Among Thieves
I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
Warnings: Contains drinking, swearing, and the implication that lotsa "adult" activities went down in Gen 1. All pairings discussed or implied are at least possible in-game, so no Sigurd/Ayra or Noish/Alec MPREG or anything like that. That doesn't mean they're all predestined or popular pairings.
Verdane, 779
Lester knew he shouldn't have let Faval drag him into the underground pit that passed itself off as "the finest tavern between here and Marfa."
"In Grannvale it'd be illegal to call this 'beer,' Faval."
The swill the barmaid ladled out was likely laced with some kind of foreign drug, too. It had an acrid aftertaste and the Verdanese drunks around them were in a suspicious stupor. That did make it easier for the travelers, though; if nobody remembered them, all the better.
"Guy in the corner keeps looking at us," Faval muttered when they were midway through the first drink. He'd learned to talk without much moving his lips.
"Which one?" Lester fought off the impulse to look over his shoulder.
"Short guy with the ponytail."
Lester waited a few minutes before taking a discreet glance back at the fair-haired man with the deeply scarred cheek. From behind, the stranger in flamboyant highwayman's dress looked almost like a little kid, but his face and eyes told a different story. Lester guessed the highwayman was about the same age as Faval's father.
The highwayman had sober eyes. Lester ducked down to stare into his cup of tainted beer, hoping he hadn't looked too long at the stranger.
They only dared drink two rounds at this particular dive. Faval threw some gold on the counter, but it wasn't enough for the barmaid. Lester left his cousin to deal with the dispute while he went up into the air to ready the horses so they could get to whatever passed for an "inn" around these parts.
Lester thought he was keeping an ear tuned for unfamiliar footsteps, but even so he wasn't prepared for the sudden tight dig of fabric into his throat, much less for the whisper into his ear.
"I don't think you're here on any regular business."
"My business is in Marfa," Lester said, as calmly as he could with his shirt-collar constricting his throat. He didn't need to look to know the highwayman had gotten the jump on him.
"Hey, Les. Got a problem there?"
"Just a simple misunderstanding," Lester lied to Faval, as the highwayman relaxed his grip just enough that Lester turn his head to see his opponent's scarred face. He knew it was the other hand, the one that wasn't at his throat, that he needed to worry about.
The highwayman looked from one cousin to the other with nothing short of hatred in his dark eyes.
"What's an Isaachian and someone from the Manster District doing in these parts?"
"We're looking for work in Marfa," Lester repeated.
"Bull."
"Hey, buddy. I don't think so." Faval said it in an off-handed way, but he was already reaching for his quiver.
"Don't do it, Faval," Lester managed to say.
Drawing the Yewfelle here, in this place, would bring down more trouble than either of them could handle. But Faval went and did it anyway; Lester heard the air sing as his cousin pulled back on the shining bow and the light of the holy weapon danced on their faces.
"Briggid's boy," muttered the highwayman as he released his grip on Lester. "And you must be Lex's kid."
"What?" Lester rubbed at his neck, wondering if he'd heard correctly.
The highwayman had his blade out now, but he was in a defensive stance.
"Who sent you?"
"Who'd you think?" Faval didn't waver in his aim; he was still poised to send the Yewfelle's arrow through the highwayman.
"Grannvale's new emperor?" The highwayman let out a hoarse bark of laughter. "He's twice the fool that his father was if he thinks sending you two in here will fix anything."
The three of them held their poses for a moment- Faval ready to shoot, the highwayman with his blade raised, and Lester empty-handed and quite frankly struck by the stranger's words.
"Listen, kiddies. I'd love to talk, but I'd rather do it when you're not pointing the Yewfelle at my throat. Later."
And he slipped away into the dark. Faval's arrow passed through empty air and embedded itself in the dirt.
"Who the hell was that?" said Faval as he scowled over the missed shot. "Not many people can dodge like that."
"I don't know, but I think I'm glad you didn't shoot him." Lester was intrigued by the way the highwayman spoke of the prior generation's lost heroes- as though he'd known them, really. "Now, put that away and let's find a place for the night."
-x-
The place they found was shabby and stained, with one bed for the two of them to share. Emperor Seliph hadn't given them enough of a stipend that they could afford to spend freely on their lodgings... and besides, that kind of display would attract attention, which was the last thing Lester wanted after their encounter with the highwayman.
"He knew my mum," Faval said of their acquaintance. "Wonder if he was one of her pirates."
