FFXII Fic: Of Magisters and Men (Gabranth/Drace, Larsa/Penelo, Vayne, Gramis)
What my f-list wants, my f-list gets. And if they want snappy patter between Judge Magisters snarking on Larsa’s future love life-- then by god, they’ll get it. In any case, this is for them and for the hopelessly fantastic _acerbitas_, who I owed fic to way back when. Here’s hoping you enjoy this for your birthday, you fabulous creature, you. ;)
Also, this is a stand-alone one-shot in the Knots, Ties and Tides universe, set a few weeks before Larsa heads off to Jahara to reunite with his clueless lady love. You don't need to read the series to understand the basics of this fic, however. And reviews and constructive criticism are very much appreciated-- I’m on the verge of giving up with that series because it’s so damn time consuming and I’d love to hear your thoughts on doing such.
Title: Of Magisters and Men
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Series: Knots, Ties and Tides
Characters/Pairings: Gabranth/Drace, Hints of Larsa/Penelo, Vayne, Gramis
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Gabranth and Drace discuss the perils of adolescence-- Lord Larsa‘s in particular.
Oddly enough, the first time that Gabranth had to face the fact that Lord Larsa was growing up came about due to a series of scribbles in the margins of an inconsequential sheaf of note paper.
One of the strangest constants of working with Archadian nobility, Gabranth had long since learned, had to be the sheer amount of paperwork they were always lugging about, no matter where they went off too. He didn’t quite know how and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know how… but somehow, every blue-blood he had ever known in the Northern-most territories of Ivalice seemed to come equipped with their own means of producing tree-pulp that could generate endless reams upon reams of what looked to be gibberish to his untrained Landisler eye. And as the potential heir to the greatest throne in the North, his young charge was no exception to the rule. In fact, in many ways, Larsa Ferrinas Solidor could even said to be an exemplar of bookishness next to some of the aristocratic louts and gadabouts Archades could produce.
(And as a prime example of such, Gabranth could point to at least one Bunansa he had once been forced to supervise and who had been the fuel of his nightmares for years to come.)
Therefore, when Gabranth had finally settled his young charge down in Archades again and did his level best to make sure he wouldn’t go gallivanting about without proper supervision, it had been oddly comforting to see the usual mushroom cloud of documents blossom at Larsa’s elbow as soon as he had found a desk again.
But bending over his charge’s shoulders to see the usual flow of notes interrupted by drawings of a most unusual sort had certainly not been. Having Larsa catch him in the act and then go through an unusual amount of stuttering and blushing that made his guardian’s eyebrows shoot right up to the top of his helm-- well, that hadn’t exactly struck Gabranth as normal either. And then watching Larsa stand up, assume what Gabranth had long termed his Brooding Solidor Scion of Many Sorrows pose and confess his great and ardent admiration for a girl he barely knew may have made Gabranth's brain melt a little within his skull.
And at the end of said confession, at least thirty minutes of which had been spent exclaiming over said girl‘s virtues, manners, tragic life story, hair style, hop-scotch playing prowess and interesting nether-region designs, Larsa had gone so far as to put his hand over his heart and pledge of his eternal (and, God only knew, devious and inscrutable) affection to a girl he had been with for all of seven days.
“I know,” Larsa solemnly concluded, “that most of those around me-- present company excluded, of course-- see me merely as a youth. But it’s long since been time for me to shed the trappings of my childhood and Gabranth, I really feel as though she might be the key to achieving such. What could show me as being more ready for adulthood than to be with one such as her?”
Drace had once told him that there was nothing more frightening than a Solidor man in love. Gabranth had a sinking feeling that this was something he might learn first-hand just why that was quite soon.
---
An hour, a very brief explanation and one smuggled sheaf of paper later, Gabranth was nursing a mug of pale ale in his private quarters while his partner, lover and theoretically better half was examining said margin scribble with an expression on her face that suggested that she had found herself looking into the abyss and it had batted its eyelashes right back at her. And when Drace finally stopped eyeing the scribbles before her as though they’d leap out of the paper and bite her conk if she didn’t keep a close watch, her words only confirmed as much.
“She’s pretty enough but nothing about her strikes me as anything out of the ordinary. Are you quite sure she‘s the one that our young lord insists on making grandiose pledges about?”
Despite himself, Gabranth nudged closer to the papers again for another look. And no matter how hard he squinted, the drawings he had spent the last half hour mentally twitching over stubbornly remained. As did the interesting jump suit squiggles that Larsa had mooned over previously. My but that boy had a fine eye for detail.
