Matabar

Book II. Chapter 65 - Striga

They entered four abreast through the factory’s gated checkpoint, where a bored guard poked his head out of a wooden shack to give their documents a cursory glance. Ardi was at first surprised that the man was showing so little interest in total strangers, but after he took a few more steps along the wooden planks covering the mud that had been churned up by trucks, everything made sense.

The entire future factory grounds were covered by a magical shield. All of it was protected, ranging from the brick-wall workshop ahead, its roof laid out in sheets of rolled steel, to the attached administrative design building that looked more like a fine house from the central districts… Even the warehouse standing squarely in the middle of the yard.

“Why are you stopping, intern?” Adakiy asked, looking back in surprise at the young man who had frozen in his tracks.

His confusion made sense—most Star Mages couldn’t sense Ley energy in general, nor any specific wards. According to Edward, such sensitivity usually developed by the time one attained their fourth, or for some, their fifth Star. Ardan, however, thanks to his Speaker abilities, wasn’t so much an exception to the rule as he was a category of his own.

“There’s a wide-area shield here,” Ardi said. He wasn’t even asking; he’d answered the abstract question with an equally-abstract statement.

“Ah, recalling the relevant information, are you?” Adakiy phrased his rhetorical question so “familiarly” that Ardan nearly flinched. “It’s a good thing that you reviewed Inakov’s entire order history. Yes, you’re right—the outer perimeter cable is buried in a conduit about half a meter underground. The generator powering the shield is housed in the generation annex,” Adakiy waved toward the warehouse, where Brant and Odurdod were headed at that very moment. “It has eighty rays of the Red Star. A reliable old workhorse that doesn’t guzzle energy. And the shield’s design isn’t all that complicated: it’s basically an alarm system, a key-lock control scheme. You know, like the ones some rich folks install in the suburbs, only without active anti-intrusion measures. Oh… I’m rambling. Let’s hurry before we fall completely behind.”

Although Ardan had by now learned to fully control his Witch’s Gaze, he couldn’t simultaneously keep it active and also listen closely to his other senses for shield magic. And so, focusing on the shield that brushed against his mind, Ardan let go of his Witch’s Gaze.

And all would have been well, if not for the fact that Adakiy (who admittedly had neither an impressive number of rays to his Stars nor much practical magical experience outside of engineering) had noticed nothing. The Blue Mage hadn’t paid the slightest bit of attention to the fact that an echo of the Witch’s Gaze had just draped itself directly over his mind.

Why?

Thoughts for another day…

Putting that detail in his basket of concerns, reflections and ideas to address later, Ardan quickened his pace.

Under the boards, which only barely covered the mire of puddles and ruts, wet earth squelched with each step. Clods of brown mud constantly threatened to splash up onto one’s boots or the hem of a cloak, and only habit kept the engineers from being caught unaware by such surprises.

Ardan himself would most likely be spending a tedious evening in the company of a washboard and a bar of soap. He could ask Tess, and she would surely not refuse. In fact, she’d probably insist on doing the laundry herself, but that was precisely why Ardan wanted to handle it on his own. His fiancée had more important things to do than deal with his mud-spattered cloak.

The air crackled faintly with the endless sparks of welding. This was a fairly recent invention, a Ley-artifact with a carbon (high-Ertalain) Ley-conduit and an arcing Ley-spark. It was definitely expensive equipment, but one that was gaining popularity among the industrialists. The loud voices of workmen rang out, hammers clanged, foremen barked sharp orders… All of these were sounds one would normally expect at an enterprise of this sort.

Ardan, for his part, glanced around surreptitiously, trying to notice anything that stood out. But as was the norm with the an Manish & Co. case thus far, at first glance, the factory—now in its final stages of construction—looked perfectly mundane.

“You’re a bit late, gentlemen mages,” a man in work clothes greeted them gruffly at the warehouse door.

He wore a plain cloth jacket, sturdy pants held up by old, cracked leather suspenders, a coarse work shirt, and a cap that had slid off to one side… and, of course, a cigarette stub pinched between grease-stained fingers. Sometimes, Ardan got the impression that the men (and occasionally women) of the Metropolis smoked so much because they hoped to balance the smog outside their bodies with the smoke inside their lungs.

“We were delayed on the road, sir-” Brant began.

“Name’s Kadiy,” the man grunted, hawking up a viscous glob of yellowish spittle and mucus and ejecting it to the side. “Shift boss said that I’m to let you into the generation annex.”

“Correct,” Brant said. Neither he nor any of the others were the least bit fazed by the workman’s unpretentious speech or equally unceremonious manners.

“All right.” With a snap of his fingers, the worker flicked his cigarette into a nearby bin. “Just mind your heads, we’re mounting the crane beam.”

With a jerk, he opened a small door set into the warehouse’s gate—a convenient postern that made it so they wouldn’t have to swing the huge doors wide open every time someone needed to enter on foot.

The atmosphere inside the enormous warehouse was no different from the one outside. Workers were stacking up thick brick walls for a heated section; high in the rafters, welders were installing a crane beam on its chains; on an iron catwalk, a few engineers in inexpensive suits were fussing around a complex diesel-powered mechanism—that machine would be used to drive the crane, lowering the hook on its chains down and bringing it back up again, helping the warehouse handle cargo more efficiently.

Ardan had seen all of this before in the textbooks for Professor Convel’s class. However, those diagrams had shown things in a far too theoretical manner, whereas now, he was beholding it through the lens of applied engineering. It was one thing to study abstract schematics and blueprints and quite another to witness the machinery in person. Getting to feel the air that was so hot and stuffy it scorched his throat, or catch the scent of burnt metal and—inexplicably—sand really did change his outlook.

