Book II. Chapter 88 - Museum (Part 4)

Chapter 88

Polina silently stared into Ard’s eyes for several seconds, tempting him to employ his Witch’s Gaze (he refrained for the same reason he’d held back with Boris). Ardan was about to remind her that they had precious little time and ought to hurry when Lady Erkerovsky suddenly asked:

“What did Fahtov manage to tell you?” Her tone carried its habitual detachment, betrayed only once by a treacherous tremor.

Ardan was slightly taken aback.

Polina rolled her eyes with theatrical precision, as though she had rehearsed the gesture dozens of times before a mirror, her facial expression keeping pace with it.

“It’s hard to imagine that you charged down here to help us before finding your friend. And as I recall, Fahtov managed to hide in the ‘Office.’”

Ardan reminded himself once more that the daughter of Duke Erkerovsky was far from stupid. Stupid people didn’t manage to kindle the third triad of rays in a Star, nor did they pass the entrance exams of the Imperial Magical University well enough to earn a Crown scholarship.

“He said Lovarskay drugged you all and-”

“She didn’t drug anyone!” Polina burst out and, going pale, she took a step back. “I’m sorry... Boris was wrong. Kerimov detected something in the tea that the... that the... Magister brought us.” She, too, could not bring herself to say the elf’s name. “But by that point, she was no longer in control of herself.”

“No longer in control of herself?” Ardan echoed.

Polina nodded.

“As you already know, my father has no love for politics and tries to stay as far from the Upper Chamber of Parliament as he possibly can, but...” She gripped her staff with both hands. “In politics, Egobar, no one trusts anyone. Even a fool doesn’t trust someone’s word. And a clever person doesn’t even trust a document. That’s why many assume my father is simply pretending. And he knows this. That’s why, ever since I was a small child, I was taught how to identify alchemical preparations that suppress one’s will by their smell and taste. And, furthermore, I was taught how to recognize those whose will has already been suppressed so that... so that...”

“So as not to let a drugged servant near you,” Ardan finished for her.

Polina nodded.

Well. That certainly explained some things…

“Don’t you dare pity me, Egobar,” Polina hissed, drawing her thin, long eyebrows together.

Ardan raised an open palm in a gesture of surrender. Tina Eveless and Polina Erkerovsky were alike in certain ways. Both were beautiful enough to drive a weak-willed man to madness; both were distantly cold toward everyone and even toward themselves, perhaps. But beyond the obvious similarities, there was also one essential difference.

A sense of danger emanated from Polina. It was the very same sensation Ardan had felt when encountering predators and people like Arthur Belsky, the Colonel, Lord Aversky, Mshisty, Milar, Kornosskiy, and... all the rest. True, it wasn’t yet as strong as theirs, and perhaps it would take Polina a decade to equal the names listed above, but one day, another fierce hunter would stride the paths of the Metropolis. A predator with staff in hand.

One day.

Not now.

“Unfortunately, I never expected to see anything like that here,” Polina bit her lip slightly. “I noticed it too late, after Kerimov pointed out the strange smell. We didn’t have time to do anything. We all went down as one.”

“Boris said that they gave you an antidote.”

Polina nodded.

“A mage and three others entered the office, including those…” She flicked her hair in a purely feminine gesture toward the corpses lying on the floor. “They forced something astringent into us. I think I detected some Trembling Tansy and the buds of a Stooping Birch.”

Both ingredients she had just named belonged to the category of Ley-flora. Like their ordinary cousins, they possessed absorbent properties and drew toxins and poisons out of the body. In this case, the concoction had likely bound the elven tea in their stomachs and prevented it from being absorbed into their bloodstreams. That was why Polina looked considerably better than Boris.

“They dragged us downstairs,” Polina shivered, and the treacherous tears froze at the corners of her eyes. Not tears of pity or fear, but pure anger. “All the children of the aristocracy learn foreign languages, Ard. It’s part of our education.”

Ardan already knew this. That was why, for instance, Mshisty’s subordinates—Captain Parela and Lieutenant Klementiy—spoke several languages. Both of them, judging by their behavior and the way they held themselves apart from the rest of Mshisty’s hounds, had ties to the nobility.

“You know Tazidahian.”

“Not very well,” Polina grimaced involuntarily. “I know the island dialects far better, but I still know it well enough to understand what they were saying.”

Ardan continued to fight the urge to hurry her along. Throughout their entire conversation, which had not yet taken more than a few minutes, the young man could practically feel the relentless ticking of the clock.

“They came here to kill Iolai,” and despite the fact that Ardi had been prepared for the widest range of motives, these words still struck him like lightning, “and to frame the Firstborn for it.”

The thoughts in Ardan’s head exploded from the starting line at a gallop, outrunning the steppe wind and those same accursed clocks. Polina’s words could have answered many questions, but...

It was now clear why they had needed captive orcs that had been strangled right across from... across from the room where the remains of violated women were meant to be found.

