Chapter Text
It was difficult sometimes, being a spymaster. Not ‘a’, the spymaster. It was difficult because he was still young, because he was so damnably short, because he still found it hard to give orders and be decisive.
Claude said that he could do this. Claude believed in him, and he didn’t want to let Dimitri down, but… having his own command gave Ashe challenges that he hadn’t anticipated and didn’t quite know how to face.
Like this one: a raven from an agent in Enbarr, detailing the beginnings of an insurrection among Imperial loyalists. Something that could be crushed easily, but taking out the group now only meant that another would rise in their place. Ashe had spent years with books of strategy and tactics - the first few borrowed from Claude, the rest pilfered from various libraries across the country - and he knew a thing or two about groups like these.
He knew that they would rise in whispers and gain a small group of followers, but that the military rule over the Empire was too tight for a handful of commonfolk to do much. He knew that they could not reveal themselves publicly for risk of being tried and executed and so they couldn’t spread their word efficiently.
He knew that leaving groups like these alive was better than extinguishing them and letting another come to take their place; maybe a more powerful one, one that was better at keeping secrets.
But still, it gnawed at him. Was it really the right thing to do, to let their enemies plot right under their noses? Should he not send a group of knights in to round them up?
The noble part of him, the part that idolized romantic stories of chivalry and honor, thought so. The part of him that he’d tried to quash, the part of him that had been nurtured by Claude’s books on trickery and manipulation… well, that part disagreed.
It was not the first time he had such a conflict. It would not be the last.
As he was about to leave the aviary, he heard a ruffle of feathers, the scrabble of claws against stone. The sound was familiar but he wasn’t expecting any further reports and he assumed it would just be another bird coming to roost for the evening.
He looked anyway - one didn’t get to be where he was without being careful, after all - and found the bird with mussed feathers, a small piece of parchment strapped to its leg. Too small to be a full letter, the edges of it torn as if done in a hurry and hastily tied to the creature’s leg.
“Woah,” Ashe murmured, holding a hand out as if to calm the bird, “hang on there, little guy. What have you got for me?”
He reached for the parchment and the bird let out a guttural caw of dissatisfaction when his hand got too close, and it looked as if it might peck at him. This wasn’t one of his birds, clearly ill-trained, and Ashe frowned, reaching into his pocket for a little cheese as a reward.
“It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you.”
It was only after offering up the treat that the raven allowed him to untie the scrap of parchment from its leg. It was even smaller than he thought at first, and unrolled into a small scrap of paper seemingly hastily ripped from the pages of a book.
The print on the pages was something about shipbuilding, with one side printed with ’applications of cedar on the flexibility of [...] surely then, mahogany would be [...] in order to preserve buoyancy’ and the other side reading ’the bow of the ship will [...] in presence of cold wea[...] the storm.’
That was not the part that worried Ashe.
What worried him was the scrawl over the letters, as if the book was all that they could reach to write on in the time it took them. In ink, with large drips of blackness on the pages, someone had scrawled:
’Ove[...] Duscur. send army’
He did not recognize the handwriting.
Half of the first word was obstructed in a large dallop of the black ink, which had soaked through the page. Try as he might, he couldn’t read it in the low light of the aviary.
Ashe frowned, pocketing the scrap of paper, and moved down toward his quarters.
-
Ashe lived alone at the palace, which in itself was a far cry from his humble beginnings at the streets. His quarters were not near Dimitri’s, but in a separate wing, above the servants and maids. He’d been given the option to move to something more lavish but found that he liked it there, where he could hear the footsteps of the workers start to leave their rooms before the sun rose in the sky, where he could see them in the halls and wave or move to help them with their heavy loads, where he could listen at his door for the idle sort of chatter that maids loved to partake in.
For a spymaster, no one was a more valuable ally than a servant.
And so, he stayed there. His rooms were small, though not cramped, and full of books, papers, letters, things to write with. He still had his bow and arrows and a few various daggers hanging on display, though he hadn’t needed to use them in quite some time. His bed rested nestled against the wall, beneath the window where often, the first few rays of the morning light would wake him before anything else got the chance to.
Once safely in his room, he went for his desk, brushing off a few other inconsequential letters aside and pulling out the two correspondances he’d gotten when making his trip to the aviary.
