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Jean comes whirling into his office a scant hour after Kaeya himself hears the news. The loose papers on his desk flutter and scatter with the wind that unconsciously buoys her fury, a fact that makes the young knight in the uncomfortable interview chair before his desk squeak with alarm and scurry for them before realizing who, exactly, just stormed into the Cavalry Captain’s office, and standing to attention.
“Master Jean-!”
She spares him barely a glance and a dismissive little twitch of her fingers- at ease - before the full force of her gaze lands on Kaeya himself. The Cavalry Captain is watching her, cheek on hand, lock of blue hair fallen to reveal the glint of his eyepatch.
He merely arches a calm eyebrow at her fury.
They understand each other. The wind dies off as Jean quietly turns and leaves, clicking the door shut behind her. Kaeya shrugs, the motion turning into a crack-pop roll of his shoulders as he leans back in his chair and reviews his notes.
“Now, where were we?”
The young knight - staring in shock - jumps once again at his conversational tone. Between the now-shut door and the relaxed Cavalry Captain, the poor lad has no idea where to put his eyes.
Kaeya takes pity on him. “You can sit back down, you know,” he adds with a grin. “Jean won’t take offense.”
“Oh- yes. Sorry, Captain.” The young knight hastily sits. “Is- er, is Master Jean angry with you?”
“Angry?” The idea seems to genuinely amuse Kaeya. At least, his low, warm laugh would suggest that. “Oh, I doubt that. She trusts me, you know.”
Though easily startled, the young knight seems to have some instinct of self-preservation. At least, that’s the easiest term for the barrier that stops him from repeating any of the rumors he’s heard - the rumors that have led to him sitting here, in his first month as a knighted member of the Ordo, in the Cavalry Captain’s office.
The Cavalry Captain is Jean’s dog.
That drunk’s safe enough when the Acting Grand Master isn’t around, but when she is- watch it.
As far as the Captains go, the Frostwind Knight is the weakest. I hear he doesn’t even pick up missions most of the time. Wonder what dirt he’s got on the Ordo to stay in that cushy office?
The young knight swallows hard and casts about for a response that includes none of these things. Kaeya’s smile only widens with the silence.
“So you do know. Excellent,” he says, sprawling self-assuredly in his chair. The young knight, by contrast, sits up straighter, knees pressed tighter together, feeling the need to take up even less space. “Now. From the top, would you mind telling me what happened on your patrol last evening?”
Six hours later, they are on the street. The young knight dogs Kaeya’s long, unhurried stride with a nervous pitter-patter of Ordo boots on Mond cobblestone. His face reflects the same nervousness, drawn and pinched, eyes darting. The Frostwind Knight, by contrast, wears the same half-tucked-away smile as always, visible eye steadily ahead. If his Elemental Sight is shimmering in his covered eye, sweeping through the eyepatch for any whisper of danger in the dark alley mouths, there is no outward sign of it. A Vision has, after all, always the same faint, steady light.
“And here we are.” Kaeya halts suddenly beneath the great statue of Barbatos. The young knight stumbles to copy him. Without the twinned sounds of boots on cobblestone, the streets of Upper Mondstadt seem even quieter at this time of night. Such an affluent district has no use for any nighttime activity, unlike the lower districts which always have someone out and about. Only the occasional patrol disturbs these streets between the hours of midnight and seven in the morning, and-
“You were assigned patrol here, yes?”
The young knight hesitates, and nods.
“Your first patrol alone. You must have been so proud.”
The young knight hesitates before nodding. “Captain,” he ventures, “we’ve been through this. In your office. Right?”
“Oh, but I’d like you to walk me through it again. Physically.” The Captain’s grin might put an innocent man at ease, but the young knight shifts his weight and almost flinches from the sharpness of his canine teeth. “Mondstadt is famed for its fresh air, isn’t it? After you.”
He sweeps a mocking bow and holds a hand out, as if some liveried servant in an ancient noble house. It looks simultaneously natural and awfully wrong in the austere opulence of Upper Mondstadt. The young knight recoils from it, hesitates, and then turns, checking behind him to see if Kaeya is following before-
he-
begins-
to walk.
