Reminiscence

They were allowed very little time for rest, despite Rebecca's insistence that comfort be made a priority.

They had been given a cramped, narrow room on the ground floor with bunks spaced so closely that Ike could sit on Soren's and use his own as a footrest—and not at all vice versa, which would lead to some undesirable consequences. Little luxury, but more than he was accustomed to.

Their window faced the wooded edge of a castle garden, and though it offered a pleasant view, they had taken to keeping the curtains drawn during the castle's active hours. This morning they settled halfway, left the window cracked; Ike liked to feel the early dampness creep in through the open air, and more than that, he enjoyed the liquid, quivering song of a bird, which Soren identified as a thrush. When Ike asked if the thrushes here spoke the same language as the ones in Tellius, he only wrinkled his nose in response.

Soren had long since abandoned his map that he had snatched from the interpreter in passing, left it rolled up between them where they sat. His bunk was pushed against the wall, so Ike could rest his back as well as stretch his legs, and it reminded him of one of those dramatic, reclining sofas featured in every guest chamber of the Crimean palace.

"You know what's weird?" Ike said.

"Hm."

"This place reminds me of Crimea, sort of. I mean, the royal court."

"And you find that strange? This is the reigning nobility, after all."

Something like a duke in Begnion, Soren had explained to him, though he had felt the need to add that these were tentative answers, as impossible as it is to piece together the sensible purport of their scant, grisly tatters of coherent thought. They spoke with an atrocious accent, according to Soren, and after his short-lived language lessons with Volug, Ike could hear the difference.

"I don't know. On the surface, this comes closer to our first stay at the Mainal Cathedral. Completely new place, people talking funny—even if they don't all seem as uptight, we still have to walk on eggshells to avoid slighting someone by mistake."

In hindsight, their escorts had gone through pains to mitigate some of the culture shock. Begnion had held them as newcomers to lofty and often unstated expectations, whereas the Wil and his family were almost overly eager to pass on the conventions of Pheraen etiquette. Rebecca had spent nearly an hour teaching them a certain greeting—a clasp of both hands, with the fingers interlocked in a certain position and grasped in a certain shape. Another was to lock arms with a person, and yet another was to kiss a knuckle, but Rebecca had only tried demonstrating this once with her husband, and let it pass when Ike and Soren did not follow the example.

Soren still hadn't answered him; he took that as a gesture to continue.

"On the other hand, I get the impression we're mostly kind of a novelty to them."

Or at least Soren had given that impression with his incessant griping, bent over the musty, indecipherable map as he explained their new situation. They expect us to leave—from Pherae, which is here, to… right here, and to give you a sense of scale, we "landed" around here—undoubtedly to subject ourselves to more ridiculous demands.

Soren simply grunted, "It's mutual, in any case."

"That's right. And you get used to it, after a while."

"Get used to what?"

Yes, this is the General Ike; this is the man who singlehandedly—yes, my dear, singlehandedly in the most literal sense, as in with a single hand—agreed, it is, without question, nothing short of extraordinary, and this is the sword Ragnell, mind you, and it is just as large and undoubtedly much heavier than that brazen replica at Sienne—

"People talking about you like you're not there," Ike said. Then he gave a weak laugh, and it sounded hollow even to himself. Court life was draining, it seemed, no matter where it found them.

"Or likening you to animals, I imagine."

Ike almost added "Now we know how the laguz feel", but while he mostly favored honesty over tact, he could distinguish between "blunt" and "unkind at best".

"Yeah," he said instead. A group of children had ventured out into the courtyard, silencing the lone thrush with their own shrill, birdlike cries.

"Ets gosos a corestad!"

Soren did not drag himself from the bed to the window, but he craned his neck to see if they had wandered anywhere near their immediate area. They were likely playing around the fountain on the garden's edge, which Ike had marveled at until he realized that he was repelling some of the less familiar servants from the courtyard but attracting their stares.

"Cor ver a nasca!"

Their ears had been flooded by the language long enough to make something of the structure, distinguish some recurring sounds and tones and pauses, but to the extent of their understanding it was good as gibberish.

