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Hubert had seen many skeletons in his time, and none of them vexed him quite so much as the empty bookshelf in his new headquarters in Enbarr. It was old, and when the former Marquis’ offices had been gutted and searched, Hubert nostalgically requested it be left alone. Most of its bones would need to be taken up with reports or registries, but he decided to reserve a couple shelves for his own use.
A few boxes of books sat near him. His reference texts, mostly. Poisons. Reason. A handful of restricted tomes were present, liberated from Garreg Mach after he and Edelgard planted their flag and stripped from it what they needed.
Ashlen appeared at his door, snapping to a quick salute, which he absently returned over his shoulder.
“Do you have my coffee?” He asked, thumbing over his first box of books.
“No, sir,” Ashlen said. “The von Aegir boy is here to see you.”
“Ah.” Hubert smiled into his hollow bookshelf. Only rarely had such a newly-disgraced shadow crawled over his door. “Let him in.”
She silently left, the softness of her leather shoes making the thundering boots that followed that much louder. Hubert didn’t even need to turn his head to acknowledge Ferdinand, so sure was he of his location. Still, he unhurriedly faced his door, his hands full with two different volumes as he tried to decide exactly where they fit.
Ferdinand entered, only to pause just within the dim threshold with his bootheels clipped together like a toy soldier opposite Hubert’s desk. He looked around as if he expected serpents or Faerghan bear traps to be lying just outside of the light from the doorway. “You asked for me?”
“I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”
Already, he saw a little spark of fire behind Ferdinand’s eyes. “Please check your watch. I am right on time.”
“I know what I said.” When Hubert spoke, he let a hint of triumph into his words—just enough to see if he could get Ferdinand’s seditious cheeks to turn as bright as his hair. Hubert felt a fragmentary thrill at the little cruelties he’d invented to make up for a year of incessant irritation. “There are a few final matters to settle. Regarding the liquidation of your traitor father’s estate.”
“I am aware.” Ferdinand’s fist clenched at his side.
“Needless to say, there is a great deal to be organized. My suggestion,” Hubert said, as if it truly was a suggestion, “is that you approve the hiring of a third party to manage the sales, and to set aside the appropriate repatriatriation for the Empire.”
Ferdinand watched him, his eyes drifting past Hubert’s hand to the green-stained volume of Almyran poisons he tucked into a prominent spot on his shelf. “To pay such an agent would require an additional percentage.”
“I assure you,” Hubert replied, reaching for another volume. “The freelancers I have in mind will work fairly and succinctly.” He left it’s more than you deserve unspoken but heavily implied in his tone. He hoped even his required courtly pleasantries dripped with it, the next time he and Ferdinand were forced to share space with Her Majesty.
“But,” Ferdinand said, tripping over the word as if he knew it would start a fight, “That would leave less for my mother and sisters.”
“Yes, that is how payment for services rendered often works,” Hubert drawled on.
“What percentage do you expect this agent would take?”
Hubert wiped dust off the bookshelf. He couldn’t believe he’d missed that earlier, and scowled as his white glove came away with gray on it. “An estate of this size...fifteen. Twenty at the most.”
He could practically hear Ferdinand’s fluttering bird heart beat harder. “T-twenty? You must know that is robbery—”
“Which is so much worse than embezzlement?” Hubert continued, arching his back around to look over his shoulder and catch a glimpse of Ferdinand practically vibrating with rage at every prod.
Hubert longed for Ferdinand to yell as he once did, denounce Edelgard in a fit of passion. One quick punch and Hubert could easily make the argument that Ferdinand was unfit for any position at his Lady’s side—or worse, her back. If he stormed out, gathering his battalion, Hubert would be ready for that, too. So Hubert tossed his javelins, wondering when the Duke’s son might finally let his storied temper get the better of him.
So far, this strategy proved itself ineffective. Edelgard had made her move, and the Black Eagles transitioned from classmates to colleagues, even as her darling Professor vanished into thin air. Ferdinand unfortunately remained smart enough to recognize that his position was precarious. Thus, he remained.
Instead of granting Hubert’s wish, Ferdinand’s shoulders slumped. “What if I went to manage the sale myself?”
Hubert furrowed his brows and slammed another book onto his empty shelf. He’d not expected that offer. At least Ferdinand was showing he could be trained.
“That wouldn’t be impossible, though it seems like a waste of time.” Hubert removed a book, reconsidered it, then thrust the volume back onto a new spot on the pristine shelf. “One that may be hazardous for you if I learn a single cent has been misplaced from the Empire’s share—”
“I can add sums and percentages, thank you.” Ferdinand’s throat worked in a flicker as he swallowed more of the hate in his eyes. “We cannot all be glorified for tedium.”
“If you ride to Aegir to oversee the final sales yourself, they will need to be seen through to the end.” Hubert spoke as he would to an unruly, forgetful child. “Before taking your post in the field, do you understand?”
“It will be done.” There was plenty of heat in Ferdinand’s amber eyes. The words tumbled out angrily, spat out from behind grit teeth like a small dog yapping at a larger one. “I suppose you would prefer I go and not come back at all.”
“Now,” Hubert cooed. “You’re not supposed to say a wish out loud.”
Watching Ferdinand struggle to come up with a clever retort was like watching someone try to carry a whole barrel’s worth of apples in their arms. His cheeks worked as he clenched his jaw, keeping his mouth from spilling out whatever angry, desperate nonsense threatened to fall from his arms.
Hubert watched him leave, and the triumph he’d felt at making Ferdinand’s face go bright red faded back to a constant hum of frustration. He’d been able to remove every blockade, every threat, every clot of human trash trudging through the arteries of Edelgard’s court that was within his reach to remove. Yet Ferdinand eluded him. He relished the day he would get to pry that pin from the meat of his thigh, one way or another.
He wished for Edelgard’s sake to keep the Aegir heir’s blood from soaking in on her skirts. But if Ferdinand insisted on bleating, Hubert would slick his whetstone as needed. When the time came, he would have half a shepherd’s pity.
If pressed, Ferdinand wouldn’t have been able to say what reception he imagined.
He had fantasies of coming back to sunny, sea-side Aegir to smiles and waves, in the way he supposed people often assumed their childhood homes might remain unchanged even as the world shifted unpredictably. With the war starting and Edelgard’s quieter revolt pulling leeches from the Empire’s skin—in her eyes anyway—a part of Ferdinand selfishly hoped Aegir hadn’t felt the effects too much. Change was necessary, but his life had changed overnight, and some part of him thought that with Aegir being so far from the capital and its politics…
He hadn’t known what he thought.
Ferdinand’s father spent most of his time in Enbarr, and his mother and sisters had quit the town not long after his father’s arrest. The people had not seen a von Aegir in months, and Ferdinand thought it would be fine.
That was not the case.
He called out to a baker from the carriage window, and the blank stare he got in return had frozen his hand in midair, the breeze and bumps on wooden wheels jostling him in the frame. He repeated the experiment when he saw a woman walking with two small children. Her mouth decidedly dropped from a smile to...something else.
Ferdinand retreated into his carriage. It seemed there was nowhere he could go to escape what his father did, and his cheeks burned at the idea that he would be painted with the same brush. Hubert did—he spared no opportunity to remind Ferdinand of it with the zeal of a cutthroat thus far denied the use of his knife. It made sense that the people under Duke Aegir’s stewardship would feel the same.
It didn't matter, Ferdinand told himself, hands placed properly on his lap, straight back holding him upright as the carriage tumbled through the gates of the von Aegir estate. Conversation wasn’t the reason why he came to Aegir, and its absence wouldn’t be the reason why he left.
