Chapter Thirty-Seven: Balthier's ascendance; the patience to fly; the will to live
A/N: A quick thank you to everyone who has been reading and reviewing….I have hopefully managed to respond to each of you individually but collectively I would like to thank you all for the truly lovely, hugely flattering, reviews you have given me. ;)
Anyway…….here we go: The pirate apprenticeship of Balthier in a nutshell….and the introduction of Fran!
In the beginning he was treated appallingly. The rats in the Syren's bilge had better living quarters and diet than he did.
Yet for all that Balthier did not care. It was strange, considering the lap of luxury he had been raised in, that he had adapted to living hand by mouth so readily. Luxury and plenty was a state of mind he had discovered….and in Balthier's mind he was a king of the skies already.
Though admittedly he was a king in a very low state of being; freedom being little more than a mindset for Balthier in the first months of his indentured servitude with Remus.
The day he was forced into the hot, metallic reeking, oil slicked mess of the Antarii's (Remus' flag ship) engine room and told to 'make himself useful' Balthier would have endured almost any form of humiliation and discomfiture just to stay close to such a wondrous feat of Hume engineering.
All day long and sometimes all night he toiled at the engines of the Antarii or the Messanthra or the Linctus, each airship different, each engine possessing its own quirks and foibles; within a year Balthier had learnt to intuit every nuance of the ships design until it seemed that without him the ships would simply not fly.
Thus, simply using a natural talent, engendered from birth and inherited from his father, further nurtured by Ludmilla and her fellow Moogles, Balthier made himself, an oft times denigrated and maligned but nevertheless irreplaceable part of Remus' pirating enterprise.
He might not be allowed within spitting distance of a cockpit but he was still flying, submersed in airships and engines and electrical components; his days taken up with the simple (in relative terms) considerations of how to extract maximum efficiency from already over-taxed engines with the minimum of resources.
He was flying and even as a passenger it was the greatest feeling he had ever known.
Of course, Balthier (the name had stuck and Ruthy, in particular, rather enjoyed his use of it) was not content to rest on his laurels. The cockpit and the pilot's chair whispered to him in his dreams and the Strahl (his Strahl – currently in Ruthy's inexpert, callous hands) waited for him to rescue her.
It was during that first year that Balthier learned patience. He learned to bide his time, to subsist in his own mind when the body suffered and his pride was all but snuffed out.
Thus in the beginning he waited, and he watched, and he learned the intricacies of his enemy; all the while biding his time for the day he could take the next step…that one step closer to his freedom.
I.
The day his luck changed and circumstance conspired to bring him closer to his heart's desire started out much like any other…….with an air pursuit and most of the (on this occasion) Dalmascan air guard on their tail.
'Balthier! Someone – get that boy up 'ere, now!'
The roaring outrage in Remus' voice travelled over the internal communications array as the Antarii shuddered and bucked, pounded and buffeted by the hail of strafing fire coming from the pursuing ships (Balthier had warned Remus that harassing the caravan routes in and out of Dalmasca would not go unnoticed but he had been summarily ignored).
Currently clinging to a bulk head and trying to stay upright while he worked on a knot of damaged wiring linking the auxiliary Mist exhaust coupling cables to the main exhaust valves of engine two, Balthier ignored the overheard command from the cockpit and continued his repairs.
It was only when one of Remus lieutenant's physically came down to the engines rooms and manhandled Balthier away from the console he was working on, that Balthier realised that he might finally gain access to the cockpit.
'Gods be damned. I need me bluidy guns an' I need 'em NOW!'
Remus was berating one of his luckless minions unfortunate enough to be manning his weapons console in the cockpit (the console was obviously malfunctioning as sparks were dancing over the array).
Balthier was shoved into the cockpit of the Antarii (a larger, newer, and much more utilitarian manner of vessel than his beloved and lamented Strahl) by the lieutenant so hard he went sprawling to the metal grated floor.
Picking himself up Balthier was knocked to his knees again when Remus sent the ship into a deliberate nosedive towards the rippling, refinery dotted, golden swath of the Sandsea, attempting to dislodge the trail of smaller craft that continued to harry the Antarii with rapid fire.
