~*Part 3*~

Noin had mastered the art of walking purposefully.  The talent was a necessary survival skill for Sank’s head advisor to Her Majesty, Queen Relena Peacecraft, and she accomplished it by keeping her eyes straightforward, arms swinging like syncopated pendulums, and feet snapping down just a little harder, making her highly polished black boots click just a little louder, so people could prepare to get out of her way before they actually saw her.  It was a stride that said clearly, “I have more important things to deal with than you, and if I have to walk over you to get to them, I will, and gladly.” 

Today, her purposeful walk was in high form. 

She approached the Queen’s quarters, noting the lack of guards with a frown, then pushed past the meager barrier of the door into the plush, pink sitting room where she found her sovereign…packing.

“My Queen?”

The blond girl looked up long enough to identify who had spoken…or perhaps just to shoot Noin a look of stubborn defiance.  Sank’s chief advisor ignored it, and stepped inside the room, shutting the door.

“Don’t try to stop me, Noin,” Relena warned.

“Of course I’m going to try and stop you, Your Majesty, or else I wouldn’t be here,” Noin retorted with a patient obstinacy of her own.

The Queen threw a pastel petticoat into her bag and stopped, back to Noin, shoulders and stance stiff and unyielding as a wall.  “He isn’t dead, Noin,” she said, voice trembling only a little.  It was still hard to talk about it, even after five years.

Noin sighed silently, the mention of Relena’s long-absent older brother bringing an unwanted softness to her despite all efforts to guard against it, and she pushed a bit further into her sovereign’s personal space. “You can’t know that.”

The girl swung around, anger imperial making her sweet features fierce. “But I do know it!  And no one will listen to me!”

Noin flinched in spite of herself, and Relena drew back, temper vanished—or at least buried deeper.  She turned back to her task, trying to force the yards of lace into the already over-stuffed bag.

“So I’m going after him myself,” she declared, strength ringing iron in her voice.

Noin watched her silently for a moment, before dry humor burned its way out of her mouth. “…And you’re bringing luggage?”

Relena looked at her, startled, then down at the clothing in her hands, and suddenly she sagged, hands drifting down to rest on the cloth, fingers going lax, shoulders drooping.  She turned and sat slumped on the bed, for once forgetting royal posturing.  For once looking like the lost child she sometimes was.  Noin let out another silent breath and approached, feeling the defenses around Relena had slackened enough to come close without risking chastisement. She sat next to the Queen, clasping her hands together to resist the urge to hug Relena, and looked at the bowed head.

“I want him back.”  It was a forlorn statement, spoken quietly, as if afraid to be heard.

“I know,” Noin replied simply. “But…why now?  Why all this…intensity after so long a time?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t know…but, something dark is happening.  There’s trouble…”

“All the more reason for you to stay here,” Noin reasoned.

“No!” Relena’s head snapped up, her eyes gripping Noin’s, but unfocused. “Death if I stay here.  Death, everywhere, a whole kingdom dying.”

“Relena…” the advisor murmured uneasily.  She should have been used to these fits by now; they’d been happening since Miliardo had disappeared during a peace mission to Oz five years ago, but the eeriness of Relena’s premonitions still managed to unnerve her.

“Get out of the way, Noin,” the Queen said calmly, returning from her daze as quickly as she had fallen into it.

“Who will take care of the kingdom while you’re out gallivanting through the countryside?”

Relena just looked at her.

“Your Majesty…”

“It’s not like you don’t already help me a lot.  It’s not like the people won’t listen to you.  Noin…” Relena made a restless movement, like an aborted attempt to stand. “I have to find him.  Something big is about to happen.  Oz has been quiet for far too long.  They’ve been testing our borders for the past six months, have been trying to weaken us for the past five years.  I should have challenged them when Miliardo d-disappeared but…”  She trailed off and shrugged.  Then she turned to Noin with pleading eyes. “Please understand.”

Noin sighed.  “Alright.  I’ll give you three weeks.”

“Six.”

“A month.”

“Deal.”  Relena stood and grabbed her bag. “I’ve dismissed the guards and I’ll take the back passage, so no one will see me.”

“A month.” This time, it was spoken as a warning. “And then I’ll send the whole damned army in after you.”

Relena paused, one hand on the corner of a framed painting of the Sank landscape, and half-turned to toss a wry look over her shoulder. “All eight of them?”  She shifted the picture and a door opened up in the wall.

“Yes.  And Dorothy.”

