Matabar. Book II. Chapter 170. Note Four (Patreon)

“What kind of abomination is this, Magister?” Milar took his cigarette from his mouth and flicked ash from it onto the flowerbed, which earned him an unmistakable look of displeasure from Mrs. Brim as she passed by.

Her husband, Mr. Brim, was a forty-three-year-old accountant at a small firm that kept the books for businesses that couldn’t afford a full-time accounting department of their own. The two of them lived directly below Ard and Tess.

“I couldn’t agree more,” she snorted. Mrs. Brim could hardly have been older than Elvira. Yet she dressed and carried herself as though she’d long since buried her youth, along with all hope of hiding the signs of advancing age beneath makeup and clothes. “And, Mr. Egobar, do try to curb the enthusiasm of that baffling contraption of yours. I did not much enjoy being woken by its racket three days ago.”

“Of course, Mrs. Brim.” Ardan gave her a wave with his good hand, smiling as charmingly as he could manage. “I’ll figure something out.”

The Brims were good people. They weren’t at all the type to be troubled by such trifles as Ard’s remarkable height, his fangs, or his staff. Nor did it bother them that Tess sometimes darted out into the street in her full stage costume, especially when she was hurrying to rehearsal. That, of course, always sparked heated discussion among certain other ladies, who never missed a chance to call those outfits vulgar.

They might have had a point if Tess had worn those outfits anywhere other than onstage or while out dancing with Ard. After all, the slits in Tess’s skirts sometimes climbed to the very point where a leg, technically speaking, came to an end, and dresses like that were held in place by nothing but decorative iron chains, arranged so the audience saw no more than the production called for. As for the necklines, well, there were moments when even Ard felt a little uneasy.

He knew Tess would change every one of her outfits on the spot if he asked her to. But perhaps that very knowledge was what kept him from ever raising the subject.

“Eternal Angels, two wheels!” Milar wouldn’t let up. He looked both a little rested and a little worn out. If such a thing was even possible. “I don’t know what kind of monster dreamed up this device, Ard, but mark my words: there’s a special corner of hell reserved for him.”

“Why?”

“Because this thing is a flat-out mockery of automotive engineering,” Milar said. “And the damn tires are narrow, too. What happens if you catch a rut?”

“I caught one yesterday.”

“And how’d that go?” the captain asked, instantly curious.

“The wheel went into resonance with the road surface.” Ard shrugged. “The handlebars started jerking side to side right away. I honestly thought I was going to end up in the Niewa. Motorcycle and all.”

“Motorcycle? Is that what it’s called?”

“This particular model is called The Petrel,” Ardan said. “But broadly speaking, yes.”

“A hellish contraption. Well, at least you didn’t end up taking a swim.”

“There’s nothing to it, Milar. I just opened up the throttle and let the laws of physics do their thing. But yes, you really are better off staying out of the ruts.”

Captain Pnev took a drag, shook his head disapprovingly, and sat on the bench in the building’s courtyard. Ard had set himself up on the asphalt beside it and spread out a canvas tool roll and several manuals from Mr. Fonsky. Smeared with oil and grease up to his elbows, he was adjusting the motorcycle to fit him. The seat and handlebars, the stiffness of the clutch and gearshift lever: all of it, as it turned out, could be tuned with a wrench, a bit of know-how, and the proper measure of patience.

“And Tess agreed to ride this thing?”

“No.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised.”

“So she’ll mostly be the one driving the car, and I’ll ride the motorcycle,” Ardan added. “Besides, there’s always a snarl of traffic heading toward Star Square in the mornings. On The Petrel, I’ve already gotten the hang of slipping through it.”

“Ignoring it. Have you shown it to Lord Fahtov?” Milar leaned back against the tree and half-closed his eyes. He turned his face up, savoring the last rays of the setting summer sun.

“He and Elena still aren’t back in the capital,” Ard said. “They took their daughter to Boris’s country estate to visit Elena’s parents, who live on the Warm Gulf coast.”

