aless
Later on, Freya realized, that the entire business had good points to it. Every cloud has it's silver lining, as her mother used to say; she hadn't been able to think about Fratley even once. The closest she could get was feeling a tender bruise on her heart whenever it rained.
She liked it that way.
They'd been travelling for three days, keeping to the dense forest of the mountain, moving along a mental path only Amarant could pinpoint. He utterly refused to tell her where they were headed, and the long footsore journey was not exactly filled with sparkling conversation. The most involved conversation she actually had with the man was when he answered her with about four sentences.
Amarant seemed to be brooding. Freya swore that about two or three times, he was hesitant to go forward, and wanted to take her back; but then he doggedly turned forward without a word.
Emotionally exhausted, guilty, lonely and even a little afraid, Freya was distinctly tired with the whole shoddy situation. She craved rain-damp grass beneath her feet, the soft drizzly Burmecian morning, Fratley's arms around her –
Pushing all those thought immediately out of her mind, she slogged on steadily, turning her mind to more immediate comforts, like being clean for more than five minutes. Amarant hadn't let her stop once on the journey, and only let her catch about an hours' sleep at a time – he never slept himself, she noticed. It was only when she saw him in that state did Freya become truly worried about the entire situation. She was thankful that young king Puck would at least be wise enough to be able to tell that it was all an enormous mistake and not to declare war immediately on Alexandria or something. (He had informed Freya quite gaily that he was looking forward to declaring war on someone. His father had been the same.)
It was only after eight days' long trek that they stopped, at the top of an enormous forested hill. Freya reckoned that they were halfway between Burmecia and Treno, travelling along the mountain range where the three lowlands met. They'd had no trouble with the upper south gate, as the guards were associated with Lindblum and not Treno, and Amarant avoided the village of Dali like the plague anyway. He'd been so distracted that by the end of the journey he had practically forgotten the dragon knight was there.
"Is this it?" Freya asked curiously.
The red-haired man looked down at her, and his deepset dark eyes clearly showed he was haunted. "Almost," he said after a while.
She looked out onto the valley, taking off her helmet so that she could see it more clearly. The area was so deeply forested that it was a sea of green as far as the eye could see; however, there was an enormous rocky outcrop jutting out of the middle, and the beginning of a mountain range leading off from it.
Amarant turned to her, his face dark. "Promise – no, swear to me that you will never take another living soul to where I am about to take you."
The Burmecian looked taken aback at his vehemence, but nodded swiftly. "I swear on my mother's grave."
He nodded and ceremonially spit on his hand. Cringing slightly, she did the same, and his hand dwarfed hers as they slapped them together. Amarant searched her face for a moment, looking for sincerity, then his own cleared and he began sprinting down the hill. "Then let's go!"
The hill was steep and very thickly forested and there were many times when Freya only just managed not to severely injure herself by impaling herself on a tree branch. Amarant travelled down like he'd been born running the mountains, and she found it hard to keep up with him; he had surprising speed for such a big, blocky frame.
Finally the hill stopped abruptly at the rocky outcrop, and Freya had to backpedal so as to not slam ungracefully against the dusty side. She looked up; the cliff-face seemed to go up for years.
"This is going to be an absolute joy to climb," she said dubiously.
"We're not climbing." Amarant was searching along the wall.
"Is there a cave?"
He smiled to himself, then brightened, having obviously found what he was looking for amidst some scrub growing out of a crevice in the rock. "Just come over here and you'll see."
Freya nimbly hopped over to where Amarant gestured. The way he pulled back the scrub showed a narrow crevice that looked like it definitely didn't go anywhere. She raised an eyebrow at him quizzically.
"Come on. Go on ahead. Trust me."
"As far as I can throw you, but I'll go in anyway," she grinned, and squeezed through the little crack. What she had thought was a dead- end back to the little crevice was indeed solid rock, but once one was wedged painfully inside, you could shuffle through yet another crevice concealed at the very side of it.
"Do I go through here?"
"What d'you think?"
The Burmecian rolled her eyes and blindly struggled through the rocky little opening. It was jagged and dark and there was filtered light up ahead where even more foliage covered the ending crack. Amarant had managed to cram himself behind her, and she felt him push her – not roughly – out through the branches and leaves and into the bright sunlight, and she found herself stamping on pine-needles in a little thicket of trees so dense that she could not truly see the sky.
"How strange," she commented vaguely to herself.
Amarant chuckled behind her, a low, husky, gravelly sound. It was rather pleasant; she realized she'd never truly heard him laugh before. "Keep on forward," he commanded.
