Chương 10: [1-4] Nicanor II's Tax Policy

Everything began with Nicanor II, King of Ulrica. At least Adelheid made it sound that way, and Gaspar quickly concurred. They interrupted the narrative before it even started to spontaneously eulogize him. Hague could cut Adelheid some slack, dude was her dad after all. But Gaspar, usually so taciturn, surprised him. If anything, he outmatched Adelheid's fervor.

Seated on the steps where the altar used to be, bathed in a descending ray of light, he spoke with uncharacteristic poetry:"No man who has walked this earth ever tread with more chivalry, more valor, more wisdom and strength than he. Virtuous and kind, yet possessed of that inner fortitude to know when to bend and when to stand firm, I have known no other that I would rather follow.

I often remember our old battles together and dream—permit me this indulgence—to have given my life for him, to bleed out on the fertile soil of the Trimetchen staring up into his so, so self-certain eyes. To hear, as my life ended, his acknowledgement. I can imagine no happier death." Hague thought all that was pretty weird. He didn't say it, though. Tuatoru did.

"A man is a man," he said, running a lint roller up and down his slutty vest while he inspected himself in a hand mirror.

"A dashing soldier, perhaps, but his administration of the territory rather left something to be desired. No?" Gaspar looked ready to kill him on the spot. Hague papered over it by making Adelheid continue the story. She gave some background. Ulrica was the northernmost nation in Perrania, which was what they called this world.

Sixty-six years ago, when the last Hero terrorized the status quo, Ulrica picked the wrong side of the fight and subsequently lost a lot of its territory to some other country called the FFIR (Adelheid pronounced it the "Fear"). Per Adelheid, this was a real black mark on her nation's history, and she got theatrical about it, with florid gestures she couldn't quite pull off because she had zero acting talent whatsoever. Then about thirty years ago, Nicanor II ascended the throne.

An energetic young man, he quickly united the local lords and waged war to restore his homeland's honor. A rousing success! Victory after victory, all of which Adelheid tried to describe in great detail, all of which Hague sped her through, since he doubted they had much individual bearing on the current situation. The short of it was, total Ulrican triumph, all lost territory reclaimed. The war did have one downside, and here was where the seeds of future disorder were sown.

Gaspar may have (in his view, sadly) survived the war, but Nicanor's sister and brother-in-law perished, leaving their young son an orphan. The magnanimous Nicanor of course took in his nephew as a ward, purely out of the goodness of his heart, and definitely not because with Nicanor then childless he needed someone to be his heir. That nephew was Lord MacCoor, the guy currently outside the gates demanding they hand Adelheid over.

At the time, of course, everyone considered this heir business a temporary arrangement. On top of being cool and great and amazing, Nicanor II was apparently a hot package (both Adelheid and Gaspar said this—Tuatoru gave Hague a knowing look), and married an equally hot, if somewhat older, wife. Only a matter of time, everyone thought, before a more direct heir manifested. Then years passed. Nicanor's nephew got older, old enough to understand the line of succession, old enough to develop expectations.

Meanwhile the prevailing assumption became that the Queen was barren. Some councilors advised, scandalously, Nicanor cash in a favor the Polymath owed him and get a church-ordained divorce; others grew resigned to the idea of Lord MacCoor ascending the throne.

"Resigned?" asked Hague.

"Was there a reason they wouldn't want him to be king?" Adelheid opened her mouth, then bit her lip. Gaspar put in: "He hasn't got the Knack."

"You said that word before, I think. About that crowd of priests in the citadel. What's it mean?"

"It means he's a worthless parasite, that's what it means," Gaspar said.

"It means he can't level up," Tuatoru said. Hague did a double take. He never expected the phrase "level up" to come out the mouth of anyone here. No wait, on second thought, it made sense. Marpasia knew what a Gamer was after all. A previous Hero must have introduced this terminology, but how did that work? The last Hero was from sixty-six years ago, before video games even existed on Earth. Was there time fuckery afoot?

"That MacCoor boy's got bad blood," Gaspar continued.

