Der Wanderer

"There, where you are not; there is your joy."

Mithrigil Galtirglin

inspiration drawn from Georg Phillip Schmidt von Lübeck

and Franz Peter Schubert

--

I.

Ich komme vom Gebirge her,

Es dampft das Tal, es braust das Meer.

Ich wandle still, bin wenig froh,

Und immer fragt der Seufzer, wo?

(Immer, "wo?")

It took four days to secure his audience with the King, and in that time Basch spent his last coin on a shave. His razor had been lost in a sandstorm along with half of his gear, and in Rabanastre it cost less to have someone else groom you than to buy the tools and groom yourself.

In that time, he slept in a youth hostel on the north side of town, overlooking a pristine fountain. As the hostel charged for running water, the fountain proved convenient for drawing from, but the citizens gave him the surliest of looks when he contrived to wash his face in it at midday. For the following days, he borrowed a bucket and waited until cover of night, scrubbing his skin and hair with sand instead of soap.

And so it was with a fresh shave, but in the garb and hygienic state of a beggar, that Basch fon Ronsenburg first knelt to King Raminas of Dalmasca. He was homeless, penniless, orphaned, and nineteen years of age.

"Seventy days it has been since Ronsenburg fell, and the Republic of Landis with it," King Raminas said, and his gentle voice still carried through the opulent audience chamber. Basch had been received alone, in one of the smaller halls, and the middle-yeared King was flanked by only four silent guards and one scribe. He sat not on a throne, but on a raised dais behind a desk, so that if Basch were to stand again they would see eye-to-eye. The King's dress bared arms that were no longer a warrior's, had they ever been, and his dangling crown was as much tassel and bead as gold and jewel. In a city so rich and mercenary, for the King to appear so human raised Basch's hopes and quickened his heart. "It grieves Us to see its heroes debased to refuge," the King went on, and Basch believed each word.

"I am no hero, save in surviving," Basch said, trying not to stare. He turned his eyes down on the coarse, brightly-patterned carpet, and he could feel the prickling threads through his tattered and sandblasted leggings.

The King shook his head. "Word of yours and your brother's exploits has reached Our ears; your tenacious refusal to allow your foe a straightforward victory is heroic."

A considerate silence followed, and Basch knew that he was to meant to make his case, here. "I will not ask you to mount against Archadia, your Majesty."

"That is wise, young man," King Raminas said with a smile that wrinkled softly at the edges, "for Dalmasca will not. If Nabradia does not mobilize, nor can We, and even then 'twould be without due cause."

In his heart of hearts, Basch had hoped to convince Dalmasca and Nabradia to beat Archades back. The hope had already been faint and half-dead, and he did not feel its passing.

"Gramis set his sights on your land for grounds best left between your mountains and your rivers, and 'tis paramount that he sees naught in Our desert of the kind," the King concluded, a clenched fist on the arm of his chair. One of the guards at his side turned his head gently toward the monarch as if confused, and Basch was drawn to the gesture almost rudely. The guard, a dark -skinned and -haired—Rozarrian?—man, looked by his eyes almost as if he was about to appeal to the King. The man said nothing, though, and Basch again filled the silence.

"He will come."

The King agreed with half a nod. "He will be years in the coming. But in that time We shall have donned a helm to glance their arrows and mail to turn their blades."

"Then weave me into its grain," Basch said, so quickly that his knee rose from the carpet.

This pregnant silence Basch could not fill; the King leaned forward off his throne, the scribe's hand stilled, and the guards, especially the dark-haired one, shuffled their sandals or twitched with unease. Basch caught the slight echo of his own voice, tinned by the vases and tiled walls, then muffled by tapestries and carpet, and bowed his head again, supining toward the floor.

He took a slow breath, and made his plea in earnest. "If you will stand against Archadia when the time comes, and rectify the indignities rendered upon my people, then I shall be both gratified and grateful to attend you."

