Confessional, 19
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Seventeen
Eighteen
Confessional
Chapter Nineteen
The squad on patrol in the chivalry had heard rumours of a retrieval mission in the castle. Since it was their only lead, they decided to follow it. The CO told Kelly he knew a shortcut, but the hunter would not be led. Instead he accepted directions to a secret pathway to what they said was a courtyard with doors to the castle.
When they came upon the place they'd been directed to, they thought perhaps that they had been misled. There was no doorway, only a bunch of old book cases and a large armoire which looked like it would have taken a score of people to move.
Lani sighed, wondering what to do now. Kelly thought that the huge piece of furniture looked quite out of place in the book room and he walked over to inspect it. Sralani watched as he tried to push it; it would not budge. That was when she saw the opening at the top, just above the edge of the armoire; the thing had been placed there to block a doorway, the one they'd been told they'd find here. Some denizen of Glast did not want this passageway used.
"Look," she said, pointing to the top of the armoire.
He looked up, behind those dark glasses, and stepped back to see. "Yeah," he said when he saw it. "Too small for us to get through, I think."
"So what do we do?" She folded her arms over her chest as she gazed up at the opening.
"I don't know," he replied thoughtfully.
~
Nicholai reached the top of the stairs and found only darkness, but for the single thin rectangular patch of light high above his head. "Come up," he called down, "nothing will kill you."
He reached out to touch the darkness in front of him as Chan followed up the stairs after him; Fuuji stayed down to pull some half-caring sort of security. The wall before him was smooth wood, which seemed very out of place beside the rough stone walls. As Chan stepped up beside him, he examined the scene and said, "Something blocked it."
"Ja," Nicholai agreed, and turned his eyes up to that opening. It was three, perhaps four feet wide, and under a foot high.
Chan's gaze followed, and he looked at it critically for a moment. "Bet you could fit through there," he said finally.
"Me?" The bard's tone was indignant.
"Yeah you. You're the smallest one here. Fuuji and I can't fit through a hole that fuckin' small."
"And just what are you expecting me to do, Herr Crusader?"
"Find help. Lieutenant Amaryn's at the Staircase, I think Smithe's in the chivalry. We're not the only fucking unit out here. Someone's gonna come help."
"How do you know I will not run and leave you both to die?"
"I don't. You're a motherfucking spy. I don't think I can trust you anywhere near as far as I can throw you."
"Hmph." By no means did Nicholai feel any sort of obligation to help them. These people were his enemies, soldiers of a nation that sought war with his own motherland. If he got over that obstacle in front of the doorway, he would run home to Schwartzwald and report everything to President Roelighein. He'd return for the black God-sword in a week or so, after the two would have died.
And then he heard a voice on the other side. A familiar sweet voice that he had not realized he missed until he heard it again.
On the other side, Lani heard the conversation, muffled by the pressing stone walls. She leaned forward against the wooden armoire and called out a hesitant, "Hello?"
"Frauline Lani!" Nicholai said in realization. "What is bringing you here?" he called back in response.
"Sralani?" But Chan's questioning word was drowned out in Lani's response as she cried, "You! You bitch!"
"Please hold no grudge, dear Lani. All in the interest of my work, ja?"
"Your work? Your work?" She was beyond angry. Bitter, furious, and somewhere deep down, disappointed.
"Luring you to bring me home and stealing Herr Fuuji's book. Not the other things, those were in interest of you."
"You're the one who--" But chan was again interrupted by Lani's respopnse.
She found her disappointment somewhat lessen, and her anger fell into some sort of listless feeling of some unnamed emotion. "What is your work?" she asked, wondering what job a bard could have that would ask him to seduce his way into stealing a book from her brother.
Chan interrupted whatever Nicholai was concocting with, "He's a Schwartzwald spy." The bard looked away guiltily in the dim light provided through that small hole.
"A what?" Then she seemed to realize who said it. "Mister Chan?"
"Yeah, your brother's here too. Down the stairs."
"Tenyo?" Her heart leapt. He was here, she'd found him. "Is he okay?"
"He's..." Chan didn't really want to lie; he didn't think Fuuji was fine, he thought the boy was crazy. "He's not injured," was what he finally decided on. Nicholai glanced at him questioningly, wondering about the hesitation.
"Oh, thank god. Everyone is fine, right? Nobody's hurt."
"Fuuji and I are good, but Clayborne turned out to be the bard and Dvorak's gone."
"Dvorak?" It took her a moment to realize he meant Ulrike, and that she was dead. That made her sad; she had liked Ulrike. "Oh...no, what happened."
Chan looked at Nicholai, handing the question to him. He only said, "A very tragic thing. I have no wish to speak of it."
"Ask if we can get to them," Kelly told Lani.
She nodded and turned the question to them. "Is there any way we can get to you?"
Chan thought, but his only answer was to ask Fuuji; he seemed to know more about this place than the rest of them did. Nicholai thought to check the stolen map, but he knew he couldn't read it in the light of that rectangular opening.
"Fuuji might know," Chan told Nicholai. "We should all discuss it."
Nicholai nodded, and moved back down the stairs.
Chan told Lani, "We need to check. Stay right there, we'll be back."
"Okay," she replied, and then stayed there by the armoire, waiting. Kelly stood by the door of the room, keeping an eye out for any dangerous monsters that might drive them from their post.
When Chan came down, Nicholai was laying out the map on the amazingly alive and green grass, and Fuuji stood over him, looking down at it as Chan walked over.
"So it was you," Fuuji said as he knelt beside the bard and the map.
