THE CUCKOO: IV

Completed August 1, 2021 (♌︎)

Warning: There are images relating to dead children and reproductive failure in this chapter, and they happen in the middle of a sex scene. No further infant death or child stabbing, however, occurs in the actual narrative here. In addition to this, there are some very awkward and unwelcome sexual advances made that involve coercive threats.

---

It was not yet autumn, and she rode atop a low crested draft bird, its gear jangling as soldiers led it through the muck of the Algost. They had forgone the humiliation of restraining her; the Nanten knew she could not and would not flee. Were it not for the jeering attitude of her escort, Ruvelia might have imagined herself merely a queen riding in a company of knights, in no way regarded as anything less than befitted her station.

The dark-haired boy who led the troop spoke to her little, but she felt that of all the men assembled, he came the closest to courteous. It was a cold courtesy of course. He was escorting her to a prison and not a palace. However, he alone refrained from making any remark as to the subject of her guilt, naming her neither adultress nor malefactor. The sullen youth who wore the late Baron Grimm's colors seemed to understand that what he was doing was ultimately removed from considerations of her guilt or innocence. She supposed she appreciated him a little for that, even if she resented him for having shot her Knight Devout out from under her grasp.

She had stopped wondering by now if Zalbag had died. It was safest—she felt—to assume that he had and to save her anxieties and hopes for her son. When she recalled that moment in the Araguay, it felt the very definition of anticlimax. They had been racing south, away from the anticipated slaughter at Gulofavia and towards the hoped for charity of Lionel. Her arms had clung fast around him as he spurred the bird hard enough that it likely bled for it. The air was thick—both with fog and the sound of insects whining.

When the bolt knocked him from the animal upon which they rode, it did not occur to her how difficult a task it should have been to keep herself from falling.

She did not fall, however.

She had managed by some instinct to make a grab for the reins, and she was shocked more by the rearing of spooked chocobo than the sudden slump and crash of Ivalice's champion away from her. She had felt at the time, that it was almost as though she had lost nothing weightier than the heavy cloak still about her shoulders. The damp air suddenly felt very cool against her skin as she sat atop the bird in solitude. It was a disciplined enough creature that it regained its wits quickly.

"Ruvelia Atkascha, you have been charged by an assembled majority of the senate with conspiracy against the crown princess, with profanation of the king's bedchamber, with…"

The squire reading out the charges went silent as the boy with the crossbow waved for him to stop. He told her that she would accompany them to Bethla, and that if she cooperated, he would see that no harm befell her.

Ruvelia breathed deep, her heart feeling as though it might knock its way out of her ribs. She closed her eyes. Then, she looked down and saw where Zalbag lay collapsed, a wine red bubble on his lips as he sank into the moss and mud below them. He was living still, but he seemed so unlike himself that Ruvelia almost thought him dead even as his chest heaved around the bolt driven into it.

She did her best not to think any further on him when she turned back to Baron Grimm's knight and accepted his escort.

She did her best to think about Orinus.

In all the ride west, as the air and her heart grew cold, that was what she carried with her. It did not do to speculate about General Beoulve or how his family or province might grieve him. It did not do to have any remembrance of childhoods or youths or anything else that they might have shared. Zalbag, once he had been sheared away from her, was like the skin a cicada leaves upon its tree: a phantom of something living—a shape without substance. When Ruvelia thought about all that had happened, she forced her mind to chase that rider spurring west. With every talonfall she was carried into the heart of their enemy's land, she imagined the wide span of leagues that her son flew away from her. She thought back to the palace and to the white walls of Igros and to how she had known at their last parting that she had made the correct decision. For all the selfishness that had been bound up in her final command to her family's retainers, she had really done for once what was best. She had acted exactly as a queen ought: both the queens who feature in fairy stories and the queens who feature in histories.

Ruvelia had been immured in the cold belly of Bethla garrison for two weeks when word reached her that her son was escaped to Romanda, and it was only then that she wept for poor Zalbag Beoulve lying discarded in the Arguay. When she discovered a few days later that the general had somehow dragged himself from out the wood, weathered wounds and fever, and re-emerged to harry the Southern Sky out of Dogula, her manner changed little.