"On the paternal side, obviously, since the Peñaranda line descends directly from the Hero Bartolomé. Lady Adelheid—by that I mean Nicanor's poor departed sister—was forced to marry a lesser FFIR lord before Nicanor ascended the throne." Bloodline powers. Yeah, this was Fire Emblem all right. Old school Fire Emblem, the kind Hague's mentor liked. Genealogy of the Holy War type shit. The oldheads in chat were popping off, though it kinda made Hague's head spin.

What did it mean in this world for people who can't level up?

"I sympathize with my cousin," Adelheid said.

"I do. One cannot control the circumstance of his birth. But it takes power to rule. Real power. A king must lead on the battlefield. He ought to have understood his limitations. There are things one simply cannot do." Anyway, the inevitable happened. The Queen finally got pregnant and here came baby Adelheid. MacCoor moved a step back from the throne. But MacCoor, now a teenager, had ambitions and did not like to see them thwarted.

He grew closer to the lords and councilors who'd started to favor him before Adelheid's birth. Nicanor II cottoned to this and decided the best thing to do was put MacCoor out of sight, out of mind and shipped him off to university in the FFIR.

"My cousin is a smart man," Adelheid said.

"He tutored me, on his visits back home. I struggled with most subjects. But he was patient and kind. They say he plotted this act for years, but it cannot be. It was those heretics he met at the university. They corrupted him."

"Heretics?" Adelheid fumbled for words, so Tuatoru put in: "Cultists, more or less. Radical anti-Sophics. God's dead, they say. So are the Heroes for that matter. No, what we must worship instead is ourselves. Solo, the self. That rot." (God's dead? Yeah unfortunately she's just a bitch.)"They find a haven in your country, Tuatoru," Gaspar said.

"None of my doing. My family are respectable Peckians. We go to church and not a one of us believes in anything."

"Alright, bookmark the religious stuff," Hague said.

"Cultists bad, that's basic Fire Emblem. So MacCoor came back, killed your dad, and is after you now so he can take the throne?" Adelheid nodded.

"And everyone's just letting him do that?"

"He has an army," Adelheid said.

"How'd he get one of those?"

"It's complicated."

"Oh, no it's not!" Tuatoru finished rolling his lint and stashed the roller in his quiver.

"Those soldiers didn't materialize out of thin air. The truth of the matter is, Good King Nicanor was nowhere near the exemplar nonpareil you make him out to be. He promised House Sequigajara land as reparations, but gave it to House Leyosa to buy their loyalty; then he turned around and put out House Leyosa with his idiotic warpwood embargo. All anyone wants is to make more money, but he didn't understand that at all.

If there's demand for warpwood in the Low continent, let them have it, as long as they've got the cash! Instead, he blathers about sovereignty, independence—isolationism more like—and fritters away his days in the theater, watching paeans to his glory years. You're surprised it came out this way? I'm only surprised it took this long." Obviously, Gaspar took this badly.

He let Tuatoru say the whole spiel as if letting him dig his own grave, and only afterward did he surge to his feet, axe in hand, full red in the face. Hague saw it coming and stepped between them.

"Leave it to the war criminal to play peacemaker," Hague said, mostly for chat's benefit. The others were getting used to his commentary, so only Tuatoru gave him a funny look. Gaspar remained standing, but didn't pass Hague. Instead he jawed.

"Of course a Tau Nuian would think pissing little economic trifles are the reason anything really happens in this world! If the dukes of Ulrica are throwing their lot in with Lord MacCoor, it's because they see a Knackless wimp that'll serve a nice figurehead. Naked disloyalty. Nothing more!"

"Have it whichever way you want," Tuatoru said, preening.

"The fact remains, truly good rulers know how not to get bumped off by their—""I'll have that tongue out of your mouth, bastard!" Hague barely stepped aside because this time Gaspar lacked any interest in being restrained. Tuatoru didn't flinch, kept up his smarmy smirk even as Gaspar charged like a bull. At least the guy had balls. Chat cheered on the fight. Kmarticuno3: Eggman vs Tuawhore WHO WILL WIN?

KagasHypnoFetish: betting on the jagen tbh Fortunately (or unfortunately), before Gaspar got close enough to swing, Adelheid's voice cut through:"It is not my father they disrespect." She stood before the missing altar. Her eyes peered up at the cracked statue of Sophia, then turned down toward Truth. In her black clothes she looked unfathomably sad.

