Sir Armand was dragged away by the guards shortly thereafter. Had he opened his mouth and said something useful as an excuse, he might've saved his fellow conspirators the suspense of an investigation. But then, there'd been nothing about this "vacation" thus far that allowed Aversa to simply relax. This victory required blood, judiciously shed. And whether they'd realized it or not, Aversa's arrival heralded death for every conspirator too self-assured to flee the country.
She'd make certain of it. She just needed to bide her time.
It might have been a better consolation if she had any patience left for Faerghus's high society.
The next half-hour was a useless whirlwind of chattering nobles and the slow progress of Aversa's impending migraine. While King Lambert did introduce her and Morgan as the heroic pegasus riders who'd saved the royal family from devious plotters, it didn't remove the prior drivel; merely shifted it to insincere fawning. It was the least he could do, given how much work this court would take to shift, but Aversa was annoyed by it anyway.
Killing any ten of them would be faster, she mused, but then quickly shook off the thought; as useful as some of her stockpiled violence could be, this was a delicate situation.
Annoying, but delicate. Thus was politics.
Afterward, King Lambert retreated from the throne room "in order to compose a proclamation." This entailed dismissing Morgan and Prince Dimitri—who were specifically sent off with an order to stick together—and escorting Aversa to his office in the royal apartments. The buzzards could disperse as they would. His brother and Lady Cornelia were invited along, even if the former only complied begrudgingly.
The king's office was a little less grand than Chrom's in Ylisstol. While there were two ornately carved couches arrayed in front of a heavy oaken desk, with a low table between them for tea breaks and the like, that was where the similarities ended. The room was designed to retain warmth even in the depths of winter, with the decor leaning heavily toward furs and woven fabrics. The fireplace was clearly well-maintained and stocked even now with a dozen logs for the owner's convenience.
Aversa sat on the couch to the left, threw one leg over the other, and leaned back in perfect relaxation like a queen awaiting a hapless jester. If not for the change in actors, she could almost imagine herself back in Plegia Castle.
Lady Cornelia sneered at her—which was rather pathetic—before taking a seat opposite Aversa. She picked at her skirts enough to arrange them as though for a royal banquet.
Both Blaiddyd men similarly chose sides. King Lambert's weight made Aversa's couch shift, which he didn't seem to notice. He and his brother seemed mostly to be concentrating on each other.
It was a little like watching lions size each other up before battle.
There was also a half-empty wine bottle on the table with paired glasses, sporting a double-headed eagle on the label. On one hand, Aversa mourned the loss of her supply of Ylissean wine due to the chaos of the last week. On the other, she wasn't about to trust an untended drink in this place. Even if, given the general use of the room, she was fairly certain the grand duke had been the one indulging.
There was silence for about ten heartbeats. Aversa timed it.
Then: "What in the Goddess's name happened, Lambert?" The grand duke, who had picked up and poured himself a generous measure of wine in the interim, slammed the bottle back to the table like a gavel. "You say this woman saved your life, but from what?"
"Despite what Sir Armand shouted about before, Duscur was not responsible." King Lambert sighed deeply and leaned back, staring up at the ceiling. It gave the grand duke and Lady Cornelia a false sense of security, given that both of them seemed to think Aversa was as observant as the furniture. "The same day we arrived, assassins attacked us in the dead of night. Were it not for Lady Aversa's quick thinking and resourcefulness, none of us would have escaped with our lives."
Aversa silently replaced the phrase "quick thinking" with "enough dark magic to encircle a town and command a strike team of undead warriors." In this case "resourcefulness" mostly meant that she'd ordered Morgan to clear out the remaining attackers as soon as the opportunity arose.
"And you insist the enemy wasn't from Duscur." Grand Duke Rufus scoffed. "Who else could even think to strike a royal procession?"
"Given the enemy used Faerghus cavalry tactics, I have a guess." King Lambert finally looked at his brother again, one hand almost unconsciously finding the red welt still on his face. By far the least of Lissa's concerns when healing him, it would take some time to fade. And the motion had the side effect of drawing Grand Duke Rufus's attention to it, and watching the man's gaze flinch away was illustrative.
The question was, whose claws were digging into that conscience? Aversa hadn't been here long enough to do much more than form a negative opinion, so there was only one witch with the opportunity.
King Lambert went on, "After discussing it, we survivors agreed that the best way to keep the conflict contained was to return to Fhirdiad as soon as possible, to mete out justice from a position of strength. As we saw with Sir Armand, the enemy moves quickly."
"Sir Armand may not have been a part of the conspiracy," Grand Duke Rufus mused, still refusing to look at the evidence of injury. "He could just be attempting to warn the court of treachery, and was misinformed."
The mere fact of Grand Duke Rufus bringing up that possibility made Aversa want to discount it. She carefully added that impulse to the list of ideas to be interrogated later, maybe after getting a moment with Sir Armand and ripping the truth out of him. If he survived that long. If nobody had posted guards around his cell, Aversa wouldn't bet on him seeing the morning.
King Lambert, though, seemed to accept the point. "If he was, we'll find out soon enough." He glanced down at the wine and clearly considered pouring himself some, then just as clearly decided against it.
"Did only the two of you truly survive?" Grand Duke Rufus asked, after taking a fortifying sip of his wine. When King Lambert focused on him again, he held up his free hand. "I only ask because I saw no one else when you entered. I expected at least to see young Glenn shadowing my nephew."
"Glenn is safely recovering from his injuries. Of the others, only a handful of our people survived the initial attack." King Lambert grimaced, then ran a hand over his face. "The enemy was well-prepared for us, and our lack of pegasi meant we had to leave men behind for the sake of speed. It was a nightmare."
