“Now, then… It’s about time we started to set up.”
At the foot of the lobby stairs, Luck Gandor checked his watch.
“……”
“All right, all right, all right, let’s go wipe ’em out!”
The oldest brother was silent, while the middle brother was shouting about violence again. Luck found their unchanging natures reassuring. He let his eyes go from them to his subordinates.
“Say, if I see anybody weird, can I cut them? It’s okay, right, amigo?”
“No.”
“Aww.”
“Especially not today. Don’t draw your swords under any circumstances unless I give the signal.”
Maria was the only one of the hitmen who was with them now. All the hired killers’ faces were far too memorable, so having the whole group together could easily have handicapped them. Ladd and the others were scattered around the hotel’s perimeter to give them more freedom. In an emergency, they were supposed to assemble at Ra’s Lance.
Not that they’ll do what we want in any case, Luck thought.
Maria grumbled. “Tch! You really are stingy, amigo.”
“There’s no help for thaaat. This is a paaarty; there are all sorts of people here. If you start fighting, lots of them will get maaad at us.” Tick Jefferson, the Gandors’ torture expert, reproached her. Several pairs of scissors were secured to his belt with special fasteners, although he couldn’t bring them out right now.
“Mgh… Fine, amigo. If you say so, I’ll behave, Tick.”
“Wow! Thanks, Maria.” Maria’s reluctant consent elicited a childlike smile from the young man.
Watching the two of them, Luck gave a small sigh.
After a certain incident two years ago, Maria usually listened to anything Tick told her. Tick was pretty messed up in his own right, but since he did function as part of a chain of command, he was significantly easier to deal with than Maria and the others. They’d brought him to the party for several reasons, one of which was to help keep Maria in line.
Luck had considered a variety of situations, and he was prepared to accept the results no matter what they might be. But personally, he hoped none of those situations would actually happen.
Granted, even he was dimly aware that this hope would be short-lived.
A port warehouse near Ra’s Lance
“Listen up, you idiots. There’s no way nothing’s gonna happen. Make that your base assumption here.”
A temporary branch of the Division of Investigation had been situated inside a warehouse.
Victor was the assistant director of a department that fielded incidents involving the immortals. As the person in charge of this site, he was briefing the row of men in front of him.
“If nothing happens here, that’s a worst-case scenario. It’ll mean there’s something going on that we missed.”
Thwacking the corkboard with his pointer, Victor glanced at the pictures and documents pinned to it. “If nothing else, remember the House of Dormentaire. Whatever you do, do not take your eyes off those people.”
One of the papers on the board held a drawing of the Dormentaire crest, which featured an hourglass.
“We picked up on this crew just the other day. They’ve been lying low. If they’ve suddenly surfaced, that means their plans are far enough along that they can afford to.”
“But, Assistant Director,” one of his subordinates said, “haven’t the higher-ups forbidden any investigation regarding their ship?”
“Yeah. Regarding the ship.”
“No, but an investigation into the House of Dormentaire itself…”
“Once they’re off the ship, who could tell Dormentaires apart from passing gangsters? I sure can’t. And if I can’t, there’s no way in hell you people can. Ain’t that right?”
Their boss’s suddenly very tenuous line of logic started raising a few eyebrows, but—
—Bill, the one who’d been working for Victor the longest, interjected evenly. “Uh… What the assistant director is trying to say is that he’ll take all responsibility for it, so fake like you’re investigating the mafia and watch that lot instead.”
“Don’t just say it, Bill! I’ve got an image to maintain!”
“Mm… I don’t believe you have any image to maintain, sir.”
Victor ground his teeth. “…You may be right about that. We’ve been playing catch-up all this time, and then we let Agent Edward Noah get worked over. At this point, we’re the dregs of the dregs.”
Admonishing himself, Victor turned to his men again.
“Which is why we’re gonna haul ourselves up out of this swamp. If they’re convinced they’re so above it all, we’ll grab their ankles and drag every last one of ’em down into the mud. Then we’ll see if they can call themselves winners. For us, there’s nowhere to go but up.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Let’s go teach ’em that in the eyes of the law, there’s no difference between the residents of heaven and hell.”
