After once again confirming that the specialized automobile models that catered to the needs of mages were truly worth the additional exes, Ardan stowed his staff in the dedicated compartment between the seats. And... then he very nearly scraped his head against the iron (not leather, which was far more common) roof of the car.
Boris Fahtov owned several exceedingly expensive automobiles, including one of the costliest solutions for the capital’s inhospitable weather.
And so, when they pulled onto the avenue adjoining Star Square, they found themselves among just a handful of similarly-fortunate souls who didn’t need to worry about the cold stalling their engine. Winter model automobiles cost far too much for many to afford.
“There’ll probably be even fewer of us now,” Boris said, a touch of displeasure in his voice, as he watched a nearby crowd head down into an underground tramway station.
“That sounds like you’re unhappy about it,” Ardan smiled.
“Don’t get me wrong, my friend,” Boris grimaced. “The underground lines are probably the best thing to happen to the Metropolis in years, but I’m afraid that they’ll slow the progress of automobiles considerably.”
“Not necessarily,” Ardan shrugged. “If the price drops and automobiles become affordable beyond just the largest cities, competition will grow. And with it, prices will fall and quality will rise. Not immediately, of course. But in time.”
Boris raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“This coming from the man... fine, fine—the half-man who spent a year and a half buzzing about how much he dislikes automobiles?”
“I wasn’t buzzing,” Ardan muttered.
“Lamenting.”
“I wasn’t lamenting, either.”
“Whining in a thoroughly tedious fashion.”
“I’ll yank the steering wheel right now, you’ll hit a lamppost, and then you’ll spend a couple of months in the hospital.”
“Firstly, you wouldn’t do that, and secondly—you wouldn’t do that.”
They smiled in unison and exhaled together.
“I’m not sure that was a good idea, Ardi,” Boris shook his head, stopping directly before a traffic marshal bundled in furs. “Iolai is a vile wretch. Vile, vindictive, and quite resourceful.”
“He’s nearly out of moves,” Ardan shrugged. “He tried the duel—that didn’t work. He tried to use Professor Alirov—that didn’t work, either. And now, thanks to Her Imperial Highness-consort, the press runs from my and Tess’ names like we’re a raging fire.”
Ardi noticed the approving look in Boris’ eyes—a touch of pride for his friend.
“A Cloak indeed...” The lord drawled, as though that explained something to himself. “Believe me, Iolai will figure out how to get to you. Especially after what you pulled today.”
“Nobody saw it.”
“Kerimov did,” Boris began listing after the traffic marshal waved them forward into the tight streets of the Central District. “Zahatkin, Shestov, and Polina as well. That’s roughly four more than ‘nobody.’”
“They won’t talk.”
“They won’t,” Boris nodded. “No one needs the kind of trouble you’ve gotten yourself into. Don’t forget—Iolai may be a puffed-up turkey, but he’s a turkey with the Agrov name.”
Ardi only waved his hand vaguely in the air. It wasn’t like he had suddenly taken leave of his senses and completely failed to understand that Iolai could genuinely make Ardan’s life miserable, but... the Great Prince had been doing that regularly as it was. Or trying to.
Slap or no slap—nothing about the status quo had changed. Absolutely nothing. Except, perhaps...
“While he’s furrowing his brow and trying to invent something new, neither you nor I need to worry about him,” Ardan shrugged. “For at least half a year or so. Until he comes up with something.”
Boris raised his eyebrows again and, after regarding Ardan with disbelief, let out a low whistle.
“Are you telling me that you staged all of that just to buy some time while Iolai busies himself with his monstrous plans?” Boris pronounced the penultimate word with obvious mockery.
Ardi answered with a smile.
“Eternal Angels, Ardi!” Boris exclaimed, slapping his hand against the leather wrapping of the steering wheel. “That is simultaneously impressive and terrifying! I can’t believe that the same person who threw a revolver at a train robber’s face a year and a half ago is now manipulating one of the claimants to the throne!”
Ard’s smile faded rather quickly, giving way to a sour expression.
