Zevros doesn't hate him, Edarial's certain of it, but he's not helping. He's literally never seen his twin this angry before. This is coming from someone who has seen his twin be angry loads of times. At meals, he just - sits there. Stabbing his food and glaring at Edarial while he does it. He gets why, he knows that Zevros is furious with him for the whole 'cold political marriage' thing. It still hurts, though, to have his immediate family just be so openly hostile.
He gets more withdrawn. Meals get delivered to his room rather than him eating with Iobel and Zevros right there, being near-openly hostile. He stops sparring with Zevros nearly entirely, spends an unhealthy amount of time in either his office or his room, and Berathyme spends all her time coiled around his shoulders, offering what little comfort she can.
She's pretty terrible at advice, but at least he has someone that doesn't actively hate him nearby.
He throws himself into being a king, gets lots of things done, and is generally considered by the public to be good at it. A good king. It's sort of tainted by bitterness, now. But the country does not fall apart, it does not break down into civil war - he handles it. The education system gets a shove in the right direction, the canals get cleaned up, various unemployed people get jobs. He wonders what on earth he's done wrong when he's doing good in the world, but he supposes it doesn't matter.
He knew what he was getting himself into, when he made this choice. He knew that Zevros would be upset with him. Maybe to the point where their camaraderie will just never recover. He doesn't know. From the beginning, he knew that he'd be shackled to someone he doesn't love. Edarial hadn't been expecting the random hatred from his new wife, but he certainly wasn't expecting to be happy.
Just, well. He wasn't expecting to be so miserable, either.
It shows, the misery. Dark circles under his eyes, the withdrawn, blank expression, unkempt hair. He loses some weight due to skipping meals just to avoid his close family. Or, other times, he just forgets, burying himself in work so he doesn't have to think 'What did I do?' over and over again.
But he's a good king. So that's something.
No one is teaching her to be a queen, so she figures it out herself.
She didn't want it but she's willing to use it. I am the queen. Explain to me this. I am the queen. Have that arranged. I am the queen. Fetch me this. I am the queen. Leave me alone.
She moves in her stuff. She sells the excess hexes to a small outfit that does mail-orders. She goes to meals and looks for things that could use someone who can say I am the queen, do as I say.
And whenever her husband is about she glares at him, and Cricket hisses, but he doesn't compound his crimes any further, so there's that.
"... Okay. Second thing I've been avoiding talking about, but we obviously need to. What in the world did I do to you? Why are you so - dead set on hating me?"
His voice breaks, just a little, on the last few syllables. Berathyme uncurls from his shoulders and relocates herself to his lap, looking at both Cricket and Iobel with judgemental eyes.
This is probably the most emotion he's displayed to her in all of their months of being married. He looks frustrated, hurt, and confused.
"I," he hisses, "did not write this, what kind of -"
He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and carefully hands the letter back to her. "That - is a forgery. A good one, but a damned forgery."
"And I suppose the fact that while I was packing to flee the country my Cricket got too sick for any healing spell I know to even alleviate his symptoms has nothing to do with you and the guards at the fountain who wouldn't let me through but would happily take him and not give him back till I married you is the result of some conspiracy operating under your nose without you having an inkling and you thought that one guard Cricket got his claws into had a fight with a gardening implement."
After a few seconds of silence, he says something to his familiar in her language. She nods, he gets up, opens the door for her, and she slithers out.
Then, very quietly, he murmurs, mostly to himself, "I am quite possibly, the biggest dupe in the country."
"That is exactly what happened. I gave him real answers because it was faster than coming up with incompetent-sounding lies and I wanted him on his way being helpful as soon as possible, and then spent months kicking myself for not saying I would solve the housing crisis in the eastlands by printing more money and giving it to the poor."
The man is not currently capable of making words that aren't curses or pleas to be let go.
"Hello," he says, to the guard. "We have questions for you, do please try to answer them."
The guard makes a pathetic whimpery sound that sounds like, 'Please don't hurt me.'
"Sword," demands Edarial.
He leans down next to Scratched McScarserson, sword out, but not pointed near the guard in any way. "Let me repeat that. We have questions."
"Please- your majesty-"
Edarial fixes him with a cold, emotionless stare. "Who were you working for, and who were your associates?"
The guard hesitates.
"Or I could let my brother and Cricket team up and try to out do each other?"
Squeaky sound. Followed by names.
Edarial notes them, then calmly returns the sword to Zevros. "Pathetically fast, yes."