But in that case, if the primary motive was to frame the Firstborn, the atrocities should have been committed only against Polina Erkerovsky. She was the daughter of a duke, a representative of the Empire’s highest nobility, whose family history traced back to warriors who’d served in the retinue of the Galessian king…

The Tavsers would have gained a surge of recruits beyond their wildest dreams. Especially since the situation seemed deliberately designed to echo the historical tragedy of the Martyrs.

But!

That tiresome, infuriating “but…”

If everything had gone according to plan, there would have been no need for the atrocities committed against Madam.... the elven Magister. The dead Tavsers would also be unnecessary because that collapsed the entire elegant theory.

But!

Again, but...

This was only true if one assumed that the equation had just one answer, rather than a range of them. What would happen if, in a tragedy involving the Firstborn, Great Prince Iolai Agrov died and the mutilated body of Lady Polina Erkerovsky were to be found on the scene as well? A surge in radicals and Tavser followers, to say nothing of public scandals and protests directed at the Firstborn.

And along with that unrest, rumors would spread among the Firstborn that things were not so simple. That in the museum, along with everything else, the remains of Tavsers had been found, and that Magister Nata Lovarskay—humiliated and degraded—had departed upon the paths of the Sleeping Spirits alongside the lord and lady.

Perhaps it was the humans who were deceiving everyone and casting the victims as the aggressors?

If such thoughts were to ferment in the public mind, it wasn’t hard to guess where such a thing would lead to.

Did this resemble the Puppeteers’ methods? Very much so. But for some reason, Ardan doubted that they were involved. It was all too... aggressive. Not so much cruel as simply blunt. The Puppeteers operated quite differently.

And yet—where did the unfortunate thieves fit into this? Perfectly ordinary, petty thieves... who’d supposedly been told to infiltrate the one place in the entire museum that, apparently, the Tazidahian saboteurs had not visited yet. And why hadn’t they done so? Perhaps because they’d been told not to?

It was possible—only possible—that the Puppeteers were not directly involved in what was happening, but still had a stake in it somehow. Especially since the conspirators’ organization and the Tazidahian Brotherhood were, by all appearances, bound by close ties.

These thoughts flew through Ardi’s mind faster than Polina could blink.

“Do you know where they took him?” Ardan asked, not feeling overly optimistic.

“To the room that was once used for storing paramilitary information,” Polina answered unexpectedly. Perhaps the Sleeping Spirits had finally decided to be on Ard’s side for once? “The Ley-equipment there hasn’t been removed yet, so it should still have an isolated generator for a stationary, self-contained shield. A Blue Star one with twenty-six rays—standard issue for protecting sensitive information.”

Ardan sighed. So, this was how all those people felt when he explained the obvious to them out of habit. He refrained from reminding Polina that he, too, studied at the Grand under Professor Convel and was, false modesty aside, one of the finest Star Engineers among the first three years of students at least.

“Kerimov and the others?” He asked instead. “Are they alive?”

Polina shrugged.

“They separated us. The others were taken somewhere that way.” She pointed in the direction of the vault where Ardan had spent half the night.

That explained why they’d brought him the elven tea as well. The Tazidahians hadn’t known that he would be here (a half-blood that was both more resilient and likely to notice anything wrong with the tea), and so they had assumed that whoever was working in the vault would collapse from pain just as everyone else had. Kerimov, Zahatkin and Shestov were meant to “fall heroically while attempting to protect the Empire’s history from desecration at the hands of treacherous Firstborn” and had thus been left along the route to the vault to give the newspapers that perfect fodder for their articles.

It also explained why one of the “loaders” had separated from his team and headed into the museum. The thieves had known that no one would open the door for them. The loading bay gates were supposed to be unlocked by their accomplice.

This meant that the robbery and the sabotage were indeed connected.

Excellent. Ardan had obtained answers to many difficult questions after all. Only a few remained.

First: were the Puppeteers connected to what was happening?

Second: where, by the Sleeping Spirits, had that damned thief gone?!

“Thoughts for tomorrow.”

“What?” Polina narrowed her eyes at him.

Ardan hadn’t realized that he had spoken Ergar’s favorite saying aloud.

“Those two—the mage and the other one—can you tell me anything specific about them?” Ardan answered her question with a question.

Polina gazed into Ard’s eyes for several moments (she had no idea about him being a Speaker, of course), then answered:

“The Star Mage wears a blue cloak and epaulettes denoting five, four, and five rays, but considering the fact that he’s a Tazidahian saboteur, he might possess an entirely different number of rays.”

Ardan was forced to agree with Polina. A mage from the Brotherhood could indeed possess more power than what his regalia displayed. On the other hand, if he had lived in the Empire long enough, he would’ve had to deal with the risk that, sooner or later, he would have been required to undergo verification. He would’ve needed to do so in order to rent training grounds at the Spell Market, visit the Mages’ Guild, seek employment, and so on.