“I’m beginning to understand where you got the idea to hurl your staff,” Boris mused, maintaining his teasing tone. “You have some sort of unhealthy compulsion when it comes to using your equipment for unintended purposes. You absolutely cannot be allowed behind a wheel. You’ll end up ramming something.”
Ardan almost chuckled as he recalled what he and Arkar had done to rescue Boris from captivity.
“Ardi.”
“Yes?”
“About your apothecary with Bazhen,” Boris’ tone regained its gravity, and he straightened slightly, somehow even looking broader than usual. “I know how hard it is to get a loan from the banks right now. There’s another industrial boom going on, there’s the transport reform, the Army salary increases... What interest rate did you take? Five and a half? Six?”
“Five point seven,” Ardan answered more quietly than usual.
“I can pay off your loan, Ardi. And issue my own. At an interest rate of a tenth of a percent,” Boris looked serious enough that his words could not be taken as mere “friendly help.” “How much do you owe?”
“Two thousand and two hundred exes over eight years,” Ardan answered.
“That’s no small sum... Your future research is the collateral?”
“And all my income from Star-related activities,” Ardan confirmed.
Star Mages—especially those studying at the Grand or possessing a respectable number of rays and Stars—usually found it easy to secure loans. This was because no property or anything else was required as collateral. It was sufficient to sign a document that would, in the event of nonpayment, divert all income from Star-related activities.
Banks, including the Imperial one where he and Bazhen had received their loan, came out ahead even if the client didn’t repay a single kso. How exactly? Because the bank would acquire the unrestricted use of a rare and valuable specialist.
This was precisely why, at the Grand, and indeed, at all Star Faculties across every institute of higher learning, one could always find those studying Star Magic on borrowed money. With roughly the same goal, the aristocratic families, the guilds, and the Army would sponsor the most promising students.
“I will give you twelve thousand exes, Ardi.” The sum Boris named very nearly deafened Ardan. “At a tenth of a percent. Open-ended. I just have a few conditions: thirty percent of the company will belong to me, and all profits falling within my share will be reinvested into Ley Medicine research and treatments for the most severe diseases.”
Someone else might’ve immediately agreed to the extraordinarily generous offer. This would solve every last problem of the “Eorsky and Egobar” apothecary in a single stroke. Someone else might’ve refused without hesitation, wary of entangling themselves with one of the largest fortunes in the Empire. Perhaps some people would have feared losing a friend, since running a joint enterprise with someone close to you was a reliable way to stop being close to them.
Ardan, however, asked something else entirely.
“Is it my friend Boris speaking to me right now?” The young man inquired in a calm tone. “Or Lord Fahtov, one of the major sponsors of the socialist party?”
Ardan had expected anything. Anything from a hurt look to a heated, perhaps even sharp reply.
But Boris... was Boris. He simply laughed. He relaxed, melted slightly into his seat, and laughed. Just as he always did.
“Eternal Angels, Ardi, my friend—this is exactly why I love you.”
“What?” The young man asked, not understanding.
“Doesn’t matter,” Boris waved it off. “I know you don’t care for politics. I even understand why. Believe me, I would never drag you into my hobby.”
“You regularly invite me to attend their meetings.”
Boris laughed even louder.
“Because, by the Face of Light, it’s sometimes unbelievably boring there! And besides, it’s a foolproof way to escape from one’s wife, or in your case, fiancée. You sit in a bar, have some cider... or in your teetotaling case—cocoa.”
“You could have just said so.”
“But then there’d be no adventure in it!” Boris protested.
Turning onto the embankment of the Crookedwater Canal, the friends fell silent for a moment.
“When mother’s health really declined, Ardi,” Boris’ tone grew a shade heavier, and his smile turned gray and slightly lifeless, “representatives of the pharmaceutical cartel came calling. It’s...” Boris cast a quick glance at Ardan. “Well, since you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in all of this, you probably already know. So... they bled mother dry, down to the very last kso they could squeeze. I was still just a child, and the fund was managed by a financier hired by David Eorsky, Bazhen’s father. Only later, when I was already fourteen, did I discover that the financier had been working for two companies at once. My mother’s fund—and one of the major Ley-medicine manufacturers.”
