Chapter 104
A while later, Ardan was once again yanked from his calculations as the door opened a second time. The young man looked up and saw Milar. He was slightly disheveled, clearly exhausted, and somewhat nervously trying to light a cheap cigarette. He grumbled:
“Bloody round table... There’s separate rules for each section and a separate area for each escort with equal viewing access,” having given up on wrestling with the lighter, Milar produced a box of matches from his pocket.
A sulfur head flared, and the thin splinter was engulfed in an orange flame. The captain took a drag and, sprawling like a boneless jellyfish across the same armchair where Captain Aloaeiol had sat half an hour earlier, he exhaled a gray wisp of smoke. Ardan coughed and waved his hand, fanning away the tobacco fog.
“You could have gotten used to it by now,” the captain observed wearily.
Ardan once again tucked his pencil into its holder and closed his grimoire, then hung it back on its chains and massaged the bridge of his nose.
“The only thing I’ve gotten used to so far is everyone around me trying to use me.”
“That’s the Metropolis for you,” Milar noted in a philosophical tone.
They sat in silence for several seconds until the captain straightened in the armchair and looked at Ardi with his clever, gray eyes.
“Who?”
“Aloaeiol,” Ardan answered honestly.
“And what did she want from you?” Milar began to ask, then immediately caught himself. “Actually, let me try to guess: she wanted you to accompany her to the Firstborn Quarter so that you could interrogate... what’s her name... Liliru?”
“Liaelira,” Ardan corrected. “But yes. You’re right.”
Milar smirked in a way that said: “That’s why I’m a senior investigator.”
“Despite her age, she’s still a woman,” Milar noted, still sounding pensive. “The things she’ll do for Kornosskiy... But, given that her appeals to your still-youthfully-warm heart failed to have the desired effect, she must have stumbled somewhere.”
“More or less.”
Milar exhaled another wisp of smoke.
“Care to enlighten me?” He asked. “Not that I’m burning with curiosity, but you’re a man... A half-Matabar... Well, the point is, you’re kindhearted, Ard. I’m not sure I can think of a reason you’d refuse to help Aloaeiol. Especially since I’m sure you no longer bear Yonatan any ill will.”
He was right. However, Ardan had first confirmed that Aror had indeed independently struck a bargain with the Crown and chosen the manner of his own departure before forgiving him. Ardan felt… only a slight measure of respect for Yonatan Kornosskiy and little else. After all, one couldn’t help but respect a man who had been willing to go to considerable lengths to help refugees he had encountered completely by chance. Even if the man himself insisted otherwise...
“She voiced her suspicions that you might be the mole.”
Ardan had been prepared for all sorts of reactions, from nervous laughter to indignation rising up from somewhere in the depths of Milar’s smoke-filled soul, but not... a weary sigh.
“And here I thought she’d already let that go...”
Ardan raised his eyebrows slightly.
“Don’t worry, Ard,” Milar waved it off and took another drag. “This isn’t news to me. The first review the Daggers did of me—and the entire unit, for that matter—was done at her request. At the time, Aloaeiol served in the Daggers unit responsible for finding information leaks, both among the Cloaks and the Guard Corps. They’re something like... guards within the guards.”
“Such a department exists?” Ardan asked, surprised.
“Naturally,” the captain nodded. “Given all the nuances of our service, Magister, the temptation to exploit it for personal gain is considerable. Sometimes, someone gives in... Not everyone is lucky enough to have a talent for Star Magic. That’s the only way to become exempt from the rule prohibiting us from engaging in commercial activity.”
Milar was right: Ardi had even explained to Tess why he and Bazhen Eorsky, despite holding the rank of corporal in the Second Chancery, had been able to open an apothecary. Incidentally, that same apothecary was steadily—if unhurriedly—growing its client base. Such thoughts helped sustain Ardi’s optimistic outlook regarding his future expenses.
He still hadn’t forgotten what using the underground tram lines had been like, so he was thinking of buying an automobile. One that could serve him reliably even during the winter. After all, spending hundreds of exes on a heap of scrap metal that refused to function for about a third of the year would be a decidedly poor investment.
