Mouse stood at the window, watching the sun begin to make its slow ascent above the horizon. The pale grey of the morning began to fade, reluctantly relinquishing its reign of the earth to gentle shades of pink and lilac. Mouse could hear birdsong carrying across the fields as the otherwise still world began to wake.
Sleep had not found her that night, though she had little sought it. Her mind was too occupied with thoughts and questions that swirled through her mind, threatening to drive her mad. She had therefore spent many of the hours past midnight wandering around the keep, dragging her feet across the flagging like some sort of ghost, a spirit too tormented to find rest.
At last, she had relented to the idea that there was likely only one person in the whole of the castle to whom she might speak openly about her present troubles, only one person whose counsel might offer any sort of reprieve from the chaos of her mind.
It was a person she had been avoiding, and who she had hoped she had rid herself of relying upon. Yet here she was, once again, sitting in the chair across from the old man as he drew his had across a long sheet of parchment.
Mouse had not expected to find him awake at this time of day, yet she had been let in almost at once upon knocking to find the old man at his desk. He was not, as he often was, carrying his hand across the parchment in a hurried script but was instead tending to the letters upon the page in an almost painstaking fashion.
He looked nearly like some ancient scribe, thought Mouse, poring over his work by candlelight in his chambers that were only now beginning to come alight with the morning sun.
“What are you writing?” Mouse at last ventured to ask, looking at the long white hairs that sprouted from the old man’s ears, the bushy brows that hung over his eyes.
“Kuno of Yarbruck,” he replied, using one hand to hold his sleeve away from the ink as the other dipped his pen. “The Ire of Edephus.”
Mouse drew her brow together.
“You already have that one,” she said, leaning forward to try and get a better look at the delicate letters crossing the page. “Why make another?”
“The Arosian court’s Master of Tomes already has it,” the old man answered without looking up from his work, “but I do not.”
“But you are the Arosian court’s Master of Tomes,” Mouse said with a laugh.
“For now,” Ludger sighed, pausing his pen for a moment in appraisal of what he had written, “but when I am no longer, the tome will remain with the court, and I should like to have my own copy.” He dipped his pen into the ink, blotting it gently before putting it to the parchment once again. “That way I might pass on to someone of my choosing,” he said. “A pupil perhaps, granted I am able to find one less—” he paused, “—tempestuous than the last.”
Tempestuous? Mouse scoffed. Certainly he could not mean her. Just because she had stormed out of the old man’s chambers, struck a nobleman in the face, and picked a fight with the captain of the guard, that did not make her tempestuous.
But as much as Mouse wanted to make some sort of reply to the old man’s slight, to defend herself against, she decided she had better bite her tongue and hold her silence, at least for the time.
“Well?” the old man said after some minutes of silence, at last laying down his pen and looking across the desk at Mouse. “I assume you have not come here merely to supervise my transcription.”
Mouse looked down into her lap and swallowed.
“You have, no doubt, heard about Jasper,” she began, “the stable boy who has been taken into custody under suspicion of conspiracy against the crown?”
“I have indeed,” the old man replied, leaning back into his chair. “He stands under accusation of conspiring to assassinate the Empress of the Arosian Empire.”
Mouse grimaced at the old man’s words, a pang of guilt coursing through her.
“Is there something of the matter you wish to discuss?” Ludger asked.
“He is innocent,” Mouse said quickly. “There can be no doubt about that.” She paused as the old man inclined his head in agreement. “But there is something else in the whole thing that has been bothering me,” she said.
She pressed her hands together, taking a deep breath as she tried to gather the nerve to ask the question she longed to hear the answer to.
“Well,” she said slowly, finding it difficult to produce the words, “I find I have had some trouble shaking from my mind a notion which you have planted there.” She looked at the old man’s cool grey eyes. “That is, that the assassin may have been seeking to kill me rather than the Empress.”
The old man nodded, and when Mouse gave him a questioning look, he explained, saying,
“If nothing else, I stand by my claims that only a blind man could possibly mistake the two of you when seated on horseback,” he shook his head, “and blind the man from Silver Lake was certainly not.”
Mouse felt her chest grow hot. She knew the old man would not contradict his previous statements, but still, she had hoped that he might, that there had been some sort of misunderstanding between them.
“But why?” she asked, her brow wrinkled in confusion and dismay. “Why should anyone wish me dead?”
