"Old man Cael! Someone from far away is here to meet you. Come out!" Cricket shouted at the top of his lungs.
It made Lucien briefly wonder if the old man was deaf. They were at the top of one of the many hills in the kingdom, and looking around he noticed that not a single home had been built on this hill or the two surrounding it. Every other hillside had at least a few houses scattered across it.
This one had nothing but the single wooden house with the blue door and a view of the sea in every direction. The old man had not simply chosen to live alone. He had arranged it so that being alone was the only option available to him.
For a long moment nothing happened. Then came the sound of movement from inside, unhurried and deliberate, and the blue door opened.
The man standing in the doorway was not what Lucien had been picturing. He was not especially tall, and there was nothing about his appearance that announced itself. Grey hair, plain clothes, the kind of face that gave nothing away on first inspection.
But he stood in the doorway the way certain people stand in doorways, as though the space around them naturally organised itself in their direction, and his eyes went to Lucien immediately, sharp and assessing, before moving briefly to Cricket.
"Mont Blanc," he said flatly. "What have you brought to my hill."
"His father sent him," Cricket said, entirely unbothered by the tone. "Says you owe him a favour."
Cael looked at Lucien again. Longer this time.
"Name," he said.
"Lucien Vosgrave," Lucien said.
Another silence. Then Cael stepped back from the door. "Come in," he said. "You," he added, looking at Cricket, "go home."
Cricket opened his mouth, reconsidered, and went.
The inside of the house matched the outside in every way that mattered. A table, two chairs, a shelf of books with worn spines, a window facing the sea. Nothing on the walls. Nothing unnecessary anywhere. It had the quality of a space occupied for a long time by someone who had long since stopped acquiring things.
"Who is Aldric Vosgrave to you?" Cael asked as he walked slowly toward him.
"My father. He said I should meet you when I was starting my journey. I do not know what for or why, just that I should come here and remind you that you owe him a favour."
"That I do." Cael began circling him slowly, looking him up and down with the unhurried attention of someone taking inventory. "So he just said that and left you to the wind?"
"Pretty much."
"And why is a boy who should be at school, or at the very least at home, out here this far from either?"
"I am curious about the world," Lucien said. "My father told me to go out and explore it. Nothing more to it."
Cael stopped. He was quiet for just a moment, and then he burst out laughing, a short and genuine laugh, the kind produced by being truly surprised rather than simply amused.
"That is so like Aldric. A clueless, reckless bastard. Sending an untrained kid out into the sea alone. Even if it is one of the lesser seas and not the Grand Line, he should have known better."
"He gave me his training manual," Lucien said.
"What, the hundred push-ups, hundred sit-ups, hundred squats and ten-kilometre run? That barely counts as anything. With just that, you are closer to weak than strong." He looked at Lucien with the flat certainty of someone who had assessed far too many fighters to soften the verdict. "I suppose that is why he sent you here."
Cael stopped in front of him and looked at him directly, the assessment quality gone now, replaced by something more considered.
"How old are you? How long since you left home?"
"I turned thirteen a few days ago," Lucien said. "It has been a little over nine months. I have been doing small-time bounty hunting along the way, taking petty criminals to fund the journey."
Cael nodded once, then turned and walked toward the door with his hands behind his back. "Come outside. I want to see what you actually know."
Lucien followed him out, genuinely uncertain what was going on in the old man's head and finding that mildly interesting.
Cael stopped a few paces into the open ground in front of the house and turned around. His hands were still behind his back. His expression had not changed.
"Come at me," he said. "Everything you have."
Lucien did not hesitate. He closed the distance fast and swung as hard and as quickly as he could, aiming directly for the old man's face. The face was there. His fist was an inch from it. And then it wasn't, and neither was the old man, and before Lucien could process what had happened his wrist was caught, his weight was used against him, and he was airborne briefly before being driven into the ground with enough force to drive the air completely out of him.
He lay on his back staring up at the sky, his head buzzing, his lungs refusing to cooperate for several long seconds. The ground was very hard. He had not fully appreciated this about the ground before now.
"Frontal attacks," Cael's voice came from somewhere above him, unhurried and completely level. "Against someone whose abilities you know nothing about. Think about that." A pause. "Stand up and try again."
Lucien got to his feet slowly, taking stock as he rose. Nothing broken. Head clearing. The buzzing was already fading, replaced by the sharper, more useful sensation of having just understood something important.
He had rushed in without thinking. The same way the thief on the island had rushed in with the rope, the same way the escort guard had swung wildly out of desperation. He had done the exact thing he had watched other people do and correctly identified as stupid.
He filed that under lessons and looked at Cael, who had not moved from the spot and whose hands were still behind his back.
This time Lucien did not rush. He circled slowly, watching the old man's feet, his shoulders, the angle of his weight distribution. Cael watched him circle with the patient expression of a man who had been waiting for exactly this and was prepared to wait considerably longer if necessary.