Book II. Chapter 121. Apple Slices

Ice floes drifted past. Great cracked slabs, their edges slightly curled and fringed with glittering crusts of snow. The spring wind drove them on, whipping the ripples into tiny whitecaps across the swift canal water as it licked at the second-to-last mark before that dreadful word: FLOOD.

After a winter of such heavy snow, when city crews had been unable to clear the drifts even with help from the military and the Guards’ corps, the Niewa once again threatened to overflow its banks. This time, though, it was not just a cold, peevish grumble from far off, not merely a threat to spill over the granite embankments. This was a very clear warning.

That was why, up ahead at the canal outlets and wherever the black threads that pierced the Metropolis fed into the Niewa on her way to Swallow Bay, barges labored tirelessly. Working in shifts, dozens of people used long pikes and augers to break up the floes as they began to melt, before they could lock together in the narrows.

Not that it helped much, but the city was at least trying to protect itself from yet another disaster by controlling what it could. Once meltwater from the snowpack on the hills seeped down to the water table, filtered through the quicksand, and drained into the river, the people of the city would have to remember why everyone kept rubber boots at home, the kind that reached as high as cavalry jackboots.

Ardan watched the floes and felt as if the black, heavy water had already engulfed him. It had pinned him to the bottom and was pressing down on his chest without mercy.

Beside him, Milar smoked. He sat in his worn wheelchair, a blanket over his legs. Every so often, he drew on his cigarette, his breath rasping softly, then exhaled little gray clouds of smoke. They vanished at once into the dark evening sky. Dusk was already giving way to night.

The city lights were coming on.

Like flickering fireflies that had come to peer into the lives of the smug folk who lived along the Markov Canal and across the Central District of the Empire’s capital, the lights flared to life along the embankments. Some glowed behind dirty glass as the hour drew near when people would begin leaning out from nearly every window, on every floor of every house. Armed with rags and buckets, they would wipe their houses’ eyes clean and smile at the long-awaited warmth drawing near.

Ardi wished everything in his life could be that simple, too.

That he, too, could wipe his eyelids clean, rinse his face with water from the canal, give himself a shake like a contented dog, and head home. And maybe, if he were a full-blooded matabar, it might all be that simple. But...

People.

Why did people always have to be so complicated...?

The worst of it was, Ardi was talking about himself now. About half of himself, at least.

“Want some candied apple wedges?” Erson asked, holding out a small open tin. “Plamena and I made them ourselves. They came out good.”

Between Din Arnson, his beautiful wife (so beautiful that whenever Ardi saw her, he could never be sure she wasn’t one of the Summer Fae), and their apparently bottomless fondness for apples, everyone in Captain Pnev’s department had long since tired of jokes about the happy family being distantly related to horses.

But no one answered Din as he sat beside Ard. Nor did anyone say the familiar words in chorus: “Din, shut up.” And while Ardi swung his legs in the icy water, protected from its bite by the veil known as the Ice and Snow, Din tucked his own legs beneath him and nibbled at the candied apple wedges.

Alexander Ursky was smoking. So was Milar Pnev. Alexander kept one hand on Milar’s wheelchair. In the other, he held a cigarette between two fingers and smoked with an oddly... stylish air, as though he’d spent his whole life in Baliero. The same cigarettes Milar smoked. They even bought them from the same shop.

“Sometimes I forget, Ard, that you’re only...” Milar hesitated for a second, exhaled another cloud of smoke, and gave a barely perceptible smile. Ardan saw his partner reflected in the water. “Nineteen years old. Eternal Angels, Magister, nineteen years old...”

Maybe that explained something to Milar. It explained nothing to Ardi.

“And what did you tell the Grand Magister?” Milar asked a few seconds later.

Of course, Ardan had already told his colleagues at the Black House about Mrs. Velena Emergold’s offer. She wanted him to go... who knew where, and investigate... something Ursky and Erson didn’t have clearance for. Milar had understood the gist anyway.

“That I’d think it over,” Ardan said, keeping his answer brief.

Milar nodded approvingly.

“Good answer, Ard. You really do need to think it over.”

Ardi looked at his partner. Milar smoked and stared off into the distance.

“When I was nineteen, I was thinking about how I was going to pass that stupid riding exam,” Milar said with a smirk, still staring at nothing. “I didn’t have to fight all sorts of fairy-tale monsters, lie around in the hospital, rush all over the country, and... I didn’t have a great-grandfather who’d drowned half the country in blood... no offense, Ard. Not to mention everything else you’ve had to live through lately.”

Ardi turned back to the canal.

Yes. For a full year, except perhaps for the last month and a half, Ardan had been a mountain goat. He doggedly climbed the sheer face of a cliff overhanging an abyss. He clung to narrow, lifesaving ledges no wider than a cat’s whisker, ledges others wouldn’t even have noticed. And every time, every time he climbed a little higher, he gave no thought to what would happen if he slipped.

