Little secrets whispered ear to ear
All too far and all too near
Secrets that keep you safe at night
And wrap you up nice and tight
== Latula: Lie
You've barely told anyone the truth for the past five years; why start now? No one knows that you are actually a girl. You dress and use the bathroom alone. You pretend that you are betrothed already. You are very careful to wrap your binding tightly every day; you are relatively flat anyways. Your armor and loose clothes conceal you female figure, though you were always shaped like a boy anyways. You don't think anyone has yet noticed that you are female. It's been five years now; someone would've said something.
You know, in your heart of hearts, that this can't last. someday, you will be discovered and have to run for your life. That applies to both your gender and your role in the Magicals. You have been a knight for about a year and a squire for four before that. You have contact with the other Underground members. You heard rumors that a new girl was joining as both an Underground and a Rogue. You should be getting confirmation or denial of that tonight.
Before you take off the heavy armor, you scan the area for anyone who might recognize you. Your cropped, dark brown hair and bright blue eyes make you distinctive, but not like Meulin or Kurloz. No one is around and this means that you can change into pajamas and sleep. You are really very tired.
Your unwrap the tight binding and change into your old clothes from when you first ran away from home. You haven't grown much since then, but you have added a couple inches to your height. You fall into bed and wrap the covers tightly around you, to keep you warm and to hide you if anyone happens to come in. You are ready for a good night's sleep.
The Plan is conspiring against you tonight, though. No sooner have you begun to drift off than the only person in the palace who knows your true identity enters. Mituna knocks on the door thrice, once, then four times. You drag yourself out of bed to open the door and find out whatever the message is.
"Rogue of Heart," Mituna whispers. "Joins tomorrow. Will not work with directly."
You nod, barely bobbing your head, but it is visible in the dark. Mituna will inherit much when his parents die, but he doesn't want it. He is part of the Plan. In a sudden fit of affection, you wrap your arms around him in a hug and release him after just a couple seconds. He smiles, just a bit, and disappears into the night.
You think he is the one in the castle who you will miss the most.
You know you don't have much time. It is inevitable that you will be discovered, and all you can hope for is that you will carry out your mission by then. You don't make close ties with other people here who aren't Underground, because they might discover you and because you will have to leave soon enough. Your mission is the most important thing, too. You don't have time for making friends with the heavy weight you carry.
The other two knights share your mission are actually male. They are much younger, though, and therefore in more danger. The younger a knight, the more suspicion he is under.
You, luckily, are twenty-one and therefore old enough to no longer be under near surveillance.
If you were younger, you would never have survived this long.
You're all in the same boat here.
It is far too late to consider going home to the Magicals, but not too late to work on the conspiracy. Your job is to plant the seeds of malcontent in the ranks of the knighthood. You are not about thievery and mind games to get your job done, either. Especially mind games. You have been messing with your acquaintance's heads for a long time now. You tell creative lies and half-truths and use the magic that lurks in the very bottom of your subconscious to make them believe you.
The knock comes again. Thrice, once, four times. Mituna has come and gone; this must be one of your knight allies. They do not know that you are a girl and you'd like to keep it that way, so you blow out the candle and wrap a robe around yourself before opening the door. It is, in fact, Dave.
"Michael," he says to you. You have no idea what prompted you to choose that for your pseudonym. Latula is too feminine, so you can't use that. And Pyrope is well known as the family with the teenage girl with dark hair and blue eyes who died in the woods. Your name according to the knights is Michael Summers. Even according to the Knights of Time and Blood.
"Dave," you reply, deepening your voice. You've had a perpetual throat ache from this for the last five years.
"We meet tomorrow night. The usual place. It's time to begin the Plan," he says tersely. You don't exchange many words in the palace; the meaning is harder to discern if you use fewer words. However, your mind knows exactly what he means: the group is meeting at the house of the Magicals. You will still be dressed as a boy, but you will be using your normal voice. It's not that you try to hide the secret too much, it's just that the fewer people know, the smaller chance it will be discovered. It's common sense. You have always relied on your mind to make your choices for you, and even when your heart and you mind compete (which is all the time), you try to use your head. You have been told that you are like a scale: half heart and half head. But you try to let your head win, so you don't tell your secret. Except to Mituna, who recognized you the second he saw you, even dressed as a man.
