Book II. Chapter 87 - Museum (Part 3)

Chapter 87

Crouching down and taking care to stay out of the light reflected by the windowpanes, Ardan cautiously approached the entrance. Closing his eyes, he listened to what was happening on the other side of the scaffold-clad walls. On the ground floor, several people were shifting from foot to foot, occasionally clinking the rifles they leaned upon.

They smelled of gunpowder and the inexpensive leather of polished boots. Beyond that, Ardan heard nothing else. Whatever the intruders had planned, they had already dispersed throughout the entire building, likely dragging the drugged orcs along with them.

Damn, Ardan hissed in his mind.

Even assuming that tonight’s practicum was meant to be done by students from one of the capital’s institutes that had a Star Magic department and not the Grand itself... who in their right mind would try to break into a building that had a dozen or so mages inside it?

It seemed like a rather uncreative way to arrange a premature meeting with the Eternal Angels. And the entire situation with the “loaders” who’d committed suicide (which bore a rather strong resemblance to the Puppeteers’ methods) looked suspicious at the very least.

“...We grab the diary and get out...”

If the thief had been referring to Estenyen’s journal, that made no sense. A copy of it could be found in the library of any sufficiently large city in the Empire. His writings contained no major secrets.

Ardan steadied his breathing and his slightly-quickened heartbeat. While he only had one accumulator per Star at his disposal right now, he still had to keep going...

“Adventures,” Ardan muttered with a touch of revulsion.

Carefully, keeping his silhouette low, he circled the entrance and found the most remote, secluded corner—one the sun rarely visited.

Even a month ago, back when the Queen of Winter had not yet claimed her throne, Ard wouldn’t have been able to do this. The shadow dwelling here was too scared of the incomprehensible noise and the glare and shouting that hadn’t left its secluded den for many strides of the Spirits of the Day and Night.

The construction was changing the building, and with it, the fragments of the Names that lived here. And yet, after opening his gaze to the true image of the world, Ardan managed to discern a quiet, almost weeping whisper amid the cacophony.

The shadow was pleading for peace, for silence, and for the return of the unchanging world it had grown accustomed to over dozens of cycles of the Queens’ succession. Ardan breathed his Will into its barely audible voice, along with a promise that soon, everything would change, it would return to the way it had been, and the dark corner would once again be disturbed by no one but the kind and friendly spiders who knew the rules of shadow-silence.

The shadow believed him and touched the Speaker’s fingers with a thin, gray veil. Ardan gently drew it toward himself and was soon cloaked in an unseen mantle.

Focusing on the whispers of the Name’s fragment, the young man went up the steps. Breaking a window and climbing inside would have been a poor idea—he might lose control of the shadow, and then, frightened by the bright light, it would flee back to its hiding place. Besides, the noise would surely draw the attention of everyone on the ground floor.

And so, after approaching the door, Ardan Listened once more. He tried to Hear the things he had read about in the book given to him by Mshisty and his hounds. Filling his lungs with shards of the winds that were crashing against the invisible dome that shielded the museum, Ardan blew gently upon the door.

A gust of squalling wind erupted from the Speaker’s lips and crashed against the doors, flinging them open in a wide, welcoming embrace.

“I told you to close the window so there wouldn’t be a draft,” the broad-shouldered man in a worn jacket and pants that were somewhat unsuited to the season snapped.

“I did close it,” the second one bit back and hurried to the door to slam it shut.

Ardan, who’d already slipped inside, barely managed to dodge aside and avoid a collision with the zealous, short man wearing the jacket of... a dockworker? Ardan had been to the port several times by now and had memorized the look of both their summer and winter uniforms.

He wore a shortened sheepskin coat, the kind used by watchmen who languished in the port warehouses. He also didn’t have a rifle, but a battered revolver… The laborer pressed his shoulder against the door and bolted it from the inside.

“Strange,” he grunted, now satisfied that the doors were securely locked. “The nails holding the bolt-plate got pulled clean out of the wood. It’s like a hurricane hit the door.”

“Maybe it was a hurricane,” the man who actually had a rifle shrugged. It wasn’t even a military model, but a hunting rifle converted to a military style.

Ardan, who was hiding beneath the gaze-deflecting cloak woven from shadows, frowned slightly. Everything now looked even stranger than it had a few minutes ago.

The man who looked like a port watchman brushed off the snow that still clung to the old, matted fur of his sheepskin coat and returned to his partner. They stood watch together, facing the entrance, but were positioned so that nothing was obstructing their view of the nearest offices, whose windows faced the street.

Ardan loosened his control over his Witch’s Gaze and felt weariness descend upon his shoulders like a heavy sack of wet flour. Despite the generators being shut down and the weakening pressure of the dead Ley, Ard was not outside the Metropolis, but in the heart of it. This was a city that was utterly alien to the art of the Aean’Hane.

Then again, a year and a half ago, Ardan couldn’t have accomplished even half of what he had just done.

Nearly losing his concentration, he stepped back, allowing his Witch’s Gaze to do its work.

“Eternal Angels, it’s honestly a bit frightening,” the port watchman sniffled.

“Scared of the fanged subhumans, Mr. Zorov?” The “hunter” smirked. “Don’t worry—they pumped so much potion and Angel’s Dust into those godless bastards that it would be enough to put down a battalion.”

