xOxOxO
Amelia led Lina to a meager side room, what had likely once been a closet repurposed for some desperate servant. Like everything else in Ruvinagald Castle, it was dark and slightly moldy even with an ample window. Its only furnishings were a pallet bed, a rickety chair, and a newfangled mechanical clock that ticked and whirred. More importantly, the sorcerer corps of Seyruun had reinforced it with a powerful magical barrier to soundproof the conversations within.
Amelia closed the door behind her and walked to one corner, standing with her hands clasped. Lina watched her warily.
"My grandfather," Amelia announced, "has passed away."
"Amelia…" Lina's voice pitched low, unsteady. "Figured it was something like that," she muttered. "Um...I'm sorry."
"It's all right. He was so sick for so long." The palace had never discouraged the popular perception that Eldoran was catatonic, rather than suffering in the grip of a vicious dementia that even Seyruun's best healers could only postpone. His piercing blue eyes, the same rare blue as Amelia's own, hadn't recognized his granddaughter in more than three years. "That's currently the closest secret in the world," she added. "It won't be announced until Daddy and I are within Seyruun's borders.
"The funeral will occur once we arrive in Seyruun. Following a one-month mourning period, my father will be crowned king, and his successor named. And so..." Amelia took a deep breath. She was ready for this moment. She'd rehearsed these words so many times, but hadn't anticipated how it would feel to say them out loud. "I need you to find my sister and bring her home in time for the coronation. Because if she's not home…"
The implication lingered in the air. Lina looked at her as though she'd grown a second head.
"A-Amelia?"
"Bring my sister home," Amelia said again. "She has to be there, so she can be crowned."
Lina stammered something that wasn't a word. She stepped back, both hands alternately clutching and clawing, her discomfort arcing out through her fingers. In any other situation it might have been satisfying to see the magnificent Lina Inverse so utterly at a loss.
"Why," she managed, weakly. "I don't know why you think that I…"
She was lying. All the cards were finally out on the table and Lina-san was lying, lying to her about one of the most important things in her world. "Lina-san!"
"I just-"
"Lina-san," and Amelia was so full of anguish she could hardly swallow, "do you really think I'm so stupid?"
"What?"
"Do you think I never looked for reports that mention her or the people she traveled with? There are so many," Amelia said, her voice rising sharply, "and they go back years…"
Long ago, months after her return from beyond the depths of death, Amelia had tricked Seyruun's royal academy archivist into giving over some of the most tightly controlled information in the kingdom. Amelia had furtively copied everything she could find about her sister, from the sparse and incoherent letters sporadically sent to their father (sometimes just the words "I'm sorry" on the back of a wanted poster), to the stories of a red-headed loudmouth always at her side. It had been impossible to forget the sickening discovery of who that loudmouth had to be. She'd vomited right then and there over catalog records and rare parchments, her cover blown, and since then anything about Gracia had disappeared from the public archives altogether.
"For so long I thought...if I was with you, then maybe…maybe you, or maybe she... " She deliberately stuck out her jaw to keep it from trembling. The old matron Marjan had taught her that trick as part of her princessly etiquette: proper princesses, Marjan said, did not beg, faint, or cry, even if they were about to break. At the moment Amelia felt very much that she would.
"...but you never said anything."
Lina leaned against the opposite wall. She might as well have been on the other side of the Demon Sea.
"She never talked about her family," she said, unintentionally swiping that nasty fact like a poniard into Amelia's heart. Amelia had thought about it for years. Of course it made sense that Gracia would keep her identity a secret. But to never bring up a sister, not once? Then again, Lina almost never spoke of her sister, either, and talked about her home even less. Did they just...not care about their loving families? No! No! She loves us, she wants to come home!
"...I didn't know for the longest time."
