A Good Consul [fic]

[morriganfearn]

Title: A Good Consul
Game: Post-Sacred Stones (FE8)
Rating: G
Characters: Eirika, Tana, Knoll, Ephraim, L'Arachel
Genre: Angst, Budding Romance
Pairings: Eirika/L'Arachel
Prompt: FE8 - Eirika/L’arachel—Learning how to mourn.
Warnings: None
Summary: There is too much to do to restore Renais, and Eirika is finding it hard to fit everything in. Luckily, L'Arachel has noticed.

Eirika gazed as the long rusty splotch adorning the rug in her father's room. “I think,” she said very quietly, as though the serving lady hovering at her elbow would break into a thousand pieces if she raised her voice, “we will need to get rid of this.”

“I've been telling everyone that it must happen,” the lady agreed, writing down in her ledger. “That kind of thing shouldn't be in the royal chambers on coronation day. Now, is it salvageable, do you think? The secretary from Grado will want to know.”

Said secretary, a tired looking woman with the black lesions and deep scarring of a badly healed revanant bite, waited like a hungry shadow in the council chamber. Oh, the woman probably went to her own rooms at the end of the day, and compiled the lists of pleas that had to be brought to the attention of ambassadors and other secretaries, and this woman did all of her work dilligently. She just seemed to have become a permanent fixture of gloom in the council chamber. Eirika wished she had more charitable thoughts about her than 'vulture.' She really would have to sit down with the representative and talk to her until she knew the woman's story. Eirika could guess it involved the earthquake, and an attack from the undead bands, and every child in her village slaughtered. Just like every other story out of Grado.

“The rug is salvageable. Has anyone—the sheets on the bed?”

“Not burned, as you ordered, your highness. But we haven't changed them, either. No one wanted to touch them.”

Not even undertakers, Eirika suspected. She did not blame any of the people who had to secure the palace after the true rulers had taken it back from Sir Orson. “Good. The mattress and those sheets should be marked salvageable. The bed curtains, too.”

“Right, my lady. We could bring in priests to do another cleansing, but it's probably best to get rid of the bed and the chairs. I'll mark those—”

Eirika looked at the Queen's vanity, which was painted all the gaudy shades of sea foam blue and green and red that wood carvers in northern Renais favored. The last person to use the chair and the hair brush had black sludge in her veins, and sat there at the pleasure of a man who could not see the reality of her decay.

A good queen, however, would not waste the workmanship of years long gone. Eirika steeled her spine. “Cleanse the paint pots, and put them in with the rest of the goods to go to Grado. Cleanse the furniture, but keep it. We can always get a new mattress and sheets. Just—get rid of everything in the furniture.”

She turned to the windows. Glass planes glittered in afternoon sunlight. She had a beautiful view of the forecourt. Someone should have drawn the heavy velvet curtains, but those had been looted. They looted the curtains but left the bed for Fado's children to look at. As she looked down, she noted a familiar stride heading for the stables, and out by the west wing, long shadows of knightly guards searched for their lost charge. Even with the sun in her eyes, Eirika foresaw another intervention.

The Queen turned a bright smile on her lady in waiting. “The other rugs should be fine. Almost everything else in the royal apartments is fine. Sir Orson and his—Sir Orson was only in here, right?”

“As far as we know, my lady.”

“Then let's get this place cleansed once more, and give what we can,” Eirika's mouth hurt all around her teeth, but they kept on showing. This was peace time. It was supposed to be easier to make these decisions. “You'll take care of it, won't you? Any of Mother's little things that are still around, well, if they were handled too much, we can sell them. The big things, like the furniture, we must keep. And the dresses. They—maybe we can remake them, if they were,” she couldn't keep the hesitation in her voice from making the grisly thought even darker, “used. Make sure those pieces that must be sold, rather than donated, get appraised by Master Rennac. We'll want Carcino prices on them, and he'll know what we should say about, well, wear and tear. I leave it all in your hands. But ask me if you have questions about any of it.”

“No, my lady, I think it's pretty clear,” the lady in waiting bowed. She was a third cousin on Eirika's mother's side. She would know what was useful and what was valuable among the late Queen's things. Eirika's father had only held on to them for Eirika, after all. Now that she would be crowned queen—

Eirkia strode from the room. They weren't hers yet. She shouldn't look at them too hard until after the fealty ceremony. Proper coronations took so much time and energy to arrange. Maybe she wouldn't have to go through her mother's things for another year.