“I’m not afraid of those filthy subhumans,” the “watchman” bristled immediately, as though insulted. “It’s just... I don’t like all this Star heresy, Mr. Tonsky... Why did they have to drag a sorcerer in here?”

“Not a sorcerer, you village idiot, but a Star Mage,” Tonsky corrected his partner. “And we’re not in the Enario Theocracy, Mr. Zorov, where they claim that Star Magic goes against the will of the Face of Light.”

“You do know that our human magic is taught to all sorts of filthy vermin even at places like the Grand?” Zorov shot back just as sharply, adjusting his port-issue sheepskin. “The hospitals are full of pointy-eared freaks. The banks are crawling with bearded burrowers. Is this what our ancestors suffered and fought for over thousands of years, Mr. Tonsky? Why they bathed in blood and ended up afraid to sleep at night? So that scum could now live as though we don’t commemorate the Martyrs every year? It’s simply absurd!”

Ard didn’t need to see their patches or the tattoos on the inside of their wrists to realize that these were followers of the Tavsers.

“I understand and agree with you, Mr. Zorov,” the man with the hunting rifle hastened to calm his rather agitated partner. “But you can’t lump everyone together. If some Star Mage is forced to share a roof with the descendants of subhuman filth, that doesn’t make him their ally.”

“An ally,” Zorov spat at his own feet. “Did you see? Did you see what our beloved fucking Emperor did? He gave a pardon to an Egobar! All the bloody Egobars! Bloody Aror! There’s more blood on his hands than even the Commander of the Fatian Army during the Massacre could hope to have.”

Tonsky frowned and, sighing, shrugged.

“The Emperor does what he can, Mr. Zorov.”

“If he did what he could, we’d have already restored the reservations, Mr. Tonsky,” the watchman hissed. “We’d have posted armies around them and then waited for the bastards to die off. And all that filth in the Upper Chamber of Parliament, including Abrailaal… We should have strung them up to sway like flags from the Tsar’s Bridge. Then I’d say we weren’t disgracing the names of our forebears.”

“Honestly, my dear Mr. Zorov, it’s because of people like you that most folk consider us to be insane terrorists and murderers.”

“It’s because I’m tired of what our leadership calls ‘gradual change!’” Zorov very nearly barked. “What changes, for the Angels’ sake, when in our capital, in Vetrograd itself-”

“Metropolis- ” Tonsky interrupted.

“Vetrograd,” Zorov insisted. “Because we are the Galessian Empire, not some incomprehensible ‘New Monarchy.’ And in the Vetrograd of the Galessian Empire, there should be no Firstborn Quarter. Have you heard the latest rumors?”

“Which ones?”

“That the great-grandson of that Egobar monster, may their entire wretched family suffer in hell until the end of time, opened an apothecary there? An apothecary which, may the Eternal Angels have mercy on their lost souls, our own compatriots visit? Humans! How short their memory is.”

“And what’s so terrible about our brothers and sisters being able to buy their medicine cheaper than from the cartel?”

“The fact that it’s medicine made by subhumans,” Zorov hissed. “And not just any subhumans... An Egobar!”

Tonsky sighed and shrugged.

“Listen, Mr. Zorov, I know that extremely radical views are popular in the organization right now, but... I support the main line,” Tonsky shifted his rifle and slung it over his shoulder. “We need to restore the reservations and cease any additional state financial support for their enclaves. That’s enough. They don’t bother us, and we don’t cross paths with them.”

“That’s-”

“That’s quite enough, Zorov,” Tonsky interrupted him, dropping the formalities this time. “The Firstborn are dying out. Their numbers, even according to the official census, are declining, and by the third quarter of this century, the time will come when you might see them as rarely as mages. People like you simply ruin our reputation and scare the masses away from our organization. If not for radicals like you, we’d have long since formed and registered our party in Parliament.”

Zorov smiled crookedly.

“If your views are that moderate, Tonsky, then what are you doing here?”

“I’m here because this is essentially a peaceful action,” the hunter shrugged with the same indifference from before. “Those fanged bastards they brought in—they ruined girls. And if we’d handed them to the guards, they’d be rotting in the mines or chopping timber. Instead, we’re using the scum for…” Tonsky had nearly finished his sentence when he turned sharply to his partner. “Why are we even discussing this right n-”

He didn’t get to finish that sentence. Ardan, who’d circled behind the conspirators, gripped his staff near its tip and, swinging it hard, swiped the base of it across the backs of both partners’ heads in a single broad arc. They flailed their arms comically, their legs buckling, and crumpled to the floor like ragdolls. Ardan caught the rifle before it could make any unnecessary noise, and no thud came from the falling men—their winter clothing cushioned their fall.

And now, alive but unconscious, a pair of Tavsers lay before Ardan. The genuine article. Not the loudmouthed followers one might encounter on the street, but active members of the political movement itself.

They were the other side of the coin minted by those who believed in the Conclave’s teachings of Firstborn racial supremacy. How amusing it was that the radicals of diametrically opposed ideologies were, in essence, indistinguishable from one another. And perhaps the views of both warring sides had a right to exist, but to Ardi, they seemed equally mad.

