Vayne II, part I .... part 2. Heh.
Back to Acts 1, 2, and 3
IV.i
[Senate. Senators, Judges Magister, Gramis, Miran, Vayne with Bergan, Hardin.]
SPERO: It is inexcusable.
LORAS: It is unforgivable.
GREGEROTH: To crush peace in the cradle!
GRAMIS: No one is asking me to forgive this, and I do not intend to.
GREGEROTH: But each night that you let the whelp languish in prison his hatred feeds on the same gruel. You cannot let him live, your Excellency. You cannot risk your successor offering him clemency and again upending all you poured into Ivalice’s chalice.
SPERO: No man may live a traitor to the crown.
GRAMIS: But his treason was thwarted.
LORAS: What says the Ninth? Who is the cur’s accomplice?
ZECHT: And where is the coin that will dispatch us to sniff among sellswords? What says the Senate?
LORAS: This is a concern of state-
ZECHT: And I assure you the State has our concern. We are Magistracy of the Interior, not hounds. If he had aid within Archadia we will find and dissolute it. If his hand comes from without, you require diplomacy-which Caleb has done a stellar job of assuring we have not-or stealth, which we can neither spare nor risk. We are suspect in every palace of this land. They will be watching for us. If we move, it is the war that he desires.
LORAS: And of our men who prowl the skies?
ASTOR: They flew the colors, Dalmascan Blue and Gold. I reported this. We were not hailed, nor were we fired upon. An exchange of broadsides, but the force was great. Upon reflection it smacks of the hoax Dalmasca claims it to be, but this is the sky, and the nearest one bridge gets to another is out of even cannon-sight. I do know this; the Jagd Yensa blankets that southron swath, and even were she not Dalmascan born that flagship was harbored in a sandrat port.
GREGEROTH: Distraction, then? A show of might?
SPERO: The dog made clear that much. Sow discontent, create a state of emergency, move in and have the child killed in the confusion, and fault the blood of Raithwall.
ASTOR: This disgusts me.
GHIS: You and so many others, Astor.
ASTOR: Murder is enough. Fratricide, worse still. But to turn his attentions on a defenseless babe. We have a term for those wretches in the sky, Ghis.
ASTOR, GHIS: Charybterix.
GHIS: And you can ask any hunter what best to do to Charybterix. Hardin?
HARDIN: Slay it cleanly and make your intended a gift of its feathers. With deference, your Excellency, your Honors, I do not appreciate being so deceived. Perhaps it has clouded my judgment, but you have given all of us to judge. And if my liege and the Senate rule him guilty, I will move he hang.
GHIS: Hang? You speak like the Westerner you are. In the skies, we plank.
GREGEROTH: And in the cities, we behead.
LORAS: Come, gentlemen, we first must ascertain his guilt.
ZARGABAATH: He denies nothing.
LORAS: He’s saved us that trouble, then. Better a guilty plea than the orobouros of a trial. Do any among us contest?
[No man speaks in Caleb’s favor.]
GREGEROTH: The Senate accepts the defendant’s plea.
SPERO: Does his Excellency veto?
GRAMIS: I do not.
[Miran begins to exit.]
GREGEROTH: Then does his Excellency permit the Judges Magister to interpret the law and sentence?
[Silence. Exit Miran.]
GRAMIS: Caleb belongs to the Law.
RION: Then let Our Honors convene.
[Exit the senators and lower judges. Bergan and Vayne are the last.]
ZECHT: That Gregeroth is as Charybterix as Caleb.
RION: Yes, but Gregeroth is not being sentenced.
ASTOR: I rather like your Hardin’s idea.
GHIS: His House is on the rise.
RION: Do we agree, then, that the punishment is capital?
GHIS: What other choice have we? Carrion-fowl though he be, Gregeroth is right. Let one traitor live, curry sympathy, herald others.
ZARGABAATH: There has been enough death in House Solidor this generation.
GHIS: Had Caleb his way, there would still have been another, and one of more promise.
ZECHT: Imprisonment is crueler.
RION: Aye, to the treasury.
ZARGABAATH: Are we to be the fiends Ivalice fears? Persist in executing our own? What example does Archadia set to the lands it means to welcome?
ZECHT: None now. Our efforts have been soured, our gestures of peace stained by context. Worry not for foreign policy, when the traitor is our own. The Ninth moves life confinement.
ZARGABAATH: Has he knowledge, then, to benefit your own?
ZECHT: We cannot know, if he is dead.
ASTOR: I had a turncoat in my midst, in the campaign against Landis, when I was but Mid-ranked under Ferrinas. I kept the traitor in the brig, that he might retain the rights of man and a trial like this one. His fellows broke him out and sabotaged my ship, and to this day the creature is at large. The Second moves death.
ZARGABAATH: A traitor may mend. The Fourth moves life confinement.
GHIS: A traitor may mend-in faerie tales and cradle songs. More likely, he will emerge from the womb of prison a threat to the regime, and will never cease to be so, even should the darkness of his cell illumine better aspects of his soul. The Thirteenth moves death.
ZECHT: Such tunes were sung in your cradle?
GHIS: You forget, this is Archadia.
RION: To behold the Lady Thea, clutching the child to her withering breast, and to hear her sobs grow dry with the rasp of her lungs, has moved me more than any of your pleas. The Fifth moves death, and Death has it.
ZECHT: You are too kind.
RION: Your Excellency; his sentence. The Law returns him to you, not to be judged, but slain.
GRAMIS: I will not be the hand.
RION: But Scale must be the blade. Archadia is Solidor; the traitor must die by Solidor’s sword.
GHIS: Miran, then. The future is his, and Caleb has poisoned it. Or Vayne, if Miran cannot.
ASTOR: Is that sufficiently cruel for you, Zecht?
ZECHT: Crueler to the executioner than the dead.
GRAMIS: Am I to visit my gravest sin upon them?
RION: Is Caleb still your son?
GRAMIS: [a long silence, then:] Let the Law do what it must.
RION: Fetch Miran, then. Let his arms prove of use.
[Exit Astor, Rion, Zecht. Zargabaath, a moment intent on Gramis, and then he too exits.]