"Ja, your sister was helpful," he muttered offhandedly as he tried to locate them on the map.
"Excuse me?"
He found the castle and tried to trace the path to the courtyard with his fingers. "She is very attracted to handsome bards. It was a very simple thing to make my way into your house."
That's when it clicked for Tenyo. Why Sralani had been so hard to wake up that day his book had vanished and why she'd seemed so out of it when she'd finally awoken. Nicholai had seduced her, drugged her, and then ransacked his room for any vital information. It make him unspeakably angry that his sister had been tricked like that, that Nicholai had been low enough to go through his sister to get to him. And, above that, that Lani had been touched by somebody else. Even despite his disgust with his sister's honest feelings, his being her brother for twenty years of their life made him very protective of her. So protective, and so angry now at the injustice of Nicholai's particular sinister brand of perfection, that he leapt on the spy like a tiger on its prey.
The attack came so suddenly that there was no time to react. Chan rushed to haul Fuuji off before he did serious damage, pulling him away as he struggled. He pinned Fuuji down much the same as he'd pinned Ulrike down, telling him, "Calm the fuck down. Christ, Fuuji."
Nicholai sat up, nursing a bloody nose. The ribbon had come loose from his hair and his golden curls hung in disarray over his face and his shoulders. He muttered something like, "Schweinehund," as he moved one blood-covered hand from his nose to find the hood of his huntress shirt so he could staunch the blood with that instead.
Fuuji was screaming threats, trying to writhe his way out of Chan's hold. The crusader sighed, shifted so that Fuuji was pinned on his stomach only by Chan's weight as he sat straddling the boy's waist. He looked over at Nicholai, asking, "Find anything?"
Nicholai shot him a glare, but leaned over the map nonetheless, holding the fabric to his face with his right hand as his left scanned once more for their position. The stains already on his huntress uniform contrasted with the fresh ones from his new, real injury.
"Get off me!" Fuuji demanded. "That's low! That's low!" I'll kill you!"
Chan gave him a sound whack upside the head, which did as intrended and made the priest fall silent, holding his hands over the now aching spot on his head. "Fucking save it," said Chan. "Kick the shit out of him when we get out. It can fucking wait until then." Chan knew they weren't safe here. This was Baphomet's land, he could get them if he wanted them. They had to get out as soon as possible, get away from the wrath of the king of Glast Heim.
"I don't care," Fuuji said, glaring at Nicholai from his place on the ground. "It's your fault," he said. "You did it. I don't know how but you made her think it! You made her think she's in love with me!"
The look on Chan's face was one of complete shock and confusion, but he said nothing.
Nicholai's eyes narrowed at the map and he said, without looking up, "Nein. Her father was doing that."
"Shut up. You shut the hell up. You don't know what our dad--" He cut himself off suddenly as he watched Nicholai rise slowly, and somehow very intimidatingly to his feet. Fuuji was almost afraid, for a moment, that Nicholai would walk over to him, maybe kill him, and that chan would let him.
But instead he just wiped all of his blood on his hood and then threw it back over his shoulder, and then he pushed his hair out of his face so that it was tidy again and he looked over at Fuuji and said, "Herr Fuuji, I am knowing much better than you the pain your father has given Lani."
Their eyes locked, and they stared each other down for what seemed to be forever, until Chan said, "So how 'bout that gettin' the fuck out of Glast Heim."
Nicholai broke the gaze, looking to the ground for his ribbon. "The south gate is to the churchyard, the west is to the stairs," he said, as he retrieved the red strip of cloth from the ground. "The other two are both parts of the castle, and one from its prisons."
"Those two are no-go's," said Chan. "Fuuji, you said you checked all the doors, right?"
"Get off," the priest growled in response.
"Can I trust you to behave?"
"Fine."
He stood, unpinning Fuuji from his place on the ground, and reached down to help him up. As that happened, Nicholai had begun the task of weaving his long hair into a braid to keep it out of the way, holding the ribbon in his mouth as his fingers moved through his shimmering golden curls. Fuuji tried to ignore him as he said, "Church, south, that one's broken. The chains are snapped and the hinges look bad. I doubt it'll ever open again."
"West?"
"Locked from the other side."
"So if..." He paused, not wanting to say this plan in front of Fuuji. The boy was mad, there was no telling what would make him snap now. And while Chan was certain that he could overtake him should it come to that, he really didn't want it to come to that. "Okay," he finished. "Wait down here."
Fuuji gavve a noncommital noise in reply as Chan walked over to Nicholai, who had finished his braid and was now tying it off with a bow. "If you can go and lead Sralani around to open the door--"
"Ja," he interrupted, throwing his braid back over his shoulder.
"Let's go then."
Nicholai bent down, picked up the map, folded it up and put it away. Then he and Chan walked back up the stairs and Nicholai rapped harshly on the wooden obstacle in the doorway. "Frauline," he said, just as harshly.
Lani gave a start at the unexpected alert. Having settled on the ground with her back against the armoire while she waited, she leapt to her feet, saying, "I'm here."
Kelly glanced back at her, to the hallway, and then moved to stand beside her by the armoire.
"There's a door that's locked from the other side through the labyrinth stairase. Nicholai's gonna lead you there to open it for us."
Nicholai paused in the act of removing his lute from his back, and looked, with a hint of surprise, at Chan. It was the first time the crusader had actually called him by name. He recovered from the shock quickly and set the instrument against the wall. He knew it wouldn't fit through with him, he'd have to be handed it one he was over. His bow, as well, he took off and placed beside the lute.
"We don't need a guide," Kelly muttered under his breath, even as Lani said, "Okay we can do that."
