Matabar

Book II. Chapter 58 - Young colleague

Chapter 58

“Dear Ardi,

A month has passed since you and Tess left, and yet there are times I still find myself listening—waiting for a floorboard to creak in the corridor or for a step to whine on the staircase.

Kelly occasionally spends entire days trying to reason with that ill-mannered, cantankerous plank, but I suppose this is simply the nature of our new home. It’s simply a little creaky and, until recently, it was far too large for the four of us.

When you and Tess were here, I was—however briefly—overjoyed to be captured once more by the exhausting, yet deeply satisfying, chaos of household chores. Perhaps to you, since you’re such a city dandy (forgive my smile) now, the joy of a large family seems obscure. But for us simple people from a small settlement, the frantic energy of such a thing is nothing but a delight.

Tess is a wonderful girl, and I am unspeakably glad that you have found a new home in her.

My little boy.

At times, I still turn my gaze toward the Alcade peaks. You know, if one rises early enough, steps out onto the attic balcony, and peers intently into the distance, it feels like our native slope is barely visible.

I understand that you have many affairs to attend to, my darling son, but if you ever find the time, go with Tess to visit your father and grandfather. I believe they would be glad to see you.

And yes, I know that your father’s faith claims that the paths of the Sleeping Spirits are always beside you, that the ancestors gaze upon their descendants from those trails rather than dwelling in graves and shrines, but... I don’t know, my dear.

I am counting the days until I can attend your wedding. Kena and Erti, of course, will not cease their chatter about the capital and the breathtaking journey awaiting us. You should hear their heated debates! It is, at times, quite hilarious.

Kelly frowns at it all, naturally, but I can see that even he wishes to behold all those wonders you told us about.

I’m counting the days...

Oh, forgive me, I’m repeating myself.

I hope you are already busy with the wedding preparations, for there is very little time left! And you, amidst all the bustle, might have forgotten that organizing such an event is the task of the groom and his family. I’m sorry that I cannot help with that at all, but I believe you will handle everything!

You always handle everything, my little boy.

Sometimes, my heart grows heavy at the thought of how much the Light has laid upon your shoulders, but then I recall the scripture and realize that everyone carries only the burden they have the strength to bear. And you have the strength to bear so much, my darling.

And now, I sit once again on the balcony, watching the sun caress the peaks of our Alcade.

Sometimes, in my dreams—dreams I hide not only from Kelly, but from myself as well—I see you, my dear, and Erti, and many other little ones playing around Hector while your Grandfather crafts toys for you.

But these are only dreams. The strange visions of an aging mind. Yet here is the joke, or perhaps the blessing of the Eternal Angels: my body still remembers its youth.

Yes, you have guessed correctly: I am expecting again. The doctors have confirmed my suspicions. It is the sixth week of my fourth pregnancy.

Kelly is worried that by the time the child grows up, we will be too frail, and Erti and Kena will have to shoulder duties that don’t belong to them. But such is the lot of a family. We live inside our own small world, where we help one another survive. Just as it was in the Alcade, so it was in Evergale, or here in Delpas.

Family is always your anchor, Ardi. Remember this when you look into the eyes of your soon-to-be wife. She is your anchor, and you are hers. But the burdens you help each other share... they are different, Ardi.

Very different...

Oh, forgive these sentimental motherly instructions. I write this letter and as I do so, in my mind, I am standing beside you, smoothing down your disheveled hair—the hair of a little rascal ready for adventures, bruises and scratches. All the while, I keep forgetting that you are already a man. But I suppose this is the fate of all mothers: to birth boys only to bid farewell to the men who leave home.

And so, I look for the Alcade more and more often. It seems to me, my dear son, that we are all somewhat like the Alcade swallows. We fly from the nest beyond the far horizon… only to inevitably return.

Perhaps, if it was the will of the Light, I would wish for us all to return to our mountain. If only for a short while. To tend the graves. To bathe in the stream. To watch the sunset.

Do you remember what the sunsets were like there, Ardi?

