The Grand Hall; Palace of Rabanastre
'The Defence calls Her Royal Highness, Ashelia B'Nargin Dalmasca to the stand.'
The Pirate cried with a theatrical flourish and Ashe rose from her throne and moved across the hall to take her place in the dock.
It was marginally cooler in the dock, a slight draught reaching her back from the shadowed cloisters behind her.
The entire hall was aghast that the sovereign of Dalmasca could be called by a self-confessed pirate to his defence.
It was necessary for her Chief Justice to explain to her people that it was perfectly legal by the statutes of Dalmasca's law codes; this did little to prevent the excitable whispers but did add some legitimacy to Balthier's characteristically bold actions.
Ashe smoothed her sweaty hands on her skirts, the action hidden by the low wall of the dock and stood to attention, back straight and head held high.
She was tired, over-heated and feeling somewhat slow witted. The heat was intolerable and the funk of body odour from so many people pressed together in this enclosed space reminded her, unpleasantly, of some of the less reputable places she had visited while on a quest to liberate her kingdom.
When all her people had been relocated out of Lowtown and Nabradia had been restored, dependent on their being any Gil left over, she would have to have this hall ventilated, Ashe decidedly resolutely.
It took some time for the hall to fall into tense and expectant silence and in that time Ashe watched Balthier. She was grateful to see he was suffering from the heat as much as she was, plucking at his loose sleeves and flapping the sides of his tan coloured, remarkably plain, waistcoat.
'There will be order in the court.'
Veniliss was finally forced to raise his voice over the insidious wave of whispers that surged the length and breadth of the grand hall, his booming command finally quelled the worst of the chattering.
Ashe felt a single trail of sweat crawl down her scalp from the hairline weighted down by her circlet crown, which escaped down her neck. She longed to take off the heavy crown and scratch her itching scalp but couldn't.
' Your Majesty.'
Ashe thought it was the heat that gave Balthier's voice a subdued solemnity more than any sense of reverence.
He stood before the dock and this close Ashe could see the circles under his eyes and watched as his fingers twitched in his gloves. She had the feeling they were both longing for this to be over.
She nodded to him in regal acknowledgement and waited for him to lay his cards on the table.
She saw him cut a sharp glance over her left shoulder into the shadows and knew he was having one of those peculiar silent conversations with Fran that had so vexed and fascinated her when they had all travelled together.
Balthier latched his gloved fingers around the handrail of the dock and rocked back on his heels slightly, a faint frown puckering his brow.
The hall was so silent that Ashe fancied it would be possible to hear a pin drop, all eyes and ears strained to hear what the pirate would say and do next.
'Let's talk about trust.' Balthier finally said; that dragging tiredness still in his voice.
For all his flamboyant confidence in discrediting Tamberlio he acted as though he thought his case was lost already, when surely he knew he was winning despite all the evidence against him.
'In his opening statement the honourable Chief Justice claimed that my crime was not selling or manufacturing counterfeit Licences, though he would no doubt see me punished for that alleged offence, as well.'
Balthier shot an unfriendly look towards the Chief Justice who hovered anxiously between his desk and the dock.
'But, instead, I am accused of abusing a bond of trust formed between ourselves during your exile, this crime he claims is a far greater offence than any tangible crime I may stand accused of.'
Balthier turned slightly jaded eyes to the galleries, Ashe had noted throughout his virtuoso performance of these two days passed, that he favoured the people in the galleries with his attentions over the wealthier Dalmascan's who claimed the pews.
'Though it pains me to say this, I agree with the honourable Chief Justice Veniliss, betraying the trust of a friend is one of the greatest crimes a man can be accused of, betraying a friend who is also a Queen, well, I should think that completely inexcusable.'
Ashe fought the confused frown that threatened to take up residence upon her brow. Was he apologising? Was this an admission of guilt?
'If I was truly guilty of such a crime, then I should find myself unable to offer any defence for myself.' Balthier continued, his expression abstracted, Ashe suspected his mind was already racing ahead of him.
A roguish smile blossomed upon his lips, 'Tell me, Your Highness, do you feel betrayed?'