There were only around twelve thousand Blue Mages in the country, so the probability of such a check happening was quite high. And it wouldn’t even be a compulsory one, but a procedural and bureaucratic one. Even Ard had been forced to go through it for the sake of attaining some basic documents.

Even so, dismissing the chance that Iolai had been captured by a Blue Mage who, as they would say in Magical Boxing, belonged to the heavyweight division—that he could not do. Small though the probability was, it still existed.

“And the second-”

“A mutant,” Polina interrupted him. “Kerimov managed to drive a letter opener into his thigh, and I saw black veins along his leg and black vapor coming out of his mouth.”

“Ahgrat.”

“Bless you,” Polina said sincerely.

On the one hand, the fact that he had a mutant as a partner for this operation decreased the probability that the Blue Star Mage possessed a truly impressive number of rays; on the other, it did nothing to improve the situation. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“Are you finished questioning me, Egobar?” Polina suddenly perked up and squared her shoulders. “Shall we go rescue that pompous idiot already?”

Ardan blinked several times.

“You’re going to risk yourself to help Iolai? The same man you just called a pompous idiot?”

“He may be a pompous idiot, but he’s a pompous idiot from my country,” Polina answered firmly, with a hint of wounded pride. “And I will not allow some Tazidahian bastards to run roughshod over us.”

Ardan looked at Polina Erkerovsky in a new light. She was gripping her staff tightly, its surface adorned with several seals of military magic. She still smelled of fear, but she fought it more successfully than many of the men Ardi had encountered on his path in the dream of the Sleeping Spirits.

In the young man’s mind, the voice of General Davenport resounded:

“...You don’t like the nobility... ...

…Not all of them, Ard. I’ve served alongside the sons of dukes, princes, and high-ranking noble families. Many of them are honorable patriots, willing to give their lives and their fortunes for the good of the Empire...”

Amusingly, Ardan suddenly realized that Polina Erkerovsky, both due to her temperament and her talent for military magic, would have been a far better fit as Lord Aversky’s student than Ard himself.

What irony…

“Why do you even bother asking such questions, Egobar, when you yourself have no intention of backing down,” Polina snorted. “And your relationship with Iolai is even more complicated than mine.”

Ardan bared his teeth slightly. He had nothing to say in response. If he were being honest with himself, it hadn’t even occurred to him that he was risking his life for Iolai Agrov. It was simply... the right thing to do. Probably.

“The only question is what to do about... her,” Polina said, stumbling once more over Magister Lovarskay’s name, and nodded toward the elf, who was now sleeping very deeply.

Ardan looked around. Pools of blood had spread across the floor, and the air already carried the unpleasant smell of the fluids of dead bodies. Several turns behind them lay the Tavsers’ corpses. But even if one dismissed the sentries, some fifteen men were still unaccounted for.

Roughly half of them—six to eight radicals—might be keeping the Tazidahian mage and mutant company. And according to that most optimistic estimate, a similar number of them were still roaming the museum. Possibly alongside the unconscious (and ideally still living) companions of the Great Prince.

All of this limited their options if they tried to bring Magister Lovarskay along. And she wasn’t the only problem...

Ardan regarded the bravely-posturing Lady Erkerovsky skeptically. The young man was currently talking himself out of employing the same trick he had used on the elf with her. Ardan could not be certain that Polina wouldn’t just fail to be useful, but might actually cause him harm due to her panic or confusion the moment any fighting began.

But leaving her here—that decision could bring even greater problems in the future.

“Let’s go,” was all Ardan said.

Polina shifted her bewildered gaze from the elf to Ardi.

“But if-”

“We have no choice,” Ardan cut her off. “No choice and no time. Whether we move her somewhere or leave her here, the risk to her doesn’t change. So...” The young man sighed and turned away from the sleeping elf, and with a heavy heart, he repeated: “Let’s go.”

Polina most likely understood where he was coming from. They truly had no way to mitigate the chance of Lovarskay being found. Doing so would require them to eliminate all the bodies and traces in the corridor, which, without resorting to Star Magic, was nearly impossible.

“That’s inhuman, Egobar,” Polina ground out.

Perhaps she was right, or perhaps she wished to distance herself from the decision and absolve herself of all responsibility for what might happen.

“Then it’s fortunate that neither of us are human,” Ardan said more harshly than usual.

He didn’t like the decision either, but his feelings did not alter the cold, hard facts. Any other course of action, however humane and morally correct it might seem... In practice, he had done everything for Lovarskay that he could. Everything beyond that was her own path in the dream of the Sleeping Spirits. And their dream was what it was.

Without looking back, Ardan continued forward. Thanks to the sound of her footsteps, her ragged breathing, and the frightened, uneven rhythm of her heart, he knew that Polina was following behind him.

In complete silence, they passed several more turns, and at last, Ardan raised a fist in the air. They stopped before a heavy, massive iron door.

