For example, a day when there would be more time before sunset, because overly self-confident dark magicians do not last long in Krauhard. And I needed to be sober, too...
I sighed, pondering how fast city life had weaned me from cautiousness, and started slowly making way back. A warm bed was already dancing before my eyes; if I sang Joe a story about poor me, tired from the trip to Krauhard, he would surely agree to give me a ride home in his carriage. A wheelbarrow would suit me fine as well... Having almost reached Uncle's home, I came across two strange guys, poking around some junk machinery under the awning. But the excess of food eaten and drink imbibed did not permit me to understand what they were doing and why their faces looked unfamiliar. A lot of people had gathered for the funeral—maybe these guys were the guests of some villagers? Muttering, "Excuse me, dudes," I passed them, but as soon as the strangers got behind me, something stung my side. What the hell...? My legs gave way, weak-willed corpse collapsed—not on the ground, but into the clutching hands of that duo. I was quickly pulled behind the garage.
"Well?" one of them asked tensely.
"Nothing," the other said, thoroughly searching my pockets.
"Damn! What was he looking for here?"
"F*ck knows. What should we do? Two corpses in the same place would be suspicious; we don't want cops' attention."
The first one thought for a moment. "Drop him into a gully," he made a decision. "They'll think he was drunk."
All my sensibilities howled in protest: the mountain's slope was cleaved through by the gully right behind Uncle's property, which was kind of a canyon in miniature, all in narrow cracks and wet boulders. If I fell into it, my bones would be broken, and people would find me by smell a few days later. Alas, despite the roaring power of my Source, my muscles were limp and motionless, and I wasn't able to concentrate on spellcasting. Another mess I got myself into!
Max came to my aid: it raised voice. The growling of the zombie-dog was as music to me. I do not know what those two had managed to descry, but in a moment only a quickly subsiding sound of footsteps reminded of their existence. I lay there, slowly grasping the horror of my situation. I couldn't send Max for help; anyone in Krauhard would immediately recognize the zombie in it. What the drunken bums were capable of doing with the dog, I was afraid to think of. My only option was to wait for the poison's action to end. I hoped I would be all right. Dark magicians are surprisingly overconfident! I mentally ordered Max to watch for the two strangers and prepared to wait.
Minutes dragged on slowly. It was getting dark, or maybe darkness was just growing in my eyes. I was running out of breath; all the power of my Source was not enough to drive away the nasty, pulling cold that was getting closer and closer to my heart. And then I realized that Uncle Gordon died exactly like that—alone on the cold rocks, knowing that his murder would be declared death from senile weakness. The two strangers were the cause of his death. To kill them! But while I lay here, they would be far away, and Max seemed not to hear me.
The cold escalated into a dull ache, and fear of suffocation started pestering me. How soon would they notice that I was missing? Joe, perhaps, decided that I had gone home on foot. It would take a while until they figured out that I wasn't there... Logic dictated that they would begin worrying only in the morning; a dark magician was more likely to survive at night than drunken rescuers.
I tried not to panic and think optimistically. To recall my job, focus on my plans for the future (I had so many of them!), focus on my eccentric family that couldn't manage without the help of the pragmatic dark mage. The rustle of blood in my ears lulled so sweetly... but I needed to stay awake. Stop! Since when did blood rustle?!
I made an incredible effort to turn my eyes, dried out from not blinking, and noticed that something flickered on the edge of the cleft, vaguely resembling a pile of foliage whipped by the wind.
It couldn't be worse.
Meeting a creature from the other world was the last thing that I needed now, precisely at this moment. Indeed, Rustle did not forget the heart it had heard. It came after me, but I was so young yet! On the other hand, to recall my life before dying wouldn't take much time; I didn't live long. First of all, I shouldn't show the creature my fear. If my illegal practice had taught me anything, it was the conventional wisdom that the undead learned about its adversary's power by how fearless the adversary was. Maybe it came after me to avenge its deceased comrades? What nonsense got into my head... I was not going to surrender without a fight, but my power, suppressed by the poison, would be enough for just a friendly slap. The monster would guzzle me, no question, and maybe choke as well. I would torture it with heartburn!
I needed to think about something cheerful. What was nice in my life? My motorcycle, short-term anonymous glory, my cute zombie-dog, Lyuchik who wanted to tell me something—all day long he had been bobbing around me. The two scoundrels searched for something, but what? Family honor required me to find and seize the treasure. By now every heartbeat in my chest caused sharp pain, my dried up eyes burned, and a string of pictures from the past day (so bright!) floated in my mind, mixing with episodes of the busy last year, events of the previous summer, recollections of the first meeting with Rustle.
I got scared only after realizing that I was staring at myself from outside, from the ruins, bottom-up.
Chapter 17
The auditors from the capitol did arrive, as Mr. Satal predicted, but Locomotive was not afraid of them. His office was like a storefront—transparent and shiny; it screamed, "Look, but don't touch." The rigorous auditors would see papers in ideal order, friendly clerks, guards in polished uniforms, and an almost complete absence of rank at the office: everyone was on an assigned task. NZAMIPS was snowed under with work!
