Chapter 105
The two partners passed through a low doorway and found themselves in a space that was cramped and stale in equal measure. There was little to see beyond the cracked boards that hid the stones behind them—stones that had been stacked without much care, the seams between them thick with mortar. There was nothing else. Only the cold, and the cold was deeper here. Considerably so.
Milar shivered a little, and Ardi understood, with that quiet detachment that had become a habit of his, that they had stepped into one of the connecting passages between buildings. Perhaps a narrow lane had once run here, or some thin path threading from one walkway to another. Then new construction had turned it into a dead end, and the dead end, in time, had been enclosed enough to make a corridor of sorts.
In the flickering light of the gas lamps that had been put up every few paces, the stairs gleamed with flaking varnish. Ardan, motioning for Milar to keep his guard up, opened his grimoire to the section on healing spells. Together, they climbed to the second floor, which was, in truth, little more than an annex to the bar below.
The cold floor creaked beneath their feet. Layer upon layer of carpet prevented it from feeling almost like ice. The old rugs had never been removed; new ones had simply been laid over them and left there.
When they reached the third door on the right, Ardan lifted his hand to knock and felt a faint prickle at his fingertips. With a flicker of surprise, Ardan let the world show itself to him in its true form for a single instant.
Appearing as a whirl of multicolored Ley, a handful of runes in the Fae tongue were now shimmering along the door. They hadn’t been drawn with much care, but they still held more than enough power. This wasn’t the art of the Aean’Hane just yet, but it was already quite a bit more than the petty tricks of some Speakers. Atta’nha had shown such enchantments to Ardi back before he’d even completed his first year in her care.
“What are we waiting for?” Milar asked. The moment Ardan blinked, the door was once again only a door.
“Give me a second.”
He let his grimoire fall closed and lifted his left hand toward the door. In his mind, he drew upon the fragment of the Name of Ice and Snow, let it fill with his Will, and watched it sheathe his hand. It ran along his skin, wrapping his fingers in a veil that nothing could pierce.
A few moments later, his arm was covered in glittering ice from his forearm to the tip of his middle finger. Milar drew a sharp breath and stepped back. Ardan, without ever touching the door, drew his icy hand across the spot where the Fae runes still burned.
He simply scooped them up the way a man might scoop water out of a pond. He lifted them away. The borrowed light of another’s Ley shimmered upon his ice, fading away gradually, blinking faster and fainter each time, until at last, a small handful of snow tumbled toward the young man’s feet. It vanished before it touched the floor.
The prickling at his fingers stilled, and Ardi let the shard of the Name slip from him. He brushed the last chips of ice off his hand, turned the unlocked handle, and pushed the door open.
Click. The hammer of a revolver was thumbed back.
For what felt like the hundredth time, Ardan found himself staring down the barrel of someone else’s gun.
“Bad idea, miss,” his partner said from behind him.
Milar slipped through the doorway, stepped at once to the side, and leveled his own iron at the half-elven figure who was holding Ardan at gunpoint.
“Who are you?” The woman hissed.
Ardan remembered her well. She still had that same dark blue hair tumbling in curls down her shoulders. Only now, instead of her stage dress that had revealed more of her satiny skin than it had covered, she was wearing a plain house dress and a sweater. Her narrowed, almond-shaped eyes were the color of a fire just starting up, and her body still possessed curves that the finest models of Baliero would have envied.
But Ardi wasn’t moved by her beauty. He noted that she had a kind of feline, almost animal allure, and that was the end of it. His outlook was similar to how someone might regard a painting, or a sculpture.
“I cannot stand creatures like you,” Liaelira said in that same low, forest serpent murmur.
“I beg your pardon?” Ardan replied, untroubled by the revolver pointed at him.
After hundreds of hours of training, he could, with no real effort, cast Orlovsky’s Shield and, if it came to that, sever the arm that held the gun in the same gesture. He hoped that it wouldn’t come to that.