"According to what selection process? Nataliem can be locked up. But I doubt even if you were doing your due diligence for once you'd detect every minor noble whose - parents were pressuring them to try to marry you, or whatever. For that matter, did I really earn my tiara on the basis of that survey, it was a reasonably well-made survey, how good was second place?"
"Invisibility. I have decent healing but it's not perfect. I finished one to walk through walls a few weeks ago. I have a shielding hex on me but it won't hold up to a well-made offensive spell or prolonged physical battering. All my offensively purposeable spells besides the knockout take longer to charge, so while it might entertain Cricket if I came home with stories about boiling Nataliem's brain in its own juices or something, it's not tactically useful."
"Oh, I like you, you're useful. Okay, game plan - Iobel, invisibility to start out, then wall walking, sneak in while we are being large distraction. Charge up a knockout spell, hit Nataliem with it. If there's any problem at all, book it through the walls and yell. Edarial - protection duty. Iobel in particular, she's vulnerable, you got that invisible shield set up?"
"Let me know when you're about to do the spell, Ari. While it's charging we'll head there. Iobel, start charging on invisibility. Don't freak out and lose it when Edarial's spell goes, your vision will change, just try to adjust and get used to what size of people mean what distance."
It goes. The world seems to dim and the people around them turn to bright, translucent silhouettes. It's hard to identify who's who - their faces are now shrouded by varying shades of lighter colors. It will take a bit to figure out, but Edarial is a light blue, Zevros a pale green, and their various companions different colors between them. If Iobel inspects her own hand, she'll see it's a brilliant white, and possibly be able to figure out what the colors mean from hers and Edarial's.
"I was the one that noticed the results of your cat and the strange convenient headaches at the same time. Went to tell Edarial, he blew me off and went back to pouting. Not to mention, I was against the whole 'get married to someone you don't know' thing from the beginning."
"But you didn't, for example, ask me what was wrong, or present a sufficiently approachable face that the survey-taker went to you with my story, or double-check the intake procedures of queen candidates, or keep a close enough eye on the guards to know that at least half a dozen of them are taking orders from someone else."
"Oh, believe me, I'm kicking myself for my own missed opportunities. I could have gone to you, I could have gone to Edarial, I could have simply thrown enough magic and screaming at the top of my lungs around during my rescue attempt that I would be guaranteed attention outside of a handful of bought and paid for guards and helpless servants, I could have burst into tears at the wedding, I could have kept hold of Cricket in the first place, downed those guards, and dunked him myself, I could have worked faster on my wall-walking spell, I could have prioritized cramming my idealized teleportation spellchart into my head last summer instead of setting the project down to pick at an immortality hex, I could have done so many things. And so could any of us, so why are you being more judgmental than my cat?"
"Because if Edarial had listened to me in the first place, none of this shit would have happened. You'd be in your magic shop working on an immortality hex, and we'd be anywhere but here. The two of you would never have met, I wouldn't be pissed at my brother, your cat wouldn't have been kidnapped and poisoned, and Ari wouldn't be a quivering mess of misery. Everybody wins."
It's a large, fancy house, with pretty gardens and a few fountains. Iobel can see lots of people inside it, some whose silhouettes look like they're carrying weaponry. On the third floor is a lavender figure who's isolated from the others, and who seems to be sitting at a desk. That's probably Nataliem.
There are neither of those things, unfortunately - but she can find at least one set of stairs through the walls by looking at how people move. While there are what look to be servant passages for out of the way deliveries, they might be too cramped for comfort if someone else is in them. The main hallways have guards in them, but at least Iobel would have the ability to go around them if they are walking towards her.
Up the stairs she goes.
There's three of them; Iobel could get them all, but it's probably safer for her to quietly stalk them while they try to drag Nataliem through a combat zone and only knock one out if they get farther than the front door. If she sees the raven she wants to get her, too.
The raven is still in the room with Nataliem. She pecks at a window for someone to open it so she can fly away to safety, but the guards are currently busy trying to drag her master out. Fortunate for Iobel, not so much for the raven. She gets to trying to open it herself, struggling a little with a device not built for use with a beak. If Iobel's fast enough, she can manage to knock her out.
Now it's just waiting to see if the fight's going in her side's favor downstairs, and making sure Nataliem isn't dragged completely out of the house.
If Iobel's watching the proceedings through the floor, she can see that Zevros is utterly terrifying in one on one combat. Especially when combined with his brother's spell - it's hard, if perhaps impossible for someone to sneak up on him. Once he knows they're there, he handles them well enough, and leaves several crumpled bodies in his wake. A few of their silhouettes flicker out entirely.
