Chapter Eight

When they returned to the parlor of the Figaro suite at the Blue Lion, Strago let himself into the room, blinked, and then backed out and shut the door.

"What?" Edgar asked, looking confused.

"Edgar, I'm sorry, but can you wait in the pub for a moment?"

"I suppose so..."

When the king was safely departed, Strago opened the door.

He'd recognized the back of the head, somehow; the shoulders, the shade of the mouse-brown hair, shaggy now, rather than the matted but once stylishly long mane he'd had the first time Strago saw him, stretched out on Charis's sofa in muddy clothes, sweaty and ill, or the neatly-cropped style he'd worn after they had to cut his hair off during the fever. And then there was the portrait, on a tiny canvas, pensive and older than the mere boy he'd known. There was a long, thin scar down the side of the face, and when he turned his head, he was pale, much more than Strago remembered. But then, he would be. And somehow for all that he hadn't changed.

"Face forward!" Relm snapped, and Clyde's head obediently swivelled back into position. Relm got up and clambered onto the arm of the chair to arrange him just so. It was only as she jumped back down, rattling the floorboards, that Strago found his voice.

"Are you out of your mind?" he yelped.

"Oh, please. It's canvas. And he's just a big softie at heart," Relm said, rolling her eyes, and Strago realized she thought he'd meant her; that she was in danger with the assassin, that she at least shouldn't be posing him like a barber shaving a man. "Like that adorable puppy of his!" she added, in the usual sugary tones she usually used for the dog. Strago heard a sigh. From Shadow, he realized.

"Oh, come on, nobody in here needs to think he's a killer beast. He scares people plenty, you saw that clerk in the store! Mandibles of death!"

"What...?" Strago said, completely mystified now.

"I escorted her to town, and she's punishing me for my sins."

"Well, you got a lot of 'em," she retorted, and touched up the scar.

"Can I stay, then?" Strago asked. "These old bones need a rest."

"Sure, whatever," Relm said.

"There's a chair near the fire," Clyde added.

"No, I... think I want to see her paint. Normally it's too dangerous."

"Suit yourself," Relm said, and Strago sank, creaking, onto a footstool, leaning more heavily on his stick than he had a year before, before he'd thought she was dead and he'd lived all undeserving.

Clyde had wanted to conceal his identity from Relm. After the fire, when the others all lay unconscious, Strago had awakened to the familiar shock of magical healing, and found Clyde, mask tugged down to his chin, standing over him. She will never know. Are we agreed? Those were the only words they'd exchanged directly since Clyde left Thamasa; Strago had simply nodded, Clyde had tugged the mask back up, and nothing more needed to pass between them, or should.

He wanted to conceal his identity in general, for reasons of his own. Shadow, the assassin, had done far more than a young man in the thieving duo Shadow had ever intended, but Strago knew there was more than just a string of train heists that made him bury his old life, and that he'd never know the details.

It was interesting, though, to watch the painting take shape under Relm's brush, the face acquiring definition and clearer expression, the hair molded from a blob into his real hair, shaggy and brown. The background was loosely indicated already, the rough paint outlines of chairs and wall, and she detailed those as she watched. He wasn't sure it was usual to work so quickly, he realized she could probably use training and refinement, but she was also his granddaughter and by his lights the finest artist in the world.

Finally, though, the lure of the fire was too strong, and he creaked over to it. That was the worst part of getting old; you hurt all over, and you could vaguely remember a time when you didn't, so you really felt the injustice. But the fire was warm, and the armchair was comfortable. Very comfortable.

"You have to buy him a drink, too," Relm was saying.

"Wha?"

"You were asleep!"

"Resting my eyes!"

"With fake snoring noises?"

"Yes!" he snapped, and she started laughing.

"Shadow," she said, through her giggles. "You have to buy him a drink."

"I do?"

"I told him you would."

"Not necessary," Clyde said, but he was wearing the mask again. Relm seemed to be wrapping her little canvas up in some cloth.

