Matabar. Book II. Chapter 162. Vault (Patreon)

The world slowly came back to him. First the pain returned, a dull, steady ache that spread like a stain across his back and up to the base of his skull. Then the first sounds cut through the muffled ringing in his ears: crackling flames, the rustle of crumbling masonry, the distant wail of sirens. Only then did his vision return, blurred behind a reddish veil.

Ardan lay on his back in the middle of the alley, broken glass and crumbled stone beneath him. Black smoke shrouded the otherwise serene sky overhead.

Nearby, Neil Kralis was rolling off the dented hood of the Derks, grunting and swearing through clenched teeth. He slid to the ground, braced himself with his palms on the pavement, and shook his head, scattering dust and shards from his hair.

“Self-destruct protocol,” he rasped.

“What?” Ardan shouted. He couldn’t hear his own voice through the ringing. He struggled to sit up, and the alley swayed around him. “What did you say?!”

“Self-destruct protocol!” Kralis got to his feet and swayed. He regained his balance and hobbled toward the building engulfed in flames, pressing a hand to his ribs. “Get up, Corporal. This isn’t an attack. Or rather, it’s not quite an attack.”

Ard dragged himself to his feet, felt around for the hood of the Derks, and leaned on it. Everything still swam, but his legs weren’t shaking, and his bones seemed intact. Lucky. If they’d been a couple of steps closer to the entrance, he would have had to resort to healing magic.

When I get back to the capital, I’ll look into protective artifacts first thing, he promised himself. Ardan limped after Kralis and asked, “What’s this protocol you’re talking about?”

“Every branch of the Black House has one,” Kralis said over his shoulder without breaking stride. “If an unauthorized visitor gets into the Archive or any other sensitive area, they blow up the building. The whole thing. Better to bury everything under the rubble than let even one document be carried out. So this?” He jerked his head toward the fire. “Our own people did it. Somebody inside flipped a toggle switch. Tiny little thing, too. About as big as what’s left of my nerves.”

All around them, people had begun to gather on the once-quiet street. Worried faces peered from archways and doorways. Some pointed at the flames while others ran away, shielding their heads. Sirens wailed above the rooftops, drawing closer and closer as the Guards’ corps and the fire department raced toward the blast site. The explosion had probably put half the city on alert.

Ardan and Kralis ignored the onlookers and stepped through the doorway the blast had ripped open. Only a minute earlier, a solid oak door had stood there beneath a modest awning.

“One good thing, at least.” Kralis spat blood and dust. “The whole staff’s out on the steppe and around the city right now, looking for that goddamn crate. There was almost no one in the building.”

Ardan jerked his head around to look at him. He was still a little queasy, and the movement nearly made him throw up on the spot.

The mutant’s damned venom…

“Almost?”

Kralis said nothing.

Inside, the Black House now resembled the belly of an old brazier. The blast had torn the branch office apart. Snapped beams and twisted rebar dangled from the upper stories through the collapsed floors. Fire crawled along the walls, devouring government-issue furniture and papers. The air shimmered with heat, distorting every outline.

The ground floor was strewn with plaster, broken brick, and shards of glass. In the far corner, under the rubble, Ardan spotted the “almost.” A human arm, twisted at an unnatural angle, jutted out from beneath a slab.

Almost no one, he repeated grimly to himself.

“Upstairs.” Kralis was already scrambling up the twisted staircase, clinging to what remained of the railing. “Faster, Corporal.”

Ardan clambered after him, jumping over the gaps in the steps. Despite his bruises, Kralis was remarkably quick on his feet, yanking an automatic pistol from beneath his jacket. With his other hand, he drew a light saber from the folds of his long cloak, its blade slightly curved and its grip worn.

“Why upstairs?” Ardan shouted as he leaped over a smoking beam.

“The Archive’s on the top floor,” Kralis called back without turning. “The water table’s too high beneath the building. So we keep… kept everything valuable up there. The blast was upstairs, right where the protocol was triggered. That means someone got to the Archive. So that’s what all this is about, not—”

He didn’t have time to finish.

Out of the smoke and flames, a spear hurtled down from the collapsed flight of stairs above them.

A bone spear! Long and yellowish white, with a serrated point, it whistled out of the reeking clouds straight at Ard’s chest.

“A Tazidah mutant!” Kralis barked as he jerked back toward the wall.

Ardan brought his staff down on the crooked step. A seal flared beneath his feet, and the air thickened in front of him. The Basic Shield unfurled into the spear’s path, a bluish, translucent film. The bone struck the barrier, cracked, snapped, and flew off to one side, scattering sparks. Ardi felt the familiar drain of Ley and glanced at his hand.

The rings on his fingers were ridiculously empty. Not a single accumulator.

Ahgrat.

Up above, a figure flashed into view in the top-floor window.

A woman. Slight and unremarkable, she wore scorched clothes and clutched a charred leather folder to her chest. She vaulted the sill and leaped down into the alley from the fourth floor. In midair, legs of bone burst from her back, tearing through the fabric. They looked something like a spider’s. She landed softly on them, almost like a cat, then sprang forward and raced toward the street. Her getaway car was making a U-turn, its brakes squealing.

Ardan found himself remembering Peter Oglanov.

But Kralis didn’t hesitate for a second. He sprinted to the window and leaped out after her without slowing down.

Ardan looked at the window with weary resignation.

“Another window,” he muttered, and jumped too.

They landed almost at the same instant, a few steps apart. Ardan absorbed the impact with his knees half bent, rolled over one shoulder across the broken glass, and sprang to his feet without letting go of his staff. But Kralis didn’t even sway. He took aim at the car as it sped away, but never fired.

“Get in the car!” Kralis yelled as he rushed toward the crumpled Derks. “If that thing gets away with the folder, it’s all for nothing!”

He yanked open the driver’s door, but Ardan caught him by the shoulder.

“I’ll drive,” Ardi said curtly. “I can cast spells while we’re moving.”

Kralis froze for a split second and gave him a quick once-over. Then he nodded and dove into the passenger seat.

There was no time to argue.

Ardan slid into the driver’s seat, tossed the staff between the seats, and turned the key. The engine in the battered but tough Derks sneezed, coughed, then caught with an indignant roar.

“Attempt number two,” Ard breathed. He pushed the image of the chase on the island of Saint Basil from his mind and mashed the pedal to the floor. “Or number three, if you count the race?”

The car surged forward and wove down the alley, pressing Ardan back into the seat hard enough to steal his breath for a moment. Heavy, angry shudders ran through the whole Derks. The wheel bucked beneath his palms, sending the shock of every pothole in the pavement through his bones. The gearshift thrashed in his fist like a landed fish, while the floor beneath his feet hummed and vibrated in time with the engine’s strained roar. Ardan immediately prayed to anyone who could hear him: the Sleeping Spirits, the Eternal Angels, the Old Gods, Milar, and Arkar, asking only that he not stall or mix up the pedals at the worst possible moment.

