Chapter 16: Violence

They rode without rest through the day and through the night. Teta was bound with rough rope that chafed her wrists, and any movement her captors didn't like was met with the delicate pricking of that needle-sharp knife. She couldn't stop thinking about what that knife would feel like inside her, spilling her blood and guts into the earth. What would dying feel like?

They rode without rest, without cease, and Teta was slung like a saddlebag across the creature's back, her ribs aching with every jolt and jostle in the road, her nose filled with the thick sweaty smell of the animal. The perfect weather continued through the day and then gradually cooled after sunset, but Teta's torn dress was not made for such cool. She shivered, and her captor pricked her with the knife again. "Don't move," he whispered.

She didn't move. She didn't want to die.

She must have slept at some point, though she could not imagine how. One moment she was staring out into the bleak night, watching an indifferent sky alive with blazing stars: the next, her side exploded in pain as she hit the ground. She cried out, her bladder aching so it felt like it might burst at any moment, but she couldn't do that, she wouldn't do that, she was bound and captive and she did not know what these people would do to her, if she would be raped or stabbed or a thousand other horrors that bubbled in the back of her mind but she would not piss herself. She was a woman, she was in control, she wouldn't-

"Fuckin' nobles," hissed a deep voice, and a rough hand grabbed her by the hair and hauled her to her feet. She gasped as her scalp burned, barely seeing the bearded, barrel-chested man in front of her. His other hand pulled at the skirt of her dress.

"What are you doing, Foxe?" asked the calm voice who had threatened her with the so-sharp knife.

"Bitch needs to pay," said the man in front of her, glaring over her shoulder.

"She will, Foxe," said the calm voice. "They all will. But we need her alive and whole."

"She'll stay whole," grunted the man. "Just be a little sore."

"No."

"You don't give me orders, Gregory!" spat the bearded man.

"Yes I do."

The bearded man glared over her, then shoved her backwards. Someone caught her, turned around so she was staring at the cold blonde man who'd slashed at Dycedarg and cursed at them from behind Alma's barrier. Gregory?

"I have to pee," Teta said.

"I don't care," Gregory said, and shoved her to the ground. She landed hard, barely able to keep her balance, jostling her full bladder. She bit her lip against the pain and the pressure.

For a moment, she almost begged. "Please," she would have said. "Please, I have to, don't make me do this, please." And begging worked, sometimes: give someone a chance to be magnanimous, make it clear you are entirely in their hands. But that depended on the person in question. Sometimes, begging just made them crueler.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, not looking at him. "I just...I don't want to...I..."

Tears coming, and that was too much weakness so she swallowed them down. She had to make him feel powerful, but if she seemed out of control herself he . "I don't want to piss myself," she said. "And I don't want to stink up you or...or one of the birds, but I can't go without you cutting me loose, I can't-!"

She did not look up at him, did not raise beseeching eyes to his face. It was better this way. Appeal to self-interest while looking weak. She'd played this game before at the Academy. She'd just never played it for such high stakes.

"Alright," Gregory grunted. He drew that so-sharp knife and slit her bonds in one fluid motion. "You got one minute," Gregory said. "And if you try to run-"

"I won't," she said. "Thank you."

She rose to her feet and stumbled a little ways away. His eyes were still on her, but she understood the stakes. It was go now or be hauled back atop that bird, and while she didn't want him watching she needed to relieve this pressure against her waist. It was the smallest of victories, but it was a victory.

She pulled down her underwear and squatted in the grass, her eyes searching for any sign of the bearded man or anyone else who might threaten her. Her mind was racing.

She hadn't fought, like Alma had fought. But Alma's fighting hadn't saved her: Zalbaag had. All Alma's fighting had done had gotten her beaten before Zalbaag had rescued her. There were knives and swords all around, and Teta had no magic and no sword, she had nothing with which she could save herself. This wasn't some story about the commoner girl who fought her way free through ingenuity. If she was to survive, she would do so by clinging tenaciously to life and never giving them her captors a reason to hurt her.

Right now, they thought she was a noble. These men might hate nobles, but they weren't stupid. A noblewoman could buy them freedom. A commoner girl—a commoner girl who sympathized with nobles—would be disposable. They'd kill her, and they'd take their time.

Stay alive. Stay intact. Survive.

She rose from the grass and pulled up her underwear. She walked back, her head bowed. "Thank you," she whispered.

