When Lucien, Lilith, and Nemea ventured into the station they found Derek Alderton standing with Matthew Lawson, flanked by a grim-faced man Lucien didn't recognize. There were handshakes and smiles all around as Lucien reunited with his old friend, as Derek's lithe stoat scampered down off Lucien's shoulder and rushed to rejoin her person. Plans were laid for Lucien to meet up with Derek later in the afternoon at the Colonists', and all was as it should be, apart from the sense of unease that had sunk its hooks into Lucien.
It was plain that Derek had come to Ballarat in search of the deserters, and that Matthew Lawson was stepping and fetching for the army and was none too pleased about it, but those facts alone did not account for the sense of alarm Lucien felt when he clapped his eyes on Derek. Derek was a company man, a Major now as Lucien had been when the army finally released him from its clutches; maybe that was what worried him. Maybe it felt strange, to think Derek had carried on with the army for so much longer, and yet had not advanced any further. He'd seemed the sort of man who was destined for greatness, and achieving the rank of Major was nothing to sniff at, but really, after all this time, surely he ought to have been a Colonel, at the very least. Had Derek perhaps offended the wrong person? Or had he been deemed unfit for advancement for other reasons? Perhaps he was simply content where he was. Perhaps a Major did not raise so many eyebrows as a Colonel, and could move about more easily. Army Intelligence did prefer its agents keep a low profile.
Where had Derek spent the last few years? That troubled Lucien, as well. The French had retreated in Indochina - though unwillingly - and the Yanks were picking up the slack, and no good could come from any of it, Lucien thought. It was why he'd been sent to Paris in the first place, to infiltrate some expat groups there that were suspected of fomenting communist sympathies. The fact that Lucien was a drunk with communist sympathies himself had quickly spelled the end of his efforts and the end of his army career, but Derek was a different breed. He didn't share Lucien's more egalitarian nature. He would have stood out like a sore thumb in Paris, and doubly so among the immigrant Asian community. He was too tall, too stiff, too conservative, too mistrustful of other cultures. Infiltration had not ever been his specialty; his talents lay more in enforcement. Which explained his interest in the deserters, Lucien supposed.
After a brief and unsettling conversation with Jean about whether he was staying for lunch - and whether he'd have need of her in the afternoon, seeing as she had an interview scheduled with the Royal Cross, damn them, and meant to leave him - he noted Sergeant Hannam's car in the drive, and slipped out of the house, still wondering about his old friend. Hannam was a polite enough fellow, if a bit too reserved for Lucien's taste, but he did not complain about having a lion in the backseat of the Major's car, and he obligingly took the car up to speed just to show Lucien how fast it would go, which, as it turned out, was quite fast indeed. Nemea didn't care for it, Lucien could tell by the set of her ears, but Hannam's daemon didn't complain.
In fact, Hannam's daemon didn't put in an appearance at all. Lucien watched the man closely as they drove along, making careful small talk, but there was no sign of the creature in the car. When they stepped out in front of the Colonists' Hannam obligingly opened the door for Lucien, and Lucien studied him carefully, searching for a lump in one of his pockets that might have been a mouse, or a small lizard, or something, but there was nothing. Whatever his daemon was, it must have been quite small indeed, to escape Lucien's notice. It was as if...it was as if he had no daemon at all, but such a thing was quite impossible. There was no such thing as a man without a daemon; the daemon came forth at the moment of birth, and stayed with their person until death, and the experiments of the Axis powers during the war had proven precisely how far apart a man and daemon might be allowed to travel from one another before both perished, and the distance was not so very great. Not great enough to allow Hannam to leave his daemon behind and travel to Lucien's home. The distance from the Blake house to the end of the street alone would have been enough to end them. No, Lucien thought, he was just being silly. Of course Hannam had a daemon. He wouldn't be able to draw breath without one.
Would he?
"Lucien!" Derek boomed as Lucien stepped into the parlor where the Major was waiting by a billiards table with two glasses of beer close to hand. "Welcome, my old friend."
Hannam melted out of sight while Lucien shook Derek's hand, and took Lucien's worries about his suspiciously absent daemon with him.
"Derek," Lucien said, grinning.
"Got you a drink." Derek motioned to the beers, and they each took a glass, clinking the rims together solemnly.
"To old friends," Derek said.
"To old friends."
They both drank deeply, and then Derek turned his attention to setting up the balls on the table.
"A friendly game?" he asked. It had been years since Lucien had last played billiards; he was known to throw darts at the Pig & Whistle from time to time, but he tended to avoid his fellow members when he drank at the club. He was fairly certain he was about to be soundly beaten.
"As long as we're not playing for money," he said good-naturedly, and Derek flashed him a grin.
"No, not this time," he agreed.
While Derek faffed about with the balls Lucien went to fetch the cues, and as he handed one off to Derek he asked the question that had been foremost in his mind from the moment he'd seen his old friend at the station.
"So, where on earth have you been, Derek?"
Derek grinned at him, sharp and grim, and aimed his cue to take the first shot.
"Here and there," he said.
"Right." Lucien should have known better than to ask. He leaned against the table, watching Derek break the set, and Nemea sat back on her haunches beside him, her heavy weight pressed reassuringly against his leg. He reached down to scratch her behind the ears, and it occurred to him then that Lilith was nowhere in sight.
Most unusual.
"Have you been well, at least?"