“At Boris’s country estate,” Milar repeated. “Hanging around your little magical crowd, Ard, I’m starting to develop an unhealthy inferiority complex. You know, on account of the size of my paycheck.”

Ardi just gave him a thin smile. Anyone would feel a little out of place in Lord Boris Fahtov’s company. His mother, the sole survivor of a Hunter expedition to a Lich’s lair, had left him a fortune so unimaginably vast it was downright obscene. To Boris, a hundred exes meant roughly what a couple of kso meant to most people in the capital.

“So how are you holding up?” Milar asked suddenly.

The wrench in Ardan’s hand slipped off the bolt head. It clipped the edge of his work glove, lightly snagging the stitches in what remained of his left pinky and ring finger. The pain was almost gone by now. Mostly, he was irritated, with a faint edge of anxiety.

Ardi set the wrench back on the rag and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. Then he got up and went to sit beside Milar. He too closed his eyes and turned his face to the sun. Overhead, the leaves rustled in the canopy, throwing an ever-shifting maze of shadows across his face.

“How much do you know?” Ard countered.

“The Colonel told us pretty much everything at the meeting, Magister.” Milar, eyes still shut, brought the cigarette to his lips and took another deep drag.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

“Do you judge me for it?”

Captain Pnev didn’t answer right away.

“I don’t know. Yes. No. Probably. I don’t know, Ard. That’s a hard question. I can’t even imagine what I’d do in your shoes.” Milar breathed out a little cloud of smoke, and it vanished into the green of the canopy. “If someone kidnapped Elvira and one of the kids—I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t even want to think about it. But I understand you. I understand Reish too, more or less.”

Now it was Ardan’s turn to say nothing.

“Do you blame him?”

“A little,” Ard said. There was no point denying the obvious.

Milar nodded and once again flicked his ash straight onto the flowers. Captain Pnev reserved a particular brand of cynicism for any plant that expected special treatment from him. Just one of those funny little quirks of his.

“Because you’re young,” Milar drawled, a little dreamily. “Not even twenty yet, and for all the tons of shit you and I have slogged through, you’re still young, Ard. There’s still nothing in your life bigger than you are.”

Ardi turned and gave Milar a doubtful look.

“Except for family, of course,” Milar added at once. “But trust me, the older you get, the more clearly you see it: family isn’t a part of you, not even the biggest part. It’s you. Everything you are.”

Ardan turned back to the motorcycle gleaming in the sun.

“Do you and Tess read the same books?” he grumbled.

“I don’t know what your lovely wife reads, Magister, but I don’t need a book to tell me about life. I’ve worn out more than one pair of boots on these fucking roads.” Milar gave a crooked grin. “So I can understand Reish. He lives for a cause bigger than himself, and that means bigger than his family. The same goes for Adelaide, I’d guess. But I can understand you, too. Your wife and the people you love are your entire world.”

“You’re saying it’ll pass?”

Milar gave a small shake of his head, his mouth twisting wryly.

“Not pass, exactly, Ard. Just change shape. Into something a little different.”

“Did it change for you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it has, or maybe—Eternal Angels, Ard! Why do I always end up having the talks your father should be having with you, and—” Milar opened his left eye, looked at Ard, and heaved a sigh. “Sorry. That just slipped out.”

“It’s all right, Milar. I suppose no one was there to have those talks with you, either.”

The subtle barb bordered on rudeness. Milar answered by flicking his ash onto Ard’s boots this time.

“Hey!” Ard protested.

For a moment neither spoke. Then they smiled at the same time. Wind swept through the tree, stirring its rustling canopy. People kept coming out of number twenty-one on Markov Canal, then going back in, on and on forever. A sliver of road showed through the archway, cars drifting sedately past. A little farther off, beyond the railing, boats and small pleasure craft sliced across the glassy surface of the black river, rattling every bit as loudly as motorcycles.

“So how are you doing, then?” Milar asked, circling back to his original question.

Ardan sighed and closed his eyes again. He let the sounds of a street he knew from end to end wash over him.