The mutant’s black car shot out of the alley and into the street. It was racing downhill toward the lower districts. Ardi swung out after it. The wheel suddenly jerked in his hands as if it were alive, trying to turn too far and hurl the Derks straight into the corner of the nearest building. Ardan held it firm and wrenched it back, feeling the tendons in his forearms tighten.

The rear wheels lost their grip. The car skidded, its back end swinging sideways toward a cast-iron fence. Teeth clenched, Ardi turned the wheel into the skid, just as he’d seen Milar and Arkar do so many times, and gave it a touch of gas to steady it.

It worked.

A hair’s breadth from the fence, the Derks regained traction, straightened out, and sped off in pursuit.

“That’s more like it,” Ard said through clenched teeth, shifting gears with a nasty grinding rasp that sent a cold shiver down his back.

He was still a long way from matching Captain Pnev’s skill, to put it mildly. Ard wasn’t so much driving the Derks as wrestling with it, as though it were a wild, headstrong mustang. The beast was just waiting for its master to falter so it could break free and smash itself to death against the very first obstacle. If he relaxed his grip for even an instant, the wheel pulled to one side. If he stayed on the gas too long, the rear end began to slide. If he let his attention wander, the car took aim all on its own, first at a lamppost, then at a wall, then at an oncoming cart.

Sleeping Spirits! Dagdag’s contraption and the racetrack couldn’t even begin to compare to this.

Ardan kept the Derks moving by sheer will and stubbornness, driving on when everything in him said he couldn’t.

“Step on it, Corporal! Step on it! They’ll get away!”

“I am stepping on it!” Ardan roared.

The Derks rushed on, faster and faster.

The houses on either side ran together into an unbroken gray ribbon. The wind howled through the shattered window and lashed his face, wringing tears from his eyes. Ardan lowered his third eyelid. The pavement beneath the wheels blurred into a rumbling streak. At every rise and dip, his stomach dropped away somewhere back down the street, and his heart seemed to pound even faster than the engine’s pistons.

Ahead of them, the mutant turned to look back through the other car’s rear window. Her pale face flashed into view. She lowered the folder out of sight and whipped her free hand out the window. Another bone spear burst from her palm, growing longer as it flew.

“Look out!” Kralis shouted.

Ardi ducked. The spear whistled over the Derks’s roof and buried itself in the wall of a building behind them, blasting out a fountain of brick chips. A second spear struck the pavement just in front of the hood. Ardan swerved around the bone stake jutting up out of the asphalt.

Kralis leaned halfway out the window, braced his elbow on the door, and opened fire. The pistol crackled in a long, ragged burst. Bullets rattled against the rear of the black car, striking sparks from the metal and showering the street with broken glass. Neil fired his new pistol effortlessly, several times faster than even Ursky could manage with his revolvers.

“Like hell,” he growled as he replaced the pistol’s empty magazine. “Stop, you bitch!”

The mutant’s car swerved right, then left, dodging the bullets. Up ahead, at the end of the street, Ardan saw where they were headed. Some office building stood directly in their path, with a broad plate-glass window on the first floor.

The black car hurtled straight toward it without slowing down. A moment later, it slammed into the window.

Glass burst into countless shards, and the frame went flying somewhere inside. The mutant’s car crashed into the spacious lobby and swept everything out of its path. Ardi saw desks go flying, saw chairs tumble through the air, saw frightened clerks jump back toward the walls with folders clutched to their chests.

“For fuck’s sake!” Kralis yelled, jabbing his pistol forward. “What the hell is wrong with you, Ard?”

“What’s that got to do with me?” Ardan barked back. He didn’t let up on the gas.

The Derks barreled through the shattered window behind the black car, and the world narrowed around them to a corridor of crashing noise and falling debris. Glass crunched beneath the wheels, and pieces of the frame grated against the undercarriage. A woman in a uniform dress pressed herself against a column to one side and shrieked at the top of her lungs.

“I hope you and Captain Pnev never fucking leave the capital!” Kralis roared as he clung to the door with one hand and fired ahead with the other. “You hear me, Corporal?! Never!”

“I’ll keep that in mind!” Ard spun the wheel to steer around an overturned table.

The mutant’s car raced the length of the lobby, smashed through a second plate-glass window on the opposite side, and shot back out onto a parallel street. A moment later, the Derks tore out after it through a shower of glass.

They burst straight into a bustling market. Ardan swerved, narrowly missing a vegetable stand. The black car ahead was less careful: it rammed through rows of market stalls. Cabbages, turnips, and broken boards from the counters flew into the air. Vendors scattered in all directions, screaming. Someone scrambled under a cart; someone else flung a basket after the cars.

“You and Ert are brothers, all right!” Kralis yelled, apropos of nothing.

The mutant hurled another spear.

This time she wasn’t aiming at the Derks. The bone projectile struck a cast-iron gas lamp at the edge of the market and snapped it off at the base. Flame roared skyward from the ruptured pipe in an orange fountain, scorching the canvas awning of the neighboring shop. Ard jerked the wheel just in time, missing the flames by inches. Heat licked the car’s left side, and the smell of something burning swept into the car. Ardan felt the hairs on his arm catch fire and crackle.

“How about you shoot back?!” Ardan snapped through clenched teeth.

“So there’ll be absolutely nothing left of the city?!” Kralis snapped as he reloaded.

A tram packed with people crawled across the street ahead. The black car darted across its path, missing the tram’s nose by a hair. The engineer slammed on the brakes. The tram shrieked to a halt moments later, showering the pavement with sparks and blocking the road. Ardan howled and downshifted. He cranked the wheel to the right, steering into the narrow gap between the tram and the front of a building. The Derks scraped its side along the wall, throwing sparks. It ripped off a mirror and a drainpipe but made it through.

“I didn’t think we’d make it!” Ardi gasped.

“That’s not what worries me.” Kralis jerked his head forward. “Look where she’s barreling off to!”

The black car swerved hard right into a side alley. As Ardan swung the wheel to follow, he froze for an instant. The alley ended without warning. Ahead was a broad stone staircase: a long, steep cascade down to the city’s lower tier. Dozens of chipped steps. Houses flanked the staircase, their blank walls barely more than a car’s width apart.

The mutant’s car didn’t slow. It leapt onto the stairs.

“They’ve gone crazy,” Kralis breathed. He slowly turned toward Ard. “You too?! You… too… Don’t you dare, Corporal!”

“What choice do I have?!” Ard barked, steering the Derks after them.

The front wheels rolled over the edge. The car plunged down the steps.

The world was nothing but furious, relentless shaking. The Derks clattered and bounced, its whole frame shuddering so violently that Ard’s teeth beat out an almost musical rhythm. The steering wheel came alive again, a frenzied creature straining to wrench itself out of his hands in every direction at once.