“Those whose hearts truly belong to another,” the singer clarified, never letting her barrel drift from Ardi’s face, “man or woman. For satyrs, it is worse than iron. And the blood of my father runs strong in me. He was the last of the Forest Jesters.”
Liaelira finished her sentence in the tongue of the Fae. “Forest Jesters” was indeed the name once given to satyrs, who were the half-bloods of Fae and humans that had been born at the dawn of mankind’s age. Back then, the City on the Hill had been ruled not only by its Queens, but by Kings as well. And together, they had decreed that it was forbidden for the Fae to create offspring with creatures of flesh.
This all happened a very long time ago—not even centuries, but entire millennia ago.
“My name is-”
“I know who you are, Ard Egobar,” the half-elf, half-satyr nearly spat the words. “You’re the great-grandson of Aror. May his name be forgotten.”
Ardan lifted an eyebrow, but only a little. He hadn’t expected Liaelira to be among those who kept to the teachings of the Conclave. Nor had he expected the small apartment of someone of her kind to have Ley-wiring feeding both a stove and an icebox. And that wasn’t even mentioning the perfectly respectable iron furnace and bed with metal springs.
“You have a great many human things for someone who follows the Conclave’s teachings, miss.”
The fire in the singer’s eyes—already smoldering—flared. She turned sharply to Milar and spoke in a voice of pure command:
“Shoot him in the ass.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Ardan watched Milar’s lashes flutter several times in plain bewilderment.
“A tempting proposal, I must admit, but-”
Milar never finished that sentence. The half-elf cut him off with a hiss as she doubled over in pain and let her revolver fall. It struck the floor with a dull thud, and for one brief moment, a silence settled over the apartment. It seemed like all three of them had expected a shot to follow. None came, mercifully.
“It seems my rotten luck has shown me two miracles today,” Liaelira sneered, and without so much as a glance toward her fallen weapon, she sat down at the table and poured herself water from a carafe. “Two men who both truly love their women… No one will believe me when I tell this story later… What do you bastards want?”
Liaelira was no longer speaking like the figure she became on the stage. The seductive, mysterious diva had vanished without a trace. Had Ardan not known otherwise, he might’ve taken her for one of the Six—or perhaps it was now the Five? The fine points of the Metropolis underworld were difficult to keep track of.
The young man glanced at Milar, who answered him by tipping his revolver toward the singer. It was like he was saying: “Your investigation, your call.” And there was no time to argue—at any moment, the cover Ursky and Arnson were providing for them could collapse.
Leaning on his staff, Ardan walked over to the table and pulled out the second chair.
“May I?” He asked politely enough.
“You may turn it over and pick whichever leg suits you, Egobar,” the singer snapped.
Ardan shook his head wearily and sat down opposite the singer, who was still working through her water. She’d gone noticeably pale, and was clearly fighting back nausea. Then again, no one had forced her to try and enchant an investigator of the Second Chancery. In fairness to her, Liaelira likely had no notion of who exactly had come knocking at her door.
She had probably assumed that Ardan was…
“What do the Cloaks and their pet dog want with me?” The elf asked, pressing the glass to her temple.
Fair enough. She had seen Ardi in the company of Arkar when they’d wrecked half the “Sea Breeze” and then led a chase down the main avenue of the Firstborn Quarter. That chase had resulted in the avenue being set ablaze, several lampposts being felled, the pavement cracking, and the whole business had ended with them being arrested by Sergeant Boad. Any passerby could’ve easily seen Arkar being bundled into the back of a truck.
Ardan had been released that same night, of course, but the reasoning behind that decision was still a mystery to most. A lot of folks had likely come to the simplest of conclusions: his staff and regalia of a Star Mage had done the trick.
“I will describe a place to you, Miss Liaelira, and two of its patrons, and you will do your best to recall when and where you saw them.”
“Have at it, Egobar,” the singer answered, tilting her glass.
Ardan described the memory he had drawn out of Linda Day’s mind. He described it as well as he could manage, down to the smallest detail. It didn’t take him long. A few minutes, no more than that. And as he spoke, he watched Liaelira’s face carefully, and listened to the rhythm of her heart. At some point, he realized one thing: she’d recognized something in his tale.