“I don’t know, Milar... I... I’ve done almost nothing I can’t take back. Something I’d... regret. Probably. I hope I’d regret it. Sounds strange, doesn’t it?”

“Hate to disappoint you,” Milar grunted, propping himself up a little straighter, “but no, Magister. Sooner or later, just about everyone in the service runs smack into this sort of dich... dochta...”

“Dichotomy,” Ardi supplied.

“Whatever you say,” Captain Pnev snorted. He’d finished school before the education reform. “Don’t go thinking you’re special. That sort of inner turmoil is perfectly normal. Granted, not all of us have the option of calling in a pack of Anomalies for backup, burning down half a fortified city, and—”

“What happened to Shamtur wasn’t my doing!”

“Ard.”

“What?”

“Keep telling yourself otherwise if you like, but you’re a walking disaster, plain and simple. Remember what Glarkin said about the risk of becoming an Anomaly? Well, you ought to go see him. Get yourself checked out. Just in case.”

“Are you messing with me?”

Milar held up his thumb and forefinger, a fraction of an inch apart, in the universal sign for “a little,” then answered aloud.

“I just don’t want you thinking more of yourself than you’ve got any right to, Magister.” Milar breathed out another small cloud of smoke and closed his eyes, blissful in the sun. “Sure, someday that inner turmoil of yours will probably have much wider repercussions. But at heart, it’s hardly any different from anyone else’s hand-wringing.”

Ardan exhaled and leaned back against the tree beside Milar.

“That’s encouraging.”

“Tell me about it.” Milar nodded. “Anyway, there’s that saying, you know. Every happy person is happy in the same way, but every unhappy person is unhappy in their own way.” Captain Pnev snorted. “Misses the mark a little, if you ask me. Smacks of snobbery, to be honest. But once you come back to earth, you suddenly realize there are hardly any happy or unhappy people at all, Ard.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like.” Milar shrugged. “You’ve got people with a shitload of free time who never have to scrounge for a meal or a roof, so they start wondering what else their well-fed lives are missing and imagining they’re unhappy. As for happy people, their happiness is just a flash.” Captain Pnev snapped his fingers to show what he meant. “Sometimes happiness doesn’t even last a second. But the mark it leaves on your soul never fades, and that’s what sends you chasing it like a little dog after a sausage. Or like a poor junkie after his next handful of Anelian Dust. You’re no different from either of them. And the funny part is, until you catch it, you think you’re unhappy too. But now you’re measuring it against happiness, so—”

“So what?” Ard prodded.

“So if you suddenly start wondering whether you’re really who you think you are, Magister, just find yourself something to do.” Milar finished his thought with a trace of contempt, not for Ardan but for the world at large. “When you’ve got so much to do you can’t even get away to the bathroom for a good, leisurely shit, all those thoughts about happiness, unhappiness, duty, loneliness, whatever’s worrying you, even love, Ard, they all go who-o-osh!” Milar whistled and swept his palm through the air. “Off they go, not just down your list of priorities, but to number one hundred and whatever.”

Ardan sighed and smiled.

“I heard something like that once before.”

“Oh yeah?”

“From the cowboys.”

“I imagine they’re up to their ears in work.”

“You could say that.”

They fell silent again, and for far longer this time. Long enough to watch several trams pass beyond the arch, each on a slightly different route. The tram tracks forked just a little farther down the Markov Canal.

“Any progress with Driba’s grimoire and the materials intercepted from Tazidahian?”

“Next to nothing.” Gratitude colored Ardan’s voice as he moved on to the new subject (or a very old one, depending on how you looked at it). “And you? Any luck piecing together Liaelira’s history and looking into that vampire?”

Milar grimaced, then spat a yellowish gob onto the lawn.

“About the same, Magister. So we’ll keep plugging away, one step at a time, and hope we don’t have to butt heads with the Puppeteers again anytime soon.”

Ardan didn’t bother reminding him about his leave. For one thing, even by the Colonel’s own account it would be over soon enough. For another, Major Mshisty had been right. There was no such thing as leave for the Cloaks, not by law, not by regulation.

