Chapter Ten: 702 – stuck in a hell of introspection

Ffamran chewed on his sleeve cuff nervously as he sat in the back of the sky cab. His feet did not reach the floor as he sank uncomfortably into the plush, crushed velvet upholstery. Through the tinted glass of the window Ffamran could see the tall pinnacle towers that made up the inner most sanctum of the Imperial city Archades drift by, as if floating. Sucking on the thick embroidered cuff of his best jacket Ffamran slunk down even lower in the chair; he wanted to go home. He wanted Nanny Penpo but she was back in Highgarden Terrace as father had said that she could no come with them today.

'Don't eat your clothing son; that is not the purpose of such apparel.' His father's admonishment floated over the top of the broadsheet newspaper obscuring his face but Ffamran did not wonder how his father could see through the paper because he already knew his father knew everything there was to know about everything instead he simply withdrew his sleeve from his mouth.

'Sorry Father,' Ffamran did not ask his father where they were going or why he had to dress in his best clothes and leave his beloved Nanny Penpo and his toys and books to ride in a sky cab through the city. He was a good boy and good boys did not burden their fathers with frivolous questions.

Because he did not like the view Ffamran did not look out of the window as they passed over the city and instead began to pluck at the tall white socks he wore drawn up to his knees where his short trousers reached down.

He did not like the socks at all. They were too tight and pinched around the back of his knees making his skin itch. At home he was allowed to wander about bare foot (at least when father wasn't home) or he wore loose fitting, cotton trousers that reached past his knees. This was not the fashion for gentry sons but he infinitely preferred those clothes to the ones his father had insisted he wear today.

'Ffamran really, must you fidget so?'

His father's voice accompanied by the rustle of paper as he lowered the newspaper to peer reproachfully over at his son startled Ffamran and he looked up guiltily from where he had been scratching under his sock.

'Sorry father.' Ffamran folded his nervous hands in his lap and sat up a little straighter.

He did not want to disappoint his father, he saw him so rarely, and he was afraid if he did something to displease his father now then he would never be taken on another outing again; not that he minded that precisely, all his toys and books and Nanny Penpo were at home after all but still the desire to please his father was the greatest force that impacted on young Ffamran's life.

Cidolfus Bunansa regarded his six year old son over the top of his half-spectacles amusedly. After a moment he set his newspaper aside and opened his arms to the pale, anxious boy who sat staring back at him, eyes large and full of all the questions he was clearly desperate to ask.

'Come here Ffamran, before you start eating the upholstery.'

Ffamran did not need further enticement and scrambled eagerly off his seat to his father's lap. He curled himself gratefully into his father's solid embrace and resisted the impulse to start chewing on his sleeve again. It was a habit he had picked up in the last year and Nanny Penpo kept trying to break him of, but with limited success so far.

'I suppose you are wondering where we are going, hmm, son? And why I dragged you away from your puzzle pieces and your story books.'

It was a source of great joy to Cidolfus that Ffamran was prodigiously bright for a child of his tender years. His vocabulary was vastly superior to most six year olds (a visiting colleague from Draklor had remarked jokingly that the words that tripped of Ffamran's tongue were larger than he was) and Ffamran could read at a level almost five years his senior. His grasp of the basic principles of mathematics was equally advanced and Cidolfus had already had to fit a lock to his home study because there was not a mechanism elsewhere in the house that his son had not attempted to dismantle and re-configure already.

'No father,'

Ffamran's prompt, succinct answer surprised Cidolfus who frowned. 'No? That is a trifle hard to believe son, I cannot imagine why you would not be curious.'

Ffamran grew awkwardly still in his father's arms and an expression of acute discomfort passed over his oval face. Cidolfus rather thought that there was a lot of his mother, Ezria, in Ffamran's features but everyone else of their acquaintance insisted Ffamran was the very image of Cidolfus himself.

'Curiosity is vulgar father,' Ffamran said in a quiet voice his gaze seeking refuge upon the floor of the cab.

