III
Chilias Catalonia departs abruptly, leaving Milliardo behind. He has become no more than a piece of luggage, to be dragged from place to place and dropped at will.
Even amidst all else, it rankles. While Treize sees his uncle off, he stays mulishly squatting on the floor where he was put, glowering at the joins between the lacquered wooden floorboards. One might even call it sulking.
A long time passes before it registers that Treize has not returned, nor anybody else. He is…alone. For the first time since that Alliance officer handed him off to Catalonia. For the first time in all his life, it feels like.
Alone.
Hiccuping, he pulls himself together. He won't risk losing face. If pride is all he has left, then he'll cling to it for all he's worth.
Being left like this…it's an insult, he's sure. They haven't even bothered to lock the door, won't even show him the respect of treating him like a prisoner, like a potential threat. He's all-over hot, lightheaded with frustration at the knowledge of his own impotence.
He lets himself out, since he can. Looks around, feeling uncertain where to go or what to do with himself. It is immediately apparent why Treize chose the room he did for their audience: it is the most well-maintained spot in the house.
The Khushrenadas are a powerful, influential family within the Romefeller Foundation.
You would never know it, to spend time on their estate.
The halls are drafty. The thin panes of leaded glass rattle in their window cames when the wind blows. There is crumbling stonework in the friezes below the eaves. Motheaten rugs and wall hangings. Leaks and old water stains in the corners of the ceilings. Milliardo begins to suspect the wiring and plumbing have not been touched since they were first installed, for the electric bulbs glow only dimly, while the pipes rattle and clang whenever he turns a faucet before any water finally spits out.
A throat clears behind him. He finds himself faced, when he turns, with a tall, youngish-looking man, spindly as a stick insect, with a thin pencil moustache and the professionally blank face and neutral bearing of a senior-ranking household servant. "Master Treize has requested I see to your needs."
Another snarl sticks in his throat, but he has been trained since birth to answer courtesy in kind: Milliardo draws himself stiffly to his full height (meager as it currently is) and hears himself reply, "I would be grateful."
The man's name, he learns, is Bosch. Indeed, he proves informative on a number of matters. He is Treize's personal valet, and also manages the other household staff, such as they are. It wouldn't have been so in Cinq. The Luxembourg estate is a very different beast from the palace where Milliardo was born and raised, for all they date to roughly the same era.
Until a very short time ago, a hundred people or more lived inside the Cinqian palace's walls, with dozens more in temporary residence at any given time.
Here, now counting Milliardo, the formal household numbers exactly three. The residents are outnumbered by their staff by more than two to one - itself a mere skeleton crew for an estate this size.
Why so? It isn't a mere case of genteel decay. For all the estate itself is isolated within deep pine forests, the Khushrenadas are landlords for miles around. He knows this. He may not have met Treize before today, but he has been raised learning the histories of the aristocratic lineages of Europe.
It hits again, as it has been doing since it happened: a realization that crashes over him and then recedes, like waves on a shore. History is where his own lineage has now been consigned. The Peacecrafts are gone.
Milliardo has been brought here with nothing but the clothes on his back, themselves no longer fit for any purpose. His needs, as Bosch has so delicately put it, besides the immediate and obvious (a bath; a meal) are manifold.
Treize may have scrupled at giving Milliardo his brother's name, but he condescends to offer the clothes from that same brother's wardrobe. They are as yet somewhat too large, but Bosch offers calm assurances they will be altered to suit.
Again, the urge to howl rises in his chest.
He doesn't want, he doesn't give a damn about clothes.
He wants his mother. He wants Gertie. ("Wait here," she hisses urgently. Kisses his brow. "It's a game, remember? Don't come out until I tell you.")
This is not his home; these are not his people. He has no intention of becoming another ghost in this house, like Angeline Khushrenada, trapped in a pathetic half-life. He won't be used as any kind of imperfect stand-in for the dead brother, the dead son.
