Matabar

Book II. Chapter 59 - Another window

Chapter 59

Peter approached the pristine vehicle parked in the narrow alley, his gait a heavy shuffle against the silence of the stones. It was not a machine of the most comfortable assembly, certainly, but it was a far sight better than the rattling scrap heap in which Ardan and Peter Oglanov had visited the Irigov estate.

Answering the silent, questioning arch of Ardan’s brow, the old detective offered a fairly simple explanation.

“I won it at cards.”

Ardan didn’t move. He merely curved his right eyebrow higher, a steep angle of suspicion.

“Mr. Egobar… Ard… Eternal Angels, Cloak, let’s get this out of the way. Are we on first name terms or on some ‘Mr. Shit’ terms?”

Ardi shrugged. “We can use first names.”

“Excellent,” Peter said and blew his nose with a trumpeting noise. As he had done in the winter, he tossed the keys to the young man. “Then you take the wheel, Ard. I hope you’ve learned to drive somewhat better since last time. I don’t want my last few unbroken bones to get snapped.”

Without waiting for a response, Peter flopped heavily into the passenger seat. Ardan stood there for a few moments, the keyring cool and heavy in his hand, considering the possibility that inviting the man on this venture hadn’t been the brightest of ideas.

But…

First and foremost, he was focused on the fact that the murder of Veligrad Navalov, the Senior Magister of Architecture and Construction, bore a striking, uncomfortable resemblance to the death of the retired soldier who had served in the Guard Corps.

Peter had been working that case for nearly a year—among others, of course—so he knew the intricacies of the matter. Not to mention the fact that he had known Arthur “the Dandy” Belsky longer than even Milar Pnev had. Peter had tried more than once to throw the king of the Metropolis underworld behind bars, giving him a motive rife with personal history.

And all of this wasn’t taking into account other, no less serious reasons for why Ardi had turned to the very same man who had once nearly sent him to the Sleeping Spirits.

Sliding his staff into the space between the seats, Ardi settled behind the wheel. He took a few heartbeats to gather his thoughts, then turned the ignition. The engine coughed to life. He squeezed the clutch, shifted the gears, and the car rolled down the alley, merging into the buzzing river of metal, exhaust fumes, and the blinking constellations of the nighttime capital.

“Yes, you’ve definitely improved your driving,” Peter noted, shaking his flask before tilting it toward his lips.

Ardi’s sensitive hunter’s nose caught the scent—tart herbal tea, cloying and with too much sugar. Peter really had quit drinking… The old man’s face had even smoothed out, his jowls less pronounced than before.

“Did you manage to learn anything about that guard, Mr. Peter?” Ardan asked. Lately, thanks to Arkar, he had become comfortable enough behind the wheel to maintain a conversation while keeping an eye on the road.

“We agreed on using first names,” Peter said, rolling down the window. He turned his face toward the damp wind, which carried the perfume of diesel, gasoline and the city sewers.

“You may address me as ‘Ard,’” Ardi clarified gently. “But I shall address you as ‘Mr. Peter.’”

“As you wish,” the old detective said, waving his flask dismissively. “I found nothing of note. He served. He came back. He didn’t want to take part in the machinations of Irigov and his sister. Sometimes, he visited cheap brothels; he had no real companions or friends. There was one other interesting tidbit: after his death, he still owed the owner of the tenement house where he rented a room almost seven and a half exes. They shook it out of his relatives.”

“And they are…”

“Farmers in the northeast. A big family,” Peter said, scratching his stubble with his fingernails. The sound was dry and rasping. “A father, mother, a few elderly grandparents, a multitude of brothers and sisters. The landlord collected the debt through the court.”

Ardan remained silent. On the one hand, according to the law, the landlord had been within his rights to do so. But from a moral standpoint… Well, from a moral standpoint, it was not for Ardi to judge other people.

He still didn’t understand them very well. Or perhaps it would be better to say that he did not understand them completely.

“So, there are no leads?”

“None, young man…” Peter cut himself off before Ardi could react to the patronizing address. “…forgive me. None, Corporal. Except, perhaps, for its close proximity to other such cases. For example…”

“The father of Taisia Shpritz, and the recently-murdered Veligrad Navalov,” Ardan finished for him.

“May the Eternal Angels accept his restless soul,” Peter said, making the sign of the Face of Light over his chest.

When they turned onto New Time Avenue, where the young man gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make it creak and nearly buried his nose in the windshield, Peter made the sign of the Face of Light again.