“The first?” Ardi caught the important detail. “You said the first?”
Milar nodded.
“Once every three and a half years, all Second Chancery personnel undergo such a procedure,” Milar drew the ashtray closer and flicked white flakes of burned tobacco into it. “And if the Daggers have no questions for you, you never even learn about it. But if they do, then... you had better have answers for them. The Black House treats traitors no more gently than it treats those who harm our comrades’ families. And sometimes, it’s even worse.”
Ardi remembered the stories Milar had told him after their first visit to the Dandy. He often thought about them, especially in those moments when he would sink into the maelstrom of heavy ruminations about his approaching wedding to Tess, which was now only days away.
“It just so happened that Aloaeiol secured an unscheduled review of my affairs, and then further manipulated the documents so that I would be reviewed again after just a month and a half,” Milar stretched across the armchair like a lazy cat, fully living up to his mask. “That’s why she was removed from the internal affairs unit and transferred somewhere else. I lost track of her then. They don’t exactly report the Daggers’ business to me, you know. I assumed she’d been sent to some embassy abroad or, like Yonatan, sent to roam the country on the Colonel’s errands.”
Ardan now understood how Aloaeiol had gained access to such documents. And given her abilities, she was very nearly the ideal auditor. Someone who couldn’t even be detected by a Speaker could easily uncover a suspect’s most intimate secrets.
“I already assumed she’d been surveilling me and my family,” Milar continued. “How much did she tell you, by the way?”
“Probably all of it,” Ardi shrugged.
“Did she mention the miscarriage and the operation?”
“Yes.”
“The hospitals and the loan?”
“That too.”
“Did she tell you that Elvira spent six months in a hospital for the mentally ill after that?”
Ardan shook his head.
“Well, that’s good—something human still remains in that paranoid mutant,” Milar spread his hands out and took another drag of his cigarette. “Want to hear my side of the story?”
“Milar, I don’t-”
The captain raised a hand.
“Don’t, Ard. You’re not stupid. And you and I,” the captain pointed the smoking cigarette first at him, then at himself, “are, I dare say, a bit more than just partners. I hope that you won’t try to feed me some nonsense about how no doubts have taken root in your head. Eternal Angels, Magister—if I’d heard that story, I’d have started suspecting myself.”
Ardan looked away. He was ashamed to admit it, both to himself and even more so to Milar, but the captain was right. Aloaeiol’s words had sounded too clean and too coherent to ignore entirely.
“You can twist anything any way you like,” Ardan repeated his own earlier words.
“Look, Ard, I suspected you for far longer than you’ve suspected me... How long ago did Aloaeiol leave?”
“Half an hour.”
“There you go. It’s your half an hour against my several months, so let’s call it even,” Milar said, considerably more relaxed now. He offered Ardi one of his roguish smirks and then began his story. “Elvira and I always wanted many children. Even by village standards. To say nothing of city standards... but when Elvira was carrying Irvid, she caught consumption. There was already a cure for it by then, but complications arose because of the pregnancy. Praise the Face of Light, the Martyrs, and the Saints that everything turned out well and Irvid was born healthy. As for Elvira, we thought everything was fine with her as well, but...”
Milar sighed and tapped his cigarette against the ashtray again, even though he had scarcely smoked in the meantime. He was clearly nervous. Ardan could sense his changed scent, the way the captain’s heart was beating, and the gleam in his eyes. No, the captain wasn’t nervous because he was lying—he was telling the truth.
Milar was experiencing fear. The most terrible fear a man can be subjected to. The fear of being helpless when faced with a threat to his family. A threat that, no matter what he did, he couldn’t stop.
Ardan knew that feeling well: in just one year of living with Tess, he had become sufficiently acquainted with it. He would’ve chosen to face a demon three times over rather than feel anything like it again.
