15. It's Personal
He had never felt before how slowly the airship traveled. He knew that was because he had always been writing a report. He didn't have time to waste on recreational travel. This trip hadn't been recreational in nature either. If he were to classify it, he would describe it as a rescue mission. A strange sort of sortie for one such as him, but he couldn't think of any other, more accurate description. It certainly wasn't back-up, because, on her own, she would be completely defenseless.
He was at the door before it landed, then sprinted the short distance of ground to the house. Zeno passed him on the main staircase as he was going up to his room.
"Job?"
"Yes, a Personal."
"Um, well get on with it."
He went into his room and snatched his appointment book from the top of his desk. He wrote in the new job: Bodyguard, Personal; listing the date for completion as: indeterminate, not typical but occasionally the case with this type of assignment; and on the client line he boldly wrote: VerHoffen, Lucia. He put it back on the top of his desk. His room was so powerfully infused with his Nen that no one but Silva or Zeno could enter uninvited, and they knew all they had to do was ask, so he no longer used the hidden compartment underneath the desk. But now he bent down and reached under and unlatched it. Pulling it open he saw several small notebooks filled with his precise hand, but he pushed these aside in search of his objective.
There they were, halfway to the bottom, flattened and with the nap slightly squashed in places, her rose suede slippers. Several times after he had obtained them through distracted oversight, he had taken them from this compartment to hold and touch them; more often early on, but even as late as a couple of months before Killu had left. It had made him feel uneasy to be doing something that seemed so like Milluki, but somehow, even though he doubted she had been trained in any way, the shoes had held some of her aura. Mostly fear, which would have been expected given the situation she had been in when they had last been in contact with her skin, but still, it was something of her. The only thing he had of her. He could feel nothing from them now.
Now, when it was an entire decade later… and he was engaged in rescuing her again. He smiled wryly, wondering at the twisted sense of humor possessed by a fate that would cast him in the role of her Knight Champion. For the first time since the start of this entanglement he asked himself, what was she to him? Was she also just a fantasy or a dream? The real woman certainly was no ideal Lady Fair. Could she posses some natural form of Specialization, combining attraction and irritation, playfulness, arrogance, and helplessness, into some siren call he felt compelled to answer?
The shoes were tossed back inside and he closed the compartment. It was a waste of time and effort to think about things he didn't have enough facts to answer. Not when he could be busy gathering more facts right now. He went back downstairs and into the library to check the main schedule. He would have to list his new assignment. And it was also his responsibility to check and make sure he didn't have any scheduling conflicts and to notify Silva or Zeno if he did. He wanted to look at it anyway, to see if there were any new listings.
Briskly, he walked past the rows of shelves containing completed mission reports. These, Illumi believed, were the true wealth and strength of the Zaoldyeck Family. No amount of training, skill, genetics, talent, or luck, could compare with these volumes stretching back through the generations, containing within their carefully noted records, the experience, knowledge and insights of his forefathers.
He wondered why he had told Zeno it was a Personal. He could have just as easily identified it as a Political. Personals were often the most unpleasant jobs: brothers destroying brothers, husbands punishing wives, mistresses removing rivals (although he usually categorized those as Commercial); with the client often requesting special add-ons to the circumstances of the job that were distasteful, even for the hardened Zaoldyecks, to perform. But for that very reason, they were often the most lucrative, and so Illumi thought he might have said that as an excuse why he wouldn't want to give it up or trade it for a different assignment. It was already done, in any case.
Reaching the desk with the current Schedule book on it he opened it to the last listing. Yes, as expected, there was a new assignment. But the target wasn't the name he had feared, and it wasn't for him. Still, it was close enough that it was certainly connected, and he was curious what Lucia would think after it occurred. And speaking of his mercurial employer, he'd better get back and make a thorough inventory of the defensive strengths and weaknesses of her surroundings before he met with her again. He wondered if she would have any more surprises up her sleeve. Her last one, now cleaned, was safely stuck back in his vest. Adding his new job he closed the book, turned, and headed outside, back to the airship hangar.
