Gara was leaning against the rough stone balustrade on the outside of the main doors, studying the fine leatherwork of the Murasume's scabbard. There was nothing of tenseness in the way he held his body, or the muscles in his face. Nothing to indicate the unease he had evidenced before he had wisely fled Arshes Nei's room.
Schneider stalked down the steps, fixing Gara with a gaze that would have done a hydra justice. He had known very well the Ninja Master wouldn't run far. Only far enough to take it away from Arshes Nei. Schneider knew the way his sense of honor worked. His own was an uneasy and unpredictable thing.
Gara put the end of the scabbard down in the dirt and rested his hands on the pommel like it was an especially lethal cane.
"So what do we do about this?" He asked, voice neutral.
Schneider circled like a wolf, lashes half-mast, eyes glittering underneath. "I don't know." A sibilant hiss. "I made a promise not to kill you."
Gara nodded at that, face carefully impassive. "You think I'm that easy to kill?"
A laugh that held no trace of humor. He did not bother to justify that question with an answer. Gara took a breath. No fear. He always had been stupid enough to die for a cause. Always had been willing to fight against insurmountable odds in the name of his beliefs. Goddamned stupid, honorable fool who didn't know how close he was to death and probably didn't care.
"I've never fought over a woman." Gara said. "Never cared enough. But it seems stupid to do it over one you don't want to begin with."
"Shut up. It's not yours to say what I want and what I don't."
"Right. You want everything. Spoiled, fucking brat."
Schneider hissed and lashed out with a snaking coil of energy. Gara launched himself into the air, somersaulted and came down behind Schneider. The stone wall where he had stood had a blackened rent some ten feet wide.
"What? Tantrums?" Gara taunted and darted in with more speed than the eye could easily follow and clipped Schneider in the jaw with the hilt of the Murasume. Hard. It hurt. He staggered back a step, tasted blood and was so furious that he didn't even think about healing it. He was fast forgetting he had ever promised Yoko anything.
He was contemplating a nice little Tesla spell. Gara looked as if he were thinking about drawing the Murasume. The package laden figure of Geo Note's little priestly assistant trundled through the courtyard and between them, oblivious to the power that radiated through the air he passed. He smiled hesitantly at Schneider who ignored him in favor of glaring at Gara, commenting as he passed.
"Good morning. Great Priest Geo has found a merchant party to travel south with. Isn't that great news? It will be so nice to have him and lady Yoko home in Meta-Rikan again."
"What?!!"
The little priest was blown backwards off his feet, packages scattering. Schneider pounced on him, grabbing robes in his fists and pulling the man up savagely. "Yoko's not going to Meta-Rikan."
The priest's eyes were saucers staring up at him. The man's mouth worked spasmodically. Schneider shook him in efforts to prompt actual words to spill forth.
"The great priest --- priest had hoped -- they spoke this morning."
Schneider swore. Released his hold and let the priest fall in the mud. Gara was a forgotten presence behind him. "And where is the Great Priest now?" He demanded. The little priest cringed, gesturing weakly out the court yard gates and towards the city. "Helping Father Cittaro in the temple of Eno Marta. I -- I think he took lady Yoko to show her the -- the shrine."
"Oh, did he? Where the hell is this temple?"
The priest looked as if he were about to pass out. Gara supplied from behind him.
"East wall of the city. Under a guard tower."
"How would you know? Since when did you start attending to the gods?" He cast a dark glare over his shoulder. Gara shrugged, not looking particularly put out, or upset, considering what had been interrupted.
"Just like to know my way around is all."
Schneider hissed at him, frustration and anger shifting to make room for just a little bit of apprehension. Yoko wouldn't. He knew she wouldn't agree to such a pilgrimage without telling him. But still, the pull of her father -- of that melting pot of religion and commerce and misplaced honor that was Meta-Rikan -- he knew she mourned the loss of its welcome. Even he remembered things of it that were pleasant and he hated it -- but of course those were more Rushie's recollections than his own.
He cursed and took to the air.
Yoko looked up at the worn wooden statue of the goddess that adorned the small temple's naive. There were chips here and there out of the wood, though it had been lovingly waxed and oiled to keep the wood strong. It was nothing like the idols in the great cities of the south. This little church could barely seat a congregation of fifty souls and from the what father Cittaro said, he received not nearly so many as that on a regular basis. Not surprising considering Kall-Su's views on religion. Views she could understand him holding, but no priest of Eno Marta had ever preached brimstone and fire to keep his flock in line. The goddess was the gentlest of all the gods and the most forgiving. She felt remiss for never thinking to come here herself during all the time she had lived in Sta-Veron. She made a promise to herself to lend the tired seeming old priest her aide from now on. This temple could use a few luxuries and a few helping hands and she was certain she might talk Keitlan and a few of the maids into donating a little time to help a struggling faith.
