Chapter Text
Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise Ysayle when she learns that the somewhat ill-fitting clothes that have been laid out for her to wear on her travels are purchases from the Jewelled Crozier, out of the Warrior of Light’s own pocket. The cloak she’d worn to Anyx Trine, which had been a few ilms too long and necessitated a hemp belt around the waist, belongs to Ser Aymeric’s matron, Isabeau, who assured her it was no trouble at all for her to lend such a lovely thing and insisted it was better that she wore it than for it to spend the rest of eternity hung up in a dusty wardrobe.
Her own clothes, which had followed her to Azys Lla, have been destroyed. Certainly she’s got spares in safe houses and shelters out in Coerthas and Dravania, but the mere idea of venturing out to find them…
“Oh, don’t you worry about that,” Tataru tells her, hopping off a crate, “I didn’t learn how to weave and sew just to do nothing with those skills! And you’ll be my first Elezen model—er, first adult Elezen model. I had to size Alphinaud’s new coat down from the first mock-up I’d made for him, heavens.”
“I can imagine,” Ysayle says, amused, as Tataru flits about her with a tape measure. “We Elezen don’t bodily mature until about our twentieth year. I myself did not reach my current height until a year ago.”
“Only a year ago?”
“I am but twenty-four summers old, Miss Taru.”
Tataru makes an offended noise. “Don’t you Miss Taru me, I’m younger than you! And you certainly don’t have the countenance of someone who’s only four years out of their formative years. Why, you haven’t a speck of acne.”
This time Ysayle does laugh. “I assure you, my skin is nowhere near being in good condition.”
“You’re doing much better than Popoko at fourteen, I’ll tell you that much!”
That’s right—Tataru and Popoko have known each other for a long, long time, haven’t they? As if hearing her thoughts, Tataru continues: “I’ll have you know that Popoko and I have known each other since we were in swaddling cloths! The lot of you don’t know the slightest thing about Popoko once you peel the Warrior of Light armor off her!”
Ysayle raises an eyebrow at her. “Oh, you know what I mean!” Tataru cries, flailing about. “You’ve seen her outside of her official capacities, haven’t you? You know she’s a very different person when she’s off the battlefield.”
“Yes,” Ysayle says, “and no. In many ways, she’s still the same.”
Tataru dimples, mollified. “Aye, that she is.”
She gestures for Ysayle to raise an arm out, and she obliges, allowing her personal seamstress for the day to measure. “You know, Popoko was the one who taught me to sew,” Tataru says, extracting a piece of charcoal from behind her ear to notch the paper tape. “You’d never believe it now unless you saw her sewing, but she’s a better sewist than I am.” She laughs, holding the tape out to examine it. “That is, she’s got the tiniest felling stitches I’ve ever seen, and her backstitch is so tiny and neat, but gods forbid she even attempt to sew a shirt.”
“Surely it’s not that difficult, is it?”
“It could be just rectangles and squares, and she’d get tripped up and turn it into breeches anyway. Popoko’s just… not wired that way, if you will.” Tataru pats the crate, and Ysayle takes it as a signal to sit down so she can measure her shoulders and arms. “Her family were quilters. They had a shop on the old Sapphire Avenue Exchange. I learned to sew from her and her grandmother when I was six—she would have been seven, I think. She had this little plush toy that she’d made by hand, and she’d showed me when she was done, and I was so excited and wanted to make one myself.”
She fumbles with something in her pockets, and produces it over Ysayle’s shoulder. Ysayle takes it from her: a handkerchief, embroidered with tiny red and pink flowers tangled together on a vine. Two girls, together from early childhood. “She made me this as a going-away gift when Minfilia hired me,” Tataru recalls. “It was the last time I saw her in six years.”
The age-old chill of fear sinks through Ysayle’s bones. “The Calamity?”
“Well, yes. But Minfilia and I had just started our move to Vesper Bay at the time. Archon Louisoix gave us… a not-unsubstantial amount of money to do it, and we had to say our goodbyes. Not for long though,” she adds, almost as an afterthought, “we came back after the Calamity, to help with the first-aid crews and meet up with the Circle of Knowing.”
Her hands go still while brushing Ysayle’s hair away from her back. “Her house had been flattened by falling debris. I thought—I’d thought she was dead.”
