Book II. Chapter 108 - The Congress (Part 18)

Chapter 108

“Silence in Our Newsroom.”

This is perhaps the strangest title I have ever placed above my regular column. Doubly so given the fact that the premiere performance of yet another retelling of the bloody trials of the Agrovs at the end of the War of the Empire’s Founding was nearly cut short by an interruption in the Ley-feed.

That said…

For readers less acquainted with their history, allow me to explain: in the year 13117 of the First Men (the first year Before the Fall of Ectassus according to the new calendar), several children of the Last King and First Emperor were drawn into an internecine conflict. By that time, victory over Ectassus was, if not assured, then quite certain. Despite the complete exhaustion of the treasury, which would later give rise to that not-very-secret but rather romantic concept, “The Officer’s Mark of the Black House,” Ectassus was faring no better. And this was no secret to anyone.

Yes, it’s possible that, had it not been for Sergeant Mendera and his squad, who altered the course of the long war considerably, the bloody battlefields would’ve taken tens of thousands more lives. But history cares not for “what ifs.”

In any case, the foundation of Ectassus’ strength—its Aean’Hane and Speakers, and the creatures they’d created, against which the Guild of Anomaly Hunters still wages its endless war—had by then been worn thin by our Star Mages and the artifices they had wrought. As for foot and horse, even the finest elven archers had no answer to the crossbows of Gales. The castle walls and towers of the Firstborn couldn’t stand against our gunpowder. The science of fortification had long since solved the problem of the dwarves’ living armored boxes, which were once thought to be impregnable, and the problem of orc cavalry that, not so long ago, had been able to sweep whole settlements into the mud. Giants had nothing to offer against the first arquebuses, and prototypical Star Engineering—in the form of the nascent art of artifact creation—was overcoming enchantments and curses alike.

The Firstborn took refuge in those few castles where the legendary Fae still remained. This delayed the united forces of men from freeing the western lands in the name of the Agrov family.

As my brief excursion into history shows, the war truly might’ve been drawn out had it not been for Mendera and his company, and who knows what the financial costs might’ve led to… but the smell of victory was already in the air.

Victory.

Such a sweet word. So heavy with meaning. And it truly has meant so many different things to so many people.

For the peasants, the victory of Gales and the Agrovs meant deliverance from the fears that have become the black soil of our grimmest folktales—the very same ones we still tell our children. For artisans and traders, it meant new roads across the continent, and the chance to send their wares unhindered to even the most distant areas. This was a very significant change, heralding the end of a dozen tsardoms and kingdoms, and hundreds of small principalities, which were emblematic of the western continent’s fractured humanity.

As for the nobility and the military, that was where the problems arose. For generations, the finest sons and daughters of the western lands had lived by war. War had drunk their blood with abandon, for which we honor our heroes to this day; but, it must be said, war also fed them. Taxes, tolls, levies, the obligatory labor on royal and noble lands—none of it touched the military estate or the warrior nobility. And the war was drawing to a close. Which meant that the time for looking to the future was at hand.

A free future in which every man would have to find a new way to continue his life. A peaceful life. Not a military one.

Of course, no one back then could’ve guessed that Gales, beneath whose banner so many different nations had gathered, would become the foundation of the first and only Empire of Men in all of written history. No one, not even in their worst nightmares, had dared to imagine that the Fall of Ectassus would not end the wars, and that the then-young Empire would endure all that has befallen it over the past five centuries.

Drunk on impending victory, the representatives of the aristocracy and the Agrovs were already dividing up the hide of a bear yet to be fully slain. And it was this greed that gave rise to the disputes that might’ve altered the course of history. It would have been ironic to watch, through the lens of the ages, an all-but-victorious uprising of men against the yoke of the Firstborn end in the fires of internecine slaughter.

With the aid of the Church of the Face of Light, and thanks to the selfless efforts of the elder generation of the Agrovs and their heroes—including Saint Vasily the Saved, the sole survivor of the event now known as the Lament of the Martyrs—the brewing conflict was put down.

But not without loss.

Princess Verensa, the youngest daughter of the Last Tsar, vanished on the day that Sergeant Mendera and his men returned from the castle of the Sidhe of the Burning Dawn with the Flame. Great victory mingled with mourning that day. Princess Verensa, more because of her youth than any saintly qualities the folklore has since granted her—she was just fifteen years old—hadn’t come under the influence of a faction of the aristocracy and hadn’t thrown her lot in with those striving to grab a piece of something that wasn’t even on their tables yet.

Theories multiply to this day. Some say that the princess was poisoned and died. Some say that she never existed at all, and that her legend was invented by the Agrovs to be one of those “inspiring standards.” And there is also the most famous legend, beloved by the romantically-inclined youth, which claims that Princess Verensa was loved by a young soldier of the Last King’s company. A glorious warrior who didn’t come from an important family. The son of a tanner and an herbalist.

