Matabar

Book II. Chapter 14 - "The Half-blood"

Carriage after carriage, vestibule after vestibule, Ardan followed Mshisty. The man was of an unremarkable height, clad in a black suit that matched Dagdag’s severe patterns, yet the fabric spoke of a different story—of an expensive atelier and materials that were far from common.

Among those who knew him, Mshisty might have been called a maniac, a man obsessed with the bloody art of battle, but he was a Senior Magister all the same. A possessor of five Stars, their radiance a testament to his power. His first three had six rays, then seven, then four. A quiet, deadly calculus.

Aversky had once told him that if not for an incident in the Dead Lands, out on the border with the Enario Theocracy, Mshisty would have claimed a sixth Star. That brutal encounter had cost him his left arm and gifted him a litany of injuries that sang a constant, quiet song of pain. But the sixth Star would have been his limit regardless. He only held a Senior Magister’s medallion because the Guild had all but forced a research paper out of him. The work itself held no practical value; it was simply that the Guild’s leadership had found it unseemly for a mage of such profound power to walk about with the title of a mere Magister, all but invalidating the prestige of their higher honors.

The left sleeve of Mshisty’s jacket, tied in a conspicuous knot just below his elbow, was a pendulum marking the rhythm of his stride. The major himself, true to the rumors of his taciturn nature, moved with a calm purpose through the rows of anxious passengers.

Scarred and built like a bouncer in a bar where peace was a foreign word, he seemed more a veteran of trench assaults than a Star Mage. He had a stern gaze that didn’t quite look at people, but through them, like a surveyor’s tool measuring weaknesses and breaking points. His features were coarse, carved from the same rough material as his disposition. A feral sense of danger radiated from him, woven into the sharp, swift economy of his movements.

Had Ardi not known for a fact that Mshisty was a scion of Gales’ military aristocracy, he would have mistaken him for a distant descendant of the Shanti’Ra steppe orcs.

Mshisty, it turned out, also held a title. Ardi seemed to recall that he was a Lord. But unlike Edward’s, Mshisty’s family had not been claimed by a plague. They lived and thrived on the Dancing Peninsula, holding high office in the provincial capital. They did not seem to want to be around Mshisty—whose first name Ardi did not know and, in truth, doubted the major even possessed—and he, judging by Edward’s remarks, returned the sentiment with interest.

It was a surprising thing, but men like Reish Orman, Edward Aversky, Major Mshisty, and even the Colonel himself, only served to confirm the words of Gabriel Davenport—the illegitimate descendant of the Anorsky Dukes. Most of the aristocracy were deeply patriotic; it was just that the ones who caught the eye, the ones who lingered in everyone’s memory, were those willing to sell their homeland, their mother, their family, and any conviction you could name for the sake of comfort and an extra ex in their purse.

In any case, no matter how many worthy people Ardi encountered, he intended to keep clinging to the advice of Mart and Cassara. He clung to it because, in most cases, they had been right and he had been wrong. He had already paid the price for his naivety and shortsightedness, and he’d paid it in the currency of frayed nerves and failing health.

At last, they passed the final passenger carriage and entered the vestibule between the cars. It was not the enclosed sort used on the steppe trains, but an open one. Two steel balconies reached for each other, connected by iron gangways that shuddered over the massive, hidden coupling hook below.

A new carriage had been attached to the train, one that bore no resemblance to its passenger-laden brethren. It was sheathed in sheets of dark metal, its skirt descending low to hide the wheels. It was windowless, and stood a fraction taller than the standard cars.

Ardi had seen such carriages in the Metropolis. They would arrive under the cloak of night, always swarmed by a legion of guards, soldiers, and a score of Cloaks. They never came alone, but as an entire train. A Treasury train, the sort that collected the lifeblood of taxes from across the vast Empire.

An armored carriage…

A woman met Mshisty on the opposite balcony. She was not young, perhaps thirty years old. She had the gaze of an eagle and a nose to match, with gnarled fingers wrapped around a staff of Ertalain alloy, its surface carved with intricate seals.

Like Mshisty, she wore no regalia. A relatively thin grimoire was cinched to the belt of her starkly masculine, waist-less coat.

Ardan’s gaze swept over the seals on her staff again, a reflexive act of assessment. Not a single one surpassed a three-Star structure. She was either a Blue Star mage or a Yellow, but one who subscribed to Aversky’s philosophy nonetheless: the best and strongest spells are not the ones you advertise on your staff. After all, Ardi was not the only one in the world with a sharp and hungry eye.

“What’s the news, Captain?” Mshisty crossed the gangway and stood beside his colleague. Tucking his staff under his arm, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Of course.

“He’s not talking,” the Cloak mage answered, her tone clipped. She was clearly one of Mshisty’s own. “Klementiy overdid it a bit—broke his left arm, but the bastard didn’t even flinch.”