Slowly. Haltingly. And now it is Kaeya’s turn to dog his footsteps, falling in at the same position the young knight has seen him take up many times before for the Acting Grand Master - slightly behind and to the right. He’s watching Kaeya so hard he stumbles, and gets a laugh for his trouble, low and undercut with derision.
Silence is, therefore, made so unbearable that he begins to talk.
“This is the normal Upper Mondstadt route. The Lawerences have been asking for more security, so, uh- it was changed recently, there’s a loop around their property. But the Church loop was dropped to keep the same time. So once that’s done…”
The Lawrence palatial townhouse has nice grounds. Well-manicured shrubberies. There is a movement in those shrubberies that makes the young knight spook, shying a few steps to the right, hand falling to his sword. Kaeya hooks a thumb casually in his lower belt and hums a chuckle.
“My goodness. Here I thought Varka took all the horses out from under me, but it seems he’s left me with a skittish mare to prance around the city.”
“Captain-” The darkness doesn’t hide the young knight’s reddened face well enough, not with the Lawrence townhouse’s well-lit paths. Nor does it hide the sharp flash of Kaeya’s teeth.
“Kidding, of course. Mares don’t get themselves into quite so much trouble.”
The red vanishes from the young knight’s face, taking all semblance of color with it. Kaeya gestures. He turns, almost wooden in it, and begins again to walk, not even needing to look to know the Captain has once again fallen in behind him.
He does look, anyway, and then quickly turns to face front once more.
It is not as if it is abnormal to see a young knight and an older one, out here, up here, in the safer patrol routes, in the quieter hours. Weeknights in Upper Mondstadt are no strangers to the sight of two people - one in strict uniform, the other usually more relaxed - strolling the same route, as the senior teaches his junior the ropes and intricacies. But this time, they are silent, and this time, they do not walk abreast. The Cavalry Captain’s quiet footsteps remain just a little behind and to the right of the young knight’s.
They descend the steps into Central Mondstadt after the normally-allotted time. A good patrol time - long strides, no interruptions. But when the young knight hesitates and tries to turn left - along the normal patrol route - Kaeya’s amusement halts him.
“Oh, dear. And here I thought we were becoming friends .”
The ashen-faced young knight turns, stricken. Kaeya stands relaxed and smiling in the exact spot he would normally abandon the route.
“Why are you doing this?” asks the young knight, low with helplessness. “I mean, I don’t- I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Kaeya clicks his tongue against his teeth. It is a sound more commonly heard from disappointed grandparents than from ranking officers of the Ordo, but even that - or perhaps, especially that - pulls the young knight’s gaze irresistibly to the cobblestone.
“I asked you to walk me through your patrol route,” Kaeya tells him, in the half-slow tones a patient mentor might take with a particularly recalcitrant student. Worse, for the amusement undercutting every word. “Not the patrol route assigned. The one you take.”
The young knight can’t find words. It’s not as if he doesn’t try - his mouth opens and closes, several times. But in the end, dragging his feet, he turns and makes his way down the steps.
Behind and to the right, Kaeya follows.
Central Mondstadt - home of the middle class, the tradesmen and merchant-women, the bulk of Mondstadt’s citizens - is slightly busier than Upper Mondstadt. Even on a night like this, where cold nips the heels of the wind to keep it running, there are insomniacs enjoying their strolls, the calm burble of fountains and the whispers of lovers beneath them, the gentle murmurings of staggering drunks and the urgent low tones of their friends attempting to steer them safely home. A normal Knight’s patrol route would take her through the heart of this, able to offer aid and intimidation where needed, able to bear witness to events that might be later made important by some crime or another.
But the young knight does not follow the normal patrol route. Every time he hesitates, Kaeya stops and smiles. It is a terrifying enough gesture for him to remain truthful in his movements.
He faithfully retraces the steps he’d taken the night before.
There is, set in the thick wall of Mondstadt, a little door. Technically it is set in the wall raising Upper Mondstadt above Central Mondstadt, but it is the same gray stone, and very near the wall proper. It's a nondescript little door. If one didn’t know it was there - or if one didn’t have Elemental Sight - one might easily walk right on past it.
The young knight knows better. He stops in front of it. Then, slowly, stricken as if facing the executioner’s raised axe, he turns to face Kaeya.
“I don’t know what they did, Captain,” he whispers.
“They?” asks Kaeya with a raised brow. He remains relaxed, thumb hooked into his belt, bright eye steady on the young knight.