“If you’re so worried, you could take the wheel yourself.”

“I could,” Peter agreed. “If I knew how to drive.”

It cost Ardan considerable effort to keep their transport in its lane and not crash into a nearby truck hauling some goods from a factory. Ardi didn’t have time to read exactly what or from where, but judging by its coloring, it was something related to printing.

“You don’t know how to drive?!”

“And what do you think I needed Lisa for, Corporal? Or Alla, if you prefer… may the Darkness swallow her,” Peter cursed and, looking at his flask with disgust, took another swig. He was apparently regretting the fact that it contained tea and not something stronger. “You know, when your valiant colleagues in black with terrible manners informed me of the true identity… identities of Elisabeth Aris, well…” Peter shook his head. “There are things, Ard, that you don’t want to remember. And there are also things you’d prefer not to know at all. Honestly, I would have preferred to continue bringing flowers to the grave of a spirited driver in a dress…”

Peter waved his hand. The old detective generally loved to gesticulate a lot, his hand constantly dropping close to the handle of his revolver.

It was interesting to consider the trajectory of the former Chief Inspector’s life. He’d been one of the most important officers in the capital’s Guard Corps, and now he was a simple, not always washed, balding, and aging private investigator with an office in a semi-abandoned building.

Ardan honestly didn’t know how to relate to Peter Oglanov.

He had met him before plunging into the maelstrom of events connected to the Puppeteers, the history of the Empire, and Ardi’s own family. Back then, Peter had seemed like a slightly sad, eccentric old man who loved jazz and playing Sevens to him.

And now… he remained just as old, just as eccentric, and still sad, but he was no longer quite… the same as before. Ardi couldn’t find the right words for it.

And that worried him.

“She didn’t get a job with you for no reason,” Ardan said, inwardly thanking the Sleeping Spirits as he turned off the main street of the New City. He navigated through a tangle of short streets toward the Crookedwater Canal.

Naturally, a man like Veligrad Navalov had lived on the most expensive land in the city—Saint Vasily’s Island.

“Naturally, Corporal, naturally,” Peter rested his cheek on his fist. “Whoever organized everything that’s happening in the city and country right now… I don’t know what you call them in the Black House… Well, these people are trying to plug as many holes as they can. I served for almost twenty years in the Guard Corps, youn… Ard. I’ve seen more than your captain and his henchmen put together. And I know a lot of very important people’s dirty secrets. So many of them, in fact, that you would eat your hat to hear even a third of them… By the way, did you lose your colorful headgear? I recall you flaunting a cowboy hat.”

Ardi left the question unanswered.

“Maybe they were trying to find something out from you through Lisa-Alla?”

“Do you know any necromancy?”

Ardi choked and turned to the old man in surprise for a few seconds.

“I’ve dealt with Star Mages a couple of times,” the detective explained. “My point, Corporal, is that unless you raise her from the dead, neither you nor I will ever know the answer. Although, wait—she isn’t there. The body was never found.”

Ardan remained silent again. While he hadn’t yet served in the Second Chancery for a full year, he could still feel it when someone was trying to turn him from a hunter into prey.

Peter was conducting his own parallel investigation, to which the Black House had turned a blind eye due to Peter’s specific usefulness. And it was precisely this investigation that the older man was currently engaged in. And while Ardi had wanted to use the old detective, his connections, knowledge, and skills for his own ends, Peter had agreed to this adventure based on the same motives—to use Ardan.

In principle, the essence of their relationship hadn’t changed since last winter, but at least its true nature had become clear to both of them.

“It wasn’t,” Ardan confirmed.

Peter looked at him askance and grunted approvingly, with a note of respect to his tone.

“Listen, Corporal, I understand what you want from me, and I understand what I want from you. Let’s make a deal—you throw me a bone when it comes to Alla or whoever she was, and I won’t investigate the Dandy’s father-in-law in a slipshod manner and…” Peter shook his flask demonstratively, “…act as if I don’t give a damn about the death of any relative of that bastard. Because, believe me, I really don’t.”

“Alla-Lisa stole something from Trevor Man’s cabin…”

“…And while you are deciding whether to share information with me…”

“…some kind of very important key that the Puppeteers want.”

Now it was Peter’s turn to succumb to a coughing fit. He choked on his tea and began, almost literally, to drown in it. Ardan had to tear a numb hand from the steering wheel (which didn’t make his driving any more confident) and pound the old man on the back.