“Careful there!” Kadiy shouted when two workers coming the opposite way nearly dropped a cumbersome crate they were carrying.

The pair almost cursed their colleague in response, but then they noticed the group of mages behind him and fell silent. A few minutes later, after they skirted around the heated section that was still under construction, Kadiy pointed to a door secured with a hefty padlock.

“Here we are… not that you don’t already know that,” he said, and with a wave of his hand, Kadiy headed back into the boiling cauldron of the construction site, where he seemed to be an important and irreplaceable ingredient.

A colorful place, Ardan thought.

Brant fished around in his pocket and produced a long, complex key, which he turned several times in the lock.

“Feast your eyes on our creation, intern,” he declared. Like a theater’s master of ceremonies, Brant pulled the door open, revealing a sight that might well have sent Professor Convel into an ecstatic fit.

Inside, in a vast space where the air creaked with the cold coming in from the supply vents, one lone generator was humming—the only one for now.

But even now, Ard could foresee how, in time, many others would stand on individual pedestals partitioned off by insulating posts. Each of the movable platforms designed to dampen excess vibration would be precisely measured, calculated, and set apart from its fellows according to the dissipation speed of the Paarlax field. Yes, just a couple of months ago, it had been called the disturbance or the echo of the Ley-field or the Ley Lines, but that didn’t change its essence. In fact, it only added to it.

Racks for the barrier screens were stacked neatly to one side, awaiting their turn. They were not all of identical thickness because each was sized to its generator’s voltage. And none of the pedestals adjoined a wall, which automatically eliminated any risk of poor access or improper maintenance.

Even the oil drip pans, the grooves for safely grounding cables, and the lines for the main Ley-wiring that were already marked out along the walls and ceiling, at proper right angles and in strict accordance with scientific standards… All of it looked so professional. And that was saying nothing of the temporary generator powering the devices the builders needed—even that stopgap unit looked more reliable than anything Ardan had seen before.

“Ideally, it’d be nice to split the generation annex into two parts, but so far, no one’s figured out how to eliminate the conflict of two perpendicular Paarlax fields at once,” Brant noted with clear pride in his voice. “And so, a single generation section and a warehouse that’s equidistant from the key elements is our solution to that problem.”

Ardan nodded in awe, if such a thing was even possible. He still hadn’t acquired the genuine love for Ley-mechanics that Professor Convel and most of the engineering students possessed, but even he could see the beauty in such a creation.

The only thing that bothered Ardi was that according to regulations, a generation annex should’ve had a separate entrance. And yet here, despite the perfection of the layout and design, one would still have to walk through the entire warehouse to reach it. It seemed an obvious violation, and yet, for some reason, no one paid it any mind.

“Well then, my dear colleagues, you go ahead and take all your measurements and run your calculations,” Odurdod said as he tugged Ardan’s shoulder toward the exit. “Meanwhile, Mr. Egobar and I will head over to the administrative building. We’ll sign the work order and all the vouchers in accounting.”

“Uh-huh,” Adakiy and Brant grunted in unison. They were already shrugging off their cloaks, donning blue cloth aprons, and arming themselves with complex instruments pulled from their satchels.

Ardan soon found himself walking across the yard with the stocky, dwarf-blooded man. The building, which seemed frankly unashamed of the fact that it had found itself a place among the Central District’s architecture, looked like a person swollen with a tumor. In the front, it was handsome and stately, but in the back, something enormous loomed. While not necessarily ugly, it was definitely odd to see.

Realistically, it was a modest factory—far smaller than those giants that sometimes covered an area as large as several city blocks. Lashim Inakov was clearly planning to focus on quality over quantity.

“Why is there no separate entrance over there?” Ardan suddenly asked.

“You noticed, eh?” Odurdod flashed him a conspiratorial smile. “We do that on purpose. See, the initial inspection will come from the various guilds: the Mages’, Engineers’, and Factory Workers’ ones. Their officials. And they’ll start nitpicking at every little thing. If nothing’s wrong, then in order to earn their pay, they’ll start checking everything really carefully. And trust me, Ard, building anything without a single violation is almost impossible. So, when they show up in the future, they’ll see that there’s no separate door to the generation annex, they’ll write us a fine and order us to build one. And we will. That very same day, in fact. In the end, we pay the fine at a discount, and they fulfill their duty. It’s a kind of barter, you see.”

Ard’s eyebrows crept upward as he listened.

“Is it like that everywhere?” he asked in astonishment.

“Yes,” Odurdod replied matter-of-factly, shrugging. “Now, don’t get me wrong—those inspectors do an important job. But the requirements imposed upon them are such that if they find nothing in an inspection, they come under scrutiny. You can see why, right?”

“Because of potential bribes. If an inspector finds nothing, people might think he was paid to turn a blind eye.”

“Bright lad!” Odurdod exclaimed in delight. “Usually, the interns that an Manish brings in need that spelled out for them, but you… You guessed it right away.”

Ardan didn’t feel particularly proud of himself. If not for the fact that he’d spent almost a year in the Black House, he probably wouldn’t have figured out the reason so quickly, either. This was simply because, prior to certain events, he had never thought about such things.