Every step hit the wheels like a sledgehammer, sending a shock up his spine. The bodywork screeched and groaned; something broke clean off and was left behind. The car lurched from one wall to the other. Ardan gripped the wheel in both hands, his knuckles white, barely keeping the car from crumpling against the stone walls.

It veered left; he wrenched the wheel right.

The car pulled right, toward the wall; he threw his weight into turning the wheel left, feeling his tendons creak under the strain.

His feet danced over the pedals with all the agility of the Peacocks on Baliero. He feathered the gas and brake in a ragged, desperate rhythm, keeping the wheels from locking up or losing their grip entirely.

“Oh, Eternal Angels!” Kralis screamed, clutching at everything he could reach. “Can! We! Go back! To the! Garden!”

Ardan pushed the clutch all the way in and yanked the gearshift toward him, dropping a gear. The engine’s howl rose by a half step. The wheels gripped the stone, and over the last ten steps the Derks stopped behaving like a falling hunk of iron and began to respond to the wheel again, though only just.

Until…

The car flew clear of the stairs and hung in the air for an instant, all four wheels off the ground. Ard’s stomach leapt into his throat. Then the car slammed down onto the level cobblestones of the lower tier with a heavy crash, its springs compressing until the body almost touched the ground.

They went spinning. Ardan slammed on the brakes, caught the skid, steered the Derks out of the spin, and once again sent it racing after the black car, which was already heading up the far street.

“You alive?” he gasped.

“I hate you, Corporal,” Kralis informed him as he peeled himself off the glove box and spat out two teeth. “Just so you know.”

They burst out onto the winding street leading up to the foot of the hill. The black car climbed higher and higher toward the switchback road snaking up the slope. Beyond it, if Ardan remembered right, the upper neighborhoods began: a maze of alleys where the mutant would be beyond their reach.

If they lost her there, that would pretty much be the end of it.

They had to end the chase. Here and now.

“Think… think…”

Then Ardan noticed the hill. In a split second, he sized it up, judging how steep the slope was and how the switchback road looped around it. Several formulas flashed through his mind. They were nearly as complex as those needed to modify seals on the fly.

On the fly.

A funny little pun.

Ardi cranked the wheel sharply to the left.

“What are you planning, Ard?!” Kralis howled, gripping the door.

“Shortcut!” Ardan shouted. He steered the Derks straight into an alley that cut diagonally across the hillside.

“What did I do to deserve all this?!”

The plan was simple. That made it twice as insane. The switchback road wound around the hill in a loop a whole kilometer long, even though the distance straight up was next to nothing. The black car crawled along that loop, dutifully following every bend. Ardan had decided to climb straight up the steep alley, get ahead of the mutant on higher ground, and meet her on the next loop.

The Derks roared as it clawed its way up the impossibly steep slope. The engine howled at its limit; the wheels spun and spat gravel. The tachometer needle crept where the specs said it had no business going. Houses streaked past in a blur, and the alley kept narrowing. Ardi drove on without slowing. He could feel the car about to tip over backward.

They shot out onto the upper loop of the switchback road, exactly where Ardan had expected: directly above the loop the mutant’s black car was climbing. Just a dozen meters below them, its roof flashed into view.

“Hold on!” Ardi barked.

He wrenched the wheel around, sending the Derks off the edge of the upper loop and down, straight at the other car.

Time stretched into a long, syrupy ribbon. Ardan saw each frame separately, as though he were leafing through an old album. Now the Derks’s wheels leave the ground, and it hangs in the air above the drop. Now the mutant lifts her pale face toward the shadow falling over her, and her eyes widen. Now Kralis, beside him, snaps up his pistol with the same stony calm he’d probably bring to his morning tea and fires a quick burst at the other car’s windshield before the cars have even collided.

Then time sped up again, and the Derks crashed down on the side of the black car.

Metal buckled against metal, and every window shattered at once. Locked together in a single mangled mass, the two cars plunged off the switchback road and rolled down the steep hillside. Ard’s world became a jumble of sky and earth, leather upholstery, glass, and Kralis’s screams.

The tumbling car hurled them around the cabin like dried peas in a rattle. Something battered his shoulders, his head, his ribs. The ceaseless clang of tearing metal filled his ears. A roll. Another roll. Another. Another…

At last, everything stopped.

Held fast by the crumpled frame, Ardan hung upside down. It took him a moment to tell up from down. The Derks lay on its roof at the foot of the hill, smoking and crackling. He spotted the mutant’s black car a few paces away, lying on its side, another heap of scrap.

“Neil,” Ardi croaked. “You alive?”

“I think so,” Kralis groaned beside him. “Not sure, though. I hurt all over. So I’m either alive or in hell. I think it’s supposed to feel about the same there.”

They clung to the twisted wreckage as they struggled out, bloodied and in torn clothes, but on their own two feet. Ardan dragged his staff out after him and gave a bitter smile. A thin crack ran along the staff, and it gave a feeble creak. Repairing it would take quite a while, and it clearly wouldn’t be cheap.

But first things first.

Ardan struck the ground with his cracked staff. A seal flared beneath his feet, and the familiar cool glow of Star Magic spread through his body. His scrapes closed, his pain eased, and his cracked rib mended. A few more Rays went dark in his mind, and Ard had a fleeting thought: his strength kept dwindling, yet the day still seemed far from over.

At least he could move again. And fight.

“Corporal!” Kralis shouted suddenly.

Ardan turned. Mangled and drenched in blood, the mutant was crawling out from under the wreckage of the black car, her bony spider legs jutting at unnatural angles. Her hand trembled as she raised a slender glass syringe toward her own neck.

Kralis fired before Ardan could take a single step.

The pistol in his hand gave a short bark, and the bullet sheared clean through the mutant’s wrist. Her hand and the syringe flew off to one side. Cloudy liquid splashed out of the glass barrel before it shattered against a stone. Ard knew what the syringe contained. He’d seen what a successful injection could do on the Niewa embankment. Apparently, Kralis had encountered something similar before, too.

“Not this time, scumbag,” Kralis said through clenched teeth, keeping the mutant in his sights. “We’ve had enough of your tricks.”

He stepped forward and, with the toe of his boot, kicked aside a bony leg that had rolled away. Then he bent over the mangled car. A scorched leather folder lay on the floor of the car, miraculously intact. Kralis hooked his fingers under it, worked it free, and handed it to Ard.

“Take it. I don’t understand a demon-damned thing about this anyway.”

Ardan opened the folder. It held sheets of heavy paper fastened together with a metal paper clip. Building diagrams, cross sections, floor plans, utility networks. Ardi skimmed the top sheet. Blueprints. Perfectly ordinary blueprints.

“This is a plan of the factory,” he said. “The whole factory. But why would she need factory blueprints?”

Kralis opened his mouth to reply, but he never got the chance.

The mutant spat black blood as she laughed. Her remaining hand twitched. A sharp, curved stinger of bone shot from her open palm, lengthening as it emerged.

“Tarharz… zadh… rgdar!” she forced out, looking Ard straight in the eye.