'Balthier, boy, get yer ruddy arse up and fix me guns. We're ruddy dead in the skies wit'out 'em.'
Getting up was not altogether easy as Remus executed a simply astonishing series of mid-air acrobatics with the Antarii that caused an ache of longing in Balthier.
What he would not give to learn how to do as Remus did with such consummate ease. The airship and the pilot seemed to be but extensions of the same will.
Balthier hauled himself across the cockpit, clawing the backs of chairs and the metal plating of the walls, to reach the circuit breakers and relay cables behind the far wall panel.
Removing the wall panel Balthier merely took one cursory look at the blackened, fuel leaking cables and wiring in the hollow of the cockpit's wall. It was palpably obvious to Balthier (who knew and intuitively understood every nut and bolt and errant wire within all of Remus' ships) that drastic measures would be necessary to achieve Remus' wish for functioning cannons.
'What yer doin' back there, boy? I need them guns now, or 'ave yer not noticed the bluidy dogfight goin' on 'ere?'
Remus snarled as, with the deft touch and artistry of a master, the great brute of a man guided the Antarii (which was not a ship built with manoeuvrability in its design schematics) in and out of the spindling, interlacing, refinery towers with the ease of a bird in flight.
The virtuoso act of control and phenomenal piloting skill almost took Balthier's breath away, even as the whip lash speed and jerking movements threatened to induce a vicious bout of motion sickness.
Shaking off his envious admiration (as much as Balthier might hate the man, he nevertheless truly believed that Remus was the greatest airship pilot who had ever lived) Balthier moved determinedly over to the pilot's and navigator's control relays.
'What're yer doin' boy?' Remus snarled, one hand letting go of the steering rods to grip Balthier's wrist in a bruising hold as he reached out towards the console.
'What you asked me to do.' Balthier purred, looking up to meet Remus' eye. It was both disturbing and oddly impressive that Remus was so in tune with his ship that he could take his eyes off the horizon and glare menacingly at Balthier. 'I am repairing your ship. Kindly let go of me.'
Remus curled his lips, baring yellowed teeth as he released his hold on Balthier's wrist, 'Yer'd better know what yer doin' boy. An' mind that I'll be watchin' yer. I knows who sent yer t'me.'
Remus was as paranoid regarding Nylous as the pirate king was of Remus' own intentions and both looked upon Balthier as a potential spy and a means of defeating the other.
'Remus please, have I ever done anything to have you doubt me?' Balthier rolled his eyes as pried the panel from the underside of the control console and ducked underneath to get a better look at the mechanisms innards.
Balthier, who had no desire to be a pawn in their battle for supremacy, nevertheless had to concede that this attitude of rampant opportunism and suspicion shared between the two men, who dominated his fate, made his job as agent provocateur all the easier.
He fulfilled the objective set by both men (that of possible spy and possible tool) merely by breathing in and out without needing to engage in any particularly underhanded acts of espionage.
Of course it was a testament to Remus overreaching paranoia and stupidity that he could contemplate even for a moment that Balthier would attempt to sabotage the very same ship he himself was stuck on in the middle of a fierce air battle with outraged Dalmascans.
'Yer a damn deceitful bastard; yer'd have me throat cut in an instance if'n I gave yer t'chance,' Remus accused, but with very little rancour as he threw the ship into a breath-stealing spiralling ascent, before plunging the steering rods downward in a near suicidal act of daring.
Balthier, his arms up to the elbows in the acidic, abrasive mesh of fuel leaking wiring and cables, bare flesh unprotected and fully aware that at any minute a fuse could blow and the discharge of energy would very likely cause his death, merely rolled his eyes at Remus' accusation.
'Remus, I assure you, I will never cut your throat.' Which was the truth; he would never make the man's death so obvious.
In fact Balthier had no intention of allowing harm to come to the man who possessed a singular skill in airship piloting that Balthier coveted with as much fervour as Ffamran had once longed for freedom.
