Unknowing
The Marquis groans, the boys' heads turn in unison, and Wiegraf makes haste, but he slows his pace once out of the cellar proper – running would be suicide among these skittish cadets. They keep their weapons readied as he walks by, and with each step he tenses in preparation for someone to try rending his backbone, for conjured fire to burst around him. But nothing of the sort happens, and none of the blood that stains him is his own.
His own men would tell him off for it, but when the Hokuten cadets have all gone with their Aegis hanger-on and the Marquis of Limberry in tow, Wiegraf goes back and digs graves in the sand. He appropriates the salvageable and portable equipment – he would have cringed once at the salvaging, but it won't do to let it go to waste now – before he fills the graves. One of Gustav's defenders in the cellar was little more than a boy, and on that one Wiegraf feels like he's trying to toss a feather. He catches himself dwelling on the mad idea that perhaps the wind will waft it back into his face.
Gustav is the last. His body lands face down, hiding the blood that has caked on his face and clothes like macabre paint, and his green cloak settles in such a way that the spot where Wiegraf ran him through is hidden. Thank God for the little kindnesses.
"The chemist says his son's a Sir in the Hokuten."
Judd pitched another rock and watched the paltry splash. "Aw, g'wan! Mr. Margueriff? He's got a son?"
"It's just that he never visits," said Ziggy. He adjusted his feet in the gutter. "Or writes. Da says he hasn't been back since we were four or five. Maybe he's dead."
If his aim was to divert Judd's attention from his attempts to skip stones in a puddle, he succeeded admirably. "You didn't say that to Mr. Margueriff, did you? That he's dead?"
"Huh! You think I want Mum out of work, Mouse?"
Mrs. Kalman always seemed tired and harassed, her hands even more weathered and twisted than the norm in their part of Dorter. Being out of work, Judd thought, might do her good. "He'd do that?"
"I'd not be surprised. He's such a pretentious ass-" Ziggy's voice dropped on the last word, and his eyes darted up and down the street. "Wants to be a nob, Da says. If anyone'd buy a Sir for his kid it'd be him. 'Here's your potions, now would you please tap him on the shoulder with a sword and ship him off to Fovoham.'"
Judd had dreamed of getting that tap on the shoulder himself, even if he had to go to Fovoham, but he knew better than to tell that even to Ziggy.
Wiegraf reaches Dorter close to midnight, so the tolling bells inform him. Of all people, Judd Delamer is the one to answer the door at the Kalmans' safe house, and he flinches and steps backward – a movement Wiegraf is familiar with from their conversation some time ago. Wiegraf stays where he is, looking past him to the interior.
He knows that normally blankets would be laid out all over the floor of the safe house, even beneath the flimsy table; the tenants cover up with their coats and their cloaks. Tonight the blankets aren't here and neither are most of the tenants. A man – Ravel Kalman, he thinks – lies limp on one of those remaining. His breathing sounds like he's blowing through a whistle. A woman sits at the table, contemplating a half-loaf of bread; she looks up when Wiegraf steps inside. Wiegraf recognizes her as another of the fencers; he remembers seeing her with Ziedrich Kalman. She isn't a regular. It's nearly always only the Death Corps men in Dorter. "Miluda sent me when she heard about the trouble," she says. "He's dead, isn't he? Margueriff?"
"Yes."
"He needs a new sword." For a moment, Wiegraf thinks she means Gustav. But I told you he's dead, he almost says. "Mouse Delamer does, I mean. The Hokuten took his."
Wiegraf lowers the sack of takings, pushing it forward in silence. Delamer stares at him, nods slowly, then drops to his knees, dumps out the contents on the floor, and begins to examine the blades. In the end, of course, he chooses Gustav's. It's the best one, and the only one that's not bloodstained. Gustav's one strike had missed.
He jerks his head up and says, "Thank you, Mr. Wiegraf."
One of his front teeth is chipped, Wiegraf notices, and he tries to remember if it was like that before. "The Hokuten caught you?"
Delamer flinches again.
She jerks her head toward the man on the floor. "Ziggy's brother says he put up a good fight."
But Ziedrich didn't say so himself?
"Ziggy tried to take them." Delamer sounds like he's discussing the weather in Gariland as he goes on to say, "'Course, he didn't."
Judd's first glimpse of Sir Margueriff came when he was twelve and Ziggy was working on his fire spell. Ziggy's old straw hat had caught a spark, and while he dunked it in a rain barrel Judd saw the knight strolling in the Hokuten white cloak, smiling at what seemed like nothing in particular and whistling off-key. He tugged at Ziggy's shoulder, and they both looked on as the knight flung open the door of the chemist's and ambled in.
Judd said, "Do you think that's-"
Ziggy finally pulled out his hat and held it over the barrel to drip. "Whoever he is, he's pickle drunk."
Judd turned toward him and crossed his arms. "How d'you figure that?"
"The damn stupid grin for one. Hell, if Margueriff was my old man I'd knock back a couple." Judd raised an eyebrow and Ziggy amended, "If I could get some."
That line of conversation ended in Judd's second glimpse – and rather more than that – near sunset, hanging back at the door of a nearby tavern while Ziggy thrust out some gil in one hand and a mug in the other.
