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It begins with a missive from the Emperor.
URGENT: tribuni angusticlavii required to replenish ranks of IVth Legion on Dalmascan Northern Front. Forces from XIVth Legion in Ala Mhigo to be deployed effective immediately. Tribuni laticlavii and legati to board the Dalriada from Castrum Amicitia at 0500. For the Glory of Garlemald.
Gaius tol Baelsar cannot purport to be looking forward to his station in Valnain. Where Ala Mhigo is stifling in its dry, scalding heat, the thrashing tropical storms of Dalmasca are far worse. The populace in Dalmasca are far more persistent a thorn than the Ala Mhigans, certainly; the guerilla Resistance famed across the Empire for their ability to survive like the stubbornest of insects. Leading the push to subjugate Dalmasca is an unenviable task. The Resistance are a key strategic target for the Empire to make an example of.
Fortunately, Noah van Gabranth has ever been a friend to Gaius, ever since their station in Yanxia; they have seen many battlefields together and shared many wounds as a result. When he steps off the Dalriada, the tunic below his lorica already drenched in sweat, he is greeted by van Gabranth, who is quick to clasp him tight.
'My thanks for your arrival,' he says, voice uncommonly brusque. He is without his helm, and although it has been but two years since they last met, Gaius quietly thinks he looks several decades older. The hollows under his eyes look closer to craters; fine lines more like fault lines. 'It has been a loss to us all, and in truth, I am glad to see an old friend.'
'My condolences,' Gaius says, sincerely; removes his helm and holds it respectfully against his chest. 'Who did you lose?'
Noah van Gabranth hesitates before his answer.
'You remember Marcus Junius?'
Gaius shakes his head vehemently, as if to deny the truth. He remembers Marcus as if they had only seen each other moons before; another friend from the Doman front, brave and intelligent in equal measure. One of the finest dimachaeri in hand to hand combat, it took little time for him to become tribunus, poached by the ever-gaping maw of the IVth Legion. A model leader, dying a pauper's death in Dalmasca. Gaius can barely bear to think of it.
'Both he and Lucilla, murdered,' says van Gabranth, and Gaius closes his eyes. 'And their daughter –'
'Nay,' Gaius hisses, unwittingly. 'Nay, the brutes did not –'
'She is alive,' van Gabranth says, voice firmer than before. 'But if you have a moment before your briefing, she may benefit from seeing a familiar face.'
Gaius exhales slowly, folds his arms; comforting a traumatised child was hardly the first thing he anticipated doing in Dalmasca. How old must she be now, Marcus' daughter? The last time Gaius had been to Dalmasca, the family had taken an outing to the Neimharava Woods, sweeping woodland common to this part of the world. At the time, she must have been six summers, perhaps seven – two years later, the woods are charred to the ground, and she is still far too young to have had both parents snatched from her.
'Aye, with your permission, Legatus,' says Gaius, and van Gabranth chuckles. 'Is she with the chirurgeons?'
‘She is,’ van Galbranth says, leads the two of them towards a building that looks thrown together in a hurry, corrugated steel roofing all but buckling under the weight of summer rain. To think Gaius had thought it rustic in the Fringes – here in Dalmasca, the Empire’s resource looks even more scarce. The creaking ward is certainly not a place he would have chosen to house a young child, especially not one of her family’s rank. A question for the chirugeons, he thinks, and van Gabranth shows him through the door.
Despite its shabby exterior, the ward looks like any found in Garlemald; sterile and pristine, grey composite bearing the Empire’s insignia on the far wall. Beds in twos are adorned with various magitek devices, to measure blood and administer medicines. Gaius is no chirurgeon, and so moves to find someone who is; choosing to speak to the medicus who looks the least likely to topple over with fatigue at any moment.
‘Oh!’ the medicus says, startled, glancing up and down to take his measure. ‘Forgive me, my lord, we are quite rushed off our feet – what can I help you with? What brings you to the ward?’
‘I am one of the tribuni to be stationed here from the XIVth,’ Gaius says.
‘Oh yes, my lord, I know who you are!’ the medicus says brightly. ‘The Black Wolf himself, here in Valnain! Are you quite well? Can I fetch you –’
‘At ease,’ Gaius says, and the medicus flushes up to her ears. ‘I am here to visit a particular patient. At Lord van Gabranth’s request.’
The medicus pauses, nods as she understands the implication.
‘You’re here to see –’ the medicus says, barely louder than a whisper. ‘You’re here to see Lady Junia?’
Gaius nods, folds his arms.
‘Aye,’ he says. ‘She has privacy, I trust?
‘Of – of course!’ the medicus says quickly. ‘We have done everything we can to ensure the lady is safe, and undisturbed by – by any idle hearsay –’
‘Full glad am I to hear it,’ Gaius says. ‘And is she well?’