GHIS: You swore never to speak of that again.
GRAMIS: You cannot fault me here.
[Exeunt.]
IV.ii
[Caleb in his cell. Two guards. The stairs to the cell must be visible.]
[A long silence. Caleb has managed to find the highest perch in the cell and is atop it, still. Perhaps he has upended his cot toward this end.]
[Enter Zargabaath. The Guards salute.]
ZARGABAATH: [to Caleb] Even now you refuse to accept how base your stature is. We fling you into a pit, and you contrive a mountain of dust.
CALEB: When height asserts equality I take what is my right, Uncle.
ZARGABAATH: Call me Uncle no longer. You had not the blood-right, and now have none of my affection to lend credence to the contrary.
CALEB: You’ll not suffer being Uncle to a malcontent, and yet you stand proud, brother-in-law to a fratricide.
ZARGABAATH: If that is your grudge, do not inflict it on the realm.
CALEB: My grudges are numerous, your Honor, more than the bolts in that can you hide in.
ZARGABAATH: As numerous as those who walk Ivalice? As numerous as their children? They, not your father, these men must endure your ire? For it is they who will bear the brunt of your scorn, long after your sentence is passed. They, not the father who already hates you.
CALEB: And why should he hate me? Of all his seed, only mine did not poison the ground he sowed.
ZARGABAATH: And so instead you blacken the land that will be your brothers’ with salt and fire. Have you yet thought that might be why he hates you?
CALEB: His crimes are worse.
ZARGABAATH: Consider that he might also hate himself.
CALEB: And you would know, Stepmother, would you not?
ZARGABAATH: Yes, I know your father’s heart. I know what moves him, what stays him; what guilt, what joy. I know his illness, its cause, its exacerbation. I know that of all his women, he knew your mother the most, and loved her least. There is a direct correlation in that, only logical. He loved my sister, and he loves Miran. He loves Thea, and he loves Larsa, and when Thea dies he will not cease to love the boy. But you, you are the child of obligation and mourning, the child for the sake of the Motherland, the insurance that your father in his role of Emperor thought he would require, before Miran’s strength and will-to-live were evident. He resents having to have you, resents his perceived failure in needing to sire you at all. And that your mother lived, and instructed you in this with her base woman’s arts and equally hateful poison, this vexes your father more than any chaos you can create. That she lived, while my sister died-that your mother lived to bear a second son-is proof to his Excellency that there is no justice in this world, only judgment, and that you are his sentence for the necessary crimes of his youth.
CALEB: Then I am glad to have wrought this. His reparation is not yet complete.
ZARGABAATH: You are not given to judge. It is not the right of a child.
CALEB: Then who else dares judge my father? The law itself is his subject, the Motherland his spoiled daughter, and what Gods would care are dead and turned away.
ZARGABAATH: Perhaps you are right, then, in killing the child to spite the father. But that is not your aim in this, nor your want. That is mere justification in a world without justice. You are a man plain, Solidor though you be, with all the rights and privileges thereof. But treason is no man’s right.
CALEB: What is my-
ZARGABAATH: In due time, to be executed. They still negotiate terms.
CALEB: A toast to my father, on his lonely throne-usurping fratricide, and now slayer of his own son.
ZARGABAATH: Good-bye, Caleb. [Exit, without looking back.]
FIRST GUARD: [aside to the other] Caged yet, and freer with his words than ever.
CALEB: Silence, you-
ZECHT: [entering] Open it.
[The Guards comply. Zecht enters the cell, and the guards shut him in.]
CALEB: Come to gloat, have you?
ZECHT: Come to make clear to you the holes in your plot.
CALEB: You’d have done better, then?
ZECHT: At the first, what you succeeded in. You are correct; by staging this at a fete, with all of Ivalice as audience, you win even as you lose. You caused your dissent, your doubt, your chaos. You lost your life in the process, but what does that matter to you, and nearly your conspirator’s-
CALEB: And how is the bastard?
ZECHT: Gone south and home to learn from your mistakes.
CALEB: You know of his involvement and give him no chase?
ZECHT: Fear gives him chase; the snapping jowl of his own brother’s intellect threatens to cripple him utterly. Had you any sense or chance at life, you would feel the same of yours.
CALEB: Fear Vayne? I’d sooner sprout the ears and tail of a cat.
ZECHT: I can only pray you have, when he splits your skull. Perhaps you will land on your feet in the next life.
CALEB: What’s this now?
ZECHT: The Senate has ruled that it be Vayne’s hand to strike you down, if Miran cannot.
CALEB: So the fratricide will seed his sons with that.
ZECHT: Do not forget, Caleb, what your plan called for. Infanticide. Be thankful at least that the faults in your scheme absolved you that sin.
CALEB: Go on about these faults, your Honor. How would you destroy the realm, in my place?
ZECHT: I would have killed Al-Cid.
CALEB: Instead of-
ZECHT: Along with the babe. Before, so the death of the child could be construed overwrought revenge. War does not begin in one country or with one man, one gesture. It is only the will of thousands that moves an army. You knew that much, knew to make the people want war-but your goal was not to destroy the realm, or else you are baser than even I have guessed. Your grudge is with your father, and him alone, and to involve the fates of thousands in your personal retribution for a perceived slight is where you erred in this. I could undermine the throne with a scheme only a quarter-cocked, where yours was half-. But it is not worth war.
CALEB: War is the only way to harm a man who is the state, to make him know my hatred.
ZECHT: He knows your hatred. Like any good man, he refuses to believe it is inexhaustible. I did this. I have been your shadow since you took to the earth. Even were I not a man of things unsaid and desires unspoken I would know yours, know your confidence, and I still would not deem your hatred without surcease. You love your father, despite the words of your mother and the inclinations of your mind, and that is what you hate. You love him, you cannot but, and you see that as his darkest power. He commands your affection, your sympathy, and you cannot abide loving a man who you do not respect. So you hate him, in your own stead, the same as he when his father yet lived. And you hate all who serve him, all who respect him, all who persist in the arms of the pretense that his Excellency is without sin and deserves our allegiance. You hate that you respect us, that you see reason in our defense of this man. You think we’re as opportunist as you-and some of us are-or simply blind to his past and deaf to the will of the populace. But we are not. The people are not clamoring for the Emperor’s head. You, Caleb, you alone. Did you not see the tears upon his cheeks before the actual of every stead in Ivalice? He wishes no ill, no war, none of this contention, none of this chaos, none of his mistakes. He has repented, or desires to more than he can contain. When will it stop? When is it enough for you? When he ends his own life, convinced that the next will be kinder?
