An instant later the comb that Arina had given her broke the glass as it came flying through the window. Svetlana caught it in her hand as if it was some insect. She looked at the comb for several seconds, then grimaced and ran it through her hair.
I heard a low, good-humoured laugh. And somewhere inside my head Arina's voice said:
'Hello there, sweetheart. So we meet at last. Did my present come in handy?'
'Remember, you old wretch . . .' Svetlana began, holding the comb out in front of her.
'I know, I know, my darling. I know everything, and I shan't forget. If I harm a single little hair on Nadienka's head, you'll follow me to the ends of the earth, drag me back up from the fifth level of the Twilight, tear me asunder, chop me into little pieces and feed me to the pigs. I know everything you want to say. And I believe you'd do it too.'
Arina's voice was serious. She wasn't mocking us, but explaining perfectly calmly what she wanted us to do. And Svetlana waited silently keeping the comb in her hand. When the witch had finished, she said:
'All right. Then let's not waste any time. I want to speak to Nadiushka.'
'Nadienka, say hello to Mummy,' Arina said.
We heard a perfectly cheerful voice say:
'Hello!'
'Nadiushka, is everything all right?' Svetlana asked cautiously.
'Uhuh . . .' Nadya replied.
Then Arina immediately started speaking again:
'Enchantress, I won't do your daughter any harm, just as long as you don't do anything stupid. I don't want much from you – lead me out of the encirclement and you'll get your daughter back.'
'Arina,' I said, taking Svetlana by the hand, 'the district is cordoned off by the Inquisition. Do you understand that?'
'I wouldn't have asked for help otherwise,' Arina replied coolly. 'Think, sorcerer! There's a weak board in every fence and a tear in every net. Lead me through, and I'll return your daughter.'
'And what if I can't?'
'Then it's all the same to me,' Arina said succinctly. 'I'll try to fight my way out. And I'm sorry, but I'll have to kill your little girl.'
'What for?' I asked in a very calm voice. 'What good will that do you?'
'What good?' Arina asked in astonishment. 'If I manage to break out, next time everyone will know that I'm not joking. And then again . . . I know someone who likes to have others do his dirty work for him. He'll pay me well for the death of your little girl.'
'We'll try,' said Svetlana, squeezing my hand tightly. 'Do you hear me, witch? Don't touch the child, we'll save you!'
'We're agreed then,' said Arina, sounding almost happy. 'So think how I can get past the cordons. You have three hours. If you think of something sooner, enchantress, then pick up the comb and comb your hair again.'
'Only don't touch Nadiushka!' Svetlana shouted in a trembling voice.
Immediately she made a swift pass with her left hand.
The comb was instantly covered in a crust of ice. Svetlana dropped it on the table and muttered:
'The disgusting creature . . . Anton?'
We looked at each other for a second, as if we were tossing the initiative backwards and forwards, like a ball.
I spoke first:
'Sveta, this is really risky. She can't handle us both in open combat. So she leaves herself exposed if she gives Nadya back.'
'We'll find her a corridor . . . a way out . . .' my wife whispered. 'She can get beyond the cordons and leave Nadienka there. I'll find her straight away. She can even go to another town and leave her there. I'll open a portal . . . I know how. I can do that! I'd be there in a minute!'
'That's right,' I said with a nod. 'In a minute. And then what? The witch won't have time to go far. As soon as Nadya's with us, you'll want to find Arina and dematerialise her.'
Svetlana nodded:
'Blow her to pieces, not dematerialise her . . . The smart thing for the witch to do would be to use our help, but kill Nadya anyway. Anton, what should we do? Summon Gesar?'
'What if she senses it?' I asked.
'Can't we phone him?' Sveta suggested.
I thought about it and agreed. After all, Arina had fallen well behind the times. Would she even guess that we could contact Gesar by non-magical means, using a mobile phone?
Svetlana's phone was still in the house. She dragged it out like the comb, with another casual pass of her hand, then looked at me again. I nodded.
It was time to ask for help. Time to demand help. The full might of the Moscow Night Watch. In the final analysis, Gesar had plans of his own for Nadya that we knew nothing about . . .
'Wait!' a voice called to us from the gate. We swung round, probably throwing our hands up too hastily into a combat pose. For us this was no longer the ordinary, human world. We were living in the world of the Others, where the power of your spells and the speed of your reactions decide everything.
