They didn't hear from the former Crusader for six months after that, until Nooj was nearly forgotten--another of Rin's gambles that had panned out poor. Zanni's rolls of blueprints had been shelved. The entirety of Nooj's file consisted of a sparse note clipped to the tube, a tally of the cost of time and effort that had never been delivered.
When the teenager finally stooped to contacting the Travel Agency, he did so through mail. The missive was passed from hand to hand before it finally landed on Rin's desk, covered with souvenir fingerprints in grease-smear marks.
The return address listed a Crusaders branch in Luca. The sender, a junior officer named Nooj.
"Guess he's still alive," sang out one of the traders as he delivered the rest of the courier bag, hefting it carelessly onto a stack of outgoing accounts. The stained leather of the satchel told coy stories to Rin's paperwork. "Hallon owes me fifty gil."
"I would have expected the boy to have choked on his own metal toes by now," was Rin's dry agreement. His nimble fingers had already seized the envelope and were slashing it open with the knuckle of one thumb.
The trader seated himself on the edge of the desk, toying with the strap-rigging lined along his shin.
"Well?"
"He says," Rin stated, his shoulders aggressively neutral as he read the hard-stroked print, "that he will be meeting me on the fifth day of this month, on the Djose side of the Moonflow." Letting the paper fall from his fingers, the Al Bhed rolled his blue eyes to the ceiling, and sighed. "That is tomorrow. Someone have a chocobo ready for me."
The length of the trip required riding through the night--a hazardous venture at best. Rin stole his dinner while in the saddle, unwrapping hastily mixed breads and meats from waxed paper cradles, and losing half when the chocobo bounced over a rock. The reed lantern-staff that had been strapped to the saddlebags jiggled and swung its flame like a jeering pendulum. It drenched the landscape he rode through in hazard's reds and gold.
Rin found himself waiting for bandits. Or fiends, boiling out of the chill darkness, and that kept him occupied for the duration of the ride so that he did not wonder why he was honoring the meeting at all.
Dawn found him yawning, squinting his eyes closed against fatigue that tasted of a jostled stomach and loaf crumbs. His stop at Djose Temple was only long enough to swallow down caustic mouthfuls of hot black tea. Lightning crackled in the thin morning light as he watched the stones revolve, charging the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck, and the sheen of blue static glossed over Rin's cup while he drank.
Two refills later and he had unhooked his chocobo from its post, pulling himself back into the saddle with an ache in his legs that warned of overlong riding. Rin dismissed it. Noon met him and passed while he journeyed; other travelers flashed by, strangers in the dust. He napped in sporadic trances during the ride. When his eyes began to fall too heavy, Rin stole a handful of minutes asleep beside the shelter of a fallen tree. He woke with road-sweat on his neck and face, scraping it away with a corner of his shirt before returning to his trip.
By the time the forests of the Moonflow began to rise up in frond-waves of green, the Al Bhed was hunched in his seat. He pulled in the final distance slow. The steps of the chocobo mount were awkward; plumage clamped tight, head lowered, the beast was ragged with exhaustion. It did not wander when Rin slid down from its back, but only sunk immediately to the ground, black pearl-eyes scrolling shut while its chest heaved.
Rin looped the reins around the nearest tree and went looking for the Crusader.
He found Nooj as a lone figure, well away from the main riverbanks where the setting sun gleamed off clusters of metal helmets and armor. It dipped white linens in firelight, changing pale weaves into orange. Wooden boards had been laid out in irregular rows and numerous cloth bundles stretched out upon them, wide diamonds at the top before narrowing down to pairs of anonymous feet.
Nooj was watching the dead.
Soldiers mingled in audience with the fallen, their weapons slung in easy reach on their belts. The pyrefly trickle that bled out of the corpses mixed with the spirits that wandered along the Moonflow waters. Rin, watching the rainbow display, only found himself desperate for a soft bed.
"I should hate you for the trouble you have put me through." The first words out of the Al Bhed's mouth came easily. The second arrived with a yawn that wrenched his eyes closed and blurred them with moisture. "Why could you not have made this trip closer?"