“And why did he break it?”

“He miscalculated the cage parameters.”

“Idiot,” Mshisty stated, the word falling flat and heavy, devoid of any real heat. “Captain, when we return to the capital, remind me to put Klementiy through his paces at the training ground.”

The captain, who a moment before had seemed like a monument to imperturbable calm, went visibly pale. It seemed like an invitation to be “put through his paces” by Major Mshisty was not a desirable conclusion to a mission.

Perhaps Ardi should have been wondering why Mshisty’s hunting detachment, which normally roamed the length and breadth of the country, had been stationed in the Metropolis for an entire year. But he was determined to heed the advice of not only Mart and Cassara, but Milar as well.

“Let’s go, Corporal,” Mshisty said, tucking his unlit cigarette behind his ear.

The captain, still pale, spun the steel wheel on the door. A series of metallic clicks echoed, and the thick door slid sideways into the wall.

The first thing that struck Ardan’s eyes was the light. It was a physical assault. The entire compartment was bathed in a harsh, yellow glare that stabbed down from spotlights mounted around the carriage’s perimeter. Their beams converged on a single point, pinning it in place.

Deep within the carriage, held inside what looked to be a cramped wooden box, sat a half-blood.

He was half-human and half-elf. An uninitiated observer would have noticed the ears first, one long and gracefully tapered, the other… still long, but shorter, wider. A subtle dissonance. Then there were the eyes. They were quite ordinary, brown, with a distinct iris and pupil. A pure-blooded elf, by contrast, had no pupil at all, their iris consuming nearly the entire white of the eye.

Such a peculiarity had a sound evolutionary basis, one tied to the influence of the Ley and the ancestral habitat of the elves, but Ardi had no time to review his biology lessons.

The prisoner was barefoot, dressed in a simple white linen jacket and pants. A torn red undershirt revealed the outline of his ribs pressing against his skin. He was leaning his face against something that might have been mistaken for steel bars. They were bars, certainly, but not forged from any metal Ardi knew of. They were the constructs of a spell.

He was sure of this because there were only three of them, and they were not static. They were alive. No matter how the half-blood turned his head or shifted his body, the three bars moved in perfect unison, a fluid, inescapable part of his prison.

He was held in an uncomfortable pose, light beating relentlessly into his eyes, his left arm bent at an unnatural angle. Despite all of this, he looked not so much exhausted as… disappointed.

The half-blood’s body, like Alexander’s, was a canvas of dark, swirling lines—the tribal tattoos of the Armondo. They stopped short of his face, which was well-formed, with a long chin, sharp cheekbones, a slightly hooked nose, and a low forehead shadowed by dark hair. The spotlights had bleached it to the color of ash.

In all honesty, Ardi knew little about the lives of the Firstborn beyond the fragments he’d gleaned from Arkar and the bouncers at “Bruce’s.” But even he could see that this half-blood had walked a very unusual path.

“Major,” two more mages greeted their superior in unison.

Like the captain, they wore no regalia. And also like the captain, they carried military staves of Ertalain alloy, bearing seals of no more than three Stars.

One of the mages was sitting at a small table, scratching notes into a journal. Opposite him lay a piece of equipment—an iron box bristling with levers, sensors and blinking lights. Thick Ley-cables snaked from the device, feeding the spotlights and the iron contour that framed the prisoner’s box. The three moving bars seemed to originate from this contour.

This mage was about thirty-five, with a wedding ring on his finger and a receding hairline so profound it seemed more logical to just surrender and shave the remaining horseshoe of hair from his elongated head.

His colleague, who was much younger—perhaps a recent graduate of the Grand University—leaned against the far wall, a visible tremor of agitation running through him. Behind him, a generator hummed, surrounded by canisters of fuel and oil. He was pale and pointedly avoided Mshisty’s gaze.

It was clear who Klementiy was.

“So, Corporal.” The major approached the table. He picked up a sheet of paper—a list of questions—and something else.

Ardan now not only understood Milar, he fully supported him.

Along with the questions, Mshisty handed him a non-disclosure agreement and a clearance form for secret information.

But an order was an order, especially when it bore the Emperor’s seal. There was no point in arguing.

“We need him to answer these questions.” Mshisty tapped the sheet with a thick finger. “We’ve already tried… other methods. The long-eared bastard doesn’t react to things that have broken far more… formidable tongues. One thing, though—he doesn’t understand Galessian. Not that he needs to. This device, unless we tell it otherwise, doesn’t let sound through. More usefully, it completely blocks any attempt he might make to interact with the Ley.”

The train was moving slowly enough that it shouldn’t have hindered Ley workings, not for a Star Mage, and certainly not for an Aean’Hane.

But Mshisty was wrong about one thing.

“He knows Galessian,” Ardi said, signing his name with a flourish on the form. He used the same hand to point at the elf. “And he can read lips.”

