93 Recomposing (2/2)

Lucien was quite surprised, and he was touched, ”Thank you so much, John. What you just said means a lot to me.”

When John was about to go back to ask for a longer leave from his duty, Lucien stopped him.

”Wait, John. Here’s twenty grams of Moonlight Rose dust.” Lucien pulled out the small black bag and handed it over to his friend.

John had heard just now where did the Moonlight Rose come from. After more than ten seconds, he firmly took the small bag from Lucien’s hand.

”Thank you, Lucien. I’ll awake my Blessing. Only this way I can protect my family and friends,” said John seriously.

”No rush. Follow Lord Venn’s instruction and take your time.” Lucien nodded, ”Also, can you keep this a secret? After all, I lied to the princess about how I got these roses.”

”You know me, Lucien. I’m more reliable than a dead man.” John patted his friend on the shoulder and promised seriously.

...

The arrival of the House Hayne’s coach caused a stir in Aderon, the poorest district in the whole city. Although most of them could not name all the coat of arms of the big families in Aalto, they still registered in mind those of the few most powerful noble families.

Joel, Alisa and Iven had been sent back home by the Church. The pastors did not find much valuable information with them.

Seeing John and Lucien getting off the coach, Iven suddenly burst out crying, as if the little boy was trying to wash away all the horrible memories with his tears.

John gently patted Iven’s head and gave him a firm hug, ”It’s okay, now, Iven. You’re already a grown-up man and you did a great job. God bless us.”

Lucien hugged Joel and Alisa. His apology, worry and joy were all in this big hug.

”It’s not your fault, Lucien.” Joel and Alisa comforted him, ”And you see… we’re fine now.”

As the hostages of the vicious heretics, they did not expect that they could survive in the end. When they were saved, they were so grateful to the God of Truth that now they became even more understanding and tolerant. After all, nothing else really mattered when facing death.

Then Alisa and Joel told Lucien what the Church and the intelligence department of the duchy questioned them. The thing that concerned the pastors and the intelligence the most was why Alisa and Joel passed out outside of the cell, but were found by the knight inside of the cell later.

As the great thunder caused by lady Camil’s power knocked them out instantly, no hostages present could provide any valuable information. In the end, the people from the Church and the intelligence department were guessing that it was probably because the heretics first locked the hostages back in case they would escape, and later on they did not have enough time to come back and kill them all.

”We got really lucky there. Thank God!” Drying her eyes, Alisa was telling Lucien the story.

At this time, there came a knock on the door.

It was Corella and a church guard that Lucien did not know.

Lucien was a bit more relieved seeing that the Church only sent a knight squire there, which meant he was not really suspicious to the Church.

After a short and regular investigation, Corella stood up and thanked Lucien on behalf of the Church, ”The bishop appreciated what you did. Without your information, we would have suffered a greater loss.”

Lucien’s musician identity made it almost impossible for the Church to draw a link between Professor and the princess’ personal consultant. However, there were still some coincidences which involved Lucien that they were unable to explain right now.

...

Lucien finally came back to his normal life, busy with studying music and magic. He also asked Joel and his family to move into his new house temporarily, since Gesu was way safer than Aderon.

In these days, Lucien did not take even a single glance at the broken wall where he usually left secret messages to communicate with the apprentices. To be prudent, he also left aside his plan of destroying his magic lab for the time being.

This day Victor started to teach them ”canon”, a contrapuntal compositional technique that employed a melody with imitations of it played after a given duration.

With just a few rules, even beginners could achieve much with canon.

”Actually, you’ve subconsciously employed cannon in your Symphony of Fate, Lucien,” commented Victor. ”It looks like you learned a lot in the library of the association.”

”Um… yes, I guess. Thank you, Mr. Victor,” answered Lucien, a bit absent-minded.

His mind was occupied by the thought that he needed to come up with enough music works for holding a concert to meet Rhine’s requirement. Eighty years ago, someone produced a piece of music work which was very similar to the well-known Pachelbel's Canon, or Canon and Gigue in D, in his original world. However, he could still rewrite Pachelbel’s Canon into a piece of piano concerto.

Although he still needed some more ”original” pieces of music for a personal concert, recomposing was definitely the best time-saving way for Lucien to have his repertoire as soon as possible.