“Because,“ his partner grimly continued on, “I don’t much like to doubt you, as you know, but I do find it rather… disturbing to think of Lord Larsa, of all people, being willing and able to express interest in someone. No matter how dainty and comely and fragile and helpless and my god I thought I raised him better than to want things of that nature.”
At that, Gabranth flashed the first smile he had in him for days. “Well, Drace, to be fair, it probably isn't your fault. He always did have an affinity for fairy tales, after all. And considering the fact that certain others of the Solidor line barely seem to take an interest in anyone at all, male or female, perhaps we ought to be glad that Lord Larsa has his eyes on anyone at all.”
That didn’t seem to much console Drace. “But still… a Dalmascan? And a little girl he picked up from the outskirts of a mine? Does that really strike you as a suitable… anything at all for our little charge?”
He had to smile again. “What bothers you more, Drace? The fact that she’s Dalmascan or that Lord Larsa wants her despite the fact?”
Drace gave him a speaking look. He coughed and moved on.
“In any case, their meeting seems to be more of a happy accident than anything else. I do believe he told me that she had been kidnapped by some Bangaa bounty hunters who, er, were after a bounty of a most, hmm, unusual sort and who resorted to using her as bait.”
As he predicted, her eyebrows went shooting up to her bangs. “Oh. So our young lord went about rescuing her from their wicked, fiendish clutches and schemes, as he‘s always pined for?”
“Well, admittedly, not so much from their clutches as from that of Judge Ghis.”
Hers lips curled up in that way that always made him want to kiss her a great deal. “Ah, the late and unlamented Judge Ghis. I suppose he showed her as much tender care and mercy as he did to all his other victims?”
“He threatened to chuck her into the nearest Archadian prison on account of her being just blonde enough for his tastes.”
From the way her eyebrows were threatening to annex her forehead, she was about as disgusted with the idea of what could have happened to the girl as he had been. “Lord Larsa offered her a very lucky escape after all.”
“Indeed. According to him, he very neatly appeared on the horizon of her distress just in time to carry our grateful heroine off on a white chocobo towards a happy ending. Or at least a Bhujerban sanctuary courtesy of our dear and ever obedient Judge Marquis Halim.”
Her laugh mingled with his at that. “Oh, I have no doubt that he is ever a faithful servant of our empire. And I suppose our sweet maiden repaid Lord Larsa very properly afterwards?”
“Ah, Drace,” Gabranth continued, ever the picture of reason and reliability. “There’s no need to look so suspicious. From what he tells me, said thanks was both verbal and physical.”
“…And this is meant to reassure me?!”
It was decidedly hard to keep a straight face of his own when she looked so willful and engaged, when her hair was all afluff with anger and color flooded her cheeks again. He did his best anyhow.
“As in, teasing about how very brave he was and repayment in the form of boisterous games of hopscotch that left him more than a bit smitten with our unnamed heroine‘s physique and figure flattering get-up.”
Drace made a noise that suggested that he‘d have an easier time trying to make her believe that Vayne Solidor was secretly a magical unicorn with a horn placed lower than usual. “Now you just jest with me.”
“Not at all. Take a look at the full-body sketches again if you will.”
Drace took another look as Gabranth flipped through the pages for her further education. Her face afterwards suggested that she had perhaps aged a few years in the span of an instant.
“Hopscotch, you say,” she said with a tone of infinite and infinitely awful dread. “With all the brushing and the touching and the hopping and the-- oh my god, he really is growing up, isn't he?”
Gabranth nodded in commiseration. “He reportedly that he unfortunately did quite poorly against his lass and had to forfeit his earrings for quite a time afterwards.”
“Dalmascan girls. My god, what did I tell you about those underdressed hussies! Even their princess can‘t seem to keep her clothes on, apparently!”
Not for the first time, he felt obscurely compelled to defend the girl, possibly on a account of his own fellow feeling against Archadian stuffiness and their more-and-more-is-really-more sense of style. “To be fair, she did give Lord Larsa’s earrings back to him after a day of wearing them. Though from what he tells me, he would have gladly conceded them to her as a trophy if she was willing to return the favor.”
Drace shrugged the information off, though Gabranth knew that Larsa’s keen sense of chivalry had more or less come directly from her. “Even so, that doesn’t negate the fact that she likely went about without decent clothes the entire time she was with him, possibly warping poor Lord Larsa’s innocent young mind as she did so.”
