Matabar

Ardan retrieved his clothes from the temporary wardrobe, where the polite staff, with barely-noticeable weariness etched onto their faces, were consistently greeting and bidding farewell to visitors with routine and slightly dim smiles.

After throwing on his coat, putting on his hat, and wrapping a scarf around his neck, Ardan slipped out the doors and into Star Square. As usual, it was practically deserted. Only occasionally, accompanied by the discordant screech of tram wheels grinding against icy rails, could students and Magisters be seen as they hurried to their lectures, all of them wearing their cloaks.

Ardi closed his eyes and inhaled the frosty air. Winter had hidden not just the cobblestones and the sleepy, leafless trees under its snowy mantle, but also the smells of the capital itself. At the very least, here, in the center of the city, there was none of that usual diesel and oil stench, no factory smog, and no sharp whiff of tobacco smoke.

If not for Milar’s summons, Ardan would have preferred to walk to the Markov Canal, given that he’d skipped his last lecture. He enjoyed wandering Old Town, with its intricate web of elegant streets crossing over into pompous and proud avenues, where grandiose buildings — most of them resembled palaces — competed in terms of opulence and splendor.

For some reason, the city was more effective than any soothing concoction for Ardi. Even while wandering unfamiliar alleyways and stumbling upon entirely unknown labyrinths, Ardan always found himself, as lofty as it might sound, alone with himself. No one disturbed him, called out to him, demanded anything from him. It was just him, the playful wind, the snow, and the silent city.

In the distance, near a narrow alleyway adjoining the square, the prolonged blare of a horn rang out.

Ardan’s thoughts were derailed as he spotted a familiar, unassuming, slightly rusted, nearly box-shaped car. But considering the fact that this old-timer on wheels still managed to run even in -22 degrees, Milar clearly cared for it well, and the equipment under its hood wasn’t as ordinary as it might’ve seemed.

Taking his time, Ardan approached the car. With a practiced motion, he first slid his staff inside, and then climbed in himself.

Inside, the warmth rivaled that of a brand-new, expensive car. It was enough to let someone shed a few layers. Warm air streamed out from three technical vents covered by steel grates. Judging by the visible pipes, the car was being heated by the engine.

Milar, dressed as always in black — a black winter coat, black fur-lined boots, and, of course, black pants — tugged at the collar of his thick, gray sweater. Beneath it lay a shirt and vest.

“I can’t stand winter,” he muttered, scratching the red marks on his neck where the sweater had rubbed against his skin.

“I could make you a salve,” Ardan offered.

“What?”

“For the rash,” Ardi nodded at his neck. “You’re probably allergic to the lanolin. They use it to treat the wool when making sweaters.”

Milar waved him off with a grimace. “My wife bought one last year,” he grumbled, scratching at his neck again. “Paid twenty-seven kso for fifty grams of the stuff, and as soon as the jar ran out, it came back.” He gestured to the marks. “You could go broke buying those ointments. Damn winter… I can’t wait for spring.”

Ardan didn’t tell him how much he enjoyed this time of year. It would’ve just been petty. Instead, he promised, “I’ll try to make one myself. Maybe I can make more than fifty grams for less money.”

Milar turned sharply toward him, studying him in silence for a moment.

“And why would you do that?”

“Why would I do what?”

“Help me… why?”

Ardi blinked a few times, puzzled, before replying, “Do I need a reason?”

Milar paused briefly, then laughed. It was a different laugh than his usual one, more honest and almost carefree.

“And how are you still alive, Magister?” The Cloak wiped tears of mirth from his eyes. “All right, while we’re driving over, you’d better share a story about this.”

Milar leaned over Ardi’s lap, opened the glove compartment, and pulled out today’s issue of the Imperial Herald. Tossing the newspaper to Ardan, the Cloak returned to the wheel. Pressing the clutch — Ardan, after the incident at the warehouse, had at least learned the names of the car’s components — Milar shifted from neutral to first gear, and they rolled past the university buildings.

It was an amusing coincidence that less than six months ago, Milar had driven him along this very road to the Grand.

Unfolding the newspaper, Ardan wearily read the headline on the front page:

“Gang Skirmish at Warehouse District or Something More? A Journalistic Investigation by Taisia Shpritz.”

Below it was a photograph of the very same warehouse where, a week earlier, he and Arkar had helped Boris out of a sticky situation. So sticky, in fact, that, according to Elena — who’d been visiting “Bruce’s” recently and had been keeping vigil at Boris’ bedside day and night at the clinic before then — the doctors weren’t sure whether Boris would be able to stand by summer. And the prospect of him ever walking without a cane was doubtful. Of course, Star Magic could work miracles, but not always, and not in every case.

