Matabar

Book II.Chapter 45 - Before the Day of Weeping

“Let me get this straight…” Lidag frowned. He adjusted the cracked, cloudy spectacles he’d perched on his nose that had clearly been broken in the past and bent toward the list again. “You, mage, need four bottles that can hold three quarters of a liter each, three glass tubes, none of them longer than a meter or shorter than fifty centimeters. An oil burner. An aluminum sieve. Two high-neck vials. Four flasks. A wooden box no bigger than a matchbox. Twenty square centimeters of tanned pigskin. A mortar and… a list of herbs of some sort. Is that right?”

Ardan was sitting at the bar and nursing a homemade tea. The kind they sold here was something he would only drink if he were dying of thirst. And that wasn’t the city-dwelling cowboy in him talking, but the Firstborn—or half-Firstborn—who had been raised in the Alcade mountains.

The tavern served a concoction whose color reminded one of both horse dung and sodden earth. In consistency, the brew had not wandered far from its lookalikes. The smell, however, was a thing all its own, sharp enough to wake a man who’d fainted.

And so Ardi, after gathering the required herbs and flowers himself—he’d originally tried to find the alchemical ingredients he needed as well, but the task was beyond him as one needed to know exactly where to look—had dried them with a few simple spells and brought them here with him. After asking for a mug of boiling water, which had cost him a steep twelve kso, he was now slowly sipping on some bitter but proper herbal tea.

It suddenly became clear to him why Lidag had initially demanded the absurd sum of seven exes for a barrel of hot water. It was one thing to draw seventy liters of water from a well and haul it up to the second floor, and it was quite another to heat it kettle by kettle over the hearth, run upstairs, pour it, return downstairs, and repeat the process… while making sure the coal heater that had been dropped into the barrel to maintain the temperature didn’t ruin anything.

It would be too much trouble. Too much effort. It would surely take no less than three hours, and such a request was rarely made. That was why Lidag had named a high price simply to not have to bother with such foolishness.

And Ardi had agreed, if only to uphold his reputation as a “capital carouser.”

“Yes,” Ardan nodded and, pushing his mug of tea aside, laid three and a half exes on the counter.

His travel stipend was melting like snow in the spring…

“And where am I supposed to find all of this?” Lidag folded the paper and tucked it… into his pocket—a gesture that hinted rather transparently at the true nature of his question. “Do you have any idea how much work this will be for me?”

Ardan placed another two exes on the counter.

“And it’s not only about the work, but the fact that I’ll have to spend half the day running between workshops, shops and farms, gathering everything you need.”

Ardan eyed Lidag with suspicion. Could it be that somewhere in his family tree, there was a certain grumpy, stubborn half-blood dwarf from the Second Chancery? It was unlikely, of course. And yet…

The young man slapped another ex on the counter.

“No, mage, that’s still not enough to pique my interest.”

“This is daylight robbery,” Ardan hissed, parting with another ex and a half—one bill and enough coins to make fifty kso.

“No, this is the frontier,” Lidag flashed him a wide, crooked grin and, with a wave of his hand, shouted loudly. “Hey, Stray, get over here.”

A cowboy with the better part of his left ear shot off peeled himself away from a table. He’d earned his nickname precisely because of how he’d acquired this injury. He’d been shooting at a tossed coin on a bet with some Hunters. And when he’d started losing, he’d begun to boast about the speed of his draw. In the end, he’d shot through his holster and his own foot, which had happened to be standing on a rock. The bullet had then ricocheted, wounded his foot a second time, and as a grand finale, had shorn off a piece of his ear.

A stray bullet.

A stray cowboy…

The name had stuck.

Ardan had heard the story while playing Sevens in order to learn about the Monastery of the Sisters of Light.

“What do you want, Lidag?” The cowboy asked, sounding like he was already a little drunk. His breath was heavy and his tone far from friendly.

“Listen, Stray, help me out here,” the bartender said, holding out thirty-five kso. “Go down this list. Tell them that I’m asking for this stuff, and if they have what I need, I’ll put it on their tab at the tavern. Or take it off their debt.”

