Book II. Сhapter 126. Just a moment

Inside, The Flattened Horseshoe was exactly as Ardan had imagined it a moment earlier. Exactly like its many, many counterparts scattered across the country.

A long bar of age-darkened oak stretched along the left wall. Behind it, amid shelves crowded with bottles of every shape, each wearing its own coat of dust, a cloudy mirror languished, a crack splitting the room’s reflection in half. Round, heavy tables, scarred by deep scratches and stains from spilled beer, stood in no discernible order, as though a man who cared more about what was in the glasses than the geometry of the room had arranged them. Arkar would have booted a worker like that out the door and probably all the way to the nearest hospital.

Sawdust covered the floor, soaking up the grime tracked in on the patrons’ boots. In one corner, on a small raised platform, stood a piano with its lid broken off. No one had played it in a long time.

There were quite a few patrons, considering the hour. Fifteen or so men, scattered among the tables in groups of two or three. Like the men Ardan had seen in the street, every one of them carried a revolver on his belt. They watched the newcomers with a peculiar sort of lazy attention, the kind anyone who didn’t know better could easily mistake for indifference.

In truth, they were sizing up the strangers. A few pairs of eyes lingered longer than usual on the Senior Magister’s Yellow cloak and Ard’s Blue cloak, but then the cowboys, like all the others, turned away and went back to what they were doing. In the frontier territories, mages, even those of the Red Star, enjoyed the silent respect accorded to anyone capable of turning your table, glass and all, into a heap of smoking embers.

Still “melting” on Nalensky’s arm, Taisia looked around with the air of a guest from the capital visiting the provinces for the first time. She immediately pressed a handkerchief to her nose with a charming little grimace.

“How... colorful,” she said in a tone that could just as easily have conveyed admiration, distaste, or anything in between.

The Senior Magister led her to a table in the far corner, the one beside a window whose pane a spider had claimed. A dusty shaft of light pierced the whitish mesh of cobweb filling the pane’s upper corner. Chaz gallantly pulled out a chair for Taisia. She returned his courtesy with an equally courtly nod, sat down, and smoothed her skirt. Nalensky took the seat opposite her. Naturally, no one pulled out a chair for Ardan, nor did anyone intend to. He settled at the end of the table and leaned his staff against the wall.

The Senior Magister snapped his fingers and pointed at a young waitress passing by: a short girl of about seventeen, with two light-brown braids and freckles scattered across her sunburned nose. She carried a tray of empty mugs.

“Miss!” Nalensky barked so loudly that she flinched and nearly dropped her tray. “Over here, if you’d be so kind, assuming, of course, that those lovely little legs of yours can carry you this far any time in the foreseeable future.”

She flushed from her chin to the roots of her hair and came over to the table, pressing the tray to her chest like a knight’s shield.

“What may I bring you, gentlemen?” Her voice was quiet and trembled slightly. She tried not to look at Ard’s “face,” though no one wanted to look at it for long.

“What do you have in the way of wine, my dear?” Nalensky leaned back in his chair and looked her over from head to toe, as though appraising a horse at a fair. “And please, I beg you, don’t tell me you have nothing but home brew and beer. Otherwise I’ll burst into tears right here, and I’d rather not upset my companion with the sight of a graying man in tears.”

“We have wine, sir.” She raised her chin slightly, and something like hurt flickered in her eyes. “Red, from the southern vineyards of the Azure Province, last year’s vintage.”

“Last year’s Azure?” Nalensky affected a pained look on his plump, ruddy face. “Well then, I suppose beggars can’t be choosers, and with a beauty like you serving it, even vinegar will pass for Lintelar demi-sec. Bring a bottle and three... no, two glasses. Captain Skofsky, I expect, can make do with a mug; he can’t tell Forian plain from dishwater anyway.”

Nalensky let loose a ringing guffaw at his own joke. Taisia laughed along with him, displaying a performer’s flawless polish and stirring both admiration and nausea in Ard. The waitress nodded and left, and Ard saw her shoulder blades tense beneath her apron.

He had already counted to twelve in his head.

