Matabar. Book II. Chapter 148. Frost and Bells (Patreon)

“I’ll deny everything later, Ardi, but I’m only too happy to keep you company.” Favoring one leg slightly, Boris entered Bruce’s, which sat empty during daylight hours. He took off his hat and fanned his face.

During the warmer months, Lord Fahtov’s injured leg would begin to ache. That was precisely why, before the incident in Lesser Viroeyr, Boris had preferred to use a cane. He kept the cane in his luxurious Entio. Boris owned a whole collection of automobiles, as befitted the heir to one of the Empire’s largest fortunes, but the Entio remained one of his favorites.

Red-haired as ever, freckled as ever, and dressed in an expensive suit, he looked a little like a sleek, well-fed cat waiting for its chance to steal something from the table. That last impression, however, may have been a trick of the imagination, prompted by the faintly impudent look in his green eyes.

“How’s Agness?” Tess asked at once as she closed her book.

She and Ardi had already been sitting at a table for half an hour, drinking cocoa and absorbed in their separate pursuits. Ardan was working on a schematic, though this one was for Ley-mechanics rather than a seal, while Tess was reading her book with music playing from a brand-new device Arkar had bought for the bar. The device resembled an enormous cabinet. Inside, a bank of drives powered by the Ley-generator in the basement switched out the records. All you had to do was press a button and feed a one-kso coin into a special compartment, and the machine would play the selection you’d chosen.

Contraptions like that cost a staggering amount of money, but Arkar now personally controlled the Orc Jackets’ Treasury and, by all appearances, intended to turn Bruce’s into something more than a front for laundering money.

“She’s doing fine.” Boris waved to Arkar, who gave a snort. Arkar looked faintly comical in his half-rim glasses as he sorted through piles of paper. “And here I thought a gang boss was supposed to… I don’t know, act like an orc, flex his muscles in public, and crack other people’s skulls.”

“Yes, Your Lordship. Just not when there’s so much scribb—so much paperwork that…” Arkar sighed, massaged the bridge of his nose, then made an obscene gesture at Boris and returned to work.

“Want me to recommend a decent law firm, Arkar, one that could help you manage your affairs?”

“Yeah… Bazhen already suggested his old man’s firm,” Arkar rumbled, making it plain that he had no intention of continuing the conversation.

Ardi had offered to help as well, but Arkar had merely replied with a question: “Don’t you have enough business of your own?” Behind that plain rudeness, Ardi heard a terse message: “I’ll sort it out myself first.” Milar had told Ardan that the Orc Jackets owned a whole array of companies and even a few small manufacturing operations. Those operations, admittedly, mostly made clothes for the Firstborn and supplied food to places that counted the Firstborn among their customers. That largely explained how Arkar always had food suited to Ard’s diet.

Most of those businesses existed, of course, because of unfair competition, or rather, because there was no competition at all. The Jackets forced anyone who tried to move into that tempting market to back down. Maybe they were like predators guarding their hunting grounds. But the Jackets weren’t animals, after all, and the Metropolis was no forest.

Especially when that kind of policy and business model regularly led to bloodshed, shootouts, and death.

So, when you stopped to think about it, what distinguished the Orc Jackets and the city’s other gangs, which all worked much the same way, from the pharmacy cartel or any other large business? Bilinder-Troitz itself, whose generator was humming in Bruce’s basement at that moment, could hardly have competed all that fairly with its rivals.

At socialist party meetings, the representatives liked to say there was no real difference. Except for scale. The greater the scale, the less need there was for actual physical force. It became far easier to pick up a pen and add a few zeros to a check.

So what did Ardan think of gangs, political parties, the Crown, the Treasury, and business?

Truth be told, he hadn’t thought about any of it at all.

“What are you working on?” Boris helped himself to a glass of cold, clean water from the tap and took a seat at the table.

“Yesterday’s exam with Professor Convel . . .”

“You mean the one where he slipped you an exam question meant for the advanced fourth-year class in the Engineering Faculty?” Boris asked.

Ardan arched his right eyebrow in confusion. The gesture always irritated Milar, who was forever pointing out that Ardi looked more and more like Lord Aversky.

“We met at the Pharmacy,” Boris said, answering the unspoken question. “He said you’d been planning to go too, but after Baliero you went to the Spell Market.”