"I have never been," she said.

"Well loved at court."

"Your Highness," said Gaspar. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

"I heard them. Again and again I heard them. Nobody thinks a child listens.

'An odd and mannerless little creature'—Duke Mercetta said that.

'Is she not touched in the head?'—Duke Fermosa. Lady Ignez told me to my face, after the incident in her banquet hall: 'Your mother's ruined you.'""She said that when you were ten years old, Your Highness."

"And now she stands at my cousin's side. Pledging him troops. Taking up arms herself. Why? To depose me. They hate me, Gaspar. Their looks. Their whispers. They didn't conspire against my father; my cousin poisoned him alone. But now they must decide who to follow. Him or me. And he speaks so. Fluidly, so. Confidently. Nobody ever called him a, a cretin! A simpleton, a blockhead, an imbecile, a fool, a bozo! Even Knackless they prefer him. Only Signy loves me." Yyyeah.

Hague didn't want to say it, but the wandering gaze, the halting speech, the brooding melancholy, the weird explosions of passion, it all made Adelheid come across a smidge... well, chat put it best: ej_hurtt9: autistic The_Nuremberg: Autistic xosyn9914: autistic 1111111111111111111111111: RETARD Argonautic: @1111111111111111111111111 We have a zero tolerance policy on slurs. Timed out. Krantzz: Adelgard did nothing wrong tulsasiivat donated $3 and said: You better bag the cute autistic princess hague!

DGirlLiker: Bag Polymath Truth instead flambeauFelid: So Hague, you gonna romance any of these guys, that gives bonuses right idk I'm new to FE.

"Tulsa! Thanks for the three bucks. You guys know my game though. It's like flambeau said: All romance is for the purposes of optimal eugenics." WinterOrbGamer: make sure not to give adelheid any new skills so your kids get her Galeforce" Our kids, huh?" He glanced at Adelheid. She glanced back, then averted her eyes. A momentary wave of embarrassment hit him that he did everything in his power not to show.

"Yeah, I guess that might be optimal eugenics..." He brushed off Tuatoru's weird look with a wave. It was Adelheid he focused on now, and no not like that. Getting back to the actual topic at hand, he could sympathize with the plight of not being liked. He approached the issue with ease, quickly cobbling together a counterargument.

"Seems like a leap though, don't you think Addy? The idea this is all because they don't like you I mean. Like you or not, you're the legitimate heir. The line of succession must mean something. These lesser nobles rule based on primogeniture too. Bumping the next-in-line in favor of the second stringer threatens their own birthright." Adelheid stared with her mouth open, like she didn't understand.

"Am I wrong here?" Hague appealed to Tuatoru and Gaspar.

"Seems to me they open a can of worms doing this. What's to stop all their younger brothers from thinking, hey, maybe I should be duke?" Hanbo: Good point Hague Hanbo: Wars of succession happen when there's no clear heir"Wars of succession happen when there's no clear heir," Hague said. No clue if it was actually right or not, but it backed him up so let's roll with it. Did it count as a "war" of succession if one dude had an army and the other just three guys?

Well, Hague alone counted as an army, so it was a war now. An uneasy quiet passed between Adelheid and Gaspar. Even Tuatoru kept his mouth shut, though the sly look on his tattooed face made clear there was something he wanted to say. Seconds passed and nothing, so he finally ventured it.

"You assume it's known for certain that Her Highness is the legitimate heir." Before Gaspar could have a conniption, Tuatoru held up hands for peace and added: "I mean certain from the perspective of the nobility. I of course would never dare question it."

"What do you mean?" Hague said.

"My cousin. He." Adelheid wrung her hands together.

"He's claiming. I'm not the daughter of Nicanor II."

"Absolute piffle," Gaspar shouted.

"Rubbish and everyone knows it. Merely an excuse for their treason. Hrragh!" That inhuman grunt ended the discussion; neither Adelheid nor Tuatoru seemed willing to say more. Hague mulled it over, squared it with the story they told him so far. King and queen childless for years, everyone thinks she's barren, then miraculously she has a kid. You could read it as a lucky break, one more impossible deed notched in the good king's belt.