Relena winced but didn’t reply.  Dorothy was supposed to have been an ambassador from one of the numerous kingdoms in the East, but had turned out to be more of a bodyguard, and more serious about her job than anyone had expected her to be.  The kingdoms of the East had never shown any interest in Sank before, and none had shown any after Dorothy had established herself in the court.  Relena wasn’t sure where she stood with the strange, fierce foreigner.  Most of the time, Dorothy seemed more than willing to kill her should her reforms slip too far away from Eastern benefits. Ill at ease, the Queen of Sank slipped hastily out into the stone corridor and away.

~*~

It was dusk phasing into night as she rode her horse out to the grove of trees where she’d stashed her supplies.  She tied the mare to a sapling and poked carefully among the shrubbery, trying to remember exactly which hollow trunk she’d placed the bags in.  They all looked the same in the dark.

Suddenly twigs snapped to her right, and she jerked back, heart leaping.  She’d brought a weapon, but it was strapped to her horse’s flank.  She scrambled towards it, but knew she wouldn’t get to it in time as the low branches were swept out of the path of whoever was coming toward her.

The moonlight made the long, thick white-blond hair fey-silver, and the blue eyes gleam like stones.  It glinted off the metal shoulder guards and illuminated the pseudo-military uniform in shadings of gray.

“Dorothy!”  The exclamation was caught somewhere between relief and surprised wariness.

“Relena-san,” the foreigner said calmly, stepping forward into the clearing.  Relena got no more warning than that before Dorothy’s fist connected solidly with her chin.  Her head snapped back and she found herself lying on the ground, too dazed to even curl up in defense against further attacks.  But no more violence followed. 

Slowly, Relena sat up, rubbing lightly at what was sure to be a spectacular bruise.  Dorothy was standing near by, but not menacingly close, one hand on her hip, weight shifted to one side, the tilt of her head and the purse of her lips contemptuous.  Two thin, decorative braids slid over her right shoulder, weighted by beads.  She seemed to be waiting for something.

There were several questions that came to Relena’s mind, but the one that prevailed was a simple, bewildered, “Why did you do that?”

“You are endangering the kingdom,” the pale-haired girl snapped, disapproval like sharp stones in her voice. “You are endangering yourself.  I cannot allow you to do that.”

“Dorothy…”

“I’m coming with you.”

Relena blinked at the defensive challenge in the foreigner’s voice, but then felt her face soften into a smile.  “Thank you.”

“Don’t make me regret it.”

Relena nodded, and then struggled to her feet. “I think my tongue is bleeding!” she half-accused, indignant now that she knew she wasn’t going to die.  Dorothy gave her a dark half-smile, but didn’t comment other than to throw a heavy bag in her direction.  Relena caught her supplies, staggering, and slung them onto her horse.

“What are you going to ride on?” she asked curiously.

“I don’t like horses.”

Relena raised an eyebrow, but Dorothy’s only answer was a closed, unyielding look. “Are you going to walk?”

“We are.  It isn’t far from here.”

“It isn’t?”

“No.”

“Fine,” she sighed. “Lead the way.”

~*~

Trowa glanced at the gatekeeper.  The nearest Hand jabbed a spear butt into the frazzled, soot-stained man’s back and forced him forward, earning a steady regard from the Tracker, which made the other soldier retreat quickly.  Trowa turned back to the gatekeeper, and this time, his gaze was reserved and polite.

“Please activate the Gate,” he requested quietly.

Howard gritted his teeth.  The rope around his wrists burned at the sensitive skin scorched raw by the fire he’d spent most of the morning trying to control.  It still raged in the lower sections of town.  Who knew stone could burn with such determination? 

He’d been caught.  At the time, it’d seemed more important to make sure he’d have someplace left to come back to, than making sure he had somewhere to go.  On reflection, it probably hadn’t been the best decision he’d ever made.  But they hadn’t killed him, yet.  That was something.

He had no delusions, however, about the length of his life should he refuse the one skill that made him useful to them.  He stepped forward and touched the keystone with a quiet murmur.  It brightened under his palm, becoming warm, the texture smoothing so that it felt like a living thing.  He crossed to the headstone, then back to the starstone and around to the firestone.  There were twelve in all, and activating them was an intricate little song and dance that had been lost from most human memory for centuries. 

“Where do you want this to go?”

“The cliffs of Ganor.”

Howard stepped back to the keystone and tapped a series of runes that lit up briefly under his touch.  Once he was finished, he allowed himself to be hustled back to the inn where he was being kept under house arrest.

Trowa watched until they were out of sight, then glanced at a subordinate who stepped forward with a cooing bundle cupped firmly between his hands.  The Tracker took the messenger pigeon and released it into a ring, where it disappeared immediately in a flash of light.  Then he waited.