With a great fear in my soul, I realize that aside from you, I have no one left to discuss them with...

Forgive me.

Every time I find myself with child, I am besieged by heavy thoughts, which are immediately replaced by fits of childish, almost careless joy. I discussed this with the doctor the other day, and he mentioned that there is current research suggesting I’m not the only one. This phenomenon even has a name, though I have forgotten it.

I will not torment you with questions about your future family life with Tess, but I will ask you one thing—promise me, please, that you will come in the summer and look upon your new brother or sister.

I beg you. I can see how hard it is for you, at times, to look at Kena, but I also feel like you do love her. Even if it is a heavy love, one unfamiliar to me.

Please, come...

I don’t know why I’m asking for this in a letter, for I will see you and embrace you this winter regardless. But, as I said, this always happens when I am pregnant.

I love you, Ardi, my son.

Your mother, Shaia.”

***

Ardi went over the letter one last time, folded it into a neat square, and tucked it back into the envelope.

He hadn’t been able to bring himself to read it for several days, and now that he had, he didn’t know what to feel.

His mother was pregnant again. Shaia had already turned thirty-six, which, if the doctors were to be believed, was essentially the twilight of a human woman’s childbearing age.

The emphasis was very much on essentially there. And if one believed Elena Promyslov, who was so captivated by non-Star science, the childbearing age limit of women was shifting to higher numbers at nearly the same speed at which the infant mortality rate was shrinking.

Incidentally, it was surprising to see that, in those regions of the Empire where infant mortality had declined the most rapidly, the birth rate had fallen at an equally steady pace.

“Found something else to think about, didn’t you,” Ardi rebuked himself.

But he wasn’t surprised that he had allowed himself to mentally step away from the source of his anxiety for a second.

And he was genuinely worried about what he had just read. He wasn’t exactly concerned for his mother—thankfully, their family now had sufficient funds for doctors and a hospital—but whether he would be capable of feeling anything at all for the child Shaia currently carried beneath her heart.

Kena had been a surprise to him, a sort of inevitability for six whole years. Six years during which he had managed, if not to grow attached to her, then to learn to see her as something more than... than... He couldn’t even find the right word.

“Thoughts for tomorrow,” Ardi reminded himself with a sigh.

What mattered today, however, was Shaia’s remark that the wedding preparations were the responsibility of the groom and his family.

Had Ardi already known this? Somewhere, sometime, he had surely heard this fact before. But with everything that had happened in his life over the last year and a half, he had simply forgotten to think about it.

“I wonder if there’s anyone who organizes weddings...”

“There’s wedding agencies, Ard. But they gouge you so ruthlessly that it’s easier to do it yourself.”

Ardan nearly fell off his chair. He’d lost himself in reading the letter and wandering through the labyrinth of his own thoughts, and so he had completely forgotten that he was not in “his” laboratory in the “Aversky Stables,” but in a glass cube in the middle of the fifth floor of a company that manufactured and serviced stationary shields.

“Forgive me, Adakiy, I was thinking aloud,” the young man said contritely.

Ardi had been working here for a week and had only recently grown accustomed to their schedule. Due to his studies, he usually arrived around four in the afternoon. And one might’ve thought that work should be winding down by then, the employees preparing for their well-earned rest, but... offices tied to Star Magic operated on a different rhythm.

They began work, for the most part, at one in the afternoon, and finished at eight. It was all due to the tariffs on Ley energy.

In the morning hours, due to factories and other heavy industrial enterprises, the city grid would be pushed practically to the limits of its capacity. It was constantly being modernized and refined, and yet the industrial boom didn’t stand still, either.

So, to keep the bills lower, companies that didn’t really require constantly active generators had shifted their schedules toward the hours when Ley energy cost less.

“However, in your case,” Adakiy said, setting aside two long rulers with which he had been fencing as if they were sabers, leaning back in his chair and pulling out a cigarette. “Considering you plucked a star from the sky with the Orman surname, then... I don’t know, kid. But I don’t envy you.”