Before anyone could object, the half-blood proved him right. He laughed, a silent, mirthless spasm of his shoulders. The Ley-artifact, it seemed, also kept sound from escaping.

Mshisty turned to the captain, but she just offered him a slight, helpless shake of the hand that wasn’t holding her staff.

“The cage completely blocks his Ley potential,” Mshisty repeated, his tone flat. “So you can safely use your Witch’s Gaze.”

The elf laughed again, this time with more feeling.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Ardan sighed. “If I try to use the Gaze on an Aean’Hane, he will either kill me or completely subjugate my will.”

To say the Cloaks tensed would be a gross understatement of the sudden, sharp intake of breath in the carriage. It would be a distortion of the truth beyond all recognition.

“So, what you mean to say, Corporal,” Mshisty’s brow furrowed into a single, menacing line, “is that you wasted my time?”

Ardi could have pointed out that it was the major who had sought him out with a direct order from the Emperor, not the other way around. He could have mentioned that he had refused any involvement at all, right up until a document bearing Pavel IV’s signature had been shoved under his nose.

The elf anticipated this.

He waved a hand, then pointed to his mouth. He pointed to Ardi. Then back to himself.

“And why would he suddenly decide to speak with you, Corporal?”

Yes, Mshisty might have been one of the finest military mages in the Second Chancery—and after Aversky’s death, he was unequivocally the best—but the rumors of his intellectual clumsiness had not, it seemed, been exaggerated.

“My guess would be no different from yours, Major.”

The elf just smiled, revealing a ruin of bleeding gums and partially-filed teeth.

“Then go and do your job,” Mshisty said, giving him a nudge in the back that Ardi did not appreciate in the slightest. But at that moment, something else concerned him far more.

Taking the only chair in the carriage, Ardan approached the cage. He stopped just short of being too close, sat, and placed his open grimoire on his lap. Just in case. He left it open on the first blueprint of the Ice Bullet prototype.

Behind him, a lever clicked. For the first time, Ardan could hear the captive Aean’Hane. He could hear his breathing, and the rhythm of his heart. Despite the clear signs of torture—physical, mental and undoubtedly Ley-related—the half-blood’s breathing was even. His heart was beating with a calm that some people failed to find even in the depths of sleep.

“My heart beats steadily, young Speaker.” The half-blood’s voice was a whistling hiss, damaged by injuries to his mouth, but his Galessian was perfectly clear. It was also clear that speaking the language required a considerable effort on his part. “Unlike yours. Why are you so tense?”

The elf was not lying. Ardi’s heart was a frantic drum against his ribs.

Just as Adelaide had done not too long ago, Ardan fixed his gaze not on the Aean’Hane’s eyes, but on the space between his brows. At the same time, he locked his consciousness away, burying it deep within memories of the ice-scarred peaks of the Alcade and the formidable roar of Ergar.

“I must give you credit, He-who-can-Speak,” the elf said, his voice shifting and flowing into the dialect of the northern forest elves. “Your mind’s defense is a fortress. You have been taught well. I have never met one so young who is so skilled in the art, someone whom I would find it easier to kill than to bend to my will.”

“Make him speak in Galessian again!” Mshisty barked from behind him.

Ardan shook his head.

“He won’t,” the youth replied, his own words slipping into the language of the northern forests, a tongue in which his skill had grown considerably. “Why did you decide to speak with me, He-who-knows-Names?”

“Why shouldn’t I have?” The elf answered with that same enigmatic, venomous smile, turning a question back on itself.

Ardan studied him. By the standards of the elves of old, back in the time of Ectassus and Gales, this one would have been considered young, having only recently seen the sun set on his first century.

But now, after the War of the Birth of the Empire and the civil war that had followed, a shadow play orchestrated by the Dark Lord, there were not so many elves left in the world. And those who had lived past two centuries were fewer still.

The prisoner, judging by the subtle signs in his appearance, was little more than a hundred years old—a fact that sounded strange even in Ardi’s own mind.

All in all, he’d asked a good question. Why shouldn’t the half-blood talk to him? Probably because…

“You have never met Kar’Tak from other human lands,” the elf stated. It wasn’t a question. He understood. He had read it all in Ardi’s single, unguarded glance of confusion.

Kar’Tak. It was a word from the Fae tongue, and difficult to render in Galessian. The closest meaning was simply “people.” Before the Empire, it had been the proper name for all the Firstborn.

“No,”

Ardan admitted. “I haven’t.”He knew the Firstborn lived beyond the Empire’s borders on the Western Continent. Of course, nearly eighty percent of their kind resided within the New Monarchy, but the remaining twenty percent were scattered abroad.

But even setting the Firstborn aside, Ardi had only ever seen a few foreigners of any kind. There were the ambassadors at Pavel IV’s coronation, the saboteurs on the train, and the Selkado Swordsman, Darton. It was not a rich tapestry of experience.

