Book II. Chapter 109 - The Congress (Part 19)

Chapter 109

Erti, who would turn thirteen in a few weeks, already looked manlier than most human men who weren’t much younger than Ardi himself. He’d barely grown over the past half a year, which meant that his height would likely plateau at nearly a hundred and ninety centimeters—but the “lanky” descriptor Kelly had used was a touch premature.

Ardan’s younger brother, thanks to his fondness for ordinary boxing and the shooting range, and also—judging by the scent that had soaked into him, unmistakable to anything sharper than a human nose—horses, had grown broader in the shoulders and now had a stronger waist as well. His figure reminded Ardan of some kind of rough outline that promised, in the very near future, not only to match, but even surpass the likes of Alexander Ursky. Add to that some cheekbones one could’ve cut paper on, that sharp nose, that heavy but not massive jaw, and those thick, faintly forward-set brows, and whatever the doctors of Delpas had done with Ertan’s illness—they had far outstripped every expectation of the Brian-Egobar family.

Ardan recalled what Nazar Glarkin, with whom he had spoken not an hour before, had said about how the Firstborn remained all but unstudied. And how even less was known about half-bloods, and least of all the half-bloods of nearly-extinct races. Could it be that, because of Ertan’s congenital affliction—most likely tied to the peculiarities of mixed-blood offspring of man and Firstborn—Aror had been mistaken? Could it be that Ertan hadn’t, in fact, been stripped of his inheritance from Hector’s blood? Could it be that his inheritance had merely been smothered by the heavy anemia that had poisoned the human half of Erti?

After all, the Firstborn didn’t suffer from anemia, so Aror couldn’t have known anything about the condition.

For some reason, this detail felt very important to Ardan. He felt as though it held the answer to the still not-too-worrisome, but with every passing month more obvious, problem Tess and himself were having with conception. And they weren’t the only ones struggling with this. Tens of thousands of other mixed couples dealt with this issue regularly.

Right now, however, something else was troubling Ardan.

“Erti,” Ardan said, trying to draw his younger brother and… the heir to the Imperial throne out of the burst of hormones whose scent had already begun to wrinkle his nose. The two young hearts had rushed into it without a backward glance, “This is A-”

“Asya,” Anastasia cut in sharply, stepping forward and offering Erti her right hand. “My name is Asya. I help your brother with his Star Magic research, as his apprentice. In the future, I intend to enroll at the Grand as well. And you are Erti, are you not?”

Ardi raised both eyebrows. Anastasia was almost rattling off her words faster than his own racing heart was beating. The young girl was breathing hard, and on her cheeks, one could have, without exaggeration, fried an egg.

The travel bags struck the floor with a thud, and the trunk all but cracked a floorboard—only by some miracle had the iron lock not torn the brackets out by the roots. Had Aror truly been mistaken? Could a thirteen-year-old human boy ever grow within twelve centimeters of the two-meter mark and carry more than fifty kilograms of luggage through the snowdrifts in his arms and on his back and not even be out of breath afterwards?

“Y-yes,” Ertan held out a trembling hand, then caught himself, brushed it against his own thin coat, and held it out again. “Erti… Ertan Brian-Egobar. Ve… very p-pleased.”

Anastasia had obviously been expecting a courtly kiss on the hand—not for Ertan to behave like they were in a cowboy saloon. Seizing her small hand, he shook it with such force that Ardan began to fear that the Grand Princess’ arm would leave her shoulder joint and remain with Erti as a souvenir. This would, of course, lead to all of them, Tess included, being hanged in a neat row.

“Oh. Sorry, Asya,” Ertan, snapping out of it, unclenched his hand sharply and scratched the back of his head. It looked very similar to the way Ardan had acted before he’d broken the habit of ruffling his hair with his own staff. “Does it hurt?”

Anastasia smiled. She did so not only with her lips, but also with sparkling eyes—eyes that, like Ertan’s, no longer looked so oddly grown-up. Quite the contrary. They were now achingly childlike, faintly glazed over, and full of hot sparks.

Ardan didn’t doubt for a second that, right now, these two could only see each other. Why was he so certain of their mutual attraction to the “first person they’d met?” For the same reason that his own wedding ceremony was going to take place tomorrow.