Ardi offered him a tired smile. Adakiy was a Blue Mage with three, four and three rays again. He was slightly plump, balding, twenty-eight years old, and had a wife and two children about whom, in the close-to-a-week Ardi had worked at the office, he had managed to tell him almost everything. He truly was as sociable as he was knowledgeable about shields.

Not all of them, of course. He was primarily focused on his narrow specialization.

“What do you think, Brant?”

At the drafting table, which was massive—three and a half meters long and one and a half meters wide—and covered in sheets of paper of equally impressive dimensions, a man in his thirties looked up.

He was also a Blue Mage, and also had “modest” rays. Three, three again, and then two. Unlike Adakiy, he was well-built but, by his own admission, a steadfast bachelor.

Both were graduates of the Imperial Institute of Exact Sciences. This was one of the oldest educational institutions in the country, and just as prestigious as the Grand University. However, its focus was mundane science rather than Star Magic.

Even so, their magic faculty was also considered quite decent and was usually the second choice of most future mages.

“I think that I have successfully avoided the fate of getting ringed for sixteen years and I don’t intend to change my ways,” Brant replied twitchily, holding a cigarette between his lips.

Smoking here was, of course, universal, and no less frequent than in the Second Chancery. It was terrifying to imagine just how profitable the tobacco business was! Perhaps he and Bazhen were planning to open the wrong kind of shop?

“But!” Brant placed down a ruler and drew a long line, likely measuring the power cable for their current project’s installation. “Kisha, the sister of the head of the second research group, got married recently, and she said her groom used the services of... I forget. But if you need me to, I can ask around.”

“Brant,” Adakiy called out.

“What?”

“When did you manage to talk to her, and why would she want to tell you anything at all?”

“Adakiy,” Brant said in the same tone his colleague had used a moment ago.

“Mmm?” The owner of the encroaching bald spot hummed with interest.

“Instead of sticking your shiny head into the affairs of the intern and myself, you’d be better off telling me if the frequencies in the sixth and fourteenth nodes of resistance have been calculated?”

“The sixth has.”

“And the fourteenth?”

“What, was I supposed to work overtime?”

“Eternal Angels! Well, maybe you could put aside the question of the intern’s wedding and calculate it already?”

Brant waved his cigarette so deftly that the ash fell anywhere but on the blueprint.

“How am I supposed to request materials from the suppliers if you keep me in suspense for the third day in a row?”

“Just wait half an hour, I’ll calculate it!”

“In half an hour, I would have already determined the loss per meter of space and the pressure in the Ley-disturbances... damn it... in the Paarlax field!”

“Make a rough estimate for now!”

“And will the penalty for a warranty case popping up be deducted roughly from our salaries as well?! Get to work!”

And the work in the cube began to boil once more. Ardan, whose break had ended long ago, also returned to his task.

For the coming month, he had been issued an entire stack of papers dedicated, as one might’ve guessed, to runic connections and arrays of runic junctions.

His Misty Helper, despite its advanced fundamental idea, still possessed a mass of flaws, which Grand Magister Lucas Krayt had pointed out. Of course, even with those flaws, he’d still received a notice about his earnings from the Spell Market:

“Mr. Egobar,

We hereby notify you of the funds that have been transferred to your account at the Imperial Bank.

Thus far, the Spell Market has sold:

12 Misty Helper seals in unencrypted form, under the general license of the Mages’ Guild. The selling price was: 107 exes and 45 kso. Mr. Egobar’s share, according to the signed agreement, was: 103 exes and 16 (rounded up) kso.76 Misty Helper seals in encrypted form, under the general license of the Spell Market. Selling price: not specified. Mr. Egobar’s share, according to the signed agreement, was: 7 exes and 60 kso.The funds will arrive within five banking days from the moment of signing the above notice.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Senior Accountant of the Spell Market, Magister Enol Brooks.

Date of signing: 7th day of the Month of Saints.”