Felt weatherstripping protruded from the gaps between the door panel and the jambs, and a wide valve wheel served as the handle. The Guild had been exceedingly thorough in its duties regarding the storage of particularly sensitive documents. To say nothing of the fact that inspectors from the Black House had overseen their compliance.

Ard pressed his hand and ear to the door. Closing his eyes, he set out to wander among the misty phantoms of sounds and scents. He saw shadows stomping around in the barely-bendable soles of cheap work boots and carrying heavy loads. He then watched as they set them down with a piercing metallic clang at various points throughout the sizable chamber.

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The hunter listened to their voices—breathless and weary, and at times full of indignation and confusion. He counted exactly six—six distinct male voices occasionally conversing in Galessian. A human ear would have distinguished nothing at all through the insulation, but the Matabar—even if he was only half of one—could do exactly that.

Ardan felt his claws and fangs straining to come out once more, but did not give them free rein.

He continued walking among the phantom silhouettes reeking of acrid sweat and exhaustion. Amid the cacophony of suffocating smells and insinuating echoes, Ardan searched for something else. A different sound. A different scent.

And he found it. In the far corner, a calm, steady heart was beating with tranquil ease. It was like an island of peace in a raging storm, scattering white foam above a dark ocean. Instead of sweat and fear, the shadow smelled of medicinal herbs, strong elven tea, and expensive men’s cologne.

Iolai Agrov was lying unconscious somewhere apart from the proceedings. And several meters from two dark pillars, standing motionless in the center of the foaming waves, a confident heartbeat marched across parade grounds paved with the scent of fortified cider.

In Tazidahian, owing to the climate and soil that was generally ill-suited for plowing and agriculture, wine and whiskey were far less popular drinks than cider and various meads.

Ardan gestured for Polina to approach.

“What?” She asked, stepping up beside him.

The girl was trying not to let her voice betray her with a treacherous tremor again. She very nearly succeeded.

“I’ll repeat what they’re saying,” Ardan whispered, pointing at the door. “And you translate, all right?”

Polina’s tone may have remained cold, but her heart gave a feeble lurch and missed a beat. Ardan did not blame her. Remembering himself from a year and a half ago… He probably wouldn’t have fled, but he would’ve certainly lain low in the hope that Boris had succeeded and the Black House cavalry was on its way.

Alas, Ardan could not, among other things, count on his friend having even reached the shield, let alone that he’d escaped beyond the magical barrier. That was too many “ifs” in the equation to build his judgments upon them.

“All right, Egobar, but I really don’t know their language that well,” Polina reminded him.

Ardan began repeating the sounds he heard as faithfully as he could, without much concern for imitating their intonation or pronunciation.

“‘Haven’t seen Aghazd and Oughar in a while.’”

“‘Don’t worry, Mairaid, give the men time to have fun.’”

Polina was clearly translating the gist of what they’d said rather than every word, but Ardan was grateful even for such imprecise information. Before bursting into the room, he intended to gather every last piece of the puzzle he could reach. Especially since he was forming at least the rough outline of a plan as they did this.

The only ace the two of them had was the element of surprise. Shali had always said that an undetected hunter was three times as strong as one who entered the battle after announcing their presence. However, this only applied to the first strike.

“‘The only good thing about monsters who don’t look like people is their bodies, chief. I’ve never seen such forms before coming to this land that profanes the Face of Light.’”

“‘Do not fall into temptation, Mairaid, do not forget what the monsters have done to the race of man. They are creatures of the Unnamed and must be burned from the face of the planet. Just as all who abet them. Unworthy is their breath and foul their tread.’”

Such a conversation might have justified a connection between Tazidahian and the Tavsers were it not for the fact that the radical movement within the Empire didn’t really welcome Tazidahians. The Tavsers, beyond their open hostility toward the Firstborn, were a purely patriotic organization at their core.

Maybe that was why they still hadn’t been outlawed and why the authorities were content with only sending Tavsers caught committing a crime to the mines. It was something of a half measure... or perhaps a way to limit the Conclave’s influence, which, in turn, limited the Tavsers.

Politics, Ardan thought with distaste.

“‘Perhaps I should go to them for a while, chief?’”

“‘Let him sleep, Mairaid, I don’t care for scenes. And the faint-hearted Imperials will certainly flood this place with their tears.’”

Ardan raised a questioning eyebrow, and Polina only spread her hands out.

“I told you that I don’t know the language that well. I’m translating as best I can.”

Ardan nodded, then murmured, “Maybe try to be more literal?”

“‘How much time do we have left, Mairaid?’”

“‘A quarter of an hour, chief. The little cockroaches should have already taken their sweet sugar by now.’”

“Their what?” Ardan whispered.

“You wanted me to be more literal!” Polina hissed. “Besides, I don’t understand half of what you’re trying to pronounce. Their words sound completely different. The vowels are louder and the consonants harder. You sound like you’ve got porridge in your mouth.”

