Book II. Chapter 119 - The poem

Ardi was sitting in a hard, slightly rickety chair, and what he was holding in his hands was... not a grimoire at all. Here, in the Arena’s dusty, paper-strewn archive, spiders were his only company amid the mold and forgotten, dented and rusting catalog cabinets. They huddled in a realm of stale air and dead, disconnected wiring, surrounded by darkness and desolation.

Ardan had chosen this room as the place to begin building the sound system, whose components were due to arrive any day now.

“Sorry, friend,” Ardan said, watching the spider crawl across the back of his hand. “I’m going to have to disturb your solitude.”

The spider ignored its visitor and kept scurrying until it slid down a long, slender strand of silk and disappeared among the dusty hills and moldy valleys of the floor. Ardi would obviously have to clean the place up before he could set up any of the equipment. And naturally, he would have preferred almost any other place for this, but only the abandoned archive had a free connection point to the generation bay.

Why had the room been abandoned, then?

A long time ago, the Brolid family had won the Crown’s competition to build an arena worthy of hosting the International League of Magical Boxing championship. The event was held only once every four years. Thousands of people gathered to watch a spectacle like that, and nearly a hundred mages had made it through to the week-long final round.

And so, the Brolids had built this place on a truly royal scale, supplementing their own investment with money from the Crown. Unfortunately, once the event had concluded, the Arena had proven to be far from profitable. The most valuable part of it, as John had rightfully pointed out, was the land itself.

And so, half a century later, the Arena and most of the complex had fallen into disrepair, consigned to obscurity and loneliness in the gloom with those same spiders for company. Well, the spiders and the occasional cleaner who would barely open a door before hurrying to lock it again and retreat somewhere far away. Somewhere their brooms, buckets and rags had at least some chance of winning.

Ardan smiled.

“Maybe a cleaner wrote you?” Ardan asked the crumpled scrap of paper he had stumbled across in one of the cabinets. He had needed to make sure the insulating sheath around the wires hadn’t been damaged, which meant reaching in by hand.

Eventually, a small wad of paper had fallen at his feet, its surface entirely covered with cheap ink. After decades of neglect, the ink had almost completely faded, but Ardi could still make out the words:

“I will not ask what end you found

along your road through hostile ground,

whether you won or failed when you tried.

Tell me instead: what word was your guide?

When trouble rose before you like a wall,

when darkness deepened over all,

did your soul stand firm against the gloom,

or did it tremble, resigned to doom?

When you fell to your knees, did you rise once more

to challenge the storm, as you had before?

Or did sweet surrender swallow you whole,

a welcome escape for a wavering soul?

Suppose every effort you made went amiss.

Suppose your road led nowhere but the abyss.

Yet if you stood firm despite every strain,

then even your death would not be in vain.

And those who walked on with teeth clenched tight,

through endless night, never seeing dawn’s light,

deserve the praise of every trumpet that sounds

for those who have never known grief so profound.

Greatness lies not in making a man fall,

but in rising once broken and standing tall.

Fate will ask just one question outright:

“How did you dare to live and fight?”

Beneath the poem was an illegible signature with two identical initials. Whoever had written it had first and last names that began with the same letter.

Ardi knew nothing about poetry, and yet, for some reason, he’d spent almost ten minutes smoothing out the paper and fastening it inside the front cover of his grimoire. Maybe this was what Tess had meant when she’d explained to him that he did not need to understand poetry, or paintings, or ballet, or opera, or any of those other things that, to a native of the Alcade like Ardi, seemed to exist in another dimension. He didn’t have to understand them, value them, or know anything about them. Something like that could still catch him at an odd moment and stay in his head for a long time. Like a splinter. Only not a painful one.

In any case, once he was done with the crumpled sheet of paper, Ardi turned the pages until he reached the schematic for Ice Tail.

“Imagine that... one of the mages here wrote poetry.” Ardan smiled faintly and returned to his research. “Now I only have to figure out how to make you less ravenous.”

Using the Ice Tail cost almost four times as much as using the standard Fire Lash, both in terms of Ley and, once the accumulators were factored in, in exes. Every military mage was required to study the Fire Lash, and it was even part of the final-year curriculum at the Grand’s Military Faculty. The curriculum devoted three months to the base version and three modifications of each student’s choice.

So, the most sensible choice would have been to tear out the smudged page and go back to the Fire Lash, but...

Ardan’s entire arsenal consisted of ice spells. That meant he could not perform a Resonance combination if he made a fire spell his main weapon for the time being. And a military mage without the ability to perform Resonance was a joke no one would laugh at.

That meant Ardan had had to rework Fire Lash almost completely. Of course, he could’ve chosen some other spell. He could’ve found something better suited to his purposes among the nearly endless arsenal of war magic created over the five centuries since the Empire’s founding.

