Year 6
Zelgadis walked to the window and looked out at the storm outside. Snow was rapidly piling up on the window sill and sticking to the glass. Lina came up beside him. "It looks like it's going to be a cold night," she observed.
"Yeah", he agreed, mind still far away. "I wish was home with Amelia tonight rather than stuck in a drafty inn room. There are drafts there too, but we have a bearskin blanket on the bed that can keep out the chill on even the coldest nights."
"Wait. 'We' have a bearskin blanket on 'the' bed. Are you...sleeping with Amelia?" Lina asked in shock.
Oops! "I...uh," Zel stammered.
"Why are you so surprised, Lina?" Gourry asked from the table where he was sitting, sipping wine. "It's normal for married people to sleep together, isn't it?"
"But they're not married," Lina said in the tones of one tired of explaining the obvious all the time. "Right, Zel?"
"Actually..." he trailed off into guilty silence. "How did you know?" he asked Gourry.
"You're wearing a wedding ring. I didn't think it was a secret," Gourry said, concerned that he'd said something he shouldn't have.
What Gourry said was true but it was a thin band under a thick pair of gloves. Most people wouldn't have noticed. However, most people weren't Gourry.
"I knew it!" Lina shouted. "I knew that if we let you be our sole source of information on Amelia you'd leave out important stuff!" She threw herself angrily into the seat opposite Gourry and poured herself a glass of wine.
"But, Lina, you haven't told him..." Gourry stopped when Lina pinned him with a glare.
Zelgadis noted Lina's slight blush and decided to prod. "Haven't told me what?" he asked innocently.
"Never mind that," Lina said quickly. "If you hadn't told us about you and Amelia, I'm guessing you haven't told anyone else either?"
Zelgadis looked out the window again to avoid meeting her eyes. "No one outside the town."
"Prince Phil is going to kill you. You know that, right?"
"Why do you think I haven't told him?"
"You should go and get it over with. You're going to have to 'fess up sooner or later and it's only going to get worse the longer you wait."
"Better late than later," Gourry agreed.
"I know you're right, but..." Zel shuddered.
"You should have thought of that before you married Amelia," Lina said unsympathetically.
Zelgadis grimaced and rubbed at his face wearily with one hand. He joined them at the table and emptied the last of the bottle into his glass.
They talked for some time about the occurrences they were investigating and who might be behind them, but didn't come to any new conclusions.
Finally Lina said, "Come on, Gourry. Let's get to bed. We may end up snowed in tomorrow but, just in case we don't, we should all get a good night's sleep."
"Well at least you two will be warm tonight," Zel said morosely with an undertone of smugness.
"W-what do you mean?" Lina asked too innocently.
"One of the side effects of living with someone who doesn't talk is that I've become very good at reading facial expressions and body language, and you two are doing a lousy job of keeping your secret in any case. Congratulations, by the way."
Lina protested, "We're not... I mean, maybe once or twice we..." She realized that Gourry's goofy grin made her attempts at denial pointless and sighed resignedly. "I guess we got that third inn room for nothing."
"Good night, Zelgadis," Gourry said, putting a consoling arm around Lina's shoulders.
"Yeah, good night, Zel," Lina echoed.
"Good night," he replied. After they left, he walked back to the window and stared out into the snow again, missing his family.
"Mr. Zelgadis," Prince Philionel greeted him.
Zelgadis inclined his head in a sketchy bow. "Your highness."
"You have news about Amelia?" the prince prompted when the chimera failed to say anything further.
Zelgadis nodded tensely. "She's a mother."
"My Amelia? My Amelia is having a baby?"
"She's already had him. He'll be six months old next week."
"And you're only telling me about this now?" Prince Phil visibly drew upon his pacifist discipline to keep his calm.
"As some friends pointed out to me, better late than later." Zelgadis couldn't meet the prince's eyes so he studied the wood-grain of the corner of the table.
"Why did you wait so long to tell me? What's wrong?" He eyed Zelgadis' unsmiling face with concern. "Who's the father?"
Zelgadis took a deep breath and admitted. "I am. And, yes, that means the baby is a chimera. I'm sorry. I didn't mean for this to happen."
