"You have been staring out the window for forty minutes, are you feeling unwell, Lady Edelgard?"
Her uncle's voice is a lance thrown through a glass window. The peace and pleasant silence of her thoughts shattered to pieces, Edelgard turns a cool look of disapproval upon the man standing before her. She has the same eyes as he does, she realized this the other night and loathes the color now, and seeing the calculating stare she knows she has reflected back at her is… disquieting. He offers a mocking bow before her, just on the edge of obstinance and disrespect, and awaits a response.
Vulture. She thinks to herself and schools her expression to keep it from showing on her face. "Merely going over the most recent developments is all, Uncle. I assure you; I am fine."
"Oh?" There is a multitude of layered and trapped questions beneath that one inflection in his voice. "What developments are these?"
Bait. She needs to offer him just enough bait to see his reaction without risking the discovery of the plans lying beneath the surface. "A Kingdom spy was discovered among our ranks. He held interesting information regarding the resistance's movements."
She makes him wait as she wets her lips with a bit of wine. Pauses as she lifts the fine crystal to her mouth and lowers it in the next moment. "Tell me something, Lord Arundel, is there something you have failed to disclose regarding the eradication of noble houses in Faerghus? I was under the impression from your reports that Cornelia had all but settled the matter."
There's a flash of something akin to surprise and, to her private delight, resentment, to her question that crosses his face. Another bow, deeper this time and meant to lure her into a false sense of security. "My apologies, Emperor, there have been some trivial difficulties that have arisen in recent moments. Nothing to concern yourself with, of course, as we have it under control."
"And rumors of the Prince's survival?" Her voice is cool.
Lord Arundel is silent. She sees the way the skin about his mouth and eyes tightens in quiet anger. "...unable to be verified."
She drinks this time and swirls the dark red liquid within its glass. Edelgard is no stranger to letting those too full of themselves direct their efforts straight into digging their own grave and is more than happy to allow the man who was her uncle to do just that. "Interesting."
He dares lift his head, eyes narrowed at her choice in words and tone. "What is interesting?"
"Hubert." She doesn't bother lifting a hand as her retainer offers an identical copy of the report they'd removed from the spy's body. Identical, of course, minus a couple of key sentences and coded messages meant for her alone.
Lord Arundel's expression turns curiously blank as he studies the contents of the letter. She can see him working through the obvious messages and looking for anything that might give him more information than she herself has gleaned from it. Something, of course, to turn the tides of fate back in his favor and control.
This was risky, but it needed to be done. "You personally recommended Cornelia for the task of conquering the Kingdom, Uncle. I find myself disappointed." There's an unspoken 'what are you going to do to correct this grave error?' in her voice that is clear.
The servants make themselves as unseen as possible, the spies for the wretched bastards who experimented on her and allied with her Uncle as well. This was an unforeseen complication in their grand plans; Dimitri was supposed to be dead- years ago, at that- and that failure was on Cornelia and Lord Arundel. The Emperor rewarded those who were useful and heartlessly disposed of those who were no longer so; especially if those no longer useful were a danger to her personally.
Hubert does not help ease the feeling of impending doom in the slightest as his back straightens and his eye narrows down at the man responsible for Edelgard's current displeasure. The black clad mage is Edelgard's living shadow and has more blood on his hands than the number of people currently gathered in the large room has to offer. Between the powerful magic he wields so effortlessly, rumors of his direct involvement in the assassination of many who opposed the Empire, and his utter contempt for all but the Emperor herself?
Death is almost a certainty and the servants begin to wonder who their loyalties should truly lie with if they wish to survive this war.
"I will see to it that Cornelia understands the gravity of this error personally." Lord Arundel finally speaks. "I too was under the impression she had the Kingdom firmly in hand. My sincerest apologies, dear niece."
"And how will you do that, Uncle?" Her voice is deceptively light. The fire in the lamps and torches around her seem to brighten in response to her temper. "You have seen the contents of the letter yourself now; the Kingdom is on the move and we have word that the Alliance seems to be preparing to make a play as well. Should the two combine forces…"
Edelgard deliberately allows the sentence to trail off and the implications of such a thing. There is a possibility that the Kingdom rebels and the Alliance might set aside their personal history and unify against the Empire. She has more territory, more manpower, and more powerful 'allies' on her side of things- but the Alliance has Claude and they have been unable to break that stalemate or gain any ground within the territory itself as a result of his scheming. Even her uncle has commented on the Alliance leader's tactical prowess in a manner both admiring and resentful. The latter in particular due to his inability to find anything on House Riegan or Claude himself that would allow him to manipulate and exploit them to his desires.
It was one of the very few times she actually felt any sort of pity for the monster her uncle had become. Claude was frustrating on an average day and outright infuriating the rest of it, but there was no mistaking his intelligence, resourcefulness, and his creativity. He doesn't have to get his hands dirty and is never usually there when things unfold; the perfect puppet master.
I need to remind myself to be grateful that he and Claude never met alone. The idea of the two of them collaborating is stressful enough that her hair would have turned white had the experiments not been done.