But beyond just the bar, she’d recognized something else as well. Or rather—someone else.
***
Milar didn’t take his eyes off the Firstborn. While Ard was describing the unknown bar, the captain managed to retrieve the revolver she had dropped, and he made sure to keep the hammer of his own pulled back. Milar had no intention of relaxing in the Firstborn Quarter—not for an instant. And this wasn’t because he shared the political convictions of the Tavsers and those who sympathized with them.
Eternal Angels—Ard Egobar himself, the descendant of Aror Egobar, had sat at Milar’s table beside his wife and children on more than one occasion. Did that not prove that the captain’s views reached beyond the prejudices of centuries long dead?
But statistics—statistics could not be ignored. The facts, as the saying went, didn’t give a damn about a man’s opinion. And the facts and the statistics showed that a man who lost his way in the Firstborn Quarter had, as often as not, a fair chance of never finding it again.
“Ah, and now I remember where else I have seen you, Egobar,” Liaelira drew the words out, and her face twisted into the kind of sharp, venomous smile that only a woman can wear. “In a newspaper, no less. You’re getting married soon, are you not? To the daughter of the Governor-General of Shamtur.”
Milar swore inwardly. He didn’t care at all for the direction Liaelira had chosen to take this conversation.
“That has no bearing on the matter, Miss Liaelira,” Ard answered calmly.
And it was that exact calm that had Milar quietly counting how many spare “moons” he still had on him, in case he was forced to shoot his way past the local guards—Sergeant Boad the ogre in particular. Whenever Ard began to speak in a perfectly flat tone that gave nothing away, nothing good ever followed. That, too, was a fact.
“And I think it does, Mr. Egobar.” The singer pronounced Ard’s last name with blatant mockery.
“Miss Liaelira, we require your help to see justice done in a matter that concerns tortured children. The children of Firstborn.”
Liaelira flinched. And then, almost at once, she placed the mask of contempt back upon her face.
“Why should a traitor to his people concern himself with the Kar’Tak?” Liaelira very nearly spat. “Was it not you who sold out your own people, who came running like an obedient pup for the bone the usurpers tossed your way? The Agrovs dangled Star Magic before you and you wagged your tail. Tell me—did they at least spit on it, or did they take you dry?”
Milar, who regularly dealt with the criminal underworld, allowed himself only a small grimace.
“It seems to me, miss, that you have just cursed the name of my great-grandfather.”
“And I will curse it a hundred times more! A thousand!” Liaelira burst out, then settled down again. “Tess Orman… The new shining star of jazz. The lead voice of the Baliero Concert Hall… and a wretched mortal with the voice of a foaling mare. If this were Ectassus, they would’ve pelted her with rotten meat before she even opened her mouth.”
Milar tensed.
“You don’t know how they lived in Ectassus, Miss Liaelira,” Ard said, staying as quiet as he had been at the start. “You are no older than fifty.”
“I am seventy-eight, pup.”
“Which still doesn’t change the fact that you were not yet born when the Dark Lord’s Rebellion began.”
The two of them—the elf-satyr half-blood and the Matabar-human half-blood—looked one another in the eye. Or rather, as far as Milar could tell, the singer was looking at the bridge of Ard’s nose to stay clear of his Witch’s Gaze. However, it wasn’t like such precautions had stopped his partner of late.
“I had thought that my charms didn’t affect you the first time because your heart was already taken,” Liaelira said, arching her back in her chair like a cat, crossing her long legs, and lifting her chin a fraction. “But now I see it for what it truly is. You think I don’t sing as well as that mortal fiancée of yours.”
“Miss Liaelira, you are also mortal,” Ard answered her, declining to engage with the subject. “Elves are subject to time, like every other creature of flesh.”
“You’re half-human… I will still be here long after the memory of you, your children, and your children’s children has disappeared from the world.”
