Chapter Four

Mercenary Heart

Saber had quickly gone from readying herself for a tougher fight to just plain frustrated as things progressed as they did. The Heroic Spirit Rider had thundered in on his chariot, outright proclaiming himself as Iskandar, King of Conquerors. At which point he loudly and brashly made the proposal that she and Lancer join him as his royal retainers, at which Saber took umbrage.

"I am a monarch in my own right," she informed him, her chest swelled with pride. "I am Arturia, King of Briton."

Rider raised his bushy red eyebrows. "You are King of Briton?" And then he laughed, as if it were all a joke, even as Saber could sense that he didn't doubt her. "What a title, for such a little girl."

Saber lifted Excalibur a little higher. "How would you like a bite of this little girl's blade then?"

Though Rider still looked mightily amused, something flickered in his eyes that shined with something akin to respect. He was re-evaluating his impression of her.

Lancer shook his head, clearly as unimpressed as Saber was with this man's arrogance. But Saber supposed arrogance came with the territory when you were a King of Conquerors. For her part, though he seemed a bit full of himself, there was something boyish about him, however it came through just in his eyes.

Good Lord, he was a dreamer. The kind with a twinkle in his eyes. Saber was just this close to rolling her eyes.

Lancer's Master meanwhile, appeared impatient with the proceedings and ordered his Servant to get on with defeating Saber.

But then things turned more complicated when a great golden light broke in upon them, and there stood yet another Servant, standing haughtily upon a streetlamp with his arms folded.

He was as bright as the sun, but not in a pleasant way. More in that way that made one squint, the eyes watering, as they struggled to see past the garish light. And his face, well…it was beautiful, Saber couldn't argue with that. But it was an elfin, wicked beauty…a self-absorbed beauty that was more than aware of itself, and those eyes…such a venomous red.

They listed on her a moment as he looked about at all of them, a king surveying his kingdom—for clearly all the world at his feet was his kingdom, everything upon which he set his gaze, he had that air about him—and then he turned away, a disinterested feline.

Archer.

"What fools are these, calling themselves kings and heroes of men? I am the only true king of this world. It would behoove you to bow before me now, while I've still yet to decide whether or not to let you keep your heads."

His eyes fell on Saber again, and Saber raised her chin in defiance, green eyes meeting red. Archer raised his eyebrows at this. She'd given him a reason to give her a second look.

Then a shadow broke in upon them, one riddled with the violence of insanity—Berserker, of course. He swept in like a demon knight, wreathed in black smoke, pulsing with darkness. But the eyes—or the visor rather…if it didn't give sight to flames instead of eyes…burned as if echoing the pits of Hell.

And he radiated too with something, something buried within that darkness…hate…and anger.

Saber tightened her hands on her sword.

"Saber," squeaked Irisviel behind her.

Far from forgetting her presence, Saber edged closer to her charge. Particularly when Archer and Berserker clashed, Archer crying out, "You dare to look upon me with your unworthy eyes, cur?" in an ireful sneer.

What a bastard, Saber thought with a measure of contempt. Though admittedly, what appeared to be his Noble Phantasm was a glittering and magnificent sight to behold. An array of golden portals opening up behind him, growing in number, from which came beautiful, shining weapons, the kind found in treasure troves of ancient legend. He fired them like arrows, as was the way of the Archer Class, with admirable precision, like missiles.

But Berserker was surprisingly nimble, catching one weapon in midair and then using it to knock away the other coming at him, slicing it in two. Whatever he touched became his Noble Phantasm.

A shadow of a hero who had never been able to really reach that status?

This of course angered Archer all the more, and he proceeded to unleash more of his wrath upon Berserker. But just as his anger seemed to reach its peak, Archer stopped, and with a curse he vanished, taking with him his golden light. Possibly his Master had called him away, thinking he was getting too out of control. If so, then Saber would have to agree, as personally she thought the man was throwing nothing more than a glorified tantrum. He might have been beautiful, and he might be powerful and a formidable foe, but she had little respect for him.