The first, predictable. Enbarr and secret gatherings of those who would try to take their Empire back. Without a leader to unite them or crests or relics to use, they were limited in scope. Easy enough to command his spy there to keep tabs on them, join their ranks, and thwart them should they put too many lives in danger.
The second… this was something else altogether.
Ashe pulled the candle closer with one hand, reaching with his other for his reading glass, meant for interpreting particularly old or dusty books. The long and circular piece of glass magnified whatever he held it over, and so he unrolled the next parchment again carefully, and inspected it.
He didn’t immediately recognize the handwriting, but he didn’t know all the writing of his underlings by heart. The words appeared hastily scribbled, each letter running into the next, as if the author hadn’t even bothered to lift the quill in the space between letters. And the ink splotch…
Ove... now under the light, he was fairly certain that the next letter was R, leaving over-. The one after that? It could be an L or an I… perhaps even a T, but there was no way to be sure, and no way to see the rest of the writing, as stained as the paper was. He had hoped that with light and amplification, he might be able to read it, but it was useless. Overlook? Oversee?
And then, the most damning part of the letter: Duscur.
What could it mean? Since Dimitri’s reign and the subsequent restoration of Duscur, Ashe had thought that all past arguments were quelled. Could the people of Duscur be gathering some kind of force?
And if they were, what for? Ashe tried the most charitable approach and wondered if they could be trying to protect their borders: after all, there were plenty of Faerghus commoners who still bore the sting of being removed from their lands to make way for the Duscur people to reclaim their homeland.
But why would that warrant send army?
Duscur was a four days’ ride from the Fhirdiad, and yet… Ashe didn’t think he’d get any new information without going there. He could send a spy, or send a raven to his man who was already stationed there, but something about the letter seemed dire, dire enough that he wanted to see it for his own eyes, put his own personal touch to things.
Besides, if he went as himself, he could greet Dedue and figure out if he knew anything. With a spy, he couldn’t count on having any allies in the Duscur region, as Dedue did not know that he had a man stationed in Duscur.
It left a sick sense in his stomach, as if he was lying to his friend - but then, he was lying to all of them, wasn’t he? He had a man in Fraldarius territory, a woman in the Gautier lands, two in the former holdings of Rowe… he operated in secret, yes, but his friends had to have some idea about his network. It wasn’t like spymaster was a subtle title, after all.
Ashe only had to hope that they understood that his tactics were to protect them, rather than to seek out information that could harm them.
His mind was made up, regardless. Ashe decided not to pen a letter to his spy in Duscur to warn of his arrival, for fear that the scrambled handwriting really did belong to him and that he was in danger somehow.
He did write something quickly to Dimitri - 'I’ve received a concerning message from Duscur. I am investigating - if you do not hear from me in two weeks, gather your forces and contact Dedue.'
Unfortunately, Dimitri was not in the capitol. Times were fraught in Almyra at the moment with some small struggle for power, and so Dimitri had left to be with Claude there. Still, the letter would reach him in a few days.
With that, he made his way to the aviary once more to send the message, using a bird that knew its way to the Almyran palace, and packed quickly for his departure.
He would not need much.
It was late. He could wait to depart the next morning, but then he’d risk being seen, and Ashe knew how to make the shadows his friend. He drew his dark cloak around his shoulders - indistinguishable from the cloaks many commoners used, with nothing to imply that he was a knight and a member of the King’s inner circle - and vanished into the evening.
-
Ashe’s arrival in Duscur was without fanfare or forewarning. He hadn’t sent messengers ahead for fear of them being intercepted or found by the wrong people. The King’s spymaster came and went as he pleased, and no one would find it suspicious if he were absent for a few days.
And so, he arrived in Duscur on his horse - a gentle spotted gray strider - and moved toward the town of Cadon.
Cadon was, more or less, the capitol in Duscur: its trades specialized in the rich minerals mined from the nearby caverns and sold at high prices to jewelers and nobles alike. The wealth of precious stones to be found near Cadon enabled the town to be one of the more prosperous Duscur territories and its centralized location to the other towns made it as good a place as any to gather leadership.
Ashe’s spy was north of here, in the town of Batüm: a smaller coastal town, which primarily earned its keep through the local fishing community and it's port for trade routes. Batüm was his main goal, but to get there, he had to go through Cadon, which was where he would be able to rest and resupply for the rest of his journey.
