Matabar

Milar's old "Derks" roared and growled, racing along the streets and avenues of the New City. It was one of dozens — hundreds, really — of cars humming over thoroughfares so wide that, by comparison, they looked like water striders scuttling across the surface of a frozen river. A river of asphalt, where instead of reeds swaying in the wind, there was an endless forest of lampposts, traffic lights, and the occasional traffic officer responsible for the trickiest intersections. Gone were the lilies, replaced by the stark white glow of shop signs, store windows, bars, and cabarets.

And like tiny flies, a multitude of citizens swarmed about. Sidewalks — each as wide as the roads in the central districts — resounded with the clicking of heels and the rustle of coats, and every so often, a particularly playful gust of wind would send someone's hat soaring into the air.

Streetcars clanged from place to place, pausing only briefly at stops to let passengers climb into the wooden carriages haphazardly plated with green sheets of metal.

Sometimes, Ardi felt that when you left Old Town for the New City, you weren't merely going from one part of the capital to another — you were stepping into an entirely different dimension. Here, everything boiled and bubbled, and life itself seemed never to pause for breath. Sleep, if it came at all, seemed distant and unattainable for most.

Or perhaps it wasn't unattainable, but simply unnecessary.

Towering high-rises, massive and weighty, with their many entrances and countless rows of windows, stood side by side with skyscrapers — colossal pillars of concrete, glass and steel that stabbed upwards into the starless sky.

Ardi leaned his forehead against the car window, staring into that gray lid covering the Metropolis. Time after time, he tried to find the stars hidden amongst the enfolding clouds, hoping to spot a beacon that would guide him home.

Why?

He didn't truly know. Maybe he did this just so he could have the awareness of where his home really was.

And then, from the glass' reflection, a pair of sparkling green eyes gazed back at him; a strand of red hair brushed across his nose, carrying with it the scent of grass by a springtime stream; warm, slender fingers seemed to slip into his hands, and a wave of hot breath grazed his neck…

Tess.

Ardi couldn't explain why, but these days, every time he thought of home, the old ranger's house perched on the slope of the Alkade mountains always appeared alongside the familiar face of that jazz singer.

"What are you thinking about, partner?" Milar asked, turning off New Age Avenue (one of the main boulevards of the New City) toward a cluster of numbered streets.

Construction here happened so constantly and so rapidly that the authorities never had time to come up with proper names; they simply left the ordinal numbers as street designations.

"I'm thinking about what you said yesterday."

They stopped at a traffic light, waiting for the pedestrians to cross. They saw men in long woolen coats, wearing various kinds of felt hats, and carrying satchels or briefcases. The women were in coats as well — though theirs were far more colorful — and wearing hats decorated with feathers or bright patches of shimmering silk, and of course, tall boots that clicked against the pavement, sporting glossy heels.

Ardi didn't see a single mage among them. Living in the Central District, so close to the Grand University and most of the major Spell Market branches, one could forget how few Star Mages there really were in the world.

Across the entire Empire, there might not be more than three hundred thousand of them in total. That might sound significant at first, but not when compared to the overall population under the Empire's dominion…

People here lived their ordinary lives: they worked, raised children, loved, quarreled, made peace, dreamed… Why would they concern themselves with the Order of the Spider, the art of the Aean'Hane, the Firstborn, secret conspiracies, blood-soaked storms at the borders, or the angle of an ascending vector in a four-contour seal with a capacity of three Stars?

Did Ardi envy them?

Sometimes.

On the other hand, if he'd lived that same simple, mundane life — one filled with completely different worries — then he might've never ended up in "Bruce's Jazz Bar," where he'd met that petite, red-haired singer.

"Forgive me, Magister," Milar said, pressing the clutch and shifting gears. The "Derks" purred as it rolled through the intersection. "I was meddling in something that's none of my business… It's just that this whole situation with Alice has knocked me off balance."

"Have you known her long?"

Milar nodded. He took his left hand off the wheel, rummaged in a pocket, then pulled out a cigarette. For a moment, he merely looked at it, but he didn't light it. He simply slipped it between his lips.

"Alice ended up in the Second Chancery because of me, partner," he said gravely, his eyes flashing as sharply as a drawn blade. "She used to work in one of the City Guard offices in Baliero, just pushing papers. My squad and I were investigating a serial killer."