Nicholai stepped forward, looking up at the rectangle of light carved into the darkness. "Hand those to me when I am up," he told Chan, his voice soft in the manner of a person with a lot on his mind. Chan nodded and stepped up to lift Nicholai to the opening, which was at about seven feet high. Not so high that Chan himself could not reach it, but far above the minute bard's fondest dreams. Nicholai wondered briefly how Chan planned to lift him and was very relieved when the crusader took a knee, holding his hands out, fingers interlocked, to make a stair.
"Stay," Nicholai told him, to make sure he wouldn't move to lift him. He steadied his hands on the wood and stepped up, climbing from there to Chan's shoulder, where he could reach the edge of the opening. He pulled himself up, over the top of the armoire, his form so slight that he had no trouble fitting through the narrow passage.
chan stood once the weight was off his shoulders, moving so he could catch Nicholai in case he fell. Once the bard was through, crouching on top of the heavy furniture piece, he reached back through for his bow, which Chan picked up and held up to him. After that he handed up the instrument, which Nicholai slung over his back, following by doing the same with his bow, and then he moved to climb down from the seven-foot armoire.
Lani watched with bated breath, wondering at the strange feeling she got seeing him, that was not anger as she expected but something indistinctly akin to it. Kelly ran over to help the fellow huntress down, setting his hands on her waist to ease her drop to the ground. Before Nicholai's feet had hit the stone tiles of the floor, his elbow had connected very harshly with Kelly's stomach and he whirled on the man, furious.
"Do not touch me," he snarled at the doubled-over hunter.
Lani moved to Kelly's side, helping him to straighten up, fetching his dark glasses from the ground where they'd fallen and handing them back to him.
"We'll meet you there," said Chan from the other side of the door.
"Ja, go," Nicholai said, without so much as a glance over his shoulder toward the armoire. He glared at Kelly, who was adjusting his glasses on his face. "Let us have an understanding," he said, still angry.
Chan, on the other side, could still hear this, but decided it was not his place to eavesdrop, nor did he care enough to do so with any sort of interest, so he continued down the stairs to rejoin Fuuji while Nicholai yelled at Kelly.
"I am not some weak woman," he said, "who needs a strong man to help her. In fact I am not a woman at all, so do not act as if I am. I am a bard, a man."
Kelly's stare was a very confused one, but Lani spoiled the angry tirade by asking, "What happened?" She was staring at the dark stains covering Nicholai's shirt front.
He glanced down at himself and then gave a rather flighty shrug. "Fake," he said. "I had to play a death scene"
"Mister Chan said you're a spy."
He waved her statement away dismissively. "Come, Frauline, they are counting on you." He pulled his bow off his back, starting toward the door.
"Does she have to come?" he heard Kelly mutter, and he stopped, furious again but controlling his temper this time.
"He," Sralani corrected, and then wondered why she'd insisted it so adamantly. Nicholai breathed a sigh at that, as she continued with, "And yes, he does. You heard Mister Chan."
Kelly muttered something inaudible and Nicholai turned on them, annoyed. "If you wish to travel alone so fervently then perhaps you should. The great Nicholai Andalphus is not needing you, you are needing him, and he is not caring if you are coming or not."
There was a long silence, and then Nicholai continued, "King Baphomet is angered. We will be perhaps needing reinforcements. Perhaps it would be best if you left on your own to find some while the Frauline and I went to help the Herrn in the courtyard, ja?"
"Yeah. Sure." He didn't sound very enthusiastic. He walked out past Nicholai and into the depths of the chivalry; Lani thought to stop him, but by the time she'd figured out what to say, he was gone.
She looked at Nicholai who just shook his head, not for her but for himself, and then looked up at her with his practiced, charming smile. "Shall we go Frauline? To the labyrinth stair."
"Why did you tell him to leave?" she asked.
"We were not going to be getting along, that much should be obvious." He turned and began walking off, leading her away, out of the chivalry.
She followed, mostly because she didn't know what else to do. After they had been walking for a little while, she said, "So you're a spy?"
He shrugged, sort of an offhanded gesture. "I suppose," he said.
"Why?"
"Why not?"
She paused to think about that one for a moment. She decided to drop it. "I saw what you wrote in my diary."
"Ja,? A lie."
"What?"
He smiled, a somewhat distant smile, not his rehearsed perfect smile. It was somehow very endearing, more charming. "I do make a good father."
confused, she tried to think about that, but couldn't quite figure it out. "What?" she asked finally.
He sighed, and seemed to change the subject. "Did you ever think, Lani, when you were young, that another may be worse than you?"
It took her a moment to realize that he was referring to what she'd said of her father in her diary. She shook her head. "No."
"Nor I. But I see you Lani, and I think that you are very lucky."
"Lucky?" She could feel her outrage rising at the observation, and she almost wanted to punch him.
"You had at least one brother who was a brother to you, who loved you as a brother should. And you never had a child by your father's doings."
"A..." Her brow furrowed. "Okay, I think since you know my story, you owe me yours."
Another sigh, deep and sad this time, and he said, "I suppose. Growing up in Juno I was having a dead father and an absent mother. Three older brothers who treated me as an object, they were my tormentors. Three. You were having only one father."
"But..." She stopped herself, thought about it. "And you...you had a..."
"A daughter. I was fifteen. Ulrike's cousin took her for me."
"Ulrike?"
He realized suddenly, when he heard Lani say her name, that Ulrike was gone. That it was unquestionably his fault, and that she would never come back. He would have to tell her cousin. He'd have to tell his daughter that her beloved aunt was dead. And he would have to file the paperwork for the president on the loss of his second-best spy.