Hatred, vengeance, and a sense of delivering just deserts against the brutish pirate, was as nothing to the all-encompassing longing to learn to fly as only Remus could teach him that Balthier cherished above all else.
Of course, Balthier conceded ruefully, once he had attained his desired knowledge…..well...perhaps all that was prudent to say (even within the confines of his own thoughts) was that Balthier had learnt a great deal more from the pirates than merely the inner workings of their airship engines.
The morality of piracy made the depths of Archadian moral hypocrisy seem amateurish and Balthier had taken to its vagaries like a fish to water.
The Antarii shuddered in mid-air as a particularly tenacious pursuing craft managed to clip the right wing and main glossair ring with its last volley of strafing fire. Remus' curses very nearly turned the air in the cramped cockpit blue.
'Guns, Balthier, I need me guns.'
'Then you should have thought of that before you attempted to play follow the leader with half the Dalmascan airguard and took a direct hit to the weapons array. I cannot reconstitute melted components from thin air.'
Balthier muttered in abstractedly pleasant tone, his mind racing through options as he recognised the impossibility of fixing the weapons command relay.
'Do somethin' Balthier, yer ruddy arse, or we'll all be for the knackers yard. Fix me ruddy ship!'
Balthier shifted up from his uncomfortable position curled up under the control console and, ignoring in his irritation, the hail of fire and bullets pelting the Antarii's hull and shields, glowered at Remus as he pulled himself up.
'I cannot fix your bloody ship if you persist in repeatedly engaging in air battles. You are the bloody pirate; can you not pull off one damned raid without attracting an entire battalion of air gunners?'
Without waiting for a reply, and fairly sure that Remus would not risk his own life and the stability of his airship by reprimanding him for his insolence, Balthier slumped into the vacant navigator's chair (perhaps if Remus had a navigator he would not be such a poor escape artist) and pried open a front facing panel.
'Balthier…what's in yer twisted little brain?'
The Antarii was dancing through the air; bobbing and weaving and twisting through sky and cloud; poetry in motion in the middle of a battle to the death over the ominous, rippling mass of the Sandsea.
Balthier studied the navigation gauges and radar screens before looking up out of the window. 'Can you arrange it so that the majority of the pursuing vessels are directly behind us?'
He demanded of Remus as his thoughts aligned, fingers dancing over the consoles.
'Aye, I could, but they'd shoot out our back facing engines and blow us out o' t'sky.' Remus replied reasonably. Yet even as he spoke he began to smooth out the Antarii's flight path so that the pursuing ships could close in on his tail.
Balthier was momentarily surprised to realise that that one action demonstrated that despite his words and actions to the contrary, Remus trusted Balthier – at least in some fashion.
It was food for thought, but not too terribly relevant at the moment.
'They won't shoot out our engines, Remus, because we are going to do it for them.' Balthier murmured distractedly while he tapped in commands from the navigators console to begin venting the exhaust fuel and spent Mist in one, highly combustible, action.
Remus, who was not educated but was not the buffoon Balthier had once considered him to be, began to laugh. It was a less than savoury sound. The man's wide, whiskered face scrunched into a look of savage enjoyment.
'Yer evil boy, I like it.'
Balthier, mildly irked to be referred to as evil, nevertheless shook off the criticism, and smiled inanely. 'I have permission to vent the engines?'
Remus continued to keep the Antarii flying steady and, like fools, the Dalmascan pursuing ships closed in behind.
'Fire away.' Remus almost howled.
Balthier, fully cognizant of what would happen as soon as the exhaust Mist reacted with the air, pressed the button to finish the command anyway.
He could not see the resultant explosion, though the echo of the liquid splash of sound buffeted the outer hull of the Antarii, but it did not matter, he watched the radar screen dissipate into static and resolve itself to show empty air. What was left of the Dalmascan pursuit squad was now in pieces too small to register on the screen.
Guilt and a sense of compassion for ones fellow man was one of the first things a neophyte sky pirate did away with; Balthier had barely noticed the loss of what little compassion he had ever possessed.