"A serial killer… how so?" Ardi asked.

"He killed people for his own twisted pleasure," Milar replied with a shrug. "Something wasn't right in his head. He'd hunt — sorry — he'd stalk young women. Always sixteen years old. Always brunettes. And only those shorter than one-sixty centimeters."

"That's a very… specific description."

Milar shrugged again. At last, he couldn't stand it anymore and he flicked his lighter, igniting the cigarette. As usual, Ardi began coughing and rolled the window down a bit, letting in the night air. It didn't help much; now the smell of tobacco was mingling with the sting of diesel fumes.

"He'd sneak up behind them, stick a syringe into their neck, and haul them off in a car. He always picked deserted, poorly-lit streets. It took us a while to catch him," Milar continued, his voice sinking deeper into remembrance, his gaze somehow both fixed intently on the road and wandering through the labyrinth of his own thoughts. "Eventually, the guards spooked him enough that he got sloppy. They recovered a syringe, and we came to the station thinking we'd just pick up the sample for our lab folks. But Alice had already figured everything out overnight. The solution, the components… including one particularly rare ingredient. I don't recall the exact name, but that hardly matters. You couldn't buy it over the counter or in any pharmacy — only hospitals could have it. That's how we caught the surgeon."

"He was a doctor?" Ardi blurted out.

Milar nodded again."Something had snapped in his mind," he repeated. "He and his wife had a young daughter who ran away from home the moment she got her papers. No one knew where she went. The mother worried herself into the grave. The father — this doctor — apparently started taking his rage out on girls who looked like his daughter. Can you imagine? Again and again, he was killing his own child, at least in his mind."

"Because of his wife?"

"Probably. But that's beside the point," Milar said, turning sharply at the next intersection. They emerged onto another massive avenue featuring six lanes of traffic. Ardi didn't catch the name of this particular street. "Anyway, I needed a dedicated 'brainiac' on my team. Every time we needed some sort of analysis from the lab, we had to wait in line — funding's always getting slashed… So I talked with the Colonel, and he allocated a small bit of the budget to expand my department. Alice was ex-military. She made bombs for them."

"Bombs…" Ardi echoed, then fell silent.

"So she passed all the checks real quick," Milar continued, not noticing Ardi's interjection. "I promised her interesting cases and her own lab. That was enough. She signed on with us."

They both fell silent again. The silence almost lasted until the end of their drive.

Ardi brooded over everything that had happened. The temple had been bombed; someone had tried to blow up the "Heron" as well. And last year, in order to pull the City Guard and the Cloaks away from Baliero, a boarding house for the poor had been destroyed. It had been one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in decades, with a staggering death toll.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

And Alice had once made bombs.

No, Ardi was almost certain that Alice had had nothing to do with any of these explosions.

He was almost certain.

And in those Chancery dungeons beneath the Black House, that "almost" would earn her hours, days — maybe weeks or even months — of interrogation.

Was it just a coincidence?

Ardi had encountered too many "coincidences" in his life to trust them anymore. It felt as if the Spiders had chosen Alice on purpose, not just to learn something from her, but for some added reason as well. The bombings would incriminate her directly, placing her at the mercy of those inquisitors and throwing Captain Pnev — who would feel responsible for his subordinate — completely out of kilter.

A complex system of equations. Or a web of some sorts…

"Meanwhile," Ardi recalled what he'd overheard, "let's focus on the other pieces on the board. How are our plans for…"

Suddenly, maggots started squirming in his imagination, crawling over a corpse rotting in a swampy mire that was releasing the sweet, cloying smell of decay.

That was what the Homeless Fae who'd been hiding in the Palace of the Kings of the Past had said. Another coincidence?

Ardi had no evidence linking that Fae to the Spiders, other than his monstrous appearance and the fact that other Fae were also involved in this case. But neither did he have any facts to refute that theory.

All he could do was keep his eyes on the road and quietly watch the proud skyscrapers and high-rises slide past.

"Are you sure ghosts don't exist?" Milar broke the silence.

"I'm sure," Ardi replied firmly.

Milar stubbed out his cigarette and, opening the ashtray compartment, dropped it inside. It was so full of old cigarette butts that the lid barely closed, but with a forceful push, it finally snapped shut.

