Chapter 44

She paused, her voice dropping a little. "As long as I'm still in charge of this district, no child should be wandering the streets of Odense."

"Pica, let's go."

The two figures, one tall and one short, merged into the crowd.

The curve vanished from Rossi's lips.

That woman's footsteps were unnaturally light.

She wore heels, yet they made not the slightest sound against the stone pavement-the legs beneath her skirt must have been taut as bowstrings.

As for that boy...

Rossi narrowed his eyes.

He wasn't a Devil Fruit user, nor was he the type to overwhelm opponents through strength alone.

There was a familiar scent about the boy, like rust mixed with old bandages.

It was the air of someone who wore disguises like clothes, the trace of blood that had dried and seeped into the lines of his palms.

Wait.

He stared at the retreating figure.

Pica? The name struck a spark in his memory.

Curly hair, a straight back, restrained gestures.

An image of someone not yet clad in baby clothes gradually surfaced.

Could he be... Senor Pink?

"You're upset."

"I am not."

The woman turned her face away, her cheeks puffing slightly.

She didn't look the least bit like she was "not."

The memory of the blond boy at the alley entrance made the black-clad youth in the floral neckerchief knit his brows.

"It's dangerous."

"Nonsense."

The noblewoman turned back, her hands resting at her waist.

"With Pica right beside me, what could happen?"

The boy in black fell silent for several seconds, then could only raise a hand and point ahead.

"Madam, the auction is about to begin."

Once the figure beside him stepped forward, he deliberately fell half a pace behind and pressed his knuckles against his tense brow.

-It's precisely because someone like me is nearby that you're in even greater danger.

"It really is an auction?"

After recognizing that the boy in the suit was very likely Senor Pink, Rossi immediately climbed onto the rooftops and followed the pair to a theater.

Exquisitely crafted carriages filled the space outside the theater, and the coachmen's haughtily raised chins said it all.

When the noblewoman and the youthful-looking Pica reached the entrance, everyone around them removed their hats and bowed.

Lying in the shadows of the eaves across the street, Rossi narrowed his eyes.

It seemed the lady held an extraordinary position.

She certainly fit the description of "an overly softhearted noblewoman."

That description-then what was Pica to her? A relative? A bodyguard? Or something else?

Rossi paid particular attention to Senor Pink because, in the Family of the future, he could be counted among its rare decent members.

He valued affection and loyalty, often showed compassion for the weak, and was a tough man who scorned trickery.

Rarer still, in this world where "abandoning wives and children"

had practically become the norm, he was someone who placed enormous importance on family.

To bring a smile to his gravely injured, unconscious wife's face, he was even willing to wear his deceased son's baby clothes...

Absurd as Pica might appear, he was more of a gentleman at heart than those so-called gentlemen who cared only for outward decorum.

"If someone like that could become a companion..."

Better observe him first.

His mind made up, Rossi quietly withdrew from the rooftop, intending to circle around and sneak in from the other side of the building.

Inside the theater.

Elegant gentlemen and wealthy merchants glittering with jewels gathered in small circles.

Nominally a charity auction, for most it was merely a venue for dealings in money and power.

Besides these central figures, there were the female companions they had brought to show off and family members brought along to broaden their horizons.

Thus, Rossi, now dressed in a small suit and slowly sipping black tea, attracted no attention.

So-called aristocratic bearing was ultimately nothing more than a display of confidence.

Wealth and authority could nurture confidence, and so could formidable fighting strength.

The auction hall's lighting sank into an expensive amber dimness.

In the first row, the lady rose and nodded slightly to those around her.

Polite nods and silent greetings drifted through the air.

The respect stemmed neither from the institution under her name that sheltered orphans nor from her status as the organizer of this charity auction.

People knew that she was the occupant of Acanlia's throne, the ruler of Odense.

"The next piece up for auction,"

the auctioneer announced steadily, "comes from the brush of Lady Poliziano Jora-'Spring.'"

In the shadows of a corner, Rossi abruptly choked on the liquid he had just sipped.

A few dark droplets splashed onto his cuff.

The little girl seated beside him turned her head, a trace of undisguised contempt passing through her eyes.

"Pardon me."

He pulled at the corners of his mouth and wiped his chin with his knuckles.

Beneath his golden hair, his face spread into a sufficiently gentle smile, carrying a little embarrassment at being caught off guard, mixed with the composure peculiar to someone older.

The girl's cheeks quietly warmed a little.

She looked away, thinking that his smile wasn't unpleasant.

"Lady Jora is Odense's treasure!"

As the conversation turned to the painting's creator, the girl's voice immediately rose.

She began to explain, speaking as quickly as a floodgate flung open.

The lady was not only the queen but also a highly acclaimed painter, and she had founded a place that took in countless children.

She held power, possessed outstanding beauty and a gentle disposition, and poured her heart into affairs of state and those helpless young lives.

Now thirty years old and still single, she was the most admired person in the entire Kingdom...

"When I grow up,"

the girl said, her eyes shining, "I want to become someone like Lady Jora too."

"Yes, that's a fine ambition."

Rossi nodded, yet deep in his nose he caught a rustlike hint of danger.

The "Jora" he remembered

was a burly woman in heavy makeup with a shrill voice, a member of a certain Family decades in the future, separated by a gulf from the nearly perfect image being described now.

Perhaps their only common ground was a certain fixation on children.

He raised his eyes, looking over the shifting heads toward the front row.

The lady was deftly exchanging pleasantries with the nobles and wealthy merchants around her, the contours of her profile softened by the light.

