The port of the Lvneel Kingdom was smaller than he had expected. For a nation connected to the World Government, it had a subdued quality, the docks functional and well-maintained but without the energy of a place that considered itself important. A handful of merchant vessels sat at anchor, a few fishing boats were coming in with the morning catch, and the harbour workers moved through their routines with the unhurried pace of people who had never needed to hurry. It was, by most measures, a quiet kingdom living a quiet life.
Lucien tied off at the public pier and stood for a moment, taking it in.
The first thing he had thought of when his father mentioned the Lvneel Kingdom, months ago at the dock back home, was not geography or trade routes. It was Liar Noland. His father had brought back a children's adventure book from a delivery trip to another island when Lucien was young, a battered thing with an illustrated cover and pages that someone before him had already read.
It told the story of Mont Blanc Noland, an explorer and botanist who travelled the world collecting outlandish stories that nobody could quite disprove but that stretched the patience of anyone listening. He had spoken of lost tribes, impossible creatures, and ancient ruins with the unshakeable sincerity of a man who either believed everything he said or was the most committed liar who had ever lived.
The story ended with the gold city. He had told the king of Lvneel that he had found a city made entirely of gold, and the king had mobilised an expedition, crossed dangerous waters with a fleet of ships, and arrived at an empty jungle. Noland had stood at the execution block maintaining, with complete composure, that the city had been real and had likely sunk beneath the water.
The king had not found this persuasive.
Lucien had read that book three times as a child. Not because he believed the gold city was real, but because he could not decide whether Noland had been a fool, a liar, or simply a man who had seen something nobody else had and could not make them believe it. He still could not decide. He found that interesting.
He picked up his bag and looked up at the kingdom spreading out above the port. It was less developed than he had imagined, the landscape rolling and unhurried, buildings scattered across the hills in no particular pattern, most of them wood and modest in the way that places are modest when they have never needed to be otherwise. There was also a huge palace in the distance where the current king lived. Somewhere up in those hills was a man his father had sent him to find, in a house with a blue door, who did not know he was coming.
He walked up through the port and into the market street that ran alongside it, busy enough to move through without standing out, and found the nearest pub without much difficulty. It was one of the more reliable things he had learned over the past several months of travelling alone: if you needed to know something about a place, you found a bartender. They heard everything, forgot nothing useful, and generally had an opinion about it.
He pushed the door open and went inside.
The pub was dim and warm, half full in the way that pubs in quiet towns are half full at midday, occupied by people with nowhere immediate to be. Lucien sat at the bar and waited until the barman had cleared two empty glasses before speaking.
"I am looking for someone," he said. "An older man. Lived here a long time, keeps to himself. Goes by Cael."
The barman set the glasses down and looked at him with the flat expression of someone who had made a decision before the question was finished. "I would suggest you walk back to wherever you came from. Old Cael does not want visitors and the people here respect that." He waved a hand in the direction of the door without looking up.
Lucien tried the other end of the bar. Then two men at a nearby table. The reaction was the same each time, a visible tightening the moment Cael's name came up, followed by either silence or a pointed suggestion that he drop the matter. The town had apparently made a collective agreement to leave the man alone, which was either a sign that they feared him, respected him, or both. None of those options made Lucien's situation simpler.
He walked back out into the street and stood in the mild afternoon sun, turning the problem over. He had a name, a kingdom, and no address. His father's note had not extended to a detailed guide. He scratched the back of his head and looked up the hill at the scatter of buildings and wondered, not for the first time, whether the straightforward part of this journey was behind him.
A noise further down the street pulled his attention before he could reach a conclusion.
A group of boys were moving in a pack along the far side of the road, and it took Lucien only a moment to understand that they were not playing. One boy was ahead of the rest, and then he wasn't, because he caught his foot and went down hard on the cobblestones, and before he was fully on the ground the others were already around him.
The kicks started. So did the shouting.
"Liar, just like that idiot Liar Noland."
"It runs in the blood. Your whole family are liars."
The boy on the ground pulled his knees up and covered his head and said nothing, which had the resigned quality of someone who had learned that fighting back made it longer. Lucien watched for approximately three seconds before he stopped watching and started walking.
He reached the group and pushed two of them apart with enough force to make the point clearly. "Enough."
The nearest boy turned around with the immediate outrage of someone interrupted mid-momentum. "Who are you? Mind your business, outsider."
"You are six people hitting one person on the ground," Lucien said. "That is my business now. Go home."
There was a brief consultation among the group conducted entirely through glances, and then the nearest boy swung at him.
Lucien had already seen it coming. He dropped into a slight crouch and swept the boy's lead knee with a short, precise kick, not hard enough to cause real damage, just enough to buckle it. The boy went down with more surprise than injury and sat in the street looking confused.
The rest of the group looked at each other. Then at Lucien. Two more swung at him, apparently deciding that rage was a reasonable substitute for strategy. It was not. Lucien had spent the better part of a year hunting people across North Blue, and the difference between that and a street brawl with children his own age was considerable. He handled them efficiently and without particular effort, and within a minute, the group had reassessed their collective position and left at speed faster than they chased.
Lucien turned to the boy still on the ground.
He was around Lucien's age, perhaps a year younger, with a long face, yellow hair and an expression that made him seem either very simple or a liar.
"Why are they calling you a liar?" he asked. "The Noland comparison specifically."
The boy took the offered hand and got to his feet, brushing the dust from his coat with the unhurried manner of someone who had done this before and had made his peace with it. He looked at Lucien with the direct, unguarded attention of someone who had not yet learned to be cagey about who he was.
"Because he is my ancestor," the boy said. "I am Mont Blanc Cricket."