Allora, Magari

by Yeade

Schwann turns out to have been something a little more complicated to Alexei than just a tool to be used and discarded. Raven hadn't wanted to remember at all and reacts badly, but Yuri's not about to let him get away from the rest of them so easily as that, in the name of the brightest star in the night sky.

2. Around (Around and Around)

Warning for non-graphic sexual abuse and violence, with some suicidal ideation and shades of Stockholm syndrome. Alexei missed the PSA about not molesting and coercing traumatized rape victims. He also cares fuck-all for consent, as expected of the man who resuscitates people against their will by sticking a magic weaponized rock in their chests. Don't do as he does, kids! Please read responsibly!

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Allora, Magari

Around (Around and Around)

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Alexei thought long and hard on how to correct Schwann's behavior. First, he decided, he needed to separate this Raven character from Schwann and make it inescapably clear to him that while he was in Zaphias, the uniform of the Imperial Knights, or Alexei's presence, he was Schwann and only Schwann. Though Alexei could do nothing about Don Whitehorse's lax leash on his man, which had gotten Schwann so comfortable in Raven's skin, he could remind Raven that his days were numbered and his guild loyalties to be discarded at Alexei's command. Perhaps then he might give Schwann a reason to want again. Something meaningless that wouldn't threaten his plans or Schwann's place in them.

The former was a simple problem to solve, Alexei felt. He had learned that violence was a persuasive argument where other methods failed, and it would certainly serve him well here, to impress upon Raven that the Empire's hand—Alexei's hand—could always reach him, despite Whitehorse's protection and his cozy little lie of a life in Dahngrest.

When it came to the second, however, Alexei could only hope inspiration struck him once Schwann was made vulnerable and open to suggestion. He'd been trying to reinstill in Schwann some will to live for years now, with the barest modicum of success. Schwann's irrational resistance to his attempts to save the man was... frustrating. Alexei didn't know what it would take to finally break through to him, and he despised his ignorance.

So, Alexei had no choice but to proceed with this scheme of his half incomplete. He started by looking to the Royal Guard for the necessary tools. Amongst the sons and daughters of the nobility advanced into the Commandant's service this past year was a company of wastrels whose conduct Alexei had deemed unbecoming. The Royal Guard was no sinecure for those seeking rank or power enough to lord over others. Devotion to him and his cause was expected, as well as a high standard of training, and that was maintained by weeding out both the unduly ambitious and the small-minded sycophants.

This particular group liked to frequent a tavern, the Spica, in one of the more disreputable areas of the lower quarter when off-duty but still in uniform, the idiots. Each time resulted in a slew of civilian complaints about Knights being drunk and disorderly that would inevitably find their way across Alexei's desk. Accused of all manner of petty crime, from debts owed to public indecency, their files thick with demerits and punishment details, these men were bound for dishonorable discharges.

But what interested Alexei was their personal histories. Three were brothers whose father had died in service during the guild uprising six years ago; another had lost his own brother in the same conflict. Alexei perused Khroma's supplementary records. One was the subject of a minor scandal when his affianced wife jilted him to wed a guildsman of no name, and the families of the rest held financial assets in Tolbyccia that had depreciated with the expansion of guild influence to Capua Torim. All were members of a radical political faction that advocated for higher tariffs, stricter border control, even a resumption of hostilities with the Union before it grew too powerful.

Here was a hatred Alexei could use. Such men could be goaded to violence. And barring the vendors of Fortune's Market, guildsmen were not so common in Zaphias that one would go unseen in the lower quarter, especially if he acted suspiciously or intruded on spaces the locals had claimed as theirs. Now to prepare the stage for scene and players.

Alexei compared the duty roster to the litany of complaints—assigned to the noon patrol, with evening drill, they must have begun a tradition of supping late at a tavern—and jotted down a tally of which members of the company went drinking on which nights over the course of several weeks. There was a core group of four who were regular patrons at the Spica, joined by two more when drill was cut short and their healer on festival days only. He tapped his quill on the paper, ink blotting. The timing would work. Recalling Schwann from Dahngrest was always accompanied by at least a week's travel delay.

In that period, he could mandate extra drill, resentment easier to foster in tired men. A sham mission to decoy Schwann to the right place at the right hour and... Well, he would have to judge the situation as it developed. His involvement should ideally remain obscure, the event believed to be a chance encounter by the participants, but a precaution was needed against Schwann slipping the trap he set. Alexei smiled tightly. Schwann had a weakness he alone could exploit.

When all was in readiness, he had one of his agents in Dahngrest send word to Schwann of a courier mission he was to complete prior to reporting to Alexei upon his return to Zaphias. The rendezvous was set late in the evening outside the Spica, where the uniform of the Imperial Knights would be far too conspicuous for the wearer to loiter in while awaiting a contact. Schwann was certain to come as Raven, and the three-day interval for the meeting would ensure he caught the eye of Alexei's pawns, should they miss each other the first night or the second. Alexei rented an upstairs room at the inn across the street with an unobstructed view and made arrangements to leave the castle via a secret passageway, dressed plainly and cloaked.

The first night, Schwann perched himself on a stack of crates to watch both the tavern and the street, seemingly idly as he munched on a handful of skewers. Alexei saw him take note of the Knights as they exited the Spica, the four men loud in their drunken revelry and the red of the Royal Guard, but Schwann disregarded them after a couple minutes' study, none of them fitting the false description he'd been given.

He didn't notice that one of the group had marked him. Middle-aged and ill-favored with a puffed up air of superiority, the man turned to stare fixedly at Schwann as he and his companions rounded a corner. That one would be the instigator, thought Alexei.

Schwann tarried until well past midnight, then ran a hand over his face and retired, Alexei assumed, to temporary lodgings. The second night, Alexei's pawns didn't show, either on patrol or more likely carousing at a different establishment. He wasn't concerned. They would be back at the Spica tomorrow, as was their custom from the complaints logged.

Finally, on the third night, they confronted Schwann. The leader glowered darkly at the sight of Schwann and waved his friends nearer into a conspiratorial knot. Alexei stood from his seat at the room's table, the cup of tea that was his one concession to comfort left to cool unattended, and moved closer to the window as below the four men advanced on Schwann. Their circling paths, like a pack of wolves stalking unwary prey, their stances tense with anticipation—Schwann could not have failed to detect the threat.

Captain Schwann might have straightened to his full height, hand on the hilt of his sword in warning; Raven slouched a little more insouciantly and raised his hands in mock surrender, face plastered with a deflecting smile. The leader didn't take Schwann's act kindly. Smiling tightly himself, Alexei keyed up the command program on the remote control to Schwann's blastia. Grabbing him by a meaty fist in his shirt collar, the man jerked Schwann to his feet and with the help of the others pushed him against the wall at the mouth of the alley next to the tavern.

Alexei could determine the exact moment Schwann decided he had suffered enough of these fools. He relaxed further, limbs loose even as the men jostled him more roughly, and rolled his weight to the balls of his feet for speed and evasion. His knife he wouldn't draw. City ordinances restricted the civilian use of edged weapons within the barrier to justifiable cases of self-defense. A guildsman, lacking Imperial citizenship, would find it difficult to successfully indict the Royal Guard in the hidebound civil courts of Zaphias, the military tribunal a worse prospect, and Schwann knew Alexei would not countenance the exposure of any formal arraignment.

No, magic was Schwann's only option. A reduced wind blade to knock back his attackers and allow him an escape. That wouldn't do, of course. Alexei transmitted the code he had written weeks ago. The string should cause the blastia's power to cycle, to no long term effect, but if he were correct in his calculations, Schwann would feel the interruption as a sudden drain on his energies, ending with the shock of reconnection.

Barely had the traces of his spell's glyphs appeared before it dissipated harmlessly. Schwann collapsed onto his knees, clutching at his chest. Ignorant as they were, Schwann's attackers were yet Knights and realized, with a growing anger that was all too clear in the snarls contorting their faces, that he had tried to cast something. They were not slow to seize the advantage Alexei had provided them either.

One drove the breath out of Schwann with a swift kick to the gut, Schwann curling reflexively to protect his vitals. Then the leader stepped in to force him to the ground with a knee rammed into his back, his left arm yanked behind him at an angle that must have pulled from him a noise. Another weaselly man knelt hastily and clapped a hand to Schwann's mouth, fingers buried in his hair to turn his head; the youngest, a gangling boy, glanced furtively about the street, body poised to flee. Alexei narrowed his eyes. His plans could unravel here, if his pawns proved less prejudiced or more craven than he guessed. But, no, the leader leaned down to speak in Schwann's ear, an ugly smirk stretching his lips, and with a wrench on Schwann's arm that had him buckling in pain, dragged Schwann by the neck into the alley away from any witnesses, nodding for the rest to follow.

There was nothing to do now except wait. Alexei sipped his cold tea, not tasting it. Schwann had scrabbled one-handed at his throat, trying to pry open the man's grip, with an almost panicked desperation. Futile, Alexei thought, his body so uncoordinated in the wake of the blastia reset that he couldn't gain his feet, legs thrashing upon the ground.

Possibly it was all he could do to stumble after his attacker and keep himself from choking. Did he fear his artificial heart would stop? What did that idiot man say to him? They were petty bullies, drunken sots besides, and Alexei judged them incapable of rank murder. He spun his empty cup gently in his hands.

Its exterior was painted with a pair of swimming carp, the whole glazed a delicate turquoise; there was a large chip in its enameled rim. The color, shading to blue in the darkness of the room, was... striking. A pity it was marred. Time crawled forwards, every breath hanging heavy as an anchor on his awareness. Alexei was reminded of the months Schwann was presumed dead in an attempt to kill Whitehorse. He placed the teacup on its saucer with a juddering clink.

His first hint that things had not gone as planned was when the four men reappeared on the street. The thickset leader, face florid with more than drink, was adjusting his belt and had his arm slung around the shoulders of the youngest, who looked pale and unnerved, gaze darting back towards the alley. Alexei frowned. The other two, as well, seemed far too satisfied with themselves; theirs was not the boastful strut of men who were still riding high on the adrenaline of a fistfight won or at least not entirely, a languid looseness to their limbs. Slats of light from the tavern windows as they passed fell upon half-lidded eyes and smiles like a cat that had gotten into the cream.

As he waited and the minutes lengthened into an hour, then two with no sign of Schwann, Alexei's suspicions hardened into certainty. Schwann was foolish to the point of recklessness when it came to injury. Not that he wasn't one of the canniest fighters trained by the Knights, able to defend against multiple attackers, but that after a battle he would mulishly haul himself to his quarters or a safe boarding house with no more healing than gels and the little magic he knew could provide, no matter how serious his wounds. Alexei didn't learn of his discovery that he could overload his blastia and the near successful assassination attempt that spurred it until he reported the deaths of ex-councilman Fialen and Yeager's men the next day, limping into Alexei's office for his routine debriefing on Whitehorse's activities.

No normal injury would keep Schwann from retreating to a secure location, before fainting and leaving himself vulnerable. Alexei gritted his teeth. His blood pounded in his ears as he went downstairs, paid the inn manager, and crossed the street to the alley, the hood of his cloak drawn close and skirting the pools of light beneath the streetlamps, thankfully not as numerous as in the royal quarter.

Midnight was fast approaching. There were few passersby, save the drunken stragglers being ejected from the bars as they shut their doors and who paid Alexei no mind, tripping over their own feet. That should make it easier to aid Schwann, he thought. And Schwann would need his help, if he were right about what those cretins had done to him.

The alley was littered with refuse, smashed bottles and rotting trash that Alexei eyed with distaste. For once, he was grateful Schwann's choice of clothing as Raven was so bright and outlandish. Even in the gloom and huddled as small as he was against a flyer-plastered wall at the end of the alley, Schwann couldn't be missed. He flinched when Alexei crouched down in front of him. The reek of wine and sex was strong, clinging to him. His left hand lay unmoving on the ground at his side despite the shivers racking his body.

So, the arm had been pulled out of joint, and the longer it stayed that way, the greater the risk of permanent damage. Alexei reached for Schwann's shoulder. Only to pause in surprise at the sight of his own hands clenched white-knuckled into fists, nails digging into his palms with a slight sting he hadn't noticed. The aborted gesture caught Schwann's attention. He jerked, trying to shy from Alexei, though there was no recognition in his wild-eyed stare, and moaned high and wavering. "Please," he begged, voice a thready rasp, "Please, p-please..."

"Captain Schwann," Alexei said, mouth dry, "I mean you no harm. Your shoulder must be set, and for that I must touch you." Schwann couldn't hear him. He sighed, having expected no better. Determined, Alexei probed the joint with his fingers, pinning Schwann with his weight as he struggled weakly, his pleas broken by hitching sobs. As soon as he felt sure he could realign the joint, Alexei grabbed hold of Schwann's arm with one hand and rotated it carefully around the shoulder, ignoring how Schwann's face twisted in pain, the tracks of tears wet on his cheeks, and finally his low, hoarse scream as Alexei forced his bones back into place. All the tension fled Schwann's body in an instant, to lodge in Alexei's, a stone grinding against his ribs from within as his breathing sawed at his lungs. Sweat beaded on his forehead, prickling cold in the night air. Schwann was unconscious.

Quashing both the violent urge to slump in relief and to pursue Schwann's attackers, by now gone to the barracks, Alexei checked for other injuries. He found no give where there shouldn't be any and no swelling in the flesh that might indicate hidden bleeding; under his shirt, the smooth surfaces of Schwann's blastia seemed intact, the light in the alley too dim for a closer examination. Schwann's face was caked in blood and—Alexei grimaced—seed, that he rubbed at with his handkerchief, cursing quietly that he had not the prescience to bring a canteen of water. Ringing Schwann's neck and wrists were the darker shadows of bruises. He had not wanted this.

But there was no use in regretting what couldn't be changed. Alexei discarded his soiled handkerchief and raked his fingers, disconcertingly unsteady, through his hair. He had to return with Schwann to the castle before sunrise. A strange hesitation slowing him, Alexei took Schwann into his arms, picking him up, and started the long trek back.