“If you keep using your head this well, Ard,” Odurdod went on as they approached the white stone steps of the entrance, “who knows—maybe you’ll stick with the company for more than three months. We need bright guys. And the fact that you don’t have a formal education yet… that’s no trouble,” Odurdod said, clasping his hands behind his back as he climbed the first stair after scraping his boots on the wooden shoe scraper. “Adakiy, and even Brant—it’s rare to hear a kind word from him, of all people… Well, both of them are thrilled with you and full of praise for your work.”

“Thank you,” Ardan said modestly.

“What are you thanking me for?” Odurdod waved a hand, brushing his words off. “It’s all you, my young prodigy, all you. I even envy you a little. Me, I’ve been friends with exes more than magic ever since I was a kid. I always know what a person needs and what they want. That’s my particular knack.”

Together, they ascended the white stone steps and, after going through the propped-open temporary doors, found themselves in a rather ordinary, even generic, interior space. It could just as easily have been mistaken for an office center, or the halls of the Spell Market’s offices, or a bank’s reception area—it was almost impressively bland.

There was a typical lobby with a guard behind a counter; a future information desk (currently deserted and covered in sheets of cardboard); walls that would soon be paneled in wood; a floor with a new, fresh carpet… and that was about it. Apart from an unexpectedly positioned coat check (right behind the front desk) and a staircase off to the side, there was nothing noteworthy.

“Mr. Nudsky, I-”

“You can just call me Odurdod, since you don’t mind me calling you Ard.”

“Of course,” Ardan nodded. “So, Odurdod—the design you discussed with Mr. Inakov, won’t it conflict with the Paarlax fields the generators will produce?”

“Why would it?” The salesman replied with a question of his own.

They walked past an interior finishing crew and a few remaining construction workers as they started up the stairs.

“Well, if it’s also going to support the whole factory-”

Odurdod interrupted him with a laugh, making it clear no offense was taken.

“You’ve really jumped to conclusions, Ard… Careful now, or I’ll think my earlier compliments were premature,” Odurdod said, wiping away a mirthful tear. “You think we can cover the whole factory—all two thousand square meters—with that? In the entire Empire, the Crown included, you’d only find about seven—no, maybe eight—purses deep enough to pay for something like that. So no, it won’t cover the whole factory. Or any part of the factory at all. It’s going to be right here, in the admin building—a single office.”

Naturally, Ardan understood that something as titanic as what Brant, Inakov and Odurdod had discussed couldn’t simply be scaled up to cover the entire factory. But since Odurdod was feeling chatty, why not take advantage of it?

Besides, he was being truthful—Ardan could hear Odurdod’s heartbeat as it thudded steadily. And what motive would the salesman have to lie to Ardi? Especially since, by all accounts, if there was something peculiar about this job, it was connected to Inakov and Radov, whom the designer had requested specifically.

“Only a single office?” Ardan continued his cautious questioning.

“That’s right, Ard,” Odurdod confirmed. “Fifty-four square meters. I have no idea what Inakov is up to, but he clearly wants to shield himself as quickly as possible from any prying eyes… or hands… or magic… or anything else one could think of. The shield he’s requested will handle a load of up to seven hundred Red Star rays—and that is…”

Odurdod let a meaningful pause hang in the air, clearly giving Ardan the chance to finish the thought himself.

“Military-grade magic at the Pink Star level,” Ardan exhaled, completing the sentence.

“Exactly, Ard.” Odurdod, now having reached the fourth floor, stopped to catch his breath—the climb had clearly winded him. “So, whatever secrets this genius of the automotive world is hiding, he doesn’t want anyone disturbing the peace of that office.”

For a moment, Ardan struggled against the urge to immediately ask which office they were talking about, but he bit his tongue just in time. He could find that information out on his own in the an Manish company records, and he had no desire to arouse unnecessary suspicion.

Just then, they arrived at a door bearing a brass nameplate elegantly engraved with the word “Accounting.”

***

In the end, Ardan and Odurdod spent nearly three hours among the meticulous paper pushers armed with arithmometers and bulky typewriters. After that, they spent about half that time helping Brant and Adakiy with the measurements.

That was why it was nearly the start of the twelfth hour when Ardi returned to “Bruce’s.” In the main hall, as always, a band was playing. They were performing a new style of jazz that was growing increasingly more popular, where the music sounded a bit slower and the song lyrics (when there were any) were far more lyrical. More soulful, even.

The patrons—a few of whom Ardi greeted since he recognized them as regulars—were, as usual, dining and sipping drinks. Every now and then, explosions of hearty guffaws or heated debates rose up above the din. What was usually discussed? Politics, the weather and women. Sometimes even men.

Behind a red velvet rope, on low divans, half-hidden in the dim, murky light, sat a few orcs. They were barely visible and no one could hear them. Ardan made his way over to them.

Nodding to the huge bouncer, whose name, if Ardan recalled correctly, was Zararaz, Ardan caught the eye of Arkar, who was conversing with a gaunt man sporting an eyepatch in place of his right eye. Murmuring something into that man’s ear, Arkar stood up from his seat and approached Ardan.

“Matabar, you’ve come at a less-than-ideal time. I’m about to make a killing… do a bit of business, you see,” the half-orc said, correcting himself.

“I have a business proposition for you as well, Arkar,” Ardan replied.

The orc, who had already begun to turn back to his companions, swiveled toward Ardan with a newly-interested expression.

“Really now? This isn’t just another request for some oh-so-unpaid help that’s terribly vital to you and painfully inconvenient for me?”

Ardan wanted to argue with him about how he’d always paid his debts to the half-orc, but he gave up in the end. It wasn’t worth the trouble.

