All Hope of Repair, chapter 2
Aug. 8th, 2019 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shinonFandom: Final Fantasy VI
Characters: Edgar/Locke
Word count: ~7100
Warnings: Strong language, stupid humor in general
Notes: oh boy here we are still going.
That idiot from that bar in Narshe — was it over a year ago now? — swung down from his chocobo and said, "Do you take constructive criticism?" And patted the animal's neck, prompting it to run off home, and pulled off his riding gloves, because of course this fancy bastard had riding gloves. The cuffs were embroidered.
"Not from you," said Locke.
"I do trust my staff, but accidents happen. If you'd just made this sound a little more like an assignation —"
"Not happening."
"No one would blink at my getting a letter saying, for example, 'I need you. I can't wait any longer. Only you can quench the fire that burns in my —'"
"Bullshit, you've never gotten a letter like that in your life. There'd be a national panic. They'd put you under house arrest. 'No one's ever fallen for His Majesty's weak-ass game, this has to be an evil plot!'" He stopped. He gave Edgar a critical look, and then groaned. "I specifically said no mustache! What's wrong with you?"
"Ah, yes. I did want to ask you why you would stipulate something so odd."
"It was disgraceful in Narshe and it's disgraceful now."
Edgar sighed, sending a ripple through... that... thing. Locke could not stop himself from cringing. "Locke, we've been over this. You need to let it go. Your obsession with this mystery man is starting to depress me."
"You're literally wearing the exact same clothes."
"This is worse than I thought. They've been working you too hard, haven't they? It's all right, you can admit it. How long have you had this belief that you've seen the future?"
I did finally get him out of the castle, Locke thought. There aren't any guards around. Maybe this is finally my chance to kick his ass.
Edgar patted his shoulder. "Well, whenever you're ready to tell me about it, I'm here. Oh, yeah, and about your other problem." He rummaged around in his traveling bag — which was sturdy, plain canvas. At least he'd had the sense not to paint a target on this one thing — and retrieved a packet of herbs, which he tossed to Locke. "You were running low, right?"
Unsure whether to say "thank you" or "go to hell," Locke nodded and tucked it into his pocket. They walked together the rest of the way, although Locke couldn't look the guy in the face without getting offended by his wildly shitty disguise. So he just didn't look. At the end of the road, just outside Jidoor, was the dinky little inn that was supposed to put them up until tomorrow's meeting with the Returners, and of course Edgar started trying to chat up a maid within twelve seconds. Not that she was holding up her end of the conversation — too busy staring in horror and wonder at his mustache.
Locke pushed him aside and went to get the key from the innkeep — a middle-aged war widow the Returners had done business with before. Though he wasn't sure how much she knew.
"In the back," she said, and handed him the keys, and then peered over his shoulder for a look at her other guest.
Locke moved to block her, smiling apologetically. "It's really better if you don't see. Trust me."
He went back to the entrance and tapped Edgar on the shoulder. "Your pardon, please," said Edgar, "I was just asking this charming young lady for the lay of the land —"
"You could ask me, you know."
Edgar sighed, turning to Locke. "The operative phrase is 'charming young lady.' You rate, at best, one out of three."
"C'mon, make it two. I'm not that old."
Edgar snorted. It did appalling things to the blond caterpillar fixed to his upper lip. "All right, all right. We may as well settle in." He turned back and kissed his hand to the maid. "Thank you ever so much for your time." She stared at him, very obviously trying not to laugh in his face, until Locke grabbed his elbow and pulled him away.
But Edgar stopped again in the doorway to their room. "Oh, no," he said, deadpan, "there aren't enough beds."
"What are you talking about? There's two."
"Yeah, both for me. We'll have to push them together. I've never slept on a twin-size mattress before, and today will not be the day I start. I'm already making enough sacrifices."
"You're shitting me."
Edgar laughed. "Absolutely! But, man, can you imagine?" He gave Locke a slap on the back as he pushed past, then slung his bag onto the bed nearer the window. "Dibs."
Locke thought, Damn, he's way too excited about this.
"So what should I expect?" Edgar said, after poking around every corner of the room, making comments on the decor that went utterly over Locke's head. He sat down on the bed beside his luggage. "How much can you tell me?"
Locke pulled a chair over from under the writing desk, turned it backwards, and sat resting his arms across the slats. "Okay. Tomorrow morning, a guy I know will come get us and lead us somewhere. Anything he wants to do to keep the location secret, just roll with it."
"Ooh. He's not going to put bags over our heads, is he?"
"Tell you what," said Locke, "I'm sure you can make a request."
"Can I ask that he only puts a bag over yours?"
Locke rolled his eyes. "Do you want to know what I know, or not?"
"Yes. Sorry, go on, you have my undivided attention."
Locke would never admit it, but there was something disconcerting about Edgar's undivided attention. Like in his head he was breaking you down to some finnicky technical diagram for later study. But maybe that was a put-on, too. Locke had once seen this guy get clotheslined by a statue; he couldn't be that sharp. (The statue was in his own castle. He knew where it was.) It didn't matter how blue his eyes were, this was still the imbecile who'd decided to recycle a disguise that hadn't even worked last time. And he'd made the mustache worse.
"Right," said Locke. "So. We got our hands on some machinery out of Vector. As far as I know, it's not related to the boat project, but honestly, they didn't tell me much and I understood maybe half of what they did."
"Do we think Gestahl has shifted priorities?"
"Would it be a good thing if he had?"
"The options I'm looking at now are 'sabotage the fleet somehow' or 'evacuate South Figaro and cram everyone into the castle before that lunatic fries the entire coastline.' And I haven't been making great progress on either front. If he's got a new favorite toy, I guess both those issues are off my plate. But…" A rueful half-shrug. "One assumes a totally new set of logistics problems will take their place."
"Wait, what's this about sabotage?"
"Oh, come now." He grinned. He seemed to be going for "roguish charm," but the mustache got in the way. In fact, the mustache retroactively spoiled every time he had tried to be charming in the past five or six months. "Breaking stuff is at least as fun as putting it together." Then he looked thoughtful. "The hard part would be placing someone in the shipyard who could carry out my instructions. And making it look like an intrinsic failure instead of a hostile act. And making that intrinsic failure look like something they couldn't just engineer around, so they abandon the project." That grin returned. "On consideration, the hard part is all of it. Anyway. Continue. From your note, I assume I'm here to look at this gizmo."
"I don't even think it's an entire gizmo. It's, like, a piece of a gizmo."
"Intriguing."
"And they're moving it out of here tomorrow evening — they're gonna take it somewhere else and destroy it so it can't be traced to us. I mean, hopefully. So you've got one day to make whatever sense of it you can." Locke paused. "I did kinda stick my neck out recommending you for this. Don't let me down."
"Never have, never will."
That was reassuring for about three seconds. Then Locke remembered that he'd written specifically asking Edgar to be discreet, and on that score he'd never been let down harder in his whole fucking life.
"Frankly, I'm grateful for the opportunity," Edgar said, as if unaware how hard Locke was frowning at him. "I haven't done as much for the effort as I'd like. And I get to look at new tech, and I've managed to slip the leash for a whole weekend. You're doing me a huge favor, so thank you."
"Yeah, sure thing."
"Do you know anything about where we're meeting?" Locke started to answer. Edgar held up a hand. "I know, I know, it's a secret, but you've been here before, right? Any ideas? Hunches? Your guess is worlds better than mine. I've been to Jidoor, naturally, but never this quarter. Always getting wined and dined by that passel of insufferable snobs…"
"Wow," Locke said flatly, "sounds terrible."
"I beg your pardon?"
"It must be so awful to have people throwing fancy food and booze at you all day. And it's just another bunch of rich douchebags so far up their own asses they can't see daylight. I'd think you would fit right in, Your Majesty."
"No. Wrong. We're completely different. Their tax structure is barbaric, for one thing —" He stopped. "What a historic day, I think that's the first time you've called me that." Then he shook himself and resumed his train of thought. "— and they always think they can get better terms for themselves, just by parading beautiful women in front of me until my brain turns into mush."
Locke snorted. "Does it work?"
"The Empire tries it, too, actually. That's one nice thing about having one's weaknesses so widely known. You know in advance what angle the attack's coming from." He tilted his head back, his eyes rolling toward the ceiling, and sighed. "But damn, if it isn't a struggle sometimes."
Someone had to teach this guy to cuss without making such a meal out of it. He'd never pass for a regular person.
"Hey, actually, we should swap intelligence," said Edgar, straightening. "I know one half of this city. You know the other."