Unfortunately, most ice spells were already several decades out of date. The reason was simple: fire worked far better against iron. And the modern world had been built with iron and was still being built with it.

Ardi, for his part, could ignore that particular drawback because of the link between the Name of Ice and Snow and his ice-based Star Magic. But even so, working with Blue Star magic required an entirely different body of knowledge, one that was far more advanced than anything he had encountered before.

“The funnel of knowledge widens exponentially, doesn’t it, Edward?” Ardi managed a sad smile as he remembered the man’s joke. May the Eternal Angels receive him…

Yes, during that quiet month and a half, he had done a thorough job of filling the gaps in his foundational knowledge, just as Professor Convel had advised him. He had shored up his weak areas and practiced every basic Star Engineering technique he had overlooked.

But working with Blue Star magic, which even the Star Engineers at the Grand didn’t begin studying until the second half of their fourth year, would require Ardan to undertake a much more intensive course of study.

“It might even help with the Ice Dolls... and with the transmutational runic links as well,” Ardan mumbled, studying the reading list he had put together: there were seventeen titles there, and every single one of them was new to him. And apparently, that was still nowhere near the limit.

Ardi exhaled and leaned back in the chair. It swayed. He flung out his arms and nearly fell. The old wooden strips that made up the chair, which had been woven together like a basket, cracked and nearly crumbled into dust. This gave him a taste of what ordinary human furniture felt like to an orc.

Orcs...

A few days earlier…

Ardi watched the ambulance pull away from the estate, if the white-painted van could really be called that. It had wide, bulging headlights, it bore the emblem of the Church, and it had a sign on it announcing that medical care was available inside.

It was an old model. The newer one had a “chandelier” that used a simple mechanism to sweep a bright red beam of light above the driver. It broke down often and sometimes went dim, but the medics wanted it all the same, because experience had shown that when the chandelier was switched on, they had a better chance of getting the injured person to the hospital in time.

They would get Arkar there. That much was certain.

Ardi had managed to close the most serious wounds, but a severe concussion, broken facial bones, profuse internal bleeding, a ruptured spleen, and several other injuries were definitely beyond anything Ardi could handle.

Fortunately, no traitorous mutant had cut Arkar with a poisoned knife, so his orcish regenerative factor had already gone to work. Arkar might spend about ten days in the hospital, perhaps a little longer, but he would come out of it whole and healthy, without any prosthetics.

Now, as for prosthetics…

Ignoring the less-than-friendly looks from the orcs, Ardan walked along the corridor connecting the foyer to the west wing where he had used up government-issued accumulators while patching Arkar’s wounds.

“Where’s Ordargar’s body?” Ardi asked the nearest orc. He was a massive slab of muscle, fangs, tusks, brown hide, and glaring yellow eyes.

“Don’t forget your place, shrimp,” the orc rumbled. “Arkar’s not here, so...”

Ardi cocked his head to one side. Now he was curious.

“So... what?” He asked, raising both eyebrows. “Care to finish that deep, multifaceted thought, orc?”

Ardan’s friendship with Arkar didn’t mean that he had overcome his general dislike of orcs, regardless of whether they were tied to the Shanti’Ra or not. Yes, Ardi could carry on a pleasant conversation with the bouncers at “Bruce’s,” but that did not mean he was glad to see them.

He was simply honing his ability to talk to people who weren’t part of his family and small circle of friends.

An orc Ardi didn’t recognize, one of Ordargar’s former comrades, reached for a revolver. Ardi found it a little baffling… Using a revolver? Against a Blue Star Mage?

He caught his reflection in one of the mirrors. Ah. Of course. He was wearing a green cloak, and he hadn’t yet applied to the Mages’ Guild to have his new Star registered. But using a firearm against any mage, even a Green Star one, was a strange way to begin one’s journey along the paths of the Sleeping Spirits.

“Bad idea.” Azgraukar moved to stand beside Ardi. He was one of Arkar’s trusted “fangs,” a man with one serious flaw: he was hopeless at any sort of repair work. “Ard’ll kill you before you get that popper out of its leather.”

In street slang, “popper” meant a revolver, while “leather,” depending on the situation, meant a holster or a sheath.

“A shrimp in our house-”

“In our house,” Azgraukar repeated with deliberate emphasis, cutting him off. “So, Darbakargar, if you really want to, go ahead and try your luck against a Matabar half-blood who’s also a mage. Just whistle first, so we can haul our carcasses farther out of the way. Then we’ll call the cleaners to scrape up whatever’s left of you.”

Darbakargar gave Ardi a furious look brimming with pure irritation, then jerked his half-drawn iron back into its holster and stepped aside. Azgraukar nodded and led Ardan toward an inconspicuous door situated in the opposite wing of the house.