He had a job to do.
Nothing quite prepared him for seeing his home in chaos. From the foyer to the study, furniture and heirlooms alike were covered with sheets and earmarked for sale, as if there were not enough Duke Aegirs to blindfold and execute for their crimes and the Empire had decided to first take it out on the dining room. Ferdinand hollowly wandered the halls, greeting bustling staff only to have the conversation terminated when he saw how busy they were.
He folded his arms, tried to find a quiet place where he could see if the creaking wood floors remembered him. When that effort failed, he even wandered to his father’s former office—he wasn’t shocked to find it more than gutted, to find the ancient desk dissected, the walls searched and sliced in places, and any loose floorboards removed. The gin cabinet was untouched, and though Ferdinand didn’t care for the taste of hard alcohol, finding it locked felt like a further insult.
A sudden constriction around his chest found him stumbling back out into the hallway, hand on his forehead as he nearly stumbled into a young girl in a serving outfit. He didn’t recognize her. She must have been hired after he left for Garreg Mach—this, too, disoriented him.
“Sir, you’re the son of Duke—of Ludwig von Aegir.” She curtsied. “Pardon me. The butler asked me to find you and let you know that the kitchen can still prepare a meal from our remaining stores.”
“Thank you.” Ferdinand felt far away. “Thank you. I am going to step outside for a bit though.”
“Outside?” The girl asked, voice curious and hurried at the same time. “Sir, are you sure that’s...wise?”
Ferdinand blinked. “Why would it not be?”
Her hands fidgeted on her apron. “There have been some...sour feelings among the townsfolk. About your father. It may be better to stay in the house.”
He held in a breath tightly. Would it not always be about his father now? And if it wasn’t about him, it would be about Edelgard. Another’s crimes. Another’s war. “I appreciate your concern, but this is my home. Was my home. And I wish to go for a walk.”
She looked as though she wanted to say more, but relented. Ferdinand sighed. “I truly mean it. Thank you. I understand the crimes my father is accused of, but I have nothing to fear here.”
Ferdinand smiled at her and she curtsied once more. He noticed that she seemed hesitant to leave, and that her gaze followed him as he fled down the hallway. Perhaps she had more to say, perhaps she wondered where he was going.
Where else could he go, but the one place he’d always felt was safe?
The stables had been emptied weeks ago, when Hubert had announced that the Empire—because it all belonged to Adrestia now—would no longer pay for the upkeep of any horse with the Aegir brand on it, forcing Ferdinand to frantically contact a seller he trusted to keep them all safe. Just because Hubert couldn’t send Ferdinand to the butcher, he’d attempted to it out on the horses, convincing Ferdinand that there was no spiteful low he wouldn’t sink to.
As soon as he stepped through the doors, the lack of snorts, nickering, or greeting faces reminded him that something terrible had happened there. The noise from outside stilled, and Ferdinand was left with only the sound of his boots on the smooth floor. He walked into the unlit building.
Ferdinand froze, fighting either a sob or a scream.
Everything was wrong.
His eyes wet, he found the cross ties that had been torn clean off the wall and replaced once when he was a child. He nostalgically opened the empty grain room, which he would often break into to get handfuls of oats for his favorites. He wasn’t supposed to feed them by hand, but he couldn’t help spoiling them, especially when they reached out from their stalls and batted at him with big noses and alert ears. The grooms never scolded him.
Ferdinand wiped away something from his cheeks.
Outside, he heard voices.
Turning his head upwards, his first thought was that it might be the staff. He didn’t know why they would be out on the lawn and walking towards the stables, but he heard disparate voices first, even as he couldn't pick out any particular words. Were the staff off for the day? If they’d made a habit of celebrating at the end of long days, Ferdinand couldn’t exactly blame them.
But he didn’t think so. There were too many voices, and they didn’t sound celebratory.
He wondered—perhaps if the Professor, or cautious Edelgard, or Hubert and his relentless paranoia had been there, they might have noticed something was wrong.
As it was, Ferdinand’s own instincts came too late.
The light at the entryway at the other end of the empty stables went from the bluish silver of overcast daylight to shadow as one body blocked the outside at a time, until a crush of people eclipsed it.
Heart in his throat, Ferdinand swiveled towards the other end, only to see it shrouded by a similar crowd. He was reminded simultaneously of the time the Professor had had them rout out bandits in a narrow rift and the time he’d gone fox hunting with his father. The Black Eagles had been split in two, and entered the rift from two different directions. Likewise, the hounds had cornered a fox in its den, blocking each end as they brayed. The fox escaped. The bandits did not.
Ferdinand searched desperately for another way, as if he did not know every timber and tack room, as if he might be able to open a stall before they were upon him and vault out one of the paddocks. But the people poured towards the middle in waves, their yelling and chatter deafeningly loud in the space between the stalls and the hayloft as one accusation bled into the other.
Instinctively, his hand reached for his sword, but he paused. These were still his people. Many of them knew him, had watched him grow up during the long months he’d spend away from Enbarr. Surely they could be reasoned with?
“Where is our money!” A man yelled.
Ferdinand backed away from him, into the arms of a woman carrying a rolling pin. “I don’t—”
“That doesn’t put food on my table!” She shoved him, and he stumbled, bouncing off into the chest of a third.
He started to say something like ‘please listen’, the start of some rousing speech that died in the din as someone grabbed him from behind by his elbows, forcing them up painfully enough that he cried out, which was cut short when a fist came out of the throng, hitting him hard in the stomach. He wheezed and doubled over, straining against the people holding his arms as two more swooped in to grab his legs. He gasped in the suddenly tight space, thrashing more as the pain subsided and dusty air squeezed back into his lungs.
They had him. They were taking him somewhere. He couldn’t allow that to happen. He began trashing, throwing all of his muscle and training into trying to get free, but it was too late. It had been too late the second his father’s title was stripped from him. More than that, it had been too late years ago, when his father first started dropping zeroes and placing them elsewhere. Still, a lucky kick brought his heel into contact with an anonymous shin and he nearly wrenched one of his arms free.
Pain blossomed in the back of his head as something struck him—pins and needles shot down his neck, disconnecting him, and he didn’t realize why he wasn’t fighting anymore, why his limbs went completely limp in the arms holding him, why his head lolled back as four more stepped in to carry him. His vision swam with pinpricks of light at the end, every shouted word bleeding together. Someone spat on him. Someone else grabbed at his hair.
And they were outside, on the Aegir lawn, bright light bursting through cloud cover as more people yelled. He didn’t understand what they were yelling, just felt the sun drilling into the back of his skull through his half-open eyes. As he lay limply on the lawn, encircled, someone began tying his arms behind him with a thick rope. A little convulsive struggle came back into him, and he tried to scramble to his feet.
“That’s for my son,” a woman snarled after her slap. “You don’t even deserve to die the way he did.”
He opened his mouth to speak, to ask, to say anything, until someone beside her moved forward. Ferdinand had a moment to brace as the man drew back his foot and delivered a wide, sporting kick to Ferdinand’s side.
Something cracked. Ferdinand didn’t know if he’d been crying before that, but tears poured down his cheeks now, mingling with the dirt from where his face pressed into the torn up lawn.
They hated him so much.
“Get it!” Someone else called out. “Bring it over here.”
Bring what…? Fear washed through him, colder and more frantic than anything ever felt in battle.
He was going to die. There on the lawn of his family home, killed by the people his father had betrayed before he ever set his sights on more ambitious crimes.
