Chapter Text
It came down to this: no matter what Claude read, what research he stole, or who he asked, every answer he got about his Crest led to more questions. Usually the answers were "Because the Goddess wills it" or "Look, kid, I have no idea, go do your homework or something." They'd come from the progenitor god, and that was that. Book open and shut.
It couldn't be that simple. People here in Fódlan were so weird about them, there had to be more to it. Even Hanneman seemed more interested in getting his hands on samples than in the question of what a Crest was--and Claude donated a lot of blood to the cause--and Linhardt von Hevring was glad to talk about Crests, but he also had more questions than means at his disposal to investigate them.
The Crest of Riegan just kept Claude's energy up in the middle of a fight, so far as he could tell. His mother had it too, apparently, and she wasn't very illuminating about it in her infrequent letters.
No one in Almyra cares, so I didn't see any need to tell you, she wrote. Say hello to Failnaught for me. And then she'd gone on for the next two pages about renovations to the royal smithy and millet and flax yields in the northeast.
The longer he spent here, in the Church of Seiros's sweaty armpit, the weirder things got. Hero's Relics alone were a huge gap in the story, and yet, no one questioned them. Grandfather wouldn't let him anywhere near Failnaught until he was legitimated, so that avenue of investigation was out.
There was Thunderbrand, but Catherine didn't really talk to the Golden Deer. There was the Sword of the Creator; he had classes with Professor Byleth, but she was the Black Eagles' teacher, and he couldn't very well walk up to her and ask, Hey, Professor, can I see your enormous holy sword thought lost for a thousand years and ask a bunch of questions about it?
One free day, Claude tried anyway. Professor Byleth looked up from her contemplation of the fishpond, gave him two slow blinks, and shrugged.
"It's a sword," she said. "It does one thing."
"What about the lack of a Crest stone?" he asked.
She shrugged again, then squinted at her line in the water, and Claude took the hint.
So that had been less than helpful. If he wasn't going to get any concrete answers, he could at least watch his classmates.
Sometimes, Marianne landed a big cracking hit on someone in lance practice and fell into a three-day fit of despair about it, which suggested that she did have a Crest, she was just hiding it. Hilda lifted and swung battleaxes that her small frame shouldn't have been able to handle, and she went toe-to-toe with Dimitri without a problem in general weapons practice when she didn't weasel her way out of being paired up with him.
And Lysithea was just too powerful. The Crest of Charon was something, if it made her magic that strong.
He tried his best to get himself sent on with the Black Eagles' trip to Gautier territory, to--hopefully--see the Lance of Ruin and the Sword of the Creator in action at the same time, but Professor Manuela wouldn't spare him. Professor Byleth ignored him, and Edelgard, whom he didn't talk much to in the first place, refused to intercede on his behalf.
"If you're going to be a house leader, be your house's leader," she said coolly, when he found her in the Black Eagles' classroom working into the evening. "The Golden Deer could certainly learn from my class's example in discipline. Perhaps you could join us for a mock battle; I'm certainly not bringing you along on an important mission when your own class needs so much guidance."
"Ouch, Princess," he said. "I'll take my leave, then."
"Please do."
But that was just what the Her Imperial Highness was like with him and Dimitri. She was determined not to get close to either of them, and no amount of polite overtures on Dimitri's part or jokes on Claude's could crack through that shell. Dimitri was too earnest for her, Claude was too slippery. There was no winning. He'd charm her yet; he had seven more months. He had a few questions about the Crest of Seiros, after all.
So he spent that week in the Empire, piling sandbags in preparation for the Airmid's yearly flood and chasing bandits off from the village they were working in. It was boring, but it gave him time to wonder about the Lance of Ruin and prod his classmates for information.
Lorenz was glad to talk about House Gloucester's relic, the great Thrysus, whose wielder had turned back an entire Imperial army at the Great Bridge of Myrddin in the time of Emperor Bernhard, whenever that was. Hilda threw in a little bit about Freikugel, but mostly she said it was "creepy" and "not even Holst uses it, it's a lot to handle." None of what they said was conclusive or militarily useful--if he wanted to become king, a great first step would be to mount a successful attack on the Alliance--but it was interesting, and it made the hours pass.
-
It was easy to get Linhardt talking about Crests, but you couldn't control what came out of his mouth when you got him going. Claude had come to ask questions about the Black Beast at Conand Tower, and the connection between demonic beasts and Crest stones. The conversation had drifted toward Thunderbrand in action (good), then veered suddenly toward the material on Crests in the library (bad). He'd managed to get Linhardt back to Thunderbrand when Linhardt started yawning.