"You would walk the Knight's path," the King seemed to muse, his tone flirting with the contour of a question.

"Until my dying breath."

"It is We, then who shall be gratified and grateful." King Raminas rose, and nodded first to the scribe, and then, warmly, to the beseecher. "Cast off the mantle of exile; let Dalmasca be as your home."

"That I be considered worthy," Basch replied, the perfunctory countersign hovering on the dented flesh of his lips, and a cool breeze seeped into the open pores of his cheeks.

--

II.

Die Sonne dünkt mich hier so kalt,

Die Blüte welk, das Leben alt,

Und was sie reden, leerer Schall;

Ich bin ein Fremdling überall.

A fair number of these men had known each other since they were pages, and still more since squirehood. Most of them had served in this very palace from the beginning, though a few had fostered elsewhere; four in Nalbina, two in Rozarria, and one in Landischloss (which was unconventional, he admitted, but entirely worth it). Many were noble by Dalmascan standards, sons of Dukes or Earls or wealthy merchants or new-titled Knights and scholars, but as said Dalmascan standards for gentrification were relatively skewed these had few differences from the commoners. Among the lower-ranked Knights of the Order, mettle meant more than title, Basch quickly learned, and this was perhaps the greatest relief to a republican as himself. They were nine in his barracks, and they were thirty-eight in all.

Five weeks, though, and already Basch's status among them had been called into question.

"At least we know how you manage it," Cade said, clasping his right gauntlet with an awkward left hand. "You're just that good."

Basch glanced up at him and said nothing.

The tenth bed of the first barracks was the one beside the Knight banneret's, second from the door, on the right when you exited. It was considered good luck to sit on but bad to sleep in, and there stood among the group an unspoken rule that Azelas would have his privacy whenever feasible, so no one had claimed the bed in months. Basch himself quartered in the middle bed on that side, and had grown to like it. Circumstance, however, dictated that he would be taking Azelas' bed sometime in the next month, after some instruction from Azelas and the other current Knights banneret.

Cade, the Knight who had fostered in Landischloss when he was a squire, gave every outward appearance of being pleased with the arrangement. He stood against the doorframe, now strapping on his other gauntlet and having an easier time about it. Fairer-haired than Basch and sporting a saucer-eyed, deceptively boyish face, Cade favored heavy crossbows and had the sharp focus and wide-palmed hands to justify his preference. His weapon was leaning against the other side of the door, its stock casting a long shadow from the torchlit hallway that reached all the way to Basch's discarded sandals. Having just returned from a shift of his own, Basch had a mind to get to sleep before the others returned; it was always more difficult to drift off with so many people about, and half of them were so rarely tired.

And besides, Basch felt he needed time to dwell on his advancement. He'd had some success integrating himself into the palace guards and their world-since-boyhood, and only this morning Azelas had announced to all of them that Basch (the stranger, he did not say) would after barely another month among them become their Knight banneret. Basch could not help but wonder if the King (of course it had been the King) was being hasty.

Cade went on, "T'be sure, we'll all follow you," and smiled. "'Twill be like following Azelas, only new, as we know a fair sight less about you. But you're a lot alike, you see," he added, and shrugged against the wall, his armor rattling. "Least I think such."

You'd been hoping it would be you, Basch thought abrubtly and unbidden, and he suddenly focused very clearly on the bedpost.

"Just glad it isn't me," Cade said.

And that confirms it, Basch noted with a thin, gravelly noise as he cleared his throat. Someone else made the same sound, and a good deal louder, from the doorway.

"A word with the banneret-elect," Azelas commanded or asked, it was always difficult for Basch to tell.

Azelas, who had been this barracks' Knight banneret for close on to a year, received a curt salute from Cade with a subtle nod. Brunet, clean-shaven, and darker-skinned than nearly all of the palace denizens, Azelas was too young to be gruff—roughly two years Basch's senior—but give the man another score of years and sure he would be. 'Intense', the maids dubbed him; the guards tended toward 'fierce' instead. He reminded Basch of his and Noah's father in a fashion that was slightly disconcerting.

