freeallnovels Chapter 28 - The real Crimson Lady
Chapter 28 - The real Crimson Lady
Stepping out onto the street, Ardi winced. It was a pain of two parts: one was a sharp throb in his shoulder and chest; the other was a cloying stench that would creep under the skin and make a home there. One grew accustomed to the suffocating smog of the Tendari district very quickly, but it was just as easy to grow unaccustomed to it in the “fresher” parts of the Metropolis. It was almost sinfully easy to forget it after shaking out your clothes and splashing your face, and preferably not with water as gray as what flowed here.“I think Inga already knows we’ve arrived,” Milar said, clicking his saber into place on his belt. The new weapon was an interesting invention of Dagdag’s, capable of sealing a small amount of Ley energy from an accumulator within the contour of a stationary seal. He had likely been inspired by Ardan’s reports on his battle with the Squire from Selkado.
“What makes you so sure?”
Instead of answering him, Milar hooked a thumb over his shoulder. Ardi turned and noticed a small detail, one likely invisible to the common man. On the third floor of the tenement building across from the “bar,” a lone houseplant was drooping sorrowfully on the sill of a small kitchen window.
What was so unusual about a tenant’s desire to brighten their dreary life?
Only the fact that flowers did not take root in Tendari. You couldn’t find so much as a flowerbed in the district’s rare few courtyards and gardens. They withered faster than the sunrises and sunsets that could never pierce the impenetrable shell of factory smog.
“A signal,” Ardi guessed.
“We can still try,” Milar suggested.
Together, they walked to the iron door, approaching a short, newly-painted staircase that descended below the level of the road.
Remembering precisely how Arkar had knocked, Ardi repeated the signal. But this time, no one slid back the peephole cover. The other side of the twelve-millimeter sheet of steel offered no response except for the hollow echo of silence.
“What do you think?” Milar asked, snuffing out his cigarette on the heel of his state-issued shoe and tossing the butt into his other hand, which was already holding a collection of its smoldering twins.
Ardi had never understood why people in the Metropolis smoked so much. They did so even more than cowboys, and they were often puffing on pipes and cigars every time they stopped to rest or eat. Perhaps it was similar to what fish did with their special bladders. Maybe the city dwellers filled their own lungs with tobacco in order to equalize the level of foul air on both the outside and inside.
Ardi took a short breath, exhaled, and for a fleeting moment, he peeked beneath the illusory veil behind which reality hid the opposite side of their world.
He did so just for a brief instant. After all, he wanted to avoid being blinded by the mad shine of hundreds of Ley-cables, generators and mechanisms.
“It’s a stationary Blue Star shield,” Ardi delivered his verdict. “Most likely hooked up to a blue generator of the same make. It’s a homemade modification of a standard residential unit, the forty-ray kind. They install them in basements to push water through the heating pipes. Here, though, they’ve installed a donor combustion chamber and-”
“And that’s not at all what I meant,” Milar said exasperatedly. “But my thanks to you for the brief tour of the world of Ley-mechanics, Magister.”
Ardi took a step back, then climbed the stairs all the way back to the road. Milar hurried after him and, just as he had the previous evening, stood at his back, drawing his saber and revolver as he did so.
“Can you handle this, Magister?” He asked, clearly guessing what Ardi intended to do.
“Whoever gets hurt…”
“Is a Fatian,” Milar chuckled and cocked the hammer of his revolver.
As Ardi opened his grimoire, his gaze brushed over the seal for the There was no point in memorizing this seal, and as for inscribing it on his staff… his faithful old friend remained virginally clean. Perhaps when Ardi reached the domain of three-Star spells…
The young man struck his staff against the ground. A seal flared to life beneath his feet, and from his staff’s head, a misty hand slowly, unhurriedly, extended. A barely-visible, ghostly thread detached from it, disappearing somewhere around the second floor of the Crimson Lady’s building.
A moment passed, then another, and then the hand was scurrying across the grimoire’s page, leaving behind smoky records of the brothel’s stationary shield parameters and structure.
It wasn’t a terrible construction, but it was certainly not the work of a Magister. Not even a graduate of the Grand University. It was more like the work of someone in their final years at a non-specialized university. Possibly even one from the capital.
In any case, judging by what Ardi could see before him, Professor Talis an Manish would not have approved of this creation, if only because of the categorically absurd errors in the mathematical constructions of the Ley-function graphs for the linked contours and arrays in the seal. Perhaps such topics were covered in the third year at the Grand, and not… well, it didn’t matter.
“I’m afraid they won’t be greeting us with bouquets of flowers in there,” Milar sighed. “Can you hurry it up?”
“No,” Ardi replied curtly.
After spending another half a minute analyzing the acquired parameters and preparing a key for them, Ardi opened his grimoire to his… examination paper, the one he had submitted to Professor Convel a couple of months ago.
“I’m going to break the shield now, then I’ll open the door.”
“Open the door?” The captain’s gaze shifted to the ponderous sheet of steel held in place by massive, square brackets. “Are you sure? A couple of grenades wouldn’t be enough for that.”
“In theory.”
Milar swore.
“Alright… but they might start shooting at us.”
“I know.”