“Eternal Angels… you’re strong, you plague… I forget sometimes that you aren’t fully human, Corporal,” Peter wheezed. He wiped his lips, screwed the cap back onto his flask, and tucked it into his coat. “A key, you say… And, let me guess, now you and your Captain Pnev have to find her body, and since she’s a mutant and I haven’t heard anything about the Six finding a mutant, much less a key, it turns out… Ah. It’s clear why you agreed to do business with the Dandy.”

Ardi reminded himself once again that he wasn’t dealing with someone who could be easily outwitted by Skusty’s art, but with a man who had served in the Guard Corps longer than Ardan had been alive. Peter Oglanov might have had dubious morals, a repulsive character, and his way of speaking left a lot to be desired, but he was, at his core, an excellent detective.

That was why the Black House hadn’t come after him even after Peter’s actions had nearly signed Ardan’s death warrant.

“What do you know about Veligrad Navalov?” Ardi steered the conversation back to its original topic.

“Not that much,” Peter turned away to look out the window again. They were just crossing the Martyrs’ Bridge and driving through the less lively, but much more cramped Old Town. “He was born and raised in the Metropolis. He belonged to a family of hereditary aristocrats who bought their noble title a few centuries ago. His distant, many-times ‘great’-grandfather built Pashar Fortress.”

Ardan’s eyebrows nearly shot up to his hairline.

“Yes, yes,” Peter nodded. “That very same fortress where the troops of the Dark Lord were obliterated. And not only that one, actually. The Navalov family has been famous for their fortifications since the war of Gales with Ectassus. Most of the fortresses and castles that survived from those times were either built by them, or according to their blueprints.”

Well, well… It was no surprise that Veligrad Navalov had allowed himself such liberties when talking with the Dandy. Even without their indirect kinship, Navalov had had enough weight to stand on the same scales as many of the truly powerful of this world.

“Veligrad himself couldn’t produce an heir,” Peter continued. “In his first marriage, his wife died of a fever; in the second, she ran off with Navalov’s apprentice. Both marriages were childless. I suspect that Veligrad himself was simply weak below the belt… So much so that preparations, both magical and otherwise, didn’t help him much. But, after his divorce, he acknowledged a bastard from a mistress.”

“Why did he have a mistress if he was, as you put it, weak in that area?”

“For status, Ard, for status,” Peter smiled with a touch of roguishness. “He wanted to appear at events, restaurants and social gatherings with a beautiful lady. Consider her something like a New Year tree. Only with legs. Beautiful and long legs, of course. He wanted to evoke envy in others and demonstrate his wealth. Navalov was an unpleasant man.”

“Did you cross paths with him?”

“Once,” Peter answered. “The Navalov family architectural bureau was engaged in the redevelopment of one of the Corps buildings. It was a contract directly with the Crown, but nothing serious. Even so, Veligrad managed to turn this event into a whole performance, for which tickets were sold based on the quantity of frayed nerves. Needless to say, my dear Ard, I always found myself in the front row.”

For some reason, Ardan wasn’t surprised by this characterization. And yet, Peter’s manner of speaking amused him. He would shift from the harsh, sometimes coarse language inherent to gangsters, Cloaks and guards to the gallant speech of a cultured man, and then abruptly go back.

“He was a real prick,” Peter grunted and rubbed his overgrown stubble again. “He was apparently compensating for the masculine weakness of his body with what he assumed was strength of character. In reality, he simply behaved like a f… a very socially clumsy gentleman.”

“They don’t kill you for that.”

“Nowadays, you’d be right,” Peter agreed. “But in the times of even my youth, Ard, they challenged you to a duel for such things, until the previous War Minister banned them. And then he was abolished.”

The position of War Minister had existed in the Empire for only a short time. It had been abolished even before the Fatian Massacre, and then, due to upheavals in the country, they never returned to discussing it again.

“And the bastard, is that…”

“The Dandy’s wife,” Peter confirmed his guess. “They met right after that monster came to the capital. I don’t know the details, but there was a scandal. It was so juicy that Navalov kicked the child he himself had acknowledged out of the house and disinherited her. Thus, the Navalovs were left without any progeny.”

Ardi struggled for a moment, trying not to fall off the cliff where, in the darkness of a bottomless abyss, he would be consumed by his desire to find a hidden meaning in the Dandy’s marriage to the architect’s illegitimate child.

However, Milar had been right before. One shouldn’t try to find connections where there were none.