It was more conspicuous, Schwann's head lolling on his chest, and more tiring than simply hoisting Schwann over his shoulder or letting him sag against his side, feet clumsy, like just another couple of drunks staggering home. Either of those could worsen Schwann's injuries beyond Khroma's ability to heal them, however, and a visit to the medical ward that would be noted in public records was a complication Alexei didn't wish to add to this... fiasco.

He stopped often to rest, sitting on city benches with Schwann laid cautiously out next to him. Schwann did not wake. In the lamplight, the bruises mottling his face around his eye and across his cheek were starker. Red stained Alexei's cloak from some sluggishly bleeding cut in his hair; shallow gashes on his palms and rips in the knees of his trousers pointed at scraping contact with the alley's glass shards. They had shoved him to the ground. A footprint, the edge of a standard issue armored boot, was pressed into the skin on the back of one hand. In hindsight, it was a mistake to rely on the behavior of inebriated men. Idiots!

Among the complaints received by the commandant's office about this group of Knights were, Alexei remembered belatedly, charges of harassment. He should have foreseen that their predilection for—how did one irate innkeeper phrase it?—treating the female waitstaff as if they were in a brothel might intersect with their hatred of the guilds to endanger Schwann past acceptable limits. His plans for Schwann needed to be revised. To be salvaged, in truth.

Yet he couldn't focus on anything except the man himself, wrists folded limply on his stomach within the circle of Alexei's aching arms. Each stutter of breath was matched by a pause in Alexei's steps as he waited for Schwann to regain consciousness, tongue tangled in the words of an explanation he had less time to rehearse than he hoped. Schwann did not wake. Instead, he turned his face into the coarse fabric of Alexei's cloak with soft whimpers of pain, brow creasing. A band of steel tightened over Alexei's chest. He hurried to the nondescript park in the public quarter where an empress of old had constructed a secret passageway to the castle for the purpose of calling on her commoner paramour.

The park was deserted at this hour. No one witnessed Alexei tapping a sequence of birds and bees carved into the base of Astarte's statue in the rose garden—Her Imperial Majesty had been a bit of a bookish romantic who also fancied herself a humorist—or the plinth splitting apart to reveal a sloping tunnel, ancient blastia torches flickering to life. They wouldn't remain lit for long, the ones nearest the entrance already dimming as Alexei walked by, carrying Schwann. The feeling that the darkness nipped at his heels, silently chasing them, was stifling. He had never been happier to see a vacant room, pushing the wall cabinet back into place in front of the exit.

Under dust covers against one wall was a dining table and set of chairs. This was the empress's small banquet hall, for hosting luncheons and society teas, though the decorative flatware had been cleared from the cabinets and much of the furniture. After orientating himself and unlocking the door, Alexei knelt to look over Schwann where he had lowered him to the floor, fingers seeking a pulse on the vulnerable line of Schwann's throat. His stillness was too perfect for Alexei's comfort. Schwann did not wake. Groaning, Alexei stretched his sore back and arms in preparation for one final effort.

It was awkward maneuvering through the door with Schwann, but Alexei scowled and managed with a minimum of noise. Dodging the security patrols from the uninhabited royal suites to the wing where the Knights were housed was easier, his familiarity with the guard rotations serving him well and his room secluded from the barracks and busier common areas out of respect for his rank. Another few moments of fumbling to reach and use his key, and at last he was able to release Schwann's weight onto the closest couch in the safety of his personal quarters. He shed his cloak onto an armchair, dialed the ceiling light just high enough to see by without risk of being blinded, and shut the door.

For a brief while, he stood there at the door. The desire to lean upon the polished wood and never have to think about how to get Schwann the aid he needed, what to tell him when he came to, as he must, so his loyalty might survive whole, if battered, or about any other problem of the many that had arisen this night was almost overwhelming. Alexei shook his head sharply. He had not achieved all he did or all that he would by sparing himself from harsh, unpalatable realities.

Lips pursed, he assessed what had to be done. First, he pulled the cord dangling from the ceiling to one side of his bed, hidden by headboard and canopy. It connected to a bell in the nearest guardroom and would summon the active duty officer on watch at all hours, usually to deliver messages for him or run other errands. Then, quickly and efficiently, he set about removing Schwann's dirtied clothes: dagger, on the table with the belt wound around its ornate, tasseled hilt; the garish purple robe and pink buttoned shirt he favored as Raven, for some inexplicable reason; worn short boots and the loose black trousers of a style not common to the Empire. Pointless as it would be to pretend at modesty at this juncture, Alexei was still glad for the thin, knee-length pants Schwann had on underneath.

Schwann did not wake. Not even when Alexei jostled his ribs and arm, though a murmur of pain escaped his lips that Alexei hushed with a hand upon Schwann's brow, surprising himself. Do I pity him, he wondered as he went to his private bathroom, or regret that I miscalculated? There he discarded Schwann's clothes in his empty laundry hamper, to be properly disposed of later, and wet a small towel in the sink. Returning, he gently cleaned Schwann's face and neck, his hair, and his hands. It was fortunate that those cretins were too drunk to undress him enough for his blastia to show.

A brisk knock sounded at the door. "In a moment," Alexei said, tossing the soiled towel atop the pile of Schwann's clothes. He slid his arms around Schwann's back and under his knees to pick him up again, then carried him to the bed, laying him down on the blankets. Only afterwards did Alexei answer the door, opening it partway to see a watch officer who was just beginning to look nervous at the delay. To the man's credit, he straightened immediately and gave his commandant a smart salute, eyes not straying from Alexei's face.

"Tell Khroma to report to me in my quarters," he commanded, shutting the door unceremoniously on the burly Knight's rather startled yessir. A few minutes passed in grim contemplation of the bruises darkening on Schwann's jaw, his throat, and the way even in the low lighting they couldn't possibly be mistaken as anything but fingermarks, before Alexei realized how his order might be misconstrued: an invitation for his female aide to join him, alone, so late at night.

Of course, Alexei soon dismissed the thought with a snort. Let people gossip! Half the Knights already believed Khroma was his lover, and it hadn't damaged their professional relationship at all. Khroma was a steel trap of a woman who didn't care in the least about her repute. Alexei suspected that it amused her, behind her aloof mask, to use the rumors of her liaison with him to deter her potential suitors. He frowned. What her reaction would be to finding Captain Schwann in his bed and in such a state, however, was another matter entirely. She knew better than to question his dealings with Schwann, he hoped.

For the rest, he would have to trust in her natural discretion. It was one of the qualities he'd appointed her for, in addition to her ruthless competence. Still, best that Khroma not find him looming at Schwann's bedside. Do not fret, he chided himself. Plans go awry, and this would not be the first of his to do so or even the first time he stood to lose a valuable, irreplaceable tool in Schwann. Except it was not Whitehorse or Schwann himself at fault here.

With a grunt, Alexei strode to his desk, switched on the blastia light next to it, and sat, taking out a sheaf of blank papers from a drawer. He had originally intended to serve Schwann's attackers mere dishonorable discharges from the Royal Guard and without any mention of this last deed in the long string of trouble they'd caused, to avoid compromising Schwann. The idiots would've been packed home—some town south of Zaphias, as Alexei recalled—in disgrace to languish their petty lives away in obscurity, if not poverty.

Now, well, that seemed far too kind a fate for them. Worse than entitled brats, they'd proved themselves brutes and brainless ones at that. The majority of the Knights stationed at the castle should recognize Raven in passing as a guildsman of some import, given his meetings with the Commandant. By the familiarity with which they targeted Schwann outside the tavern, these idiots couldn't claim ignorance in this regard. Did they imagine there would be no repercussions to harming the Don's emissary? That Alexei would not hear of it or discover those responsible?

It would've been different had they restrained themselves to a beating that could be sanitized for official accounts as just another bar brawl in the lower quarter, typical of evenings when drink flowed too freely and tempers ran too high. But, no, they had to satisfy their lust for power in the most ruinous way conceivable, short of murder. A loud crinkle of paper drew Alexei's glare down. He forcibly relaxed his hand, breathed deeply, and smoothed the remaining sheets, flicking the one he'd crumpled off to the side.

Unwise as it would be to allow Whitehorse to learn of this fiasco, Alexei was tempted to deliver the offenders to guild justice. An alliance of outcasts bound by little more than their word, the guilds punished breaches of honor severely. He closed his eyes and massaged his temples irritably, a headache building there. No, he couldn't afford to hand Whitehorse such leverage. Despite Schwann's reports that the Don cared only for Dahngrest's prosperity, Alexei wasn't convinced Whitehorse would hesitate to turn any provocation into a war against the Empire. One day, he'd be ready to fight that battle, but not for years.

So, Raven must keep his silence, and Schwann could never acknowledge that anything happened at all, since to him nothing had. None of which pleased Alexei. Not that he was incapable of disciplining his men for their true crime as Whitehorse might have been willing to do in his place, nor that Schwann need suffer a very personal humiliation he may come to resent Alexei for, though the end of reminding him not to grow too comfortable as Raven had been accomplished.

"Commandant?" As was her wont, Khroma had let herself in, slipping quietly through the door to stand a few paces in with her hands folded demurely before her and an inquisitive tilt to her head. Alexei glanced at her briefly over his shoulder, then purposefully neatened his stack of still blank papers, tapping their edges straight on his desk.

"Tend to Captain Schwann," he said. Until Schwann woke, it was fruitless to speculate about how any of this would affect him or what steps Alexei could take in spite of it all to ensure his loyalty. Decided, Alexei grabbed his quill and dipped it in ink, absently scraping the nib clean. There was one thing he could do, as some measure of recompense.

Khroma's footfalls, always light, were indiscernible on his richly carpeted floor, but Alexei could tell when she reached the bed by her quick intake of air. "How did Captain Schwann come by these injuries?" she asked, her voice level and, to Alexei's ears, several degrees cooler than her norm. "Is this... Is all of this your doing?" The blastia! He cursed inwardly. In his haste to garner aid, he'd forgotten that Khroma was not privy to the secret of Schwann's heart.

Yet he refused to surrender his composure. Alexei began deliberately penning the rote formalities that prefaced a special order to one of his garrison commanders, even as his mind raced through the consequences of his oversight. "Think on how to heal him of his injuries," he warned her, "and not on how he received them. That is none of your concern." Khroma's stare was so hard and pointed that Alexei felt it like the jab of a spear between his shoulders. In answer, he steeled his tone and honed it to a razor's edge. "Do you understand me, Khroma?"

A long pause. His quill scratched to a stop. Just when Alexei was about to turn and attempt an explanation, Khroma said, "Perfectly, Commandant." The words were crisp and icy as the Blade Drifts of Zopheir in winter. For the moment, he had no good excuse to offer her; she seemed to sense as much and cut him off before he tried.

With a curt statement that she needed supplies, Khroma left, not bothering to seek his permission. She wasn't so uncouth as to slam the door on her way out, but the firm snick she shut it with somehow managed to sound condemning nonetheless. How utterly unlike him, to miss such an important detail! Headache fully formed now, Alexei kneaded at his closed eyes with the heels of his hands until bursts of white chased each other across his vision.

Glasses rattling jarred him from his stupor, and he was disconcerted to see Khroma, barely gone, re-enter with a tray propped on her hip. While he lost track of time on occasion when researching, he was not usually so unaware of his surroundings, the battle-trained instincts of a field commander slow to leave him. He glared down at his half-written instructions to Cumore. The night's events must have tired him more than he realized.

Try as he did to concentrate on his self-appointed task, the soft rasp of cloth and clink of bottles as Khroma sorted her bandages and potions proved nigh impossible to ignore. He was certain Schwann's ribs were bruised, not broken, and neither was his nose, bloodied as it had been, his shoulder and the delicate bones of his hand also whole under Alexei's probing fingers. But Alexei was no healer. "Commandant," came Khroma's voice from the bed, "if I may have your assistance?" He threw his quill aside, ink splattering on the letter he would recopy for his records in any case, and went.

"Keep him upright," she ordered, a roll of bandages in one hand. Alexei supported Schwann's still unconscious weight with a hand spread between his shoulder blades as Khroma bound his ribs, winding the stiff gauze around his chest and over his left arm. Some of the swelling ringing his eye was already receding, Alexei thought, the smell of Khroma's salves pungent and slightly floral. He brushed Schwann's hair behind his ear and tipped his face up for a better look at the bruises on his cheek.

Satisfied, Alexei straightened, a bit of ointment lingering warm and creamy on the pads of his fingers. "Khroma," he said, "the blastia is an artifact of the Great War. An experimental model that was never completed nor meant to be used in this fashion." The only indication she gave that she heard him was a break in the steady rhythm of her bandaging. "It saved his life." Little as Schwann valued it, this miracle that out of the hundreds dead at Temza had successfully taken root in him and Yeager alone.

Each failure, convulsing in renewed death throes upon the operating table, had nearly convinced Alexei to call a halt to it all, the civilian doctor having long made it clear to him that she would've stopped performing the surgeries were it not for his sword at her back, his threat against her family. He watched Schwann breathe for a moment. "But I won't have him paraded to more scrutiny than he must suffer," he continued, tone hardening, "a freak or a specimen to be dissected and studied."

This time he waited for Khroma to raise her head; her hands paused as he caught her gaze. She nodded, eyes widening. And so Hermes's work would remain safely a secret. "As for his other injuries," Alexei said, sighing, "Captain Schwann sustained them in the course of a mission for me, the details of which are... sensitive." Finishing, Khroma neatly rolled up her small medical kit and began gathering the extra bandages.

Alexei lowered Schwann gingerly to the bed and tugged the blankets out from under him. Once he had Schwann tucked in as comfortably as could be expected, his hair fanned dark across Alexei's pillow, he turned to find Khroma examining him with an expression he didn't trust yet couldn't quite decipher. Resisting the sudden urge to cough, he told her, "You're dismissed," then seated himself at his desk again, busying his hands with cleaning up the mess he'd left.

Still, Khroma refused to depart until she had rearranged her potions on the table next to Schwann's dagger and instructed him, "Have him drink water and a sleeping tonic when he wakes, a pain reliever if he needs it; the bottles are marked. He should rest undisturbed for the night." The sound of a smile in her voice irritated him. He could imagine which smile it was, too. The enigmatic one he despised that hinted at some hidden knowledge. Alexei grunted, not bothering to thank her as she withdrew with one last—smug, he added uncharitably—"Commandant."

