* * * * * *
The pair of us witness Nooj's departure in silence, the long crooked tail of his hair waggling like a particularly sated cat. Sailors part before him like paid mourners. Several of them cast glances back to us, then to Nooj, then back to where we stand once more. Rumors must paint a thick-blooded myth already for some of their imaginations. Split lovers, maybe. Or deathly grudges.
I don't think they're entirely wrong about the latter either.
Paine wastes no time in any of that. She could care less for who might be watching us, making stories out of our bodies to pass their own hours at sea. Another long breath melts from her lips, and then she forms it into phrases wondering. "So. He was here after all."
This causes me to blink, even in the numb nausea left behind by Nooj's passing, Paine's accusations of abandonment. "You... expected to run into him?"
And Paine accuses me of holding secrets.
"Naturally." She shifts her weight to the side, her hips lounging atop the pillar of her leg. "The Seekers have been gathering here for weeks to wait for their formal approvals. Otherwise they'd just be considered thieves. Hunters for profit. I figured Nooj would be attracted to such an opportunity. That's why I came to Luca--to see him. You," she adds, plain-voiced and practical, "were a surprise."
Those statements throw my heart against my chest in a lurch like that of a drunken shiphand. Why? Why should it bother me? Logic would have it that Paine would follow the reasonable course of action above all else, and that would be to seek out the man who shot the rest of our Team. Herself included.
Logic does nothing to explain just why I feel so sick right now.
The cloth in my hand lowers, stuffing itself back into my pocket of its own accord. The embroidered weight of Bevelle goes smug into hiding.
I'd expected harsh words from Nooj; being sneered at for joining Yevon had been among the reactions I'd figured on the part of the Deathseeker. His contempt shouldn't matter to me, not anymore. Hoping for respect from a man who has left you with twinned scars on your back and chest like a stuck roast is like hoping for Yu Yevon himself to come and apologize for Operation Mi'ihen.
It shouldn't matter to me. But it does.
Paine is a different story altogether. I knew she wouldn't approve of my return to Bevelle. Even I knew it was tantamount to a suicide mission, my wits the only weapon for defense and my soul the only coin for paying my way deeper into Yevon's mysteries. It would have taken too much time if I'd explained to her and Gippal. One or both of them would have tried to stop me; that or their curiosity would have led them back to Bevelle's waterways if only to check up on how I was doing, and then they would have been caught. Everything would have fallen apart.
That conclusion had burned in my mind like a brand all the way up my road to Guadosalam and Seymour's door. There hadn't been any time to waste; every day spent recovering was just another day for the opportunity of Kinoc's death to slip away, gone before I could capitalize upon it. Seymour would have never given credence to my claim of betrayal if I'd arrived with a party of recorder and machinist on my heels. He'd have thought we served for vengeance, not ambition.
And ambition was what Seymour understood.
So I spoke in his tongue then, using our mutual dialect in barter-trade; now I wish I could do the same so easily with Paine, whom I have never been able to negotiate with properly. On Bikanel, I needed Gippal's advice. Even Nooj, after a fashion. What the four of us managed to do in working together, I can't recover on my own.
Knowing the disaster waiting, I try to forge ahead. My voice founders like a horse in deep snow. I ignore it. "What are you planning to do with Nooj now that you've found him?"
Paine hears the detachment in my voice, recognizes my forced indifference for what it is. It stings her; I knew it would, but couldn't keep myself from acting otherwise. "I'm not sure. I never planned on trying to..." Her words falter, but she continues, "To try and kill him, even after everything that's happened. He must have a reason, Baralai. Something down there that you all saw that's changed everyone like this. Even Gippal didn't want to talk about it, and it's almost impossible to get him to stop chattering about anything."
I want to respond to the uncertainty that she is now showing me inadvertent, like a woman unaware that the silk of her underclothes is visible out the lip of her skirt. I want to do this. Paine rarely lets anyone see her uncertain and even then she tries to brush it off quickly; I want to give her assurance, I tell myself that I want to, but it feels like every inch of me is cold as ice.
