Chapter 24 – But of Course. I Am a Duke’s Daughter, After All.
The docks of relay station Cranea were always wrapped in the sound of scraping metal and the smell of burning oil.
Letaria had secured Arden in the designated hangar and was just beginning to breathe when her bracelet buzzed.
"Letaria, can you hear me?"
Milea Ichinose. Obviously.
"...Milea. What is it--I am about to go and inspect this unfamiliar territory."
"I know. That's why I'm telling you now: don't walk around the station in your pilot suit. It restricts movement and draws attention. ...Find a rental locker first, change into civilian clothes. Understood?"
On the screen, Milea delivered her instructions in an efficient tone that left no room for objection.
"Change... yes, I suppose I was wearing my own clothes back in Seldia..."
"Exactly. Same principle applies here. You follow?"
".... Ohohohoho! I am not a child in need of instructions! ...Very well, fine."
A slight pout--but she followed the directions without further argument. Milea had apparently arranged a rental space already, somehow. Letaria stowed the Noble Lotus and changed into the ordinary clothes she had come to wear in daily life here.
"Now--the inspection begins in earnest!"
◆◆◆
Letaria passed through the gate into Cranea's commercial district--and stopped.
Where Seldia was a managed garden, designed around function and cleanliness, Cranea was something else entirely. A crucible where every appetite and ambition poured in from across the sector and boiled together.
"My... what a racket."
Cranea sat at the crossroads of everything. Cargo and people flowed in from every station in the region without pause. Overhead, massive magnetic rail containers moved in an endless stream; in the corridors, multi-limbed work Makinas threw off sparks as they repaired pipework. Most of the shops lining the passages were junk dealers in Makina parts--rusted gears, dimming sensor units, all of it piled without ceremony into mountains and offered for sale.
"These lumps of iron become the parts of something that moves with such elegance? Remarkable..."
Letaria moved through the crowd with open curiosity, watching the people around her.
Broad-shouldered mercenaries. Mechanics with oil-soaked towels slung around their necks. Travelers whose destinations were anyone's guess.
In the center of the station's main plaza, she noticed Cranea's famous landmark: the Stargazer Fountain. Not water--gravity-controlled luminous sand, shaped and held aloft in the form of the current celestial map.
"...There are places with a little poetry to them, at least."
She was walking on, pleasantly surprised, when her appearance became a problem. In a district full of rough sorts, beauty like hers was simply too conspicuous.
"Hey there, miss. Haven't seen you around before."
A man stepped directly into her path.
Loud yellow jacket. The look he gave her was slow and appraising, and he smiled.
"How'd you like to work at my place? A gem like you'd have customers lining up."
"...Who are you? I am in the middle of an inspection. Kindly step aside."
Letaria was crisp and direct. The man was not discouraged. "Come on, don't be like that," he said, and moved closer.
He reached for her arm.
"--If you would please stop. The lady appears to be uncomfortable."
A calm voice, measured and unhurried.
A woman appeared between Letaria and the man as smoothly as if she had simply always been standing there.
Emerald-green hair, glossy and cut to a graceful semi-length. Gentle eyes. A soft smile.
She took the man's outstretched arm--not sharply, not aggressively, but with the firm quiet of someone dealing with a badly-behaved child--and redirected it away.
"Come off it, lady, this is none of your--"
"She seems to be in some discomfort. Getting quite this close to someone you've never met--that's not really done, is it?"
The woman was in ordinary clothes--a subdued shirt, clean trousers, nothing to distinguish her from any other citizen--and apparently deciding that drawing a crowd was in no one's interest, the man ultimately chose to leave.
Letaria let out a breath and turned to the woman.
"You have my thanks. I am grateful."
"Not at all--it was simply the right thing to do. ...A place like this is a little too loud for someone like you to walk through alone."
The woman smiled gently. There was something strikingly composed about the way she carried herself--and Letaria felt an odd, instinctive recognition she couldn't quite name.
"I am Letaria Adeniam. And your name?"
"Priscilla. Priscilla Halevy. ...You look as though you could use a moment to sit down. If you're amenable--I know a quieter place nearby. Would you join me?"
Under normal circumstances, Letaria did not take up invitations from strangers. But something in Priscilla's bearing--a kind of quiet integrity--had already unknotted her wariness.
"...Very well. As it happens, I was intending to sample the local cuisine."
◆◆◆
The place Priscilla led her to was a small café terrace set apart from the market noise--unhurried, easy to breathe in.
What was served: a sandwich made with actual vegetables, not synthetic, and a cup of fragrant tea.
Priscilla sat across from her and watched quietly--until a moment when something shifted in her expression, very slightly. A flicker of surprise.
Letaria's table manners.
The way she held her cup. The straightness of her spine. The precise, habitual movement of her fingers to the napkin between each sip. In a station at the edge of this galaxy, such things were simply not seen. This was aristocratic etiquette--the real kind, not the performed kind.
"...Letaria-san. Forgive me for asking--but where are you from?"
"Where I am from... well..."
She could hardly say another world. She hadn't told even Milea and the others the full truth of it.
Priscilla seemed to read the hesitation.
"I'm sorry--that was too direct. I only meant--the way you carry yourself is not something that comes with time or training. You were very... carefully raised."
Letaria received the observation with perfect composure and took a measured sip of tea.
"But of course. I am a duke's daughter, after all."
She would keep her world a secret--but her rank, apparently, was non-negotiable.
"...A duke's... daughter?"
Priscilla blinked and held still for a moment.
In this era of space travel, the title of "duke" was an antique--something preserved only in a handful of particular privileged classes. For a girl to claim it so naturally, in the middle of a space station café, was unusual by any measure. Any ordinary observer might have written it off as eccentricity.
But there was a weight to Letaria's bearing that made a lie feel impossible. Priscilla studied her--quietly, as if gauging where truth ended and fiction began.
"You are a fascinating person, Letaria-san. I am glad to have met you."
"As am I, Priscilla-san."
Small talk. Inconsequential, on the surface.
But in the brief time that passed, something took quiet root between the two of them.
As the station's simulated evening light came on and the artificial dusk settled across the corridors, they said their farewells outside the café.
"Today was a pleasure, Priscilla-san. ...Meeting someone like you--I count it as good fortune."
"Fufu. Likewise. I hope we cross paths again somewhere."
Priscilla bowed with care and slipped away into the crowd.
Left alone, Letaria watched the lights of the vast station from where she stood, skirt swaying in the recycled air.
A small premonition settled over her: Milea's next check-in was probably overdue.