"Who are you?" Gregory asked.

Teta swallowed, tried to think of the names of other nobles at the Academy, anyone this man might have heard of, tried to think of a compelling lie.

"Alma," she said. "Alma Beoulve."

"Beoulve, huh?" Gregory said. "Your brother's the one who didn't pay us."

Alma said nothing. She kept her eyes on the ground.

"Hands," Gregory said, with a fresh length of rope in his fingers.

Teta swallowed, warred with herself, and pushed her hands forwards. As Gregory moved towards her, she gambled. "Where would I go?" she asked.

Gregory stopped and looked at her. She couldn't see his face in the dark.

"I can't run anywhere," Teta said. "I haven't tried."

"So what?" he asked.

"Do you really need...?"

Having her hands free might not mean much, but what was the point of adding chafed wrists and aching arms to all her other problems if she could avoid it? Besides, free hands could help her in other ways. If there was an opportunity she could seize, she'd do it best with her hands free. And she could protect herself from walls and steady herself during their ride.

Gregory lowered his hands. "You sit in front of me," he said. "You do anything I don't like, and I leave you alone with Foxe as long as he likes."

The images flashed in Teta's mind, half-heard horror stories whispered in the dormitories of the Preparatory Academy and the memories of Foxe's rough hands on her. She nodded, though her throat felt tight and dry.

"We're moving out!" shouted Gregory.

They rode through the night, as the stars blazed pitilessly overhead and the half-moon shed ghostly light over the Plains. Gregory's arms were around her, firmly on the reins of his bird so there was nowhere for her to go.

Teta must have slept again at some point, because when she came to the world was brighter, the stars faded away behind a lightening sky. The Lenalian mountains were shadows on the horizon, but growing larger and larger with every passing moment. The rolling green hills of the Mandalia Plains slowly gave way to shale slopes with loose shrubs clinging tenaciously to life.

And it was still too gorgeous. A gentle breeze rolled out of the north, mingling nicely with the warm sun so high above. The air got crisper and cleaner as they started rising in elevation. It burned a little in her nostrils. At least it had been raining on the day her parents had died. How could it be so gorgeous, when she was so afraid?

The climbed a winding switchback track that wove higher and higher between two tall speaks. The sun was setting in a blaze of orange fire by the time they finished their long ascent and reached the Lenalian Plateau—a wide expanse of flatlands the mirror of the ascent behind them, shale and dirt and scrub grass spreading out between the mountains. In the far distance, she could make out the lush green expanse of the fertile Fovoham Plains.

So much stark natural beauty. So pitiless compared to the ragged band of soldiers camped across the Plateua men and women in bloody bandages shuddering against the oncoming cold as the wind howled overhead.

"Gregory!" shouted a deep, commanding woman's voice. Teta turned to stare at the brown-haired woman striding towards them, with a dark green cloak on her shoulders and a red-headed woman at her side.

"Miluda!" Gregory called, dropping from the back of his bird and pulling Teta down with him.

"Who's this?" Miluda asked, her eyes narrowing at Teta.

"Alma Beoulve," Gregory said.

A flash of fire, terrible rage and hate, in Miluda's eyes. Teta took an involuntary step backwards. "Beoulve?" Miluda repeated, her hand resting against the hilt of the sword she wore on her hip.

"Easy," Gregory said, holding out a forestalling hand. "We can't hurt her. We need her."

"Need...?" Miluda turned her glare on Gregory. "You thinking of following Gustav's path, Greg?"

"No," Gregory said. "I don't want a ransom. But as long as we've got her, her brothers can't afford to hurt us. We can keep the north until we figure out what the hell we're going to do."

Miluda glared into his face for a few more seconds, then shook her head. "This isn't what we do," she said.

"I know," Gregory said. "But right now, it's what we have to do."

Miluda shook her head. "What are you doing here, Gregory?"

"We've been riding for two days," Gregory said. "We need help."

Miluda laughed. It was a harsh, terrible sound, like a cough, like breaking glass. "Look around, Greg. Do you think we have anything to give?"

Gregory stiffened—Teta saw it, his back going rigid—but then the moment passed and he continued, "We just need to rest, Miluda."

"Plenty of room to rest," Miluda said. "A whole plain, for the dead and the broken."

Teta couldn't see Gregory's face, and she didn't know the man very well. But there seemed something a little slumped and defeated about his back.

