One-Stringed Harp
Chapter
Seven: Trust and Let Fly
If she had needed to, as she fell, Lucia would likely have grabbed a passing windowsill for the moment it would take to apply leverage, kicked off the wall, and either attempted to rebound across the street to stall her downward momentum or swung around a lamppost in a mid-air pivot and slid safely to ground level. However, she had just been dealt a stunningly sharp rap to the head, and didn't feel like expending the wasted effort.
Instead, the swordmaster simply allowed herself to plummet onto and into one of the carriages passing by underneath, which were – she could never quite explain this, and forgot to ask later – filled with hundreds of balloons. The impact was exceptionally colourful, punctuated by burst sounds wherever the point of her scabbard jabbed too hard and rather a lot of cursing on the part of the Sagita drivers. The little convoy clattered to a halt without much crashing – apart from the one occupied by Lucia – and the others watched as the door opened and she staggered out in a rainbow tide.
"What in blazes?" Lucia summarised.
From two carts down the line, Boyd and Nephenee watched. "Think we help 'er?" the halberdier asked.
"Somehow I doubt this was part of the backup plan," said Boyd. "We've got our job; let's hold off."
Rather a lot more soldiers had arrived from down the street, proper Begnion holy guard this time, and they had quickly got to the main point of the matter, which was at the end of Lucia's blade and could be used to run people through. Their argument was brief, heated, and seemed to involve concert soloists for some reason, but the guards quickly decided that anything suspicious was, if not criminal, at least not allowed, and a small contingent of soldiers marched her away down a side street. In deference to their foolishness, rather than malice, Lucia refrained from bisecting the lot of them and getting back to business.
"Weird," Nephenee observed.
"Very. Let's hope that wasn't something going wrong. …Hey, there's the Hall of Heroes."
The largest room within the Hall was, technically, the foyer, which was big enough to hold any sort of fantastically extravagant ceremony, duelling concert orchestras, an entire open-air market, or a small war. Every noble and attendant entering now was aware that it would be used for the first option today; very few knew that the last was also on the schedule, and the most aware was Fletcher Sagita, wearing the neatest finery available to the Begnion elite.
He stood at the end far from the doors, ahead of the assembling crowd, apparently taking in the incredible majesty of the ornamented relief and mural that formed the near wall, which portrayed the heroes of the goddess standing in her light and countless less-famous protectors of the nation behind them. To be honest, he found the sight boring after all the times he had seen it before, and was much more intent on the dais and throne newly placed beneath the towering figures. The wood and gold gleamed equally; it was a seat fit for the Apostle. Quietly and free of fanfare, she arrived through a side door, followed by a handful of her handmaidens.
"Fletcher," said Sanaki, nodding as she took her seat.
"Lady Apostle," Fletcher acknowledged, bowing deeply. "You honour us." His smile was completely genuine, but didn't come from any of the reasons an observer might have guessed.
"I could hardly be absent," she insisted. "Indeed, it seems that the entire aristocracy agrees with me."
"I would think they always do," Fletcher replied. That's certainly something I'm looking forward to, he added inside his own head. Sanaki's eyes seemed to flash when she smiled at his spoken remark, and Fletcher got the unsettling feeling that she was listening to his thoughts, too. For a child, she made an imposing leader.
"The Hall has been decorated magnificently," the Apostle noted, "but I especially enjoy your choice of music." They glanced at the quarter-orchestra at the side of the hall, playing something light and melodious as the nobles arranged themselves in the audience.
"I would say it's even unexpectedly good," said Fletcher, frowning for an instant as he watched the players. There was famously little written for the harp, and so it wouldn't have been strange for no one to have been playing it at all, but the harper insisted he had rarely heard such a harmonious instrument.
Sanaki grinned with an unexpected dash of mischief. "I could listen to such song all day, but I dare say your nerves would wear out before then. Will we be waiting long?"
"I'm not at all concerned, Your Holiness. Lady Astrid would not miss today if lives hung in the balance."
Considering how richly each one of them lived, there were an astonishing number of nobles in Begnion, and in Gatrie's rough calculation, every single one of them was standing within two inches of him. He had never seen aristocracy act like this before; word had quickly spread through the crowd – carried by hired foot messengers rather than whispering, because these were nobles – that Sagita had over-invited, and there wouldn't be enough room inside for everyone.
Once united by marriage, Sagita and Ceffylau would represent the most powerful force in the country, save for Sanaki herself. Everyone wants to be friends with a superpower, and so now there was an incredible pressure to be the first inside the Hall. The only reason no one was actually shoving was that each lord or lady was protected by a defensive buffer of servants, although these were bouncing off each other relatively frequently.