At the next table, two men (both in leather vests, with faces that made Ardan prefer not to know them any better) exchanged brief, sour glances, then went back to staring into their mugs. The tension in the room thickened, mingling with the tobacco smoke and the smell of spilled beer. He saw several pairs of eyes narrow slightly with every remark Nalensky made, and several hands resting on the tables shift almost imperceptibly closer to their belts.

But no one moved. The Blue and Yellow cloaks were handling the tricky job of keeping the wildest hotheads cool. You could hate the capital’s dandies all you liked and despise their manners, but no one wanted to take a Star seal to the chest. So the cowboys drank their strong beer and kept quiet, while the Senior Magister continued to sparkle with his inimitable wit.

The waitress returned with a bottle and glasses, and Nalensky poured the wine with a theatrical flourish, sniffed it, grimaced, and drank it anyway. Taisia sipped from her own glass, set it on the table, and leaned toward the Senior Magister, looking like a little girl about to hear the most interesting fairy tale in the world.

“Tell me, dear Chaz.” She ran a finger along the rim of her glass, making the glass moan softly. “This expedition of ours isn’t just about compiling a catalog, is it?”

Nalensky raised his eyebrows. He did it slowly, with such a deliberate show of gravity that one might have thought he’d been asked for information vital to the welfare of the entire Empire.

“What do you mean, dear Taisia?”

“Eighty-seven people, six mages, twelve railcars, equipment.” Taisia ticked them off on her fingers, which were adorned with thin rings. “This isn’t just a stroll through the woods with a notebook and a pencil, is it? By my modest calculations, the Guild has put at least twenty thousand exes into this expedition, not counting the hunters’ wages. And as your accountants know, those don’t exactly come cheap.”

Nalensky sipped his wine, leaned back in his chair, and clasped his hands behind his head, looking like a man about to say something momentous.

“As always, there’s no denying your perceptiveness, dear Taisia,” he said in the tone one usually reserves for praising a clever dog. “You see, cataloging is, of course, part of our work, and a very important part, let me tell you. But the expedition’s true purpose...” He lowered his voice and leaned forward a little. “That is somewhat more ambitious.”

Taisia leaned forward too, until the space between their faces narrowed to half a meter. From his seat off to one side, Ard saw a veil of foolish delight settle over her clever, predatory eyes.

Sleeping Spirits! Ard and Tess had been to the movies only twice, counting their visit to Delpas, but if Taisia Shpritz hadn’t become a journalist, she’d have had a spectacular career both onstage and on film!

“Tell me, Chaz, I’m so curious,” she said in a soft, coaxing whisper, so convincingly that even Ard believed she was sincere for a moment.

Nalensky blossomed.

“Winged-Horned Horses,” he said as though revealing a secret of national importance, yet loudly enough for half the saloon to hear. “We’re looking for traces of some of the last winged unicorns, Taisia.”

Ard held the mug of tea he’d ordered from the waitress when she returned. He frowned slightly, but did his best not to let his interest show.

“Winged unicorns?” Taisia affected surprise so flawlessly that even her eyebrows rose to exactly the right height, an elusive ideal that would arouse no suspicion. “I thought they’d died out before the Empire was even founded. Isn’t that right? I mean they are extinct.”

“‘Extinct’ is a strong word, dear Taisia.” Nalensky shook his head with the look of a professor explaining to a freshman the difference between mold and a Ley-generator’s combustion chamber. “The last confirmed sightings date back to the era of the First Principalities. But the Northern Park is a region where conditions remain close to those of that distant age. Low temperatures. Isolation. Minimal human presence. If there’s anywhere a small population could have survived, it would be there, among the evergreen forests no sane hunter would willingly venture into.”

“But why?” Taisia tilted her head slightly to one side, like a bird studying something shiny. “Why would the Hunters’ Guild spend so much money on a few horses, magical though they may be? Isn’t that more the chimerologists’ line of work?”

Phrasing like that was almost enough to make Ardan suspect Taisia herself of collaborating with the Puppeteers.