CALEB: Take your barbarian reincarnation and shove up your black arse.
ZECHT: [signals to the guards to let him out. Then, addresses Caleb:] Someone will learn from your death, Caleb. I hope, for all our sakes, that he takes the correct lesson from it, and toward that end I pray that whatever shade you leave behind alights on the shoulder of no Solidor. [Exit.]
[A long silence. Enter Miran at the top of the stairs, unattended.]
MIRAN: Ho, Honors-For when you help me down the stairs, I bring refreshments.
FIRST GUARD: A moment, m’lord. [The two ascend and bear Miran down.] It will be a chore to bring you back up.
MIRAN: I apologize in advance. Here-from the orchard, brewed just this morn.
SECOND GUARD: Thank you, Lord Miran. [The guards accept and drink.]
MIRAN: Will you let me in to speak with him?
FIRST GUARD: He asks, when he might command!
MIRAN: It is at your discretion.
SECOND GUARD: It is one thing for a Judge Magister, armored and skilled. It is another for a man cannot defend himself.
MIRAN: I expected as much. He is dangerous to one as I.
CALEB: [calls over] I know how you feel, Miran.
MIRAN: [approaching the cell] That is more than I can say for myself. I cannot fathom what it means to be free and yet confined.
CALEB: But you can guess at why?
MIRAN: I know why I would have done this. I know that our reasons are not the same.
CALEB: What cause would you have? You are the Emperor’s intended, his eldest, first in his heart-and even if you are not, whichever of the others he names heir will bend to you. Vayne knows you for the snake you are, he says as much as soon as speak at all, but he cares more for you than me, and the babe will love your contraption at least.
MIRAN: He will be bitter and wanting as us all, when his mother is dead.
[The guards fall, convulsing.]
CALEB: So it is not just your words that are poison.
[Miran makes the incantation to open the cell. It succeeds, and he slumps forward with exertion.]
CALEB: [off his perch] Miran-
MIRAN: In the name of fraternal decency, take your fighting-chance and go. It was your brother who outed you; if you want your vengeance, you deserve a chance.
CALEB: First you damn me, now you free me?
MIRAN: It was Vayne damned you, and he may well do the same to our country if you don’t show him he was right. Right now, he is just a young man who warred with his brother and won, who curried for his father’s favor. It is a game. Prove to him that you are a monster, and what was in him self-serving may fade, and he will no longer think in terms of play.
CALEB: And what do you care?
MIRAN: I also ceased to play. But I am powerless, and weary of that. I will be underestimated and used and eventually worn down. This is a more honorable way for that to happen. If I live, I will have further need of skills I am not willing to use. Go, Caleb.
[After a moment, Caleb runs. Bergan is at the top of the stairs. Without a word, Bergan hefts up Caleb and throws him down them. Vayne, in the light of the dungeon door at the top of the stairs, looks on as Bergan flings Caleb back into the cell, this time unconscious, and pries Miran from his contraption to toss him in as well. Bergan locks them in.]
MIRAN: [weakly] Well, Vayne? Whose is the match?
[Exit Vayne. Scene. Act.]
V.i
[Before the Emperor’s chambers. Gibbs and Deweg, markedly silent, at post; Gabranth, aside.]
[A long silence. Enter Hardin from the chambers.]
HARDIN: Gibbs, Deweg; it is time.
[Exit Gibbs and Deweg.]
GABRANTH: Have they made you -elect for this?
HARDIN: I cannot know. It is no time to consider promotion.
[Enter Vayne and Bergan from the chambers.]
VAYNE: Judge Hardin-Ghis would see you.
[Hardin re-enters the chambers.]
VAYNE: You are the Landiser.
GABRANTH: Yes, my lord.
VAYNE: Gabranth, is it?
GABRANTH: Yes, my lord.
VAYNE: I know not overmuch of the costume of your birth-country. The temper of your land is as our own-cooler in winter, perhaps, but much the same?
GABRANTH: Yes.
VAYNE: But was there a custom of gloves, there, in summer, in the republic?
GABRANTH: My lord-
VAYNE: A curiosity. I merely recall the words of someone wise beyond her years.
GABRANTH: No. Gloves belonged to hunters, to brace weapons; or carpenters, to prevent splinters; or street-cleaners, physics, any manner of these. But at rest, statesmen and peasants alike bared their hands. For a senator to go about with gloves on was a sign of disrespect, of distancing. Such a man did not see re-election.
VAYNE: ‘Those things, I will not touch.’
GABRANTH: Yes, my lord.
VAYNE: This child said the most amusing thing on the subject. With extrapolation, perhaps, some anthropological research…
GABRANTH: What did her Highness say?
VAYNE: That we cover our faces because we have something to hide.
GABRANTH: It is a country of secrets, my lord.
VAYNE: And our hands? They are the same. Perhaps we wear gloves not to protect from stain, but to conceal it.
GABRANTH: Both, my lord. Who ordains that a glove may serve only one end?
VAYNE: You may go, Gabranth.
[Exit Gabranth.]
VAYNE: Bergan.
BERGAN: Lord Vayne.
VAYNE: When you are Magister, keep watch for him.
BERGAN: For his advancement, of his treason?
VAYNE: The man is dual. Come. We must to the orchard.
[Exeunt.]
V.ii
>[The Orchard. Enter Gibbs and Deweg, leading Caleb; Gabranth, carrying Miran. The guards deposit the condemned on the grass and take posts. A long silence and stillness.]
CALEB: Say something.
MIRAN: I?
CALEB: Anyone. I am sick of the beating of my own heart.
MIRAN: It will cease soon.
CALEB: This is no time for wit.
