Amoro Revidi
Title: Dueling Moonlight [Part Twenty]
Series: Vision of Escaflowne
Rating: PG-13
A/N: Part 20. Ok,
did FF.net die again or did people just stop reading? I got a couple reviews on
eighteen, none on nineteen... do you guys hate what's happening with the story?
Am I writing for myself again? Anyway, enjoy. I finally get you past the
cliffhanger with Arik and Tristan, and you find out what happens once Nil and
Allen make it to the courtyard.
***
“Getting her acceptance will be easier than getting yours, I assure you, King Xachary,” Jasper says with a confident smile, turning to leave the room he had met the Basram king in to head for his own quarters.
As he steps into the hall a messenger coughs politely and gains his attention. “Dinner will be served shortly, Prince Jasper.”
“I will be in attendance,” he says, a little agitated that the announcement to his mother back in Cesario, but unable to avoid it, being a guest of the current festivities. The messenger bows formally and steps into the room where the Basram monarch remained after their conference, and Jasper heads off down the hall, looking in the shadows for Nil.
He sighs as he reaches his room and finds her nowhere. She must have been listening when I proposed to Kira… I can imagine how she feels now… but there wasn’t anything to be done. She is the one who taught me, after all, that the best things must be taken when they can be had and not waited upon to come to you… Jasper sighs as he tidies up his outfit and straightens the half-cape on his shoulders. He glances at himself in a mirror before stepping out of the room.
Black hair hanging just down into his green eyes, a slim circlet on his head to show his status, Jasper reasons that he looks as well as he can, and then steps out of the room, heading off towards the dining hall.
***
“Here we are then,” Allen says formally, stepping aside to let Nil into the courtyard. She passes him, slowly, making her way into the courtyard with red-rimmed eyes, and a messenger passing through stops before Allen to inform him of the impending supper.
Nil does not comment as Allen sends him along on his way.
“Shouldn’t you head there as well?”
Still she remains silent, stepping over to the fountain and glancing down at her reflection in the chilled waters.
“Nileyah?” Allen steps over to her and puts a hand lightly on her shoulder.
“I will attend,” she says quietly, almost too quietly to be heard. Allen tightens his grip slightly, stepping up to look at the water with her. “I said,” she begins again, louder, “that I will attend.”
“Good,” Allen says, pausing for a moment. “Then you will have to dine with me.” After saying his part he lets go of her shoulder and steps back.
“I will do nothing of the sort. I am not hungry.”
Allen stops in his retreat from the courtyard and glances over his shoulder, “And being malnourished will do you no good. If it’s my company you refuse to eat in, eat with someone else, but eat something.”
“No,” she says quietly, turning her gaze up to the stars.
Allen turns, frustrated at the signs he sees in her. Depression, most likely, and definitely heart sick, as he had once seen Van when a certain sandy haired young woman left for her home without really saying goodbye. “You,” his voice is cold, commanding, “will eat.”
“I,” she turns her head to glance at him over the shoulder, “will not.”
The two of them stare at one another, a silent battle of wills as they face off in the chill air of the courtyard. “You will,” Allen says after a long moment of silence.
“Not,” she adds, turning to face him.
“This discussion is over. You are eating.”
“I am neither your child, your wife,” she adds the last as though an epithet, “or your sister, Knight Caeli Allen Schezar. And you cannot treat me as though I am any of those things. I have a job to do and I will do it.”
Allen draws his sword, infinite patience, for once, gotten the better of. “Draw your sword.”
***
Kira glances out her window silently, until she sees the two figures enter the courtyard. One tall, long blond hair drawn back over his shoulders, but loose down his back, the other much shorter with straight black hair.
“Nileyah?” she asks the empty room around her quietly.
Jasper had come to inform her of their impending marriage in a much more final state half an hour before, and she had smiled and he had hugged her impulsively, as though he could think of no better news in the entire world that would have come about. She had silently wondered if it wouldn’t have been better that she refused him and left Nil her beloved prince.
A few moments afterwards, just as the messenger to her wing had come to inform her of dinner, she had stopped that train of thought entirely, knowing it would do her no good to think of Jasper as Nil’s prince, now that she was probably irrevocably engaged to him, and would soon be his wife, and the future queen of Cesario. Nil would be…
What would Nil be?
It was these thoughts that lead her to sit near her window instead of getting herself ready, calling for her personal servant to bring her a fresh gown, and heading off down to the banquet hall. She had idly noticed when King Van and Lady Hitomi had entered, but had politely ignored their exchange, it being none of her business what the two of them did with one another in private.
