Night Watch

by Sergei Lukyanenko

  “Sokolniki’s completely covered,” one of the guys said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it rumbled right around the ring of the restaurant, making the waiters shudder and falter in their stride.

  “The Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya line’s under surveillance,” said another of them. The young guys glanced at each other and laughed. They probably had a little competition going to see who could report fastest on his sectors.

  Go right ahead, keep looking!

  I set off around the restaurant, making for the bar. Take no notice of me. I’m a harmless security man who just happened to be given the role of a lowly guard. And now the security man’s decided he’d like a beer. Has he completely lost all sense of responsibility? Or has he decided to check that his new bosses are safe? A platoon was sent on night patrol on the orders of the king. Trala-la-la, trala-la-la . . .

  The young woman behind the bar was wiping glasses in a melancholy sort of way. When I stopped, she started pouring me a beer without saying a word. Her eyes were dark and empty; she’d been turned into a puppet, and I had to struggle to suppress an outburst of fury. I couldn’t allow it. I had no right to feelings. I was a robot too. Puppets didn’t have feelings.

  And then I saw the girl sitting on the tall rotating ottoman opposite the bar, and my heart sank again.

  Why hadn’t I thought about that earlier?

  Every field headquarters has to be declared to the other side, and an observer is sent to every field headquarters. It’s part of the Treaty; it’s one of the rules of the game, in the interest, supposedly, of both sides. If we had a field headquarters, then one of the Dark Ones was sitting in it right now.

  The Light One sitting here was Tiger Cub.

  At first her glance slid over me with no sign of curiosity, and I was almost certain everything would be okay.

  Then her eyes came back to me.

  She’d already seen the security man whose appearance I’d assumed. And there was something about me that didn’t match the features stored in her memory, something that bothered her. In an instant she was looking at me through the Twilight.

  I stood still, without trying to shield myself.

  Tiger Cub looked away and turned toward the magician sitting opposite her. He wasn’t actually a weak magician—I estimated his age at about a hundred and his powers as at least grade three. He wasn’t weak, just complacent.

  “The actions you’re taking are still a provocation,” she told him in an even voice. “Night Watch is certain that the Maverick isn’t Anton.”

  “Who, then?”

  “An untrained Light Magician unknown to us. A Light Magician controlled by the Dark Ones.”

  “But what for, my girl?” the magician asked, genuinely surprised. “Explain it to me. Why would we let our own people be killed, even the ones who are less valuable?”

  “Yes, ‘less valuable’ is the key phrase,” Tiger Cub told him in a melancholy tone.

  “Maybe, just maybe, if we had a chance to eliminate the head of the Light Ones in Moscow, but, as usual, he’s above all suspicion. And sacrifice twenty of our own just for one ordinary, average Light One? No way. Or do you think we’re fools?”

  “No, I think you’re very smart. Probably much smarter than I am.” Tiger Cub smiled her dangerous smile. “But I’m only a field operative. The conclusions will be drawn by someone else, and they will be drawn, you can be sure of it!”

  “We’re not demanding immediate execution!” the Dark One said with a smile. “Even now we don’t exclude the possibility of a mistake. A tribunal, a professional, impartial investigation, justice—that’s all we want.”

  “But isn’t it strange that your leader couldn’t hit Anton with Shahab’s Lash?” said the Tiger Cub, tilting a glass of beer with one finger. “It’s amazing. His favorite weapon, one he’s been a master of for hundreds of years. Almost as if the Day Watch doesn’t want to see Anton caught.”

  “My dear girl,” said the Dark Magician, leaning across the table, “you’re flip-flopping! You can’t accuse us of pursuing an innocent, law-abiding Light One and at the same time claim we’re not trying to catch him!”

  “Why not?”

  “Such petty sadism.” The magician giggled. “I’m genuinely enjoying this conversation. Do you really think we’re a band of crazy, bloodthirsty psychopaths?”

  “No, we think you’re a band of cunning creeps.”

  “Let’s try comparing our methods.” I could see the Dark One was mounting his hobbyhorse. “Let’s compare the losses the actions of the two Watches have inflicted on ordinary people, our food base.”

  “It’s only for you that human beings are food.”

  “What about you? Or are Light Ones born to Light Ones now and not picked out of the crowd?”

  “For us, human beings are our roots. Our roots.”

  “Okay, call them roots. What’s the point of arguing over words? But in that case they’re our roots too, my girl. And it’s no secret that the amount of sap they feed us is on the increase.”

  “It’s no secret that our numbers aren’t declining, either.”

  “Of course. Troubled times, all that stress and tension—people are living on the edge, and it’s easy to fall off. At least we’ve managed to agree on that!” The magician snickered.

  “Yes,” Tiger Cub agreed. She didn’t look in my direction again, and the conversation wandered off onto an eternal, insoluble question that philosophers on both sides have debated in vain, never mind a pair of bored magicians, one Dark and one Light. I realized that Tiger Cub had told me everything she needed to.

  Or everything she felt it was appropriate to tell me.

  I picked up the mug of beer standing in front of me and drank it in several deep, measured swallows. I really had been thirsty.