She wept all the harder for it, if anything.

It was well past the harvest, and Igros was rife with whispers as to why the queen should return to her father's home now of all times. Ruvelia Atkascha, escorted only by the barest contingent of Lionsgard, had determined to visit her brother two months out from the end of her pregnancy. The senate was in a seeming furor as she carried the royal heir into the highlands of Gallione along with her and out of the grasp of their concerns.

When Dycedarg greeted the queen, they exchanged no more than a few passing courtesies. He felt it almost impossible to look at her. They had not seen each other for the better part of the year. She had conveyed nothing to him in that interim. When she was brought before him, it wasp like seeing the moon unmoored from its sphere that it might touch your fingertips. She cast her eyes downward as he put his lips to her hand, and it filled him with something like dread. Dycedarg Beoulve, for all he had spent the better part of the year prior committing treason against the king's bed, was suddenly unsettled to have the fruits of all his labor returned to him.

He mentioned his unease to nobody.

The scheme was straightforward enough. By their counting, Ruvelia was one month out rather than the two attested to. The newest Atkascha heir was to see light in the next few weeks, in a place and under circumstances the three of them could control. There would be no queen mother offering sympathies. There would be no strangers sitting by her bedside. If the midwives arranged for fell through, Bestrald was damn well ready to catch his nephew in his own two hands. Ruvelia Atkascha had determined that she would not set foot outside of Gallione until she was safely delivered of her child, and there was self-evident wariness on the part of the two Lionsguard she had been forced to accept as escort.

For a time, the three conspirators passed their time in optimistic denial. There was no whisper of the plan, nor any admission that it should have the potential to diverge from its course. Ruvelia's every whim was obliged, and Bestrald and Dycedarg made merry each night as though this harvest season was no different than any other. They drank deep of old wine and ate all those beasts and birds forbidden Igros' common folk: deer fatted with the autumn's acorns and a great abundance of doves fresh from their annual slaughter. Ruvelia seemed in the meantime to subsist on nothing more than air.

Her brother assured her that he would hunt down the manticore of Lionel if its flesh was what she craved. Ruvelia smiled without thanking him. She ate cates and honeycomb instead of manticores. She walked in long, swaying steps about Igros white halls, circling the great hall like a monk tracing a labyrinth.

For two long weeks, the former lovers spoke little outside of the formalities necessitated by a royal visit. Dycedarg did his utmost to avoid the queen unless Bestrald called upon them to meet. He read. He wrote to the diplomat who now managed Zelmonia in his stead. He spent more time looking after his father than was—perhaps—wise. As each day's passage seemed to further carve the flesh from the old man's bones and sinews, he thought of all the grotesquerie it would be if he should die then of all times. For all Dycedarg little believed in omens, he could not imagine any confluence of two events better suited to signal trouble.

When the queen's visit stretched into a third week, it was clear that she was not well. When there came a message—stamped with her husband's seal—that bade her return, however, she grew frantic.

"They've invented something, and he has let himself be led by it," Bestrald said as he looked over the missive. "I'm sure if it's explained…"

Ruvelia, face ashen and eyes wide, suddenly threw a blue glass decanter to the floor. It shattered and spilled its contents into the long carpet of the study in which the three of them gathered. Bestrald went mute as Dycedarg stooped to pick up the larger pieces of the vessel and set them on the table.

"Fret not, your highness," he said blithely. "Neither the cordial nor the container were of any great worth."

It was only partly a lie. For all the glass might date back to Omdoria I and the drink to one of Fovoham's better harvests, he cared little about their loss. Ruvelia clasped her hands around her belly, shuddering hard as the sweep of some little limb dragged a line through the fabric of her gown.

When Dycedarg laid his hand over it to set it smooth, it seemed a great shock to everyone present that he met with no rebuke.

"The best explanation—I think—is that the queen is early delivered of the king's heir," he said. "There's still time in which that might be made true, no?"

Bestrald shook his head. "If you want a chemist to—"

"No," Ruvelia said hoarsely. "I'm not… I'm not poisoning him out of me."