“Better stick to translating the general meaning, then.”

Ardan refocused on what the mutant and the Star Mage were saying.

“‘Perhaps I’ll slip away to them in the meantime, chief?’”

“‘You desire so badly to defile your loins with pointed-eared meat?’”

“‘No, chief, but that woman looked pleasant, and since we’re leaving this rotten, stinking place, I wanted to taste an Imperial woman before our departure.’”

“‘You didn’t have enough of the Black Lotus?’”

“‘You know that whores and women are entirely different things, chief.’”

“‘Yes, only in the Empire, that distinction doesn’t hold, Mairaid—here, both are one and the same.’”

“‘You’re right, chief. Their women spread their legs more eagerly than a drunken prostitute, and their men aren’t men at all, and yet-’”

“‘And yet, Mairaid, you will stand here, with me, and wait until they finish assembling the device.’”

“‘Do you think their Black House might pay us a visit, chief?’”

“‘I refuse to take the risk. Perhaps the Empire has almost no real men left, but there are still those here I would not wish to cross. The Colonel’s dirty dogs are among them.’”

“‘At the embassy, it was a filthy monster who did it all.’”

“‘Yes, and for that, the Empire will pay. Pay right now. With the rotten blood of the Agrovs.’”

Ardan exhaled. So, the Tazidahians had decided to take revenge for the incident at the embassy? But what did those thieves have to do with it—thieves the foreign saboteurs were clearly connected to? And why were they trying to kill a man who, while nearly last in the line of succession, was still a claimant to the throne and a member of the Imperial family?

No, these were all thoughts for tomorrow.

And not even his own, but the thoughts of the Colonel and the Daggers.

Gesturing for Polina to step back, Ardan retreated several paces into the darkness. It was not hard to guess what kind of device the Tavsers—they were most likely just as drugged as Magister Lovarskay had been—were assembling.

What could draw even more public attention to the tragedy, burying any chance of concealing the attack from the newspapers and the nation? A monstrous Ley-explosion, of course, which would draw eyes like moths to a flame. Here in the capital, people had grown accustomed to the Ley-technologies of the new age, but across the rest of the country, they were still regarded as something frightening and unreliable.

The newspapers would not let such a “juicy” story slip by.

“Polina, we have only one chance.”

“I know,” she snapped, then immediately faltered. “I’m sorry. I knew it would be frightening, but I didn’t think it would be this bad.”

Ardan nodded and continued.

“When things start, run to Iolai as fast as you can. He’s to the right, diagonally.” Ardan indicated the approximate direction with his finger. “Sit beside him—specifically sit beside him. Then I want you to use everything you have, everything, without holding back, to conjure the best composite shield you know.”

“A composite against both elements and kinetics?”

Ardan nodded again.

“We’ve only just started practicing those and…” She began, then fell silent. Frowning, she said: “All right. I have several schematics in my grimoire. But how do you intend to fight a Tazidahian military mutant and a Blue Star Mage on your own?”

“I don’t know.”

Polina stared blankly through Ardi for several seconds.

“Have you lost your mind?” She finally reacted. “Let’s go back, try to break the shield, and call for help.”

“There’s no time,” he answered her calmly. “There wasn’t any time back then, and there isn’t any now. If Boris failed, we’re on our own. If he succeeded, help is already on its way.”

“Then-”

“It won’t arrive in time,” Ard interrupted her. “No one is coming, Polina. No one will save us. No one will appear from around a corner and pull us out of this. There is only us. Only you. Me. And Iolai… who is in an alchemical sleep right now. He’s there. To the right. And diagonally. Run to him. And use your best defense.” Ardan paused and added: “And add a prayer. To the Eternal Angels. The Face of Light. The Old Gods. Whoever you like. And whichever one you can remember.”

Polina swallowed audibly. For a moment, Ardan thought that the girl would turn and bolt for the exit. After all, the years that would forge the Star Mage Polina Erkerovsky into someone who could manifest the danger she already exuded had not yet passed.

She was still just a scion of the high nobility who had used military magic only on the training grounds and in her classes at the Grand.

And yet Polina didn’t retreat. Drawing herself up, she gripped her staff until her knuckles went white and nodded as firmly as she could manage.

Ardan looked at her. This was a cold beauty to whom nature had given the greatest gift it could. Polina could have used that gift and lived a calm, and in some respects even easy, life. At the very least, it would’ve been easier than most. Beauty, a noble heritage, and a considerable family fortune. That alone inspired envy in the overwhelming majority.

And yet, she stood here. In the middle of the darkness. In the basement of a museum besieged by foreign saboteurs. Even though she didn’t have to do so. And yet—she had stayed. She was even prepared to risk her own life because the enemy were outsiders, and her “own people” needed her.

Was Ard awed by the spirit of this small woman?

Awed was too weak a word.

At the very least, he now understood Davenport’s words about the aristocracy far better. He even accepted that they could be true.