At some point, Ardan had grown so accustomed to the hungry maw of the bottomless abyss that he simply stopped paying attention to it. Even a brush with death no longer felt like a tragedy. Or rather, he still knew tragedy was there, somewhere at the edge of his vision, but it had become distant and indistinct, nothing he needed to worry too much about.

But now he’d spent a quiet month and a half.

He worked at the pharmacy. Went to lectures. Pursued his own research in the lab at the Stables. Had dinner with Tess. Sleeping Spirits, for the first time since they’d started living together, he hadn’t missed a single dinner! Not once had he come home wounded or exhausted to find his wife asleep in bed and a cold meal beneath an aluminum dome.

And... Ard liked it.

He’d be damned if he was going to lie to himself and say that kind of life didn’t appeal to him. No. Quite the opposite. It soothed him, and perhaps it even made him happy. Happy with the peace that had so suddenly settled over him.

“Take Tess,” Milar continued. “She was lucky enough to know, even as a child, what she wanted out of life, Ard. Some people get lucky and find their calling somewhere along the way. Sooner or later. Some never find it at all, but usually that’s because they aren’t looking. And then there are people like you.”

“Like me?” Ardan echoed.

Milar’s chin dipped almost imperceptibly.

“You’re surrounded by remarkably driven people, Ard,” Captain Pnev went on. “Your wife. Eorsky and Boris, who know perfectly well what they want out of life. I’ve only spoken to Elena once, but she seems like a young woman who knows what she’s working toward. Lord Aversky, may the Eternal Angels receive him. Arkar, for that matter. And hell, to anyone looking in from the outside, the three of us also seem like men who already have our lives mapped out. Right, boys?”

As usual, Ursky ignored the question and went on smoking. And Din... Din remained Din.

“How about a slice, then?” Erson offered, holding out the little disc again.

Milar grimaced, then turned back to Ard. He reached out and patted Ard on the shoulder.

“You go through life like a hound on a scent, Ardi, and I mean that in the best possible sense.” Milar put his hand back on the blanket. “Or you used to, anyway. Now, though, there’s this pause that keeps dragging on. On top of that, you’ve got a very good offer from the Grand Magister herself. Anyone would hesitate. So... give yourself time. Talk to Tess. Pay attention to what you want. Just because other people know what they’re after and why they do what they do doesn’t mean you have to tell yourself right away, ‘I want this, that, and a little bit of everything else.’ And not knowing doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.”

Milar smiled. With a flick of his fingers, he sent the cigarette butt over Ard’s and Din’s heads and straight into the trash bin beside the granite stairs. A clean shot. Captain Pnev might not be as good a shot with a revolver as Yonatan or Ursky, much less Katerina, but Milar had the remarkable ability to land a cigarette butt in a trash bin every time. Sometimes even from seemingly impossible distances.

That’s what years of practice get you.

“I can see I haven’t exactly convinced you, Ard.” Milar smiled out of one corner of his mouth. “You, uh...”

Ursky put his massive hand on the captain’s shoulder.

“Here’s the thing about time, Ard,” Alexander began without warning. He rarely spoke. The loose ends of his bandana fluttered in the wind, now and then exposing the edges of his tribal tattoos. “Time only begins to mean something when you look back. Only then do you see the shape of it. And ahead...” He stretched out his hand. Cigarette smoke drifted past the men who had long since become his family. “Only fog. And if you peer into the fog of the future for too long, you can lose yourself in it.”

Alexander took another drag, then flicked the ash into the black water below.

“When I was kept prisoner in the Armondo tribe’s pit, when I fought in their rings against creatures, chimeras, and other prisoners, I cursed the day I enlisted in the Imperial Army.” All three of them turned to Ursky at once. He had never spoken of his past to anyone but Milar. Never to the others. Not until tonight. “I thought that if I hadn’t done something stupid, if I hadn’t said all those things to my father and brothers in the heat of the moment, I’d have stayed in my hometown. And I wouldn’t have had to endure all that...”

Alexander’s hand rose involuntarily, his fingers reaching for the bandana beneath his hat. He caught himself at once and lowered it.

“I was scared, Ard. And I hurt. Every day. Every evening. And every night. When my bones twisted and warped, when my muscles tore and my skin split, all from the Armondo teas they kept dosing us with, I begged the Eternal Angels for death.” Ursky took another drag and briefly closed his eyes. “And when they didn’t answer, I began praying to the One-in-the-Dark, but he was silent too. For many years I cursed the whole world, the Face of Light, my father and brothers, myself, anyone and everyone. And I lived on those curses. Even after I escaped and slaughtered every man in that damned Armondo tribe, I still lived on nothing but curses. Why? Why did the Eternal Angels remain deaf to my pleas? Why didn’t they take me back into the Light and cut short the senseless suffering the Armondo people reveled in?”