Otherwise, the Emperor, Aversky, and even Professor Lea herself wouldn’t have looked the way they did.

Denying it was clearly pointless, so Ardi gestured at the photograph.

“When we left, the warehouse was relatively intact,” he said honestly, pointing to the smoking ruins captured by the reporters.

“It was, partner,” Milar agreed, merging into the sparse traffic comprised of sleepy trams and a few rare cars as he turned onto the avenue. “And then… BOOM! It just exploded.”

“Partner?”

“For at least the next three months,” the captain nodded, “but that’s beside the point, Magister. Why did you use your Ice Wave there? Aversky said you knew your spells were in the House’s records.”

“What’s the House?”

“That’s what we call the Second Chancery — damn it, Ard, can you listen without interrupting?”

“I’ll try.”

Milar shot him a scrutinizing look, as if trying to determine whether his companion was mocking him. But in all seriousness, Ardan had struggled with holding back his questions since childhood.

“But that was an Ice Wall,” Ardi quickly corrected. “My own modification of it. I altered the properties to maximize density. I had to completely remove its mobility, but in theory, it could absorb substantial kinetic energy, and-”

“You can discuss that later with Edward, damn him,” Milar interrupted him again, braking gently as he approached a traffic regulator bundled up so tightly he resembled a ball. “I had to spend two hours filling out forms explaining why several witnesses saw you near the Crimson Lady’s brothel, getting into a car with the Orcish Jackets’ overseer, and then driving off toward the warehouses.”

“I live at one of the Jackets’ profit houses.”

“I know that… Couldn’t find another apartment?”

“I couldn’t,” Ardan confirmed. “Not many people in the center are willing to hand over their keys to a half-blood, and it takes too long to get to the Grand from the New City.”

Waiting for the signal to proceed, Milar pressed the clutch again, shifted back into first gear, and they continued onward, heading, as far as Ardi could tell, toward the Trade District.

The district’s name, of course, dated back to the days when the Metropolis was the capital of Gales, and the area was inhabited by craftsmen and merchants.

“Tell me everything that happened, partner,” Milar reminded him more seriously. “And try not to leave anything out.”

And so, Ardan began his tale, starting from the moment he’d left Aversky’s mansion and returned to “Bruce’s,” where he had encountered Elena. He went over his conversation with Arkar (leaving out his oath), the visit to the brothel, and finally, Warehouse 6. Again, he refrained from mentioning the medallion.

When he finished, Milar clicked his tongue. “Ard, my dear Ard… Let me tell you something,” Milar said, turning the wheel to guide them onto Craftsmen’s Street.

The Trade District, like most of Old Town, wasn’t all that different from the Central District. It had the same opulent buildings, the same narrow streets, and the ever-present, wide avenues with drab sidewalks.

“For the last eight years, I’ve served in the Chancery, hunting down scum and degenerates,” Milar continued, downshifting as they approached their destination. “Before that, I worked with the military guard corps — it was only for a couple of years after I graduated from the lyceum, but there, too, I hunted scum and degenerates, though they were smaller fish and often in uniform. So, tell me, do you think I’d have ever become a captain and first-rank investigator if the garbage you’re trying to feed me could fool me?”

Milar pulled the car to the curb and cut the engine. They had stopped in a narrow cul-de-sac situated between tenement houses that faced a small cluster of communal entrances.

“For starters, who in their right mind would kidnap the son — disowned or not — of the bloody Duke-General Fahtov?” Milar spoke calmly and measuredly, but the steely glint in his brown eyes was unmistakable. “Even if they demanded two and a half thousand exes for him — or seven thousand, for that matter — no one can spend money in the afterlife. That’s one. Two — cutting off a lord’s finger? Crippling him so badly that the doctors are still sewing and patching him together? A highly questionable strategy if one intends to live a long life. And when something seems questionable, it’s usually the opposite.”

“But-”

“You’ve said your piece,” Milar raised a hand to stop him. “Now I’ll speak, Ard, and you’ll listen. You should’ve been alarmed right from the start, when Elena wasn’t taken along with Boris. Even if Orvilov and his accomplice were absolutely certain she was merely his servant and not a childhood friend — or even his wife — that part doesn’t interest me. What matters is that they should have taken her for one reason: in order to avoid torturing Fahtov, a military aristocrat whose family commanded armies back in the days of the kings, and to torture Elena instead. But that’s just a minor detail.”