Pushing the oddities of Khroma's character from his mind, he resumed drafting his orders to Cumore. Who was about as poor of a city administrator as he was a captain of the Knights, no matter how many texts on infrastructure and urban planning Alexei advised him to read. He snorted. Heliord would likely have collapsed into rubble under his guidance were it not for the team of competent engineers Alexei assigned him. Though he might have Yeager offer Cumore a partnership to help curb the worst excesses.

Cumore's one saving grace was his conniving cruelty, however. Deluded into believing Heliord was his path to the commandant's office, he drove his workers mercilessly, devising an impressive array of subtle threats and half-truths to motivate them. His brigade also served as a convenient dumping ground for men of a similar bent to him, too malicious or hamfisted to be delegated other duties.

If allowed free rein, Cumore was as wasteful of his soldiers' lives as he was with the contents of Heliord's treasury. Alexei had rebuked him against it, the Empire's supply of neither gald nor trained Knights bottomless. To limited effect in the case of the men, Cumore's thin veneer of nobility apparently lending him a greater appreciation for financial sense than the welfare of peasants.

But now Alexei hoped to use the high casualty rate of Cumore's troops to his advantage. Smiling, he authorized the transfer of Schwann's attackers from the Royal Guard to the garrison at Heliord, informing Cumore in not so many words that this was a punishment and permitting him to dispose of them as he wished. Even Cumore could not be so stupid as to misunderstand.

There were two or three men remaining in that squad who couldn't be implicated in any crime. Alexei would have preferred to be rid of them all in one sweep, lest the perpetrators stumble upon an opportunity to boast about their... fun before they were exiled to the monster-infested frontier of Tolbyccia for it. Full unit transfers typically involved an official statement of cause filed with the council and a week's notice at minimum to the individuals in question, both of which Alexei would much rather avoid. Perhaps he could attach them to his personal guard, where he had more leeway in disciplinary actions...

He was aware of it the instant Schwann woke. Behind him, there was a sharp hiss of breath and the sound of blankets rustling. Probably as the fool man jerked up into a sitting position heedless of his injuries. Alexei dropped his quill in its inkwell with a sigh, then stood and turned to find, as expected, Schwann hunched over his bruised ribs, an arm wrapped protectively around his stomach and his other hand fisted in the sheets, shaking with pain. How reminiscent of when he first awoke after the blastia operation, Alexei thought.

While not a flawless process, he'd made Schwann anew once. This was his chance to correct some of those failings and bind Schwann all the tighter to him. "Captain Schwann, are you well?" he asked, clearing his throat to announce his presence. He kept his tone gentle and soothing; Schwann's undoubtedly fragile mental state required careful handling. As it was, Schwann gave no indication that he heard Alexei.

So, stepping closer alongside his own bed, Alexei said, "Captain Schwann, it's me," and let his hand fall lightly onto Schwann's bare shoulder. The effect was marked and immediate. Schwann's skin was chilled under Alexei's palm, muscles tensing. He twitched away with a soft gasp.

Fascinated, Alexei studied Schwann intently. How he shuddered, head bowed so his face was hidden by his hair. It was predictable that this soon after his... experience with those crass idiots, Schwann would not want another's hand upon him, but less so was the fact that, for the briefest moment, Alexei was certain Schwann had leaned into his touch.

"Captain Schwann," he said again, "can you hear me?" This time, a pause, followed by a small nod. Alexei had a hypothesis to test. "Do you remember what happened?" He bent forward a bit, surprisingly eager, the better to observe any changes in Schwann's expression.

A much longer hesitation, then Schwann shook his head minutely. Alexei caught sight of the hollowness in his eyes before he squeezed them shut, something of Schwann or maybe Raven lost in the deep dark that dwelt within. "Well, no matter," Alexei was quick to reassure him. Schwann gnawed at his already bitten raw lip and swallowed wetly. "You are safe in my care now."

When Alexei rested a hand on the crown of Schwann's head, it was unmistakable the way he pressed further into the contact, strands of his hair sliding between Alexei's fingers, even as he trembled with what Alexei guessed was his body's revulsion at the intimacy of the act. Interesting... He considered this strange development as he stroked idly through Schwann's hair. The shivers plaguing Schwann grew more violent, until Alexei moved his hand to cradle the nape of Schwann's neck.

Schwann froze, all the fight, if that was what it was, deserting him abruptly, though the muffled noises trapped in his throat continued to try and break free. Alexei licked his dry lips. It was stimulating, he could not deny, to watch his normally stoic First Captain respond so wholly and instinctively to his every gesture.

It seemed obvious to him now that a part of Schwann needed comfort. Craved a kind touch so desperately, indeed, that he was willing to suffer for it without asking why, his memory suppressed and his defenses stripped to an almost animal wariness that Alexei was confident he could disarm. None alive knew of Schwann's blastia heart prior to tonight, save for him and Whitehorse. Alexei had ensured as much, until he erred with Khroma, and he assumed Whitehorse understood the importance of secrecy in this affair as well as he.

Little wonder that Schwann couldn't bridge the distance from being acquaintances with anyone else to truly being bedfellows, his double life adding another set of complications. Alexei only wondered that he hadn't realized this vulnerability of Schwann's earlier. Whatever liberties Whitehorse afforded Raven, Alexei scoffed inwardly at the notion of the Don showing his enforcer physical affection beyond the occasional hearty slap on the back; a more demonstrative display would likely offend the guilds' antiquated sense of masculinity.

If it was touch Schwann wanted, open and tender, Alexei could provide. What a cheap price, far less than he feared, for the tool he hoped to keep his. He would brand his touch upon Schwann's flesh and receive in turn the blind worship of an addict or, he supposed, a lover.

That thought was so startling Alexei hardly paid attention as he sat on the bed, his body acting without further direction from his mind. Why would I ever allow this new relationship with Schwann to become sexual? He braced a hand against Schwann's back, another on his arm, to urge him wordlessly to lie down again.

Naked and warm, the ridge of Schwann's spine was queerly absorbing in the symmetry of its knobby protuberances, the breadth of his shoulders winging out and arching like the curve of a bow, drawn then unstrung, as his hunger for Alexei's touch battled his forgotten trauma. Glowing through the bandages binding Schwann's ribs was the blastia. A marvelous example of his work and Hermes's, Alexei had always seen it as beautiful, but his sudden impulse to trace the anchor points splayed across Schwann's chest was alien.

Once he got Schwann settled comfortably, Alexei forced his gaze away and walked to the table where Khroma had left a glass, a pitcher of water, and her selection of potions. He put himself to the task of mixing an effective pain reducer and sleeping tonic that wouldn't render Schwann helplessly ill later. Except try as he did to dismiss the idea as a distraction, he found his eyes drifting to his bed, his rumpled sheets, and the figure curled in his blankets. How long since I took anybody to bed? Never had he imagined that it might be Schwann. Was this truly what he desired?

Alexei was no stranger to carnal pleasures, having indulged such pastimes in his youth, yet they held no particular attraction for him even then, paling in comparison to his ambitions. The fluttering, swooning feeling of a budding romance, the yearning for an absent lover's company, the joyous meeting of two souls that transcended the body—he had no experience of them. Had in fact deemed them at best somewhat distasteful in the women and the few men he dallied with, if not outright annoyances, inconveniently persistent after his physical needs were satisfied. It wasn't a hardship to eschew intimate relations when he achieved the rank of commandant. Meaningless as they were, the weak lusts of his body infrequent and easily mastered.

Bedding Schwann would not be so simple. It would be dangerous, Alexei reluctantly admitted to himself. He returned to Schwann with filled glass in hand, all the while very conscious of the shadowed eyes that tracked him. The risk of compromising his asset at Whitehorse's right hand aside, this Schwann was too emotionally unstable; there was no telling how he would react when he learned Alexei couldn't reciprocate. No, safer to maintain his distance and play at the game of seduction. Alexei was confident in his control.

He cupped Schwann's head in one hand as he slowly fed him the potion, Schwann still intriguingly pliant in his grip. Would that Schwann was normally so cooperative, Alexei thought ruefully. For a man who followed his every command, there was a perverse streak of obstinacy in Schwann that he couldn't unearth; it waxed and waned in strength, but like the dark face of the moon was ever present. Alexei refilled the glass with water and repeated the process, eyes on the bob of Schwann's throat as he drank.

Schwann's breathing soon leveled out as he dropped into a heavy medicated sleep. He'd nuzzled Alexei's palm, completely insensible to his actions. That hand tingled when Schwann awoke late the next morning, gaze more present. Alexei clenched it into a fist and tucked the arm behind his back, standing tall and irreproachable to dispel Schwann's confusion.

You were injured on a secret mission, Captain. I searched for you when you failed to report in. Do you not remember? It was more expedient to bring you to my room than to rouse the chamberlain to unlock yours. No, it was not on your person. Your clothes? Too ruined to salvage. Have you a clean uniform? Captain, it is negligent to hide your spare key in a potted plant.

There was a part of Schwann that suspected the lie, surely. A frown creased his brow as he listened to Alexei, tension strung across his shoulders. But another and it seemed larger part of him wanted to forget, the truth a burning brand buried deep that his mind shied from. And Alexei would encourage that denial, if it kept Schwann at his side. He sent Khroma to Schwann's quarters to fetch a set of clothes, grateful that her impassive mask was in place when she delivered them and the spare key; he was in no mood to humor her elusive baiting. Schwann drowsed off again in the interim, and Alexei resigned himself to an afternoon's nap on the too short couch, ordering a generous assortment of bread, cheese, and cold cuts from the kitchens.

While a day's leave to catch up on paperwork could be excused, his presence would be missed on rounds of the city defenses and at the weekly meeting with the council. So it was with an unsettling mix of relief and regret that he saw Schwann dressed, fed, and ready for light duty as evening fell. Alexei let his hands linger as he helped Schwann into his shirt and coat. Each stroking touch was trailed by a fine tremor and a hitch of breath, Schwann pulling reflexively away before swaying back into Alexei's reach. Schwann eyed him with the wariness of a feral animal as he picked at the platter of food, eating sparingly. Alexei pretended not to notice.

"Come see me tomorrow night," he said easily, "here in my room. I would like to be certain your blastia came to no harm." Schwann hesitated, blunt nails indenting the piece of bread he held, then nodded. He knew well that Alexei would accept no compromises in servicing the blastia. Alexei stood over Schwann where he was seated in one of the room's armchairs, close enough for his sleeve to drape Schwann's leg as he hooked a finger under Schwann's chin to tip his face up. "Try not to overexert yourself in the meantime," he added, smiling at Schwann's shudder.

Finally, he took pity on Schwann. With a circling of his thumb that ventured daringly near the corner of Schwann's lips, he released him to wash his face in his private bathroom and run a quick comb through his hair. Alexei was eager, to learn the responses of Schwann's body and discover just how far he might tempt him, to what effect on Schwann's loyalty. He had looked almost dazed at Alexei's touch, eyes wide and darkening with... Fear? Anticipation? When Alexei returned, unsurprisingly, Schwann was gone. Not for long.

A week passed into a month, then two, and Schwann stayed in Zaphias, to Alexei's satisfaction in no hurry to resume his guise as Raven. It was a simple matter to invent reasons why Schwann should attend him. Khroma was occupied with preparing the Knights' quarterly expense report to the council, specifically the sleight of numbers required to conceal the extent of the resources Alexei poured into the Heracles and weapons development. A tedious affair Alexei would generally aid her with, but instead of presenting another stack of falsified documents to a bevy of old fools who were too complacent to spot the trick, he opted to call a grand review of the brigades stationed in the city. And Captain Schwann would accompany him, an inspiration to the troops.

More elaborate than an inspection, there was a tournament of arms and days of joint field exercises for the commandant to assess the capability of his forces, both individually and in units of varying size. Prior to Alexei's opening of the ranks to men and women of common birth, any comer who paid the modest entrance fee could participate in the melee and archery contests.

He had won his way into the Knights at one such tourney, a lavish spectacle hosted by His Imperial Majesty that bore little resemblance to the practical marshaling of soldiers it had become during his own tenure as commandant. How things changed! Alexei doubted his younger self, idealistic ambitions a flame in his heart, would recognize him now. He'd been so bright-eyed and blind to the workings of the world.

Schwann was interested in the proceedings, as Alexei had known he would be. Though he tried to avoid the newest recruits, who idolized him, the bits of advice he parceled out nonetheless endeared him to them, his brigade loud in singing his praises. His intent stare was sharp as an arrow as he and Alexei observed the tourney competitors; Alexei, amused, felt having Captain Schwann stand on the sidelines watching was doing more harm than good in rattling their men's composure.

Unlikely, in any case, to find among the archers or swordsmen candidates who could handle the transform bow's change in style. The Canary Brigade had been trained in the specialization, one no longer considered worth the investment, and even then Schwann's talent was rare, honed skill wed to a certain adaptive nimbleness of mind and body. Alexei told him as much, leaning in to whisper in Schwann's ear. Stray strands of hair tickled his cheek. He tolerated Raven's choice of weapon, but too many connections could be drawn should Schwann revive a practice that had been limited to a unit declared dead to the last man.

A promising Knight, one Flynn Scifo, was victorious in the melee—Alexei marked him for future promotion and possible conversion to his cause—and Schwann shivered at the gust of Alexei's breath across his cheek. And while his eyes snagged on the red uniforms of the Royal Guard, he didn't react beyond an unconscious stiffening of his back. Alexei was pleased.

The commencement of the field exercises saw them sharing a tent, as the ranking officers. They led the brigades in twos and threes some distance from Zaphias, to where the plains grew hilly before giving way to wooded terrain, for a series of mock battles: the defense of a fortified position and an assault on the same, scouting for ambushes, charging and holding a line upon exposed ground, whatever scenarios they could devise to put the men through their paces. Alexei chuckled at their terrified faces when Schwann divided the mages and healers from the rest, then pitted the two groups against one another. His brief speech about spellcasters being masters at corralling crowds of enemies with area of effect magic yet vulnerable to any fighter who could close the gap, healers always a priority target, was accurate and not reassuring in the least to the Knights who were going to be either swarmed by attackers or fireballed to within an inch of their lives.

