'The hussars knew how to smile. But we hardly ever do.'
'Then tell me what I ought to do?' I said, realising that what had promised to be a lovely day was rapidly running downhill into a dark, stinking ravine filled with old garbage. 'Tell me! You're a Great Sorceress, or you soon will be. A general in our war. I'm just a simple lieutenant. Give me my orders, and make sure they're the right ones. Tell me what I should do!'
I noticed that the entire room had fallen silent, everyone was listening to us. But at this stage I didn't care.
'Tell me to go out in the street and kill Dark Ones, and I'll go. I'm not very good at it, but I'll give it my best shot. Tell me to smile and shower Good on the people, and I'll go and do it. Good and Evil, Light and Dark, we use these words so often we lose sight of what they mean, we hang them out like flags and leave them to rot in the wind and the rain. Then give us a new word! Give us new flags! Tell me where to go and what to do!'
Her lips started to tremble. I stopped short, but it was too late.
Svetlana sat there crying, with her hands over her face.
What on earth was I doing?
Had we really forgotten how to smile at each other?
Maybe I was right, a hundred times right, but. . .
What was my truth worth, if I was prepared to defend the entire world, but not those who were close to me? If I subdued hate, but wouldn't give love a chance?
I jumped up, put my arm round Svetlana's shoulders and led her out of the room. The magicians all stood there, looking the other way. Maybe it wasn't the first time they'd seen scenes like this. Maybe they understood the whole thing.
'Anton.' Tiger Cub appeared beside me, soundlessly. She pushed me forwards and opened the door, looking at me with both reproach and unexpected understanding. Then she left us alone.
We stood there for a moment without moving. Svetlana cried quietly, sobbing into my shoulder, and I waited. It was too late for words now. I'd said far too much already.
'I'll try.'
I hadn't been expecting that. Anything at all: resentment, counter-attack, complaints, anything but that.
Svetlana took one hand away from her wet face. She shook her head and smiled.
'You're right, Antosha. Absolutely right. So far all I've done is complain and protest. I whine like a child and I don't understand anything. Everyone just sticks my nose into my porridge and let's me play with fire and waits for me to grow up a bit. So I'll just have to do it, I'll try, I'll give you new flags.'
'Sveta—'
'You're right,' she interrupted. 'Only I'm a little bit right too. But I shouldn't have let go like that in front of the others, I know that. They're only having fun the best way they know how. Today's a day off, and nothing should be allowed to spoil it. Deal?'
I felt that wall again. The invisible wall that would always stand between me and Gesar, between me and the bosses.
The wall that time would build between us. That day I'd laid a few rows of cold crystal bricks with my own hands.
'Forgive me, Sveta,' I whispered. 'Forgive me.'
'Let's forget it,' she said very firmly. 'Let's forget it. While we still can forget.'
We eventually looked around us.
'The study?' Sveta guessed.
Stained oak bookshelves with the volumes protected by dark glass. A massive desk with a computer on it.
'Yes.'
'Does Tiger Cub live alone, then?'
'I don't know,' I said, shaking my head. 'We don't usually ask about things like that.'
'It looks as if she does. Right now, at least.' Svetlana took out her handkerchief and began wiping her tears away. 'She has a nice house. Let's go, everyone must be feeling awkward.'
I shook my head:
'They must have sensed that we're not quarrelling.'
'No, they couldn't have. There are barriers between all the rooms here, you can't sense anything through them.'
I looked through the Twilight and spotted the concealed glimmering in the walls.
'I see it now. You're getting more powerful with every day.'
Svetlana smiled, tensely, but with pride. She said:
'It's strange. Why put up barriers if you live alone?'
'And why build them if you don't?' I asked in a low voice that didn't require an answer. Svetlana didn't try to give me one.
We walked out of the study back into the sitting room.
The atmosphere wasn't entirely funereal, but it was close.
Either Semyon or Ilya had made a supreme effort and filled the room with a damp, marshy smell. Ignat was standing with his arms round Lena and gazing miserably at everyone else. He liked to have fun, in any form, any quarrelling or tension was like a knife in the heart to him. The card-players were staring silently at a single card lying on the table, and as they looked at it, it twitched, changing suit and value. Yulia looked sulky. She was asking Olga something in a quiet voice.
'Will someone pour me a drink?' Sveta asked, holding me by the hand. 'Didn't you know the best medicine for hysterical women is fifty grams of cognac?'
Tiger Cub, who had been standing by the window looking unhappy, walked quickly across to the bar. Did she really blame herself for our row?
