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The last note died with barely a diminuendo, suffocated wholly by the thick blanket of snow circling the hastily-constructed stage; and the triumphant emperor wasn’t sure whether her arm was trembling more from the weight of Aymr held above her head, the cold of the night which had fallen, or the coldness of the audience’s faces.
The fake weapon was all painted wood rather than whatever strange, osseous ore had been used to forge the real deal, of course. Nowhere near as heavy as a real relic. But it wasn’t as though she’d ever been anywhere near as strong as Edelgard. It still cast the same shadow on the ground as the true Aymr did, anyway, fierce and black and almost cutting into the front row. She let her eyes flick downwards as the sparse applause unenthusiastically trickled on. Yes: and so did she, in this fine and heavy dress, backlit by a hundred, specially-designed candles.
Everything had come together wonderfully. The impresario and Hubert had driven a dozen stagehands to tears over their lectures on specifications and proper maintenance of the costumes, properties and everything else that had been prepared to create the perfect show, and she supposed it had been worth it. These past few months, each time the show had closed, wild, proud joy would grip her heart when she looked down to see Edie extending from the tips of her flimsy red boots over the audience, which would always cheer and holler her name: Edelgard, Edelgard! Even after crossing the old borders into what had been Leicester and Faerghus, she would often see a few eyes in the crowds, hostile at the beginning, glitter like their initial coldness had combined with guilty tears and turned them to glittering crystals of ice.
It really was a performer’s dream, to vanish into her role completely and move a whole sea of faces.
They didn’t care, though, this audience, here and now.
The farmers of Sacred Gwenhwyvar stared up at her, unsmiling and unmoved. When they’d finally started to clap, it was forced at best. Applause, the sort of raucous applause which thundered in her throat and shook through the stage and her body back in Enbarr, was the usual reward for how her body ached at the end of a show. Here, now, she could feel her nose and pinkie fingers begin to tingle and numb despite all the rich wines, lotions and spells she’d taken and applied before the show.
Still, when the collection of thick, furry cloaks parted, scattering off to their own little homesteads, they revealed a young girl looking up at her, spellbound.
Dorothea’s forced smile turned genuine in an instant. She beamed, her eyes crinkling, and bent down as quick as stalks of wheat under hardy boots.
“Well, hello! What’s your name?”
The girl didn’t speak, and then after a few moments blinked. Her cheeks were already flushed from the cold, so it was hard to tell whether or not she blushed. It was cute all the same.
“Demi!” she said. “Ah, I mean, Demeter, I’m Demeter, Lady… I mean, Miss…?”
The girl only stopped babbling when Dorothea extended her hand to the girl. When she took it, Dorothea marvelled at how pale it was, translucent as ice in her padded, scarlet glove.
“Demi, is it? Did you enjoy the show? What was your favourite part?” Though she was doing her best to be charming—maybe even get a sweet little laugh out of her—Demi didn’t smile. Instead, she stammered a little longer before her eyes went wide and she hastily retreated.
Dorothea straightened up, frowning. “Oh. Well, it was nice to meet you.”
“Enjoying the limelight?”
Oh, so that was why she’d run off like she’d seen a ghost. Hubie was easily mistaken for one when he crept out the shadows, after all.
She could feel his eyes settle on the middle of her back, but he had peeled out of the shadows and was looking at her in quite a more professional way by the time she turned.
“Well! I was wondering where you’d got to, Hubie. But really,” she said, reprovingly, “Do you have to hide in the shadows quite so well? She’ll have nightmares of men leaping out from every corner of the room from now on.”
“Nightmares have their place,” said Hubert, with his usual forthright menace. “Especially for a girl growing up in a family bold enough to name their daughters after bygone kings.”
Her fingers danced at her side as her own eyes flickered around the stragglers, who had grown quieter and less enthralled upon seeing him appear from the temporary wings, batlike.
So, that was why the name had sounded a little familiar.
Hubert’s own head turned to regard the girl. Demi ran forward, leaving a trail of small footprints on the snow, and collided with one of the thick, brown cloaks. The figure halted, and a similarly pale hand took her own. With their hoods up, it was impossible to say who it was, but a dark smirk still crossed Hubert’s face.
