IX.
Unlike most other pirates, Balthier was not a drunk—which was to say that he often was drunk, but he wasn't a drunk. He was sitting back with a glass of something brown and putrid right now, as at home in the brown and bronze shadows of the Sandsea Tavern as he was in the dungeon, or the palace, or any of the alleys and aerodomes and abandoned ruins that came before. Fran sat at his side, sipping her pomegranate juice and ignoring the stares—always ignoring the stares.
She had met only two other Viera beyond the Wood—both settled in Rozarria, where the jungles closely resembled the wonder at the roots of Mount Bur-Omisace, where men would pay them just to attend their parties, just to stand at their sides. But Francesca didn't give up the strictures of the Golmore Jungle only to trade them for the human equivalent: even if the path was steeper, she preferred skypirating—no laws or loyalties, always something to learn and discover—and Balthier shared in this, born into the rigors and rituals of Archadian society, where one's house was judged before one's merit, where even war was a matter of ceremony. Whether thieves or merchants or senators, Archadian women were expected to be graceful and the men courteous, even Balthier—impossible Balthier—always a gentleman in spite of himself; only on the battlefield were these roles forgotten.
Had he any desire to settle down, or at least to turn a tidy profit while waiting for the skies to cool, he was more than good enough as a mechanic, but war meant boycotts and tariffs and border restrictions—all of which lessened the supply of capable smugglers and heightened the demand for them. Balthier would not stop—an understanding between the two of them, a mutual obsession, shared but for the motive behind it: Fran was living; Balthier was running.
He wouldn't say it, but he didn't need to. He woke up shouting in the middle of the night, an echo down the metal halls even with the cockpit door closed and locked. His eyes sharpened at any mention of the Necrohol. A crime against nature, the whispers reported, nothing but a crater where the royal city once stood, but Fran knew better—sensed it whenever they flew too near the site, which wasn't near at all. It was a crime of nature—it was the power of the world wielded by those who considered themselves apart from it, above it.
"I can feel it," she had complained once, her head throbbing.
"The Mist?" he had replied.
And she asked how he knew—how he knew it was Mist, congested, enough to make their ship's magicite engine surge and sputter, a concentration that would take five thousand years to dissipate.
"Rumor," he had answered—a shrug, a smile, a malediction toward a fellow pirate who was always full of shady information. "Not really my area."
Such a lie that Fran was almost afraid of the truth it concealed.
But so he went on, a grin for every ally and opponent alike, a cocksure ease in every port, with every client, deflecting every look with a smile and every question with a glib reply and all that Archadia had done and would do was no more than water sliding off glass.
Fran often thought of stopping him—of putting her hands on his shoulders and just holding him there until he spoke to her—but she could not bring herself to do it; not when she could see how hard he fought to maintain, and not when she had no answers, no way to make this right. The rules of Eruyt had no purchase here, and if he was ashamed of his homeland's victory, he would be more ashamed to let it weaken his resolve.
"Balthier!"
She slid her eyes shut at the shout—he said they'd see the girl again, but she had hoped it might be on their own terms.
"That was quick," Balthier said, turning to Penelo as she stomped up to their table.
"We have a problem," she told him.
He raised an eyebrow. "We?"
"Your stupid bounty hunters kidnapped my—" She choked on a pause, and Balthier took the letter she had offered out.
"Your what?"
"Boss," she said at length, and then: "Friend."
He ran his eyes over the scrawling threat, Fran leaning in to read as well: trade off, conditional surrender, Ba'Gamnan. She knew the name: he'd been at the prison, and a thorn in their sides for months before that.
"This isn't meant for me," Balthier told Penelo.
"Yeah, I know."
The letter instructed whoever found it to bring Balthier to the Lhusu mines in Bhujerba, where the prisoners would be exchanged. No doubt Ba'Gamnan and his crew had been after him the night of the fete, had seen him arrested with Penelo, had seen Penelo's exchange with Migelo.
"So…" Balthier went on. "Am I to take this as an abduction?"
"I'm not abducting you!"—As though she could.—"You're going to take me there and be the bait."
He folded the letter and handed it back. She snatched it. "And why am I going to do this?"
"The Law of Exchange," she said. "You got Migelo into this, so you have to get him out."
"So, let me get this straight." Balthier leaned back and swirled his drink. "I saved your life, busted you out of prison, and returned you safe and sound to your home, and now that I've been in town all of five minutes, you see fit to order me to risk my life rescuing someone I've never even met from someone who wants my head?"
"But you have met him," Penelo insisted. "The night they arrested us. He's the nicest person in the world. He doesn't deserve this…"
Balthier glanced at Fran. He had a way of being right in the worst of ways, and she might have loathed it if she didn't enjoy it so much.