Milar adjusted his holster and checked his ammunition clips — six “moons” loaded with cartridges — before sticking his head out of the partially-lowered window to inspect something above them. He seemed utterly unbothered that Ardan had tried to deceive him.

“And if they didn’t take her, it means they had a different goal,” the captain continued, shutting off the ignition and taking the key out. “When Elena came back with the ransom, they would’ve killed her. Along with Boris. And Orvilov himself. Then they’d have blown up the warehouse. How do I know that? Because they did blow it up, Ard, when our team arrived. There were people there that you and Arkar likely didn’t even notice.”

“There was no one else there but us and the thugs working for the Crimson Lady,” Ardan objected.

“That old prostitute has nothing to do with this,” Milar scoffed. “She simply did what the important people told her to do. And in the process, she led you and the half-orc around by the nose. But again, those are just details. The key point is this: Orvilov acted under someone else’s orders. And those orders included torturing and preparing to kill the son of Duke-General Fahtov, the commander of the Southern Fleet.”

“Iolai Agrov-” Ardan began.

“I know all about your splendid three-way arrangement,” Milar said, pulling out a cigarette. With a couple of flicks of his lighter, he lit it and took a drag. “But trust me, Great Prince Iolai can’t even take a piss without his father’s permission. So, it’s unlikely to be him… His balls are too small for that kind of maneuver. But that, too — damn it, I’ll develop an allergy to these words soon enough — are just details. So, tell me, Ard, what’s the point of such an elaborate scheme for the sake of two and a half thousand exes?”

Ardan closed his eyes. He could understand when he’d lost at a game of wits and was always willing to admit defeat, especially since he’d rarely managed to outwit Skusty or Atta’nha.

“They wanted the code for Boris’ medallion,” he finally admitted.

“What medallion?” Milar exhaled a cloud of smoke, his tone laced with curiosity.

Ardan shrugged. “An old one. Probably a family heirloom. It has a demonic seal on it.”

“A demonic goddamn seal,” Milar repeated, leaning back against his seat. “Fine, Magister, you don’t trust me, and I don’t particularly trust you, either. We’ve established that. But please, the next time you try to feed me a load of crap, at least spend a couple of hours figuring out how to make it smell less.”

With that, the captain bit down on his cigarette, opened the door, and stepped outside, buttoning up his coat against the biting wind. Ardan hurried after him. Milar locked the car, checked the handles, and, ignoring Ardan, strolled casually toward one of the entrances.

In that moment, Ardan realized that it had been a mistake to try and deceive someone he’d be working with for the next three months. And more importantly, that this man, despite his careless stride, was indeed a true investigator of the Second Chancery.

After he caught up to Milar, they approached the third entrance of the tenement building, a structure that had witnessed the end of the previous century. Its facade, which had been patched up in places with evident signs of repair — there were unmistakable lines in the masonry where Ley cables and pipes for boiler heating had clearly been installed — looked somewhat dull compared to its far more ornate neighbors.

The Cloak ascended the stairs and tugged the door open to reveal a modest lobby. Inside, the worn, scuffed parquet flooring was covered by a shabby and nondescript carpet. Two doors leading to apartments were on the right, on the left were ten mailboxes, and straight ahead, a narrow staircase led to the upper floors.

“I can’t stand staircases,” Milar said through gritted teeth. “And we’re heading to the last… the fifth floor.”

But before he started their climb, the captain stopped briefly by the mailboxes. He inspected them carefully, muttering something under his breath, and shook his head grimly. A moment later, he turned away, whistling a cheerful tune while puffing on his cigarette, and began climbing.

Ardi couldn’t yet determine which side of Milar — the jovial, seemingly flippant persona, or the grimly focused professional — was his real face and which was the mask. The captain’s demeanor often oscillated between irreverent jesting and thunderous seriousness when matters concerned work.

“Magister.”

“What?”

“Since we’re apparently going to spend,” Milar paused mid-sentence, leaning over the banister to glance upwards, and cursed, “three months in an uncomfortably close… let’s call it proximity, could I trouble you to answer a few questions?”

“All right.”

“First question, Magister,” the captain tapped ash onto the windowsill of the stairwell and casually spat into a flower vase. “Are you washing your socks?”

“Every morning and… why?”

“Just curious,” Milar shrugged, sniffing the air. “There’s a smell.”

Ardi frowned. At first, he thought Milar was joking, but there was indeed a scent here. It was something faintly sweet, yet cloyingly pungent, leaving a bitter, garlicky aftertaste in its wake. Somewhere, meat had spoiled.

