The entrance to the oubliette. While Balthier, Fran, Daina, and Vaan hid in the inky shadows, two Imperial magi chanted out a complex spell in an arcane language. The magicks in the door responded, glowing white, blue, and violet, curling like vines. The paling flickered and died. The judge and his company strode through the unlocked door. So did Daina and the others, from a safe distance, slipping through before the paling refreshed itself and sealed them inside. The oubliette was blacker still, a chilly, forsaken place. None of the Imperials bothered to turn around, just as none of the other prisoners had followed them. Perhaps there had been demonstrations of potential escapees in the past.

A lamp flared, its yellow phosphor jumping into the pools of shadow. A second, then a third gave off enough light to let them see. Daina stole a glance at Vaan. "How did you end up here?" she whispered.

He screwed up his nose. "I didn't mean to."

"I don't think any of us did," she said, grinning. "What were you doing in the sewer with a pair of sky pirates?"

"In all honesty, it happened so fast that I'm not sure. See, Penelo told me it was like the Empire was swallowing Rabanastre whole. It isn't the same city we used to know," he said. Then he scuffed the floor with a shoe, sighed again, and continued. "I wanted to take back what's ours. Give back to Dalmasca. I figured if I found something good in the palace, and it fetched a good price, I'd buy them all dinner."

"Them?"

He gave her a clear-eyed look. "The war orphans."

"I see." She truly did. This was what she and Resistance were working so hard to undo: Children resorting to thievery to survive, children growing up without parents, Dalmasca forgetting its culture as the Empire took over. Vaan, in his clumsy simplicity, represented everything evil about Dalmasca's defeat.

"Penelo must be worried sick." Vaan tenderly scrubbed the back of his head and the cockatrice egg-sized lump sure to be there.

Daina remembered the frantic blonde girl begging for Vaan's release. The one to whom Balthier had loaned his handkerchief. "Who is Penelo to you?"

"She's a friend." Vaan's smile was warm. "After my parents died of the plague, hers took me in, but then they were killed in the war. Her brothers, too, and mine. They're all gone. It's been Penelo and me ever since."

No wonder the girl had been so frantic, then.

"Quiet back there," Balthier admonished, and they fell silent.

The phosphor brightened to a more natural white. The judge's entourage vanished down a set of steps. Daina crept forward to peer over the landing.

Below them, a crow's cage hung from a thick chain above a pitch black hole that seemed to go down forever. Inside the cage, arms chained above his head, a collar of metal that restricted all movement bruising bare shoulders, another such collar around his waist from which chains depended to secure his ankles, an untamed thatch of curling, wheat-gold hair and beard obscuring his face –

"You have grown very thin, Basch. Less than a shadow. Less than a man," the judge said, removing his helm. All Daina could see was the back of his close-shorn head, also wheat-gold.

Vaan audibly gasped when the imprisoned man looked up, and so did Daina.

The prisoner was not Captain Vossler York Azelas, as she had first thought, but Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg. The traitor. The kingslayer. The one who was supposed to be two years dead.

"Sentenced to death and yet you live," the judge went on, speaking Daina's thought aloud. "Why?"

Basch obediently spoke, his voice rough and tired. "To silence Ondore. How many times must I say it?"

"Is that all?" The judge's words could have rusted iron.

"Why not ask Vayne himself?" Basch paused to draw a breath, difficult because of the way his arms were chained, which put pressure on his ribcage in all the wrong places. "Is he not one of your masters?"

"We've caught a leader of the Insurgence," the judge said casually as if Basch hadn't spoken. "She is being brought from Rabanastre. The woman Amalia. Who could that be?"

Daina dug her fingers into the stone railing of the landing to keep from speaking. Basch seemed to spark at the mention of Amalia, but then the energy bled out of him. He lowered his head once more. The judge put his helm back in place.

"Such a faithful hound to cling so to a fallen kingdom," he said contentedly.

Basch closed his eyes and mumbled, "Better than throwing it away."

"Throwing it away?" the judge snarled, suddenly angry. "As you threw away our homeland?"

With that, the judge and his soldiers left by another route, leaving the traitor alone with his guilt once more. Daina, breathing as hard as if she'd run the entire distance from Rabanastre to Nalbina Town, her eyes locked on his bowed head, didn't realize that the others had left her there on the landing. They approached the crow's cage and the hole under it.

Fran's stiletto heels struck stone, too regular for an accident, and Basch's roughened voice called, "Who's there?"

Completely ignoring him, Balthier put one foot on the ledge and peered into the chasm yawning below the cage. "This is the place?" he asked Fran.

"The Mist is flowing through this room," Fran affirmed. "It must be going somewhere."

"You!" For the first time, Basch showed real signs of life. He jerked against his bonds. "You're no Imperials. Please, you must get me out –"

"It's against my policy to speak with the dead," Balthier interrupted, frowning. "Especially when they happen to be kingslayers."

"I did not kill him," Basch said unblinkingly.

Balthier's sarcastic tone sharpened. "Is that so? Glad to hear it."

"Please, get me out. For the sake of Dalmasca."

At that, Vaan flew into a rage. Taking two tremendous strides, he sailed across the gap and clung to Basch's cage the way a dive talon stuck to its prey.

"Dalmasca?" he bellowed, shaking the bars as if to tear them apart. Basch jounced, helpless, in his chains. "What do you care about Dalmasca? Everything that's happened is because of you! Everyone that's died, every single one!"

"Vaan!" Appalled, Daina dashed down the stairs and took the leap herself. The cage rocked wildly under their momentum. She tried to pry his hands loose. "Stop it!"

He seemed beyond hearing her, beyond reason. "Even my brother," he raged, "you killed my brother!"

"Quiet!" Balthier hissed. "The guards will hear."

Vaan paid him no heed, so Fran took action. "I'm dropping it," she announced.

Balthier barely had time to duck out of the way as she, with a well-placed swing of one strong leg, threw a lever. The cage jolted sickeningly, shocking all words out of Vaan. He grabbed Daina, eyes wide.

"Pirates without a sky," Balthier lamented. Swiftly, he mimicked Fran's jump across the gap to the cage. He braced Daina against the bars with his arms, and with a rattle that billowed into a chainsaw snarl, they plummeted.