"Old man! Old man!"
Cricket's voice reached the hilltop before he did, which was saying something given how far away he had started shouting. He appeared at the crest of the hill a minute later, gasping, waving a newspaper above his head with both hands, and moving at the unsteady pace of someone who had run the entire way up without stopping and was now paying for that decision in real time.
Lucien and Cael paused the sword session and watched him arrive.
Cricket bent over with his hands on his knees for a moment, chest heaving, then straightened and thrust the newspaper toward Cael.
"They captured him," he managed between breaths. "The Marines captured the Pirate King. Marine Hero Garp did it. They fought for days, a whole week apparently, and Garp came out on top." He swallowed. "They announced it this morning. Gol D. Roger is going to be executed in Loguetown. This month."
Cael took the paper without urgency and read it in silence. His expression did not change.
Lucien looked over his shoulder at the headline, then at Cael's face, watching for something. There was nothing to find. The old man read the article to its end, folded the paper in half, and set it on the ground beside his feet.
Cricket, still catching his breath, looked between the two of them and settled on Cael. "You know Garp, don't you. You fought alongside him once. Is he really strong enough to take down the strongest man on the planet?"
Cael looked at the two of them staring at him and was quiet for a moment.
"Garp is strong," he said. "But do not believe everything a newspaper tells you. They can be wrong, and they can be untruthful, sometimes deliberately." He looked at Cricket. "Go home. Your mother will be looking for you."
Cricket recognised the tone, which was the tone of a man who had decided the conversation was finished. He looked at Lucien, got nothing useful back, and started back down the hill with a wave that suggested he was not entirely satisfied with how this had gone.
Cael picked up his sword. "Stance."
Lucien reset his position and began swinging, the movement coming from muscle memory now rather than conscious effort. Six months on this hill had done that much at least. The corrections had stopped coming as frequently, which he had learned to read as progress rather than indifference.
But his thoughts were elsewhere entirely.
Cael's words sat awkwardly against the headline. Do not believe everything a newspaper tells you. It was a simple enough warning on the surface. But Cael had looked at that article with the particular expression of a man reading something he already knew parts of, and the warning had come specifically in response to a question about whether Garp was strong enough to defeat Roger.
Which meant one of two things. Either Roger had not been captured the way the article described, some larger Marine operation rather than Garp alone. Or Garp had not won at all, and Roger had gone with them willingly, which raised a different set of questions entirely.
He swung the sword again, corrected his elbow without being told, and kept thinking.
He was still thinking about it at dinner, and at some point between eating and clearing the plates, he decided that thinking about it in silence was less efficient than asking directly.
Cael was difficult to read but he was not dishonest, and the warning about the newspaper had been offered voluntarily rather than withheld, which suggested the old man was not entirely opposed to him knowing something.
Lucien finished the dishes and came back outside. Cael was sitting in his chair facing the open sky, which was unusual. Most evenings he was already in the back room by this hour. Lucien sat beside him and looked up at the stars for a moment before speaking.
"Do you think Garp is not strong enough to have defeated the Pirate King?"
Cael was quiet for a while, long enough that Lucien thought the question might go unanswered. Then the old man said, "If Roger truly became Pirate King, it means he surpassed everyone. Garp is strong. Probably stronger than almost anyone else in the Marines, with one or two exceptions. But he is not strong enough to defeat Roger. Even if the entire Marine force mobilised together, Roger would still be capable of breaking through the encirclement and escaping."
Lucien looked at him. "Then he was not caught."
"No, he was caught. The Marines are not foolish enough to announce it everywhere if they did not have him secured." Cael took a slow drink. "They have him. They simply did not take him."
The distinction sat in the air for a moment.
"He surrendered?" Lucien asked in doubt and disbelief, as that seemed the only conclusion. It came out quietly, almost to himself, the words arriving slightly ahead of his understanding of them. "The Pirate King just simply surrendered. Walked in and let them take him." He stared at the stars. "That is either the strangest thing I have ever heard or the most calculated."
Cael said nothing. He looked at the sky with the expression he used when something had been said correctly and did not require his input.
Lucien kept thinking it through. Roger had the strength to escape. That had just been established plainly by a man who had fought alongside him and had no reason to flatter anyone. If the Marines could not have taken him by force, then the only way they had him was because he had allowed it. Which meant the execution in Loguetown was not something being done to Roger. It was something Roger had decided.
"Why would the strongest man in the world choose to be executed?" Lucien said.
"That," Cael said, setting his cup down, "is the only interesting question." He stood and moved toward the door. "Think about it. You will not find the answer tonight, but think about it." He paused in the doorway. "We leave for Loguetown in ten days. This is probably the last time you see the Pirate King live. I want your footwork clean before we go."
The door closed.
Lucien stayed outside for a long time after that, looking at the stars and thinking about a man who had conquered the entire world and then walked into a Marine prison of his own choosing. He could not find the logic in it yet. But the fact that he could not find it was, for the first time in a while, genuinely interesting.
He opened the notebook and wrote one line.
Why does a man choose the ending.