Chapter Five: 708 O.V: Somewhere of Great Cruelty

The rough wood of the board he is bound to scraps against his bare back and splinters slide between layers of skin, working deep into oozing cuts. The Worgen hair rope twisted around each wrist and lashing him to this indignity grinds into his flesh, flaying away skin in washes of salty blood.

Speck steps up beside his head, holding the customised fire blackened poker in one hand, affixing the golden Gil coin to the pincers on the end. Speck was as offensively nondescript in appearance as even, even here deep in the bowels of his own torture chambers he had the appearance of affable harmlessness.

Gods Balthier hated him.

'I suppose asking you to be reasonable is a waste of breath?' Speck queried as he regarded him with utterly uninteresting medium brown eyes, the pure blandness of his gaze intensified by the spectacles perched on his small nose.

He skinned his lips back from his teeth like a caged wolf. The man who was Balthier was gone and all that was left was the wild animal snarling for freedom, 'Reason is for the meek…..and the….' He pants through pain to force the words out, 'and the uninspired.'

Speck cocks his head to the side rather like a bird and frowns as he chases down the quote's lineage. The bastard actually smiles and laughs when he catches it. 'Philomentes, that old reprobate,' He shakes his head smilingly, 'And of course the old coot is right. Reason is just a shackle; much as morality and justice are fabrications of an oppressive state.' The man chuckles warmly, the sound so openly friendly it makes Balthier sick, 'Trust you to be an adherent of Philomentes, Balthier; a man after your own heart, eh?'

Speck stretches out one black glove clad hand to poke a finger at the blood saturated ropes around his wrists. Balthier grits his teeth and Speck curls his surprisingly ugly large hands around Balthier's ragged wrist and squeezes. The sick light in the man's empty eyes clearly expresses the pleasure he receives in causing others pain.

'If it would please you more Balthier, this needn't be a matter of surrender – I won't force subservience on you as I do the rest of the chattel.' Speck looks at him and his eyes emote just the right about of bereavement for the needless brutality he has inflicted, 'Please let's be adults about this; join me Balthier, as an equal not a slave.'

Once more he bares his teeth, 'I told you once Speck…….you can't afford me.'

He knows what is to come, of course he knows, but knowing does nothing to prepare one for the pain. Faster than a striking serpent Speck shoves the poker's other end into the fire, the end that has a vicious driving point and does not clasp a Gil coin in metal pincers. When the end burns like embers of hell he reverses his grip on the poker as one might reverse a grip on a two headed pike. Icy cold fear sweat breaks out over Balthier's brow. The pokers end is bright as the red eyes of a hellhound.

'So be it,' Speck told him calmly. 'What I cannot buy I shall simply take.'

Balthier does not close his eyes or turn his face away, though he almost wishes he could. The blazing heat of the poker's tapered end is agony against the resistance of his flesh - he feels the burn – but not for long, as flesh gives way rather swiftly to the point of Speck's acquisitive aggression and soon it is a different pain, one of invasion, that takes Balthier.

'Really this is all so unnecessary, Balthier.'

He does not scream as Speck drives the red hot poker deep into his side, but instead strange and raw guttural noises, like the sounds of dying fiends, bubble up from his lips. Balthier's eyes leap to the dark and heavy rock ceiling of this subterranean hell hole. He watches trails of sand sift from minute cracks in the cave ceiling and gather in pools in the crags of the quartz lined walls. He thinks of the sandstorm raging outside and the Alraunes roaming the Yensa and tries to force his consciousness from his agonised body.

'A man can possess too much pride, Balthier. Give up already, while you can still make a good bargain.'

Speck wrenches the spike out of his flesh and Balthier only narrowly manages to strangle his own howl of agony before it can fly free of his throat; his mind is wild with the pain and he wonders how much more of this he can conceivably live through? A better question might be how much more of this does he want to live through - for surely death is preferable?

'By the gods man, but you've got some guts,' Speck laughs brightly, amused by his own double-meaning jest. Balthier looks at him through the torrent of stinging sweat that cascades down his face. He refuses to look down at his mutilated body. The man's be-spectacled eyes are bright with something that, had he not been standing there with the bloody poker in his hand, might almost have been respect.