The balls made an eerie clack as they slammed together, a sound not unlike the breaking of a bone.
"Well enough," Derek allowed. "The army keeps me busy, and I've seen much of the world. The situation is grim, Lucien, and getting grimmer by the day."
No doubt that was true, but here in Ballarat the situation seemed almost rosy. Lucien was comfortable in his father's house, in his father's job, and he had made a friend of Matthew Lawson, and could laugh amiably with the lads at the pub, and some nights he did not dream at all, and that was for the good. Life in Ballarat was quiet, and predictable. Well, it had been predictable, up until Jean announced her intention to leave him. Lucien hadn't seen that coming. He'd thought she was perfectly happy, and he had in truth been quite content to keep her on, but now that he knew she did not wish to stay he could not help feeling as if he had failed, somehow. As if he had simply not been good enough to entice her to stay on. Perhaps if he had been more quiet, or more tidy, or more predictable, she would not have found him so distasteful, and they could have carried on together. But such were the troubles of life in Ballarat; his biggest concern was the impending departure of his housekeeper. A man like Derek had graver matters to worry about.
"If the Yanks aren't careful, they'll be mired in war in Indochina until the end of the century," Derek told him then, blunt as ever.
"What would you have them do instead?" The government attacked the communists, the communists attacked the government, and on and on it went, with civilians caught in the crossfire. The previous world war had proven that what happens in one corner of the globe echoes in another, and it seemed to Lucien that there were no good choices. He was only grateful it wasn't up to him to decide.
"We're working on it," Derek said evasively. "If you really want to know, though, you could always come back into the fold."
Nemea tossed her head uneasily, and Lucien shared her distress; there was nothing he wanted less.
"The army wants no part of me, and I want no part of it."
"You're happy here, then?"
"I am," Lucien said. Well, he had been. He was, sometimes. There were moments of happiness to be found in Ballarat, fleeting bursts of contentment he had not known since before Singapore fell. That was enough, for Lucien. It had to be enough.
The interview at the Royal Cross went quite well, Jean thought, and she returned to the Blake house cautiously optimistic that she would soon be leaving it for the last time. Well, perhaps optimistic was the wrong word; she was fairly certain the thing was done, but she was not exactly looking forward to it. As she walked through the gate and up the gravel drive towards the house, that fine old house she had tended lovingly for more than a decade, as she walked up the short steps and over the porch she had swept at least one a week for years upon years, a strange sort of melancholy settled in her heart. It would grieve her, she thought, to leave this place behind. To leave behind the memories of Thomas Blake and Athena, to leave behind Mattie and Osiris, to leave Lucien and Nemea to their own devices. It would be bleak, she thought, to be entirely on her own, as she had not ever been in all her life.
Well, not entirely alone. Halcyon would still be with her.
"I don't like that place, Jeannie," he was saying as she unlocked the front door and hung her coat upon the peg just inside it.
"It's a perfectly lovely building," she told him. "It's clean, and the people who run it seem fair. I don't know why-"
"Won't it be dreadfully boring, cleaning the same empty rooms every day, never meeting the people who stay there, never hearing their stories? Wouldn't it be more interesting to stay here with Lucien, and help him with his cases? We could learn so much, Jeannie! He's been all over the world, I'm sure he has so many wonderful stories he's not told us yet, and we could learn all about the exciting places he's been. Oh, I'm sure he's been to Paris. He could tell us all about it. You could take that money you've saved, Jean, and instead of paying for some dreary room in a boarding house you could buy a ticket on a ship, and we could go there! I'm sure Lucien would want to go with us, he could show us all around Paris, and tell us so many interesting things, though I'm not sure how Nemea would fare on a ship. You know she doesn't like tight spaces, Jean, maybe we could…"
On and on he went, as Jean drifted deeper into the house, went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Jean did not try to stop his ramblings, though his thoughts did trouble her, a very great deal. She had always longed to go to Paris, but if she truly meant to leave she'd sink most of her savings into finding accommodations and furnishing them, and it would be quite some time before she'd build up enough to even dream of such a trip. But what was the good of going to Paris alone? That was what had always stopped her, in the past; she longed to travel, but she longed, also, for a companion. She could hardly ask Lucien to go with her, as Halcyon suggested, not when they'd only known one another a few months and he could be so unpredictable, but he would know, better than anyone Jean had ever met, how best to enjoy Paris.
"Jean? Jean? Jean!"
She was so lost in the tangle of her own thoughts that Halcyon had to call her name several times to catch her attention.
"What is it, sweetheart?"
"Are there stoats in Australia, Jean?" he asked her curiously.
"No. They're causing all sorts of mischief in New Zealand, but there aren't any here. There aren't supposed to be, at any rate."
"Then why have I just seen one looking through our kitchen window?"
All thoughts of Paris and the Royal Cross fled from Jean's mind, then, and she rushed to the window, peering out into the garden. There was no sign of the stoat Halcyon had seen, and she opened her mouth to tell him he'd been mistaken when she caught the glint of two beady eyes peering at her from beneath a rosebush. The creature turned, and she caught sight of a long tail, brown fur on top and white on the bottom, and then it vanished from view.
It couldn't have been, Jean thought, a natural creature. It must have been a daemon, but then what was it doing alone in her garden? Was its human on the other side of the fence, waiting for it? Why would someone do such a thing, send their daemon out of their sight and into someone else's garden? Why take such a risk? And why here?
Most unusual, she thought.