"Kalman can get it himself," said the barkeep, giving Ziggy a Look. "And if Kalman can't get his own self over here instead of sending his boy, why then I'd say he's had enough already."
"My da turned his ankle on a cobblestone," said Ziggy piously. "If you're so bloody unsympathetic to a man in agony why then I-"
Something touched Judd's shoulder and he spun. Sir Margueriff grinned down at him. "Well'n, do I pass muster for this fine establishment?"
"Ah – ah-" No matter what Ziggy said, surely he wasn't in such a state that -
"I haven't had that much, you know," he said, still smiling, and Judd felt himself flush as Sir Margueriff walked past and interrupted Ziggy's haranguing of the unimpressed barkeep.
Ziggy and Judd left the tavern with an entire bottle of liquor, reputed to be the best in stock however good that was. Judd lingered, listening to the chatter and laughter of the patrons. "Call me Gustav," Sir Margueriff had insisted, and right after saying that he'd bought the bottle on behalf of poor Mr. Kalman with the twisted ankle and maybe he'd like to share with his friends – here he'd winked at Judd, who'd blurted "Thank you, Mr. Gustav" and then, belatedly, "Sir!"; Judd flushed again when Sir Margueriff laughed at that, and grinned back in the corner of his mouth.
They perched on the roof of the Kalman house and Ziggy declared "I love him even if he is a drunk," as he filled up the mug. "I'll fund a church and I'll get the churchies to name it Saint Gustav's." He took a swallow, then choked and made a face.
"What was that you said about a church?" Judd said sweetly, though he felt rather inclined to do the same. Ziggy handed him the mug, and he gulped it as he'd seen it done.
Some time later, Ziggy was shaking the bottle and letting the remaining liquid slosh about inside. "We'd better take this to Da."
"I'm going to be a knight," said Judd, blinking up at the cloudy sky.
"That's nice," said Ziggy, starting to pick his way down.
"I am," said Judd. "In ten years I'll have my own white cloak, and I'll buy everyone drinks."
"Eh, could you buy me ethers instead?"
"I'll be a hero. I'll end the whole damn war. I'll buy drinks for Sir Beoulve and T. G. Cid, and they'll call me up to Igros. No. Lesalia." He curled his tongue around the word and thought absently that it was a very pretty word when treated properly.
"They haven't called him to Lesalia," Ziggy yelled from below.
"How d'you know they haven't?" Judd yelled back.
They'd met years ago on the way to the Fovoham front, when Wiegraf elbowed Gustav for talking in church and Gustav hadn't had him killed for it. Perhaps he'd never really been at risk for outright execution, especially given certain facts about the then-Sir Margueriff, but when he had just put his elbow into the side of a Hokuten knight his future had not seemed particularly bright or long.
"Dear God," said Gustav some six years later, in what remained the only circumstance he ever seemed to think of the deity in question. "When did you sprout?"
Wiegraf shrugged. He'd wondered the same thing himself.
"I'm told you got some high-up's attention." He'd probably been told by the lengthy letter Wiegraf had scrounged up the coins to send him while he was home on leave. He never wrote back, and Wiegraf was well used to it by now – if it was really important, Gustav always said, the army would tell you anyway. Gustav didn't seem to much care about that now, as he clapped Wiegraf on the back and said, "So you're a Sir now. Good on you."
Wiegraf let himself bask for a small while before asking, "How was Dorter?"
Gustav snorted. "I don't know why I bothered." Before Wiegraf could gather a reply, he put his crooked smile back on and said, "Seeing as you probably haven't got round to celebrating yet, Sir Folles, it's my knightly duty to see to it."
As a matter of fact, Wiegraf had celebrated his knighthood, albeit several days delayed, but he knew there was no way he could convince Gustav of this.
Some hours later he disowned Gustav's idea of a celebration, tended to his chocobo, and retired to the tent he shared with another soldier. For now, he had the tent to himself; he'd seen the other man in the tavern when he was leaving. He wasn't particularly shocked by the debacle. He'd have to be a fool to be shocked at this point. He'd known to expect this sort of thing since he was fourteen, when Gustav had whispered flirtatious nothings to a blushing woman in the pew ahead of them in church. He couldn't claim shock; he could claim little besides the kind of low, vaguely sick disappointment that always settled in his gut when he witnessed such scenes, and he wasn't entirely sure even that was justified.
For what seemed like hours, half-dreaming, he kept thinking of a bloody skirmish early on during the stint in Fovoham. After it was over Gustav had clumsily bandaged him with his ripped-up Hokuten cloak, took a replacement off a dead man, and half-lugged him along with the straggle of other survivors before running into a small contingent from Romanda and sustaining equivalent injuries in the process of taking them down.
The handful who'd survived that found a nook in the rocks, where Wiegraf had managed to shred the second cloak to pay back Gustav. They'd waited all night, swords ready, for scouts from one army or the other to happen upon them, and Gustav passed the time by reciting pithy poetics that Wiegraf later discovered had been cribbed whole-cloth from a traveling bard. One song in particular sounded quite generally jaunty when Wiegraf was dizzy and constantly on the verge of yawning – springtime and dancing and so forth. It turned out to be a ditty of such repute it was rumored that singing it with a church in sight could get you hauled away by examiners. At the time, he'd merely appreciated the distraction.