“You know about it all, don’t you? My friends.” The young knight gestures to the door. “I used to sneak out through this door to meet them when I was still a squire. They went to Liuye, but I stayed here to finish my training. That’s when I met Sir Tunstall, after they were gone. My mentor. You know that- you know who he is.”
Kaeya tilts his head.
“Who he was,” amends the young knight. Kaeya smiles.
For a moment, all is silent but for the normal nighttime sounds of the district.
“I didn’t do it,” blurts the young knight. He finally meets Kaeya’s gaze, searching his face for any sign of- belief, disbelief, acceptance, attack. “I promise. I really didn’t. And I know they didn’t, either, they’re good lads. Sir Tunstall- I couldn’t do anything to him! He accepted me when nobody else would. You don’t know what that’s like, Captain Kaeya - to be just, absolutely, to be a foreigner in Mondstadt, know you’re nothing and nobody, and then have someone see you. Believe in you. Sir Tunstall believed I could be better than those guys, the ones I came with.” He flings his arm out to indicate the door. “You have no idea what that feels like. I could never hurt him!”
The smile always tucked into the corner of Kaeya’s mouth has faded to a mere glimmer. He cocks his head to one side and examines the young knight, appraising.
“Couldn’t you?” he asks.
“No!” cries the young knight, then claps a hand over his mouth. Too loud. Pigeons take flight from the top of the wall, alarmed and shrieking about it, bumping into one another in their haste.
Kaeya tilts his chin back to watch the spectacle, that self-satisfied smirk returning to linger on his expressive mouth. He waits for the shrillness of pigeon wings through breezy night air to settle before he responds.
“Then who’s through that door?”
“Not my friends. They’d never-”
Kaeya’s smirk widens. The young knight stops.
“You think they would.” He clutches his elbows, unable to tear his eyes from the Cavalry Captain’s face. “You think they did . Oh. Oh, Archons. Barbatos save me.”
“My,” remarks Kaeya, “you even swear like one of us.”
The young knight’s face spasms. For a moment, he can’t seem to choke words out, and then-
“So what’s going to happen to me, Captain?” he manages through a stranglehold throat. “Am I- Am I guilty by association? Do I- are they-?”
“You have a choice now,” cuts in Kaeya, smooth as a fine wine, equally as abrasive to an inflamed conscience. “One way or another, you are going through that door. You can warn them, let them get a head start.”
The young knight makes a strangled sort of sound. Kaeya speaks over it.
“Or,” he says, “you could bring them up to me, and we can have a conversation.”
“But what if they didn’t do it? What if-”
Kaeya’s smile is where hope goes to die, and the words fail on the young knight’s lips as he beholds it. He simply stares, aghast, for several seconds.
“By all means,” says Kaeya, “talk to them before I do. They’re your friends. I’m sure you can get the truth from them, eh?”
This time, it is he who gestures to the door. The young knight hesitates, steels himself, draws himself up, gives himself a good shake, before he opens it - hinges well-oiled - and steps down into the darkness. It latches silently behind him.
Kaeya cracks his neck, yawns, stretches, and leans against the wall to the hinge side of the door to wait.
When the door opens again, it admits four men into Mondstadt’s hallowed walls. The young knight leads the party, his face a study in contrasts. Behind him range a motley crew of three - Mondstadt clothing, with Treasure Hoarder scarves around two necks - all noisy with relief and metal clinking at their waists. Hard men, with scarred hands and loud-hushed voices.
“Thanks for sheltering us, Kell.” The first speaker’s voice carries abominably in the quiet Mondstadt night, whisked by the winds. The resultant sssh! s that follow are no less disruptive, but the speaker presses on, undeterred. “Baal’s ballsack, dunno what we’d do without you. Knew you’d come around after that guy got sacked.”
The young knight - or Kell, perhaps, to his friends - turns to them, eyes searching. His youthful face sags with relief when he finally sees Kaeya, leaning against the wall, hidden at first by the door opening outward. The Captain winks and holds a finger to his lips.
By pure strength of will, Kell manages to avoid calling out. He even goes so far as to divert his gaze to his friends’ faces, though they don’t seem to notice.
