent time. How much? Once a week, once every two weeks?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like he had much reason to spend time with me; he was Commander, planning the offensive.”
“So now, these every other day visits, what do you talk about?”
“What do we talk about?”
“Yes. He tells you how awful it was out there, but what else? What would you and Rowen have to talk about? You’re the daughter of the man, our Administrator, who removed him from command. Rowen is quite angry about this.”
“He’s not angry about being stripped of command.”
“But he’s angry.”
“He has a lot of emotions. He was tortured; his entire crew was… executed. Most of the men under his command–”
“–died under his command.”
“Being stripped of his command wasn’t the worst thing that happened to him.”
“So he’s unstable.”
“He’s in pain. His wounds are fresh.”
“Did he ever tell you to leave? To stop visiting?”
“Yes.”
He looked surprised. “Yes?”
“Yes. He said Ambrose wouldn’t be happy that I kept visiting him.”
“So he didn’t really want you to stop?”
“No. He was alone otherwise.”
“So you continued?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you visit him in the first place, on that very first day?”
“I was in the harbor when he came back. He was dying. I didn’t want him to die alone. I’m glad he’s still alive. We need him.”
“Hugo’s dead. His nineteen-year-old son…” Damien looked at his notes, “Matin… is trying to stop Caria from falling apart. We don’t need Rowen; they’re crumbling. We’re safe now.”
“Oh, I don’t think we’re safe.”
Damien smiled. “Is that what Rowen says?”
“Whatever he says about out there, on the sea, against them, I believe. No one else in this room has seen what he has or knows what he knows. If Caria is crumbling, shouldn’t we help our cousins? Why would we want them to suffer any more than they’ve been suffering?”
Damien’s posture softened. He stood and started around to the front of the table. Maurice picked up the note-taking.
“When I was a boy, about your age,” he said, “I had my first crush. Do they still call it that these days? She was my mathematics instructor. She was ten years older; I was enamored. One day I caught her with my father and I realized that she only tutored me, was kind to me, perhaps even flirtatious, as a way to connect to my father. But oh, everything she said, I believed every word of it. And when I thought about it, I realized all the questions she had asked me, all our discussions, weren’t to learn about me but to know more about my father.”
He sat back against the table and waited for his wisdom to sink into me.
“I’m sorry you so poorly miscalculated her,” I said.
The gallery of four chuckled. Damien himself chuckled, albeit acerbically.
“Did he threaten or plan to harm your father?” he said sharply.
“No.”
“Did he take advantage of you?”
His face was a wrinkled old concoction; he was a gnarled, offensive creature. Ride it out.
“Advantage…?”
“Men like Rowen,” he said, “I understand why they are attractive to girls like you. Just a few weeks ago he was strong, handsome, manly, a naval commander. He was going to be Admiral one day. His attention must have been beyond flattering. You’re not much, are you, compared to the women he’s been with? Have you seen those beauties? Yet, he takes a liking to you, a pale lonely, motherless little girl with few friends; ghosts in the Archives hardly count. The only living person who understands you — Rowen is a stretch, don’t you think? That he could want you for any other reason than that he needs something from you? Did he touch you?”
Hateful malignant animal.
“No.”
Damien turned to his report book. “I saw him grab her arm in the harbor. He screamed at her and left blood on her skin and her clothes. He pulled her to him and whispered in her ear. What did he say to you?”
Your father did this. The Carians will come and you will die.
“He wanted to be sent back out.”
“He blamed your father.”
“Not to me.”
“You came after his surgery to visit him,” Damien pressed on, “Regularly. You heard him threaten the Administrator. He was planning to assassinate your father. He established a relationship with you so he could understand your father’s schedule; so he could determine the best place and time and way in which–”
“Who is saying these things? It’s not even possible –he can hardly walk–”
“Rowen was our finest commander,” Damien said, “He survived insurmountable odds. One leg won’t stop him; he has plenty of strength to pull a crossbow or wield a knife. He’s always been defiant of Ambrose’s authority.”
“Then why didn’t you investigate him before, when he was strong, handsome and manly?”
That caught him off guard.
“Answer the question, Damien,” Lisle said.
Damien turned an angry red.
“Those were words,” he said, “these are plans.”
“Ilona denied plans,” Abigail said, “Or her knowledge of them. Is that correct, Ilona? You deny knowledge?”
They wanted Rowen dead. Damien and Ambrose wanted him dead. I had to save him.
“I heard no plans. I saw no plans.”
“There is the matter of…” Damien flipped furiously through his report book, “the inappropriateness of…” he looked back at me, “Did he take advantage of you? Did he touch you-”
I pushed my chair back and stood. “Stop!” I demanded.