But as Nil and what looked to her to be the Knight Caeli Allen Schezar enter, she sits up and takes notice. What are the two of them about? she thought to herself.
The words did not echo up to her third floor room well enough to make out, but one phrase leapt up to her, as clearly as the singing noise of polished metal sliding from a hilt. The noise was something that, of late, she had heard far too much of, and the words made her freeze in her tracks. Draw your sword.
She was up and heading quickly down to the courtyard the instant she saw Nil turn to face the Knight with his sword drawn, all worries over her own appearance and dinner far from her mind, the only thought that, This should not happen!
***
“Why must you?” Tristan asks quietly as Arik spreads herself across her cloak on the floor. “I just don’t understand.”
“It is the duty of the Kathis,” she replies, voice tender and yet empty, as though reciting something by rote to a small child, “in times of peril, to secure the line of the throne.”
“I just don’t think that’s right to force someone to do,” Tristan replied, sitting, finally, on the bed, which he finds is very soft, despite the look of its construction.
Very quietly, Arik responds, “In this case… it isn’t entirely forced.”
“What?” Tristan looks up quickly, scanning her blank face, trying to force her to open her closed eyes by will of looking at the lids intensely.
“If you did not hear then you did not wish to, there are only the two of us in this room, and it does not echo,” she says in a louder voice. “Deny what you want, I’m too weary to keep up pretenses any longer.”
“Arik?” he stutters, shock and disbelief evident in his voice.
“You’ve known me for more than fifteen years, Tristan, get over it, and go to sleep,” she says, turning on her side, face to the wall instead of towards him. If I am going to cry tonight, I won’t have him see tears on my face.
“No.”
“Go-to-sleep, Tristan.”
“No,” he repeats, voice firmer.
“Then I will,” she says with a faint shrug.
“You will not. Neither of us will. Not if it means when we wake up you’re going to be killed.”
“As I said before, there’s no help for it.”
“There is,” he begins, voice faint again, “one at least.”
Her back stiffens and she glances over her shoulder at him.
Wordlessly, Tristan kneels next to her, one hand gently touching her shoulder. His fingers faintly trace it down to the elbow and then back up, hesitantly. “If we… were to,” he speaks slowly, as though thinking it out, “just once, to try, would that be enough to buy us some time?”
Arik nods slowly, taking his hand and allowing him to help her to her feet. The two stare awkwardly at one another and then she leads him silently to the bed where she sits down and begins to loosen the rest of her clothing.
Tristan watches wordlessly as she disrobes and then sits beside her. “It isn’t forced,” he says quietly.
***
Mot stands silently in the room as Sotet goes about packing his things for his journey. His clothing first, then his armor.
***
Slowly, Nil draws her sword, brown eyes cold as she stares straight at Allen. The noise of the blade against the metal ring at the opening of the sheath a familiar, comforting sound in her ears.
“You should not have said that about my sister,” Allen says quietly.
“Stop talking and begin!” Nil says, falling into a defensive stance.
Steps on the stair as she moves quickly, wanting nothing more than to avoid a confrontation between the two fierce guardians. Kira curses her frailties and pauses on a landing to gather her breath, leaning against the balustrade.
***
“I am sorry I have to go, mother,” Sotet says quietly as he closes the bag with his clothing inside, tying off the knots firmly and securing his long knife and bo to the outside of it.
“When you return we will speak of this,” Mot replies, still glancing out the window and not at him. “Now is not the time.”
“Now is the time!” Sotet exclaims, deep voice booming in the near-empty room. “We do no know when I shall return again, why, then do you say now is not the time? Why is it never the time, mother!”
***
Clang!
The whistle of two blades through the cold air resounds in the courtyard. “You’ll be late for your meal, Knight Caeli!” Nil says tauntingly, satisfied to see the frustrated look on Allen’s face as she blocks another of his blows directed to disarm her, and then another.
***
She turns mournful dark eyes on her son and says, “Because of duty, Sotet. Remember that, if nothing else, duty. We may not be up-to-date in our traditions, or our ceremonies, but even if you cannot believe in them, believe in the duty we have, to the world.”
“I’m leaving you and still all you can speak to me of is duty and the world?”
