Author's Note: As was requested in the reviews for the last update, a few explanations: to "give quarter" means to permit escape, usually in exchange for monetary goods. Therefore, when Lelouch tells Clovis that he will give quarter, he is saying basically, "Give me what I want and I won't hurt you." As for chablis, it's a type of French wine.

This update, we finally see the castle (or part of it, anyway) and even more familiar faces. Don't flay me for this one!

And of course, as always, my eternal gratitude to my readers and reviewers! I do honestly read and consider every one of them, so please don't be afraid to speak up!

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Go No More A-roving: Let Your Hearts Never Fail

It was a testament to the rough seas that Suzaku was bent over the rail at the head, guts spewing. He hadn't gotten sick like this since his first days as ship's boy at the tender age of ten. Then again, he reminded himself distantly, he hadn't had such a shock to the system in the middle of a raging storm before. He flopped back to the deck with a groan and wiped the spittle from his mouth on the back of his hand. Above him, the sky cracked with lightning as the ship was tossed on the sea below him. Rain fell into his eyes and he shaded his face woozily.

"Captain Gottwalt didn't tell me you had no head for foul seas," Captain Asplund said peevishly, standing over Suzaku's head. Suzaku moaned, rolling to the side to retch on the man's boots. Asplund's expression of irritation was tempered with concern as he reached to smooth Suzaku's hair from his forehead. "Go on, then," he told the sailor. "Best you get down below before you're blown off the deck."

Suzaku crawled to his knees and winced, smiling gratefully at the man as he staggered back to his hammock. The ship rocked queasily and he shivered, curling onto his side.

Lelouch was a prince. Lelouch was a prince. Lelouch was a prince. No matter how he said it, he couldn't draw any meaning from the words; it was as if they were disjointed sounds strung together for the sake of stringing them together. Chair orange level, he pondered. Nonsense.

And yet here they were, racing through the storm on their way to Pendragon to register their claim with the Emperor. Lelouch's father, the father the boy had been so reluctant to talk about--though, reluctant to talk about his own, Suzaku had never pressed--the father that ruled Britannia, not to mention almost half the known world. The doting father, offering more than two thousand pounds' reward for the retrieval of his son, lost all these years and desperately missed.

And yet. And yet he hadn't been the one to bring Lelouch in from the cold, to watch the blush of warmth creep back into limbs pale with cold, to see the quiet, serious boy learn to lean back and watch the clouds as they drifted by in the endless, boundless freedom of the blue sky stretching horizon to horizon with nothing but wispy scraps of white to hold it up. And part of him couldn't help but wonder: if Lelouch had known there was a home to go back to, why would he freeze on the streets?

Suzaku's stomach clenched and he pressed a fist into it, curling around himself. Nausea bubbled up as he considered for the hundredth time the way things had ended between them. His sigh was shaky as he settled against the canvas; there was no sense dwelling on the things he couldn't change now. He closed his eyes tightly, lashes damp and spiky against his cheek, and willed himself to uneasy sleep.

When he woke, the ship's violent rocking had calmed into a gentle swaying. All around him, he could hear the sounds of bone-tired men shuffling back into their beds after a long night at their captain's unreasonable hands. He still felt a bit weak as he hefted himself from the hammock's comforting hold, his joints wobbling to connect with the firm floor. Pinching his shirt in disgust, he shucked it and rifled through his sea bag for a clean one, throwing on his jacket and nosing the collar. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine the boy's scent on it, though he knew that's all it was: imagination. Unable to stop himself, he held the fabric to his face, imagining he could catch, under the salt ocean smell, the faintest hint of tea. Something sharp--citrus--like oranges or lemons or bergamot, his memory prompted, offering with it the almost tangible memory of tasting sweaty skin beneath his lips as a thin, pliant body arched against him. Lelouch.

--Prince Lelouch, his memory traitorously whispered. Prince Lelouch, kidnapped by pirates to be offered as bounty to his father, the Emperor. Suzaku twitched, suddenly nauseous again. It wouldn't have happened, he thought irrationally, if he'd been there to protect him. If he hadn't forced the boy--the bleeding prince! His mind still couldn't parse it--into a corner, if he'd said something to Gottwalt, if he'd just done something so the boy wasn't all alone on a pirate's ship only god knew where, he'd…. Well, at least he would know where Lelouch was right then, instead of worrying.

Shaking his head to clear it, he bounded up the stairs to the deck, taking in the sight of the expedition crew preparing the winch to lower their smaller boat into the water. Captain Asplund was digging through a pack enthusiastically, tossing strange sundries around as he searched. "Aha!" he cried, holding up the strangest looking sextant Suzaku had ever seen, admiring its gleam in the sunlight. Turning to lift an eyebrow at the bustling docks that were clearly visible from the deck, Suzaku figured that if the captain thought they'd lost their way--

"I was wondering when you'd finally get up here," Asplund said cheerfully, tweaking the knobs on the instrument toward some imaginary horizon that didn't even remotely resemble the one before them--in fact, it looked as if it was aimed at the china shop at the end of the pier. Suzaku blinked. The captain continued blithely, peering at the instrument to take some obscure measurement unreadable by any sane man. "I thought we'd have to leave you behind."

"Leave me behind?" Suzaku repeated, confused.

