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Daybreak.
...
“Erias.”
He studiously blocked out the distant voice echoing through his head, smothering himself in a shroud of warm, comfortable darkness. He was really buried in there, he could tell– except he tried not to think about it, because thinking about things lead to thinking about other things, and eventually he wouldn’t be able to stop, and he would have no choice but to get up for the day.
He was really supposed to be getting his well-earned rest right now. Wasn’t he? Probably. He would have checked the clock, but every conscious action dragged him further and further from where he wanted to be. That is to say, asleep.
“Hey, Erias, you doofus. You’ve got a visitor.”
He could just feel the embrace of sleep loosening. Ignoring the voice was now itself taking conscious effort. Shit.
Whether it was Victor or Isme, they really shouldn’t have been bothering him right this moment anyway. They knew he had been up much later than either of them, and still something was so important that he was going to be dragged fighting from bed? He really hated to become the old man of the team – especially considering who else he worked with – but they must have known better.
If it’s so important, I really shouldn’t be ignoring them, he thought to himself, before promptly trying to banish the thought, hiding behind the fleeting, fading remnants of his dreams. And then he realized he was too busy thinking about not thinking to sleep.
There was just no winning. A truly dismal paradox.
“Balancia! Come on, man!”
“Fine! Fine!” he groaned through the pillow, agonizingly raising himself from bed to be bombarded with the harsh light of morning. Instantly his eyes began to stream. “I’ll be down in five. Just give me a damn minute.”
“Okay, it’s not that kind of… you’re not on call. I know they kept you late. But you’ve got company,” said Isme. She leaned sternly against the doorframe, a glass in one hand, looking surprisingly cleaned up for how abysmally early in the morning it must have been. She lowered her voice as he gradually sat up, glancing emphatically at the closed bedroom door. “And between you and me I don’t think she’s happy about waiting.”
She? Instantly a couple faces flashed into his head, but… that would have been absurd. He could’ve used another minute in bed. Or… fifty? That probably would’ve been nice. Dreams, may they rest. “What? Here? Who?”
Isme didn’t say anything, but she slid the door open to let their visitor inside before quietly stepping out into the hallway, the stairs creaking under her feet as she descended out of sight to leave them alone.
“Oh.” Erias quickly stood up, suddenly conscious of little but his less-than-flattering nightwear. He could’ve sworn he could hear Isme’s snickers echoing down the hallway.
“Morning,” he observed adequately. “Doctor Rode. I wasn’t, uh, expecting you.”
She took up much the same position Isme had, surveying the scene from beside the doorway, though obviously she was not nearly as relaxed. Wrapped in the pristine white fabric of her coat her arms were crossed, her posture as intimidatingly, tirelessly straight as ever; something thin, rectangular and bright red was clutched in her hand. Her eyelids seemed heavy, but maybe it was just the condescension.
Doctor Isobel Rode was an imposing figure, in spite of her stature. And not just because she was Valerie’s right hand or because everything about her screamed sharp or even because she had surely engineered this moment to be as disarming as possible, as she did. She kept everyone over whom she had even a modicum of power on their toes.
That’s what Erias and the others often said, anyway. In professional company, where more specific language was frowned upon.
“Captain,” she said flatly. “I can tell.”
He nodded at the container in her hand, trying to avoid her disconcerting stare. “You came out here at–” he blearily looked over at the clock, and realized it was actually much later than he’d thought it was. “Well, at this hour, to hand me this thing?” he asked. Left a suitably annoyed pause. “Ma’am?”
She extended one arm and held it out to him, and reluctantly he extended his own and took it. It felt like a small sheaf of paper, contained in a rare sheath of red plastic (one of those snap-to-open things, about the size of an envelope, but evidently more secure). For something so urgently important, it seemed very light.
He tapped the smooth surface with the back of a fingernail, tilting it and feeling its contents slide. “Valerie knows we have couriers for a reason, right?”
“Mr. Valerie insisted that this information be relayed to you, personally, by me, personally.” Rode shut the door and crossed her arms. “That container is entrusted to your care. Keep it on your person, please. It’s not to be opened except in the event of one of the scenarios he discussed with you last night. I don’t need to remind you, do I?”
It sure seems like you think you do, he grumbled internally. “I suppose I was mistaken in interpreting those hypothetical scenarios as hypotheticals, then.”
“Obviously, yes, they are,” she said, “but you are to remain prepared for the possibility. The contents regard specific contingencies. If, at any point, they become necessary, you’ll have them on hand. Have I somehow left anything unclear about that?”
“Ah,” he grumbled externally. “And couldn’t all of this just have been left for this morning? Or last night? Or handed off for the org to give me? Or in any case all bundled together so that you wouldn’t have had to wake me up right now?”