Now his eyebrows were quirking cheerfully. “It's hard to think of how much more he could be warped after over a decade of dealing with his brother. And Drace, be serious. How can you tell how scantily she's dressed from simple pencil sketch?”
“Gabranth," she said in a tone of infinite weariness, "be realistic. She’s Dalmascan."
He winced and Drace went on. "Even when they had a king, he wouldn‘t wear a shirt. Which honestly explains a great deal about why it was so easy to subdue their country. Our cavalry likely won over theirs less by strength of numbers than because they could put on proper armor.”
“Point,” he finally conceded, images of the leather nursing bras he had personally seen Dalmascan troops wear to battle flashing through his head. “And after all, no one knows armor like the Archadians know armor. Still, of all the people he could have taken to, she seems innocuous enough. And for all of Lord Larsa’s plotting-- and of course, we know him, he’s certainly up to some plotting, even you have to feel at least a little bit of pity for the poor girl-- she certainly isn’t of high enough birth to matter in the long run anyway.”
Drace looked slightly mollified at that, at least. “Well, likely you are right. No matter how determined our lord might be to entertain her here, she hasn‘t any reason to stay for long.”
After another sip, Gabranth finally let the alcohol work on him long enough to ask the question he’d been hoarding all this time. “Why the hostility then, Drace? You’re usually the first to speak up in favor of more women in the Archadian court, after all. Even if, somehow, Lord Larsa could connive to bring the girl here, what would be the trouble? You’re being unusually…”
Her eyes were a little terrifying when they were slit this way at him. “You mean to say catty, don’t you?”
He tried to negotiate the next few words as quickly as possible. “No… no that isn’t… I wouldn’t say catty, per se, more like, erm…”
Well, if he absolutely had to die, there were probably worse ways to go than being beaten to death by a beautiful woman. It might not be precisely the way he’d always thought he’d go, but still. In the afterlife, or at least wherever he ended up in after this was over, this would make for a fine story.
To his enormously relief, though, Drace eventually stopped fingering the hilt of her weapon and sighed. “I suppose I couldn’t blame you. It’s just… don’t you find it so strange to think of our young lord as growing up and even having his eye set on someone?”
It was surprisingly hard to hide his smile when he didn’t have a helm to cover it behind. “Trust be told, not really. I was around that age when the same happened to me, though I was never quite as successful with women as… as…”
As someone else had. Once. Before. Before the turn of everyone.
And as though she realized it, as she always realized it, Drace put her hand next to his, stroked his calluses with her own, brought him back to this present moment and what lay within, rather than what had festered far before her.
“Point taken,” Drace said, and her voice was calm and lovely and so close to his ear, drawing him back to the present gently. “Still, I don’t know if I’m ready for Lord Larsa’s adolescence. Good lord, I’m not even sure if I’ve recovered from Lord Vayne’s one!”
He squeezed his fingers gently around her wrist in thanks and received a lopsided smile in turn. “Having heard rumors from that era, I can believe you.”
Drace began to fondle the hilt of her club again in that way that tended to alarm and excite him in equal measure. “I had to wear a dress for his coming of age, Gabranth. A dress. One that put a bow across my behind, in an underhanded attempt to embarrass me to death. I think that was the first time I ever understood the true evil festering in him.”
Gabranth groped for words he could speak without being clubbed to death and found, rather to his alarm, nothing whatsoever.
“And that’s not even going into the time that 'Lord Vayne' placed an angry nanna inside my bedroom for, as he explained it, a romantic surprise. As though he has enough soul in him to feel anything like a normal human being. And it shed, Gabranth. It shed all over my underthings. I had itches where no itches ought to exist for weeks.“
“…” Gabranth started to say but finally stopped when it was clear that no words would be forthcoming.
“Please at least tell me that if Lord Larsa approaches you for romantic advice at any point, you shall not involve angry nannas in it.”
“…I will most certainly try,” Gabranth finally managed. "I don't really believe Lord Larsa tends towards the 'angry farm animal' school of courting anyway."
His partner across from him shrugged wearily and took a leisurely sip from her cup. “True enough. I should have hoped I at least managed to grind that much into his thoughts.”
“Along with the proper way to sling a potions pack across several territories while never running out of the best items,” Gabranth said, and they shared a quick smile over their mugs of ale. For the life of him, Gabranth still hadn’t figured the trick to that one out.