The sun had climbed to sit directly overhead by the time the gate flared again.  The woman who appeared stood average height, imposing through sheer willpower if not physical stature.  Her eyes were keen and her features lovely but sharp.    Her brown hair was gathered into two braided buns behind her ears.  Her crossbow slanted easily against her back, her bolts neatly placed in her hip-quiver.  The face paint that flared like fairy wings from her eyebrows and curved down, feathering against her cheekbones and tapering to the corners of her eyes shimmered as she stepped out of the circle and nodded to his salute. 

“Commander Une,” he murmured, stepping aside in preparation to lead her to the base house.  He stopped when someone else stepped up from the circle to flank her.

Her companion was unexpected, dressed in the plain traveling outfit of the southern desert nomads.  The thick, blanket-like cape had a hole cut out in the middle for a head, equal lengths of coarse fabric falling in front and behind to about mid-thigh, arms free of encumberment.  The wide-brimmed hat was pulled low and the scarf wrapped high to ward off the comparative cold of Oz’s spring weather, leaving all but the blue eyes covered. 

Trowa recognized that intense gaze and glanced at Une, startled.  The woman gave a small shake of her head, which he answered with an equally small nod.  Holding his questions, he continued his aborted motion to lead them away.  Sooner or later, Une would have to explain what the King of Oz was doing here, but now was not the time.

“Status report,” Une said crisply as she fell into step beside him.

“Quatre Winner is still missing.  The fire is under control in the upper quadrants, but we’re still having difficulty containing it in the poorer areas.  The exact cause of the fire is unknown, but I have a few soldiers who swore it was a foreign sorcerer.”

“Eastern fire magic,” the King of Oz commented from a half-step behind Une.

“Possibly,” Trowa conceded.

“That’s not the kind of publicity we want,” Une cut in. “I’m sure you’ll be able to think of a more mundane cause to attribute it to.”

The Tracker nodded.

“The elf is more important,” the King said quietly. “This campaign will go nowhere without him.”

“He’s out of the city,” Trowa admitted.

“Then it’s a good thing we have the best Tracker in the kingdom here with us,” the King replied, dry humor barely warming his voice.

Une stopped when they reached the mayor’s house and turned to face them, and Trowa turned to face her. “These are my orders.  Trowa, you will go after Quatre Winner and bring him back as soon as possible.  Turbarov has moved the schedule up by a month, so the last thing we need is more delays.  Since we’re in such a hurry, you’ll take…” She glanced at the King, “someone to assist you.  I’ll expect a report in no less than three days.  In the meantime, I’ll stay here and…stave off the wolves.” She barely suppressed a sigh, then turned and snapped. “Dismissed!” And marched up into the house.

Trowa watched her go.  “Will she be alright?”

“Better to ask if the others will be alright.  She was ready to tear jugulars with her teeth when she got your message.”

“It’s a mess.”

“So I noticed.  Are you ready to go?”

Trowa turned and started walking toward the stable. “How did you get her to agree to bring you here?”

“I threatened to have her replaced.”

Trowa didn’t smile, but his visible eye twinkled a little. “I see.  She believed you?”

“She’s under a lot of stress.  Sometimes she forgets that she’s more of a mother to me than my real mother was.”

Trowa nodded, mood darkening again.  “Aa.  Everyone’s under a lot of stress.”

They walked a while in silence.  The air smelled like ash and burning stone and the sun was blotted occasionally when the wind shifted the smoke that rolled its way into the sky.  It made Trowa uneasy, and not just for the immediate threat the fire presented to his person, but because it reminded him of things that he’d rather not think about. 

Une’s denial aside, he knew that magic had worked its way into the scene somehow, and that always made things unpredictable, especially when it was magic that no one knew much about.  Fire magic wasn’t often seen outside of Eastern boarders.  Elven magic was an art forgotten by all but elves and a few like the gatekeeper.  And earlier he had spoken with his sister, Catherine, and heard her story about the boy in necromancer robes.  Necromancy had been outlawed almost a century ago.  Not even its former practitioners remembered all of its rules anymore.

The King’s riding boots made hard sounds against the cobblestones and took authenticity away from his disguise, for southerners wore soft-soled sandals.

“What should I call you?” Trowa asked.  It hardly seemed appropriate to call him “Your Majesty” since it seemed obvious he’d rather no one know who he was.

“Heero,” the King answered mildly.  “Heero Yuy.”

~*~

Wufei noticed that the elf was falling further and further back.  He leaned forward. “Duo.”

