Happy 19th Anniversary, Final Fantasy Tactics

I.

The March of the Black Queen

It was over four hundred years ago.

In those days, recall, that our continent of Loar largely consisted of a kingdom that we then also called Ivalice; a kingdom separated into six regions all too soon to be unified by the great hero who began Ivalice's next “golden age.”

In the continent's center lay Lesalia, the royal seat; the others branched from that center, be it Fovoham to the north, proud Gallione to the west, broken Zeltennia to the east, or Limberry and Lionel to the south west and south respectively. These were political divisions, rather than geographical; but in spirit if not in deed they all carried three great similarities: they answered to the Royal City of Lesalia and their king Ondoria III, they all knelt before the Church of Glabados, and they were all desperately poor. For in that time, the kingdom had not yet recovered from the scars of The Fifty Years' War with Ordallia to the east.

This last fact was held in contention for some years, as written documents of the era were largely recorded by learned men and the nobility – and there was no greater time to be noble than in the wake of a war. Coffers were overstuffed in the case of those who sent others to fight. One particularly noteworthy example was just months before the official declaration of the end of hostilities—the church, a wealthy body itself, hosted an opulent baptism ceremony for the newly-born royal baby, and it seemed all of Ivalice's ruling class was in attendance, even as many fields lay fallow and bones bleached in the dried Lake Poescas beds.

***

The wheels turned, and the goldleaf herald, the twin lions, emblazoned on the carriage's door was spattered with mud. Inside, a powerful woman brushed her long blonde hair back behind her without tipping her crown; she prepared to seize her destiny, unknowing that it would seize her instead.

The War of the Lions began and ended each with a miracle.

Queen Louveria Atkascha's eyes instinctively went to the newborn baby in the nurse's arms as the carriage bumped hard over something in the marsh. Then, catching herself, she turned instead towards the fourth and final passenger, whose gaze hadn't left the window.

“Must they jostle us so?”

The man, whose eyes were partially obscured by the elaborate, elongated-skull shape of his dragoon's helmet, showed what most would find to be a scandalous lack of protocol in not turning to acknowledge his queen. “The Siedge Weald is rough terrain for all, your majesty. It can't be helped, save we saddle you to a chocobo directly.”

“Disgusting.” She sniffed. “If I must be dragged halfway across Ivalice on this errand, I shan't be doing it birdback.” The nurse made a little gasp, and it was all Louveria could do not to roll her eyes. The nurse was lowborn and Galgastani besides; the Queen was nearly surprised she could understand basic sentences. Now she was to believe the woman was also a believer in St. Ajora?

The baby gurgled in a way that seemed prelude to a peal.

“You seem quite entranced with the view, Ser Garland, given the Siedge Weald is naught but a damp forest at best.” And of the season, far worse. With the brief melting of the snows in the Felmarian Highlands around Gollund and a higher-than-average rainfall, areas south and downriver of the Highlands were practically marshland. The chocobo train leading the carriage kept slowing as it would moor and unmoor itself in the mud that had once been the only cleared roadway through the forest.

The captain of the Lionsguard's lip turned up slightly. “Your majesty, we have come separated from our escort.”

It had been the tradition of the Ivalician royal family for generations that the Queen herself would take her firstborn to the Church of Glabados's seat at Mullonde in person to be baptized. In the hypothetical, it was meant to signify royalty's continued alliance with the church as much as it did a celebration of the child's birth. In truth, Louveria considered it a power play by church officials, that royalty would come to them, rather than vice versa. That the twenty-seven year-old queen alone need attend was what galled the most; that it was viewed as less aggressive because she was, to be pointed, less important.

Historically, the king still did travel to Mullonde with his queen. But Louveria's own husband, of course, was quite ill.

They had left the Royal City of Lesalia in gay pageantry and a hundred strong. By Gollund, however, much of that group had peeled away. Traveling in such numbers was often harder than in fewer. Her official decree to the people had been that in war's wake, the people of Ivalice did not need to see soldiers marching in their streets, regardless of the reason; but in truth, Louveria just didn't see the point in parading for the rabble. They'd not appreciate what they saw, anyway. But they'd still kept a company of twenty in the interest of security, a half-dozen of those mounted – they, at least, had been able to keep pace with the carriage. But now they were missing.

The baby began to cry.

“We shouldn't have come through the Weald,” she muttered. Garland shook his head.

“We'd no choice, if we didn't want to travel through desert.” The Siedge Weald ran through the southeast borders of Gallione – taking the mountain pass and traveling through the Merchant City of Dorter was the only southern path that didn't wind through climes that, to put it mildly, would put the newborn at risk. They could have traveled northwest of Lesalia, through Fovoham, but then they'd be favoring the Grand Duke Barrington's hospitality over that of the Merchant's Guilds, and the royal family had just levied higher taxes upon them, so...

If she was to die in a bog, please let it not be for such dull politicking.