"No, I want to. To thank you for keeping an eye on her. And settle your nerves after hours with the brat," he added, with some affection. "Relm, is it dry enough for that?"

"You were 'resting' for a long-ass time, old man. Me and Shadow were plotting your death so I could inherit all your money."

"Uh huh."

"Don't worry, she couldn't afford me," Shadow said.

"I'm gonna go see if Edgar will get me drunk," Relm said, propping her bundle against the wall and scooting out the door. After it clicked shut behind her, there was silence.

"I'd order something for old times' sake, but I doubt they'd have that amber ale Jeren used to brew," Shadow said.

"Closest thing they have, I guess," Strago said after a moment, staring into the flames. "He died, three winters after you left." Silence, from Shadow. "Thank you," Strago said, after a moment.

"I haven't ordered it yet."

"I meant for spending time with Relm."

"Do you think she ought to know?" Shadow was standing, arms crossed as usual, wholly unreadable.

"I don't know anymore. Probably. Do you think you might tell her?"

"I'll go order the drinks," Shadow said, and left Strago alone for the moment, feeling strangely peaceful, despite the unanswered question, as he watched the fire.

---

When Relm stepped out of the room into the hall, she saw darkness outside the windows. She turned down the hallway, took the stairs at a gallop, and burst into the pub with her sketchbook under her arm to see no one she knew at all. Not that that mattered. She strutted into the room, too cool to look around, until a sharp whistle cut through the noise.

She looked over – along with half the pub, she saw – and found Sabin gesturing her over. Gau had his fingers in his mouth, so he must have whistled, and Cyan was hunched over a glass of something. She walked over, much less cocky now with all those eyes on her, but she recovered enough to whap her sketchbook down on the table when she got there.

"What was that about, huh?" she demanded. "Scoot," she added, to Edgar, who slid over a fraction. Good enough – she squeezed in next to him.

"You no looking," Gau said.

"So?" She elbowed Edgar in the side. "I said scoot. Or I'll draw you."

"You always threaten that, but I think you're bluffing," Edgar said, which meant, of course, that she had to dig out pen and ink from her bag and produce a tiny caricature of him that blew a kiss to the waitress and scared her away for, as it happened, several hours. She grinned and scribbled it out, then yelped and started giggling as Edgar attempted to pick her up bodily and pass her into a corner of the booth. He gave up the attempt, and she clambered over him and Sabin into the corner. The brothers passed her inkwell and pen to her, and she arranged herself with the aid of elbows to the sides of Cyan and Sabin on either side of her.

"Apparently you weren't hungry, Relm," Edgar said, aggrieved, "but the rest of us intended to order a meal. Would you like something to drink, as you clearly have no interest in food?"

"Yes! Hot chocolate please. Ooh, and could you order me an omelette? I want a cheese omelette."

Edgar shook his head and stood, and she watched for a bit as he spoke to someone behind the bar – Shadow was there too, taking a couple of bottles someone gave him – then settled back in her corner with her feet on the seat, so she could kick Sabin if he tried to reclaim any territory, and tried practice sketches in pencil of Gau and Sabin and Cyan. They went back to talking. Cyan grumbled something about "ostentatious joy," whatever that meant, but he sort of smiled at something Sabin said. She kept trying to draw him; she didn't understand why he tried to look so crabby so much of the time, but it was good practice.

"Don't you ever want to show it when you're happy?" Sabin asked him.

"I suppose I might. But seldom."

Edgar returned, and she drew him, too, but got bored on the flowy lines for his hair and turned her attention to the pub itself. What she was noticing, despite the show of joy Cyan talked about, was that everyone seemed subdued, only a little less so than they'd been when she ended up here not long after the world broke. Most of the people she'd passed on the street had black armbands at least, and some wore heavier mourning, even as they also had sprigs of holly in their lapels or arms full of packages. Plenty of people looked happy enough, and the shops were plenty crowded, but some of the things on the in the windows looked faded, or dusty, or old; like they weren't bothering to keep things up, much, or didn't have anything new to put out to draw people in. She was pretty sure some stores had the same window displays they'd had the year before, when she was living on the streets here. But maybe that was just Nikeah; she'd never been here before the Fall. Things had been different back home. They didn't have so much stuff, for one thing, or so many stores.