“Perhaps,” Ard said with that same, eerie calm.
They both fell silent, and Milar cursed once more—in his head—the day he had asked for a military mage to be assigned to his unit. How simple things had been back when their cases hadn’t involved the Firstborn, or any of this otherworldly insanity.
“Tell me that I sing better than your mortal woman, Egobar. Tell me my voice is perfect.”
Milar swore aloud, and added, louder still:
“Liaelira, we are from the Second-”
Ard did not let him finish.
Without so much as a blink, the young man repeated the elf’s words as though they cost him nothing.
“You, Miss Liaelira, are a singer without compare. And your voice is perfect.”
Milar let out a breath. It wasn’t like he hadn’t expected such steel from Ard. It was just that he hadn’t expected it from a nineteen-year-old boy. Though, given what this particular nineteen-year-old boy had lived through—and how much of it there’d been—it would have been unwise to imagine he might be easily provoked.
Liaelira let out a snort, narrowed her inhuman eyes a fraction, and leaned forward.
“Then kiss me, mage. Kiss me as though you wanted me. As though you wanted to take me, here, now, in front of this mortal sack of meat and bone. Kiss me as though the fire in your loins were about to go out for good. Kiss me as though you were swearing to love me. And then, perhaps, I might answer your-”
Milar didn’t even bother to curse again. What would be the point? When someone leaped of their own accord into the open jaws of a hungry beast, what good was cursing them for being an idiot?
Liaelira naively believed that she had some sort of advantage. That possessing the right kind of knowledge guaranteed her some manner of safety.
That, and the chance to settle some old score with the one she had been taught to hate. Unfortunately for her, the singer had forgotten one small detail. She’d forgotten why exactly the Conclave had taught her to hate Aror Egobar in the first place, and what sort of notoriety had clung to that name to make it so that, centuries later, it could still frighten children.
The latch on the window had frozen so deeply that it shattered like brittle glass as it flew open and a blizzard burst into the room. The wind grabbed Liaelira as easily as it would a feather.
It lifted her up and set her down in Ard’s outstretched hand. The young man had risen to his feet. Just like a few days ago, Milar once again felt like his partner looked taller than he actually was.
The elf jerked, raked her nails along the front of Ard’s coat, and beat at his arm with her fists, but she still couldn’t break that deathly grip. Meanwhile, his staff had already filled with luminous white symbols, and a cold blue mist had welled up behind his eyes.
“You believe yourself immortal?” Something wolf-like crept into his still-calm tone. “Then answer me this: what’s to stop me from turning your mind inside out and taking the thing I came here for by force? Then you will spend the rest of your centuries living no differently than the flower you imagine yourself to be.”
Liaelira rasped and writhed in a fruitless attempt to reach the floor, but her slippers only kicked above the snow-covered boards without making contact.
“Do not mistake my indifference toward you for meekness, elf,” Ard said and flicked his hand. Liaelira flew across the room, landing on her bed and slamming her back against the wall. “And do not speak the names of my great-grandfather or my bride again.”
By the time he’d spoken those last few words, Ard had already returned to his familiar form. His eyes had regained their color—still inhuman, but amber now, not blue. The symbols on his staff dimmed as well and slipped back inside the wood.
Ardan turned to the window, drew it shut, and ran a finger along the frame. Ice sealed it back up, locking the cold safely outside the apartment.
“Miss Liaelira, would you be so kind as to tell me where and under what circumstances you witnessed the event I just described?” Ard repeated the question with all his earlier courtesy and composure.
And all at once, Milar realized another perfectly simple fact. Ard hadn’t lied, nor exaggerated, in the least. Liaelira truly meant nothing to him. That was the only reason he was in no hurry to use the full force of his Witch’s Gaze upon her. After all… Who would have stopped him?
***
Ardan looked at the elf, who had pressed herself back against the cold boards of the wall. This was all because of those accursed Tazidahian photographs, and the voice of poor Lusha, who still visited Ardan’s memory every now and again.
