Chapter Nine: Introducing the Damsel; for there must always be a girl involved

There were, Ffamran knew, far, far worse fates to befall oneself than this, but right at this juncture of time he struggled to name them.

' Really it was quite atrocious, Ffamran, you should have been there. I don't know what Aisling was thinking.'

The girl currently clamped to his side, holding his left arm hostage against any attempts to flee, prattled on cheerfully oblivious to his growing exasperation.

'I suppose that sort of attire is all well and good for women in Landis, they are all built like siege engines at any rate, but for Archades, well, she looked like a gigantic orange blimp. Truly I thought she should take off should a stiff breeze stir.'

At least he wasn't expected to actively participate in this conversation. He had given up trying to insert what he hoped were half-way polite grunts of interest at strategic intervals into her tirade, only to find that his silence simply encouraged her to talk all the more.

He really didn't understand the female of the species at all.

'So to cut a long story short,'

Her words registered in his mind and Ffamran's heart leapt in hope. Oh, yes, please.

'I found myself quite put out by it all. There I was trying to be civil and personable and welcome these newcomers into polite society as a good Archadian would, and do you know what? All they wanted to do was harp on about Landis this and Landis that.'

Ffamran squeezed his eyes closed briefly as a tension headache pinged into life behind his left eye.

It wasn't that Anna Zaagabaath was all that bad really. Certainly if taken from a purely aesthetic perspective she was quite attractive; a vivacious, loquacious, red head with a very nice figure.

He knew that the younger Judges of the Judiciary rather enjoyed it when Judge Magister Zaagabaath's daughter came to visit her father.

Had one of them been in the vicinity of the Grand Arcade right now he would gladly pay to have them take her off his hands.

'It's not that I don't sympathise with the Landissians, I'm sure I should not like to have my home invaded, but the simple fact is the war is over, almost five years hence, and they lost. They should move on with their lives and try to make the best of life in the Empire.'

Ffamran wondered vaguely how she could talk continuously without seeming to pause for breath. Perhaps she possessed gills like a fish, or a specialised respiratory system that stored air for longer than any normal Hume?

He also wondered why she insisted on talking to him; wouldn't she prefer an audience that was even marginally interested in what she had to say?

It had begun in his final year of Akademy, the year he turned fifteen and was thrust into the Judiciary, Anna Zaagabaath had much preferred to sit by him during seminars and once he became a Judge her visits to the Judiciary increased in both frequency and duration.

Sometimes she came solely to see him, neglecting to even inform her Magister father that she was in the building.

As far as he could recall he had done not one thing to warrant this special attention and would really rather be without it.

Ffamran had been told, by the few friends he had ever made in Akademy, that he could be decidedly anti-social at times.

Clearly, Ffamran thought ruefully, he had not been anti-social enough.

' Ffamran, are you feeling quite well?'

Anna had miraculously broken off her monologue regarding her inane views on how to better assimilate the disgruntled of Landis to peer up at him with concern in her prettily painted green eyes.

' Today I witnessed a man be tortured, it has given me something of a headache.'

Ffamran said, because, quite frankly, he had ceased to care. If he could sprout wings and fly away he would do so.

Anna frowned at him, 'Ffamran, please, I do hate it when you get into one of your moods.'

She told him fastidiously ignoring what he had just told her because it did not quite fit with the cosy world view of a privileged child of Empire.

Ffamran opened his mouth to say something, anything really, to forestall the torrent of her words that threatened to sweep him away in a flood of triviality but he was, alas, too damn slow.

The floodgates had opened once again.

'Father has told me that Lord Bunansa and his eminence Lord Vayne are getting along famously of late. Mother and I thought it would be quite lovely if you and your father could come to dinner with the family next week, do you suppose your father will be available?'

Ffamran had the highly irrational desire to laugh hysterically, instead he heard himself say in flat tones.

'My father has been working long hours at the laboratory lately and seldom comes home for dinner.'

He had also taken to talking almost exclusively to thin air all hours of the day and night and going everywhere armed with twin rifles. Ffamran found himself dealing with the uncomfortable mental image of Cid and his psychosis sitting around the dinner table with the Zaagabaath household.

'Well that is all the more reason for him to get out and spend some time with friends, isn't it?' Anna chirped, unperturbed.

'It is hardly good for a man to spend all his time alone with nothing but his work, now is it?'

Ffamran blinked, distantly in his minds inner eye, he could see his other self shake his head in disgust.

'No.' Ffamran agreed distantly, 'It hasn't done him much good of late.'

'And you too, Ffamran.' Anna said squeezing his left arm, still held in her vice like grip so tight he was losing feeling in his fingers from lack of blood flow.

'You are always so serious and quiet and dutiful, even in Akademy it was so.'

Anna sighed as she led him by his captive arm towards one of the benches lining the panorama overlooking the rest of the city below Central and in the distance the imposing tower of the Solidor palace.

'Now look at you, a Judge and you not yet seventeen, father says you could have a bright future in the Judiciary.'

Ffamran sat and gazed sightlessly out at the blue sky and the wispy white clouds that patterned that azure expanse, so very, very far away from where he sat.

Anna remained silent as they both watched a shadow pass overhead as a private light airship coasted down through the clouds towards the Aerodrome in Trant.

'I do know, Ffamran.' Anna's voice was uncharacteristically soft. She looked at him with oddly earnest eyes.

'My own father thinks I am just a silly, fluff headed girl, and perhaps I am. It is the expected manner for ladies of my station, but I am not blind. I know you had your heart set on studying aeronautics in Bhujerba. I know it was your father who forbade it.'

'A son's duty is to the will of his father.' Ffamran said even as the words choked him.

'But you are so unhappy.'

Anna told him, in case he had somehow failed to grasp his current emotional state of being in all the excitement of being forced to live a life he detested with every fibre of his being.

'And so?'

Ffamran felt his lip curl in a sneer that was more his reflection than himself, though daily the divide between them blurred.

'It is the way of the Archadian Gentry, the children are the tools of their fathers and their mothers and in turn they mould their own children to their whims.'

'Ffamran.'

Anna sounded scandalized, so much so that she let go of his left arm and shifted slightly away from him on the bench.

'It is all quite beautiful in its twisted intricacy. One generation of Archadians corrupt the next and so on until we reach the point where we must invade other countries to spread the misery around. Ah, yes, truly we are lucky, lucky people to have been born Archadian.'

Ffamran laughed harshly, his eyes hot but tearless. Ffamran, though he knew not why, had never shed a tear in all his life.

'Ffamran, I do not like it when you get like this. When you talk so, it scares me.'

Not really hearing Anna at all Ffamran turned to face her, but saw instead the vague outline of his own great escape.

He reached out and took both her hands in his, as they rested nervously plucking at the embroidered hem of her tunic, he squeezed those hands.

'I have decided to escape, Anna. I won't be party to this farce any longer. So you see you really shouldn't waste any more of your time on me. I won't be here much longer.'

'Ffamran, what do you mfffph!'

In all honesty Ffamran was as surprised as Anna when he caught the back of her carefully styled head and pulled her close to kiss her fully and entirely inappropriately on the lips.

He had never kissed a girl before. He had never had the desire to, probably due to that rather large anti-social streak.

Now however he found that perhaps he had been missing out on a readily available pleasure after all.

He was even more certain of the fact when Anna Zaagabaath decided to ignore any token resistance she might make in the name of propriety and parted her lips to allow him greater access, while clutching the high neck of his shirt collar in her fists.

Ffamran decided at that moment that wherever his life took him and whoever he was destined to become when he finally did away with Ffamran Mid Bunansa he would make a point of enjoying this particular social interaction as often as he could.