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Where sails Balthier now in his beloved sky?
Does he wither like the winter-branch?
Does he tumble like the fallen star?
Let us not question--wonder not!
Let nothing be closed or finished.
Let ending be the only thing that dies.
-- Tesso, The Journey of Balthier, Book XIX, lines 47-52
---
i.
It began with one ear. Just to see if his father would notice.
He spent two weeks making sure to sit at his father's left hand at mealtimes, trying to pass his father in the hallways on the left, before he realized that it simply didn't matter. He could flaunt the largest rock in all of Ivalice in his ear and his father wouldn't notice unless it was made of nethicite.
---
ii.
"I've spoken to Vayne," Cid said suddenly one night, at dinner. "You're to be made a judge."
Ffamran dropped his fork against his plate and barely managed to muffle its clatter. "A judge?"
Cid had a jovial smile on his face. "A fine opportunity. Do you know how many ardents--or gentry, for that matter--work their entire lives for a judgeship? And here you are, about to be a judge, and just barely eighteen."
"I don't know what to say, father," Ffamran said, quite honestly. His friends received skiffs and research positions and tours to Bhujerba for their eighteenth birthdays. A judgeship--well, there was nothing you could say to that.
"Say nothing," said Cid. "Just make me proud."
Why not, thought Ffamran. It wasn't as if he were doing anything with his life, anyway. And it was the first time in a while that his father had smiled in such a way.
---
iii.
Cid was, naturally, bent over his notes, muttering to himself as he was so wont these days. Ffamran paused in the doorway, thinking that perhaps he ought to say goodnight, when Cid looked up and said, sharply, "The Judgeship. Are you pleased?"
Ffamran started.
"You should be," Cid continued. "We are drawing ever closer to the nethicite, which is necessary if man is to hold history in his hands again. And mankind must always decide its own destiny. Otherwise, what is the point of free will? We are not chocobos to be tamed and ridden. Or culled."
"I--of course." Ffamran nodded.
"But you don't realize the danger," Cid said, very earnestly. "Of course you wouldn't. You're of the Occuria, Venat. What does death mean to you? But our lives--our lives are very short."
Ffamran turned and made down the hall to his room. He could still hear his father speaking behind him.
He had his ear pierced the very next week.
---
iv.
Ffamran lost the game nearly as soon as the cards were in his hands.
"I'm merely out of practice." Ffamran scowled down at his cards. "Bhujerban Threes is a child's game. I regularly bested my tutor." He looked up. "Best two out of three."
"As milor' wishes," Jules said graciously, and shuffled the cards.
But Ffamran lost that game, and then the next, and then the one after that. He gaped down at the crate, speechless, before leveling his gaze up at Jules. "You're cheating," he accused.
"O' course," Jules agreed amiably.
Ffamran stared at him, and then began laughing. "A chop to you, my good man, if you'll teach me your tricks," he said. "I believe that's a far better bargain than my coin."
---
v.
Gabranth was the youngest of the Judges Magister and their golden boy, sun-lit from the inside. Ffamran could not account for the way his skin grew tight whenever Gabranth got too near, or the way he clung to each of Gabranth's words, each action, calculated and measured as thoroughly as gold. It perhaps had something to do with how Gabranth was patient with him where the other Judges were not; Ffamran was young for his role, he knew, and he had not trained his entire life for it. But Gabranth understood how it was to be the youngest and most-challenged.
"You are qualified," Gabranth assured him. "Lord Vayne would not bend the emperor's ear for just anyone. I have seen you with the sword," he added, voice warm. "You are a true prodigy."
"You flatter me," Ffamran murmured. "But still I fear some slip-up, some mistake--"
"Mistakes are only human," Gabranth said. "You will not be dismissed for some small carelessness."
"He will not be dismissed for anything," Ghis sneered as he swept down the hall. "Not while Doctor Cid builds us airships."
---
vi.
Altair nearly broke his wrist, the first time he tried it, and the shot went wide of the dummy he ordinarily used for bow practice, burying itself in the wall. He dropped the gun and shook his hand, grimacing, curling and uncurling his fingers. Then he picked it up and tried again.