When he turned to face them, however, his face was calm. Almost confident.

"Scrounge up what you can," he said. "Help if you need to, but get some rest. We're heading for Zeakden at dawn."

"What do we do with her, Greg?" asked one of the soldiers, gesturing towards Teta.

"I'll take care of your prisoner," Miluda said. "Radia. Show these boys around."

The men moved out into the field, following the red-headed woman—Radia, apparently. pulling their chocobos with them and leaving Teta alone with Miluda. As the orange blaze of dusk gave way to cool evening shadows, she folded her arms around her body, looking in every direction at once. How many men were there like Foxe, eager to make her pay however they could? How would she be safe, without Gregory to stop them? Completely in the care of this woman who had looked her with such fierce and furious hate?

"Follow me," Miluda said, and walked into the thicket of tents. Teta hesitated, then stumbled after—she couldn't give her captors any reason to hurt her. Strange, awful smells besieged her from all times—the smell of rot, and shit, and blood, thick and cloying and salty. Her mouth felt thick with saliva, and her stomach lurched and spasmed. She she would have vomited, if she'd had anything to eat.

And there were the noises, too. The wordless moans and groans, the animal whimpers, the frantic whispered prayers interrupted by pained cries. The thick, aching words with tears behind every syllable as dying souls struggle to share their last message with the world.

It wouldn't be so bad, if she hadn't heard and smelled and seen this all before. If it didn't conjure images of the Plague Camps, where the desperate and the ill flocked in droves so that the Healers might tend to them. Those figures in their red-and-white robes amidst a sea of ragged, dying souls, choking and coughing and wheezing and breaking as their bodies slowly suffocated under the weight of their disease. If this place wasn't so like the place where haer parents had died.

But these people weren't dying of disease, were they? They were dying because of what had been done to them by other men. How could people do this to each other?

"Beoulve."

The word was flat and carried all the acidic impact of a curse. Teta froze, the skin on her neck crawling. For a moment, she almost looked around to see if there was a Beoulve nearby. Before she remembered what she'd said. Before she remembered who she was supposed to be.

She turned slowly to see Miluda standing at the mouth of a small tent. She was watching Teta, but her face was masked by the gathering shadows.

"Not gonna answer me, Beoulve?" she asked. "Won't deign to speak with a commoner?"

"No, I-" Teta started.

"Oh, she admits it!" Miluda said. "An honest noble! That's a rare thing. Not like your brother." She cocked her head. "Ramza is your brother, isn't he?"

How much did this woman know about the Beoulves? Did she know Alma was Ramza's sister? Would Teta be better off confirming or denying?

"See all these people?" Miluda asked. "Hear'em? Smell'em? Your brother did that, Beoulve."

"Ramza wouldn't do that," Teta said.

She snapped a hand to her mouth, her eyes widening. She hadn't meant to say it. She hadn't even thought about it. But Ramza wasn't like Delita. Hell, Ramza wasn't even like Alma. He always looked just as uneasy as Teta felt, and when they'd drunk their stolen wine in Ramza's room she'd learned that he was even trying to avoid killing on the battlefield. How could he have hurt all these people?

"No?" Miluda asked. "Come here."

Teta hesitated, staring at the woman, looking around as though there might be help nearby. But how could there be? She was alone here. More alone than she'd been in her entire life.

She took a few hesitant steps forwards. Miluda turned away from her, back to the entrance of the tent. She had a lighting rod in hand, glowing with runes at the tip. She held it high, so it cast a little cloud of illumination around them. At the very edge of their circle of light, a ways inside the tent, was a blond-haired woman, breathing in a choked, crackling wheeze.

"Your brother did that, Beoulve."

Teta stared at the blonde woman, transfixed by the lines of pain in her face and in the shadows of other injuries concealed by the thin blanket spread over her.

"What did he do?" Teta whispered.

"Lied," hissed Miluda. "Told us we could be safe and led us right into danger. Made me..."

Miluda didn't finish. She trailed off, staring at the woman in the tent.

"She held them back, while we escaped," Miluda said. "I...I couldn't leave her, but by the time I got back, they'd already..."

The hand holding the lighting rod slowly drifted towards the ground. Teta barely noticed: she was trying to make sense of what she was seeing, smelling, hearing. She longed for the return of that nightmare vertigo: she wanted this to feel surreal.

