Work Text:
Lute arrived to Frelia considerably dusty, but none worse for the wear. It was almost regrettable that the only monsters one found lurching along the roads these days were so pedestrian, and barely more than a warm-up exercise for a genius.
But more importantly, she had a certain building to find. A stable, maybe, or a rookery or whatever one called the place where pegasi were kept. On second thought, she was more likely looking for the barracks of the pegasus knights. If “barracks” was the proper term. It was sobering to realize that even a sage of unparalleled prowess had whole areas of knowledge well away from her expertise. Good. She wasn’t in any risk of getting bored. Lute adjusted the strap of her almost-deflated traveling bag and set forth through the streets of Frelia.
In truth, she was much more comfortable on the roads, crappy monsters and all. Capital cities were huge—a remark unworthy of her intellect, but no less blatant for that. Until she left to help save the world, Lute had never set foot on any place larger than her hometown. Said hometown might have a place in the history books simply for being her birthplace, but one had to admit it didn’t have anything else to set it apart. Still, everybody was used to her and didn’t mind her as long as she didn’t set anything on fire, which was too clumsy for her anyway. Big cities had towering buildings and way too many people, most of them throwing dirty glares at her travel-weathered clothes. Not that Lute cared, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant. Besides, all the noise and crowding got old awfully fast.
As usual, she underestimated the city’s size and had to sit down and rest on a public garden, sitting on the marble steps leading up to some old guy’s statue. The first king of Frelia, maybe. It didn’t make any sense, but walking through a city was more tiresome than a whole day of journey. Maybe it was the weariness catching up with her. Anywhere else, she would’ve headed straight to the closest inn. She wanted to meet with someone first, though. It had made sense at first. Well then. Lute got up, smoothed her cape out, smearing dust on her hands in the process, and tried to find the outskirts of the city. At least, it was reasonable to assume the grounds of the pegasus knights would be found in the edges, where there was more room.
Her eyes scanned over the statue a couple of times before she realized what it was. A pegasus standing on its rear legs, wings held up, carrying a knight that lifted up her lance over her head. It looked very heroic and inspiring. That meant—right behind the statue was a line of flower beds around a path that led to a massive white building with huge decorative pillars. Indeed, this had to be the place. A line of golden letters over the gates read “Pegasus Knight Academy”. Lute realized she had seen glimpses of the Academy’s white roof several times already. She combed her hair with her fingers, redid her pigtails and went through the gates.
“Hey, you!” A woman Lute had never seen before stepped in her way before she could walk halfway through the oversized reception. A junior officer, judging by the uniform. “If you want to see a relative, you have to come in the weekends.”
“Not a problem. I’m not here to see a relative.”
Junior didn’t like the answer, despite it being very reasonable. She probably didn’t like that she hadn’t been able to prevent Lute’s scuffed boots from leaving a faint track of dry mud on the spotless floor. One could see her point, considering that Junior was probably in charge of scrubbing, but in the end Lute was a world-saving hero and Junior wasn’t. That had to come with some privileges.
“I’m here to study the pegasi,” Lute explained before Junior grabbed her elbow and dragged her out, as she was clearly itching to do.
“Then go talk to the University or something.”
Lute hadn’t come this far to leave so easily, and she was ready to see how Junior fared against Lute’s her battle-honed reflexes, but in the end it wasn’t necessary. Steps resounded in the floor toward them, momentarily distracting Junior and allowing Lute to retreat.
“If you can—” The calm, collected voice broke in an undignified squeak of surprise. It happens to the best of people. “Oh—Lute?”
“Captain Vanessa.” Junior stood straighter.
“What’s wrong?” Vanessa quickly left her companions behind, standing before Lute all tense.
“Nothing. I had a long journey and didn’t stop to rest.”
Junior walked away in a cloud of offended but intact pride. The two pegasus knights with Vanessa smiled unconcerned, probably thinking that people who devote themselves to study magic are a bit kooky anyway. Quite a few people seemed to think that, though Lute had never figured out why.
Vanessa took the situation on stride, as befitting someone who was right by Luthe at the saving the world deal. “Phew! I thought it was an emergency. Never mind. It’s been a while.”
Lute had the feeling Vanessa didn’t really expect her to show up, but decided not to take it personally. Even if the last few months had been too dedicated to cleaning up loose ends to travel. It suddenly occurred to her that there must be far more things to clean at the capital, and the pegasus knights certainly had to have a part on it, and the work might still go on.
“If it’s not a good moment, just say so.”