  So the hunt was just a front?

  Yes, and I’d realized that a long time ago. But it was important for me to know that our side understood that too.

  And the Maverick hadn’t been caught?

  Naturally. Otherwise they would already have contacted me. Either by phone or mentally, that was no problem for the boss. The killer would have been handed over to the Tribunal, Svetlana would no longer be torn between the desire to help and the need to avoid getting drawn into a fight, and I could have laughed in Zabulon’s face.

  But how, how was it possible to find a single man in an immense city like this, when his powers manifested themselves spontaneously? Just flared up and then faded away again. Lying dormant between one killing and the next, one pointless victory over Evil and the next. And if he really was known to the Dark Ones, it was a secret kept by the very top bosses.

  Not by the Dark Ones who were wasting their time up here.

  I looked around in disgust.

  This wasn’t serious!

  The guard I’d killed so easily. The third-degree magician debating so keenly with our observer and not bothering to keep his eyes open. Those young guys at the terminals, shouting out:

  “Tsvetnoi Boulevard has been checked!”

  “Polezhaevskaya Street is under surveillance!”

  Yes, this was a field headquarters. And it was about as ludicrously unprofessional as the way the inexperienced Dark Ones were hunting for me right across the city. Yes, the net had been cast, but no one was concerned about gaping holes in it. The longer I could keep on dodging the roundup and the more I thrashed about, the more the Darkness liked it. At the strategic level, of course. Svetlana wouldn’t be able to bear it; she’d lose control. She’d try to help, because she could sense the genuine Power developing inside her. None of our people would be able to restrain her—not directly. And she’d be killed.

  “Volgograd Avenue.”

  I could slit all their throats, or shoot them all right here and now! Every last one of them. They were the Darkness’s rejects and the failures, the dunces who had no prospects because they had too many shortcomings. It wasn’t simply that the Dark Ones didn’t feel sorry for them—they were a
hindrance, they got in the way. The Day Watch was nothing like the almshouse that we sometimes resembled. The Day Watch got rid of anyone who was surplus. In fact, it usually got us to do the job for it, handing them a trump card, the right to respond, to change the balance.

  And the Twilight figure that had directed me to the Ostankino tower was another product of the Darkness. An insurance policy, in case I didn’t guess where I ought to go to fight my battle.

  But the real action was being coordinated by just one Other.

  Zabulon.

  He didn’t feel the slightest resentment against me. Of course not. What use would such complex and petty feelings be in a serious game like this?

  He’d eaten dozens like me for breakfast, removing them from the board, sacrificing his own pawns to pay for them.

  When would he decide that the match was played out and it was time for the endgame?

  “Do you have a light?” I asked, putting down my beer mug and picking up a pack of cigarettes lying on the counter. Someone had forgotten it, maybe one of the restaurant’s customers, fleeing in a state of panic, maybe one of the Dark Ones.

  Tiger Cub’s eyes lit up and she tensed her muscles. I realized the sorceress could start her battle transformation at any moment. She must have assessed the enemy’s strength too. She knew we had a serious chance of success.

  But there was no need.

  The old third-grade Dark Magician casually held out his Ronson lighter. It gave a melodic little click and shot out a tongue of flame, and the Dark Magician carried on talking.

  “There’s only one reason why you constantly accuse the Darkness of playing a double game and organizing deliberate provocations—in order to disguise the fact that you’re not fit to survive. Your failure to understand the world and its laws. When you get right down to it, your failure to understand ordinary people! Once it’s accepted that the diagnosis made by the Dark Side is far more accurate, then what becomes of your morality? Of your whole philosophy of life? Eh?”

  I lit up, nodded politely, and set out for the exit. Tiger Cub watched me go with a puzzled look in her eyes. Well, you just figure out for yourself why I’m leaving.

  I’d found out all I could find out around here.

  Or rather—almost all.

  I leaned down toward the short haircut of the young guy in glasses who had his nose stuck in his notebook and asked briskly:

  “What districts are we closing off last?”

  “Botanical Gardens and the Economic Exhibition,” he answered, without even looking up. The cursor continued to slide across the screen. The Dark One was issuing instructions, relishing his power as he moved red dots across the map of Moscow. It would have been harder to prize him away from this process than to drag him away from the girl he loved.

  They know how to love too, after all.

  “Thanks,” I said, dropping my burning cigarette into the full ashtray. “That’s very helpful.”

  “No worries,” the terminal operator said casually, without looking around. He stuck his tongue out of his mouth and stuck another dot on the map: one more rank-and-file Dark One moving into the roundup. What are you so delighted about, you stupid fool? The ones with real power will never appear on your map. You’d be better off playing with toy soldiers if power’s the way you get your kicks.

  I slid across to the spiral staircase. All the fury I’d felt on my way here—the determination to kill or, more likely, be killed—had disappeared. I’m sure at some point during a battle a soldier enters a state of icy calm, the same way a surgeon’s hands stop trembling when the patient starts dying on the operating table.

  What possible variants have you provided for, Zabulon?