That was the death knell of the talk. Claude waited for Linhardt to slump over his books and papers, tested one of Linhardt's hands to make sure he was actually asleep, and eased Linhardt's stack of notebooks toward his side of the table.
The best part of hanging out with Linhardt in the library was that it granted Claude a kind of invisibility: because the library staff had given up trying to keep Linhardt from taking his naps at the tables, they all just pretended he wasn't there. This let Claude go about his business in relative peace, without his choices in reading material being remarked upon.
The notebooks' contents mostly retreaded what he'd already gleaned on his own and from reading through Hanneman's papers. There were brief notes on everyone, observations on their abilities, a whole page dedicated to Marianne's mystery Crest, and a very good sketch of what was definitely Dimitri's torso,. Claude also spent a lot of time looking when Dimitri had his shirt off, and didn't blame Linhardt one bit.
And, folded in half, there was one page dedicated to Lysithea.
Minor Charon: rain. Second Crest ??????? obviously Major.
Nobody had two Crests. Claude had heard this over and over: Crests were a rare blessing from the Goddess's hand on her chosen, yeah, yeah, if they showed up in three consecutive generations it was a miracle.
This was just a little scribble in on one single page, but it might explain a lot about why Lysithea was just so good, and so defensive, too. Maybe Hanneman suspected it too, but he was too wise to put it to paper.
Claude decided to do what he always did, which was just ask.
Every time Lysithea saw him in the library, she looked annoyed, never mind that he spent as much time here as she did. The Riegan manor's library had only contained ledgers, histories of the Alliance, and three well-thumbed novels about horses with his mother's name on the inside cover. Here, he had a chance to read books from all over Fódlan, even if you had to be fast before Seteth found the good stuff. Tomas the Librarian somehow managed to get all kinds of things on the shelf for curious students to read, despite the weekly rampage.
"Linhardt's onto you," he said, kicking his feet up on the table across from her. She was almost hidden behind a pile of books, and was copying two marked up drafts of an essay for Professor Manuela. She didn't look like she'd been sleeping much, and if she was still here after dinner, Claude was coming back with another installment of the story of the ghost in Garreg Mach's library.
"This isn't a stable, Claude," Lysithea said. "As for Linhardt, I have no idea what you could mean."
"Nah, I suppose you wouldn't pick up on that kind of thing. Princesses--noble heroes--like you are too honest to notice when someone around them is being sketchy."
"You are only two years older than me!" Lysithea said. "We've been over this. Don't treat me like a child."
Claude a little bad about prodding her, but not bad enough to stop. "Is it two? Or is it three? I can't keep track. Please, Lysithea, help me with my math. Or maybe I'll just go have our pal Linhardt do it instead?"
Lysithea raised both hands in a gesture of peace. "We're not talking about this here," she said.
When they were in a more private place, after a little more questioning, he got her to admit that yes, she had a second Crest. A little more questioning, and the whole awful story came spilling out her: the strange, pale-faced administrators, the rituals, the changes to her body, her Major Crest of Gloucester. She did have two Crests. Her hair had been black. She wasn't going to live very long.
"And if you tell anyone, I'll turn you into pastry flour," Lysithea said. "There! Are you happy?"
Claude had so many more questions, but Lysithea had looked so miserable when she'd told him--all the children in her House eaten up to make her, just because those people had the power--and now her shoulders were hunched, and she wasn't meeting his eyes. He knew a thing or two about being a scared, powerless kid, but if he tried to drop that into the conversation, he had the feeling she wouldn't take it well.
"Come on, no need for threats," Claude replied. "I'm just glad you trusted me enough to tell me."
"Don't go treating me like I'm made of glass just because you know." She brushed her white hair over her shoulders and seemed to settle back into herself.
"I wouldn't dream of it. Besides, who could upstage Hilda as the delicate flower of the Golden Deer?"
Lysithea snorted. "Just forget all about it."
Nah, Claude would just mention to Lorenz that Lysithea was looking a little frail, but that Claude's simple, simple mind couldn't imagine could possibly be done about it. Lorenz would trip all over himself to drown her in restorative teas and bury her in cakes for the good of the Alliance. That part was easy.
The hard part was deciding what to do with this information. Okay, so Lysithea was impossible and should not have existed at all. People without Crests turned into horrible monsters when they tried to use Hero's Relics.
Someone else at Garreg Mach had pure white hair like Lysithea's: somebody he'd never had a full conversation with that wasn't about their respective classes' performance in the last mock battle or how he was needed to make sure the Golden Deer showed up on time for their chores. Somebody who could be found every night in the Black Eagles' classroom, and who hated being disturbed, which was all the more reason to go bother her.
