Chapter 24 – Interrogation And Dead Pirates

“Where did you take the girl!” Darya asked the man for the sixth time. She stomped on his stomach, making him spurt sea water.

“D-don’t kill me! don’t kill me!” he yelled as soon as he caught his breath again. His third attempt to get up and run away failed like the other two. He flailed his arms around like an octopus, unable to get his legs to move at all. The blow across the spine had paralyzed him, which worked well enough for her purposes.

“You took a girl from this island, where did you take her? Answer me!” Darya asked again, grabbing his braids. She wasn’t practiced in the profession of CIA interrogator, but she figured yelling in his face enough could yield some answers.

“I din take anyone!” the man howled. “I was collecting money is all!”

“What money?”

“F-fish! The fish! The villagers, they pay for Golan protection, see!” he panted, eyeing Lurim who was aiming the slingshot at his face from a few feet away.

“Look at me, not him!”

“Th-the fish! When they sell, they pay us—not me, the cap’n a cut. Please! I dindo anything!”

“How much is this cut?”

“T-thirty percent! We collect for cap’n, see, or he cut our hands clean off!”

“Thirty!” Darya yelled. “How are they going to pay anything? It’s the off-season, right? I don’t see any of them fishing. How are they paying you anything?”

“Th-they din pay. T-that’s why cap’n came and took people. Th-they can buy ‘em back! cap’n din kill ‘em!”

Taking people? Buying them back? What is this slave business he’s talking about?

“Your captain took people? more than one?” Darya frowned. The idiot was digging his own hole with everything he said so far. “What people? Men or women?”

“Both! Men go work colonies where work is. Women, they go—” the man swallowed. “…you know.”

“I don’t know. Tell me. Where do women go?” Darya asked, angrily shaking his head.

“They go where their work is,” the man said, shrinking lower.

“And where is that?”

“Mainland. They go Galtea.”

“Women have work in Galtea? I see, and girls, where do they go if they aren’t old enough to work?”

“S-same place. Cap’n sell them.”

“You told me the villagers can buy their people back when they start fishing again. How do they get back a girl who’s already been sold in Galtea?”

The man swallowed. “Villagers, they only buy back men. Women sometimes. But girls are gone.”

The man seemed to sense the danger he put himself in just by saying those words. He cowered lower and started begging immediately. “Is not me, lady! Don’t kill me! I feel no legs! my legs! help!”

Darya let go of his head and let him slide back down. She didn’t know his part in the operation, or the divine or mortal punishment for it. She had gotten what she needed from him. The girl had been taken to Galtea, and the seer who went looking after her would’ve gone there already.

The man was wheezing now, and he was blinking slower and slower with a dazed look on his face. She didn’t have much time to ask more questions.

“Where do they sell girls in Galtea?” Darya asked, poking him with her heel.

“I donknow! not one place. Cap’n sell to highest price. We donknow where after they take them in carriages out of harbor,” The man panted. “Help me!”

Darya ignored him. “You knew this boy from the cave. There used to be a girl in that cave.”

“That, girl,” the man coughed. “She cost more. That one rare, see.”

A rare and expensive girl? Maybe because she can also breathe underwater? Now, where in Galtea would such a girl be sold?

Find this and other great novels on the author’s preferred platform. Support original creators!

“Is there any place that you know of? Or heard rumors about?”

“They say auction in the colosseum, after the fights at night. People seen carriages go there. Cap’n know warlord Dakva.”

“Warlord Dakva? What does he have to do with the colosseum auction?” Darya asked. The man was already slurring his words and making less sense.

“His colosseum. His fighters, Dakva, scary orc,” the man coughed again. “H-help me, lady. I beg!”

A scary orc named Dakva owns a colosseum and fighters. He runs auctions at night. Good. I’ll go there next.

“The money you collected, is it here?” Darya asked, ignoring the man’s plea.

“M-money not here, I swear!”

“Really? If I check in there,” Darya pointed at the wooden hut. “I won’t find any money?”

“Th-they din pay this month, see.”

That was true. They had already punished the villagers by kidnapping people because of it.

Darya looked at her right hand. She had bled a small patch of blood on the sand already.

“H-help me, lady. I dindo nothing!”

Lurim was still aiming his slingshot at the man with a fierce frown on his face. Clearly, this man had done something to him at some point.

“Is that true? Lurim?” She asked the boy. “He says he didn’t do anything.”

Lurim let go of his slingshot and stared at her as if she had said something illegal. He started performing a bunch of signs in rapid succession. He ended it by drawing a line across his cheek several times and pointing at the man.