By Pavana Lachrimae
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Squaresoft is not mine; no copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: Bit of a long chapter this time. Sorry about that. ; I'm still ploughing through this, if anybody is still reading :). Again, as always, criticism is welcome and if you don't like the story, then at least tell me why. What do you think of the latest plot development? Think it's too silly, or just right? I don't know. Oh well. Feedback makes the world go round!
A/N II: Much thanks to He-Loves-Me-Not, who has literally kept this story alive with her reviews!
x
"You were going to get rid of me?"
The girl didn't seem as upset by this as I had thought she would be. Still, I felt guilty telling her, all the same. I thought of putting a hand out to touch hers, but decided against it. Neither of us would have benefited from it. Seymour, too, had been self-conscious of his hands when he was younger; up until he was about sixteen or seventeen, he had a habit of pulling his sleeves as far over his wrists as they would go.
"That was the initial plan," I admitted. "But… things change. You're going to have to excuse me. I've never told anybody this before- I have a fair amount of explaining to do before I get to the point. Please, listen.
-x-
I was opposed to the idea from the very start. So much so, in fact, that I came close to leaving a few times. I could not understand why the doctors did not listen to me. At least I had what my mother had told me, at least I knew that this could kill him. But some of them had never even heard of this before, such was the secrecy surrounding the young noble's condition. Only Orfeo, the over-talkative doctor who had examined Seymour before, had any idea of what was going on- but the operation had been his idea to begin with. Evidently, he was not as well-informed as I was.
Many times over the next few days I tried to protest, but in my youthful arrogance I had forgotten two things. I was human, and I was a woman, and even then, at a time where our cultures were beginning to accept each other, I did not have a voice.
My salvation came only moments before the procedure was due to start.
We could not risk taking Seymour outside, for obvious reasons. Instead, we had employed two junior surgeons, both Guado, both sworn to secrecy on pain of excommunication, as well as Dr Orfeo, who was working under the… slightly more ominous threat of a horrible death. They were to work in a cleaned-out corner of the family quarters; what used to be Anima's room, to be precise. I, having finally given up on protesting, was sitting alone in my room, willing the time to pass more quickly; willing the nervousness and the pain within me to subside.
I could not hear what was happening from where I was, but I could imagine it. Now, the young man my mother and I had been looking after for the best part of my life was lying, under a heavy anaesthetic, on a stripped-down mattress in his dead mother's room; now mouths and noses were being covered with sterilising cloth, now one of the doctors was slipping a pair of surgical gloves on over his gnarled fingers, now he was taking up the scalpel and-
It sent shards of pain deep into the curve of my stomach, as if it were my skin that the blade was digging into, and I were fully awake. But the very second that I imagined that slick silver penetrating his flesh, my door swung rudely open. The very same man that I had imagined slicing into the fold beneath Seymour's stomach stood in my doorway, his hand resting tentatively on the knob.
"Orfeo wants you to know that we're not going to go ahead with it," he said, and shrunk back. I did not even bother to reprimand him for not knocking; within moments, I was at the door to Anima's room. Tromell, who was already there, put his hand on my shoulder, holding me back.
He still served Jyscal's family then, but he was different- younger, and clean-shaven, with only the subtlest lines around his pale green eyes to indicate the passing of age. He was as astute as he had always been, but back then he was also more assertive. Perhaps working at Seymour's side wore him down somewhat. I don't know. We didn't talk often. After my mother died, as may be obvious, I kept to myself. (With one exception, but I will come to that later.)
"Young Seymour is still asleep. He does not yet know what has happened." He glanced over to the door, as if able to see the eighteen-year-old through it. "It would probably be wise for you to stay with him until he wakes up, and tell him."
"I will. What made Jyscal change his mind?" I asked.
"… we've come up with an alternative arrangement," replied Tromell, who suddenly seemed in a rush to get away. I let him go.
I was too dizzy with relief to notice, then, that he had not told me what the alternative arrangement was. The first hint I had that anything might be wrong was when, about ten minutes later, while I was sitting beside the still-sleeping Seymour, a servant woman named Riana pushed open the door, and stared at me with wide, startled eyes.
-x-
"Before I go on," I told Darra, "I must explain about Riana and I. We were lovers. What happened with your- your father split us up. But please don't misunderstand me; I don't hold it against you. It's over now. The only reason I'm telling you this is that it has something to do with what happened next."
Seymour's daughter frowned at me.
"I thought you said that people disapproved of… that kind of thing," she said. I nodded.
"We did our best to make sure that nobody else knew. Several people must have suspected, I'm sure, but as far as I knew, neither Jyscal nor any of his advisors had any inkling that the two of us were together. I think Seymour may have guessed, but then, he was always very… astute."
Darra stiffened a little, as if unsure whether to take that as a personal compliment. I could see then the same spark of awareness in her eyes that I'd seen in his long ago. This girl was coldly intelligent, I realised, though she lacked the smooth charm that Seymour had managed to cultivate.