The old man’s grey eyes twinkled in the morning light spilling in from the window.
“I cannot assume the murderer’s motives,” he said, lacing his fingers together and resting them over the bulge of his belly, “but I do not doubt that whatever they may be, they stem from a knowledge of who you are.”
“Who I am?” Mouse asked, swallowing down the lump that had begun to form in her throat.
The old man looked at her, his eyes piercing through her reluctance.
“Owing to your parentage,” he said, “there may be those who wish to eliminate you, either because you are seen to represent the crown and all that goes with it or because you threaten it.”
Mouse shook her head.
“So you still purport this story of yours, that I am a much closer relative of the Empress that what I have been known to be my entire life,” she said, more as a question than a statement.
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The old man smiled.
“I have not changed my mind in regard to from whose womb you sprang,” he said, “largely because I was there to see it for myself.”
Mouse’s eyebrows rose in surprise.
“The fact that it makes you uncomfortable,” the old man said, “does not make it any less true.”
Mouse sat quietly, trying to understand how any of what the old man told her could be true. Her eyes went to the portrait of the former Emperor that hung on the wall near the bookshelf. He was young and handsome, the hint of a smile dancing on his lips, breathing life into an otherwise somber face.
“Were you close to him?” Mouse asked softly, her eyes following the brushstrokes that carried the Emperor’s hair from the crown of his head to his shoulders.
“Quite close,” Ludger said, “though there were some years between us.” His own eyes now went to the portrait. “My own brothers and sisters were lost to the red finger,” he said, “just as his were.”
Mouse looked at the old man, noting a sadness in his eyes she had never seen before. She studied his face.
How old was he, really? she wondered. Old enough to see three different rulers sit the throne of Aros, if not four, and old enough to know a good deal more than Mouse about such matters that she now pondered.
He turned to fix his grey eyes back on Mouse.
“What else would you like to know?” he asked, an almost uncharacteristic gentleness in his tone. “What would you like me to tell you?”
Mouse swallowed.
She had not resolved herself to believe everything the old man said, but she had decided at least to hear him, to see if she could discern herself if there might not be some truth in his words. She was surprised by how patient he was being with her now. Perhaps, she thought, he had been waiting for her all this time, waiting for her to come around to reason.
She drew a deep breath.
“Tell me a story,” she said, drawing herself up in her chair to look the old man squarely in the eye. “Tell me a story about a girl who lived her life believing she was one thing only to find out she was another.” She rubbed her fingers nervously along the carved arms of the chair. “A girl who thought things were one way and woke up one day to realize that they were not.”
The old man considered her, his grey eyes become vivid and lively as he tugged at one of the long white whiskers that sprouted from his chin.
“If you will allow me,” he said thoughtfully, “I should like to start at the beginning.”
Mouse nodded her assent and braced herself in her chair for the coming words that she knew would be like to rattle her.
The old man closed his eyes and leaned his head back for a few moments.
“You came into the world,” he began, returning his gaze to an uneasy Mouse, “at a time when the Arosian Empire was at odds with itself. Emperor Lothar had recently wed a young woman of Ahnderland, Elke, daughter of Queen Filipa, and in doing so, joined the nation of Ahnderland to the Empire.”
Mouse nodded. None of this was yet news to her.
“This union, however,” Ludger continued, “was ill-received by many, both of the upper classes and the lower, on both sides. In fact, it had been opposed not only by most of the Emperor’s High Councilors and the Arosian court, but most of Elke’s own people had been against the marriage as well.
“You see, many Arosians were upset that the Emperor did not marry a Toth; that, of course, would be no surprise to anyone. But they might have more easily forgiven these subverted expectations were it not for the unease they felt at the growing opposition on the other side.”
Mouse shifted in her seat, her curiosity piqued by the telling of what she considered a familiar tale being told from a different perspective.
“Ahnderland had been weakened substantially by the Iskian Wars. One side constantly pillaged their villages and raided their fields while the other razed them so that they could not be used by their enemies.”
The old man shook his head, his brow knit together.
“It was a terrible thing,” he said, “to watch them suffer such devastation for a war of which they were not even a part. Their own army was all but decimated by constant invasion and their economy had all but collapsed. So when Emperor Lothar approached Queen Filipa with an offer to join her kingdom to his own, she felt she had little choice.”
Ludger held out his hands in front of him.