“No,” Anastasia—Asya—said gently. “Not at all.”

Maybe Ardan should’ve stepped in, but before Kelly could swallow his rising indignation with a knowing little smirk (damn it all! He also didn’t know what the only daughter of the Emperor looked like!), Shaia entered the room.

Right then, Ardan forgot all about the heir to the throne. And his own injuries. He forgot about everything else entirely...

“Mother,” he said simply.

A moment later, he was holding Shaia in a tight embrace. It was at once firm and gentle. She held him the same way. Ardi breathed in a smell that was so familiar and so dear to him: sweet pastries and blackberries. The smell of his home. Not the home he had chosen, as he had with Tess, but the one in which he’d been born and where bright and joyful memories had waited for him—the laughter of his parents, the warmth and comfort of a child’s bed.

For a single instant, he was convinced that Shaia smelled not only of blackberry pie, but something else as well. It was something that tickled his nose with pine needles, that washed his road-weary feet like a cold mountain stream, that caressed his hair like a fresh wind, and warmed his back like hot stones.

For the briefest moment, Shaia had smelled like the Alcade. But Ardi knew that this was only a flicker of his own weakness. A sweet sort of homesickness for the large wooden house that stood at the bend of a mountain stream had overtaken him for a second.

“Let me look at you,” Shaia asked with that softness and care only a mother is capable of.

Wrapped in a fur coat thrown over a woolen dress and several shawls, she looked at Ardi. These were eyes Ardi would never forget for as long as he lived, since they had been the very first thing he’d seen in his life.

Shaia raised her hand and, standing on her toes, ran it along his cheek.

“You aren’t forgetting to eat?” She asked matter-of-factly, acting as though, in the year and a half that had just gone by, they hadn’t spent just a handful of days together.

“No, Mother,” Ardan said, pressing his cheek into her palm.

“Good,” she nodded. “Then, if you would be so kind, help Erti with our things and show us where we may settle in, please.”

“Oh, right, yes,” Ardan cleared his throat and turned to Arkar, whose vast back was already shielding the still-frozen pair that was Erti and Anastasia. “Wait, where’s-”

Ardan looked around and soon let out a breath of relief. Little Kena, who was wearing a comical, scarlet fur coat with white mittens and gloves, had already settled onto Tess’ lap and was conducting a most weighty and serious conversation with her.

“Yesterday, Guta and I—that’s what I named my bear, Erti told me stories about animals and I liked that name—yesterday, Guta and I heard some strange sounds coming from the compartment next to ours,” Kena explained to Tess, presenting her plush toy with all the gravity of a seven-year-old. “We think they were eating in there and chewing very, very loudly. Mama taught me that you mustn’t chew loudly. It’s bad manners. And one can choke, too. But that man and his lady were clearly never taught that.”

Tess reddened at first, then, barely holding back a laugh, asked:

“And did you tell any of the grown-ups?”

“Papa,” Kena offered her a small shrug. “But he very nearly choked from laughing. And here’s what I thought then—what if one can choke even if someone else is chewing on the other side of the compartment wall?”

A small tremor of barely-contained mirth ran through Tess, while Ardan only smiled. Kena reminded him of both Shaia, with her honesty and openness, and of Kelly, with her simple, sometimes painful directness.

Speaking of the older generation of their strange family that had been pieced together from the broken patterns of two shattered mosaics…

Sleeping Spirits!

Ardan was already tired of turning his head. He felt as though he’d ended up in the middle of a spring storm and didn’t know which branch to seize to stay on his feet.

“Arkar,” the half-orc introduced himself curtly, extending his huge, light-brown paw of a hand toward Kelly.

Kelly had served as a cavalry officer on the same stretch of the front as Arkar. The former Sheriff of Evergale was not in the least bit intimidated by the sight of two meters and twenty-odd centimeters of muscle weighing in at nearly a quarter of a ton.

“Kelly Brian.” Kelly’s calloused hand was soon lost inside Arkar’s paw, which reminded Ardi of Anastasia. Speaking of his friend, she still couldn’t tear her eyes away from Erti, and Erti, for his part, was still staring dumbly at the heir to the throne even though he didn’t know the whole…

Sleeping Spirits!