“Well, now,” he said. “It seems she knows the man who refused use of his barn for the performance. Something about his livestock taking ill with the unfortunate weather, even though money had already exchanged hands. And just a little too late for us to find somewhere else to stage the show… such a uselessly dangerous act of rebellion, I can’t help but admire the nerve.” A long, thin smile curled across his face. “I wonder if he’s told any other lies.”
“Oh,” said Dorothea. A small pit opened in her stomach as she watched the girl trotting alongside their renegade host, holding out her arm and looking innocently at her own footprints in the snow. “Well, even if he has, there’s no need to go overboard. The performance still went ahead, right?”
Sacred Gwenhwyvar—the locals loathed outsiders shortening the name, though she could have sworn she’d overheard a few woodsmen cheerfully talking about ‘Gwennie’ as they hacked away at some firs while the Mittelfrank Company caravan passed by—was mostly flat farmland, forts set up with easy proximity to the Duscur peninsula, and those who made their business in one of those two fields. Nowadays, the forts were populated with Duscur battalions under the firm hand of Imperial officers, but the population itself stubbornly clung to the old ways. Tension was thicker in the air than the snows, but as Edie had surmised in their discussions on what to do with the region, it was the only way forward in the region. The men of Duscur were the least likely troops to be swayed by gold or fine rhetoric to their revanchist dreams; they had been betrayed over and over again by Faerghus, after all, to the very end, when on Tailtean Plain, the stubborn last king of Faerghus had shown his true feelings for his loyal servant and warped him into a monster—
( But that wasn’t what happened , she’d said after the meeting with the representatives of Duscur had ended. Hubert had just smiled, his eyes narrowing with the same pleasure he got from a fine coffee or a well-executed chess move. ‘ Does it matter?’ )
In any case, the population was already enthusiastically kept in line. It was common for locals to get dragged in by the ear for hiding Old Church priests and poorly-forged medals of the Immaculate One, to the point where Enbarr had received complaints from the Imperial officers stationed there about the levels of minutiae involved in keeping criminal records.
She laughed, sweetly, trying to hide the dread that trickled down her back; the fear of more bloodshed.
“Edie sent me out here, you know. Being forceful will just make them dig in their heels more.”
“Yes, they seemed… very moved.”
Dorothea fixed her earrings, unnecessarily, with a twinge of nervousness.
“Well. About that. We were thinking of doing another opera for the rest of the tour. Maybe The Tragedy of Ionius .”
“Is that so?” Hubert’s eyebrows settled deeper, casting his golden eyes into shadow, like small fires in a black night. “I thought you were proud of The Lady of Hresvelg .”
“Well, I—the last few audiences have been very quiet, is all. Ionius is just as…”
It wasn’t ‘just as’ anything. The Lady of Hresvelg was the point of the tour, at least on the surface paperwork filed with the culture ministries back in Enbarr: explaining the hypocrisies and cruelties of the old order and why the war had been necessary, why things had needed to be this way, to Edie’s new subjects; donating all the proceeds to charities, both the new and some old ones that had been firmly scrubbed clean of religious affiliations. Hubert and House Vestra had mostly funded the tour out of pocket.
Dorothea had promised him, long ago, to devote herself to Edelgard’s vision of the future the same way he did. It was just that it had felt wonderful performing it in Enbarr, but further from the heart of Adrestia, deeper into the cold, heartless forests of northern Faerghus—
Well. When King Dimitri had been cut down with some clever staging and she had sung of regretful necessities, she’d felt for a moment that she was twirling gracefully on the cusp of her dismemberment by the audience, then their dismemberment by the soldiers they’d put in place, then nothing put blood, pooling in the snow like the fallen petals of a naked rose. Of course, there were protections in place to stop that from happening. Hubert had been in the wings, like a silent wraith, his loyal, silent underlings dotted around the stage and in the audience.
The feeling had not disappeared, though. Not when she’d danced across the burning Fhirdiad together with the rest of her companions, not when the great dragon had been struck down, not when she’d taken her bow to deathly silence and then forced clapping.
