The Cuckoo


Chapter 4: When in Reim

"It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it."

―Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess


Titus shifted, glancing at the sky from his place beside Lady Scheherazade once more.

"Relax," she bade him. "Yunan is frequently unpredictable, but rarely tardy."

Mu Alexius muttered something under his breath and crossed his arms, leaning back against one of the columns caging in the open balcony. He couldn't hear what the imposing Fanalis man said, given that they were on opposite ends of the room, and thought it best not to wonder too deeply. Despite having glimpses of Mu for years and years as his body gestated, the man was a stranger.

More importantly, he looked at Titus as though he wasn't even there, most of the time.

He was mercifully spared the awkward labor of finding some sort of rebuttal to his mother or her staunchest defendant by the linked transport seal finally beginning to glow.

"—ly crazy old bastard!"

The walls echoed slightly with the force of the newcomer's… unique introduction. As the glare died down, they found themselves looking at a young woman sprawled on the now unmarked floor, clutching a large, weathered pack to her. She had hair as blonde as his or Lady Scheherazade's that was twisted back into two large buns, pale skin, and pink eyes practically burning with indignation. Those flames gradually dwindled down to nothing as she took in her new surroundings, and her grip on the bag tightened ever so slightly.

"…Yunan didn't inform you where he was sending you," Lady Scheherazade surmised.

"Yunan didn't inform me he was even considering sending me anywhere," the young woman said, her voice much more pleasant at a lower volume. She climbed to her feet, revealing that she was dressed in a large white linen shirt cut for a man that fell to her knees. It was closed up to her collarbone with small bronze buttons and cinched at the waist with a thick belt of what he thought might be fine Parthevian leather.

She was barefoot and, he realized with a start, shorter than Titus himself, despite being older than him in all senses. She was likely around Lady Scheherazade's height, give or take an inch. She straightened her spine and raised her chin minutely, and for a moment it seemed as though she was standing as tall as Mu.

"My name is Chrysanthi," she said, which made sense, given her coloring. "I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you've been expecting me, Lady Magi."

"Indeed I have," his mother nodded, a rare smile tugging at her mouth. "I see that Yunan is still as inscrutable as ever. He called in an old favor and asked that I host you here in Reim for a time."

Chrysanthi was silent for a moment. "Here as in this country, or…?"

"Personally," Lady Scheherazade specified.

"Oh." She shifted, and he noticed that the laced-up sandals she was wearing didn't quite fit either; she had apparently been entirely outfitted by the other magi. Something about that sat wrong with Titus, and he felt his mother's amusement stir at the back of his mind as she noticed the sentiment.

"Come," she beckoned to the young woman. "I would be willing to wager that after being secluded with that old hermit, you wouldn't turn down a proper bath."

"Oh, you have no idea." Her shoulders slumped, and a soft, relieved smile spread over her face. "I'm just happy to see the sun again, honestly."

"I can make a very good guess," his mother said, a strange, nostalgic note of wryness slipping into her tone. "Is there anything else I can offer you beyond that, before I return to my duties for the day?"

The young woman hefted her bag onto one shoulder, her expression turning thoughtful.

"I think," their new guest said, with genteel aplomb, "that I would definitely appreciate a greater degree of alcohol in my life right now."

Mu finally perked up from where he had been giving her a wary, measured once over. "You'll enjoy your time here, then."

"This is Mu Alexius, one of Reim's foremost warriors." Lady Scheherazade introduced them when the young woman turned to look at the Fanalis. "And Titus Alexius will be your guide while you are here," she finally drew attention to him, and he stood up straight, bowing slightly to Chrysanthi. "I will have a maid escort you to the baths, and he will join you for a midday repast when you are finished. We can speak more tomorrow, so please enjoy the rest of the day as you wish."

"Thank you." She seemed to be taking this situation with amazing sanguinity. Titus wondered if that said something about the young woman herself, or the company she had been keeping as of late. His mother had many conflicting feelings when it came to her fellow magi, and shared very few of them with him.

Also, Chrysanthi's first words had painted a rather vibrant picture in his mind's eye.

He realized belatedly that both his mother and the guest had left, each flanked by a few female attendants. A small snap of panic flared low in his stomach, but he quashed it ruthlessly. This was a test run, of sorts; they knew nothing about this young woman other than the fact that Yunan vouched for her moral character. Gleaning any details from her whatsoever would be good practice before he left for Magnostadt.

He could handle it.

He glanced over at Mu and opened his mouth—to bid him good-bye or assure Mu of his resolve or perhaps even ask for advice—but the older man was already turning away. He leapt from the balcony without so much as a single look back.

