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Zihark looked down at the sludge the barkeep had called "beer". To be fair, he wasn't paying good money, and places like these were the only ones permitted to open past curfew.
The bar smelled of heavy musk and smoldering coal in a dying fireplace, pungent wood mixing with the sharp sting of alcohol. Flickering lanterns barely warded off the darkness pooling in the corners. In this cramped establishment that previously drew only the dregs of society, men filled the leaden oak tables, those fortunate to dodge the labor camps: disabilities, limps, hunchbacks, rashes, shakes, mental afflictions, anything that caused them to lose value in the eyes of Begnion's Occupation Army.
Down the counter from Zihark was a gathering of women, their whispers playing a treble hum.
"...smoked out 'nother rebel group th' other day, kids 'n teens barely ol' enough to —"
"Really!"
"...'discipline'...cruelty, more like..."
"...spears again? Goddess, those poor children..."
"...I tell m' boy to not...never listens...says they're rallyin' to..."
"Shh!!"
"...ain't lyin', I'm tellin' you...says th' king had an heir."
"...that's the silliest...if he's real, why wouldn't he..."
Zihark frowned, reached into his pocket for the rusty coins he spent so sparingly. They clattered on the counter and his mug filled again as a voice like sandpaper rang out behind him.
"What do you think'll happen if he did that without an army? Begnion's hold is too tight and all our guys are in camps. He'd get shut down within the week."
Apprehensive looks passed between the women, but one of them, whose face looked far too young for the wrinkles it bore, responded in kind. "He's not doing the country any good either, lying low the way he is."
The voice uttered a rough laugh. "So he pops out all of a sudden and says he's the next king in line. Think people'll believe him?"
"Things've gotten to the point where people are turning to groups of children for help," she countered.
"Exactly. So people are desperate, is what it is. They'll latch onto the first person stupid enough to pull some kind of uprising, and then what? We run ourselves into Begnion's spears?"
"Beggin' your pardon, sir," piped up another of the women, "but real or not, what people really need righ' now is a symbol."
"Right, s' what Crimea did, inn'it?" a second male voice grunted.
With his next swig, Zihark stole a glance at the table behind him. Three men: the first, missing a leg; the second, his face so badly scarred the whites of his eyes shone like diamonds; the third, heavily freckled but otherwise unremarkable.
The man with the scarred face gulped at his bottle and continued, "Mind, might not work out so well for us. We ain't chummy with 'em like Crimea is."
In the wavering light, several of the women's faces turned hard as stone. "Don't you speak o' that country," the woman closest to the wall hissed, and Zihark identified her as the one who'd spoken of the king's heir. "Countless o' our men, murdered three years ago..."
"Ma'am, I hear you," the man with the missing leg said, in his voice that now bordered on smooth glass rather than sandpaper. "We all lost something in the war — that's why we shouldn't be looking for ways to throw more lives away, you get me?"
The barkeep, his neck as wide as the gallon jars he was cleaning, made eye contact with Zihark, gesturing toward his empty mug with hands freshly wiped on his yellowing apron. Zihark shook his head.
"I swear," trickled an unfamiliar voice from the same table, "if he shows up with a pack of subhumans the way Crimea's princess did, I'm not standing for it."
" 'Twas like her personal army," replied the man with the ruined face, his words barely carrying over the renewed whispering from down the counter. "I 'eard from me wife they're even aidin' with Crimea's restoration."
"Oi," groused the rough voice, "there you go with Crimea again. Best be careful you don't start a fight."
"How else d'you think them scholar types're rebuildin'?"
A restrained sigh, a mug striking wood. The unfamiliar voice again. "Those good-for-nothing beasts. Of course Crimea would ally with them. Don't a lot of Crimeans live in Gallia anyway?"
Abrasive, grinding laughter. "Figures. They're no better."
"Hey, mate." Two of the three occupants peered up at Zihark as he stood by their table; the man with the scarred face was taking a long draft from his bottle. The freckled man arched his brow skeptically. "Need something?"
The breath he took in was cool, easy. "He's right, you know. Those laguz you gents are speaking about... Crimea's restoration wouldn't be happening without them."
"Sure. Your point?"
"Neither would Crimea have won the war without them."
The freckled man looked to stand, but his friend with the ruined face had taken hold of his sleeve, an easing movement against the side of the table. "No," he said, "the only reason a country as backwater as Crimea defeated us was because Begnion flew in on a chariot to save the day. Not those subhumans."