“They-”
“Yes,” Boris nodded. “They were siphoning the funding. When Mr. Eorsky Senior and his accountants got to the bottom of the paperwork, it turned out that over six years of my mother’s suffering, under the pretext of developing a cure for her condition, the pharmaceutical cartel had received more than twenty thousand exes.”
“And the actual research…”
“They spent ten kso on it, Ardi. Ten. Kso.” Boris, stopping before yet another traffic marshal, briefly closed his eyes. “I bear no grudge against Mr. Eorsky. Back when he hired that... individual, the man had a spotless reputation.”
“He was bought off?”
“Yes,” Boris nodded again. “Based on evidence compiled by Eorsky’s lawyers, the guards opened a case, but no one was ever arrested or detained. The financier perished in an accident—a crash. The pharmaceutical manufacturer’s accountant who had processed all the transactions was killed during a ‘common’ street robbery, and all the funds vanished into the accounts of a dozen transport companies responsible for shipping equipment, medicine components, and anything else you can stuff into an empty crate. Convenient coincidences, wouldn’t you say?”
Boris fell silent. The traffic marshal waved them through, and their tires crunched across the fluffy snow. Ardi had never really asked his friend why he—a representative of both the nobility and the wealthiest stratum of society—so sincerely supported the socialists.
He had always assumed that Boris Fahtov’s political leanings were rooted in the pain inflicted upon him and his mother by the Commander of the Southern Fleet—Duke-General Fahtov. But evidently, the origins of Boris’ political convictions ran far deeper than family drama.
“Do you want revenge on them?” Ardi asked directly.
Regardless of what Boris might’ve answered, if Ardan had sensed a “yes” in his friend’s words for even for a second, he would have refused immediately and categorically. His forest friends had taught Ardi well. Revenge, however righteous and sweet it might seem, always led to the destruction of oneself, of those nearby… Of everything its dark mantle touched.
“Perhaps,” Boris answered after a pause. “I don’t know, Ardi... I want the money that mother earned, and that Eorsky’s firm now manages, to do some good. To change something in this country. You understand? I want to change things for the better. And if, in the process, it happens to hurt those bloated bastards—I’ll be glad. But going after them deliberately—no, thank you. I’m no hero, Ardi. You can call me a coward, but one evening spent in a warehouse was enough for me. I’ll limit myself to settling things with the wife of my bastard father.”
Ardan reached over and gripped his friend’s shoulder. He remembered that Boris suspected Duke Fahtov’s wife of organizing the attack on Little Viroeira. In reality, that had been no mere terrorist act, but an attempt to kill Lord Boris Fahtov and his pregnant wife Elena.
As for the cartel... Boris had likely said the only words that made it possible for Ard to answer him with a smile:
“You’re no coward, Boris... I’m not against your offer, but this isn’t my enterprise alone. We need to meet with Bazhen. If he has no objections, I’ll be glad to work alongside you.”
Boris turned to him, looked into his eyes, and gave him a restrained nod. After that, they didn’t exchange another word until they reached the former Mages’ Guild building that was going to become the History of Magic Museum. Nor did they need to.
Since Ardi’s last visit, the building that had once belonged to the Mages’ Guild had changed, though not dramatically. Like a furry beast before winter, it had grown thicker—not with additional fur, but with tall scaffoldings. Workers with buckets and brushes were refreshing the facade; someone was hammering nails to affix new decorative elements; and somewhere, a hand drill gave a faint squeak.
The roof had been restored, the pilasters scrubbed and repainted, the windows replaced, and, on the whole, the building was very nearly in a state where it would not be embarrassing to let the general public in.
Instead of a procession of trucks carrying away typewriters, tons of documents and cabinets, hundreds of desks, and a veritable mountain of other furnishings from the guild’s offices, a line of smaller trucks had queued up at the building’s side entrance. Tightly-assembled crates were being rolled out on heavy platforms, and several Green Star Mages were overseeing everything.