Boco's warking roused him. By the time Wiegraf had stumbled over his tentmate and out of the tent, Boco had quieted and was prodding the shoulder of a sprawled, supine form with his beak. The moonlight allowed him to recognize said form. Before he had worked anything out properly, Wiegraf had already hauled Gustav inside, over the oblivious tentmate and into the vacant corner. He lingered a while before going outside and falling back to sleep propped up against Boco.
At some point during a drawn-out forest battle, Judd became separated from the rest of the Ivalician force. For once blessing his small build and flimsy armor, he clambered up a tree, stabbed the enemy archer already in residence, and sat with his arms latched to the trunk, water dripping from the leaves above onto his head. He stayed there until he saw an allied lot passing below. Then he clambered back down and rejoined the battle with a vengeance. Before, the others had called him Mouse. When they got wind of it, they started calling him Squirrel.
"You have blood on your face," said Ziggy afterward. When Judd didn't move, he daubed at it with his wide sleeve. Judd stared at the sleeve. He'd thought it was the rain.
"I heard there was some farmboy got knighted a couple of years back," said Ziggy that night, stoking the fire.
Judd made an indistinct noise and buried himself further in the bedroll.
"Might be there's hope for you yet."
Judd made another noise.
"Look, I go to all this trouble to ask around about this sort of thing and now you-"
"Why would I give a shit about some farmboy?"
There was nothing but the fire crackling for a few seconds. Then Ziggy whispered, "You do anyway, don't you, Mouse?"
"I don't," said Judd. "Now you're going to say something like he paid off the king or whored himself out to high command and I don't want to hear it."
"Actually," Ziggy was whispering from right beside Judd's ear now, "I think this one hit the Church. He's a Holy Knight now, or something like. So I'm told."
"Don't want to hear it."
"You know Sir Margueriff's da paid off the Hokuten. Didn't do the other thing, all praises to holy Ajora, else I'd be tearing my eyes out imagining it. You know that. Why're you like this about it now? Was it the battle?"
"Bugger the battle."
"Fine, so maybe he got their attention with his stunning virtue and lack of profanity. Now you've got a standard to shoot for, yah?"
"Shut up," said Judd, "or I'll… put a dagger through your eye. I learnt it today."
"I'm sure you did," said Ziggy, and shut up.
That night Judd dreamed he was swallowed up in the mass of soldiers as they charged and charged with no enemy in sight. He was half-suffocated in the press but it felt good and safe; in the dream he completely ignored the issue of wide-range summoning and other such magic. He wore a knight's cloak and knew where he was, what everything meant. When he woke up he tried for an hour to remember that meaning.
The next morning Gustav woke Wiegraf by – he gathered later – falling on top of the tentmate, who was still lying in front of the exit to Wiegraf's tent. Sleep was cleared away entirely by the subsequent bout of curses from both parties. By the time Gustav scrambled pell-mell out of the tent, pursued by a final sally of profanity, Wiegraf had gotten the crick out of his neck and begun his morning routine with Boco. As Gustav stood behind him, he continued with it.
As Boco snapped up his greens, Gustav said, "Sorry."
"It's nothing."
For a while, they both observed Boco's dining etiquette. Then Gustav spoke again, his half-submerged Dorter accent increasingly pronounced. "I mean it, y'know."
"If you meant it," said Wiegraf, stroking the chocobo's yellow feathers with perhaps a bit more force than he would have otherwise, "then you wouldn't keep at it. You'd better go back to wherever you left your things. Maybe they haven't missed you."
"Yah," said Gustav, "that's what always gets me, your saying things like that. Or doing things like that. You make a better old man than my own old man. I haven't kept at talking in church, have I?"
"Not when I sit next to you."
"Well, I haven't. Um."
It was the "um" that did it. Wiegraf turned around, not too quickly, to see Gustav with his hair sticking out like dried straw, one eye blackened, scratches down his cheek that he hadn't noticed the previous night and were probably from a drunken brawl.
"I know you didn't slip them anything." Gustav ran a hand through his hair. "I know. It does happen sometimes. You made Holy Knight, you said?"
He found himself reaching backward and patting Boco again for no particular reason other than he wanted to do something with his hands. "Not exactly."
"Still." He sat down heavily; after a second, Wiegraf folded his own legs. "If anyone'd manage that it'd be you, and you make a hell of a better knight than me anyway. God. I won't pretend you're not annoying as fuck sometimes but that's not an excuse and I shouldn't have pretended last night was anything to do with you."
"But it was, to start with," said Wiegraf. "Don't lie to me."
"See, there you go again." He groaned, pressing his hands to his face; it looked like he was rubbing at the bruising around his eye. "Anyhow. I'm making a muck of this, I bet, but I am sorry. And I mean it. And I can't say it won't happen again but swear to Ajora dancing on a pin, I won't keep at it. All right?"
"All right."
Gustav was grinning and chatty again by sunset, and Wiegraf found himself strangely relieved by this.