“We tried for a long time after Irvid. Nothing worked. It was one thing after another. Doctors pumped Elvira and me full of all manner of garbage. There were diets. Restrictions. We couldn’t even visit a bathhouse... Apparently, excessive heat affects fertility... and our house wasn’t even connected to the central heating, which was only just beginning to appear. And we lived in the Tend. The central heating there...” Milar gave him a thin smile, and his gaze clouded slightly. It was clear that the captain had embarked on a journey through the labyrinths of his own memory. “Finally, we managed. But then, perhaps because of the lingering traces of that old illness, perhaps because she was exhausted... the pregnancy was difficult, which had never happened before. Elvira was always a little flame right up until the last few weeks, but this time...”
Milar briefly closed his eyes and leaned back against the headrest. If there was one thing Ardan understood about his partner, it was that Milar likely regarded his family with the same reverence that had been instilled in Ardi during his childhood. Perhaps that was why they had found common ground so quickly.
“Then she fell ill. Seriously ill. I spent most of my pay on various medicines. I filed an application with the supply department, and Dagdag, along with the Colonel, secured the hospital’s assistance, so we managed,” Milar’s voice dimmed, resembling the red glow that still smoldered on the cigarette clamped between his fingers. “But then came the developments in the Narikhman case and their laboratories. I was either doing raids, or occupied with my own investigations, and at home, I was fussing over Elvira and the children. Corporal Alice Rovnev helped us so much back then. She practically became a nanny. Several nights a week, she even slept at our place. If not for her...”
Ardan hadn’t known that either. This explained why Milar had risked his own career to pull Corporal Rovnev out of a dire situation.
“I started to crack, Ard. Emotionally more than physically, I think.” Milar opened his eyes and aimed his gaze at the ceiling—only instead of it, Ardi was certain that the captain was seeing something else entirely. “And then we were sent to reinforce Yonatan’s operation and apprehend those mages. Bloody mages, Ard... as if I didn’t have enough problems... And there were living corpses. I’d only seen magic a couple of times before, when Mshisty and Aversky had taken part in raiding the Angel Dust labs.”
“When they took down the stationary shields?” Ardan asked.
“Yeah,” Milar answered curtly. “So... I made a mistake, Ard. I got surrounded and panicked like a green recruit. Didn’t even throw my grenade—can you believe that? I simply didn’t throw my grenade... I was hacking away with my saber and I panicked... I was just so tired... And if not for Aloaeiol, then Yonatan might have been sitting here instead of me right now. And someone else would’ve dragged you to the capital.”
“History knows no subjunctive mood, Milar.”
“Right you are, Mr. Scholar,” Captain Pnev said with a touch of acidity. “That same evening, when the whole place blew up—destroying the research and the researchers both—Elvira was taken to our hospital. The Black House’s hospital, I mean. Alice called the emergency carriage. Elvira was in bad shape. Very bad shape. As were the dozens of operatives and investigators that had been wounded in the Narikhman’s final death throes. And so, it soon became clear that there weren’t enough doctors there to take care of Elvira as well, and... I used my connections.”
Ardan flinched with surprise.
“Aloaeiol was right, Ard. I wouldn’t have passed the review,” Milar’s heart didn’t so much as falter—he was telling the truth. “Remember when I told you about that surgeon who was killing children who looked like his own daughter?”
“The one Corporal Rovnev helped you catch?”
Milar nodded.
“Well… One of the girls he murdered was the niece of a banker called Tonskih.”
“The Bornovitz and Tonskih Bank…” Ardi said slowly.
Milar nodded again.
“Because his family had been able to tell his girl’s grave that her killer had been caught and brought to justice, he promised to help me with anything. And I took him up on that,” Milar, still tilting his head back, raised his cigarette to his lips and drew on it. Ash fell onto his chin, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I came to him in the middle of the night and asked for a loan. Enough to transfer my wife to the hospital. He agreed. Immediately. While standing in his nightshirt in the pouring rain. He threw himself into the automobile with me so we could write the cheque as quickly as possible. I never expected it, Ard... never expected such kindness. Together, we collected Elvira and brought her to the Tears of the Martyrs Hospital.”