“And,” his lover added, “ I suppose I can even feel a bit sorry for the girl he's after if he's anything like his forefathers. For all his faults-- and believe me, they are many and varied-- at least Lord Vayne never troubled any but me in his half-hearted attempts at spawning further Solidor scions. But sometimes I think Lord Larsa takes too much after his father…”
Gabranth resisted the urge to tip his hand by winking at her, having more than a passing acquaintance with stories of the imperial harem the present emperor had maintained in his youth. Drace, he recalled learning, had had herself a merry time in them once as well. "There's nothing worse than a Solidor man in love, yes?"
She fixed him with a darkling eye that did nothing to hide her smile. "Honestly speaking? Absolutely nothing!”
After a minute, though, Drace sobered up again. “But the thought of Lord Larsa growing up and growing tall and one day settling down with someone… It strikes me as so odd. Is it… ah, you’ll laugh at me if I tell you I very much want to keep him just as he is, won’t you?”
He very carefully did not laugh, though he was tempted to. He was well aware that she used that giant club of hers for more than decoration, even though her primary role nowadays lay more in the class room than the battlefield. “Well, considering the rigors of puberty, he might eventually wish for that as well.”
His partner groaned. “Oh, please no, not this litany again…”
Gabranth cheerfully went on anyway. “His voice will drop. His limbs will lengthen. And he shall grow pustules and hair where none have ever existed before…”
Drace had her face buried in her hands now. “You are horrible, Gabranth, just awful. Why ever did we let you drag your mud-splattered carcass to Archades, anyhow?”
He dramatically cast his eyes at the sky at that. “I’m awful? Drace, you wound my young and aching heart! I was merely trying to be realistic and prepare you for the changes to come. And if anything, I ought to be pitied. Who do you think he will approach for advice on love and grooming and god knows what else when all of this occurs?”
Well, at least she looked slightly more heartened at that. “Not I, thank god. At least my ovaries turned out to be good for something!”
Now he wanted to sigh. “You need not delight in that fact so much, Drace.”
Payback was a bitch and Drace wasn’t so bad at playing one either. “Heh. Needn’t I?”
“No,” he said sternly, though even he had to grin when she laughed afterwards. “But Lord Larsa is, for all of that, a mere twelve years of age. And no matter how much the spirit might be willing, our young lord’s flesh is much too young to be bothered with the finer points of courting and ruling over any and all of us. So why don’t we celebrate our run of good luck with him thus far tonight? And merely hope for continued luck with him to come?”
“I’m not,” Drace said darkly, “at all convinced that we can count all of our dealings with Lord Larsa as the result of good luck. Remember that one episode when he managed to escape from you at the age of eight in the wilds of Old Archades? And just what sort of characters we had to bargain with to get him back? At least Cid’s lay about son proved useful for once in his life then. It made all the headaches in dealing with him just a bit more manageable.”
Gabranth winced at the memory-- as well as the rather potent dressing down he had received at the hands of the Emperor afterwards. “Point once more. But still, at least he isn’t nearly as homicidal, suicidal, regicidal, fratricidal, matricidal or patricidal as some of his storied relatives have been throughout the age. That’s as much our influence as anything else.”
When Drace smiled like this, with all herself and with her hands folded against her chin and her teeth gleaming beneath her bright eyes, she rivaled any of the wonders of Landis in its prime. “That is true. God only knows that our good Lords Gramis and Vayne had nothing to do with that much.”
His cup of ale looked so very inviting when tipped against hers. “And that accomplishment calls for a celebration in and of itself. So why not have one?”
Her own hand twined around her cup’s stem, even though she still looked in need of a bit more convincing. “Why not? But given the less than ideal circumstances that we’re laboring under… whatever shall we have it for?”
Gabranth actually had to think of that for a moment. His own strength lay more in cunning than in a quaint prose style, after all. But his tongue had once helped him convince the Emperor of Archades to advance a foreigner from a defeated and despairing realm into one of the highest positions of his empire. And he rather liked to think that it would prove equal to her challenge right now as well.
“It’s true, Drace, that our lives are proving to be less than perfect and predictable in every way… and yet, as long as we’ve each other, what need have we for perfection after all? Let’s drink, then, to what we have, with each other and within each other, and to our good luck, frayed though it might be after so long. And most of all, let’s drink to the continued growth and good health of Lord Larsa. He is our hope and his happiness is our happiness and perhaps, after he is grown, he shall prove to be the redemption for us all.”
And from the look that Drace flashed him from beneath her long, silverfish lashes, that tongue of his had served him right well once more.