"But Ulrike told me she didn't like you."
He smiled ruefully. "Liar. Did she say I was a jerk?"
"Yeah."
He sighed sadly and repeated, "Liar."
"But...okay. So, then, when did you decide to be a boy?"
"Not long after. Just before sixteen. But that part is getting very complicated."
"Did your brothers stop once you...you know."
He was silent on that question for a short while; they exited the chivalry into the overcast day outside, and he directed them toward the labyrinth staircase. She was about to drop the question and ask another, thinking he was too uncomfortable to answer, but then he finally did.
"No," he said. Then he quickly followed with, "A lie, Johann did. But the other two...if anything they became worse."
"So what did you do?"
"I simply ran. Nothing so dramatic as you." That he wished to speak of. Choking his brother Mikhael out in the middle of the night, stealing away to Ulrike's house, saying good-bye to his year-old daughter, knowing he wouldn't see her again for a long time while he began a new life in a new country. He took a deep breath, stopping himself there, waiting for her reply.
"Where did you go?" she asked.
"Al de Baran," he said. "Where I learned the language of Rune-Midgard and became an actor."
"An actor?"
"Ja." He gave her a grin, cocking his head just slightly. "I am being a very good actor."
"Really?"
He nodded, but it seemed somewhat distant. "That is all of it, really."
"What about being a spy?"
He gave an offhanded shrug, saying, "Acting."
She opened her mouth to speak but closed it, thinking about his implication. Finally she asked, "Why are you telling me all this?"
"I am a man who cannot be a man. You are a girl in love with a boy you cannot love. We are both being very...different. Two sides of the same coin, as the Ruenmidern like to say. I feel a..." He paused, frowning, his brow furrowing. "Connection to you. Like we are the same, I am you, but to an extreme. We are both, as I believe Herr Chan would say," and here he did a perfect imitation of the crusader's gruff voice, so perfect that for a moment Lani thought he had somehow snuck up behind them and said it himself, "pretty fucked up."
"So...sympathizing? You can sympathize?"
"Empathize. And...I suppose."
And she repeated, "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you will understand as others cannot. As I said, you can empathize. The only other girl I know who could was Gisele; she is long dead. Your father drove you from being a dancer, as my brothers drove me from staying a woman. He drove you to love your brother, just as they drove me to be a lover of women."
She saw it. The similarities he pointed out did make sense, and suddenly she realized something she never had before. "Tenyo was there for me. That's why... He was the only person...he still...well, not anymore...but, the only person I really had to talk to. The only person...who could make me feel better."
"That is why you are in love with him. It is the same reason I fell in love with Ulrike."
She fell silent.
"Today is being a day of confessions, Lani. I fear, deep in my heart, that I will not live to see the sun's setting this night."
"I'll save you," she said, her voice soft and very quiet. She wasn't sure why she said it, or how she intended to follow through. But she felt some pressing need to protect him. She could picture him suddenly, a scared young girl as she had once been, hiding behind locked doors, running at the smallest noise, always looking nervously around for any signs of her brothers to sneak up on her, just as she had been with her own father.
He laughed, coldly, saying nothing as they reached the pavillion and headed down the stairs into the labyrinth staircase.
~
Chan and Fuuji headed to the south doors that led to the ruined staircase. They walked in silence, Chan wary of setting the priest off again. It took them quite some time to walk from one side of the courtyard to the other; the place was monstrously vast.
There was a stone walkway approaching the archway. Very detailed stone statues of goblins, the grim and terrifying features carved on their masks mocking the two soldiers, stood on either side of the path. They stood still, as golins never did, their painted-on cross-shaped eyes glaring cheerfully, angrily, sadly, or dementedly at nothing.
Fuuji stopped beside a knife-weilding one, who stood with its blade thrust over its head as if leading the others into battle, and he sat beside it, resting his arm on the statue's base. Still he said nothing. Chan stopped on the other side of the path, near an archer who held its bow out before it with a stone arrow nocked and ready to fire at nobody.
He realized suddenly that he still carried the god-sword they had come for, and he looked down at it, at the vicious ebon blade. It didn't look like a god's weapon, it looked like the devil's weapon. Fitting, then, that they'd stolen it from Baphomet, wasn't it? He held it up to the light, the strange ambient light of the courtyard, and wondered what was so special about it that they'd risked a unit to go get it.
"Still want to quit, Dick?"
He looked from the sword to Fuuji, who was staring at him from the other side of the walkway, his dark eyes so full of intent and madness that it actually managed to disconcert him. "This is bullshit," he said, lowering the sword. "And you know it. I'd rather be fighting the goddamn Schwartzwald, at least then it'd seem to have a fucking purpose."
"People would still die."
"For a goddamn reason, though."
"You'll probably get your wish soon enough."
He stopped, saying nothing to that. It was probably true. With what was happening now, they did seem to be on the verge of war. But it was also true that he did feel as he'd said; he'd rather be fighting Shcwartzwald soldiers than undead, dying for his country in the line of battle instead of for a fruitless wild goose chase in a dead city. He really had planned to walk into the CO's office and throw down his blade, but he reconsidered now. A war, a new purpose. His country, his men would need him.
"So are you still quitting? Getting out before the big fight?"
He looked up from his thoughts. "Quit playing fuckin' devil's advocate, you motherfucker."
Tenyo gave a smile and a slight shrug.
With a sigh, Chan sat before the statue of the goblin archer, and he lit a cigarette and waited, lost in his own thoughts.