“What’s on the horizon?”

“Besides a headache, boots with holes in them, and trying to shake some new gear out of Dagdag?” Milar smirked. “Nothing interesting, Magister. We’re waiting for Dandy to get in touch with you about Narikhman. In the meantime, toward the middle of next month, we’ll take a ride out to Winged Lake…”

“To the prison for mages?”

Milar cracked one eye open again and gave Ard an appraising once-over.

“You figured it out.” Captain Pnev wasn’t asking. “Yes, that’s exactly where we’re going. The Colonel has almost finished arranging for you to have a talk with a certain… inmate, one with rather extensive experience in… these matters. He’s already received a copy of Tazidahian’s documents, and he should be done going through them soon.”

Ard’s eyebrows crept up.

“An inmate? With a copy of top-secret material?”

Milar sighed and stubbed out the butt, then drew a fresh cigarette from his case. He lit up again. Every so often, with some help from Elvira, Milar got the better of his habit, but he always fell off the wagon in the end.

“It’s a special case, Ard. Anyway, you’ll figure it all out for yourself when we go.” Milar waved it off and cleared his throat. “And coming up next is a gift of sorts from that journalist you know so well.”

“Taisia Shpritz?”

“That’s the one.” Milar nodded. “Our department hasn’t had much to do for a while now. We’ve been waiting for either a breakthrough on the fronts I mentioned or another stunt from the conspirators. So the Colonel decided that since we got into bed with Shpritz, and by ‘we’ I mean you, we’re the ones who have to clean up the mess. That means we’ll be the ones digging into the recordings of Stepan Halsky’s conversation, all the photographs, and everything else involving the Overseer of the Telkarts.”

“But that has nothing to do with the Puppeteers!”

“True, but there’s a word for this. What’s it called? Let me think. Ah, yes, Corporal. It’s called an order,” Milar said, needling him. “So get ready. Three weeks from now, when Ursky and Arnson get back, we’ll do a little investigating. And honestly, I’m glad. Ordinary work at last, nothing to do with demons, or chimeras, or the Aean’Hane, or any of that other weird crap. Though even as I say it, I’m wondering what demon possessed me to open my mouth. What if I’ve jinxed it?”

“You mean weird stuff.”

“Oh no, Magister. I said exactly what I meant to say.” Holding the cigarette between his teeth, Milar got to his feet and brushed off his summer slacks. “I’d offer you a hand with that contraption, partner, but I’m afraid the Eternal Angels would curse me and I’d forget how to drive a proper car on the spot.”

“But it’s not a car.”

“That’s exactly my point… Ard.”

“Milar.”

Milar waved without turning around and headed through the archway that led to the street. Ardi sat a little longer in the shade of the rustling canopy, then went back to work on the motorcycle. Somehow he had a feeling this was far from the last time he’d be tinkering with the thing. Maybe he ought to buy a spare set of tools and stow them in a saddlebag, which he would also have to make himself or else order from a leatherworker. Ardi smiled.

Ardi smiled.

Maybe it was all the hours he’d spent on his back beneath Arkar’s generator, coaxing it back among the living, but Ardan had come to enjoy tinkering with machinery. At least when it had nothing to do with cars.

***

As always at lunchtime, Bruce hummed every bit as loud as The Petrel’s engine.

Ardan settled in at a table by the far wall, with his back to the exposed brickwork (which Arkar thought was wildly stylish), and laid the Magistrate’s gray folder out in front of him. Around him the room went about its business: waiters threaded their way between the tables with trays in hand; steam billowed above the kitchen’s serving window; the air smelled of fried onions, braised meat, and fresh draft beer. Dozens of voices blended into a steady, well-fed hum. Unless you made a point of listening, you couldn’t pick out individual words.

A worn velvet rope cordoned off an area in the far corner, where the orcs were having lunch as usual. Four of them today. They ate in silence, trading only the occasional short, guttural phrase. No one paid the rope the slightest attention, or so much as glanced in that direction.

