If all else failed, there was the Inquisition. Something told Edgar that the grey-robed officials were unlikely to be pleased by the idea of a visit from the Dragon of the Twilight.
Festive Prague seemed to have disappeared, faded and receded into the distance. Edgar caught a taxi and rode to the hotel without once looking out of the window. He paid the driver automatically and walked into reception, giving the doorman a look that probably made him wish he could disappear through the granite slabs of the floor.
Edgar strode towards the lifts so rapidly that his unbuttoned raincoat almost fluttered behind him. He walked towards the room that his intuition as an Other told him was the one he was looking for.
Then he suddenly stopped as if he’d run into something and swallowed convulsively.
The Finns had just come out of the bar. The Regin Brothers. All four of them. Four, not three – the Chinese, the African and the Slav had been joined by an ethnic Finn, the one everybody had thought was dead.
But there he was, alive and well.
But of course – why would Gesar have wanted to kill a witness?
No doubt an artist is overwhelmed by a whole range of inexpressible feelings when he puts the final piece of glass in place in a mosaic. But what are you supposed to do when the glass pieces of the mosaic form the stark words of your own death sentence?
‘Brother!’ one of the Finns said triumphantly to Edgar. ‘We want to thank you and the Day Watch of Moscow for your support. Why don’t you join us? We’re celebrating the survival of our brother Pasi – everybody thought he was dead.’
The genuine Finn gave an embarrassed smile, his entire appearance showing how touched he was by his comrades’ concern.
‘Congratulations,’ Edgar said in a hollow voice, although there wasn’t really anything to congratulate them on – all four of them would be certain to die at Fáfnir’s resurrection.
‘Brother Dark One …’ Seeing Edgar’s hesitation, the magician stopped pressing him. ‘Do you happen to know the Light One who is also a defendant? Why did he call us four horses?’
His colleagues all began nodding indignantly.
‘Are we entitled to regard it as an unjustified insult?’ the leader of the Regin Brothers asked hopefully.
‘No,’ Edgar replied. ‘It’s worse than an insult, it’s the truth.’
And he sprinted for the lift.
CHAPTER 6
BY MIDDAY Anton had given up.
He and Igor hadn’t drunk any more vodka, despite its remarkable ability to stimulate the imagination. Coffee already made him feel sick. And he didn’t feel like drinking any of the wonderful Czech beer either.
Igor was standing at the window with a glass of Danone drinking yoghurt in his hand. He shook his head at Anton’s latest suggestion.
‘No, come on. What sort of dragon-slayer would I make? And I thought we’d abandoned the Fáfnir scenario?’
‘But what if it’s right after all?’
‘It makes no difference. It’s a battle of magic, not a duel with a fire-breathing dragon.’
Igor chuckled and added cynically: ‘And anyway, in a fight between Fáfnir the Dragon and a pair of modern battle helicopters, I’d put my money on the choppers. There’s no point in any more guessing, Anton. We won’t come up with anything.’
‘But even so, Igor, you’re the key.’
‘But what can we do about it? Nobody ever tells keys which doors they’re to open. Anton, I’m a perfectly ordinary Other. Only Zabulon knows what makes me significant. And Gesar probably knows too. He’ll come upstairs and join us in a moment, then we can ask him.’
Anton looked through the Twilight and said enviously:
‘Seriously? Is he already close? I can’t sense him.’
‘I can’t sense him either, I just saw them through the window, walking into the hotel.’
There was a gentle tap at the door. Just a token gesture of politeness, no more than that, and a moment later the visitors entered through the Twilight. Gesar, his silent shadow Alisher, and Svetlana. Svetlana was led through the Twilight by the magicians, and she only saw Anton when all three of them emerged from the Twilight into the human world. She smiled and gave a slightly guilty shrug, as if to say: ‘Just look what I’m like now.’ And once again Anton was overcome by a miserable feeling of guilt and tenderness, mixed with shame and anger at himself. Even though he’d had no other option but to let the Mirror take away all of Svetlana’s power. And the most important thing was that, as a result, Svetlana was still alive. But he couldn’t rid himself of the cursed feeling that the game had been lost.
Could Igor really have similar feelings when he remembered Alisa? Similar, but far more bitter?
In that case Anton could only be surprised and delighted that he was still alive.
‘Good afternoon, lads,’ Gesar said softly.
He was wearing a modest, inexpensive suit and plain tie. Looking like a run-of-the-mill businessman who bought his clothes from Marks & Spencer and always sent his employees modest presents at Christmas. In this case, of course, Gesar regarded himself as the very best present.
‘Hello, Boris Ignatievich,’ said Anton. He couldn’t bring himself to call this afternoon good. ‘Hello, Alisher.’
He and Sveta simply exchanged glances again; he took her by the hand and led her across to a chair. As if she were an invalid. It was awful.
‘Good afternoon, boss,’ Igor said calmly. ‘Good to see you. Hello, Sveta. Hi, Alisher.’
Gesar’s bodyguard Alisher (that is, of course, if it was really possible to regard a third-grade magician as a body guard for a Great Magician) – or, perhaps more accurately, his orderly, the son of a devona and a human woman – nodded to the magicians without speaking and moved into the corner of the room, where he froze with his arms crossed on his chest and partially withdrew into the Twilight. Anton sensed that Alisher’s ability to observe in the Twilight had been heightened artificially, clearly by the boss. And he also noticed that the young magician was trying not to look at Igor. That was another awkward complication – Alisher’s father had been killed by Alisa Donnikova. And even though he hadn’t been either a human being or an Other … it was hard to be precise about the status of a devona, a faithful helper of the Great Magicians. The devona himself did not perform any great feats of heroism, that was not his job. He merely served the heroes, removed minor obstacles from their path. And he strengthened family ties, facilitating the birth of great heroes.
Anton caught his breath.
As a rule, werewolves’ children inherited the ability to transform, while magicians’ children only became Others very rarely. But how did it work with devonas?
Who was Alisher, simply a magician or a devona like his father, who had been Gesar’s assistant in Central Asia for many centuries?
And what did the boss need the young Uzbeki magician for? Was it only for sentimental reasons that Gesar had taken him into the Moscow Watch and made him his retainer?
‘Anton!’
He looked at Svetlana and only then realised that he was squeezing her hand too hard.
‘Sorry.’
Gesar was standing in front of Igor, looking into his eyes. He looked for a long time without saying anything. Then he sighed and walked away to a chair, hunched over and looking limp. He sat down and lowered his face into his hands.
‘Boris Ignatievich,’ said Igor, ‘forgive me.’
‘No!’ Gesar barked, with his hands still over his face. ‘I won’t forgive you. So what if you fell in love with a witch? I won’t condemn you for that – that’s destiny. But you’ve given up on yourself – don’t expect any forgiveness for that.’