There was the sound of soft grunting behind her, and Agrias turned to find Mustadio working a needle roughly into the leather of his holster, attempting to repair a seam. She frowned. “Is now the right time for that?”
“You polish your sword,” he mumbled, “But I cannot oil a firearm and also draw it.” He glanced over to where the boy slept in the trough, watching his exposed belly rise and fall slowly with even breath. “The grand heroes of Ivalice, now sitting a baby like a pair of chocobos.”
Agrias offered him a thin smile. “I’d thought that way once before.” She eased herself down to a sitting position across from him, still keeping one eye on the door. “When Ser Garland first assigned me to Orbonne. Fresh from the war... I didn’t yet know the Princess. I’d say I was aggrieved.”
Remembering Ovelia, he smiled. “How long did it take?”
“Oh, I was young and headstrong... the better part of a week, before she won me over.” They both chuckled. “Nay. I could see the fragility at the first, the loneliness, but in time I saw the strength in her submission to the will of the court, that she felt it was her duty as guarding her was mine. What prompted her to tap the bars of her cage was the sense of pointless cruelty that she couldn’t voice, couldn’t think.” She looked at her hands. “To remain secluded is a duty, but to receive not a letter? I did not understand at first the scope of it, as my own sense of duty was... complicated. But she could not see the malice for what it was because she could not believe it of her own family.”
“She had as much in common with Ramza, in that respect.” Mustadio bit off the needle’s tether and inspected his work.
“Aye, she did. I think he understood sooner than I, because he’d lived it once... but it was that purity of spirit, that light in her heart, I grew to understand.” She looked at Orinus again, his peaceful sleep. A war of two children, neither of whom deserved their fates. That so many would look to brace their levers upon so few. “It was beyond duty, the desire to protect her.” That she’d failed.
“Like having a child, I suppose...” He flushed, realizing. “Not that I meant... your age isn’t...” She rolled her eyes, leaned over to pull the blanket up further over the young prince’s shoulders.
“A child the nation turns on, asleep in Bervenia.” She smiled. “I suppose history repeats in that way.”
“Do let me know if he says anything about the drinking water,” he snarked, then grew silent.
She listened for sounds outside. She couldn’t hear their new allies, only the yowl of some far-off feline, a snatch of music from a late night service.
“Agrias.” Mustadio’s voice was hoarse, hesitant. She eyed him, as he donned again his holster, pointedly looking at nothing. “Explain to me the act of confession.”
“I’m... sorry?” Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t that.
“You know I don’t...” He coughed. “I’ve not said... I admire your faith, Agrias, I truly do, even if I do not believe.” She raised an eyebrow. “I do! I cannot believe in those things, but it must be a blessing to have something so... guiding to reach for when you feel lost. I have nothing like that.” He laughed. “When my father was taken, and I was running, I had nothing to turn to at all. It’s a wonder that the stone didn’t call to me.” And it occurred to Agrias then to wonder how long he’d been thinking of that. “If I hadn’t been so desperate to free him, I wonder how I might have...” He waved it off. “Anyroad, ’tis fully beside the point. I just wondered... could you explain confession? For voicing sins to Confessors seems so anathema to me, like feeding the flames of your own ‘Funeral’ pyre.”
“Not every sin is heresy.” She shook her head slowly. He’d never talked to her like this before. “Forgiveness is possible in the eyes of Ajora, and every abuna is meant to be a representative of His will on this plane. We voice our sinful thoughts aloud in order to make them real. What you deny you cannot atone.” She frowned. “Why do you ask this now?”
“Because I have had a thought that I do not mean, do not intend, yet I feel I must voice and be judged for it.” His head lolled, and he pulled at his tail. “So I suppose I was correct in believing that I was looking for a Confessor.”
She studied Mustadio. Thought about how much had changed since they’d first met in Zaland, when she’d not trusted him a whit. He was one of her closest friends, she realized, and she still barely understood him. “You can speak it aloud here, if you like. I’m no abuna, but you can trust my silence, if nothing else.”
“I know I can,” he said simply, and looked at Orinus again. “I... As I said, it is a thought I’d not act upon. But damn me, Agrias, if I didn’t for a second see this boy and think on how easy it would be.” He didn’t elaborate; he didn’t have to do so. To slay the child, he meant. There was a long, pregnant silence. Unlike Mustadio, he did not fidget at all, there in the dark of the barn’s shelter.
“Aye.” She rubbed at her face. “Fear not my judging, Mustadio, for I thought it also. For Ovelia. For the war. Slain by a pair of hereticks, the Butchers of Lionel. Might it serve a greater good? I cannot say.”
“But neither of us could, were we even to desire it.”
“No.”
The wind rushed cold through the loose walls of the barn.
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Meisio Cruxus, the Witch of Doom and Orinus Cygion, the Seer of Space.
This will most likely be the last time I actually go out of my way to celebrate 4/13, which means we probably won’t be seeing these two again for a long while. Me and my friend enjoyed them while we did. Homestuck was such a wild ride and, if I could, I’d do it for the first time all over again.
Scorpio sat there on the altar, round and red like a 'taur's eye, reflecting the candlelight. Ovelia started to lose the trail of conversation as her eyes found it again and again. Cardinal Delacroix was saying... something... about outfitting Mustadio for travel, some further show of largesse, as though he hadn't yet done enough for them. But Ovelia was tilting her head ever so slightly, seeing the reflection of her own face in the stone, pinched and inverted and swirling in the shadows.
She rubbed clammy hands across her gown, feeling the points of her nails drag and catch on seams. Agrias was not looking at her. Why wasn't Agrias looking?
'Tis your birth and faith that wrong you--
Ovelia's dreams of witches had not stopped when she aged. Even at Orbonne, whispers had seemed to carry up through the floorboards and the cracks between stones. Even in Mullonde, holiest of all places, their breath was in her ear. She had seen the waters and oils anoint young Orinus, and the whole hall had seemed to breathe with wet, pulsing sighs.
Her heart had raced, then, and she had stumbled over her words, petitioning Ser Garland of the Lionsguard to let her see Queen Louveria, her mother-cousin, whose face she was coming to forget. Some acknowledgment, some candle-flicker to let her know. Surely the baby prince was a miracle to offset her sins. She'd shut herself away to protect him, if only she could see his face the once.
'Tis your birth and faith that wrong you--
Everyone was coming to their feet. The meeting's purpose had come to an end, and she could feel only the pain in her stomach where she'd been punched. She held onto that pain, focused on it, as something real, not a whisper in the dark.
“Princess?” Agrias was helping her to her feet. “You look unwell.”
“All this talk of violence, I think.” She shook her head. “I will endure, Agrias.”
“It is all a dreadful business indeed,” offered the cardinal, whose beneficent smile didn't quite reach his eyes. He took the Zodiac stone in his hand. “We musn't forget that St. Ajora was only too willing to battle the evils of Ivalice; empathy for sin is a dangerous creation of man, as we all too easily see the sins in ourselves as a weakness of heart, rather than a poison that must be drawn.”
Ovelia winced as though she had again been struck.
'Tis your birth and faith that wrong you—not I.
She turned to her knight. “I think perhaps I need the midday meal to calm my body.” For there was a great hunger roiling within her, that she wished she could quell.