"I know both, actually," said Locke, and made a point of boredly drumming his fingers on the chair back. "There's nothing you can tell me."
"Really! Don't tell me they invited you to one of their little art shows?"
"Of course I wasn't invited."
"Oh." His eyes lit up. He leaned forward. "Tell me more. Who were you robbing? Did you get away with anything? When was this?"
Locke had not expected this level of interest. "Maybe four years ago? Do you have some personal investment in —"
"Okay, was there a man, about 5'8", with a very obviously infected nose piercing, that he kept saying was supposed to look like that? Because he was trying to be a trendsetter, but it looked so painful that nobody was willing to follow him on it? But then he stuck with it for another six months trying to save face."
Weirdly, there had been. "I think I got his cufflinks."
Edgar laughed delightedly. "Good! I hate that guy."
"Is he someone important?"
"Yes, very. Thank you so much."
"Then who was it?"
Edgar stopped looking gleeful long enough to feign surprise. "But Locke, you said I had nothing to tell you." And then threw himself back on the bed, cackling. "Ah, this is why we're friends."
"Uh, wrong. We're friends because Banon said I had to put up with you."
"Details, details."
"And speaking of. Are you really gonna go meet your revolutionary contacts looking like that?"
Edgar said lazily, "I anticipate changing my shirt between now and then."
"The mustache —"
"Stays."
Locke gritted his teeth, but there was no fighting him on this one. "Okay, could you at least change your hair? Something other than your extremely recognizable signature style?"
"I can't fathom what you're suggesting."
"I guess you can't cut it, because then you'd have to explain when you got back home —"
"And for no other reason?" Edgar said dryly.
"But at least lose one of the ribbons. And there's always dye —" Locke got up. "Here, roll up your sleeve for a sec?" Looking equal parts amused and perplexed, Edgar did so. Locke crossed over to him and took hold of his elbow, angling it to let him inspect the bared forearm. "Hm, yeah. Your arm hair's blond too, so you wouldn't be able to go too dark. People might twig that something is wrong."
"You're assuming I go around flaunting my arms at all and sundry. Although maybe I should..."
"It's one of those things people pick up on subconsciously. But you could get away with a medium brown." Edgar, rolling his sleeve back down, looked faintly insulted by the suggestion. "Or gray," said Locke, offhand, and now he looked appalled. Locke grinned. "What? Plenty of people start graying in their twenties. It's nothing shameful."
"Okay," said Edgar, "fine, I've received your suggestion. Just know that I will never act on it as long as I live."
"There are kinds that'll wash right out in a day or two."
"Good to know. Still never."
"And remember to get your eyebrows, when you never do this. If you overlook those, it's really noticeable."
Edgar sighed irritably. "All right, how's this?" He pulled out the ribbons holding back his hair and swung it forward over one shoulder in a long golden wave. And then — while he stared off at nothing in particular, looking bored — whipped it into a braid with startling speed. His hands never faltered. He never looked at it, even as he retrieved one of the ribbons and tied it off again.
"Efficient," Locke said, finally, when he remembered he was supposed to respond.
Had it always taken this much effort not to stare at the guy's hands? Should he have been staring at them more? The steadiness, the assurance — if he hadn't been busy running a kingdom or something, he'd make a perfectly decent card sharp.
No, maybe not that. His default expression of vacant friendliness was a bit much. Looking back at their first meeting, it was kind of embarrassing Locke hadn't realized that he was being hustled. The trouble was, Edgar was smart enough to try to fake stupid, but too real-stupid to fake stupid convincingly.
"It was kind of a nervous habit when I was little," said Edgar. Oh, right. The braid. This was not actually about whether King Edgar Figaro could be persuaded to embark on a life of crime. "One time Sabin hacked all his hair off with kitchen shears so I'd stop doing it to him too."
Locke took up a position on the other bed and lay back, pillowing his head on his folded arms. He stared at the ceiling. He didn't see the ceiling. The only thing in his head suddenly was that arm, those hands, that smooth and shining braid, and what it must feel like weaving it together, gliding fingers through that long, long hair —
Edgar said absently, "I hope they cleaned those shears. We were not tidy children."
"What's he like?" said Locke, trying to distract himself. Fuck's sake. It was just Edgar. "Your brother, I mean."
Edgar hesitated. At last he said, "I don't know. It's been a long time. I know how I remember him, but as much as I've grown up since he left, I have to assume he's done the same." He sighed.
Then, briskly, "That's not what you asked. You want more dirt on the old days — so, here, this is illustrative. One afternoon I dug this gigantic old clock out of storage and dragged Sabin over to look at it. It was still running after who knew how many years of neglect, and I'd just been reading about clocks, so I got it open and showed him all the moving parts, and then I think" — he laughed a little at the memory — "I just started lecturing him about different types of escapements. That one had a really interesting low-friction mechanism, actually — a bit of a historical curiosity. It narrows down the date of manufacture to a five-year range, and… I'm doing it again. Sorry." But it hadn't occurred to Locke to be bothered. It wasn't like it was a chore, letting Edgar's voice roll over him, on the rare occasions it wasn't saying something completely asinine. He was a king, anyway. With all the talking he had to do, they must have drilled him in how to make it sound good. That much made sense. "Anyway, Sabin let me go on about this for ages, and then he said, 'You wanna know something else about this clock?'" Pause for effect. "'It says we're gonna be late for dinner.'"
Locke wasn't sure what this was supposed to illustrate — only that Edgar, for whatever reason, thought it was delightful. "Well, were you?"
"Very nearly! And then I would've gotten yelled at." He laughed again. "He spotted the only important piece of information, long before I did, and I wish I could say that was the only time. And I'm sure he had no idea what I was talking about, but he listened anyway."
"And left you open to getting yelled at?"
"That's nothing," he said, defensive. "I should've been more responsible, that's all."
"So, what, were you the designated fall guy?"
"It wasn't like that." A long, thoughtful pause. "I guess you could say I was the ideas guy, more than anything else. Most of the good ideas were mine, but more importantly, so were all the bad ones. So if anything went wrong, it must've been my doing." He chuckled. "Besides, I was bigger than him. I could strongarm him into anything, if I had to." Another pause, and then, quieter, "I usually didn't have to."
Locke said nothing. Even if he'd known what to say, he wouldn't have said it. He probably should've realized that questions about one's long-lost brother would cut close to the bone. It'd just never occurred to him that Edgar could be cut.
"He was always too soft-hearted," Edgar went on in the same abstracted tone, as if no longer aware Locke was there. He drew in a breath, and Locke started to feel preemptively weird about hearing a recitation of the flaws of some guy he'd never met and probably never would. Instead Edgar said, "I hope that hasn't changed."
Something in his voice made Locke sit up again and study him. He looked tired and sad and achingly noble — to the extent you could ignore the mustache.
You really couldn't ignore the mustache, and you couldn't ignore the fact that he was the kind of dumbass who thought the mustache was appropriate. When it had just been his voice against the half-darkened ceiling, Locke had thought about going over to him, apologizing for poking at old wounds, offering his shoulder. Confronted with the reality of Edgar Figaro, National Embarrassment, he thought, Nah, he's fine.
Locke lay back down. Within half a minute Edgar was back on form, rambling about dumb shit, like nothing had ever happened.
In the morning Edgar was sluggish and monosyllabic, buttoned his shirt wrong, and only blinked in confusion at the suggestion of breakfast. They hadn't even been up that late, Locke thought — or at least, he hadn't. He remembered dozing off to the sound of Edgar making increasingly irreverent predictions about the Empire's new weapon. "You didn't go out partying after I was asleep, did you?" he asked.
Edgar gave him a sidelong look, eyelids at half-mast. "It's not even eight o'clock. What do you want from me." Locke pointed to where one side of his shirt hung an inch lower than the other. "Balls," Edgar said sleepily, and took the better part of a minute to sort it out. When their escort arrived, a guy Locke knew only as Rod, Edgar was upright and personable, if a little quieter than usual; as soon as Rod had seen them into the waiting delivery wagon and gone out front to drive, he slumped again. His mustache had remained perfectly fixed in place overnight. The rest of him looked about to collapse around it.
"Not a morning person, huh?"
Edgar sighed and leaned his head against the wall. But Locke didn't have long to enjoy how dumb he looked with his cheek mashed flat and his mouth hanging open like one of those ornamental carp, because then the wagon started to move. And now they were jolting along in a dark, enclosed space that smelled like mulch, over a very unfinished road, and in short order, all his attention was reserved for fighting down the nausea. It was half an hour before the wagon stopped. By that point they had to support each other down the offloading ramp.
