Before he could even think about what he was doing, Chrom bolted out of the room after Ortho. The dark mage was apparently more fleet of foot than he looked, because by the time Chrom got into the hall he was already out of sight. Chrom cursed the size of the palace yet again, realizing that Ortho could have fled down at least three different passages, each of which branched off yet again at frequent points. There was no hope in trying to chase him down; he would just tire himself out blindly searching through the castle while Ortho made his escape. The only small comfort was that he hadn't gone directly outside. At least for now, he was still inside the palace.
He ran back into the room around Frederick, who had been close behind him. The disused living room had transformed into a scene out of nightmares. Small fires smoldered all around the room, and despite the efforts of the guards to stamp them out the room had filled with haze and the stench of burning fabric. At the center of the room Robin was lying on the floor, with Tharja hunched over him clutching his head, shuddering gently.
"Sire, we can still chase after him," Frederick said. "We've lived here all of our lives, we could be able to corner him."
Chrom shook his head. "No, don't play his game. He's still been here for months, and if he's been planning all this then he's certainly had time to memorize potential escape routes."
He pointed at one of the guards. "You! Sprint down to the gatehouse on the outer walls, tell them to close every gate, nobody gets out of the castle grounds no matter who they are. Don't stop for anything, don't leave there until the gate is sealed."
He pointed at another. "You! Head to the barracks, round up every man you can find, I don't care what they were already doing. Post guards around all of the entrances to the palace's main building, don't let anybody in or out unless they're with me or Frederick. Send some people up to guard Ortho's room too. Tell everybody you see that he's betrayed us, and to capture him on site. Shout it as you run if you think it'll help. I don't care if people get scared, we need to catch him."
The two men ran off. Chrom's head was faintly buzzing, and he almost didn't notice Fredrick tapping him on the shoulder.
"What if he gets to the gate before the messenger?" Frederick asked.
"I have enough faith in Ylisse's men to think they'll be intelligent enough to stop a man running at full sprint away from the royal palace," Chrom said. "If Ortho wants to get away then he has to act casual, which gives us a chance to outpace him."
"So we have a chance to hunt the cornered rat down?" said Frederick, hefting his ax again.
"Not yet," Chrom said. He glanced at Robin's prone form, and pointed to the remaining guard, who had just finished stamping out the last blaze. "Run up to the infirmary, or the Shepherd's storeroom, whichever you can get to fastest. Grab a couple of healing staves, bandages, and every bottle of salves you can carry- I don't know which kind are used for burns so we just have to hope we get lucky. When you get those head back here as fast as you can. Bring back the nurse if you go to the infirmary." The man nodded. "Go!" Chrom shouted.
As he left, Chrom looked at Frederick. "I need you to go back outside. Get Lissa and Maribelle back here as fast as you can. Carry them if you must." He paused for a moment. "If Sumia's with them, tell her I'm okay."
Frederick, not wasting words, ran at full tilt out of the room.
The room was quiet for a few seconds. Chrom tilted his head back and took a deep breath. He had to keep himself from panicking. If he panicked, he'd start making bigger mistakes, and if he made mistakes, then Ortho might be able to escape. The important thing was to keep calm, think clearly, and focus on making that flatworm in human clothes pay for what he did.
He heard a sniff behind him, and turned around. Tharja was still by Robin's side, holding his head up and rocking from side to side.
"I don't think you should move him," Chrom said, not wanting his injuries to get any worse.
Tharja looked up and revealed a face wet with tears. Chrom was mildly taken aback, and was suddenly feeling even worse.
"He'll be okay, right?" she asked, choking slightly. "They'll be back here any minute, right?"
"It'll be fine," he said, trying to keep his voice gentle. "You know Frederick, he'll be back with the healers before they have time to realize what's going on."
Tharja didn't say anything, and just nodded, looking back down at Robin.
A moment passed, and Chrom looked around the room. He realized that the three men Ortho had put under his control were still standing at the back of the room, their expressions still pleasantly neutral. They would have to be dealt with later. Chrom didn't know exactly what Ortho had done to place them under his control, but he was sure the process couldn't be easy to reverse. It was disconcerting, how they stood in one spot, totally rigid because their master had tightened their strings. All the more reason to find Ortho as quickly as possible.
He started pacing back and forth. The seconds seemed to stretch for years, and the minutes were almost unfathomable. The acrid smell of ashes hung in his throat no matter how hard he tried to block it out. Eventually the sound of a heavy thumping coming back up the corridor brought him some measure of relief.
Frederick burst back into the room with a leather satchel in one hand and Lissa slung over his shoulder. He set both down on the floor, and turned toward Chrom.