The other boy turned his head to look at him and caught sight of Quatre, slumped low in the saddle.  He pulled the roan in and grabbed the reins out of the elf’s slipping grasp.  Wufei still wasn’t confident enough about riding to reach out and steady his sagging companion, but he studied Quatre from his seat as Duo settled the horse, and hissed in dismay.  There was about three inches of arrow shaft buried in the elf’s shoulder.

“Stop,” he said.  Duo had already seen the damage and eased his mount to a stop.  Wufei threw a leg over and dismounted, nearly toppling as his land legs struggled to reassert themselves, but he was too worried to notice much and caught his balance against Quatre’s buckskin, pulling the elf off as carefully as he could as the horse shied.  Duo was down in time to catch Quatre’s trailing legs, and together they lay him on the ground. 

“K’so,” Wufei growled as he checked the wound.  It was deep, but seemed to have missed anything vital.  Still, just being lodged in the muscle for three hours through a bumpy ride through tangled forest had doubled the damage. The pale sleeve of the elf’s outfit was soaked with blood.  “Barbed arrowhead,” he announced, sitting back. “I can’t get it out without further damage.  We need to get him to a healer.”

“Iron,” Duo rasped, white-faced.  Wufei looked up, alarmed at the tone, and wondered if he’d soon have two unconscious companions to deal with. “Arrowheads are iron.  He should be dead.”

“Well he isn’t,” Wufei snapped, pushing strands of black hair out of his face irritably.  There was a time for doom and gloom, and then there were times when one just had to suck it up and deal. “But he may be soon.”

“I should…” Slender, dexterous fingers traced the wound carefully.  Wufei frowned at the braided boy. “I should be able to…” Duo laid his palm against Quatre’s wounded shoulder and closed his eyes.   A familiar burn made its way up his spine, exploding like starbursts behind his eyes, tingling through his fingertips.  He could see the elf without looking, Quatre’s body drawn in thin blue lines of his soul that glowed with fey magic, woven into a whole.  Duo touched the frayed strings, making them complete. 

Then a lick of darkness whipped across his mind, breaking his concentration, and his delicate manipulations spun out of control, blasting apart.  Duo cried out and lurched forward, just barely catching himself, dimly hearing Wufei’s alarmed voice.  All he could see was the elf’s form unraveling beneath him and recoiled violently.

Wufei leaned in to get Duo’s attention, only to be smack across the chin and thrown back as the boy flailed out with a low cry and darted off into the forest.  Wufei scrambled up only to stumble again when a black wave crashed into his mind in the boy’s wake.  Wufei had to prop his hands on his knees and just concentrate on breathing as his brain threatened to shut down, the darkness doing its best smother him.  By the time he straightened, Duo was gone.

“Shimatta!” Wufei snarled, lunged in the last direction he’d seen Duo go, and nearly tripped over the elf, still unconscious, and looking decidedly paler, on the ground.  He stopped.  He looked at the horses. 

The horses looked at him. 

“Okay, creatures,” he said in what he considered his most reasonable tone, “how about we call a truce?”

~*~

The man stood tall on the open cliff, outlined against the last struggling moments of brilliant light as the sun reluctantly slid below the horizon.  He faced the forest, but was watching the skies, long hair swinging in small braids, wrapped in so many green and brown leather strips it was impossible to tell the original shade.  A mask in snow hawk design, minus the beak, hid the upper half of his face and he had the eyes for it—light blue and sharp as a hunter’s.

A quick-slim shadow detached itself from the forest and soared toward the cliff.  The man held out his heavily gloved arm and whistled.  A sleek peregrine swooped in and alighted obligingly on his fist, chirruping happily.  He took a treat for it out of his belt pouch and then, as it ate, he took the message off of its leg.

Arms slid around his waist, a solid weight settling against his back, and a chin bracing itself on his shoulder.  Warm breath tickled his ear. “News?”

“Une sends her regards… and an update.”

“Oh?” the voice seemed unconcerned, but the man knew better.

“Yes.  Fire’s been subdued, few casualties.  And…” He felt a tremor through his body.  “Turbarov has moved up the schedule again.”  His hands tightened on the missive as a cold fear gripped his chest.  Warm lips brushed against his skin, tracing the curves of his ear comfortingly.

“Aa.  And?” 

“There isn’t much else.  You can read it for yourself.  I think she’s about to crack from the strain.”

The weight shifted, but did not lift, arms reaching around further, hands stretching to take the scrap of parchment. “Poor Une.”

The man snorted and turned inside the circle of arms to face the person behind him.  “I doubt our sympathies should be for Une.  That woman is scary normally.  Stressed, she should be a complete nightmare.”

The ginger-haired man in hunter green and dark gray grinned, eyes twinkling. “That’s not a very polite thing to say.  I never had any trouble with her.”