"We're a disgrace," Edgar said confidentially, and Locke gave him a crooked grin. They stood together a while longer, getting their bearings, on the gravel of what turned out to be a railyard.
Rod shut up the wagon — they tried to look respectable for as long as he was in visible distance — and tipped his hat. "They're in one of the freight cars. I'll be back this evening to collect you." And drove off.
"Hope like hell we're not riding back in the same thing," Locke muttered.
"I don't know, it was an interesting change of pace," said Edgar. Locke glared at him. "I said 'was.' The novelty's rather worn off by now." He rubbed at the side of his neck where it met his shoulder, and something popped. "Do they have coffee in detached freight cars in the middle of nowhere?"
"Well, they're expecting you," said Locke, nodding down the hill toward the sorting yard and its rows of big boxy cars. Edgar followed his lead. "And I told them you're persnickety, so maybe."
"Did you?"
"Yeah, I said they should expect to cough up two or three grand on refreshments appropriate to your fancy-ass tastes. Oh, yeah, and no one's allowed to wear hats in your presence, and eye contact is a six-month sentence."
"And how'd that go over?" Edgar said warily.
"They told me to go fuck myself. But I think I had 'em going for a second or two."
"Oh, great, you've made me some enemies in advance. Thank you for that." He ran a hand over his hair, smoothing it down. "Well. I've overcome bad first impressions before. A little challenge keeps things interesting."
Not with that stache, you haven't, Locke almost said, before remembering that he'd looked just as stupid the first time Locke had ever seen him and now they were basically best friends. And then he thought, wryly, Something must be wrong with me.
Feet crunched in the gravel. They both stopped and turned. A guy was flagging them down from between tracks.
"He's got a hat on," said Edgar. "Does that mean there won't be truffles, either?"
"If there's any kind of fungus in there," said Locke, "it'll be because someone's fucking with me."
"Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Should we see what he wants?"
As they drew closer, Locke recognized this kid. His name was Zane — they hadn't worked together much, but he'd completely destroyed Locke at darts one night, which most people couldn't do and which entitled him to some respect. There was also the fact that he was about seventeen — maybe eighteen tops — and had been with the Returners two years already. Kid was dedicated for life, and he didn't even know what life was yet. Locke was a little wary around people like that, the true believers, who got into this shit out of pure unselfish conviction instead of —
Well, instead of other reasons. Then again, he was making assumptions. Zane wasn't too young to have a past.
"Hey, what's up," said Locke, once they were in earshot, and Zane gave him a distracted nod, busy trying to size Edgar up. When his gaze snagged on the mustache, he actually flinched. "Yeah, this loser's with me. I'm pretty sure he's not as stupid as he looks, but it's a close contest."
"Thanks so much," Edgar muttered. Then he slapped on an obliging smile and offered his hand to Zane, who shook it with an expression of total bewilderment. "I promise I don't breathe fire or anything," he said, as if that were the only possible reason for trepidation. "I'm here to consult about machines, nothing more, nothing less. The very last thing I want to do is cause anyone discomfort." Zane looked less comfortable with every word out of his mouth. Locke had to turn aside to hide a grin. "I hope we can work together amicably. Please do let me know if I impose too far." So polite. So self-effacing. Who knew he had it in him?
"Yeah, sure," said Zane, blank. But turning to Locke, he miraculously regained the ability to string sentences together. "We've got the machine in a car back here. Gonna connect to a train heading north at 7:15 tonight, so we wanna be cleared out by five. Oh, and the boss wanted to talk to you." He cut his eyes toward Edgar, a silent, I'm not gonna ask, but I really wanna ask.
"Got it," said Locke, making a few covert hand signals most thieves on the continent would read as He's one of us. Not that all Returners had that kind of background, but there were more than a few. Some of the experience was transferable. And the gamble paid off — Zane's eyes widened slightly in recognition. Locke said, "Let's not waste time, then."
As Zane led them to the car in question, Locke leaned toward Edgar and whispered, mockingly, "'I promise I don't breathe fire. Gosh, I'm just a simple machine guy. Let's all be friends.'"
"It's called damage control," said Edgar under his breath. "And I don't sound like that."
Zane rapped on the side of a heavily graffitied boxcar, got an answering rap from within, and unlatched the sliding door.
Edgar frowned at him. "Are we going to be sealed in?"
"I'll be out here watching the yard. If something goes wrong, you'll just have to go along for the ride. You can get off in Zozo, no one will be watching by then. Downside is you'll be in Zozo."
"My, this is an adventure," said Edgar, calmer than you'd expect from an aristocrat faced with the prospect of a visit to that sinkhole. What, did he have a sword in his bag or something? Did he seriously think he could handle those cutthroats? But meanwhile Zane was rolling back the doors, revealing a widening slice of the darkness inside.
But it wasn't completely dark. A few lanterns rigged to the ceiling cast a cone of light down on two men, an abandoned game of checkers, and a tarp. The little guy was a mechanic from Narshe, although not one of the ones who'd gone with Edgar to see the ship; the beardy one was Banon. The tarp — well, he had no idea what was under the tarp, and he had no chance to speculate, because Edgar had already climbed aboard and was blocking his view.
"Love what you've done with the place," Edgar said, "though I hope you haven't been cooped up in here long. I'd imagine the scenery gets stale, to say nothing of the air." He offered his hand to the mechanic. "I don't think we've met, but if it helps, on a technical level we still haven't. You never saw me, I was never here, and so on. I am a nonentity." Locke did not have to see their faces to guess that he'd just winked, and that the mechanic was wondering, What the hell is wrong with this guy? "As such, there's no need for any reserve on either part. Especially given the timetables, I hope we can be collegial." Locke clambered up behind him, met the mechanic's gaze over his shoulder, and then shrugged to say, Yeah, I dunno what his deal is, either.
"Shutting you in," said Zane, and slid the door closed behind them. If only being done with Edgar's nonsense was that simple for everyone.
The dark clamped down around them. The mechanic finally regained his balance and said, "What you're going to see was brought to us by a lady who smuggled it out of Vector —"
"Can I talk to her?" said Edgar. Predictably, all attention.
"No way," said Locke. "Five seconds of you smarming at her and she'd go running back to the Empire."
"She's on her way back even now," said Banon. Edgar pivoted toward him with the most painfully gratuitous attitude of respect. "She's offered to try to get us more components."
"How courageous," Edgar murmured. A lady who could transport heavy machinery was probably his dream girl.
"That, or this leak was faked," said Locke. "She could still be on Gestahl's payroll. Giving us bogus weapons to get in good with us and point our attention the wrong way."
"Also possible. Which is another reason it's better she never sees you," Banon told Edgar. "But we think it's worth examining in any case. Thank you for taking the time." He turned to Locke again and nodded to the sliding door. "Locke, a moment while our experts orient themselves?"
"Sure."
Banon brushed past Edgar on his way, and paused long enough to mutter, "Nice mustache, Your Majesty."
"Oh," said Edgar, "uh, thanks," in the faint voice of someone who was just now realizing that everyone could see it. Someone who had just realized that Operation: Piss Off Locke was also making him look like a moron in front of the grown-ups. His shoulders came up around his ears.
Locke banged on the wall, waited for the all-clear from Zane, and pulled the door open again. He dropped into the gravel and helped Banon down behind him. From Edgar's direction, as the door slid home, could be heard a violent ripping sound and a pained whimper.
"Quite the character, this expert you brought along," Banon observed mildly.
"Hey, yeah, quick question. Did you know what you were getting me into? I mean, really know?"
"I had certain hopes you'd get along. Was I mistaken?"
"Well. No, but..." Locke searched for words, found none, and just said "Ugh" with more conviction than anyone ever had before. "I'm sure we can count on him. But he's a complete doofus. It's — he does both. I don't get it, either."
They walked up and down beside the tracks and compared notes on the ebb and flow of anti-Imperial sentiment in the towns of the northern continent, and Banon sketched out a new scouting operation he planned to tap Locke for. On their fourth or fifth pass, and while Locke was discreetly trying to angle for a slightly larger boat less liable to get tossed around like a cork, the boxcar's door grated open again.
Edgar leaned out. There was a raw red spot just above his upper lip. Locke considered the probable reaction of whoever had to unload this car when they found a dumb-looking strip of blond hairs kicked into a corner somewhere, and smiled. And then stopped smiling. Awkward blotches aside, Edgar looked as serious as he'd ever seen him. "Come look at this," he said. "Both of you."