Meanwhile, Berserker's sense of awareness, scattered as it was, seemed to peer about through the haze of his madness, and his gaze found Saber. He paused in a moment of thoughtfulness that was rare for the Berserker Class, before he threw back his head and let out a raw roar of unmistakable rage.

Before Saber even had a chance to fully process what was happening and figure out what had set him off, he leapt forward, grabbing hold of a street lamp and ripping it up from the ground, and then barreling after her with it, waving it about heedlessly as he charged after her like a mad bull. Saber managed to block him by the skin of her teeth, feeling the full power behind his blow down to her very bones as the light-pole-turned-Phantasm clanged against Excalibur's blade.

Then she broke away and leapt back, trying to lead the lunatic away from Irisviel. But just as Berserker came at her again, Lancer actually came between them with his spears and deflected the next blow, proclaiming his intention to help Saber finish this beast so that he might be given leave to finish his unfinished duel with Saber honorably.

"It would be nothing short of a disgrace if I let this go on," Lancer told her, tossing her his charming smile.

Saber met it with one of her own. "Lancer…."

Lancer's Master however had other ideas, and compelled a resistant Lancer, using a Command Seal, to force him to side with Berserker instead in destroying Saber.

Lancer whipped around, crying up to the shipping containers stacked high. "But my Lord! Please! I beg of you, do not taint my honor with such a command! I will help Saber defeat Berserker, and then I swear I shall defeat Saber!"

"We don't have time for this Lancer!" Lancer's Master shouted angrily. "Now, obey me! By my Command Seal—"

"My Lord!"

"—I order you to help Berserker destroy Saber."

Almost immediately, Lancer went rigid, as one put under a compulsion, and then about-faced and struck out at Saber, even as his shadowed face expressed painful shame.

"Sorry…Saber," he rasped, clearly fighting against the impulse of the Command Seal and losing.

Saber, recovering herself from his attack, felt pity for him, for this honorable knight whose honor was being compromised by a Master who clearly had no respect for such a sense of honor, at least in this context when it suited him to abandon such niceties for his own gain.

Steeling herself, determined not to let this be the end of her path to the Holy Grail in spite of the odds against her, Saber held Excalibur before her.

"Irisviel," she called, "I ask you to run. Now. I will hold them here while you escape."

She felt Irisviel's hesitation, and then heard her say, "No," in a very firm voice.

"Irisviel!" Saber looked round at her desperately, willing her to heed her words and flee.

But Irisviel shook her head, her red eyes turning strangely steely. And then she said, "Saber: please believe in your Master!"

Saber gave a gasp, suddenly sensing another dark presence over the shipyard, much like the kind she'd felt from her father as a child, the father who had never seen her, and yet she had felt him, every day.

"Kiritsugu is…here…?"

She turned, following her sense of that presence, and up above, near a towering shipping crane, the moonlight glinted just off of the long cold metal of what Saber perceived with her keen vision was some kind of rifle used for sniping targets while they were unawares.

He'd use…a sneak attack…?

That was as unmagelike a thing as she had ever heard of. Even Lancer's Master was much more of a mage than Kiritsugu Emiya clearly was, abiding at the very least by the rules of the Grail War as a proxy conflict.

Following his line of sight, she surmised that Kiritsugu had his gun trained on Lancer's Master, exposed thanks to his having stepped out in the open to taunt Rider's Master (who was no more than a boy and apparently one of Lancer's Master's students—to Rider's credit, he stood up for his Master against Lancer's Master, as it appeared that Lancer's Master had intended to have Rider for his Servant instead, only to be usurped by the unassuming and cowering youth in Rider's chariot, and Saber had to admire the way in which Rider vituperated Lancer's Master for skulking back in the shadows as he was doing).

Crazily, Saber had half a mind to cry out a warning, only in the face of such a despicable display as that of the tactic of the knife in the dark.