Ardan slowly turned his gaze away from Shaia, who had already unbuttoned her fur coat. Ardi now saw clear evidence that his mother was with child thanks to her very rounded belly. It seemed like Shaia had no more than six weeks remaining before the baby was due to arrive. He turned back to Arkar. How would his mother take the presence of a half-orc here given the circumstances of Hector’s death?

Apparently, he needn’t have worried.

“Shaia Brian-Egobar,” his mother introduced herself and took Arkar’s hand in turn. For an instant, Ardan felt that same unpleasant, ill-tempered prickle that he had long since categorized as jealousy. “Thank you very much, Arkar, for the help you have given my son.”

“Well, it’s not exactly clear who has helped whom,” Arkar growled a touch awkwardly, and then caught himself at once. “Come—I will see you up to the apartment. We’ve only just connected the heating and got the hot water in. You’ll be able to polish yourselves up—I mean, freshen up—after your trip.”

And, just as awkwardly as before—at once chuckling and growling—Arkar swept up all the travel bags and trunks with lightning speed, as though they weighed no more than a feather. Whistling something under his breath, he scuttled toward the door that led to the stairs.

Despite his occasional savagery and ability to remain cool even when being very cruel, Arkar—like any other soul—was no stranger to a quite different, far brighter set of emotions. At the sight of this oversized creature—he was also older than Kelly and Shaia put together—acting visibly shy and ill at ease, Ardan barely held back a smile.

“Come on, you disgrace,” Kelly said and gave Ertan a soft push between the shoulder blades.

“Ah? Ah!” Erti snapped out of it, reminding Ardan of himself once more, and awkwardly scratched the back of his head again. “And will you… Will you be…”

“You may speak plainly,” Anastasia said, shining like the summer sun.

“Will you be here when… that is… Well, when we-”

“I will,” Anastasia cut him off.

Erti flushed so deeply that it seemed like, if given another second or two, the ends of his hair might catch on fire.

“I’ll be quick!” he cried out and, spinning around, very nearly ran into Arkar’s back. “Absolutely quick! Don’t go anywhere!”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Shaia, who’d exchanged warm smiles and cheek kisses with Tess by then, picked up Kena, and the whole household trailed after the half-orc. Only Anastasia, Tess and Ardi remained in the bar.

Passing Anastasia, who seemed to deflate as she noticed the look in his eye, Ardan grabbed his staff and tapped it lightly against the floor. A ghostly veil shimmering with miniature ice shards surged out of the top of his staff. It swept along the windows atop an icy wind, covering them in an instant with an impenetrable pattern not of mere frost, but solid rime.

Releasing the all-but-weightless fragment of the Name of Ice and Snow, Ardan grabbed his grimoire and began to leaf hurriedly through its pages.

“Where is it… I had something like that… Where-”

But before he could find the auxiliary seal he needed (one of those he barely ever used, and therefore hadn’t spent the mental effort to commit to memory), the dull thud of another’s staff hitting the ground came from next to him.

Ardan turned to his friend and caught sight of the scarlet, neatly-conjured seal that had appeared beneath her. It had been cast quite well, and swiftly enough that she could’ve passed for a first-year of most of the Grand’s faculties, except for the Military and the Healing Faculty.

Out of the Ertalain crystal that was a pure scarlet color and set in the head of Anastasia’s staff, a soap bubble sprang out, then swelled and widened like a spring bud. It settled around the chairs and tables, leaning against the walls and seemingly trying to soak into the lacquer that covered the floor as well.

Bubble of Silence. That’s what this modification of the basic version of the Veil of Secrecy spell was called. And the modification, which was beloved by the nobility, demanded no fewer than four red rays to cast. It not only guaranteed that no sound wave could pass beyond it, but also added a useful function. With the ordinary Veil of Secrecy, the waves still set up vibrations that one could read with a special counter-seal.

The Bubble of Silence nullified this threat completely, absorbing the vibrations with its innermost layer.

Such a solution had its own downsides, of course.

Tess, who was unused to such things, was opening her mouth, working her jaw, and rubbing her ears with her hands. Right now, everything inside the soapy veil had the same dull, hollow ring of an echo at the bottom of a deep well.