Geo Note was speaking with the old priest by the open front doors. Yoko wondered about the naive, inspecting the few artifacts that graced the reliquaries lining it.
Father Cittaro made a startled noise from the front. She looked up and saw the last person she would have expected to sit foot in a shoddy little temple to Eno Marta fill the doorway. She opened her mouth in shock a moment before Schneider swept in, grabbed her father by the front of his robes and slammed him into the wall of the atrium.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
She didn't have any trouble hearing what he said, since he was yelling it rather uninhibitidly in Geo Note's shocked face.
"Remove your hands from me." That was father, somewhat lower, evidencing offended indignity.
"How dare you think you can take Yoko back to Meta-Rikan."
So that was it. She could not for the life of her imagine how that bit of conversation had gotten back to him. She made a little frustrated sound in her throat and hurried up the aisle towards them.
"What are you doing??" She brushed past the very startled old priest, who was clearly debating whether he ought to attempt to pull the rude assailant off his fellow priest. His lady goddess must have been looking after him to grant him so much hesitation. She had no indecision at all about laying her hands on Rushie's arm. She yanked back with all her strength and he wouldn't budge, too intent on pressing her father into the stone of the wall.
"Stop it!"
He shook her off so hard she staggered a few steps backwards and stabbed an accusing finger at her. "What are you doing?" He still had an arm across Geo Note's throat, which greatly hindered the great priest from attempting an answer to his first enraged question.
Yoko, who knew exactly what the problem was and could have solved it with a few simple words, got her back up at the accusatory and very proprietary look in his eyes. Irritating, irrational man. If there had been anything readily at hand to throw at him, she would have snatched it up and hurled it. As it was, she threw both hands out in agitation and screamed.
"Who are you, to think I answer to you? I thought we had this conversation?"
"Not this one." He snarled back at her, then thrust Geo Note roughly to the side, his attention focused solely on her. She was never the recipient of his ire -- not real ire, but she found it in his eyes now. And did not particularly like it. She lifted her chin and forced herself to speak in a coolly rational tone of voice.
"If you would ever lower yourself to engage in conversation before you flew off into your asinine rages, maybe people would talk to you. And no, I am not going back to Meta-Rikan with father, even though now that I think about it, it doesn't sound like such a bad notion." She stalked between him and the moon eyed old priest and out onto the lightly traveled street outside. Father called after her, but it wasn't a desperate plea for help, so she figured he wasn't being killed and ignored it.
Rushie didn't try to stop her or attempt to follow her. She almost wished he had. She hated for resentments to simmer. Better to get them out in the open, if it meant harsh words exchanged and anger flared. She ground her teeth and simmered. He was usually quick to take offense, but that reaction had been extreme. Something had set him off this morning.
She slowed her deliberate march somewhat as her anger cooled and veered her course towards market street. The venders were beginning to get a trickle of foreign goods to sell as the weather improved. She browsed through stall after stall of merchandise, trying to divert her stewing indignation. There was a nice display of cutlery on the bench of a metal smith that she was in the mood to inspect. She picked up a stiletto and had dark thoughts about what use such a thing might be put to. She put it down regretfully and drifted to another stall.
There was a figure she recognized standing before a stall boasting used clothing.
"Lily." She said, surprised to find the girl here. Lily looked back, a quick dark of dark eyes behind her hair. A moment's alarm before she recognized Yoko.
"Oh, hello, Lady Yoko. I finished my chores early so mistress Keitlan let me come into town early." She said, as if Yoko would fault her for avoiding her duties.
Yoko smiled brightly, determined to chase away the foul mood and crowded close to see what Lily was looking at. A bright red skirt, voluminous and many layered, like the gypsy wanderers wore when they passed through towns to entertain the landbound folk.
"Oh, that's pretty. Not for working around the castle, I take it?" she grinned as she fingered the material. A blush could almost be seen on Lily's face past the hair.
"No. No. A tavern keep has consented to let me play at night for whatever gratuity his patron's deem fit to grant me with. This --" and she hesitantly touched the plain, brown material of her skirt. "-- did not seem appropriate."
"You're playing at a tavern? How wonderful. I'm so happy for you. Which one? I must come and listen to you."
Lily told her of the lute Gara had gifted her with and her approach of Setha's friend who worked at the tavern last night. She had played a few songs and the late night patrons as well as the tavern keep had been well impressed. Yoko was delighted for her and when the merchant named a price for the skirt that seemed beyond Lily's capacity to pay, offered to help pay for it herself.
"No." Lily said softly. "Thank you, but no. I have been fettered so long, that I long to survive by my own resources and none other. Please understand."
