Chapter 160: Queens of Ivalice

With the loud creak of unoiled hinges, a shaft of pale light smoked down the stairs to fill her prison with a dusky glow. From her stiff and stinking bed, Louveria Atkascha, Queen-Regent of Ivalice, blinked weary eyes and levered herself into a sitting position, squinting against the sudden light.

It was not the worst cell to be imprisoned in—there were grimmer dungeons, both in Bethla Garrison and beyond. The heavy locked door opened onto worn stone stairs that led down in a spacious stone room, bisected by great metal bars that ran from the worn stone floors to the high stone ceilings. It was large enough—large enough for her to pace in the dark without running into her meager collection of furniture.

Then the door closed, and the light dimmed. The figure descending the worn stone stairs had a gentler light in her hands—a runetorch, casting gentle moonlight through the room.

She knew who it would be long before she could make out the woman's face. There had been many visitors in her months spent imprisoned in Bethla Garrison, but she knew all her regular guards, and she'd had regular news from Emanuel. She'd been expecting this visit for months: she'd been certain of it now for weeks.

Ovelia, Queen of Ivalice, came to a stop outside of her cell.

For a time, the two Queens regarded each other in silence—Ovelia, brown of hair and eye, regal in a fine gown; Louveria, blonde hair greasy from inattention, blue eyes narrowed. Finally, Louveria took a sip of tepid wine from the table beside her bed. "It took you long enough."

Ovelia shrugged carelessly. Louveria tensed at the shrug. The diffident, mousy girl who had been slipped into the Lion's Den as a poison pill to end her dynasty could not have made such a gesture. It was too knowing, too imperious. It spoke to intimate understanding and to utter disregard. She had considered all the dangers such a visit to the Queen-Regent might post, and dismissed them out of hand. This was the woman Louveria had always feared the girl could become.

"It would not have been safe for me to see you, before now," Ovelia said. "And besides...I didn't much want to."

Louveria cocked her head. "Not safe?"

Ovelia smiled thinly. "It's been a year, but we haven't weeded out all your agents quiet yet. I come to visit you, I meet an unfortunate accident falling down the steps..." She paused. "But to be honest, you weren't my primary concern."

Louveria frowned. "Who was?"

"What does that matter to a dead woman?"

Silence between them. Slowly, Louveria lifted herself off of the bed. "So I'm to be executed."

"It's what you deserve," Ovelia said shortly. "But no. Execute you, and we risk starting this war anew." She paused. "Not for any love of you, you understand. Just because there are people who still think they can win power under your name."

"So what?" Louveria assumed the most regal poise she could manage in the rough brown sackcloth that was all they allowed her. "You're here to kill me yourself?"

Ovelia shook his her head. "You're not listening. If an execution risks turning you into a martyr, what would an assassination do?" She smiled grimly. "No, you're going to kill yourself."

Louveria blinked. "Excuse me?"

Ovelia shifted, and pulled a bundle from under one arm. "Ink-" She held up one dark, fat-bottomed bottle. "Quill. Paper-" She held up a final bottle, clear as crystal. "Poison." She lowered the bottle back to the bundle. "You will take the poison, in front of a witness. You will leave a note, that makes it clear you make this choice of your own will."

Iron in that little girl's voice. Louveria could barely hear her through the heat of her own anger. "I will not be made a villain-" Louveria began.

"You are a villain." Ovelia's voice was cold. "But I do not need your confession. I only need your despair. You will not allude to torture, since you have seen none. You may say your brother's death has broken you. You may say this war has tired you. You will not make a martyr of yourself. You will remove yourself from the board."

"And why would I do that?" Louveria asked.

Ovelia smiled thinly. "For Orinus."

A flash of cold terror, chilling the edge of her anger. Louveria swallowed against the sudden dryness in her throat. "You threaten my son?" she whispered.

A flash across Ovelia's moonlit face. The iron woman was gone for a moment—Louveria saw the mousy girl who'd scurried about the Lion's Den, a rodent fit to be caught and crushed. Then another flash, and the little girl was the woman, and there was hate in those eyes.