Titus sighed, and turned to head over to the kitchens and make arrangements for their guest's meal with the chef.


The food looked like something out of a fairytale, and Anthy did not bat so much as a single lash.

That wasn't something she could really help; while it was a gorgeous, delicious spread, with dishes from all sorts of countries, it was also basically old hat for her. The Kou Empire was a sprawling, luxurious monster that subsumed and assimilated the countries around it, reaching out further to incorporate foreign aspects of cultures that were beyond its reach. Or beyond its reach for the moment, at least. There were some aspects of culture, naturally, that at their core were purely Kou, from back before her uncle ever began extending his influence.

Food was not one of them.

If she was entirely true to herself, the bath had been far more succulent than the feast. She had grown spoiled as a natural matter of course, and it had ben unspeakably wonderful to lounge in a large, steaming pool at her leisure and emerge smelling like a well-kept garden. The scents that the maids had selected had been more cloyingly sweet when compared to the gentle, subtler ones Koubun usually selected for her, and beggars could not be choosers. Not even beggar princesses.

On that note, she had made sure to make all the necessary compliments; she had been raised to have impeccable manners if she ever met foreign dignitaries, and Titus definitely counted. It was, she admitted privately, a bit of an unfair match-up. A spy wasn't much good when you knew he was a spy, and technically a newborn as well. She didn't remember much in the way of specifics, but she knew that he had been around two years old, chronologically, when he met Aladdin in the original story.

Given the strange, skewed version of world events she was living through, it was entirely possible that Titus had been 'born' yesterday.

"I didn't realize Artemyra was so culturally open," Titus remarked politely, rousing her from her musings.

"They probably are, because of the Seven Seas Alliance," she mentioned, taking a sip of sweet, blessedly alcoholic cordial. Yunan had only had tea and water in his house, out of personal taste. "But I have no idea how true that is. I've never been there."

"You haven't?" He perked up, and she could see him mentally scramble to follow up on that. She wanted to pat his head and praise him.

"No." She took a bite of a familiar type of spiced rice dish and tried not to grimace, because it was bland and overcooked compared to the original Kou version of the dish. "Despite the name and appearance, I wasn't born there, either." She downed the rest of her cordial, washing out the disappointing aftertaste. "My mother was a slave that was sold to a brothel halfway across the world from her homeland."

"Sneaky," Belial murmured to her, but it lacked any sort of disapproving edge. It was entirely the truth, after all.

"Oh…" Titus paused awkwardly. He probably only knew about whores and harlots on paper or by word of mouth. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"She's not one now," Anthy said with a shrug, delicately dabbing at her mouth with the napkin provided. "My father saw to that."

"Are you finished?" Titus seemed eager to change the subject. She couldn't blame him; that was a fairly heavy subject to just lay on a person, which was exactly why she had done so. With that much said, he would be hesitant to dredge up much more about her family's circumstances.

She could just come out and say that she was a Princess of Kou and desired transport back to her family, but the veritable superpowers of Reim and Kou didn't always get along, and she saw no reason to put Hakuyuu in debt to Scheherazade and Reim's current Emperor when Yunan was already calling in a favor.

Plus one other small issue, of course.

"Shall we go tour the city, now?" She excused herself with as much grace as she could, smoothing down the flowing fabric of the dress given to her, which she had been told was called a stola. That was a funny aspect of this world she had noted, and actually understood after thinking it over for some time. There was a quote that she had once heard or read at some point, regarding her mother tongue:

"English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary."

The language that spanned the entire world here took that sentiment a step further. Words and phrases were commonly patchworked onto each other, some sharing no common roots or linguistic similarities whatsoever, but held together all the same by the initial iron-clad translation spellwork and preserved until the meaning was universally attached to the word, regardless of culture. It was how the clearly Japanese suffixes came into play, at least on the count of person-to-person formalities.

Explicit ranks such as 'King' and 'Princess' and 'Lord' were more formal than tacking a '-sama' onto the end of somebody's name; she still called Hakuyuu 'Yuu-niisama' in private, for example, as did Hakuryuu. Kouha was in the habit of calling her 'An-An' and referred to their elder brothers as 'En-nii' and 'Mei-nii,' while Hakuwa called her 'Acchan,' but those were special cases.

It had briefly fascinated her, when she was learning how to read and write, but so little was known about the beginning of this world that asking questions like 'why is this word totally different from a similar one' had been useless. Etymology was hardly her passion these days, anyways.

So, the stola was a stola, end of discussion.

"Absolutely," Titus agreed, jarring her from her woolgathering once again.

