Finn hung up the Den Den Mushi and sat with the rod balanced across his knees for a moment, watching the current move.
Then he turned around on his stool.
"You two," he said.
Hina and Vergo both looked up from the triceratops, which Vergo had nearly finished preparing. The smell of blood and scorched sulfur drifted across the clearing.
"What is it?" Hina asked.
"Stop wasting time. Let's eat, sleep, and sail for Alabasta in the morning." Finn set the rod aside and stood, stretching his back with his hands clasped behind him.
Vergo's response was to return his attention to the animal without comment. The question of whether he had objections had become essentially theoretical. His young master had committed fully to Finn's camp, which made Finn's word the word that mattered, and Vergo had never been a man who confused clarity of obligation with weakness of character. The admiral gave an order. He would carry it out. That was sufficient.
Hina tilted her head. "Alabasta? The situation there is supposed to be genuinely unstable right now."
"The oldest kingdom in human history," Finn said pleasantly, "home to a civilization that has been building and rebuilding itself for thousands of years. I thought it would be worthwhile to go and absorb some of that culture." He paused. "And something interesting is about to happen."
Hina's eyes sharpened with immediate interest. She had been with Finn long enough to recognize that particular tone, the one that sat between casual and deliberate in a way that was always a signal.
"What kind of interesting?"
"Dragon is in Alabasta. He has been making his moves, setting his pieces, conducting himself with the gravity appropriate to the world's most dangerous criminal." Finn smiled at the horizon. "And he is about to discover that the situation is somewhat more complicated than he anticipated. I want to watch him work through that."
Hina considered this for a moment. Then she stepped down from the triceratops and began gathering her things with the crisp efficiency of someone who had become very practiced at departures.
"When you put it that way," she said, "Hina also curious."
The port city of Erumalu sat at the lower reach of the Sandora River, the longest inland waterway in Alabasta. The river had been declining for years, its flow strangled by the unnatural absence of rainfall that had come with the Dancing Powder trade, and Erumalu had declined with it: businesses shuttered, docks thinned, the particular quiet of a place that had been slowly abandoned settling into the stone.
But the port still functioned. Ships still came and went, merchants and travelers passing through on their way to Alubarna or the interior, and the foot traffic was mixed enough that unusual arrivals did not draw much attention.
The merchant vessel that came in during the late afternoon was unremarkable from the outside.
The figures that disembarked were less so, if you knew how to look.
The man at the front wore a dark cloak over a pale gray suit, and his build was lean in the way of someone whose work had never required him to be large. His eyes moved across the dock with the automatic, unhurried assessment of a man who had spent his career reading rooms. The moment the desert heat reached him, he recoiled with a grimace, took the water bottle that appeared in his subordinate's hand before he had finished frowning, and drank half of it in one pull.
Behind him, several figures in fitted black followed at respectful distance.
Spandine, Commander of CP-9, had arrived in Alabasta.
The man at his shoulder was younger, lean, and carried the particular stillness of someone who was almost always the most dangerous thing in any given location and had long since made his peace with that. Who's Who's Devil Fruit was not something that announced itself, but something about the quality of his attention made people choose to stand slightly further away from him without quite knowing why.
"Lord Spandine," Who's Who said, with the measured ease of someone whose relationship with his superior had recently become less formal, "both Crocodile and the Revolutionary Army are operating in this country. Are we certain this is worth wading into?"
Another subordinate would have received a very different response to that question. In CP, you obeyed. The reasoning was not your concern.
But Who's Who was not another subordinate, and Spandine had been making that increasingly clear in small ways for months.
Spandine lowered the water bottle and squinted at the dust-white buildings along the harbor road. "Do you think I chose to come here? In the last several years, every CP operation that crossed paths with the Revolutionary Army has gone badly. Nine out of ten. Crocodile is not a simple man. If I had any say in the matter, I would have sent someone else." He made a short, aggrieved sound. "But I did not have any say in the matter."
This was the other consequence of consistent competence: eventually, the Five Elders noticed.