They stepped back inside. Edgar slid the door partway shut behind them, admitting only a six-inch bar of light and a narrow view of the empty tracks.
"Right." He motioned for the mechanic to hold their specimen up to the light. The man did so, with some difficulty; the piece was unwieldy, a fat quarter-cylinder attached to a convex metal plate. "Thank you," Edgar said to him, and then to Locke and Banon: "My colleague and I have agreed that this is a component for a Magitek laser cannon. What you see here is part of the barrel and its mount. It's not clear what kind of platform it'll be mounted on, but it's fair to assume it's a lot smaller than the boats they were testing last fall."
"Well," said Locke, "that's good, right? Smaller guns, less damage?"
"Less damage per gun — in theory, but we'll get back to that." Edgar shook his head. "It suggests they're shifting to prioritize more guns rather than bigger ones, which means a lot more tactical flexibility. You can't surround a city with one cannon, no matter how big. If you've got twenty cannons, even if each is proportionally weaker, that's a much different story."
Banon said, "We understood they couldn't produce Magitek units at that scale. They only have one factory."
"Right. So by implication, either this is a long game or they've increased capacity. I don't know about you, gentlemen, but I find either prospect... worrying." Edgar looked at each of them in turn, and then smiled grimly and said, "Let's continue."
He took the piece from the mechanic and set the narrow end down on the floor, angling the tube so that Banon and Locke could see the back of the plate. An empty rectangular compartment was welded to the concave side. "If the same design practices hold over from the gunboat, that's the housing for a power supply. Again, more disturbing implications for their manufacturing capabilities, because it's a good bit smaller than anything we've seen out of Vector before. We don't know much about their — well, for convenience's sake, let's call them batteries. What we know is that they generate electricity through some apparently magical means, they deform magnetic fields even when not producing current, it's likely they can be recharged at facilities equipped for that purpose. And conventional wisdom as of yesterday was that they're bulky. We thought that imposed limits on how they could be transported and what they could be rigged up to, and we could roughly estimate how powerful a given unit was proportional to its size. If this is the genuine article, we may as well throw all of that out."
"'If?'" said Locke.
He nodded. "Like you said, this could be misdirection. It may not reflect anything Gestahl's seriously working on. Maybe it's from a scrapped project, or maybe it was designed purposefully to intimidate. But even then, I'd argue we should plan for worst-case scenarios. If they can't do this now, assume they'll be able to in a year at most."
"Why's that?"
"Have any of you met Kefka?" said Edgar. His posture sagged, just a little, and his voice was bleak and weary. "If this is a trick, it went through him. He thinks that kind of subterfuge is just delightful — but then he gets bored. Fast. He'll be thinking, why pretend to have earth-shattering power when we could have it for real? And no matter how many people he has to burn through, he'll get it. And Gestahl will keep funneling him money and pretend to have no idea what he does with it. What do you mean he's taken the lead engineers' families hostage, kidnapping isn't Imperial policy at all, and so on."
Locke thought, And he has to make nice with those murderers on the regular.
"Anyway, as long as I'm here speculating wildly, one more note. You've no doubt noticed the arc here describes only a quarter of a circle. This piece arrived as a discrete unit — it wasn't chopped or melted off of anything. That suggests that the final form of this weapon involves four of these components arranged around a ring. It's possible each of those has its own power supply, but without knowing the output of one of the batteries, to say we might be dealing with four is meaningless. So I won't do any scaremongering on that score. What we do know is that this setup limits the cannon's total range of articulation. Which is to say, it can more or less only hit things that are right in front of it. So. Small mercies, I guess."
Pretty damn small, if they made enough to cover all the angles.
At length Banon said, "I see. Thank you for your analysis." He looked at the mechanic. "Do you agree? Anything to add?"
"That about covers it," the man said. Locke wondered what had really happened here — if this was a consensus or if Edgar had just steamrolled him. Edgar was hard to divert once he got going. And, shit, sometimes he even sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Go figure.
"We still have a few hours, correct?" said Edgar.
The mechanic pulled out a pocket watch. "It's twelve-thirty."
"Great. Is anyone attached to this thing in its current form?"
"Pardon?" said Banon.
"I mean, can I take it apart now? Not that there's much here to disassemble, but as long as we've got it, let's leave no stone unturned. At the very least, I can shave off some samples for analysis." He shook his head, muttering to himself, "These guys use the weirdest alloys."
"Fine by me," said the mechanic, so Banon gave Edgar the nod. Edgar set the component down directly beneath the light, then crossed to the far wall where he'd left his bag. After a moment he returned with a bulky leather roll, which he unfurled with a flourish on the floor next to this quarter of a death ray. It clanked open in jerky stages, showing an array of — okay, those were screwdrivers and that was a wrench and that one was an auger, Locke was pretty confident, but as the roll kept unrolling he started getting lost. And how many different sockets did one man need? And how much weight in highly specialized metal had this guy been lugging around all this time?
He said, "I guess we should stay out of your hair, huh? Or do you need anything?"
Edgar took a deep breath, scrutinizing his dim and dingy work area. Slowly, he let it out. "I hate to be a bother," he said (the liar), "but — coffee? As much as you can possibly get?"
Locke stepped back outside and bummed an insulated flask off Zane, with promises that he would return it free of any mustache or mustache-related residue. Edgar accepted it with effusive thanks. And then got to work, and stopped noticing anything else.
Their ride back to the inn was less cramped, and less agricultural-smelling — this one even had windows, they just had to sit back far enough to be invisible from the road. So fortunately Locke wasn't so sick this time. And this time Edgar was actually lucid. But for a long time they still didn't speak. Every time Locke glanced over, Edgar was staring at the floor.
At length he said, "I owe you all an apology." For what? Locke thought. For not singlehandedly blowing up that boat, or whatever you thought you were supposed to do? "I treated this excursion too lightly. Given the stakes, my behaving so frivolously was an insult to you, and the Returners, and the woman who brought us that machine." He closed his eyes. "People are going to die. A lot of people. And I was trying to get a leg up on you by gluing stuff to my face."
Okay. Definitely not the angle he'd expected. "But we're gonna save people. And you're helping."
"It's still a graver situation than..." He sighed, opening his eyes again. "I don't get to leave the castle behind much. I got carried away. I let myself think of this as an adventure with a friend, and not a critical mission for the future of the world, and — I'm sorry for failing to respect everyone's time."
Locke shifted in his seat. He had thought, sometimes, that he was owed an apology for one or another of Edgar's dumb schemes. But actually getting it was too damn weird. "It's both, though. Right? It's a critical mission, but also we're two idiots spending a weekend away. I mean — the Empire's not going anywhere. If you can't have fun under the shadow of imminent death, when the hell are you supposed to have fun?" Edgar gave him a searching look. He shrugged. "Anyway, I think you've already groveled enough for one day. Give it a rest."
"Excuse me? If you hadn't poisoned the well against me, I wouldn't have needed to —"
"You haven't figured it out yet?" Locke folded his arms behind his head. "I didn't say shit. I never told anyone who I was bringing, I just said, 'I know a guy.' So as far as Zane and the gang are concerned, you're some random dickhead who showed up wearing an awful mustache and did a bunch of bowing and scraping and said a bunch of weird shit for no reason."
Edgar's eyes were wide. "What."
"I call it payback."
"You..." He sputtered. Locke could see the gears turning as he thought back over a day's worth of obsequious BS. A deep scarlet flush spread gradually up from his collar and over his face. "You little..."
"Yes?"
For another few seconds Edgar just stared at him, mortified. That was a new look, and one Locke wouldn't object to seeing more of. Then the tension snapped, and he slumped forward, his shoulders shaking with laughter. "You bastard. Well played." He scrubbed a hand over his face and sat up straight again. His fingers had left a smudge of some nondescript machinery grime over one cheekbone. Locke was freshly relieved that the mustache was gone — at times like this he was almost bearable to look at.
"For the record, you're not supposed to glue stuff on that firmly. It shouldn't be leaving a mark like that." Locke pointed.
"A mark? Did it really...?" He probed at the spot, and then winced. "Ah. Yeah, still stings."
"Dumbass."
"I admit, this is a blow. Here I thought you were staring at me because I'm handsome."
Locke scoffed. "Not on your life."
Edgar heaved a theatrical sigh. "Oh, well. I guess I'll live. That said" — he leaned forward again — "please tell me more about fake mustache protocol. You sound like you speak from experience."
"Maybe I do, maybe I don't, but I am not enabling any more of your bullshit. You try this again, you deserve whatever happens to you."