“That’s my fault,” Tess admitted at once. “We’d planned to visit the car dealership after the Pharmacy yesterday, but I got held up at rehearsal.”

“That only worked in our favor.” Boris nodded vigorously. “Otherwise, I couldn’t have joined you. Especially after I probably flunked alchemy. How did you do, by the way, Ardi?”

Ardan thought back to that day’s exam with Professor Kovertsky. The assignment had been to prepare a mixture that would neutralize the fumes from burning fuel containing an unknown amount of Ertalain impurities.

“Well, I’m sure I’ll score about an eight.”

“It’s all right. You’ll make up for it tomorrow.” Boris winked. “In case you’ve forgotten, tomorrow’s exam is all Military Studies.”

Ardan grimaced. Boris was right. The military exam now went by that name alone, with none of the “general physical training” business tacked on. It came in two stages. They had to report to the underground training grounds at the Grand by eight in the morning. Then, over the next four hours, the entire class had to fight one-on-one duels, the matchups chosen at random under last year’s reform. Then a two-hour break, though a very peculiar one.

During that period, the students were once again required to report to the Nursery in the Old Park area. The same Nursery where, just under a year earlier, Ardan had met Erzans Paarlax, may the Eternal Angels receive him.

“So what exactly are you making?” Boris asked again.

His father’s watch read just past five thirty that evening. His father’s cover for the business trip had called for a government-issued watch, so this one had stayed with Ardan. He still had about an hour before his rescheduled visit to the Anaklov and Partners factory, and thanks to the courier offices, letters in the Metropolis arrived within an hour rather than taking several weeks as they did elsewhere in the country.

“I’ve been thinking about whether there’s some way to automate the process of applying seals to storage plates.” Ardan unfolded the blueprint and turned it toward Boris. “Assuming it’s possible to create a separate module to decode the free parameters of individual . . .”

At Boris’s blank stare, Ardi sighed, took the blueprint back, and tried to explain it in words of one syllable.

“The main problem with complex Ley-mechanical devices is this: the seals have to be engraved on the plates.” Ardi folded the blueprint and calculations, put them back inside his grimoire, and secured them with a leather bookmark. “If there were some way to take humans out of the equation, the defect rate could be cut in half, maybe even by two-thirds.”

“Why do you need it?” That was all Boris asked. Clearly, even that pared-down explanation had left him none the wiser.

Ardan didn’t even try to explain that his Multidimensional Seals would be essentially useless even if he ever found a way to implement them. Why? Because there simply weren’t enough mages for a population that large. And even if Multidimensional Seals didn’t require a particular ray or Star, they would . . . still be useless.

Because despite everything, Mart Borskov was right. Society needed experts in Star Engineering and all the varied branches of Shield Charms. Healers, to a far lesser degree. And despite everything that had happened lately, war mages still stood at the very bottom of the list. So Ardi had to find a way, at least in theory, to record Multidimensional Seals onto plates that Seal Vaults could use. Until he did, the seals would remain a highly specialized use of Star Magic, and almost no one would need them.

To experiment with plates and Seal Vaults, Ard had two options: spend a small fortune continually ordering them from a manufacturer, or take the much cheaper route and buy blanks and training plates that could withstand a couple of operating cycles. But that left him paying in hours instead of money. For a single experiment, Ardan would end up spending several days engraving seals.

So he was looking for some way to take the human element out of the equation, and by human element, he meant himself.

True, engraving machines had long been used at Ley-production plants, but they still had to be operated by a person. And not just anyone: a well-trained specialist, often one who had studied at a college or even a small institute. Not a Star institute, granted, but one with Star departments and the required coursework. So Ardi was trying to... He didn’t even know what to call what he was trying to do.

“For my research,” Ardan replied, and left it at that.

“Ah, well then, talk it over with Elena tonight.” Boris lifted his mug of water in salute. “All right, you two, we’d better get going. They’re widening the roadway along the Crookedwater Canal embankment again, eating into the sidewalk to do it. Somehow, that means the road will be narrower than usual for the next three months. So we’re guaranteed a traffic jam.”

“Perfect!” Tess smiled and got to her feet at once. “That’ll give me just enough time to finish.”

They said goodbye to Arkar and stepped out into the street. Metropolis sweltered in the heat, its muggy summer air immediately pressing against their faces.