I couldn’t breathe. Ambrose had approved the questions on paper, but couldn’t face me in person when Damien attacked me with them. Did he actually feel shame?
Damien stopped. I faced him as fearlessly as I could.
“The only person who has taken advantage of me is you, today,” I said, “For whatever reason you are pursuing Rowen, I don’t appreciate being used and humiliated to do it. You find real evidence of his wrong-doing and leave me out of it.”
Damien’s eyes flashed furiously. He stepped toward me ready to unleash more–
“–That’s all you’re going to get Damien,” Abigail said authoritatively.
“I have–”
“Enough,” Lisle said, “For your sake, enough.”
“Am I free to go?” I said.
Damien nodded, defeated. He thought it was going to be easy to defeat me but he didn’t know anything about me. Now we both knew just a tiny, little bit.
***
I came out of the dark passage into the light and the energetic din of the main hall. I paused beneath the stairwell. Word of Hugo’s murder had quickly spread and the bureaucrats were making pointless plans to remake the empire with what little of the navy we had left. My hands shook as the aftermath of the confrontation in Room Number 5; Rowen in this new context was expendable. He was vulnerable and I had to warn him.
I started across the mosaic sea floor toward the massive central doors to the portico. Every day at precisely six in the morning, unless there was a storm or unseasonably cold winter day, the House Guard opened these doors and the string of secondary doors that ran the length of the portico. The fresh sea air that circulated through the Main Hall announced the business of the day.
A large powerful figure appeared in the main doorway. I stopped. The din hushed and we all stared at him. In five weeks this was his first appearance in public. He steadied himself on crutches and as he came into the pristine hall its bright light magnified the severe beating and torture he had endured and survived. His handsome youthfully rugged face was crisscrossed with shallow cuts sealed by Peter’s perfectly executed stitches and his nose was still swollen from the reset break. He moved forward with a rower and swimmer’s balance that had adapted already to the loss of his right leg.
Peter followed a few feet behind as Rowen propelled himself past me toward the hallway. His eyes were singularly and elementally dark. He understood exactly why he, and I, were here but he wouldn’t get the same leniencies I had: he was the target; I was only the bait.
Deny it, I warned him but I heard nothing. He had shut me out.
Peter paused beside me. “I can stop the interview,” he whispered. Doctor’s orders.
“He won’t like that,” I said. Rowen was not weak.
“It’s not about what he likes.”
“Will you keep an eye on him?”
He nodded. “What are you going to do?”
“Stop it the right way.”
Peter caught up to Rowen and they both disappeared behind the stairs. The energy in the hall rose again but it wasn’t like before. The bureaucrats seemed now less sure about the future.
***
I ran through the tunnel from Government House to the harbor and across the long central stone pier to the Harbor Tower. There were maybe thirty ships currently in port and many of these were still in rough shape. Carpenters, newly minted young captains and crews scuttled up and down ships’ hulls like little crabs making repairs to their homes. These last few weeks basic seaworthiness was the navy’s realistic goal but the Council, specifically the Administrator, wanted more. More required people and people, rowers and marines specifically, were in short supply. And I had yet to see any bureaucrat pick up a hammer, axe or even sewing kit much less an oar to move us out of the shock of our current reality.
I stopped at the Orders Wall to catch my breath and collect myself. Damien was one thing but Ambrose required an additional amount of composure. Placidity, like the most serene lake on a clear autumn day, a benthic stability. I noticed the stone ospreys: Pollux rubbed those things coming or going to the point of compulsion. With a bit of chagrin, I quickly touched one then the other and headed into the Tower, up the three flights to the Oversight Room. Ambrose’s voice struck out from the doorway.
“What does this mean?” he yelled. No answer. He was in a foul mood, his voice rife and pitchy with frustration.
I observed first from the doorway. The Oversight Room was crowded; about eleven bureaucrats clustered together on one side of the room and an equal number of young captain and command staff stood at attention along the wall of the other, Castor center, the lead among them. Unsurprisingly, lines drawn, our own mini-battle. Their faces were stubbornly blank, all hard, rebellious silence. Pollux was absent, a wise move on Castor’s part.
Ambrose walked the commanders’ line, his massive back to me, and shook a stack of papers at them. He had styled himself as not only their Administrator but their direct Commander, Rowen’s replacement, yet the men refused confidence in him. They were fundamentally shaken; their senior command all dead and now that Rowen was stripped from them they were lost in a tempest, unable to do much beyond the rote cycle of patrol sorties that had until now been their training. There were few strategists left and the news that Matin had murdered Hugo had barely registered; there was no celebration or exuberance in the Harbor. We were vulnerable and even more so with Ambrose at the helm.
We all knew it, he did not.