Arkar was still nowhere to be seen behind the bar. He was busy keeping the place running, so a sullen assistant had taken his place. The assistant poured beer with a pharmacist’s precision and the expression of an orc sentenced to the job for life.

Ardan took a sip of tea and looked at the folder.

By rights, he should have been sitting somewhere else entirely. The new academic year was only a few days away, and any sensible student would be spending that time either buried in textbooks or out in the sun. Ardi, though, had spent the last week and a half in the Stables, working from morning till night on his arsenal of war seals. Casting rapidly, running through shield sequences, switching between defensive and offensive combinations, developing new seals. He had to admit it was all part of his life now, and in all honesty, he couldn’t stand any of it.

Military magic came more easily the more time he spent on it. The trouble was, he still didn’t like it. A week and a half of daily practice at something you can’t stand can wear anyone down, even a matabar (especially one with a mutant’s venom still working through his system).

By the end of that stretch, Ardan kept catching himself drilling the sequences like a bored craftsman, going through the motions. The mere sight of the training ground would set him yawning until his jaw ached. A sure sign it was time to stop before the medicine turned to poison.

So today Ardan had made his escape.

And not just from the Stables. He’d run away from his own desk, too. His personal research on transmutational runic links and multi-dimensional seals had been gathering dust for months now, buried in the dismal depths of a filing cabinet he’d bought, like almost everything else, at the flea market. Ardi had tried every approach he could think of and filled three notebooks. Twice he’d started with a blank page; twice he’d hit the very same wall. He needed new knowledge and new ideas to make headway. There was no sense in mulling it over on his own any longer.

He could stare at those notebooks all he liked; the dead end wasn’t going anywhere.

At Bruce, at least, he didn’t have that wall staring back at him: his own inability to see where to go next, let alone how to get there. Instead, a perfectly ordinary folder looked up at him from the table. And unlike his notebooks, it promised something new, something real.

Ardan untied the cord and drew out a stack of pages, professionally printed on heavy paper.

The very first sheet announced the title with the kind of solemn bureaucratic excess that only a government office could produce.

“The Magistrate’s Annual Open Competition for an Applied Engineering Invention.

“This year’s theme: ensuring the safe operation of residential and public buildings equipped with autonomous generator compartments or individual low-power Ley-generators.”

Ardan snorted and turned the page. Clearly, the writers were paid by the word, not for the quality of their prose. Next, though, came the technical brief, which finally favored specifics over bureaucratic wordiness.

“Solutions intended to reduce the risks of using autonomous generation systems in the home will be considered. These risks include, but are not limited to, leakage of spent Ley beyond the contour; resonant effects in generating contours; overheating of components and related malfunctions; failures resulting from maintenance performed without a licensed specialist.”

Ardi reread the last item twice and mentally translated it into plain language: “blows up when a clueless owner goes poking around inside with a screwdriver.” If the reports Professor Conwell brought him with depressing regularity were any guide, his translation was right on the money.

“Mandatory requirements for solutions: applicability to existing housing stock without major reconstruction; an implementation cost affordable to a household of average means; the ability to function without the constant presence of a licensed mage; and resistance to unskilled tampering.”

The brief also came with a reference sheet: a dry departmental table cataloging incidents over the past five years. Ardan scanned it and let out a whistle. The number of fires in the generation sections of private homes was climbing year over year. And the geography was telling. The provinces, the borderlands, the settlements that had grown up around mines and big factories: all the places the Ley-grid extending from the provincial capitals couldn’t reach. And wouldn’t, in all likelihood, for another twenty years. People were installing their own autonomous generators, sometimes downright shoddy ones, because they simply had no other choice.

And then they went poking around inside them with that infamous screwdriver, for the very same reason.

The standard list followed.

Evaluation criteria: safety, price, ease of maintenance, suitability for mass production. First prize: eleven hundred exes, plus royalties from the company that adopts the winning solution. Applications accepted until the first day of the White Month. The Magistrate would assemble the jury, bringing in experts from the Guild.