But we didn't have to fight.
There was a young man standing at the gate, with three children behind him – two boys and a girl. They were all dressed in greyish-green, semi-military clothes that looked like the uniform of a routed army. The man was about twenty-five, the children about ten. He couldn't have been their father, or even their brother – their faces were too dissimilar.
They had only one thing in common – their dark auras. Wild and shaggy, totally out of keeping with their likeable faces and short, neat hairstyles.
'I see our werewolves have come calling,' I muttered.
The man inclined his head briefly to confirm that I was right.
What a fool I was!
I'd been looking for an adult with three children, but I hadn't bothered to check the Young Pioneer camp.
'Come to give yourselves up?' Svetlana asked frostily. 'You've chosen a bad time.'
No matter how weak they were as Others, they must have felt the recent vortex of power – and the incredible might radiating from Svetlana, which left no chance for werewolves, vampires or any other lower Dark Ones. Sveta could have buried them up to their necks in the ground with a single wave of her hand.
'Wait!' the man said quickly. 'Listen to what we have to say! My name's Igor. I'm . . . I'm a registered Dark Other, sixth grade.'
'What town?' Svetlana asked curtly.
'Sergiev Posad.'
'And the children?' she asked, continuing her interrogation.
'Petya's from Zvenigorod, Anton's from Moscow, Galya's from Kolomna . . .'
'Are they registered?' Svetlana asked. She clearly wanted to hear the answer 'No', and that would have sealed Igor's fate.
The boys pulled up their shirts without speaking. The girl hesitated for a moment, but then unfastened her top button.
They all had seals.
'That won't do you much good,' Svetlana muttered. 'Go into the shed and wait for the field operatives. You can explain to a tribunal why you took the cubs hunting humans.'
But Igor shook his head again, with an expression of genuine concern – and not for himself, which was surprising.
'Wait! Please! This is important! You have a daughter, don't you? A little Other girl, a Light One, two or three years old?'
'We saw where they took her,' the boy with my name said in a quiet voice.
I moved Sveta aside and stepped forward. I asked:
'What do you want?'
We already knew what the werewolves wanted. And the werewolves knew that we understood. The sad thing about it was they could tell we'd be willing to deal.
But there are always little details worth talking through.
'A charge of minor negligence,' Igor said quickly. 'While we were out walking we inadvertently allowed ourselves to be seen by human children and frightened them.'
'You were hunting, you beast!' Svetlana burst out. 'You and the cubs were hunting human children!'
'No!' said Igor, shaking his head. 'The kids got a bit frolicsome and decided to play a game with the human children. I arrived on the scene and pulled them away. It was my fa
ult, I wasn't watching them closely enough.'
His calculations were precisely right. I couldn't have ignored what had happened, even if I wanted to. The facts were already out. It was just a matter of how to classify the incident. Attempted murder almost certainly meant dematerialisation for Igor and intensive supervision for the cubs. Minor negligence meant no more than a report, a fine and 'special supervision' of his subsequent behaviour.
'All right,' I said hastily, so that Svetlana couldn't get in before me. 'If you help us, you can have your "minor negligence".'
I wanted to be responsible for saying it.
Igor relaxed. He'd probably been expecting the deal to take longer.
'Galya, tell them,' he ordered. He explained: 'She saw it . . . Galya's a fidget, she just can't sit still . . .'
Svetlana walked over to the girl. And I gestured for Igor to move aside. He tensed up again, but followed me meekly.
'A few questions,' I explained. 'And I advise you to answer honestly.'
Igor nodded.
'How were you granted the right to initiate three children who weren't yours?' I asked, swallowing the words 'you bastard' that were begging to be added.
'They were all incurably ill,' Igor answered. 'I was studying in medical college, on practical training in a children's cancer ward . . . all three of them were dying from leukaemia. There was a doctor there who was an Other. A Light One. He suggested it to me . . . I bite all three of them and turn them into werewolves, and they recover. And by way of return he receives the right to heal a few other children.'
I said nothing. I remembered the incident from about a year earlier. An utterly outrageous case of open collusion between a Dark One and a Light One, which both Watches had preferred to hush up. The Light One had saved about twenty children, making the most of such a rare opportunity to heal. The Dark Ones had received three werewolves. A small exchange. Everyone was happy, including the children and their parents. A few additional amendments to the Treaty had been adopted to avoid similar cases in the future. Everyone had preferred to forget the precedent as quickly as possible.
