There are, in truth, many problems in this world that cannot be solved by gunfire and bloodshed. A pistol loaded to the brim cannot decide what you should have for dinner, nor can it compel a mildly rebellious young girl to come home at once. And when those two problems happen to collide, they become a rather conspicuous sort of trouble.
Inside a small restaurant along the street, Lloyd gazed at the windowpane fogged with heat, beads of water clinging to the glass. Pedestrians drifted through the mist outside like lone boats slipping across a white, silent sea. One by one, the streetlamps flickered on, their glow diffused by the haze until they resembled scattered, earthly stars.
"I imagine they're searching the whole world for you right now."
Lloyd drew his eyes away from the window and looked at the girl seated opposite him. In a month's time she would become a duchess—so they said—yet she did not resemble an adult in the slightest. She was willful to the core.
If it had only been simple willfulness, that would have been easy enough to handle. But when a child possessed both talent and the direct tutelage of a certain someone, things became… complicated.
"Yahweh and I have an unspoken understanding," Celiu said. "If he can't find me, he gives up. And I return home safely before midnight. Like an unwritten rule."
"Sounds like Yahweh suffers quite a bit because of you."
"It's just a mutual compromise."
Celiu cut into her food and brought a piece to her mouth. The motion was faintly clumsy, as if she still wasn't used to it.
A few years ago, this same girl had no such life. On freezing nights she had nowhere to go, crouching in street corners with bread gone hard as stone. Even after meeting Lloyd, her days had been a constant flight, surviving on whatever passed for warmth. The changes of these past years were dreamlike—so dreamlike that even now, remembering them felt unreal.
Lloyd rested his chin on his hand, utterly at ease. The frost on Celiu's face had always been her finest disguise. Sometimes even he couldn't tell what she was thinking.
"Are you getting used to this life?"
"More or less. People have to adapt to their circumstances, don't they?"
"That 'more or less' is a bit much, don't you think? A more-or-less duchess?"
Lloyd shot her a sidelong glance. Perhaps wealth had simply made life dull for her. Then again, only someone bored of lavish banquets would start taking an interest in odd curiosities from the distant East.
"You taught me that," she said. "To remember what I used to be."
She didn't even bother looking at him. Or perhaps her naturally cold temperament simply left no room for visible reaction.
"This all feels like an illusion," she went on quietly. "Even an ugly duckling turning into a swan wouldn't compare."
Her knife came down again; the plate was soon wiped clean. She sat straighter in her chair, an edge of chill authority settling over her.
"Old Dunling. A new life beginning. If new lives were real, you wouldn't be a detective, would you?"
"This happens to be my lifelong dream, Celiu."
Lloyd fired back at once. He was stubbornly devoted to the profession.
"A detective who carries a gun? At heart it's still a life of killing and fighting. 'Detective' is just a disguise. We're alike, Lloyd. We don't trust the lives we're given. The only thing we trust is ourselves. Even a 'new life' is just a beast pausing to rest and sharpen its fangs—because it knows this peace is only a fleeting dream."
In her ice-blue, fathomless gaze, Lloyd saw his own reflection—anger, and something like dawning recognition—like the faces of the drowned beneath a frozen sea.
He shivered faintly, then raised a finger and shook it.
"No, no, no, Celiu. There you go peering into me again. Keep that up and you'll have no friends."
That damned girl. It was as if she possessed some strange magic; no one could hide beneath that stare. If talent had a true owner, the word belonged to Celiu.
She said nothing more, only turned her gaze to the misted window. Droplets gathered and slid down the glass in thick trails, carving wandering paths across the surface. Light filtered through them, turning the pane into something hazy and dreamlike.
They sat in that quiet for a long while before Lloyd suddenly asked,
"Then why do you think all this is just an illusion? In a month you'll be Duchess Stuart. All of Old Dunling will celebrate you. The Stuart nobles will become your knights. In a few years, you may be the most powerful person in the city."
"You're not that child shivering in a street corner anymore. You never will be again. So what are you afraid of?"
They were similar people, burdened with similar troubles and doubts. Perhaps that was why Lloyd had reached out to her in that alley years ago—much as he did for other orphans.
"So what are you afraid of?" she asked instead.
She did not answer his question, only returned it in his own way. Lloyd had no reply.
She rose to her feet. On her expressionless face, the corner of her mouth lifted just slightly, forming the faintest curve.
"I had a good time tonight. Let's meet again."
Lloyd arched a brow. Truth be told, it was hard to read any shift of emotion on that small face of hers. Sometimes he wondered if she simply couldn't make expressions at all.
The conversation from moments ago seemed to dissolve into nothing. With quiet, mutual understanding, the two of them let the unpleasant parts fade away.
"I'll walk you back," Lloyd said.
"No need. Yahweh's already here."
Celiu pointed toward the door. The bell had just rung. The elderly butler stood there like an old lion—aged, yet still broad enough to block the entrance. Beneath the dark fabric of his coat was a telltale bulge. Judging by the shape, Lloyd guessed it was a gun.
"Ah… well. Goodbye."
Lloyd waved to Celiu, though his gaze inevitably drifted to Yahweh. From the moment the old butler entered, he had been staring at Lloyd with undisguised hostility, resentment almost solid in the air between them.
For a moment, Lloyd even suspected that the instant Celiu stepped outside, a storm of bullets might wash through the restaurant and leave his annoying self behind forever.
Fortunately, nothing of the sort happened. Not until the black carriage had driven away did the tension finally ease.
Celiu curled into the comfortable back seat, scenery sliding past the window in a slow procession. Yahweh's frame was too large for the carriage; he had to hunch slightly, folding himself in.
"…Do you not like banquets, my lady?" he asked at last, his aged voice cautious.
"No. I just wanted to visit that exhibition today."
Celiu tilted her head gently, resting it against his side. Raindrops stretched into long lines across the glass, trailing off into places she could not see.
"If there is anything you need, please tell me."
"You've already done more than enough, Yahweh."
She shook her head. Thinking carefully, things truly weren't so bad.
When she had first become a child of the Stuarts, she had been terrified—though she couldn't have said of what. Like a startled fawn, she had bolted blindly in every direction. Back then she had caused Yahweh no end of trouble. Having grown up in cold corners of the world, her survival instincts had been sharper than he'd imagined.
That night, he had searched for her for hours before finally finding her asleep in a stable, curled atop a pile of straw. He had told her that if she couldn't get used to things, changes could be made. After that, in every place she might hide, the old butler quietly placed blankets and pillows.
From that moment on, Celiu decided he wasn't so bad—just clumsy in the way he showed it.
Rather like the way he threatened Lloyd with a gun every single day.
Perhaps that was when her long string of compromises truly began.