A Dark-Adapted Eye
I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
Warnings: Generally dark subject matter. Spoilers for FE3.
More than thirty people braved the icy wind and snow showers to make the journey to a desecrated temple on the outskirts of the capital. Though bundled against the cold, the varied length and richness of their mantles suggested that this group represented a range of society-- aristocrats, merchants, artisans, soldiers, and laborers. Likewise, they numbered men and women, the gray-haired and the beardless lads alike. One young lass held a babe in her arms, as though this meeting mattered more than good health or sense. Some were brave enough to wear openly their badge of association, a ribbon of the blue-green color known as "popinjay," while others sported a more subtle cluster of white or gold ribbons.
The rear of the temple proved drafty, so those sitting there had no reason to take off their mantles. This was useful-- Castor had a scarf over the lower part of his face to muffle his Talysian accent, while Gordin kept his face shadowed to conceal the gooseberry-green eyes that marked him as an Altean. So Castor kept his mouth shut, and Gordin his head down, while a man who wore his popinjay ribbon like a military sash recited all the latest injustices, the crimes of the usurper and his Talysian whore.
First it was the taxes, then it was the way some old noble families of Archanea had their lands redistributed to the common folk. It conveniently wasn't brought up that the ones having their lands taken away had all been found guilty of treason and worse. Then there was a vast amount of time spent on the queen's escapades during the wars. Most of that was old rubbish-- the same well-worn tale about how the queen, when a wee lass of fourteen, used her feminine wiles to cajole young men into serving her cause. As far as Castor knew, it had only happened once; Her Majesty generally used gold, and lots of it, to get what she wanted. To hear these people speak, half the old Archanean League had been lured into the fight by the promise of time spent in young Princess Caeda's bed, with her lord turning a blind eye to it all.
Now that His Majesty the King had been established to everyone's satisfaction as a pimp and a scoundrel, talk turned to his indiscretions.
"He bought himself a concubine from Grust, and yet no one's seen her since the war's end."
Castor had to sink his fingernails into Gordin's arm as the hall buzzed with the general consensus that the Grustian maiden now lay on the floor of the sea, most likely with the king's child in her belly. The talk just got more heated from there, to the point where several brought up His Majesty's fondness for Macedonian pegasus knights, and they all said "pegasus knight" like it was a fancy term for a slut. Granted, Castor had been surprised back in the day to find the Macedonian riders had taken real knightly vows and weren't just a gaggle of short-skirted girls playing around on their flying ponies. But no one who'd actually met a Macedonian knight would be thinking of them in the terms these popinjay people were slinging around now.
By the end of the meeting, the king and queen stood accused of indiscretions with nearly everyone who'd ever served them with the exception of that ancient withered fire dragon, and Castor reckoned it was likely that this crowd had just forgotten about Bantu. Castor wasn't sure whether he should walk close to Gordin or to keep his distance on their way home, as the very air around Gordin seemed warm with his anger.
"How could you endure hearing those vile lies about your princess?" Gordin spat once he had enough control of himself to get out the words.
"Lies are lies," replied Castor. "If they were sayin' nice things about Her Majesty, we'd not ha' been there."
Gordin shook his head. He still had a lad's face, and with his eyes round with shock and dismay, he looked no more than twelve.
"And that terrible story about Sister Melissa! How can people believe such things of the king? Can't they see, from what he's already done for them, that he'd never do something so base?"
"Look around you, man." Castor flung his arms wide at their surroundings-- fine homes with damaged walls and broken windows, untended gardens gone dead and brown beneath the frost, a pair of feral dogs feasting openly on someone's rubbish. "All through the last war, I was hearin' about Just King Hardin and how he'd never order villages sacked and wee children murdered. And he did it all the same."
A rat scampered across their path, not the least bit bothered by their approach. Castor fired a shot from his crossbow and left it dead in the gutter. Killing rats wasn't a specific duty of the Free Knights of Archanea, but a rat near the size of small cat surely counted as a threat to the people of the capital city.
"How d'you expect people to trust their new king after all the last new king did to the land?"
"King Marth is not that sort of man," Gordin said, and his stiff Altean dignity showed plain as the moon.