Stussy's ascent through CP-0 had required exactly this kind of reliable performance in difficult situations, and Spandine had been building his record carefully, backed by resources that most of his colleagues did not have access to. The Queen's influence ran through the CP agencies in quiet ways that the Five Elders did not fully map, and Spandine had learned to work within that current. When his rivals in the agency found themselves assigned to impossible situations involving the Revolutionary Army, Spandine had often known just enough in advance to avoid sharing their fate.
But this time, the Five Elders had arranged the assignment personally. There was no polite way to decline an instruction from above that arrived with that degree of formality.
"The difficulty is also the opportunity," Spandine said, as much to himself as to Who's Who. "If I perform here, CP-0 becomes a realistic next step."
Who's Who absorbed this without visible reaction.
"I am serious," Spandine said. "You think I complain because I am afraid? I complain because I am annoyed. There is a difference." He straightened and adjusted his cloak against the heat. "We go to Rainland first. Meet with Crocodile, convey what the Five Elders need conveyed. Then we assess what we are actually working with and decide from there."
He started walking.
After a few steps, he stopped again.
"One more thing." He turned to look at Who's Who directly. "I have not said this clearly yet, but I should. When I move up to CP-0, CP-9 needs someone who can hold it together. My son is now the Marines' problem, which is frankly a relief. And CP-9 belongs to Lady Stussy's network. I cannot hand it to someone from outside that circle." He held Who's Who's gaze. "Do not let me down on this mission."
Who's Who was quiet for a moment. The weight of what had just been said settled over him.
"I understand," he said. "I will not."
Spandine gave a short nod and turned back toward the port terminal.
"Good. Now get one of the others to arrange the camels. I refuse to walk across a desert."
Who's Who raised his voice slightly, directing it at the group still gathering near the gangplank. "You heard him. We need a caravan to Rainland. Move."
He fell into step behind Spandine as the rest of the CP-9 unit sorted itself out, and they walked together toward the terminal end, Spandine still muttering about the heat and the sand and the particular injustice of being assigned to the one country in the world that had managed to run out of rain.
Twenty meters behind, the rest of the team filtered off the dock in a loose group, unhurried, deliberately unremarkable.
Jabra rolled his shoulders and watched Who's Who retreating back with the particular expression of a man assembling an argument he has been sitting on for a while.
"How exactly," he said to no one specifically, "is he more qualified for that position than I am?"
"The fact that you believe yourself to be qualified is probably answer enough," Kalifa said. She was adjusting her glasses with one finger, tone utterly neutral, which was somehow worse than if she had been irritated.
"We came up from the same home," Jabra said. "We worked the same posts. I have the same years in. How is that fair?"
"You also have the same record of picking fights with your colleagues," Kaku said, from slightly behind the others. His elongated nose made his profile distinctive even at this angle. "Which is a separate matter from combat capability, but probably relevant to command eligibility."
"You're the one to talk," Jabra muttered.
"I never disagreed with Who's Who being the better choice," Kaku said mildly.
Blueno had said nothing through any of this, which was consistent. He walked with the unhurried gravity of a large man comfortable with silence, and occasionally the others seemed to forget he was there until they turned around.
"The real question," Jabra continued, his irritation not quite spent, "is whether Spandine actually means it, or whether he says it to everyone and sees who performs."
"He does not say it to everyone," Kalifa said. "He does not say it to you."
"That is a very mean thing to say."
"It is also accurate."
Kaku made a sound that was almost a laugh and didn't quite get there. Blueno watched the street ahead.
They were not close in the way that people who liked each other tended to be close. They argued. They competed. They had, over many years, catalogued each other's weaknesses with the precision that only comes from extended proximity in a profession where weakness can get people killed.
But there was something underneath all of it that had been there since the welfare home: the specific, wordless understanding of people who had needed each other before they were old enough to choose their associations. They did not talk about it. There was no reason to.
They fell into line behind Who's Who and followed him into the heat of Erumalu, toward the camels, toward Rainland, toward whatever Crocodile and the Revolutionary Army and the desert country's slow collapse had waiting for them on the other side.
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