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The city of Warsaw greeted Cross and his newly-found apprentice with cold winds, thick fog and non-stop rain.
So far, it turned to be far gloomier than the drawings on various postcards sold at the train station.
Founded on the both banks of the Vistula river, it sprawled out into the valley with train tracks, webs of newly-built roads and coal factories.
And so, for the foreseeable future, the two of them were stuck waiting under a bridge adorned with carvings of a mermaid. Their informant was running late.
Cross sighed as he put away the recent newspaper, deciding to use this rare break as an educational opportunity.
"Listen, you useless idiot. The exorcist's job, naturally, makes you travel across the world all the time. Whenever you go to a new place, have the decency to at least familiarize yourself with useful phrases in local language, such as 'thank you', 'good day' and 'fuck off'."
"Y-yes, sir!" the kid squeaked.
God, he was even younger than he seemed.
"Can you read what's written on that storefront?" Cross pointed to an old building across the street. Big bold letters, "Fotografia" written in Latin script. Should be easy; they haven't traveled east enough to bother with Cyrillic.
Allen squinted his eyes.
"Fo... to... Fotogr... "
Oh right, it dawned on him. The kid never even went to primary school.
Guess he'll have to spend a few evenings playing a teacher. Fantastic. All Noahs, every single one of them better kneel down and kiss his boots after the 14th returns, as a reward for putting up with this child.
Cross opened the newspaper on a page detailing the latest murder in London city.
"Read that out loud, until I tell you to stop."
***
Cross paced back and forth around the room with arms folded behind his back.
"The only math concept you need to know are percentages. To calculate interest, obviously."
Allen nodded with no enthusiasm whatsoever.
"Percent literally means 'one hundredth of something'."
"Uh-huh..."
"I give you 100 apples and ask you to give me 50%. How many of them do you have left?"
"Master, where did you get so many apples?"
"Doesn't matter! It's a math problem. Answer me, brat."
"Besides, you'd usually ask for... All apples... I'd have none left," he adds barely audible.
Cross pinched the bridge of his glasses so hard, it almost caused them to snap.
"If you slice up an akuma in 100 parts, how many of them is 5 percent?"
"Five?"
"Exactly, idiot apprentice."
Cross threw a few dozen handwritten notes from his wallet at the kid and picked up his coat.
"Your task for today is figuring out how much I owe to that banker in Hamburg and making this number smaller. I don't care how. I have some business to attend."
"The brothel?" Allen looked at him with big, bright eyes, head tilted slightly to the side.
Cross threw the nearest shoe at the kid to test his reflexes. They were pretty fast, actually.
***
Fully-concentrated on a task, the kid sat writing something down at the dingy table of a poorly-lit bar corner. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, sweat and ethanol.
The way his tongue sticked was rather adorable, Cross caught himself thinking, only to immediately banish the trail of thought from his mind. He was not getting attached. Under no circumstances he should get attached to the doomed vessel.
"What is that you're doing, brat?" He nodded at Allen instead of a greeting.
"Your debts. I'm compiling them into a table to make it easier to track. And also miss Božena showed me how to use this thing." The boy gestured at the abacus to his right.
"Who the fuck is Božena?"
"The bartender! She's really nice, even lets me grab some snacks from the shared bowl. Says I'm a growing boy, whatever that means."
Cross glanced at the woman behind the bar, then at the calculations. To his horror, the kid was a natural at paperwork. There also was a rather unflattering drawing of himself grimacing in the top-right corner.
Too proud to make a comment on the latter, he said:
"You forgot the decimal point over there. But other than that... Good job."
"Huh? Can you repeat that?"
"I said "get back to your job", bastard. You have a dozen or so of those left to go through."
God, what was going on with him? Exhaustion? Too many drinks? Retrograde Mercury? Maybe he was finally getting old, and the changes to his brain were irreversible?
***
"The thing about obscenities, you fucking moron, is that there's a time and a place to use them."
Cross and Allen were running towards an old stone bridge with a gothic tower built on it. At moments like this he could only sigh and wonder what intricacies of fate made this little rascal end up in his care.
There was no time to admire the intricate sculptures adorning either side of the road or centuries-old cobblestone: a group of angry men was closely following the pair's tracks.