"I admit to some curiosity myself. Where is dear Patricia?" Lady Cornelia asked. Her brows furrowed like she was concerned, but Aversa heard the note of condescension like it came from her own mouth. Not to mention the pout that fled her face just a heartbeat too late. "Your Majesty would never leave Her Majesty behind without a reason."
That was probably how the queen had ended up on the Duscur expedition at all, instead of playing regent over the grand duke. If King Lambert had originally planned for the journey to serve two purposes—diplomacy and a vacation away from court intrigue—then transporting the entire royal family together made sense. Convenient for the assassins, too. If Fhirdiad nobles were so odious all the time, even someone as well-meaning as King Lambert could fall into that trap just from sheer social fatigue. Else there was a real chance any king might start defenestrating them.
Gangrel usually told Aversa to do it for him. Validar wouldn't have had to ask.
All of that was ultimately irrelevant. The queen was out of their reach now, wherever she was. If Robin called on still more Shepherds, perhaps Tharja could provide another angle of inquiry, but that was up to him. Aversa acquired more pressing problems at a speed that would have made her past self blanch.
If the woman's fate was as nightmarish as Aversa suspected, it would be a mercy not to know.
King Lambert drew a gloved hand over his face, hiding his eyes. Then, in a dead voice: "Patricia is gone."
Lady Cornelia covered her mouth with both hands. "No. That's impossible."
My baby niece is a better actress than you, Aversa thought. She didn't bother to school her own expression away from abject boredom, all the way down to letting her eyes slide half-shut and resting her hand in her palm. She even drummed her long nails against her cheekbone to truly sell the apathy.
Lady Cornelia hadn't moved fast enough to hide that smile from Aversa's scrutiny.
"Mirco, I know you can be strong, and quick. Run."
The image of Mirco's terrified little face might not be what haunted Aversa for the rest of her life, but she'd certainly never forget it. Instead, it was the calm she'd remember—absolute iron control when faced with a killing field. A town square filled with rows and rows of corpses, with the living gently picking their way through the ranks with shovels or tears. The awareness that, whenever scouts came back alone, entire families were lost in the fire. Being told, after Morgan's long flight, that there were dozens more who'd been cut down in the fields as they tried to run.
And Aversa was entirely certain not a single mention of these tragedies would sway their hearts.
Aversa wanted to reach across the table and dig out their eyes with her bare fingers.
"How did it happen?" Grand Duke Rufus looked more surprised than aggrieved. The bass note in his voice boomed, but Aversa had seen King Lambert crush a man's skull with one hand. It left an impression. "Surely there were guards around her, Lambert."
"They died," King Lambert said, his tone held level by force of will. "But from the word of the scouts, her carriage was left untouched. It was as though she vanished entirely."
It was technically true. Henry disposed of the loitering enemies in the area, but there was no handy corpse to confirm the queen's death to the satisfaction of people like this. Hiding and disposing of corpses was half the reason murderers weren't often caught without eyewitnesses. Magic could make a difference there, but not all places had easy access to trained mages for that purpose.
Grand Duke Rufus didn't say anything, but Aversa watched his eyes dart to Lady Cornelia while he drained his wine in one long swallow.
Aversa raised an eyebrow. She was starting to see why Grand Duke Rufus had his own territory. Leaving him in the capital was asking for trouble.
"I can't imagine what you've been through for the last few days," said Lady Cornelia promptly. The false sympathy was thick enough to choke on. "Surely you need time to rest and recover before planning your next steps?"
King Lambert shook his head. "I have no intention of letting those responsible hide their deeds. We will drag them into the light as soon as possible."
Standard metaphor, of course, but Lady Cornelia's mouth twitched.
"Of course! We'll make those dogs pay!" said Grand Duke Rufus, a little too loudly. He must have made it through most of the bottle alone by now.
The remainder of the conversation was not much more productive. Aversa had no real desire to see King Lambert recount the entire sequence of events that led to their first meeting, but with more restrained emotion where shock had once been. In the end, the three of them talked increasingly in circles, with the grand duke steadily draining the wine, Lady Cornelia offering vague platitudes, and King Lambert's patience dwindling. Aversa was thoroughly ignored.
She thought of defenestration again, mostly to keep her mood up.
After entirely too long, Lady Cornelia and her patsy were gently driven from the room with assurances to meet later and all of that rot. King Lambert needed to call a guard to get someone to haul his brother's drunken weight out of the room. All Aversa really hoped for from that interaction was that the man didn't trip down a flight of stone steps. If he did, her slow assembly of a case against Lady Cornelia's faction would hit a stumbling block.
Still, she wasn't sorry to see the back of them.
They sat in silence for a while.
King Lambert swept a hand over his face to push his hair back, then headed for his desk. Once there, he yanked the chair out hard enough that the legs screeched, slumped into it, and hid his face in his hands. He seemed to be taking a moment free from any noble audience to just sit there and breathe. There was no point in begrudging him a chance to restore his composure, so Aversa didn't.
It would undoubtedly come as a rude shock to King Lambert, but she'd identified two of the major conspirators in Fhirdiad just by walking into the throne room and laying eyes on the pair for the first time. Such a pity about the nigh-mandatory kinslaying.
The rest was all confirming her suspicions.
Lady Cornelia was the most obvious problem. While she was not as powerful as Aversa, she certainly had enough dark magic to make most of the mages in Duscur look like amateurs. She'd give Tharja or Henry pause for a few moments before they annihilated her after the initial confusion. They wouldn't even need magic; Henry had been practicing as an assassin in the last days of the war with Grima, and Tharja was a decent archer. Given her age and position at court, Lady Cornelia was also one of the few candidates Aversa could think of who would have the experience and the resources to compose a curse that targeted Crest-bearers with any success.