A few performances ago, in a little settlement very close to this one, but one that had actually had a small meeting hall, she’d turned her head after one graceful arabesque, to the group of companions gathered at the left of the stage. Though she’d rehearsed with the rest of the cast countless times, their faces above the stitch-accurate armour and regalia had been for that moment so unfamiliar and hollow, like the wooden puppets held up to be the opposing forces on either side of the conflict, the burning people in Arianhrod and Fhirdiad, that it made her stagger and twist her slipper on the replica of Edie’s red cape.
It had been barely noticeable. Not even Hubert, who’d been out on reconnaissance, had been there to pick up on it.
That feeling hadn’t left her since.
“You really are enjoying the limelight,” he said, with cutting derision.
“It’s not that I’m not proud of it, Hubie,” she huffed, and pushed all her swirling misgivings into their usual little jewelled box deep in her stomach. “ I was the one who convinced Edie to give me the go-ahead with putting the show together in the first place, not you. Don’t you remember?
“Naturally, I remember. It’s not like I disapprove. The Mittelfrank Opera Company is one of our crowning achievements. Your talent and hard work really have moved many minds. If any voice, any charisma could move the masses—”
“It would be ‘Lady Edelgard’,” she cut in, with a knowing grin.
“True. But Lady Edelgard also cannot sing. Nor take on a role in a profession like an opera singer.”
Yes. Nobles could visit the opera. It was the place to be seen, really. They could pay for the singers they liked, in whatever way. They could even pay for their education at high institutions if they felt generous enough. But the performers themselves were often seen by them, and the masses, as being involved in an illicit profession.
That hadn’t changed as much as Dorothea had been hoping, since Edelgard came to power. She had a lot to do, of course. She and Professor Manuela were really the ones who had to give a good image to the masses, despite everything that she and Professor Manuela were doing now.
“Well, that’s true,” she purred, peeling her mind away from that, “Don’t I look just like Her Majesty?”
Back then, she’d used that voice for all kinds of noble scumbags. Do I look pretty? Do I really look like Saint Cethleann and you want to worship at my feet, my lord? Do I really look like a Dagdan warrior queen you want to put in her place because you just can’t let the fact a woman beat you personally even when your side won the war, my lord?
Do I really look like a lady-in-waiting you threw out of your house because it turned out you fucked a Crestless child into her? What a funny story we’re laughing at, no really, do tell me how I’d never let you down like that.
She’d wanted to rip all their eyes out, but when she felt Hubert’s eyes rake her up and down in consideration, the flip of her stomach wasn’t from revulsion.
“Yes,” he said. He was usually quick and sarcastic with his responses, but this one took a while. He placed a hand on her back, in the middle of the cordate hole at the back of her red dress. In Enbarr, it might have been the coldest thing in the room before they brought out chilled wine for the patrons. Here, it was the warmest.
Her whole body shivered.
“My, Hubie, are you always so handsy with Lady Edelgard in her armour? I’m so envious of her!”
His hand disappeared.
“I see you’re still intent on claiming I have some long-burning unrequited love.”
“Well, you do know her outfits best.” She turned her head with a flirtatious smile. “I didn’t tell you to stop , Hubie.”
“Enemies might try and target Lady Edelgard’s back more often if you don’t cover up more. Where is the cloak?”
“Oh,” she lied, easily, “I tripped on it all the time in rehearsal.”
Hubert made a disgruntled noise.
“It really does look like Edie’s armour from the audience,” she said, turning back to the mirror and removing her earrings. “The designers said you helped with that. It doesn’t stand up to the cold much, though.” She turned. “Really, Hubie, did we have to come all the way out here into the middle of the mountains? Mercedes told me there are a dozen small towns dotted around in Gwenhwyvar— Sacred Gwenhwyvar—surely they have music halls.”
“None of those small towns are sitting on one of the warrens where… dark things slither .”
Hubert’s black-clad arm came past her bare skin, laying a map on the dresser. Even if his manner was cold, his body was always warmer than she expected. As his pale, long finger moved to a patch of mountains, like one of the writhing monsters from beneath the earth had emerged from among them, she knew instinctively the expression he was wearing: the dark, gleeful grin of a man who enjoyed his work far too intently.