And then Ardi struck his staff against the ground several times. The first seal summoned the silhouette of a small mouse, which darted nimbly into the translucent barrier that had flared up around the building. It resembled satin fabric billowing in the wind, and the persistent and very brazen mouse quite deftly gnawed a hole exactly the size of the door through it.
The next seal painted a small patch of asphalt with a pattern of serpentine frost. Ardi had had to modify the on the fly, adding the part of the array for the future that was based on the recursion of spatial elasticity, changing the projectile’s properties of mass and volume.
Professor Convel certainly would not have approved of the formless polyhedron (by technical standards of quality, spells were supposed to have a shape, as this was considered the mark of a “professional engineer”) that weighed nearly forty kilograms but had a volume of only thirty cubic centimeters.
Only instead of instantly launching from his staff’s tip, this icy “something” began to tremble feverishly. It vibrated, gradually emitting a deeper and louder hum. The space around the polyhedron shimmered, and when its roar began to crack the windows in the neighboring houses, Ardi allowed the spell to break free.
Accelerated to an incredible speed, with a clap that nearly threw Milar and Ard several steps back, it slammed into the brothel’s steel door and… folded it around itself like a sheet of cheap paper, tearing out chunks of brickwork with a raw, unfettered violence, completely collapsing the entrance arch before it flew into the vestibule. Several bouncers armed with revolvers, likely thanks to instinct and a keen sense of danger (), had hidden behind a gun safe, and that alone saved their lives.
The spell, not even noticing the resistance, and now clad in the mangled sheet of metal, flew into the next barrier, which met the same fate. A second crumpled sheet of metal, a partially-collapsed ceiling, and a few shattered floors and walls later, the spell was hurtling down a short corridor. Then it blew out the last door. Only then, unable to withstand the strain, did the icy polyhedron burst into a shower of snowy needles. The three iron doors, after splintering the parquet, tearing up the concrete floor, crushing various tables, and forcing unsuspecting patrons and workers alike to scatter and leap aside with panicked screams, slid across the floor a good dozen meters and slammed into the staircase, embedding themselves at least twenty centimeters into the concrete.
Finally, after the crash and roar that would likely soon draw half the street to this area (), a silence descended. People, whether they were men holding onto their hats or, in the case of the workers, covering places of “possible interest,” peeked out from their hiding spots and from behind comrades… who had been used as those very same hiding spots.
Shards of brick fell from the ceiling, torn Ley-wiring sparked, and jets of water from the plumbing shot out from somewhere.
“What… what have you done?” Milar drawled, simultaneously shocked and irritated.
“Their doors were hollow. Just empty boxes,” Ardi exhaled wearily, the transparent discs of already swirling around him. “I thought it was all solid.”
Unlike the previous evening, there was no point in controlling them himself today—Ardi wouldn’t have been able to react to a bullet anyway, so he was using a modification where the discs reacted independently to the speed and density of any object crossing their perimeter.
“Their doors were hollow… He thought…” Milar grumbled, nudging Ardi in the back to finally bring him to his senses. “You’ll be filling out the paperwork yourself.”
“But-”
“You. Will. Fill. Out. The. Paperwork. Yourself,” Milar repeated with an emphasis that tolerated no argument. “Let’s go. We didn’t tear down half their building for nothing.”
Ardi, shaking his head sadly, walked forward to join his partner. What was the point of panicking now, when what was done couldn’t be undone?
Descending the staircase, which was now adorned with several deep cracks, they entered a sort of foyer, where several revolvers were already staring at them insistently.
The bouncers, the same ones who had met him and Arkar half a year ago, were trembling slightly, but they didn’t take their fingers off the triggers.
“That’s useless, you know,” Ardi said, spreading his hands out.
Someone didn’t believe him. A shot rang out, and as that happened, one of the spell’s discs instantly “dove” in front of the bullet. Both shattered into fine dust, and Milar, without a moment’s hesitation, fired as well. He wasn’t as accurate as Alexander, so he couldn’t shoot a revolver out of someone’s hand. But he was excellent at hitting kneecaps, a fact he often reminded everyone of.
The bouncer dropped his weapon, clutched his bleeding leg, and howled like a wounded beast.
“You’d better call your own sawbones,” Milar recommended, not lowering his barrel. “And get Inga. Tell her the Second Chancery has some questions for her.”
Two of the bouncers stayed with the wounded man, while the fourth bolted into the main hall. Skirting the stone protrusions of the rubble and leaping over severed cables and broken pipes, he rushed toward the staircase.
The patrons, upon seeing Milar’s uniform and the cloak on Ardi’s shoulders, tried to disappear into the shadows. They pressed themselves into corners, hid behind debris and tables, and one even dove like a swallow behind the bar, where the bartender himself and several of the working girls were already hiding.
“Arkar won’t be happy that I broke his favorite establishment,” Ardi lamented, calmly walking along the “trench” he himself had plowed.
“If I were you, partner, I’d be more worried that will be displeased,” Milar reasonably reminded him.
They walked into the main room, where they brushed brick dust and metal shavings off a couple of chairs, set up a table, and sat down. They found themselves surrounded by the shattered remnants of a once-great room, frightened people, and fountains of clean and not-so-clean water gushing somewhere in the distance.
The captain, taking off his hat, looked around.