"You?" Prince Phil shouted, enraged by this betrayal. His hands balled into fists but his voice sounded bewildered and almost gentle as he asked, "Do you love her?"
Zelgadis was startled by the question. "More than anyone else in the world. Except maybe Rodi, our son."
Prince Phil relaxed slightly. "Are you planning to get married?"
"Actually...we already got married before the baby was born. But you could probably declare the marriage invalid since Amelia didn't give her vows out loud or use her full name."
Prince Phil started to get angry again. "Is that what you want?"
"I thought that's what you would want." Zelgadis looked away again. "She ought to be married to someone noble, or at least human. She deserves so much better than to be a subsistence farmer, village healer and the mother of a chimera."
"Did you tell Amelia that?" there was a hint of amusement in the prince's booming voice.
"I tried to back when she first suggested we get married. That brought me back to my senses, but it turned out that she was already pregnant by then."
"What do you mean, 'back to your senses'?" Prince Phil asked dangerously.
"I remembered that Amelia is a princess and I'm a freak so there is no way we belong together." His voice filled with anger at himself. "I know that! But it's so easy to forget when I'm there with Amelia and Rodimus, surrounded by the furniture I built with my own hands, eating food I helped make. It feels like my home, my family. All the people there treated us like a couple even before we were, and Amelia... When she smiles at me..." He trailed off, embarrassed to say anything more in front of her father.
To Zel's surprise, Prince Phil smiled, clasped his shoulder warmly (although a bit too powerfully), and said, "I understand."
"You...you do?" Zel stammered.
"Amelia's mother was just the same. When she decided I was the one she wanted, there was no resisting her. Ah, what a woman! I love her still, even though she's been dead these many years." He sighed sentimentally. "If my daughter has decided she wants you, I'm not going to even try to stand in her way. And you're a good man, even if hiding all this so long shows a shameful lack of courage!"
Zelgadis hung his head. "I'm sorry. I should have asked your permission when things first started going this way, but it never even occurred to me that you might say yes."
Prince Philionel frowned at the fact that he'd gone ahead anyway, but decided to forgive him. "I remember the day I introduced my father to my intended bride. He was not happy. He thought a sorceress who specialized in black magic and dressed in a leather bikini wasn't a suitable wife for a prince of Seyruun. Well, he came around eventually, and she made a fine princess."
"Amelia's mother...dressed in a leather bikini?" Zelgadis asked in shock.
"And a cape. And she had this little skull necklace... Ah, she was so beautiful!" Prince Phil sighed nostalgically. "What I'm trying to say is that I understand why a young man might pursue a relationship for some time before telling his father, let alone the girl's father. Waiting until you have a six-month-old son is definitely too long, but I'll forgive you on the condition that you take good care of my daughter and grandson." He looked up towards heaven and exclaimed with joy, "I have a grandson!"
When the echoes cleared away, Zelgadis said shakily. "I never thought you'd take the news so well. I don't know what to say."
"Why don't you go back to your family? Maybe take a break from searching for your cure for a while?" Prince Phil suggested with a broad wink.
"But Rodimus shares my condition. For his sake..."
"There will be plenty of time to look when he's older. Children change so fast at that age it would be a shame to miss anything. And maybe stone skin isn't such a bad thing for someone in line to the throne of Seyruun to have. Helps with survival you know," Prince Phil laughed loudly.
Zelgadis smiled tentatively. He bowed gratefully to his father-in-law and left the room, shaking with relief.
"Did you hear? There was a wagon attacked by bandits not fifteen miles south of here!" Huey said.
"How scary!" his wife Sophie quavered.
Zelgadis and Amelia were having supper at the young couple's house while Rodimus played on the floor with their son, who was around his age.
"That's the first I've heard of bandits in this area," Zel said conversationally.
"It's the first time I've heard of any since that bandit slaying girl cleaned them all out years ago," Huey said.
"Lina Inverse?" Zel asked.
"Yeah, that sounds like the right name."
"They said she was just a little girl, scarcely older than I was at the time," Sophie said. "Can you imagine? I mean, what's this world coming to?"
"I heard she was only thirteen when she ran away from home to seek her fortune," Zel supplied helpfully.
"Didn't she have any proper parents?" Sophie said pityingly.
