Honesty Is (Not) The Best Policy
I do not own FireEmblem or any of its characters.
Rated T for mature themes and violence.
Chapter Two
In the court of Archanea, it was considered an honor to dress, bathe, and attend to the bodily needs of the sovereign. It made sense to native Archaneans that no less than the second son of a high-born marquess should assist a king, a prince, in rising from bed in the morning. The visiting princes of lesser royal houses were, apparently, of a less civilized nature; they declined the servants Princess Nyna offered them. Duke Hardin of Aurelis claimed he needed no attendants other than his own chosen men, and the Prince of Altea indicated that whatever he needed for the day should be left in his dressing room before dawn, but under no circumstances was anyone to enter his bedchamber.
The spurned scions of Archanean nobility, so eager to prove their usefulness after the liberation of their capital, bantered among themselves over whether the prince's odd habits were the product of Altean modesty or some more recent paranoia. Waking in the middle of the night to find the garrison defending your home had actually seized said home for themselves might just do that to a person.
-x-
"Beg pardon, my lord. The princess said to rouse you by eight..."
The Viscount of Gortys had the fair hair and light eyes common to the people of the Holy Kingdom, and his long face showed considerable embarrassment that, once again, he'd failed in his duty to properly attend the commander of Princess Nyna's armies. Said esteemed visitor was seated at the dressing table, already in his under-shirt and drawers, when the Viscount arrived.
"Don't trouble yourself over it. As I said yesterday, sleeping past daybreak at all is a pleasure I don't often enjoy."
It was quite a kind answer that Prince Marth gave to the Viscount; a less considerate guest would have pointed out that the bedchamber was stifling and the four-poster bed with its plumes and tassels was, under these circumstances, a place to roast to death rather than sleep. But if Prince Marth had pointed these things out, the Viscount and everyone beneath him in the court hierarchy would have been obliged to do something about it- call in a mage to fill the room with a snowstorm, set falls of cooling water pouring down the walls, or something equally drastic. So the Viscount accepted the answer, feeling decidedly grateful to the visiting prince who didn't expect miracles out of anyone.
So grateful, in fact, that the Viscount of Gortys didn't question much thereafter.
-x-
Gortys was, in Prince Marth's estimation, something of an amiable idiot. His father the Marquess of Teuthis was a weathercock, a man who'd changed his loyalties half-a-dozen times since the outbreak of war- not for any apparent self-interest, but because he wasn't capable to sticking to a course of action once he'd set upon it. But Teuthis had been happy to welcome Princess Nyna and her armies when they arrived, and Nyna had welcomed the young Viscount to court, and now he was Prince Marth's problem for the duration of her stay at Millennium Court.
And, truth be told, an amiable idiot rummaging through her personal effects wasn't such a bad thing. If Nyna had assigned her a clever and ambitious young noble as a servant, Marth would have sent him packing at once.
"Is that comfortable, my lord?"
"Yes," Marth lied as Gortys tied off the sash looped around her waist. The sash was tight enough that the fabric of her tunic was bunched awkwardly in front, but that wasn't the main source of her discomfort at the moment, and Marth wasn't about to ask Gortys to help her with the actual problem.
The man wasn't exceptionally bright, but he wasn't blind.
Hopefully, the fact that her sash was too tight would keep her from thinking too much about the red prickling irritation under her bindings, at least until she could see Sister Lena for a remedy. The summer's heat had brought with it all manner of nuisances...
"Will you be wearing the Princess Nyna's Emblem today, my lord?"
Of course she would wear the Fire Emblem. Displaying it for all to see wasn't any mere affectation of fashion; it was a declaration of purpose. More than that... it was proof, solid evidence beneath her fingers that the Prince of Altea was the champion they'd been waiting for.
And when Gortys was finished with her, it was the Prince of Altea looking back at her in the mirror- Fire Emblem, bunched-up tunic, and all.
-x-
Nyna had invited her to breakfast. An intimate breakfast, Nyna had said, with only a dozen or so people. The people turned out to be ladies from noble houses that had remained loyal to the House of Archanea through the invasion and occupation, and now they wanted a chance to gawk at their liberator. "Part of the territory," the people of Talys called such duties, and though Marth felt there were more useful things she might be doing that particular morning, if the noble ladies thought breakfast with the Prince of Altea was a fit reward for their efforts... it was a reward given easily enough.
Marth didn't often find herself in the company of so many women; she looked around the table at the assembly of rouged faces, the heads of tightly-curled hair and all the rounded bosoms as displayed by the finest Archanean fashions, and felt completely apart from it all. The conversation was nothing significant- a little clucking from the senior ladies over how young their princess and the Altean prince both were, but mostly the chatter of people who were deeply, immeasurably relieved to have something resembling their normal world again. It was why Nyna's army had to linger at court, after all; there remained half a continent to win, but the part they'd already won couldn't simply be let to itself. The dead must be properly mourned and laid to rest, the desecrated temples must be sanctified, the loyal rewarded and the fickle and the treacherous dealt with accordingly. In that light, this celebratory breakfast had its own minor role in welcoming order back to the city of Pales.
