Matabar. Book II. Chapter 165. Costume (Patreon)

For the second time in his life, Ardan found himself in the office of Shamtur’s Governor-General. And for the second time, he was there against his will. The room looked almost exactly as it had on his last visit. At a glance, it was still hard to distinguish from the office of any ordinary clerk or company manager: a lone desk covered in green baize, several armchairs, a small reading table, bookshelves, and an iron filing cabinet with labels attached to its doors, their paper already gray and faded with age.

The peculiar map on the wall was the only sign that the office belonged to a military officer. Instead of provincial borders or railroad routes, it showed the positions of trenches, pillboxes, fortifications, and water crossings. Most importantly, every last one of them was on the Fatian side, not the Imperial one.

Reish himself sat behind the desk amid a heap of assorted papers, wearing the very same uniform, his gaze stern and piercing.

He had changed, though. More gray threaded through his red mop of hair, new lines had cut into his face, and he had grown noticeably thinner. There was one other change: behind Ard’s back, squarely in Reish’s line of sight, hung an enormous wooden board, draped for now in a sheet of linen. A secret map, presumably, or something of the kind that no visitor was meant to lay eyes on.

Reish smoked a pipe and tapped his fingers against a closed cardboard folder. Alaris sat beside him with his twin brother Asilar, who was trying not to look toward the only person in the room who wasn’t a redhead. Odd as that might sound.

Ardi didn’t blame him. Asilar’s hatred of the Firstborn was justified, however deep it ran. Ardi himself still couldn’t view the whole Shanti’Ra tribe (or gang, as the newspapers called it) with anything like an open mind. He couldn’t confine those feelings to the ones who’d taken part in the raid on Evergale. If what he felt toward the rest wasn’t hatred and spite, then it was…

Sleeping Spirits. Ard didn’t even know quite how to put those feelings into words. So he understood Asilar. Better, perhaps, than Asilar suspected.

“Other than the automobile, Mr Investigator, did you notice anything else?” Reish’s eyes narrowed a little as he shifted his gaze from Asilar to Ard.

His tone held no irony or sarcasm. If anything, he was underscoring Ard’s official standing. Perhaps even for his own benefit.

Ardi’s eyebrows rose in mild surprise.

“Isn’t that enough, Mr Orman?”

Asilar allowed himself a brief smirk.

“Typical Cloak,” he said, so quietly that Ardan wouldn’t have heard a word of it without a matabar’s ears.

Reish sighed and waggled his pipe, leaving a curtain of smoke hanging in the air.

“A single automobile, Ard.” Reish pointed the stem of his pipe at him. “It’s hard to build any kind of theory on that, let alone issue orders.”

Ardan opened his mouth, then shut it again and had to concede that Asilar might have a point. Just not in the way Asilar meant.

“That automobile tailed us from the moment we passed out of your lookouts’ sight…”

Ard hadn’t even finished when Reish and his twin sons exchanged a look.

“What lookouts are you talking about, Ard?” Alaris asked.

“The ones who never leave their posts at the windows of the neighboring buildings,” Ardan said evenly. “During the day they change shifts at exactly two fifteen. At night, it’s one fifteen. There are ten of them altogether, two armed with long-range rifles. A new model, from the look of it, since the scopes don’t always catch the light. Probably built to be detachable, and…”

Ardan broke off. There didn’t seem much point in talking to the Military, of all people, about new rifles for marksmen like Katerina from Kornosskiy’s squad.

For a moment, silence settled over the room.

Reish cleared his throat as he tapped the spent tobacco out of his pipe and into the ashtray. “How long did it take you to spot them?”

“The day after Tess and I got here,” Ardan admitted.

He chose not to dwell on the way Asilar flinched, just slightly, at the words “Tess and I.” And Ardi decided it would be unwise to point out that Milar, for one, would have spotted something like that before they’d even climbed out of the automobile.

“The actual number of sentries is—”

“Sixteen. Sorry to interrupt,” Ardi cut in. “Six more are posing as assistants to the wedding coordinator, but I assumed they were meant to be as inconspicuous as possible, and… I didn’t want them losing their bonuses if I pointed out that, on the whole, they’re not hard to spot.”