MIRAN: To the end, I disagree with you. There is no better time. I am a cripple lying in the grass, as the tortoise on his back; the sky bodes an ugly summer rain; I have never liked this orchard; and oh yes, I am condemned to die a traitor to country, crown, and father; but there is no better time for my tongue to see indiscriminate use. I may say anything I want, and my lot in life can get no worse.
CALEB: You’ll still have your tongue when Vayne takes off your head.
MIRAN: That’s exactly it.
CALEB: It stills my heart none.
MIRAN: You’re afraid, then.
CALEB: Desist.
MIRAN: You are. That’s good. Perhaps if you admit it, you’ll die easier.
CALEB: I don’t want to die easier.
MIRAN: Then keep denying your fear. I certainly cannot stop you.
CALEB: Are you afraid?
MIRAN: Yes, Caleb. Very. Not for myself, I know what I deserve, but for you, frankly, and for Archadia. For Vayne. I cannot help but consider what this will do to him if he permits himself to care. Perhaps I am not giving him sufficient credit. Will he lament us, do you think? His tears, as libation beside our blood, speeding it along?
CALEB: I doubt it.
MIRAN: So do I. I expect that is not why you are afraid, though.
CALEB: Will father cry?
MIRAN: For you?
[Enter Vayne with Bergan. Bergan is bearing Scale.]
MIRAN: Ho, Vayne. Perhaps you can answer us this: Will father cry for Caleb?
VAYNE: He is not here?
MIRAN: His curtains are drawn back, but I cannot see from here whether he is by them framed.
VAYNE: He is, but his back is turned.
CALEB: To the end, unrepentant.
VAYNE: Like father, like son. [Receives Scale from Bergan.] You see this, Caleb? Figuring hilts, it is longer than your body will be when your head is severed. I cannot lift them both. I admit to you this; I cannot heft them both. However hard I have trained to surpass you martially, as well as socially, I cannot wield the swords when they are joined. Were it you alone to be executed, I would make a fool of myself in the trying. [Separates the swords of Scale, and bears one in each hand.] Even as this, they are unsteady. Surely you can infer beyond that. I am not meant to be wielding the House sword.
It is as simple as that. I am not intended for this purpose. I am not a Magister meant; I am not a tyrant; I am not even yet a man, by the standards of this country. But I am to be your executioner, and it is to be with this blade.
Think you that father thought the same when he slew our Lord Uncle? I do. That is why this blade-these blades-are heavy as they are; to discourage the weak from taking them up at all.
But the first is Cunning. [Sets one blade down before Miran.] And this other is Tradition. And one at a time, they are not so great a burden.
Who first? The traitor, or the accessory to it? More appropriately, which is the worse fate; to leave this coil the sooner, or to learn the sum of your actions and be unable to recant? And that asked, whose is the baser crime?
MIRAN: To knowingly abet a traitor is the greater sin.
VAYNE: Should I kill him first, Caleb?
CALEB: Yes.
[Vayne does not. He beheads Caleb. After, he leaves Tradition in the grass and takes up Cunning.]
MIRAN: Thank you.
VAYNE: [sotto voce] It would have hurt me more to slay you first.
MIRAN: Perhaps that would still have been for the best. You will need that pain.
VAYNE: If I were to have lost courage in this, I would rather you be the one to live and behold that. Caleb would gloat.
MIRAN: I would gloat as well; you merely would not have seen it.
VAYNE: I would have been content to take the throne and be manipulated by you.
MIRAN: I would not have been able to.
VAYNE: [kneeling over him, stabs Miran in the chest.] Is that your last lesson to me?
[Miran dies.]
[Vayne rejoins the swords first and cleans them after. He returns Scale to Bergan, and they exit together.]
DEWEG: Where to, with the bodies?
GABRANTH: There are to be no graves.
DEWEG: [looks around the orchard] I see.
GABRANTH: To the groundskeeper. He will make use of them.
[Gibbs hesitates.]
DEWEG: Gibbs. Gibbs.
GIBBS: It seems wrong. Uncivilized.
GABRANTH: Your country, your customs. [Exits, bearing Miran’s body.]
[After a time, Gibbs and Deweg follow with Caleb’s. Scene.]
V.iii
[The Emperor’s chambers. Gramis, alone. Enter Vayne, immaculate.]
GRAMIS: How was it done?
VAYNE: You could not watch?
GRAMIS: [after a time:] They were sons, as well as prospective heirs, Vayne.
VAYNE: And you an Emperor as well as father. I would have marked the due of both great men to look upon my brothers as they died.
GRAMIS: And to look upon you, slaying them?
VAYNE: Feared you that you would behold no compassion in my eyes, no falter in my stance?
GRAMIS: I see none now.
VAYNE: Perhaps what tears might come have fled in dejection.
GRAMIS: [a stifled exclamation; silence.]
VAYNE: Why, your Excellency? If the prospect gave you such pause, why did you insist it be my hands to strike them down? If there was no other who desired them dead, why did you have them killed?
GRAMIS: There are many yet living who I desire dead.
VAYNE: Proselytize not on the disparity between desire and capability. Impotence is merely insufficient impetus.
GRAMIS: This is not the time for wit.
VAYNE: What galls you is that thus, it is plain that I am not your agent. I am capable, therefore desirous. Quite desirous. And so my brothers are dead. ‘How was it done?’ you ask. Your answer, your Excellency; with little remorse, few tears, and fewer tremors.
GRAMIS: Do not pretend to know my heart.
VAYNE: I do no such thing. I catalogue your fears, Excellency. [Accelerando gradual.] You have lived through reprisal, and fear another. You fear that your father’s sins rest on you, and yours on my and Larsa’s shoulders. You fear that fratricide is the other of the Solidor dragons.
GRAMIS: And the first?
VAYNE: Capability. But no, your Excellency, the first is as your duly appointed instructors have taught, Cunning, and the second Tradition. But Fratricide, it seems, is a tradition.
GRAMIS: Out.
VAYNE: [at length, bows.] Yes, father. [Exit.]
[Gramis, alone. Exeunt.]
End of Part I.
.