This came out to just over one hundred and ten exes, which, considering the sum the Market itself had paid to buy the rights to the seal, barely fell short of two hundred exes in total.

It was an incredible sum for the Ardi of Evergale times. But now... It would probably be enough for the insurance deposit on an apartment rental and the first six months. Or perhaps it constituted... a seventh of his planned expenses for outfitting the laboratory in the stables. And that was without accounting for consumables.

Ardan folded the payment order and ran a hand over his face. It was no wonder the absolute majority of mages agreed to a sponsorship from the Crown (something Senior Magister Paarlax had refused in his time), which then got sixty percent of the income, as well as the exclusive rights to any patents.

And there is no reason to believe that I will receive even thirty exes from the sales of the Misty Helper next month, Ardi reminded himself.

Anyone who needed the seal had already purchased it. Large companies, naturally, had acquired unencrypted seals. In such cases, encrypted runic “signatures” were still embedded. These were something like a regular clerk’s stamp, only in the form of a hard-to-read array of runic connections.

Every company had its own “array” registered with the Mages’ Guild with which they signed their products. This reduced illegal seal distribution, and also secured the revenues of the Spell Market and the mages who created spells against black market copying.

Naturally, there were craftsmen who could decrypt signatures, forge them, or even erase them entirely from the general blueprint, but such tasks required a level of knowledge that only a Senior Magister in the field of Seal Engineering tended to possess.

There were fewer than a hundred such people in the entire country.

And when it came to encrypted seals, the blueprint itself represented such a mishmash that, without a key, which was also issued individually, the seal simply didn’t function.

Such approaches to protecting intellectual property imposed their own costs in the form of increasing the price of the seal, not only in its monetary equivalent, but also in terms of Ley.

An encrypted seal usually consumed ten percent more rays in every Star, and when licensed by the Mages’ Guild, it demanded an additional red ray that was spent on the “signature.”

That was precisely why Mart had said that everyone strove to get into faculties like Star Engineering. Not only would they be guaranteed work for the rest of their lives—very well-paid work at that—but selling their inventions would also be possible.

As for military magic… There, everything worked quite differently and with the participation of the state, which regulated things quite strictly.

In fact, starting from the Blue Star, private trading organizations had no right to either buy or sell seals of military magic at all. That fell under the purview of the Mages’ Guild and the state inspectors.

A mage could sell their creations to the state, but acquiring something from it was practically impossible. They could do it if they had special permission, or if the mage was in the army, the Guard Corps, or the Black House. And at that point, it was simpler for them to just request the spell rather than to purchase it.

“What is it, Mr. Egobar? Not as simple as in the lectures?” Adakiy winked while clicking the keys of the arithmometer.

Ardi had a poor understanding of what exactly Adakiy was supposed to have calculated back at the end of last week. He was pretty sure it was the loss of Ley energy at the intersection of cables.

Talis an Manish’s company had received an order for the development of Ley-cables, generators, and a stationary shield (a “turnkey” service, as they called it) for a small factory producing exclusive automobiles. And the department in which Ardi was currently working was in charge of the stationary shield.

But because some machine tools were also powered by the Ley, it was necessary to design a highly complex system of wiring that would not turn into the mess Ardi had had the misfortune of witnessing on the dirigible.

“A bit more complicated,” Ardan answered evasively, glancing at the stack of papers he had already set aside. “But solvable.”

Adakiy grunted and put his notes aside. Ley-cables, especially considering they carried charges of varying power, always came into conflict.

But then again, these were all topics pertaining to a narrow branch of knowledge that was only covered during the fifth and sixth years of the Engineering Faculty. Ardi understood almost nothing about them.

“Brant.”

“What do you want now?!” barked the engineer who was lying on the drafting table.

“My wiring isn’t coming together here, so I need-”

“The intern already calculated everything.”

“What?”

“I said he calculated everything already.”

“All the arrays of connections?”

“And the vector conjugation matrix.”

Brant, nearly knocking over a jar of ink, all but flew over to them and snatched the sheet with Ardi’s calculations. Frowning and smacking his lips, he read what was written there.