All of it was clear, sensible, and even a touch dull. Then Ardan reached the notes, set at the very end in a small, almost apologetic typeface. One of them made him set his pencil aside for a while.

“Note 4. Solutions that entail altering the design of generating contours, sections, or generators as a whole will be considered on an equal footing with add-on and external solutions and welcomed by the commission.”

Ardi leaned back in his chair and ran his eyes over the note once more, this time without his pencil.

So that was it. For all his fifth-year swagger, the lanky student from the Spell Market had been absolutely right. Officially, the Magistrate had announced a competition focused on safety: a noble, peaceful subject that prompted no awkward questions from anyone. But the fine print said otherwise. “Changes to generator design are welcome” was bureaucratese for “the Crown wants new generators.” Wanted them badly, in fact, and simply didn’t care to say so out loud, because saying it out loud would have sent prices soaring, thrown the industrialists into a panic, and, far more importantly, drawn attention abroad.

And Ardi was under no illusion that the Empire had Paarlax’s research all to itself. Most likely, work built on the late Grand Magister’s discovery had been underway all over the world for some time now.

As it stood, though, it was just a modest competition to keep the average citizen’s shed from burning down. Who could fault anyone for caring about sheds?

Ardan thought back to Poplar on the balcony in Shamtur. Women’s universities and medical colleges “on an incredible scale.” Lines of industrialists in the Emperor’s reception room. And now generators, tucked away in note number four.

“Doesn’t matter,” Ardi muttered, pushing the thought aside.

He drew the folder closer, took a blank sheet of paper, and began sketching out his first rough ideas. A self-limiting contour. A section that absorbed the discharge of spent Ley rather than venting it outward. A seal that stopped generation before the feed faltered. He immediately added a terse “how?” in the margin beside each line. So far, sad to say, he didn’t have the faintest glimmer of an answer to any of them.

That was normal, though. Every piece of work he’d ever done had started that way. Little by little, the hum of Bruce receded to the far edge of his awareness.

Before half an hour was up, a familiar voice jolted him out of his work.

“I knew I could find you here, Ard.”

Professor Conwell stood beside the table, leaning on a cane topped with a knob of bone.

He looked exactly as he had on the terrace of The Shell in Azure City: trim, gray-haired, dressed in an impeccably tailored summer suit. His eyes held that keen, lively curiosity most people lose by thirty or so.

The professor’s gaze flicked over the glove on Ard’s left hand. It lingered there for only a fraction of a second, then returned to Ard’s face. Conwell asked no questions. For that alone, Ardan was grateful.

“Professor.” Ardi rose and shook the offered hand. “How long have you been back in the capital?”

“Longer than I’d like. Company business, boredom, paperwork.” Conwell lowered himself into the chair opposite and propped his cane against the table. “And, to be honest, I’ve been looking for you, Ard. I stopped by Markov Canal, where your charming downstairs neighbor told me you’d ‘roared off on that rattling nightmare of yours.’ Logic suggested the nightmare was rattling its way toward food. That, and the motorcycle parked at the curb. I can’t say I’m thrilled that you’ve dragged that unpleasant bit of the Azure Coast into the capital, but I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“Mrs. Brim is observant.”

“All the neighborhood ladies are observant. It’s their main line of work.” A waiter came over, and the professor ordered Lintelar coffee. He waited for the man to leave, then got down to business. “Ard, I won’t beat around the bush. The offer I made you in Azure City still stands. A position at my firm, flexible hours built around your schedule at the Grand, interesting problems, and a salary that won’t make you blush, should you ever care to mention the figure. I saw your work during the exam. I know about the relay for Mr. Brolid. And, of course, about the Misty Helper. I won’t pretend otherwise: I would very much like to see your name on my payroll.”

Ardan said nothing for a moment, turning the pencil between his fingers.

It really was a generous offer. More than that, it was honest. After everything he’d been through in the Metropolis, Ardi had come to prize honest offers; they turned up far less often than generous ones did.

