Matabar

Book II. Chapter 10 - "Shamtur"

Aside from an encounter with one of the Princesses of Winter, the journey to Shamtur proved to be nothing particularly memorable. Even the High Forest didn’t leave much of an impression on Ardi.

Throughout it all, however, he supported Tess’ childlike excitement as best he could. The red-haired beauty would often lean against the window, nearly pressing her nose against the glass.

The train made no stops in the forest, for very obvious reasons—the High Forest was not considered the safest of places. The railway here was guarded by mounted patrols comprised of the army and the Second Chancery. Once, they even spotted a group of riders dressed in black, including one bearing a distinctive staff made from Ertalain alloy.

All of this was necessary because the High Forest was known as a place with an “unusually high concentration of anomalies, as well as Firstborn creatures not counted among the sentient.” Specifically, there were: stone giants (something like mountain trolls, only smaller and far more bloodthirsty), treefolk, various predatory “anomalies” (including one of the last populations of griffins in the world), and plenty more. Ardi couldn’t really remember Professor Kovertsky’s lecture on the flora and fauna of the High Forest all too well.

During the War of the Birth of the Empire, this region was home to one of the great elven princedoms—the first to fall under the march of Gales’ steel-clad legions and machinery. But the Aean’Hane and the Star Mages had managed to leave their own mark as well…

As for the name High Forest, it spoke for itself. The trees and other flora here grew to twice—even two and a half times—the height of those found anywhere else. You could easily come across eighty-meter tall cedar giants with sprawling crowns; stately maples ranging from thirty to sixty meters tall; larches that looked as if they’d stepped out of the pages of some fantastical tale. And the layer of moss and grass was so thick that it seemed as if the whole ground was draped in a living carpet, one marked by endless rivulets, streams, and small lakes that one could swim across in a quarter of an hour.

During those troubled times of internal strife, the High Forest had served as a refuge for the Dark Lord’s army. Later, when the country had been trying to rebuild after the Firstborn rebellion, the High Forest had become home to poachers, illegal loggers, and treasure seekers.

Rumor had it that the Sword of Darkness and the Staff of Stars had been hidden here. There were plenty of theories to support that claim—enough to pique the interest of many adventurers seeking treasure and easy profit.

Occasionally, those adventurers stumbled upon ancient elven tombs. Such “final resting places” had typically been built underground, with a mound of enormous, heavy stones piled on top, which the elves of old had shaped using magnetic fields and sound.

Ardi had read a study on this topic. First, the sound vibrations would spin a stone spindle. This would then generate magnetic fields so “dense”—which, as Ardan had gleaned from Senior Magister Paarlax’s musings, resonated with the structure of waves—that the rock could be heated and worked almost like clay.

This art that stood at the boundary between the powers of the Aean’Hane and technology was called the Echo of the Stars.

It had been lost after the Fall of Ectassus.

Ardan sighed and turned away from the window.

He was trying his hardest to distract himself from the fact that on his wrist, beneath the strap of his wristwatch, lingered an unmistakable imprint shaped like blue lips.

Sidhe…

At last, the endlessly tall trees of the enchanted forest were left behind, and after following one of the tributaries of Winged Lake, they arrived at their destination.

Shamtur lay in a kind of indentation along the Empire’s border, which meant that it was surrounded on three sides by the Fatians. And most astonishing of all, Shamtur was only a day and a half away on horseback from Feladjo, the capital of the Fatian Principality.

As the train passed fields scarred by trenches, some of them roofed over with planks; watchtowers standing like bared teeth, empty but kept in proper order; wooden and occasionally stone pillboxes bristling amid an already tangled web of zigzagging trenches… Ardan finally understood Arkar, Milar and Aversky, even if it was only a little.

Even the sky here was somehow different. Low. It was draped with clouds, or perhaps with a gunpowder haze created by the ceaseless artillery guns drilling at ranges visible somewhere in the distance beyond the high palisades.

More and more often, soldiers could be seen through the window, marching in some direction known only to them—cavalrymen too. Ardan even spotted a few strange-looking machines once, which were somewhat reminiscent of trucks, hauling artillery pieces behind them.

Most surprising of all was that, despite the rather peculiar view outside—the kind that would leave anyone on edge—Tess watched it all with warmth in her eyes.