The roof of a hotel near Ra’s Lance
On the very top of a comparatively new hotel, just across the street from Ra’s Lance, two women were gazing out at the reddening sky.
One was still a girl. The other was a young woman of about twenty.
The girl—Leeza—spoke crossly. “Honestly! Why do I have to patrol with you, Chané?”
Chané, who strongly resembled the girl, lowered her eyes in consternation. “……” She looked up again, at Leeza’s back.
A little sister.
How could this happen so suddenly…?
After she’d reunited with her father, he’d introduced this girl to her as her little sister.
The family resemblance was clearly visible. However, Chané hadn’t had any time to prepare herself emotionally before the introduction, and she hadn’t been given any real explanation. She couldn’t help but feel bewildered.
The prospect of having relatives besides her father had almost never crossed her mind.
Come to think of it, the woman who threw chakrams at Mist Wall was named Leeza, too, wasn’t she? she remembered vaguely. It was about all she could do.
That said, the other Leeza’s voice had been completely different, so she didn’t think anything more of it.
It was likely that Chané had been given hints that this girl existed, but Huey had been such a priority to her that she had discarded the information as unnecessary.
As a result, actually meeting her had left Chané with no idea how to act toward this “little sister.”
On top of that, apparently Leeza had known about her for quite a while already.
“How is that redheaded fellow of yours? Is he well?” the girl had asked at their first meeting, catching Chané off guard.
Seeing her blush a little, Leeza had puffed out her cheeks. “Lucky you, Chané. You always get your way,” she’d said, sounding bored.
Why is she avoiding my eyes? Did I do something to make her hate me?
Chané didn’t know about her sister’s complicated situation, so she ruminated on the idea, sure that this must be her fault.
She seemed to have decided that this and the mission Huey had set for her were different matters, so she didn’t get disturbed enough for it to get in the way of her work. She wasn’t satisfied with that state of affairs, though.
The moment her heart was the slightest bit unsettled, she was no longer a perfect pawn that could fulfill her father’s expectations. She’d always been fine with her status, and she couldn’t stand to lose even a little of her edge.
…At least until four years ago.
I have to go back to that time.
After all, Father’s returned.
Unless I become who I was as well, my life will be meaningless.
As she was thinking these things, Leeza turned back. “Listen.”
“……?”
“The other day, a man named Firo Prochainezo came to meet with Father. Remember?”
“……”
Chané nodded.
A little while after her father had come back, a man named Firo Prochainezo had visited his hideout. Her father had summoned him, apparently, and they’d discussed something in private.
Chané knew the man, very slightly. He was a childhood friend of Claire Stanfield’s; his name was constantly coming up in the old stories Claire told her, and she ran into him in town every so often. When trouble had broken out at Mist Wall in 1933, Firo had been there, too. She couldn’t recall spending much time with him, and Claire only dropped in to say hello to the guy when he got the time.
It had seemed a little odd for him to come to visit her father. She didn’t know what his relationship with her father was, but Huey hadn’t seen him as an enemy in any way… At least that was the conclusion Chané had come to. She didn’t know Firo was the one who’d gouged out Huey’s eye, and Leeza didn’t bother to tell her.
“I wonder what they talked about.”
“……”
Chané shook her head to show she didn’t know, either.
As a matter of fact, when the pair had finished their discussion and emerged from the other room, there hadn’t been any signs of conflict. The bitterness on Firo’s face had never left, but when he saw Chané, he’d sighed and said, “Tell Cla—Felix hi from me,” before he left. Huey was in high spirits, and neither of his daughters suspected any sort of problem.
The relationship wasn’t a hostile one. In that case, Chané decided, everything was fine.
Her father had probably laid the groundwork for some sort of scheme, but that happened all the time. It was nothing for her to worry about. Why would her little sister be concerned about this so long after the fact?
As Chané wondered, Leeza asked her a question. “Chané… Just hypothetically, if that redhead fought with Father…whose side would you take?”
“……!”