“You have to forbid unauthorized persons from accessing the school territory!”
“No, I don’t. I have invited experts from NZAMIPS to check the ward-off perimeter. After repairing the fence, some signs need to be replaced. In addition, I will arrange for a safety lecture. Do you think Mr. Tangor will agree to help?”
“It’s irresponsible!”
“Irresponsible to repair the perimeter?”
“That insolent dark…”
“Saved Mihandrov. Did you want to say that?”
The mention of the young dark magician produced a strange reaction in Mr. Fox: he winced, grimaced, and began to shake his head. The white in general tolerate stress poorly, but that show looked more like a nervous breakdown. How else could one explain that, in rushing to save one child, he had forgotten about the fate of a hundred others?
“Nobody asked him about that!”
“Exactly. He showed concern for others, voluntarily and knowingly. His behavior must become a model for us.”
“Do you blame me for something?”
“Yes, I do. Your duty as a teacher is to take care of the children. What have you done for that?”
“You are too young, girl; you still have much to learn. There are times in life when we must act decisively to save at least somebody. You’ll lose plenty of people before it settles in your pretty little head!”
Mrs. Hemul smiled - a healer specializing in disaster medicine learns of inevitable casualties in the first place. Five years of experience, and no one better than she could walk the fine line between dead and barely alive, which would also die if left without help. She remembered the terrible fire at the Hotel “Palladium”, a train crash near Turik, hundreds of smaller incidents; only the birth of her twins made her change the career path. But she never treated people like lifeless flesh, even if they had only fifteen minutes left to live. It seemed that Mr. Fox conceitedly considered as “inevitable victims” the entire boarding school.
“Have I missed something? Someone has died?”
It seemed he did not understand the meaning of her words.
“Mihandrov needs a dark magician. I was right, and you were mistaken.”
Mr. Fox broke into an incomprehensible monologue about purity of thought and harmony of being. Interesting that yesterday he didn’t even intend to call and warn her; on the contrary, if he could, he would have left without saying a word. Mrs. Hemul felt nauseous at the sound of his voice, but she patiently listened, occasionally pointing out errors in his reasoning. A white experiences unbearable difficulty trying to insist on something, unless he is obsessed. She wanted to calm down the tension, forgive his sins, and send him off, but it was better to let him make noise in her office than run around the school scaring students and staff.
She needed to get rid of that man, quickly and under any pretext. Unfortunately, having learned that NZAMIPS experts had eliminated the urgent threat, the assistant principal abruptly changed his mind and came into her office with strange fabrications about the inevitable evil. He seemed confident that it was Mrs. Hemul who ought to behave differently. Oh, yes! On the director’s desk there was already a report, demanding rather than requesting the Board of Trustees to fire the inadequate assistant principal. In a few minutes a courier, called for that purpose, would take it to Artrom. It would be even better to talk to the trustees personally, but Mrs. Hemul could not leave the school while Fox was there. Her intuition literally screamed for caution in dealing with the mage-practitioner. She was doing that for the sake of the children, and the assistant principal wouldn’t get young Petros either, even if Mrs. Kormalis wouldn’t return home at all.
Chapter 33
I entered Mihandrov’s office of NZAMIPS at half past nine as a civilized looking person. To be honest, I wanted to speak to the lieutenant, but the tiny room was already occupied by dark mages.
Gorchik sported a bruised face. If he had found such trouble in such a quiet town as Mihandrov in one day, he was a real combat mage! From Mrs. Parker (with whom we got along very well now), I knew that the incident occurred in the same local pub closing after the sunset. The visiting dark (with an exceptionally subtle body) quarreled with the owner, who had a surprisingly melancholic personality, and the former was thrown out to cool down outside. Gorchik was about to employ combat magic on the full-body brewer, but he was stopped by the other “cleaners” in time. I think the fear that they would have to stay sober until the end of the trip if the brewer was hurt stimulated them much more than the prospect of the shackles of deliverance on their mate. Now, a bitter wrinkle lay above the brow of the unfortunate magician; he was figuring out a way of getting into the pub again without losing his dignity.
There were not enough chairs, so Lieutenant Clarence was standing—not a very advantageous position psychologically. I carefully removed the flower pots from the windowsill and motioned him to sit beside me.
“Okay,” the sergeant fidgeted, trying to settle comfortably on a hard office chair, “let’s introduce each other.”
I secretly poked the lieutenant with a finger and waited for a continuation. The “cleaner” did not notice the purposeful pause and introduced himself first: “Master Sergeant Otto Claymore, my assistants—Philip Gorchik, Keane Rispin, of the Rapid Response Team, Polisant Regional Office.”
“Aren’t you from Artrom?” I clarified. It was important.
“Civilian mages are in Artrom, but we’re from Polisant,” Gorchik grinned contentedly.
Obviously, it was some local twist, but their regional coordinator was still Axel.
“Thomas Tangor,” I humbly introduced myself, “an out-of-staff employee.”
“What’s that?” the sergeant did not understand.