She could feel crackles of energy between them, and couldn’t help but be swept up in the feeling herself.
“We move as soon as you’re ready.”
Dorothea fiddled with her earring and laid it on the dresser with a deep, piteous sigh, trying to calm her thumping chest before he made fun of her for it. “Already? Well, I’d love to, but I won’t be ready by the morning if you don’t help me out of this thing. There’s far too many petticoats keeping the shape, not to mention all the armour. Edie really must be the strongest girl alive.”
“That she is.” Hubert got to it. “Though she is… distracted at the moment, with the professor’s health.”
Yes.
I don’t understand, she’d said to Dorothea one day over tea and cakes, after a speech before a mass crowd where Edelgard had looked very splendid and from which Dorothea had taken a lot of inspiration for her subsequent performances of The Lady of Hresvelg . Her face had been drawn rather than twisted in passion, her pale face hard rather than a shining beacon to the world. The professor’s humanity was restored after we slew Rhea, but their heart weakens by the day. When you go, I ask that you search for a cure.
“Hubie,” said Dorothea, lightly. “You do want the professor to get better, don’t you?”
“Of course. They’ve proven to be a valuable asset to Lady Edelgard, and loyal.”
“But, on a personal level. You want the professor to get better.”
Said like that, it sounded far less striking and brave than her place as the Lady of Hresvelg, and far more like she was convincing herself of the fact.
“You make me sound rather more vindictive than I am,” said Hubert. “Right now is a pivotal moment for Lady Edelgard to solidify her grasp on the continent. If the professor supports her, naturally it’s best to have them around. If they prove to be a distraction to her, or worse a detriment, then I’d appreciate if they hurry up and choose whether to recover and die.”
“Hubie,” said Dorothea, with a tut, and a turn of the head that moved her fake white tresses and across her shoulder, “That’s a rather heartless way of looking at it.”
They did whisper, though—the thought came into her head—that Hubert had killed his own father for Edie’s sake.
Besides, heartlessness had proven to have merits. Who had won the war, after all?
“I’d say it has rather a lot to do with the heart,” he said, with a small tilt of his mouth in the mirror that she’d learned over the years was the most genuine kind of smile he had and a small, leather prod of a finger at her back. “Don’t worry. I hold enough… regard for the professor that I’m not about to sneak into their sickroom with a pillow.”
Still, it was a strange mix of wariness and warmth that blossomed within her that Hubert was sharing his considerations with her. They really had become a well-oiled pair, with all this spying business. And even if sometimes, she would have rather known less about what was going on, he tended to notice the squeamishness and hold back certain details.
She could feel the back of the dress loosen as he undid the last button and strap that, hidden away beneath the layers of finery, held the costume together. She could feel his eyes lingering, heavier, and put a sway into her walk as she stepped out of the pooling mass of red and over to her dresser.
“Well, I’m glad to hear it!” she found herself saying. “I really wouldn’t forgive you if you got the dear professor killed just for expediency.”
Hubert laughed, small and low.
“I think you would.”
Dorothea disregarded the comment.
“And neither would Edie.”
“No, you’re right about that. …But what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
When they left, her dress was far slimmer and darker than her costume armour, bursting with hidden effects and design features for the stage. She could walk and move easier now, but Faerghus’ freezing winter meant she’d had to add a lot more layers than usual: a short black cape that came around the shoulders here; a fur-lined set of handless gloves there. It was a wonder that Ingrid had been able to stand Aillel and not faint dead away from her pegasus’ back and plunge into the bubbling magma beneath, if this sort of weather was what she was used to.
She moved her thoughts away from dear, departed Ingrid and onto the second show of the evening.
These ones took place in well-lit rooms. If they were fabric, any noble lady would have been envious of the complex triangular layering of the grey walls, though not with their dull colour; any brightness came from the thick, blue lines which ran straight across the floor, walls, and even the ceiling. They leaked cold light into the corridors like irrigation ditches fed fields.
It was empty, however. Dorothea took her hand away from her meteor, relieved and wary all at once.
“Empty,” said Hubert with a click of his teeth. “This place has been newly abandoned. They might have had help from the local population.”
