(Updating every two weeks through June)
Chapter 116: A Voyage of Heretics
As the ship's engines rumbled to life beneath him, Ramza finally crawled from the back of the caravan. The salt of the sea breeze prickled in his nostrils, and the sun was bright enough to make him squint.
"You should stay in there until we're well away from port," Melia grunted, with a reproving look over her shoulder.
"I don't think we're going to be pursued by Templar ships," Ramza replied, as he looked around the deck. "They don't even have a navy, do they?"
"They don't," Val said, stepping into view from one side. "But getting spotted won't do anyone any good. Get back in there."
Ramza scowled at both of them, and ducked back inside the caravan. It stank in here: too many bodies hidden inside for too long, as they had made their way into Sal Ghidos under the cover of Meliadoul's Templar authority. Ramza, Rafa, Malak, Agrias, and Radia had all been compelled to hide inside, each of them too recognizable based on the wanted posters. Mustadio, Alicia, and Lavian stayed outside with Melia, with new forged orders on Mustadio's person should they encounter any trouble: they were reinforcements for the Templar expedition in the Neveleska Archipelago, traveling with the attache to the Bishop Canne-Beurich for that purpose.
Heading to the Archipelago. Heading to Ovelia, and Beowulf, and answers.
"Should have snuck out," Radia muttered, as Ramza wormed his way beside her.
"You're both pretty whiny for soldiers," Malak observed, perched on a crate of supplies near the caravan's front.
Radia scowled at him. Malak grinned back. It was nice to see him smile: he looked much more relaxed and youthful than Ramza had ever seen him.
"Not too sad to have missed Sal Ghidos, though," Radia grunted. "Wasn't exactly fun last time we were here."
"Not really, no," Ramza agreed. They'd spent nearly a month wandering those dingy streets nearly two years ago, helping the local garrison deal with a local cabal of merchants who'd formed their own little criminal syndicate as they tried to seize control of the city. Sal Ghidos had been ravaged by the Ordallian fleet during the 50 Years War: whole blocks were still cratered and burnt, which made for hellish fighting when the syndicate's enforcers had leapt out at them from alleyways. Ramza remembered a particularly frantic battle one night, when they'd been the ones doing the ambushing, catching a local gang leader in his weekly meeting with the syndicate. Running from alley to alley, bodies leaping out of shadows with the blades flashing in their hand. Ramza had nearly had his throat cut by an Ordallian mercenary: only Gaffgarion's quick bladework had saved him.
Ramza looked sidelong at Radia, who was staring moodily out towards the caravan exit. "You alright?" he asked.
She shrugged. "As I can be." She looked back to him, and squeezed his hand. "We should talk later."
"I'd like that."
A few minutes later, and Melia shouted the all-clear. Ramza gestured for the others to go ahead of him, and absently rubbed at the healing wounds in his legs. They had been relatively shallow, and had missed major veins, but even after Lavian's care, they still ached.
"Ramza." Ramza looked back up to find Radia waiting for him by the exit. "Are you alright?"
Ramza laughed, and shook his head. "No."
They had won no victory at Limberry Palace. They had survived, yes: they had even struck down another Lucavi. But those demons still held his sister, even if Argus had promised no harm would come to her. And now there was the matter of this larger plot that Argus had spoken of, before he'd burned. The demons they were facing were not merely feeding the fires that consumed Ivalice: they were feeding on the very souls of those they killed. They could bring men back who were three years dead, just to dance to their tune. Why?
So many questions unanswered. And Ramza had saved no one.
Radia nodded, and ducked back into the caravan. "Maybe we could talk now."
Ramza shrugged. "If you like."
They were quiet for a moment. She rested her head on his shoulder so hesitantly, as though she were afraid she might hurt him. Ramza wrapped an arm around her, just as gently.
"It's...hard," Radia said. "I...these last few years..." She rested her hand on his leg: he placed his hand on hers. Still so ginger with each other, as though one of them might crack and shatter if they weren't careful.