On the other hand, if one assumed that-

“I already checked.”

“What?” Ardi jerked, and the car jerked with him.

“Hold it steady!” Peter shouted as they nearly flew onto the sidewalk.

“Damn it all… I said that I already checked, Corporal. I looked into whether Veligrad was engaged in anything related to the reconstruction or excavation of temples of the Old Gods, dungeons, or castles of the past, and generally anything that could bring such a foul fate upon an ordinary person. But no. There’s nothing like that.”

The former Chief Inspector indeed… Ardi really had been wondering if Veligrad Navalov had had connections to something that could sing in chorus with the Dead Lands, the Old Gods, and everything that concerned the Puppeteers.

On the other hand, the young man couldn’t shake the feeling that Delpas (the mining equipment), the mysterious key, the research regarding demonology and chimerology, the Dead Lands on the border with the Enario Theocracy, and now Navalov’s death, were somehow connected.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Now, Corporal, you are probably wondering why, as you put it, the Puppeteers… what a stupid name,” Peter winced and continued to hold on to the door handle tightly, as if he didn’t trust Ardan to deliver them to their destination safe and sound.

The youth didn’t blame the detective for this. He wasn’t very optimistic about their chances, either.

“Three times now, if you count Taisia Shpritz’s father, someone has made everything look so obviously like the work of the Narikhman, but they’ve done it in such a way that even an idiot would guess that they’ve been framed.”

Actually, Ardi hadn’t even thought about that yet, but he didn’t show it. As for the fact that Peter now knew their code name for the unknown organization, that was nothing to worry about.

The old detective, due to what had happened at the Irigov estate, and then the “basement” of the ancient vampire’s house as well, already knew far more than anyone else. Perhaps only Milar Pnev’s department and the Colonel himself were better informed.

“The answer to why someone has done so is altogether quite simple and prosaic, Corporal,” Peter exhaled with relief when they stopped near a meter-high, wrought-iron fence situated in front of the lawn of a palace standing in the middle of Short Street, which was named that… because it ended at one of the numerous canals crisscrossing Saint Vasily’s Island.

“Even if you and your colleagues in black are completely sure that the Narikhman are not involved, you will still have to verify it. Which means exposing one of the most hidden criminal organizations and then butting heads with it. Ha! I would watch that show from the front row, or any row, really.”

“From what I remember, the last time the Second Chancery clashed with the Narikhman over the proliferation of Angel Dust laboratories, the whole capital burned like we were at war.”

Ardan, taking his staff and stepping out onto the street, recalled the situation with the Hammers and the Orcish Jackets.

The Puppeteers had already tried to start a war between the gangs in the capital once. They clearly needed that to happen for some reason. But why?

It would likely be, as always, a distraction. And since the mysterious criminal geniuses tended to not only nest one plan inside another tightly, but also prepare backups, then…

What, from their point of view, and for the sake of their unknown goals, was the fundamental difference between the Hammers fighting the Orcish Jackets and the Narikhman clashing with the Black House?

In theory—nothing. But, surprisingly, even that was not important, but rather… what exactly were they trying to hide under the smoke of the fire they were so carefully and solicitously kindling?

But Ardan would have to think about that some other time. For now, he opened his grimoire to the page with the Lake Mask seal.

It was a simple spell based on the principles of low-power stationary wards (ones that didn’t require a connection to generators), as well as illusion magic. One could buy such things for a couple of coins at the Spell Market, or even directly at the Grand University, because students often played pranks on each other there and simply had fun using them.

Such illusions cost basically nothing to acquire because they couldn’t withstand the check of even the poorest of stationary shields, and dispelling them was no trouble at all. For Ardan, it was easier to create something like this himself, which would likely sound somewhat incredible to other students and mages.

From the head of his staff, a ribbon of water unfurled, taking with it three rays of his Red Star. It covered Ardan’s face, leaving behind a sensation of spring freshness and a slightly moist taste on his lips.

“By the way, you… Light help me!” Peter reached for his revolver, but pulled his hand back in time. “Ard, is that you?”

“It is,” the youth answered in his own voice. Changing that as well would have required spending extra rays, and Ardi was not ready to go to such extravagant lengths.

“Damn it… Couldn’t you have created someone with a more pleasant appearance? I’ve already gotten used to having a two-meter-tall, handsome man in my company, not… this.”

Peter frowned, shook his head, and headed toward the estate.