It was also where Dedue lived.
Ashe longed to visit him, to see a familiar face in all of this confusion. He knew that whatever the haphazard message was, it could not mean that Dedue would betray them. Dedue was the most loyal man he knew and he loved Dimitri as one would love a brother.
He deserved to know if something was happening, particularly something that threatened Duscur. With any luck, the two of them could figure out the strange meaning of the message together and deal with whatever problem it was trying to warn them about.
The town of Cadon was still in its infancy, though it had been some years since Dimitri’s decree allowed the people of Duscur to begin to rebuild. The infrastructure was there, being slowly built back up after the former Kleimen commoners dismantled much of the roadways and irrigation systems to build their own cities during the occupation after the Tragedy.
Moving through the streets, Ashe could see now the work that had been done, but for every repaved roadway there was a building that still had singe marks from the flames that once blazed through the streets.
The lesser side roads had not been paved at all, but were well-worn from foot traffic and the wheels of pulled carts. Some of the roads were too narrow for Ashe to fit astride his horse and he took care to navigate carefully, staying on the main trail until he finally saw an inn up ahead.
He took his horse out behind and dismounted, leading his steed up to the stablemaster, who sized him up with a curious expression.
“...you one a’ Kleiman’s men?”
Ashe shook his head.
The stablemaster was an older man, looking in his late forties. His white hair and darker complexion marked him as one of the Duscur people; the scars on his face and arms marked him as a survivor of the Tragedy.
“Why do you ask?” Ashe inquired, leaning back a little to get a better look at him. It was a strange question: Kleiman had been executed by Dimitri years prior, and while there were factions of dissatisfied commoners of Faerghus who felt entitled to this land, they weren’t associated with the Kleiman name.
The name should scarcely be uttered anywhere. Dimitri made sure of that.
The stablemaster shrugged, looking over Ashe’s horse.
“We don’t get many visitors from the Kingdom here. Too deep in the territory for a ‘just passing through’. Thought you might be one of those bastards scoping out our land for yourself.”
The response created more questions than it answered. Ashe wanted to ask more, to clarify - well, any of it - but the stablemaster was already going over to his horse, sizing the beast up and continuing.
“It’ll be ten gold to stable her for the night. Twelve for the next day if you’re not outta here by lunch. That’s plus the stay at the inn.”
Ashe nodded, deciding not to push the issue - for now, anyway. Being too inquisitive would look suspicious. If he’d learned anything, it was to make friends first, and then ask questions.
Besides, he still wanted to see Dedue.
“I agree to those terms. I’ll pay with the innkeeper?”
The stablemaster nodded, and Ashe offered him the reins, which he took readily. The man gave him the time to get his small bag from the saddle, before leading Ashe’s horse off to be penned for the night.
The innkeeper was a chattier young man, also of Duscur, though his hair was dark and pulled back into a ponytail, where it swept behind his shoulders and down to the base of his spine.
“I’ve been told you’ve got a horse with us?” he asked, though the question seemed rhetorical at best, “good, good - well, for a night’s stay here is sixteen, plus the horse is twenty-six… if you want a meal brought up to you, that’s another seven, so… thirty-three? Half now and half at checkout, alright?”
Ashe flashed a smile and nodded, reaching into his smaller coin purse for the appropriate amount of money.
“What’s the meal for tonight?”
“It’s a duck stew, one of our cook’s best.”
“Sounds delicious. I’ll take you up on that.” And then, as he set the money down on the counter, he tilted his head, “do you guys get a lot of visitors here?”
There was a pause. The innkeeper pursed his lips as he counted out the coins, slipping them into his own bag before shrugging and leaning forward with his elbows on the countertop. “Not really. There were a lot more when we were establishing trade routes with Faerghus, treaties, that sort of thing. Now it’s mostly just traders.”
“Your stablemaster… he said - something about Kleiman?” Ashe asked innocently, tilting his head, “I thought he was dead?”
The innkeeper’s pleasant expression darkened like a storm and Ashe thought that he’d gone too far. Kleiman might as well have been a curse in Duscur - he should have known better than to repeat it.