“It means I work two days a month.”
The “cleaners” stayed silent for a while, trying to comprehend such blatant injustice.
“Clever,” the master sergeant commented, “I hope what we saw was not an example of your work?”
I shrugged and didn’t stoop to meaningless excuses: he grasped the situation without my help, and I let him leave his gibes to himself. Sergeant Claymore finally started feeling tension and sat down a bit straighter. “I understand the case could be closed now.”
It was very typical: they had just arrived and already intended to leave. And they would leave, if we gave them at least half a chance to throw their work on the other people’s shoulders.
“Have you already found all the missing people?”
“Finding the corpses is just a matter of time. The combat group isn’t needed for that.”
“Excuse me, how has your assignment been formulated?”
“Never mind. We have expelled the otherworldly.”
“What does the supernatural have to do with it? I don’t care about the supernatural. You will be accountable for the artisans, not for the supernatural.”
“Are you being rude?”
“Yes!”
Sergeant Claymore got behind Clarence’s desk quite voluntarily; now, the same desk restricted him from coming and taking me by the shirt. Also, I was sitting in such a way that all three “cleaners” were before me, and the door was right beside me. It wasn’t very conducive to the development of a conflict; however, the sergeant tried. He got up, and I did too. He defiantly stared at me; in return he got exactly the same challenging look from me. We were of the same height, and that greatly simplified the matter.
What happened further concerned only the dark; we disputed the question of whose will was primary—whose was poised to cause the enemy more problems and to make it through to the end. Strictly speaking, the majority of the dark are interested in just that, not in the nonsense about the law and the order. The sergeant saw the white lieutenant and, obviously, thought that the latter wouldn’t be able to reprove him. He decided that they had done enough. But now Mihandrov was my town, and for my own territory I would tear anyone to pieces. Gorchik restlessly fidgeted in his chair, but I was confident
that I could awaken my Source more quickly than he his. Do not tell me about arrogance! That kid did not see anything worse than the witch’s baldness, but I had overcome three mature ghouls! I would even set my zombie-dog on them. There were eight corpses—and there would be eleven.
And Claymore faltered. He did not want to challenge his scope of duty, but to retreat in front of his subordinates meant to lose his indisputable authority. It would be bad for the discipline. Evidently, the sergeant was looking for a way out of the conflict. His posture and body language—one shoulder slightly forward, as if taking a bow, head low, gaze on the enemy, but askance. Okay, sergeant! I closed my eyelids, breaking resistance, and Claymore immediately took advantage of me. “Hey, kid, relax! We will find that scum, clean up the neighborhood, and then will do what our superiors will order. We are soldiers.”
I nodded, accepting the new terms. The sergeant was absolutely right; they didn’t have a reason to go against the order. Hence, we would continue working together; I had a lot of interesting ideas in this regard.
The “cleaners” dragged themselves in single file to the door, looking at me warily. I poked Clarence with a finger again. I hoped he would not apologize! That would spoil the whole disposition—as long as they considered themselves on foreign soil, they would not be tempted to do a shitty job.
“Keep quiet, take your seat,” I whispered to the lieutenant as soon as the door closed behind Rispin.
We sat in silence for a few minutes, while I pondered whether Gorchik had eavesdropped on us. Maybe I should check it out? My conflicts with the other darks had never reached that stage before, and the encounter with Mr. Satal was lost from the start.
The lieutenant broke the silence first: “That was outrageous!”
“What was outrageous?” I did not understand.
“All of that!”
“That they wanted you to sign the claims rejection?” I guessed.
“Exactly!”
The poor fellow felt abused.
“Hey Rudy, have you had any dark among your acquaintances?”
He shrugged uncertainly.
“I see. Remember (better write it down): the first thing a dark magician does when he receives an assignment is an attempt to get rid of it. To frighten him or appeal to his sense of duty would be useless, but to indicate the possible consequences of underperformance with an emphasis on personal responsibility is a must.”
The lieutenant frowned. What a naive kid!
“Do not look at me. I grew up among the white; consider me a cripple. The real dark behaves exactly the way I described. Judge for yourself: why would they want to clear up mess that wasn’t their fault?”
“But… what can we do now?”
“Let’s follow the plan as before; now you know why the plan was like that. Your senior coordinator remains our goal, so look out for journalists. Ask the directrix of the school for help; she seems to be smart. And forget about these guys: as long as they know they are being watched, they will do their job in the best possible way. Do not flirt with them, or they will instantly make you do their job.”
Poor old Clarence rubbed his eyes in confusion, trying to make his brain understand my logic. I think the white are unable to grasp the subtleties of the dark character, though empaths seem to cope with that somehow.
“I’m stunned,” he concluded finally. “I took a course on dark magicians—even attended a workshop. Nothing like reality.”
“Theory without practice is dead! Go back to work.”
* * *
Striped police ribbon carved out from the monotonous landscape a large rectangle, inside of which the grass was either mowed short or burnt out to the roots. A convenient wide passage was cut through dense thickets of thorns. The three combat mages were busy, each one doing the work that suited him best.
