Chapter Nineteen
When I came belowdecks, Edgar greeted me by kissing my hand – "because I forgot to earlier" – and then slinging an arm around my shoulder and walking me to the parlor area where Setzer was pouring out wine. I let him because he was warm and he was wearing a cape, but the wine and the warmth soon made me sleepy and I nodded off leaning against him.
Edgar nudged me awake. "You're not supposed to let me near you, remember? Let alone sleep with me," he said, and I blinked at him. "Locke's instructions," he added.
Finally I remembered. "Edgar, that was years ago. You're so strange." A moment later another thing he'd said sunk in. "I wasn't sleeping with you."
"Well, technically..."
"Edgar!" I complained, whiny with weariness.
"I can show you to your cabin, Terra," Setzer interrupted. "Your things are already in it."
"Cabin's nice," I agreed, yawning, but not stirring, so Edgar stood and tugged me up from the settee then gave me a gentle shove in Setzer's direction. I managed to get my shoes off but fell asleep in my clothes at first; I woke some time in the middle of the night to undress and climb under the covers in my shift.
The next morning, I woke slowly, until I noticed how much light was in the room, which sent me bolt upright in bed, convinced I'd overslept. Then I noticed the surroundings – tiny cabin, a shelf in the wall for a writing desk, my trunk under it for a seat, and nothing else besides the bed. The light had that weird quality you get above the clouds, brighter than I'd have expected, but it was probably still early. A small oil painting of flowers hung over the writing desk – Relm had painted enough to decorate all our homes twice over, back in the days when we were fighting Kefka. We'd all tried to shield the kids somewhat, keep her and Gau safe on the airship as much as we could, and she'd been terribly bored much of the time.
If this cabin was the same as the one I'd stayed in back then, there'd be a hidden wardrobe – and there was, though all it contained was one of Setzer's robes. That was fine by me, because his dressing gown was silk and felt lovely. I was swimming in it, but I didn't mind that. I went looking for the head, drank from a dipper full of water, then poured more into the basin and splashed my face with it, and set off in search of tea. Then I remembered something else, and ran up the stairs to the deck. Edgar was there, leaning over the railing. He waved, and I came over to join him.
I'd always loved sunrises and sunsets on the airship, from above the clouds – the way the colors seem to rise up from a floor of clouds beneath you, more delicate and less bright than they are below, and the feeling that it's something private, shared only among the others on the ship, sometimes kept all to yourself.
"I never get tired of this," he said. "Setzer's jaded – he came out, set a course, then went below muttering about coffee."
"He must have gone back to bed. I didn't smell any."
"Perhaps so," he said.
"Are we descending?" I asked.
"He thought you might like a look at the rest of the country from above," Edgar said.
"I guess so," I said, but I just looked out over the clouds again, while we were still above them. Then we began sinking through them, the part I could never get used to, because no matter how many times I was on deck for it I still thought my vision ought to be blocked somehow. Then we came out on the other side, and I looked down below us at the brown stripe of land. I could just see the ocean off to the west, still a bit dim in the early morning. There were a few scattered houses, looking like children's blocks at this distance, and then I felt the ship level out.
Below, the land was brownish-gold, tawny and russet, with patches of darker brown that seemed to be bare earth, and occasional dots of evergreen, though most of the trees were brown or bare with occasional patches of brilliant gold or red. It looked like a harvest, something we'd seen rarely enough from the air, before, back when the plants weren't growing right, and the crops rotted in the field or never ripened. I thought that was what he meant, but I began seeing more of a lighter, dustier brown; no sign of stubbled fields or grass dead for the winter, just... dust. I knew how that looked, because I'd seen land like that around Figaro.
"It looks like desert," I said.
"Most of the Serpent was under the ocean," Edgar said. "It's not really a trench anymore, I suppose... do you remember anything you might have read in school? The Treviad, maybe?" I shook my head. "Sowing salt into the earth was a punitive measure – if you wanted to ensure your defeated enemies could never make use of their land again, you plowed salt into the ground."
