Captain Ittetsu' hammered a fist on the iron lockup door. "Key us in!"
"Now Yui-chan, I want you to stand way back with Kuwata, okay?" Leafa instructed her niece sternly.
All of those defense lessons paid off in that moment as Kirigaya Yui nodded her head solemnly. More than anything, she understood what she needed to do, keep out of the way, so that everyone could be safe.
Leafa glanced to the Gnome. Kuwata had his game face on, nostrils flaring as he gave a thumbs up. He'd protect Yui with his life, of that there was no doubt.
"Siesta, you too." The Sylph nodded to the maid servant. "And, are you sure you want to be here? He did hurt you."
Siesta nodded her head. "I do not believe I am in any danger so long as you are here Miss. And I will also ensure the Young Miss does not get any closer than is prudent."
Leafa smiled. "Glad to hear it."
Not that it could possibly be that dangerous. They'd had the Kurotsune contained for over a week. Then again, Suguha thought, they'd had the Kurotsune contained for over a week, and he'd had nothing to do but think of ways to escape.
But when they entered the vaulted stone chamber, the Kurotsune was exactly where they had left him. Looking a week gaunter and more haggard, but just as securely held.
The guards on duty looked alert but Captain Ittetsu squinted, eyeing discarded cards laying beside their chairs. Then looking at the Kurotsune, he grimaced. "Why is the prisoner ungagged?"
"Sir!" One of the on duty Salamander's, a burly new recruit, saluted. "It's just that it's a huge hastle to have to ungag him whenever he starts making noise for water or to use the bedpan. Guess we could just start skipping the bed pan though . . . I mean we only have him a few more d- . . ." The Captain's glare silenced the guard. "R-Right. Sir!"
"Well, has he said anything since you ungagged him?"
"Other than asking for water." The guard shook head. "And the bedpan. When we give him food he eats. When we give him water he drinks. Mutters to himself. Real quiet like."
"Hmm." The Captain nodded. "You'll make sure to gag him, and keep him gagged, once we're done."
"Sir!"
"Well Kirigaya." Ittetsu looked at Leafa. "This is your show. So let's try it again."
"Right!"
"Gino, you and wolf backstop, just in case." Ittetsu instructed, waving the extra guards he'd brough along to enter the cell first. Only when everything was fully prepared did he and Leafa approach.
The Kurotsune's head hung low, his wild autumn hair screening his eyes. His lips moved silently, as if he were in some inner conversation. But as soon as they crossed the threshold of the cell, he spoke.
"I am visted again by a spirit of the winds and the ghost of a giant. Come to ask me more questions?"
"The same questions." Ittetsu growled.
"Ah." The Kurotsune nodded slowly. "The very definition of insanity." Then he frowned, his fox ears piqued as he looked up at Leafa. His eyes were brown red, like autumn leaves, and there was a slight vertical oval to his pupils.
"Maybe not." The Captain said. "We're going to try a little quid pro quo."
"Oh?" The Sionach tilted his head, but his gaze never left Leafa.
"All we want is for you to cooperate in returning what you stole." Leafa stepped in. "Helping to reduce the damages could see your sentence lightened. Can you tell use what you did with everything you've stolen?"
He shrugged, as much as was possible in his condition. "I . . . forget . . ."
"Did you forget?" Leafa asked. "Or are you withholding that information because you want something from us? Your freedom?"
"I cannot imagine you would give me that just for returning some bobbles." The Kurotsune almosted seemed to chuckle. Though there was no mirth on his small mean face.
"But it's all you have to bargain with. Then there's something else. Something more important to you than your freedom. But your afraid to tell us too. Because you don't trust us." The Sylph insisted, receiving a dark look from the Kurotsune. "The Tomoe you attacked Siesta for. Why is it so important?"
"I already told you." He hissed, nose twitching, ears flattening. Those oval pupils were growing smaller and sharper.
"It's not the only Tomoe you've tried to steal." Leafa continued. "You've stolen dozens, maybe hundreds. But this one was so important that you risked exposing yourself to approach me. You were even willing to go after Siesta just days later. You're not stupid, you must have known it was risky. If you tell me why it's important than maybe we can help."
"I already told you . . . It is that which sees what is essential, what is . . ."
"The heart!"
The Kurotsune's eye widened as Leafa produced the item he must have always suspected she was holding from inside of her coat.
"It is only with the heart that one sees rightly." Leafa repeated the words from her niece's story book. "Anything essential is invisible to the eye. This Tomoe . . . But it's not really the Tomoe that's important is it? There's something else here. Something essential. Something invisible to the eye. The heart sees those things. So the heart is also essential. It can't be seen by the eye!"