'Who told you that?' Cid was genuinely surprised to hear such blasphemy from his son, certainly he would never fill his boy's head with such twaddle. Curiosity, ingenuity and the desire for knowledge were the only things that separated civilised man from mere savages.

'Master Lydon, father.' Ffamran told him looking up with a keen regard, perhaps sensing his father's bemusement, 'Master Lydon said I asked too many questions and it was not dignified for a gentleman's son to do so.' A tiny spark of impish defiance danced across Ffamran's expression, 'I think he said that because he did not know the answer.'

Cid chuckled, 'Yes I rather suspect you are right son. Hmm, perhaps I shall have to see about replacing Master Lydon. I am singularly unimpressed if the man I have employed as my son's primary tutor denounces the pursuit of knowledge as undignified.'

Ffamran nodded his head, seeming much happier now, 'Yes do, father, I do not like the man and Nanny Penpo is much more knowledgeable than he. Can she not be my tutor once more, as she was when I was small?'

Cid's lips twitched up at the corners to see the incredibly earnest but ever so slightly conniving look his son was giving him. Cid had received more than a few raised eyebrow looks when he had commissioned a Moogle as a nanny for his only child but Cid had found no reason to regret the decision. However it had come to his attention that perhaps his son needed to spend more time with his own race before he became confused as to his species. Cid doubted that there were many other hume children whose first spoken word was 'Kupo'.

'We shall see son, we shall see.' He gave his son a little squeeze, 'Now let us return to the purpose of this trip. I think it is time, and you are old enough now, to meet your mother and your brothers.'

Ffamran blinked, 'Mother?'

Ffamran of course knew what a mother was, just as he knew that he did not have one. The loss did not affect him, and in fact he did not feel any sense of loss at all, it was simply a fact of his happy insular existence that he had a father who he worshipped and a Nanny who he adored and a number of household servants who formed the backdrop of his life and that, for Ffamran, had always been sufficient. The concept of a 'mother' was abstract and vague and he did not quite know what to make of it.

'Yes and your brothers, Hyram and Vassili.'

Cid watched his child intently. Ffamran absorbed this new information thoughtfully but did not speak. Cid watched with pride as expressions flittered over his son's young, soft features and he wondered what his son's first question would be.

'Father, why do my mother and my brothers not live in Highgarden Terrace with us?'

It was a painful question, and although Cid had been expecting to tackle that question at some point during the day the bite of old grief still caused his spine to stiffen.

'Because they do not live at all Ffamran; not anymore.'

Cid murmured as the sky cab began its descent at the docking point outside of Highhills Cemetery the oldest cemetery in Archades. Mausoleums, elaborate crypts and discreet headstones covered the entire hill top and the surrounding several hundred acres. It had been speculated by those of a macabre mindset that there were more bodies occupying Highhills than there were in the entire Central District of Archades. It was for this very reason that Highhills had been dubbed the 'bone city'.

Ffamran was still absorbing his father's words, 'Oh,' he said eventually, 'I suppose that is a good reason then.'

Cid swallowed down a laugh. Out of the mouths of babes, he thought ruefully. He had been worried that taking his son to the Bunansa crypt would upset the boy, now he realised that a six year old had no concept of either death or grief. As intelligent and perceptive as Ffamran undoubtedly was he was still only a child. A child who had never known the love of his mother the way Cid had.

'Come now son,' He held out his hand to help his little boy out of the sky cab, the high imposing white marble walls of the Highhills cemetery before them, the intricate wrought iron gates open under the crisp blue sky. Together hand in hand, father and son walked through those gates to go and visit the dead……………

Balthier's eyes shot open, his heart hammering in his chest so fast and furious he actually wondered if the organ would palpitate itself to bits inside the shell of his ribs. He was drenched in sweat as he came back to the present and an awareness of his eighteen year old body once more. As his vision cleared of the last vestiges of memory and illusion he found himself face to face with his tormentor, the female Filpot.

'Back again Ffamran?' Beatrice Filpot asked him brightly, her dark eyes piercing as she peered at an ampoule of some manner of liquid substance critically. 'Tell me, what did you see this time?'