“On the other hand, I can’t help but note that I’m beginning to see the advantages of having a mage in our friendly department.”
“Put your hat on.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Arkar warned me that the Crimson Lady has a thing about them.”
Milar turned sharply toward Ardi and threw up his hands. Considering the fact that he was still clutching a revolver in his left mitt, the gesture made those behind the captain gasp and duck their heads.
“Magister, do you honestly think that my hat is what’s going to bother her right now, and not…” He swept his gaze across the hall. “…not all of this.”
Ardi only sighed bitterly. Milar nevertheless put his hat back on. Then he took out a cigarette, lit it, and, picking up a bottle from the floor, knocked off the neck with the butt of his gun and sniffed.
“A Telkarts counterfeit,” the captain pronounced his verdict and poured the contents out onto the floor.
Ardi had already tested these arrays and contours, which he had named in other spells, so he knew what was supposed to happen. But he could never have imagined that a person like the Crimson Lady would install a mere decoy instead of a fully-fledged armored door…
For a few very long seconds filled with anxious sighs and the echoes of the half-demolished building, he and the captain sat alone. One smoked, while the other contemplated how he could further refine his ideas so they might have a chance to prove themselves in a more… delicate application.
Finally, Inga appeared on the balcony by the staircase. She was a tall, stately woman of middle age, whose wild hairstyle and almost theatrical makeup () made her look nearly fifteen years younger, began to descend the steps. This time, she wore a shimmering, emerald dress with a slit so high up the leg it almost completely bared her thigh. Around her neck rested a necklace of dark agates, each the size of a quail’s egg.
She walked through the half-ruined main room with the air of, if not an Empress-Consort, then certainly someone just as important and powerful. The unfolding events seemed not to concern her in the slightest. She maintained a straight, proud posture and, without any fear or doubt, looked directly at the table of the two visitors.
She was like the queen of a half-ruined kingdom, but one who had no intention of surrendering the keys to her capital.
An astonishing display of composure and self-control.
Gracefully seating herself on a chair prepared for her in advance, she unfastened her clutch bag, which matched her dress, took out a cigarette case, and, pulling out a long, thin cigarette, looked expectantly at Milar. He, with a crooked smile full of approval and surprise at such audacity, flicked his lighter and lit it for her.
Inga took a drag, exhaled a cloud of smoke, and, crossing her arms under her rather expressive chest, simply said:
“I’m listening.”
“We are interested in a girl named Astasya,” Milar began, but Inga, with a theatrical and somewhat demonstrative air, turned to Ardi.
“I thought your face looked familiar, Mr. Mage,” she said, flicking ash from her cigarette directly onto the floor. “And now I recall seeing you before, not long ago, in Arkar’s company. How surprising. Either the Overseer of the Orcish Jackets is collaborating with the Black House, or the Black House has a rather strange way of choosing its mage operatives. Especially ones so young.”
Ardi said nothing and tried not to meet Inga’s eyes. She clearly remembered everything. And she knew everything. And she was wearing that necklace not just for show, but because next to it, Bagdbag’s protective artifact looked like a child’s art project. And not a very skillful one at that.
The Crimson Lady just snorted and turned back to Milar.
“If you, Mr…”
“Captain Pnev,” Milar introduced himself, pulling out and displaying his identification. “Investigator, First Rank.”
“Well then, Mr. Captain, if you had an interest in one of my employees, you shouldn’t have shown it so…” Inga, shaking her mane of hair, swept her gaze over the half-ruined brothel. “…openly. You could have just knocked.”
“We did knock.”
“And?”
“No one answered,” Milar returned the Crimson Lady’s haughty, superior smirk. “To be honest, I wanted to level your whole fleabag den, but my partner, in honor of how you sold out one of the other criminal groups for a few exes six months ago, decided to settle for just your entrance.”
Milar was bluffing, of course. However, he was doing it so skillfully that it would be better not to sit down at a table with him for a game of Olikzasian Sevens. He mixed truth with half-truth almost as artfully as Skusty.
The Crimson Lady, by selling Arkar information on the whereabouts of the kidnapped Lord Boris Fahtov, had indeed violated her contract with those who had bought her patronage. According to the unwritten rules of the Six, it was a major offense. You couldn’t play for two sides at once (). The late Andrew was a poignant example of that.
“Fair enough,” the Crimson Lady nodded, though her voice made it clear she was restraining herself from… doing something foolish. “I haven’t seen Astasya in almost three weeks.”
Milar, as always, took out his notebook and made a few notes.
“Did she have regular clients? Did she work on the side? Maybe she had some kind of health problems?”
Inga laughed. It was a ringing, sharp laugh. Like a bright saber striking a sheet of iron.
“My dear captain, I make sure the girls are clean everywhere, and that no one’s nose, or perhaps something lower that you dear men usually think with, falls off after them,” she took another drag and, as if by chance, blew a cloud of smoke into the face of a coughing Ardi. Yes, it seemed like he and the Crimson Lady would now have a complicated relationship… “As for what they do in their free time and-”
Milar, cocking the hammer, pressed his revolver to the Crimson Lady’s forehead. A rustle was heard from the bar, the staircase, and the “entrance,” and the barrels of revolvers and even a few army rifles glinted as they were raised parallel to the floor. However, just as Ardi lifted his staff from the floor, Inga, still not losing her composure, still looking Milar straight in the eye with the same haughty expression, elegantly waved her hand, and her “employees” lowered their weapons.