“How was it?” Tana broke away from the honor guard, who stood at attention outside the door, to link arms with Eirika.

“Not as bad as I thought,” Eirika leaned on Tana's shoulder as they walked, trying to remember how they would have talked about this a few months earlier. Tana didn't need to be treated like a lady in waiting just because Eirika only seemed to be allowed to talk to them nowadays. “It's all about doing these things one step at a time. By the way, Rennac is still here, isn't he?”

“L'Arachel said he would be, so chances are he hasn't managed to run off yet,” Tana said, patting Eirika's hand reassuringly.

Well, that was one thing that was easier. “I don't know what I'd do without all the help Frelia and Rausten has offered,” oh shadows and fire, no. She sounded like a courtier rather than the Eirika who was Tana's friend. Eirika revised her words. “I really mean it. You and Innes and L'Arachel—You've helped me and Ephraim so much. Joshua, too.”

Tana's laugh chimed like bells across the ceiling. “We need to pull together now, if everyone's going to get better. Besides, if we weren't here, you know Seth would try to be in six places at once, and that would only last for a few months before he spontaneously combusted, which wouldn't help anyone.”

“I think you're giving Seth a little too much credit. Between me and Ephraim, we would make him combust in a few weeks, at least.”

Tana giggled. “You'd never drive anyone to combustion. Your brother, well, Innes has been saying that just being in the same room as Ephraim is going to kill him for years. And, of course, that's Innes being Innes, buuuut even I can admit your brother isn't the most tractable person in the world. I can definitely see Seth being driven to distraction.”

“You don't know the half of it,” Eirika grinned as Tana trotted down the main stairs, pulling her along into the sunlit wash of the great hall. “I think he slipped his body guard detail again.”

Tana shook her head. She had been the one to fly after him last time. “Is he still in the grounds?”

“Oh, certainly. I don't think he'd get very far this time, anyway. There is much more to do, and Ephraim can't help himself when given problems. But, um, we should probably get to the stables before my brother tries to ride off again. Just to save time.”

Was that the too-polite, courtier way of putting it? Tana just laughed, and clung harder, making Eirika smile as they sped up, looking just like any other young people heading out of the grand keep. The sun slanting across the grounds was warm in that good tail-end of lazy summer way. Lazy summer was of course a lie, but Eirika found herself wishing painfully for a few free hours to take herself into the royal forest, or find some isolated corner to enjoy.

Tana climbed the fence on the horse paddock with the ease of practice, but her pegasus must be enjoying the free sky, or out playing pranks on the stable boys, as there were no horsey greetings. Just a lot of flicking tails from the war mounts.

Tana pushed into the loose stall that opened between the barn and the pasture. Eirika wondered if it was generally frowned upon for royalty to be in the manure rich darkness of the wrong end of a box stall. Early summer hay hovered on drafts running through out the stables, and the dust coated her as soon as she stepped into the shade. Funny to think that a stable could be so similar to a library, and yet one was intended for the intellectual, and the other was meant for the active. But dust was dust, whether it was produced by books or horse food.

Thinking back on the lengthy trip to the bathhouse this morning, Eirika decided that she loved dust.

Having found the latch, Tana let them both into the main stable, where they stumbled upon the sight of Knoll, engulfed as always by his robes, sitting on a haybale, staring with ill-concealed horror at the reins Ephraim was holding out. Eirika immediately recognized the way Ephraim's mouth had drawn back in a stubborn line, like a mule a heart beat away from tossing the baggage that it was carrying onto the road, and ready to offer defiance to anyone who tried to load it up again.

“You need a horse,” the tone of voice suggested that the King of Renais had said this several times, if not in the same words.

The scholar nodded over Ephraim's shoulder at the two intruders. “Your highnesses.”

Ephraim swung around. “Eirika! Tana! Tana, tell him he can't expect to walk from here to Grado. He should have a horse.”

“If only so the bandits in the countryside have a reason to shoot at me,” Knoll's murmur was almost imperceptible.

Eirika hid a smile at the sharp point. Maybe it was a wince.