The four-story mansion located in the center of the city didn’t particularly stand out compared to the other luxurious buildings—the lairs of the rich and powerful. The façade was every bit as lush as the others, with colonnades, marble and stucco molding, a porch at the grand entrance, and the air was all but saturated with the smell of brand new, crisp exes.

Ardi, while examining his reflection in a puddle, briefly wondered how a man who’d lived alone in an area of almost three thousand square meters must’ve felt. Perhaps he only wondered about this because he himself couldn’t afford anything like it. And for that reason, such a luxury seemed like an extravagance bordering on madness to him.

“And what do you think?” He asked the puddle quietly.

The man looking back at him was cross-eyed, jug-eared, with an improperly stitched hare-lip. He also had horrible teeth and a nose that had been broken and was now bent to the side. His skin resembled the rind of a rotten Kargaam lemon, and his bulging lips answered with only silence.

Ardi, upon creating the illusion, had hoped that the more repulsive the appearance turned out to be, the less anyone would want to look closely at it. This theoretically meant that the illusion had a better chance of remaining undetected, especially since it only lasted a few hours.

“Are you coming, Corporal?” Peter urged him.

Ardan nodded and ran to catch up with the detective who had already approached the wicket gate. Locked with a bolt, it served more as part of the exterior decor than a serious barrier for even the alley cats. The stationary shield was what normally kept out intruders. At the moment, judging by what Ardi could sense, it was turned off, just like the generators themselves, which were located somewhere in the basement.

Peter unceremoniously leaned over the fence, slid the bolt back, and they walked together toward the house.

There, on the porch, sitting on a simple chair and hugging an army rifle to his chest, a young guard was dozing. He had pulled his cap down over his face, wrapped himself in his warm uniform, and was peacefully drooling right into the barrel of his weapon.

“They’ve let themselves go, of course,” Peter remarked disapprovingly and, just as unceremoniously, he slapped the visor of the man’s cap, knocking it off the head of the sleeping sentry.

Instead of jumping to his feet and pointing the rifle at them, the guard simply wrapped himself more comfortably in his uniform and seemed to wheeze something in response. He was sleeping so deeply and sweetly that…

“This day promises to be an interesting one,” Peter snatched his revolver from its holster, and Ardan opened his grimoire to the first page of the section with healing spells.

“Been like that for long?” Peter asked as he pressed his ear to the door.

Ardan approached the guard and, after checking his pulse, leaned down to sniff the guard’s mouth.

“Damn it, Ard! It looks like you’re about to partake in sodomy!” Peter turned away and, pulling out a set of lockpicks, busied himself with the lock. “I will remind you that such a thing gets you no less than ten years of hard labor.”

Ardan ignored the inappropriate joke.

“This wasn’t magic,” the young man stated. “It was alchemy. Cheap stuff. He’ll wake up in a couple of hours and just have a terrible headache.”

Peter, grunting, pulled the door toward himself.

“Not locked,” he drawled, putting the lockpicks back into his coat. “Summon your colleagues, Corporal. We’re going to need reinforcements.”

“Already done,” Ardi showed him an activated amulet from among the ones Milar had given him.

“As much as I want to stay and wait for the Cloaks here, Ard, it is apparently our fate to socialize inside the estates of all sorts of assholes.” And with that, without waiting for a response, Peter was the first to enter Navalov’s house.

Ardan sighed and followed him. The chances that he would make it to the magic boxers’ club were rapidly approaching the place where, apparently, Ardi had once again found some sort of adventure for himself.

After entering, Ardi held the front door open, propping it with an umbrella stand. At Peter’s bewildered look, Ardan mouthed: “Habit.”

He didn’t bother to elaborate that every time he entered such places, the door had an unpleasant habit of disappearing right after.

Peter nodded and, putting a finger to his lips, waved his revolver toward the interior.

On the inside, just like with the outside, the mansion differed little from its brethren. There were plenty of expensive furnishings like carved, lacquered furniture and paintings hanging on walls covered with wallpaper that was far from modest in either its coloring or quality. From the ceiling hung chandeliers stylized to look like their predecessors from the time when Old Town had not yet been illuminated by the Ley, but had languished among candles and oil instead. Along with this, stucco, parquet and a multitude of other details all but shouted in one’s face about not only the wealth, but also the character of the many generations of this house’s owners.

Peter skirted one such testimony—a miniature of a most ordinary, provincial fortress that had become famous thanks to a battle that had defined the fate of the modern Empire. Leaving the tiny copy of Pashar Fortress behind him, Ardan joined the detective.

