THE CUCKOO: I
Completed August 1, 2021 (♌︎)
Author's Notes: This piece contains a lot of reproductive suffering (child death, miscarriage, stillbirth, harm to children) and anxieties about parenthood, and your mileage on how sexy the sex is may vary greatly depending on how you feel about those omnipresent concerns intruding. It also features a lot of speculations about and allusions to people entering marriages or sexual relationships at very young ages (even if there is no explicit underage sex), and there are repeated instances of children witnessing violence, a fair amount of casual misogyny/sexism, and some canonical parent murder just running its course in the background. There are additionally elements of this fic that have not been tagged, in the interest of avoiding spoilers, although none of them introduce additional violence or sexual content not already tagged for.
It was autumn, and the churchyard smelled of dry leaves and damp earth. The bells tolled nones; the cedars sounded with bird chatter. When Ruvelia Atkascha approached at last, Dycedarg did not move from where he leaned against the moss overcrusting a mausoleum. He thought to himself that it was a good hour to walk with somebody—that anyone catching them might think them new-made mourners.
The queen was shrouded in black crepe, and she did not wear a crown.
"My brother said you were waiting here," she said tersely, drawing close. "A rather morbid place for 'friendly conversation,' is it not?"
"Would you rather hear what I have to say in the thick of Igros?" He gestured around to the field of headstones. "Everyone around here is better suited to keep their silence than whomever's milling about the castle."
Ruvelia said nothing, but her posture straightened. Dycedarg looked to the ground.
"My condolences again for your misfortune."
"I'm sure you didn't bid me walk all this way to hear that again."
"I did not."
She rolled her eyes. "I don't see why men put on such airs of intrigue. Why couldn't Bestrald just tell me himself instead of sending me to conspire with you in the shadow of some poor fool's grave. If you want—"
"It's my mother's."
She paused, silent again. There was the low trill of a swallow from somewhere overhead as she looked to the monument. He wondered how often she might have walked past it in her girlhood unknowing. It did not bear the house crest, and Ruvelia could surely have no recollection of there ever being a Lady Beoulve.
"One live heir in a decade before Zalbag finally killed her, Rue," he said. "Do you think you're the only one used to seeing small coffins measured?"
He smiled then, kneeling to the ground to pluck one of the scalloped leaves of a purple-flowered plant half-hidden in the tall grass. Even without seeing it, he knew Ruvelia's look: that downcast expression of disdain she retreated into when uncertain. He cared little if she disdained him; he did not give that brief history with any expectation of sympathy.
He held the plant up to her, spinning it in his fingers.
"Do you know what this is?"
"No." She laughed darkly. "You're not going to show me how to whistle on it, are you?"
"Hellevetch," he said, ignoring the barb. "Midwives call it Bastard's Bane."
She crossed her arms and looked off into the distance, breathing deeply as one does in anticipation of having to shout. Dycedarg imagined that she must intuit the substance of what he is about to say.
"Non-lethal for the most part. You could eat it every day and die of old age." He looked down at the plant a moment, fidgeting with one of the leaves. "Give it to a mother with a babe at breast, however…"
"I'll kill her," Ruvelia said flatly.
"So Bestrald was right that the Queen Mother proved very attentive to your recovery?"
Ruvelia nodded, fists balled as she continued to look off into the distance. Dycedarg appreciated her composure. She was a woman clearly used to finding ways to fold her passions into shapes too small for others to suss out. He imagined, however, that her heart is still very much that of the wild and spiteful creature who haunted the Igros of his youth.
He also believed wholly in her resolution.
"You will need to be more cautious in the future."
If the poets had ever spoken true that a woman's glance could carry venom, Dycedarg thought he should be dead within the hour. He stepped forward, catching her wrist in the air before she could strike him for drawing so near. The whole motion was instinctual, immediate—if he were one to draw such comparisons, he might have said it was something like a dance.
"More cautious than this for certain," he continued.
"What caution do you propose?" she asked.
There was a silence between them then. Dycedarg—for all the many times he'd arranged and rearranged the wording of it in his head—felt suddenly quite foolish in saying what he had come there to say. He did not remember the exact phrasing he used later. What left the clearest residue in his future thoughts was the sudden crash of talon falls in the distance and the irrational conviction that he could feel her pulse quicken somewhere beneath the thick leather of his glove.
Ruvelia offered no word of agreement or disagreement once he outlined what he and Bestrald had planned. They stood a little while on the hill afterwards, watching the Hokuten riding back to the city gates: a mess of white feathers and blue banners that floated along as though it truly were the northern sky.