Milar fell silent, and Ardi noticed a tiny glint in the corner of the captain’s eye. It was a solitary, miniature tear filled with fear. Even now, years later, Milar was still frightened by the mere thought that something could have gone differently. That Elvira could have...
Ardan shivered.
“But why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“I did tell them,” Milar countered calmly. “The very next morning, when it became clear that Elvira would survive… I drove to the Colonel’s office, placed my credentials, my saber, and my revolver on the table, and confessed everything. I am the son of a soldier, Ard. A soldier of the Empi—to hell with the Empire. I am the son of a Galessian soldier. And I did not put on this uniform so I could exploit it for my own gain. Whatever others might say about how useless the words ‘honor and dignity’ have become, to me, they still mean a lot. A whole lot...”
Ardan recalled their conversation at the beginning of summer.
“No one is perfect, partner. I would’ve skinned a bastard like Irigov alive, without any trial or investigation. And I would not have felt the slightest bit of regret. What’s more—I would have slept better knowing I’d rid the world of such a foul burden.” He paused.
“And the day after, I would’ve gone to the Black House and turned myself in. And from there, it would’ve been up to the judges to decide.”
Ardan didn’t need to listen to a heartbeat that had not wavered by a fraction to understand that Milar was telling the truth. He really had tried to turn himself in.
“The Colonel gave me several months,” Milar exhaled another wisp of smoke. “Either there would be a breakthrough in my search for the largest Angel Dust laboratory, or I would leave on an indefinite assignment. And let me tell you, I was quite motivated. My children were freezing and crying at home, worrying about their mother. And on top of that, their mother has been lying there for days like a vegetable, staring at the ceiling.”
“Milar, I-”
“That fucking bitch of a nurse... That bloody little bitch!” Milar burst out and, closing his eyes, steadied his breathing. “Things were very bad, Ard. They ended up literally scraping the baby out of Elvira’s infection-riddled body. Then fighting for her life. And that girl—the daughter of some minor military aristocrat—couldn’t take it and fled the operating room. She left the basin behind. She left the bloody basin behind... and Elvira woke up at the worst possible moment and saw what was in it. She was lying there, Ard. Our daughter. What was left of her, at least…”
Ardan didn’t even want to imagine what exactly the fetus had looked like after such an operation, but he assumed that it was no better than the accursed photographs in those Tazidahian documents. But those were just “photographs” and someone else’s children, while in this case...
“It was like she just switched off,” the captain continued. “Like a lightbulb. Her body was there, but,” Milar tapped his temple, “her mind was somewhere else. They transferred her north, to the edge of the suburbs.”
“To Saint Yevdokia’s Hospital,” Ardan whispered quietly.
That was the name of the sister of one of the Martyrs. She’d gone mad while sifting through the ashes of the church that had burned down along with the mothers and their children that had sheltered inside it. Refusing food and water, she’d dug into the earth with her bare hands for many days until she’d died. The myths claimed that her body never decomposed, and where the ashes had been, a field of flowers had soon bloomed. Yevdokia herself was said to have turned into a stone statue from which, like tears, a pure spring that could heal burns had started flowing.
But that had happened in the fairy tales and myths of the Galessian Church of the Face of Light. In the modern world, her name had been given to a hospital for the mentally ill.
“She spent six months there... I even developed a sort of ritual, Ard. An absurd one,” Milar rubbed the knuckle of his thumb across his eye and let his hand drop limply. The ash of the cheap cigarette that was worth a couple of kso fell directly onto the parquet of the Crown Hotel, which was worth more than what the two of them earned in a month. “In the morning, I’d visit her. Then I’d head to work. Then I’d head to the church to light a candle and pray. In the evening, I’d visit her again. And then I went home. We eventually cracked the laboratory.”
“How?”
“I struck another deal, Ard.” Milar took another drag, and this time, as he exhaled, he inhaled the smoke through his nose. “The Narikhman were ruining everyone’s life. And the Black House, after all the reforms and budget cuts, was no longer what it once was. We didn’t have the strength, so... the enemy of my enemy.”
“The Dandy?”