*

“Of course, of course, Your Lordship.” The slightly plump little man in the striped vest had already been holding forth to Boris for a good fifteen minutes. His mustache was slicked with pomade and so very thin that, in the showroom’s half-light, it looked more like a narrow streak of dirt than facial hair. “Anaklov and Partners builds some of the finest automobiles in the Empire! The new winter model, Your Lordship. The last word in engineering! An inline six-cylinder engine, four and a half liters, fifty-five horsepower, a body made of Foothill steel, handcrafted leather upholstery from a Baliero atelier. And note this, note this: a Ley-starter of the very latest design. No more hand cranks, no more cranking away in the rain! One turn of the key, and the engine sings more sweetly than an Imperial Opera soloist.”

Ardan wandered unhurriedly among the display models with his hands clasped behind his back, studying their gleaming fenders and chrome radiator grilles. The automobiles rested on waxed oak parquet, but truth be told, Ardi would rather have been in a stable with horses. Horses, at least, he understood.

Tess strolled beside Ardi, now and then running one finger over the door handle of a model that had caught her eye. Every so often, a small, faint smile flickered across her face, the one Tess wore whenever she looked at something that interested her but was of no importance at all.

“Fifty-five horses, you say.” Boris took off his hat and fanned his face with it. “Moren-Gold offers eighty for the same price.”

“Your Lordship, please! Moren-Golds are death traps! The brakes only work half the time, and even then only in third gear! I personally saw one crash into a lamppost near Star Square, and according to their engineering department, it was the lamppost itself that was to blame!”

“At least you won’t have to pay a premium for the brand name.”

“Yes, Your Lordship.” The manager had grown bold enough to indulge in a little sarcasm. “If you don’t mind the funeral expenses, then of course MG is an excellent choice.”

Ardan gave a quiet snort and stopped beside a dark blue, open-topped car. The car looked as if the Eternal Angels themselves had spent their spare time building it, using only the very finest materials.

The lacquered finish shimmered a deep, dark blue, almost like the surface of a mountain lake on a windless day. The wheel spokes, painted to match the body, gleamed as though someone had polished each one by hand that morning.

“And what’s the fuel consumption?” Boris wouldn’t let up, squinting every so often and tapping one finger against his hat. “And let’s have none of your usual tall tales.”

“Tall tales, Your Lordship? How could you… Twelve liters per hundred kilometers in city driving, nine on the highway.” The manager thrust out his chest as if he had personally made the engine deliver the figures he’d just quoted. “And on the new Bilinder-Troitz fuel with an Ertalain additive, eight on the highway! Eight, Your Lordship!”

“On Bilinder-Troitz,” Boris repeated thoughtfully. “If my exams haven’t knocked my memory clean out of me, which, all things considered, is entirely possible… isn’t that the stuff that costs three times as much as regular diesel?”

“Progress demands sacrifices, Your Lordship.”

“Progress, apparently, mister, demands that our wallets go on a diet.”

“There’s no need to be so crude, Your Lordship.”

Tess watched the verbal fencing with undisguised delight, then turned to Ardi, lowering her voice.

“I didn’t even know Boris could haggle.”

“You still haven’t seen him haggle with the Pharmacy’s suppliers,” Ardan whispered back. “Sometimes Bazhen even takes notes.”

“And how much oil does it burn?” Boris went right on, giving the manager no chance whatsoever to catch his breath.

“A liter per thousand kilometers, Your Lordship. Personally, I recommend nothing but the finest mineral oil. Incidentally, we supply that very oil to our customers at a discount!”

“A discount on the oil, but twenty-two hundred exes for the car itself. Brilliant. Simply brilliant.”

“Twenty-one hundred, Your Lordship, and only because you’ve honored our showroom with your patronage and promised to test our new racing model next year—”

“Nineteen.”

“Nineteen fifty, and I’ll throw in a set of winter tires.”

“Eighteen fifty, and you’ll deliver the car yourself to my friends’ home on the Markov Canal.”

“But just a moment ago, it was…”

The manager broke off and sighed as though Boris had just taken the shirt off his back.

“One thousand nine hundred exes even, Your Lordship. Delivery will be included. So will my prayer to the Eternal Angels that my employers don’t toss me out on the street by the end of the week.”