Ardi narrowed his eyes, tilting his head slightly.

The elf mirrored the motion. They regarded each other with an interest that perhaps only scholars could possess, forgetting for a breath the true nature of their circumstance and surrendering to a flicker of pure curiosity.

What was Ardi supposed to feel? He had grown used to it. The other Firstborn saw him as human, an abstraction that spoiled the clean lines of their existence. Humans saw much the same.

He didn’t feel like an outsider among them. It was more the case that both wished for himto see himself that way.

But this captive Fatian half-blood was something else entirely. A foreign soldier captured in the line of duty. Not a criminal, not a terrorist, not a conspirator.

An enemy from a hostile nation, carrying out an order.

Ardan felt no hatred. No contempt. No fear.

He felt… nothing. Not even compassion or pity. Not even a flicker of superficial empathy.

It was a strange sensation.

Like looking into an emptiness.

“Hey, Corporal,” Mshisty grumbled from behind him, his voice a rough intrusion. “I may not understand a word you’re saying, but even I can tell that’s not the list of questions. Get to work.”

Ardan flinched, cleared his throat, and raised the questionnaire.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Where did you get the symbols of the Armondo tribes?” He asked, reading the first question.

He had expected the elf to laugh again, to fall back into silence. But he didn’t.

“I was born in the north of the Empire, boy.” The half-blood’s face went still, his gaze dropping.

He looked just as he had when Ardan had first entered the carriage. A little tired. A little sad.

The elf spoke, and Ardan translated, his own voice a low counterpoint. As the story unfolded, it became painfully clear why the elf refused to speak Imperial. He understood it, but the language was a forgotten country to him, one where he could no longer properly form his thoughts.

“In the Firstborn reservation. It was called Nalakit. During another border breach by the Armondo cavalry, I was unlucky enough to be among the captives,” the elf said, his tone perfectly even, scrubbed clean of regrets or distress. But Ardi could hear his heart, the way it would sometimes stumble in its rhythm. “I was sold. I was a toy for the son of a chieftain of one of the coastal tribes. Instead of women, he preferred… effeminate youths. And until I grew up, the chieftain’s son used me as he wished… and when he wished.”

He fell silent for a moment, his fingers tracing one of the swirling patterns on his right hand. And a ring. A simple iron band, clumsily forged into a circle.

“When I grew older, I was lucky enough to serve food to guests at an Orkomadaad. Do you know what that is?”

Ardan nodded.

“A custom of the Armondo. It’s when neighboring tribes gather to discuss trade and disputes.”

“You are well-educated, boy.” The corners of the elf’s lips twitched. “At the Orkomadaad, the tribe’s shaman noticed me. He saw me whispering over the water, making it solidify in the throat of the chieftain’s son. The shaman did not intervene. That mortal died gasping, screaming, and despairing. He tore at his throat with his nails, but could not dislodge what was stuck there. He died quickly. A pity. I wanted him to suffer longer, to endure everything he’d made me endure for almost five years. I turned sixteen that day.”

A sticky cold bit at Ardan’s back. In his ears, he heard Irigov’s desperate shrieks, and the lifeless, gunpowder-scented words of Peter Oglanov:

“Bastards like him are taught with pain.”

Milar had spoken of it later, of how such perversions were common among the powerful, a sickness born of their position. Of their sense of exceptionalism. For those who reached great power, true power, such things became just another way to confirm it. They enjoyed not the act itself, but the feeling that “they, the special ones, could, while others, mere mortals, could not.”

Perhaps that twisted, sin-stained way of thinking was not unique to the Empire, but to all people… and to the Firstborn as well.

“The shaman’s tribe took advantage of the situation. A bloody massacre began. The shaman took me with him and began to teach me. He knew little, and possessed even less talent, so it wasn’t long before I was able to break his mind and escape,” the elf said, his fingers tracing the symbols higher up his arm.

His heart was beating with the steadiest rhythm it could manage while his mind walked through such unpleasant country.

Ardan asked the next question.

“How did you end up among the Fatian saboteurs?”

“The same way all Kar’Tak do,” the elf shrugged. “Through Tazidahian.”

“What?”

“When I fled the Armondo, exhausted and nearly spent, I reached the southern tributary of the Left Eye of the Mountains,” the elf continued his story. Ardan, drawing on his geography lessons, conjured a map of the world. The Eyes of the Mountains were two lakes in the Kingdom of Ngia, west of the range that bordered the Great Glacier. “A young lumberjack’s daughter found me. She nursed me back to health, hid me in an old hunting cabin all winter. There, she gave me her first night. Or perhaps I accidentally took her by force, when I failed to control the Witch’s Gaze and succumbed to my impulses. To be honest, I don’t remember. I only remember that her relatives went looking for her along with the other villagers. They found us both. Undressed. They dragged her out of the hut by her hair. I don’t remember that day well, boy. I only remember anger. Rage. Despair and shame. A river flowed nearby. It had just woken up for the spring. And its voice awoke with it. I heard it. And I killed them all. Including that girl. I don’t know if I killed her by accident or on purpose. I don’t know…”

The elf paused, catching his breath, and Ardan didn’t know what to think. The story he was hearing was the last thing anyone would willingly listen to, but this was his job. He was paid a decent salary to do it.

