10

Alea iacta est
May 10

I

The news she had learned from Gladio didn't take long to reach everyone else the next day. What she would have never expected was that it didn't come from Captain Drautos, accompanied by the due assurances about their future and the fate of their families and friends outside the Wall, but from the laconic voice of an announcer on the news, on a TV that happened to be on in the common room of the Kingsglaives' headquarters.

Silia was muzzy after spending a sleepless night crumpling the sheets, torn between conjectures and worries and in the grip of the uncontrollable temptation to activate the transmitter and look for the frequency of Legato, Caesar, Sarah and Sam to prepare them for the news. She was leaning against the wall, listening absently to the chatter of the others when Neil yelled to shut up and had run to raise the volume as much as possible. Disconcerted, she had listened to the news of the truce and the related unilateral conditions, without being yet able to believe that undeserved slap, that insult added to the injury. Her comrades had been informed of the fate of the kingdom together with the common crown citizens.

The announcement was listened to in a surreal silence. Silia, already prepared for the news, scrutinized the predictable reactions of her teammates and the others'; their mouths contracted in a shocked and indignant grimace, their eyes focused on the screen, the tendons of their necks tense as if they were preparing to warp against an enemy. She was ready to witness the righteous indignation of the Glaives, but their first – still stunned – remonstrance aloud, when someone managed to produce them, were sedated by Captain Drautos' sudden arrival.

"Glaives! Assemble in the briefing room," he ordered, coming out into the common room. "Now," he added impatiently as Altius tried to ask him something.

Two minutes later, neatly lined up at attention with their arms behind their back, they listened in disbelief to the Captain's feeble explanations, nothing more than what the newscast had said and, if anything, less than what Gladio had told her. The Captain had always been inscrutable, but sporadically in those fifteen years had abandoned himself to gestures of confidence with them; at that moment more than ever, they would have needed to be told that they hadn't been neglected. Although she was already aware of the news, she felt her face petrified with indignation.

If she was indignant, Libertus Ostium was out of his mind. He had always been a passionate man, to the point of often endangering himself and his comrades on the field because of his lack of clarity, and he was the only one to reply.

"But your home's out there too!"

"It is," the Captain answered, without a break. The story of Titus Drautos was the story of almost all of them, one of the reasons why they had followed him with blind trust and obedience. Thirty years earlier his village, in the northeastern archipelago of the Cavaugh region, had been invaded and absorbed by the Empire.

"Why would the King do this?" Libertus insisted, giving voice to the question everyone had on their lips and for which everyone already knew the answer.

Silia expected a violent reprimand, an exemplary punishment, especially since Libertus had leveraged on Captain's personal history, but there was none. Perhaps, after all, he knew they had every reason. "Because it'll end this damn war," he only answered bitterly, turning around. Silia could no longer recognize him.

"Crowe!" he ordered, when it seemed like he would leave without further explanations.

"Sir!" The girl straightened up quickly.

"Prepare to deploy. You're being sent to infiltrate Tenebrae."

"Tenebrae, Sir?"

"Mission details are classified. Report to my office for briefing in thirty minutes. And, Nyx, you're off the west gate. You've been reassigned to the castle guard. That is all."

Still stunned and amazed, they broke the lines as the Captain was still moving away. Silia turned to talk to Legato, next to her, but Libertus furiously moved forward, hobbling himself with his crutches. "So this is what you were talking about, Luche?" he shouted, when the Captain still had to be within earshot. Probably the two of them had previously talked.

"You heard the Captain," Luche replied, calm as always, without letting himself be provoked. Luche, Nyx and Libertus had known each other for a lifetime; they had come together from Galahd. "This wasn't our decision to make."

"Not ours to make?" Libertus pounced on his comrade, but Tredd stopped him. "Those are our homes out there! Our people! And you're just gonna go along with this and abandon them?"

"If we don't go along with them, the Empire will unleash all hell on Insomnia."