Later, while the Archadean forces prepared to invade Nabudis, he interrupted Judge Zargabaath's strategy. "I beg your indulgence a moment."
"I'm listening," Zargabaath rumbled.
"Why not arm the infantry with guns instead of bows?" he suggested.
The other Judges stared. Vayne Solidor raised an eyebrow.
"They often have much longer range than that of a bow, or even a crossbow," he pointed out. "The wide variety of shot available would surely avail us against our opponents, as we would be able to disable or immobilize rather than kill, and the ability to do such from a distance would prevent unnecessary loss of life on our side. Do you not agree?"
"That will be enough," the emperor rumbled. "Guns are for the craven, men too cowardly to face their enemies head-on in battle. They shoot you from behind, aiming to blind or poison; I will not have such things in my army."
"Besides," Vayne said with a smile, "we have something much better than bows, in any case."
"Yes, your Excellency," Ffamran agreed, and from then on he always carried Altair.
---
vii.
No more of this, he thought as he wrested the helm from his head and threw it down on the bed. He saw more honor in the filthy faces of Old Archades than in the Senate, or House Solidor.
Let the others do the Empire's work tonight. Tonight, Ffamran Demen Bunansa was no one's heavy-armored pawn; tonight, he would turn to the works of Sofoc and Jas Hamen, in which men sailed the seas in search of the sky, unearthing priceless treasures and battling fearsome monsters, the likes of which the world had never seen again. Tesso's Balthier, who wrestled with gods for the chance to become his own man, would never have allowed himself to be bent to another's purpose.
The youngest Judge Magister in the history of Archades sank down onto his bed and stared at his hands. He was no Balthier. Balthier was a leading man.
---
viii.
"They will not come out," she said.
"Not unless you rip them out, no," Balthier agreed. "Or cut off a part of my ear, I suppose."
Fran tipped her head inquisitively to one side. "It is how they used to mark slaves."
"So I hear."
"Do you feel so chained?" Fran queried.
He supposed the earrings might seem like severed links from a chain. Ordinarily, one had the edges filed down so that it was a single loop rather than this odd loop and a half, but Balthier had rather favored the way they looked. They reminded him of the end of Tesso's epic: Let nothing be closed or finished. Let ending be the only thing that dies.
"Only to this free and whimsical life," Balthier replied. "Come, now, I hear there is to be a wedding in Rabanastre. Shall we attend?"
---
ix.
He'd always thought viera would look a bit silly; surely no humanoid could look dignified with animal features. But no, she was fascinating and beautiful. Taller than he expected, maybe.
"What. . . happened?" he croaked. His mouth felt like he'd swallowed a Giza Hare whole.
"The pollen," she said. "You must beware."
"It. . . pollinated me?" He blinked and scrubbed at his gummy eyes.
"Mandragora, they are. Their dust poisons," she explained, stretching out a hand to help him up. "It chokes you so that you cannot speak, and blinds you so that you cannot see."
"Then I am in your debt," he said, slowly.
The viera's gaze was downright unsettling. He felt a little as if he were being hunted, or perhaps evaluated as being worthy to hunt.
"I see you, in town," she said. "You are a sky pirate?"
He dusted pollen off his cuffs, careful to hold his breath. "I've a ship."
"Sky pirates seek freedom," said the viera. "I too, seek freedom."
"Really." He stopped fussing with his sleeves.
She inclined her head. "I am Fran," she said. "What shall I call you?"
"Balthier," he replied.
---
x.
She was a test fighter, scrapped because the client thought her wings were too expensive. All right, then; their loss. Balthier had his wings, now, at no cost. Some modifications, here and there, to make her truly his own. So all that time spent in his father's laboratory under the watchful eye of a moogle was useful, after all. Fancy that.
He called her the Strahl. It was a concept he'd learned from one of his tutors: a ray that pointed itself one way and never stopped.
Infinite, always going in one direction: away.