Matabar

Book II. Chapter 17 - New deal

Finding Bazhen Eorsky turned out to be simple enough. Ardi didn’t even have to enlist the help of the Black House messengers, which was lucky, since he intended to discuss the matter with Bazhen without drawing their mutual employer’s attention.

The very next day, Ardi found himself in Baliero again. He’d been here just last night, amid the street musicians, tipsy poets, boisterously guffawing sculptors, impoverished painters, less-than-socially-responsible young ladies, and rakish young men. Ardan had picked Tess up from her rehearsal, and they’d strolled to the Painted Bridge, savoring the district that never slept and never fell silent.

In summer, Baliero drowned in flowers and the glow of Ley-lanterns, in the ringing of dance music, in jazz, in people’s shouts and laughter, and the roar of fashionable car engines.

By day, on the whole, Baliero was not much different from its evening guise, aside from looking rather more... lackluster. So it was no surprise that Bazhen, who was famous at the Grand University for his unhealthy penchant for beautiful women and an equally-unnatural attraction to strong, cheap alcohol, not to mention his knack for finding trouble for his own soft backside, would be drawn to this district.

Ardi had stopped by the University (picking up a copy of next semester’s schedule along the way), asked the library regulars where a student party had recently been held (they occurred with enviable regularity), had fought off a momentary urge to drop everything and stay with the books there, and then, armed with the needed information, had set out for Baliero.

Apparently, the party had been a smashing success, since half of Second Street knew about it. In the neighboring house, a third-floor window was even broken. The city guards had roped off part of the front lawn from the rest of the street, zealously guarding the peace of the trampled, broken rosebushes for some reason.

Adjusting the short-brimmed hat Arkar had given him, Ardi eyed the shattered glass, then the bushes. One didn’t need to be a hunter or an investigator to deduce that someone had jumped out of that window last night and landed straight in the shrubs.

Tapping his staff on the cobblestones, the young man approached a second-rank private. The guard was sweating in the heat inside his somewhat worn scarlet uniform, leaning on the rifle propped against his side with all his weight.

“Officer, I-” Ardi began.

“Mage,” the exhausted guard interrupted him bluntly. “Do me a kindness and move along.”

Ardan sighed. Meeting the guard’s eyes, he let the Witch’s Gaze slip free.

“Would you mind telling me what happened here?”

“There’s not much to tell,” the guard said, waving a hand as if suddenly forgetting his recent rudeness. “One of yours—one of the mages—fled from a student party and found nothing better to do than wake up in the bedroom of a certain, shall we say, rather eccentric young lady.”

“And where can I find this mage?”

“At the precinct,” the guard shrugged. “Sleeping it off. They nabbed him when he tried to escape.”

“Escape... from where?”

“From the bedroom.”

Ardan scratched the back of his head with the tip of his staff, puzzled. “And why was he escaping from the bedroom?” He asked awkwardly, not quite grasping the situation.

Had his Witch’s Gaze somehow failed?

The guard glanced around, lowered his voice to a whisper and, shielding his mouth with a hand, answered, “That girl,” he whispered conspiratorially, “she used to work at the Black Lotus. On delicate orders... and now, it seems, she has only one client. Some member of the Supreme Court or something.”

“Ah,” Ardi intoned in comprehension.

That sounded exactly like Bazhen. He not only had a love for beautiful women (who invariably returned the sentiment), but in addition to their flashy looks, they had to possess no less flamboyant life stories. For example, being the daughter of some lord—or better yet, a duke, or better still, not a daughter at all, but a wife or mistress.

“Which precinct did you say he’s in?”

“The Seventeenth.”

“Thank you,” Ardi touched the brim of his hat and trundled up the street. Fortunately, the Seventeenth Guard Precinct was only a few tram stops from there.

“And you have a good... day as well, sir... mage...” The guard called after him, each pause between his words growing longer as Ardan walked farther away. The man was apparently struggling to understand why he’d just spilled all that information to a stranger as if under oath, and after failing to find a sensible answer, he abandoned the futile attempt to puzzle out his sudden fit of chattiness.

Ardi, meanwhile, was striding down the street. He was dressed not in new clothes, admittedly, but in a decent suit—one that demon claws and Star-born werewolf fangs had not yet torn up, that no enemy spells had singed, and no bullets or sabers had gotten a chance to rend. A glossy, green Star Mage’s cloak billowed at his back, with none of the countless patches or mends his old one had had. And on his feet, he wore shiny, polished, lightweight summer shoes.

Life—despite the key that hung on a cord around his neck alongside the little oak figurine and the fang—was getting better. Or at least it was doing its best impression of getting better.

Automobiles drifted past. They were mostly long, low-slung models with painted hoods and barely any trunk to speak of. Trendy and expensive, they were capable of accelerating to a monstrous ninety, even a hundred kilometers an hour. There were plenty of girls in thin, form-fitting dresses that thirty, or fifty years ago at most, would have been mistaken for undergarments; men in suits of every color; flowers everywhere; and even the black Niewa river, forever crashing against the granite shackles of the embankments, did not seem as cold and gloomy as usual.