"You speak to me of threats?" Ovelia breathed. "You who made my every waking moment misery, for fear that I might threaten you? You who had assassins ready to slit my throat, to wield my corpse as a cudgel against your enemies?" She took a threatening step towards the bars of the cell: it took surprising effort for Louveria not to flinch. "If I were to threaten your son, it would be exactly what you deserve!"

Hate-filled eyes locked with Louveria's. Louveria held her gaze.

The hate cooled a little. Ovelia stepped back. "I'm not threatening your son, Louveria," Ovelia said. "But there are threats to your son. We're close to ending this war, but there are those who will see him as a threat to my power, or a threat to the peace, or just a useful stepping stone to raise their station." She closed her eyes. "I can't protect him from the burdens of his birth. But I can stop people from using him as I was used."

More silence in the room. Louveria did not relax. The woman in front of her was very different from the girl she'd known, but the danger had not changed. She could make all the speeches she wanted: she was still threatening her son.

Ovelia took a deep breath, eyes still closed. "Guard-Captain Emanuel will have told you about our meeting with the Council in Lesalia."

Terror overpowered her anger. Louveria tried to show no emotion on her face, even though the girl's eyes were closed.

"Glevanne hid the trail well," Ovelia continued. "The spies he scattered through the ranks of the Nanten and their allies, to aid the Hokuten. And Emanuel's clever enough to keep a low profile. Unfortunately for you, we knew about him before he was placed in charge of your guard. It wasn't our decision to put him there, but...having someone to dripfeed you information who couldn't possibly rescue you was useful enough. Anything we didn't want you to know, he didn't know."

Her every word drove icicles deeper into Louveria's heart.

"I'll be leaving in a few hours," Ovelia said. "A few hours after that, Emanuel will be reporting our departure to you, along with a few other tidbits. I hope he finds you with tears on your face, poison in hand, ready to drink. I hope he rushes to save you, too late—his keys don't work, you see. You can say whatever final words you find fit. And then you die."

Louveria said nothing. Some small part of her hoped they were gambling—they only suspected Emanuel. But some other part of her knew better.

"And if I don't?" Louveria asked.

Ovelia shrugged. "Your son will be still be safe with me. No one will lay a hand on you, save to stop you escaping. And you will never escape. You will never seen the sun again." She paused. "You will never see your son again." She looked around the cell. "One way or another, you're going to stay in this gaol for the rest of your life. You get to decide how long that is."

Louveria did not need to look around her to sketch the details of her dungeon. They were burned into her mind, with every glimpse she'd gotten over the past months. The cold stone floors and colder steel bars, the lumpy mattress, crooked table, crooked nightstand, crooked chair. Servant's clothes were brought to her, and icy water to bathe in. The latrine connected to the fort's plumbing. She could live here for a long, long time.

As she imagined those cold, uncomfortable years, Ovelia continued, "But that is only a lash, and a stubborn beast like you needs greens as well. For instance: I can guarantee your son's safety."

Louveria studied the iron face in front of her. "How?"

"The Nanten have functionally won this war," Ovelia said. "But both armies are too numerous to be conquered and too exhausted to advance. Even with Dycedarg and Larg dead, enough of the Hokuten high command survives to make peace talks...difficult."

Ovelia said this last nonchalantly, as though it should be no surprise to Louveria. And of course, it wasn't.

"We've a variety of lashes and greens to bring them around for peace talks," Ovelia said. "Territorial concessions, lift this general to this title...recognizing the right claim to Igros alone would go a long way." She said this last as nonchalantly as she'd mentioned Dycedarg and Bestrald, but Louveria could sense a certain relish in her voice. "But there's one option that I think would satisfy everyone."

"A new lord is declared in Igros. In exchange, Orinus is recognized as the rightful heir to the throne of Ivalice, and I declare myself Queen-Regent."

Louveria blinked. "You...what?"

Ovelia shrugged. "Your pretext for war was that I was an assassin plotting the deaths of you and your son. Ours was that you and your brother had corrupted Ivalice under the banner of authority stolen from the rightful hands of the Atkascha. Making me Queen-Regent recognizes both our claims. Everyone saves face." She paused. "And it protects your son, because some part of my authority comes from him. Anyone who would threaten him threatens us both." A wintry smile. "There are precious few who would risk that now, I think."