“Cheers,” his lover said warmly… right before she took a sip from his cup and then grabbed his chin to take a sip from him. And the kiss she gave him afterwards was more than enough to knock any thoughts of young lords, damsels in distress and homicidal madness out of his mind till the arrival of morning once more.
Also, this is a stand-alone one-shot in the Knots, Ties and Tides universe, set a few weeks before Larsa heads off to Jahara to reunite with his clueless lady love. You don't need to read the series to understand the basics of this fic, however. And reviews and constructive criticism are very much appreciated-- I’m on the verge of giving up with that series because it’s so damn time consuming and I’d love to hear your thoughts on doing such.
Title: Of Magisters and Men
Fandom: Final Fantasy XII
Series: Knots, Ties and Tides
Characters/Pairings: Gabranth/Drace, Hints of Larsa/Penelo, Vayne, Gramis
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Gabranth and Drace discuss the perils of adolescence-- Lord Larsa‘s in particular.
Oddly enough, the first time that Gabranth had to face the fact that Lord Larsa was growing up came about due to a series of scribbles in the margins of an inconsequential sheaf of note paper.
One of the strangest constants of working with Archadian nobility, Gabranth had long since learned, had to be the sheer amount of paperwork they were always lugging about, no matter where they went off too. He didn’t quite know how and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know how… but somehow, every blue-blood he had ever known in the Northern-most territories of Ivalice seemed to come equipped with their own means of producing tree-pulp that could generate endless reams upon reams of what looked to be gibberish to his untrained Landisler eye. And as the potential heir to the greatest throne in the North, his young charge was no exception to the rule. In fact, in many ways, Larsa Ferrinas Solidor could even said to be an exemplar of bookishness next to some of the aristocratic louts and gadabouts Archades could produce.
(And as a prime example of such, Gabranth could point to at least one Bunansa he had once been forced to supervise and who had been the fuel of his nightmares for years to come.)
Therefore, when Gabranth had finally settled his young charge down in Archades again and did his level best to make sure he wouldn’t go gallivanting about without proper supervision, it had been oddly comforting to see the usual mushroom cloud of documents blossom at Larsa’s elbow as soon as he had found a desk again.
But bending over his charge’s shoulders to see the usual flow of notes interrupted by drawings of a most unusual sort had certainly not been. Having Larsa catch him in the act and then go through an unusual amount of stuttering and blushing that made his guardian’s eyebrows shoot right up to the top of his helm-- well, that hadn’t exactly struck Gabranth as normal either. And then watching Larsa stand up, assume what Gabranth had long termed his Brooding Solidor Scion of Many Sorrows pose and confess his great and ardent admiration for a girl he barely knew may have made Gabranth's brain melt a little within his skull.
And at the end of said confession, at least thirty minutes of which had been spent exclaiming over said girl‘s virtues, manners, tragic life story, hair style, hop-scotch playing prowess and interesting nether-region designs, Larsa had gone so far as to put his hand over his heart and pledge of his eternal (and, God only knew, devious and inscrutable) affection to a girl he had been with for all of seven days.
“I know,” Larsa solemnly concluded, “that most of those around me-- present company excluded, of course-- see me merely as a youth. But it’s long since been time for me to shed the trappings of my childhood and Gabranth, I really feel as though she might be the key to achieving such. What could show me as being more ready for adulthood than to be with one such as her?”
Drace had once told him that there was nothing more frightening than a Solidor man in love. Gabranth had a sinking feeling that this was something he might learn first-hand just why that was quite soon.
---
An hour, a very brief explanation and one smuggled sheaf of paper later, Gabranth was nursing a mug of pale ale in his private quarters while his partner, lover and theoretically better half was examining said margin scribble with an expression on her face that suggested that she had found herself looking into the abyss and it had batted its eyelashes right back at her. And when Drace finally stopped eyeing the scribbles before her as though they’d leap out of the paper and bite her conk if she didn’t keep a close watch, her words only confirmed as much.
“She’s pretty enough but nothing about her strikes me as anything out of the ordinary. Are you quite sure she‘s the one that our young lord insists on making grandiose pledges about?”
Despite himself, Gabranth nudged closer to the papers again for another look. And no matter how hard he squinted, the drawings he had spent the last half hour mentally twitching over stubbornly remained. As did the interesting jump suit squiggles that Larsa had mooned over previously. My but that boy had a fine eye for detail.
“Because,“ his partner grimly continued on, “I don’t much like to doubt you, as you know, but I do find it rather… disturbing to think of Lord Larsa, of all people, being willing and able to express interest in someone. No matter how dainty and comely and fragile and helpless and my god I thought I raised him better than to want things of that nature.”