-
The moon was high, the green outside the classrooms was deserted, and, most importantly, Hubert wasn't lurking. A perfect night for an ambush. If Claude was wrong, he was wrong; the worst thing that could happen was that he looked a little stupid. If he was right, then there were two people at Garreg Mach who shouldn't have existed, and that opened up whole new avenues for investigation. After all, what did it mean for some hypothetical war at some point in the future if there were lots of these two-crested people around in Fódlan, actually? He owed it to himself to do the work and find out.
"So, Princess," Claude said, bowing before Edelgard, who sat at the end of the long bench like it was a throne. "What's it like having two Crests?"
Edelgard looked up at him, her lavender eyes clear and unblinking. Her hands were covered in inkspots, and she moved to cover her papers before he could read them. They were letters, not class notes. Maybe there was a suitor back in Enbarr she wrote to, who knew.
"What an interesting question, Claude," she said. "Tell me, what is it like to be an Almyran prince at Garreg Mach?"
All right, he hadn't been expecting that, but there was nothing to do but roll with the blow. "Wow, that was quick," he replied. "It only took someone five months to figure it out."
"I had you investigated, of course." Edelgard's back was very straight as Claude sat down next to her on the bench. "I'd assumed you were just a Riegan by-blow with a lucky Crest, but the truth is much more interesting. Why hide it? Petra doesn't."
"I don't know if you'd noticed, but Almyra and the Alliance aren't too friendly," he said. "Being from Almyra doesn't help my case if I want to become Duke Riegan." A year of losing his accent and Judith's constant lessons on who was who in Alliance politics had only just barely helped his case. He'd gotten word just days ago that the Five Great Lords had voted to legitimize him, which was only kind of a relief. "Anyway, seeing as I'm being so open and honest with you, you may as well tell me about your Crests."
"I can't see that you've told me anything that I didn't already know."
"So you do have two Crests, is what I'm getting here."
"I never said I did."
"You didn't not say it."
Edelgard sighed in disgust. "Please leave, Claude," she said. "I have quite a lot of work to do, and I'm sure you do, too. You'll never move into the advanced axe class if you keep slacking."
Okay, that was a cheap, cheap shot. Raphael, who'd never picked up a weapon before Garreg Mach, had gotten to advanced axe training before Claude.
"See, you know how I know?" Claude said. "I had a little chat with Lysithea. Makes me wonder what kind of people could do that to the Imperial Princess, too. Who knows what kind of digging a lazy guy like me might start doing he was motivated enough?"
Edelgard's face was already pale, and it went paler. Bull's-eye. "Lysithea... please take good care of her, Claude."
She'd clammed up, though. Her gaze was distant. Fortunately, he had a contingency plan for this. The lighting was right, he'd mussed up his hair, and he'd left the jacket off for just such a situation. He knew how his arms looked when he flexed.
"At least tell me what your Crests are," Claude said, and he sat himself down on the bench next to her. He put his elbow down on the table, right next to her inkwell, and Edelgard's eyes dipped downward. "Look, Your Highness, I won't tell anyone. Your secret's safe with me. But you already knew mine, so why don't we get to know each other better, house leader to house leader?"
To his surprise, Edelgard's ears turned a deep pink. "Flirting with me will get you nowhere. Get out," she snapped.
"I try to flirt with you once a week, believe me, I know it doesn't work," he said. It was working now. "I'm going, I'm going, see you tomorrow."
-
After that night, Edelgard floated above and past Claude's further attempts at conversation. Like magic, and probably using actual magic, Hubert was always at hand with some very important Black Eagles business Edelgard had to attend to at that very second whenever Claude was around. Dorothea flirted with Claude more than usual, too, until Claude neutralized that threat by introducing her to Hilda.
If Edelgard wasn't going to talk to him, Claude would just make himself unavoidable.
In exchange for covering for her with Seteth on a very hungover morning, Professor Manuela signed off on his moving up to advanced axe practice. Manuela had sighed cryptically about young love and gone back to catching up on grading their papers. With a boxful of Derdriu shortbread, he got Professor Jeritza to agree to pair him with Edelgard.
He shouldn't have bothered with the bribe, because Jeritza very obviously did not care who was fighting whom. But he had warned Claude: "If you fight Edelgard, her axe will taste your blood," he'd said. "This failure will be... instructive."
-
As it turned out, advanced axe practice was first thing in the morning, and it was where Edelgard got out all of her frustrations. When she saw Claude, she looked for all the world as though a monastery cat had vomited directly into her mouth.
Claude lost every bout. The failure was not instructive.
"Claude, come on," Hilda said, after the first day, dragging him to Marianne to get his bruises healed before anyone could see them. Marianne wasn't answering her door, and the two of them looked like idiots. "If this is a some kind of scheme, it's stupid and you should give it up."