"We'll unleash it right back on them!"

Fucking empty chitchat. The Empire had been beating the shit out of them for decades. Libertus could shout as much as he wanted, the situation didn't change. No matter how you looked at it, there was no way to escape unscathed and, though the idea was repugnant, the Captain had a point: though humiliating, it would be the end of a war that had been going on for too long, and not the worst. The Kingsglaives had failed.

"That fucking Libertus," Caesar snapped in a low voice. "He cannot control himself, that idiot."

"Well, he's right." Sarah crossed her arms, biting her bottom lip. Certainly she was thinking about her sister's and mother's futures and Silia felt an affection that extinguished when she heard her following words. "Of course you can't understand, you don't have relatives outside."

It was an unjust and unhappy sentence, even if uttered in a moment of discouragement, and Caesar replied harshly before she could do it. "Don't be such a bitch. Don't talk as if we didn't give a damn."

"And you don't talk as if we were all in the same situation. Lydia and my mother are out there. Who's left for you?"

Their team had always been very close, especially because for almost two years they had been only six, but Caesar and Sarah would frequently squabble. As a rule it was up to her or Legato to intervene to reason with them, but at that moment she felt so frustrated that she would only make matters worse. "Look, I'm going out to smoke," she said resentfully.

She came down the hallway almost running, to prevent them from following her, up to the inner courtyard. Sarah and Caesar, Libertus, Luche and Furia were not the only ones who were arguing heatedly. She heard angry murmurs, over-the-top tones, some blasphemy. The news had divided the Kingsglaives.

She came across the courtyard on the right up to a pallet of bags of cement out of sight. The new headquarters would have been a beautiful building, when the refurbishing works had been completed, provided that the Kingsglaives would still be there. She had feared the dissolution of the army by decision of the King, but at that point it could also be Niflheim to request it as a collateral condition to the ceasefire. It may already have happened and they didn't know it yet.

She sat on a sack, running her fingers through her hair in an exasperated gesture, and lit the cigarette she held between her lips. She remained with her eyes closed, smoking and trying to clear her mind to concentrate.

On what? We have no orders, we have no directives. For the first time, the Captain seems not to know what the hell he's doing.

A still distant sound of heavy footsteps caught her attention. Silia recognized Marius from the corner of her eye. He also had a cigarette between his lips and was looking around. From where he was, he could not have yet seen her, and she didn't want to talk to him, in case he was looking for her. So, she slipped down the bag and took refuge with her cigarette in the gap between a stack of crates and the wall.

Marius was approaching and Silia hurriedly put out the cigarette, flattening herself against the wall. She heard the noise of a second pair of boots on the ground of the courtyard: someone had reached him. Furia probably, or maybe Bellum.

"Where are you going?" It was Luche Lazarus' voice.

"Can't I smoke when I want, now?" Marius replied polemically.

"Answer the transmitter when you're called, Marius." She didn't understand that new authoritarian nuance in Luche's voice. "You know we must always be available in these days."

"I know. But I couldn't answer in front of everyone. At what time?"

"At seven o'clock."

Silia wondered when Luche had become so familiar with Marius. She had never seen them interact so much but, after all, if they wanted to have a beer together or to chase tails, it was their fucking business. She only hoped they would go and talk about it elsewhere so that she could walk away freely.

"Is that really necessary?"

Luche's voice was as sharp as a mesmerize's sword. "Do you want to back out?"

"Never ask that again."

Silia remained motionless, listening. It was not a simple guys' night.

"Then stop asking unnecessary questions."

Their steps began to move away, then one of the two Glaives stopped.

"Who else is in?" Marius asked.

"Certainly not your friend."

"She's not my friend and I don't give a shit. That was not what I meant."

Luche's voice softened. "Marius, there's nothing wrong. We are not monsters. And I am the first to find it a waste of precious skills in a world where there are too few of us able to fight, but there is no choice. Remember what's at stake."

The steps resumed moving.