He should have run the moment they left the Darkling Woods. She had been the one to catch him that time, furtively sneaking around L'Arachel's tent, the bandages over the healed slash that had nearly taken his eye already coming loose. Because she had been feeling selfish, she had halted Knoll, and asked outright if he knew whether demonic wounds could block healing magic. He hadn't a good answer to that, and she had coaxed and cajoled, tricking the scholar into staying with the return party as far as Renais.

She really shouldn't have, Eirika knew. Knoll wanted to leave the stone cage of the castle more than Ephraim, and she had gotten him stuck here because she had wanted to save someone.

She pulled guilty eyes back to her brother, who was now arguing with Tana—in the weird way that anyone had to argue with Tana when she pleasantly agreed to all decisions and then followed that agreement up with a pleasant, amiable “however” that tore the agreement to ribbons. “Ephraim, if Scholar Knoll has a plan for his journey, we shouldn't stand in his way. What village is your planned first call, this evening? You want to find an inn before sunset, of course.”

Knoll's tired eyes raked over her. “How late in the afternoon is it now?”

“You could probably get to the outer hamlet by dusk,” Eirika felt so helpful.

“Ah. It seems the kingly plan of dogging my footsteps from the library to the stables might have born more fruit than merely pestering me about not leaving.”

“Ephraim,” Tana scowled, far more effectively than Eirika. “Eirika needed help today and you spent the day,” she waved her hands, as though circular patches of air could illustrate hideous plots of courtesy that Ephraim had concocted.

Knoll, however, had the words to add to the motions. “Trapping me in the library with a long discussion about the northern swamps of Grado.”

Tana frowned. “Um—I know you're not exactly Lute, Scholar Knoll, but you weren't a willing participant in that conversation? I can't tell.”

“Fascinating as the habits of the criminals who roam the swamps on the border are, I was more interested in leaving than discussing them.”

Ephraim had a better face for playing Carcino Bait than most. Seth was better, Eirika suspected, but her brother was more than capable of sitting down with his own troops and not losing much in a few hands. However, his hands had nothing to hold right now, and the fingers were jumping like nervous spiders. She watched them steal around behind his back to lock together, and hide any more of his secret cues, but the initial nerves were enough of a giveaway. Ephraim either had an ulterior motive, and detaining Knoll had been done by underhanded means—or he had an ulterior motive, and detaining Knoll was part of that ulterior motive. Her bother didn't tend to ask about criminals without an intention to chase them down.

Maybe, if she headed that one off at the pass—if she gave him an assignment to help out the beleaguered villages in the south, she could make him return on time to give her a report, and that would keep Ephraim on the throne for a few more months before another adventure seized him. Would she have time to assemble a group of protectors Ephraim could not outwit? And there were preparations for the official ceremonies to make.

The official entrance of the stables opened in a blast of light and fresh air that sent more chaff flying. L'Arachel strode in, peering around sharply. “Tana! There's a messenger from your brother. Some nonsense about Frelia needing more troops for the latest monster hunt on the northern coast? He needs you to see what men Renais can spare.”

Eirika felt her stomach drop. More monsters? This was surely Ephraim's territory, but he was drawing himself into Grado. “Tana, please tell Innes we'll draw up the figures—the troops on our side of Fort Mulan could be mobilized. I just—we need the men he loaned us in some key areas, so, please, just let me check.”

“Eirika,” Tana began.

The queen held up placating hands. “No, it's fine. Things are not dire on the Frelian border, so We absolutely can spare some men. I know you all have problems with the nearness of the Darkling Woods. I'll figure something—”

Ephriam actually dropped the reigns of the horse at that. “Eirika, really, this—”

“You have plans for helping Grado, Brother. Trust me. I know. I understand! The people there are suffering. We can't let that happen,” words inflected with more high pitched stresses than L'Arachel proclaiming that she was just interested in dancing lessons, nothing more, backed up against Eirika's teeth. Knoll was staring at her, with eyes hiding a kind of sympathy that complimented the plain astonishment Tana and Ephraim shared.

Someone grabbed her hand. Eirika's mouth finally shut like a trap, as she turned to look at the holy princess of Rausten. L'Arachel smiled brightly. “Eirika, let's go have tea.”

