Chapter Text
Like water off a wyvern’s back—that was what people said about trying to get a rise out of Kamyar el-Samandi.
By the time he was thirteen, hardly anyone remembered him as the crybaby prince who’d clung to his father’s knees. Those few who did remember—those few-dozen other slightly-less-royal princes who vied for the throne—did so wistfully. When Kamyar had been a child, all another prince had to do was mutter half-breed or chickenblood in his earshot, and the little brat would shout and swear and swing his fists—which offered perfect pretext to swing back, harder and faster, and send him crying back to his father’s side.
But as Kamyar grew tall and strong, he began to feign deafness; when he could not feign deafness, he would walk away—and days later, the provocateur would wind up half-delirious, vomiting, and curled up in some healer’s den.
“Sorcery?” Kamyar said, when someone accused him, once, laughing. “Wouldn’t be fair for me to be an ace archer and a sorcerer, now, would it?”
(Nowadays only drunken fools at festivals bothered with the slurs.)
So what, some of the savvier princes thought, so you can’t insult Kamyar to his face anymore. There are other ways to discredit an heir.
But the only thing sharper than Kamyar’s arrows were his eyes, which missed nothing, and his mind, which kept a keen accounting of all he saw, as though writ in the Book of Names. One prince swore that all he’d done was think ill of Kamyar, and the next week a horrible scandal of his was dragged to light, from a box of letters no one should’ve known about, dropped in a place where they should not have been.
More impressive, perhaps, was the assassination attempt that Kamyar foiled all on his own, with an ingenious little trap, which ended with his own arrow striking the final blow from a quarter-mile away.
“If you knew of this,” one of the palace-guards sputtered afterwards, while the rest of his patrol hauled the body away, “why didn’t you tell us?”
Kamyar shrugged. “Didn’t seem worth bothering you guys.”
There were no further attempts after that. At least, none that Kamyar let get that far.
Then, and only then, did King Zamyan begin to bring his son close, after years of tactful neglect. Soon Kamyar became his shade at council-meetings, his hunting-companion, his second in all things, and woe to any who doubted him.
But Queen Elena, whose mind was sharper than even Kamyar’s arrows, remained distant as the moon. One cool evening, in one of her cryptic moods, she came to her son and warned: “Kamyar, someday there will be something you can’t forsee, and something you can’t avoid by scheming.”
Kamyar had said something—improper. He couldn’t remember it now; he only remembered what he’d felt: a white-hot fury, like he hadn’t felt since he’d first heard the word half-breed. Somehow, still, it wasn’t enough, never never enough—
They parted in fury. They made up later, in the sideways fashion that parents and children often do. No wrongs were admitted, no words exchanged. Elena came to Kamyar one night and braided his hair like she had when he was little, and Kamyar asked about the garden the queen had been tending, and over two cups of tea they chatted about anything, everything except that something you can’t forsee, that something you can’t avoid.
Yet perhaps it was fortuitous that Kamyar received that warning from the queen a mere week before word of a dead uncle reached him, a uncle he hadn’t even known he had. A desperate entreaty came right after, begging for help, and thus Kamyar came to take a Fódlan name, and packed his things, and went to claim his birthright across the mountains as Claude von Riegan.
And once he crossed the mountains, he found himself drawn to Hilda—easily, naturally, like drops of water pooling together.
It was so nice, it was so easy, that Claude didn’t realize it was happening, until it had already happened. They were friends, then companions, then so steadfastly similar and like-minded that he could no more think of himself apart from Hilda than a drop of water could think of itself apart from the river into which it fell.
Maybe it had started at the academy, when they were still just kids, and didn’t know it. They were kids, and when Claude wasn’t rooting around in the archives (“I swear, Claude, you’re going to turn into a dust bunny if you keep this up”), the two of them were lying around in the quad, skipping class, engineering little pranks to pull on Lorenz or Ignatz (because, they both agreed, they were by far the easiest Deer to mess with).
Or maybe it had started during that first Battle of Garreg Mach, when he saw a strength in Hilda like a switch had flipped. Seeing the trail of broken bodies behind her as she marched relentless down the battlefield gave Claude a shudder and a thrill. “What was that all about?” he asked later, and she rolled her eyes and said “God, Claude,” as if he’d been gauche enough to ask her age.
But it had probably started around the time he started sneaking into Hilda’s room at night.
It was after the war had broken out in earnest, when all the Deer had scattered back to their territories—Hilda to Goneril, Lorenz to Gloucester, Claude to Riegan, and so on. And it had started as a joke, sort of. Claude played it like a joke, clambering up the side of Castle Goneril’s northmost tower one night in his sticky-soled shoes, with a single red rose held firmly in his teeth. When he knocked on the highest window, and a bewildered nightgowned Hilda opened it to let him in, he bowed with a flourish and quoted some cheesy old love poem.
“You’re ridiculous,” Hilda said, laughing, taking the proferred rose. She set it on her bedside table and looked him over: hair bedraggled. “So why are you here?”
