“Brigands! Bandit SCUM!”

A woman wearing a fine dress and a thoroughly ruined updo screamed bloody murder from her spot in the ditch by the side of the highway. There were about twenty five others tied up and tossed in a row beside her, all with various professions and classes. The morning sun was getting higher in the sky by then, and the light it provided was enough to see that the woman was getting herself very dirty with all her thrashing about.

There was, of course, no way any of them could escape Meredith’s mana-draining threads. Especially the woman with her Enchanter class.

Normally Jack would have been doing the interrogating since it was his raid, but he was busy helping the others unload all the crates full of whole-sale fruits, vegetables, and kids. On the other hand, Allen and Nora were standing with Iana so they could have a chat with the Lanthinus company people. Allen just wanted to give Nora an example of how the Spades typically did their interrogating; Iana could have easily managed the situation on her own.

Iana put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. The pose got her all the attention she needed. The fact that she was wearing a rather revealing pearl-blue dress also probably helped. She looked no older than twenty after all, and with her soul seal active again, she was no longer shown as a reaper.

“Right, which one of you was in charge of this, ah… venture, shall we call it?” Iana said, speaking over the breathless struggling of the Enchantress noblewoman. Iana’s eyebrow twitched when the noblewoman screamed again, and she slowly paced over with a scowl. “Surely it can’t be you,” she said, leaning over the red-faced woman. Her makeup was hopelessly smeared, and her gown covered in filth. The others lined up with her just tried to stay quiet and look away.

“Drown yourself, you MISREBLE old hag!” she hissed, glaring up at Iana.

Allen instinctively took a step back.

Mercifully, Iana only stared down at the noblewoman for a second. The poor woman seemed to realize she wasn’t the one with the high ground, and turned away, somehow managing to force a smug and defiant look in spite of how much she was shaking.

“Well then, I’ll take that as a no,” Iana said and looked over at the other two nobles. “It must be one of you two then.”

One of them was a bespectacled man appearing in his late thirties and dressed in a very richly decorated surcoat with a royal-blue cloak over top, both soiled by mud. He was a level nine-hundred Scholar and was no longer any threat. The other was the similarly leveled lighting Mage, and he was missing an arm and barely holding on to the torn and singed remnants of his clothes. He couldn’t replace them either, since all of their inventories were unreachable with their mana being sucked out. Instead, he just laid there motionless with his eyes glazed over, probably thinking about parasitic, flesh-morphing worms.

The Scholar was the one to answer through gritted teeth. “Yes, that would be me. I am Baron Fredric Lanthinus of Canterbury. You will regret this afront to the noble court of the Holy Kingdom of Light, ravagers, your days are numbered.”

“One of the four major countries on the other continent,” Allen thought to himself. “Well, it was nice of him to introduce himself.”

Iana laughed delicately into her gloved hand before fixing Fredric with a mocking smile. “Oh my! A noble from the Kingdom, that’s so much more interesting than an imperial. It’s a shame you’re only a baron,” she said, ignoring the nobleman’s face twitch. “But I digress; your title has no value in this conversation anyway. We don’t want your ransom if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“What?” Fredric spat, incredulous. With a huff, he pushed himself up to glare at Iana from his spot in the ditch. “Who are you then, if not bandits? Would you not have robbed and killed us all by now if you say you have no intention of ransoming us?” he scoffed and looked away. “You must be quite smart then, because I can assure you, the Kingdom would not have appreciated that.”

Allen nudged Nora in the side and made yapping hand gestures at the noble’s expense. His apprentice cracked a small smirk despite her obvious apprehension towards the whole situation.

Iana sighed dramatically and put a hand on her hip. “How astute of you, Fredric,” she began, ignoring the noble scowl again at the familiar usage of his name. “Indeed, we are not bandits. Let’s just say we’ve been given charge by the local authorities to find eliminate a certain band of unsavory smugglers. Now, we can do this the easy way, or the ha—”

“What in Jiira’s name are you talking about?!” the man shouted. He looked over at the rest of his employees and servants, none of whom had anything to say. “Th-those postings about us selling contraband were overexaggerated. This country has absurd laws governing illegal items!”

“Yet not as strict as your Kingdom, but sure, illegal shmillegal am I right?” Allen remarked, tapping his foot and grinning behind his mask. The nobleman gave him a dirty look but didn’t say anything in return. “I really hope they turn on each other quickly. Playing dumb just takes forever.”

“We’re not here for your little toys either, Fredric,” Iana said, her tone was a little more irritated than before. At the same time, a row of more than fifty large crates were being brought over and lined up behind Iana. Not everybody present could lift a whole crate by themselves, but magic made things easier.

“Tell me, what’s in the crates, Fredric?” Iana asked.

The nobleman cocked an eyebrow and scoffed. “Exotic fruits and locally sourced vegetables, you miscreant. If you’re looking for the supposed contraband, you’ll find that in the smaller carriages.”