She was scanning the pub crowd for interesting, stationary people she could draw, when she saw Locke and Terra come in, stamping snow off their boots and shaking it off their coats in the vestibule. Locke was looking around the room, and Edgar waved him over. She drew the two of them as they slid in on the other side of the booth, heaving coats into the corner and displacing Gau, who'd been curled up on the seat. They interested her; she thought fascinating drama was going on with Celes and Locke, though Locke didn't really seem to be aware of it, and he spent a lot of time with Terra, while Sabin had told her Setzer wanted Celes to marry him, and Edgar flirted with both the women, and, really, everyone except her. She might not know what was going on but that didn't mean she couldn't snoop until she did.

Food came, and Relm attacked her omelette, ate half of it, slurped her hot chocolate and returned to her sketchbook. This time she went to work with inkwell and brush, creating little moogles and deformed chocobos – she had a hard time with them, so she needed the practice – and set them marching over the edge of her sketchbook, down her knees and onto the table, where the moogles trekked over sandwiches and steaks, and menaced Locke's drink with spears. The chocobos, looking all wrong, tended to topple over, but a few worked out all right and one galloped around the edge of the table. The others ignored her and her moogles, or at least they were pretending to, and she grinned and hummed to herself contentedly. She was free to draw right now, or at least, no one was stopping her; she'd had her chance at seeing Shadow's face, so she'd seen something no one else had (except Gramps, but that couldn't be helped, and besides, she thought they knew each other already;) and she was inside, warm and dry, on a cold, icky night.

"Relm?" someone asked, and she looked up with a start. Everyone was watching her.

"Yes?"

"Moogles are swimming in my soup," Locke said.

"Aw! They are! That's so cute!" She hadn't set them to do anything like that, so they were showing some initiative. Terra burst into giggles, and Relm grinned broadly at her.

"Relm..." Locke said, threatening, and she sighed and flipped the page over. The moogles faded out, and she paused with her pen poised over the inkwell.

"Is anyone going back to the airship tonight?" she asked.

"With a good will!" Cyan exploded. "I said before I am weary of this town."

"I have business in town tomorrow," Edgar said. "I don't know about anyone else."

"I want to stay wherever the most people are," she said. "More of you to draw. And annoy. I was just wondering."

"I go Cyan," Gau said.

"So it's just Setzer and Celes holding down the fort?" Edgar said. "Pity I can't be a fly on the wall for that."

"Do you think she'll be all right?" Locke said. "I mean, I'm sure she could break his arms if she needed to, but it might be kind of upsetting to need to."

"I'm sure Setzer has good survival instincts," Edgar said. "Though if you want to rush to her rescue, I'm sure she'd appreciate it. Possibly."

"Why don't we go back, Locke?" Terra said. "I want to give her that coat, and I want to look at all the toys you bought when they're not in the middle of the street, and I need to pay you back—"

"Don't worry about that," he interrupted, hastily. "Yeah, I'm ready to go, since my soup's been claimed by the moogles."

"They don't have cooties," Relm scoffed. "They aren't even real."

"Yeah, well..."

The food was mostly gone, though, and now Gau was fidgeting. Terra stood, and Locke helped her on with her coat. "I guess it's just us, big brother," Sabin said.

"Shadow and Gramps might be staying here," Relm said. "I don't know."

They did, in the end. It was Relm, Cyan, Gau, Locke and Terra on the rented wagon, shivering as they moved slowly back to the airship in the night, quiet again and somehow subdued, even Relm and Gau. Cyan took the reins, their carter gone home for the night; Locke and Terra walked together, speaking a little, too quietly for Relm to hear. Cyan seemed at peace now, Gau quiet and sleepy, and Locke and Terra seemed less happy, more serious, though she thought she heard quiet laughter once. Relm gave up on eavesdropping to draw trees and snow, and wish for paint.