"He's a man. Can't they all be corrupted?"
Gordin stopped short, mouth open like he meant to catch some snowflakes.
"See here, Gordin. You were raised in a land that accepted your king and his house without question. Not me, man. Not in Talys. Mostyn is a good king, maybe a great one, but there's still some that wish he'd go away forever and the let the clans govern themselves. Queen Caeda knows it-- there's nothing we heard tonight that's worse than what's been said about her own beloved father."
XXX
The bells of the Great Temple had chimed out midnight before the pair of bowmen reached the headquarters of the Free Knights.
"Goodness! We wondered if you hadn't been caught," said Midia as she let them in. Even at the late hour, she still wore a shirt of mail under her robe.
"Not us, Lady Midia," said Castor as he unwrapped his scarf. Gordin just shook his head as he hung up his mantle.
Midia, dear soul that she was, had a pot of pale golden apple-daisy tea waiting for them, and insisted that they each drink a cup before recounting the night's adventure. George and Astram had waited up for them as well, though the men were drinking something far stronger than apple-daisy tea. Castor looked with longing at George's glass of brandy, but it wasn't offered him.
"They're not terribly subtle, as rebels go. Most wear Nyna's colors openly," reported Gordin. "The hate in the room was almost palpable."
Castor let Gordin do most of the talking, only chipping in his own observations when it seemed Gordin had missed something. He had to fill in quite a bit when Gordin began to blush and stammer over the slanders regarding Sister Melissa.
"Well, he did buy the girl, from her own grandmother no less," said George, long fingers interlaced beneath his chin.
"He bought her freedom! It was the only way to see to her safety. You remember what General Lang--"
"He acquired the girl, she fell in love with him, and now she's disappeared off the face of the earth after causing a very public scene with Princess Caeda."
"Caused a scene," Gordin repeated; his face had gone quite pink, and not just from the wind. "Sister Melissa was merely teasing Her Highness. They were friends. Look, after she vanished, King Marth even had his own men sent to search for her--"
"That doesn't help, Gordin." Midia poured another cup of tea and placed it in front of the flustered Altean. "If one doesn't know the particulars, the entire business with Sister Melissa really does look very bad."
"His Majesty expects to be judged by his actions alone. I don't think he's quite grasped that actions don't always speak to everyone in the same tongue." George stood and walked to the mullioned window that overlooked the back gardens in the day but now showed uneven diamonds of darkness, speckled by firelight.
Gordin opened his mouth, but quickly shut it again, and only shook his head as George continued.
"It may be out of line to say it, but a lot of this hinges on the queen. If she delivers a healthy boy come springtime, the usurper and his whore become a legitimate dynasty, and half of these malcontents will settle down and thank the gods for a stable kingdom. If she has a girl, or if the kid doesn't live, the argument that the king carries any special blessing loses its force."
Castor looked at the Archanean's lean, fair profile with a new sense of admiration. At times he'd thought that the number of mainlanders with common sense could be counted on his fingers.
"When is the king due back in Pales?" The mighty Sir Astram made his first contribution to the evening.
"He's supposed to return from Macedon before the queen enters her confinement," replied Midia. Her fingers rested oh-so-gently on Astram's arm as she leaned forward to refill his glass.
George muttered something under his breath; to Castor's ears it sounded like "And there's another problem."
XXX
On the fifth day of the week, Castor went to Millennium Court for his interview with the queen.
She received him in a reception room as though he, Castor son of Asvin son of No One In Particular, had at least the same rights as the noblemen who were squealing over taxes and the loss of ancient privilege. Though Her Majesty's child was due in the Month of the Ram, the queen was yet so slender that it took a keen eye to notice the change in her at all. But her color was good, and suited the blue and murrey of the Royal House of Talys, and Castor didn't have to gild his tongue with flattery to say his queen looked lovely.