Still he did not garner any pleasure from his actions either, unlike his captain.
Remus fist came down hard on Balthier's back in a fiercely triumphant pound, knocking the breath from his lungs. 'Well done, boy. I reckon yer've earned yer wings now. There's blood on yer 'ands an' no mistake.'
Balthier turned to Remus sharply, hope lurching within him, as Remus pushed the Antarii south-westerly and out of Dalmascan airspace.
'Wings?' It was no more than an exclamation of air; a tangible utterance of hope.
Remus snickered, sly enough to detect the sudden intensity in Balthier's voice that he could not repress.
'Aye, I reckon after a dirty, vicious, move like that, yer pirate enough to learn to fly. Gods help yer, yer've more between yer ears than t'rest o' these lunkers, at any rate.'
Remus turned in his chair to further berate the sundry sheepish minions trying to edge out of the cockpit in the aftermath of a sky battle that need not have happened if Remus had merely listened to Balthier in the first place.
However Balthier was not listening to any of that.
A small, cold, triumphant smile brushed over his lips. Looking out of the windows of the Antarii (not the Strahl, but still an airship of merit) Balthier's heart thumped in his breast.
He controlled Remus airships already, from the engines outward, now, entirely through accident and not design, he had gained his wings……tomorrow, tomorrow, he might even gain the keys to his freedom; all he had to do was wait.
Wait and plan and he had grown so good at that.
II.
Ffamran Mid Bunansa had always been blessed with a quick and nimble mind. He learned new skills quickly and adapted to new ideas easily. Balthier, inheritor of that intellect, capitalised fully on the endowment of brains Ffamran had granted him, not only to grasp swiftly the complexities of airship flight, but also to smooth his rise to prominence in Remus' pirate pack.
It proved to be a remarkably easy ascent to power.
Balthier was not sure why but his cool-headed (some might say ruthless) actions the day of the Sandsea dogfight had apparently gone a long way to changing Remus' impressions of his indentured slave mechanic.
So much so, in fact, that with the occasional, fateful, interjection at key strategic moments, such as 'I have a suggestion' or 'Hmm, have you considered…' Balthier had manoeuvred himself into a position of trust and prestige. It was not long before he was involved in the planning and the implementation of some of Remus' most successful heists.
There were missteps and miscalculations aplenty in the seven months it had taken to position himself just so. Some of those had been pure accident (and he had suffered for them) others had been deliberate to throw his detractors off the scent; primarily those who suspected he was leading Remus astray.
However the breakthrough, the moment serendipity smiled upon Balthier once more, was a while in coming.
It started off as another ordinary day.
Business had taken Remus to Bervenia to negotiate a ceasefire with Ruthy (who had decided, after many secret discussions with Balthier himself, that playing second fiddle to Remus was beneath her dignity – and with a few choice scraps of information Balthier let slip - she had set herself up as an independent operative).
Balthier, who had since been busy playing the two pirates off against each other and thus proving to the ever watchful Nylous that he was loyal to the task he had been set, had managed to make himself scarce during those negotiations (ostensibly by offering to check the engines of the Strahl, part of the non-aggression settlement – again thanks to Balthier's whispers in Remus' ear).
Reunited with his beloved airship Balthier had been too pre-occupied communing with his ship (and it was his ship, no matter who claimed ownership of her. It was he, Balthier, who had saved the Strahl from the Draklor scrapheap) to notice the stealthy approach of two 'interesting individuals' into the private airship hangar.
'Why're we blowing up this one, Rik? It don't look worth the effort. Y'sure this is the bastard's ship?'
A woman's voice floated through the Strahl's hull, Balthier, who had been checking the wiring in the cargo hold, heard the voice clearly and immediately went still.
'This is one a' 'is ships. An' it's 'ere, right where the Moogle said it would be, all's we got t'do is set the explosives an' even if that bastard Remus ain't on board when it blows 'e'll get the message t'get the 'ell outta Balfonheim f'good.'
A rough male voice and the scuff of feet on the stone floor outside; Balthier's heart contracted in sudden horror – explosives, explosives on the Strahl?