When his parents died to the arrows of the elves and the spears of the dwarves, the warrior went west to Vetrograd, which is now known as the Metropolis. The accounts differ here. In some, working in his father’s workshop had given the boy enough strength that he could bend a horseshoe with his bare hands and kill a maddened bull with one punch. Others theorize that his mother was a Listener, and that since his childhood, she’d fed him concoctions and herbs that had made his skin tougher than steel and his sinews stronger than rope.

All of this, of course, is the stuff of legend.

Thanks to the archives of the Church and the city offices, it is reliably known that there was indeed a young man from the borderlands of the Alcade Foothills—they were still called the Antareman Foothills back then—who arrived in Vetrograd at that time. Due to his remarkable build and great height, he was taken for a half-blood of the Firstborn and thrown into a dungeon, where he demanded a trial by Sword and Fire to prove his innocence.

While the court was considering his case after yet another loud victory of the Army of Gales, the soldiers and their commanders returned to Vetrograd to lick their wounds and replenish their ranks.

In the stories, it is said that Verensa’s beloved, whose name has remained hidden by the shadows of the past, did battle with none other than Saint Vasily himself and prevailed three times, forcing Vasily to change his weapon and dismount from his warhorse. But in the records of the Church and the city office of Vetrograd, it is written that Vasily acted as the judge of the trial. Then again, one may assume that the bureaucrats of the past possessed the same desire for advancement as their descendants do in our own time. Vasily’s name may have been protected from a defeat they thought would mar his reputation.

Be that as it may, it is reliably known that the young man, after successfully completing the trial by Sword and Fire, proved before the Face of Light and the Eternal Angels that he had no Firstborn blood in his veins. Yes, these days, one may speculate at length about how farcical the judicial system of the past was. But one would also do well to remember that we are discussing a bygone age.

The accounts claim that, at the festival in honor of the Army’s victory, within the sand ring where the nameless youth and Vasily fought (or perhaps it was someone else and not the famed hero and commander), was where Verensa first saw the young man. It was love at first sight, fate, or perhaps only the romantic inventions of first bards, then minstrels, then writers, musicians, and nowadays, theatre directors as well.

Be that as it may, it is reliably known that, on the day a victorious Sergeant Mendera returned to Vetrograd, a horseman rode out of the city with two laden mules. That horseman was the youth of remarkable height—the nameless one who’d fought at his own trial and had never taken up a weapon again. And on that very same day, Verensa also disappeared.

The romantic storytellers love to say that the Last King himself, upon witnessing the young man’s valor and his steadfast spirit, and understanding that fate had bound him to Verensa, resolved to trust his own instincts. In utmost secrecy, he accepted the youth into the ranks of his retinue and gave him the black raiment. After receiving an oath from the nameless hero, he asked him to take Verensa away from the capital and hide her among the endless reaches of the Alcade Foothills.

Why?

Perhaps he feared that the young girl would fall prey to palace intrigue. Or perhaps because he wished for at least one of the Agrov bloodline to live a quiet, ordinary life filled with the cares of the world and not the unrest of states. An answer to that question may be found only in legends and myths, for archaeological investigations, chronicles, and archival documents will not help us.

Those who enjoy engaging in historical speculation like to add to the tale. They say that, beyond the Tsar’s Forest, on the border of the endless steppes of the central part of the future Empire, some three months after the nameless young man left Vetrograd, a young couple took up residence in a small settlement. They were a man of imposing build who opened a tannery, and a pregnant girl known for her beauty and her singing.

The settlement of Taakt has, due to this, become steeped in myth and legend, but there isn’t a single reliable confirmation that the young couple were indeed Princess Verensa and her faithful companion and beloved.

History, just like the legends, loses the thread of this tale at that point. Too much was happening in the young Empire, and so the possibility of an additional Agrov line remains shrouded in legend.

What was the point of this long and roundabout introduction of mine, you might ask?

Forgive my weakness, but I am desperately curious to know what our descendants will say about the events of the last few days. Will they, too, try to separate truth from legend? How will they characterize what has happened? Will they laugh at our fears, or will they see the still ghostly, but already bloody thread that binds together whole decades of feigned peace?

After the Small War, which is better known as the Fatian Massacre, the western continent—and the eastern, too—has known no major strife. Save for some minor skirmishes along the most volatile frontiers, like the Fatian and Armondian fronts with the Empire; the eternal troubles with piracy in the Shallow Seas, beneath which the Island Union and Grainia conceal their military ventures; the Pass of Storms between Selkado and Castilia; and the constant efforts of Al’Zafir to defend its only source of fresh water… the world is living through the most peaceful decades of its whole thirteen-thousand-year history.

It is for this very reason that, at the start of my historical digression, I used the old calendar.