Characters: Edgar/Locke
Word count: ~7100
Warnings: Strong language, stupid humor in general
Notes: oh boy here we are still going.
That idiot from that bar in Narshe — was it over a year ago now? — swung down from his chocobo and said, "Do you take constructive criticism?" And patted the animal's neck, prompting it to run off home, and pulled off his riding gloves, because of course this fancy bastard had riding gloves. The cuffs were embroidered.
"Not from you," said Locke.
"I do trust my staff, but accidents happen. If you'd just made this sound a little more like an assignation —"
"Not happening."
"No one would blink at my getting a letter saying, for example, 'I need you. I can't wait any longer. Only you can quench the fire that burns in my —'"
"Bullshit, you've never gotten a letter like that in your life. There'd be a national panic. They'd put you under house arrest. 'No one's ever fallen for His Majesty's weak-ass game, this has to be an evil plot!'" He stopped. He gave Edgar a critical look, and then groaned. "I specifically said no mustache! What's wrong with you?"
"Ah, yes. I did want to ask you why you would stipulate something so odd."
"It was disgraceful in Narshe and it's disgraceful now."
Edgar sighed, sending a ripple through... that... thing. Locke could not stop himself from cringing. "Locke, we've been over this. You need to let it go. Your obsession with this mystery man is starting to depress me."
"You're literally wearing the exact same clothes."
"This is worse than I thought. They've been working you too hard, haven't they? It's all right, you can admit it. How long have you had this belief that you've seen the future?"
I did finally get him out of the castle, Locke thought. There aren't any guards around. Maybe this is finally my chance to kick his ass.
Edgar patted his shoulder. "Well, whenever you're ready to tell me about it, I'm here. Oh, yeah, and about your other problem." He rummaged around in his traveling bag — which was sturdy, plain canvas. At least he'd had the sense not to paint a target on this one thing — and retrieved a packet of herbs, which he tossed to Locke. "You were running low, right?"
Unsure whether to say "thank you" or "go to hell," Locke nodded and tucked it into his pocket. They walked together the rest of the way, although Locke couldn't look the guy in the face without getting offended by his wildly shitty disguise. So he just didn't look. At the end of the road, just outside Jidoor, was the dinky little inn that was supposed to put them up until tomorrow's meeting with the Returners, and of course Edgar started trying to chat up a maid within twelve seconds. Not that she was holding up her end of the conversation — too busy staring in horror and wonder at his mustache.
Locke pushed him aside and went to get the key from the innkeep — a middle-aged war widow the Returners had done business with before. Though he wasn't sure how much she knew.
"In the back," she said, and handed him the keys, and then peered over his shoulder for a look at her other guest.
Locke moved to block her, smiling apologetically. "It's really better if you don't see. Trust me."
He went back to the entrance and tapped Edgar on the shoulder. "Your pardon, please," said Edgar, "I was just asking this charming young lady for the lay of the land —"
"You could ask me, you know."
Edgar sighed, turning to Locke. "The operative phrase is 'charming young lady.' You rate, at best, one out of three."
"C'mon, make it two. I'm not that old."
Edgar snorted. It did appalling things to the blond caterpillar fixed to his upper lip. "All right, all right. We may as well settle in." He turned back and kissed his hand to the maid. "Thank you ever so much for your time." She stared at him, very obviously trying not to laugh in his face, until Locke grabbed his elbow and pulled him away.
But Edgar stopped again in the doorway to their room. "Oh, no," he said, deadpan, "there aren't enough beds."
"What are you talking about? There's two."
"Yeah, both for me. We'll have to push them together. I've never slept on a twin-size mattress before, and today will not be the day I start. I'm already making enough sacrifices."
"You're shitting me."
Edgar laughed. "Absolutely! But, man, can you imagine?" He gave Locke a slap on the back as he pushed past, then slung his bag onto the bed nearer the window. "Dibs."
Locke thought, Damn, he's way too excited about this.
"So what should I expect?" Edgar said, after poking around every corner of the room, making comments on the decor that went utterly over Locke's head. He sat down on the bed beside his luggage. "How much can you tell me?"
Locke pulled a chair over from under the writing desk, turned it backwards, and sat resting his arms across the slats. "Okay. Tomorrow morning, a guy I know will come get us and lead us somewhere. Anything he wants to do to keep the location secret, just roll with it."
"Ooh. He's not going to put bags over our heads, is he?"
"Tell you what," said Locke, "I'm sure you can make a request."
"Can I ask that he only puts a bag over yours?"
Locke rolled his eyes. "Do you want to know what I know, or not?"
"Yes. Sorry, go on, you have my undivided attention."
Locke would never admit it, but there was something disconcerting about Edgar's undivided attention. Like in his head he was breaking you down to some finnicky technical diagram for later study. But maybe that was a put-on, too. Locke had once seen this guy get clotheslined by a statue; he couldn't be that sharp. (The statue was in his own castle. He knew where it was.) It didn't matter how blue his eyes were, this was still the imbecile who'd decided to recycle a disguise that hadn't even worked last time. And he'd made the mustache worse.
"Right," said Locke. "So. We got our hands on some machinery out of Vector. As far as I know, it's not related to the boat project, but honestly, they didn't tell me much and I understood maybe half of what they did."
"Do we think Gestahl has shifted priorities?"
"Would it be a good thing if he had?"
"The options I'm looking at now are 'sabotage the fleet somehow' or 'evacuate South Figaro and cram everyone into the castle before that lunatic fries the entire coastline.' And I haven't been making great progress on either front. If he's got a new favorite toy, I guess both those issues are off my plate. But…" A rueful half-shrug. "One assumes a totally new set of logistics problems will take their place."
"Wait, what's this about sabotage?"
"Oh, come now." He grinned. He seemed to be going for "roguish charm," but the mustache got in the way. In fact, the mustache retroactively spoiled every time he had tried to be charming in the past five or six months. "Breaking stuff is at least as fun as putting it together." Then he looked thoughtful. "The hard part would be placing someone in the shipyard who could carry out my instructions. And making it look like an intrinsic failure instead of a hostile act. And making that intrinsic failure look like something they couldn't just engineer around, so they abandon the project." That grin returned. "On consideration, the hard part is all of it. Anyway. Continue. From your note, I assume I'm here to look at this gizmo."
"I don't even think it's an entire gizmo. It's, like, a piece of a gizmo."
"Intriguing."
"And they're moving it out of here tomorrow evening — they're gonna take it somewhere else and destroy it so it can't be traced to us. I mean, hopefully. So you've got one day to make whatever sense of it you can." Locke paused. "I did kinda stick my neck out recommending you for this. Don't let me down."
"Never have, never will."
That was reassuring for about three seconds. Then Locke remembered that he'd written specifically asking Edgar to be discreet, and on that score he'd never been let down harder in his whole fucking life.
"Frankly, I'm grateful for the opportunity," Edgar said, as if unaware how hard Locke was frowning at him. "I haven't done as much for the effort as I'd like. And I get to look at new tech, and I've managed to slip the leash for a whole weekend. You're doing me a huge favor, so thank you."
"Yeah, sure thing."
"Do you know anything about where we're meeting?" Locke started to answer. Edgar held up a hand. "I know, I know, it's a secret, but you've been here before, right? Any ideas? Hunches? Your guess is worlds better than mine. I've been to Jidoor, naturally, but never this quarter. Always getting wined and dined by that passel of insufferable snobs…"
"Wow," Locke said flatly, "sounds terrible."
"I beg your pardon?"
"It must be so awful to have people throwing fancy food and booze at you all day. And it's just another bunch of rich douchebags so far up their own asses they can't see daylight. I'd think you would fit right in, Your Majesty."
"No. Wrong. We're completely different. Their tax structure is barbaric, for one thing —" He stopped. "What a historic day, I think that's the first time you've called me that." Then he shook himself and resumed his train of thought. "— and they always think they can get better terms for themselves, just by parading beautiful women in front of me until my brain turns into mush."
Locke snorted. "Does it work?"
"The Empire tries it, too, actually. That's one nice thing about having one's weaknesses so widely known. You know in advance what angle the attack's coming from." He tilted his head back, his eyes rolling toward the ceiling, and sighed. "But damn, if it isn't a struggle sometimes."
Someone had to teach this guy to cuss without making such a meal out of it. He'd never pass for a regular person.
"Hey, actually, we should swap intelligence," said Edgar, straightening. "I know one half of this city. You know the other."