“In a month, the fields will bloom and flowers will hide the lines of fortifications,” she said a little pensively. “The rains will stop, and the sky will rise higher. It’s beautiful here, Ardi. It was especially beautiful in my childhood. And not because everything is more beautiful and unusual in your childhood, but simply because… there were far fewer trenches and forts back then.”

Ardan cast a quick glance at the endless lines of fortifications. His inhuman eyes could see columns of smoke in the distance, hanging over the unending toil that was intended to expand and branch out what was already the longest line of border fortifications in the world.

They’d begun at the border itself, then pulled back ten kilometers inland, encircled Shamtur, and that was that. Once, that had been the extent of it.

“They started building them a few years ago,” Tess said, leaning back against her seat and folding her arms. “And the work hasn’t let up since. Quite the opposite. We still have ten kilometers until we reach the city, Ardi, and they’ve already dug up everything here. Here, and farther on, to the northwest. Toward the Alcade Hills.”

They were fifteen kilometers deep, and more than nine hundred kilometers long… It wasn’t hard to guess that they intended to connect the fortifications with the Alcade Hills—the place where the mountain chain gradually “descended” into the earth, and the high peaks gave way to meter-high rocky waves, rising steadily from east to west.

Ardi involuntarily recalled Bazhen’s words, tossed out before Ardan’s duel with Great Prince Iolai… War truly did seem to be looming on the horizon.

Finally, the train crossed the last belt of forest, and up ahead, the platform and station building came into view. The city proper lay to the south of an artificially-planted forest that split the plain into two halves: Imperial and Fatian.

Shamtur was considered a relatively small city compared to other provincial capitals—it only had 1.2 million inhabitants. However, all else being equal, that 1.2 million included roughly two hundred thousand military personnel garrisoned in the city and nearby barracks, not to mention about the same number of soldiers spread out along the entire Fatian border.

Thanks to that, Shamtur was the most heavily armed and fortified city in the Empire. But not in the world. The greatest fortress city was Feladjo, which was encircled by stone walls nearly forty meters thick. That city served only as the nominal capital of the Principality; the largest city by population and economic standing in Fatia lay much farther to the north.

They say that the Fatians spent decades deliberately shifting the center of their country farther from the Empire’s border, but chose to leave their capital, both as a symbol and as their main stronghold, in its current place.

All of this ran through Ardi’s mind as he gazed at the city’s distinctive houses and the streets to match. Everything was squat, massive, square, and built entirely of stone, sturdy brick and cement. And judging by the thickness of the window frames, the city—where winter often greeted its inhabitants with five, or at most ten, degrees below zero—could boast walls six bricks thick.

From his History of Star Magic lectures, which often dealt with military conflicts involving Star Magic, Ardi knew that five bricks was the minimum thickness for frontline fortifications. Walls like that weren’t likely to be pierced clean through by shell fragments. They certainly wouldn’t survive a direct hit from a large-caliber artillery piece, but they could stop fragments.

The train, which had been slowing down for the past half hour until it was practically crawling along the rails, gave a jolt and came to a halt beside a concrete platform. It was smaller than the one in the Metropolis, but far better than Delpas’ wooden platform.

Ardan helped Tess gather her belongings (his mother had managed to sew two dresses for her, and in the city, they’d bought a few more garments at a fair to replace those they’d left behind in Presny). Handing his fiancée his staff, he hefted a satchel, a traveling bag, and a newfangled invention Kelly had shared with them. In truth, Ardan suspected that the rectangular, brown item with a brass handle on hinges—what was the word… “suitcase”—was simply a gift from the former sheriff of Evergale.

The first-class carriage was empty, as one would expect, so they made their way to the exit vestibule without any fuss, where a rather surly conductor tipped his blue cap.

“Have a good day,” he said, and with that—not caring in the least whether anyone replied—he flung the doors open and flipped down the steel steps of the footboard.

Immediately, the smell of the city struck them, and unlike the capital, it smelled not only of factory smog and diesel, but of gunpowder as well—it reeked of gunpowder even more than everything else combined.

Ardan sneezed and, after stepping down, placed the suitcase on the ground. He offered his hand to Tess as she descended. She gripped the wooden handrail with one hand and with the other, she held up the hem of her dress. In the process, her hat—not nearly as fashionable as the hats of other ladies due to lacking any feathers, but still very cute—nearly slipped off her head.