“You don’t think they’re… working with them?”
Hubert laughed. The sound echoed.
“Hypocritical indignation is for above ground and the earshot of others. Going beneath the earth wouldn’t be the worst move, if they’re fenced in by the Duscur troops above—”
He paused, and stood up straighter, like a predator catching the scent of prey.
“What is it?” she asked.
“And yet, there’s something . I can feel it.” His leather fingers brushed his own tome, as if to match the sensations, confirm them. “Yes… something of theirs is here.”
His fingers came away with an elegant sweep, and then he moved into the chamber with a slow, appraising gait. In the middle of the main chamber were several metal troughs. The irrigation lines pumped light into their sides, giving the whole thing an eerie blue glow.
“Well, now,” he said, with something that was and wasn’t like delight when he reached them and peered inside. “What have we here?”
Dorothea hurried over, but took a step back once she’d reached them and taken a look for herself.
These bases were always so sterile and lifeless. The only semblance of it was how the light of the blue lines would frequently die and come back to life again. And yet, those same blue lines came up and into the trough, only to pass into a small body, as though invisible ventricles were passing that light from all around the grey room into one, tiny form.
The tuft of hair on its head was darker than the shadowy, metal cradle it had been left in. And it was pale, unnaturally pale. Paler than Hubert, paler than the snow and the people who lived in it outside.
She didn’t let herself consider what that left for it to be as pale as.
“It’s a baby,” she said. “It’s…”
She gathered sternness into her voice.
“Hubie, it’s a baby. We can’t just leave it here.”
“I didn’t think you were cold enough to suggest killing an infant.”
“What?! No, that’s not what I mean at all! Why would you even consider such a thing?”
Hubert sighed. “Don’t you recognise what that thing is? Look closer.”
Dorothea’s breath caught and she looked away, guiltily.
“Yes. One who slithers.” Hubert folded his arms. “We found facilities like these in Adrestia too, but any life they tried to foster had long since withered away. This is a stubborn one. Perhaps it’s the Faerghus air. It does seem to foster rebellious types who don’t know when it’s over. Or those who won’t let it be over.”
He seemed almost fond of that description of his, somehow, but Dorothea remained as silent as the little creature in the metal frame.
“It’s not human, you know,” he said, unfolding his arms carelessly. Though he spoke about an enemy, he didn’t seem to think it could cause him any harm at all, Dorothea thought, sourly. It was always easier when you could at least pretend they were capable of doing it back to you. “You don’t need to feel bad for it.”
“Even if it’s not…”
“…Our orders were clear. The eradication of those who would subjugate humanity is paramount. You know this.” Hubert looked at the small thing, but even he looked away again into the shadows. She wondered if he had to, in order to keep the logical distance in his voice. She wondered if the fact he was trying was admirable or horrifying.
Dorothea had only recently been admitted into the category of acceptable humans among the powerful herself. Surely though: she’d come to believe—understand—that dragons and monstrous humanoids who schemed and fought humans were an enemy to the progress and safety of humanity.
When they were adults.
Well, when they were the same age as those who fought to subdue them, at least. Flayn had lied about what she was for centuries, just like all the other dragons, Edelgard had said when she’d discovered her gazing blankly out across Enbarr from the castle ramparts one day, a small, crumbling map of the old city and a chirpy note from a dead girl about where ancient musicians had played in her bare hand, and crushed it to dust in her gauntlets.
We must think of the future, dear friend, not the past.
She looked down at the baby again, and the pit in her stomach yawned like an abyss that went on forever and ever.
“I’ll take it,” she said, just as she began to feel the pit pulling her in like one of the black vortices Hubert could make appear in thin air.
“What?”
“I’ll take it. I’ll be its mother. It doesn’t have to know.” Her voice took on strength, as she spotted the handhold and clung to it for dear life. “ Nobody has to know. The timing will work out. We’re on tour, nobody we know will see me for months. They don’t have to die. I’ll take responsibility for everything to do with it.”
There had to be someone who didn’t have to die. Not like everyone else on this bloody road she’d agreed to go down with Hubert. There had to be someone who Dorothea could save, even if they ended up eliminating everyone else on their way to a better world.