At that, Gabranth flashed the first smile he had in him for days. “Well, Drace, to be fair, it probably isn't your fault. He always did have an affinity for fairy tales, after all. And considering the fact that certain others of the Solidor line barely seem to take an interest in anyone at all, male or female, perhaps we ought to be glad that Lord Larsa has his eyes on anyone at all.”
That didn’t seem to much console Drace. “But still… a Dalmascan? And a little girl he picked up from the outskirts of a mine? Does that really strike you as a suitable… anything at all for our little charge?”
He had to smile again. “What bothers you more, Drace? The fact that she’s Dalmascan or that Lord Larsa wants her despite the fact?”
Drace gave him a speaking look. He coughed and moved on.
“In any case, their meeting seems to be more of a happy accident than anything else. I do believe he told me that she had been kidnapped by some Bangaa bounty hunters who, er, were after a bounty of a most, hmm, unusual sort and who resorted to using her as bait.”
As he predicted, her eyebrows went shooting up to her bangs. “Oh. So our young lord went about rescuing her from their wicked, fiendish clutches and schemes, as he‘s always pined for?”
“Well, admittedly, not so much from their clutches as from that of Judge Ghis.”
Hers lips curled up in that way that always made him want to kiss her a great deal. “Ah, the late and unlamented Judge Ghis. I suppose he showed her as much tender care and mercy as he did to all his other victims?”
“He threatened to chuck her into the nearest Archadian prison on account of her being just blonde enough for his tastes.”
From the way her eyebrows were threatening to annex her forehead, she was about as disgusted with the idea of what could have happened to the girl as he had been. “Lord Larsa offered her a very lucky escape after all.”
“Indeed. According to him, he very neatly appeared on the horizon of her distress just in time to carry our grateful heroine off on a white chocobo towards a happy ending. Or at least a Bhujerban sanctuary courtesy of our dear and ever obedient Judge Marquis Halim.”
Her laugh mingled with his at that. “Oh, I have no doubt that he is ever a faithful servant of our empire. And I suppose our sweet maiden repaid Lord Larsa very properly afterwards?”
“Ah, Drace,” Gabranth continued, ever the picture of reason and reliability. “There’s no need to look so suspicious. From what he tells me, said thanks was both verbal and physical.”
“…And this is meant to reassure me?!”
It was decidedly hard to keep a straight face of his own when she looked so willful and engaged, when her hair was all afluff with anger and color flooded her cheeks again. He did his best anyhow.
“As in, teasing about how very brave he was and repayment in the form of boisterous games of hopscotch that left him more than a bit smitten with our unnamed heroine‘s physique and figure flattering get-up.”
Drace made a noise that suggested that he‘d have an easier time trying to make her believe that Vayne Solidor was secretly a magical unicorn with a horn placed lower than usual. “Now you just jest with me.”
“Not at all. Take a look at the full-body sketches again if you will.”
Drace took another look as Gabranth flipped through the pages for her further education. Her face afterwards suggested that she had perhaps aged a few years in the span of an instant.
“Hopscotch, you say,” she said with a tone of infinite and infinitely awful dread. “With all the brushing and the touching and the hopping and the-- oh my god, he really is growing up, isn't he?”
Gabranth nodded in commiseration. “He reportedly that he unfortunately did quite poorly against his lass and had to forfeit his earrings for quite a time afterwards.”
“Dalmascan girls. My god, what did I tell you about those underdressed hussies! Even their princess can‘t seem to keep her clothes on, apparently!”
Not for the first time, he felt obscurely compelled to defend the girl, possibly on a account of his own fellow feeling against Archadian stuffiness and their more-and-more-is-really-more sense of style. “To be fair, she did give Lord Larsa’s earrings back to him after a day of wearing them. Though from what he tells me, he would have gladly conceded them to her as a trophy if she was willing to return the favor.”
Drace shrugged the information off, though Gabranth knew that Larsa’s keen sense of chivalry had more or less come directly from her. “Even so, that doesn’t negate the fact that she likely went about without decent clothes the entire time she was with him, possibly warping poor Lord Larsa’s innocent young mind as she did so.”
Now his eyebrows were quirking cheerfully. “It's hard to think of how much more he could be warped after over a decade of dealing with his brother. And Drace, be serious. How can you tell how scantily she's dressed from simple pencil sketch?”
