Follow the Moon Chapter 2, a suikoden fanfic

Don't think this scar is the souvenir of some duel, or a blow I received on a dangerous job. It was nothing more than the swipe of a wild rose bramble. I was running in the dark, didn't see where I was going.

A minute's inattention and all this mess.

A gunner, Rani, crossed our path one morning, and the two of us stepped aside – there was no reason not to. But it stopped her cold and she looked at Clive and me like we'd just puked on her shoes.

I smiled. "Got a problem?"

"Yeah, tell your – tell the Guild Master he's a –" She cut her words off. Even if you weren't going after the Guild Master, you had to be careful who you criticized in the garden, especially to fellow gunners.

"What's wrong?" Clive asked. Guarded, not concerned.

She seemed about to say something, then thought better of it. "I have things to do." And walked on.

We actually had a chance to see Kelley later that day. He'd been the Guild Master for a little over a year, been with us less and less, and he was always so pleased when we could be alone. We were in his office, a rare privilege that was compromised by the mess. He jammed a bunch of papers into his desk drawer and ricocheted around, lifting the blinds, unearthing chairs, his reflection flickering off of the sacred rifle's glass case.

"So much clutter." I looked around. "Is this what we all trained as Knight Gunners for?"

"Hey, don't go on." Kelley sat on his desk. "You'll hurt Storm's feelings." He nodded towards the glass case and, idiot, did look a bit uneasy. Of course the sacred rifle has a soul, or something, in there. That's how it can choose the Guild Master. But no one ever said the rifle was a prima donna.

"Speaking of hurt feelings, what did you do to Rani? We ran into her, and she had nothing nice to say."

"Huh? Oh." He leaned forward, shoulders sloping in. "She wanted an assignment change, that's all."

"That's all?" I asked, and Kelley and Clive both braced because they knew what was coming. "She's working with Dareb, why wouldn't she want a new assignment?" I crossed the room, fighting back the sudden energy in my muscles. "And why didn't you give it to her? She doesn't need Dareb. You could have put her with Parvis or –" My voice was rising. I stopped, then smiled, sweetened a bit. "Well, go on, Guild Master. Why didn't you?"

"There's no point upsetting the balance of power, not when things are going so smoothly." Kelley glanced at me and seemed to regret it. "Look, I know how you feel about Dareb, but –"

I forgot to smile. "You damn well know how I feel about Dareb." His expression didn't change. "He puts guns to girls' heads. You know that! Why don't you run him out of the garden and have done with it?"

Kelley's hands were clamped on the edge of his desk. "It's not like I can just do that. He's an elder. Besides, that's personal business."

I turned to Clive, who had remained seated. He looked from me to Kelley, mouth canted in a thoughtful frown. Did he have the nerve to disagree with both of us?

I took a deep breath and softened my tone. "Kelley – "

"I don't want to talk about it, Elza." He glanced at me and his forehead bunched between his eyes. "And, like you said, I'm the Guild Master. So – end of discussion."

I stared at him, then wrenched my eyes away because I didn't want Kelley to see the anger. Neither of them should see it. I walked to the far wall, looking out the window at one of the compounds.

I don't remember whatever else we three tried to talk about. But I was pacing again that evening, wall to wall in my room. Clive sat on the edge of the bed, mending his long gray cloak, looking up at me from time to time, gauging.

So I smiled and leaned one shoulder against the wall. "Thinking deep thoughts?"

"I suppose."

"You going to talk? Or is it smarter just to keep your mouth shut?"

He tied off a line of stitches but didn't move to rethread his needle. "Kelley has a lot of new responsibilities."

"Sure does." My smile widened. "Like protecting Dareb."

"You don't know what Kelley's planning."

"Exactly. But wouldn't it be so nice if he gave us a hint?"

Clive turned the needle over in his fingers, a surprisingly delicate – and completely unaware – movement. "He's responsible for the entire Guild now."

The smile wasn't helping. I sat down next to Clive, disregarding the cloak. "You don't think..."

"What?"

"That something's really wrong?"

"With Kelley?"

"Or the Guild."

My arm was against his, and I could feel the muscles jerk reflexively. "The Howling Voice is going to outlast Master Dareb."