Ardan turned to face the metal door and quietly set the base of his staff against the floor.

He had only one chance here. And if he missed, then all of them were so utterly dead that not even a degenerate would gamble on them surviving.

Fortunately, Ergar had taught him that a true hunter only needed one strike to end a fight.

Ardan opened his grimoire and found the page he needed rather quickly. He hadn’t memorized this particular modification of the Ice Artillery for the simple reason that it was unlikely for any opponent—whether in the real world or in the Magical Boxing Arena—to ever give him the time he needed to prepare it.

The modification was called the Charged Shell, and the trick behind it was that the mage had to spend an extended period of time filling the Ley energy contours that dealt with density and the frequency of recursive-propulsive iterations. Instead of the nearly-instantaneous deployment of the standard version, the Charged Shell required, from the moment the seal was invoked to the moment it was unleashed, anywhere from two seconds to... infinity. It all depended on how many rays of the Green Star one spent on it.

It was an utterly impractical spell for military purposes, but extraordinarily useful in matters concerning the testing of stationary and passive shields—the kind Ard designed and practiced with in the “Stables.”

While scanning the schematic, Ardan mentally reached for his Stars. They blazed at the touch of his mind and obediently yielded the necessary power. In his Red Star, not counting the accumulator, two rays remained; in his Green, he had five.

Around the young man’s feet, a white-blue seal ignited. The droplets of moisture in the air began to harden and crackle, spinning in a merry carousel around his staff. They gathered in a shimmering shroud at its tip, gradually assuming the shape of a vibrating, hollow sphere of ice.

As the seal formed, Ardan also reached for the light burning on his finger. The green-hued Ley imprisoned in the Ertalain crystal surged through his hand, into his staff, and then into the seal. Ray by ray, the seal absorbed more and more energy, and with it, the sphere of ice grew.

By the time the accumulator on the young man’s finger crumbled, leaving him only his own Star to work with, the sphere had already exceeded the length of a man’s forearm in diameter.

Ardan looked at the iron door.

Not enough, the desperate thought hammered in his head. This isn’t enough.

If he asked Polina to open the door, eliminating the additional barrier, then—despite the fact that the Tazidahians were expecting their comrades—Ard could still lose the element of surprise that he’d staked everything on. And while his spell had most likely gone past the threshold of Green Star magic at this point and entered the Blue Star level, he was facing a Blue Star Mage.

He needed something more. Something greater than what his own Stars could provide.

If they’d been somewhere above, somewhere near the windows and the street blanketed in fluffy snow, perhaps Ardan could have called upon a fragment of the Name of Ice and Snow. He had no idea what that would do since he was relying exclusively on the theories of Nicholas the Stranger. Even so, this was not the moment to choose caution over a dubious-but-real chance of survival.

Were it not for the Winter that had wrapped the city in its white shawl, Ard wouldn’t have even attempted something like this.

The snow was too far from him. He couldn’t hear it, couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it, and...

The young man’s gaze shifted to his own wrist, where, if one looked closely, the mark of Allane’Eari—the Sidhe of the Cold Summer Night and daughter of the Queen of Winter—could still be discerned.

Damn these adventures… was Ard’s last thought before he reached for the thinning thread connecting him to the Princess.

* * *

Polina didn’t take her eyes off Egobar and his spell. She wasn’t staring at him because she was particularly impressed by her enormous, fanged classmate and his slow, ponderous spell.

Something else entirely had caught her eye.

The first thing she’d been surprised by were the military accumulators set in their specialized rings that adorned the young man’s fingers. How had a student of the General Faculty—let alone the relative of a blood-soaked criminal whose family and entire race were ostracized—acquired such a thing? A military accumulator! Even students of the Military Faculty didn’t start training with them before the middle of their third year. And they didn’t do so in academic duels, but in conditional combat settings, where time was counted in fractions of seconds.

It wasn’t enough to merely wear a military accumulator—one had to know how to use it in battle without losing focus and shattering one’s own seal.

Egobar possessed military accumulators and he wielded them with considerable skill. That meant that he’d done this before…

But even that paled in comparison to what happened when the Ertalain crystal crumbled into sparkling dust.

At first, Polina thought that she’d made the wrong decision—the bewilderment and pensiveness that had suddenly marked Egobar’s handsome face in broad strokes did not inspire much optimism in her. But then resolve took their place. Cruel and cold. Like a cold night.

It was strange that Polina thought of precisely that. She was reminded of a night where the darkness makes the imagination paint horrors in every bush, every alleyway, every silhouette. The kind of night where the cold sends tremors through one’s body, the kind that then creep toward their freezing soul.

Egobar’s wrist blazed with exactly that. With the night’s darkness that had previously seemed like something out of a fairy tale to her, like something impossible. And, as though it was preparing to shove the girl’s reason straight into the abyss of childhood fables, the world around them shuddered.