The crowd parted to reveal a heavy wooden bucket carried on a long plank, and the smell of a shipyard dizzied Ferdinand further. Two men brought brooms and brushes alongside it, and one grinned. He called out to the crowd. “Let’s make the Duke’s little cock look like one, too!”
There was a roar of laughter. Behind Ferdinand, a hand fisted into his hair to keep his head straight. “Careful. We could miss and burn your face.”
“Please don’t do this. I’ll do anything. I’ll make it right!” He managed, voice sounding high and small. “Please, please—!”
Ferdinand didn’t feel the heat right away, as the first slash of the brush left a streak of hot pine tar from his shoulder to his waist. Overhead, someone gutted a pillow, sending a blizzard of down feathers onto his ruined uniform.
The tar finally reached his skin. When he opened his mouth to scream, a cold metal bar stifled the sound.
With the resources of House Vestra solely in his control, Hubert finally had the liberty to indulge his pet projects—chiefly, his venom lab. Formerly relegated to a small collection in his quarters, it now inhabited an unassuming space tucked into the intestines of the Imperial Palace. Adjacent to the dungeons and remodeled from an old guard station, Hubert ordered it filled with metal racks and glass shelves. In under two weeks the lab was operational, and he had a steady supply of lethality for study and use. It oozed with an ambient, sweet heat and the whisper of scales sliding over substrate.
His first subject of the day was a juvenile Brigid mamba with sleek gray scales and a mouth as inky as his fingertips. It twisted an unhinged, angry jaw between his thumb and forefinger, writhing from the effort to wrench itself free and sink still-dripping teeth into the skin under Hubert’s gloved hand, or maybe even deliver a fatal dose of neurotoxin to the artery under his wrist.
The snake was young, but it had enough death in its glands to kill a marquis several times over. Hubert was possessed of nostalgic fondness for it.
He felt at home there. It was one of the few places he was never bothered, save for emergencies.
The panting agent in a smudged apron signaled just such an emergency. She stood at the end of the room, eyes fixed on the snake in his hands. He glanced down—her own hands were gray and shaking with the aftershocks of a magic overused for the first time.
Hubert released the mamba back into a glass shelf and quickly slid it closed.
“You're from Aegir, and you wouldn’t have warped here if it wasn’t urgent.” Not a question, though the name slipped from his mouth like a word he’d prefer not to say again. “Report. Quickly.”
“There’s no easy way to say this.”
“Then say it the hard way. What has he done now?” Only the low magical hum of the heating stones bolstered Hubert’s patience.
“There’s been a...revolt in Aegir territory.”
Hubert scowled. Finally. The little lord’s true colors shown. He’d pushed and he’d pushed, and as expected, Ferdinand had answered. All his talk of nobility and honor was worth little more than mutiny, just as Hubert had always known.
The disappointment that followed was unexpected but inconsequential.
“...Sir?”
“I knew it. A snivelling dolt to the end.” Hubert’s words ground out of him like gravel. To think Edelgard believed in Ferdinand, let herself have hope, coated a bitter taste on his tongue that Hubert would make sure Ferdinand paid for several times over. Perhaps Edelgard would let him go alone, give him a small force to crush the revolt and smother the miserable flame at its center. “Tell me what kind of meager force he’s gathered so I can start imagining my victory.”
It hardly mattered. The outcome was predetermined—which left the question of whether he would bring Ferdinand back to Enbarr or deal with him in the field. There’d be plenty of time to decide, based on Her Majesty’s orders and his own mood.
“No, I...that’s not it.” She blinked. “Around noon today, people started gathering outside the Aegir estate.” She paused, thinking through her next words. “There was a great deal of anger. Much of it...directed towards the young lord.”
A thin layer of ash settled over Hubert’s nerves. “What?”
He saw her words unfolding as she spoke, took them and wrapped them around his own knowledge of rage and mobs. In his mind, a wildfire burned out of control.
“Those of us stationed in the staff tried to warn him, or tried to stop the crowd. But we didn’t know where he went.” She inclined her head gravely. “They caught him in the stables.”
Hubert’s blood went cold, lancing through his heart and he swayed in place. Ferdinand. In the hands of a mob. After going to Aegir presumably to do the right thing, like a fool.
Of course the people hadn’t taken it well when they learned Ferdinand von Aegir would be returning. Of course Ferdinand had gone to the stables like some wretched child instead of staying in the relative safety of his ill-gotten home.
Hubert’s throat tightened and fluttered. A few things could happen when a lot of very angry people had someone they hated in-hand, unarmed, begging, and they all slid across Hubert’s mind one at a time. Most scenarios ended the same way, each one a lead weight for him to swallow.
What would he tell Edelgard? He wanted to spare her the seeping, suffocating details, if she allowed it, but there was nothing he could say to defend himself. ‘I didn’t know it wasn’t safe’ was meaningless in the light of ‘I hadn’t cared’.
“I couldn’t see but someone said they roughed him up. When they got him out to the lawn, someone had the idea to get some pitch from the shipyard and one of the pillows from inside—” the report dripped over Hubert like rain, more of the same soaking into his coat like the inevitability of a body growing cold and waxy.
“Skip to the end,” he snapped, shocked by the sound of his own voice, the little tremor of foundling anxiety. “Is the brat alive?”
She recoiled from the sharp crack of his voice and made a half-step back towards the door, where she clasped her hands together, and that sparked another surge of anger. He didn’t hire people to cower from him—
“I don’t… I mean, I didn’t—”
He pressed two fingers to his temple while his other hand planted itself on the forgotten journal on his desk. His gloves still smelled like acrid toxin and musk.
“I will repeat myself only once.” He was quieter, an entirely new and unidentified kind of venom eating away at the soft tissue of his throat. “Is he alive?”
“He was alive when I left.” She straightened her back as she found a rock to clasp to in the form of the most honest and reliable answer she could give. “Clive sent me away before I could see more. Said you needed to know.”
Hubert grimly nodded to her. “Good work. Give Ashlen your full written report and feel free to make use of the cot outside the codebreaking hub.” He gestured to her hands. “Sleep will help with the tremors.”
She saluted and slipped out the door as quickly as she’d arrived.
Hubert pressed his elbows on his desk, his back rounding as he took a seat in his chair. Somewhere behind him, the meaty body of a pearly-scaled lizard slipped off its humid hide and thumped harmlessly onto the paper floor of its enclosure.
Unbidden, Hubert remembered Ferdinand taking lunch with Edelgard in the Mess Hall. The two of them engaging in a hearty debate about the ethics of farmed fish. Sometimes they slept near each other on a tree after battle, bandages on their knees and elbows as they waited for Linhardt to make his rounds. Hubert wondered if Ferdinand had ever seen Edelgard smile at him, if he’d ever realized how much she’d hoped for more than petty competition between the two of them.
And Hubert had let him leave without even checking with his eyes or ears, without giving a cursory glance or consideration to whether one of Edelgard’s generals would be butchered not six hours after stepping off his carriage.
Losing an asset to treason was one thing; losing him to recklessness was unacceptable.
Damn. Damn wildfires and damn Ferdinand.
Hubert rose to his feet, gathered his dark coat, and warped away.
Hubert arrived in Aegir territory in the dead of night, his hands vibrating like a current of magic still ran through them. A few torches burned. The handful of people daring enough to check the shadows realized quickly that they were not supposed to see him there and averted their eyes. Nature had several ways of hinting to would-be attackers that an animal was dangerous, and Hubert’s well cultivated universal hostility usually did the trick. As such, he moved either unnoticed or unbothered, the same way travellers and predatory animals mostly just wanted to stay out of each other’s way.