Apparently he doesn't mind leaving some casualties.
Once all prisoners have been dropped off at the prison to be processed (and Nataliem's familiar is bound with a hex), there seems to be little else to do besides wait at the palace for him to wake up for questioning.
Out of habit, he curls up in his room. He has a lot of things to think about.
So, Edarial didn't do it. He was neglectful to the point that it almost strains credulity, but seems to have been legitimately upset about having to get married, which is - some excuse, if not much - and is now quite willing to resolve the problem insofar as it can be resolved.
She has very little sense of his personality on a social level under all the despair - approximately, what she knows is that he's the sort of person to get married for some combination of national benefit and brotherly sacrifice despite finding the prospect hideous, he is not a rapist (lucky him; that would have gotten her thinking very seriously about murder), and that he smiled when she healed the fallen enemy combatants. And that he filtered candidates for queenhood on the basis of the quality of their politics in a way that made Iobel the best choice by a significant margin.
(She leaves a note in clearly readable Marlese for Zephrys: she wants the names and addresses of everyone else who was being considered so she can find out if she was the only person being coerced at any point in the process. She somewhat doubts that Edarial would think of this.)
He's willing to divorce her. She's not sure if that would be best, although she's scarcely going to cling to his sleeve and weep if he insists on it because he can't stand the sight of her.
But she thinks she's a good queen, and could be better if the king weren't avoiding her; and he has to be married to somebody; and maybe if he ever lightens up he'd be all right; and maybe she can cook up a spell to get her pregnant with the heir to the throne without having to trespass on his distaste or her unease.
It's more complicated than that on paper, but those are the conclusions she has by the time Zevros's few hours have elapsed.
Zevros takes the list of names, then heads back over to his trainees. He clears his throat. Then he starts reading them, in a loud commanding voice. The first few are confused. Then, they start noting whose names are being called, and that's when they get very nervous. He makes it to the end of the list, rolls up the paper, and then looks at them all, calmly.
"Ladies. Gentlemen. If your name has been called, congratulations. You are now under arrest. For kidnapping, poisoning, extortion, obstruction of an emergency healing thingymadoodle, assault, and best of all treason. Against her majesty. Ladies and gentlemen whose names have not been called - I will buy you a drink for every one of the named people that you arrest. Or stab, honestly I'm not picky. But try not to take too long at it."
Zevros draws his sword, grinning. "Because I'm competing, too."
It turns out that the number of guards that are not traitors outnumbers the ones that are by a large amount. It's hilariously one sided, and soon enough - there are all named parties that Iobel and Cricket know of that were involved, out of commission in one way or another. None are dead, and they are all escorted (or carried off to) the prison, to join their fellows.
"And remember!" calls Zevros, after the remaining guards, "The most important lesson of all! Traitors get to go to jail, people that are loyal get to party after asswhooping! Know where you stand on that, be on the right side!"
Then he looks at Iobel. "I realized that Ari is probably still sulking in his room. So I just handled it."
Zevros shrugs. "I've got no idea. Honestly though, it will probably take a while. If you want to get anything done in the next week or so on the front of talking about where your... creepy double nonconsensual relationship political thing is going, I would recommend talking to him."
Pause.
"I do not want a civil war."
"Not completely random, no, but still quite random in comparison to various people that have been on the political playing field for decades. Yes, they are that delicate. I understand that you are not trying to start a civil war, I am not accusing you of doing so, but I am being frank with you because I don't have the energy to be more gentle."
"And? And those would be the people that would be most hurt by a civil war. Those would be the people that would really suffer. It would be their homes that are getting pillaged for supplies for armies, their fields that are getting emptied, their children that are conscripted to join one side or another - I could go on. There's a lot of material about how wars are bad. I'll spare you."
Iobel makes no attempt to approach Edarial again. She attends meals, she takes the list of names and addresses of the other queen candidates mentioning that some treasonous behavior that might have affected them has come to light and asks if they suffered from any coercion prompting or prolonging their stay at the palace, and she keeps an eye out for any queening that she can do.
He sends her a few things that could require queening. Shyly, with 'You don't have to deal with them if you don't want to' caveats on every one. It turns out that he was doing a lot on his own, once Iobel starts helping with his workload. He can manage just fine with it, but he feels guilty for not teaching her how to be a queen.
Occasionally, rarely, he will actually make jokes. He is revealed to have a sense of humor. With Zevros. Iobel herself he doesn't quite know what to do with, so he leaves her alone. But he can joke around with his twin, again.
