Silvana suppressed a flinch at the momentary flicker of the Geller fields oscillation. Suggest she look at it indeed. Reaching out she touched the dataslate he had set down, the sense of his intense study lingered on the thing as well as determination to get to the bottom of the mystery that it laid out. She couldn’t read the slate in the way that he understood it but Astropaths had faced that problem for millenia. A snap of her fingers bought a whining servoskull into the room from the storage annex. The thing hovered just above head height on its antigrav plates as it zipped across the room to its mistress. The skull settled above her shoulder like a falcon, purity seals fluttered as it settled. Two long mechadendrites slide from its mouth, one of them encircled her wrist, the other plugging into the input jack of the dataslate with a metallic click. The air hummed slightly with the hiss of compressed air as the servitor began to tap out the contents of the files in extremely rapid pulses on her bare forearm.

“The Inquisitor used me in a number of ways,” she began, her mind was partitioned by her training, part of it completely absorbed in the information being transmitted to her and another part of it equally absorbed with the conversation.

“I have considerable skills in telepathy and mental manipulation, that is useful in interrogations as you might imagine,” Silvana explained she briefly considered speaking directly to his mind but decided that such an act of petty insolence was beneath her. 

“Im also able to conduct auto-seances and psycometry. The Inquisitor finds me useful for my astropathic abilities as well, it is useful to have me with operations taking part far from him so that there is a reliable vessel of communication available without having to go through the Administratum.”

Alrik, like many inquisitors, had at least a dozen Adepts that often worked in teams of four or five. Sending the pair of them after something like this was an unusually small footprint. There was no way for her to know if that meant he thought it would be simple, or he was merely forcing his Interrogator to work outside his comfort zone. She had been working independently since before Blademar came to the Inquisitors service and so all of her information was second or third hand. Perhaps when they reached their destination she would suggest they hire some local talent.

“It sounds like the local nobles might react poorly to the open arrival of Inquisition Agents,” said the part of her mind fully occupied with the data slate. They would react with fear, fawning or obstructionism according to the assessment in the files, none of which would be conducive to finding answers. Perhaps the small commitment was intended to provide a touch of subtlety to a sensitive situation.

“I am aware of several occasions in which the Inquisitor has executed rogue psykers,” she replied in a dreamy voice, her mind increasingly fragmented by the multiple pathways it was pursuing.

“I have some training in dealing with such individuals, as you might imagine.” She was glad that her partitioned mind made the statement emotionless.  Alrik was not comfortable in the presence of psykers, it was one of the reasons he prefered to keep her operating at a distance. It was a shame, though not a surprise, that the same mistrust had been transmitted to his student.



[@POOHEAD189]