Zihark said nothing.
"Who do you think is flaunting their power over us now? Begnion? Or those forest brutes?"
"If laguz aid is how Daein will get back on its feet, you would turn it down?"
"Yeah, I would. Any Daein fellow worth his weight in gold would." The man matched his stare, every blink slow and deliberate. "Something else to say?"
"Just one thing," he heard himself respond, the words welling up from some abyss deep within. "You have no love for your country."
He returned to his seat at the counter, feeling no less than several tables' eyes on him. Noticing in the split second the barkeep's eyes grow wide —
The first fist came so close it snagged the hair on the back of his head, the raw power whistling as it rushed past him and sent his mug tumbling over the counter. The second fist caught him in the jaw — he stumbled, flanked by the sound of breaking glass and shrill gasps from the women at the counter.
The freckled man rubbed his knuckles, his expression unchanged. "I knew something was up when you said 'laguz'."
"It's what they're called," Zihark said evenly.
"That's enough." There was a stir; the barkeep was moving around the counter toward them, pushing his sleeves up his massive arms as he went.
The man swung a finger toward Zihark. "Hey, this guy's a traitor! Get the hell out of Daein!"
When Zihark let his fist fly, he was surprised at what little effort it took; the force that drove those hardened knuckles into the man's face sent him toppling to the ground. His rough-voiced friend twisted on his single leg against a table edge, breaking his fall.
"After what those subhumans did to us in the war, you'd grovel for their help?" A burly woman down the counter had come to her feet. "Have you no Daein pride?"
"Daein pride?" Zihark repeated, loosening his fists, but the rough-voiced man was showing him his palms, the way one might when trying to placate a wild animal.
"Why would you side with your enemies over your own people?" Under the indignation was genuine confusion, Zihark could see it swimming in his eyes, his question devoid of sarcasm or malice.
"So I'm a traitor for wishing to see my country restored?"
"What you're wishing is for us to open our borders to those beasts and that'll be the ruin of us all!"
Zihark shook his head as he trod backward toward the door. "Mindsets like yours are what will cause our ruin — "
The freckled man jumped up and charged; the full of his body weight deflected past Zihark as the latter moved to use his momentum as a throw, but other bodies were suddenly joining the fray, hands fastening upon his shirt, pulling, tearing in several directions, and his legs seemed to disappear beneath him. The ground met his elbow hard enough to rob it of feeling, and he twisted on the aging wood, deflecting a barrage of fists and steel toe boots, rolling, punching, boxing throats and twisting ears, wedging somebody's head against the inside of his good elbow —
"That's enough!!"
He was thrown into the grubby mud and slime that lined the cobblestone outside the bar. By then, the night was heavy enough that the oil lanterns hanging from the buildings oozed thickly, and the fog pressed down upon him. He caught a glimpse of the barkeep's snarling face before the door slammed with an echoing bang.
Some distance away, his fellow brawlers struggled to their feet, the freckled man among them.
"If you like the subhumans so much, why don’t you join them, I’m sure they’d love to have you! Though I think they prefer their prey with a lot more meat on its bones!"
Zihark thought of his sword that hung concealed in the next alleyway; it was calling to him, a magnetic force tugging at his fingers, and for the first time in a long while he felt the vengeance for blood spill open in his veins. He staggered to his feet and turned, putting distance between himself and the bar.
A thick veil of clouds obscured the moon, the haze settling on his skin with a chilly stickiness. The bar patrons were shouting after him and he broke into a run when he heard their footfalls on the cobblestone.
A mad country in a mad world, that’s what it was. That bigotry and hatred were things people could get used to, that they became the water they drank and the air they breathed. Most of all, that he should've been used to it, because none of tonight’s events were out of the ordinary, and the post-war anger the people of Daein harbored was a righteous one.
Still, he thought as he retrieved his sword, he wasn't the least bit drunk; not that he would ever blame a loss of composure on something as frivolous as alcohol. He supposed even men like him had a breaking point.
You have no love for your country, he'd said to the man. Did he have love for his?
"...Zihark?"
A figure towered over him, blotting out the clouds that hung in the sky so pervasively. Black as soot as the night was, there was no mistaking the voice.
"Jill?"
She extended a hand and he took it carefully, pulling himself up from the moldering crates that groaned under his weight. "Are you okay? What happened to you?"
