VI. In Which Soul-Searching And Misunderstandings Are Not Exploited For Cheap Comedy or Hackneyed Clichés
ooo
Sabin awoke and sat up, massaging his temples. Ugh. Where was he? What had happened? He didn't remember being particularly frustrated. In fact, it had been a pretty uneventful day, up until the big dinner and everything afterward...
Oh. Right. Edgar lay stretched out in bed, looking more like a cat than a king with his hands folded under his chin. He certainly hadn't spent the whole night being tormented by a few horrible words.
I like your arms.
What a mess.
He didn't bother with changing clothes and instead went straight for the weight room. Years ago his father had refurnished one of the dungeons into a private gym for his son. It had been one of Sabin's favorite places to go for peace of mind, and he'd be damned if he didn't need it now.
After two hundred pushups, leg curls and old-fashioned jumping jacks he saw the familiar fringe of Edgar's cape in the doorway. "Oh, uh, hey."
"It's five o'clock, Sabin. This is early even by your standards. Would you like to have Matron start breakfast, or would that interfere with your busy schedule of imposing upon me without bothering to mention what's wrong?"
"Nah, I'm fine."
His utter absentmindedness irritated Edgar, who had sacrificed much-needed sleep for his brother's sake without getting so much as a single morsel of information in return. He stifled the urge to stab him with a drill bit and simply swept away.
Sabin watched him leave. How much does he really know? He sat down by the bench press and reached for the bar. No matter what else happened in his life, weights were something he could control. Three hundred pounds in the morning would still be three hundred pounds the next day. The only thing that changed was the way it felt to lift them.
The only thing that changes is...
Shit. No. He wasn't going down this road, not so soon after waking up. Lack of sleep had made him stressed and he was having trouble focusing, that's all. Good exercise would clear his head. And if he started wandering into uncharted territory for a second time he could tell some lame jokes.
It wasn't long until he was so torn between being distracted and working valiantly to not be distracted that he lost count. Discouraged, he worked harder, scraping the back of his mind for the most horrendous puns he knew, the ones that made even Locke queasy. He went through every joke he could find with bananas, chickens, and bears...
Bears. He sighed. At this rate he might as well suck it up and deal with it. So what? It was a compliment. Why was it any different than any other, like when anyone else mentioned they appreciated how strong he was? He knew the truth to that even as he asked the question. The fact that he wasn't even sure how close they were made everything different.
Terra had a strange way with words. She could hardly open her mouth without touching on a hidden truth or aspect of someone's personality, often giving voice to things everyone else would rather leave unsaid. Many times her innocent but pointed remarks had brought even the most casual conversation to a halt.
This time his discomfort had nothing to do with her curious phrasing.
He sensed a presence in the doorway and jerked his head to indicate he was aware. The inhabitants of Castle Figaro knew it was a bad idea to interrupt him when he was concentrating on his workout. Not that I am today...
"Sabin?"
"Yeah?" he grunted.
"Don't you want breakfast?"
"You just asked me that."
"I asked you that an hour ago."
Had it really been an hour? It couldn't have been. On the other hand, he probably did spend around ten or fifteen minutes on banana puns. "Well, uh," he said lamely, "I'm still busy."
"Mm-hmm." Edgar glided into the room holding a full breakfast plate and a teacup. He paused for a moment, then sat down on Sabin's thighs. He crossed his legs primly and took a sip of tea."With what, I wonder..."
"What, can't you tell I'm doing rocket science?"
"I'm saying it's unusual for you to still be here. You'd ordinarily be out running by now, you never had a remarkable attention span."
"Yeah, well." As much as he wanted to come up with a snappy retort, the smell of crepes and fresh fruit was too tantalizing to ignore. Sabin realized he hadn't had a bite to eat in nearly twelve hours. "Yeah, well," he said again.
"Naturally. Would you care to explain why the senator from Tzen spent the evening locked in a prison cell?"
"That was a public service."
"I don't disagree, but it's still going to make for a gauche confrontation. It would do me good if you and Terra would lay low upstairs until the representatives leave. The Lady Coppelia won't be putting in any more appearances today."
