Chapter 411: Open Book
By the sixth hour, Cyran Solvere had become reasonably certain they would find nothing.
Imperial security had taken his communicator, sealed both campaign offices, questioned his staff, searched his residence, and obtained access to every account declared during the election review. He assumed they were currently repeating the process through relatives, former colleagues, and anyone unfortunate enough to have shared a drink with him during the last decade.
That was inconvenient, but not dangerous.
The information he had used around Arik had not come through anything that could be traced directly to him, and the people involved had been careful long before Cyran became a candidate. There were no incriminating messages waiting inside an improperly protected device, no sudden deposits, no handwritten plans hidden beneath a mattress.
Arik had noticed too much.
Unfortunately for the emperor, noticing something and proving it were entirely different problems.
Cyran sat at the narrow table in the secured interview room with his sleeves still buttoned and his dark gray jacket folded across the back of the second chair. They had not put him in a cell, probably because detaining a prime ministerial candidate three days before an election was already politically volatile enough without photographs of iron bars.
The room itself was almost insultingly comfortable. Pale stone walls, a reinforced window overlooking one of the inner courtyards, water, untouched food, even adjustable heating beneath the floor.
Civilized detention.
The lock disengaged sometime after sunset.
Cyran looked toward the door.
Mezos entered alone.
That made him sit a little straighter.
The chief of imperial security wore a fitted black uniform without ceremonial decorations, his deep red hair pulled away from his face and secured low at the back of his head. Cyran had seen him many times around the palace and during public appearances, usually looking younger than his years because of whatever effect being an arcanist had on his aging.
Tonight there was nothing remotely approachable about him.
His blue eyes were cold, his expression emptied of the dry amusement Cyran had occasionally observed around Arik, and he carried neither a folder nor a tablet.
Mezos closed the door quietly behind him.
Cyran glanced at his empty hands.
"I assume the search has been disappointing."
Mezos approached the table without answering.
Cyran rested one forearm against the back of his chair.
"You have been through my finances, my campaign, my home, probably my underwear drawer by now. If you found something significant, I doubt you would be standing here without paperwork."
Mezos stopped across from him.
Still nothing.
Cyran disliked silence when it came from someone who clearly had no difficulty maintaining it.
He smiled anyway.
"I did nothing that justifies this. If the emperor believes otherwise, you are welcome to find whatever information he thinks exists."
Mezos moved around the table.
Cyran followed him with his eyes.
There was something wrong with the way he moved.
He approached as though the conversation had already reached its conclusion.
Cyran straightened.
"What are you doing?"
Mezos stopped beside him.
Then one hand came up and settled against the side of Cyran’s head.
For a fraction of a second, Cyran only felt the warmth of his palm against his temple.
Then ether slipped past skin and bone.
His entire body reacted before thought caught up.
Cyran shoved backward so violently that the chair scraped across the stone floor and struck the wall behind him. He tore himself out from beneath Mezos’s hand and staggered sideways, one palm braced against the counter beneath the window.
Mezos lowered his arm.
Cyran stared at him.
The stories.
Old military accounts about arcanists capable of reaching directly into memory, pulling information out without needing speech, records, or confession.
The process was not clean.
A mind was not an archive where someone could remove one document and close the drawer afterward. Search too deeply, disturb the wrong connection, tear through too much memory, and whatever remained afterward might still breathe without truly being whole.
People forgot names. Faces. Entire years. Some became hollow enough to require instructions for ordinary tasks.
Cyran’s pulse hammered against his throat.
"You wouldn’t."
Mezos’s face did not change.
"I would."
Two words, spoken without anger.
That frightened Cyran far more than a threat would have.
"There are laws governing mental intrusion."
"Yes."
"You need authorization."
"I have it."
Cyran’s stomach dropped.
Either Arik had already signed it, or Nurian security law permitted it under whatever classification they had placed on suspected infiltration of the election.
Neither possibility improved his position.
Mezos stepped forward again.
Cyran immediately moved along the counter.
"Wait."
Mezos continued.
" I’ll cooperate."
That stopped him.
Cyran pressed one hand against his temple where the ether had touched him. There was no pain, only the lingering sensation that something had brushed a place inside him no other person should ever reach.
Mezos waited.
Cyran laughed once beneath his breath, though there was nothing humorous in it.
"Gods."
He looked at Mezos properly now.
"You searched everything because you expected me to believe that was the danger."
No response.
"And this was always available."
"You told me to find the information myself."
Cyran stared at him.
Under any other circumstances, the answer might have been almost funny.
Not now.
"I’ll tell you."
Mezos remained still.
"All of it," Cyran added quickly. "You do not need to put your hands inside my head."
The cold professionalism in Mezos’s expression never shifted.
"Then begin."
Cyran pulled the displaced chair upright but did not sit. He needed movement, even if it only meant adjusting his sleeves and placing both hands against the table to steady them.
"I had access to someone inside the election commission."
"Name."
Cyran hesitated for less than a second.
"Seren Halvik. Deputy legal coordinator."
Mezos gave no visible reaction.
Cyran understood immediately that naming one person would not satisfy him.
"She was not the only one."
That earned the smallest change in Mezos’s eyes.
Cyran swallowed.
Months of careful preparation had depended on evidence remaining fragmented enough that nobody could assemble the entire picture.
None of those precautions mattered against someone who could simply reach into his skull and search until he found what he wanted.
Cyran looked once toward the reinforced window, where the palace lights reflected faintly against the dark glass.
"Let’s make a deal."