Perhaps, were it not for those two working together to unsettle him, he might’ve kept his composure. And now Liaelira smelled of fear. Real, undisguised fear.
“That’s the ‘Fish Net,’ a bar on the corner of Hissing Street,” Liaelira answered, her throat suddenly as dry as parchment. “You can buy a little Dust there. The man you described—he sells it.”
“Is he one of the Narikhman?”
“No, Egobar, I am not foolish enough to deal with them,” Liaelira said, rubbing at the dark bruises on her throat while trying to gather herself, and not quite managing. “He is a vampire. I don’t know his age, but he is strong.”
She gave them a sudden grin. It was bloodthirsty and unpleasant.
“They all call him Odax,” the singer added, fixing Ardi with a murderous look. “Ask the barman for a sprat’s tail, and he will tell you where to find him.”
Ardan listened to her heart, to her breathing, took in the smell of her—the singer was not lying. And why should she? With every fiber of her soul, she hoped that Ardan’s meeting with Odax would end in the worst possible way for the young man.
“Thank you for your help,” Ardan said with a nod, turned, and motioned Milar toward the door with a glance.
Captain Pnev was the first out. He was obviously in no mood to linger—neither in the annex of the “Sea Breeze” nor in the Firstborn Quarter in general.
At the doorway, a croaking, hateful voice stopped Ardan.
“It would seem like only monsters bear the name Egobar.”
Ardan paused for a moment.
“Then I will kill you, Princess. You and all those dear to you. Even if it takes me the rest of my life to do it.”
“I know, Speaker. I know that that is exactly what you will do. You haven’t just broken our laws, have you? I can feel the stains of the Dark Words upon your soul. For now, they are only small smudges. Tiny, scarcely-visible specks. But they are growing. You know that, too, don’t you? Can you feel them?”
Ardan did not turn back.
***
Finding the place wasn’t difficult. Half an hour spent in silence with Milar brought them to the establishment they were looking for. What Ardi had assumed to be the silhouette of a Shaggier in Linda Day’s memory had in fact turned out to be a torn fishing net clumsily drawn on a sign. It was that simple.
“What’s the plan?” Milar asked while adjusting the belt that held his spare “moons” and his saber that was hidden beneath the fur of his coat.
Ardan looked at the plain door knocked together from boards and reinforced with sheets of metal nailed there with rough iron pins. It felt strange to see firsthand something he’d only recently experienced in another’s memory.
“We find Odax. We take it from there.”
Milar sighed and shook his head.
“This, Ard, is precisely why you are a Junior Investigator.”
“I’ve only been doing this job for a year!”
“Fair,” Milar agreed with a nod, “but your plan is still shit.”
Ardan looked at his partner, who was shifting from foot to foot in an effort to coax some warmth back beneath his clothes. Even though it wasn’t as cold inside the Firstborn Quarter as it was outside of it, they’d spent enough time on the street for Captain Pnev to really taste the joys of having to make do without any personal transport in the dead of winter.
“Do you have any better ideas?” Ardan asked, his voice ringing with poorly-hidden hope.
“No,” Milar answered at once, then added, “I only wanted you to know, Magister, that when all of this goes to the demons again, I’ll blame your improvisation.”
Ardan very nearly choked with indignation by the time Milar had brought out his favorite saying:
“Whoever dies is a Fatian,” and he was the first through the door.
Ardan hurried to follow him. Inside, they were met by the same shabby establishment Ardi had seen in Linda Day’s memories. However, this time, more smells were added to the tableau. There were sharp, biting aromas—not of fish, but of some kind of drug, perhaps. The smoke from it curled along the ceiling and it clouded his vision a little. Milar swiftly drew a vial of dark liquid from his pocket and tipped it into his mouth.
“Kargaamian dope,” Milar whispered, grimacing. “They use it often enough in places like this.”
Ardan winced and shook his head. And yet, despite how hard he tried, he couldn’t drive away the pungent smell that, in some curious way, was robbing everything around him of its finer details. It felt as though anything larger than his hand could still be discerned, but anything smaller—the lines of a face, for instance—was lost to him.