"But don't you think Kelley could be trying harder to make it better?" My thoughts tracked into the past, when the three of us were younger, falling silent as we walked from the south compound to the mess hall because we had to cross the apprentice graveyard, all those dead kids who hadn't lived long enough to take their place in the Guild. Saying that we only had to wait a few more years, and then we'd be grown up and we couldn't be pushed around so much. That dog we had for a bit, Carrot. Kelley had been the one who fought the hardest to keep her alive. Clive and I kept her secret.

The thing with me and Dareb had started ages ago, when I was about fourteen. When I walked into the older, emptier wing of the stable, and I found Dareb and one of the female gunners he worked with. Walking along the far wall, and her shoulders were rigid, and that glint of light under her ear was his gun, he was holding it to the back of her head.

I wasn't sure what to think, but I knew that there is no greater insult than to shoot a gunner in the head. In an honorable duel, you fire for the body, and shooting someone from the back makes you look clumsy and cowardly. Being shot in the brain is something else, a wish for instant death with no dignity of final words and settled affairs. It betrays a fear of your target and an unwillingness to speak to them as they lie dying.

You might say, shouldn't an assassin shoot for the most vulnerable target? Maybe so. Still, no respected gunner ever points his gun at another gunner's head.

I didn't say anything at the time, only to Clive and Kelley, but over the next few months, I began to pick up hints. Female gunners complaining of having to work with Dareb. Dareb sending his ex-partners on jobs that kept them away from the garden for months. Dareb demoting some of his ex-partners. A little before I came of age, this happened to a gunner I knew, Lydia. We had sparred together, and after one of my sessions, she told me we'd have to stop because she was being sent into New Armes to watch over King Jalaat's court. She wouldn't be back for more than a year. I didn't see how this could happen, because she was an instructor, and her place was here, not in the field. Lydia had given me a withering look and told me to ask Dareb. And I'd thought back to that gun behind a girl's ear.

That night, I'd knocked on Master Sauro's door and tried to gather my observations into a solid accusation. At the end, Sauro crossed his arms and frowned down at me. "And what do you think Dareb has been doing? What exactly?"

"Sir, it can't be good."

"Elza, you are not a gunner yourself. You have no clear idea what's going on. And Dareb is an elder. You are in no position to be making claims."

Seeing other instructors and their sometimes playful violence, I'd often been grateful to be one of Sauro's students. He was tough, but I'd never seen him cruel, or unfair. This came uncomfortably close. "But sir –"

"Leave Dareb to us elders. In the meantime, if you don't want to die young, you should wait until you actually have some status before you make serious accusations."

I had seen Sauro defend weaker students against bullies and severely punish adults who broke Guild law. But it seemed that even he had the elders' interests closest to heart. I tried to put all these thoughts out of my mind until the next year, when Dareb selected me to accompany him on a job to Tinto. Kelley was with me when I got the order, and he immediately picked up my mental recoil. When he asked if I was going to be okay, I thought a long, long minute, then put my hand on my pistol and told him everything was fine.

I didn't let my guard down, always kept an eye on Dareb, and he fairly ignored me. But on the trip back, when we were a day from home, in a bare wintery forest, he put out his hand and stopped me. And when he spoke, it wasn't what I expected at all. He wanted half of my pay. As my superior, he'd already taken a large cut from the reward, which had been cleared with the Guild, and now he wanted more, which most definitely would not have been approved.

"What the hell? No, I'm not going to –"

And he put his pistol between my eyes. "Don't argue."

I'd been worried about rape, and when he brought up money, I never thought of going for my gun. I'd held guns for years, taken them apart, cleaned them, modified them, and fired them. I thought I'd seen them from every possible angle. But not this.

Before I could think – I couldn't think – he'd reached around me and taken my money bag, opening it one-handed. As he riffled through it, counting potch notes, anger washed back into me. In the folds of my cloak, my fingers twitched – could I reach my gun without him seeing? What then? Shooting a gunner in self-defense would be pardoned, but shooting an elder? What would happen to me?

He dropped my lightened purse at my feet but didn't remove his pistol, bending so he could look me in the eye. "I work hard," he said, "to make sure the Howling Voice Guild stays strong. To protect all of us from the hounds in Crystal Valley. Sauro knows this, and you should know it too."

