The Chronicle of the Worthy Son

Interrogation, pt. 2

Able set his forehead in his hand and took a slow, bolstering breath. Stay calm. Just a little longer. He let his breath out but still flinched when Tanner slammed his hands on the table.

"Oh, you find me tiresome, do you?"

Able cautiously raised his eyes to meet Tanner's and tried to sit more attentively. The senior deputy was looming over the table, but it was still between them. Best keep it that way if at all possible.

"Where exactly do you get off your high horse, Houser? What exactly makes you think you're so much better than me?"

Okay, no safe answer to that. Just stay calm. Capstone believed him. She would come back. ...or was he as much a fool for trusting that as he did Miller's visions?

Tanner leaned deeper across the table as if impersonating a crouching lion. "I swear I wouldn't give a shit about a stuck-up weakling like you, except that-that disdain you have for the men of the uniform. Naw. I can't let that slide."

Able had been trying not to gag as Tanner's hot and stinky breath hit him, so one of his eyebrows got up and away from him at this bizarre allegation. Wrong move.

Tanner strode around the table like a man instead of leaping over it like a cat, but Able felt pounced all the same when Tanner grabbed the front of his coat and pushed back so the front two legs of the chair were in the air. "Tens of thousands of men came here and bled so a faggot like you could go to school? You feel real good about that? So high and mighty, so smart to skip out on their struggles?"

"No," Able said as evenly as he could with the chair wobbling beneath him. Should he stand? He was a bit taller than Tanner, so that might be perceived as a threat. "No, I think we agree, you and I."

"The hell I do!" Tanner's angry spittle landed on Able's face.

"The war was a tremendous waste of life," Able still tried. "That's what you're so angry about, isn't it?"

"The hell it was." Tanner thrust his palm into Able's chest, sending him and the chair over backward.

Able instinctively jerked his head forwards and arms around it as the chair clattered on the stone beneath him. His breath was forced out by the back of it, its comforting support a weapon at this angle. He tried to scramble away but the seat had his legs stuck flailing like an upside-down crab's.

"No, they proudly scrabbled and starved and slaved for something greater than themselves, something greater than all of us." Odd for Tanner to have a lecture in common with Capstone. "And you spat on that. You spat on our nation and all we've done for you." He set his booted heel into Able's gut.

Able gasped and tried to squirm away, but the heel lodged against his left pelvis. He nearly grabbed Tanner's ankle to pry him off but stopped himself. Even seeming to assault an enforcer was trouble he couldn't afford to get into. Not now.

Tanner rested his elbow on his knee to seemingly causally press harder. "You conspired with the enemy to bring us down."

Able fought for the breath to reply, "That was Driver, not me!"

"No, come on! You admitted to conspiring with the Shadow."

Able closed his eyes and breathed deep in his lungs. It was his other organs that seized him in panicked pain. He could breathe. He could keep his head. "You mean Prince Plaudit."

"No." Tanner sneered and shook his head. "Even if he has royal blood, he doesn't deserve that title after turning on those who bled in his name!"

"...you have more in common with Driver than me, then." Yes, that was really keeping his head.