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Confessional
Chapter Nineteen
The squad on patrol in the chivalry had heard rumours of a retrieval mission in the castle. Since it was their only lead, they decided to follow it. The CO told Kelly he knew a shortcut, but the hunter would not be led. Instead he accepted directions to a secret pathway to what they said was a courtyard with doors to the castle.
When they came upon the place they'd been directed to, they thought perhaps that they had been misled. There was no doorway, only a bunch of old book cases and a large armoire which looked like it would have taken a score of people to move.
Lani sighed, wondering what to do now. Kelly thought that the huge piece of furniture looked quite out of place in the book room and he walked over to inspect it. Sralani watched as he tried to push it; it would not budge. That was when she saw the opening at the top, just above the edge of the armoire; the thing had been placed there to block a doorway, the one they'd been told they'd find here. Some denizen of Glast did not want this passageway used.
"Look," she said, pointing to the top of the armoire.
He looked up, behind those dark glasses, and stepped back to see. "Yeah," he said when he saw it. "Too small for us to get through, I think."
"So what do we do?" She folded her arms over her chest as she gazed up at the opening.
"I don't know," he replied thoughtfully.
~
Nicholai reached the top of the stairs and found only darkness, but for the single thin rectangular patch of light high above his head. "Come up," he called down, "nothing will kill you."
He reached out to touch the darkness in front of him as Chan followed up the stairs after him; Fuuji stayed down to pull some half-caring sort of security. The wall before him was smooth wood, which seemed very out of place beside the rough stone walls. As Chan stepped up beside him, he examined the scene and said, "Something blocked it."
"Ja," Nicholai agreed, and turned his eyes up to that opening. It was three, perhaps four feet wide, and under a foot high.
Chan's gaze followed, and he looked at it critically for a moment. "Bet you could fit through there," he said finally.
"Me?" The bard's tone was indignant.
"Yeah you. You're the smallest one here. Fuuji and I can't fit through a hole that fuckin' small."
"And just what are you expecting me to do, Herr Crusader?"
"Find help. Lieutenant Amaryn's at the Staircase, I think Smithe's in the chivalry. We're not the only fucking unit out here. Someone's gonna come help."
"How do you know I will not run and leave you both to die?"
"I don't. You're a motherfucking spy. I don't think I can trust you anywhere near as far as I can throw you."
"Hmph." By no means did Nicholai feel any sort of obligation to help them. These people were his enemies, soldiers of a nation that sought war with his own motherland. If he got over that obstacle in front of the doorway, he would run home to Schwartzwald and report everything to President Roelighein. He'd return for the black God-sword in a week or so, after the two would have died.
And then he heard a voice on the other side. A familiar sweet voice that he had not realized he missed until he heard it again.
On the other side, Lani heard the conversation, muffled by the pressing stone walls. She leaned forward against the wooden armoire and called out a hesitant, "Hello?"
"Frauline Lani!" Nicholai said in realization. "What is bringing you here?" he called back in response.
"Sralani?" But Chan's questioning word was drowned out in Lani's response as she cried, "You! You bitch!"
"Please hold no grudge, dear Lani. All in the interest of my work, ja?"
"Your work? Your work?" She was beyond angry. Bitter, furious, and somewhere deep down, disappointed.
"Luring you to bring me home and stealing Herr Fuuji's book. Not the other things, those were in interest of you."
"You're the one who--" But chan was again interrupted by Lani's respopnse.
She found her disappointment somewhat lessen, and her anger fell into some sort of listless feeling of some unnamed emotion. "What is your work?" she asked, wondering what job a bard could have that would ask him to seduce his way into stealing a book from her brother.
Chan interrupted whatever Nicholai was concocting with, "He's a Schwartzwald spy." The bard looked away guiltily in the dim light provided through that small hole.
"A what?" Then she seemed to realize who said it. "Mister Chan?"
"Yeah, your brother's here too. Down the stairs."
"Tenyo?" Her heart leapt. He was here, she'd found him. "Is he okay?"
"He's..." Chan didn't really want to lie; he didn't think Fuuji was fine, he thought the boy was crazy. "He's not injured," was what he finally decided on. Nicholai glanced at him questioningly, wondering about the hesitation.
"Oh, thank god. Everyone is fine, right? Nobody's hurt."
"Fuuji and I are good, but Clayborne turned out to be the bard and Dvorak's gone."
"Dvorak?" It took her a moment to realize he meant Ulrike, and that she was dead. That made her sad; she had liked Ulrike. "Oh...no, what happened."
Chan looked at Nicholai, handing the question to him. He only said, "A very tragic thing. I have no wish to speak of it."
"Ask if we can get to them," Kelly told Lani.
She nodded and turned the question to them. "Is there any way we can get to you?"
Chan thought, but his only answer was to ask Fuuji; he seemed to know more about this place than the rest of them did. Nicholai thought to check the stolen map, but he knew he couldn't read it in the light of that rectangular opening.
"Fuuji might know," Chan told Nicholai. "We should all discuss it."
Nicholai nodded, and moved back down the stairs.
Chan told Lani, "We need to check. Stay right there, we'll be back."
"Okay," she replied, and then stayed there by the armoire, waiting. Kelly stood by the door of the room, keeping an eye out for any dangerous monsters that might drive them from their post.
When Chan came down, Nicholai was laying out the map on the amazingly alive and green grass, and Fuuji stood over him, looking down at it as Chan walked over.
"So it was you," Fuuji said as he knelt beside the bard and the map.
"Ja, your sister was helpful," he muttered offhandedly as he tried to locate them on the map.
