five things that never happened to larsa ferrinas solidor
(and one that did)
Basch spoke most kindly, but Larsa could feel the look he gave in reply was as stricken as though the words had been a slap instead. The trouble was, of course, that he had not. Certainly he had known that the names by which all the other Judges Magister went were not their own, as this had always been the custom; they were old family names, identifiers which connected the men and women of the Judge Magistrate to their respective bloodlines, fine or coarse, without rendering living breathing people vulnerable to resentment and revenge by those judged. But Gabranth was the name by which Larsa had known him since before Larsa could remember, learned in circumstances so informal that he simply never thought to question that it could be but a name. He did not know the true names of the other Judges Magister either, but confessing himself ignorant of Gabranth's -- especially now of all times -- seemed a crime unbearable, a weight that could not be stood.
"No," he managed to whisper, at last, after long struggling moments where his throat worked but made no sound and Basch's troubled looks were shot with pity. "I... suppose I did not." He could no longer meet Basch's eyes. "...What is his name?"
"Noah," Basch said, and came up to touch his shoulder; and there was a heavy aching in Basch's words as well. "Noah fon Ronsenberg."
Larsa let his eyes close, and nodded. Then, after but a moment's thought, he knelt down at the side of the infirmary cot where Gabranth -- where Noah lay, more bandage and injury than man. There was nowhere he dared touch of his body, nowhere that seemed that it would bear the weight of hands, but he could lean in close nonetheless, close enough to whisper in his ear: "Noah, please wake up soon."
He has slept in the sick bay of the Alexander for a week and more, and in the meantime there was much else to be done and to be considered, but all the while that name has remained on Larsa's lips, heavy with honour and love. He waits with it, as he sits at the man's bedside, daring now at least to clasp his hand; he waits with his hope, and with all patience, for such time as he may speak it aloud, and to its owner's ear.
---
The doors clang open and he strides through them, leaving the trail of soldiers behind outside the cell with no more than a look. He wears no circlet to declare his rank, but this is mostly a formality, a concession to the proper order of procedures that has yet to be observed; by instinct they answer to him as they would a liege. He is only a little surprised, but very grateful.
Drace sits on the cell's one stained cot, one of her legs thrust out stiffly before her, and he winces at the sight of it: if no bone is broken, then at least there is some bad sprain, he thinks. Stripped of armor, she is mottled with bruises, and he wonders with dim outrage who has seen fit to beat her. It does his heart ill to see her head held so low -- but when she looks up and sees him there, she lifts it at once, and straightens her back with it. It is not precisely an improvement.
"My lord," she says, and cannot disguise her mingled surprise, relief, anxiety. "I pray you forgive me for not rising."
"Of course." He gestures to one of the soldiers at last, and takes from him the keys to her cuffs, which he commences to unlock. "In this, as in all else, you have nothing to be pardoned," he tells her, in undertone, as he does, without meeting her eyes. "I know what happened."
Her hands freed, she rubs their wrists together, stirring the blood back to life; he can feel her watching him, but still not meet her gaze. "...And what has become of your lord brother?"
He closes his eyes, and says nothing. It is answer enough.
"And Judge Gabranth?" she asks, at last; the words sound oddly torn from her, as though she can restrain them no longer. He winces again, and this time he can feel her recoil. "He is not -- "
"No," he succeeds in saying, before she can finish. "He lives; but he is badly injured, and..." The words will not come at first; he must force them forth. "He may not wake."
He looks up in time to see Drace's mouth set, and she brace herself against the wall behind as though to stand. "Take me to him."
Larsa cannot but stare at her. "...Judge Drace, he rests aboard the Alexander; her infirmary was nearest after the battle. She flies yet nigh Rabanastre, it is a day's -- "
"Take me to him," she repeats. Every word she bites between her teeth. And as he looks upon her stony, composed countenance, he thinks he has finally begun to understand something he has never had cause to suspect before.
"Of course," he says, and takes her arm. It is an affront to her dignity he would never commit under circumstances in which she could rise under her own power, but she accepts it resignedly enough at present, hauling herself up to stand at his side.
