"You got better," Cael said.
"Of course I got better. I could not land a single hit on an old man after two months of that training, which means I was probably worthless to begin with." Lucien paused, feeling the small warmth of the evening's result still sitting somewhere in his chest. "Just wait. The time it takes me to put you on the ground instead is not as far away as you think."
He did not finish the sentence.
Cael was there and then he simply was not, and before Lucien could locate where he had gone a force arrived from a direction he could not identify and he was airborne, then not airborne, then on the ground looking up at the darkening sky with the familiar sensation of his brain catching up to events that had already concluded.
Cael stood over him, hands behind his back, expression unchanged.
"Don't get cocky," he said. "I was not serious just now. Not even close." He looked down at Lucien for a moment. "You did well for thirteen. That is what I said and that is all I said."
He turned and walked back toward the house, then stopped at the door without turning around.
"Go and get me some rum. I finished mine."
Lucien did not bother arguing. He simply turned and walked back down the hill, watching the last of the sun drop toward the horizon as he descended. By the time he reached the bottom the sky had shifted into the deep orange of early evening.
He pushed open the door of the bar he had first walked into the day he arrived in Lvneel, and the bartender, without turning around or asking anything, reached under the counter and produced a large jug. Lucien took it, left the money on the counter, and walked back out. No words were exchanged. This had happened enough times that words were no longer required.
He was two steps out the door when he nearly walked into Cricket, who was standing on the street holding a newspaper with both hands and staring at it with an expression Lucien had not seen on him before. Wide-eyed and completely still, the easy manner entirely gone.
Lucien slowed and looked at the paper over his shoulder.
GOL D. ROGER: THE PIRATE KING. THE MAN WHO CONQUERED THE GRAND LINE.
He stopped walking.
He still remembered the first time he had seen that name, at the bottom of the bounty board in Flevance, the grinning face above a number so large it had taken him a moment to read it correctly. The image had never quite left him, the contradiction of that expression against everything the number implied. And now that same man had done what the title said. Conquered the Grand Line and become the official King of Pirates.
"He actually did it," Cricket said quietly, still staring at the page. He said it the way people say things they have been half expecting for a long time and are still surprised by when they arrive.
"I wonder what he found at the end of it," Lucien murmured, looking at the headline over Cricket's shoulder. "After conquering the entire world. What does a man actually see when he gets there."
Cricket startled and nearly dropped the paper. "Lucien. When did you get here." He pressed a hand to his chest and exhaled. "Are you here for the rum again? Looks like you have taken over my old job." He glanced at the jug. "How is the training going?"
Lucien did not answer. He was still looking at the page, turning something over quietly in his head. "The Marines will not let him live long," he said, more to himself than to Cricket. "They cannot afford to. A man like that walking free is a problem they cannot ignore."
Cricket frowned. "Who is going to catch him? He is the Pirate King. The strongest man on the seas. There is nobody in the Marines strong enough to take him."
Lucien just shrugged. He reached over and took the newspaper from Cricket's hands without asking, tucked it under his arm alongside the jug, and started back up the hill.
He wanted to know what Cael would say. An ex-Marine Captain, sitting alone on a hill, hearing for the first time that the world had a Pirate King.
The climb back up felt shorter than usual, which he attributed to having something worth thinking about. By the time he reached the blue door the sky had gone dark and the lamp inside was lit, its light showing through the half-closed shutters in a thin yellow line.
He pushed the door open and set the jug on the table. Cael was sitting in his chair with a book open across his knee, which meant he was either reading or pretending to read, and with Cael the distinction was difficult to establish.
Lucien set the newspaper on the table beside the jug without saying anything.
Cael looked at it for long enough that Lucien understood he had already read the headline and was deciding something. Then he reached over, picked it up, and read in silence. His expression did not change in any way that was visible. He set the paper down, poured himself a measure of rum, and looked out the window at the dark hillside.
"Well," he said finally. "There it is."
"What do you think?" Lucien asked.
"It was bound to happen sooner or later," Cael said. "And in a way I am glad it was Roger. He earned it." He paused, turning the cup in his hand slowly. "He also helped us once, years ago. A fight we could not have managed without him."
Lucien looked at him. "Roger fought alongside the Marines? Who in the world is dangerous enough that the Marines needed a pirate's help to deal with them?"
Cael looked at him over the rim of his cup with the expression he used when a question was being filed away rather than answered. "That is not something you need to know right now." He set the cup down and stood. "Eat your dinner and get some sleep." He moved toward the back room, then stopped. "From tomorrow we start sword training. A weapon is not optional in this world, and the sword suits you. We begin at sunrise."
He went to bed without further explanation, in the same way he did everything.