"I'm fine," Claude said, "really. I know what I'm doing."
"She's usually not that hard on people, not even me." Hilda banged on Marianne's door again. "Raphael isn't as good as everyone else, and she's super nice to him, actually. Ugh, I bet Marianne's hiding in the stables again. What'd you do to make Edelgard mad?"
"What do I ever do to make anyone mad? Hilda, Hilda, everybody loves me."
Hilda gave him a very piercing look. For about half a second, he wanted to tell her absolutely everything, and then he got over it. He trusted her, but not that much; someone who effortlessly coordinated a battalion of people to do her chores for her while still protesting her uselessness was formidable. Also, Claude didn't want to get too cozy with the heir presumptive to the Goneril family. He might go back to Almyra after all. He didn't want to face Hilda down as a friend.
Still, Hilda didn't get weird about the mystery Riegan thing. That was nice. He could count on her to fill him in on any cultural details Judith hadn't gotten to, like who Kyphon was and why he should care about the latest novel about him and King Loog.
Edelgard had bruised Claude's ribs that day. She did worse the next day.
Claude wasn't bad with an axe. Over the next two weeks, he should have been able to score at least one win over Edelgard, but he didn't even get close. Edelgard wasn't perfect. Professor Jeritza chided her, in his slow, dispassionate way, both for rushing through fights and not thinking through her approach and her technique, and for toying too much with Claude before she finished him off.
"I tire of this. Give me a challenge or go back to the intermediate class," Edelgard spat, the morning of the second week.
The bout had lasted seconds. Claude's axe had gone flying in the first strike, the second had stunned him, and the third saw him on his back on the stone ground with the handle of her axe pressed into his throat.
She had a devouring flame in her eyes. Her weight holding him down was negligible, but there was something off about her, something genuinely predatory. Twin Crests, he thought, freezing and laying very still beneath her. She'd drawn on both of them for that speed and precision. If he could control his own like that... he had a long way to go.
Next time he wanted to get under Edelgard's skin and crack that royal facade, he'd pick something a little less painful. She'd probably broken his hand, but, hey, at least Marianne was getting a lot of practice in.
No one was paying attention to them. Petra and Hilda were going at it in earnest on the other end of the training ground, which was much more interesting to the rest of the class than round fifty of Edelgard pulverizing Claude.
"You want to kill me right now, don't you," Claude said. That'd be nothing new.
"Stop digging, Khalid," she said, pressing in a little harder. "Please, let it go."
No one but Nader had called him that in more than a year. He'd have time to feel emotion about that when he wasn't being choked out in public. Right now, he was just glad he didn't have a boner.
"Look," he said. He lifted his neck just enough to put his hands behind his head, to really settle in and relax, and Edelgard's beautiful face twisted in irritation. "If you're going to do it, do it. But before you murder me in front of all our classmates, tell me why I can't win a fight against you."
One of Edelgard's eyebrows rose. Her face composed itself before his very eyes, and she took her axe from his throat. Claude massaged the skin there. Across the yard, Raphael cheered Hilda on.
"You're not awful. Against anyone else, you might have a chance. But when you use the axe, it's obvious that you're thinking of it as a sword fight." She sat down next to him. Her profile in the early morning light, her little upturned nose, the way she brushed a stray silver hair impatiently behind her ear--"You need to stop. The axe isn't a pleasant weapon, Claude. It isn't a fight of attrition. If I haven't incapacitated my opponent in the first three strikes, the fight is lost already. I'm not trying to duel you, I am trying to break you."
From anybody else, that little speech would have been melodramatic. From Edelgard, it was still melodramatic, but she spoke with complete conviction, as though she was on stage addressing an imaginary audience. Well, that was royalty for you. Claude stood and offered her his hand, and she stared at it, uncomprehending, before she allowed him to help her up.
He didn't let go. Neither did she. The beige training uniforms did no one's body any favors, but he was aware of how thin they made Edelgard look, and just how many times she could have broken him in the past two weeks. He'd been playing with fire, and the fire had taken pity on him.
"Hilda is winning," Edelgard said, breaking the contact. She racked her training axe, and his, too, and began her cooldown stretches. "Get ready to congratulate her, or she'll be insufferable tomorrow morning."
"Got it," Claude said, and they joined the crowd just in time to see Hilda deliver a clean underhanded blow that sent Petra sprawling into the dirt.
"An acceptable performance," Professor Jeritza said, once the cheering from the Golden Deer in the class died down. "I will see you both for a more detailed assessment after practice."