Nalensky, meanwhile, laughed. His laughter was loud and rolling, full of the condescending amusement that betrayed the same need to feel superior that had plagued Lord Aversky, may the Eternal Angels receive him. Senior Magister Nalensky fancied himself not only the funniest person in the room but the smartest as well. Naturally, he stood ready to share his wisdom and knowledge for the modest fee of universal adoration.

“The Winged-and-Horned aren’t ‘just horses,’ my dear Taisia.” He raised one finger and jabbed it into the air for emphasis. “They are Anomalies of the rarest class. The only creatures on the planet whose Ley-structure resonates perfectly with the echo... with the Paarlax Field. It was thanks to them that the high elves held sway in the early days of history, long before the Kingdom of Ectassus arose. The legends say a single such horse could amplify its rider’s magical abilities severalfold, allowing the rider to cast spells that would simply have been impossible without it. These days, though, most researchers think the horses did something even more important: they got around the paradox of the thinning Paarlax Field and let their riders use Ley without touching the ground. Right in midair. And if we can find them and then understand the principles behind a mechanism like that, our airships...”

The Senior Magister broke off.

Taisia, for her part, pretended she’d heard nothing particularly remarkable and gave a slight nod. She lifted her glass to her lips. Before she drank, she said lightly, as though the thought had only just occurred to her:

“But surely every Anomaly within the Empire has been recorded and cataloged, hasn’t it? I read in the Imperial Herald that the Hunters’ Guild completed a full inventory of the Anomalies as far back as the middle of the last century.”

Nalensky grimaced, less at the question than at being forced to acknowledge the obvious.

“The Parks cover a vast territory, dear Taisia, as does the Empire itself,” he said, his tone a little drier than before. “It’s simply impossible to catalog everything. The Northern Park stretches across tens of thousands of square kilometers of impenetrable forests, swamps, and fragments of the Great Glacier, terrain not even the most desperate expeditions have managed to reach. The last serious attempt was mounted thirty-two years ago, and of its ninety participants, forty-three returned. The rest...” He raised his eyebrows pointedly. “...did not return.”

Ardan listened in silence over a mug of tea that had turned out to be surprisingly decent for such a backwater. Not Kargaam, of course, or even Forian, but passable.

Questions spun through his mind, and not one of them had anything to do with Winged-and-Horned Horses.. The Puppeteers’ interest in the Northern Park had nothing to do with zoological discoveries, and most likely nothing to do with an attempt by humanity to conquer the skies. At any rate, none of the records that had come into the Black House’s hands pointed to either explanation.

So there was no need to invent extra explanations.

No.

The conspirators were after something specific, something purely practical, something they could use “right here and now.” For all their historical significance, magical horses didn’t fit the profile of an organization focused on chimerization, artificial Stars, and research into the nature of demons and Fae.

Or did they?

Ard thought about it. If winged, horned horses truly amplified a rider’s magic severalfold, that made them less a zoological curiosity than a resource of considerable strategic value. A mage astride a Winged-and-Horned Horse wasn’t merely a mage; he was a force of another order. But even so, catching magical horses in impenetrable forests was, to put it mildly, impractical, given that the Puppeteers preferred laboratories and secret documents to chasing horses across glaciers.

No, it was something else. Ard was almost certain, but “almost” wasn’t “certain,” and as Milar had taught him, you don’t build an investigation on “almost.”

At that moment, the saloon door flew open and a rowdy crowd spilled in. A dozen or so hunters, all of them in leather jackets, with bandoliers loaded with vials of alchemical reagents and cartridges. Men who smelled of the Empire’s endless roads, with the manners of people accustomed to living for today and spending money as though tomorrow would never come. With a clatter, they dragged over enough chairs, took up three tables at the back, and began ordering beer, vodka, cheap whiskey, and snacks, all the while shouting over one another.

A short distance behind them came two Blue mages from the expedition. They were the same men Ard had noticed on the platform: around thirty, with inexpensive but military-grade staves and good boots. They took a table beside the hunters.