"I don't know...what I'd be...who I'd be...without you," Radia whispered.
He squeezed her hand. "I...me too."
"But...my father."
Ramza's heart ached. "I know."
"And the worst part is, it's not even..." She shook her head. "You killed him, Ramza. But I...I think he would have killed you, if you hadn't, and I couldn't...I don't ever want to lose you."
Ramza squeezed her hand again. "I can walk into another trap for you, if it'll help."
She laughed, leaned up and kissed the side of his neck, and an electric tingle raced out from the place where her lips touched his skin.
"It's just..." Her breath tickled his skin, but he had no urge to laugh. "Him and I, we...we never really...figured it out. How to be...a father and a daughter. And...and now, it's...it's never going to be...better. And that's not your fault, but..."
Ramza shrugged. "I know." He paused a moment, thought of Alma and their last conversation on the way to Orbonne. "It's...like that with...with my father, too. And he wasn't like Gaffgarion." He paused. "No offense."
Radia laughed. "None taken."
"You realize at this point you're sitting in a stinking caravan by choice?" called a voice with a faint Romandan accent.
Ramza and Radia looked up. The captain who had carried Ramza and Mustadio to safety in Lionel had poked her head through the caravan's entrance. No longer was her tan, angular face framed by a mane of black hair: now it was as pink as the horizon at dawn.
"Maybe we're like pigs," Ramza suggested. "We like to roll around in our own filth."
The captain wrinkled her nose. "We don't have running water on this ship, so I would prefer if you didn't."
Radia squeezed his hand, then disentangled herself from him, and clambered to the exit. Ramza took a deep breath, then rose on aching legs, and followed her. The sun was as bright as it had been moments before, but this time the sea breeze was strong enough to carry away the worst of the caravan's smell.
"Moving a little stiffly there, heretic," the captain said cheerfully, helping Radia down and reaching for him in turn. "Finally feeling your age?"
"They say the body starts to go at 20, don't they?" Ramza said absently, letting the captain help him down. "Still have a few months left." He stretched. "Should have realized you'd be the one taking us to the Royal Retreat."
"I simply go where I'm paid to go!" the captain replied. "No motivations of my own."
"Of course not," Ramza agreed, smiling. "Thanks anyways.
The captain gave an airy wave, and sauntered off. Ramza watched her go, and nodded to a passing crewman he recognized from his last spell aboard the ship. Agrias, Alicia, and Lavian were huddled near the door to the galley, talking in hushed voices and casting suspicious glances at every crew member who hurried here and there on errands of their own. Ramza headed towards them.
"This could be a trap," Agrias repeated, waving Ramza over.
"It's not," Ramza said.
"It could-"
"These are the people who brought me and Mustadio to you in Lionel," Ramza replied. "If they wanted to hurt us, they would have done it then."
Agrias grimaced, and cast another wary look around. Lavian gave her captain a reassuring pat on her armored shoulder.
"We'll still need to set up a regular guard rotation," Agrias said at last.
"Let me know what you need from me, Agrias," Ramza said, and strolled past her, looking for the rest of his friends. He saw Malak and Rafa at the front of the ship, talking animatedly to one another, and looking younger and more alive than he'd ever seen them. Melia stood a little way behind them, looking characteristically awkward, but then Malak called something to her and she called something back and though Ramza couldn't hear the words he could see some of the tension leave her face.
He headed belowdecks, to the battered collection of floor-bolted benches that passed for the ship's galley. He was headed for the ship's engine in search of Mustadio, but he found him here instead, sitting at a table with the Germonique Gospel and Simon's notes spread in front of him.
"Thought I'd find you working on the engine," Ramza said, sitting down across from him.
"I'll take a look at it later," Mustadio grunted, flipping over one page and making a note on a piece of paper next to him. The dark circles under his eyes seemed even darker than before. "Who knows the next time I'll have a chance to work on this."