Ser Garland thumped the outside of the carriage with one gauntlet and it rolled to a stop. Louveria could hear the birds warking and kwehing at the sudden stop in dangerous territory. He swung out with the door and closed it behind him, his face appearing in the open window. “Tarry here, your majesty.” And then he was gone.

Louveria turned to the nurse, who was trying to quiet the newborn. Until he was baptized in the name of the Great Father Faram and St. Ajora, the baby boy was nameless: a quaint tradition no doubt spurred by the number of children lost in the birthing.

“There there, wee one.” The nurse rocked him. “Your mum's just worried for your pa, that's all, no need to weep so.” The boy showed no signs of ceasing. In his wailing face, Louveria could almost see his true father's eyes, and she shuddered.

“There are goblins that have encamped in these woods before,” Louveria offered. “The Order of the Northern Sky has been trying to weed them out for years, but with so many at war all this time...”

The nurse, whose name was Eilonwy, rocked the boy. She had the darker skin of the Galgastani people, but something hawkish in her features suggested Romandan blood as well. She'd been plucked, apparently, from a kitchen somewhere. “Perhaps it's the moogles.” This to the child. “Long, long ago, these woods were full of the wee flying little beasties. Yes they were!” Louveria didn't give this fairy tale more attention than it deserved, smoothing out her dress and taking deep breaths. If it was going to happen, it'd likely happen... now.

There was some muffled shouting outside the carriage. She tried to see what there was to see from the window, but there was naught but a bubbling circle of what looked like gray mold, beneath a hunched tree resembling a gallows. How auspicious. Ser Garland was a celebrated veteran of the Fifty Years War, having served some degrees beneath Barbaneth Beoulve himself in the Order of the Northern Sky. She knew he would not fail her. But that sight from her window did give her pause.

“Your majesty?” The nurse, apparently quite scared, forgot her place. “Would you like to hold him?”

Before Louveria could reply, a man in the night screamed in what could only be his death.

They both looked to each other, then to separate windows. There was nothing there but the sour haze of the Weald, but they each of them kept squinting out, trying to catch a flash of steel. Because it had certainly come upon them now. There were men warring in the muck. The grunts and crashes carried. It didn't sound like magick, which was blessing enough – a stray fire spell was like to ignite the gases swimming in every popped mold bubble. It was said there was fungus in these woods that could kill with a breath.

“Is it bandits, your majesty, or the goblins?” asked the nurse.

“I can see no more than you, Eilonwy.” Most importantly, the fighting was still in a single direction, and those sounds moved no closer. She sat back and closed her eyes, thinking and counting.

“I am quite sure Ser Garland will protect us.” The baby seemed less sure, as he was howling. Her little minotaur. “T'isn't fair.”

“There's little 'fair' in a bandit's design, Eilonwy.” She said the woman's name the way that one might idiot.

“No, your majesty, I just meant...” She looked down at the boy. “That they'd hate you so, just for St. Ajora placing you above us all.”

Queen Louveria's mouth opened and closed, but no sound was forthcoming.

And then a corpse attacked the carriage.

Eilonwy shrieked and Louveria lurched backwards as a man's body slammed hard against the side of the carriage, rocking it and (in the moment) making Louveria believe it might tip. Its face was pressed against the window, or at least... half... was. She could see the man's skull, part of it, from where the flesh had been peeled back by blade, and the empty socket seemed to swallow her.

The boy had, oddly, stopped crying. Queen Louveria Atkascha knew that were the dead to rise, they could find worse targets for their rage than she.

And then the corpse was falling backwards, and Ser Garland was standing at the carriage's riding board, slapping again the outside, and the chocobos were moving, at a much faster, more frantic pace despite the uneven footing. Eilonwy clutched the boy closer to her bosom, and Louveria's nails gripped the fabric of her seat.

“Your majesty, we are betrayed!” From his place riding alongside, Garland called in to her. “They were of our own company!”

“Our escort?” She asked.

“Over half, bought by some unknown enemy!”

“They smell blood in the water.” Louveria crossed her arms. “Fools to a man, they are. The king's health improves by the day.” Eilonwy brightened at this, and offered her a smile and a nod. “But who in the kingdom could even offer the coin to turn members of the Lionsguard?” The Lionsguard, naturally the personal guard of the Ivalice royal family, was not merely a prestigious position, but one appointed only to war heroes like Ser Garland; and ones in noble families not well-enough connected to be threatening, at that.

“Perhaps we should indeed have gone north through Fovoham after all,” Garland muttered, but something in his tone of voice caught Eilonwy's curious attention. Louveria almost smiled. Then she saw the boy looking at her, and something in his gaze was like the dead eyes of the man who'd hit the carriage door.

***

The beginning of the Fifty Years' War can be traced to the death of Ordallia's King Devanne III, and his failure to name a successor. His cousin, Varoi VI, was next in line for the throne; however, King Denamda II of Ivalice—the uncle of Devanne III—proclaimed himself the rightful heir and declared war on neighboring Ordallia to the east.