Thirteen and a half thousand years…

That is how much time has passed since the first proto-settlements were built in the desert that sits on the border of Al’Zafir and Kargaam today. They were built by men who were no longer merely hunters and gatherers, but tillers of the earth as well.

These are the first grand monuments.

They are the first remnants of not only technical, but also cultural progress. Imagine a healed shinbone on a skeleton in a society where any such injury would’ve been a death sentence not too long ago, and where the help of not just one’s neighbors but the whole community was required to deal with such a thing.

This was the time of the first infrastructural works that required complex coordination of common labor. The first appearance of trades, too.

Thirteen and a half thousand years. The handful of settlements built by the forebears of modern man would later lead to them spreading across the world and multiplying to their present number of a little under two billion souls. One billion and eight hundred million to be as precise as one can get.

One would think that this is something monumental. The very numbers themselves—one hundred and thirty-five centuries, almost two billion souls, the wars endured, the cataclysms, the magic of the Firstborn, the anomalies, even the mythic dragons. Mankind has withstood every trial that the Face of Light, in his boundless wisdom, has set before us. But, just like in the tale of Verensa and the blood of the Agrovs, we stand upon the threshold of a tragedy.

After the Congress protocol saw the highest officials of state evacuated from the Baliero Concert Hall, the Ambassadors’ Round Table convened a few hours later and went off without a hitch or any serious trouble. As expected, economic agreements and treaties were signed, partnerships cemented, and intentions backed by money which, when expressed in Imperial currency, equals more than one hundred and thirty million exes.

This was perhaps the most ambitious Congress yet. To say nothing of the fact that more than a quarter of this staggering sum is made up by the Empire’s share of the contracts. And this includes not only the new Ertalain export agreements, but also our participation in any number of infrastructural projects. The Guild of Engineers and Builders of the Metropolis, for instance, will design and supervise the construction of new underground tramline branches in Dunsfield, the capital of the Confederation of Free Cities. The Empire has also made an agreement with the Kingdom of Kargaam to build for them, while retaining forty-four percent of the shares, four heavy plants dedicated to the primary processing of Ertalain. To say nothing of the dozens of smaller agreements related to the exporting of various end products of the industrial and energy sectors. Including the construction of the central city Ley-generation hub in Skal, the capital of the Principality of Scaidavin.

The Empire, even though it is the youngest member of the world’s Star Community, is becoming the foremost exporter of Star-related industry and technical knowledge. And even the recent obsolescence of the Analyzers, and the spread of analogues of the Training Grounds, are not enough to take our crown in this field.

Nothing foretold the dark clouds gathering on the horizon. Even the all-encompassing treaty of economic partnership between Grainia and Urdavan, which included the unification of their currencies, did not, from the standpoint of the national security of the remaining countries represented by their ambassadors at the Congress, appear especially questionable.

Yes, perhaps Scaidavin had voiced a firm protest, announcing the indefinite closure of the strait and the return of military bases to its previously-demilitarized enclave…

And perhaps the Island Union had stated its intention to create a network of naval bases on its countless islands, most of which are so small that they aren’t even shown on most charts…

But none of this carried particular weight, because “even if”—though I mean “when,” not “if.” When the union of Grainia and Urdavan grows beyond the merely economic, their combined industrial and demographic potential will still not be enough to threaten anyone—save, perhaps, Scaidavin. But their fall would not be permitted by the League of Selkado, which has refused the offer to join the new Urdavan-Grainian Union.

And so the status quo, which has allowed our nations to coexist and prosper together for nearly three decades, has remained unbroken. It has been shaken, even cracked, but still stands firm upon the pedestal carved out of the bones of those who created it.

At any rate—that’s how it’s been for the past two days. Barely twelve hours ago, your humble servant, in the company of his foreign colleagues, was on duty in the antechamber of the Palace of the Kings of the Past. I was waiting to speak with the foreign ambassadors and our own countrymen that were engaged in matters of international politics as they took their leave of the Gala Dinner.

The end of the Gala also ended the Law of Silence, which guards every Congress from the press’ speculative pronouncements.

And, by the Eternal Angels, that silence was shattered.

Right in the middle of a celebration meant to express support for the preservation of peace and prosperity, and the strengthening of a young and yet already useful and effective community of nations, an ear-splitting piece of news rang out.

Ignoring every rule of conduct and decency, before the very eyes of His Imperial Majesty Pavel IV, the Ambassador of the Tazidahian Brotherhood signed a treaty with the Urdavan-Grainian Union. In that treaty, he announced the opening of his nation’s borders, both the land and sea ones—including the Whale Gulf—to traffic of any kind, and to persons both civil and military, if they are part of the new agreement. An agreement that the Kingdom of N’gia joined at once, announcing the closure of its southern borders.