Reish slowly turned to Alaris. Well, that explained why Tess’s older brother and his wife hadn’t left the estate. Apparently, the job of organizing security for the wedding had fallen squarely on his shoulders.

“And what gave them away?” Alaris asked glumly.

“Among other things, the smell of gunpowder and the calluses on their fingers. The kind marksmen get.” Ardan kept the other details to himself. “What I’m getting at, Mr. Orman, is this. I know I’ve only served in the Black House for a year and a half, but… I think I’m competent enough to raise a concern about my wife’s safety.”

Asilar, Reish’s hot-tempered twin, gripped the armrests so hard they creaked. He was just about to jump to his feet, but Reish stopped him with one stern look.

“That’s exactly why,” Mr. Orman started to say, but…

Ardan flicked an ear as he listened to footsteps in the hall, and he took a small sniff of the air, catching a scent he recognized: expensive cigars from the Islands, mixed with whiskey so cheap you probably couldn’t even buy it from the Telkarts anymore. Only the Sleeping Spirits knew where the visitor had found it.

“Delighted to find you all in good health, gentlemen,” a familiar voice said as the door swung wide.

It was Major Mshisty. He was average height, with a coarse, weather-beaten face covered in scars. His long hair was tied in a ponytail, and an empty sleeve swung where his left arm should have been. He didn’t even wait for an invitation: he closed the door behind him, propped his staff against the wall, and dragged a chair over. He didn’t care one bit as the chair’s legs screeched across the lacquered floor, leaving scratches.

Settling in right beside Ard, Mshisty laid a cracker on Mr. Orman’s desk, scattering crumbs, and fished a cigar from the inside pocket of his absurdly expensive summer jacket.

Despite all that, he looked quite refined, even graceful in his own way. Perhaps this was the “aristocrat and scholar” version of Mshisty, rather than the “mad dog of the Black House.” Even without a Black Star, he remained one of the Empire’s most powerful war mages, and one of its most destructive, in every sense of the word.

“Hello, Tulip.” Not a single muscle in Mr. Orman’s face twitched.

At first Ard thought he’d misheard. Then he decided he might be better off leaving the study, collecting Tess, and finding out whether Shamtur had a hotel. But a moment later, he realized why he’d never heard Major Mshisty’s first name before.

Mshisty was a newly minted Grand Magister of Military Magic. He ignored Mr. Orman, one of the country’s most prominent generals, and turned to Ard.

“My parents owned a small flower business,” he explained, exhaling a puff of blue-gray smoke. “They thought it would make a decent name. Sadly, the fact that ‘Tulip Mshisty’ doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue didn’t trouble them in the slightest.”

“Got it,” was all Ardan said.

He didn’t get any of it, really. Least of all why Mshisty was bothering to explain anything to him in the first place.

“I don’t quite see what has you so worried, my dear colleague.” Major Mshisty waved a hand, fanning the smoke away from his face. “If you’re that anxious about young Tess, just cast a good passive shield with a delayed trigger. You could even add an active offensive component. Your Black House clearance will cover you if it causes any harm. I imagine you’re competent enough to manage that, Corporal.”

Mshisty was all courtesy, in both speech and manner. Still, it was best not to forget exactly who was in the room.

And then, without warning, Mshisty fell silent, and sparks of murderous madness flickered in his eyes. Ardan had seen them before on the shore of the Angel’s Tear, when Mshisty had gone off alone to fight Swordsman Selkado, heedless of the danger or the consequences. Selkado practiced a science designed specifically to counter Classical Star Magic, especially its Imperial branch.

Mshisty turned slowly toward Reish and smiled. The way a snake might smile at a rabbit that had blundered into its clearing.

“The Corporal has a bent for engineering, so I’m sure he would have handled the task even without my advice.” Mshisty suddenly drew his hand away from the desk and flicked the ash from his cigar straight onto the floor. “How would you feel about moving into a smaller house, Reish? Not that I’m hinting at anything, but I’ve had a rather nice spell waiting to be tested for quite some time now. I just haven’t found a building with decent stationary shields to put it through its paces. And your estate, it seems to me, would be perfect.”