"You shouldn't have had so much cordial," Belial murmured, just a touch disapproving.

She kept her outward expression pleasant, but hoped the deep wave of steadfast disbelief she directed his way was properly conveyed. Her time with Yunan had dumped a significant amount of stress onto her shoulders between her training and Belial and the magi himself; she deserved a little something to take the edge off.

Also, there was no conceivable way she was going to be able to walk the streets of the capital of Reim without a little something-something to grease the metaphorical wheels.

Honestly, that man was an enigma. She had no idea what Yunan thought he was doing, sending her here of all places. A small part of her charitably recognized that he most likely had thought that her appearance and common sense would serve her well and that Reim would be as safe a starting point as any, with another magi looking out for her. And that he had no real way of knowing about her… personal views on this particular country. The majority of her, however, had been simmering with resentment until she had banked the flames of her ire with an entire pitcher of cordial.

More than just not wanting to inconvenience her family or homeland, the heart of the issue was that she held a deep grudge against this country. It was on her mother's behalf, because Domitia was too kind and satisfied with her current lot in life to be properly resentful about being sold like an animal. Anthy had always—in this life and the last—only been able to truly nurse a grudge for somebody else's sake, and this was one that wouldn't be erased any time soon, she was sure.

It also didn't help that she had been to Italy on a family trip in her former life, and could vividly imagine what the buildings around her would look like, aged and ruined and rebuilt around the husks of an age gone by.

Yes, your city is gorgeous, but you know what would really make it perfect? A little fire and anarchy.

Anthy was a mellow drunk, so the alcohol was actually helping her not blurt out pithy, snide comments such as that one. The buzz from the cordial managed to sweeten her disposition enough for her to fall back on carefully trained habits. Yunan had given her a brief break from the life of a princess, but it was honestly so deeply ingrained into her that she couldn't just pretend she was the young woman she had been before Domitia brought her into this world.

So she made the best of the situation, strolling along with one hand tucked into the crook of Titus's arm. He was, she noticed, just about Kouha's height and even more effeminate than her closest brother; she had honestly mistaken him for a woman, upon first glance.

The way his eyes were sparkling as he took in the sights—obviously for the first time—right along side her didn't exactly boost her opinion of this country very much. It did, however, lend a little extra buoyancy to her mood. She was actually humming lightly under her breath as they paced the perimeter of the Coliseum, and it was even partly out of good cheer, rather than just a desperate attempt to drown out the roar of the crowd and what, exactly, was likely going on inside.

"Would you like to watch—" Titus began.

"No," she said, holding on to her pleasant state of mind with the mental equivalent of a white-knuckled death-grip. "Let's go visit the Forum Remanum instead." Ancient temples won out over needless death and showmanship without question.

"Are you interested in politics then?" Her escort was probably trying his best to be subtle and slick, she realized.

"Not really," she told him, totally honest. "But I find myself inextricably tangled up in them despite my best efforts. So, I might as well keep abreast of them all the same. 'Know thy enemy,' as the saying goes."

"I'm not familiar with the saying," he told her, brow furrowing slightly. "How does it go?"

Oh. That's right, she realized, of course he wouldn't be familiar with it. This world didn't have a Sun Tzu equivalent, or at least didn't have one yet.

"Know thy enemy and know thyself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster," she recited, more than likely bastardizing the half-remembered quote. She hadn't exactly been a fanatic student of ancient Chinese military strategy, after all. There was more to it, she knew, but frankly she had been lucky to remember even that much and Titus had no way of calling her out on it.

"That's very sage advice," he told her, smiling. It made him even prettier, which she hadn't thought possible up until that moment. "You should share it with one of the philosophers milling around."

I thought that was an ancient Greece sort of thing, she didn't say, because she had sobered up a little bit after that thoughtless slip of the tongue. "Maybe another day," was her diplomatic substitute. When the magical barbarian horde-substitutes are looting your ships and sacking the streets, for example.

"Be nice, Anthy," Belial chided, which was entirely uncalled for.

She knew better than to actually say it. She just thought it, very hard, and let the hidden sentiment kindle the deceptively gentle curve of her mouth a little longer. "Actually," she mentioned, "I'm a little surprised you're so willing to let me wander around this part of the city." That was… mostly true. She had hardly been bedecked in silks and gold when they first saw her, but Yunan's word did have centuries of credibility backing it, she supposed.

In the clothes she was wearing and in the company she currently kept, however, it made sense that nobody gave them a second glance; paired up and finely dressed, the two of them made for a pretty picture, just two young patricians out for a stroll.

