Amare Dividere
Title: Curious Strategems
Series: Vision of Escaflowne
Rating: PG-13 for some violence.
A/N: Again, thank you guys for being so patient. Life will always be life, I guess. You have your encouraging reviews, and a friend of mine named Morgan to thank for this chapter getting posted tonight. I have a rather full weekend ahead of me.
Sotet stands quietly as his mother packs the bag that is being sent with him. Back to Norte. Back to his father. For quite some time, his mother has been trying to pack the bag, but she keeps changing the contents, making him change clothes…
"Enough, mother." Sotet sets his face. "I can pack my own bag. I can make my own way. Since I was little you have cared for me, more than other Kathis mothers, watched out for me, more than other Kathis mothers, and prevented me from doing my duty to the Consortium. I am a nobleman's son, yes, but I am not made of glass. I am not as fragile as you make me out to be. I am your son, but I am also his. Am I such a disappointment to you that you refuse to let me do the work I inherited from you?"
"You have never been a disappointment to me," Mot says, lowering her hands weakly to her sides and sinking down on his bed. "I have been the proudest mother I could be, of you, given the circumstances. I was not allowed to be a true mother to you."
"No Kathis is allowed to be a normal mother," Sotet replies, turning to look out the window at the sky surrounding the Compound, his own dark eyes troubled. "I have known this and have not asked it of you that you be someone else's mother. What I am saying is that you seem not to have been mine."
Mot balls her fists as she hears these words, and sets her jaw. Sotet looks back over his shoulder at her, "Who, for instance, is my sibling? Or siblings? The Calipse twins? Or perhaps-"
A fist flies, stricking the tall young man across the jaw. Sotet's head snaps to the side and he blinks.
"Never, ever disrespect me," Mot says with narrowed eyes.
"Mother… mother why?"
"You said you wanted me to be as other Kathis mothers are to their children," Mot says, her anger causing her slender shoulders to shake with repressed rage. "Your sister learned the hard way not to vex me. You will learn the same."
Sotet offers no reply, and there is silence in the small private room the two of them share. He turns back to the window, and she turns to gaze at the fire. "Pack your bags and meet me in the main hall," Mot says, heading for the door after the silence has gone from pregnant to uncomfortable.
"Yes, mistress," Sotet says in a bitter voice. 'Now,' he thinks to himself. 'Now when I do not need it I get what I want. Now, when I do not want it.' The door closes behind his mother and he recalls the words of the only other Kathis he ever took advice from.
'Things rarely turn out how we want, when we want.'
With a snort, he begins packing.
In the morning, Van tries his best to avoid being woken by the light of the rising sun, and fails. Something that Hitomi does not fail. Chuckling to himself, he decides to let her sleep, gently stroking his hand on her swollen stomach thoughtfully.
The show for the advisors the previous day was one thing. The people will be less easily fooled. Glancing at Hitomi's face, he smiles. Unlike his own mother, he doubts that their first child will look too far from either of them. She shifts, turning her cheek towards him, and Van obliges the sleepy request by kissing her.
With a contented murmur, Hitomi settles against the bed, one arm bending to cover his that is around her.
Van glances out the window. Winter is sitting outside and staring at them. It is much later than normal. 'I should get up and go to see the Egzardians,' Van thinks to himself. He looks down at Hitomi and the hand that has threaded fingers through his own.
'She will be angry again,' he concludes. Kissing her cheek again, lingeringly, he nonetheless slips his hand from Hitomi's and gently pulls away from her to slip into the bathing room.
Thankfully, he breathes a sigh of relief, Hitomi turns on her back and sprawls across the bed. 'Apparently this is a part of pregnancy as well,' Van thinks with a chuckle. 'I wonder how late she will sleep if I let her.'
He heads into the bathing room and strips out of his clothes, pulling the chord to let the warm water into the tub and slipping into it with a sigh. The sword wounds from the wedding have healed, but still ache in the cold, as the ones from the last war, but only ever in the chill of winter. His body relaxes in a different way from the prior evening, but he forces himself not to linger in the balmy water.
