Matabar

Book II. Chapter 25 - Andrew, Lusha and Zirka

“Alright, let’s re-establish the timeline,” Milar said, leaning against the hood of his car. He was working his way through a sandwich, one he’d bought from a cafe not far from the Castle Tower.

Like Ardi, who, at that very moment, was tearing into a strip of tough bear jerky with his teeth—a sight that drew startled looks from passersby but not so much as a flicker of emotion from his partner, Milar had felt no desire to linger in the skyscraper any longer than circumstances demanded.

Every time something had whistled, short and sharp, or let out the barest whisper of a squeak, or worse, a stuttering clap, the two of them had stood shoulder-to-shoulder, staring for a long moment in the direction of the sound. Neither of them had wanted to further fray their nerves that had already been stretched taut, so they’d bid farewell to the sailor-turned-concierge and left the building.

“About ten months ago, the Puppeteers burned Anvar Riglanov’s apartment to the ground.” Milar punctuated the thought with the crunch of a lettuce leaf, wiping a smear of mustard from his stubble. “A little-known writer of fairy tales, a man for whom luck was a stranger. And the one time he drew a winning ticket, it turned out to be a front-row seat to a bloody soiree starring demons and the Dark Aean’Hane.”

Ardan tore off another strip of meat and nodded.

“Or perhaps it was a little more than that,” the young man added. “Maybe it happened a couple of months before His Imperial Majesty’s coronation.”

“Which, on the whole, doesn’t change the big picture,” Milar said, waving his sandwich. “At the moment of Anvar’s death, the Puppeteers released some… some…” The captain, seeing two women walking past them, choked on his next word, thumped his chest, and continued without the profanity. “A big creature. A Dark Sidhe.”

“It would be simpler to call it a demon than a Dark-”

“Oh, by the Face of Light, call it brown, call it crimson, call it polka-dotted for all I care,” Milar pleaded, cutting him off. “Anvar himself, before he died, managed to use his knowledge of the Fae and pull the Sidhe of the Burning Dawn over to our side.”

“Roughly.”

“Why roughly?” The captain asked, his eyes narrowing.

Ardan sighed and, after taking off his hat, tilted his head back. He let the warm summer breeze drift over his face, his nose catching the muted scents of flowers carried to them from the Central District. They’d fought their way through the dense curtain of the New City’s smells—diesel, cement, and fresh asphalt—and had then hurried on, following the wind.

“I have no idea how he managed it.”

“What do you mean, Magister?”

“Even if the veil had been torn, a knowledge of fairy tales alone isn’t enough to free anyone from a prison in the City on the Hill. If it were that simple, then…” Ardi opened his eyes and looked out at the bustling street. “I don’t know, Milar. It just sounds strange.”

“But you’re sure that’s what happened?” The captain asked.

After a short pause, Ardi nodded.

“Then the details don’t really matter right now.” The captain once again picked out a half-moon of pickled onion from his sandwich. He couldn’t stand them. “So, Anvar frees the Sidhe of the Burning Dawn. It takes on Anvar’s appearance and worms its way into the Spiders’ trust, while also introducing itself to you in the guise of two ice cream sellers in order to make a deal.”

“That’s right.”

“Then Anvar the Sidhe orchestrates that whole mess at the ‘Heron,’ passes himself off as Aror’s non-existent student, gives us a clue about the airship, fakes his own death… or the death of the already-dead Anvar he was impersonating, even though he was already dead… Damnation! It’s enough to drive a man insane! Alright… And at the very end, you give him, the Sidhe of the Burning Dawn, the Sidhe Flame, and he gives us the wave.”

“Gives us the wave?”

“Says goodbye… Eternal Angels, Ard,” Milar said, genuinely exasperated. “You’ve been working at the Black House for half a year and living in the house of the Jackets for a year, and you still don’t understand street slang?”

Ardi just shrugged. He enjoyed learning other languages. If you read a book in its original tongue, whether it was fairy tales and legends or the works of the Aean’Hane or the Star Mages, and not a translation, you could stumble upon details that had blurred or had even vanished entirely in the retelling. But no one wrote books in the slang of thieves and gangsters, so Ardan didn’t have much of a grasp on it yet. Only a surface level understanding.

“Fine, it doesn’t matter,” Milar waved it away again. “Something else does. Do you know what?”

Ardan thought about it for a moment.

“That’s a rather long time…” The young man drew out.

“Uh-huh, good, keep going.”

“And… in all that time… no one noticed the presence of a demon in the city.”

Milar snapped his fingers and gave him a satisfied smile, simultaneously wiping away more mustard. This time, it was on his nose.

“And now, after all this time, that very same demon kidnaps Andrew’s younger brother. The same Andrew who, eight months ago, gave the Jackets and the Dandy the shield layout on Baliero’s Fifth Street. The same Andrew who was shot by Alla-Lisa, the mutant and face-changer who served the Puppeteers and helped the Spiders… And half the criminal underworld of the Metropolis is now searching for her body…” Milar tossed the last piece of his sandwich into his mouth, wiped his hands with a napkin, and with a neat toss, sent it into a nearby bin. “If I hadn’t been stewing in all this fairy-tale bullshit with you for the last seven months, Magister, I’d think I was talking to a madman. And considering that was my own monologue just now, I’d drive myself to the asylum.”