Eirika's heels skidded on the straw covered floorboards as L'Arachel pulled her toward the door. Ust rose in clouds over her boots as L'Arachel pulled her across the forecourt. The gate guard stared at the two women as L'Arachel ordered gates unbarred. Seth—at the head of a group of knights looking very harried—physically paled and stopped in his tracks, as L'Arachel's smile grew brighter than the sun and so full of teeth Eirika had to wonder if there was any true wyvern in the holy princess' ancestry.

Suddenly they were walking down the main street of Renais castle town, alone. People did pause and look, and a few even bowed, before the force of the shining smile hit them and they melted away again. L'Arachel took a turn to the west down one sunset street. “There. Sorry about the sunlight. It does make one tear up, doesn't it? There's a lake somewhere nearby, isn't there?”

Eirika managed to pull herself out of the stupor her apparent kidnapping had created. “Ah—yes, just beyond the town walls. Why would there be tea there?”

“Oh, because of the romance of it. Tea by a lake at dusk,” L'Arachel laughed. “Doesn't it sound grand, watching the sunset together?”

“It's more of a marsh,” Eirika observed, wiping at her cheeks. “But, I'm sure it will be fine. Uh. Why did you have tea brought there?”

“Oh, I haven't. I'm just hoping that some will be there. But if we can't have tea, that's little matter. We can just sit and talk and pretend the tea will arrive. That is the best way to have tea, don't you think? Living in hope for some more. And little sandwiches. One should always hope for little sandwiches.”

It slowly dawned on Eirika that even for L'Arachel, this was patently ridiculous, and they were drawing too close to the west gate to turn back.

“L'Arachel—”

The gloved hand grasping hers tightened slightly. “Trust me—once we're out of this mausoleum, even for an eye blink, it will look different. Everything. Will. Look. Different. You can trust me on this,” the holy princess murmured, waving imperiously to the gate guard.

“I don't understand—” but L'Arachel was ushering her through the gate with a determination that would have put Ephraim at his most mulish to shame.

 

Then they were out, on the road with dust rising in dry puffs and grasshoppers singing mournfully in the grass. Eirika drew in a breath, looking back, half expecting an honor guard riding after her. But it was just the familiar stone wall, and the open fields. A mile or two up the track, and they would come to the gnarled tree and cascade of broken rocks where the Gradoan wyverns had caught up with Eirika and Seth nearly two years ago.

Something knotted in the back of her throat. Her whole body ached from her neck outward, the royal carriage of her spine suddenly rebelling. She knew her fingers squeezed like a vice on the hand L'Arachel had offered. Everything was coming apart.

Suddenly, L'Arachel yanked on the hand she held, swinging Eirika into a deep embrace. Clever fingers used to channeling healing magic stroked through her hair soothingly. Eirika buried her head in the comfort of a boney shoulder, and hoped that she was not leaving snotty trails on the diaphanous fabric of L'Arachel's chosen gown.

They hung together silently in the middle of the road until Eirika had moved past the hot itchy feeling of her eyes, and the burning exhaustion of her lungs, to the thudding of her heart and the sheer tiredness that filled her. When she let go, and managed to step back, L'Arachel didn't even seem to mind that part of the white gown was clinging a little too wetly to the shoulder she had just offered. Instead, L'Arachel kept tight hold of the hand she had first grabbed.

“Now, do you want to go on a walk?” L'Arachel asked.

Eirika breathed out. “Yes. I think I do.”

“Good,” L'Arachel set off down the road, glancing around with bright interest at the fields. “This is so different from home, you know. Rausten has glorious forests everywhere. And lakes. And rocks. And here the rocks are there, but you have such wide fields, and everyone is so busy with the farming.”

“Yes,” Eirika agreed, seeing the movement of oxen far off. Were they planting? No, surely not. It was too late in the season. Maybe they were setting up a second harvest, though? She had to learn these things. “Do you know everything about logging and,” she wondered what else someone did in forested areas. Most of the forests in Renais were colonized by baels, “Er, forestry?”