Cade took his leave, hefting his crossbow and guiding it with a wide berth around Azelas' legs, smoothly perching the stock on his shoulder and sauntering off. Azelas watched the man leave, and a cursory, almost bemused expression crept up his face from the shadows. As he left the dim hallways for the darker barracks, shade filled the hollows around his eyes and under his chin and between his lips, and as Basch stood to regard him these only deepened and further masked the Knight banneret's intentions.

"Sir," Basch acknowledged.

Azelas nodded in response and sat on the edge of the bed by the door, currently his, to be Basch's in a month or less. Basch sat back down as well, but turned to face his senior respectfully and leant his sword against the bedpost.

"Surely there is cause for your exaltation in this time of peace," Azelas said, and though Basch could not read his face in the jacitating light the man's voice was straightforward and unadorned. "I trust our seniors, and theirs."

He did not directly ask wherefore. Perhaps that was why Basch told him.

In the hallway, someone lit another torch, and Basch's eyes adjusted; Azelas sat with his hands in loose fists, resting on the skirt of his mail on either thigh. "You have a facility with command that belies your lack of experience taking orders," he observed of Basch. "Most of the men take you for a militiaman, or Peaceguard. Some say robber-baron." They find it glamorous, he did not say, but so Basch interpreted the way Azelas wound his lower lip in his teeth.

Basch made a sound in his cheek that approached a snicker, almost, closer to a scoff and nearly a smile.

"Your disposition contests that," Azelas complimented, a plain statement, almost like an order.

Basch closed his eyes, a bit shyly. "Thank you…but they are part correct."

When Basch opened his eyes, Azelas sat, listening, without a change in demeanor at all. The crystalline light from the hallway cast the Knight banneret's dark hair to a clean, bluish tone, the same way Basch's turned not-quite-green in water, but Azelas' face was still more shaped by the shadows around it than his own intent. There was something trustworthily untouchable about the man, like a character in a song.

"What know you of these last eight years in Landis?" Basch asked pointedly.

For all the dimness, Basch could see Azelas' somber smile. "I suspected as much. But you cannot have been so high in your country's military if your age is what it appears, so you were not in the military proper."

Basch nodded. "The resistance."

"And you led…" Again, Azelas' tone lingered in the greys, neither command nor question.

"Ronsenburg," Basch admitted with a facility that unnerved him upon reflection. "That is what I am. My brother and I jointly kept our home contested, after our father died in its initial fall."

"The twins."

Basch's confirmation was silent.

"Your trust does me honor," Azelas said, firm and quiet but leagues from a whisper.

"It is not idly placed."

The men sat there in stillness and silence, and a pair of guards paced through the hall outside. Basch sat across from Azelas—what was his first name?—and it was as comfortable as tepid bathwater, with no absent thoughts, nothing yearning to be said.

Basch's eyes had adjusted to the lowlight long ago, and he stared almost through Azelas' into a startling brightness. There was something foreboding in the sound of gauntleted hands opening a door on the other side of the hall—I have been gone a hundred days, Basch recalled, and felt the ghost of Noah's hand in his.

"Nor is it intended as concession, for my depriving you of your post," Basch said quickly, and shadow filled the space between them again.

"Think not on it," Azelas assured with a flick of his mailed fingers and an ambiguous smile. "Far be it from me to refuse private quarters. I suspect his Majesty shall start me on a sergeant's track presently."

--

III.

Wo bist du, mein geliebtes Land?

Gesucht, geahnt, und nie gekannt!

Basch turned twenty on a day like any other.

Summer in Rabanastre was a nasty business, or so the locals assonated, and Basch agreed. Already unused to the dry desert heat, Basch found himself parched around every other street corner, and his waterskins constantly empty. In his months at the royal city Basch continued to be unpretentious about drawing water from the sculpted fountains—it was, perhaps, a small act of defiance that had earned him some jocular infamy. Water was expensive, more so when there was a demand for it; and not that the King was stingy, but what Basch did not spend on his arms and upkeep went toward information.