Then there was Grand Duke Rufus, who most resembled Gangrel in the days before Aversa got her claws into him. Theoretically a decent man—since all things were possible, somewhere—he stood to benefit most immediately from King Lambert's death. Besides, Grand Duke Rufus rather looked like he'd prefer to be blackout drunk and back in his estate. Not a promising sign of a guilt-free mind.
It was no wonder King Lambert hadn't been able to tell that these two wanted him dead, if this was how their day-to-day interactions went. She'd met more productive and consistently useful houseplants.
"I think I am retroactively more insulted by the comparison to your brother," Aversa said, mostly to break her silence. She examined her nails with a casual air, still a little annoyed that she'd needed to cut one of them short.
"I am so sorry you had to see him like that," King Lambert burst out, letting one hand slip to the desk as he pinched the bridge of his nose with the other. Because he was so fair—in both senses of the word—Aversa spotted the mortified blush at his ears before he even said that much. "I swear on the Goddess's name, Rufus isn't normally that bad."
Aversa thought, Does that mean you ran out of regents without disastrous personal flaws? Noting the harshness of the thought, however, what she said was, "It seemed to me that he had entirely too much to drink."
King Lambert sighed. "Yes, overindulgence is a weakness of his. But I had hoped once he settled in Fhirdiad again, Lady Cornelia could rein in his worse habits."
"Are they having an affair?"
"I…don't believe so?" King Lambert looked more surprised at the question than Aversa thought he ought, but he went on, "Neither Rufus nor Lady Cornelia are married, so they wouldn't be breaking any vows if there was some hidden relationship. To be perfectly honest, I'd been under the impression they were at odds."
It was more like Lady Cornelia seemed to hold the grand duke's leash.
Only one of them could lie to a man's face not long after signing his death warrant, and Grand Duke Rufus was not the winner of that confrontation. It wasn't as though Lady Cornelia was subtle about her disdain and malice, either. While both of them acted as though they could neither see nor hear Aversa—which would have gotten them killed by Aversa three years ago—she had no doubt they'd been assessing her.
Had they bothered to speak a single polite sentence in her direction, then maybe…
"But there is something you should know, Lady Aversa," King Lambert said, jolting her out of her bloody thoughts. "While I also need to apologize for the court's conduct when we arrived, the behavior there was also unusual."
"How so?" Aversa had, by this point, picked up the abandoned wine bottle and turned it over for the sole purpose of having something to do with her hands.
"Those waiting for us today were some of my staunchest opposition." In the face of Aversa's confusion, King Lambert explained, "Negotiations with Duscur were expected to take more than two months, because many of the towns on the peninsula are nearly independent and would require separate treaties for each area. The bulk of the nobles you saw in the throne room were those who either spoke up against my plan to forge any peace with people outside of Fódlan, or who are allied with those who did." He sighed. "Rooting them out took almost ten years. Then Rufus allows them back into the fold after barely three weeks, and for what?"
"What indeed," Aversa muttered.
"Imperial wine, for one," was King Lambert's equally unhappy rejoinder. He waved one hand in the direction of the bottle, as though he'd borrowed Aversa's headache over the last few minutes. "It looks like a 1172 Arundel red, though the details escape me. Rufus would know."
"Pity he drank it all, but at least we know it's not poisoned. I don't see why anyone would bother." Though he did need to moderate his intake. Aversa set the bottle back on the table, wondering when she'd get a chance to properly compare Ylissean wine to whatever this was. And what sort of calendar system these people used. "He'll live."
King Lambert didn't appear to have much to say to that, choosing instead to rest his head in his hands again.
It made Aversa feel just slightly guilty to say, "Your Majesty, I believe we have to discuss some of what just occurred."
"Yes, we must." He sounded even less enthused than Aversa was. Still, he straightened his spine and his shoulders, as though it was business as usual. "The western lords chose Rufus as their figurehead." King Lambert's blue eyes met Aversa's red ones, and his expression was closer to ice than it had been even when Sir Armand was still in front of him. "He's been drinking himself half to death out of guilt. That was what you wished to say, was it not?"
Close, but not quite. "Lady Cornelia likely masterminded it."
That brought King Lambert up short, briefly. "If Lady Cornelia wished to harm Faerghus, all it would have taken was neglect. There was a plague so virulent that it even took Dimitri's mother from us, and yet…"
"I can't speak for her actions then, and I don't intend to," Aversa interrupted gently, noting King Lambert's reluctance to finish that thought. "But here and now, that woman has enough mastery of dark magic that she could have easily crafted all of the curses we saw in Duscur. No one else in Fhirdiad even comes close."
And while the curse for King Lambert had been a lethal one—one way or another—the prince and his knight were a different matter entirely. Attacking his conscience with that seemed more manipulative than not, so Aversa let it sit. King Lambert would remember her remarks sooner or later.
"Then we should have your friends join us here," King Lambert said, raising his head with a determined set to his face. "Where are they now?"
"Running errands."
"…What?"
MEANWHILE…
The primary advantage of spending the early morning stitching notice-me-not curses to a trio of cloaks was, of course that no one looked twice at Henry's merry band of scouts. Affected strangers' gazes glanced off them like blows deflecting off plate armor. Under such an enchantment, somebody like Gaius could walk directly up to a target, pull him off his horse, and probably kick him with his metal-capped boots before the spell gave out. The three of them were thus able to make their way from one end of Fhirdiad to the other without attracting undue attention. It was one of the most useful scraps of magic in Henry's grimoire by far.
Aversa's needlework was pretty good, too. They weren't going to make Lissa do it.