Rispin rustled through the brush in the location of the secret burial. The exhumed corpse had been thoroughly examined, described, and its parts wrapped in packing paper. He was an experienced criminalist, able to make the dead speak without the aid of necromancy. The credit for his hire by NZAMIPS, and not by the criminal police, should be given solely to Coordinator Axel; NZAMIPS doubled his pay.
Sergeant Claymore plotted on a sheet of paper a detailed plan of the crime scene, concurrently sketching a draft of his future report. His subordinates flocked to him with their findings.
“He was right, that kid,” Gorchik came out of the bushes in overalls and goggles, the lenses of which made his face look like a fish tank. Needless to say, the dark did not like wearing glasses.
“What, someone called Rustle?”
Gorchik winced: naming the only monster that was more or less responsive to the call of the otherworldly liquidators was considered bad taste among combat mages.
“Shield, modified to specifically kill the white Source.”
Claymore raised his eyebrow. An interesting picture! The dark Source could exist for some time outside the body, but the white one was not receptive to the fixation on the pump-sign. There was a time when inquisitors could induce spontaneous manifestations of white magic, but the consequences of that were so horrendous…
“It does not look like they tried to exorcise the possessed here.”
“No, it doesn’t,” confirmed Gorchik. “The victim followed the killer to this place without any resistance, voluntarily called his or her Source during the ritual, and was murdered then. This requires either utmost dedication or an extreme amount of credibility to the murderer.”
“Given the age of the victim,” the sergeant nodded to the lovingly-wrapped remains, “one does not exclude the other.”
“That means that our scum is a highly respected person. A man like this you won’t approach without an order.”
Claymore frowned. “Shit! It increasingly looks like the artisans. I hoped they weren’t involved—so many years have passed, and Axel watches the white community thoroughly.”
“The place already smelled bad a year ago, but the empaths decided that there was a collective magic resonance. I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of those nerds now!”
The dark mages exchanged malevolent grins.
“What, are you done?” Rispin broke away from the excavation.
“How about you?” the sergeant looked at his watch.
The forensics expert shrugged. “Nothing. The scoundrel works exceptionally accurately. The bones are not damaged; apparently, the victim died from a puncture to the soft tissue. I can’t say anything more specific; the spell, accelerating decay, was applied. If the murders started ten years ago, it would be extremely difficult to find all the victims. The imprints of their auras will be hard to identify.”
“I’m in a better situation!” Gorchik boasted. “There are some fragments suitable for identification, but they won’t tell the overall picture.”
“Shit,” the sergeant spoke out. Hence, they couldn’t find the murderer with magic. They would have to use good old police methods. “Can we identify the victim?”
“Yes.”
“Compose his or her portrait, and we’ll show it at school. He was young, so he must be one of theirs. We are done for today. Tomorrow we’ll start to look for the rest. Can any of you ride a horse?”
For an urban dark, the idea of getting on a horse seemed unnatural.
“I see,” the sergeant sighed, “that means we’ll walk.”
Rispin muttered under his breath something dirty that rhymed well with “Tangor.” The sergeant himself could hardly refrain from swearing. No, in his mind he certainly understood the importance of catching the killer and the significance of their mission, but in his heart… Claymore wished with all his heart that the underage parasite would die in agony, infected with shingles. Well, he must have tried hard to find such a vile job for the three respected magicians! The sergeant did not doubt the success of the investigation—no villain escaped their team—but at the thought of how much time they would spend searching for the other corpses, he w
anted to get drunk.
Chapter 34
A call from the school caught me lying under the car: I finally got into that squeaky vehicle! Of course, Alfred didn’t let me work on the car right away; it was preceded by a thoughtful conversation about the benefits of front-wheel drive, the quality of local ethanol fuel, and the prospects of oil engines. Of course, he was not a professional alchemist and could not resist my obsessive charisma. I approached the adjustment of the carburetor with the piety that some people begin a prayer with, but then things got livelier. I started to feel great peace and happiness. The design of the machinery, clear and functional, was such a contrast to the intricacies of human existence that I sensed tears welling in my eyes. I officiated over the brake actuator (a critical part of cross-country driving) when I was interrupted.
Clarence came up, reporting, “Mrs. Hemul called and begged you to come to school. She seemed to sense that someone at the school cast spells this morning, and it highly disturbed her.”
I almost threw a wrench at him. Could I have some personal time off? Which of us was the town’s sheriff? Who was the head of Mihandrov’s NZAMIPS? A unit of combat mages was grazing in the town, but he called for help a poor student on a business trip, a student who didn’t even have a degree in magic!
But Lyuchik was at the school. I sighed and went to wash my hands off grease.
On the way to the school I was planning to tell the directrix all I thought of her. She hadn’t known the words I was about to say! I had called her yesterday, but she discouraged me from coming, hinting that she did not want to provoke Fox. And now everything seemed okay with her “boyfriend”. Just when I was finally back to doing interesting things, he was readying his excuses! I hated that!
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