CHAPTER III: Wait, Scotch that

Ffamran was still having difficulty containing his shock. He had burst into the Bhujerban meeting room to find Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca crouched over the bleeding body of Ricard Solidor; dress now more red than white. He knew instinctively that there was no way she could have killed him although he knew from experience that she could seriously wound a man's ego. So he'd done the only thing he could think of at the time: get her out of that room before she a) passed out or b) was found by someone with greater esteem for her assassination abilities.

Pushing her head in the basin full of cold water had woken her up nicely. She'd grabbed him by the ear and pulled until he'd let her up. She gasped and spluttered, flicking hair out of her face.

'What was that for?'

He ignored her question.

'What happened in there? Did you see who killed Ricard Solidor?'

She coughed again and looked up into his face. He could tell that she had finally returned to reality by the look of loathing spreading across her face.

'You! What do you want?' She spat, subconciously clinging to the only thing that made sense at the moment; general dislike.

'I want you to tell me whether or not you saw who killed that man!'

'I saw him but I didn't see who he was'

'Great,' Ffamran said, getting up, 'Just great.'

'What?' the princess asked roughly. She sat down on the side of the bath, heedless of the red stains she was trailing along the gleaming white tiles.

'Well, the heir to Archades has been murdered on the eve of the Peace Conference conceived to avoid such bloodshed. I doubt Old Man Solidor will be in quite such an appeaseable mood with his son butchered within his own nation. What else, oh that's right, because we do not know who the killer is and because there has been no open resentment of ­­­­­Riccard, you and I and prime suspects.'

'Why would anyone think we killed him?' Ashe asked incredulously.

'Well there were two of us. I have a gun while you have an illegally concealed knife; you have more blood on you than he has in him and best of all, we weren't supposed to be wandering the now bloody corridor.'

Ashe surveyed herself with a look of dumb astonishment.

'Here,' Ffamran said, offering her a cobalt blue dress, 'I grabbed it from the wardrobe. Considering the Bhujerbans didn't bring any women with them I suspect the dress is a souvenir or belongs to a mistress. Either way it won't be a huge loss. Use the shower and clean up any blood. I'll be waiting outside.'

'What's the plan?'

Ffamran thought for a moment.

'Currently,' he began, 'Non-existent.'


Doing her very best not to look down at the water, embroidered with curling red, gushing down the drain, Ashe did her best at scrubbing off all the drying flecks of blood. It was everywhere: her earlobes, the tips of her hair, under her nails. When she'd done the best she could, she towelled herself dry and slipped into the straight, strapless dress. It was a bit big for her around the waist so she tore a clean strip off her old dress to use as a sash.

She worked fast so as to keep her mind off what she had seen. She had travelled with her father to areas laid to waste by the eternal war but Riccard Solidor with his white rolling eyes and hissing voice had struck her more personally than anything she had seen.

After wringing out the now torn and blood stained dress, she bundled it up in two layers of towel and used the absorbent material to sponge any remaining stains off the tiles. Finally convinced that no one casually using the bathroom would notice anything other than a distinct lack of towels, she slid open the door.

At the sound, the Archadian boy popped his head in from the front door.

'Done?' He said, 'bring anything that has blood on it and dump it in here.'

He pulled a clinical green laundry trolley into view.

Together, they dug out half the linen already in the trolley and dumped the evidence in. The towels were already turning red so they only had so long before the linen it was sandwiched between turned the same colour. As Ashe pushed the bloody towels in she thought she could feel a number of solid objects hidden down at the bottom of the trolley.

'This way.' Her accidental companion said in a hushed voice, walking quickly down the corridor, pushing the trolley in front of him in a manner that suggested that young nobles usually wandered the hallways of the Bhujerban embassy with large piles of linen in tow.

Ashe followed him with heavy feet, jerking her head at every sound. They hadn't met anyone by the time they got to the lift. After pushing the trolley inside and closing the door, the boy deftly flicked open a small cabinet at knee height underneath the main array of buttons. He chose a red switch close to the floor. The click of the switch was followed by the elevator smoothly accelerating downwards.

'The servants' switchboard.' He explained upon seeing her quizzical expression.

He sat down on the couch built into the side of the elevator and lounged lazily on it. Ashe tried to stand still but in the dread that someone below them might decide to use the lift was over powering. To try and hide her worry she held her clasped hands behind her and rocked on her heels. She watched the arrow moving down the Level numbers on the dial above the door. It eventually reached one but remained stationary while the lift continued to travel downwards.