Yoko blinked, quite taken back by the fierce adherence to honor. This girl was only now being allowed to develop her own sense of worth and pride after so long denied it. "I understand. But the skirt would look lovely on you."
Lily sighed and dug in her little purse for another two coins. "I was saving them. But there will be more now that there is no one to take them from me."
"Saving for what?" Yoko asked as they left the vender with Lily's wrapped package.
"Freedom. A means to travel without wondering quite so desperately where my next meal will come from. I know well how it feels to starve and have no wish to experience it again."
"A good minstrel will always find welcome." Yoko encouraged. "Oh, look, pine nut cakes. Have you tasted one? You must." She bought two regardless of Lily's claim to be dependent on no one. They sat down on a low stone wall beyond the market street to consume the cakes. The sticky sweetness clung to fingers making eating the pine nut cakes a messy task. But a thoroughly delightful one. Lily even smiled, which Yoko thought was an amazing thing. The girl had to push her hair back to eat the cake to keep honey from lodging in it. Her features were delicate, almost exotic in the cast of her eyes and the tone of her olive skin.
"Why do you hide your face all the time? What are you afraid of?" Yoko voiced the question as soon as it surfaced in her mind. Lily blinked at her and reflexively looked down, but the hair tucked behind her ears would not fall to cover her face.
"See? You're trying to do it now."
Lily sighed, seeming uneasy with Yoko's bluntness. "It is easier to hide, I suppose. It always has been. If they don't notice you, then they tend to leave you alone."
"Oh. That's terrible. What a terrible way to live." Yoko finished off her cake and licked her fingers one by one. "But you don't have to anymore. You're not a slave. And by the way you have to tell me all about that. I've only heard the barest rumors."
"I don't see how." Lily grumbled. "I can hardly get away from the gossip."
Yoko lifted both brows, chuckling. "Well, I've been --- preoccupied -- the last few days and haven't had the time to catch up on all the rampart calumny. But I can well imagine how surprised the staff was. I mean such a thing is soooo out of character for him. I mean unless you use threats and force and all sorts of other dire things as impetus Kall-Su just never gets involved in the workings of the common world. He's like the master of distancing himself from everything that doesn't directly interest him. You must have really made an impression for him to make such a gesture."
"I didn't." Lily said softly, clearly uncomfortable with the topic. "I offered support and he was merely repaying the debt."
"If you say so."
Lily drew her brows and cast a hesitant look at Yoko. "I do --- but why else would Lord Kall-Su have done such a thing?"
"I haven't the foggiest. But, he's been -- off a little bit since he came back. I think the shell he always uses to protect himself is cracked and he can't figure out how to put it back together."
"You know him well?"
"Pretty well. He sort of got forced to accept me because of Rushie -- otherwise, he'd barely know I was alive. But that's how most powerful sorcerers are, to be honest. Most of them are so wrapped up in wizardly stuff, that they don't have time for the world."
"It scares me, the casual talk of great magics."
"Well, you are definitely in the wrong place then, 'cause we've got the best collection of magic in the world right here in Sta-Veron. I'm not bad at it myself, you know?"
"You?"
"Well, it's mostly holy magic that father taught me. I was going to be a Holy Sword once upon a time before the world went insane. I've got a good sense for people and you know, you've got an awful bright aura for a just a normal girl. Are you sure you don't have a touch of magic yourself?"
"No." Lily said sharply. "And I wouldn't want it if I did."
"Well, it's not too bad. It sort of comes in handy sometimes. And sorcerers aren't all that scary -- as long as they're not cranky -- if you keep them on a leash and don't let them think they can walk all over you."
Lily did not look quite convinced about that. A shadow fell over them and both girls looked up. Yoko scowled.
"You're blocking my sunlight, Rushie."
He crossed his arms and scowled back at her. People veered to walk around him on the cobbled side walk.
"I would like to talk with you."
"Can't you see I'm busy." She said airily.
He glanced briefly at Lily, then sniffed and said. "I will not apologize in the midst of market."
Yoko's brows shot up at that stiff declaration. He was going to apologize? Amazing. Such a thing was not to postponed or missed. Such a thing was to be savored to the fullest extent possible. She kept the self-satisfied smile from her face and leaned in to Lily to promise. "I will come and listen to you play tonight and applaud outrageously so that the tavern keep knows how valuable an asset you are."
Then she slipped off the wall and strolled down the street with the sure assumption that if he had convinced himself he had done her an injustice, he would surely follow. He did.
Kall-Su woke up with the most dreadful traces of nightmare lingering in his head. The pounding of his heart was liken to deafen him. He could not recall what he had dreamed. He was not certain he wished to. There was wetness on his cheek, though to attest to the disagreeable nature of the nightscare. He hissed in disgust over his own weakness and threw the bedsheet back in a fit of violence. He summoned a cold, blue witchlight and stood, listening to the vast emptiness of the sleeping castle. He went to the window and thrust the shutters open and the glass window panels, needing to see the sky, even if it was night black and all but covered with clouds.