Boris spent some time searching for a place to park until, in sheer desperation, he stopped at the adjacent street. Climbing out, Lord Fahtov cast a mournful glance at his gleaming, lacquered shoes—thoroughly unsuited for a stroll—then shifted his gaze to Ardan’s own footwear. They were solid, without any polish, and with soles thick enough that even a broken nail posed no threat to them.
“Not that I’m counting your exes, Ardi,” Boris grumbled, pulling his staff from its mount, “but where, by the Eternal Angels, do you spend your money? Your job, the Magical Boxing matches, your side work with an Manish, and you even sold that spell of yours. Granted, you’ve been suspended, but you should still be earning decent money.”
Besides Milar, Arkar and Tess, Boris and Elena remained the last two people in the entire Empire who were nearly fully apprised of Ardan’s life. He had been trying to correct his Alcade habit of keeping everything to himself, and was making an effort to open up more to the people he cared about.
“Equipment,” Ardi began ticking things off on his fingers. “Ingredients. Consumables. Have you seen the price of seal paper?”
“No, Ardi, I haven’t,” Boris shrugged. “I, unlike you, have no intention of going into engineering.”
“For your information, since the start of summer, it’s gone up by seventeen kso per ream,” Ardi grumbled. “I’m also saving for the wedding, and I haven’t even started looking for a new apartment for Tess and me, and the prices on Markov Canal are simply astronomical.”
Boris locked the car doors, and they set off through the sparse crowd of rosy-cheeked, bundled-up citizens, heading toward the future museum.
“You’re still trying to find something on the canal?” Boris asked. He really did know nearly everything about his friend’s domestic struggles.
Ardi nodded.
“Maybe I’ve just gotten used to them, but... I don’t know, Boris,” the young man sighed, turning up the collar of a coat that was too thin for the season. “Having Arkar and his lads nearby gives me a kind of inner calm. No, that’s not the right word... I can’t explain it. It’s simply a bit easier for me when they’re close by. And that feeling ties me strongly to the place.”
Ardan ran the pad of his thumb along the surface of his staff. It was rough, with slightly cracked lacquer that was gradually surrendering to its owner’s adventures (he ought to buy some special solution at the Spell Market and give it a fresh new coat). It was old Alcade oak and it reminded him of his childhood home.
“If I didn’t see the fairness in Mr. Orman’s reasoning, I might have invented a hundred excuses not to move,” Ardi admitted honestly.
“I understand, my friend,” Boris sneezed and sniffled. “It’s just that they’re not human.”
Ardi knew perfectly well that Boris wasn’t putting any political subtext into those words.
“You know, after I was disowned, my biggest problem wasn’t that I was no longer the heir of the damned duke,” as always, when speaking of his father, Boris didn’t forget to curse the man, “but that I was surrounded by people who didn’t understand me. Not because they didn’t want to, and not because there was anything wrong with them. No. Not at all...” Boris smiled sentimentally and, raising his gaze toward the gray sky, he exhaled a thick puff of vapor. “We’d simply lived in different worlds for a very long time, Ardi. I didn’t understand their problems. They just laughed at things that seemed important to me. And it took me quite a few years to find my footing in their world, my friend. To understand it. Accept it. Become part of it. And that’s just the difference between social classes, Ardi. Your situation, as far as I can tell, goes considerably deeper. So, it’s no surprise that ‘Bruce’s’ feels easier to you. Because...”
“They’re not human,” Ardi finished for his friend. “You’re probably right. But on the other hand, Mr. Orman is right, too. I understand that my service in the Black House isn’t the most pleasant prospect to begin with, which means that the Orcish Jackets are... simply an extra headache.”
“One which you, my dear friend, will have to sort out after our extremely merry, spirited, and—however you look at it—riveting adventure,” Boris summarized with obvious sarcasm.
By that point, they had reached the building. Skirting past workers who were none too pleased to have “pompous mages” underfoot (a direct quote from a plasterer who very nearly dropped a bucket on Ardan’s head), they climbed the staircase and entered. Wincing at the sharp chemical reek of paint, varnish, and other people’s sweat, which had absorbed all of the above, Boris and Ard took off their coats. Lord Fahtov also removed his sable fur hat.