However, there is a certain type of person drawn to the profession of armoured knightship, and only a particular class of these people achieve fame and power enough to be called generals. This type of person is technically classified as 'huge', and Gatrie and Hail qualified. Towering over the rest of the crowd, they strode confidently through the sea, and it didn't hurt – aside from a twinge in Gatrie, whose guilt had been working overdrive for days already – that the nobility had a tendency to recoil sharply when they saw her Brand, or realised that the face-painted, hulk behind her was doubtless a laguz. His cloak billowed like a blood-red sail.
"Duke Taramount, formerly of Gallia, present for the wedding of beorc lords," said Hail to the Sagita attendant, who blanched.
"Ah… do you have your invitation?"
"Why should he need it? You invited us," she countered impatiently.
"For the, for the sake of official record and conf-f-firmation," he stammered.
Gatrie leaned forward. The hood of his cloak hung back slightly, making the painted lines across his cheeks more noticeable, as well as the new red blaze of his hair. "I am present," he said deeply, mimicking Mordecai's accent. "This is 'confirmation'."
It would be unfair to call the attendant spineless for letting them in. Sanaki had made it clear in recent times that she would no longer tolerate the exclusion of laguz from Begnion society, nor their secret slavery, and wanted diplomatic relations with Gallia to approach friendship instead of hostile disregard. He also had a very strong allergy to having his face clawed off. Besides, he thought, the beastmen don't like chairs, so no one can complain he's taking their seat.
Gatrie and Hail surveyed the scene, which consisted of the heads of a lots of aristocrats and every level surface covered in lace. "This place would be nice without so many tacky decorations. You know. Understated and formal," Gatrie said in a low voice.
"Understated? Those are fifty-foot statues of heaven-blessed heroes over there," Hail murmured back.
"You haven't seen much of the rest of Sienne, have you?" he asked rhetorically. "The Apostle's palace, maybe? The gold is gilded."
"I've only been to the… less-travelled parts of Mainal Cathedral."
"What am I missing?" asked Gatrie's cloak, from around chest-level. Mia had tried to get in legitimately, but discovered at the door that her invitation had been revoked, and then got driven to the back of the crowd with torrential speed. She didn't care for Plan B in the slightest.
"A perfectly ordinary garish spectacle of a noble wedding," Hail replied, her suspicion of Gatrie's story rising again. "What happened to the assassination attempt you warned of? Look, there's Sagita talking to the Empress at the far end."
"Right," said Gatrie. He stretched his arms and shifted so that Mia was revealed, like an actor as the stage curtains rise, and rubbed a fist in his palm, anticipating the savage thrashing to come. "Go see if you can get a slice of cake before the chaos starts."
"I haven't seen the slightest confirmation that there's going to be chaos yet," Hail protested.
"Weren't you listening? I am confirmation."
It's hard to say what would have happened if Gatrie had been slightly quicker. A few seconds' haste here or there throughout the day could add up, maybe giving him the extra minute he would need to force his way through the crowd and deliver to Fletcher the express-courier beating he had been carrying for days. Instead, he was only just beginning to wade into the nobles when Astrid arrived.
She did so impressively, appearing from one side of the hall with a regiment of retainers around her, most of them Sagita servants. Following in the entourage were several of her family, including Lord and Lady Ceffylau, whose attempts to look overjoyed weren't very convincing. The sun blazed through the high windows of the hall, illuminating her in a flare of white. Fletcher gestured, and the music stopped – except for the softly echoing song of the harp – as she approached.
The end of the music was a signal, and the hall's main doors closed, despite the crowded nobles still outside. Their protests were completely shut out by the heavy wood, and no one inside heard the further demands for answers when one of the Sagita attendants cast down a runic stone at the archway and it burst into an impenetrable light barrier.
"In retrospect, maybe we should have already moved," said Boyd, once he recognised the sudden glow from the door. "Bloody hell, we just got really locked out."
Nephenee glanced around the street and realised the tactical position that Fletcher had built. Begnion guards formed a perimeter at the end of the city blocks in all directions, making sure that no one came within a thousand paces of the Apostle while heavily armed. That didn't help much, because the Sagita guards standing around the great hall didn't need to be heavily armed.
The long daggers they were now producing from boots and sleeves were plenty to keep hostage several dozen helpless aristocrats. The commotion around the hall turned from argument to terror and panic, and the Begnion guards were good enough to know the difference, but Boyd and Nephenee paid no attention to their approach. It was too obvious how events went now – the Sagita guards had no chance in combat with lance-wielding soldiers, but the soldiers couldn't get anywhere near the hall without risking the hostages' lives.
"Soren's brilliant'r than we give 'im credit for," said Nephenee. "Think we'd best try getting' in?"
"How, climb the walls? Come on, walk back to the carriages and look like you forgot your stiletto."