Sabin made a sound like "nrrgh!" that had nothing to do with the weights. "I guess you want us out of the way, huh?" he said, preoccupied with the steady rhythm of raising and lowering the bar. I like your arms. I like your arms. I like your arms.
"I'm not ashamed of you, if that's what you're implying. Fewer people present means fewer opportunities for chaos."
He was right, but at the moment any amount of furious bureaucrats was preferable to seeing Terra. "She doesn't need me. She's plenty tough."
"I had a feeling you would say something like that, so I went ahead and told her you would stop by. You go settle your affairs and I'll settle mine." He delicately impaled a raspberry on the end of his fork. "Hungry?"
Only Edgar could get away with screwing him over and then trying to play nice. He half-nodded, and Edgar skillfully flicked the tines so the berry went flying. Sabin caught it between his teeth.
"Now then. I know you're green in these circumstances, and while I can't speak with surety because you haven't offered me so much as a word, I can gladly offer advice..."
The strain of so much continuous lifting was beginning to take its toll. "Shouldn't you be, y'know, talking about the gross standardized flat tax or whatever it is you do?"
"Nonsense. I am an inventor, a statesman and a king, but above all, I'm a brother," he said, patting Sabin's leg. "So as much as I would love to be exchanging insincere farewells with men who detest me I'm willing to make the incredible sacrifice and spend my precious time with you."
"Gee, thanks a lot."
"That being said," Edgar concluded, standing with a flourish, "I'll leave you to your obligations. A gentleman never runs away from difficult business."
So he did know! Or did he? What was there to know? Sabin still hadn't figured that one out. "Damn it, Edgar, if you want something, you oughta say it instead of beating around the bush like that."
"What, you mean to be direct? Open? Honest? Straightforward?" He finished his crepes with a look of disdain. "How unkingly."
"You're my brother, and I love you..."
Edgar shook his head. His brother would never be a great romantic with that kind of candor.
"...but I'm about five seconds away from hurling this at your head," he threatened, briefly dropping the bar to emphasize the seriousness of his words.
"Why, then I'll have to make my exit in four. Goodbye for now, and do remember you'll always have me as a listening ear."
"As in listening to me or listening in on me?"
There was a surprised pause. "Touché," Edgar said briskly. He turned on his heel and left. Sabin did twenty more I like your arms, doing his best to not to think too much about what lay ahead.
Terra was busy taking out the hem of a skirt when he stopped by. She was still wearing his shirt, but she'd already made the bed and confined her sewing to an easy chair. "Good morning!" she chirped, looking up from her scraps of wool.
She didn't look mad. Should she? Hell, should he be? "Hey, feeling better?"
"Much! I slept well." She held up the skirt for his appraisal. "Do you think this is about right? Marianna's grown so much over the past few months. I don't know if her big sisters can keep up with her hand-me-downs."
"Yeah, it's real cute." Sabin bent over the top of the chair and noticed with some amusement that her feet didn't quite touch the ground. "Edgar says we're stuck up here until all the big kids leave."
"I don't mind. I'd only cause more trouble anyway."
Welcome to my life. "Say, uh...I mean, the other night, if I..."
Terra blinked up at him and he forgot what it was he'd meant to say. Did they really have anything to talk about? If she wasn't upset, why was he? Had he imagined it all? "It's nothing."
"Sure."
Her smile caused such a jolt in his knees he would've fallen if not for the chair. "Um," he said, reeling, "I...I have to be somewhere." He was gone before she could manage a baffled "goodbye".
ooo
The cloud of Edgar's nightmarish evening had an unexpected silver lining. All his guests had been so offended that no one was lingering around to bother him. He led them to the door, offering profuse apologies or creative rationales, and was finished almost immediately. He'd never seen so many self-important people in such a hurry to leave.
He was so inundated with people leaving he almost missed Sabin rushing past. Edgar stopped him with a yank to the back of his ponytail.
"Ouch!"
"And where are you going?"
"Out. Training."
"Where?"
"Wherever."
"When will you be back?"
"This evening, I guess. Why?"