“I received your message.” Hubert slid up beside Clive in the way two seasoned hunters might greet one another, by keeping their eyes firmly on the horizon and the haphazard patrols that were stationed across the manor.
“What did she tell you?”
“That they caught him in the stables, he was beaten and feathered, and she didn’t stay to watch the end,” Hubert answered. He shoved his hands into his pockets against a sudden chill before casually asking the question that could mean anything. “Where is he now?”
“We think he’s in one of the tack rooms.” Hubert followed Clive’s glance across the lawn, down the hill and a number of red gravel paths leading to the stables. “Alive, last we saw.”
Hubert’s heels settled a little more easily into the ground. He hoped his relief wasn’t apparent, since he had a reputation to maintain, still, it was a handful of lead pulled back out of his stomach on a long string. “They’re still holding him?”
“They talked about bringing him to the magistrate for some reason, but the crowd was losing steam.” Clive dug his boot into a still smoldering fragment of charcoal in the sandy dirt under his heel. “Most of them were expecting a grown man, not someone a little older than their own sons.”
“And you haven’t attempted to extract him?”
“I...wasn’t sure what your orders would be.” Clive worked through his words in the eternal manner of someone unsure if they were about to say something truly insulting. “The situation is delicate.”
Hubert didn’t press the lie hidden behind that sentence. Didn’t need to. He knew what Clive was saying; that they’d thought Hubert might want to take the opportunity to let the crowd do something he couldn’t.
He wasn’t angry. Surely he’d never had a kind word following any report on Ferdinand’s activities or the activities of his family. He’d rarely even identified Ferdinand by name, opting to use any number of slights and barbs instead—and still his people always seemed to know whose mail he wanted them to search, whom he wanted them to follow, where he thought the first dagger in Edelgard’s back would come from.
To the point where they saw a mob forming and thought Hubert von Vestra would want the cards to lay where they fell. It would nearly be a condemnation, if it wasn’t so thoughtful.
He hadn’t realized his disdain for Ferdinand was quite so famed, but felt a familiar pinprick of shame all the same.
“Ready a carriage at the second warp rendezvous outside of town. With blankets and vulneraries.” Hubert pulled his coat tighter around his chest. “I’ll get him myself.”
If Clive had a question, it never reached his lips. He merely offered a quick salute and a hushed “sir” before turning on his heels and disappearing through the servant’s entrance of the sacked manor.
From shadowed safety under a tree, Hubert warped up into the dark of the hayloft. The magic carried him in a whisper over the heads of three men playing cards by torchlight, holding the late watch but bored out of their skulls. Hubert aimed to relieve them of their charge. As he slunk away from the dim light outside, he vanished into the dark of the loft, his silenced boots carrying only the dullest vibration of his weight. Overhead he heard bats chitter. Rats scattered into the rotting hay near his heels.
Hubert closed his eyes, counted to ten, and summoned the dimmest light to carry in his palm as he moved into the guts of the empty building.
Over each stall rested an allotment of hay—now stale—and square holes not quite small enough for Hubert to attempt fitting through, short of an emergency. So he stalked forward slowly until he came to an ancient staircase with warped slats. At the bottom was a feeble door, unlocked, and Hubert slipped through.
The area around the stalls was similarly unguarded. Doors were closed, though someone had left a lantern burning in the hallway in front of a locked double-door, for if the would-be guards outside heard someone like Hubert prowling around and needed to rush in. All of the doors and shutters locked out the outside, and only that one dimming column of light burned against the dark.
Hubert stepped towards the doors, cupping his hands around the flimsy padlock and quietly driving a spike of magic through the workings. The sharp crack of metal made more sound than he would like, but a distant howl of laughter from one of the men outside told him it went as unnoticed as the vermin upstairs. Hubert laid the metal fragments beside the tack room, his ears still trained elsewhere.
The door creaked open under Hubert’s hand, casting light into the dark room.
Ferdinand lay with his body half-turned forward, his blanched face resting flat on the stone floor as bound hands poked out from under the red horse blanket someone had carelessly draped over him. What Hubert at first thought was a gag glinted at the raw corners of Ferdinand’s lips, and his stomach sank at how clever a stranger thought they were. It was a bit, with the leather of the bridle knotted so tightly and wildly behind Ferdinand’s skull that it may well have been a bow.
He hadn’t expected this.
“Ferdinand.” Hubert hissed out, holding the dim light in his hand higher.
There was no response. No closed eyes fluttering defiantly open. No angry struggling against his bonds. No fire. Nothing.
Hubert’s throat worked at a lump, and he took a step closer. “Ferdinand?”
Still nothing, and Hubert’s pulse thrashed as he cursed light too washed out to tell him if he’d been too late by five minutes or five hours. Hubert’s mind raced with all the ways Ferdinand could have been left to pale and shiver to death, forgotten in an unlit room after being paraded around Aegir on a cart like a war trophy.
“Ferdinand!” He said it as loudly as he dared. Again, Ferdinand didn’t stir. A sick feeling spread from Hubert’s chest to behind his eyes. He covered the next few steps quickly.
No. No. Not like this. He didn’t want to tell Edelgard—
Hubert dropped to his knees. He ripped off one glove and placed two fingers to Ferdinand’s exposed throat.
Ferdinand’s eyes shot open and he explosively thrashed away, bound legs flailing for any grip on the tiles and nearly thrusting him backwards into low shelving full of brushes. His eyes were wide, and he breathed heavily around the bit in his mouth.
Even that burst of movement seemed like too much, because after a few weak attempts for his boots to get further traction on the floor, he curled around himself, eyes squeezing shut as a low keening eeked out of his mouth along with spittle and diluted blood.
“By the Ten,” Hubert swore, smothering the flare of hot adrenaline searing across his chest. “Do you want to wake up the whole town?”
His surprise died in his throat at the way Ferdinand looked up at him, still wrapped protectively around his own stomach.
The fear in his eyes would have matched Bernadetta more, not lively Ferdinand.
Hubert held up his empty hand as a sign of goodwill.
“Peace, Ferdinand. I’ve come to get you.” He offered a weak smile, though he wondered how much Ferdinand could even see with the light in his eyes.
With the stillness of a wounded animal, Ferdinand let Hubert lay hands on him.
Cautiously, carefully, Hubert started by untying the bridle from around Ferdinand’s head. When he finally worked through the sloppy knot, he removed the bit from between sore lips. It was made from two twisted lengths of metal—a kind explicitly banned for the horses at the Imperial Palace. As he removed it, little bits of gory white molar came out into the grooves between the stone flooring. Ferdinand coughed, stretching his mouth. Next, Hubert hid a knife behind his leg and made quick work of the bindings on Ferdinand’s wrists and knees.
He reached for the edge of the blanket and pulled it back. As he did, Ferdinand buried his face back into the floor.
Hubert understood why.
Feathers were doused haphazardly over Ferdinand’s ruined school uniform, which he’d stubbornly been wearing as if they were the only clothes he still owned. Where it wasn’t doused in feathers or where most of them had fallen off, dried pitch caked on the fabric and left it stiff.
Hubert stayed frozen for a moment. Two distinct places—heavy brush marks from Ferdinand’s shoulder across to his stomach, and a matching spot on his back—seemed to have fastened the cloth to his skin by heat, to the point where Hubert dared not remove it. He didn’t have the skills to address such injuries in the field, nor the experience to calculate the ruin underneath.