"But when you did-"
"That's not...it wasn't…" Lina dug and scratched at the side of her head with the instinctive frustration of a trapped animal. Amelia knew Lina's least favorite situations, aside from anything slug-related, were those that couldn't be resolved with explosions or quick wits. "That's not for me to tell. If she had wanted-"
Something selfish and resentful welled up within Amelia, something that had silently borne every burden for years while a certain someone did whatever she wanted, no matter how much it hurt everyone else. Her royal comportment, already wavering, collapsed at last. "What about what I want?!" she cried, blazing with anger, setting off ripples in the barrier shielding the room around them. "You know how much I want to see her again! I knew you always liked her more, but do I really mean that much less?!"
It was the sort of low blow that people who loved each other weren't supposed to inflict, and even as she wrestled with her pain Amelia immediately wished she could take it back. She knew the answer to her unfair question wasn't 'yes'. But somewhere in there was a glimpse of a painful truth that now lay raw and half-exposed between them. Her beloved sister and dearest friend had a bond with which Amelia could never compete.
"W-who says anybody likes that bimbo at all?!" Lina shot back, losing her cool. "Do you know how much crap I've carried over the years because she wouldn't grow up? If I didn't care, this dumb mess would be a lot easier!"
"So bring her home," Amelia said through grit teeth. "Please, Lina-san."
Lina crossed her arms and turned around, her cape making a crisp whoosh behind her. Outside the sky seemed frozen at midnight. "In a month, maybe two? Even if I could..." she trailed off. When she spoke again, it was softer, hesitant, almost sorrowful; it was all the proof Amelia needed that Lina truly did care in her own reluctant way. But it's not the same.
"It won't be what you want. She's not like that."
How would she know? It couldn't be true: Gracia would come home and take the throne, as was her duty as crown princess. She was out training, that was all, just like Amelia went out into the world to train and become stronger. Gracia would come home. Gracia wanted to come home. Keep believing!
"Please," Amelia repeated. The mechanical clock ticked loudly, its cogs churning against her heartbeat. "I'll pay anything…"
For a moment it seemed the sorceress had a ready retort, but it never came. Lina simply made a clenching gesture that dispelled the barrier and stalked out. The door slammed brutally behind her.
xOxOxO
Zelgadis had been on edge as soon as the courier arrived and his apprehension had only grown with every passing second. By the time Lina came back down the stairs (approximately three years later, it felt like) he had ranked and run through every conceivable scenario ten times each.
"Lina-"
"You handle it," she snapped, elbowing past the guards and shoving Zelgadis aside.
"Handle what? What's going on?"
"I said handle of it," Lina said again, showing no apparent interest in elaborating, "because I can't." She was somehow both sour and solemn: unusually serious, and mad about it. Her uncommonly agitated expression would have made the hairs on the back of Zelgadis's neck stand up, had they not been made of wire. "Gourry! Time for a power nap. We need to pack up and get out of here before sunrise."
Gourry, unlike Zelgadis, didn't mind operating without context. He was cautious by nature, but his trust in Lina was absolute. "Where are we going? Is Amelia okay?"
"Don't know, not my problem."
Not your problem, maybe- Just as Zelgadis was about to shout after them, he felt a familiar heavy hand on his shoulder accompanied by the smell of salmon. "Where the hell have you been?" asked Eogre. "We've got work to do. Let's go."
"Work" was occurring in a dining room reinforced with magic barriers, around a long, narrow table where every minister and commander from Seyruun was talking heatedly all at once. Phil sat in the center, looking grim. Hans and Franz stood grumbling in a corner. Through all the animated conversation Zelgadis could pick out some key points: Phil and Amelia needed to return home as soon as possible (bad), under some pretense (bad), and ideally separately to ensure their safety (very bad). But at least he didn't hear the word coup or invasion, which gave him some hope that the worst possible situations had not occurred. When he heard some speculation about what Prince Christopher was up to, he had a pretty good guess about what had occurred.
No wonder Phil looked so dour. Then again, Phil sometimes seemed that way regardless. Zelgadis had the sense that for all his exuberance, the towering, hairy meatloaf of a man didn't necessarily enjoy being a ruler. He couldn't see how this changed anything for Phil, who had been regent for more than seven years. Amelia, on the other hand…
Amelia. Would that make her Crown Princess Amelia? Would she become the crown princess of the most influential kingdom on the continent, if not the charted world? There were a lot of important things he had to focus on, so of course the only thing Zelgadis could think of was that he had once run off carrying the world's most powerful man into a sewer, and zipped the world's most powerful woman into a giant star costume.