"And how are you going to know if Nooj is just going to lie to you again so that you'll trust him, Paine?"
This strikes her. She folds her arms in a tight line across her chest, replies harshly now that I have begun to fight her. "It's not as if you're telling me the truth about this either, Baralai." My name in her invocation is a thing bordering on bitter. Paine continues to challenge me in the same breath. "Why won't you?"
I exhale my own impatience with all of Spira out in a sharp sigh. "Because there are people who will kill for this information, Paine. I know you can take care of yourself," I continue, lifting my hand to forestall her own protest, "but Maester Kinoc and the instructors wanted us dead. Nooj did as well. Until I know if this is a false lead or not, I don't want to jeopardize anyone. If I die, that's one thing... but I don't know who else will get drawn into this. We've already lost Gippal. Don't you think I worry that you're next?"
Silence between us, as nearby gulls cry and squabble for a dropped piece of squid.
"That's the stupidest thing I've heard for a while, Baralai."
I accept this rather than trying to fight her verdict, turning my face away with a twist of a smile. "You didn't like our decision to split up from the beginning, if I remember it right."
"Look how much success we've had by following it." Paine cannot hide her features by tilting them towards the ground; her bangs are pinned swept-up, and they do nothing to conceal her eyes as she focuses on the ground. "Do you mean it? Is... Gippal really..."
"The Guado attacked the Al Bhed's home in the desert, Paine. I've read the death toll," I say, gently. I do not bother to explain just how I heard the information, buzzing in Guadosalam as it was and smug upon Seymour's lips. "No one's seen him since."
Paine does not inquire either. Instead she just gives a toss of her head, like a horse weary of the draft traces. She does not look at me when she makes her next statement, a flat tone-dead defenses. "And knowing that's supposed to make me let you go too, is it?"
We're not making sense to each other. I don't think we're even making sense to ourselves, but I don't know what else I can do. "Listen, Paine," I say instead, and look back towards the face of a woman I have seen a dozen times dissolving in my dreams. "This isn't a good time to talk about this. If I don't show up at the inn soon, the guards will come looking to make sure I'm all right. Okay?" Every inch of hope for reconciliation, I force into the patience of my words. "I'll try to see you again before we have to leave. Can you wait that long?"
"Can you give me a time?" Always practical, Paine, but now there's a harder edge in her voice that wasn't there six months ago when first I knew her. "A place?"
Either is impossible. I am wary of making those kinds of estimates for future meeting times when the port is full of Seekers-in-waiting and Bevelle's guards, Luca traders and dissidents. "I only wish I could. If I can't find you, then I'll come looking again here as soon as I'm able. On the next ship picking up spheres to Bevelle," I add, hoping that I could turn this thin wish into a reality and knowing even as I said it that the odds were even more slim than now. "I'll come then. Look for me."
Maybe I could ask Trema. Maybe I could find something else to trade to him. Surely there is some task that might be exchanged for a small favor of attending a regular trade vessel. Or perhaps I can lie and say that I am only paranoid about Nooj, that I want to check surveillance of the man directly to make certain the Deathseeker is not winning in his schemes.
I do not know what I can yet use, but the hope in me simmers. I do not want to lose Paine to distrust, but that is the only thing keeping us all alive so long as the Deathseeker is still searching for Vegnagun. We went through too much in the desert to let it all go now.
Even as I think that, I realize I am already falling into the trap of wanting so desperately to give away all my discretion, and instead cling to the distraction that is friendship.
I can't let myself do that.
Paine is unconvinced of my offer. Her lips purse; I see her unwillingness to place faith in something so nebulous as the future, a thing that could change as easily as the wind. She never used to be so concerned before. Then again, she is hardly fearful now.
Colder, maybe. Harder.