“Only to see thy lady’s shining face,” he purred—and when Hilda looked unconvinced, he added quickly, “and also I might need a place to stay, if you don’t mind, Alliance Leader business, and maybe don’t tell everyone I was here?”
“That sounds more like it,” she said. “Dare I ask—” and then she paused, shaking her head. “No, the less you tell me, the better. There’s a couch in the boudoir, you can sleep there, and I’ll tell the servants to mind their own business.”
“I’ll be gone before morning, promise,” Claude said, with his biggest smile.
“You owe me, Mr. Leader Man.”
And not much happened that night, or the next time, even. But Hilda couldn’t ignore, and even Claude couldn’t hide, how dull his eyes looked as of late, how heavily he walked, and his first silvery-gray hair poking out from the rest. So one night, when they were both sitting on the edge of her bed and drinking tea, at goddess-only-knew what hour, Hilda ventured at last: “You look tired.”
Which wasn’t a question, but Claude heard the question anyway, and deflected: “Oh, you know, it’s just been busy ever since my grandpa passed. I never would’ve complained about homework at the academy, if I’d known how much more paperwork I’d be dealing with when I got out, there’s all these petitions and ledgers and—”
“Claude.”
He paused, and eyed Hilda carefully—how much to say? was worth saying? did he want her to know? and surprised himself with his answer: “The Alliance should’ve collapsed ten times over, by now. Half those times, I was able to head it off, but the other half? I got lucky. And I’m not really one to leave things to luck, so.”
Hilda nodded, like that had been the answer she was expecting.
“How is it here?” Claude asked, setting his tea down, leaning closer to Hilda. “How is it really?”
Hilda gave him the same look he’d given her, a moment ago, deciding how much to say. “You know what happens, when a few noble ladies get picked off in some assassinations, because their lords are all squabbling with each other?” She stared at Claude, and he could only shrug. “Well, if you’ve got a certain overbearing brother, he loses it, and says you’re absolutely not to leave Goneril under any circumstances, and triples the guard, and spends his days fortifying every wall and gate in the whole territory, just in case Gloucester banners flash in the distance.” She sighed. “And I get it, it’s probably the right thing to do, but it’s just so boring. Wish something interesting would happen out here, you know?”
And as she said that last bit, she slid a hand up Claude’s leg, paused at his hip, raised her eyebrows ever so slightly, and oh. That would be interesting, wouldn’t it? And why not?
So maybe it started with that, thinking with the wrong head and all that, and it was a fun night, tremendously so—but Claude suspected it really started the morning after.
Hilda seemed determined to stay in bed as long as possible—while Claude stepped out of bed just seconds after his eyes opened, Hilda threw a pillow over her head to block out the sun. Claude slunk off to Hilda’s boudoir, dressed himself, threw water on his face, combed and rebraided his hair—Hilda at last turned over and tossed the pillow aside, grumbling something about the sunlight. While Claude was at last pulling on his boots, and Hilda was idly picking at one of her fingernails, she called across the room: “When you’re meeting with Myrne Ordelia, you really ought to offer her some crescent-moon tea, if you can. It’s her favorite.”
“Sorry, meeting with who now?”
“Don’t play dumb, Claude,” Hilda said, not bothering to look up from her fingernails. “You keep dropping in on days the winds between Ordelia and Goneril are fair. And Ordelia is clearly the swing vote in the roundtable meetings lately, so you need them to back you. But Riegan can’t be showing undue favoritism right now, because then House Edmund will double down and press for funds your house doesn’t have, so you keep passing through here all sneaky-like, so if anyone starts to suspect anything they’ll suspect something else. And you’re smart enough to figure that, even though she’s pretty stuffy, what Myrne wants, she gets, so you’re going straight to her with, like, bribes and flattery and secret promises or whatever.”
Claude had stopped lacing his boot, staring at Hilda. No use denying it, he supposed: “You’ve found me out. So who told you?”
“No one.” When Claude kept staring, she looked up from her fingernails at last: “No one, seriously. Claude, it’s so boring here that I even follow politics now. It’s horrible.”
Maybe it was horrible, but she was smiling, too, and seeing her coy little smile, Claude felt the overwhelming urge to kiss her.
He didn’t, of course, at least not right then; he had to be at Ordelia by noon. But thereafter, he found himself drawn to Goneril even on days when the wind wasn’t fair, drawn to the faint nightflower scent of her room, drawn to a mind as sharp and canny as his own.
And being with Hilda was so nice, it was so easy, that Claude let so many things slide, like water off a wyvern’s back.
Like when one of the servants came to attend them, early one morning. Claude and Hilda were only barely awake, still tangled in a mess of sheets and pillows and covers. Hilda threw pillow over her head, in a vain effort to block out the sun. Claude rubbed his eyes and sat up to see—Cyril.
No, not Cyril. But someone who looked so much like him. Like Cyril, except younger, and with dark circles under his eyes. He worked quietly and quickly, dusting and polishing every surface in the room down to a sheen, lifting up every little knick-knack and bit of pottery on Hilda’s desk.