“Don’t bother to thank me,” Anastasia narrowed her eyes at him and answered the question that hadn’t been asked yet. “I use it nearly every day, or the dutiful servants will pass everything on to the Cloaks, or to Urnosov, or to the governesses, and they, in turn, will pass it straight on to father.”

Ardan took a few decisive steps forward and came close to the heir to the throne.

“What are you doing here?” He asked, refusing to let the warmth he felt at his friend’s presence enter his voice.

Anastasia lifted her chin proudly and met his gaze without a flicker of hesitation.

“As I’ve already said—I couldn’t miss my only friend’s wedding.” She might’ve even been using the very same tone in which Ardan himself, not so very long ago, had announced to the Empress-Consort that he would personally pay for the insanely pricy suits given to him at the Anorsky estate. He idly wondered if he’d also sounded this stubborn and foolish back then.

“Sleeping Spirits, Anastasia!” Ardan cried out and leaned heavily on his staff again. “There is… demons only know what going on in this city! All of this muck with the Congress is enough! And you chose to leave your guards behind and come here? Into the lair of the Orcish Jackets?”

Anastasia lifted her chin higher still. This had seemed, only a moment ago, like an impossible feat. Ardan had noticed in their correspondence that his young friend was growing up with every passing day. Even so, seeing it firsthand made the difference between this Anastasia and the one from a year and a half ago far too blatant. And he wasn’t talking about how she’d grown up physically.

“So, you’re not glad I came?” She hissed. “I suppose I ought to have settled for learning about your misadventures from the newspapers, since you couldn’t be bothered to keep up our correspondence.”

“I had,” Ardan tapped his wrist, “my reasons. Poplar should’ve told you that much!”

Behind him, Tess let out a small cough, and Ardan understood, with a growing horror, that he had not, in fact, told his all-but-wife about the mark of Allane’Eari.

“See!” Anastasia pointed past Ardi. “Your love of secrets is going to be the cause of your first marital quarrel. You might want to focus on that, rather than how I got here.”

“Well, do forgive me, Your Highness! The part of me I eat with is in working order—unlike, in the case of some, the part one sits on!” Ardan barked.

“If yours were truly in working order, Esteemed Chieftain, you would’ve asked where I intend to stay for the next day and a half, rather than trying to make me sit through the same suffocating interrogation that the servants in the palace subject me to every day!”

“And if yours were in working order, you would’ve grasped that it is absolute idiocy to leave the most defended building in the Empire!”

“Well, if absolute idiocy is, to you, an attempt to participate in one of the happiest days of your friend’s life—a day, by the way, that will not happen again!—and if you take such events so lightly, then I pity your other friends!”

“My other friends don’t try to commit elaborate suicide while dragging everyone around them along for the ride!”

“Ah, well then, you’re simply afraid? Then don’t worry, Ardi—my magic will be enough for both of us!”

“Your magic? The fact you’ve lit nine rays in your Red Star does not make you a great mage!”

“It’s still two more rays than you have!”

Anastasia and Ardan were shouting at one another so loudly and heatedly that they didn’t notice Arkar coming down. The half-orc, who had only half-resigned himself to the fact that he would likely be flayed alive in the cellars of the Black House simply because the only legitimate heir of the Agrov blood had crossed his threshold, all but clutched at his heart.

He would most likely have preferred another tour of that underground temple of the Old Gods and a meeting with a second demon to the sight of an angry Ardan and Her Imperial Highness yelling at each other with such force that… Well, the panes weren’t rattling, but the magical soap bubble that had enveloped his bar was pulsing rather notably indeed.

Carefully walking around the two shouting mages, Arkar came to stand beside Tess, who looked a little angry, but still seemed to be the most level-headed of those present.

“Have they been at it long?” Arkar asked, lowering himself with great care onto the chair next to her.

“A little while,” Tess answered evasively while still boring into her fiancé’s back with an unfriendly stare. “Did you know anything about why Ardi couldn’t continue his correspondence with… the Grand Princess?”

“Tess.”

“Yes, Arkar?”

“I would’ve preferred not to know that they were on… such friendly terms at all,” Arkar answered her, still pale.

Tess turned toward… her friend? And she nodded.

“Fair enough, but-”

“Madam Atura is right. They truly are very alike,” someone said.