The brisk, chill breeze brought with it the faint smell of wood smoke from the city beyond, the more elusive smell of rain that had recently come to wash away even more of the snow that clung stubbornly to the land. Mostly, though, it brought a sense of freedom that he didn't think he could ever get enough of. Even the concern of his friends had been a yoke that weighed upon him, stifling and so clinging that he had been on the verge of fleeing this place that he loved to seek solace from it. But they had not come all of today, after Schneider had left him. And other than Keitlan with his meals, no one had intruded upon him.
So Schneider trusted in his assurances of sanity, even if he felt far from such a state now, with the oblique remnants of nightmare still fresh in his mind. Schneider continually surprised him, going from stubborn single mindedness to complete preoccupation with something that drew his attention more strenuously than thoughts of Kall-Su's impending suicide. Stupid, stupid thing to let himself be driven to. The thought of his own gullibility, his own weakness, made him sick. And angry. And worst of all, he could not quite manage to shed the images and the words, no matter whether they were real or planted by Angelo, from the recesses of his mind. He pushed them away, but they always lurked about, waiting for an unguarded moment to sneak up on him. Perhaps they came out more fiercely in his dreams and drifted away tauntingly when he woke prematurely from the nightmares.
They fluttered about in the shadows now, waiting for him to return to bed before they might pounce again. He had been getting little in the way of restful sleep lately, a few hours a night at most. He had no desire to retreat back to slumber now. He put on the robe lying across the foot of the bed. It was a fine, elegantly embroidered affair that had been added to his wardrobe without him even knowing it. A good many things had cropped up without Kall-Su noticing at all. Someone at least had a care for his state of dress.
He tread softly down the hall, hesitated at the door to his study, but the pull of the books was not strong, so he passed it by in favor of padding down the steps towards the great hall, which would be blessedly empty at this late hour. As would be the kitchen which guarded the door to the wine cellar, which he had, now that he thought about it, only entered once and that long ago when he'd first taken this city and made this castle his own. He had only ever entered the kitchens a few times more than that. Servants had always fallen over themselves to attend him and he had always taken full and rightful advantage of their vassalage. It never occurred to him to act otherwise, until even the thought of a lowly servant intruding upon his solitude made him uneasy. And he dearly wanted a bottle of the very fine wine he kept in the cellars below the kitchen. Enough of the wine could chase even the nightmares away.
He stopped with his foot on the bottom step at the sound of laughter from the hall. He drew his brows, irrationally angry that someone should dare to occupy it when he wanted to traverse it in privacy. Then a burst of giggles again and he thought he recognized Yoko's voice.
"Oh, Setha, you were so baaadd."
"Oh, the lads, they love it, Lady." Another voice he did not recognize. "Play the one about the lovelorn knight and his lady married to another, please. I want to hear it again, before I find me pillow."
"Oh, yes, that one's so tragic. It was the best you did." Yoko sounded drunk. The other girl did. There was a quiet, murmured ascent by someone else that he couldn't quite hear, then a lilting procession of music accompanied by a hauntingly beautiful voice. He didn't need to see the other girl to know who it was. The voice triggered a flood of memories. In the midst of nightmare -- or had it been reality -- that lilting voice had been a break in the darkness that threatened to consume him whole. For no reason he could think of she had offered a lifeline -- it just hadn't been enough.
He slid down the wall and sat on the next to bottom step, trapped by the song. By the familiar nuances of a voice.
Who are you?
No one.
Her name was Lily. She had refused to tell him, ashamed of her slavery. He recalled her hiding her marked hand. He could see the gesture over and over in his mind. So very antithetical to the bravery she had shown in daring to enter his cell. It was why he had sought her out, because of the gesture. Because he could not get out of his head that that mark made her think she was worthless and yet she had been his only bit of salvation in that dank, windowless hell of the Prophet's making. Her worth therefore was immeasurable, even if his own had plummeted.
The song was over and he had drifted through it, hearing the voice but not the words. The girls were talking about finding their respective beds. Their footsteps pattered on the floor approaching the steps. He had of a sudden a great desire to be elsewhere, a total wish for anonymity. He made a gesture and gravity lost its hold on him. Floated upwards to reside in the deepest shadows of the alcove over the stairs. They danced up the stairs below, Yoko practically skipping, humming to herself, the other girl, one of the servants, swaying in her path, hardly able to hold her balance. And the third girl, who held an instrument lovingly against her breast and climbed more sedately than the other two, head down and hair falling over her face as it always seemed to do.
Then they passed and the silence crept back. But the solitude wouldn't come with it, because the siren song wouldn't leave his head.