Chapter Forty-eight: Distant Souls
Something had finally gone right.
With a single piece of bloodstained paper, Durbe had managed to sow the seeds of suspicion among the other lords and place the blame for Heartland's disappearance solely on Ilya. He didn't know whether it was true that his village had been offered as a sacrifice for something, or whether any of the lords had murdered their predecessors, though he had reason to believe it had happened. It was a risky play, but the payoff was better than Durbe could have hoped for. Ilya was now the one faced with failure and Polara was on edge that there might be more going on in their ranks than she thought. He doubted it would have gone so smoothly had Vector or Alasco been at the meeting.
Mizael sat alone at the back of the library at Arclight, hunched over the journal he took from Kaito, half a dozen maps spread around him. His human form was always so easy to read – he bit his lower lip and fiddled with the ornament in his hair when he was anxious – but there was an added layer of exhaustion in his shadowed eyes.
"How did it go?"
Durbe sat next to Mizael and pulled a map closer. Judging by the geopolitical boundaries etched in faded ink, it was at least three hundred years old, and the corners flaked off in his fingers. "It worked."
Mizael rested his forehead on the palm of his hand and closed his eyes. "Even Alasco bought it?"
"No," Durbe mused, peering at the tiny scrawls on the map, accented with Mizael's equally tiny scrawls. "Vector and Alasco were missing. But if they were there, Alasco would have accused the two of us of plotting treason for the nine hundredth time and Vector would have convinced the others to take control of Tenjo or Arclight or both from me. The blame for everything from last year's Baria Crystal shortage to Alasco's favorite hunting dog having a sneezing fit would have been placed squarely on my shoulders."
The corners of Mizael's mouth twitched. "How I would love to see Alasco's face when he finds out he was right about us the whole time."
He's not right about everything. "Your face is pale again. How are you feeling?"
As quickly as the smile appeared, it was gone. Mizael wiped his forehead with his sleeve. "I was getting dizzy and hot again in my body."
Durbe reached over and brushed Mizael's hair from his sweat-soaked forehead. "How long have you felt like this?"
Mizael muttered something that sounded vaguely like "a few days."
"Mizael-"
"Don't take out that knife again, Durbe," Mizael said softly, grabbing Durbe's wrist.
Durbe thought they had cured Mizael, but clearly some of the poison lingered in Mizael's body. "You should have told me. Immediately."
"And force me to drink more of your blood?" Mizael exhaled slowly. "I won't do it."
"You're of no use to me dead."
Mizael arched an eyebrow. "Well, neither are you."
Durbe pulled off his glasses and rubbed his face. "Fine. Don't revert into your body for a few days. If it doesn't get better by then, I will tie you to the bed and force it down your throat."
"I didn't know you were into that."
Durbe resisted rolling his eyes with effort. "Don't be difficult."
"Then don't coddle me."
He wasn't here to bicker with Mizael, good-natured or no. He was concerned; if Mizael became sick again, there wasn't a chance they could complete their goals. They had so much to accomplish and no time. "Have you discovered anything about the legend?"
Mizael placed his hand to his facial markings, which stood out more than usual against his pale skin. "Durbe, I think I figured out why no one has ever come close to finding the Dragon." He looked at Durbe with an expression of curiosity. "The legend isn't universal. I don't… think it's even a legend."
"I don't understand."
Mizael pulled Kaito's journal closer and pointed at a small portion of one stanza.
The broken soul,
A weary warrior approaches the Mountain of the Gods
Seeking penance, offering a soul with his blood.
"It's a prophecy," Mizael explained. "This isn't about just anyone. It's about a broken soul. Offering his soul with blood. And when he wields his sword…"
Durbe was barely aware of Mizael's hand gripping his or of Mizael's other hand lifting the sleeve of Durbe's robes. "He will strike down the kings and a new king will be born."
"It's about us." Mizael ran his hand down Durbe's arm, the scar from that fateful night in the library long since faded, but a new one had taken its place. "I'm the broken soul. I offered myself to you with my blood. My life, my loyalty, and… I would… if…" He turned his head, hand releasing Durbe's so it could play with the ornament in his hair again. "If you ask… my soul is yours, Durbe."