Oddly, Milar seemed to have noticed it before Ardan, even though the latter had always prided himself on a sharp sense of smell. He could only excuse his lack of perceptiveness by blaming his distraction on their earlier conversation in the car. If Iolai Agrov had truly had no connection to those unfortunate events, the puzzle became not only more tangled but also... far more intriguing.

“Why do you tap your staff against the floor?” Milar asked abruptly.

“What?” Ardi didn’t immediately understand the question.

“Your staff,” Milar mimed striking the floor with it. “It makes a racket every time you do it. So, if we ever need to do something covert, I’d like to know if we can avoid this…” Milar failed to find the right word for it and simply shrugged.

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“We can’t,” Ardi replied. “The staff closes the Ley circuit leading from my Star and into the Ley lines. Without that, a mage’s energy simply dissipates into the air.”

“Any surface would work?”

“Only those in direct or indirect contact with the ground,” Ardi clarified.

“Fair enough,” Milar muttered as they reached the next landing, where he extinguished his cigarette and tossed the butt through the railing. “And those glowing lines you Magisters tend to make? Can they be hidden? They’re like the holiday lights on New Year’s Eve.”

“Our seals?”

“Yeah.”

“No,” Ardan shook his head. “A seal is, essentially, a direct manifestation of Ley energy embedded into the surrounding space by a mage. We can’t make them invisible.”

“Why?”

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Ardi admitted. “But to make a comparison, imagine a lantern. When it’s on, it glows. When it’s off, it doesn’t. You can’t make it work and not glow.”

“I could break the bulb.”

“But then it wouldn’t give off light, and technically, it wouldn’t be working, either.”

Milar stopped, pondered for a few seconds, and then let out a noncommittal hum.

“So, in a real pinch, you’ll be banging your stick and glowing like a restaurant display?”

“I seem to recall, Milar,” Ardi shot back, his voice tinged with irritation, “that you specifically requested a mage for your team.”

“Fair point,” Milar agreed with a chuckle.

They reached the fifth floor and passed through a flimsy wooden partition separating the staircase from a small landing. Like the first floor, the landing was covered with a rug, though it was less dirty and worn, which was understandable, as fewer people came through here.

Again, only two doors were present. They looked sturdy and not overly old. One bore faintly visible, steel numbers that read 30, and the other had 29 on it.

Milar approached the door marked 29. Instead of knocking, he nearly pressed his face right up to the keyhole and took a deep sniff. Immediately, he choked on the stench, retching reflexively. Spitting viscous saliva onto the floor, he blew his nose into a handkerchief, then pulled out a small, flat tin from his pocket, smearing something white and intensely minty-smelling under his nose.

“Here,” he said, handing the tin to Ardan. “Otherwise, with your half-blood sense of smell, I’ll have to drag your unconscious carcass back.”

Ardan flared his nostrils and nearly lost his breakfast. The sickly-sweet stench of rot mixed with a sharp, acrid, garlic-like odor turned his stomach.

He remembered where he’d last encountered such a smell. Once, in Evergale, one of the ranch hands had gone missing for three days. Polskih had sent Ardan to check on the man at his home. It turned out that the ranch hand had gotten drunk, fallen, and broken his neck. And since he’d lived alone, no one had noticed the accident. His house had reeked just like this.

Without arguing, Ardan dabbed a small amount of the minty ointment above his lip. The strong peppermint aroma cleared his senses slightly, pushing the stench of death to the background.

“So,” Milar muttered, fumbling with his coat pockets, “which medallion do we need? Damn it, these newfangled things are…” He pulled out a set of six round medallions, each slightly different from the one he had previously handed to Ardan. “Ah, found it.” Milar pressed one of the medallions before stashing the rest back into his pocket.

“It used to be simpler,” he grumbled as he pulled out a leather roll from that same pocket. It was the kind carpenters typically carried, but instead of woodworking tools, Milar’s roll contained a selection of curved picks, miniature vials, a magnifying glass, brushes that looked like they were meant for shaving foam, and other small implements. “You’d send a runner back to the House, and that was that. Now we’ve got communication medallions. And good luck remembering which one connects to which department.”

Milar knelt down and armed himself with the tools from his roll. Using a fine brush, he applied a gray powder to the handle of the door. Leaning in with the magnifying glass, he inspected it closely.

“No fingerprints, of course,” he sighed.

“Fingerprints?” Ardi asked.

“Look at your fingers,” Milar said without turning around. “Every person has a unique pattern on their fingertips. It’s how you can tell one person from another.”