It was frankly exhausting, but exhilarating, too, Alexei thought, the activity settling something in Schwann. He flinched less at Alexei's nightly examination of his blastia, at Alexei's order that he undress and Alexei's hand on his shoulder, fingers pressing tenderly along the blastia's anchor points. Alexei was hardly concerned for the blastia's structural integrity, Hermes's work intricate but built to resist the wear of time as well as the blastia of the ancients had. It would take a piercing weapon of exceptional caliber, wielded by a strong arm that knew exactly where to strike to truly damage the blastia or destroy it.

Of course, that didn't mean this was an idle exercise in accustoming Schwann to his touch. He streamlined the power regulation and tinkered with the base coding. The matrices he added might, he hoped, allow Schwann to cast spells with his heart blastia, similar to how the bodhi blastia embedded in his dagger functioned, and ones far safer than the forced overload he kept using despite all of Alexei's warnings. Schwann's skin was painted in pale shades of shimmering light by the diagnostic window projected from the control remote. Alexei smoothed down a few unruly licks of hair on Schwann's bowed head and wondered what sort of spell would fit the unconventional formula. None of the elemental glyphs seemed quite right. Under his hand, Schwann shook.

Everyone decamped to the capital in high spirits. Even the Schwann Brigade, men selected by Alexei precisely for their lack of intelligence, acquitted themselves well, girded with some words from their captain and the gritty determination to not embarrass him. Alexei's mood soured, however, at the official correspondence from Dahngrest waiting for him, brought by messenger.

Whitehorse wanted Raven back. "Send me your spy. I have a job for him." So, they were to at last dispense with the polite fiction that neither was aware of Schwann's double life. Damn that wretched man! Had Whitehorse uncovered Schwann's identity or only guessed that the Commandant wasn't ignorant of his long term infiltration mission, whether or not he reported directly to Alexei? He sneered. Given the sieve of information that the guilds were, maybe Whitehorse didn't care what Schwann saw.

Alexei was still reluctant to let Schwann go and Schwann reluctant to go. His eyes reflected a disquiet at the prospect of becoming Raven again that he had never shown before. And it was this unwillingness that decided Alexei. For what reason did he scheme and worry rather than command Schwann to abandon his guild persona, if not to send him back to Whitehorse a poisoned chalice? Raven's life would be no escape this time for Schwann, haunted by a trauma he refused to remember.

"Do as Whitehorse asks," Alexei told him, "and nothing to imperil his trust in you." There were rumors of bandits plaguing the area north of Dahngrest, the ruined tower at Ghasfarost their lair, but Whitehorse had the muscle in Altosk alone, not to mention the Blood Alliance, to rout any number of common thieves without risking the retrieval of his pet assassin from the Imperial Knights. A boon Alexei could have denied him. "It must be important for him to have summoned you. Learn the truth." Schwann went sickly pale and obeyed.

Three months later, he returned, the white of bandages encircling his neck and arms, from his wrists up into his sleeves. He didn't account for his injuries, somehow unrelated to his investigation of Ghasfarost, and at the shadow that lay itself across his face, Alexei didn't question his silence. Besides, Schwann had such interesting news.

Perhaps discontented with meager contract pickings, members of the Blood Alliance had taken to robbery. Hence Whitehorse's undue caution in moving against them, the guild rule of noninterference tying his hands. He reckoned, too, according to Schwann, that the head of the Blood Alliance, Barbos, was not so innocent as he purported to be when he disavowed the rogue mercenaries, just as Alexei would have in Whitehorse's place. Schwann was to slip past the engagement as guild forces stormed Ghasfarost's outer walls to search for evidence of Barbos's complicity in the attacks.

He found it, in unsigned orders detailing the routes of merchant caravans around Dahngrest and in snatches of overheard conversation between the thieves as the more reckless rushed to bolster their defenses, their cleverer brethren bolting like rats fleeing a sinking ship. A handful of singed paper scraps and enemy chatter wasn't enough, though, to condemn the leader of one of the Union's five master guilds. In the aftermath, Barbos volunteered the services of the Blood Alliance in occupying Ghasfarost. Why, he argued with a shark grin, fix the tower up and it'd be the perfect outpost to protect the very traders who suffered losses in the bandit incursion while keeping his rowdiest men too busy to cause further trouble.

Barbos intended to be the first to challenge Whitehorse then. Alexei wanted to laugh. Uncontested as Whitehorse's control of the Union had been since he founded it after the Great War, as the years passed and he aged, it was inevitable that ambitious younger rivals would seek to oust him. His body might be as hardy as ever, no man capable of besting him as the strongest fighter the guilds could boast, including Schwann, but in the political arena the sharpness of your sword was not the only factor in play. And missteps were costly as a stumble or broken guard in battle.

Could Barbos be made his pawn? Alexei considered it. If nothing else, he could trust Barbos to betray him and in Barbos's greed for power up to that point, men of his ilk predictable in a way. There was a node for the blastia network in Heliord, but another near Dahngrest, in Ghasfarost, would not go amiss, and Alexei imagined Barbos would gladly cooperate for the promise of access to restricted blastia technology and improved weapons. Whether Barbos succeeded in dethroning Whitehorse or no, the chaos would weaken the guilds.

Yes, Alexei would extend an offer. Spots of pale red bloomed, tantalizing, on the stretch of Schwann's throat as his blood seeped through the bandages. Using Yeager, who could do with less opportunity to pursue his own ends in Leviathan's Claw and Ruins' Gate. The contrast of white upon Schwann's tanned skin was striking, and Alexei dragged a finger along the edge of the gauze, Schwann's pulse leaping to meet his touch. "You must be more careful with yourself, Captain Schwann," he said softly.

Schwann's breathing quickened as Alexei's hands framed his face. He shuddered, swallowing, as Alexei's voice dropped lower, confiding. "You've done well." There was a slight flush to Schwann's cheeks under his caressing thumbs, imperceptible had they not been standing so close. And Alexei was pleased.

When he dispatched Schwann back to Dahngrest just a few days later to observe Barbos, as Whitehorse would undoubtedly want of Raven, too, Alexei bid him farewell with a light squeeze to his shoulder, gaze catching on the jut of his collarbone where it peeked out from the unfastened neck of his uniform. Schwann's almost flustered reaction to Alexei's apology for summoning him so early in the morning curled Alexei's lips up into a smile. At their next debriefing, again in Alexei's quarters, he invited Schwann to sit beside him on the couch. The stiff line of Schwann's body from head to thigh, leg brushing Alexei's, amused him. As did Schwann's startled jolt at the tugging of Alexei's fingers on the hair tucked behind his ear and the speed with which he excused himself soon as Alexei permitted.

Thus they danced, over and over. Schwann didn't initiate or protest, stoic in this as his body was not at every press of Alexei's hands. Which never wandered too far, Alexei feeling no need to risk more. Not when even a gentlemanly arm at the small of Schwann's back to lead him out the door had him tensing, muscles shifting beneath his clothes, and would bring to his eyes that dazed look.

It was a look Alexei still couldn't say was anticipation but that meant, he learned, Schwann would yield to him and his will. Each surrender was sweet, a mark of his claim on Schwann, buried deep and unerasable. Or so he believed. Until Baction.

· · ·

It was dark when Raven came to, cold and stiff from huddling on the floor. He felt frayed thin. Salt crusted his skin, his eyes tender as a day-old bruise, and he tottered to the sink again like a drunk on unsteady legs. There was a small mirror hung crookedly on the wall. About the last thing he wanted was to meet the gaze of his reflection, though, so he carefully watched his hands tremble as he ran the faucet and splashed a little water over his face, before staring at the clear (not red) swirl of it down the drain. He could shatter the glass into shards with one hard punch.

No, if Raven knew Flynn at all, he'd keep a respectful distance until mid-morning maybe. Whereupon Sodia would be given leave to ask around for him in the inns Flynn remembered he favored and orders issued for every Knight on guard and patrol to report Captain Schwann's location to the Commandant. Sodia, promoted or demoted to the role of Flynn's spymaster—there was a confession and several overdue arguments that he avoided despite being privy to the reasons—wasn't yet experienced enough to catch Raven at his own game.

Usually he'd enjoy laying a few dozen false trails for her to follow, forcing her to work her nascent network of civilian informants here in Zaphias, only to turn up lounging in her locked office, feet on her desk as he read her files. Her exasperated expression and the way it would sharpen into determination was a beauty to behold.

But this time Sodia wouldn't have to search further than the public quarter market for leads on which direction he'd fled. Raven didn't intend to stay trapped in this room, waiting for her to knock on the door or, worse, for Flynn to. Mind completely blank, he gathered his belongings.

Spare clothes, folded and bundled together with his comb and sewing kit, a bar of soap, other odds and ends into his simple sleeping mat. A pouch for gels and potions, another for gald. His hand hesitated in reaching for his (Casey's) bow, and after he slung it over a shoulder with his pack, hesitated even longer in grabbing his quiver. Full of arrows tipped with the everlight heads he'd commissioned from Nobis and the Soul Smiths. He stroked his thumb slowly against the edge of one. The metal alloy was tougher than steel but not so heavy, more resistant to blunting, and easily enchanted with the new spirit magic formulas.

Fine weapons, worth the hefty price he paid, and it wouldn't take much pressure for him to break skin on them. Raven drew away, picked up his quiver by the strap and, with a quick glance about the room, left to settle his bill. While the inn manager, rousted from bed, grumpily counted his gald at the front desk, his forefinger rubbed ceaselessly over the shallow gash across the pad of his thumb. Just a (bloodless) slit in the flesh, no more painful than cutting himself on paper.

At the city gates, it wasn't difficult to convince the watch officer to lend Captain Schwann one of the tamed quiettas the Knights stabled there for courier runs to speed his journey to Nor Harbor. That Raven might've helped the man's cooperation along by implying the Commandant had entrusted him with an urgent secret missive for Don Whitehorse didn't excuse the lax security, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to not reprimand the guards even as he thanked them. Ignoring the sly looks they exchanged as they nudged each other excitedly—that was harder.

Well, he thought with a rasping chuckle, Sodia would soon set them straight about blindly assuming any story told to them was true, the word of a superior or no. She'd have a similar lecture for the drowsy woman who, upon recognizing Schwann, jolted into a flustered salute and waved him through the checkpoint at Deidon Hold shortly after dawn without a single question as to his destination or purpose. He ought to be flattered, he supposed, that he (old and worn and dead and still Alexei's) was cause for a young lady's blush. Playing the part, both parts, with a solemn nod as he passed and a wink back over his shoulder had come naturally.

Raven laughed and laughed now, louder and louder, until his voice echoed distorted into the cries of some beast from Ehmead Hill's darkening wooded slopes. No monsters leapt out of the night to attack him at the noise. It seemed, naive and gullible as many of them were, the Knights were doing an excellent job keeping the main road from Zaphias to Capua Nor safe for travelers. Was he disappointed there would be no use for his arrows? (What monster could kill him?)

He didn't sleep and stopped only to rest the quietta, watering it at nameless streams and feeding it from the bag of seed a stable boy had shyly provided him. The gels he ate soothed his hoarse throat, though he knew they couldn't stave off thirst and hunger indefinitely. By dusk the next day, his stalwart mount was in the charge of Nor's small garrison. Raven boarded the last ferry to Torim; he had to clutch the ship's railing with every step, exhaustion clawing at his limbs.

On foot out of Torim Harbor with a fresh box of fish-filled rice balls, he found he couldn't sleep and couldn't eat. The food tasted by turns sickly sweet, coating his tongue like syrup, and bitterly salty, the sour stink of spilled wine and rotting trash gagging him as he retched up most of his meals. It was all in his mind, none of it real. Maybe if he repeated that to himself enough times, Raven wouldn't jerk awake barely twenty minutes after falling into a doze with the sensation of phantom fingers around his neck and a dull headache, his shoulders throbbing in remembered pain. He half expected to feel Alexei's too keen eyes upon his naked skin. (Captain Schwann, are you well?) The hilt of his knife was a familiar comfort in his palm. (He wasn't.) Its edge gleamed pressed against the soft underside of his wrist.

Finally, the grooved shaft and chain of Dahngrest's old barrier blastia came into view over the treetops. Raven clapped a shaking hand to his mouth before he could start sobbing. There would be no dropping in for a friendly chat with Karol at Brave Vesperia's guildhall, however, or Harry at the Union headquarters. A week of hard travel and stress (fear) clinging to him, he wasn't fit for company. Harry didn't need the embarrassment, Raven already something of an oddity in Altosk since his identity as Schwann was revealed, and Karol didn't need the worry.

So he slipped unnoticed through Dahngrest's back alleys to the slightly dilapidated building where he rented a two-room residence that suited his bachelor lifestyle. He couldn't quite stifle his wet hiccuping giggles at the realization that this, at least, would never change. Not like his false heart encouraged romance beyond harmless flirting, he chided himself. What difference did it truly make to learn his body had been used (he wanted to forget) for sex when he'd allowed Alexei to use him in all the other ways that mattered?

Locked alone in his shabby flat, Raven let himself think again. It was no surprise in the end that Alexei hadn't dirtied his own hands, given his fondness for pawns and watching them move unwittingly to his plans. Raven wrapped his piled blankets tighter around him on his bed, shivering. Why was he so cold? He regretted shucking his clothes without first drawing a scalding bath to soak (drown) in.

The Royal Guards he'd fought and killed on the Heracles, during Brave Vesperia's storming of the castle, and in the shrine at Zaude had not seen him as more (less) than an enemy or a traitor, he was certain. Fortunate as he perhaps was that nobody called him a whore then for Karol, Estelle, and the rest to hear, he now had no idea what became of those men. (They raped him.) He turned his face into his pillow, knees curling inwards, and tried to breathe. They could be anywhere.