‘Quite – quite well. Her injuries are well healed, but her vision – well,’ the medicus says, smiles diplomatically. ‘Perhaps it would be best for you to see her for yourself.’
‘If her wounds are healed,’ Gaius says plainly, ‘why is she still here?’
The medicus sighs, a pained expression on her face that Gaius can only describe as a grimace. She leans in, ushers Gaius away from the beds, pulls him out of earshot of the other children who are already avidly staring at the newcomer on the ward with wolf-like grins.
'Forgive me of speaking ill of the lady, but –’
‘Speak freely,’ Gaius says, bluntly. ‘I am not your legatus.’
‘Nobody will take her, my lord,' she whispers, eyes wide. ''Tis most unusual for a girl of her family's status, but – should anyone even mention taking her away she becomes a most feral thing! She scratches, she bites – goodness, Lord van Quintus needed stitches after the lady was done with him!’
She sighs, places an exhausted hand to her forehead.
'If this continues, we may well be forced to house her in the orphanage.'
'The orphanage,' Gaius says, flatly. 'Where she will be expected to house with Dalmascans?'
'Indeed,' the medicus says, quietly apologetic. 'It would otherwise be unthinkable given the nature of the family’s death, but – we truly are struggling to find another option.'
'I shall speak with her,' Gaius says. 'Bed thirteen, aye?'
The medicus nods, which is all the permission Gaius tol Baelsar needs to walk through the ward, conversation and chatter turning hushed in a mere whisper of his presence. An unfamiliar face, he imagines, and wonders just how many unfamiliar faces have been to visit the girl already. He glares at anybody foolish enough to stare at him, open-mouthed. Has the child not suffered enough, thinks Gaius, without being made into the ward's entertainment?
He passes past a hue of sickly children with a range of ailments – Dalmascan fever, ceruleum eye – before he sees a bed shrouded in chirurgeon's curtains at the ward's end. Junia, Livia Julia, reads the sign hung at arm's length, and Gaius clears his throat by way of introduction.
'Livia,' Gaius says through the curtain. 'Gaius tol Baelsar, of the XIVth Legion. I was friends with your family.'
There is silence from behind the curtain. Gaius stands, unnerved in a way he has seldom felt in years.
'Do you remember me?'
'Everyone claims to be a friend of my family,' comes a quiet, spiteful voice, and Gaius smiles. 'But I do remember you.'
'Aye, I hoped you would,' he says. 'We went to visit the Neimrahava Woods together, didn't we?'
'Yes, we did.' she says bluntly. 'Aren't you going to come in?'
It has been some time since Gaius can recall anyone being quite so insolent in his presence. Despite his immediate shock, he finds it refreshing.
'Aye,' Gaius says, keeps the laugh from his voice. 'As you wish.'
He draws the curtain back a fraction, wide enough only to let himself through. Livia is sat in pale brown robes, cross-legged on the gurney; a web of bright-hued tubing providing a myriad of intravenous medicines into her arm. Her face is bandaged still, half of it obscured by fresh white gauze. Most noticeably, there is an eye patch where her left eye should be; it is an entirely unclinical pink, clearly homemade by Gemina or another of the staff. Embroidered on the pink gingham fabric is a smiling face, almost comical upon the sulking, obstinate features of Livia Junia.
'Say nothing,' she says, her face visibly aflame. 'I hate it.'
Gaius tries his best to keep the smile from his face.
‘I am sure we can fashion you another,’ he says. ‘May I sit?’
Livia shrugs her shoulders, but shuffles her legs up the gurney nevertheless.
‘Thank you,’ says Gaius, places his helm on the chair before sitting on the edge of the bed, steel creaking ominously. ‘How are they treating you?’
Livia stares at him, with eyes that remind him of a startled animal.
‘Fine,’ she says. ‘The food is dreadful. The medici are kind.’
‘I am pleased they treat you well,’ says Gaius. ‘And what of your days here?’
‘Long,’ she says sharply. ‘Bored of visitors. Bored of laying here.’
‘You do not have company?’ he asks, with growing concern. ‘You do not leave?’
Livia sighs, stares at the ceiling, wearing an expression Gaius can only describe as unimpressed.
‘What do I need company for?’ she asks, gesturing at a large pile of dog-eared books at the end of her bed. ‘’Tis not part of my recovery.’
‘Aye, I suppose not,’ Gaius concedes, and looks at the book on Livia’s pillow. ‘This one looks interesting – The Six Elements, aye? I did not know you had an interest in Eorzean history.’
‘It was all they had,’ Livia says, blankly. ‘Why would I care for Eorzeans?’