Never before had so many operatives obtained vacations in early summer...
Locomotive did not deceive himself: had the auditors set a goal to get to him, they could have easily found or invented a case. Perhaps, that occasion wouldn't be serious enough for a full internal investigation; in the worst case, it would lead to a reprimand or a record of "incomplete conformity". Unpleasant, too, but he was used to that. No one could hang blame on him for the appearance of the banned potion on the market.
Judging by the displeasure with which the auditors examined the results of the police investigation, they were well aware of the situation. Yes, the case of dragon tears had already gone to court. Ms. Kevinahari had given the captain a tip, and the lab was quickly caught red-handed; however, the mastermind of that crime had fled and, by Locomotive's estimation, was already quietly killed somewhere. Such failures could not be pardoned. In the hands of NZAMIPS investigators there were two haywire white mages and a few small fries who distributed the poison under the guise of a stimulant. Without regret, Captain Baer addressed capitol authorities on the question of how the criminals had gotten the recipe for the most dangerous venom—it was outside his jurisdiction. The villain, declared wanted, had moved to Redstone from the East Coast just a year ago, so let the central office find out what he was doing here.
For the auditing period, Mr. Satal, the senior coordinator of the region, defiantly left the city; upon returning, he was astonishingly well-informed about everything that had happened.
"We got off easy," Mr. Satal briefly summarized the result. "Captain, I was told that they had a direct order to fire the higher-ups in Redstone's division but could not find anybody wishing to take your post. So do not consider it a success. The Dark Knight still hangs over our heads, and no empath can predict what he is capable of."
"It is unlikely that he will do anything crazy," the captain said thoughtfully. "He has a new source of income now. Why would he run the risk?"
The dark mage glanced at the captain indignantly, and Locomotive regretted that he hadn't put a protective suit on.
"Confess, you sleazebag, who is it?"
"Uh... a student, I think. I warn you, I have no evidence!"
"To hell with the evid
ence! Are you sure it's him?"
The captain shrugged: "He has a non-standard channel of power. He was involved in illegal practices. For three years he lived in a dormitory, paying fifty dollars per semester; now he rents an apartment. He wears suits that cost my monthly salary, each! He is originally from Krauhard. Earlier this year he bought a black motorcycle in the 'Plaza'. "
Locomotive did not mention the incident with the crystal, nor the fact that he had begun making inquiries only after he had seen a gentleman that the poor scruffy boy, ready to chase brownies for twenty crowns, had turned to.
"Hmm," Mr. Satal blissfully squinted his eyes. "Introduce him to me!"
"Why?" Locomotive became tense.
"I want to look him in the eyes," the senior coordinator fidgeted in his chair. "Don't you understand? He's a genius! A gold nugget. Forty-four episodes, with no insurance and not a single misfire. Ordinary mages are not capable of such things. Just Tangor the Second, you know!
"Tangor?" the captain stiffened.
"Yes! Tangor was a coordinator about twenty years ago; at the courses he drove our brains up the wall... He served here, too."
That was why the student's name seemed so familiar to him! Locomotive strained his memory: "Toder Tangor?"
"Exactly. How do you know?"
"We worked together. I was already a lieutenant then."
Captain Baer belatedly realized that he was almost twice as old as his boss, and questions of seniority for the dark were a sore topic. But the danger had passed.
Mr. Satal pointedly raised his finger: "He was also a genius!"
"Sorry that he ended badly."
"All because of his own people," the coordinator's face suddenly hardened. "But that will not happen to me!"
The captain politely stayed silent. Everyone has his own hang-ups! However, didn't Baer himself rave about conspiracy of the elite? They were from the same office, and long service in NZAMIPS used to affect brains of its employees.
"By the way, the student's name is Tangor. Do you think he is a relative?"
"All the Tangors are relatives, but it's unlikely that our student is a close one. That coordinator lived in Finkaun."
Locomotive breathed... and gasped: he did not have enough courage to tell the coordinator of the rewritten crystal.
"What?" Mr. Satal squinted suspiciously.
And people say that the dark mages cannot feel people!
"Aren't you surprised with all this?" Locomotive blurted the first thing that came into his mind. "I mean the repulsive behavior of the "cleaners", the ghouls, and dragon tears—all that in one place after ten years of quietness? Keep in mind, I had repeatedly reported about the doings of Grokk, but nobody reacted. As if nothing out of the ordinary was going on. F*ck with him, deceased! Nowadays our prison is overcrowded with dissidents. And what is interesting is that half of them are immigrants. They lived normally somewhere, and then about a year ago decided to move to Redstone. What was the reason? Some kind of festival? Maybe I missed the poster?"
The senior coordinator frowned thoughtfully and folded his palms as if making a house of cards.
"There is an opinion swirling around," he began cautiously, "that some of the events bear traces of premeditation."
Who would doubt that!
"Aliens?"
"No, our own people."
"What do they hope to accomplish?" the captain got interested.