"I told you so," Judd teased once they were inducted into the Knights of Death, though he was not entirely sure if he had in fact told Ziggy so. But Ziggy smiled anyway, gave him congratulations that were not entirely facetious, and called him Sir Judd and Sir Mouse until Judd called him Sir Ziedrich in retaliation.
Ziggy waited until Judd was pacing about with his new cloak held out before him before venturing, "I heard something else about Margueriff. Nothing bad, mind."
Judd settled somewhat, sitting down and running his fingers over the yellow stitching in the green fabric. "Yah?"
"He's in with the commander. Folles is always writing him, so they say. Still doesn't seem to write back, though."
"I might have guessed."
"Maybe it's not just his old man, then."
"May be."
"Hey," said Ziggy after a while, "Folles made it, didn't he? That's good, right?"
"That's not it."
"Hey," said Ziggy after another while, "remember when Margueriff came home and he bought us that-"
Judd remembered. "That was years ago."
"God, what's eating you all of a sudden?"
"It's not sudden." He turned the cloak, smoothed it over his knees. "You'd know that if you paid any attention." He was uncomfortably aware of the strains of his own voice, the thinness and petulance that he certainly hadn't meant but was there all the same.
"You were happy enough just a minute ago," said Ziggy with his usual inexorable logic. "Joking around and 'Sir Ziedrich' and all that."
"You're the one who's right," said Judd. He inwardly winced at the continued whining undertone, but what else could he say? "You oughtto be happy."
Ziggy stood. "So who're you, and where'd you stick Mou – Judd? God, you're not an Ordalian spy, are you? I couldn't live with myself knowing that we've been going more'n forty years against such a passel of idiots."
"I couldn't pay them off like Margueriff's da," Judd rambled on, looking down at the cloak. "And I wouldn't, if I could. And of course I'm not anything close to Mr. Folles, but I keep thinking I ought to be able to get something from them." He felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. "I know I'm at least as good as some of the asses in the Hokuten. I know I am. Do we all have to be so much better? So much luckier?" The yellow on green stabbed at his eyes. He closed them. "And this is, what, the consolation prize?"
"Sure you're good," came Ziggy's voice from behind him. "Sure you are. You're great. We'll show the nobs all right. You'll see."
We, thought Judd, and grew warm.
There was no sense in long letters, said Gustav, because the army would tell you anyway if it was important. The army didn't tell him about Wiegraf's knighthood, and it didn't tell Wiegraf when Gustav lost his. Wiegraf managed to find him anyway via copious inquiries, reflection on what he already knew of the man, and generous amounts of dumb luck.
"The old man asked me if it was true," said Gustav. "I said, about the raping? And he said, no you dolt, about the getting kicked out of the Hokuten. So I said, yah, that's true, and he just grabbed at his chest like so and hit his head on the potions and that was it. Can't believe they didn't take me in for murder, but hey! It was right in the shop and he had some biddy in there crating things. There were witnesses. Nowlook what you've done." He reached for the mug. "I could feel it going fuzzy and you've just dusted that."
Wiegraf stayed silent, deftly lifting the mug from the bar and pressing a different one, filled with water, into Gustav's hand. Gustav gulped it, choked, and glowered at a spot somewhere to Wiegraf's left; Wiegraf said, "It was worth a try."
Gustav blinked. "Huh! And there you are." He let out a throttled sound, half laugh and half sob. "There's prob'ly a moral somewhere in there. Something to say in church. Paying doesn't pay, or something like. Unless… hey, what're you doing in here, Wiegraf? They do for you too?" He leapt up, mug still in hand and water sloshing out to join the unidentifiable sludge coating the floor. "The fuck-"
"No, they didn't," said Wiegraf, leaping up as well. He brought Gustav with him when he sat back down. Someone sang off-key. A fight broke out in a dark corner. Wiegraf surreptitiously emptied the ale mug onto the floor as well.
"So then," said Gustav, scrutinizing Wiegraf's uniform. "Your new troop. The Dark Knights, was it?"
"Knights of Death," Wiegraf automatically corrected him.
"God, that's cheerful."
"The soldiers voted on it."
"Sounds like a fun bunch."
He took a deep breath. "Do you want to judge that yourself?"
As it turned out, Gustav did indeed want to, and in fact insisted on doing it right then. It was all Wiegraf could do to get him to retrieve his things from one of the upstairs rooms first. So much for first impressions, he reflected as they stumbled their way into the encampment, with Gustav's arm slung over his shoulder.
A small knot of green-clad soldiers quickly gathered around them by way of welcome. They'd already had some idea what Wiegraf was about, and a small, anxious-looking fencer piped up, "Mr. Wiegraf? Is… ah… Sir Mar-"
"Yah," he cut off Wiegraf, then pulled away to sketch out a low bow. "Pleased to make the acquaintance of you folk. And fuck off with the Sir already. I said to call me Gustav, didn't I?"
"You haven't yet," said Wiegraf, and wondered momentarily why the fencer looked so poleaxed.
"God," said Ziggy, "we're done for. We're dead. We're the bloody Dead Corps."
Gustav leaned against the door, looking mildly nonplussed, though Judd couldn't believe he'd be so stupid as to actually feel the way he looked. Ziggy's brother Ravel had made his excuses and fled to the roof. Judd momentarily wished he'd thought quickly enough to do the same.