I bent my arm, fingers lacing around my pistol's grip.

Dareb glanced down, following the movement. "You can try. If you'd rather die than lose a little potch, that's your business."

It wasn't about potch. It was about me being too frightened to think or speak. And that I let him take my money, and I said nothing, and I hated myself.

But with his pistol between my eyes, I finally managed to whisper, "Shooting a fellow gunner is punishable by death."

"Not," Dareb said, "when the Guild owes you this many favors."

Sitting there with Clive, on the bed, I wanted to ask if Kelley owed Dareb any favors. How soon before he would. But my anger couldn't push me to say it when I hardly wanted to think it at all.

Later that night, sick of the Howling Voice and its politics, I lay awake and found myself speculating what would have happened if I'd never been sold to the Guild. Not for the first time – when little, I'd dealt every day with the driving pain of being separated from my family, and I'd woken from dreams that ignored the misery of my home and just left me wanting it back. Later, I'd given myself a twisted sort of comfort trying to imagine what I might have been without all these guns and lessons and laws. My family in Sajah had no crops to gather and no potch to buy anyone else's. Maybe I would have starved to death by my sixth birthday. But maybe things would have improved. Perhaps I would have grown up alongside my older siblings, had younger brothers and sisters. What would I have done with myself? I'd never had to think about choosing a profession. What else was I good at but firing a gun? My mother was married at my age.

Tipping my head, I studied Clive. If it was hard to imagine my life in Sajah, it was impossible to think of him existing outside of the Guild. So disciplined. I might've thought his devotion to the Howling Voice was soulless if I didn't know he was so passionate about it. He was born here. For him, any life outside of these walls is an aberration.

And Kelley? I tried to imagine Kelley's other life, with him as a farmer or perhaps an animal doctor, but I just became too caught up in trying to guess what he was doing with his life now.

I should've apologized to that kid – such a sweetheart, he took my wrapped up Star and Moon after I told him a bad man was hunting me, and once he'd toted them halfway across town I had to convince him to take a reward. And then in a second I switched him around as a human shield. All so I could fire a shot I knew would be dodged.

Well, bad man. You found me.

The uneasy thing was, I was the Guild Master's best friend. If I heard people complaining, even indirectly, about him, that could only mean others had been talking even more quietly for some time. I worried for him. Being so high up, on this pinnacle, Kelley had no one standing at his back. Doing nothing while people talked left me restless, and I began to do some digging. Maybe I'd have explained it by saying I needed to know more if I was going to prove people wrong about Kelley. But really I just need to find out what was true.

Kelley was always busy, usually with the elders, so I could only listen to talk and take my findings to Clive. When he was home. The elders had us away from the garden more than ever, and always apart.

I don't know, there's something about Judith. She's been with Covell for years and now he's been sent indefinitely to Gregminster...

…apparently he and the elders decided to rebalance the payment, so now we gunners'll be lucky if we take twenty percent of the cut...

…And Cathari turned Pitt away cold. Said that no one is going to be considered for Knight rank for the time being. She looks pretty angry herself...

…It isn't that. This is Kelley, he wouldn't rape someone. Nicole just doesn't talk much about it. And... I suppose if anyone gets the promotion, it might as well be her...

...so when Estola found the kittens, she had the kids drown them – and they were in tears, so she had them beaten. Then the Guild Master found out and had her beaten, then he took her gun, and that's how she was banished. It's awfully extreme, I've never heard of anything like this happening... I hear they took her eyes out...

...Master Dareb told me he'd take it to the Guild Master, and he did, and bam! I've got an assignment in Razril. I could use a nice sunny beach...

…Guild Master thought the toxicologist might be planning something so he had him try the medicine out on himself...nothing happened, so I guess he was lucky...

...Jannik's being sent to the Outlands, I'll bet you anything it's because he got Nicole pregnant...

...they found Dryden in the cellar, he'd been vomiting blood and by then it was too late...

Eventually, even Clive had to accept that something was wrong. But he still argued. He didn't pace in agitation, like me. He stood in the corner of the room, arms crossed, staring out the window as he turned things over while I was ostensibly already asleep. One time when I turned over and told him to come to bed, he shot me a look like I was crazy.

