‘May I take my prisoner away, Zabulon?’ I asked.
The monster stood there, swaying on its crooked paws, with the claws on its toes sliding in and out. Then it took a step and stood between me and the motionless witch.
‘I ask you to confirm the legality of the arrest,’ I said. ‘Otherwise I shall be obliged to summon help.’
The demon began transforming. The proportions of its body changed and its scales disappeared, its tail was drawn back into its body, and its penis stopped looking like a club studded with nails. Finally clothes appeared on Zabulon’s body.
‘Wait a moment, Anton.’
‘What for?’
The Dark Magician’s face remained inscrutable. Presumably in his demonic form he felt far more emotions, or at least he didn’t feel any need to conceal them.
‘I confirm the pledge made by Alisa.’
‘What?’
‘If this matter is not made official, the Day Watch will accept any magical intervention you make, up to and including the third degree.’
He seemed to be utterly serious.
I swallowed. A promise like that from the head of the Day Watch …
‘Never trust the Dark Ones.’
‘Any intervention up to and including the second degree.’
‘Are you that eager to avoid a scandal?’ I asked. ‘Or do you need her for something?’
A tremor ran across Zabulon’s face.
‘I need her. I love her.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘As the head of the Moscow Day Watch I ask you, watchman Anton, to settle this matter amicably. It is possible, since my ward Alisa Donnikova had not yet caused any significant harm to humans. As compensation for her attempt’ – Zabulon emphasised the last word – ‘to perform a magical intervention of the third degree, the Day Watch will accept any Light intervention that you may perform up to and including the second degree. I do not ask for this agreement to remain secret. I do not impose any restrictions on your actions. I confirm that for the offence she has committed Day Watch agent Alisa will be severely punished. May the Dark bear witness to my words.’
A faint trembling. A rumbling below ground, the roar of an approaching hurricane. A tiny black ball appeared on Zabulon’s open palm, spinning rapidly.
‘What do you say?’ asked Zabulon.
I ran my tongue over my lips and looked at Alisa’s magically frozen body. She was a real bitch, no doubt about it. And I had a personal score to settle with her.
Maybe that was why I didn’t feel like settling this business with a compromise. Maybe it had nothing to do with the risks of an agreement with the Dark. Alisa had tried to use the prism of power to extract part of the life energy from humans. That was third-or fourth-degree magic. I’d be able to perform a second-degree intervention, and that was a very big deal. A genuinely massive intervention. A city without a single crime for a whole day. A brilliant and unequivocally good intervention. How many times in the history of the Night Watch had we needed to make a third-or fourth-degree intervention but didn’t have the right, and we’d had to just go ahead and risk it, terrified by how the other side might respond?
And now I could have a second-degree intervention for free, or as good as.
‘May the Light bear witness to my words,’ I said, and held my hand out to Zabulon.
It was the first time I’d ever called on the primordial powers to witness anything. I only knew it didn’t require any special incantations. And there was no real guarantee that the Light would deign to become involved in our affairs.
A petal of white flame flared up on my open palm.
Zabulon flinched, but he didn’t take his hand away. We sealed the agreement with a handshake, the Dark and the Light coming together. I felt a stab of pain, like a blunt needle piercing my flesh.
‘The agreement is sealed,’ said the Dark Magician.
He frowned too. He had also felt the pain.
‘Do you hope to gain some advantage from this?’ I asked.
‘Of course. I always hope to gain some advantage from everything. And I usually do.’
At least Zabulon wasn’t obviously delighted with the deal we’d made. Whatever he might be hoping for as a result of our agreement, he wasn’t completely certain of success.
‘I’ve found out what the courier brought to Moscow from the east and why.’
Zabulon smiled gently.
‘Excellent. I find the situation trying, and it is a great relief to know that now my concern will be shared by others.’
‘Zabulon, has there ever been a single case when the Night Watch and the Day Watch collaborated? Genuine collaboration, not just catching violators and psychopaths?’
‘No. In any collaboration one side or the other would be the loser.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
‘You do that.’
We even bowed politely to each other. As if we weren’t two magicians on opposite sides, an adept of the Light and a servant of the Dark, but two acquaintances who got on perfectly well.
Then Zabulon returned to Alisa’s motionless body, lifted it easily and threw it across his shoulder. I was expecting him to withdraw from the Twilight, but instead the Dark Ones’ leader gave me a condescending smile and stepped into the portal. It remained visible for a moment, and then began to fade. I was going a different way.
It was only then that I realised how tired I felt. The Twilight likes it when we enter it, and it likes it even more when we’re agitated. The Twilight’s insatiable, glad to take on anyone.
I chose a spot where there weren’t many people and tore myself out of my shadow.
The eyes of the people walking by swung away as usual. You meet us so often during the day, you humans … Light Ones and Dark Ones, magicians and werewolves, witches and healers. You look at us, but you’re not allowed to see us. May it always be that way.
We can live for hundreds and thousands of years. We’re very hard to kill. And for us the problems that make up human life are no more than a schoolboy’s distress at his bad handwriting.
But there’s a downside to everything. I’d gladly trade places with you humans. Take this ability to see the shadow and enter the Twilight. Take the protection of the Watch and the ability to influence people’s minds.
Give me back the peace of mind that I have lost for ever.
Someone jostled me to get me out of the way. A tough-looking man with a shaved head, a mobile at his belt and a gold chain round his neck. He looked me up and down disdainfully, muttered something through his teeth and headed on down the street. The girlfriend clinging to his arm made a rather unsuccessful attempt to imitate his glance, the kind that petty gangsters use for jerks who are a soft touch.
I laughed out loud. Yes, I probably looked a sight! Standing stock still in the middle of the street, apparently gawping at a stand covered with ugly bronze figurines, wooden matryoshka dolls with politicians’ faces and fake Khokhloma painted boxes.
I had the right to shake up the entire street. To perform a mass remoralisation – then the man with the shaven head would take a job as an orderly in a mental hospital and his girlfriend would head for the train station to go to see the old mother she’d managed to forget, somewhere out in the sticks.
I wanted to do Good – my hands were just itching to do it!
And that was why I mustn’t.
The heart might be pure and the hands might be hot, but the head still had to be cool.
I was an ordinary, rank-and-file Other. I didn’t have the power granted to Gesar or Zabulon, and I never would have. Maybe that was why I took a different view of what was happening. And I couldn’t even use this unexpected gift – the right to use Light magic. That would be joining in the game that was being played out above my head.