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Ardan watched the crowd, pretending to examine the crack in his mug. The hunters drank, laughed, and slapped one another on the shoulders. For all the romance surrounding their profession, hunters were adventurers, pure and simple. The kind of people who chose the work not because they dreamed of protecting civilians from Anomalies, but because they knew how to survive, fight, and shoot. They preferred to earn their living without having to put on uniforms or sailor stripes. Still, there were surely former soldiers among them, as well as former bandits and, for that matter, ordinary people who had grown tired of living from one paycheck to the next.

They lived only for the moment. Every one of them knew the next expedition might be his last, and that was precisely why they drank as though tomorrow would never come. There was something primal in them, something feral, and Ard, raised in the forest among real predators, sensed it keenly.

Maybe that was why he’d been able to find common ground with Balitsky’s squad on the way to Larand Monastery of the Sisters of Light. Not with the whole squad, of course. Still, there was no sense dwelling on old grief.

The noise in the saloon swelled.

The hunters sang some obscene song, mangling the words and melody with equal enthusiasm. After draining their glasses, the two Blue mages’ voices rose, irritation mounting. Ard caught fragments of their conversation: something about wages, about delays, about how “the Guild promised one amount but pays another.”

“...and travel expenses come out of our own pockets, can you believe it?” barked one of them, a stocky man with a red beard and a scar through his left eyebrow. “I got all the way to Reynar at my own expense because those bureaucratic rats ‘forgot’ to include travel reimbursement in the contract!”

“They actually told me they’d recalculate my base salary once I arrived on site,” replied the second mage, who was taller and had a narrow face and cold gray eyes. “What do they mean by ‘arrival’? I signed a contract for a specific amount, and if they think I’m going to spend two months wiping my ass with leaves and digging myself a little hole for half of what they promised...”

Their voices kept rising. At one point, the red-bearded mage rose from the table, his glass clutched in one fist, and turned toward Nalensky’s table.

“Senior Magister,” he said with about as much respect in his tone as there was whiskey in the already empty bottle on their table. “Since we’re stuck here for a few hours, perhaps you’ll find time to talk about our pay?”

Nalensky had just been explaining to Taisia how semen-collection procedures differed among mammalian Anomalies, while she listened with an expression of reverent “delight” on her face. He slowly turned his head and looked up at the mage.

“Wages, Mr. Melin?” Nalensky repeated the word as if he’d been asked to discuss the color of the entryway rugs. “Your contract has already been signed. You signed it yourself, no less. All its terms were agreed upon. Payment is handled by the Guild’s finance department, not by me.”

“The Guild’s finance department is in Metropolis,” the second mage, the taller of the two, put in. He rose from the table and came to stand beside his companion. “But we’re here, in this hole, and as I recall, you, Senior Magister, are the head of this expedition, which makes you responsible for making sure the people taking part get what they were promised.”

Nalensky flushed crimson. The fingers holding his wineglass tightened slightly, making the glass squeak plaintively.

“I’m here to deliver this expedition’s scientific results, Captain Rogov,” he said through clenched teeth, his voice stripped of all its feigned cheer. “And as for your wallets, once again, your contracts determine what goes into them. Contracts that, let me repeat, you signed entirely of your own free will. Voluntarily.”

“Voluntarily?” The red-bearded Melin smiled, and the smile held more anger than amusement. “It’s only voluntary if they tell you the truth. But they promise you a full salary plus a transportation allowance, only to send an advance that, after deductions, leaves barely enough for this.” He raised his glass of cloudy liquid. “There’s another word for that, Senior Magister!”

Melin stepped toward their table. Ardan felt the air in the saloon thicken. The hunters fell quiet, stopped singing, and began watching what was happening with the peculiar, predatory interest of people observing someone else’s fight and wondering whether they ought to join in.

“And since we’re talking about the situation,” Melin said. He turned his gaze to Taisia, and his eyes lingered on her a little longer than they should have. “Perhaps Miss Shpritz would prefer better company?” He inclined his head slightly. “Captain Rogov and I would be glad to offer you a seat at our table, where at least no one is trying to lure you into his sweaty bed and call it polite conversation.”

For several seconds, the saloon fell silent. A ringing silence, broken only by the creak of a chair beneath one of the hunters and the distant whistle of a locomotive at the station.

