This took a while to post because I just didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do with Ramza and Delita next. I'm sick of being depressing, but at this stage of the tale I've been struggling to work out how to do anything else. I'm not sure that this one is my finest piece, but I hope it doesn't disappoint completely:

Vignette 20 - Means and Ends

15 miles North of Gariland, Two Trees Tavern, evening

They'd made only the briefest stop in Gariland, that afternoon, to pick up a few fresh provisions, the sort they had run out of because they wouldn't keep for more than a couple of days. More than one face had been turned with troubled eyes in the direction of the Akademy as they had passed the end of the street that contained its main gates. Ramza hadn't tried to deceive the girls about the fact that they might very well be considered to be disobeying orders if they came along with him and Delita, but that couldn't stop them worrying. Ramza had noted it but hadn't said anything.

That evening, they had found themselves lodgings in a roadside tavern about fifteen miles north of Gariland. It wasn't an inn exactly, actually the most accurate term was probably "hedge tavern", but it had a dormitory in the loft and since it was bucketing down outside they were very grateful to have even that draughty roof over their heads. They were the only guests for the night too, so for all the dormitory could hold at least a dozen people they didn't have to share.

The two boys had claimed the beds nearest the rickety stairs while the four girls claimed those at the other end of the room. Most of their things were piled haphazardly on the six unused beds between them, and there was a moth-eaten curtain hanging in the middle of the room which allowed the girls to shut off their end of the room from the boys, so that they could all change out of their damp clothes in a modicum of privacy.

Ramza sat himself on the end of Delita's bed as he pulled his boots back on after changing.

"Did you see Ophellia's and Sam's faces as we passed the school today?" He asked very quietly.

"Yes. We should probably tell all four of them that we won't blame them if they want to leave and head back to school. I think it was probably wrong of us to even ask them to come." Delita said in a similar undertone. Though Delita had continued to display signs of worry that day, he had been significantly less preoccupied than he had been for the last couple of days. The bout of tears the evening before seemed to have helped clear his mind.

"You're right, of course, but if they go, it may make it a lot more difficult for us to successfully get Tietra out." Ramza said, consciously playing devil's advocate. He watched Delita chew on his lip for a few seconds.

"It's not as if any of them even know Tietra that well. I still think we should tell them to leave if they want to. We shouldn't encourage them to go, though." Delita said. "I'll speak to them over supper; she's my sister."

In the end, the girls had all agreed to stay, but Ramza wondered if, on reflection, he should have been the one to speak to the girls - Delita had not done it in quite the same way Ramza would have wished him to. Delita had told the girls how grateful he was that they had all chosen to come with them and how marvellous it was to have such loyal, supportive friends. He'd let that sink in for a few seconds and then said that, however, he and Ramza had come to realise that they might not have been completely fair in asking the girls to come with them and he assured them that if they felt like they wanted to leave, they could head straight back to the Akademy in the morning and neither of the boys would blame them for doing so.

Ramza thought about the way Delita had done it. It had been a well-thought-out little speech but had he been one of the girls, after being thanked for coming with them and being told what a wonderful person he was for being so loyal, he would have found it hard to then say to Delita, knowing he was grief-stricken over his kidnapped sister, that he was going to walk away from this. Yet Delita had said all the things that needed to be said to the girls, so why did Ramza feel like Delita had subtly manipulated the situation to guarantee that the girls would make the "right" choice?

He had to be wrong, at least about his suspicions that Delita had deliberately done it this way. Delita had been the one who had said it was wrong to have even asked them to come, after all... Not everyone was the subtle politician that Dycedarg was - Delita had probably just said what he felt was needful without thinking exactly how it would sound, put that way.

Delita hadn't failed to notice the troubled covert glances that Ramza kept throwing his way before their food had arrived – they really weren't helping him shrug off the insidious sense of guilt he was feeling. He knew he had been a manipulative bastard but, with Tietra's safety on the line, he was trying very hard not to care too much about that. In the short time between talking to Ramza and them all settling themselves in the tap-room for supper, he'd decided that, wrong or not, he was going to say what Ramza expected of him, but not in the way he'd originally meant to.