Ardan stowed the rifle behind a nearby door and turned toward the staircase.

He might have believed that, because the Sleeping Spirits loved mocking him, or the Eternal Angels adored irony, or some other absurd coincidence, he and Boris and the others had found themselves in the middle of a terrorist action being conducted by the military wing of the Tavser organization. However...

Bang.

Bang-bang.

The three shots fired by the terrified thieves posing as loaders, who had lost control of their own bodies, echoed through the young man’s mind. This was magic that was beyond the capabilities of the first five Stars, which meant that it was likely connected to the art of the Aean’Hane.

And it was precisely this detail that shattered the coherence of the emerging picture.

Ardan exhaled and was about to focus on his ears and nose when he realized just in time that his accumulated fatigue would be enough to break his concentration and undo his veil.

Ahgrat, Ard cursed in his mind once he realized that he couldn’t rely on both his hunting senses and the art of the Aean’Hane.

Given a choice between the veil that was hiding him from the terrorists infesting the building and his heightened hearing and smell, Ardan naturally chose the former.

“Boris,” the young man reminded himself.

The last time he’d seen him, he’d been in the “Office,” and at present, he had no reason to believe his friend was somewhere else. And while such thoughts may not have reflected well on Ard as an officer of the Black House, when given a choice between his friend and Iolai Agrov with his entourage of hangers-on and Polina Erkerovsky, Ardan would choose Boris a hundred times out of a hundred. Without a moment’s hesitation. And that was precisely why the young man carefully headed up the staircase.

He paused from time to time, listening and sniffing (without immersing himself in the mountain hunter’s senses) to gauge his surroundings, but, to his surprise, he didn’t find a single Tavser. It seemed like they’d vanished into thin air.

Ardan’s ears didn’t catch a single creak of soles stiffened by the cold, nor a single cough—that eternal companion of the first frosts; his nose detected not a single note of gunpowder, pungent alcohol, or acrid male sweat.

Keeping his magic at the ready, Ardan climbed to the correct floor and, guided by the same signs as earlier in the day, reached the “Office.” Stopping before the door, the young man listened once more—but the museum answered him with virginal silence yet again. It almost felt like no one was here at all.

By the Sleeping Spirits, what is going on here?! Ardan barely stopped himself from shouting this, limiting himself to a mental cry of utter confusion.

Carefully opening the door, Ardan slipped into the room. The first thing the former Alcade hunter noticed were the scattered papers. The sheets had flown in all directions, but it didn’t look as though they’d been swept aside during a fight; rather, it seemed like they’d been dragged along by someone grasping at anything to break their fall.

The overturned cups, puddles of tea spilled across the desk, and toppled chairs completed the picture, telling the story of how, some time ago, the people in here had lost consciousness and, while falling backward, had flailed their arms in a futile attempt to catch themselves, clutching at whatever they could reach.

Ardan went around the desks and... his heart almost stopped. His throat constricted around a tight, nauseating lump. His head spun.

Underneath one of the desks, wedged into the corner between the old filing cabinet and the overturned chairs, Boris lay in shadow. He was curled into an unnatural position. It looked like he was simultaneously trying to stifle a scream of pain—he’d bitten into his jacket collar and shirt with such force that the seams had torn—and trying to hide. His twisted fingers were jutting in all directions like broken twigs—the joints had surrendered to the convulsions of his muscles and tendons.

He had disgusting, foul-smelling stains on both sides of his trousers—the product of an agony that had struck his body with enough force to leave a whitish foam crusted at the corners of the lord’s lips.

For several breathless moments, Ardan was certain that he was looking at the corpse of a man who had departed to meet the Eternal Angels in a torrent of agony so savage that the skin on his scalp had split from the strain, sending hundreds of tiny scarlet droplets trickling down his hair. Only the fact that Boris’ heart was still beating made Ard exhale with some small measure of relief.

Elena’s pale, tear-streaked face and the mental image of her collapsing with grief swirled in Ardan’s mind like a dim, foggy nightmare...

“Not today,” the young man snarled and went to his friend.

Sweeping aside the heaps of papers and the curtain he’d torn down during his fall that had become Boris’ main refuge, Ardan ran his hand across his friend’s forehead. His temperature, if nothing changed, would soon reach the point where his blood would begin to clot directly in his veins and arteries.

Muttering something unprintable in the language of the steppe orcs (as though swearing in something other than Galessian somehow absolved him of all responsibility), Ardan mentally reached toward the window. He “touched” the frost that had adorned the glass with ornate patterns, drew its cold away, and breathed it into Boris’ face.

As he did this, he turned his friend onto his side. Then, tensing the muscles of his forearms, Ardan pried open Boris’ mouth and pushed three of his own fingers inside. He went so deep that he nearly touched the back of his throat.

At first, nothing happened, but then his friend’s body jerked in another convulsion. It was like a fish thrown onto shore, thrashing against sand and stone in an attempt to return to the river.

Wrapping his arms and legs around Boris as though trying to strangle him the way Guta had taught him, Ardan kept his fingers in his companion’s mouth. Something warm and soft, lumpy and slimy, foul-smelling and intermittently laced with blood, touched Ard’s fingers.

He held on until the gag reflex expelled everything that hadn’t yet been absorbed into the intestine.