"If the nobs don't gut us for this," said Ziggy, "Wiegraf will. God. Out of my fucking house, and take your goddamn nob with you."
Gustav cast a glance at the trapdoor to the root cellar, where the small band accompanying him from the raid in Mandalia had temporarily fortified themselves along with the bound and unconscious Marquis of Limberry. "Wiegraf doesn't have to know about this."
"Of course he doesn't have to!" said Ziggy. "But he will. And we're dead."
"We've been dead a while now," said Gustav. "Can't very well kill dead people, now can you?"
Ziggy looked ready to fling lightning. "Out."
Judd stood up from the table and began to pick his way between the blankets. "Wait. Can't we at least let him explain?"
Ziggy's head swung between Judd and Gustav. He heaved a sigh. "Five minutes."
"It's not what you think," Gustav began.
"Oh, and here I was thinking this was a complete misunderstanding."
"Remember why we're the Corps now?" Gustav pressed on. "'Cause they didn't pay us. And we still haven't been. Paid, that is. We've been spending on food and potions and all that shit, just bleeding gil, and what do you think'll happen when we're out of it? We'll be taking their money anyway, or else we'll just starve."
As though we're not already, Judd found himself thinking. Dorter winters were never pretty, and wherever Gustav and his lot had been they didn't look much better off. He remembered how they dove into the root cellar on their arrival at the safe house, scrabbling at what food was left inside.
"But we wouldn't take it like this," Ziggy muttered. "Not like this."
"See if you're saying that in a year. In a month, even. Just because Wiegraf's not figured it out yet – fuck, of course he'd say no to start, but it's done now and he'll have to deal, see? Maybe he'll catch on after this."
Judd couldn't imagine Wiegraf "catching on," let alone to such a thing. Neither could he imagine him "dealing" rather than "dealing with." From the look on Ziggy's face, the failure was mutual.
"We'll be gone tomorrow, if you like."
"What if we'd like you gone now?"
"We wouldn't have rested for a good bit then, would we?" Gustav rubbed at his eyes; the gesture was probably not entirely affected. "Y'know heads get fuzzy. Mistakes get made, tracks get left…"
"If we don't let you leave," said Ziggy, "that won't be a problem, will it? The cellar's damn cramped, and from here I can take everyone else out with one spell."
"Everyone including that noble," Judd felt obliged to point out. So much for the united front. "And then we would be done for, wouldn't we?"
"Right then," said Gustav, and rubbed his eyes again. Judd thought of the night he'd arrived in camp leaning on Wiegraf, disheveled and drunk.
How d'you figure that?
The damn stupid grin for one.
But he hadn't been grinning that time, and he wasn't grinning now.
"Gustav," Judd began, "This is…" They were all on the same side, weren't they, even with this? He could be strong. He could. "I don't think…"
"It's not just about the money," Gustav cut him off. He'd turned to Judd now, stepped away from the door, his form suffused with a kind of growing wildness that Judd had seen sometimes during the war. Even if Wiegraf didn't gut them all, he'd certainly gut Gustav – if he could beat the nobles to him. "'Course it isn't just the money. Give me some credit. There's people… listen to me!" he yelled suddenly, though Judd couldn't figure out when he might have implied that he wasn't listening. "There's people out there who… it doesn't have to be like this, see? It doesn't have to-" Judd felt the wall against his back; he hadn't realized he'd been backing up. Gustav's hands were shaking at his sides and somewhere far away Ziggy was yelling at him to lay off already. Ziggy's here, he thought, and didn't flinch when he felt the hands on his shoulders and the hot breath on his face. The smell of the breath confirmed his intuition.
"I don't want to die," Gustav whispered. Judd nodded. "And I don't have to. We don't have to. It'll work out. Just keep mum for now and I'll put in a word for you. You can even be a knight. Beoulve'll see to that for us both."
Judd took a deep breath, trying to ignore the reek of rotgut. "I am a knight," he said, though he wasn't entirely sure what he meant by it.
"Well'n, everyone'll knowyou're one."
"I said lay off him," Ziggy called out. "It'll fry the table, but I think that's an acceptable loss."
Judd craned his neck. "It's fine. It's fine."
Gustav said again, "I don't want to die," as his fingers dug in like the claws of a panicking animal, and Judd wondered when everything had changed behind his back. "God. Oh God."
"Nobody's dying around here," said Judd, and bemoaned for the thousandth time the thinness of his voice. "Stay for the night. There's plenty of room." There wasn't, but that was immaterial.
On the roof, once Ravel was evicted, he tried to explain as he rubbed at his aching shoulders. "I just think… I don't know, I ought to do this for someone who's… well. Dying."
"Dying?" said Ziggy. "Bugger that. He's already dead. The thing you do for dead people is you burn them or bury them before they get maggots or spread the plague."
"You're not going to tell Mr. Wiegraf, are you?"
"Not if you won't."
"Then-"
"Can't see any good from this, but buggered if I'll let you get spitted on a sword just because you wanted to play merciful saint."