Ashe tensed in the dock, fingers biting into the heavy folds of her skirts, as her mind scrambled to piece together a response.
He had ambushed her, flinging the question towards her with all the languid distain one might use to discuss the weather, yet he surely he knew what a loaded question it was.
To say no would be to invalidate this entire trial, if she said yes she would be, essentially, passing judgement on him instantly, again invalidating the trial and ruining all the hard work she had gone through to engineer this elaborate game.
Ashe could hear the roar of her heart, loud and thunderous as she stared, stricken, into his brown eyes, shuttered, enigmatic and unknowable. Panic clawed at her throat as it seemed the attentions of the jury bore down on her like a physical weight, crushing her under the force of their expectant curiosity.
'Objection.'
Veniliss' deep baritone voice jolted her out of her mute panic and Ashe blinked as her Chief Justice turned hard, contemptuous eyes upon Balthier.
'Do not think to play upon Her Majesty's charity and kindness to manipulate the will of Dalmasca and her sovereign to pardon you, pirate. You risk being held in contempt of court.'
A strange expression danced over Balthier's face, she recognised it and knew that Balthier's next words would likely be ones she would not like.
'Contempt of court, your Honour?' He purred, his smile curling spitefully over his lips as he looked down and brushed his hands down the white cotton of his shirt.
'Tell me sir, why is that I should feel anything but contempt for this court, hmm?'
Ashe swallowed back her own gasp and dug her finger nails into the flesh of her palms as she curled her hands into tight, bloodless fists. The entire hall inhaled sharply in shock at the dramatic change of atmosphere. What was he doing? Had the heat addled his wits?
Balthier turned a look of pure belligerence towards the pews, the galleries and the two friends who stood by Ashe's vacated throne as he stood casually at ease looking for all Ivalice like a proud and disinterested Bandercouerl or silver lobo, watching vermin scuttle through the long grass of the Steppes.
It was as if, Ashe found herself thinking, she had caged a wild animal who had, abruptly, decided he no longer wished to accept his captivity and would now bare tooth and claw against his captors. Ashe's heart thumped erratically in her chest, a complex muddle of desire and panic lodged under her breast bone.
'I stand accused of what is, essentially, a misdemeanour crime, but am held accountable for an act tantamount to treason, that of breaking a bond of trust with a queen. I am to be tried by a jury not of my peers, for a crime that does not exist in any statute of law, but by the population of a country not my own.'
Balthier prowled towards Veniliss, though lean and agile in build and lacking the musculature of Basch or even Vaan, Balthier was still an imposing presence and he dwarfed the Chief Justice in height and stature as he came level with the other man.
'I have respected this court, whose authority to try me I could have questioned long hence, for one reason and one reason alone; because I respect the Queen. Therefore sir, I do not see the merit of your objection and will uphold my question.'
Balthier turned on his heel in one beautiful pivot, the same movement she had seen him use in battle, swinging his gun to aim upon all manner of foes. He looked at Ashe and his brown eyes were still as unreadable as ever. She could not tell if hatred or humour lurked in their depths.
' Your Highness, I ask again, do you feel betrayed?'
' Yes.'
Ashe was surprised to hear her own answer. Her voice strong and firm as it carried, effortlessly, towards the farthest reaches of the furthest gallery.
As the hall shifted and rippled like the ocean waves, murmurs of dismay and titillation undulating through the pews and galleries, Ashe only had eyes for him.
She watched a purely predatory smile spread across his handsome, somewhat sharp featured face and knew she had fallen foul of an artful trap the design and purpose of which she knew not.
'Yes, what, Your Highness?' He purred; cocking his head to the side in the manner of the Ose they had battled in the Great Crystal, a look of pure calculation, pondering the best way to make the kill.
Ashe felt her back straighten with the steel of her will; she had faced down worse foes than he and feared him not. She did not need the itching weight of the crown upon her head to know her power.
'Yes, you have betrayed me.' She told him coldly.
He betrayed her now, he betrayed her with every word and deed and every soft moment, when the cynicism left his eyes, and he pulled her into his arms and almost, almost told her what his eyes hinted at, that he loved her.