"Whoops! Close one," Henry said cheerfully, being hauled back to the safe side of the street by Lissa's quick hands.
A split second later, cavalry thundered down the street past them, in pursuit of a riderless black horse running full-pelt through the streets. Not one of their heads turned in the direction of the people they'd nearly trampled just off their left flank.
There were also some drawbacks to Henry's spellwork. This particular trick still needed some more testing. The primary disadvantage of using a curse to avoid ordinary attention meant, in the wake of one chaotic moment or other, keeping from being run over by carts was an ongoing problem.
Especially for Henry.
As for the incident that spooked the horses… Henry figured there was always the occasional war-beast whose greatest goal in life was to break the yoke and live a life of murderous freedom. No matter how short it might be in the end. The warhorse who'd led the stampede hadn't been one of them, but that mostly just meant Henry had to talk to a different horse, which bolted instead of taking the time to throw and trample its rider first.
The dark mage was still yelling at whoever looked most like a cavalry commander about twenty paces away. The cavalry commander yelled back.
No one bothered looking for an empty space with the occasional spell flare-up. They didn't know to look. Besides, from the perspective of humans, horses spooked at invisible nonsense all the time.
Lissa hugged Henry around the waist in relief, and Henry hugged her back because it felt nice. Lissa being sad was the worst.
"You know, I like my friends in a state other than 'flat.' Try to keep that in mind." Glenn pinched the bridge of his nose. It was one of the more likely responses to spending an afternoon with Henry outside of a battlefield context. Lissa even said he was getting better at more harmless antics. Or at least the risks that would only hurt himself. "Surviving Duscur to die at home like this would be ridiculous."
"Hahaha!" When Henry noticed Glenn frowning at him—which took five full seconds—he hid the lower half of his face with his grimoire. It was mostly to keep Glenn from noticing his smile, even if that was already a lost cause. "At least it wasn't the cabbage cart!"
"What would've been better?" Lissa asked, knocking the heel of her hand against the back of Henry's head.
"Oh, maybe something with firewood. It'd be over pretty fast."
Glenn crossed his arms. Maybe he was frustrated? "So much for that talk about controlling animals."
"I don't control anything! That's the point." Henry shrugged, tucking his grimoire away after a moment's thought. "Wouldn't be fun any other way."
"Fine, fine. There's the next one," Glenn said, clearly just pushing events along. He pointed at a man wearing black armor astride a dark steed. "We've cleared the chaff."
But the guy over there was clearly a pushover, so Henry thought the most entertaining part of the whole thing was the horses.
"Whatever! Tag, he's it!" And Henry sent a minor bad-luck curse toward the guy. Feeling it take hold, he turned back to his companions for approval.
Lissa clapped. Then she tucked her hand into his and they could keep walking down the street like that, once Glenn was done being boring.
It still kinda sucked that Aversa said they weren't allowed to kill anybody. Well, actually, she'd said that to Henry and then told Lissa what she'd told him, so there was no way they'd get the jump on any of the bad guys now.
Glenn rolled his eyes, but he graciously allowed himself to be distracted. Pulling out a pocket notebook, he opened it to the map he'd drawn late last night. While Fhirdiad didn't have Ylisstol-style coffeeshops—Glenn gave them both strange looks at the idea—they'd been able to find the occasional table, beer barrel, or other flat surface for writing. This moment's lucky desk stand-in was, in fact, a table. Glenn even found a fat log to serve as a chair. Using a charcoal stick, he marked their target's location on the map and drew a rough sketch, along with a few notes.
It was mostly a description of their target—sadly lacking a bird mask—in as much detail as with the others.
Henry peered over Glenn's shoulder, watching him work. If not for the Outrealm Gate's enchantments, he'd be pretty lost no matter how good Glenn's handwriting was. This wasn't nearly as complicated as Ricken's notes, though. "Y'know, I still think it'd be safer if he was dead."
"My answer is still no, Sir Henry." Glenn scribbled something else Henry couldn't see. After a critical glare down at his notes and then at his audience, he folded the map again and tucked it into a pocket. He folded his arms on the table. "His Majesty's orders were very clear. We can't afford to kill potentially innocent people in the crossfire. Just knowing their dispositions for later is enough."
That wasn't something the king had said to him, but Aversa was the one who talked to him most of the time. Maybe she'd rather forgive a change for the sake of caution than for recklessness.
Lissa squeezed Henry's hand. "And we can always come back later."
Though since Henry had laid curses on each dark mage so far, just to see if they noticed, what Glenn didn't know wasn't his problem. A low-level curse laid by eye contact was only strong enough to give the average person a headache, but there'd be time for escalation if any one of the candidates decided to cause trouble later.
Getting out and doing field work was an excellent way to spend the morning.
"Aww, fine." He bounced on his heels, already turning north. "Okay, next!"
Glenn slipped the notebook back into his pocket. "Not if we were still intending to reconvene on time. And we agreed on ignoring the one in the palace until then. His Majesty would prefer to confront that problem once everyone's blades are pointed in the same direction."
If the sneak was a member of King Lambert's court, there'd be a few public executions to round out the day. Henry was pretty good with an axe, but maybe they had a guy for that. Most kings did.
"Then we shouldn't keep him waiting," said Lissa. She held out her other hand like she was planning to help him up, sort of like how knights treated maidens in carriages. And it wasn't a setup for a joke.
This time, anyway!
Glenn rolled his eyes again, but he did accept the "assistance" because Lissa offered.
Taking Glenn along for the sake of navigation was a compromise, which of course meant no one was entirely happy with it. Criss-crossing the city was necessary to track heir future enemy. It was just that, in some ways, it was a time-filling task for the most chaotic people following the king around. While they worked, Sir Gustave gathered loyal knights as quietly as possible to serve as a true, armored honor guard for a procession.