Intrigued by the tone in his voice, she advanced through until she had reached the end of the minature forest and the top of a hill.
Freya rubbed her eyes in disbelief.
It was a sun-flooded valley, carpeted in soft green grass, the rock of the outcrop framing an almost flat landscape. There were another few thickets hugging the walls, but most of the space was given up to the vast expanse of mind-numbing electric emerald green. Opposite where she was a crystal waterfall tumbled and roared down into a pristine blue lake, deep and bubbling, obviously to feed an underground stream; the lake was deep and wide and took up about an eighth of the surprisingly large amount of space cuddled deep within the outcrop. The grass nodded with bright wildflowers and birds sang in the trees as if no living being had ever breathed in the area. Freya was stupefied at the untouched pure beauty, the vista that lay before her that looked like it had come out of some fanciful oil painting.
"What is this place?" she breathed, and she saw Amarant looking at the wide expanse of paradise with wide-eyed reverence.
"Heaven," he said simply, then flushed a little at his words, growling and mangling a word deep in his throat. "Aless."
If it had been Alexandria or Lindblum he would have been stopped at least a dozen times on his rounds, but in Treno, Zidane Tribal was only known by his name and not his face. He would have wrapped his tail around his waist just to make sure, but ruefully he remembered that he would be more likely known as 'Zidane-the-man-who-lives-in-the- palace-with-that-nice-Queen-Garnet-if-you-catch-my-drift, heh-heh- heh,' and not 'Zidane-with-the-tail-who-just-helped-save-the-world- thank-you-very-much.'
However, the city was still buzzing with the news of Freya's escape, and Zidane realized afterwards that the fact that she escaped at all would mean that they'd have a doubly hard case to fry. Since she escaped, it meant quite obviously to Treno that of course she was horribly guilty.
The bounty posters weren't that flattering, either. Freya looked like a bad cross between a drowned hamster and a haystack. Nobody would ever be able to find her from that awful picture were it not for the accurate physical description beneath that, and the magic words, 'Wanted alive – forty-thousand gil.'
Puck and Dagger were in almost daily correspondence now. Puck had been having to restrain angry citizens who couldn't believe that anyone dared besmirch their famous dragon knight's name and that it was all a anti-Burmecian conspiracy, and Fratley was currently having kittens over the entire situation. Apparently Freya had actually run away from Fratley before the murder happened, citing some pale excuse about 'needing some time away'. That wasn't the Freya he knew, though he'd always had a sinking feeling in his heart about the supposed happiness that Freya and Fratley shared; from the old descriptions that Freya had given to him of what her lover had been like before, new Fratley contained no shred of the man he'd once been. Zidane didn't blame her.
Having ambled gaily through the main streets from the entrance, veering sharply towards the left, the blonde finally reached the establishment that he had been aiming for and scanned the tables, grinning when he caught a glimpse of a shining pot-helmet and a shock of flamingly red hair at a table. Cinna, Blank, Marcus – let it never be said that the Tantalus boys didn't pull through. Baku and the triplets were back at Lindblum, but as far as Zidane was concerned, those three combined could quite successfully steal the world if they tried.
"Thanks for coming," he acknowledged, leaning down on the table. "Found anything yet?"
Marcus pushed a chair to him. "Some, but it's all confusing," he admitted. "Either our facts aren't supposed to add up or this guy is really ugly."
"Sounds like a real nutcase, too, from what his motives are," Cinna chimed in.
Zidane pulled his chair in. "Right. Just tell me everything, okay? Let's start from exactly what happened that night."
The fiery redhead shot Zidane a look, dropping his voice. "Just be sure not to talk too loud; you wouldn't believe how touchy these people have been getting about this entire thing. It's awful, trying to get them to talk."
"I can well believe," he said ruefully.
Marcus pushed his knotted headscarf a little further down over his eyes. "Well, it's like this," he began. "People run away in the street because your friend Freya and a man 'all in black' are fightin' tooth and nail right in the main road. Real late at night. It begins to get bad so some people scream and run away – but…" he sighed. "This is where it gets messy. Some people swear black and blue that they saw Freya pike the man and then the others who were watching, but most of the people who were actually there said they just saw her standin' over the dead bodies with blood on her hands and on the weapon she was holding."
"Could've been an accident," Zidane argued. "She might have missed a shot and hurt somebody accidentally." He cringed inwardly to hear his own words; Zidane knew that Freya would never miss a shot, let alone accidentally hit others, but until everything was safe there was no way he could ask her.
"Pretty much of a damn fluke accident if you 'accidentally' spear seven people in the hearts dead-on," Cinna snickered.