"But that guy, he was really mean," Allen looked back for a moment to note the distance between them and the mob. It was shrinking. Rapidly.
"Of course he would be, you cheated him out of his money for booze. Choose your fights wisely, kid."
Cross frantically looked around: they needed to hide somewhere.
He picked up Allen with one arm, jumped into a horse tram passing by and crouched on the floor.
"Shh. Lay down and make sure they don't see from the outside."
At least the evening didn't wrap up by a swim in the murky waters of Vltava, and that could be considered a success.
***
"Don't fucking move! I'm gonna tie you to a chair if you continue fidgeting!"
Cross firmly held Allen's shoulder with one hand and maneuvered to pour diluted carbolic acid on the new piece of cotton with another. Kid's scraped knee was swollen and oozed blood.
"Ouch! Damn bastard!" the kid smacked him in the forehead with a fist.
"Burning means the disinfectant is doing its job, so quit whining."
Satisfied with the wound cleaning, Cross went on to find a roll of bandage in the first-aid kit.
"In the future... Make sure to clean any cuts and wounds, or your limbs will fall off, got it? The world is full of invisibly-tiny monsters waiting to kill you."
"That's ridiculous."
"And having your arm possessed by an eldritch power to kill akumas is, apparently, fine and normal?"
Allen sighed.
"There," Cross tied the bandage into a neat bow and admired his job for a few moments. "Hope you've kept your eyes peeled; these need to be changed every day."
He put away the first aid kit into the suitcase and turned to his apprentice.
"And Allen. Tell me immediately in case it hurts more or becomes hot to the touch. Cut with the pretending-it's-fine crap, I know you idiot way too well."
"I will."
An empty smile returned to his face, it infuriated Cross beyond belief.
"Now get the fuck out and bring me something to drink."
"B-but sir..." there they were, the doe-eyes. His apprentice had acting skills of a con-man; somehow he mastered changing facial expressions rapidly to his advantage. "My leg really hurts."
Were that fake tears rolling down the kid's cheeks? Cross watched him bear worse pain in the past without batting an eye.
"Go change into clean clothes and then — rest."
The kid grinned devilishly.
Cross groaned and made sure to bang the door as loudly as he possibly could, when exiting the hotel room.
***
Allen plopped on a plush seat opposite of his master and sighed.
"No alcohol sold at the kitchen car, sir."
"What is it, a rail line for saints?" Cross stretched his arms and looked out of the window. Blurry images of snow-covered planes and occasional vegetation flickered before him.
Allen absentmindedly shuffled a deck of cards in his hands: playing solitaire over and over again can bring a person only so much entertainment. There was a certain lulling rhythm to the fast movements of his fingers, the swaying of the train cart and clutter of the wheels.
"How about I teach you a few card tricks?"
"Aren't you disastrously bad at cheating, master?"
"Not that kind, brat. The ones you can show at bars to get women to like you."
Allen shrugged and passed the deck.
***
Their journey east was interrupted somewhere in the Carpathians, Cross wasn't exactly sure. The nearest mountain pass had snowed in last night, so the pair ended up stranded at a small city at the bottom of the mountain.
The inn at the central square was unremarkable, like any other he'd passed through in the years of travel, too tired to care about the interiors. What mattered that it was warm and provided a shelter from the storm outside.
A few men wearing embroidered wool vests sat at wooden table and laughed loudly. To the right there was another one, already asleep from the drinks. An old woman sat at the back, playing cards with the man with a moustache.
"Where is nearest place to sleep?" Cross asked, looking around for anyone who might understand his words.
The man with a moustache squinted and stood up. It seemed he was the owner.
"Deutsch?" he asked, eyeing the pair wearily.
Cross groaned, trying to remember the few phrases he learned in childhood:
"Schlafen. Ich und das Kind."
"Zehn gulden," the man muttered, leaning on the counter.
"Acht."
"Zehn gulden", the owner said louder and frowned.
"Son of a bitch," Cross fumbled with his bag to get one silver and two gold coins from his wallet.
"Master, are we going to have dinner?" kid pulled at his sleeve.
Cross sighed and pointed to the steaming bowl of something on the drunk man's table, then to himself and the kid:
"Zwei."
The owner nodded, showing at empty seats, and disappeared in the back of the inn.