He had misread Linda Day’s memories slightly. She hadn’t simply forgotten the patrons of the place—she had been physically incapable of remembering them. But then how had Liaelira’s face been preserved in her mind?
The answer lay close to the surface: the elf had made an effort to be remembered.
Why?
A question that warranted a second visit to the singer of the “Sea Breeze…”
Ardan reached for his grimoire, meaning to try and ward off the outlandish intoxicant—Matabar blood had no immunity to it—but Milar caught him by the wrist.
“Don’t,” the captain said softly, his face now an unclear muddle of soft, indistinct silhouettes. “We are drawing enough attention as it is. Come.”
Ardan thought that they were heading for the bar, but instead, Milar took them to the far table. The very same table where Day had spoken with the vampire.
Unbuttoning the fur coat that covered his cheap-but-tough woolen suit and matching waistcoat, the captain caught the barman’s eye with a gesture. With another, he asked for two glasses of water.
“Shouldn’t we be asking for a sprat’s tail, Milar?” Ardan asked.
“That could lead to any number of things, Magister,” Milar said, shrugging his shoulders. “From a warning sent to Odax himself, to, I don’t know, gentlemen with iron leaping out of a hidden alcove behind the bottles and shooting at us like they were trying to win a tin soldier at the fair.”
Ardan shifted his gaze toward the bar, and he indeed saw a small paper price tag swaying under the last bottle on the shelf. If you didn’t know where to look, even with all of Shali’s lessons, you would not catch it immediately.
“You’ve been here-”
“Never,” Milar cut him off. “But trust me, all these dens where they amuse themselves with illegal amusements—forgive the repetition—are essentially the same.”
Ardan nodded, then caught himself.
“Liaelira-”
“You didn’t overdo it. Don’t worry.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
It was hard for Ardan to read what emotion crossed his partner’s face given that it was still a smear of flesh-colored paint.
“She made Day remember her on purpose! Perhaps we should go back and question her again.”
A silence fell between them.
“Oh, right, you can’t see my face,” Milar remembered. “We can certainly call on the singer again, Ard, but I don’t believe you are terribly interested in what sort of things she and Day got up to in her bed.”
Ardan suddenly found it hard to breathe, and he tugged the collar of his shirt aside. It cracked softly. Even if Ardan’s body could weather the cold and damp of the Niewa and the Swallow Ocean well enough, his clothing could not.
“You mean to say-”
“What I mean to say, Magister,” Milar cut him off again, “is that because of your obvious talents, I sometimes forget that you will not be nineteen for another month and a half. Live as long as I have, and you, too, will learn to recognize at a glance the kind of people who, shall we say, have certain tastes.”
Ardan remembered Boris’ hint regarding Polina Erkerovsky and then put such thoughts aside. That was certainly no business of his.
“But she might know something about Day.”
“If she knew more than what the mad mage liked to do under the sheets, then when you mentioned this bar, she would’ve thought of Day, not the vampire,” Milar said in a lecturing tone. “Eternal Angels, Ard. How do you contain all of this at once?”
“All of… what?”
“Extraordinary sharpness when it comes to nearly everything, and an absolute naïveté when it comes to other people’s souls. Then again, why am I even surprised? Thank heavens that you’re at least not as far gone as Aversky was—may the Eternal Angels receive him.” Milar started to say something more, then thought better of it.
A barman came to their table. He was most likely a half-orc, or perhaps a second-generation descendant. He was even shorter than Arkar and his skin was almost the same color as Milar’s, and yet he was broad enough that he would have had to walk sideways through a standard doorway. And it wasn’t due to fat, but the unnatural swell of muscle.
“Is there some kind of trouble here, investigator?” The barman asked without ceremony, plainly addressing Milar.
“We’re not even going to play the fun little game where I pretend I’m not one of the Cloaks and you pretend you hadn’t already guessed what I am?”