"Ugh, can we make it quick? I'm so sweaty," Hilda said, pulling her shirt away from her torso and looking pitiful.
"That," Professor Jeritza said, "is not my problem."
-
So, of course, no one could have foreseen that the sinister masked professor with no interest in talking to anyone but weapons and murder was secretly the Death Knight, agent of the nefarious forces had decided to work against the Church this year. Flayn got kidnapped, Professor Manuela got stabbed. Of course there was a secret passageway under all their noses, and of course Professor Byleth and the Black Eagles got the glory of finding this out and riding in for the rescue.
Professor Manuela was fine, at least. Claude paused in the doorway to the infirmary. A healer dressed in the robes of a Knight of Seiros nodded her permission for him to come in. His heart was pounding, and not just because he'd run all the way here from the greenhouse. Manuela was so good to him, and to all the Golden Deer who needed a little extra kindness at Garreg Mach.
One of her hands rested over her stomach where the wound must have been. Hilda held Manuela's other hand. and Edelgard sat on the opposite side of the bed, her arms crossed over her chest, scowling. She looked relieved to see him, and she stood up--a little fast, in his opinion.
"If you'll pardon me, Professor, I need to see to my classmates," Edelgard said. "They've been underground for an hour, and there's been no word from them."
That was a perfectly reasonable request, but Manuela coughed feebly. The healer rolled her eyes. Edelgard sat back down.
"No, stay," Manuela said, with a very good quaver in her voice. "Claude, we've been talking about my career. Why, if I should die here... you four may be the last people in Fódlan to hear the Divine Songstress's voice.
"It sounds like Hilda here has been describing the victory aria from The Falcon Knight's Bride. Why, I played the role of Emperor Iris so many times, I could do it in my sleep." And she sang: "You who are encased in ice, who have been conquered by such flame...."
Her voice wobbled, but her tone was clear and pure. Even the healer sat up and paid attention.
"That's amazing, Teach," Claude said. He'd heard her in the choir, but never just on her own.
Edelgard nodded politely. "The Divine Songstress, indeed," she said. "Feel better soon, Professor Manuela."
Then she took her leave. Claude stayed with Manuela and Hilda for a while, until the healer shooed the two of them out, because laughter would make Manuela pull her stitches.
"If Professor Jeritza is evil now, do you think axe practice is canceled?" Hilda asked, on their way down the steps and back to the dormitories.
"Nah, they'll get a Knight of Seiros to do it. Or Seteth."
"Seteth won't let us get away with anything." Hilda sighed. "Did Edelgard seem weird to you? Weirder than usual?"
"Not really," Claude said, but Hilda's Edelgard sense had been right before.
"I don't know, she couldn't wait to leave, but she apologized to Professor Manuela twice before you got there. Have you ever heard her apologize? Because I haven't."
"Sure," he said, and let Hilda talk him back into the taking the dishes she'd stolen back to the kitchen for her. He deposited them in his room along with the ones he'd stolen, and then peeked out into the hallway.
Nobody was around. Edelgard would be back in the Knights' Quarters waiting for the Black Eagles to resurface. It couldn't hurt to have a quick poke through her room, not that he expected to see her second Crest embroidered into her underwear along with her initials.
The door wasn't locked, so he eased it open.
It was tidy. There were flowers on the desk. A very large white magic textbook lay open on her bed. Edelgard, black-robed, stood in the middle of the room, lifting a mask to her face. She turned and saw him, and hissed, "You."
And at the exact same moment, Professor Hanneman came up the stairs, and said, "Claude?"
Claude looked at Edelgard. He looked at Hanneman, walking down the hallway toward them.
Oh, hey, Professor, he could say. Edelgard here looks like she's up to something incredibly evil right now, maybe you want to take a look at this?
But he kept his mouth shut. Edelgard knew something about Crests that she wasn't telling him, and he'd exhausted the sum total of Hanneman's knowledge. Edelgard was a puzzle, a puzzle who was about to get caught doing something bad.
Fortunately, Hanneman paused well before he got to Edelgard's room. He looked out a window and stroked his beard. "Professor Manuela is resting peacefully," he said. "I thought you should know. She hasn't been as fond of a student as she is of you in quite some time, young man."
"That's good to know," Claude said, glancing at Edelgard from the corner of his eye. Still there, still hadn't moved. "On both counts. Thanks."
"She's tough as a stew chicken," Hanneman went on. "Don't you worry."
Hanneman shuffled away, back down the stairs. Only when Claude couldn't hear him anymore did Edelgard speak.
"Claude," she said. She affixed the mask to her face. Her voice changed, deepened, when she said, "You've almost made me late."
And that was the last thing he heard before the butt of her axe came down on his head.
