Matabar

Book II. Chapter 22 - Oglanov

Ardi set his pencil aside and allowed himself a moment of rest, leaning back into the stiff embrace of a wooden chair that was more sturdy than it was comfortable.

He winced as a short, insistent lance of pain flared in his side. He unscrewed the cap from his thermos and poured a measure of fragrant, strong tea into the small cup. The brew was Tess’ handiwork. The girl had asked Ardi for the recipe to one of the Aean’Hane concoctions used to hasten recovery, and had then prepared it herself. She had even managed to get it right.

Then again, even if she had failed, Ardi would’ve still told her it was perfect, then simply brewed a new batch for himself in the privacy of Aversky’s laboratory.

Over the last three days, Ardi had spent several dozen exes of his vacation pay—not all of it, by any means, as his leave had been cut brutally short—to purchase and deliver a collection of alchemical glassware to the former Aversky family stables. He’d acquired a cheap metal stand, a pair of burners, thermometers, and other assorted sundries.

He had also swept the proving grounds clean, touched up the sections where the paint had long since flaked away like dead bark, and he’d also tended to the wiring that had burned through in places and sagged like tired rope in others. He’d replaced the worn-out parts in a few of the generators hidden away in a cramped utility closet, checked the integrity of the training fields’ shields, and… All in all, he had spent two full days on the project.

If Aversky had used these premises, it was not for their intended purpose. It seemed unlikely that he had been testing any spells or technologies here, save perhaps for his means of long-distance communication.

Over the course of those two days, the young man’s health had seen some improvement, but he still leaned on his staff when he walked. Breathing was still hard for him, and without the tight binding of a pressure bandage, a telltale prickling would begin in his lungs after only ten minutes. He could sleep only on his back, and even then, he would wake up in a cold sweat every few hours. Even so, the worst of his bruises had faded, his cuts had sealed over with fresh, pink skin, and the dull thrumming in his head no longer echoed alarmingly.

Boris and Elena had not come to “Bruce’s” during this time. Ardi did not blame them. Boris, he imagined, had much to think about, and some decisions to make. But Ardi had, of course, sent a messenger to Holy Warriors Street with a letter requesting permission to pay them a visit at the end of the week, to which he had received an immediate reply:

“Of course, my friend! Our doors are always open to you, no need to give notice! Forgive us for not visiting you upon your discharge—I had to take Elena to the hospital. After… that incident on Tiny-Viroeira, our physician insisted on running some tests.

We are still attending appointments.

But we are very much looking forward to seeing you!

Always your friend,

Lord Boris Fahtov.”

Boris was not the sort of man to hide his true feelings behind a saccharine veil of flattery and deceit. And besides, who was Ardan, that anyone should fawn over him? A corporal, a junior investigator, a mage who could not even protect the people dear to him.

Pushing his friend’s letter away once more, Ardi closed his eyes and let out a low groan, one born of both the pain in his ribs and the pain of his own helplessness.

“I hope you are not screaming at me from the heavens, Edward,” Ardi breathed. “May the Eternal Angels receive your soul.”

Behind him, as if mockingly answering him, the glass alchemical equipment gave a faint jingle. There was no mysticism in it, of course. It was merely the ventilation system, which was prone to fits and starts. Tuning it would require climbing into the shaft to fix the rotor—something Ardan, in his current state, was certainly in no condition to do. And so, he had to endure it.

For now, the equipment was of little use to Ardi. The supplies Professor Kovertsky had given him were nearly exhausted already. And buying Ley-flora and Ley-fauna anywhere but in the Firstborn Quarter was simply courting ruin. The Spell Market, for instance, sold materials for nearly twice the price of the stalls on Sleepless Street.

One might’ve suspected another cartel agreement, as was the case with the apothecaries, but no such thing existed in the trade of alchemical ingredients. It was simply that Sleepless Street dealt in uncertified goods, often providing no guarantees or certificates of quality. The Spell Market and its associated small enterprises, meanwhile, sold exclusively high-grade products, thoroughly vetted and accompanied by all the necessary papers straight from the Mage Guild.

“Right, then,” Ardi said, picking up the pencil. He twirled it between his fingers, then tucked it behind his ear. “Back to work.”

