The Golden Age
This takes place thirty years after the ending to Shadow Dragon; it assumes that the events of Monshou no Nazo happened in accordance with the "good" ending, wherein Nyna abdicates and Marth basically takes over the entire continent of Archanea. Or, as the game script itself tells it, he "decides to rule over the world."
Warnings: Contains implied brother/sister incest between minor characters. And not in a positive sense, either.
Disclaimer: I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
*****
The red orb of the sun settled gently into a milk-white haze that hung above the mountains to the west of the harbor town. To the east, the sky above the Galder Ocean was a dusky shade of lavender. In the space between these horizons, a lean figure both armed and armored made her way through the shadowed streets of the marketplace. The dying sun tinted the end of her lance, and for a moment it seemed an enchanted weapon infused with fire spells. A veteran of the Great Wars might have been reminded of the Parthia and its burning arrows. This veteran of the Wars wasn't thinking of the sun, or the purple sky, or the beauty of the evening. She was thinking of food and a place to sleep, and of restocking her weapons. A strong drink or two in the bargain would make it a decent night.
The vendors of Galder Harbor stayed open well past sunset; some said the real life of the town didn't begin until the stars came out. Catria had no reason to hurry past the rows of open stalls or to brush away the entreaties of the vendors, no reason save that her goals were simple and she'd learned to live without a great deal. The confectioner's little dainties didn't amount to a meal, and the indigo silks of the textile shop might suit her coloring but would do her little good in a fight. She had but one key item on her shopping list.
The armorer was a man about her own age, with some gray shot through his hair and a good deal of it in his beard. She asked him what he had in the way of hand axes, and he spread his entire stock of axes before her, no doubt with the hopes she'd be tempted by the crude imitation of Hauteclere. She ignored it and took up the best of the hand axes, one with a blade of forged Altean steel.
"Six hundred."
"You're a cheat. This axe won't last for more than thirty uses before the handle snaps. Four hundred."
"That's Macedonian ironwood. It'll last you a hundred blows."
"It's Aurelian heartwood," she said, allowing her Macedonian accent to bleed into the words. "Four hundred."
In the end, the armorer agreed she could have it for a little more than her desired price.
"Four hundred and fifty. In gold. Not silver, and not that blasted red stuff they're passing off as coin these days."
"Is this gold enough for you?" Catria slid five coins across the counter. The armorer picked one up, brought it to his lips as though he planned to test it with his teeth, and apparently thought better of it.
"Aye. That'll do." A note of reverence touched his gruff voice as he admired the sheer beauty of the design. The golden seraph of the previous reign was the unbeatable standard for purity in Archanea, but the quality of workmanship was also better than anything the contemporary mints could turn out. "Not many of these circulatin'. Most of 'em that remain are in Her Majesty's own treasury."
He gave her change in gold-- coins from Free Khadein, but at least they weren't cut with base metal. As Catria put away the change, she hesitated, then pulled out one more of the precious Archanean seraphs. The light of the setting sun flashed red across the clear details on its surface, illuminating the profile of a handsome young man. A boy, really. Young enough to be Catria's own son.
You promised us so much.
Catria stowed her gold and her new weapon, and made her way to the waterfront for some refreshment. The Falcon Queen wasn't the most disreputable tavern in Galder Harbor; it occupied a comfortable middle ground wherein legitimate and illegitimate dealings blurred together. Like a piece of shot silk, the color of the place differed depending on where one stood to look at it. The very sign above the door embodied this ambiguity; depending on one's perspective, the painted image showed either the titular queen's bold strength or her merciless ambition. Catria liked the place because the drinks weren't cut with poison; the liquor and ale fueled gambling and debates but rarely led to crime. Instead of breaking into violent fights over the Whites and the Blues, the customers took bets on whether or not Queen Lizabet would manage to capture her brother by the end of the year.
"It's even. He can't get out of Grust, but no way is she getting over the bridge."
"The Chiasmir straits are the most overrated line of defense on the continent. A half-trained boy could take that bridge with a dozen men."
"Aye, and he did. Twice."
They were not speaking of Prince Henry, nor his renegade brother Prince Bran. Catria watched as the gamblers raised their cups, as though on instinct, to the memory of an earlier youth. They honored him, for all that he was in truth responsible for the current troubles, this "War of the Children" that might easily stretch to ten years at its current pace.