“Eighteen hundred, and I’ll personally put in a good word for you if anyone asks.” Boris clearly didn’t understand how compromise worked. He simply kept lowering the price until… To be honest, even Ardi, a skilled haggler himself, couldn’t tell at what point Boris decided it was time to stop.

“Eighteen seventy-five.”

“Seventeen fifty.”

“Eternal Angels, Lord Fahtov! I’ve got children and a nagging wife at home! Have you no conscience?” the exasperated salesman cried. “Eighteen hundred, and I’ll pay the registration tax out of my own pocket!”

“Deal!” Boris immediately held out his hand. The showroom manager shook it with a smile that was deeply relieved yet faintly doomed, as if he’d just miraculously dodged a train but broken his leg in a ravine.

And Boris Fahtov still thought of himself as a socialist… Amazing that they didn’t hoist him onto their shoulders and carry him straight back to his enormous apartment, which took up half an entire floor.

Ardan listened until the haggling was over, then calmly walked over to the sales desk and pulled the documents from his inside pocket. Still fanning himself with his notepad, the manager unfolded Ardan’s papers and pored over them, his lips moving as he read. Suddenly, his little mustache twitched. Then it twitched again, and the salesman slowly looked up at Ard.

“Mr. Egobar… I’m sorry, but there’s a note here: ‘Firstborn or closest living descendant.’ And… ahem… your companion. How is she related to you?”

“My wife,” Ardan replied calmly. “And her name is Tess.”

The manager’s little eyes flashed with rekindled excitement.

“Tess Egobar? The Tess Egobar? The jazz singer?”

“The very same.”

The manager nearly dropped his notepad, then beamed so broadly that Ard felt vaguely uneasy.

The salesman practically floated past Ard and immediately gave Tess a gallant bow.

“Mrs. Egobar!” he began in a rush. “O Light, what an honor, what a tremendous honor! I was at your magnificent performance at the Arena, the place owned by that… what’s his name… Brolid! I cried, Mrs. Egobar, I cried, and I’m not one bit ashamed to admit it! Listen, folks, I have an offer you simply cannot refuse. In fact, refusing it would be downright illegal. If we put the car in your name, Mrs. Egobar, and you allow us to mention in our advertising brochure that Tess Egobar herself bought a car from us, I’m prepared to take another two hundred exes off the price. Two! Hundred!”

Boris brightened at once, clearly scenting a chance to torment the manager a little longer. He clicked his tongue and tapped his hat thoughtfully with one finger.

“How about we have a look at Orlansky’s? I hear they’ve got a winter model in now, too…”

The manager went so pale that his sparse, slicked-down mustache stood out like a thin line of ink.

“Boris.” Tess cut her friend off gently, her tone velvet-soft. “No, we’ll buy it here. This car fits our budget. And the manager is simply doing his job. It isn’t his fault that some people are prejudiced against the Firstborn.”

The manager went scarlet.

“You’ll have to forgive me, but I won’t allow you to print my name in your brochure,” Tess added, her tone a shade colder, snuffing out the salesman’s glow in an instant.

“Absolutely, positively not?” the manager asked plaintively.

“Absolutely, positively not,” Tess confirmed firmly.

“Then I’ll knock off fifty,” he said with a sigh, “because you’re so principled, Mrs. Egobar. And another fifty for the pleasure of spending a little time with someone so beautiful. It’s like talking to a painting come to life.”

“And couldn’t you give me a little discount because I’m her husband?” Ardan asked with studied nonchalance.

The manager looked him over appraisingly, then spread his hands.

“Forgive me, Mr. Egobar, but your wife’s beauty already comes at far too high a price. And please accept my apologies, all of you. It’s company policy… they’re afraid the Firstborn might not go over well with… certain people, and… once again, my apologies. Nothing personal. It’s simply the nature of the job.”

Ardi gave a slight shudder and shook his head.

“He’ll still get around a hundred and fifty exes from the sale,” Boris whispered in Ard’s ear while the manager and Tess worked through the paperwork. “These days, because of the Transportation Reform and Treasury sponsorship, cars sell at a markup of nearly seventy-five percent. Four years or so ago, one like this would’ve cost less than a thousand.”

Ardan just shook his head.