Livia sits, tight-lipped, her face a stone fortress. She is as firm as Gaius knew her parents to be; stubborn and unyielding, even at such a young age. Gaius imagines he is hardly the first to ask her such questions, if the lack of enthusiasm in her voice is any indicator; instead, he chooses another subject altogether.
‘Do you still train?’ Gaius says, ‘If I remember rightly, you were quite the talented pugilist.’
Livia’s eyes narrow, lower lip jutting forward angrily.
A reaction, thinks Gaius. At last.
‘They won’t let me,’ she sneers. ‘I’m not allowed off the ward, apparently. It’s too dangerous.’
She glares daggers into the fabric of her bedclothes, pulls her knees up to her chest.
‘Besides,’ she says, more quietly. ‘I wouldn’t know how to, now. With – with my eyes.’
Gaius finds himself holding a breath as Livia speaks the unspoken, slices through the tension in the room with her blunt, truthful words. Her voice is even, chillingly firm, but her hands betray her, balled up in tight fists clutching the bedsheet. To re-navigate a life with one eye alone is a terrifying thing, especially for a child. For the first time, Gaius is stricken by just how brave the girl is.
‘All the more reason to practice, is it not?’ Gaius says, voice soft. ‘I would help you, if you liked.’
Livia looks at Gaius, her uncovered eye scrutinising him with a forensic glare. Gaius cannot find he blames her for her reticence; trust is a fleeting, fragile thing, and Livia has had it torn from her in the most brutal of ways. He sits and waits for her to make a decision; watches as her brow furrows in deep thought, as her gold-brown eye flickers from place to place, staring at everything and nothing in particular.
Eventually, Livia nods, shuffles off the bed to stand. Gaius follows suit, stands alongside her, and smiles down at her. Standing next to him, she is barely tall enough to reach his waist. As the two of them walk down the centre of the ward, there is silence; as they pass each row of beds, fresh whispers follow at their heels. Gaius feels a tug at the sleeve of his tunic; it is Livia, clinging to his wrist white-knuckled.
Gaius feels a sudden pang of protectiveness sharp in his chest.
‘I will be taking Lady Junia for a walk,’ Gaius says to the medicus, in a tone that brokers no argument. ‘She shall be back in plenty of time for supper.’
With that, Gaius tol Baelsar takes Livia out into the tropical heat, and for the first time all morning, she smiles.
***
Gaius’ arm tenses slightly as his young charge lands a punch on his glove. He crouches as best he can to match Livia’s height as they spar in the camp’s makeshift training ground, as they had each evening for the last sennight. Livia’s technique has improved swiftly to Gaius’ eyes; her moves are less hesitant, less childlike, and more balanced, better distributing her weight to accommodate her restricted vision. She has not fallen in days, which Gaius is glad for - a few days prior, she had tripped flat on her face in front of half the IVth Legion. Her face had scalded bright red, and Gaius had hidden her in the drape of his coat as he took her inside. A swift glare from Gaius had silenced any legionaries who had the nerve to laugh.
Here, she is on good form; throws a punch to his shoulder that has surprising heft behind it. He smiles as he catches her fists, adjusts her stance to steady her knees.
‘Remember, Livia,’ Gaius says, plying her into position, ‘pugilism is an art. ‘Tis ferocity and grace in equal measure. The key to victory lies not in raw strength, but balance, and –’
‘Poise,’ Livia interrupts drily, grinning. ‘Yes, yes, I know. You said the same yesterday. And I’m getting better, you know!’
She catches him off guard with another jab, her tiny arms stretching their very furthest to try and strike him on the chin. Gaius smiles, shaking his head. Should anybody else be quite so insolent, they would suffer swift justice, but Livia? With her, he cannot help but find it charming.
‘Good,’ says Gaius, as he blocks another stubborn shot at his shoulder. ‘Much better form, but your speed is still lacking. We shall work at it another time.’
He lowers her hands, clasped in his, signalling a pause in their training.
‘I am stationed at Hromvir Point for the next sennight,’ Gaius says, gently. ‘The Bozjan border is quite a way from the ward, my flower. I shall endeavour to see you each morn, of course –’
‘No!’ Livia says, her voice so unmistakably heartbroken it makes Gaius feel a stab of guilt to the heart. ‘You must promise me you’ll come every day! How else will I get better? And – and what else should I do during the day? I’m so frightfully bored.’
Gaius smiles, gently, cradles Livia’s round face in his hand.
‘Every morn, Livia,’ he says, firmly. ‘I swear it.’