What the fuck did I just hear? Silia waited a few more seconds before leaning out from behind the crates. Are they planning something against the Empire during the signing of the treaty? A new white noise began to buzz at the back of her head, and this time it was not Gladio.

At that moment her transmitter activated.

"Where have you been?"

"Smoking in the courtyard, like I told you. Can't I?" she replied sourly to Sarah. She leaned over to look into the courtyard, but Marius and Luche had moved away.

"Don't be hysterical. I'm with Sam and Legato. We're going to have a beer in your bar. We cannot talk about this shitty treaty while sober."

Jeez, now I'm the hysterical one, she thought, but she didn't say it. "What about Cee? Where is he?"

"With Nyx, trying to reason with Libertus. We'll tell him to join us there. See you at the main entrance."

II

The mood at the tavern was excited for the news of the armistice. Many customers, predictably, toasted the truce, but not all of them. Even the crown citizens, after all, were divided. When a festive voice broke away from the indistinct confusion, Silia and the others fell silent, their lips tight.

"How can they be happy with this shit?" Sarah whispered between her teeth, her hand trembling while holding the mug.

Silia recalled her depressing rendezvous with Balthier a few months earlier. She wondered if he, too, was celebrating the truce with his wife, or if the idea of an armistice with the superpower he had fought against for four years and because of which he had been mutilated disgusted him as much as them. Everybody only wishes the King to keep the Wall erected for a few more years, then his son will do it, and then his son's son. His children, she realized. In that exact moment Balthier was certainly thanking the Six because his children, with that truce, would know peace.

She looked up to peer at her comrades, worried that some of them would react to other customers' looks. A tall man with graying hair and a mocking air, in particular, that she knew to be a regular of the place, kept turning to their table, looking for a quarrel. Even Samuel – the bartender – kept looking nervously at them. It really had been a bad idea to come there.

Caesar joined them more than an hour later, and he was not alone: Nyx Ulric, the hero, deigned them of his presence. Silia gave a warning look to Sarah, and her friend had understood perfectly because she shrugged; she would not reopen the hostility with Caesar.

"Hello." Her comrade retrieved two stools from the near table and sat next to Sarah. He too, apparently, didn't intend to get back to arguing. "I hope you don't mind if I brought the hero with me."

"A hero downgraded to the City Guard," Nyx complained, sitting down next to Caesar. Silia gave him the finger, and Nyx smiled, raising his hands in an apologetic gesture. "Forgive me, Coeurl. I know you had to do this for more than six months. Anyway I find you well, in the civilized world, without mud and blood on your attire. How's the prosthesis?"

"Better than the real leg, but at the cost of months of hell." Silia sucked it up and held out her hand, which he squeezed energetically. They were not really friends, she and Nyx, partly because – as her and her former Squad 6 teammates used to – he tended to isolate himself with Libertus, Altius and Luche. Over the years, however, there had been workouts together, drinking, talks, and even some occasion to save each other's lives, and she recognized his superiority in the field.

"Come on," Sam said, nudging Caesar. "Spit it out. Altius told you what the mission with classified details is, right?"

Caesar looked sideways at Nyx, and in a flash of painful understanding Silia realized that Team 6 didn't exist anymore: Cee was now a teammate of Nyx and Libertus', just as the others had new comrades to watch their backs, if squads, now that the Kingsglaives had returned to Insomnia and a truce with Niflheim loomed, still meant something. Probably not, as Captain Drautos had pointed out, but she felt bad anyway.

Nyx answered with a slight nod and a shrug. "Crowe is going to Tenebrae," he replied, running a hand through his dreadlocks. "To escort Princess Lunafreya Nox Fleuret."

Silia moved on her stool, uncomfortable, but didn't speak. Crowe must have been instructed to escort the princess to Prince Noctis. In his hasty communications, the Captain hadn't divulged that the wedding would be held in Altissia, nor did the newscast. That information, as far as she knew, continued to be classified.