"That might just be that one guy," Ike resumed. "I mean, with the dog comparisons."

By now, the children may or may not have been talking about them—sound carried far and clear through the open courtyard, and since their arrival the younger members at court had been unsurprisingly reluctant to approach them.

"We never really did apologize to him."

"I don't think he needs an apology from us, let alone the benefit of the doubt," said Soren. He had feigned apathy towards the dog insults; even with Ike, he maintained a steeled pretense of indifference, but the woman's prying had been sharp and precise; she needled at the tender foible of his façade, and Soren had reacted in the most civil manner he knew of. She was not the duchess, or Roy's wife, or Sophia, as she had insisted they call her, but a nonsensical, presumptuous girlish defective fountain sputtering out fits of baseless accusations, who smelled of vomit masked by a miasma of perfume. Ike didn't disagree with the last bit.

"As it stands," Soren continued, "our best hope here lies in learning their language. They are… all but one of them are woefully inexpert with the ancient tongue. Nuances are lost, and many concepts are incommunicable when at least one party doesn't understand them. To—to address your concern, I will say this much."

He faced Ike now, picking up the map to hold it against his lap.

"You would find much more use in a voice than a sword or an axe. The difference in treatment you'll receive is startling, to say the least."

It took a practiced ear to detect it, but at times Soren would bow his head and stew in his own roiling worries, and less often than not, Ike could hear it. The words would come out constricted—not tense or stiff, but in that exerted, practiced calm, as though he had been planning to say them some time ago, but didn't know when, or where, or if they should be heard. He would take measured breaths through his nose and go taut at the back and shoulders, though this was hardly peculiar with Soren.

But Ike was only barely aware of these observations himself, and he could not articulate why it unsettled him as much as it did. As if by instinct, he took the map and set it aside.

"Soren."

"What? All I meant to say was that we should make learning the language a priority."

"I know. Just come here."

Three knocks startled Soren to his feet, and the woman barged in without waiting for their permission. To most of these people, warning was luxury enough.

It was the one who reminded Ike of Sigrun—there was the calming voice with the edge of authority to it, the kind eyes pinched at the corner with wrinkles of worry, and more than any of that, the gentle acceptance of their all-around foreignness. She was not quite as permissive or lax as Rebecca, but she could appreciate their difficulties.

When he responded, Soren was forthright with his anger this time, which seemed… somehow right to Ike. Before these last few days, he had seldom heard him speak the language outside of battle, and during battle he never spoke it so much as he forcefully invoked it, or muttered it in a fluid stream of curses, or snarled it, or spat it out with the blood that lined his teeth.

"Today's the day," he told Ike, smoothing the edge out of his voice when he returned to Common. "She wants to know if we'll have further need of her assistance before she departs, since as far as interpreters go we are otherwise restricted to the druids."

"Woah, wait, those are druids?"

"I'm not translating that. Sumakide za ono uruka… ah…"

The woman cut him off with a laugh. "Seida yorumu, hehe!

"A nice laugh", indeed. Soren was incensed now—Ike could see it in the curl of his fingers, heard it in the stiffness of his translation. While Soren had never reveled in his prominence as the Greil Mercenary's tactician, he had commanded some degree of respect, and possibly very secret adoration if one looked hard enough; by the end of the second war, very few challenged his judgment without drowning their objections in deference and self-doubt, and whenever he deigned to speak, he was not to be interrupted. The luxury of renown had turned itself on its head here.

"I asked how long we're meant to stay here," Soren said.

"What did she say?"

"Literally, she just repeated part of an incantation to a wind spell." He turned aside to Ike. "She meant something along the lines of 'free men', though I suspect she's merely eager to fit a chant into general conversation, because I'm not entirely convinced of our—"

"Heis isona! Na fierdo quare guin a fada!" the general barked to the window. Ike realized that the children from earlier had been gravitating just on the edge of their purview, snatching what glimpses they could into their unintelligible conversation.

