Valeur took a long drag on his cigarette as he observed, from the rooftop, two cloaked assassins surreptitiously bury Theophilus' body in the woods a distance away from the guildhouse. The black leafed branches obscured his vision, but it was apparent to him that the Heartman's assassins were terribly good at the job.

It took them only 15 seconds. It was as if they already had dug up graves ready to be used.

"You people really thought about everything down to the graveyard," he dourly remarked to the figure in the shadows, lurking somewhere in his far left. "Quit hiding like that, I'm your cousin and it's so...cliche."

"Haha," Fontaine laughed sparingly, and moved away from the chimney he was leaning on. Nimbly tiptoeing on the tarred roof shingles, and stretching his arms to his sides like a child on a balancing bar, Fontaine actually looked...younger.

Which was no mean feat. A brief childhood memory where he and Fontaine played Knight and Thief in the Al de Baran sunset let a small grin escape Valeur's lips.

Fontaine noticed it, but let it go.

"Why did you leave the family and join this shitty guild?" Valeur asked as he laid his back and stretched out on the black roof. Not to mention let yourself get drenched with some crazy idiot's spittle and get brainwashed in the process.

Fontaine crouched beside him, removing his carmine neck cloth and tied his hair back with the fabric. "It's fun," he said offhandedly as he made vague hand signals to Étienne and Aemilianus, who began to walk their separate ways. "Tsk, you'd think they really earned their place," whispered Fontaine. "They couldn't even spell their own name correctly under the moonlight."

"Don't change the subject, Fontaine. Lise was sick for a whole month," Valeur said, referring to Fontaine's younger sister.

From the corner of his eye, Fontaine looked at his cousin's blue ones. They were so much like his. "Lucrezia," he said simply. Having answered the question, he faced the moon and focused his sights on it.

"I know it's her, but..." But she's your ordinary run-of-the-mill country bumpkin acolyte!

"You ask too many questions," Fontaine finally stood up and started to leave, but after a thoughtful pause he added, "I may be your cousin, but I have demon blood. Not like yours. I think I was wrong in bringing you here."

===

"Third death in the month. Not good, Leon," Elfienne said as she mopped the floor effortlessly with one hand and moved things aside with another. "Keep this up and the Vanguards will sniff us out, for sure." Sighing, she kicked the water bucket accidentally, spilling water all over a big portion of the wooden floor. "Oh, for..."

She was about to look at her companion and plead for assistance, but he wasn't in his usual lounging chair. He was already behind her.

"Punishment?" Leon whispered in her ear as he grabbed the barmaid from behind. "Listen, Dearest Heart, if they were really keen on weeding out evil," he spat out the last word, "we should have been anolian fodder a month after I started the guild."

"But I heard talks that there's a new upstart among the Vanguards, and he's really--mmph!" Two fingers made their way into her mouth, playing with her tongue.

The young alchemist did not need to look at her welcome assailant's face to know that he was grinning. She knew the exact times that he would grin, by instinct. Elfienne sucked in her breath as she felt the telltale brush on her thigh, the telltale hardness pressing against her back...

A few moments later Valeur walked in, and just as quickly shut the door.

Leon laughed a little as he writhed a little over the wet floor to adjust himself, and Elfienne ducked her head over him to hide her face beneath her locks.

"I'm jealous, Elfie," Leon breathed, "nobody ever made you blush like that."

===

Valeur wiped the sleep from his eyes as he rose from bed, the thick daze even letting him think that the events of last night was a bad dream, that he was still sleeping in his own room.

The cold, uncarpeted floor made him realize he was dead wrong.

Valeur's present realities were the following: 1) he was no longer the Villefort heir, 2) he was now staying indefinitely in a rented room and now living off the scraps known as his salary, 3) that he was a new initiate of a guild that could be made up of the dredges of society.

Groaning, he reached out for a chipped cup from the rickety bedside table and poured himself some water. Water, at least, was still in abundance. Even if the abundance was just a pitcherful.

His mind fully awake, he caught a glimpse of the newspaper partly slipped in under the door. Valeur plodded across his small room, in gray shirt and all, to pick it up.

Stéphane, the weasel who wormed his way into Alfrieda's skirts, as new Vanguard.

Valeur quick-scanned the front page article for important words: Upstart. Revolutionary. Epitome. Honorable.

Alfrieda smiling to the crowd, her hand on Stéphane's white-garbed arm. Like a Vanguard's wife...

Valeur's mind mentally screamed.