Ignoring Ardi, who was practically choking on his indignation, Stray tossed the coins in his palm and grumbled.

“Not enough.”

“I won’t ask about your debt for a week, Stray. Or do I need to remind you that you still owe me an ex and twenty kso from last month?”

The cowboy choked, wet his throat with something that vaguely resembled moonshine, and put on his hat.

“Lidag, my almost-brother from a woman I’ve never laid eyes on, I’ll be right back,” he said and, swaying slightly, headed for the exit, knocking over a few chairs along the way.

Ardan, after watching the still-not-sober man leave, slowly turned back to Lidag. He had, for a moment, considered testing just how smoothly he could influence the mind of a simple bartender in order to make him return at least half of the exes he’d just paid.

“Hey now, mage, you can lower that gaze of yours,” the bartender flinched, his hand instinctively reaching for something under the counter. Most likely a sawed-off shotgun. “This is the frontier.”

“So I’ve heard,” Ardan all but spat, for the only thing he disliked more than adventures was unnecessary expenses. “But it still looks like daylight robbery to me.”

“Look, young man, do you know who to go to?” Lidag, shaking off his fleeting fear, calmly returned to his ledger. “You don’t. Does anyone here know you? No. And you look almost like one of the not-quite-human folk, too. Do you think anyone would have even opened their door for you, let alone sold you anything? What you just paid for were my connections, my reputation, and the certainty that your entire list will be delivered to you.” Lidag glanced at the clock on the wall. “By tonight. Not before. And that’s if Stray doesn’t fall off his horse somewhere. Otherwise, it could be the middle of the night.”

Ardan graced Lidag with a resentful glare for a moment longer, but the innkeeper was already paying his guest no mind. The young man knew that everything he’d just been told was true. Indeed, Ardi would likely not have been allowed to go into most places. And some particularly wild farmer who was quick to resort to violence might have started shooting just to keep a “not-quite-human” off his land.

Ardan had heard such stories from Arkar’s gangsters. On the frontier, farmers often saw the Firstborn as a bad omen, linking them to livestock deaths, sickness, crop failures, and any other misfortune they wanted to blame on someone. And that someone was often the “not-quite-human” folk among them.

“Ard… Hey, Ard!” Nathan’s familiar voice pulled Ardi from his thoughts and his attempts to burn a hole in Lidag’s bald spot with his eyes alone.

Taking his mug of tea with him, Ardan, not forgetting his staff, moved from the bar to a table where Balitsky sat with his companions, Bakket and Ladmir. A stranger had joined them.

He was plump, with a sheen of sweat on his forehead and eyes that were a startling blue, almost like a cat’s. He wore a green cloak over his shoulders and epaulettes denoting that he had five and four rays in his Stars. And judging by his very cheap grimoire but quite expensive staff made of Ertalain alloy, the man was a mercenary mage.

Such mages were registered with both the Mages’ Guild and the Guild of Anomaly Hunters, and sometimes took temporary contracts with the army. But they served not on the borders, but somewhere on the training grounds, where their work was reduced to helping regular military mages practice their skills.

Ardan knew all of this thanks to Edward, may the Eternal Angels receive him, and he had regarded this subset of mages with a mixture of skepticism and condescension ever since he’d learned of their existence.

“Lev Lapin,” the mage introduced himself. “A pleasure.”

He rose somewhat awkwardly from his seat and extended a plump, sweaty hand, which he first wiped on a worn-out tunic that had been fashionable about seven years ago.

This was probably around the same time the man had graduated from the Ley Faculty at one of the capital’s institutes.

“Ard Egobar,” Ardi replied to the surprisingly firm handshake. “Likewise.”

Not quite understanding why he had been called over, Ardan sat down at the table.

“Listen, Ard, can you imagine the bad luck,” Balitsky said, placing a mug of ale in front of the young man. “Lev was riding here with his group last night, but they had the misfortune of running into a group of marshals on the road.”