Ardan finally released the lord when Boris started wheezing and reaching toward the elbow he’d pressed against his chest. Realizing that Boris had regained consciousness, Ardan helped him into a half-reclined position, propping him against the wall.

“H-hurts...” Boris rasped. “Ev-everything h-hurts.”

Ardan, suspecting the worst, briefly left his companion and, approaching the desk, ran his hand through the spilled liquid and sniffed.

Elven tea.

And it was not diluted enough to remain harmless to humans. Boris, and presumably everyone else present, had experienced an abbreviated version of the ancient torture.

Worst of all, Ardan had no idea how to deal with this. His grimoire didn’t contain a single healing spell capable of counteracting poison. This was because poisoning a Matabar or, for instance, an orc, was no simple task thanks to their evolutionary adaptations to their environment.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Clenching his teeth with such helpless fury that his fangs nearly scratched his gums, Ardan returned to Boris. The lord wheezed and smacked his cracked, bleeding lips.

“Just hold on, my friend,” Ardan whispered and, darting aside, seized a cup from the desk.

Wiping it bone dry with his own cloak, the young man, praying to the Sleeping Spirits that no one would notice, cracked the window open. Scooping up several handfuls of snow stuck to the sill, he packed them into the cup and whispered a brief request to a fragment of his native Name of Ice and Snow.

He returned to Boris with a nearly full cup of cold water.

Cradling his friend’s head, Ardan helped him drink. Boris consumed the life-giving moisture greedily, coughed, spat, wheezed, and then gulped it down again.

“That’s enough,” the lord said, no longer stammering, but still without any strength, his words barely audible. “Stop... I can’t take any more.”

Ardan nodded and set the nearly-emptied cup aside. For several seconds, Boris simply breathed evenly, while Ardan, who was holding his staff again, silently watched the door.

“You look... considerably better, Ardi,” Boris managed to force out through his numbing throat, pausing often, and clearly fighting the encroaching weakness. “Whereas I’ve... shamefully... soiled my suit. What will my... laundress think? That I drank myself into an animalistic state and... mistook my trousers... for the privy?”

Boris was clearly trying to joke around, and even stretched his lips into a smile, but then he groaned in pain when fresh blood spurted through the crust there.

“We can always just burn it, Boris,” Ard tried to match his friend’s humor. “The only question is how we should scrub the smell off you. Now that is a truly serious task.”

Boris snorted and attempted to make an obscene gesture in order to send his friend, as Milar and Arkar would put it, “on a long and convoluted journey of fornication.”

“What happened here, Boris?” Ardan asked.

He already suspected what he would hear, but still needed to hear it all the same.

“Lov-Lovarskay... drugged us... with some filth,” Boris began, breathing heavily and occasionally lapsing into a wheeze. “She said it was tea. Kerimov was the first to notice something. Said it...” The lord groaned, clutching his stomach, “...smelled like the hospital. Like elven medicines.”

“Kerimov said that?” Ardan asked to make sure. “Iolai and the others arrived, then?”

“An hour after they took you downstairs,” Boris attempted to nod, but failed. “Then... I don’t remember. My whole body felt like it was run over a washboard. It felt like every bone broke, Ardi. I didn’t experience anything like it even in... that bloody... warehouse. Don’t know... how I survived it.”

Ardan looked at his friend. He could’ve maybe asked Boris to let him into his consciousness, but that was hardly the best idea. In the state Boris was in, any serious manipulation of his mind through the Witch’s Gaze could end badly. And not only for Boris himself.

“Do you remember anything else?” Ardan asked. “Anything at all, Boris? You were left here alone.”

The lord closed his eyes and groaned. He was clearly trying to push through the veil of pain and horror that had so tightly enveloped his consciousness.

“Yes... I crawled... to hide... couldn’t cast anything. The pain made me forget every spell, and I could barely see...” Boris continued. Ardan used his Witch’s Gaze a little to help his friend, but no more than that. Anything beyond this could genuinely cause him harm. “Someone burst into the office. They strangled Baklov. He screamed. He also cried, I think. Iolai, Polina and the others were taken away.”

“They weren’t harmed?”

“No,” Boris answered after a moment’s thought. “They... they forced them to drink something to make them stop convulsing.”

They forced them to drink something... This meant that the operation had been meticulously planned, and if it had been meticulously planned, then...

“The people who took them—did they know that we would be here? Our group specifically?” Ardan asked, not particularly expecting a coherent answer.

“Yes,” Boris answered suddenly. “Yes, Ardi, they knew. They knew for certain.”

“You’re sure?”

This time, Lord Fahtov managed a nod, which he immediately regretted, groaning in pain.

“Yes,” Boris repeated. “Based on their conversations, on the fragments I think I vaguely remember… They knew for certain we’d be here... Although, wait. Not specifically us, but... Iolai. They knew Iolai would be here.”

Ardan frowned. He was no longer even asking himself what was happening in the museum because the picture was crumbling before his very eyes.

Some petty thieves had likely been planning to steal Estenyen’s diary, which had no real value.

The Tavsers he’d left behind on the ground floor had been entirely convinced that they were participating in a military operation of their radical movement.

There were also the captive orcs brought here by the several dozen armed men and one mage.

