This shopkeeper thinks that her best option there is antiseptic, bandages, and gauze. Which the chemist will have. And he doesn't. And it's not like he's a priest. It will probably fine if there's no mention of religion? And they keep paid-for advertisements up for at least a week.

It's a deal.

When she finishes writing out the advertisement, is there time to go to the chemist? Also, is it common for the police to work to a precise schedule, and if so, how do they tell time? She might need to buy a timepiece...

The officer escorting her says they have three overlapping patrol shifts. Most people work eight to six; It's one in the afternoon now. Timepieces are a bit expensive, you're looking at a pound even for old models and at least a couple pounds for a new one. He also thinks the nearest chemist would... Probably try to interrogate her extensively, and that could be time-consuming.

Okay, no timepiece then, and she'll go to the chemist later. (She's slightly wistful; regulator marrenai have built-in clocks, but cantors don't.)

On the walk back to the station, she asks if there's a visible or audible clocktower?

There is, it's just barely visible from out here and sometimes not even audible, but a bit further north and you can see it clearly. The factories have shift alarms too, once every four hours.

The actual interrogations they have her perform are mostly sort of anticlimactic. This person accused of murder firmly believes he is innocent. This one accused of sabotage seems to be guilty, having done it in a fit of drunken pique. This one hauled in for being in contact with suspicious characters has agreed to describe everything they know in exchange for leniency and Kireh is verifying. A courier who waylaid a vital package; Incompetence, not malice. A smuggler argues that he had good intentions and was helping people and should be let off. A woman who stole from her husband and fled to Bristol; Her husband was beating her. A dozen more men and two more women in ten minute interviews. These people are all fairly unnerved, and mostly innocent-ish. The officers take everything down diligently.

-And a child is brought in, eventually. She has a bruise around one eye, and rough clothes. Crosses her arms and tries to look unimpressed at Kireh and the officers.

"The orphan Waltana Hampson, age fourteen. Approved topics are why she was in a restricted industrial area, what she was doing with an automaton, what she changed in it if anything, what it was intended to do, how to reverse it, if she intended to benefit or cause trouble from altering the automaton in any way."

"I'm telling you, it will work better now. All you have to do is turn it on."

"Miss, please sit at the table."

She huffs and sits.

Kireh realizes she made a mistake. Some of the suspects are trying to lie to her with their thoughts. Not successfully, but she can imagine a future optimization-race between her techniques and criminals' deliberately-muddy minds. She doesn't like muddy minds.

She thought this project was just a way to make money and establish a reputation, so she could gather followers later, for her to shape as she's used to shaping her petitioners and summoners. She didn't think about how it would impact Marra's interests over the whole city.

It might not be that bad. The innocent try to bare their minds to her, if they're not too afraid, and it would be great if people who expect to be innocent in future interactions with the Bristol police practice clarifying their minds ahead of time.

And Marra Herself might be willing to discard criminals into the pits of ambiguity and self-deception. They are, after all, mostly less Lawful and thus less useful, less likely to be awesome. (Maybe Marra even predicted that Kireh would make this mistake... drop that thought; she's not supposed to speculate on Marra's predictions of her.) But Kireh is sad about wasting, say, the Green Gulliman, who does have a sense of Lawfulness.

Even if the outcome is positive, she still made a mistake by not thinking about it first. She already knew that overusing Marra's Inquisition damages petitioners! Normally, now is when she would find a superior to correct her: the main camp's regulator, one of her three semi-superior cantors, Marra Herself. But she's alone here. Marrans aren't supposed to be without a superior! Marra's choice to ascend and leave Herself unguided was a sacrifice. Kireh can patch the habits that led to this mistake, and maybe that's good enough, but it's still wrong. 

- Kireh might not be alone here. She might find a superior, or another cantor for them to be each other's semi-superiors. Or she might train a cleric for Marra: a second-circle cleric as a semi-superior, or a third-circle cleric definitely above her.

She patches the error, but crudely so it's easy to reverse, and sets a reminder to consult a superior when she has one.

"Hello, Miss Hampson.

I'm going read your thoughts, only the topics the officer just mentioned. I will stop if you drift off-topic or if you ask me to stop. I will not report any other information to the police, certainly nothing about any other crimes, past or future, committed by you or anyone else.

My personal advice is that you relax and let me guide you; lying to me is very unlikely to work, and by attempting to lie you will do yourself injury.

I'll need to touch you."

Kireh stretches an arm across the table. Her claws don't retract, but she keeps them pressed together and curls her hand to point her claws back at herself.

She takes a deep breath first, and puts her hand on the weird clawed one.

Marra's Inquisition. Wait two rounds for it to settle.

"What were you doing with the automaton?"

That is weird.

"I was fixing it."

Or not exactly fixing, but optimizing. They're beautiful.

"Or well, improving it. Look, if you're reading, can you see-"

It just makes sense, see, when it pauses during its walk like that it's deciding where to go next- Rotors and dials and wires- But it stops, here, and that triggers this, which starts that, and it checks where it is and where it has to go, and then moves again. But if she has this part start from this over here,

"See, it can do the figuring out where to go while it's walking instead, it's faster. And nothing I did can't be changed back..."

