(Sorry for the blatant lies in my last chapter, folks. We're back in business, at least for the time being)
Chapter 110: An Answered Prayer
Perhaps Melia's father was more clever than she'd given him credit for.
She sat crosslegged, silent and still as a gravestone, on the floor of the caravan where she had once been bound and helpless, with her sheathed sword in her lap, and her brother's gauntlets on her hands. They did not quite fit her—too lose in the left hand, too tight in the right—but she would not claim vengeance without wearing them. God had arranged so much for her satisfaction. This, too, must be His will.
How had her father done it, she wondered? How had he held all Limberry Palace to such silence? Who were these women, that provoked such fear in Ramza and his capable band of murderers? No matter, she would have her answers soon enough, as she would shed his blood soon enough. Everything was as it should be.
Repeat it to yourself enough times, and maybe you'll believe it.
Her jaw clenched, but she could not ignore that voice. It had been with her all her life: small as a pebble in her boot, and just as firm, always troubling what would otherwise be an easy step. It let her see her father's cruelty more clearly than Izlude could, so she was not taken in by his rare kindness and praise: it had sharpened her skill with the sword when what her instructors said differed with her own instincts. It prodded at her now.
Her father was cruel. Her father was powerful. Her father was clever. And for all that, there was no way he could render Limberry Palace silent for two days. The Church, for all its power, did not wield such influence. Even if he were still alive, the Marquis himself could not wield such influence. This was the heart of Limberry, and even with the nobles of Limberry tearing themselves to pieces in another pointless feud over rival ambitions, it should not have lain this quiescent. Someone should have claimed it...and if they had not claimed it, there should be signs of the battle that had been fought for it.
So why was Limberry Palace silent? Was it her father? Or someone else?
The caravan rumbled on. Muffled voices did not quite reach them through its walls. She remained seated, coiled tight, with her sheathed sword in her lap, and her eyes shut. God would provide. The Saint would provide. She would have her moment. Her brother's killers would die by her hand.
And if they're telling the truth?
About demons loose in Ivalice?
Why is the Palace silent?
The caravan rumbled to a halt. Mustadio switched the controls on the side of the magitek engine, which slowly hummed into silence. The voices were growing more distant with every passing moment. Melia adjusted her grip on her sword, and tried to swallow down her doubts.
"Does anyone else hear music?" Mustadio asked.
Melia gave the machinist a strange look, opened her mouth to ask what he meant...then paused, and closed her eyes. There was something else in the air, a thin and distant sound she'd almost mistaken for wind or birdsong. It was too muffled by the caravan to be made out clearly...but it was also too rhythmic to be anything natural.
Melia rose slowly to her feet, and took unhurried steps to the caravan's rear. From the corner of her eye, she saw Agrias following her, with the wary steps of a guard. Her grip tightened on her sword, though she tried to give no other outward sign that she had seen. She unlatched the caravan's back, dropped it down to form a ramp connecting the floor of the caravan to the ground below. The moment the door dropped, the sound of music became unmistakable, though it was still thin with distance.
She glanced towards the source of the music, up the sculpted marble staircase and its elegant balustrades, then took another casual glance around the front law, with its trim hedges and burbling fountains. The main doors of the Palace were closed far down the paved Ydoran road that led inside: six men in immaculate red dress uniforms stood before it, halberds held at stiff attention.
Agrias watched the distant guards uncertainly. "Why aren't they moving?"
"Does it matter?" Melia asked, strolling down the exit ramp.
Agrias' heavy hand closed on her shoulder before she was halfway down. "We need to stay here."
"You need to stay here," Melia replied, shrugging her off. "I'm not on guard duty."
She felt rather than saw Agrias' grimace, as her weight shifted indecisively higher up the ramp. Then, in a curt, severe voice, she said, "Malak."
"Of course." Malak's light steps hurried behind her, until he appeared in her peripheral vision. He offered the guards a quick, curious glance, but still they stood, unmoving as statues, besides the great main doors that led into this spacious front yard. The emerald lawns, rimmed by neat walking paths and bisected by the great Ydoran road they'd ridden upon to arrive here, glittered beneath the noon sun high above. Everything was as it should be in Limberry Palace, with music wafting in the air like the thin clouds drifting through the blue sky high above.
Something was terribly wrong.
"Something's wrong."
Melia looked over at Malak, who was frowning at the guards at the far end. "Yes?"
"There's...some kind of magic in them." His frown deepened as his brow furrowed. "Can't you feel it?"
Melia frowned in turn, focused her inner senses. Maybe that was part of the wrongness she felt in the world around her: a shudder of unfamiliar magic, working towards unfamiliar ends. She couldn't quite feel it, even with Malak pointing it out to her...but she also couldn't deny there was something in the air.
"What does it feel like?" Melia asked.
"It..." He closed his eyes. "It feels a little like mine."
"What does yours feel like?"
Malak didn't answer with words. Instead, one of his swords floated out of the sheathes on his hips, and floated over to her. She rested one hand upon the floating blade, closed her eyes and reached out towards it with will alone. It was more distinct than this vague not-quite-something in the air, a thin string of will and force tethering the sword to the wielder.
Is that what I'm feeling? Strings of magic? Tying the guards to...to...
To what?
"What did you do!" Ramza howled, over the clang of clashing swords, and Melia was already in motion before she knew what she was doing, hurtling towards that anguished voice with Malak's sword still in her hand and Malak leaping along beside her, taking the stone steps as quick as bounding deer, trying not to make a sound.