Edgar stared at him, pained by the change he saw. Sabin could be a lot of things, but aggravated and on edge wasn't one of them. Why wasn't he talking? Whatever happened to Sabin telling him absolutely everything at the drop of a hat, whether it was too much information about a festering wound on his back or the sunset he'd seen a few days prior? Now he was distant, reserved, and troubled. It was more than uncharacteristic, it was wrong.
Why? There was no limit of responses to that one. "It's no issue," he said, turning away. "I'll see you then."
"I...yeah, back later." He could tell Edgar resented his being so standoffish, but he could barely think straight. They could talk sometime later when he didn't feel like his brain was about to explode.
How could something so small have affected him so much? Why was it affecting him at all? When had he started paying attention to those things? What kind of martial artist was so easily influenced by another person? Maybe it was the castle. Maybe he'd get outside where he belonged and everything would suddenly fall into place.
The possibility put a spring in his step. Sabin ran to the front gates and ordered them open, waiting for the first rush of desert air to bring back his senses.
It didn't work. He set off at a lively jog, determined to either get some answers or kill himself in the process.
The latter was pretty plausible. After a near-sleepless night, three consecutive hours of hard exercise and a single raspberry for sustenance, it was impressive he'd made it this far. It was like being a novice, when Master Duncan had given him bare gruel to eat and made him train from dawn to dusk.
"You'll be stronger for it!" his master had shouted. "Anyone can be a man when they're fat and happy! True character comes through under duress! Go on, show me who you really are!"
Who am I? Sabin had a feeling he wasn't looking too good at the moment. It wasn't as though he'd meant to run away like that, but in that split second he'd been taken so off-guard that he could have---
If anybody would be able to help him, it would be Edgar. Of course, if anybody would be able to blow things out of proportion and involve everyone on the planet in a harebrained scheme to completely humiliate him, it would be Edgar. It might be best to stay quiet for the time being. Who knows? It might be the weather.
He grimaced. Why do I keep saying that? What if it really is something that won't go away? And what the hell is "it", anyway?
Damn it, he couldn't even be confused right. No wonder he had so many problems. He began whistling an old song under his breath, a stupid rhyming ditty he and Vargas had thought up somewhere in the midst of lazy summer days. Às vezes, só vive um dia, às vezes, só uma hora... Kind of bleak, now that he thought about it. As kids, death didn't really seem to apply. Death was for animals and old people. They were safe in their frenzy of punching, kicking and wrestling in the grass.
...which is how it should have been, but often wasn't. The children in Mobliz had not only experienced death, they'd seen it firsthand. The earthquake had taken entire families. Some were too young to remember, but others would still wake up in tears. How were kids supposed to cope with something like that? That was part of what he hated so much about the world today: nothing was sacred. All the old rules were broken. There was no point in trying to restore things to the way they were. The only thing anybody could do was to go with it and hope everything turned out okay.
ooo
There was something therapeutic about fixing clothes, Terra thought. As tiresome as it could be to pick up the needle day after day, she took comfort in being able to see how time had passed in her stitches. Had it really been six weeks since she patched that cap? And what about Pamina's boots? She'd cobbled them together before the first harvest, which meant almost eight months had passed. Soon Katarin would have her second baby and they'd have to go back to the rice paddies by the banks. It amazed her how quickly the whole cycle went by, and it kept getting faster.
A voice outside her room meekly offered a "Dearest?"
"Yes?" Only Edgar could make it sound as though he was honored beyond words to be in her presence. "Please, come in."
"I wanted to inform you that the great robed pestilence has left in peace. You are free to go about as you please."
"Thank you, Edgar, but I'm all right. I think I should finish these while I have the chance. There'll be so much to catch up on when I go home."
He sat down in the chair furthest from the window, signifying his position as an intimate friend. To choose a spot by the entrance would have meant he was there under protest, to be under the sill would suggest he was there for ulterior reasons, and the beside chairs were for lovers. It was an old etiquette that Terra couldn't possibly have known, but decades of firm discipline wouldn't let him waver. What about falling asleep on the bed?
"May I be of assistance?" he asked.
"No thank you...I really should've washed out these feedsacks better. There's still a lot of starch in the fabric."