The only thing Ardi regretted at that moment was that Tess hadn’t accompanied him on this impromptu walk. She had hurried off to the atelier to work on some new orders. Ardan would have loved to free his fiancée from having to work under Madam Okladov so that she could devote all her attention to rehearsals and music but... he simply wasn’t in a position to do that.

It was discouraging. It wasn’t yet to the point of making him, as Milar would say, start covering his head in ashes, but discouraging all the same.

But all good things, sooner or later, come to an end. Not necessarily a dark and unwelcome end, mind you. Sometimes, the end could be just as pleasant or even desirable as the event that had preceded it, but it would always be an irrevocable end nonetheless.

In this case, that end took the form of the Seventeenth Precinct. It was a squat two-story building that had rudely wedged its rough, unhewn bulk between the slender waists of Baliero’s elegant townhouses—rather like a bouncer from “Bruce’s” suddenly hurtling into a line of young beauties.

It was made of gray brick, with absurd window frames painted blue and an almost buffoonish red door topping a stoop of the same color. In front of the facade, instead of a lawn or garden, lay an expanse of asphalt where a few official cars and trucks were parked.

A handful of guards stood nearby, smoking and chatting.

Ardan sighed, shook his head, and boldly stepped through the gate. A few curious glances darted his way, but no one moved to stop him or ask why he was striding so confidently toward the precinct.

Visiting hours for civilians had not yet begun, but the guards, seeing his staff and Star Mage regalia, kept their distance. They likely dreamed up some compelling reason for why an Imperial Mage was bound for the station, and went on smoking. No need to invite extra trouble or hassle—no one was going to pay them a bonus or give them more leave for it.

Ardi climbed the steps, opened the door, and found himself in a cramped foyer. To his left, in a wooden booth behind cloudy glass, a duty officer with a bored expression was reading a newspaper. Ahead, a corridor wound deeper into the building, branching into two wings. To the right, in a dark and dusty corner behind a floor-to-ceiling iron grate, were the detainees.

He spotted two rather foul-smelling homeless men, whose clothing doubled as both tent and toilet (Ardi did not judge, he merely noted the details), and one... naked man, whose shame was being covered by a hand towel. Apparently, a guard had fetched it for him.

Bazhen, as naked as the day he was born, lay on a narrow wooden bench bolted to the wall. The white cloth was draped over his loins, and he, bothered neither by the stench nor the company, was dozing peacefully.

“Magus,” drawled the duty officer lazily, “are you here to see an officer on business? If it’s a personal matter, civilian visiting hours are posted at the entrance.”

“Good afternoon.” Ardi removed his hat and stepped up to the booth. Given the relationship between the Guard Corps and the Second Chancery, he was in no hurry to flash his credentials. “I’m here regarding my colleague who was detained last night.”

The duty officer—a small, gaunt man, silver-haired with a bit of stubble—rose from his stool and peered past Ardi’s shoulder.

“Oh, that one... Irsky, Firsky, whatever his name was... yes. We detained him. Are you his authorized representative?”

“No,” Ardi answered honestly. “More like a good friend.”

“Then, Mr. Good Friend,” the duty officer rumbled gruffly, settling back onto his stool, “vacate the premises, please. I’ve already told you where to find the visiting hours for civilians.”

Ardi did not give up.

“Listen, sir—” the young man glanced at the guard’s stripes “—Corporal. He’s basically being held here for petty hooliganism. He broke a window, crushed some flowers. Nothing that-”

“And he also gave one of my colleagues a jab in the snout,” the duty officer snapped, puffing up like a turkey. “And that is already grounds for…”

A disgruntled voice came from the cell:

“…grounds for an unprovable offense, officer,” Bazhen drawled, not even opening his eyes and not in the least bit concerned with his nakedness. “There were no witnesses to that little episode, save a sergeant’s wounded pride. So, my friend here is correct: minor hooliganism. And considering the fact that I was detained without any adherence to proper protocol or someone even checking my papers, I regret to inform you that I’m eligible for immediate release. So open the gates, officer. Your hotel here is fine and all, but the neighbors are a bit... peculiar.”

As if to confirm his words, one of the homeless men gave a hearty burp and spat on the floor, producing a glob that resembled the slime of a Ley Anomaly more than ordinary spittle.

“Just wait till the captain comes, and he’ll decide who’s supposed to do what,” the duty officer practically growled.

Ardan sighed and finally drew out his badge from the inner pocket of his jacket.

“I need to take this mage with me,” he said, short and firm.

The duty officer took one look at his Second Chancery Investigator’s badge and twisted his face as if he’d bitten into a whole Kargaam lemon.