He's actually completely fine with talking to Iobel, and occasionally gives her status updates on his brother. "He actually went outside today," or "Edarial's staring at the ceiling again, do you think I should go poke him or would that make it worse," or "I'd drag him off to spar with me if he would stop making that face every time I suggest it."
But beneath the abrasive manner, rude language, lack of care for the country as a whole - it's rather clear that he does care about him, quite a lot.
She accepts every queening task sent her way, takes copious notes, and has Zephrys recommend a co-worker to do more of her random tasks and free up more of her time.
She confines herself to smiling at amusing jokes; she doesn't think they're quite at a laughing stage with each other.
Iobel is fine talking to Zevros too; he kind of rubs her the wrong way, but not enough to prevent ordinary conversations. She certainly has no opinion on whether poking Edarial will make him worse. She knows almost nothing about him, certainly nothing compared to his twin.
One day, over lunch (with Edarial present) he says, "So apparently Nataliem is pissed because we threw him in prison and then ignored him. Does anyone care? 'Cause I don't."
"I suspect that it had something to do with a twisted desire to help Marlatia. Because obviously everything he did is exonerated because he was doing it in the country's best interests," deadpans Edarial. Sarcasm is also a thing he proves to be capable of doing, as demonstrated here.
"It's the escalation pattern that confuses me more than the result he aimed at. That and how he expected to go unpunished, assuming he did - as it happened we didn't notice for a very long time, but he didn't know me well or do much to prevent any impulse I might have manifested to go to you with my concerns directly."
Edarial actually already knows where Nataliem is in this dungeon. He'd checked to make sure living conditions weren't terrible, before dumping him here. "This way," he says.
Then, there is Nataliem. His familiar is with him, since she can't fit through the bars. He glances up, at them both. "Ah, your majesties," he says, getting up to bow with only a trace of spite, "to what do I owe the pleasure?"
"And even if he had tried to charm me, I was under the impression that he'd held my cat hostage. If we'd had enough of a conversation early on to produce that information then instead of just the other day, I imagine the ultimate outcome for you would have been the same. Did you have some plan of getting away with it?"
While he is the former queen's son, he's not her king's. He's aware that there were several attempts at inventing a spell to cure sterility, and for one very good reason. The former king was sterile. None of the attempts to fix this worked. This is something he's been aware of for most of his life, and not cared about in the slightest. What did he care about a father who isn't there?
But with it all laid out in front of him like this... Well. It's not hard to figure out.
"Shit," he hisses. "Shit, you son of a - are you lying, are you making this up to spite me?!"
He growls, "You're lucky that my brother isn't here. He would have killed you. I wouldn't have stopped him."
Iobel can think of things to say, but doesn't know if this is the time. She doesn't know when would be the time, but - it doesn't seem to be now. Maybe if she just leaves him alone long enough Edarial will magically turn into a person again instead of a heap of negative emotion.
"If it were very private I would have referred to you as 'the king' or something," she says, shaking her head. "Cricket asked what I was thinking and I said - I think you look at me like I'm a walking sign that reads 'contemplate the terrible circumstances of your marriage now' - as opposed to a human being."
"I would have said it directly to you in the first place if I were after an apology. I have no particular hope that you are ever going to like me or anything about me beyond my opinions on governance, but it seems like it would be more conducive to forming some kind of working relationship regarding the opinions on governance if you didn't find me and my - context - intolerable to think about. I'm mostly wondering if that's ever going to happen or if eventually you're going to dismiss me, queen someone else who you might or might like and who might or might not be helpful but who at least isn't associated with so much unpleasantness, and move on."
"How can I like you when I hardly know you, and you spend most of your time commenting on my various failures while I'm still trying to pull myself together? Because personally I feel like I'm not being treated like a person, either. It's like I'm an excuse for you to - be queen or you're waiting for me to do something you don't want, like kick you to the curb for my own comfort. I don't even hate you or dislike you, I'm just - stuck in the mindset that there is a woman who hates me and happens to be glaring at me every chance she gets and oh wait she turns out to be entirely justified. Honestly most of this isn't even involved with you, you just happen to be a reminder of the shit that's going on in my head. None of that's your fault and I know that and I'm working on it."
"I don't expect you to like me. But how am I supposed to know what will and won't help you pull yourself together? I know very little about you and less about how to haul you out of a miserable fugue, and if Zevros's likewise inability to do so is any indication I could have known you all your life and still have no idea. More information and feedback would help me, and you asked me what I said when warned it wouldn't be pleasant, and what else do I have to go on? I know little about you and less about what you do when confronted with a marriage to someone you - apparently produce no value judgment upon at all. You could have me packed off home if you like. My apartment and my store are still there. You could get rid of me. Why wouldn't you? When all I am to you is a terrible reminder of something you never wanted that was worse than you feared."