'Reconsider,' Speck presses, 'I knew, even when you were just a stripling of eighteen, that you were a man to make the world your own, Balthier.' Speck shakes his head and his lying eyes are filled with an almost pride. If Balthier could have managed it, he would have spat in the man's eye then. 'And now you have done it – Vayne slayer, father killer, saviour of Dalmasca. You died on Bahamut and rose again.'

Speck's hand glides up the length of the poker and his fingers squeeze down around the gore covered pointed end; smoke rises from the still heated end. Speck lifts his viscera slathered palm up to his face and examines the tincture of Balthier's blood soaking into the leather of his glove in something like rapturous awe.

'Join me.' Speck insists as he twists the poker around gripping it in both hands and thrusts the coin end into the forge to heat and burn.

Balthier breathes uneasily, panting and choking, as his heart struggles to find a safe pace and beat and his synapses scream with pain. His blood pours like water down his side, over his hip, down his leg. There is a very large part of him that wants to give in now. He can always recant later, after all. Just agree and then this pain can end, damn you; a voice in his head berates him.

Balthier knows that it is a lie; take up one of Speck's coins and you are his forever.

Speck watches Balthier, as he pulls the white hot poker from the forge. He handles the poker in such a way that Balthier can see the blazing heat of the coin; the demarcation of Dalmasca's queen in profile clearly visible. Balthier turns his head away, closing his eyes. Speck has used a Dalmascan coin in deliberate mockery, for the man's sadism knows no bounds. There is a voice inside his head clamouring for relief, surcease, surrender; anything at all that will stop the pain that he knows is to come.

'Be reasonable man,' Speck cajoles him, 'You know I've won; I'll have you the hard way or I can end this now. We can be equals in this grand endeavour. Join me and we shall shape the Company into the greatest force of change Ivalice has ever seen!'

'No,' one word and it might as well be his last; in fact he bloody hopes it will be. He is a fool, a damned stupid, prideful fool. He knows that Speck can devise a thousand ways to hurt him even in the dying embers of the day, and then come up with a million more tomorrow. He knows he should feign surrender so that he can survive to fight another day.

He knows this, Balthier has always been the pragmatist, the realist, the cynic, but he can't do it. He can't give in to Speck.

There are some things that cannot, must not, be borne. He will not swell the ranks of the Black Guard for any means. He knows if he surrenders now he might not find the strength to rebel later. Therefore he cannot surrender.

'No,' he says again and he means it.

'A pity,' Speck says and it sounds like he actually means it, 'I really don't want to do this Balthier; but if this is your price, so be it.'

Speck calls two of his silent black garbed henchmen over to wield metal hooks to pull back the ragged edges of Balthier's poker wound and Balthier writhes against the rough wood of the board, his heels drumming against it due to the excruciating pain. His fingers flex and curl helplessly, grasping for air as if to wield it as a weapon. He sees the emptiness in Speck's eyes as the other man forces the heated Gil coin deep into the contours of Balthier's flesh.

Balthier screams and he screams and he screams. Somehow, and this is the worst cruelty in a nest of depravity, he still hears Speck's voice over the wrenching howls of his own pain.

'Bought and sold Balthier; all men have their price and now all Ivalice shall know yours.'

709 O.V: The Little Palace Solarium Rabanastre - Maid's Day

Ashe had been working through a budget of papers while nested upon cushions on the floor when Balthier reared back into consciousness with a strangled cry and so much violence of motion that he knocked Palia, who had crouched beside him to check the dressing on his wound, straight back onto her rear end.

Ashe knew immediately from the wild look in his uncharacteristically wide eyes that Balthier was not fully conscious and instead still caught in whatever nightmare had wrung such naked panic from him. Rising swiftly Ashe waved Palia back as Balthier seemed to almost gasp air into his lungs before dropping his head in his hands.

It had been two days since she had sat beside him and told the pirate that his Strahl was safe. Two days since Balthier had suggested that Fran had been with the Strahl the last time he had seen either and then almost instantly, he had questioned his own assertion.

Since then Balthier had slept most of the time; or so Palia had told Ashe. When he woke he had been agitated, tetchy, confused and nervous; all traits that Ashe did not naturally associate with the pirate.