Handle it, Lina had said. "It" not just being Amelia, of course, but the entire knotty nightmare of Seyruun's royals and their deadly, obsessive lust for power. Only a first-rate deviant with a twisted, calculating mind could keep up with the rate of scheming in and around the palace...a first-rate professional deviant who can use a sword, and ought to be pretty good with magic, too...
He forced himself out of it. "It's two weeks if you take the fastest route," the defense minister was saying, "and if you take the backroads, closer to four. I would formally recommend keeping Princess Amelia off of the main roads. When word gets out, and it will, she'll be a target."
Two to four weeks with a dead king and Phil and Amelia outside Seyruun? Absolutely not. Even if Prince Christopher had renounced his claim to the throne before, there was no guarantee he wouldn't try it again. Zelgadis looked around all the squabbling, snarling men in the musty room and realized he trusted no one in it other than Phil himself. No doubt plenty of them were already planning to use the interregnum for their own ambitions.
There has to be a way, Zelgadis thought, and quickly realized there was. "There's no need," Zelgadis interrupted. "We can get them both back in two days without anybody seeing."
Everyone stopped to stare at him. Phil raised his stupendous monobrow.
"I know a golden dragon," he clarified, "and she can make the trip in two days with enough dandelion and cimarrón tea."
Franz gave him a blank look. "I don't understand anything about your life," he said.
Neither did Zelgadis, honestly, but he didn't have time to worry about that. Filia had been none too pleased about a late-night wakeup call informing her she had a job to do. But Zelgadis had been waiting with an itemized list of every time she'd dragged them around on inconvenient errands, and moreover, all of Seyruun was depending on her. He knew the best way to work Filia was to appeal to her theatrical impulses (and her considerable ego).
He had tried to tell Amelia too, only to be coldly informed by the guard outside her room that she would see no one but her father. "Well, tell her to be at the stables by five, then," he'd replied, trying to ignore an irrational pinprick of resentment. He'd been here this time, damn it, and she'd wanted Lina of all people. No, that conversation hadn't been about emotional support, he was certain. No one could ever be that desperate.
The departing parties headed out several hours later, packing up at the stables just outside the diplomatic quarter. Night still held fast in the capital. The scene had a strangely surreal quality, or maybe it just seemed that way to Zelgadis. Lina and Gourry, the world's proudest pedestrians who only ever rushed to the dining room table, were hurriedly loading up a pair of horses. Phil and Filia regarded each other with puzzlement and suspicion, while Amelia stood off to the side, her expression a hollow facsimile of cheery Amelia-ness.
Zelgadis went to Lina, whose skinny feet didn't reach anywhere near the stirrups. "Should we expect to see you again soon?" he asked, because conventional goodbyes were clearly off the table for some reason.
"Don't know, not my problem," Lina said again, only half-listening. Her eyes glinted with a hardness that made him want to back away for his own safety.
"That's fine. I'll take care of it."
This stopped her. Lina glanced down at him, then up again towards the horizon where a faint yellow smudge hinted at approaching daybreak. "I guess that is kinda your thing now, huh?"
"More or less."
She gave him a bleak, joyless smile. "Everything comes full circle eventually," she mused. "You can only run in one direction for so long."
Yes, that's how circles work, Zelgadis thought, and might have said it out loud if the whole thing hadn't already felt so profoundly alien. He just nodded and watched her go. Gourry followed after her, humming something imprecise. Before they could get very far they were flagged down by Zangulus, wearing only a pair of slacks and old boots. He held out his sword in a hearty bandit's salute, the gesture equivalent of a rousing toast delivered with particularly vulgar swear words.
"Hey, Gourry! Keep practicing-next time!"
Gourry just gave him an enthusiastic wave as he passed. Zangulus held his sword aloft, then sheathed it. He caught Zelgadis's eye and approached him.