"Well... " His jaw throbbed. He gathered a fistful of his shirt and wiped his face of mud, as though just noticing it. "I had a disagreement with some people and it turned a bit, well...ugly."
"Doesn’t look like it was just a bit," Jill said, sounding like she had spent the past weeks either talking too much or not at all. She was encased head to toe in a heavy traveling cloak, her hair spilling out from under the hood like flame.
"No lasting injuries, at any rate. What brings you into the city?" Zihark said with a stab at cheeriness, marveling at how they now stood eye-to-eye.
"Deliveries," she answered plainly, "but since the entire area's covered in fog, I've only just finished... Then I noticed my rations were running low and figured I'd restock in town."
"Actually, there's a curfew — "
"Here, too?"
" — so I don't think you'll be able to buy any supplies tonight. I can spare some food, though."
"No, that’s okay. I'll wait until morning." She looked down the alleyway, toward the pale light streaming from the main road. "Uh, so, Zihark? Why were you lying in the street?"
"The room I'm renting is much too stuffy for late-night musings, you see."
She nodded understandingly, and he appreciated that she didn't pry into the matter. "You've been in this town since the end of the war?"
"Nope. I don't stay in any place too long, just kind of drift through cities monitoring the status quo. That work camp 'conscription' is a doozy to avoid too."
"That's smart to keep on the move." Her bright hair danced through the gloom. "My work takes me to a lot of regions, but no matter where I go it's just...terrible. Cities and villages, even the countryside. It's like the land itself is decaying... You hardly see whole families anymore.
"Things are especially bad in Nevassa," she continued. "Apparently people there disfigure themselves to escape the work camps."
Zihark thought back to the man with the missing leg in the bar. "Take away the Daein spirit and you take away all the people have. No wonder children are leading the charge — they're the ones who still have hope."
"Not even they get spared by the soldiers." Jill drew her cloak tightly around herself, and they shared a moment so somber Zihark realized she wasn’t speaking from conjecture. "Zihark, have you...have you heard anything the people are saying?"
"Like what?"
She paused. "There are a number of rumors going around. About — about Ashnard."
"And his lost heir?" Zihark finished, and her posture instantly straightened.
"Yes, exactly — "
A loud bellow split the night. "You two over there! What are you doing in the streets at this hour?"
"Blast!" Jill hissed, turning, but the moment to flee had already vanished.
The alleyway was suddenly illuminating with light as soldiers clad in russet armor marched towards them, their shoulders filling the entire breadth of the road and their lances gripped at identical angles. "Pardon us, just got lost," Zihark called back, but their gait only hastened until their torches bathed the two of them in a silky golden light.
"You're out way past curfew."
The soldiers' eyes flitted over Jill’s hooded form before landing squarely on Zihark, with a uniformity that made his heart drop.
"We’re very sorry," he said into the silence, "we were making our way back to our inn. The fog was so thick we lost our way."
The glowing light danced across the men's chiseled features. The foremost soldier indicated Jill with a flick of his wrist.
"You, take your hood off."
She complied, releasing a vermilion ponytail that cascaded forth and twisted like ribbons in the torchlight.
"Sir," one of the other soldiers said. "I’ve seen her around. She runs a courier service and has no ties with the townsfolk."
The first soldier surveyed them coolly, from the small bag Jill clutched in her hands to Zihark’s grimy boots. "Since you're travelers, we'll let you off the hook tonight," he finally said. "We'll escort you back to your inn."
"That won't be — " Jill began, but Zihark cut across her.
"That would be great, thank you."
The soldiers filled in around them and they began to walk, breaching the rippling fog. Upon reaching the main road, where a frigid draft pushed insistently at them, the first soldier said, "You know, we've heard reports of a man inciting trouble in a local bar. We don't give two shits about bar fights, but folks say he was disturbing the peace. Provoking the customers and glorifying subhuman action in their country’s problems, rubbish like that. Kinda matches your description, my man."
Zihark tried to smile, but the muck on his clothes surely did the talking for him. Beside him, Jill answered without wasting a second. "I’ve been with him all night and he was never in any bars. He slipped and fell, actually."
"Is that so?" The pauldron of the closest soldier scraped against Zihark bluntly. "You're sure, now?"
"Yes."
"Awfully suspicious."
"Sir, it's a dark night."