"I am a demon, Ramza Beoulve," the Marquis said, thin and distant and undeniable, and Melia's blood froze in her veins. Whatever those things in masks had been, she knew that voice. The Marquis was an ordained Inquisitor of the Church, and had worked often with her father, and had never been without a kind word for her and Izlude whenever their paths had crossed. That voice, proclaiming itself a demon, was the Marquis'. That voice belonged to a dead man.
Was he telling the truth about everything?
The music had stopped with the clanging of blades, and Melia and Malak slowed as they neared the top of the stone stairs, creeping as slowly as they could manage to the large doors hanging open just beyond them. A strange smell lingered in the air.
"I'll kill you!" Ramza screamed, and the agony in his voice echoed inside Melia, plucking against her grief.
"Kill me, and I cannot bring your sister back," the Marquis replied, and heat flickered in her stomach, fighting against the cold of her blood. Ramza's sister truly had been a hostage to a dead man?
Another flicker of cold, far deeper than the first: Ramza's sister was dead? Like Izlude?
"Liar!" Ramza shrieked.
"Come now, Ramza Beoulve," the Marquis laughed. "I am always quick to reward the good service done to me. I have always been a most gracious lord. Is that not so, Argus?"
"Most gracious, my lord," a deep voice answered, with an even thicker Limberry brogue than the Marquis. "Hello, Ramza."
Melia and Malak reached the topmost stair, crouched low, and peered through the ornate doors to the ballroom beyond. A final flash of cold swamped her, like an ocean wave rearing up inside her and crashing through her veins to drown her heart: her eyes went wide at the nightmarish tableau beyond the ballroom doors.
Ramza and his friends stood upon the carpeted entranceway with their weapons drawn. Two identical women, one in a red bandeau and one in a blue, menaced Ramza's allies with drawn katanas. Ramza and the Marquis were just visible halfway down a matching staircase in red carpet beyond the doors, their blades locked together. All around them were men and women in handsome clothing, each with a removed mask in hand. Every face showed a walking corpse.
"Celia and Lettie told you our purpose is salvation," the Marquis said (not just his voice but his face, and Melia's head spun, and her chest felt tight, not a rotting corpse or a waxy dead man's but bright with terrible life). "We deal in death so easily...but we can deal in life, as well."
He took a step back from Ramza, and rested his long katana against one shoulder: with his other hand, he tossed a white rune-laden bow to a blonde man wearing the Marquis' demonic-looking armor. The blonde man dropped the mask in his hand and reached for the bow. He caught it with a leering grin at the woman standing beside him: the corpse with the honey-colored hair, the lovely dress, and the mangled ruin where her face should be.
"Our purpose is salvation," the Marquis said again. "Ivalice united in glory, under the auspices of the only power truly worthy to be called divine. That power can bring equality and prosperity to our broken kingdom, as it can bring the dead back to life."
It was true. It was all true. Demons walked in the flesh of men, and brought the powers of old stories to life. A dead man commanded a host of corpses, and made promises of power, and offered terrible temptations, like fallen siblings brought back from the dead.
And in the thick of her horror, Melia wondered: could they bring Izlude back to her?
"Give us the Gospel," Elmdor said, as Melia's heart quivered. "Give us the Stones. You shall have your sister back. You shall have the Ivalice you seek."
Ramza stared at the Marquis. He stared at the corpses. He stared, longest of all, at the pulp-faced woman with broken teeth standing beside the deep-voiced blonde man. The sword in his hand trembled.
"No," Ramza said at last.
Silence.
"No?" the Marquis repeated.
"No." Ramza's voice trembled worse than his sword. "You will not have the Gospel. You will not have the Stones."
"Then you consign your sister to a fate worse than death," the Marquis sighed.
"It seems to me she is consigned already," Ramza replied, with grief cracking in his voice, and Meliadoul felt another pang in her chest. She knew that grief too well.
"You have no idea what horrors I can visit upon her," the Marquis growled.
"Can it be any worse than this?" Ramza asked, and laughed—a sound as cold as ice, and sharp as glass. "My sister's corpse stands beside the first man I ever murdered-" The blonde man's eyes flashed dangerously, and the strange purple glow beneath his pallid flesh brightened, like embers fanned into fresh fire. "Under the command of a demon wearing the face of the holiest man I ever knew. A demon and his dead man, leading a host of corpses. How scared you must be."
"You think me frightened, Ramza Beoulve?" The Marquis' laugh matched Ramza's, in coldness and sharpness alike.
"Aren't you?" Ramza asked, though his voice shook. "I killed Cuchulainn before I even knew what you Lucavi were. I killed Wiegraf, and when he turned into Belias, I killed him, too. We drove you from Riovanes, Messam." His grip tightened on his sword. The cold in his voice was melting, giving way to terrible heat. "You kill my sister, and offer to make her a new puppet in exchange for my surrender, and I do not blame you for your fear, because the people beside me have faced armies and demons and every one has fallen before us but if you hoped for mercy you should not. Have killed. My sister!"
Ramza sprang towards the Marquis, a second too slow. Rage and grief might give him strength, but they had also slowed his thoughts. By the time he had decided to move, Meliadoul Tengille had already ripped past him, swinging Quan's sword at the demon in the Marquis' skin.
The Marquis' long katana had already snapped up to his defense. As his blade clashed against hers, his red/brown eyes widened in disbelief. "Melia?"
"Demon," she replied, and willed, and her magic cracked his sword.
She would not leave a fellow righteous seeker of vengeance alone upon the battlefield. They would get the justice they deserved—from this demon, and all his motley company—in the name of the siblings that had been taken from them. God had led her to this place to kill a monster, just as she had asked Him to.