His mouth accepts on his behalf. He dresses in the too-big hand-me-downs; he sits at the empty dining table and eats the food put in front of him, drinks the watered wine he is served; he sleeps in the bed he is directed to.
And he plots his escape.
At the start of drills one morning, Noin collapses. A flurry of concern ripples through the cadets before Instructor Voegel wades in. "Marquise!" he barks, summoning him over. "Get her to the infirmary."
Noin's conscious but out of it as he and Voegel help haul her to her feet, but her knees threaten to give out again as soon as she's upright. Zechs draws her arm over his shoulders to keep her steady. "That's not-" she begins to protest halfheartedly, but they can both tell that it is.
Sighing, she stoppers her complaint and lets him take her weight.
The Lake Victoria base isn't small: it would take fifteen minutes to reach the infirmary going at a jog. They haven't covered even half the distance in that time and Noin's already flagging. "Please," she gasps, "I need to stop a minute."
He helps her to a bench, where she hunches with her head between her knees while he waits for her to catch her breath.
Looking up after a minute she says, "I can manage the rest of the way on my own if you want to go back to class."
It's- he's not worried.
She's not well. Her breath is coming too fast and shallow, and under her flushed cheeks there's a sickly pallor - but people don't just get sick and die these days…at least, not people close to the Alliance. This isn't some L2 slum; they're on Earth. And they're soldiers: if they're going to die, it will be in service to the mission. But Treize would consider it inexcusable for him to just leave her here. So would he, for that matter. It would be…ungentlemanly. It's just not happening.
So he scoffs and says, "Don't be an idiot." It's gruff and also not very gentlemanly, but Noin doesn't seem offended. Still. He remembers with discomfort the ready kindness she offered him in the mess hall - can he not do even that much?
Clearing his throat he looks away and asks her if she's ready.
With a visible effort she gathers herself enough to stand.
"I woke up in the night not feeling well," she seems compelled to explain; and her frustration is palpable when she adds, "but this morning I was better!"
It was a short-lived recovery, if so. But she was fine yesterday, too, he recalls. Voegel had them running drills all morning - and he hadn't been going easy on them.
Her head droops and he wills her not to cry. Tears would be beyond him. He's relieved beyond words when all she does is lean on him more heavily.
Her hand is hot. So is the rest of her; he can feel the feverish heat bleeding through her uniform along the back of his neck and where he grips her around the waist. Despite the heat radiating from her and the warmth of the air, she shivers; he can feel that, too.
The duty doctor glances up as they stagger in and directs them over to a bed. There are about twenty to choose from, most of them empty. One has a curtain drawn ominously round it, closing it off from view.
Zechs gives that one a wide berth as he helps Noin over to the bed the doctor indicated, depositing her on top of the covers.
She starts to curl into a ball, then urgently sits back up. "I need- I'm going to-"
Fortunately, the beds are equipped for just this eventuality. Zechs grabs a nearby basin and positions it just in time for Noin to cough up a thin stream of brownish bile. She thanks him after with her eyes averted, panting and embarrassed and miserable looking.
"It's fine," he tells her, looking for somewhere to put the basin, eventually electing for the floor by the head of her bed in case she needs it again. After another minute of awkwardly standing over her, he seats himself on a nearby stool.
The doctor is approaching. Convenient timing, now that Zechs has dealt with the messy part. With barely a glance in Zechs's direction, he flicks closed the curtain around Noin's bed, leaving Zechs to wonder if this is his cue to leave. But though the drawn curtain feels like a dismissal, no one has requested it. The thought of returning to Voegel's drills does little to fill him with enthusiasm, so he remains as he is.
One of the empty beds has a book sitting beside it, forgotten on the bedside table. Zechs picks it up and idly flips through. It's a cheap paperback spy thriller. He doesn't need to do more than glance at it to know that it's terrible. Just the sort of mindless reading for a convalescent.