"Excuse me?"
He found the castle and tried to trace the path to the courtyard with his fingers. "She is very attracted to handsome bards. It was a very simple thing to make my way into your house."
That's when it clicked for Tenyo. Why Sralani had been so hard to wake up that day his book had vanished and why she'd seemed so out of it when she'd finally awoken. Nicholai had seduced her, drugged her, and then ransacked his room for any vital information. It make him unspeakably angry that his sister had been tricked like that, that Nicholai had been low enough to go through his sister to get to him. And, above that, that Lani had been touched by somebody else. Even despite his disgust with his sister's honest feelings, his being her brother for twenty years of their life made him very protective of her. So protective, and so angry now at the injustice of Nicholai's particular sinister brand of perfection, that he leapt on the spy like a tiger on its prey.
The attack came so suddenly that there was no time to react. Chan rushed to haul Fuuji off before he did serious damage, pulling him away as he struggled. He pinned Fuuji down much the same as he'd pinned Ulrike down, telling him, "Calm the fuck down. Christ, Fuuji."
Nicholai sat up, nursing a bloody nose. The ribbon had come loose from his hair and his golden curls hung in disarray over his face and his shoulders. He muttered something like, "Schweinehund," as he moved one blood-covered hand from his nose to find the hood of his huntress shirt so he could staunch the blood with that instead.
Fuuji was screaming threats, trying to writhe his way out of Chan's hold. The crusader sighed, shifted so that Fuuji was pinned on his stomach only by Chan's weight as he sat straddling the boy's waist. He looked over at Nicholai, asking, "Find anything?"
Nicholai shot him a glare, but leaned over the map nonetheless, holding the fabric to his face with his right hand as his left scanned once more for their position. The stains already on his huntress uniform contrasted with the fresh ones from his new, real injury.
"Get off me!" Fuuji demanded. "That's low! That's low!" I'll kill you!"
Chan gave him a sound whack upside the head, which did as intrended and made the priest fall silent, holding his hands over the now aching spot on his head. "Fucking save it," said Chan. "Kick the shit out of him when we get out. It can fucking wait until then." Chan knew they weren't safe here. This was Baphomet's land, he could get them if he wanted them. They had to get out as soon as possible, get away from the wrath of the king of Glast Heim.
"I don't care," Fuuji said, glaring at Nicholai from his place on the ground. "It's your fault," he said. "You did it. I don't know how but you made her think it! You made her think she's in love with me!"
The look on Chan's face was one of complete shock and confusion, but he said nothing.
Nicholai's eyes narrowed at the map and he said, without looking up, "Nein. Her father was doing that."
"Shut up. You shut the hell up. You don't know what our dad--" He cut himself off suddenly as he watched Nicholai rise slowly, and somehow very intimidatingly to his feet. Fuuji was almost afraid, for a moment, that Nicholai would walk over to him, maybe kill him, and that chan would let him.
But instead he just wiped all of his blood on his hood and then threw it back over his shoulder, and then he pushed his hair out of his face so that it was tidy again and he looked over at Fuuji and said, "Herr Fuuji, I am knowing much better than you the pain your father has given Lani."
Their eyes locked, and they stared each other down for what seemed to be forever, until Chan said, "So how 'bout that gettin' the fuck out of Glast Heim."
Nicholai broke the gaze, looking to the ground for his ribbon. "The south gate is to the churchyard, the west is to the stairs," he said, as he retrieved the red strip of cloth from the ground. "The other two are both parts of the castle, and one from its prisons."
"Those two are no-go's," said Chan. "Fuuji, you said you checked all the doors, right?"
"Get off," the priest growled in response.
"Can I trust you to behave?"
"Fine."
He stood, unpinning Fuuji from his place on the ground, and reached down to help him up. As that happened, Nicholai had begun the task of weaving his long hair into a braid to keep it out of the way, holding the ribbon in his mouth as his fingers moved through his shimmering golden curls. Fuuji tried to ignore him as he said, "Church, south, that one's broken. The chains are snapped and the hinges look bad. I doubt it'll ever open again."
"West?"
"Locked from the other side."
"So if..." He paused, not wanting to say this plan in front of Fuuji. The boy was mad, there was no telling what would make him snap now. And while Chan was certain that he could overtake him should it come to that, he really didn't want it to come to that. "Okay," he finished. "Wait down here."
Fuuji gavve a noncommital noise in reply as Chan walked over to Nicholai, who had finished his braid and was now tying it off with a bow. "If you can go and lead Sralani around to open the door--"
"Ja," he interrupted, throwing his braid back over his shoulder.
"Let's go then."
Nicholai bent down, picked up the map, folded it up and put it away. Then he and Chan walked back up the stairs and Nicholai rapped harshly on the wooden obstacle in the doorway. "Frauline," he said, just as harshly.
Lani gave a start at the unexpected alert. Having settled on the ground with her back against the armoire while she waited, she leapt to her feet, saying, "I'm here."
Kelly glanced back at her, to the hallway, and then moved to stand beside her by the armoire.
"There's a door that's locked from the other side through the labyrinth stairase. Nicholai's gonna lead you there to open it for us."
Nicholai paused in the act of removing his lute from his back, and looked, with a hint of surprise, at Chan. It was the first time the crusader had actually called him by name. He recovered from the shock quickly and set the instrument against the wall. He knew it wouldn't fit through with him, he'd have to be handed it one he was over. His bow, as well, he took off and placed beside the lute.
"We don't need a guide," Kelly muttered under his breath, even as Lani said, "Okay we can do that."