Dycedarg let his gaze trace the edges of the purple stain on the floor, wondering morbidly who might someday take it as something worse than wine.

"If I might be so bold, your highness, there are gentler means that might be tried."

Bestrald raised an eyebrow.

"It's no poison, in any event," Dycedarg continued, stroking his beard, "although I concede you might reckon a man poisonous."

Ruvelia remained pale as her brother's face flushed. Dycedarg took it that his meaning was known.

"Don't forget yourself," Bestrald said, obviously taking some affront that Dycedarg should feel entitled to resume the work once commanded of him. "This is not some occasion for you to—

"—to what, Bestrald?" Ruvelia snapped. "Do you suddenly have qualms about this?" She laughed. "If you're going to mistrust the motives of a man you commanded me to fuck, you might as well spend your ire on that dullard in Lesalia."

Bestrald offered no response, but he crumpled the edge of the crown's letter in his hand. Dycedarg, not wanting to overstep in that moment any further than he already had, moved towards the wine cupboard to look for something with which he might replace the lost decanter.

He landed on a bottle that had come into his possession during the most recent round of peace talks out in Zelmonia—something from the far eastern lands past where the Ordallian continent ran against the sea. He figured that whatever was about to happen, it fit well to toast it with a rare vintage.

Ruvelia's gaze was still locked on Bestrald as Dycedarg poured himself a glass.

"I can leave, if either of your highness and your grace would further discuss matters alone." The wine was red and strong—sweeter than he was used to and tasting of a spice he couldn't place. "I did not mean to make any claims to service not befitting me."

When nobody spoke, he finished the glass very quickly and moved towards the door.

"Don't hesitate to send for me if—"

"Bestrald!" He turned and found Ruvelia had pulled herself up to lean against the edge of the long table. Her brother's dumbfounded expression still hadn't changed.

"Leave us, Bestrald."

The Duke of Gallione opened his mouth as if to speak, and then he said nothing and he left the room. As he passed where Dycedarg stood, the two men in no way regarded one another.

Once they were alone, he waited for her to say something. When she merely stood there trembling, he shut the hasp on the door and listened until the echo of the Duke's footsteps were gone.

"I could try to bring you to some place more comfortable, if you'd like," he said, scanning the courtyard beyond the window. "Tell me what you want of me, and I'll see it done."

"Here is well enough," she whispered.

He drew the office's single, long curtain closed. She did not incline towards him when he turned to her, but when he caught her in his arms, she met the violence of his hands and lips upon her with equal force.

Ruvelia did her best not to cry, for all each compounded indignity of her life seemed aimed to draw tears from her. She did not want—at first—to think about the heir to House Beoulve rubbing his stubbled face against her skin or consider the scent of alcohol which clung about him. She did not want to think of the writhing weight within her and how it kicked against the weight atop her. She wanted to think of nothing. When Dycedarg kissed her, breath and eyes burning, she imagined she might drink all those humors that lent him fire and warm herself by them. The floor upon which she was half pinned was horribly cold where stone met her skin. The cloak and couch pillow they'd stuffed under her back had quite collapsed from their original position.

Ruvelia's skin prickled as he tugged apart the front and side laces of her gown that he might expose her breasts, and she gasped as he buried his face in them, hands tracing her flanks and inevitably coming round to caress the swell of her belly. She was angry that he should make her aware of the vastness of her body even as she moaned and rocked against him. It was like being in a fever to be touched again.

Her face was hot now. Her breasts were hot. Dycedarg's mouth was on her and she thought to ask him if her milk was early come in—it would be a good sign if it were. She tugged her fingers into his hair instead, wrenching him close as he pulled up the hem of her dress. Her mind fell away to shapes then—to purple flowers staining her fingertips as she tore them—to soft lumps of shapeless flesh and little webbed bones caught in a gel of her blood. She had read once that bears must lick their cubs until they have their form: that they had no face with which to breathe until their mother gave them one.

The floor beneath her was still very cold for all the rest of her was burning, and she sobbed as Dycedarg pulled apart her thighs.

"Are you well?" he whispered. He went still, and for a moment the only thing that moved was the body shifting within Ruvelia's own.