“Take him and get lost, Cloak,” he hissed and literally tossed the cell key onto the counter.

Ardan nodded, then went over to the grate and unlocked it. Bazhen was already on his feet... And once again in his original, natural state. The towel lay abandoned on the bench behind him.

“Uh...”

“They have my things,” Bazhen answered the unspoken question in a calm, even tone.

The duty officer had already plunked a bundle of Bazhen’s personal effects on the counter.

Bazhen dressed quickly, and within a few minutes, the two of them were striding down the street. Bazhen reeked strongly of alcohol, of a wild night, and of the same odors that clung like a blanket to the homeless.

It was a peculiar combination that made Ardi’s eyes water and his head swim. Every time they passed a flowerbed, the youth tried to savor the fragrance of the blooms for as long as possible instead of... well, instead of whatever it was his friend smelled like.

“If I’d wanted to wave my Cloak badge around, Ard, I would’ve done so from the start,” Bazhen wheezed.

He was walking in a peculiar manner—arms thrown back over his head, fingers interlaced behind his neck. It was as if he weren’t walking at all, but lying on a bed. Bazhen maintained an absolutely ostentatious air of nonchalance, one he strove to uphold twenty-four hours a day.

“And this is the thanks I get for pulling you out of there?” Ardi said.

“And do you really think, cowboy, that I couldn’t have managed it myself?” The smaller man shot a wink at a pretty girl walking arm-in-arm with a dignified matron.

The girl—thankfully out of range of Bazhen’s aroma—laughed, while the matron hissed like an angry cat at Bazhen and tugged her granddaughter farther down the street.

“You would have managed,” Ardi conceded. “So why were you still lounging there?”

“Because, if you care to recall, my dear Ard, the last time I was caught in... a certain delicate situation, I had to spend a few days working the gate at the Black House!” Bazhen all but howled. “I have no desire to repeat that. So I wanted to sleep in, then remind the Shrimps they’ve got nothing on me, and walk free with a clear conscience and a...” Bazhen sniffed at his own armpit “...a rather distinctive scent, but that’s a minor detail.”

Ardan remembered a conversation between Indgar and Arkar—“Shrimps” was street slang for the city guards, on account of their red uniforms.

Ardi might have asked why Bazhen led such a bizarre life. But that would mean admitting to the fact that, two months ago, on the airship, he had accidentally overheard Bazhen’s parents talking. They’d turned out to be rather prominent people, titled and far from poor. Eorsky Senior, it would seem, owned a thriving law firm.

That was a far cry from the legend Bazhen so meticulously fed everyone about his family.

But Ardi wasn’t about to dig into his colleague’s soul.

“Alright, Ard,” Bazhen went on, “since you spent so much time tracking me down, I suspect it’s not because you were lonely, nor because I still haven’t sent you your share of the duel bets.”

Ardan nearly tripped. Sleeping Spirits! He had completely forgotten that Bazhen owed him something.

“Actually, you’re right,” he said, touching his staff’s tip to the back of his head. “Though getting that money would be nice too.”

“You’ll get it... Now then, be so kind, cowboy, as to tell me why you flashed your badge and interrupted my good—if smelly—sleep.”

Ardan recounted his previous day’s adventures in the pharmacy. Bazhen, as he listened, still found time to exchange glances with several women of various ages—including a married lady of about thirty sitting in the passenger seat of a car halted at a traffic light. The driver was preoccupied with the road and didn’t notice his better half smothering her laughter into her handkerchief and ‘accidentally’ dropping a calling card, which Bazhen deftly snatched up, disguising the move as tying his shoelaces.

Ardi wasn’t well-versed in that non-Star science called psychology, which had begun developing in the last seventy-odd years. Moreover, he didn’t really believe that one could decipher the soul of a human or a Firstborn by trying to force the tumult of hundreds of millions of hearts into a single template.

But clearly, something was wrong with Bazhen. Something in him had broken. And long ago, at that. Something deep and important. Although, it was also possible that Ardi was simply hearing and seeing the underside of the world a bit better now than he had even a year ago.

After all, as Nicholas-the-Stranger had theorized, Star Magic and the art of the Aean’Hane were far more tightly interwoven than mages of the past had assumed.

“What can I say, cowboy,” Bazhen shrugged, twirling the lady’s calling card between his slender fingers and smiling dreamily. “Welcome to the real world of the big exes. That’s how pharmaceutical magnates operate.”

Ardan turned to his companion and nearly cried out in surprise. “What?! There’s not a single pharmacy where the prices aren’t so inflated?”

“The major ones? Not a chance,” Bazhen shrugged, flicking the card with the address and postal code into his breast pocket. (For the record, they’d detained him without his staff or regalia.) “And the small ones usually operate on the sly. Without any licenses. Plenty of those in the Tend, Tendari, and even in the New City.”