However, this was merely a pretense to justify the invasion of the Ordallian province of Zelmonia, which bordered Zeltennia—of which it had, centuries earlier, been a part. Long an independent state, it had been annexed by Ordallia nearly a century prior. Ivalice had since been aiding the province in an effort to weaken Ordallia—an effort that ultimately failed. Tired of Ordallian rule, the Zelmonian leadership and nobility secretly petitioned Ivalice to take a more direct hand in their liberation.

After a victory in Zelmonia, the Ivalician armies marched on the Ordallian capital of Viura. As fate would have it, Denamda II succumbed to fatal illness on the road. The momentary confusion amongst Ivalice's troops gave Ordallia the opportunity it needed to regroup, and Varoi VI succeeded in pushing the Ivalicians back as far as Zelmonia. The resulting impasse would not be broken until the Romandan army's invasion two years hence.

Romanda, a powerful military state to the northwest lying across the Rhana Strait from Gallione, marched on Ivalice at the behest of Varoi VI, a blood relation of the Romandan nobility. However, Denamda II's successor Denamda IV was a fearless warrior, personally leading his men into battle against the combined might of Romanda and Ordallia. This, along with an outbreak of the Black Death in Romanda, forced the Romandan army to withdraw after only three years.

Two military orders worthy of particular mention in this conflict are the Order of the Northern Sky, led by Knight Gallant Barbaneth Beoulve, and that of the Southern Sky, led by Cidolfus Orlandeau, known also as the Thunder God.

After countless victories at home, these two orders had been poised to advance into Ordallia. However, the protracted conflict had begun to take its toll on domestic morale. Peasant uprisings and revolts throughout Ivalice and Ordallia forced both countries to send their troops home to pacify their own citizens, resulting in another stalemate.

It was Denamda IV's sudden death by malady that broke the stalemate, although some claim that he was murdered. His successor, Ondoria III, was ill suited to the throne, and left the governing of Ivalice to his queen and retainers. Without Denamda IV's leadership, the armies of Ivalice had little prayer of preventing Varoi VI's successor, Prince Lennard, from defeating the troops stationed in Zelmonia and advancing into Ivalice proper. Despite the valiant efforts of the Northern and Southern Orders, Ivalice's leaders soon began looking for a peaceful alternative.

***

Mullonde Cathedral was the figurine at the center of the confection that was Mullonde itself, a small island in the south of Gallione, where the Black Coral Sea opened up into the Bugross. The entire island was taken over with what they called the “Holy City,” a series of tiered pavilions and hanging gardens that hid away the Glabados Church's infrastructure. From the causeway where Queen Louveria stood holding her newborn son, it looked like a sliding-tile puzzle that she'd been gifted as a child, an image scrambled into tiny squares.

It was a labyrinth, or a fortress, in architectural evening wear.

The rest of the ride to Mullonde had been uneventful. When they'd reached the Magick City of Gariland, they'd had an evening to rest before the few hours ride to Port Asyton on the coast, where they'd boarded a ferry that had been prepared and waiting, gilded and festooned to make of great import its toted cargo: two women, one important; a half-score of tired men; and one wailing infant. She'd taken the child from Eilonwy then, so that onlookers would see the queen bring her own son before Faram the Great Father with her own hands – and so that the rattled nurse could find wherever it was the poor people hid in the City of God to tell them of their great adventure in the forest.

A change of clothes later, and she now waited in the open air, looking over the one part of Ivalice that held itself to the authority of no kingdom but heaven. Since she had taken him, the boy had not cried. He was not as heavy as Louveria had suspected, and warmer. So warm.

Ser Garland stood by the door in silence, but it would not do for the queen of all Ivalice to enter the cathedral proper on the arm of an unknown guardsman. And so it was that her escort arrived in gleaming silver armor, a single line of sweat running down into his goatee.

“Your majesty.” Zalbaag Beoulve, Knight Devout of the Order of the Northern Sky, knelt low before her. Zalbaag was not unattractive, but his countenance was more noble than handsome. He was tall and his red hair was cut too short, out of a no-doubt misguided sense of battlefield necessity. His armor, however, was far more ceremonial than whatever he no doubt wore when he was cleaving heads at the Ordallian border. It was, in fact, his father's armor – she'd seen it often enough before – and it was perhaps a size too large for him, though that did not prevent him from moving gracefully as he swept his cape behind him on the way to his knees. It did make him look younger than he was, though – she was struck by the absurd thought that he was a year her elder, and yet had done more to win the people by age eighteen than she'd yet managed at all. Following in the footsteps of his father.