'Do you blame me?' Igor asked.
'It's not for me to blame you,' I whispered. 'All right. Whatever your motives might have been . . . never mind that. The second question. Why did you take them out hunting? Don't lie this time, don't lie! You were hunting! You were planning to violate the Treaty!'
'I got carried away,' Igor answered calmly. 'What point is there in lying? I took the cubs out for a walk, and deliberately chose the most remote area. Then suddenly there were those little children . . . Alive. They smelled good. One thing led to another. As for the cubs . . . they only caught their first rabbit this year, got their first taste of blood.'
And then he smiled – a guilty, embarrassed, even sincere smile. He explained:
'Your mind works quite differently in an animal body. Next time I'll be more careful.'
'All right,' I said.
What else could I say? Nadiushka's life was hanging by a thread. Even if he was lying, I wasn't going to start prying.
'Anton!' Svetlana called to me. 'Catch!'
I looked at her – and the images came crowding into my mind.
. . . A beautiful woman in a long, old woman's dress with a bright-coloured Pavlovsk shawl . . .
. . .Walking beside her, a little girl . . . falling behind . . . the woman picks her up in her arms . . .
. . . Along the riverbank . . .
. . . Grass . . . tall grass . . . why is it so tall – above my head . . .
. . . I jump over a stream – with all four paws, put my nose to the ground, pick up the trail with my animal instincts . . .
. . . A stunted patch of trees, merging into a hummocky field . . . trenches, ditches . . .
. . . A smell . . . what a strange smell this land gives off . . . it's thrilling . . . and it makes me want to squeeze my tail between my legs . . .
. . .The woman with the little girl in her arms goes down into a deep trench . . .
. . . Back . . . back . . . it's the same witch, the same one, that's her scent . . .
'What is it?' Svetlana asked. 'If it's not far away, why didn't I find them?'
'A battlefield,' I whispered, shaking the images of what the little wolf-girl had seen out of my head. 'The front line ran just past here, Sveta. The earth there is soaked in blood. You have to look for something specific to find anything at all. It's like trying to probe the Kremlin with magic.'
Igor came up, cleared his throat politely and asked:
'Is everything all right then? Maybe we could wait for the investigators at the camp? We don't really need to rush things, our session there ends in a week, and I can report to the Night Watch to explain everything . . .'
I was thinking. Trying to correlate what I'd seen with the map of the area that I'd summoned up in my memory. Twenty kilometres . . . the witch hadn't simply walked there with Nadiushka. She'd shortened the journey – witches can do that. We wouldn't catch her in a car, mine wasn't a jeep, after all, and there wasn't a single Niva or UAZ four-wheel drive in the whole village. What you really needed for those roads was a tractor . . .
But I could enter the Twilight.
Or even better, make myself faster.
'Sveta,' I said and looked in her eyes. 'You've got to stay here.'
'What?'
'The witch is no fool. She won't give us three hours to think. She'll get in touch sooner than that. With you – she's not expecting anything remarkable from me. You stay here, and when the witch contacts you, talk to her. Tell her I've gone to prepare the corridor through the encirclement . . . Lie, tell her anything. Then I'll summon you and distract her.'
'You won't manage it,' said Svetlana. 'Anton, you're not strong enough to withstand her. And I don't know how quickly I'll be able to open a portal. I'm not even sure I'll be able to. I've never tried, only read about it. Anton!'
'I won't be alone,' I replied. 'Right, Igor?'
He turned pale and started shaking his head.
'Hey, watchman . . . That's not what we agreed!'
'We agreed that you would help,' I reminded him. 'We didn't define what counts as help. Well?'
Igor cast a sideways glance at his young wards. He frowned and said:
'You're a real swine, watchman . . . It's easier for me to fight a magician than a witch. All her magic comes from the earth. It cuts straight to the quick . . .'
'Never mind, we'll be together,' I said. 'The five of us.'
The cubs – I forced myself to think about them only as cubs – glanced at each other. Galya jabbed Petya in the side with her fist and whispered something.
'What do you need them for?' Igor asked, raising his voice.
'Watchman! They're only children!'
'Werewolf cubs,' I corrected him, 'who almost ate human children. Do you want to atone for your guilt? Get off with a caution? Then stop yapping!'