“It was the circumstances. That’s what we gave way to,” said Edgar. The prospect of spending Christmas and seeing in the year 2000 in the ancient Gothic city of Prague had really fired his enthusiasm. Edgar loved the solemn city-it was the embodiment of the European spirit, a city where Dark Ones felt free and at ease.
“By the way. You’ll probably be flying on the same plane as those Regin Brothers. Take a moment to drop them a hint that the Moscow Day Watch has no intention of abandoning Dark Ones who have suffered on its territory.
Tell them not to panic or lose heart.”
“And are we really going to defend them?”
“Yes, we really are. You see, Edgar, I have a few plans that involve that absurd trio. For the time being I need this international alliance… So pay a bit of attention to them as well. The Light Ones will probably set a spy on their trail. Keep an eye on him too. Don’t let him interfere. Don’t get involved in any unnecessary conflict-just keep him at a distance, that’s all.”
“I understand, chief.”
“Take these,” said Zabulon, opening the safe beside the desk and handing Edgar two amulets and a charged wand. “I don’t expect you’ll need to use the Mist. But just in case… And you know where to recharge the wand.”
“At Kostnitsa? At that ossuary?” Edgar asked, reacting immediately.
Zabulon nodded.
“Darkness!” said Edgar, almost feeling envious of himself. “I haven’t been there for seventy years!”
“And you can purge yourself at the same time,” Zabulon advised him. “Do you know how?”
Edgar frowned. They might be friends, but after all, Zabulon was a magician beyond classification, and Edgar hadn’t even reached the first level yet, although he obviously had the potential for it. Edgar still had to carry on using his ordinary human name, but on the other hand, his surname had been completely forgotten by now.
“I’ve mastered the technique. In general terms.” It was obvious that Edgar didn’t like having to say that.
“Then you can practice it,” said Zabulon, closing the subject. “That’s all-now go and get ready. If you have any business outstanding, hand it over to someone else. Shagron or Belashevich.”
“I understand, chief. I will.”
“Good luck.”
Edgar left the chiefs office, then called into his own for a moment, composed a message for Shagron, and suspended it in the Twilight before he set out for home. On his way out he ran into Alita.
“Hi there, beautiful!”
“Hello, Edgar. How would you like to go to the skating rink?”
“I don’t have time.”
“Oh, come on,” said the young witch. “It’s almost New Year-what business could you have to deal with? The
Light Ones are more concerned with the quality of the champagne that’s being made than their usual mean tricks. Holidays are for having fun, not for working.”
“That’s debatable,” Edgar said with a sigh. “But anyway, I don’t have time. I’m going away.”
“Where to?”
“To Prague.”
“Ooh!” Alita said enviously. “For long?”
“I don’t know. A week or so…”
“The New Year in Prague!” Alita sighed. “And not just any New Year-the year 2000… Maybe I should go with you.”
“Go if you like.” Edgar didn’t try to dissuade her. “But not with me. I’m not going to have fun…”
He felt a little envious too: If the witch went to Prague, she’d be able to relax with a clear conscience. But Edgar had been on too many of these work trips to entertain any groundless illusions that they wouldn’t involve much work.
There was always plenty of work, and especially at holiday times, as bad luck would have it. And during the most important holidays (who would claim that a change in the first figure in the number of the year wasn’t an important event?) there was always more work than even the gloomiest prognosis suggested.
On his way home Edgar quickly reviewed the probabilities and established that the morning flight to Prague would be delayed until the evening and he would have to take an afternoon flight with a stopover in Prague. Of course, there weren’t any tickets in the ticket office, and he couldn’t really count on the special reserve either. But that didn’t bother Edgar too much-what could be simpler than the old trick with the double-booked ticket? And, of course, the “right” ticket would turn out to be the one bought by the Other. Even if he only bought it a minute before checkin.
Packing for a trip doesn’t take an Other long. Why bother taking things with you when it’s simpler to buy them on the way? His entire luggage consisted of the amulets, the wand, and a briefcase containing a solitary magazine and several wads of American currency. Of course, an Other can get everything that money can buy without spending a kopeck or a dime. But it’s not worth wasting the Power. And not all interventions are the same.