"That's right," I said. "I forgot that you're the only one who worries about this."

"You're worried about Kelley. I'm thinking about the elders. They're pushing him around."

"Then why doesn't he push back?"

"Why do you want to think the worst about him?"

I turned my back to him. "You think I'm happy about this?"

I didn't need to see him to guess how his face looked, the jaw tight, the eyes almost painfully insistent. "Kelley's our family. We need to help him, not pile on more accusations."

I thought that over, and though I didn't turn around, I quieted my voice. "I know that. We'll talk to him. Now come on, calm down. Come to bed."

Can't say how grateful I was when he did, and I didn't let my eyes close until his breathing evened out.

I'd never seen a place as bleak as Rockland. Its bare, ragged desolation reminded me of my deepest memories of Sajah, and that its people refused to leave left me with an oddly comforting hopelessness. It's always helps to have a plan, whether or not the plan's good.

During my brief stay, I often found myself walking the small graveyard. The Rocklanders never inscribe names or birth and death dates. They prefer to describe themselves, then leave nothing more than last words, advice to those who walk the tombstones. Here lies a young mother: Jeremy, please watch over my son. Here lies a one-armed soldier: I cannot forget the snowy heights of Tigerwolf. Here lies a penniless scholar: I have followed the Sindar and now we will walk together.

The stonecarver of Rockland had three young daughters and hardly any potch.

I thought, what if? What if there was a woman who died? Alone and broken on the street?

What if her last words were to a man, apologizing that she could not live long enough to die at his hand? What if she insisted his name be carved on the stone itself?

I paid the carver.

My man is sure to find the tombstone. He won't believe it. But I envy whoever sees his face when it happens.

"It's not often I get a personal invitation. I'm flattered."

"C'mon, don't –" Kelley never liked blandishments, even as a joke, so he started to cut me off. Then his mouth tightened and he only made a vague, dismissive gesture. It was early morning, the time most of the elders spent together, a brief moment of solitude for the Guild Master. I walked slowly around his office, still wondering why I'd been sent for but not Clive. I'd have to work hard to explain my absence if I didn't want to Kelley's oversight to hurt Clive's feelings.

I kept my voice light. "So what's going on?"

"I..." Kelley trailed off in thought. Was never much good at covering when he needed to think something through. "I need your help with Guild business. That is... the elders – I want to try an experiment."

"I hope you aren't going to cut me open. I won't like that."

"No. It's – we're trying to get more information about Storm. How it thinks and...things. Do you mind?"

I didn't know much about Storm. It was an ancient gun, one of the first made, with some soul or consciousness inside of it – I've no idea who was willing to make such an ultimate donation. The elders used it to determine who would be Guild Master, though I didn't know exactly how.

"What do you want me to do?"

Kelley lifted Storm from its glass case, laying the long rifle across his desk. "It's empty. Could you just lift it and pull the trigger?"

"And then what?"

He looked preoccupied, though his eyes were fixed on me. "Huh?"

"Should I wait to hear a voice? Does Storm talk?"

He made another, quicker gesture. "Just lift it and pull the trigger. Then we'll – see what happens."

So I did.

Storm had a good weight and a pretty way of tucking itself against my shoulder. The trigger went smooth as a blink, and the rifle made a click in its depths, the aggrieved tsk of an empty weapon.

I lowered Storm and looked at Kelley. He was leaning heavily over his desk, staring at me. His eyes were lined and dark – he looked like a little boy again, after the lesson when Jenna died.

"Kelley?"

He shook his head. "That's all, Elza."

I set the gun down. Why on earth was I holding the Guild Master's rifle? "Kelley, what's going on? What were you doing?"

"We'll talk about it later, when – It's fine." He walked around the room and opened the door for me.

"I suppose I can't demand an answer of the Guild Master?"

He flinched. "Listen – I'm sorry. But you'd do me a favor if you didn't talk about this. To Clive even. Okay?"

I stared at him. Smiled. "As ordered, sir." Then walked past him without looking. If he thought I was presenting my back to him, he didn't order the appropriate punishment.