Ard did not try to grab her hat, nor did he react to the hand reaching for their suitcase. Luckily, his response was the correct one.

He remained standing in place, ignoring the fact that their suitcase had been taken. It helped that the young man to his left was exceptionally tall, with a thick mane of copper hair and features faintly reminiscent of Reish Orman. On Ardi’s right, the young man’s twin appeared—except this one’s face was marked by a deep, long scar that had once been hastily stitched.

Tess’ eyes kindled with wild joy and warmth, and it was clear she was barely restraining herself from leaping off the steps into the arms of the two smiling men. Each of them was only ten centimeters shorter than Ardan himself—an extraordinarily towering height for a human. Both of them looked to be about twenty-five years old.

With Ardan’s help, Tess hopped down and stood beside her fiancé.

“Ardi,” she said, almost trembling with impatience as she turned to her brothers, “on the left is Alaris, the oldest of us. And on the right is Asilar, he’s younger-”

“But only by a few minutes, sir mage,” Asilar added warmly and gently—almost like his little sister would. Except he wasn’t smiling at Ardan at all, but at Tess.

It was all perfectly natural, aside from a certain uneasy sensation in Ardi’s gut. It was as if he had crossed into someone else’s hunting grounds, and the hunter who’d seen him was making every effort to appear happy about having a guest, while in his heart…

“Would you allow us to hug our sister, Mr. Egobar?” Alaris asked in a steady tone that was devoid of any unnecessary emotion.

At first, Ardan didn’t understand what he had to do with it, or why the brothers couldn’t just hug their sister, but then it dawned on him. She was now not simply Tess Orman, but Tess Orman, the fiancée of another man. And the Ormans, while they didn’t exactly fit the usual aristocratic stereotypes, were aristocrats nonetheless.

“Yes, of course—my apologies.”

Tess immediately threw herself into Alaris’ embrace and hugged him tightly, and he spun her around—much as Ardi had spun Kena. Perhaps it was exactly the same as that…

“Allow me,” Asilar said, reaching out and catching his sister, then whirling her around in the very same fashion.

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They all laughed and began talking at once, their voices overlapping in a joyous clamor. Ardi stood to the side and, watching Tess’ brothers, instantly forgot about the strange feeling he’d gotten from the scarred twin. In its place, the young man felt sincere happiness for his fiancée. He understood her feelings perfectly.

Sometimes, letters just weren’t enough.

Then again… letters were never enough.

At last, the brothers set Tess back down on the ground and, in perfect unison—which made Ardan think of Neviy and Kevin back in Evergale—they turned to Ardan.

“Mr. Egobar, Father couldn’t come to meet you in person—he’s at an important function in the city,” Alaris began. Ardan sensed absolutely nothing from him. “But he’ll return by tonight. I apologize for the discourtesy.”

“Ah… yes… of course,” Ardi answered a bit awkwardly.

He didn’t know much about etiquette, but he remembered that the best rule for being in high society was to not be there at all. Alas, that sacred rule had already been broken.

Alaris picked up the suitcase and cast a very keen glance at the staff Tess had handed back to Ardan. Clearly, he’d seen such things more than once in the past.

Asilar, however, acted as if… Ardi didn’t exist.

“Let’s go,” the eldest of the Orman children said.

Tess took her fiancé’s arm, which made Asilar’s jaw clench for an instant, and pulled him toward the station building. It vaguely resembled a church—though perhaps only because of the tall spire crowned with a lightning rod.

There was hardly anyone on the platform or in the waiting hall. There were certainly far fewer people than in Delpas or, of course, in the Metropolis. It was perhaps a hundred passengers and about as many people meeting them. Bored ticket agents were reading newspapers, not paying the slightest bit of attention to anything.

Instead of heading for the regular queues where travelers presented their documents to the guards, Alaris led them through an inconspicuous, unmarked door and out into a private area, where two cars were waiting. Their license plates began not with a digit, but with a letter—the distinguishing mark of military vehicles.

The automobiles were fairly ordinary, specialized service models: high suspension, massive wheels, an almost rectangular cab, and heavy doors whose passenger windows did not roll down.

By the vehicles stood two soldiers and a woman wearing glasses who had very clever, deep-set eyes. She had a stately figure but an overly round face, and sparse, fine hair tucked not under a hat, but under a kerchief. She also wore the same ring that Alaris did on her finger.