She was saved the trouble however at the crack of the whip from Rider's chariot, as Rider himself charged electrically forward and stampeded over the bloodthirsty Beserker, all but crushing him and forcing him to retreat, vanishing out of sight. The danger passed, Saber breathed a sigh of relief, as Rider chastised Lancer's Master once again for forcing Lancer into such an honor-compromising situation, which irked Lancer's Master such that he commanded Lancer to retreat as well.

Before he left though, a very relieved Lancer bid Rider thanks for helping him to keep his honor intact, and gave Saber his word that they would finish their duel another time.

"Until then," said Saber pleasantly, "I look forward to it."

"As do I." And she might've imagined it, but she thought Lancer might've winked at her before disappearing.

Then Saber gave Rider her thanks, to which Rider turned a little sheepish, strangely enough, and then he and his Master took their leave, flying off again in a tempestuous fashion as seemed to fit his character.

"Saber!" Irisviel ran over the second it was just the two of them on the open grounds of the warehouse district, taking a hold of Saber's injured hand in both of hers and looking it over solicitously.

"I'm fine, Irisviel," Saber assured her with a smile. "No worse for wear. This curse on my hand might be a problem, but nothing I can't endure."

Irisviel looked up from her very physician-like examination of Saber's hand and regarded her with the awe with which she'd regarded her before. "Oh Saber. I'm sorry I couldn't have been of more help." She soundly sincerely distraught over it.

"Don't be that way, Irisviel." She managed to close the fingers of her cursed hand around Irisviel's, giving them a squeeze. "I couldn't have done this without you. With you at my back, I feel as if it made me stronger in the fight. Stronger than I've ever felt in a fight before, if I'm being honest."

Irisviel blinked as if dumbfounded, and then beamed, pleased she contributed more than she'd thought. "Well, for only our first battle of the Holy Grail War, I'd say we came out pretty okay all things considered. We'll be even fiercer next time."

And Saber laughed. "Indeed. I don't doubt that, Irisviel."

Saber shed off her magical armor and returned to the black suit and gloves she wore as her street clothes. Just beyond the shipyard, they found that the Mercedes had been delivered to them courtesy of the Einzbern maid who'd been driving them, though the maid herself was nowhere to be found. Possibly she'd found some other means of returning to castle on the edge of the city, deep in the woods that apparently had been purchased eons ago by the Einzbern family.

But why would she have left the car here at their disposal, instead of remaining to drive them?

Then Irisviel squealed. "Oooooh! She left it here for us, just us two! I imagine Kiritsugu asked her to do it," she added with a sigh.

Saber frowned as Irisviel ran an oddly affectionate finger over the silver hood of the car. "Why would he do that? That seems rather careless of him. Neither of us know how to get to the Einzbern's castle."

"But there's a…what's it called? Oh yes, a GPS inside that'll tell us how to get there," Irisviel trilled. She was practically dancing as she opened up the front driver's side door. "Hop in, Saber. I'll drive us." She giggled and ducked inside the vehicle.

"Um…okay." Saber felt the need to proceed with caution as she stepped around the front of the car and got inside the front passenger's seat. As she shut the door, she was somehow surprised to see the alacrity and ease with which Irisviel stuck the key in the ignition and started up the engine, and then proceeded to operate the GPS.

But the way she kept…well...giving little squeals of delight under her breath made her seem much more like a child than a woman.

"Buckle up, Saber!" Irisviel commanded, after buckling herself in. Then she put her foot on the brake pedal and shifted into DRIVE.

Saber had barely snapped the buckle in when Irisviel hit the gas with such enthusiastic force that the King of Knights felt her insides thrown forward while her external body was thrown backward hard against the seat. Somehow.

Instinctively she groped for something to hang onto, and managed to find a handle at the roof of the car, just above her window.

Irisviel meanwhile shouted with glee as she turned every corner as hard as she could in making their way out of the maze of shipping containers onto the main road.