"Most go north." The Moogle pouted considerately, crossing his arms as he adjusted a small bolero tie around his neck, whiskers twitching. "They swarm the ocean-ports and scrounge for fare. Archadian records attest to three hundred-odd airships, and half that by sea, carrying refugees. But they let the ships go. They did not want to conquer the hearts of the people, only their homes."

Kneeling to the Moogle's level, Basch rested the leather of his left greave on the hot cobble outside the Aerodome. He could feel the sun through the back of his light armor, especially at the elbows where the leather wore thin, and his hair was caked to the nape of his neck with dry, nervous sweat. "And those who remain?"

"They press further westward," the Moogle replied in a polished, appropriately soft tone. "The outlands, the Greilands, the mountainsides." He knew not to make it appear that this was a transaction, and the curl of his maw was serious but congenial. "There is crime, and not just crime against the Archadians. Those who flee are given chase by both sides."

"Do the Senators tarry?"

"I have heard of four who yet lived, a week ago. fon Morgenlich, fon Hohstern, Earl Byron, and fon Osterturm." Before Basch could ask, even though he half-knew, the Moogle clarified, "They are bribed, though, or they do not resist. The others, the Emperor kills."

fon Morgenlich and fon Hohstern were cowards, Basch remembered, and fon Osterturm had been lambasted from the sea. Likely, the man had surrendered in order to keep the ports open, for the refugees' sake. But Byron, the silt-miner of the Greilands, had ever been a wild card, and had been alleged an Archadian mole in the years leading up to the fall. Though he firmly denied it, and the evidence had not been pressing, he had never really made good on his claims to fealty. Perhaps the rumors had been true.

Ignoring the twinge of fury in his stomach, Basch resumed his questioning. "Have any made it out?"

The Moogle paused to remember. "Altritter, Laertatison, Bohm, fon Fleischer, and Mauslein by air, fon Rosencrantz by sea. If others do, they do by other names."

"Who commands Archadia now?"

"The Emperor has passed the swabbing to his eldest sons. They wish to be efficient."

"Are they opposed?"

"The resistance died at Ronsenburg," the Moogle said with a toss of his head. "Those fled have become outlaws. All the other commanders have given up, or are so far underground that I cannot find them."

Basch hissed in a sullen breath, and his lips had begun to chap. "…And of the twins?"

"Neither pelt nor penny of them," the Moogle chirruped, his pompon waving as he shook his head. "Archadia still searches."

Rising from his kneel, Basch unhooked his coin-purse from his belt and, cupping it in his hands, began counting out coin into his palm for the Moogle. The creature, in turn, pulled an inch-wide file of papers from his own, much larger satchel (nearly as big as his body) and handed them up to the Hume. "My contacts gave me these; old maps, blueprints, deeds. Signatures. We stole only a little, what we could, what had duplicates or later drafts and would not be missed; the rest are lost to Draklor and the Akademy."

The smell of paste, gunpowder and home rose past the acrid air and spiked through Basch's eyes, an earthquake between his temples. He held the papers in the hand that had been tallying the coin, and a pulse raced up that arm, remote and almost chilling. His breath caught in his throat and it burned, like near-starvation, like sand just before it turns to glass.

Without a second thought, Basch passed the entire pouch of coin to the Moogle, keeping only the nine discs he had counted into his hand. Perhaps the creature thanked him, but Basch could hear no more; the file in his hands had set the blood pounding through him, as if his very heart had moved itself to that hand.

The young Knight absently watched the Moogle pad off, tucking Basch's coin-purse into his pack. Only when his knee bruised from the stone and the desert sun began to chafe the back of his neck did Basch remember to stand, and he did, sliding the file of maps into his own satchel as if they would shatter otherwise.