He betrayed her because his love took from her and gave back nothing but uncertainty. He gave her no promises or reassurances and yet she could not, would not, let him go.
Balthier had returned to the dock and curled his gloved hands over the rail where she too gripped the wood as a lifeline. Their hands lined up along the hand rail as he leaned towards her, committing an unforgivable act of impropriety that was almost a hanging offence, he asked her, mildly:
'How have I betrayed you, Your Highness?'
Her answer was readily available and came from the shadows of her soul where she had known the answer all along though she would not acknowledge it.
'You betray me as you betray yourself, Sir Bunansa.' She whispered, too low for anyone aside from him to hear.
He recoiled from the dock, as if she had struck him, eyes for a moment wild and shaken to his much shielded core. Then she watched him swallow down a moment of pure panic and paste on a smile.
'Your Highness, you must speak up, your people cannot hear you.' His voice was poison honey sweetness dripping over razor blades.
'I said, Master Balthier, that you have betrayed me in so far as you have betrayed yourself.'
She declared regally, the upper hand hers as she saw the lingering fear that she would expose him for his true self, dance behind his eyes. She watched him back away, almost unconsciously, from the dock as she rose to her full height inside the little wooden box.
'When first meeting you sir, within the passages of the Garamsthye waterway I had thought you a man of little scruples and certainly no native honour. I did indeed, in my desperation to free my kingdom, offer you the greatest of my country's treasures, though loathe I was to do so for a sky pirate and a thief, who thought only of his own profit.'
Ashe continued her voice gaining further strength and resonance as she turned to face her people who watched with nary a sound, the air thick with expectancy.
'That you took, as you so lyrically put it, not one pretty coin nor shiny trinket, demonstrated to me that you were not the base individual you claimed to be. Honour lurked inside you, sir, though you were loathe to concede to its dictates within you.'
Balthier drew breath for speech but she denied him as she had seen him do to the other witnesses, she would not sit idly by while he played with her, this was not his game, nor ever had it been. This lesson she was about to teach him.
She ruled here and this game was hers.
'You saved Rabanastre when you diverted the course of the falling Bahamut and in doing so cemented in my eyes the truth of your good character. The betrayal I speak of is your actions hence. You betrayed the good in you in favour of the base and betrayed a trust I granted in that good man by pandering to your vice.'
She declared, she turned then and seizing her own moment for theatrics she left the dock without permission, but then she was queen here, whose authority was greater than hers?
As the people packing the hall rose to their feet half in response to traditional dictates to rise when their sovereign did, and half in excitement and a desire not to miss what happened next, Ashe walked calmly and in controlled fashion towards the Defendant, who looked less than pleased with this turn in events.
'I speak not as a Queen when I speak of betrayal, had you wanted gold from my treasury I would have granted what I could for my Kingdom's sake, but you asked for nothing from my Kingdom, and so instead I speak as one who thought to call you friend and ally, when I say, yes, good sir, I am betrayed.'
Silence reigned on the tail of her statement and then quickly, like the whisper of a breeze through long grass, the hiss of sand grains sliding through fingers, the murmurs began as the Defendant stood motionless and suddenly mute against her allegations.
Ashe bit down hard on her inside lip and tasted the sweet copper of blood, she almost wished to recant her words, except that for all that she wanted to see him exonerated and accepted by her populace she did not want to see him pardoned completely.
She was no fool, to grant him his freedom was to watch him fly away again, therefore what she sought and had sought from the moment she captured him, was a means to legitimise keeping him in Rabanastre.
A means to keep him with her ever more.
She watched him marshal his wits, turning, slightly on his heel to maintain eye contact as Ashe paced around him.
'Indeed, Your Highness, then may I request that if you would accuse me as a friend and not a monarch that I address you as a friend and not a Queen?'
Ashe nodded, 'You may, sir.'
She knew that to even the most ignorant and dull-witted of observers the display she and Balthier put on now could not be viewed as purely that of Monarch and fallen ally.