Balthier bit his lip until he drew blood, his mouth ulcerated from the numerous times already that he had reacted in the same way to repress the furious responses that wanted to come blistering off his tongue. Instead he let his aching head hang between his shoulders, his arms clamped at uncomfortable angle by the chains shackled to his wrists and the wall of the carriage he was stuck in.

For the last -however many hours or days Balthier had lost count – Beatrice Filpot had subjected him to all manner of psychological tortures, using strange substances injected straight into his veins, infusions that he was forced to inhale or imbibe or otherwise suffocate and judicious misuse of confusion spells to force him back into living memory. He did not understand the purpose of these involuntary strolls down memory lane except that the Filpots, from what he was able to divine, were operating under the misassumption that he was either amnesiac or had been forced to forget his true identity.

'…..W…why are you doing this?'

Balthier was not of a weak will or constitution, if nothing else he had proved that at least. He could take a beating with a smile and had come out of Nylous' induction torture with his wits and will in tact, but there was something infinitely more soul-destroying about being dragged back into his childhood, an idyllic time and place lost to him forever, over and over again for no obvious reason.

The memories were so vivid that he could still feel the warmth of his father's large hand curled protectively around his own and the scent of crisp early autumn on the wind as it whistled mildly through the valleys of headstones climbing up the hill where the forest of crypts and mausoleums crouched at the summit. Balthier was not sure what hurt most, the sense of violation or the pain and heartache that remained once the memory faded and he realised that he was not that happy child anymore.

Beatrice Filpots look of sympathy infuriated Balthier as much now as it had the first time. She reached out with a warm, damp face cloth to wipe away the sweat that drenched his face.

'I don't do this to hurt you Ffamran. All you have to do is renounce the false and foul identity of Balthier and you can return home to your father.' The female Filpot told him, her voice honeyed zealotry. The same insanity she had been spouting every other time he had asked this question.

'All will be forgiven Ffamran. Your father knows that you were not in your right mind when you helped Hamish Fon Denbak escape execution. You were under the malicious influence of that band of sky pirates; a young man's natural inclination towards radical liberalism corrupted by insidious influence. All you have to do is tell us where those brigands who kidnapped you are and you can go home.'

Balthier's lip curled in open contempt; the same message over and over again and the same corruption of the greatest decision of his life. His moment of self-discovery and the hardest act he had ever undertaken rendered moot, turned into an act of muddle-minded petty defiance by a foolish, spoiled gentry son. Was that the story Cidolfus Demen Bunansa had put about to absolve himself of the stain of his son's defection, or more chillingly, did his father really believe it?

As much as it outraged Balthier that it should be widely believed and profligated in Archades that he was not in fact a man acting against a corrupt system but instead merely a brain-washed toff, it was the craven childish relief that lurked deep inside him that truly made his blood boil. There was a part of him still, it seemed, that could not bear the thought of disappointing his father. A part of him that was relieved his father did not hate him.

He had thought when he left Archades almost two years ago that he had closed that chapter of his life, brought to a premature conclusion once and for all the life of Ffamran Mid Bunansa when he accepted the name 'Balthier'. He wondered now if he had needed to believe things were so final to give him the courage of his convictions; could he still justify his actions knowing that his father still loved him in some fashion?

'I have no….idea…..of whom you are….referring to…' He gritted out between his teeth for the umpteenth time in this long and unpleasant game they played.

Going back was not an option and he did not want it to be. Not only because he had run from much more than just his father's domineering madness but because he was not Ffamran anymore and Ffamran's devotion to his father was not a part of who Balthier was supposed to be.

He also had to admit that another reason he had no choice but to endure this psychological torment was that he would not betray Remus or the rest of Remus' people.

It was not any great loyalty to Remus that prevented him from handing the man over. He had always intended to betray the pirate, but not to the Empire and not if it meant betraying himself as well. Everything he had done to escape Archades would not, and could not, be erased. He had left his home and his father because neither was what they had been when he was a child. The dream had become a nightmare and he had to remember that even as the undertow of those halcyon memories threatened to wash all that very real pain away.