Even in Dahngrest, at this very moment. It'd been his suggestion that the Hunting Blades not bar recruitment to ex-members of Alexei's remaining forces, disbanded by Flynn, who were willing to defend, strictly supervised, settlements in far Tolbyccia and Desier from monsters. He laughed, the sound shrill to his ears despite being muffled by the covers he pulled over his head. No good deed of his went unpunished.

Walking the streets, though not paved in the fine stone of Zaphias, had him tensing at strangers who brushed too close or stared at him a bit too long. Panic frothed hot in his chest. This was his home. He shut his eyes—deep breaths—imagined the shapes of his scratched, wobbly table and sturdier chairs, the kitchen counter with its mess of cooking ingredients and utensils, shelves and cabinets lining the walls, a compact wood stove in the corner—they were his and well known to him. He was safe here. He had to believe that.

And he was not totally without recourse. The Hunting Blades, same as Altosk and Fortune's Market, kept detailed enlistment rolls that included pictures, courtesy of Dahngrest's best photography guild. His blastia eased its attempts to burn a hole in his lung. Karol and Judith had argued vehemently with the portraiture artist who refused to have a dog sit for a session, co-founder of Brave Vesperia and savior of the world or not. Sighing, Raven wallowed in the memory, just a little.

Yuri enjoyed the show so much he almost failed to step in when it threatened to devolve into fisticuffs; Raven's contribution was to console an unbothered Repede and add that, actually, there was a fella in the studio two floors up who specialized in portraying animals, beloved family pets and creatures in their natural habitats and the like. Weren't they going there next? Delayed, of course, for the greatest comedic effect. Karol's screech of frustration, Yuri's quietly amused "old man." The enigmatic smile that graced Judith's lovely features, as the furious artist shoved them all out onto the stairs, slamming the door on Repede's last bark... Sleep caught Raven unawares.

He woke, he couldn't tell how many hours later, disoriented yet feeling steadier. Hungry, too, his stomach grumbling. Raven (and Schwann) had always done better with direction. Grateful, he dressed by rote and strolled a few blocks down to the stall of his favorite food vendor. Customers were sparse—ah, it was early in the morning.

Which explained the empty streets, Dahngrest a city that neither set with the sun nor rose with it. The fish with miso sauce, a couple kebabs on a side plate, hadn't the flavors it normally did but also didn't immediately land splattered on the cobblestones at his feet, so he deemed the meal a success. Thus fortified, he hurried to the Hunting Blades guildhall, hoping that for once his luck would hold and he could avoid the crowds.

Nan greeted him in the front office with a yawn, listened blearily to his lie about an investigation into the current employ of former Royal Guards on Flynn's behalf, and tossed him the key to the records room with a grouchy, "You know where it is, Raven. Put everything back the way you found it when you're through with whatever it is you're really after." Then she tucked her head into her arms, shameless, for a nap right there at the reception desk.

Raven tsked and grabbed a quilt from a nearby couch to drape over her bare shoulders. Kids these days! If left to his own devices on the dawn shift, Karol wound up snoring into his paperwork, as well. They were a matched pair and, frankly, too sugary for him to stand at times like this.

Probably his first smile in a week faded as he glanced from one file to another. Dark hair or blond, long, short, bald, heavy brows, and square jaw or rounded chin, narrow nose, and high cheekbones, plain and rugged, delicate as a woman's, scarred or not scarred, eyes blue, green, brown, an in-between color? He couldn't remember. Wary of attracting unwanted attention, Raven gnawed at his clenched hand and didn't scream, didn't cry, didn't make any noise at all.

The smell of that alley, the taste of... Pain shadowed his nerves, ready to scorch his bones black at the tiniest spark upon the dry tinder of what memories he had, and he couldn't recall their spirits be damned faces! Strung by its ties on a laundry pole across the apartment windows above there had been a girl's summer frock, the red brighter than the men's uniforms and splashed with a cheerful yellow pattern. Flowers or cute cats or something else suitably girlish. Why would he focus on that and not...? A tattered flyer for a haberdashery on the wall, marred by a streak of his blood. Glint of a broken bottle on the ground, off of metal armor, belt buckles, and the unadorned band of a silver ring that dug into his skin, queerly cold.

I'm fucked in the head. That was suddenly the most hilarious thought he'd ever had. Raven, of all people, shouldn't be claiming he was still sane, having been missing pieces of himself for years and years. He didn't think about anything as he reordered the Hunting Blades' personnel files in their correct drawers. Or as he went back to his flat and crawled into bed again. Maybe if he got access to the Knights' records of assignments and transfers, he could... No, he decided, shuddering, he couldn't return to Zaphias now.

Maybe he should just... stay here, unmoving, (waste away) until his muscles stiffened and all the warmth leached out of his body. Except, no, Yuri knew where to look for him if he wasn't carousing in the taverns or sleeping off a mission in his room upstairs at Brave Vesperia's guildhall. He didn't want Yuri or—he gulped, mouth dry—Karol to find him a bloated, desiccated corpse, flesh sloughing from his grinning skull. They would never forgive him that. And how could Judith recover from the loss of his handsome face, his wit and charm?

His hands were shaking. That was bad for an archer's aim, though he admittedly wouldn't be of much use in a fight like this. Not the familiar, almost comforting desire to die (numb with pain, no more, no more), which he could honestly claim he had experience with, but the distraction and the jumpiness, his consciousness jangling around in his head like loose coins (worthless) at the bottom of a beggar's tin cup—he hated it. Teetering on the edge of a cliff was worse than letting go and taking the plunge. Why was he hanging on? Why claw at the frayed threads of his life with bleeding fingers? No, Raven had promised. He mustn't forget that. Yuri and Estelle, Karol, Rita, Judith and Flynn... They were so, so cruel in their kindness.

An idea crept up on him. There was no point to remaining in Dahngrest; it would only be easier for the others to track him down. Everyone knew he had a wandering spirit, so nobody would question his absence for weeks yet. And there was one last major gap in his memories, that he could feel like a missing tooth. What more harm could it do to retrieve this final piece of his past? (It might kill him.) He laughed sharply.

Schwann or Raven, he was a lying, murdering whore (Alexei's) who didn't have the decency to shuffle off this mortal coil when he should've two lifetimes ago. Self-respect? No need for that. Friendship? A luxury, nice to have for a while but undeserved. To Baction, then, after he forced himself to sleep and eat again. He had once believed he would meet his end there. (Please let there be an end to this.)

· · ·

The moment he saw Schwann, Alexei knew his tool was on the brink of snapping. Schwann had delivered to him the Princess as commanded, yes, but from where Alexei had his suspicions and, worse, he guessed that Schwann would refuse to tell him. Lady Estellise was conscious, unharmed and unbound, sitting nervously on the sand-swept stairs to one of Yormgen's ruined houses. As if in mockery of knightly virtue, Schwann stood silent at her shoulder, a few respectful paces behind her. She had no hope of escaping far enough across the dunes to outrange Schwann's arrows, her fencing skill no match for his in close combat or brute strength, so she could only appeal with her words to the man she had met twice yet whose nature she never truly perceived.

And to Alexei's alarm, her naive, artless strategy was working. Oh, Schwann was not so remiss as to allow his expression to change from one of stony indifference when her eyes desperately searched his face for some acknowledgment that he cared for her plight. When she looked away, despairing, however, his gaze slipped to the side or dropped to the ground, like he couldn't bear to watch her. It was as obvious to Alexei as a flinch, though his weakness didn't last longer than a heartbeat each time. Had those children infected Schwann with their sentimentalism? Alexei frowned.

"Escort the Princess to my flagship," he told the guardsmen who accompanied him, "and see that she is settled comfortably, in privacy. I have matters to discuss with my... informant." Dismayed shock painted the Princess's cheeks white as she twisted around to stare anew at her captor, the name of Schwann's guild persona a whisper upon her trembling lips. What exactly did the idiot girl imagine a captain of the Imperial Knights was doing at Don Whitehorse's right hand?

Or was she waiting, in vain, for Schwann to reassure her that this was all a big convoluted misunderstanding? Alexei hid his sneer with a hand. Raven had always been a traitor. And whatever genuine personal loyalty Whitehorse had managed to cultivate in Schwann over the years was now rendered null and void by the man's death, regardless of the unfortunate fact that Alexei had to sacrifice Yeager's usefulness as a neutral party to achieve it.

No guild would dare trust Yeager's intentions after his involvement in the Don's demise was laid bare. With the Union and Palestralle both reeling, likely embroiled in succession crises, the Princess and her power in Alexei's grasp, better that Leviathan's Claw support the Royal Guard than continue to accept independent contracts and test Altosk's commitment to noninterference, already strained by Barbos's schemes. Yeager rowed ashore with his two so-called daughters prior to their arrival in Yormgen to scout the area for the pursuers who were no doubt following Schwann and his prisoner, perhaps Alexei himself. Flynn Scifo had begun questioning his orders since Nordopolica.

Schwann ignored the girl's mute pleading, her hands clasped tightly together before her heart. Her escorts eventually led her towards the ship, her shoulders hunched, and only the way Schwann's eyes went distant spoke to the tension Alexei knew he felt. As for Raven, his position in the Union should not be damaged by his retrieval of the Princess, provided her little band of meddling friends was dealt with as planned. Alexei was close—so close!—to finally unlocking the mysteries of Zaude. While there may be no need for petty politics once he had, if humanity again proved blind to reason, he had a role for Schwann to play in the war to dismantle the guilds.

He stepped closer to Schwann, who blinked at him, startled. Schwann's fingers spasmed on the hilt of his dagger. "Captain, you've done well," Alexei said, his voice pitched low and intimate. He placed a hand where Schwann's neck joined to his shoulder, thumb resting lightly against the soft underside of his jaw, and was pleased to find Schwann shuddered at the touch, pulse a flutter within the hollow of Alexei's palm.

This particular collar was still fitted snug about Schwann's throat; Alexei had but to determine how hard he should pull on the leash to bring his First Captain to heel. Letting Schwann go, he turned away to smile. "You are to travel with the Princess to the shrine at Baction," he continued, crossing his arms, "and take charge of the forces arrayed there. When my business here is finished, I shall come to you and with the Heracles."

Duke Pantarei, Scifo and his brigade of potential mutineers, and the gaggle of ignorant children who nevertheless had a talent for stumbling into Alexei's affairs and served to eliminate Barbos, Ragou, even Cumore. There were too many pieces in movement on the board for him to act incautiously. Baction was both a staging point for his coup and a trap, though he couldn't say for certain who would be lured into it.

With Rita Mordio and the Krityan woman, the blastia hunter, among their number, it wouldn't be long before the Princess's friends tracked her unique aer signature or the transfer magic Schwann reported they'd activated to Yormgen, and Alexei figured Duke wouldn't be far behind them. That man had an infuriating tendency to appear when and where Alexei least expected him to. Given his intervention in Keiv Moc and at Ghasfarost, however, it was safer to assume Duke had realized the extent of the Princess's power same as Alexei and was keeping a discreet watch on her as well as her companions.

Alexei eyed Schwann's impassive face, his teeth grinding in remembered anger. Schwann had dutifully informed him of Duke's presence and he admitted neither encounter was a good opportunity to wrest back Dein Nomos, but it burned to have the sword he'd sought for almost a decade so nearly in his reach. He sighed. That was all in the past.

If his hypothesis about the Princess being the key to the Rizomata formula was correct, Duke could do as he wished with Dein Nomos; Alexei would soon be able to craft a substitute and one more flawless than the various blades he'd created to anchor his blastia network. Judging how compromised Schwann was by his association with Lady Estellise and company was more pressing at the moment. Whitehorse's death was another complicating factor, loath as Alexei was to grant that old thorn in the Empire's side additional influence over what was his.

"Maintain your cover," he instructed Schwann, "and send to me any leads on apatheia or Entelexeia by bird." Not often surprised, Alexei was a bit nonplussed at the wind construct Schwann spelled to fly to him a year ago. Caught in its body of webbed air was a short message: Schwann would be delayed in Dahngrest for a month or two by a broken leg. Scroll spat out, the hummingbird-sized thing circled Alexei aimlessly until it dissipated some hours later. The only explanation Schwann offered was that he met a mage who cast fire dragons and that larger birds required too much energy to persist.

Do not be so foolish as to betray me, Alexei thought. Schwann helped Mordio leave the cannon emplacements in Egothor Forest inoperable, attacking the Royal Guard in the process, then vanished with the entire group seemingly into thin air. "Have you nothing else to report?" he asked. Except Alexei's research suggested a secret pathway to the legendary city of the Krityan ancestors existed somewhere in those woods and that in this city dwelt an Entelexeia of immense power. Nor was such transfer magic a feature of common ruins, like the occasional energized bridge, his own experiments aside. "Captain Schwann?" Tell me where you went.

Schwann hesitated. Damn him. "No, nothing," he lied and didn't try to hide it, swallowing shallowly under Alexei's probing stare. Damn him! That Whitehorse didn't reveal to him Belius's true identity Alexei could believe, both guild leaders grown canny in their age. After all, Schwann didn't reveal to Whitehorse the Empire's knowledge of how apatheia formed, at Alexei's bidding.

Long had Alexei suspected there was more to the Coliseum's master than Palestralle let on, at any rate, their Duce either a series of remarkably similar men who all named themselves Belius or the inhuman monster that built Nordopolica a millennium before. That Schwann surrendered Belius's apatheia to the Union as a sort of peace overture... Even this mistake Alexei could forgive him, volatile as the situation must have been with Palestralle demanding reparations and every guildsman sworn to Whitehorse up in arms.

There would be other chances to collect more potent apatheia than the smaller stock he'd painstakingly excavated from the battlefields of the Great War. Entelexeia activity was on the rise again. The phoenix-like beast that showed in Dahngrest would not be the last to challenge him or attempt to murder the Princess. Especially should he encroach upon the temples of their ancient worshipers, he mused, Baction a beginning towards that end, too.

He should not be so furious at Schwann's deception. To protect those children, the Krityan woman and her people? Or had Whitehorse's doomed affection for Belius stirred in him pity for the monsters that had killed him and his comrades? Rage beat a snarling tattoo deep within Alexei's chest. He couldn't look at Schwann now, clad in that gaudy, unkempt costume which suited him ill.