The twins’ hands drifted a little lower of their own accord, settling where the holsters sat beneath their jackets. Each holster held a new automatic pistol. Apparently, some prototypes had already proven themselves well enough to be put into production. Not mass production, perhaps, but enough to arm officers on the most important fronts.

“I imagine, Tulip, that I’ll suffer far less inconvenience than you will, once you find yourself without any hands at all.” Once again, Mr Orman didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow.

An ordinary man, sitting across from a Pink war mage, and one with a very particular kind of reputation at that. And Reish wasn’t simply wearing a convincing mask or putting on a show of bravado. Nothing of the sort. Ardan could hear his heartbeat and catch his scent. Reish Orman truly wasn’t afraid. Not in the slightest. Which seemed to prove him worthy of his post as Governor-General of Shamtur, in charge of most of the Imperial-Fatian border, including its most dangerous stretch.

“Reish, I doubt anyone in this country besides the Emperor and the Colonel can forbid a Black House mage from casting anywhere he pleases on our soil.” The mad glint in Mshisty’s eyes dimmed a little, and his smile grew more… human. “I’m no expert on the law, but if that doesn’t qualify as a crime against the Second Chancery, it’s at least a fineable offense.”

Reish turned to Ard.

“What’s this about, Ard?” he asked curtly.

Ardan could probably have told him the whole truth. That he’d been denied access to the Orman estate’s stationary shields on Adelaide’s orders. But… Adelaide was still Tess’s mother. Adelaide had carried Tess for nine months, then spent sixteen years raising her and looking after her. And she still cared for Tess.

She loved Tess. And so Ardan would never even consider doing Adelaide any harm.

“My apologies, Mr Orman.” Ard inclined his head slightly. “I’d completely forgotten that special regulations are in force here in your city, and that I need to obtain clearance.”

Mshisty grimaced.

“How noble,” he said through gritted teeth.

Reish turned toward Asilar, just as slowly as before. Asilar clenched his jaw, rose from his seat without a word, and left the office, slamming the door on his way out.

“Family drama,” said Mshisty, spreading his hands... hand wide before pulling Mr Orman’s ashtray back toward himself. “Every time I see it, I’m more convinced I was right not to marry. Easier on the nerves.”

Coming from Mshisty, the “mad dog,” a line like “easier on the nerves” sounded almost absurd. Then again, when you thought about it, Mshisty could fray everyone else’s nerves without troubling his own.

“Next time, Tulip, be kind enough to contact my secretary before you come barging into my office.” Reish laced his fingers together, a gesture that brought the Colonel to mind, and fixed his gaze on Mshisty’s face. “I’m grateful to the Emperor for sending you here to keep our family celebration safe. And I’m grateful to you for agreeing to come. But that doesn’t give you the right to behave like this in my home.”

Mshisty nodded and held up a hand.

“You know me, old friend. I’m humility itself,” he said without a trace of irony. “Besides, I’d hate to break with our fine tradition of meeting the Corporal on your property.”

“There’s no such tradition,” Ard broke in, for no reason he could name.

“Then we will establish it,” Mshisty shot back without even turning his head toward him. “Especially now that you’re under my command for the next ten days.”

“I’m on leave,” Ardan immediately reminded him. “I’m not under anyone’s command right now.”

Mshisty laughed. It sounded, Ardan supposed, the way hyenas laugh in Kargaam. Not that he had ever heard one. He’d only read traveling mages’ accounts in the Grand Library.

“You ought to read the Black House regulations a little more closely, Corporal.” Mshisty wiped away a tear. “It’s right there in black and white: Second Chancery personnel don’t get leave, at least not de jure. What they get instead is an order stating that the employee is to see to the restoration of his physical and mental health until special orders say otherwise.”

“In that case, please show me those special orders.”

“I don’t have them.”

“Then maybe Captain Parela has them? Or Lieutenant Clementius?”

“Possibly.” Mshisty nodded. “But I won’t find out, because they’re on leave.”

Ardan let his eyes fall shut and took several deep breaths. He was beginning to see why Aversky had preferred to steer clear of Major Mshisty. Lord Aversky, may the Eternal Angels have mercy on him, had respected Mshisty but hadn’t gone out of his way to seek his company. Or rather, he hadn’t sought it at all. Yet the two of them had been bound by something that, however twisted and baffling, could only be called friendship.