Milar gestured for his partner to follow and, opening the car door, dove behind the wheel.

“He kidnapped Oglanov, too,” Ardi added, wrapping the rest of the bear jerky in a handkerchief and tucking it into an inner pocket as he settled into the car.

“You think it was the demon?” The captain turned the ignition key, and they merged into the stream of traffic.

“Most likely,” Ardan nodded. “And he most likely didn’t become one until recently.”

“Why?”

“Because we found the remains of a military accumulator by the door,” Ardi reminded him, opening his notebook as he spoke. Thankfully, it was not as quick to part with its blank pages as his grimoire. “And on the door, a trap from the Narikhman repertoire was waiting for us.”

“Could they have brought it with them?”

“They could have, but…” Ardan took another deep breath and leaned back against the seat, allowing his exhausted body to finally snatch a few moments of well-deserved rest from the madness of the day. “Remember when we were dealing with the Weeper, how I told you that because of the Ley-wiring, the generators, the sheer amount of iron, and the concentration of Star Mages, it’s almost impossible for Fae, anomalies and demons to exist in the capital?”

“I remember,” Milar nodded, shivering slightly. “I’d like to forget it, but I remember.”

“Well then,” Ardi turned a page and showed the captain a black-and-white photograph pasted to it, which had been cut from a literary journal.

After his recent conversation with John Brolid, the organizer of the Magical Boxing tournament in the Metropolis, Ardi had become somewhat intrigued by John’s view on novels. Anvar had been a writer, after all, albeit an unsuccessful one, so he must have been published somewhere. And he’d been receiving royalties, otherwise he couldn’t have afforded the rent in the Castle Tower.

Tess, who had a fondness for novels, had recommended a list of journals to Ardi. He, in turn, had procured old issues from the city library, where copies were kept for a full half-century due to the law.

Of course, defacing them and cutting out photographs was not exactly legal, but these were special circumstances. Besides, the Colonel had given them practically unlimited authority…

“That’s-”

“Anvar Riglanov,” Ardi nodded. “In the flesh.”

In the photograph, the same old man from the “Heron” was looking back at them. He wore a white top hat, though without the strange-looking goggles near the top of it. He had a wizened face with a thick, snow-white mustache. The same kind of beard was almost touching his drooping earlobes. Only his gaze was different. More… open, perhaps. Despite his venerable age, there was something a little childlike about it.

“And what’s the point of this photograph, Ard?” Milar turned back to the road. “We already know that the Sidhe created an illusion… If you remember that casino, you already know that it was basically all fake.”

“I thought so too,” Ardi flipped a page and ran his eyes over his next set of notes. “Until we ran into the Weeper, which had been placed inside an ordinary suit of armor.”

“Go on.”

“Why would the Puppeteers just summon a demon? Especially in the bracket of their own… asset.” At the captain’s hard look, Ardi changed the term. “In the house of their own asset.”

“That’s better,” the captain nodded. “And as for your question—I have no idea.”

“Look, they were experimenting on Trevor Man’s and Le’mrity’s ship, right? All those illegal experiments with werewolves, mutants, chimeras, and vampires.”

The captain, who’d stopped next to a traffic controller, opened his cigarette case.

“You think they were conducting other experiments.” Milar took out a cigarette and, placing it between his lips, never lit it. Apparently, he was once again trying to, if not quit, then at least not smell so strongly of tobacco. “Especially since, if we combine the facts known to us, Magister, the word ‘demon’ was related to the kidnapping of your friend, Lord Fahtov. And then again to the Staff of Demons, which never played a role in the story with the Spiders and Professor Morimer.”

“Exactly!” Ardi nearly exclaimed. “Now look. We have a dead Anvar Riglanov, who is being impersonated by the Sidhe of the Burning Dawn. A Sidhe, just so you know, is the highest aristocracy of the Fae. The most powerful of the-”

“I remember, Magister.” Milar tapped his temple with a finger. “So just keep explaining.”

“Ah… right… okay,” Ardi faltered slightly. “The Sidhe of the Burning Dawn is too powerful, or his Ley field is too dense, to exist in the Metropolis. So an illusion, Milar, is out of the question. And so, he most likely-”

The captain choked and jerked the steering wheel so hard they nearly flew onto the pavement. After wrestling the old “Derks” back into its lane, Milar, growing pale, turned to Ardi.

“He… possessed Anvar Riglanov’s body? Like that Weeper possessed the suit of armor?”

Ardan closed his notebook and gave him a short nod.

“It’s the only explanation for what happened.”

The captain swore. Viciously, but also amusingly. He mentioned the amorous entanglements of donkeys with everyone who had ever conducted any research in the field of demonology. Maybe their ancestors as well? Ardi didn’t quite get a couple of the slang words.

“…and those who financed it all,” Milar finished his angry tirade.

“Any biological organism has its own Ley-charge, and consequently, a Ley field,” Ardan continued. “For example, non-star science has a theory that if it weren’t for the Ley, the physical capabilities of even the human race would be much lower.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, Milar, that you wouldn’t have survived your fall from the window when that Homeless Fae exploded after our visit to Alla-Lisa’s apartment.”