-
When he awoke, he was tied up on Edelgard's bed. His skull was pounding. It was night, and he opened his eyes to see Edelgard and Hubert conferring in the light of a single candle. Edelgard was still dressed in her creepy robes, and her eyes were hard and cold.
"You've seen something you shouldn't have," Hubert said, pulling the chair up to the side of the bed. He had a long, slender knife in his hand, and he tested the point of it on his fingertip through his black gloves, which seemed like they were for murdering. "How unfortunate for you."
"That's a little much," Claude said.
Hubert made a sound that Claude hated to describe as a dark chuckle. "Perhaps," he said. "And perhaps you think you can still talk your way out of this. I am here to tell you that you cannot."
"Oh, come on, you're not actually going to kill me." The ropes binding him were rough, and he could not find any give in them, which meant he couldn't reach the knife in his boot. Clearly, one or both of them had done this before. Claude went on, "I could have ratted Edelgard out to Professor Hanneman. I didn't. There'll be a lot of questions if the next Duke Riegan goes missing."
"How willing you are to stake your life on that. Students die at the Officer's Academy," Hubert replied. "That's the risk one takes when one sends one's child to Garreg Mach."
There was a bang on the door. Edelgard and Hubert both turned to look. There was another bang on the door, and then someone jiggled the handle, and then an axe head burst through the lock.
Hilda stood in the doorway, barefoot in a lacy nightgown, her pink hair piled in a tight, high bun. She had never been more perfect to Claude, if only for the stunned look on his captors' faces.
"Excuse you," Hilda said, leveling the axe between the two of them. "That's my house leader you're threatening. I don't know how to use this thing, but I'll try my best!"
"Hilda," Edelgard said, pressing her palm into her face. "Please, we're in the same axe practice."
"And we're also neighbors. These walls are basically made out of paper? You and Hubert here aren't that quiet when you're copying each other's history homework, or whatever you're doing in here when you're talking about the fate of Fódlan! Let Claude go, or I'm suddenly going to remember how to split foreheads."
"Edelgard is up to something," Claude said, just in case Hilda had to run. "I think she had something to do with Professor Manuela getting stabbed, look at the robes."
"Yeah, they're ugly," said Hilda. She clicked her tongue. "What are those, bedsheets? Who's your tailor?"
"No one is splitting anyone's forehead," Edelgard said through gritted teeth. "My robes are fine."
Hilda sighed. "They're not. Also, can we light another candle? If I have to squint, I'm going to get wrinkles."
"Lady Edelgard," Hubert cut in. "Perhaps... we should discuss what we're going to do with them."
"Oh, great, now we're having a discussion. Can we do that after you've untied me?"
Hubert used the long knife to cut Claude's bonds, and Claude sat up, massaging his wrists. Hilda dropped herself onto Edelgard's bed next to him, axe in hand.
"So, if you weren't up to something, you wouldn't have said you were late and knocked me out," Claude said. "I think I've showed you some good faith by not ratting you out to Professor Hanneman, you should return the favor. It's not like you're working with the Western Church, or anything."
Edelgard gave him a very blank look that told him everything he needed to know.
"Goddess," he said--that felt wrong on his tongue, he was never going to say that again--"you're working with the Western Church? To kidnap Flayn?"
"More precisely," Edelgard said, "the Western Church is working for me."
"My lady," Hubert said.
"I know what I'm doing, Hubert."
Hubert looked skeptical. "As you say."
And then Edelgard gave them the rundown: the Church of Seiros had been secretly manipulating Fódlan for a thousand years. It had manufactured the Kingdom of Faerghus and then the Leicester Alliance to keep the people divided and under its thumb.The Knights of Seiros were answerable to only the Archbishop, and had been used to commit terrible crimes: the tentpole of force that propped up the Church's lies. The Crest system itself was corrupt, and it elevated the undeserving and discarded talented individuals because of accidents of their blood. The Church used this, too, to keep the people of Fódlan under their control.
Edelgard's face shone in the candlelight. If he looked away from her, Claude thought, she'd be seared into his vision; he'd see her afterimage in the dark.
Now, he'd been expecting something a little smaller, like "robing up to steal some the lost Hero's Relic of House Hresvelg" or "sneaking off to cut a political deal, which they weren't supposed to do at Garreg Mach," but this sort of made sense, too. Edelgard did write a lot of letters, and someone had experimented on her. The Church? He didn't have all the pieces. He could play along until he did.
Hubert helped her out the heavy robes as she spoke, unbuckling her breastplate and laying her weapons aside neatly, and jealousy surged in Claude, hot and sudden. Edelgard had Hubert, Dimitri had Dedue. There was no one here he'd trust to do something like this for him. He hadn't had so much as a valet since he was fourteen.