Eventually, the doors opened to reveal a scanty, grimy concrete room furnished only with a solid looking metal door facing the elevator. They exited the elevator. Retrieving a key from Gods know where, the boy cautiously pushed the door open a fraction. When the world did not come crashing down he pushed it open a little further and stuck his head out. Apparently the area was empty as he flung the door open the rest of the way and motioned for her to come out with their cargo.

Ashe had seen that the door led outside but had not been prepared for the squalor and the stench. They appeared to be in an abandoned lot besides the Embassy building, below the main level of the city. At least five large bins lined the oily walls and in the distance through the seemingly dirty light she could hear the roar of traffic. The drains apparently also ran down here and, a chorus of rushing used water and the warm embrace of the stench of dirty bodies meeting her regal standards. She couldn't believe that such a place could exist right next to the unnecessary wealth of the Embassies' building.

'Eurgh.' She said, putting a hand to her face.

'No need to turn your royal nose up at it.'

'Do your people really live in such conditions?'

'Only those below the poverty line. Anyway, you should be grateful; this is perhaps the only place that we could dispose of that dress of yours.'

He began to rummage around in the bottom of the trolley, having to bend all the way down so his cheek rested against the sweaty, used linen.

'But doesn't all the rubbish from the Embassies' building come down here? Surely they'd know to search the rubbish.' She asked.

'We're not going to dump it in the bins. Ah, here we go.'

He righted himself and held up his hands triumphantly. From the depths of the trolley, through fathoms of cotton, he had extricated:

Two bottles of scotch.

Ashe stared dumbly.

'And what are those for?'

'We're going to have a party right down here and you are going to fall head over heels in love with me and we'll get married and have beautiful babies,'

There was an angry silence.

'It was a joke!' he said putting up his alcohol laden hands in a placating fashion, 'A joke! Don't they have those in your poncy little city?'

She continued to frown at him with all the venom she could muster.

'Fine. Just watch this.'

She watched in indignant silence as he trundled the trolley right into the middle of the open space and pulled one of the sheets out. He tore a two large sections of it away and pushed the rest back in. He motioned for her to come with him. They walked about ten metres away. He kicked any debris away towards the walls. There, he unscrewed the tops of both the bottles and asked her to hold them. She watched in growing wonder as he jammed the one piece of material into the neck of the bottle so that one end trailed in the scotch and the other hung several inches out. Before beginning on the other one, he took it from her to have a quick swig.

'Shame to waste it all.' He whined as her gradually softening expression hardened again in disapproval.

Wordlessly, he finished what he was doing with the other bottle. Then he pulled out his gun. With an expert hand, he dismantled part of the gun near the trigger so that the lighter for the gunpowder lay exposed. He readied the gun and held it close to the material on one of the bottles.

'I've fiddled with it so it'll produce a larger spark than with most guns. When I light this, I want you to throw it into the trolley. Okay?'

Ashe nodded.

He pulled the trigger and the lighter ignited the end of the cotton. Wordlessly, Ashe threw the bottle in the direction of the trolley while the boy began to light the other. She threw the second when it was ready. The first landed in the trolley while the second hit the concrete just in front of it. The second bottle exploded as the glass shattered while the first added to the writhing flames moment later as the fuse ran down.

Ashe watched the fire burn, feeling the light graft itself into her eyes. A hand took hers and began to drag her in the direction of the road.

'Come on. We can't be found around here. We have things to do.'

'Like what?' she asked, pulling her hand from his as she began to hurry along beside him.

'First, we're hitting the market place and then the clubs.'

'You do realise that Riccard Solidor is lying dead upstairs, that we stole from the Bhujerban ambassadors and have just left a blazing pile of bed sheets back there?'

He rolled his eyes.

'Yes I am well aware of that princess,' he said ironically.

'So why are we going to the market place?'

'To get you some new clothes. Your current attire will be instantly recognised as having been stolen the moment we step back inside that building.'

'Fine. But then why are we going to the clubs?' she asked suspiciously. She had never been to a club in her life and she couldn't see going to one on her first visit to one of the largest cities in Ivalice with a boy who could probably play three women at the same time as a good idea.

He grinned in a way that she didn't like.

'We're going to construct an alibi.'