“No, it’s fine.” Vanessa turned to the other two. “I trust you’ll do fine on your own, but you know where to find me.” The others nodded and disappeared down a hallway by the left. “We have a lot of new recruits lately, you know? I guess we’re popular.” She sounded proud.
“Thanks to you and your sister,” Lute pointed out.
Vanessa looked away sheepishly. “I guess so. Anyway,” she rapidly changed subjects, “you were interested in pegasi, right?”
“Yes. But I should get a room and a bath first.”
“My bad. If we weren’t full now, I’d ask you to stay at the Academy.”
“That won’t be necessary, thank you.” Lute was a bit miffed that Vanessa seemed to think she couldn’t afford an inn.
“I guess you wouldn’t care for the meals, anyway.”
“That’s not an issue at all. I haven’t had an actual meal in days, so anything is a step up.” Lute was very matter-of-fact about it. After all, she was the only one who wouldn’t bother cooking. Artur, bless his monky soul, always made sandwiches and other easily-carried food for her to eat on the road, and since he did it there was no point in refusing. But once Lute ran out of them, she just ate bread, cheese and fruit straight from her bag.
“Sorry, I didn’t know.” Vanessa looked concerned. “You should make sure you eat a proper meal and sleep in a proper bed before you show up at the Academy again.” It seemed Lute attracted people like that every once in a while. But then, it felt good to have someone act concerned over her every once in a while. It wasn’t very nice, but it was good to have Vanessa act concerned over her, after worrying that Lute wasn’t as welcome as she’d like.
Next day, Vanessa insisted in taking Lute on a tour of the Academy. The endless corridors made Lute feel a bit dizzy, but she didn’t mention it. She even kept herself from getting lost in the library, even though she knew there were treatises of magic in there calling to her. Vanessa knew as much about the history of the Academy and the pegasus knights of Frelia as Lute did about cute bugs, and the whole institution clearly mattered a great deal to her. Lute respected everyone who took their calling seriously, genius or not.
“Actually,” Vanessa went on as they stepped into the pegasi’s aerie—that was the proper word—which smelled just as expected, “we have to reject most aspiring pegasus knights. One has to stay under a certain weight or the pegasus would slow down and give the enemy an advantage, and most importantly, it takes a lot of coordination just to stay on the saddle. And now we’re even running short on pegasi.”
Lute looked around. Quite a few of the stalls looked unused. “You had many losses?”
“It wasn’t that bad, but our pegasi have a low birthrate lately, so we’re not coming up with replacements.”
Yes. That was Lute’s mission, as clear as if it’d been delivered to her in an official-looking scroll. “I’ll find what the optimal conditions for pegasi breeding are.”
“It’s not that you have to—but you don’t want to hear that, right?”
Lute irradiated conviction. “People of my intellect are called to situations like this.”
“But going through my superiors will take a while. I mean, I don’t expect you’ll want to stay in Frelia for a few months.”
“Typical.” Lute chewed on the inside of her cheek and considered the situation. For her, stagnating was the worse outcome. Not having a challenge befitting her abilities. Anything else wasn’t an issue. “Then I’ll just pass some information on to you unofficially.”
“Oh.” Vanessa was a bit surprised, almost as if she’d expected Lute to say she’d hang around waiting for an official permit. Or hoped so. For a moment, Lute considered changing her mind, but then Vanessa went on. “Well, if there’s something you’ll need—”
“Access to the library.” Lute’s mind had already started wandering toward the subjects she’d need to focus on. What exactly could affect a pegasus’ health? Food? Climate?
“I’ll tell the librarian—” A couple of junior officers showed up at the doors, saw Vanessa and waved to her frantically. “I’ll tell the librarian to help you out with everything. It seems something came up, sorry.”
Since Lute had already started wandering, she didn’t mind being left alone at all. In fact, for the next two days she barely saw Vanessa at all, but that was okay, because she had facts to process, and a librarian to confuse. Then Vanessa showed up at the library while Lute was taking notes from two different books open before her. Lute put them aside before Vanessa walked out the way she came.
“Find anything new?”
“Not quite, but I have a lot of notes about historical periods of low birthrate among pegasi.”
“Wow, that’s a lot of work.”
“You sound like you’re surprised I found anything at all,” Lute grumbled.
“Well, pegasus breeding has been studied for centuries. It’s okay if you don’t find anything new.”
“But historically breeders have focused on traits like speed, endurance and intelligence. I can’t find anything about fertility in the three main schools. By the way, it seems two of those haven’t existed since our grandparents’ time. Why?”