Ardan examined his fingertips closely and noticed faint, swirling lines there he hadn’t paid attention to before.

“Fingers leave traces on surfaces because of bodily secretions,” Milar explained as he moved to the lock with a thin, curved pick. “Don’t you read books or newspapers? For the past twenty years, everyone’s been raving about this new frontier in criminology.”

“I’m not interested in the criminal world,” Ardan replied with a shrug.

“No signs of forced entry on the lock, either,” Milar muttered, twisting his tool. “That means they either had the proper key, or she knew exactly who she was dealing with.”

“She?” Ardan asked. “Do you know who’s in there?”

“I have a guess,” Milar said as he gave a final tug with the pick. The lock clicked open. “Let’s see if this case turns into a dead end, or if there’s a chance to make progress.”

The captain pushed the door open and stepped inside first. The small, cramped entryway had a single coat hook on the wall, a stand for umbrellas, and a shabby shoe rack desperately in need of repair.

“Don’t touch anything,” Milar snapped at Ardan, “and watch where you step. Don’t ruin any hard evidence.”

“Hard evidence?”

“By the Eternal Angels, Ard!” Milar groaned, exasperated. “You ramble on about seals and Ley energy but don’t know what fingerprints or hard evidence are?”

Ardan could only shrug. After all, no one could know everything.

Milar made that odd, incomprehensible human gesture — he rolled his eyes — before drawing his revolver from its holster. Holding the gun in his right hand, he pushed open one of three doors leading off the entryway.

The first led to a bathroom. Inside were a small, gray toilet, a mirror, a few bottles resting on makeshift wooden shelves, and a bathtub hidden behind a curtain.

Milar used a handkerchief to carefully turn the hot water faucet. The pipes groaned and clattered loudly, like a wild boar that had been starving for days.

“Haven’t been used for a few days at least,” Milar muttered, turning off the water and stepping back into the entryway.

The next door opened to a tiny kitchen. Along one wall stood a small table for two, covered with a worn, moth-eaten cloth. To the right of a narrow window stood a sink and a Ley-powered stove, upon which lay a single, forlorn coffee pot — or, as it was called in the Empire, a za’firka. The conical iron pot, with its narrow spout and long handle, looked almost like an alchemical mixing flask.

The za’firka lay on its side, and a dark, dried stain had spread out beneath it on the stove.

“Maybe she didn’t know them after all,” Milar sighed, turning back to Ardan. “Could you, with your skills, have unlocked that door without leaving a trace?”

Ardi pondered this. Technically, he could have filled the keyhole with damp earth, inserted a stick to create a makeshift key, and then compressed it. But that would’ve still left traces.

“I see,” Milar said, waving off the lack of an answer. “They either used the proper key or a copy.”

“Or perhaps a more skilled mage did it,” Ardan added. “But I still don’t understand-”

“Come on,” Milar cut him off, closing the kitchen door and returning to the entryway.

With his revolver raised, Milar nudged the last door open with his shoulder. Instantly, an overpowering stench hit them, breaking through even the minty ointment.

Inside a ten-square-meter room, sprawled across a messy bed with bloodstained sheets, lay the naked body of Lisa. Her arms were flung outward, her neck was twisted to one side, and her skin was gray and bloated. Her eyes bulged from their sockets, and her swollen tongue jutted from her lips. Blood pooled beneath her body, seeping into the mattress.

“She’s been dead for at least three days,” Milar muttered, walking over to the window and examining it closely before pulling back the curtains to let daylight spill into the room.

The captain moved through the space methodically, pausing at Lisa’s tangled hair as if tempted to tug at it, perhaps to confirm the reality of the horror that lay before him. Instead, he pushed aside the haunting shadows and turned his attention to the snow-covered streets outside.

Milar, while Ardan was feeling unable to avert his gaze from the dead body, examined the windowsill. Then he walked around the bed and, going to the wardrobe, opened the creaking door with the muzzle of his revolver.

Ardi shuddered. The creak was so long and audible, as if it were the muffled, final scream Lisa had let out before falling silent forever.

“...Eternal Angels… If we somehow make it to “Bruce’s,” I swear I’m teaching you how to drive, big guy.”

Meanwhile, Ardan remained frozen, his gaze locked onto Lisa’s lifeless body. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the scene — those were the glassy, cloudy eyes of someone who had seen no magic or miracles in her final moments, only despair and death.

Death had settled here, lingering on the bedside table where a woman’s miniature revolver rested in its holster, unused. It was the same revolver Lisa had once used to save Ardan’s life.

