(Part Two begins now! And for your patience, please accept a double update: first, the stage is set by Annabel Iphis, a knight of the Lionsguard trying to make sense of her conflicting obligations; then, Ramza Beoulve and Radia Gaffgarion are offered an exciting new job after years of fighting. If you want to see my musings on the chapters, grab the pdf of Part One, or look at my other work, be sure to check out quickascanbe dot com)
Part Two: The Strong, the Weak, and the Godly
Chapter 28: The Cost of Duty
Annabel Iphis couldn't decide if she was a traitor or not.
She'd started trying to puzzle it out almost a year ago. She was still struggling now, walking through the paved and pristine order of Lesalia, with the polished storefronts around her and the Ydoran watchtowers spaced evenly along the city's neat grid. To look at her, you might have pegged her for a soldier—the short dark hair, the hard and wary eyes, and the purposeful, agile steps. She wore a cloak that obscured her features, and no mark of her rank or unit on her person. A short sword was hidden beneath the cloak, its outline artfully concealed in the folds.
Easy to guess she was a soldier. Harder to guess she was of the Lionsguard—those elite knights from across the kingdoms devoted to the service of the royal line. But Annabel couldn't forget: not with the looming shadow of the Lion's Den in the distance, visible even from where she walked on the far fringes of the city. It was a citadel of stone and concrete, artful and deadly in the style of the strongest Ydoran fortifications. Garrisons, watchtowers, murderholes, meeting rooms, greenhouses, and even a few ancient magical traps and weapons maintained by some of the finest royal mages lay hidden within. Here was the ancient stronghold of the Atkascha line: here, kings and queens of old had ruled Ivalice.
Here, Queen Louveria spread her poison, in the name of her son, Orinus.
And that was the problem. The Lionsguard were sworn to serve and protect the royal family and, through them, all Ivalice. But how did you execute your duties when the royals turned against each other? When your King perished of the same symptoms that had killed his father, decades after the fact? When nobles, advisers, and men of conscience were harassed, disgraced, and imprisoned, as the Queen grabbed for more and more power?
Whose side was the only child of the Iphis family to take?
She hesitated in front of the door, then took a steadying breath and pushed her way inside to reveal a dingy dirt-floored hole in the wall, cast in murky light by a half-dozen candles on a half-dozen tables. A heavily-bearded man stood behind the bar, drawing a drink from a barrel and pushing it into the hands of a sour-faced man sitting in front of him. She made her way to him.
"What are you looking for, stranger?" asked the barkeep.
Anna took another breath, making sure she had remembered all the words of the answering phrase. "A strong drink and a little peace," she said.
The barkeep chuckled. "I can manage a drink," he said. "But no peace. Only quiet."
"Quiet'll do just fine." She placed two 100-gil coins on the table, and he reached below the bar and pulled out a small green bottle with a hand-drawn label. She took it gratefully, turned away from the far, and looked down at the label, which had a simple diagram of six points connected by lines. A small corona encircled one of those points, and if you knew what you were looking for, you might realize that the pattern of the dots conformed to the location of the candles in the bar.
She made her way to the indicated candle, and took a seat She pretended not to have noticed the man sitting just behind her, his own hood drawn up to obscure his face as he spooned a thin vegetable soup into his mouth. She faced the other way, and opened her bottle.
"And her I'd asked the barkeep for a little quiet," mumbled the man behind her.
"I'm not here for quiet," Annabel said. "I'm here for peace."
No answer from the man behind her, just the clinking of a metal spoon against a ceramic bowl. Anna's heart was beating very fast, and her hands were shaking almost as badly as they had before the exam she'd taken to become a Lionsguard cadet. The sons of the Iphis family had always served in the Lionsguard, and Anna was the only heir to the Iphis name since her father had died in the war. Whatever her mother said she did not intend to break that tradition and she had tried so hard and the Military Academy hadn't taken her because she was a noblewoman and her mother had spat a thousand hurtful barbs as she had fought to be appointed a mere squire to the Lionsguard, but she had earned her appointment, she had fought her way to be the first among the cadets, and now...