"What?" Sarah exclaimed, leaning over the table. "What's this story? Doesn't the princess of Tenebrae have men who can escort her to Insomnia?"

"I don't know what to tell you." Caesar lit a cigarette. "Even Crowe was not given too many details, just a fucking tiara to give to the princess and a motorcycle to get to Fenestala. Maybe Her Majesty wants a Kingsglaive to support her escort. Or it was an idea of the King. Don't you feel a little teased, lately, you guys?"

They looked at each other silently with a disconcerted and resigned air. Nyx clicked his tongue in a gesture of impatience. "I don't know. Everything has changed. Until last month, though on a deadline, we knew what we'd do during the day and what we'd do the following day, if we were not dead: fighting. Now that we're back, we spend the day hanging around wondering what will become of us, we quarrel among comrades, and we are unaware of who knows how much detail about a war we have fought firsthand for years."

"But are you so sure that something has changed?" Sam crossed his arms on his chest. Outside the battlefield, it was unusual to see such a discouraged expression on his commonly relaxed and facetious face. "We have been out of the world, Ulric. Do you have any idea of what has happened to Insomnia in these ten years while we were fighting? How the crown citizens' opinion about the Glaives has changed? Look around." He made a large gesture with his arms. "Are you so sure that a year ago we were aware of everything? I'm not, not anymore. I cannot recognize Captain Drautos."

"We lost the war," Silia whispered, and for a moment she thought of her mother. "We had already lost it when the Kingsglaives were founded. We only delayed the moment when Lucis' reign was forced to acknowledge it."

Her five comrades looked at her bitterly. They didn't answer because she had said what everyone was painfully aware of.

"I thought you shared your friend Amicitia's optimism." Sarah raised her eyebrow with a mocking smile.

She forced herself to calm down. They were all overexcited and she didn't want to fight too. "Gladio Amicitia has nothing to do with it but, if you really want to know, I don't think there's a right or wrong way to take this news. We haven't been able to defeat Niflheim. This is a fact. Was there more that could be done? I don't know. Perhaps, if in the last fifty years, instead of thinking of crystals and rings, someone at the Citadel had studied and experimented, by this time we would have some technological and non-magical weapon in our hands to repel the magiteks." She stood silent for a moment, challenging the others to contradict her. "But now look, the King's life energy is running out and we are no longer able to stop Niflheim's advance. The King has decided to sign a truce to save at least Insomnia. Tens of thousands people will live in peace, at least them. If it's right or wrong, who can say? But in war, they taught us that ten people's life is worth more than one person's life. Have you forgotten it? In three days have you already stopped being Glaives?"

No one stared at her face. Silia looked for Legato's gaze, the most controlled and rational among them all, but even he, his jaws clenched, kept his eyes fixed on his glass. She had uttered words that hurt her first.

Nyx straightened up on his stool. "The Coeurl is right. We are soldiers, and the King has decided. We have only two roads: deserting and continuing to fight as loose dogs, or obeying, as we have sworn to do."

"As for me," Sarah began to say softly, "I will stay. At least until the signing of the treaty, to know what will happen. But I won't leave my sister and my mother out there. I'll try to take them to Insomnia, and if it won't be possible, I'll leave the Glaives and return to Safir."

"I will stay." Legato was dry. "I have nothing to lose."

"Your face," Samuel pointed out. "After ten years of risking our lives at the hands of the Imperials, should we hold out our hands? And how, then? What will happen to the Kingsglaives?"

"I'll stay too," Caesar whispered. "The King opened the doors of Insomnia when I had nothing. Insomnia, now, is my home. Doesn't that apply to you too, Sam?"

Samuel stopped in the act of lifting his mug. His face expressed anger, indignation, and finally shame. He put down the glass, scratching the back of his head. "It was just to point out, what the fuck," he snapped. "I won't desert. I have nothing left out there."