There were times when he feared he would never understand people…

*

Ardi looked at the child he had last seen almost six months earlier. The same button nose, the same disproportionately long lashes. If anything, she had more dark hair now, tucked beneath a funny bonnet with a Kargaam elephant clumsily embroidered on it. So clumsily, in fact, that the elephant was extraordinarily easy to mistake for a donkey. Which was exactly what Ardan did.

Boris burst out laughing and said he’d thought the very same thing at first.

“No, it’s not a donkey at all.” Elena pouted slightly. Her arms were covered with so many adhesive patches and bandages that hardly any bare skin showed. The dressings all smelled of mild, herbal salves.

The Fahtovs’ apartment, once a little bare, was now overflowing with baby things. There were children’s toys, several changing tables tucked into different corners of their seemingly endless apartment, and several wardrobes full of swaddling cloths. Every bit of free space in the nursery and the bedroom was taken up by Sleeping Spirits, swaddling cloths, baby shirts, little blankets, and sheets.

Boris and Elena refused any nighttime help from nannies or a governess. They always got up on their own whenever their baby girl screamed or cried.

“I think she sometimes cries on purpose now, just so one of us will go to her,” Boris said, still whispering.

“Really?”

He nodded.

“I can tell just by listening now,” he declared, careful not to catch Elena’s attention as she chatted happily with Tess. “It sounds a little different somehow. Not as… I don’t know… not very convincing, maybe.”

“And Elena?” Ardan asked, matching his friend’s tone and inflection.

Boris shook his head.

“Sometimes we get a little…” Boris paused to search for the right words, rocking his daughter’s cradle as he thought. “It’s not like we fight over it, but I practically have to pretend I won’t budge.”

“So Elena won’t give in to her?”

“Uh-huh,” was all Boris said. “I suppose Agness takes after her grandmother.”

“Which side?”

“Elena’s side,” Boris answered the obvious question, smiling at the funny way Agness stretched in her sleep. “Elena’s mother, may the Eternal Angels receive her, sometimes made me feel as if I shared a hut with a Cloak.”

When Boris called it a hut, he wasn’t exaggerating in the least. Elena’s family served in the household of the Duke-General, Boris’s father. And when Boris, in a burst of anger that may even have been righteous, burned down his father’s estate, Elena’s parents took him in when he was suddenly left orphaned (and struck from the Fahtov family tree).

Their home was a modest one, belonging to an ordinary family of estate servants who, of course, were promptly dismissed, making life harder still for all four of them.

“You know, when we fought my old man in court over my mother’s inheritance,” Boris said suddenly, his voice soft. His eyes never left Agness. It was as though he and Ard were thinking the same thing. “Tamara, Elena’s mother, stood there in court as if the man across from her wasn’t a Duke-General, the Admiral-Commander of the entire Empire’s southern fleet, but a . . .”

Boris was clearly lost in memory, and the corners of his mouth twitched. Slightly. Just barely. But for some reason, that was enough to make Ardi feel a faint ache, and for a moment he remembered the way snow smelled.

Snow always smelled of Grandfather . . . Grandfather himself, not Ardi’s great-grandfather Aror.

“People probably don’t even look at dung beetles that way.” Boris left the rest unspoken. “The bastard got so angry over it. He kept demanding that the case be heard in an aristocratic court, and Eorsky the elder and his team flat-out buried every single petition. You know how funny it was to watch? On one side: a hereditary aristocrat, accompanied by a bloated lawyer who reeked of a wh—of a brothel. On the other: a former servant in a dress patched a hundred times and someone else’s lace-up bodice, borrowed from a harbor merchant’s wife. Beside her, Eorsky the elder and five of his assistants. Eternal Angels, Ard. The judge had to delay the proceedings while the bailiffs fetched another bench from a different courtroom.”

“And how did Eorsky the elder end up there? You didn’t have access to the money.”

Boris smiled again, but only with his eyes this time.

“Maybe he felt guilty about what happened to Mother’s money, which the pharmacy cartel had stolen.” Boris reached out and lightly touched Agness’s nose. He moved so slowly, so tenderly, so carefully, as though he were trying to touch a capon suspended motionless above the surface of a forest brook. “The case had caused quite a stir. We’d already given up hope when someone asked, ‘Who will be representing the plaintiffs?’ Just then, in a scene straight out of some ridiculous stage production in Baliero, Eorsky the elder strode into the hall, all but kicking the doors open. Can you imagine? He’d been stuck on a train for a week, but he made it . . .”