Durbe had known all along – they both had – but hearing the words spoken out loud made it real. And it wasn't fair, that they could have this and be unable to act on it. But if the other lords thought it was happening already, and simple rumor could ruin them… wouldn't it be worth it, lest they lose this chance forever? "Mizael," he said in a soft voice, wrapping his fingers around the hand playing with the dangling ornament, "what if-"
The door opened, and Durbe was glad that he and Mizael had taken up their research in the back of the library, hidden from view of the door. It gave them enough time to situate themselves a professional distance from the other and clear their expressions of pathetic longing before the servant rounded a bookcase and handed Durbe a note, Durbe's name written on the outside in slanted letters.
"From Lady Pherka," he said, bowing deeply before scurrying off.
Durbe waited until the servant was gone before he ripped open the letter. "It's been half an hour, what the hell could possibly have-"
Stadium is on fire. Rebels attempting to break into the palace. Can't contact Vector. Need assistance doing so. –Pherka
With a sigh, Durbe tossed the letter on the table. Mizael glanced at it and shook with silent laughter.
"It's not funny," Durbe said irritably.
"Charming, how they need help, can't get a hold of Vector, and inform you that they need you to find him," Mizael said, making notations in the journal. "You should ask them to just slap you in the face next time."
Durbe's powers were vastly inferior to those of the other lords; that was no secret. He couldn't exactly help it, either. Growing up in a place like Sargasso, where Baria Crystal was practically nonexistent, stunted his growth in many ways. But the other lords rarely reminded him of this fact. Not like this. "I'll be back in a few minutes."
"You're not going to help them, are you?" Mizael half-turned in his chair.
"We can't let Heartland fall to the rebels," Durbe muttered, grabbing the note again. "I'm just going to pass along this message to Lord Vector and I'll be right back."
The paper they had acquired from the library was tucked deep into Akari's pack as they boarded the ship bound for home – for Arclight, Akari reminded herself, because she was leaving her home again – but Chris wasn't relieved that they were leaving. Nor was he relieved when the ship's captain informed them that Lord Alasco had decided at the last minute that he wasn't going to be joining them. In fact, if she didn't know better, she'd say he was disappointed. Akari couldn't figure that out, either; she was ecstatic that she wasn't going to have to listen to Alasco tell her stories about how gullible and foolish her father had been in trusting a Barian. And she was certainly glad she wouldn't be forced to watch Alasco reenact her father's murder for the fourth time.
A light drizzle fell on the deck as the ship departed from the pier. It was a cold rain; late spring in the north was much different than it was south of the mountains. It didn't seem to bother Chris. He stood on the deck, arms crossed and eyes narrowed at the trees lining the river ahead of them. When she asked what was bothering him, he simply told her she should go below deck and get some sleep.
She went below deck, but she did not sleep. Instead, she rummaged around in her personal belongings and pulled the paper out. Chris was on edge, and had been since Vector had found them in the library. Akari still didn't understand why a page of Dragoon genealogy had anything to do with Kaito; half the page was blotted out, anyway. There was something vaguely familiar about the family surname, which wasn't Tenjo. But then, from the little Chris had told her, one of Kaito's female ancestors had been from the Astral Kingdom before moving to the Tenjo kingdom and marrying into the royal family. Her family name would have been different from Tenjo.
"I can't believe I'm even entertaining this idea," she muttered, thrusting the crumpled paper back into her pack. "Only nobles marry royalty." She fiddled absently with her thin wedding band. What if Kaito's ancestor had been kidnapped and forced to be married? Things like that happened. Even to Dragoons, probably. Except even Dragoon children were taught how to kill from the time they could walk, or so she'd heard, and she doubted a Dragoon woman of marriageable age would be taken captive and forced to marry a noble from a distant kingdom without putting up a fight.
She threw herself onto the bed and glared at the roof of the cabin. Her stomach sloshed uncomfortably; she still hadn't gotten used to the rocking motion of the ship. Something seemed to be happening on the deck, as well. Alongside the sound of rain that was now steadily pattering against the porthole and deck, feet pounded on the creaky wooden beams. More feet than belonged to the small crew of this ship.