Three years after she'd proven herself strong enough to blow out whole armies with a single spell she was making clothes from livestock bags. Edgar was aware she didn't need an exorbitant amount of money in her life, but he still flinched at the sight. She deserved the comfortable living he'd received by mere accident of birth. He watched her sew for a while, moved by her selflessness and skill. She didn't ask for charity. She'd learned to survive with the strength of her own hands.
Remarkable. There was no other word for it. She was simply remarkable in every way, shape and form.
"If it wouldn't be a bother, I'd like to wander around a bit more before I go," Terra said, running over a seam with her thumb. "Around the desert, that is. There are so many neat caves and oases around here, and the ancient castle was really beautiful. We saw so many lovely things when we traveled, but we never had the time to appreciate them."
"A reasonable request," he agreed. "Take Sabin with you, he'd be an expert guide. You can talk to him about it when he comes back this evening."
"Comes back?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I was under the opinion that he'd been here to see you." Was his brother really that forgetful? Edgar made a note to give him a good slap. "He's out training for today. Did you want to make plans?"
"It's..." Terra put down her sewing. "No, it's fine. He did come to see me a little while ago, but he didn't mention training."
The note of a good slap was revised to provide for a good physical assault. Edgar couldn't pass it off as an unfortunate coincidence or even a faulty memory. Sabin had deliberately left without telling her, and now she knew it.
"Your work can wait for another day."
"Huh?" She didn't look devastated or grief-stricken, just slightly distressed. It was refreshing to know there were ladies in the world that didn't turn every encounter into a grand tragedy. Speaking to all those noblewomen last night had made him want to tone down his own histrionic tendencies.
"Come with me. I think I might have something that would interest you. It's not as untamed and exciting as the desert, but I think you might appreciate it nonetheless. Please..." He offered her his arm. "Permit me to be a proper host for the one guest with a perpetual place in my heart."
Somehow his overblown gallantry was just what she needed. "Yes. Yes, show me."
Side-by-side they went up the cramped service stairs, a dusty passage that went above the balcony and the highest bell tower. Terra held to the end of his cape. Where could they be going? She could find the dining room, the banquet halls, the dungeons, storage, kitchen, the living spaces, the chapel, the shops, and even the famous engine room. What else could there be that she hadn't seen?
Edgar finally stopped at a narrow ledge with an even narrower door. He withdrew a skeleton key from his pocket and slid it into the open lock. "I hope you find it as magnificent as I do." He opened the door with a wide gesture.
"Ah...!"
The whole room was built like a theatre, with seat boxes on mezzanines around an enormous stage. A large globe in the center was etched with constellations of the northern and southern hemispheres. Empty wineglasses and old robes sat atop a giant craps table. The whole room was like a...
"A museum," she said breathlessly, looking at a telescope pointed towards the glass ceiling. "All of this, and..." A glimmer of strings caught her eye, and she turned to a cherrywood cello. "I didn't know you liked music!"
"Yes, well, after five drinks I like quite a bit. I used to play the violin religiously when I was younger, but I've no opportunity for it anymore. Setzer has mentioned he's wanted to pick it up a string instrument or two, so they're really here for his entertainment. I'm more interested in old plays these days than music."
It was hard to think of Setzer's scarred, bony fingers wrapped around a violin. "Is he any good?"
"His tempo, stroke and turn are never right, yet somewhere in all that he sees a gig. It's agonizing to listen to."
"Maybe so..." The image of Setzer's fingers were replaced by a picture of the two men together, playing instruments and singing that old song about the woman who wouldn't come down from her window. "So this is where you play poker?"
"Yes, among other things. There's only so much to be done with a game of cards, you know? Father and Mother often had friends up here for private meetings. The acoustics are wonderful for a show or a concert. If you like, the next time you visit I'll have a performance here."
"I would love that, Edgar." Then, in a passionate outburst, "I think the whole castle should look like this!"
"Hm?"
"All of it! The hallways should have ribbons like this, and instruments, and carpets, and all the things you like. You shouldn't have to confine who you really are to a single room. Why not show everyone the man behind the throne?"