Not bloody likely!
Having better sense than to burst out of the Strahl's hold in a highly visible explosion of righteous indignation, as such a move would likely lead to his less than heroic death, Balthier remained carefully still, straining his ears to hear more.
As he suspected the two would-be bombers began work on forcing open the Strahl's boarding doors. He winced as one of the two scraped what he imagined was a ladder of some description up against the paintwork of the Strahl in an attempt to get to the door.
'Careful you eejit, you want t'make it obvious we bin 'ere?' The woman snapped.
'Shut up woman an' make yerself useful by keeping a bloody eye out for trouble.'
Balthier, hidden in the Strahl, rolled his eyes in contempt at the two's antics. He doubted a herd of Behemoth accompanied by a full marching band could make as much noise as these two.
His own actions covered by the noisy ineptitude of the would-be saboteurs Balthier pulled open the cargo hatch in the floor of the hold and jumped down to the hangar floor underneath the Strahl.
Keeping his steps light he was able to duck under the belly of the Strahl and walk around the ship to come behind the two strangers (the woman with an impressive bosom and even more impressive mane of wheat gold hair and the man with the build and ragged looks of a quintessential Balfonheim native) before either one noticed.
'Good evening.'
Balthier gained a certain pleasure in the fact that the man on the ladder nearly fell off in his surprise and the woman holding their collection of tools and, possibly, explosives, had to make a swift grab for the bag of supplies before it hit the floor.
'Bloody 'ell, where t'hell did yer come from?' The woman demanded at the same time the man growled belligerently.
'Who the 'ell are yer?'
Balthier smiled, 'Where I come from and who I am is not really pertinent right now. The pertinent issue is that you are attempting to fit my ship with a time delay explosive and I object to that, quite strenuously.'
'Yer ship?' The woman turned sharply to her companion, reaching up to smack the man around the head, 'I told yer that yer ruddy picked the wrong ship.'
The dark haired man ignored her, which considering the woman's ample assets and the fact that that slap had to have hurt, was no mean feat. Instead the man looked shrewdly at Balthier.
'I know yer.' He muttered. 'I seen yer in Balfonheim with Remus. Yer one of 'is men.'
The man drew a throwing knife seemingly from nowhere and brandished it in a long, almost delicate looking, hand. Balthier folded his arms across his chest.
'Please. First you try to sabotage my property, somewhat inexpertly I should add, and now you insult me? I am most assuredly not one of Remus' men.'
Balthier unfolded his arms to examine his cuffs (the recent upswing in his status had led to an upswing in his fortunes; it had been a relief to dress as befit his status once more) with nonchalant distain. 'Who are you anyway?'
His answer was the flight of the knife from the man's hand.
Balthier, who had spent the last eighteen months weathering the storm of a violent captain and his sadistic former paramour's mercurial attentions, was fairly used to sharp, pointed implements being flung at his head, and so ducked accordingly.
'Are you quite finished?' Balthier demanded dryly as he plucked the knife from where it had scraped the stone floor of the hangar, 'I am trying to have an adult conversation and I would appreciate it if you would desist in throwing things.'
The man and the woman were staring at him in something akin to incomprehension. Balthier had discovered through hard experience that when a man threw a knife at his head they were somewhat thrown off guard if Balthier reacted, not with a return of violence or with flight, but instead with mild indignation.
Violent people found it difficult to deal with a man who stood his guard and talked in words of more than one syllable. His vocabulary alone had saved Balthier from any number of fatal encounters.
'Who the bloody 'ell are yer? Yer bloody mad.' The woman sounded almost admiring as she looked him up and down.
Balthier affixed his practiced smirk to his face and relaxed his stance. He did not think that these two intruders really had any more desire to engage in pointless violence than he did, which was a relief.
Balthier, sensing an opportunity, allowed his smile to grow, engagingly, 'My name is Balthier, and I rather think that you and I can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement, my dear lady.' He purred towards the woman.
The man clattered down the step ladder as the woman returned Balthier's smile with a bold once over.