She sat up slowly and strained her ears to hear the muffled voices above, but she couldn't make out clear words. Her father had once told her and Yuma stories of river pirates attacking cargo ships, but this… wasn't a cargo ship. It was far too small to be a cargo ship, and if it was river pirates, they would know the difference, right?
Cautiously, she climbed off the bed, slipping off her boots to minimize the noise, and climbed the short staircase to the cabin door.
"…promised he would be here," a voice was hissing.
"They very well may have lied to us. After all, they have been working with them all this time," another, much calmer, voice responded.
Akari frowned, ear pressed to the door. They were promised who would be here? Who were they?
"What do we do with them? We can't just leave now or it will be suspicious."
"I'm sure we can find some use for the future king and queen of Arclight." The voice sounded amused.
Her heart pounded as she slowly descended the staircase. She didn't know whether they were pirates or assassins or kidnappers, but any way she looked at it, they seemed to be in even more trouble than before.
Knitting was… relaxing. Vector was dreadful at it, but the repetitive motions gave him something to do while he pondered things. He didn't feel like opening Pherka's letter, because it was doubtless some kind of nagging reminder that he should come to meetings and how the lords were supposed to be a unanimous council, which we can't do if one or more of our lords is consistently absent from meetings. That, or the city was burning to the ground, and Vector couldn't really be bothered to deal with that sort of thing at the moment. Not when he was only halfway through a scarf for darling Miza.
The door to the reading chambers opened. "Vector."
"Durbie." Vector sighed. "What brings you to my humble abode?"
Durbe stopped abruptly in front of Vector's settee and wordlessly thrust out a piece of paper. Vector glanced at it and rolled his eyes before returning to his knitting. "You can set it with the other one I didn't read." He held up the lump of yarn that vaguely resembled a scarf. "Do you think Miza would look good in this shade of yellow or should I try a nice goldenrod to accent his hair?"
"You have responsibilities," Durbe said curtly, dropping the letter in front of Vector.
"Yes, I know, but the commemorative day when Miza's parents brought forth their deformed monster son into the world is coming up soon and I really wanted to finish his present first." At Durbe's set jaw and clenched fists, Vector sighed and set aside his project. "I'm not leaving for anything less than the world ending."
"Heartland City is on fire." Durbe's eyes lingered on a small portrait on the fireplace mantel. Vector waited for him to ask why he had the Tsukumo family's portrait – it was a nice portrait, and gave Vector so much inspiration, seeing how tightknit and happy the family had once been before half the family died and the other half ended up thrown in the middle of a conflict they wanted nothing to do with (Akari being forced to wed Lord Christopher must have been a fate worse than death, Vector decided) – but Durbe apparently decided that the issue of the Heartland Kingdom going down in flames was somewhat more important at the moment. "Rebels are trying to break into the palace. Pherka and Ilya request your assistance."
Ugh. Vector dragged a clawed finger down his face. "Why can't you do it?"
"You'll have to ask Pherka." Durbe turned to leave, but Vector wasn't about to let Durbe get out of this one.
"Have you used that map I gave you yet?"
Durbe cast a glare laden with suspicion at Vector. "What did you expect me to do with the prince and his friends are at the Dragoon Shrine, Vector?"
"Oh, I don't know, maybe…" Vector held out his hands and shrugged. "Go after them?"
"Of course," Durbe said tonelessly. "I'll get right on that."
"Sarcasm doesn't suit you, you know." Vector examined his nails, uneven around the edges. They needed a good manicure again.
"The Shrine is warded, as you very well know, or you would have gone after them yourself." Durbe crossed his arms.
"Which didn't stop you from decimating the Dragoon Village all those years ago." It was the one piece of Durbe's puzzle that Vector couldn't put together. The Barians had tried for centuries to get into the village, and Durbe had managed to make it look easy, effectively destroying it overnight. "Can't you just do… whatever it was you did that time?"
"It took years of planning," Durbe said in a quiet voice after a moment of silence. "Which, in case you hadn't noticed, I do not have. Good day."