"We met the runner you sent up to the storeroom and took his supplies. I sent him on a second trip to the infirmary to see if he could find the nurse. I couldn't find Maribelle quickly enough, I'm sorry. I'll head back right now and try again."
Before Chrom could reply, Frederick had already made his way out of the room.
"Chrom, what's going on? One of the soldiers was running by yelling that Ortho killed Robin," Lissa said, her voice panicked.
"He's not dead," Chrom said firmly, gripping her shoulder. "I need you to keep it that way. He's right there. Ortho put him in some sort of trance and hit him with fire spell, do everything you can to heal the wounds."
"Right," Lissa said, nodding and picking up the satchel. She hurried over to Robin, and hesitated slightly.
"Tharja, I'm going to need you to put him down. I can't help him if you're in the way," she said.
Tharja only replied with a nod, and put Robin's head down. Lissa started unpacking everything in the satchel. A few small healing rods, designed for portability, were the first to come out, followed by the bandages and a dozen jars of salve.
"You can help him, right?" Tharja asked quietly while Lissa was unpacking.
"Burns are hard. Most of the healing staves we have are just for knitting muscle, mending bone, that sort of thing. They can't instantly fix flesh that's been burnt away, same way they can't regrow an arm," Lissa said. Tharja's eyes widened slightly, and Lissa hurriedly continued. "But I can use the staves to stop any serious bleeding, and the salves can soothe the pain on the lesser burns in the meantime. Once he's out of danger we can use magic to help him heal the worse sections, bit by bit. It'll take a while, but with any luck, he'll be fine."
"He'll be fine?" Tharja said.
"With any luck," Lissa repeated, examining Robin's side.
Tharja sighed. She sat back on the floor next to Robin, staring intently as Lissa started dressing his wounds. For a moments there wasn't any sound besides the ethereal hum of the healing rod. She fretfully dug into the carpet with her fingernails.
"This is my fault," she said after a while.
"You didn't do anything wrong," Chrom said. "If you hadn't been listening at the door Robin would be Ortho's sleeper agent right now and we would have no idea. Any fault lies with all of us. Nobody realized Ortho was trying to dupe us until it was too late."
"If he weren't marrying me, Ortho wouldn't even be here," Tharja said, resting her head on her hands.
That was a depressing thought. Chrom wasn't sure how he could respond to it; any sort of dismissal would seem like empty words. He stood still for a few moments, before a thought occurred to him.
"Listen," he said, crouching down. "My father started a war that killed countless scores of innocent people and brought our country to the brink of ruin. When he died the responsibility for all the suffering he caused passed directly to Emmeryn, and now it lies with me and Lissa."
"She didn't wallow in guilt, and neither can we. Sitting on the throne feeling sorry wouldn't have helped anyone. You have to focus on fixing the problem." Chrom paused to gauge if his words were having any effect. Tharja didn't move. After a moment, she spoke.
"So you're saying I should worry more about finding Ortho and making him suffer for what he did?"
Chrom hesitated slightly, and nodded. "Let's go outside. We can talk to your family, maybe one of them knows where he might decide to hide. We'll track him down eventually; he can't just vanish out of the palace. I promise you'll be the first to see Robin when we get him to a safer location."
Tharja remained motionless. The only sound in the air came from Lissa snipping off the end of a bandage.
Chrom sighed. "Look, if you-"
"I know where he is," Tharja said.
There was a pause. "What?" Chrom and Lissa both said simultaneously.
"I know where he is," she repeated, standing up suddenly. "The coward is going to disappear right under our noses if we don't stop him." Her voice was a complete monotone.
"What do you mean?" Chrom said.
"You only keep combat spells in the Shepherd's storeroom, don't you?" she asked.
"Yes?" Chrom said.
"I think so," Lissa said, sounding confused.
"But the library has all sorts of other spellbooks. Spells that aren't useful enough to practice with, or rare spells. Rare spells like teleport spells." Her voice was gradually rising in intensity, and she was starting to angrily pace back and forth.
Chrom's mouth gaped open for a moment as he processed this revelation. He stood up as well.
"Wait here. I'm going to go get some more people, we can stop him before-"
"I am not going to wait!" she shouted. "The gutless wretch is going to flee the first chance he gets, and the longer we wait the closer he gets to that spellbook. You told me to focus on fixing the problem. The problem is the stinking roach that calls himself my uncle." She grabbed her discarded spellbook off the ground, turned away and ran out the door into the hall.
"Stop!" Chrom shouted futilely, and followed her into the hall. The last he saw was her back disappearing down the hall, barreling forward without regard for her own safety as she screamed Ortho's name savagely.