I came quietly into the room and took a place behind the central giant round planning table and as equidistant as possible from everyone. Rowen’s carefully managed plans to repatriate Scalia and his on-going operations of the Great Harbor, the secondary harbors and its 500-strong fleet were now a mess of papers flung across the table. I had been here a few times and watched from a corner the speed, the preciseness, the energy in which everything and everyone moved under his command. His ghost moved about, together he and his commanders marked and remarked a giant map as they worked and reworked all the possibilities, probabilities of invading Scalia. It should have been a win; they considered everything — everything –
“What does it mean?” Ambrose demanded again, “Castor?”
Castor’s jaw tightened. He eyes flicked to me, fast, then back to Ambrose. At just twenty Castor was controlled, tough, self-assured and faced Ambrose without fear. There was a language between men; in the space Ambrose gave him he understood Castor was unique, a man as certain as the tide in morning. And evening and in all the phases of the moon. He was Rowen’s successor and Ambrose needed him.
Ambrose slammed the stack of papers on the table and stared hard at me.
“Perhaps they’ll talk to you,” he said.
“I’ve already been on the receiving end of an interrogation today,” I said, “I’d rather not be the inquisitor.”
His entire face snarled: “It was an interview.”
“Damien asked if Rowen touched me,” I said.
Outraged, Castor and the rest of the Captains suddenly broke free of the wall. Now they reacted. Ambrose responded to all of us all at once.
“Accusations were brought to his attention,” he said loudly, “I approved the inquiry.”
“They’re not true,” I said.
“That is for the inquiry to decide, when the investigation has been completed.”
“The punishment is exile.”
Ambrose slammed his hand against the table; it shuddered. I did too, a little.
“I know what the punishment is!” he screamed.
Castor opened his mouth to defend me. Stay. He stayed.
Ambrose rubbed his temples; he was a man under a great deal of stress and not handling it well. Clearly.
“Out! Everyone out!” Ambrose shouted, “you stay.”
The bureaucrats immediately scuttled down the stairs. The Captains were less quick to move.
“Castor,” Ambrose said coldly.
Castor looked at me. Go, I told him impatiently. They left but I felt Castor stop at the second-floor landing. Ambrose shoved papers across the table so they flew, scattered and twisted aloft in a fury.
“I can’t make heads or tails of these plans. Any of it!”
“The Captains can,” I said calmly.
“I’ve ordered them–”
“Clearly that’s not working. Like it or not, you rely on them. And they’ve always had Rowen.”
“Sit,” he said.
I sat.
He took a deep breath and released it slowly. He sat. He seemed to pull himself together but he remained volatile, a dark storm still rumbling round the harbor, shaking ships deep in their hulls.
“Is there an accusation?” he said, “Yes. I assigned Damien to investigate it. You dislike Damien but I’ve seen the way Rowen looks at you. Before all this. He has always coveted this.”
“He had this. He was Commander.”
“He wanted my seat.”
I laughed. “Rowen never wanted your seat; he liked his seat. And this view. And it’s not your seat,” I said, “It was never any one person’s seat.”
“Things are not the way they used to be.”
“Hugo’s dead. You said things would go back to the way they used to be when Hugo was dead.”
“Well, that will take some time,” he said. Disingenuously.
“So until then? You’re Commander as well?”
“Til we have a new Commander.”
“Do you have anyone in mind?”
“A short list. Most of them are quite young. Castor shows some promise.”
He was fishing, perhaps even negotiating with me. Castor for Rowen.
“He’s gifted,” I said, “and loyal; he has no interest in your seat. He’s a package, with Pollux. And the Boys. You know how I feel about them.”
A sigh, this one very deep and profound, and he hoped rife with fatherly feeling.
“You’re all without mothers. That must be strange.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t know her.”
He looked almost nostalgic. He leaned forward and smiled widely.
“She was–”
“I don’t need to know her,” I said.
He seemed a bit crestfallen but he quickly churned a new strategy.
“You feel sorry for Rowen –”
“I don’t. I know what’s true and what is not.”
“Listen to me,” he said, “Rowen’s not worth defending. I’ve seen this so many times in men who come back; he’s damaged–”
“I won’t speak against him. It’s good he’s alive. Hugo or Matin, they’re still coming for us. All we have left are Castor and Pollux. They’re young. Let Castor learn everything Rowen knows,” I said, “Rowen can never be Commander again; that punishment is death to him.”
Ambrose stared at me for a long while. He seemed to consider my advice but, a great politician, he seemed many things at any one time.
“You’re certain he never…” he said.
“He never,” I said.
An honest lie but truthful to the vague question. I had saved Rowen, whether he was grateful or not.
***
Chapter Four | Ilona 4.11 Inappropriate Interrogation — The End of Roca (wordpress.com)