“Thanks,” Ardan said.

He wasn’t exactly thanking him for the help itself. He was mostly grateful for Azgraukar’s willingness to stand with him, and for settling the entire conflict with nothing but words.

“Don’t mention it,” Azgraukar replied, and his tone was unusually courteous. “If you had done anything to Darbakargar, Ordargar’s loyalists would have stepped in.”

Azgraukar turned halfway around and surveyed the orcs gathered nearby. Half of them looked fired up, ready to celebrate the victory, while the other half looked downcast. They averted their eyes and sought out members of their own faction, gradually coming together into small groups.

“Arkar’s going to have to do something about this,” Azgraukar said quietly. “And I hope he succeeds. Otherwise...”

Otherwise, as far as Ardi understood it, the Orcish Jackets would not exactly cease to exist, but the gang would have to endure a small-scale “civil war.” Or a split, with roughly half its members breaking away.

But if Ardi was honest with himself, none of that concerned him at all. All of it was a matter for the guards, for Arkar, and perhaps for those Cloaks whose duties involved dealing with the members of the Six. Ardan had no doubt that such “colleagues” of his existed.

Together, Ardi and Azgraukar approached the door and then stepped inside the room. Ordargar lay on a wide, blood-soaked table in a servants’ utility closet that held brooms, dustpans, and all manner of cleaning supplies. It was a wonder the table legs hadn’t cracked beneath him, but apparently, the thing had been built to last.

“Close the door, please,” Ardan said. He quickly added, “And don’t let anyone in.”

Azgraukar nodded, locked the door from the inside, and planted himself in front of it, his back to the entrance, facing Ardan. Ardi, meanwhile, had already drawn his father’s knife from its sheath. He approached Ordargar, whose chest bore a gruesome, ragged wound exposing a shattered rib cage, then raised his blade over the body.

“Ard!” Azgraukar protested. “He’s still our former Chieftain! We have to show respect for his remains before we send the smoke of his funeral pyre skyward.”

Ardan looked at Azgraukar before answering:

“With all due respect, Azgraukar…” He slashed open Ordargar’s left pant leg.

Azgraukar lurched forward and bared his fangs and tusks, but then he froze midway. Disbelief flashed in his eyes, followed by disgust tinged with primal fear.

“Ahgrat,” Ardan swore curtly.

A leg that looked nothing like an orc’s was attached below Ordargar’s knee by an ugly, bulging, whitish scar. Of course, he was assuming that some orcs hadn’t suddenly grown bumpy, slimy skin and their feet hadn’t turned into long, webbed paws ending in only two clawed toes.

Ardi moved a little closer to the joint and sniffed. A sickly-sweet smell rose from it, like a piece of meat forgotten in the sun and drenched in sour honey. It didn’t so much hit his nose as crawl into it, settle on his tongue, and refuse to go away, even when he held his breath.

Ardan brought his knife to the scar, drove its tip into one of the whitish lumps, and jerked back just in time. A jet of thick, yellow-white fluid sprayed into the air. It was something like pus, only the Star Magic version.

The stench that came from it was so bad that Ardan held his breath, leaned his staff against the table, tore off his tie, spat on it, and tied the wet part over his nose. Azgraukar, meanwhile, doubled over with the urge to vomit and, finding nothing better, grabbed a bucket and said goodbye to his dinner, his lunch, and perhaps even his breakfast.

Regardless of whatever deal Ordargar had made and, more importantly, whoever he had made it with, he’d had very little time left to live.

Black flesh was already visible inside the scar, with purple capillaries and threadlike, pale scarlet veins running deeper beneath it. That meant chimerization alone would’ve sent Ordargar down the paths of the Sleeping Spirits in less than two months. As far as Ardi could recall from the autopsy reports on Lea Morimer, her chimerization had been far more stable. Yes, her grafted limbs would’ve still killed her, but only after several years. The artificial Stars in her brain would have killed her sooner.

But several years was nowhere close to “a couple of months.” Did that mean Ordargar had not made his deal with the Puppeteers at all? Perhaps he’d dealt with someone else? Could this mysterious “someone else” be connected to the organization represented by the vampire who had bribed Linda Day, Driba’s apprentice, before dying at the hands of the Dark Aean’Hane?

“It’s a good thing I don’t have to sort this out,” Ardi breathed out. He wiped his knife on Ordargar’s clothes and slid it back into its sheath.

“But... you’re... a mage...” Azgraukar protested, fighting down the urge to retch.

“That’s not what I meant.” Ardi shrugged.

After the Conclave, Milar’s squad, on the Colonel’s orders, was handling only its own investigations. Any related matter had to be turned over to the Black House. Apparently, since then, the Colonel and the bright minds of the Second Chancery had managed to refine a procedure for screening out possible moles, because the number of investigators and operatives assigned to the Puppeteers case was continuing to grow.