"I know both, actually," said Locke, and made a point of boredly drumming his fingers on the chair back. "There's nothing you can tell me."
"Really! Don't tell me they invited you to one of their little art shows?"
"Of course I wasn't invited."
"Oh." His eyes lit up. He leaned forward. "Tell me more. Who were you robbing? Did you get away with anything? When was this?"
Locke had not expected this level of interest. "Maybe four years ago? Do you have some personal investment in —"
"Okay, was there a man, about 5'8", with a very obviously infected nose piercing, that he kept saying was supposed to look like that? Because he was trying to be a trendsetter, but it looked so painful that nobody was willing to follow him on it? But then he stuck with it for another six months trying to save face."
Weirdly, there had been. "I think I got his cufflinks."
Edgar laughed delightedly. "Good! I hate that guy."
"Is he someone important?"
"Yes, very. Thank you so much."
"Then who was it?"
Edgar stopped looking gleeful long enough to feign surprise. "But Locke, you said I had nothing to tell you." And then threw himself back on the bed, cackling. "Ah, this is why we're friends."
"Uh, wrong. We're friends because Banon said I had to put up with you."
"Details, details."
"And speaking of. Are you really gonna go meet your revolutionary contacts looking like that?"
Edgar said lazily, "I anticipate changing my shirt between now and then."
"The mustache —"
"Stays."
Locke gritted his teeth, but there was no fighting him on this one. "Okay, could you at least change your hair? Something other than your extremely recognizable signature style?"
"I can't fathom what you're suggesting."
"I guess you can't cut it, because then you'd have to explain when you got back home —"
"And for no other reason?" Edgar said dryly.
"But at least lose one of the ribbons. And there's always dye —" Locke got up. "Here, roll up your sleeve for a sec?" Looking equal parts amused and perplexed, Edgar did so. Locke crossed over to him and took hold of his elbow, angling it to let him inspect the bared forearm. "Hm, yeah. Your arm hair's blond too, so you wouldn't be able to go too dark. People might twig that something is wrong."
"You're assuming I go around flaunting my arms at all and sundry. Although maybe I should..."
"It's one of those things people pick up on subconsciously. But you could get away with a medium brown." Edgar, rolling his sleeve back down, looked faintly insulted by the suggestion. "Or gray," said Locke, offhand, and now he looked appalled. Locke grinned. "What? Plenty of people start graying in their twenties. It's nothing shameful."
"Okay," said Edgar, "fine, I've received your suggestion. Just know that I will never act on it as long as I live."
"There are kinds that'll wash right out in a day or two."
"Good to know. Still never."
"And remember to get your eyebrows, when you never do this. If you overlook those, it's really noticeable."
Edgar sighed irritably. "All right, how's this?" He pulled out the ribbons holding back his hair and swung it forward over one shoulder in a long golden wave. And then — while he stared off at nothing in particular, looking bored — whipped it into a braid with startling speed. His hands never faltered. He never looked at it, even as he retrieved one of the ribbons and tied it off again.
"Efficient," Locke said, finally, when he remembered he was supposed to respond.
Had it always taken this much effort not to stare at the guy's hands? Should he have been staring at them more? The steadiness, the assurance — if he hadn't been busy running a kingdom or something, he'd make a perfectly decent card sharp.
No, maybe not that. His default expression of vacant friendliness was a bit much. Looking back at their first meeting, it was kind of embarrassing Locke hadn't realized that he was being hustled. The trouble was, Edgar was smart enough to try to fake stupid, but too real-stupid to fake stupid convincingly.
"It was kind of a nervous habit when I was little," said Edgar. Oh, right. The braid. This was not actually about whether King Edgar Figaro could be persuaded to embark on a life of crime. "One time Sabin hacked all his hair off with kitchen shears so I'd stop doing it to him too."
Locke took up a position on the other bed and lay back, pillowing his head on his folded arms. He stared at the ceiling. He didn't see the ceiling. The only thing in his head suddenly was that arm, those hands, that smooth and shining braid, and what it must feel like weaving it together, gliding fingers through that long, long hair —
Edgar said absently, "I hope they cleaned those shears. We were not tidy children."
"What's he like?" said Locke, trying to distract himself. Fuck's sake. It was just Edgar. "Your brother, I mean."
Edgar hesitated. At last he said, "I don't know. It's been a long time. I know how I remember him, but as much as I've grown up since he left, I have to assume he's done the same." He sighed.
Then, briskly, "That's not what you asked. You want more dirt on the old days — so, here, this is illustrative. One afternoon I dug this gigantic old clock out of storage and dragged Sabin over to look at it. It was still running after who knew how many years of neglect, and I'd just been reading about clocks, so I got it open and showed him all the moving parts, and then I think" — he laughed a little at the memory — "I just started lecturing him about different types of escapements. That one had a really interesting low-friction mechanism, actually — a bit of a historical curiosity. It narrows down the date of manufacture to a five-year range, and… I'm doing it again. Sorry." But it hadn't occurred to Locke to be bothered. It wasn't like it was a chore, letting Edgar's voice roll over him, on the rare occasions it wasn't saying something completely asinine. He was a king, anyway. With all the talking he had to do, they must have drilled him in how to make it sound good. That much made sense. "Anyway, Sabin let me go on about this for ages, and then he said, 'You wanna know something else about this clock?'" Pause for effect. "'It says we're gonna be late for dinner.'"
Locke wasn't sure what this was supposed to illustrate — only that Edgar, for whatever reason, thought it was delightful. "Well, were you?"
"Very nearly! And then I would've gotten yelled at." He laughed again. "He spotted the only important piece of information, long before I did, and I wish I could say that was the only time. And I'm sure he had no idea what I was talking about, but he listened anyway."
"And left you open to getting yelled at?"
"That's nothing," he said, defensive. "I should've been more responsible, that's all."
"So, what, were you the designated fall guy?"
"It wasn't like that." A long, thoughtful pause. "I guess you could say I was the ideas guy, more than anything else. Most of the good ideas were mine, but more importantly, so were all the bad ones. So if anything went wrong, it must've been my doing." He chuckled. "Besides, I was bigger than him. I could strongarm him into anything, if I had to." Another pause, and then, quieter, "I usually didn't have to."
Locke said nothing. Even if he'd known what to say, he wouldn't have said it. He probably should've realized that questions about one's long-lost brother would cut close to the bone. It'd just never occurred to him that Edgar could be cut.
"He was always too soft-hearted," Edgar went on in the same abstracted tone, as if no longer aware Locke was there. He drew in a breath, and Locke started to feel preemptively weird about hearing a recitation of the flaws of some guy he'd never met and probably never would. Instead Edgar said, "I hope that hasn't changed."
Something in his voice made Locke sit up again and study him. He looked tired and sad and achingly noble — to the extent you could ignore the mustache.
You really couldn't ignore the mustache, and you couldn't ignore the fact that he was the kind of dumbass who thought the mustache was appropriate. When it had just been his voice against the half-darkened ceiling, Locke had thought about going over to him, apologizing for poking at old wounds, offering his shoulder. Confronted with the reality of Edgar Figaro, National Embarrassment, he thought, Nah, he's fine.
Locke lay back down. Within half a minute Edgar was back on form, rambling about dumb shit, like nothing had ever happened.
In the morning Edgar was sluggish and monosyllabic, buttoned his shirt wrong, and only blinked in confusion at the suggestion of breakfast. They hadn't even been up that late, Locke thought — or at least, he hadn't. He remembered dozing off to the sound of Edgar making increasingly irreverent predictions about the Empire's new weapon. "You didn't go out partying after I was asleep, did you?" he asked.
Edgar gave him a sidelong look, eyelids at half-mast. "It's not even eight o'clock. What do you want from me." Locke pointed to where one side of his shirt hung an inch lower than the other. "Balls," Edgar said sleepily, and took the better part of a minute to sort it out. When their escort arrived, a guy Locke knew only as Rod, Edgar was upright and personable, if a little quieter than usual; as soon as Rod had seen them into the waiting delivery wagon and gone out front to drive, he slumped again. His mustache had remained perfectly fixed in place overnight. The rest of him looked about to collapse around it.
"Not a morning person, huh?"
Edgar sighed and leaned his head against the wall. But Locke didn't have long to enjoy how dumb he looked with his cheek mashed flat and his mouth hanging open like one of those ornamental carp, because then the wagon started to move. And now they were jolting along in a dark, enclosed space that smelled like mulch, over a very unfinished road, and in short order, all his attention was reserved for fighting down the nausea. It was half an hour before the wagon stopped. By that point they had to support each other down the offloading ramp.