Perhaps he should... but no, if Ramza had been the one to speak to the girls he'd have done no better at sticking to what they'd agreed! Only, in that case, the chivalrous idiot would likely have practically begged the girls to leave for their own best interests. Whether he felt guilty or not, getting Tietra back was more important than chivalry or even honour! Surely the ends justified the means, in this case.

As they ate and the others threw off the solemnity that his speech had created, he tried to do the same. He looked around the tap-room, empty of all but them – even though it was less than a mile from the last village they had passed, this must not be a popular place with the locals. Either that or no-one had wanted to brave the torrential rain to come for a drink this evening. Even the landlord was currently absent. It was certainly a dingy little dive of a place. Then he caught sight of the grubby-looking dark-haired toddler who was standing in the doorway regarding them, sucking on his forefinger. He gasped aloud, which made Ramza turn towards him, a questioning look on his face. Delita nodded towards the child in the doorway.

"Sorry I got a shock - it's just he's the spitting-image of Drysta." He said.

"Your baby brother?" Ramza asked. Delita nodded.

"I didn't know you had a brother." Hildy, who was sitting opposite Delita, said, frowning.

"He died at the same time as my parents, when he wasn't much older than that." Delita said, nodding towards the child again – the boy was probably two-years-old. As six pairs of eyes turned towards him, the little boy gave them an alarmed look, then tried to hide under one of the other tables. As he did so, he bumped his head against one of the chair-legs. As the wailing began, it was Delita who jumped up and, crouching down in front of the little boy, tried to calm him, while checking him for any injury.

He spoke gently to the boy for a few moments and, as soon as he was sure that the little one's shyness was forgotten, he picked him up and carried him over to the table.

"Can't just let him wander about when there's an open hearth he could fall into." He said as he settled the little lad on his lap, in response to several questioning looks that were being directed at him. "What?" He asked as he saw that this wasn't going to satisfy several of the girls.

"We're just surprised, I suppose, at how you are with the little boy." Juliana, sitting to his left, said.

It wasn't too often that he still felt that there was a chasm between his own and his high-born friends' experiences. After all, half of his life had now been spent living amongst people of their class and he quite enjoyed the fact that he could pass for either high- or low-born, depending on which was more advantageous at the time. But there were some things that would occasionally set him apart from the others, and apparently his reaction to small children was one of them.

Since the boy's parents weren't around, he'd naturally just gone to deal with the child when he had hurt himself. It simply would never have occurred to him that the others might not have done the same – or even not have known what to do. Yet, if you were brought up by a gaggle of nursery maids and governesses, even if you did have younger siblings, it probably wasn't necessary to automatically go and deal with them when they hurt themselves; there would always be a servant to do it instead.

He gave Juliana a rueful smile and a shrug.

"When your parents are farmers, they're almost always incredibly busy, so except when we were at school in the mornings, Tietra and I were almost always given the job of keeping an eye on Drysta, once he could walk, whether we were doing our chores or going out to play." He gave a wistful, reminiscent smile. "Even if we tried to leave him behind at home, he'd just give me mam the slip and toddle after us, so we quickly got used to having him along. So it just seems natural to see to this little one, since his mam and dad aren't about."

"Taters." The little boys suddenly said, pointing at the plate in front of him. Delita's attention went back to the boy.

"Do you like taters?" He asked. The boy nodded then reached out to take a roast potato.

"Looks like I'm sharing my supper, then." Delita said with amused resignation.

Ramza watched his friend, who was now having a quiet "chat" with the little boy, even though he was only getting the occasional guttural monosyllabic response. As he talked on, Delita happily ate from the same plate as the grubby urchin.