As far as Henry cared, it got them out of the house.
Again.
Henry was bored of pomp and ceremony, though they'd barely started with that stuff. He'd rather find the problems immediately, rip their hearts out in plain view, and stomp on the mess. It wasn't anything personal. It was just way faster than this. It wasn't like he was Aversa, who acted like that burning rage in her chest was almost self-sustaining. He was just impatient.
Oh well.
On the next part of their long lap around the city, Henry stopped on the side of the street—out of cart range, this time—and said, "Hey, Glenn?"
"What is it, Sir Henry?" Glenn asked. Sounded a little like walking around had given him some patience back.
"When we go to the castle and have the big ballroom brawl or foyer fight or something, we should probably have some backup weapons, right?" Henry held up two fingers and sent a yellow arc of lighting shooting from one to the other. "So I'm thinking lances and axes."
"Just because we can have them doesn't mean we need them," Lissa said patiently. "And anyway, we've still got stuff left to do before we head back."
"But I want one."
"Do you want to carry one? Because I think we're just gonna end up carrying them."
To this, Henry didn't really have a good argument. He and Lissa could trade most of their tomes, except the dark magic ones, so maybe she had a point. "Robin would have us carry extras."
"Robin would have us carry our own tents right now if he could." Lissa puffed out her cheeks like a chipmunk. "Both ways uphill, and in the snow! Building character until the enemy is the least of our problems."
Henry considered this. "No, that sounds like Frederick."
"Oh gods, it does. That's actually a worse thought," Lissa said, with an exaggerated shudder.
Glenn, who had been following this conversation with slowly increasing alarm, said, "If it comes down to a fight, the castle has a better armory than Sir Gustave will. Try to be patient."
"That's way farther to walk, though!" Henry complained. They'd have to leave their mission behind and then walk all the way back and waste tons of time.
"I'm sure you'll survive." Glenn rolled his eyes. He was quiet for a little while, ducking past every morning visitor to the marketplace between them and nominal safety. It was only after saving them both from being run over by another oblivious cart-driver that Glenn finally changed the actual topic instead of being all sulky. "Why did Lady Aversa entrust you both with this kind of task?"
Okay, then he was still sulky.
"That tone's a little judgey," Lissa muttered, pouting a little. "What, don't you think we're responsible?"
"Sincerely… No, not really." Glenn watched them with a little divot between his eyebrows, then sighed.
"I mean, we fought in a war together, and I'm pretty sure Aversa's related to me somehow." When Glenn looked at him funny, Henry went on, "We're from the same village in the middle of nowhere! It's so tiny that the only way anyone leaves is by dying. Except us! So, probably related."
"I… What about your parents?"
Ha, yeah, that was a whole thing. Henry didn't really remember what they'd looked like, during whatever time they were around before abandoning him in the mountains. More than ten years on, all he could say was that his dad might have had the same hair color as he did. Aside from the familiar shape of the thought, it wasn't like it mattered much. His parents were as dead to him as he was to them.
Also, they were actually dead. Funny how that worked out.
"Plague, sometime before I went back." Henry shrugged, taking the lead in their no-longer-leisurely stroll even if he didn't know where he was going. Glenn was probably one of those big family noble types, so relatives didn't go dying on him much outside of battle. Maybe that was what he thought was weird. "It happens."
"My condolences. I didn't mean to bring up something painful," Glenn tried. He made the same kind of face that people like Libra and Ricken did when Henry brought up things that made other people sad. It looked a lot like pain.
Henry didn't see much point in it; none of that had happened to them, so he just laughed it off until they gave up. It didn't matter.
"Oh, it's not a big deal. They were pretty terrible." Henry felt Lissa squeeze his hand the third time she did it. Probably. When he looked down, Lissa made sure to thread their fingers together and squeeze again. "What did you say about them, Lissa? That time we went back to pick up Aversa."
"That if they'd still been around, I'd have set them on fire." Lissa's voice came across grimmer than she usually was, and totally confident. It was a little like she'd picked up some stuff from Aversa and her witch-queen act, but her version was a lot cuter. "Nobody treats you like that ever again without having to deal with me."
"That's love!" Henry concluded, settling a hand over his heart with a wistful little sigh. If he'd met Lissa a little earlier… Well, actually, most things probably wouldn't have changed much. He'd been in the Plegian army practically since he had all his grown-up teeth, after all.
"Should I be more afraid of getting married now, or less?" Glenn muttered to himself.
Lissa scoffed. "Sir Glenn, if you think we're weird, you haven't met enough married couples."
"For which I am strangely thankful." Now Glenn was pouting. It wasn't as cute as when Lissa did it. "The in-jokes alone are enough."
"Does your idea of romance involve a lot more money and power and stuff like that?" Lissa asked. "Since you're a noble."
Maybe it did! Henry couldn't help but bother Glenn at least a little. "Or maybe it's just because you're a pessimist!"
"I'm sorry I asked," Glenn said. Grumbling a bit, he put his serious face back on and changed the topic. "Sir Henry, where is our next target?"
"This way!"
Twenty minutes of walking later, Glenn was even less happy with his choices today. "That's Lady Cornelia's townhouse. Are you sure about this?"
"Yep."
There was a moderately powerful blot of dark magic on the back side of the building, at an angle well off the ground. Probably the second floor, barring some sort of structural nonsense usually limited to fortresses. It wasn't foggy or blocked by concealing spells at all.
Lissa nudged him. "How strong is it?"