How they managed to survive their trip through the backstreets of Fuyuki onto the mountain road that would take them to Einzbern castle, Saber couldn't fathom, as it seemed to her that they came face-to-face with oncoming traffic lights more than once. But Irisviel sidestepped every obstacle that came their way, weaving in and out of traffic and miraculously not drawing the attention of the authorities, squealing with exuberance all the way.

Up on the mountain road, where they were the only ones out driving on it, Irisviel went even more unrestrained with the wheel, turning it over and over back and forth in wide rotations, Saber sprawled back against her seat and clinging for dear life, teeth grit, well aware that if they crashed, then the airbags deploying them might not be enough to save their bones from getting crushed.

"Isn't this amazing?!" Irisviel exclaimed, clearly under the impression that Saber was having as much fun as she was.

"Heh, heh, yeah, sure," Saber said, giving her a nervous smile and trying not to sound faint of heart. Come on, you're the King of Knights, for God's sake! There's no reason you can't handle this, even if things do go south.

"Of all the toys Kiritsugu's bought me over the years, this one's my favorite!" Irisviel gushed, which then explained why Kiritsugu would have it so Irisviel could drive the rest of the way to the castle—he knew she enjoyed the act of driving, terrible as she was at it (though undoubtedly he'd had this in mind, given how short a distance Einzbern castle actually was from where they'd started out in the shipyard).

This raised another question though, and a perplexed Saber couldn't help but ask, "This is a…toy?" Last she was given to understand, full size cars were anything but toys. Irisviel referring to it as such exposed an strange facet of her and Kiritsugu's relationship.

At which point, she tried to recommend that they hire a professional driver.

"But that would be boring—I mean dangerous," Irisviel hastened to correct herself. "If we were to be attacked and a party outside the Grail War were to be killed as a result."

"Well…I suppose you make a fair point," Saber admitted, before suddenly spotting an obstacle in their path. A person. Reacting instinctively, she commanded Irisviel stop the car, already reaching over with her foot to hit the brake pedal and wrest control of the steering wheel from her charge.

They skidded to a halt.

The headlights cast their beams of light on the one who blocked their path, their presence giving off a dangerous aura.

"This man…is a Servant," Saber muttered under her breath. Snapping to action, she shifted the car into PARK and then disembarked, stepping around it to confront the enemy before them.

Caster, if she wasn't mistaken.

The ghastly man towered over Saber's short stature, cloaked in violet with the strangest style of flamboyant ruff about this neck. But that wasn't what disturbed Saber: it was the eyes. There was something not quite right about them, beyond how grossly protuberant they were…like a frog's eyes. The way he smiled with those eyes, it was enough to chill even the bravest person's blood.

"Greetings, Holy Virgin." Even his voice was unnervingly ghastly, a strange falsetto that bordered on madness.

Saber was taken aback. "Pardon me?"

"My dear Jeanne, at last you and I can be together once again." He reached out for her.

"Who is Jeanne? I have no idea what you're talking about." Saber put a hand on her hip, a natural reflex from her former life when she'd ready herself to draw her sword.

Caster took a step back, looking stricken. "Do you mean to say…you do not recognize me?"

"Saber, who is this? Do you know him?" Irisviel had appeared at Saber's side.

"I have no idea, I've never seen him in my life," said Saber, never taking her eyes away from the enemy.

Caster quickly became distraught, losing his smile as he grabbed his head in his hands and gave a cry. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! No! What tragedy, what cruel twist of fate! You've been brought back to life by the power of the Grail but lost all your memories! What sorrowfulness to have befallen you, Jeanne!"

"Enough!" Saber snapped.

"No!" Caster dropped to his knees and pounded the ground with his fist, throwing a fit. "No, it was my prayer! My Holy Grail that brought her back to life!"

"Stop it! You embarrass yourself!"

But Caster went on wailing like a lunatic, forcing Saber to summon Excalibur and point it at his throat, which was enough to make him freeze.

"Be warned," Saber told him icily, "next time, I will not hesitate to strike."