Another young man speaks up now - better at hushing his voice, though it still grates in the wind. “You don’t blame us, do you, Kell? Like really, it’s kind of your fault, if you think about it. He only figured out about our smuggling stuff because he was tryina figure out where you went every night, so-”
“So you killed him?” Kell’s voice is tight with grief and something else. A man who has spoken the same way, like Kaeya, might well identify the emotion. Fury.
“Eh, well, knock on the head, pitch into the harbor,” says the third, muttering. “Didn’t think it’d kill the old sot so fast, but shit, they just don’t build ‘em like they used to anymore.”
“My, my,” purrs Kaeya. “Admission of two crimes for the price of one. Well done, young Sir Kell.”
The effect is not quite immediate. The three have to figure out where the smooth, sarcastic voice came from, first, and then once they see Captain Kaeya leaning casually against the wall, it takes a moment longer for tired, overwrought brains to click through the implications. It’s obvious when the effect has taken hold. The effect is named terror , and it grips all three.
“Jean’s dog,” yelps the loud one, where the murderer hisses, “Run!”
They do try to run, to their credit.
They do not get very far.
The hoarfrost that had been gathering between the cobblestones during that long wait surges up as they try to turn and scatter, wrapping around two’s ankles and making them stumble with numb feet to sprawl drunkenly over the stone. The third faces off against Kell for a moment - long knife against Favonius sword, bitter rage against bitter rage - before he lunges, and a low wall of ice springs up, just high enough to trip him and send him sprawling past his former friend. None are able to get up. Once prone on the ground, the frost has them, securely creeping around each wrist and ankle to tether them all to the cobblestone.
It is over in seconds. Kaeya has not even drawn his sword. Kell lowers his own, mouth open, suddenly and clearly aware that the rumors of the Cavalry Captain’s nature have been wildly off the mark.
Kaeya pushes himself from the wall and comes forward, stepping over one prone body on the way. It takes Kell a moment to realize what he’s doing when he puts his hands together once, then twice, then a third time.
Clapping.
It sounds as sarcastic as the rest of him. This time, Kell does not flinch.
“I want to stay, please, Captain.” He speaks first, against protocol. “Mondstadt is my home. The Ordo is my home now. I had no idea what these people were doing.”
“We’re your friends, you gobsmacking-” The speaker, sprawled on the ground, suddenly chokes and falls silent. Kaeya’s Vision glimmers with light.
“Oh?” he asks Kell, tilting his head.
The young knight’s jaw works. “At least let me attend Sir Tunstall’s funeral,” he whispers. “Tomorrow. And then-”
“Oh, you’re not getting off that easily.” Kaeya grins. “It seems you have an aptitude for this sort of work, Kell. And I like people who are willing to show their loyalty to Mondstadt, as you just have.”
Kell stares, a little bit blankly. The stress of the night has been a lot for a young mind. Kaeya laughs and takes pity on him.
“Let’s see. I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, and you’ll tell me where I lose you, hmm? You’re going to help me carry these three up to the Ordo and put them in formal custody. And then we’re going to have a quick chat about your future before you get to warm up and go to bed. If we hurry, you might even get a few hours sleep before your Sir Tunstall’s funeral. Ten of the morning, if I’m not mistaken.”
Kell stares now, properly, incredulous. He looks around at his former (traitor) friends, ice-manacled to the stones below. Looks again at Kaeya, and his cool smile.
“But I-”
“Ah, that’s where I lost you. We will discuss your future in the Ordo after these three are safely in custody. Snap to it, now.”
The young knight seems to be learning what every other man or woman underneath Kaeya does - that the genial tone holds command, that he will brook no argument once he decides on a course of action. So Kell does the natural thing, and bends to help pick up one of his friends from the stone. The icy manacles shift as he does so - melting away from their ankles, but holding their wrists together securely.
Frost, too, covers each mouth but Kaeya’s and Kell’s. It facilitates a quiet journey back to the Ordo.
Once the party of five disappears inside those great doors - a knight, a captain, and three prisoners - Mondstadt’s winds kiss nothing else of note until morning’s light and the waking of the city at large.
Jean lets herself into Kaeya’s office with more decorum, this time.
It is two of the afternoon. Warm afternoon light slants across a desk neat-messy with papers, highlight a half-cape and fur collar draped messily over the back of a couch, barely reaches a bookshelf of notebooks. Each bound book is filled with Kaeya’s practice-beautiful handwriting, and chronicles a different area of Mondstadt’s darkest interests.