A young girl two places down, the daughter of the late Count of Mantinei, seemed rather dazzled by the presence of the Altean prince, and kept raising her napkin to her lips as she cast long glances in Marth's direction. Marth spoke to her once- just a passing reference to the lands of House Mantinei, which had suffered considerable damage- and the girl's gray eyes widened to the extent that they looked likely to pop right out. This nettled Marth, and she turned away to speak to an aging viscountess with a keen and surprising interest in the isle of Talys. She was Grustian by birth, and remembered when a young nobleman of Talys had passed through the royal court of Grust, impressing them all with his wits and gift for language.
"Yes, King Mostyn was quite well at our parting. The western coast and the capital were both ravaged by the pirate attacks, and one inland village completely razed, but the people of Talys are stouthearted. I'm certain that, by now, they've built the village anew."
"And his young daughter? I'm told she is here, fighting in your company."
"Yes, the princess Caeda is with us." This was not a comfortable subject, and Marth was relieved when Nyna stepped in to explain that the heiress of Talys had taken a fall from her pegasus during the battle for the capital and was, a fortnight after the victory, still resting.
Marth lost her taste for both breakfast and conversation after that; she decided the fresco on the opposite wall was more interesting than the pop-eyed girl and the viscountess and the rest. The painting had come through the occupation intact, and depicted a merchant showing off a tray of goods to a roomful of well-dressed young ladies- possibly the ancestors of those now at the table. One of the girls was reaching for an ornate dagger in the center of the tray.
The pop-eyed girl never did stop staring. Nyna proclaimed the breakfast a success, though she had noticed the attention Marth had paid to the fresco. She knew the story behind it, as it happened.
"Long ago, when the Holy Kingdom was young and wars raged against the city of Thabes, a widowed queen of Archanea hid her young son among the women of the court to keep him far from the battle. But the late king's adviser, a clever man, disguised himself as a peddler and went to the prince's hiding place with his goods. All the maids-of-honor crowded around, reaching for brooches and hair-pins and ribbons, but one of the girls showed interest in a dagger the cunning adviser had placed on the tray. And so the prince gave himself away, and the adviser exhorted him to step up to his duties and fight, as his father had fought, and so the prince joined the battle and Thabes was crushed."
"Ah. An inspiring tale, to be certain."
A deeply silly tale, in Marth's opinion, though she couldn't pin down why exactly it disgusted her. After leaving Nyna, she walked back to her rooms alone, nagged by the feeling that she really ought to pay Caeda a visit. There was no reason to avoid her friend, after all... but Marth had been doing exactly that.
She was dwelling on a memory from a few years back, of Caeda dashing through the practice yard, methodically dissecting a practice dummy with her sword, when Marth sensed someone lurking in an alcove of the palace corridor. Two someones- the pop-eyed daughter of House Mantinei and another young lady from the luncheon. Their voices carried well across the marble-floored hall.
"He's just so... it's like, when I look at him, there's no one else in the room."
The pop-eyed girl had a high feathery voice. The voice that answered her was lower, flatter, with a distinct twang to the words.
"Yeah, I'd heard the Altean prince was a real charmer, but I didn't know they what they meant 'til now. I mean, even watching him pick up a fork was interesting. They don't have anybody like that around here."
"I think he's the nicest boy I've ever seen," sighed the pop-eyed girl with whom Marth had exchanged one inconsequential sentence.
Marth took the long way back to her rooms to avoid encountering either of the young ladies. It was one thing, she reflected, to charm a girl by, say, bursting into a prison cell with a party of rescuers in tow. It was another thing entirely to have that effect by showing up to breakfast and answering a few questions. A very useful thing to be sure, but...
If only living up to the role of Altea's prince could truly be that simple! As simple as reaching for a dagger instead of a hairpin when presented with the choice.
Not long after, she dreamed of a peddler with a hidden face, presenting her Falchion on a tray. When Marth grasped the blade by its hilt, it shrank, and became nothing more than a gilt hairpin studded with emeralds and rubies. They laughed at her then, the other girls, and the pop-eyed girl screamed from behind her handkerchief. Marth could still hear the shrieks and the laughter when she broke free of the dream and found herself face-down in the grand four-poster bed, her unbound breasts pressed uncomfortably beneath her in a reminder of what she was and what could never be.
Author's Notes: Just to be clear, only a tiny handful of people know that Marth isn't a boy. Merric knows, though he didn't originally, and Lena found out shortly after joining Marth's company. Jagen and Malledus have known the whole time, and the King of Talys knows even though he's not in this story. The knights don't, the other royals don't, and the rank-and-file most certainly do not. And yes, Marth does identify herself as a girl who happens to also be a prince. Or a girl who has to become a prince, perhaps.
The story in the fresco is based upon a fragment of the Trojan War myths, in which young Achilles is hidden from war-recruiters until cunning Odysseus shows up in the guise of a peddler. Funny... Gharnef likes to pull that particular disguise.