A Boy Like Cold Fire

Because the kingdom of Belloff graciously recognized the titles of nobles who fled to its shores from abroad, it possessed, quite uniquely, a class of people known as the Immigrant Nobility.

Dolores's family belonged to that class, and in Aquigneux the common term was rarely used. Instead, society preferred a more elegant euphemism — the Relocated — with which they could needle newcomers with perfect civility.

People generally abandon their homelands when life there becomes unbearable, so an immigrant noble was, in effect, living proof that his native country had grown insufferable enough to force him out. In other words, they had not come by choice; they had simply been moved here, the way one relocates a piece of furniture.

"That theft case two months ago, too... The Crown really must not sit idly by while immigrants cause trouble like this."

"Lately I've been seeing Sames and people from Sholotera more and more often. I heard from Monsieur Clément that a child was born out of wedlock — and would you believe it, by a Sames woman. Poor Madame Élise, she must have been beside herself..."

"You mean the fabric merchant, Monsieur Clément? I heard he closed up his shop recently. Surely not because of..."

It was strange. Dolores had done nothing wrong, and yet she felt a sudden, irrational urge to crawl into a mousehole and hide.

"By taking in far too many of them, even the word 'tolerance' has been polluted. Look at Lenore. Now that is a strict and elegant city. There's simply no room for immigrants to set foot. Everyone there is steeped in refinement. ...Of course, I grant you, in this day and age not everyone who calls himself a noble is truly noble... but those people are different, I tell you."

"Oh my, really? You've been to Lenore?"

"As it happens, a very dear friend of mine holds a position in the Lenore police bureau..."

Then it happened.

"If he's your friend, sir, would he be a common patrolman or a beat constable, at best?"

The clear, ringing voice locked shut the throats of every adult in the room as if by magic. Dolores, who had been shrinking into herself, slowly lifted her head.

Beside the sofa where the grown-ups sat, two boys — one her own age, the other somewhat older — were perched on stools.

'Here we go again.'

'It's too loud to ignore, isn't it?'

The older boy, a teenager and the more immediately striking of the two, wore a navy jacket trimmed with silver embroidery and white gloves.

Like a description lifted straight from a textbook, his jacket was smooth and unwrinkled, pressed perfectly down to the collar.

His gentle, slightly melancholy eyes and healthy complexion gave him a warm, comfortable air, and Dolores — who had always harbored a romantic longing for an older brother — felt her heart flutter for no good reason.

'You said listening to this was giving you a headache too, remember?'

The boy beside him, the one her own age, was by contrast delicate and high-strung in a way she couldn't quite name.

Beneath a black velvet cloak that fell to his waist he wore a deep gray child's suit, the garnet buttons at his waist glinting in the lamplight.

A small golden brooch fastened his neckcloth in a loose, careless knot.

The two boys had the same thin brown hair, as though they were indeed brothers, but their presence could not have been more different.

The taller boy pressed his palm flat against the back of the smaller one's head, wearing an expression of utter contempt. The smaller boy twisted free regardless.

"Sir, have you actually been to Lenore, that cesspit you're so fond of talking about?"

"...W-well, I...?"

"Yes, I suppose 'so-called' would be the right word here. So-called 'elegant people.' You seem not to understand how insufferable they are. Those people wouldn't spare a single glance for our kind. After all, they're 'true nobility, my dear sir.'"

It was speech no child his age could possibly have produced.

"What does a brat like you know, going on and on like th-that?"

"I couldn't say what I know, sir, but I can certainly tell what you don't."

"What?"

"Look around you — among our nation's great mercantile houses, among its newspapers, how many families have never so much as tasted foreign soil? Even Lord Albert Shepard, they say, spent a year studying abroad at Bloomer Academy in Hennessy as a boy. That famous Buchanan was a foreigner himself, two hundred years ago. Oh — do you read the Romerto Journal? Monsieur Romuald Ansel is one of these 'Relocated' himself, and yet he publishes a paper? With such polluted ideas? He must be mad. Or is it meant as propaganda for seditious elements, then? Hmm, sir, you don't read the Romerto Journal, do you? The one you just slipped under your hat. Ah, a Romerto Journal, if I'm not mistaken... Mmph!"

At last the taller boy shoved back his chair and stood, clamping a hand over the mouth of the smaller boy, who had been firing off insults with wild abandon.

Judging by his expression he seemed terribly sorry about it — but curiously, the apology itself was perfunctory at best.

"I apologize on my brother's behalf. Please don't take offense. My little brother is rather sensitive about noise."

Dolores felt a strange, illicit thrill.