Jean has never seen inside most of them. She does not care. She slumps in the guest chair which the young knight occupied yesterday, passing a hand over her face and sighing.
“Could you at least pretend to be interested in the death of one of our own?”
“Ouch,” says Kaeya mildly. He is lounging half-reclined in his chair, ink wet on an equipment requisition in front of him. “How did it go?”
“As well as any event of the kind. His former squire showed up.”
“Oh, good.”
“I saw him in your office yesterday, right after I heard about Sir Tunstall’s death. I thought….”
She trails off. Kaeya rests his elbow on the chair’s armrest, his cheek on his hand.
“You thought?”
Jean shakes her head and sighs. It’s an awfully tired sound for so young a woman.
“I thought he might have something to do with it. I owe you an apology,” she adds. “I wasn’t really thinking straight when I barged in here yesterday.”
“You wouldn’t be our Master Jean if you weren’t so concerned,” says Kaeya with a dismissive sort of warmth. He waves his hand to forestall her protests. “Don’t even think about it. You were right - I was looking into it.”
“Ah. So that’s why you skipped the funeral?”
“No,” says Kaeya, with a flash-in-the-pan grin, “ that’s because I’m the laziest Captain that’s ever been at the Ordo, and I slept right through it. How foolish of me.”
Jean looks up now and gives him an expression of pure exasperation. Kaeya throws his head back and laughs. After a moment, she can’t help but join him, a rueful chuckle adding to his mirth.
“Alright, no,” he finally adds, swinging his leg down from the armrest and sitting properly. “There are three men under custody in the Investigation Division’s holding cells. All are from Fontaine originally, but have been in Mondstadt for most of their adult lives. As far as you’re concerned, Captain Albedo was called to a routine smuggling check a day ago, which quickly turned more interesting than normal. He found the evidence of foul play on their boat and got the men to confess to the murder of a decorated Ordo knight.”
Jean absorbs this information - or lack of it - with more equanimity than one might expect from so principled a woman. She stands up and paces over to Kaeya’s window, looking out at the grounds.
“Has Albedo agreed to this?”
“I confirmed it with him last night. He doesn’t mind taking credit - his report will be on your desk by tomorrow evening.”
“And the interrogation room above the library-”
She cuts herself off almost as soon as she asks it, grimacing. Regrets asking. Kaeya spins in his chair to watch her tense back, and laughs quietly.
“Thanks for keeping Lisa out of it. But no. I didn’t have to step foot in it at all last night, actually.”
Jean’s shoulders unknot. Just slightly, naturally - this is a woman with the weight of a city on those strong shoulders - but enough that Kaeya’s eye is drawn to it, enough for his smile to soften into something else.
She looks at him over her shoulder before turning fully, half-perching on the windowsill.
“Something with young Kell?”
“Something,” agrees Kaeya, lips pursing. He pauses, watches Jean. “They used to be his friends, as it turns out. Amazing, the despicable things you’ll do when you think you’re helping a friend.”
Immediately her expression changes - the same way Kell’s did twelve hours ago. Consternation, guilt, fretting, worry. “Kaeya-”
“Oh, Archons, none of that!” Kaeya waves it all away with amusement. “I like what I do, you know. Didn’t mean you at all. No. No, it was something else he said that made me give him a second chance.”
“It is unlike you to show mercy to Mond’s enemies,” Jean admits softly. Kaeya shrugs and stretches his arms over his head.
“ You don’t know what that’s like ,” he recites, “ to be a stranger in Mondstadt, know you’re nothing and nobody, and then have someone see you. Believe in you. ” Jean is looking at him fully now, but he does not return it. Perhaps it’s out of politeness - perhaps it’s out of self-preservation. Either way, her expression is raw and stunned enough for the caution to be well-advised. “Sir Tunstall’s trust apparently swayed him fully to Monstadt. I’m willing to believe it, enough to give him a chance.”
“Kaeya.”
“Don’t Kaeya me.” He rolls his eyes and stands, still not quite looking at her expression as he brushes past her on his way to the window. She steps aside for him. Now it’s her turn to stare at his tense back, not at all hidden by abandoned half-cape or fur collar.