Astrid's slow procession stopped beside Fletcher, who smiled widely. Behind her, the attendants stood much closer to her parents than they needed to for any friendly reason. The Apostle didn't seem to be paying attention; she was transfixed by the tireless harper. Fletcher's joviality faltered slightly as he tried to get Sanaki's attention. "The bishop, Your Holiness?"
"He will arrive momentarily, Lord Sagita. I confess myself astonished by the nature of this music. Even the instrument seems very familiar," she noted.
Fletcher's smile was entirely too brittle now. He did so hate the child. Imperceptibly, he turned toward Astrid. "Perhaps a minor reorganisation of the order of ceremony? You won't mind, I'm sure." He beckoned the harper, who carelessly threw his instrument into Fletcher's hands.
Astrid's mind was racing. If she didn't kill the Apostle, her parents would die. Thoughtless, self-important people, but innocent of any real crime. She couldn't do that – it was true to say that Fletcher's attendants would kill them, not Astrid, but the semantics were of little use to corpses. If she fired on the Apostle, Fletcher would undoubtedly rise to fill her place; he had the resources, the soldiers, and the superweapon.
If she fired on Fletcher… oh, what a poetically delicious thought. The blast would kill her, of course, unless she could convince him to stand at least thirty feet away, but given the mess that her life had decayed into, it wouldn't be such a bad thing to end it with the destruction of a truly evil man. …Could she? Heroics aside, Astrid hadn't awoken that morning with intent to die, especially by her own hand. The new, already-vanquished Astrid couldn't have done it; she was too weak. If today was the last day of her life, Astrid would die as the soldier she had always strived to be.
If only she trusted herself to be that person now.
She watched, entirely without surprise, as Fletcher flicked the tip of a blade through the harpstrings, severing all of them but the last, gleaming cord, which cut through the blade like a karmic razor. No longer tied into its disguised shape, the wing-shaped harp twisted at its corner and the upper arm reversed, snapping upright, the string taut no matter what length it needed to be. He handed the Bow of Falling Stars to her, with a half-second's meaningful glance at her parents and the assembled nobles.
"What in the world are you doing?" Sanaki demanded, but her voice was flat and grave as her mind quickly pieced together this with the thefts from the reliquary. She knew her history better than most of Begnion, especially when it came to deadly weapons. "Oh, by the goddess…"
"Don't order any heroics, Sanaki," Fletcher growled. From the quiver on his back, he drew a headless arrow, no more than a rod with feathers on the end, and passed that to Astrid as well. It was just a decoration, something appropriate to the house of archers, but to the Bow of Falling Stars, it would serve as well as any other arrow. "Nobles of Begnion!"
"What is this?" someone demanded. "Displaying weapons before the Apostle? Madness!"
"Not merely displaying, but putting to good use as well," said Fletcher. "I will be brief with you all, because quite honestly I have no stirring speech to make. If you all wanted me as emperor, this would have been much more straightforward, I'm sure. Instead, I will say this: here, today, the Empress dies by the hand of House Sagita, and I will be taking the throne. The right to rule will always fall to the one with the power to take it. Once you've served your purpose as hostages, you will be welcome to return peacefully to your homes. Anyone who prefers some sort of confrontation can expect to be blasted to dust and dispersed in the wind."
"You wouldn't dare," said one of the younger nobles. "You haven't got the power to match her."
"I most certainly would," Fletcher replied, as if offended. "And yes… we do. Fire."
Astrid raised the bow toward the sky and drew back; just as before, the arrow turned to a blazing line of blue, like lightning hammer into a thin ray. Parts of the crowd drew back, others began to charge forward.
"Hold!" Sanaki bellowed, and the hall fell still. "No one approach. I will face you alone, traitor."
"Very honorable of you. I said fire, Astrid."
…The true warrior goes through phases of understanding, she remembered him saying. First in wielding…
"Are you waiting for something?"
"She's about to commit sacrilegious regicide, Fletcher, give her a moment," Sanaki remarked.
Then there is a greater level of knowledge… the shape can change but the essence does not… the warrior becomes his weapon, and the barriers between them are gone… the two acting in perfect harmony...
There was a face in the crowd.
"You don't have a choice in this matter now, Astrid–" And only then can you find the strength that you need to– "FIRE!"
Astrid let the arrow fly. Sothe was already moving.
The blue flash rocketed through the ceilings and the roof above it, carving a circle through the stone with blinding speed. It was gone, vanishing into the sky, and to watchers outside reappeared just as quickly, falling from the heavens like a star that lost its grip, blasting through stone again, down on the Apostle. But he had leapt, his handmaiden's cloak flying out around him, his crossed daggers a flicker of silver that snapped apart with the relief of a desperately needed breath and a sparkling blue snap. Sothe landed on the far side of the Apostle and gladly shook off his cloak. The halves of the slashed arrow skittered away to the corners of the room.