Claude, at least, is gentler and seems to be a little nobler in his efforts than Hubert. He also has a conscience and a lack of willingness to do anything it takes, regardless of how difficult or hard to stomach it may be, to win. Or so she thinks, anyway, he was rather vehemently against her "heavy-handed" course of action and that makes her think he's squeamish in a way she and Hubert are not.
That Hubert is not, Edelgard corrects herself a moment later. She's a little squeamish and there are certain things even she can't manage to give the order to do and knows her retainer has gone behind her back and ordered done, or has personally done, himself against her wishes.
"The Emperor has asked how you intend to repair this failure, Lord Arundel. Do you intend to remain silent?" Hubert's words are cutting and she knows all too well that he is on a thinner sheet of ice than she herself is with the man. He is also more difficult to get to, given his presence at her side, and Arundel will have a demon of a time actually managing to get the two of them separated long enough to kill him off.
She doesn't know who would actually win that particular showdown and doesn't want to; she needs Hubert alive.
"That was dangerous," Hubert informs her curtly after she retires to her personal chambers late in the evening. "Even I could not tell where the lines were drawn and just how far we came to tipping our hand in his favor."
"Neither could I," Edelgard replies. She's entirely focused on removing the pins from the coiled bun on the left side of her head. The night before she'd failed to remove them all and wound up waking up in the middle of the night thinking that a rat had gotten tangled in her hair and its claws were stabbing into her scalp. It'd happened during the experiments. She never wanted to feel anything like it again and the foul mood had carried over into the day's duties. "And yet, we managed."
Edelgard is slipping and she knows it. It was a brief pair of nights and yet she knew all too well how it could take just one moment for everything to change; for better or worse. Her eagerness at a chance to have her dream accomplished and to have even the slightest chance of spending what remains of her life happily is proving to be her undoing. Gradually, mind, but an undoing nonetheless. The day I no longer have to shoulder any of this alone…
Of course, Edelgard is counting on the fact that her beloved Professor would certainly help her dismantle society at its foundation. Claude has already stated an explicit interest in seeing Rhea and the Church of Fodlan either eliminated or changed entirely and that is useful in and of itself. She has an unexpected ally in him. Dimitri… Dimitri held much in the way of noble ideals and standards he desired for the good of all that she could use to lure him to her cause.
They called him soft-hearted and too weak to be a proper King for Faerghus. The bitter cold and harsh environment of the north calls for relentlessness, chivalry, and the type of suicidal honor that country and its line of esteemed rulers should be held above all else. Such narrow-minded focus does not pair well with the man's personality and she has heard as well as seen the whispers and pity cast his way all too often from their Academy days.
He and Claude, perhaps the Professor if she is going to be honest, have that something in common; a different type of societal breakdown and reconstruction than she herself has set her sights on.
Hubert's brow furrows as she pours another glass of wine and curls up in her favorite chair. "Is that wise?" He has the start of a lecturing tone in his voice.
Edelgard suspects he took much from Seteth's lectures and likely spied upon them in order to commit certain mannerisms to memory once he'd seen their effectiveness. "Is what wise, Hubert?" She challenges him in her own way to be forthcoming with his complaints rather than dance about the subject; there had been too much in the way of verbal dancing and parring that day and she was tired of it. Speaking frankly is something she has come to appreciate over the years.
Unless it was Ferdinand. Less frank on his part would do much to soothe her nerves as well as to placate Hubert after an hours-long argument with him.
"The wine."
Edelgard sends him a pointed look over the rim of her glass. "It's only my third glass today, Hubert. I have one with the evening meal, had one thanks to the encounter with my uncle, and this one before I try to sleep."
Hubert, of course, says nothing on the matter but the corners of his mouth deepen in disapproval. Unable to find a particularly weighty argument to send her way, he changes the subject. "What do you expect Lord Arundel to do?"
She makes a derisive sound Dorothea would be most proud of. "He'll speak with Cornelia and other contacts warning her that I begin to grow suspicious and to do something about it."
"And your plan?"
"We meet them on the battlefield, of course. We cannot let all of our hard work go to waste." Edelgard drains her wine a little too quickly for either of their liking. The tart flavor scours her tongue and throat as she swallows it down. Her eyes fall to the northern wall. There are no windows in this room centered in the middle of Hresvelg castle and she has not missed living with four thick walls around her.
Of course, she didn't realize just how much she had enjoyed being able to look out the windows whenever she pleased or be outside if she so chose either until she'd returned to Enbarr. "How are the preparations faring?" Her eyes return to Hubert and she is keenly listening as he rattles off their progress and what is left to do in the coming weeks before their departure.
One more moon and we're ready. Six words. Six deceptively easy words and they told her so much all the same.
Those words were the ones she had eliminated from the copy of the 'report' that she and Hubert had fabricated for her uncle's examination. They were not for him. Not for anyone's eyes but her own. She almost pitied the messenger she'd killed; he'd been completely unaware of the Kingdom's betrayal and had believed he'd gotten to the Empire with intel valuable for their cause. Almost; he'd participated in the Remire Village Calamity and laughed over what had taken place there. Executing him herself had been immensely satisfying.
One more moon and it would all come to an end.
It had to end.