Vector let him go and returned to his knitting, which he wanted to finish up with before going to Heartland. One of these days, he would figure out how Durbe managed to singlehandedly scheme up the demise of the Dragoon race. "But then," he whispered with a giggle, "you've already got quite the juicy backstory, haven't you, Durbiekins?"
It rained for two days.
Rain usually wasn't a problem for Kaito; back home, he welcomed rain. It brought relief to farmers and provided respite from the heat in the southern parts of the kingdom. But climbing up a steep mountainside with torrents of water cascading down the same rocks he was trying to climb while turning the dirt into a thick mud that that sucked his boots in like quicksand was a nightmare. Not to mention that this northern mountain rain was frigid, though it was approaching late spring. It made what should have been a half-day trek last four times as long, and with nothing dry enough to catch fire, he was certain he was going to get sick from the exposure to the cold. Nothing edible even grew this far up this time of the year except juniper berries, and Kaito pried at least four ticks from his drenched clothing. He was frozen to the bone, starving, exhausted, and filthy, and the Kamishiros owed him for this.
When he reached the rather flat summit, he leaned against a scraggly fir and grimaced. His chest was throbbing again, but whether it was from the exertion of climbing the mountain or an onset of a lung affliction, he didn't know. All he cared about was getting inside next to a fire with a hot meal as soon as possible and out of these wet clothes.
He didn't even set foot on the bottom stair leading up into the Shrine before a cloakless Yuma Tsukumo blocked his path, a sword aimed at Kaito's throat.
Even if he had the energy to draw his sword, he wasn't sure his numb fingers would have been able to hold the hilt properly. He stood there as Yuma, sopping hair plastered to his red face, unsheathed Kaito's sword and tossed it onto a stair behind him like he was dropping a viper.
"Why are you here?" Yuma's soft voice lacked any force, despite the steadiness with which he held the sword.
"I needed to talk to Prince Astral and the Dragoons," Kaito said wearily.
He didn't miss Yuma's slight flinch. "About?"
"None of-" He grimaced as the edge of Yuma's sword pressed into the side of his neck and decided not to finish his sentence. "Let me inside. It's freezing."
"Not until you tell me why you're here."
"I told you-" Kaito began through gritted teeth.
"And I told you, my lord, not until you tell me why."
He didn't know Yuma well, only from their brief few meetings, but this behavior was uncharacteristically more like Ryoga than it was Yuma. "My kingdom has fallen to the Barians."
The sword loosened slightly, just as a woman said Yuma's name in a high-pitched voice and the Healer woman – Kotori – arrived behind Kaito from the grounds of the Shrine with the wild woman Cathy at her side.
Yuma's attention shifted, his expression solemn as Kotori gently pushed the sword away from Kaito's neck. "Why were you outside, Kotori? It's freezing."
"We were…" Kotori looked down, eyes filling with tears.
"Putting flowers on top of the place where Rio's body is becoming one with the earth again," Cathy supplied helpfully.
Yuma flinched again and Kotori buried her face in her hands and hurried up the stairs into the Shrine. Kaito's mind reeled. "Rio's… body?" Could it be true that Ryoga was now the sole living Dragoon?
"She died almost half a moon ago," Cathy said, looking down at her feet. She alone seemed unfazed by the frigid rain, but from what Kaito had gathered about her a few weeks ago, she had lived in the northern mountains for her entire life. She was probably used to it. "It's very sad." She followed Kotori up the stairs.
Very sad was an understatement; Yuma wiped a stream of water from his face and bit his lip. Rio had been Yuma's friend just the same as Ryoga was – though, Kaito realized with a jolt of realization, Yuma's relationship with Ryoga might have been a bit different – and even though Kaito hadn't known the twins for very long, or had a good relationship with them most of the time, he had considered Rio… not a friend, perhaps, but an ally. But then, maybe a friend. She was always much more polite toward him than Ryoga was, at any rate. Kaito had only ever considered Chris a friend before everything happened. A friend was someone he could trust, as far as he was concerned, and even if he didn't like the Dragoons, he at least trusted them.
And now Rio was dead.
"How?"