"And here I thought I had the time alone to train. But everybody's headed out, eh?"
"Something like that," Zelgadis said, and moved several steps counterclockwise so that Zangulus had to turn back. Phil and Amelia were both in cloaks for what little good it would do. The last thing he needed was for everyone to know the king and princess of Seyruun had taken off before sunup.
"Say, I just remembered something you said years ago," Zangulus went on, watching as Gourry and Lina set off down the road. "You said 'it's a mystery to me why people with so much talent can seem to be so empty inside'. Do you remember that? You were talking about them."
The conversation came back to him in vague shades. Zelgadis had only been trying to describe Gourry by way of Lina because their behaviors were so erratic; the more he thought of it, the less sense it made. "I said a lot of things back then," Zelgadis said, remembering another embarrassing line about unbreakable bonds. Back then he'd tried so hard to be profound that he ended up sounding silly. He didn't know whether he had been particularly juvenile at the time, or if constantly cringing at your past was just a natural function of getting older. "Being talented has nothing to do with being happy or mature."
"You're right. I was thinking they don't seem empty at all to me, you know?" He swept hair out of his eyes and looked out after Gourry and Lina with something like satisfaction. "Anyway, I suppose I'll see you around, unless I end up in prison for cutting down a room full of sugar lobbyists."
Zangulus shrugged, since he and Zelgadis were not on saluting terms, and went back his own way. Zelgadis was left to contemplate the other's words. Lina was still a snappy walking papercut with a hair trigger and looking more unsettled than he'd ever seen her, but Zangulus was right: there was something different about her. Or was it Gourry? Was it both of them? Their rhythm had changed somehow in a way that could transcend their circumstances. It was the only thing about his friends that didn't seem artificial right now. Maybe that was why Gourry was calm as always, even as Lina looked ready to tear up a monster army with her pointed little fangs. He recalled that he hadn't seen any sign of the Thing that had bedeviled her for so long, and wondered at it.
Behind him, a glittering pillar of light briefly cast all of Ruvinagald in a brilliant golden glow. Filia had transformed and was hunched over in the clearing by the stables, where she'd petrified an unsuspecting herd of fainting goats. "If you want to stay discreet, we'd better leave now! I don't want to pick javelins out of my hide!"
Zelgadis sighed. The secret to his friends' unexplained serenity would have to get in line behind everything else he didn't have time for. He was beginning to understand why knights had squires.
xOxOxO
They were more than halfway to Seyruun by nightfall when Filia had to stop and rest. Not wanting to be seen in the nearby towns, they settled at the top of a gorge, where scrubby clusters of green bushes ran alongside the river bank. It was growing late, but not so late that Amelia and her father couldn't take part in that time-honored tradition of daddy-daughter bonding: martial arts.
Piles of weatherbeaten boulders were strewn around the gorge's mouth, pushed to the edge by millennia of water and relentless winds. They're about to meet something much stronger, Amelia thought. She could tell that Zelgadis thought this indiscreet and unwise, but he must have decided confronting either of them was even less wise, because he left them alone and went to sit near Filia, passed out next to a bush.
Phil dropped into a low horse-riding stance, and Amelia lowered down alongside him. They began striking at the rocks. Punch, punch, punch, back-hand strike. Punch, punch, punch, jab-punch. Amelia wanted to savor how nice it was to train beside her father again, but couldn't. She could barely focus over the maelstrom of emotion ready to boil over within her. Worse yet, her father didn't seem bothered in the slightest. She didn't know what to say or how she would even go about saying it, and there was nothing for them to do except level the rocks around them into sparkling gravel as darkness fell.
More than an hour went by before she worked up the nerve to say anything at all. Somehow, the instant she opened her mouth, he was ready to speak instead.
"Look at your knuckles! Good for you, training so hard!" He laughed, his signature escalating hah-hah-hah that seemed to involve his entire lungs.