“Azgraukar.”

“Huh?”

“Very soon, a whole horde of Cloaks is going to show up here and take Ordargar’s body.”

Azgraukar, a half-orc, nearly dropped the bucket that was half-full of his own vomit.

“What do you mean, Ard?” In his outrage, Azgraukar forgot that he had just been vomiting.

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“They’ll return him to you...” Ardi hurried to reassure him. “Around the time Arkar is discharged from the hospital. You wouldn’t hold the farewell rite without Arkar anyway.”

“I don’t give a damn when Arkar gets discharged, Ard!” Azgraukar growled, trying not to shout. “This is our fallen Chieftain! No human will lay a hand on his remains!”

Ardi turned to Azgraukar and looked into his eyes.

“You have two choices, Azgraukar,” Ardan said, his voice cool. “Either you gather the orcs and all of you leave this place as fast as you can, or you keep arguing with me and trying to prove something. Then the Black House will start questioning all of you, and I doubt you will like the way they ask questions.”

Azgraukar reached for the hilt of his knife, then exhaled sharply and pulled his hand away.

“I won’t forget this, human,” Azgraukar said through clenched teeth, then stormed into the corridor.

Ardan still had his fist clenched around his activated signal medallion. A few minutes later, the gang’s car engines were already growling to life beyond the window.

The present day…

Ardan stretched. Ordargar’s body had been taken to the Black House laboratory, the estate had been turned upside down, and Ardi himself had been asked to write a detailed report on everything that might’ve had any bearing on the incident. Ardi had sent the report directly to the Colonel through the “Eltir,” the Second Chancery’s network of front cafés, using one of its couriers.

And, truth be told, it was a relief not to have to untangle every little detail himself. Ardi had very little interest in exactly where Ordargar had acquired the artificial leg that had amounted to his death sentence. He, Milar and the others already had more than enough investigative threads to follow without adding another one.

Someone knocked on the door.

“Ardi.” John poked his head inside, looking anxious and considerably thinner than he had been just a while ago. “The trucks have arrived.”

“Perfect!” Ardan exclaimed, and once again nearly toppled off the decrepit chair.

The two of them moved as quickly as John could manage. They followed the curving corridor, descended the broad staircases, and passed a row of narrow utility rooms.

The trucks, two potbellied, smoke-belching “Oyvada” models with canvas covers, stood at the Arena’s service entrance. Their drivers, a pair of mustached men in oil-stained jackets, were leaning against the cabs and smoking. Behind them, wooden clipboards in hand, three expeditors were shifting from foot to foot in identical gray coats and caps bearing the supplier’s emblem: a stylized gear with an abstract rune inscribed within it.

“Mr. Egobar?” The senior expeditor, a lean fellow with a long nose and an impatient look about him, held out an invoice to Ardi. “These are one hundred and sixty-four Seal Vaults, model KP-12, Ingvar series, insulation class three. Plus nine spools totaling eighty-four kilometers of Ley-cable, the connecting couplings, one Input Block, and one microphone module. Sign here.”

Ardan didn’t sign right away. Instead, he took the invoice and scanned it before answering:

“Unload everything. I’m going to check every single unit.”

The expeditor blinked.

“All of them?”

“Every single one,” Ardi confirmed.

Unloading took about half an hour. Cursing, the loaders dragged wooden crates with tin-reinforced corners from the truck beds and arranged them in rows along the wall. Ardan stood nearby with his arms crossed over his chest and counted. There were indeed a hundred and sixty-four crates, each about the size of a vase. They were not especially heavy, but they were awkward to handle and bore the stenciled warnings: “HANDLE WITH CARE” and “DO NOT TILT,” which the loaders naturally ignored with professional indifference.

Ardi pried open the first crate. Inside, nestled in a bed of wood shavings and oiled paper, the much-discussed Seal Vault awaited him. It was a government-gray metal box the size of a thick book. The top panel held three round gauges with brass rims and small glass windows, behind which thin needles rested. On the side were two ports for the Ley-cable, capped with rubber plugs. And in the center, beneath a hinged lid secured by a latch, was the slot for the plate.

Ardan flipped back the lid and drew out the plate. It was a rectangle of Ertalain alloy. It was a dull silver, remarkably light, cold to the touch, and about the size of a playing card. An encrypted seal copied from Ardan’s own schematic was engraved on its surface. The engraving was precise enough to fall within the permitted range of error. The lines looked even, but Ardan could not shake the feeling that the whole device had been assembled with only enough care to pass factory and Guild inspections.

The Vault’s housing was riveted together rather than welded. The gauges sat slightly crooked in their sockets, not enough to matter, but still noticeable to anyone accustomed to working with this sort of equipment. The rubber plugs on the ports did not match: one was thick, the other noticeably thinner. Ardan could tell that once the cable was connected, the thinner plug would melt before the end of its expected service life.