Completed for Puella Nerdii, on her birthday.
.
IV.i
[Senate. Senators, Judges Magister, Gramis, Miran, Vayne with Bergan, Hardin.]
SPERO: It is inexcusable.
LORAS: It is unforgivable.
GREGEROTH: To crush peace in the cradle!
GRAMIS: No one is asking me to forgive this, and I do not intend to.
GREGEROTH: But each night that you let the whelp languish in prison his hatred feeds on the same gruel. You cannot let him live, your Excellency. You cannot risk your successor offering him clemency and again upending all you poured into Ivalice’s chalice.
SPERO: No man may live a traitor to the crown.
GRAMIS: But his treason was thwarted.
LORAS: What says the Ninth? Who is the cur’s accomplice?
ZECHT: And where is the coin that will dispatch us to sniff among sellswords? What says the Senate?
LORAS: This is a concern of state-
ZECHT: And I assure you the State has our concern. We are Magistracy of the Interior, not hounds. If he had aid within Archadia we will find and dissolute it. If his hand comes from without, you require diplomacy-which Caleb has done a stellar job of assuring we have not-or stealth, which we can neither spare nor risk. We are suspect in every palace of this land. They will be watching for us. If we move, it is the war that he desires.
LORAS: And of our men who prowl the skies?
ASTOR: They flew the colors, Dalmascan Blue and Gold. I reported this. We were not hailed, nor were we fired upon. An exchange of broadsides, but the force was great. Upon reflection it smacks of the hoax Dalmasca claims it to be, but this is the sky, and the nearest one bridge gets to another is out of even cannon-sight. I do know this; the Jagd Yensa blankets that southron swath, and even were she not Dalmascan born that flagship was harbored in a sandrat port.
GREGEROTH: Distraction, then? A show of might?
SPERO: The dog made clear that much. Sow discontent, create a state of emergency, move in and have the child killed in the confusion, and fault the blood of Raithwall.
ASTOR: This disgusts me.
GHIS: You and so many others, Astor.
ASTOR: Murder is enough. Fratricide, worse still. But to turn his attentions on a defenseless babe. We have a term for those wretches in the sky, Ghis.
ASTOR, GHIS: Charybterix.
GHIS: And you can ask any hunter what best to do to Charybterix. Hardin?
HARDIN: Slay it cleanly and make your intended a gift of its feathers. With deference, your Excellency, your Honors, I do not appreciate being so deceived. Perhaps it has clouded my judgment, but you have given all of us to judge. And if my liege and the Senate rule him guilty, I will move he hang.
GHIS: Hang? You speak like the Westerner you are. In the skies, we plank.
GREGEROTH: And in the cities, we behead.
LORAS: Come, gentlemen, we first must ascertain his guilt.
ZARGABAATH: He denies nothing.
LORAS: He’s saved us that trouble, then. Better a guilty plea than the orobouros of a trial. Do any among us contest?
[No man speaks in Caleb’s favor.]
GREGEROTH: The Senate accepts the defendant’s plea.
SPERO: Does his Excellency veto?
GRAMIS: I do not.
[Miran begins to exit.]
GREGEROTH: Then does his Excellency permit the Judges Magister to interpret the law and sentence?
[Silence. Exit Miran.]
GRAMIS: Caleb belongs to the Law.
RION: Then let Our Honors convene.
[Exit the senators and lower judges. Bergan and Vayne are the last.]
ZECHT: That Gregeroth is as Charybterix as Caleb.
RION: Yes, but Gregeroth is not being sentenced.
ASTOR: I rather like your Hardin’s idea.
GHIS: His House is on the rise.
RION: Do we agree, then, that the punishment is capital?
GHIS: What other choice have we? Carrion-fowl though he be, Gregeroth is right. Let one traitor live, curry sympathy, herald others.
ZARGABAATH: There has been enough death in House Solidor this generation.
GHIS: Had Caleb his way, there would still have been another, and one of more promise.
ZECHT: Imprisonment is crueler.
RION: Aye, to the treasury.
ZARGABAATH: Are we to be the fiends Ivalice fears? Persist in executing our own? What example does Archadia set to the lands it means to welcome?
ZECHT: None now. Our efforts have been soured, our gestures of peace stained by context. Worry not for foreign policy, when the traitor is our own. The Ninth moves life confinement.
ZARGABAATH: Has he knowledge, then, to benefit your own?
ZECHT: We cannot know, if he is dead.
ASTOR: I had a turncoat in my midst, in the campaign against Landis, when I was but Mid-ranked under Ferrinas. I kept the traitor in the brig, that he might retain the rights of man and a trial like this one. His fellows broke him out and sabotaged my ship, and to this day the creature is at large. The Second moves death.
ZARGABAATH: A traitor may mend. The Fourth moves life confinement.
GHIS: A traitor may mend-in faerie tales and cradle songs. More likely, he will emerge from the womb of prison a threat to the regime, and will never cease to be so, even should the darkness of his cell illumine better aspects of his soul. The Thirteenth moves death.
ZECHT: Such tunes were sung in your cradle?
GHIS: You forget, this is Archadia.
RION: To behold the Lady Thea, clutching the child to her withering breast, and to hear her sobs grow dry with the rasp of her lungs, has moved me more than any of your pleas. The Fifth moves death, and Death has it.
ZECHT: You are too kind.
RION: Your Excellency; his sentence. The Law returns him to you, not to be judged, but slain.
GRAMIS: I will not be the hand.
RION: But Scale must be the blade. Archadia is Solidor; the traitor must die by Solidor’s sword.
GHIS: Miran, then. The future is his, and Caleb has poisoned it. Or Vayne, if Miran cannot.
ASTOR: Is that sufficiently cruel for you, Zecht?
ZECHT: Crueler to the executioner than the dead.
GRAMIS: Am I to visit my gravest sin upon them?
RION: Is Caleb still your son?
GRAMIS: [a long silence, then:] Let the Law do what it must.
RION: Fetch Miran, then. Let his arms prove of use.
[Exit Astor, Rion, Zecht. Zargabaath, a moment intent on Gramis, and then he too exits.]
