The island was easy enough to find. Small and uninhabited, the kind of place that appeared on charts only as a navigational reference rather than a destination. He spotted a second boat pulled up on the southern beach before he had fully rounded the headland, which told him the man had not gone far from his landing point. People who were hiding and not expecting to be found rarely did.
He beached his own boat on the northern side and came around through the interior on foot. The place barely qualified as an island. It was smaller than the one he had trained on, just a narrow strip of land with a thin patch of trees running down its centre, the kind of terrain that offered one hiding spot and not much else. He moved into the treeline slowly, watching where he put his feet, keeping his breathing even. If the man was still here, Lucien wanted to see him before being seen.
He didn't get that.
He had taken perhaps a dozen steps into the trees when something hit him from the left with enough force to throw him sideways into a trunk. He bounced off it hard, felt something compress sharply in his ribs, and caught himself against the bark before he could go down completely. He stayed still for a moment, one hand pressed against his side, and turned his head.
The man from the poster was standing about four metres away, breathing hard, holding a length of heavy rope with a rock tied to one end that he had apparently swung like a weapon. He was bigger than the poster had suggested, or maybe that was the adrenaline making the assessment unreliable. Either way, he did not look like someone who had spent the last two days feeling sorry for himself. He looked like someone who had spent the last two days being afraid, and the fear had curdled into something uglier. His eyes had the wide, unfocused quality of a man whose nerves had been wound tight for too long and were now past the point of thinking clearly.
"I thought at least a teenager would come for me," the man said, spitting to the side. A grin spread across his face, wide and unsteady. "But you. You're just a kid."
Lucien looked at him without expression. The laziness that usually occupied his face was gone entirely, replaced by something flat and attentive. He noted the grip on the rope, the angle of the man's shoulders, the way his weight was distributed slightly too far forward. Tired people telegraphed. This one was practically announcing himself.
"And you're just a thief," Lucien replied.
The man's grin tightened, and he swung. Lucien read the arc a fraction too late and caught the edge of it across his already injured side. The pain spiked hard enough to blur his vision for a moment. He used the momentum to roll with it rather than absorb it, put a tree between himself and the next swing, and reset his footing.
The man wound up again. This time Lucien moved before the swing came, circling wide and keeping a tree at his back, staying just outside the weapon's range. The rope needed space to be dangerous. He made sure the man didn't have it. After several swings the pattern became clear: the man was strong but slow, and each wasted swing was costing him more than he could afford. His shoulders were dropping. His breathing had grown ragged. Lucien watched the fatigue accumulate with the patience of someone who had learned that timing was cheaper than effort, and when the man's next swing pulled him a half-step too far forward, Lucien moved.
He closed the distance fast and drove into him low, and they went to the ground together. Lucien got on top and went for the choke, which was the quickest way to end it cleanly. He almost had it.
The knife appeared from nowhere. The man drove it upward toward his face with the blind, desperate speed of someone with nothing left but survival instinct. Lucien pulled back but not fast enough. The blade caught his cheek in a shallow line and blood ran warm down the side of his face.
He released the choke, grabbed the knife hand by the wrist with both of his, and twisted until the grip broke. The knife dropped into the dirt. He kicked it away, pinned the wrist under his knee, and pressed his forearm across the man's throat with enough weight to make the point without causing permanent damage. The man went still beneath him, chest heaving, staring up at the tree canopy with the hollow expression of someone who had used everything they had and come up short.
Neither of them moved for a moment.
Lucien straightened slowly, one hand pressed to his ribs, the other touching the cut on his cheek. The bleeding was light, but the sting was sharp and specific. He looked at his fingers, looked at the man on the ground, and reached for the same rope he was targeted with.
He tied the man's wrists, sat him against the nearest tree, and took stock. The man was unhurt in any way that mattered. Lucien's ribs were a different conversation entirely, and his cheek had added itself to that conversation uninvited. He pressed the back of his hand against the cut and held it there while he caught his breath.
He had won. He was also twelve years old, sitting in the dirt of an unnamed island, bleeding from his face, with a bruised ribcage and a tied-up thief for company. He wrote this down in his head under the category of lessons and stood up.
The sail back to Flevance took the better part of the afternoon, the man's boat trailing behind his own on a short line, its passenger sitting in the stern in silence. Lucien kept one hand on the tiller and the other resting lightly against his side and did not particularly enjoy the journey.
The Marine officer who processed the claim looked at the poster, looked at the man, and then looked at Lucien with the expression of someone who had decided the most professional response was no response at all.
"How old are you?" he asked.
"Twelve," Lucien said.
The officer stamped the paperwork and counted out the reward without further comment. Lucien pocketed it and walked back out into the street. He stood still for a moment, running the honest accounting. The money was sorted. His ribs were not, and his cheek was dried blood and discomfort, and the afternoon was fading. He looked up the road toward the residential district.