Alexander took half a step forward and leaned over the canal’s dark water. He crouched and held his palm just above the dark surface. A scattering of tiny, cold droplets brushed his skin.

“And now, looking back, I understand that I’d suffer twice as much, three times... no... ten times as much, just to walk that road all over again.” For the first time in Ard’s memory, something resembling a smile appeared on Alexander’s stony face. “To step into the flower shop again and meet Galina. To hear the first cry of each of our daughters. Their first laughs. To walk with them through the Park in autumn and watch them play with the leaves. That first time...” Alexander broke off and shook the moisture from his palm. “If I hadn’t ended up in captivity back then, Ard, if I hadn’t traveled the rest of that road, I’d never have met my wife. And my daughters would never have been born. Did I go looking for what I wanted? No, Ard. It found me. I just didn’t understand that until I looked back.”

Ursky straightened and once again took hold of the handle on Milar’s wheelchair.

“You’re only nineteen, Ard,” Alexander continued. He had said more in this single speech than in all the time Ard had known him. “You’re just starting out. And right now, when you look back, all you see is your childhood and your teenage years. But they’re over. And you’re lost. That’s normal. That’s human. Say goodbye to your youth, Ard. And keep moving forward. Live so that when the time comes to look back, you can see that you did everything in your power. Everything you were capable of. That you never lost your nerve. Never gave in to weakness. Never betrayed yourself or anyone else. Then perhaps, when you look back for the very last time, you’ll see the path you’ve traveled and understand it. I can’t promise you that. But I believe it.”

Alexander fell silent.

“I will not ask what end you found

along your road through hostile ground

...”

All three looked at Ursky as though they were seeing him with fresh eyes. Alexander “Bear’s Paw” Ursky. One of the Black House’s finest operatives. A superb marksman and an even better fighter. A father of five daughters and a faithful husband. And perhaps, too, a man with a far richer inner life and a far keener mind than he cared to let anyone see.

“But most important of all, don’t turn down the apple slices.”

“Din, you...” Alexander and Milar were already bristling.

“First, you turn down the slices,” Din continued, popping another treat into his mouth. “Because they’re so small and insignificant. You think you still have time. That tomorrow will come, and the day after. And you’ll be able to try a slice. And then you turn down a walk with your wife. Again, because tomorrow will come. Besides, the weather isn’t very good today. Then you forget about your hobbies and about getting any rest because there’s still so much to do. And for the same reason, you give your friends an apologetic smile. And then, at some point, you realize you’ve given up everything that should never have been put on hold for the sake of things that could have waited. So don’t turn down the apple slices, Ard, when life offers them to you. Life is too seldom generous with small joys for you to cast them aside so recklessly.”

Once again, all three stared at Din Arnson in silence, though this time they looked openly surprised. He was tall by human standards: a big, easygoing man, warm and welcoming, sometimes as kind as a child, and utterly devoted to his wife.

“Did you all plan this together or what?” Milar grumbled, then added, “What a strange evening.”

He reached for the little dish and took a candied apple slice. Alexander Ursky followed suit, his face as stony as before.

Ardi, meanwhile, took his treat and gazed at it, lost in thought.

Maybe the pharmacy, the research, the sound system, and the Grand had also been nothing more than little candied apple slices. Small pleasures he hadn’t denied himself.

Just slices.

And nothing else.

“Tomorrow morning, at this address.” Milar held out a short note to Ard. “Dagdag has cooked up some kind of wheeled monster you’ll have to practice on. Ursky and Din are leaving tonight on an urgent assignment, so you’re our only option. My rehabilitation isn’t over yet, and right now I’m not much of a driver. So... sorry, Magister, but we don’t have as much time as the Grand Magister gave you to think it over. We only have tonight.”

Ardan took the note.

* * *

A yellowed page fastened to the inside cover of the grimoire bore a poem by an unknown mage. The slightly crooked letters, written in cheap ink that had faded over the decades to a ghostly blue, still formed legible words. For some reason, every time Ard reread them, those words snagged on something inside him. On that same splinter Tess had told him about long ago, up on the roof, during their first long conversation.

“Fate will ask just one question outright:

How did you dare to live and fight?”

Ardan sat at the kitchen table with his chin propped on one fist, his eyes resting on the lines though he was hardly taking them in anymore. His mind had wandered far away. His thoughts drifted like ice floes on the Markov Canal. Heavy and unwieldy, they collided, then drew apart, leaving nothing in their wake but ripples.

Brakes squeaked in the street below. A car door shut with a barely audible thump, and hurried heels clicked across the pavement. The footsteps tapped their way up the stairs, then stopped briefly while she exchanged a few words with the concierge. That familiar tapping... quick and light.

Tess.

The lock clicked. The door flew open, and in she burst. Burst was exactly the word. She flew in like a flame flaring unexpectedly in a dark room. Her scarf unwound in midair and sailed onto the coat rack; her coat dove after it, and her gloves landed on the side table, all in one unbroken motion, as if Tess weren’t taking off her things but dancing.