"Fed ese!" a girl shrieked from the garden. Ike guessed that meant "Oh no, those men weren't aware of our snooping, or more likely didn't care all that much until a high-ranking visiting official drew their attention our way; we should probably think of an excuse!"

They heard the crunch and rustling of leaf-littered grass as they fled, dispersing in all directions at once. Ike could still hear some of their voices in the distance, and then that of a chiding adult. Probably a caretaker. He doubted the kids would have come within a field's length of them if the attendants could help it.

Cecilia turned to Soren and continued in the old tongue.

"She apologized for the children," he said. "They're… scaled? I highly doubt that was the word she wanted."

"Huh. I was covered in scabs as a kid, I guess."

"She invites us to join her, and the rest of the group, presumably, for a late breakfast. Enjoy the full benefit of her interpretation services while she's here, I suppose."

"Maybe so." Ike pushed himself onto his feet and saw Cecilia—some officer, Soren had told him, a general—take a step back. "I wouldn't mind grabbing something to eat."

This needed no translation.


"Ike, ste morzars ime milos a ceral?"

That was one habit of Wil's that Ike could recognize from the night they had appeared on his doorstep; he looked him straight in the eye and addressed him directly with his questions—not either of the interpreters—and it was a welcome gesture, even if Ike couldn't understand a word of the language. Cecilia translated for Soren, and Soren said nothing for a while, hardly acknowledged that he had been spoken to, as he examined the untouched food set before him.

"I think," Soren began diffidently, "he is asking if their cuisine bears any similarities to that of Tellius."

"That's… a big question."

"Those seem to have become a matter of course."

Soren's eyes flickered to Rebecca, who had been watching him with a quiet, intense deliberation. As if compelled by some imperceptible signal, he pushed his spoon into his cake until it met the plate with a hard, tinny clink, but he did not take the bite.

"But really," Ike said, "I mean, in Phoenicis, breakfast is just meat—like those huge goats, elk, yaks, and then this weird chocolate bark drizzled with berry syrup—"

"Ike."

"Daein's locked in a, I don't know, a 'who can brew the strongest drink' competition with Crimea, because the stuff they serve in the morning could make you sick—I mean the general 'you', not to call you a lightweight or anything—and can breakfast be pretentious? Because Begnion—"

"Ike." Soren did not raise his voice, but he was curt with his translation to Cecilia. "Kunino ku iroi."

"What'd you say?"

"Our breakfasts tend to the savory side. Phrased unambiguously for their sake, 'more meat'."

This appeared to worry Rebecca, who asked if they would prefer that their cooking incorporated more meat, which Soren denied before he passed the message to his companion. Ike could understand the concern; Rebecca and the cook, a nervous-sounding older man with thick, woolen whiskers, were accommodating to a fault. Would Ike suggest he liked more spice and substance, Soren would likely starve than submit himself to their excessive redressing—or venture out into the woods to forage.

The breakfasts at the court were sweeter than Ike was accustomed to, and much sweeter than what Wil and Rebecca could provide for them on sudden notice. This one was a cake, round, glistening, firm, and buttery, with an orange-tasting glaze and a side of grapes that seemed partially decorative. Their breakfasts were light enough for Soren to finish off, though he'd yet to see him ask for seconds.

To Soren's chagrin, Cecilia intended to keep them at hand for as long as the opportunity presented itself—it only served to remind Ike of the sheer vastness of information they were expected to eventually absorb. The other day, they had tried to work them over slowly, going fact by fact.

Elibe—that was the continent. Lycia, the country, Pherae, the territory. That was easy enough—they could locate themselves on a map at last.

But when it came to the history, of the country or the territory or the people, it had been slow coming.

Soren had given him an impromptu briefing the other night—he was much better at putting the pieces together than Ike.

From what I can salvage from that woman's conflagrant wreckage of an explanation, we have found ourselves amidst company of some renown and a period of some significance, but knowing next to nothing of this country, my sense of scope of these matters is vague at best. The ruler here had served as general in a campaign against the country… here. Our "assailants" contributed in part to the effort. The interpreter, a high-ranking general in the country… here… also participated, which is why I find her incompetence with the language so baffling.