“So. The car.” Reish got his pipe going and returned to the original subject as though nothing had happened. “You’re set on it, Ard?”

Ardan nodded without a flicker of hesitation.

Reish met Alaris’s gaze.

“Pass it all the way down the chain,” he ordered. “In two hours, every sector from here to the border is to be reinforced with three additional patrols. Get the descriptions out to every unit. Quadruple the number of sentries and set up machine-gun nests positioned for crossfire. And… whatever else you see fit.”

“Yes, General.” Alaris saluted. “Permission to proceed?”

“Proceed.”

Alaris rose, clicked his heels, and vanished through the door exactly as his brother had. None of it was for show. Ardan knew that with a man like Reish Orman, no one in the family would ever hold a post simply because they were family.

Alaris and Asilar both had all the qualifications their posts required. What’s more, when they were on duty, they saw him not as their father but as their general. He, in turn, saw them not as sons but as subordinates. However outlandish that might sound to an outsider.

“Any suspicions?” Mshisty asked, all business. “Considering how skeptical you are of our House, Reish, you wouldn’t have called us in unless you suspected something… Well, unless I’m wrong and you’ve grown that fond of your son-in-law.”

Reish’s only reply was to shove a folder across the desk. Mshisty nearly dropped his cigar as he caught the folder before it could slide off onto the floor.

“Rude.”

“Learn some manners, Tulip. Then maybe people will treat you decently.”

Mshisty made an indistinct, deeply skeptical noise, something like the bleat of a sheep.

“We’ve known each other for twenty years, Reish. You might have figured out by now that I don’t give a damn about people.”

“Then don’t be surprised that they don’t give a damn about you.”

Mshisty waved a hand vaguely in the air, then rested his cigar on the rim of the ashtray. He slid the folder a little closer to Ard and opened it.

Ard leaned forward and peered at the contents. Among the intelligence briefs and reports, he found a string of messages suggesting that a group of Fatian saboteurs had been gathering in the city over the past seven months, presumably to attack a target that had yet to be identified.

Ard knew little about life in Shamtur, but with Tess’s stories to go on, he could tell that situations like this were normal. Normal by local standards, of course.

Fatian saboteurs struck at Shamtur regularly, once or twice a year. The Empire, for its part, harassed the settlements on the far side of the border. And both countries, though each knew who was behind the attacks, invariably declared every incident the work of criminal gangs or bombers.

Why?

Probably no one wanted a repeat of the Fatian massacre, which this time around might prove to be the very spark that set off a wildfire. Then again, they could simply have chosen not to commit sabotage in the first place, but… politics remained, as ever, a dark and tangled forest for Ard, and he was in no hurry to go wandering into it.

“You think they’ve come for you?” Mshisty sounded faintly surprised. “I’m not downplaying your importance to the country, Reish. But if Fatia could kill you, they’d have done it long ago. If memory serves, the last time they tried to get to you, they never got any further than kidnapping Tess.”

Ardan felt his fangs nick his gums and his fingernails lengthen a fraction. Neither change in his appearance escaped the notice of the other two men in the office.

“One theory is that they’re after the shipment of new weapons that arrived in the city.”

“Weapons?” Mshisty echoed, then immediately caught himself. “Oh, yes… weapons… The army crowd fussing over their trinkets.”

“These ‘trinkets,’ as you put it, Tulip, now pose a threat to Blue mages, too.”

“Firearms?” Mshisty snorted. “Forgive me, Reish, but I seriously doubt that.”

Mr. Orman’s shoulders twitched almost imperceptibly. He cared very little what Major Mshisty thought.

“Fine, let’s ask the expert.” Mshisty spun toward Ard and jabbed a finger at a photograph of a small warehouse stacked with weapon crates. “Tell me, Corporal, do these updated versions of crossbows actually pose a threat to you and others like you?”

“In theory, yes.” Ardan didn’t try to deny it. “Ten men with automatics would force me to spend my Blue Star’s entire reserve on a reinforced Orlovsky’s Shield. That many shooters would push any version of the Fire Lash beyond its limits. So maybe they’re not an outright danger, but they narrow my options a great deal.”

Mshisty, who had clearly expected an entirely different answer, frowned a little.

