At Gallows Keep, Myfanwy’s interrogation of Gestalt turns a guarded meeting into a contest over hidden knowledge: she seeks information about his connections with the Grafters, while he reveals that his faction helped secure her place on the Checquy Court because they believed she was weak. The scene’s decisive reversal comes when Myfanwy demonstrates that she can reach across Gestalt’s separated bodies, exposing a power neither side had fully reckoned with.

Setting and circumstances

Myfanwy enters the room where the Checquy has imprisoned one of Gestalt’s bodies. After being confined to the secure Rookery residence, she has had a courier bring her cardigan from her house; at the last moment, however, she changes into a more formal blazer. The garment has a corset sewn into it, holding her posture unusually straight. Her two bodyguards remain outside, where the glass door lets them watch what happens.

Gestalt is restrained in stocks fixed to the wall with iron bars, with a wire sphere around his head. The apparatus and his confinement establish the imbalance of the encounter, but his hostile attention makes clear that physical restraint has not given Myfanwy control over what he knows—or what he may yet do.

The interrogation and its stakes

Myfanwy begins by asking whether Gestalt has anything to tell her voluntarily. He rejects the premise: if torture could not make him speak, he asks, why would he cooperate of his own free will? Myfanwy responds by proposing a different pressure point. Gestalt has four bodies, she argues, and must be emotionally attached to them; she threatens that he may choose whether to answer or risk the loss of limbs, and asks how he would bear to occupy a body deprived of its senses or limbs.

Her threat is tied to the immediate circumstances. The Checquy has two of Gestalt’s bodies in its custody, and Myfanwy warns that only his cooperation can keep those two unharmed. She also tells him that the torturers are preparing their agenda and are expected to begin the next day, setting a deadline for any decision. Rather than treat the interrogation as a straightforward demand for information, she makes the safety of the captured bodies the leverage through which she tries to break his resistance.

The questions turn from the Grafters to what Gestalt did the previous night. Myfanwy refers to a moment when he seemed to leave himself entirely, and asks whether he had retreated to a private spiritual or psychic refuge. She presents the episode as evidence that there is more to him than the Checquy had understood. She also raises the serious allegation that he fraternized with the Grafters, and offers the possibility of leniency if he talks fully, while reminding him that the Checquy regards such conduct as treason.

A secret about Myfanwy comes into view

Gestalt counters by revealing that Myfanwy’s abilities have become visible to others. He says that people noticed her affecting someone across the room, even though they had believed she needed physical contact to influence another person. He also says that her supposed lack of courage was one reason his side worked so hard to get her onto the Court. The confession transforms the interrogation: Myfanwy is no longer merely pressing Gestalt for his secrets but has learned that his faction helped shape her rise within the organization.

When she asks directly whether they wanted her in the Court, Gestalt describes their former assessment of her as weak and preoccupied with figures. His words disclose the scale of their miscalculation. They wanted her in a powerful institutional position while believing they could predict or contain her; the Myfanwy confronting him is alert to the contradiction and makes no attempt to hide that his answer has supplied useful information.

The exchange of leverage

Gestalt threatens that the two will change places and that Myfanwy will then be the one at risk. Myfanwy answers by telling him she will have the two captured bodies shot at the first sign of trouble, and that they will see daylight only if he works with her. Her position is therefore forceful but conditional: the same bodies that give Gestalt his unusual, shared existence are also the immediate means by which the Checquy can constrain him.

The scene ends without a confession. Myfanwy turns her attention to Gestalt and gains access to the perspectives of his other bodies: one is in a dark room at a computer, with a glass of gin and a plate of cheese on the desk; another is asleep; a third sits on a hard bed behind a closed door; and the last is watching television in a bright room beside a river. The glimpses establish that Gestalt’s bodies remain dispersed across different surroundings, even while one is held at Gallows Keep.

Outcome and significance

Myfanwy breaks contact and steps back, physically shaken by the effort. Gestalt, meanwhile, remains silent and watches her with fury. The encounter has not secured the information she came for, but it has changed what each knows: Myfanwy has learned that Gestalt’s faction engineered her Court appointment, while Gestalt has seen evidence of the reach of her power. The interrogation ends not with an answer, but with both characters newly aware that the other is more dangerous than previously assumed.