I thought of the land registries back at home, the pins in the map, but I couldn't remember how many there'd been beyond the first bend of the Serpent. I saw a house or two, but only one showed any sign of life – a woodpile outside, a few chickens in the yard. The others looked abandoned, one with its roof falling in. What had happened to those people, and how were the ones who'd stayed doing? "Did you see a lot of those abandoned houses?" I asked.
"Here and there," he said. "Have you had any stragglers coming in?"
"No... maybe they all starved."
"They'd be likelier to give up before that," he said. "From here they might have gone to Nikeah or Tzen. Don't borrow trouble, Terra. We had enough. We still have. It's not just here – Nikeah lost almost all of its agricultural land, something like ninety percent of it. It's almost a blessing so many died in the cataclysm, or the food shortages would have been far worse than they were."
"I don't..."
"Are you sure you want to run a country?" he said. "It's never easy, and the consequences are almost unbearable sometimes. At least, they are if you're... Gestahl never seemed to think in those terms."
"I... didn't plan to. It just happened. I can't back down now, can I?" Many of our settlers came from around here, and most of those who didn't had some background in farming; surely they'd have known, better than I had, where they could afford to plant. Maybe they were all clustered in the arm of land just south of the town. I couldn't remember how many pins had gone on the map outside that area. "Will the land ever be usable?" I asked.
"That I don't know. My knowledge of it is all through poetry. No one ever needed to salt the land around our capital, and the southern part of the kingdom has largely been safe, except on my watch." He looked as though he'd tasted something unpleasant as he spoke, but then he shook his head. "I'll see if I can find some agronomists who know more, Terra. We have a few; I have a project underway. I want to see if we can grow food even in the central part of Figaro."
I nodded. "Maybe the rains will wash the salty land away after a while, leave us with something we can use."
"That may not be quite how it works... I'll find some scientists for you, my dear." I nodded, and he sighed. "Makes me wonder if that man was in the right when he aimed the crossbow, though."
"What do you mean?"
He didn't look up from the ground sliding by down below us. "Look at how I spend our money," he said. "Trying to irrigate the desert? We need more agricultural land, desperately, but we've no proof this will work. We're paying and provisioning troops in the Narshe cleanup, we've given generous loans to Doma and earmarked more for Mobliz and Narshe when their governments are fully functional. It's important the rest of the world rebuild as well, but people are still homeless, going hungry. I funded Locke's expedition out of my own stipend, which is altogether too generous. The cost of the dig was tiny compared to the cost of the Narshe operation, or the amounts I'm forgiving in taxes and the defaulted loans I'm taking over to get my people back on their feet, but it could have gone somewhere else."
"Is that why that expedition stopped after a year?" I asked, suspecting even as I spoke that I was missing the point.
He nodded. "And maybe I'll regret that rather than the money spent, on my deathbed. Locke thinks the War of the Magi could never be more relevant than it is today, that we need to do our studies of it now, because people will be paying attention."
"It's kind of a moot point, isn't it?" I said. "Magic's gone. Really gone, this time, not just sealed. No one will be reviving it."
"There will be other forces just as destructive," he said. "Or more so. You know of guns?" I nodded; I'd ordered a handful at the request of one of the wealthier farmers, and when they came in, they drew quite a crowd of spectators. Several people, not just the purchasers, had fired a few shots at some targets for the curious. The guns made an obscene noise, but supposedly they were more powerful than a bow and more efficient for hunting. "They can kill a man, and I know there are people working every day to improve them. Or imagine a bomb more explosive than the powder the guns use."
"What would they make it of?" I asked. My mind just went to magic again. "Do they have something already?"
"I don't know, Terra..." He turned his back on the rail, leaning against it and rubbing his face. "It's just one of the multitude of possibilities that plagues me. I thought I'd use this as a vacation, but instead I just find new dangers I haven't heeded because I'm too occupied with the immediate problems."
"That's... awful," I said. I hadn't given much thought to his situation; I knew he was busy, had even sort of realized he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, but I'd had no idea what that entailed.
I reached out to touch his arm, and he caught my hand and kissed it. "Don't let me worry you, Terra," he said, and didn't let go of my hand. I entertained a brief suspicion that he'd just been seeking sympathy, but then he said "I don't find myself sleepless most nights. I just can't seem to get away from a low roar of problems needing my attention, no matter where I am or what I'm doing," which sounded more like playing it down. And then he added, stroking my hand, "It's too late for me to make an impression on you, isn't it? It was too late long before."