The curtain draws back. "Fifteen minutes," says the doctor. He has a mild, absent sort of manner; it isn't clear whether he's speaking to Zechs or Noin or the empty room at large. Zechs openly snorts as he removes himself back to the medical station across the room.
"What did he say?" he asks Noin.
She's still fully dressed and only partially reclining. Her feet, still booted, peek out over the side of the bed where they won't soil the sheets. She holds out her arm, displaying a cotton wad taped over the median cubital vein running through her elbow.
"He's running tests."
Her color is bad, her normal olive-toned complexion grayish. Had she been that pallid when they arrived? Maybe she's bad with needles.
He tosses her the book; she fumbles it (he takes absent note of her dulled reaction time) and glances at the cover, frowning. "You can take that," Zechs tells her. ("Thanks?" she says uncertainly.) "Something to keep you occupied while you're in here."
It used to be easier to be kind to people. It was second nature to him, once.
He's still reflecting on that when the placid doctor returns from his tests with a diagnosis. It's malaria.
It's not a wholly unknown diagnosis down here. Everyone on the base is regularly dosed against it, but there are breakthrough infections every couple of years. Treatment and recovery will keep Noin bedridden for at least two weeks.
She makes a small pained noise at the news, not quite a protest, and slumps back against the pillow.
Zechs watches the doctor as he confers quietly with Noin and goes about his work. He doesn't move with any sense of urgency or appear overly concerned. Under certain circumstances such a thing might irk him, as a sign of inattention or worse; but today he finds it oddly reassuring. The doctor pays him little mind, and he stays until Noin falls asleep.
A sudden bitter cold snap freezes the lake, and Milliardo seizes his moment. It isn't difficult; he is not kept under watch. He has stuffed his pockets full of apples and now bundles himself into his coat.
Leaving via the front gate is not an option. It is kept closed at this time of night, and would take him past the gatehouse and the groundsman's cottage where he would surely be seen during the day. But much like the house, the wall enclosing the Khushrenada estate has fallen lately into disrepair - and on the far side of the lake, well, there he can make his escape. The road curves around and he will only need to make it through a small portion of woods to reach it. He can follow it and then…he will figure out the rest later.
The moon is not quite full, but bright. There are no clouds. He can see his shadow stretching across the silvered lawn and looks back over his shoulder towards the house. It stands still and silent, its windows dark. He hurries on.
He is nearly at the lake's far shore when it all goes wrong.
It's deathly quiet. The sound of his labored breaths and the scuff of his feet over the ice are unnaturally loud in the still night air. There's not a breath of wind. He can see the bullrushes looming in front him, tall black shapes poking up towards the sky. Nearly there.
With his next step, the ice gives way beneath his foot and he plunges into freezing water.
He flails. The shock is intense. Water over his head, sucking him down. His mouth instinctively opens to draw air but he can't. Water floods his mouth, down his throat before he can think, before he can close it.
Air.
Cold.
He needs air. Where is up?
His head bumps against something hard and solid. Ice - he's at the surface after all? It's inky black - his lungs burn - where did he fall through? His feet kick (he thinks) trying to reach oxygen through sheer force. If the ice cracked under his weight it can't be that hard?
Air. Air!
His hand breaches the water's surface, his head follows, he sucks air and water into his lungs, chokes (can't see, water streaming into his eyes) and flails forward. Feels ice beneath his fingers, tries to drag himself forward as it disintegrates beneath him. Keeps going. The shore was so near!
When he blinks enough water from his eyes to clear his vision he sees he's facing the wrong way, panics again as he tries to reorient himself. His heart beats like it might explode. The cold is so powerful it's impossible to focus on anything but that.
He manages, eventually, to drag himself from the water, his useless thrashing moving him at last far enough forward that his feet touch bottom. From there he is able to calm himself enough to remember what his father once told him about falling through thin ice (the smooth snick of skate blades as they race each other: "Well done, Milliardo!"), kicks himself horizontal and is able to propel himself belly-down back onto where it's solid. Lungs burning, he crawls the remaining distance to the shoreline proper then collapses, coughing and retching.