“Children have disappeared, you old whore,” Milar spat out each word with pure loathing. “Some of them are dead. Some were tortured. We failed to save one of them ourselves. His body is being sliced into ribbons back at the Black House right now, just to find out something, anything. And I give you my word as an officer, Inga, that if you don’t stop playing the femme fatale, you’ll be the next one they slice up. And your people. And everyone I deem even remotely involved in these deaths.”
Milar forcefully pushed the revolver forward, imprinting a red circle on Inga’s skin through her complex makeup.
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“And don’t look at me like that,” Milar snatched the cigarette from the Crimson Lady’s lips and flung it aside. “Don’t forget your place. You’re a criminal. A madam in a den of vice. And we are the Second Chancery. And all of you here,” Milar swept his eyes over the hall and roared, “All of you! You are breathing because we have more important business right now.”
“You-” Inga had barely begun to hiss.
Her words were drowned out by the revolver shot. She let out a short, thin, muffled cry. The Crimson Lady clutched her exposed thigh, from which a trickle of blood had begun to run. This time, the sounds of cocked hammers could be heard, and Ardan was realizing that he would have to use all his accumulators, but Inga, clenching her teeth, her jaw muscles working through the pain and blood, cried out:
“No!”
“The second shot won’t be going into flesh,” Milar cocked the hammer again, and as far as Ardi knew his partner, he was playing his hand openly now… “The next time you forget your place, I’ll shoot you in the knee. Then the shoulder. I’ll shoot off your arm, for all the demons’ sakes. And after that, if I have even the slightest doubt about the truth of your heartfelt confession, we’ll take a trip to the Black House.”
Inga hissed and clutched her thigh, from which hot, thick blood still streamed. Milar hadn’t hit any arteries or bones, so the wound wasn’t too serious, but if not bandaged and treated promptly, there could still be complications.
“Look at me!” Milar barked in a commanding tone.
Inga raised her gaze, which was full of hatred and… fear. A deep-seated, old fear she wished she could forget, but something had reminded her of it. It had come, kicking open a door she’d thought was secure, and loudly announced that all her previous finery and delusions were nothing more than a masquerade she had been allowed to entertain herself with.
And Inga was not afraid of men specifically. Nor of Milar and Ard.
She was afraid of their black clothes and the silver crest on their belt buckles.
But Ardi didn’t blame her.
Sometimes, he himself forgot he served.
“I don’t… let anyone work… off the books,” the Crimson Lady said, still trying to maintain a brave face in a losing game, trying not to let the fear seep into her words. Even so, her voice still trembled. “Astasya broke… that rule.”
“What did you do to her?”
“I gave her… to the Night Folk,” Inga squeezed out. “They’re not welcome… in our establishments. But… we… sometimes use… their services.”
“Do you know anything about who paid Astasya for the overtime work? Do you know anything about this Andrew she was seeing?”
“No, I-”
Milar flipped his revolver, gripping it by the barrel, and slammed the butt down hard on the fingers of Inga’s left hand, which was gripping the table. The Crimson Lady howled like a wounded doe and bit her lower lip until it bled. Her index and middle fingers, now a bloody mess, were pointing in different, unnatural directions.
“It was a vampire,” she hissed. “An old vampire. He came to her sometimes.”
“You said you don’t work with the Night Folk,” Milar flipped the gun back and pressed the muzzle to Inga’s kneecap.
“No! Don’t!” She screamed. “He’s not with the Night Folk! He’s not with them! He pays… a lot. Doesn’t hurt… the girls…”
“What else?”
“I…”
“Speak!”
“I know he lives… in the Mansionhills…” Inga hissed, her skin already turning pale as blood started to foam on her lips. “An old mansion. Deep… in Birch Grove. House… number… four… We… sometimes brought him… young ones.”
“Young ones?”
“No! No-no!” Inga shrieked, nearly choking on her own saliva, all traces of her former snobbery and arrogance vanishing at once. “All of them had papers. They were all over sixteen.”
“By how much?”
Inga fell silent.
“By how much?!” Milar raised his revolver again.
“A few weeks… a month… a little more…” Inga stammered. “By law, they were already adults. All the documents… were in order.”
“And how many of them didn’t come back? How many remained in that mansion?!”
Tears were now mixing with the blood. Empty, cold tears, devoid of empathy. The only person Inga was crying for was herself.
“I didn’t count…”
Milar swore.
“And did you know that those documents can be forged?” The captain hissed. “Do you know how much they cost to buy from the Telkarts? Do you know girls come to the capital and end up with people like you?”
Inga was silent. She knew. She knew everything.
“What, Cloak?” She suddenly jerked, spattering saliva, blood and hatred all at once. “Are you going to blame for this? Yes! Yes. Maybe some of them… were younger. But they had nothing to eat. Their families were starving… and here… they got money… A roof over their heads… safety… I gave them-”
“What? What are you trying to say? That you were them?” Milar interrupted. “You found girls in dire straits. And you convinced them that the quick and easy way was the right way. And you didn’t do it for them, but for your own profit. And power. safety, Inga. And you know what’s ironic about that?”