Nicholai stepped forward, looking up at the rectangle of light carved into the darkness. "Hand those to me when I am up," he told Chan, his voice soft in the manner of a person with a lot on his mind. Chan nodded and stepped up to lift Nicholai to the opening, which was at about seven feet high. Not so high that Chan himself could not reach it, but far above the minute bard's fondest dreams. Nicholai wondered briefly how Chan planned to lift him and was very relieved when the crusader took a knee, holding his hands out, fingers interlocked, to make a stair.
"Stay," Nicholai told him, to make sure he wouldn't move to lift him. He steadied his hands on the wood and stepped up, climbing from there to Chan's shoulder, where he could reach the edge of the opening. He pulled himself up, over the top of the armoire, his form so slight that he had no trouble fitting through the narrow passage.
chan stood once the weight was off his shoulders, moving so he could catch Nicholai in case he fell. Once the bard was through, crouching on top of the heavy furniture piece, he reached back through for his bow, which Chan picked up and held up to him. After that he handed up the instrument, which Nicholai slung over his back, following by doing the same with his bow, and then he moved to climb down from the seven-foot armoire.
Lani watched with bated breath, wondering at the strange feeling she got seeing him, that was not anger as she expected but something indistinctly akin to it. Kelly ran over to help the fellow huntress down, setting his hands on her waist to ease her drop to the ground. Before Nicholai's feet had hit the stone tiles of the floor, his elbow had connected very harshly with Kelly's stomach and he whirled on the man, furious.
"Do not touch me," he snarled at the doubled-over hunter.
Lani moved to Kelly's side, helping him to straighten up, fetching his dark glasses from the ground where they'd fallen and handing them back to him.
"We'll meet you there," said Chan from the other side of the door.
"Ja, go," Nicholai said, without so much as a glance over his shoulder toward the armoire. He glared at Kelly, who was adjusting his glasses on his face. "Let us have an understanding," he said, still angry.
Chan, on the other side, could still hear this, but decided it was not his place to eavesdrop, nor did he care enough to do so with any sort of interest, so he continued down the stairs to rejoin Fuuji while Nicholai yelled at Kelly.
"I am not some weak woman," he said, "who needs a strong man to help her. In fact I am not a woman at all, so do not act as if I am. I am a bard, a man."
Kelly's stare was a very confused one, but Lani spoiled the angry tirade by asking, "What happened?" She was staring at the dark stains covering Nicholai's shirt front.
He glanced down at himself and then gave a rather flighty shrug. "Fake," he said. "I had to play a death scene"
"Mister Chan said you're a spy."
He waved her statement away dismissively. "Come, Frauline, they are counting on you." He pulled his bow off his back, starting toward the door.
"Does she have to come?" he heard Kelly mutter, and he stopped, furious again but controlling his temper this time.
"He," Sralani corrected, and then wondered why she'd insisted it so adamantly. Nicholai breathed a sigh at that, as she continued with, "And yes, he does. You heard Mister Chan."
Kelly muttered something inaudible and Nicholai turned on them, annoyed. "If you wish to travel alone so fervently then perhaps you should. The great Nicholai Andalphus is not needing you, you are needing him, and he is not caring if you are coming or not."
There was a long silence, and then Nicholai continued, "King Baphomet is angered. We will be perhaps needing reinforcements. Perhaps it would be best if you left on your own to find some while the Frauline and I went to help the Herrn in the courtyard, ja?"
"Yeah. Sure." He didn't sound very enthusiastic. He walked out past Nicholai and into the depths of the chivalry; Lani thought to stop him, but by the time she'd figured out what to say, he was gone.
She looked at Nicholai who just shook his head, not for her but for himself, and then looked up at her with his practiced, charming smile. "Shall we go Frauline? To the labyrinth stair."
"Why did you tell him to leave?" she asked.
"We were not going to be getting along, that much should be obvious." He turned and began walking off, leading her away, out of the chivalry.
She followed, mostly because she didn't know what else to do. After they had been walking for a little while, she said, "So you're a spy?"
He shrugged, sort of an offhanded gesture. "I suppose," he said.
"Why?"
"Why not?"
She paused to think about that one for a moment. She decided to drop it. "I saw what you wrote in my diary."
"Ja,? A lie."
"What?"
He smiled, a somewhat distant smile, not his rehearsed perfect smile. It was somehow very endearing, more charming. "I do make a good father."
confused, she tried to think about that, but couldn't quite figure it out. "What?" she asked finally.
He sighed, and seemed to change the subject. "Did you ever think, Lani, when you were young, that another may be worse than you?"
It took her a moment to realize that he was referring to what she'd said of her father in her diary. She shook her head. "No."
"Nor I. But I see you Lani, and I think that you are very lucky."
"Lucky?" She could feel her outrage rising at the observation, and she almost wanted to punch him.
"You had at least one brother who was a brother to you, who loved you as a brother should. And you never had a child by your father's doings."
"A..." Her brow furrowed. "Okay, I think since you know my story, you owe me yours."
Another sigh, deep and sad this time, and he said, "I suppose. Growing up in Juno I was having a dead father and an absent mother. Three older brothers who treated me as an object, they were my tormentors. Three. You were having only one father."
"But..." She stopped herself, thought about it. "And you...you had a..."
"A daughter. I was fifteen. Ulrike's cousin took her for me."
"Ulrike?"
He realized suddenly, when he heard Lani say her name, that Ulrike was gone. That it was unquestionably his fault, and that she would never come back. He would have to tell her cousin. He'd have to tell his daughter that her beloved aunt was dead. And he would have to file the paperwork for the president on the loss of his second-best spy.