The thief nodded his greetings to Astrid. "We're not done yet, but that was totally another victory dance moment."
Fletcher was blank, as his mind tried to comprehend what he had just witnessed. "That was the single most improbable thing that has ever happened."
Sothe shrugged. "I'm just that good. By the way: hold still." Fletcher stumbled with the first blow Astrid dealt him with the Bow, which bounced satisfactorily off the back of his head, but he twisted under the following strike, wrenched it from her grasp, and rolled her to the floor with a deft sweep. He leapt away from her before she could sweep his legs out, turned the bow toward the Apostle, and plucked the arrowless string.
A sonic boom reverberated in the hall and shook lamps free from the walls; a chord rang out as the air seemed to form a fist and hammer Sothe against the wall. The Apostle's real handmaidens, who had already dropped to avoid harm, slid across the smooth stone floor, but Sanaki stood, her arm stretched forward, hand shaping a sigil in the air, and the gale split around her, merely ruffling her hair.
"What in the world–" Astrid demanded, clambering to her feet, but not approaching Fletcher.
"Not quite as impressive as the star-arrows, but much easier to use," he replied smugly.
"And entirely insufficient if you wish to kill me," Sanaki mocked him.
"Not at all – but I'll need your cooperation now," said Fletcher. "Tell me, girl, how many of your Sainted should I kill before you surrender? I've got quite a supply, so there's no need to rush. This can last all day."
After the blinding azure streak erupted from and fell upon the Hall, Boyd and Nephenee reached an immediate agreement that there wasn't much point in waiting for another signal. She unscrewed the fasteners and detached one of the carriage's wheels, which the warrior immediately set to using as the bluntest carving instrument in the world. A bit of percussive vehicle maintenance and some tremendously splintered wood later, the standoff between Begnion holy guard and House Sagita soldiers were treated to the bizarre sight of two Sagita-uniformed people rushing up the great Hall's steps, one carrying a door, the other a one-wheeled carriage axle.
"What have you done to that wagon?!" the senior Sagita lieutenant demanded.
"Improvised," said Boyd, trying to look official with an outlandishly ornamented wooden board under one arm. "Urgent delivery for his lordship and ladyship, sir." Nephenee threw salutes to anything that moved.
The lieutenant looked at the light-barricaded door. "No one's getting inside for a while yet, boy."
"Not those ones," Boyd said, as though the man were ridiculously slow. Without taking his eyes off the soldier, he held the door out sideways, with two blunt-pronged ornaments pointing into the crowd. Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Nephenee hammered the axle against the granite steps, snapping off the other wheel, and twirled the pole back up into a lancer's defensive stance. There was a reason this didn't attract many people's attention.
Ike and Elincia gratefully grabbed hold of the apparent ornaments and pulled, drawing out the pair of swords that Boyd had embedded there while the convoy was stopped to be searched. "Steel?" he asked.
"Well, I would have put Ragnell in, boss, but I was afraid of killing everyone within thirty feet," Boyd replied, scowling at him without much intent.
"It'll do."
There is this to be said about the swordsmanship of Lord Ike of Crimea: occasionally, some of his better foes started to see it happen. Generally, the only way of safely viewing Ike in action was to be an innocent bystander behind a nearby brick wall. And the mortar would need to be quite strong. Of course, surrounded by innocent – if frequently objectionable – Begnion nobility meant that he had to restrain himself somewhat. On the plus side, the Sagita guards were distracted enough that he got the element of surprise on them again and again.
Ike immediately ran through the nearest soldier, who he had already marked down as a nasty piece of work, twisted to thrust his boot into another's stomach, hammered down on another with the pommel of his sword, and began forcing nobles behind him with one hand while parrying off oncoming soldiers with the other. Boyd stepped in, door swinging, to take charge of herding aristocrats, which left Ike free to vault into the midst of the Sagita guards and really begin unleashing merry havoc.
Typically enough, several of the guards produced spellbooks and attempted to retreat to a safe casting distance, imagining that Ike's attention would be taken up by the dozen soldiers closing around him. They were less enthusiastic when he parried the first two fireballs with a bat of his blade – silently thanking Stefan for that technique – and downright dismayed when Elincia charged into their ranks, slashing with surgical precision.
Nephenee did her best to assist the queen, but there was only so much more destruction she could add to the royal crusade. Without magic to defend against, Ike had become a whirlwind of steel, and most of the soldiers who were driven within his striking distance once were quick to throw down their weapons and scramble away in retreat.