A tribunus keeps his word, and so Gaius makes a point to visit Livia at least once a sun, even if only for a bell or two. Most often it is at unsociable times in the morn, prior to the legion’s first drills; yet every day, Livia bounces awake with the enthusiasm of an eager pup, happily talking to Gaius about everything she has read and the budding romance between the medicus and the pilus and how she even invited the older boys on the ward to arm-wrestle with her but not a single soul dared to! He can scarce believe the reticent, obstinate Livia he introduced himself to less than a moon prior was the same Livia he now knows to be an excitable whirlwind of a girl.
He cannot deny his fondness for her. Perhaps in another life, Gaius tol Baelsar could imagine himself a family man; perhaps a quaestor in Garlemald, with a doting medicus wife. Perhaps in another life, he has time to raise a child – he has always liked children, has always had a natural ability to put them at ease. But in this life, he is Gaius tol Baelsar, and his duty is to the Empire before all else. The Garlean military had all but raised him, His Radiance Solus zos Galvus himself taking him under his wing at an early age. He had learnt the value of utmost loyalty by the age of twelve, serving his Emperor as an errand boy and more besides. At sixteen summers, he had joined the XIth legion, following his master into battle as he had followed him throughout the royal palace. It was a life of glory, of that he was sure; but it was a life far from normal.
Perhaps, if he permits himself to think about it, he sees a great deal of himself in Livia. Gaius was seldom permitted to be a child, yet he remembers the silence in the quiet hours. The austere loneliness of being made an adult before his time. The need to fill that void with training, with discipline. Livia certainly has the passion for it, and at such a young age - it is hard for her drive not to remind him of the boy he once was, a lifetime ago.
For now, at least, he can keep her company. Ensure that she may have a life of glory as well, if it is a life she chooses for herself.
***
The battle in the borderlands is fiercer than any of the legati had anticipated. The Dalmascans have moved to infiltrate the northern border, into the hinterlands of Zadnor; an abandoned outpost in the adjoining country of Bozja. The latest intelligence from the IVth suggests that Bozja has its own guerilla force, channelling supplies and manpower to the Dalmascans through a covert tunnelling system. Gaius and the ten tribuni under his command are tasked to snuff out the lines of operation, by any means necessary.
It takes little time at all to collapse the tunnels with ceruleum bombs and magitek firepower. It takes significantly longer, however, to find the source of the supplies. The savages have a wide range of magicks at their disposal, their one advantage in the field; their headquarters disguised to aetherblind troops, magicked traps taking out several foot soldiers at once. Gaius and his men approach their search in a more traditional way – through brute force alone. He stations reinforcements across the entire three malms of the border; places a sea of magitek turrets across the way, automated to trigger at the slightest movement.
The posting is one of his most exhausting in Dalmasca yet. Gaius takes the command at sundown, surveys the border at night, reports directly to van Gabranth at sunrise. The airship back to the IVth barracks is another few bells of travel, upon which he finishes his administrative work in fits and starts in between succumbing to sleep.
He is on the airship back to Valnain when he realises –
He has not seen Livia for almost three suns.
Upon landing, the children’s ward is the first place he visits. While Gemina and the other medici are often courteous upon his arrival, this morning as he enters, her lips are clamped firmly together, eyes fixed on the floor. He pays it no mind – formalities mean little when he has a promise to keep. He walks through the ward briskly, before he sees something horrifying.
The chirurgeon’s curtain surrounding Livia’s bed has been torn, half of the curtain hooks dangling loose upon the metal frame. From the broad gaps in the curtain, he can see Livia’s belongings all in a similar state of disarray. Her usually neat pile of books has toppled over onto the floor, stray pages strewn across the bedsheets. Her drawers have been pulled out of the bedside table, leaving her meagre belongings in a maelstrom on the hospital floor, clothing and bandages and her bright pink eyepatch all victims to the struggle.
In the middle of the chaos is a trembling silhouette, wrapped up in bed sheets tight enough to suffocate.
‘Oh, Livia,’ Gaius says, and feels sheer guilt pour from each word. ‘I am – unspeakably sorry.’
She is silent for a few moments,and Gaius fills it with explanations that he knows are pithy before they even leave his mouth. He tries to describe the long journeys to Zadnor, the foul nighttime wind in Bozja, the mountain of paperwork that threatens to bury him at any moment – but nothing so much as stirs her from her cocoon of bedsheet. It is only after he stops making excuses for himself that he hears something, muffled against the fabric.
Delicately, he pulls the covers free from Livia’s head, just a fraction enough to hear her voice.
‘You promised.’
Gaius closes his eyes.
Before he can decide what to say, Livia sits bolt upright, and Gaius realises with a fresh wave of guilt just how distraught she has been. Her eyepatch has been replaced with a standard-issue white one; beneath the patch, her face is pale, sallow, and her free eye is still swollen red.