“So, this is good...” Brant muttered. “He used the rule that a twice-transposed matrix is equal to the original... not bad... Here, he reduced the skew-symmetric matrix... and I thought that combining the arrays of runic connections into matrices wasn’t covered at the Grand University until the fourth year of the Engineering Faculty.”

It wasn’t, but thanks to the books recommended to him by Grand Magister Krayt, Ardi always had something to occupy his mind. Even when it began to groan a little due to conjugated matrices. But he pushed on because, sooner or later, the arrays of runic connections attached to vectors eventually turned into them.

“Not a bad job, intern,” Brant whistled, returning the paper to its spot. “Maybe if you had made your revolutionary little trinket now, Shalov’s department wouldn’t have had to refine your Misty Helper so that it could be connected to generators.”

In truth, when creating the seal, Ardi hadn’t even thought about stationary use, because... he didn’t really own any generators he could use like that.

“I’m not surprised the Professor brought you to us,” Adakiy finally found the courage to clap Ardi on the shoulder. “You really do have a bright mind. Alright, since you calculated everything, and a week earlier than we thought you’d manage it, then, so be it, we will keep our word and share our knowledge.”

They had indeed made a deal that if Ardi finished early, Adakiy and Brant would coach him a little about Star Engineering.

It wasn’t like Ardan needed them to do this, but... he couldn’t very well say: “Could you please name everyone you’ve noticed is acting suspicious? Maybe someone living better than their salary should allow them to? Or is there a rumor that someone is a bit corrupt?”

No, with that sort of method, he was very unlikely to ferret out where the leak in the company had originated. He was likely to spook the mole instead, just as they had already been spooked when it came to Edward’s house.

Which was why Ardi, since he had to act alone here, had followed the teachings of Ergar and Shali.

The hunt, at times, was not a fast process at all. Sometimes, the prey had to be allowed to convince itself of its own safety.

“So what’s the problem with the wiring?” Ardi blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

Brant and Adakiy exchanged glances and, arming themselves with mugs of coffee and cigarettes, sat down opposite Ardi at the table.

“For a start, future luminary of science, what do you know about Ley-resistance?” Brant asked with a squint.

“Only the basics,” Ardan answered honestly. “It’s a physical quantity characterizing the ability of a material to impede the passage of Ley energy. It is expressed as the coefficient of proportionality between the potential difference and the force of constant Ley-tension in Grand Magister Omad’s law for a section or closed circuit of conductors.”

“An excellently memorized definition!” Adakiy applauded.

“Enough, chrome dome,” Brant cut him off. “Can you put it in your own words?”

Ardan thought about it for a moment.

“It’s basically how strongly a material resists the passage of Ley through it.”

“Good lad,” Brant nodded. “For a start, take, for example, your staff.” The engineer nodded toward the staff made of old oak leaning against the wall—or, as the demons and Fae called it, Ley-wood, Fire-wood, Warding-wood, and... many other names. “That is, if I’m not mistaken, oak?”

“Correct,” Ardi nodded, not bothering to mention that the oak was far from ordinary.

“There we go. Oak, like any other material or gas, has a specific Ley-resistivity. In the case of dry oak wood, it is, roughly, if I’m not mistaken, five-tenths of an Omad and change per square millimeter. That’s very decent conductivity, by the way, for the price. That is why wooden staves are often used by novice mages.”

It was surprising to see that Brant apparently knew the table of resistances by heart. There were so many lines in it that they would suffice for a separate publication. Actually, that table was a separate publication—or rather, a handbook.

“To use another example, the resistance of the human body equals ten to the eighth power Omads, which vividly demonstrates why our organism holds Ley inside it, but is in no particular hurry to part with it.”

Yes… Ardan had, some time ago, tried creating seals without a staff, and going by sensation alone, it was as simple as writing in a thin, flowing calligraphic script... with the thumb of his left hand, when he himself was right-handed.