“Can you walk?” The breathy surprise—the anger—settled into his voice. “I can warp us out of here, but if you can stand it will be easier.”
Ferdinand shook his head. When he spoke, it was directed more towards the floor than Hubert, and it came with a loud sniff. “It hurts.”
It sounded like something a child might say, and Hubert strangled his first response: life is pain. That was too cruel, felt too much like the tip of his tongue parroting his dead father. He knew Ferdinand could handle injuries as well as anyone. He’d brushed off arrows, lance wounds, and thunder the same as anyone else who attended the Officer’s Academy.
But a healer or a vulnerary always remained within arm’s reach. Ferdinand had never needed to sit in the dark with bone-deep pain before or let it seep into his body until it was the only thing he knew about being alive.
“I know,” Hubert said, reaching for a comforting aspect that did not come naturally to him. “I know it hurts.” A beat. “But those men outside won’t hesitate to finish the job if they catch me freeing you. Do you understand?”
“I heard them talking about throwing me in the bay.” Ferdinand’s lip quivered, and two more restrained sobs crawled out of his throat, trying so hard not to scream. “They were going to throw me in the bay.”
“Evidently not.” Hubert replaced his glove, even as his stomach twisted back into knots. Would his people have still stood by and watched if the crowd meant to follow through? It would have been on him if they had. “Something clearly stopped them.”
“They hate me.” Ferdinand’s shoulders shook as his trembling hands felt along his ribcage, he jolted violently as he pressed into one particular spot. He rocked again, shaking his head. Tears poured in ugly trails down his wet cheeks as he fixed on Hubert again. “You hate me.”
Something about the way Ferdinand said it cut like a knife in Hubert’s foot. Ultimately non-lethal, still somehow painful.
“I don’t have to hate a man to cut out his heart,” Hubert answered before trying to suppress the defensive cadence of his speech. “And I don’t have to like you to know this wasn’t right.”
“All you do is try to get rid of me.” Ferdinand choked, gasping in several wheezing breaths.
“Well, I’m here to bring you back.” He let that hover between them in the cold of the tack room. “Can you stand?”
Ferdinand took a couple deep breaths through his nose, some unfathomable calculation running across his red, puffy eyes. “I think so.”
When he made no effort to rise, Hubert grasped Ferdinand’s arm just above where the hempen rope had scored his wrists raw and slung it over his shoulder. Then and only then did Ferdinand seem to come to life a little, pushing up with his other arm until his hips, knees, boots were underneath him and he stood like a shaky fawn.
“Easy.” Hubert braced his other hand against Ferdinand’s waist, trying to keep his chest from moving too much as Ferdinand weakly clung to Hubert by the arm hooked over his shoulder. Ferdinand’s weak knees crumpled the second he was upright, catching Hubert unaware and nearly dragging both of them down to the floor. Ferdinand hissed, his face twisting in pain.
The drum of a wooden bar being lifted from a distant door echoed through Hubert’s ears. He redoubled his efforts until Ferdinand pressed into his chest, bloody hair brushing at the crook of Hubert’s throat. He wrapped his arms under Ferdinand’s, lashing them together around his shoulders.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway. Ferdinand trembled again. “Hubert—”
Hubert placed a hand over Ferdinand’s exposed ear, and reached separately for the well of magic on the other side of reality, the source he rationally knew was there. The magic recognized his hands even as it ate at them.
And just like that. A twirl of power, a twist in relative space as unsettling but harmless as a skipped heartbeat, and they were out of the stables, out on the dirt and under the moonlit trees. Ferdinand stumbled away from Hubert, awkwardly grasping for a branch as Hubert moved to support him. They didn’t have long now.
The carriage waited, lit by two lanterns, led by two chestnut horses, and manned by a nervous-looking driver.
Next to him, Ferdinand swayed in place, trying to find stable footing on the dark woods even as his knees buckled one at a time, leaving him falling away or leaning into Hubert as Hubert walked them to the gravel path. Ferdinand tripped on something, and Hubert’s hands tightened around him, earning another pained, whimpering noise.
Clive stood at the carriage door, his eyes casting into the darkness. “Green sleeves for the Morfis queens?”
“No, only beds of red.” Hubert maneuvered Ferdinand into the light. One of the horses in the team stomped a foot. The other snorted. At the sight of him, Clive’s frown deepened. Hubert didn’t know or care if it was in concern, though he suspected disapproval.
“The supplies you asked for are in the carriage.” He moved to open the door as Hubert shuffled Ferdinand closer. “Were you spotted?”
“No, but they were right behind me. It will be clear he’s missing about—” Hubert checked his charcoal-darkened pocket watch under the lantern “—now. I fear I’ve left you with more chaos than I expected.”
“We wouldn’t have it any other way.” Clive moved to place his hand at Ferdinand’s waist when Hubert awkwardly pulled him through a too-small opening.
Once inside, Hubert placed him on a cushioned seat, his head dropping dully to the carriage wall as Hubert shoved aside heated stones and removed two sets of warm blankets from the floor. Ferdinand’s lips started quaking as his skin prickled in response to the heat. He began to shudder, as if he hadn’t realized how cold he was until Hubert was wrapping his shoulders twice over.
Hubert pulled a stopper from a glass bottle with his teeth. “Here.”
When he pressed it to Ferdinand’s lips, he kept them stubbornly together, blearily opening his eyes to try and see what Hubert was holding.
“You need to drink this,” Hubert said. “It’s a vulnerary.”
Ferdinand sniffed. “How do I know there isn’t—”
He stopped short. Had he been about to say ‘laced with arsenic’?
Hubert grit his teeth and counted to five before he found his response. They didn’t have time for this. Later, he could consider how deeply he’d sown the seeds of distrust. “I didn’t liberate you just to poison you or lose you to infection. Edelgard would never forgive me.”
Reluctantly, Ferdinand opened his lips for the vulnerary. Hubert tilted the glass in, letting heavy, Faithful serum drain into a bloody mouth. He coughed, choking briefly, and Hubert eased the glass into his chilled fingers. “Can you drink the rest of this on your own?”
Ferdinand nodded wanly, letting his head fall back as he took another sip of dense magic.
Hubert grasped at the door of the carriage and addressed Clive. “Remain to observe the situation. Burn what you have to. Don’t take risks.”
“Sir,” Clive acknowledged, gesturing to the driver. “We’ll keep them off your trail.”
Hubert nodded, then tapped the side of the carriage twice with his palm before retreating back into the gloomy interior.
Vulneraries and similar potions had no narcotic effects—if they did, they would have been nearly useless in battle. However, the absence of pain was itself a hefty sleeping drought. Ferdinand stopped shuddering under the warmed blankets, his eyes going half-lidded as he tried to keep an eye on Hubert but lost the battle every time. They would inevitably close and then his head would inevitably tap the side of the carriage on a sharp turn or bump, startling him back to wakefulness only to have him loll sloppily back to sleep.
On the third time, Hubert changed seats. The vulnerary would take the danger from Ferdinand sleeping with the bloody mark on his head, but it would do no good to bring him back to Enbarr further exhausted after his ordeal. Rest would only be good for him on the long trip back.
Hubert snuck his hands behind Ferdinand’s back, over the blankets, and braced him carefully against a bony shoulder. The long hours that followed occupied both his mind and his hands. He waited for the first sign of shock, or that the unseen burns had begun to turn. When Ferdinand’s head drooped, Hubert held Ferdinand next to his own chest, his throat, relieved to find the skin under his bare palm warm, but not feverish.