“I began to wander through Ngia. I gathered a small band of other Kar’Tak. We robbed. Raped. We did any dirty work that would pay us in coin,” the elf said, his words direct, without sorrow or shame. He felt no embarrassment for what he was saying. Because… “They are just mortals, boy. No different from beasts. They were created by the Spirits to serve us, but they forgot their place. And we reminded them. For as long as we could.”

Ardan knew a fair amount about Firstborn physiology. Or rather, he had begun to learn about it… right after he’d discovered that he and Tess might have problems with conception. He wanted to be prepared for a negative outcome to that particular problem. What if he had to find a solution to it himself…

“Your mother was an elf,” Ardan looked at his ears and eyes, but not into the latter. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have a pupil. Which means your father…”

For the first time since their conversation had begun, the elf showed emotion. Rage. And pain. Pain so deep you could drown in it.

The half-blood raised his hand and struck one of the bars of the magical cage. It vibrated and left a deep cut on his palm, and Mshisty and the other mages raised their staves.

“I had no father, boy,” the prisoner continued only after he had calmed down. “You’re from the south… you don’t know what it’s like in the reservations… My mother was kidnapped by bounty hunters. Given to their clients. Those who wanted…” For the first time, the half-blood faltered, fell silent, his heart beating faster and faster. “…to taste an elf. There were more than a dozen of them. And that night, my mother ended up in the hands of every one of them. So I don’t know who my father is. And my mother… she went mad and, after I was born, she took her own life. But I don’t blame her. When I was a slave to the Armondo barbarian, I often thought of doing the same. I also wanted to set out on the paths of the Sleeping Spirits.”

The elf was wrong about one thing. Ardan did know what life was like in the reservations. And, a hundred years ago, what the prisoner had just described had indeed been the norm. Back then, the laws of the Empire had not applied in the reservations, there’d been no army, no guards, and any interaction and trade with them had been strictly forbidden.

In essence, the reservations had been little more than pens where the Firstborn had been locked up to gradually die out.

It sounded horrible, but the Empire, which had barely survived the civil war, could hardly be accused of excessive cruelty toward those who had first enslaved the human race for thousands of years, and then nearly plunged the country into chaos, leaving it to be torn apart by those who desired it. And there were plenty of those who wanted to take a piece of the Empire’s wealth, both on the Western and Eastern Continents.

But more than a century had passed since then.

Now the reservations had laws, including their own, which were valid only on their territory; their own guards; railways were being built to connect them with the rest of the Empire, and in some places, they had already been completed; trade and entrepreneurship were not forbidden, moreover, the Treasury even subsidized the construction of large enterprises: factories, plants, even a few shipyards.

That was why, in the capital, one district was enough to accommodate almost all the Firstborn of the city. They were simply not very eager to leave the north of the country, where they were not oppressed and not called beasts behind their backs.

Actually, they also called people beasts.

Which the prisoner had just confirmed.

Of course, problems remained. Many of them. Including horrible and bloody ones. But it wasn’t like a hundred years ago, back when the wound left by the Dark Lord had not yet healed.

“We managed to hold out for almost fifteen years,” the elf continued his story. “Until the Ngia military caught us. All my friends were burned alive at the stake, and I, because of my ability to Speak, was bought by the ambassador of Tazidahian. Although, given the relations between these human countries, he probably just ordered Ngia to hand me over to them. And so I ended up in slavery again. Now I was owned by Tazidahian and, alas, I can’t answer any questions about what happened there.”

Ardan didn’t need to ask “why” to figure it out, but he could hear the sound-recording device, located inside the bulky apparatus controlling the cage, creaking behind him.

Every word they said was being recorded and would later be listened to, translated and documented. So he had to ask.

“Star Magic?”

Ardan clarified. “Malefication?”“Along with chimerology,” the elf nodded. “If I try to answer, I will die instantly. A dirty attempt by mortals to imitate what our art is capable of. And, alas, they have succeeded.”

In general, Ardi had expected something like that, but the part about chimerology surprised him somewhat.

“You weren’t an Aean’Hane when you got to Tazidahian.”

The elf remained silent.

“You became one there.”

Again, there was only silence and a steady, slightly curious gaze.

“My group was sent to Fatia to serve them,” the elf continued to answer the original question. “We were ordered to cross the border and try to infiltrate the Metropolis. Once we got there, we were to receive further instructions. That’s all I know.”