None of her comrades felt the need to ask her what she would do. She wouldn't have deserted, it was clear, but she was feeling more and more dragged by an unbearable current: everything around her was changing again.

"And what will you do, hero?" Sam asked.

Nyx blinked over his glass. "What Caesar said also applies to me. This truce makes me indignant, but our job is to fight and obey, not to contest the decisions of the King."

They were almost the same words she had said to Gladio the night before. Silia smiled. She was about to ask if he knew what Luche was doing with Marius, but Nyx intercepted her look and smiled in turn, raising his glass in a toast.

"Pro aris et focis, then. For hearth and home. Let's drink out of this cup to the bitter end."

III

"To Prompto."

"To our departure."

"And to Noct's marriage."

They laughed, clinking their glasses. His friends never drank, so that toast was a surprising exception to the rule. They were back at Sotherby's, with four mugs of beer in their hands, and before entering they had promised aloud not to think about Niflheim and the truce, at least for a few hours, and to concentrate on the few positive aspects of the situation; Prompto had solemnly sworn as a Crownsguard, though his uniform – he was tinier than most of the other Guards, including many women, and there was nothing of his size – would be ready only the day before they left; in three days they would leave Insomnia and finally they would see the world outside Cavaugh; Noctis, at last, would be married to his beloved Lunafreya.

For one night, Gladio allowed himself to be a man of twenty-three and to be excited by all the news. The next day the worries, the summons, the preparations and the recommendations would resume, but for the moment he enjoyed his beer and the general enthusiasm. Prompto was uncontrollable, Noctis tried to conceal the euphoria showing off his dim attitude – but he kept smiling when he thought no one saw him – and even Ignis was more animated than usual.

"What will we do when Noct is married? Will we come back to Insomnia? Will we stay in Altissia?"

Noctis shrugged. "Everything is still very nebulous. My father said that he will have Luna leave Tenebrae towards Altissia before the Imperials discover that the wedding won't be held in Insomnia. But I still don't know what we'll do next."

Prompto arched his lips in a grin. "A honeymoon, maybe? You two alone, since with the cease-fire there won't be more dangers out there?"

Gladio was about to open his mouth to remind Prompto that it would not be so simple: Insomnia would withdraw the defenses from the last cities still under siege, but that didn't mean that the citizens would accept that decision without fighting. Peace would not have been so immediate.

But Noctis, red, moved away from the table so abruptly that he risked turning over with his chair. "Prompto, will you stop?"

"Has she already written to you through Umbra? My beloved Noctis, now finally..."

"Prompto!"

Gladio joined the general laugh. He reminded himself that at least for that evening he had decided to ignore the alarm bells that kept bothering him: the lack of a date for the signing of the treaty, the ignorance of what they would do after the wedding... too many silences, too many dark spots, too many unsaid.

"Who knows if the princess will have bridesmaids? You have lived in Tenebrae for months, Noct, what can you tell us?"

Noctis shook his head. "Apart from Gentiana, Luna has a maid, a woman of a certain age, but I don't remember any friends or attendants. She's very discreet."

Prompto stretched on the table with a depressed look. "Again, no girls in sight. I'll just have to live with it. Tell him something too, Gladio!"

Gladio raised his mug of beer. "Come on, Prompto, Altissia is full of elegant and beautiful ladies who are just waiting to ignore you."

Prompto tossed him a handful of paper napkins.

"Ignis, ask for an orange juice for the kid, he's already drunk. And one also for His Majesty, before some capillary broken by alcohol spoils his delicate complexion."

A single beer, in fact, when they managed to finish it – and by then it had become a broth – was enough for Noctis and Prompto to collapse on the table exhausted by sleep, but not before Prompto had picked up enough nerve to get up to ask for the cell number to the two beautiful girls at the next table. They told him that they already had younger siblings and rather glared clearly at Ignis, much to Prompto's dismay and fun for them. It was up to him and Ig, obviously, to pick them up from their seats and take them to Noctis' house. Prompto's parents, Gladio thought bitterly, hadn't showed up at his swearing-in ceremony and probably the day after wouldn't even notice their son wasn't home.