“Damned lawmen,” Lev rolled his eyes. “And I even asked the Guild before signing the contract if everything was all right with Mechislav.”

“Mechiiislaaav,” Bakket and Ladmir drew out in unison for some reason. The latter looked greener than grass and thinner than milk porridge. Apparently, he was having a hard time dealing with the aftereffects of their recent revelry.

“He’s fine, Lev,” Balitsky chuckled. “But his habit of selling artifacts from beyond the Perimeter without going through the Guild… not so much. You see, Bakket and you were saying we should use his contacts on Sleepless Street. If we had, we’d be sitting in a marshal’s cage right now, too.”

The shooter with the goatee silently raised his hands, admitting that he’d been wrong.

Sleepless Street in the Firstborn District of the Metropolis… Arkar had once said that if you knew the right people, you could find all sorts of goods there. And, apparently, if you knew those same “right” people, you could sell them, too. Without documentation. Without taxes. Without any responsible oversight or registration.

“Thank you, Nathan, for agreeing to take me with you. The whole season would have been a wash otherwise…” Lev thanked him sincerely. “By the way, I don’t see that… what’s her name… the Blue Mage… Anita.”

“We had to send her back to the Guild,” Nathan’s face darkened slightly. “A small matter of paperwork.”

“Oh?” Lev sounded a little disappointed. “Strange that we missed each other. We surely took the same path… but then again, what’s it to me?”

One had to wonder if Lev’s grimoire had any torn-out pages, or if he had a foggy memory of a night spent in Anita’s company.

“Listen, Ard, the reason we called you over is simple,” Nathan hurried to change the subject. “Lev here has been telling us some interesting things. He says the area near the Ral Mountains is quite lively right now.”

“That, Nathan, is a considerable understatement,” Lev interjected, wiping his forehead with a cloth. “Of course, when a fisherman talks about his catch, the fish always have eyes the size of a bull’s testicles…” Ardan nearly choked on his tea. Every time, every single time he met new people, he heard some new expression… “But even if you dismiss all the rumors, the mere fact that a group of Cloak operatives was seen at the Ral border fort speaks volumes.”

Ardan wiped his lips and sat up a little straighter. At the beginning of summer, he had seen Cassara at Edward’s funeral, and he was pretty sure that Lev had just mentioned her squad.

“We’re in the Ral foothills right now. Soon, we’ll be heading out on an assignment to the Dead Lands.”

“They say that they were even going to send them beyond the Perimeter,” Lev continued. “But then an epic mess started, ensuring that the Perimeter will be closed to everyone this season, and probably the next as well.”

Ardan barely restrained the question trying to claw its way out: “And what happened to the Cloaks?” It would have been very strange for him to inquire about such a topic.

“Any theories, Lev?” Bakket leaned forward slightly. “You think it’s the Shimmering?”

Ladmir flinched and shuddered.

From his General Knowledge lectures, Ardi knew that the Shimmering was the name for the phenomenon when the borders of the Dead Lands expanded. Usually, it was only by a few square kilometers, sometimes even less, but despite such meager “conquests,” during the Shimmering, the creatures inhabiting the Dead Lands bred like rabbits. That was why it was the dream of any Hunter with a malfunctioning self-preservation instinct to be beyond the perimeter precisely during a Shimmering.

Legends circulated among them that if you caught such luck by the tail just once, you could retire with all the exes you’d earn.

“If it were just the Shimmering, my dear Bakket, they wouldn’t have stationed several garrisons along the border, keeping everyone out of cannon shot range,” Lev took a sip of ale and grimaced. “This is some kind of piss…”

“Shh,” Balitsky and Bakket both hissed at him.

“Lidag’s got the hearing of an orc,” Balitsky whispered, then added more loudly. “You think they’ll open it in two seasons?”

“What else can they do?” Lev shrugged. “Whatever is happening over there, even two years without the Ralian supplies will raise prices by no less than forty percent. And the first ones to pull the biggest haul out of there after the border opens will make a fortune.”