Nalensky slowly set his glass on the table. When he spoke, his voice was unusually even. For an instant, something surfaced in his oily gaze, a reminder of the man who had managed to earn the Yellow cloak he wore on his shoulders.

“Captain Melin. Captain Rogov. Let me remind you both: the next train to Metropolis leaves this very station in four days. You’re free to turn in your Hunters’ Guild credentials to the conductor of our train, collect your final pay for the days you’ve actually worked, and fuck off. Go to hell, go cry to your mothers, or go back to your wives.”

He gave the final phrase particular emphasis, and his right hand, resting on the table, turned slightly to expose his wrist. A Liniri Irika watch flashed gold in the dusty shaft of light: heavy, massive, and probably worth as much as both captains earned in a year. Ardan was inwardly glad he’d hidden his own beneath a plain cloth bandage around his left wrist.

Melin clenched his jaw until the muscles bulged, then reached for his staff. Rogov, standing beside him, hurried to put a hand on his colleague’s shoulder. For several seconds, the two stood without speaking. Then Melin wheeled around and went back to his table, knocking over a chair on the way without even bothering to pick it up.

Rogov lingered a moment and gave Ard a long, appraising look. His gaze skimmed Ard’s face, then dwelled a little longer on his build, his height, his staff, and his grimoire. Then Rogov left as well.

Nalensky exhaled, sipped his wine, and turned to Taisia, a slightly strained smile on his plump face.

“My apologies for that inappropriate spectacle, dear Taisia.” He waved a hand as if shooing away a fly. “Hired mages, you know, are like cheap cars. They’ll get you where you’re going as long as you keep paying for endless repairs. But the moment they sense the money drying up, they start creaking and demand yet another trip to the repair shop.”

Taisia’s laugh was light and musical, as if nothing had happened. She laid her palm on Nalensky’s hand.

“You’re so brave, Chaz,” she said. Her voice had that particular note, the one that made men believe they had just accomplished a legendary feat worthy of the tales of Aror. “If it had been me, I would’ve been scared.”

Ardan silently finished the rest of his tea and looked toward the table where Melin and Rogov sat. Red-bearded Melin smoked as he stared at the wall, while Rogov murmured something in his ear. Every so often, their eyes slid toward Nalensky’s table, and those looks clearly held something more than mere resentment over the delay in their payment.

After his experience with the cowboys, Ardan had no doubt: the conflict was only beginning.

***

They returned to their compartment toward evening, when the sky above the station had deepened to dark blue and the first stars had begun to prick through the veil of clouds. The train stood on the tracks, wreathed in billows of white steam. The boiler had already been topped off, and the train gave a low rumble as it readied itself to depart.

Nalensky said goodbye to Taisia at the entrance to their car, holding her hand between his palms for a good half minute longer than propriety required. Then he went off to his own car, leaving behind a cloud of cigar smoke and the heavy scent of men’s cologne.

Taisia entered the compartment, tossed her coat over the back of the chair, took a cigarette case from her purse, and lit up. Ardan deactivated the Mask and felt a ripple of tiny pinpricks race across his face. Familiar by now, almost pleasant, even, but always slightly painful, as if someone had pulled a thin film from his skin. His true face settled back into place: amber eyes, high cheekbones, a straight nose. With relief, he ran his palm over his cheek, making sure everything was where it belonged.

As always, they found themselves on opposite sides of the screen, but this time the silence didn’t last long.

Taisia spoke first.

“The Winged-Horned horses,”,” she said, sending smoke toward the ceiling. “What do you think, Ard?”

Ardan let a moment pass before answering.

“A pretty story for a newspaper piece,” he said dryly. “But I seriously doubt the people we’re looking for are interested in the magical horses themselves.”

“Then what?” The screen creaked, and judging by the smell, Taisia had moved a little closer.

“Within Northern Park,” Ardan said slowly, choosing his words, “there may be remnants of Aean’Hane structures. Towers, underground laboratories, vaults. Perhaps that’s exactly what draws our ‘friends.’”