“You may rise, Ser Beoulve.” Louveria offered a gracious nod of her head. The previous king, a far more martial ruler, had been grandiose in his claim of Zalbaag as “the savior of Ivalice” after some skirmish or other, but he came from one of the best-bred families in the kingdom, and was known to be a man entirely without guile. “Until it is time, we give you leave to be at ease.” He stood, but did not relax. She'd expected little else. “Please, join us here at the edge of the causeway.” She took a step aside so that he'd come up to the edge and look out, as she had. “We were just admiring the hanging gardens, as we so rarely have chance to visit Mullonde. It is all so much more ostentatious than our cathedral in Lesalia.”

Zalbaag did not take the bait. “It is said the step formation represents the path upwards to sainthood, your majesty, and the winding spread suggests the temptation to stray, that each of us must avoid.” His word choice was careful, in that he did not contradict her. She graced him with a small chuckle. The baby rustled against her bosom.

“We would hear of your father.” Louveria found herself bouncing the boy a bit without even thinking about it. “Fathers and sons are very much of our mind of late, for quite obvious reasons.”

Zalbaag's head bowed, and he suddenly looked more tired. That spoke more honestly than what he offered in dialogue. “Lord Father is often ill of late, but he serves you without cease even from his bed. As Count Orlandeau meets with Prince Lennard's general Lanselot, letters exchanged between he and my father serve as his counsel at the peace table, or so I am told.”

She graciously offered Zalbaag a nod. As Knight Gallant and commander of the Order of the Northern Sky, Lord Barbaneth Beoulve should stand as her escort this day in the stead of the king. She idly wondered if he suffered the same malady as her own King Ondoria Atkascha III. “We are to understand some of the court think it less a peace than a surrender, Ser Zalbaag.”

Zalbaag's mouth opened, but something caught in his throat. Ah, how cruel of her!

In truth, after the sudden death of King Denamda IV, much of the spirit left Ivalice's forces, despite the charisma and example of its two leaders, and all the kingdom knew it. If so many of the knights had not needed to be recalled to deal with unrest at home, who was to say how the conflict would have ended? But of course, Zalbaag could not say so to the queen, certainly not without insulting the current king, who was so often ill that the burden of rule fell to Louveria herself.

Zalbaag's face finally restored some of its color. “I remember, your majesty, when I was younger, my father brought my brother and I to your grounds and we all made sport of a hunt together.”

She smiled. “We remember as well, Ser Zalbaag, and think on that day fondly. Though we admit surprise that you do as well, for as we recall, you did not enjoy that day as we had.”

He looked out to the hanging gardens. “I only mention this memory, your majesty, to provide context for my claim that I'd not known you one to surrender anything.”

And on that puzzling remark she'd be forced to dwell, as a page swung open the doors. It was time to be announced.

***

Prince Lennard of Ordallia was not an exceptional martial mind himself; he was instead a gifted orator, who won his people with talk of liberating the “holy land” of Zeltennia and Lesalia, at the border of which lay Bervenia, the city where St. Ajora was said to be born. It is believed the stratagem originated with his general, Lanselot Tartaros, who hailed from what we now know as Valendia. Concern that Ivalice had no right to St. Ajora's birthplace was met with fierce opposition from the Church of Glabados's Knights Templar, but the people of Ordallia in that era were ostensibly Reformed Pharist, and viewed St. Ajora not as a redeemer, but as an important prophet, and did not recognize the Church of Glabados.

In our own era we may find something quaint in the thought of Reformed Pharism, that one might well claim as easily that Kiltia sects had turned the world's stage to this new face. However, historians have of late unearthed records suggesting perhaps a tenth of Ordallians in that era actually practiced the outdated religion. Prince Lennard's accusations of the Church of Glabados were instead a means of projecting Ivalicians as the Other; he might as easily have said that they were practitioners of the Dark, for that is how his people took it.

In the sum of world events the concerns of faith are mooted by the politics of faith's influence. For while faith moves man, life everlasting exists only for the remembered. Faram's power is absolute, but man's is transient. The body is but a vessel for the soul, a puppet which bends to the soul's tyranny. And lo, the body is not eternal, for it must feed on the flesh of others, lest it return to the dust whence it came. Therefore must the soul deceive, despise, and murder men.

***

For the son of the queen, no less than the High Confessor Marcel Funebris—the leader of all the church—could perform the rite of baptism. At his side stood Cardinal Alphonse Delacroix, who himself had served in the war with distinction in earlier years. Delacroix handed the baby from Louveria to the High Confessor, who took him gently and looked right through her. Funebris was a very old man, and his sunken eyes were dimmer than the candlelight dancing across his high forehead, but his grip on the boy was firm and strong.

“Queen Louveria Atkascha, we receive this child into the arms of the Church of Glabados, that he may know the gift of life everlasting. Have you chosen a name for this child?”

“Yes, he is the Prince Orinus Atkascha, named for my father's father, named for the disciple of St. Ajora, for the Zodiac Brave.” Louveria daren't turn or look away from the High Confessor, but she knew that the cathedral was full of nobles judging her every breath and action. And she could feel her brother's eyes boring into her back.