Her cheeks burned from the wind; her red hair spilled over her shoulders in wind-tossed disarray, strands slipping free of the clip. She clutched a music folder in one hand, and a smile brightened her face. That same smile: broad and open, the one that made something leap in Ard’s chest every time.

Their eyes met across the hall: Tess at the front door, Ard at the kitchen table. Ard sat with the grimoire in his lap, Milar’s note in his vest pocket, and a weight in his chest he couldn’t ease.

And he felt awkward. Because he could practically feel his own face giving away every thought. Milar, Ursky, Din: they’d seen it, after all. And Tess would see it too. She always did. He was ashamed that his doubts, his vague, unfocused anxiety, would spoil her evening. She’d come home from rehearsal looking forward to another evening together. She was so happy, so alive, while he greeted her looking like he had to attend somebody’s funeral again tomorrow.

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Tess walked down the hall, stopped in the kitchen doorway, and looked at him. Her smile didn’t fade so much as change, almost imperceptibly. It grew a little softer, a touch quieter, and much deeper. That, if his grandfather’s fairy tales were to be believed, was how people smiled when they saw someone they loved, knew that person was hurting, and had no intention of asking about it.

At least, not yet.

“We’re going for a walk,” Tess said in a tone that left no room for argument.

Ard blinked.

“Now?”

“Right now.” She nodded.

“Tess.” Ardi waved toward the window. “It’s nighttime.”

“I know, dear.” Tess picked her gloves back up, thought better of it, and set them down on the small table again. “I just rode home in the dark.”

“And you want to go for a walk in the dark too?”

“Exactly!”

Ard opened his mouth to object. It was late, it was cold, and he had things to do tomorrow morning... Then he shut it again. He wasn’t even entirely sure what he had to do in the morning, and anyway Tess had already turned and was heading into the bedroom, unbuttoning her rehearsal blouse as she went. There was no point arguing. When Tess made up her mind with that much energy behind it, only someone who didn’t value his life or his peace and quiet would argue with her.

She changed quickly, like a spring storm roused from sleep. She did nearly everything unrelated to music that way. Her rehearsal blouse flew onto the armchair, and her skirt wound up on the back of a chair. Without looking, she yanked a wool dress and a shawl out of the wardrobe, and a minute later a different Tess stepped out of the bedroom. In short boots, with her hair pinned up by a single long hairpin. Ardi always wondered how she managed to pin her hair up so deftly without so much as a mirror.

While his wife changed, Ard buttoned his shirt and pulled on his vest, then shrugged his Star mage’s coat on over it, cloak and epaulets and all. As usual, he checked the accumulators in his rings. With practiced ease, he secured his grimoire to the chains at his belt, then took up his staff.

“Tess,” he said as he buttoned his coat.

“Mm?”

“I need to tell you something.” Ardan looked away. “Mrs. Velena Emergold. Grand Magister. She made me an offer.”

Tess appeared in the bedroom doorway as she draped the shawl over her shoulders.

“What kind of offer?”

“To leave the capital. To quit my post at the Black House. To pursue research. Under her patronage. Real research, Tess...”

Tess didn’t stop. She didn’t freeze, and her expression didn’t change in the slightest. She merely adjusted the shawl around her shoulders, walked over to Ard, slipped her arm through his, and said,

“Let’s go.”

“Don’t you want to talk about it?”

“I do.” She nodded, then immediately added, “But while we’re walking.”

They went out into the night.

Spring.

You couldn’t see it yet, but you could already feel it: in the damp air, in the faint scent of the last, most stubborn snow melting away, and in the wet earth breaking through the crust of ice in the small parks.

As they had on dozens of evenings before, they walked arm in arm along the Markov Canal, slowly, taking their time. Their footsteps barely stirred the silence: his heavy and slightly uneven from his limp, hers light and quick, falling twice for every one of his. Ard matched his pace to hers, and she matched hers to his. Together they found a rhythm all their own, neither fast nor slow.

“Tell me about the rehearsal,” Ard asked.

“Why?”

Ardan couldn’t find the right words. Talking was hard for him even on good days.

Tess gave his hand a little squeeze.

“All right. But you’re going to laugh.”

“I’ll try.” Ardan tried to smile.

“No, you’re going to laugh,” she repeated, a smile in her voice. “We’re down to the final rehearsals for ‘The Death of the King.’ We had another run-through today. Then comes the second act. The most dramatic scene. Gustav is on cello. You’ve seen him, the serious one with the sideburns. He plays the solo. Long and mournful. And the audience is supposed to sob, or at least take their eyes off their very expensive watches.”

“I suppose they should.” Ard nodded obediently, trying to put the playfulness back into his voice.