"Better than the small fry guys out here, but not as strong as the one in the palace." Henry peered around the wall, looking for a good spot to climb something. With a decent vantage point, he could just climb right in.
The building was draped in white stone inlays and equipped with a minimalist garden because Fhirdiad was so dang cold, dotted with neatly trimmed fir trees. It was smaller and newer than the townhouse maintained by and for House Dominic, with four windows across the front to the latter's eight, and three floors. It also didn't appear to have the same number of outbuildings to hide necessary features, such as stables or a torture dungeon.
It looked kinda like Robin's townhouse in Ylisstol, actually. From Lissa's story about it, that building had originally belonged to a traitorous hierarch in Ylisse's church, and Robin received the man's holdings after one war and some "housecleaning." And he'd ripped out part of the adjoining gardens so Tiki always had enough landing room.
Henry mostly just liked going over to steal all the raspberries when he was in town.
Regardless, the inside of the building could only have so many layouts. Even if the perimeter's brick wall and metal gate could keep out the average intruder, with the help of guards, it was comically inadequate against a group like theirs. Even if Henry didn't have the power necessary to burn whatever he liked and rush straight through, he'd also taken thieving lessons from Gaius in exchange for never, ever trying to share more Plegian cooking with him ever again.
Henry didn't really get it, but he never went anywhere without lockpicks these days. Seemed useful to be prepared.
There were also a lot of super complicated curses nailed to a couple of those windows, which Henry could feel like a buzz in his back teeth even now. It was a little like holding a bee in his mouth and pretending he couldn't hear it complaining.
And there was a lot of complaining going on. Animals didn't like the kind of stuff the dark mages in Duscur had used. Felt wrong, or creepy, or something like that. Not all of the crows and rats had the same thoughts about it.
Their main obstacle was actually Glenn, the wet blanket.
"Who's Lady Cornelia anyway?" Bouncing on his heels, Henry peered around the gates and looked for a way inside. "Sounds too much like Cordelia. They should've called her something else."
Cordelia was better, anyway.
Glenn ran a hand down his face. "She's a member of His Majesty's court." The unsaid "you ignoramuses" did not go entirely unheard. Ignoring Lissa's judgy face, too, Glenn went on, "A decade ago, she saved Fhirdiad from a plague. His Majesty gave her the formal position of court mage and even ordered that house built for her needs in gratitude."
So, what, she was this king's version of Robin? Sounded fake.
Nobody who had a house like this was that sincere.
"So what? There's a dark mage in there. We should go get 'em." Lissa looked between them and huffed. "I can probably go first, right?"
"Nope! Need to do some poking around before that." Henry said.
"I hope that doesn't mean you're going first," said Glenn.
"I might!"
Glenn sighed. "Find us an entryway first, then circle back and we'll discuss our options."
"Fiiiine." Henry got that a lot. Rather than try to argue, he thought, So, who'd have the best eyes and brains for this trick?
Henry reached out and ran a finger along the brick as he and Lissa walked arm-in-arm around the perimeter, humming quietly to himself. There was always something alive, everywhere, that didn't obey human orders. Finding the cracks in the enemy's defenses was pretty easy when most of these dark mage types treated the animals around them with literally no concern whatsoever. Everybody and everything around them would happily betray them for a bag of pine nuts.
"Anybody listening?" Henry asked the world, sending a little thread of his power spiraling out from his palm.
A dozen little heads whipped in his direction.
Sometimes Henry just wandered off whenever he pleased, only to come back carrying whatever he'd found along the way. Sometimes wounds, on himself or others, and sometimes little novelties he thought would amuse some other Shepherd for a few minutes. He was, in the end, a people-pleaser.
It was just that people were difficult.
Rats were pretty simple.
"Got something?" asked Lissa, watching him kneel under a tree, hand out and beckoning. She even dropped into a crouch next to him.
"Yep."
"Is it frogs?"
"Nope!"
Lissa heaved a sigh of relief.
Out of the rustling grass and leaf litter, a brown rat poked its nose against his fingertips. Long whiskers twitching, it placed one paw on his pinky finger and asked, Help?
"I was just about to ask you the same thing," Henry said quietly, even as he tilted his hand just far enough to run a finger over its head. "Hey, you. Aren't you cute?"
Help? The rat leaned into his touch, beady little eyes briefly closing. It—no, she—crawled into his hand entirely, a slightly stubby tail dangling between his thumb and forefinger. Help.
Lissa rested her hand against his shoulder, covering her mouth with one hand. Right, Lissa didn't really like most of the "gross" animals much. He'd memorized a list a couple years ago, but it seemed arbitrary to Henry what animals counted as enemies to humanity. They were all just doing their own thing. Humans just…got in the way sometimes.
Though it was still funny to watch some of the Shepherds scream when they ran into unexpected bugs.
Help me, the rat insisted. She started running her little paws from her mouth across her head, even stopping to groom her whiskers. Then she started sniffing his hand, even stuffing a bit of his sleeve into her mouth. You?
Then the cawing started.
Crow voices were pretty accurate to their messages. The black ones across the city had a whole language all to themselves, telling each other the news about trustworthy places, sources of food, and an awful lot of family gossip. Right now, a bunch of them were shouting things a lot like this little rat.
Help us!
One, two, three humans. No bad humans.
Help us! Help us! Help us!
Henry stood up slowly, raising the rat to his shoulder so she could hide in his hood. Whatever was setting off the crows was definitely gonna be their problem, and they needed everyone's hands free to deal with that.
"I guess she's a little cute," Lissa admitted, her gaze flicking between the direction of the crow ca-caw-phony and the rat whose whiskers tickled Henry's jaw. "Something's wrong, isn't it?"
"Mm-hm. Don't think it's just us, though."