It was as if the floor and walls had forgotten that they were made of solid stone and, for a moment, had become the pliant surface of still water. Disturbed by Egobar standing in their center, the floor and walls rippled outward in a wave, one that made Polina shiver even harder than the fear clamping down on her heart; harder than the cold burrowing beneath her skin.

She could feel her lips turning blue, her fingers curling. The breath escaping her mouth turned so dense it resembled smoke—or white vapor. Her eyelashes grew heavy with the ice that clung to them.

Unfurling like a serpentine coil, frost streamed out from beneath the base of Egobar’s staff. With the hands of an invisible artist—a true herald of winter—it adorned the floor and walls. And in those images, in those seemingly-random patterns, Polina somehow felt like she was seeing something strange. Strange and wondrous.

She saw a snow leopard with several tails standing at the edge of a mountain gorge. And there, amid the tall grass, she spotted a small but deadly lynx that was already running forward. There was also a bear wrapped in gleaming fabric and rearing up on its hind legs. And near them, but also far away, a squirrel and a she-wolf wandered. From time to time, these two seemed to transform, no longer beasts at all, but strange people carrying snow-white staves. A four-winged eagle soared somewhere in the sky, and a colossal ibex struck its hooves against a field of flowers.

And this entire tableau, simultaneously mesmerizing and repellent, was painted upon the train of a black dress... or a starlit sky... or perhaps a dress that had become the sky.

Polina thought that she sensed someone pass by her to touch Egobar’s shoulder and vanish, all in the same instant. They vanished, only to leave behind the enormous young man around whom winter bloomed. True winter. This one stretch of corridor in the museum’s basement had suddenly become the epicenter of winter. Cold winds blew in every direction, and the snow stung one’s eyes.

Polina began to squint. She no longer knew whether Ard Egobar was standing before her—his eye sockets flooded with blue mist, his hands holding a plain wooden staff that glowed from within—or whether an enormous wolf with silver fur was baring ice-forged fangs.

Polina understood nothing about what was happening.

Except, perhaps, for one thing.

All those terrible fairy tales she had heard in her childhood about Aror Egobar, the Dark Lord, and the Aean’Hane of the Firstborn—they weren’t fiction at all. They were not merely frightening fables adults used to discipline the next generation.

Not at all.

It was all true.

Right in front of her, whether he was a man or a wolf, stood a shard of the ancient truth.

“A Speaker,” Polina whispered, and added in her mind: Iolai never stood a chance.

And then everything—for an instant, for a fraction of an instant—stilled. The ice sphere had changed dramatically. It was now the size of a truck’s wheel and it… looked like the moon.

A bright moon that had risen above a forest in the middle of... a cold summer night.

Or so it seemed like to Polina, who was frozen in the midst of the icy waste that had swallowed the corridor. And now even she could hear the Tazidahians speaking in the distance:

“‘Mairaid, does it not seem to you like it’s gotten rather cold?’”

“‘Chief! The door! It’s turned white!’”

And then the winter moon, trailing silver light behind it, exploded forward.

* * *

The thread connecting Ardan to the Princess of Winter thrummed, and with every second he spent at the edge of the power that lurked somewhere on the far side of it, the young man felt the crushing weight behind it growing.

His legs trembled. His shoulders sagged. From the sheer strain, blood vessels burst not just in his eyes and nose, but across his entire body. His head filled with a wet, impenetrable cotton, and only the Sleeping Spirits knew how Ardan didn’t lose concentration. Perhaps it was the hundreds of hours of training and the dozens of chases and battles he’d been involved in. Or perhaps it was simple luck.

But Ardan held. He did not falter.

And when he realized that he had taken what he’d wanted from the fragment of the Name of Ice and Snow—which he had heard within the mark—he released the spell. The enormous sphere flew forward, dragging the frost that clung to the walls and floor in its wake. Like a procession behind a majestic queen, a mantle of ice and frost streamed after it.

But here was the remarkable thing: this time, Ard... He... could feel his spell. Like it was part of himself. An extension of his body. An inseparable aspect of his mind and will. He knew with utter certainty that if he willed it, the sphere would vanish in an instant, or conversely, burst like a soap bubble, burying them all beneath tons of concrete and steel.

Ardan wished for something else. He urged the sphere to spin upon its axis, and it spun.

Ardan willed the sphere to create a wide vortex, and a vortex danced around it.

The steel door never stood a chance. It didn’t even crumple—it literally shattered like a brittle ice sculpture.

It was as Arkar had once said—all plans eventually go sideways.

Ardan lost the element of surprise after all. By the time the ice sphere burst into the spacious chamber, a shield spell that looked like a fiery tornado was already dancing around the man in the blue cloak at its center, and the second man’s skin had been replaced by a sturdy, gleaming chitin carapace.

Ardan willed the sphere and its wake not to touch Iolai, and... they did not. As for the drugged Tavsers—the moment the snowy train touched their bodies, they were instantly transformed into ice statues. Their final breaths became a fog that rolled across the inner walls of crystalline sarcophagi.