This had only gone on for a few intense minutes when the Begnion guard finally allowed the others through. Ike was in the midst of using one soldier as leverage to dropkick another and then flinging the first into his comrades, but he was abruptly out of targets; the last few collapsed in a flash of lightning and Soren skipped over them without paying much attention.
"I hope you don't mind being tapped as allies," said the sage. "If we hadn't been desperate–"
"Nonsense," said Ike. "It's invigorating."
"A wonderful change of pace," said Elincia. A mage at her feet began muttering a spell, but it immediately trailed off into a groan when she kicked him. Pointing out that she enjoyed doing so far too much just wasn't the sort of thing you told a queen. "Can you bring down the light barrier?"
"No," said Soren, "but maybe I can speed its decay. I hope we're not missing anything important."
"Now that the boss is here, I'm pretty sure we're going to miss everything except holding coats," Boyd remarked. Nephenee elbowed him lightly. "Okay, yes, I'm glad to see you too."
"I'm glad I don't have to order you," said Ike. "Let's have that door down."
Sanaki scowled at the treacherous archer. "I hardly intend this as a taunt, but might I suggest that a stiff breeze makes for an ineffective weapon of execution?"
"Don't tempt me to prove you wrong," Fletcher replied. "And with my guards holding the hall, you're not in any position to tell me what I can't do."
"Very well," she said. "Let me tell you what you are doing. You have revealed your treachery. You stand here now, unable to take steps to kill your foe, emptily threatening the lives of bystanders and wishing that you still had some vague hope of victory, but slowly realising–"
Then a rational thought burst through Fletcher's rage and pointed out the distraction for what it was; he immediately spun in place and struck the bowstring again, blasting a furious wind down the aisle where Gatrie was quietly approaching. Any nobles caught near the edges of the gale were shoved away, falling into each other or over their seats, but Gatrie was trapped in the middle and responded the only way he could. He did nothing. Nothing outward, anyway, save for a slight shift in his footing and extra bend to his stance.
With his eyes closed against the tearing air, he concentrated on the stone under his fingertips, the floor that was built on the foundations that sank into the ground that lay shallow on the surface of the endlessly deep earth. He had worked this kind of mental fortitude before, and it worked, although he didn't know how. Until the singing wind stopped, he focused on nothing but rooting himself to the very core of the world. When it did end, he opened his eyes and smiled; he had only slid back a couple of feet. And, coincidentally, had slipped into a good sprinting position.
Gatrie charged toward Fletcher again, and again the lord unleashed a hurricane force that Gatrie had to halt and weather, but he did weather it as no other soldier could, and charged again. After a third gale he was too close to be deterred, and Fletcher had to leap aside to avoid being crushed under a flying tackle. Fletcher was no trained soldier, but he was quick on his feet, and used Gatrie's relative clumsiness to his advantage. When the general approached next, Fletcher leapt and fired at the floor; the wind splashed outward and blew Gatrie's feet out from under him, while the lordling was merely boosted another foot or two up and away.
Astrid had already taken the opportunity to slip further away from Fletcher in the chaos; she was out of fighting practice and had no wish to rush at him unarmed like Gatrie. Unfortunately, the Hall was mostly quite empty of weapons, especially since Sagita's few armed guards in the hall were attempting to force all the attending nobles into a smaller and more convenient space. There wasn't even banquet cutlery out, which was unlucky, because Astrid had seen the cake and determined that it would take a halberd to cut through.
What she had found were some of the wedding presents, mostly those sent by messenger from far-off nobles. A family crest caught her eye on one of the packages, and she tore it open immediately. Astrid's eldest sister, long since married away, had always been more like her than the rest of their family, and sending something in recognition of their best shared hobby would be just like her. Astrid withdrew the object curiously. Diamonds were set into the handle, which was more than a little bizarre, and tremendously uncomfortable. Still, Titania had given her some training with weapons of an axe-shaped nature, and this more-or-less fit the name…
Trying to rub the dull agony out of his head, Sothe stumbled upright and tried to measure the fight. At close range, Gatrie was turning out to be a trickier target than Fletcher expected. He was relentless, but surprisingly good at twisting out of the way whenever the Bow spat out one of its melodious shockwaves. The two were keeping each other busy, and none of the Sagita servants were going to kill hostages until it was very, very clear to them that the Apostle wouldn't last long enough to order their fiery executions. It was exactly the sort of stalemate he hated; thieves did not do slugging matches.
"Shouldn't you be incinerating him in holy fire?" Sothe asked the Apostle, nodding at Fletcher.
"Only too gladly, but I did not bring the sacred scrolls of retribution to a wedding," Sanaki replied.