Shortly, a young round-faced woman made her way to them, carrying two bowls on a tray.
"Banosh," the waitress said, putting spoons on the embroidered tablecloth. A few minutes later she returned with two cups of a beverage that smelled like dried fruit.
"Alcohol?" he asked, pointing at the liquid, to which the woman giggled and shook her head.
"Alcohol ein gulden..." she went silent for a moment, trying to remember the word and then showed four fingers. "Ein gulden sorok krajcar."
"Fucking robbers."
The waitress laughed even more, as Allen tried to tell her some of the words for "Thank you" he had learned.
"Гарне хлопчисько," she said and ruffled through boy's hair.
The dish tasted really good: a corn porridge mixed with cheese, sour cream and pork rind. Warm, filling, high in calories — exactly what one needed after a difficult day of travel.
The men sang something in the language neither of them understood.
***
Allen did another push-up. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead.
"Capital of India."
"Calcutta."
"Capital of the Dutch East Indies."
"Uh... Batavia?"
"And which island is that?"
"Huh? But you didn't tell me anything about memorizing islands..."
"Java, you idiot apprentice. An exorcist always needs to be one, no, two steps ahead. Ten more laps around the neighborhood after you finish with this set. Go!"
"Spierdalaj," the kid hissed in return.
"What? Speak up, brat."
"The, uh, 'go fuck yourself'. You mentioned it'd be useful."
"Atta boy. Five more laps for speaking out against your master."
***
The port city on the shore of the Black Sea was loud, bustling with life, trade and dozens of different languages. Bright sun hang above, not yet strong enough to fully melt the dirty snow and slush under their feet.
Turning to the main waterfront street, Cross looked around, trying to see anything through the crowds of people.
"Master, I think it's that one," Allen set down the suitcases he was carrying to point to a storefront with Restaurant written on it.
"You sure it's the right place?"
"Yellow building, tall windows, vines on the wall. That checks out."
A woman in an exquisite hat waved her hand to get their attention. For the first time in a while, an informant that actually spoke English.
"That good-for-nothing brat is my apprentice, Allen."
"Pleasure to meet you, miss."
"Maria. I'll be your host for the mission."
"How's the city treating you so far?" the woman asked, fixing her hat.
"Master made me run up and down those ridiculously long stairs until I almost passed out... Of course, I was carrying all of our luggage."
Maria smiled:
"Ah, the Boulevard Stairs? Those have exactly 200 steps, pretty high up. The view of the sea from the very top is worth it, though."
"Would you like something to eat? I'm sure the journey has been long and tiring."
Allen's face immediately lit up.
"Let me explain the situation in detail, then..."
***
The makeshift raft was stuck in the middle of the sea, miles away from the coast. Rhythmically swaying up and down, carried by the waves.
Allen clenched Timcampy close. He looked more like a wet kitten than a human boy.
Cross took a cigarette out of the pack in his pocket. The flint and steel refused to produce a spark, no matter how many times he hit them together.
"Don't be scared, brat, someone will definitely notice our absence in the morning. The hard part is done, we've defeated the akuma terrorizing the locals."
"I don't wanna die in the same boat as you!"
He lit a cigarette with a sigh.
"If you scream this loudly, seagulls will notice and come over to take a shit. Or worse, they'll pick your scrawny ass up and carry you away."
This didn't lighten the mood.
"Alright, alright. How about a fairy tale or whatever to keep you entertained?"
Cross pointed the smoldering tip at the sky.
"See that dipper-shaped constellation right here? That's Ursa Major. According to a legend, some ancient god turned his mistress into a bear to save her from his wife's revenge."
"Women are scary..."
"Damn right. And now time for a trick. Connect the two stars of the dipper's rightmost side in your mind, and then add this distance to it about five more times."
Allen hummed approvingly.
"This is how you find Polaris. It always points to the North, so now you'll never get lost without a compass."
"I see..." the kid yawned and rubbed his eyes.
"Now, sleep. I'll keep watch."
"What if there's another akuma? Only I can see them."
"In that case, I'll wake you up immediately, stupid apprentice."
He covered the kid with his coat and flicked out the cigarette.
"Promise you won't get turned into a constellation... The Big Jerk in the night sky..." he murmured.
"Shut up already."
Now they only had to wait.