The adults stared at the boys in flustered bewilderment, and every one of those hateful words she'd been forced to endure all evening suddenly weighed less than a single gram.

The condescending gentleman — Dolores had privately dubbed him so — turned crimson and began to rise in a threatening manner, but an elderly gentleman standing across the room checked him with a laugh that carried more amusement than worry.

"These are boys under Madame Roux's particular care. Wouldn't it be wiser, Lord Jerome, to let it pass gracefully?"

"...Madame Roux, you say?"

The name alone carried weight enough to settle the matter.

"How else, do you imagine, could those children be sitting here without a guardian in sight?"

"What on earth sort of children behave this way, then...?"

"The precious sons of an old, dear friend of mine. Thorned roses, the pair of them — sharp and maddening in equal measure."

At that moment Madame Anne Roux returned to the drawing room. She had evidently been outside; snow was gathered on the hood of her cloak.

"Madame. We were wondering where you'd gone."

"Seeing off a guest whose stay was brief. Lord Jerome, even you are no match for this one. I only wish there were someone in Aquigneux capable of indulging his moods."

"...Madame Roux, forgive me for overstepping, but children must be taught proper habits from an early age—"

"Why of course they must. I shall pass your sentiments along to the boy's parents. Though I doubt they'll do more than let it go in one ear and out the other. Isn't that so, Xavier?"

Madame Anne Roux bent slightly at the waist, smiling, and met the eyes of the boy called Xavier. A child and an adult, merely looking at one another — and yet the air between them seemed strangely, enormously charged.

He remained in her memory the way the subject of a painting does, its colors layered one coat deep.

The boy standing at Xavier's side spoke up.

"Madame, the gentleman does have a point, you know. Excessive favoritism spoils a child."

"Now, Luka, I favor you both quite equally, don't I?"

"What I want, Madame, is to be scolded with the same enthusiasm."

Madame Anne Roux laughed.

She was a witch who could reduce everything that had happened that night to a thing of no consequence at all.

The boy who had been standing there with a sullen face turned his head.

As though he had sensed some girl's stubborn stare, he looked directly at Dolores.

Between the bangs of his neatly combed brown hair were long, cool green eyes, wide and horizontal in shape.

There was no warmth in them, nothing soft or gentle — and yet, strangely, they seemed mature beyond his years.

Ever since she had come to this salon in Madame Marguerite's company, Dolores had been treated as barely present, a child of no account — and so the boy's gaze, plunging toward her in a straight, unerring line, abruptly cowed her.

If it grew any sharper, it looked ready to pounce.

"Xavier. You know full well one mustn't be rude to one's elders — and you did it anyway. As an apology, you will play for us."

"..."

"Xavier?"

Madame Anne Roux followed her son's— no, followed Xavier's gaze, and her eyes came to rest on Dolores.

Under the weight of that gathering attention, Dolores's heart began to beat a little too fast.

"...You truly mean to?"

"Why not? This much courtesy I can afford to show."

"...If the lady insists, I hardly have a choice."

Xavier turned his head away with imperious disdain and opened the instrument case that stood against the wall.

Inside lay a violin, its body smooth and gleaming with polished luster.

The reddish-brown grain of the wood was like the heart of some tree in a dark forest.

Rosewood? Mahogany? Which was it? As the bow's tip grazed the four strings, they trembled with a thin, delicate sound.

The boy neither smiled nor bowed, as any ordinary performer would have. He simply set the violin to his chin.

He let his shoulders settle comfortably, took up the bow, and drew it across the four strings. In an instant his eyes turned grave, and the room fell silent.

Camille Ravel's Clair de Lune, performed that evening in Madame Roux's salon, opened the door to an unfamiliar world like a conjurer's trick.

The small boy's bow leapt and raced across the strings with the mastery of an adult's, impossibly fast, passionately slow, trembling at the fingertips, and it sent a shiver through everyone watching.

And his expression never changed once. As though it were all perfectly natural.

He was like a cold flame. Like a burning storm.

Discipline and a rapture on the verge of bursting were tangled together all at once, until Dolores could no longer explain even to herself what she was feeling.

Every so often the boy looked at her — or perhaps she only imagined he did — and those glances had a strange power to cut straight through her.

It was the look of someone watching a stranger who has wandered into the center of his world.

Trapped inside the music pouring in from every direction, Dolores was caught like a fish snared in a net.

When the performance ended, Madame Anne Roux addressed the company with an air of magnanimous triumph.

"Now that you've heard this boy play, I trust you all understand that a little rudeness this evening is hardly worth mentioning. Wouldn't you agree?"

Madame Roux was, truly, in the right.

The boy was a genius.