Chapter 524: 524. Enough Talk With The Starlight! Time To Get Back To Work!

Elizabeth looked at Lily, and then at Rex, with the expression of someone who had in fact noticed exactly this and was slightly surprised to have it named.

"I noticed it," Elizabeth said.

"When?" Lily said.

"Day two," Elizabeth said. "In the study room."

"He placed the cross-references before I reached the point in my analysis where I needed them, and when I mentioned it, he described the analytical gap I was approaching rather than his own anticipation of it." She looked at Rex. "You described the problem, and it’s not you solving it."

"The problem was more relevant," Rex said.

"To the analysis," Elizabeth said. "Yes... That’s the point Lily is making."

Lily looked satisfied in the same way she always did when something she had observed was confirmed by an independent source.

Rex looked between the three of them. Lily, with her chin in her hand and her direct attention.

Diana with the window light still on the side of her face and the small stillness she carried as a default. Elizabeth, with the expression that had both registers in it and had stopped apologizing for either.

"I’ll be going out this afternoon," he said. "And away from Aethelgard for a few days after that."

"Probably a week at the outside."

The table absorbed this differently than he had expected.

Elizabeth looked at him first. "Huh...?"

"Away where?" she said. "What about our work...?"

"There are things connected to the recovery analysis that require in-person attention outside the city," Rex said. "The relay network cannot be managed effectively from a desk."

Elizabeth looked at him with the specific expression she used when she was deciding whether the explanation she had been given was the full explanation or the surface of it. For a week now, she had been assessing Rex and had consistently concluded that the surface explanation was always accurate, while the deeper issues were ones she had chosen not to explore.

"How long is a week at the outside?" she said.

"What kind of question is that...? Of course it’s a week," Rex said. "One week at the outside, probably."

"And before that?" she said. "This afternoon."

"Something I need to handle before I leave," Rex said.

Elizabeth looked at him for a moment longer, and then she nodded once, the small nod of someone filing information and closing the question.

Lily had been watching this exchange with the particular attention she gave to things that directly affected her.

"A week," she said.

"At the outside," Rex said.

"That’s different from a few days," Lily said.

"It’s the upper range," Rex said. "Not the expected range."

Lily looked at him. She wore the expression that indicated she was trying to determine whether she was being managed or informed, and she had become skilled enough at reading him that this process did not take long.

"Okay," she said finally. "But I want a letter if it goes past five days."

"You’ll get a letter," Rex said.

"A real one," Lily insisted. "Not just a summary of operational developments."

"Alright, a real one," Rex replied. "Probably."

Lily held his gaze for a moment with the steady attention that appeared in her when she was being genuinely serious, and then she nodded and picked up her cup again.

Diana had been quiet through the conversation. She looked at Rex now with the flat, direct attention she used when she had something to say and was choosing her words with intention.

"Come back in the same condition you leave," she said. "That’s all I’m asking."

It was a simple sentence, and it carried the specific weight of someone who had been on an expedition with him and had seen what close looked like from a closer distance than she would have preferred.

Rex looked at her.

"That’s a reasonable ask," he said.

"I know it is," Diana said. "I’m making it anyway."

Rex finished his tea and thought about Evelyn Astralight walking through a canyon in Drevash with the specific quality of attention she brought to everything and thought about the week she had to reach conclusions.

"I will," Rex said.

To Diana, to the table, and to the specific weight Lily had put into "coming back" without using those words.

It was two words, carrying the weight of someone who understood that the appropriate response to such an announcement was not just any reaction but the specific one they needed to offer, rather than all the other possible things they could have said.

...

The afternoon was clear and cool, the kind of weather that made Aethelgard’s streets feel like they had been swept clean, and Rex moved through them with the particular unhurried pace he used when he wasn’t in the professional register and didn’t need to be.

He had been thinking about Amelia Brightsoul since the conversation with Lustia, which had organized a set of thoughts he had been carrying in a less structured form for several weeks. The desire level sitting at ninety percent was the result of a process that had been running quietly in the background of everything else: the accumulated weight of encounters that had each moved the number a few points at a time.

The specific thing about ninety percent was that it was close enough to maximum that a single meaningful moment could close it, but it was not automatic. It required the right conditions.

’I think today is going to be another easy encounter and impregnation~!’ Rex thought while stretching both his arms. ’It’s going to be even better when Apollo’s home.’

He was thinking about how to create the right conditions when he heard someone calling his name.

"Rex!"

Rex heard someone call him from the distance. "Hm...?"

The voice was male, familiar, and carrying the same effortless warmth that Rex had catalogued as specific to a particular personality type. He turned around just to see someone familiar.

’Oh... this man...’

It was Cassius Brightsoul, Apollo’s father; he was crossing the street toward him with the loose, confident stride of a man in his early fifties who had maintained physical capability as a professional habit.

He had the same jaw structure as Apollo and the same quality of directness in his eye contact, but where Apollo’s directness came from earnestness, his father’s came from experience.

"I’m glad I ran into you," Cassius said, and he meant it.

’Nahhh~! I’m more fucking glad to run into you because you can lead me back to your sexy priestess wife who needs a good fucking.’

He had the particular quality of a man who genuinely meant most of what he said and had stopped worrying about whether that was naive, because life had demonstrated that it wasn’t. "I’ve been meaning to come find you since Apollo came back."

"He told me what you did in that canyon," Cassius said. "All of it."

Rex looked at him. ’Oh...?’

’Apollo... you always clutch up with that, huh?’

"He said you went in alone," Cassius said. "Ten Legion members, no backup, and he was unconscious for the whole thing."

"He was," Rex said.

"He said you came out with him and the others," Cassius said. "And got the intelligence that took down the whole Legion operation in one afternoon."

"The operation isn’t taken down," Rex said. "Solmordia is still operational, and the relay network was compromised, not destroyed."

"I know," Cassius said. "He told me that too."

He looked at Rex with the directness that was his natural mode. "I’m not a man who says things he doesn’t mean..."

"So when I tell you that what you did for my son means something to me personally, and I want you to take that seriously."

’I can’t believe... every path that I take always goes so smoothly...’ Rex thought. ’As if fate or even destiny were by my side...’

’Even if those two shit don’t exist... this story is always dedicated to me, Rex Rexilion!’

Rex looked at him for a moment. "Of course."

"I take it seriously," he said.

"Good," Cassius said. He paused, the pause of someone who has finished the important thing and is now transitioning to a secondary thing that he has been holding in reserve.