"Maybe. I wonder why he took me for one of the Dozels." Lester also wondered if Faval had deliberately taken the good side of the bed, or if there was a good side. "I don't look anything like Johalva... or his brothers. Or his father, for that matter."
Lester recalled the Dozel clan without effort- all brown-haired and scowling, with a tendency to coarse, thick features. He hoped he didn't come off that way.
"No idea. I thought that Lex guy didn't have any kids."
"I'm pretty sure he didn't." Lester mulled it over a while, then added, "He could tell where each of us was raised just on how we talked. He's travelled, that's for sure."
"Gotta be a pirate," Faval said.
"Or a mercenary."
"Yeah." Faval yawned. "An Isaachian and someone from the Manster District. He got us all right and all wrong in the same moment."
"Well, a fine pair of nobles we make given you can't open your mouth without sounding like a street tough from Conote." Lester was hardly the first to make that comparison, but he felt it was probably the most accurate way of summing up how Faval, Duke of Jungby, presented himself.
"Hah. You're the one who thinks he talks like a Grannvale noble when it's dead obvious you come from the ass-end of Isaach." Faval did a fair imitation of Tirnanog's particular brogue.
"Hey, Mother tried her best with me."
"Guess she didn't have much to work with," said Faval. "All right. Good night, Your Saintly Highness of the Noble House of Edda."
"We probably shouldn't be talking about this," said Lester, mindful of the thin walls. "Good night, Faval."
-x-
"I'm starting to wonder if His Majesty didn't pick the wrong pair for this job," Lester said in the morning as he looked over their collection of maps. "How are the two of us supposed to bring law and order to Verdane when we can't even get a drink without ending up in a fight?"
"C'mon, who else was he going to send? Arthur and Tinny? That'd be funny."
Lester had to shake his head at the idea of the Velthomer-Freege siblings attempting to pacify Verdane. But really, the mission was ridiculous. Two men, tramping through a large and wild nation that hadn't really seen proper government since war broke out between Grannvale and Agustria more than twenty years before. Somehow, through either kismet or charisma, the sons of House Jungby were supposed to bring Verdane justice and the rule of law. Lester would've felt better about their prospects had the emperor given them something resembling an army.
And then they walked out of the inn to find the highwayman in his full gaudy costume, perched on the front stoop and whittling a stick.
"I've been waiting half the morning for you little dolts," he said as he glanced in their direction.
"You!" Lester didn't doubt for a second that the innocent-seeming small knife and sharpened stick could be deadly in the highwayman's hands.
"Yes, me. I figured I could might as well join you two knuckleheads before someone less compassionate than me put an end to you."
"How about you tell us who you are first, buddy," said Faval in the tone of voice that usually involved the Yewfelle and projectiles.
"The name's Dew."
Lester had known a few moments in his life when words alone made him flinch like a cross-punch delivered hard to the gut, and this was such a moment.
"No way," he said without even thinking. "Mother always told us you'd been killed at Belhalla."
"Heh." Dew smiled, though one corner of his mouth didn't rise very far. "I dropped to the ground when the firefight started. Rolled around in some blood then played dead and crawled away on my belly after sundown. If the rest of them had any sense, they'd have done the same, but no. They all went down defending their honor and virtue."
He spat out honor and virtue like they tasted bitter on his tongue. Lester, who had only been able to piece together a fragmentary account of the legendary disaster, found questions spilling from his mouth.
"Did anyone else make it out of there alive? Holyn did, I know- he reached us in Isaach."
"He's still around?" A gleam of something like hope flickered across Dew's face.
"No," said Lester, and the highwayman's expression went flat again.
"I think Beowulf got away. Once Sigurd died, he knew he wasn't gonna get paid, and he wasn't in it to prove his knightly honor or holy-blooded holiness. His contract got unexpectedly dropped and he was out of there." Dew shrugged. "Lex died for sure, if that's what you're asking about."
"You've got me all wrong. I'm not Lex's son. My parents are Lady Aideen and Bishop Claude."
"Aideen? You mean that?" Lester thought he saw, for the first time, genuine shock in the older man's eyes. Then the eyes narrowed back into cynical slits. "Kid, I don't know what your mum told you, but you're the spit of Lex of Dozel."
Lester didn't want to think about that right now.
"Well, what about Bishop Claude?"
"He was hurt bad. Got put on somebody's horse by one of the Chalphy knights and sent off who knows where. Never saw him again." For all his earlier claims of compassion, Dew wasn't showing much of that now. "Any other questions for me?"