Then again, she was the one to provide all this information; perhaps I am giving her less credit than she deserves. Even though her work on your hand had been next to useless.

Ike had to admit that while his hand didn't hurt, it was more than a little hideous to look at, with a gaping split and crumbling crust and splotches of discoloration. That was one disadvantage of staff-induced healing over "traditional" methods: the tissue did not repair itself instantaneously, with various, unpredictable reactions to the magic. If a healer took especial care, it would make a clean recovery—but more often than not, it would warp. The disparity was purely cosmetic.

Soren typically concerned himself with Ike's injuries in one way or another, but held off in what might have been a courtesy to the Pheraens. Ike balled his fist—felt the sandy, abrasive sensation in his palm—and tried to remember.

There was more to remember—from what had Cecilia seemed to imply, it was their utter lack of reverence that betrayed their ignorance. They had crashed and tumbled, loud and clumsy and stupid, into an eminent assembly of conquerors. It had surprised even Ike to learn that Wil and Rebecca had been accomplished warriors who fought in the war previous to Roy's, enlisted under his father's command. Both rulers, from what Ike could tell, were regarded as heroes.

He wondered if they ever crumbled under the weight of their own renown.

He never wondered for long, since whenever they had been allowed enough time and peace to reassess their surroundings, Ike's mind would wander to his more immediate impulses.

Cecilia's last talk with them was blessedly simple. The leader of the mercenary troupe accompanied her at the entrance hall, where they had summoned the pair; they had been allowed little time or chance to speak with him, and Soren was having trouble parsing his meaning through Cecilia's flawed translation.

"Im eplara maser e socrar," said Ogier, wringing his fingers together, "hos cessitas im palle a monda indec resperde, esss… ess, ess, es dace minerto a serre."

Cecilia silently absorbed this, contemplating a simpler rendition of what sounded, from what Ike could tell, to be pleading. Then she turned to Soren.

"Nego nego nego nego."

"He…" Soren's mouth closed tight into a frown. "What."

"How'd she get that out of what he said?"

"How the hell, indeed," he said, and Ike almost laughed, because even mild profanity was surprising to hear in Soren's voice. "Yuido wa ta sudeni ko."

It was likely a question; Cecilia chuckled in response.

"Senma riake washimo ta… ehh… nakidega," she said.

"Yanodo. Since you may be confused, it was essentially 'sorry' over and over again," explained Soren. "Because subtleties such as deference are absent from the ancient language."

"Really?"

"No. Would you like to tell him anything?"

"Uhh…"

Ike looked to Ogier and startled him with his sudden attention; the mercenary flashed a quick, nervous grin in response. He seemed nice enough, and Ike regretted what little disruption he had caused to his company; not only was it a terrible inconvenience, but he suspected the Pheraens' perception of them would have been far more forgiving had they avoided the skirmish in the first place.

"I know we didn't get to talk much, and that's a shame," he said, following Wil's example and maintaining eye-contact. "This must be weird coming from me, but I have a lot of respect for what you do. We're still a little lost, yeah, and it's too bad I can't tell you this directly, but Soren and I… are pretty handy, I guess you could say. If you need a little more muscle in the group, figuratively I mean, you'll know where to find us? It might be the other way around, actually. Anyway, I'd feel a lot less useless than I'm feeling now, so think about it."

For a moment, he was worried he had given Soren too much chatter to work with, until he realized the apparent deliberation had been a ruse.

"Sude bo su de bosu debo."

Ike wasn't sure because Soren's mannerisms were as hard to interpret as the language he was speaking, but that might have been his way of playing around. Cecilia took it well, and she appeared to understand when he managed to come up with a legitimate, albeit clipped translation of Ike's offer. He probably added that they wouldn't do it for free; though that hadn't been policy for the Greil Mercenaries, every lost, teary child returned to its parents might as well have been a knife in Soren's gut for all the complaining he'd do. He was always the one to draw these cases to their attention, however, and though Ike never disclosed his suspicions, he had a hunch: Soren regarded his generosity as a weakness to be guarded.

