The second day of travel was quieter than their first. They ran into Rouge without her sister during a morning tea. She was polite and more chatty than the day prior, excusing herself to run a muffin to Nydia.

After breakfast, Azui left Nero on his own in order to practice his instrument. He extended an invitation for the finder of things to watch, but he declined, wanting to go through the documents that Azui had brought with him. He was able to use the documents to connect dots within his own research. 

Looking at the contents of one specific letter reminded him of something he had yet to disclose to his client. In fact, it was a large part of the reason Nero had wanted to take this foremost trip on his own. 

Nero did not like surprises. He wanted all his ducks in a row before bringing the deliverables to his clients. If he did not know a fact was undoubtedly true, he could not present it. As a child, and all the more as an adult, he had never been one two go with the current. He needed to know exactly where that current was taking him before jumping in. It was something he could not help, very compulsive. 

And the same part of his brain that made it impossible to leave things to chance, made it impossible for him to lie. 

He had lied, there were two things he had to disclose to Azui before docking in Torelen. Neither were easy topics, nor were they easy for him to disclose because they were not yet completely solidly formed.

He packed up the documents. He would tell Azui the theory he had physical evidence for.  Ninety percent certainty was enough for most, and should be enough for him. 

Azui was not where he’d said he would be, so Nero asked the boat staff if they had a piano anywhere on the boat. The staff member scowled, likely brushing off Nero as the commoner he was, and admitted there was one in the performance hall, while emphasizing that amateurs were discouraged from playing on it. Nero left the man mumbling to himself about damage and insurance.

A piano on a riverboat probably was subjected to plenty of damage even without the aid of amateur piano enthusiasts. 

Azui was no amatuer. Nero could hear the music all the way from down the corridor. From a distance, he could not tell if his pianoing was better than his mandolin playing. Although it was less likely that the distance had anything to with it, and more of the fact that Nero knew nothing about music at all. 

He slipped between the two doors quietly, but the hinges of the door gave him away with a whine. 

The small hall was empty save from the young man at the piano. The chairs of the table were stacked on the tables, and the curtains of the stage were drawn closed. The instrument was located slightly left of the stage. 

“Sorry if I'm not meant not to be here. Once I get started, I find it hard to stop-” He  glanced back from the piano, his playing uninterrupted. “Oh, it’s you. How’d you find me here?”

“I’m pretty good at finding things,” Nero answered blankly.

His flat delivery made Azui laugh and miss a key on the piano, “Right, it’s your job. My apologies. Can I say…I thought you had turned in for the night, friend?”

Nero took a chair off the table and flipped it over to take a seat. “Ah no, I went over the documents you brought and thought I would go on a walk to process it.”

“Oh, I hope those were helpful.”

“They were very helpful.”

“But?” Azui asked expectantly,  “What is the ‘but’?”

He was right to expect one too.

“I erm, Azui, I need to tell you something that may be hard to hear.”

“Nero, I know she died. I’m not under some disillusioned impression that we’re going to find her alive.”

“It’s not that.”

It was then he  stopped playing, turning to face Nero. “Tell me.” 

The finder complied, and tried to word his statement as tactically as possible, “When I was going through your father’s records, I found letters addressed to him, similar to the ones you shared with me. There were only two. Both were sent shortly before her death.”  He paused, “From what I’ve gathered your mother was completely self sufficient. She never asked your father for anything after she left.”

His client was losing patience, “Nero.”

“She had cancer.” When Azui’s expression didn’t change, he elaborated, “ She paid for most of the treatment herself but it wasn’t enough. In those last two letters, she asked your father for money to help with treatment.”

His mouth formed  a thin line. “I suppose there’s no way of knowing what my father’s response was?”

Nero shook his head remorsefully, “She would have had that in her possessions. However… I did not find records of his sending money to her. Nor of him traveling to deliver it personally. There’s no saying for sure-”

“Well I can’t say I’m surprised.” He turned his back to Nero again and carefully thumbed an ivory key.

Uncomfortable, Nero rose to leave.

“Stay,” said the young man at the keys. “I feel better when I have an audience.” 

He drifted into a song, far slower than the one he was playing before. Nero wouldn’t call it incredibly emotional, it was trance-like, because the player was on autopilot. His real mind was elsewhere. 

As he approached the end of his final song, he spoke up again, “Did she say what sort of cancer it was?”

“In the throat, I believe.”

His notes unraveled into a strangled off key chord.

The next day was one spent in a shared silence. Although Azui stuck around Nero wherever he chose to be. First, in the room, then during lunch time in the lounge. They ran into Nydia and Rouge again, and in that brief moment, Azui snapped back into character. Like a role, or a coping mechanism. When they excused themselves to go back to their room, they fell back into silence. 

Nero, of course, did not fault him. The man was mourning, and he understood it would take him time to process it. 

His true concern was that it was obvious that Azui did not wish to be alone, and alone he would have to be. There was one more thing nagging at Nero that he had to verify before Azui arrived in Torelen, and he would have to do this by disembarking the boat at the next stop. In the evening, a whole day before reaching their destination.