“Queen Louveria Atkascha, do you believe in Faram, the Great Father, creator of heaven and earth?”

Louveria knew that at this moment, in Lesalia, as her husband the king slept in his room, attended by white mages and chiurgeons, a man was strolling through their courtyards, running his hands softly along the leaves and branches of the plants in their gardens. Divari and Hedychium, Leucojum and her precious Prima and Moon Bloom flowers. In one corner there lay one of the last known Agathis trees, and this man liked to sit beneath it to meditate and divine.

“I do,” she said, and High Confessor Funebris anointed her son with oil. Behind them was the cathedral reredos, an altarpiece depicting the infant St. Ajora, floating above a well with arms stretched out – the Miracle of the Warding. There was someone behind the reredos. She couldn't see them, but somehow she knew. Someone listening, or waiting.

“Queen Louveria Atkascha, do you believe in the blessed St. Ajora, who drove the demons from our world and then died as our redeemer?”

This man in Lesalia beneath the Agathis tree, whose name was Stark, was the Court Astrologer. An adept whose powerful magicks could read the Zodiac and seemed to make the stars themselves move in his auguries. He was the keeper of all the secrets. But his powers were of no consequence to pollen of the Faren flower, which was virulently poisonous even mixed into the midday repast. It was known as a sudden killer. An old man already, Stark would seem to have suffered an attack of the heart as he fell to the ground beneath his beloved tree.

“I do,” she said, and High Confessor Funebris consecrated her son and lowered him into the shallow water. The figure that she could not see behind the reredos did not move, did not seem to breathe. She assumed it was one of the Knights Templar; the guardians of Mullonde, the strong arm of Glabados that punished the heretics and asserted the church's authority. She assumed it was such because in Mullonde, it was assumed they were everywhere.

“Queen Louveria Atkascha, do you renounce evil in all its forms? In man, monster, or Lucavi?”

Louveria knew at this moment that in the Grogh Heights, the farmlands north of Lesalia that provided the royal city with its food, a healer was walking the well-trod path to Yardrow, summoned to a noble's home for treatment. Tall wheat and rice and corn to each side, he walked uphill without another soul in sight.

“I do,” she said, and High Confessor Funebris raised her son to the Great Father, and to the ecstasy of the congregation. She no longer sensed the presence behind the reredos, but her brother's gaze remained.

“Queen Louveria Atkascha, do you accept the waters of baptism to walk in the path before your son in St. Ajora's name?”

Were bandits to murder this healer, named Barzini, nobody would notice it happen in the act. They could strike him quick, and again in the soft dirt as he hit the ground, and drag him prone into the rows of crops before a wagon or a band of discharged knights were to come across them. He could be buried in that ground then, returning life to the soil, and the total of it would be a richer harvest.

“I do,” she said, and High Confessor Funebris raised a wet and withered thumb and drew it across her forehead.

Cardinal Delacroix was handing Orinus back to her now, and she was shocked to realize it was over. The worst of it though was to come, though, she knew, in the accepting of the celebrants. Her son reached for her with one hand and found the pendant that had been her king's betrothal gift. He was smiling.

***

Consider the forgotten casualties of the Fifty Years' War: the people of the lost nation of Galgastan.

Lying north of Fovoham, Galgastan was once the seventh province of Ivalice. However, Galgastan's liege lord Duke Balbatos refused to aid King Denamda IV's military push. Claiming that the previous king's invasion of Zelmonia was a matter of pride at odds with his people—as drought had laid Galgastan low, and its people were starving—he declared Galgastan an independent nation, and petitioned Romanda for aid.

Much of Ivalice was happy to let them go—the Galgastani people possessed a darker skin, and the nobility often called them “goblinkin” in correspondence. Balbatos himself, who had dubbed himself “Hierophant” and “Lord” in the act of independence, was an exception: a distant relation of the Goltanna family of Zeltennia—Duke Druksmald Goltanna himself being able to trace his line to Denamda II—his skin was an Ivalician pale.

Romanda, seeking a beachhead in its campaign against Ivalice, welcomed Galgastani independence with open arms. However, in its aid it only brought the black plague. Without food, dying of the plague, and subject to Ivalician raids and banditry, the people of Galgastan dragged Balbatos from his seat in Coritanae Keep and put him to the guillotine.

There are few records of Galgastan following the War of the Lions. Much of the former province was a wasteland for decades, only eventually being overtaken by population increases in Ivalice during the golden age.

***

Louveria endured the effusive praise of feckless nobles for the better part of an hour, but when her brother, the Duke Bestrald Larg of Gallione, chose his opportunity at last to approach, she announced that she'd take the air, and trusted Ser Garland—or Ser Zalbaag for that matter, or even the invisible Templar—to bar the door to the causeway. What she did not expect was to find that she and her child were not alone.

“Your majesty.” The pear-shaped man offered an insulting parody of a bow. “Did you and your dear child also come in search of the beauty of Mullonde? I find it rests a weary spirit.”