They found themselves in a spacious foyer, where they were slightly blinded by the gilding along the mirrors and the railings of the divided imperial staircase, as well as the marble hidden under carpets from Lan’Duo’Ha.

Looking around, neither Peter nor Ardan could find a single piece of evidence that anyone had broken in here. There was no dirt, no broken objects, no dust-free space left behind after something had been carried out.

No, only the ringing silence of a vast, deserted space greeted them.

“Maybe try conjuring something?” Peter hissed over his shoulder.

“What?” Ardi hissed back.

“Am I a mage? How should I know? But last time, you conjured something.”

“Yes, while looking for a demon,” Ardan nodded. “But there are none here.”

“You sure?”

Ardi inhaled noisily through his nose. A whole bouquet of smells immediately hit him in the face: the slightly heavy, somewhat acrid aroma of polished copper; the musty and stifling scent of cobwebs, which the spiders, rejoicing in their newfound solitude, had already begun to weave; the slight smell of dampness from the sewage system and, most of all, the scent of lacquered wood. A few moments later, all of that was drowned out by Peter’s strong cologne, which he had probably resorted to using instead of a shower.

“No, there are no demons here,” Ardan confirmed. “Nor other people, which is strange, because someone did come in here.”

“Yes, strange indeed…” Peter agreed. “Flapping his nostrils like that… if I had a staff and Stars, I would conjure something.”

Ardan was forced to agree with Peter. Despite serving in the Black House for almost a year, he still hadn’t acquired spells that could simplify the search for someone or something. On the other hand, he had always relied on his own skills as a hunter, however insignificant (in the opinion of Ergar and Shali) they might’ve been, but right now, they, too, were silent.

He could not hear or smell anyone except Peter and himself, and all he could see was the almost pristine purity of the grand foyer of a lavish house. It gave him the impression that, after the servants’ last cleaning, no one had been here.

In the materials handed to him by the Dandy’s people, it had been noted that the final cleaning had been carried out the day after the murder and, after that, the building had been sealed.

However, he couldn’t trust the Dandy and his materials. Just as he couldn’t, at this very moment, trust his own eyes, ears and nose.

“If someone broke in here, then that means they need to find something,” Peter turned both his head and his revolver from side to side. “What do you think, Ard? Where, in this obscenely huge house, could something valuable be hidden?”

Both of them would’ve paid considerable sums of exes for an answer to that question. Running through an enormous house in search of someone who could so easily hide their tracks and conceal their presence from a snow leopard was no simple task.

On the other hand…

“For a man like Veligrad Navalov,” Ardan mused. “The meaning of his life was his work.”

The old detective and the young investigator exchanged glances. In each other’s eyes, they read the same words:

“The study!” they both declared in a loud whisper, if such a thing were even possible.

“Right, now we need to figure out where it might be located,” Peter plunged so deeply into his thoughts that he began tapping the barrel of his revolver on his chin. “Navalov was a narcissistic asshole, so it’s definitely on the top floor.”

“And he lived for architecture,” Ardan picked up. “Therefore, the windows are, naturally, not on the inner side, but facing the facades of the buildings opposite this one.”

“But he suffered from masculine weakness, so he took care of himself, which means that it’s somewhere away from the grand staircase, so the draft doesn’t come in from under the door,” added Peter. “That means windows facing the street, on the top floor… But is it the east or west wing?”

“We can-”

“We are not splitting up, Corporal,” Peter interrupted him sharply. “Because if you die, I will never be able to prove to the Cloaks that it wasn’t my fault, but your own stupidity that ruined you.”

Ardan sighed. Peter was right—splitting up was dangerous. But if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be able to search the entire top floor that occupied seven hundred square meters. At least not in a way that wouldn’t scare off whoever had infiltrated this place. And that was assuming that this same person hadn’t already realized that they were far from alone in the house.

“Very useful staff you have there, Ard.”

Ardan ignored the honest but meaningless jab. He merely made a mental note that he needed to compile a full list of seals for development and… then develop them. He didn’t need spells for every single thing in his life, but for quite obvious work and not-so-work-related situations. Such carelessness might cost him too much next time.

“And what about that… what’s it called… sorcery of the Firstborn?”

Ardan, who wasn’t taking his eyes off the stairs and was listening intently to the corridors, shook his head. Despite the fact that the generators hadn’t been working for quite some time, there was still too much dead Ley on the island itself, and in the house as well, for Ardi to use the art of the Aean’Hane.