  I start thrashing about in the nets closing in around me, and the commotion attracts Light Ones and Dark Ones, all of them—and especially Svetlana?

  That one’s out.

  That I give myself up or get caught and then the long, slow, exhausting trial starts, concluding in a frenzied outburst by Svetlana at the Tribunal?

  That one’s out.

  I start a fight with your field headquarters operatives and kill them all, but end up trapped a third of a kilometer above the ground, and Svetlana comes dashing to the tower?

  That one’s out.

  I take a stroll around the field headquarters and figure out that no one there knows anything about the Maverick, and try to play for time?

  That’s a possibility.

  The ring was getting tighter, I knew that. It had been closed off first around the outskirts of the city, along the Moscow Ring Road; then the city had been carved up into districts and the major transport routes had been closed off. It still wasn’t too late to take a quick look around nearby districts that weren’t under surveillance yet, find a hiding place, and try to lie low. The only advice the boss had been able to give me was to hold out for as long as possible, while the Night Watch was rushing about, trying to find the Maverick.

  It’s no accident that you’re squeezing me into the district where we had our little scuffle last winter, is it, Zabulon? I can’t help remembering it, so one way or another the way I act is bound to be affected by my memories.

  The observation platform was empty now. Completely empty. The final visitors had fled, and there were no staff—only the man I’d recruited, standing by the stairs, clutching his pistol in his hand and staring downward with his eyes blazing.

  “Now we’ll change clothes again,” I told him. “The Light thanks you. Afterward you’ll forget everything we’ve talked about. You’ll go home. All you’ll remember is that it was an ordinary day, like yesterday. Nothing much happened.”

  “Nothing much happened!” the security man blurted out cheerfully as he took my clothes off. It’s so easy to turn people to the Light or the Darkness, but they’re happiest of all when they’re allowed to be themselves.

  CHAPTER 6

  ONCE I WAS OUT OF THE TOWER I STOPPED, STUCK MY HANDS in my pockets, and stood there for a while, looking at the beams of the searchlights shooting up into the sky and the brightly lit security check booth.

  There were just two things I didn’t understand in the game being played out by the two Watches, or rather by the leaders of the Watches.

  That Other who had departed into the Twilight—who was he and whose side was he on? Had he been warning me or trying to frighten me off?

  And the kid, Egor—had I really met him just by chance? And if not, had our meeting been a destiny node or just another of Zabulon’s moves?

  I knew next to nothing about inhabitants of the twilight. Maybe even Gesar himself knew nothing.

  But at least I could think a bit about Egor.

  He was the card that hadn’t been dealt yet. Maybe only a low card, but a trump, like all of us. And small trumps have their uses too. Egor had already been in the Twilight—the first time when he tried to see me, the second time when he escaped from the vampire. That wasn’t a very good hand, to be honest. Both times he’d been led by fear, and that should have meant his future was decided. Maybe he could linger on the borderline between human being and Other for a few more years, but his path led to the Dark Ones.

  It’s always best to look the truth squarely in the face. It didn’t make the slightest bit of difference that so far Egor was just like any other good kid. If I survived, I’d still have to ask for his ID every time I met him—or show him my own.

  Zabulon could probably influence him. Send him to any place I happened to be. That reminded me that he probably had no difficulty sensing where I was either. I was prepared for that.

  But I still didn’t know if our “chance” meeting had any meaning!

  Given what the Dark computer operator had said—that they weren’t combing the Economic Exhibition district yet—it had. I might get the wild idea of using the boy somehow—hiding in his apartment or sending him to get help. I might head for his building. Right?

  Too complicated. Way too tricky. They could take me easily enough anyway. I
was missing something, something crucially important.

  I walked toward the street and didn’t look around again at the Dark Ones’ sham headquarters. I’d almost even forgotten about the shattered body of the magician who’d been guarding it, lying somewhere near the foot of the tower at that moment. What did they want me to do? What was it? I had to start from that point.

  Act as bait. Get caught by the Day Watch. Get caught in a way that would leave no doubt that I was guilty. And that had as good as happened already.

  After that, Svetlana wouldn’t be able to control herself. We could protect her and her mother. The one thing we couldn’t do was interfere in her own decisions. And if she started trying to save me, to pluck me out of the Day Watch’s dungeons or rescue me from the Tribunal, she would be killed. Swiftly and without hesitation. The whole game had been designed so she could make a wrong move. The whole game had been set up a long time ago, when the Dark Magician Zabulon had seen the appearance of a Great Sorceress in the future and the part I was destined to play. The traps had been set. The first one had failed. The second one was holding its greedy jaws wide open right now. Maybe there was a third still to come.

  But where did a kid who still couldn’t manifest his magical powers come into all this?

  I stopped.

  He was Dark, that must be it!

  And who was it who killed Dark Ones? Weak, unskilled Dark Ones who didn’t want to develop?

  One more body laid at my door—but what was the point?

  I didn’t know. But I did know that the kid was doomed and the meeting in the metro hadn’t been any accident. I could see that clearly now. I must have been experiencing prevision again or another piece of the jigsaw had simply fallen into place.