“I’ve already arranged for him to be with Captain Eula’s next deployment, and warned her to keep an eye out. She’ll make sure everything’s in order with him.”
“Of course you have.” Jean clasps her hands in front of her. “You’re always so thorough, for the slacker Captain.”
Kaeya’s laugh could be called rote , if one were feeling generous. Jean is, apparently, not feeling generous, because she suddenly steps forward. Her hand lands on Kaeya’s shoulder.
Kaeya freezes.
Jean does too, but she doesn’t move away.
For a moment, they both stand silently - Kaeya staring out the window of his office, Jean behind and to the left, her grip loose. Both breathe a little unevenly, a little shallowly, but for their own reasons.
Jean gently squeezes. Kaeya exhales - deep, shivering at the end of it - and his shoulders drop from en garde beneath her touch.
She chooses to repay honesty with honesty. “I don’t know how I’d run the Ordo without you.”
“Probably just as well as with me,” Kaeya says after a moment. Jean squeezes his shoulder harder.
“Definitely not.”
“Oh, you would,” Kaeya disagrees, “because I have very thorough contingency plans in place. Just in case I… Just in case something happens.”
“Why would anything happen?” Jean steps closer, side by side. Her hand is still on his shoulder, but now her forearm rests along his tense back as well, and she stares out the window as his gaze burns down into her. “Someone saw you, believed in you, and now you’re one of Mondstadt’s. No matter where you came from.”
Kaeya’s breath catches. Jean either doesn’t notice, or chooses not to, because she doesn’t stop.
“You’ll reconcile with him one day. He won’t always be so stubborn.”
For a moment, Kaeya is dead silent - no breathing, no twitching, only a pulse beneath Jean’s touch. And then his shoulders begin to shake. With laughter. True, proper laughter, from his chest, that makes Jean lift her hand for fear of gripping too hard.
“Yup,” he manages through it, grinning down at her. “It’s always been Diluc, hasn’t it? But don’t worry - I’m not going to be the one who shuns the Ordo over a brotherly spat.”
Relief and warmth wash through Jean’s expression, closely followed by an answering smile. She gently bumps Kaeya’s shoulder with her own.
“I’d chase you down if you tried. Succession plans or no, I need you here.”
“Sure, sure, Dandelion Knight.” Kaeya presses a hand to his chest - less in fealty, more in laughter. “Heard.”
“Good.” As reluctant as she is to do it, she must step away from him now. “I have to be available. People will be dropping in all day, because of-”
“The funeral, of course. They’ll want to offer their condolences and be consoled by you. Do you need me to run interference?”
Jean shakes her head, though really, if she’s surprised Kaeya asked, she doesn’t show it. “They need me.”
“Naturally.” Kaeya’s grin is as easy as ever. “And don’t forget, you have an appointment with Lisa at five for tea.”
Jean purses her lips. “We’ll see.”
“I don’t think Lisa’s appointments are the kind you can just see about. Something tells me she’ll be seeing you whether you show up or not.”
Jean’s half-scowl turns into a rueful laugh. “You have everyone’s measure down perfectly, as always,” she admits. “I’ll be sure to make time for her. You wouldn’t run interference with her for me, would you?”
“I,” Kaeya tells her, “value my life.”
She’s chuckling as she lets herself out of his office. Once again, the door clicks shut behind her. But this time, Kaeya is left alone, with no new knight to keep up appearances for.
He stares at the closed door for a time. Then he raises a shaking hand and drags it over his face, exhaling long and hard.
“It’s not Diluc.”
He mutters it more for his own benefit, just to hear it said aloud, than anything else. He turns. The bookshelf doesn’t just contain notebooks - there are knick-knacks, bottles, decorative pieces. He uncorks a bottle and pours half a glass of amber liquid, knocks it back with a practiced swoop, puts his hand over his face again.
“As if Diluc would ever trust me again like-” he trails off into a choking laugh, more openly bitter than the one he dared to show Jean earlier. That hand slips beneath his eyepatch, gentle fingers running over the covered skin beneath.
His other eye goes to the bottle, then to the requisitions on his desk.
He wavers.
Then, with another shaky breath, Kaeya corks the plum wine, pushes aside his glass, and takes up his pen once more, to complete the other work Jean has entrusted him with.