Milar’s eyes widened. Not due to shock at yet another paradox of Star Science, but because of the small detail they had missed back then.

“She had been living there for weeks… That snake creature…”

“Yes,” Ardan nodded. “Only I didn’t pay it any mind back then because it wasn’t exactly a demon, and she had only copied the physical form, not possessed anything.”

“And you think that this was also one of the Puppeteers’ experiments?” Milar picked up the thread. “From the same field?”

“More like a product of those experiments,” Ardi confirmed his guess. “And if you put it all together, it turns out…”

“They’re looking for a way to allow a powerful demon to exist among us, and for that…”

“For that, they’re experimenting with possession.”

Milar slammed his hand on the steering wheel, nearly hitting the horn.

“But that’s just fairy tales, Magister! Old, gruesome fairy tales from a time even before Gales! It’s straight out of legends about the Old Gods and prehistoric times!”

“The Holy Inquisition wouldn’t agree with you and-”

“They only exist in Enario these days…” Milar interrupted him, then immediately caught himself. “Where they sent Sergeant Mendera’s squad, which led to the creation of the Dead Lands. And also…”

“And Sergeant Mendera and his men were also connected to the Sidhe Flame, which has already featured in the Puppeteers case.”

Milar swore again. This time, it was short and to the point.

“Is that even possible, Magister? Possession?”

“Star Science doesn’t know the answer to that question,” Ardan answered honestly. “Maybe the Dark Aean’Hane know, but the scroll I read in Atta’nha’s library didn’t mention possession.”

“What did it say, then?”

Ardan didn’t answer right away.

“You don’t want to know…”

“Fair enough… But if you’re right and the Sidhe of the Burning Dawn really did possess…” Milar fell silent again and struck the wheel once more. “Eternal Angels! That’s most likely how he was able to worm his way into the Spiders’ trust. It’s unlikely this possession is as simple as it sounds. But he could have passed off any injuries as damaged Stars, which would only have added realism to his cover story. Well, shit…”

They fell silent for a time. Outside the “Derks,” the scenery had changed again. This time, the skyscrapers had begun to gradually give way to wide, sprawling fences. Not the simple kind like at the port, but massive, heavy brick structures, though still topped with the ever-present barbed wire.

There were many wide steel gates through which loaded trucks were constantly passing. Unlike the trucks at the port, these often carried processed materials or manufactured goods. Even so, about half the cargo was fuel. As far as Ardi knew from Bazhen, the city council hadn’t issued a permit for the factory district to build a gas pipeline and storage facility, nor, for that matter, a fuel pipeline with similar storage. The justification was that the factories were still being built and the city was still growing, and perhaps the factories would eventually be relocated and residential areas would appear in their place, so everything would have to be redone.

Bazhen, however, claimed that the freight companies hired by the factories had a reach that was far too “long” in the city council.

After passing several industrial zones interspersed with flea markets (Ardi had been to a few of them more than once, buying clothes, shoes, and various second-hand tools for Star Science), they finally drove into the Tendari district.

The buildings around them shrank, now three or four stories at most, which was a stark contrast to the New City’s towering giants. They also looked dejected and modest. The brickwork was devoid of any facing or decoration. The sidewalks brazenly sported broken paving stones, like a hooligan showing off his bruises and a bleeding lip after a fight.

The roadway, instead of having smooth asphalt, grumbled under their wheels with potholes and ruts. And no matter how hard Milar tried to avoid them, he kept hitting small pits hidden under puddles of mud.

The captain swore and drove on.

And the farther they went, the deeper they plunged into the Tendari district, the darker the already gloomy sky became. And the air, despite the closed windows of the car, smelled of coal, dirt, gas, and something akin to gasoline. It was the smell of crude oil mixed with diesel fumes.

Ardi remembered that smell well. He had become saturated with it the last time he’d come here, when he and Arkar had risked a visit to the establishment of the Crimson Lady. And something told Ardan that a repeat visit was in order…

They stepped out onto the street and, despite the early evening, which hadn’t even had time to don its twilight attire due to the fact that the period of the Metropolis’ light summer nights was nearing its end but wasn’t over quite yet, the sidewalk and road had already been plunged into a light, autumnal gloom. It was that time when it’s still not dark enough overhead for the streetlights to come on, but the mind would already refuse to perceive the time of day as light.

Coughing, Ardan wiped his face and looked up at the sky. It was drowning under the thick fumes of indifferent smokestacks sitting atop countless plants and factories. Like hundreds of brushes wielded by an industrial-scale artist, they were generously painting the high azure in all the possible shades of gray and black, transforming the space above the heads of the passersby into an exact copy of the puddles of fuel and diesel spilled beneath their feet.

“You need this?” Milar offered Ardi a small jar of ointment for his nose, to block the smell.

“No,” Ardi declined.

Last time, because of that ointment, he hadn’t been able to immediately sense the presence of the Homeless Fae. That lesson had been learned well enough.

“So that’s why this powerful demon of yours…” Milar laced those last few words with a hefty dose of sarcasm. It wasn’t directed at his partner, but rather at the situation itself. “…has managed not only to hide for so long, but to exist in the Metropolis at all. Someone is possessed by it.”