“And what will my invaluable help be rewarded with, Ard?” The half-orc drawled. “I’ll be providing you with serious muscle,” he flexed his already enormous muscles, “as well as the priceless experience that comes from my decades of gangster life. There’s also my cunning, resourcefulness, and the fact that I have deadly aim. With both hands.”

“No one will need to be shot.”

“Just so you know, Ard, my interest just halved,” Arkar sighed in disappointment.

“We need to infiltrate two places, Arkar. The company’s office and the factory grounds, and also-”

“And also, with pitches like that—I mean, with such sca… plans, you can go back to where you came from,” Arkar cut him off. “A company office and a factory—that’s a whole load of all kinds of magic. I don’t work with that.”

“I do work with that,” Ardan countered, waving his staff under the half-orc’s nose.

Arkar stroked his bristly chin thoughtfully.

“Well, that’s true enough… Right. So, what’s my motivation here? Preferably expressed in dough… in exes, that is.”

“My associate and I will need help setting up our apothecary in the Firstborn Quarter. We’ll need help with construction, with hauling freight, and…” Ardan shook his head wearily. “…with making sure the local gangs don’t bother us.”

Arkar, upon hearing the offer, looked like he was about to refuse for a moment. But then he broke out into a predatory grin, baring his tusks and fangs.

“When do we start, Matabar?” The half-orc was clearly far too good at doing profit calculations.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

He and Odurdod Nudsky had a lot in common when it came to that.

“Tonight, orc.”

***

After making sure that Tess was fast asleep and wouldn’t hear anything, Ardi carefully locked the door behind him and headed down to the barroom. Only on weekends did the establishment stay open around the clock; the rest of the time, it closed at one or two in the morning, depending on how busy it was.

Arkar, who was in his usual “working” garb, was already waiting for him. He was puffing on a fat cigar clamped between his teeth while checking over his revolvers and spare “moons” that were already loaded with cartridges. The orc truly was an excellent marksman. He wasn’t quite as good as Katerina, nor was he as deft with his guns as Aleksander Ursky was… but any such shortcomings were compensated for by the boiling orcish blood in his veins.

“One question before we head out, Matabar,” Arkar said, holstering his guns and snapping his bandolier closed. “Why didn’t you call your Cloak partner for this job?”

Ardan was about to answer when the orc drawled lazily:

“Oooooh… So you aren’t sure there’s anything there you really need…”

Ardi never ceased reminding himself that Arkar was no idiot. He was the Overseer of the Orcish Jackets, which was far from a meaningless title or a useless position.

“More or less,” Ard didn’t deny it. In truth, he wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t be spending a sleepless night wandering the city for nothing. “Shall we go?”

“Not go, ride,” Arkar winked, and humming a little tune through his tusks, he swaggered out first.

A few minutes later, they were cruising through the deserted streets of the slumbering city. Here, along the canal embankments, one almost never encountered the revelers typical of Baliero, or even clerks who’d been working late. There was nothing but silence, broken only by the occasional pair of young lovers who might draw the attention of the patrolling guards. Those guards’ gazes sometimes slid along the black sides of the “Shvenlik” automobile as it sliced through the veil of night.

“Tell me, Ard, have you chosen a wedding planner yet?” Arkar abruptly asked, shattering the cozy silence.

Ardan nearly choked on air in surprise at the question.

“It’s just that, if you haven’t, I know a guy. He doesn’t charge much, he talks even less, but he does everything… well,” Arkar grimaced, “if you provide him with the proper highly-motivating incentive, he’ll do a fine job.”

“Thank you, Arkar,” Ardan replied sincerely. “But Elena already recommended someone she knows. He helped some classmate of ours, and apparently, everyone was satisfied.”

“‘Some classmate of ours…’” Arkar mimicked his tone with a hint of mockery, or perhaps doubt. “You know, Matabar, if you resemble your Cloak in any way, it’s because of your absolutely horrible social skills.”

“Probably,” Ardan admitted readily.

It wasn’t like he was averse to meeting people or even remembering their names, major life events, personal details, and everything else that the students of the Grand University busied themselves with. He just had enough worries of his own, and if anyone found his stance ill-mannered or uncultured, Ardi could always flash his fangs. Not to intimidate them, but to remind them that he was, after all, just a country bumpkin.

Before long, they crossed the Martyrs’ Bridge and entered the New City, which was painted with dead, but bright lights. At night, it roared and rang just as loudly as Baliero. Here, the automobiles kept rumbling along broad avenues and endless boulevards, and high-rise buildings glowed with Ley-lamps that were almost brighter than the streetlights arrayed along the curbs.

Ardi, as usual, gazed out the window. Normally, as Atta’nha had taught him, he would be listening to the city, attuning himself to the fragments of its boundless Name, but tonight, the city was silent. Or rather, Ardan was deliberately distancing himself from the whispers that trickled out of the dark alleys.

After the recent incident on Saint Vasily’s Island, and ever since the Niewa had seized Ardan’s mind, he’d realized that one must not only know how to hear the world around them—they also had to know how to shut it out. And perhaps that second skill was every bit as important as the first, if not more so.

So why hadn’t the wise she-wolf, the Princess of Winter, taught him that? Why hadn’t she even mentioned it? Because initially, learning to listen had been far more important for Ardi. And everything else… Everything else wouldn’t matter if he didn’t live long enough for it to matter. Such was the simple logic of the Fae—a logic that might seem twisted or even cruel to ordinary mortals.