This, she thought desperately, was the future. This, surely—this and the girl who had once at least a few morals and standards and a spine to her name even if it was just a mass of thorns and rage—could be part of Edie’s future.
Hubert regarded her.
“That’s a bold decision to make on the spot.”
She laughed, a drawn sound peppered with a small bit of hysteria.
“I make a lot of decisions on the spot, Hubie.” Her voice was tight, high, and she forced herself to inject some cheer into it, some of the steel of the idealised Lady of Hresvelg; the one who appeared on staircases and stages and held herself together at the bedsides of those she loved. “It’s a thing a girl of my profession learns how to do . And It’s not so bad. Back when I was growing up, nobody would have expected much more of me than becoming another unmarried mother. At least now with all my darling friends to back me up, nobody will dare criticise me.”
Hubert looked at her. And then, he laughed. It was a soundless laugh, accompanied by a shake of the head. His posture was easier, his thin eyebrows unfurrowed and finally, thank whoever Dorothea was supposed to thank, his arms folded across his chest again and away from his weapons.
“Unmarried? So, you’re not going to propose to me for the sake of convenience again.” His thin lips stretched. “I can’t tell if that puts me at ease or disappoints me.”
“Oh, Hubie,” she said, trying to pull herself together with a giggle and a wave of relief, “When a girl doesn’t propose, of course it should be abject despair.”
“As you say.” He regarded the infant. “…You do have time to make your mind up. Development from these technological cradles is sped up exponentially, but out of them, one of their lifespans expands well beyond a human’s.”
“I won’t change my mind. But thanks.”
She looked down at the baby.
“I haven’t—I haven’t even picked it up yet. Them. Can I?”
Hubert pressed down on one of the wires. The light pumping through cut off after the pressure point. There was a small hiss and he smiled, pleased with himself.
“Just like the others. It’ll be easy enough to extract.”
She stood by as he fiddled with the rest of the wires, nothing to do but wait.
A nobleman partner and a baby who looked just like him so nobody could claim otherwise and kick her out. It was everything she’d planned for, ten years ago. And out of the lot of them, Hubert had always been the nobleman she liked the best, even if he was the nobleman she knew there was the least point trying to seduce.
Was this like those operas full of mighty women who’d only marry those who could best them? This sort of glamorous unattainability? Or was it more like some show laden with ironies, where you could hear the audience laughing wildly as you acted like you had no idea the truth was making a fool of you?
After all, the girl that Hubert would drop everything for was Edelgard, and he’d seduced Dorothea to their cause rather than the other way around.
“Are you going to tell her?” she asked, eventually. “Edie, I mean.”
“No,” said Hubert. “I told you before, didn’t I? Not all of Her Majesty’s orders are in her best interest. It would go against Her Majesty’s ideals to question too loudly why the child of two Crestless individuals possesses the sort of merit only before possessed by those lucky few. Both for the public… and for Her Majesty herself.”
He laughed, fondly. It was sinister coming from his face, but somehow it felt genuine.
“You once called my point of view fascinating, but isn’t Her Majesty’s just as interesting in its own way?” He smiled at Dorothea and for a moment, she fancied she saw something like that same fondness from before in them, making the cold, mercenary gold melt, if only momentarily. “Just as your own is.”
She blinked.
“Mine?”
“You always used to think you were the most sensible of us. Just as Her Majesty does. Yet you’re both governed by emotion. And the past.”
“Well! That’s rather rude. Though I never thought I’d hear you talk about Edie like that either.”
“The truth can be difficult to bear. But don’t misunderstand. Her Majesty has far more strengths than I and you—you have a softer heart than mine. Even if it’s too soft, at times, it means that paths to victory occur to you that do not immediately occur to me. Many of your ideas have merit, especially now that the war is won and the next is to create an image of ourselves as…caring, righteous governors of the people. It’s useful to have someone like you around.”
He looked at the child in the trough with an inscrutable smile, reached in, and picked it out. It opened its eyes, very slightly, and gurgled, regarding him with equal interest.
“Yes…” he said, into the still air of the base, contemplative, “…And if it behaves, I dare say it’s always useful to have ourselves a little monster around too.”