“Probably.” Tess snorted. “Listen to the rest... And then a string snaps. It doesn’t just snap. It flies off the peg and whips him across the nose. Across the nose, Ardi!”

“Did it hurt?” Ardi narrowed his eyes.

“Terribly,” Tess said with a laugh. “Gustav yelps and drops his bow. It bounces off the floor and hits Victor’s sheet music squarely. Victor’s our double bassist.”

“The one whose mustache is longer than his double bass?”

“His mustache is normal, Ardi,” Tess said, pretending to scold him. “So Victor, startled, plucks the wrong string, and the double bass makes a sound that—” Tess clapped a hand over her mouth, choking on laughter. “it sounds exactly like a bear stepping on a cat.”

Ard couldn’t help himself. He laughed, softly and briefly, but he laughed. It was the first time all day.

“And? Then what?”

“Then it gets worse. Gustav sits there with a red nose, pressing a handkerchief to it and repeating, ‘That’s my best instrument, that’s my best instrument.’ Victor tries to apologize, but every time he starts to speak, he instinctively clutches the double bass, and it lets out another moan.”

“Tess, if I’d been there, I’d probably have been dying by then.”

“Everyone was dying.” Tess’s laughter still came in peals. “Everyone except the director. He’s sitting in the front row, drinking water. Glass after glass. Then he takes out a handkerchief, wipes his face, turns to us, and speaks. Calmly. Evenly. The way Alexander does when he’s feeling generous enough to spare a word or two.” Tess puffed out her cheeks and lowered her voice. “‘Ladies and gentlemen, I believe your contracts require each of you to draw musical sounds from your instruments rather than imitate a barnyard.’”

“Fair, to a point,” Ardi said, fighting back a smile as he tried to sound serious.

“And then Victor tries to set the double bass down and clips a music stand. The stand topples over.” Tess tipped her head back and let the wind toss her hair a little. “The sheet music flies off to one side. Just then, Gustav is trying to put on a new string. The stand hits him in the knee, and he drops his cello straight onto the floor. He makes a sound, and even the director starts laughing.”

“Was the cello all right, at least?”

“Yes, of course it’s fine.” Tess waved it off. “Gustav’s knee is too, by the way. They only stopped rehearsal for twenty minutes. To finish laughing. And fetch a new music stand.”

Ard listened and felt the weight in his chest begin to recede. It hadn’t gone away. It was still there, retreating, shifting somewhere toward the edge of his awareness. Like street noise you stop noticing when a voice you want to hear speaks right beside you.

“And you?” Ard asked.

“Ardi, I laughed so hard I couldn’t sing for another five minutes after everyone had calmed down!” Tess laughed. “The director said if I giggled one more time, he’d replace me with Gustav’s cello because it, and I quote, ‘expresses more emotion.’”

“A stern man.” Ardan sighed.

“A wonderful man,” Tess countered. “He’s just tired of us. And we’re tired of each other. End of the season. Everyone’s on edge. Reporters are crowding around all the theater doors, too. Belsky’s men keep chasing them off, but...” Tess shook her head. “So maybe, Ardi the wizard, sometimes something has to fall over before everyone remembers they’re people, not Ley-mechanisms.”

They walked on. Tess talked on. About new arrangements, about the quarrel between the first and second violinists, about how the flutist had brought a puppy to rehearsal and it had fallen asleep right beneath the conductor’s podium.

Ard listened and took in her every gesture.

A smooth turn of her head, a small wave of her hand, a quick glance at Ard to make sure he was smiling. Every gesture she made, even after all this time, still seemed like a small miracle to Ardi. He caught the lamplight on her hair and the gleam of laughter in her eyes; he caught the scent of spring flowers blooming beside a stream, of lavender cream, and of something elusive that belonged to her alone.

“Taxi!” Tess suddenly cried. Leaving Ard behind, she dashed to the curb, waving her arm.

“Where to?” Ard called after her.

“You’ll see!”

A black car swung around the corner with a yellow stripe running from its hood, over the roof, and all the way to the trunk. Tess dove inside, pulling Ard in after her by the sleeve.

“To Baliero,” she said to the driver.

He nodded, adjusted his cap without a word, and started up the street.

“Tess...”

“When was the last time you went to Baliero for fun instead of business?”

Ard gave it some thought but couldn’t remember.

“That’s what I thought.” Tess nodded and settled more comfortably, resting her head on his shoulder.

At night, Baliero refused to sleep, just like the main streets of New City. The district lived by its own decidedly peculiar schedule, one in which nightfall and moonlight were no reason to go to bed. Quite the opposite.

Tess led him to a little lane Ardi had never been down before. It was tiny, paved with deliberately weathered cobblestones, with low arches and hand-lettered signs rather than printed ones.

A faint light glimmered beneath one of those arches, and unfamiliar voices drifted out.

“A poetry club?” Ard asked in surprise.