‘I scratched at it,’ she says, bluntly, gesturing to her eye. ‘I scratched at – at everything, and I don’t know why –’
Livia’s face crumples, and she bursts into a fresh flood of tears. Gaius immediately moves to her bed, allows her to throw her arms around him and sob agonised wails into his shoulder, holds her there until her tears have soaked through his tunic.
‘I let you down, Livia,’ Gaius says, stiffly. ‘And it shall not happen again.’
She sniffs despondently, wipes her eyes on his sleeve. Gaius waits until her shoulders have stopped shaking before gently unfolding her from his arms. Livia sits up against the wall, knees to her chest, and Gaius moves onto the bed fully, knees folded, to reach for her hands.
‘I thought –’ Livia says quietly. ‘I thought you were –’
She cannot bring herself to finish her sentence. She does not need to, for Gaius sees the wide-eyed expression on her face and knows, knows as he does his own name.
‘And then – then I could never – never be a fighter like you!’ she says, lip trembling perilously. ‘Who would teach me? Who would –’
‘Livia,’ Gaius interjects, softly. ‘I broke my word before, but I swear to you – I am going nowhere.’
He holds one of her palms between both of his, envelops her tiny shaking hand in full.
‘Besides,’ he says, smiling down at her. ‘’Twould take more than a troop of savages to get rid of me, aye? His Radiance would never hear of it.’
Livia’s hand goes limp in his.
‘That’s what my parents said, too,’ she says so plainly that Gaius wants to swallow his accursed tongue. ‘Before they died.’
Not even for the first time this morn, Livia has stunned Gaius into silence, with her candidness, with her bravery. In truth, he knows not how to respond – there is little he can say to change what has happened, or to change her outlook on life now she has learnt how ceaselessly fragile it is. He closes his eyes again at his incompetence. How much easier it is to strategise and brutalise than it is to hear her speak, truly speak.
‘Did they tell you?’ Livia says, quietly, eyes downcast. ‘Did they tell you what happened?’
‘I did not pry,’ Gaius says. ‘’Tis your story to tell, and no-one else’s.’
Livia hums silently, tilts her head, as if considering something entirely new.
‘Would you listen?’ she says, eyes distant. ‘If I told you?’
***
She thinks of it as a sun like any other, to begin with.
She walks home from the ludus with the three other Garlean children in her class, accompanied as always by Lucius, the pilus prior. She often thinks about how strange they must look to everyone else in the city – the four of them in their grey uniforms following a soldier around the streets of Valnain like faithful hounds. Still, as her parents tell her every day, she is to walk accompanied until her tenth nameday, until she is old enough to go to the grammaticus instead. Then, and only then, when her and her classmates are old enough, will they be permitted to walk on their own. Livia can hardly wait for it – unattended, she will be able to peer into the bookshop on her way to class, will be able to buy an extra large creme pastry from the bakery with nobody to tell her otherwise. In truth, she is all but counting down the days.
She bids goodbye to Lucius and the others once they are through the security point and the iron gates are firmly closed behind them. The residential area is sprawling, with all the children living in different provinces – once they are firmly inside the base safely, Lucius is often tired enough to let them make their own way home. Livia walks to the twelfth avenue, where – as she thinks with a swell of pride – the largest houses are, including hers. It is only when she arrives at her home that she notices the first sign that something is different.
The gate is open.
Her parents have taught Livia to never leave the gate open - our house is our sanctuary, says her father, and our doors keep it safe. Livia clutches her satchel by the handles, grips it tightly as she takes tremulous footsteps up the path. She does not know what to expect when she arrives there, but she knows danger as an abstract thing – all the Garlean children do, as the only ones ferried from place to place by a military guard.
Her heart quickens in her chest as she sees the door from afar. It is hanging from its hinges, slamming to and fro in the breeze. Livia freezes, tries her best to breathe normally. Her parents must be inside, surely, as they would not have left the home in such a state. That means there must be burglars inside. She hovers by the door, in two minds of what to do – she should leave and call for Lucius, she should — but if she does and her parents are inside and in danger, she surely cannot leave them. The second feels the option of a braver girl, and so Livia puffs up her chest, holds her satchel like a weapon, and slips inside the broken door.
She feels out of her depth as soon as she walks into the atrium. Paintings have been torn from the walls, the crimson drapes of the curtains slashed from the rafters. Anything of any seeming value has been stripped or taken – the chromite clock on the wall, the magitek lockbox that Livia secretly knows hold her mother’s pearls - all gone, and she sniffs helplessly, silently hoping that the plush almasty in her bedroom still lies there undisturbed.
The Garlean flag that hangs above the fireplace in each home has been thrown into the fire itself, charred remains dragged across the floor. Eventually, the charcoal dissipates by the entrance to the drawing room; the door is closed, but from inside, Livia can hear quiet sobbing. By the entrance, there is a dark stain that seeps under the door; a wet, copper-brown colour that can – that can only be –
‘- and I thought Garleans hated giving head,’ comes a voice, so sharp and unfamiliar it makes tears prick at Livia’s eyes. ‘Loved it though, didn’t you?’