Ramza shook his head. "Work on-" He broke off: Val had just descended the stairs. "Mus?"
Mustadio looked up at the urgency in Ramza's voice, then hastily put his books away. Ramza's chest felt tight: he didn't think this was a trap, but there was still so much he didn't know. The last thing they needed was for this unknown woman to see they had the-
"That's the Germonique Gospel, right?" Val asked, sitting down next to Mustadio and peering with interest at the book he'd just closed and slipped gently back into his bag.
Mustadio started. "Wha-"
"That would be high heresy," Ramza managed.
"Higher heresy than killing a Cardinal?" Val asked, arching her thin eyebrows. "Not to mention Templars and Inquisitors..." She shrugged. "I don't think you need to worry about being caught with a blasphemous book."
"No one's said it's the Gospel," Ramza said.
"I'm saying it is," Val said. "I've seen it before."
Ramza and Mustadio stared at her. "When?" Mustadio asked. "At Orbonne?"
"Is that where it ended up?" Val asked, and shook her head. "No. Before that." She extended a hand. "May I see it?"
Mustadio and Ramza exchanged glances. They didn't know this woman, who had seemed unperturbed by the gore and destruction of Limberry Palace, and who knew of both the Lucavi and the Gospel. But they had trusted her this far, hadn't they? The people she'd led them to had saved them once before. And if she meant what she'd promised in Limbery...if she really was taking them to see Ovelia again...
Ramza nodded his head a fraction of an inch. Mustadio nodded in turn, and carefully pulled the book from its place in his bag. He offered it to Val as gingerly as Radia had put her head on Ramza's shoulder: Val took it with matching reverence. When she flipped it open, her face changed: the severe, cynical look was gone, softened into something much younger and more innocent.
"It looks exactly the same," she sighed, and took a deep breath. "Even smells the same."
Ramza frowned. "How long has it been since you've seen it?"
"More than ten years," Val replied. Her fingers traced the edge of the page as her eyes hungrily took in every word. "In my great grandmother's house."
"Your..." The hairs on the back of Ramza's neck stood up. He remembered the words with which Simon's notes began: the old woman who had held this book before Simon, who had not spoken through every torture the Inquistors could inflict upon her.
"A brilliant woman," Val murmured. "The world is less without her."
"Can you read it?" Mustadio asked. There was something a little strange in his voice, strained and casual and hopeful all at once.
"The cipher?" Val shook her head regretfully. "No. She didn't have time to teach it to me."
"Cipher?" Ramza repeated.
Mustadio's head snapped back to Ramza. From their place buried in dark, exhausted circles, his eyes burned with excitement. "I figured it out a little before Melia attacked us," Mustadio said. "Certain errors in the text repeat themselves throughout: what you might first think is a misspelling is actually deliberate. There's information hidden in the text itself. But old Ydoran is hard to decipher even when it's not encoded, so..." He sighed. "I've been trying to crack it."
"That's what you've been working on all this time?" Ramza asked.
"He's clever," Val said, smirking at Mustadio. "It's a subtle thing. Gran showed me a little...I think she was planning to teach me, but..."
"But the Inquisitors found her?" Ramza prompted softly.
Val nodded. "She had friends who warned her." Her eyes flickered back down to the Gospel. "It was during the War, so it wasn't hard for a little girl to lose herself among the Orphans." Her eyes flashed up. "But I never forgot. What she told me, about the truth. What the Church did, to keep it hid."
Ramza locked eyes with her. He knew that gaze. He'd seen it on Delita's face, more than once.
"You're working against the Church?"
"I'm working for the Church," Val corrected him. "At least, for now." She looked back at the book for a moment, then glanced at Mustadio. "You want it open, or closed?"
"Open, please," Mustadio said, and took it when she passed it carefully back to him.