After making sure that His Majesty and the new Crownsguard were sleeping hard, Ignis suggested they stay there too for the night and offered to prepare an Ebony coffee pot. They drank it in the kitchen, in a relaxed silence, enjoying the cool evening air.

"So," Ignis said, adjusting the glasses on his nose. "Apparently we are almost there, Gladio. Is this not what you've always wanted?"

Gladio enjoyed the thick, bitter taste of the coffee. "Yeah. But not like this, I think. Sometimes our desires are satisfied in inscrutable ways. And what about you?"

"I'd be lying if I told you I'm not passionate about the idea of leaving Insomnia. Passionate and also a little worried. We have being training for a lifetime against dangers that we have never really faced. What if I wasn't up to it?"

"You will be. We have broken our backs for years. We'll find it out soon, anyway. Won't be long now, uh?"

Ignis nodded. "Two days. How did Iris take it?"

Gladio snorted a laugh. "She's sorrier for Noct's departure than for mine, I believe."

"In fact, I was talking about Noctis' marriage. Her infatuation for our gloomy prince has not yet extinguished, has it?"

"I don't think so." Gladio scratched his hairline, embarrassed at the idea that his sister was now fifteen and that her childish attachment for Noctis might have turned into something more adult. "But she said that she's very excited about the marriage, that Princess Lunafreya is amazing, and that she hopes they can be happy. She made a sense of the impossibility of the whole thing long ago, Ig. She still is an Amicitia."

"I'm positive. And you? Did you put everything in order, Gladio?"

"I'm well under way with the preparations, don't worry. I know that out there we won't find hypermarkets, but I dare to think that we'll do fine even if we find out that I forgot the hooks or a peg for the tent."

"I don't mean that." Ignis looked away from his coffee and gave him a strange look. "Did you tell Hartwood that you're leaving?"

Gladio didn't even try to lie. He put the cup back on the table, leaning his forehead against the palm of his hand, and nodded. "Last night. I know I shouldn't have, but the announcement of the armistice today has become public knowledge, and in any case I trust her discretion."

Ignis didn't reproach him. "What happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"Don't tell me you bade farewell with a handshake."

Gladio frowned. All day he had tried to shake off of himself the memory of the moment when Silia had stopped resisting and had abandoned to her hands to dance that waltz. The way those cat-like eyes had looked at him, melancholy, hungry. Her warm skin under her attire, the femininity he had first glimpsed in her. Refraining had been physically painful. "Actually we have. Don't get any ideas, Specs. Right now there are much more important things at stake than my personal happiness."

"You have always done everything you had to, Gladio, and even more. You are at least allowed to desire."

Gladio sighed. In the actuality he had not failed in anything, but he wasn't able to completely and serenely focus on the departure, making him unsteady on the inside. "You know what?" he said to Ignis, or perhaps to himself, giving voice to the only thought that could alleviate his remorse. "Better this way. The departure, I mean. It would have been a mess if..."

"...if?"

Gladio slapped the table, but managed to control the tone of his voice. "Do you really want me to say it? If I would have let go, Ig. Let's not talk about it anymore. It's over now. We are leaving, and she's waiting to know what the hell will become of the Kingsglaives after the treaty. We are two adults with similar duties that don't allow for distractions."

"Your father is the Shield of the King as well," Ignis reminded him, "but you and Iris are here."

Gladio blushed. "My father didn't marry a Kingsglaive," he underlined, "but a good woman waiting for him at home while he practically lived in the Citadel. Not exactly the happiest bride of Insomnia."

"Now you're unjust. Your father loved your mother very much."

"It's true, but King Regis came before her. It's the same for me, with Noct." He stood up. "Let's get this over with. And please don't mention her to the others."

Ignis shrugged in a resigned attitude. "As you wish, Gladio. Good night."