“Belsky, the Saint, the orcs, the northerners, the smugglers—I leaned on all of them. Not openly, of course. It took me two months to motivate one set of bastards to give up another. And you already know how it all ended.”
Ardan looked at Milar. This was a man who, for the sake of his family, had played a dangerous game with the criminal underworld of the Metropolis and... won. He’d won so thoroughly that he had severely wounded one of the most dangerous organizations of the century. By depriving the Narikhman of their Angel Dust income, the Black House had managed within just a few years to bleed them so dry that they’d gone deep underground.
“Milar.”
“What?”
“One detail is still missing.”
“Yes, Ard. I know.”
Finally, his partner admitted, “I didn’t mention it because I don’t know much myself,” Milar straightened, adjusted his jacket, and placed the butt of his cigarette in the ashtray. “Aversky checked. Our smart fellows in white coats checked, too. Elvira was dragged to every medical office imaginable for the next six months, but... no one knows how or why she woke up. At some point, it was just… snap,” the captain snapped his fingers, “and my wife was with me again. Speaking. Breathing. Laughing. And she remembered nothing of that night. Elvira’s memories ended with Alice sending a courier to fetch the emergency carriage, and the next thing she recalled was my face when I came to visit her at the hospital.”
“So they reviewed you again?”
Milar nodded.
“And they found nothing, Ard. Because there was nothing to find. All of it is just a wild heap of filth piled atop a mound of blood, lies, manipulation, and everything else our line of work is made of. It’s very unsightly but, as practice has shown, very important.”
“And the clerk?”
“I learned about that accident from the Colonel,” Milar massaged his cheekbones and eyes with the heels of his hands. “He also told me that Aloaeiol had been reassigned and Yonatan had been sent to wander the country.”
“Because...”
“Because the parliamentary commission needed a culprit to point the finger at.”
“And they chose Yonatan...”
“It was either a mutant suffering from extreme paranoia or me,” Milar didn’t deny it. “And, I’ll be honest, Ard—if I’d had to make the same choice as the Colonel, if I’d had to choose between Kornosskiy and anyone else, I would’ve done the same thing.”
They fell silent again. The smell of cigarette smoke hung in the air, mingling with half-forgotten fear—the kind that likely had Milar waking up in a cold sweat some nights. Then he’d gently hold his wife, trying not to rouse her, thanking fate that everything had turned out as it had.
“Milar, I-”
“Well then, Magister,” the captain slapped his knees and got up, “shall we go?”
“What? Where?”
“To the Firstborn Quarter,” Milar said as though it were obvious. “The fact that Aloaeiol wanted to use you doesn’t mean her impulse to use the information about Liaelira as quickly as possible was fundamentally wrong.”
“But there are only four and a half hours left until the ambassadors’ round table!”
“Then we’d better not be late, Magister,” Milar winked in his usual roguish manner.
*
The old “Derks,” defying the frost that still refused to relent, even though it was no longer quite as vicious as before, crept through icy corridors. There were simply not enough trucks—even with the ones brought in from the port—to haul the snow out of the capital. And the best that the thousands of street sweepers and the soldiers assigned to support them could manage was to pile the snow into enormous heaps, forming meter-high snowdrifts lining the roads.
The wind and the humidity it brought in from the Swallow Ocean and the Niewa would then turn the fluffy mounds into small hills of ice separating the road from the pavement.
“If they don’t come up with something, there’ll be another flood come spring,” Milar voiced the bleak thought and turned onto a wide avenue.
The Metropolis was no stranger to floods. Indeed, the city had been built and expanded in a way that would minimize the consequences of the Niewa’s rampages. This didn’t always help, of course, and due to that, particularly in the Central District, the false floors had come to be. They weren’t quite a ground floor, but no longer a basement, either.
Ardan, meanwhile, was gazing out the window. He kept running his sleeve across the glass to wipe away the gray film left behind by his breath.
They’d left the Crown Hotel only fifteen minutes ago and had nearly crossed the entire Central District already. This was because of the cold, the snowfall, and the Congress. The Emperor had even declared most of this week a public holiday. For the next six days, the majority of the Metropolis’ workers, clerks and government offices would have nothing but wind and snow to keep them company.