Ogier seemed inclined, maybe a little overeager, towards Ike's idea, held out his forearms, and when Ike could not think quickly enough to respond, took both of his hands in his own.

"Doarte am sento a velle."

Ike inexpertly repeated; Soren was much better at memorizing these formalities, but no one apart from Rebecca, Wil, or Dart expected he put them to use.

As a handful of Ogier's men caught him up at the entrance hall and crowded him out the door, acknowledging Ike and Soren with little more than a few grunts, Cecilia remained behind.

"Soren." She raised an eyebrow. They pronounced their names oddly, particularly Soren's—they narrowed their lips and purred at the "r". Ike used to think that was only a Gallian thing.

"Hm?"

"Sutomo."

One more thing.

Though with all her wavering and deliberation, it rather seemed she had too much to say and too few ways to say it. Free men, she repeated. Broken land. The scars are healing over, and she is one who holds the staff. They are busy, in other words, but the foreigners are welcome to Aquleia once the mood strikes them. Learn much, rich city, rich, gay, grand, broken land.

You will be inspired, Soren translated with the usual edge of doubt. You are not beasts. Etruria is mages, scholars, men of cloth—we will see that. Even the prince will see that.

Lleu is learned, more with this language than I, and a Mage General is chosen for his wisdom. He will grant you a safe journey.

"Runa tokoha ni," said Soren. "You—she will pay him handsomely."

"Sunedi kata." Cecilia laughed. "Ehh, rui tegata deyaro."

You are smart, but suspicious.

He is a mercenary, countered Soren.

Talk to Sophia, then. She is wise and safe.

Soren thought she had confused a word or two somewhere, and he was reluctant to convey the message to Ike as it was told. But the Etrurian servant who had been attending the minutiae of Cecilia's departure had come in to inform her that all was ready; a train of escorts had been prepared for her, and final farewells were in order.

Cecilia nodded, stepped to close the distance between them and took Soren's hands before he could flinch away. Nodded again. He simply rubbed one hand with another when she released him and gave Ike the same respects. Roy was to come down to see her off, and likely the bulk of his retainers would flood in and follow. In times like these, Ike and Soren took to either withdrawing to their room or to the shelter of the seaside villagers. They decided they had spent enough time in their room.


Cecilia had left, and Lleu was nowhere to be found. Ike had gotten used to the language barrier by now, and Soren must have appreciated the excuse not to talk. Rebecca seemed to similarly dismiss it, and the chef was already acclimating to their presence. He was mixing a sauce now, and let Ike swipe a finger over the flat, dripping spoon to take a taste. It was pungent, spicy, strongly aromatic.

Ike enjoyed this leisure more than any other part of their "cultural instruction and cultivation", and he enjoyed their chatter, their mutual bursts of excitement, their passionate disagreements. In watching them interact, he was reminded of his sister and Oscar.

The chef even shared Oscar's shade of hair, except it was far overgrown, and Ike couldn't see Oscar growing a beard—or a stomach.

For some reason, it struck him in an odd place to be thinking about them. He stopped thinking.

Maybe he would talk to Soren about it, he thought.

But Soren was occupied. Wil had now wandered into the kitchen with the thickset woman whose name Ike forgot, in spite of her fondness for throwing herself into the center of their attentions. She was the one with the theatrics, the one they assisted in the carrying and hauling with Dart, and Soren did not like her much at all.

This time, Ike appreciated the distraction. When Dart was the last to intrude, and when they urged the three of them out into the courtyard, Ike easily complied, and because Soren rarely left Ike out of his sights in loud company, he followed as well.

The procession at the gatehouse had not cleared, and he assumed Lord Roy—and his wife, hopefully—were still preoccupied with the formalities of Cecilia's departure. Somewhere, he thought he heard a wyvern. Soren raised his head to the sky and confirmed it. It was a single beast headed towards the gatehouse, hind legs outstretched and wings drawn back as it reached for solid ground. Though it was hard to tell from this distance, there appeared to be a rider. It seemed that greetings were due as well as farewells.