Caster stared at her, and then he sighed and closed his eyes a moment before standing and straightening up.

"I see now. I will have to find a way to restore your memories to you, my dear Jeanne. Rest assured, I will see to it that you and I are truly reunited as one once more." And then he vanished into Spirit Form, fleeing.

Saber sighed and retracted Excalibur.

Irisviel leaned against the car with her arms folded. "It's irritating to have someone who insists on not listening to you."

"His type repulse me," Saber grouched, glaring at the spot in the road Caster had previously occupied. He had come so close to pawing at her like a lecher.

And he was thick with the scent of blood.

Young blood.

The blood of children.

Saber bristled.

Even as Irisviel went back to driving, she reigned in her erratic style, though that could be because she'd become subdued and didn't seem to have the same zeal she had before.

"I'm sorry about that, Saber," she said as she took her turns more gently (though she still took them unnecessarily).

"Don't worry about it," said Saber, sad to see Irisviel's spirit so dampened but admittedly glad that it resulted in her not driving so wildly. "I must admit that this brings to mind another advantage to having been raised as a boy: I didn't have to worry about the unwanted attentions of madmen like that. If I'm to be completely honest, that was rather difficult to handle, I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to handling things like that. You'd think I'd be better at it, given I can handle a sword just fine, but swords and…mmm…fending off social indiscretions don't exactly mix."

"Oh Saber…." Irisviel gave her companion a very sympathetic smile. "I think you handled yourself very well. Much better than I can say I would've."

Saber regarded her with interest. "You've had to suffer the unwanted attentions of a lunatic?"

"Well, not a lunatic, but a man, yes. One of my…ah…cousins."

"One of your…cousins?"

"There's…quite a bit of inbreeding in the Einzbern family. Grandfather laments that that's why the bloodline's thinning but…he's the only one who…goes on living decade after decade, century after century."

"You mean…he's…immortal?"

"I'm not sure exactly. He can be killed. I think it's more he…refuses to die. Until he achieves the dream of the Einzbern."

"The Grail."

"Yes. But…." Irisviel's voice took on a more steely tone as she narrowed her eyes at the road ahead. "Kiritsugu and I intend to make our own wish."

"To bring the world salvation," said Saber, remembering.

"Yes."

Something about the conviction in Irisviel warmed Saber to her all the more. It gave her a kind of thrill to think of Irisviel defying her family for a dream she and her husband shared, and for a noble dream at that. It echoed that sense of a deeper bond between her and Kiritsugu as a couple.

Irisviel cleared her throat. "But back to my story about my cousin forcing himself on me. Let's just say that all I could manage was to flatten myself against the wall behind me, though I did give him the most hellish glare I could muster."

Saber chuckled. "How did you get out of it?"

"Kiritsugu swooped in and saved me!" Irisviel used a dramatically breathless voice here, and on the word "swooped" she did an audaciously wide turn with the car that nearly sent them into a tailspin into the guard rails along the edge that served as the only barrier between one's car and falling off the mountain.

Saber gave a yell and scrabbled for that handle she'd hung onto earlier, forced to clench her teeth the rest of the way even as her mind tried to fathom the idea of Kiritsugu coming in like some gallant and chivalric gentleman to defend a lady's maiden purity, as Irisviel crowed with laughter all the rest of the way up to Einzbern castle.

In the end she came to the conclusion that it wasn't far off the mark for him to have done something like that for a woman he'd come to love and marry. He probably just didn't do it with any kind of unnecessary flair, none of that pretty sonnet recitation and the like.

For Kiritsugu, it seemed, actions spoke far louder than words.

However frosty things seemed to be between them thus far, she had to admit that she had to respect his decidedly utilitarian approach to things.

Up at the castle, Saber jumped out of the car as quick as she could, but that didn't stop her legs from turning to jelly. She had to grab the edge of her open door to steady herself before she could go on.

How unseemly.