“N-n-no.”
“That if not for your greed, Inga… If you had continued to run your profitable little business by our unspoken rules, without touching children, none of this would have happened. You would have continued to live here, in your warm den. But now…”
Ardi heard that characteristic sound. A light whirring, the clicking of metal, and a barely-audible grinding. It was the sound of the Second Chancery’s “Derks’” engines. Ardi turned sharply toward Milar’s jacket. The chain of a signal medallion was sticking out of his right pocket.
The captain had likely activated it the moment Ardi’s spell had blown the entrance to the building apart. The sounds of a scuffle could be heard coming from the direction of the ruined archway, and then Ardi’s and Milar’s colleagues flooded in.
Wearing black leather cloaks and black hats, armed with revolvers and sabers, they indiscriminately kicked and punched people to the ground and slapped handcuffs on them.
Shouts were heard:
“Freeze!”
“In the Emperor’s name, nobody move! By the order of the Second Chancery!”
“Any attempts to escape will be met with immediate execution!”
And the weeping and pleading of frightened people followed:
“Please don’t! I’m here by accident!”
“I don’t know anything! I don’t know anything!”
“It’s my first time here! I came here out of curiosity!”
But the Cloaks didn’t care. And Ardi couldn’t condemn them. He himself had wondered if Milar was being too restrained as he’d interrogated the Crimson Lady.
Din and Alexander approached them.
“What do we do with this one?” Alexander asked in a cold tone.
Milar examined the bloodied Inga, with her crushed fingers, her face disfigured by a grimace of hatred, terror and pain.
“Bring her in for interrogation,” was all Milar said.
Ardi reacted faster than he himself had expected he could. By the time Inga had moved her jaw in an unusual way, as if trying to dislodge something from between her teeth with her tongue, the young man had already caught her gaze.
The dark agates of her necklace flared, and Ardi suddenly found himself in darkness. An impenetrable, deep darkness. One in which there were no landmarks, no outlines, not even his own self. His body disappeared, and his thoughts followed, leaving behind only a distant, deep echo. Fading… fading… and fading…
***
Din swiftly slit the Crimson Lady’s cheek with his knife, inserting the blade between her teeth, while Alexander used his fingers to pry open the former brothel owner’s mouth and pluck a crystalline shard from a false tooth.
Milar, however, never took his eyes off Ardi. As the agates in Inga’s necklace burned brighter, Ardi’s skin turned a horrifying shade of gray, and his eyes, which had rolled back to show only their whites, turned completely black.
The young man went limp and slumped over in his chair. The only thing that gave the captain hope was the fact that he was still clutching his staff.
“What did you do to him?” Alexander hissed.
Inga laughed the way only those on the chopping block could laugh. As was the way of some condemned people, she was trying, in her final moments, to wound the ones who would give the order to have her executed.
“You have… no mage anymore… Cloaks,” Inga rasped and hissed, her face contorted in a crazed, bloody smile. “He’s finished.”
“Pray,” Milar said, his tone flat and devoid of all emotion, without turning or taking his eyes off his partner. “Pray, you fool. To anyone you can. Pray that he lives.”
“And what will you-”
“Because if he doesn’t, you will die so slowly that you’ll forget you were ever alive at all,” the captain finished, and only then did realization dawn in Inga’s eyes.
The final realization that, while the Second Chancery had perhaps lost its former power and fearsome reputation over the course of the last five decades… Out there, on the granite bank of the black river, the Black House still stood. And it was still prowling somewhere in the shadows. And now, it had found her.
Inga screamed the way only those who fear something more than mere death could scream.
“Come on, Magister,” Milar squeezed out through clenched teeth. “Come on… don’t let me down… What will I tell Tess, huh? What will I tell your mother? Come on, kid. You’re Aror’s great-grandson. Come on…”
***
“Go to the oak tree, the one we sat under as I told you stories about Ectassus when you were little.”
What? A voice? Whose voice? Did a voice exist?
Yes, it seemed like it did. As did sounds. And images. And something else. Something besides the darkness.
“It remembers you from your childhood. You and our whole family.”
It was Grandfather. Grandfather. Old, frail, and stooped under the weight of the past. Forever wrapped in a patchwork quilt. He would rock in his chair on the veranda and look at the mountain peaks.
Their mountain peaks.
But who were they?
And most importantly—who was he? Who was it that was thinking all of this right now?
“I’m sure it will share… Such a staff will serve you well.”
Share? Share what? Ah, yes. The old oak tree near their house on the bend of the mountain stream. Grandfather had often told him stories under it. And legends. Sometimes they’d been funny, sometimes they’d been sad, but they’d always been incredibly interesting. Stories of wise wizards. Valiant knights. Brave heroes. Cunning villains. Mighty dragons. And of something he didn’t understand or know back then.
Love.
Such a simple word.
Such a complex word.
Words… thoughts… images…
“And it will always remind you of home.”
And like a rushing torrent, the memories of the past flooded into the darkness. They stitched him arms from the Alcade winds; forged him legs from the endless expanses of the foothill steppes; molded his torso from the clay of the capital’s smog, and kindled the flame of his heart with the smiles of his mother, his brother, his father, his grandfather, Tess, Kelly, Kena, his friends from the forest, Milar, Boris and Elena, and all those whose images and memories only fanned that flame.