“Damn it,” he hissed. He turned back to Reish and bared his teeth in another grin. “Oh, would you look at that. It turns out Mr. Governor-General, our dear Corporal’s father-in-law, didn’t know his son-in-law is a Blue mage. Nine rays, mind you.”

Reish looked Ard over from head to toe, then let his gaze settle on the cloak at his back.

“Why?” he asked, offering nothing more.

“To avoid drawing unwanted attention,” Ardan replied just as curtly.

“And when do you plan to switch cloaks, Ard?”

Ardan shrugged.

“I have the Colonel’s signed permission to get certified publicly whenever I want. So maybe… at the end of this academic year.”

In fact, if Boris hadn’t suggested a way to stop Iolai Agrov from making their lives miserable… Ardi wouldn’t have bothered with certification at all until he graduated from the Grand. He didn’t care one bit about the color of the cloak on his back or the number of Ley-Stars on his epaulets. But a nineteen-year-old who had lit three Stars, the second and third with nine rays apiece, could draw attention.

Ergar had always taught him that a good Hunter should go unnoticed not just by his prey, but by other Hunters as well. Granted, Ardan wasn’t a full-fledged Hunter, but he would have been a fool to deny the wisdom of those words.

“Does Tess know?... Why am I even asking?” Mr. Orman shook his head. “In that case, I suppose I can worry a little less about her now.”

Ardi was thrown for a moment, and then he reminded himself, once again, of his own skewed sense of what was normal. Reish Orman might be the Governor-General of Shamtur, with very nearly a full company of mages under his direct command, but when it came to Star science, he was still a layman.

To him, a Blue mage was a distant, mysterious figure. Ard’s way of life, his studies at the Grand, and everything that came with them made him see things differently: the rank of Blue mage was a respectable achievement, but hardly cause for awe.

To put it in perspective, ordinary people saw Blue mages much the way mages themselves saw Pink and Black mages.

Once again, that underscored how impressive Reish Orman’s composure was in Major Mshisty’s presence.

“Now that we’ve discussed everything that needed immediate attention, Ard, would you give Major Mshisty and me a moment?” Mr. Orman was asking Ard to leave as politely as he possibly could, but unmistakably.

Ardan was only too happy to oblige, of course, and wasted no time. He rose, took up his staff, and nodded to each of them in turn.

“Mr. Orman. Major.”

He had almost reached the door when a clipped voice called after him, a slight bark in it.

“Or you can stay and sign a few papers that would let you, Corporal, take a more active part in all this.”

“I’m on leave,” Ardan reminded him yet again and stepped out the door.

The last thing he wanted was to be in the company of Major Mshisty, or around anything that tended to come along whenever he showed up.

He and Tess had agreed that she’d wait for him in the room Shuma and Lubava shared. They were the Ormans’ youngest children, and Tess simply adored them. She’d been fussing over them since childhood, hers as well as theirs.

Tess loved children. Perhaps every bit as much as she did the stage and music.

Ardan sighed and paused for a moment in the broad corridor. They still weren’t having any luck… He would probably have to follow Boris’s advice after all and see an elven Healer who specialized in fertility. The trouble was, Ard’s gut told him that wouldn’t help either. He had no idea why things had gone so smoothly for Shaia and Hector, apart from his mother’s trouble with breastfeeding.

He simply hoped what his gut was telling him wasn’t intuition at all. Just the paranoia that came as a bonus with his paycheck.

“Mr. Egobar.”

Ardan shook off his thoughts and looked toward the bend in the corridor leading from the common sitting room. Coming his way was Duke Erkerovsky, in the flesh.

The plain iron-framed monocle was still in place. He wore no rings; his only ornaments were diamond cufflinks, in a different style this time, and the buttons on his suit, now made of emeralds. The suit was made from the finest handwoven linen. To say nothing of the custom tailoring, which Ardan could spot at a glance, seamstress’s son that he was.

He carried a cane that looked too heavy to be just a cane. The old calluses on his hands, hard as stone, confirmed that the lacquered shaft held something more.

“Duke Erkerovsky,” Ardan said in greeting, taking the hand the Duke offered him. The handshake, uncommonly firm despite the Duke’s slight build, strengthened Ardan’s suspicions about the cane.