Nooj did not stir as he heard the Al Bhed's approach, but only inclined his head. "My squad had to wait for a summoner for our fallen. We sent someone to Guadosalam, but the Guado's maester was away at Bevelle, and there was no one else who could be spared. We had to bribe this one to delay her pilgrimage."
No apology was in the teenager's voice. The bitter youth that Rin had met six months ago had vanished, swept underneath a veneer of restored dignity. Returning to the Crusaders had poured living patience back into the angry, crippled child that had hobbled out of the Travel Agency and back into his own world. Yevon's realm.
Crunching up the gravel of the path, the Al Bhed stopped at the tree Nooj was leaning against. The teenager's hair still had not been tied up, and it ran in a rebellious waterfall over the Crusader's back. Rin wrinkled his nose. "That does not explain why you made me come all the way out here, instead of visiting Mi'ihen--"
"Look at it." Nooj cut through the complaint with the ease of a knife. His face remained turned towards the shimmering riverbanks. "Just look. Over there. There is the truth of Spira."
On the Moonflow, a woman was dancing.
Water dripped from her bare feet as she twisted her waist around, following the arc of her hands held parallel as a blind man might, fingers stretched into the air. Between her thumbs balanced a staff that was decorated with long lashes, feather-bound. On the downstrokes, the downy tufts struck the surface of the river and dragged matted ripples that splashed fresh drops with every revolution.
Pyreflies drifted from the bodies that were laid out in wrapped offering. They congealed around the woman, drawn to the invisible vortex she was building with the whirlpool of her dance. Thick enough to hide her features, the spirits swarmed in rainbows. The woman walked on water in a miracle of pleated skirts and death.
Rin observed the show through a dull cynicism induced by the road. "You mean, the summoner?"
"The pyreflies." Nooj's fingers tightened on his cane. The carved hook of wood gleamed as the mahogany polish caught the dimming sunset. It mirrored the embered intensity in the teenager's eyes; Nooj wet his lips with his tongue as he spoke, fixated on the ritual. "Being Sent. Returning to the Farplane where they belong."
Such enthusiasm was not evoked from the Al Bhed. "You look as if you lust after them. Why don't you save such things for a woman? Or," Rin added, tart in his pique, "a man, if that is more to your liking?"
Sarcasm broke the spell around the teenager.
"I take it you don't like them."
"There is nothing to like." Reaching up, Rin yanked the riding goggles off from his forehead, feeling the stickiness of sweat trapped beneath. He ran the moist strap through his fingers, irritated. "The dead become fiends. There are some Al Bhed who believe that pyreflies can interfere with machina, if there are too many of them. You should not play with them either," he added pointedly, "not with your leg."
The teenager breezed over Rin's warning. "And is your opinion of summoners much the same?"
With a snap, Rin bounced the rubber sealing of the goggle-lenses off a fingertip. "We would be foolish to turn them down, but we do not rely upon them." His answer was rote. "Let Yevon spend its charity on us heathens. We are not in their debt."
Nooj fell silent, abandoning the temporary warming of his voice. Out on the waters, the woman continued to spin. The sun coated her in liquid gold, shattering off the river currents until it seemed as if she were dancing on a smithy's forge.
Once he found himself unable to clean even the pretense of grime off his goggles, Rin spoke up again. "Why?"
"I passed my sixteenth year last month." The revelation, volunteered, slipped unexpectedly out of Nooj's customary reclusiveness. His face tipped against a low-hanging branch; leaves dotted green against brown hair. "I almost forgot about it, but my ranking officer in the Crusaders remembered it from my file. They said," the teenager announced, leather creaking as he leaned further into the tree trunk, "they were impressed with your work. Even, that they might start thinking about Al Bhed machina in the future." Nooj shrugged. His cane scraped against the small pebbles of the road. "On a limited scale."
Caught aback by the nonsequitur of personal information and not yet able to weigh its worth, Rin defaulted to business. "Indeed." The word was detached. "I have received an order last month from a Crusader division near Macalania. They wish to try a type of Al Bhed pistol. I assume they must have encountered you?"