"Typical mage response. You don't see Gatrie complaining about being unarmed–" said Sothe, and then one of Fletcher's random missed shots hit them, echoing like a dozen exploding pianos. The Apostle protected herself again, but Sothe was out of her range and did something like an involuntary backwards somersault, landing on his wounded chest and cringing again. So far, getting up was proving to be a losing strategy in life.
At last Fletcher caught Gatrie distracted, hitting him dead-centre with a sonic boom, and the unprepared general was sent sprawling. Fletcher sighed in relief, but kept the Bow trained on him and drew one of the headless arrows. "I'd be obliged if you'd give me your name before I kill you. Not that I'm willing to wait, but it'll take a moment to line up a fatal shot like this. I'm thinking the eye is probably the best bet."
"You don't even know who I am?" the general demanded. "You're making too many enemies, Fletcher. It's not even safe to turn your back anymore." Because Astrid's sense of stealth and timing was still better than Gatrie's, Fletcher only had a half-second's eye-widening realisation before she clocked him over the head with a gilt-edged tennis racket. The next few strikes came in from the sides, and Fletcher rolled with them, trying to get out of her range and keep his eyes on everyone at once.
"Just sit down and take your smiting, you twisted freak!" Astrid bellowed, which was possibly the least-like-her sentence she had ever uttered. Battered, bruised, and leaning heavily against the Apostle's throne, Sothe grinned. At least some good had come out of this mess.
"Do you suppose I could get some reinforcements, people?" Fletcher called to his servants. One of them ventured out across the storm-ravaged floor to unlock the access to another side room, and a stream of lightly armed and armoured Sagita soldiers poured out of it. They kept pouring right across the hall and through the far door, because, at the end of the file of soldiers, Calill, Marcia, Geoffrey, Bastian, and a contingent of Crimean royal guards were pursuing them with violent intent. The whole procession took less than half a minute to clear through and out of sight, and when they were gone, the main doors of the Hall had swung open.
"It's amazing what you can do with a Pegasus, a willingness to break a couple of fourth-floor windows, and the deep desire to cause harm to bad people," said Soren, walking in with the others.
"I'm Ike," said (predictably) Ike, his gaze sweeping the crowd. "Yes, I'm a lord of Crimea, and no, I don't have a surname. I'll save you the trouble and add yes, I'm that Ike, so everybody drop your weapons or I will personally mess you the hell up." The clatter of hostage-taking blades echoed off the stone arches of the hall.
Fletcher just shook his head. "This is ridiculous."
"What can I say?" asked Soren. He laughed, and quite accidentally visions of vengeful storms and the eternal suffering of dark judgment swirled around him in most peoples' minds. "You're not the only one with a private army and superweapons."
"I think he just called you a superweapon," Elincia whispered to Ike.
"Aye," Ike agreed. "Maybe that could be my surname."
"Fletcher, give up," said Astrid, and there was sincere pleading in her voice. "No one has to die today." The hall waited in silence. The archer-lord heaved a slow sigh. At last, he spoke.
"Maybe you're–" Fletcher spun and shoved out with surprisingly effective kick that caught Astrid in the stomach and sent her to the floor, hammered Gatrie with another air-cannon, and before the newcomers could take a half-dozen steps he had drawn three arrows and nocked them. Everyone skidded to a halt very quickly, because the trio of arrows were pointed skyward and had just flared into humming blue lines.
"Three?" Gatrie scoffed. "That's a trick shot; you can't aim like that…"
"He doesn't need to," Astrid muttered under her breath. In the deathly quiet, he heard her anyway.
"You're right," said Fletcher. "If anyone gives me cause to let go, for any reason, this hall and everyone within gets to perish in a storm of fire, stone, and celestial might. UNDERSTOOD?!" His fingers twitched, and the multitude cringed. "Good. Everyone leaves. Now. Except for the Apostle. Then she dies, the throne passes to me, and anyone who wishes to file a protest may do so from the afterlife."
"You said you couldn't use it!" Astrid snapped at him, an edge of panic in her voice. "What was all that for, otherwise? You said you didn't trust, or… or something."
"I honestly couldn't," said Fletcher. He was tired; his fingers shook slightly holding the bow drawn. "But one thing I know is that the power to succeed will always come to those who need it. And I do believe in power. I trust my own intent. And the Bow is both of these things: nothing more or less than an instrument to impose my will on the world. It is mine, and with it I claim all of Begnion for House Sagita."
"How dare you bring down that name with you?" The voice seemed to come from everywhere. Fletcher whirled about in a circle, but no one was sneaking up behind him, nor from any other angle. Distantly, subtly, the Apostle smiled and waited. "How dare you?" the voice repeated. Fletcher began to panic, but it only lasted for a moment.