***
Allen lets out a furious roar and lunges, not aiming to disarm any longer. The stress of the last few days, the possible relapse of Celena into Dilandu, the Gecko attack… Chid and Exeter in such danger…
***
Mot holds out a hand, palm up, to her son, the tattoos swirling down the inside of her forearm that pool in her palm catching the light filtering in the window and standing out at a great contrast to her pale skin. Sotet, unsurely, steps over, within touching distance.
Slowly, Mot places her hand on his cheek. “Once, that is all you were to me… another part of duty. Now, you are my beloved son. I only pray you can forgive me for not knowing how to be a better mother to you. They train us in battle and so many things, but never for motherhood.”
***
Not expecting the impromptu spar to turn ugly and so real, Nil deflects the blow, but at a price. The blade cuts her along her left arm, and her blade lodges in the hilt of his sword. As she takes a quick step backwards, both swords clatter to the ground, Allen still moving forward towards her.
Once again moving, she finds herself at the doors of the courtyard, and through the frosted glass she can see the first blood drawn in the spar, by Allen. For a horrified moment she watches the two swords go flying from the duelists’ hands, splashing straight into the fountain. She shoves her way through the door and into the courtyard as soon as she sees that Allen is still moving.
***
Sotet’s anger softens slowly as he listens to her, and he steps closer, putting his arms around his mother. “Of course I forgive you, mother, and I love you.”
***
Bleeding, and with Allen’s greater mass pressing her into the lip of the fountain, Nil struggles to maintain consciousness amidst the chill of the world and the draining feeling from her left arm.
“Take it back!” Allen exclaims, no longer using the deep, mature tone he usually speaks in. Instead, his voice is mid-ranged, and very child-like.
Nil glares up at Allen, frustrated, and struggles slightly, but is still unable to get him to let go.
“What are the two of you doing!” a clear voice rings out in the air over the panting breath of the two of them.
“Stay back, Princess,” Nil says loudly.
Allen draws back, blinking, and looks around him. The sudden outburst was so unlike him that he simply has no words, and Nil dislodges him from his crouch over her with a simple twist of her hips, sending him straight into the fountain.
Kira stares evenly at Nil, hair still matted, dress watermarked, with the blanket hanging haphazardly around her. “What is the meaning of this?” she demands, summoning up all the royal glamour she can possibly muster in the situation.
“Ask,” Nil turns, plunging her left, scraped arm into the fountain to retrieve her sword, “the Knight.”
Kira turns on Allen, who stands gracefully, retrieving his own sword, and steps out of the fountain, leaving the courtyard without a word. Kira starts to stop him, but Nil, drying her sword on her clothing, puts a hand on her arm and pushes her back towards the door. “Go inside. Change, get to dinner. Nothing happened here.”
Kira blinks her violet eyes uncomprehending at Nil, the slightly shorter, brown eyed woman suddenly frightening in her intensity, the lilt usually present in her voice gone, her brown eyes almost on fire and looking slightly red. Kira takes first one step backwards, and then another before turning and leaving the courtyard, heading back up the way she came.
With a silent sigh, Nil lowers her head, staring at the ground. She wipes her eyes once, and then turns to re-enter the castle herself.
She freezes as she does so, and a bit of her own façade falls off, brown eyes turning amber for a moment. “Y-you…”
The impression of the figure standing before her nods once, silver hair tumbling down over it’s shoulders, body glowing faintly greenish-white.
“What’re you-”
“Sleep,” the figure says, and Nil nods, slumping into the corner of the doorway.
***
At dinner, Hitomi glances up as several people enter late. First Allen and then Kira, puzzled, she glances next to her at Van, but he shrugs slightly, hand in hers making a similar gesture under the table.
Hitomi smiles politely at the Egzardian queen, “Sorry, I got distracted, what was that?”
“I was just commenting,” the slightly older woman says with a little annoyance obvious in her voice, “how nice it is to see a young lady such as yourself at one of these gatherings. Usually they are dreadfully boring and you only see the usual string of monarchs.” She turns to Van, “It is also a delight to see the King of Fanelia among his peers, finally.”
Van smiles tolerantly, but Hitomi can feel the tension in his muscles as he does so, and so she smiles, “Well Van offered to come and escort me, so that I could see everyone I knew when I was last on Gaea.”
“Ah yes,” Xachary speaks up, “You are from the Mystic Moon… what is it you like to call your planet?”
“Earth,” she says with a faint smile and an inward sigh. She disliked the devouring glances the Basram monarch tended to favor her with. As though he were sizing her up for some reason.