“Duke Barrington.” The liege lord of Fovoham was not an entirely unexpected guest – Grand Duke Gerrith Barrington was one of the church's favored sons, celebrated for his work in establishing orphanages throughout Ivalice. That did not, however, make him a welcome one, for—as anyone in the royal court could tell you—Barrington's generosity of spirit was not matched in the social graces. He was, plainly, a boor of the highest order. But better this than Larg. Queen Louveria stepped forward to join Barrington at the railing. “In truth, we sought solitude.”

“Not much more of that to be found, with little Orinus there.” The duke chuckled. “But of course, you have the nurses for that, I'm quite certain.” And there it was, right out the gate. Barrington was not a subtle man.

“We have indeed a young Galgastani with whom the young prince is properly enamored.” She waved it off. “We wish to express our appreciation, Duke Barrington, for your understanding in the matter of our processional.”

“Hm? Ah, 'tis nothing, your majesty, I assure you.” He did a sort of copy of her own gesture. “I think the peoples of Gollund and Dorter, being oft lowborn, were given a rare jewel in chance to see the royal prominence as it passed through.” He cocked his head. “It's only a shame that the route proved so dangerous.”

“Oh? Had you heard of our adventures in the Weald, then?” She smiled beatifically. “We had the pleasure of Ser Zalbaag's company before the ceremony, and had gathered the people of Gallione were as-yet unawares. We expect the young knight would have saddled a chocobo on the spot to ride out in our honor had he known.”

“The Knight Devout, for all his martial cunning, is perhaps predictable in that way,” he allowed. “It's true that the nave's attendance was quiet on the issue. I'd actually heard before joining the celebrants.”

“Had you.” The duke had little right to criticize the Beoulve second son's predictability. While Louveria had not desired a confrontation on the causeway, the content of this meeting was exactly according to design. For his part, Barrington was smirking at his own cleverness. It made one whole side of his fat face look like fresh bread as the knife entered it to slice.

“It is in a way apropos that you mention your little Galgastani, your highness.” Barrington laid a hand on the railing. It was adorned in dozens of little rings and baubles and looked vulgar to her. “Before coming here to the event, I was actually in visit with some of the children, now grown, who had found home in my orphanages. Many come under the boughs of the Church of Glabados as they come of age, you see.” She didn't rise to the bait. “The Galgastani are truly fascinating people. Marvelous breeding stock. I spent time with them during the war.” Barrington hadn't fought himself. He'd hired a company of outland sellswords who had marched at his command. “So many of their villages burned at that time. There were many children cut loose from civilization overnight.”

“It is a wonder that more weren't brought to Coritinae Keep,” Louveria offered icily. “One might think Lord Ronsenbach would shelter his own.”

Barrington harrumphed, picking a piece of lint from his robes. “The late Lord Balbatos's footman cannot even keep his working vassals fed, I fear.” A state that Ivalice itself was all but destined for, no matter the heroic efforts of Count Orlandeau and his partner in correspondence. It was said that army deserters often broke for Galgastan first, but the country was in ruins following its failed alliance with Ordallia. “But of course, St. Ajora teaches us to love our neighbors before ourselves.” Not that Barrington had ever missed a meal in his life himself.

“You were explaining how you learned of our fright in the Siedge Weald, Duke Barrington.” Explaining, rather, how he was not responsible for hiring the traitors in the Lionsguard of St. Konoe. Queen Louveria had known that he would race to place himself above blame, the first act of any guilty conscience. In her arms, Orinus fussed and pulled at her gown.

“Yes! Quite. I can't imagine your majesty ever concerning herself with the whispers of the lowborn, but in walking those halls I heard so many fables and misapprehensions! It's quite striking, the credulity of the uneducated.” He leaned in and stuck his tongue out at the baby. “Can you believe, some even think this little angel was the result of swapping pans, like some little changeling?”

Orinus sniveled. Louveria's eyes narrowed. “Duke Barrington, you forget yourself.”

“Hm?” He looked up and saw her expression. “Ah! Quite right, your majesty, I humbly apologize.” The duke was nearly fifty, and had held higher favor with the previous king. He had often made habit of speaking as though he were of higher station, even when he wasn't pretending to an advantageous position. He dipped his head, but swiveled it back around to her. “I mean only to say that so often, their nonsense is only just; but I did hear a tale of surprising consistency, and of such recent vintage, that I wondered if it might not be true.”

“One half of my coterie yet lives.” She bobbed her son. Below, commoners and the lay were jockeying for positions where they could view the nobility who were already filtering out of the cathedral. “The other does not.”

“Pray consider your return to Lesalia, your majesty.” He bowed, and made a slightly better effort this time. “The roads of Fovoham lie open to you, and my own forces all too willing to bolster your own.”