"Right. There goes that theory. Could the guy have been fighting with somebody else who killed the people who were watching, then ran off?"
"Not enough time, as I reckon it."
Zidane shook his head. That particular question would have to be asked to Freya. "What about later – the riot? Who started that?"
"No name given, according to everybody, so, well, we asked around for details on what he looks like," Blank spoke up gloomily. "And either this guy is really, really ugly or the different accounts don't add up. I thought he might have been a lizard from out East, because of what they said about his skin colour, but…"
"He's got hair," Cinna put in. "They don't have hair. Most probably a halfie, though lizards prefer to stay in the warm, and Treno's colder than a witch's tit at this time of year compared to out east. But yeah, he had hair."
"Loads of it. Blue, apparently."
"Maybe he's related to Ruby."
"Maybe it was Ruby."
"You guys are stupid," huffed Blank, who had always had a sweet spot for the aforementioned lady. "Dark blue. Topknotted."
"Big, too. 'Couldn't see him for the muscles'," quoted Marcus.
"I heard he was quite lanky. And covered in scars from head to foot ."
"Uglier than a rat's arse, too. They all agreed on that."
"Speaking of rats," Blank said slowly, "He kept on ranting and raving about Burmecians. Looked like he was doing the whole damn thing all out of the fact that your friend was from there. That's one odd thing – hasn't been any prejudice like that for, oh, half a century."
"Wouldn't be off for one of the lizards, though," Zidane said thoughtfully. "Lizards eat rats. And the scars and things would add up as well; they breed fighters."
"I've never even seen a lizard halfie," Cinna said, shaking his head. "Why would one suddenly stir up a riot over here? It doesn't make any sense. Lizards don't come over here, they don't even trade with us, they just don't like it."
"Who knows?" sighed Marcus. "It's not making any sense whatsoever. So we have a whole lot of dead people, and we have an ugly mottle- skinned lizardman who got his friend killed and blamed it all on a big Burmecian conspiracy and started a riot. It doesn't gel together. Two totally different events."
"Huh? Whaddya mean, 'friend killed'?"
He blinked. "Didn't I tell you? I got told he started the riot 'cause Miz. Crescent killed his brother, which apparently all Burmecians do, because they're obviously big and evil." Marcus' voice dripped sarcasm.
"You sound so upstanding," Cinna grinned.
"I just think that's idiotic. I think it doesn't matter what skin you have, you're still probably as much as an arse as everybody else."
"How sweet. You should become a poet."
"Which 'friend'?" Zidane said urgently. "C'mon, Marcus, think."
"I don't know. I never got told."
"Damn! I wish Freya was here. She could at least tell me. Or Amarant." The blonde rubbed his forehead in frustration, his tail wrapping around the chairleg.
There was a tapping on his shoulder. Zidane turned around and blinked at the scruffy man at the next table, nursing a mug. "Par'n me," the man beamed at him, "but was yoo meanin' an Amarant of the flamin' persuasion?"
"That's him," he answered genially.
"And youse his friend?"
"Ah… as much of a friend as anybody can be to Amarant," Zidane hazarded. "Yes."
The man nodded sagely. "Thas' 'im, all right. I bin listenin' to your conversation on account of eavesdroppin', an' I weren't gonna tell you nothin', but I will 'cause youse Amarant's friend an' I owe him one an' you also look like you gots some gil." He shone at his tact and charm.
"Come over here, neighbour," Marcus grunted, who knew a chance when he saw one. "What's your name?"
"Andry. You kin call me 'Andry'." He shuffled his chair closer.
"So, Andry, were you there that night?"
"As sure as sure can be, guv. Those poor, poor souls." Andry made an attempt to look upset, but it didn't quite work.
"Did you see who killed the people?" Cinna thumped his hand down on the table eagerly.
The man shook his head. "Nah, sorry. I 'rrived later."
"What can you remember about the man who lead the riot?" Zidane pressed.
"Couldn' see him ver' well. Not his brother, neither."
The Tantalus gang exchanged a look. "Brother?"
"Yeh. He was all in a snit 'cause of that knight killin' his brother."
"I didn't hear that there was a lizard among the bodies," Marcus said slowly. "Did you see anything of the brother?"
"Well, no. He was sorta sufferin' from a bad case of the death. That an' he was all rolled up in black at that man's feet." Andry took a swig of his ale. "Shouldn' wear black. S'bad luck, especially when you wear it all over like that."
It took about a second for the group to gel, and then there was a clattering of chairs as they all stood up abruptly. Zidane flung some gil down on the table in haste for the man. "Thank you very much," he proclaimed, and then they were gone like a flash.