“Lada!” Tess cried out, and gave her a firm hug. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“And I you, Tess,” replied the woman who was evidently Alaris’ wife.

Ardan didn’t hear Lada’s heartbeat falter, which meant she was speaking sincerely.

“It’s good that you’re finally home, Tess,” Alaris said as he stowed Ardan’s suitcase and satchel, along with the travel bag, in the trunk of the service car. “Mother and the little ones have been waiting for you.”

“I’ll ride in the other one,” Asilar snapped, and without waiting for a response, he turned and headed to the second car, where three uniformed soldiers with rifles on their shoulders stood smoking.

His twin, along with Lada and Tess, watched him go with sad but understanding looks.

Then Lada shifted her gaze to Ardi, giving Tess a reproachful look. “You didn’t tell Mr. Egobar?”

Tess silently turned aside.

“And what was she supposed to tell me?” Ardi asked, already knowing what answer he’d hear.

“My brother, Mr. Egobar-”

“Please, just call me Ard.”

Alaris smiled and nodded.

“My brother, Ard, has a very difficult history with the Firstborn,” Alaris said with a sad, slightly weary sigh. “In his youth, he was in love with a friend of Lada’s. They were studying together at the Military Academy to become cartographers—Lada and Militsa. They went out for field exercises, and Fatian intelligence found out and sent their own team. That team was made up of Firstborn. Militsa died.”

Ardan had heard of this. The Fatian army and their saboteur units had groups of Firstborn they used for obvious purposes: sabotage, reconnaissance, and gathering information in the Metropolis if they could infiltrate it.

Tess moved closer to Ardi and took his arm.

“Sorry I didn’t tell you, I just… I just…”

Ardi placed his hand over hers and gave a gentle squeeze. When his fiancée met his eyes, he smiled and barely restrained himself from kissing her. It wouldn’t do, after all, to kiss in public—even if they’d already been officially married. But once they were back in the Metropolis…

He understood. He understood perfectly why she hadn’t told him. When you stripped everything else away, it was for that same reason that Ardi hadn’t told her certain things, either.

“We’ll have to cover your staff, Ard,” Alaris said, retrieving a special sheath from the car. “Father mentioned you have a permit for openly carrying Ley-artifacts, but Shamtur is under perpetual martial law, and anything considered a weapon is allowed only for members of the army. And the Second Chancery isn’t part of the army. Sorry about this.”

So, Reish hadn’t tried to keep Ardi’s job a secret. He must have had his reasons.

“Alright,” Ardi said calmly, taking the cover and sliding it up over his staff starting from the bottom, then tying off the drawstrings at the top.

“Though, considering the fact that I didn’t see a single engraved seal on it, I’m not sure what the point of it is,” Alaris added with a slight squint. “It’s not a service-issue staff or-”

“Dear,” Lada interjected, taking his arm, “we came to meet Tess and her fiancé. You’re not on duty, and they’re not your rifle battalion. Please, forget your role as commander for a little while, alright?”

“Yes,” Alaris mumbled, looking slightly chagrined, but he quickly pulled himself together and resumed his former even tone. “My apologies, Ard. Tess wrote about you in her letters, and Father said that you—though not the ideal candidate he’d hoped to see—are still a dependable man, albeit…”

“Not exactly a man,” Ardi prompted.

“A new person,” Alaris corrected, emphasizing the first word. “One who intends to take my sister as his wife.”

“Alaris,” Tess nearly hissed.

“I hope that over the following week that you’ll be spending at our family home, we’ll have time to get to know each other better,” Alaris finished, blatantly ignoring his sister. “But let’s continue this conversation on the road. Especially since curfew has already begun.”

That explained why they had waited so long for the sun to slip below the horizon and for gas lamps to flicker on over the abruptly-empty sidewalk (Ley-infrastructure, of course, had been in no hurry to reach Shamtur). In a city under an indefinite state of martial law, a curfew was always in effect. And given the Ormans’ status, it was far safer to travel on an empty road—where every vehicle was either from the military or suspect—than to risk the obvious alternative.

Ardan once again helped Tess up into the car, let Lada climb in next, placed his staff between the seats, and sat on the end beside Lada. Once he sat down, he was surprised to find that his knees weren’t touching the back of the front seat, and his head wasn’t scraping the steel roof.

