Alixander Lane would have been formidable to most men in the city, but he was considerably smaller than Kilian and almost impossibly thin. He had wide shoulders and a thicker chest, but his waist and hips were slight. As soon as he'd laid his hands on him, Kilian immediately noticed the same about his fingers. Though they were long enough to wrap around the bulk of his bicep as he pulled him back toward the street, they were impossibly thin, obviously frail even wrapped in a layer of fabric. If it wasn’t for the heavy drape of the cloak he wore over his shoulders, the man would look almost sickly.

Alixander had an amiable way of speaking and seemed to believe if he simply engaged Kilian in conversation, he could walk the both of them down the street and ultimately out of the neighborhood. All Kilian could read around him seemed to be garbled, whispered, but he got the idea that the man was a seasoned manipulator. However, he guessed he’d rarely squared up with a Mystic.

They’d come to the edge of the property when Kilian stopped suddenly and lightly pushed back energetically on the place where the other man had laid his hand on him.

Alixander jumped and yanked his hand back immediately, a tangle of blonde curls exploded forward as he held his hand against his belly.

When he caught his breath, his reproach was light, “Was that necessary, friend?”

“I don’t know how you figured I was your friend.”

“I count everyone as my friend until they prove otherwise. Regardless, I suppose I should thank you. That should get me out of the monotony of my afternoon’s work.” Alixander raised his hand to show Kilian that the push had left an angry welt burned into the palm, his long fingers were as red as rhubarb.

Kilian shrugged. “You’ll just have to use your other hand to write for the afternoon.”

Alixander’s expression dropped and he emphatically pulled up his cloak to reveal a sling. “Not an option for me”

“What happened there? Did you get into a bar fight?”

“Out of the womb perhaps.”

“Oh,” Kilian could not quite reckon with the fact that a man who was allegedly the cream of the crop — nephew to the King — was arguably just as much if not more genetically hobbled as he. The difference being that Kilian was stronger, smarter, and could read the deception pouring off the man like a bad poem.

“Well then, I’ll walk you up to the streetcar stop at the top of the hill.”

“I need to talk with your brother.”

“I have advised you against that, friend.”

“I already told you that I’m not your friend.”

“Well then, stranger,” His head bobbed with the strange affectation he put on the word. “I’ll walk you up to the transport stop at the top of the hill.”

“If your brother does not wish to do his job, why did he take a position in the Dyad chain of command.”

“Again, I would advise that you are ill-acquainted with our ways here in the city, Captain.”

It was a non-answer and it irked Kilian but the man was so goddamn well-spoken, so strangely elegant, so odd. He was something like a cross between a man and a Mystic with all the maddening effects of good breeding. Regardless, Kilian was tired of dancing with Alixander, so he turned and looked directly into his aloof crystal-blue eyes. He shot his shot. “I’m still in Basic and go on regular missions in the wilds. We’ll be out there for days, listening for machine code and hunting butchers. You know the low-level shit you guys find us so useful for. A few weeks ago, my partner Grant and I were out doing a sweep, and we came across something odd. It sounds like a machine code but it’s different — the information disseminated in it is massive. I— I can’t even parse it on my own and I was assessed as the strongest generator currently serving in Concord. But the main message Grant and I were able to decipher —"

“I read the file, you know,” Alixander blinked and looked up at the sky, squinting slightly against the afternoon sun. “You realize the political consequences of such an assertion, not to mention the historical and religious ties.”

“Is it not our job to protect the crown at all costs?”

“Save elderly Boren to destroy the family?” Alixander shrugged. “Such a move would be disadvantageous to me, assuredly. I can’t doubt that my elder brother came to the same conclusion.”

“And if one of the princes is a Mystic?”

Alixander shook his head, “Mystics have innate talent, access to a mycelium of intelligence. Brangoris and Byron are three of the dullest men I’ve met with only the basest of interests. Half of my income consists of the pennies they throw to me for compositions rhyming different slang words for genitalia.”

Kilian’s irritation was palpable. Regardless of the truth of Alixander’s assessment, neither he nor his brother should be the final word. Alixander himself was no part of the Dyadic chain of command.

“This should not stop with you, with your truant brother.”

Alixander shrugged his shoulders. “But it shall.”

“You said there's a file and you read it, surely others will read it.”

“I read it because I am the most curious man on the face of this planet. And after I was nice and warm with drink last night, I amused myself by digging through the presynced files in my brother's office. Charles will doubtlessly lose that particular parchment unless it becomes advantageous to find it at a later date.”

“You people are rotten to the core.”

“As I said, if you wish to push it further, you should speak with your father. He’d know the correct avenue,” Alixander said. “But I think you’ll find that those of us who have been around for twenty or more years will assess it as little more than a vicious fairy tale told by a would-be Dyadic career climber.”

Kilian couldn’t hold his disdain any further. He turned on his heels abruptly and released a burst of energy into the aether. He heard the man screaming and supposed he probably popped at least one of his eardrums, but he was quite sure that he’d gotten everything he could out of him.