He climbs out and dries off, heading quietly into the bedroom and changing into his own clothes before slipping out. Making his way to the outer room, Van finds Merle seated and waiting.
"Where's Hitomi?" Merle asks, leisurely eating a light breakfast of her own. There are two other plates set out.
"Hasn't she been eating in the dining room?"
Merle shakes her head. "It's hard to disguise that you have no appetite and you can't keep your food down if there's nobles expecting polite conversation, Lord Van." She offers him a piece of fruit.
"When will the Egzardians be eating?" Van asks, sitting down and taking the fruit from her to eat it. Surprisingly it is fresh, and moist. "And where did this come from?"
"The treaty with Asturia involves trade. I made certain to secure some of the things that will do Hitomi well during the duration of her pregnancy."
"I'm eating pregnant woman food?" Van asks, taking another bite of the fruit.
"I suppose," Merle grins. "We have to watch diet. I am a little disturbed that you are waiting so long to announce her pregnancy. I would like to get her into the care of a midwife."
"Is there no one you can trust not to talk about it?"
"Austa could probably give the proper care to her… now that you mention it."
Van eats the end of the fruit thoughtfully.
"I will have her brought to the castle again… this evening while everyone else is at supper I will fetch her myself. The Egzardians normally eat about mid-morning. It is a custom in their land that the time before the sun is fully risen is spent in fasting." Merle shrugs, her bright hair slipping over her shoulders.
"Is Hitomi keeping her food down now?" Van asks.
"For the most part."
"If she can this morning, I would like her to join me in eating with the Egzardians."
"They have been most kind to her."
Van arches a brow. "What do you mean, most kind?"
"I have a feeling that Queen Inah suspects she is pregnant. It is a good thing for you that there are not Fanelian noble women in the castle that have bourn children before. It is not easy to hide six cycles of a growing child from experienced eyes. And Hitomi will only get larger from this point onwards."
Van taps his lower lip. "So they know…"
"Most likely," Merle says.
"Where is Arik?" Van asks, glancing around the room. It felt strange, suddenly, not to have the woman who had been shadowing him for his weeks in Freid waiting for him in the morning.
"Grieving," Merle says in a soft, condescending voice.
Gaddes steps into Allen's room in the palace and whistles. The room is spacious, and on one of the upper floors of the palace. It has a view on three of the walls of the city and the harbor surrounding the palace. A far cry from the knights' quarters he had before, or even from the Senior Knight's and the Champion's rooms. "Woah. Nice."
"I would prefer not to be reminded of the surroundings," Allen says in an uncomfortable tone from his reclining position in the enormous bed. He has not realized the size change from his previous quarters. Celena makes it seem much more natural to have a room of this size than his childhood friend.
Regarding his friend's face, Gaddes sees what the rooms say to Allen. 'This is nobility to Allen,' Gaddes thinks. 'Even the highest honors he has achieved are not the same as those of the nobles. But these are obviously upper nobles quarters, if not royals' rooms.' He clears his throat, "She said she would take care of you. I just didn't know she meant something this… extravagant. Did she assign you servants?"
"Gaddes," Allen says warningly, turning to look the windows on the opposite side of the room.
"She did then." Gaddes smiles to himself, stepping over to draw the guaze curtains across the windows. "Did you decide how you would approach her about it?"
"We've had this discussion," Allen says, puzzled at his friend's behavior. "And I still have the same answer. She does not want to be approached."
"Then you're going about it the wrong way." The taller man stops his work, folds his arms on his chest and crosses to sit in Celena's vacant chair beside the bed. "Eries-"
"You will use her proper title," Allen snarls.
Gaddes lifts his hands. "The princess," he starts again, "isn't like the other women you've known." Allen looks at him pointedly. "Princess Eries is not even like her sisters," Gaddes says. "And you know that. You always have. It's why you didn't go after her when we were younger."