"You are the guest of Lady Scheherazade herself," Titus explained. "By extension, it would be a grave insult to bar your from these areas."

So that's how you say her name.

"I see." She laughed softly.

Anthy had gleaned more than just a clarification on pronunciation from his impassioned statement. By saying that, he had let her know something very, very important: they didn't know about Belial. Personally, she was entirely inclined to keep it that way. While King Vessels naturally garnered a certain amount of respect, two factors held her back. The first was that she had already personally decided not to use Belial's power if at all possible, barring using Djinn Equip for flight purposes—because it was a damn long road back to Kou from this part of the world and also because who didn't want the ability to fly, really?—and doubtlessly there would be people that wanted a demonstration of her status and capabilities if she was entirely open about her status. The second factor was that the very nature of Belial's abilities caused a kneejerk suspicion to niggle at even the most open and trusting of minds.

Best to just be a mysterious traveler with a powerful benefactor, she felt. Scheherazade probably assumed that Anthy was, at best, a candidate for becoming a King Vessel. In an ideal world, Yunan would probably send somebody on a journey to test them before bestowing a normal, not-cataclysmic power upon them. Or rather, an ideal, sane magi would do so. Given what she knew of Yunan—and Judal for that matter—her own circumstances were admittedly not beyond the realm of imagination.

She just hadn't ever bothered imagining something like this would happen to her. When Judal had offered to raise a Dungeon for her if she fell into Depravity for him and had graciously accepted her gentle refusal—that is to say, he called her a boring little doll and sulked off for the better part of a month—Anthy had well and truly thought she had dodged her one shot at adventure. She had, at the time, nearly regretted it.

Nearly regretted it.

Her decision had been cast in a much better light the next time Hakuei returned to the palace—victorious, naturally—with plenty of battle stories. Anthy was not a fighter. And, unlike her mother, she wasn't a lover, either. Anthy was a bookish, sarcastic crybaby under the courtly veneer of a cloistered, well-groomed princess. She wasn't entirely helpless, granted, but she was still so not cut out for this… this globetrotting quest to get back to her homeland that it was almost funny. She was lucky that she had a knack for lies and half-truths and basic skills for self-sufficiency, carried over from her first life.

"Actually," she said, turning a smile onto Titus. "You know what? I think the Forum can wait a little while. What's the biggest market around here?"

"Um…" Titus looked at her like a deer caught in the headlights.

He probably wouldn't know that, off the top of his very sheltered head. That, she reasoned, was all the more reason to take him along. She wouldn't buy anything, probably, but generally speaking markets were a font of information; there were likely merchants from Kou there who she could ask about travel routes. She wasn't worried about being recognized; very, very few people knew her by sight aside from her relatives and the higher courtiers. During her unexpected trip with Hakuryuu into the countryside, she had been thought to be his bride by the villagers that had sheltered them rather than a princess of Kou in her own right, despite being less than eighty miles from the city she had spent her entire life in.

"I can ask," Titus said, glancing back towards the guards who had been discreetly trailing them the entire time. The beginnings of fascinated excitement glittered in his eyes, and she felt her smile grow a little more honest in response.

That was another benefit: Anthy had a soft spot a mile wide for children. Even if Titus physically and mentally was only slightly younger than her, there was a certain lack of experience; a type of stumbling, curious eagerness he had displayed so far as they explored that had rapidly endeared him to her.

"Let's," she decided, gently steering him over to their protective detail.


"So," said Scheherazade later that night, at dinner. "Titus tells me you seem to be headed to Kou, next."

Titus choked slightly on his wine, apparently not expecting his report on Anthy to be relayed to her face so quickly. Anthy continued sipping at her cider entirely unbothered. Scheherazade wasn't touching the food—understandably—but the princess saw little value in obscuring her plans or even letting her current meal be derailed by them.

"Well, not next," she pointed out, after swallowing the mouthful of marinated chicken she had been enjoying. "Given how far off it is, after all. But, it's the next end goal."

"I wonder," Scheherazade mused. "You were passed to me from Yunan. Am I to send you on to the third of our number?" If her eyes had actually been open, Anthy suspected they might have narrowed after that question for effect. Given Judal's proclivities and the international incidents she occasionally heard Hakuyuu moan to her eldest brother about, her 'childhood friend' likely had a very poor reputation in certain circles.

And that was without taking the stigma of blackened Rukh into consideration.

"I'm sure I'll cross paths with that one too, sooner or late," Anthy admitted. She just chose to avoid mentioning that he was most likely throwing a tantrum and zipping around to find her in the meantime. "But really, I just want to return to that country in particular. I left something important there when Yunan decided to just up and drag me off."