It all reminded him of something Professor Convel used to say with great distaste: “Ley-equipment is designed by people who don’t fully understand what they’re designing, assembled by people who couldn’t care less, and sold to people who can’t tell a working instrument from a pretty box.”

Ardan set the plate back in its slot, closed the lid, and pulled the rubber plug from the first port. He pressed his left hand to the opening and sent a barely-perceptible test pulse of Ley through it at the minimum diagnostic setting. The pulse passed through the port, slid along the Vault’s inner channels, touched the plate, and returned through the second port. Ardi felt the weak but acceptably-even return pulse with the fingertips of his right hand. The losses were minimal. The Vault worked.

“First one’s good,” Ardi said, reaching for the second crate.

The expeditors exchanged a look.

By the fifteenth crate, the senior expeditor had begun tapping his pencil against his clipboard. By the fortieth, the tapping had become a rhythmic countdown to the end of someone’s patience. His two colleagues were shifting from foot to foot and glancing at their watches. The loaders had finished smoking long ago and now sat on the cab steps, yawning.

“Mr. Egobar,” the senior expeditor said, finally unable to stand it, just as Ardan pried open the seventy-eighth crate. “The equipment passed factory inspection. We have every certificate of compliance from the Mages’ Guild. We can-”

“Please wait,” John Brolid interjected, his tone gentle but firm. He was standing a little off to the side with the patience of a man prepared to stay there as long as necessary. “Mr. Egobar knows what he’s doing. We... appreciate your time. But you’ll still have to wait. By law, we have the right to inspect everything we think needs to be inspected.”

The expeditor looked at John, who was almost gaunt and dressed in a worn coat, and apparently decided that arguing was pointless. He sighed and returned to tapping his pencil.

Ardi worked methodically. He pried open crate after crate. He drew out one Vault after another. He inspected the housings with meticulous care, checking for dents, cracks, and panels that did not fit tightly. Then he opened the slot lids and pulled out the plates. He inspected the engravings, making sure every line was clear while looking for chips or missing elements. Only after ensuring that the quality was adequate did he put each plate back. After a while, he worked almost like an automaton repeating the same routine.

Pull the plug from the first port. Palm. Pulse. Wait. Evaluate the return. Pull the plug from the second port. Repeat. Close it. Record the number in his notebook. Next.

He found the first defect in the seventy-ninth Vault. The pulse entered through the first port but never returned. Ardan frowned, pulled out the plate, and examined it closely. One of the vectors on the plate had a break no wider than a hair. The pattern didn’t close. The seal was dead.

“Number seventy-nine, defective.” Ardan delivered his verdict and set the Vault aside.

The expeditor stopped tapping his pencil.

By the one-hundred-and-tenth crate, Ardi had found four more defects. Two Vaults had flaws in their engravings. One had a crack in the inner insulation housing that scattered the pulse before it reached the plate. Another had a skewed slot, so the plate sat loose and shifted out of alignment at the slightest vibration, introducing additional errors.

By the one hundred-and-twenty-seventh crate, the defect count was already up to nine.

“Here’s the list.” Ardi held out his notes to the expeditor. The notes listed the numbers of the defective units and exactly what was wrong with each. “Record the deduction under Mr. Brolid’s name.”

The expeditor took the two documents, read them, and grimaced as if he had been told to start the entire job over again. He pulled his pencil from behind his ear and, grumbling under his breath, began copying the numbers into the invoice.

“Nine units,” Ardan dictated. “At two hundred and six exes apiece for a complete Vault set, including the plate, the seal, and the engraving work. Subtract the bulk-order discount you gave us. The total comes to: one thousand and two exes and thirty-three kso.”

John Brolid went pale at the figure, then turned pink, then pale again, and Ardi couldn’t tell whether he was pleased with the money they had saved or horrified by how much of the equipment had turned out to be unusable. Probably both.

After the expeditors had collected their signatures and recorded the deduction on the invoice, they loaded the defective crates back into the truck bed and drove away in a cloud of blue-gray smoke, leaving a persistent smell of diesel behind and resenting the time they had lost.

Weary, Ardan watched them go, then took off his cloak and pulled a leather tool apron from his bag. The apron was heavy and worn, with a host of pockets and loops; he had bought it on Sleepless Street for one and a half exes. With a practiced motion, he tied it over his vest and got to work.

One hundred and fifty-five serviceable Seal Vaults. Eighty-four kilometers of Ley-cable. One Input Block. One microphone module. And the Arena: a vast, empty stone bowl open to every wind, where his footsteps came back to him as a hollow, lonely echo.