He stood there before the Aerodome a moment longer, his throat still parched and his mind at the mercy of his memories. Dizzy, heat-addled, Basch walked into the shade of the West Gate and uncorked his waterskin to toast. Happy birthday, Noah, he thought with a solemn nod, raised the cask, and drank.

--

IV.

Das Land, das Land so hoffnungsgrün,

Das Land, wo meine Rosen blühn.

Wo meine Freunde wandelnd gehn,

Wo meine Toten auferstehn,

Das Land, das meine Sprache spricht,

O Land, wo bist du? . . .

A year ago tomorrow, Ronsenburg had fallen for the last time.

It was the darkness before dawn, and the halls of the palace were still lit by their crystals and torches, beginning to dim. Four men were asleep in his barracks, so Basch had struck no further light, but he packed with a breakneck efficiency. His satchel was half-full, and his blood was barreling through his veins like a cavalry charge. He had acquired the leave, though only the King knew Basch's intent to go to Nabudis and reunite with his brother, as they had sworn when their home crumbled around them. Basch already knew what he would do; surely the King in welcoming one twin would welcome the other, and together they might draw those Landisern with remaining spirit to Dalmasca, and stand firm against Archadia when Archadia came, or better still, stay their hand through fear of the might of Landis at Dalmasca's side.

And to see Noah again! They had never been apart for so long, not even as children, and the lack of even rumor of his twin had kept Basch sleepless, at the first, and at the last, and often in between. He was certain that Noah still lived—he would know, would he not, if his twin had left this mortal coil?—but feared for how his brother may have fared, where he had gone, what they both may have learned.

Urgent footsteps in the hall startled him out of his reverie. "Basch," Azelas—Vossler, Vossler, he insisted it of Basch at least—called from the doorway, and when Bach turned to face him the man's countenance was as dire as his voice.

Basch saluted, dropping the flap of his satchel and passively listening to the leather bag topple onto his cot, creaking gently. "Has there been—" he began, and even he knew not what he would have asked; a change, a summons, an incident?

"An incident," Vossler chose for him. And Vossler described it, without mincing his words.

Between six and ten Landisern refugees, late in the coming—perhaps outlaws for a time, perhaps not—had been admitted to the city sometime this morning, on foot from Nabradia. They had shopped around before settling at the Sandsea at twilight, where they proceeded to run up a tab that would put sky pirates to shame. They became rowdy. A few of them became especially rowdy. Cade and another Knight, off-duty, had attempted to calm them down. Perhaps it had been the desert heat, or a conscious acknowledgement of the day, but the rowdiness sullied and the arguments grew incendiary, the Landisern railing against King Raminas and Nabradia for not aiding Landis, one year ago tomorrow.

And now Cade had a wyrmfire shot lodged in his shoulder and the Landisern had four hostages, including one of the Princess' nurses, who had come by the Sandsea only to speak with the bartender, her son.

Basch had abandoned his packing halfway through Vossler's elucidation. By the time he learned that Cade was wounded, he was practically leading Vossler out of the barracks and into the castle proper, clasping his gauntlets even as they ran.

--

V.

Ich wandle still, bin wenig froh,

Und immer fragt der Seufzer, wo?

(Immer, "wo?")

In the first hours, Vossler and the other Knights had siphoned off most of the East End and some of the North, with the help of the local Peaceguard. It had then been early morning still, the hour of bakers and street-cleaners, and before the streets began to boil over the blocks surrounding the Sandsea had been corralled. All this activity had sounded only in the back of Basch's mind; his task was to parley.

And he was to negotiate his countrymen out of the situation and into jail without the political ramifications escaping to the populace.

By the seventh hour, the Landisern voices had differentiated themselves. Seven spoke, but only two seemed vehement, and the others were afraid. Five male, two female, and all of them relatively young. Basch recognized some of the voices, but could not attach names to them; or perhaps he did not, and was only craving the accent he had missed the sound of and imposed association on it. The hostages were unharmed but petrified, and not literally, if their voices told true.