“Do you like it, Ard?” For the first time, Alaris’ voice held a hint of emotion—a touch of boyish enthusiasm, to be exact.

“It’s very unusual,” Ardan said. He was even able to straighten his back and relax his hips a little, allowing his legs to slide forward. “But I definitely like it!”

“The cabin’s been modified,” Alaris explained. “My brother, father and I often have to drive, so we saved up a few months’ worth of pay to order three custom cabins. The ceiling here is higher, and the body itself is longer.”

Somehow, Ardan was not at all surprised that the Orman family had paid for the modifications themselves, without requesting anything from the Crown—even though they had every legal right and good reason to do so.

The city streamed past outside. It was nothing like what Ardi had seen before. It had none of the lightness or easygoing feel of Delpas; none of the detachment of Presny, which still remembered its days as a small town rather than the plains’ main transport hub; and, of course, you wouldn’t be able to find the pomp and majesty of the Metropolis’ Old Town or the sky-piercing skyscrapers of the New City here.

No, Shamtur looked entirely different.

It had squat stone buildings and streets that wound and converged in a complex system of intersections and alleys that looked more like trench lines. Massive walls buttressed one another, and their uniform gray paint blurred into a single haze, creating the illusion that the two lone automobiles were driving through a rocky canyon or even a cave, rather than a city.

You couldn’t see people out on the streets at all. Perhaps just the occasional passerby who’d promptly be accosted by military patrols wanting to check their permit for being out during curfew.

Even the windows here were different. They had smaller frames and thicker glass, which was invariably padded with cotton or newspapers so that if it shattered, the shards wouldn’t fly inside.

The city was like a squat, thickset, warlike old man watching his guest as the guest observed him from the cabin of a military automobile. The old man was watching and appraising, perhaps even aiming at him, preparing himself to take the potential foe down, just as a seasoned, veteran hunter would.

Yes, Shamtur most resembled an old, yet still mighty, hunter.

Ardi wasn’t surprised that Tess had wanted to leave this place, nor that she was returning with such gladness. What amazed him was how people found room for joy in such a place, not to mention laughter and all those things that, by Tess’ account, filled this border city.

Maybe he would find an answer to that in the daytime, when the city woke up and stretched, casting off the shackles of the night watch, and when everything Ardan was noticing now would be hiding in the sunlight.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were a scout, Ard,” Alaris remarked, adjusting the rearview mirror so it didn’t bother the driver but still let him see the back seat. “I don’t recall ever seeing anyone studying Shamtur so attentively.”

“Force of habit,” Ardi answered.

“I see,” Alaris nodded.

He’d probably assumed this was referring to Ardi’s work with the Cloaks, but Ardi was talking about how Atta’nha had taught him to constantly listen to the world around him, and how Skusty had taught him to notice what those who only looked with their eyes failed to see.

“There’s one thing I’m curious about, Ard: how do you manage to balance working with the Cloaks and studying at the Grand?” The red-haired officer pressed. “Tess wrote that you’re among the top students there. And we read…”

Ardi had served with Milar long enough to know when he was being interrogated, but Alaris carried himself casually and genuinely cared about his sister, so the young man saw no need to use Skusty’s lessons now.

Alaris opened the glove compartment and took out a newspaper from a week after a certain duel had taken place at the Imperial Magical University.

The headline practically shouted from the front page:

“Great Prince Iolai Agrov Fights a Descendant of Aror Egobar, the Dark Lord’s Right Hand.

Report by Taisia Shpritz .”

“At the end of exams at the Grand, a training duel took place between Great Prince Iolai Agrov and Ard Egobar, whose admission into the sanctum sanctorum of Star Magic not only for our beloved country, but the entire world, still causes doubt and apprehension in some circles.

The Emperor wanted, of course, to clearly demonstrate the possibility of peaceful development and coexistence between the Firstborn and Gales’ descendants.

Alas, what do we see instead? Not even a year has passed, and blood has already been spilled in the Grand and-”

“No blood was spilled,” Ardan said, cutting off the article by the journalist famous throughout the Empire. He folded the newspaper and handed it back to Alaris.

“It says here that you won.”

“It was a training duel,” Ardan shrugged. “I got a little lucky.”

Despite everything, Ardan had to resort to Skusty’s teachings. He didn’t elaborate that “a little lucky” was referring to six months of training with the best military mage the Empire had seen in the last century.