If he’d had a crew of certified workers cleared to handle Ley-equipment, he would’ve finished in a few hours. On his own, though... It looked as though he would be stuck here for the rest of the day, all night, all morning, and half of the following day. It was a good thing Ardi had brought enough dried tonic tea.

It was a weaker version of the nasty stuff he had practically lived on for half a year.

Ardan started with the upper sections. The layout, which he had finished refining at home on the windowsill while Tess had slept, called for the Vaults to be placed around the perimeter of the stands at even intervals, about two meters above the last row. Each Vault first needed to be fastened to the wall with four bolts. Ardi, armed with a drill he’d had to borrow from the Arena’s caretaker, bored holes in the old, crumbling stone, hammered in the anchors, and screwed the metal boxes into place one after another.

The work was monotonous, but not physically demanding. Each Vault weighed a little over three kilograms. Carrying them up the steep stairs of the stands and then holding them aloft while simultaneously driving in the bolts would probably have strained both a human’s arms and their back. Fortunately, even with the mutant’s poison lingering inside him, Ardi was still not entirely human. Yes, his right leg ached with its familiar, dull pain, and by the fiftieth Vault, he had begun to limp more noticeably, but he didn’t stop.

John followed Ardi, taking long breaks and catching up afterward. Ardan couldn’t expect any help from him, though. The hands of a master of ceremonies and a fight promoter were good for handshakes and signing contracts, not for wielding a hammer or a drill. John followed him around like a loyal, nervous dog, one that was unsure of what its master was doing but determined to stay close.

From time to time, he handed Ardi bolts from one of the apron pockets, and whenever Ardan accepted the help, John looked as if he had just made the decisive contribution to the whole enterprise.

When Ardi reached the ninety-first Vault, already mounted on the wall and connected to the still-unpowered Ley-cable, he ran a test pulse through it and got no return. He took the Vault down, opened it, and examined the plate again. The engraving was fine. The insulation and connection channels looked serviceable enough as well. Only the gauges stubbornly read zero. Ardan ran the pulse again, this time increasing the power only slightly. The needle on the central gauge twitched, climbed to the “3” mark, shook, and immediately dropped back to zero.

The seal linking the Vault to the generation system couldn’t hold a load. The problem was a factory defect that hadn’t shown up during the cold check but had appeared once the Vault had been installed as part of the larger system.

Without a word, Ardan took the Vault down and set it aside. Then he pulled a small notebook from his pocket and wrote down the serial number.

“Another one?” John asked in dismay.

“Another one,” Ardi confirmed, not happy about it either.

By nightfall, Ardan had found thirteen more defective units—Vaults that had failed during installation. Some had dead connection seals, others had cracked insulation housings—Ardi had found those when the telltale smellof overheated alloy had drifted out from under the plug—and a couple had plates whose engravings had begun flaking off right there in his hands, leaving silver dust on his fingers.

“Why?” John asked with an expression that suggested he wasn’t actually asking him about defective equipment, but about the meaning of life… “Why us, of all people? They equipped the Baliero Concert Hall without a single complaint. They dug the underground tram lines, and everything was fine. But for us, it’s every eighth box.”

Ardan almost answered him. He wanted to tell John that the Baliero Concert Hall had been outfitted by specialists from a proper design bureau, people who could order their equipment directly from the finest workshops in the Empire and pay three times as much for a guarantee of quality. And the underground tram lines had had to follow military standards because of the enormous number of passengers underground.

And although he and John hadn’t bought the cheapest equipment available, they had still bought it from a supplier nowhere near the top tier and had gotten exactly what they’d paid for. He could’ve also said that Ley-equipment throughout the world was designed and assembled by people whose qualifications, to put it gently, did not always meet the demands of the work. Had Professor Convel been here, he would’ve gladly delivered a forty-minute speech on why Star Engineering in its present form amounted to: “A blind man’s attempts to paint the ceiling of a cathedral.”

But then Ardi looked at John’s face, which was practically gaunt now, with dark circles beneath his eyes and lines that hadn’t been there a while ago, and decided not to upset him. What was the point of explaining to ordinary people that each time they lit a burner on the stove, there was a nonzero chance it would be the last thing they ever did? They believed in the infallibility of the Ley-equipment that made their lives so much easier, and so...

And it wasn’t only the common folk, either. Not all mages had studied at the Grand, not by a long shot. In fact, fewer than one percent of all the specialists in the country had ever passed beneath the arch of the central building of the Imperial Magical University.

“It happens,” was all Ardi said instead. “We’ll return these too. We’ll get almost another fifteen hundred exes back.”

John nodded numbly, as if he had stopped counting and simply given up.

Ardan worked, just as he had estimated, until noon the following day, without help or taking a break for lunch. John brought him sandwiches and a tin mug of tonic tea, and Ardi chewed without taking his eyes off the cable he was running along the ceiling molding, hammering in a staple every seventy-five centimeters (the material was strong enough not to sag over a long span).