“Gabranth," she said in a tone of infinite weariness, "be realistic. She’s Dalmascan."
He winced and Drace went on. "Even when they had a king, he wouldn‘t wear a shirt. Which honestly explains a great deal about why it was so easy to subdue their country. Our cavalry likely won over theirs less by strength of numbers than because they could put on proper armor.”
“Point,” he finally conceded, images of the leather nursing bras he had personally seen Dalmascan troops wear to battle flashing through his head. “And after all, no one knows armor like the Archadians know armor. Still, of all the people he could have taken to, she seems innocuous enough. And for all of Lord Larsa’s plotting-- and of course, we know him, he’s certainly up to some plotting, even you have to feel at least a little bit of pity for the poor girl-- she certainly isn’t of high enough birth to matter in the long run anyway.”
Drace looked slightly mollified at that, at least. “Well, likely you are right. No matter how determined our lord might be to entertain her here, she hasn‘t any reason to stay for long.”
After another sip, Gabranth finally let the alcohol work on him long enough to ask the question he’d been hoarding all this time. “Why the hostility then, Drace? You’re usually the first to speak up in favor of more women in the Archadian court, after all. Even if, somehow, Lord Larsa could connive to bring the girl here, what would be the trouble? You’re being unusually…”
Her eyes were a little terrifying when they were slit this way at him. “You mean to say catty, don’t you?”
He tried to negotiate the next few words as quickly as possible. “No… no that isn’t… I wouldn’t say catty, per se, more like, erm…”
Well, if he absolutely had to die, there were probably worse ways to go than being beaten to death by a beautiful woman. It might not be precisely the way he’d always thought he’d go, but still. In the afterlife, or at least wherever he ended up in after this was over, this would make for a fine story.
To his enormously relief, though, Drace eventually stopped fingering the hilt of her weapon and sighed. “I suppose I couldn’t blame you. It’s just… don’t you find it so strange to think of our young lord as growing up and even having his eye set on someone?”
It was surprisingly hard to hide his smile when he didn’t have a helm to cover it behind. “Trust be told, not really. I was around that age when the same happened to me, though I was never quite as successful with women as… as…”
As someone else had. Once. Before. Before the turn of everyone.
And as though she realized it, as she always realized it, Drace put her hand next to his, stroked his calluses with her own, brought him back to this present moment and what lay within, rather than what had festered far before her.
“Point taken,” Drace said, and her voice was calm and lovely and so close to his ear, drawing him back to the present gently. “Still, I don’t know if I’m ready for Lord Larsa’s adolescence. Good lord, I’m not even sure if I’ve recovered from Lord Vayne’s one!”
He squeezed his fingers gently around her wrist in thanks and received a lopsided smile in turn. “Having heard rumors from that era, I can believe you.”
Drace began to fondle the hilt of her club again in that way that tended to alarm and excite him in equal measure. “I had to wear a dress for his coming of age, Gabranth. A dress. One that put a bow across my behind, in an underhanded attempt to embarrass me to death. I think that was the first time I ever understood the true evil festering in him.”
Gabranth groped for words he could speak without being clubbed to death and found, rather to his alarm, nothing whatsoever.
“And that’s not even going into the time that 'Lord Vayne' placed an angry nanna inside my bedroom for, as he explained it, a romantic surprise. As though he has enough soul in him to feel anything like a normal human being. And it shed, Gabranth. It shed all over my underthings. I had itches where no itches ought to exist for weeks.“
“…” Gabranth started to say but finally stopped when it was clear that no words would be forthcoming.
“Please at least tell me that if Lord Larsa approaches you for romantic advice at any point, you shall not involve angry nannas in it.”
“…I will most certainly try,” Gabranth finally managed. "I don't really believe Lord Larsa tends towards the 'angry farm animal' school of courting anyway."
His partner across from him shrugged wearily and took a leisurely sip from her cup. “True enough. I should have hoped I at least managed to grind that much into his thoughts.”
“Along with the proper way to sling a potions pack across several territories while never running out of the best items,” Gabranth said, and they shared a quick smile over their mugs of ale. For the life of him, Gabranth still hadn’t figured the trick to that one out.
“And,” his lover added, “ I suppose I can even feel a bit sorry for the girl he's after if he's anything like his forefathers. For all his faults-- and believe me, they are many and varied-- at least Lord Vayne never troubled any but me in his half-hearted attempts at spawning further Solidor scions. But sometimes I think Lord Larsa takes too much after his father…”
Gabranth resisted the urge to tip his hand by winking at her, having more than a passing acquaintance with stories of the imperial harem the present emperor had maintained in his youth. Drace, he recalled learning, had had herself a merry time in them once as well. "There's nothing worse than a Solidor man in love, yes?"