He truly did need to hurry. In an hour, Milar would come by to pick him up, and then they would drive out to see Peter Oglanov. They had decided not to postpone their visit to the old detective until the corporal recovered fully because, in all fairness, Peter had already been waiting long enough.

Pulling his staff closer, Ardi rose to his feet with a groan worthy of his great-grandfather. He took the diagram from the table and hobbled his way to one of the three training grounds within the building. This one, the smallest and fitted with the simplest shield, was meant for practicing elementary spells and served as a kind of infinite accumulator.

The entire principle of Aversky’s testing grounds was, in truth, quite simple. They negated the satiation effect—the phenomenon where a Star Mage could not absorb the Ley from more than four military-grade accumulators per Star, and would require nearly half a day to recover before being able to do so again. They achieved this through, to put the convoluted technology in its most basic terms, the phenomenon of resonance.

In other words, the testing grounds, by absorbing the Ley energy of a Star Mage’s spells, returned their own Ley back to them, which spared the brain the necessity of “processing” new energy. Yes, one could still grow tired within a testing ground, both physically and mentally, but the strain on their Stars as biological objects would be reduced to a minimum.

Ardi flipped several levers on the control panel, and a stationary shield with arbitrary parameters shimmered into existence around Tony. The young man casually struck the floor with his staff. A rather complex seal formed beneath his feet, and a ghostly, misty hand materialized above a sheet of paper.

In essence, this was the same Misty Helper that Ardi had used on the airship to infiltrate Trevor Man’s cabin, but at the same time, it was also a new version of it.

Where the previous version had latched on like a parasite to a spell, cycling through its runic connections in search of the one that completed the Ley-circuit—a simple numerical search based on mathematical expectation—this new version of the spell worked somewhat differently.

It was the Misty Helper that best suited his needs as a test subject for Ardan’s hypothesis that an array, at its core, was not an object on a mathematical plane, but a fully volumetric natural phenomenon. And thus, the Ley would flow not only, conditionally speaking, “horizontally” along vectors from one runic connection to another, but also have a direction along the “vertical” axis, just as the Ley-field itself did.

How could this be used in practice?

He neededIt was necessary to understand whether it was worth delving into his ideas about creating a fifth type of runic connection—transmutational—or if Ardi had simply grown too conceited and birthed not some new idea in his mind, but was merely trying to build a castle in the air on a foundation of wet river sand.

Before allowing the Misty Helper to begin its analysis of the arbitrary shield spell covering the Tony mannequin—a simple wooden doll of human height fixed to a mobile mechanical tripod—Ardan made several entries in his workbook. Not his grimoire, but a plain, ordinary student’s notebook.

“Theoretical Development of Transmutational Runic Connections, Day: 47,” Ardi scribbled in a hasty, jagged handwriting. “Currently testing: Misty Helper. Day: 1. Version: 2. Rework: 3. Attempt: 4.”

The purpose of the transmutational connection Ardi was trying to create within his own design was for the Misty Helper to not simply attach itself parasitically to an opponent’s shield, which, in truth, was not so difficult to negate by simply building the right failsafe into a defensive seal or spending a few more rays to strengthen its basic defensive properties. Given the existence of stationary constructs, this would be no trouble at all.

Back on the airship, the situation had been entirely different. The small, portable generators hadn’t been able to create the kind of voltage their massive, land-based brethren possessed.

But if the Misty Helper could, say, not parasitize the defensive structure and draw attention to itself, but directly integrate itself into the opponent’s defense, that was another story entirely.

How would it do so?

Through the transmutation of its own properties depending on the properties of the target, and thereby, in the most literal sense, becoming an inseparable part of a foreign structure.

On paper, it did not sound terribly difficult.

But in practice… In practice, Ardi still had no idea where to even begin the calculations, or… what calculations were even necessary.

For now, he was blindly forcing his way through to a windfall. The branches of complex equations were constantly scratching at his eyes, tangled functions were catching in his hair, and countless graphs and Ley-limits were slamming like stones against his already-battered bones.

“Come on, come on,” the young man hissed as a ghostly, gray ribbon extended from the misty hand hovering over the paper and touched the shimmering shield of the Tony doll, a magical construct shaped like an ancient infantryman’s kite shield.