'Balthier?' she queried in clear but calm voice. Ashe had woken roughly from enough nightmares of her own that she knew not to crowd him or make any sudden moves. Sensing the precariousness of the situation Palia eased back from her patient and allowed Ashe to take control.

Balthier did not respond to her voice and continued to sit up in his welter of sheets cupping his face in his hands and breathing rapidly and unsteadily. Ashe could see the fast flutter of heart and lungs moving under the visible architecture of his ribs. It occurred to Ashe that she must see to it that he ate more than the sops of bread and milk Palia had managed to force him to ingest, for he was growing painfully thin.

'Balthier you are safe, you are here in Dalmasca. You remember don't you?'

Still he did not respond but the calming of his breathing suggested that he was unlikely to lash out at her approach and so Ashe walked over to him, making sure her tread made sound on the cushion strewn floor of the solarium so he would not be surprised by her presence beside him. She crouched gingerly next to him on his right side and tentatively reached out to place her palm upon his bare shoulder.

'Balthier, can you hear me?'

He jerked like a wild animal and his head came up and whipped around, lips curling in ready snarl, which immediately fell away when he came back to himself to recognise her and his surroundings.

'Ashe, bloody hell; don't creep up on a man like that.'

Vehemence fading he groaned and relaxed marginally but his head still drooped and his eyes still refused to look at anything except his own hands sitting limply in his lap. Ashe had never seen the pirate so visibly shaken; one might even deduce from all this that Balthier was just a man, after all. Ashe almost smiled, somewhat caustically. The man must be in quite a state to allow so much genuine emotion to escape him.

'I didn't creep up on you,' she told him dryly, 'You just weren't paying attention, pirate.'

Her palm warm against his fevered, flesh Ashe could feel the tremor of his breathing shiver through his body; he was trembling. Thoughtlessly she trailed her hand down the elegant line of his spine; partly to offer comfort and partly because she liked the long spare grace of his arched back.

Balthier's head came back up again and he turned to stare at her. 'Don't do that,' He said very quietly and very distinctly.

Ashe, startled, withdrew her hand as if he had stung her. She felt a flare of embarrassment touch her cheeks.

'I apologise,' she said stiffly.

Balthier almost smirked as if sensing her stung pride, 'Fran,' he seemed to falter on his partner's name a moment, as if surprising himself in speaking of her at all. 'Fran does that,' He said very softly and Ashe understood. She struggled to think of something to say and found she could think of nothing of any comfort. Strangely Balthier chooses to speak more anyway.

'She is forever scolding me for slouching.' Balthier's eyes contain a glimmer of his familiar mirth in them, perhaps kindled by thoughts of his dearest partner. 'It is her belief that I shall shrink in on myself and compact my own spine with all my slouching.'

Ashe allowed herself a small smile, recognising the explanation was also meant as tacit apology for his previous sharpness. 'I cannot believe the leading man ever slouches.' She rejoined teasingly.

Balthier's lips twitch and it pleases Ashe to see the spark of humour deepen in his eyes, 'Why do you think I wear the vest, Highness?' He retorts easily and Ashe can see him deliberately pulling himself out of his night terrors and fever dreams with each word of banter, 'It is physically impossible to slouch – or sit comfortably at all – in that piece of apparel.'

Ashe does laugh then and Balthier's brown eyes sparkle with that odd gleam of relish that once, before she came to know him better, Ashe had taken for mockery, but now knows to be simple pleasure when his jests hit their mark with his audience. Balthier is a man who takes a great deal of delight in his own wit Ashe knows, but only so long as others do as well. He is, paradoxically, a rather generous cynic.

Palia clears her throat pointedly and it is only then that Ashe realises she and Balthier have simply been holding the others gaze for these last handful of seconds. Ashe jerks her head to the side and Balthier (she has no doubt) is smirking when he turns to look at Palia.

'I'm glad you are feeling better bhadra,' Palia tells him smiling slyly and coming to kneel on his other side with a fresh roll of bandages and curative odds and ends.

'Oh I'm sure,' Balthier smiles back at her brightly and it is not just Palia who gapes at him in surprise when his beautifully modulated Archadian tones wrap smoothly around the Bhujerban tongue, 'All the better to poke and prod me, no?'