Glenn rushed around the corner, hood up in case of falling bird debris, and began to say, "What did you do—?"
Glenn cut himself off when a dozen crows burst out of a tree in the distance and converged on the guards at the front gate, prompting some of them to start shouting at the birds. This, in turn, scared some of them into taking flight, but it also attracted a growing flock of other birds to see what the fuss was about. In minutes, there were almost a hundred crows and ravens peering down at the situation from trees and nearby rooftops. They shifted like water when someone threw a rock, but didn't retreat.
Going by the voices, that could keep the household guard busy for quite some time through intimidation factor alone. People always thought there was something inherently spooky about crows.
Glenn's suspicion—a hilarious contrast to the king's magnanimous, unblinking trust—would have to wait.
The sentiment, among all the cawing, was, Hate you hate you hate you! The crows were worked up, and it wasn't even Henry's doing. He'd only used magic to understand them and to get their attention, not anything more complicated. It wasn't like the horses at all.
"Thanks," he said to the crows who'd hung back to enjoy the chaos.
One landed on his shoulder, peering around his hooded head at Lissa. It cawed in his ear, and he heard, Who are you?
"All questions will be saved until the end of the mission, I suppose." Glenn turned his attention back to Henry and Lissa, totally unaware that he'd kind of answered the crow's question, too. "What did you find?"
"A rat!" Henry said immediately. The crow croaked as a courtesy.
"Do you mean a spy?" Glenn asked, with the tiniest hint of desperation.
"Nope! Literally a rat." Henry lifted a hand to the side of his hood.
The brown, pointed nose poked out, whiskers twitching wildly as she took in new scents. In short order, the rest of the rat climbed out of his hood and into his palm again, all the way down to the naked tail. She sat up in his hand, peering at them both with beady little eyes.
Glenn grimaced. Maybe he was a cat person.
Henry thought rats were pretty great. He'd survived a few days during his time in school because rats were good at getting through ropes and susceptible to bribery. And they were too small to get caught in any of the really wild torture devices except on purpose.
They'd also helped him set a couple fires on the way out, but that went against most of their instincts.
What Glenn said was, "Does…the rat have something to say?"
"I mean, she has a message." Henry's avian passenger took wing to join the guard-harassing campaign, so he allowed the rat to sit on his shoulder instead. Stroking the rat's head with a careful finger, Henry went on, "She says, 'help me.'"
Help, the rat agreed. Maybe Henry ought to give her a name. He'd have to think about it.
"Is it the rat asking for help, or is the rat asking for help for someone else?" Lissa asked.
For some reason, it never quite occurred to most people that if a mage could understand and influence animals, the animals could make requests in turn. Maybe it was just a logical gap in their mental picture of the world, considering that no one Henry knew about displayed quite the same abilities. Yes, taguel like Panne and Yarne could understand animals as a part of their shapeshifter nature, and every manakete effortlessly steered wyverns to their will, but people were usually less considerate of beings who couldn't speak. Or would eventually end up in the soup pot. Aversa was one of them; so was Tharja.
And yet, Henry could feel the tug of another mage's magic, whirling around his own. It wasn't the same—nobody's would be—but it was on the crows and on the rat, and it was active now.
"Oh, for someone else."
Glenn could draw whatever conclusions he wanted. Poor guy looked skeptical even before all this started. "With…what?"
"With breaking her friend out," said Henry. The rat leaned up against his hand and did something ratty with her mouth that made those little eyes shudder. "Aww, look how happy she is."
"I'll take your word for it, Sir Henry," said Glenn, doing a wonderful job of pretending not to be staring into space somewhere past Henry's ear, and of not drawing his sword. More the second thing than the first thing. "Who is her friend?"
"The dark mage. Dunno what else. Rats don't care about that kind of thing." Henry flicked a careless hand and sent a small mote of purplish magic spinning over the garden wall. "But isn't a knight's usual story to rescue maidens locked in towers and other romantic stuff like that?"
Glenn blinked, wrongfooted. "I'm sorry, I thought we only wanted to track them." Apparently, confusion made him a bit grumpy. "We didn't trip into a novel while I wasn't looking."
Henry cocked his head to one side as the rat scurried up his scarf to hide. "What's that got to do with anything?"
"Look, if someone's going to this much trouble to help us break in, then clearly they're trying to send a message." Lissa didn't hold out her hand to the rat or anything, but she braced her healing staff against her shoulder like she planned to fight someone with it. "And the Shepherds help people, even if not all of us are knights. Henry, do you think we should?"
"I think so! If it goes wrong, we can just burn something down to hide the evidence." At Lissa's frown, he added, "Aversa didn't say we couldn't."
"I said no killing anybody," said Lissa.
"I'll come up with something nicer, then."
Lissa huffed, but once the banter was over, she mostly just set her chin and looked determined. Henry expressed outright concern for strangers in dangerous situations approximately once per blue moon, since strangers weren't his friends by definition, but everyone tried to encourage it. "Okay. Then do you want to go over the wall or through it?"
"Hold on—" Glenn began. Spoilsport.
Henry ignored him. "Great! I was just gonna go on my own if you said no, anyway."
"No, you weren't." Lissa bonked his shoulder with her staff, well away from the rat passenger.
"No, I wasn't," Henry agreed instantly.
Glenn looked like he wanted to give up and go home for a couple of heartbeats, then muttered, "How do I keep getting myself into these situations?"
Mostly by following orders, probably. Which was why Henry mostly took them as suggestions unless they sounded fun.
Henry immediately scrambled up to the wall like a squirrel, feeling his rat passenger's little paws clinging hard to his hair. Little flickers of purple magic around his hands and feet, summoned with barely a thought, gave him the grip and the momentum for it.