The Ley-cable was thick and rigid, with an Ertalain core wrapped in a fabric sheath. It ran from each Vault to a central trunk line, and the trunk line in turn ran to the generation bay, which was located in a ventilated annex attached to the Arena. Guild rules did not permit generation bays of that size to be installed in basements. That was only sensible: if something went wrong and the basement caved in, the fuel would keep burning beneath the rubble, which was not a good thing.

Five of the six generators were working properly. The third one, an old “Irhen” model with a worn nameplate, was acting up. Ardi spent almost an hour working on it: he took the housing apart, replaced the blades, fitted a piece of oiled felt he had found in a utility room in place of the burned-out insulation gasket, and changed the oil in every drive. The “Irhen” coughed, shuddered, and finally came to life with a hesitant whine. Ardan patted its housing like he would’ve patted a horse on the rump, then returned to the stands.

By noon, Ardan had mounted as many of the remaining twenty-five Vaults as he’d needed. Two more had failed during final testing: one with the same dead connection seal, the other with stripped threads on its port that had made connecting the cable impossible. He had also run all the wiring, connected the trunk line to the generators, and routed the control cables into that little abandoned archive room, the one with a window overlooking the Arena.

The archive itself had changed somewhat. A console now stood on a rough table knocked together from boards—wonky but stable. Ardi had built the console himself over the course of two evenings, using components he had bought on Sleepless Street. It was simple but well made: a wooden panel with holes drilled through it and brass toggle switches set into them.

There were sixteen switches for the Vault groups, plus three more for the main power, the trunk line, and the Input Block. A numbered paper tag secured with carpenter’s glue sat beside each toggle. Above the panel was a whole constellation of monitoring gauges, also purchased on Sleepless Street, that showed the load in every sector.

The whole contraption looked like a mad inventor had put it together in a basement, but it worked.

It was supposed to work...

“John,” Ardan said while looking out the window at the oval of the Arena drowning in gray twilight. “Head down to the spot where the stage will be. I’ve already hooked up the Input Block and a microphone. Say something into it... anything.”

John, who didn’t need to be asked twice, nodded and disappeared through the door.

Ardan was alone now. Before him, the console, with all its toggles and gauges, sat idle. Beyond the window, the Arena stretched out in silence. There were twenty thousand empty seats. More than a hundred Seal Vaults hung around its perimeter. There were also nearly ninety kilometers of Ley-cable. And six generators, one of them held together with... felt and a prayer to the Sleeping Spirits.

And yet, Ardi was not entirely alone in the middle of the dusty, abandoned archive. His companion was a question he had deliberately avoided all day, one that now leaned against the cracked doorframe and watched him with sly amusement.

Would Ardan blow up half the Arena when he flipped the main power toggle?

The calculations claimed that wouldn’t happen. The total load would reach only forty-two percent of the generators’ maximum output, the Vault system was balanced to two decimal places, and the Input Block on the stage could capture a sound signal within a four-meter radius without any loss of quality.

Even so...

His intuition, the same instinct that tugged at his sleeve every time he got behind the wheel of the “Derks,” remained quiet. That was probably a good sign—its silence usually meant Ardan had done everything right.

Emphasis on the word usually.

At last, John appeared in the window. Small and dark at that distance, he scurried across the Arena floor toward the point marked with a white circle, where a cable protruded from the packed earth. Beside the cable stood the Input Block and, on a tall stand, a microphone was connected to the block. John reached the point, tilted the microphone arm toward himself, turned toward the little room, and waved.

Ardan sighed; he needed some kind of signal. In the future, he ought to add a light module: a Ley-lamp on a long pole that he could switch on and off from the little room to send commands.

Then again...

Ardi mentally added the idea to his already-endless list of improvements, then immediately crossed it off. Fog rolled in off the bay every other day. In weather like that, a weak light would not reach even halfway across the Arena, while a strong one would blind the audience. He needed something else. Maybe a sound signal.

Or... No. Later.

Those were thoughts for tomorrow.

Right now, the test was all that mattered.

Ardi rapped his staff against the floor and, pointing it toward the window, he cast Sparks. A harmless, decorative burst of bluish lights fanned out over the Arena, drifted slowly down, and winked out over the damp earth. John understood the improvised signal. He straightened, brought the microphone closer to his face, and began to speak.

Ardi heard no sound. At that distance, John looked tiny, his moving lips barely distinguishable.

Ardan laid his hand on the main power toggle. The brass felt cold beneath his hand. He waited a moment. One second, then two. Then he lifted the lever.

The generators below began to hum. Ardi felt the hum more through the soles of his feet than he actually heard it. The gauges on the console came alive. The needles twitched and began creeping upward, each toward its own mark. Ardan quickly scanned them: every sector was in the green zone.

