Cloths of Heaven
(i)
A terrible silence had descended over the field as night fell. Aya sat in his armour at the tent with a pen and paper in his hand as he recorded the names of the lost for a memorial. Each man came to him with a name and he diligently wrote it down, not knowing how the men adored him for such a simple thing. He was their lord, whether he wanted to be or not, and he remembered them, living and dead.
He had given over his palanquin to help the wounded.
But even as the men adored him they feared him for he was cold and bloodless.
He had fought with them, he had killed with them, and he had eaten with him with his bone white fingers, thin as sticks, but it was apparent that he had never been one of them.
Farfarello suspected that if someone suggested it that they would kneel down and worship their beautiful, bloodless, Fujimiya.
He himself had other amusements; it had proved remarkably easy to break the enemy general, she who had been Layla. He called her Kitten now, just because he could. In fact if not for the fact that she now belonged to him he would have complained that the amusement had not lasted as long as it ought.
The creature, Free, stood beside Aya, saying nothing, but the hands on his hooks said more than words ever could. He was ruthless but gentle; Farfarello found the paradox amusing.
A boy picked his way across the field, beside him was the man with the claws. Farfarello had admired his steadfastness in battle; the way that he had sliced through the flesh like water, even now his armour was splattered. The boy’s hair seemed almost green in the twilight and he wore a simple silk smock and trousers, he look vastly unsuited to the field.
Aya reacted to the sight of him by lifting his head to appraise the boy, “Yuki,” he said quietly, “bring word to your master that if he can send me the names of his dead then I will also honour them.”
Yuki bowed his head, “that’s not why he sent me, he thought your forces might kill someone else.”
Aya tilted a scarlet eyebrow; there was a smear of blood along his perfect white cheek. “A truce exists between these two forces.” He said, “even Ken alone could have crossed the field, as long as he did not attack they would not. They have their orders.”
“Chloe wants you to come home.” Yuki said as Ken shuffled his feet.
“Tomorrow,” Aya said, “I will meet him to discuss the terms by which I brought the forces of Eressea and Inabayama to his aid against the Nemesis, tell him that.” His voice was chilly, “but before you return have something to eat, you look pale.” He looked at his guardian, “you, too, Ken, I would not have any at my table go hungry.”
“This isn’t your place,” Ken stammered, “Your place is with Chloe.”
“Is it?” Aya asked, “surely my place was with my husband but I abandoned him, or surely my place is with my king in Inabayama.” His tone was almost mechanical, “what I want does not amount to a pile of ashes in this world, I have only my duty. I will explain that to Chloe on the morrow.” Then he stood up, “come, I will have food prepared, it is simple fare, fit for soldiers, but nourishing nonetheless.”
“Aya,” Yuki protested, “you look so unhappy.”
Aya stumbled for a moment, “I’m sorry, Yuki, there is nothing of that left within me.” When he turned back his expression suggested that he was as porcelain as his skin, like there was nothing inside him at all.
“Aya,” Yuki protested, “what made you so cold?”
Aya’s laugh was bloodless and cold; there was nothing of humour in it at all. “Love and duty do not bedfellows make, Yuki, when your time comes, make sure you choose one over the other. I am a Fujimiya, we do our duty by Inabayama.”
“That’s just an excuse,” Yuki protested, “You just won’t admit that you are a normal person and you have wants and needs and you can be hurt too.”
Aya’s expression was fond but cold. “My wants and needs died this morning, Yuki, I have nothing left inside me, surely that is reason enough to embrace my duty.”
“And your duty to Chloe?” He asked.
At that Aya lowered his eyes. They were still hard like chips of flint. “Chloe must understand what it is that I do, my duty to him as the Nemesis is second to my duty to Mamoru as king.” He walked to the cook pot, “come, eat, the food is good.” Then he went to walk away, “but tell Chloe what I said, that I will honour his dead with my own.” Free trailed along behind him like a ghost but Ken noticed the book he had left open and inscribed in the pages was the name “Crawford of Eressea, beloved husband and father, general and inquisitor,” he just didn’t know what it meant.
They returned to Chloe guided through the forces by Aya’s blonde guardian who introduced himself as Yohji. Yuki went to the blonde Nemesis and regardless of his usually aloof pride threw himself about his waist and sobbed.