Mr. Satal shrugged: "Power. Wealth. Satisfaction of their brutish instincts. What else can they get by fishing in troubled waters? I don’t know whether you follow politics," Locomotive chuckled knowingly, "but suggestions to 'improve' the social order of Ingernika come regularly."
"Can't we just bring these wiseacres to reason?"
"Unfortunately, the people who generate the ideas and the ones who implement them are not the same; so far we can't prove a connection between them. And an attempt to ban debate would have violated the principles of democracy. Our options are education and prevention of violence and destruction."
"Don't you think that letting them stay on the loose is kind of... dumb?"
"Risk is inevitable, but our society must prove its historical sustainability continuously, whether it wants to or not."
The dark spoke about the problem as if he were reading a piece of paper, quietly and impartially, perhaps exactly as he perceived it. Locomotive was an ordinary man, and he couldn't detach himself the same way. He thought about casual witnesses, innocent victims, children whose lives would be crippled by their fanatical parents. How many of the forty thousand inhabitants of fallen Nintark really wanted to participate in the large-scale magic experiment?
The coordinator noticed a shadow on the face of his subordinate and nodded: "There will be victims. But that's the distinguishing feature of our adversaries' regimes—attempts to avoid casualties at all costs. You already know the results that come of their actions. We are required to limit the death toll to the members of the risk groups."
Who would be in those groups? A few days ago Locomotive was visited by a relative, who promised to show her children the zoo during summer break. The cop's little niece (his second or third cousin from the side of his mother's sister's husband) told him with excitement that the Dark Knight came to their town in winter, ousted a ghost from the town hall, and gave the children a ride on his motorcycle two times around the church. The captain checked reports regarding the incident and realized that he could never have met that relative of his again. And the one to blame would be Grokk and, through him, indirectly, the people who carefully planned and organized chaos in Redstone county to achieve their filthy goals. Therefore, whatever the dark mage had said about historical necessity, Locomotive hoped to find the villains and render them harmless, even if his actions would be excessive.
God knows, it will strongly improve the social order.
Chapter 18
Lyuchik saved me.
Our novice white mage and his buddies snuck their way into the funeral feast to watch the boozers. Please don't think that Krauhardians often get dead drunk. He watched me going behind the garage, but did not see me come back. Despite the risk of being punished for lewdness, Lyuchik went to the elders and demanded to find me. When a group with charmed lamps (we take them everywhere in Krauhard) turned round the garage, Rustle disappeared without a trace. Thus, one brother saved another.
Then Joe gave me CPR and heart massage for forty minutes without a break until the headman's truck reached the county hospital. (Anyone who has tried giving CPR even once would understand Joe's heroism; I would have lasted for a maximum of fifteen minutes). I regained consciousness after two days in intensive care, and for the first five minutes I was convinced that I woke up in heaven: everything was white, luminous, and slightly hazy. I seemed to see angels even... Still not sure whether it was my imagination or something else.
Nobody was able to understand the depth of my problems there. I bent over backwards to convince the healers that I was healthy, but the attending doctor proved the opposite with perverse pleasure. And he called himself a white! By the end of the week I got sick to death of his saying "my friend". In part, he was right: for a couple of days my eyesight occasionally weakened and sharp pain pierced muscles on any attempt to get up; but eventually all these symptoms were gone.
"Do not argue with me, my friend," the doctor lisped good-naturedly, tapping me on the knee with his knocker. I was lucky that he didn't use needles! He laughed, "The injection you received would have killed an ordinary man on the spot, but dark mages are exceptionally strong bastards."
If the doctor said so, I had to believe him. As a result, he forbade me to cast spells at least for another two months; he even wrote a letter to the university to that end.
"Why are you in a hurry?" Chief Harlik asked when he came to interrogate me. "We called your boss, he reacted with understanding, and you are free until the beginning of the semester. I wish I had a boss like yours!"
Should I explain to t
he man that if I do not renew the revivifying spell, Max would bite half of Krauhard's residents? I did not want to teach cannibalism to my dog.
"So, what happened then?"
He listened attentively to my story and confirmed with a nod the suspicion that Uncle was poisoned, but did not share the progress of the investigation: "We will find those two. It's a pity that you did not descry them better. Do you know what they were looking for?"
"I have no idea. I thought Uncle had said something to you."
He pursed his lips.
"We'll return to that later. Two days before his death, Gordon had received a parcel, something small and light. Do you know from whom?" Perhaps he understood my answer by the expression on my face. "Okay, have a rest. Talk to you later."
And then I decided to ask a very important question: "How do people die from an attack of Rustle? I've wanted to ask for a long time."
He shrugged: "Hard to say—there used to be no witnesses. Typically, only bones and a puddle of brown foam remain on the spot."
At that moment I recalled the caretaker on King's Island. On the other hand, I doubted that he tore off his own jaw.
"How do you treat the victims?"
"We don't! Just wait until they will recover on their own. The victims show a positive reaction to the presence of the supernatural in their bodies for life. Rustle, you know, does not forget the ones that it has marked. I hope that was a rhetorical question?"
I raised my eyebrow: "A professional one. We had a lecture about it at the university."
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