In a single motion, she slashed her own throat with the stinger.

Kralis lunged forward, but he was too late. The mutant collapsed onto her side, and dark blood gushed from her slashed neck. A few moments later, it was all over. Her head rolled farther down the slope. Her body convulsed several times and went still.

“The Brotherhood of Tazidahian,” Kralis muttered as he tucked his pistol away. “Their motto. ‘Humanity above all.’ Fanatics…”

Ardan held on to the blueprints as he slowly straightened. The pieces of the puzzle were coming together.

“Neil,” he said. “We need to get to the factory.”

“The factory?” Kralis frowned. “Why? We’ve got the folder. That thing’s dead. We need to call in—”

“Look.” Ardan jabbed a finger at the network of underground utilities in the blueprint’s lower corner. “Right here. Before work on the factory began, they pumped out the groundwater. See the level markings? They pumped the water down far below the level needed for an underground warehouse to store finished goods. Several thousand exes lower, if you’re measuring in cash.”

“So?”

“So there’s something else under the warehouse. And that ‘something’ is why they drained the water from beneath the entire hill.”

Kralis looked at the blueprint, then at Ard.

“You’re saying...”

“I’m saying the real target of the sabotage, if there really was any sabotage at all, was there the whole time,” Ardan said sharply. “Under the warehouse.”

They headed up the slope and emerged onto the nearest side street, where an unremarkable car sat tucked against the curb. Without ceremony, Kralis smashed the window with his elbow and dove inside. He fiddled for a second with an intricate device that looked like a cross between a screwdriver and a lockpick, and the engine obliged, purring to life.

“Get in, Corporal,” Kralis said. “But I’m driving this time. The way you drive, it’s a miracle my prostate didn’t fall out.”

“But you’re a mutant. You people regenerate like...”

“But that doesn’t mean I like pain!”

***

Someone else’s car rolled through the streets of Delpas. Kralis drove smoothly. Every so often he muttered something through his teeth, barely loud enough to hear. Ardan sat back in his seat and leafed through the blueprints, mulling over what he’d seen.

“Explain it to me,” Kralis demanded without taking his eyes off the road. “What’s going on with the underground warehouse... or under the underground... Damn it! I only learned to read because I had to for this job! I’m an operative, not whatever all this is.”

“Answer one question for me first,” Ard said. “Who owns the factory?”

“The factory?” Kralis thought for a moment. “Oswald Grimach is the manager. But he doesn’t own it. The factory itself belongs to the Crown. Grimach was just appointed to run it.”

“I see,” Ardan muttered under his breath.

That was perfectly logical. A factory manufacturing the latest firearms simply couldn’t be in private hands.

“And what’s he like?” Ard asked. “Anything unusual about him?”

“What do you mean, unusual?” Kralis asked, puzzled. “A manager’s a manager. Sits in his office, signs papers, sends reports to the capital. Why do you want to know?”

“It still doesn’t add up.” Ardan tapped the blueprint with a finger. “If Grimach ordered the groundwater drained far below the level needed for the warehouse, he must have had a reason. Nobody pumps the water out from under an entire hill because they have nothing better to do. It’s expensive, it takes a long time, and there’s simply no point. So they must have needed it for something... but the blueprints don’t show what.”

“What if they were just playing it safe?” Kralis shrugged. “You never know. Maybe they built in a safety margin to make sure it wouldn’t flood.”

Ardan slowly turned his head toward him and raised his eyebrows.

Kralis held his gaze for a second, then another. Then, reluctantly, he grimaced.

“All right, all right,” he grumbled. “I get it. With everything that’s going on, that kind of ‘extra caution’ really does seem a little...” He broke off and slammed his foot on the brake. The car swerved, its side nearly kissing an oncoming truck. Kralis straightened it out. “Actually, there is something. Grimach has a hobby he’s known for. Somehow it slipped my mind. I didn’t think it mattered. It’s nothing special, after all. He’s a collector. Obsessed with old things. He’s got a huge collection of all kinds of antiques at home.”

“A collector,” Ardan repeated.

Ardi leaned back in his seat with a weary, inward smile. It seemed he and Milar would soon have yet another reason to drop in on the Ragman. This was starting to smell all too familiar.

“How much longer?” he asked aloud.

“Almost there.” Kralis nodded toward the tall brick smokestacks already rising above the rooftops ahead. “Get ready, Corporal. Something tells me the day isn’t over yet.”

Ardan had seen factories before, all of them in the capital, but never anything on this scale.

The Delpas steelworks was an immense hulk of soot-blackened brick and rusty iron. It sprawled along the shore for a good half kilometer. Tall smokestacks rose into the sky above the sawtooth glass roofs of the mill buildings, belching brown smoke. It drifted low over the whole block, settling as soot on the walls and pavement.

A ceaseless din came from beyond the factory gates: rolling mills clanged, steam hissed, and steam hammers pounded, making the ground shudder underfoot even at this distance. Ore carts crept along the elevated trestles, cranes rumbled, and through the foundry’s wide-open gates Ardi could make out a hellish orange glow. There, white-hot molten metal sloshed in gigantic ladles.

Heat made the air shimmer. It smelled of something burning, mill scale, and… sulfur. Ardan reminded himself where they were. In a place like this, a stench like that made perfect sense. Demons probably had nothing to do with it.

Kralis drove the car right up to the gatehouse, a squat booth with a striped barrier and a pair of guards in uniform jackets.

“Are you going to stop?” Ardi asked.

“Do we need to?” Kralis grinned, teeth bared, and floored it.

The barrier shattered into splinters. The guards barely had time to jump aside as the car roared into the factory yard, sending workers scrambling. Kralis raced across the yard, weaving between stacks of steel blanks and heaps of slag until the Town Hall appeared ahead. The only building on the grounds with clean windows and something resembling a proper entrance. The Derks stopped right at the doors with a squeal of brakes.

They leaped out of the car and bounded up the steps. Employees scattered as they raced through the corridors and flew up another staircase. Still running, Kralis pulled a worn badge bearing the Black House crest from under his jacket and shoved open the door to the outer office.

“Second Chancery business!” he barked at the dumbfounded secretary, a very young woman at a typewriter. “Where’s Grimach? Come on! Where’s the manager? Quick!”

Startled, she sprang to her feet, pressing her hands to her chest.

“M-Mr Grimach isn’t here,” she stammered. “He left a little while ago…”

“Where did he go?” Ardan stepped closer.

“The finished-goods warehouse.” She looked fearfully from one Cloak to the other. “He was with… he was with a man… a c-colleague of yours. He showed a badge like yours, too. He said they needed to inspect the warehouse right away, and they went down. About twenty minutes ago, maybe a little longer.”

Ardan and Kralis exchanged a look.

“What’s this about a ‘man from the Chancery’?” Kralis said slowly. “We didn’t send anyone.”

“Then he’s not from the Chancery,” Ardi whispered. He turned back to the secretary. “How do we get down there?”