Maybe that was why, in human and Firstborn tales, the Fae were seldom cast in the role of benevolent folk. More often than not, they acted as some kind of inherent danger from which, if one was attentive and careful enough, they might extract a boon.

Ardi glanced sidelong at Arkar, who was whistling merrily.

If this hadn’t been the Imperial capital at night, where engines thundered, but rather the storied realms of Gales or Ectassus, where the clatter of horseshoes and the clinking of swords reigned, then Arkar might have been mistaken for a Fae himself.

“You know, the Fatian Massacre happened only a few years after the breach of the Armondian border and the capture of Shangrad,” the half-orc said, halting by a monument to Hec Abar. Staring up at the towering sculpture, Arkar took a deep drag on his cigar. “They sent the Fanged Division there and… Well, you get it. Point is, if I hadn’t already gone gangster by then, if I’d served a couple more years, I might have been caught up in that massacre, too.”

“What are you getting at, Arkar?”

The half-orc didn’t answer immediately.

“Lately—especially since the past summer,” Arkar murmured, clearly alluding to the demon and the underground temple of the Old Gods, which caused him to shiver involuntarily. “I’ve been dreaming about the front more and more often and… I never want to end up there again. War is horrifying, Ard. The most frightening thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Even more than a demon?” Ardan asked quietly.

“Even more than that,” Arkar nodded, shuddering once more. “All right, enough of that—let’s go over our plan one more time.”

“Our plan?” A truly amused smile graced Ardan’s face.

“Fine, fine,” Arkar conceded. “I admit it, this time, the plan is entirely yours. So then… by making use of the stolen-”

“Borrowed,” Ardan corrected him at once.

The half-orc chuckled and inclined his head.

“Fine, let’s say that the pass you borrowed from poor Brant’s car… damn, I forgot his surname… Anyway, using that pass, you slip into that building over there,” Arkar pointed a clawed finger at the dark, locked-up office building, “and steal… borrow the papers on the smoke spewer… the factory, I mean, after which we drive over to do a heist—to rob, that is, the facility in question.”

“Orc.”

“Yes, Matabar?”

“Hearing it from your mouth, it does sound like a crime.”

“Ard, may you be flipped head over heels!” Arkar threw his arms out so wide that he nearly smacked Ardan in the jaw. “What, did you think we came out here to dance? It is a crime.”

Ardan flashed him a black identification badge.

“This is a covert operation of the Second Chancery, Arkar.”

The half-orc uttered a few extremely colorful curses in the steppe tongue.

“So why the fu… why, I mean, do you need me on this secret operation of yours, if you plan to act solo all around?” Arkar demanded.

In response, Ardan pulled a small card from his pocket. It bore a clever—if seemingly simple—seal. This was a key that would allow someone to pass unharmed through the company’s shield. It worked on the same principle as the shield at Irigov’s estate, only no one would try to incinerate an uninvited guest in wild Ley-flame here.

“I need you to hold this and stay here—but don’t move more than a couple of meters away.”

“Hah?”

“Just hold it while sitting in the car,” Ardan nodded.

Arkar bared his full set of fangs, his tusks tipping forward.

“Arkar, I had no one else I could ask,” Ardan hastened to clarify. “I specifically need a half-blood for this. Someone other than myself. And that leaves…”

“…only me,” Arkar finished for him, and reached out to snatch the card from Ardan’s hand.

“Wait, I still need to cast a spell.”

“Sleeping Spirits! Well cast it already!”

Ardan restrained the urge to retort and turned toward the card. Naturally, after he’d used Nicholas the Stranger’s lockpicks in Baliero, and after his Misty Helper had become publicly available for a couple hundred exes of profit, breaking into the an Manish company premises after their shield had been fully activated wasn’t going to happen.

But!

It was as Skusty had used to say: “Any knot can be untied if you know where to start.” Now, more than ten years later, Ardi suspected that the impudent squirrel had meant something else entirely, but the point remained.

Any shield built on a “key-lock” principle had two core constructs. The actual “lock,” which currently enshrouded the entire building, was a monolithic construct. If Ardan tried to so much as use his Misty Helper on it, let alone break it, it would immediately trigger quite a spectacle.

Over the past three weeks, Ardi had not only diligently earned the exes he’d been promised—he had also stuck his nose everywhere it could reach. As a result, he’d managed to get a look at the building’s protective seals and blueprints. Just in case.

And what he’d found was that an Manish and his partners had approached the task with a bit of creativity and a dash of mischief. The shield would swaddle Ardan like a baby and then shoot a full fireworks display into the sky, all of it accompanied by a blaring siren. The theoretical perpetrator would thus be neutralized and the guards, along with every person for miles around, would be alerted in the most shameless manner.

But that would only happen if the intruder happened to be a mage. If an ordinary person tried to enter, each time they approached the shield’s boundary, they would simply bump into an invisible, impregnable wall. Of course, the shield could be overloaded… if around a thousand or fifteen hundred people tried to breach it all at once. Then the generator feeding the shield would simply short out from the surge.

“Have you cast it yet?” Arkar whispered for some reason.

“Almost,” Ard whispered back.

Ardi had spotted a loophole in the method that the shield used to distinguish between an ordinary person and a mage. It all lay in the difference in Paarlax field density between those who bore Stars and those who did not.

What did the key have to do with it? Every key inscribed the parameters of its owner into its construction. And when that person approached the shield, it checked the key’s parameters against the list of allowed entities.