"I've got none," said Faval. He'd been taking this all in without much of a reaction. Then again, Lester thought, neither of his parents had been lost at Belhalla and Faval wasn't carrying around any lifelong questions about who died there and how.
"No, I suppose not right now," Lester said after a moment's reflection. "Thanks, though. I guess it's good to know the truth."
"Well, I've got a question for you," Dew said as he turned toward Faval. "Your twin sister's still alive?"
"Patty? Yeah, she's fine. She went back to Thracia 'cause she's hoping to marry a general's son and inherit a mansion."
"Good," said Dew, and Lester thought the highwayman sounded genuinely pleased. "Always did worry about that kid."
"Why?" asked Lester.
"Came into the world feet first and she wasn't strong. All the rest of you kids were healthy little savages but it looked for a while like we were going to lose Patty." With that, he pocketed his whittling knife and shot a pointed look at the Jungbys. "Are we planning to get to Marfa any time soon, kiddies?"
-x-
"He's for real," said Faval. They'd reached an inn as dingy and sad as the previous night's and the cousins at last had a moment to themselves. "All the rest of that stuff he could've made up or taken out of other people's stories, but he wouldn't know about Patty if he wasn't really there with Mum and Sigurd. One thing I still remember Mum saying after all these years was I had to take care of Patty 'cause she'd been doing everything backwards from the day we were born."
And with that, Faval made peace with the idea of their new traveling companion. But Faval went through life with the Yewfelle in his grasp and the holy brand of Ulir's bloodline on his brow and found it easy enough to take the world in stride- at worst, he might let some punches or arrows fly, but then he'd get over it. He wasn't made for melancholia. As for Lester, he didn't understand at first why he couldn't sleep, but after Faval's third request to "Stop squirming around!" Lester decided that talking about the fate of Claude of Edda might prove helpful.
"The Chalphy knight that Dew mentioned had to be Alec, because we know the rest of Sigurd's men died with him at Belhalla. Sir Alec escaped with his wife Sylvia and their baby girl, and we know they got pretty far because Leen ended up at the orphanage in Darna."
"We don't know nothin'," said Faval. "I don't even know how I got to the orphanage Patty and me ended up in, never mind how Leen got to hers."
"So the woman who served as the Eyes of Claude when he was in the Tower of Bragi might've been Sylvia. That actually makes some sense!"
"No, it doesn't," said Faval. "The Tower isn't anywhere near to Darna. It's clear on the other side of the world."
"Okay. Well maybe Sir Alec took Leen westward to Darna and Sylvia went north with my father."
"And maybe you're thinking about this way too hard," Faval replied. "The Eyes of Father Claude being Leen's mum just sounds to me like one big coincidence."
"It's not coincidence, Faval. It's destiny. Look at all the improbable things that already happened to bring about the new Crusade."
"Yeah," Faval said after thinking it over for a minute. "Okay. A lot of stuff did happen that was pretty unlikely. That still doesn't mean Leen's mum was the Eyes."
"But it feels true."
"Yeah, maybe. You want to talk coincidence? I think it's funny how everybody switched up."
"What do you mean, switched up?"
"So, the way you reckon it, Sylvia dumped her kid at an orphanage and went off with your father. Meanwhile, your mum was up in Isaach getting awfully friendly with Sir Midayle."
"Hey! You don't know anything about that-"
"And that's not even taking into account where Lex of Dozel fits into it," Faval continued. "And from what Dew said, that Beowulf guy just kind of ran off, and his wife somehow gets to Thracia and gets mixed up in some bad way with my old man while my mum is wandering around with me and Patty. And that's just us."
"Now you're the one reading way too much into things," said Lester. "You've really no idea what went on in Tirnanog or anywhere else."
"Exactly," said Faval. And on that note of satisfaction, the Duke of Jungby fell asleep, leaving the Duke of Edda to brood in the darkness.
To Be Continued
A/N: So the hapless "good cop/bad cop" show of Lester 'n' Faval meets up with a bitter and disillusioned Dew, and now things get messy. :)
While Leen and Corple don't necessarily know they're related, per the Alec/Sylvia lovers' conversation Leen was already born before Behalla, so survivors of Sigurd's army (specifically, Lewyn) would at least figure a green-haired dancing girl named "Leen" was likely Sylvia's daughter even if no one knew that Alec!Corple was Sylvia's son. Not that this really matters in the grand sense of the 'fic or anything else but it does go to show how little everyone does know.