Amelia looked down at the backs of her hands and saw they were barely pink and bloodied. Why didn't you send an army to find Gracia? she wanted to say. What came out was: "Sometimes I train with the demolition corps. When Zelgadis-san is around he lets me practice sparring, even though he's not very good." On the other side of the gorge, Amelia saw Zelgadis pull his cowl hard over his ears and, perhaps finding it insufficient, try again with Filia's hat.
"He tried to kill me once," Phil said brightly, evidently enjoying the memory. "Boom, a Flare Arrow straight to the head! And a good one, too! Would've burned my face off if I hadn't jumped out of the way! Do you remember that?"
Of course she remembered; unlike Phil, Amelia found no happiness in it. Among all the pains in her life, nothing came close to those awful few days when she'd believed her father had been murdered. She'd despaired that her miserable family was doomed to be one long, grisly chain of violence and greed that would never end until they were all dead. Only Lina-san's steadfastness had kept her from giving in to absolute heartbreak.
Why didn't you stop them from naming a new successor? "Please don't be hard on Zelgadis-san," she said. "He just thought I was in danger."
"Yes," Phil agreed. "I know."
There was nothing else to be said on that front, or so Amelia thought, but he wasn't finished.
"And what a good idea to take the dragon-lady, eh? We'll be in Seyruun tomorrow and can get to work before the ministers even know we left. Won't they be surprised!"
He laughed again, and for an instant Amelia feared he was insane; she supposed this was how other people felt about dealing with Phil most of the time. How could he say "get to work" like he wouldn't be burying his father? Where was the worry for his missing eldest daughter, the future queen of Seyruun?
Daddy, what are you doing? she wanted to shout, but her emotions ran up against a lifetime of obedience and hero-worship.
"You're right," Amelia said, resigned. "It's going to be a big day. I think I'll get some rest."
Amelia went back towards the camp, hands balled in fists and head down so that not even the owls and foxes could see her stinging eyes. Being had begun to feel very hard. As she walked she thought how it would be so nice to just fade into the ether for a little while. Had she looked up she might have caught herself before walking straight into the only person who could.
"Oh dear. What is it, Amelia-san?"
Amelia braced both her palms against a gray cloak that smelled of milk. She looked up at Xellos's uncannily bland, placid features, his expression impenetrable as ever.
"X-Xellos-san…?" she stuttered as she drew back. Xellos held her elbows lightly. She could have pulled away, but didn't; the real grip was the knowledge that he could tear her apart atom by atom with an unfinished thought.
"What is it, Amelia-san?" he asked, his voice kind. He gave her a neutral smile, accompanied by a sensation like dead tongues lapping at the back of her eyeballs. The familial sadness in her heart seemed to stretch open into a gaping wound. Every sad and anxious pang metastasized into a cascade of sorrows, all the raw suffering of crying without any of the catharsis.
But, she thought, wincing as the pain all but engulfed her, I'm not going to cry, especially not in front of Xellos-san.
"Thank you for your concern," she managed, half-panting, perfectly aware that concern was not anywhere on his mind. Her upbringing had prepared her well for the kinds of ritual politenesses that Xellos enjoyed. "Fencing with flowers", her protocol teacher called it. "But I'll be okay. I have someone I can talk to."
He released her arms. The nightmarish astral tongues were gone, and she assumed he was sated. For now. Amelia thought she and Xellos had a moderately amiable relationship, better than cordial, but not warm ("warmth" and "mazoku" being irreconcilable concepts). Of everyone Amelia had ever met, only Xellos's sweet tooth rivaled her own. But no amount of comradely conversation or shared slices of pie could make him other than what he was. Every time she survived an encounter with Xellos it was simply because he didn't benefit from the alternative. Amelia never forgot there might come a day when that ceased to be the case.
"How good to hear," he replied. "It's quite surprising to see the princess of Seyruun out by herself late at night, looking so distraught."
"I'm surprised to see you, too. You said you were very busy closer to the coast. Have you finished all your work out there?"
Xellos raised both eyebrows at her and smirked, and Amelia saw the inimitable pride of a bureaucrat who had slacked their way up the ladder. "In a manner of speaking. I suppose we're both moving on to bigger things."