His sodden coat weighs him down. Water gushes off it and puddles round him.
Move, he begs of himself, but can't seem to bring his feet under him; he's shivering too hard and his arms have gone weak and limp as the last of his adrenaline departs. He's still so cold, though. And he has…so far to go. It looks hopeless from here. But he won't turn back. He won't.
His lungs feel scoured raw; each inhalation of frigid winter air pricks at him like needles and sets him coughing anew - but he's gained his knees now, hard lumps of frozen earth digging into him. Next his feet, slow and careful. His fingers are clumsy, numb; his toes, too, useless inside his soggy shoes. But he's up.
Go, he tells himself again, and this time he does: staggering forward, gaining determination with each step.
But it's cold; and the woods confuse him. Which way is it to the fallen wall? To the road? He's no longer quite sure. Still, he does not stop moving…or he doesn't think he does, until he looks down and sees his hands splayed on the ground where he has fallen.
What-? he thinks, staring at the thin white shapes against the dark, not quite able to comprehend what he is seeing.
There's a sound in the dark, a faint clopping noise. Through the trees emerges the thin silhouette of a man, leading a horse.
"There you are," says Bosch.
He looks Milliardo up and down and sighs, just once.
Milliardo blinks, he only blinks and when he opens his eyes finds there is a flask pressed to his lips. "Drink," Bosch urges him. Flat and professional. "Come on, now. Down the hatch." The flask tilts forward and something warm fills his mouth. He barely tastes what it is, but it's warm, and he gulps it down until there is no more.
He's lifted, and that's when he remembers himself and begins to struggle.
"No," says Milliardo. "No, put me down. I won't-" But he can barely hear himself. Is barely aware when he is heaved onto the horse's back, limp and heavy as a sack of grain. Bosch adjusts him slightly to rest more comfortably over the saddle blanket; another is thrown atop him and then there is a pause as Bosch discovers the contents of Milliardo's pockets.
He withdraws one of the apples, holds it up like he is examining a gemstone. "Hm," the valet says inscrutably, then feeds it to the horse before they begin the brief trek back. Milliardo didn't even make it off the grounds.
Noin is still in the infirmary when the class rankings are posted. Courtesy demands that someone bring her the news; then honor demands that it be him, now that he's thought of it.
He's astonished to walk in to find Treize already there.
Treize, when he looks up, looks quite delighted. "Zechs!" he calls and crooks a hand in summons, a smile spreading across his face. Not wanting to be seen to drag his heels, Zechs swallows the sudden sinking feeling in his stomach and snaps off a brisk salute. "Now, now, none of that," Treize gently chides. It's unspeakably bizarre seeing him in here in his bright, crisp uniform, balanced at perfect ease on one of the uncomfortable stools that sit beside each bed. Bizarre and bizarrely maddening. "And what brings you here, my friend? You're not injured, I hope?"
"My health is fine." Zechs feels like he's just parried a verbal feint and is immediately cross with himself. "And you?"
"I heard from Instructor Voegel that Cadet Noin here was indisposed, so I came to check on her recovery - and to offer my congratulations on her top marks."
At this last, Treize gives her one of his beneficent smiles, like a priest offering up some holy blessing. (Irrational, Zechs feels it like a reprimand. Did Treize not bring him here expecting he would be the top student of his class? The failure sits like a stone in his gut.) Noin's eyes light and her cheeks pink with pleasure at the attention - either that or she still has a touch of fever.
"Yes, congratulations," he echoes. And then, stiffly, "How are you feeling?"
"Much better, thank you. My temperature's stabilized, so Captain Marwick should be clearing me for light duty soon. I can return to lessons, and then back at drills after that." She is looking better than when he brought her in: more alert, and her color has improved. And - glancing again at where she is sitting with her back propped against a pillow, he can see that book he left her hiding in her lap, closed around a finger to mark her place. "Did you," she hesitates, "come to visit?"