The woman's eyes ticked over the fine fabric of his shirt, the tight fit of his trousers, the lean lines of his body (wealth and luxury might be a state of mind but Balthier saw no reason not to advertise the state of his mind for the whole of Ivalice to see).
'Yer don't say?' The woman grinned tossing her hair back behind her and crossing her arms to cradle her phenomenal cleavage. The man stepped up beside the woman glowering daggers (but at least this time refraining from throwing any).
'What the 'ell yer takin' 'bout; how c'n yer 'elp us?'
Balthier's heart thumped heavily with the growing certainty that another milestone on his road to freedom had been reached. He had the means, the motivation and now, possibly, he might have found allies…..all he needed now was the method and the right time to make his ascent.
He smiled slowly and beatifically, 'I am presuming you wish Remus dead, hmm?'
The two incompetent plotters looked to one another and then to him, slowly they nodded in assent, probably assuming that denying the fact would be somewhat pointless considering the evidence of their own actions.
Balthier's smile grew, each heart beat concise, a drum roll towards freedom. 'Marvellous.' He purred, brushing his cuffs free of imaginary lint, he lifted his heavy lidded eyes insouciantly, 'So do I. Shall we come to terms?'
III.
The auction house (or rather, the makeshift hangar shed built on the tiny purveema too small to be marked on any map) was crammed to the rafters with pirates, slave-dealers, brigands and assorted reprobates of low status.
Balthier barely noticed. His only thought was for his plan. Two years in service to Remus. Almost three years since Ffamran made his leap for freedom and fell into Nylous' pit. Now it was time; time to make another leap and hope to take wing once and for all.
In the folds of his starched cuffs the vials of concentrated fire Magicite waited. Balthier's fingers twitched at his side, ready to act. Impatient after so long of biding his time and waiting to spread his wings and fly.
'Friends, companions, loyal customers; today we 'ave a treat for you, eh? A fine specimen of pure blood Viera!'
The auctioneer's thick Rozarrian accented voice snapped Balthier's fraught, over-sensitized, mind from his own imminent deeds to the makeshift stage.
'We start de bidding at t'irty t'ousand gil, eh?'
Balthier blinked in surprise at the first consignment as she was dragged up on the stage. He had never in his life seen a Viera in the flesh.
The woman? - vision of loveliness? – that stepped onto the stage with the regal bearing and cool distain of a visiting deity gracing this den of Hume scum with her presence was the most remarkable specimen of female beauty Balthier had ever seen.
Impossibly tall yet almost delicately proportioned dressed in attire that would seem highly provocative on a Hume woman but which seemed merely natural and serviceable on this beauty; it was nevertheless not the physical attributes of the magnificent creature before him that so captivated Balthier's attention.
It was her eyes.
The spotlight that had been deliberately turned on the woman to disorientate her cast her bronzed flesh in exquisite brilliant radiance. Yet her eyes, large, almond shaped, and defiantly turned onto the crowd, seemed to burn into his awareness, not because of any expression that lived in those shadowed eyes, but because they held no expression whatsoever.
It had oft been said that the eyes were the window to ones soul, in which case, this woman's soul had long since left for pastures new.
Balthier knew, instinctively, with absolute conviction, that whatever fate had led this Viera to this miserable place and whatever cruel twists of coincidence had brought her so low as to be so chained, her soul was flying free.
He recognised the look in the eyes of this woman; he recognised his own expression. The eyes of one who does not live for the body, nor reside in the flesh, but instead in the mind and the spirit.
It seemed to Balthier (who had never considered himself a superstitious person) that the presence of this divine Viera was almost providence; an omen that this was his time to truly fly.
As the bidding carried on with a vengeance, sweaty fisted men grasping ticket stubs and bidding boards, Balthier sidled up to Remus. Whether this Viera was indeed a sign of divine providence or not, Balthier knew a good distraction when he saw it.
He nudged Remus and nodded his head towards the Viera with a questioning look in his expression. Remus, in less than gregarious mood, not that the man was very genial company ordinarily, grunted inarticulately and shook his head. Not quite sure what motivated his words Balthier persisted.