Need I even say that the dinner was disrupted by this, and that the ambassadors and their colleagues flew off in every direction? The Palace of the Kings of the Past resembled a disturbed beehive. Only instead of bees, automobiles bearing diplomatic plates were flying out of it, carrying their occupants to their embassies, and then to the train station. From there, throughout the night, foreign state trains headed out, bearing dispatches both written and living toward the Dancing Peninsula. In all of the Empire’s history, the ice-free port of Nigrad has likely never received so many important people as it has now. At this very moment, while you read this article, ships are leaving the port, carrying the earth-shattering news around the world.

The news that the status quo, which is still on its feet, is nonetheless ready to be knocked down by even the lightest of attacks, the kind that would’ve previously been deemed insignificant and unworthy of notice.

The Charter of the North, as the ambassador of Tazidahian has named it, is, from a historical perspective, only seconds away from becoming the first international, document-bound union not only of economy and politics, but of armed forces as well. And in it, of course, the Brotherhood, by virtue of its demographic, but most of all its military and industrial potential, will at once take the leading position.

And then the world will be only moments away from a conflagration.

Just like half a millennium ago, the air reeks of blood. And that smell did not leave me—not in the Palace of the Kings of the Past, nor as I drove home.

Dawn hadn’t yet broken when His Imperial Majesty signed an edict removing all customs and duties on industrial, agricultural and economic cooperation with the Island Union. The Island Union then signed an edict bringing the staff of the High Command of the Army and Fleet of the Empire into its own Military Command, essentially uniting the Empire’s army with the Islanders’ fleet.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

There are already rumors that, while still aboard their train, the Confederation of Free Cities signed a pact of non-aggression and mutual non-involvement with Al’Zafir, Kargaam, and Selkado. Scaidavin has opened its internal market to Selkado’s goods, and Selkado itself has pledged to deliver to its northern neighbor, over the next three years, no fewer than fifty tanks, along with seven war frigates, each of which will be able to bring six heavy naval guns to bear—a combined firepower that would be sufficient to level a coastal fort.

As for the decisions of Castilia, Lan’Duo’Ha and Kargaam—there are no rumors or news about them yet, but you can be certain that we shall hear about them before long.

Something that had, until recently, seemed unshakeable and perhaps not even comprehensible—thirteen and a half thousand years and almost two billion souls—suddenly proved no stronger than the paper upon which the loudest words I have ever heard have been set down.

Even now, here in the newsroom, we are still deafened by their echo. And so, in the absolute silence of our shaken minds, only the steady clicks of my faithful typewriter ring out. They are like a metronome, measuring out the fractions of moments that may be separating us from catastrophe.

I would like to believe and hope, my dear readers, that—as with the tale of Princess Verensa—one day, writers and historians will argue over what is truth and what is fiction. For now, my dear readers, all I have for you is an ellipsis.

And on the other end of it, there remains only hope—hope in good sense, hope in the Face of Light, and hope that this spark is not, after all, fated to turn into a conflagration.

…

Reported by:

Senior Magister of Economic Sciences,

Eriozem Klochkov.

Note:

The author’s opinion may not necessarily reflect that of the editorial board.”

***

“To ensure a swift recovery, it’s not only the body that needs rest, but also one’s nerves, Corporal, so I would advise that you not pick up a newspaper anytime soon,” a familiar voice said.

It had been cured by smoke until it had become a scraping rasp. It was also weary beyond any hope of rest and clipped to the bone, with no patience for idle reflection or sentiment.

On the chair beside the simple hospital bed sat Doctor Nazar Glarkin. He still wore the same dirty glasses, had the same dark rings under his eyes that had never gone away, and had that same metal flask in his hands, from which a recognizable whiff of spirits was rising.

Ardi knew this doctor quite well at this point. That in itself said quite a lot.

Rolling the newspaper into a tube, his teeth clenching faintly, Ardan set it back down on the bedside table from which he had only just taken it.

“Is it that bad?” Was all the young man asked.

During his previous visits to the Black House’s hospital, Ardi had woken in the general ward. Not in a separate room, as he had now. Then again, this cell of his differed from its more spacious fellow only due to the presence of a door leading to a private washroom, walls that were a little cleaner, and a ceiling so disgustingly white that, however hard one tried, they could not make out the dark net of cracks in the plaster.

Nazar exhaled a small cloud of smoke and screwed the lid back onto his flask. He reached for the bed’s metal rail, where a wooden clipboard with several sheets of paper lay, each of them filled in by a different but uniformly-small and tightly-packed handwriting.

“It would be easier, Corporal, to list what wounds you didn’t suffer,” Nazar said, lifting one sheet after another, his wrinkled cigarette held by his lips alone. “I can say with utmost confidence that you owe your life to Major Mshisty, who got to you fast enough that Star Magic could solve most of the problems. By the time they brought you in to see us, all the surgeons had to do was sew you up and…” Nazar nodded toward his thigh, where the mutant had landed one of his most dangerous strikes.