It was so much harder than she'd ever though it would be.
"For peace," said the man behind her, and Anna felt weak with relief.
"Who are you?" Anna asked.
"Best we don't trade names," he said. "If one of us gets taken, we can't out the others."
Wise. But of course he was. Everything she'd learned pointed to him being some kind of Nanten spymaster, so skillful he could secret himself even in a capitol city inundated with hostile Hokuten and still carry out covert operations. She'd seen the signs—the unexpected brawls and blow-ups, powerful nobles suddenly exposed to charges of corruption and scandal, other nobles and authorities who escaped before they should ever have had reason to fear the Queen. That was what had brought her here, tonight, in spite of her name, in spite of her questions.
"We're safe here?" she asked.
The man chuckled. "If you think we're safe anywhere, you really don't understand what we're facing."
She brought the bottle to her lips, but didn't drink. No telling what had been put in the bottle. Like this man said: nowhere was really safe.
"The man at the bar-" she mumbled around the bottle.
"The barkeep's one of ours," the man replied. "Not the man he's serving."
So who was the sour-faced man? Just someone looking for a drink somewhere out of the way? Or an agent of the Queen and her brother? Perhaps an agent of Dycedarg Beoulve? Or perhaps an agent of this mysterious man behind her, waiting for her to lower her guard?
She didn't know if she was a traitor or not. But she did know that these were very murky waters to be swimming in, and she'd never wanted to be here. She'd wanted to be the shield and sword of the royal family, protecting them as they upheld their God-given duties. She wanted to be a hero, a proud servant in the tradition of the best of the Iphis name She hadn't known that the trust shown in her would also come with such black secrets. She hadn't known...
"What news?" came the voice from behind him, shaking her from her reverie.
"The Princess," Anna replied.
"We need more than that."
She swallowed against the dryness of her throat. "She's in Orbonne."
"I'm aware."
"She's the only one left."
"She...what?"
Anna lifted the bottle to her lips, but still didn't drink. "Alma Beoulve left last night. She's the last one. Now it's just Ovelia."
"Which means there's no fallout when she dies," the man behind her muttered.
The sour-faced man at the bar stumbled out the door. The bar was eerily quiet now.
"They're...they're going to blame the Nanten."
"It's the obvious move."
"They've got cloaks," Anna said. "And..."
"And?"
"I'm not sure about this," Anna said. "But I think Dycedarg altered the paperwork of a Nanten garrison, so it'll look like-"
"They'll be on the official papers?" he said in surprise. "Oh, that is clever. And of course, the Hokuten won't ever discover the discrepancies in their own records."
She nodded, her fingers drumming on the neck of her bottle. All this she'd pieced together from the memos and letters that fell into her care as a member of the Lionsguard: little mentions of 'security of our nation,' 'protection of our allies,' 'reprehensible condition of a frontline Nanten garrison.' All so innocuous if you couldn't see the pieces.
But this last secret was a betrayal, no two ways about it. She'd had to break into Dycedarg's personal carriage to find it, while his guards were asleep from the drinks she'd slipped them, loaded with soporifics.
"It's a small unit," she said. "No more than ten soldiers."
"That is small," conceded her contact. "Only a..." He paused for a moment, thinking. "Two to one advantage over the Lionesses, yes?"
"Just about," she confirmed. "But they..." She faked a yawn, so she could look around the empty room. Only the barkeep remained, busily polishing a glass. "They have someone on the inside."
The man behind her stiffened: she heard his cloak rustle with it. "Who?"
"I don't know," she said. "But Dycedarg was...he was sure. Sure that someone was ready."
"That's all it would take," he muttered. "In a straight fight, they've got a fair shot, but if one of their own..." He trailed off. "You don't know who?"
"No," she said. "I just...I found it in a note. Apparently they'll be reinforcing the garrison so that no one can say-"
"That they didn't protect her," the man said. His spoon clattered in his empty bowl. "Lucavi take me, that's..."