“Maybe some clever fellow just decided to inflate the market?” Balitsky mused, tracing the rim of his mug with a finger. “It’s strange… As far as I can recall, they’ve only ever closed the border on the Forbidden Isle.”

The Forbidden Isle was a relatively large island far to the west of the Dancing Peninsula. It had gotten its name because one half of it was occupied by the Dead Lands, and the other by the old tomb of an Aean’Hane elf of the southern forests. It had, of course, been plundered centuries ago.

“Yes, when all sorts of nasty things started crawling out of the pointy-ear’s tomb,” Lev said, putting his greasy handkerchief back in his pocket. “Can you see the connection, Nathan?”

Balitsky frowned.

“You think they found someone’s tomb in the Ral foothills?”

“Or an old sanctuary, or some abandoned fortification, or something else just as important,” the mercenary mage nodded. “And if that’s the case… Eternal Angels, Balitsky. Remember that old tale about the mage who cleaned out a pre-Imperial lich’s lair? She lived like a queen for the rest of her days.”

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“Need I remind you, Lev, that she died from her wounds?” Bakket interjected. “And disfigured, at that?”

Ardan forced himself to remain calm. For some reason, the fact that the Hunters had spoken about Boris Fahtov’s mother so dismissively had stung him deeply. Perhaps this was because Boris was his friend?

“That’s precisely why I suggest we prepare thoroughly,” Lev insisted. “If we gather a good group, train, maybe invest properly in equipment and ammunition, then everyone can earn their retirement.”

“And what makes you so sure that they’ll start letting people in again in two years, Lev?” Balitsky narrowed his eyes at the man.

“Because, as I’ve already said, the market won’t withstand a three-year ban,” Lev reminded him, coughing slightly. “And importing the volume required by the Metropolis alone from Olikzasia is impossible. We’d have to import way too much from N’gia and the Eastern Continent. Besides, the Guild won’t let the military and the Crown maintain the ban for that long. They’ll drag them through the courts. They’ll go to the Supreme Judge if they have to. You know those bureaucratic sharks. Just give them a reason to sue. That’s why two years will be the maximum.”

Balitsky and Bakket exchanged glances and shrugged. Ladmir, meanwhile, was nearly sliding under the table due to how hungover he was and pressing a bloody piece of beef to his head from time to time.

“You heard all that, Ard?”

“Yes,” Ardi nodded.

“What do you say?”

Ardan raised his eyebrows slightly.

“You’re a young man, free and clear,” Balitsky leaned forward a bit. “And, as we both know, not one to shy away from a challenge, and you know how to keep your mouth shut. Besides, you probably know other graduates who are looking to make some coin. What do you say? Are you interested?”

Ardan opened his mouth to speak, but then his eyes flicked to Balitsky’s amulet. It was a rather unpleasant little thing, though weak. In the Metropolis, it would be completely useless due to the interference from generators and Ley-wiring. It only worked under very specific conditions. That was why they didn’t issue them to the investigators of the Black House or the detectives of the guard corps.

“I’ll ask around about the Ral Dead Lands, Nathan, but I have no desire to find myself beyond the Perimeter,” Ardan answered, once again employing Skusty’s art.

Balitsky clearly listened to his amulet for a few moments and then nodded.

“If you happen to encounter anyone who’s ‘in,’ have them write to Nathan Balitsky at the Nigrad branch of the Guild of Anomaly Hunters.”

“Deal,” Ardan was about to get up when another predictable question stopped him.

“You don’t want to join us this season?” Balitsky tried his luck. “We’ll be joining a large party, of course, but surely you understand that you can never have too many good mages beyond the Perimeter.”

If only Balitsky knew how ambiguous, and at the same time, painfully true that statement was.

“Thank you, Nathan, but I don’t like adventures.”

“Not even when they pay well?”

“Especially when they pay well,” Ardan nodded to Lev and headed to his room to wait for the equipment he needed for his alchemy.

The Day of Weeping was fast approaching, and once again, he would have to race against time.