Palia laughs, 'Ah you have found me out,' she tells him smilingly in her own tongue and Balthier reclined on his elbows to give her access to his wounded side. He winced when he saw the wound unveiled, and his face darkens, even though the last two days have seen a great improvement to the wound site. Ashe, in contrast, cannot take her eyes from his face; she is astounded.

'I did not know you spoke Bhujerban.' She states almost accusingly and immediately regrets her tone.

Balthier chuckles but it ends in a sharp hiss as Palia begins to clean the wound with a potion, and the healing draught stings the flesh. He flicks a laughing glance Ashe's way all the same.

'Majesty there is a wealth of things you do not know about me,' He purrs at her, deliberately provocative, but he does not bother with an accompanying leer or anything else so obviously flirtatious; instead he begins to assist Palia in re-wrapping the bandages around his chest.

'You are of Archadian birth,' Ashe points out feeling oddly aggrieved that her assumptions are at fault, 'And Archadians are notorious for speaking no tongue but their own - and expecting all other nations to do the same.'

Balthier's lips quiver, 'Ah not true; for Bhujerba is a favoured holidaying resort for the Archadian gentry.' His dark eyes flash at her and she knows he is about to deliver another jest. Quite abruptly he raises one hand and snaps his fingers as if trying to attract the attention of someone, then in obnoxiously loud voice he calls out in bad and broken Bhujerban: 'Waiter bring me more Madhu – I'm thirsty!'

Ashe is a bit confused but Palia gives way to peels of laughter, 'Ah it is true; the Archadian youths who flock the Cloudbourne sound exactly so.' She claps her hands in amusement. Balthier ducks his head as if in gracious acceptance of the applause.

Ashe, for no reason whatsoever, is quite abruptly, and inconceivably, jealous. She does not like the instant and easy rapport between Balthier and her lady-in-waiting and she is quite aghast at herself for it.

'And were you one such boorish lout Balthier?' she asked him with more tartness than she intended, 'Is that where you picked up your grasp of the language?'

Balthier is clearly in high spirits now, despite how he came to wake but scant half hour before, and his eyes are dancing with merriment and wicked teasing when he turns back to face her.

'Hmm, while it is undoubtedly true that I have picked up all manner of things, not all of them good, from hanging around taverns, Highness.' He smirks at his own insinuation, 'I have spent more time serving the bar at the Cloudbourne then I have propping it up as a paying customer.'

Ashe blinked, not just at the notion of Balthier earning an honest wage in such a……mundane…..manner but also by the insinuation that he has spent considerable time in Bhujerba in the past. The pirate had always given the impression that he hailed from nowhere and settled on no land for longer than the time it took to restock the Strahl, and although Ashe knows that the former is a lie, she still finds it hard to imagine the pirate spending much time in any hume habitation. He is like a humming bird, buzzing from place to place faster than an eye-blink.

'Ah,' Palia murmurs meditatively, interrupting Ashe's musings, 'Now I see - I thought it was you, but I was not sure.' Palia taps a finger to her cheek in thought, 'You are Ran, are you not? It was you who used to fly for old man Tournai; the boy who built the moving chair for Mama Pern's poor crippled boy?' Palia smiles broadly, 'Yes, I remember you now, bhadra.'

'Ran?' Ashe demanded before Balthier could answer; her eyes widen, 'as in Ffamran?'

Balthier winced delicately, 'Highness please; can we not air my dirty laundry all over the place, hmm?'

Ashe will not be made to feel embarrassed this time, '"Ran"?' she persists, 'And just how many other names do you have, pirate? Do you keep an appellation in every port as other pirate's keep a doxy?'

Balthier actually laughs, as if he thinks she is trying to amuse him. 'Well,' he smiles drowsily, 'perhaps not in every port, just as I do not keep a woman in every port either.'

He smirks and then flips his hand in a magnanimous easy gesture, 'You know how I came to leave my home, Majesty, and for a boy of Empire who wishes to outrun Empire's reach there is but one place he thinks to go.'

Ashe blinked, 'Bhujerba…..you ran away from Archades to Bhujerba?' she stares at him, 'you are telling me that you ran from the Empire to become a Bhujerban bar-keep?'

Balthier gave her a droll look, 'Would it suit your sense of the dramatic better, Highness, if I had left my home, as a stripling of sixteen, to become a hardened criminal?'