She fixed him with a darkling eye that did nothing to hide her smile. "Honestly speaking? Absolutely nothing!”
After a minute, though, Drace sobered up again. “But the thought of Lord Larsa growing up and growing tall and one day settling down with someone… It strikes me as so odd. Is it… ah, you’ll laugh at me if I tell you I very much want to keep him just as he is, won’t you?”
He very carefully did not laugh, though he was tempted to. He was well aware that she used that giant club of hers for more than decoration, even though her primary role nowadays lay more in the class room than the battlefield. “Well, considering the rigors of puberty, he might eventually wish for that as well.”
His partner groaned. “Oh, please no, not this litany again…”
Gabranth cheerfully went on anyway. “His voice will drop. His limbs will lengthen. And he shall grow pustules and hair where none have ever existed before…”
Drace had her face buried in her hands now. “You are horrible, Gabranth, just awful. Why ever did we let you drag your mud-splattered carcass to Archades, anyhow?”
He dramatically cast his eyes at the sky at that. “I’m awful? Drace, you wound my young and aching heart! I was merely trying to be realistic and prepare you for the changes to come. And if anything, I ought to be pitied. Who do you think he will approach for advice on love and grooming and god knows what else when all of this occurs?”
Well, at least she looked slightly more heartened at that. “Not I, thank god. At least my ovaries turned out to be good for something!”
Now he wanted to sigh. “You need not delight in that fact so much, Drace.”
Payback was a bitch and Drace wasn’t so bad at playing one either. “Heh. Needn’t I?”
“No,” he said sternly, though even he had to grin when she laughed afterwards. “But Lord Larsa is, for all of that, a mere twelve years of age. And no matter how much the spirit might be willing, our young lord’s flesh is much too young to be bothered with the finer points of courting and ruling over any and all of us. So why don’t we celebrate our run of good luck with him thus far tonight? And merely hope for continued luck with him to come?”
“I’m not,” Drace said darkly, “at all convinced that we can count all of our dealings with Lord Larsa as the result of good luck. Remember that one episode when he managed to escape from you at the age of eight in the wilds of Old Archades? And just what sort of characters we had to bargain with to get him back? At least Cid’s lay about son proved useful for once in his life then. It made all the headaches in dealing with him just a bit more manageable.”
Gabranth winced at the memory-- as well as the rather potent dressing down he had received at the hands of the Emperor afterwards. “Point once more. But still, at least he isn’t nearly as homicidal, suicidal, regicidal, fratricidal, matricidal or patricidal as some of his storied relatives have been throughout the age. That’s as much our influence as anything else.”
When Drace smiled like this, with all herself and with her hands folded against her chin and her teeth gleaming beneath her bright eyes, she rivaled any of the wonders of Landis in its prime. “That is true. God only knows that our good Lords Gramis and Vayne had nothing to do with that much.”
His cup of ale looked so very inviting when tipped against hers. “And that accomplishment calls for a celebration in and of itself. So why not have one?”
Her own hand twined around her cup’s stem, even though she still looked in need of a bit more convincing. “Why not? But given the less than ideal circumstances that we’re laboring under… whatever shall we have it for?”
Gabranth actually had to think of that for a moment. His own strength lay more in cunning than in a quaint prose style, after all. But his tongue had once helped him convince the Emperor of Archades to advance a foreigner from a defeated and despairing realm into one of the highest positions of his empire. And he rather liked to think that it would prove equal to her challenge right now as well.
“It’s true, Drace, that our lives are proving to be less than perfect and predictable in every way… and yet, as long as we’ve each other, what need have we for perfection after all? Let’s drink, then, to what we have, with each other and within each other, and to our good luck, frayed though it might be after so long. And most of all, let’s drink to the continued growth and good health of Lord Larsa. He is our hope and his happiness is our happiness and perhaps, after he is grown, he shall prove to be the redemption for us all.”
And from the look that Drace flashed him from beneath her long, silverfish lashes, that tongue of his had served him right well once more.
“Cheers,” his lover said warmly… right before she took a sip from his cup and then grabbed his chin to take a sip from him. And the kiss she gave him afterwards was more than enough to knock any thoughts of young lords, damsels in distress and homicidal madness out of his mind till the arrival of morning once more.