"I think I shall die," she groaned. "What else can I do but die?"

"You shall do no such thing."

"Please…"

He did not ask for further invitation. He'd undone his laces by then, and Ruvelia felt the push of his cock, hard and hot as anything else, at the edges of her sex. She bit her tongue as he slowly leaned into her, each gradation of the act leaving her feeling fuller than she thought she might be filled.

"You are not going to die, and the child is not going to die," Dycedarg said, shifting his weight slowly as he tried to feel out how best to maneuver himself. He gasped when she suddenly tensed.

The weight and size of him within her was so different than it once had been. She tried to imagine some place where none of this was happening or some future where it all had happened. She choked a little as she tried to measure out the pace of her breathing.

"They want us to die, you know." He pulled back slowly before his hips snapped back in a sharp thrust. "They want us to finish dying for their war and their vanities so that they can rear up a bloodless, pale brood who won't remember their sins."

She gasped as he hilted into her again, her body twisting as she yearned that he should drive deeper into it.

"It's been more than fifty years, you know—closer to sixty now." His fingers were in her hair; his lips hot against her neck. "Men with grandchildren have gone to their graves having never seen a world at peace."

They'd found a rhythm now, even if Dycedarg seemed intent to punctuate everything with speechmaking. Ruvelia tried to puzzle through if she should respond to anything he said, but her mind came away from it with each new motion—with the white aching heat that accompanied each thrust.

"They have been bleeding us all our lives, Rue, and we haven't died of it. They made us all to fight and bear them up more fighters—to fall into place that we might carry their names into a future not built for us."

In voice and in action, he was increasingly frantic now, and she was not far behind him. As awkward an affair as it was, she bucked her hips up to meet him, biting her lip as she tried to stay silent. Each rocking motion seemed to carry his words closer to her, even as it carried their meaning away. She realized that he had never heard the man speak with the weight of so much concern before.

"You won't die and you won't fall, Ruvelia Atkascha, because I know you hate them as much as I do."

She did—God she did. His hands were on her hips now; they circled round her back. She closed her eyes as she felt something within her pull tight and tangle against itself. Ruvelia winced as there came a sharp ache in the muscles below her ribs, as her mind slipped to all the creatures in the senate and palace she wished she could tear apart alongside her. She moaned hard.

"Let this kingdom burn to the rotted ground, and we'll make merry in its ashes." His voice was frenzied now. She heard it crack. "You will live and this child will live to ruin them."

Ruvelia pulled against him hard then. The joint of one of her hips began to pain her for her efforts, and she laughed as he buried his face once more against her that she might not see it. For however little she thought his grief originated with her, Ruvelia felt flush and full with the mastery of having wounded something, and all her thoughts sank into her body and moved within it. Everything dissolved into the fire in her belly and the gallop of her heartbeat.

He rode her fast as she cried out, and when no sound came from her lips she recognized them as being stuffed full with the flesh of his hand. She bit him. What else could she do? As the great knot within her splintered and undid itself, Ruvelia tore the thing in her mouth until her lips were wet with the taste of iron and salt. When Dycedarg finally came, it was with the choked off gasping of a creature trying to stifle its own pain.

Ruvelia remembered a rabbit she'd once seen taken, thrashing against its snare after so many moments lying as if it were already given over to death. The animal came back to her as she lay there, her gown clinging to her sweat slick body as she felt the heat seep back out of it. Many things came back. She thought her last child's face—grey and ruined. She thought of the silver ornaments in her hair when she was given over to Lesalia. She thought of the meadows that lay between Igros and the woods and the sea, of the places where she had hidden from her frightened nurses in her girlhood, of all those fantasies she had once had of persisting without need of a husband or a cloister. She thought of things never given voice to—of fairer compacts never made. She thought of the way the sky must look outside the covered window, and whether it would rain.

She imagined—as she gave herself over to tears again—that it would be some sort of good fortune if it rained.

When next she heard Dycedarg Beoulve speak her name, he seemed in something of a panic. She imagined him upset that he shouldn't just be able to plow a child out of her like a farmer pulling up krakka, and it took her a little time to recall that she'd wetted her face with his blood. She tried to pull herself upright in the hopes of making an apology for that or else for having made it through all his efforts unchanged.