Gaius did tend to say he'd have been a frightening assassin if he ever learned patience. Henry laughed it off; he was good enough already!
"What kind of chivalric novels do you people read?" Glenn asked, but was already kneeling to offer Lissa a boost over the wall. A reasonable act, given that the wall was twelve feet high. "Ready?"
"Sure, but that seems like a lot of work." Lissa patted him on the shoulder, scooping both of them up in the cradle of her wind magic from that brief contact, and lifted them gently over the wall and over whatever thorn bush Lady Cornelia grew nearest the wall to deter intruders.
Henry watched them go, then leapt from the top to the paved stone path and bounced over to them with a grin. "Nice one, Lissa."
"Thank you, Lady Lissa. It probably would've been a lot less dignified to just climb."
"Glad to hear it. I've been practicing."
"...You've been practicing how to break into people's houses?" Glenn suddenly looked less thankful.
Whatever! Skills were skills.
Help me, help me, the rat chanted in his ear.
Henry waved them along toward the house, because why stand among all these spoiled roses? The blot of dark magic was about twelve feet above his head and six away from the corner windows, which made him itch to climb it like he had the wall.
Standing back a little to look at the window closest to that blob, the curtains were obviously drawn, and there were iron bars across the frame that kept anybody from getting in or out. The only reason the security stuff wasn't obvious was that the bars were on the inside. There was almost certainly some loose doorframe, settled foundation, or some other gap that would allow the rats much easier access, but humans needed to make some adjustments.
"So, how are we supposed to get in without alerting the guards or servants?" Glenn asked, like he'd found a real flaw in the plan.
Joke's on him. Henry didn't make plans.
"I mean, there's two ways to do it, and one of them is against the rules. So we're not doing that." It was maybe a little unfair, given that Henry knew Aversa's only solution when faced with a locked door was to blow up the door, but Henry got his grimoire out and sat next to the corner of the house. "Now, lemme see…"
As Glenn stood as a very nervous watchman and the household guards continued to patrol, oblivious to the intruders, Henry dug down into his repertoire of tactics pulled some of Owain's stage ideas. Watching him and Cynthia try to come up with approved-for-children versions of some of their dramatics was pretty neat, and they only had to conform to a couple of rules. Morgan was the one who added the most specific rule of all: The ones where dragons died at the end were banned in Robin's household.
Henry, meanwhile, got to listen to Owain complaining that audiences were getting tougher and enchanting people to sleep to get the story moving didn't have enough pathos. He didn't really know what that meant, but it was a useful trick.
"Do you think Aversa might want to copy this later?" Henry asked, as the rat crawled down from his shoulder and started sniffing around.
Lissa scooched a little out of the rat's path, only saying, "If it works, probably."
"What does this spell even do?" Glenn's voice. Almost worried.
He probably should be.
Putting a kingdom into an eternal slumber wasn't something Henry would've normally tried. It seemed like a waste of effort even when Owain talked about it. But one household, for less twenty minutes? Simple enough, even if he scratched out the shape of the spell using a bit of discarded wood. All he needed was a bit of his own blood to seal the deal, and the brick was rough.
Henry immediately punched the wall exactly hard enough to make his knuckles split. It didn't even hurt.
"Hey!" Glenn said, probably totally forgetting that they were sneaking.
Lissa's hand landed gently on Henry's wrist. Not enough to stop him from doing anything, but enough to remind him she was right there with him.
Then it was down to a bit of power, using the welling blood as a medium.
There was a tiny flare of light.
Riotous clamor arose from the crows. The six-guard patrol, passing just behind their huddled group, collapsed on the spot in a muffled series of bouncing metal clanks. This noise was immediately joined by several other suspicious clanks. When Henry looked around the building's corner, the patrol that originally headed their way was in a similar situation.
Hate you, hate you, hate you! And yet, none of the crows descended to pluck the downed guards' eyes out or anything. That might've woken them up.
"Nyahaha, good call there!" Henry waved to them with his free hand. "We'll get to your friend soon enough."
Help us, they called back. Help us!
"A little less waving and a little more healing," Lissa said quietly. Her magic washed over the tiny sting in his hand and made it like it'd never happened. "Ready?"
"Yep!" And Henry flounced right over the spellbound bodies of the guards and made a beeline for the back door.
"Good thing they're all wearing helmets." Glenn skirted around the fallen men instead of Henry's more direct path, sounding a little like the world had tilted again.
"Pff, they'll be fine." Henry clapped his hands together just to test the bad guys' hearing. Getting exactly no reaction, he trailed little golden sparks as he headed for the door, a little spring in his step. "Let's get to work!"
They had a breakout to stage.
Notes:
1. In some Fire Emblem games, the localized name of the dark magic-wielding class is "druid." Coincidentally, Henry is both a druid in that sense and capable of talking to basically anything alive. Does he use this skill especially effectively? No.
2. A "grimoire" in this case is basically mage-being-pretentious talk for a dark mage's notebook. Aversa's is full of shorthand where her expertise is strongest, and thus death-curses are nigh-indecipherable squiggles and laundry-sorting spells are extremely detailed.
3. The reason "the dragon dies at the end" stories are banned in Robin's household is because someone can be born a dragon. Like Nagi. And Nagi might cry. By contrast, being a witch is usually a career choice. Aversa isn't sentimental about witches, so someone getting Hansel and Gretel'd doesn't bother her.
4. I tend to view Glenn as the average between Rodrigue and Dimitri's descriptions of him. While he has the knightly manners expected of his upbringing and day job, his base personality is probably closer to Felix's than not. Just, uh, less bitter.