'So Miledy has gone to find the missing Princess Guinevere,' Miledy's mother, Lurja, mutters when Murdock enters her study. It is a room filled with bookshelves of volumes on Bern's history and politics, and more book piles that she has borrowed from official library archives. The former strategist of the Bern army looks up at Murdock. Though Lurja is now a frail, elderly woman, Murdock's huge shoulders and torso bow down in a gesture of complete reverence.
'I am glad: my daughter will fulfil her role in the army.' Lurja's brittle finger traces a dust trail on the windowsill. Under the light, her crimson hair is laced with silvery strands.
Murdock clears his throat, 'I understand that the timing is unfortunate. But I would also like to send my congratulations for her marriage. I noticed her wearing a piece of wedding jewellery.'
'Is that so?' Lurja laughs, 'Gale wasted no time asking for my daughter's hand, did he? Even though he had already received my husband and father's blessings, he insisted on mine yesterday morning too.'
'Because Miledy holds you in the highest regard, as do I.' Decades ago, it was Lurja's tactical capacities that prevented the assassination of Murdock, King Zephiel and Zephiel's mother, the former Queen Helene of Etruria.
'I appreciate that you took time from the army at such a crucial moment to bring news about my daughter,' Lurja watches the cavaliers far away riding towards Lycia. She rotates the wedding bracelet around her wrist, 'Miledy's wedding jewellery… What did it look like?'
'A gold circlet with a small ruby,' Murdock answers.
Lurja's eagle eyes soften, 'that's a beautiful choice, indeed.'
'It's difficult to be a young adult growing up in wartime,' Murdock joins Lurja at the window, noticing how purple her veins are under the papery skin, 'economic depression, no space or energy to get married and start a family. It was not my choice to rupture your daughter's happiness. But please don't worry. Miledy will find the princess and return them both safely to Bern— Lady Lurja… You don't seem confident.'
'Miledy is a capable wyvern knight,' Lurja glimpses the chain of Murdock's pendant under his collar. So he still thinks of the wife he lost during labour, along with a stillborn child, 'but I am unsure if she will return once she finds the princess to whom she has pledged her loyalty. I gathered that there were some disputes between Princess Guinevere and her brother King Zephiel.'
'Are you suggesting that Princess Guinevere has betrayed our country?' Murdock starts at the wise woman's statement. The suggestion seems unthinkable but Lurja had once correctly predicted and taken measures against his assassination.
'Nothing conclusive.' The sunlight glares outside, casting Lurja's long shadow on the floor, 'but it just seems suspicious. Princess Guinevere disappears with Ellen, a healer and cleric with no combat skills, into enemy territory when we are about to go to war. Surely, if there was such an urgent task to complete in a precarious area, it would have been wiser to take her bodyguard Miledy. The only reason the princess might have left without Miledy is out of fear that Miledy is too loyal to the Bern Army, while Ellen's faith is in St. Elimine.'
'Your reasoning is sound as always,' Murdock reaches to support Lurja as she stumbles on a rug, but she catches herself against a bookshelf, 'still, it's blasphemous to question the princess' loyalty to the king, her own brother.'
'Then keep this conversation between us,' Lurja sits down at her desk. She slips off her wedding bracelet and holds it against the window, trying to impose a circular frame on part of the sky, 'I'm just a grumpy old woman who's prone to pessimism.'
'What? Sister Ellen has run away?' The creases between Father Renault's eyebrows and along the sides of his mouth deepen. The hulking form of his former mercenary life shows under the bishop's attire, 'but it's dangerous. Bern and Lycia are going to war. And what of Princess Guinevere? Isn't Sister Ellen her lady-in-waiting?'
'The princess has vanished too but you must not mention it to anyone. King Zephiel asked us to be discreet about his sister's disappearance,' I glance at the orphans playing war using sticks behind Father Renault in front of my hometown's local church, 'please ask the rest of the Elimine network to look for Ellen. She and the princess will most likely be together anyway.'