In the wanderings of his mind, Hubert noticed his own chill abated, the spot underneath Ferdinand almost damp for as warm as it was. The loud youth—the rebellious imbecile—that had dogged his temper and occupied his attention almost seemed...harmless. Peaceful. Even over the clattering wheels Hubert felt a chest rising and falling, a flighty but steady heartbeat under an angry wrist. It became comforting, as afraid as he was that there was something he’d missed, that Ferdinand would still somehow slip away even on the road to safety. Which would leave Hubert admitting to Edelgard not just the violence but that he’d been holding Ferdinand when it happened. Both utterly preventable. Both occurring just under his nose.
This was his fault. It’s what they would all say, anyway; even Edelgard would have her suspicions. Were he an outsider, he’d have suspected himself. Nodded at the report and said “good work” as he drank his morning coffee. Even if Ferdinand didn’t suspect him, Hubert knew what he hadn’t done.
And so for all Hubert’s loathing, he found himself grateful for the warmth, waiting for that next breath, checking a pulse to make sure it wasn’t fluttering off into nothingness.
When the first healing dose wore off and every bump elicited another whimper, Hubert roused him as gently as he could.
“Ferdinand?” he queried, in echo of when he’d arrived in the stables. It felt like a lifetime ago, that moment he’d thought Ferdinand dead—
“Hm?” The lump stirred to life, and instantly doubled further into Hubert’s chest before realizing what he’d done. He quickly dragged himself closer to the outer window as the carriage hazarded another rough patch of road. “ ‘m sorry.”
“Don’t trouble yourself. It’s time for another potion.” Hubert again removed a stopper. “Can you take it yourself?”
Bruised fingers claimed the second vulnerary. He held it shakily up to his mouth, fighting the sway of the carriage. Still, he drank all of it, and again fell back into his seat.
“I feel...truly terrible,” Ferdinand said.
“Any worse?”
Ferdinand’s brows knitted angrily down, even through the haze of his vanishing pain. “Please stop, Hubert.”
“Stop what?” Hubert paused. Confused. He was doing what most would do, was he not?
“I am grateful you came for me but please stop pretending that you care.” There was a little crack in his voice, a little break to the end. “You do not have to.”
“You need not worry, von Aegir, about something as trivial as my concern.” He kept the bite out of his words, but only just. He had no one but himself to blame for this too. “I must return you to Enbarr in one piece. Ergo, I need you to tell me if this damn road jogged that noble rib somewhere fatal. Understand?” He took a steadying breath. “Now, how do you feel?”
“Terrible,” Ferdinand replied. “No worse.”
“See?” Hubert pulled a corner of cloth back around Ferdinand’s stomach. “That wasn’t so hard. We’ll get you back to the Imperial Palace. Get you to the infirmary—”
Ferdinand’s eyes shot open. “No.”
Taken aback, Hubert scarcely believed his ears. “I beg your pardon.”
Ferdinand shook his head. “No, if you take me there, Edelgard will know. Please, Hubert, you have to take me anywhere else.”
Hubert stared blankly, watching even this sudden, frantic desperation disappear behind Ferdinand’s watery eyes.
“Without proper healing, you may yet die,” Hubert intoned patiently. “I do not make a habit of investing so much effort in a corpse.”
“Please. There are other healers.” Ferdinand shook his head, the gesture too wide. “Please take me anywhere else.”
Hubert imagined what it would be like, even slipping into the infirmary under the sheen of the early morning would result in chattering and gossip. Not all of the physicians, nurses, or healers paid to cut the downy cloth from his skin would talk, but a few would, and the people they talked to would talk to more, and so on until the whole palace knew, complete with a catalogue of injuries and pitiable whisperings of ‘poor thing, did you hear?’.
For all their differences, Hubert would have hated that as well. “I will see what I can do.”
The ride back to Enbarr would last until the early morning. The carriage rocked in time to the sound of fast hooves, and at regular intervals Hubert got out to assess, to follow up on the promise that they hadn’t been followed even after they were out of Aegir proper. Hubert would have preferred not to stop at all, but an animal couldn’t be pushed past reason the way his own body could. He hadn’t rested, and finally the familiar strain of his long-distance warps began humming in his bones, as surely as the coachman regularly needed to change out the team at inconspicuous waystations.
During one break, he checked Ferdinand, who had lapsed back into either sleep or unconsciousness against his shoulder. He backtracked their trail on the next and obscured their tracks at a crossroads. On the last, after they were safely within Hresvelg, he had a smoke. A nasty habit, Edelgard assured him, but he assumed neither the driver, the horses, nor Ferdinand would betray him to Her Majesty.
By the time Hubert threatened a doorman and maneuvered Ferdinand into the lobby of a modern apartment building, he realized there was no way he’d be able to get him up three flights of stairs. He cursed and reached for the very last of what his frail hands could take for the day, warping them to the third floor and hoping he remembered the number correctly through the tingling in his fingers and the dull headache roaring to life behind his eyes.
The next few minutes felt like they lasted forever. Ferdinand still leaned on him, though the alternating hazes of pain and eased pain had faded into an empty awareness. He seemed awake but vacuous, and the most Hubert had been able to get out of him was a promise to hold the blankets over his shoulders.
Hubert propped Ferdinand up against a wall and started firmly knocking on the door.
A robed Dorothea opened it, her face running the gauntlet from sleepy, unadulterated rage to alert concern, and back to irritation. Hubert wondered how badly his appearance betrayed the night he’d had. “Hubie? What are you doing here?” Then. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
Hubert looked past her into the apartment. “Where’s Manuela?”
“She’s in her room.” Dorothea crossed her arms. “But I’m just staying here. Isn’t it your job to keep tabs on everybody?”
“Is she sober?”
“I...think so?”
“Get her. Now.”
The evaporation of Dorothea’s patience was nearly instantaneous. “All right you bossy, shady birdwatcher. You have to tell me—”
Hubert collected Ferdinand from the wall, though hesitated to push into the apartment. As soon as Ferdinand fell into Hubert’s side, Dorothea’s eyes widened, her mouth hanging open gently as she processed what she saw. She dimly stepped aside, allowing Hubert through.
He stumbled past the entryway, the small open kitchen and dining table, until he found the couch and deposited Ferdinand on it. Distantly, he heard the door click shut behind him as Dorothea lit a lantern. She looked at Ferdinand as she swept off towards the bedrooms.
Manuela came out of her room in a wash of green silk—a sleeping gown and loose, elegant robe clinging off her.
“Out of the way, Vestra.” She knelt in front of Ferdinand, who blinked briefly back to awareness at her touch. She ran her hands over his head, the faintest glow of faith at her fingertips as she assessed him. They settled at his jaw and cheeks, cupping them as his amber eyes glazed over again. If she smelled the pine that Hubert had become inoculated to, she quickly found the source by lifting, and then closing the blanket.
“Oh, kid,” she said with profound disappointment in the world, and more to the air than Ferdinand. The atmosphere was just as ready to answer. Her hand remained at his cheek for a moment longer. “You’ll be okay.”
She turned to Dorothea. “Dorothea. Put some water on for a warm bath—not too hot.”
Dorothea blew off to the tiled bathroom at the furthest end of the apartment, disappearing behind a door.
Hubert shifted on his feet. “Is...there anything you require of me?”
“No,” Manuela answered curtly before reconsidering, as if Hubert had the disposition to be hurt by bluntness. She gestured to the back of the apartment. “There’s a settee in my room, if you want to grab some beauty sleep.”