Bazhen plucked a violet from a nearby flowerbed and, inhaling the bloom’s aroma, sauntered down the street as if everything around him were part of an endless performance in which he himself was the star of the show.

“But,” continued the most notorious reveler of the Grand, “those don’t tend to last long. First, they don’t always sell quality goods, and second, as the manager told you, they quickly get pinned under someone’s thumb—either by the law or by the colleagues of those fellows you rent your apartment from.”

“The gangs?”

“The very same,” Bazhen nodded. “At the very least, the Hammers and the people of the Saint Eordeach take their cut, which the pharmaceutical giants pay them dutifully to avoid any unwanted competitors popping up on their turf.”

Ardan shook his head grimly. It seemed that ordinary citizens had almost no opportunities to benefit from Ley-medicine… by design.

“On the other hand, there are upsides,” Bazhen noted.

Ardi almost choked on his outrage. “Upsides?!”

“Hey,” Bazhen raised his hands in surrender while handing the violet to a pretty girl passing by at the same time, “calm down, big guy. I get that you’re prickly because of your brother and his illness, but it’s precisely the existence of Ley-medicine that allows regular medicine to be sold almost at cost of production.”

Stolen story; please report.

Ardi turned sharply away. Bazhen wasn’t wrong. Ardan really was taking the situation to heart because of Erti. Because of the sleepless nights and the buckets of tears his mother had shed when she and Ardan had taken shifts holding her younger son’s icy hand—when they’d tended to Erti, changing his warming compresses without rest so he could sleep for a few hours.

Because of Kelly knocking on every possible official’s door to get a doctor sent over from Delpas as fast as possible. For any price. He’d done it all just so a doctor would come.

And that was just their family.

How many other families were out there that didn’t have an eldest son who knew the art of the Aean’Hane, nor a father with a sheriff’s badge?

“It’s not right,” Ardi said firmly.

“Nobody’s arguing with you, cowboy,” Bazhen replied matter-of-factly. “But believe me, the pharmaceutical lobby is one of the strongest in the country. They secured the best conditions for themselves and wrote a heap of laws tailor-made for their benefit under past Emperors who were frankly either weak-willed, or preoccupied with the Armondo, the Mercenary War, or the Fatian Massacre. Those Emperors, you see, had bigger worries than a fledgling field like Ley-medicine.”

“That much is true,” Ardi conceded the obvious. “But times have changed.”

“Maybe they have,” Bazhen shrugged again. “But our Emperor is not all-powerful, and as you know, he doesn’t wield unlimited authority. There are still the three Chambers of Parliament, Supreme Court, and the self-governing bodies of the provinces. And the pharma people, whenever it’s needed, pay all of them off. Some they intimidate. Others, they blackmail.”

“And they have that kind of money to throw around?”

“A whole cabal of almost twenty families and companies?” Bazhen snorted. “Of course they have enough, Ardi. More than enough, in fact, with plenty left over for living the high life.”

“That’s a monopoly,” Ardi muttered. They had stopped by a bench near a small square and, without saying a word, had sat down to rest. “Monopolies are illegal.”

A breeze swept past, carrying flower petals and bringing with it the fragrances of perfumes—both men’s and women’s. In summer and spring, Baliero, like the Central District, resembled a blooming garden.

“De jure, my dear cowboy, it’s no monopoly at all. More of a cartel collusion,” Bazhen corrected him. He crossed one leg over the other and sprawled out on the bench so insolently that his pose verged on indecent. “Not a single one of those companies, even the biggest among them, holds more than ten percent of the market. They’re nowhere near fifty-one percent. So in terms of the law, they’re in the clear.”

“Then why doesn’t the Empire-”

“Why don’t the Emperor and his people do something?” Bazhen interrupted him. “Aside from the reasons I’ve already mentioned? They are doing something, Ardi, make no mistake... State clinics exist, after all. And also that national insurance fund. They’re acting, albeit very slowly. The well-greased pharma lobby in Parliament is one of the largest and most influential. And to be honest, there’s not much outcry among the common folk.”

“Which is strange...”

“Strange to you,” Bazhen corrected him. “And to anyone else knowledgeable about Star Magic. But for the people whose parents often couldn’t even read or write—don’t forget, the education reforms only picked up steam relatively recently—well… When your mother and father are illiterate and you yourself don’t know demon spit about Star Magic, the mere fact that some cough syrup costs, say, five kso today, whereas your father recalls it costing forty kso twenty years ago, that’s already a big win. The existence of a far more effective Ley-based equivalent? That doesn’t bother folks too much.”

Bazhen abruptly changed posture and, planting his elbows on his knees, steepled his fingers under his chin.

“Believe me, cowboy, you are far from the first Star Mage to ask that question. And not the last to secretly plot opening your own little shop with fair profits and equally fair prices. And you know what?”

“What?” Ardi asked, a bit more sharply than he’d intended.