"Very good. I will see you then," you reply. He gives you a long, searching look before leaving. You are suddenly very nervous; does he know? Is it not dark enough? Are your clothes too tight? You slip off the robe and examine yourself in the glass window. Your hair has hints of red in it, though not like your sister. Your eyes are a bright blue that borders on teal, exactly the same as Terezi's. You have a square-ish jaw and your features in general are rather masculine for one of your age and gender. You have broad shoulders and narrow hips, making you shaped more like a man than most other girls you know. You happened into excellent luck when it comes to being a knight. You look fairly masculine anyways, so all you had to do was wrap your chest and chop off most of your hair.
Sometimes you wonder what luck Meulin or Damara or Porrim would have trying to be a knight.
You dress alone, as always. You wrap the binding extra-tight today, even though that will constrict your breathing more than ever. You arrange your hair to cover your eyes as much as you can and put on your loosest clothing. Today is a day to be disguised the best you can. The meeting tonight is essential.
After a grueling day of much hard work, you are ready to make your way home. You climb silently down the stairs to meet the other knights just outside the doors of the castle. You call it the palace ironically, because it is not terribly palace-like. It was Dave's idea.
The walk to your home village and the place you consider home is long, but not horrible. You like walking, but your breaths come hard and fast because you simply cannot get enough oxygen to your lungs. You can feel your heart beating too fast for this simple walk, but it won't slow. And you refuse to slow down.
Thrice, once, four times. The door creaks open and the three of you pile in. "Latula!" Terezi cries, rushing over to you. You haven't seen her in a year.
"How'd you know it was me?" you ask your little sister teasingly.
"I can smell you, stupid. You smell like teal and metal."
You smile widely and follow her to the dining room, where Kankri is serving food. You hug him, too, and he's stiff as a board. "Please don't trigger me, Latula," he says. "I dislike being touched without warning."
"Oh, come on, loosen up!" you say, smiling again. "I'm home! We're all coming home! Aren't you glad?"
He nods once, twice. You can tell he's nervous. It's probably because he's cooking for thirty-two tonight, instead of just fifteen. Wait—the new member (you have a hunch who it is) is part of the home group. Sixteen, then. It's still doubling. You'd offer to help, but you've got things to do, people to greet, plans to make. So you hug him once more and join your sister in making sure everyone who comes is one of the thirty-two people who are Magicals.
You can't afford to make mistakes.
The last to arrive is the Page of Hope. You forget his real name. The last seat left is between Feferi and Nepeta, and he sits there. He looks distinctly uncomfortable. You also notice siblings exchanging pregnant looks that seem to convey secrets kept even within the Magicals.
A voice in your head startles you. It is Terezi, sending you psychic messages. This rarely happens, but you almost enjoy it, even though you can't reply.
Eridan and Nepeta are engaged, but Eridan loves Feferi and Nepeta loves someone else, your sister explains. Meulin and Kurloz are married and something is wrong with Meulin. Equius's father is very ill; he is set to inherit the duchy soon. Aradia and Equius are engaged and he loves her, but she loves Sollux, who loves Feferi, who loves no one as of presently. John and Dave love men; they may be together. Kanaya and Rose are in danger of being discovered by the village and must be separate at all times in the village. That pretty much covers it.
You nod, and Meenah and Karkat begin the meeting.
You don't care much about the complicated agenda laid out in front of you, but you understand your place in the Plan to overthrow the monarchy. You are to gather knights to your cause however you can. Knights can fight, and this is essential to the secondary phases of the plan. Your goal also is to search anyone who might even have the tiniest traces of magic.
You've got this.