It seemed to Ashe that invisible chains of electrified energy ran from the two of them as they circled each other, as if tracing the steps of some ancient, solemn dance.
Balthier licked his lips as he watched her warily, yet his voice was calm, smooth and carefully modulated to please their rapt audience.
'Then I protest against the assumption that I have betrayed myself, and that even had I failed my better nature as you claim, that that failure has any bearing upon you. You speak as if you have claim upon my life, yet I do not see how that would be so.'
In the periphery of her vision Ashe was aware of the look of worried anxiety on Vaan's face as he watched intently. Penelo, always sensitive to the tensions of others, gripped her friends arm tightly, eyes wide.
'Perhaps you are right sir,' Ashe had expected such a rebuff from Balthier, a man who had made a creed out of running from the expectations of others, and was prepared for it, letting it faze her not a jot.
'Perhaps it was presumption on my part to hope, in the spirit of friendship and comradeship forged in the most trying of times, for some better life to find you then the one you have made for yourself.'
In the eyes of her detractors Ashe knew that her performance simply fed fuel to their nay-saying, yet she cared little.
They could accuse her of illicit conduct with pirates, of wilful lack of haste in finding a husband, a lack of mind to the traditions of the past, if they wished. A Queen could only be cowed by the truth if she was afraid of it and Ashe was tired of being afraid of the possibility of failure.
She would try and if she failed let them challenge her then, she had lost everything once already and she had ascended her throne despite it all.
All the while she and Balthier paced a tight circle around and around each other, neither following nor leading the other, a synchronicity to their steps even though they failed to find a similar synchronicity of desire.
'Indeed? Why did you presume that I need or want a life better than the one I have, pray tell?'
Balthier's retort perfectly encapsulated the fundamental difference between them. To him freedom to roam was all, while to Ashe such freedom without purpose spoke only of a bankruptcy of the soul.
Their slow circling had taken them around in full circuit; Ashe could see the frozen, horrified and fascinated visage of her Chief Justice no longer able to run this circus, brimful of objection that could not be spoken.
This was not a criminal trial anymore, though it be a trial of a different sort, a contest of wills, between her and him; the Pirate and the Princess, as was, playing a game of one-up-man-ship that was never supposed to offer a decisive victory to either party.
But Ashe was tired of frustrated triumphs that offered more loss than gain, so she would make this the last game. Here now one of them would be the victor and one would be forced to concede, though even Ashe knew not what the spoils of the final victory would be.
She decided it was time to lay her cards, face up, upon the table as it were; she would not hide behind her bluff any longer. Let all her people see and let them hear and let them decry it if they will, for the Queen would have her cake and eat it.
'Every man deserves something of permanence to call their own, Master Balthier, the chance to leave mark indelible upon this land and know that their lineage continues even once they pass to other plains. The life of a pirate offers only a short drop and sudden stop. As your friend I would have given you better than that.'
Though she spoke in the language of high artifice she saw his eyes widen, understanding dawning as he realised that she played this game not for brief nights spent in hiding, fearing being caught by prying eyes, but for a greater commitment.
'Highness,' Balthier breathed, aghast and too stunned to hide it, the mask dropping and real fear lighting his eyes, though whether for her or himself remained to be seen.
'You look too well upon me; this devotion to my betterment is not in your interests.' He tried to forestall her.
She knew he had no interest in her throne or in acquiring one of his own and as Ashe had no will to share her throne this suited quite well.
Who else but the man who threw down title and lineage that rival that of a lesser king, to safeguard his good conscience, could she trust to support her rule?
'Do I, good sir? Or is it merely that you do not reach for the heights you could attain?'
A Queen must choose a mate through political expedience not personal preference, Ashe knew this well and had followed that dictate once, much to her hearts misfortune.
'I am a Sky Pirate, your majesty; I have no fear of heights, only of finding myself too high beyond my station without a parachute to save me when I am cast down.'
Balthier spoke in jest, but his eyes were deadly serious. They spoke emphatically to her to fold, to forfeit the game and bow down to the will of nebulous forces she could not command.