"Ooh, wasn't that fun, Saber?" Irisviel chirped as she too got out.

"Heh. Thrilling," Saber managed.

Luckily she was able to master herself quickly enough to shut the door and follow Irisviel up the steps to the oaken front doors.

Inside the foyer, they were greeted by the maids who had accompanied them on the plane. Irisviel left the keys to the car with one of them, asking after the whereabouts of her husband as she took her coat and hat as well.

"Master Kiritsugu has not yet returned, madam." The maid bobbed a curtsy.

Irisviel looked seriously over her shoulder at Saber. "He must have gone after another Servant."

Saber frowned as the maids took their leave to let the two of them climb the main staircase and with the purpose of seeking a brief respite. "On his own?"

"No, Maiya's with him," Irisviel told her. "His assistant." Something dark flickered in her red eyes for a moment, but then was gone, like a dark bird fluttering through an empty church.

"I mean that…I'm not there," said Saber, more quietly.

"Oh, well, you're with me," Irisviel pointed out, and then reached for Saber's hand, clasping it in her own.

Saber sensed it trembled a little, but said nothing about it. "Well, he's certainly demonstrated his dedication to this fight. Going right after another Servant without so much as a break. I had many days like that…battles that lasted for more than one moonrise…times when I wouldn't sleep for over eight and forty hours. But war can be a restless beast."

"Hm." Irisviel smiled at her again, but Saber thought it looked a bit…wan. Then she looked away. "I have a feeling…part of him…wants this over as quickly as possible. I mean…he's always very keen on efficiency." This time it was her voice that trembled a little.

But again, Saber made no comment on it. Instead, as they reached the top of the stairs, she said, "I'm sure he misses your daughter."

Irisviel squeezed Saber's hand a bit tighter.

Saber, instinctively, squeezed back.

And you miss her as well. Of course you do.

"Yes," Irisviel finally said, rather hoarsely. She squeezed her hand even tighter. "Did you know…Saber…that…Caster…?" She closed her eyes and swallowed before she continued. "That Caster and his Master have been…abducting children and…killing them?"

Saber lowered her green eyes to the floor. "I smelled…blood on him, when we confronted him in the road."

"They're so young," Irisviel whispered. "No older than my daughter."

Saber took Irisviel's pressing hand in both of hers. "We'll meet him in battle and stop him. I'll see to it. Irisviel."

Irisviel looked at her. She blinked rapidly and then looked down the hall to a row of bedrooms. She pulled away from Saber's grasp. "I think I'll go rest for a bit…I'm a bit tired…. I think that…jet lag is catching up with me." She laughed, but it wasn't all that hearty.

"Of course." Saber followed, and, seeing which room Irisviel ultimately chose to lay down in, posted herself just outside its closed door, standing guard.

Left to rest for a moment, Saber took the time to peel back the black gloves she'd been given on her left hand and run the index finger of her other hand along the scar that was all that was left of the cursed blow dealt by Lancer's spear. Experimentally she twitched a couple of her left-hand fingers, and still felt where it went numb, where she couldn't move with the same freedom and fluidity.

And if she couldn't fully grip Excalibur's hilt with both hands, then using her Noble Phantasm to its fullest capacity was out of the question for the time being. Not until she defeated Lancer.

Heaving a sigh she tugged her glove back on, trying to think how she would be able to make do with what resources she still had left to her.

When Kiritsugu arrived at the castle with his assistant Maiya, a young woman with short dark hair dressed smartly in black, much like Saber was (though Maiya's clothes seemed to form-fit almost like a military uniform complete with high collar), it was a little past midnight. But rather than sleep, the man immediately called for a meeting with his wife. That Saber should accompany her was implied, but not explicitly said. Nevertheless, he didn't protest when she entered the room behind Irisviel.

In fact, he didn't acknowledge her in the slightest, but Saber let it slide for the time being. Better that than be outright excluded from the proceedings.