Five more hours and Basch was up against the barricaded door, overhearing their names as they dropped, learning the dynamic of the band. The alcohol was out of their systems and the fight with it; they held on now only out of fear of repercussions. They argued amongst themselves, half-forgetting that Basch could hang onto their every word. He began to reason with them around hour sixteen, when the sun was to set again. He proved them enough of who he was to lure them in; no name, no station, but that he knew Ronsenburg and knew their plight and only wanted only to coax them out before they made things too horrible for themselves. Some believed him, some did not, and the sky grew dark over the city.

Vossler tossed him a Mana bulb. Basch raised a perplexed eyebrow—how had a Mana bulb made it this far south, and if it had, wasn't it a rarity?—but took a large bite of the onion-like plant and swallowed before the juice could drive his eyes to tear. The effects followed half a moment later; the setting blood-colored sun no longer seemed so foreboding, the streetlight brightened and Basch suddenly remembered what day it was and that there was a half-packed satchel on his bed.

Hour twenty-two and at least the Landisern were sleeping in shifts. Basch (heart pounding, histamine in his temples and the back of his neck, and halos around every crystal) spoke almost privately with the ones who remained awake, his ear pressed to the barricade and the brigands speaking quietly through the gaps. Of course it followed that the one who held the firearm was the most vocal and enraged, and his name was one that Basch should have known, Robin Altritter, a son of the Senator from the smaller city just West of Ronsenburg.

Basch remembered playing robber-baron on the Altritters' attic stairs. He and Noah were the vandals, and Robin captured them and had them hung.

Another bite off the Mana bulb and Basch recalled that they were an active ingredient in Ether. The crystal streetlights ceased to buzz and Basch could feel his fatigue being violently shoved aside. He talked with the frightened brigand another hour, and plans for how to end this stakeout began to weave into one another, which Basch (hand quavering, characters unique to Landis sneaking into the popular alphabet, sweat smudging the ink) took down on paper and tossed to Vossler, wrapped around a tile coaster. Robin appeared to have been asleep from hour twenty-two until hour twenty-eight, if how he awoke and promptly howled at the young man who had told Basch his name was any indication.

The sun rose again during the twenty-sixth hour and Robin was still railing into the twenty-ninth, and the poor sympathetic young man was crying by the end, until Robin turned his mordant attentions on the guard outside the door. When his attention started to drift from the insults and they seemed to come from inside him Basch peeled off another section of the Mana bulb, this time forgetting to swallow it quickly and getting the acid threads stuck in his teeth. Hour thirty, the numbness in his tongue subsided, and Robin finally grew weary of hurling slurs at Basch and the Knights and the Peaceguard. A long quiet came after than while the brigands conferred; Basch might have slept, longed to, but the throbbing at the base of his head, the swarming voices of the Peaceguard as they diverted area traffic, the brightness of every light everywhere conspired against him and he spent the hours against the barricade, twitching.

At some point, Noah was sitting beside him and glaring. Basch took another bite of the Mana bulb, and Noah left. For some reason, he was wearing a cowl and had not shaved.

In the quiet that came at just after noon—hour thirty-four—they began to argue loudly again and it grated on the Knight's temples. Basch (feet shifting, tremors making it as high as his elbows, a crust at the corners of his eyes) offered them a suitable arrangement, which refined itself over the course of the next three hours; one at a time, and slowly, they would let out the hostages, and any of the band who was prepared to give himself over to the law. No one would proceed anywhere with arms. That agreed upon, Basch pried himself away from the cordoned inn and joined Vossler (hoarse, pacing, surlier than ever) and the others, spread in a slightly threatening arc but out of a hand-bomb's range.