And he would actually ask someone about the Ral foothills. But not the people Balitsky might’ve hoped he would. By the Sleeping Spirits, Milar was most likely not mistaken, and the Ral Mountains were indeed somehow connected to the Puppeteers and their mysterious conspiracy.

***

Lidag had not lied, even if he might’ve estimated the time wrong. At least Stray had neither stumbled on the road nor lost his way in the fog of his alcoholic indulgence. And so, around two in the morning, there was a knock on Ardi’s door. A not-too-happy innkeeper appeared on the threshold, handing his guest a chest of vials and a cloth sack full of vegetation.

“Mage, all of this…” Lidag gestured at the materials he himself had brought here. “Is it safe? There won’t be a fire or, Eternal Angels forbid, an explosion?”

“No,” Ardan replied and, taking the equipment, closed the door in Lidag’s face, adding mentally, at least, there shouldn’t be.

In the Alcade mountains, he had used his own hands, some fire, and Atta’nha’s guidance, so he was no stranger to making do. On the other hand, back then, he had been learning how to create concoctions, potions and salves using Ley-plants, berries, roots and mushrooms as a base. Very rarely—only a couple of times, in fact—had Atta’nha shown him incantations and spells that could turn even the simplest brew into something akin to the art of the Aean’Hane.

Concoctions made with incantations and lacking a base of Ley-plants possessed far less power and a shorter duration. In fact, they seemed like cheap imitations of the real thing.

Back then, his “why?” had always been answered by the she-wolf’s “such is the dream of the Sleeping Spirits,” and their conversation would end there. Only after studying at the Grand University and devouring tons of literature in its library did Ardan learn that it was all about tension.

The incantations of the Speakers could not create sufficient Ley-tension to transform the properties of the plants, which, like any living or inanimate object, initially possessed a Ley-charge. And so the result tended to be relatively meager.

Alas, Ardi would have to make do with just such a crutch, because getting any of the required Ley-plants in Larand was impossible. And traveling to the border of the Dead Lands, where he could have obtained the necessary ingredients, would have taken too much time and jeopardized the entire venture.

Setting his staff aside and rolling up his sleeves, Ardan overturned a nightstand and, using some boards he had brought in beforehand, began to construct not so much a semblance of a laboratory as something so makeshift that even moonshiners would have laughed at his setup.

He spent some time using clay, grass, water, oil, and muttered curses to arrange all the tubes and flasks in the correct sequence.

“Right,” Ardan ran a finger over the notes in his grimoire. “For Stone Bones, I need thyme, Stone Cedar nuts, Rainbow Salmon liver, and two chicken eggs.”

Of course, he had neither the required Cedar Nuts, which grew exclusively on the slopes of the central Alcade ridge, nor were there any Rainbow Salmon left in the rivers of the Alcade, let alone Larand.

“If we take the required tension as the unknown, and place it into Senior Magister Nanizov’s calculation formula,” Ardan muttered, armed with a pencil and the knowledge gained from Professor Kovertsky’s lectures, “it turns out that I need a third degree at each of the transitional states. Now to calculate…”

Armed with a set of measuring scales he had borrowed from Lidag, Ardi began to weigh the simplest of ingredients. These consisted of thyme, an egg, a common cedar nut, and the liver of a most trivial salmon. All of which, thankfully, he had been able to buy at a local shop.

“Each full distillation cycle will triple the concentrate,” Ardan finished his initial calculations and put away the ruler he had used to measure the resulting station, its main nodes and elements. “So, if we take it as a fact that the incantation will work, I’ll need four distillation cycles for the additional ingredients, six for the main ones, and eleven for the fundamental one.”

Ardan looked at the nut lying impassively in the mortar.

“Fine, let’s make it twelve… probably.”

The young man swore under his breath. He had no proper scales, no proper station, not even a clear understanding of how to use the incantation because Atta’nha had always strictly warned him not to abuse this skill.

But he had little choice.