“Most likely.”

He and Milar were soon standing before the house they were looking for. It was no different from its neighbors: a three-story building of red brick with wooden shutters instead of glass in some of the windows. A low porch, raised just above the sidewalk, grinned like a homeless drunkard, baring broken steps, a crooked railing, and a stoop that sagged to one side. On the roof, which looked as if it were about to collapse inward, several chimneys jutted out, occasionally spitting out gray clouds of smoke, like a man suffering from consumption.

“I have a very unpleasant theory, Magister.”

“And what’s that?”

“If everything had gone oh so wonderfully for the Puppeteers at the Castle Tower, they wouldn’t have needed to burn down Anvar’s apartment,” the captain said, untying the cord from the hilt of his saber. He spun the cylinder of his revolver and hung a few spare “moons” on his belt for a quick reload. “They didn’t do it at Alla-Lisa’s place. Which means…”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“That they only started the fire because something went wrong.”

He and Milar exchanged a look.

“You think the demon might not have agreed to cooperate with the Puppeteers?”

“In the tales about wizards of old, they say that when a demon is summoned, its will is bound so that it cannot escape.”

“In the tales…” Milar snorted. “But could, for example, this demon of yours have possessed, say, the body of a Narikhman Star Mage before having a disagreement with two Aean’Hane, resulting in the apartment being burned down?”

“Ahgrat.”

“So that’s a yes,” the captain nodded. “And could, let’s say, the tales of your mentor Atta’nha, the ones the Aean’Hane elf was searching for, have contained some stories about demons, possession, and all that? And not about artifacts of the past, as we assumed last fall.”

“You already know the answer to that question, Milar.”

“I’m just hoping so hard it makes me want to quit right now, Magister, that you’ll answer in the negative.”

Ardi remained silent.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.”

“You’re repeating yourself.”

“Oh, go to hell, Ard,” the captain groaned like a wounded boar. “I liked it much better when you didn’t understand the concept of humor.”

“I still don’t understand it very well,” Ardi assured his partner. “But I’m trying to figure it out.”

“How about you figure it out when you’re not on duty.”

They fell silent. Both of them were standing at the porch, staring at the building. It creaked faintly in the wind due to its rotting shutters, wooden beams grown thin from time and neglect cracking from time to time. And then there was the howl. A long, muffled sound. It was as if, while listening closely at the mouth of a deep well, you could just make out someone’s hopeless, plaintive groan begging for help. A moan filled with the ultimate realization that help would not come.

The building had clearly been empty for a long time. And if anyone dwelled here, it was the ghosts of a past that could not be called bright by even the most optimistic people in the world.

“And here we are again, crawling into some asshole,” Milar pressed the button on his signal medallion. “And once again, it’s connected to demons.”

“He’s probably not in there.”

“Dammit, Ard! The whole building looks like it crawled right out of the ass of That-Which-is-in-Darkness!”

Ardi flinched. As did Milar. At his own words, no less. Only once had Ardan heard someone talk about That-Which-is-in-Darkness—Duchess Anorsky. Or maybe he hadn’t heard it. Maybe, for just a moment, he had heard what the Duchess had been thinking when she’d spoken with Senhi’Sha.

His mother, like all followers of the Face of Light, had taught Ardi not just to never speak of That-Which-is-in-Darkness, but to never even think of it.

So Milar was clearly on edge.

“I’m talking to the Colonel this very evening,” the captain ground out. “If we’re going to keep wading through all this stinking splendor, then he can relieve Alexander and Din from participating in general field operations. Otherwise, you and I will definitely… one day…” The captain exhaled, leaving the thought unfinished. “Alright, Magister, let’s go in. We check everything carefully. We shoot demons on sight. As for people… we do it only if they look like demons or have bad breath.”

“But wh-”

“It was a joke, you fool,” Milar rolled his eyes. “And don’t forget, whoever gets hurt is…”

“A Fatian,” Ardan finished their department’s favorite saying.

“There’s a good lad.” The captain drew his saber. Holding it in his right hand, his revolver in his left, he climbed the porch steps and, as was his habit, pushed the wooden door inward with the barrel of his gun. The hinges, weary of life and long deprived of grease, let out an unpleasant squeal. “Let’s go.”

They went inside. Both of them immediately propped the door open with a rotting plank that had slid down from the wall. Lessons learned in the past had taught them to do so. The walls, as was customary in such houses, had once been paneled with wood. Only not with the wide panels fashionable in modern times, but with long, narrow ones. Now blackened and covered in mold, soot, and a dark, swampy slime, they resembled the fingers of an undead creature scratching at a sheer wall in a futile attempt to climb out of the darkness of a bottomless abyss.

The few surviving pieces of herringbone parquet still covered the collapsed floorboards, beneath which something gurgled and bubbled unpleasantly in the flooded basement.

With every step they took, clouds of dust rose into the air. Thick and viscous, they clung to their clothes and tried to touch their skin to leave their heavy, musty traces upon it. And the air. The air was thick, suffocating, a felt rope wrapping around the throat and stuffing itself into the gullet like a rotten rag that hadn’t known anything but a dirty bucket and stale water for decades.