'You have my word,' Father Renault slams his staff against the ground, 'Lady Miledy.'
'Please just call me Miledy like you always have,' I re-saddle my wyvern, Trifinne, 'how could I have let them, especially the princess, vanish at such a crucial time? I'm supposed to be her bodyguard.'
'I'm sure she has her reasons for going with Sister Ellen,' Father Renault pushes the children away from his robes but they keep trying to play hide-and-seek around him.
'But Ellen can't even fight!' I let an orphaned girl with pigtails grab my hand, expecting her to run off once she realises there's no candy, 'how's she going to protect the princess?'
'Miss Milly!' The girl squeals, jumping up to point at my circlet, 'is that wedding juu-wa-riii? Is Miss Milly getting married?!' She swoons, spreading her dress around her as she kneels on the ground, 'I wanna get married!'
'Ewww!' Her brother totters behind her, wiping snot against his shirt, 'maaaa-wige!'
'The celebrations will have to wait, unfortunately,' I mention when Father Renault lifts his eyebrows to follow up the children's taunting 'I'm going to visit the villages closer to the Lycian border. Someone would have seen them.'
'Look after yourself, Miledy, and don't despair,' Father Renault opens my hand and gives me a fruit scone, 'St. Elimine will watch over you and Sir Gale. Remember that.'
'Thank you, Father Renault.' I soar into the sky with the scone warming my pocket. The shadows cast over Father Renault's eyes make his face appear graver than usual. Meanwhile, the little girl describes her dream wedding dress to the distracted bishop and disgusted younger brother: an Etrurian-style gown with frills from the waist all the way down to the train and fairy wings on the back.
'Don't worry about me, Zeiss,' Gale remarks while he and his subordinate Zeiss return their wyverns to the stables after training, 'it shouldn't take long for Miledy to find the princess and cleric.'
'Such bad timing: to think that only yesterday, you'd proposed to my sister,' Zeiss pats his wyvern Rubley before latching the wooden gate shut.
'And somehow,' Gale frowns at his new brother-in-law, 'the entire army seems to know about it.'
'S-Sorry, Sir Gale. I couldn't hide my excitement at welcoming you into our family,' Zeiss backs up against the stables' gate, looking back at Rubley for support, 'I only told a few friends from our squad— although Charles is a bit of a gossip around the taverns in the capital.'
'You mean the entire city knows?!'
'I-I can't confirm anything,' Zeiss puts his hands up in a gesture of surrender, 'anyway, it's good news.'
'Still, it'd be good to keep my personal and political affairs separate,' Gale grumbles, looking overhead at messenger wyvern riders soaring through the sky, 'especially that my non-native status has been brought up against me before. I wouldn't want it to affect Miledy.'
'It's bad luck that General Narcian used it to snipe the position of Dragon Lord from you,' Zeiss slumps on a crate and sighs, 'if only Ellen could have heard the news of your proposal to Miledy. She would've been overjoyed. I hope Princess Guinevere can protect her.'
Gale pauses before asking, 'shouldn't Sister Ellen be the one protecting the princess?'
'Oh! I forgot— I mean, never mind!' Zeiss spins around to hide his blush. He stares out at the Lycian mountain peaks bordering Bern, murmuring, 'Ellen... Why didn't you ask me to protect you?'
'Where's the servant?!' A brute cavalier in red armour growls. Two henchmen arrest Princess Guinevere after confiscating her lightning tome, 'go find her!'
The soldiers disappear into the castle. Meanwhile, Ellen trembles behind a bush, listening for the fading clop of horse hooves against dirt, 'oh, Princess. If only Miledy were here… She could've gotten us to General Roy. But then she wouldn't want to try negotiating with the enemy, would she…'
Suddenly, a man whispers behind Ellen's ear, 'hey.'
'Ah!' Ellen shrieks, falling back to see a long-haired man with a scar on one side of his face, 'KYYAAA!'