“We can if you’d like to, soldier boy, but I’ve had a few bad run-ins with your sort.” The barman bent down and rapped his knuckles against the lower half of his left leg, just below the knee. The sound was dull. “We deal in nothing too serious here, investigator. A bit of Kargaamian herbal tobacco, a touch of Lan’Duo’Ha products. They fine you for that and lock you up for two weeks.”
Ardan didn’t know what they were talking about. He wasn’t familiar enough with illicit substances—when, of course, the substances in question were not related to Star Magic—to weigh the barman’s words.
“And what about Glitter?”
As far as Ardan knew from overhearing orcs talking about it at “Bruce’s,” Glitter was what Angel Dust was sometimes called. The name came from how its small granules could catch the light almost as brightly as cut diamonds.
“And before you answer me, sir, I would strongly suggest that you think about it carefully,” Milar drew aside the flap of his fur coat with an eloquent flourish, baring his revolver. “As you can see, I have a mage with me. So, even if someone here should care to join our conversation in a livelier manner, I will still be in one piece by the end of it. You, on the other hand, will lose your second knee.”
The barman shifted his weight from foot to foot for some time, and then sighed heavily.
“Cloaks…” He drew the word out morosely. “There is one such person. Goes by the name of Odax.”
“Where can he be found?”
“Tell you what, soldier boy: when he is stuffing your innards back down your throat—be a good lad and don’t say I was the one who told you about him.”
“Do not worry, sir. Vampires no longer frighten me. I have been seasoned.”
“All right, then… You will find him near the quay in the South Port. He has a cabin there. A shack, more like. He lives there.”
Milar looked over at Ardan, and his partner gave him a nod: the barman wasn’t lying. Or he thought he wasn’t. Either way, they had no other leads. Nor, for that matter, any time to look for them.
“For your trouble, mister barman.” Milar drew a twenty-five-kso coin from his pocket and laid it on the table.
The barman swept it up quickly enough and, on his way back, muttered something so quietly that an ordinary person would not have caught it. However, Ardi wasn’t exactly an ordinary person.
“What, do the Cloaks have a special budget for tips now?”
Ardan sprang to his feet.
“Sir.”
The barman turned.
“Has someone else already asked this same question?” Ardi inquired, fighting to keep his voice from rising—the pounding of his own heart was drowning him out.
“A few days back,” the barman said with a shrug. “It was a colleague of yours. He asked me the same thing.”
Milar and Ardi exchanged a glance and bolted toward the exit, nearly colliding in the doorway.
***
“How much time do we have left?” Milar asked while moving his hands between the steering wheel and the grate above the heating vent. He was alternating them in an effort to keep them warm without crashing the car.
They were once again driving along the snowy mountain pass that the fair Metropolis had turned into. They’d left the Firstborn Quarter—both its labyrinths and also Boad, who had failed to reach them in time—behind.
Ardan raised his hand and looked at his wrist, consulting his father’s watch.
“We have two and a half hours before the round table begins.”
“Then we have a hundred and thirty-five minutes,” Milar said through clenched teeth. “To either pick up the trail of this mysterious vampire, or…”
The captain fell silent, and there was no need to say anything further. Both Milar and Ardan understood perfectly well what the barman’s words had meant. If one of the Cloaks had been asking about Odax, that could mean only one thing: the two partners were chasing not only the vampire, but the mole who had given them no peace for over a year now.
Perhaps Ardan ought to have been focused on that. And yet, he could not, however hard he tried, shake the voices of Allane’Eari and Liaelira from his head.
“Milar.”
“I know, Ard, but I can’t drive any faster—we’ll crash at the first turn.”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
Milar made some kind of face. Ardan, even though some time had passed, still couldn’t see much. He could discern the watch’s dial, but Milar’s face, and certain lines inside the car, still seemed determined to dissolve into a mad orgy of color and shape whenever he turned to look at them.
“What then?” The captain asked.
