[Suikoden Tierkreis] White Noise

[runiclore]

White Noise
By: Amber Michelle
Prompt: preparation
Character(s): Chrodechild
Words: 677

For: seta_suzume (original request post is here)



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It was a rule of armies, in Chrodechild's experience, to make enough noise to wake the dead before an important battle, yet be simultaneously quiet. Meruvis was the only man speaking in the barracks; he murmured something to Roberto, whose answers were short, and the scrape of several swords being sharpened drowned the words. Someone leapt onto the sleeping platform with a thump, ran across. She didn't even hear the waterfall outside any longer unless she tried, though it made the details outside blur into a runny green tapestry of the forest through the sheet of water. It had kept her up many nights when they first moved the Blades to this castle, but she'd slept well since then-- until the night before.

Her swords were sharpened; her boots were polished, the tear in her coat was mended and the belt replaced with one of Fredegund's own, because she wouldn't have the forge spare a bit of leather for her when there were more important objects to craft for an attack on Cynas - armor, weapons. She'd nearly laughed to hear a pair of metal fans were made with slim blades of metal sharp enough to slide through skin like butter and painted - painted! - with a sunset landscape, a monochrome of reds, some brown, some yellow. But it was Yula who mentioned it over yesterday's afternoon meal, her plate decorated with a small dome of white sticky rice and thin slices of pink tuna brought from the waters of the Porpos-kin. Many an enemy has laughed when confronted by such a weapon, she said, holding her fork as Chrodechild remembered her sister doing as a child - like a shovel. A true warrior will make a weapon of anything. This fork, perhaps, if he so chose.

Yes. It was true, what Yula said; anything might be a weapon, and anyone, but Chrodechild did not think it the province of warriors to do so. With a few years that man had made a mockery of her sister and twisted the purpose of the Divine Edge, yet he was no warrior. He was nothing. He ran away from the justice of her blade, and what was his name-- Beardsley. Fredegund would not speak it aloud, even to remind her. Chrodechild wanted to ask what really happened while she was gone, but always stopped herself when her sister's hand curled at her throat, when her shoulders hunched as if she expected some blow.

So his name, if she chose, might be a weapon. She was glad the others had not noticed.

Fredegund cried last night. Chrodechild had lain still, stared at the stone ceiling, and watched the shift of light as the waterfall warped the shape of the moon. The day was overcast but hot, and the same play of light glimmered in the black mirror of her arm guards where they waited on the sill to be strapped on. She picked one up, pressed it to her arm and curled her fingers to hold it by a strap so she could turn it over and buckle, but it slipped from her hands and clattered onto the floor, and it felt as if the entire room watched her bend to pick it up.

Only Yula was watching when she straightened, her glance sidelong, while she appeared to face the window. It seemed sometimes that she carried nothing - that being ready, for this princess of the North Star, simply meant she must be awake. And it seemed she was always awake, though she must sleep some time. She'd lain with the rest of them, on Chrodechild's left, while her sister slept to the right, and she entertained dreams, some more elaborate than others, which involved running Beardsley through, striking his head from his shoulders in one blow, or worse.

She would kill that man if she did nothing else on this mission. She hoped the others would understand.


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