7.

Dreaming that one day we’ll be able to rest

He landed lightly on the ground below the window, passing the guards without being detected. The presence tailing him followed him out of the estate.

The streets outside the castle were humming with activity. Dominic wove through them, turning corners and deftly swerving around the residents who were still out. The crowds were thin, but they slowly began to grow with the strength of the lights. It was like a makeshift daytime was descending through the windows of the bars and restaurants.

There was a different kind of mana about than what the city carried when the sun was out. Parasols and bandannas turned to lipstick and perfume. Roses and sweet words rolling off sweet tongues. Fragrant candle smoke. Throwing arms around both friends and strangers, mingling breaths and mingling laughter. From every direction, there were uncountable streams and threads of mana passing under his nose—uncountable lives and uncountable circumstances, all of which would disappear by sunrise.

There, too, was the same scent that had been following him for the past few days, staying some distance behind him—one poorly suited for the vibrance of the living city. Dominic made sure they were keeping up, and continued deeper into the crowd.

A raucous bar caught his attention as he approached, the music and buzzing voices even filling the street. He made sure his veil was fastened on tight before ducking inside.

A stage, filled with musical performers, was creating most of the din. They were playing well, but the patrons were also speaking and singing and laughing over them, adding to the boisterous noise. But the noise was exactly what Dominic had come for. In a place as packed and loud as this, no one would notice him.

He wove through the crowd, squeezing through the thin pathways between bodies and tables. He’d always considered himself taller than average, but apparently some demons weren’t held to the same standards. A few towered above everyone else like stone pillars.

A man bumped into him with a brief, gruff glare. Too tall. Another brushed past without even sparing him a look. Too thin. A couple women, chatting animatedly with each other, glanced up at him and blushed as he gave them a cordial smile. They wouldn’t be any good either.

Dominic finally made it to the bar. He studied the patrons seated there. Most were with friends or conversing with partners. He needed someone who had come alone.

He had almost turned away from the bar when one pair at the very end split off—one man leaving his friend there to go and watch the stage. Dominic studied the man who stayed. He wasn’t perfect, but his size roughly matched. He would do.

Dominic made his way to the other end of the bar, veering carefully between customers.

“Is this seat taken?” Dominic asked, pulling the stool next to the man out.

He seemed to hesitate a moment, probably wondering whether or not to save it for his friend. He eventually acquiesced and nodded.

“It’s free.”

Dominic sat, leaning forward on the counter. The man beside him smelled overwhelmingly like liquor, but mixed in, surprisingly, was the light, refreshing scent of lotus.

“Is that good?” Dominic asked, pointing towards his drink.

The man laughed.

“It’s good for getting me drunk,” he replied.

Dominic chuckled. The man took another swig from his glass.

“What about you?” he asked. “Don’t tell me you’re going to drink with a veil on? Just take it off. No one here will remember your face by morning anyway.”

“I’ll decline,” Dominic replied. “I’m not supposed to be here, you see.”

“Oh, you snuck out. A troublemaker.”

The man emptied his cup.

“Your head is not going to be happy with you tomorrow,” Dominic commented.

“I’ll deal with that when it comes.”

“Still,” he continued, nonchalant, “I’d sleep if I were you.”

“Ha! The night…is still……young……”

The man’s head drooped further and further until it finally hit the counter with a dull thunk. It wasn’t hard to cast a spell in the middle of a sentence.

The bartender, a woman with black hair and curling horns, glanced over at them, vaguely uninterested.

“Out like a light,” she remarked.

Dominic took the man’s arm and draped it over his shoulders.

“I’ll take him upstairs,” he said. The bartender just nodded and turned away. She must’ve been used to it.

On the second level was a rudimentary inn. He found an empty room and entered, dumping the man on the floor.

Dominic glanced towards the window. The person following him must have been using the trails he left in the mana to keep track of him. When he was relaxed, mana naturally leaked from the surface of his skin. He closed his eyes, focusing. He began slowly drawing it in, catching stray wisps and reeling them into his body, until it was almost gone. The spell he’d written on the veil would eliminate the mana signature that came out with his breath. If anyone had been standing and staring right at him, they would have had a hard time even realizing he was there.

He didn’t mind being tracked, but not right now.

“Sorry,” Dominic mumbled, reaching down for the man’s clothes. “I need these.”

