That night, Ludger brought it up during dinner.
The timing felt slightly troublesome.
Not because there was ever going to be a truly convenient moment to mention that the capital wanted him to attend the Emperor’s birthday celebration, but because the scene at home looked unusually peaceful for once. The table was full, the food was warm, and for reasons Ludger could not begin to explain without assuming some deeper cosmic trickery, the twins were actually behaving.
Not perfectly. That would have been suspicious. But enough to stand out.
Arash sat straighter than usual, trying very hard not to look like someone who had recently discovered that making sword noises while eating was apparently frowned upon. Elle was doing something similar, though with a little more success. Both of them had the same oddly serious expression, the kind children wore when they had decided, for reasons known only to themselves, that tonight they were going to act like proper adults.
It was unsettling. Ludger watched them for a second and found himself unsure what exactly he was supposed to feel about it. On one hand, the lack of chaos made the meal quieter. On the other, seeing the twins try this hard to seem grown up felt faintly wrong.
Honestly, they could stand to act a little more spoiled. A little more childish. That would at least be normal.
Instead, Arash carefully reached for something like he was attending a noble banquet, and Elle nodded at something Elaine said with such solemn grace that Ludger briefly wondered whether they had both been possessed by extremely polite ghosts.
Still, dinner was calm. Which probably made it the right time to ruin the calm a little. So Ludger did.
“The capital sent payment,” he said.
That got attention immediately, though not alarm. Just the usual shift in focus that happened whenever Ludger dropped important information into a meal with the same tone other people used to ask for salt.
“And,” he added, “they sent an invitation.”
Elaine looked at him over the table. “An invitation.”
“To the Emperor’s birthday celebration. In two months.”
That made the room pause by a degree. Not heavily. Just enough.
Arslan’s expression flattened faintly in the way it usually did when the capital inserted itself into their lives again. The twins, not understanding the full significance but recognizing that adults were discussing something official, somehow managed to sit even straighter.
Elaine, on the other hand, only took a brief moment to think before speaking.
“The Emperor’s birthday party,” she said.
Her tone was thoughtful rather than annoyed, which Ludger found mildly suspicious but chose not to comment on.
“The timing is a bit bad,” she continued, “but it would only happen two days before your birthday party, so it is fine.”
That was… not the response Ludger had been expecting. He blinked once, then looked at her. Elaine had already moved on to the practical side of it, which in retrospect was exactly the sort of thing she did whenever reality tried to become inconvenient in her house.
“Viola, Lord Torvares, and Luna will have a harder time getting here on time, though,” she added. “If they attend in the capital first and then come north after.”
Ludger nodded at that. Yes. That part made sense.
If the imperial celebration took place two days before his own, then anyone attending both would have a narrow travel window to work with. Not impossible, especially for people used to moving quickly when they had to, but still annoying enough to complicate things. Viola in particular would probably complain about the timing on principle, and Luna would do it more quietly in ways somehow more cutting.
Arslan finally spoke.
“So you’re going.”
It wasn’t exactly a question. Ludger gave a small shrug.
“Probably.”
That got a brief look from Elaine.
“Probably?”
“Yvar thinks it may help reduce future problems with the capital,” Ludger said. “Especially now.”
Arslan grunted once, which was about as much approval as that line of reasoning was likely to get from him at dinner. Elaine, however, simply nodded.
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“That seems likely.”
Of course she said that like it was obvious. Because to her, it probably was.
Ludger watched her for a second, then said, “I thought the timing would be worse for you.”
Elaine looked mildly offended by the suggestion.
“For me?”
“Yes. The party.”
She smiled then, small but sharp in the way only mothers who had already won an argument no one else fully realized they were having tended to smile.
“Ludger,” she said, “if the Emperor wants to celebrate his birthday close to yours, that is his poor planning, not mine.”
Jennifer would have appreciated that answer. Arslan gave a short breath that almost counted as a laugh. Even the twins seemed pleased, despite almost certainly not grasping the politics involved. Elaine continued in the same calm tone, already reshaping the problem into something manageable.
“If you need to go, then go. Two days is not enough to ruin anything. It only means that the people coming from the capital side will need to move quickly, and if they don’t, then they arrive a little late.” She lifted one shoulder. “The food will still exist.”
That was also true.
There was something deeply unfair about how easily she flattened logistical irritation into a series of manageable household facts.