Ardan couldn’t feel his leg. Not at all…

“Then-” He started, breath hitching.

“All is well,” Nazar cut him off. “You’re still recovering from those two… hundred milliliters of anesthetic we poured into your system. Apart from a complicated fracture, which will keep you from enjoying your morning runs for the next month or so, there is nothing there. As in—your leg is there, and there is no prosthesis, whose reflection I just saw in your eyes.”

Ardan let out a breath of relief and sank back into the pillows. Then he frowned again and raised himself onto his elbows.

“My fractures usually-”

“And that, my dear Corporal,” the doctor cut him off again, drawing fiercely on his cigarette as though afraid it might be taken from him at any moment, “is why I am speaking with you, and not one of my colleagues.”

After saying that, Nazar handed Ardi the clipboard, which was now showing the last few pages of notes. The young man could not decipher the doctors’ rapid handwriting, but the chemical formulae set down between the lines of all-but-unreadable text—those he could.

At any rate, he understood enough that his heart started beating faster and he felt a cold sweat run down his back.

“You-”

“We don’t know what to do about this,” the doctor cut him off for the third time. “If we knew, Corporal, we would’ve already done it. Whatever they poisoned you with, it almost entirely blocks the regenerative properties of your blood. To say nothing of the other oddities that made it so we had to pour a bucket of anesthetics, antibiotics, and all the rest into you. You basically matched a third of a company in terms of sheer medical consumption.”

“A platoon.”

“What?”

“A third of a company is a platoon,” Ardan said quietly and absently.

Nazar only waved a hand through the air, and the smoke from his cigarette resolved itself into a thin, blurred snake.

“At the present moment, your body, in regard to its defensive properties, differs little from a normal human’s,” the chief endocrinologist of the Cloaks went on. “There is some cause for cautious optimism. The indicators of your liver and kidneys are elevated. That means the former organ is trying to filter the poison out, and the latter are doing their best to flush it using natural means. But…”

Nazar leaned forward and rapped a finger on the calculations.

“You are nearly a scholar, Corporal. You can manage the arithmetic.”

Indeed he could. He’d done it before Nazar had begun talking about his kidneys. If one extrapolated the rate of clearance based on the present indicators, the cleansing of his body would take no less than half a year. And that…

“And that’s if nothing changes,” Nazar simply spoke his patient’s thoughts aloud. “A body— especially one that’s barely been studied like your own—is far removed from the clean conclusions of mathematics, Corporal. Perhaps you will return to normal sooner than the projected six months. Perhaps it’ll happen even later. Maybe it will never happen. Either way, on the last fourth day of every month, I’ll expect you here. We will draw your blood and urine for testing. Perhaps by reverse engineering it, we will be able to make some sense of what kind of poison this is.”

“And then use it against the Firstborn and the mutants?” Ardan asked, unable to hold back.

“Just so, Corporal,” Nazar replied calmly. “Regardless of who made this wonderful concoction, it seems to be a most effective counterweight to the Tazidahian military machine.”

Ardan initially wanted to say that it was Tazidahian who had invented it. However, that felt unlikely. It made more sense for it to have been the Puppeteers, who had once again used everyone and everything around them. Somehow, they’d created a weakness in the Brotherhood’s otherwise impeccable force of military mutants and chimeras.

“In other respects…” Nazar shrugged and brought his flask to his lips. Then he swore, unscrewed the cap, and tried again, more successfully this time. “In other respects, you are quite fit, Corporal. Due to your extensive injuries, I would advise you to not eat anything sharp, salted, peppered, fried or roasted in the coming months, but you are an educated man… or one in the process of acquiring your education… In any case, you understand. And besides water, you are allowed no other drinks. No coffee, no juice, and least of all alcohol. And so on until-”

“The poison is flushed out,” Ardan cut him off, returning the favor.

The doctor nodded.

“It’s simply incredible to see what Star Healing is capable of when it can be used in time,” Nazar mused. “Corporal Egobar, shredded to bits, who ought to have spent a couple of months in the hospital, is healthier than most on his third day of recovery. By the way, Major Mshisty spent a whole list of accumulators ranging from reds to pinks on you, which will no doubt delight Lieutenant Dagdag. It’s strange that he didn’t need to do the same for Captain Pnev.”

Ardan turned the page. He understood perfectly well where Nazar was going with this.

This was one of the entries in Ardi’s medical chart:

Result of Integrity Test, Star Nodes in Patient’s Brain:

Red Star.

Volume: 7 rays.

Condition: Ideal.

Green Star.

Volume: 9 rays.

Condition: Ideal.

Blue Star.

Volume: 9 rays.

Condition: Minor damage.

Recommendation: conduct a reexamination at the Heroes’ Hospital in two months. Should the Blue Node show no natural improvement—development of a treatment plan to follow.