"It's not like I can see any from it." Judd buried his face in his hands. "I can't believe what got into him doing something like this, friends out there or not, but I can't – I can't just –"
"Right. If we fought them, even if we weren't slaughtered the nob prob'ly would be."
"That's shit and you know it."
"I would have blown him away, damn the table," said Ziggy, "but he'd grabbed you by then, see? So then you were very clearheaded about the whole thing, placated him and that –"
"God. Stop."
"Him and his 'people out there.' Ha. Prob'ly keeps those people in a bottle."
At some point the former Sir Margueriff had taken a knife to his old summer cloak, cut out a square with the Hokuten crest, hemmed the edges of the square, and converted it to a handkerchief. Wiegraf found it crumpled on the floor of the safe house, underneath one of the blankets. He remembered seeing it the last time he'd seen Gustav, partly because Gustav had made a point of lending it out to someone with a bad cold and, once it was returned, surveying the results with a sort of vindictive satisfaction. He made his small digs where he could.
This was by no means a small dig.
The Gustav Margueriff who was captain in the Knights of Death and the Death Corps had most of his laughter burned from him; beneath it Wiegraf had discovered a cold practicality that often carried the day, and often for the better. Wiegraf wondered now what had become of that practicality, how it had become so mangled. He thought Gustav had the sense to realize that the surface expediency of kidnapping and ransom was far outweighed by the consequences.
There were six left stationed in Dorter – three archers and two wizards, including Ziedrich and Ravel Kalman, and one fencer. The fencer – Judd Delamer, was it? – had left the house to go marketing. He spun at the sound of his name being called, and when he saw Wiegraf he let out a too-loud, too-relieved sigh. He was a disappointment. Wiegraf had seen little of him, but what he remembered seemed entirely in earnest – not innocent by any means, but with the idealism of the experienced. Had that been subverted, or had it been a mask to begin with?
"Yes, Mr. Wiegraf?" said Delamer now, voice low, wide-eyed and anxious. It might have been vaguely endearing before, but now it set Wiegraf's blood to simmering. For all he knew there might be an iron will beneath, but he'd figured his chances would be better with this one than with any of the other five.
Wiegraf drew up alongside him, noting the wall of a tumbledown house at his other side. He fingered the scrap of cloak in his pocket. "Are you absolutely sure you haven't seen Gustav recently?"
"I'm sure."
In one motion, Wiegraf yanked out the scrap and dangled it between them, the rather grotty crest in clear view. They both stared at it until Wiegraf put it away and said, "Does that help your memory?"
He blinked rapidly. "Ah. No. Is there something I should know about that?"
"Oh, I doubt it," said Wiegraf. "I think you already know very well. Where is he?"
"I need to get to the market now," said Delamer, glancing toward the sky on the verge of rain. "It's-"
"Forget the market. I asked you a question."
Delamer stared at him a moment longer. "… I said I don't know!" He turned away, heading back toward the Kalman house.
Wiegraf followed, and it only took a few steps before they both came to a stop again. Delamer was still avoiding his gaze. "Don't lie to me! I know what you did!" He turned back to Wiegraf then. "Where is Gustav? Where?"
He backed against the wall of the shack, lowering his head. "I… don't know…"
Wiegraf stepped forward, closing the already-small distance. "Where is the Marquis? Where are you hiding him?"
"Say something!"
The air was knocked from Judd's lungs immediately afterward, nullifying anything he might have said. He met the floor; on some level, he noted the increase in pain. He noted more of it in his scalp soon afterward, as he was yanked up by a hand in his hair. He blinked at the indignant face above him, his thoughts scattering like minnows.
"Stop, Algus!" someone called from the side.
"Damn," said the face, and Judd felt himself stiffen to keep from toppling again as his released hair fell back into his face. He returned to his knees, seeing and hearing almost as if through water. He wanted to sleep. "Listen carefully. Soon, the Hokuten are going to slaughter you lot."
They'd already knocked Ravel from the high roof where he'd been ensconced with his longbow, and they'd impaled Ziggy through the spine as he was casting a spell, and God only knew what had become of the other three.
"That's right. Each of you are going straight to hell. Being a thief sure pays, huh?"
What he wanted to think of as Ziggy's ghost – but he hadn't gone so mad as to believe it, not quite yet – whispered idly, Soldiering was just brimming with rewards in contrast, wasn't it? Think of how excellently compensated we were.
"But you're lucky. You tell us where Wiegraf is going-"
He wondered how long they'd been standing there, watching the confrontation, before one of them had shouted to Wiegraf. They might figure he was the sort to break quickly. They were probably right.
"-and I'll let you live, how's that?"
Come on, you can say this. You've plenty of practice. Of course it didn't exactly work last time, but now you have some idea what you're doing by it instead of protecting a dead man…
He couldn't bring himself to look up, and "I don't know a damn thing" came out little more than a murmur. But the impact of the boot in his chest, sending him backward, informed him of his small if somewhat costly success. His head cracked against the floor; his skittish thoughts, beginning to coalesce, scattered again.
"Watch your language!" he heard – Algus, was it? – shout. "Never talk to nobles like that!"
He could hear Ziggy's snickers. If he thinks that's bad language he really is a nob.
