"You're an Ackerman."
The naked accusation was met with a look that would've silenced any other, but Suzanne had faced worse than this girl, and, by the way she scoffed, she also knew it'd take more than a nasty glare to deter the likes of this middle aged woman with little left to lose with her life being the least of those concerns.
Chief among them was this quite literal premonition that this was only the beginning in something larger than an single person here, and, while this was the result of and fell upon the shoulders of that mysterious girl, Ymir, she couldn't shake the feeling that Mathias, Rita, and this girl were to play a significant role in it. Despite her want that they wouldn't be tangled in Mathias' life, someone had plans for them yet, and this girl more-so over the other two, knowing what she presumed correctly, judging by that reaction, and what she was glad in her heart of hearts for because, again, she didn't care what happened to either this girl nor Rita in the end, as long as Mathias came to less emotional or bodily harm. Even if it was a part of growing up, and he'd already turned into a fine young man already, better than his father, needed her guidance no longer, the crisis of a parent approaching old age, she was a fool trying to convince herself that Mathias didn't need her. A son always needed their mother, and she was his just as much as he was hers. Sara wouldn't mind. No, she'd encourage it, as a dear friend's gift from beyond the pale. And neither could leave her retributions unsettled. Old scars, split and bled anew; fresh callouses on her knuckles. She since found that she didn't want to. That everyone else could go to hell, and she'd be the one to send them, if need be. Then it'd be her turn, eventually. It started with Bernhardt. It ended with the King. Caught in the middle were many others, though she knew few by their names. One such was Kenny. Or, rather, who pulled his strings: the King's adviser herself. Therein came in this girl.
She knew the Ackermans well. Had been raised by, and partnered to one, for ten years on. Heard the story from his father, of their role in the history of the walls. Their broad and bloody history, and their brief and bloodier end. The head of the family, his father's father's brother, beheaded, the rest hunted like rats, taking to the slums beneath Mitras. Scattered like so many red leaves which fell from overhead, and this girl, given her age, how alike she looked to Kenny, to Levi… to Kuchel… strongly suggested she was the one his grandfather had been searching for. All those years, all this time, never found. Until here and now.
"Well, got something to tell me?" Amanda said, appearing relaxed to the unassuming eye.
They were alone, standing opposite one another on the forest floor, but even so Suzanne kept her knife close at hand and noticed one of the girl's blades showing its face outside its sheath. It was shortly after nightfall. No having to worry about any Titans devouring them. Little risk of Rita's soldiers overhearing them because she'd asked favor from Kelly to persuade them otherwise and those who could be trusted had been ordered away.
Unlike with Nikki or Mathias she had dealt with this girl's kind before, and went straight for the throat. "Your uncle is going to be in Fuerth long before it takes us. He'll be there for a painting Erhardt is probably carrying. If you try anything alone, you're going to get yourself killed."
"Maybe," Amanda replied coldly. Then, glancing down at her hand, the one which concealed the knife, she gave a frown though the trick of the light turned it into the shadow of a grin. "But what do you give a damn?"
"A quick death for you would be a slow one for her. Kelly is the daughter of a minor nobleman in Mitras. Mathias is the son of the wealthiest man in the Exterior. Together they can persuade the officials to spare everyone that aren't Rita or surnamed Ackerman. She'll be put on trial where she'll probably be executed. You kill him — or anyone else — and there won't be a trial. If there is, it'll be formality. Either way you'll be taken, tortured, then murdered. I can save both her and you, but I need you to trust me."
Amanda chuckled. A dark, knowing amusement. "Trust you? The old maid with the knife up her sleeve that's made it 'shockingly' clear she isn't all she seems?"
Suzanne cracked a thin smile. "My mother is a member of the royal family. Kenny knows this. Let me talk to him. I'll get him to take you two to Mitras with me. I'll appeal to her directly."
"Oh? And how will you manage that?"
"Because I killed the King of the Walls and his family for her."
Walking in the convoy alongside Doris, the two of them talked about her daughter. She wanted to have a fuller understanding of the girl when she finally confronted her, parting ways with the older woman when she felt she learned enough and went looking for Ada and Ymir while sifting through the jumble of memories that assaulted her back in Quinta.
Almost certain the person she'd seen in them and her mother were the same, though it was difficult to discern how much time had passed since, she knew it was significant and nowhere close to recent. Taking into consideration how long she'd been alive, growing old in years but not in youthfulness, there was a high chance that her mother appeared not a day over her age forty years prior herself. Unlike Bernhardt, she'd only seen her mother in person once, shortly after her father's botched assassination attempt on the King. When she was being taken into custody, there'd been a woman instructing them, eying her intensely, and before they could throw her into a cell or execute her, as only befit one who tried to murder the highest figurehead in the walls, child or no, this woman, by behest of Jörg from Sara's wish, had been the one to overrule the Assembly, sparing her life but still kicking her out on the streets to fend for herself nonetheless. Based on this, the words of her father, the rush of memories from that phenomenon in the district plaza, all signs pointed to her mother being the King's adviser; the only individual with the power to speak in his voice. Wherein, with her knowings, though she'd wanted never again to face the truth, having buried all traces in the recesses of her brain twenty years prior, content to simply be a servant to the Kramers until the end of her days, rumor became fact.
The King's adviser in title only, her mother was the true ruler within the walls, and Suzanne was her only living heir begotten by lust that she knew of. No long lost siblings had come riding to her under the cover of darkness to see her, after all.
Suzanne Fritz, a fifty year old princess.
The very had been absurd when she discovered the truth originally, but it soundly even more ridiculous now.
And her mother, this Lady Voigt, if she put two and two together correctly and would try to have Ymir attest, was older than even the walls themselves. Of which the implications frightened her, and she wanted nothing more to be that lonely child again, running around in the Underground, knowing but the one truth in the entire world: that someone loved her, even if it he was just playing pretend.