Ardan took care not to show that the last entry had brought him considerable relief. Why had the apparatus at the Black House hospital not detected his tenth ray? Most likely for the same reason that it wouldn’t be detected at the Heroes’ Hospital either, where Ardan had once undergone such an examination to register for the Magical Boxing qualifiers.

Even if, for instance, the pressure in a pipe exceeded ten atmospheres, if the gauge was rated only for eight, the needle would still just show eight. Though it would flutter.

In this case, that fluttering had taken the form of “minor damage” they’d detected.

It might have been good news, but…

In two months, the flutter on the device would still be there, which meant a treatment plan would be drawn up for Ardan. A plan which, again, would have no effect at all. Sooner or later, questions would be asked.

Thoughts for tomorrow, Ardan reminded himself, and then asked aloud, “And Captain Pnev?”

Nazar looked Ardi directly in the eyes for several seconds, which somewhat unsettled the young man. The stronger his Witch’s Gaze became, the more he had to exert himself not to step across the threshold of another’s mind. Especially when the invitation was so brazen.

“Given that both of you are being discharged today,” the doctor drew on his cigarette again and absently played with his own greasy hair, “and it was for that worthy reason that we have brought you out of your medicated sleep—or maybe we did it to avoid disrupting your wedding—you can get up and go see for yourself.”

Nazar drew aside a second curtain, behind which was a chair. On it, neatly folded, lay a standard-issue suit and a pair of boots (this time, they were fitted to Ardi’s size). A cloak also hung over the back of the chair, hanging down to the floor, and beside it stood his staff and grimoire. His grimoire had been opened, since the Black House had been obliged to examine Ardan’s spellbook after what had happened a few days ago. Ardan, however, had made sure to hide his secrets.

He wasn’t even upset that they’d tried. The Black House had been duty-bound to check his grimoire. The exercise, alas, had surely yielded no new knowledge for them. There weren’t many people in the whole world who could decipher the most secret of Ardan’s notes. The greater part of his work consisted of a shifted transliteration of the alphabets of the orcs of the southern steppes and the northern elves. And the parts that touched upon transmutational runic links, along with his own thoughts and musings on the Ice Beasts—those parts he’d written down in a cipher built upon the written language of the Fae.

Beside his staff and grimoire, a crutch had also been propped against the chair.

“Get dressed and you’re free to go,” Nazar said, and then, rising to his feet, he went over to the window, opened it, and began to smoke in earnest.

Damp, frosty air brushed against Ardi’s face. But it wasn’t as cold as before. Winter had loosened its hold upon the Metropolis, and the young man could feel the change with his own skin.

The hardest part of dressing, given the cast on his thigh, was getting into his uniform pants. Luckily, they had apparently been sewn with this new element of his wardrobe in mind. Otherwise, how could one explain that they, just like his new jacket and shirt, fit him so well? As for the crutch, Ardan let his eyes roam between his staff and the medical aid for a moment, and at last, he took up his staff. Somehow, it felt more reliable. And as for walking—he would manage.

After inadvertently leaning on his injured leg, Ardi cried out from the sharp pain that spiked from his heel to the middle of his spine.

“Ah, yes,” Nazar added from the window. “The analgesic properties of your blood are likewise being suppressed by the poison, so… welcome to the wonderful world of human pain.”

Ardan growled something inarticulate and kept on dressing.

“You will now be able to assess the falsehood of the claim that pain teaches us lessons,” Nazar remarked, still seated on the window sill. “Because if that were true, the world would be brimming with wise men.”

Ardan paused for a moment and once again looked at the perpetually grubby, weary, disheveled doctor who stank of tobacco and booze. His gaze turned pensive this time.

“Captain Pnev is in the room next door and is likewise getting ready to be discharged,” Nazar added without turning around. “Until our next meeting, Corporal. Do not forget: every last fourth day of the month, I expect you here, ready to give samples.”

“Very well,” Ardan answered simply, and using his staff to support his injured leg, he hobbled toward the door. He hadn’t even stepped into the corridor when he felt an unpleasant sensation in his hand.

The mutant’s poison hadn’t just stripped him of a Matabar’s physical strength, but it had also exposed him to a whole new world of sensation. For instance—he now knew what a regular human felt when clenching a staff that hadn’t been particularly well sanded or polished. Every imperfection, every roughness bit into Ardi’s skin. Using the crutch began to look quite a bit more appealing…

Once he left his hospital room, he made his way over to the adjacent one and had only just opened the door when he heard a familiar, displeased voice.

“Goddamn fucking demons, fuck!” Milar let out a string of curses.

Except for the fact that he was leaning on the shoulders of Alexander and Din, the captain looked well enough. He was wearing a standard uniform, looked to be clean-shaven, and he’d even gotten a haircut. However, beside him stood a chair on large wheels with thin spokes, and just then, as Ardi watched, his hand missed a glass set on the table directly in front of him.