"I was confused," Allen says in a huffy voice. "And we were different, back then."
"Maybe you were." Gaddes chuckles. "Well at least now I know you're nearly well. For a while I thought you might actually be ill still. Now. Get your ass out of bed. You've got a meeting to get to."
"I do not."
"Why do you think I'm here? Celena is dressing the princess. She's deemed you well enough. I'm supposed to get you ready. We're reporting to the council today."
Allen starts to retort, but Gaddes lifts a hand.
"The princess wasn't informed of this, and we're officially not supposed to even see her until you're done with this. She won't even be at the meeting. Dryden called it."
"Refer to him with respect as well," Allen responds, throwing back the covers and making his way to his feet a little shakily.
"Why should I?" Gaddes asks, rising. "I never have before. Are your clothes in here?"
"In the wardrobe," Allen says, crossing to brush out his hair swiftly.
Jasper holds up his hands and Emman sets the young child on his feet. Shakily, the heir takes a step towards his father. On the side of the room, Nil watches with cautious brown eyes. Winter in Cesario means that the passes are frozen and the only attack can be from the air. The walking six month old will mean nothing but another body to chase around the castle.
But it is not nearly as much winter as she would like.
She turns her brown eyes out the window and glances at the melting snows. Other parts of Gaea will still be wrapped in snow and ice, she knows, but if someone had forces close enough…
"Nil."
Turning her head to look at Jasper, he points at the young child who has chosen to walk towards the stoic bodyguard instead of his father, and is holding onto her boot.
A small smile curves Nil's lips and she lowers herself to her free knee and brushes a hand against the heir's cheek. The young prince blinks eyes that look just like his mother's at her and gurgles a smile. Nil kisses his forehead and turns him around again to face Jasper, who is much closer to her than he was to Emman.
"Walk to your father, young heir," Nil says softly in his ear before patting the heir's rear and releasing him from her gloved hands. Perhaps another body around the castle, but a welcome one.
Emman watches the guardian with careful eyes.
Since Jasper was young, Nileyah has appeared to age little.
Since Jasper was young, Nileyah has grown little.
What sort of a creature had the Kathis sent to Cesario to be guardian of the prince? What sort of a woman aged that slowly and that well?
The Queen covers her mouth as she feels a cough coming on, and tilts her head towards the ceiling, eyes closing. 'If my time is up, only make them happy,' she prays fervently. 'See my son well on his throne… see my grandson grow up… and wipe the sorrow from her eyes.'
Eries searches the castle in frustration, but can find neither Dryden nor Allen. Hours later, after lunch and near dinnertime, once she has gone to the last place she can think to look when she comes across the guarded council meeting room. As she starts to enter, the guards cross their axes before her.
"We have orders from the king to let no one enter these rooms."
"I do not care to understand that. You will let me pass or I will have your posts," Eries says, all her royal might wrapped securely around her shoulders like a piece of fabric.
The guards do not move.
Eries narrows her blue eyes at them.
There is a silent battle of wills then, and both guards turn their faces front. Eries reaches a hand towards the door knob, and the guard on the left side of the door swings his axe towards her in a swift, warning gesture, thinking that she will move out of the way in time. He does not count on the royal arrogance. He does not know the royal family well, having been hired since the queen's abduction.
It is not until she collapses that he realizes what harm he has done. And then he sinks to his knees beside her, numb as his partner shouts for help. His hands fumble to reach for her wound, but he is shouldered aside by his partner, a much more veteran guard, but who was not given command of the door for reasons of practice.
Van heads into the dining hall and is unsurprised to find the nobles and the royals from Egzardia standing next to their chairs. Hitomi had risen shortly before, and upon trying the fruit laid out in the antechamber of the royal rooms, she had deemed herself fit enough to take breakfast in public that morning.
So Van had helped her into the tub and watched over her as she bathed, and then his careful eyes watched as Merle and the knowledgeable lady-in-waiting had dressed her meticulously in a gown that hid the curve of her stomach.