It was spring, and Igros was stuffed with soldiers. The general had returned, and he'd brought the Thundergod along with him this time. Every baker and brewer worked themselves into the twilight hours to keep pace with the appetites of two armies, and many a giddy maiden stalked about the massing knights to settle some appetites of her own. The duke had been badgered by his son to call for a formal feast day in tribute to the brave knights now returned from the heathen wastes of Varoi's empire. When Ruvelia Larg looked out from the high castle walls, everything was lanterns and bonfires, stretching out towards the horizon until they met the stars.
She was fifteen, and Bestrald had teased her that she should catch some lordling from out the throng now if she ever hoped to make a match. "Marry before April's end and you might enjoy a rich widowhood come autumn, sister. Most men here are already betrothed to the wrong end of a Viuran guisarme." She knew, even then, that he had stolen the quip from one of his friends. Her brother was never clever under his own power.
She made no matches; she was not on the hunt for them. Instead she had more wine than her mother would think fitting, and she danced a roundel with the other women until the lilac ribbons in her hair purpled with her sweat. When she left off, giggling and dizzy, Ruvelia set herself to wandering about the castle before any man might find occasion to speak to her. She did not think herself drunk at the time—not even when she tangled her fingers in the braids of tapestries older and better born than she was, not even when she flopped her way barefoot onto one of the balconies and tore her hair free of every braid poor Celeste had spend the afternoon plaiting into it.
She stood there, pink-cheeked and jubilant in the moonlight, and completely failed to notice the child sitting beside her until she had quite nearly tripped upon him.
"Are you alright, my Lady?" he chirped as he moved out of the way and pulled himself to standing. "I hope I'm not where I oughtn't be."
The boy flinched a little as Ruvelia laughed, and did his best to compose himself when she sat down beside him. He seemed very aware of the expectations of rank for a youth who couldn't have seen more than twelve midsummers.
"Why are you here if you think you shouldn't be?" Ruvelia asked. "There are far better places to make mischief than an empty balcony."
The boy blinked before looking down at the tome that he'd spread out on the stone beneath him. Ruvelia hadn't noticed it, and much like the boy himself, it struck her as being from somewhere very far removed from Gallione. It was bigger and older than the sort of book anybody still paging should be trusted with or interested in, and in the moonlight she could only just make out the tracery of circles and spheres on its open leaves.
"I'm just looking at the stars, my Lady," he whispered. "My father said I might."
"The stars?"
"If Bamjik's treatise is right, a comet might come? I wanted to see."
There was the clamor of somebody singing in the hall. Ruvelia sank to the ground, her gown billowing out as she knelt to look at the book. The boy sat down alongside her, taking the volume in hand somewhat protectively.
"Are you an astrologer, then?" she teased. "Can you tell my fortune?"
The child didn't say anything for a moment, but he thumbed through the pages of the tome as though he took the request very seriously. He didn't look up when he finally asked after the particulars of her birth, tracing his fingers along the lines of tables and lists as though the course of Ruvelia's life might be squared and contained within them. He bit his tongue in thought.
Ruvelia for her part, leaned back and looked at the sky, imagining what a comet might look like cutting across it. She hoped it would be picturesque, like some celestial arrow dropped from the bow of the moon—an image men might set in decorated books or stained glass.
"Ajora's wounds!" A booming voice dragged her from her reverie. "The son of the Southern Sky set to abscond with the Duke's maiden daughter!"
The boy squeaked as Dycedarg Beoulve swaggered onto the scene, cup in hand and both his brother and Ruvelia's own stumbling after him.
"I wasn't absconding with anybody, ser!" the boy said in a mild panic. "I'd been told…"
"Good lady! We'll lend what aid we can!"
Dycedarg swept over to where Ruvelia sat and knelt before her with all the exaggeration of a player on a pageant wagon.
"Give your poor knights the order and we'll carry the both of you to the priest!" He nearly broke off as he caught himself laughing. "Let us be the merry escort to your elopement!"
Ruvelia plucked the glass from out of his upraised hand as she stood up. Bestrald practically fell over in braying guffaws as she emptied its contents over the edge of the balcony.
"I would prefer my escort be somber were it to be made of you fools." She looked to where the novice astrologer sat quaking. "Don't you lot have any more doomed soldiers to toast downstairs?"
Dycedarg, who had flung himself to the flagstones in grief over the loss of his drink, grinned up at her.
"By the Braves, good lady, is not the most doomed of soldiers before you here: my poor brother's condemned to march east with me this week next, and I've been doing my utmost to pour out a lifetime's worth of cups to counterbalance his misspent youth of temperance and reserve."
Zalbag, whom Ruvelia had barely noticed before he was mentioned, said nothing in response, but leaned instead against the white brick of the castle and held a hand to his face. Dycedarg laughed again as he pulled himself upright.
"It's him you should be absconding with!" He moved to clap Zalbag on the shoulder, which only punctuated his brother's self-evident mortification. "Now that war has stolen him from any pledge to a monastery, it will be a great shame for him to go to his grave like a monk. Give succor to Gallione's son, dear lady—we can't have you running off to barbarous Zeltennia!"