Then Hayley hit him, feet-first, meteoritic, because the battle had carried Fletcher to the point immediately under the hole Astrid blasted through the upper floors when she fired on the Apostle. The force of impact alone floored Fletcher, but Hayley gave him no chance to resist, slamming his knuckles against the stone floor until he let go of the Bow of Falling Stars. Somewhere in the tangled brawl he had let go of the arrows, but with his stance, form, and concentration broken, their magic blinked out of existence and they rolled away harmlessly.
The same could not be said for the woman now pinning Fletcher's arms to the floor with her knees and subduing him with a hammering rain of fists. It was a surprisingly brief burst of thrashing, and at the end Fletcher was still conscious, although he probably wished otherwise. His eyes focused first on his assailant from above, and then on the Bow in Astrid's hands.
"Whoever you are, you have my thanks," said Astrid. "Now get up so I can finish this for certain."
"No," said the general. "I'll take charge of him. He's my responsibility."
"What's that mean?" asked Gatrie, frowning.
"Hayley Sagita, good of you to join us," said the Apostle, and she laughed at Gatrie's shocked recoil. Hail looked down at Fletcher, gave him one last backhanded slap, and rose to her feet to salute the empress properly. "And I might add you've done extremely well for your first mission."
Hayley's mouth worked in silent consternation for a moment. Eventually she blurted "Your Holiness, no one told me my brother was the one masterminding all of this."
The Apostle looked, if possible, even more amused. "If I had known, do you think I'd have been here today? All told, I would say this worked out better than we could have hoped." She surveyed the destruction throughout the Hall of Heroes. "Well… close to it."
"You didn't tell me you were his brother!" Gatrie blurted.
"Well... half-brother, obviously. Anyway, you were already disbelieving me about being an agent of the Apostle; why would I make life harder on myself for nothing?" She returned the general's glare. "So now you're going to be suspicious about it anyway? I told you the truth; I ran away from home when I was eleven and a senator found out I was half-laguz."
Gatrie opened his mouth to protest, but the Apostle pre-empted him. "Her claim is true, sir knight, and trust me when I say I would be the first to know otherwise. As a matter of fact, given today's events, I believe I'll be instating you as immediate heir to House Sagita."
"Heir?" Hayley repeated. "What about my brother?"
"Execution is quite clearly outlined as the fate of traitors to the Begnion theocracy," said Sanaki.
The elder Sagita sibling didn't seem to have noticed that the entire hall was watching her shake her head. "No. I may not know what you intend by giving me my House back, but if that is your command, then I will take charge of all of it, including Fletcher."
Sanaki stared wide-eyed, then laughed. "You would dare argue with me in the same breath that I make you a noblewoman? I can see Sagita's future is going to make for delightful entertainment."
"What can I say, Your Holiness?" She glanced at Gatrie, who was still not hiding his bafflement. "I'm a knight. Standing firm is something of a specialty."
Lucia arrived at a sprint, skipping over the gale-rent ruins of the main doors paying them any heed. "I saw that flash from across the city – do you have any idea how many soldiers are on the street out there? What did I miss?"
"Everything," Calill reported.
"Blast!"
"Don't remind me."
"What?"
"Never mind. It's been an atrociously windy day. I'll make appointments for both of us at the hot spring spa, and maybe we can do something about your hair," said the sage.
"You're talking crazy again; I take it that means this ordeal is over?" the swordmaster asked.
"That depends," Calill observed. "Fletcher isn't dead yet, and I have to admit that's irritating me rather a lot. On the other hand, Soren's gone off to raid a library; he says he's got an idea for how to destroy the Bow properly this time. None of this divide-the-pieces-and-hide-them-where-they'll-never-be-found wishy-washiness."
"Good goddess, Fletcher's alive, the Bow is intact, and I can't see the Apostle anywhere – did we win or not?" Lucia exclaimed. Calill grinned slyly and spun a lock of her hair around her finger.
"Her Worshipfultacularness is fine. As for winning, well: in the ways that count, that remains to be seen."
Time passed; Sothe wasn't sure how much, since he spent most of it feeling like he had been shoved through a pasta press. At Ike's command, the rest of the former mercenaries spread out through the Hall to capture and pacify the remaining Sagita guards, most of whom were unwilling to recognise Hayley as having the slightest authority to issue orders. Some of the nobles dispersed, while others gathered in clusters here and there around the periphery of the main hall. House Sagita was unstable now, which meant life had become interesting for the politicians again, and if such matters needed discussing anyway, there was no sense in letting a small banquet go to waste. Sothe spared a moment of his time to direct a general hatred at the lot of them, and then got back to aching.
Eventually Elincia arrived with a Mend staff in hand, insisting that she had gone looking for one at her first opportunity, and to be fair she did put it to extraordinarily good use. Certain that he was coherent enough to remember it now, the Apostle thanked him before sweeping away with Hayley to discuss her coming ascension. Vaguely, the thief wondered if this made him some kind of minor saint.