"I see," he said slowly, sounding calm to his ears, though his blood coursed pounding in his veins. "You have your orders, Captain." Perhaps he'd been too kind in his treatment of Schwann. As he put some distance between them—he did have to arrange for a brief stay in Yormgen, to greet whichever of his enemies he would bait to Baction—Alexei grudgingly considered that he may just have lost his objectivity where Schwann was concerned. In addicting Schwann to his touch, he had become himself entangled in a glut of useless emotion. His hunger for Schwann's receptive responsiveness, the attraction of bending Schwann to his will with so simple a gesture as the tender stroke of his thumb across a flushed cheek... He was in control.

Or, rather, he had been. Schwann had betrayed him, despite his removal of Whitehorse. And unlike with Yeager, he was bereft of options in leveraging Schwann's loyalty that wouldn't expose his own vulnerability—this unruly need that had eluded his iron grip. The remote to switch off Schwann's blastia was sitting innocuously in the desk drawer of his cabin aboard the ship. If he were in full command of his senses, he would kill Schwann while he was in range, before Schwann could betray him in an act more dangerous to his plans than the omission of intelligence he already possessed. But he balked. It galled him.

Preparations made, Alexei saw to the departure of the ship. Schwann scuttled up the ramp at the last second, to disapproving grimaces from the crew and guards, hands waving through the air expansively as his lying tongue no doubt spun a half-baked story about the Commandant being far too upstanding a knight to strand his poor self in the desert alone, on foot, nary a drop of water in his canteen, and with the heroic service he'd done the Empire by finding their wandering princess. His Raven mask was firmly back in place. And Alexei wanted to scream.

Why, after all he had given him, did Schwann refuse Alexei the heart he was owed? The heart Schwann shared carelessly, in torn chunks, with the soldiers of his brigade, with Whitehorse and undeserving guild riffraff, and the band of miscreants he'd spent barely a season with, under false pretenses, who by his own account would've been glad to be rid of him. When the Princess's friends finally arrived, as predicted, Alexei studied them closely.

Three were noisy brats: a boy of no name, raised in Dahngrest to idolize the guilds; the girl claiming to be Aifread's granddaughter, who like as not was a huckster; Mordio, young for her genius and as socially maladjusted as she appeared in Heliord. The Krityan woman had her charms, Alexei supposed, and was at least a capable warrior; the leader, one Yuri Lowell by reports, still had something of a Knight's bearing and a certain low cunning. With his strikingly long, dark hair, he also resembled, in passing, the captain of the Canary Brigade, but Alexei was quick to dismiss that as sufficient cause for Schwann's behavior.

In the end, the only one he deemed worth a second glance was the dog, as a fine specimen of the fighting breed prized by the late emperor's brother. Duke's entrance and exit was typically abrupt, though it was a minor boon to confirm he avoided discovery by Imperial patrols with the aid of his Entelexeia ally. Even Scifo came, to hurl at Alexei accusations of treason. As if the Empire had not failed Alexei first in its corruption and complacency, that resisted reform and wasted its strength in internal bickering instead of uniting the world's people. He happily abandoned this gathering of fools to Yeager, for him to kill or lure to Baction—Alexei didn't care which. His mind was occupied, as he sailed to the fleet rendezvous with the Heracles, by how he might use the Princess's power and the problem of Schwann.

Baction set the second into glaring perspective. Schwann had disobeyed him. A minimal amount of work had been accomplished, supplies left stacked in the shrine's musty corridors and a skeleton watch on the perimeter; most of the guards were sleeping or playing cards around small campfires. Because the man Alexei expected to take charge of this rabble was lounging on the grass outside, having never bothered to change out of Raven's clothes.

For a mad spell, Alexei wanted nothing more than to grab Schwann by the throat and strangle him, slap him, punch him until he felt a fraction of the pains he was forcing upon Alexei. Sanity prevailed, however. He curtly ordered the men from the Heracles to secure the shrine, one contingent to find which room the Princess was being held in and relieve her guards, the remainder to roust the malingerers into performing their duties. Once the troops were mustered, their attention elsewhere, Alexei walked around the debris and arches of crumbling stone strewn across what might have been the temple gardens to deal with Schwann.

"You are not in uniform, Captain," he said. He kicked sharply at Schwann's outstretched leg on the ground. Alexei breathed, in and out, and repeated silently to himself that this lapse was not wholly unforeseen, that events progressed faster than anticipated, Whitehorse's grandson a softer target than he guessed. One bleary eye opened to gaze up at the darkening sky. "Huh. I'm not," came the indifferent reply.

Now he took note of the metal flask tipped over, empty, just out of Schwann's reach. Crouching, Alexei gripped Schwann by the chin, fingers digging into warm, yielding flesh. Schwann didn't flinch or protest as Alexei jerked his face towards him.

His eyes were unfocused, his lips parted, and the stench of cheap rotgut, that he'd probably wheedled from the ship's crew, was strong as he sighed shakily. Alexei pushed Schwann's head away with a grunt of disgust and stood. "You're drunk," he hissed. The urge to strike the man prone at his feet again swelled within him.

"Well," Schwann—no, Raven—said, "I didn't 'xactly have the time ta toast the Don, so..." He flailed a boneless arm, hand gesturing broadly at the grass, Alexei, the flask, his rumpled clothing and generally wretched state. "Here I am! Drinkin'! Gotta drink ta—" His words stopped abruptly, a stricken expression twisting his features before he threw his arm over his face. That rough and slurred fake accent grated on Alexei's nerves.

Did Schwann want to be punished? He could not be so unaware in his grief as to think this disgraceful display would merit any other response. "Whitehorse is dead," said Alexei flatly. Never had he touched Schwann with intent to hurt, though many times his patience was sore tried, yet it seemed all of his restraint was for naught. "Yuri Lowell and the rest of the Princess's friends will learn soon enough who you truly are and that you betrayed them." If pain was what Schwann sought, Alexei would oblige him, with pleasure.

"Pull yourself together," he snapped. "You are of no use to me like this." Then he strode back to the shrine, a plan to reassert his control over both Schwann and his own inconvenient desires already forming. Violence had proven effective in the past at cowing Schwann into a more suggestible state. Alexei pursed his lips. No, he corrected himself reluctantly, those cretins raped Schwann. What if the sexual humiliation was key to breaking Schwann's defenses, pain alone not enough to disarm him when he was fairly drowning in it?

It would muddle Alexei's role, he realized, for him to force Schwann, when he had so meticulously fostered in Schwann the expectation of a kind touch, tender as a lover's, at his hands. And he needed Schwann's trust, more even than he despised the notion that his years of effort were wasted and more than he wanted Schwann's fear, Yeager's often slipshod performance a lesson in the limits of blatant coercion. His mouth twitched, threatening to curl into a grimace. The act itself was crude and distasteful. Alexei may not care for the trappings of romance as his previous bedmates had, but he'd treated every single one of them generously and with consummate skill, unable to countenance less than excellence in any aspect of his life.

Still wrestling with his disinclination to punish Schwann the way he was almost begging for, Alexei had to bite back a growl of annoyance at the two Knights who called for him with a rightfully hesitant sir. "What is it?" he said, his tone and stare a little too cold, by how hastily the men straightened into identical stiff salutes, faces blank and eyes front. It would be a trial he didn't have the temper for to pry whatever trifling issue these idiots saw fit to burden him with out of the formal statues they had become. "At ease," he commanded sternly, "and speak."

They glanced around nervously for several seconds, to Alexei's mounting irritation, before finally one said, "Will the... guildsman outside be remaining, Commandant?" So it was prejudice, thought Alexei. Not exactly surprising for the Royal Guard and in members of his personal cadre in particular, these men having swallowed whole his propaganda about the Empire's superiority, the guilds a lawless mob of degenerates who rejected civilization and progress.

Gratifying as it was to mark the spread of attitudes that would make his conquest of the guilds all the easier, he usually didn't have the time to entertain the ranting, defamatory speeches such men were so fond of. But there was a niggling tendril of a memory about these two in relation to Schwann that he wished to follow. "Why do you ask?" he said with a bland look that was sure to incite them. Could fate have laid the solution to his problem neatly at his feet? They did not disappoint.

"He may have rescued the Princess," the other said hotly, "but he can't be trusted, that shady fucker. He's a no-good rat a-and a dirty traitor, too, a damn libertine, like all the rest of them guildies." Beside him, his friend spat viciously on the floor with a muttered curse—Alexei raised an eyebrow—that sounded rather like whore. At his deliberate lack of a reaction, their anger deflated, and they suddenly remembered just who they were talking to. "Pardon the language, sir," the first mumbled.

Which was not an apology for the meaning behind the words, Alexei observed. He recognized these men now: from the same company as the four who'd drunkenly assaulted Schwann and were exiled to Heliord for their crime, to die under Cumore's inept command. Alexei struggled to put names to their faces. And where was the third Knight transferred from that unit? Did he not have the stomach to pursue what was seeming more and more like a vendetta against Schwann's guild persona? Or, Alexei perceived in a flash of insight, was he a casualty of the occupation of Baction? Was Schwann merely a scapegoat for their misery?

It hardly mattered. He studied the impotent rage branded upon their forgettable features. They would serve. "Yes," he said slowly, "our guest outside has overstayed his welcome." The idiots elbowed each other, plainly relieved they were not going to receive a reprimand, though Alexei had mentally signed their death warrants the moment he decided to allow them to touch what was his.

"The two of you see to it that he's escorted from the premises. The Empire has no further use for him as a spy." A barest suggestion that they might find a different use for him. "With Whitehorse dead, at least there is no risk of a repeat of the diplomatic incident from three years ago," he added, sighing heavily. Let them believe their company was disbanded to appease the Union and that they should fear no reprisal, however poorly they conducted themselves tonight.

Alexei held their gazes long enough to watch the dots connect, their narrow minds primed by evoking their crass friends, then dismissed them. Their hurried swagger to the shrine entrance, the glint in their eyes and their lewd, predatory smiles—Alexei clenched his hand on the hilt of his sword, sore tempted to skewer them both over its blade. No, this was the better option. His relationship with Schwann would not be damaged as much as were he to do the deed himself, and when Schwann was left newly fragile and vulnerable, he would have no one to turn to for the comfort he craved, save Alexei. The logic did nothing to dispel his foul mood. He stormed through the maze of rooms and corridors until he located the Princess, taking the chamber adjacent to hers as his own.

Not even experimenting with her power, as marvelous as he'd imagined, managed to satisfy him. The entire time he worked with some small apatheia to create a spell prison that would also enable him to forcibly activate her abilities, the Princess, who was a naive little girl still, pleaded with him and beseeched him. "Why are you doing this?" she cried. "This power of mine—it's dangerous!" As if Alexei weren't already aware and of so many secrets, of Zaude, that she was ignorant of. "P-Please tell me what you want! There must be another way!"

Simpler to stopper her mouth with screams, the formulae unforgiving on her body as Alexei tested her limits, than to grant her an answer she could never understand nor accept. She had experienced few of the world's myriad cruelties, after all; her dreams were intact, untarnished by ugly compromises and unmarred by the senseless killing of precious comrades.

Perhaps when her friends were dead and Zaphias lay devastated at her feet, poisoned by her power, she would be prepared to look upon Alexei as savior instead of villain. In the end, she was exhausted into unconsciousness. Alexei manacled her hands together, securing the chain to a metal ring driven into the platform she slept on.

He seated himself on the edge next to the steps, his back to her, and began applying what he'd learned of the Princess's power to one of his copies of Dein Nomos. Armor and coat discarded as the night wore on, their weight too confining, he was dressed down in his trousers, padded socks, and a thin shirt, the sleeves of which he rolled up as he let his thoughts wander in the hushed gloom.

There were similar low stone daises scattered around the temple and a central larger, columned audience hall. Idly, he pondered what or who the ancients had shackled to these altars; the Entelexeia fed only on aer, but maybe it flattered their monstrous egos that their worshipers were willing to offer them blood tribute. A Child of the Full Moon was surely a worthy sacrifice.

On a whim, Alexei fancied himself a high priest to Astal, the Entelexeia that had once ruled this temple, before chuckling at the absurdity. If Astal lived and unwisely tarried near the shrine, the scouts would discover it, and then Astal would face the firepower of the Heracles and be overwhelmed, the era of the Entelexeia fast drawing to a close. The Princess may be of use there, as well, to charge the hoplon blastia with energy that was inherently inimical to the Entelexeia. He rubbed tiredly at his eyes with one hand. Further refinement and integration of his control formulae was required.

Just when his mind was on the verge of being consumed by other concerns, as though jealous of his attention, Schwann returned to him. Like a ghost, he appeared from the darkness, slipping silently into the flickering circle of light cast by the blastia torches at the platform's corners. Alexei set his sword aside and waited.

Schwann was not injured beyond what bruises the shadow of his stubble concealed along his jaw. Raven's purple robe was askew, hanging off one shoulder, and he had lost his hair tie, his one visible eye focused on Alexei and wild. Alexei wet his lips, throat suddenly parched at the sight of Schwann's mouth, open and trembling and bite-swollen.

In halting and jerky movements, Schwann knelt. Then he half shuffled, half crawled on hands and knees to Alexei, who tensed at the weight of Schwann's head in his lap. "Please, p-please," Schwann murmured into his thigh, breath warm through the fabric of his pants. Uncertain but a frisson of excitement searing up his spine, Alexei stroked Schwann's hair, twining strands of it about his fingers as Schwann shivered, his choked whispers of please, please broken by hitching gasps of air. So it had come to this. Alexei wondered whether Schwann had finally remembered everything.

Whitehorse was dead, and soon Zaude would yield to him mastery of its mysteries. And since it had proven impossible to maintain his distance, this time there would be no more games to play, keeping Alexei from bedding Schwann. Why should he not take what he desired from Schwann, who was so desperate for it?