Something clicked in Ardan’s head.

The elf bore no resemblance to the Aean’Hane who had blown up the main branch of the Imperial Bank. And not because he was a half-blood. Rather, that Aean’Hane had been confident that he would survive, while this one…

“How much time do you have left?” Ardan asked.

The elf smiled again. This time, there was even some pride in his expression. Not for himself. For Ardi.

“Our deadline to reach the Metropolis was yesterday. So… the seal will trigger any moment now, boy.”

“Is that why you decided to talk to me?”

“What do you think?” This time, the elf smiled not only with his lips, but also with his eyes. He managed to catch Ardan’s gaze. Just for a moment, but he managed it. It would have been enough for the Aean’Hane to penetrate his Speaker’s mind and break it, but… he didn’t. “Before I set out on the paths, I wanted to see it with my own eyes. And hear it with my own ears.”

“See and hear… what exactly?”

The elf suddenly reached out his hand through the bars. They vibrated, slicing off one strip of skin after another, exposing muscle and bone.

Mshisty shouted something. The other mages stirred. But the elf, despite the terrible pain and the fact that he was pushing his hand through a meat grinder, touched Ardi’s forehead with his bloody fingers.

“My True Name, boy, is Anaaleale Anaanala,” blood flowed from the elf’s ears, eyes and nose, and Ardi heard an unpleasant, bony crunch. “Let it be remembered. Let it also be heard when the Time of the Great Songs comes.”

“Damn it, Corporal, are you tired of living?!”

A metal staff fell to the floor next to Ardan, and Mshisty, grabbing him by the collar with his only hand, dragged him away from the cage. Ardi, however, did not take his eyes off the elf, from whose every pore blood was streaming. He also couldn’t look away from his hand, which had been flensed almost to the bone. It kept reaching and reaching for Ardi.

“We see the signs, boy,” the elf said with his lips alone, without making a sound. “The prophecy will be fulfilled. He will return. And he will uphold his oaths and destroy his enemies…”

The elf did not finish his speech. His chest crunched one last time and blossomed into a flower. A flower of breaking ribs, shooting out bloody petals from which hung scraps of internal organs, torn arteries, and in the center, his exposed heart beat one final time.

The half-blood never lowered his gaze. His lips still trembled in a futile attempt to finish what he’d started.

Before his death, he had been trying to say:

“Duty and honor.”

Ardi remembered those words. And he remembered that evening when, sitting on a cliff in his native Alcade, he had talked with Cassara.

“Eternal Angels,” Mshisty let go of Ardi’s collar. “Corporal, did he enchant you somehow or what? That long-eared bastard. He probably thought he could take you with him. The Fatians are completely-”

“He’s not Fatian,” Ardan interrupted him.

“What?” Mshisty asked again.

Ardi got to his feet and, dusting himself off, walked back to the cage. He picked up the major’s staff and handed it back to him.

“He’s an Imperial,” Ardan explained. “Around a hundred years ago, he was kidnapped by the Armondo, and then Ngia sold him to Tazidahian, where he spent about seven decades. All the other information you have on…” Ardi pointed his staff toward the plate spinning under the glass dome of the device. “May I be dismissed, Major?”

Mshisty stared at Ardan for a few moments, then gave him a curt nod.

“Yes, Corporal, you may go. You did an excellent job.”

Ardi silently headed for the door leading out of the carriage. At the very exit, Mshisty’s voice stopped him.

“Ard.”

He froze.

“Edward and I always had a complicated relationship, but… as far as I can recall, you are the first and only one he honored with the phrase ‘not as stupid as the rest.’ I suppose for him, that’s the highest compliment possible and… I’m sorry, Corporal, that it turned out this way. If you ever need a partner for military magic practice, send for me. I’d like to see what Aversky’s student is capable of.”

Ardan turned to say something, but his gaze was caught by the lifeless figure of the elf.

He wasn’t even a foreigner… and if he had been, would that have changed anything? But he wasn’t… He was a captive countryman who had endured things no one would want to hear about. Because such pain did not belong only to its owner. It was contagious. Like a disease. And it could leave black spots on anyone with a living heart beating in their chest, not simply a cold stone.

And yet, did the half-blood’s suffering justify the atrocities he’d committed in Ngia?

Ardi didn’t know.

And he didn’t want to know.

He didn’t want to spend another moment in this cursed carriage.

“Thank you,” was all the young man said. “Have a good day, Major.”

***

When Ardi returned to their compartment, Tess was reading a book, the window curtain pushed aside. It was about four hundred pages, a hardcover with embossing. A familiar surname graced the cover. It seemed that everyone who was not a stranger to fiction was reading this author.

Trends…

“Is it interesting?” Ardan asked, putting his staff in a special stand by the wardrobe and sinking into the adjacent armchair.