Ardan wiped the foul saliva from his mouth with a handkerchief and put it away in an inside pocket. He wasn’t entirely convinced that these sensations were being caused solely by the desolation and the fallout of factory smog. Perhaps if he could analyze his own saliva in his new alchemical laboratory, he would learn something more.

Thoughts of the spacious “Aversky Stables” distracted his mind a little from his surroundings, and it became easier to breathe, although the mustiness and dampness still stung his mind like persistent mosquitoes.

“An underground profit house was once here,” Milar said quietly. The captain was walking almost sideways, holding his saber in front of him with the hilt parallel to the floor. That way, he could rest the handle of his revolver on its flat surface. Ardi had seen a similar stance before—Yonatan Kornosskiy had done something like this as well. “Do you know what that is?”

“Yes.”

Katerina had told him about such places during their journey across the prairie. These were houses that served as cheap brothels, where the workers (both male and female) could only boast about the sheer variety of venereal diseases they had. But it didn’t end with brothels.

Shops selling counterfeit weapons, dens for drug addicts, and of course, the infamous laboratories for producing Angel Dust—the most widespread drug in the world.

And all this “splendor” belonged to the Narikhman, making them arguably the most powerful underground organization on the western continent.

The Second Chancery had solved this problem by pulling the weeds out by the roots. And only faint traces like this house remained as a reminder of bygone days.

Ardi sometimes wondered if the fall of the Narikhman and their retreat deep underground had ignited a bloody and brutal gang war for the redistribution of spheres of influence, one in which Saint Eord had held a short-lived lead until he was outmaneuvered by a then-young Arthur “The Dandy” Belsky.

It was as Skusty had used to say: “One cannot do good without causing evil. Such is the dream of the Sleeping Spirits.”

Milar, upon reaching the turn where the staircase should be, pressed his shoulder against the corner and immediately winced. A drop of viscous slime mixed with soot, dust and grime had trickled onto his shoulder. Suppressing a gag, the captain cursed and took a sharp step to the side. Ardi, who was already mentally “touching” the accumulators on his fingers, was ready to conjure a shield and use his new Ice Spear at any moment.

But it was only a few clearly sick pigeons that, with a flap of their wings, flew out through a crooked, empty window frame. The staircase itself, rotten and bristling with rusty nails, maintained an orphaned silence. And only the traces of a somewhat clumsy repair job—where the old planks of the steps had been replaced… with planks that were still old, just with fewer splinters—hinted that it had ever been used at all.

Though not for a long time.

“And what happened to Andrew’s younger sister?” Milar whispered over his shoulder.

The captain approached the stairs and tested the strength of the structure with the heel of his shoe. It creaked and moaned like a dying mare, but could still hold the weight of a grown man.

“She was placed in a year-round children’s boarding house,” Ardi answered, trying to walk in such a way that he could always touch the wall with his staff in an instant. “Arkar took care of it.”

“A boarding house? The kind where they treat consumption?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure she had consumption? It’s a contagious thing. Her brothers would have fallen ill, too.”

Ardan opened his mouth and then closed it. He had no idea what sort of ailment the younger sister had had that had driven Andrew to risk his life in a very dangerous venture. And, in the end, he hadn’t just risked it, but had outright met the Eternal Angels after all.

And if it hadn’t been for Arkar’s casual remark about how he had indeed helped the sister of his treacherous “employee,” Ardi would have known nothing at all about her fate.

“I see,” was all Milar said.

There was no point in complaining or blaming anyone here. They couldn’t have possibly imagined that the connection between Andrew and his family and the events in the city had extended beyond a failed attempt to deceive two gangs at once.

They climbed first to the second floor, and then to the third. In some places, the floor had collapsed so much that one could see the gaping abyss of the previous floors through them, across a full seven meters of space.

Some sections had been covered by boards that had been nailed in place clumsily despite the care clearly put into the work. Taken from warehouse pallets, they served as a kind of bridge thrown over the gaps. Walking across them, given the depth of the chasm underfoot, was not very comforting, but there wasn’t much of a choice.

“And how big is this demon supposed to be?” Milar ground out through clenched teeth, carefully stepping on the not-so-reliable platforms.

Apparently, the captain was remembering the creature the Spiders had used in the temple of the Old Gods.

“I already told you back when we were dealing with the Weeper that for the Fae and demons, their physical form is not the same as it is for us.” Ardi secretly hoped that they wouldn’t have to jump out of a window again. “It’s all about Ley-particles and the Ley field… so I can’t answer your question.”

“Wonderful,” the captain exhaled with clear dissatisfaction.

“But I can say for sure that there are no demons or Homeless Fae here.”

“The smell?”

Ardi was about to just nod in response, but seeing that Milar had his back to him, he answered simply:

“The smell. It doesn’t smell of sulfur or swamp here.”

“Got it.”

After passing through a corridor where the tatters of dust-caked cobwebs hung from the ceiling, and where the wind often came in through wide holes in the walls, the partners reached a door. The only door in the entire corridor.

In other places, instead of doors, dirty mats hung on crooked jambs and frames, but even those were long torn and almost decayed. The building was clearly uninhabited, except for one single apartment on the third floor. Apparently, the brothers and sister had climbed far away from the basement dampness.