“Hey there,” Claude called.
The boy startled and dropped the bowl he’d been holding. It shattered into two dozen fat clay pieces.
“Sorry. My bad. Didn’t mean to scare you.” Claude hefted himself out of bed—and the boy flinched, staring wide at Claude.
Weird. Claude knelt down and began to pick up the pieces, but that really set the boy off. Suddenly he scrambled to collect the pieces, shouting, ”No, I do, I do!”
“I can help,” Claude protested, but the boy snatched the pieces he’d been holding straight out of his hand.
“Oh, Claude, let him do it,” Hilda called, sitting up and blinking away the sun. “He’s better at it than you’ll be.”
So Claude watched, as the kid picked up every last piece, and swept the floor, and wiped down all the windows. He watched how the kid’s ribs poked out a bit, visible even under his clothes, when he stood up straight, and he watched the little limp he had on his left foot. He watched as he set out some tea, and scampered out the door at last.
Claude must’ve been staring at that door for a while, because Hilda finally asked: “What?”
Claude shook himself. “Nothing, just—that kid looked a lot like Cyril, don’t you think?”
“Did he? I can’t really tell them apart.”
Wow. Claude sucked in a quick breath, then looked sideways at Hilda—she was in the middle of brushing her hair; she hadn’t noticed.
“He looked a little rough, didn’t he?” Claude tried. “Do you think he’s alright?”
“I mean, he’s an Almyran. That’s kind of their thing.”
Claude watched Hilda sideways, in silence, for a few moments more, while she dabbed some powder on her face. And then he smiled, and crossed the room to ruffle her hair (“gosh, Claude, I just brushed that, jeez”), and picked up one of the teacups on her desk, because he was no stranger to letting words roll off of him. Like water off a wyvern’s back.
When Claude finally returned to visit his home in Almyra, the first thing his mother said was: “You shouldn’t have come.”
“It’s been six years,” Claude said, bewildered. He had understood why she wanted him to keep a low profile while he was at the monastery, and why it would be dangerous for him to jaunt back home during the war, but surely six years and a shattered empire was distance enough between them?
Queen Elena shook her head: no. If Claude was a wyvern, deft and imperturbable, his mother was more like a lioness, coiled and tense and always, always watching.
“A disappeared prince ought stay disappeared,” she told him. “Lest a cousin notice that the prince seems to be lurking in some shadow, where he ought to be squashed out. Lest another prince trace you back to Leicester and send more assassins after you there. Lest you invite undue Almyran interest in Fódlan, lest someone learn that Claude von Riegan is really Kamyar—”
“Mom, mom, I get it, okay? Look, I got all the way to your drawing room without any of your guards noticing, didn’t I?”
Elena frowned. That much was true.
Claude smiled. “I’ll be just as quiet on the way out, promise.”
Elena’s shoulders relaxed, just a little, but her gaze was still sharp. “Kamyar, what are you doing here?”
“Visiting. It’s not a crime to say hi to my own mom, is it?”
Elena rolled her eyes. “Kamyar, what are you really doing here?”
Claude laughed. “Well, you can probably guess a little of it, right? Even Miss Ignorant As Possible can’t have missed the news of what’s been happening in Fódlan.”
Elena regarded Claude coolly. The less she heard of her homeland, the better, in her view—but she gave a stiff nod for Claude to continue.
“There’s a new church that’s ruling the continent. An old professor of mine’s at the head of it, actually, sort of a wild story there, actually—” Claude read his mom’s annoyed glance and hurried on “—right, and also, there’s a man in Leicester who’ll do well handling southeastern affairs. I’ve got some things to tie up, for sure, and some people I owe favors to, but after that? Fódlan won’t need me much longer.” Claude smiled his real smile: “I can come home.”
He had expected his mom to look a little excited. She had voiced the most vehement objections to his leaving in the first place; surely she wanted him back? But instead her eyes narrowed into slits: “And what else?”
He gave a helpless you got me shrug: “I have a friend I’d like to bring along for a visit.”
“A friend?”
“Yeah. A lady from Goneril, actually. We fought together during the war.”
Elena sucked in a breath at the word Goneril. “Claude, If this is yet another gambit to get some Fódlan general to make friends with Nader, and borrow our army yet again—”
“No, no, not like that—we’re at peace now, remember? It’s a friend. She’d like to meet you. That’s all.”
Elena looked even more discomfited than before. “A friend?” she pressed, and Claude heard the question in her voice, and gods, seriously—
“Just a friend,” Claude repeated.
Elena hmphed. Then she reached and snapped a bangle off her wrist, thrusting it into Claude’s hand: “Here. Don’t bring her unless she’s wearing this.”
“Mom, she’s just curious, seriously, it’s not like that—”
“Isn’t it?” Elena asked, in a voice that brooked no argument, and closed Claude’s hand around the bangle. “Tread carefully, Kamyar.”