“Princess Celia supported the other one, so they ended up closing due to a lack of funds and interest.”
“Typical.” Things like this made Lute thankful she’d never become embroiled in academics. It didn’t seem to be healthy ground.
“Just don’t say anything bad of the third school. It eventually became this academy.”
“Still, this might be related to your current problem. Maybe it was under the surface all along.”
Vanessa looked out of the window. “I guess it’s for the best we didn’t go by the official channels after all. Never mind.” She looked back at Lute. “Do you still want that pegasus ride?”
Lute almost jumped to her feet. “You remembered!”
“Yes. I didn’t say anything because you looked so busy—but then I thought you could use a distraction.”
Maybe Lute should’ve tried to talk to Vanessa more often. Vanessa probably cared, she was just busy. Hopefully, taking up her offer would be a start toward being friendlier.
Lute had figured out riding a pegasus wouldn’t be so different from riding a regular horse. Not that she’d ever done that either. But the second the pegasus jumped, her stomach jumped too, and stayed halfway up her throat. And the ground was so terribly far away! She could just about see why somebody else could enjoy the view, but the only thing going through her head was the way someone would look after falling all the way there.
“Are you okay?” Vanessa asked from right behind her. Lute wasn’t sure she could speak. “I guess not. Let’s go down.”
Even that didn’t make Lute feel much better. Solid ground had proven itself to be an illusion. Her legs were too wobbly, so she sat on the ground and waited for her stomach to return to its place. Vanessa sat by her side, a hand on Lute’s sweaty forehead.
“It’s a common reaction, actually,” Vanessa said.
“Really, I’m fine.You should go do anything that needs doing.” At least Lute’s stomach had finally gotten unstuck. Her head was still woozy, though. She wanted to rest it on Vanessa’s shoulder, but that felt vaguely inappropiate. Then Lute realized she’d done it anyway. “I didn’t mean that,” she said, but didn’t lift her head because it was too comfortable.
“It’s fine.”
Maybe someone would see them and get mad that Vanessa was making too many allowances for a friend—or whatever idea they got about them—and Lute couldn’t let that happen. She stood up and found she was almost back to normal.
“I’ll feel better after I rest in the library a while.”
“Don’t work too hard.”
There weren’t any breakthroughs in the next few days, but Vanessa showed up at the library nearly every day, so it evened out pretty well. She talked a lot about her sister, who was out in a mission, and her parents, who lived in the country. It seemed Vanessa felt a bit guilty over not visiting as often as she thought she should, but she made up for it by writing often. Somehow, she’d gotten the idea that Lute either was an orphan or couldn’t stand her family. Lute explained that she didn’t got along too well or too bad with them. They were there, mostly. She hoped that didn’t weird Vanessa out too badly.
One morning, Vanessa was there before Lute even arrived.
“I’m hiding,” she admitted. “Well, not really. I just wanted to have some peace before the new recruits find out where I go all the time.”
Lute had the feeling this was one of those situations where a sympathetic listener was needed, but she wasn’t very good at it. “You’re tired of them?”
“Not quite.” Vanessa sat on a chair by the window. “It’s not even them, it’s just me.”
“But you don’t mind me, so it has to be them.” Lute spread out the books she’d been reading last time and opened them on the right places, but didn’t start reading.
“It’s just that they have all these hopes on me. They think I’m some kind of war hero.”
“That’s true.”
“Really? I never felt like one.”
“Of course you’re a hero. Just like me. You were there too, right?”
Vanessa stared at Lute for a moment. “Is it just the way it looks? I mean, do you ever feel insecure?”
“No. I worked hard to be this good. Even if natural talent does have a part on it, I don’t see why I should apologize.”
“That must be nice.”
Lute wasn’t sure what could be the right thing to say. “So—you’re afraid you’ll disappoint the new recruits?”
“Probably. If they didn’t have such high hopes, I wouldn’t risk disappointing them.”
“Then it’s their own fault, isn’t it? Not that you’re disappointing.”
Vanessa laughed very softly. “I guess it’s up to them in the end. But you know, I told you most of them joined because they heard of our exploits—if you can call them our. It’d be easier if Syrene was here. I can’t help thinking they want someone like her, not me.”
Lute pondered that a moment. “Didn’t you tell me Syrene also looks up to you?”
“Well, I’m her little sister. I can’t disappoint her, for some mysterious reason. But I can still disappoint total strangers.”