"Your father was clever- he had a knack for appealing to what people most wanted," I continued. "It's how he gained their approval, and how he became successful. If you did not relent to him one way, he would simply find another way to get through to you.
"What he hated most of all was not being in control."
-x-
Riana was a petite, curvy girl, shorter than average and strikingly pretty. Her face was oval-shaped and slim against the head-dress she usually wore, which underplayed the pleasant stockiness of her body. She may have been marginally overweight, but it did not show on her cheeks. It may have been this that led Tromell and Jyscal to choose her, or it may have just been the fact that she came from a good family and was on hand at the time. Either way, the poor girl could not have helped it.
I did not have time to follow her when she turned on her heel and left the room again, leaving as quickly as she had come. All I could do was call out to her, and ask her if anything was wrong, but she did not reply. I couldn't leave Seymour lying there, as he might wake up at any time, so I just sat there and tried not to think about it.
I watched the young half-guado for a while, his slender chest rising and falling beneath the blanket that somebody had draped over his body before I came. His face was relaxed. His eyelids, traced across with the indented marks that were typical of his heritage, were benignly closed, and his hair was tied back in a loose braid. I remembered how my mother used to plait it like that, when he was little. I don't think Anima ever did.
What they say about sleeping faces is not true. Aside from his eyes being closed, Seymour did not look any more innocent than when he was awake. The undercurrent of worry and hurt was still there; his eyebrows were creased slightly, frowning, although the rest of his face was calm and neutral. I had seen this face develop and change over the years, sculpt itself out of childhood and into painful adolescence, twist itself into tears and- very occasionally now- smile. I had seen this man grow up, and yet he was only a few years my junior. Thinking this made me feel older than I was.
I ended up falling asleep too, despite the knot of worry that had managed to root itself in the pit of my stomach. It must have been at least an hour later when I awoke to the sound of the blankets stirring- the flicker of Seymour's eyelids told me that he was slowly drifting awake, although he did not yet know that the operation hadn't gone ahead.
I put my hand on his.
His fingers clenched, then unwound under my touch. He muttered something; the remnants of a dream. Tentatively, I spoke his name.
"Mm still alive," he murmured, and reached down with the other hand to touch his stomach. I took hold of his wrist.
"We didn't go ahead with the operation. I'm sorry," I told him. Instantly his arm tensed underneath mine, bewildered, and he squeezed his eyes shut before opening them again, obviously struggling to wake up faster.
"What?"
"I don't know what happened, Seymour, but Maester Jyscal told the doctors to leave. I wish I could tell you more."
Wrenching his arm away from mine, he rested his hand against his still-swollen stomach, and moaned. "What in Spira does that mad old bastard think he is doing?" he said. His voice still sounded a little drugged. Hurriedly, I tried to stop him from getting up, but he pushed me out of the way and started to scramble his way out of the blankets, only stopping when he remembered that he wasn't actually wearing anything underneath them. Wrapping them around himself with as much dignity as he could muster, the young man sat up and glared at me.
"Get me some clothes. Now."
Obediently I rang for a servant (I thought it best not to leave Seymour on his own, for a variety of reasons), but before anyone else had even had time to respond, Jyscal and a man I had never seen before arrived at the door. They told me, in no uncertain terms, that it would be best if I left then. As I hurried down the corridor back to the servants' quarters, I could hear raised voices- one of them Seymour's- but I had more important things to think about at the time.
Riana was just where I suspected where she would be; in the kitchen, where she worked when she was not managing the house's laundry- in guado culture, servants do not generally have one specific function. When she saw me she dropped two plates and smashed them. Two kitchen-hands looked round, then, as if by some unspoken agreement, hurried out by another door. What worried me was the fact that she did not appear to notice.
"Riana, did you want something earlier on? You just left without saying anything," I started, my pulse quickening with repressed worry. Her soft lips parted a little, then screwed shut in a fierce frown. She didn't speak for a while, but just stared at me, her eyes only a few degrees from tears, looking like she was still trying to find the words to say what she wanted.
"How could you?" she spat finally. "After all we have been through… I can't believe you would throw it all away for that- that freak!"
"What?" I stepped closer to her- she moved back even further. Puzzled, I reached a hand out towards her but she shrunk away from it as if it were a weapon.
"You lying slut! I should have known, when you started spending all that time with him- I should have known you humans were all the same, I should have known…"
Tears started streaming down her face. My instinctive urge was to wipe them away, but I had to hold myself back. I knew if I tried to touch her now, she would not welcome it.
"Riana, I don't understand. I haven't been doing anything behind your back- you know I wouldn't. What are you talking about? What's going on?"
"Ask Seymour, Heba!" she hissed. "If you still can't get it into your thick head, ask him!" Then she turned on her heel and stormed out, crunching bits of porcelain beneath her shoes.
Tromell's words flashed again through my mind. 'An alternative arrangement,' I heard him say again. Anger swelled within me, and my vision reddened. Realisation dawned within me like a slowly uncoiling snake.