‘He’s a better fuck with his teeth missing,’ says another, and Livia lays herself flat against the wall, trying to listen. She recognises the faint cadence of the words, but knows little of their meaning – despite having lived here for most of her life, she speaks little Dalmascan, speaking Garlean at home and socialising solely with her Garlean classmates. ‘Want a go?’
‘I don’t fuck swine,’ says a third voice, and Livia hears a round of harsh laughter. She blinks, and feels tears splash down her front. Her shoes are rubbing. Her clothes are too tight. She knows her parents are in there, and she wants to be sick. She does not want to see, but she cannot sit in helplessness. Livia crouches and places her eyes against the keyhole, the way she often did, filching information on hidden presents for her nameday.
The horror compels her to look.
Both of her parents are bound to chairs, three strangers stood around them. Whatever is happening here, it is no normal burglary; the strangers taunt her parents, one of them with their hand around her mother’s neck. The largest of them – a lion man she has never seen the likes of before – moves aside, and for the first time, Livia can see her father.
What remains of her father.
Livia knows her father to be a broad, smiling man, with dark-brown stubble and twinkling eyes. What she sees instead is something resembling a phantom, or a wraith. Blood pours from his mouth, some of his teeth still scattered down his front. He wails, his voice a bestial, howling sound – he cannot speak, Livia realises, he no longer has a tongue. His mouth is a gaping maw, a red, dripping cavern. She covers her mouth as best she can, but she cannot stop the scream that unwittingly falls from her.
The strangers draw away from her parents, and turn towards the door. She covers her face, childishly; as if she cannot see them, they cannot see her. The largest of the men opens it, and Livia drops her hands, comes face to face with sheer terror. He must be a good six fulms taller than her, barely large enough to fit in the doorway; in the presence of fear she stands, uselessly, clutching her satchel and sobbing.
‘Oh,’ one of the men says, grinning, a dark-haired Hyur this time. ‘Where were you hiding her?’
Her father moans his wordless moan. Her mother shakes her head, and screams.
‘Livilla,’ her mother cries in Garlean, and Livia jolts. ‘Run, my darling – run, now –’
One of the strangers smacks Livia’s mother with the butt of her rifle, silencing her. Livia hesitates for a second too long before bolting for the door, and the lion man slams it closed in front of her, standing vigilant. Livia cries, for she knows naught else to do – everything is so confusing and there is so much blood everywhere.
‘I don’t – I don’t understand,’ Livia says, her voice trembling, and she tugs gently at the lion man’s sleeve. ‘What are you doing?’
He turns and looks at her, laughing callously.
‘Didn’t even bother teaching you Dalmascan, did they?’ he sneers, talks so quickly that Livia can only just grasp a word. She shakes her head, dumbly; as far as she can remember in her short life, she has never felt quite so powerless.
‘Listen here, brat,’ he says, pushes his large, hairy face up close to hers. 'Let's try it in Garlean, shall we?'
He leans forward, smirking, and cradles her hand in his clawed paw.
'Mummy and Daddy have been very bad,’ he says, in fractured Garlean, in a tone that sounds a high-pitched mimicry of Livia’s. ‘Mummy and Daddy are going to die!’
‘No!’ Livia shrieks, pushes against the man’s thick arms as best she can, her fists pummelling into his forearm to no avail; he does not so much as flinch at the impact. ‘No, no, no –’
She snarls, kicking and screaming, pushes every ilm of her body against the man pinning her down. She will not let them touch her parents again, she swears, as she opens her jaw as wide as she dares and bites down on the lion man’s forearm, hard as she can. He swears, so surprised that he lets go, for the slightest instant. It is all the time Livia needs. She pushes away from him and runs to her parents, screaming, reaches for the knots around their arms and hands and pulls, vision so blurred with tears she can barely see, pulls so desperately that she can barely stand, until –
She feels something blunt hit her on the back of her head, and she crumples.
Everything is blurry, after that. There are holes in her memory, where the weave of her story comes undone. She comes to once, and does not realise they are speaking to her. She comes to again, and her mother’s thighs are splayed apart, one of the men thrusting between them with a twisted expression on his face.
She comes to a third time, and the gurgling from her father’s throat has stopped. The low drone of his desperate wails have stopped. Her mother’s legs are bleeding, and the fight has gone from her eyes.
‘Don’t look so sad, little one,’ says a woman, dark-skinned with long, delicate ears. ‘’Tis far better to die than to serve Garlemald.’