"What about Baliero? I remember what you told me about that house on Fifth Street," he pressed on.

"If you're talking about the ghost of Milomir, that was a very elaborate illusion," Ardi explained, waving a hand dismissively. "Elaborate in terms of Star Magic, I mean."

"What about the Oan-"

"Aean'Hane," Ardi corrected him without thinking.

"Yes, them," Milar said, jerking the steering wheel to swerve away from a potential collision — someone had been daydreaming at the wheel, distracted by a fancy boutique window display. "For the Aean'Hane, that might not be so difficult."

"For the Dark Ones, sure."

"And what do you mean by 'the Dark Ones,' exactly?"

Ardi recalled the forbidden book in Atta'nha's library and shuddered."They are those who speak the Dark Names. Normally, if the Aean'Hane follow the proper path, they draw on the power of… well, in human language, we'd call it nature — the elements of nature and creation."

"And in the Fae tongue?"

Ardi paused to mull it over.

"I couldn't possibly explain it to you."

"Why not?"

"Can you look at a tree and see the far side of its trunk at the same time?"

Milar frowned."That's impossible, partner."

Ardi smiled faintly. Once, as a boy, he had given that very same response to Skusty the squirrel on a mountainside clearing.

"That's exactly why I can't explain it," he said.

Milar muttered something unintelligible — most likely a curse. He wasn't angry at Ardi, though, just at the situation.

"So the Dark Ones call upon what exactly? Darkness itself?" He pressed.

"Not as such."

"Partner! By the Eternal Angels, quit stalling like a maiden on her wedding night! It's too late. We're already in the same bed here."

Ardi sighed and ran his fingers along his staff. He still hadn't etched a single seal into it. He kept worrying he'd make some trivial mistake and waste the precious space on something unimportant — something he could remember on his own.

"Figuratively speaking, of course," Milar added, falling silent again.

Alice's arrest had truly rocked Milar to his core. Although he was as tough as anyone in the Second Chancery, he usually wasn't this shy about joking around.

"They call upon souls," Ardi finally said.

Milar whipped his head toward Ardi so sharply that they almost caused an accident themselves. Thankfully, a driver in the adjacent lane leaned on their horn, and the captain jerked the wheel just in time.

"And what's so dark about that, partner?"

Ardi remembered Atta'nha's words. He could never explain it better than the wise she-wolf had.

"Because nature simply is, Milar," Ardi said, closing his eyes as he recalled wandering the forests and mountain slopes of the Alkade with the ancient wolf, conversing with the gusts of wind and blades of grass, with the sunlight and the shimmer of lake water. "The rain simply is. The wind, storms — these things just happen. Even a drought, a forest fire, or the fiercest gale you can picture happens because it happens. But a soul…" Ardi remembered Atta'nha asking him why he had saved the bear cubs from that mountain troll, whose hunt he had disrupted. "Regardless of its good intentions, a soul acts due to the heart's will. And the heart is like grass in the wind — fickle. Darkness can seep in. And the darkness of a soul is powerful. The darkness of a soul can destroy what nature itself never could."

"You sound like a poet, partner," Milar said, glancing sidelong at Ardi. "Or a lunatic."

"I'm just translating the wolf's words."

"The wolf's words," Milar repeated this phrase the same way Ardi had repeated "bombs" a moment earlier.

Ardi himself had once turned to his soul for power. It had happened after that elven Aean'Hane had burned the Imperial Bank to the ground. Ardi had heard Names he should never have heard, and he'd used them. Even if it was only the faintest scrap of their power, he had still used it, leaving a mark on himself — an imprint that would someday remind him of its presence.

"But that still doesn't explain why you're so sure ghosts don't exist, Magister."

"A soul, or one's consciousness, or the residual pulse of Ley energy that a living body accumulates — call it what you like, Milar — returns to where it's supposed to go after the death of the physical vessel."

"And where's that?"

Ardi offered him another shrug. "Ask me something easier."

"All right, let's say I believe you. But what about vampires? And other undead, like zombies, wights, liches, and so on?"

"The majority of those creatures, including your 'so on,' don't even reside in the Dead Lands, or at least no one has proven they do yet." Ardi answered. "A huge portion are myths or superstitions spawned by horrors conjured up during the war between Ectassus and Gales."