And yet.

“Professor, I really appreciate the offer.” Ardi hoped his gratitude came through. “Truly. But I have to decline.”

“May I ask why?” There was no trace of offense in Conwell’s voice. “The salary? The terms?”

“Time.” Ardan spread his hands. “I have a com—well, my own research, my studies, and half a dozen other obligations, half of which I often don’t even hear about until the last minute. I just won’t have enough time to do good work for your firm. And taking on obligations when I know I can’t fulfill them properly—” He faltered for an instant, and an image of Talis an Manish flashed before his eyes at the worst possible moment. “Let’s just say I’ve already been there. I don’t want to go there again. Not for any amount of money.”

Conwell heard him out without interrupting, then nodded slowly and took a sip of his coffee.

“Well. I’ll confess, my dear Ard, that’s more or less what I expected,” he said with an odd note of satisfaction in his voice. “What’s more, Ard, I’ll repay your honesty with some of my own. Had you accepted, I think I’d have been a little disappointed in you. People who grab at everything within reach rarely see anything through.” His gaze fell on the gray folder, and his white eyebrows rose a fraction. “Now that is interesting. The Magistrate’s competition, I take it?”

“That’s the one.”

“And you intend to enter, of course.”

“I do.”

“Commendable.” Conwell set down his cup and looked at Ard, his eyes crinkling with an almost boyish good humor. “Then I have a duty to warn you. The whole city will be entering the competition this year. Forget the city: the whole country. It’s too lucrative an opportunity, and anyone with even the shabbiest little design bureau knows that perfectly well. My firm is entering. Foda Moshain’s firm is entering, and Grand Magister Moshain, you should know, has the best Star Mechanics on the entire east coast. Guild workshops, small design bureaus in the capital, homegrown talent from the provinces: they’ll all be entering. You’ll be competing against the whole country, Ardi. Including, as I said before, yours truly.”

Ardan had expected something inside him to flinch at that. Instead, the prospect excited him.

“And since we’re on the subject—” Conwell grimaced a little. It was a sore point he complained about even in lectures. “You do see the real problem with today’s household generators, don’t you? Everyone will rush to treat the symptoms. Valves, fuses, warning runes, safety couplings, combustion chambers, vibration units for the blades. In other words: bolt-ons, bolt-ons, and more bolt-ons. But the problem runs deeper. We all work from essentially the same core design. And it’s already nearly half a century old. We’ve kept it going solely through incremental modifications. But once we’ve taken those modifications as far as they’ll go, and we’re nearly there already, all the progress we’ve made with this technology will come crashing down in a matter of months. We’ll simply hit the limit of what the design can produce. The foundation itself is flawed, you see? Rather like yours will be once you’ve skipped a couple… dozen lectures.” Conwell winked at him and waved a hand. “But listen to me. Rattling on as if I were at the lectern, and in front of a competitor, no less. Forget everything I said.”

“Already forgotten,” Ardan lied with a polite smile, even as he committed every word to memory. “But you know, Professor, that only makes this whole competition more exciting.”

Conwell looked at him for a second, then burst out laughing.

“Glad to hear it, Mr Talented Student, glad to hear it.” When his laughter had run its course, he stood and picked up his cane. “Then good luck to you, Ard. I mean that.” He had already taken a step away when he turned back and added, in the tone he usually reserved for the trickiest question on an exam, “And by the way. The notes at the end of the brief. I trust you read them carefully?”

“The fourth one twice,” Ardi replied.

“Once again, I’m glad to have you as my student.” Conwell gave a satisfied nod and headed for the exit, his cane tapping at his side.

By evening the crowd at Bruce had thinned, and the place had gone quiet. It wasn’t the fifth day, after all. Tomorrow wasn’t a day off, and everyone would be back at work. Beyond the windows, a deep summer blue had spread over the canal. Ardan had filled four sheets with sketches. He’d crossed out three of them and crossed out the fourth twice. By his own measure of coins spent on scrap paper, that counted as a decent start.