“We know. You’ve got some pretty spicy stuff, I’ll admit, but nothing special,” Allen said from the side, summoning a very well made dagger from his inventory and twirling it around. “I already helped myself actually. The price for this was pretty good, but one-hundred percent off?” he continued, chuckling, “You must be crazy!”

“Fuck you, brat!” the noblewoman suddenly screamed. “That blade is worth ten platinum bars! I enchanted it myself!” She shook in anger while Allen just laughed. “Your feeble peasant mind couldn’t even begin to comprehend the amount of wealth you’re holding right now! Not in a lifetime would you ever even lay eyes on—”

The woman’s breathless rant was suddenly cut off as she started gasping for air. She struggled more, but without the use of her arms there was nothing she could do to stop Iana’s magic from freezing her throat solid. In a matter of seconds, all the woman could do was lay still with bulging eyes, breathing through a frozen open windpipe.

“Much better,” Iana said with a teasing smile. She waved her hand in front of the lightning mage to get his attention. “Do you know what’s in the crates, young man?”

The Mage just stared back at Iana for a moment before answering. “No,” he said, returning a valiant attempt at a firm expression.

Allen caught the Scholar noble clench his jaw slightly at his partner. “It’s hard to tell who’s lying, but they’re definitely not on the same page here.”

Allen waited as Iana quickly went down the row of employees and asked the same question. Roughly one third of them answered “no” with some variation of a dodgy expression, while the others eagerly agreed that the crates were just full of produce, some even seeming confused. Allen even recognized Dale the Apothecary in their somewhere.

The first crate was opened, and its contents was revealed to be several bushels of apples and eight bound and gagged girls between the ages of twelve and fifteen. Everyone reacted with shock and outrage, though with varying degrees of success. Allen could clearly pick out a few faces that were clearly fake, telekinesis man was among them to nobody’s surprise.

“Like I said, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Iana began again. “Tell us who all of your clients are and everywhere you have bought and sold slaves before. Do that, and I’ll make sure your final deaths are painless. Alternatively, if you can prove yourself to have no connection to slave trafficking here, we’ll let you be on your way with anything you’d like from this convoy.”

That time, rather than shouting back at Iana, Fredric went after the lightning Mage. “ARTURO!” he shouted, red in the face and veins bulging. “What have you done!? You fool, you said those funds were from investment bonds!”

“They WERE!” Arturo shouted back, his bloodshot eyes flicking between the Scholar and Iana.

“Why should I believe you!? Your cousin turned into a fucking monster and got himself killed!” Fredrick shouted, literally shaking. He gestured at the noblewoman beside him with his whole hog-tied body and continued to rant. “And Jiira knows this isn’t Heather’s scheme, the woman can hardly tell her tits from her arse. You, on the other hand, have the means and connections for ALL OF THIS!”

The words kept being flung back and forth for a few minutes while the employees just tried to stay quiet like kids do when their parents are fighting. Allen couldn’t help but laugh at the scene. It was always great when the prisoners interrogated themselves.

“You’re the one handling the fucking finances,” The lighting Mage retorted, burnt out and covered in sweat. “Don’t try to say I’m the one with the connections simply because I outrank you. I only agreed to play along with the business of a lowly Baron because my cousin was so persistent. Now he’s dead!”

“Look, I’ll… I’ll give you my ledger with all the transactions we’ve made with customers,” Fredric said, ignoring his partner completely. “I want nothing to do with that,” he said motioning with his chin at the slaves.

“Okay, where is it?” Iana asked though a thin-lipped smile.

“It’s in my inventory…”

“Because of course,” Allen thought. It didn’t take a lot of mana to open an inventory, but that mana wouldn’t actually be used up. That meant the Scholar would still have enough mana to, maybe, activate a suicide totem he was hiding somewhere. Allen knew that, but he could tell the nobleman didn’t have anything like that planned. Besides, Meredith could heal against suicide totems anyway.

“Fine, let him take out one item,” Iana said over her shoulder with a sigh.

The Healer paused her healing of the slaves and turned to give one nod in the direction of Fredric. Allen waited patiently for something to go wrong, but miraculously the guy really did just take out a notebook.

Iana handed it to Allen for him to flip through, and it didn’t take long for him to notice the trick. He turned around and leaned over to Nora before pointing out a few lines to her. “See this?” he whispered, getting a nod in response. “He switched the orders. Remember Kenneth told us the crates of potatoes were going to the governor of Hillford, not some restaurant. They must have ordered the glassware, which Fredric here put under the governor.”

“What does it mean?” Nora asked in a hushed voice.

Allen grinned back at his apprentice. “It means he’s a fuckin’ liar.”

“Oh.”

Allen cleared his throat as he returned the ledger to Iana. A simple smirk would have been enough to tell the woman all she needed to know, but since he was wearing a mask, Allen settled for a thumbs down.

“As I suspected,” Iana said with sigh. She turned back to an expectant Fredric and gave the man a sullen look. “Well Fredric, it seems you're not getting out of this after all.”