Ardan had exchanged only a few words with Bazhen’s father, back when Eorsky the elder and his wife had ended up aboard that ill-fated Airship. But between those few words and the conversation he’d overheard, Ardi wasn’t the least bit surprised by Boris’s story now.

“Elena does all her own sewing and mending.” Boris changed the subject without warning. He looked at his wife the way a blind man, suddenly granted sight, might look at the very first dawn of his new life. “I’m forever telling her, ‘Come on, stop. Let’s have the tailors do it. Or let the nannies handle the work.’ But she won’t have it. She has to do it herself, and that’s that. And wouldn’t you know it, she still ends up with her hands covered in scratches and cuts by evening. She’s never had any luck with needles. At one point, even her mother thought Elena was pretending so she could spend more time with the books they’d brought me from Mother’s collection. But no. If this were a fairy tale, Ardi, you could say someone had put a curse on Elena.”

Ardan looked at his friend. Her face had grown a little drawn, and she was plainly exhausted. Dark circles were already forming beneath her eyes, and the curve of her breasts had softened a little. Yet she looked . . . like the happiest person in the world. As if she glowed from within. Just like that dawn, lavishing its beauty on the man who had once been blind.

As Ardi watched Agness, Boris, and Elena, he felt it with sudden clarity: the icy vise that had been crushing his chest for nearly a month had begun to loosen. Tess’s laughter helped pry it loose, as did Arkar’s grumbling and the unfunny jokes Eorsky told while half drunk. But somehow, what finally melted it away was a bonnet. Such a funny, absurd little bonnet. With a little elephant that looked like a donkey.

“Boris.”

“Yes, Ardi?”

“We need to talk in private.”

Boris pulled his hand away from the cradle and looked at Elena.

“Darling.” He turned to Tess. “Tess, forgive us uncouth men if we head into the cigar room for a talk.”

“Neither of you smokes, dear.” Elena laughed. “So I still don’t know why you call your study the cigar room, but…”

Elena looked at Tess. Tess shot a glance at Ard’s face and nodded at once. Her smile remained exactly the same, giving nothing away. Only the look in her green eyes dimmed a little. Because of the way she’d grown up, Tess saw a little more than Elena did. Once again, Ardan realized that perhaps Grandfather had been right.

To find a kindred spirit, he’d truly had to cross half the world...

“Don’t get lonely, little one.” Boris bent over the cradle’s rail and gently kissed his daughter on the forehead. Without even waking, she giggled and tapped her little hands against her father’s cheeks. “And make sure these two women don’t start discussing indecent things.”

“Boris!” Elena laughed, and Tess joined in at once.

Lord Fahtov braced himself on the cane he used at home instead of his staff and heaved himself to his feet. Ardi hurried after him. A moment later, they slid the doors to Boris’s study shut. When open, the doors vanished into the walls. In truth, though, it was hard to call the room a study at all.

There was only one bookcase, its shelves filled entirely with works on war magic. Keeping it company was a small table buried beneath newspapers and magazines devoted to magical boxing. A little farther off stood a pristine writing desk; half its drawers, it seemed, had never even been opened.

There was also, rather unexpectedly, a billiard table and a long, overstuffed sofa upholstered in velvet. And across from it were two armchairs in the same style and color.

Ardan lowered himself into an armchair and turned to his friend. Boris, meanwhile, walked over to the window, planted both palms on his cane, and leaned his full weight on it. His shoulders drooped a little, and his chin nearly touched his chest.

“You know what hurts most, my friend?” Lord Fahtov said softly. Far too softly for an ordinary person to hear.

But Boris knew Ardi would hear. He would hear and most likely keep silent. Because at a moment like this, neither Ardi, who still didn’t fully understand human customs, nor anyone else would break the silence.

“What hurts most is that I hoped.” In the window’s reflection, Ardi caught the glint of a tear at the corner of Boris’s eye. It would never roll down his cheek. Lord Fahtov allowed himself no such softness. Or perhaps no such luxury. “Right up until the very last moment, I kept hoping it was all some kind of nonsense. That I’d imagined it. Maybe it was those bastards from the train? Maybe Orvilov’s relatives…”

Orvilov, if Ardi remembered correctly, was the last name of the classmate who had tortured Boris in the warehouse. Orvilov had been Selena Lorlov’s suitor; she had fallen under the influence of Professor Leah Morimer. It should have been ancient history. Yet the consequences were still rippling outward, and they were not done with either Boris or Ard himself.