At the very least, he thinks with a tiny half-smile, whoever mistreated her so should find her reinstatement a most unwelcome surprise.
---
Like most of the more important communications he has had from al-Cid, this letter was infuriatingly, melodramatically obtuse, nearly to the point of illegibility. But despite Larsa's best efforts through the post, his friend could be induced to say no more than that he was anxious to make introductions of Larsa to some dearly held friends of his own, and would be most pleased if Bur-Omisace could serve them again as meeting ground ("perhaps to put all unpleasant memories behind us, my dear young Larsa").
Finally, conceding that he would never defeat al-Cid's sense of secrecy, he has agreed to the meeting, and per request brings only Basch and Noah to accompany him: the former now bearing the latter's armour, the latter bearing naught but his own person, and the heavy limp of which he may never be entirely free. The day is brilliantly clear on the mountain when they arrive, the sky of blued metal, the light of jewels, and he finds the three men with one of al-Cid's assistants on one of the peak's terraces, standing and talking and laughing, one sitting perched on the wall that blocks off the drop. At first he has no idea who the two strangers with al-Cid could be; they are dark-haired, one tall and slim, the one sitting easily on the wall stockier, dressed in the Rozarrian style and entirely unfamiliar to him.
Then the taller one turns to look at him, and with a small pang he sees that, for all his hair is shorter and his features finer, the man looks quite strikingly like Vayne did. And only then, all at once, does he understand.
"Hello, Larsa," says Islude softly, as Olan pushes off the wall behind and comes to stand alongside, both of them smiling. "At last we meet."
"Larsa Ferrinas Solidor," al-Cid says expansively, looking pleased with himself as a cat perched on its dinner. He hardly knows whether to strangle the man or break down in gratitude. "May I present your exiled brothers: Islude Atkascha Solidor and Olan Atkascha Solidor. Who, as you can see, are dead only in rumour and the occasional official document."
It is surely not the first time that friendship with al-Cid has struck Larsa speechless; however, he can perhaps safely say that it is the most pleasant.
---
He remembers Captain Azelas, remembers liking him in their but brief association aboard the Leviathan. His strong sense was of a man longing for the best and expecting the worst, gentler by nature than time and circumstance had allowed him to remain. He is also aware that he and Basch have been close friends in the past, and that for some reason Noah seems to harbour a particular distaste for the man.
It is a surprise to see him -- Captain Azelas no longer, he supposes, although the new rank he occupies escapes Larsa's memory at present -- in the course of his visit to Bhujerba for a number of trade discussions, but not a great one; they had known that Basch's old friend, now in disgrace with her Majesty of Dalmasca, had found respite in the Marquis's service as one of his personal guards. Still, seeing Azelas behind Ondore's shoulder, now uniformed as a sainikah, his eyes cast downward, bears its own shock of recognition that even rumour cannot supplant. Larsa exchanges the most cordial of bows with the Marquis, and hopes the man has been getting on well. He cannot but feel a bit guilty; he did not suggest Azelas's unfortunate decision, nor would he have done so, but he fears his sympathy may have wrongly bolstered the man's confidence in same. It would not be the first time his own innocent folly had driven another astray, and he would regret it most deeply, were it so.
Basch is of course in the retinue with which he travels, and stands at his side, an imposing presence, throughout the day's business; but when the talks are finished and he and the Marquis rest at ease in one another's company the following evening, he notices both the more recent Judge Gabranth and the Marquis's man seem to have slipped away from the rest of each's company. It is difficult, however, for him to be too concerned. He supposes they have much to talk about.
---
She is a beautiful child: hair so fair it is nearly white, a rosy, delicate face, wide eyes desperate with curiosity. Her bassinet rests out on the terrace that is her parents' favoured spot, a canopy of white silks dressing it against the harshness of the desert sun. As Larsa leans over it to smile down on her, she looks up at him as well, from her swaddling, eyes bright with interest.