GHIS: You swore never to speak of that again.
GRAMIS: You cannot fault me here.
[Exeunt.]
IV.ii
[Caleb in his cell. Two guards. The stairs to the cell must be visible.]
[A long silence. Caleb has managed to find the highest perch in the cell and is atop it, still. Perhaps he has upended his cot toward this end.]
[Enter Zargabaath. The Guards salute.]
ZARGABAATH: [to Caleb] Even now you refuse to accept how base your stature is. We fling you into a pit, and you contrive a mountain of dust.
CALEB: When height asserts equality I take what is my right, Uncle.
ZARGABAATH: Call me Uncle no longer. You had not the blood-right, and now have none of my affection to lend credence to the contrary.
CALEB: You’ll not suffer being Uncle to a malcontent, and yet you stand proud, brother-in-law to a fratricide.
ZARGABAATH: If that is your grudge, do not inflict it on the realm.
CALEB: My grudges are numerous, your Honor, more than the bolts in that can you hide in.
ZARGABAATH: As numerous as those who walk Ivalice? As numerous as their children? They, not your father, these men must endure your ire? For it is they who will bear the brunt of your scorn, long after your sentence is passed. They, not the father who already hates you.
CALEB: And why should he hate me? Of all his seed, only mine did not poison the ground he sowed.
ZARGABAATH: And so instead you blacken the land that will be your brothers’ with salt and fire. Have you yet thought that might be why he hates you?
CALEB: His crimes are worse.
ZARGABAATH: Consider that he might also hate himself.
CALEB: And you would know, Stepmother, would you not?
ZARGABAATH: Yes, I know your father’s heart. I know what moves him, what stays him; what guilt, what joy. I know his illness, its cause, its exacerbation. I know that of all his women, he knew your mother the most, and loved her least. There is a direct correlation in that, only logical. He loved my sister, and he loves Miran. He loves Thea, and he loves Larsa, and when Thea dies he will not cease to love the boy. But you, you are the child of obligation and mourning, the child for the sake of the Motherland, the insurance that your father in his role of Emperor thought he would require, before Miran’s strength and will-to-live were evident. He resents having to have you, resents his perceived failure in needing to sire you at all. And that your mother lived, and instructed you in this with her base woman’s arts and equally hateful poison, this vexes your father more than any chaos you can create. That she lived, while my sister died-that your mother lived to bear a second son-is proof to his Excellency that there is no justice in this world, only judgment, and that you are his sentence for the necessary crimes of his youth.
CALEB: Then I am glad to have wrought this. His reparation is not yet complete.
ZARGABAATH: You are not given to judge. It is not the right of a child.
CALEB: Then who else dares judge my father? The law itself is his subject, the Motherland his spoiled daughter, and what Gods would care are dead and turned away.
ZARGABAATH: Perhaps you are right, then, in killing the child to spite the father. But that is not your aim in this, nor your want. That is mere justification in a world without justice. You are a man plain, Solidor though you be, with all the rights and privileges thereof. But treason is no man’s right.
CALEB: What is my-
ZARGABAATH: In due time, to be executed. They still negotiate terms.
CALEB: A toast to my father, on his lonely throne-usurping fratricide, and now slayer of his own son.
ZARGABAATH: Good-bye, Caleb. [Exit, without looking back.]
FIRST GUARD: [aside to the other] Caged yet, and freer with his words than ever.
CALEB: Silence, you-
ZECHT: [entering] Open it.
[The Guards comply. Zecht enters the cell, and the guards shut him in.]
CALEB: Come to gloat, have you?
ZECHT: Come to make clear to you the holes in your plot.
CALEB: You’d have done better, then?
ZECHT: At the first, what you succeeded in. You are correct; by staging this at a fete, with all of Ivalice as audience, you win even as you lose. You caused your dissent, your doubt, your chaos. You lost your life in the process, but what does that matter to you, and nearly your conspirator’s-
CALEB: And how is the bastard?
ZECHT: Gone south and home to learn from your mistakes.
CALEB: You know of his involvement and give him no chase?
ZECHT: Fear gives him chase; the snapping jowl of his own brother’s intellect threatens to cripple him utterly. Had you any sense or chance at life, you would feel the same of yours.
CALEB: Fear Vayne? I’d sooner sprout the ears and tail of a cat.
ZECHT: I can only pray you have, when he splits your skull. Perhaps you will land on your feet in the next life.
CALEB: What’s this now?
ZECHT: The Senate has ruled that it be Vayne’s hand to strike you down, if Miran cannot.
CALEB: So the fratricide will seed his sons with that.
ZECHT: Do not forget, Caleb, what your plan called for. Infanticide. Be thankful at least that the faults in your scheme absolved you that sin.
CALEB: Go on about these faults, your Honor. How would you destroy the realm, in my place?
ZECHT: I would have killed Al-Cid.
CALEB: Instead of-
ZECHT: Along with the babe. Before, so the death of the child could be construed overwrought revenge. War does not begin in one country or with one man, one gesture. It is only the will of thousands that moves an army. You knew that much, knew to make the people want war-but your goal was not to destroy the realm, or else you are baser than even I have guessed. Your grudge is with your father, and him alone, and to involve the fates of thousands in your personal retribution for a perceived slight is where you erred in this. I could undermine the throne with a scheme only a quarter-cocked, where yours was half-. But it is not worth war.
CALEB: War is the only way to harm a man who is the state, to make him know my hatred.
ZECHT: He knows your hatred. Like any good man, he refuses to believe it is inexhaustible. I did this. I have been your shadow since you took to the earth. Even were I not a man of things unsaid and desires unspoken I would know yours, know your confidence, and I still would not deem your hatred without surcease. You love your father, despite the words of your mother and the inclinations of your mind, and that is what you hate. You love him, you cannot but, and you see that as his darkest power. He commands your affection, your sympathy, and you cannot abide loving a man who you do not respect. So you hate him, in your own stead, the same as he when his father yet lived. And you hate all who serve him, all who respect him, all who persist in the arms of the pretense that his Excellency is without sin and deserves our allegiance. You hate that you respect us, that you see reason in our defense of this man. You think we’re as opportunist as you-and some of us are-or simply blind to his past and deaf to the will of the populace. But we are not. The people are not clamoring for the Emperor’s head. You, Caleb, you alone. Did you not see the tears upon his cheeks before the actual of every stead in Ivalice? He wishes no ill, no war, none of this contention, none of this chaos, none of his mistakes. He has repented, or desires to more than he can contain. When will it stop? When is it enough for you? When he ends his own life, convinced that the next will be kinder?