“We get a few of them passing through,” he said, his mouth twisted like he’d just bitten into something sour, “the king cut off the bloom, but the plant is still alive, twisting like vines under our nation and yours. Most of them like to tumble in here and stir up trouble: start fights, steal from us, that kind of thing. They think this land belongs to them.”
Ashe nodded solemnly, his mind racing. Could that be what the letter was about? Maybe he was supposed to oversee something in Duscur? Maybe send an army to root out the last of this vile family’s influence?
Duscur had no army. Her people could fight, as they’d learned to do over the last decade or so, but no organized corps to band together and protect their interests. At best, each town had something of a militia, but funding had gone more toward rebuilding and reestablishing trade than to bolster their military - an unpopular decision at the time, but one that had served the nation well nevertheless.
It had been Dedue’s decision, Ashe remembered. Dedue’s leadership.
“You think - it’s lead by someone in that family?” he asked, his voice soft, “I thought that the King had banished them all?”
The innkeep shook his head, his lips pursed.
“They were banished for awhile. Left the country. I think some of them even went underground… but one lady came back. Younger sister or married wife - I can never remember which. She gathered a bunch of thugs who were angry about your king’s decree and has been causing trouble ever since.”
Ashe didn’t ask about why they hadn’t reported it to Faerghus or asked for help. It didn’t seem like the kind of solution anyone would have been happy with, but the idea that this had been happening right under their noses made his blood boil.
“...right.” And then, changing the subject, “I know Dedue Molinaro lives in this town. Do you know if he’s around? I’m an old friend from the war, and I’d very much like to see him.”
“You’re what?” Immediately, Ashe thought that he’d been too forward. This was bound to attract attention. “You fought with Dedue? Are you one of the knights?”
Even as he lied, Ashe felt guilty, but he shook his head anyway, offering a wobbly smile. “Just in a batallion, I’m afraid. But I knew Dedue pretty well.”
“Right, right, well - as far as I know, he’s around. I think there’s a few meetings he’s doing; we’ve got a trader staying here who has business with him. I’ll show you to the town hall where he’ll be in the morning.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Ashe said with his best smile. He hefted his bag higher onto his shoulder and took a step back. “Now, um - my room?”
-
In the morning light, Cadon was a beautiful town. Colorful banners - one for each family, unique to that family’s surname - were hung each morning from the doorframes and taken down each night to be dusted and cleaned. Ashe watched them all flutter in the wind with a muted curiosity as the innkeeper took him to the town hall.
This was beautiful as well. The structure stood proud, despite weathering some remaining damage from the previous skirmishes. Ashe could see where the stone was repaired, painted over, where modifications had been made to the steps and railings, which were likely once wooden and burned away. Somehow the modifications gave the building character, made it seem ever-more resilient.
When he first laid eyes on Dedue, Ashe thought the same of his scars.
His hair had grown since Ashe last saw him, still shaved on the sides, but with the rest tied up behind his head in an elegant bun. Modest signs of age were starting to bleed through around his face: his jaw was squarer, his throat fuller, his eyes with the faintest beginnings of crows feet.
Upon seeing him, Ashe forgot everything he was supposed to say.
Dedue didn’t notice him at first. He was talking to one other other men in the town hall, a lavish looking trader, dressed in the colorful robes of Dagda, whose words came with dramatic swoops of his hands. He was the sort of man who commanded most of the attention in the room and Ashe, as one who always shied away from that sort of attention, found himself fading back out of view.
“You wanted to talk to him, right? He’s right there,” the innkeeper offered helpfully, waving his arm in Dedue’s direction. “Good morning, sir! You’ve got a visitor!”
The call distracted Dedue from his conversation and he turned his gaze and Ashe saw his soft eyes for the first time since - since -
- it didn’t matter. What mattered was that Dedue saw the innkeeper before Ashe and his expression split into a gentle smile that could melt the heart of the strongest warrior alive.
“Senca, well met. A visitor…?”
It was supposed to be a question, phrased like one, but the last syllable cut short when he saw Ashe, shrunken and unassuming in the shadow of the other personalities in the room.
Dedue’s smile faded, but not due to sadness or unease - rather, surprise, and before Ashe could apologize for his lack of warning for his arrival, Dedue’s expression bloomed again. If possible, this smile was more brilliant than the last, one of unbridled joy and affection, and as he took a step toward the two of them, Ashe felt so elated that he didn’t know why he waited so long to visit.