Enraged, I fled out of the kitchens and through the living room, ignoring the precarious bowl of fruit I managed to knock over in the process. Up on the landing, the guard outside Jyscal's bedroom started as I slammed through the doors, and I could hear the soft scrape of a weapon being drawn, but I did not care. Tromell was there, at the door, and although he started at the noise he did not seem surprised that I had come to see him. Rather, he had been expecting me.
"Ah, Miss Heba. There you are. I have been looking for you-"
I interrupted him mid-sentence. "If you don't tell me what's going on right now, Tromell of Guado, I'm going to leave."
"I'm afraid I can't let you do that." His tone was apologetic, but firm. He took hold of my arm. I shrugged it off.
"What are you going to do? Lock me away? You know Jyscal's advisors want me out anyway, why are you trying to stop me? Do you think I'd tell everybody what's going on? Is that it?"
"Heba!" He took my arm again. "You're forgetting that you have little power here. You're not one of us. Essentially, you're alone in a city where some people still don't want you to be here. It doesn't matter who your mother was, or how long you've lived with our family- you are, and always will be, an outsider. If you were to be harmed…"
"Are you threatening me?"
"No. I'm helping you. Come with me, Heba. We need to talk."
I had no choice but to go with him, half-expecting to meet a group of assassins on the way. But surprisingly, he led me into his study, which stood just beside the stairs that led to Seymour's room, and sat down at his desk.
Like many of the rooms in the mansion, it was lined with a thick layer of interlaced roots; the house had been carved out of the ground so long ago that where they were cut had since healed up, and I could see new coils sprouting occasionally from the ends. Unless you actually lived in Guadosalam, you would not have realised that the great network of vines out of which our city is carved was a living thing, and still growing, albeit very slowly. The roots would not have to be cut back for another twenty years; it took at least fifty for a new shoot to become an annoyance.
Tromell's carpet was richly woven, embroidered with patterns which I knew to be pictures of pyreflies (the farplane had long been an inspiration for much of his culture's art); the furniture in the room, which was cheap and plain, looked slightly strange sitting on top of it. Hanging just to the right beside his chair was a brightly-coloured musical instrument that looked like a harp, only a little smaller, with strings that shone as if they had been fashioned from metal instead of gut.
Did Tromell play it? At the time, I couldn't have cared less. Arms crossed, I stood opposite him, my gaze boring into his. I felt close to collapse, and he seemed infuriatingly calm, although I could see that my anger was unnerving him a little. I was glad for that.
"Ever since Seymour was… taken ill, people have been saying things," Tromell said. That was not surprising. Ever since I had discovered the 'tumour' several weeks ago, he had been confined to the house, and it was not usual for a Maester's son to remain unseen for so long. Besides, everybody knew that we had sent for a doctor- rumours were bound to be spreading, especially given Seymour's turbulent childhood. We had thought his health problems were a thing of the past. Evidently, we were wrong.
"They say that Guadosalam is going to lose its heir," continued the man in that steady, hollow voice of his. "That Seymour's human blood has made him sickly and weak. That Jyscal should never have mixed with the humans or their church.
"Unfortunately, that is not our only concern. There have also been rumours of another nature spreading through our city- rumours of a child to be born among the mansion's inhabitants. It would be incredibly dangerous for all involved if the truth were to be known," he added, eyeing me pointedly. I narrowed my eyes.
Tromell let out a short sigh.
"You may or may not have heard that she is involved by now," he said, "But the servant girl Riana… she comes from a good family, Heba. And she is already a little –forgive me, but she is already a little rotund. Given that, it would be possible for her to be carrying a child for several months before she began to show. And it would be equally possible that young Seymour would have fallen for her…"
I knew where this was heading. I could barely stop my voice from shaking when I spoke. "You're going to tell everybody that Riana is pregnant."
He nodded slowly. "She has agreed to wear padding around her stomach from now on. Tomorrow, the people of Guadosalam shall be told- and that, when the Maester's son recovers from his serious but not fatal bout of illness, the two of them shall be married. It will be a joyous occasion for all," he added, a little optimistically, I thought.
"Riana… knows about Seymour?" I asked. Inhaling deeply, Tromell shook his head.
"…no. We had to manipulate the truth a ways, Heba. I am sure you will understand that secrecy is absolutely imperative when it comes to the young master's condition, and I know you will continue to serve our family in-"
He broke off and stared at me. I must have looked ready to tear him limb from limb then, because he cleared his throat and carried on; "To be blunt, we told Riana that, as the people would not accept an heir whose Guado blood was so diluted… she was… 'covering' for you."
"Covering for me?"
"Yes. Well. Erm." The guado looked at me for a moment, probably feeling rather awkward. Then he got up, and headed over to a chair at the corner of his room, picking up the plush red pillow adorning it and clutching it to his chest with both hands, like a shield.
"You are going to need one of these," he said.