Milar showed him two fingers, then one, and then rammed the door with his shoulder. It flew off its hinges (it had been holding on by a thread and a couple of short, unsuitable screws) and crashed to the floor. The room… was clean. As clean as it could possibly be.

The walls were painted with different colors. For example, the hallway was gray, part of the living room wall boasted a satin shade of blue, and the opposite wall was white. They had apparently used whatever they could scrounge or trade for at the nearby factories. On the floor, acting as a carpet, lay the cut and sewn-together pieces of various sacks. The kind often used for hauling coal. The ceiling had been patched with pieces of inferior scraps that the “wood” factories usually sold by the kilo at the markets. In poor districts, people used them to fuel their stoves.

In fact, one such stove could be found here.

It was in the living room, which, judging by the number of beds in it, had also served as a bedroom and a kitchen as well. There was also an old, pot-bellied, cast-iron stove with a compartment for wood, a grate, a heavy, flat lid that one could cook on, and the long sleeve of an iron pipe going straight up to the roof. It would likely provide enough heat to keep warm in the evenings, and on warm days, it could serve as a stove.

There were three beds.

Two of them had not been used for a long time. The one nearest the exit, however, judging by the state of its cheap but well-kept—clearly often washed and even ironed—bedding, had been used relatively recently.

It had belonged to Lusha. That was the younger brother’s name. The older one was Andrew. The sister was Zirka. And the younger brother was Lusha.

Ardi walked over to the wooden beds arranged in a triangle around the stove, and ran his fingers over a headboard. Dust. Cobwebs. He also felt dried tears and crystals of frozen laughter, as invisible as they were weightless.

They had been sad here. They had laughed here. Hugged. Parted. Met again. And been sad again.

They had lived.

In a dead house that was more like a crypt than anything else, a small hearth full of life had been discovered. Real. Hot. Sincere.

“Look,” Milar pulled a box from under the bed that held a few simple, homemade toys.

There was a clumsily-carved doll in a dress sewn from colorful scraps of fabric. And a little soldier who had a dry stick instead of a rifle. A leather ball. A couple of pieces of chalk. The same chalk that had been used to draw pictures on the white wall next to the bed closest to the stove. A yellow, smiling sun. A blue stream framing a beautiful little house, nestled among flowers and clouds.

Two brothers and a sister…

“Let’s skip the sentimentality,” Milar said, walking over to the window.

The murky glass, which had clearly been installed a very long time ago, was covered by old, misshapen, knitted curtains. The kind that were once popular in Old Town. You could still occasionally find them in the most hidden corners of the central districts.

“Alright,” Ardi agreed, but it was hard for him to ignore the similarities.

He had a younger brother too. And a sister. Only it was Erti who was sick, not Kena…

He missed them. Them... Yes, he had strange feelings for Kena, who shared only half his blood, feelings that couldn’t be called sibling love. More like a warmth. Not unconditional, but the kind he had learned over five and a half years of living under the same roof.

Ardi understood that now.

But he missed them no less for it.

“What do you think?” Milar asked, opening one of the small cabinets that had most likely been brought here from the same factories as the wood scraps.

In one of them, judging by the smell and how well it had been cared for, they’d stored food. Grains, bread, and other things that didn’t spoil.

And in the other, their few clothing items.

“Andrew was killed a year ago,” Ardan said, walking past the most neglected bed. “A couple of weeks after that, Arkar got Zirka out of here.” Ardi passed another bed, upon which a few yellow stains remained. No matter how much you washed the linen, if the sick person couldn’t get up, the stain would set in so deeply that you couldn’t easily get it out. “Lusha was the last one left. But he only disappeared from the port a couple of weeks ago.”

Milar snapped his fingers.

“What the demons, Magister, was the boy doing here all this time, if his older brother and sister left this fine establishment a year ago?”

It was a good question indeed. Ardan walked over to the last bed. It still smelled of a person. Not enough time had passed for the dampness and mustiness to reclaim the last bastion of resisting light in this kingdom of darkness and desolation.

Why would Lusha stay here?

Maybe Ardi didn’t know Arkar well enough to say for sure that the half-orc had a big heart, but Arkar treated children with a special kind of reverence. He wouldn’t have paid any mind to the fact that he’d owed Lusha nothing. He hadn’t really owed Zirka anything, either. Her brother had died because of his own foolishness and shortsightedness. Nothing else.

And so Arkar would have sent not only Zirka to the boarding house, but her brother as well.

Why, in that case, hadn’t the half-orc done it? Because Lusha wasn’t there at the time. He had hidden.

Why?

What could make a boy—hungry, not very healthy, wearing rags and perpetually covered in soot and grime, breaking his back doing a grown-up’s job at the port—refuse a golden ticket and make him stay in an empty apartment? In a place where there was no more laughter, no more joy, only sadness and a grief that ate away at everything around it. Like mold. Or maybe they were one and the same. Black mold and apathy of the same color…

There was only one answer.

“He was trying to find out what happened to Andrew.”

“Right,” Milar, who had stepped aside and taken out a cigarette, nodded. “Lusha stayed here to figure out the details behind his brother’s death. But that’s another discrepancy.”