People were hiding in their homes as well, staying warm. They were also spending time with their families. A lot of them were happy to extend the New Year’s festivities, even if the circumstances weren’t ideal. Sometimes, when the weather permitted, they ventured out to the nearest café or, seizing the rare few hours of calm, they’d head out to get provisions. But for the most part, the streets had grown so desolate that even the sweepers were barely around.
And, as with any rule, there were exceptions.
Ardi kept watching the lights of Baliero gleam on the far side of the slumbering, frozen Niewa. At the very center of the nation’s premier fashion and arts district, the Concert Hall seemed to be having an endless celebration. Ardi pictured the queues of automobiles, the crowds of people who had scorned the weather, and, of course, the enormous hall itself—the boxes, the stalls, the orchestra pit, and the stage on which his fiancée was acting and singing.
Thoughts of Tess warmed the young man. They didn’t help with the cold, which he didn’t really feel, but everything that had transpired in the past hour. Did he suspect Milar? No, of course not. The theory that Captain Pnev was the mole almost had more holes in it than the one about Captain Aloaeiol—or Ardi himself.
Had Ardan wanted to learn about such intimate and painful details of his partner’s life? A complicated question. If he said “no,” he would be deceiving himself—the short, middle-aged investigator with a deplorable attachment to cheap tobacco had long since ceased to be a complete stranger to Ardan. But saying “yes” would also be disingenuous.
People...
Why was it always so difficult with them...
“...ideas?”
“What?” Ardan started, surfacing from the depths of his reflections and tearing his gaze away from the Baliero Concert Hall.
Milar glanced at him sidelong and flicked ash into the special compartment located beneath the nozzles of the heating system. It hadn’t originally been present in this model of “Derks,” but in Lieutenant Dagdag’s world, the word “impossible” apparently didn’t exist. “Will there be funding for it?” was his only real concern.
“Do you have any ideas?” The captain repeated his question.
“I don’t know, Milar—Elvira could’ve woken up for any number of reas…” Ardan immediately cut himself off. It was unlikely that Milar had been asking about what had happened to his wife several years ago. “Sorry.”
“Where are you drifting off to, Magister?” The captain frowned. “In case you’ve forgotten, we are currently risking our careers, our bonuses, and possibly our backsides to obtain intelligence... Damnation, it’s as though I’m back in training and skipping my riding lessons. And if you’ll recall how those truancies ended, then...”
Milar waved his cigarette vaguely in the air.
Ardan sighed and admitted:
“I was thinking about Tess.”
Milar drove in silence for several seconds, and the expressions on his face were enough to curse the windshield wipers. The right one had frozen to the glass and refused to work, which was why Ardi couldn’t see his side of the road.
“Now think about our case. Do you have any ideas on how we should approach this?”
By this point, they’d nearly reached the main bridge connecting the right bank of the capital with the peninsula upon which the Firstborn Quarter was situated. Due to its dense (the word was perhaps a rather gross understatement) construction, it looked like a sullen, black stain being perforated by hundreds of thin lights when compared to the snow-white capital.
“You’re asking me whether we should barge into the ‘Sea Breeze’—where we might not even find Liaelira—wave our identification around, and threaten to shoot everyone’s kneecaps?”
Milar squinted and turned to Ardi.
“My honed instincts can tell that you’re hinting at something, Magister.”
“I’m not hinting, Milar—I’m saying it directly,” Ardi muttered. “Every time we act like that, we then have to chase someone, blow something up, and-”
“And this from the same man,” Captain Pnev interrupted, “who demolished half the Crimson Lady’s den. And don’t bother saying that you’re not technically a man.”
Ardan merely raised his hand in surrender.
“So, any ideas, Magister?” Milar repeated his question once more. “Because I haven’t exactly visited the Firstborn Quarter much. To be precise, I’ve been here three or four times before.”
Ardi’s brows climbed a notch.