“The Queen could either cling to her nation’s independence,” he said, lifting one hand, “in the hopes that in time, they might slowly claw their way back to economic prosperity. Or,” he raised his other hand, “she could sacrifice this independence and guarantee her people’s survival.”
Mouse chewed her lip as she pondered this.
“Naturally,” the old man continued, “many of those in Ahnderland were not prepared to give up their independence just because it was what the Queen had decided. They had no wish to pledge fealty to an Arosian Emperor, and they made no efforts to hide such sentiments.”
He once again laced his fingers together and placed them back over his stomach.
“In fact, Elke’s brother, who you know as Lord Marius, was one of the most vehement adversaries of this plan.”
The old man paused for a moment, allowing Mouse to take in all that he had said.
Though she was well-versed in the Empire’s history, thanks in large part to Ludger’s instruction, there were details in his telling of it now that she had not known before.
“The crown,” the old man continued after some moments of reflection, “was therefore not only under a great deal of pressure to justify the union of Lothar and Elke, to prove Queen Filipa’s decision the correct one and spare her her people’s ire, but due to mounting tensions among the ruling classes and the constant fear of rebel forces in Ahnderland rising up to act upon their disapproval, the royal family of Aros found itself under constant threat.
“Marius, the would-be heir to the throne of Ahnderland, had been so strongly and vocally opposed to his sister’s marriage, that many watched for his supporters to come and reclaim the woman by force.”
The old man paused again, this time looking closely into Mouse’s face. He was preparing, she could tell, to tell her something that would not be easy to hear. She swallowed and wrapped her fingers around the arms of the chair.
“Your birth,” Ludger began now slowly, “and your sister’s, unlike most of those born into your station, was, mercifully, a private one. Your mother’s being from Ahnderland meant that she was able to spare you the spectacle of a typical royal birth. Few were in attendance,” the old man stroked his chin in thought. “A midwife, a surgeon, a nurse,” he paused, “myself, and a few other close friends.”
Mouse felt her stomach begin to stir upon hearing of her own birth being described thusly.
“The birth of two twin girls,” the old man shook his head, “many might have seen as some sort of omen, a portent of doom to be feared and perhaps even—” He paused, turning his eyes away from Mouse’s. “—nullified,” he said, the word settling into Mouse’s stomach like a pit.
“But to your father,” the old man quickly went on, “to welcome two daughters into the world when he might have only had one was something of a miracle.” A bittersweet smile turned his lips. “Your mother’s parting gift to him before leaving this world.”
Mouse felt the unbidden tears begin to prick at her eyes. It was still difficult to entertain the notion that Emperor Lothar and Elke of Ahnderland might be her parents, but there was something very sad in it, to remember once again that she would never know the woman who gave birth to her.
“Lothar made a decision that day,” the old man said, his own grey eyes seeming to have become a bit misty, “that he would not waste that gift. He would hide it away from the world, cherish it in private.”
He sighed.
“And so, one child was given to the crown,” he said, “to live and die for the glory of Aros. And the other,” he nodded his head toward Mouse, “was given a very different sort of life.”
Mouse looked down at her lap in discomfort.
“Lothar knew that it is by grace alone that Kings and Emperors live,” Ludger went on somberly, “and it gave him comfort to think that should anything happen to himself and his family in the difficult days that followed the joining of Ahnderland to Aros and the death of his beloved Elke, the Empire would not be left without an heir.”
Following this, the old man fell quiet, leaving Mouse to ponder all that he had said. It was fantastical in a way, she thought, almost unbelievable, but not entirely.
She had been stunned by what she had heard, and it took her some moments to gather herself to speak.
“Why tell me know?” she asked, shaking her head as she looked into the old man’s grey eyes. “Why tell me at all?”
Ludger smiled at her and lifted his shoulders.
“There was never going to be a right time to tell you,” he said. “There never can be with this sort of thing.”
A small laugh escaped Mouse lips. She could not be more in agreement with the old man there.
“But there may come a day,” Ludger said, “when you find that your empire needs you. It is my prayer, just as it was your father’s, that that is a call you will be prepared to answer if and when that day comes.”
Mouse tried to swallow, but her throat had gone dry.
“After all, it is a thin divide,” the old man said, his grey eyes glistening from under his thick white brows, “between the Empress who wears the crown and the other way around.”