"How much are you going to take from me?" asked Miluda.

Rough hands grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around. Rough hands seized her by the throat, thumbs pressing against Teta's windpipe. The air went out of Teta's world. She choked in Miluda's wild-eyed grasp, clawed at the hands that were so rough against her aching neck. The world was turning darker and darker, and Teta's last breaths were wheezing whispers, and all she could think was that she was going to die, die like her parents, like Alma's parents, killed, and there was nothing she could do for all her struggles Miluda was still glaring into her eyes and Teta had never seen such awful hate in anyone's eyes, how could anyone hate the way Miluda hated, how could anyone do this, how could Teta be about to die when there was so much life to live, how-

"Captain!" someone cried. "No!"

Miluda was wrenched backwards, and Teta spilled into the dust. She looked up to see Miluda facing off with the red-haired woman who'd been at Miluda's side earlier.

"Out of my way, Radia," Miluda growled.

"No, Captain."

"She's a Beoulve. She did this to us."

"She didn't do anything to us," Radia said. "She was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"That didn't stop them from hurting Emilie!" shouted Miluda. "That didn't-"

"We're better than them!" Radia yelled.

A moment's taut silence.

"Then why are we losing?" Miluda asked.

She moved farther into the tent and knelt by the blonde woman's side. Radia grabbed Teta by the shoulders and pulled her firmly to her feet, leading her away.

"Thank you," Teta whispered.

Radia flinched. "Please, don't. What Ramza did to us was..." She shook her head. "I won't let her kill you," she said. "But I don't want to hear you..."

Violence, fear, desperation, and weariness mingled freely in the woman's voice, giving her a flat, dangerous lilt. Teta's throat still ached. Her chest and back were scraped and bruised from the falls she'd taken over the past several days. She needed to keep her mouth shut. She needed to stay alive.

"What did he do?" Teta asked, because as much as she needed to survive she also needed to know why Miluda's hands had been around her neck, why there had been such hate in Miluda's eyes and in Radia's why, why there was a blonde-haired woman wheezing and dying in a tent far away, and what Ramza had to do with any of this that made her supposed sister such a target.

"Convinced us there was safe passage north," Radia said. "Told me he didn't want anyone to die, and then he let us..." She shook her head. "How can anyone lie like that?"

Had Ramza lied? Had he done that?

They reached a small tent in the center of camp. Radia held the flap open. "You'll be safe here," Radia said. "I guarantee it."

Teta crawled inside, scraping her knees against stones and dirt. Radia sat cross-legged at the tent's entrance, her sword across her lap.

"He wouldn't do that," Teta said.

"He did," Radia replied.

"I don't know what happened," Teta said. "I wasn't there. But..."

But she remembered the last time she'd seen Ramza, drinking wine in Ramza's room, as Delita had jibed and jested. Ramza, refusing to kill anyone, risking life and limb because it was the only way he could make sense of this war.

"He doesn't kill," Teta said.

"He doesn't...what?" Radia shook her head. "He's a soldier."

"I know," Teta said. "And he hasn't killed anyone."

"You're lying," Radia said.

Teta said nothing.

"Would you do something like that?" Radia asked, as the silence stretched.

"No," Teta said.

"Didn't think so," Radia huffed.

"I wouldn't fight at all," Teta said.

"Why not?" Radia asked.

I don't believe in violence, Teta wanted to say, but that was foolish and naive, the sort of thing a child-hero says in the stories you tell to pretend the world makes sense. And the other problem was that she was not Alma Beoulve, so how did she sound like her without giving herself away? Was it safer to be Teta, or Alma?

Or safer to stick to the common ground between them?

"My parents are dead," Teta said. "Choking Plague killed them both. And a lot of other people, too. There were camps like this all over Ivalice."

Radia snorted. "Balbanes Beoulve died in a tent, huh?"

"No," Teta said. "But my mom, she..."

Teta remembered Alma, tears in her eyes as she talked about clutching at her mother's cold hand, begging her to wake up. And Teta remembered her own mom in one of the Church's tents, Delita crying out for a Healer who wouldn't come, Teta stroking her mother's damp forehead, holding her father's calloused hand. She remembered the smell, of rot and sweat and bile and thick mucus, the strangled breaths and wheezing, the shit and piss and blood. So very much like this hopeless camp.

"My mom wasn't noble," Teta said. "She died alone."