Namely, her entire life.

"I see," the magi nodded slowly, apparently satisfied with her answer. "I believe I understand why Yunan sent you here, then."

"He wanted me to take the long way," Anthy confirmed, her tone sour as she took another long sip of cordial. "At least, I think that's his reasoning. I'm not even sure Yunan always knows what Yunan is thinking." Perhaps that was unfair of her to say, but the man had kidnapped her. No matter how charismatic he was or how good his intentions might have been, she had every right to still resent him for it.

She was very deliberately not thinking about how her cousins or Judal or—oh God—her father might be reacting in the aftermath. It wasn't conceited of her to think that there would be no small amount of fallout over this stunt; even removing the fondness they held for her from the equation, her family was inarguably chock-full of prideful, aggressive people. If somebody—or rather, many somebodies—didn't die once Kouha was informed, she would be shocked. And, she could admit in a twisted, shameful little corner of her mind, perhaps even a little hurt.

She was reminded, once again, how warped her standards had become in this life. She quickly distracted herself with another mouthful of cider.

Her hostess had a benign, unreadable look on her face that made Anthy immediately uncomfortable.

"Did… Have I said something strange?"

"No," Scheherazade shook her head. "I suppose I'm just relieved that you aren't as easily dazzled as the other individuals that Yunan has taken an interest in over the years." She tilted her head in a manner that somehow managed to be both elegant and self-deprecatory. "He helped train me early on in my life, so I must admit that I was once among that number."

Titus looked fascinated, apparently as unprepared for this revelation as Anthy was.

"Really?" She rubbed her thumb against the rim of her goblet, feeling a bit awkward. "I, uh… Well, my sister is always saying that I'm just not an easy girl to satisfy." To be exact, Kourin usually meant it in regards to food, which was as insulting as it was mostly-inaccurate. "So maybe that's it?"

"Perhaps," Scheherazade said graciously, an amused cast overtaking her face. "Are you very close with this sister of yours? It must be difficult, being so far away from her, if so."

That was an almost blatant hook for information, but Anthy would not be baited. "Less difficult than you might think," she huffed, entirely honest. "She's been making even more of a nuisance of herself than usual, since she's going to be married off soon. It's almost like being on a vacation, not having to deal with that every day."

Almost, because not having to listen to Kourin's snide little barbs at her weight and blood was nowhere near worth not having Koubun and the twins by her side. She felt, once again, the phantom throb at not having them at her back. If they were here, Koubun would be subtly signaling her dozens of safe conversation topics she could segue into. Shinju and Shinri would have rendered this entire extended stay completely unnecessary; they were strong enough and cunning enough that all four of them would have been out of the city and miles away by breakfast time tomorrow, safe on their way back to Kou.

"What about you?" Anthy asked, taken in a flash of Koubun-worthy inspiration. "Do you have any family?" It was a faux-pas that she made a show of visibly regretting once said; Scheherazade was hundreds of years old, and therefore any true family she once had, unable to maintain the magoi-intensive life-support she herself used, would have perished years ago.

Her carefully calculated gaffe, however, was sent flying as Scheherazade actually giggled.

"You spent the entire day with my son, actually." The magi was smiling in a warm manner that outstripped the bland, dignified expressions she had been sporting thus far. Anthy didn't even have to fake the thunderstruck look she was no doubt sporting.

"I was… what?" She glanced at Titus and found him staring, shiny-eyed and completely taken aback—at his mother. It was gratifying, in a sad sort of way. Anthy herself objectively knew that Scheherazade had always loved Titus as a son just as he had loved her as a parent. However, in the version of events Anthy knew, it had taken until they were both teetering on the brink of death that the magi revealed her true feelings.

It had been a while since she had been so starkly reminded of the differences between this life and that story, Yunan's interference notwithstanding. She didn't mind this discrepancy at all though; Titus had obviously needed to hear this as soon as possible.

"I would have never guessed," she vaguely admitted after recovering from her bout of shocked gaping. "He never said."

"The people of Reim," Scheherazade told her in a loving but exasperated sort of way—as though sharing the secret of Titus' parentage had opened the floodgates of her carefully controlled emotions—that made her seem closer to her actual age than her physical appearance. "Very much enjoy the myth of an unchanging, ageless, virginal magi. It suits my purposes to indulge their fantasy, more or less."

Titus looked scandalized and then vaguely—and increasingly not so vaguely—horrified at the implications of his mother's virginity being fictitious.

Anthy took one look at him and nearly choked on her cider, she was laughing so hard.


Next Time: Anthy was going to ruin somebody's day, that much was certain.