Livia sobs uncontrollably, her heartbeat so loud in her ears she can hear Garlemald and little else. Blood drips so steadily from the maw that was once her father’s mouth. Her mother sobs quietly, bruises freshly blooming on her neck and forehead.
‘You’re wasting your breath,’ says the third man. ‘Look at her stupid little face. Doesn’t understand a word of it.’
He smiles, baring his teeth; baring his knife.
‘Let’s see if she understands this, eh?’
Livia is too disorientated to so much as raise a hand as the man seizes her mother by the hair, holds the blade against her throat and watches her squirm, crying out in fear. He places it against her neck, flat, never cutting the skin; simply holding it there, waiting for the moment it cuts. Out of the three of them, the hyur is the cruelest. He teases with the edge of the knife, traces it feather-light along her mother’s jaw, across her cheek and up to her brow.
Livia sobs as she realises what he is doing, as she sees the point of his blade linger over the pearlescent third eye on her mother’s forehead.
He pushes the blade into her mother’s eye. She screams a bestial, wounded scream, so inhuman Livia fears she may never hear a sound so horrifying again. Blood pours down her mother’s face as the points of a star; rivulets of blood dripping down her face like rainwater. Livia closes her eyes, for if she cannot see it it will not be so bad; if all she can hear is the screaming and the man’s harsh laughter then she could be watching a military documentary, the sorts she knows they show in her father’s training. She must be strong, of course – for it is not real, any of this –
‘Oi!’ the man shouts, and Livia is jolted from her imaginary sanctum. ‘Look alive, darling! You’re missing the best part.’
Her mother shakes her head, as if willing Livia to close her eyes again.
‘The best thing about you Garleans?’ he says, wiping his hands on her mother’s dress. ‘You’ve got three eyes to gouge instead of two.’
‘No,’ her mother whispers faintly, ‘no – please –’
While her mother writhes in protest, the lion man holds her down by the shoulders with all his strength. The knife meets her eye with surgical precision; the scream so much worse than last time for how ragged and raw her voice is. The man purses his lips like a craftsman perusing a work of art, sliding the blade around with delicate motion. If Livia could focus on him and him alone, perhaps he could be an artisan. Perhaps she could be in the square in Valnain, watching the street artists. Perhaps she could be anywhere but here.
The hole left behind is so deep that Livia can only look at her mother in split seconds, for she does not want to remember her like this. She wants to remember her as beautiful and smiling, not as this blood-drenched horror that looks more terrifying than any nightmare she could ever conjure. She covers her mouth to keep from being sick as she realises the man is brandishing her mother’s eyeball around like a trophy, viscera and a long string-like nerve dangling from it. What could her parents have done – what could anybody ever have done – to deserve this, thinks Livia, and she curls her knees up to her chest, presses her face into the comforting darkness of her school skirt.
From the sounds of her mother’s agonised cries, the other eye is gone too. Livia shakes her head, covers her ears, tries everything to get rid of the sound; but before she can try anything further, the man pulls her hair, lifting her face up to see him, to see her mother’s cavernous face.
‘Got a present for you,’ he says, and Livia desperately shakes her head. He smiles, his prey caught in a snare, and places her mother’s eyeball squarely in front of her face.
He rolls it between forefinger and thumb, before squashing it with a sickening pop.
Livia vomits onto her skirt.
‘Oh, I think you broke her!’ says the woman, who pats Livia gently on the head. ‘Put her out of her misery, already.’
‘Aye, enough theatrics,’ says the lion man. ‘The guard will be here soon, and we need to cross the border in time.’
‘Hm,’ the Hyur agrees, but does not move. Instead, he stares at Livia with a curious smile, the same expression as before. An architect surveying an empty plot. He walks to her, crouches down in front of her, as if to tell her a secret.
‘Have you seen enough, little one?’ he asks her, in Garlean. Livia nods so fiercely she feels her head will threaten to fall.
‘No more,’ she whispers. ‘Please no more.’
The re-emergence of his shark-like smile makes Livia sob, for she knows her plea has failed.
‘How I hoped she’d say that,’ he says to his comrades, laughing. ‘Got time for one more?’
‘Be quick about it,’ the woman sighs, as if indulging a child.
Livia screams.
He holds her down by her neck, the blade close enough to her eye that she can see it doubled, quadrupled; she is crying so hard that eight blades look to be moving toward her. The piercing sensation is like nothing she has ever felt before. Before this, she thought pain was the time she had broken her wrist during training. She thought pain was needing stitches from the medicus in her knee. She knows pain, now. She knows pain, and terror, and death. Blood pours down her face, and it feels like warm water. Her mother is still screaming.
She blinks through darkest red, and then, there is nothing.