And now he’d just learned that the attackers had known about Great Prince Iolai Agrov doing his practicum here.

How, by the Sleeping Spirits, could all of this possibly fit together?! The Tavsers practically worshipped Great Prince Arkadiy Agrov, Iolai’s father, for the simple reason that, in addition to being lauded as a war hero, Arkadiy often spoke against the Crown’s policy of fostering peace between the human race and the Firstborn.

They would never harm Iolai. Especially after, according to the newspaper headlines, he had saved the leadership of the opposition from dying on the airship at the start of summer—that was exactly how it had been presented to the public.

“And one more thing, Ardi.”

“Yes, Boris?”

“They...” His friend groaned. “Their mage and several others... There were four of them here... and they all spoke very clean Galessian. No cursing, no filler words, no slang.”

“And?” Ardan didn’t quite get it.

“I grew up in a port city, my friend,” Boris gave him a pained, sad smile. “I always recognize a foreigner’s accent. Galessian isn’t their mother tongue. When we first met, you spoke almost the same way they do, as though you’d learned the language in your adulthood.”

“Galessian is my native language.”

“I know. But for them, it definitely isn’t,” Boris wheezed again and pressed harder on his stomach. “I’d swear it on the Eternal Angels, Ardi. Maybe I’m not a Cloak, but those were bloody foreigners.”

Foreigners... and how did that even fit into the situation? Beyond the fact that Ardan had given up on trying to understand what was happening, of course. Whenever he managed to connect several elements, the moment he added another, everything fell apart. It was like trying to assemble a puzzle from pieces belonging to twenty different sets. A few would inevitably match, but you could never complete the full picture.

“I feel... so... bloody... awful... Ardi... I think. I’m. About. To. Pass out.”

Ardan checked his watch. Ten minutes had passed since he had found Boris. This meant that, for several hours, unknown Tavsers, thieves, and several confirmed foreigners had been running around the museum. And they were holding several scions of the aristocracy, a bunch of drugged orcs, and possibly Magister Lovarskay herself as… hostages?

And yes, while all signs pointed to Lovarskay being complicit in the plot, if that were indeed the case, then fate had truly become too cliched to bear. So, going with mathematical probability instead, Ardan struck the elven Magister’s name from the list of suspects.

Milar would have surely called his partner every name under the sun for such frivolity, but... In a situation where Ardan understood nothing, he preferred to rely on cold numbers and logic rather than insubstantial theories.

More likely than not, given the level of preparation, Lovarskay had been used somehow rather than...

Ahgrat…

What did it even matter in the grand scheme of things?

“Boris, listen to me,” Ardan cupped the back of his friend’s head and pressed their foreheads together, fearing that Boris would simply lose consciousness otherwise. “Listen carefully. I know you’re in tremendous pain.”

“F... ing... agon... y, my fr... nd,” Boris whispered, “swallowing” parts of the words as he grew weaker.

“You’re going to have to endure it, my friend,” Ardan whispered. “Otherwise, we all die here. You understand? Do you understand me?”

Ardi gave his friend’s head a slight shake.

“Under...stand.”

Ardan opened his grimoire. Not hesitating for even a second, he extended his claws and, tensing his muscles, tore out a page. It actually took some effort. The Spell Market hadn’t been exaggerating when it had claimed that this particular specimen was one of the finest examples of military grimoires.

“Do you know what this is?” Ardan held out the basic seal for the Misty Helper.

Lord Fahtov’s eyes closed and he... began to snore. Ardan, gritting his teeth, flipped through several pages of his still-open grimoire. Apparently, avoiding an unnecessary expenditure of his limited supply of rays would not be possible after all.

Finding the spell he needed, Ardan drew two rays from each of his Stars. Beneath the young man’s feet, a crimson seal blazed to life, and a haze of the same color burst out from his staff. It flowed into Boris’ nostrils and mouth, and a moment later…

“Shit!” Boris swore, jolting violently, and then immediately hissed in pain. “Ardi, may the Angels knock you from the heavens—have you lost your mind?!”

“You’re awake,” Ardan cut him off. “The adrenaline won’t last long, though. You’ll be out in a quarter of an hour.”

“Adrenaline?” Boris patted his own face and moved his broken fingers. He was clearly feeling almost no pain right now. “You used Second Wind on me?”

“That’s exactly what I used,” Ardan didn’t deny it. “A modified version.”

“Modified?!” Lord Fahtov whisper shouted. “My adrenal glands will need a month to recover!”

“Boris, your adrenal glands are currently the least of our problems.”

After briefly pondering that, he sighed:

“Fair enough. What do I need to do?”

Ardan once again showed him the diagram of the Misty Helper.

“I’ll help you get downstairs,” Ardan began laying out his plan. “There, at the edge of the square, is a shield that’s preventing me from using this.” Ard produced his Black House signal medallion and slipped it into his friend’s jacket pocket. “There’s a nub on the crest—press it after you bring down the shield.”

“Bring down the shield?” The lord waggled his broken fingers. “Ardan, I’m not really in any position to-”

“We don’t have time for doubts, Boris,” Ardan cut him off rather sharply. “If you don’t break the shield, there’s a very good chance we’re all dead.”