“The e-elevators haven’t w-worked since the ac-accident. So you’ll have to use the s-stairs. At the e-end of the hall.” She waved a trembling hand. “Turn left, go all the way to the end, and there…”

But they were already running.

The staircase seemed to descend almost forever. The factory’s rumble overhead grew more muffled with each flight, until a heavy, oppressive silence took its place. The damp, rust-streaked concrete walls slowly closed in around Ard, and he kept telling himself this was all perfectly normal. Dim overhead lamps cast a sickly yellow light that did little to help.

Why… why did it have to be underground again…

The air turned colder. It smelled of dampness and machine oil, and Ardan caught another scent almost at once: blood.

They found the first body at a bend in the corridor.

A man in work coveralls lay facedown in a dark pool. He would never get up again. A little farther on, they found a second body slumped against the wall, then a third.

Kralis’s expression darkened as he stepped over the bodies.

“This was recent,” he said through clenched teeth. He touched the edge of the pool with the toe of his boot. “Not even half an hour ago. We’re close, Corporal.”

The corridor brought them to a warehouse: a long underground hall crowded with rows of storage racks. Crates of finished goods, stacks of oiled paper, defective steel castings, and rejected gun barrels filled the shelves. An ordinary factory warehouse, like thousands of others. But at the far end, beyond the last rack, something looked out of place.

Ardan slowed and took a closer look. A rack heavy with defective blanks had been shifted aside, exposing an opening in the concrete wall behind it. A false wall. The rack served as its door. Beyond the heaps of factory junk, the opening led to a secret room at the far end of… yet another gently sloping stairway.

Light spilled from the opening, and voices drifted out.

Hugging the racks, Ardi and Kralis crept closer and peered inside.

The hidden chamber was small, with the same bare concrete walls and bright lamps. At the far end stood a massive steel door with a round combination lock. Just like a bank vault door.

People were clustered in front of the door.

A heavyset man in an expensive, rumpled suit paced nervously back and forth right at the threshold. Ardan had no trouble recognizing the manager from the portrait in the factory reception room. Oswald Grimach. Two others stood beside him. Mages. The taller one carried a long staff; an open grimoire hung from a chain at his belt. The shorter one also carried a staff but hung back a little. Neither wore a cloak or shoulder boards, of course. Two more men stood motionless by the walls on either side. Ardan suspected these two were mutants too, like the ones he and Kralis had faced less than an hour earlier.

“Somehow he found out about you!” Grimach was almost shouting. Fear rang clear in his voice. “He found out and changed the lock combination! It’s not my fault! You were supposed to find out exactly what he’d changed it to! That was your job, yours!”

“We didn’t have time,” the tall mage said coldly, his Tazidah accent harsh and guttural. “Your shift supervisor was killed before he could give us the new code. Someone put a bullet through his head while he was being worked over. From a considerable distance, too. Right through the window. A clean shot.” The mage shook his head. “We had to scramble to cover our tracks. That’s why we had to stage that whole circus with the crate. So you’re hardly one to talk about other people’s sloppy work, Mr. Grimach.”

“But I don’t know the combination!” Grimach howled. “He changed it, do you understand? And where are the blueprints? We need to shut down generation!”

So that was why they’d needed the blueprints… At every military plant, the generation section was off-limits to most people, and even its location was classified. That was exactly why engineers didn’t like taking on that kind of work for the Crown. It meant signing piles of nondisclosure paperwork, then traveling to the site to do the maintenance in person. The an Manish firm, for example, refused outright to work with the Crown for that very reason. More trouble than it was worth.

One of the pair by the wall slowly turned his head. His empty eyes swept over the warehouse, then fixed on the opening Ardan and Kralis were hiding behind. There was no doubt now: he had spotted them. He bared his teeth and said something in his own language.

The tall mage followed his gaze.

“We have guests,” he said calmly. Without turning toward Grimach, he added curtly, “Figure something out, Grimach. Otherwise, instead of being paid in exes, you’ll get one very nasty curse. It’ll take you a long time to die.”

Kralis didn’t wait for the rest of the mage’s preamble.

“I’ll take the mutants!” he called as he stepped out from behind the rack. “I can’t help you with the mages, Corporal. They’re your problem! Whoever croaks…”

“Is a Fatian,” Ardan finished.

A puff of black smoke burst from Kralis’s parted lips.

The next instant, Kralis vanished. He didn’t leap aside, didn’t dart away. He simply vanished, his body blurring in the air. Even Ardan’s keen eyesight couldn’t track his movements. When Kralis reappeared, he was already at the far wall beside the first mutant. He moved as no man of flesh and bone could. His body bent and flowed at impossible angles, as if he were made of nothing but joints. The saber in his hand became an unbroken, flashing arc.

One of the mutants tensed in response. Thick, overlapping scales spread across his skin as Ardan watched, turning him into something like a lizard. Kralis’s saber clanged against the scales and bounced off, striking sparks. The second mutant lunged after Neil, moving unnaturally fast himself, though he couldn’t match Neil’s speed. The chamber filled with the whistle of air being sliced apart.

But Ard could no longer spare them any attention.

The two mages moved a little farther apart. Things weren’t exactly looking good. Both opponents swept their hands through the air. Rings set with accumulators flashed on their fingers. Ard’s own fingers felt strangely naked.

One mage might have been manageable, assuming he wasn’t a Yellow. But two, and with accumulators at that… At least, if it had all happened as Ardan thought, there wasn’t so much as a whiff of a Yellow mage here. And even if one of them was a Blue, he was clearly in the Star’s first triad of Rays.

One chance in ten. Maybe less.

And that one chance came down to not letting them strike first.

Ardan scooped Ley from his Stars and immediately sent it whirling into a seal, rushing the casting. Ordinary spells would have been one thing, but…

It was as though a blacksmith’s hammer had struck the back of his head. His vision darkened and swam, and nausea rose in his throat. Still, the seal flared at his feet. It churned and boiled, taking shape in strange patterns, diagrams incomprehensible to either mage. To anyone. And for now, probably beyond anyone’s control but Ard’s, judging by the experiment with Agatha Spree.

A snow lynx sprang from the cracked head of his staff.

The Ice Doll soared up to the ceiling and drove its ghostly claws into the concrete slab. Clinging there, the lynx raced toward the mages, leaving patterns of frost in its wake.

The tall mage recovered his wits, whipped his staff up, and sent a wave of roaring flame racing toward Ard. Ardan struck with his cracked staff, and a bluish film flared before him: an elemental Shield. A moment later, the stream of fire slammed into it with a hiss and broke into rivulets of dying sparks. Heat licked Ardan’s face, but the shield held.

The second mage, the shorter one, was already closing the final contours of a seal. More slowly than an experienced war mage should have. A Fire Lash coiled in the air before him, its crimson glow growing brighter. Some variation on a standard Blue Star military spell. An Imperial spell, no less!