“You are very useful, Ard,” Peter said through yellowing teeth.

“You’re one to talk,” Ardan couldn’t restrain himself after all. And not because of Peter, but rather, because of himself. He had focused so much on military magic, far more than he’d wanted to, in fact, that he had forgotten that his main job in the Black House consisted not of chases and battles, but searching. Often for objects, less often for people.

Maybe if he’d possessed the necessary seals or had at least crafted some simple semblances of them himself, things in Larand would have ended somewhat differently.

“Crown or banner?”

“Crown.”

Peter pulled a kso coin from his pocket, flipped it, caught it, and said simply:

“East.”

Half-turned, shoulder to shoulder, they slowly ascended the stairs. From the walls, the consistently large, always gap-toothed, and, naturally, sleek faces of Navalov’s ancestors looked down upon them—the entire male half of the Navalov family. And the higher up the stairs one got, the more ancient the outfits in the portraits and the crueler the gazes of the gradually-thinning faces became.

In the mirrors, Ardan examined the balconies of the floors and the branching corridors. He didn’t want some horror to jump out at them from the darkness, like at Baliero.

Ardan was also in no hurry to cast any spells like Orlovsky’s Shield—if the intruder was a Star Mage or, even worse, one of the Aean’Hane, any magic could signal their presence as reliably as a wailing fire siren. And so Ardi went up to the fourth floor, hiding not behind magic, but behind Peter’s figure, which was wide at the waist and slightly narrower at the shoulders.

Was he ashamed of such behavior? The Irigov estate was still fresh in his memory, so… no, not particularly.

“Feel anything?” Peter asked. He was holding his revolver on a bent elbow.

Ardi drew in air through his nose again, but, just like on the first floor, he sensed nothing strange. The only real difference was that up here, the smell of the carpets that lined the corridor floors was much stronger. And there was also lots of book dust.

“No.”

“Shit,” the detective swore. “Let’s go.”

And so they did, stepping carefully across the thick pile carpets. Around them shimmered silver plaques on stands, covered in praise for the aristocratic family’s good work. There were also some more miniatures. From the portraits hung here, the stately Navalov women looked down upon the uninvited visitors.

Apparently, luck had smiled upon Ardi again. Navalov’s study was indeed located in the east wing of the palatial house.

How did Ardi know this? It wasn’t because of a smell or some other complex details hidden from the common layman. Among the multitude of doors they had left behind, this particular one had been flung wide open, and dozens of sheets of paper covered in writing had been scattered across the floor.

And there was a distinct draft coming from inside.

Peter, stepping over the piles of scattered documents, was the first to enter the office and, after running across the spacious room, he stopped by the window. The thrown-open sashes and the tulle fluttering in the wind, with the curtains frowning in displeasure, clearly hinted that…

“The bastard’s gone,” Peter stated and put his revolver back in its holster. “Damn it…”

Ardan exhaled with relief—he really didn’t want to deal with the one who had managed to hide from him so well—and, leaning on his staff, looked around.

The walls were upholstered in green cloth—that had been fashionable about forty years ago, he was pretty sure. Wrought-iron girandoles with crystal sconces had been mounted on them, and each of them cost no less than Ardan’s monthly salary. The ceiling was decorated with a painting in which… Veligrad Navalov was depicted as one of the Angels of Light.

“Disgusting blasphemy,” Peter spat on the floor.

Odd… Ardi hadn’t thought that the former Chief Inspector was a religious man.

Opposite each other, standing like wings flanking the entrance, were two huge bookcases. There were also some antique filing cabinets that looked both impractical and expensive. The pot-bellied wardrobe with a somewhat crooked door ruined the overall image a little, but a grand fireplace with armchairs in front of it, and, directly across from that, a massive office desk, distracted from it.

Until recently, pedantic order had reigned here. And now, it was all chaos and ruin: the furniture had been broken and smashed and the books were everywhere, like common trash; the ash from the fireplace had been scattered across the floor, the upholstery of the armchairs had been ripped open, and everything that could be torn from the walls had been. Even the chandelier had been pulled from the ceiling, and now its crystal teardrops tinkled pitifully in the wind.

“They were clearly looking for something here, Ard,” Peter grumbled, prowling around the office and lifting one, then another silent witness of the looting. “The question is what exactly that thing was. And why they did it in such a rush that it looks like the Fatian front in here.”