Andry pocketed his gil in a huff. Everybody was doing that to him lately.
He couldn't pick up the scent. There were too many Burmecians in this stinking hellhole, and if he had half a chance he'd get rid of all of the rat infestation but they were not part of the blood-pact. The Knights were part of the blood-pact, and once they were done, he could rest…
The bounty-hunters did not matter. They were all incompetent fools who couldn't catch a fish in a bucket, much less a slippery little rat who knew how to dive into a hole. They were sneaky, dishonourable bastards, and obviously Crescent was the same. She could hide, yes, she could hide, and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing because it meant that the kill would be all his own because he could find in the end, yes, she could slip into her hidey-hole but he would slip his hand in in the end… the end was near, yes, blissful end.
That thought cheered him immensely as he slipped into the shadows, away from the stinking city and into the forests and mountains he loved so well. The hunt had begun… there was just the simple matter of retrieving the quarry.
Amarant watched Freya out the corner of his eye, amused, leaning against a tree and pretending to be sound asleep in the shade. The little rat was ankle-deep at the shores of the lake, and had been amusing herself for the past ten minutes by attempting to catch a fish in her bare hands, splashing frequently in the process. Although her claws were lightning-quick, they never quite managed to spear a sprat, which probably didn't matter to her anyway. Freya's helmet, leather bracers and coat were safely rolled up and tucked away in the rock niche in the mountain she was storing her things in – what was it with women and arranging things? – and she had taken to just wearing her light linen undertunic and loose breeches. He'd hardly recognized her at first, but then the simple reality of the fact that she was not born with the helmet wedged firmly on her head set in, and Amarant was able to look at her. She was quite pretty, really, if you liked that sort of thing, which he definitely did not.
What an odd first few days it had been. Freya was clearly in love with the valley, which made him oddly smug, though living with someone else there after so long of being there by himself was a thing that he hadn't expected to get used to. The conversation had also been stilted, as neither were great talkers, but soon Freya had relaxed and thus himself done the same. Neither would ever find themselves babbling like a brook to each other, but at least they could talk, and the Burmecian appeared grateful to him.
Grateful? Bah, anybody would have done it. Actually, he wasn't in the category of 'anybody', but the fact that anybody would have done it anyway meant it was nothing special.
Amarant had forgotten the comfort of Aless. There was plenty of fish to eat and red meat if he just ventured a little way out of the valley, and although Freya forced him to cook it he didn't really miss the way he used to feed when he was young. There was plenty of running water for drinking and washing, and even shoots and vegetables (Amarant disliked them, but Freya chewed on anything, as Burmecians were wont to do). Hell, he'd eaten better than he had for weeks – slept better, too. The grass was softer than eiderdown and a small banked fire kept any chill that might have come away. They slept on either side of it, and Freya didn't even complain that he snored (which he didn't anyway, Lani was just a filthy liar).
She was a resourceful wench, too, obviously used to sleeping out in the open. Freya had managed to travel around with matches in her pockets, teabags sewn into the lining of her coat, and an entire small teapot wrapped up in a pouch. Quite obviously insane – people who enjoyed drinking leaf juices usually were - but resourceful nonetheless.
The Burmecian eventually tired of harassing the fish and came over to flop by his side. "You're not sleeping," she announced. "Your eyelids are shut too tightly."
He grunted, but his mouth curved in a smirk. "Isn't there a knightly code or something stating you're not allowed to annoy the piss out of innocent people?"
"I wasn't aware you came under the bracket of 'innocent people'."
"Touchè." Amarant straightened up and looked down at her. "What do you want?"
"You mean I have to have a reason to be near you other than to bask in the glow of your obvious affection?"
"When did you become so charming?"
"I've always been funny. You just never noticed."
"You've always been funny in the head, more like it."
"You're cruel at this time of day, Mr. Coral."
He looked down at her as she crossed her legs and fiddled with a blade of grass. She practically shone; since when had she been so carefree? A palpable aura of sadness had always surrounded Freya, but now it was stripped away and narrowed down to quiet moments and a shadow in her eyes that spoke of former tears. Maybe there was something off in her tea. "Why are you so happy?" he asked bluntly.
Freya shrugged honestly. "I don't know. Maybe it's the valley, maybe it's because… it doesn't seem to matter here," she murmured wistfully.
"What not matter?"
She chose not to answer him for a while, and when she did, she brushed him off. "Never mind. Want to spar? You're still unspeakably bad at defending yourself against polearms."