“Everyone knew that Andrew tried to outplay the Dandy and the Jackets, and that he paid the price for it,” Ardan said, walking over to the drawings and running his hand over them. He heard laughter. Felt the hot sparks of joy.

It was amazing that even in such a godforsaken place, people could manage to preserve little islands of happiness. And hope. Hope was, perhaps, even more present than happiness.

“So the conclusion is different.” The captain hadn’t put away his revolver and saber, but you could tell his anxiety had subsided. “What is it, Magister?”

Ardi understood that Milar had most likely put together the full picture of what had happened as soon as he’d seen all the clues and had already figured out the motives of all the participants. And now he was “torturing” his partner.

He reminded Ardi of his forest friends/mentors whenever he did this.

“Lusha didn’t believe what he’d heard on the streets.”

For the umpteenth time, Milar snapped his fingers.

“You’re making progress, Magister.” The captain’s lighter couldn’t strike a spark in the damp air, so he waved his hand and left his cigarette unlit. “The kid had very good reasons to be suspicious about how Andrew died and to try and figure out the truth. Especially since if Arkar paid for the girl’s boarding school, then why go through all that trouble to earn those exes? Remember, Franz said the boy was pinching every kso to pay for his sick sister’s expenses.”

Ardi remembered.

The details really didn’t want to “stick” together.

“The Crimson Lady,” Ardi suggested. “She was somehow involved in what happened. The Spiders found her somehow, right? And Mariandat’s opinion is that a vampire kidnapped one of her workers. It’s too many coincidences for a simple… coincidence. Lusha could have heard something on the street that would have made him visit her. Hence his need for money.”

Milar sat down on the cold surface of the stove and thought about it for a moment.

“It sounds interesting, of course.” The captain tapped his chin with the barrel of his revolver. “The old prostitute certainly shouldn’t have shared that information about the warehouse with Arkar. The Puppeteers could have made it look like she owed them.”

“And high-ranking officials sometimes visit the Crimson Lady’s establishment.”

“Not high enough,” Milar corrected. “Because otherwise, they’d be visiting the Black Lotus, but you’re right. The Crimson Lady works with very wealthy citizens, even if they don’t quite reach the level of the Lotus.”

“And also, unlike the Lotus, she doesn’t need to worry about the reputation of her establishment,” Ardi added, slightly taken aback.

Milar looked at him with unconcealed pride.

“The children. You think she might have been involved in the business with the children.”

Ardi remembered Inga, with whom Arkar had had a brief and very pointed conversation. Inga had looked like a woman who knew the price of everything, herself first and foremost. A long time ago, the world had hung not just a label on her, but a price tag. Like in a butcher’s shop. And now Inga was returning the favor. Instead of other people’s faces, she saw only the number of exes that this or that human was “worth.” Or Firstborn. Or… child.

“She could have,” Ardi nodded.

“But the Six, unlike the Narikhman, don’t touch children,” Milar pointed out. “Because they don’t look for trouble.”

“The Lady isn’t in the Six.”

“I know,” the captain nodded. “And that’s exactly why we can consider this… So, the kid heard something somewhere. And he decided to find out the details. And to do that… he tried to get something out of the prostitutes? The ones who usually warm their own ears on pillows? That sounds far-fetched, Magister. And the Lady would have definitely suspected something if a ragged boy had kept coming to her and ordering girls with all his exes.”

Ardi hissed something unintelligible. It was true. When you got down to the gritty details, it sounded pretty weak.

“But on the other hand, Lusha lived on the streets,” Milar narrowed his eyes. “Guys like that have a completely different kind of mind. Cunning… and the ability to survive. A ragged little boy, barely making ends meet, who lost his brother, his sister off in a boarding house… Do you know what he evokes?”

“Pity,” Ardi shrugged.

“In men, yes.” Milar stood up and finally put his revolver and saber back in their holster and scabbard respectively. “But for some women, beaten down by fate, in a difficult situation themselves, maybe forced to work as a prostitute, a boy like that could become something like a pet. Someone to take care of. And through that care, they can imagine that someone is taking care of them. Not the current them. But that little, abandoned girl they once were.”

Ardan turned to Milar. That had been a way too detailed description of another person, even for a First-Rank Investigator.

“You’ve seen this before.”

“I’m telling you, Ard, you’ll make an excellent investigator one day,” Milar smiled again, but his expression was all but devoid of joy. “Remember the Weeper?”

Ardan nodded.

“Remember how I told you that as a kid, I killed a drunkard? A retired soldier whose mind had rotted away. The Weeper made me relive all of that.”

Ardan nodded again.

“I didn’t tell you what happened to his daughter and wife.” Milar reached for his lighter, remembered it had failed to spark, and just waved his hand. “His wife wasn’t good at choosing men, Ard… She met a newcomer in town. He fed her beautiful stories. Promised to take her with him to the Taia borderlands. But in reality, he was just a vagrant. He did… things… with her. Ones that shouldn’t be mentioned in polite society. But sometimes, I could hear them. We were neighbors, after all.”