'Quiet, or they'll find you.' He smirks, licking his lips, 'you're looking for General Roy, son of Lord Eliwood? I worked for him, Lord Eliwood that is. He lacks the rugged charm of my brother Lloyd but still is a handsome fellow.'
Ellen tries to crawl away from him, 'p-p-p-please, sir... I'm only a cleric of St Elimine...'
'Listen, Sister,' the man extends his hand for Ellen to take, 'either you hide here for the rest of your life while those brutes hold the princess hostage, or I help you get to General Roy. What'll it be?'
'What if you're tricking me?' Ellen's arms are up in a defensive posture.
'Then you're on your own,' the man withdraws his hand, 'Lord Rude and his bastards will spot your holy robes from a mountaintop. It's only a matter of time.'
Reluctantly, Ellen lowers her arms and studies the man. He's right: Princess Guinevere's captors will come back to do a more thorough search of the premises soon, '... OK, sir.'
'Great,' the man throws off his dark cloak and drapes it around Ellen's tiny figure, 'now, put this on so you're less eye-catching. I know a route through the woods.'
Ellen's delicate fingers, pale from spending most of her life in the church, wrap the cloak around her like a cabbage roll. It reeks of soil and sweat. The man turns around and laughs, 'I've killed so many men while wearing that cloak.'
'Eek!' Ellen drops the cover, revealing her white cleric's dress again.
'Just kidding. Now put it back on or we're both toast.' He jangles a coin purse hanging from his belt, 'I hope you've got some cash for the end. Nothing is free in this world.'
Ellen's feet step one in front of the other, disconnected from her eyes that watch the dagger hanging from the man's side. He could carve her up in an instant.
'Swearing yourself to a life of chastity so young,' he remarks, resting his hands behind his head, 'must be boring, Miss— What's your name?'
'Ellen,' she pushes her brown hair away to get a better look at her guide. He doesn't seem like a bad person, 'and you, sir?'
'Name's Legault,' Legault rests one hand against his dagger's handle, 'what're you and the princess doing all the way out here? You can't even fight.'
'The princess insisted I come with her, even though her bodyguard Miledy is one of the most competent wyvern knights,' Ellen skips every few steps to keep up with Legault, 'Miledy and her family are deeply loyal to the Bern state. So is her love, Sir Gale, even though he was born in Etruria.'
'Boy, are those love birds in for a shock,' Legault stuffs his hands into deep trouser pockets, 'but maybe that would just be the case for a vagabond like me.'
'Was there a special lady in your life?' At last, Ellen manages to keep up with Legault.
'A Pheraen paladin, Lady Isadora,' Legault smiles at the blue-skied horizon as though picturing the woman herself, 'gorgeous dark hair and red lipstick, even when she was in battle. She ended up marrying that blonde twat, Lord Harken, even though he'd spent time working for the wrong guys and even forgot about their engagement.'
Legault pulls Ellen away from a thorny branch in her path, 'in the end, people marry within their class. That's just the way it is.'
'A-Actually,' Ellen squeaks, scurrying ahead to look Legault in the face, 'class shouldn't be a barrier to true love because we are all equal in the eyes of St. Elimine. Sir Gale and Miledy are proof of that!'
'We all need useful fantasies, don't we, Sister?' Legault whips the cloak off Ellen, sending a chill through her body, 'that's General Roy over there, kid with the bright red hair. Now, I'll be taking that cloak back along with a payment, thank you.'
AUTHOR NOTE: Thank you for reading the first chapter of The Defector From Bern. This series is a sequel to my 13-chapter fanfiction series, An Etrurian 'Spy' In Bern (hereafter referred to as Etrurian 'Spy'). Set before the events of FE6, Etrurian 'Spy' covered Miledy's career in the Bern army and relationships, focusing on her deepening bond with Gale. I encourage you to read Etrurian 'Spy' if these aspects interest you (Etrurian 'Spy' link: s/14180248/1/An-Etrurian-Spy-In-Bern). Otherwise, stay tuned for the next instalment of The Defector From Bern. - kafkascharm