Ardan needed no charts on a clipboard fastened to the bed to understand what was happening.

He’d been just in time to put off Milar’s meeting with the Eternal Angels, but not fast enough that the man’s clinical death hadn’t had any consequences.

The captain looked up and their gazes met. For several seconds, a silence hung in the room.

“They say I’ll have to learn how to walk again, how to shoot, how to fence, and how to use a knife and fork,” Milar began, as if resuming some conversation that had never taken place. Alexander and Din lowered him into the wheelchair. “Look at this—I can’t even grip a glass. My limbs aren’t listening to me properly.”

After greeting the operatives, Ardan hobbled over to his partner.

“And the prognosis for your rehabilitation?” The young man asked.

Milar shrugged.

“Nine months if I don’t slack off,” Milar answered with a bit of optimism. “And up to two years if I start pitying myself and acting like a little baby.”

Ardan closed his eyes for a moment. In his head, he knew he had already done the impossible; in his heart, however, it was still hard. And the faces of Elvira and the captain’s children would not stop accusing him of failing them.

“Hey, Ard,” Alexander’s stern, cold voice pulled him out of his thoughts. “It could’ve been a great deal worse. Don’t forget that.”

“Aye,” the ever-cheerful Din agreed. “And as a bonus, Milar will now actually learn how to drive before he learns how to walk.”

Everyone, even the captain who had to turn around in his wheelchair to do so, stared at the smiling blond. Din scratched the back of his head and stretched his smile wider.

“Well, he is in a wheelchair now… He’ll be steering. And only later will he be walking. And he’ll even ride to tomorrow’s ceremony rather than walk to it,” Din explained his joke a touch haltingly. “You’re not cancelling that, are you? Because your family must’ve already arrived… And Plamena and I have prepared a wonderful gift, but I’m not telling you what it is. It’s a surprise.”

And so they stood there, the four of them. A wounded mage with a cast on his leg who was about to be properly introduced to the concept of “human pain;” Captain Pnev, who had to learn how to use his own body again; and two whole, unhurt operatives, which, given the nature of their work, was quite ironic.

And what were the four of them doing?

Laughing, of course.

The upcoming Anomaly Hunters’ Guild’s expedition; the fact that the Dandy still owed Ardi a way to get to the Narikhman; the mysterious death of Arseniy, the Overseer of the Hammers; the fact that the mole had been destroyed; the results of the Congress; the Puppeteers and their future plans, which involved mining equipment and excavating an Aean’Hane tower that had belonged to the now-extinct high elves; the upcoming meetings with the Colonel; and even the matter of the tenth ray in Ardan’s Blue Star—all of these were thoughts for tomorrow.

And, by the Sleeping Spirits, Ardan would’ve given a lot to keep them there. He would’ve loved it if they’d stayed in tomorrow, which, as everyone knows, is a new one each day.

***

“In a week, I’ll come round for you, Ard,” Alexander called out through the open window.

“You could’ve told him that tomorrow at the wedding,” Din reminded him. He was sitting in the back beside Milar, who had already smoked half of a fresh pack of cigarettes, it seemed like.

“Din.”

“What?”

“Shut up,” Milar and Alexander chorused, and with a nod to Ardan, the taciturn operative turned the service “Derks” toward Markov Canal again.

Ardan stood in the cleared spot between the snowbanks, looking at a sign that read: “Bruce’s Jazz Bar.” And below it hung a smaller placard: “Closed until the end of the Festival of Light.”

Because of the holidays and the incredibly bad weather, the letter from Ardi and Tess couldn’t have reached Delpas in time, so Ardi’s family didn’t know about the move. As for the Governor-General of Shamtur, he maintained—as far as Ardan had understood based on Tess’ remarks—a rather spacious official apartment in the city. And naturally, knowing Reish Orman’s character and convictions, it surely stood empty most of the time. It was used strictly for work, or, as a rare exception, for his daughter’s wedding, and it was likely that Reish and his family were staying there.

The trip from Delpas to the capital ought to have taken a week, but on account of the frost, the snowfalls, and so on, Ardan’s family were due to arrive that very evening—on the eve of the ceremony. This was why Ardan was particularly grateful to Dagdag for the wide pants…

As for the placard, Ardan had arranged things with Arkar. The celebratory dinner after the ceremony would be held in house number 23 on Markov Canal, and that was where his family would stay as well. And, to be honest, these days—unlike a month before, when Arkar himself had offered his hospitality—what Reish Orman thought of this decision didn’t particularly concern Ardan. Reish Orman had every reason to worry, and every right to speak his mind about Tess; but when it came to Ardi’s own family, he had no right to speak up at all. The Governor-General of Shamtur surely understood this as well.

This was what Ardan was thinking about as he hobbled toward the door. Indeed, he would have to grow accustomed to this new way of moving. Perhaps he ought to ask Dagdag for the same sort of apparatus as Milar’s. Admittedly, it would not be very convenient for attending lectures.