Manipulate a sales assistant’s mind for a piece of cake, and the Night Watch would nail you for an unsanctioned intervention. That would be just like them.
And apart from that, Edgar would simply have felt sorry for the sales assistant. The cake wouldn’t have bothered him, of course. What if he suddenly needed to steal a jeep from an automobile sales room? People were the Other’s foundation. Their feed base and substratum. They should be treated with consideration… And there was no need to worry about that kind of ideology sounding too much like the Light Ones’.
The Dark Ones could tell the difference between treating human beings with consideration and doting on them.
They could tell it very clearly.
Edgar used the night to catch up on his sleep, although it was harder than he expected to get to sleep at such an unusual time. Even as he was sinking into slumber, Edgar regretted that he hadn’t gone to the skating rink with Alita.
In the morning Edgar discovered that someone had put a lot of work into improving his natural magical shell, strengthening it and weaving in stiff, tightly connected reinforcing threads. Zabulon, of course, who else? It couldn’t be anyone else. Hm… thought Edgar. Could this mission really turn out to be complicated and dangerous? Or is Zabulon simply playing it safe?
Since clashes with the Light Ones had become more frequent, Zabulon had installed personal protection for a lot of the members of the Day Watch. Just where did he get all the energy to maintain so many shields?
There were probably only two Others in Moscow who knew the answer to that-Zabulon himself and his eternal opponent Gesar. And maybe the Inquisition. At least its top bosses.
Shagron offered to give Edgar a lift to the airport. It seemed like the newly repaired magician simply enjoyed driving his newly repaired BMW around Moscow when the city was in a holiday mood. The excuse he invented couldn’t have been any simpler or more convincing: a briefing on current business. Not that there was much business for Edgar to brief him on. The hysterical response of a thirteen-year-old girl who had discovered that she could enter the Twilight and accidentally looked at herself in a mirror while she was there. Win her confidence, talk some sense into her, support her… an assignment for a beginner. And then there was the gerontophilic succubus who was the laughing stock of half of Biruliovo.
This wasn’t even work. It was just a couple of trifling problems. Minor domestic turbulence.
Just as he was walking into the airport terminal, Edgar got a call from another magician high up in the Day Watch-the magician that his colleagues knew as Yury, although he could obviously have used a Twilight name quite openly. Shagron had one for his special services to the Watch, and Yury was significantly more powerful
and much older than Shagron.
“Hi, Edgar. On your way to Prague?”
“What of it?” Edgar asked, Odessa-style.
“Listen, and don’t interrupt. I know a thing or two about the chief’s plans. And why you’re being sent there. It’s not all as simple and clear-cut as it seems at first glance. There are several Light Ones leaving for Prague today and tomorrow, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Gesar himself goes there in a few days. There are a few little signs that indicate the Light Ones are setting up a large-scale operation. Of course, Zabulon is planning an appropriate response. So you just be careful. Especially while you’re traveling.”
Yury stopped, as if he were expecting a reply from Edgar, but Edgar didn’t say anything-he remembered he’d been told not to interrupt. He just reached into the Twilight, attempting to locate Zabulon-but he couldn’t find the slightest trace of the chief. He couldn’t tell where he was, what secret crannies he was lurking in, or what deep levels of the Twilight he was roaming through. The most powerful magicians had their own paths and their own motives, incomprehensible to those around them.
“You remember the chief sent Alisa Donnikova on vacation?” Yury went on. “Remember what happened to her. Of course, you want to know why I’m telling you all this. I’ll tell you right now. Because I’m a Dark One. And also because I’ve worked with you for quite a while already. Take it any way you like, but I’d prefer to see you as a live, healthy Other, and not just another shadow in the Twilight. See you, Edgar.”
Edgar stood there for a while, thoughtfully squeezing the cell phone in his hand. Then he put it back on his belt, picked up his briefcase, and set off for the ticket desks.