Nobody said anything for a moment—least of all Ruvelia's two unwilling suitors, who were obviously hoping for the joke to end and had been for a while. The little page redoubled his efforts to scan through his treatise, as though the key to escaping the drunken youths surrounding him lay scrawled in some ephemeris.
"Tall words. Aren't the two of you half-barbarian at that rate?" Bestrald finally piped up, cutting the awkward silence with more awkwardity. "Didn't your mother come out of Lionel?"
Dycedarg stopped smiling rather suddenly as the silence resumed. Ruvelia recognized that nobody else would draw this to a close any time soon, and hoping to help things to their end, she took one of the hair ribbons still curled around her fingers and walked over to fold it into Zalbag Beoulve's hand.
"There," she said, "a favor—that's how things go in high romances, after all." She turned to Dycedarg. "We can all discuss who I'm to abscond with after the war."
"Thank you," Zalbag said quietly and with the great deliberation of a drunk man picking his words. "My apologies..."
"No need. I should be getting back downstairs at any rate—I'm sure my chastity will be better guarded under my father's eye."
She turned to leave, hoping everyone would follow and fail to recall this in the morning. As she did so, the little astrologer stood up.
"Wait!"
She looked back to him, and she tossed the other ribbon—balled up and knotted with fidgeting—toward him where he sat.
"I'm sorry I couldn't have my fortune read." She laughed. "Take this for the trouble."
"I'm sorry I didn't have time…" he replied, stumbling towards her as he moved to pick up the article. "I wanted to say though…" He paused, looking up at the quartet of nobles. "I think there's an ill star somewhere under Capricorn for you."
Ruvelia looked at him very warmly as she thanked him. She told him that she would be wary of Capricorns. After returning to the party and awakening to a grey morning full of headaches, however, she little remembered this detail of the night before—nor did she reflect at the time as to how Bamjik's comet had never come.
The late Lady Beoulve had come out of Lionel, and Balbanes had known her for all of three weeks when the two were wed in anticipation of his march towards Viura. He had been nineteen at the time and she four years his junior; he had barely known what to expect from a wife or from a war. When he returned fifteen months later to find himself a father, he had no true expectations as to that either.
In the end, war was what he acclimated to—although he did his best to be kind in his other capacities. Lady Beoulve was denied nothing: an easy enough dictate for a woman who requested so little. Had she ever told him she did not wish to bear him more heirs, he surely would have heeded her. Watching men die by the score out on Ordallia's plains, however, Balbanes had supposed women could not reckon death in ways too dissimilar from men—that it was not exceptional that she should be almost yearly delivered of and then bereft of a child.
He was only present for one birth: a girl born at eight months who was scarcely dragged to the font before she was remitted to heaven. She was called Audomra, named like all the rest of them for southern saints that sounded strange to a Gallione ear. Balbanes had been all tenderness, and he admired something like a soldier's stoicism in how quiet his wife made her griefs. His son was little affected by anything beyond worry for his mother. He had come to understand the promise of younger siblings as one of those polite lies by which parents manage their children.
When Balbanes next departed for the Zelmonian border, his wife was in no way harsh with him. He felt in their final meeting, however, that there was something accusatory in her gaze. Her brown eyes had a shining green cast in the autumn sunlight—something like a coeurl at dusk. He told himself years later that he ascribed too much to it all—that his wife had never made any complaint to him and that he should not read hatefulness into her silences.
Still, more than once in the decades that followed he humiliated himself with slurred half-confessions while in his cups, unburdening to a certain decorated viscount of Zeltennia as he insisted himself a man beset.
"It's the same eyes—Cid—the same eyes—the same expression even. Like a damn cat. It's monstrous, you know, but I wish sometimes I could stay forever on the field so I shouldn't have to return... to have two little ghosts always peering at me."
His friend spoke little in these moments, being a man better used to and better suited to listening. He would let Balbanes spend an evening agonizing over a woman he had barely known and do his best to agree with him that it would be a terrible thing to force his sons ever to marry. Not being married himself—nor in any position to intervene in his friend's domestic affairs—he did not give voice to his own unease: how it seemed clearer and clearer with time that it was not Balbanes' bastards he treated as the cuckoos in House Beoulve's nest.
Author's Notes: Bamjik is a "Magical Duke" living in Igros who is mentioned as being one of Phantom Thief Zero's victims in one of the game's sidequests; Audomra is actually the name of a very minor character of Lionelese origin (the winner of a machinist's competition); the conceit that Lady Beoulve's children are named for "southern saints that sounded strange to a Gallione ear," however, is very much intended as a dig at what terrible names "Dycedarg" and "Zalbag" are.
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