“Goodness no,” L'Arachel replied. “I haven't had the time. I am a monster hunter, after all. Like my parents. I mean I'll have to learn some day, but—”

“I don't know what m mother did,” Eirika blurted out. “She was the queen, but—my father handled everything while we were growing up, and I—he never said much about her. I wish I knew what a queen was supposed to do. I'm trying—I know I'm supposed to keep the king on the throne and support him, but—Do I need to know everything my farmers know? Do I need to know all my craftmasters know? And what about diplomacy? Grado is slipping in the south and Frelia needs men, and I—” Erika took a gulping breath, feeling the whole of Renais pressing in on her. “How did my mother do all of it?”

“Probably by not having a brother constantly trying to run away, and monsters arising where they have no right to,” L'Arachel observed tartly, coming to a stop in the middle of the road.

Eirika chuckled shakily. “It's not that bad—”

“You can be angry at him, you know,” L'Arachel said suddenly. “When Mom and Dad were killed my uncle took me in, and saw to my education and made me heir, and I was so angry with him for always doing the proper thing for the people of Rausten, or not doing anything that would avenge my parents, or being there when I needed him, or not being there. I was so angry, and I didn't think I should be.

“But my Uncle sat me down one day, and he told me one of the wisest things I've ever heard. The Goddess made anger as much as she made joy, and we can't just shut off the bad things inside of us, because it shuts off the good things as well. You absolutely can be angry at people even when it's unfair, even when there's nothing that they can do to help it. Whatever you feel should be out there in the world because it's a gift, and as long as you aren't hurting other people because everything is so frustrating, it's alright to be angry at them, or because of their actions.

“So, you can be angry at your brother, you know. Even though he's the only family you've got left, and he loves you. That doesn't stop him from—”

“He killed Lyon,” Eirika interrupted quietly. “There might have been—I want my friends back. I want my father back. I want everything the way it was, and I don't want to be queen. I don't want to be making all of these decisions. I was always supposed to be the crown princess, and Ephraim was supposed to be the King, and I don't think he even wants to do that. He just—wants to run away. I think he'd become a General of Grado, if he could, just so he could make it up to Lyon, and it's all wrong.”

L'Arachel breathed in. Eirika watched her chest rise and fall. “You can love a friend, too. That, too, is one of the gifts we're given. Even if they did something unforgivable.”

“So I can be mad at my brother, and in love with my friend?” Eirika wanted to laugh. She wiped more tears from the corner of her eyes.

L'Arachel shrugged, turning to face her. “You can also love your brother and be mad at your friend. None of this is mutually exclusive, you know. I miss my parents every day of my life, but there are some days when I know if they walked around a corridor I'd scream at them and yell about how much I hate that they decided fighting monsters was more important than me. And other days when I'd cry with happiness.”

It was exhausting, Eirika thought, keeping up with someone who seemed to have all the answers. It was exhausting trying to do this all on her own. It was exhausting trying to involve everyone who needed to be involved. Was this how Ephraim felt all the time? Or maybe this was constantly boiling under L'Arachel's loose collar, too. Maybe every ruler felt this way.

“Can we run away?” Eirika said suddenly, peering off down the road stretching to the nearest hamlet. “You and I could leave—we could just go out, fighting monsters, and helping people—”

“And having tea?” L'Arachel suggested, looking at the sky innocently, and then rocking back on her heels. “Sorry, no. I'm here on my Uncle Mansel's authority to see to it that Renais grows strong and powerful. And you wouldn't like me very much if we went off to act like hooligans.”

Eirika nodded slowly, the eagerness that had suddenly gripped her dissipating. “Sorry. You're right.”

“We can always save people in our time off,” L'Arachel amended brightly. “But for now, my only duty is seeing to it that you're a strong ruler and your brother is helping you as he should. So, do you want to continue walking, until some tea arrives?”

Eirika gripped the hand she held, and then, recalling a particularly silly etiquette class that seemed supremely apt, she bend and applied a courtly kiss to the gloved knuckles. “Anything for my lady Consul of Rausten.”

L'Arachel laughed merrily, pulling Eirika into another hug, and whispering: “Remember, you can tell me anything. Or I can tell you everything.”

“Tell me about the moonlit princess,” Eirika requested, as they began to walk into the gathering dusk. “I never had time to appreciate her during the war.”

“Oh, she is a paragon of justice and love,” L'Arachel's eyes sparkled at the flattery, but there was something there, Eirika thought, that understood that it was flattery. Maybe it was possible to grow into knowing everything.