Asplund lowered the sextant and looked at him expectantly. "I'd rather assumed you'd want to go, since you're so vested in the task at hand and all. Was I wrong?"

Suzaku shook his head. "No, sir. I just…where? What are we doing?"

Sighing, Asplund folded the sextant under his arm in exasperation. "We're going to Pendragon Castle, of course, to speak with the Emperor and register our seach. That way, if you find him, I'll get the credit for it!" At Suzaku's poleaxed expression, Asplund huffed. "I'd bet you don't even have your things ready to go, do you?"

Suzaku shook his head mutely.

"Go on, then," the captain shooed, waving him back below deck. "Go get it. We're leaving as soon as I can get this boat into the water!"

The tiny boat rocked and swayed they approached the city. Suzaku watched the dock approach, then stared after it as they passed. He turned to ask the captain where they were going, but stopped mutely, taken aback by Asplund's suddenly sober countenance. The nose of their craft nudged its way toward a guarded steel grate that covered what looked to be a sewer exit. The guards nodded graciously to Captain Asplund, who nodded back. They grunted as they lifted the grate, and the boat slipped into midnight black.

Suzaku was surprised to hear a current, though the boat felt perfectly still. He dipped his fingers into the water beside the craft and was further shocked at how it eddied and pulled around his fingers. The sailors drew in their oars to keep from losing them in the stream.

"We won't be able to get back out this way," Suzaku realized.

Asplund shook his head. "They don't want to see ships loitering about the gate. There's an exit on the other side of the castle, though we'll probably leave another way. Our boat will be returned to us," he said. He pointed to the yellow flickering of reflected light ahead. "Don't say anything when we get there. I'll speak for you."

Nodding, Suzaku leaned forward as they drew closer to the light. Finally, they were drawn from the end of the tunnel into a small stone room. A wooden pier and a solitary door at the top of a short flight of stairs waited for them, as did a man wearing the livery of the House of Britannia. The man bowed to them as the sailors tied the boat to the pier and helped the captain out, moving to stand behind him in a flank.

"I have an appointment with His Majesty," Captain Asplund said crisply, and the man nodded, bowing. Suzaku trailed behind as the man led them up the stairs and through the door, and he gasped when he stepped through.

Every inch of the antechamber was decorated, but in a way that suggested an ancient wealth. Polished glass mirrors hung from the walls and gleaming wall sconces held perfectly white beeswax candles. Even the floor's quartz floor tiles held a subtle tracery of gold. The servant led them obliquely, as if the extravagance was perfectly commonplace. To him, it probably was.

Outside the chamber, they trailed through a hallway lined with wide windows and velvet curtains. A painting on the wall bore the uninterested features of the Crown Prince Schneizel, set next to inherit the throne after his brother Odysseus's horse riding accident. There had been nasty rumors about that one, made all the worse by the memory of distant political intrigues supposedly perpetuated by the blond prince. Suzaku had never really had a head for royal gossip before, and he flushed to realize how little he actually knew about the family he served. He was wondering if there was a painting of Lelouch around when he was distracted by loud voices in one of the side rooms.

"I swear to you, I saw him! I saw Lelouch!" a man cried, and Suzaku froze. Glancing at the others, he reckoned the hall was long enough that he wouldn't lose sight of them. He listened.

"Clovis, I do believe you were accosted by pirates. Pirates with an uncanny knowledge of your love for fine alcohols, may be, but the fact that the pirates knew to ask for booze hidden on your ship doesn't mean that the pirate was our brother," a woman replied in an exasperated tone.

"But Cornelia--"

"No, Clovis," the woman said wearily. It sounded like a conversation that had been repeated, word for word, several times before. She was getting tired of it, apparently. "I will not lend you my fleet to go jaunting through the East Indies to find our brother, who might not even be there."

"You know as well as I do that Gottwalt said he'd been taken by pirates!" Clovis retorted.

"I know that Gottwalt thought he'd found him, and I know that Gottwalt's actions got that poor boy taken by pirates, but no one but you actually thinks it was Lelouch," Cornelia told him. Gently, she continued, "I know you want it to be him--"

"I don't know why you don't want it to be him," Clovis cut in stubbornly.

Cornelia sighed. "Because if it is him, why couldn't we find him? If he were still alive at all--"

"Don't say that!" Clovis's voice held a note of hysteria.

"If he were still alive at all," Cornelia repeated carefully, "he would have found his way home by now. Why haven't we found him, when there are hundreds of people all over the empire claiming every day that they've seen him?"

"Maybe he doesn't want to be found?" Clovis suggested desperately.

"Listening at doors is a bad habit," a soft voice whispered by Suzaku's ear. He jumped, turning to face a young noble girl. Her lovely pink hair was bound loosely behind her, and her expression was warm. "They're talking about whether or not my brother is alive," she said, cocking her head to the side to regard him.

"I-I know," Suzaku said, dropping into an automatic kneel. "Your Highness--" he started.

"Euphie," she corrected gently. He stared at her, bewildered as she smiled at him. "I think you know him," she said at length. "My brother. Lelouch."

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Chapter Notes: This chapter's title comes from the song (The Bonnie Ship) The Diamond, another rollicking fun song about sailors on a whaling vessel leaving. My favorite part is the last verse, where they basically claim that when they get back to town they intend to knock up every single girl in town, haha.