‘That can’t be helped. I am a Dark One after all. But I don’t happen to think it’s useful to lie without any reason.’
Zabulon stood up, and Anton also got to his feet.
‘Think, Anton. Think, Light One. And remember: your love and the lives of your friends depend on your decision. That’s the way it goes sometimes: in order to help your friends, first you have to help your enemy. Better get used to it.’
Zabulon walked rapidly out of the room, and then out of the apartment. That very instant the sentry sign started howling in the Twilight, and the mask of Chkhoen on the wall pulled a terrifying face. As Anton listlessly tidied up, he tried to gather his thoughts.
Should he believe Zabulon or not?
Should he be with Svetlana or not?
Should he call Gesar and tell him everything or should he keep quiet?
Every conflict, from a simple, crude brawl to high-level intrigues between states and the Watches, is a battle of information. Whoever has the more precise idea of his enemy’s strength and aims will win.
Zabulon’s aims and Anton’s could not be the same. That was absolutely impossible. But what if the head of the Day Watch had told Anton what he had precisely in order to make him reject the very idea of missing the Tribunal?
Where was the truth, and where was the lie? Zabulon’s words were a cage, but inside the cage there was a man-trap, and inside the man-trap there was a mousetrap, and inside the mousetrap there was poisoned bait … How many layers of falsehood had to be peeled away in order to expose the truth?
Anton took a coin out of his pocket. He tossed it in the air and caught it, then laughed and put it back in his pocket, without even looking to see if it had come up heads or tails.
That wasn’t the right way.
If one of the two choices was a trap, then he had to look for a third choice.
In order to get to the Tribunal at dawn, I either had to get up very early, or not go to bed at all. I chose the second option. I could catch up on my sleep later.
My Dark colleagues had grilled me stubbornly for a while, trying to establish my motives, but since I myself didn’t understand very much about why I behaved the way I did rather than some other way, they didn’t get much out of me.
Nothing really interesting happened until the evening; I went to the shop where they burned mini-discs for my stylish little player and asked if they kept the lists of tracks ordered by their customers. It turned out they did. And for some reason I chose to order a copy of the last disc they’d done for Anton Gorodetsky, the Light Magician. Maybe I was trying to get an idea of his view of the world from his choice of music. I don’t know … Just recently I’d got out of the habit of asking questions, because most of the time I didn’t get any answers. And correct answers were even rarer.
And there was one other thing that stuck in my memory that evening: someone I met in the metro. I was on my way back from the music shop. On the metro. Sitting there with my hands in the pockets of my jacket (my Dark colleagues had kindly brought my things back from the field HQ at the airport) and listening to the disc I’d just bought. I was in a good mood, feeling calm.
Suddenly there was a subtle change of some kind in my surroundings. The announcer was just warning the unfortunate passengers to be careful, because the doors were closing. I pressed ‘pause’ and raised my head, glancing around.
And I saw him. A teenage kid, fourteen or fifteen years old. There was no doubt that he was an Other. He must have been initiated, because he was staring at me in fascination through the Twilight and also shielding himself against it pretty skilfully. But his aura was absolutely pristine and clear. As pure as newly fallen snow, halfway between the Light and the Dark. He was an Other, but at the same time he wasn’t either Light or Dark.
We looked at each other for a long time, all the way to the next stop. Probably we would have carried on looking at each other for even longer, but a rather attractively built woman, obviously his mother, roused the kid from his trance.
‘Egor! Are you asleep? We’re getting off.’
The teenager started, looked at me one last time with obvious anguish in his eyes and stepped out onto the platform. I was left behind in the carriage.
It took me about a minute to gather my thoughts. I was still wondering what had struck me so much about this Other. He had reminded me of something. Something very important, but elusive – I just couldn’t think what it was.
Then I went back to Nikolsky and his ‘Mirror of the World’, and that calmed me a little:
Strange. This song would suit the Light Ones better. So why did I, a Dark One, feel that strange ache in my heart?
I carried this vague, uncertain feeling back to the Day Watch office with me. The elderly, worldly wise vampire at the entrance started away from me like a sanctimonious hypocrite from sudden temptation. Shocked, I suddenly realised that there were a few bluish-white streaks glowing in my own aura.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, putting my aura in order. ‘It’s a disguise.’
The vampire gave me a suspicious look: a female vampire stuck her head out of the duty office – she was almost certainly his wife.
They checked my seals very thoroughly and it looked as if they were going to stall me as long as they could, but at this point Edgar came into the office with a pretty young witch. He understood what was happening at a glance, and a single twitch of his eyebrow was enough for the over-vigilant couple on watch. Edgar nodded to me and walked towards the lifts. The witch was devouring me with her eyes.
In the lift she plucked up her courage and asked:
‘Are you new here?’
Her voice expressed an entire spectrum of emotions and aspirations that I felt no desire to analyse. Somehow I didn’t feel like demonstrating my own power in front of Edgar and the other powerful Dark Ones.
But Edgar’s attention had been caught, and I could see he was genuinely interested in how I would answer.
‘Well, in a certain sense I’m new.’
The young witch smiled.
‘Is it true that you defeated four Light warriors single-handed and killed the tiger-woman?’
Edgar curved his lips very slightly in a sarcastic smile, but he still said nothing, listening with interest.