***
Gaius gently holds Livia’s hand throughout her story, dabs at her eyes as she cries stoically, determined to finish without succumbing to sobs. He marvelled at her strength; such horrors would have stunned a lesser soul into silence for eternity, but Livia had braved it all. He holds her in his arms, an all-encompassing embrace – in truth, he knows of little else he can offer. She is so small in his arms, so fragile. He will never leave her so vulnerable again.
A base, childish part of him wishes he had been there. Wishes he had been there to slaughter each Dalmascan savage that dared to lay a hand on the Junii. Wishes he could have swept Livia up in his arms, to carry her to his quarters safe from harm. Wishes that are uncharitable, that he knows are the musings of a bitter, selfish man.
'I am sorry, Livia,' he whispers, kisses her hair. 'You are under my protection, now. You shall be safe. And that is a promise I shall never break.'
***
Months pass. Gaius tol Baelsar trains with Livia every morn he can. On occasions he knew he should be away for several suns, he works to ensure the preceding days are spent close by her. Such manipulation of his deployment seldom leaves him in the Emperor's favour; both he and van Gabranth growing quickly frustrated by his obstinacy. Quietly, he feels his sacrifice worth it for Livia. In just a few short months, his loyalty is to her as much as it is the Empire.
Dalmasca’s winters are as bitter as its summers are sweltering. On a bitterly cold morn, he arrives at the ward to find Livia wrapped up in all the blankets she could claim, still shivering. The medici are forced to tend to wounds in thick woollen gloves – poor hygiene practice, but necessary to avoid the winter’s sting. Livia’s eyes light up as he approaches, warmth flooding to her pink cheeks. He has not failed her since she had told her story, her trust in him enough to inspire him on even these darkest of days.
‘My darling Livia,’ he says, swaddling her and her surplus of blankets in one of his arms. ‘I trust you are well?’
‘I’m cold,’ she pouts, holding her blankets tight for effect.
‘Aye, I can tell. You have – by my count – six blankets wrapped around you right now.’
‘I’m very cold,’ she says, pointedly.
‘I came to ask if you were ready to spar, but I fear that may be beyond even your impressive faculties today.’ Gaius smiles, pauses for a moment. Livia stares up at him, diligent, before her mind wanders and she kicks her legs, absently.
‘Can I go back to hiding in my blankets now?’ she asks after a few minutes.
Gaius hesitates. She is as irreverent as ever, and for the first time since he vowed to ask her this most urgent of questions, he finds his resolve faltering. He would rather fight the stalwarts of his own legion than bare his soul for even a moment, but for Livia, he has to be willing to try. He owes her that much, at least.
‘Livia,’ he says, all but standing at attention. ‘I have a proposal for you.’
‘A proposal?’ she asks. ‘Are we to marry?’
She shifts towards him on the bed, lowers her blankets to whisper in Gaius’ ear.
‘I should like that.’
Gaius laughs softly, before continuing.
‘Nay, nay. Not yet, anyway. Mayhap when you are older.’
Livia scowls, and shuffles back onto the bed, and Gaius smiles, cradles her face in his hand.
‘I have some papers with me,’ he says, and Livia stares at him with her wide golden eye. ‘I shall need your consent, and the consent of your attending medicus, of course, but –’
His voice breaks, in a way it has not since he was a child himself.
‘Livia,’ he says. ‘Would you permit me to adopt you? Would you – would you like to be my daughter?’
Livia’s lip quivers before she bursts into tears, immediately falls into his waiting arms.
***
It had taken a few sennights to arrange, but soon, Livia was sat aboard Noah van Gabranth’s Aurora-class airship, looking out a porthole as she and her father made their way to Garlemald. Once the novelty of their flight had worn off some and Livia had stopped gabbling about being among the clouds, Gaius surprised her with something he had seldom given anyone outside of political machinations; a gift.
‘I have something for you, Livia. A housewarming present, if you will.’
He reaches into his duffel bag and pulls out a small rectangle, wrapped haphazardly in parcel paper and string. He hands it over, and Livia quickly unwraps it, sparing no thought for the paper.
She pushes the wrapping aside to reveal a small frame. Inside, pressed within the glass, is her pink gingham eyepatch, smiling up plaintively at her.
‘I found it as we were packing your things, inside one of your books,’ Gaius says, quickly. ‘My apologies if I stole your bookmark, but I could not leave it behind. ‘Twas the subject of our first conversation, do you recall?’
Livia smiles, cheeks flushing brightly.
‘I said I hated it,’ she says, quietly. ‘And you promised me another.’
‘Aye,’ says Gaius. ‘A tribunus keeps his word.’
Livia clasps the frame to her chest, holding it as she did her plush almasty from a lifetime ago, tears once more forming in her eyes as the bright lights of Garlemald bloom over the horizon.