Actually, her mind was stirring with more curiosity, as she reflected on what Irisviel had said when she'd woken her a few minutes before now at being summoned to the conference room.

"Kiritsugu…is here?" Irisviel sounded a little confused.

"Yes. You were expecting him, weren't you?" Saber held out a hand to help Irisviel up when she still seemed groggy.

But Irisviel blinked then and turned wide awake, perking up a bit. "Well, we'd discussed making as little contact as possible. As a precaution, with me being the proxy Master. After all, it would be suspicious if any of the other Masters were to catch us conspiring together." Even so, there was a blush to her cheeks that hadn't been there before, and she seemed less listless than she had when she'd gone to sleep.

Maybe that explained why Irisviel had become so subdued all of a sudden. True, she really must have been tired, and the thought of those cases of missing and dead children weighed heavy on her mind as well, naturally, but when Saber considered that she might've also been like a plant lacking sunlight with her husband absent, bearing in mind that the two of them had already discussed seeing little if any of each other throughout the duration of this war, it wasn't any wonder she'd been like that. And, sure enough, when Irisviel and Kiritsugu saw each other, Irisviel seemed much more like a plant regaining vitality when it's been put back in the sunlight.

Though by now Saber was hardly surprised that Kiritsugu only gave his wife the merest of half-smiles in greeting—sincere to be sure, but fleeting—before turning back to the various maps, charts, and documents spread out on the long wooden table.

As Kiritsugu and Irisviel proceeded to pore over these, standing across the table from each other, Saber stood by just behind Irisviel, noticing that Maiya took a place opposite her behind Kiritsugu. The way she stood attention furthered Saber's theory that Maiya had a very militaristic record.

"This is where we hit them." Kiritsugu tapped his fingers on a place on the map. "The Fuyuki Hyatt."

"How?" Irisviel asked.

"Explosives."

Saber meanwhile regarded her Master with a frown. Something prickled in her at the way he had recounted the way in which he had chosen to deal with their enemy: he had seen fit to simply slay Lancer and his Master using underhanded means? Behind her back? When she and Lancer had sworn to finish their duel honorably?

It was no less irksome than when she'd seen him prepared to snipe Lancer's Master back during their battle in the shipping yard.

She had wanted to give the man the benefit of the doubt, but now…if this was how things were really going to go, she wasn't sure she could stand idly by and let him get away with this. She clenched her jaw as her ire caught fire.

Meanwhile, after Kiritsugu and Irisviel took a moment to go over the likely places in Fuyuki where the Grail would appear, Irisviel confirmed that with the curse on Saber's wrist not lifted, Lancer and his Master Kayneth were indeed still alive. Irisviel suggested that they launch an attack on Lancer then, but Kiritsugu dismissed the idea, saying that with the Church having proposed rewarding any Master who could take down Caster with a brand new Command Seal, his thinking was that he could take out each Master and Servant pair one by one as they were all drawn into duking it out over who took out Caster.

More than that, but seeing as how Caster was under the delusion that Saber's identity was that of an old flame, the heroine Jeanne d'Arc, all they had to do was wait for Caster and the rest of them to come to them. With these conditions it would be all but too easy for Kiritsugu to strike from the shadows.

Saber, for her part, had heard enough. There was a growing buzzing in her brain that was briefly clouding her thinking, and the words were coming out of her mouth before she could stop herself.

"Master…I cannot approve of this. For you to condone and employ such underhanded methods…it is an insult to Heroic Spirits. A nobler course of action would be to confront our enemies with dignity, particularly where someone as undignified as Caster is concerned! At the very least so that we might prevent the deaths of more innocent children…."

That tucked away maternal part of her flared up at the thought, and remembering the way Irisviel had nearly cried at the thought of those children.

She clenched her fists, and if not for the gloves, she probably would've drawn blood from her palms with her nails.