Just as he finished switching his red outer robes with the strangers’ blue ones, he felt the spy tailing him start to move. They had probably noticed his presence disappearing and gotten restless. Not leaving any mana trail was suspicious in its own way. Dominic relaxed again, letting it seep back out, then got an idea. Everyone had a unique scent.

Dominic made his way to the door and headed out into the hall. Near the stairs, a demon with purplish skin was stumbling his way, clearly inebriated. He just nodded politely to them as he brushed past. They disregarded his presence without even a second glance.

To them, he must have smelled like alcohol, with just the slightest hint of lotus.

Dominic stepped out into the cool air of the street. He ran a hand through his hair. The aura of the district was infectious. It made him wonder what songs they were playing.

He continued, flowing with the crowd, making his way slowly out of the buzz of the bars and late night diners. The spy on his tail had apparently picked up his trail again. Perhaps they were clever enough to realize he had imitated another patron’s mana signature. Perhaps they just had really good eyesight. His hair and eyes and physique hadn’t changed, after all. Regardless of the reason, it was fine if they followed. He needed them to follow. The change of clothes was for everyone else to see, so he wouldn’t be remembered by strangers tomorrow.

They were moving quickly—too quickly to actually have been part of the crowd. The presence overshot him, then stopped closer than ever to Dominic, just ahead. But clearly nobody had passed through the throngs of people at that speed.

He turned his gaze upwards. The sky was a dark, deep blue. At the very edge of a building not far from him there was a tiny swallow perched, its gleaming eyes meeting his.

There.

In the middle of the flowing crowd, he stopped and wordlessly stared up at that little bird. He wondered: even if he spoke a different language than everyone here, even with this much distance, even with this many people in the space between them, even without a single word out of his mouth, could that swallow watching him from up there feel the mana around him? Could it feel the meaning behind his amber eyes?

Dominic smiled.

He turned away, heading down a side street. He drew in his mana entirely, imagining the numerous bricks in the walls, imagining the clouds which moved unnoticed overhead, imagining treading like air, making himself nothing again. A few people brushed past him, bumping into his shoulder, not even realizing his presence.

He wove through the streets and alleys, keeping track of the bird following him in the back of his mind. It was circling above, trying to find him by sight now that his mana signature was gone. He turned and ducked into the back door of what smelled to him like a club. Like wine and the overpowering, almost nauseating scent of perfume. He leaned against the wall inside and sighed quietly, adjusting his veil.

His smile must have felt smug to the bird earlier, but if anything, he was tired. There had never been a real moment of rest since he’d woken up on the shore. And tonight, there was much to be done.

Dominic rubbed his eyes. Just a little longer.

The whispers and intermittent laughter inside the club drifted to his ears. Pink rose and lavender. Sweet wine and rich desserts. Hushed secrets and loud gossip. Coins being spent like a river. He knew that kind of place. It was where the nobles gathered to talk about things they weren’t supposed to know.

He drew open the curtain that covered the back room and walked inside.

The atmosphere was muted, but thick with tension. The patrons—men and women, demons and humans—all wore veils or masks like Dominic, though most were clearly just for show. They probably already knew each other. No one noticed him come in and mingle with the room. Some looked, then glanced away and forgot there had ever been anybody there. He flowed past them unseen.

Three women sharing snacks over a table were gossiping raptly with each other. They didn’t notice as Dominic neared, listening in on their conversation.

“How did she find out?” the one with dark blue hair whispered.

“He was caught red-handed in bed with his mistress!” a younger girl with pink hair and tiny horns answered, looking almost gleeful.

The green-haired one beside her gasped.

“No way!”

“It’s true! The lady knew something was up and came back early.”

“And she found them?” green-hair asked.

“In their own bedroom?” blue-hair added.

Pink-hair nodded vigorously.

“Just like that!”

Blue-hair put a hand over her veiled mouth in shock.

“What’s going to happen now?” she asked.

“Well, you know what they say—”

“A man who travels eventually makes his way to the dump.”

The three ladies looked up in surprise at Dominic as the words left his mouth, then broke out into laughter.

“What wisdom!” blue-hair commented. Pink-hair was locked in a fit of giggles and couldn’t seem to stop.

“If only the lady could hear that herself,” green-hair said.

“I want to tell her so badly!” pink-hair said, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes.

They faced each other as if Dominic wasn’t there, as if they’d already forgotten his presence. He turned away from the table.

The scent from the bar area was a little less perfumed, a little more dizzying. Liquor and wine and the smell of sweet fruits. It swirled in the air and thickened like haze. Dominic pulled out a stool and sat beside a couple of men talking business over drinks. They didn’t even glance over at the new addition next to them.