"They must." Neither confirming nor denying the question, Nooj bit down his next reply until it forced itself out from his throat. He twisted his shoulders to glare at the Al Bhed, staring directly at Rin for the first time since he arrived. "Well?" His voice spiraled up, belligerent, violated pride finally showing through. "Is that enough? Is my debt over?"
Envisioning months of hectic rides in exchange for not cutting his losses, Rin met the challenge with a resentful eye. "It could be."
The Crusader broke first.
"My mobility isn't good enough," Nooj declared. He dropped his gaze, pulled his cane closer to his body with a hand. "I can't cross the Thunder Plains like this, not unless I want to be blackened to a crisp. Plus, I can't respond fast enough in combat yet. I'll need more."
"That is your fault for not waiting for your upgrade. May I remind you that you were the one who abandoned the final parts?" Turning away from the teenager and leaning his back against the tree, Rin barked a dry-throated laugh. The absurdity of the situation was overwhelming, magnified by weariness. "You really thought that you could just make it on the basics. I should tell you--your recklessness is so great that many of my employees have started to call you taydrcaagan, a seeker of death. I believe the name most certainly fits."
Uncertainty spread across Nooj's brown, clot-pupil eyes. It mutated just as swift into an anger that clouded the iris-colors and tainted them murky as silt.
"Are you saying no?"
"We Al Bhed have a saying for things like that. It goes: fyga ib, tispycc." Confident that Nooj was no further educated in that language than he had been before, Rin braced his spine against the tree and pushed off it in a roll of his feet. Balance gave the Al Bhed only passing note; Rin felt the
world swerve, unsteady, but he tossed his head up in a defiance against exhaustion.
"As you said before, I am an opportunist. This means that I do not enjoy seeing the strain on my latest investment." Weariness lent a furry, giddy edge to the world. Rin forged ahead, ignoring the warning signs of his body. "If you are going to be a Crusader for Yevon and wear machina upon your body, at least pretend to have the staying power of an Al Bhed." Racial pride marched off Rin's tongue to a drumroll caramel-bitter. "You will need to attend your regular maintenance schedule. Should I believe you capable of this, seeker of death?"
Breath bent back upon itself as Nooj gave a snort of contempt. "You don't know anything about me."
"Yes," Rin snapped back, so fast that he nearly shot the end off the teenager's voice. "But unfortunately, I must know everything about you."
Distant at the riverbanks, the muttering of the Crusaders twined around the rising hum of night insects. Darkness had prowled in while the two had been speaking, and now it swallowed Nooj's legs and most of the woods beside. Behind them, Rin could hear the chirping squeaks of his chocobo fallen into slumber.
His hand found Nooj's face with surprising ease, sprawling its palm across the bridge of the teenager's nose.
"Understand this: I do not care if you die." Pressing his fingers on Nooj's cheekbones, Rin watched the skin pale beneath his bronze. "Only do so in a way that does not place my equipment at fault. This is your payment to us, taydrcaagan. When you came to us begging for charity, we should have turned you away. Then you could have died as you wanted, a nameless casualty on the road, unmourned and forgotten. Instead, you wanted dignity. You wanted to purchase a lie, and that, I have given you flawlessly. It is up to you to uphold it now. Think of something that is better than carelessness."
The temptation to squeeze harder burned. Rin's eyes felt like dry marbles as he glared, hot and threaded with road dust. Years of discipline had trained the sharp desert ruthlessness running in the Al Bhed's mind. He knew to prefer the patience of the merchant, buying out laws that could not be directly fought.
Some rules, however, cared for no price.
Against Rin's skin, the teenager formed words, burring them out despite the proximity of flesh.
"I don't think I like you as a business partner."
Heat from Nooj's breath washed over Rin's palm. His grip slackened, eased until he was only touching the Crusader's face instead of forcing the skin taut against Nooj's face. When he took his fingers away, the release of pressure returned color to the skin in a slow flush of blood. "The feeling may be mutual."