He sighs. "Yes. I could get rid of you, but I'm not going to just because it's convenient for me. Because even if - this was worse than I expected I still took on the responsibility willingly. Meaning that I'm going to listen to your preferences for things, including how you seem to want to stay as queen. You deserve some basic respect for your choices. You are my wife and that is not meaningless to me. Even if the ceremony was a sham and I wanted to shove that idiot priest's stupid misogynistic oaths back down his throat."
"Oh, god, the oaths," says Iobel, almost laughing. "They were - yes, they could have stood to go back whence they came and maybe a bit farther. Well. This is good to know, because if you were going to show me the door I'd have preferred it done quickly. So. Since I'm here, since I'm staying - how does one haul you out of a depressive pit, how does one formulate some reasonably cordial working relationship with you, how does one cause you to feel like you are being treated like a person, how does one come by information about you like that of 'willing to consider preferences of wife in wife-relevant decisionmaking' by mechanisms other than speculation or conversational happenstance?"
Edarial attempts a little, teensy smile. "As to the others... Talking? Asking relevant questions? I don't know if you want to talk to me or not, and it's not like I know what in the world to say to you. I've been mostly in my own head, unless you want updates on how much I hate myself at any one point in time, I don't think that's very useful for smalltalk."
"I found and allocated funding for that person who wanted to coordinate canal cleanup and had more than sixty percent of an idea for how to go about it," she volunteers. "I took some of it out of the budget for buying new dishes. I don't know why there was such a budget for buying new dishes; they aren't exactly unreusable."
"I want to be effective; if I can't be effective working on the same thing you're doing because you have a solo workflow that works and shouldn't be perturbed, I'll do something else. I'm good at inventing spells and cheating at problems and aggregating a lot of anecdotal complaints into patterns. Deploy me where I'll be useful."
"Born a prince. Avoided my mother like the plague, for very obvious reasons. The king I didn't need to avoid - he didn't like either of us, for being bastards, so he did most of the avoiding. He at least threw some tutors and nursemaids in our general direction, so we weren't completely bereft of parental figures. None of them really - stick out to me, they got switched a lot on account of my mother, but it was better than nothing. When I was eight and between tutors I got bored and bound Berathyme, for permanent company - I'd had basically only Zevros - and because magic interested me."
"I was born out in South Fork, but my parents got divorced when I was very little and I grew up with my mother here in Emavan most of the time with visits out to my father now and then. He's a police officer and she's a schoolteacher, so I got to go to the school she teaches at for several years, even though it's mostly too pricey for the children of single parents. I bound Cricket when I was seven because I wanted to be a spellbinder and because I wanted to be able to pet him." She pets him illustratively. Cricket purrs.
"I taught Cricket the translation of his name - which I now mostly call him even in the private language; he likes the sound of it better - and enough basics that I could send him on little errands like asking Raney when dinner would be, and then a bit more when I opened the store and wanted to be able to leave it open when I stepped out without paying a human shopkeeper. And he has wheedled me into teaching him a little swearing, although not nearly as much as Zevros has managed to pass along recently."
"I should write to my parents," Iobel says abruptly. "The last they heard was - before. It is possible that on learning that they run no particular risk of being locked up for my cooperation if they appear here, one or both of them will want to. Should I dissuade them in advance?"
"It is really hard to reduce an entire brother into a few sentences. Uh... Really smart, driven, had a pole perpetually up his ass. Fucking fantastic listener, heart bleeding all over the place, sometimes gets a bit too focused on one thing to the exclusion of everything else. Treats himself like a resource to be used and not like a thing to be taken care of until he realizes he is hurting. Uh... Sarcastic, and a huge magic nerd."
Zevros snickers. "He kind of just looked confused, then said, 'Nothing? I already knew' and just moved on because he just didn't think it mattered in the slightest. It was kind of funny, I wanted to hug him for it."
"I begin to suspect that he agreed to get married to spare you the trouble, as though there is somehow more justice in a straight man being married to a woman he has no interest than in a gay man being likewise. Or perhaps that didn't factor in and it was only your preference for absconding for fruity drinks."
"Pretty sure it was a bit of both. Me not wanting to be king, and me being gay. He wants to be king, and doesn't seem to be gay, so I guess in his head it was the better option. Honestly though, he doesn't seem to be anything, I don't even know if he likes women. He's shown absolutely no interest in anyone. At all."