"I hope you realize how this sounds," Claude said, when she was done. Hilda had lain down next to him on Edelgard's bed about a minute into the speech, and she made an agreeing noise. "You're going to overthrow the Church? You're not even Emperor yet."
"There is time still to kill them both," Hubert said quietly, folding the robes in the corner.
"Yet," Edelgard said, ignoring Hubert. She stood before the two of them in a sleeveless shirt and trousers, and her chin was tilted proudly. Hubert took a deep red robe from the back of the chair and slid it over her shoulders, and she accepted it seemingly without thought, tying it around her narrow waist.
This was a lot to take in.
"Well," Claude said, because he couldn't give in too easy, "we all have dreams we want to achieve. Good luck."
Hilda was dozing off.
"Is that all? 'Good luck'?" said Edelgard.
"What do you want me to say? Don't get me wrong, this is all very plausible, but sounds like a big power grab to me."
"It isn't a power grab," Edelgard said, "it's a fight for the very soul of Fódlan. Too long have we labored in the Church's shadow--"
"That's exactly what someone making a power grab would say," Hilda piped up. "Why tell us?"
"Because you're far too lazy to do anything about it," Edelgard said. Hilda nodded in reluctant agreement. "And I think that Claude might be sympathetic to my position."
"Yeah?" Claude rubbed at his wrists.
"I can't imagine that you have any deep attachment to the Church of Seiros."
"If it's the choice between finding some sympathy for your position and getting thrown off the side of the mountain, I'll take the sympathy," Claude said.
"I'd rather you came willingly to my cause."
"Well, you should have thought about that before you knocked me out and tied me up." There, that was probably enough naysaying. "Listen, you make some good points. I didn't know about my Crest until a year ago, and I didn't feel any lack of it in my life."
Edelgard looked mollified.
Hilda roused herself and sidled off of the bed. "Um, I need kind of want to wake up in time for black magic practice tomorrow, so can you three work this conspiracy stuff out on your own? Delicate maidens like me don't think about this kind of stuff, it's so complicated...."
"'Night, Hilda," Claude said. "I'll yell if they try to murder me again."
"I'll be sleeping, save yourself!" Hilda said cheerfully, and left with her axe before anyone could stop her.
And then Claude was all alone, facing two people who were a lot scarier than he'd given them credit for.
"So," he said. "How about that violent revolt against the Church of Seiros."
"You understand," said Edelgard, "that I can't trust your word that you'll keep silent on the matter."
"I wouldn't trust me either."
"Then we've found some common ground."
"First step in a negotiation!"
"This isn't a negotiation," Hubert said, and Edelgard hushed him.
Claude was too tired for this. His head was still pounding. He was definitely skipping archery practice tomorrow morning.
"How about this," Claude said. "I've got questions about Crests. You obviously hate Crests, so I'm guessing you know a lot more about them than I do. You give me answers, I keep my big mouth shut. The more answers, the longer my mouth stays shut. Sound like a deal?"
Edelgard looked unconvinced. That was fine. The more single-minded she thought him, the easier she'd be to manipulate later on.
"And when I run out of things to tell you?" she asked.
"Then we can reassess the terms of the deal," he said. "I'm sure you'll have something else I want."
"You'll sell yourself so cheaply for a bit of knowledge," Edelgard said. "Very well. It's a low price for me--I'll accept, for the moment. Betray me, and I'll do so much worse than throw you off a mountain."
-
Claude did not sleep well that night. He woke up with his throat unslit, which was something. Here he was, a foreign prince, the presumptive next leader of about a third of Fodlan, sitting on the juiciest, most important piece of information on the continent.
He skipped all of his classes, and he wandered around the monastery, listening. Everyone was talking about some mysterious Flame Emperor showing up in front of the Black Eagles, calling off the Death Knight, declaring himself the fire that would remake Fodlan, and leaving. That explained the costume.
He'd gotten out of Edelgard's room alive by saying sure, massive war against the Church of Seiros, sounds great, love it. There might be more, and more answers, to gain from the Church if he blew her in to Seteth.
At home, he wouldn't have hesitated even for a second to use this as leverage, to play both sides off each other. He knew exactly where he stood with his family, and it was nowhere good. His parents left him to fight his own battles, and he took every weapon he could get to find some advantage. Maybe this place was making him as soft as his eldest sister always said he was.
Never stay your hand, Khalid, she'd said, the first time he'd bested her in a duel. He'd pulled his blow when he'd finished her off. She'd sighed, gotten up, and backhanded him into the dirt. Then she'd added, almost sympathetically, You're just too gentle for your own good.