Teta stared at the wall of the tent. From the corner of her eye, she could see that Radia wasn't looking at her.

"So what?" Radia asked.

"So..." Teta closed her eyes. "So that happened. So people starved, and people got sick, and people died. Why do we have to hurt each other, too?"

"Because sometimes it's the only way," Radia said.

"To do what?" Teta asked.

"To make them listen," Radia said.

Teta shook her head. "Dead men don't listen."

"They weren't listening when they were alive, either," Radia said. "It was a King of Ivalice who got us into this war, him and all his noble friends. They wanted power, and they bit off more than they could chew, and they kept fighting. They let everyone else bear their burdens, and we did it because we love this kingdom, and they wouldn't even pay us."

Teta looked back towards Radia. She was an impressive-looking woman, wiry beneath her leather armor, perfectly at ease with the sword in her hand. Her dark eyes blazed from her smooth pale face. She hardly looked older than Teta.

"You didn't fight in the war," Teta said. "Look at you."

Radia flushed. "I...they...!"

"You weren't wronged," Teta said. "Were you?"

"What would you know, Beoulve?" snarled Radia.

"What would you know, Radia?" Teta asked.

She was surprised at her own venom, her own courage. But perhaps it was just that she felt safe here. She didn't feel afraid of Radia. Something about the woman set her at ease. She reminded Teta of Alma, and Ramza, and Delita.

"The things this kingdom did..." Radia shook her head. "They wanted justice, and they needed help."

"So you killed people," Teta said.

"I did," Radia said. "Because sometimes that's the only thing you can do."

"I don't believe that," Teta said.

Radia shrugged. "You don't have to believe me," she said. "You saw this place. Look how we've treated you. Look how your people treated Emilie."

Teta closed her eyes, feeling the weight of the night, the aching of her throat where Miluda had grabbed her, remembering the broken wheezing woman in the tent, Foxe's rough hands pulling at the hem of her dress. "I'm sorry," she said.

"It's not your fault," Radia said.

No, it wasn't. Just a vicious chain of violence, and no end in sight. What could Teta do now, except try to survive?

She must have slept at some point, because she was awoken, aching and spasming, by a gentle shaking on her shoulder.

"You're leaving," Radia said.

Teta crawled out of the tent and into the dawning light. The camp was dissolving, the bandaged, cursing, crying wounded staggering north and west. A few scattered tents remained, their occupants prone upon their backs. Teta thought one of them had the blonde woman inside of it.

In the distance, she could make out Gregory and Miluda. Radia walked towards them. Teta hesitated, then followed.

"Why did you help me?" Teta asked, her mind alert again, wary of all the hostility and danger that surrounded her.

"We're better than the nobles," Radia said. "We have to act like it."

They reached Miluda and Gregory. Miluda did not look at Teta.

"It's cold in Zeakden," Gregory said.

"There's nowhere else to go," Miluda said. "We'll hold the pass as long as we can."

"They won't come," Gregory said. "It's too long a ride."

"They'll come," Miluda said. "They can't afford not to. You're taking the bitch?"

Gregory glanced at Teta. Teta felt a creeping, shameful weakness all along her skin.

"We have to," Gregory said.

"You don't," Radia said.

"Graffy will decide," Miluda said.

"Captain!" Radia exclaimed.

"It's not my call to make," Miluda said. "And she may have brought him this far." At last, Miluda turned those heavy eyes on Teta. Teta flinched, remembering how they had glared into her face while thumbs had pressed against her windpipe, choking her just like the disease that had killed her parents.

Punch! She heard it before she felt it, the fist hitting her stomach, wheezing before she realized she was in pain, a knot of emptiness filling her chest with nauseous fumes. She sank to here knees, gasping, and then Miluda grabbed her by the hair and pulled her upright by her burning scalp.

"Captain!" Radia shouted.

"I promised your brother I'd kill his family if he betrayed me," Miluda whispered. "If I see you again, Beoulve, I'll keep my word."

She shoved Teta towards Gregory, who held her upright and brought her staggering back to his chocobo as the world danced around her, stars in her vision, her breath coming in squeaking squeals. So much pain, so much terror, so much violence. And what was the point of it? Why...?

The questions hurt. The lies hurt. The truth would hurt. She was caught in a bramble of thorns, with every movement tearing at her, one way or another. She had to survive. She had to. No matter how she hurt.

She did not want to die here.