“Best to keep your own working vassals fed, Duke Barrington.” She turned away from him and allowed herself a smile, for her – for her and Orinus – alone. “If Ser Garland requires aid, I can petition the Knight Devout's company. For many would say to approach the queen and her young prince when they are alone would be a treasonous act on its own.”

When she turned back, the large man was gone. His only wise move that day.

***

Ivalice only just had better love for its Crown. King Ondoria III's malady left a woman issuing proclamations that she claimed were of her husband's design, and those who still harbored grudges with Ordallia placed on her the coward's mantle. Though many proud and heroic women served in the Fifty Years' War, many in Lions' armies still viewed the hearth as woman's home.

Noble families oft sent their daughters for religious instruction, but Louveria spent few years within a monastery’s walls. Like Goltanna, the Atkascha family could trace their line to Denamda II, and Louveria's father the Duke of Gallione often took her to Lesalia from even a young age, hoping to marry her to someone in Denamda IV's line. They found a love match in the offing with Ondoria III, a frail young second-born son who found himself the rightful heir when his elder brother died in the war.

By the time Louveria's father had died and her brother Larg instituted as the White Lion to Goltanna's Black in his stead, she was married to the new king. Ondoria III would be thirty-five at the time that the hero Delita made his entrance into the historical narrative.

The aforementioned birth of Louveria's son, the Prince Orinus, was met with some relief in the royal family. Two sons had already died in the birthing. Until that time, the only heir to succession was Princess Ovelia Atkascha, trueborn daughter of Denamda IV and sister to Ondoria III, whom they had adopted as a daughter when it appeared there would be no living sons.

***

“Ser Garland, we are much afeared from our travels. Please secure our chambers, that we may know peace of mind.” The guard nodded silently and entered the suite of rooms prepared for her, and then she closed the door behind them. Passing courtiers, pages, and assorted clergymen of Mullonde would assume only what had been rumor for a year's time now – that Queen Louveria had been having an affair with the captain of her guard.

When they'd allowed a moment for the hall outside to clear, she settled into a chaise and shifted the weight of her sleeping son. Eilonwy would no doubt be catching up with them soon enough. “Everything proceeds apace.”

Ser Garland removed his helmet and sat it upon the stone sill. His hair was damp and matted. If Louveria was the sort of woman who curried loyalty and affection in the manner the court suspected, she'd still find no place for the dragoon in her chambers when the meetings were adjourned. But Ser Garland was a smart man, a man whose loyalty was to leadership and power. He'd discerned early that as captain of the Lionsguard, his best role was beside the queen, not nursemaiding the man eight years her senior who already looked twice that when he was able to rise from his bed.

“Why Barrington, your majesty?” He pulled the hair back from his face with one gauntlet. “He is a viper, and the box in which Denamda kept him now lies open.”

“When I was a girl, I accompanied father on his hunts from time to time on the grounds.” Louveria held up Orinus and bounced him on her knee. “I had the taste for it even then, I suppose. But he taught me then that there's little to fear in a serpent, because you know it will strike. A hound is different, because it is loyal until it is angered. The grand duke's hungers have made of him a fool. Are you certain that you have carved out all the rot?”

“Those remaining are those loyal, your majesty.” Of the Lionsguard assigned to her, only some could be trusted to keep their loyalty to her and their mouths silent. The rest, Ser Garland and his men had fell upon in the Weald. There had been no bribery; but Eilonwy had told the story within minutes of their arrival in Mullonde, and Barrington's name would be on her lips. The lie would be in every noble's ear by the next sun-up as far as Zeltennia. “There is one other matter: the Princess Ovelia requests an audience with you.”

She frowned. Speaking again of boxes left open; she should have expected that Orbonne would give leave for her to attend the baptism. “I am weary from my exertions, the travel and the attack and such.” She made a vague gesture. “Express the due regret.”

“Yes, your highness.” He did not mention her brother the duke. “May I ask of you a question?”

“Speak.” Orinus's hands wrapped around her fingers. She smiled at the boy.

“Why the healer, Barzini?” He shook his head. “I understand the sense of Stark's killing, the threat he posed, but not the other.”

She frowned.

“I express no regrets in my service, your majesty. I seek only to know the way of it, that I might aid you further.”

She sighed. “To replace an inconvenient lie with a convenient one.”

“I do not understand.”

She looked at her son, and in that moment, found herself moved. This was the miracle at war's beginning. “Tell me again of your family, Ser Garland.”

“I... yes, your majesty.” He turned to the window. “Our nobility is slight, and young. My father served with distinction during the earliest years and was awarded a house. Before that, we were a line of knife sellers. My grandfather used to carry a massive whetting stone upon his back, up and down the streets of Bervenia. I have an uncle still, with a small but respected parish there, not far from St. Ajora's birthplace. With no family of my own, at times I send some gil-coppers to him when I'm able.”

“You should marry,” she offered, “Have a son of your own.”

He shook his head. “Harder then, to protect yours.”