“He won’t come back,” Ken said, “he said he had nothing left except his duty to Inabayama, but I don’t get it, he gave up his duty before.”
“No,” Chloe said, “he came to Atzara to kill me.” He corrected them even as he ineffectually patted Yuki on the back, “in the end he couldn’t, so he failed his duty even in that. What other news do you have for me?”
“He is recording the names of the dead,” Ken lowered his eyes, “he said that if we send the names to him he will record them too, that he will give our men the same honour as his own.”
Chloe nodded, “did you see the book?”
Ken nodded, “I only read a few names, but one stuck out, it didn’t look like it had been written in ink, more like, well,” he stopped, “blood, and it was bigger than the rest.”
“What was it?” Chloe pressed.
“It said Crawford of Eressea, beloved husband and father, general and inquisitor.”
Chloe went silent, then he lowered his head and his hand on Yuki fell still. After a long and uncomfortable pause he asked, without raising his eyes, “Is Free with him?”
Ken murmured assent.
“Then that is all we can do.” He said, “This is Aya’s grief, we cannot change or alter it, all we can do is be patient and be there when he needs us.”
“But,” Yuki protested. “Aya loves you.”
Chloe knelt before him on the carpet, pulling the boy into his arms, “There is a story, that rings like a bell,” he said reciting a ballad, “of a man who loved not wisely but too well.”
“I don’t understand,” Yuki said.
Chloe sighed, “Aya told me everything, every word in his power to give,” he was stroking Yuki’s hair as much to calm himself as the boy who was serving as his page, “how he had come to Atzara to kill me but couldn’t, because by the time he realised what I was he loved who I was.” He stopped again, searching almost aimlessly for the words he found lacking, “how as a boy he was sold into a marriage for Eressean glass, to a man who was kind and loved him, and being young and overwhelmed by such a love loved him back.” There was a moment’s pause, “and because such love is young and naive doesn’t make it any less powerful.”
“The man who died,” Ken stammered, “he was…”
“Crawford of Eressea,” Chloe finished.
“Then, the coldness, the ice,” Ken protested, “The slaughter, he’s grieving?”
“Perhaps,” Schuldig said from the rear of the tent, “but the Fujimiya repress, not express.” He stopped, “Like his father and uncles before him he will sacrifice himself for the good of the kingdom rather than admit a single flicker of pain.” His tone was disdainful, “which is ironic really, as the Fujimiya feel so much.”
“How dare you speak of the royal favourite so?” Ken said unsheathing his claws by clenching his fists.
“I am the partner of his champion,” Schuldig said quietly, “I travelled with him from Eressea when he was a naive and loving boy, I stayed by his side in Herensea where the people loved him for his kind heart and nursed him through the death of his sister, and I lamented his loss when he ran to Atzara to kill the Nemesis, and I was there last night when a shadow of him returned to us. In many ways I know Ran better than he knows himself.”
Chloe looked forlorn, “he needs time, Ken, and love, and that’s all we can give him.”
“No,” Schuldig said, “it’s all that he will accept.”
Aya waited until Free was asleep to slip from the tent into the woods behind it. He measured the belt in his hands and picked a sizeable looking tree bough. It overlooked a small and clogged pond. He threw the metal buckle over the tree keeping one end in his hand and then rigged a simple twisted noose.
She walked out of the water without a single drop of water to mar her loveliness, her hair was like moss down her back and her dress like the algae on the water. She pressed a clammy cold finger to his lips and shook her head, he looked at the water and she shook her head again, then she reached up and with corpse chilled lips kissed his forehead before she began to sing, and this time he was close enough to hear the words.
“One for joy and two for sorrow,
Three for pleasure and four for horror,
Five for crying, six for laughter
Seven for sons and eight for a daughter,
Nine for diamonds and ten for gold
And eleven is a secret that cannot be told.”
It was the rhyme he knew but it was different, reversed.
She reached up on tiptoes and kissed him again, then with her hands on his waist turned him back towards the tent and then not so delicately shoved him. “One for joy,” she repeated, “two for sorrow.”
And Aya understood, with a heart that felt like a lump of lead in his chest, he returned to the tent, and accepted Free’s slap without comment. The belt he left behind.
|