"Do I pass inspection?" Hitomi had asked, turning in the gown for him.
"Always," Van replied, reaching a hand out to brush her cheek. "But we mustn't be late to breakfast or people will start talking."
"They are already talking," Hitomi said. "I have not been to breakfast in months. I have been praying in the chapel instead." Blinking, Van left it at that and tucked her arm through his to head to breakfast.
Glancing around at the curious faces, he sees why she did not go to breakfast. Hitomi's face, however, never falters from the smile she puts on her lips as she greets all the gathered men and women personally. How she had time to learn all their names…
It had felt long enough to his heart… but had seemed only weeks.
Arriving at the head of the table, Van pulls her chair out and she gracefully takes a seat, adjusting the fall of her gown and sitting, he notices, with a slight curve of her back.
'Clever,' he thinks to himself as he takes his own seat. With him the rest of the assembly sits.
It is not, Van remembers afterwards, customary for anyone to sit before the king, but he does not care to make a point of that with his wife pregnant. Even if the others do not know. He turns a doting smile on her and signals that the meal serving may begin.
From inside the council chambers, the noise of the guards and servants running in the halls is muted, but still present in the ears of those gathered. Allen stops mid-sentence in answering the latest of the barrage of questions the king has come up with to seal his fate as a traitor to Asturia.
"What is that commotion?" Allen asks, ears pricking as he turns towards the doors.
"We are not finished with this inquiry," the Minister of Justice says, thumping a thick hand on the wooden table before him. The flames of the candles jump at the motion.
The words finally filter in. The bellowing voice of the guards shouting, "Bring help, the princess has fallen!"
The advisors' eyes go wide, even the Minister of Justice's, and Allen's face pales, and then darkens in rage. Short months earlier, the vision presented to his ears would have completely arrested any other action. But after rousing the princess from a similar state, he is no longer paralyzed by it. He gets swiftly from his chair, "For this you had to seal the room! With new guards at the door!" He spits on the floor and turns. Gaddes, who was posted on the inside of the door, yanks them open for him.
The sight that greets the two knights' eyes is a tragically beautiful one.
Eries's body is on the floor, fallen backwards in the dress she had put on bright in the early morning, her hair fallen in a large pool around her head, staining red and darkening with blood from the axe wound.
Gaddes turns immediately and runs for the doctor, his boot falls loud in the near-silent hall. "Which one of you did this?" Allen asks in a tight-lipped voice. The doorway behind the two of them fills with the advisors, and the king.
The standing, shaky guard is unable to speak any more, and points to the guard kneeling next to her. At some point since the accident, in the precious seconds in which the doctor did not arrive, the two switched places. The experienced guard had no wish to have his bloody hands on the royal person in the event of the Senior Knight's entrance. The guards, by this time, realize there is little he will not do for the middle princess. They witnessed her fury at his wounded return, and saw his narrow eyed glances at the newest of them when they were presented to him by the Captain of the Royal Guard.
There is the sound of a loud slap and the kneeling guard falls to the side. Allen moves quickly, taking up a similar position beside her, covering the deepest part of the wound with his gloved hands, eyes trained on her pale face, disregarding the red staining his white gloves. "Please… princess…" he says in a quiet voice that he desperately hopes she can hear while his hands try to stop the flow of blood from her veins. He does not care if the advisors, or even the king hear his pleading. He is aware of the severity of the situation and hopes only that she lives. "Please… do not go."
Dryden struggles through the advisors, unable to speak as he beholds the sight of his sister-in-law fallen. Gaddes returns, the doctor running at his heels, his assistant behind him. "Is she…?" the king manages to find his voice finally.
Gaddes ushers the advisors back into the room with a forceful hand of encouragement, unable to turn his eyes onto the princess again.
Allen turns his eyes to Dryden as the doors shut behind him, and they are fire in watery blue orbs that glare him down. "Not yet. And if she becomes that way because of this I will be done with you."