“But you’ve lived in the capital for over ten years!”
“That doesn’t mean I’ve had a reason to come here,” Milar replied and, after turning past the bridge, stopped the automobile beside yet another mound of snow and ice. It served as an improvised barrier at the entrance to one of the Firstborn Quarter’s few vehicle-friendly streets. “Go on, Magister—take the reins of our humble duo.”
Milar opened a tin of salve that Ardan had made for him and, after spreading it on his neck and wrists, buttoned his wool coat more tightly. Together, they stepped out onto the street, and Ardi, taking up his staff, counted out several coins and left them on the hood.
“What’s that for?” Milar asked.
“For the street urchins. So they don’t damage your automobile.”
“Ard.”
“What?”
Milar spread his gloved hands—gloved and mittened on top of that—then once more pulled up his collar and raised his scarf higher.
“In this cold, the urchins will be nothing but icicles!”
Ardan merely displayed his unbuttoned, not-especially-thick coat and bare head and bare hands. Milar just cursed at him and puffed up like a frozen pigeon, but said nothing more.
Ardi, who was hoping that this visit would proceed without the appearance of a certain rather colorful ogre, headed toward the labyrinth of walkways, staircases and narrow alleyways. After just a few months of running his apothecary with Bazhen Eorsky and their new partner, Lord Boris Fahtov, all three of them had been forced to become rather adept at navigating the Firstborn Quarter. And while none of them could yet move freely through the local maze, finding certain landmarks and using them to locate the most popular destinations was something they could manage.
And the “Sea Breeze” bar wasn’t exactly an obscure and unknown establishment. Quite the opposite—it was one of the most popular spots for those who were no longer counting every kso but were still not ready to spend their money at venues outside the Quarter.
And so, after twenty minutes of wandering—sometimes descending, sometimes climbing, sometimes passing straight through entire buildings—the partners finally emerged onto the right “street.” It was a space hemmed in between two blank walls and adorned with a few lightbulbs, so calling it that felt generous.
Ahead, next to yet another staircase that disappeared under an archway, a sign’s lightbulbs were winking on and off, creating the illusion of a siren perched upon a rock, waving her tail. She was half-woman, and more beautiful than an elf, and half-denizen-of-the-ocean-depths. She had a feminine torso, head and face, and where her legs should’ve been was a fish’s tail. She looked nothing like the ghastly chimeras created by Star Mages half a millennium ago.
Under the bar’s awning, in front of a brand-new window (the previous one had been shattered by the Star-born werewolf), were several figures in dark coats with raised collars, just like before. They were whispering amongst themselves and smoking. There were two goblins, a dwarf, and an elf. As he approached, Ardan pretended not to notice the hard stare of one of the goblins, nor how the creature darted nimbly aside and vanished into an alleyway that opened up onto a wide avenue that was connected to Sleepless Street.
Ardan remembered this place well.
“Where’s he off to?” Milar asked as he lowered his scarf slightly.
Deep within the Firstborn Quarter, it was considerably warmer than outside of it. This made sense, since the odd architecture kept away the worst of the wind.
“We don’t have much time,” Ardan answered. “Sergeant Boad will show up here soon.”
“The ogre you told me about?”
“That’s the one.”
“But aren’t you considered one of the locals now?” Captain Pnev glanced back at the trio standing by the entrance.
“Not to Boad,” Ardan looked around. “And not to those who share his views.”
Aside from the new window, the bar hadn’t changed since his last visit. The same tobacco smoke lingered, so thick that if you tripped, you might never hit the floor. You would instead plop down onto a featherbed of dense smoke.
It settled along the floor, framing the boards, which were cracked in some places. It clung like morning fog to the shoes and ankles of the patrons: goblins with torn ears wearing colorful, vivid outfits worthy of Baliero’s finest dance halls; massive orcs wearing mostly waistcoats or knitted sweaters instead of jackets; elegant elves whose sheer beauty made the eye barely capable of registering what clothing they’d chosen to don; and the few dwarves in smart three-piece suits, flaunting fingers glittering with rings.