Ardan struck a flint and lit the burner. Lacking a thermometer, he did as he had in his childhood, moistening his palm with water and holding it over the flame. By adjusting the flame, Ardan found the right intensity (approximately, of course), and then got to work. He crushed the thyme mixed with the nut in the mortar, whispering words over it that no mortal ear could hear and no mortal tongue could speak. Ardi wasn’t even sure if he was actually saying them, or just imagining that he was doing so. But still, he Spoke.

A faint blue glow flickered around his hands, gradually being absorbed into the mortar. It seeped down the sides, trickling in thick droplets into the rustling mixture. Then, when that was done, Ardi submerged the ingredient in boiling water.

In the Alcade, he would have had to wrap the base of the concoction in maple leaves and bury it where wild boars slept so that they could warm the mixture with their massive bodies overnight, and so that the earth would enrich it with absorbed moisture. But what would’ve taken him a whole night in the mountains now took only a few minutes. Ardan was soon removing the flask from the makeshift tripod and straining it through the sieve into the next chamber.

Wiping his forehead, Ardan looked at his own recipe and the list of necessary operations. The process of creating just three not-so-complex concoctions and one mixture would, in the best-case scenario, take Ardan until morning. In truth, for a student of the Grand University who had successfully passed the final exams of the first year, this should’ve been no trouble at all, but life was seldom so generous.

“The main thing is not to rush,” Ardan reminded himself and continued his work.

***

By morning, the young man had managed to carve out a few hours to nap. The final bit of work on the special mixture, which was supposed to help with the grates, since he figured it was likely that there’d be more than one, proceeded mostly without Ardi’s direct involvement. All that was required of him was to not mess up the ingredients, proportions and temperature at the beginning. Then the mixture would simply simmer in its chamber, marinating in its own juices and the vapors flowing in from the neighboring chambers.

And so, after setting everything up and convincing himself that at least some of his work was solid, Ardan collapsed onto the bed and covered his face with his hat.

He felt like he might have even dreamed of something, only he couldn’t remember what exactly. Perhaps something to do with Sheriff Maryana Sestrova and Old Slimy. Admittedly, that might have just been reality seeping through in his sleep.

“Ard…”

He wouldn’t have minded sleeping for at least another couple of hours.

“Ard!”

Or maybe a little more.

“Damnation! Fledgling mage!”

Ardan reluctantly lifted the hat from his face and squinted against the bright, sharp stab of the dawn’s rays. After getting to his feet and making sure the mixture had steeped long enough as he walked past it, Ardi went to the window. There, out on the street, astride her black horse, Sestrova was waving a folder of papers at him. Her rumpled appearance was a clear sign that she had also had a sleepless night.

Ardan nodded and waved an inviting hand. While Sestrova tied up her horse and came upstairs, the young man had time to wash his face and spread the mixture onto a preheated cast-iron skillet.

There was, of course, no knock on the door. Considering there was only one tavern in town and it likely often attracted the attention of the sheriff and her deputies, it was a matter of course that Sestrova had keys that she used to open the door.

Overnight, her sharp face and equally sharp, aquiline nose had grown a little gaunt and her back had stooped, which only further emphasized her lack of a waist.

“Found it,” Sestrova said without any formal greeting, tossing a cardboard folder with files onto the bed and looking around the room. “Are things at the Black House so bad that you couldn’t get a better room from Lidag?”

Ardan only offered her a small smile in response and, covering the skillet where the mixture was drying with a lid, returned to the bed. Untying the strings of the folder, he began to read the enclosed papers.

“Ah, right, you’re not-quite-human…” The sheriff answered her own question. “I’d almost forgotten.”

Ardi, however, was turning one page after another. It was just as he had suspected. According to the blueprints, the fort did indeed have a rather well-designed system to counteract the flooding of its underground passages and storerooms. Whoever had designed the fort had foreseen not only the possibility of enemy infiltration, but also an attack using Star Magic. Everything had been built to last, albeit with the rather outdated technologies of centuries past.

