"Understood." Does Sergeant Renss have a nametag or otherwise make herself obvious.

No nametags to be seen, but the person that brought him up beckons him to follow. The holding cell is apparently the basement, down two flights of stairs and behind a locked door with a single bored guard stationed outside who snaps to attention when she hears visitors.

"You're relieved for the rest of the shift," the presumable Sergeant Renss says, catching the keys that the guard throws at him. Once they're alone, "go on," he says, waving Blai in.

The basement they've stuck her in isn't in great condition, but it's dry and not cold, which is a long shot better than being on the road. More boring, though, so almost a week in she's not sure she likes the trade. There's a cot and a chair and a desk boasing some impressive water damage, and a whole lot of empty space. There's not much to do in here, and they said no to a book because they're not supposed to give her paper, so when the door handle turns, Keisha's dozed off on the chair, face-down on the desk. She rolls her head at the noise, blinking blearily at the light.

"Mrrhf? Whu..."

Recognition of her guests is like a bucket of water to the face. She startles upright, almost falling out of her chair. Her mouth opens, and for a second nothing comes out until...

"...Hi."

She looks a bit worse for wear—stressed, tired, a bit disheveled—but not distressed or visibly injured.

"Voyager."

The door shuts but does not lock.

"Are you... okay... I heard you got back but couldn't get any details about it."

"Yes, I'm fine. The people my kidnapper delivered me to disclaimed endorsement for her actions and had me escorted to their border to make my way, and en route I stopped in Khelt which generously offered to send me home by the fastest transit available after a couple months' work so that I wouldn't be delayed by staying to assist them with some things. I've been back in Liscor for some time now."

"That's... good. Sorry I keep making problems for you."

"I think you're far more inconvenienced than I am. I hope it was worth it."

"...I think so?" Does he not even know what exactly she did. "I'm also thinking about the part where, uh, all the questions I answered Gazi about might have something to do with why she took you."

"Oh. I think public knowledge might have been sufficient for her to think it would be potentially helpful and it was entirely her own decision to kidnap me instead of asking politely."

Knock on the door, and yelling, "WE GOT A NOTE FOR YOU!"

An envelope is passed through the gap under the door.

"For which of us?" Blai calls.

WHY IS THEIR TIMING LIKE THIS

"THE SELECT!"

It says, after opening,

Clarification: you may share freely the contents of our discussions with the Voyager.

- Ferris

Oh, that's useful, he was sort of wondering if this meeting was supposed to serve any purposes besides letting them catch up socially and verify each other's intactness. He reads it and then shreds it into tiny pieces, rip rip rip. "They want to invite me to Manus to talk to them about some things," he says, "and are potentially willing to trade you for this, but they don't want it generally bandied about; bringing you here was orchestrated so that I could have someone local to this universe to sanity-check the arrangements for things like how they can evaluate the value of my information without learning it in the same process, without bringing in any additional parties who otherwise would know nothing."

OKAY THEY'RE JUST GOING TO SKIP HER AWKWARD APOLOGY ATTEMPT

"They explained some of that to me. Do you have anything specific you wanted to know?"

"Do you know anything about Skills that check the value of private information? Have they generally dealt honorably with you?"

"Well, I was their... prisoner... as a criminal and suspected spy... so I don't know what you mean by 'honorably'? They interrogated me. They didn't torture me. I've read about secret brokers in stories, but not in real life."

"When you say they didn't torture you do you mean that they didn't injure you or do you mean something more expansive than that?"

"They didn't injure me, but, er, it sounds like you have something specific in mind and I don't know what you're thinking about?"

"Nothing very specific. There is - legible torture that leaves marks, and there is - treatment which I have heard called 'illegible torture', which is more plausibly deniable as intentional maltreatment. Sleep deprivation. A general atmosphere of threat even if it never materializes. Guards who might be acting alone or might be acting on orders taking liberties. You at least don't look like they've been starving you though I don't know for sure what that looks like in gnolls."

"I'm not being starved or sleep-deprived. They were pretty rough when they took me in, and they did try to scare me with stories about Salazsar's mines, but I think that's just what they do. During one of the custody transfers one guy kept jabbing me with the blunt end of his spear. I think one of them tripped me on purpose one time" and laughed at her in this really awful way, which was really the more upsetting part at it. "One guard was definitely 'forgetting' my meals on purpose but I mentioned it to a different one and then I never saw him again. Other things like that. There was kind of a general air of contempt? It was worse the first two jails they had me in; they moved me around a bunch of times. They used charm spells and I think truth spells, and Skills for the interrogation, which was sometimes unpleasant during or after the fact.

"I don't... think... I would describe it as 'illegible torture'? It kind of seemed like that's just what prison's like."

"...well, I expect it's possible to do better under some conditions and don't know if those conditions obtained. It's highly promising that the guard who skipped your meals was removed, though."

Shrug. "They felt very... uptight? Serious? Compared to Liscor's Watch. But I've never been arrested in Liscor."