Treading across the thick cardboard that covered the floor, they followed the signs hung on bare walls from which the old wooden paneling had been stripped.
“To Practicum” was written on a simple piece of cardboard in black paint. The handwriting was kind of careless and the arrow was pointing to the right.
“You think half the Grand has already been through here before us?” Boris asked, looking around.
Ah, yes, Lord Fahtov had most likely never troubled himself with visits to the capital’s bureaucratic centers. He had lawyers and representatives for that—or whatever such servants were called among the aristocracy.
“More like half of all the capital’s Star Magic students,” Ardi shook his head.
Together, they climbed to the second floor, and Ardi, while ascending the staircase, did his best to fend off the less-than-pleasant memories of his previous visit. One could only hope that this time, everything would proceed in a thoroughly civilized manner and Ardan would not need to intrude upon anyone’s mind or use his Second Chancery signal medallion.
Before long, they found a door covered in more cardboard. Someone had written the word “Office” in broad, sweeping letters across it.
Upon entering, the two friends were surprised to find Polina Erkerovsky daintily sipping hot tea in the company of two mages. One was a silver-haired man—somewhat portly, but very cheerful, with eyebrows so bushy they practically spoke on their own. Wearing a blue coat, he gleamed with modest epaulettes that denoted that he had three, five and two rays. Beside the gentleman sat a stately woman who was so slender that she might have been mistaken for a Baliero fashion model. A woman of advanced age, to be precise. She was likely sixty-eight, if one were counting. She had a thin, short neck, a jaw that was rather square for a woman, eyes bright enough to belong to someone forty years younger, and a green coat. Her epaulettes denoted two and two rays respectively.
Boris was briefly taken aback, but Ardi was not surprised in the slightest. Traveling across the country, running around the capital, and his regular visits to the Spell Market had been enough to inoculate him against the Grand’s prejudices. The epaulettes of Polina, Boris and Ardan gleamed with what the world of Star Mages would consider to be a truly monstrous number of rays. That was precisely why, a year and a half ago, Gleb Davos and Yonatan’s squad had been so stunned by Ardan’s number of red rays.
Even reaching the second triad was considered a very serious achievement for any Star Mage, and anything belonging to the final triad was an extraordinary success.
“Gentlemen,” despite his advanced age and considerable weight, the silver-haired man hopped rather nimbly off the desk. “My name is Magister Eonis Baklov, and this is-”
“Magister Nata Lovarskay,” the old woman nodded. She was likewise seated not on a chair, but on a desk... with her long legs crossed beneath a thick winter skirt.
Boris and Ard exchanged bewildered glances. It seemed as though, in the case of Magister Lovarskay, some chimerist of Professor Kovertsky’s caliber had simply crossed one person’s body with another’s head.
“Boors,” Polina hissed, setting her teacup aside.
The fact that she had gotten here first clearly indicated that, at least in winter, the underground tram lines truly were faster.
“Lord Boris Fahtov.”
“Ard Egobar.”
After a brief round of handshakes, they were seated in the available chairs. The office, for the time being, contained nothing beyond an old wooden filing cabinet that had clearly been inherited from the Mages’ Guild (just like everything else gathering dust in the small room), several desks, and some simple chairs.
“And now, a little test so I can determine where to assign you for your practicum, gentlemen,” the old woman said with a sly smile and still-gleaming eyes. “Why do I look the way I do? My lady, please don’t give your friends any hints.”
Polina snorted so colorfully that it was crystal clear, without any words spoken, what she thought of the epithet “friends” being applied to them. Boris answered first.
“A preparation derived from the blood of the Undying,” Boris proposed after several minutes. “You participated in experiments related to it. Though I haven’t heard that the extract is capable of anything beyond smoothing out facial wrinkles, even if it does so very well.”
The Undying was the name of a natural Anomaly that was considered a protected species due to its near-total extinction. A fine oxymoron, that. Nearly extinct Undying.
