Meanwhile, on the roof of a wholly unremarkable flat in a wholly unremarkable section of town, that morning's abductee was considering how to do the least damage to the yards of violet silk he wore while crawling through Vaan and Penelo's open window. This was why Larsa hated state robes with such a passion. You couldn't do anything interesting in them (because the Emperor was supposed to leave the execution of what he considered interesting things to lesser men). "Tch. To hell with it. If you would hold this for a moment, Vaan?" he said, lifting the heavy golden crown from his head and handing it over. He massaged the red dents it left in his temples with relief, then pulled off the cloak, the ruff, the sash, and the underrobe, and now, considerably more mobile, swung his legs over the window frame and into their apartment. Vaan and Penelo followed, grinning silently, their arms heaped with silk and lace and leather. He noticed with a tickle of amusement that the crown had migrated from the grip of Vaan's right hand to Penelo's head, tipped slightly askance over her pale hair. He turned back to her and righted it, bowed low, and was rewarded with a rosy blush that settled into Penelo's cheeks.

"You want this back now?" she asked, reaching up to remove it.

"Not really. It suits you," he said, only mostly in jest.

"You are so full of it, Larsa," Vaan said cheerfully from the low table in the center of the living room, which he was dusting with the end the of his belt sash. "You can put all that stuff here, Penelo, it's clean now. Cleaner."

A key rattled in the lock of their front door, and Larsa froze. He only resumed breathing when the two Dalmascans continued unperturbed with the tasks each had busied themselves with. An individual to be trusted, it seems, though the fewer knew he was here the better. "I was out back when I heard the bike and WOW that's really the him?" said the boy who slipped through the door and closed it hastily behind him.

"Hi, Kytes, And yeah, that's him," said Vaan over his shoulder, who was wandering in the direction of the kitchen.

"I thought you were making that part up. No waaaaaaaaaaay. He's my age. This is incredible! This is insane! The Emperor of Archadia is standing in my living room!" he gibbered. The boy's clothes were poor—filthy, rank, and patched—but the body inside them was well fed and tanned. Larsa greeted him politely but refrained from asking what he'd been doing, curious though he was. He was not well-versed in the etiquette of thieves, but sensed such a question would likely breach it. And possibly that he'd be better off not knowing.

"Kytes, stop badgering him," admonished Penelo, grasping him firmly by the shoulders and orienting him in the direction of the hallway. "Make yourself useful and find some clothes of yours he can borrow for today—and change yours. And maybe burn them afterward. You smell like a sewer rat."

"Your highness!" he said, and turned about to slap his fist over his heart in a sloppy salute. Larsa smiled. The Archadian occupation had ended three years ago, and if the pain of defeat has eased enough that his country was the target of gentle mockery rather than hissed curses, well, reconciliation was progressing as well as he had hoped. It certainly helped that Queen Ashelia was his friend as well as his ally; it had been drilled into him from very young that the two were not always, nor even often, synonymous.

"I think this is going onto the pile now," announced Penelo, and removed the circlet. Larsa settled down onto one of the cushions on the floor while Penelo made a show of tidying up the stray orange peels and tea mugs, apologizing repeatedly and at length for the slop and clutter two teenage boys left around a place, and she wasn't their maid, but you know.

Kytes soon returned in clothes more fitting for a merchant's son than a beggar, with more held in his arms. "The pants might be kinda short. Sorry," he mumbled, and deposited them beside the imperial finery before disappearing into the kitchen. Larsa could hear him squealing excitedly at Vaan over something but couldn't make out the words. He rose and stripped down to the last remnants of his state robes while Penelo looked politely away to reshelve a few books that didn't need reshelving. He closed his eyes for a moment to luxuriate in the cool breeze wafting through the window. If this was desert winter, he did not ever care to see what summer was like. The rainclouds overhead hadn't yet release the afternoon downpour, and the air was so thick with moisture he imagined it was practically drinkable.

When he opened his eyes, he found Penelo was staring at him over her shoulder. She flushed twice as red as she did the first time. He, in turn, quickly grabbed the sleeveless tunic and pulled it over his head before she noticed his face go the same shade as hers.