CALEB: Take your barbarian reincarnation and shove up your black arse.
ZECHT: [signals to the guards to let him out. Then, addresses Caleb:] Someone will learn from your death, Caleb. I hope, for all our sakes, that he takes the correct lesson from it, and toward that end I pray that whatever shade you leave behind alights on the shoulder of no Solidor. [Exit.]
[A long silence. Enter Miran at the top of the stairs, unattended.]
MIRAN: Ho, Honors-For when you help me down the stairs, I bring refreshments.
FIRST GUARD: A moment, m’lord. [The two ascend and bear Miran down.] It will be a chore to bring you back up.
MIRAN: I apologize in advance. Here-from the orchard, brewed just this morn.
SECOND GUARD: Thank you, Lord Miran. [The guards accept and drink.]
MIRAN: Will you let me in to speak with him?
FIRST GUARD: He asks, when he might command!
MIRAN: It is at your discretion.
SECOND GUARD: It is one thing for a Judge Magister, armored and skilled. It is another for a man cannot defend himself.
MIRAN: I expected as much. He is dangerous to one as I.
CALEB: [calls over] I know how you feel, Miran.
MIRAN: [approaching the cell] That is more than I can say for myself. I cannot fathom what it means to be free and yet confined.
CALEB: But you can guess at why?
MIRAN: I know why I would have done this. I know that our reasons are not the same.
CALEB: What cause would you have? You are the Emperor’s intended, his eldest, first in his heart-and even if you are not, whichever of the others he names heir will bend to you. Vayne knows you for the snake you are, he says as much as soon as speak at all, but he cares more for you than me, and the babe will love your contraption at least.
MIRAN: He will be bitter and wanting as us all, when his mother is dead.
[The guards fall, convulsing.]
CALEB: So it is not just your words that are poison.
[Miran makes the incantation to open the cell. It succeeds, and he slumps forward with exertion.]
CALEB: [off his perch] Miran-
MIRAN: In the name of fraternal decency, take your fighting-chance and go. It was your brother who outed you; if you want your vengeance, you deserve a chance.
CALEB: First you damn me, now you free me?
MIRAN: It was Vayne damned you, and he may well do the same to our country if you don’t show him he was right. Right now, he is just a young man who warred with his brother and won, who curried for his father’s favor. It is a game. Prove to him that you are a monster, and what was in him self-serving may fade, and he will no longer think in terms of play.
CALEB: And what do you care?
MIRAN: I also ceased to play. But I am powerless, and weary of that. I will be underestimated and used and eventually worn down. This is a more honorable way for that to happen. If I live, I will have further need of skills I am not willing to use. Go, Caleb.
[After a moment, Caleb runs. Bergan is at the top of the stairs. Without a word, Bergan hefts up Caleb and throws him down them. Vayne, in the light of the dungeon door at the top of the stairs, looks on as Bergan flings Caleb back into the cell, this time unconscious, and pries Miran from his contraption to toss him in as well. Bergan locks them in.]
MIRAN: [weakly] Well, Vayne? Whose is the match?
[Exit Vayne. Scene. Act.]
V.i
[Before the Emperor’s chambers. Gibbs and Deweg, markedly silent, at post; Gabranth, aside.]
[A long silence. Enter Hardin from the chambers.]
HARDIN: Gibbs, Deweg; it is time.
[Exit Gibbs and Deweg.]
GABRANTH: Have they made you -elect for this?
HARDIN: I cannot know. It is no time to consider promotion.
[Enter Vayne and Bergan from the chambers.]
VAYNE: Judge Hardin-Ghis would see you.
[Hardin re-enters the chambers.]
VAYNE: You are the Landiser.
GABRANTH: Yes, my lord.
VAYNE: Gabranth, is it?
GABRANTH: Yes, my lord.
VAYNE: I know not overmuch of the costume of your birth-country. The temper of your land is as our own-cooler in winter, perhaps, but much the same?
GABRANTH: Yes.
VAYNE: But was there a custom of gloves, there, in summer, in the republic?
GABRANTH: My lord-
VAYNE: A curiosity. I merely recall the words of someone wise beyond her years.
GABRANTH: No. Gloves belonged to hunters, to brace weapons; or carpenters, to prevent splinters; or street-cleaners, physics, any manner of these. But at rest, statesmen and peasants alike bared their hands. For a senator to go about with gloves on was a sign of disrespect, of distancing. Such a man did not see re-election.
VAYNE: ‘Those things, I will not touch.’
GABRANTH: Yes, my lord.
VAYNE: This child said the most amusing thing on the subject. With extrapolation, perhaps, some anthropological research…
GABRANTH: What did her Highness say?
VAYNE: That we cover our faces because we have something to hide.
GABRANTH: It is a country of secrets, my lord.
VAYNE: And our hands? They are the same. Perhaps we wear gloves not to protect from stain, but to conceal it.
GABRANTH: Both, my lord. Who ordains that a glove may serve only one end?
VAYNE: You may go, Gabranth.
[Exit Gabranth.]
VAYNE: Bergan.
BERGAN: Lord Vayne.
VAYNE: When you are Magister, keep watch for him.
BERGAN: For his advancement, of his treason?
VAYNE: The man is dual. Come. We must to the orchard.
[Exeunt.]
V.ii
>[The Orchard. Enter Gibbs and Deweg, leading Caleb; Gabranth, carrying Miran. The guards deposit the condemned on the grass and take posts. A long silence and stillness.]
CALEB: Say something.
MIRAN: I?
CALEB: Anyone. I am sick of the beating of my own heart.
MIRAN: It will cease soon.
CALEB: This is no time for wit.
