Inbetween

Chapter Thirteen

Nyura sent Ciel to Asa through her lady-in-waiting. Whether the lady had no more than a rushed explanation to give him or simply had no time to spare, Asa missed his chance to question her. Somehow, Ciel managed to be even less forthcoming. She did not speak to him. He had no idea what he was supposed to do with her. He only knew what he was told. This woman was some sort of expert brought by High Lord Erramun from his domain to help the duchess and now Asa found himself stuck working with her.

If what was happening now could be called working with her. So far she just shadowed his every move. Moments ticked by and before he knew it, nearly an hour had passed since she was delivered to him. He found it unnerving to think of another person as being delivered rather than introduced to him, but she made no effort to communicate with him so there was no introduction so to speak.

He knew her name and her reason for being here thanks to Nyura's poor haggard lady in waiting who had to take on far too many tasks at the palace, including escorting Ciel to him. Once she left to return to her other duties, Asa had no idea what to do with her.

Was she his assistant? Should he defer to her now? With so little information and none forthcoming, he had to guess and there were not enough hours in the day for these games. He had other work demanding his attention. As much as he wanted to put all of his time and energy into the search for Yuri, he was still the captain of the palace guard and his work was even more difficult than usual. He wanted more time to focus on his search and the stranger things became within the palace the more time he had to spend trying to keep some semblance of order for everyone else.

With Ciel watching his every move and acting as a near perfect shadow, Asa found himself giving his primary job a lot less attention than it really deserved. Being watched without commentary distracted him more than it had any right to. It was not so much the silence that got to him as it was the way he could feel her eyes observing his every move. He wanted to say something, but he was not sure if it would do any good. Her silence made him feel as though he was not permitted to speak to her at all.

Her unnerving presence pushed him to delegate more of his work than ever before so he could move on to gathering more intel about Yuri and hopefully find a way to make use of Ciel before she drove him mad. He hoped finding a use for her would keep her from constantly following him around. Already he started to worry that she would be with him day and night until Yuri was found or Nyura decided to do something to change the current arrangement.

The worst part of all was how Ciel seemed to enjoy his distress. He did his best to tamp it down and act normally. Unfortunately, nothing about this felt normal at all. He forced himself to start talking again to reclaim a small semblance of normalcy.

He could not remember the last time he had been intentionally silent for this long. With other people, there was always at least a bit of verbal communication and when he was alone there was always at least a bit of inner monologue happening. Somehow Ciel's presence even managed to silence his inner voice.

He cleared his throat and did his best to get his voice working again. "Since you're here to help with finding Yuri, I guess you can come along while I follow up on a bit of research I started earlier. That way you know what I know and we can move forward from there."

Ciel flashed a smile at him before settle back into her neutral expression. She seemed unflappable no matter whether he worked silently or spoke up. Meanwhile, she confounded him at every turn. He needed to figure out what she was about so he could pretend they were at least on equal footing.

With the pattern set, he assumed wherever he went she would follow him without question. He did not bother asking her if she was ready to go because he had no expectation of receiving an answer. Instead, he just started walking. Sure enough, she followed just one pace behind him and to the right. Hearing her footfalls just slightly off rhythm with his own and catching flashed of her clothing if he turned his gaze even slightly in her direction unnerved him a bit. He suspected she was doing this on purpose, but he had no way to confirm that suspicion. The sneaking suspicion means that he took a small bit of joy out of taking her out into the city where her shadowing stunt would be nearly impossible.