A flame in whose roar he heard his own name.
Ardan.
Ardan Egobar.
That was his name!
Ard opened his eyes and saw… a room. It was all covered in a dark haze. While he had managed to throw off the shackles of the necklace artifact that had clearly been created by an Aean’Hane—his staff had likely helped him a great deal—it could still conceal Inga’s memories and thoughts from him under a secure and nigh-impenetrable veil.
Ardan knew that if he tried to penetrate it, neither his staff nor a miracle would help him. He was still an ordinary Speaker, a Green Star Mage, and not of the caliber required to stand against
But still, Ard heard something.
Voices.
“This will be expensive,” a high, soft, and at the same time haughty voice declared. It belonged to the Crimson Lady.
“Exes are not a problem, Inga.”
“Fifteen hundred.”
“Fine.”
“Demons… I could have asked for more…”
Ardi could barely distinguish their intonations. They spoke dryly and mechanically. It was as if factory machines were communicating with each other, not living people.
“You could have. But it’s too late now.”
“Eternal Angels… So all I have to do is find fourteen-year-old girls for you and take them to the Mansionhills.”
“Yes. But make sure to choose those whom no one will look for.”
“And what will happen to them there? Children are taboo even for the Six! Not to mention the Cloaks. I still want to live.”
“You live, Inga. And live richly. Especially if you keep your mouth shut and do as you’re told.”
“Who will I be working through?”
“A certain gentleman will visit you soon. Invite him into your home. He will come at night and choose the suitable girls. You can keep the rest.”
“Is this man… a vampire?”
“Does it matter?”
Inga didn’t think about it for long. Not long at all…
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“And one more thing.”
“What?”
“One day, a young man named Andrew will come to you. Find a girl for him who can gain his trust.”
“Alright. And then what?”
“When the time comes, get rid of her. Preferably in pieces. Understood?”
“Yes. How will I know when the time has come?”
“Believe me, Inga, you’ll know…”
The haze dissipated for a moment, and Ardi saw a figure he had encountered before.
***
Ardan opened his eyes again. This time, he was sitting on a chair, breathing heavily, and looking at… the bloody, white orbs that had fallen from Inga’s eye sockets, hanging from the thick threads of nerve endings. A grayish, shiny mucus was flowing from her ears, nose and mouth. And she herself kept convulsing until she fell still.
“There’s a lead for you, Magister,” Milar clapped his partner on the shoulder with obvious relief. “This is exactly what happened to Irigov and the Shangra’Ar orc, so I assume Inga was working with the Puppeteers.”
“Milar.”
“What?”
“I saw him.”
The captain turned sharply to his partner.
“What? Who?” He demanded, his voice filled with concern and impatience.
“One of the Puppeteers was in her memory,” Ardi rasped, barely clinging to the remnants of the fading vision. He was so tired. “I saw him. I saw…”
Ardi’s arms went limp, and he slid into the much more pleasant and familiar darkness of sleep’s oblivion.
***
Even before he opened his eyes, Ardi knew where he was. He could sense that sharp, almost herbal smell mixed with the acrid stench of chlorine-based agents. Professor Kovertsky often used this solution in the laboratories after practical work was finished. Apparently, it had a radical effect on microorganisms, but reliable research in this area was almost impossible to find. As was research in the field of microorganisms in general.
Funding for non-Star science, especially in these recent years of increased spending on the Mages’ Guild and their research, had all but dried up.
Why was Ardi thinking about all of this now, while looking at the already-familiar walls of the Second Chancery’s hospital ward?
Probably to distract himself from the thought that he had been lying here not so long ago. And he was also in no hurry to look toward his partner, who was sitting on a chair nearby, reading a newspaper.
“I see you’re awake,” Milar said, rustling the wide sheets of his paper.
Ardi sighed and turned to his partner. Judging by the fact that he was clean-shaven and the sun shining outside the window was far from the evening sun of a Metropolis summer…
“How long have I been here?” Ardi asked.
“You spent the night here,” the captain replied and, slapping the back of his hand against the newspaper, he snorted in displeasure. “All the front pages are talking about the Congress. Who will be invited. How the opening ceremony will go. They’re acting like it’s not a political event, but some kind of festival. Journalists, demons take them…”
“Milar.”
“What?” The captain glanced at his partner. “We told the future Mrs. Egobar that you were delayed in the laboratory. She pretended to believe it.”
Tess… For some reason, Ardi felt as if he had let his fiancée down.
“Why didn’t you tell me right away that you had called for backup?” Ardi decided to change the subject.
“So that you,” Milar rolled the newspaper into a tube and pointed it at the young man’s head, “would think with the organ that’s not just for adding numbers. You don’t work in the construction department, by the Eternal Angels. You’re not supposed to be demolishing houses.”
“Only the entrance collapsed,” Ardi grumbled.
“Yeah. And along with it, my no-longer-so-youthful libido, when I had to—and I, you fanged menace, —fill out those damn papers, because you so cleverly and conveniently decided to pass out,” Milar, as was his way, exhaled and relaxed after delivering a tirade that was part comical, part serious. “And also because Inga needed to see our uncertainty. Otherwise, she would have been more guarded and wouldn’t have made a mistake.”
