Author's Note: Apologies for the delay and shortness of this chapter again. The last few weeks have not been conductive to much writing at all. That being said, thanks to any readers for hanging in there during the slow times. I'm hoping to get the next chapter up soon this week.

- - - - - - - - - -

There is a strange power in being known never to explain yourself. It's impossible to keep people from gossiping even when they are aware of the facts, but being too closed-mouthed earns you just as many troublemakers as it does allies. Or bruises on your face. Even if you say nothing when you speak, you should still do a lot of it just in case the silence causes even more suspicion.

That is another lesson of Bevelle. Watch out for large sticks, particularly those wielded by jealous paramours.

Since it's a trick in of itself to convince the crowd to spin tales around you based upon the direction you desire, trying to be perfect is only an exercise in futility. I haven't yet figured on what degree of effort is best. Being in the Crimson Squad seems to have done irreparable damage to my social calibrations. I find myself missing simpler means.

Gippal's fault for that. Everything becomes simpler with friendship, right until the point where they shoot you.

None of the guards who have been sent with me to Luca are conversational types, so I can hardly experiment on them. Nor are there priests assigned to this mission. Any judgments for this journey will fall to me to decide as Trema's Lustrum; in this, I am acting as emissary of the Founder of New Yevon itself.

There's a power in that too. I'm just not sure I like it yet.

The implied prestige has granted me one of the more comfortable berths on this ship. While the temperatures were cool in the northern regions, the air has become steadily more sweltering by the time we have rounded the route to Luca's ports. Sticky clothes have never appealed to me. Sweat by itself is not a terrible thing; when you are training, it's expected that you begrime yourself. But when you drip just by standing around? There I draw the line.

Unfortunately, the line doesn't care where it's put. The humidity grows with each passing day of our trip. Luca is far enough south that summer explodes early, dripping its grease like a pit-roasted pig while other villages are still shoveling snow off their footpaths. We enter into it like sleepwalkers realizing too late they have wandered into an oven.

Three months from now will bring the midpoint of the year; I can only imagine how the summer will cloy the air.

Traveling south is a pilgrimage in reverse. I left Bevelle, left the temples close to Mount Gagazet, and played visitor to the smaller shrines dotting the coastlines. New Yevon wants to make sure that things are going well with the Summoners assigned at task. Even though the Aeons are gone, the dead never cease piling up, and who else to perform the Sendings?

It has taken us several weeks to arrive. I used the time to throw my formal garb overboard during the night. Going to Bikanel with my favorite green coat almost killed me in the Crimson Squad, drowning me in a misery of heat. I refuse to trundle Luca's streets while dressed like a priest.

Keeping the coat isn't much better, so I've stripped down to a light, long vest that I'm hoping will have deep enough pockets for all the secrets I am to bear. It's an idea I'm taking from Gippal's pants. For all the metal of his limbs and that fur ruff, Nooj's bodysuit was surprisingly practical. The fabric was porous enough to allow a person's skin to breathe. Paine always had to peel back the leather of her pants at the end of each day, shuck her gloves from her arms while the skin gave moist sounds of protest.

Only Gippal was untouched, and that because the Al Bhed was used to such conditions.

Bevelle is not. Bevelle does not design for tropical regions when it conjures the travesties it likes to convince us are clothes. The lighter vest-coat reaches down to my ankles and is actually based off the Djose traders. I don't look very traditional, but tradition isn't what's going to melt underneath the sun, so Trema can discipline me later about my preference for staying comfortable.

"Port in five!"

All this time spent in pointless travel and the only thing I have managed to accomplish is to think about how best to keep from sweating.

While I was able to shed a good deal of the heavier Lustrum robes through help of the sea, I did retain one of the ceremonial sashes. This, I sling around my shoulders as I prepare for disembarking. Timbers groan, releasing the smell of salt from their soaked fibers; the boat is filled with the tincture of the sea, now mixing with the tropics.

