Edgar chewed on his lip. Now it looked as if he’d given the Light One an idea, passed on some information to him or simply pointed him in the right direction. That was bad. But then, why was it? He wouldn’t mind being able to understand the situation better himself. It was a matter of vital importance to him too. Edgar mused out loud:
‘Maybe someone wanted the Inquisition office moved out of Berne?’
‘Or decided it ought to be moved to Prague.’
They gazed at each other thoughtfully – a Light Magician and a Dark Magician, both equally interested in understanding what was going on. The waiter was about to approach them, but he saw they hadn’t finished their beer yet and went to serve the Americans.
‘That’s one possibility,’ Edgar agreed. ‘But we didn’t need the actual operation with the Talon. Don’t even think of blaming us for that kind of nonsense.’
‘But maybe,’ Anton exclaimed, ‘you needed to ruin some other operation, one of our operations. And Fáfnir’s Talon was a very good way to do that?’
Edgar cursed himself for being so talkative. Only in the figurative sense, of course. No Dark Magician would ever set an Inferno vortex spinning above his own head.
‘Nonsense, what other operation …?’ he began. And then he suddenly realised that by starting to defend the Night Watch so unexpectedly, he had effectively confirmed Anton’s guess.
‘Thank you, Other,’ the Light One said with sincere feeling.
Still mentally lashing himself, Edgar stood up. It was true what they said: before you sit down with a Light One, cut out your tongue and wire your mouth shut.
‘It’s time I was going,’ he said. ‘I really enjoyed … our little talk.’
‘Me too,’ Anton agreed. And he even held out his hand.
It would have been stupid to refuse, so Edgar shook it. Then he tossed a five-hundred-crown note onto the table and hurried out.
Anton smiled as he watched him go. It was amusing to give a Dark Magician a fright, especially one of the Day Watch’s elite. The fat Watchman obviously thought he’d given away some terrible secret, but he hadn’t given anything away; the explanation Anton had suggested was stupid, and even if it happened by chance to be the right one, Anton still hadn’t learnt anything worth knowing.
He squinted at the waiter and gestured, as if writing on his palm with his finger. A minute later he was handed the bill.
Including the usual tip it came to one thousand and twenty crowns.
Oh, those Dark Ones …
It was only a trifle, but Edgar had still saved money. After all those jibes about the poor Night Watch and that invisible counting on fingers.
Anton paid, stood up (the beer had had an effect after all – his body felt relaxed in a way that was pleasant and alarming at the same time) and walked out of the Black Eagle. Towards Staromestské Square, where he had an appointment with a representative of the Inquisition. He was only just in time.
There are always a lot of tourists here.
Especially on the hour, when the old astronomical clock begins to chime. The little double windows opened and little figures of the apostles appeared in them, moving out as if they were surveying the square, and then retreating into the depths of the mechanism again. The indefatigable Staromestské Square clock.
Anton stood among the tourists with his hands in his pockets – they were feeling cold after all, and he’d never liked wearing gloves. All around him video cameras hummed quietly, camera shutters clicked and the multilingual crowd exchanged impressions of their visit to the latest obligatory attraction. He even thought he could hear their brains squeaking as they ticked off one more site on the tourist map of Prague: ‘Watch the clock chime – done’.
Why was he walking along in this faceless crowd, as if he was also ticking off the points of a tourist itinerary in his mind?
Mental inertia? Laziness? Or an incurable herd instinct? Dark Ones probably never wandered around in the common crowd.
‘No, I don’t understand you,’ someone in the crowd said in Russian, a couple of steps away from him. ‘I’m on holiday, do you hear? Can’t you decide for yourself?’
Anton squinted quickly at his fellow-countryman, but the sight wasn’t a pleasant one. His compatriot was sturdily built, with broad shoulders and generously hung with gold. He’d already learned how to wear expensive suits, but not how to knot a Hermès tie. The tie was knotted, of course, but with a ‘collective farm’ knot that was awful to look at. A crumpled scarf dangled from beneath an unbuttoned coat of maroon cashmere wool.
The New Russian caught his glance and frowned as he put away his mobile. He turned to gaze at the clock again. Anton looked away.
The third generation, that was what the analysts said. You had to wait until the third generation. The grandson of this bandit who had got rich and somehow managed to stay alive would be a thoroughly decent man. You just had to wait. And unlike people, Others could afford to wait for generations. Their work went on for centuries … at least the work of the Light Ones did.
It was easy for the Dark Ones to make the changes they wanted to people’s minds. The path of Darkness was always shorter than the path of Light. Shorter, easier, more fun.
‘Anton Gorodetsky,’ someone said from behind him. Someone speaking a language that was obviously not his own, but which he knew perfectly.
And with that intonation that was quite impossible to confuse with anybody else’s. The aloof, slightly bored intonation of the Inquisitors.
Anton turned round, nodded and held out his hand.
The Inquisitor looked like a Czech. A tall man of indetermin ate age in a warm, grey raincoat, a woollen beret with a decorative pin in an amusing design of hunting horns, weapons and a deer’s head. Somehow it was very easy to imagine him in a twilit park in autumn: strolling over a thick carpet of brown leaves thoughtfully, sadly, slowly – looking like a spy engrossed in his thoughts.
‘Witiezslav,’ said the Inquisitor. ‘Witiezslav Grubin, let’s go.’
They made their way out of the crowd easily – for some reason the people moved aside for the Inquisitor, even though he didn’t make use of his powers as an Other. They set off along a narrow little street, gradually moving further and further away from the idle tourists.
‘How was your flight, Anton?’ Witiezslav inquired. ‘Have you had a rest, some lunch?’
‘Yes, thank you, everything’s fine.’
A show of politeness from an Inquisitor, even if it was strictly formal, was a pleasant surprise.
‘Do you require any assistance from the Office?’
Anton shook his head, quite certain that Witiezslav would sense the movement, even though he was walking in front.
‘That’s good,’ the Inquisitor replied in the same indifferent voice, but quite sincerely. ‘There’s so much work to do. The Office coming to Prague is a great event for us. We feel very proud. But our department is very small and there’s a lot of work.’
‘I understand that the Inquisition hasn’t had to intervene very often in Prague.’
‘Indeed. The Watches here are law-abiding. They don’t violate the Treaty very often.’
‘Indeed,’ thought Anton. The Inquisition’s job had always been to resolve disagreements between the Watches, but crimes committed by individual Others were dealt with by the Watches themselves. The atmosphere of a normal European country was hardly likely to have a pacifying effect on the Dark Ones. But within the framework of an organisation they’d learned to respect the law.