"You're a stick, Larsa!" Vaan exclaimed, returning to the living room with Kytes and four glasses of cool herbal tea pinched in his fingers—and also impeccable timing. Penelo relieved him of two glasses, still somewhat pink. Vaan didn't seem to notice. "Is the Archadian treasury so broke they can't afford to feed you or something?"

Larsa seized on this new topic of conversation with relief, unflattering as it was. "I suppose I forget to eat, sometimes. Much requires my attention," he said, as he did up the last button on the short pants and then gratefully accepted the glass Penelo offered him from her spot on the cushions that lined the table.

"If it looks like you could armwrestle Penelo and she'd win, that's bad, okay?" said Vaan.

"Yes, mother," said Larsa, laughing.

"First order of business ought to be lunch," said Penelo, slightly forced. "I'm starved. Usual spot in the south end, Vaan?"

"Sounds good."

Larsa cleared his throat politely. "I must point out at this juncture that I haven't any gil. Your appearance in my suite was rather…abrupt."

"But you're one of the richest guys in Ivalice." Vaan said, perplexed.

"The emperor doesn't nip down to the tea shop for a cup and some biscuits, stupid. Honestly," said Penelo.

"If only he could, Archadia would be a far more pleasant place, which is neither here nor there. However…" he said, and paused to pull the posts out of his ears and hand them to Penelo. "these are Mosphoran pale sapphires. That should be compensation enough."

"If you plan on buying the shop. Larsa, I can't take these," she protested, eyes wide.

"I could," said Vaan. She glared at him. "What? The Harsh Dawn could use a paint job."

Larsa shook his head and lifted her hand to drop them in, curling her fingers around the exquisite stones. "A gift. They will not be missed, I assure you."

"I...okay. Sure," she stammered. They were two carats each and the rare, delicate apricot hue so prized by discerning jewelers, and were probably worth more than whatever hole-in-the-wall they planned to take him to.

Vaan drained his glass and set it down. "And so we're off. And Kytes?" he said to the boy, who had spent the entirety of the conservation eying the rich robes in hungry silence, "If I find so much as gold thread or glass bead missing when we get back…" he said, drawing his finger slowly across his throat from ear to ear, "you'll get it."

---

Larsa let Vaan and Penelo provide the majority of the chatter as they walked (something they were quite happy to do), casting in a few words here and there. He had never seen Rabanastre before, not really. He knew it from the air, and the grounds of the palace complex, but that was all. It was old, older by far than what was now known as the city of Archades. Once the two capitals had been very much alike in character, but decades ago his great-grandfather had ordered the old city abandoned in the name of progress, and the once-luxurious mansions gradually filled in with weeds and hungry migrants from the countryside. Archades was built anew with a skeleton of towering steel and the hum of air cabs overhead. In Rabanastre everyone walked, and every stone was lovingly adorned with carvings and mosaics, chipped and scarred yet still beautiful. No wonder they had fought so hard for every inch of this ground. It was weathered yet strong, a matriarch's hands cradling generation after generation that was born and died within her walls. As Larsa dragged his bare fingers over the sunwarmed stone,he was suffused with a sensation of slow, deep peace.

It was so pleasantly distracting he nearly bumped into Vaan, who had stopped in front of a narrow ironwork door that had bled rust all over the cobblestones. He jiggled the door handle, leaned on it, cursed, and finally kicked it hard with the toe of his reinforced boots, which loosed the rusty hinges with a horrible screech. "Monsoon season," he said by way of apology for Larsa's wince. "Everything is either rusty or moldy. If you're really unlucky, it's both."

They descended the stairs revealed behind the opened door, which had piles of unsavory thing mounded in the corners Larsa tried not to think too hard about, and, in accordance with the unwritten rule all cities held in common about dank stairwells, smelled faintly of piss. The dim alley at the bottom, Larsa was unenthused to discover, smelled of even worse things.

"What a delightful aroma," he, observed, wrinkling his nose.

"It's kind of a tradeoff," Penelo said, shrugging. "Lowtown is a lot cooler because the waterways are flowing right below us, but…the waterways are flowing right below us. You get used to it."

"The respite from the heat is welcome, nevertheless, could we eat topside?"