“At this rate, we can only wait.”

“Didn’t that old man get a new healer recently, though? It might be a while.”

Dominic quietly waved to the bartender and pointed to the glass the man beside him was holding. The bartender nodded and started mixing another drink.

“I’ve heard he’s a human. And rumor has it that his execution’s already slated.”

“Poor thing.”

“Nothing we can do about it except hope it ends quickly. Do you still remember that guy from a couple years ago? He was employed for a while, but his death was…”

“Cruel.”

“So cruel. It still makes me want to be sick thinking about it.”

“Are you sure that isn't the alcohol making you feel that way?”

“Haha.”

A glass appeared in front of Dominic. The drink inside smelled of heavy liquor and something like caramel. He picked it up and took a sip.

“Well, for our sake, I hope the new kid dies quickly and takes the lord with him. Nothing’s going to last with that prideful old man in charge.”

A long sigh.

“It’d be so easy to just let us do business with the duchess, but his one-sided feud is killing us.”

Dominic rolled the drink across his tongue. It was strong and bitter.

“He doesn’t know his place. The duchess is leagues higher than people like us.”

“I bet the duchess doesn’t even know who he is,” Dominic said.

“Right? It’s like a flea staring down a lion.”

“Like a mouse under a mastodon’s foot.”

The two men didn’t glance his way at all, his words melting into the conversation as if he had always been there. All three of them drank from their glasses. Dominic set his down and left it at the bar, unfinished. He moved away from them, the warmth from the alcohol still lingering in his throat, the taste of caramel still coating his tongue.

There was a performance on in the other hall, dancers in long robes and flowing ribbons twirling across the floor in a flurry of reds and jade greens. On the sidelines there were people admiring their formations, speaking with each other over drinks, clapping along to the beat of the drums. A tipsy woman in pink twirled along, mimicking their movements, and bumped lightly into Dominic.

He took the hand she had raised in the air and smoothly finished spinning her in a circle.

“Oh?”

She looked up as if only seeing him now.

“You’re a handsome one.”

“I’m flattered.”

Dominic passed her hand off to a friend who had come to fetch her and the two left, humming to the song being played, without sparing him another glance. He turned and headed away.

The entire establishment carried the scent of malt and rose and rich chocolate and long sighs. It made him want to stay a little longer, to pretend that he didn’t have other business waiting for him outside.

Dominic leaned against the ledge of a window and took a breath. A waiter passed him with a tray of small, square cakes, and they didn’t look up, didn’t even stop as he reached over and took a plate.

The cake was dense, almost like a cube of chocolate. He picked it up between his fingers and took a bite.

Sweet and smooth. The flavor was rich like wine, but not bitter. He popped the rest of it in his mouth, leaning against the ledge. The sound of string instruments strummed through the halls and filtered into his ears.

There was still so much he had to do, but this wasn’t bad.

He reached over and undid the latch on the window, pushing one side open. A chill from the night breeze flowed in. There was still the slight taste of wine and caramel coating the inside of his mouth.

Dominic took one more breath of the heavy, perfumed air, and jumped out.

The streets became quiet as the sounds of the musicians in the club faded. He had left the entertainment district behind, wandering between buildings with lightless windows and locked doors. There were few people out now, just drunkards wandering home, and certainly none meandering through the back alleys and side streets like him.

It’d been a while since he’d been able to be truly alone. The last time it had happened, he had been stumbling over the shore, the scent of salt and blood filling his senses. The viscount thought he’d die if he was sent there.

Dominic thought it might be nice to go back.

Beside him, gracing the wall of a building, a staircase appeared. It led up to the roof, over which hung a wide, moonlit sky. Dominic followed it upward.

It was a clear night. The stars came into focus, twinkling across that vast expanse. Dominic stared up at them. Kasma the bear. Lenea Minor. The Heliods. He’d learned a bit about constellations while doing jobs on ships. They probably called them different things in Hesia, but they were still the same stars. The moon too, staring down at him, sported the same craters and glowed the same reddish hue he had always known. How strange.

He had come to a place that was like a totally different world, but for once, it felt like he hadn’t really gone that far at all.

If it weren’t for the scent of stale air and damp earth coming from behind him, he would almost have enjoyed the scene.

Dominic began to turn to face the person who had followed him there, but before he got far a blade was drawn, the cold metal resting against the side of his neck.

A low voice rang out.

“Don’t move.”