Ludger nodded again. That made the choice simpler. Not pleasant. Still not pleasant. But simpler. Across the table, Arash and Elle were both watching with exaggerated seriousness now, like they were trying to understand a council of war while also remembering not to fidget.
Ludger looked at them once more and had the deeply strange thought that he would almost prefer Arash to start misbehaving again just to restore some balance to the world.
Instead, the twins remained impossibly proper. Elaine noticed him looking and smiled faintly.
“They’ve decided to act mature tonight.”
“I can see that.”
Arslan muttered, “It won’t last.”
That, at least, was reassuring.
The meal went on after that, still peaceful, still strangely warm, and for a little while the capital, the Emperor, the invitation, and the coming trip all felt less like a looming irritation and more like just another piece of life to be fitted into place.
Ludger did not especially enjoy that realization. But he accepted it.
And when he looked around the table again, at Elaine’s calm certainty, Arslan’s solid presence, and the twins doing their best impression of tiny disciplined adults, he found that the decision to go felt less like being dragged into politics and more like something simpler.
An obligation. One that ended. So he could come back home in time for the celebration that actually mattered. Arslan snorted softly after the matter seemed more or less settled.
“They probably didn’t invite the rest of Lionsguard,” he said, “because our numbers alone would cause quite the ruckus.”
That was true enough.
A full Lionsguard presence inside the capital, especially after everything that had happened recently, would have looked less like a noble contribution to imperial ceremony and more like a controlled occupation with better manners.
Arslan took another bite, chewed, then added dryly, “Or maybe they thought we’d bring the true northerners to the party.”
That got the faintest twitch from Ludger. Yes. That would definitely have gone well.
A capital birthday celebration full of silk, politics, posturing, and hidden knives, improved, naturally, by the arrival of loud, direct, heavily armed northerners with no patience for court etiquette and a tendency to solve social problems by asking whether the other side had considered not being stupid.
A perfect fit.
“Either way,” Arslan said, “I’m grateful I don’t have to waste time on that kind of nonsense.”
That, at least, sounded completely sincere.
Ludger gave him a look, then said, “I could always send you instead.”
Arslan stared at him. Elaine smiled immediately. Even the twins seemed alert enough to understand that this was the beginning of one of those exchanges worth listening to. Arslan set his cup down and looked at Ludger with the long-suffering patience of a man who had raised a deeply inconvenient son.
“You want me,” he said slowly, “to go stand in the capital at an imperial birthday celebration, surrounded by nobles, ministers, polished idiots, and people who smile while planning which throat to cut first.”
“Yes.”
Arslan narrowed his eyes. “And you believe I would survive that peacefully.”
Ludger considered it for half a second.
“No.”
That earned a short laugh from Elaine and what was probably the beginning of one from Elle before she remembered she was still trying to act like a proper adult. Ludger let the joke sit there for a moment, but the truth of it was obvious enough. He wouldn’t actually send Arslan. Not because his father couldn’t handle himself.
He could. That was part of the problem.
Arslan in a setting like that would either become a source of constant irritation to everyone trying to play politics around him, or he would get irritated first and remind the capital that polished stone still cracked when hit hard enough.
Neither outcome sounded especially productive. Besides, Ludger had his own reasons now.
“I can use the chance to check things in the capital myself,” he said.
That made Arslan’s expression flatten slightly again. Because yes. That sounded a lot more like the real motive. Not the birthday. Not appearances. Not court manners Investigation. A chance to be present in the middle of things and see what moved when enough important people gathered in one place.
Elaine, of course, noticed that immediately too, but said nothing for the moment. Ludger’s thoughts had already moved ahead. The capital. The gathering. The nobles. Military figures.
And maybe… His eyes narrowed slightly. Maybe the illusionist would be there too. That possibility sat in his mind and refused to leave.
A gathering like that would attract the sort of people who liked standing near power while pretending not to be part of it. It would create chances to observe, chances to speak, chances to notice who drifted where and why.
And if the illusionist showed up… Then Ludger had new questions for him.
Not the scattered curiosity of before. Not half-formed suspicion wrapped in instinct.
Real questions now, sharpened by everything Gustav had said and everything that still failed to fit properly around the Regent, Orleandul, hidden structures, vanished backgrounds, and men who moved through the Empire like they had been placed long before anyone thought to look.
If the illusionist knew more, and Ludger strongly suspected he did, then an event like this might be the kind of place where threads crossed just enough to be useful.
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