Colleagues

While the girl in red was beating Dailin senseless, Anya introduced the newcomer.

"As Dailin said earlier, she's from the Love Family. She should be living in a city-state in the Flamecore Inner Ring, enjoying a life of luxury. But her father was transferred here for work, so she came with him to live in Her City."

"Don't listen to Dailin," Anya said in Meifuni's defense. "She takes her work seriously. It's just that, because of her special status, the director won't let her work on the front lines."

"If anything happened to the Love Family's little princess, we'd never hear the end of it."

Once she had vented her anger, Meifuni wiped her hands and turned to Xilian with a smile.

"Hello. Let me introduce myself properly. I'm Meifuni Love, and I handle some of the paperwork."

Xilian studied the girl before him. Unlike the tall, alluring Anya, she had the air of a girl next door. She wore brown boots, a red shawl, and a white outfit. Her long golden hair was pinned up behind her head, and a sweet smile graced her face.

"Hello..."

Just as Xilian reached out to shake her hand, Meifuni grabbed it first and held on tight.

"Oh! It's you!"

Meifuni recognized Xilian as the visitor Anya had wanted to investigate yesterday.

She turned to Anya in excitement, her eyes brimming with curiosity.

"Your name's Xilian, right? No surname, or do you just not want to say?"

Meifuni's smile turned sly. "Never mind. Everyone has their little secrets."

She suddenly leaned closer, looking Xilian up and down.

"Hmm... Not bad-looking, and you're pretty solidly built..."

Her sudden enthusiasm caught Xilian off guard. Just as he moved to put some distance between them, she slipped behind him and circled him for another look.

"You carry yourself well, too... All in all, decent enough."

Suddenly, she appeared in front of Xilian again. He instinctively tried to step back, only to find himself against the wall.

Meifuni stood very close, her clear eyes meeting his.

"Gray-blue eyes. You look rather melancholy."

She deliberately poked his stomach. "Has something bad happened to you lately?"

Xilian could not tell whether this was one of Meifuni's conversational tricks or whether she really was that observant. The tragedy in White Cliff Town flashed before his eyes.

He covered it up. "Does being broke count as something bad?"

Meifuni caught the fleeting sadness in his eyes.

"That certainly counts."

"Then are you going to support me?"

"Why?"

Meifuni took a step back.

"I thought you were checking whether I met your standards of beauty," Xilian said, straightening his clothes. "Judging by your comments, I seem to have done all right."

Xilian had read books about young men who found wealthy women to support them and lived happily ever after—until they died in bed.

Like Tim, Xilian did not like the part where they died in bed. But as a desperate way out of his financial crisis, it was worth considering.

Xilian was easygoing, and he knew how to adapt.

Meifuni took another step back and gave Anya an astonished look. "Have you started liking weirdos like him?"

Without waiting for Anya to answer, Meifuni thought it over aloud.

"Well, Sister Anya has seen every kind of handsome man. Maybe this type is rare enough to be interesting. And he does look good, so I suppose he has his own appeal?"

Anya sighed helplessly. She had known Meifuni would get the wrong idea.

"Can't you tell Xilian was joking?"

Anya had no intention of explaining her curiosity about Xilian. Instead, she pressed down hard on Meifuni's head.

"I apologize on her behalf. She never knows when to stop. She's foolishly naive sometimes."

"She said... you and me?"

Xilian was confused. His eyes met Anya's.

An odd tension stirred between them. Anya, renowned for her skill at romance, found herself utterly defeated by Xilian's gaze.

She turned away to avoid his eyes, looking almost shy.

"It's nothing. Please don't take it to heart."

"All right."

Xilian knew when to let a matter drop.

"See? See!" Meifuni cried.

"Quiet!"

Anya wished she could cover Meifuni's mouth.

Dailin had no idea what had happened between the two of them, so he simply went over the practical details.

Xilian was tentatively due to start next Monday, though the exact nature of his work was still unclear.

Then Dailin took out a stack of banknotes.

"We don't normally pay wages in advance, but I can lend you a little money myself to get you through this rough patch."

At a glance, it looked like enough to keep Xilian going until payday.

Xilian stared at him. "That's... quite a surprise."

"What's wrong?" Dailin grinned. "Did you think everyone at the City Guard Bureau was a cold-blooded lunatic? We look after each other."

Dailin firmly pressed the banknotes into Xilian's hand. "More than any words of thanks, I'd rather you stay alive. Don't go dying for no reason before you've paid me back."

Xilian did not know how to respond to such unexpected kindness.

"Thank you, Dailin."

"It's nothing. Think of me as the first friend you made in Her City."

Xilian hesitated. "I think you're the second."

Dailin paused as an absurd possibility crossed his mind.

"Don't tell me the first... was that dog?"