“That’s not necessary.” Hubert crossed his arms.
“You look like you had a longer night than I did. I’ve got this.” Manuela began prying the blankets from Ferdinand’s white-knuckled grip. “Besides, after you’ve slept I need you to tell me what the hell happened.”
“P-Professor Manuela?” Ferdinand’s voice crawled out of him. As if on the wings of some unhelpful, ingrained etiquette, he tried to rise from the couch. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”
“Shh.” She ran a hand over his forehead to guide him back down. “You’re safe now, kiddo. You don’t need to do anything but trust me. Capiche?”
He nodded, tears filling his eyes again.
At that, Dorothea floated back into the room, her attention on Ferdinand as she nervously knitted her hands together, hovering, unsure of what to do.
Hubert shuffled past her. As he did, one graceful hand reached out to grab his arm. The prickling sensation radiating up his hand turned into a starburst of needles. He shot Dorothea a look he hoped was utterly withering.
Dorothea matched his scathing and doubled it. “What did you do?”
“Me?!” Hubert felt his last nerve give way. He reclaimed his arm. “I saved his life.”
“From what? Why did his life need saving, Hubert?”
“I’m sure you can piece it together.” Hubert had withheld every sneer for nearly eight hours. He was ready to unleash a few of them. “I thought you of all people would understand.”
“I wouldn’t try turning my concern into some kind of gotcha moment if I were you.” Her eyes brightened. “Ferdinand said he was going back to Aegir. Seems like maybe someone should have known if the people there wouldn’t be happy to see him. Someone like Edie’s spymaster?”
“Spare me your accusations. I am the Minister of Imperial Affairs, and if mistakes were made, I am aware of them.” He leaned away. “Please step aside.”
He didn’t wait for her to respond and, instead, stepped around her.
Hubert’s stumble to the settee was a blur. His body thrumming with the tension that came with long nights, of simultaneously needing sleep and yet feeling like he could get by with never sleeping again. When he ripped off his coat and laid down, his body rejected the soft cushions before sinking like stone into the upholstery a moment later. His height provided some awkwardness, and one foot draped off to the floor as he propped the other up on the armrest. He was vaguely aware that his neck would hurt when he woke up, but he forced his eyes closed.
He heard Ferdinand cry out several times before finally falling asleep.
Hubert smelled coffee.
Not many things could make his mouth water. When he’d been young, avoiding food poisoning was part of his education, and every meal was a test for the days when he would scrape a serving of honeyed Hevring hen off of Edelgard’s plate and need to decide if it was safe or not. Sweets disguised too much. Game was too rich and musty. He had access to the most delicately crafted dishes the kitchen provided and he preferred sealed rations, salted or pickled.
But he allowed himself some small joy in coffee. It wasn’t an unkind thing to wake up to.
The apartment seemed quiet too. There was some whispering outside. The sound of water at a roiling boil. No more crying.
As expected, his position had become even more awkward while sleeping, and his bones popped in the cool, quiet dark.
Manuela’s room was, as a note, about what he would have expected. There were a handful of bottles strewn about at various levels of fullness. A few treatises on Faith remained relegated to a small bookshelf under a vanity, which was itself scattered with paints and products that Hubert couldn’t name.
He hauled himself onto aching legs and made his way out to the apartment proper.
Manuela and Dorothea seemed as tired as he felt, and had at some point changed into day clothes. They huddled together over conductive stones as Dorothea stirred them to life with fire magic. He couldn’t hear what they said, but Dorothea saw him first, then Manuela, and they quieted.
“Well,” Manuela started as she billowed past Dorothea. “I see one of our patients is up. I’m going to go check on the other one.”
Hubert caught her attention as she passed. “How is he?”
“They—whoever they were—did a number on him, but he’ll live. He’s tough.” Manuela crossed her arms. “You and I still have to have a big conversation.”
“I would have it no other way.” Hubert inclined his head and offered a tight smile that implied he would have it any other way. But Manuela wouldn’t talk. Wouldn’t spread either his shame or Ferdinand’s far and wide.
Dorothea smiled at him as she forced the plunger on the press. “Hubie. Thought you might want some coffee.”
He made a noise that likely barely passed for an affirmation as he reached for a mug from behind a glass-lidded cabinet. “I was ungracious this morning. I should thank you.”
Dorothea shook her head. “Don’t thank me. Thank Manuela. She’s the healer. And she’s the one letting me stay with her while Edie figures out who we’re going to go kill next.”
That earned a dark smirk from Hubert. His next words were not sentiments that came naturally to him. “Well, in any event...thank you for letting us in.”
“Did that hurt to say?” Dorothea poured two mugs worth of coffee and reached for the sugar. “Also, Ferdie said you were up with him all night.”
“Ah. Is my public execution on hold, then?”
“I’ve decided to grant you a temporary stay.” She frowned. “But if I find out—“
“If there was intent of mine behind what happened, you will need to get in line behind Her Majesty.” He took a sip of his coffee without sugar. Despite himself, he closed his eyes. Smiled. Bitter. Wakeful. Nothing in the world existed like it, particularly after a long night away from the palace. From the warmth of the mug to the warmth of the drink, it seeped into his body’s coldest, sorest spots. “What else did he tell you?”
“Not much,” Dorothea said. “Say, Hubie, Manuela says it would be good for Ferdie to try and keep some food down, but our supplies are a little light. Petra and Bernadetta are coming by later with groceries.”
“If Bernadetta has left her room, it must be serious.” Hubert snorted lightly. “I’m sure...he will appreciate that.”
“You’re welcome to stay, if you want.” Dorothea spoke tentatively, making an offer that she knew may not be returned or even welcome. Hubert was used to that.
“That is considerate of you.” Hubert took another sip of coffee. “However, I must decline. Her Majesty needs to know as soon as possible.”
Dorothea’s face flickered, though he suspected not in disappointment. “Right, I suppose she would.”
Hubert blinked. He sensed some misplaced hesitation behind her words, but wouldn’t even begin to chance a guess at why.
They drank in silence for some time. Hubert with his black coffee. Dorothea with hers heavily sugared and mixed with cream. By the end of it, Hubert less resembled a corpse, somewhat, and Manuela emerged from the bath at the far end of the apartment. A morning of hard work and healing had removed the lazy grace he associated with her. “Hey, he’s asking after you. Are you still here?”
The mug in Hubert’s hand stopped halfway to his mouth. “He’s asking after me?”
“He wants to talk to you.” Manuela practically spelled out each word. “I can tell him you’re in the wind if you want.”
Hubert had imagined he’d be the last person Ferdinand would want to see for some time. He was in for a return to form, most likely, with the enhancement of Ferdinand now having something to rub his nose in as well for every time Hubert mentioned the traitor duke. “As you can see, I am here.”
“Good,” Manuela said. “I’d hate to disappoint him.” Her eyes narrowed. “But first, you are going to tell me everything that happened.”
“It’s rather sensitive information. I’m sure you can—”
Manuela crossed her arms. “I want to hear it from you.”
“I promise you will be well compensated for the expense and any damage done.” Hubert placed his mug down by the stovetop.
Manuela sighed. “That is absolutely, one-hundred percent not the—”
From the back of the apartment, a raw-sounding voice cried out. “Manuela?”
Hubert and Manuela both turned in Ferdinand’s direction.
He looked at her. “Would it not be better for me to rip off this particular bandage?”
A long moment passed where Hubert could have sworn she intended to lobotomize either herself or him with one of her long, lacquered nails.