The first person climbed out of the Sandsea's left, street-side window between hours thirty-eight and thirty-nine. It was not a hostage, but one of the band, and from the salten streaks down his face and the way he bolted right up to the Peaceguard, Basch (seeing double) guessed this was the one who had conversed with him all night at the door. He gave himself up readily amid Robin's cantankerous jeering, but did not look back as a trio of Peaceguard led him off.

After him came two hostages, first the bartender, whose hand was bruised and possibly broken, and then a Seeq, who near fell out of the window with fatigue. Hour forty-two saw another brigand emerge, one of the women, and to Basch (the doublesight drowned, but the streetlights like needles and everyone's voice an arrow) her face was as familiar as her voice had been but he could conjure up no name to match it. Seven hours, seven more climbers out the window, and Basch (everywhere at once except for home) took off his left gauntlet and rolled the withering shoots of the Mana root between his fingers, and when even the reek of it started to fade he took another bite of it instead.

His father had always extolled the virtues of going straight to the source.

"Oh gods, oh gods! Thank you!" the woman—the last one out—the baby Princess' nurse, or one of them, was crying. Someone had caught her rather than let the plump woman climb the whole way, and she clung to the Peaceguard who could barely support her. "Is everyone whole? Is my son—my son—"

"He will be fine," Basch (outside himself and wondering if their father could tell them apart) said, almost snapping to attention. The guards were leading her, almost dragging her, up the block to a barrel of water and a medical team. "Are you the last?"

She may not have heard him. "Oh gods, thank you, Sir Basch, thank you!" she reached for him, and tears had left raised pink paths through her sagging face—

"Basch?"

He darted his eyes to the barricade.

"Basch fon Ronsenburg?" Robin shouted again. There was the sound of glass breaking, thuds and scrapes and an incoherent, animal cry.

He'd never heard his own name spoken with such venom. It only occurred to him a second later precisely what that meant.

"You traitorous bastard!"

Basch rushed to the barricade and pressed himself against the wall, thrusting his hand into his left gauntlet and drawing his sword halfway. He felt a hand on his shoulder and nodded the signal for Noah to go ahead, move in, they had done this before and Basch was always better at maintaining a distraction or an offensive while Noah deceived the enemy, and Basch (eyelashes, collarbones, fingernails aching) shouted right back at Robin, "Yours is the treason, spurning their good will!"

"This to their good will!" Robin wailed, and a window exploded. Shards of glass flew past him and Basch (covered in a sheen of grime and sweat like snakeskin) shielded his eyes but did not flinch. "They sit here and prosper while our people are hunted like hares!"

"Robin, Archadia has won if you let them slay your honor!"

"Who are you to talk of honor?—you're serving a King, and one who lifted not a finger for our plight!"

"Nay. His Majesty offered his hand in the finger's stead." Basch (freezing, freezing, he had not felt this cold in years) lowered his voice, certain that the brigand was not hearing him anyway, but that he had to keep Robin's attention or the plan would fall apart.

"Is this how you honor your homeland?" Robin screeched, and the barricade shook with it. "You eat their scraps and drink from their fountains while your countrymen starve?"

"And you would have me become you?" Basch (throat raw, ears swollen) found himself yelling.

"I am the last true Landiser!" Robin hollered, "I am the last patriot! The rest are murdered, or fled, or sold themselves like you, fon Ronsenburg, you heartless cur! They stifle our songs and forget that they are men! They pack into the bellies of ships like slaves! They rot in the sewers of Archadia and serve in their army and tear down our fortresses! They die in the desert, they starve, they bleed, they—"

There was a sound like trampling hooves on crystal.

A blast shattered the barricade and Basch tore himself out of its path on instinct alone, whipping around and drawing his sword in one swift arc. Noah—no, father—no, Vossler—leapt through the debris with something blunt in his hands, and hammered it down in a violent arc on someone's outstretched arm. A gun went flying through the air and Basch caught it in his arms, then found the trigger and trained it on the scene.