Silence for a time. Perhaps even this mysterious man hadn't really understood the danger. Perhaps he hadn't imagined just how insidious these people were. Anna knew she hadn't. She'd spent so long lying to herself, pretending that the King's death really could be innocent, pretending that the Queen's paranoia and tyranny were justified in such difficult times...
But she was an Iphis. They protected the royal family, even from itself. If she had to be a traitor to do that, so be it.
The door to the bar swung open. A dark-haired man in a Hokuten cloak entered the room, hand on his hilt, eyes sweeping across the room. Anna's heart lurched in her chest, and her hands began to tremble again. She reached for the bottle and lifted it to her lips, still not drinking.
"Were you followed?" the man behind her muttered.
"Were you?" Anna whispered.
Silence, as the Hokuten soldier's eyes settled a moment too long on her. Then he was moving towards the bar.
"He knows," the man behind her whispered. "On your right, there's a door in the corner. I'll distract him."
The man behind her rose to his feet, bowl in hand. Anna followed him with nervous eyes as he made his way to the bar. "Pardon me, sir-" he slurred at the top of his voice, and then stumbled over his cloak and slammed into the Hokuten knight.
"Watch where you're going, oaf!" boomed the Hokuten knight, and Anna was already out of her seat and moving towards the corner, and just as he'd said there was a door there, small and easily-missed, and it swung noiselessly on its hinges and she was through, into a little storeroom with another door outlined in moonlight in the back and Anna pushed her way through this surprisingly-heavy door and stepped outside. She cast her head every which way, taking her surroundings: she was sandwiched between several small buildings and the wall that had been half-carved into the surrounding mountains, and there didn't look to be much in the way of-
Movement from the corner of her eye. She turned, hot-footed backwards with her small sword already in hand, lashing out in time to deflect a flurry of quick jabs with a much longer blade. The slight shadow in front of her drove her back in the dark, and it was all Anna could do to keep her feet, panic and doubt forgotten as the man came after her, lost in the immediate rush of frenzied fighting.
Blades ringing against each other, quick jabs, slashes, and thrusts, and the man in front of her cursed and drove forwards, too eager, too clumsy, and there was her opening, there-
The door behind her creaked open. Anna felt a cold pressure in her back and below her belly, almost as though she had diarrhea but deeper and wider somehow, and she took a quick, surprised breath. Her fingers reached for her stomach, and found the cold steel of a sword.
A heavy blow to the back of her head, and her thoughts melted into blurred colors and dazed stars and ragged fire burned in her stomach as the blade tore free. She hit the ground, gasping still.
"She was supposed to be poisoned!" grunted the man who'd ambushed her, and the moon passed out of cloud cover and exposed his sour face.
"She was cautious," said the other man, and she recognized that calm, pleasant voice—the voice of the Nanten spymaster. She moaned in protest, trying to understand what happened, trying to make sense of the disparate pieces.
He leaned down to her, and a shaft of moonlight illuminated the darkness beneath his hood. Eyes so dark as to be almost black glittered beneath a mane of clay-red hair, and his cheek was mottled with the scars of an old burn.
"Go help the others clean up," the red-haired man said. The sour-faced man grunted, and stepped over her and through the door. He didn't even look at her. He didn't even...!
Anna found she was crying. It all felt so pointless.
"You..." Anna whispered, and her voice felt so weak. "Why...?"
The red-haired man sighed. "Because no one else can know what you've done," he said, almost kindly. "You had noble intentions, I know. But you're not very good at this. You'll get caught. And when you do, you'll make it impossible to keep her safe."
"But..." By the Saint, her stomach was agony, and her head was spinning and she felt so weak, and the night seemed darker somehow, and all her questions and all her struggles, her fighting to get here and the secrets she'd learned, had it all been for nothing?
Suddenly he'd shifted, straddling her chest with her short sword braced against her throat, and her head was spinning and she couldn't remember him moving and it seemed like the stars were winking out, like the light was going out of the world.
"Safe?" she mumbled. "You'll...keep Ovelia..."
She couldn't see the red-haired man's face anymore.
"You have my word," he said.
"Who-" she started, and then the blade drew an aching line across her neck and Annabel Iphis tried to blink and found she couldn't open her eyes anymore.