They resembled a cross between a duck, a beaver and a shrew. They were small creatures that inhabited marshlands. They possessed no special powers or properties save one—time held no dominion over them. The Undying did not age. And so, since time immemorial, even before the founding of the Empire, both Firstborn and humans alike had hunted them. Their blood was used to create concoctions, ointments and pills in pursuit of an obvious goal.
Eternal youth.
Fortunately—or perhaps not—no one had ever managed to achieve any meaningful results. The sole outcome of these endeavors had ended up being the near-total extermination of the species.
A rather sad story, when you thought about it.
“I’m afraid, Lord Fahtov, that I could not scrape together enough exes for a cream made from the Undying’s extract,” the old woman smiled.
“I mentioned experiments, not a purchase,” Boris muttered quietly and fell silent.
“And you, Mr. Egobar?” The old woman, maintaining her kindly smile, turned to Ardan.
She very nearly fooled him. The deliberately-incongruous physical attributes could indeed mislead someone. And not because Ardan didn’t think that elderly people had the potential to maintain a fit and powerful body—no, in Evergale, where one labored from birth to sunset, such things were far from rare.
It was all in the eyes. The eyes, and the fact that Ardi could feel a familiar tingling. And the main generators, due to the renovations, had been shut off.
“It is… an incredible glamour,” Ardan said, somewhat haltingly, in the dialect of the forest elves. “If you hadn’t asked, I would have never guessed.”
The old woman blinked, froze briefly, then smiled broadly. An instant passed, then another—and before them sat an elf. The doll-like face of a girl of about sixteen greeting the spring of her youth, violet eyes without irises or whites, and long ears crowned with a sharp triangle of cartilage that somewhat resembled a fang were added to her former stateliness. This unusual ear shape was one of the things you could use to distinguish the elves of the north from the elves of the eastern forests.
“What gave me away?” The elf asked in Galessian.
“The eyes,” Ardan answered. “Too young and carefree.”
“Egobar...” The elf repeated and snapped her fingers. “Oh, of course! And here I was wondering why the surname seemed familiar to me. Well then, my dear Magister Baklov, it seems like the competition was unfair from the start.”
The elderly Magister could only spread his hands out.
“And what is your real name?” A clearly displeased Boris asked.
Lord Fahtov, despite all his virtues, really hated losing. He never allowed himself to take out the bitterness of defeat on anyone, but you could tell when Boris was displeased. Displeased with himself, first and foremost. It was understandable, perhaps, given the way his life had unfolded.
“I’ve already introduced myself,” the elf replied, smoothing her gorgeous chestnut hair. “Nata Lovarskay.”
“But that’s a human name!”
“Believe me, my lord, after more than two hundred years, you are far from the first who’s wanted to bury me under identical questions,” Lovarskay said with the same sly smile from before. “And rest assured, I shall feed you a dozen tall tales if you insist. So, let us get down to business.”
“Gentlemen,” Magister Baklov indicated the documents Polina had brought. “While the lady and I, along with... the lord... Eternal Angels, I have never seen this much nobility in one day... In fact, I’ve probably never seen so many of them. They do say that, at the Grand-”
The elf cleared her throat, and the elderly Magister, catching himself, returned to the original topic.
“Right then. While we sort through the documents, compile reports, and conduct the inventory, our dear Mr. Egobar and Madam Lovarskay will head to the storage vault. And accordingly, we shall need a volunteer to visit them in the vault every half an hour in order to expropriate their accompanying manifests.”
The Magister was clearly attempting to joke around, and it was not that he failed entirely—the atmosphere was simply not quite conducive to it.
“I’ll visit my friend,” Boris volunteered immediately.
“Excellent!” Magister Baklov clapped his hands together. “Then let us begin! The opening is just around the corner and...”
Ardan, after hanging his coat on a hook, scraped the mud and snow from his shoes using a special wooden device, making sure to get it all into a designated wooden tray, then followed the elf. Lovarskay was holding the door open and was already waiting for him in the corridor.
Just as the two of them had nearly disappeared around the corner leading to the back staircase, Boris’ slightly sardonic voice reached them.
“By the way, Magister Baklov, Great Prince Iolai Agrov and his houn… associates… will be arriving shortly, and, to be honest, it would be best not to let him into the vault.”