"Everyone aboard this ship has reason to hate the Church, and people like them," Val said. "That's the reason they crewed this ship. That's the reason you're on this ship. That's the reason this ship is sailing at all." She stood up. "Talk to the Lionesses, won't you? They're making everyone nervous."
"They've been betrayed before," Ramza said.
"And we're the ones who pulled you out of the fire, when you were," Val replied. She headed deeper into the ship, leaving the two of them behind.
Agrias insisted on maintaining a guard all the same, though she did relent on how thorough that guard needed to be. All she wanted was to make sure that at least two of them were watching the crew at any given moment: one belowdecks, and one above. Ramza took the first above deck watch, and spent it strolling about, talking to any crew who crossed his path.
As before, the crew were gregarious and diverse, in appearance, accent, and habit. As before, they were disarmingly evasive when it came to personal details...but not quite as evasive as they had been on his first voyage. He picked up the occasional name (Benedict, a grinning older man who claimed to have once been a priest; Emmeline, iron-haired and iron-eyed, who off-handedly referred to her time in the Haruten: Klaros, a young man with a wicked hand at cards and an unmistakable Ordallian accent).
The ship had a diverse crew. More importantly, the ship had the same crew. As far as Ramza could tell, no one had disembarked, though it had been nearly a year since Ramza had last laid eyes on them. A crew that had twice now dared the wrath of the Glabados Church...while at the same time, working with two of their ostensible agents.
"How are you enjoying our fine ship?" Captain Faris asked.
Ramza looked away from the dazzling ocean horizon, and glanced over his shoulder at the approaching Captain. He and the Captain had exchanged few words since their short conversation three days ago, but he had heard the other crewmen call her by name. That was another change: the crew had been careful not to name one another, the last time Ramza had sailed with them.
"A bit better than I did last time," Ramza said. "I hope we aren't crowding you."
Faris shrugged. "We do the work that is asked of us." She paused. "Although I admit, this is the second time I find you at the heart of some more...interesting work. First I smuggle you from Goug to escape the Templars...now I find you with a Templar."
"She's got every reason to be here."
"Of this, I have no doubt," Faris said. "Val would not have brought her aboard otherwise."
"If she wasn't fresh from killing a Lucavi, I would have left her behind," Val said, approaching from the other direction.
"Lucavi again," Faris grunted. "You really believe this, Val?"
Val shrugged. "It fits the facts we have."
"I thought it was another one of Delita's little stories," Faris mused.
Ramza's head snapped around. "Delita knows about the Lucavi?"
"He's the one who told me about them," Val said.
Ramza's head was spinning. Knowing of the Church's plot was one thing: knowing of the Lucavi was quite another. The Inquisitor in Lesalia had been certain Ramza was adding lies to his heretical murder, to cover his tracks: Izlude had known only of the Church plot, and not of the demons that reached out through the Stones. How did Delita know?
And then, a far more chilling thought: had Delita known about the Lucavi when they'd spoken in Warjilis? When he had sent Ramza in to spring the trap around Ovelia, had he also known of the Lucavi lurking behind it?
"If the heretic boy backs him up, I'm inclined to believe him," Faris said, as Ramza's head roiled more fiercely then the blue ocean spread out before them. "He seems an honest sort."
"You make that sound like an insult," Ramza muttered.
Faris flashed a dazzling smile. Val chuckled. Ramza's thoughts had quieted a little, as he looked between them. "You're fighting them, too?"
"Them?" Faris asked, with a quizzical tilt of her head.
"The Church. The Lucavi."
"Resisting them, certainly," Val interrupted. "Fighting them...well, we'll leave that to you."
Ramza grimaced. "Thanks."
"We all fight in our own ways," Val replied. "You should understand that better than most, Ramza Beoulve. Are any of your siblings like one another? And are any of you like your father?"
Ramza was quiet. Thinking of Dycedarg, who had been at the root of all the crimes against the Death Corps. Thinking of Zalbaag, who had given the order that had killed Teta. Thinking of his sister, bold and brilliant and captive, for some dark purpose he didn't understand. Thinking of his father, kind and decent and good-natured...and utterly unknown to him.