He was quick to catch her when she felt it: the shifting fall of a weight into the valley of her hips.

The first pains did not find her until they were well into the night, but she was soon after too ill to travel. When Orinus Atkascha took his first breath, it was under the cloudless sky of Gallione.

It was autumn once more, and Lesalia glowed in the dark of the November night. The heavens dotted with stars and sky candles as the kingdom celebrated. The crown prince had expressed his pleasure with the display most enthusiastically, although he would have turned the whole affair rather somber had he not been thwarted in his attempt to fling himself from a balcony in pursuit of one of the lanterns. Even with Omdoria's completely anticipated absence, everything and everyone at court seemed bright. The war had finally died. A prince had finally lived. Whatever councilors and lords might plot tomorrow, all had reason to be glad in one of those two victories, and the gaiety that pervaded the imperial palace was—for the most part—sincere.

House Beoulve seemed no exception to this rule for all they still wore mourners' weeds. The elder children were subject to continual toasts and accolades for their respective contributions to the coming peace; the younger children had found themselves in the capital for the first time and had been almost at liberty to explore it. As the fete wore on through the evening and the largesse of the Atkaschas' wine cellars began to dwindle, the atmosphere grew jovial to the point that social decorum and demarcation bled for it. Bestrald Larg seemed increasingly eager—as the night wore on—to see that every minor lord and knight had a chance to marvel at his newest nephew. It soon became evident that any creature with noble blood stood a chance of being made to hold the over-exhausted birthday child should they come too far into the Duke of Gallione's orbit.

Ramza Beoulve, having little head for his own nobility, was very much caught off guard when he found the heir to Ivalice's crown shoved into his arms. He had not recognized how drunk Gallione's lord was nor paid attention to the circumstances of any of his prior victims. All he could truly do at the moment was try not to drop the little creature who immediately set to gumming his sleeve—leaving a milky slug slime trail that he knew would show poorly on the black of his shirt.

He turned to his better bred siblings with a pleading look. Alma was the first to respond, and it was much to Ramza's relief that the prince immediately preferred her to his last handler. When Dycedarg stepped over to join them, it seemed to be only with the practical aim to get his lordship to stop handing a baby so liberally to people. Orinus busied himself in the meantime by trying to devour his hand.

When her brother—objecting to his friend's interference—heaped any number of ridiculous blazons on the future king's name, the queen quietly took the opportunity to leave the child's side for the first time that evening. She was—for once—not the center of attention. For the first time in a long while, she slipped through a gathered crowd without being stopped or even much noticed. Zalbag Beoulve, who had not joined his converging family and had kept himself relatively aloof from the rest of the revelers all evening, was rather surprised to look up from his barely touched glass and find Ruvelia Atkascha at his side.

"Would you walk with me, General?"

Her voice was very soft, but some soldier's instinct in Zalbag seemed to recognize it as a command.

And so they walked.

The palace gardens were not without other celebrants, but the pair of them were little noticed as Ruvelia led her companion through a maze of boxwood and into the seclusion of its center, where the only light left to watch them was the moon. There were statues of horses there, rearing as chocobos do when startled. Zalbag did not recognize their riders for all they must have been past royalty or generals.

He knew, even before she spoke, that this was not a place where he ought to be on that night.

"What are you thinking of doing after the war, Zalbag?"

"I lead the Hokuten now, your majesty."

"Your majesty?" she laughed. "Did we grow up together only so that you could call me 'your majesty?'"

Zalbag looked over his shoulder, back towards the palace.

"I suppose we did grow up together after a fashion."

"Call me by my name then." She drew near to him. "Call me Rue even."

"If your majesty wishes it."

"You wound me, you know," She laughed again. "I don't believe I can think of any other man in that court from whom I'd suffer this."

"I'm sorry, Rue."

"That's better." She ran a hand along one of her tight-coiled braids. "I'd be liable to tumble off a balcony myself tonight if I really thought you'd forgotten me. After all of these years, I certainly hadn't forgotten you."