“I’m not finished.”
“...Oh.”
“The rest of this group will be on duty today. You, Captain, are relieved until some point this afternoon yet to be determined, when you will be directed by wire to escort Madam Adeline from her temporary residence to the rest of the Court. You’ll be given the addresses. Afterwards your Peaceguard organizer will provide you… something to occupy you until the end of watch.” She paused. “Don’t bring the container.”
He wondered whether she rehearsed her speeches to sound so clinical. Or more likely, she was just… like that. “Yeah. I inferred that part.”
Two days ago, Erias would never have imagined that he would end up watching over a mysterious wayward immortal who had been living in the middle of the ocean likely for a thousand years or more. A timescale longer than he could possibly care about, let alone comprehend– he’d long since made peace with that. But here he was.
He was good at what he did for the guard, and for the Court; if he wasn’t, some other spritely volunteer would have taken his place a long time ago. But he was, unfortunately, just as capable handling immortals as regular people, and the job fell to him. Increasingly so these days.
Well, someone had to do it. The immortals always seemed to have their hands full. He truly couldn’t imagine how they functioned, every day.
“That’s all fine, then,” he said. “...Understood.”
Doctor Rode gave him a pointed look that was somewhere between irritation and disappointment. “Mr. Valerie is not tethered to the natural cycles.” she said. “I assure you this is the most efficient this exchange could have been.”
Read my mind, huh?
He probably didn’t want to say the thing he was about to say, but to be fair, it was already on the tip of his tongue, and he was really very tired.
“And what about you, Rode? You don’t look like you’ve had much sleep either. You feel ‘untethered’ from normal time, just like the boss, is that it?”
“Actually,” she said, “yes, it is, and I am.” She smirked, seemingly satisfied with herself, throwing him off guard. Who knew how long she’d been waiting for somebody to ask that, and he’d walked right into it. “As much as I can be. Good morning.”
Then she left the room and, presumably, the house, her footsteps light.
His last hopes dashed, Erias gave up and draped a housecoat over his shoulders, and after a spray of icy water to clear the fatigue from his face, he pitched downstairs and turned the corner into the commons.
“There’s my guy!” Isme was already shrugging into her uniform and lacing up her boots, preparing to leave for the day. Erias sat down across the table from her as she glanced up at him with one eye, though she was quickly focused on her work again. “What’d the spook have to say? She just left. Didn’t even say goodbye.”
“Nothing you need to worry about,” he said. “She was following up on yesterday.” He took a cursory look around the open room to find only the two of them, finding the house disconcertingly quiet. “You’re heading out? Where’s Vic?”
Before she got the chance to, Victor stepped out of the washroom and into the conversation, their own uniform half-done. “Right here. Glad to see you’re up, sunshine.”
“That makes one of us.”
“To be fair, I haven’t decided yet,” Isme helpfully chimed in.
“Hope you had a good sleep,” Vic said. “But more importantly, what’d the mysterious Rode spirit herself up to your most private-est chambers for?”
“I didn’t, for the record, and nothing, don’t worry about it!” Vic and Isme exchanged a look, though they declined to comment; not that Erias wasn’t happy to move on. He took one more hopeful appraisal of the house but, neither seeing nor smelling anything, begrudgingly stood up and started towards the kitchen. “Do we still have any tea?”
“You should really try orange juice or something,” Isme called through the doorway, picking up and swishing her own glass as he started digging through the cabinets. “Malte from down the road is selling it fresh at the market. Not to mention it’s better for you. Good to start the day, y’know?”
“I don’t know if that’s true, but either way I don’t really care. I’m off this morning, which is lucky, because as soon as you two are out of here I’m going right back upstairs and passing out. Hopefully.”
Vic leaned into the doorway, watching his process intently. “So she came all the way out here and woke you up just to remind you that you could sleep in?”
“For the most part, yes. I’ll probably be joining you guys on watch at… quote, “some point” later today. After I take care of this other thing for ‘em.”
“Just you? Or, don’t tell me the Court’s still tapping the rest of us?” Isme scoffed.
“If they don’t just bite the bullet and bring us on retainer full-time come the new year, I’m really gonna lose it. I’m gonna go full-fledged anarchist or something.”
Erias sighed, a little overdramatically, and started steeping the first tea he could find without even bothering to check the label. He was definitely going to regret that. “Just me, for now. I’m escorting the, uh… the new one,” he said. “Adeline.”
At that, the others both perked up, obviously intrigued, but he didn’t have much more to say. Instead, he offered, “She was flying with you two all the way back from Vermiles. What do you make of her? First impressions? Anything I should know?”
“Well, she put a lot of work into avoiding us, actually,” Vic mused. “Really saw almost nothing of her ‘til just before we landed. But from what I’ve heard she might’ve been in shock or something, so I dunno. You know how they are.”
