Chapter 38
Van searched the horizon for any sign of enemy soldiers, but so far nothing. Two days of nothing and it was getting rather tiresome.
"Are you sure about this captain?" Van questioned for the tenth time.
"Yes, sir," the man replied, "The rumor checked out."
"Then why aren't there any guys over there?" Another leader shouted. "Not so much as a stray dog has come through here!"
The two officers started to bicker and Van sighed. They had a clear view of the field, which was a pretty sorry place to hide and attack from, but the rumor was their best shot.
He was not about to lead a full blown attack on Asturia, that would be suicide. After talking with his military leaders, it was decided the best thing to do was block any invasion and protect the Fanelian borders. If they set foot into any other country, Van knew he would inadvertently drag that innocent country into a war and forced to choose sides. Also, it wouldn't help his statement of innocence if he went around attacking the royal family anymore than they already thought he did.
"…how dare you speak about my mother in that tone!"
"And why shouldn't I?" The man groused. "She's my wife!"
The King sighed, leaning back in his perch from the tree. He wondered if Hitomi was fairing all right with all the duties thrust upon her so quickly. She knew the basics; thanks to her extensive reading of the boring texts, but books were a far cry from practice.
He thought about her panicked look and it made him smile. She was so cute when she got worried. Shaking that thought from his head, he told the feuding family members to be silent as he scanned the horizon again.
A light breeze started to blow and Van squint his eyes, trying to get a better image.
Was it his imagination or was there a glimmer of metal for a brief second? Like the flapping of a cape, revealing a knight's shined, undamaged armor before covering it up again?
But that's impossible!
Wasn't it?
There were curses and crashes sounding from the room above where many of the knights were eating and they knew one thing was for certain: Dilandau was not happy. The truth of the matter was he had not been happy for about an hour or so. Many people outside his rule thought the man was insane, but somehow, he always won. His method was in his madness.
The reason for the fit of anger lay in a messenger from Asturia who had come long ago and ran directly up the steps. A few moments later, there was a scream of shock and then a heavy thud heard but barely over a shriek and colorful curse. There was no mystery as to what happened. Apparently, the messenger had informed the general of something that didn't please him.
Folken stared at the livid armor clad general, "You need to calm down."
"Calm down?" Dilandau shouted, grabbed the blue haired man by his cape collar and shook him violently. "How can I 'calm down' when everything is now ruined! I wanted to destroy Asturia! I wanted to destroy it all! To make those hypocrites burn!"
Folken made no moves to protect himself, only gave a steady look to the angry face in front of him. If the general could spit and snarl, the Fanel man had no doubt he would've.
"Nothing is ruined, delayed, but not ruined. You are being very short sighted."
Releasing the man, Dilandau staggered backwards until the back of his knees hit his chair and he dropped down into it.
"They aren't going to let the prince go, so we have to go get him! And once we have the Prince, we can burn that pretty little kingdom down." Picking up his bloodied sword and a stray cloth, the general began to clean his sword from his messenger's blood. "We can leave tonight and be back by dawn."
"And alert the rest of the countries to what we are doing?" Folken questioned in a serious tone. "We will not attack Asturia, they have too many allies. We just need to refocus and decide another plan of attack. As long as Asturia has Prince Allen in their midst, we can't attack at random."
"But I want to. We don't have the doppelganger, we handed him over so Asturia would arrest the prince and now they have both of them!" Dilandau hissed, cleaning his sword with jerky motions. "I want to set Aston's pig head on fire and watch him burn away like a candle."
The taller man remained impassive to that statement. This was past head-butting politics down to just plain sadism of a pyromaniac.
"I have already recalculated our plans to compensate for the fact that both Princes are with Asturia now. I have decided we need more strength."
"More?" Dilandau scoffed, his finger tracing down his cheek. "We are feared because of our overwhelming numbers and our technology is unsurpassed. What would more strength be able to do that we aren't able to do now?"
"The historians always relate that when a certain three countries ally, they are perceived to be undefeatable." Folken let a small smile grace his features. "Due to our earlier strategies, two of those countries are now at war or very soon will be."
"And?" Dilandau asked, obviously bored with the subject since death and fire had been extracted from it.
"One of them will need us to survive," Folken let a small bit of arrogance come to his eyes. "We need Princess Serena to do more work."
The other person hissed viciously, "Must we involve her more than we already have?"
"Yes," Folken replied in a flat tone. "She has to regain Van's trust so that Zaibach may gain Fanelia's king and their main weapon, Escaflowne."
"After all she's done?" Dilandau snorted, "He'll have to be insane to cooperate with us."
"Grief causes people to do—desperate things."
The blue eyes of the general sparked with interest at the mention of grief. If grief was involved, it often meant destruction was its herald. He liked—no, loved to destroy. Watching as the helpless and weak begged for mercy before he snuffed them out of their pitiful existence were what colored his daydreams.