Amelia put a finger to her lips to stop Zel from revealing their connection to Lina, but her eyes were laughing. He obediently changed the subject. "Mr. Nolan is selling a large batch of Amelia's medicines in the towns to the south for us later this week. I hope he doesn't get attacked."
"Heaven forbid!" Sophie exclaimed.
"Somebody really should do something about those bandits," Huey said forcefully, failing to volunteer for the job.
Zelgadis noticed Amelia's jaw set. He shook his head at her subtly.
"Maybe the king will send some of his knights," Sophie said hopefully.
"Maybe," Zelgadis replied skeptically, thinking that the king was unlikely to bother with such a small outbreak of violence. "What do you think, my princess?"
Amelia glared at him for his choice of endearment.
Just then, crying broke out on the floor. It turned out that the boys had gotten into a fight over a toy. Zane had hit Rodimus and then started crying because his hand hurt. Rodimus had started crying because Zane was crying. The mothers quickly sorted the situation out and scooped up the babies into soothing hugs. The conversation never got back to the topic of bandits.
The next morning when Zel woke up the other half of the bed was empty. He got dressed, made breakfast for himself and Rodimus and fed, cleaned and dressed the baby. Then he went down the hill to the town and knocked on Huey and Sophie's door. A very surprised Sophie opened the door.
"Would you mind looking after Rodi for a few hours?" Zel asked. "I think Amelia's gone after the bandits and I want to follow her just in case she needs backup."
"She's what?" Sophie exclaimed.
"Gone after the bandits," Zelgadis repeated himself dryly. "Probably."
"How terrifying!"
"Yes, Amelia can be merciless," Zel agreed. "So, will you look after Rodi?"
"Of course. You must be beside yourself with worry!" Sophie said, perhaps in the hope that saying so would make him start acting like it.
"Even limited to the spells she can cast without a spoken invocation, Amelia should be more than a match for a gang of bandits as long as she doesn't get so caught up in posing that she forgets to attack." Zelgadis grimaced, wishing he was more confident the 'as long as' part of that was a remote possibility.
"Well, I suppose she did kill that bear..." Sophie said doubtfully.
Zelgadis dropped his son into her arms and took to the skies.
He headed south in his ray wing bubble, scanning for signs of trouble from above the treetops. For a long time everything looked completely normal but finally he saw lightning crash down from out of a clear sky. He raced toward the location where it hit.
Amelia was standing on a tree branch at the edge of a rough camp with her cloak streaming in the wind. Under it, she was wearing a belted tunic and loose trousers not too different in fit from her old hero's costume. Zelgadis landed on a tree branch of his own a bit further away where he could observe without being seen.
The bandits had spotted her. They were pointing. Some were laughing while others looked worried. Once Amelia was sure she had everyone's attention, she pinned them all with an accusatory finger and launched into her justice speech. She kept it simple since the bandits wouldn't be able to understand her signs anyway, but Zelgadis saw that she did manage to work a few phrases about 'justice' and 'evil doers' into the series of poses. She must have also managed to work in the gestures to cast her visfarank spell because when she finished she leapt down into the middle of the bandits and started throwing punches that sent them flying in all directions, her fists wrapped in glowing balls of force.
When they scattered in terror, Amelia levitated back up into the tree and sent out fistfuls of freeze arrows to stop them in their tracks. Zelgadis picked off a few bandits who tried to run past him with quiet freeze arrows of his own.
Within minutes, the fight was over. Amelia smugly surveyed her prisoners. She whirled, startled, when Zelgadis landed beside her but held back from attacking him.
"Let's tie them up and leave them just outside the nearest town," Zelgadis suggested quietly, producing some rope. "We'll miss out on any bounty, but I know you've been trying to avoid being seen outside of Shaid." He had his hood pulled low and his scarf pulled high to hide all of his face except his eyes.
Amelia nodded agreement with his suggestion. After they dropped off the bandits (literally), Zel cast a burst rondo spell above their heads to attract attention and then the two quickly flew off together.
"Oh good, you found her!" Sophie sighed with relief when they went to pick up Rodimus. "She didn't really try to go after bandits single-handedly, did she?"
Amelia held up her fingers in a 'v' and smirked.
"They shouldn't be causing any more trouble," Zelgadis confirmed.
Sophie looked faint.