Ah. So the grief yet lingers, whether she likes it or not. By her own admission, Popoko has only been with the Scions for seven, eight months? “She had three siblings,” Tataru continues, voice hushed as if it will keep the choked notes out. “Her brother was two years younger than me, and her sisters were two years younger than him. I used to babysit them for coin when my father’s business went under.”
Popoko does not talk about her siblings. Popoko will not talk about her siblings, when Alphinaud brings up anecdotes of his sister and Y’shtola cracks jokes about hers. Even Master Thancred, whose story has been related to Ysayle in hushed whispers from everyone else, has a sister he is looking for. Popoko, much like Ysayle herself, is an orphan to circumstance—to the Calamity. The family she has found in its wake does not negate the pain that remains.
And, it seems, Tataru’s pain as well.
Ysayle turns, and folds the handkerchief back into her shaking hands. “You have been a good friend to her,” she says, unsure of how much more she can say without breaking a boundary. “You are a good friend to all of us, Tataru.”
“Thank you, Ysayle.” Tataru’s smile, although watery, does not waver. “I’m only trying to pay it forward.” She discreetly blinks the tears from her eyes. “Now, I’m done taking your measurements, so shall we talk styles?”
“Let’s,” Ysayle says amicably. She doesn’t want to linger on tragedies longer than she has to.
(Her own decisions become harder by the day to justify, after all.)
“Thank you for lending me this, Isabeau,” Ysayle says, “and I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you with it.”
Tataru had been far too humble about her own capabilities. Though she said she’d have to start with mockups with the outfit she and Ysayle had designed together, she’d tailored down Ysayle’s current clothes to fit, and dyed them a sensible woad blue to weather the worst of the road. Within hours she’d produced a new cloak made of some dense wool, felted to a silvery shine on the outside and yet fleecy and soft on the inside. The collar is done up in yak fur, and hides a sleek hood that covers her ears well. No doubt Tataru was incredibly thorough with her drafting, though Ysayle imagines Lalafellin ears are just as difficult to fend for as Elezen ones.
So of course having her own new cloak means she ought to return Isabeau’s cloak, which, although aged, is no less beautiful. It’s made of the same material as her own cloak, dyed a beautiful deep wine colour, and instead of buckling to the side with ornate hook-and-eye closures like Ysayle’s own, there’s a line of pliable leather ties at centre front, and a placket inside to keep the wind out.
She doesn’t know whether to fold it or to hang it up, so she just lays it as flat as possible as she offers it back to Isabeau. The elderly matron almost looks surprised. “I thought you’d keep it for a while longer, milady,” she says, folding Ysayle’s hands around the fabric.
“I couldn’t possibly,” Ysayle protests, but Isabeau’s hands are insistent. “And please, I’m no lady. Not anymore.”
“Miss Dangoulain, then.” Fine. She’ll take that. They refer to all of their visitors by last name, after all, with the exception of Alphinaud whose youth grants him an additional modicum of familiarity. “Consider it a gift, then, from me to you. A second cloak, should you want some variety in your wardrobe.” She smiles, and for a moment Ysayle is painfully, painfully reminded of her own grandmother, whose memory remains intertwined with the last remnants of Coerthan spring. “Trust me, the style will never go out of fashion.”
“I—I’m honoured,” Ysayle says, “I really am. It’s just—”
It catches in her throat. What she had wanted to say was I’ve rarely had more than one outfit to wear regularly and this feels like it belongs to a world I do not belong to. What she had wanted to impart was despite everything you’ve done to make me feel like I belong, and all the kindness, I still feel like you’re wasting it on someone who was supposed to die.
Isabeau must catch this look on her face, because her grip on Ysayle’s hands loosens, just a little. “Oh, now we’ll both crease it,” she fusses. “Let me hang that up for you, and while I do, would you join me for a cup of tea?”
Humbled, Ysayle obliges. Isabeau hums a tune she vaguely recognizes as a Halonic hymn as she hangs up the cloak and disappears into the kitchen. She returns with two steaming cups of tea—no milk, no sugar, just simple leaf in water. They are old mugs, chipped across the rim and carefully sanded down to avoid ripping someone’s lip or tongue.
“The late Lady Apolline de Borel brought Ulysse and I into her service after her first husband passed,” Isabeau says. “To my understanding, he was nearly thirty years her senior. His inheritance went entirely to his children from his first marriage, most of whom were either about her age or even older. Her eldest stepson had no great love for her, and she returned to House Lavaud with nearly nothing to her name.