'Ah, but look at her, Remus, a true blooded Viera. Quite a prize to take home to your lovely Maud, wouldn't you say?'
'Got no interest in no bloody rabbit wench, Balthier.'
Balthier sighed elaborately as he carefully palmed one of the vials from his cuff.
'Remus, in all these months, have I steered you wrong?'
'Do I hear any more bidders for t'irty nine t'ousand? Come now friends, goods like dis one come along but once in de blue moon, eh?'
'Bervenia.' Remus growled. Balthier repressed a wince, covering up for Rikken and Elza's incompetence had been costly in terms of his relationship with Remus, but he had more or less smoothed over those minor suspicions.
'Forty thousand gil!'
'Must you always bring that up?' Balthier asked dryly, half watching the Viera on the stage. Something about the woman's poise, the tremor of alert readiness in her stance, suggested to Balthier that this Viera was ready to fly the nest.
Balthier sighed again, working on distracting Remus with his words to cover his actions as he shifted towards the man's gun holster, 'I have said that what happened in the Aerodrome was a misunderstanding. I was not trying to escape, merely negotiating a better rate on fuel for the airship.'
'Forty-t'ree t'ousand gil -do I hear any more bidders for forty-t'ree t'ousand gil?'
'Yer a damned silver-tongued liar, boy, and yer should count yer lucky stars I don't hang yer from these rafters with yer own entrails.'
'Forty-four t'ousand gil to de man wit' de parrot, going once, going two times, going…'
Balthier laughed; he had long grown inured to threats from Remus. His smile became insouciant.
'Perhaps you should. Though if you were to take that action I'm not sure your wallet or your wife would thank you. Liar I may be but I'm a lucrative one.' He purred disinterestedly.
The Viera exploded into action, as sudden and unexpected as a summer storm, just as Balthier managed to slip the powdered fire magicite into the barrel of Remus' gun.
For a few seconds, Balthier, like everyone else in the stinking shack, could only watch the ferocity and unleashed primal power and that was the Viera in action.
Then, shaking himself into his own action, Balthier slipped from Remus' side and dashed through the slack-jawed crowd to light the first of his tapers on the vials he had liberally secreted all over the warehouse prior to the auction beginning.
Balthier thought he heard Remus call after him, having noticed his escape, but he did not look back.
Ducking behind a table Balthier took cover as the Mist bombs, which he had slaved over in secret for months, ignited in the air and blew out the back wall of the shack.
In one lightening quick glance behind him, Balthier saw the Viera on her knees, almost forced face down onto the stage by a thick set ruffian, then he saw Remus, one eye blazing, bearing down on him and Balthier darted through the hole he had made in the wall.
Balthier ran. He ran like the wind. He ran like his life depended on it (which it did) and it was still not enough. It did not matter how fast he ran the purveema was only so many acres large and there was only one way off it.
Remus closed in on him at the docking bay where the Strahl (recently liberated from Ruthy – an orchestrated manoeuvre Balthier was rather proud of) waited. Breathless but determined not to show it, Balthier calmly faced Remus and his gun.
'Yer pushed yer luck too far, Balthier.'
Incongruously Balthier felt the urge to laugh. He smothered it and instead smiled slightly with a sardonic shrug of his shoulders.
'One might say, considering how things have worked out, that I didn't push my luck far enough.'
An odd flicker passed over Remus one remaining eye; an expression more subtle and complex than his usual bluff anguish or annoyance. Balthier could not identify it and did not try. He was waiting for the moment Remus pulled the trigger.
Three years and it had all boiled down to one man and a gun; Balthier's entire existence hinged on the outcome of one single tiny movement of a stubby finger on a trigger.
'Aye, an now yer die, yer bloody toff.'
Remus pulled the trigger and as the chain reaction of the misfire blew a hole through his chest Balthier thought he caught a look of pure surprise upon Remus heavy features. Then the man collapsed to his knees and fell heavily onto his side on the rickety boards of the docking bay.