A king with no heir brought peril to his country. A king with too many heirs brought absolute ruin. The squabbles of the House of Anri soured the air of the entire continent, as princes and princesses carried on like marketplace drunks. Only, instead of overturning fruit carts and fish-stalls, they overturned entire nations. First the youngest of the five rose in rebellion against his siblings, declaring his portion of Talys to be the leftover scraps of the empire. Then his closest sister intervened to save him when the three senior siblings brought an army against the rogue prince, and from then on it was the death of Macedon all over again, with brothers and sisters not knowing if they wanted to kiss each other or kill one another. The distaff branch of the family even jumped into the fray, playing diplomatic games with the aim of stealing as much as they could from their blood-crazed cousins. The whole fiasco reached a tragicomic peak when Pontifex Ellerean was coerced into appointing the eighteen-year-old middle sister as his successor, which ended Free Khadein as anyone knew it and narrowed the choices of anyone aiming to flee.
In a case like this, it was hard for people to understand who and what was the enemy. Most citizens threw up their hands, then ducked their heads and prayed to any god listening that this outsized family altercation would just go away, and soon. Others, like those lucky enough to stay in places like the neutral ground of Galder Harbor, tossed down their drinks and backed one royal brat or another, as though the heirs of Anri were pit fighters in a particularly vast arena.
"Prince Henry's out of money. He's paying his troops now with promises-- titles and estates in Altea, even."
"Henry'll retake Altea when Lord Narga comes back to give all of us presents."
That brought a number of chuckles from the gamblers.
"Don't count Henry out. He's got the Falchion."
"That piece of tin only worked against dragons. Lizabet has the Miracle Sword."
"She's no mistress of the blade. Now, if Lizabet had the Gradivus...."
And the table erupted in shouts, as the idea of Lizabet armed with the legendary lance provoked high emotions in people. She already had Iote's Shield plus the so-called "Miracle" sword, and having the sacred lance of Archanea in her personal arsenal was a idea to make even the cynics of Galder Harbor uneasy. Fortunately, the Gradivus was locked away where not even Queen Lizabet could command someone to fetch it for her.
Caeda had the sense to recognize what a brood of dragonspawn she'd reared. How that happened, I'll wonder to the day I die.
"Catria, the Azure Knight."
Catria had seen him coming and taken his measure before the young man spoke to her. This one was a soldier, not a gambler. He wore Lizabet's white badge on his tunic, ill-concealed beneath a cloak.
"Some call me that," she said, and deliberately looked past him. "Some have called me other things, through the years."
"Indeed. The tales of your prowess haven't faded with time." He cocked his head, like an intelligent bird about to mimic true speech. "I've heard you're currently searching for an employer."
Blasted spies. The precious channels of information the Liberation army used during the War of Heroes were turned to something despicable in peacetime.
"I don't take sides in this war. I could afford better entertainment than this if I did."
"Surely, a knight of your stature knows the value of a stable nation."
"We had a stable nation. So we thought, anyway." Catria drained her second cup; she closed her eyes to better savor the burn of the Dolhr rotgut they called brandy at this place. "It appears the welfare of an entire continent is too much for one pair of shoulders."
The agent misinterpreted her; he saw Catria's comment as a slight against his queen, when in truth Catria was speaking of things passed more than a decade before. It took a while for the agent to wind down from his eloquent defense of Lizabet and her rights to the empire. Catria waited until he was done, then knocked the conversation in other direction.
"If I were Queen Lizabet, and I am glad that I'm not, I'd go back to Pales to tend my own lands and wait patiently for fate to hand me the territories under dispute. If the past tells us anything of the future, she's likely to outlive her brothers by many years. Why waste time with them now?"
The agent didn't appreciate her joke.
"Lady Catria, are you speaking lightly of the longevity of our queen?"
"I'm saying her brothers are weaklings. Henry will wear himself out chasing ghosts, and Bran will drink himself to death beneath his twin sister's skirts."
"Lady Catria, if you agree that they are both unfit to rule, why will you not stand with us?"
"I see no place to stand with any decency." No safe place between the sword and the wall, not when the sword was dipped in the poison of cynical politicking and the wall was made of starry-eyed fanaticism.
"Lady Catria...." He took a seat across from her; evidently her skills were still storied enough as to make this young jay forget his manners. "These are troubled times--"
"I've seen worse."
"And you can help us to end them."
She was too angry to laugh at him and too weary to argue. She let the agent plead with his eyes for a while; his lips were parted with expectation, some final plea resting unspoken between them. It was a a parody of seduction, and Catria had given up far better than anything this boy could offer.
"I swore my oaths to my king and commander before you were born. I will not take up arms against any of his children." An image of baby Lizabet, with wide blue eyes beneath a tuft of hair, flashed into Catria's mind.
Gods, he was so proud of her. Like a little replica of her mother, he said....