'You are a hardened criminal.' Ashe pointed out, still struggling to imagine Balthier as 'Ran' the bar-boy. Placing Balthier within the confines of a tavern is easy enough, but the notion of Balthier performing tasks of manual labour, wielding mop and broom, and carrying drinks to and fro……no, it is too much.

Balthier is watching her very levelly, 'As always, Ashe, I am touched to the cockles of my heart to discover what high esteem you hold me in.'

Ashe waves that off indifferently, 'Balthier you don't have a heart,' she looks at him sharply, 'And even less scruple.'

Balthier can't keep the smirk from his face, 'Hmm, well, possibly.' He concedes, 'But one can hardly be blamed for what the wide world makes of a man, can he?'

Ashe scoffs, 'As if you would ever allow chance and circumstance to dictate your life, Balthier. No, what you are now, you are solely because of your own design.'

The smile leaves his face like water slipping through fingers, something dark and jaded fills his eyes for a moment and Ashe is caught quite by surprise. She watches as shadows swallow his vision and his gaze turns introverted. The pirate is suddenly many miles away in spirit.

'Pretty to think so,' He murmured and almost unconsciously, or so it seemed, his fingers brushed over the bandages covering the deep wound in his side. 'No, Highness,' Balthier told her quietly, in that same quiet voice he had used when once, on the Phon Coast, he had beseeched her not to give her heart to a stone, 'you are wrong; for every man has his price, to be asked, to be met, to be bought and sold.' He shook his head bitterly, 'and once the trade is done there is no going back.'

Ashe frowned and without thinking reached out a hand to touch his bare shoulder in a feather light and nervous caress, 'Balthier?'

He looked almost sharp when his gaze focused on her and his voice was crisp, 'Any word on my girl?'

It took Ashe a moment to realise he meant the Strahl and she nodded, 'My uncle is due to release her to one of Dalmasca's royal pilot's tomorrow. She should be docked in the aerodrome in less than twenty-four hours.'

Balthier nodded succinctly and his mood had undergone yet another mercurial change that it seemed to Ashe that the man might have as many personalities as he did names. 'Good - then I'll be able to take my leave of you sooner than you had hoped Highness.'

A fission of total surprise and something approaching dismay washed over Ashe, and remembering that Palia was still in attendance she turned to her maid for help. 'Surely he is not fit to leave?'

Palia was watching Balthier keenly and when she spoke she spoke in Bhujerban, 'My lady is right, bhadra…..act in too much haste and you may not live to repent your folly.'

Balthier's expressive mouth quirked in caustic humour but he shook his head, 'I think….I can almost remember where the bastard held me, damn it.'

He looked up at Ashe and his eyes were chaotic, 'I have the damnedest feeling that bringing the Strahl here might be a mistake.' He swept a hand through his hair, 'Speck knows how much I love my ship; he wouldn't leave her floating unharmed, nor allow Ondore to take her first, not unless it is all a ploy to lure me in.'

'Balthier you are not making sense,' Ashe squeezed his shoulder, 'Slow down, be calm.'

Without warning Balthier's hand lashed out and encircled Ashe's wrist, 'You don't understand. I almost took up a coin once, in Bhujerba, and it cost Tournai his life,' Balthier's face twisted in a mask of self-contempt, 'What if the coin you dug from my innards this time was not my asking price, but instead Fran's? What if I'm not the one he's hunting, but her instead?'

Ashe wrenched her wrist from his hold, 'Balthier stop this! What has come over you to be so wild?'

The pirate shook his head savagely pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes, 'I don't know,' He admitted through gritted teeth. 'I am fine, and then, without warning, memory comes upon me.'

Balthier sighed again and spoke with strained calm. 'I fear the Crucible where all men's souls are weighed and measured, and I do not even know what it is or how I came to escape. I hear voices in my memories tell me I have killed Fran and I think I hear her scream, yet I am sure, so sure, those voices are liars,' he scoffs a derisive laugh, 'but I'll be buggered if I know where my partner truly resides. I have forgotten something immensely important, I am sure of it.'

Balthier took in a deep breath of air and raised his face to Ashe, expression carved grim with tension, 'I think the Black Guard has risen Majesty, and I think I have led them right to your door.'