He responded beautifully to Alexei's hand tugging at his hair, pulling away, back arching, long enough for Alexei to spread his legs and urge Schwann to settle between them, still on his knees. A gentle nudge at his shoulder stopped him from immediately, instinctively bending to his task. Heat pooled in Alexei's gut at his eagerness. He swayed, eyes shut and throat bobbing under Alexei's palm, as Alexei pushed his robe the rest of the way off, then unbuttoned his shirt, sliding it down his arms to expose the blastia.

"You want to please me, Schwann?" Alexei asked, hearing the thickness in his own voice. He curled his hand around the nape of Schwann's neck, thumb tracing the sharp ridge of his jaw. Schwann flinched minutely and nodded, bared shoulders shuddering. His blastia pulsed, distressed. Alexei doubted he had noticed at all the Princess sleeping soundly behind them, caught in his head and the savage riptide of his emotions. Smiling, he decided he liked this heedlessness in Schwann.

Almost he hoped the Princess would wake and know who Schwann truly belonged to, his body Alexei's and his heart. But her caterwauling he could do without. How horrified she would be on Schwann's behalf! Alexei flicked open his trousers and wordlessly pressed Schwann's head down, one hand twisted in his hair and the other a collar about his throat. You're mine. Schwann obeyed, surrendering wholly. Mine.

· · ·

On his knees in the grass, coughing up the bits of rice and fish he'd managed to choke down only a few hours ago, Raven was sick and tired of being sick and tired. Why had he felt it'd be a smart idea to come back here? (He hadn't.) Stumbling to his feet, he tried blindly to escape the temple grounds but didn't make it far before his legs gave out and he had to sit on a fallen pillar, collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut. He hunched over, breathing so fast and ragged he was afraid his lungs couldn't bear it.

Memories of Baction that didn't fill him with shame were precious few. Leblanc's face, dirt-smeared cheeks streaked with tears, peering at him through a hole in the rubble Adecor, Boccos, and the rest of his brigade were rapidly widening, digging at the rocks with their bare hands. Their smiles when they pulled him free, limned by the rising moon. Weary, covered in dust and scratches, yet so open and unaccountably relieved. (He did little to earn their dedication.) Yuri and Judith, undaunted in their confidence, perception keen as their sword and spear. Flynn with the courage (he couldn't find in himself) to oppose Alexei. Rita, her anger not able to hide her concern, and Karol's heartfelt words. While not good memories, not truly, they were his lonely company in that tomb of stone and held at bay everything in him which said he was better dead.

And now they'd be even fewer. A sob hissed out past his gritted teeth. It was reckless of him to drink so much. He'd known that when he invited himself to the crew's nightly card game on the sail to Baction. The hooch from their cobbled together still was strong enough to peel the paint off their ship. Easier to gulp cup after cup of the nasty stuff, until his eyes burned and his hands shook and he could totter away, dark spots swimming at the corners of his vision, to drop like a sack of meal on the aft deck as far as he could get from Estelle, her cabin with its guards, her silence, her stare, wounded and imploring.

Then once he started, he couldn't seem to stop. Liberating the quartermaster's flask of whiskey, he drank to the Princess's health and his, neither of which was likely to last between Alexei's plans and Yuri's judgment. He drank to Yeager, who wouldn't meet his end at the tip of one of Raven's arrows or knife, and to the Don, who should never have trusted Raven with avenging him or, really, anything else over the years. It was only fitting that he was useless to Alexei, too.

Punishment, he'd thought, when the two Knights came to drag him into the shadows of the forest, and he welcomed it. Didn't resist as they kicked his feet out from under him, forced him to kneel. Didn't wince at the rough fingers in his hair or on his jaw, at the flat of a blade drawing lightly over the exposed skin of his neck. Raven snorted derisively.

Of course, he couldn't recall their faces or names. Would it help, he wondered suddenly, to recreate some of those sensations? He wrapped his robe tighter around himself and fisted his hands in it to stay them from reaching for his dagger. (A turn of the wrist, and the edge would slice deep.) No, he couldn't risk an attempt. (Could part his flesh and bleed him dry.) The men accused him of being a rat (whore) who goaded their friends to their deaths and needed to be taught a lesson about keeping his mouth shut. Raven hadn't paid their ranting much attention. Whatever they wanted to do to him and for whatever reason was no more than he deserved.

Not even when one laughed and, unbuckling his belt, suggested they ought to make sure his mouth was too busy for slanderous talk did he flinch. There was a yawning pit in his chest; he caved into it, from bones to prickling skin, and it was like diving to the bottom of a frigid lake, numbing. He was thankful, in fact, that the men didn't hurt him after they finished with him. Simply knocked him to the ground, sneered, and told him the Empire no longer required his services.

Half drunk and mind adrift, he had still not been so foolish as to believe Alexei wasn't expecting Schwann. So he cleaned himself up in a nearby stream. At the next change of guard on the shrine entrance, he slipped in, the sleepy patrols easy to evade in the gloom of Baction's halls for one familiar with the security protocols. He'd understood, at last, what Alexei desired of him. And he...

Gasping, he curled his forehead to his knees. His blastia was growing warm, though not yet uncomfortably so. Wet patches dotted his legs in increasing number. He couldn't face his own actions. He couldn't.

"Coward," he rasped, the thinness of his voice a shock. "Don't be a coward." What could remembering possibly do now? It wouldn't erase the past. Raven stamped down viciously on the impulse to forget—that had brought him nothing but trouble, not to mention put him in this mess to begin with—and forced himself to consider what he'd learned.

Well, he must've been (was) a good cocksucker. He'd certainly had enough practice, Raven thought hysterically. Alexei had groaned low and deep and yanked him up by the hair, leaning in until his breathing was a harsh rasp in Schwann's ear. "I want more," he said—no, growled. Schwann had been confused—he hadn't completed his task—but Alexei's hand on his throat demanded an answer, so he nodded and didn't protest as Alexei dragged him to his feet and led him into the next room with a possessive arm around the small of his back, the whole length of Alexei's body pressed hot and hard against his side.

Schwann let Alexei undress him, sitting when told to and standing, lifting first one foot, then the other, like a doll, Alexei's palm stroking over his hipbone. He let Alexei push him down onto the narrow cot and arrange his limbs—on his knees still, head pillowed on his folded arms, and legs spread wide—until Alexei was satisfied. The grip and slide of Alexei's fingers on his chilled skin had seemed so distant, Schwann was utterly unconcerned about how he might look; it was someone else's body that was being bent and folded, opened and displayed—a tender piece of meat to be devoured, bleeding red in the center. He'd reflected idly on the luxuries of the Commandant's camp and mess, with an actual bed and chair, a table, a set of dishes and cutlery not made of cheap tin.

Finally, he let Alexei fuck him. It had hurt, at first, and he wanted it to. But Alexei was a skilled lover, as meticulous in this as he was in everything else he did. Raven laughed and muffled the sound with both his hands, feeling totally unhinged. It would've been better had Alexei treated him like the whore he was. Rather that than this grotesque parody of affection. Alexei's touch a curious, seeking caress across the planes of his back. Alexei's voice a soft murmur, nonsense words and hushing noises, as he tensed—it hurt, it hurt—arms coming apart so he could clutch clawing at the cot's woolen blanket.

It had hurt, until it hadn't anymore. He'd cried out and not in pain when Alexei shifted back onto his heels, pulling him over his lap and thrusting deep, deeper. Raven swallowed the urge to retch again, the taste of bile thick on his tongue. Maybe Alexei and those other faceless men, too, wouldn't have fucked him like a whore if he didn't act like one when a cock was shoved in his mouth, in him, begging and moaning.

He hadn't known where to place his hands. Unbalanced and flailing, he twisted and writhed like a worm impaled on a hook. Alexei guided one arm up to wrap around his head, the first time Schwann had dared to touch Alexei as he did him, and ordered in a hoarse whisper—take yourself in hand, yes, that's it, Schwann—what he ought to do with the other.

A short, sharp bark of laughter burst bitter and black from Raven. He was honestly a terrible whore. Ignorant in the skills expected of him and never remembering to ask a fair price for his services, before or after. (They raped him.) He shouldn't keep demeaning by association the ladies who chose to sell their bodies, to survive in dire circumstances or in Dahngrest and the loftiest social circles of the Empire, as a matter of business or for the status and wealth accorded professionally trained courtesans, even for the pleasure of it. Raven had just wanted to be hurt a little bit less, selfishly and unthinkingly, though (he deserved it) it hardly made a difference in the end, and Schwann...

There were no doors in the rooms of Baction, the stone halls open and echoing. He gripped his head in his hands, shaking. Estelle had been in the adjacent chamber. While he was sure—he had to be or he might as well slit his throat right here—she slept through his crawl to Alexei's feet, their activities then blessedly quiet, had she woken later? What could she have heard? He was lucky that, chained as she was, she couldn't have seen him naked with his legs splayed wide over Alexei's thighs, mouth panting and back arching as he was fucked like a bitch in heat. Alexei had fondled his blastia, fingers gentle where metal joined to skin as they weren't on his hip, holding him with bruising force.

No, no, Estelle would never have been able to look him in the eye had she suspected how Alexei truly used him, when he caught her up on events since they parted ways, in Zaphias after her rescue. At least not without a telling blush of embarrassed pity, the Princess frank and sincere in all things whereas lying was second nature to him. He was going to drive himself mad (madder) with these panicked what-ifs. The abrupt sensation of Alexei's hand upon his (bare, bitten) shoulder was so strong he shuddered.

Hours could've passed. Alexei finished with him, Schwann had rolled onto his side, knees curling inwards, and lost track of time. He stared at nothing in particular, feeling achingly empty. Alexei's light touch jolted him back into his body to find it cold and sore. No more, however, than a few consecutive battles of average difficulty might leave him or could be explained by the shrine's perpetual chilly darkness.

"Dress," Alexei said, offering him Schwann's uniform. He had obeyed, of course, and couldn't bring himself to care about the half-dried mess of blood and seed, his and Alexei's and his, that Alexei cleaned off him, rough cloth rubbing whorls into his skin. As he helped him into his shirt and coat, hands lingering, Alexei told him Astal had been spotted, that he would set out with the Heracles and the Princess to hunt it tomorrow but he anticipated hostile company before long, that he had a trap prepared. And the only thought in Schwann's head then was that Yuri would show him mercy, as he had the Don, and kill him in one quick strike of his sword.

Raven snarled, tearing at his hair. Why had Alexei seemed so betrayed when Schwann said he would stay to bait the trap? "You are still of use to me, Schwann," he said. "Let the Royal Guard handle delaying any intruders; they are disposable." I was disposable, too, in the end. The Heracles, Estelle, Yeager, his rank of commandant and the loyalty of his men, the Empire itself, his morals, his humanity—what had Alexei not discarded on his path to Zaude? Schwann was certainly not exceptional there.

"You I want with me in Zaphias and beyond, should fortune continue to favor us." Alexei grasped him by the arms, a feverish light in his eyes. Some distant part of him had screamed with the instinct to flinch away from Alexei; he didn't move. "Do not falter, Schwann, so close to achieving all we hoped for since the Great War." Lies. Raven gnawed at his clenched hand. They must've been.

At best, Alexei was loath to needlessly sacrifice a tool that had served him well; at worst, he simply hadn't yet tired of bedding Schwann. No argument Alexei could have presented would've convinced him to live, at any rate, Schwann already deadened to the world. That he'd wandered Baction in a haze with a detached sort of appreciation for how fitting his death would be, Raven remembered before, though he couldn't (refused to) guess why his mind had created such smothering barriers, aside from a twice over traitor's guilt.

Eventually, his stiff back to Schwann, Alexei said, "As you wish." Again Schwann hadn't replied, whatever Alexei saw on his face during the course of their one-sided conversation enough to change the plans. "Say your farewells to your brigade, Captain," added Alexei, voice hard. Then he swept by Schwann and from the room without a word of goodbye himself. Not that Raven expected any sentiment warmer than a perhaps gloating statement that he'd been a marvelous tool.

He and Alexei met each other once more at Baction, as Alexei left for the Heracles with the Princess's spell prison in tow. Alexei had nothing to say then either, mouth tightened into a frown. In fact, he didn't so much as glance at Schwann. Likely he couldn't forgive Schwann his disobedience, Raven assumed. An idea somewhat borne out by the contingent of Royal Guards Alexei had apparently summoned to fight Brave Vesperia and that he had to subsequently dismiss, countermanding the Commandant's orders, issued less than an hour ago, in a petty squabble that Raven would've found hilarious had Alexei not been trying to deny him his chosen death.

It was easy to forget it all, that death looming assured. His cursed body and who had done what to it would shortly cease to matter, if it ever had. And after Baction, there was no time for introspection, his energies bent on catching up to Alexei and making amends. The sea voyage to Zaphias was a blur, not helped, he admitted, by the injuries that had Leblanc escorting him to his cabin every few hours to please rest, sir! A very respectful insubordination, he'd thought, amused, but he went.

Strain like acid in his veins from overloading his blastia; cuts, bruises, and burns from his scuffle with Brave Vesperia; more bruises and probably a number of hairline fractures from the shrine collapse, which happily was not the organ damage or broken bones he could've suffered. The constant but low level pain was a welcome distraction, really. And there was always someone or something else more deserving of his worry: the Heracles, Zagi and Yeager, Zaphias, Karol, Yuri and Rita, Estelle. When at last he had the opportunity to ponder Alexei, safe in the castle jail cell he informally considered his, Raven was struck by the strange, uncharacteristic mercy Alexei had shown him.

Despite having him in sight and his clear betrayal, Alexei hadn't switched off his blastia, as Raven feared (hoped) he would. Why had Alexei acted so contrary to his usual methods? He'd believed Alexei arrogantly confident that no tool of his could harm him, and part of Raven or Schwann or both felt an almost vicious glee at the prospect of proving him wrong.

But now... Raven shook his head. No, that couldn't be it. While Alexei may have been a madman when he died, to imagine Schwann could return to him a loyal dog after Baction and Zaphias would've been beyond mad. He squeezed his eyes shut and saw red splashed bright against the translucent white stone of Zaude, the murky green crystal of that giant blastia. Karol, careful not to look at his firm warning, had leveraged the wreckage up so he could retrieve the mangled remains, little as Alexei would've appreciated being wrapped in Raven's purple robe, that he had only ever viewed with disgust. His hair was pale and fine slipping through Raven's stained fingers, the sensation oddly familiar then.