And what did Arkar have to do with any of it? The crux of the matter was that the Firstborn, by their very nature, possessed somewhat different Paarlax field parameters from humans. Those parameters, of course, could still be measured and standardized. But! Add to that the fact that Arkar was a half-blood, and then everything would be turned upside-down, because every half-blood had their own unique set of parameters.

Thus, the moment Arkar touched the key, it started to go a little mad. The seal’s runic links simply couldn’t process the inputted information, because as far as they were concerned, no such information existed. Which meant that the data passed along to the shield was… well, gibberish. And all Ardi had to do then was…

The young man struck his staff against the floor of the automobile, and an exact copy of the key Arkar was holding appeared on a blank slip of paper in his hands—except for the fact that it had recorded Ardan’s own parameters. Naturally, they had issued Ardan such a key on his very first day of work.

“That’s it?” Arkar’s coarse brows shot up. “Just a copy?”

“Not just a copy—a nonexistent copy,” Ardan corrected him, sounding proud of his creation.

“And what’s the difference?”

“The difference is that the shield is configured to resist copies, but only those it can recognize. In our case, the key you’re holding is already touching the shield’s echo, but because you specifically are holding it, the key is generating a chain of endless, tiny false signals that can drive the shield’s core construct almost insane. It then vibrates ever so slightly—like a thin trickle of water in the wind. And I’m going to walk between the raindrops. My fake key will briefly stabilize the flow, and also-”

“Also, Ard, I was hoping to hear the word ‘nothing’ in response to my question,” Arkar pleaded, almost whimpering. “Not only did I not understand a single bit of your airy… words, but I’m also tired of listening to them.”

Ardan, like a fish cast ashore, opened and closed his mouth silently, cut off mid-monologue. After all, he wasn’t planning to just break “any old shield,” but the stationary defenses of one of the largest and most reliable magical security firms in the entire Empire! Even Edward, upon learning of his feat, might have rewarded him with a slight nod—or perhaps a condescending smile.

“If you look at me with that sort of disdain one more time, Ard, I’ll smash your mountain-born muzzle.”

“Fair enough,” Ardan conceded, and stepped out onto the street.

He would be lying if he said that he wasn’t feeling anxious about what he was preparing to do. His calculations relied exclusively on general Paarlax field theory, which he maybe understood a tiny bit better than most. And that was only because he’d memorized all the formulas and derivations from the grimoire of Senior Magister Erzans Paarlax, along with the man’s commentary.

Ardi might’ve even liked to forget those, but because of his temporary alliance with the Wolf of Blazing Darkness that day, every last detail had seared itself into the young man’s memory.

Why?

Alas, the mysteries of the Aean’Hane art were not as well documented or analyzed as Star Magic. In fact, they hadn’t been documented at all—let alone analyzed!

“Pull yourself together,” Ardan chided himself under his breath.

Holding his “fake key” out before him and hoping that all his theoretical calculations were correct, Ardi strode toward that invisible boundary where he could feel the shield’s influence. As he passed the monument to his father, Ardi fancied that he could feel the reproachful gaze of those lifeless stone eyes upon him.

“It’s just your imagination,” Ardi reminded himself silently. “Father is dead.”

Even after three weeks, he still couldn’t quite get used to seeing Hector, even if only as a figure carved in stone.

The shield doused Ardan with a cold drizzle somewhere deep in his consciousness. It then flickered for a second, and that was enough for the young man to slip inside.

Truth be told, this lockpicking method probably wouldn’t work for anyone except those Star Mages who also possessed a Speaker’s abilities. They would either hurry too much or dawdle and fail to time it just right while aiming for that moment when the shield falters from the accumulating errors among its runes. And any complications created by the copied key would likely trigger countermeasures from the-

“Thoughts for another day,” Ardi whispered to himself.

He opened the door with an utterly ordinary iron key and, taking advantage of the fact that his Matabar eyes could handle the acrid gloom cast by the surrounding skyscraper lights, he climbed up to the floor he needed.

It felt rather strange to be in a building that was normally lively—forever hazy with cigarette smoke, filled with the rustle of papers, the clacking of arithmometers, and the loud conversations of engineers—and find it so still. It didn’t seem asleep so much as… soulless. It had turned into a banal stone box with mute furniture, abandoned gizmos and softly humming generators.

Nevertheless, Ardi removed his shoes and padded silently up the staircases in his socks. Far too often had he found himself in situations where his perception of reality had diverged from the actual reality itself. So, with his shoes tied together and slung around his neck, he listened and sniffed the air before each new step he took.

And perhaps that was what saved him from almost certain catastrophe.

“Are you sure no one’s here?”

Ardan went ramrod straight against the wall and froze, crouching slightly below the level of the rail, where the shadows completely covered him.

“Of course, Mr. Majakov,” purred a voice that was languid, seductive, and offering sweetness with its promises. “Everyone left long ago. We’re all alone. It’s just you and I…”

“Ohh, Anila…”

Ardan silently sent a thousand curses at the Sleeping Spirits, who were no doubt laughing at his expense. Why, of all nights, did Anila have to snare one of the other interns in her net tonight!? Lajak Majakov had graduated from the Grand University last year and an Manish had been delighted to poach him during the Mage Guild’s placement. In the end, Majakov hadn’t even served a season in some provincial Mage Guild office before he’d been sent back to the capital at the end of this summer.

Ardi had barely interacted with him—they worked in different departments on different floors.

He could hear smacking kisses now and muffled moans trembling at the edge of someone’s lips.