"Give. It. To. Me." The Sionach hissed. His pupils were now slits, little flecks of blackness in twin oceans of red. Like a burning autumn forest. He began to tremble, his profile vibrating, rattling the chains that held him in place. He teeth grit in pain as he tried to <<phase shift>>.
The guards lifted their staffs but Captain Ittetsu stayed them. The endless shackles were too much. He stayed in place.
"This is what we have to offer Kurotsune." Captain Ittetsu announced. "Explain yourself, and by the authority vested in me by the Faerie Court . . ." The Captain shook his head as if he was never going to get used to saying that ". . . I will ensure the safety of your Tomoe."
The sionach hissed something.
"What's that?"
"He said . . ." Leafa began.
"It
isn't mine! Give. It. To. ME!"
"Oh no. That isn't how this is going to work." The Spriggan leaned close, glowering over the hunched Sidhe. "Think. Think! This is your last chance to make things easier on yourself. Because in a few days you're going to be tried, sentenced, and dragged off to the deepest hole this Kingdom's got. Your only company will be a disfigured psychopath and this Tomoe will end up so deep in a TRIST vault that you will never, EVER, see it again."
The Captain didn't even flinch as the Kurotsune threw back his head, snapping at the air inches from his nose. The wild desperation in his eyes was as raw as ever. But underneath, there was something calculating.
"Bastard." The Sionach muttered. "You bastard." Quieter still.
"Now that you got it out of your system. Ready to talk?"
Again the Kurotsune murmured something, so quiet even Leafa struggled to hear.
"Hmm?" The Captain leaned as close as he dared. Listening as the voice repeated a little louder and in a strange cadence . . .
The Kurotsune exhaled, and the Sylph's eyes focused on the way his breath whitened, the tiny waves of frost that played across his chains.
'Oh no.'
"Captain!" Leafa started to move, rising on the balls of her feet just as the Kurotsune finished a miniscule chant.
So small that nobody had noticed the magic, but repeated over and over for who knew how many hours. This time, a tiny spark ignited beneath the lock buckling one of his chains to the ground. There was a faint -pop- of frozen metal, followed by a -ping- and the rattling of freeing chains.
The blacks of the Kurotsune's eyes expanded from pinpoints to dark light drinking voids as he moved with predator drive.
So many things happened at once.
The guards had gotten complacent with their prisoner, and maybe all of the Captain's vaunted security had been too much of a good thing. They'd laid all these traps, but never really thought about what it would like when they had to fight around them.
The first <<concussion shots>> from the guards shattered the frozen chains as the Sionach twisted himself, using his shackles as a shield and further freeing himself in turn. One chain, shackled around his ankle, was still anchored into the ground, he yanked it taunt to trip a guard into one of the binding traps, then pulled harder on the brittle chain, shattering it, before leaping to his feet and over the entangled guard.
Still half shackled and bound in a straight jacket, the Kurotsune blurred, finally freeing one of his hands with <<phase shift>> as the panicking watchmen stumbled for a safe place on the trapped floor to stand and fight. Their own bindings and dispells interfered now as the Kurotsune moved around them, his free hand came up in a glitter of runes and suddenly the whole world went black.
'A smoke screen!' Leafa thought. But she was far from helpess, sharpening her gaze until the currents came to her, the faint eddies and movement that would betray the Sionach even in pitch darkness.
Here too, Leafa saw the weakness of their measures playing out. The Kurotsune had spent all of his time lulling them into compacency and memorizing the locations of all their traps. Now, with the guards blinded, he move through them on memory, throwing and kicking guards into their own binds as he made a circle of the room.
"Leafa get down!" GiNo shouted as Akela flared brightly enough to be seen even in the smoke, revealing the wrippling profile of the Kurotsune pouncing, aiming not for Leafa, but the Tomoe in her hand.
Then something grabbed the Sylph by the back of the collar. She was pulled to safey, the Tomoe flying into the darkness and all was silent for what felt like a long time but couldn't have been more than a few moments as sound reached her ears in the slowly breaking darkness.
It sounded like . . . Crying.
"Where is it?" She heard the Kurotsune's hateful voice breaking into fear.
"W-Where is it?! She had it! I felt it! So where is it?!"
For all the trouble he had caused. For all that he had lacked remorse. As the smoke screen cleared to reveal the Kurotsune, Suguha's heart almost broke for him.