“You don’t see any such shops around, do you?” Bazhen said with a bitter smirk. “You might be thinking of enacting some illegal schemes with the gangs, or how the Emperor could sic our bosses on them, but... The pharma tycoons generously invest part of their immense profits into research funds. Do you know their contribution percentage to building modern hospitals and developing the technical side of medicine? No? It’s best that you remain ignorant. It’d make you ill.”

“Only, de facto, it’s not their money being invested, but the people’s,” Ardi grimaced. “The people they’re charging double.”

“Oh, are you turning socialist now?” Bazhen snorted. “Need me to tell you where their party meets? Go on, have a word with the Colonel—he’ll get you embedded in their ranks, you can be a snitch. Just remember, it’s the radical socialists who hold third place among the most active bombers—right after the Tavser fanatics and the Firstborn Conclave.”

“I’m not interested in politics.”

“That’s because you’re a fool,” Bazhen suddenly hissed, an uncharacteristic hardness in his voice. “No offense, but anyone who isn’t interested in politics... Well, politics doesn’t care who’s interested in it and who isn’t. It’ll screw each of us all the same. You were in Shamtur this summer, weren’t you?”

Ardi nodded.

“So how was it? Did the miles of trenches and whole cities’ worth of forts and pillboxes inspire you?”

“I remember what you told me before my duel with Iolai.”

“Well, don’t forget it,” the smaller man nearly barked, the last of his affected bravado melting off his face. “War is, shall we say, the final punctuation of politics. The last stop. And if war comes, cowboy—a big war, not with Fatia, but with Tazidahian itself—then no one will give a damn what views you hold or how ‘above’ politics you consider yourself. Out at the front, we’ll all be crawling through the same trench, interested and uninterested alike.”

Ardan turned his gaze aside. The half-elf’s voice still hadn’t faded from his memories:

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

“I don’t quite understand, Bazhen, how we went from my question to discussing war,” Ardi admitted.

Bazhen waved a hand dismissively.

“That’s why I hate talking to thick-skulled oafs like you,” the law student snorted. “Because it’s all connected, Ard—in one tight, serpentine, venomous knot. The Emperor starts cracking down on the pharma companies? The funding for his initiatives to improve healthcare for ordinary people plummets. Then come illnesses, epidemics, overstrain on an already battered system. That leads to unrest, riots, even rebellion. He’ll have to call in the army and the guards—who are people too, who also get sick, whose parents, wives, husbands and children also fall ill. What happens then? Murmurs and dissent among the populace. And all this while tax revenue to the treasury drops because the pharmacy cartel pays its taxes on those super profits quite diligently. And it’s with those taxes that new schools are opened, transportation, healthcare, education—and yes, even military—reforms are carried out, shipyards built, and...” Bazhen sighed and shook his head. “It’s a tangled mess, Ard. More tangled and complicated than any seal you’ve ever seen in your life. Because a seal is just numbers and some nonsense with the Ley. But here—here we have human lives. Whole generations of them.”

“So what? Does that mean nothing should be done about it?”

“It means it has to be done gradually,” Bazhen explained. “Slowly. Preferably without them even noticing. Bite off one piece at a time, until the beast’s carcass is so weak and shriveled that it can be squashed with a single blow. Just like how, after nearly a decade of gradual strangulation, we snuffed out the Angel’s Dust labs and dens in one fell swoop, forcing the Narikhman deep underground.”

“But they still exist.”

“They do,” Bazhen nodded again. “Only now they cause far less harm. And the Black House, along with the Emperor’s loyalists and His Imperial Majesty himself, have the opportunity to tackle other, far more important and urgent problems.”

Bazhen relaxed once more, leaning back against the bench.

“You, cowboy, are simply a fool, that’s all. Naïve, and ignorant of the great big world that lies hidden behind you and Captain Pnev running around the capital. Maybe, as old Convel claims, you really are the brightest mind of Star Engineering, and maybe you’re even decent in the military field—but governing a state... that requires a different kind of mind. And ruthlessness. And lack of principles. Cynicism, even. There’s no room for emotions, nor for the fact that you have a sick brother and therefore can’t see the forest for the trees.”

Ardan narrowed his eyes at him.

Bazhen smirked.

“Feel like punching me?” He drawled.

“Possibly...”

“The truth is always unpleasant to hear, Ard,” Bazhen observed, seemingly untroubled by his companion’s agitation or by how tightly Ardi’s fists were clenched. “But facts remain facts. The manager told you the truth. And you, being a simpleton, refused the discount all Star Mages get. Though, given you’ve got a dash of Firstborn blood, it’s not so bad. Firstborn reservations and their neighborhoods in major cities and the Metropolis—all of those are places the cartel won’t go. They can’t sic gangs in there, either. And the laws are a bit different. That’s why, incidentally, the poor and the students at the Grand sometimes buy their medicine on Sleepless Street and-”

Bazhen broke off, and slowly—very slowly—turned to Ardi.