"I didn't know I'd made such an impression."

They were facing one another now, and Zalbag could trace very clearly now the line between the Ruvelia of his present and the one of his youth. She seemed very little a queen under present circumstances.

"Don't you remember?" The laughter seemed to fall away from her voice, although her mood still was merry. "We were supposed to abscond after the war."

Zalbag's initial reaction to the statement was one of confusion, and he could feel the weight of Ruvelia's gaze as he struggled to recall whatever it was that she could be referring to. It eventually came back to him piecemeal: a goblet refilled despite his protests, the Duke's daughter looming over his brother as he laughed, the soft nap of the red hallway carpet against his face before he was finally extricated from the floor and moved into a morning of sickness.

"Were we?" he finally said, not quite yet having puzzled the answer.

"Not really..." She sighed. "...I've long considered it a fine sort of fairy story, however, that you should grow to be a hero and I a queen."

Zalbag was increasingly uneasy with the direction the conversation was headed, for all he had a pang of nostalgia to remember waking up twelve years prior with a purple ribbon knotted around his wrist.

"I hardly think the past decade has been a fairy story, Ruvelia," he said soberly.

Even in nothing more than moonlight, Zalbag could see the shimmer of teardrops gathering at the corners of Ruvelia's eyes. She pressed against him very suddenly, and he wasn't able to dodge.

"I know..." His body stiffened as she embraced him, warm. "...but I would very much have liked some part of my life to have been one."

Zalbag stifled any number of impulses then—to recoil, to push her away, to return the embrace as must be expected of him. However little appetite he had for what was unfolding, he knew there were many things expected in tales of heroes and queens.

"You should speak to your husband on it, your majesty," he said quietly after a while. "I'm afraid I cannot—."

He had been off his guard for the embrace, and he was no more ready for what happened next. When Ruvelia Atkasha, queen of Ivalice and trueborn sister to his liege lord, pulled him into a desperate kiss, Zalbag went still as one of the statues looming over him.

It was a long few seconds before he shoved her aside. He tried not to look at her expression as he turned to leave.

"I must be going." His voice was cold. "You want something that can't be had of me."

She grabbed him by the arm. She was clearly upset.

"I can't be here, Rue," he continued, trying to brush her off. "Forgive me if I led you into this folly in some way."

"Are you afraid, then?"

"Everyone should fear sin." He took a deep breath. "I should not like to take on ones of your making in addition to my own—not with a war's worth of them."

"Women have their own wars, Zalbag," she replied with obvious venom, "and nobody names us saviors of Ivalice no matter how much we bleed for them."

He did not move, nor did he answer her. He felt very miserable, and he almost wished he could betray God, king, and self alike to better fit the fable demanded of him.

"Kiss me again," Ruvelia whispered, "or I'll scream."

Zalbag turned and looked at her, and as it became evident that he would not obey, she fell silent and loosed her grip on him.

There was a low cough then and a little squeal. Ruvelia wiped her face with her sleeve as Dycedarg turned the corner of the hedge maze, the royal infant held fast in his arms as it merrily babbled and tugged at what portions of his face were within reach.

"Pardon me for any interruption," he said icily. "I've been charged by your brother with getting this back to you."

Zalbag felt himself go pale as he began to guess at how much had been overheard. He could see Ruvelia inhale sharply as she balled her hands into fists.

"A less than ideal trade, I know," Dycedarg said. "Zalbag is quite evidently the better behaved of the two."

Orinus gave a wild shriek before Ruvelia could offer any retort, and Dycedarg visibly winced as the child pulled his fist away with a few strands of his hair to point at the sky.

Zalbag looked up.

There, against what darkness escaped the glow of the city below, shone a streak of light, cutting across the sky like a scar.

---

Author's Notes: The notion that bears are born as little flesh blobs and must be licked into shape comes from Guillaume de Deguileville's The Pylgremage of the Sowle. There are, apparently, horses somewhere in Ivalice if you believe the original Playstation manual's claims that Delita's father was a horse breeder. If you want to be a dork, the wine comes from exactly where you think it comes from.

---

PREV | NEXT BACK