Tess came in, bringing the cool evening air with her. Her face was flushed, a few strands of hair had slipped loose, and her eyes glowed as they always did after a good rehearsal.

“I knew I’d find you here.” She dropped into the chair opposite him and drained his cold tea in one swallow. “That’s it. I’m a wreck. The assistant director ran us for four hours straight and announced that over the summer I had, and I quote, ‘grown as lazy as the resort crowd.’”

“And your voice?”

“My voice is right where it should be.” Tess couldn’t help beaming. “Can you imagine? I was so afraid after… everything, but it’s all there. Even the high notes. The conductor said the sea air had been good for my vocal cords, and in the same breath added that it was no excuse for taking the summer off. As always, Mr Fursher has a way of praising you that leaves you feeling guilty.”

“That’s a talent.”

“That’s Mr Fursher.” Tess swiped the last cracker from his plate and crunched it with relish. “Oh, and they announced the fall season. Ardi, there are two new musicals, and in one of them I’m in the running for the lead. The lead, can you imagine? I’d be playing a jazz singer. I’ll have to get through the audition first, of course, but even so, the girls nearly killed me with their glares, right there at the run-through.”

“Will they live?”

“What choice do they have? I plied them all with cocoa afterward.” She nodded at the sheets covered in scribbles. “And I see you’ve had a full day yourself.”

“Professor Conwell came to see me.” Ardan began gathering his papers into the folder. “He arrived to offer me a job. He left as a competitor.”

“Sounds like the plot of an operetta. Tell me on the way? Let’s just take a little walk.”

They took the long way home, zigzagging along the canal and through the dusky streets. The city was cooling after the day’s heat, surrendering its warmth slowly and with obvious reluctance, as though the sun-heated stone of the embankment had grown attached to the day. A fresh breeze off the water carried the faintest scent of pondweed. From somewhere beneath a bridge came the splash of a late boat. The lamplighters were already making their rounds from post to post, and one by one, trembling yellow pillars of light came alive on the smooth black water.

Other couples passed by, out for an evening stroll just like them, with no particular purpose and no hurry at all. It struck Ardan that this was probably the first walk he and Tess had taken all summer without his thoughts turning to work even once. Now he just had to avoid jinxing it. Tess walked beside him, her hand tucked into the crook of his arm, and listened as he told her about the competition, about note number four, and about “an entire country.” She gasped in all the right places with such sincere indignation that you’d have thought Foda Moshain had personally insulted their family.

“So you’re up against every design bureau in the Empire,” she summed up just outside their building. “And that makes you happy.”

“The thrill of it.” Ardi shrugged.

“Or Lord Aversky’s ghost is egging you on,” Tess said with a fond, reproachful sigh. “May the Eternal Angels receive him.”

The entrance hall of number twenty-one was cool and smelled of floor wax. Ardan glanced into the mailbox out of habit and scooped out a thin stack: a water bill, a furniture-store flyer (timely, as it happened), and a thick envelope of expensive cream stock. He tilted it toward the Ley-lamp’s light, scanned the return address, and froze.

“Mr. John Brolid.”

For several seconds, Ardi simply stared at the name. Then his memory helpfully laid out before him everything he had blissfully forgotten amid all the towers, bandits, explosions, and weddings. A new season of Magical Boxing was beginning, and he was still listed as an active competitor.

“What’s that?” Tess peered over his shoulder. “Oh. Brolid. Wait. That’s— You’re—”

“I am,” Ardan confirmed.

He hefted the envelope in his palm without opening it, then slipped it into his bag beside the Magistrate’s folder and let out a weary, heartfelt sigh.

“You know,” he told Tess mournfully, “this school year looks like it’ll be just as eventful as the last.”

Tess looked at him, at the bag bulging with papers, at the staff in its case slung over his shoulder, at the pencil poking out from behind his ear. Then she laughed, a bright, full-throated laugh that rang through the entire stairwell, so loud that somewhere upstairs Mrs. Brim’s door banged shut.