The Duke didn’t even come up to Ard’s chest, and yet he didn’t seem short in the least. He was a patron of ballet and poetry who kept clear of politics and could be talkative on occasion, but there was something more to him all the same. Something that inspired both instinctive respect and a sense of calm.

Duke Mark Erkerovsky was a congenial man.

“As I recall, we parted on a less-than-pleasant note last time, Ard.” Erkerovsky gestured toward a bench a little way off, an invitation.

They walked over together and sat down as one.

Ardan remembered their earlier conversation. “Still, Your Excellency, I don’t understand why you’re telling me this,” he’d asked.

“Truth be told, I don’t know myself, Ard. Maybe I just want to talk to someone who has no one to sell my words and thoughts to, and no way to use them against me later. And that’s rare. Extremely rare… Or maybe… maybe I’m trying to see you as a reasonable man, not the descendant of a bloodthirsty murderer who wiped out my ancestors and wouldn’t let a single body be buried. I don’t know, Ard. Honestly. Maybe all of it at once.”

It had been their first conversation and, as it happened, their only one. At his wedding to Tess there had been no chance to talk. Nor, when it came down to it, any wish or reason to. Neither of them had minded in the least.

“I can assure you, Your Excellency, that…”

“Just Mr. Erkerovsky will do, Ard.” Erkerovsky cut him off in a tone so courteous it hardly seemed like an interruption at all. “And I know what you want to say. That you didn’t feel the slightest discomfort. Or that none of it mattered, but…” The Duke half closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall with evident relief.

If the lectures on the Star Healing Arts were any guide, Mark Erkerovsky had a mild ache in his lower back. After all, he’d turned forty-three that year. He wasn’t young anymore, though his lifestyle and wealth made him look perhaps even younger than Milar.

“I don’t want you to think I’m making you shoulder the burden of what happened a quarter of a millennium ago. You have absolutely nothing to do with any of it. And… forgive me if I lost sight of that the last time we met. But I’ve had a whole year to think it through, long enough to see you as a young man I find decidedly to my liking.” The Duke caught himself and smiled thinly. “I hope that description sits well with you. The word ‘man,’ I mean.”

Ardan gave a silent nod. They sat like that for several minutes. The Duke gazed up toward the ceiling while Ardan tried to distract himself from the smell of the Duke’s cologne. Not that it was unpleasant. The heat in Shamtur was simply so fierce that ladies and gentlemen alike were dousing themselves in more scent than usual. It might not be all that noticeable to a human. To a matabar’s nose, though, it was impossible to miss.

“I imagine life has a way of throwing you together with people who react badly when they hear your surname, Ard.”

“It happens,” Ardan replied evasively, just the way Skusty had taught him. He really did enjoy Mr. Erkerovsky’s company; he just didn’t care for the subject.

No, it wasn’t that Ard cared what strangers thought of him or his family. He didn’t, not in the slightest. It was just… just that every time he came up against the consequences of Aror’s decisions, he ran headlong into harsh reality yet again. Once the veil was drawn aside, the Grandfather of his memories, foul-mouthed but so warm and gentle, with his familiar scent of snow, turned out to be someone else entirely.

And sometimes it was simply too painful for Ard to dig yet another splinter of that long-shattered illusion out of his flesh. Sometimes he just wanted to savor its echo and his memories of home on the bank of a swift mountain stream.

“I’d prefer to think of you as Major Hec Abar’s son,” Mr. Erkerovsky added, for some reason.

Ardan only gave a bitter half-smile.

“May the Eternal Angels be my witnesses.” The Duke made the sacred sign of the Face of Light. “But I believe in redemption, Ard. And if it was the will of the Light for a hero of the Empire to walk a thorny path soaked in innocent blood, then I suppose there was some meaning in it, one beyond the reach of a mortal mind.”

“You believe in fate?” Ardan asked, surprised.

The Duke hardly seemed the sort of man to hand off responsibility for his own life to some metaphysical definition of deterministic invariance.

“It’s more that I believe people change,” the Duke replied after a while. “Or rather, as the years go by, the stage costume we all try on now and then gathers the dust of the road, weighs more heavily on us, and sometimes even becomes stained with blood. It grows cumbersome and ill-fitting, and people cast it off, laying bare what the Face of Light breathed into them when He wove physical shells of light for their souls.”