Beatrice Filpot sighed in response to his less than confident refusal, sounding only mildly irritated. She had been watching him intently the whole time just as she always did, 'Very well Ffamran we shall have to do this the hard way.'

Dropping the damp face cloth to the floor of the carriage Beatrice picked up a piece of dark blue cloth and doused it with the contents of the ampoule she had been looking at earlier. With lightning fast reflexes she pushed the cloth against his face. Balthier tried to turn his head away, tried not to breathe in, but with his hands bound there was little he could do to resist or escape as the potion laced cloth smothered him.

He knew from previous experience what the noxious vapours would do to him. The scent of dry ice and steel permeating his senses, frozen lightning tendrils crawling over his brain, probing and stabbing at his mind, trying to find weak spots from which to infest his memories. Balthier thrashed against the sensations, against the chains that held him, the back of his head smacking against the wooden side of the carriage. All to no avail however as memory rose up around him like an iced fog. He screamed wordlessly in almost mindless defiance as he was dragged under once more.

………..Six year old Ffamran held tightly to his father's hands as he was led through the tiered ranks of neat white headstones that rose like square edged teeth from the manicured emerald green lawns. He looked about him with avid interest; he did not feel anywhere near as scared or apprehensive here as he had in the sky cab.

Falls of golden brown and burnt orange leaves had been piled up in neat stacks by the toiling groundsman and Ffamran almost unconscious strained against his father's hand holding his towards those piles, longing to run into them and play. The balding trees, still burdened with some fiery leaves, which populated the landscape like proud sentries, also captivated his attention. He wanted to climb them, imagining what the view must be like from the tops of the highest boughs, but his father kept a tight grip on his hand.

'Who lives in those white houses father?'

He pointed with his free hand up towards the distant rise of the hill where a number of strange structures, which looked like very little houses made all of white, stood gleaming in the sun. It seemed odd to him that anyone would live in a cemetery, but then his grasp of the purpose of cemeteries was minimal. They were a place to put dead people that was about the limit of his comprehension and all he had ever felt it necessary to know until now.

'Those are mausoleums, Ffamran,' his father told him and then crouched down until he of eye level with his son, he pointed to one structure in particular, 'Do you see that mausoleum with the steeple roof and the gold orb atop?'

'Yes father,' Ffamran peered narrowly until he could make out the building his father was pointing at. It was much grander and larger than the others.

'That is the Solidor Crypt, where our gracious Emperor Gramis' forebears reside.'

Ffamran nodded, hoping he looked sufficiently impressed. His father stood and continued to lead him along the path up towards that cluster of dead peoples' houses. As they ascended the simple gravestones gave way to long flat raised tombs of granite and marble.

In places statues of humes in robes with bowed heads stood before those tombs and in others allegorical representations of various abstract concepts, which to young Ffamran just looked like odd shaped fiends, filled the empty spaces between the squat oblong lumps of stone. Ffamran did not like the statues as they made him decidedly uneasy. He did not like the blank carved eyes on the tall statues staring sightlessly down at him.

Eventually, not too far below the summit of the hill where the Solidor mausoleum stood, they came to a halt before a pale white rectangular building bearing the familiar seal and crest of the house Bunansa above the big heavy wooden door. The roof was steepled and at the apex of that steeple a carved bird, wings outstretched and beak open on a scream, perched aggressively. Ffamran eyed the stone carved bird with trepidation afraid that it might come to life and those sharp talons come screaming towards his eyes. He ducked his head and looked pointedly at the red and dusty ground, sparsely dusted with grass, before the mausoleum.

'Here we are son,' Cid said quietly, 'the family tomb. Fifteen generations of Bunansa's are entombed below in the underground crypt.' His father confided oddly proudly, 'The Bunansa's have been interred here for as long as the Solidor's; that is something you must remember, son. Our dead reside in the loving shadow of our departed emperors just as we live under the beneficence of the living Solidor line.'

Ffamran did not really understand much of what his father said, but he nodded his head gravely and met his father's intent gaze; 'Yes father.'