Or, if you looked at it another way, and figured the king had the fertility problem and not the queen...

"You're His Majesty's daughter." Gaspar seized the princess by the shoulders and forced her to look him in the eye. She did everything in her power not to.

"I knew His Majesty better than anyone. And I see in you his same strength, his same courage, his same vigor on the battlefield." (His same Sanguinity, maybe.) "You're his daughter and that's that."

"Yes, sensei," Adelheid said. Sensei?! Hague decided not to ask. The rest of the story proceeded without interruption. MacCoor returned to the capital one day with his new associates from university, the ones Adelheid called heretics. Hague knew cultists were bad news, and apparently Nicanor didn't need genre savvy to think the same. He threw them out of the castle, but it was too late. He fell ill that night and died the next morning. All healers confounded. Official cause of death: Entropy Sickness.

His body no longer held itself in order. The_Nuremberg: Hague should spread Entropy Sickness disease en masse causing all the enemy soldiers to die slowly and painfully MacCoor moved fast after that. Produced a letter, supposedly penned by the Queen herself, revealing her infidelity and Adelheid's illegitimacy.

The dukes either helped or stood aside as MacCoor arrested the Queen and her favorites—the Queen being so undeniably unpopular neither Gaspar nor Adelheid gave her more than a token defense during their account—then moved to "detain" Adelheid. Adelheid might not have been beloved, but she did have one friend, this Signy/Sieglinde de Leyosa she kept talking about. (Though chat noticed, meaning Hague noticed, that "Leyosa" was one of the families Tuatoru previously said Nicanor pissed off.) Signy helped Adelheid escape the castle while MacCoor was preoccupied with the Queen. Loyal Gaspar joined them at the edge of the capital, which was also where Signy hired Tuatoru as a mercenary—" Soldier of fortune." —as a mercenary, her family apparently having some dealing with his in the past.

"I happened to be in Ulrica to escort a warpwood shipment Signy's family was selling to mine. Rather good stroke for me, to get in on some real action. Nothing quite so dull as scanning the strait for pirates." Signy wanted Adelheid to board Tuatoru's boat and flee the country. Adelheid vetoed that plan. She wasn't content to tuck tail and run, oh no. For all her awkwardness, an inner drive propelled her, just like her father. But what could she do with so few allies?

Hopped up on her diet of theater and historical drama, she knew of only one option: Go to the Floating City, on Ulrica's southeastern border, and convince Polymath Truth to summon a Hero to her aid. This was, of course, an insane idea. Polymath Truth functionally had no ability to do anything on her own. The Polymaths descended directly from Sophia (Hague already noticed the family resemblance), so only they possessed the power to summon Heroes.

Which they did, historically, to maintain the status quo in their favor. Any secular nation gets too uppity, BAM, a Hero's here to put them in their place. Total church domination. Until, as per usual, the dreaded Last Hero. He showed up, turned around, and slew crazy old Polymath Wisdom instead, leaving "young" Truth to inherit the title of Lolipope. With its Floating City batted out of the sky and a preteen pontiff, the Sophic Church had never been weaker. estellaris: the sapphic church......

: o~ The secular nations pounced on the opportunity. In exchange for military protection, Polymath Truth was now bound by a covenant whereby she agreed never to summon a Hero without the joint approval of the FFIR and the Queendom of Lucia. Countries, of course, that ascribed to "Hero Corruption Theory." Hague looked at Polymath Truth. When they first entered the cathedral, Gaspar set her down on a bed of flowers, and she'd stayed there ever since. She was only just now starting to stir.

She looked like she was having a nightmare, her face scrunched into a little grimace, her body twitching and her fingers spasming into soft hooks. A tiny groan escaped her lips. Her hands kept gripping her stomach. It was obvious she was older than she looked, like a lot older, especially if she became Polymath sixty-six years ago. But she was probably still young (and impressionable?) by descended-from-the-goddess standards.

"As I mentioned before," Tuatoru said, "nobody believes in this Hero Corruption Theory nonsense, it's simply the story they tell to justify controlling the Polymath."

"Marpasia seemed to believe it," said Hague.