“It’s interesting that you’re using these bottles, which are normally used for collecting bull semen, Corporal,” Sestrova flicked her finger against the central chamber—a short, pot-bellied flask that had seen things more peculiar than bull semen during the night. “Overall, you were right, Ard. They do have that… what’s it called… drainage hole. Only knocking it up will be a bit harder than you thought.”

Ardan opened the last page and then slowly ran a hand over his face as if he were trying to wipe away the weight of what he had just seen. It felt eerily like a deluge of water from a storm surge that had immediately settled on his shoulders upon seeing it, crushing him from all sides.

“Twenty-three meters,” Ardi whispered. “Twenty-three meters down a rocky cliff, right in the middle of a storm.”

Of course, at such a depth, the storm surge would be almost unnoticeable, but he had to get down there first, and only then could he “enjoy” the relative calm. Back when he and Guta had used to compete to see who could dive deeper and hold their breath longer, Ardi had never gone deeper than twice his own height. In order to hunt tasty fish, more was not required.

“Can you handle it?” Sestrova asked. Her tone held a mix of curiosity, excitement and a certain degree of concern.

“And what about you, Maryana, have you figured out what we’re going to do about the Day of Weeping and the distraction?”

Sestrova, pretending to sway her hips, walked over to him and, taking advantage of the fact that Ardan was sitting, loomed over him. It was rare for anyone of human stock to look down on Ardi, even when he was seated. It was a rather unusual sensation.

“Are we on a first-name basis now, Corporal?” She asked, her tone somewhere between dangerous and seductive, or perhaps both at once.

What a strange woman. She was something like a porcelain figurine that had been shattered several times and glued back together not by the careful hands of an experienced restorer, but by herself.

Instead of answering her, Ardan just looked her straight in the eye. For a time, they stared each other down, after which Sestrova threw up her hands and stepped away.

“What a bastard you are, Corporal…” She whispered so quietly a human ear would not have caught it. “Yes, I’ve thought of something. All sorts of people will be there, Ard, ranging from your colleagues and those arrogant mages from the capital to local penitents and moneybags whose souls are suddenly telling them that tomorrow is the day to start atoning for their sins. With their money, of course. And that’s when I’ll drop by, so to speak, to inquire why there are so many visitors in the temple during a storm.”

“But it’s the Day of Weeping,” Ardan shrugged. “From what I understand, the same thing happens every year.”

“It’s a tradition,” Sestrova emphasized pointedly, “and there’s no law that allows nearly a hundred people to flood the secluded walls of a women’s monastery all at once. What if they’re planning something evil? Or even worse—an indecent attempt to corrupt the soul of a particularly young nun? As a representative of the law in this godforsaken, shitty land, I must ensure that… what’s wrong with you?”

Ardan, upon hearing the familiar phrase, couldn’t help but flinch. Once, a little over twelve years ago, Sheriff Kelly had said something very similar when he’d trudged up their mountain to see his father.

“A memory…” was all the young man said.

Sestrova looked at him curiously and, flicking one of the flasks again, turned to the window.

“You know what I’ve noticed over my years of service, Corporal?”

Ardan answered with silence. The question was rhetorical anyway.

“That in this line of work, you meet more broken people than whole ones. And even if a whole person does find their way into our little circle of interests, sooner or later, they get broken as well.”

Ardan thought about Yonatan and his squad, Cassara, Mshisty, Edward, Milar and… all the others his path had crossed with in the dream of the Sleeping Spirits.

“You’re probably right.”

“Of course I’m right…” She stood by the window for a few seconds, then turned back and, as if nothing had happened, returned to the previous topic. “So, I’ll show up with an inspection.”

“I doubt a simple inspection will distract them much.”

“And who said it would be simple?” And with those words, Sestrova pulled something out of her belt pouch. It was nothing less than… a military-issue grenade.

It resembled a miniature torch. Or an ice cream on a stick. It had a narrow handle topped with a cylinder containing an explosive incendiary mixture. The handle itself was the detonator. You had to activate it by first pulling the handle out, then you needed to twist it and push it back into the cylinder, after which a soldier had about five seconds until the explosion.