A mistake…
“You knew?”
Ardan didn’t have to specify what he was asking about. Milar just shrugged.
“I had my suspicions,” he replied. “Yes, Irigov’s accomplice helped him with the children, but she had to get them from somewhere, right?”
“Through Lorlov.”
“Who was left without any relatives, without a family,” Milar nodded, “cast out onto the sidelines of life. And she came to the capital to earn money. Does that remind you of anything?”
“You think she… worked for the Crimson Lady?”
“Quite likely,” the captain nodded again. “Only not by spreading her legs, but by helping with Ley-generators or some minor seals. That’s how the Puppeteers and Lea Morimer realized she could be influenced and used. It’s as you said—they, the Puppeteers, always work in a way that yields the maximum benefits from a single action. And, preferably, in different directions.”
Ardi leaned back on the pillows, and the captain continued.
“And I assume that she didn’t get the nanny job in that unfortunate family’s house on her own,” Milar added. Ardi remembered the cruelty with which Lorlov had dealt with the residents of the house in Baliero, in whose basement an old, bricked up passage to the sewers had been discovered.
Even back then, Ardi had wondered where so much hatred for ordinary humans, not even Firstborn, had come from. The answer only came to him now…
“The father of the family was likely well-acquainted with the Crimson Lady,” Milar stood up from his chair and, after walking over to the rack, tossed his clothes to Ardan. “He probably wanted convenience so he wouldn’t have to travel far. And he got it in the form of a young, pretty mage, one who was always ready to work not just with her head, but also with her body… And Lorlov could have agreed to it for the sake of a higher, just cause. Of course, we’ll never know how it all really played out.”
Ardan, who was pulling on his pants, asked his next question quietly. He did so because he already knew the answer:
“Why did you never share your suspicions with me?”
Milar grabbed his partner’s staff and hat and silently handed them over, then gave him an expressive look with his clever, slightly mocking eyes. In this, he and Edward were also similar. However, while the Grand Magister had generally considered himself the smartest person in any room he’d been in, Milar believed that he could see through everyone he encountered. And those he couldn’t… he just hadn’t turned his keen attention on them yet.
And, as with Edward, such confidence in his abilities was far from unfounded.
“Because I’m a Firstborn,” Ardi answered his own question.
“Yes and no, partner,” the captain didn’t deny the obvious. “Back then, in my eyes, you were just dead weight. Not even truly tested in a real predicament yet. And then everything got caught up in such a whirlwind of shit that there was no time for abstract musings. And now, here it is, surfacing again. Like shit…”
They fell silent.
Milar had had his reasons. The Empire, since time immemorial, had employed unusually strict laws when dealing with anything related to citizens under the age of sixteen. Before, during the era of the Dark Lord’s Rebellion, that age had been lower—thirteen. But the further progress marched on and the more a citizen had to learn to become an independent cog in the system of society, the further the boundary of so-called childhood was pushed back.
Moreover, these laws had not been handed down to society from above. Not at all. They hadn’t been issued by some soft-hearted Emperor, written by a motherly Empress-dowager, or formulated by Parliament in a fit of empathy.
These laws, which punished those who harmed children not just with great prejudice, but with genuine fury, had been issued with only one goal in mind—to preserve the state’s monopoly on violence. Back when the lynching of criminals who had harmed children had practically become the norm, the Empire had issued these decrees.
And it was all because of the policies of Ectassus. A long time ago, before the unification of the principalities under the banners of Gales, the Firstborn had literally controlled the size of the human population. All due to a simple whim of nature.
Humans lived much shorter lives than Firstborn. And they had far more children. And so the Firstborn () had feared that humans would end up outnumbering them. Children were often kidnapped back then. They were taken into slavery to do dirty, hard work, and sometimes for their masters’ own amusement and pleasure. They were pitted against each other like fighting dogs in arenas. Sometimes, experiments with potions and magic were conducted on them as well—the Firstborn had been far from the magical, mythical people his great-grandfather had sometimes portrayed them as in his stories.
Each principality, tsardom, and kingdom of Ectassus used to be issued a permit that clearly stipulated how many children their inhabitants could have per year. Hence the mercilessness.
This was why, at least partially, that one church of the Face of Light was burned to the ground. After those poor children were burned alive with their mothers (), that event provided the impetus for the unification of the principalities. And it was that exact fire that Saint Vasily, the future ruler of Gales, survived.
These were old stories.
Scary stories.
Children were often kept in line with these stories. In those grim fairy tales, of course, there was no place for the politics of the Firstborn and Ectassus. No. Instead, they told of the cunning and villainy of the Firstborn; of witches who’d devoured children; of immortal sorcerers who’d stolen rosy-cheeked virgins away; of evil kings who’d violated unmarried beauties, and much more. All so that children would be on their guard. So they would know not to trust a beautiful wrapper, and that behind the lovely face of an elf, a completely different sort of monster might be hiding.
Children grew up, but they didn’t forget these stories. They told them to their children. And they to theirs. And so, over the centuries, any crimes against children had instilled in the populace the terror of a possible repeat of the nightmares of Ectassus’ rule. And a frightened crowd is terrible, strong, and almost uncontrollable.