“Eccentric is a solid assumption,” added Isme, “but yeah. She seemed pretty harmless to me, I suppose. A little… timid. Why? You got concerns?”
Erias thought over the little he had seen of her the previous night– admittedly, not much, although he might’ve had a slightly better understanding of her situation than either of them at this point. He had a hunch that the Court’s suspicions about her were similar to his own. Sometimes they were given more credit than might have been appropriate, but he knew they were experienced enough to see the pattern.
It had been a few seasons since the skeins had started – not that he was actually supposed to know the specific details, strictly speaking, but when you were attached to the inner circle so often it wasn’t hard to put two and two together – and now this stranger’s mysterious arrival on top of everything else they had to deal with. Two things he thought had absolutely never happened before, ever, but there they were. In the span of less than a year.
Maybe he was still a little sleep deprived. He poured the tea. “No, no concerns. Doesn’t really matter. Just curious, I guess.”
Vic shrugged. “Alright. Just don’t get too attached, man.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know how they are.”
“Anyway, though. We should’ve been outta here five minutes ago,” Isme said. “Balancia, you old charmer, you.” She started tugging Vic along by the arm, to which they quickly acquiesced. They both stopped before reaching the door, though, and turned back to Erias in the kitchen doorway.
Vic snapped possibly the laziest salute he could have possibly mustered. “Take care. And hey, maybe I’ll invite some of the guys over for dinner? We can all finally get caught up. Been a long couple weeks. God, more than that, even.”
“Yeah, sure,” Erias said; he didn’t know whether he would be up for that, honestly, but he figured it wasn’t worth complaining about either. He took a too-hot, too-bitter drink of tea and waved as the two departed. “See you.”
He didn’t even make it upstairs before falling asleep on the couch, limbs bent out of shape in a way that he would surely regret later, a cup of mediocre tea still sitting and steaming on the table next to him.
Then the sun was high in the sky, beating down through the windows between tilled rows of grey cloud, and Erias was (relatively) well-rested, ready to take on his new inexplicably extra-special task. The Court’s sigil shone neatly to his sleeve.
He was ready as he could be, anyway. Immortals had a way of confounding the strongest attempts to maintain a normal, everyday routine, as anyone who thought about it for five seconds probably could have anticipated; but then again, from his limited experience with this one in particular she didn’t seem very prone to trouble, outside of the company she had recently been keeping. Harmless, Isme said.
The wire came in through the house’s landline while he was milling about– a simple message with two addresses, neither a particularly long walk. He could use the steps, and the Court wouldn’t mind however long he took.
It was even a nice day out, too. Unseasonably so. Nothing to complain about.
Erias strolled between the denser tracts of buildings and clusters of airy open shops straddling the edge of the city centre, through crisp prevernal air and the ambient, almost distant noise of activity, and then down a winding side-street towards the steep riverside. It wasn’t difficult to find the address he was looking for, despite its unassuming facade; but he shouldn’t have been surprised about that.
What did surprise him was the fact that the front door was unlocked and wide open, the lights darkened, no sign of anyone inside.
There weren’t many things that could pose an actual threat to an immortal, he knew that, he wasn’t an idiot, but nonetheless his instincts kicked in as he surveyed the scene. Something prodded at him. Something was wrong.
Could she have just run off on her own? Was she still working with Mercier after all? Or someone worse? He swore to himself as he cautiously tiptoed through the entryway and past a few open doors, nothing but more empty rooms beyond. The place looked like it had been torn apart for something. Ransacked. He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if she really had cut and run–
He stepped into the empty commons – a gentle breeze swirling through the curtains and the open glass door at the room’s other end – at the same moment that the immortal stranger wandered into view outside.
She jumped when she caught sight of him, her haphazard ensemble fluttering as she quickly hid something she was carrying – a book? – behind her back and turned to face him. He couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief as he crossed the distance between them to meet her at the threshold.
“Afternoon, ma’am,” he said, trying his best to even his voice.
“Captain Balancia,” Adeline said, clearly stunned. “Hi.”
“You left the front door open.” He looked again at the sliding glass window to the garden, wide open between them. “...All the doors.”
“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t know– I thought it would be fine. I was just trying to… make myself at home. Marcel didn’t say I had to stay inside. He didn’t exactly say that. It’s a little tricky to find the right balance here. Sorry.”
The words had feeling behind them, but her voice was low and flat, her face placid. Unreadable. Facing down her full attention was almost as unsettling as facing Doctor Rode’s. Almost.
He realized she was waiting for him to reply. “Ah, it’s– it’s probably fine.”