"No one is interested in that man. The chair he sits in means far more than he ever will. " Even as he was smiling, she could hear the futility in his voice. He had moved past being bitter and had come to accept it. The irony of his fate seemed to amuse him above all else.
The idea of Edgar as a hollow puppet frightened her more than she could say. Terra didn't have to imagine what it would be like. She'd been one herself, and it was too cruel a life to wish on anyone. This was more than just his marriage, it was his entire identity that hung in the balance.
The chair he sits in means far more than he ever will. "Well, I don't think that's true," she said, "and neither does Sabin, or Setzer, or any of us! Edgar, promise me you won't stop being who you are even when it seems like nobody cares."
This time his smile was sincere. It was almost impossible, he thought, to see and speak with her and not be smitten. Had he been another man and not spent so long preparing for a loveless future, he very well may have ended up one of her most ardent suitors.
"Ah, meu coração," he sighed, kneeling, "for your sake, I promise."
Terra laughingly bent down to kiss his forehead as a lady favoring her knight. It was out of her power to grant him his freedom, but she could give him strength by being his friend.
She glanced up and gasped. On the far wall was a full-length portrait of the twins, their stern-faced father, and a gorgeous blonde woman in a bright pink dressing gown.
It can't be... "Edgar?" she asked, untangling herself from his gentle arms and going to look closer. "Who is that?"
"That's Mother."
"But I thought---"
"Posthumously, of course. For my father's thirtieth birthday a famous artist did a painting of what he thought the royal family was 'supposed' to look like. Flattering, isn't it? Father was horrified, and Sabin was so upset. He didn't understand how there could be a place where he and Mother were together."
"Well, I don't think much of what families are supposed to be like," Terra said. "Maybe I'm not qualified to be a mother in the same way other people are, and I know it's not easy for the children to grow up all together like that, but I wouldn't want it any other way. We work hard and we love each other. Isn't that enough?" She looked back at the portrait. The queen of Figaro was beaming out at her angelic children, who stood with an inhumanly rigid posture in the foreground. It was all painstakingly detailed, but it didn't seem real. They didn't grow up this way. Why would anyone memorialize something that never happened?
"If you'd like..." Edgar had gone to the corner with the instruments and was standing by a painting there. "Someone was dedicated enough to do a more accurate depiction, even if it didn't quite fit the standards for royal decorum." This painting, only half the size of the other, showed a completely different family. A young Edgar, no more than four, sat up straight on a cushion while Sabin was preoccupied with gnawing on his own arm. The king was partially hidden by shadows in the background, just barely looking over his shoulder as though to check that the boys weren't in any trouble.
"It's just right!" Terra exclaimed. "And Sabin's expression is perfect."
"Yes. I'm not sure whether he's thinking or just licking some orange marmalade. I'll ask him someday."
It's so beautiful, Terra thought. The family she saw was a little broken and a bit eccentric, but she liked it a lot more than the illusionary one. Knowing the men those two odd boys had grown up to be filled her with hope. Family isn't a destiny or a job. They just...well, come together. And maybe I can do it too.
ooo
It was a quarter after midnight when Sabin finally saw the castle over the horizon. By all accounts it was a rotten day. Not only had he not been able to come up with a conclusion to everything he'd been thinking about, but the flooding from earlier in the season had ruined most of the edible plants. All he'd managed to eat were a few scant desert berries and the softer bristle twigs.
He was starving, miserable, and frustrated as ever. What was I supposed to accomplish today?
There was no reason he couldn't have walked through the front doors, except for his own stubborn refusal to cut himself a break. He doggedly set up onto the east wing, sweating and grunting with every move. Damn it, this was harder than he remembered. Bigger, too. Maybe he'd just drop off the side and die.
When he finally reached the familiar pillars of the king's balcony he could've fainted right there. Instead he wiped his brow and staggered back to his own room. After such a lousy experience the least he deserved was a long rest. No amount of mental gymnastics was going to keep him from sleep tonight.
He was about to flop onto the bed and happily chalk up the whole thing as a do-over when a pair of hands seized him and struck his face against the wall.