MIRAN: To the end, I disagree with you. There is no better time. I am a cripple lying in the grass, as the tortoise on his back; the sky bodes an ugly summer rain; I have never liked this orchard; and oh yes, I am condemned to die a traitor to country, crown, and father; but there is no better time for my tongue to see indiscriminate use. I may say anything I want, and my lot in life can get no worse.
CALEB: You’ll still have your tongue when Vayne takes off your head.
MIRAN: That’s exactly it.
CALEB: It stills my heart none.
MIRAN: You’re afraid, then.
CALEB: Desist.
MIRAN: You are. That’s good. Perhaps if you admit it, you’ll die easier.
CALEB: I don’t want to die easier.
MIRAN: Then keep denying your fear. I certainly cannot stop you.
CALEB: Are you afraid?
MIRAN: Yes, Caleb. Very. Not for myself, I know what I deserve, but for you, frankly, and for Archadia. For Vayne. I cannot help but consider what this will do to him if he permits himself to care. Perhaps I am not giving him sufficient credit. Will he lament us, do you think? His tears, as libation beside our blood, speeding it along?
CALEB: I doubt it.
MIRAN: So do I. I expect that is not why you are afraid, though.
CALEB: Will father cry?
MIRAN: For you?
[Enter Vayne with Bergan. Bergan is bearing Scale.]
MIRAN: Ho, Vayne. Perhaps you can answer us this: Will father cry for Caleb?
VAYNE: He is not here?
MIRAN: His curtains are drawn back, but I cannot see from here whether he is by them framed.
VAYNE: He is, but his back is turned.
CALEB: To the end, unrepentant.
VAYNE: Like father, like son. [Receives Scale from Bergan.] You see this, Caleb? Figuring hilts, it is longer than your body will be when your head is severed. I cannot lift them both. I admit to you this; I cannot heft them both. However hard I have trained to surpass you martially, as well as socially, I cannot wield the swords when they are joined. Were it you alone to be executed, I would make a fool of myself in the trying. [Separates the swords of Scale, and bears one in each hand.] Even as this, they are unsteady. Surely you can infer beyond that. I am not meant to be wielding the House sword.
It is as simple as that. I am not intended for this purpose. I am not a Magister meant; I am not a tyrant; I am not even yet a man, by the standards of this country. But I am to be your executioner, and it is to be with this blade.
Think you that father thought the same when he slew our Lord Uncle? I do. That is why this blade-these blades-are heavy as they are; to discourage the weak from taking them up at all.
But the first is Cunning. [Sets one blade down before Miran.] And this other is Tradition. And one at a time, they are not so great a burden.
Who first? The traitor, or the accessory to it? More appropriately, which is the worse fate; to leave this coil the sooner, or to learn the sum of your actions and be unable to recant? And that asked, whose is the baser crime?
MIRAN: To knowingly abet a traitor is the greater sin.
VAYNE: Should I kill him first, Caleb?
CALEB: Yes.
[Vayne does not. He beheads Caleb. After, he leaves Tradition in the grass and takes up Cunning.]
MIRAN: Thank you.
VAYNE: [sotto voce] It would have hurt me more to slay you first.
MIRAN: Perhaps that would still have been for the best. You will need that pain.
VAYNE: If I were to have lost courage in this, I would rather you be the one to live and behold that. Caleb would gloat.
MIRAN: I would gloat as well; you merely would not have seen it.
VAYNE: I would have been content to take the throne and be manipulated by you.
MIRAN: I would not have been able to.
VAYNE: [kneeling over him, stabs Miran in the chest.] Is that your last lesson to me?
[Miran dies.]
[Vayne rejoins the swords first and cleans them after. He returns Scale to Bergan, and they exit together.]
DEWEG: Where to, with the bodies?
GABRANTH: There are to be no graves.
DEWEG: [looks around the orchard] I see.
GABRANTH: To the groundskeeper. He will make use of them.
[Gibbs hesitates.]
DEWEG: Gibbs. Gibbs.
GIBBS: It seems wrong. Uncivilized.
GABRANTH: Your country, your customs. [Exits, bearing Miran’s body.]
[After a time, Gibbs and Deweg follow with Caleb’s. Scene.]
V.iii
[The Emperor’s chambers. Gramis, alone. Enter Vayne, immaculate.]
GRAMIS: How was it done?
VAYNE: You could not watch?
GRAMIS: [after a time:] They were sons, as well as prospective heirs, Vayne.
VAYNE: And you an Emperor as well as father. I would have marked the due of both great men to look upon my brothers as they died.
GRAMIS: And to look upon you, slaying them?
VAYNE: Feared you that you would behold no compassion in my eyes, no falter in my stance?
GRAMIS: I see none now.
VAYNE: Perhaps what tears might come have fled in dejection.
GRAMIS: [a stifled exclamation; silence.]
VAYNE: Why, your Excellency? If the prospect gave you such pause, why did you insist it be my hands to strike them down? If there was no other who desired them dead, why did you have them killed?
GRAMIS: There are many yet living who I desire dead.
VAYNE: Proselytize not on the disparity between desire and capability. Impotence is merely insufficient impetus.
GRAMIS: This is not the time for wit.
VAYNE: What galls you is that thus, it is plain that I am not your agent. I am capable, therefore desirous. Quite desirous. And so my brothers are dead. ‘How was it done?’ you ask. Your answer, your Excellency; with little remorse, few tears, and fewer tremors.
GRAMIS: Do not pretend to know my heart.
VAYNE: I do no such thing. I catalogue your fears, Excellency. [Accelerando gradual.] You have lived through reprisal, and fear another. You fear that your father’s sins rest on you, and yours on my and Larsa’s shoulders. You fear that fratricide is the other of the Solidor dragons.
GRAMIS: And the first?
VAYNE: Capability. But no, your Excellency, the first is as your duly appointed instructors have taught, Cunning, and the second Tradition. But Fratricide, it seems, is a tradition.
GRAMIS: Out.
VAYNE: [at length, bows.] Yes, father. [Exit.]
[Gramis, alone. Exeunt.]
End of Part I.
.
Completed for Puella Nerdii, on her birthday.
.