Arkar and Tess turned sharply toward the sound. Beside them, holding a miniature shot glass filled with… milk in his small paw, sat a cat. He was wearing a winter version of a green soldier’s uniform with a strict cut. When he moved, he made the tiny tin medals on his chest jingle slightly. At his side rested a scaled-down version of a cavalry saber in its scabbard, and on his boots, the traditional Galessian pattern was visible.

And while Tess had met Mr. Poplar before, Arkar blinked several times, then rubbed his eyes with his wrists, and was, eventually, on the verge of letting out a roar. He’d already opened his fanged mouth and, for some reason, touched a tusk, before he—just as slowly—closed his mouth again and waved instead. By now, he really should’ve grown used to the fact that, owing to his friendship with a certain Speaker, his life really was starting to resemble some perverse version of a cruel, if sometimes beautiful, fairy tale.

“At times, their correspondence has gotten even more heated than what you are seeing now, Miss Tess, Mr. Arkar,” the Vila addressed the half-orc, twitching his small muzzle and shaking his whiskers comically. “Which is perhaps why the Grand Princess found such a good friend in Mr. Ard. At times, it seems to me like they might be relatives of some kind…”

And, as if to confirm the cat’s words, Anastasia and Ardan chorused as one:

“You’re not listening to me!”

Ardan looked at the flushed Anastasia and simply couldn’t grasp why she didn’t understand what he was trying to tell her.

“You’ll never understand me at all,” Anastasia threw her hands up.

“I could say the exact same thing to you,” Ardi retorted.

“So, what, because I’m the heir to the throne, I’m supposed to sit obediently behind three locks, behind a few dozen Cloaks and Daggers, and wait until I am handed off, like a cow at a market, to the most generous bidder?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Ardi shook his head. “You know perfectly well how I feel about that part of your life. We have spoken about it more than once.”

“Well, if we’ve spoken about it more than once, why will you not praise me?” The young girl’s eyes flared with fire again.

“Praise you for what?!” Ardan, unable to hold himself back again, raised his voice. “For putting the careers of a few dozen people in danger with your escape?”

“Perhaps, if I was able to escape, they had no business being my guards to begin with?”

Ardan opened his mouth to launch into another tirade, but soon shut it again.

“Very well,” he sighed, defeated, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It’s hard to refute that. How did you actually get out?”

Anastasia let out a small huff—the kind only the heir to the largest country in the history of the world could make—and held out her open grimoire. Ardan barely resisted the urge to scratch the back of his head with his staff, which would’ve cost him a fair portion of his scalp, and looked at the diagram.

At first, he didn’t quite grasp what he was seeing, but with each passing second, he could not help but acknowledge Anastasia’s engineering skill. Using means that were far from simple, she had built, from scratch, a stationary seal capable of projecting an audio-visual illusion. And one that drew power from a generator besides.

Where on earth had she found a generator—ah, yes. He was, after all, dealing with the daughter of the Emperor…

What was so striking about the seal? That it didn’t work on its own, but layered itself over…

“A gramophone?” Ardan’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “You enchanted a gramophone? And… the resonators as well?”

“My voice has been recorded on it,” the Grand Princess answered proudly. “The sound waves carry through space and reflect off old mirrors—they have a thin, metal base. In this way, I can create a recursion of interaction between the source of the sound and the surrounding area, and the spell merely supplements the effect with a visual one.”

Ardan looked at her seal once more.

“In the array responsible for keeping the primary image going, and in the array responsible for setting the trajectory and rules of motion, there is an error in the conjugating bridge,” Ardan pointed to a number of runic links.

“Yes?” Anastasia came alive at once and leaned over Ardan’s arm. “Where?”

“Here,” the young man tapped his finger against the page. “With your method, the seal will start accumulating errors when external influences act upon it. At some point, the illusion will fail to combine within itself the parameters of the reaction you’ve set to…” He caught himself. “No. That is not important right now!”

Snapping her grimoire shut, Ardan handed it back to Anastasia, who once again looked upset.

“This wouldn’t fool either Urnosov or the Cloaks. Therefore…”

“Therefore, I threw a grand tantrum in advance,” Anastasia cut in. “It was so large that, this time, it seems even father was angry about it. And, trust me, after all this time, I know exactly how each of my keepers will react. This small trick—which I am still expecting you to praise me for—will hold just well enough to last the next two days. Especially since, as you yourself rightfully pointed out, everyone at the palace is busy dealing with the consequences of the Congress, and a wayward, troublesome Grand Princess is, for the moment—thank the Eternal Angels—no one’s concern.”

