A/N: My longest chapter yet! I struggled with it a bit, so I'm sorry if that's evident. As always, I appreciate your reviews. They encourage me to ignore other obligations in favor of writing more (hint, hint! ;)).
Wicked =/= mine.
Fiyero didn't—couldn't—pay attention. Nessarose's words kept playing through his head…"what happened to my sister." He tried to tell himself that it could mean anything, yet he couldn't deny that her words had a strange, terrible sense of finality.
His thoughts were interrupted when his father stood, addressing the Prime Minister of Gillikin, who had, apparently, been speaking. "We would be happy to provide you with the services of our army," the king said, glancing disapprovingly at Fiyero, as though he should have been the one responding to the other man's apparent request. "Where have they set up camps?"
The Prime Minister smiled gratefully. "They're scattered along our southern border," he responded. "Not only are their activities morally reprehensible, but they're disrupting our trade, you see."
"Of course, of course," said the king. "I'll send several troops, led by my son himself, to clear out the area tomorrow."
"That's quite generous of you, Your Majesty," said the other man. "If I can ever return the favor, when our military is better financed of course, I would be honored to do so."
The King nodded in acknowledgment, and took his seat. Shortly thereafter, the meeting was adjourned.
Fiyero was uncertain about what had just transpired, and, quite honestly, could care less. He turned back to Nessarose, but she regarded him coldly and wheeled away from him before he had a chance to further pursue their conversation.
The evident urgency with which he needed to talk with her—with which he had been talking with her earlier in the day—was not lost on Madame Morrible. In fact, she had been watching the two with great interest throughout the afternoon, even, at one point surreptitiously moving closer to them in order to more effectively eavesdrop.
What she had heard had disturbed her greatly. However, she took some small comfort in the knowledge that the prince was too brainless to screw things up for her.
Despite being somewhat accustomed to it, King Tiggular was beginning to grow weary of his son's apparent inability to pay attention. Upon learning that Fiyero had no idea about the mission for which he had been volunteered, the king irritably explained it to him.
"These groups of vagabonds have unfortunately become quite common. Our army has dealt with them many times within our own borders. It's quite simple, really—clear them out, have them move on at threat of arrest. It's not a mission that I would ordinarily send you on, being that it's rather mundane—you're dealing with mere panhandlers and the like. However, we must do what we can to build our alliances," he finished pointedly. "You heading this mission shows the Gillikenese that we take their problems, however small, quite seriously. And you heard the Prime Minister—they will likely return the favor, should we need them to do so."
"Hm." Fiyero responded, glancing out the carriage window.
"Have you been listening at all?" The king asked, annoyed.
Fiyero sighed. "Go to Gillikin, clear out the vagabonds. Got it."
The king shook his head, wondering exactly how much longer he would have to prolong his retirement before he could trust Fiyero to step into his place.
The next morning, Fiyero found himself riding toward the Gillikin border with a small troop of men. Once again, he'd asked himself why he was going along with this, instead of leaving the castle altogether and forming a highly driven one-man search party. However, he grudgingly admitted to himself that he still had no idea what was going on and why everything had changed so dramatically—and that until he figured this out, he would be of no use to Elphaba.
It took his troop the entire morning to reach the border, at which point they quickly spotted one of the camps of which the Prime Minister had spoken. Fiyero soon realized that his men had done this sort of thing before. Several of them rode up to the panhandlers sitting just outside of makeshift tents and ordered them to evacuate the area immediately or risk arrest. The rest of the men divided themselves into smaller groups and entered the tents. Fiyero followed one of the latter groups into the largest of the dwellings.
He soon realized it wasn't a dwelling at all. It was filled with cages, stacked one on top of the other, lining the walls. There must have been over fifty, each one filled with a different sort of animal.
"What is this?" Fiyero asked Avaric, who had entered with him.
For once, Fiyero was not regarded strangely for asking a question. Avaric thought it quite normal, as the prince had never accompanied his men on one of these raids. "LiveStock black market," he responded. "The owners of all the unlicensed traveling fairs come here to get their Animals."
"Animals?" Fiyero repeated, shocked. He regarded the Wolf at his right more closely. He would have thought the creature a wolf—his eyes were dull, lacking any of the insightful, thoughtful "spark" that separated the Animals from the animals.
"What's your name?" He asked the Wolf kindly. In response, it only scratched itself, then lay down and began to lick its paw.
"He doesn't speak," Fiyero said softly to himself, momentarily forgetting Avaric's presence. He couldn't help but think back to the caged Lion Cub that he and Elphaba had rescued from a similar fate.
Fiyero's melancholic trip down memory lane was interrupted as he noticed that one of his men had apparently located the owner of the outfit. A heated exchange took place, ending in the man's loud, angry agreement to leave. He called to several of the vagabonds still outside, who proceeded to enter the tent and begin unstacking the cages and moving them outside, into waiting wagons.
"What the--? Hold on! Hold on a second!" Fiyero yelled, making himself heard over the grunts of the men and banging of cages against one another. "What's going on here?"
"We're moving them out of the area, Your Highness, per the king's orders," Avaric responded, finally giving Fiyero the "have-you-lost-your-mind" look that he had grown quite accustomed to.
"'Moving them out'?" Fiyero repeated incredulously. "These are encaged Animals, for Oz sake!"
Everyone, the soldiers as well as the vagabonds, stood around uncertainly. "So," said one of the soldiers finally, "what exactly do you want us to do?"
Fiyero sighed, exasperated. "Set them free! And arrest these men for kidnapping."
Now all of his men were giving him "the look."
"Do it now or risk dishonorable discharge," he threatened. That got everyone moving. The owner, obviously distraught at the sudden loss of his lucrative business, was in no mood to make the soldiers' task easier and claimed that he had lost the keys. They were thus forced to move from cage to cage, breaking each lock with the hilt of their swords.
Fiyero watched this, for the first time feeling the slightest relief from his building anxiety. Finally, he was doing something. Perhaps not exactly what he wanted to do, but still…he was able to create some order for himself out of all of the chaos he had been experiencing. Even though he hadn't yet found her, he was able to do something of which he knew Elphaba would be proud.
"Holy shit!" One of the soldiers suddenly exclaimed from across the tent, as he peered into one of the cages. "Check it out," he said to his companion with a smirk, "this joint's got both Animals and vegetables."
The second soldier approached the cage and his eyes widened. He regarded the younger soldier reproachfully, then turned and called to Fiyero. "Your Highness! You should probably see this."
Fiyero strode across the tent. "What is it now?" He stepped in front of the soldiers and turned toward the cage in question.
His heart dropped to his feet.
No one spoke for a moment. Finally, the younger soldier broke the silence. "What should we do, Your Highness?"
"Break the lock," Fiyero responded. His voice was hollow. "Now."
They obeyed, and Fiyero crawled inside the cage, which was slightly larger then most of the others. He forced himself to ignore the stench that pervaded the small space—he thought it would kill him if he contemplated it too much. If he thought about any of this too much—what he saw, what he smelled, what it all meant, he might break down. He couldn't afford to do that; later, maybe, but not now. Now, he couldn't think…he just had to do.
So he crawled toward the figure, huddled and unmoving in a back corner of the cage. Her back was to him, the light was dim, and she was covered with grime and incredibly, heartbreakingly thin, yet somehow, he knew.
He had found her.