His father wore an abstracted mask upon his face. A complex amalgam of different emotions that young Ffamran did not even know how to interpret let alone ascribe a name to, but they made him nervous all the same. His father was a man of swift changes in mood and grand gestures, he did not talk he bellowed, he did not laugh he guffawed, subtlety and ambiguity were not part of Cidolfus Bunansa's emotional palette. This strange subdued quietness unsettled his child who squeezed his hand anxiously as they stood facing the studded door of the squat white building with the blind eyed and stone hearted bird watching them with marble-coated belligerence.

Cidolfus bestirred himself and glanced down and smiled faintly at his boy. 'Well then son, let us go in.'

Heart hammering and palms sweating Ffamran took a step back as his father let go of his hand to open the doors of the mausoleum. Those heavy tarred and studded wooden doors swung open on well oiled hinges and a rush of stale smelling air ran out of the opening to confront Ffamran. Beyond the opening he could see an empty space of white and mosaic tiled walls and a staircase cut out of a hole in the floor leading down.

'I don't want to.' Ffamran took another two steps back as his father beckoned for him to come inside. 'I don't want to go in there.'

Ffamran knew that dead meant not alive, but he did not really comprehend what it meant to be 'not alive.' What did it mean to be dead? Did it just mean that the dead had to stay in places like this cemetery living underneath these odd pale white buildings while the rest of Archades went about their business a handful of miles away?

Ffamran imagined an entire town of dead people milling about right under the hill, directly under his feet. He imagined open market places and stalls, he imagined underground sky cabs and the like all operating in complete darkness never allowed to see the light of day…..and yet, as interesting as that would be, Ffamran suspected that that was not what being dead truly entailed.

'Ffamran, come now, there is nothing to be afraid of,' the first threads of impatience wound through his father's speech. Ffamran jolted, that ever present fear of disappointing the father he adored almost made him run to him regardless of his fear, but he did not. The fear of 'the dead' was that great.

'I don't want to father. I don't want to see my mother and brothers. I like things just as they are. Please father can we go home now?'

His father's face twisted in anger and he moved to grab Ffamran by the arm, 'How dare you speak so of the woman who bore you? I will not have this foolishness Ffamran, you are not an infant.'

Six year old Ffamran could not explain the tumult of emotion that brought tears to his eyes (and he a child lauded for the fact that he never cried). Panic clawed at his throat and he trembled, his father's anger, as quick and fierce as summer thunderstorms, was enough to frighten him ordinarily but the white building and its dark subterranean staircase and cruel bird statue scared him all the more. Instinct screamed at him that he did not want to go down there. He did not want to see his dead mother and dead brothers; death was nothing he wanted to experience. Somehow little Ffamran knew that death was something to be feared, not revered.

His father's large hand closed about his forearm and jerked him off his feet towards the doorway of the white building, the bird glaring at him from above with pupiless smooth white eyes. The bird's stone talons closing over the edge of the roof sharp as knives and the beak; open on silent screech, vicious as a rapier.

'No!' Ffamran screamed breaking painfully free of his father's grip and turning to run blindly down the hill.

He did not heed his father calling out to him angrily. He did not heed anything at all as he broke from the path and darted through the serried rows of graves. He did not want to stay in this still, empty, quiet place; this land of the dead where young Ffamran, with all his life ahead of him, had no place or business. The dead had no hold on him and ran as fast as he could to ensure they never would.

It was then, running eyes stinging with the tears that never would fall, that he fell into the open grave, left unmarked, and tumbled into the dark head first; the heady scent of fresh turned soil surrounding and enclosing him. He did not have time to scream as he landed hard at the bottom of the grave.

……….Balthier screamed again, the sound torn from his throat more in response to the terrible pressure he felt building up around his heart, slamming down against his inflamed mind, then in response to the memory of that disastrous trip to the Highhills cemetery many, many years ago. In the rich tapestry of terrors and thrills he had experienced since then the events of that day had seeped into the hidden regions of his memory, not even consciously recalled until this moment.

It was only as he began to convulse, unable to breathe, that he realised that he was no longer chained to the wall but instead lying on his side on the rough boards of the carriage floor. The fact that he was no longer restrained didn't matter greatly as Balthier was too busy choking, limbs going into spasm, to take advantage of the situation.