“Two Stars,” Alaris whistled. “Seven in your first and nine rays in your second one. At eighteen… I can’t recall a single front-line mage who could boast of such an accomplishment.”

Ardan stayed silent. It wasn’t that he disliked this conversation, it was just that Alaris hadn’t asked him a question, so there was no answer to give.

“And also-”

“And also, brother, if you’re so eager to exchange words with my fiancé, you can do it tonight with Father in his study,” Tess cut in, her tone rather sharp.

Alaris looked from his now-frowning wife to his sister, then raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture.

“The Metropolis is a restless city, dear,” he said somewhat distantly. “And your fiancé’s job is restless as well. I just want to be sure that-”

“The main thing is that I am sure,” Tess interrupted him again, in an even harsher tone than before. “Sure of my own safety, and of Ardi. And you’re behaving as if you’re on the drill ground. Ardi is not your soldier. You’re not his commander. He doesn’t owe you any reports.”

“He’ll still have to talk with Father-”

“And when he does, then you can listen!” Tess snapped, her green eyes practically sparking. “We spent nine days on a train, Alaris! And if you think my husband—”

“Fiancé.”

“—is deriving any sort of pleasure from your interrogation, then you’ve never been more wrong in your entire life! If you want, we can have a polite conversation about the weather! Or about the fact that they’re repairing the adjacent street!”

“They’re not repairing it, Tess, and-”

“I don’t care! Just like you don’t care that someone might be tired from their journey!”

Ardan, knowing full well that once Tess got wound up, she couldn’t be stopped, wisely remained silent. Alaris, who had known his sister far longer than Ardi had, fell silent as well.

The driver was diligently pretending to hear nothing and see nothing but the road and the light of the headlamps picking out cobblestones in the gloom.

They traveled the rest of the way in sepulchral silence, and only when the car slowed to a halt by the wrought-iron gates of a sizable house did Tess whisper softly:

“I’m sorry I lost my temper.”

“No, dear,” Alaris said, running a hand through her hair. “You’re right. I overstepped. I offer my apologies to you and Ard.”

“It’s fine,” Ardan hastened to diffuse the situation because, in truth, everything truly was fine.

If Erti had brought someone home, Ardi would have wanted to know, if not everything, then a great deal about that lady as well. He understood Alaris perfectly and had nothing against him, even if their conversation had indeed turned into an interrogation.

The house that the bulky automobile had stopped at was about twice the size of the Brian-Egobar home in Delpas, yet still much smaller than the estate of Irigov or anyone else out in the suburbs where the wealthiest of the Metropolis’ residents kept their country homes. If those palaces could even be called “homes…”

However, due to Shamtur’s particular architectural style, the Orman house—despite its spacious veranda, lawn and garden—reminded one of a castle. It wasn’t as grandiose as Le’mrity’s, but more of a semi-military structure. Heavy and ponderous. It wasn’t at all like what Ardi had imagined from Tess’ stories.

Of course, she perceived it differently. To her, the massive walls had been planed smooth by family warmth; the narrow windows widened with dreams of a world beyond the city; the low roof soared upward, borne aloft by music and beloved guests; and the wrought-iron fence topped with barbed wire disappeared behind the light of lanterns which cast a mysterious dance of shadows.

To Ardan, it was simply a huge, three-story, elongated building in a military town.

To Tess, it was home.

“By the way, dear, you must not have received our latest letter,” Alaris said, turning to them with an apologetic look. “Our guest wing is occupied, so we’ll have to put Ard up in one of the free rooms in the main wing.”

“Alright,” Tess said with a shrug, then suddenly went pale as she realized something. “Wait. The entire guest wing is occupied?”

“Yes.”

“Meaning…”

“Yes,” Alaris confirmed. “Father decided to settle the matter of both betrothals at once.”

Both betrothals?

Ardan barely managed not to curse. Even if no one would understand the Fae language, tone alone could be far more expressive than any meaningless utterance.

Duke Erkerovsky was courting Tess’ younger sister.

“His Grace, Duke Erkerovsky, has arrived as well, along with his daughter, Lady Polina,” Alaris added. “She’s studying with your fiancé, it seems. And apparently, she’s friendly with Great Prince Iolai. That’s why I wanted to ask about that article…”

Ardan couldn’t hold back anymore.

“Ahgrat.”