Louveria stared at Ovelia. Her throat and chest felt tight—with hate, and with hope. This monstrous woman would take her title, and take her son. Everything Louveria had worked so hard to build...

But her son would be safe. Ovelia was right. It was just the right offer to soothe the Hokuten.

"And if that's not green enough," Ovelia said. "Once I've looked over your suicide note, I'll allow you to write another. A letter to your son."

Hate and hope flared with redoubled force. Louveria clenched her jaw to keep from speaking.

Ovelia waited a moment, then turned, and started walking for the stairs. Louveria stared after her, still clenching her jaw, still trying not to cry out. But when Ovelia started climbing the stairs, she said, "Wait."

Ovelia acted as though she hadn't heard her. She was halfway up the stairs now.

"Wait," Louveria said again, and then tore the last word from her throat. "Please."

Ovelia stopped, and did not look back at her. Louveria swallowed, and managed, "I'll do it."

She did not want to linger on in this endless darkness. She did not want to see the ruin of everything she'd fought for, killed for, suffered for. Orinus could survive. The Largs could survive. Some part of her could survive.

Ovelia slowly descended the stairs, stopped outside the cell just outside of Louveria's cell, and extended paper, quill, and ink. Louveria took them carefully. "I'll need light."

Ovelia offered her the runic rod. Louveria took it in hand, reached out with tentative magic, and found it was good for nothing but light. But of course. Ovelia would not be so careless as to hand her a potential weapon.

She made her way to her crooked table and its single splintering chair, carefully arraying quill, ink, and paper, as though she were writing some missive in the course of her royal duties. This had never been her forte—she had left that to Dycedarg and Glevanne, men too cowardly and weak to step into the risk and rewards of open power. They had never understood that power was like a muscle, to be worked and wielded, lest it atrophy.

And now Glevanne and Dycedarg were dead. Before the day was over, Louveria would join them.

She paused then, staring down at the paper. She remembered when Glevanne had been Goltanna's emissary to the Lion's Den—when he had fallen in with her so easily, seeing in her the path to power denied to him by the blustering fool he served. And she remembered Dycedarg, too: Dycedarg, more brilliant than her brother, more dangerous by far. Dycedarg, hands as nimble as a torturer's, tongue as sharp and clever as any weapon. Dycedarg, whose treachery had landed her here.

"There's an old parable about power," Louveria said, still staring down at the paper in front of her. "A behemoth can tear through castle walls. But catch them while they're young, chain them to a post they can't pull up, and you can chain them to that same post when they're adults."

"I've heard this before," Ovelia said sharply.

"Have you?" Louveria asked. "Curious. Dycedarg was fond of that analogy. About how we don't question our assumptions. Question our own understanding of our strength."

Ovelia said nothing. Louveria waited for a moment, then started to write.

"It was an interesting idea, when I was young," Louveria said. "I sympathized with that behemoth." She smiled thinly. "This world is built to keep people like me from the throne. We are meant to be pawns for our fathers, our brothers, our husbands. They train us early, so we do not think to question our lack of freedom. Our lack of power."

She paused, perusing the lines she'd written. No, too petulant, too childish: she crumpled the paper and flipped to another sheet, took a moment to compose herself.

"It was only after I met you that another meaning to his parable," she murmured, staring down at the blank sheet of paper. "The behemoth does not comprehend its own power...but its keepers do. Oh yes. They chain it to the post that held it as a child, and live in mortal terror of the day it realizes the post cannot hold it. The humans only hold the power until the behemoth realizes its own strength." She nodded, and began to write out a few lines.

"Power grows, in the using. In its youth, the behemoth was weak enough to be chained by the humans. But in adulthood...who can say how long the chain will hold? Who can say how long it will be, before the behemoth realizes its strength, and breaks its chains?"

Much better, yes. More poignant, more profound. Painting the picture that had been asked of her. The picture that would be her final word to the kingdom she had ruled.

"Is that how you saw me?" Ovelia asked. "Just a beast who you had to kill, before she would kill you?" There was ice in Ovelia's voice, but Louveria heard cracks in that ice, fissures of pain that ran deep.

Louveria laughed under her breath. "Child, that's what you were. That's what you were born for, bred for, brought into my house for. The Council of Lords feared me, so they chained a behemoth in my house, and hoped I would not dare to kill it before it killed me."