He wanted… so much. There were walls around his heart still, shrouded in layers of apprehension and loneliness, but Dedue was there. Dedue was real, and he didn’t look upset to see him at all.
“Ashe,” Dedue finally said when he was closer, and he lifted a hand as if to touch him but thought better of it, lowering it again and standing awkwardly before him, “I wasn’t expecting you. I would have… prepared something for your arrival.”
Ashe shook his head, bashful all of a sudden, and Senca seemed to understand that this was more of a private conversation because he edged his way away from the two of them with a knowing smirk.
“I -“
Right. The reason he was here. The letter. The strange reports of Kleiman’s men. Ashe swallowed thickly and tried to push everything else from his mind, but it was too difficult when Dedue was standing this close to him.
“- I’m sorry for not sending a message beforehand. In truth…” There was a pause - Ashe glanced toward the trader, found him to be out of earshot, and lowered his voice, “...in truth, no one knows I came. I need to keep it that way.”
The light slowly filtered out of Dedue’s eyes and Ashe hated to see it go. It felt like a betrayal somehow, to come here after all this time and have it be because of this - but what else was he supposed to do? He was the king’s spymaster, Dedue was the lord of another land.
“I see.”
Dedue followed suit, lowering his voice, “you should… come to my office. We can talk there.”
Ashe nodded and Dedue turned to greet his trader again, offering him a goodbye. The man seemed to understand - or their conversation was close to ending anyway - because he nodded and took his leave.
Dedue motioned for one of the branching staircases after he was gone and Ashe followed him, trying to keep his distance, to not be caught staring at him, to not remember -
The stairs were spiraled and tricky and Ashe turned his thoughts around in his head as he climbed behind Dedue. There was too much to think about, too much work to do, though he wished there wasn’t. He wished he’d made a social call at any point in the ages since they’d seen one another last.
But with his work - with their work, could anyone blame them?
Dedue’s office was sparsely decorated, though it suited him even so. What decorations were there - a few potted plants on the windowsill to soak up the sunlight, a scarf on his bookshelf, a few small tools on his desk - suited him and made the room warm and inviting, despite the stiffness of the chairs.
Ashe didn’t sit and Dedue didn’t ask him to. They were alone.
“Now…” Dedue started, moving for his window so that he could look over the street below. He didn’t look at Ashe, and Ashe tried to stifle his feelings about it. “...why can no one know that you’re here?”
“I… I think there might be something going on at or around Duscur,” Ashe offered, his voice going high with his nerves like it used to when he was a child. He cleared his throat and tried again when Dedue didn’t immediately respond. “I talked to the innkeeper - Senca - and his stablemaster. They both think that someone under Kingdom jurisdiction is causing trouble in Duscur. If that’s true, then…”
“We’ve been handling it,” Dedue said, his voice heavy. It sounded like too much of a reprimand and when Ashe flinched backward, Dedue’s voice went a little softer. “...surely you understand. Dimitri is my closest friend but he cannot fight my battles for me, no matter how badly he wants to. No land will respect Duscur if we go whimpering to the King of Fódlan every time we have a problem.”
“Even if that problem comes from Fódlan?” Ashe asked, finding his courage, challenging.
Dedue looked away from the window toward him, his expression contemplative.
“...what do you know?”
Ashe shrunk back, his bravery ebbing from him in the onslaught of Dedue’s full and weighty attention. Dedue knew what he was, what role he occupied at Dimitri’s table. He surely could assume that Ashe was keyed in to all sorts of information across their lands, so it would be reasonable to assume that Ashe was here on spymaster business.
But having spies in Duscur?
He did. Dedue didn’t know. Ashe wasn’t sure how to get to the next part without overplaying his hand, especially to someone as deceptively intelligent as Dedue, someone who’s respect he desired, someone who already had to balance the world’s mistrust of him.
Ashe swallowed hard and thought about Claude’s advice: sometimes a smaller truth makes the lie taste better.
“I… got a frightening letter. I don’t know where it came from, only that it implicated Duscur.”