“Anastasia, why call them ‘keepers?’ They’re only doing their job…”

“Then they are doing it poorly,” Anastasia repeated her irrefutable argument, “since I am here now.”

Ardan rubbed the bridge of his nose again. He wasn’t good at arguments of this kind. As a rule, Ardi wasn’t good at arguing in general. Among beasts, such things weren’t common. If your opinions diverged, your paths diverged along with them. And as for anything tied to discussions in a pack… Ardi didn’t know how a pack lived. That was why he had such trouble with social nuances, actually.

Ardan was working on the problem, but for now, the results left much to be desired.

“But how did you get here?”

“It wasn’t hard,” Anastasia made a vague gesture in the air. “From the palace, I went on foot to the nearest tram stop, and from there, I went to the underground lines.”

“You took public transport?!”

“Do you think I have an automobile, or that I know how to drive one?!” Anastasia cried out with the same annoyance Ardan had just displayed. “Of course I took public transport!”

Ardan felt like he was about to be sick. His heart was hammering. The Puppeteers, in the pursuit of goals known only to them, to the Sleeping Spirits, and to the Face of Light, were doing as they pleased in the Metropolis. They’d very nearly sent the ambassador of the Tazidahian Brotherhood to the Eternal Angels. They’d flooded the government with their moles. He was also pretty sure that it wasn’t just the Empire’s government that had been compromised. And yet, in broad daylight, the only heir to the throne had run out of the palace and, without a second thought of any kind, had set off on a journey through the entirety of the Central District.

Indeed…

Such madness was likely something that even the Puppeteers couldn’t have foreseen. In truth, no one could’ve expected this to happen. Only Anastasia could’ve come up with such a mad plan.

“I understand why you’re worried, Ardi,” the Grand Princess tried to smooth things over. “But I have been preparing for this for almost two months. Ask Poplar.”

Ardan turned sharply and looked at the half-blood of a forest cat and a Fae who was seated at the table with Tess and Arkar, sipping his milk from a shot glass. Poplar dropped his ears a little and looked off to one side. Shame was evident on his whiskered face.

“And how are you planning to return?” Ardan asked quietly.

“I assumed that, the morning after the ceremony, you would drive me back,” Anastasia answered as though it were nothing at all.

Arkar choked on air so sharply that he actually grunted. Tess, who had kept her composure until now—though not without making a mental note to ask about their interrupted correspondence later—made some sort of indistinct sound. And Poplar… Poplar sighed with the same weary resignation Ardi felt.

The Grand Princess looked between them in honest bewilderment. “What’s the matter?” She asked. “You do serve in the Second Chancery.”

The heir to the throne might’ve had an iron will worthy of her mother and father. She might’ve carried within her the monstrous gift for Star Magic that most of the Anorsky line (and at least one of the Agrovs) possessed. And, like Erti, by virtue of the life she’d led, she didn’t exactly look like a child. But…

She was still a fourteen-year-old girl who was about to turn fifteen. And even something she’d been told and had actually understood from the start might’ve simply slipped her mind.

“Oh…” Anastasia paused suddenly. “Perhaps this was a bad idea…”

“Indeed,” Ardan sighed. “Even if I avoid an interrogation, I shall be sent on an indefinite journey across the whole Empire.”

The bar, somewhat resembling the magical bubble of the silence spell, was now wrapped in a silence of its own.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t think about that,” Anastasia muttered reluctantly, and after another brief pause, she added, “But are you at least glad I came?”

“Of course I’m glad!” Ardan waved her off and looked at the frozen window.

Now he had to work out what to do. And the most pressing issue was no longer how he would return Anastasia to the Palace of the Kings of the Past.

What troubled Ardan far more was how Erti and Anastasia had looked at one another. And that… That truly was a problem.

The young man looked at Arkar, and the half-orc just shrugged at him.

They had, in effect, exchanged some silent remarks:

“It’s a pity I don’t drink, orc.”

“That’s your choice, Matabar.”