Truth or Lies

1

"Thanks, this chair is aweful. Also you have a problem with your plumbing on Deck-13. Someone should really look into that."

Her words couldn't have been less fitting. They were more suited spoken to a not very good friend at the brunch table, but not here. Not in this situation and not anytime else in this room. Someone might have expected glamorous, glorious words. Something meaningful and deep. Something that could convince the three people in front of her, not to execute her in the following thirty minutes. Everyone always expected vibrant last words of those condemned to die, but that was only true in movies, novels, and those awful all-day programs on the universal entertainment screens. Either that, or pleas for mercy. Neither were said that day.

The largest man in the group of executioners, his name was Aesop Salidar - for which ever reason his mother thought that name would be appropriate for a man like him - shifted uneasyly. Despite his size and his sizeable muscles he was scared of the comparably small woman in front of him. He had heard numerous stories about her. Usually he didn't give two shits about rumours and reputations. He liked to make up his own mind about whether a person was dangerous or not, but she was different, as cliché as it might sound. The way the Patrol had brought her, the box she came in... like a fucking delivery of chopped up meat that wasn't chopped up yet. She still wore that strange helmet, her hands were tied and yet, as soon as the mouth piece was gone and Ishria, his colleague, had sat her down on the last chair she would ever sit on, she said that...

Ishria Mah'rashi and Tellon Tovar constrained her, or at least tried to in the most stupid and time consuming fashion possible, because the one and only Yaruna Nasaseru is also known as "The One that cannot be touched" and so they didn't. Cuffing her to the chair took longer than walking the whole length of the panorama deck on the Sirions Tribute, and that already was an excruciatingly long walk, but at least the view was nice. This on the other hand was just excruciating. Aesop was a patient man, but even he had limits and he was approaching them faster with every passing minute his colleagues took longer to chain her. The three of them were usually a good team. They'd been working together for almost ten years now, not always in the execution business, but nevertheless, they knew each other and their job, but this time it simply felt wrong. Maybe that scared the big man, because it wasn't business as usual. Normally, the convicts were either sobbing their eyes out and begging for their life - uselessly of course - or they were hard faced and silent and judging. Nasaseru was neither. She sat there like she fucking owned the place, like she wasn't about to loose her life and Aesop couldn't understand how she did it.

"Shut the fuck up," he said in his low growling voice and positioned himself behind Tellon, who was the smallest of them, the weakest, but also the quickest and most skilled. That's why he instead of Aesop usually put on the cuffs and restraints. Aesop's fingers were large and with all the fistfights he'd won and lost in his life, also a bit of sense'd left them.

"I'll shut up once I'm dead, sweetheart," her reply was dry and a dirty smile spread over her face, but she didn't do anything else. She just sat there, unmoving, complacent even, as if she was waiting for them to make a mistake.

"Won't be long, honey," Ishria said and shot Aesop a concerned look. They had been advised, strictly advised, to not use anything conductive when touching her. Neither of them knew why exactly... they only heard the rumours about the Quiet Death, which was only one of several names associated with her and maybe the least frightening of them all. They heard about her doing magic, strange things, and also of all the people she supposedly killed. Her headcount according to some shitheads in the bars was ridiculously high, nearly unbelievably high and now that same woman, the Quiet Death, sat on their fucking execution chair, patiently waiting for them to finish shackling her to the damn thing. And then there was that ridiculous helmet... They'd had to take of the mouth piece to be able to settle her down on the chair. It was too long in the back and wouldn't let her lean back into the chair. If the judges had decided to kill her in a different way, there wouldn't have been the need to take it off at all. But here, unfortunately, it was different. If it had been up to Aesop the thing would have stayed on until after she was dead, but what should he do. She needed to sit for them to properly blow her lights out, thanks to this ancient killing machine.