Gaddes frowns tightly as he turns, looking at the fallen woman. His heart cracks as he sees the doctor looking over what he can see of her wound, peeling back Allen's hands.
Dryden takes a step back from Allen's look.
The doctor frets, looking at the gash and the spilled blood, and finally orders bandages and a hot blade. Allen lifts his eyes and glares at the doctor. "That will leave a scar," he hisses. 'Vanity,' he thinks, 'is not obvious in Eries… but this will damage her more than I ever have.'
"That will also stop the flow of blood!" the doctor worries his bottom lip. "I do not know if sewing it shut will do much good in this case."
"It is across the vein," Allen says in an angry whisper, as though afraid she will hear. "It needs to be sewn shut."
"Bring hot water. A basin. Towels," the doctor shouts at the guards who move quickly on their way. His assistant kneels and opens the bag with his tools in it, and quickly threads a needle.
Sotet makes his way down the stairs towards the main hall, the thick traveling saddlebags his mother gave him for his last journey slung over one shoulder, sleeping roll under his opposite arm. In the hall he sees several people waiting, where he had only expected one.
Mot, with her back to him, stands nearest the stairs, facing the fire, as she had in his room. Next is Jujiin, holding a thick cloak, and beyond the Master of Etiquitte stands someone he never expected to see at his departure.
Selassie, quiet and pale, blue eyes serious and as far off as ever. It takes a moment of descending the staircase to realize that she has become the Mistress of Strategy since his last true conversation with her. Bitterly, as he approaches his mother, he is reminded that he has had little interaction with the other members of the Consortium who were not teachers.
As he reaches the landing, his mother turns, steps forward, and embraces him. "Be strong," she says, an emotion thick in her eyes that does not come out in her voice.
He cannot begrudge her a mother's care, at least. She is the only mother he has ever known, after all. He nods, and leans down to kiss her cheek before stepping up to Jujiin. The tall, silver man throws the thick cloak around his shoulders and affixes it around his neck. "It is winter in parts of Gaea," he says, turning to escort Mot upstairs, leaving Sotet and Selassie alone.
"I never congratulated you," Sotet offers the pale young woman.
Her blue eyes are called back to the present and she focuses them on him. In an instant there are a hundred things he realizes he should like to say to her, things he never quite realized before. He opens his mouth, and she smiles. He remains silent.
"Walk a little with me, outside," Selassie says.
He only then notices that she is dressed for the stormy weather that perpetuates outside of the Compound, and he sets his things down and nods, hunching the cloak tighter around himself.
It is not until they are near the outer wall that Selassie speaks again, and it is silent until she does for he can come up with nothing to say to her himself. He feels gangly and awkward next to her.
"I often wonder if remaining behind is a blessing or a curse," Selassie says. "But I have always held more strength in my mind than in my body. My mother told me, when I saw her last, that she was proud of that, and glad that I should not venture out, as she does, into heartbreak and peril."
"The whole world cannot be heartbreak and peril," Sotet replies. "Our mothers are special women, and so special circumstances affect them. Your life has not been so?"
"I have never seen a blue sky," Selassie says to him. "But I am made aware that Norte has none anymore, either. The way that Zaibach did not when you and I were children."
Sotet blinks, unsure of what she means by that.
"Your father's kingdom holds danger for you, and I came to see you off to offer you an alternative to the peril you will undoubtedly face there. Neither you nor I are the fighters of our cousins and siblings here."
He scowls.
"I mean it in a helpful manner, and not the disrespect you take it as," she adds. "But time is short, so you will have to return to hear my true apology. When you are in the wide world, when you are walking across the green fields of Gaea, keep an ear out and keep watch for Arik Dulchap. She holds the ways of the Consortium in more trust than some of us who have not been made exile, and she will be a good ally to you in retrieving the kidnapped Queen, if you let her."
"Why tell me all this?" Sotet asks, suspicious.