“We won’t talk about temperature right now,” Brant exhaled a cloud of smoke. “The whole table is calibrated for twenty degrees. Upon heating or cooling, the conductivity of the Ley per square millimeter changes, of course, but those are jungles it is pointless for you to wade into, whereas Adakiy-”

“I’ll calculate it!” The other engineer couldn’t restrain himself. “My deadline for submitting this section of the work is the day after tomorrow.”

“We could have already started on the new one!”

“Not everyone is a workaholic like you, Brant!”

“A pity,” the engineer snorted and turned back to Ardi.

“As you may know, Ertalain ore not only has a resistance of practically nine-thousandths of an Omad per square millimeter, but also has almost no temperature threshold for conductivity change.”

Ardan nodded again. That was exactly why Ertalain ore was one of the main resources in the world, and also the guarantee of the western continent’s prosperity. The Alcade specifically was an abundant source, making the Empire one of the richest countries in the world.

And while the Empire didn’t lack gas and oil, coal, ores, and other minerals in its depths, it was Ertalain that allowed it to remain the world leader in terms of Star Magic.

“But the Ley also possesses the property of weakening as it moves away from the source,” Brant continued. “If we’re talking about the natural influence of the Ley Lines, then the higher toward the sky you go, the worse it gets. And that has you dealing with the incalculable power of an entire planet, while here, we have generators. Yes, with every passing year, they get better and more powerful, but can the power of a planet really be compared to the power of our generators? It’s absurd to even consider such a thing.”

Ardan nodded and, though he wasn’t particularly interested in the topic, memorized it for the future. There was no such thing as superfluous knowledge. Especially knowledge in the field of magic.

“So, despite the fact that Ertalain threads are used in Ley-cables, there is still some loss. And the longer the cable, the greater the loss. Come, intern, I’ll show you.” Brant waved his hand invitingly, and the three of them moved to the drafting table.

“Look here, suppose we are building a room for general energy generation. To start, each of the generators will form its own Paarlax field. You know what that is?”

Naturally, Ardan knew about the “Paarlax field.” In fact, he had learned about it a little earlier than the rest of the country.

“A little,” he replied.

“Well then, at the moment, we can ignore this field because the power outputs are too low and no conflict will arise,” Brant armed himself with a pointer and began to trace along the tangled schematic spread across multiple sheets. “But! Suppose we need to run a cable here, into the production shop, from the Green Star generator for the stationary shield. It will go along the ceiling, then through the partition, and so on. In total, that’s almost forty-four meters. Which, when you convert it, equals almost five Red Star rays of energy loss, because every ten meters of a two-millimeter cable cross-section equals the loss of one red ray per hour.”

Ardan frowned. It seemed to him like Brant was going somewhere with this, but he didn’t yet understand where.

“And here,” the engineer pointed to another node, “we have a Blue Star generator, and it feeds not a shield, but a relatively small furnace, because within these current parameters, this ends up being cheaper than fueling it with a gas piston. And that’s another seventy-five meters. And then-”

“I understand,” out of habit, as he would at the Grand University, Ardan even raised his hand, like he was answering a professor at a lecture. “Each cable doesn’t simply throw energy into the void... it creates its own Paarlax field. The energy lost in transmission does not disappear, but goes into the surrounding area and can create a conflict.”

“Bravo!” Brant, for a moment, shone no less brightly than Adakiy’s bald spot. “And now imagine that we have kilometers of wiring, all of it heating up, creating its own Paarlax fields—which, until this summer, we simply called Ley-disturbances—the generators themselves, stationary shields, and all the other magnificence we have to deal with. Do you now understand what a poorly-calculated load will lead to?”

One didn’t need to be an engineer to guess.

“To the Broken Seal effect, only in machine form.”

“Aha,” Brant put down his ruler and returned to the table to sip his strong coffee. “Everything will go up in smoke. Maybe not immediately. Maybe in a month or so. But it will blow up famously hard. And that’s after hundreds of exes go down the drain because of generator overruns. And the most unpleasant thing is that everything I just listed is only the stuff I can explain to you right now, in a couple of minutes, Mr. Intern, and not in a couple of years, over the course of a university class.”