The first soldier exhaled sharply. "I'm taking him in for questioning. See if the people at the bar recognize him."
It was then that Zihark met Jill's eyes for the first time, and they widened so upon seeing him in the torchlight that any alibi he might have conjured up died in his throat.
"Hey, keep walking," a soldier behind him jabbed him in the back. "You're not making yourself look any — "
His words cut off in a strangled cry as Jill whirled and kicked him in the throat.
Several hands closed around Zihark's arms in the instant he sprang into motion; twisting, he loosed one, then another, before a shoulder rammed him to the ground. A barrage of thuds made him look up in time to see Jill's bag swing overhead and knock another soldier off balance; the pressure on his back gone, he rocketed to his feet and pushed through the thinnest part of the troop, breaking into a sprint after the streaming crimson hair.
They ran until a patrol squad loomed out of the fog before them and forced them down the nearest alleyway, army boots ringing heavily in pursuit as they tore through stacks of crates and rotting trash. The ponytail vanished back into the dark hood as Zihark broke level with Jill.
"We need to leave town!" she called to him, her voice taut.
"Come," he answered, "this way!"
They squeezed through a narrow crevice barely visible in the darkness and found themselves in a labyrinth of monochrome streets, filled with inky puddles that ensnared their boots like tar.
"Our footprints," Jill muttered.
"Take off your shoes, quickly!" Zihark came to a halt behind a fetid dumpster, kicking off his boots and catching Jill as she stumbled.
Taking both pairs by the laces he led her past increasingly ramshackle apartments against the eerie silence that had fallen, their feet light on the cobblestone. After a string of winding turns he indicated a building where the emerging moonlight didn't catch, and they flew up the stairs to the topmost floor, then under a heavy tarpaulin and into a flat that smelled faintly of cured meats.
"What are we — "
"Abandoned no more than a few days ago." Zihark brought forth a pocket tinderbox, struck it aflame, and, breathing heavily, checked that they were completely alone before snuffing it under his sodden foot. "Doubt the soldiers know about it."
"Yet, at least," Jill panted. "We're safest outside the town's borders. I have a camp set up a little ways into the hills."
"Once the soldiers pass, we can use the rooftops to get to the side of town, then slip out under cover of fog." He pushed her boots back into her hands. "Looks like I'll have to forgo my things."
"At the inn?"
"Yeah. Until the guard eases up, I can't go back there."
It took only a few moments for soldiers to begin calling into the night. "They're here somewhere, the west patrols didn’t see them pass. Check every nook and cranny, two men to a corridor! The three of you, cover that side!"
Zihark laced his boots carefully, catching his breath. The sword he'd left behind in the alley where they first met the soldiers would have to remain until his face disappeared from the wanted lists. He'd made a habit of carrying it wherever he went and stashing it when he entered buildings to avoid apprehension and imprisonment; after all, leaving it in an inn was akin to handing it over to the innkeeper.
"If they split into groups of two or three we should be fine." Jill smudged a hole in one of the windows with her sleeve and looked out into the night. "If they're anything like the soldiers I fought, I mean."
"The soldiers you fought?"
She laughed a little, possibly, Zihark realized, the first time she had ever done so in front of him, and even then it was a laugh filled with sorrow. "You're not the only one starting fights." The clouds parted and a sliver of moonlight shone through the narrow windows. When she turned to look at him, her visage was troubled. "Sorry..."
"Come again?"
"Sorry, for what I did back there. Nowadays every able-bodied man gets rounded up and shipped off to work camps, so person of interest or not, they were never going to let you go. If they'd really taken you in for questioning..."
"I'm sure it wouldn't have — " he began, but she shook her head.
"Your face, Zihark, it’s blue and purple. They knew you were their agitator from the start."
"Oh." He touched his face, a little sheepishly. "In that case you saved me, Jill. Thank you."
"It's a little early for thanks," she replied, but smiled all the same. They set about rifling through the cabinets and drawers for whatever resources had been left by the previous occupant, turning up with little more than tattered blankets and old medicine, but the streets outside were quiet by the time they finished.
When they slid back out through the heavy tarp, the fog was still heavy enough that it hung over them like a sheet — heavy enough that, even had all the town's eyes been trained on the rooftops, nobody could have spotted the two figures maneuvering to the town's boundaries, dropping down past its walls, and disappearing into the barren hillside.
It wasn't until a couple hours later that they spoke of the Mad King's heir again.