And now she lay sprawled among the foam-like sheets, her blue-tinged arms flung wide, her neck twisted, blood everywhere.

Wait, blood?

“All her clothes are gone,” Milar said, stepping away from the closet and gesturing to the empty hangers. “And the rest of her belongings, too.”

“The blood…” Ardan murmured faintly.

“Are you about to faint? You can step outside-”

“Her neck. The blood,” Ardan rasped, struggling to form words.

Milar turned toward the bed, then back to Ardi, then to the bed again.

“Not bad, Magister. Not bad at all,” Milar said, tucking his revolver back into its holster. Pulling on a pair of black gloves, he carefully lifted Lisa’s shoulder — or what was left of it.

On her back, as well as on the blood-soaked sheets, distinct lines and symbols could be seen.

It was a seal. One that had been carved into her flesh while she’d still been alive. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been so much blood.

Ardan closed his eyes, looking as if he were trying to rid himself of the sight. But in the darkness that enveloped his perception, the features of the dead woman began to emerge gradually. Her eyes stood out most vividly: glassy, clouded, and bearing witness to things they could no longer recount.

Ardi couldn’t take it anymore. Turning sharply, he exited into the entryway and then out to the stairwell landing. Pressing his back against the wall, he slowly slid down to the floor. No matter how long he stared at the gray, crumbling paint covering the fine cracks in the plaster, he couldn’t shake the image now burned into his mind.

The entrance door opened, and Milar, removing his gloves, stepped out and stood beside him. The captain pulled out a pack of cigarettes, tapped it against his knee, and deftly caught a cigarette with his teeth before lighting it.

“Want one?” He asked, offering the pack to Ardan.

The young man grimaced and waved him off.

“You’ll start smoking eventually,” Milar shrugged, stowing the cigarettes back into the pocket of his coat. “It’s just a matter of time. And time, of course, is a very relative thing. When you’re staring down the barrel of a revolver, your whole life flashes before your eyes: from the moment you first shit yourself in the cradle to the time you nearly crapped your pants because of a cocked hammer.”

Milar took a drag and exhaled a cloud of acrid, pungent smoke.

“It’s bad, Ard, that we’ve lost the last witness from Baliero,” the captain said, leaning his head back against the wall. In his left hand, he held the cigarette, and in his right, his fur hat. “You, for instance, don’t know anything about the demon, apart from the fact that you were paid for your involvement. The Orcish Jackets worked through an intermediary who brought the job to Arkar. That same intermediary brought the job to the Dandy as well.”

“And they-”

“And the intermediary was chopped into pieces, stuffed into a barrel, and left on display near the main guard station,” Milar replied before Ardan could finish asking. “Bastards.”

Ardi stretched out his hand in front of him. It trembled slightly. He clenched and unclenched his fist. It didn’t help.

“All right, Ard,” Milar extended a hand to help him up. Ardan didn’t refuse. “Our team of eggheads will be here soon — they’ll take a look, maybe find something we missed. They’ll copy the seal, too. Meanwhile, we’ve got work to do.”

With that, Milar turned, took a step toward the neighboring door, and knocked on it nonchalantly. Holding his hat under one arm, he bit down on his cigarette and pulled out a small, elongated notebook with a stubby pencil attached to it by a string.

“One of the perks of working in the central districts, Magister,” Milar muttered to himself as footsteps approached from the other side of the door, slow and deliberate. “You can always find housewives here.”

The door opened, revealing a middle-aged woman. She wore slippers and a warm, woolen dress with wide skirts. In one hand, she held a cup of coffee, and in the other, a fashion magazine.

“Who are you?” She asked, her tone a mix of irritation and faint haughtiness.

“Captain Milar Pnev,” the Cloak said, displaying his badge. “First-Rank Investigator of the Second Chancery. With me is Mr. Ard Egobar, Star Mage and trainee of the Second Chancery.”

At those words, the woman’s smug demeanor vanished like smoke in the wind, taking, it seemed, a layer of her makeup along with it. Even under her blush, her cheeks paled considerably, and her gaze lost its sharpness.

“H-h-how c-c-can I h-h-help-” She stammered.

“Your neighbor,” Milar interrupted, nodding toward the slightly ajar door to Lisa’s apartment. “When did you last time see her, and under what circumstances?”

“About f-four days ago,” the woman replied after a brief pause. “L-Lisa came home late, as usual. It was a quarter past ten.”

“A quarter past ten?” Milar, not taking his eyes off the woman, was scribbling in his notebook. “How can you be so precise?”