Ardan looked at the complex blueprint differently. Now he understood why, hypothetically, the maintenance staff of Ley-generators and cables received one ex, while the engineer who calculated, thought out, and created all of this received ten exes. The level of knowledge and competence required was simply incomparable.

“But if we can use Resonance, taking the Ley from the outside,” Ardan approached that section of the blueprint where the generation room with its several massive installations was depicted, “and also restore our Stars, receiving Ley energy from the planetary Paarlax field, then...”

“Then, theoretically, the Ley can be transmitted at a distance without the help of conductors,” Brant finished for him. “But here we encounter such jungles of high science, intern, that, generally speaking, no one understands anything. And if they say they understand this—then they really understand absolutely nothing. For example... the shorter the Ley-conductor, intern, then, paradoxically, the stronger the loss and the stronger the Ley-disturbance becomes... dammit... the stronger the influence of the Paarlax field is.”

Brant picked up a simple pencil and, at least by the standards of a military mage, created a simple seal about as quickly as a lazy turtle.

A scarlet pattern flared beneath his feet, and a stream of wind burst from the pencil, ruffling the young man’s hair.

And a moment later, the pencil cracked and crumbled into splinters.

“At particularly small dimensions of the Ley-conductor, it begins to disintegrate under its influence. Why? There are about as many theories as there are attempts to circumvent this fact,” Brant dusted off his hands and, arming himself with a broom and dustpan, gathered the splinters from the floor. “You can’t imagine, Ard, how popular wands were ten years ago. The whole market was filled with them. Staves practically disappeared from the display cases. And then it turned out that such an inexpensive wand lasts for a couple of weeks of active magic use, and then that’s it. It turns into splinters, like that pencil. If it’s more expensive, made of various Ertalain alloys, then its shelf life is a bit longer, of course, but insignificantly so... And if you carve seals on it, then forget it—it will withstand only a couple of casts. Alright, intern, Adakiy, let’s get back to work. We have to go to the customer’s location next week, and we don’t even have the banal cable routing and distribution box points ready here.”

***

“That will be sixty-eight kso,” the driver pointed to the arrow of the meter.

Ardan, parting with three small coins and receiving change in the form of two, climbed out of the somewhat cramped interior of the taxi. It wasn’t like he had started living large and stopped using public transport. Quite the opposite, in fact.

After he’d finished his work at the company, the young man had rushed to catch the mech-bus, which had decided that fortune had been favoring Ardi a bit too much lately. As a result, the engine had boiled over at the very first intersection.

After that, Ardan had scrambled so as not to be late for his appointment, rushing to the tram (there were far fewer of them in the New City than in Old Town, but still enough). Then, as if out of spite toward him specifically, he had not ridden even a third of the route before two automobiles had collided on the tracks.

The nearest underground station had been just as far as the “Mitakov Office Center,” so he’d had to catch a cab. Fortunately, in the New City, bubbling and teeming not only with pedestrians but also with automobiles, this hadn’t been a problem.

The same could not be said of the money he’d spent on the relatively short, half-hour journey. If Ardi had had about four hundred exes lying around, he would have thought about acquiring a used automobile. In a couple of years, it might’ve even paid for itself.

The high-rise building surrounded by skyscrapers and standing opposite an avenue that was busy even in the evening greeted Ardan with a familiar view.

There were the gray, knit-together brows of the cracked wooden window frames. A canopy that was full of holes in places stretched over part of the sidewalk, and creaking, jamming revolving doors stood at the entrance.

The foyer was, as always, cluttered, damp, and smelled of mustiness, and the elevators were cordoned off and disabled, which Ardi was all too glad about.

He went up to the floor he needed and, out of ingrained caution, checked if there was another problem he needed to be wary of, like a crumbled military accumulator under the door, a magical trap on the door, or simply—the smell of gunpowder.