The ribbon, woven of transparent mist, bored into the magical wood like a nimble snake. And, for a fleeting moment, it managed to pass itself off as one of the shield’s many splinters. The first symbols even managed to appear on the sheet of paper, but not a fraction of a second passed before the Tony doll’s shield flared with a violent lilac light, and Ardi felt his seal shatter.

The misty hand vanished, and the ribbon along with it.

Exhaling in disappointment, Ardi made a few notes in his workbook.

“Attempt: 4 on Rework: 3—failure. Note for the future—proceed to Rework 4.”

As Aversky had recommended, Ardan intended to adhere to the golden rule while developing his spells: “the number of attempts must equal the iteration of the rework plus one.” If a spell turned out well from the start, then it required no reworks (as that would be a modification, not a rework), and could be realized on the first try. But if the task was a difficult one, then each rework required as many attempts to implement as there were reworks preceding it.

Thus, for the tenth rework, he’d make eleven attempts; for the twentieth, twenty-one, and so on. Why the plus one? Because the first, as always, did not count.

Closing the workbook, Ardi returned to the control panel and switched off all the breakers. The Tony doll’s shield immediately vanished in a flash of lilac, and the growl of the generator subsided into a sleepy silence. There was no sense in burning fuel for nothing, dulling the blades, and wearing down the Ertalain crystals—they weren’t the cheapest consumables either.

Stowing the workbook in a cabinet, Ardi took the notes concerning the “Standard Model of the Misty Helper” with him. Not the new version, which, on the whole, did not yet work, but his old design. Now, accompanied by full documentation and after being tested under various conditions and on different shields, it might be of some interest to the Spell Market.

Yes, the Misty Helper had no military applications, and it only worked on shields up to a Blue Star at most, but the latter fact could be easily changed with a few simple modifications.

Stolen from NovelBin, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

What, then, was Ardi hoping for?

He wasn’t actually hoping; he could see the Misty Helper being very useful (helpful, even) during the installation and testing of stationary shields. It would surely be far easier to identify a vulnerability to lockpicks with another seal than to spend hours, days, and even weeks at an arithmometer with strings of monotonous calculations.

So, perhaps he could fetch a dozen exes for his creation. Such a sum was hardly astronomical, but it was far more pleasant and pragmatic to support one’s research if it began to pay for itself, rather than endlessly pouring salaries and bonuses into it, which were far from inexhaustible.

Ardi wasn’t even thinking about profit yet.

The profit, in theory, was supposed to come from the enterprise he and Bazhen were planning, for which the young man needed to settle his affairs in the Firstborn District… And that would be useful for a variety of reasons. If nothing else, Ardi would be able to make purchases on Sleepless Street. Thanks to the art of the Aean’Hane, he, unlike other Star Mages, had little trouble distinguishing between quality Ley-fauna and flora and outright junk.

Placing the documentation and an enlarged diagram of the seal into his bag, Ardi, who was trying to instill a new habit in himself, slid the accumulators onto his fingers. The rings with their crystals looked somewhat out of place on a man’s hand and attracted unwanted attention from the guards, but… Ardan didn’t care. He had made a promise to himself that he would not allow what had happened in Little Viroeira to happen again. And his friends from the forest and his father had taught Ardan to keep his word. Especially a word given to oneself.

As he was leaving the “stables,” the young man made sure all the defensive measures were in place. And, not at all surprisingly, Milar was already waiting for him in the dead-end alley, leaning against the hood of his car and smoking a cigarette.

They exchanged a handshake and Ardi stowed his staff in what had become its traditional storage spot—between the front and back seats. In truth, the young man had grown just as accustomed to the old “Derks” as he had to its driver.

“Is it still in there?”

“What?” Ardi asked.

“The research…” Milar drew the word out meaningfully.

Ardan nodded. Several grimoires that dealt with methods of long-distance communication were still in the cabinet, awaiting their turn.

“Eternal Angels,” the captain rubbed his chin and, taking one last drag, headed for the driver’s seat. “I don’t understand what’s going on in the Colonel’s head for him to leave all this good stuff to you. I just hope he wasn’t mistaken… but if I were in his place, I’d have burned these papers altogether. By the Eternal Angels, I’d have burned them all and forgotten about them entirely. Especially in the current climate.”

Ardan, who’d finally managed to settle into the passenger seat, grunted a short reply.