"It's the same for us," Val continued, into Ramza's silence. "Hell, for me and Faris more than most."
"Heresy and its accouterments are an old family business," Faris agreed.
Ramza blinked. "You're related?"
"She's my aunt," Val said, with a fond smile at Faris. "She helped me get out before grandma got taken, and kept tabs on me after. Helped pave the way for me...so to speak."
"You don't look-" Ramza began, with a glance between their features and their hair. But then, Faris had worn black hair the last time Ramza had seen her.
"Aunt Faris never stays the same for long," Val replied. "Hasn't since she was Uncle Faris."
"God wouldn't give us such a fine canvas if he didn't want us to paint upon it," Faris replied.
"I thought it was, 'God wouldn't give us such fine marble if he didn't want us to leave our mark'?" Val asked.
"Art is art." Faris gestured down at herself. "And you have to admit, I am quite the work of art."
"You believe in God?" Ramza asked.
"I do," Faris answered. "I always have. I think I always will. But it seems to me that God must be like a good parent, yes? They offer us lessons, and tools...but when Their children are grown, it is up to us what we do with those lessons." A dark look crossed her face. "The Church treats us like we are property. Good sheep to be herded as our shepherds will. Do not ask the wrong questions. Do not read the wrong books. God does not make mistakes." Faris spat to one side. "I don't know if I agree about God making mistakes, but I know people do. And I dislike any people who cloak themselves in God so they can pretend their proclamations are beyond question."'
Again, Ramza was quiet. For all his time running from the Church, he had spent little time thinking of its doctrines...or the threat that Ramza posed to them. He treated the Church as just another enemy to fight: a terrifying enemy, to be sure, with elite soldiers free to chase him to every corner of Ivalice, but not so different from the Baerd Company, or the Death Corps, or the Khamja, or the Hokuten, or the Nanten, or...
He was starting to feel discouraged at the sheer number of enemies he'd seen in his short life. He swallowed, and focused back on the Church. He had never been particularly pious. His mother had rarely gone to church, busy taking care of them and the local needy of Igros with the money left to her by her dead husband. His father had been far more devout, but had been away too often to do more than take them to the occasional service. Ramza knew that the Germonique Gospel threatened to unravel the Church by revealing the Saint as nothing more than a man, but he had never thought about how much wider that reach was: how the moral authority the Church claimed to derive from their service to the Saint had been used, in Ivalice and beyond.
"Land ho!" called a voice from the crow's nest. Faris snatched a telescope from her side and scanned the horizon, murmuring to herself. Ramza and Val squinted. There might be a slight shadow on the horizon, but that could just as easily be Ramza's imagination.
"There," Faris said, with some satisfaction, and handed the telescope to Val. Val looked for a moment, nodded, and offered it to Ramza in turn. The shadow leapt into focus as soon as Ramza put his eye to the eyepiece: a gentle white beach leading up scrubby green hills, beyond which stretched a thick, hilly forest.
"Took a bit longer than it might've," Faris explained, as Ramza turned the telescope from one side to the next in search of the other islands. "We could've followed the coast the whole way out, but we didn't want anyone knowing where we were going. This way, we'll come into the Archipelago from the north. Maybe more cautious than we need to be, but..."
She kept talking, but Ramza had stopped listening. Off to one side, past the island, he would have sworn he saw the slightest hint of movement. He frowned, squinted into the eyepiece to try and get a better look, found that didn't help.
"I think there's something moving out there," Ramza said.
He felt Faris go stiff at his side. Wordlessly, he handed the telescope back to her. She snapped it to her eye, focused on the same patch of horizon where he'd seen the movement. Her mouth pressed into a thin line. "Unknown ship!" Faris bellowed, in a voice so loud and thunderous that it stung in Ramza's ears. "All hands to battle stations!"