“Five minutes,” she snapped. “Then you tell me.” She scowled. “And I know there’s bad blood between the two of you, but try to show a little restraint. He’s been through it.”
Without giving that the dignity of a response, Hubert made a strategic exit from the kitchenette, aiming for the back of the apartment.
The bath was tiled in blue, with modern copper pipes snaking around the walls and a shining mirror over a stylish bronzed sink.
Ferdinand sat in a chair in the middle of the room, with his ruined clothes nowhere to be seen, and his hair still damp from where either Manuela or Dorothea had helped him wash the blood out. He twitched nervously, his back to the door, exposing the long square sheet of a bandage over his right shoulder. Splotches of pink skin radiated out from around the edges.
Hubert crept through the door, waiting for Ferdinand to hear him or see him in the reflection of the mirror, but his head remained pressed into his palm.
“Manuela, is Hubert still here?”
“He is,” Hubert said, folding his hands behind him.
“Hubert.” Ferdinand, surprised, reached for the towel at the base of his chair and wrapped it around his shoulders. Hubert didn’t see what the point was—he’d seen much worse the previous night, but let the vanity go unanswered.
“I’ve been told you were asking for me.” Hubert kept his voice as neutral as possible, sure that any misstep would result in an argument that he didn’t want.
“I, um, yes, I was.” Ferdinand turned in the chair, amber eyes looking a good deal brighter and more familiar. “I wanted to thank you.”
“It is not necessary.” Hubert imagined a man thanking a clumsy surgeon.
Ferdinand let out a huff of air. “I knew you would say that, of course.”
“Of course.” A nervousness began humming through Hubert. He would rather the other shoe drop already. “I assure you—”
“Please do not tell Edelgard.” When Ferdinand finally made his request, he made it so quickly the words blurred together, and Hubert was stunned into silence.
Hubert opened his mouth to reply, to argue, but he hadn’t expected that response, and clicked his jaw shut.
Ferdinand continued. “I know I have only myself to blame. I know I should have had a battalion with me. I should not have left the house.” He swallowed, his eyes firmly planted on the floor, away from Hubert. “I know I am a shameful, stupid child unfit to be her general. I know. I know. I know.” He sucked in a breath. “But please...I do not want her to know.”
The tirade washed through the small room, with every ‘I know’ Ferdinand bent more tightly over himself, pulling the towel closer to his knees. And yet, it was free from every expected accusation—Ferdinand had no anger for Hubert, Edelgard, or the people of Aegir.
He had plenty for himself.
“I assure you,” Hubert began, “that if you were as unfit to be her general as you claim, she would already be aware.” His shoulders drooped as he continued talking, as if he were preparing for a cane on his knuckles and disbelieving the words about to drain from his treacherous lips. “Although you have many faults and I do not hesitate to make you aware of them, what happened in Aegir was...not your doing. The security of Her Majesty and her allies falls to me. If there is shame in this for anyone it rests on my shoulders. I was not aware of the situation, and I promise that is a mistake that will not be repeated.”
Ferdinand went dead silent. Hubert waited.
“I never thought I would live to hear the day that you admitted an error.” He gave a little pained laugh. He redoubled. “Then...all the more reason not to tell Edelgard that I was hurt.”
“Why is this so important to you?” Hubert tried and failed to keep the exasperation out of his voice. “Her Majesty—”
“—will pity me,” Ferdinand finished. “Or she will worry. Neither is what I want. I am sure you can understand that.”
Hubert...could.
“I must tell Her Majesty about the unrest in Aegir. Clearly the people there have needs that are not being met, and we must respond.” As Hubert spoke, Ferdinand’s face went downcast. “However, there’s no need to go into detail on your experience or your injuries. There was a risk and I extracted you. We can leave it at that.”
Ferdinand’s eyes glittered. “I...thank you.”
Unsure of what else he could say and stunned by the direction of the conversation, Hubert shifted.
“I think Manuela—”
Hubert didn’t stay to hear the rest. His warp spell carried him out onto the sidewalk before Ferdinand finished speaking.
When Hubert found Edelgard, she had a troubled frown and sat perched on the throne that had—until recently—been her father’s. He’d sent one of his people to brief her, of course, so there was no surprise at his arrival or his grim visage.
Hubert described the situation in clear, concise details, to the best of his recollection and understanding based on the reports from his agents.
“I see,” Edelgard said after a long moment, brow knitted in deep thought. They’d discussed this as a possibility—Fodlan had always had a lit fuse crawling slowly towards it, but the pressure valve of war and her purge was meant to release some tension. If Edelgard could direct fury towards the Church of Seiros and the decomposing nobility, then that was two enemies down. The idea that things were so reactive, that they were spiraling so rapidly, didn’t sit well with Hubert, and he knew Edelgard would find sleepless nights over it. “We have food en route to the outlying territories?”
Hubert nodded.
“I want it in Aegir five days ago.” She spoke into her fist where it was curled against her chin.
“With all due respect, Your Majesty,” Hubert offered tentatively, “is it wise to show favoritism?”
“I don’t want the people there realizing we scooped Ferdinand right out from under their noses.” She let out a breath. “Full stomachs will help tide them over until Duke Aegir answers for his crimes.”
That last bit at least was music to both their ears. He bent slightly at the waist. “It will be done.”
“Hubert.” When he looked up, Edelgard’s eyes bored sweetly into him, studying, concerned. She no longer had the visage of an emperor, but a worried friend who often sent those from her inner circle into danger. “How is Ferdinand?”
“A little shaken, but we removed him from the situation in time.” Hubert had no hesitation. He’d been thinking about what he could say that wasn’t a lie but wasn’t the whole truth either. He shifted on his heels. “Lady—Your Majesty. I have a confession.”
At that, Edelgard’s face ran the fractional gambit from concern to surprise. “What would that be, Hubert?”
He swallowed. A light layer of sweat collected under his gloves and collar; if he had any honor, he’d tell her how close they came to absolute tragedy. “I have made no secret of my feelings about keeping Ferdinand at your side.”
Edelgard pressed a hand into her temple. “If after this you really mean to tell me—”
“Please, allow me to finish.” He made a half-step towards the throne. “I believe I have been...ungracious in my assessment of him. He should still be watched. Carefully. But as far as I can tell, his commitment is genuine.”
She regarded him with wide eyes and the mildest shake of her head, as if she hadn’t heard him correctly. “A ringing endorsement by your standards. What brought this on?”
“We simply had time to talk after the long trip back,” Hubert replied, his mind going unbidden to the bandages on Ferdinand's chest and shoulder, the irritated skin splotching out from under pale wrappings.
Edelgard snorted, the smallest smile on her lips. “If that’s all it took, I should have locked the two of you in a room together a year ago. You almost sound like you don’t want him gone now.”
Hubert forced himself to return the expression. “His competence in a real conflict will still need to be tested, of course. However, after witnessing him in Aegir, I agree that he has virtues we’ve yet to see in full.”
“Hm.” She tapped the arm of her throne in thought. “Don’t worry. I won’t make you say it again.”
Hubert deflated, feeling a chill at his throat. “I must go. If the rations are to make it as soon as possible, there’s work to be done.”
When she dismissed him, Hubert did not run from her sight, did not spit out the bile in his gut. He’d kept things from her before, of course. Things below her notice, sins he would gladly take onto himself so she wouldn’t lose sleep over them. It seemed wrong to hide such a devastating error from her. Perhaps that was his punishment. At least he was guaranteed that Ferdinand wouldn’t be bringing it up at every opportunity.
Somehow, that was no true balm. It would need to wait.
He had work to do.