“Me too, but-”

“The job,” Milar rasped and started the engine, which answered its owner with a similar sound. “And it’s our lot to work it again today. And on such a sunny day… maybe we can get some ice cream?”

“Only if it’s on the way back.”

“On the way back from Peter Oglanov’s? You’re an optimist, Magister.” Milar pulled out of the alley and rolled onto the central avenue of St. Vasyli’s Island. “After Peter Oglanov, you usually want a wash and a drink. Possibly at the same time.”

***

The last time Milar and Ard had visited the “Mitakov Office Center” in the New City, it had been winter. Soldiers’ Brotherhood Avenue had been buried in snow and parked cars; the sidewalk had rattled with pedestrians bundled in warm clothes; the night had been nearly endless, and with it, there’d come a ceaseless dance of lights from signs, headlights, windows, and lamps.

Now, in the middle of a workday, the side street adjoining the avenue where the high-rise was located looked… well, almost exactly as it had in winter. Cleaner, perhaps, and deprived of its former abundance of lights, but still drowning in people, Firstborn, and a diverse array of motor vehicles as well.

One shouldn’t forget that the New City comprised nearly eighty percent of the capital’s total area, and in terms of population density and numbers, only about three hundred thousand people lived in Old Town. All the other nineteen-plus million were here, in the tangled web of endless streets, avenues and skyscrapers of the New City, all piled one atop the other.

But no matter how many times Ardi reminded himself of this, he still sometimes forgot that fact for the simple reason that he didn’t venture out to the skyscrapers all that often. His entire life in the capital had basically unfolded in the city’s central districts.

Milar killed the engine and waited as his partner, hissing like an angry viper the entire time, extricated himself from the car. Taking his staff, Ardi exhaled and shook his head. Every time a new flash of pain struck, he reminded himself that he would not return to a dependency on invigorating concoctions. It would be better to let it ache for a few more days than to turn into a living skeleton again and literally start falling asleep on his feet.

“You look like hell, you know that?” Milar said, knocking a cigarette from its pack with a slap and catching it deftly with his lips.

“After meeting you, Captain, I generally look like this all the time,” the young man responded in a tone that was a little sharper than the situation required.

Milar, who was bringing a lighter to his mouth, only smirked.

“You’re being disingenuous, Magister,” he said, taking a drag and starting toward the main entrance, which was hidden beneath a wide canopy that stretched halfway across the sidewalk. “You started getting into trouble lo-ooo-ong before you and I ever met.”

Ardi wanted to object, but he couldn’t deny the captain’s point. Adventures, which he had disliked since childhood, did not return the sentiment for some reason and found the young man with enviable regularity.

Inside the building, just as last time, they were met by a spacious lobby with sagging, and in places torn, leather sofas. There was no information desk, only crooked and sometimes rotting wooden mailboxes. There was also peeling paint, flickering lights… and only the dry Metropolis summer had spared the room from puddles and slush.

“Still the same hole as before,” Milar remarked, removing his hat and heading for the elevators.

On his last visit, upon seeing the state of the “Temporarily Out of Order” signs standing before the two elevator shafts blocked off with chains, Ardi had assumed that the word “temporarily” had been there since the building’s construction. And it seemed like he had not been mistaken.

Only a single lift was still in operation.

Realizing that taking the stairs would not be the brightest of ideas, however tempting, Ardi trudged after his partner.

Groaning and coughing like a homeless drunk with consumption, the steel box descended on trembling cables, occasionally scraping against the grooves of its steel guides.

Ardi felt a damp chill run down his spine.

Milar, however, acting as if nothing were amiss, stepped inside, turned a lever to close the entrance behind them, and then pressed the button for their desired floor.

Ardi tried to ignore the way the walls gradually narrowed, the way the ceiling pressed down on his shoulders, and how each subsequent breath became more and more difficult to take. Even knowing that Grand Magister Emergold was likely not mistaken and he had indeed developed a fear of enclosed spaces after falling into a crevice as a child did nothing to alleviate his discomfort.

So, when the grilles opened, Ard nearly stumbled out, greedily gulping the stale air of a room that had long forgotten what it was like to be cleaned.

“Maybe you should talk to someone about that, Magister? It’s just… not right, you know.”

Ardan ignored his partner’s advice, which was full of mockery. Every time they had to use an elevator, Milar never missed an opportunity to jest at his colleague’s expense.