They were often used during the brief skirmishes with Tazidahian and their military chimeras. The explosion itself was not particularly impressive, with a blast radius of only a few meters. But the incendiary mixture would spread for almost twenty, and considering the fact that its composition was something like the enriched fuel for Ley generators, you couldn’t put it out with water.

“A souvenir from Snowy Lake,” Sestrova explained, not without a touch of pride, and put the grenade back. “My husband was a military engineer, so he kept a few working samples at home.”

“You have a husband?” Ardan was surprised.

“Had,” Sestrova turned halfway to the window. “He was killed by Tazidahian saboteurs. The whole town thought Timur just made a mistake at work. Blew himself up in his own workshop, they said. But I knew he was too smart and careful for that. So, I searched. Just like back then, with Marin… I searched and I found them. A cell of Tazidahian saboteurs. And what a majestic group they were… Four second-rank privates… Fucking idiots who, for a few dozen exes, took away…”

She didn’t finish that sentence, but in Ardi’s mind, a phrase echoed:

“…after some stupid decisions made by men and a couple of bold steps taken by one orphan woman…”

The final variable in the equation named “Sheriff Maryana Sestrova” fell into place. It was not at all surprising that after such a feat, when everything had been against her, Sestrova had become sheriff. And it was just as logical that she had returned.

Perhaps she’d thought that if she could find her husband’s killers, she could also deal with what remained from her distant childhood—the mystery of her twin brother’s disappearance.

Once, Milar had told Ardan that broken people break everything around them. And Artur Belsky, better known as the Dandy, had claimed that there was almost no difference between gangsters and Cloaks, just that one group cared for themselves, and the other… for others. Perhaps they were both right.

“You’re going to blow up the monastery?” Ardan rose to his feet and, taking the red-hot skillet from the burner, poured the mixture into a hastily-made ball of pigskin. “The holy abode of the Face of Light?”

“It’s for a good cause,” Sestrova shrugged. “Besides, mage, even a couple hundred of these little things wouldn’t be enough to level the place, even though I’d like to… So no, I won’t blow up the monastery. But the barn full of hay for the horses... The blaze will be so bright they’ll see it from over here. The storm won’t put it out, so there’ll be quite a commotion. They won’t have time for you.”

“You think you can do it without being seen?” Ardan took up a needle and thread and began to sew the ball shut, smearing all the seams with a fat-based glue. It was almost like soap, but a thicker, more viscous compound.

“And why would I do it secretly, Corporal?” Sestrova offered him a wide, slightly mad grin. “On the contrary—I’ll be very open about it so they all go to hell and lose their minds. I’ll shout and scream about Old Slimy, demons and whatever else comes to mind. I’ll start shooting in the air if I have to. Can you imagine the madness? A storm, a crazy sheriff and a fire. You couldn’t ask for a better distraction.”

It would be foolish to argue with that statement, and so Ardi didn’t.

“In the best-case scenario, they’ll take your badge, Maryana, and in the worst…”

“They’ll hang me from the nearest branch,” the sheriff finished for him. “But that’s only if we’ve missed the mark, mage. And I can feel it in my gut and… something else, may your delicate ears be spared, that all the answers are there, in those underground passages. Both to your questions and mine. So, when you find out everything, hurry up and get me out from behind bars. I’m not in a rush to meet the Eternal Angels, you know.”

“Even so, they won’t let you stay in the service.”

“I don’t give a damn,” Sestrova waved it off. “I pinned this stupid badge where normal women have breasts only so I could find my brother. I don’t care what happens after that.”

Ardi bit the thread, tied a knot, and looked at the sheriff. She did not take her eyes off the window. She was watching the passersby and pretending that everything was fine with her. Only her rapidly beating, occasionally stumbling heart betrayed her fear, her uncertainty, and her lie. Sestrova was lying. To herself.

“Well, Corporal, I guess now we wait?”

Ardan nodded.

“We wait.”

Thankfully, they wouldn’t have to wait long. The Day of Weeping would begin with the first star in just ten hours.