“She liked you.  The rest of us had to deal with the deadly combination of her temper, that…thing that she insists on linking with and makes her so volatile, and her wicked right hook.”

The ginger-haired man blinked. “She had a wicked right hook?”

“You had better believe it.  She probably still does.”

“Treize!”

The ginger-haired man turned at his name to see a slender teenager jog her way up the incline from the trees behind them.  He let go of his companion and stepped toward her.

“What is it?”

“Intruder!  Alone, and by the way he’s moving—wounded.  We think someone may be following him.  He’s acting like a hunted thing.”

Treize frowned. “Well, just let him wander through and keep an eye on him.  Report if there are any developments.”

“Well, I would,” she said, stopping a few steps away and giving him a look that said clearly I know the drill.  What kind of idiot do you take me for? “But he’s wearing necromancer robes.”

That changed everything.  “I’ll go look into it personally, then.”

The girl grinned a bit. “I thought you might want to, sir.”

“You’d better come too, Zechs,” he said to the long-haired falconer.  Zechs launched the peregrine back into the air and nodded, falling into step as Treize followed the girl back into the forest.

“This feels like trouble,” the falconer murmured.

“I wouldn’t bet against it,” Treize answered.

~*~

Duo was running and he didn’t know where he was going or what would happen when he got there, he only understood that something was driving him, something he couldn’t escape.  It breathed hot on the fine hairs on the back of his neck; it had translucent wings that flicked at the periphery of his vision like knife-edges of darkness; and its thoughts sank claws into his mind in sharp needles of pain, laughing softly.

It made him aware of the half dozen people closing in around him, breathing their souls like incense.

He tried to ignore it by narrowing his sight to the dead and rotting leaves under his feet, limiting his hearing to the sound of his own labored breathing, concentrate on nothing but the frantic beating of his own heart.

He succeeded so well that he didn’t realize a long form in green and gray had dropped from the trees to intercept him until he bounced off a solid chest and a strong hand gripped his arm to steady him and to hold him still.

“You may travel no further without permission, yearling,” a man’s voice spoke in the tone of one who had repeated an order to the point of annoyance.  Duo looked up, and the dark thing inside him surged to the front of his mind with a scornful laugh.

“Permission?  From who?”

The tall man had ginger-brown hair and aristocratic features, but his expression was mild, almost amused, instead of the affronted disdain expected.  Duo could feel the thing shift, black coils sliding restlessly, and through his panicked freefalling state, he felt the creature become wary.  The man might have been a Tracker, his eyes were so sharp, but unlike the girl Duo had met in the village, this man seemed to know exactly what he was looking at. Under that gaze, the creature recoiled into hiding.

In its retreat, Duo became aware of his situation.  He was surrounded by five people in green and brown, the sixth a variation in gray and obviously the leader.  They all had bows or weapons of some sort.  Duo was unarmed with no backup.  Bright One knew where Wufei was.

Wufei.

With that came the memory of why he was running.

Have to get away.  This thing kills people—and likes it!  Feeds off of death.

“Perhaps we should begin again,” the aristocrat was saying, expression still coolly amiable.  “What is your name?”

But wait.  It seems…afraid of this guy.  Duo ignored the question and locked gazes, eyes fierce. “You can control it.”

“My name is Treize,” the man continued as if Duo had answered.

“Duo,” the acolyte answered impatiently. “Teach me how.”

Treize tilted his head and dropped the pretense, eyes narrowing slightly, “If you’re speaking of my ability to control the Shinigami, then I’m afraid I can’t.  It’s not something that can really be taught.”

Duo’s shoulders slumped a bit before something occurred to him.  He raised his head and asked, “Shinigami?”

“Yes.  Of course, you know that’s its name.”  Treize trailed off as Duo shook his head slightly. “You don’t?  Then how did you bond with it?”

“Hey.” Duo tossed his braid over his shoulder. “It wasn’t my idea, pal.”

Treize studied him critically. “How odd.”

“You’re telling me!  It’s not living inside of you.”

“No wonder you’re so desperate to learn about it.”  He drew back and looked around as if he just realized they weren’t alone. “Very well.  Come with us.” He hesitated. “That is… if you would like to.”

Duo felt he really didn’t have much of a choice.  Another man as tall as Treize stepped up to his shoulder.  He turned and looked up into blue eyes and a smirk—the rest of the face was hidden behind a detailed mask.  Duo blinked.

“A little early for Masquerade, don’t ya think?” he asked.  The man only smiled a little more and put a hand on his shoulder.  That was the last thing Duo remembered.

On to Part 4

Back to Part 2

Back to Fanfic Page

Back Home