Luckily, the other side of the cracked, crooked door, which they clearly had no intention of fixing (it had taken quite a beating last time), smelled only of tobacco, cheap alcohol, unwashed clothes, and... floral perfume.

It was fashionable on Baliero these days.

Ardi opened the door, and the first thing that caught his eye was the fact that, sitting at the secretary’s desk, near the old filing cabinet made of rusty iron, was not the stunning young blonde named Ella, but... another girl.

She had an equally impressive figure, thick hair (black this time), and an almost complete absence of curves above the waist, which the girl was clearly trying to compensate for with wide hips and an equally indecent, in the opinion of the older generation at least, pencil skirt.

She had a slightly asymmetrical face, which was skillfully hidden by her makeup. She adjusted her half-moon glasses and looked at Ardan with dark eyes.

“And you are...”

“Egobar,” Ardan introduced himself. “Ard Egobar.”

“Ah, Mr. Egobar, yes-yes,” her voice matched her appearance—slightly raspy and viscous, like melted chocolate. “Mr. Oglanov is expecting you.”

Ardan reached for his hat and... simply nodded. Opening the door leading to the office that Ardi suspected was the old detective’s home as well, the young man briefly pondered something truly confusing: how did Peter always manage to rope in girls who belonged on the runways of Baliero, and not in a hotel for bedbugs that, thanks to a silly misunderstanding, also sheltered the retired Chief Inspector of the Metropolis?

The office itself had not changed much since Ardan’s last visit.

There were traces of gunshots and magic on the walls, scratches on the floor, and cuts on the sofa upholstery unskillfully stitched back together with dark nylon threads.

At the desk, wrapped in a coat not suited for the season and finishing the last remains of a cigar, Peter Oglanov was looking out the window.

He was still short, with a clearly unhealthy paunch, slicked-back, thin gray hair, a gap-toothed smile, and skin resembling lemon zest.

Even so, the clear, steely light of his gray eyes and that sly, slight smile, with which he rewarded the seated Ardi, remained impressive.

“Ard, glad to see ya... you... whichever you prefer, in good health,” Peter slid a glass of... ordinary water across the table.

And he poured himself some crystal-clear water from a glass bottle as well. “I try to hit the bottle less often these days. Encountering ancient vampires and torture chambers, as you might know, changes one’s attitude toward life a little. Immediately after, one wants... I don’t know, to breathe the stale air of this unpleasant city a little longer.”

“And-”

“Ella went to the Azure Coast after everything that happened,” Peter answered the unspoken question. “The Black House took care to fix her, so to speak, facade, but the building itself, Ard, is hopelessly askew. The foundation has cracked, and the roof is leaking. Do forgive my metaphors. It’s hard to blame the poor thing, though. Anyone would have lost their mind after surviving... that,” Peter swirled his glass as if something much stronger than water were inside it. “And so an asylum under the patronage of the Sisters of Light accepted her as a permanent resident, for which they have my gratitude.”

After hearing the words “asylum” and “Sisters of Light,” a shiver ran through Ardan, but he immediately pulled himself together.

“I won’t get into why you decided to contact me specifically, Ard,” Peter rose to his feet and, with a very confident gait, showing off a belly that was much smaller than before, reached his safe, from which he fished out a small revolver. “But I owe the Black House for saving both my life and Ella’s, so I will work, so to speak, on a voluntary basis. But if you are suddenly given a bonus for solving the murder, I will not refuse my fair share.”

“It feels like I paid for a couple of years of your help in advance by moonlighting as bait at the Irigov estate at the beginning of the year.”

Peter waved his hand over his head, put several “moons” with spare cartridges into his coat pockets, and with a deft, cunning skill, took his brown hat from the rack and placed it on his head in one smooth motion.

“Let’s go, my young colleague. I will show you how a real detective works, and not an investigator of the Imperial kennel.”

Ardan sighed, shook his head, and followed Peter. One could only hope that the investigation wouldn’t drag on for too long—he wanted to visit the club that Lucius Raft had invited him to.