Cec Drury had been, as ever, the kindest, most accommodating host Jean - or anyone else for that matter - could possibly have asked for. When Lucien walked her inside the Colonists' - staring over his shoulder the whole way, anxiously looking for some sign of Derek Alderton or Lilith - Cec had met them at the door, and escorted Jean at once to one of the empty rooms upstairs, with a stout door she'd been instructed to keep locked. He'd gone to the trouble of setting up a wireless in that little room, and brought her up a plate of food, and told her he'd check in on her often, over the course of the evening, lest she need anything. What Jean needed, more than anything else, was to sit somewhere quiet and have a good long talk with Lucien, but he was far too distracted, and when he left her it was with that far-away look in her eyes, the one that told her even when she was no more than an arm's length away from him he couldn't really see her. His head was off in the clouds, or buried in the past, and he was too preoccupied with other matters to spare a second thought for her, however fond of her he might have been.
Fond indeed! She thought to herself, pacing by the little window. Her room was right at the top of the building, and that window afforded her a fine view of Ballarat in the evening. It was early, yet; too early for her to eat the supper Cec had brought to her, but he would be busy, soon, with the evening's customers, and she was grateful he'd thought of her at all. Up here, tucked away behind a closed door, looking down on the town below, the people bustling to and fro, Jean felt rather like a princess from an old fairy story, locked away in a tower, waiting for her knight in shining armor to come rescue her. Only she wasn't, not really; she was not a damsel held captive by some curse or foul beast, but had instead been put somewhere out of the way, so that her brave knight need not worry about her safety while he fought his own battles.
Well, bugger that, she thought fiercely. Of course she'd never say such a thing out loud - Mrs. Jean Mary Beazley did not say bugger anything - but she thought it, just the same. She could have helped him, the way she'd helped him when Derek first came to town. She could have...oh, she wasn't certain precisely what she could have done but surely she could have done something. Surely she could have been of assistance to him, could have been a help to him, rather than a liability. Sitting up here alone, whiling away the hours, her heart eating itself alive with worry for him, she felt more weak, more bloody useless than she'd ever felt in all her days.
And he'd made her this way. He'd decided she was of no use to him, save as an object for his affections, whatever those might have been.
"Oh, isn't it wonderful, Jean?" Halcyon sighed dreamily, floating up near the ceiling in lazy circles.
"I beg your pardon?" Jean snapped, a bit more waspishly than she intended. There was, she thought, absolutely nothing wonderful about her current predicament.
"It's like something from a fairy story," Halcyon said. "This good man, this brave man, who's lost so much, he's found reason to love again, and he'll do anything to keep his lady love safe from harm."
"I don't recall anyone saying anything about love," Jean pointed out to him. All Lucien had said was that -
"He said he's fond of you, Jean!" Halcyon fluttered through the air to perch upon her shoulder, to brush his soft feathered head against her cheek. "Fond enough that he thinks Major Alderton might go after you, to get to him. You matter to him, Jean. He seems -"
"Impossible?" Jean suggested.
"Shy," Halcyon said. "Like all this time he's been pining for you in secret, and now he's had to tell you the truth and he's afraid to say too much but he simply can't keep quiet another moment longer."
Jean sighed and settled herself down on the edge of the bed, and Halcyon's little claws clutched at her blouse, holding on tight as she jostled him around.
"Don't you think you're reading too much into this, little one?" Jean asked him softly.
The truth was, though, that Halcyon was Jean's own heart, and every word he said had been whispered in the vaults of Jean's own mind, whether she'd been willing to listen or not. Part of her resented it, being locked away like this, but part of her...oh, part of her was filled with a wild, tremulous joy, a fragile sort of hope, the likes of which she had not known since she was a girl. Lucien was so lovely, when he wasn't being utterly impossible. A handsome man, a fine dancer, clever and kind, strong and brave, he was everything; he was everything Jean had dreamed of, and more besides and he was fond, of her, fond enough to worry for her, to try, in his own way, to protect her, and though the independent streak in her nature that had seen her through so many hardships in the past balked against it, her heart rejoiced, to think he cared enough for her to want to keep her safe.
"I know," Halcyon told her sagely. "Nemea knows. Lucien loves you, Jean. You'll see."
"Only if he comes back to me in one piece."
Jean hadn't meant to say that out loud, but she was only talking to Halcyon, and she supposed he probably knew already precisely what thoughts filled her head. Suppose Lucien had, at long last, declared his fondness for her, only to be murdered the very same day? Suppose Derek Alderton and his dreadful stoat proved more cunning than he, and snatched him away from her at the very moment when their happiness seemed imminent? Jean had passed the time waiting by the window, waiting for her man to come home, once before, and that waiting had ended in calamity. Suppose this one did as well?
"Oh, he will," Halcyon said confidently. "I'm sure of it."
It must be, Jean thought, a lovely thing to be sure.
The Pig & Whistle was as busy as it ever got of an evening, but when Lucien strode through the door at precisely five o'clock his eyes roved over the crowd, the row of men gathered at the bar, the merrymakers throwing darts in the corner, the old timers seated at the booths that lined the walls, and his gaze fell unerringly upon Derek Alderton, sitting alone at a small round table near the back of the bar with two tall glasses of beer in front of him. Lucien squared his shoulders, and made his way there at once.
"Took the liberty of ordering for you," Derek said, motioning to one of the glasses as Lucien sat down. Lucien didn't like that; he'd not seen the drink poured, and so had no idea whether Derek might have tampered with it in some way.
"Think I'd prefer whiskey this evening," Lucien told him, and Derek smiled at him grimly. There was no sign of Lilith, but Nemea was sticking close by Lucien's side, and the fellows around them stared at her in wonder, and gave the table a very wide berth.