"I am the Mistress of Strategy, but battles are not all there is to life," Selassie says with a faint blush to her cheeks. "Growing up I have found myself quite deficient in planning other parts of life, and if you die, I probably won't get the chance."
Sotet has no real response for that, other than another articulate blink. Her cheeks color more darkly and she bows her head.
"Safe journey to you, Sotet. May the many gods guide you home safely." And with that, she turns and heads back up the hill towards the nearest entrance to the Compound's buildings, leaving Sotet to contemplate her words, or to move more quickly about his own way.
"She is pale," Celena says in a worried tone as she glances down at Eries's prone body lying in the bed. There is a thick layer of bandages around her neck, several pads of gauze secured beneath it extending down her breast on the curving stroke of where the axe fell.
After the doctor sewed her wound shut with surprisingly deft, but trembling fingers, Celena had arrived and marshaled the other ladies in waiting to carry her up to her room under Allen's watchful eyes. The utmost care was taken in changing her into a dressing gown and getting her into bed before Allen was allowed to quit his pacing in the hall and enter her bed chamber.
"She will be fine," Allen replies stubbornly. He trails his fingers anxiously on the bedpost as he passes it, pacing, eyes never leaving her pale, resting face. It has been a while since he has seen it without the customary veil affixed over her nose and hiding her features from clear view… in fact he cannot remember ever not seeing her in the veil. He finds it easy enough to ignore the ladies in waiting that hover at the edge of the room, just out of eyesight.
"She wears the veil because of some commitment that keeps her from being free," Celena says, lowering her voice to a bare whisper and watching her brother's face as he stares at the Princess's.
"I didn't know that," Allen says, taking a seat on the side of the bed and reaching out a hand to gently brush Eries' hair from her cheek.
"Was the wound very bad?" Celena asks, feeling a little out of place seeing her brother touch Eries in that manner, but unable to leave because she is the appointed chaperone. And because she knows that gossip will start if she removes herself in such a circumstance. The ladies in waiting are not out of her eyesight. She wrings her hands behind her back, a cloth clenched in them, and stands a few feet from the bed, almost afraid to approach for fear of Allen's reaction to it.
"There is a vein under the skin where she was struck," Allen says, eyes trained on her fallen form. "It was severed. We must watch the bandage," he runs ghosting fingertips along the edge of the wrappings. "If they turn red then the wound must be burned closed. The stitches will only be enough if she does not move much to break them."
The other, dutiful ladies in waiting nod behind his back, but Celena knows it will be the two of them who care for her the most while she is recovering.
"Burned?" Celena shivers at the thought, her own memories swimming into her vision. Thankfully the princess's room is much brighter than those she had in Zaibach, or the cockpit of her guymelef. Thankfully she is wearing a dress and not carrying a sword…
"With a…"
"… red hot knife," Celena says, drawing her gown's sleeve up to show a burnt mark on her forearm. Thankfully, she is not Dilandu. "You gave me that yourself," she says in a soft voice that cannot reach the ladies in waiting standing in now nervous poses against the wall opposite them.
"I did not know it was you at the time," Allen says in a weary voice, his posture relaxing slightly as he lowers his head into his hands, propping his elbows up on the bed.
"I know." Watching his face, Celena deems it safe enough to approach. She draws a chair over and sits on the other side of him stoically. "You should rest. I will watch her first."
"I cannot sleep," Allen says. "I will not be able to. The image of her hair… drenched in blood…" he shakes his head.
Celena leans over to put a hand on his shoulder. "Brother… try to forget. She will need you to be strong. You cannot be strong if you are not rested. You were injured recently as well."
Allen rises, slowly, not quite daring to touch Eries's cheek, and steps back from the bed and towards the door. He turns his eyes, at last, to the other ladies in waiting, and his blue eyes harden in the lamp light in Eries' bed chamber. "You watch her… I have things to attend to."
"Brother…"
He does not reply, turning and walking out of the door, pausing only to close it quietly behind him.