“That was about when I married Ulysse.” The small smile on her face is a moment of private fondness, an intimacy that need not be spoken. “The first few years were not easy. We lost our first child in the womb, and the second but lived a few days before the cold took her too. How could we not follow her Ladyship, who wanted but a family of her own?
“Eventually, she was allowed to leave her mourning and re-enter high society. She was, after all, a widow at thirty-five summers. There, she met Lord Hadrivien, who was her equal in all things: age, education, family standing. They were all but made for each other.”
(Ysayle does not note that many spouses of knights are widowed well before thirty-five.)
Isabeau sighs, and takes a sip of her tea. Unlike Ysayle, whose lips are perpetually chapped in winter winds, Isabeau’s skin is glowing, lined with wrinkles and other landmarks of a life well-lived. “They both wanted a child. It was not to be. For many a night I wept with Lady Apolline. I had well felt her pain before, both physical and emotional.”
“I’m sorry,” Ysayle says. It is the first thing she has dared to say in a long while. She reaches over to Isabeau, and the older woman accepts it with a light squeeze.
“It is alright, dear. The pain has passed us by. I can look it in the eye now.” Isabeau’s gaze falls on the portrait of Lord and Lady Borel hanging over the mantle. “Lady Apolline was devastated, but it was a difficult time in Ishgard, and a difficult time for her.”
Then she drinks the rest of her tea like a shot, and says, “this was when Lord Aymeric was delivered to us.”
Ysayle has yet to actually meet her benefactor. Despite the fact that she has been sheltered in his house for weeks now, hiding from the rest of Ishgard, Ser Aymeric de Borel himself has yet to make an appearance. She wonders if the man will be released long enough from his duty for her to do so. “So the rumours that the Archbishop was his father…”
“The truth.” Isabeau’s laugh is cold and bitter like a tea that has oversteeped its welcome. “Though I would argue that Lady Apolline and Lord Hadrivien were more his parents than that man could ever be. Miss Dangoulain, I have never lost faith in Halone, but when that babe came to Borel Manor in a basket, I lost all the faith I would ever have in Her practitioners.”
Saints alive. “They abandoned him on your doorstep?”
“They may as well have.” Isabeau looks stricken. “Forgive me for being so outspoken, but when Miss Poko returned to inform us that the Archbishop was dead… Well, it felt like he got what was coming for him.” She shakes her head. “Oh, but where am I going with this? The Archbishop is dead, and his Heavens’ Ward are no more.”
She takes Ysayle’s hands. “If you have the chance to,” she says, “ask him about the rest. His childhood, his parents.” She falters. “His relationship with Ser Estinien. I take it from Miss Poko you and he were not… close.”
Not close. In a purely social sense, yes. They suffered each other. And yet they had been together, hadn’t they? Had they not taken their anger out on each other all across Dravania, and through the Churning Mists as well? They had lain next to each other in some dark corner of Moghome, and despite the sweat on their skin and the travel-weary ache of their bones Ysayle had looked over to Estinien, nearly asleep, and she had suddenly wanted to put two fingers to his pulse, if only to see if his heart beat the same as hers.
“It is… a long story,” she finally says. I don’t know if I even have all the parts.
Isabeau squeezes her hands. “You needn’t tell me. But talk to Lord Aymeric about him, someday. I think the man you knew and the man he knew ought to be consolidated into one.” She exhales. “The grief will come, inevitably. But with time it will be easier to face.”
There’s a knock at the wall. “Surprise,” Tataru says, poking her head into the parlour. “I’ve been informed that I ought to take a break from my drafting. Might I join you?”
“You are always free to do so,” Isabeau says, immediately rising. “Let me fetch you a cup, and some scones for all of us.”
Another thing on her to-do list, then. It stretches longer and longer: ask Ser Aymeric about Estinien, find a way to compensate Tataru for her brilliant needlework, broker a lasting peace between Hraesvelgr’s brood and the peoples of Ishgard and its surroundings. Here is one task she can complete now: scooting over on the couch to make room for Tataru to sit next to her.
One task at a time, then. It makes the fact that she’s survived all the more thrilling. It makes the peace they strive for even more important.