“You’re a half-blood.”

“True.”

“No, no, no!” The smaller man waved his hands for emphasis. “You, by the Eternal Angels, are a half-blood!”

“Bazhen, are you not completely sober yet?”

“I’m so sober I’m disgusted with myself!” The law student exclaimed fervently. “You, by the Face of Light, you’re a half-blood! Which means, by law, you have the right to open any commercial enterprise on Firstborn territory, including the reservations and their city districts. And most importantly—you fall under their legal quirks!”

Ardan was beginning to grasp what Bazhen was driving at.

“And since small Firstborn enterprises can count on subsidies,” he went on, bracing his elbows on his knees and lapsing into thought. “If we find a place near the border of the Firstborn District, then... it might work... Yes, damn it,” Bazhen slapped his knees, “it just might work! The pharmaceutical cartel wouldn’t be able to do a thing! The Conclave probably won’t be thrilled about it, but a couple of ringing exes on their table will make everyone perfectly agreeable.”

Bazhen grew more and more fired up even as Ardi recalled a certain ogre guard—Sergeant Boad—who had left him with a few words of warning:

“Half-blood. Remember that you’re not welcome in this district. Unless you have a very good reason, you’d best not show up here again. Otherwise... who knows what might happen to a corporal lost in unfamiliar parts.”

“If we buy second-hand equipment from the scrapyards,” Bazhen was saying, evidently already drawing up plans for a pharmacy of their own, “and sort out all the Guild’s schemes and the bureaucratic hurdles, we could even get an official license.”

“Bazhen...”

But the law student didn’t hear him.

“And it’s an opportunity to make money out of thin air. Just on the price difference alone. Seven—no, a nine percent profit, and everything else comes from shaving off the cartel’s markup. In a year, this will be the biggest pharmacy in the city!”

“Bazhen!”

“What?” The other man turned to him.

“If I try to open a business in the Firstborn District, it... won’t end well.”

Bazhen smacked his palm against his forehead.

“Cowboy.”

“What?”

“Tell me—have you managed to stir up trouble for yourself in every last corner of the capital?”

“I-”

“That, by the Eternal Angels, was a rhetorical question!” Bazhen exclaimed, unable to hold back. Then, after sitting for a minute with a very pensive look on his face, he snapped his fingers. “Face of Light, it really could work! I’ll need two, maybe three months to shut up the idiots who think they can beat me at bureaucracy. As for you, cowboy—can you manage to, let’s say, sort out your issues with the Firstborn in ten weeks or so?”

Ardan recalled Arkar’s words:

“I’m sure that in a couple of weeks, a representative from the Conclave will roll up… approach you, I mean.”

Ardi answered honestly, “I don’t know.”

“‘I don’t know,’ he says... Ard, don’t you need money?”

“I do,” the young man nodded, adding just as sincerely, “I need it badly.”

“Then you’ve got ten weeks,” Bazhen clapped him on the shoulder and leapt to his feet. “Ten weeks from now, we’ll go pick a place for the shop, cowboy. If it works out, we can then decide whether to split things equally or fairly. Okay, see you around!”

And then Bazhen, practically skipping with glee, dashed to the tram stop and hopped onto the tram heading toward Star Square, evidently intent on visiting the Grand’s library at once.

For a while longer, Ardan sat on the bench, watching the passersby. Baliero unfailingly attracted young artists and freethinkers, only rarely diluted by the presence of an older crowd.

Young men and women strolled about, discussing various things and gleefully trying to catch the flower petals carried by the wind. They, too, were surely occupied by various questions, troubles, complicated situations from which they’d escaped here, to Baliero, where the music never ceased—an eternal accompaniment to the inexhaustible fountain of life.

Did they think about Shamtur and the kilometers of new military fortifications? Did they ponder cartels, conspirator Puppeteers, or—generally speaking—did they often open a newspaper to read the news?

Surely some of them did, but... somehow, Ardi felt like they were in the minority.

Ardi held out his hand and caught a pink cherry blossom petal. In the Alcade and Evergale, cherry trees bore no fruit and did not bloom, so he had only seen one do so for the first time here in the Metropolis.

He blew on his palm, and the petal floated off down the street, soon merging with hundreds of its lovely little fellows. Ardi then rose and strode toward the tram stop from which he could get to the Black House.

***

The building greeted him with its usual surliness that verged on outright inhospitality. It was a heavy, ponderous black cube that was six stories high, squatting across from a small plaza and flanked on two sides by parks with tall trees and fountains.

It had practically been stripped bare—devoid of façade adornments or elegance. Even the window frames of the Black House, built of dark brick, looked stern and unwelcoming.

On a small lot to the left of the lone front entrance rested several official “Derks” cars—virtually identical copies of the one Captain Milar Pnev was always tinkering with so lovingly.

Ardi shivered slightly.