He could hear voices scything into his awareness in the lulls between his screaming blood pounding in his ears. The vibrations of feet clomping towards him over the floor simply verged with the general pain he was in.

'Gods almighty what have they done to him?'

Strong hands tried to haul him upright but Balthier could not afford the time to worry about this; breathing was his priority.

'Drugs, most like,' a female voice, not Beatrice Filpot but one he thought he should recognise nevertheless, 'a veritable chemical banquet by the looks of it, in fact.'

Balthier forced his eyes open. Light blinded him in spears of white and red and yellow and he squinted painfully as his breathing normalised and his body stopped writhing uncontrollably. Two faces blurred, and edged in unnatural nimbus haloes of crackling luminance, wavered before his eyes. A young man with a shock of red hair and bright engaging green eyes and a woman, grey just threading through the thick mane of dark hair at her temples and black gimlet eyes as hard and sharp as avaricious death.

The woman reached out with a black gloved hand to stroke his sweaty cheek, 'Balthier darling, what a lot of trouble you are.'

Ruthy smiled in patronising fashion as she trailed her hand down from his cheek to encircle his neck, fingers rubbing over the feverish pulse dancing at his throat. She squeezed down just a little making it hard for him to swallow. The leather of her glove was wet and slick and as always the mind-reeling scent of raw meat and roses filled his nostrils.

'Now Balthier my dear boy, why don't you tell me what the mean lady has done to you?' her voice sultry poison honey seeped into his brain like slow draining acid, 'and also what precisely you have done with the Landis Phoenix.' Ruthy smiled wolfishly, teeth glinting as she continued to hold him by the throat.

Balthier's heart stopped, the whirling reel of his thoughts ground to a halt and he stared in open panic up at Ruthy. The Phoenix; he did not know what had happened to the Phoenix.

Ruthy licked her lips hungrily her dark eyes keenly aware of every thought that danced behind his eyes it seemed. A low growling chuckle rolled off her lips, 'Oh deary me, Remus will kill you when he finds out, darling. You really are in trouble this time, aren't you?'

Balthier could not have found the breath to speak even if he had known what it was he could say. Abused memory tried to track down the last moment he remembered the Phoenix being in his possession; a glimpse of an ambush in the rain, the Filpots surrounding him and Balthier reacting with gun drawn, the Landis Phoenix dropping to the muddy ground. He swallowed hard, Ruthy was right; with the Phoenix gone, perhaps lost for good, his life was forfeit. He stared mutely at Ruthy who nodded sagely.

'A-hum,' she purred, 'Remus hoped you'd come unstuck because of the Phoenix, though he was hedging his bets that Mary-Belle would kill you. I must say I'm disappointed though, I'd hoped you'd be smarter than this.'

Ruthy let go of his throat to walk her fingers, sharp nails sheaved by the gloves, over his chest. She flicked open the top two buttons of his shirt (his vest ghosted away by the Filpots at some point in his captivity), 'Still,' she purred meditatively, 'perhaps this situation need not be so dire, after all?'

Even drugged, ill and severely disadvantaged Balthier was no fool and he recognised the opening gambit for either a deal or blackmail. He swallowed again, 'What do you want?'

The question was hard to voice and not just because of his general discomfort. Being indebted to Ruthy was not a fate he would wish to enter into lightly, though it looked like his choices were limited.

Ruthy smiled triumphantly around a peal of delighted laughter, 'Everything my dear, I want everything; but for now I'll settle for you.' Her dark eyes rooted to his, hard as nails and tenacious as a behemoth. When she spoke her words were hard as pellets of ice.

'Mind, body and soul, Balthier; I want your devious mind, your lovely young body and, that most precious gift because it is a commodity so few can boast, I want your loyalty. In return I will ensure Remus does not gut you like a trout as soon as he finds you.'

Her savage smile filled the world, leeching the light from the room until all Balthier could see was that knife-like grin, 'All you have to decide, Balthier darling, is whether being mine is preferable to being dead.'