Ardi, scratching the back of his head with the top of his staff, looked around again. Peter was right, of course. The search had indeed been conducted in haste. Stepping over a whole stack of gutted books, Ardan approached the hopelessly ruined antique cabinet. It was once almost a masterpiece of woodcarving, and now…

“Whatever they were looking for, it’s something very small, Ard,” Peter persisted. “Understand?”

“Otherwise, they wouldn’t have gutted the books,” Ardan nodded.

Something very small… something that could fit into a book… Which was why they’d smashed the whole office, after which they’d escaped through the open window. Apparently, they’d done so right before Peter and Ardan had come up the stairs.

Only one question remained…

Peter and Ardi exchanged glances again. Both of them, almost simultaneously, raised their staff and revolver toward the only thing that, amidst the chaos of all this destruction, looked relatively intact.

Of course, the pot-bellied wardrobe was far from actually “intact.” But the crooked door, frozen on its bent hinge, remained closed.

And here was the trouble—Peter really didn’t know anything about magic, so before Ardan could adjust the parameters of his Ice Cage, the detective shouted for some reason:

“Come out with your hands up!”

“Ahgrat!” Ardan shouted and immediately struck the floor with his staff.

In that same instant, a seal blazed beneath his feet, and liquid glass flowed from the head of his staff, forming twelve translucent discs.

Who could manage to hide the rhythm of their heart and their scent from a snow leopard and, at the same time, ingratiate themselves with a guard enough to apply alchemy to his lips? The answer was obvious.

The doors of the wardrobe shattered into splinters and flew everywhere. For a moment, time froze, and Ardi, opening his eyes wide, saw before him a most ordinary girl of the most average appearance wearing equally-inconspicuous attire. A person could see someone like her and immediately forget her. And only in those eternal nightmares that would torment them for years to come would one dream of her endlessly long, living hair.

Coiling in tight strands, it streamed like a set of waterfalls in different directions, entangling the area around her like the tentacles of an octopus.

“Tazidahian mutant!” Peter shouted and squeezed the trigger.

With his left hand, he cocked the hammer of his old revolver no worse than any cowboy. He acted so quickly that the shots practically merged into one. The bullets, lined up in a straight line, should have landed one after another in the center of her mass, right in the middle of the girl’s corset.

But not even one of them was destined to reach its target.

The hair, which had previously been swimming through the air, suddenly jerked and, merging into one mass, turned into a steel cleaver. Not in a figurative sense, but in an almost literal one. A blade of steely hair the length of a horse’s leg, which gleamed in the light cast by the Ley-lanterns standing in the street outside, sliced through the bullets.

Ardan had already struck the ground with his staff at that point, but… nothing happened.

The Ley he had sent into his staff simply whooshed outward, throwing him several steps back. Miraculously staying on his feet and struggling to remember what this was—the effect of a Broken Seal—Ardan watched with horror as his staff was prevented from touching the floor by hair that had wound itself around its shaft.

The mutant jumped, and after landing on her feet, she waved her hand, and another strand, this one stretching out into a drill several meters long, rushed straight at Peter’s chest.

He jumped aside, but it was too late. Age and excess weight took their bloody toll on the detective, and the mutant’s strike hit his left side, easily ripping open the flesh there.

And immediately, with a second swing of her hand, the mutant sent her cleaver at Ardan’s head.

Eight of the twelve discs burst at once, but at least they shifted the blow to the side. They couldn’t even block it fully, however. The floor next to Ardi exploded with dust and splinters, and the young man leaped back to avoid falling into the newly-created hole.

As he fell, he struck the floor with the head of his staff, and an Ice Bullet, cutting through the gray cloud, went somewhere into the ceiling. Ardan hadn’t trained much with this spell yet and couldn’t correctly change its parameters during a fight.

The mutant, whose blue eyes flashed like those of a spider or a locust, pushed off the floor with the coiled pillars of her living hair and flew out through the open window.

Jumping to his feet, Ardan ran over to Peter and swung his staff, but the detective yelled:

“Go after her, you fool! The reinforcements will patch me up!”

Ardi still couldn’t force himself to just leave. He briefly assessed the wound, and only after making sure that Peter wouldn’t die in the next half hour, he nodded and rushed to the window.

As he was jumping onto the windowsill, he thought:

I wonder why windows are so unlucky for me… and then leaped from the fourth floor, straight into the open arms of the burgeoning twilight.