Pawns and Hollow Castles
Seventh Day of the First Month 294 AC
Bdellavritra, Mereth despised the oily pustules, not least because they were some of the few baatezu skillful enough to avoid her gaze and that of her sisters, but she would never deny the whisper-fiend's skill at deception nor their worth to the Lord of the Ninth. It was wise of the Lord Justice to order a full evacuation, though she was not entirely certain of the value of setting the place ablaze with alchemical fire. Most of her kin were inured to the flames of the Abyss and would not be harmed. If any would perish it would be the catspaws, mortals perhaps unknowing of who they had chosen to sup with.
"Fire's a great way to cover your tracks," the alu demon noted from the other corner of the room, looking up from polishing her claws with what could only be deliberate nonchalance.
Mereth kept her expression deliberately neutral, showing none of the annoyance at being read by the demon get. "And the concussive force and collapsing stonework might prove inconvenient for some of the beings they would send after us." She was certainly not willing to wager a half-hour's guard shift on that actually happening given that Aradia would have known the scope of their presence in Meereen. Haste had made fools of greater minds before, her former lord not least among them.
"But you still regret we are going to blow this place up?" Azema prodded as was her kindred's wont. "Like the look of it?"
"Faintly," she answered the first question, but not the second, and did not elaborate. This time the tanar'ri took the hint.
The truth, which she had no intention of speaking aloud, was that she had some faint sympathy for the Unsullied. Slaves to uncaring masters, gears in the mechanism of their own enslavement, as close as crude mortal means could get to the bindings that had once constrained her, yet they had not chosen to walk into the dark with their eyes open as Mereth and her sisters had done. She was suddenly very glad it was the erstwhile demon who stood in her company and not Yrael. What the steel-winged archon might have guessed from her expression she did not wish to imagine.
***
Teana grabbed hold of the table's edge to steady herself as the crystal ball before her filled with the echo of distant flames. It was never pleasant looking through a shadow-trace, made worse this time by the vertigo of seeing the scene through both its senses and the diviner's focus. "It's done, didn't kill anyone though. I triggered it just before the Unsullied broke down the door."
"Why?" Aradia asked sharply, still looking for her pound of flesh for the violation the devil had wrought upon her most likely.
"Because there were no devils in the group other than a pair of imps flying along unseen, but the person commanding them was Izdril zo Yherizan, Head of the House. Someone had persuaded him to dress more plainly than his station as well."
"So they divined it was a trap..." Malarys began.
"Guessed," Lady Sandviper interjected. "They couldn't divine shit, the worm was warded against divination even if the spell has a hole in it for the fiends to exploit."
"Guessed," the Lord Justice corrected smoothly. "And they decided to send us a proverbial sacrificial goat, the young head of what we can now assume is a neutral family, or at least one that is not so tangled in Baator's plots that he would suit them better as a dead martyr than a living head of House."
"Well we still have our prize, now we just need to figure out how to get answers out of its, er... heads without triggering some contingency," Tyene says. "Do you want to handle it or should I?"
How do you interrogate the belier devil?
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OOC: I don't usually do break points like this, but given that you are looking to interrogate a devil that holds at least some of the secrets you have been chasing for two months it seems appropriate.