"We're a disgrace," Edgar said confidentially, and Locke gave him a crooked grin. They stood together a while longer, getting their bearings, on the gravel of what turned out to be a railyard.
Rod shut up the wagon — they tried to look respectable for as long as he was in visible distance — and tipped his hat. "They're in one of the freight cars. I'll be back this evening to collect you." And drove off.
"Hope like hell we're not riding back in the same thing," Locke muttered.
"I don't know, it was an interesting change of pace," said Edgar. Locke glared at him. "I said 'was.' The novelty's rather worn off by now." He rubbed at the side of his neck where it met his shoulder, and something popped. "Do they have coffee in detached freight cars in the middle of nowhere?"
"Well, they're expecting you," said Locke, nodding down the hill toward the sorting yard and its rows of big boxy cars. Edgar followed his lead. "And I told them you're persnickety, so maybe."
"Did you?"
"Yeah, I said they should expect to cough up two or three grand on refreshments appropriate to your fancy-ass tastes. Oh, yeah, and no one's allowed to wear hats in your presence, and eye contact is a six-month sentence."
"And how'd that go over?" Edgar said warily.
"They told me to go fuck myself. But I think I had 'em going for a second or two."
"Oh, great, you've made me some enemies in advance. Thank you for that." He ran a hand over his hair, smoothing it down. "Well. I've overcome bad first impressions before. A little challenge keeps things interesting."
Not with that stache, you haven't, Locke almost said, before remembering that he'd looked just as stupid the first time Locke had ever seen him and now they were basically best friends. And then he thought, wryly, Something must be wrong with me.
Feet crunched in the gravel. They both stopped and turned. A guy was flagging them down from between tracks.
"He's got a hat on," said Edgar. "Does that mean there won't be truffles, either?"
"If there's any kind of fungus in there," said Locke, "it'll be because someone's fucking with me."
"Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Should we see what he wants?"
As they drew closer, Locke recognized this kid. His name was Zane — they hadn't worked together much, but he'd completely destroyed Locke at darts one night, which most people couldn't do and which entitled him to some respect. There was also the fact that he was about seventeen — maybe eighteen tops — and had been with the Returners two years already. Kid was dedicated for life, and he didn't even know what life was yet. Locke was a little wary around people like that, the true believers, who got into this shit out of pure unselfish conviction instead of —
Well, instead of other reasons. Then again, he was making assumptions. Zane wasn't too young to have a past.
"Hey, what's up," said Locke, once they were in earshot, and Zane gave him a distracted nod, busy trying to size Edgar up. When his gaze snagged on the mustache, he actually flinched. "Yeah, this loser's with me. I'm pretty sure he's not as stupid as he looks, but it's a close contest."
"Thanks so much," Edgar muttered. Then he slapped on an obliging smile and offered his hand to Zane, who shook it with an expression of total bewilderment. "I promise I don't breathe fire or anything," he said, as if that were the only possible reason for trepidation. "I'm here to consult about machines, nothing more, nothing less. The very last thing I want to do is cause anyone discomfort." Zane looked less comfortable with every word out of his mouth. Locke had to turn aside to hide a grin. "I hope we can work together amicably. Please do let me know if I impose too far." So polite. So self-effacing. Who knew he had it in him?
"Yeah, sure," said Zane, blank. But turning to Locke, he miraculously regained the ability to string sentences together. "We've got the machine in a car back here. Gonna connect to a train heading north at 7:15 tonight, so we wanna be cleared out by five. Oh, and the boss wanted to talk to you." He cut his eyes toward Edgar, a silent, I'm not gonna ask, but I really wanna ask.
"Got it," said Locke, making a few covert hand signals most thieves on the continent would read as He's one of us. Not that all Returners had that kind of background, but there were more than a few. Some of the experience was transferable. And the gamble paid off — Zane's eyes widened slightly in recognition. Locke said, "Let's not waste time, then."
As Zane led them to the car in question, Locke leaned toward Edgar and whispered, mockingly, "'I promise I don't breathe fire. Gosh, I'm just a simple machine guy. Let's all be friends.'"
"It's called damage control," said Edgar under his breath. "And I don't sound like that."
Zane rapped on the side of a heavily graffitied boxcar, got an answering rap from within, and unlatched the sliding door.
Edgar frowned at him. "Are we going to be sealed in?"
"I'll be out here watching the yard. If something goes wrong, you'll just have to go along for the ride. You can get off in Zozo, no one will be watching by then. Downside is you'll be in Zozo."
"My, this is an adventure," said Edgar, calmer than you'd expect from an aristocrat faced with the prospect of a visit to that sinkhole. What, did he have a sword in his bag or something? Did he seriously think he could handle those cutthroats? But meanwhile Zane was rolling back the doors, revealing a widening slice of the darkness inside.
But it wasn't completely dark. A few lanterns rigged to the ceiling cast a cone of light down on two men, an abandoned game of checkers, and a tarp. The little guy was a mechanic from Narshe, although not one of the ones who'd gone with Edgar to see the ship; the beardy one was Banon. The tarp — well, he had no idea what was under the tarp, and he had no chance to speculate, because Edgar had already climbed aboard and was blocking his view.
"Love what you've done with the place," Edgar said, "though I hope you haven't been cooped up in here long. I'd imagine the scenery gets stale, to say nothing of the air." He offered his hand to the mechanic. "I don't think we've met, but if it helps, on a technical level we still haven't. You never saw me, I was never here, and so on. I am a nonentity." Locke did not have to see their faces to guess that he'd just winked, and that the mechanic was wondering, What the hell is wrong with this guy? "As such, there's no need for any reserve on either part. Especially given the timetables, I hope we can be collegial." Locke clambered up behind him, met the mechanic's gaze over his shoulder, and then shrugged to say, Yeah, I dunno what his deal is, either.
"Shutting you in," said Zane, and slid the door closed behind them. If only being done with Edgar's nonsense was that simple for everyone.
The dark clamped down around them. The mechanic finally regained his balance and said, "What you're going to see was brought to us by a lady who smuggled it out of Vector —"
"Can I talk to her?" said Edgar. Predictably, all attention.
"No way," said Locke. "Five seconds of you smarming at her and she'd go running back to the Empire."
"She's on her way back even now," said Banon. Edgar pivoted toward him with the most painfully gratuitous attitude of respect. "She's offered to try to get us more components."
"How courageous," Edgar murmured. A lady who could transport heavy machinery was probably his dream girl.
"That, or this leak was faked," said Locke. "She could still be on Gestahl's payroll. Giving us bogus weapons to get in good with us and point our attention the wrong way."
"Also possible. Which is another reason it's better she never sees you," Banon told Edgar. "But we think it's worth examining in any case. Thank you for taking the time." He turned to Locke again and nodded to the sliding door. "Locke, a moment while our experts orient themselves?"
"Sure."
Banon brushed past Edgar on his way, and paused long enough to mutter, "Nice mustache, Your Majesty."
"Oh," said Edgar, "uh, thanks," in the faint voice of someone who was just now realizing that everyone could see it. Someone who had just realized that Operation: Piss Off Locke was also making him look like a moron in front of the grown-ups. His shoulders came up around his ears.
Locke banged on the wall, waited for the all-clear from Zane, and pulled the door open again. He dropped into the gravel and helped Banon down behind him. From Edgar's direction, as the door slid home, could be heard a violent ripping sound and a pained whimper.
"Quite the character, this expert you brought along," Banon observed mildly.
"Hey, yeah, quick question. Did you know what you were getting me into? I mean, really know?"
"I had certain hopes you'd get along. Was I mistaken?"
"Well. No, but..." Locke searched for words, found none, and just said "Ugh" with more conviction than anyone ever had before. "I'm sure we can count on him. But he's a complete doofus. It's — he does both. I don't get it, either."
They walked up and down beside the tracks and compared notes on the ebb and flow of anti-Imperial sentiment in the towns of the northern continent, and Banon sketched out a new scouting operation he planned to tap Locke for. On their fourth or fifth pass, and while Locke was discreetly trying to angle for a slightly larger boat less liable to get tossed around like a cork, the boxcar's door grated open again.
Edgar leaned out. There was a raw red spot just above his upper lip. Locke considered the probable reaction of whoever had to unload this car when they found a dumb-looking strip of blond hairs kicked into a corner somewhere, and smiled. And then stopped smiling. Awkward blotches aside, Edgar looked as serious as he'd ever seen him. "Come look at this," he said. "Both of you."