This situation was too mystifying for Lute. Thankfully, she had devoted herself to the study of magic, which was much more straightforward. “They don’t look disappointed in you.” She started reading a book so Vanessa wouldn’t keep talking about difficult subjects. Half a page later, the conversation was out of Lute’s mind. “Say, do you know anything about wild pegasi?”
“They’re supposed to still exist somewhere, but I haven’t heard of anybody seeing them in a while.”
“Well, this old treatise claims that a pegasus can scent out their mother’s family and never mate with them. It might be wrong. It’s certainly wrong about a few other subjects—but see, I found this family tree of Frelian pegasi—what a weird thing to keep around—and it seems most of today’s living pegasi are descended from a few mothers. Maybe that’s why their birthrate has gone down.”
“That’s always a problem when you’re trying to breed animals for certain traits. Maybe the war dealt us a particularly unlucky blow. So you want to go looking for wild pegasi?”
Lute pushed her chair away from the reading table. “It looks like the most promising lead. Besides, I could find something about their resistance to magic while I’m at that. It’d make developing an anti-pegasi spell much easier.”
“Um—that doesn’t sound too good. At least don’t mention it anywhere close to the Academy, where you might be mistaken by a spy plotting against us or something.”
Lute did hear that, but her mind was already moving elsewhere. “I should try to find everything I can about pegasi sightings. And buy some food. I guess I’ll be able to have everything ready for tomorrow.”
“So soon?”
“I thought you wanted me to solve this issue of yours.”
“I—hoped you would.”
“You didn’t think I could,” Lute pointed out calmly. It was more of a letdown than she’d thought.
“I just like having you around. Because—ever since Syrene left, I haven’t had anybody to talk to who is—relaxing.”
“I see. I think so, at least. I’m going to miss you too. Not that I mind traveling alone, but having someone to talk to is different at least.”
A blanket of awkward started settling on top of them. Someone had to do or say something before it ruined the mood completely.
“Then I’ll go with you,” Vanessa said.
That wasn’t quite what Lute was expecting.
“Are you sure? Aren’t you busy in the Academy?”
Vanessa looked down at her laced fingers. “Yes, but that’s mostly because I try to be everywhere so I can be a proper captain.”
“That must be why everyone looks up to you.”
“Oh. Now you point that out, yes—I see why that could happen. Well, that’s an even better reason for me to leave! I think I might be coddling the new recruits too much. And it’s not like I wouldn’t be leaving on an important mission for the future of Frelia.”
If that important mission succeeded, chances were she’d be held up in higher esteem, but Lute didn’t think it necessary to point that out.
“That’s a great idea, actually. You’ll help me identify pegasus droppings and all that stuff. We’ll be much more efficient together than me going out alone—and I don’t tell that to anybody.”
Next morning, Lute was up and heading to the city gates before dawn had broken, something quite unusual for her. It would be foolish to expect that traveling in company would be completely good. Unsurprisingly, Vanessa had made it there even earlier.
“Good morning—what’s that?” Vanessa asked. She meant the horse, of course.
“You didn’t think I’d tag along on foot, would you? I’ve decided to become a mage knight.” The horse huffed at Lute’s shoulder. “Don’t take it personally, but after seeing all the work it takes you to feed and clean Titania and mantain her tack in perfect order, I thought it wasn’t worth the bother to be any kind of knight. But after careful deliberation, I’ve realized that the easy of moving around makes up for the rest, and anyway, 'mage knight’ has more style. I just have to get used to it. That shouldn’t be too hard for me.”
Vanessa smiled. “I’m sure of it.”
The city gates slowly opened. The horse shook its tail, but Lute didn’t have the feeling it was all that happy.
“So you really don’t mind leaving with me?” Lute asked.
“It’s more than not minding it. You’re one of the few people I know who doesn’t expect a lot out of me—wait, that sounds terrible. What I mean is that you’re more like my sister. No, that’s even worse.”
“I never got to talk to your sister, you know. Maybe I should.”
“Maybe,” Vanessa said, glad to have an out.
That might’ve been the end of it, but Lute thought it was up to her to say something instead of letting things go.
“I know what you mean, so it’s not like I got the wrong idea or anything. Even someone as skilled in other areas as me has trouble figuring out how she feels, never mind explaining how she feels.”
“Oh.” Vanessa sounded relieved. “I get that.”
The open road appeared before them. Lute’s heart leapt up, more excited than she’d realized to leave the city behind. “The horse and all that stuff was a bit expensive, you know. We should look out for some well-to-do bandits.”