Ardi didn’t stay to hear the rest of the conversation and mentally cut himself off from all other sounds. While descending the shabby staircase (apparently, the renovation of the utility areas had been deferred to better times) that led to the basement, he drew a faint breath through his nose. Before the images and scents could form in his mind, he heard Lovarskay’s amused remark:
“I never lived in the forests, Mr. Egobar.” She had correctly divined his intent, and indeed, she smelled nothing like an elf. She smelled a lot more like the young women of Baliero. It was a fashionable fragrance comprised of citrus, vanilla, and a rare Kargaam fruit whose name Ardi could not recall. “May I call you Ard?”
“Of course,” the young man nodded.
“Well, well,” the elf said with genuine surprise. “You’re not rushing to ask why I have such a name.”
Ardan shrugged. Truth be told, he would have preferred to trade places with Boris. While he had nothing against forest elves or Magister Lovarskay herself, it was just...
“You’re perceptive,” his companion murmured.
They had already reached the dimly-lit basement corridors illuminated by old oil lamps (because the generators were off). Ardan followed slightly behind Lovarskay since he didn’t know where exactly they were going.
“Not talking?” The elf posed her rhetorical question. “Honestly, Ard, you have nothing to worry about. Two hundred years ago... that is an enormous span of time.”
“For humans.”
“And for elves who grew up in the Metropolis as well,” her heart was beating evenly and her voice remained light and melodic—she was not dissembling. “You know, Ard, I can remember times when the capital consisted only of what is now called Old Town. I liked it better back then, to be honest. Perhaps that’s why I took up studying history.”
“Magister Lovarskay, I’m not-”
“You are not using the Witch’s Gaze,” she turned to him briefly and... winked. “Believe me, I would have felt it. And, most likely, I could have given you a rather unpleasant surprise.”
Ardan glanced at the Stars and rays on her epaulettes. Such power would not have sufficed to weave so masterful a glamour. Which meant that, for the first time in his life, Ardi had met another Speaker.
“When the rebellion was suppressed and my parents died at Pashar Fortress, I was taken to an orphanage for Firstborn children.” Ardi had not asked, but Magister Lovarskay had, for some reason, decided to share the story of her life with him. “And then a very kind family adopted me. I trained as a secretary, but, you know, finding work for Firstborn was even harder back then than it is now.”
Ardi exhaled and finally asked:
“Forgive the bluntness, but why are you telling me all of this?”
Magister Lovarskay laughed.
“You must lead a rather complicated life, Ard, if a heartfelt conversation with a fellow Speaker requires some weighty justification. Or do you know of a place where dozens of us gather? Please, have mercy and write down the address for me.”
Ardi involuntarily recalled his very recent conversation with Boris. He had borne the title of Speaker for a little over twelve years. And Madam Lovarskay had likely done so for several centuries. And she had almost certainly not encountered someone who could understand her all that often.
“I’m sorry.”
“You are young, Ard,” the Magister said, not offended at all. “Youth is prone to excess sharpness and haste... In any case… That was when I learned how to use the glamour—it makes life in the capital easier. Then, of course, when my parents had children of their own…” For the first time, the elf’s voice faltered, “I sometimes visit their great-great-grandchildren.”
Ardan regarded her stately figure. She was over two hundred years old... How many generations of the family that had given her shelter and the chance to live had she buried?
“And, well, one thing led to another, and now I’m the director of the History of Magic Museum,” Lovarskay finished.
Ardan had not doubted for a moment, from the very start of their conversation, that the one in charge here was her and not Magister Baklov at all.
“Perhaps you’d like to ask me something, Ard?” The elf said, pausing before the last door of a dead-end corridor, and winked again. “Or do you still not trust me?”
“Forgive me, Madam Lovarskay,” Ardi decided to be honest with her, “but every time I encounter someone whose life was ruined by my great-grandfather, it never ends well.”
“Every rule has its exceptions, Ard.”
“I hope so.”