They passed a line of other offices and approached the door they needed.

“Peter Oglanov and Associates, Private Detective Agency.” It had a new, brass plaque, which looked more like a gift than something a man like Oglanov would spend money on.

“Stop.”

“Wait.”

The partners exchanged a look.

“You first,” Milar said, stepping aside. He drew his revolver from its holster and shifted the saber at his belt so he could draw it from its sheath at a moment’s notice.

After the incident with the Spiders, the captain no longer left his bladed weapon behind in the car.

Ardi, meanwhile, conjured the seal for Orlovsky’s Shield beneath his feet. He took an extra moment to ensure that twelve barely-transparent discs were indeed circling slowly around him, then pointed the base of his staff at a faint, shimmering dust clinging to the threshold of the room.

“Crystalline Ertalain dust,” the young man explained. “A military accumulator shattered here.”

“Good,” Milar nodded. “I mean, that’s bad, of course, but what can you do. Now, be so kind as to step back.”

Ardan obediently took a step back, and a moment later, without warning, Milar grabbed an empty vase from a nearby table and hurled it at the door. Ardi didn’t even have time to object before the doorknob swelled and transformed into a steel snake, sinking its fangs into the vase and shattering it into tiny pieces. Then, with a somewhat disappointed glint in its artificial, metallic eyes, it dissolved into mist, leaving a hole in the wooden panel of the door.

“A typical Narikhman trap,” Milar growled through clenched teeth. “I won’t even bother to tell you how many of our operatives lost their fingers and hands before we learned to spot them on sight. I think that was the first enchantment that managed to bypass the analyzers.”

Ardan only sighed quietly. If not for the abundance of Ley-cables and various stationary spells on the building, he might have been able to feel the trap with his Speaker’s skills. Even if this had been Old Town instead of the New City, he would have definitely felt it, but here… Discerning anything in the mess that was the endlessly buzzing Ley-field of this place was impossible.

“I get the feeling that we won’t be speaking with Mr. Oglanov today.”

Milar, gesturing behind him, approached the door and opened it with the muzzle of his revolver, his right hand never leaving the hilt of his saber.

Ardan held his modified and enhanced-to-a-Green-Star-level Ice Arrow at the ready, which he had renamed… Ice Spear. Until he finished developing the Ice Bullet, the Spear would likely remain his primary offensive spell.

The cramped room greeted them with a grimy, clouded window hidden behind a wide desk, which was, as usual, buried under papers that had laid siege to an old typewriter.

The secretary was not at her desk. The only evidence she had ever been there at all was a half-drunk, strong coffee that had gone cold in a white ceramic cup.

The door leading directly into the office was wide open, revealing the sagging, short sofa that served as Peter’s bed. Only instead of the portly, jazz-loving, alcohol-respecting old detective, a coat rack now lay upon it.

Besides the sofa, there was also a wide, red mahogany desk, whose lacquer had cracked like broken ice on a frozen puddle. The imprints of bottles and glasses had been permanently sealed into its surface. And, of course, there was an open gun safe in the far corner. It was voluminous enough to hide a decent arsenal within.

And if last time, the place had smelled of alcohol, tobacco, dampness, and debt—more of debt than anything else—now, surprisingly, the air was easy to breathe and didn’t try to strike one across the spine with a heavy, dusty sack.

Milar, after a careful inspection, holstered his revolver.

“There was a party here,” he said, walking over to a simple iron filing cabinet that took up an entire wall in the reception area. “Possibly even with gunshots.”

“The neighbors would have heard, and…” Ardi trailed off. Even he, with only two Stars, had the ability to cast a special shield that would trap all sounds inside it. No, he didn’t already know the spell, but he could buy it.

And considering the trap on the doorknob and the crystalline dust, there had been a mage here.

“You catch on quick,” Milar snorted, pulling out the archive drawers one by one. “If you’re going to ask why they then enchanted the handle and covered their tracks… that’s how the Narikhman work. Consider it their signature.”

Ardan, listening intently to his senses, ready to raise additional shields at any moment, approached the secretary’s desk. He brought his face right up to her chair and, closing his eyes, drew in a noisy breath through his nose.

“Dammit, Ard… you just outdid Din.”

“Have you called them yet?”