“You’ve heard of it?” Tess asked, every bit as surprised, as if Ardan didn’t know a damn thing about art...

All right, he really didn’t understand a thing about the finer points of art. Except, perhaps, what Tess herself had explained to him.

“I’ve heard of it.” Ardi shrugged, though he had a feeling he’d heard about the place from Tess, too. “But I’ve never been.”

“Then let’s go.”

“Tess, I don’t understand poetry.”

“You don’t need to understand it.” Tess smiled. “You just need to listen. You’re the one who found a poem in the Arena archives and attached it to your grimoire. So all is not lost, and my husband isn’t a complete blockhead.”

They descended rough stone steps. Inside, it was cramped. The air smelled of cheap tobacco smoke and held the warmth of a cast-iron woodstove. The low ceiling bore down on their shoulders, the brick walls closed around them in a suffocating ring, and half-melted candles in bottles flickered in the draft.

A young man stood on a small platform. He was thin and wore glasses, his long hair gathered into some elaborate braided ponytail. He was reading about rain falling on the city and washing yesterday from its streets, with dozens of rapt listeners gathered around him.

The whole thing struck Ard as far too pretentious and perhaps even a pointless waste of ink and paper.

Tess, though, listened intently, her head tipped slightly to one side. So before long Ard was watching her instead of the poet. The way her lashes fluttered whenever one of the poet’s lines particularly moved her. The way she silently mouthed the words along with him, repeating the ones she especially liked.

The poet finished, basked in the applause for a few moments, then rolled up his sheet of paper and left. A woman came forward to take his place. She was middle-aged and heavyset, and she wore a shawl patched more times than anyone could count. She surveyed the “hall” and began reading about her mother and how she used to bake bread in the mornings.

“Beautiful?” Tess asked in a whisper.

“I don’t know,” Ard said honestly. “I don’t understand. What’s bread got to do with anything? Is this some kind of metaphor, or... is she really telling us about food? Sleeping Spirits, Tess. I don’t understand any of it.”

Tess looked at him and smiled. Then she rested her head on his shoulder, and they kept listening.

Half an hour later they stepped back outside, and Tess, still holding his hand, led Ard along the street. Straight to a café with familiar, cheerful music spilling through its doors.

A funny name: The Blue Heron.

Inside, they found a spacious room with high ceilings, round tables along the walls, and a dance floor in the center lit by three Ley-lamps fitted with colored shades. A small band with a piano, a trumpet, an upright bass, and drums was playing a fast new number the regulars seemed to love. Some twenty couples moved around the floor.

Whether he liked it or not, Ardi had become reasonably well versed in music, thanks to Tess’s efforts and, to some extent, Professor an Manish’s.

Tess ordered two cups of strong, spiced coffee. They sat at a corner table.

“It’s nice here,” Ard said.

“I knew you’d like it.”

“How did you know?”

“Because you can hide here.” Tess winked.

They drank the faintly bitter coffee and listened to the unobtrusive music, and Ard felt something inside him thaw, slowly and reluctantly, but thaw nonetheless.

“Ardi.”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s dance.”

Ard set down his cup.

“Tess, I’m not at my best right now.”

“I know.”

“Not even close. Absolutely not.”

“I know.”

“I’ll step on your toes.”

“Ardi, your dancing toughened me up a year ago. Back then, you stepped on every part of me there was to step on.”

“Tess.”

“Ardi.”

He looked at her and heaved a sigh. If he was as stubborn as a mule, then Tess... Tess couldn’t be moved an inch once she got something into her head.

Ard looked around.

A fat man in an unbuttoned vest whirled a slender girl who barely came up to his shoulder. Two elderly men clasped each other’s elbows and shuffled in place, roaring with laughter. Caps with matching military insignia poked out of their pockets.

In the corner, a young couple danced with their bodies pressed so tightly together you couldn’t have fit a postage stamp between them. They clearly didn’t give a damn about the rhythm, the music, or the rest of the world.

“Come on,” Tess said, tugging at his hand.

And before Ard could come up with a single convincing new excuse, he found himself on the dance floor.

Tess took his right hand and placed it on her waist. He felt the warmth of her body through the fabric of her dress and pulled his hand back a little. Not because he felt awkward, of course, but because he wanted so badly to pull her closer. Tess caught his hand and returned it to her waist.

“Don’t run away,” she whispered, her face close to his chest.

She rested her left hand on his shoulder and took his left hand in her right. Their fingers intertwined.

The music was fast, but as always, Tess led him slowly, ignoring its tempo and setting her own. A step to the left. A step to the right. Ard moved like a wooden puppet, as if they hadn’t danced together a hundred times before, or close to it. His hands went rigid again, his shoulders rose nearly to his ears, and he took each step as if he were crossing a minefield. On the second step, he stepped on Tess’s left foot.

“Sorry.” He tried to pull away, but Tess wouldn’t let him.

“It’s all right,” Tess whispered.