Ooooh.

She's an engineer!

Kireh wants her.

"What did you expect to happen after you changed it? To it, to you, to the owner of the automaton?"

She's smart, too.

(Huh, so automata are just machines after all.)

"Uh, I was sort of hoping they'd notice it was working better and then I could be all - Hah! Behold, I did that, hire me! But- They told me it could have caused an accident instead."

Which, duh, and yikes, and now she's in all sorts of trouble but it's not like her other option (stay put in the orphanage and wash clothes or something) would have been much better.

"Why were you in a restricted industrial area?" She's not sure how big the area is and if Waltana could see the automaton from the outside, but she's keeping the question open.

This seems like the sort of youthful indiscretion that Good people love to make a show of forgiving. In the interest of keeping Waltana in Bristol and out of prison, can Kireh make that outcome more likely? If she asks about reversing the change, Waltana might promise to reverse it herself. Which would be helpful for impressing the police. But witnessing that promise would be outside the topics Kireh is approved to read, so is she allowed to maneuver in that direction?

Iomedae would say no: the police are not expecting her to subtly arrange things in her interest, and she needs to follow their unwritten expectations... (Kireh thinks Lawful Good has caught themselves in a trap where they're expected to be nice and so their Law compels them to keep doing it.)

Abadar would say no, because the police didn't show much skill in negotiating her contract, so she should try to predict what they would have agreed to if they were better at contracts, which would have included a clause about not modifying interrogations for her own purposes.

Asmodeus would say haha fuck them.

Marra is Lawful Evil, but She's not Asmodeus. Marra says that if there's ambiguity, do something reasonable (and ideally reversible or fungible) and consult with a superior later for mediation and, if needed, correction.

A reasonable thing here would be to not modify the interrogation now, and then ask the police chief later and request compensation if it turns out she could have behaved more freely.

"Uh- To fix up the thing's pathfinding? Because it was bugging me seeing it pause like that when everyone says the industries need to go faster and they wouldn't give me a chance when I asked nicely?"

'Go home, little girl' 'Stop bothering me, you urchin'. Fah. Right. Is this a trick quest- Ooooh, they probably thought she was stealing shit. Well, she wasn't. She thought it'd be easier to ask for forgiveness for engineering than stealing.

That seems to be enough? She pulls her hand back.

"She's telling the truth. She wasn't trying to cause trouble, just wanted to improve the automaton, as she said."

And now that she's not reading, she can say what she likes. "Officer, was there a better way to demonstrate engineering talent, for someone who doesn't have money or connections?"

"I don't think so, but that's not my department. Uh, you're sure there is no other motive? Not selling information to anyone, not testing the security, not trying to sabotage anyone or anything..."

"No! It's just that nobody gives me a chance for anything just because I'm young! And a woman!"

The officer sighs slightly. "Please, just that, and we can be done here. I'm sure you'll be fine, if you truly had only good intentions, but we have to know."

"Her motives seemed straightforward to me, but I can check more thoroughly..." She reaches out again.

"Did anyone ask you about going to the industrial area? Were you planning to approach anyone with information you learned? Were you thinking of coming back to do something else later?"

Siiiiiigh.

Fine.

She told a couple fellow orphans she was 'up to something' and paid them so they would cover for her absence. They asked where she was going and she told them, and they laughed at her for liking to watch the machines. She wasn't digging for information exactly, and didn't go looking with the intent of telling someone else. If things got really desperate for her she might have come back to steal things, if there weren't any better options.

Kireh passes this on. "Were you observing what would be worth stealing?" She doesn't want to ask that but she's doing her job Lawfully...

(What's the issue with being a woman? Do male engineers have a tendency to do unsafe things to 'impress the girls'? Ohh or it's an honor thing? And they don't just segregate them because... that's not worth the cost somehow? Maybe female engineers are rare for some other reason. Maybe it's a weird sort of sorcerer bloodline?)

"No! Or not on purpose anyway."

Obviously the things worth stealing would be, the whole automaton. Kind of hard to hide. Or some of the tools, wire, maybe the pneumatic plugs or valves and stuff. She has no idea how to fence them though and only vaguely is aware that 'fence' is the term for selling stolen things deniably.

(Her thoughts are currently centered on machinery, not sexism.)

The officers accept this once Kireh relates it and try to send her back to holding.

"What, not going to let me go now?"

"We'll probably let you go, but that's for Chief McAllen to decide, not me."

"Fine." She glances at Kireh again. "I never thought the government would find magic and immediately use it to punish criminals, though. Hmph."

"Come along, we have more interviews to do." 

She comes along.

...The rest of the interviews are generally unremarkable. The focus of the police's questions are trying to find associates and the real reason behind various troubling events. Though apparently a lot of their suspects are refusing to be mind-read, quite reasonably really, and this won't be held against them, it just won't do anything to clear them, either.

Chief McAllen comes to see her after her four hours are up.

"I think that went alright. We can let people out and back to work now- I'm not entirely sure how news of you will spread, but use of your ability sanely and consensually will soothe the worst of the fears, I think. And I do of course understand that you're just fulfilling a contract, as it were. I think it will be a good deal from my perspective after tomorrow. Any issues from your side of things?"