"Excuse me. I need to place my bets." The betting tables never closed at the Falcon Queen, but it was the best excuse she was willing to give. The bets consumed a fair amount of the silver she'd earned in her last paying job in Grust. King Yubello was sorry to see her go, but when young Henry and his army crossed into Grust seeking shelter from his sister's dragoons, Catria knew that, this time, her place was as far away from the melee as was possible. She'd liked working for Yubello, and losing her position there fueled her resentment against the Children nearly as much as did the mess they'd made of their father's legacy.
Catria left the tavern dissatisfied. There was not enough brandy in her blood to give her the illusion of happiness, and not enough silver in her purse to get her to Pyrathi if she lost her bets. She wanted to hold onto those seraphs as long as possible, as already a number of people saw things like that armorer, and said it was gold or no sale. Catria fingered the hilt of her dagger; there was no arena proper in Galder Harbor, but there were other ways of making money with one's wits and reflexes. The young blades of the waterfront always did tend to underestimate a woman.
"She never cries," he said, and handed the child over so that "Auntie Catria" could see for herself. "A child this young, and she doesn't cry. She's a wonder."
Catria spread her winnings out upon the bed. Most of it was Lizabet's debased coinage, silver pieces with the queen's pretty face on one side and her Falcon Pegasus on the reverse. The one gold coin in the lot was from Khadein, with the arms of the Pontifex Cornelia.
"I could settle down in Khadein. No wars, no trouble as long as you do whatever Her Holiness says. It's too blasted hot there, though."
Catria was muttering to herself to pass the time. She had no desire to live in Cornelia's theocracy. It was difficult to worship a man as a saint when you'd known him at close quarters-- and in no royal palace, either, but the kind of living where walls were all canvas, bed was a heap on the floor, and the privy was a hole in the ground. Catria should fly there some day and tell the Pontifex about the time she and the Prince of Light had each decided that Raman Bay was a good place for a morning swim....
No, she wouldn't tell that story. Some part of her soul that hadn't quite scabbed over still hurt at the memory. She had others, though, that might serve to enlighten Her Holiness. There was the incident involving a bottle of centuries-old Chiasmir liquor, wherein Catria learned in an extremely colorful manner why the prince so rarely drank alcohol. The memory amused her, until it raised the unpleasant image of reckless young Prince Bran, staggering down the halls of Macedon Palace into the arms of his sister Marceline.
"How could two such parents produce these miserable children?" she asked the stains on the ceiling. "The boys might have been better if they'd really known their father, but I can't explain Lizabet." Or perhaps she could... take the mother's wits and cunning, but leave out the heart, and take the father's resolve, but with his basic sense of justice perverted, and Catria had a decent approximation of the Falcon Queen. Cornelia was even worse; Catria still didn't know how a family known for their sense could turn out such a hard-hearted little fanatic.
"It's enough to make one question the divine rights of heroes," she said, pouring the tainted silver from one hand to the other. "If decency isn't passed down in the bloodline, why give these little fools the weapons? They only end up holding their own people hostage."
If Lizabet's agent were still skulking around, he could have her brought in for treason. Catria decided it was best to turn in for the night. She dumped the silver into her purse and threw the purse in the corner. As for the gold seraphs, those were tucked in a pouch she kept around her neck. That pouch was the last article she removed from her person each night; she kept it under her pillow as she slept. This night, Catria slipped her hand into the pouch and withdrew one of the coins. The soft metal was smudged with the years, but by the flickering light of her candle, the image of the young king was still beautiful.
"You saved us from the dragons, but there's no one strong enough to save us from ourselves," she said. She closed her fingers around the coin, held it tightly until the metal grew warm in her hand. So Catria the Azure passed another solitary night, lost in the dreams of three decades before. Outside her room, the fever of this decade's war burned brightly, from the hilltops of Macedon to the crowded streets of Pales, from the bridge of Chiasmir to the shores of Talys.
The next morning, the drunks at the Falcon Queen received the news that Lizabet had converted one of Prince Henry's top generals, and they downgraded Henry's odds overall to one-in-thirty. Catria collected her share of last night's wager, then left town on the road south.
*****
A/N: Marth and Caeda's (awful) children are, in order of descending age, Lizabet, Henry, Cornelia, Marceline, and Bran. Marceline and Bran are twins. Lizabet is in her mid-twenties, the twins in their late teens. Catria is about forty-six in this scene.
At the base of it, I find "Marth takes over the known world" to be an extremely unsatisfying ending to his tale, especially given the characterization of Marth in FE3 (see characterization rant on my DA journal). Simply put, that facile manner of empire-building tends to have terrible repercussions down the line. The ending is even more odd given the general darkness of the Archanea-verse, which is fairly unkind to everyone outside Marth and Caeda. Nyna and Camus? Hardin? Wolf and his crew? Abel, Palla, and Est? No happy endings there. So, I give you, as the late Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story.