As they continue talking, assigning everyone their job, you observe your friends. Damara, who was betrothed to Rufioh before running away due to her magic and missing him greatly, and later met him when he was part of the Magicals, seems ill at ease. She keeps rubbing her head, as if she's got a headache, and crossing her arms, as if protecting herself. She is next to Rufioh; perhaps this is the source? Or maybe it's because she has a dangerous role. Likely both.
Mituna looks happy, as usual. He is always happy; that is why you like being around him so much. So many people in this group are downers, but not him. He is as upbeat as you and you really like that. If it weren't for the fact that it is currently impossible because you are pretending to be a man, under other circumstances you might consider courting him.
Maybe you will, once you finish pulling off the Plan.
A thought lurks in the back of your mind: the ones before you. You often refer to them as "ancestors" because they started the Magicals. The twelve of them tried and failed to pull off a plan very similar to yours, and the possibility that this could happen to your plan scares you.
Also, all of them were publicly tortured and executed, and this is terrifying.
You don't speak of this.
No one does.
It is your worst fear, both for you and for the ones you love. You sister is just sixteen; if she faced this horrible fate, it would be the worst torture for you. And Mituna, and Kankri, and the other knights, and any one of the thirty-two of you. You sometimes have nightmares of the entire community of the Magicals being tortured to death on a stage in front of the town, your real identity revealed, your sister dying a painful death right in front of your eyes, Mituna writhing in pain, Kankri lying bloody in an iron cage. These images taunt you whenever you let your mind wander too much.
You try not to let your mind wander too much.
"Latula," Kankri begins, and you snap your head to face his. You briefly realize that now everyone knows your real name, but everyone knows you ran away from a noble home anyways. Maybe they will assume you just dislike your feminine name.
"Yes?" you say.
"Your plan. Please tell us," he says, inviting you to explain what you intend to do.
"Well," you say, unsure of how to begin. "I plan to use mind tricks to make the knights' loyalty sway from their lords to a desire for independence. I can lie about what the monarchy does in order to draw knights to our cause. In about two months, I plan to reveal the Plan to overthrow the monarchy and slowly get them acclimated to magic. I don't know what we'll do if-slash-when the plan succeeds or fails; I guess they can decide for themselves."
"Very acceptable," Kankri says. He's normally far more critical that this, but you can definitely live with a quieter Kankri.
Your attention shifts back to the people at the table with you. Karkat, your fellow knight, also looks deeply uncomfortable, but in a different way. He is constantly shifting in his chair and glancing left, then right, then at his brother, left, right, and so on. You don't know much about affairs of the heart, but you think there is something to do with love going on here. You'll ask Meulin later. Or maybe Dirk, one of those of Heart. You remind yourself that the new member (Meulin's little sister, Nepeta-you were right) is also one who knows the heart, but you suspect that she is part of this. The way she looks at him-she has some part in this, definitely.
Dave, meanwhile, looks completely impassive. He always does. He made himself a special pair of glasses with dark lenses, so it's hard to tell that his eyes are actually a bright shade of red. You happen to know that he is something called an albino, who has absolutely no coloring, because your sister was briefly betrothed to him before running away herself. He manages to be constantly poker-faced and solemn, though some things will crack his hard shell of apathy. Specifically, his twin sister and twin cousins. It's very similar to Terezi, who laughs in the face of danger unless it is danger to you.
You prefer to just fight, no matter the expression on your face.
The meeting ends and a meal is served. No one really labels this late night meal; anyone who is awake can eat it. Kankri prepares four meals a day at various times and sleeps in between. He is also a seer in the stand at the market. You believe that the rogues and thieves take turns cooking lunch. All of you take the vegetable stew, pieces of bread, and potatoes cooked with onions that are offered to you. You are starving.
As everyone at the table devours the meal, you wonder when, precisely, the day will come that this will all come to fruition and the final phase will manifest itself.
Coincidentally, Kankri has one more thing to say.
"The final phase will be in six months," he informs the whole of the Magicals. "That is when this will all begin and end."
Everyone nods, understanding the seriousness of this statement. Six months. Do it or die, they say. You are going to give this your all and you are going to win.
You refuse to consider the alternative.