Ardan turned to the window. Beyond the glass, on the far side of the ice-bound Niewa, the lights of Baliero still glittered. All at once, he ached to hold Tess. He yearned to breathe in the scent of her hair and drown amongst the flowers that bloomed in spring by the brook.
“Do you think something is happening to me?” He asked, speaking softer than he should have.
“What? Be a little more specific, Magister, if you please?”
“Does it not seem like I am growing crueler?” Ardi said, and added, “Crueler than I once was.”
Milar didn’t answer right away. They had enough time to pass several traffic wardens bundled up like balls of fur before Captain Pnev resumed the conversation.
“You know, Ard, when I was training in the army, this is what they used to tell us: ‘The men you can rely on most in a trench are the cruelest bastards you will ever meet.’” Milar moved his hand back toward the warmth and pressed the accelerator a touch. “And our first task was to become like them. And then, when it was all over, we had to put that inner bastard on a leash and never let him out again.”
Ardan shrugged.
“And where’s the wisdom in all that?”
Milar sighed.
“I wish I knew… But I’ll tell you this much, Ard. So long as you keep asking yourself questions like that, all will be well with you and your heart.”
“So long as you keep asking yourself questions…” Ardan would do well to remember this phrase.
“Thank you, Milar,” Ardi said, and meant it.
“Anytime, Magister. There is a good amount of…” Milar tapped a finger against his temple, “…stuff up here that I sometimes feel an urge to dump on someone. It’s part of getting ready for old age. I shall do a fine job muttering and telling everyone how to live, paying no mind to the fact that the world around me has changed.”
“Could we do without the… added stuff?”
“Ohhh no, Ard,” Milar drawled. “That is part of the bargain! My experience is seasoned with my own not-always-funny jokes.”
Ardi smiled, and then Milar smiled, and soon, they were both laughing. The buildings around them grew shorter. The streets were divided by endless canals with broad bridges arching above them. They were high enough for barges to pass beneath them.
The South Port, like the Night Port, was used for the traffic of the Metropolis’ canal network. Larger trade ships and civilian craft did not come here. Sometimes, small skiffs would pick up people who wished to be ferried over to the shore of one of the capital’s many islands.
Right now, however, the port was empty. The canals bristled with sparkling fangs, the granite banks were bright with snow and ice, and the few buildings huddled under white caps.
Milar drove between the warehouses and the cranes wrapped in canvas, scanning for the cabin they were after. At last, after rounding another turn, they saw it.
The barman hadn’t lied.
It was a small building that had been awkwardly thrown together, with a gaudy porch and a sloping roof. The place was barely worthy of being called a hunter’s log cabin. Even so, light came through the wide-open windows. A living, warm light. A black column of smoke was rising out of the crooked chimney. They were burning wet wood, by the look of it.
Then again, why on earth would a vampire heat his house?
“We’re too late!” Milar barked and without even bothering to kill the engine, he jerked the door handle and all but spilled out into the street. “Come on, Ard! After me! Whoever dies is a Fatian!”
Without so much as glancing back, Milar drew his revolver and a grenade Dagdag had given him as he ran, bolting toward the cabin.
Ardan grabbed his staff and opened the door. The moment his foot touched the packed snow, his whole body turned to stone. He couldn’t even move the tip of a finger. It was just like before… Like that evening…
All he could do was watch Milar vanish into the house.
His fingers stung. The world around him faded into a gray haze. The shadows the lamps were casting began to flicker, as though they were alive. Ardi felt his insides twist into a tight knot as cold, invisible fingers closed around his throat.
He’d felt something like this quite recently. In the Crown Hotel.
A Dark Aean’Hane! Milar had just run into a house where a Dark Aean’Hane was waiting!
Ardan struggled to move, struggled to summon the fragment of the Name he knew, struggled to do anything at all. But just as the sun cannot rise in the west, one cannot break a bargain they’d made with the Fae.
The mark of Allane’Eari blazed in bright blue fire upon his wrist.
“...We gave you the ability to walk when you could not, Speaker... Therefore, this winter, when you will be able to walk, you must stand...”
And then came the explosion.