"Now that sounds like something I could agree with," the younger one chuckled, an inane grin stretching across his face.
"Come back here you living hairball! Don't run away from me!" Armand shouted down the hall as Merle scampered away on all fours.
Hitomi looked up momentarily, sighed, and continued to read the trade treaties and other various legal papers. Running one hand through her hair and tugging on her golden strands gently, she found a new respect for her husband in doing all this work.
She had always assumed when he disappeared for the majority of the day, it was to practice fighting, lounge about, or avoid the common palace chaos that seemed to follow both Merle and Armand around (which, in turn, they always seemed to follow her around these days). Instead, she had found out for the past two weeks, he had been in his office working from sun up to sun down, revising documents, and handling disputes in the kingdom.
"This is so boring," Hitomi remarked to a rather lengthy complaint a farmer had put in about his neighbor. She begged for a distraction and that resulted in Merle knocking over an ink well onto one of the many papers. When Armand went to clean it up, Merle accidentally put her hand on his white sleeved shirt, staining it with the black ink what ensued was the fiasco currently happening.
Leaning back in the chair, Hitomi stared out the window at the forests beyond the city walls. Her mind wondered back to where it had been since Van left for war two weeks ago. Information was limited, but by all accounts there hadn't been an official battle yet.
There had been a whisper around the country that Allen had been arrested in Asturia for circumstances no one was clear about.
So much was happening! Hitomi cried in her mind as she tipped her head to either side, cracking her neck.
"Your majesty?" Lilya, one of the maids, stood at the door peeking in shyly.
"Yes?" Hitomi was caught between happiness and dread. Happiness she would be torn away from this boring paperwork and dread because it might be more paperwork or someone to complain in person.
"You have a guest, Miss Leiko Kanzak," she announced in a somewhat scared voice.
"Let her come in," she hadn't seen her family in such a long time, not since Millerna had come- before she-
"Sister!" The energetic voice filled the air second before her busty older sister came through the doorway. Looking over her shoulder, she gave a condescending eye to Lilya, "You may go."
Standing up and walking away from the cursed desk, Hitomi greeted her sister with a hug. "I haven't seen you in so long!"
"Probably because I got banned from the castle, but with your reserve soldiers now in place of your real guards, I just said who I was and they started to run around like a bunch of chickens!" Leiko laughed loudly at her own joke. "How do you stand to have that kind of power and not make them do silly things constantly?"
"They do inane things without my wanting them to all the time, I hardly want it encouraged." Hitomi's smile twitched as she muttered under her breath. Raising her voice to an audible level, "What brings you around today?"
"Oh listen to you! You sound so snobby now! I guess your King taught you a lot of things." Her sister winked and sashayed over to one of the extra chairs in the room and dropped down into it. "Wow, nice chair, I'm impressed."
Hitomi blinked in mild surprise, "How is everyone?"
"Oh you know, I'm engaged again, this time he's only fifty! Scary thought is that I might actually make it to the wedding day if he doesn't kill over first." Her sister shrugged. "Daddy isn't happy about the war since we will lose money. You know I had to wear the same dress twice in a month? That's how poor we are now! That's why I got engaged to such a young rich guy for once."
"Heaven forbid," Hitomi sighed, rolling her eyes. "How are Father and Mother?"
"Packing," Leiko replied, giving a rather envious eye to her sister's dress and jewelry. "You know that necklace doesn't match your dress, baby pink and blue-purple are so not compatible."
Her hand instantly flew up to the pendant, grasped it, and kept it safe in her fist. She hadn't removed it since Van had put it around her neck. Armand had the audacity to try and take it off and she had slapped him on the hand without a second thought. Of course the knight went into his dramatics that he was abused and he'd never be able to lift a sword again because the queen maimed his right hand.
"Perhaps we can offer that neko for a treaty. I'll say she stabbed me!" Armand growled, coming back into the room. He couldn't stomp, still being stuck with a cane. The healer's had made him use one so that he could walk hunched over when necessary. The man found it a rather useful whacking stick for Merle and Hitomi on different occasions.
It was going to be firewood before long if Armand kept it up Hitomi had vowed silently.
"Sir Armand, isn't it?" Leiko instantly purred, slowly rising to her feet and slinking over to the brunette. "So nice to finally meet you again."
"Yes, I know. I just have that type of personality." Armand deadpanned, his blue eyes flat as his voice. "You are- Leeky?"
Unphased, "Leiko, Queen Hitomi's charming older sister." Hooking her arm through his, she beamed her best smile to the knight. "I hear that you're single."
"Leiko!" Hitomi fused, "You're engaged."
"Always keep your options open, Hitomi. I've always told you that." Armand's mouth twitched, as if trying to control a nasty beastie that begged to bite the woman's hand off. "Oh, before I'm distracted by this tall, dark, and gorgeous man, Father wants a permit for all of us to leave Fanelia."