Tomorrow’s thoughts.

Ardan channeled Ley into a new seal. At once, four walls of ice shot up from the floor around the Blue mage from Tazidah. The Ice Prison closed with a crash, cutting him off from the hall. Sharp spikes shot from his prison’s walls toward him, aimed at his chest. The Blue mage’s own modified Fire Lash immediately enveloped him in a roaring wave of fire. The ice spikes burst into sprays of steam. The Prison’s walls began to hiss and sag, melting faster and faster.

Meanwhile, the first mage unleashed a barrage of small fire spells at Ard. They fell like hail from every side, swift streaks of orange. An ordinary elemental Shield could no longer protect him, so Ardan snapped his staff up and raised a slightly different defense. Orlovsky’s Shield, modified to absorb elemental rather than kinetic energy. A Blue Star modification, and his Star was losing its Rays faster and faster.

The streaks of fire slammed into the rainbow disks and went out one by one, absorbed without a trace. But there were only five disks, and they too were crumbling into stardust.

The Stars had very few Rays left.

Ardan hurled an Ice Spear forward. But the first mage had already finished a new seal, though he still wasn’t particularly quick about it. The seal had absorbed what remained of the Ley from the Fire Lash. A huge bird of living flame soared up with a roar to meet the spear. Somewhere between a phoenix and a hawk, it spread its immense wings of flame across the full width of the hall.

The Ice Spear pierced the fiery flesh, then simply evaporated in a puff of steam, leaving the enemy spell almost untouched. The flaming hawk beat its wings and hurtled straight at Ard.

A solid wall of relentless heat bore down on him. The other mage was probably already preparing a Resonance. And…

Ardan tilted his staff almost imperceptibly, and the snow lynx leaped from the ceiling.

The Ice Doll plunged straight down into the thick of the fight. It broke apart in midair before it reached the enemy mages, turning into a whirlwind of tiny, glittering ice petals. They swirled through the hall like a freezing snowstorm. Both mages sensed the danger in time and instinctively struck the floor with their staffs. Each raised an elemental Shield, fearing another ice attack.

That was exactly what Ardan had been aiming for.

Before the petals touched the other mages’ shields, he cast Resonance himself. In an instant, the seal absorbed what was left of the Ley he’d released. The air around Ardan began to hum, then crackle, and a storm of ice burst from the head of his staff. In a single heartbeat it became a full-blown blizzard, a myriad of ice shards hurtling through it.

A simple kinetic spell. Except that a Blue Star and Resonance had multiplied its power.

The whirlwind howled like a pack of hungry wolves as it gathered speed, spinning impossibly fast before it swept over the two mages.

The elemental Shields had saved the Tazidahians from the spell hidden in the Ice Doll. But they could do nothing to stop plain kinetic force.

When the whirlwind subsided, nothing remained of the two mages but dark rivulets down the walls and tiny bloody fragments, almost as fine as dust, settling through the air. It was as if both had been scraped to pieces on an enormous grater. Which, come to think of it, was what had happened.

Ardan swayed and braced himself on his cracked staff, barely managing to stay on his feet. Almost nothing was left in his Stars. His vision darkened, perhaps from his fear of enclosed spaces, perhaps from Ley exhaustion. His legs trembled, but he stayed upright.

A few steps away, a bloodied Kralis sat astride the fallen, scaled mutant. One last stroke of his saber beheaded the foreigner beneath him. The second mutant lay in ten or so mangled pieces.

The hidden hall fell silent except for heavy breathing and the crackle of ice melting on the floor.

Oswald Grimach flattened himself against the steel vault door. White as chalk, he clutched at the combination lock with trembling hands, as though it might somehow protect him. He stared at the two Cloaks who had dispatched the mages and mutants on their own. His eyes were full of animal terror.

Ardan leaned heavily on his staff and started slowly across the hall toward him. Each step was a struggle. His head rang and dark spots swam before his eyes, but he walked on, refusing to let himself stop or sway.

“Stay back!” Grimach shrieked, flinging his pudgy hands up in front of him, palms out. “Don’t you dare come near me, you subhuman! Filthy beast! I… I’ll file a complaint! I have connections in the capital! I…”

Ardan stepped right up to him and looked into his eyes.

“Oswald Grimach,” he said quietly.

He stopped holding the Witch’s Gaze in check.

Grimach jerked as if he’d been slapped. His eyes glazed over and his mouth opened a little. A scream caught in his throat. His body went limp and his knees buckled. With his back against the steel door, he slid slowly to the floor, staring blankly into space, all the light gone from his eyes.

“What did you do to him?” Kralis limped closer, his hand pressed to the gash in his shoulder.

“No lasting harm,” Ardi replied. “He’ll come to.”

He turned away from Grimach and walked to the door. He set his palm against the lock and listened for a moment. The gears were bored with their near-eternal stillness, so rarely disturbed by anything from outside. Yet he could hear the pride, even a certain grandeur, in their defiant watch. Astonishing how much honor those little Names had. Far more than the Names of certain people…

Ardan called the Name of the Combination Lock. The door opened smoothly, revealing… yet another staircase.

Ardi said only, “This way.”

They descended. Another flight of concrete steps led them into an underground chamber, lower still than the hidden hall. Ardan felt along the wall, found a knife switch, and pulled down its wooden handle. One after another, the overhead Ley-lamps flared to life.

“Eternal Angels,” Kralis breathed.

It was more a museum than a cache. The underground hall was spacious and the air was dry. Treasures stood on beautifully carved, velvet-covered pedestals throughout the room. Ancient, finely wrought armor. Elegant blades with flowing elvish script along their length. Books in tarnished silver bindings and scrolls under glass, so brittle with age that it seemed they would crumble if you so much as breathed near them. Paintings in massive frames, darkened by the touch of passing centuries. Jewelry: diadems, brooches, necklaces, their gemstones shimmering in the lamplight.

Ardi walked slowly past the pedestals. Graceful elvish handiwork. Heavy, solid dwarven creations that reflected their makers’ love of stone and metal. Rough but powerful orcish bonework. It really was quite a collection. Judging by what Ardan had seen in Grimach’s memory, it was illegal from the first piece to the last. The pieces Grimach could show off openly were the ones he kept at home.

Ardan stopped.

A wooden figure stood on one of the farther pedestals, among the other treasures. A totem. Carved from dark wood that had grown darker with age, a snow leopard crouched low to the ground, several tails coiled around its powerful body.

***

An hour later, they gathered in the plant manager’s office. Beyond the windows, the factory still rumbled and clanged and sent up smoke, as though nothing at all had happened.

Oswald Grimach sat handcuffed in his own chair. He no longer looked quite like the man who had trembled and pressed himself against the vault door only a short time before. His gaze had cleared and his face had regained its color. But a dull resignation had settled in his eyes.

Another man sat beside Ard and Kralis. He was older and heavyset, with a bushy gray mustache and a soft, deceptively good-natured face. Major Tikhon Barda, head of the Black House’s Delpas branch. The very man whose department had quite literally been blown sky-high that morning.