On the fourth step, he came down hard on her right foot.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Move.”

On the sixth step, her left foot again.

“Tess, this is a bad idea. Maybe...”

“No.” She cut him off. “Don’t look down. Just look at me.”

He looked at her face. Tess’s green eyes were so close. So calm and endlessly warm, without a trace of irritation or impatience.

She stepped closer. Ard felt her breasts touch him and her breath tickle his collarbone. His hand no longer felt wooden where it rested on her waist. His fingers relaxed, and his palm settled more gently against her, following her every movement, every subtle shift of her body. Tess tipped her head back slightly and looked up at him with an expression that belonged to her alone and was meant for him alone.

“See?” she said. “You’re dancing. And nothing terrible is happening. The world isn’t falling apart. Does your foot hurt much?”

“No, it doesn’t... but this isn’t me,” Ard said. “It’s you.”

“This is us, Ardi.”

She rested her head on his chest. Ard drew her closer, carefully, tenderly, but more firmly than before. After the first few moments, they all but stopped moving. They simply stood there, swaying. His chin touched her hair, and the soft strands lightly tickled his stubble. Her hair smelled of spring and home.

He could feel her heart through the fabric of her dress and his own shirt. Quick and light, like the patter of drops from the last icicle left hanging after all the smaller ones had melted. Or was that his own heart? Truth be told, he’d stopped telling them apart long ago.

People danced all around them. The fat man was still twirling his slender young dance partner, and she laughed. The older men had already settled at a table. Reminiscing about their years of service, they drank something from little shot glasses and toasted comrades-in-arms who had not lived to see this day.

The young couple in the corner remained oblivious to the world.

The pianist’s fingers flew over the keys, and the double bass breathed, low and resonant. In the colored light of the Ley-lamps, everything looked a little unreal. Like a dream in which you know you’re asleep and pray the alarm won’t ring. Won’t jolt you back to reality, not for another couple of hours, at least.

Ard bent and touched his lips to her temple. Tess squeezed his fingers a little tighter.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“For what?”

“For dragging me out of the kitchen.”

“The kitchen isn’t going anywhere, Ardi. But we’ll never have tonight again.” Tess repeated Din’s words verbatim.

The music died away. The musicians bowed and, like the poet, lingered for a few moments while the applause echoed around them. Tess drew back from Ard but still did not let go of his hand. She looked at him as though reading something in his face.

“Another dance?” she asked.

“And whatever you do,” she added, smiling, “don’t turn down the apple slices.”

“Yes,” Ard answered.

And he was surprised at how easily the word had come.

The band began to play again.

They left the café around two in the morning. The street looked unusually empty for Baliero. Somewhere far off, the last tram dinged once.

Tess walked beside Ardi with her arm looped through his. They were silent. For a long time: two blocks, maybe three. Ardan knew she was waiting for him to speak. Tess didn’t push him or ask for anything. She simply waited until he was ready.

After all these years, though, Tess knew when to stop waiting, and Ardi knew when he owed her an answer.

“What’s weighing on you, Ardi?” she asked at last without turning her head.

Ard said nothing for a moment. Then he drew a breath.

“If I accept Velena’s offer... if we leave... you... After your success at the Arena, Tess. After the triumph of ‘The Death of the King.’ Dandy... Belsky. He’s right. It won’t even be a year before you...”

Ardi fell silent. They both knew perfectly well what this was about.

“I won’t change my mind, Ard.” Tess said it as if she were once again stating the obvious. “Never. I’ll be happy anywhere, as long as you’re beside me. Here in the Metropolis. In Alcade. Or anywhere else we end up together. Because the music and the roles will be gone, but we’ll still be us.”

Ard stopped and put his arms around his wife. She looked at him, perfectly calm. Just looked at him, the way someone does when their mind has long been made up.

“Me too,” Ard said quietly. “I’ll be happy anywhere, as long as you’re beside me.”

Magic, research, his work at the Black House: as long as he could hold her like this, absolutely nothing else mattered in the slightest.

Tess smiled. Softly, with just the corners of her mouth.

“I know, Ardi the wizard. I’ve known it ever since that very first day, when we walked along the embankment together, but...” She searched his eyes. “What’s unsettled you so much?”

Ard turned away and looked at the canal. The black water carried the last ice floes along. Small, pitiful remnants of a harsh winter. And with them went the last shards of the name of the Ice and Snow, still ringing somewhere at the edge of hearing.

“I honestly don’t understand what I’m doing, Tess,” Ardan admitted. “I thought I wanted to study at the Grand. But what I actually do is study on my own: sit in the Library, read treatises, run experiments in the Stables. Sleeping Spirits, I’ve missed more lectures than I’ve attended!”

Tess remained silent. Ardan went on.