She was the kindest of the four, and he loved her dearly, but she never let him forget his place. She was the peerless warrior who would succeed their father; he was the half-foreign baby. He wasn't going to regret climbing over her to get to the throne.
Those were Khalid ibn Tiana's problems. The next Duke Riegan just had to survive the school year. He came back to the green outside the classrooms and sat himself a cool stone wall behind a row of bushes, taking out a workbook so he'd look busy if anyone walked by. It was the best place to eavesdrop. Eavesdropping was comforting.
"Hey, Claude?" Hilda said, sometime later, snapping him out of his reverie. He looked up from his notes to see her standing over him, twirling a bit of hair around her finger. "I hate to bother you, but we need to go bail Leonie and Lorenz out. They took a bunch of weapons from the training ground, and Seteth is super mad about it? Leonie says the two of them were just cleaning them, but Seteth's not buying what they're selling."
Claude closed his workbook, glad for the distractions. He was in the faith magic class purely to suck up to Professor Manuela, and he hated it. "Sure, we've got this," he said. "Come on, let's make this right."
There was a tournament on right now, and an evening service at the Cathedral. The classrooms were deserted. "How are you feeling? After last night?" she asked.
"Like I stepped in pegasus blessings," he said.
Hilda's neat eyebrows drew together. "I know we're not close-close, but whatever you decide, I have your back? Like, I'm not in a position to promise that House Goneril will do anything for House Riegan, but if I'm really serious about something, Holst will at least hear me out. If nothing else, he can wring Hubert's skinny little neck for you?"
House Goneril had been a thorn in his family's side for the past two hundred years, since they'd been the Counts and Countesses Goneril. He'd never expected to like Hilda.
Oh, you're pretty handsome, that's going to make this easier, Hilda had said on the tour of the monastery before the start of classes, attaching herself to his arm. I so did not want to be the leader of the Golden Deer, big yellow capes aren't exactly my style? But now I can have a relaxing year! Let me know if I can do anything to help!
"Thanks, Hilda," Claude said, "that means a lot."
So he sat there in Seteth's office with her, arguing that Leonie and Lorenz were the two people at Garreg Mach least likely to steal anything. Lorenz was too--Claude hated to say it--virtuous, and Leonie had too much to lose to mess up her education in such a stupid way.
Hilda, had been sitting next to him silently, looking emotional. She teared up right on cue, and talked about how generous and selfless Leonie's whole village had been to pool their money and get her to the Officer's Academy, and how moving that was.
At Hilda's muffled sobs and trembling shoulders, Seteth crumpled like a tent in a desert wind. He produced a handkerchief clumsily embroidered at one corner with what looked like the Crest of Cethleann, and agreed to put Leonie and Lorenz on sky watch for a week instead of whatever other punishment he'd had in mind. Mission accomplished.
Hilda left, still sniffling. Claude lingered.
"Is there anything else I can do for you, young man?" Seteth asked, picking up a pair of spectacles from his desk.
Here was his chance.
Almyra had no quarrel with Adrestia. Adrestia didn't seem to have an interest in anything outside of Fódlan's borders. He had Seteth's full attention, and this could become the Church's problem.
Claude could see the future unfurl before him like Professor Manuela's maps: Faerghus sided with the Church and fought to maintain its independence. The Alliance, thinking itself behind its mountains, its rivers, and its money, imploded over the ever-present Imperial Question. Claude had sat through enough high table meetings to know how they were. They'd end up doing nothing, and the Empire would sweep in anyway.
And Claude could just leave. He could go back to Almyra. With Fódlan busy tearing itself apart, he could use what he'd learned about Alliance tactics to lead an assault on the Silver Pass--Fódlan's Throat, whatever--take it, and use it as a base to take control of Goneril territory. Being the person who'd broken the Pass would get him closer to being king, but it wouldn't get him closer to his dream: of destroying the borders, of breaking the barriers, of making things better for people like him, who weren't enough for one side, and not enough for the other, either.
There had been something in Edelgard's eyes when she talked about the Crest system, something he recognized: she wanted to change the world, too, and she was a lot farther along than he was.
"No, there's nothing," Claude said, his stomach turning.
Seteth nodded. "Then if you'll pardon me, I have a fishing tournament to organize."
Claude left. Dooming the continent to years of war for the sake of his curiosity didn't feel great, but if Adrestia really did have the military might Edelgard's confidence suggested it did, he could be in one of two places: at her side, or under her boot.
A Fódlan Edelgard had thrown into chaos would be a Fódlan that Claude had a shot at reshaping to his liking. It would be worth it in the end. He just had to believe that.