Orinus giggled as though he'd understood. Ser Garland knew that she'd been poisoning the king; did he know that she'd poisoned the previous one, as well?

“I am weary,” she decided. “You command the Princess's hound, do you not? Send them back to Orbonne, Ser Garland. I must rest for our travel back to Lesalia.”

“Yes, your majesty.” He fixed the helmet back onto his head, hiding his expression. And then he left.

Louveria eased Orinus into the cradle the Church of Glabados had provided them, and watched him fidget. Eilonwy would return soon, to handle the changing of him and the feeding. In looking at his large eyes, she found herself shocked in loving him.

Ser Garland was not of risen nobility enough to understand why the rumor of the child's bastardry could not harm her in the way the truth could. Ivalice thought her barren from complications or possessed of a poxy womb; that Ondoria III had smuggled a mistress's spawn into the birthing room. When the midwife had died of old age shortly after, it had been her one stroke of luck; the rest she'd had to make herself. Barzini was the only living soul who had seen the baby's head crown.

Something fell in the other room of the suite. Her head jerked, and she spun, finding herself immediately snatch little Orinus into her arms to protect him. But there was nobody there. A shade, at best, of the many she had made herself.

***

The economy of Ivalice was brought to the very brink of ruin as it struggled to pay reparations to its former enemies and to repay the loans taken from neighboring states to fund its war effort. The loss of Galgastan's laborers and farmland caused further shortages. Soldiers returning from the front found themselves without pay, and entire orders of knights were summarily discharged from service, stripped not only of livelihood but also their fealty. The swelling ranks of the unemployed did little to relieve the people's distrust of the Crown and the nobility, whose tables never emptied. Many became rogues and traitors, men donning the thief's cloak and plotting treason against the Crown.

***

Queen Louveria again rode in the carriage through the Siedge Weald. The sun had started to set; leaving Mullonde had been a more trying task than arriving. Confessor Zalmour, a self-satisfied inquisitor, had set about blessing their travels, and some spare few nobles had lingered for a last chance at petitioning her. They'd sent a few riders ahead to secure adequate lodgings in Dorter; they'd never manage to climb the mountain at night.

Eilonwy was carrying the baby, and Louveria found she ached for him. The baby's every giggle sounded like shattered glass. How had this occurred? How could one half-day have been enough?

Ser Garland seemed lost in thought. She turned her gaze to the window and saw the same gallows tree. She blinked. “Stop the carriage.”

Garland signaled the driver, and they rolled to a halt. She allowed Garland to help her out so that she could view the stagnant pool of mold collected beneath the gnarled trunk, and nodded to herself. “Let it be here.”

“Your majesty?” asked Eilonwy, as she was helped out of the carriage. Louveria held out her arms, and the nurse handed her Orinus. Ser Garland led her over to the bubbling marsh, which seemed almost perfectly round. It was like the set of a stageplay. The nurse was shaking, until Ser Garland drew his sword, at which point she collapsed to her knees.

“Wh... your majesty, what... I'm so sorry, whatever I've done, I...”

“Shh.” She held Orinus close. “You'll scare him.” And when she really did quiet, Louveria felt a pang of regret. The dragoon raised his blade. Eilonwy would sink into the mold, vanished without a trace.

And then the carriage exploded.

With a searing flash of yellow, the entire forest seemed to swell and constrict as the wooden carriage erupted. Splintered wood flew past her face, and Louveria dropped to the ground, cradling her infant son and sheltering him from the sudden shrapnel. The chocobos were shrieking – one had already taken off into the forest, and another had fallen to the ground with a shard in its head – and when she called out for Ser Garland, she could not hear her own voice.

It was an explosion without heat, lightning without thunder—magick, certainly, but of a kind she didn't know. Her ears rang and her shoulders shook; she looked up to see their attacker standing on the gallows-branch of the gnarled old tree.

It was a fifteen-year old boy. His Galgastani skin seemed to make him one with the treebark and the darkness. He looked like he could be Eilonwy's son. Eilonwy... As Ser Garland rose to his feet, sword at the ready, blood caking one ear, she turned her head to find that the nurse had fled.

There were shouts in the dark again as the rest of her convoy came at last to their rescue. The boy stared at her. She found that she was crying; not for herself, but for her son.

“I come bearing a message.” The boy's voice was deeper than it seemed a body his age could allow. “When the crows feast upon your king, they will again upon Ivalice.”

One of her soldiers was at her side then, lifting her up as another nocked an arrow. But when it flew, there was nobody there to receive it. The boy was gone. The leaves rustled only, the sound of a crow's wings in flight. She rocked her sobbing child and prayed the young of Ivalice would not eat their old.

***

Records of the hero Delita first appear one year before the outbreak of the War of the Lions, not long past the first birthday of Prince Orinus Atkascha. It was a time of great unrest for Ivalice - murder and theft were commonplace. Many were the young adventurer and mage who stepped forward to counter this threat. Of such, the city of Gariland, too, saw its share...