"It doesn't matter," Yuma said in a barely audible voice. He failed to sheathe his sword three times before his shaking hand managed to place it in its scabbard. "Get out of the rain."
He turned to follow the women inside but Kaito was still curious. Maybe he shouldn't say anything about it at all, but Rio's time of death at least explained…
"Was it as enjoyable for you as it was for him?"
Yuma's foot froze mid-step.
So he was right. It didn't explain how or why he had felt the entire thing, or why Kaito had apparently gone into a seizure the next morning. He couldn't remember any of it, and he could no longer feel the strange draw he had once felt toward the captain, like ropes pulling him back. But this explained a great deal.
"Damn hypocrite," Kaito muttered. "He had no right to act like the morally superior one when he broke his oaths for another man."
He was about to make a snide comment about how Ryoga felt overwhelming guilt over it the next morning so it must not have been as good as Ryoga had hoped for, but he didn't have the chance before Yuma turned, walked down the stairs back to Kaito, and nailed him in the jaw with his fist.
The force of the blow caught Kaito off-balance as he fell painfully on his back into the frozen mud on the ground, the taste of blood filling his mouth. Yuma's hand grasped the hilt of his sword just as the door to the Shrine opened and Ryoga hurried down the steps in nothing but his nightclothes. As Yuma lifted the sword, face lined in anger and – Kaito knew this look all too well – anguish, Ryoga grabbed him by the wrist.
"That's enough," Ryoga said in a dangerously quiet voice.
Yuma's jaw tightened, but he pried free from Ryoga and stormed back upstairs into the Shrine without another word. Kaito's heart thudded painfully; he was sure from the look in Yuma's eyes that he would have hurt if not killed Kaito had Ryoga not intervened.
"Get up," Ryoga said in that same voice, heading up after Yuma.
"No snarky remark about me being in my rightful place on my back?" Kaito grunted, rolling over onto his knees. "That's unlike you."
There was a complete lack of emotion in the captain's face as he turned back to Kaito. There was something very, very strange happening right now. "You're here, which means you're in trouble again. Get up." He started walking again. "I have much to discuss with you."
The shadow – Black Mist, it called itself – sat cross legged on the end table as Astral sat on the bed with Yuma's cloak in his hands. He didn't want to go through Yuma's pockets, because he knew Yuma kept his journal inside his cloak. It was an invasion of privacy. But Black Mist was right about one thing – Yuma was keeping something from him. Perhaps…
"Why would he write it down if it's a secret?" Astral whispered, fingers tugging at the clasps on the cloak.
Black Mist rolled its eyes. It must have been Astral's imagination, but it seemed Black Mist was becoming more… opaque. Even the green markings on Astral's face were starting to show up on this shadow's face. "What else do you write in journals, Astral? Besides, why would he feel the need to keep something from you in the first place? Aren't you in the same boat? The Kamishiros were half-Barians all along and you can't even trust Yuma anymore… Who can you trust, mmm? If you can't find anything in the journal, maybe you're just being paranoid. Maybe it's all in your head." Black Mist laughed, but it no longer sounded like Astral's voice. It was high-pitched and made Astral shudder.
Reluctantly, he reached into one of the inner pockets. His fingers brushed a leather cord and he pulled out the captain's fang necklace. Astral didn't know why Yuma insisted on keeping it, but the captain was acting odd since that night and it might have been a reminder for Yuma of the captain he had…
Black Mist let out a quiet ah. "Who would Yuma choose to protect if it came down to it? His captain or his prince?"
Astral ignored Black Mist and slipped the necklace back into the pocket. The journal must be in the other-
He pulled his hand back abruptly as a jolt ran through his fingers. There was something else in there, something… but no.
"But yes," Black Mist whispered, and it was now hovering over Astral's shoulder. "Go on, pull it out."
With trembling fingers, Astral reached back into the pocket and pulled out a tiny charm dangling from a thin cord. Astral resisted the urge to drop it and instead lifted it to eye level.
"Isn't that a Barian crest?" Black Mist leaned closer to Astral until it was whispering in his ear. It laughed again. "Now why would Yuma have that?"