Amarant immediately went on the defensive. "…Claws aren't a defensive weapon. They're a killing weapon. You're supposed to kill your opponent before he can get a thrust in."
"Assassination, you mean."
"It's what I've trained for."
"Point taken."
"What about hand-to-hand?" he taunted back. "You're unspeakably bad at defending yourself without your spear."
"It's a pike – and rule one is to never go anywhere without your weapon."
"Easier way of doing that is to make yourself the weapon."
Freya looked at him, and pride would not let her admit that her hand skills were not up to scratch. "Fine. Let's go hand-to-hand."
Amarant looked surprised, then his face settled back in his usual apathetic mask. "That's not a fair fight."
"Fights aren't usually fair, Amarant. You just have to make sure that it's usually unfair for the other person. And I have trained hand-to-hand, you know. I'm a knight of Burmecia."
He gave that rough, amused chuckle again, and stood up. "Only if you're sure you want the bruises."
"Try me."
So he did, and exactly fifteen seconds later he had her pinned to the ground with his foot.
"Fine, fine! I submit!" she protested, her ego bruised more than anything else. "I'm humiliated. I cower before you. Could you let me breathe now?'
Amarant took his foot away. "It's not that you're not strong," he admitted grudgingly. "It's just that you don't know how to leave your body undefended to me. I'm a monk, and you're still acting like a knight and pretending I'm not going to go for your vitals 'cause that's unfair. Monks fight, we live with our hands. You leave everything open… I'm surprised you managed to stay up that long," he added graciously. "Learnt your lesson?"
She sat up and dusted herself off. "Yes, actually."
"Smart woman."
"And I want you to teach me."
That threw him off completely. He stared at her for a moment before raising his eyebrow in surprise. "Why?"
"You have anything better to do?"
"… well, no."
"Done, then. We'll train every day here; you can teach me how to avoid your attacks, I'll teach you at least something about not getting caught on the end of a pike, which would at least be more than the nothing you already know," she added crushingly, attempting to win back lost ego.
"It's not like I haven't fought against pikes before," he grunted.
"I'm an elite."
"You speak big for somebody whose chest is smaller than my foot," Amarant smirked unwisely.
"That's it! Nobody makes quips about my chest!"
Amarant did eventually recover from being pushed into the lake, but only barely.
"Amarant?"
Freya had woken up to many light droplets of water falling over her body and making the fire spit. Having lived in a city where rain fell almost constantly, this did not perturb her at first, and she decided to patiently wait it out. However, waiting it out was apparently a bad idea; the light spray turned into heavy pounding droplets and the fire went out.
"Oh, Gods," she grumbled. "I knew we'd need a shelter."
Amarant woke up immediately at the sound of her voice and shook himself in disgust. "Damn. It's not supposed to be rainy season yet." He looked quite clearly haunted.
"Let's move back into the pines. We can erect a shelter tomorrow."
"No," he said simply, shaking his head. "I've got somewhere."
"Lead away."
They walked through the insistent sheets of rain, rounding the lake, until they were hugging the wall. "Can you climb?" Amarant grunted over the noise.
"How high?"
He pointed up.
"Not in this weather. I wasn't made for climbing. Should I jump?"
"You'll never see the spot." Before she could protest, he'd gathered her in his arms and wrapped hers securely around his neck. Freya yelped slightly as her personal space was suddenly invaded, but then clung to Amarant for dear life as he took his arms away from her and began climbing the rock face. He moved sideways so that he was climbing up directly behind the waterfall, and the roar of water filled her ears; Amarant climbed for what felt like forever, and then he hauled himself up onto a ledge and deposited Freya safely inside a dark opening up behind the waterfall. Freya blinked, then looked inside, her eyes quickly adjusting in the dark.
The cave didn't go that far back, but it went far enough back so that there was ample space that would not get wet from the waterfall. At the very end was spread dried grass, obviously as something to lie down on. The walls had been decorated with little pictures in grey clay chalk, and something that looked very much like a crude stuffed animal made out of a leather bag and buttons rested against the wall. Amarant was very quick to shove that under some grass.
"What is this place, Amarant?" she asked finally. "Where did you find it? How long did you live here?"
The redhead looked at her for a long time. "I… grew up here, simple as that," he stated with finality.
"No wonder," Freya breathed. "That explains a lot. Why did you grow up here?"
"This is not the time or place to talk about that," he said tightly, flopping down into the grass.
"When will it be?" Freya took her place next to him. The grass smelled vaguely musty but it was soft and dry.
"… when you beat me hand-to-hand."
"Done."
It rained, and she slept.