“You were lucky, Major,” Kralis remarked, studying Barda. “If your timing had been off by half an hour, you’d have been scraped out from under the rubble along with the others.”

“I’d gone out for snacks,” Barda said without a trace of a smile as he stroked his mustache. “To the shop two doors down. I haven’t been able to work properly on an empty stomach since I was a kid. So my stomach saved me.” He turned his hard stare on Grimach. “Talk, Grimach. From the very beginning.”

Oswald Grimach swallowed and began speaking, his voice level and lifeless.

“They got in touch with me several months ago. Through an intermediary. They said they wanted to buy something from my collection. They offered so much I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t, do you understand? I didn’t see anything wrong with it. Believe me. It was an ordinary deal. Perfectly routine in our circles. They gave me a letter of recommendation.”

“Whose?” Barda seized on that immediately.

Grimach smiled sadly.

“I don’t remember… I remember being handed a sheet of paper. I remember seeing a familiar name on it. But I don’t know which name.”

“And what happened next?” Ardan asked. He’d seen this scene in Oswald’s memory. The sheet of paper Oswald had been shown was completely blank except for an unfamiliar seal drawn on it.

“On the night we’d agreed on, I led three buyers down to the vault,” Grimach continued. “I did it myself. I took them to the door so I could open it and hand over the goods. But when I entered the code… the lock wouldn’t open. Someone had changed the combination. I didn’t know the new one. We tried to open it, but—” Grimach swallowed. “The factory was due for an inspection in the morning. And the night-shift workers decided to come in early and check everything again so they wouldn’t get written up. They came down. Saw us. And then…”

He fell silent.

“And then they were killed,” Kralis finished for him. “All of them. So there’d be no witnesses.”

“I didn’t want this,” Grimach said in a hollow voice. “Honestly, I didn’t. But it all snowballed… I was just being swept along! Just swept along… And then the buyers said there was almost no time left. We had to cover our tracks. Throw your department off the trail. So I pointed out the crate of prototypes to them. No one can open it without a Black mage anyway. I told them they could steal it, cause an uproar, and then everyone would think the point of the sabotage was to get the weapons. So that’s what they did.”

“Where’s the crate?” Major Barda’s voice was harsh.

“Sunk.” Grimach shrugged. “In the lake, that same night. Nobody had any use for it. It was just a diversion.”

Ardan leaned forward.

“What exactly did the merchants want to buy?” he asked. “Which specific items? List them.”

Whatever that seal had done, it had badly scrambled Oswald’s memory. Not as thoroughly as the Puppeteers could have, but enough to keep most of it hidden from the Witch’s Gaze.

Grimach looked up at him, his eyes empty, and began listing the items. An antique diadem crafted by ancient elves. An orcish ceremonial necklace made of river pearls and bone. A bundle of dwarven rune tablets. He also mentioned one more thing in passing, without a trace of expression.

“And a few letters,” he said. “Old letters. Personal correspondence. Jacob Agrov’s letters to his older brother. But I keep those in my safe at home. There really aren’t many. My pride and joy… but I needed money. So I decided to sell them too.”

Ardan froze, then turned to Barda.

“Those letters,” he said slowly. “I have to get them. As soon as possible.”

“What for?” Barda’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What do you want with somebody’s old correspondence, Investigator? Those letters are evidence in my department’s case.”

“I can’t say,” Ardi replied calmly. He even took a little pleasure in saying those words for once instead of hearing them. “It comes with the job, Major.”

Barda studied him in silence for a few seconds. Then he nodded slowly.

But Kralis couldn’t take any more.

Without a sound, he lunged forward. In two strides he was at the armchair. He whipped out his pistol, and an instant later, its barrel was jammed between Grimach’s teeth. Grimach wheezed, his eyes bulging, and Kralis placed his finger on the trigger.

“Neil,” Barda said.

“Because of this piece of filth,” Kralis said through clenched teeth, “workers died. A whole shift. Renk’s family. Our people at the department. Children, Corporal. They tortured children! Tortured them! And he… just needed money. The manager! Of the factory! Oh, of course he can just steal a crate to cover his tracks! With the prototypes in it!”

“Neil,” Barda repeated, his voice steely. “Lower your weapon. We still need him alive.”

Kralis stood motionless for several long seconds. Then he exhaled through his teeth, slowly pulled the barrel free, and stepped back. He turned, spat at Grimach’s feet, and walked out into the reception room.

Ardan got up too and crossed to the desk. He picked up the wooden snow leopard totem that had been brought up from below.

“Where did you get this?” he asked without turning to face Grimach.

“The totem?” Grimach was clearly trying to remember. “Bought it a few years ago. Secondhand. Some beggar brought it in. Stank something awful. A matabar’s grandson, I think he said.”

Ardan sighed heavily.

“Tell me about him.”

“Nothing to tell, Corporal. A sorry sight. All in rags, filthy, always drunk. Came in and offered me the figurine for a few exes, just so he’d have enough for booze.” Grimach snorted, and for a moment undisguised contempt came through in his broken voice. “Whined that he couldn’t find work anywhere. Because of the mark in his passport, you see. Yet he looked perfectly human, nothing animal about him. So I bought it for next to nothing. Even that made him happy.”

Ardan spoke quietly, his eyes on the totem, not even glancing at Grimach.

“He was human.”

“What?” Grimach asked, not following.

“A matabar’s grandson is human,” Ard repeated. “Matabar blood isn’t passed down in quarters. Only in halves. He was just as human as you are. He just had the bad luck to be born with the wrong entry in his passport.”

Grimach spread his hands as far apart as the handcuffs allowed.

“Maybe he was human,” he said indifferently. “Still stank like a beast, though.”

Ardan carefully set the totem on the desk.

Then he walked over to Grimach’s chair and leaned toward him. With a faint rasp, claws slid out from beneath Ard’s fingernails. Grimach flinched, but Ard had already slashed him across the cheek, leaving four thin, bleeding furrows. Grimach hissed in pain and fear.

“Listen to me, Oswald Grimach.” Ardan put the force of his will behind the words. “You will live. You’ll go to the mines or the logging camps, and you’ll work there for the rest of your days. And you will live a long time. A very long time.”

Grimach shrieked and clutched at his bleeding cheek.

“And every day,” Ardi continued, “you won’t be living, just existing. Passing from one gray day to the next. Everything you own will go to others. Your collection, the reason you did all those things I saw in your memory, will be broken up and handed over to other people. In time, your wife will meet another man, and who could blame her? Your children will change their last name to escape your disgrace, and they’ll start pretending you never existed. And you’ll watch, year after year, as your whole long, empty life drains away. And one day, at the very end, you’ll suddenly realize that even an animal’s life had more meaning than yours. And then you’ll touch these scars on your cheek.” Ardan straightened and headed for the door. “And the last thing that comes back to you before you die will be this conversation. This conversation and my face.”