Ardan grew even more surprised. It must have shown on his face, because the Duke gave a little laugh.

“Oh, forgive me, Ard.” He waved a hand. “We’re putting on a ballet about the First Prophet, so I’ve gotten a little steeped in the philosophy of Holy Scripture. It’ll pass. This usually happens to me whenever we mount a major production. I get in too deep, hopelessly immersed in the material.”

Ardi nodded. Thanks to his mother, he was every bit as well versed in the catechism of the Church of the Face of Light, the mainstream faith of the Empire and Al’Zaphir, as in the Firstborn belief in the Sleeping Spirits’ dream.

“So, Ard, I’d like you to know that my homes, from the Metropolis to the Azure Coast, will always, and I do mean always, have rooms kept ready and places set at the dinner table for you, Tess, and the children I hope and believe you’ll have together: Olesya’s future nieces and nephews.”

Some might have heard nothing but formal courtesy in those words, or an empty promise made by a man who knew from the start he’d never be called on to keep it. But Ardan, odd as it might sound, had spent half a year in another duke’s basement. Long enough to know that Mark Erkerovsky wasn’t a man who talked simply to show how eloquent and well-mannered he could be.

“Thank you,” Ardan said quickly, but the next words escaped before he could stop them. “Was that part of your agreement with Mr. and Mrs. Orman?”

The question might have been taken as an insult, but Duke Erkerovsky showed no outward emotion. The only tell was a brief falter in his heartbeat, too slight for Ardan to make out what the Duke was feeling.

“Have you ever given any thought to the nature of your marriage, Ard?” the Duke answered with a sudden question of his own.

“What... do you mean?”

“What any other Investigator would probably have noticed if he weren’t as madly in love with young Tess as you are. Eternal Angels, Ard. Watching the two of you at the wedding, for a second I thought I’d never seen love that strong before, and that I might never see it again in anyone else.” Duke Erkerovsky’s eyes drifted half shut again, and after a few moments he went on. “But a feeling, even one that all-consuming, would never have been enough on its own to secure permission for you to marry the daughter of a man who holds the key to one of the most important gates into the Empire.”

“It was quite some time before Mr. Orman approved our union.”

“Oh, Ard.” The Duke sighed with a trace of sadness. “You wear black adorned with some rather peculiar medals. And I’m certain that is no accident. So I have no doubt at all about your abilities when it comes to, forgive my bluntness, trivial matters. But politics... if you believe that Reish Orman or the magnificent Adelaide has any freedom whatsoever to decide their children’s fates, you are deeply mistaken.”

Slowly, Ard began to understand.

“Children, Ard, are our greatest vulnerability. And no sensible ruler would ever let anyone plant a time bomb beneath one of the most important holdings entrusted to his keeping.”

“You mean that...”

“Your marriage, like mine and young Alaris’s, was approved by the Emperor himself.” Duke Erkerovsky nodded. “You couldn’t even get engaged without his permission. Neither Adelaide nor Mr. Orman had any say in it, whatever they might tell their children to keep them from dwelling on that fact. That fact is quite obvious to anyone in the know, by the way.”

Now Ard’s own heart skipped a beat.

“But then why did Her Imperial Majesty the Consort give the Imperial Herald an interview?”

“For the very reasons she stated,” Erkerovsky replied calmly. “You may have misunderstood why the press was curious. They weren’t interested in your marriage itself, but in finding out why it had been approved at all. And that’s precisely what the Empress-consort explained to them.”

The Empress-consort had said in the interview, “And the miraculous recovery of my daughter, Her Imperial Highness Great Princess Anastasia, nearly seven years ago is directly linked to the selflessness and courage of Etid Ard Egobar. His heroic deed deserves a story every bit as gripping as the ones your newspaper, Lord Virov, so eagerly promotes from time to time.”

Ardan turned away to face the opposite wall.

“Why are you telling me this, Mr. Erkerovsky?”