He flicks his gaze briefly to Treize. "I wanted to make sure you heard about the class rankings. I didn't know His Excellency would have brought you the news himself."
"Aha," says Treize, "I'm intruding. Zechs, Cadet Noin, I'll leave you to it. Please do get well soon, Noin, I'm sure your presence is needed out there. Try to keep the rest of this lot in line, hmm?" He gives Zechs's shoulder a passing squeeze; Noin smiles back at him.
"I'll do my best, sir. Thank you."
Then it is just the two of them and Zechs is left standing with nothing to say, Treize having taken the words from his mouth.
"How did you do?" Noin asks him. "In the rankings."
He makes a conscious effort to smooth the scowl from his face as he turns to her. "Second. Two percentage points behind you."
She smiles up at him, a little tentatively. "I've probably fallen so far behind in here you'll have me beat next quarter. But after that it'll be anyone's game again." The smile shifts, becomes more daring.
He takes Treize's stool. "Once we get into real mobile suits there won't be any competition. I won't just be the best pilot in our year, I'll be the best pilot in all the Specials."
"Oh? That a fact?"
For a second it felt like a game; and then, as abruptly, it doesn't anymore. "I'm the better soldier," he insists.
At this Noin snorts. She actually snorts. "We're neither of us soldiers. Not yet, not ever. We're training to be officers. There's a difference, Marquise. Didn't your family tell you what you were coming here for?"
His blood flashes hot, then cold. No. His family hadn't been in a position to tell him a damn thing.
Noin seems to sense she's crossed some invisible boundary. She fidgets on the bed, looking down at the book in her lap. Says softly, "I've looked at your simulator results, you know."
He hadn't, although maybe he should have assumed - he's looked at hers often enough after all, that name continually dogging his in the rankings. Of course he clicked through to look more closely. Her statistics show a pilot that is competent but cautious, which is how he knows he could beat her if it came to it.
"You want to know what I think?"
He frowns and doesn't answer, but the silence is obviously answer enough. He's curious despite himself; he's listening.
"You're brilliant. You have higher mission completion rates than anyone." He knows that already. Her quiet voice continues, unrelenting, "You also die twenty-two percent of the time."
She looks up at him. The skin around her eyes still bears the mark of her recent illness, shadowed hollows making her irises appear very blue and stark in her face, ringed with dark lashes. The intensity of her stare is arresting. It's hard to look away.
"Romefeller's investing a lot in us, you know. Feeding us, housing us, educating us. And our suits won't come cheap either. Enlisted soldiers, sure, they're ten a penny." She sniffs, and Zechs is surprised at the evident disdain she feels for the systems which have put them here, at the cynicism which he has never seen in her before. "But us? You really think they're interested in funding resources that aren't going to last more than four or five skirmishes? Dream on."
He swallows, hearing the sense in it, the ugly truth.
She smiles crookedly, humorous and bitter all at once.
"If you're that set on being number one, you're going to have to start showing more long term value than that."
After Bosch brings him back, he is the sickest he's ever been in his life. The barking cough he develops lingers for a month even after he is well; and while he is ill there are days when he is barely conscious at all. Asleep, he dreams vividly of his mother in the form of an angel, come to carry him away. He wishes she would. He doesn't want to be here anymore.
When he next opens his eyes after his fever finally breaks, his mother is nowhere to be seen. Only Angeline, in the chair at his bedside, intent and ghoulish. The disappointment is bitter. The only angelic thing about Treize's mother, he thinks spitefully, is her name.
"The lost little lamb returns at last," she sighs. "Are you feeling better?"
He flinches from her when she reaches for him but she is undeterred, scarcely seems to notice. Her hand smooths over his forehead, softly strokes his cheek. The other plucks fretfully at the nightclothes he is wearing. Her son's, her realizes, swallowing dryly. A sad smile plays at the corners of her mouth.