And so laws had appeared, punishing people like the Crimson Lady—Inga—with all possible severity. And that was why, as the Kenbish brothers had once noted long ago, they still, despite all the reforms, did not apply to the children of the Firstborn…
“This pause has dragged on a bit, hasn’t it?” Milar opened the door and extended his hand in an inviting gesture. “Please, Magister, proceed into a new day, a new world, and the new ass-end of trouble we’re rapidly sliding into.”
As he was walking down the corridor, Ardi hurried to ask:
“What exactly happened to me?”
“Dr. Glarkin said it was just a normal sort of sleep after severe mental exhaustion. To my objections and claims that I sometimes have strong doubts about your mind even being present, he responded with agreement and a couple of IV drips they gave you after,” Milar was back to his usual, semi-joking manner of communication. “Don’t worry about the change of clothes either—Tess provided them. Along with a couple of pieces of dried venison. Alexander and I initially thought they were some strange kind of shoe soles. How do you even eat that stuff?”
Instead of an answer, Ardi just showed him his fangs.
“Ah, right…” Milar muttered. “In any case, we have a new question now.”
“And that is?”
“Can’t you guess for yourself, Mr. Junior Investigator?”
Ardi thought about it for a moment. Overall, considering the Puppeteers’ tactics and how they constantly moved things outside the brackets only to open them again, the answer was lying on the surface.
“Lusha.”
“Continue,” Milar encouraged.
“We can’t know if he was left in that house on purpose or if something went wrong with the Puppeteers’ plan somewhere.”
“And why is that?” The captain opened the door leading to the staircase for them.
“Because if something went wrong, we have to ask what and why,” Ardi, now free of pain and not leaning heavily on his staff, descended the cold steps. “And if it was all planned, then Inga was set up so they could get rid of her in one blow and, at the same time, create a vacuum among the Metropolis’ gangs.”
“Correct,” Milar almost grunted. “Now that her domain and sphere of activity have been vacated, I’m sure a turf war will begin. Everyone will want to rush to occupy the available niche. Remind you of anything?”
“Last winter,” Ardan responded immediately. “The attempt to pit the Hammers against the Jackets.”
“Hammers… Jackets… How is it that among all of them, there isn’t even one Teapot, Hatchet, or, damn it, even an Outhouse,” Milar hissed under his breath, then added louder, “You’re thinking correctly, partner. Look at that. Maybe Glarkin is right and your brain is capable of thinking about more than just Star Magic… There’s one snag, though. If the Puppeteers us to visit Inga, why did they give so many clues pointing toward the Night Folk and the ancient vampire? It’s unlikely that the latter is just a pawn for them, like that Indgar.”
“May his name be forgotten,” Ardi responded mechanically.
Milar was right. Such a plan looked strange, to say the least. On the other hand, they might not know all the details.
“A trap?”
“Possibly,” the captain nodded. “That’s why you and I are going to visit the Black House now, where we’ll pick up Alexander and Din, and together with Dagdag and his rattling, buzzing contraptions, we’ll figure out how best to conduct the operation.”
They passed through the foyer, which, as always, was uncrowded and very… black due to the clothes worn by the few visitors and patients.
The street greeted the partners with stale air and the sultry, scorching sun of the summer capital.
“But if we know about the vampire and that Astasya was killed, why go to the Night Folk?” Ardi asked.
“Because if there’s one thing in this world you can’t doubt, Magister, it’s greed. And stupidity. Both humans and Firstborn have it in spades. Maybe she was ordered to kill her quietly and bury her just as routinely, but Inga might have wanted to earn a little extra. Can’t let good merchandise go to waste, right?” Milar walked up to the car and, stopping abruptly, tossed the keys over his shoulder. Ardi barely caught them. “You’re driving.”
“But-”
“You’re driving, I said,” the captain repeated. “I wasn’t home all night, either. Only you were sleeping, and I wasn’t! And do you know why? Do you, you beanpole? Because I was filling out those fu… blasted papers again. I was wrestling with them until morning! I could work as a scribe in my retirement, by the Eternal Angels! So I’ll rest. Maybe even sleep a little. And you, before my sweet and, I hope, deep slumber, will tell me a story about what you saw in Inga’s head. And remind me about the Palace of the Kings of the Past and that Homeless Spider.”
Ardi placed his staff in the car. Milar immediately climbed into the back, but not before retrieving a blanket and pillow from the trunk of his old “Derks.”
The young man was not very thrilled with the idea of visiting the Night Folk quarter. This area, which was essentially outside the capital and where werewolves, vampires, mutants, and Star Mages who had served their prison sentences for practicing forbidden magic were allowed to settle, was colloquially called that. He was even less enthused with the thought of visiting the lair of an ancient vampire who had managed not only to escape the watchful eye of the Black House, but also to settle right next to the “tribe of the candle.” In the suburbs. In the place where the wealthiest and most powerful citizens of the Empire resided.
Making himself comfortable, the captain wrapped the blanket around himself and said curtly:
“Tell me.”
Ardi sighed, turned the ignition key, and, clutching the steering wheel in a death grip, somehow managed to pull away from the curb.