"It's just automatic with you, isn't it?" I couldn't help being amused, but I extricated my hand.
"Automatic but only about half-serious. If I thought you were likely to give up on Locke I'd be keeping my distance – lecherous young king or no." I laughed, but his grin faded as he continued. "I wasn't trying to separate you, Locke, and Celes permanently, just to give things some time to settle."
"Meddling must be automatic, too."
"A bit," he conceded.
"Why'd you do it? I thought you were arranging it that way deliberately, but I didn't..." I trailed off, unsure how to say it. I'd been too confused by my own feelings to sort out anyone else's except in terms of mine – if Locke cared about me, if Celes hated me because of him, if Edgar thought we should be apart.
"It's ironic," he said. "For all my efforts women give me a wide berth, but Locke, without even trying, gets more entangled than he even knows. I don't think he had any intention of stealing Celes's heart, or even realized he'd done it, but there was some attraction there, on both sides. Things were very awkward on the airship just after that opera interlude." I'd heard about that, but not this part of it. My chest felt strangely tight. He took my hand again, but I just kept looking out over the dust below us, and the dimly-glimpsed seashore to the west. He continued. "And I could tell early on that he had some manner of feelings for you; I'm not sure he could, though, and you were too lost to respond in kind. And then the world broke. We each found our own reason to go on as best we could, but I almost got the impression Locke was Celes's reason. While we were looking for everyone else she'd keep mentioning him, he was the first one she'd ask about when we made inquiries..."
I nodded, feeling miserable, almost like I was about to cry, and he squeezed my hand. When I looked back at him, I saw he was watching me. "He wasn't ready for that," Edgar said. "Even if he'd thought he was, and he didn't. He told me how, after he tried to revive Rachel, Celes was waiting for him, and he felt for her sake he couldn't let her see how it had hurt him." I pulled my hand away, wrapped my arms around myself. "Didn't he confide in you, Terra?" Edgar asked. "I know the two of you spent time together after he rejoined us."
"Edgar, what— what are you trying to say? He liked Celes but she scared him off so he settled on me?"
"Of course not!"
"Are you sure?"
"I can't read his mind, but that sounds nothing like the man I know."
"So what makes you think it— why do you think he's in love with me and not her?"
"Terra, don't you pay any attention at all? The letters, the visits, surely you remember those?"
"Don't take that tone with me!" I flared at him. "You're the one who got in the middle of this right from the start!"
He buried his face in his hands. "And I regret it profoundly just now, but will you hear me out?"
"Fine."
"Perhaps he's loved you from the very start. I suspected he might early on. It certainly seems obvious he cares for you now, at any rate. But I don't know why he'd fall in love with you rather than with Celes. You're both charming young ladies, when you're not loudly berating me as you both delight in doing, but why we love one person more than another is one of mankind's great mysteries. You used to ask us about love and you were never going to get a satisfactory answer, because it can't be explained. All I know is what I saw— Locke seeking you out, enjoying your company, seeming happiest when he was with you. And looking like he'd been punched in the gut when Strago raised the possibility that you might not survive a victory against Kefka."
I nodded slowly, trying to make sense of Edgar's view of it. Trying to remind myself of the most hopeful way I could ever see Locke's feelings. "You don't think Locke ever knew Celes was—" In love with him, I thought— "interested in him?"
"I think he tried not to know. Puzzling as I might find that course of action, I think he was choosing not to think much about Celes's behavior, rather than be forced to deal with it." That sounded about right, at least. Not that it made me feel much better. "Don't look so glum," Edgar said. "The last time I saw Celes, she didn't appear to be pining away for his love. Last month," he added, before I had a chance to ask. "Granted, it was an official visit, but she seemed in good spirits when I had a moment to speak with her privately."
"That's good," I said.
"And you'll be seeing him in a matter of days to sort out all of this," he said. "Cheer up. If you want to worry about something, I can tell you about the economy. Or the population figures we're compiling."