“Anyone at all… anyone, Ardi, anyone, just not…”

Boris clenched his teeth and said nothing for several moments. Then he seized the cane and drew it back in a wide arc. He drew it back, but never struck. He only looked at the locked doors and slowly lowered it.

“There.” Without turning, he nodded toward the table. “In the magazine Premiere Bouts of the Global League. On the center spread.”

Ardan slid several magazines off the stack and fished out the one Boris had named. It was the leading periodical in the Confederation of Free Cities, published every eight weeks. Each issue was translated into every language in the world, then distributed by sea and rail to capitals and major cities before the next issue appeared. Each copy ran only four pages. It was printed on heavy stock and filled with interviews, a few seals, brief reports, and columns, yet it cost an exorbitant nine and a half exes per issue.

That probably explained, at least in part, Magical Boxing’s peculiar popularity among ordinary people. It also explained why Boris had hidden the unsigned envelope in this particular copy: Elena, who couldn’t stand that kind of entertainment, was unlikely to look inside.

He glanced at the article’s headline:

“Congressional developments postpone Global League International Championship final in Metropolis”

Below the headline, the author wrote that the championship had, for the moment, been pushed back by only two years, but who knew whether it would ever take place at all.

Ardi, though, was already undoing the ties around the envelope. Photographs spilled onto the table, their stiff edges making faint clicks. They had all been taken at different times of year and different times of day, most likely in different cities as well, to judge from the streets around them and the horse-drawn traffic in the frame. Yet the same woman was in every one.

“This is…”

“Peter Oglanov took the ones in Metropolis.” Boris didn’t even turn around. “The rest were taken by colleagues of his in the trade, people he’d recommended. Almost a year, Ardi. Almost a whole year and nearly six hundred and fifty exes spent. And now I know. I know for certain. It was her. She…”

Ardan turned back. A woman who looked thirty-two, maybe thirty-four, kept turning up in the company of some decidedly shady-looking characters, handing them envelopes. One of those envelopes had been opened and photographed in detail, with a bloodied body in the background.

In the photograph taken in the dark alley, pictures of Boris, Elena, and… Ardi and Tess lay across the bullet-riddled chest.

“I’m sorry, buddy. I’m sorry.” Boris shook his head. “I may have dragged you into my feud. Damn it… Fuck, Ard! I’ve put everyone in danger. Everyone… Agness… Elena… both of you… all because I once acted with no thought for the consequences.”

Boris faltered as he spoke. Sometimes he tried to raise his voice, only to choke it back at once and lapse into a hoarse whisper.

“What would it have cost me… just to slam the door? Or even to call that slut a whore three more times, which is exactly what she is? Sleeping with my old man in the house while my mother was still alive? Strutting around the house as if the place already belonged to her?” Boris bore down so hard on his cane that its tip cracked the varnish and the parquet beneath. “And now what… Does she think I give a damn about that bastard’s inheritance? No. She can keep the money. But no. What she can’t stomach is the fact that I can challenge the decree he used to cast me out. I’ll regain my lawful right to a seat in the Upper Chamber. And she’s probably sitting there already, picturing her little mongrels, whose only link to the Agrov line is their surname, and nothing more, angling for a fucking seat a little closer to the Emperor. By the demons, they’d tear each other’s throats out for the chance to so much as stand beside the door to the House. And I would’ve waited. I would’ve served my required term in the Army. And they could’ve hounded one another to death. I’d have done nothing but applaud. Honestly, Ard. I would’ve stood there and clapped my hands like a halfwit. Though I myself… after all, I’m also… a Fahtov… no, Ardi. No. I don’t care. Even if I have to blow half my fortune on lawsuits. Even if they have to issue a special decree just for me. But Agness’s last name will be Malesh. My mother’s name.”

Malesh… one of the Empire’s oldest family names. Mrs. Talia Malesh had once borne it. She served under legendary Sergeant Mendera, a hero of the War of the Birth of the Empire. Then she vanished without a trace in what was now the Dead Lands of the Ralsk Foothills.