For a moment Balthier held his breath; waiting, waiting, waiting; he watched Remus, holding his own breath in his lungs against the terror that Remus' chest would rise and fall once more.
It did not. Remus lay on the boards, the gun still in his loose grip, one eye wide and unseeing and his face still caught in a rictus of surprise.
Adrenaline coursed through Balthier's body in a searing wave. He breathed in and he breathed out as slowly, cautiously, he moved towards - not Remus, not the man who had tormented him and trained him -but instead a corpse wearing Remus' familiar face.
Balthier kicked his tormentor and his mentor's gun from his limp hand across the deck of the docking bay and crouched to make one last check to assure himself that Remus was gone and would never come back.
He looked into that one, infinitely wide and fixed eye, and obscurely felt he owed the man an explanation.
'Powdered fire Magicite. My father taught me about it. Mixed with gun powder it packs quite a wallop, you'll find.'
Tone conversational Balthier checked the non-existent vital signs of the other man and quickly got to his feet.
'Right then,' He muttered to himself, 'time to affect that daring escape.'
Balthier would never know how it was that he realised he was not alone.
He would never be able to explain how he managed to interpret the frisson of his nerves and the rising of the hair at the nape of his neck in such a way that he knew – absolutely knew – that the person behind him was none other than the Viera from the auction, and in many respects he had concluded that it did not matter.
Birds of a feather would instinctively flock together, after all.
He reacted to the whisper of warning from his hindbrain; the subtle certainty that unless he spoke now he would be in some considerable difficulty (he had seen the Viera fight after all).
'Now, now, my dear Viera, no need to be hasty; I was going to invite you along, one unwilling guest of this Purveema to another, so there is really no call for violence, hmm?'
'You knew I was here?'
He had never heard a voice like hers.
A voice that managed to be so perfectly modulated as to sound both flat and dead, monotone in delivery, but to carry an undercurrent of things unknown and unknowable, within each syllable that her simple question seemed to thrum through his entire being.
Balthier turned around and affixed his most charming and debonair smile to his face.
'Process of elimination. That lot of braying slobs make so much noise, you, on the other hand, do not.'
He caught a glimpse of the Viera's reddish irises and felt his heart leap to his mouth. When he looked into those remote, alien eyes he saw the sky. He saw the immensity and the vast reaches of the sky stretching upwards and onwards beyond Hume imagining.
Vast, empty, distant, and filled with impossible promise.
Balthier, unable to look with impunity into eyes that seemed a window to everything he had ever wanted, turned sheepishly away and began to clamber up the boarding ramp of the Strahl.
'Ordinarily I would be gentlemanly and let you go first, but frankly, I fear you might fly off and leave me.'
Balthier wondered, distractedly, if the Viera could hear the tremor in his voice as he offered her his hand. He was not sure why he was offering her a seat on his personal escape vessel, but he knew, with that same peculiar, illogical sense of conviction, that he could do nothing less.
When the Viera ignored his offered hand and climbed up into the Strahl (his now; finally his) Balthier was almost overcome with a sense of rightness.
He could feel himself begin to shake with a growing sense of gathering momentum; a sense of velocity, as after so long planning and enduring and waiting, he was finally ready to ascend.
'You fly?'
Were the only words the Viera offered to him as she preceded him into the cockpit of the Strahl; the look she gave him, cool, incurious, but at the same time oddly amused, seemed to stir something in his soul.
'You fly?' The question meant more than the Viera could ever know.
That one question seemed to be the distillation of a long, hard, convoluted journey. A Journey that had taken from him everything he was, including his name, stripped him of all that he thought would protect and save him and left him with nothing except himself with which to survive.
And here, now, at the very culmination of that journey, the pinnacle of his ascent, this wild, distant, brilliant woman, with blood on her long clawed hands and her hair windblown in loose curls about her head, asked him if he could fly?
Balthier thought that he could almost have wept in joy and pain and rapture but instead he answered her with a lazy smirk and insouciant shrug.
'Surprisingly well, actually.'
A/N: Whew! Next up Epilogue: Rabanastre!