He drained the rest of his drink in one go and stood. "Well, your audacity is less than charming, but you've got a point." And he flicked a coin onto the table and strode past Penelo, Fran at his heels. "Ba'Gamnan is a problem we've been meaning to deal with for some time now, anyway."
"What?" Penelo asked. "Just like that?"
"I can change my mind, if you'd like."
"Nope. We're good."
They laid out some basics on the way to the aerodome—they wouldn't be following the proposed plan, of course, but then again neither would Ba'Gamnan. They lent Penelo a blade under the condition that she made herself useful, and Balthier insisted that she dunk her head in a fountain they passed along the way to wash the stench of Nalbina from her hair. It didn't work well, but he let it slide.
Rabanastre's aerodome spanned a wide oval at the southern end of the city, one of the greatest airship docking stations in Ivalice, though it earned such fame only because the city had no sea port, and thus compensated for missed trade through increased air travel. The city operated under the protection of a paling—an invisible shell of energy generated by the outer walls to form a dome over all within—which served to bump back and scramble the systems of any ship that attempted to breach the borders without authorization.
Naturally, all pirate ships were officially merchant vessels—Balthier's ship, the Strahl, was three of them, depending on where it was and where it needed to be. Easy enough to assume that if a ship of a certain size took a line anywhere near a bustling city, it was at least a matter of smuggling goods out of Archadia or Rozarria, avoiding the worst of the tariffs and fees. They rarely found trouble docking.
The Strahl was a magnificent Archadian vessel large enough to hold perhaps ten passengers comfortably, and far more cargo than it let on. Its surface was polished to a shine—gold and red and a few touches of white—and its design was sleek, elegant, similar to other Archadian crafts, yet intangibly unique. A prototype, Balthier had told her once; stolen before it entered mass production, which should have been more problematic than it was, considering standardization was a frustrating business even for commonplace skyships—Archadia and Rozarria employing different systems of measurement, each with its own tool set. The Strahl was a necessary mix of whatever was available in whatever port they landed in, Balthier mixing and matching parts with abandon. It seemed a strangely overcomplicated system to Fran, and intentionally so, though Balthier always knew exactly what he needed and where to find it.
Penelo stood in awe of the ship as Balthier typed a code into the keypad beside the entry hatch.
"This is the Strahl," he said, and the girl smiled, face bright.
"You really are a skypirate!"
"Well, the headhunters seem to think so."
And Fran added: "You could buy your own ship for the price he fetches."
She meant it, too: he had a bounty on his head like she had never seen, and the longer he eluded it, the greater it grew. This job—the Dusk Shard—it was supposed to clear his name, or at least grant them a greater shield, a lower profile. Hope remained, but taking out Ba'Gamnan's gang was still worth their while.
"Is it armed?" Penelo asked, striding up and down the ship's flank and daring to run her fingers along the satin-smooth side panel. "How fast can it go?"
"Hop aboard and see for yourself," Balthier replied.
He pulled down the entry hatch—steps unfolding onto the floor—and Penelo followed him in, Fran right behind them. The girl seemed to know little of airships, marveling as thoughthe cockpit were roomy and the cabin well-equipped. It was a stealth ship—all comfort and décor traded for speed and firepower and the occasional load of illicit cargo or passengers. Its engine was compact, its frame agile, the whole of it lightweight and heavily armed. Penelo had no appreciation for its finest features: military-grade navigation systems and state-of-the-art targeting technology.
"How can that little engine handle all this?" she asked, flitting around, looking over the arsenal.
"Brains over brawn," Balthier replied.
"Why isn't your army using this stuff?"
"Latest model. Not even on the market yet. And I don't have an army." He and Fran took their seats in the cockpit, and Balthier gestured to the second row. "Strap yourself in. She's a bit temperamental."
Penelo bounced down and pulled the belts over her shoulders while Balthier deactivated the gear lock and Fran powered up the navigational controls.
"The shortest way is over Dorstonis," she noted.
"The shortest way?" asked Penelo.
Balthier clarified: "Shortest if you're looking to avoid any Imperial attention."
And Penelo leaned forward a bit. "Bhujerba isn't involved with the Empire."
"Of course not," he scoffed. "She's free as can be. For now. I hear the Imperials have been massing there for the last week or so."
"Oh, no…" Penelo flopped back in her seat.
The engines hummed.
"The latest says the flagship of the Eighth Fleet docked two nights ago," Balthier went on. "Getting ready to shift the assignment of the Judges working Vayne's security detail, among other things."
"You have some good connections," said Penelo.
"Not particularly. Fran's just got big ears." Fran cast a glare his way, and he quickly corrected himself: "Ah—good ears, I mean. Hold on."
The hatch in the ceiling of their docking station rumbled open, illuminated text projected at its rim indicating a gap in the paling beyond. The Strahl lifted from the dock, then bucked as the engines throttled forward—out of Rabanastre, out of Dalmasca, into the bright desert sky ahead.