“…You seem awfully calm about the prospect.”

Ardan waved off his friend’s words. Boris was right. Ard really was managing to stay disturbingly calm. And that was likely because, as Milar would put it, situations like this had almost become part of his routine.

“The shield is most likely powered by an external generator, so you won’t be able to break it entirely,” Ardan spoke hurriedly, acutely aware of the time that was slipping away. “Make a lockpick and slip through the perimeter. Once you’re outside, use the medallion. Oh, and try not to attract the guards’ attention.”

Boris raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“I understand that your colleagues have a strained relationship with the guards, Ardi, but-”

“It’s not about that,” Ardan interrupted him. “It’s the fact that, if the terrorists, saboteurs, Tavsers, or whatever they actually are, spot the guards, it’ll be chaos. And that increases the odds that we’ll-”

“Die,” Boris finished for him. “You’ve described that particular prospect rather vividly, repeatedly, and quite persuasively.”

“Excellent.” Ardan took his friend by the arm. “This is going to be very unpleasant, Boris.”

With that, he engaged his hips and core, straightening his body and pulling Boris to his feet as he did so. If not for Second Wind spell, which forced the adrenal glands to produce an unthinkable amount of adrenaline, Lord Fahtov would likely have lost consciousness due to the pain. He might’ve even met the Eternal Angels.

But thanks to Star Magic, Boris merely hissed like a venomous snake through tightly clenched teeth.

Handing Boris his staff, Ardan made sure that his friend could stand on his own (thanks to the wall propping up his shoulder) and, stepping away briefly, listened and sniffed to try and learn what was happening in the corridor.

He didn’t detect a single soul.

Sleeping Spirits. This was getting absurd! He wondered whether this was how ordinary people felt when they found themselves in the company of investigators. Did they also feel as though the world had gone mad and was showing them an image straight from a lunatic’s imagination?

Going back to his friend, Ardan bent slightly so Boris could lean on him.

Together, they traversed the corridor and then spent several more minutes descending the staircase. Boris cast a doubtful glance at the Tavsers lying unconscious by the building’s entrance. Ardan didn’t know what his friend was thinking, but the young man himself sensed that something was wrong.

He may not have served in the Black House for long or participated in a significant number of operations, but he understood how watch duty worked. The fact that, despite all the time that had passed, no one had come to check on the two sentries… meant something. What did it mean, exactly? Ardan couldn’t formulate a proper guess, but the sheer sensation of wrongness wouldn’t leave him alone.

“Something’s off here, Ardi,” Boris whispered.

“Very much so,” Ardan agreed.

They exchanged anxious glances, then nodded to one another and parted ways. Or rather, Boris went outside, and Ardan remained in the building. Because of how frequently he had used the art of the Aean’Hane and especially his Witch’s Gaze this evening, exhaustion was gradually claiming its due. His breathing was growing heavier, his eyelids filling with lead, and parts of his leg muscles were turning to cotton.

No longer needing to maintain the veil around him, Ardan pressed his whole body against the wall. Placing his hand against the plaster—not yet covered by wallpaper or wooden panels—he closed his eyes and focused on his hunter’s senses.

Phantom scents swirled around him. He could smell the fear spilled upon the floor; it had scattered throughout the area in patches of broken fingernails that had clawed at the boards, and in the traces of torn clothing. Ardan followed its trail. He flared his nostrils, drawing in the aromas of the hunting path...

No.

The aromas of a besieged museum.

Ardan descended, following the scent down into the underground labyrinth of the old archive, and then he wandered its corridors until he stumbled over something. Something that smelled not so much like fear as it did an unplanned surprise. Ammonia and urea.

Ardan “bent lower” and, cutting away all extraneous smells, sniffed again.

Dead flesh. Quite fresh. It was literally hours old, no more than that. It had been killed, judging by the way the sweet... no, the way the metallic and thoroughly unpleasant blood of a human, not prey, had spread out. Yes, this was human blood. It flowed slightly forward and to the side—the person had fallen face down after being struck from behind.

Beyond that, the scents were lost among the traces of dust and wood. Ard could not detect anything further.

Opening his eyes, the young man tapped his staff against the floor. Consuming several more of his rays, twelve spectral discs appeared to replace the ones Ardi had recently dispersed on his own. Edward would not have approved of this, but no one had taught Ardan how to properly conduct himself in a besieged building where Spirits only knew what was transpiring.

“Please, let it not be Iolai and the others,” Ardan prayed, imagining what the newspapers would splash across their headlines if down there, in that labyrinth comprised of the old archive’s corridors, the Great Prince and Lady Erkerovsky had met their demise.

Newspaper headlines... For some reason, Ardi mentally stumbled over the rustling image of cheap paper.

“Thoughts for tomorrow,” the young man reminded himself. “Or perhaps not quite tomorrow.”

For now, he needed to deal with the situation itself, not its causes. Readying the Ice Artillery and Ice Bullet since they were his most lethal, well-practiced, and reliable military spells, Ardan began his descent once more.

Treading carefully on the steps, he listened to what was happening below. Alas, only silence answered him. In most rooms of the former Mages’ Guild archive annex, the casings, thresholds and door frames were lined with weather-stripping felt to keep out moisture, and the door panels themselves had been constructed in layers. And along with the moisture, this approach also swallowed sound.