The sphere struck the Tazidahians. The mutant, crossing his forearms before him, screamed and took the blow with his body. Ardan didn’t know what the man had been hoping for. It felt as though he had struck the mutant’s chitin with his own fist. That was how it seemed to him. He’d struck it with his fist. His Will. His thoughts. His gaze, even.

Ardan couldn’t find the right words for it.

All he knew were his feelings. And he could feel the enemy chitin cracking in his “hand.” Hear the groans and death rattles. He even saw how desperately the flesh shrouded in black mist was trying to regenerate as he tasted the copper tang of blood.

Ardan struck his staff against the floor, and of the mutant, not a trace remained. The sphere, after expanding, completely engulfed the creation of the Tazidahian war machine. The mutant simply vanished. Only his ice-encrusted feet and a pool of black blood hinted at the fact that someone had once stood there, discussing the “sub-humanity” of the Empire’s inhabitants.

Ardan concentrated on the furious fire beating against his “hands.” The young man tried to crush the flame. Smother it. Seal it inside ice and snow. And he very nearly succeeded. Perhaps he would’ve managed it had it not been for a brief flash inside the fire tornado.

The Tazidahian mage had used an accumulator and fired a beam of energy through his nearly-broken shield. It was yellow, with two crimson sparks orbiting it. Ardan, in his strange state, couldn’t see the seal, so he had no idea what the unfamiliar magic did.

He tried to conjure his own shield, but realized at once that he was completely spent. He was physically exhausted and both his Stars had gone dark, stripped of every ray, and his last red accumulator had long since crumbled to dust.

The two crimson sparks, blossoming into fiery petals each time they collided with his sphere, melted a small opening through it. They were very small, but still enough for the yellow beam to get past his spell, miss Ardan’s neck, and punch through his collarbone.

His connection to the sphere vanished, and along with it, the sphere itself. As it melted, scattering in a blizzard, Ardan, his staff slipping from his numb hand, was already on his knees. He collapsed more from the crushing helplessness that descended upon him than from the blinding pain in his right shoulder.

An invisible, enormous hand caught him.

The fire vortex dispersed at the same time as the ice, and something unseen clamped around the young man like an impregnable vise, seizing his wrung-out body that had lost all capacity for resistance. With another tap of his staff against the floor, the Blue Star Mage of Tazidahian wrenched Ardi upward and brought him close.

“Interesting, Galessian mage. Very interesting,” he said.

Sleeping Spirits. The Tazidahian looked entirely ordinary. He had an unremarkable build, a rather nondescript face, and deeply set eyes. He didn’t look like a monster or a freak. He was not some creature out of his great-grandfather’s stories.

He was just a man.

Just a foreign soldier.

“I don’t have time for you, so-” The Tazidahian didn’t get to finish that sentence.

The plan had indeed gone off the rails, but Polina had accomplished her task. She’d even exceeded it. She had managed to reach Iolai and not only protect them both with a composite shield, but also rouse the Great Prince.

Upon noticing that the Tazidahian had seized Ard and was preparing to finish him, he did not hesitate for even a second. Not even the shadow of a doubt crossed the Great Prince’s face. Disregarding his pain, ignoring his shock and bewilderment, he struck his staff against the floor immediately. A crimson seal blazed, and from the tip of Iolai Agrov’s staff, a crescent of wind tore free, its edge trailing white-hot plasma.

“Now, Egobar!” Iolai screamed, battling the agony lancing through his muscles.

“He may be a pompous idiot, but he’s a pompous idiot from my country.”

The Blue Star Mage reacted instantly. The viselike grip released its hold on Ardan and Iolai’s dual-element Blazing Wind spellshattered against a rather cunning shield that materialized as a semi-translucent stone shroud.

Ardan fell to the floor. The Tazidahian clearly didn’t see a mage whose right arm was now swinging like a lifeless whip and whose staff was somewhere behind him in the corridor as a threat.

Ergar had taught him how to end a fight with a single strike.

His father’s hunting knife flashed, and before the Tazidahian military mage’s spell could form, his eyelids twitched in a strange, jerky blink. A moment passed, then another, and Ard—who had collapsed onto his back—felt the first drops of a bloody rain that was fountaining from the decapitated body of the foreign saboteur fall on him.

Lying on the cold floor, the young man stared up at the ceiling. Somewhere nearby, a severed head struck the ice-covered concrete with a dull thud and rolled away. Then, with considerably more force, the body crashed down beside it.

Ardan, now breathing heavily, was thinking about something else entirely.

He was wondering if they would get the credit for their practicum…

Something told him that, in the coming months... years. Yes. In the coming years, he would refrain from visiting the History of Magic Museum. Or any museum, for that matter.

The Sleeping Spirits could bear witness to this fact: Black House field assignments were safer than museum work.