"You're awfully suspicious for a man who leads such a comfortable life," Derek said easily. "Everything's been handed to you, hasn't it, Lucien? Your father's house, his practice, his job with the police, his housekeeper. All of it passed to you, and what have you done to deserve any of it?"
"Is that what this is, Derek? You're jealous?"
"What do you think this is, Lucien?" Derek asked him, amused. "I thought we were just a couple of old friends, meeting up for a drink."
"I know you killed that boy we found last night," Lucien told him. It would be best, he thought, to simply lay all his cards on the table, as it were. "You and Lilith. And I know you ordered Sergeant Hannam to retrieve the body of that deserter by any means necessary, even if it meant killing Burt Prentiss."
"No, Lucien," Derek said, shaking his head. "You suspect. Knowing and suspecting are two very different things."
"Will you tell me that I'm wrong?"
"If I did, then you'd know, wouldn't you?"
Lucien was sick and tired of all these blasted riddles.
"Derek-"
"Suppose," Derek said, leaning back in his chair and spreading his long legs wide in front of him, looking completely at ease despite the dark turn their conversation had taken. "I was behind these crimes. You want to know why, don't you?"
"Yes."
Derek hummed.
"You remember when we were in the camps? You remember the Japanese wanted to know how much distance they could put between man and daemon before they perished?"
That was not something Lucien was ever going to forget, the howls of agony from the damned, the little daemons disappearing into shimmering clouds of nothing when the space between them and their humans became too great to bear.
"They thought they had it figured out. An exact number beyond which the separation could not be borne. But they were wrong, Lucien."
Lucien's blood ran cold at the very thought. That Hannam, he'd had no daemon that Lucien had seen, and Lilith could clearly go far afield of her master, but-
"How?" he asked faintly.
"The Japanese moved too quickly. The Germans found out that a tolerance could be built up, over time. Driving a wedge between man and beast, pushing them to their limits but no farther, again and again, until slowly, gradually, a greater distance could be survived. Our scientists have been building on their findings. We now have nearly a dozen soldiers who can be miles away from their daemons, and feel no ill effects."
"What possible reason-"
"Survival," Derek hissed. "A daemon makes a man weak. Kill the daemon, kill the man. In battle, many a man has been lost because his daemon was hit, when he himself was not. And it makes espionage difficult; a man can be easily identified by his daemon. And besides, they whisper to us, turn us from the course of reason. The daemon is the heart of the man, but compassion has no business in war."
Horror-struck, Lucien found he could do no more than stare at his former friend, wondering when, wondering how, Derek could have become so twisted.
"What does any of this-"
"Have to do with you?" Derek grinned. "You and Nemea, you've already endured a great separation. It would be easy to do for you what has been done for Lilith and I. Lilith can go places that I can't, and that makes her a perfect asset for gathering intelligence. And Nemea is a fearsome creature. We could outfit her with some protective gear, and have two soldiers for the price of one. War is coming in Indochina, Lucien. We need men with your skills with languages, and we need fighters on the ground, fighters who can be stealthy, and quick, and slip through the jungle unseen. The pair of you, and other pairs like you, could turn the tide in this fight. You could help secure our victory, sooner rather than later."
There was something rather like madness shining in Derek's eyes, and Lucien's heart broke to see it. Lilith had never been particularly warm or gentle, but she was part of Derek's very self, and he had severed his connection to her, and Lucien could not help but wonder what else had been lost, in the cleaving. That Derek could be so consumed with thoughts of victory, now, so determined, it seemed, to become more like the men who'd once held him captive rather than less, it was unthinkable. It could only have been, Lucien thought, the bloodlust of a man without a soul.
"The boy we found-"
"Hypothetically," Derek said, grinning in a horrible way, "perhaps he was a soldier who could not fulfill the task for which he had been selected. There is no room in the army for weakness, Lucien."
That poor lad, Lucien thought, devastated. Had he been selected to lose his daemon, as Derek had done, as Sergeant Hannam had done, and refused, and been killed for it? Nemea sat close by Lucien's side, the solid warmth of her pressed against his leg, and he tried to imagine it, for a moment, being ordered to let her go. No, he could not do that himself, and he would never allow himself to work for men who would give such orders in the first place.
"A man must sever the ties that bind him to worldly concerns, and focus on the task at hand," Derek continued bleakly. "Our pitiful, individual bonds mean nothing, if the world is plunged into chaos because of them. You've grown soft, too attached to this town and to that woman. Lilith has seen it, the pair of you, dancing around. You know how that ends, Lucien. You danced with Mei Lin, once, and she dallied with other men, and she died, and what good did it bring you, in the end? I can bring you glory. I can bring you power. I can bring you back to the life you were meant to live."
"No," Lucien said fiercely, rising from his chair. "I will not be party to this madness, Derek. And if you or Lilith-"
"If we what? If we come near your precious Jean? Lilith is at your home already, and you know precisely what she's capable of. If I'm not there within the hour, she will assume the worst has happened to me, and she will make certain that you don't need to worry about your housekeeper any longer."
A grim sense of relief flooded through Lucien at that; Derek did not know, then, where Jean was, and that meant that Jean was safe. He had been right, to fear the worst, and he had done all he could to protect her, and he was grateful for his foresight now, more grateful than words could say.
"And really, Lucien, she's just a housekeeper. The world is full of women like her. Why bother with that one? Why spend your whole life with just one of them, when you could save them all? When you could have any one of them you wanted, any time you wanted, anywhere? Forget her, Lucien, and come with me. Let's take the whole bloody world for ourselves."
There was a feeling in Lucien's gut that was very like grief. There was, he thought, nothing left of the man who once had been Derek Alderton. Lucien's brother was dead.