He could vividly imagine a scene in which the captain—vacationing somewhere on the southern peninsulas—suddenly received a message from the capital that his leave was over. The only consolation was that the letter would take no less than three days to arrive even by the swiftest postal train. And then Milar would spend twice as long on the journey back.

Maybe he’d cool off by then.

“Not likely,” Ardan muttered to himself.

No one was hanging around outside the building, so Ardi walked in without worry. If someone had been smoking, he would, due to the odd custom of the Second Chancery, have had to wait until they were finished. He showed his credentials to the pensive duty officer, then signed the visitor log.

“Is the Colonel in his office?”

“Is he expecting you, Corporal?” The man asked in a dry tone.

“No.”

“Have you made an appointment?”

“No.”

The duty officer pulled open a desk drawer and, rifling through some papers, took out a blank request form.

“Fill this out and wait. A letter will be sent to your address with the appointed date and time.”

Ardan blinked a couple of times. Well, that made sense. It wasn’t as if the Colonel simply sat in his office twiddling his thumbs all day, waiting for any Second Chancery employee to knock on his door. The Emperor’s right hand likely had only a few free moments in his packed schedule.

Ardi hadn’t thought of that simply because, usually, if he found himself at the Black House, it was because the Colonel had personally summoned him and Milar. The rare exceptions were his visits to Dagdag the quartermaster, or to accounting.

“Is he actually in right now?” Ardi decided to test his luck.

The duty officer frowned.

“I have an important matter to discuss with him,” the young man persisted. “Please, if he’s in, just tell him Corporal Egobar is requesting a few minutes of his time.”

The duty officer regarded Ardan with an annoyed look, but—perhaps after recalling his surname and noting his staff, cloak and epaulettes—reluctantly pressed one of the signal medallions hanging on the wall of the wooden booth.

After a short wait, one of the many unmarked double doors opened (in the Second Chancery, each door was followed by a small vestibule with another set of doors behind that, so that one couldn’t just casually glimpse into a room in passing). A woman of about twenty-seven, perhaps a little older, emerged. She wore a black uniform and the epaulettes of a corporal.

Without a word, the duty officer scribbled a few words on a slip of paper and handed it to the corporal. She, also without a word, took it and pivoted on her heel, heading off toward the stairwell.

A heavy, slightly awkward silence hung in the room. Ardan drummed a light rhythm on the counter with his fingers, then stepped back and sat on one of the wooden chairs bolted to the opposite wall. The duty officer seemingly resumed reading his newspaper, but judging by the recognizable shape of the bulge beneath the wide newsprint pages, he was hiding a book under the paper. Probably a novel.

Ardi, after a moment’s thought, opened his grimoire. He was working on both the Ice Bullet and Ice Beasts spells currently. He most likely wouldn’t be able to downgrade the latter to a two-Star level anyway, meaning that this spell would not be of any use to Ardan for quite some time. If nothing “grounded” him in the meanwhile, he would ignite his Blue Star in, at best, a year and a half—perhaps two years.

Rushing such a matter, given the fact that you only got one lone attempt, was simply foolish. It had taken the youth almost five years to go from a Red to a Green Star. Completing the journey from a Green to a Blue Star in two and a half or three years didn’t seem long; if anything, it seemed rushed.

Perhaps Ardan ought to remain at the level of the Green Star for a good seven or even ten years—but something told him that would be a mistake. He led far too restless of a life to afford such liberties.

After a few minutes, the female corporal returned and passed a new note to the duty officer.

Sleeping Spirits.

If Edward’s invention could be completed, it would help even in this rather mundane scenario. Admittedly, he was unclear on why no one had run pneumatic post tubes to the booth—Ardan had seen such tubes in the Colonel’s office, after all.

“In fifteen minutes, you may go up to see the Colonel,” the duty officer announced in the same dry manner from before, and returned to his novel.

The female corporal, without a word or even a glance at her colleague, went back into her office.

“Thank you,” Ardi nodded. He checked his watch, then turned back to his notes.

He skimmed over his latest scribblings and ideas. Ardan wanted to integrate the very same arrays that Edward had been using with his strategic magic project into his new spells. Much smaller than usual, these could attach freely—kind of like bricks—to the main array and carry out auxiliary tasks.

For example, if he wanted to modify the Ice Bullet—and here it was not so much a desire as a banal necessity—he would only need to replace the “bricks” of it instead of completely rewriting the structure of the seal.

All that remained was to figure out how to organize the transfer of data between the “bricks” and the “main” array with the least possible Ley expenditure. For that, of course, reversible rune links would do; due to their easily-calculated nature, such links were often used in assembly problems. But they were too costly in terms of Ley energy and not quite suitable for Ardan’s purposes.

And so the young man intended to use a different approach, one that had occurred to him after studying the structures of Lady Talia’s Chaos School.

If one imagined an array not as simply a mathematical object on a plane but as, say, a “physical” cylinder in three-dimensional space, then its runes would acquire—besides the four types of links—one more property: height of placement.