Judd wasn't laughing. His bound hands were trapped beneath him and smarting something fierce; he managed to turn on his side, curling himself. His left arm and side would probably pay for it later, but it did for now. Lazy patterns swirled in his head and some part of him scrambled madly through them. There was something to be said, wasn't there… something that mattered… yes, that was it… "We're… not thieves."
"What did you say?"
"Nobles never change. You think we aren't human. We risked our lives in the war for this country –" He lifted his head somewhat, trying to focus on the furious boy through his hair. "– but you dumped us afterward." He'd dreamed of saying such things before, but never dreamed of himself bound, haze-headed, at their mercy… no, forget the last, he couldn't dwell on that. "How are we different? Birth? Status? What the hell's rank?"
"You kidnap people for ransom! So don't act so great!"
There was that, wasn't there? He'd silently gone over satisfactory justifications for any number of anarchist acts, but that hadn't been one of them. That was something of an explanation in itself, wasn't it? "Kidnapping the Marquis was not Mr. Wiegraf's plan." He couldn't actually see if the boy had lifted an eyebrow, but his posture suggested eyebrow-lifting. "We'd never kidnap a VIP…" Well, theoretically... "… for money…"
"Then, who?" This boy had a milder, bemused voice; Judd looked toward him and put together the pieces – the one who spoke now, the one who'd called out to Wiegraf, the one who'd called for "Algus" to stop. "Who kidnapped Elmdor?"
Right. Who…?
Fuck. Judd let his head drop again, closing his eyes. Maybe they'd think he'd passed out. He felt about to, anyway.
"Talk! If it wasn't you, then who else would do it?"
No such luck. Well, there's your point gone. Ziggy snickered again. If he'd been, well, actually alive and there, Judd would've wanted to punch him – or, given the current state of his hands, maybe bite him. But he was right, wasn't he? There was his point gone.
Honesty's the best policy. And that was, what, his mother talking? Might as well. Then maybe he could… maybe… "Gustav," he muttered, half-hoping they wouldn't be able to catch it.
"Gustav? Who the hell is he?"
A third boy spoke up from somewhere behind him. "Gustav Margueriff. He's a captain of the Death Corps."
"So it was you all!"
That wasn't… the pieces fit together the way they were framed, but it wasn't right, it wasn't like that, he had to say something, had to make them understand… "No." And Judd found himself back up on one knee, meeting "Algus's" glaring eye. "We're fighting to beat you! We're proud that we fight for equality…" His voice climbed with each word, to heights it had never before aspired to reach. What else could he say, what could make it clear? God, he wasn't used to this. There had to be something to say – anything. He wasn't, they weren't, and Gustav… "We're different from Gustav!"
The boy sprang forward and his kick caught Judd in the face. Judd hit the floor for the third time, eyes shut on impact, wondering if the rule he'd heard for drowning applied and he wouldn't be getting up again. "Proud?" he heard the snarl. "You bastard!"
"Enough, Algus!" cried the second boy. Judd imagined it being shouted over his carcass.
There was a pause. Then, somewhat calmer, "So, where is this Gustav?"
Bugger Gustav. Judd certainly didn't owe him anything anymore. The Hokuten cadets were welcome to him; they bloody well deserved each other. Why shouldn't he tell them? There was some part of him niggling away, saying that he oughtn't tell them but not why he oughtn't, and it was probably the same part of him who'd wanted to protect Gustav in the first place and gotten him into this.
Then there was the small detail of not wanting to die. No mass to hide in this time, no assurance that if they were going to die they were going to do it together. He'd missed that chance.
I see… in "Rat Cellar"…
"Sand Rat Cellar," he said. At the same moment he realized why he really shouldn't have talked.
There wasn't a profanity in existence that measured up to this occasion, but that wasn't to say Judd didn't make a valiant effort to find one as he slipped under.
Delamer doesn't turn around when Wiegraf steps onto the roof; Wiegraf asks without preamble, "Did you tell her?"
"'Course." Watching from behind, Wiegraf sees him bring a hand to the area of his throat. "I'm very good at telling people things."
"Was that what the Hokuten told you?" Unspoken, is that why you're here now?
His shoulders hitch. "They were gone when I woke up," he says, still with that flat voice. "She had to cut me loose. I didn't bring them here too, I don't think."
"Where did you bring them?"
"The Cellar. Where else?" His shoulders hitch again and before Wiegraf knows it he's placed Gustav's sheathed sword beside him on the roof and sent it spinning away with a push. "That was my last chance, wasn't it?"
Wiegraf remembers many times where the shriek of his sword as he drew it sounded louder than it does now. He nearly startles nonetheless. Delamer does startle, then pulls his limbs inward and lowers his head. "I don't think you'll believe me," he says, somewhat muffled, "seeing as you'll think I've plenty of reason to lie, and you've plenty of reason for that, but I don't think it was just money."
"I should hope not," says Wiegraf, holding his sword point toward the roof and understanding that, indeed, he had hoped not. He'd expected better, and the recollection of Gustav in the Cellar, shouting about food and beds, still leaves him feeling raw.
He'd tried his best to explain what should have been well understood. You have to fix the basics!