That thought didn't last any longer than it took him to notice that Astrid was standing nearby, still in her ultra-simple-if-elegant white dress, still holding the Bow of Falling Stars like it might slither away. He could see the pained concern in her eyes, and struggled to show no emotion himself.
"You were incredible," she said.
"That reminds me, I need a good place to do a victory dance…" Sothe muttered.
"Why did you come back?"
"Are you really going to ask that?" the thief retorted.
"Well… I suppose I hoped it was because you wanted to say something. Or ask me something."
He frowned. She had said that rather meaningfully. "Is there a reason you're still wearing that dress? You do realise you've bled on it a little." Astrid looked away. "You do mean that, don't you? Astrid…" he said, his voice dropping as he approached her, "I didn't come back to ask you to marry me."
"I – that's entirely –" she stuttered, colour rising in her face. Sothe took the paladin by her shoulders and gently spun her around to face across the hall.
"You are a tiny bit insane and I'm going to explain how. See Boyd and Nephenee over there? They had to split up to flank the last holdout soldiers. Now, even I can't hear them from this far away, but it's not hard to guess from the motions: he's asking if she's okay, that laugh is a yes, the poke in his chest is because she's letting him know exactly what she thinks of overprotectiveness, he's pointing out that he asked her to lead the attack, she's teasing him about Ashera-knows-what…"
And then Boyd literally lifted the halberdier off the floor in his embrace, to the surprise of Astrid and everyone close enough to hear the two of them, which was everyone. "Apparently things have changed while I wasn't looking," Astrid remarked absently.
"That is normal," said Sothe. "Not arrangements made by your parents, not marriages to strangers you've known for three days, and not having little wars break out over your personal decisions. That's why I don't trust nobles; even you have absolutely no idea what 'normal' really means."
"So why did you come back?" Astrid repeated.
Sothe looked her in the eye and whispered: "Because I love you."
"You know," Gatrie said loudly, marching toward them in heroic fashion, "this whole thing happened because of me. In case you were wondering. I mean, Calill and Lucia apparently had some kind of plan going, but if I hadn't known that this wedding needed stopping, we'd all be pretty well knee deep in 'we're screwed' right about now. I'm just saying."
Astrid laughed and stood on her toes to plant a quick kiss on his cheek. "Thank you, Gatrie. The whole country should thank you, but since your brilliant intervention kept me from becoming the new wicked empress, I can't decree it."
The general rubbed his cheek and surveyed the two of them with a discerning eye. "Yup, typical," he determined. "Well, one of these days my karma will balance out and I'll be made Duke of Tellius or something. Hey, is that Marcia? She's wearing her hair longer these days." Gatrie waved the two of them off with something resembling a salute and ambled toward the Pegasus knight, a smile already spreading on his face.
"What in the world goes on inside that head?" Astrid wondered.
"I wouldn't want to know," Sothe said with certainty. "Look, I still have someone I need to find, and Daein is the only place left to look on the whole continent. So I'm not staying here in Sienne, and you'll have to decide what you want to make of that."
"Are you coming back?" Astrid asked.
"…If I said 'count on it'?"
"Then I don't care where you're going," she replied. "In fact, I was thinking about asking Ike if the Crimean Guard could use another paladin for a few months. Anything to get out of Begnion."
"Well. No sense in rushing anywhere," Sothe said, without quite as much cool smoothness as he usually projected. "I don't have to leave now. Besides–" he took her hand and slipped into a dramatic pose– "I have at least one victory dance to catch up on."
"The orchestra scattered some time ago," Astrid pointed out.
"Music calls for dance; dance calls for music. They'll be back. Or I don't care. Either one. Thief rules." The paladin laughed and twirled into motion.
Endnote : At long last - I've been planning parts of this last chapter for, what, a year - One-Stringed Harp comes to a close. There are a handful of loose ends, like the tea-ninja and the actual destruction of the Bow and the explanation of how Hayley got her laguz blood and subsequent Brand, and they actually do have explanations, but this is where the story ends. Most things don't tie up neatly at the end, because most things don't actually end; if you think there could or should be more following this chapter, then I've succeeded. If you don't, uh... well, I don't care. Thief rules.
The next postings by me ought to be, as stated before, the end of Cascade (an FE8 story and sequel to Symmetry, which is some of my best and favourite work) and a shorter one set between chapters 16 and 17 of FE9, titled Fever Dreams, in which Ike gets infected by a demon-plant growing in the dead Serenes Forest and wanders through a hostile dreamscape while the mercenaries work to find the cure. Soren sings about FE10 spoilers. Seriously.