And as was well-known, the higher above ground you went, the weaker the Ley field became. If one applied that same principle to Lady Talia’s arrays, then the reason for her creation and use of the degenerative rune links became clear.

In reality, they weren’t degenerative at all, but rather... something like a “bridge-forming” link. Or even something more akin to those lifts Ardi hated than to bridges.

The Ley in the “cylinder” array would rise from the bottom to the top, weakening as it ascended, and Lady Talia had used that weakening to literally fuse two runes into one. But since the Ley only “weakened” rather than disappearing entirely, that allowed—for mathematical purposes—not an approximate fusion, but a complete transmutation of properties instead.

And it was precisely this transmutation that Ardan had decided to work on. Alas, he had never heard of rune links being able to transmute before, so with every fiber of his being, he yearned for the day when he could immerse himself in the depths of the Imperial Magical University’s library.

One thing was certain: given the truly staggering amount of calculations, the majority of which Ardi could barely imagine, let alone solve, his work on transmuting rune properties would drag on.

For a long time.

A very long time.

A quarter of an hour with his grimoire and a pencil only whetted the youth’s appetite, but when the minute hand on his watch shifted once more, Ardi closed the book, let it hang back on its chains, and headed for the stairs.

Climbing to the top floor, Ardan walked down a well-known corridor until he reached its end, which was capped by two towering dark doors.

Entering the vestibule, he gave a quick knock on the next set of doors, and then stepped into the Colonel’s office. It looked as it always did: spacious, with two desks pushed together, a portrait of Emperor Pavel IV hanging above a discreet door leading to the Colonel’s private quarters, walls paneled in dark cherrywood, a steel filing cabinet by the desk, two armchairs for reading, a glass side table, and another cabinet filled with books and cardboard files.

And of course, the entire wall opposite the entrance was a solid expanse of windows stretching from floor to ceiling. Usually, those were covered by tulle and two layers of heavy drapes, but now the drapes had been drawn aside, and a playful summer breeze—bursting into the Colonel’s gloomy sanctum with impish delight—was tugging at the tulle, trying to rip it from the rod.

“Corporal,” the Colonel greeted him.

He looked as he always did: of average height and middle age, with intelligent, piercing eyes, a slightly rough-hewn face, and he was dressed in his customary dark three-piece suit. He sat in an armchair, smoking his favorite brand of cigar and reading a newspaper. But Ardi’s gaze noted how the chairs near the desks were a bit askew.

The Colonel had only recently concluded a meeting. And it most likely hadn’t been a very pleasant one.

“Colonel,” Ardan replied with a nod.

The de facto head of the Second Chancery indicated the chair opposite him. But before Ardi even reached it, the Colonel spoke:

“If you’re here to tell me something about Delpas or your train ride from Shamtur, you will not only greatly disappoint me, Corporal, but I’ll also probably forbid you from coming to see me without a direct summons.”

If they didn’t know the Colonel, one might have taken such a remark to heart, but Ardi understood the nature of their work perfectly.

“No,” he said simply, seating himself. “I’m here on a more important matter.”

The Colonel folded down a corner of his newspaper, gave his visitor a keen look and, with that same keen interest, drawled, “Unexpected... Go on, Corporal.”

“I came here regarding Aversky’s will.”

“Ah, yes. He did warn us that he’d be leaving you his first practice ground,” the Colonel responded. It made sense that he was well aware of the fact that the Averskys’ abandoned family stables were not what they appeared to be on paper. “I have no objections. For five years, as Edward wanted, it’s yours. Use it wisely. If that’s all that was bothering you, then you may be dismissed.”

“He didn’t just leave me the grounds, Colonel.”

The Colonel eyed Ardi for a few moments, then folded his newspaper and, lacing his fingers together, said in a commanding tone: “Continue.”

“Mr. Aversky also left me a research project which...” Ardi hesitated a moment, choosing his words carefully, “...led to the creation of the communication medallions and-”

“And not another word!” The Colonel ordered sharply, raising his voice a fraction.

He got to his feet, went to the bookshelf, and pulled out one of the books. As he did so, Ardi felt a peculiar and rather advanced ward envelop the office, cutting it off from the outside world so completely that nothing could be heard or seen from without, not even through the open windows.

“Come over to the table, Corporal. It seems like we truly have something to discuss. But it wouldn’t be very productive to have this conversation with you alone, so I’ll have to recall your partner from his vacation. In fact, your own leave is over as well.”

“Yes, Colonel. I understand.”

“Well then, Face of Light help you, Corporal, because Captain Pnev certainly won’t be happy about my message.”

Ardi knew that already. Oh, he knew it all too well. But the thrill of the hunt was urging him on. They really might get to flush out the Puppeteers’ mole who had burrowed their way into the Black House.

The hunter ran his tongue across his fangs. He could smell the scent of prey.