Moving down into the labyrinth, Ardan noticed that the oil lamps had been extinguished—and in a rather radical fashion, at that. They had simply been smashed. Why?

The eyes of the Matabar half-blood adjusted quickly, and the world, losing its color, sank into a gray haze that granted the young man the ability to discern the outlines of objects. Objects and bodies. Near the very foot of the staircase lay two figures.

Wearing mismatched and cheap clothing, they lay in a pool of their own blood. The pinkish shards of their broken ribs and vertebrae protruded from their mutilated backs. Bone splinters had scattered like wood chips across their fur coats that were covered in numerous patches.

Something like this required inhuman strength to do. Orcish strength would’ve sufficed if the orcs hadn’t been in a magical stupor.

Ardan crouched and turned the cuff of one of the dead men around. As he had suspected, a laughing skull, stitched in black thread on the sleeve of a work shirt worn beneath a sweater and a threadbare jacket, stared back at him.

This was a Tavser. A factory worker.

“May the Eternal Angels have mercy upon you,” Ardan whispered.

He had found the answer to at least one of his questions. Why had no one come to check on those two sentries? Because what difference did it make what happened to them if the Tavsers were meant to die anyway?

What did this variable contribute to the equation?

Slightly more than nothing.

Ardan inhaled through his nose once more. And once more, he ran amongst the “phantom scents.” He followed a trail that smelled of herbs and saliva. Ardan had been wrong—the orcs had not been bewitched, but drugged. They’d lost control of their minds and bodies through alchemy, not magic.

“Turning” around a corner, Ardan caught the sweet scent of chestnut blossoms and didn’t linger.

Opening his eyes, he silently pleaded with the Sleeping Spirits to have mercy and let what Ard had just detected have no actual connection to what lay ahead.

Removing his boots and setting them aside, he first stepped on the ball of his foot, then rolled it toward its outer edge, and only at the very end did he set down his heel—moving soundlessly through the corridors, just as Ergar had taught him. Step by step, breath by breath, accompanying his movements with a silent prayer to the patrons of the Firstborn, he drew closer to his destination.

Before long, Ardan froze at a corner.

“Tahd ha dirok’hi aha gahaksa,” he heard a coarse language tempered by very resonant vowels.

Ardan didn’t know the words’ meaning, but he had heard this language before.

Boris had been right.

Foreigners were indeed operating inside the museum.

Tazidahians.

Drawing his father’s knife from its sheath, Ardan angled it past the corner. In the polished blade, he caught the reflection of a solitary oil lamp set upon the floor. Ard had to wait several seconds for his eyes to readjust, allowing the colors to return.

During that time, he watched two men as they conversed. They were standing over the bodies of orcs whose bulging eyes protruded from their sockets and whose bluish tongues lolled above slackened jaws.

They’d been strangled. The ropes used to kill them were still lying beside the Tazidahians.

“Bahra hofa aadro,” one of them waved his hand.

“Uhva uvodai?” The other clearly asked something, pointing at a closed door.

“Vodair nahdr!” The first nodded and grabbed at his own crotch with a laugh.

Ardan drew his knife back and, inhaling deeply, crouched and carefully set his staff on the floor. Just as Ergar had taught him, he engaged his hips and back; just as Shali had instructed him, he extended his arms and bared his claws; and just as Guta had shown him how to do, Ardan shifted his center of gravity.

It was over quickly.

Pushing off the floor and launching himself at the opposite wall, he became little more than a blurry shadow in the eyes of the startled Tazidahians who’d turned toward the noise. But they were only prey, not hunters. And this prey had expected to see someone come around the corner, not for someone to rebound off the opposite wall of that very same corner.

The first man collapsed to his knees, clutching his throat. He pawed absurdly at the flaps of skin dangling from four deep, ragged wounds left by Ardan’s claws. Blood sprayed in all directions as he choked and wheezed. Fragments of his trachea and chunks of his tongue clogged his throat.

The second only managed to reach for his revolver’s grip before he fell like a ragdoll. His father’s knife had sunk hilt-deep between the Tazidahian’s eyes. Ardan, bracing his knee against the foreigner’s eye socket, withdrew the blade and, wiping it clean on the dead man’s clothing, returned it to its sheath.

Before opening the door, Ard... went back for his staff. If he’d had more accumulators, he would have used magic and given the mountain hunter no cause to bare its teeth. The last thing the young man wanted was to fulfill the Black House doctor’s ominous prophecy and transform into some sort of bestial Anomaly...

Fortunately, Ardan had used nothing beyond the abilities of his own body and his skills, infusing neither with Ley. But the temptation to unleash his magic grew with each passing moment. It was so simple—so much easier than the ephemeral Names and the mind-bending schematics of Star Magic.

“Enough,” Ardan snarled at himself and retracted his claws and fangs.

Picking up his staff, he approached the door and opened it, already knowing what he would find. A table stood in an empty room. A woman was tied to it. She was stretched out as though she’d found herself on some rack from the days of the Inquisition. Ropes bound her ankles, preventing her toes from touching the floor. Her hips were pressed against the table’s edge while her chest and abdomen lay atop it, and her arms—wrists broken—had been pulled to either side and bound as well, stripping her of any possibility of resistance.