"The desert in the east?" Zihark asked, dabbing salve on his face. "You've heard what people call that place, right?"
Despite taking shelter in a cave, they hadn't bothered to set up a fire. Zihark lay on the chalky ground inside Jill's tent as she nestled, swathed in thick cloth, against the side of her wyvern, who she'd fed with hunks of meat from her bag immediately upon returning. Its great leathery wings draped across the mouth of the cave, shielding them from the moonlight that peeked incessantly through the cover of clouds.
He hadn't any good reason to refuse the tent, seeing as Jill had her wyvern for warmth, but he couldn't accept her food in good conscience. Procuring supplies from the town was no longer possible after what had happened tonight.
"The Desert of Death," Jill's voice filtered in from outside the tent. "I know. Still, that's where the majority of the rumors point to."
"Somewhere out of the way, where few people would know of him firsthand," he mused. "It's definitely one of the remotest areas in the nation. What would he be doing in a place like that?"
"Especially with Daein the way it is?" she reinforced. "People assume he's planning some sort of rebellion, biding his time, waiting to take back the throne."
Zihark wrapped his blankets more snugly around himself and rolled onto his side. His face stung from the ointment, his joints ached with exhaustion. "There isn't a Daein citizen who doesn't want to see their country restored. So they impress their ideals and beliefs onto him...myself included, of course."
Jill was quiet for a bit. "Until recently," she finally said, and her voice rose thinly in the night, "I've never heard of the Mad King having an heir."
"Neither have I," he responded after a comparable pause. "Though...it was the same with Queen Elincia, no? The populace didn't learn of her existence until after the king's death. That's why she worried — rightfully, I think — that they wouldn't accept her."
"And imagine if they didn't," she agreed. "Now that you mention it, Zihark...this all seems weirdly similar to her situation three years ago, doesn't it? Except...her concealment was to prevent a power struggle, right? Ashnard, on the other hand, seems more like a maniac who'd eliminate his children himself."
"I agree with that. He was called 'Mad King' after all..."
The wyvern snorted and gave a rumbling yawn, so palpably Zihark could almost see its breath unfurling in the chill.
"Unless," Jill continued, "he didn't know he had a son."
Zihark let the words hang in the dark, where they seemed to coil and blister with energy. "So if he was taken away right after being born..."
"And raised in the desert where he'd be safe from his father?" Though her voice remained level, it glowed with a subdued fervor, like a pot beginning to bubble. "It'd make sense, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah...it would." The ground was cold, a soothing balm against his swollen jaw. "What will you do, Jill?" It was a question he'd be hard-pressed to answer himself, but something in her voice hinted she had an answer, and he was right.
"I've been reflecting on it for some time now, and I want to find the prince."
Zihark chewed on this, and all the while she didn't say another word. "That's fair. Rumors are rumors, but they must start from somewhere. But you aren't thinking of going alone, are you?"
"If I have to, I will. Not a lot of people want to travel to the Desert of Death."
"Yeah, I can imagine. What about Haar?"
She hesitated, just long enough for him to wonder if he shouldn't have asked — "He's...been away making deliveries. It'll be all right. I left him a note." — and before he could say anything else, swiftly followed up with, "If it turns out there is no prince, then I'd be glad I found out for myself."
Getting to his feet, Zihark opened the tent flap and stepped out; Jill looked up at him and he saw in her the same sort of fire that must have compelled her to fly into laguz-controlled waters in pursuit of an enemy ship, without a shred of backup.
"Jill," he said. "You and I both turned our backs on Daein during the Mad King's War. If it does come to a revolution, would you raise your lance on Daein's behalf?"
"Of course I would! What's the point of all of this if I wouldn't?"
"Even if we encounter old Begnion comrades on the field?"
She looked perplexed for a second, then something in her expression hardened. "If they oppose the things I believe in, then my path is clear. Meeting my old comrades in Talrega three years ago didn't stop me, either."
"I see," he said quietly. A brutal but necessary outlook. He wasn't so sure he possessed the same fortitude as her, and he'd certainly lost count of the times his allegiance to Daein had been called into question. But no matter how he sliced it, it tormented him to see his country eviscerated with its skin left out to dry, and wandering from town to town getting into fights with the local community was a pretty pathetic way to reform anything. "Well — I can get on board with that. If you'll have me, I'll gladly join your search for this prince."