'And yet you thought nothing of aiding an ousted monarch in a battle against an ascendant Empire? Your words do not ring true, Master Balthier. I think you do yourself an injustice.'
'True, Your Highness, but as you no doubt recall, I took quite a fall within the flaming wreckage of Bahamut because of that vaulting arrogance, if nothing else I have learnt a little caution.'
Around and around they paced each other, around and around Ashe's thoughts circled just as they had on the ascent to the Sun-Cryst as she battled against the dictates of higher forces and her own will to cut a path anew.
'An interesting argument, good sir, for it could be countered that you reached your highest point aboard the Bahamut and have fallen ever since.'
Her father, King Raminas, had ruled by consensus and the dictates of tradition and been universally loved by his courtiers, yet that had not saved him. Ashe herself had been everything a dutiful Princess should be, mild, sweet and obedient to father and husband and that had won her nothing but loss and heartache.
She would look no longer to tradition and the ways of the past for her succour, but to her own will.
'Then I have ascended to my heights and fallen short and it is only natural therefore that I should fall.'
Balthier argued, more against her stirring ambitions to see the weave of tradition fundamentally altered than the delicate words they bandied to and fro.
'For the genuine love and good will I have for you, Highness, I would not wish to see my inevitable fall in anyway affect you. If I have betrayed you, let me be gone from your realm and your mind and leave Dalmasca unblighted by my lack of grace.'
Ashe became aware, slowly as one who wakes from a dream to the sounds of bird song in the morning that the entire hall was alive with excitement.
Dalmascan's whispered in awe at what sounded like a genuine admission of guilt and regret from the outrageously unrepentant Defendant as well as the unmistakable timbre of honesty that echoed to the tune of the word 'love'.
In the wake of the extraordinary confrontation between their sovereign and this flamboyant, entertainingly roguish pirate, the sonorous murmurs from the galleries, the true citizens of Dalmasca to whom rank and birthright meant little, coalesced into a single desire, expressed in many forms: clemency, pardon, forgiveness.
Buoyed up by the will of her people behind her, Ashe stopped moving around and around in futile circles, calling a halt to their dance and extended her hand, speaking for all and also only to him.
'Dalmasca remembers her friends and would not turn a cold eye from them in their time of need. You had cause once to call on Dalmasca's gratitude after Bahamut and did not. Once more she offers her hand to you, will you reject the hand of clemency as you did the hand of gratitude?'
Ashelia B'Nargin Dalmasca had done much for her Kingdom and would give more still in the years to come, but no longer did she believe that duty and honour alone were enough to sustain her in her task.
Let her detractors talk if it pleased them, she had faced down would-be gods and monsters for her throne and she would face down the malice of her conceited councillors with clear conscience.
The only thing that mattered was the next few moments as every pair of eyes in the grand hall watched and waited for the Pirate to make his move.
She held her hand aloft and still, refusing to allow the tremor that ran through her fingers to show as she waited for the Pirate to make his decision.
She knew that this was not the outcome of the game he may have chosen, that he may well silently seethe at her for this manipulation, the loss of his empty, purposeless freedom. If he did then let him turn from her hand and face his fate as he would have it, a fugitive ever more.
No one breathed in the grand hall as seconds dragged with the longevity of hours and the heat pressed down upon their heads with the intensity of the eyes of the gods. Moments lingered and slowly, falling away with a dead and limp heaviness, Ashe's hand fell.
The pirate caught her hand in his gloved palm at almost the last moment, and his fingers did shake visibly, as he slowly and with utmost sincerity dropped to his knees and laid a properly reverent kiss upon her signet ring.
'Well played Princess, I have been soundly beaten at my own game, bravo.'
He whispered as the grand hall almost imploded in the sudden vacuum caused by seven hundred people all inhaling at once and then, in deafening crescendo the hall erupted into wild and exuberant cheers.
Though few people knew precisely what they cheered for all knew that in some way a great battle had been fought and won this day and once more, their queen had been the victor.
A/N Well...that was not exactly the way I thought this would go, but as I say this story has a life of its own. Is it finished? I honestly don't know. Any feedback is gratefully received as always.