Even cornered as he was, backed up with his sword in his hand and his supporters dead or dying on the floor, Gustav's mouth had twisted in that crooked grin. And you think you'll do that? For a moment it had almost seemed back to the Hokuten knight laughing at the dreams of the cloud-headed boy. Back then, he'd respected Wiegraf's tenacity at the very least, torn up his cloak for bandages, sang him filthy songs to pass the time; what was left of that? The smile deadened and dropped away. Gustav's eyes seemed almost afire in what light filtered into the room. It was a wild fire if so, frantically leaping and about to transform itself and all in the vicinity to ash. I don't think so, Wiegraf. Give up? Never!
"He thought he was going to be a knight again," Delamer thankfully continues – that is, thankfully until Wiegraf realizes what he's saying. "He said he'd got friends out there who could do that. Ones who could help. I don't know if they were actually there, but he seemed to think he'd got them."
Wiegraf thought nothing could be worse than what he'd already thought of Gustav. He finds now how wrong he was. He'd thought Gustav's stupidity was at least something that followed from his established sense. What would have possessed him to act so over an ephemeral promise of knighthood, of all things? He of all people should have known how little it would mean. What does Delamer think he'll gain from claiming to have followed a delusional man?
He can't make out most of Delamer's next claim, but the last and audible word is enough. "Beoulve, you said?" Another flinch. "What about Beoulve?"
"He said 'Beoulve'll see to it.' To the knighting."
"Did he now?"
"Yes."
"Which one?"
"That's all he said. Beoulve. I – I don't know," and then he laughs. His huddled form shakes. "I really don't this time."
Wiegraf slides his sword back into the scabbard and sits down. Each time he blinks he feels on the verge of going under. Wouldn't it be fine if the Hokuten found him asleep on a roof, he thinks, and tagging along with that thought he wonders how many of the Hokuten remember Gustav – as one of them, as a shame to them, as a captain of the Knights of Death or the Corps, any way at all.
He thinks he should say something. What he says is, "I believe you."
"Thank you."
He waits until he feels he can trust himself not to pitch headfirst to the ground before starting down. Once a stable surface is beneath Wiegraf's feet, he looks up. They need everything they have left. "You had better get down. Rain's coming." He waits just long enough to hear boots moving above him before he goes back into the house.
Delamer manages to catch him before he drops off, which is taking longer than expected. "I told them where he was," he says, barely audible over Kalman's whistling breaths. "Not where you were. God. That makes no sense, does it?"
Wiegraf keeps his eyes closed. He can almost feel the knotholes in the floor beneath the blanket.
"I – I'm sorry, Mr. Wiegraf. I'm sorry. Please… understand…"
"Go to sleep."
"I want to stay on," he keeps at it, "if you'll have me."
"By all means," says Wiegraf, because he can't stand to hear that voice a second longer. "Go to sleep."
He doesn't follow his own advice. Instead he stares at what he can make out of the ceiling and mouths goodbye until it brands itself into his brain.
END
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Skip this interminable babbling if you please (and please review if you please!) .
This story got its start years ago, on my first foray into the FFT fandom, with two separate fanfics that were technically completed but never actually posted. The first was a character study of the Death Corps fencer in Dorter (and by character study I mean angst ad infinitum). The second was a speculation on how Wiegraf might have met Gustav, and why the latter eventually got into the Death Corps. The first died in obscurity. This second eventually shrank into a humor fic which you might have read, by the name of "Fencer Folles and Sir Margueriff."
Skip to the summer of 2007. I was looking over my old work and these two caught my attention – in particular, two aspects of the game plot that I'd noticed at the time. The one I turned over most was how Gustav got into the Death Corps. I found it hard to see Chapter One Wiegraf going "So here's this guy who's been kicked out of the Hokuten for war crimes including rape. Not forgetting I have a sister who I care about enough to pursue a vendetta on her behalf. Hey, let's take him in! Promote him to captain while we're at it!" This would be understandable if, as I'd seen posited on a forum around the time I wrote the original fic, Gustav hadn't done it. In my 'verse he probably did, but there's enough doubt for Wiegraf to give him the benefit. Also, I've read plenty of news articles where in the aftermath of assorted crime the neighbors etcetera go, "But he was such a nice guy!"
The second, which I'd touched upon as a source of cheap angst, was the fact that the Dorter fencer's speech on class discrimination and his assertion that "we're different from Gustav" is rather at odds with his earlier initial refusal to tell Wiegraf where Gustav got to (I'm assuming here that the fencer in each of these scenes is the same person). This raises the possibility that Algus was actually right to some extent when he pointed out, "So it was you all!" With this go-round, I decided to explore the possibility that it wasn't. I took a look at an alternate possibility for the fencer's motivations (shameless promotion time!) in one of the drabbles in "One Thousand and One Ivalician Knights."
I proceeded to cannibalize the two older stories, and the remainder went into what became the tale you see above you.
On a side note, as you've probably noticed, a good chunk of dialogue is appropriated from the scenes at Dorter and Sand Rat Cellar, albeit somewhat tweaked.
Also, thank you to Evil Mina, who helped me get my thoughts together, and I hope she doesn't mind that I dragged her into this.
So there you have it. And now, if you've made it this far, I'll say thanks and repeat my entreaty to review.