Bigger things? Amelia would much rather think about his problems than her own, which was a terrible sign. "Yes, we are," she said, and tilted her chin up with royal dignity.
"Beware the snake!" shrieked a high-pitched woman's voice in the distance. Xellos's lips curled down in a crimped horseshoe, full of distaste.
"I think that's my cue to go," Amelia ventured.
"As a matter of fact, Amelia-san, I was just thinking the same thing myself."
xOxOxO
That night the plateau boasted endless stars, a gently burbling river, a legendary magical chimera and a dragon sleeping under the moon. It might have been something out of an epic fantasy, if not for the ridiculous way the chimera cowered under a curious hat and the dragon snoring so powerfully that nearby bugs got caught in her noisy intake.
Zelgadis held his cowl and Filia's two-piece hat over his head as tightly as he could. As soon as Phil started talking he had been frantic not to hear, but there was no such thing as not hearing Phil even if you had ordinary ears. Not that they'd said anything very personal or interesting (Phil didn't seem too angry about the near-miss with the Flare Arrow). Against his better judgment, Zelgadis had been taken by their tones. Phil sounded so at ease, even jovial, while Amelia's voice was the sound of rushing water under a frozen surface, a thin veneer of calm threatening to break. It was one of those conversations where what wasn't said mattered even more than what was. But what wasn't being said eluded him entirely.
Zelgadis sat meditating on this under the tranquil moonlight, thinking idly about what he might say to Amelia when she was ready and the many unknowns that awaited them in Seyruun. Filia's unhinged snores aside, the peace of a late summer evening made it easier to reflect. Naturally it couldn't last.
"Beware the snake!" Filia shouted, pitching forward unexpectedly and smacking Zelgadis across the face with her left hand. He fell over backwards into the hard ground as she sat up. "Oh! Oh dear, I'm sorry, I just...Zelgadis-san, why are you wearing my hat?"
He couldn't think of an explanation that wasn't embarrassing, so he wordlessly handed it back to her. More embarrassing still was the white cap, now torn and slit with holes where his wiry hair had stabbed through. "Uh, I'll buy you a new one."
She gave him a long-suffering sigh. "Zelgadis-san, I had a holy prophecy," she said loftily, pausing for effect. A fat cricket with no sense of dramatic timing let out a trill.
"What was it?"
"I saw a snake biting the bare breast of a powerful woman, possibly a queen," she declared. "She was imposing and ruled half the world! Whatever do you think it means?"
"It means you went to the classical art museum in Ruvinagald," Zelgadis said, and her bright blush confirmed his suspicions. Snakes biting women on the breast weren't very original as far as metaphors went. Still, nothing good ever came from Filia's dreams. Her believing in them was bad enough. "You should go back to sleep. We still have a ways to go before we reach Seyruun."
"Oh...but it felt so real, I was sure of it." Filia sighed and resumed her sleeping position, an elongated C-shape that was one of the clearest hints to her not-quite-human status. She propped her head on her hands and closed her eyes. "Or it's the tea," she added sheepishly. "I've had the strangest dreams since the Cosmopolitan Tea Traders began sourcing their black teas from Calakmul."
Zelgadis had already tuned her out before her words had registered. It belatedly jolted his brain. "What did you say?"
Filia opened one eye. "What?"
"What did you say? Where is Calakmul?" Zelgadis was too irritated to moderate his aggression. Of course Filia would know things about tea that no one else would. Another clue to a mystery had been right under his nose, if only he bothered to ask. You've made your point, universe. Just as important was the prospect that he might be proven right about something with the other knights. Or they're right, and I'm an idiot-
"Zelgadis-san, you told me to sleep," she pointed out.
"Never mind that!"
She squinted at him and sat up again, obviously unsure what to make of this uncharacteristic enthusiasm about her interests. "Well, it's on the western continent. It's straight northwest of that island Calliope, in fact. I don't know what it is, but over the past few months it's started to taste like…"
Filia stopped and sniffed the air, once, twice, then three times. "Zelgadis-san, do you smell garbage?"