Incidentally, on account of all the chaos after the end of the Congress, in all the higher education institutions of the Empire—save for the graduating years—the winter examinations had been cancelled. Which was perfectly logical, and most timely in Ardi’s case.

With a sigh, the young man pulled the door open. The bell rang as it always had, but then it was followed, to his ears at least, by an equally-ringing, unusual silence.

Ardan had seen Arkar truly go pale only twice before. The last time, such a change in the half-orc’s face had been the doing of an actual demon called up by Lea Mortimer. And so, finding Arkar all but white behind the bar, Ardan tensed a little.

Arkar slid his eyes to one side, and Ardan, who was already preparing to call upon the tenth ray of his Blue Star, followed the direction of his gaze. In a bar that was completely empty (even the orc bouncers were nowhere to be seen), two people were sitting at a table.

Tess, her hair braided, wearing a plain dress and a warm, knitted cardigan, was stirring some tea in a porcelain cup. She was smiling sweetly, and seemed not to notice the staff resting against the table—a staff made of almost pure Ertalain. Ardan had seen such a thing only once before, in the possession of Lord Aversky himself. The cost of such a thing lay beyond the comprehension of more than just the average Star Mage.

But a moment later, Ardan forgot the staff even existed. He was looking at the hair cascading down a young girl’s back. It was blacker than a raven’s wing, and running through the center of it, easy to make out, was a red pattern. A pattern in the shape of a flower.

Altane’Mare. The Crystal Mountain Flower…

Upon hearing the bell, she got up and turned sharply around. Ardan had last seen her a year and a half ago, but for some reason, it felt as though a whole lifetime had passed since then.

“Ardi!” The noticeably-more-grown-up Grand Princess Anastasia cried out, and, crossing the bar in a second, ran up to him.

Stumbling for a heartbeat, she smiled bright and true, and squeezed Ardan in a firm embrace, her arms locking around him just below his chest—far higher than they once had.

It was easy to forget how quickly human children could grow.

This was the only daughter of the Emperor—a young girl who would soon turn fifteen. However, she had eyes that Ardan had only ever seen in one other child—his own brother

“I couldn’t miss the wedding of my only friend,” she whispered.

Ardan wanted to shout, “What are you doing here?!” or “How did you even find this place?” or perhaps “Where are the Cloaks and Daggers who guard you?” He even thought of activating his signal medallion. Damn it all! He even Listened for the Name of Ice and Snow, ready to wrap the bar in a blizzard and hide it from prying eyes, but…

He did none of that. He only bent down a little and embraced his… friend in return. Strangely enough, at that moment, he was feeling the same thing he’d experienced that evening many years ago, by the brook, when his forest friends had come to his rescue: Guta, Shali, and of course, Skusty.

He remembered the warmth. The pure joy.

They were exactly the same kind of warmth and joy he felt at the sight of Anastasia smiling. After so long, only the fullness in her cheeks and the playful spark in her eyes remained of the mischievous little girl she’d once been. Before Ardi stood a young woman in the making.

And, by the Sleeping Spirits, Ardan was hardly surprised that Anastasia knew no rest at balls and other high society events. Even if she hadn’t been the heir to the throne of the Empire, her beauty alone would’ve been enough to make the sons of the aristocracy lose their minds. Which they were doing rather successfully.

Behind him, the little bell rang again. A snowy wind burst into the room, and with it came that familiar, dear smell.

Ardan turned and saw Erti—dusted with a layer of snow, his lashes white with rime, lightly dressed—enter the bar, dragging several travel bags and trunks in his arms and across his shoulders. Ardan’s younger brother, who’d been on the verge of saying something, froze instantly, and his pupils grew so wide that they all but ate up his irises.

Anastasia moved somewhat sharply away from Ardan and froze in exactly the same way. Her heart was beating so quickly that it seemed to have stopped altogether—the beats blurring into one another.

“Erti, what are you standing there for?” A displeased bass rang out behind the boy—a boy who looked more like a young man. “In case you weren’t aware of this, not all of us are like you. Some of us can feel the cold!”

But Erti only stood there, looking straight ahead. Just as Grand Princess Anastasia was standing there and looking back at him. They couldn’t tear their eyes away from each other.

Ardan recalled an old letter he’d received from the heir to the throne:

“Sometimes, when I look at all those lights, I think: what if among them, there is someone who could be to me what Tess is to you? What if I, too, were to walk into some bar one day (though I doubt I will ever find myself in one) and meet someone whose eyes I cannot look away from?”

Ardan let out a slow breath and turned to Tess, who’d gone paler than even Arkar. Ardi’s future bride didn’t need to hear another’s heart, or catch their scent, to grasp a thing as simple as…

“Ahgrat,” Ardan said without much excitement, almost wearily, as though summing something up.