Her hair color... yes, that hair color vaguely supplied the edges of some blurred future silhouette.

Why would the ruler of a country end up embroiled in bloody slaughter?

Did that mean the country beneath his feet, called Acanlia, was about to undergo some violent upheaval?

His fingertips unconsciously brushed his chin.

The auctioneer continued calling prices at an unhurried pace.

Rossi rose soundlessly and withdrew through the side aisle.

Only after quite some time did the girl beside him, still talking excitedly, discover that her brief listener had disappeared.

The wind at the docks struck his face with a salty, fishy smell.

Before he even drew near, Trebol's angry voice had already torn through the night, striking his ears from afar-

"Pah! What kind of damned place is that!"

The wind over the deck carried a bitter saltiness, and Trebol's voice drifted over amid the creak of rubbing ropes.

Rossi had only just stepped onto the damp planks when he heard the muttering-about some woman who had refused to provide services, about poetry and painting, about sleep.

Beside him, Diamante gave two short coughs and tugged at his companion's stained sleeve.

They had all crawled out of that refuse-filled corner of Spandamruze.

Fire, scams, cheap alcohol, and even cheaper transactions of the flesh had formed the backdrop of their childhood.

But Doffy was different.

Even Rossi was different.

Certain subjects were unsuitable for discussion in front of them, like wounds exposed at the wrong moment.

"Have we settled on a buyer?"

Rossi turned his gaze away from the patches of light wavering on the sea.

"We have."

Trebol smacked his lips, something missing from his tone. "Doing business here... is too straightforward.

"Every price is posted plainly on the wall. Convenient, but dull."

He missed that back-and-forth wrangling, the ** of transactions ** in their words.

At that moment, only the gulls atop the mast gave their monotonous cries.

The person seated on an oak barrel chuckled, nearly invisible threads weaving, intertwining, unraveling, and repeating between his fingertips. "Fufufu... I hear the queen here is very unusual."

Doffy's voice was very level, as though stating a fact, yet also as though brewing something. "Close ties with the Navy, a harbor built like an iron fortress, and the entire city kept in perfect order.

"They say she's good at art, too.

"I'd really like to see her for myself-"

Rossi's thumb brushed his chin.

The information he had heard at the dockside tavern that morning still lingered in his ears: the queen named Jora was no mere figurehead.

But reputation was sometimes a fragile ornament, especially at sea.

The more dazzling the ornament, the more readily it attracted storms.

He took something wrapped in oiled paper from inside his clothes and handed it to Pica, who was crouching in the shadows by the ship's rail.

The figure accepted it and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth.

His Adam's apple bobbed once, and he swallowed with a crisp gulp.

"Thanks."

Pica's voice came from the shadows.

The size of the gift didn't matter; what mattered was who had given it.

"This city deserves to be called 'Fairy Tale Land.'"

Rossi pieced the scraps of information together in his head-no pirate harassment, merchants who didn't need to carry swords, streets that were unnaturally clean.

On this sea, such a place was as rare as an illusion. "It would make a good long-term trading point."

"The routes at sea aren't nearly so clean."

Trebol spat overboard. "Our blades never dried the whole way here.

"Ordinary people? Their cargo would be feeding the fish before it got halfway."

Rossi nodded, but his gaze settled on the colorful rooftops beyond the docks.

Pirates weren't what worried him.

If the woman in that Castle really was the "Jora" of future rumors,

then this fairy-tale city would probably turn another page very soon.

Beneath the calm surface, the currents had already begun to shift.

Night swallowed Odense's outline, and the sea breeze carried salty moisture into the gaps between its streets and alleys.

Huge windmill blades turned slowly in the darkness, converting the power accumulated during the day into electricity and lighting the lamps lining the streets-those points of light linked into winding ribbons, barely tracing the bones of the port city.

In an inn's attic, dim amber light seeped through the gaps in the floorboards.

The boy stood with his back against the wall, his uniform buttoned all the way to the top.

Two men stood opposite him, their black suits tailored with excessive stiffness, like two iron frames draped in cloth.

"There's no need to repeat the mission details."

The man on the left spoke, his voice as flat as though measured with a ruler. "You only need to remember this: before sunset tomorrow, the queen must 'die in an accident.'"

Pica's fingers curled slightly at his sides.

That tiny movement did not escape the other man's eyes.

"Put away those unnecessary emotions."

The man on the right stepped half a pace forward, his heel striking the floor with a short, sharp click. "We didn't pick you out of a garbage heap three years ago to raise a philanthropist."

Outside the attic, an extremely faint scraping came from the roof tiles.

Rossi pressed himself against the edge of the skylight, his breathing fainter than the night breeze.

The conversation below filtered through the gaps between the floorboards, every word edged with shards of ice.

He recalled the scene he had witnessed outside the Lord's Mansion a few hours earlier: the noblewoman had entered the gates surrounded by servants, her skirts stirring fine dust as they swept over the stone steps; meanwhile, the young guard had turned alone toward the docks, his shadow stretched into a thin silhouette beneath the streetlights.

Now it seemed that silhouette had held something else.

"But..."

Pica's voice was a little dry. "Her Majesty the Queen has been funding the Orphanage all this time. Just last week, she-"

Thud!

The dull sound of a fist striking ribs cut him off.

The boy staggered backward, his back slamming into the wall and shaking loose a shower of dust from overhead.

"No buts."

The man who had struck him shook out his wrist. "You're CP3's blade. A blade doesn't need to think about the intentions of the one wielding it."

A brief silence fell over the attic.

Only the distant wash of waves against the seawall came through the walls in a muffled rhythm.