Surprisingly, the first-class compartment had two armchairs, a bed, a wardrobe, and even a washbasin with a tank. It was no wonder that there were only three such compartments on the entire train.

“It is,” Tess nodded and turned the page.

“And what’s it about?”

She lowered the book a little so that her eyes were visible.

“You don’t like fiction, Ardi-the-wizard,” the girl said the last few words with a certain irony in her voice, clearly hinting that when Ardan picked up books, they were either textbooks or scientific materials.

“I just don’t have enough time to read fictional stories,” the young man spread his arms out. “And besides, I got my share of myths and legends in my childhood.”

“This isn’t a myth,” Tess objected gently. “It’s prose. It’s about a famous artist who became infatuated with a young model, but she didn’t reciprocate his feelings. In the end, a broken heart led the artist down a crooked path. He started abusing Angel Dust, alcohol, leading a dissolute life, and came into conflict with literally all his friends and family.”

Ardan’s eyebrows rose slightly.

“And what’s so interesting about reading something like that?” The young man asked with sincere bewilderment.

Tess was silent for a few moments.

“I don’t know, dear. It’s all presented as an adventure. The main character is very charismatic. And it all feels like a struggle with one’s inner demons,” she pondered a little more. “And the… horizontal relationships are beautifully described here and… when you read about something so bad, you almost feel like bad things only exist in books and newspapers, and not in the real world.”

They had already passed through the lines of fortifications and were now moving toward Winged Lake. This time, they would pass not on its western, but on its eastern side and then, ambling along the broken coastline, side by side with the Swallow Ocean, they’d continue past several bays, right up to the Metropolis.

“The book, by the way, is almost autobiographical,” Tess returned to her reading, and as she spoke, her voice grew quieter and quieter. “The whole capital knows about the author’s escapades. He rented a room in the Black Lotus for a whole six months, and was also detained naked in Baliero. He even escaped from the bedroom of the wife of a high-ranking official.”

She fell silent and continued to read. Ardan looked out the window. Maybe books could describe something dark and viscous, but…

“My true name, boy, is Anaaleale Anaanala.”

In the real world, stories were far more terrifying than the fictions of writers and poets.

“Don’t get distracted,” Ardi reminded himself.

So, was the Aean’Hane who’d arrived from Tazidahian connected to what was happening in the country? Any sane mind, after hearing such a claim, would laugh and dismiss it as ridiculous paranoia.

After all, not all misfortunes had a common thread leading to the unknown conspirators who had organized and supported the Order of the Spider.

In the end, it was still unknown what exactly “Alla Tantov” had been doing on the airship, where the Staff of Demons had disappeared to, what relation these foreign saboteurs had to those events, and, most importantly, what the medallion Boris had inherited had to do with it.

Yes, it was Boris Fahtov’s medallion and the bombing of the Imperial Bank that had caused Ardi the most prolonged turmoil, full of empty guesses and assumptions.

Ardi turned to Tess and his eyes, for a moment, widened with surprise as he grasped his and Milar’s shortsightedness, which was bordering on stupidity.

“Books.”

“What, dear?”

“Sorry,” the young man shook his head. “Thinking about work.”

“Alright.”

And Tess calmly returned to her reading. She didn’t ask a single question and Ardan was grateful to her for that.

If we returned to the thought of books, the mistake was probably not so much due to shortsightedness, but due to the fact that whoever was hiding behind the masks of the mysterious Puppeteers, they had succeeded in this matter.

In what?

In concealment. Some plans had hidden under the shadows of others, which, in turn, had covered other plans as well.

Like with Le’mrity’s Castle Tower. When Milar and Ardi had arrived there, all their thoughts had been occupied by the Weeper demon. And that wasn’t surprising, given the very absurdity of the fact that despite the Ley-cables everywhere and the overall abundance of metal, a Fae who had lost its way had managed to hold on in their world for so long and establish itself so firmly.

The partners had been pressed for time, the fatal hour had been approaching, and so they’d hurried to deal with the pressing problem and return to the Ragman. Like moths, they’d looked at the flame, completely oblivious to what was hidden at its very base.

They’d been blind even when they’d wondered why the Spiders (although, in this case, it had been the Puppeteers) had needed a demon in a building belonging to one of their accomplices. The answer had been the theory that the Spiders had conducted an experiment to bind the Demon not to a Ley-artifact, but to a simple, forged suit of armor.

With that, he and Milar had calmed down.

But!

Why do it in the Le’mrity skyscraper specifically? Why not in any other building? A much more reliable and secret one?

Ardi should have figured everything out then and there. If not then, then at least a month ago. Right after he’d learned that Selena Lorlov’s function had had no true bearing on the equation. On the contrary, she had just been a variable that had taken on a certain value only under specifically formed vectors and…

Milar would probably kill him right now.