Milar walked over to the wall and, like Ardi before him, ran his fingers over the drawings. And while he didn’t have the skills of a Speaker to Hear anything in them, Milar had eyes. And a heart. And several children, including a girl.

Ardi wasn’t the only one feeling sentimental here.

“But who cares what a man and a woman do in bed, right?” The captain continued. “So no one said anything, even though they didn’t approve of her ending her mourning so quickly.”

“For a drunkard? Who beat her?”

“And for a retired soldier, Ard.” Milar rubbed the pads of his fingers as if he wanted to find something on them. “And we were simple country folk and… well, you understand. I’m sure the customs are similar in Evergale.”

Milar wasn’t mistaken…

“And then it turned out that he wasn’t doing anything with the widow at all. Except for feeding her bullshit stories, of course. Claiming he understood her. That he didn’t want to rush things. He respected her mourning…” Milar clenched his fist and closed his eyes. “And everything that had happened in that bedroom had actually happened to her daughter, Ard. And it only came out when someone, in a drunken stupor, called the widow a woman of dubious virtue who had taken up with another man right after her husband’s death.”

Ardan gripped his staff tighter.

“You know, there are those who hurt children because of their sense of power, their sense of impunity, their jadedness with life, or, like Irigov, because they enjoy destroying something bright and innocent,” Milar walked back to the window. “And then there are those who only pretend to be human, Ard. Or Firstborn… but in reality, in here,” the captain tapped his chest. “There’s nothing but shit and rot.”

“What happened to the girl afterward?”

“After the villagers burned that bastard alive?” Milar asked with a smirk. “Nothing good, Ard. Traditions being what they are… she left on her own. And she wouldn’t have been able to live there anyway. They would have pecked her to death. There would have been no happiness for her. Not even just… air to breathe. So she left. I only found out later, thanks to a twist of fate, what had happened to her. She moved to Okrest, can you imagine? It’s where I served as a military investigator. A coincidence like that… She sold herself for cheap. Raised a child as best she could. Not even her own. Picked up a street urchin and raised her. I helped her a little, sometimes… With what I could. And then I was transferred to the capital. So I don’t know what happened to them after that.”

Only now did Ardi finally understand why the Weeper had triggered that particular memory in Milar that evening. Before, Ardan hadn’t understood why the captain would be pained by an event that, knowing his character, he would have surely been proud of. Proud… if not for the consequences of his actions. Milar still couldn’t forgive himself for the fact that his impulsive actions had led not just to one lost soul, but several.

“You’re not to blame at all, Captain.”

“I know,” Milar cut him off rather sharply. “I know, Ard. With my head. With my head, I know it. But here,” he tapped his chest. “Sometimes, it hurts. Not every day, of course. Not even every year. Only when I remember. And I try to remember rarely… So, I think you’re right in some ways, and Lusha is indeed somehow connected to the workers of the Crimson Lady. Just not in the straightforward way we might assume he is.”

They stayed silent for a while, after which Milar swore, stood up, and was about to say something.

Ardi put a finger to his lips and, holding his staff tightly, placed his hand on the floor. He hadn’t imagined it. It was indeed vibrating slightly. At the same time, the curtains hanging near the open window didn’t even stir. It was completely still outside.

“Ahgrat.” Pushing off the floor with his feet, Ardan managed to slam his shoulder into Milar’s stomach just as the floor beneath them practically exploded.

A fountain of black, foul-smelling water that seemed more like rot or time-thickened fuel burst forth. It shattered the floor, splattering the walls with dark spots, then suddenly congealed and transformed into three long claws. Showering everything around them with splinters and fragments of old wood, they tore through the wooden ceiling and walls with ease. And they would have torn through Ardan and Milar’s bodies too if not for the timely shield.

“Son of a-”

Milar’s shout was drowned out by a roar as the putrid claws, unable to break through Ardi’s Reinforced Standard Shield, simply finished demolishing the floor, and the partners plummeted down.

Ardi, not wanting to test how deep the flooded basement was, managed to scrape his staff against a crossbeam. The Ley energy needed only a brief instant, far less than a second, to connect with the Ley Lines within the planet.

And so, even as they began to fall, a greenish seal was already flaring to life beneath the young man’s staff. Ardi, wrapping an arm around his partner’s chest, held his staff out in front of him and let the spell fly.

It was a simple, though mana-hungry, military spell of the Red Star that demanded six rays, one he had practiced with Aversky. It had a short and concise name: Breath.

A gust of hard, lashing wind burst forth from Ardan’s staff. It swept along the walls, scattering the viscous liquid, and slammed into the basement floor. Then, without losing much force, it rushed up to meet the falling pair. It caught them, spun them around, and slowed their descent enough for them to land on their feet. They did so with disheveled hair and clothes torn in places, but whole and relatively unharmed.

“Well, Magister, at least we now know where Lusha is,” Milar said, pulling his revolver from its holster.

Before them, baring a fanged maw, stood a creature so warped that the features of a fourteen-year-old boy were barely recognizable.

A creature that clearly had some sort of connection to the Homeless Fae and demons, but… didn’t even have the slightest trace of their unique scent or any other sign by which one could recognize it as their kin!

Thoughts for tomorrow, Ardan decided, and then, pushing through the filthy water, he struck the ground with his staff.