There was no food left in his stomach for Raven to throw up, but he tried to, anyways, gagging on his own sour spit. The broad chest that had been pressed to his back was crushed, splinters of rib jutting out from rents in the bloodsoaked clothing, dyed a darker hue than Alexei's uniform. Head, arms, legs—all barely recognizable. Just raw meat in a torn bag of skin, bone and gristle. Save for Alexei's hands, elegant and long fingered and miraculously whole. The same hands that had touched him with such...

He had to escape this place, this forsaken place. Desperation lent him a rush of strength that he used to haphazardly gather his belongings, piled hidden around a half-crumbled stone wall, and flee in the general direction of the coast. Raven traveled leagues down the beach towards the port that supplied Aurnion—more a series of temporary docks for larger ships to offload their cargo to be barged upriver—before he realized he had no clue where to go next.

Zaphias was still out of the question, as was Dahngrest; Estelle was in Halure, Rita her frequent companion. Dear Judith and Patty, too, would help him run from Flynn, Yuri, and the rest without asking why for however long he needed, but not only was he not current on where the two most adventurous of their group were, both were possessed of unique feminine charms that would ultimately woo the answers they desired from him. He dropped weakly to the sand and stared at the waves restlessly wearing away the shore, grain by grain. A pretty decent swimmer normally, he'd be able to get far enough that the land would be a shadowed mass on the water's horizon. (If he didn't spare anything for a round trip.) Zaude lay at the ocean's heart, too.

"At least stop lyin' ta yerself," he muttered, an echo of Rita's voice in his ears. "You don't want any of 'em ta see you like this." Raven chuckled wetly. Except maybe Repede. Much as his nose had sniffed out Schwann's identity and caused everyone a lot of grief that Raven, unrealistically, hoped to avoid until there was a battle to occupy them, he was grateful for Repede's nonjudgmental presence later. The way he would occasionally fall back to pad along at Raven's side, with an unobtrusive brush against his leg or nudge of a snout at his hand, was a comfort when the others were by turns friendly and wary, no longer sure what to make of him.

Not that Raven blamed them. He scoffed. He hardly knew what to make of himself. The sun was setting; he'd wasted an entire day at Baction, mired in his memories. What was one night more? Mind completely blank, he unrolled his sleeping mat. A cursory search of the treeline yielded enough wood for a small fire, and he contemplated eating one of the tuna sandwiches in his pack, then decided to try his luck tomorrow, too exhausted to deal with another bout of sickness.

Raven dreamed of bone-white hands smearing his naked skin red. Fingermark brands crept up his thighs and over his hip, his chest, and down his arms to twine about his wrists, his throat, his face, strangling and searingly hot and he shivered and shivered and couldn't wake, trapped, stripped to some gibbering thing less than a man. He had no appetite, in the morning. With the ease of practice, he ignored his lightheaded unsteadiness and continued walking the beach, wishing the sea could wash him out to its empty expanses as it did, in the fullness of time, all of life's wreckage.

· · ·

Between ousting the council and Prince Ioder, securing the castle against Scifo's mutineers, and adjusting the barrier blastia to draw on the Princess's power, Alexei had little time to mourn Schwann. He certainly didn't expect the girl to remind him of her kidnapper. Exhausted by the continual strain on her body as Alexei refined the barrier controls to trap a defensive mass of disturbed aer within the city yet keep the castle interior safe and isolated, Lady Estellise had drifted into an uneasy sleep, curled into a tight ball at the center of her spell prison. Alexei took advantage of the quiet—she had screamed and sobbed as he forced her to use her abilities—to research and send to the kitchens for food.

And so it was that he had a mouthful of bread and cream stew, his head bent over one of his journals to review the procedure for connecting to his blastia network, when the Princess woke with a pained gasp. He released her from her confinement with a flick of his wrist and said simply, "Eat." There was no risk of her escaping, collapsed trembling on the floor and the Royal Guard patrolling the castle halls, and a negligible danger to his person. Even if she could gather the strength to attack him, he doubted she had the resolve to kill him. Her hatred was far more likely to turn inwards.

She made no move to climb to her feet or to sit at the table with Alexei, where her own bowl of stew waited, cooling. Alexei sighed and added, "I will feed you myself, if I must. Do not test my patience." He had no desire to coddle her. When she finally stood and stumbled to the empty chair, he watched her out of the corner of his eye with some relief.

The Princess stared unseeing at her meal for so long, like she had forgotten what to do with a spoon, that Alexei, irritated now, feared he would have to prod her to continue at each bite. But she surprised him. "Where's Ra—?" She shook her head and swallowed, before correcting herself. "Where's Captain Schwann?" Alexei shut his journal—he knew the protocols by heart, the necessary revisions aside—and drummed his fingers on the leather-bound cover.

Why the concern for a man who betrayed her? He gritted his teeth. Or had she, too, noticed that Schwann was not wholly his and hoped to gain an ally who might free her? She would be disappointed in that, and he almost pitied the Princess her futile denial of fate. "Dead," he said. Just as he wanted, he thought, a bitter taste on his tongue.

Oddly, hearing of Schwann's death sparked a bit of fire in the Princess. She straightened in her seat and actually glared at Alexei, demanding, "Wh-What did you do to him?" Though she quickly remembered her precarious situation and dropped her gaze to where her hands twisted anxiously in her lap, shoulders hunching. Alexei arched an eyebrow. The nerve of this naive little girl!

Pretending to understand anything of his and Schwann's relationship, with no experience of the Great War or the decade of struggle they weathered together afterwards. She who had barely set foot outside the castle walls for eighteen years and hadn't the wits to see Schwann in Raven. He could have slapped her for her presumption and laughed in her face both. Instead, he asked, tone neutral, "Why do you assume I was responsible?" Tempting as it was to detail for her how intimately familiar he was with every part of Schwann, he didn't feel he would be able to stay his hand should disgust thin her pretty mouth or, worse, sympathy bloom red across her cheeks.

"In truth, I ordered him to delay your companions," he said with a carefully disinterested shrug, "and since at least a couple of them survived to chase after you while he has failed to report in..." The luck of fools, to walk out of that trap alive and apparently unscathed. Schwann had been determined to die, and the odds were not in his favor. Three brawlers of some aptitude, the dog running interference, and a mage of Mordio's reputed prowess to contend with. "Well, I would say the outcome of their battle seems obvious."

Did you meet an end you were satisfied with? Alexei wondered. He suddenly hated the look of the Princess's bowed head, curtained in that girlishly pink hair, and hated the way she acted so gracious and demure, when in reality she was constantly pushing and shoving her indiscriminate compassion where it neither belonged nor was needed, imperious as the queen she would thankfully never be. Was Belius not enough of a lesson for her? Then Alexei would teach her another one about meddling in affairs beyond her comprehension. "Unless you meant to ask who lived and who died? That, Princess, I'm afraid I cannot say for certain." She would rue her prying.

"Schwann was a superb fighter," he explained, "more skilled than he likely let you and your companions see." Her teeth worried at her bottom lip. He had her attention. How plainly did he have to speak before she realized the nature of the confrontation between Schwann and her precious friends? "I trained him personally in the sword."

Hours spent drilling Schwann in a secluded practice yard as the chill of a morning mist fled beneath the blazing sun and their shadows lengthened as the afternoon waned into a firelit summer night. Alexei had been proud, he recalled, at his shaping of the fine raw material that was Schwann when his student, for the moment, mastered his special technique for debilitating enemies. It would not have saved Schwann. The Princess's breathing hitched in what was not quite a sob.

"Your friends killed him," he told her bluntly, "but I imagine he made them pay dearly for that victory." He tapped a finger contemplatively on his chin. "The boy, perhaps, who was so clumsy with his chosen weapon. Or young Mordio, if he managed to close with her and disrupt her casting. And there was no arte of the Imperial Knights that he couldn't counter..."

Now she understood. "S-Stop," she begged him, "Please stop!" She shrank in on herself, hands clutching shaking at the base of her throat, as if in search of something to hold onto. A necklace? Alexei didn't care. Mementos were for those who hadn't valued the present as they were living it, only to become chained to the past by their regret for what was lost.

"After all," he mused, "you were not there to heal them. They must have relied on your power, when there was no lull in the fighting to use a gel, and I promise you Schwann would not have allowed them those chances." Could she picture the bodies of her friends lying limp upon the shrine's cold floor as rivulets of their blood traced the stone tiles? He had seen Schwann bleed more times than he could count, from the blow that killed him to wounds sustained in combat and self-inflicted. The scars were ridges and knotted whorls over Schwann's skin, rough to the touch as Alexei dragged his hand down Schwann's back. "He was too good for that," he finished quietly.

The Princess stared at him in abject horror. "N-No, no," she cried, tears pooling in her eyes unshed, "I saw them. I saw them! Y-Yuri and Ba'ul a-and..." She trailed off, surely remembering that the flying whale-like Entelexeia—Ba'ul, Alexei guessed, and the answer to how the group evaded pursuit, same as Duke—had been blasted by her own power from the dizzying heights of the Sword Stair. Granted, her friends may have survived again, like cockroaches, or they may have been crushed in the fall. Easier for him, if she believed the latter.

"Why speak of the dead?" he said. She buried her face in her hands, sobbing in earnest. "Now eat. I still have need for your power." Eventually, she obeyed him, a hollow-eyed porcelain doll as she spooned stew into her mouth mechanically. Alexei left her in Khroma's care, his aide's piercing glare a mild annoyance. So, Khroma's icy exterior hid a heart with a soft spot for doomed causes. Though, of course, she would do nothing to chastise him or rescue the Princess, just as she had left Schwann in Alexei's bed years ago.

Unable to sleep, Alexei wandered the castle grounds, until his feet brought him to the royal gardens. The head gardener had forgotten to lock the gates in the chaos of the coup or his haste to flee with the rest of the servants. Moonlight shone across a gaping hole in the hedge maze, like the bite of a giganto monster, where the bushes had never grown back from the trimming Schwann had given them with his wind scythe.

Alexei laughed. Slowly at first, then louder and louder, finally so hard his stomach cramped and he had to fold himself onto a wrought iron bench. Why had Schwann been so fond of napping in these gardens? He didn't say, and Alexei didn't ask. It was inconsequential. Forever would these mysteries in Schwann's thinking remain beyond his grasp, as inaccessible as the ancient secrets of Zaude had once been, drowned by the unfeeling sea.

He drew from a pocket sewn into his uniform, tucked against his side, the remote that had controlled Schwann's blastia. There was no use for it now, he supposed, Yeager's loyalty assured by other means. Yet his fingers itched to activate it. To key in some meaningless command—a basic status check or a slight improvement to the energy conversion formula—that would send a signal into the night, to be received by no one. Foolish sentimentality was what it was. Even had Schwann lived, the remote would've had no effect out of line of sight.

It was time he discarded it. He was on the cusp of fulfilling his ambitions for the world, and there was no more room for doubts or hesitation. Gently, Alexei placed the remote on the grass and, in one sharp movement, drove his sword clean through it. The only path he had led forwards, to Zaude and the future. Whatever awaited him there, be it death or glory, he was ready.

· · ·

TBC

---

'Cause I'm a total nerd, I spent the better part of this chapter's second half trying to rationalize the game's ridiculously compressed timeline from Raven's kidnapping of Estelle to his rejoining the party aboard the Heracles. Even assuming Raven tricks or spell charms (Bouquet) Estelle into using her power to activate the warp blastia in Myorzo, he couldn't have predicted where the teleportation would send them. So, I figure they ended up in Yormgen by chance.

Instead of having Schwann drag Estelle back across the desert to Mantaic, which last had an Imperial presence in the blockade of Cados, I've taken the liberty of giving him a faster magical way to contact Alexei. His wind bird messenger is based on the idea that TOV mages can create enduring semi-physical summons (Flame Dragon) and the fact that Raven has four unrelated homing or auto-targeting artes (Dark Chase, Glimmer of Heaven, Azure Heavens, Love Shot). Now Alexei can come meet Schwann and Estelle in Yormgen by sailing up the inlet the town sits on. This also neatly puts him in place for his later confrontation there with Yuri, Flynn, and pretty much the whole gang, lol, after he dispatches Raven and Estelle to Baction by sea.

Once he's done taunting everybody, lol, Alexei ships out for Baction, too, probably leaving Yeager behind. He rendezvouses en route with the Heracles and a fleet of reinforcements, the Royal Guard, Schwann Brigade, and some filler soldiers, as the Empire's gotta have more military units than the four shown in-game. Flynn, his brigade, and other supporters of Ioder disobeyed Alexei's command to assemble in favor of following him to Yormgen or defending the capital against his likely coup.

Since Yuri and company can't just pull up the world map to find Baction, they return to Myorzo and pass a few anxious days searching the city archives for information on the shrine, then flying around Hypionia actually looking for it, during which the events of this fic happen. Similarly, I estimate a delay of two to three days before they confirmed Raven and Estelle were missing—Myorzo's a lot bigger than it seems on TV, lol—and tracked them down to Yormgen to begin with, plus another several days after Baction to heal, resupply (in Nordopolica), and locate the Heracles again.

That should barely give Leblanc, Adecor, and Boccos enough time to dig Schwann out and set sail from Baction to Zaphias on the ships they arrived in. Where they would meet up with the Flynn Brigade under Sodia and coordinate the attack on the Heracles, Raven with the knowledge that Brave Vesperia's coming on Ba'ul and needs the anti-air cannons disabled. Raven manages to beat the party to the Heracles because he doesn't care how tired or injured he is. Honestly, fighting the Royal Guard and Zagi, then crashing with Ba'ul couldn't have done his body any favors on top of his near death(s) at Baction; he needed to rest the most in Nor Harbor, after Karol, and still might not have fully recovered for the trek through the Blade Drifts. Meanwhile, Alexei has plenty of time for evil scheming in Zaphias, Flynn to evacuate civilians to Halure and regroup the Knights at Deidon Hold, the timeline finally uncompressing.