“My husband works as a manager at a restaurant on Small Oboronny Street,” the woman explained, seeming to regain some of her composure. “He comes home at exactly ten every day, and I prepare dinner for him. That time, he was slightly late. He came ten minutes later than usual. While he was undressing, I saw Lisa. It was ten fifteen.”

“All right,” Milar nodded, flipping a page. “What can you tell me about your neighbor?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t quite understa-”

“Did she have visitors? Maybe there were some people regularly coming to see her? Did she make noise? Were there any situations that seemed suspicious to you?”

The woman raised her hands in a helpless gesture, almost spilling her coffee onto Milar’s boots.

“Oh, excuse me, I-”

“No harm done, Mrs…?”

“Maria Erity.”

“No harm done, Mrs. Erity,” Milar said in a bored tone, making another note. “Please, continue.”

“Well, there’s not much to tell, Investigator,” Maria said, her posture relaxing as she ceased to resemble a living doll. “Lisa’s been here for about… what, a year now? Maybe a little more.” She shrugged slightly. “She never caused any trouble. Didn’t make noise, didn’t bring men over. Occasionally, someone might’ve visited her, but that happened rarely. She herself sometimes wouldn’t appear for days. Like before the winter she disappeared for a week and a half. When she came back, she was limping and didn’t look too well. Honestly, I can’t tell you anything specific about her. We didn’t cross paths often. She would leave early in the morning and come back late. She never smelled of alcohol, just those awful-smelling cigarettes she smoked. And that’s about it. Did something happen? Did she go missing? Are you looking for her?”

“Thank you for your cooperation, Mrs. Erity,” Milar said, ignoring her questions. “Have a good day.”

The captain shut the door in Maria’s face, snapped his notebook closed, and headed toward the staircase.

“Let’s go, Ard.”

The young man didn’t move.

“What’s wrong?” Milar asked, pausing at the stairwell.

Ardan inhaled deeply through his nose, then wiped away the minty ointment from his upper lip in one sharp motion. The sickly-sweet stench of decay hit him again, causing a slight dizziness. This time, however, there were other notes in the mix, ones he hadn’t noticed before since they’d been masked by the ointment and the stench of death. It was the odor of swamp rot mingling with the scent of blooming lilies and nightshade flowers.

The scent of a Homeless One.

Ardan didn’t hesitate. He slammed his staff against the floor. The Ley coursed through his body, filled his hand, flowed into his staff, and surged through the building, disappearing deep into the earth. Beneath his feet, a glowing seal flared to life, while pale threads shot out from the tip of his staff, forming four sharp, elongated icicles that hovered over his shoulders.

It all happened in less than a second, but Milar didn’t need an explanation. The Cloak, drawing his revolver, aimed it at the door and fired two shots without hesitation.

The bullets whistled past Ardi and struck the wooden door, splintering it into sharp fragments. From within the apartment came a hiss, followed by the massive, serpentine tail of a creature as thick as a car and at least five meters long. It smashed through the door, sending it flying before it crashed into the wall above Milar’s head.

The captain, who was now buried under debris, tumbled backwards down the stairs.

Ardan, who had dodged to the side in time, stood firm before the now-exposed doorway. Inside the apartment, he saw a creature that belonged in a cage beside the Maw more than anywhere else.

The lower half of the creature’s body was a serpentine tail over a meter and a half in diameter and roughly five meters long. The upper half was a grotesque parody of a woman, with four sagging breasts, a fang-filled, hairless maw for a face, and skin like a toad’s. Behind her, the torn apart, chewed up, and partially-consumed bodies of the real Maria Erity and her husband lay sprawled out on the floor.

“Speaker,” hissed the Homeless One in the Fae tongue, her voice a venomous blend of malice and hunger. “I will devour your heart and drink your Ley!”

Coiling her tail, she braced herself against the ruined wall of the bedroom and launched forward like an arrow loosed from a bow. Her clawed, spindly fingers extended, and her tooth-filled maw yawned open as a forked tongue flicked out.

Ardan, acting decisively, banged his staff against the floor once more. Instead of retreating, he charged forward. By the time a shimmering protective veil had enveloped him, the youth was already standing in the doorway.

The creature collided with his shield. The impact spun her slightly to the side, and with a loud crash, she slammed into the wall, dislodging several bricks. Fortunately for him, Ardan now fully understood that the Universal Shield of the Stranger/Nicholas was a redirecting-type spell.