"But Ulrike told me she didn't like you."
He smiled ruefully. "Liar. Did she say I was a jerk?"
"Yeah."
He sighed sadly and repeated, "Liar."
"But...okay. So, then, when did you decide to be a boy?"
"Not long after. Just before sixteen. But that part is getting very complicated."
"Did your brothers stop once you...you know."
He was silent on that question for a short while; they exited the chivalry into the overcast day outside, and he directed them toward the labyrinth staircase. She was about to drop the question and ask another, thinking he was too uncomfortable to answer, but then he finally did.
"No," he said. Then he quickly followed with, "A lie, Johann did. But the other two...if anything they became worse."
"So what did you do?"
"I simply ran. Nothing so dramatic as you." That he wished to speak of. Choking his brother Mikhael out in the middle of the night, stealing away to Ulrike's house, saying good-bye to his year-old daughter, knowing he wouldn't see her again for a long time while he began a new life in a new country. He took a deep breath, stopping himself there, waiting for her reply.
"Where did you go?" she asked.
"Al de Baran," he said. "Where I learned the language of Rune-Midgard and became an actor."
"An actor?"
"Ja." He gave her a grin, cocking his head just slightly. "I am being a very good actor."
"Really?"
He nodded, but it seemed somewhat distant. "That is all of it, really."
"What about being a spy?"
He gave an offhanded shrug, saying, "Acting."
She opened her mouth to speak but closed it, thinking about his implication. Finally she asked, "Why are you telling me all this?"
"I am a man who cannot be a man. You are a girl in love with a boy you cannot love. We are both being very...different. Two sides of the same coin, as the Ruenmidern like to say. I feel a..." He paused, frowning, his brow furrowing. "Connection to you. Like we are the same, I am you, but to an extreme. We are both, as I believe Herr Chan would say," and here he did a perfect imitation of the crusader's gruff voice, so perfect that for a moment Lani thought he had somehow snuck up behind them and said it himself, "pretty fucked up."
"So...sympathizing? You can sympathize?"
"Empathize. And...I suppose."
And she repeated, "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you will understand as others cannot. As I said, you can empathize. The only other girl I know who could was Gisele; she is long dead. Your father drove you from being a dancer, as my brothers drove me from staying a woman. He drove you to love your brother, just as they drove me to be a lover of women."
She saw it. The similarities he pointed out did make sense, and suddenly she realized something she never had before. "Tenyo was there for me. That's why... He was the only person...he still...well, not anymore...but, the only person I really had to talk to. The only person...who could make me feel better."
"That is why you are in love with him. It is the same reason I fell in love with Ulrike."
She fell silent.
"Today is being a day of confessions, Lani. I fear, deep in my heart, that I will not live to see the sun's setting this night."
"I'll save you," she said, her voice soft and very quiet. She wasn't sure why she said it, or how she intended to follow through. But she felt some pressing need to protect him. She could picture him suddenly, a scared young girl as she had once been, hiding behind locked doors, running at the smallest noise, always looking nervously around for any signs of her brothers to sneak up on her, just as she had been with her own father.
He laughed, coldly, saying nothing as they reached the pavillion and headed down the stairs into the labyrinth staircase.
~
Chan and Fuuji headed to the south doors that led to the ruined staircase. They walked in silence, Chan wary of setting the priest off again. It took them quite some time to walk from one side of the courtyard to the other; the place was monstrously vast.
There was a stone walkway approaching the archway. Very detailed stone statues of goblins, the grim and terrifying features carved on their masks mocking the two soldiers, stood on either side of the path. They stood still, as golins never did, their painted-on cross-shaped eyes glaring cheerfully, angrily, sadly, or dementedly at nothing.
Fuuji stopped beside a knife-weilding one, who stood with its blade thrust over its head as if leading the others into battle, and he sat beside it, resting his arm on the statue's base. Still he said nothing. Chan stopped on the other side of the path, near an archer who held its bow out before it with a stone arrow nocked and ready to fire at nobody.
He realized suddenly that he still carried the god-sword they had come for, and he looked down at it, at the vicious ebon blade. It didn't look like a god's weapon, it looked like the devil's weapon. Fitting, then, that they'd stolen it from Baphomet, wasn't it? He held it up to the light, the strange ambient light of the courtyard, and wondered what was so special about it that they'd risked a unit to go get it.
"Still want to quit, Dick?"
He looked from the sword to Fuuji, who was staring at him from the other side of the walkway, his dark eyes so full of intent and madness that it actually managed to disconcert him. "This is bullshit," he said, lowering the sword. "And you know it. I'd rather be fighting the goddamn Schwartzwald, at least then it'd seem to have a fucking purpose."
"People would still die."
"For a goddamn reason, though."
"You'll probably get your wish soon enough."
He stopped, saying nothing to that. It was probably true. With what was happening now, they did seem to be on the verge of war. But it was also true that he did feel as he'd said; he'd rather be fighting Shcwartzwald soldiers than undead, dying for his country in the line of battle instead of for a fruitless wild goose chase in a dead city. He really had planned to walk into the CO's office and throw down his blade, but he reconsidered now. A war, a new purpose. His country, his men would need him.
"So are you still quitting? Getting out before the big fight?"
He looked up from his thoughts. "Quit playing fuckin' devil's advocate, you motherfucker."
Tenyo gave a smile and a slight shrug.
With a sigh, Chan sat before the statue of the goblin archer, and he lit a cigarette and waited, lost in his own thoughts.