Ardan rolled his eyes and then barely stifled a triumphant exclamation. It hadn’t even been eight years, and at last, he understood the meaning of that gesture! And all of it, in a way, was thanks to Anila’s tireless efforts to find herself a husband among the Star Mages. Indeed, it was possible that those efforts were progressing by leaps and bounds at this very moment.

Forgive me, Ardan apologized silently.

He stretched out his consciousness toward the city. At the same time, he took care to keep his own Name securely chained to his mind. Ardan brushed against the sleeping streets of the central districts. He skimmed the drowsy exchanges of weary guards and flitted above the snores of townsfolk bundled up in their blankets. He touched the silent automobiles left in courtyards and parking lots for the night. He glimpsed the shining fragments of children’s dreams—children who had so stubbornly refused to go to bed and then so swiftly, effortlessly, slipped into carefree slumber… All of it coalesced into a tiny fragment of the Name resting on Ardan’s lips.

He pressed an open palm to it and blew. A sparkling dust that looked like sand wafted from his lips and filled the corridor of the top floor. An instant later, he heard the thud of two bodies hitting the floor, followed by the gentle sound of peaceful snoring.

Ardan peered around the corner and immediately shut his eyes. He had no wish to disturb Anila, who had shed her jacket, blouse and corset, or Majakov, whose dropped trousers and underthings were bunched around his ankles.

“Milar will die of laughter when I tell him about this,” Ardan declared confidently, then added, “Arkar too.”

Which prompted him to consider if it might be wise to not tell anyone about this part of the adventure.

“I should hurry,” Ardan reminded himself in a whisper.

Yes, over the past year, he had grown stronger as both a Star Mage and a Speaker, but it was unlikely that his simple Sleep Hex would hold for much more than a quarter of an hour. After that, Anila and Majakov would awaken and find themselves in a rather unorthodox situation.

Ardi walked along a narrow corridor situated between glass-walled offices and, passing the lab he shared with Adakiy and Brant, came to the door of Senior Magister Idrad Radov’s sanctum. Pressing his ear to the door handle, he listened to the echo of the lock’s whisper and the mechanism, which had needed oiling for a long time now. Ardi politely asked it to open, and the door swung inward. The young man wiped a sudden sheen of sweat from his brow.

Using the Aean’Hane art through the clamor of dead Ley, which practically saturated the New City, was as easy as running uphill with stones tied to your feet. In addition…

The young man wiped a few drops of blood from his upper lip. His vision swam for a moment, and a muffled tolling that sounded like a distant bell boomed in his ears.

Clutching the doorframe, Ardan waited a few seconds. When his head cleared and the ringing faded, he stepped into the office. Aside from a desk buried in blueprints, a few graphite boards scrawled with formulae, a pair of shelves holding work grimoires, and a brand-new filing cabinet, there was nothing else here.

At an Manish’s company, it wasn’t customary to put safes in one’s office. Why? Ardan had no idea, nor did it particularly concern him.

In any case, even if Radov was involved with the Puppeteers, he likely wouldn’t keep incriminating documents or other evidence at his workplace. But understanding that simple fact didn’t stop Ardi from carefully checking the majority of the documents and papers he could sift through in the ten minutes he’d allotted himself.

And yet, just as he’d suspected he would, he found nothing but blueprints, invoices, equipment lists, and various abstract notes—everything was directly related to the company’s activities and nothing more. In the end, he had to content himself with discovering the number of the office Inakov wanted hidden from prying eyes.

Number zero? Ardi thought, surprised at this oddity, but the blueprint immediately cleared things up.

The office by the staircase that led down to the basement was situated, for all intents and purposes, behind a sliding wall. The shield’s area covered only a single vault safe with a wall and door that were seven hundred millimeters thick. The walls were two-layered, three hundred and fifty millimeters each, with fire-resistant, insulating material sandwiched between them.

Ardi had seen something like this before.

That’s a genuine bank vault! the young man exclaimed in his head.

Laying the papers down on the desk, he pulled out a blank sheet, a pencil, and—using an old-school method of copying someone else’s notes—he made a rubbing with swift strokes, transferring all the needed information. Then he carefully returned the papers to their proper places and, making sure he left no traces behind, he slipped back out to the corridor.

Doing his best not to look at the half-dressed Anila and Majakov, Ardi hurried down to the first floor, and then, just as quietly and inconspicuously as he’d come in, he slipped outside and returned to the car.

Removing a pair of spectacles, Arkar set aside yesterday’s issue of the Imperial Gazette.

“Well, how did it go?” he asked in a bored tone.

Ardi, instead of answering him, waved the sheet with the pencil rubbings.

“Let me see.” Without waiting, Arkar snatched the blueprint copy from Ardan’s hand.

Perching his half-rim glasses back on his nose, he smacked his lips as he ran his eyes over the sketch.

“This is a bank safe! The kind most branches install so tellers can keep quick cash… I mean, coin on hand!” Arkar couldn’t hold back his exclamation. “You can’t just go and buy one of those from the manufacturers. You need a registration… licenses and such, paperwork. How’d a simple constrictor get one?”

Ardan once more struggled to hold back the words that almost burst from his lips: “Constructor, not constrictor!”

“Good question, Arkar. I’d very much like to know the answer as well.”

“Then let’s go find out.” The half-orc turned his key, rousing the engine from its brief nap.

***

“Zagzargragz,” Arkar spat out. This was a barking, crude curse of the steppe orcs.

It didn’t have a literal translation because it wasn’t a word at all, but the name of a rather hapless legendary—and not in a good way—hunter from one of the northern orc tribes.