Ashe smiles, gently; she has been doing so more and more lately, and privately Larsa thinks it suits her character far better. "She's napped well today," she says, turning her fond smile as well down to the baby's gaze. "You're very fortunate; she's seldom so well behaved."
He glances up at her and smiles, the breeze blowing his hair across his forehead. "Already she learns diplomacy, then; to put her best face forward only for foreign dignitaries." This sally makes both her parents laugh, if only for politeness's sake, and he smiles down at the infant princess once more.
Without looking or having to look, Ashe reaches out and finds Rasler's waist to wind her arm around, and he answers it with one of his own across her shoulders. The years have not been long, but have been enough to erase from his features the evidence of his long imprisonment; he wears a short skim of beard on his cheeks now, but they have regained some semblance of their previous boyishness. The frail, starved creature he was when his princess learned he yet lived, and rescued him from the dungeons at Nalbina, is now all but buried under the weight of health and of strength, and perhaps not least of all, of fatherhood. It gladdens him immensely to see them both so at peace, delighting in their child and in each other. The gods know the darkness each has passed through, to come to this new dawn.
"Perhaps his Excellency would care to hold her," Rasler says, amid a kiss pressed into his wife's hair; Ashe looks to Larsa inquiringly, and his smile seems to be answer enough.
With extremes of care she bends over the bassinet to draw the baby out and into her arms, the folds of blanketing cloth tucked around her small body, and comes around to his side; with hardly an inkling of reservation she passes the fragile weight to Larsa, and he is humbled by her trust -- by both their trust. She is even more beautiful seen from in his arms.
The day is very fair and very clear.
Larsa stands with his hands folded before him, trying to hold himself as high as he may; the robes hastily assembled for him are heavy despite their smallness and drag upon his shoulders, the circlet too large and prone to slip if he does not raise his head just so. It's all a rather terrible visual metaphor, he has remarked aside to Basch, and found the irony in the words more bitter than he had meant. He stands flanked with Judges Magister; Basch in his brother's armour to the one side, Zargabaath to the other, both graced to have helmets to defend their thoughts. He has no such luxury, and must find it in himself to compose his own features. He thinks he has managed very well thus far.
There was no such pomp and ceremony for Gabranth (for Noah, he corrects himself fiercely, his hands squeezing too tight together for a second, for Noah), although they tried the best they could. His burial needed be in secret, and in the end they gave him to the sea, at the gorgeous edge of the Ridorana Cataract. The spray of water over the edge had caught the light in diamonds and pearls, the wind blown back his hair over his shoulders and the breath from his mouth; he had stood then beside Basch as well, on the boat from Balfonheim, but with no such need to control his looks and glad of it. Basch had clasped his shoulder and he had bowed his head to weep, as he had been taught to refrain from doing since he had been old enough to learn continence in all things, but still he could not help himself, despite his shame. He felt that he could have dropped his heart into the water, and its weight would have been enough to serve them well as any anchor. And he, just then, the better to be free of it.
The priest passes his hand over the graves, speaking the ancient words of rest and welcome back to the arms of the earth. For his part Larsa thinks his father and brother should have little use for either. Neither did he ever know to be a man who would admit origin in dust, nor accept respite when work yet remained unfinished. Though two caskets have been buried in the plots so newly turned, next to the older ones that hold his elder brothers even in disgrace, only one holds a body, and nor can he fully explain the thorn that knowledge thrusts into his heart. Perhaps it is only all these open ends, that bleed as open wounds: bodies vanished into the crashed wreck of the Bahamut, Vayne's and the brave sky pirates', stories cut short with no true endings but only the daily dreary progress of words, words, words. Surely, he thinks, there should be more to it than this. More to plan than funerals, more to say than farewells.
This time last spring, he could scarcely have imagined that all would be as it is now in a year's time; the idea would have seemed preposterous if he had been told, even amid the icicles of fear that had already begun to creep in through his skin. Perhaps he will wait, keep himself quiet in his spirit, until the spring next, and see what then rises from the soil. Surely by then they will not all be so much in death. Surely even from all this burnt earth, something may still grow.
He closes his eyes. It seems the sun is as bright as ever it has been.