“Because I see a kindred spirit in you, Ard, someone who doesn’t want to be dragged into the endless squabbling over the right to run other people’s lives,” Erkerovsky said, his tone quite firm. “And because I once had a similar conversation with your late mentor. Lord Aversky was a difficult man, but he managed to keep the flies from buzzing around him by wearing a Black cloak. You, alas, cannot claim the same. But you would do well to think about it, Ard. Because as time passes, someone is bound to want to fit you for a stage costume with ‘political intrigue’ embroidered on it in very large letters. Be on your guard against that.”

Ardan turned back to Erkerovsky and saw him in a slightly different light. Now, somehow, the images no longer clashed at all in his mind: the patron of the ballet, the man whose hands bore the calluses of fencing and shooting, the man who carried a blade inside his cane.

In fact, they fit together.

“Thank you, Mr Erkerovsky.”

“Don’t mention it, Ard. Don’t even think of it as advice. Think of it as a conversation with someone I never imagined I would be speaking to so calmly. But perhaps Holy Scripture is right, and the Light really does work in mysterious ways.” Leaning heavily on his cane, Erkerovsky rose to his feet and set off toward Reish Orman’s study. Halfway there, he stopped and, without turning around, added, “Ard, you look like a man who has only just realized he’s wearing a costume.”

A remembered conversation intruded on Ard’s thoughts.

“I’d rather shoot dogs than Galessians. At least that wouldn’t turn my stomach like this does.”

“No, come on, not the dogs! Poor things. Don’t you have a heart? Shooting dogs, he says…”

“Yeah, you’re right… I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry, boys. My nerves are shot to hell.”

“And here’s what I’m thinking.” Erkerovsky resumed walking, his voice echoing back to Ard. “Perhaps the Emperor approved your marriage because he saw something beneath your costume. That leaves just one question: has your wife seen it too? Or is she in for a surprise sooner or later?”

Ard sat alone for a little while, then got to his feet and went to find Tess.

***

Ardan stood in the doorway of the nursery, one shoulder propped against the jamb, in no hurry to go in.

The younger Ormans’ room was a world away from the stern atmosphere of the rest of the estate. Here, a soft rug lay on the floor, worn clear through to the backing in two places by endless games. Wooden fortresses and tin soldiers were heaped in the corners, and a whole rank of plush animals lined the windowsill, battered even though such toys were still a novelty. Warm light from the setting sun streamed into the room through the wide-open window.

In the middle of all this splendor sat Tess, the skirts of her dress spread across the rug, with two children whirling around her.

Seven-year-old Lubava, a black-haired child with the family’s snub nose, had climbed into her sister’s lap and locked both arms around her neck, demanding her undivided attention. Twelve-year-old Shuma, already self-conscious about looking like a little kid, put on a solemn air. His eyes gave him away completely, though: he was happy his big sister was home.

“And then! And then what happened?” Lubava kept tugging at Tess’s sleeve. “You sang right in front of all those people? And they clapped for you?”

“They clapped.” Tess lightly flicked her little sister’s nose. “So loud my ears were actually ringing. The whole Arena, can you imagine? Thousands of people. And there I was, up on the stage, singing.”

“I want to do that too,” Lubava breathed.

“I told you singing was for girls,” Shuma snorted, with all the worldly wisdom of his twelve years. Then again, who was Ard to judge? He was only seven years older himself. “Now, flying, that’s something. I’m going to be a pilot.”

“You’ll be whatever you want to be.” Tess drew her brother close and ruffled his hair despite his halfhearted resistance. “A pilot, or anything else. But give singing a try anyway. You might find you like it. You’ve got an incredibly beautiful voice, you know.”

While her sister was distracted, Lubava seized her chance and, with a war cry, bowled her over onto the rug. All three tumbled across the floor in a knot of arms, legs, and ringing laughter. Tess tickled them both, and the younger two shrieked and fought back. A plush rabbit flew one way, a tin soldier the other, and the whole room filled with pure joy.

“Ardi!” Lubava finally spotted him in the doorway and lit up. “Ardi, come play with us! Tess says you can do magic tricks!”

Ardan smiled, pushed off from the doorjamb, and stepped into the warm light of the nursery.

“I can,” he said. “But keep it quiet. Don’t tell your mother.”

Whatever Mark Erkerovsky might say, Ardan felt perfectly comfortable in his costume as long as Tess was close by. If the costume even existed.