“By the gods, you’re an ugly one, Ard,” Arkar said, scratching his stubble as he looked over Ardan’s Water Mask disguise. “Magic, is it? Or is the wedding stress affecting you? Sorry, couldn’t resist.”

Ardan just waved a hand dismissively. After exiting the car, they slipped through a door in the factory gate, and Ardi rapped his knuckles on the guard booth’s cloudy glass. Under the glow of an oil lamp inside, a watchman was reading a book—apparently the very same book Tess had been so engrossed in on the train.

“Oh! Light protect us!” The guard gasped, and after a single glance toward Ardan, he blessed himself with His sacred sign, then hastily lowered his eyes to the fake documents. “G-go on through, gentlemen mages.”

He didn’t even register the enormous figure of Arkar, focusing instead on hiding his gaze back in the pages of his book.

“It works,” Arkar muttered in genuine amazement.

Ardan refrained from commenting on the fact that the orc clearly hadn’t believed in the plan. But, since he knew human nature, Ardi had expected nothing else. There was no better camouflage than forged papers, genuine mage credentials, and an appearance so repulsive it drove people away. Of course, all of that only worked where the security was lax to begin with.

Ardi was certain that once construction was finished and the factory began operating, it wouldn’t be so easy to walk in here. But that day was still a long way off.

His mind brushed against the unremarkable shield of the outer perimeter, and soon, he and Arkar were climbing the external staircase of the administrative building.

“They’re breaking the rules, damn them,” Arkar grumbled, glancing toward the manufacturing floor itself, where Ley-lamps glimmered and men’s voices could be heard. “Those Northerners have really grown brazen.”

“What?”

“The Hammers,” Arkar spat on the ground by his feet. “They undercut prices by offering to work at night, which is illegal. The Workers’ Guild forbids construction being done after dark. Never mind, Ard—at least now I have something to hash out… I mean, something to discuss with Arseniy.”

Arseniy was the name of the Overseer of the Hammers—a gang of laborers and settlers from the Empire’s northern provinces. He and Arkar had a long and complicated relationship built on mutual trust, hatred, friendship, and their joint service on the Armondian border where they’d liberated Shangrad from the invaders.

Ardan, after once again listening to the faint whispers of the locks, opened the front door. Then he started swaying on his feet.

“Ard…” Arkar grabbed him under the arm. “Are you all right?”

“I can’t anymore,” Ard answered, more to himself than to the half-orc. “I can’t use the Aean’Hane art again tonight.”

“Uhh… well… er… all right,” Arkar mumbled, scratching his head under his hat in confusion. “Let’s go.”

They traversed the entire first-floor corridor until they reached a stairwell leading down. Running his gaze along the wall, Arkar clicked his tongue appreciatively.

“You know, Matabar, if I didn’t know there’s a passage here, I’d never suspect a thing.”

“That’s the idea. Now please, don’t distract me.”

Ardan, now armed with the blueprint, squatted down in front of the false wall and took out a pencil to begin making notes in his grimoire. In all likelihood, if the main generators had already been installed, he would never have managed to break even the simple seal protecting the office entrance. But for now, it was still powered only by the temporary Red Star generator that Ardi had seen earlier in the day…

It still wasn’t easy by any means, especially considering the fact that they’d added protections against the Misty Helper.

A few hundred exes earned, and now I’m dealing with such a headache, Ardi mentally chided himself.

“Ard…”

On the other hand, he was already working on a Transmutation Misty Helper, which the standard seal protections would be useless against. But to finish that, he needed to complete his development of the transmutational runic links, and who knew how long that would take.

Which meant that he now had to improvise a workaround for the protections against his own creation. Fortunately, that was easier than matching wits with something unknown.

“Ard.”

All he had to do was change the initial parameters governing the seal’s attachment—switch them from rigid to permissive, and then try to mask the dynamic array with progressive runic links as if it were static. How? By using the degrading runic links that Lady Talia had created for her Demonology and Chaos School.

“Ard!”

“What? I asked you not to interfere and-”

Ardan fell silent. He turned to follow Arkar’s pointing finger. There, out of the darkness of the corridor, sashaying like the finest fashionista of Baliero, came Anila.

“Mister Egobar…” She cooed, her voice sweet and sultry—apparently, the Water Mask on the young man’s face wasn’t fooling her. “Why didn’t you join us? I waited so long for you…”

As she spoke, her face began to twist. Bone cracked and tore through skin that swiftly turned gray and scabrous; her hair whitened and grew longer as it thinned; her legs shortened and, bursting out of her stockings, swelled with grotesque, misshapen muscles. The same happened to Anila’s arms, her fingers sprouting long claws. Her torso bloated like a soaked sponge, and her breasts sagged to her knees. From her long, bristling nipples, a tar-like, black milk started oozing.

A moment later, she yawned wide, her fanged maw gaping so far that her lower jaw nearly touched her stomach, lost somewhere amidst the corded sinews of her enormous frame.

“Is that an illusion too?” Arkar whispered.

“No,” Ardan breathed, rising to his feet. “It’s a Striga. A Homeless Fae!”

A Homeless Fae with whom Ardi had spent three weeks, and yet he still hadn’t sensed her presence! How was that even possible?!

“And what should I do?” Arkar asked, placing his palms on the handles of his revolvers.

The Striga stretched out her arms and her claws gouged deep furrows in the brick walls.

“Understood!” Not waiting for an answer, the half-orc shouted at the top of his lungs. “Time to start shooting!”