Behind them, in the flat, grassy clearing where they had settled, the woman disrupted their absent gazing with a barking fit of laughter.

"Heis, Sorrren. Ike. Sare viuda es zuda!"

They turned and saw the fisherman emerge from the storehouse, sagging from the weight of the weapons slung over his back. Ike realized what they had planned for the afternoon.

"Ehh, leca e boc." Wil shrugged from where he sat. He had taken shelter beneath a tree—and archery target, it seemed—his wife knelt at his side with what dignity she could maintain while they squatted in the cutting grass. Wil tilted his head as a signal for Ike to join them. They were to be spectators.

One habit Ike had taken to in lieu of real comprehension was inventing a meaning behind the foreign gibberish. It staved off some of the isolation, and he had found from his lessons with Volug that he was not too bad at it.

So the knight might have been drawing their attention away from the wyvern, maybe asking if they've ever seen one. She had brought them to a horse before and waited expectantly for a reaction; she had apparently misread their confusion as astonishment. Cecilia had to be dragged in to confirm that yes, there were horses in their home country. There were wyverns here, apparently, but they had yet to see a pegasus. The climate here would have bothered them, Ike supposed.

His imagination, unbridled, started to stray into odder territory, but Ike let it flit away from his grasp; he humored himself.

Rebecca sounded exasperated as Dart and the knight distanced themselves from each other, assuming their positions. "What is this meant to accomplish?" she may have asked.

And when Dart tossed the sleeker axe the knight's way, falling to the bald patch of earth before her feet with a thump, she may have said, with some effort as she hauled it onto her shoulder, "What do you think?"

A swing of the axe, a triumphant swell of the chest.

"Dart! I challenge you!"

Dart drove the curve of his axe into the ground and leaned with that bent, beastly hunch over the shaft.

"Haven't had enough, have you? Tell me, girl, what'll make this time so different from the last?"

Out from round the storehouse corner emerged a figure swathed in robes and trembling apprehension. Even from this distance, it was clear that he had been made to preside over the bloody duel that would unfold; Ike could see it in the brisk pace, the visible agitation. The knight tossed her head to Lleu and called to him. Yoo-hoo! Or the Pheraen equivalent Ike guessed.

But Lleu was not nervous, he suddenly realized—he was storming, fuming, and once this became clear, the fabrication was torn out from over his eyes. Lleu was growling something to Rebecca and Wil now, and when Soren stood to allow him wide berth, the druid lunged to catch him.

"Atata—heis! Agh, turiguante rieta a colo—"

Lleu yelped when Soren seized him by the arm, and howled as he dug his fingers into the gap between the bones.

"Don't touch me," he snarled, and released him with a shove. Stumbling back a safe distance away, Lleu clutched his arm, shaken, and pressed on with his tirade.

"Exado a ti sheku gojino ka ru, es lace uscarule en—"

"I did not." As Soren took one step forward, Lleu took a huge, panicked spring back. "Deshi sen to desa—"

"Remadane! Rea e ciota!"

"Omite sho masa"

"Heis!"

Once more, Rebecca had wedged herself between the mage and an attacker, and her argument with Lleu had overtaken Soren's in pitch and force. Ike tried to get his attention—or comfort him or something, he was not quite sure—with a hand at his wrist, which Soren reflexively drew away.

"What is it?" Ike said quietly.

"Aceste divolo is tejadore," spat Lleu, "Sophia ta shi tanao jonoka. Rideaki yowabo o ni. Na puete manca quej ede!"

His panting was harsh and ragged; Ike heard him swallow his spit, his glare affixed to Soren despite Rebecca's efforts to break apart the hostilities. Soren folded his hands and watched, faintly amused, as Lleu flinched at the movement.

"It's that girl," he told Ike coolly, calmed in Rebecca's shadow. "She's relapsed, apparently. And she wishes to speak to me."

He edged closer to Ike, presumably to remove himself from the conflict as much as possible. The duel had been interrupted, but not called off.

It took a practiced eye to detect it, but Soren was nervous.