‘I’m sorry, I just happened to be passing,’ I said guiltily. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you at all.’
He looked at me for a second, then nodded.
‘I believe you.’
Ah yes, he was at the peak of his Power right then. He could sense a lie intuitively.
‘I’ll be going,’ I said. ‘That was a great performance, I was fascinated.’
‘Wait, I need to wet my throat,’ said Egor, setting off beside me. ‘I’ve been streaming with sweat…’
Some curious little boy grabbed hold of his sleeve. Egor politely stopped and unbuttoned his shirt to show that there was nothing in it. Then he took a light, silvery little ball out of the air and handed it to his suspicious spectator. The kid squealed in delight and dashed across to his parents, who were standing nearby.
‘Really great,’ I said appreciatively. ‘Do you perform in Moscow? I could take my daughter to the circus.’
‘No, not in Moscow,’ Egor said, frowning. ‘Do you know how hard it is to get into the circus back home?’
‘I can guess.’
‘If you’re not from a circus family, if you haven’t been jumping around the circus ring since you were five years old and you haven’t got any contacts … And if you get an offer to perform abroad …’ Egor frowned. ‘To hell with them! Next year I’ll be performing in a French circus, I’m just negotiating the contract, then they’ll really be jealous…’
We sat down at a table outside the nearest café. Egor ordered a glass of juice and I asked for a double espresso. I was feeling sleepy again.
‘So are you here because of me or not?’ Egor asked abruptly.
‘I had no idea that you were flying to Edinburgh. My assignment here has nothing to do with you!’
Egor looked into my face suspiciously. Then he sighed and relaxed.
‘Then I apologise. I got a bit heated in the plane. I don’t like the outfit you work for … I have no reason to like it.’
‘That’s OK,’ I said gesturing with my open palms towards him. ‘No offence taken. You don’t have to like our outfit, it doesn’t deserve it.’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Egor, staring pensively at his glass of orange juice. ‘Well, how are things there? Still Geser, is it?’
‘Of course. He was, he is, he always will be.’
‘And how about Tiger Cub and Bear?’ Egor asked with a smile, as if he’d just remembered something good. ‘Did they get married?’
‘Tiger Cub was killed, Egor.’[2] I actually started when I realised he didn’t know about it. ‘It was a very bad business… we all suffered.’
‘Killed,’ Egor said thoughtfully. ‘A pity. I liked her a lot. She was so strong, a were-tiger …’
‘A shape-shifting magician,’ I corrected him. ‘Yes, she was strong, but very emotional. She attacked a Mirror.’
‘A Mirror?’
‘Yes, well, that’s a type of magician. A very unusual type. Sometimes, if some Watch starts winning, a Mirror Magician appears to help the other side. They say they’re created by the Twilight itself, but no one knows for sure. A Mirror Magician can’t be defeated in ordinary battle, he absorbs his opponent’s Power and parries every attack. We really took a beating that time – and Tiger Cub was killed.’
‘What about the Mirror? Did you kill him?’
‘Vitaly Rogoza was his name … He dematerialised. Of his own accord, that’s their destiny. A Mirror is originally a weak, indeterminate magician who loses his memory, then travels to the place where one Power is gaining a serious advantage over the other and takes the side of the one that’s losing. And afterwards the Mirror disappears, dissolves into the Twilight.’
I said all this automatically, thinking about something else.
There was a painful cold lump growing in my chest.
A weak, indeterminate magician?
‘Serves him right,’ Egor said vengefully ‘I feel sorry for Tiger Cub – I often used to think about her. And you, sometimes.’
‘Really?’ I asked. ‘I hope you weren’t too angry with me.’
To be quite honest, I really couldn’t have cared less right then just who Egor used to remember and how.
A weak, indeterminate magician.
He travels to the place where …
He dissolves into the Twilight…
‘I was a bit angry,’ Egor admitted. ‘But not too much. It wasn’t really your fault. That’s the way your job is … lousy. But I resented it, of course. I even dreamed once that you were really my father. And I was going to become a Dark Magician and work in the Day Watch in order to spite you.[3]
But he hadn’t lost his memory, had he! I couldn’t draw such a simple comparison between Rogoza and Egor after all.
‘That’s a funny dream,’ I said. ‘They say some dreams are an alternative reality breaking through into our consciousness. Maybe somewhere, somehow, that’s the way it was. You shouldn’t have gone over to the Dark Ones, though …’
Egor said nothing for a moment. Then he snorted.
‘Oh, no. A plague on both your houses. I don’t like the Dark Ones, and I don’t like the Light Ones. But you come round any time, Anton! I’m staying just near here. In the Alex City hotel. I’ll introduce you to the rest of our crew, they’re all great guys!’
He put a few coins on the table and stood up.
‘I’ll go back to work. My number’s the highlight of the show – the lads won’t take much money without me.’
He had hardly even touched his juice.
‘Egor!’ I called to him. ‘How did you happen to come to Edinburgh? Was it your own idea?’
The young man looked at me in surprise.
‘No, it wasn’t. A company invited me – Scottish Colour. Why do you ask?’
‘I thought I could give you a hand, if necessary,’ I lied without a moment’s hesitation. ‘Find you an agent.’
‘Thanks,’ said Egor, and the warmth in his voice made me wish the earth would open up and swallow me. ‘No need, but thanks anyway, Anton.’
I sat there, looking at the dregs in the bottom of my cup. Was that still not enough coincidences for me? Maybe I should use the coffee grounds for a bit of fortune-telling?
‘Scottish Colour,’ I muttered.
My chest was feeling so cold now that it didn’t hurt any more.
CHAPTER 4
THERE’S NOTHING MORE absurd than to arrive in a new city and spend your time in a hotel room. That’s okay for the red-hot afternoon of the Spanish siesta. Or for newly-weds on honeymoon, when the size of the bed is far more important than the view out of the window.
But then, Valeria was caught in a hopeless situation. The police had told her not to leave the city. And she simply didn’t have the strength to go out into that crowd of merrymakers, that swirling mass of tourists.
She opened the door immediately, as if she had been waiting just behind it. Although, of course, no one could have warned her, since I’d walked past the receptionist under the protection of a Circle of Inattention.
The girl was wearing nothing but shorts and a bra. Well yes, it was quite hot, of course. Even the good hotels here didn’t have air-conditioning, the climate didn’t really require it. As I said, it was quite hot – especially if you were drinking.
‘Yes?’ Lera challenged me drunkenly.
Her black hair was styled in a square cut. She was attractive, thin, quite tall.
One of her hands was on the handle of the open bathroom door. I had arrived just as she was on her way to the toilet.