"Bruce doesn't like being called 'that dog.' He'll bare his teeth."

Anya laughed beside them.

Meifuni listened to their cryptic exchange in utter confusion. She had no idea what they were laughing about, but Anya's reaction only strengthened her suspicion.

Anya really was interested in this strange outsider.

And after seeing Dailin give Xilian money, Meifuni could not believe for a moment that his request for support had been a joke.

Before Xilian left, Dailin said he ought to meet the director of the City Guard Bureau. But the director was at a meeting that day, so it would have to wait.

"Do you care that much about Xilian?" Anya asked.

"Not particularly. He just reminds me a little of myself," Dailin said wistfully. "I was about his age when I came to Her City, though I had it much worse."

Meifuni listened in on their conversation.

She had heard Dailin's story at the City Guard Bureau. Supposedly, a merchant had brought him to Her City and treated him like a slave. Then one day, Dailin killed the merchant and smashed his shackles.

"What about you, Anya? Is Meifuni right? Do you really like Xilian's type?"

Dailin asked it half in jest.

Meifuni recalled another story she had heard around the City Guard Bureau. No, it was not a rumor so much as something everyone accepted as fact.

Dailin had been pursuing Anya for a long time, and he knew her tastes inside out.

Anya smiled but did not answer at once. Instead, she looked at Meifuni, who was eavesdropping nearby.

"If you're not here just to pad your résumé, go do some work. Do you know how many reports you owe?"

Anya squeezed Meifuni's cheeks. "Don't think I'll write them for you again. Go!"

Meifuni knew Anya only wanted to stop her from listening, but she had no choice but to leave, however reluctantly.

Anya was still not reassured. She and Dailin went to the small park outside the City Guard Bureau and sat on a bench beneath the trees.

"We keep doing this," Dailin said with concern. "Won't Meifuni feel like we're shutting her out?"

"No. She's a cheerful girl, and she understands why," Anya explained. "As far as the City-State Council is concerned, the Love Family is an outside power."

"The City-State Council doesn't want the Love Family meddling too much in Her City. And the Love Family doesn't want one of their own actually getting involved on the front lines."

"The front lines?"

Dailin caught her choice of words.

Anya got straight to the point. "I looked into everything Xilian did after entering the city. First, he exchanged Soul Marrow for money and rented an apartment. After buying a few necessities, he went to the Centipede Trading Company and bought a damaged Jet Revolver."

Using the City Guard Bureau's access, Anya had traced the broad outline of Xilian's finances and pieced together how he was living.

Dailin relaxed somewhat when he realized Anya was investigating Xilian rather than taking a romantic interest in him. But when he saw that she suspected Xilian of something, his anxiety returned.

"Did you find anything wrong?"

"Something very wrong," Anya said. "By my calculations, he had hardly any city-state currency left after buying the Jet Revolver. That fits with his need for an advance on his wages."

"So?"

"Why would a Torchbearer buy a damaged Jet Revolver? Was he going to have the Spirit Artisans repair it? That would cost him even more. It makes no sense."

It was a strange detail, though Anya could not say what lay behind it.

"But more than that," Anya said gravely, "the real question is Xilian himself."

Dailin clenched his fists without thinking. "There's something wrong with him? Didn't we test him with Soul Marrow Agent? You told me he was trustworthy... Is he connected to Chaos?"

"He isn't a Chaos Follower," Anya said. "Quite the opposite. He's Chaos's greatest enemy."

Dailin froze.

Anya continued, "A Torchbearer's power passes down through bloodlines. But over hundreds and thousands of generations, those bloodlines can mutate to some extent, just like human genes."

"Take the famous Cold Sun Clan, for example. Their bloodline underwent a mutation that makes their Soul Marrow Flame burn an eerie blue."

Anya hesitated before speaking slowly. "My bloodline has mutated too. It lets me sense the purity of other people's bloodlines. If their blood is exposed, I can even detect other Torchbearers from a considerable distance."

"That night, during the interrogation, when I pulled out the needle after administering the Soul Marrow Agent and brought a few drops of blood with it..."

Anya's voice suddenly fell. Dailin turned toward her and saw an expression of extraordinary complexity on her face.

Excitement, fervor, fear... reverence.

"I can't really describe it. It was as if a power deep in my blood was calling to me, as though I stood before the very source of my bloodline... I hardly dared meet his eyes."

Only then did Dailin understand the look on Anya's face when she had met Xilian's gaze earlier.

It had not been a woman's shyness. It was the urge to avert her eyes from something sacred.

As if in a vision, Anya glimpsed a vast radiance flickering between the buildings.

She gave a self-mocking smile. "I even had the degrading urge to... lick up the blood he'd left behind. He was like..."

"The blazing sun," she murmured.

"A blazing sun, burning fiercely."