"What?"
"Daddy wants to leave, the trade is dwindling to nothing and he refuses to be shipped back to the poor house." Leiko stroked Armand's arm and the knight muttered something under his breath. For whatever reason, the man was holding his tongue. "Most of the tradesmen feel this way."
"I…need some time to think," Hitomi managed to struggle out and forced a smile. "Why don't you stay for lunch, Leiko?"
"Oh!" She tightened her grip on Armand. "How wonderful."
"Armand, will you please inform Rai that we'll have a guest."
Breaking Leiko's deathlike grip from his arm, Armand gave a shaky smile, "With pleasure, your highness."
"Talking about pleasure…" Leiko gave her best look to Armand who had quickly backed up to the door and left within a blink of an eye.
"Leiko," The older woman turned her attention to her sister. "Armand's into men."
"Seriously? But he's so handsome; he could have any girl he wanted! He could have me for pity's sake."
"He is sinfully into men," Hitomi lied.
Leiko shrugged, "Could be worse, he could be married."
Hitomi could feel her migraine coming back. Though Leiko caused the queen to remember a half-forgotten fact. Armand wasn't hideous looking, his personality was tolerable to a deaf person, and Van said he had been married. So why was a very eligible knight still by himself?
With a twitch of one of her eyebrows, the idea that he really might be into men ran across her mind.
Allen closed his eyes, one leg was propped up on the bed, and the other was over the side. Behind his blue eyes, he played and replayed the lifetime ago when he had been the Prince of Zaibach and proud to be so.
That was before it was washed away in a tide of red and silver, before Dornkirk had-
"Hello, my prince," his blue eyes snapped open at the sound of the voice. Jerking his head to the side, he saw one of the last sights he ever thought he'd see again.
"Naria," Allen whispered, astonished to see the lovely neko on one knee bowing to him. From the golden hair, to the tail swishing behind her Allen couldn't believe who he was seeing. "What are you doing here?"
"I was asked to escort Prince Chid safely back to Asturia."
In other words, Allen thought, climbing to his feet, she was part of the plot.
"Why come see me? What are you really doing here?" With grace only a cat possessed, she drew up to her full height, nearly able to stare the knight directly in the eyes. She had grown into a lovely woman since the last time he had seen her, curves, and her rather revealing outfit gave him a rather detailed image of just how much she had changed.
"I came as a messenger," she smiled, her eyes lighting up with a mischievous glint. "Your sister wishes for you to join her once again."
Allen grimaced, "No."
Naria tipped her head to one side, as if questioning his quick and harsh answer.
"Have you truly forsaken your homeland?" The neko's tale twitched faster as he stared at her.
"...All those people!" Allen screamed at Dornkirk, the woman at the old man's side insisting Allen to be quiet. "You are no better than he is! You knew what he was doing and you still let him -"
The sound of her slap resounded in the main hall. The woman's eyes held a rare fire of anger that burned brightly. "You will not talk to me in that tone, boy."
"I was born in Asturia, Zaibach was a foster land to me," Allen explained calmly.
"I was born there too, but it never was home to me," she purred. "Why do you avoid us, Prince Allen?" She reached through the bars and touched his face. He seemed preoccupied by his thoughts, but her gentle touch jarred him out of his stupor. His eyes grew as he stepped back quickly.
"I'm not Prince Allen anymore. I relinquished my title when I left." Allen clarified, pressing his back to the furthest wall from the bars and the neko. "Tell Serena I have no interest in any type of offer. I am a part of Asturia now."
The neko let a wicked grin cover her mouth, "There won't be an Atsuria much longer, Prince Allen. You've never forgotten us, you still want to be in Zaibach, and soon you will be. Remember that." She bowed, and gave a slight laugh before slinking out of the prison.
Allen let go a breath he had been holding, and dug his fingers in between the stones of the wall. There had to be a way out of here! He had to protect Atsuria! King Aston didn't realize the type of danger he was putting his country in by dealing with Zaibach.
Serena might want to keep Allen alive, but her two right hand men supposedly wouldn't give a second thought to a blood bath of any city. Stratego, the fallen prince, of where it was never said but he was known as the 'fallen prince' who was incredibly cunning and crafty. Then there was Dilandau, the general who had appeared a few years ago and quickly established a reputation as a fiery demon who thirsted for blood.
It was true though, he had never really forgotten about Zaibach. After all, he had been its 'prince' for over ten years. He kept up with the gossip and random bits of news that came from the country. No matter what, he thought somewhat disgusted; he was still worried about the ins and outs of the country.
Especially his sister, he blamed her sad state on those two generals. They had to be at fault. She wouldn't have been-wouldn't have done- it wasn't her fault! But he couldn't go back to her! Not like this! Not while she was still with those two!