Go through the door. You can chat with the folks, they say to go to the stairs. OK, go left to the end of the hall. The guards say that nobody should go upstairs. Next, talk to the large servant nearby. He says to press the square button to call the guard, and then you run to the stairs.

There's no real trick to this. Just press square and then hug the right wall (i.e. the side of the stairs) to go around and then up. Go through the door at the top of the stairs.

Now you're in a long hallway. If you get caught by guards you start at the beginning of the hallway again, so it's not a hugely bad thing. There are various signets on the floor here. The 2nd horizontal row down from the top has a lion. Use your sunstone on the lion and "the hidden way is lit".

Now here's the trick. The light is in the very top left area, but that way is blocked by guards. The guards on the eastern side won't move, to keep you on this "map". Only center guards will be lured by you. So this is a puzzle game.

Go down and right and lure those guards south. Now go to the east of the guards north of your starting point and lure them east. Bring the guards at the 3rd row right down to the 2nd row right. Finally, lure the top left guard to the right. You can now go to the far left to the faint light. Go in to the light. There is peace and serenity in the light :). The door closes behind you.

Go straight to the end of the hallway and press the switch at the left. Now go right to the door and it opens.

This is the treasury. You see the statue moving. In short order you get a glowing gem.

"Quite a performance" says the pirate guy. Fran is the rabbit girl. The gem you got is the goddess's magicite. You of course run for it. Now you're in the garden stairs area. Go up all the stairs. There's a cut scene of fighting, where an airship blasts down. It's sort of confusing, but what happened is that a group of insurgents was attacking the palace to get to Vayne. Vayne knew this was going to happen and laid an ambush to kill them off as soon as they tried it.

You're cornered by both the pirate and rabbit. They grab you and fly-motorcycle off with you. You learn that Balthier is a sky pirate. Both of them join your party. Now you're in the Garamsythe waterway in a new area, the east spur stairs. Use the save crystal. You here learn about gambits, these are like macros. They're ways to tell your NPCs what to do.

Final Fantasy XII Walkthrough