Abruptly, her eyes shutter and she withdraws her touch. Her hand drops, and she walks out of the room without another word, just the quiet slap of bare feet on hardwood and the vanishing train of a long white nightgown. He watches her leave with a mixture of relief and - and something he can't name. Pity? Envy?
He would like to be able to wield his grief as she does. Make it into a thing with teeth.
He is tired enough that he could roll over and go back to sleep. But he is also hungry. Ravenous, in fact. Did they feed him at all while he was ill?
There's no knowing when or if Angeline will return - or anyone else. So he will have to fend for himself. Moving too quickly sends him into fits of coughing, so he goes slow, rising and dressing himself and then moving at a shuffling pace out into the corridor and downstairs.
The route to the kitchen takes him past Treize's favored sitting room. He glances inside as he passes and finds it occupied. It's his first glimpse of the young master of the house since their first meeting. He's spotted lurking.
"Ah," says Treize in his rich, cultured voice, "you've woken. You gave us all quite a fright." There's just the slightest quirk of his mouth as he adds, "Mother was near inconsolable."
Milliardo hardly knows what to say. "That wasn't my intention," is what he settles on, his eyes awkwardly on the floor.
"I imagine not," Treize replies with quiet humor. "Please, come in and join me. You had better take the seat by the fire…you're still recovering, after all. I hope you'll forgive me? I've been an inconsiderate host up til now."
Milliardo can't think of a polite way to protest, so in he goes. Sits uncomfortably in the chair Treize points him to. The dry heat of the fire tickles his throat; he has to stifle another cough. It's loud in the quiet of the room.
"It's an awful thing, what happened to your family. Please, allow me to express my condolences." Milliardo keeps his gaze laser-focused on the rug at his feet. He isn't sure he can bear to hear this. "Still… I'm glad to see you haven't lost your fighting spirit."
Whatever conclusion he'd been expecting from Treize's remarks, it's not this. In surprise, his eyes dart finally up to meet Treize's. He is fully prepared to take offense, but Treize's expression remains bland; innocuous.
"The Peacecrafts don't believe in fighting."
"Well…that's not strictly speaking true, now, is it?" asks Treize. "They condemn violence, yes. Warfare. But that's not exactly the same thing. To get to where they were, to have become influential enough on the world stage to draw the Alliance's attention, let alone their wrath, they must have been strong-willed indeed. They merely, I would argue, went about fighting in their own way."
Milliardo is still too weary to debate the finer points of his family's philosophy. "It hardly matters now," he says, directing his glare into the fire.
"Perhaps not," Treize acknowledges softly. "But then again…you will have to decide what to do now, will you not?" The flames jump fuzzily as Milliardo's vision blurs; his eyes smart, but no tears come. "You could be forgiven, I think, in your position, for wanting revenge."
"I want to kill them," he bursts out hotly, unthinking, unable to contain himself. "I want… I want to kill them!"
Treize hums with understanding. "This may come as a surprise to you, but I am no friend to the Alliance myself."
It is a surprise, he's right. Milliardo mutely stares.
Treize smiles. "You haven't wondered why my uncle spared your life?"
"I thought he didn't hold with child murder." Milliardo manages to summon a contemptuous sneer as he quotes the colonel's words.
Treize chuckles. "There's that too, no doubt. But I doubt he was entirely motivated by altruism. Uncle Chilias can be coarse at times, but he would have seen at once that you could in time become an exceptionally useful ally."
All thought of his hunger now forgotten, Milliardo is fully focused on what Treize is saying. He's not sure he understands what he's hearing right. An ally? Him? (Why is he being trusted with this? This seems like dangerous talk.) "And you?" he asks of Treize cautiously.
"I thought it was brave of you to run. Foolish - a winter escape attempt with only a few apples in your pockets, but courageous, nonetheless. I admire that. I believe our goals may be similar. And that in time…we may even become great friends, you and I."
Milliardo swallows hard.
What is he to do?
This is not his home; these are not his people…and yet they are all he has.