Dedue was quiet as Ashe reached into the small bag on his thigh to retrieve the scrap of paper, carefully preserved in a small wooden box. He opened the box, moving for Dedue’s desk as he did so, and carefully splayed the paper open on it so that Dedue could look for himself.
He did. The larger man took a curious step closer, head tilting as he read the few scattered words, his mouth downturned in a frown.
“You came all the way to Duscur for this?”
Ashe bit his lip. “I didn’t know what it meant - it could have been serious. I wanted to make sure that you…” that he what? That he was alright? That he wouldn’t be hurt? Ashe bit his lip and rephrased. “I wanted to find out what was going on and offer my aid if I could.”
Dedue was silent for a long moment, considering the offer as he picked up the parchment and turned it around in his hands. Ashe had never known him to be particularly prideful, but he knew that running a nation like Duscur required a certain amount of it - at least outwardly. Dedue could not afford to accept excessive help from others; what he had, he had built for himself and for his people.
And then, there was the fact that he might simply want to deal with this himself. There was a nonzero possibility that Dedue already knew what this letter was referring to and preferred to keep it out of Ashe’s ears. Ashe wouldn’t begrudge him for that, but the thought of it - Dedue operating separately from him, with so much of his life in secrecy… it saddened him.
Look who’s talking. Ashe bit back a grimace at the thought, considering what he did.
Finally Dedue spoke, his tone even and measured in the way that Ashe had come to expect from him.
“The book this is torn from is a seafaring book. Probably from a library, of which we have several throughout Duscur. We have two libraries in coastal cities where one of these books might be common, but only one which has a trade route for gallnuts.”
Ashe blinked in surprise at the sudden information, taking a short step closer to look at the paper in Dedue’s hand. “...gallnuts?”
“Mm.” Dedue nodded, flipping the paper over. “They’re used to make some types of ink. Whoever wrote this wasn’t accustomed to it… it’s thicker, easier to splotch. Like.. well, this.”
Not for the first time, Ashe found himself in awe of the amount of knowledge of the world that one must have to be in a leadership role like this. Dedue has doublessly had to negotiate for his trade routes and had to know everything about what a budding nation like Duscur would need, down to the types of ink imported.
He wondered if Dimitri had to learn the same sort of thing. He felt, not for the first time, wholly unequipped to be working with such men. They clearly saw something in him or he would not be here, but when Dedue had more or less solved his mystery for him, he felt superfluous.
At least this was reassuring in some way: that he’d brought it to the right place.
“It’s in Batüm,” Dedue offered after Ashe remained silent. He handed the paper back to him, his mouth in a slight frown, “the library.”
Batüm. That was where his spy had been stationed. Ashe knew immediately that the letter had to come from him. He didn’t know his spy in Duscur well - Del was younger, a more recent appointment, with his mother from Duscur and his father from… somewhere overseas. His family was one of those who did not return to Duscur for the rebuilding, but instead chose to continue serving the king. Del fit into his assignment reasonably well, and knew enough of the culture and accent to get by in Batüm without undue suspicion.
His reports, Ashe remembered, were always very scant. Ashe had assumed that there was never much to say. Maybe that was why he didn’t recognize the handwriting.
“I’ll go there, then,” Ashe finally said, solidifying his plan. Dedue nodded and watched as Ashe slipped the parchment back away.
“It’s a day’s ride. I’ll go with you.”
Of course. This seemed to be serious - why would Dedue not want to go? Any responsibilities could be put on hold for a day or two, but… if Dedue found out about his spy…
“Are you sure? You don’t have to.”
A small smile graced Dedue’s face, more amusement than pleasure.
“The people on the road and in Batüm will be a little more receptive to me than you. Plus… it’s like I said, I want to fight my own battles. If you turned and left for Fhirdiad now, I would still go to Batüm, but I have a feeling that there’s a reason you want to go.”
Ashe could not fight the sudden heat that rose to his cheeks and he nodded mutely, looking at Dedue through his lashes. Of course he would have some sort of idea. Dedue had proven to be nothing if not intelligent and reasonable, and Ashe had always been a terrible liar.
But… he couldn’t say he minded. This trip, however short, however potentially dangerous, would be shared by the two of them. A day’s ride meant a day in Dedue’s company on the way there and the way back, whatever that entailed.
He couldn’t say no.