When blitzball is off-season, the pulse of the port town becomes docile. It still maintains its status as the largest center of trading, however, and to say that Luca has quieted is much like claiming a tornado is gentler than a typhoon. Boats clog the piers. The captain's muffled swears trickle down to me from the deck overhead as he paces back and forth, hating everyone and everything that gets in his way to dock.

I heard Gippal once refer to Luca as the navel of the world, the pammo-pidduh of which we were all but lint. Not exactly the stuff of minstrels. Then again, Gippal never was.

I wonder what he would call it now.

Trema was serious about inflicting records upon me. The weight of the dossiers burrows to the bottom of my pack and attempts to drag me with it, causing my shoulders to ache after five minutes slung over a shoulder. Giving me a sphere would have been far lighter than this bulk. Dislike them as the Founder may, pyrefly records do have their advantages. Even though I have had the opportunity to memorize all the files by now, flipping the papers back and forth in my hands until I dreamed of faceless names until dawn, I have kept myself from reading the details. Foolishness on my part, but I suspect I am trying to stave off my meeting with Nooj as long as I can.

As we finally make it to a state of formal arrival, I hear mutters trickle through the dockhands assembled to help rope us ashore. Not all in Luca are pleased to see New Yevon's visitors. Once ships from Bevelle were revered. By the looks of it, however, we have been losing status by the day.

That is no surprise. There is a reason that the guards are the first to rally themselves down the gangplank, and that is because the danger of insurgents. Luca has not been declared a hotbed of active political clashes just yet, but some priests expect it will only be a matter of time. To lose access to the trade port would be a major blow for Bevelle. We use it as a travel stop and source of funding both, as well as a midpoint to Kilika's Temple.

So many politics, and I have no inclination for any of them just now. Vegnagun sits on my thoughts, heavy as the beast it resembles.

What a ponderous mess my life has become.

As much as I would like to shoulder past the guards and get myself to our registered inn rooms for a shower, I understand the need for patience. If there are dissenters hidden in the crowd, I would rather they clash against the armored officers than myself. Not only would a fight be socially unacceptable between a Yevon agent and a pedestrian, but I have no weapon upon me save the single machina pistol; even that was smuggled along underside my vestcoat. Sight of it would only incite gossip further. No, I decide. I can wait.

My pack rubs against me while I lean against the railing, count down the time until it is my turn to leave.

Nooj is here--somewhere, in this very town. He has signed up for the Seekers willing to work with New Yevon and find the supposed truth that has been buried for so many years. The means by which the Seekers intend to do this is to find spheres. They are hunters, little more, but hunters can band together in packs. So long as there is a leader charismatic enough to rally them.

I have not even begun to think about what I will say to the Deathseeker's face.

The guards disperse with no sense of urgency about them. Contrary to their leisure, my feet have already started to itch. Standing exposed right in plain view on the Yevon ship strikes me as doing nothing more than demonstrating a glorified target for any gunner, and I have little desire to expose myself to Nooj before I am ready.

By the time the dock has finally cleared, it is all I can do to keep from pushing through the thinning crowd, firm-lipped. Washing up would do much to clear my head. Patience is what I like to think of as one of my stronger virtues, but even I have become restless from weeks cooped-up, unable to focus on the nemesis on my horizon.

Dodging the dock-hands is an art of the waist. I twist to the side to avoid several crates swung wide across the walkway, find myself forced to turn in yet another direction to keep from colliding with a woman hauling a sack of fish over her own shoulder. My attempt to save my pack of records leaves me pressed uncomfortably close to the damp mess of scaled bodies. Whitened eyes goggle at my intrusion; then I get my bearings, thrust a hand between myself and the net and push myself away.

I will smell like the sea for days.

"Please pardon me," I mutter quickly to the black-clad legs I bump against on my way out, the fingers of my hand still coated in fish-slime. The odor of leather that the stranger bears is a welcome change from what is rapidly becoming the ocean's rot, and I breathe it in deeply as I pass. I have little chance to thank my benefactor directly; we pass as strangers do, the crowds thick around us both while the noise of the port howls in our ears.

Wait.

I know those hips.

"Paine?"