I take myself out of the spell of watching her, my own habits of measuring up a woman I remember having the same expression while we all argued over a missions assignment folder one evening. "Can you give me one thing, Paine?" Hesitation will get me nowhere, but not saying this would be worse. "Promise me you won't get near Nooj."
Paine's eyes are red spheres shining when she pins me upon their gaze. "Only if you promise me you won't sell out to Yevon."
If time spliced itself to months ago on a ship halfway between here and a desert hell, Paine might be making a mockery of herself; then, she had dared me to be something more than conservative. Now neither of us like the results but life is not a record. It has no rewind feature.
Even before I think to answer aloud, I am already shaking my head in negation. Working for Trema has already begun to take me down a path that is radically different than the traditions of the priests of the past; the former Maesters may have hidden history, but never have they destroyed it with the same uncaring ease that I have seen the Founder perform. Trema's stamp will be the direction that Bevelle will take, for all that it will be disguised under Yevon's name. Explaining that, however, would only put Paine in greater danger.
So I err on the side of caution. "I don't know the future, Paine," and I spread my hands as I do so, showing the palms in a gesture of helplessness that we both know is an absolute lie. "I'm sorry."
She watches me, the recorder in her still measuring me onto seconds of sphere-time.
"Then I give no guarantees."
Her footsteps are hard clacks on the stone of the dock, boot-heels staccato. I listen to them fade until they are absorbed into the noise of the port, gone into ghosts of memory even while I am straining to hear just one more step.
The journey to the inn dissolves after that, minutes time-lapsed and deemed unimportant to the final documentary. I am lucky enough to encounter two guards while I am but a few steps away from the ivory-stoned building. They had worried over my delay. I shake my head to assure them, and let the pair fall into escort beside me while I check in at the registry book and scrawl my name on the appropriate line. Baralai, Lustrum of the Founder Trema. In service to New Yevon.
The innkeeper bows to me when I set the ink-stub down, palms going parallel in the full style of reverence. He and his family are old followers of Yevon. I find this out later over dinner, which largely consists of chunks of sliced apples mixed with nuts and greens. The innkeeper's wife hovers over me with the dishtowel wrung in her hands until I realize she is waiting to hear how I find the dinner, and then I remember to compliment her for having fruit this early in the year. This causes her to bob her head in thanks before hurrying to other work, but she returns often to check upon the state of my plate.
Unsurprisingly, I have very little appetite.
The salad is forced into my stomach to keep from accidental insult. I drink water to try and wash it all down despite the way that my throat tries to reject anything put through it; refusing seconds of the meal brings a flicker of worry to the innwife's face before I blame my lack of hunger on the long sea voyage.
By the same token I call my own departure from the table before the guards have finished their own meals. A bath would do me well after the trip closeted on the ocean; I have managed to wash up during our brief visits on landfall, but between the sweat and strife of the day, I am possessed by the urge to slough off my own skin.
The taps run hot water and cold in equal, perfect temperatures upon twisting. Luca has numerous advantages upon Bevelle; one of them would have to be the abundance of physical luxuries. Bevelle may indulge in certain whims, but most of which center around a mental thirst for complication; here in the trading port, people only want to have a filling dinner and bath afterwards before they sit down with their families and friends for a round of evening games.
Pammo-pidduh of the world indeed. The Luca night is warm and lush with so many living bodies about on their business, sounds of foot traffic heavy even through the evening. I yank the curtains of my windows back and push them open so that I can breathe in the breeze.
Tomorrow will be a day full of interviews and reports. Somewhere in the line-up will be a certain Deathseeker, his confidence already well-prepared and ready. I doubt he would just rescind his application after seeing me. No, he is likely betting on my automatic refusal, hoping to turn it into a form of proof against Yevon's willingness to find the truth.
Truth. What an irony that is, to have the Deathseeker who lied to us all turn around and try to play at being a champion of such an ideal.
Two can play this game, even where four have lost. Even when I think I am losing still. Especially then.