“And I’d swear it to her, Ardi… I honestly—I thought about it. Honestly… I wanted to go to that fucking city, to that estate cursed by all the Angels.” Boris pressed his forehead to the glass and clenched his teeth again. “I wanted to drop to my knees, sob, beg forgiveness for anything and everything, and put it in writing: to hell with the seat in the Upper Chamber… to hell with it… as long as Agness… Ardi, I would have done it. I swear. Do you believe me?”

“I believe you,” Ardan answered without a moment’s delay or doubt.

“I would have done it,” Boris breathed, “if I’d known it would accomplish anything. That there’d be even the slightest point… But what I’ve learned, Ardi, is that people without honor are pathologically unable to believe that anyone else could still have it at all. Liars always assume everyone else is lying too.”

“She won’t believe you.”

“She won’t.” Boris nodded, his forehead sliding along the glass and leaving greasy streaks across it. “And she won’t rest until…”

Without turning his head, Boris glanced sidelong toward the closed doors. Beyond them, Tess and Elena were chatting, and Agness slept, snuffling softly.

Ardan could hear her heart, bigger now but still so small. He could hear it even from here.

Tap-tap.

Tap-tap.

Like tiny footsteps over cobblestones still wet from the morning fog. Ringing and light. The delicate little bells of someone else’s soul, so bright and untouched by any shadow.

Like the souls behind the faces that sometimes surfaced in Ard’s memory. Memories of the collector. Of the Angel’s Tear. Now those faces came back to him every time he saw the intercepted documents in the stack of papers on his desk. After all, he had hidden those documents just as Boris had hidden the private detectives’ envelope.

Only Ardan had hidden them from himself.

“I’d honestly like to find another way out of this, Ardi. Honestly… But after half a century of decline, even the Black House can’t lay a hand on the wife of a Duke-General who is the admiral of the southern fleet, a man whose only crime is having been born a bastard. My old man has served the Crown well, after all. And the fleet thrives under him.”

Boris wasn’t lying. The elder Fahtov truly was held in high regard by the Crown because of his remarkable efficiency and absolute incorruptibility. There you had it. An excellent soldier, but a worthless man.

“I’ll have a great deal to prepare… and I really will try to find another solution. Maybe the Black House… maybe I can prove there was a criminal conspiracy… but if I can’t, then… this winter I’ll pay a visit to my…” Boris ground his teeth, plainly unwilling to say the next word. “…my home. After that, the gallows can have me. And after the gallows, even the deepest pits of hell. I don’t care. At least Agness will get to live a good, peaceful life, without the constant threat of that mad whore. Oh, Light, my friend… how hungry for power do you have to be to…”

At last, Boris raised his head and looked at the golden sky of Metropolis.

“I remember asking you, Ard, to help me. But that was in the heat of the moment. I still hope I know what ‘honor’ and ‘dignity’ mean to the descendants of the Kings’ Retinue. So I have to ask you again. Will you help me? Please don’t answer right away, because even if it works, even if Father knows nothing about it and this is all just her game… the old man will uncover the truth anyway. He may not even love her, but he’ll do it simply on principle. And then… I honestly don’t know. I don’t know what will happen after that.”

Boris turned toward Ard. For some reason, just for a moment, Ard thought he saw his friend give an odd shudder.

Tap, tap went the little footsteps.

Would he help his friend?

Tap-tap chimed the little bells.

Would he help the child he had bathed in the Light with his own hands?

*

Boris was certain he’d turned on the light when he entered his office. But for a moment, he would have sworn by the Eternal Angels that a cold winter night had taken over the room, flowing like a cloak from the shoulders of a strange creature. Tiny stars glittered. When he looked closer, he saw they were glints in fur as white as first snow, the fur of a creature halfway between a man and a white wolf. Its bright amber eyes seemed to blaze from within.

Boris wiped his eyes with his fingers, brushing away the tears. When he opened them again, the vision was already gone.

“Of course, Boris. I’ll try to talk to Milar. Maybe an investigation really is possible. If our department can’t conduct it, another can. But remember: the moment you call, day or night, I’ll be at your side.”

Boris looked into his friend’s eyes and gave a quick nod. It was probably unfair of him to ask, but he certainly couldn’t manage alone.

As they left the office to rejoin their wives, Lord Fahtov didn’t notice the frost pattern on one corner of his window, a pattern that looked uncannily like a wolf and... a round form pierced by an icy fang.