“Although, come to think of it,” the Magister drawled, opening the door with a perfectly-ordinary key, “I can’t say that you’re in for a particularly pleasant night.”
They entered an enormous chamber that had once likely served as a storage facility for old documentation. This was made clear by the acrid smell of paper dust, the traces of numerous shelves on the walls, and the fact that, against the far wall, several dozen meters from the entrance, a crudely nailed-together filing cabinet stood in lonely despondency—either forgotten or deliberately left behind.
Within this underground expanse, crates now stood in rows, piled up high—and all of them varied wildly in size. Some of them were so miniature that they could scarcely have held more than a small box, and others, conversely, were large enough to contain an entire dresser within their planked depths.
A sheet of typeset print had been roughly and hastily nailed to each crate.
“Look, Ard, our task here is quite simple,” the Magister propped her staff against one of several desks illuminated by yet more oil lamps. “First and foremost, we unpack everything related to Paragraph Three. You verify the integrity of the artifact, fill out the intake card, and attach the accompanying manifest. And in approximately...” The elf checked the dial of her wristwatch, “…three hours, another shipment will arrive. Forgive an old woman, but I won’t be able to help you there. You’ll take the dolly and bring the new crates down here in a flash.”
“And so on until morning?”
“Yes, Ard, until morning,” the Magister nodded. “If you’d like tea, just say the word—I’ll prepare it. I’ll have to step away periodically in any case, so you’ll be on your own down here for most of the time.”
Delightful...
“Madam Lovarskay, what was the point of that whole performance with the glamour?”
“Perhaps, after two hundred years of life, my sense of humor has simply deteriorated somewhat?”
Ardan raised a skeptical eyebrow, which made the elf laugh again.
“In truth, certain artifacts, especially from Paragraph Three…” Ardan glanced at the nearest manifest, which was clearly labeled: “The Epoch of the Aean’Hane.” “…may possess certain properties capable of causing unpleasant consequences. And to notice them, one needs either a very well-trained eye, which usually belongs to students of the History of Magic Faculty—but you can’t send those on every assignment—or someone capable of seeing through my glamour.”
The Magister settled in behind the desk and, opening a jar of ink, gestured with her hand toward the crates.
“But don’t worry, Ard—the probability of such an event is negligibly small. These are exhibits from the main reserves, true, but they have all been studied and processed long ago. So, everything I just said is nothing more than a precaution.”
“Mm-hm,” Ardi hummed, removing his jacket and draping it over the back of a chair.
The elf historian plunged into her work, and Ardan spent some time expecting a catch. Something about all of this didn’t sit right with him. But perhaps the young man’s mind was genuinely plagued by paranoia—a sort of offspring of the professional deformation endemic to Second Chancery operatives.
And really—it wasn’t as though every encounter with the consequences of his great-grandfather’s decisions and actions had to end in bloodshed, right?
So, after both calming himself and resigning himself to the prospect of a sleepless night in the company of dust, wood shavings and oil lamps...
“And what should I-”
“There’s a crowbar over there,” the Magister said without lifting her gaze from the documents, pointing toward a box of simple tools. “And do try not to get splinters. Your predecessor managed to get one that was so bad we had to take him to the hospital.”
“Mm-hm,” Ardan repeated and armed himself with a rather hefty, nearly meter-long crowbar.
“Were you under the impression that museum work entailed something else?”
“Honestly?”
“Of course.”
Ardan exhaled and answered mournfully:
“Yes.”
At that, she did raise a thoughtful gaze to him.
“Do you know any of my colleagues? Apart from the professor teaching your course at the Grand, naturally.”
“Yes,” Ardi repeated. “I had the opportunity to speak with Mart Borskov.”
“Oh!” Madam Lovarskay couldn’t contain her delight. “Then it’s no surprise that you might have formed some false, romantic impressions. Mr. Borskov is at the cutting edge of archaeological research. That’s why he himself has a somewhat distorted notion of what we, the ordinary mortals, do.”
She truly had lived among the humans for two centuries. She even spoke exactly like one.
But those were thoughts for tomorrow.
Shifting the crowbar from one hand to the other, Ardan got to work.