Blood ran down her thighs, and dark bruises bloomed like hideous buds beneath the tatters of her torn clothing. She was alive. She was still breathing, and whispering something that was barely audible through the pink, bubbling saliva.

Ardan looked away. Bound hand and foot, lying on her side against the wall, Polina sobbed quietly. Ardan had thought such things happened only in fairy tales, but one of the strands of her dark hair had gone white—now somewhat reminiscent of Iolai Agrov’s coloring.

They hadn’t forced her to watch, but simply placed her that way, with her back to the wall. She’d faced Magister Lovarskay the entire time, who was lost somewhere amid her own pain, horror and degradation.

As if mocking them, Polina’s and Lovarskay’s staves lay against the opposite wall. So close and yet so far.

Ardan drew his knife and approached Polina. She blinked and, thrashing with all her might, moaned something through her gag. The gag, it seemed, had been hastily-fashioned from Lovarskay’s undergarments.

“It’s me, Polina. Ard,” the young man raised his hands. “You know me. Ard Egobar. We study at the Grand together. Do you remember me? We spent several weeks living together in Mr. Reish Orman’s house in Shamtur. Remember?”

Reason gradually returned to Polina’s eyes. Unlike Lovarskay, she appeared relatively intact. Her clothing was whole, there was no blood visible anywhere, and the only mark of abuse was a scarlet welt on her face—the remnant of a sharp male slap.

The Tazidahians hadn’t had enough time to subject Polina to Lovarskay’s fate. Or perhaps, given their attitude toward the Firstborn, they had never intended to violate her. In any case, it didn’t matter.

Ardan sighed at the irony. Meeting those whose families Aror had ruined truly never ended well. And it seemed like this rule extended beyond Ardan himself.

“I’m going to cut the ropes, all right?” Ard held out his knife.

Polina flinched, and the intoxicating, sweet taste of fear hit Ardan’s nostrils. The hunter had not yet fallen asleep inside his mind, and saw only bipedal, weak, human prey there. And what could be sweeter than frightened prey—especially when Ardan hadn’t eaten in nearly twenty-four hours.

Polina nodded and Ard slashed her ropes. She immediately tore the gag off her mouth and, gasping no less hoarsely than Boris had, broke into a coughing fit. By the look of things, she might have choked to death before the Tazidahians could have inflicted any further pain upon her.

Ardan reached out to help Polina remove her remaining bonds, but she jerked sharply away.

“Don’t touch me!” She very nearly screamed.

This wasn’t just fear talking, but revulsion as well. And it wasn’t caused by Ardan being a Matabar half-blood, but by him being a man.

Ardan didn’t know what Polina had endured, and had no concept of what was happening in the mind and body of Magister Lovarskay, who was still tied to the table—and honestly, he didn’t want to know. He knew that if he allowed himself to sink into that kind of empathy, he would only feed the hungry maw of clinging fear.

“I’m sorry,” Polina caught herself at once and added: “Thank you.”

Ardan nodded and held his knife out to his classmate.

“Please, cut her ropes,” he said softly. “I don’t think I should go near her right now.”

Ard suddenly realized that he could not bring himself to say Lovarskay’s name aloud. It was as though naming it would make the ugly reality even more... ugly and real. It was a strange feeling. A feeling he never wished to experience again.

While Polina murmured something, stroking Lovarskay’s hair—matted with blood, sweat and tears—Ardan removed his cloak, unfastening it from his epaulettes.

When Polina cut the bonds on her legs, Lovarskay’s battered body began sliding down, but Ardan caught her in time. As he had suspected, the moment he touched the elf, she tried to scream. In response, Ard struck her, not hard, but firmly and sharply, aiming for the base of her skull.

“What are you doing?!” Polina outright snarled, leveling Ard’s own knife at him.

“She can’t help us in any way,” Ardan answered calmly, for some reason recalling how Elena had once aimed an unloaded revolver at him. (Sleeping Spirits, even if it sounded odd, it was fortunate that Elena spent most of her time in the hospital or at home.) “And this will give her a chance to sleep.”

“Sleep?” The snarl became a hiss. “Brain displacement inside the cranial cavity is now called sleep? A concussion? And disruption of the nerve centers, too? Are you out of your mind, Egobar? We’re mages!”

Ardan didn’t reply. He could have granted the elf an enchanted sleep, but that would have drained his already-limited strength. Damnation! Ard had grown so accustomed to the constant use of military-grade accumulators that he had nearly forgotten what it was like to manage without them.

Wrapping Lovarskay in his cloak, Ardan lifted her in his arms and carried her into the corridor. Stepping over the Tazidahians’ bodies without looking back, he called out:

“Bring my staff, please.”

Muttering something, Polina tucked both staves under her left arm while still gripping his knife in her right hand. Ardi didn’t see exactly what she was doing, but he heard the resonant thuds of heels striking the dead men’s skulls.

Gently lowering the unconscious Lovarskay to the floor, Ardan turned to Polina. Unashamed of her blood-soaked hem and shoes, not even glancing at the Tazidahians’ caved-in faces, she held his staff out toward him.

After taking it, Ardan asked the most pressing question:

“What is happening here, Polina?”