“An interesting thought.” Taisia exhaled, and the smoke slipped through the gap between the screen’s panels, making Ard wince. “But if there were any towers or laboratories of the Dark Ones there, the hunters would have discovered them long ago. They’ve spent decades combing the area for anything that might fetch even a few exes. So anything sticking up from the ground even a little has long since been mapped, looted, and sold off piece by piece at the Spell Market.”

“What sticks up, sure,” Ard agreed. “But what stays hidden...”

“Underground?” Taisia said it without a questioning inflection, more as a statement. “The underground complexes of Aean’Hane? Traces of them do turn up across the continent from time to time, of course. But usually they’re just half-flooded tunnels, choked with rubble and packed with traps that regularly claim the lives of adventurers and students who decide to earn a little extra on Sleepless Street.”

“Exactly.” Ard nodded, though Taisia couldn’t see him behind the screen. “But if the Puppeteers were looking for ordinary ruins, any other ruins would do. Which means there’s something in Northern Park that exists nowhere else.”

“Dragons,” Taisia said, as calmly as if she were talking about a breed of dog. “Perhaps this is somehow connected to dragons. Or demons.”

Ard fell silent. Then he turned his head toward the screen.

“What makes you say that?” he asked slowly.

“Because I’ve followed the headlines for the past several years, Ard.” Taisia stubbed out her cigarette and immediately lit another. For Taisia, dangerous and predatory as she was, that was the only sign of nerves. “And wherever people linked to those you call the Puppeteers appeared, sooner or later the subject of dragons came up. Or demons. Fifth Street in Baliero. Makingia. Larand Monastery and the Dead Lands. The mountains of Tazidahian. A shipwreck in the Shallow Sea. The commotion on the Northern Continent and in Selkado... And now Northern Park.”

“Dragons are extinct,” Ard said, but his own words sounded less confident than he would have liked.

“The Winged-Horned horses are extinct too,” Taisia countered. “And yet the Hunters’ Guild spends tens of thousands of exes searching for them. Do you believe in coincidences, Ard? And as far as I could tell, you didn’t object when I mentioned demons.”

Ardan, of course, didn’t believe in coincidences. But he didn’t believe in dragons either, dragons no one had seen in more than a thousand years, and his skepticism was about as solid as his reluctance to share a compartment with Taisia. Solid, unshakable, and, alas, thanks to the Sleeping Spirits’ sense of irony, utterly useless against a reality with a mind of its own.

“Let’s say you’re right,” he said at last. “Let’s say it’s dragons. Or something involving demons. That still doesn’t explain why the Puppeteers need the Northern Park in particular.”

“Because of what might be inside the Park.” Taisia lowered her voice. For the first time in their entire journey, Ard heard something genuinely serious in her voice. “Not just ruins, but functioning Aean’Hane facilities. Towers, laboratories, sanctuaries, anything at all! Any sort of foul thing that’s still drawing power from some underground Ley-source. Something akin to the Flame of the Sidhe. Have you heard of it?”

Ardan hiccupped.

“That’s speculation, Taisia.”

“That’s journalism, Ard. We speculate, then we verify.”

“And then you publish before you’ve checked?” Ardan thought of the stories Milar had told him about Taisia.

“That happened once, and only once!” Taisia snapped. The screen rocked, apparently because she’d smacked her palm down on the table. “And I withdrew that article before the issue even came out!”

“After you received a letter from the Black House.”

“After I double-checked the facts myself and realized I’d jumped the gun!” Taisia paused for a second. “And the letter from the Black House arrived much later.”

“How convenient.”

“You’re insufferable, Ard.”

“The feeling’s mutual, Taisia.”

Outside the window, the locomotive whistled, and the train gave a jolt. Gently, almost imperceptibly. The wheels clattered over the rails, gathering speed, and the landscape beyond the window began slowly to recede. The station, the water tower, The Flattened Horseshoe, and with them the horses tied to the hitching rail and the cowboys.

“So what’s your theory?” Taisia asked, calmer now. Ard heard her settle into her chair, drawing her legs up beneath her.