Her Majesty always made sure to have a plate of plain shortbread and some black ale on hand for these interviews. So it had been the very first time she'd entertained him, after he'd taken the prize in the annual boar hunt. She'd ignored his dirty fingernails and pressed on him shortbread from the royal kitchens, and likewise ignored his uplander's speech and talked to him as though he had more sense than a sheep. And Castor, for his part, had looked at her bright eyes and shining hair and wondered if the heavens hadn't sent them an angel to be their next queen. A peculiar sort of angel to be sure, one with spirit and wit and the ability to grasp where desperation might take a man-- long before she ever could have felt the corbie of despair flutter in her own heart.
If any woman could withstand the cruel tongues and spite of the mainlanders, then surely it was Caeda of Talys. Indeed, once all the due pleasantries were done with, Her Majesty was positively eager to talk about what she called "dissent in the street."
"There are elements operating underground within a mile of this court, Castor, that should be brought to light."
"Aye, Your Majesty. The streets of Pales are sticky as the path of a snail with lies and deceit."
"Then we need to lift up every stone and piece of rotten wood to find these snails, and send them back into their shells."
Castor imagined a giant snail draped in a popinjay banner; it caused him to smile, and the queen smiled with him for a moment. Then her rosy mouth turned as stern as it ever did, and she spoke to him in a lowered voice, as though Millennium Court itself were full of malcontents.
"I think some of this dissent may live close to us, closer than we might want to believe."
"Aye, my lady. I don't doubt it." Indeed, Castor knew well that he was living with three who still believed that Nyna hung the moon. Dame Midia and her knightly companions accepted their new sovereign mostly because Nyna ordered them to before she went across the ocean.
"I want you to keep your eyes and ears sharp, Castor. Follow any and all signs that point to a rebellion-- wherever the paths may take you." She tipped her pretty head to the side and blessed him with a pearly smile. "I believe you're especially well placed for this."
"Aye." To spy on his housemates was an easy task. For a moment, he'd feared the queen was asking him to trail one of the bishops or a Knight Commander. He'd have agreed to it, even so-- he saw the small purse, heavy with coin, that the queen had concealed until that moment in her hand.
"I think thirty pieces of gold should cover your expenses," said the queen.
She placed the purse in his opened palm, like a shrine-maiden bestowing a goddess icon on a pilgrim.
"I'll do anything to serve Your Majesty," Castor said as his fingers closed around it. When the purse was heavy, the heart indeed was light.
XXX
On the seventh day of the week it was back to the ruined temple, through the cold and the slush, for another round of complaints from the malcontents. These were mostly the same complaints, though there was a lot of talk about Grust that evening.
"He's got the prince of Grust locked up in the great castle of Altea."
"Yes, 'for the boy's own safety,'" one man jeered. He had a rich mantle and a Nyna ribbon.
"Separated the poor thing from his sister," a woman added. "Twins are sure to ail, kept apart like that."
As far as Castor knew, there had never been any love lost between Grust and Archanea since the days of the Liberation Wars. But these fine citizens of Pales considered Grust to be a cautionary tale. Under Just King Hardin's rule the land had been raped, a long with a good many of its women, and all the unsavory details like the death of little Prince Yubello's regent and the prince's "incarceration" in Altea Castle flowed together with the gutter-minded talk about Sister Melissa into a single stream of filth.
"Mark my words, they'll disappear, just like our Nyna."
A man in his late thirties-- Castor pegged him as a burgher-- called it out, his voice strained with excitement. He might as well have screamed "Fire!" from the way the assembly responded. Most shouted down his lack of caution; though the malcontents were happy to hash over every terrible thing, real or imagined, that the king had already done, they were usually careful not to predict any more evil deeds.
"Why can't he tell us where Nyna went?" wailed the lass with the child in her arms. "We ask, and ask, and never can learn where she's gone to."
Her babe responded with a thin, high wail of its own. Another malcontent in the making, thought Castor. He had one of his own feet placed over Gordin's to keep the younger man securely in his chair.
"These people live in a world where white is black and up is down," Gordin fairly shouted once they were clear of the malcontents. "How do they ever lace up their own clothes? They can't see straight!"
Castor let the fellow rant for a time; in a sense, it was a pity that he spent so much time in Gordin's company. Gordin didn't have it in him to be the dissident Castor was seeking. Being a native Altean didn't absolve him from suspicion, but the way he wore his heart on the sleeve, as a badge of his honor, meant that Gordin wouldn't be able to conceal any skulduggery for more than a fortnight.