The vicious Sionach thief scrabbled blindly on the floor, tears in his desperation maddened eyes as he tried to find the Tomoe Leafa had dropped and the final piece of the puzzle fell into place.
Why had he only tried to take the Tomoe from Siesta? If he knew what he was looking for, then why hadn't he simply pilfered it from the market nobody the wiser?
'Because the mobs are people.' Suguha as she watched the Kurotsune's eyes slide over the Tomoe like glass, his blindly groping hands batting it into the corner. 'The mobs are people. They're just . . . conditioned.'
"Leafa? Are you alright?!" GiNo shouted in her face. Akella loomed behind the Kurotsune, growling, but the Sionach seemed beyond care. He was so close to what he yearned for. But just as far as he'd ever been. The guards, recovering, moved to restrain the thief once more.
"Stop!"
A commanding voice rang out, and at first Suguha didn't recognize it until she realize it was her own. The watchmen stood, dumbstruck as the young Sylph dusted herself off and was helped to her feet by Gino.
"This is our mighty thief?" The Salamander hardly seemed to believe it.
"I know." Leafa agreed. "But I think I understand . . . Siesta?" Despite the possible danger, the maid servant had stepped into the cell and without prompting had gone to retrieve the Tomoe, then brought it back to the Sylph's waiting hands.
"Miss. May I ask what is happening exactly?"
Leafa closed her eyes, and Suguha thought. She thought about GiNo and Akella. And she thought about Siesta. And she thought about the Kurotsune.
'I need to tame him.' She thought. 'I need to make a connection. But a connection means trust. And trust means . . . Someone has to trust first. I'm the one who wants his trust.' The answer was simple, it just wasn't one she could reach as a watch woman. Only as Suguha.
"Siesta." She composed her thoughts. "The Kurotsune has hurt you. And he's hurt many other people without any remorse for what he's done. He is not a good person. And he doesn't deserve your forgiveness. But . . ."
"He's in pain. Isn't he?" The maid said quietly.
"He's . . . Under a terrible enchantment." Leafa answered. "But I think I know how to break it. Would you . . . Like to help me?" Siesta nodded and together they came to stand before the pitiful form of the Sionach Sidhe, almost curled into a ball on the stone floor, sobbing and shaking.
Together they kneeled down and together each of them took one of his hands. And together they both placed the Tomoe.
"Mister Kurotsune, This matters to you so much more than it does to me." Siesta said. "So I would like you to have it."
And the Sionach's shaking stilled. And his palms closed around the cool smooth charm in his hands. And Leafa looked into the raw red eyes that couldn't believe what they were seeing.
"You're . . . giving this . . . to me?" His eyes darted between the human and the Sylph. "Why?"
"I don't think it was ever mine." Siesta answered. "I may only be a commoner . . . But I'm not blind."
"No." The Sionach shook his head. "Not blind at all, Miss. You, both of you, see rightly." Then taking the Tomoe he touched it to his brow. "My Flatha." He whispered. "My Princess . . ."
"Is that what the Tomoe is?" Leafa asked him. "Flatha . . . It's her heart." Someone who he loved dearly. Someone he'd do anything to protect.
He seemed calm now. Beyond caring. The madness that had driven him had melted away, and the guards, even Captain Ittetsu were still for these few precious moments.
"A long time ago, I decided to go on a journey and I left Flatha behind. She was always so difficult. Expecting me to cater to her whims and wishes. And so ungrateful when I did. She was only a little thing, with just her ridiculous nails and teeth to protect herself. Yet she insisted she did not need me when I left. The only thing she thought to do was to give me a charm for my jouney. She told me it was just a triffle and that I should throw it away if I did not care . . ."
He shook his head.
"But it wasn't just a trifle at all. Flatha gave me her heart for safe keeping and when I lost it I could not find it among all the others. I did not know her heart from any other! I look back now and I think . . ." He choked. "I think now . . . That I did not know how to love her properly. I . . . I still do not know . . ."
He looked at the two of them, tired, and wretched, and grateful.
"That's what you were afraid of. That we'd see her as a treasure to lock away. We won't take Flatha's heart from you." Leafa promised. "And if there's anything we can do, to help her, then we will, I promise you, Kurotsune."
"Brenhen." The Kurotsune said.
Leafa tilted her head.
"My name is Brenhen."
"Well then, Brenhen." Leafa said softly as the guards came to restrain him, gently this time, as if everyone sensed the formality of it all. "Why don't we take a short rest. And then I have some questions for you."
And Brenhen, meeting her eyes, nodded.
)