"Even so-"

"Even so," Ardi cut in, "a body without a soul can exist, but a soul without a body cannot."

Milar muttered another indistinct curse.

"So you're one hundred percent sure ghosts don't exist?" He asked again.

When Milar grew this insistent, it made Ardi uneasy.

"When it comes to magic — Star Magic or the Aean'Hane art — you can never be one hundred percent sure of anything," Ardi said cautiously. "Why are you being so stubborn about-"

"I'm not being stubborn," Milar interrupted him. The car started slowing down. They were nearly at their destination, and Ardi was starting to guess the reason for Milar's line of questioning. "It's just that, unlike you, partner, I bothered to check the address the Ragman gave us."

They came to a halt in the middle of an expensive district, where the skyscrapers were less soulless and monolithic and were instead adorned with elaborate architectural details, bas-reliefs, and colonnades of angels, gargoyles, and mythical beasts. There were miniature caryatids in place of window frames, and grand arcades marked the imposing, arched entrances to these giants that clawed at the sky.

Yet even among all this magnificence — an inspired blend of old-world charm and modern lines — one structure stood out.

It looked almost like a pair of conjoined trees, with two towers standing united up to the seventh floor, then splitting apart and soaring the remaining eighteen floors in proud independence. The right tower, topped by a conventional spire reminiscent of the previous century, wasn't especially remarkable. But the left tower…

The left tower, the one facing the street where Milar had parked, looked like it had wandered off the pages of some mad architect's workbook. How else could you explain the fact that, after the twenty-fifth floor — where a roof should've been — there was an entire castle?

Not a true pre-Imperial castle, of course, but a carefully fashioned imitation. Even so, Ardi had no trouble picking out the four turrets standing at each corner of the "castle walls," which had, in reality, been replaced by gigantic glass windows capped not with battlements, but with ornamental brackets. There were no arrow slits for archers and crossbowmen here, only vantage windows and decorative stained glass. Instead of cannons bristling from the ramparts, there were sculptures of angels and, surprisingly, demons — grotesque fiends that were forever being slain by the swords and spears of the Face of Light's servants. And in the center loomed a tall tower, spanning several floors and crowned by a cornice shaped like an upturned skirt, dotted with windows, balconies, and an observation deck just below a lofty spire.

"The Castle Tower," Ardi whispered, his words laced with resignation. "This is the Castle Tower."

"That's the one," Milar confirmed. "Now tell me again — are you absolutely sure ghosts aren't real? Because we're about to waltz into a castle. A damn castle. And you know what's in old pre-Imperial castles, right? A hell of a lot of ghosts. And other nasties."

"Superstitions," Ardi declared, though his tone was not entirely convincing. "Besides, it's not actually old. They only built it a few years ago."

"Sure… but who knows what these wealthy folks might've been up to in fifteen years?"

Castle Tower was famous throughout the Metropolis, owned in its entirety by Baron Tarik Le'mriti, one of the biggest coal mine tycoons on the eastern seaboard. Originally from a family of ordinary miners, he'd made his fortune off the steam boiler boom, patenting one of those used for heating homes. He'd received his noble title after sending his daughter to the Grand University's General Faculty and then marrying her off to an elderly, retired officer — one with an inherited title, naturally. And of course, the old man had died of old age a couple of years later.

According to the newspapers in Duchess Anorsky's library, Le'mriti adored anything ancient, especially if it was from the Era of the Empire's Founding. And so, he'd had his high-rise built in such a way that he could perch his own personal "castle" on the roof, where he lived with his family.

"Did you bring everything I asked for from the supply department?" Ardi asked, not taking his eyes off the building's "crown."

"There's a valise in the trunk," Milar replied, also staring up at the tower. "I almost had to sign away my soul — or whatever it was you called it — to old Dagdag to get it. If you break anything, you'll have to deal with him yourself."

In the distance, a long, jagged flash of lightning lit the sky, followed by a peal of thunder that rippled through the low-hanging clouds.

"I hope you're really sure about this," Milar murmured, swallowing hard.

Sleeping Spirits… Ardi would've loved to be sure of it…

"Let's go," he said, opening the door and stepping out into the first tapping droplets of rain.

The Week of Storms was still going strong, but at least this time, Ardi felt somewhat prepared. Baliero and Selena Lorlov had taught him a great deal.

That was what he believed, at least…