When the sparks of the wyrmfire shot had cleared, Vossler stood above a cowed and silent figure, tapping the jagged leg of a table in his hands like a ready club. Basch (holding back a cough, forcing himself to be still) lowered his left hand and the gun toward Robin where he knelt, panting, and the smell of blood broke past the smoke in the desert air.

It was nearly noon on the third day, the fifty-third hour.

The Peaceguard swarmed in and still Basch and Vossler stood, chests heaving with weariness and fear. But the captive did not budge, and hung limp and broken when the Peaceguard hefted him to his feet. He caught Basch's eyes, then, and Basch was reminded of an eel on the chopping block.

"Basch," Robin spat one last time as the Peaceguard led him off in chains. "Of all the people to have sold out," he seemed to mutter, but did not need to finish.

A thousand thoughts tangled themselves in Basch's mind. That he had not sold out was among them, but as the straw that broke the beast's back; it intertwined with thoughts of Noah, and home, and praying that he was not too late for either.

At some point, a Peaceguard took the gun from him, and Basch sheathed his unused sword, and Vossler worked his way out of the ruins, past the tall tiled columns that still supported the Sandsea's façade. He shuffled toward Basch like something undead, but his breath was loud and laborious against Basch's ear as he lowered his forehead to Basch's shoulder. Vossler's slick skin slipped down the metal and Basch heard that as well, and he found himself nodding into the man's half-embrace.

"I am going to Nabudis," Basch told Vossler firmly. A step later the sun flared behind Basch's eyes and he collapsed, exhausted, toppling into Vossler's arms as if hamstrung. Half-masticated chunks of the Mana bulb forced its way out of his throat and stung the torn corner of his lip.

--

VI.

Im Geisterhauch tönt's mir zurück:

"Dort, wo du nicht bist, dort ist das Glück."

Sunset neared, and the sentries were preparing to close the South Gate when he arrived. He rushed through the bazaar, towering over the Seeq and Moogle peddlers that convened closest to the fore, weaving through the taller Hume and Bangaa. Was it a feast-night, or was Nabudis always this busy at sunset?, Basch wondered in passing, turning corners and bolting through the streets with the zeal of a child at play.

The traffic only thickened in the residential areas, and those who saw him parted for him, clutching their parcels and guiding their children out of his wild path. He was a sight, panting and frothing almost like a mad beast, darting through the crowd with the clatter and scrape of sand-loosened armor. Every other breath he apologized to someone he struck in this chase, and his ragged voice was lost under the frittenant throng. He wound north, toward Noah, toward home, every fiber of his mind shouting that Noah is home, is all that remains of home.

I am the last patriot, Robin Altritter said, and Basch spat the memory out on the cobblestones.

Chest heaving, war-torn, and four days too late, he stepped up to the Colonnade.

For three nights, he sat or stood or lay in the shade of a great pillar. He paced the steps and the sidewalks and questioned the passerby, but they turned from him, frightened by his urgency or doubtful of his motives. He grew ragged and unkempt, and children pointed at him wild-eyed from the other side of the street; their mothers patted them on the ears and buried the children's faces in their skirts, shushing them, reminding them that it was not polite to gape so at the poor, the homeless.

He returned alone to Rabanastre when his leave was up, and was started on a sergeant's track.

I come here from the mountains;

The valley dims, the sea roars.

I wander, silent and ill-at-ease;

And ever my sighs ask, Where?

(Always, "Where?")

The sun falls cold upon me,

The flowers, drained; the life, spent;

And all I hear of them is emptiness.

I truly am a stranger.

Where are you, beloved home?

I seek you, and crave you, yet I know you not!

The land, the land so green with hope,

The land where bloom my roses,

Where my friends walk,

Where my beloved dead rise;

The land, where my tongue is spoken,

O land, where are you?

I wander, silent and ill-at-ease,

And ever my sighs ask, Where?

(Always, "Where?")

The spectre's breath entices me back;

"There, where you are not; there is your joy."