Haltingly he cleared a way for her as she stepped back inside, setting the book that he thought she had been trying to hide casually down on a chair, before they settled again into awkward silence. He coughed. “Do you know why I’m here?”
“Oh,” she said again. “I was wondering about that.”
“Right. Valerie and Marcel wanted to meet with you at this restaurant– I have the address. I’m to escort you there and to… check up on you?”
Instantly she perked up, however imperceptibly, wide eyes still set into her otherwise stony expression. “Really? Already? Why?”
“I don’t have the details, ma’am,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll tell you when we arrive.”
And just like that, her face was as mild as it had been just moments before; she said, maybe a bit disappointed, “Okay. Let’s go, then.”
Even easier than he expected. He led the way back from the riverside housing tract into the more built-up portions of the city, and then from the mostly-peaceful shaded paths to the busy open squares and boulevards radiating out across the region from the towers of the government complexes.
Unlike many of the places the immortals frequented – obscure, hard-to-find niches in the oldest corners of the city that outsiders rarely visited, that turned many a simple delivery or escort into a day-trip – their destination was somewhere Balancia knew how to reach by heart, so he let himself relax on the silent walk. But naturally the same couldn’t really be said of Adeline.
Erias had learned, even without the extra senses they experienced, what an anxious immortal was like. The waves of heat, the tingling sensation on his skin, the scents of incense and ozone and a nearly-unnoticeable buzz like an electric current through metal.
She had all the symptoms, and they only intensified when the two were forced onto the busier roads and marketplaces.
He did his best to weave a more idle path, considering an immortal melting down in the middle of the city was just about the last thing he ever wanted to be indirectly responsible for, but she only seemed to grow more agitated as they went.
Finally, she cracked and said, as he gingerly started to turn another corner, “Balancia, what are they going to do to me?”
Her tone was much calmer than everything else might’ve indicated, but it gave him cause to stumble anyway. I am so, so not prepared for this, he lamented, and carefully avoided saying anything that might push her further. He tried to stay nonchalant about it, only barely missing a step; in spite of her words, she hadn’t even broken stride. “...I am… not sure what you mean. Last night Marcel laid it all out for you, right?”
“But are they really going to let me go once they find where I came from? They keep talking about all these other bad things going on, and they seem to think that I have something to do with it all, and… I don’t know.”
Oh Lords.
He cleared his throat. “I, uh. I don’t see why they would go back on their word. Lots of immortals keep to themselves, there’s no problem with that,” he said.
She was fidgeting with the fringes of her ill-fitting clothes, he noticed. “Marcel at least seems fine, but Ri– um, someone, someone I knew, or know– she was afraid of what you would do. Not you, specifically. Them,” she said. “You do work for them, don’t you?”
“Ah.” It didn’t take a millennium of deductive knowledge to figure out who she was talking about, what she meant. “Well broadly, no, most of the Peaceguard are just watchmen and backup to emergency services and the like, but I guess we’re apparently talking about me, personally, now, so… ”
“Yes.”
“...She doesn’t exactly keep to herself,” he said, very tactfully, teasing the conversation somewhere safer. “So they do have, um, an interest in her, that’s true. But as far as I know they’re not going after her for now, and as long as you are asking me, I don’t think they have any reason to. Or to do anything bad to you, either, to be clear. Bigger problems to deal with at the moment.”
“I see.” She seemed to be thinking hard, though her stare remained fixed straight ahead as they walked, focused on the horizon. “That seems good, then. More good than bad.”
He sighed Relieved she seemed calmer, at least. She probably could have run off whenever she wanted and they would have been hard-pressed to catch her; she must’ve known. So everything was probably fine. Harmless.
Then he caught himself getting twisted up about those bigger problems again. Until last night, River Mercier had been the last thing he was worried about; immortals’ play-fighting didn’t exactly top his priorities.
He and anybody else paying attention had noticed it, even in the quietest corners of Solace; not just the skeins (although being able to put a name to that didn’t put him any more at ease), but… rumblings. Everyone was restless, not just the Reformists– even those less attuned to the movements of the Court, who didn’t even know what they had to be worried about, and over the past year it had only gotten worse. It was dangerous, and therefore it was his duty to combat it, but he was as lost as everyone else; he knew the patterns were there, he just couldn’t see them through the static. Maybe nobody could. Too much for one person to fully comprehend.
Recently, when he’d spiralled down this line of thinking, his mind had often turned to history in a way he wasn’t entirely comfortable with. He thought that in the vacuum of Partition, maybe the city – maybe Alesse itself – was... falling. Had been, perhaps, for a very long time. Since the War all those centuries ago.
Without the wind, you wouldn’t even feel the invisible velocity. You’d only know it when you hit the ground.
...There really was no winning for him, today.
“Yeah,” he said. They kept walking in silence.
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