Saber couldn't remember the last time she'd been so passionately angry, ready to punch something, break something, scream. It had been one of the best things about pretending to be a man, she had been allowed to lose control now and then, kick at things, vent her frustration in the training and exercise yard in Sir Ector's castle. As a lady, she would've been expected to bottle everything up, and the very idea of such a thing felt impossible, for surely she would've exploded in very literal terms otherwise.

"Why do you not allow me to go out and fight? Could it be that you don't trust me, your own Servant?"

Yet, for all of her impassioned pronouncements, Kiritsugu simply closed his eyes, saying not a word. Completely ignoring her.

Saber ground her teeth.

Look at me, damn it! Say something!

Truly, how could he? How could he toss aside the lives of innocent children like that, as though they were nothing more than peanuts? Peanuts, whose weight he was measuring against…what? Something.

The worst of it was her mind was trying to reconcile the man who had laughed so sincerely with his daughter, embracing her so tenderly, with this cold, unfeeling man here. Many of those children were his daughter's age! Would he have still cast them all aside if she had been among them? There was a part of Saber that feared he just might.

Looking at Irisviel, she felt she was thinking about something similar, thinking of her daughter, and how she was just like those children, children who had mothers of their own, and what she would do if her daughter was among them. Saber had no doubt in her mind that she would protest whatever her husband said. But would her husband concede for her sake, and her sake alone?

And yet…Irisviel said nothing. She gave Kiritsugu a helpless look, but that was it. She seemed curiously conflicted in fact, which suggested to Saber that there was something between Irisviel and Kiritsugu, something indicating that this wasn't a foreign subject to them. Perhaps they had already spoken of such things coming up, how they should react to them. Which again strangely reinforced that inexplicable and bonding sense of intimacy between them.

Then Irisviel said, with a rather pleading note in her voice to her husband, "But the Church has called a ceasefire between all Masters and Servants save for Caster—"

Kiritsugu opened his eyes at last, but only to address his wife. "Ignore that," he said with sharp authority.

"But Kiritsugu…" Irisviel tried again.

"It'll be fine, Iri," Kiritsugu told her. He even sounded softer. More human.

It was that more than anything that finally got Saber to relax and stand down.

Even so…she still couldn't look at him. It was bad enough that the mere fact that this man was her Master was enough to overwhelm her with shame.

How can this possibly work? I can't abide by his way of doing things. I'd sooner sully Excalibur's blade with clay than let my pride and honor as a knight be marred by going along with this sort of backhanded strategizing.

Distantly she heard the rustle of the maps, charts, and documents being gathered together, and when she looked up, Saber saw Kiritsugu sweep from the room with Maiya walking obediently behind him.

Irisviel meanwhile sank into a chair at the table with a sigh, massaging one of her temples absently. "I'm sorry you had to see that," she said.

Saber, sympathetic, decided not to let Irisviel see how much it bothered her. "It's fine. Don't worry about it." Other than that though, she couldn't think of much else to say.

But then Irisviel lifted her head and contemplated the door Kiritsugu and Maiya had exited through, and got a very melancholy look on her face. "I think I know what it is," she said, sounding desolate and pitying. She got up from the chair and walked around the table to the door.

"Are you going to go talk to him?" Saber couldn't help asking.

Irisviel paused at the door and gave Saber that same wan smile she'd worn earlier. "Yes. If only for a moment." She paused, and then added, sadly, "It wears on him, I'm sure, to be that cruel when that isn't what he's really like."

Truth be told, Saber was too dumbstruck by this statement to respond, and could only stare at her lady charge as she too swept from the room, seeking out her husband with her soft and gentle supplications.

"What he's really like?" Saber murmured to herself, leaning back against the wall with her arms folded, staring off at a spot on the carpet but not really seeing it. Instead, she saw that man as he laughed and played with his and Irisviel's daughter. "The mystery of a mercenary's heart."

Well, he was still her Master. She wouldn't betray him, not even out of spite. Instead, putting her faith in Irisviel's words, that at least her and his goals were relatively the same, and equal in nobility, she would resolve to hold out hope that that faith would be rewarded in the end.