Darkness! the magician thought to himself. What was that? A warning of some kind? And obviously behind Zabulon’s back. And he brought up that business with Alisa…
Zabulon had simply sacrificed the witch Alisa. Coldly and without any unnecessary pity. Like a pawn in a game of chess. In the games played between the Watches it was absurd to develop any feelings for the faceless figures on the board… but Others know how to feel and love as well. Edgar felt genuinely sorry for Alisa, but he wouldn’t have lifted a finger to save her, not even if he had known everything in advance. Every game has its own inflexible rules, set once and for all. And nobody who has joined in a game can ever withdraw from it, or go against the rules. The witch Alisa had made her exit, and the witch Alita had made her entry. The law of conservation in action. In fact, Alita promised to be more likeable…
Working on autopilot, Edgar brainwashed the girl at the desk, still absorbed in his own thoughts. She gave him a little blue booklet with his ticket and canceled the ticket of some other unfortunate passenger. Unfortunately, he would just have to take a later flight, because in the world of people and Others, it was the latter who set the rules. Why did Yury feel the need to warn me? Edgar wondered as he stood at a bar counter with a glass of beer that was very expensive, but not very good. Surely not out of altruism? Nobody breaks the rules of the game that way.
He recalled in passing that when Zabulon left Moscow, he hadn’t left Yury or Nikolai as his deputy in charge, although they were the Day Watch’s most powerful Dark magicians after the chief. He had appointed Edgar, who was substantially less powerful than either of them. Yury had already been acknowledged as a magician beyond classification in the nineteenth century, and Nikolai just recently, after the war. Edgar still hadn’t even reached first level, and if he was honest, he hadn’t even mastered the second level completely. Sure, Edgar was a powerful magician. Sure, he was more powerful than most of the Others in Moscow, Dark or Light. But he still couldn’t match Yury and Nikolai.
Just why had Zabulon done that? Was Yury trying to take a bit of petty revenge? Out of simple envy? Trying to scare him or even (you could never tell!) simply having a joke at his upstart colleague’s expense?
The way Edgar had been brought in from Estonia had been hasty and illogical too. There he was, living a quiet life up in the small Baltic country, running its small, drowsy Day Watch, and then suddenly-slam bang! The urgent summons to Moscow, the mad scramble to get his successor in Tallinn up to scratch-who was a classical
“hot-headed Estonian boy,” barely even fourth level… Edgar ought to give him a call, by the way. And then what had happened in Moscow? Edgar had been thrown straight into the crucible of a hectic two-week operation, and then, not long after that, he’d taken part in a wild cavalry raid to rescue from the Light Ones a witch who’d been practicing without a license. And that was all. After that, there’d been more than three months of routine work until the middle of November, when he’d suddenly been appointed acting chief of the Day Watch while Zabulon was away, and then there’d been the Mirror’s visit and the Tribunal at Moscow University.
If he thought about it, it was quite possible that the old Day Watch magicians could try to teach this newcomer from the Baltic a lesson because he was making a career for himself too fast, but they could hardly believe he was actually conspiring to take over from the chief. Zabulon didn’t leave Moscow very often. And when Zabulon was there, Edgar was no more than just another operational agent. A powerful one, of course, an elite operative,
but he only had the same rights as the others.
By the time his glass was empty, Edgar had decided to stop guessing at the reasons behind it all. His best bet was to try to figure out a line of conduct that took account of… of everything. Even the very wildest possibilities.
All right. What was it that had finished off Alisa? She hadn’t gathered enough Power in time. She hadn’t recognized the Light Other, even though he was so close to her. She hadn’t refused a duel that she was certain to lose. And most important of all-she’d given way to her emotions. She’d tried to appeal to a Light One’s feelings.
Well, then, Edgar wasn’t short of Power, and Zabulon had even given him some of his own. His two amulets were a real treasure house of Power, especially the one charged with the Transylvanian Mist. If Edgar used that one, every Other in Europe would sense the monstrous discharge of energy. Plus the battle wand-a highly specialized weapon, but it was fast and reliable. Shahab’s Lash was nobody’s
i.e.
of a joke!
That meant Edgar had to keep as close an eye as possible on the Light Ones. Oh yes, about the Light Ones…
Just at that moment there were three of them in Sheremetievo. First, there was his old friend from previous operations, Anton Gorodetsky, who the lower-level Dark Ones had nicknamed “Zabulon’s favorite.” In that business with the Mirror he’d done just what Zabulon wanted for some reason, and helped the Dark Ones… Or had he just made everyone think he helped the Dark Ones? Probably that was it-otherwise how could he have stayed on in the Night Watch?