They stepped back inside. Edgar slid the door partway shut behind them, admitting only a six-inch bar of light and a narrow view of the empty tracks.
"Right." He motioned for the mechanic to hold their specimen up to the light. The man did so, with some difficulty; the piece was unwieldy, a fat quarter-cylinder attached to a convex metal plate. "Thank you," Edgar said to him, and then to Locke and Banon: "My colleague and I have agreed that this is a component for a Magitek laser cannon. What you see here is part of the barrel and its mount. It's not clear what kind of platform it'll be mounted on, but it's fair to assume it's a lot smaller than the boats they were testing last fall."
"Well," said Locke, "that's good, right? Smaller guns, less damage?"
"Less damage per gun — in theory, but we'll get back to that." Edgar shook his head. "It suggests they're shifting to prioritize more guns rather than bigger ones, which means a lot more tactical flexibility. You can't surround a city with one cannon, no matter how big. If you've got twenty cannons, even if each is proportionally weaker, that's a much different story."
Banon said, "We understood they couldn't produce Magitek units at that scale. They only have one factory."
"Right. So by implication, either this is a long game or they've increased capacity. I don't know about you, gentlemen, but I find either prospect... worrying." Edgar looked at each of them in turn, and then smiled grimly and said, "Let's continue."
He took the piece from the mechanic and set the narrow end down on the floor, angling the tube so that Banon and Locke could see the back of the plate. An empty rectangular compartment was welded to the concave side. "If the same design practices hold over from the gunboat, that's the housing for a power supply. Again, more disturbing implications for their manufacturing capabilities, because it's a good bit smaller than anything we've seen out of Vector before. We don't know much about their — well, for convenience's sake, let's call them batteries. What we know is that they generate electricity through some apparently magical means, they deform magnetic fields even when not producing current, it's likely they can be recharged at facilities equipped for that purpose. And conventional wisdom as of yesterday was that they're bulky. We thought that imposed limits on how they could be transported and what they could be rigged up to, and we could roughly estimate how powerful a given unit was proportional to its size. If this is the genuine article, we may as well throw all of that out."
"'If?'" said Locke.
He nodded. "Like you said, this could be misdirection. It may not reflect anything Gestahl's seriously working on. Maybe it's from a scrapped project, or maybe it was designed purposefully to intimidate. But even then, I'd argue we should plan for worst-case scenarios. If they can't do this now, assume they'll be able to in a year at most."
"Why's that?"
"Have any of you met Kefka?" said Edgar. His posture sagged, just a little, and his voice was bleak and weary. "If this is a trick, it went through him. He thinks that kind of subterfuge is just delightful — but then he gets bored. Fast. He'll be thinking, why pretend to have earth-shattering power when we could have it for real? And no matter how many people he has to burn through, he'll get it. And Gestahl will keep funneling him money and pretend to have no idea what he does with it. What do you mean he's taken the lead engineers' families hostage, kidnapping isn't Imperial policy at all, and so on."
Locke thought, And he has to make nice with those murderers on the regular.
"Anyway, as long as I'm here speculating wildly, one more note. You've no doubt noticed the arc here describes only a quarter of a circle. This piece arrived as a discrete unit — it wasn't chopped or melted off of anything. That suggests that the final form of this weapon involves four of these components arranged around a ring. It's possible each of those has its own power supply, but without knowing the output of one of the batteries, to say we might be dealing with four is meaningless. So I won't do any scaremongering on that score. What we do know is that this setup limits the cannon's total range of articulation. Which is to say, it can more or less only hit things that are right in front of it. So. Small mercies, I guess."
Pretty damn small, if they made enough to cover all the angles.
At length Banon said, "I see. Thank you for your analysis." He looked at the mechanic. "Do you agree? Anything to add?"
"That about covers it," the man said. Locke wondered what had really happened here — if this was a consensus or if Edgar had just steamrolled him. Edgar was hard to divert once he got going. And, shit, sometimes he even sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Go figure.
"We still have a few hours, correct?" said Edgar.
The mechanic pulled out a pocket watch. "It's twelve-thirty."
"Great. Is anyone attached to this thing in its current form?"
"Pardon?" said Banon.
"I mean, can I take it apart now? Not that there's much here to disassemble, but as long as we've got it, let's leave no stone unturned. At the very least, I can shave off some samples for analysis." He shook his head, muttering to himself, "These guys use the weirdest alloys."
"Fine by me," said the mechanic, so Banon gave Edgar the nod. Edgar set the component down directly beneath the light, then crossed to the far wall where he'd left his bag. After a moment he returned with a bulky leather roll, which he unfurled with a flourish on the floor next to this quarter of a death ray. It clanked open in jerky stages, showing an array of — okay, those were screwdrivers and that was a wrench and that one was an auger, Locke was pretty confident, but as the roll kept unrolling he started getting lost. And how many different sockets did one man need? And how much weight in highly specialized metal had this guy been lugging around all this time?
He said, "I guess we should stay out of your hair, huh? Or do you need anything?"
Edgar took a deep breath, scrutinizing his dim and dingy work area. Slowly, he let it out. "I hate to be a bother," he said (the liar), "but — coffee? As much as you can possibly get?"
Locke stepped back outside and bummed an insulated flask off Zane, with promises that he would return it free of any mustache or mustache-related residue. Edgar accepted it with effusive thanks. And then got to work, and stopped noticing anything else.
Their ride back to the inn was less cramped, and less agricultural-smelling — this one even had windows, they just had to sit back far enough to be invisible from the road. So fortunately Locke wasn't so sick this time. And this time Edgar was actually lucid. But for a long time they still didn't speak. Every time Locke glanced over, Edgar was staring at the floor.
At length he said, "I owe you all an apology." For what? Locke thought. For not singlehandedly blowing up that boat, or whatever you thought you were supposed to do? "I treated this excursion too lightly. Given the stakes, my behaving so frivolously was an insult to you, and the Returners, and the woman who brought us that machine." He closed his eyes. "People are going to die. A lot of people. And I was trying to get a leg up on you by gluing stuff to my face."
Okay. Definitely not the angle he'd expected. "But we're gonna save people. And you're helping."
"It's still a graver situation than..." He sighed, opening his eyes again. "I don't get to leave the castle behind much. I got carried away. I let myself think of this as an adventure with a friend, and not a critical mission for the future of the world, and — I'm sorry for failing to respect everyone's time."
Locke shifted in his seat. He had thought, sometimes, that he was owed an apology for one or another of Edgar's dumb schemes. But actually getting it was too damn weird. "It's both, though. Right? It's a critical mission, but also we're two idiots spending a weekend away. I mean — the Empire's not going anywhere. If you can't have fun under the shadow of imminent death, when the hell are you supposed to have fun?" Edgar gave him a searching look. He shrugged. "Anyway, I think you've already groveled enough for one day. Give it a rest."
"Excuse me? If you hadn't poisoned the well against me, I wouldn't have needed to —"
"You haven't figured it out yet?" Locke folded his arms behind his head. "I didn't say shit. I never told anyone who I was bringing, I just said, 'I know a guy.' So as far as Zane and the gang are concerned, you're some random dickhead who showed up wearing an awful mustache and did a bunch of bowing and scraping and said a bunch of weird shit for no reason."
Edgar's eyes were wide. "What."
"I call it payback."
"You..." He sputtered. Locke could see the gears turning as he thought back over a day's worth of obsequious BS. A deep scarlet flush spread gradually up from his collar and over his face. "You little..."
"Yes?"
For another few seconds Edgar just stared at him, mortified. That was a new look, and one Locke wouldn't object to seeing more of. Then the tension snapped, and he slumped forward, his shoulders shaking with laughter. "You bastard. Well played." He scrubbed a hand over his face and sat up straight again. His fingers had left a smudge of some nondescript machinery grime over one cheekbone. Locke was freshly relieved that the mustache was gone — at times like this he was almost bearable to look at.
"For the record, you're not supposed to glue stuff on that firmly. It shouldn't be leaving a mark like that." Locke pointed.
"A mark? Did it really...?" He probed at the spot, and then winced. "Ah. Yeah, still stings."
"Dumbass."
"I admit, this is a blow. Here I thought you were staring at me because I'm handsome."
Locke scoffed. "Not on your life."
Edgar heaved a theatrical sigh. "Oh, well. I guess I'll live. That said" — he leaned forward again — "please tell me more about fake mustache protocol. You sound like you speak from experience."
"Maybe I do, maybe I don't, but I am not enabling any more of your bullshit. You try this again, you deserve whatever happens to you."