The smoke climbed higher, twining like ivy around the legs of wooden tables before covering the barely-visible glasses of strong spirits with ghostly hands; it brushed against the scarlet embers at the tips of cigarettes, cigars, pipes, and cigarette holders, only to shoot up toward the ceiling. There, the Ley-lamps were glowing faintly, desperately trying to break through the smog and mostly failing in their hopeless quest.
At the long bar counter, on stools of varying heights, sat the loners who were chatting with the bartenders. They, in turn, were shielding the display of pot-bellied bottles with their bodies. Through the smoke, neither price tags nor labels could be discerned.
The stage was empty right now and the tables and chairs near the outer wall stood deserted. The patrons had crowded deeper inside, as far from the entrance as possible. Even though the Firstborn could endure the harsh weather far better than humans, the cold reached even them.
Tapping his staff against the ground as he walked, Ardan inevitably drew attention and felt the prickle of curious gazes, but paid it no mind.
Approaching an open spot at the counter, he rapped his knuckles on the lacquered wood. Before long, a dour dwarf approached him. The corners of his eyebrows had little braids adorned with runestones hanging from them. This was a native of the Ral Foothills, since that was the custom there.
“Good evening,” he greeted them, his tone pointedly cold.
“Good evening,” Ardan nodded.
“What’ll you be poisoning yourselves with?” The dwarf asked and nodded toward Milar, who had almost melted in relief because of the wave of warmth that had washed over him. “Fair warning—we’re nearly out of human swill at the moment. Might be that there’s a bit of whiskey left. It’s rather shit, though. Not worth the price.”
Instead of answering him, Ardan slid three coins across the counter—their total value amounted to three-quarters of an ex. The dwarf’s dark eyes gleamed with genuine excitement, and the coins vanished from the bar almost as fast as they had appeared.
The bartender leaned heavily on the counter and gave him a little twitch of his eyebrows, which made his braids jingle rather amusingly. Ardi had to try hard to maintain his serious expression.
“Liaelira,” Ardan whispered.
“She performed here two days ago,” the dwarf answered in the same hushed tone. “Next time she’ll turn up... is at the start of the Festival of Light.”
Honestly, it had been foolish to hope that they would walk into the “Sea Breeze” and, by some stroke of incredible luck, immediately stumble upon the elven half-blood.
“And where can she be found outside of working hours?” Ardi posed his second prepared question.
The dwarf shrugged and cleared his throat with great eloquence. Exactly three times. Ardan slid three more identical coins across the counter. This conversation was becoming a rather expensive pleasure.
“She lives close to Drunken Hill, at the crossing of Mole Hole and Stumbled Boot.”
To anyone who’d never set foot in the Firstborn Quarter, such a response might have seemed like a clumsy attempt at a lie or a rather elaborate insult. But Ardan knew perfectly well where the bartender’s description would lead them. And by a remarkable coincidence, the journey from the “Sea Breeze” to said location would take almost an hour.
And so, even if Ardan hadn’t been able to smell the lie and hear the dwarf’s heart stumble, he would’ve still suspected that something was off.
Catching the bartender’s gaze, Ardan infused his Will into his words:
“Don’t lie to me.”
For a second, the dwarf’s eyes went glassy, and his body snapped to attention. In a mechanical whisper, he said:
“She’s in the back. Take the staircase. Second floor. Third room on the right. She’s resting.”
“Excellent,” Ardan nodded and, breathing somewhat more heavily, gestured toward Milar, who was standing behind him. “If you do anything stupid, my associate will shoot you in the kneecap. And I... Well, you do know who I am, don’t you?”
The dwarf looked down in a daze, then back up.
Ardan left it at that and headed toward the inconspicuous door that was situated beneath the antlers of a Clawed Deer—an Anomaly from the Tsar’s Forest.
“Remind me: who was talking about unnecessary kneecap-related threats earlier, Magister?” Captain Pnev hissed from behind him.
“You know, Milar,” the young man drawled, “sometimes, I find your methods quite effective.”
“Go to hell, Ard.”