To put it in non-mathematical terms, Lorlov, as a phenomenon, had served two purposes. First, she’d drawn attention to herself, and second, she’d diverted attention from the underground tram lines and forced their opening to the masses to be postponed.

And what if the Le’mrity skyscraper, the Weeper, and the fact that the Spiders had found the Ragman served exactly the same purpose?

To divert attention.

From what?

“…Then in 72, a writer shot himself. He wrote about faeries and whatnot. He wasn’t successful at all, but… he was a nice man…

…

…He had an old-fashioned first name… Named after his great-grandfather. Anvar.

…When did he shoot himself?

…A year ago. When the rats were starting to make themselves scarce. I feel sorry for him—he never finished that book.

…What was it about?

…I told you, faeries and such. Mendera and so on. A typical dime-store historical fantasy, though he called it a heroic epic and humanity’s greatest mystery .

…Mind if we have a look at that apartment?

…Well, all right. Sure, I’ll get you the key. But the place is ruined—there’s nothing left but soot and cinders..

…What happened?

…A fire… The place was completely torched, and here’s the odd thing: the apartments next door weren’t damaged at all, not even a singed beam.”

Then he and Milar, despite taking the key, had never visited the real Anvar Riglanov’s apartment. They’d thought it was all connected to the demon and its machinations.

But!

Again with this damned “but…”

What if it hadn’t been about the demon at all? Or rather, not entirely about it. What if the demon had just been a distraction, simultaneously creating a problem and a way to hide the real root cause in it.

If you looked at it from a different angle, what connected Anvar Riglanov and the Puppeteers?

Anvar Riglanov had been writing a book about Mendera and the Fae.

A book…

A book!

Who else in the past year had been associated with a book? A very specific book. One directly related to the Fae?

The Aean’Hane elf who’d blown up the Imperial Bank. Yes, he and Milar had thought it was all about the Spiders looking for artifacts, but as it turned out, the Spiders hadn’t needed artifacts in such large quantities as the Black House had assumed. The Staff of Demons had not been used by the Spiders and Lea Morimer. And, again, Boris’ medallion…

No.

These were not links in the same chain, but rather… rather…

“Different threads of the web,” Ardi whispered to himself.

The Puppeteers were hiding plans within plans, covering the most important one with several others that could easily be… sacrificed.

Like pieces on a board.

Pieces…

Yes, this was not so much a web as a chessboard.

It reminded him of prey that knows how to camouflage itself and thereby confuse the hunter. And Ardan, as if he hadn’t been taught by the best hunters of the Alcade, had allowed himself to be deceived. Even after the Sidhe of the Burning Dawn had almost directly spelled everything out:

“…Maybe it’s because I liked Anvar’s books. Or maybe because it was he who freed me from my confinement, albeit accidentally. For which he paid with his life…”

Ardi still hadn’t seen the prey hiding in its shelter.

The book that had disappeared from the bank was really important. But not to the Spiders. To the Puppeteers. And, most likely, it was this book, along with the Staff of Demons, that were the key figures in this exchange. And the whole situation with Lea Morimer and the Spiders had just been a distraction.

In other words…

“There is no difference between them,” Ardan whispered again, very, very quietly. “There is no difference between Lea Morimer and Selena Lorlov.”

Why?

Because the Weeper hadn’t used fire. Only illusions. Why, then, would she make Anvar shoot himself, and then… set his apartment on fire? No matter how you arranged these components on the timeline, they still sounded like mutually-exclusive elements.

And, moreover:

“…A fire… The place was completely torched, and here’s the odd thing: the apartments next door weren’t damaged at all, not even a singed beam.”

And who had a connection to both the Spiders and the Puppeteers, and, moreover, had the ability to burn an apartment in such a way as to hide it not only from the neighbors, which was already quite incredible, but also from the Ley-shields and equipment that the modern buildings in the New City are crammed full of?

The Aean’Hane elf. The very same one Aversky had killed.

And who’d just died in the armored carriage?

An Aean’Hane elf.

There was too much in common for it all to remain under the heading of “coincidence.”

But then Aversky’s death stood out from the general series of events. The main theory of the Black House remained that Edward Aversky’s death had been used to weaken the military and scientific potential of the Empire. But if this really was the case, if that was the whole reason for it, then why wasn’t he killed earlier? And if the Puppeteers were hiding big shadows inside many smaller shadows, then maybe there was some hidden agenda in his death as well?

After all, the Spiders, acting on the orders of the Puppeteers, had kidnapped Ardan to gain information about Edward.

And where else did he factor in here?

In the death of… the Aean’Hane elf.

Another “coincidence?”

No, Milar had not been mistaken in his analysis of the Puppeteers.

Nothing had ended with Lea Morimer.

Fields that were gradually turning into forests rushed past the window.

Ardi looked at them and thought.

If this was all really a chessboard, then the game was just beginning. And the obvious question made him very nervous: what kind of a piece was he?