"Captain Marpasia's job is to believe it. She's the Polymath's chief jailor, after all." In his pocket, Hague thumbed the Heteromorphite stone Marpasia dropped." Was her chief jailor." Tuatoru shrugged as if to say: such things happen. Adelheid never considered the political dimension at all, at least the way she told the story.

She knew about the Covenant, but believed—naively, Hague bet—she might convince the rulers of Lucia and the FFIR to let a Hero be summoned, given what she considered the urgency and significance of her situation.

She reached the Floating City, was even accepted as an honored guest and treated with sympathy, her father being a friend of the Church and her cousin not so much. But nobody intended to lift a finger to actually help her. Summon a Hero? Out of the question. They refused to let Adelheid even speak to Truth without Marpasia present. The bureaucratic red tape might have been her gallows if not for—"That damned fool, Lord MacCoor. He marched an army on the Floating City." They could only speculate as to his motive.

Adelheid suggested her cousin hated when things didn't go as planned, so he was willing to do anything to stop her before she became a thorn in his side. Tuatoru mentioned Signy spread false rumors that Adelheid was successfully petitioning the FFIR for an invasion force, putting pressure on MacCoor to act. Gaspar, whose opinion of MacCoor was way lower, dismissed him as simply showing off his big dick army to his neighbors. A way to say, "I'm King now."

Either way, MacCoor spooked the city something fierce the moment the pegasi reported him on the horizon. All hands to the wall! Prepare for siege! The disarray proved Adelheid's one chance to get to Truth while Marpasia was busy organizing a defense. It worked. Truth was all too eager for the chance to summon a Hero and crawl out from under Lucia's thumb. They rushed to the summoning chamber, Marpasia realized and gave chase—and Hague knew the rest. Hague leaned against the wall, arms folded.

He mulled over the story. Seemed he landed smack in the middle of a much more complex political landscape than your average Fire Emblem, where you usually got an evil empire and a goodguy kingdom. He scrutinized each of his allies, Adelheid especially. He doubted she lied about much, if anything. For all her brooding melancholy, she was too earnest, too awkward. It'd be easy to tell. But did she understand her situation fully? Was he getting the whole picture?

He didn't trust Gaspar or Tuatoru to fill in the blanks, especially Tuatoru. Maybe this Signy girl, if she ever showed up. No read on her yet, though that bit about her family being anti-Nicanor already raised red flags. If Truth woke up, she might have a different story to tell. That was why he decided to drag her along in the first place. He never got a chance to pick his side; upon being summoned he immediately had to fight.

But that didn't mean he was locked into this storyline, despite the Fire Embleminess of helping the princess avenge her dad. MacCoor had an army and Adelheid didn't, meaning the choice between him and her was the same question as before, during the Benedicta snafu: logical versus ethical. Except right now Hague couldn't even be confident Adelheid was the ethical choice. Of course, he also wasn't sure MacCoor would accept him if he decided to switch sides. Before Truth collapsed, she asked him to save the world.

The people in the citadel asked him to save their city. The first thing he promised, when he spoke to Marpasia, was that he wouldn't be evil. What should he do? Put up another chat poll? They'd just tell him to stick with Adelheid because they thought she was cute. Maybe he should. He needed chat's buy-in, after all. The big exposition dump dipped his viewers into the high 400s. If he got into a fight, it'd probably rise to the 500 threshold again—probably. But he couldn't just count on that.

Before he made a decision, people started yelling outside. Hague bolted upright, thinking their hiding spot was discovered. But Tuatoru looked out the window and said it wasn't that.

"Stay here. I'll check it out." He was only gone a few minutes before he returned with news:"MacCoor's moving to the gate."

"He's attacking?" Hague asked.

"I guess that's what we were waiting for. Once the pegasus knights go to deal with that, we can climb down the cliff."

"Not quite, Hague my dear fellow."

"What? Why not?"

"I said MacCoor's moving to the gate. The man himself. Not his army."

"Himself? Alone?" Adelheid said.

"That's madness. He has no Knack. He can't defend himself. It's a lunatic risk."

"Apparently he wants to talk." Adelheid stared, perplexed. Tuatoru didn't seem to understand it either, though he kept smiling. Gaspar only shook his head in disbelief. Hague thought for a second and decided.

"I want to hear what he has to say."