“The Black House... I thought I’d agreed to serve so I could study under Lord Aversky. But he’s been dead for almost a year now. Yet I stayed, and I don’t know why.” They reached the water. Ardi grabbed the cold parapet rail. “‘Operation Mountain Predator.’ Yes. Then I thought... convinced myself I’d stayed for access to it. Yet I opened it only once, and months have passed since then, Tess. Months! I haven’t even filed a request. I haven’t even gone up to the Archive door.”

He went quiet. Tess stood beside him without a word.

“Everyone around me knows what they want,” Ard continued. “Milar. Ursky. Din. Bazhen. Boris and Elena. You. But I... I just keep running. Somewhere. After something. And every time I stop, I realize I don’t know why I was running.”

“Can I ask you something?” She touched his shoulder.

“Of course.”

“If we leave now... if you accept the Grand Magister’s offer... or if we go somewhere else, anywhere at all, then... could you live with knowing you’d left without doing what you could have done here?”

Ard didn’t answer. Tess didn’t press him.

“You just named the reasons that brought you back to the capital and kept you here,” she said a minute later. “The Grand. Aversky. The Archive. And you can see for yourself that none of them applies anymore. But you stayed, Ardi. You’re still here. That means there is a reason after all. Just a different one.”

“But I don’t understand what it is.” Ardan shook his head. “I’m confused, Tess. So terribly confused... and now there’s no she-wolf, no little squirrel to tell me where I went wrong.”

“But were you wrong?” She pressed close against his side. “What do you do in the Black House every day? Not because you’re ordered to. Not out of duty. What do you do when you choose for yourself?”

Ard remained silent.

“You help people, Ardi,” Tess said softly. “You patch Arkar up in the kitchen. You run, without your magic, toward a mutant to save the ambassador of a country that may be hostile to us. You heal the wounded, risking your own life. You spend your own money making salves and medicines for people who can’t afford what the cartel sells. You build a sound system so twenty thousand people can hear the music and Mr. Brolid can save his building. And if John hadn’t insisted, you’d have agreed not to take a single kso from him... You don’t even notice how you change everything around you, Ardi the wizard. Not for vanity or profit. Just because you are who you are. And maybe what you’re meant to do isn’t tied to the Black House or the Grand. Maybe it’s simply that you...”

A scream rang out.

Thin, desperate, cut off mid-word. The sound came from the alleyway nearest them. Dark, impossibly narrow, and only twenty meters ahead.

“Help! Please, somebo—” The voice broke off again, cut short. Someone else’s hand had clamped over their mouth.

Ard whirled around. He moved before his mind could catch up. He tensed, reached for his staff, and turned toward the scream. He took one step and... stopped.

Tess.

He was on a date. With his wife. The woman he loved. In the middle of a cold night. Spring was almost here, but for now it was still winter.

Ardi turned to her, at a loss. Tess stood there, the wind whipping her hair and tugging at her coat. She looked at him with a smile. That smile. The one that held love and acceptance and knowledge... knowledge of who he was, even when Ardi himself didn’t know.

“Go,” Tess said softly. “I’ll wait.”

“Yes,” Ard answered just as softly. “I’ll be back soon.”

He struck his staff against the ground, and a domed shield shimmered into being around Tess. Ard wheeled around and ran.

His staff rapped against the cobblestones. Ard wasn’t thinking about Velena Emergold’s offer. He wasn’t thinking about the Black House, the Grand, Methods of Long-Range Communication, or transmutational runic links. He wasn’t thinking about how he had no idea what he wanted from life.

He ran toward the scream. Because someone was calling for help. And because maybe, ever since childhood, ever since that day in the Alcade forest when a five-year-old boy raced after a fledgling snatched up by a bird of prey... maybe ever since that very day, this had been what he wanted from life.

“And if you keep sticking your head into a noose for every sorry wretch you meet, sooner or later you’ll choke.”

Maybe Yonatan Kornosskiy had been wrong. Maybe, of all the lessons he’d learned from Cassara, Katerina, Mart Borskov, and the rest, Yonatan’s was the wrong one.

Ardan wanted to believe that.

After all, wanting to help others wasn’t such a bad thing.

* * *

Milar’s note remained in his fist. Ard gripped it the whole way as the old "Derks" made its way through the predawn streets, its engine wheezing and coughing.

The address led him to the outskirts of New City. To a long, squat brick building behind a high fence topped with barbed wire, something like a warehouse or a workshop. A lone lamp flickered at the gate, and in its light Ard made out a sign bolted to a post:

“Technical Base No. 7. Pass Required for Entry.”

And nothing else. No company name, no owner’s name. You might spot a sign like that and drive on without paying it any mind.

Ard killed the engine and climbed out of the car. The morning air carried the tang of diesel and the reek from the trash incinerator, clinging to his face like a cold, damp towel. Somewhere beyond the fence came the clang of iron and the grumble of an engine.

Ardan flattened the note, read the address again, and, once he was certain he hadn’t made a mistake, strode toward the gate.