"We didn't have to be enemies," Ovelia said, and there was a tremor in her voice—the ice was cracking, breaking, falling to pieces, and Louveria could see the girl beneath.

Louveria laughed again. It sounded sharp in her ears. It felt sharp in her throat. "No?" Louveria asked. "Look at yourself, child. Look at what you've done. Look at what you've become." She laughed once more, and the sharpness was intentional, aimed at Ovelia with wounding intent. "You tell me we didn't have to be enemies, but with years to weaken you, and all Ivalice at my command, see where you stand. See what you've become."

She lifted her eyes briefly from the paper. Ovelia's face was lost in shadow, but she thought she saw her hands clenched into shaking fists. "You hate me because I saw what you could become. And your options were either to die, or prove me right."

She almost pitied Ovelia then. Ovelia was like so many fools across the world, men and women alike, who could not bear the bleak reality that sat in front of them. Who could not understand that human civilization was only separated from the animal world by the sophistication of its weapons. What matter if use tooth and claw or blade and spell to crush and devour your enemies? The nature of the world remained the same: a chain of prey and predators, with room for only one at the top.

Louveria had spent her life seeing the world as it was, in all its sharp and brutal majesty. The world was like a fortress, a creature of war and violence sometimes dressed up with pretty words and pretty fabrics, all to deny its own bleak necessity. You sometimes had to share in those lies—to pretend the tapestry on the wall masked the unforgiving stone beneath. But you could not allow yourself to believe them. You could not allow yourself to forget what the world truly was. If you did, it would destroy you, as it had destroyed so many others.

Bestrald had seen it a little (more after the poison), but Dycedarg had been the first person she'd met who had seen it the same way. Still, that had been its own lesson. Louveria understood that the lies were a stepping stone, as all things were stepping stones. In this unforgiving world, you used every tool at your disposal, climbing higher and higher, so that the world was yours to command. Dycedarg had believed he could traffic in lies forever—that he could dress up the world enough to fool those around him, and be the silent predator stalking its halls.

Imagine if he'd had the courage to step into the open. To rule as she had ruled. But then, his way had let him bring her down. His way had left her locked in this place, writing this letter, with death ahead of her,.

She reached the end of her suicide note. She stared down at the paper, and through the paper. She felt as though she stood upon a collapsing tower overlooking a city, or a crumbling precipice at the summit of a mountain. She felt that she could see such incredible vistas, could see the length and breadth of the world as though she had the eyes of a god. And she felt, too, the sure and certain fall ahead of her. Plunging, plummeting, down, down, down...

But she would not allow Ovelia to see her weak.

She took a deep breath, then set aside her suicide note, and set to work on her note to her son. It did not take her long. With all the gravity and power she possessed, she rose to her feet, and moved towards Ovelia with paper and rod in hand. "The top is my declaration. The bottom is for Orinus."

She handed papers and rod alike to Ovelia through the bars. In the false moonlight, Ovelia had regained her composure. But it was not a face of steel anymore. It was softer, stranger. She read the papers carefully. Expressions passed over her face like solitary clouds across a clear summer sky. Louveria could read none of them.

Until she started to laugh.

It started small, that laugh. It was soundless, at first—Ovelia stared at the note to her son, and her face and shoulders twitched, as though she were on the verge of tears. Then the sound began: distant and delicate and just a little broken, like the tinkling that follows the shattering of glass. There was a little sharpness in that sound, on which a careless soul might cut themselves. But it was not the same sharpness that had been in Louveria's throat. It was too honest for that, too earnest.

It scared Louveria. She fought the urge to flinch away from her.

"Oh, Louveria," Ovelia giggled, looking up at her with a broad, almost friendly smile. "Oh, you poor beast."

There was too much kindness in those eyes. Too much understanding. Louveria wanted to claw those impudent brown eyes from her head.

"You tell your tales of behemoths, chained by lies for terrified masters," Ovelia said. "You call yourself such a beast, who learned your own strength. And look at you now. In a prison you put yourself in."

"You put me here, you bitch," hissed Louveria.

"I didn't, you know," Ovelia said. "I really didn't. I'm glad you're here. You deserve to be here. But you laid every stone on the path that brought you here. Brought you to this."