He turned away and didn’t look at Grimach again.

***

They made it in time for dinner after all.

Neil was driving Ard back to Masons’ Street in a new Derks. New? It looked just as old and battered as the last one, which had met its end under the hill. Evening light was already gilding the city outside the windows. The factory smoke seemed softer now that it was behind them, even homier in a way.

“It still doesn’t add up, Corporal,” Kralis said, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “Where did that note come from? How did the shift supervisor even find out about the deal they were planning? How did he manage to change the combination in time? And most importantly, why? None of it makes any sense.”

“That’s not my problem anymore.” Ardan leaned back wearily in his seat. “That’s your Investigators’ job.”

“Fair enough,” Kralis grunted.

The car stopped at the familiar gate with its chrome-plated fittings. Warm light shone in the windows of the house. Ard smelled dinner cooking and heard Kena’s muffled laughter.

He was home.

Ardi got out of the car but didn’t head for the porch. He walked around the car instead and opened the trunk. A heavy boulder took up nearly all the space, its smooth gray surface veined with mica. Its weight had made the Derks sag noticeably over its rear wheels all the way home. Earlier that day, as he was leaving the factory, Ardi had asked Kralis to stop near the Park. That was where he’d picked up the stone.

He bent down, lifted the boulder, and grunted under its weight as he heaved it onto his shoulder. The stone weighed him down, but Ardan walked doggedly on, carrying it across the yard and into the garden, to where night-blooming summer flowers glowed in the dusk among the cherry and apple trees. There, between a wild rosebush and a red rosebush, he lowered the boulder to the ground. He kept adjusting it until at last it sat firmly in place, as though it had always stood there.

Then he took the wooden snow leopard totem out of his pocket and gently set it on the stone’s flat top.

Ardan settled cross-legged on the ground beside it. He gazed at the little figure of his Teacher for a long time.

“Hello, Ergar,” he said at last in the language of the matabar. “Our trails have crossed again. But you’re not my Teacher, and I’m not your student. We’re free hunters. You guard your trails, and I’ll guard mine. And if they’re destined to cross, we’ll know we’re not hunter and prey. We’re brothers.”

He fell silent for a little while, then ran his palm over the stone’s rough surface.

“Sometimes I miss you, Ergar. And Shali. Guta, Kaishas, Atta’nha, and … even that pesky little squirrel Skusty and proud Lenos. I miss you all … I miss you so much. And … forgive me, Ergar. Forgive me. You were right. I really will never be a true hunter. But you know, I came to terms with that a long time ago. And … I have a good life, Ergar. Not an easy one, I suppose. Sometimes it’s downright hard, but …” Ardan looked back at the warmly lit house where his family lived. “A good life. I wish you could hear me, my brother. But I remember my promise. When I come back, I’ll be sure to tell all of you so many stories that we’ll be talking about them for several more steps of the Spirit of Day and the Spirit of Night. But for now … sleep, my brother. Sleep and dream your dreams.”

Behind him, the grass rustled softly. The air filled with the scent of spring flowers growing beside a stream.

Tess came over and sat on the ground beside him, gathering up her skirt. Without a word, she looked from her husband’s face to the small dark figure on the stone.

“Why are you talking to a figurine?” she asked gently.

“It’s not a figurine,” Ardi said. “It’s Ergar.”

Tess gave an understanding nod, as though that explained everything.

“Can I touch him?”

“Yes.” Ardan smiled.

Tess reached out a hand and carefully touched the wooden snow leopard with her fingertips.

“Hello, Ergar.” Her voice was quiet and serious. “Thank you so much for keeping my husband safe and raising him. Thank you for putting up with how stubborn he is and his utter inability to dress even halfway decently.”

“Hey,” Ardi protested.

Tess just smiled and rested her head on his shoulder. Ardan wrapped one arm around his wife and sat in silence for a while. Then, his eyes on the totem, he spoke again in the language of the matabar.

“This is Tess, my brother. My wife. Forgive me, my brother… forgive me. I remember my other promise, too. But you’ll have to decide for yourself whether you’re willing to lead human cubs along the mountain trails or not. Because ours will be human cubs, and… forgive me. I know that gives you little to be proud of, but such is the dream of the Sleeping Spirits. And now, please, watch over Erti. And… until we meet again. One day we’ll see each other again. I know that for certain.”

He stood and helped Tess to her feet. Together they walked arm in arm toward the house, where the table was set and cabbage rolls and berry pie were waiting for them.

A week later

When the house fell quiet and the lights in its windows went out, Ertan climbed out onto the roof.

He had a habit of coming up here at night. He’d climb the drainpipe onto the sloping roof and sit beside the still-warm fireplace chimney. From there, he’d gaze out over Delpas, spread below him in a scattering of lights. More often than not, he had company up here.

The alley cat was already sitting on the roof’s ridge: old, mangy, one ear torn, his gaze heavy and watchful in a way no cat’s should be. He sat motionless, looking into the distance, past the lights of the city to where the outskirts gave way to dark, boundless prairie. Somewhere out there, a train was trailing smoke as it carried Ard and Tess east.

“I’m always proud of you, my brother. Every moment,” the cat whispered, almost too softly to be heard. “And you’ve met the best companion I could ever have wished for you.”

Ertan froze halfway up the roof.

“Huh?” He stared blankly at the Teacher. “What are you even talking about? What companion? You’re talking nonsense again.”

The cat slowly turned his head toward him. He got to his feet, arched his back, and gave a leisurely, dignified yawn, revealing his three remaining fangs.

“I remember,” he said simply.

“Remember what?” Ertan asked, confused.

“Myself,” the cat replied. “My memories. Everything I was. Everything I am. I have my memory back.”

Ertan leaned forward. His eyes lit up.

“It’s back? Seriously?” he blurted. “Tell me! Tell me everything! Who were you? What do you remember? Are you really a cursed fairy-tale prince? Want me to ask a friend of mine to kiss you? Or are half-orc girls not really your type? Dugbag might be willing, if it comes to that. He’s not a girl, of course, but his love of cats is downright unhealthy.”

The cat gave him a long, mocking look. Something very old and very sly rippled in his eyes.

“Maybe,” he drawled. “Maybe someday I’ll tell you. In a few years. If you can beat me in a fair fight.”

“Hey! A few years is a long time, you know!” Ertan protested.

But the cat was no longer listening.

He turned to face the dark expanse of prairie beyond the city lights and crouched low against the roof ridge. His mangy body suddenly tensed with wild strength.

“Follow me, little hunter!” The Cat shouted as he darted off. “You still have a lot to learn.”

A gray shadow streaked along the roof ridge, leaped to the neighboring roof, then to the next. It was almost gone, dissolving into the night. Ertan cried out, laughed, and rushed after it, leaping across the tiles. Two shadows, one large and one small, raced one behind the other over the rooftops of sleeping Delpas beneath the high summer stars.