"By Lord Naga's fangs!" he said now, striking his opened palm with a fist. "We lost our own land over the fate of those children!"
"I wouldn't remind anyone of that. It might sound like King Marth has a reason to bear a grudge against the lad and his sister."
Gordin stopped short, sending a spray of puddle-muck in Castor's direction.
"How do you slip so easily into the mindset of these people?"
"I've told you. Talys is no place for fine notions of knighthood. Our world is one where the dogs eat the dogs, and it's best to be a living dog-- not a dead one."
"I remember Talys as quite a pleasant land."
"You lived in a castle in the service of a prince, not in a hovel thatched with heather and a plain dirt floor." Castor kept his eyes open wide, knowing that if he closed them at that moment, he'd be treated to the image of his sister's dead face. A shout sounded behind him, but it wasn't an echo from Maiden Lane in Port Warren. It came from a narrow side-street that branched off from their path at an angle, as did the high-pitched scream that followed it.
They looked at one another, seeking confirmation of their instincts. Then they were off and running, Castor with sword in hand and Gordin with his arrows ready-- Free Knights to the aid of a damsel in need.
XXX
After they'd rescued a lass from a drunken lout who proved to be her own husband, Castor felt he and Gordin had both earned the brandy Midia poured for them. George, too, was waiting for them-- for "debriefing," as he called it. Sir Astram was conspicuous by his not being there, and when he asked about it, Castor was told that the Archanean swordsman was on patrol elsewhere in the city. Castor made a note of that as Gordin gave the account of the night's meeting.
"They're convinced that there's something sinister in the way His Majesty is handling the heirs of Grust. It's absurd."
"No, it isn't absurd."
Gordin's eyes seemed as large as quail's eggs as he stared at George.
"Mister George, I don't understand you."
"The king has taken the twins-- two potential foci for rebellion-- out of their own land and is keeping them under close observation in his own bases of power. If educating the twins were His Majesty's sole concern, he could have sent them both to school in Khadein. He didn't."
"Prince Yubello would learn nothing of statecraft in Khadein," objected Midia, who looked as shocked as Gordin did. "In Altea he's learning how to one day manage his own kingdom."
"Oh, of course." George sounded sincere, but there was something glib in his voice, at least to Castor's ears. He was setting Midia at ease more than anything, Castor decided. He also decided that George knew a great deal more about this whole business with the twins than he was letting on.
Castor lingered a while by the fire after Gordin and Midia had each retired to their rooms. George, too, waited up, nursing his glass of brandy. Castor closed his eyes and pretended to nap in hopes that either George would say something more of interest, that Sir Astram would come home in a talkative mood, or both. It wasn't ten minutes before George rewarded him with a statement not meant for the innocent among them.
"If Yubello ever sits on his throne, then I'm the long-lost heir of Thabes."
XXX
Castor expected to find Gordin sleeping, but instead his roommate had lain awake in his bunk, preyed upon by agitation. When Castor got to their room, he found that Gordin had a plan worked out for himself.
"I'm going to find our Sister Melissa. When she turns up safely, people won't be able to hurl that falsehood any longer."
"Good luck with that," replied Castor. "While you're out safeguarding the nation, you may as well pray that little Prince Yubello doesn't catch his death of cold in that drafty castle...."
King Marth might not quite have learned yet how the world worked in terms of what people saw, and what they believed, but young Gordin really didn't understand. But they'd learn... they'd learn. Castor closed his eyes against the darkness, only to see again the image of Leen, down on the floor in the squalor of the House of the Doves. He sent up a silent prayer for his sister while he waited, ears pricked for the homecoming of the fifth and final Free Knight of Archanea.
To Be Continued?
Author's Notes: I wrote this as a one-shot character piece without intending to resolve any of the plot-threads, but if I should care to revisit Castor and the gang at a later date, I will upload subsequent chapters. This is a fragment of my Tales of the Unified Kingdom FE3 project-- it's set in the year 609, the year after the end of FE3.