There was still strange warmth in her voice. But there was terrible steel as well. It felt molten in its intensity, as though it could sear Louveria at any moment.

"You bullied, and tortured, and murdered," Ovelia said. "You put mercenaries in Nanten cloaks, and sent them to die, so that your assassins could slit my throat. When that failed, you sent Hokuten soldiers to murder me, to cover up your crime. And when that failed, you told lies about Druksmald Goltanna, pretending he was the architect of some terrible conspiracy to...to what?" Ovelia shook her head. "What choice you give him, but war? What choice did you give me, but violence? And what choice did you give your allies, but to turn against you?" She cocked her head. "You know that's how you ended up here, don't you? Dycedarg made sure there were holes in the Hokuten defenses. He made sure Lesalia could be sacked."

Of course she knew. She was no fool. Bestrald could not see it, but Louveria could—how Dycedarg had turned on them over the years, wearing the cloak of the Larg name to spread his own influence, his own power. He saw the world as clearly as she did. In the end, there could be only one great house in Ivalice.

"You tell your little story of a behemoth chained in your house," Ovelia asked. "So you can pity yourself, for failing to put down the beast when you had the chance. But that story is...stupid." Ovelia shook her head. "If I walk into a house, and find a beast chained there...I think I find a way to free the beast. If I cannot feed it, if I cannot tame it, but if it is still weak enough that the chain can hold...I can take it somewhere else. Somewhere far away, where it can live in peace, and never bother me again."

"But you can't see that, can you? Because all you see is a world of chains and beasts. Never seeing that you're the one setting the chains. Never seeing that you're the one creating beasts." Ovelia laughed again—that bright and jagged sound. "You tell yourself you're the victim of a cruel world. And somehow you forget: you're the one who made this world cruel."

She extended the suicide note back to Louveria. "This will do."

Louveria stared at that hand, and the note that was her death warrant. The girl's words echoed endlessly inside her, like a shout across the mountainside. She felt avalanches in those echoes.

She lashed out with both hands, to grab that wrist, to wrench it, yank it, hurt the girl it was attached to, hurt this vicious little beast-

Golden light exploded outwards from the ring on that hand, caught Louveria fast. She gasped against the warmth, the pressure, her hands bare ilms from Ovelia's. Their eyes met. The heated steel was in those brown eyes, bright and lethal.

"You're not entirely wrong," Ovelia admitted. "I am the beast you made me."

The golden light washed away. Louveria stood where she'd been caught, her hands still bare ilms from Ovelia's. Ovelia remained, hand outstretched with Louveria's suicide note. Slowly, Louveria reached out, and took the paper from Ovelia's hand. And when Ovelia held out the vial of poison, she took that, too.

"If the story Emanuel tells is right," Ovelia said. "The note goes to your son when the peace talks are over."

Orinus. Orinus, whose birth was an agony she had never known. Orinus, whose pinched pink face as she held him in his arms had been like sunrise in a long night. Orinus, gentle and wonderful as an ocean breeze on a hot summer's day. Orinus, the sole softness she'd ever known, in those brutal world.

Ovelia left. Louveria did not see her go. She stared down at the paper in front of her.

Ivalice has been a wilderness for as long as I can remember.

I was born into war—into a struggle for survival against two terrible empires who would have devoured Ivalice whole. I saw great men die, to save our kingdom from those beasts. King Denamda IV. Balbanes Beoulve. The names are endless.

And when we finally beat the beasts back from her borders, we made beasts of ourselves. Beasts like the Death Corps ran riot in Gallione, and their example spread to every corner of Ivalice. And when I tried to measure up to the great men who had died to save our kingdom, the beasts came for me, as well. Beasts that wore noble names. Like Goltanna. Like Orlandeau. Like Beoulve.

The rot runs deep. The beasts outnumber the men. If there is hope for the world, it lives in the future of the Atkascha dynasty. In my son. But I see no hope for me. Not in this world of beasts.

But as she stared at her suicide note, and fingered the poison in her hand, she was not reading the words written there. She was reading the words she'd handed to Ovelia. The last kindness she could do for her son.

My son. My sun. The world is harsh. The world is cruel. The world is dangerous. Trust no one. Be strong.

I love you.