“I don’t know yet,” he said honestly. “That’s exactly what I still need to find out. And I need to figure out whether any of the Puppeteers’ people are aboard this train. Or whether they’ve already infiltrated the Park and are waiting there for the expedition.”

“Fun,” Taisia said in a tone that meant exactly the opposite.

“That’s the job,” Ard replied.

“That’s the job,” Taisia echoed.

The train gathered speed, and the wheels clattered faster and more evenly, gradually turning the steel thunder into a barely discernible, monotonous rhythm that lulled and soothed at once. Outside the window, the early night came on in dark waves, overtaking the last of the sun, and the last glimmers of sunset painted the treetops a coppery gold.

No one spoke through the screen. Ard was in no hurry to disturb the quiet perfection of that private moment. From the sound of it, Taisia had opened a book.

The conversation died away on its own, and Ard was more than a little grateful for that.

***

Six days later, early in the morning, when the fog still clung to the treetops like a lazy cat, the train finally reached its destination.

Ardan noticed the change at once. The air outside the window was different now, denser and colder. It smelled of pine needles, wet stone, and something else, something he couldn’t name but would have recognized among a thousand other smells. This was what the boundary between humankind’s iron civilization and the wilderness smelled like.

The little town they had arrived in was called Yellik. The moment he saw it, Ard felt a pang in his chest.

It was so much like Evergale...

Not in the details, no. But in the feel of it: the way the town nestled snugly in a hollow between the hills, surrounded by forest rather than prairie. The way smoke rose from the chimneys of the low wooden houses with their sloping roofs and slightly lopsided porches, all of them darkened by weather and time. The way it smelled of firewood, livestock, wet earth, and that special smell of a small town that knows every one of its residents by name.

The main street was thick with mud after the recent rain and stretched from the station to the central square, if you could call the little hard-packed patch of ground in front of a two-story building of dressed stone a square. The Empire’s crest and a sign reading “Yellik Town Hall” hung above the entrance. Shops, a smithy with a smoking chimney, an apothecary with a lopsided sign, and something resembling a hotel or an inn all crowded around the square. The smell of fried meat and onions drifted from its windows.

Hardly anyone was out on the street. It was still early morning and foggy, and most of the townspeople had yet to leave their homes. There were no farmers or cowboys here, after all. The town owed its entire existence to the Park; it was home to workers, researchers, and all those with direct ties to the Guild of Mages, Scientists, and Hunters.

Taisia stood beside Ard on the platform, pulling her scarf close around her neck. Spring had yet to seep into the morning air here; it felt more like late winter, with a frosty bite that numbed cheeks and fingers.

“Reminds me of a place,” Ard said softly, though he wasn’t really talking to anyone in particular.

To his surprise, he realized that, in the time he’d spent with Tess, Milar, Bazhen, Arkar, and the rest, he’d grown unused to peace and quiet.

“A place where you grew up?” Taisia asked, and for the first time in twelve days, her voice held neither sarcasm nor bite.

Ard didn’t answer, but Taisia seemed to understand and didn’t ask again.

Senior Magister Nalensky was in a far worse mood that morning than he’d been the evening before. He stepped down from his train car looking like a man who’d been woken too early and intended to make the entire world around him pay for it. He pulled on his gloves, adjusted his Yellow cloak, muttered something like “good morning,” and strode toward Yellik Town Hall.

Taisia set off after him, and Ardan, feeling the familiar prickling across his face, followed them both down the muddy road as it kept trying to suck the boots off his feet.

They were to meet with the governor of Yellik and discuss the porters, horses, and stagecoaches promised for the expedition, without which it would simply be impossible to reach Northern Park.

The edge of civilization. Beyond it stretched only the boundless wilderness of the Empire. And the number of people and animals the governor made available would determine how quickly the expedition’s eighty-seven members, together with their equipment, supplies, and ambitions, reached their destination.

Ardan looked at the town hall. It was squat and a little ungainly, but its thick stone walls made it look more like a small fortress than a government office. A man in a fur vest stood on the porch, smoking a pipe. But Ardi couldn’t seem to spot the stagecoaches, horses, or porters anywhere.