Of course, it was no surprise to him that Delita was good with children, though all four girls seemed unsure what to make of it. To Ramza's vague shame, Delita and Tietra were always a lot better at anything practical than he or Alma. Whenever the four of them spent some days visiting his grandparents, the two Heirals would simply pitch in and help with the farm work and the care of his youngest cousins, while Alma and Ramza would have to be told and shown what they could do to help and, even once they began, they still weren't usually much good at it.

By the end of the meal, neither the landlord nor his wife, who presumably were the child's parents, had shown up and the little one was beginning to show signs of restlessness. Delita excused himself from the table and, carrying the little boy who still had a piece of potato clutched in one fist, went in search of someone to take the child off his hands. Given that it was late in the evening and that there was no-one searching for him, Delita assumed that the boy's parents thought him asleep in bed.

He discovered the kitchen and stuck his head around the door, spotting a pretty, though careworn woman, perhaps four or five years his senior scrubbing pots at the large sink in one corner. The disappearance of the landlord was also explained as he heard a loud snore to his right and turned to see the large man in a chair in front of the fire, sitting with his head flung back and his mouth wide open.

Delita walked into the kitchen, careful to be quiet so as not to disturb the sleeping man. He might as well not have bothered with his care, as the little boy called "Mamamam!" as soon as he saw the young woman. Surprisingly, the tavern keeper didn't awaken. The young woman turned sharply, revealing a heavily pregnant belly and gasped when she saw the tall knight-apprentice carrying her little son.

"Oh, sir! Has Bran been bothering you? I'm so sorry, I put him to bed an hour ago, I thought he'd gone straight to sleep."

"Please don't worry, mistress, he was no bother, he just kept us company for a few minutes, but then I thought I'd better come and find you and let you know he was out of bed." He carefully set the little one on his feet and the toddler headed straight for his mother, who immediately told him to stay quiet and not to wake his daddy, glancing apprehensively over at the man. Delita regarded the little boy for a moment, struck again with his resemblance to Drysta.

"May I ask, mistress, neither you or your husband are related to a family called Heiral – small-holders from Western Gallionne – are you?" The woman looked mystified at the question.

"No sir, Jaks and me both come from families that were serfs until twenty years ago. No-one from our families would ever have travelled more than a dozen miles from our village just over yonder."

"Ah well, not to worry, the little boy just reminded me of someone." He made as if to go, then halted, struck by how tired this heavily pregnant woman seemed, yet how reluctant she was to have her husband awoken.

"I'm sorry to be impertinent, mistress, but you look absolutely exhausted. Tell me where the little one sleeps and I'll put him back to bed for you. He seems to have taken to me and it would save you a job."

"Oh, I couldn't possibly ask you to do that, sir." She said, her eyes wide and an embarrassed look on her face.

He thought about insisting that she hadn't asked, he had volunteered, but the poor woman looked so flustered that he simply thanked her for a well-cooked supper and left the kitchen.

Perhaps he'd been wrong about the little boy's striking resemblance to Drysta. He'd been thinking a lot more than normal about his brother and parents since he had found out that Tietra had been taken and perhaps that had simply led him to fancy a resemblance where there wasn't one. His thoughts moved on from the boy to his poor tired mother.

As the recollection of the woman's fleeting expression of apprehension as she had thought the little boy might wake her husband passed through his mind, Delita made a decision. Once they had Tietra back, safe and sound, he'd help Alma with her little scheme about Tietra and Ramza. Not for the material gain but because he knew for certain that Ramza Beoulve would never give any woman cause for a moment of that sort of concern. He knew with a cast-iron surety that his sister would always be given all the respect and care in the world, if she married Ramza, and, above all, that was what he wanted for her.

Author's Note

If anything, I've made Alma more manipulative than Delita, up until now, and I never wanted that to be the case. Alma though, so far, only manipulates others for what she sees as their own good, Delita, on the other hand, I wanted to show doing some subtle manipulation to get what he needs from a situation. Certainly, he's doing it to help his sister, but what he wants from the four girls definitely isn't in their best interests. The means being justified by the ends, though, that's definitely Delita's personal mantra from here on out!