Sveta and I took a glass of cognac each, clinked glasses demonstratively and kissed each other. I caught Olga's look: not delighted, not sad, just interested. And just slightly jealous.
I suddenly had a bad feeling.
As if I'd emerged from a labyrinth I'd been wandering around in for days, for months. And all I saw when I came out was the entrance to the next set of catacombs.
CHAPTER 2
IT WAS another two hours before I got a chance to talk with Olga alone. The jollity that had seemed so forced to Svetlana had already moved outside. Semyon was in charge of the barbecue, handing out kebabs to anyone who wanted them – they seemed to cook at a speed that definitely hinted at the use of magic. There were two crates of wine standing in the shade nearby.
Olga was chatting amicably with Ilya, each of them holding a skewer of kebab and a glass of wine. It was a shame to interrupt, but. . .
'Olga, I need to have a word with you,' I said, crossing towards them. Svetlana was engrossed in an argument with Tiger Cub – an intense discussion about the Watch's traditional New Year Carnival, which they'd moved on to from the subject of the hot weather. The moment was just right.
'Excuse me, Ilya,' said Olga with a shrug. 'We'll come back to this, okay? I'm intrigued by your views on the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even though you're wrong.'
Ilya smiled exultantly and walked off.
'Ask away, Anton,' Olga said to me in exactly the same tone.
'Do you know what I'm going to ask?'
'I think I can guess.'
I glanced around. There was no one near us. It was still that brief moment at the beginning of a dacha picnic when people want to eat and they want to drink, before their stomachs and their heads start to feel heavy.
'What's going to happen to Svetlana?'
'It's not easy to read the future. Especially the future of Great Magicians and Sorceresses . . .'
'Don't avoid the issue,' I said, looking into her eyes. 'Stop it. We worked together, didn't we? We were partners? When your punishment was still in force and you didn't even have that body. And your punishment was just.'
The blood drained from Olga's face.
'What do you know about my offence?'
'Everything.'
'How?'
'I work with the data, after all.'
'You don't have high enough clearance. And what happened to me has never been entered in the electronic archive.'
'Circumstantial evidence, Olya. You've seen ripples running across water, haven't you? The stone might be lying on the bottom already, deep in the silt, but the ripples still keep on going. Eroding the banks, casting up muck and foam, even overturning boats if the stone was really big. Let's just say I've spent a long time standing on the bank, standing and watching the waves wearing it away.'
'You're bluffing.'
'No. Olga, what happens to Sveta, after this? What stage of the training?'
The sorceress looked at me, completely forgetting her cold kebab and half-empty glass. I struck again.
'You've been through that stage, haven't you?'
'Yes.' It looked as if she was going to open up. 'I have. But I was prepared for it more slowly.'
'So what's the great hurry with Sveta?'
'Nobody was expecting another Great Sorceress to be born this century. Gesar had to improvise, make things up as he went along.'
'Is that why they let you have your old form back? Not just for doing a good job?'
'You say you understand everything!' said Olga, and her eyes glinted angrily. 'So what's the point of tormenting me?'
'Are you monitoring her training? On the basis of your own experience?'
'Yes. Satisfied?'
'Olga, we're on the same side of the barricades,' I whispered.
'Then don't try and stop your comrades getting on with the job.'
'Olga, what's the final goal? What was it you couldn't do? What is it Sveta has to do?'
'You . . .' she said, genuinely confused now. 'Anton, you were bluffing!'
I didn't answer.
'You don't know anything! Ripples on the water! You don't even know which way to look to see them!'
'Maybe so. But I got the most important thing right, didn't I?'
Olga looked at me and bit her lip. Then she shook her head.
'You did. A straight answer to a straight question. But I'm not going to explain anything. You shouldn't even know about it. It doesn't concern you.'
'That's where you're wrong.'
'None of us wishes Sveta any harm,' Olga said sharply. 'Is that clear?'
'We don't know how to wish anyone harm. It's just that sometimes our Good is no different from Evil.'
'Anton, let's stop right there. I have no right to answer your questions. And we shouldn't spoil this surprise holiday for the rest.'
'Just how much of a surprise is it?' I asked suggestively. 'Well, Olya?'
But she'd already pulled herself together, and her expression remained impenetrable. Much too impenetrable for a question like that.
'You've found out too much already.' Her voice was louder, it had assumed its former tone of authority.
'Olya, we've never been sent off on holiday all at the same time before. Not even for one day. Why has Gesar sent all the Light Ones out of Moscow?'
'Not all.'