The Homeless One, shrieking and wailing, fell to the floor. Ardan, summoning his will, unleashed all the charges of his previous spell. The first icy spike struck the creature’s abdomen, pinning her to the ground. The remaining three pierced through her tail at its narrowest point, securing her in place.

The beast howled, thrashing as she tried to break free, but the enchanted ice held fast. Each convulsion only deepened her pain and tightened the grip of the frosty bindings. Emerald, glowing blood spurted rhythmically from her grotesque maw.

“By the Eternal Angels,” Milar muttered after climbing back up the stairs, scratched up but otherwise unharmed. He leveled his revolver at the creature’s face. “What in the hell is this thing, Ard?!”

“It’s what the Church calls a demon,” Ardan replied hoarsely, his breath coming in gasps. The exertion from all that spellcasting had left him feeling as though he’d spent an entire day running through the mountains of the Alcade. “But this one hasn’t fully formed yet. She hasn’t completely strayed from the Path of the Queens. She’s not quite a demon, but no longer a Homeless One, either. She’s something in between.”

“She’s a half-damned demon?” Milar grumbled, his grip on his revolver steady. “Path of who now?”

“I’ll explain later,” Ardan waved him off. He planted his staff against the creature’s throat and spoke with cold determination, “What are you doing here, Homeless One?”

The monster flailed, attempting to strike him with her clawed limbs. Two well-aimed shots from Milar’s revolver shattered her elbows, leaving her limp and defenseless.

Gurgling blood, the creature writhed and hissed in the Fae tongue, her words drenched in hatred. “You cannot stop the harvest, Speaker...”

A glowing seal ignited across her abdomen. Though Ardi only recognized a few of its intricate nodes, it was enough to alarm him. His eyes widened as he shouted incoherently. Pivoting, he rammed his shoulder into Milar’s midsection, hoisting the captain onto his back before sprinting down the stairs.

Ardan ignored the shots Milar fired toward the Wandering One as she tore herself apart to break free from the ice spikes. He kept running and leaped from the stairs, aiming for a window.

Just like at Baliero, he twisted mid-air. But this time, it was the fifth floor they dropped from.

They crashed onto the roof of a car below, the vehicle groaning under their combined weight. Ardi shoved the wheezing Milar off his chest and tumbled down to the ground as well, covering his head with his hands. Milar quickly followed suit.

A moment later, as the Homeless One half-emerged from the shattered window, an explosion thundered through the building. A sphere of fire bloomed like the petals of a morning flower, ripping the creature into a bloody rain of fleshy fragments and tearing a section of the wall away.

Chunks of masonry, green blood, and smoldering flesh rained down on Ardan and Milar. Thick, black smoke billowed from the fifth-floor windows, interspersed with bold, audacious tongues of flame. A fire alarm wailed in the distance.

Coughing, Milar staggered to his feet and clapped his hands over his ears a few times, as though trying to shake off the ringing. For Ardan, the deafening roar in his ears was relentless. On top of that, a searing pain was spreading across his back like molten fire.

The captain helped Ardi to his feet. The mage felt as though an entire herd of mustangs had just trampled him.

Together, they stood there, heads tilted back, staring at the rising flames and listening to the cries of panicked residents spilling onto the streets. Almost in unison, they began muttering curses under their breath.

“You have no idea, Magister, how much paperwork this is going to generate for us,” Milar groaned.

“Us?” Ardan echoed weakly.

“You didn’t think I’d be handling it all on my own, did you?” Milar snapped, knocking the dust off his hat before jamming it back onto his head at a crooked angle. “And as for any evidence? I guess we can kiss that goodbye. And your half-demon...” He kicked away some charred flesh that looked like a piece of her torso. “She’s not telling us anything now. She screamed herself to bits.”

“She was killed,” Ardi said, shaking his head and ignoring the captain’s odd joke.

“What?”

“That seal — the one that killed the Homeless One,” Ardan explained, his voice quieter as he replayed the scene in his mind. “It was a very clever setup. It worked on the principles of a stationary shield. It was placed there in advance, but only triggered when necessary.”

“I didn’t understand a damn thing you just said, Magister,” Milar muttered, the word “demon” clearly having left a bitter taste in his mouth.

“They did the same thing to her as they did to that warehouse,” Ardi clarified.

By now, the street had filled with too many people — residents fleeing the buildings and rubberneckers alike.

“Let’s go, Ard,” Milar said, brushing off bits of flesh and tugging Ardan toward the car. “This case is honestly beginning to smell, and it’s not flowers I’m detecting. By the Eternal Angels... What a brilliant way to start the new year this is.”

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