In response, Milar shook his activated signal medallion. And judging by the arrow on it, Din Arnson and Alexander Ursky wouldn’t arrive for at least half an hour. They must have been somewhere far away.

“Smell anything?” Milar asked without a hint of irony, flipping through a file from one of the cases.

“The last time someone sat in this chair was about five days ago. A young woman.”

“That precise?” Milar was slightly surprised. “How can you be so sure?”

“You don’t want to know the details,” Ardi warned him honestly.

Milar shot him a suspicious look but didn’t press for more. Instead, he returned the file to the archive and, taking in the whole scene with a thoughtful gaze, spread his arms out.

“They were clearly looking for something here, but they didn’t find it.”

“Why?”

Milar stood next to his partner and gently ran his fingers over the papers on the desk, reading the headlines. There were mostly unpaid bills and… newspaper clippings. But nothing specific or clearly pointing to anything concrete.

“How about you think for yourself, Mr. Junior Investigator?”

Ardan surveyed the room and immediately answered his own question.

“If they had found what they’d been looking for, they wouldn’t have needed to abduct Mr. Oglanov and his assistant.”

“What makes you so sure they were abducted?”

“Am I being tested?” Ardi countered with a question of his own.

“No,” Milar waved him off. “But as the last few weeks have shown, you tend to get into scrapes on your own as well, so I’m going to make sure that, should the need arise, you’ll be able to gather the necessary information.”

Ardan sighed and pointed first to the coffee, then to the walls by the door, the chair, and finally, the coat rack.

“Everything indicates that when they entered, the assistant was sitting at her desk, and the detective was lying on the sofa. The assistant was likely subdued first, with magic. Oglanov had time to react—he knocked over the coat rack in his haste—then opened the safe, but he didn’t have time to shoot.”

“Why didn’t he have time?”

“Because there are no bullet holes in the walls.”

Milar smirked and, motioning for Ardi to step aside, bent down and pointed a finger at… an obvious gouge in the leg of the desk, which Ardi hadn’t noticed at first.

“When a person shoots in an emergency, they usually aim at their own eye level,” Milar explained. “Peter was lying on the sofa, so he shot lower than you expected.”

Ardan just gave a short nod. In this craft, he was still no match for Milar.

“But that was good. Very good, even,” the senior investigator praised. “So why do you think they took them and didn’t kill them?”

“Because then they wouldn’t have bothered to get rid of the bodies and, as always, would have cut out their eyes.”

Milar hummed something unintelligible and waggled his hand back and forth.

“That’s weak, Ard,” he grimaced. “You can do better.”

Ardan thought it over for a moment.

“Because there are no signs of a search,” Ardi offered, a little uncertainly. “And they had a mage with them… so a search wouldn’t be necessary. The information could have been extracted with…”

The young man shuddered, remembering how Indgar had threatened him with various instruments of torture. A mage didn’t need such tools. Only a branch of Star Magic forbidden by the Al’Zafir Pact. And it was unlikely the Narikhman respected any pacts.

“They couldn’t extract the information, so they took them along,” Milar finished for his partner. “Good, Ard. Not bad. Now let’s look for the clue he left us. Because…”

“Because a man like Mr. Oglanov would have to have a backup plan.”

Milar snapped his fingers and nodded. And while Ardi was pondering where to start looking, the captain, almost swaggering, walked over to Oglanov’s writing desk with its flaking lacquer petals.

“The sofa’s been moved,” Milar said, nodding toward the scratches on the floor that had clearly been left by the iron caps on its legs. “But after Oglanov fired, because the gunpowder residue is on the floor, not the upholstery. Which means he moved it himself. Possibly when they were torturing him. So…”

The captain braced his foot against the wall and pulled the heavy desk toward him with all his strength. Moving it aside, he peered at the side panel.

“Come here, Magister,” Milar beckoned him over.

Ardi approached, looked closely, and saw a message that had been scratched into the wood and was covered in bits of fingernail and dried blood:

“Eord.”

“I hope this isn’t like ‘Bri-&-Man,’ Ard,” the captain said, stepping away to look out the window. “Because this time, we’re not postponing anything. We’re going to the port right now.”

“What about Din and Alexander?”

Milar swore.

“Well, damn it all… Here we go again, postponing…”

“Only for half an hour.”

“Oh, go to the demons, Magister.”