After checking the readings once more, Ardi raised the trunk line toggle. And then the Input Block toggle.

“...check, one, two, three, check... Ard, can you hear me? One, two...”

John Brolid’s quiet, slightly shaky voice, with its characteristic rasp, came not from one or two points, but from every direction: from the walls, the stands, seemingly even the air itself. Every Vault reproduced it at once, and the sound did not double, break up, or drone. It simply... sounded, even and clear, as if John were standing not hundreds of meters away on the floor of the Arena, but right there in the little room beside Ardi.

“...if you can hear me, give me a sign, because I can hear myself, Ard! Oh, Light! I can hear myself! Eternal Angels, I can hear myself!”

Ardan released another Sparks spell and let himself smile.

* * *

Twenty thousand people. They filled the stands from the first row to the last, and the Arena, which had grown accustomed to silence and emptiness over half a century, shuddered and came alive like an old man jostled awake from a long sleep. The Ley-lanterns set around the perimeter bathed the bowl in soft golden light, and in that light, twenty thousand faces glowed with life, as though lit from within.

The evening air settled like a motionless veil over the heads and shoulders of the audience. There was no real wind yet, clinging to the last remnants of winter and refusing to acknowledge the approaching spring. No fog either, that herald of melting ice. And above the Arena, in the dark blue sky, the first stars appeared, faintly visible through the haze of light pollution cast by the glowing Metropolis.

And down below, Tess twirled on the stage—a round wooden platform John’s carpenters had built in a week.

She was wearing a green dress. It was long and flowing, like liquid emeralds, with an off-the-shoulder neckline and a high slit that revealed a flash of pale skin whenever Tess moved. Her dark red hair, which looked like it had been forged from copper, was swept up high, baring her neck and delicate collarbones. At her throat hung a thin chain with a pendant, the one Ardi had given her a couple of days before the concert. The pendant glinted in the lantern light, and it seemed as though a small star burned against Tess’ chest—the only one in the whole darkened sky.

Her musician friends had taken their positions behind her in a semicircle. They played and the sound drifted across the Arena. It didn’t shriek like an angry hawk, thunder like a maddened horse, or roar like the engine of a government-issue “Derks.” In the last row, every note was just as gentle as it had been beside the musicians.

Tess was singing about the Cat.

And twenty thousand people had gone still. There wasn’t a whisper, or a cough, or a rustle. Only Tess’ voice, clear and deep, with a faint rasp on the low notes that made it sound alive. Her voice rose to the sky and came back down, reflected by the magic hidden inside the Vaults, and every person in every row heard it as though Tess were singing for that listener alone.

Ardan stood in the little room, behind the console. His left hand rested on the toggles, his right on the edge of the table. Every so often, he tore his eyes away from the performance to check the readings on the gauges. The needles trembled in a smooth rhythm, as though eager to break into a dance and follow the music pouring over the Arena.

During the chorus, when Tess hit the high note, the needles jumped a little, and Ardi, without looking away, eased the toggles for the two Vault clusters nearest the stage down a fraction, just enough to prevent an overload. Then he brought them back up. Lowered them. Raised them again. At some point, his hands began making the adjustments almost automatically, like a musician who no longer thinks about his fingers.

And his gaze... More and more often, it drifted back to Tess.

To the way her green eyes seemed to glow from within beneath the lantern light. To the way her skin, pale as porcelain, shone against her green dress. To the way she moved across the stage. Not walking, but flowing smoothly from one position to the next, with every movement matching the music and every gesture—a hand raised to the sky, a turn of the head, a step to the side—seeming both inevitable and exactly right.

He watched the way she shone. It was more than mere happiness. It was something that Ardi, despite the dozens of volumes on Star Magic he had read and all of Atta’nha’s scrolls and books, had no name for.

Tess finished the second-to-last verse. The saxophone took up the melody, its sound thin, a little sad, and not at all catlike. Tess closed her eyes, drew in a breath, and began the chorus. Her voice rang out and filled the entire Arena, rising toward the stars veiled by the city’s glow, and twenty thousand people took a breath with her.

Ardan moved the toggle for sector fourteen down slightly. The needle returned to the green zone.

He smiled.

In that moment, he wasn’t thinking about the approaching race. Nor was he thinking about the fact that, in a few weeks, he would have to travel to the northern reaches of the Empire to participate in another adventure he hadn’t chosen for himself. He wasn’t thinking about the Puppeteers, or the Colonel, or chimeras and mutants, or the pharmacy cartel and its patents, or the “Derks” and its clutch, or the accumulators, or Congress, or the ordinary people whose lives are decided by those who jab a finger at a map.

Tess was singing. Twenty thousand people could hear her.

That was enough.