The Crown and the Key

by Andrey Vasilyev

  “Really?” I said to the Gray Witch. “I’m not good enough to be a full-fledged ally? You said I was good enough before—did the council turn you down?”

  She was going against what she’d said so recently in that very room. Although, I did need to be careful about my tone…

  “I don’t like being trite, but things have changed,” the Gray Witch said simply. “The clan code is strict, if flexible.”

  “That’s good,” I replied as I declined her offer. “Staying flexible with issues like this is commendable—it means you can appreciate a range of viewpoints.”

  “Huh?” the Gray Witch said, I thought, with surprise. Wait, she has emotions? “Explain yourself.”

  “He turned us down?” Radius asked happily. “I told you!”

  “Still, out with it,” the Gray Witch said sternly.

  I massaged my pulsing temples.

  “What’s there to explain? I told you—my clan is going to sit this war out. It doesn’t do anything for us, and we don’t get anything out of it. Even put it this way: I don’t see a place for us in the war. You all have your reasons, you’re divvying up power over the continent, you’re carving up zones of influence, but what does that have to do with me? That’s the first thing.”

  “There’s a second?” the mistress asked.

  “Of course. I have a clan, like I told you, that has fifteen low-level players and a bunch of NPCs, most of which are elderly or kids. Us players don’t have anything standing between us and all the monsters, traps, PKers, and everything else in the game, sure. But a bunch of invalid NPCs? They aren’t a target for the rest of the players out there right now, but they will be as soon as I join your alliance. They’ll be slaughtered to a man if only to get under my skin. Just take Miurat—he’ll bring a dozen of his high-level players in and level the place. And if he does that, I’ll fail the social quest I’m working on, and at that point, I might as well just quit the game. That’s the second thing.”

  “And the third?” The Witch smiled cryptically.

  “That’s it,” I lied, looking her in the eye. “Just that.”

  “You’re lying,” she fired back. “You weren’t lying about the first two things, but you’re lying about them being all.”

  “You shouldn’t have declined,” Radius said with a sympathetic look. “And not just because you think we’ll remember that afterward or try to get back at you. Loners have a hard time surviving when things are upside down like they’re going to be. And that’s not to mention the missed opportunities. It’s one thing to be nearby the pie when they’re cutting it up; it’s another to show up when it’s almost eaten.”

  “Still, no,” I replied, getting up. “But that doesn’t change the way I feel about your clan. If I can do anything to help…”

  The Witch got up, as well. “I’m glad this won’t get between us. We’ve known each other too long to have that happen.”

  It didn’t look like she was too upset about getting turned down, though her face was impossible to read. It was equally impossible to figure out what her underlying motives might have been.

  “Agreed.” I was starting to feel wobbly as the system practically screamed that it was time to stop playing.

  “Oh, one more thing,” the Gray Witch said, digging around in the papers covering her desk. “Open your exchange—you don’t have any portal scrolls. Here you go.”

  Is there anybody in Fayroll who hasn’t heard about that slip-up? And how could she possibly know? There was something going on, and that was just another pain in my head.

  I shuffled a foot. “Thanks. If you think of anything I can do for you, let me know.”

  “There will be something,” the Witch said, either cheering me up or trying to scare me. “I imagine somebody will be approaching you from the Double Shields—they aren’t going to just give up on their plans, even with war on the horizon. Don’t forget to tell me when that happens.”

  “Of course,” I replied. “So, the war’s going to be a big one?”

  “Are you talking about the big battles with fireballs flying overhead? With the gryphons circling and the masses of players banging iron together?” She saw my nod and continued. “We’ll have that, too. But that kind of thing is really just a bone you throw to all the players—it’s fun, and you have to have it. We’ll have that, just a little later. The real war, the one for control of locations, resources, markets for loot, and, most importantly, information, that one’s already underway. It started a long time before this, only it wasn’t so obvious.”

  You must not be doing so well if you’re trying to push for open conflict. Although… The Double Shields may have engineered the whole thing to provoke the Hounds of Death to… God, I need to get some sleep.

  “Okay, go to bed,” the Gray Witch said, patting my shoulder. “We’ll talk more later, believe me. If you want to skip out on the war, that’s your right, though the war will come to your doorstep whether you like it or not. You’re already part of this.”

  I nodded to Radius and Cedric, after which I left the office. It was a short, intriguing conversation. There was a lot for me to think about once I’d gotten some sleep, and it was what the Witch said right there at the end that most piqued my interest. Some people just don’t know how to be simple and straightforward.

  “Flavius,” I said to the kid who was chattering on about something with a giggling Tren-Bren. “Could you show us out?”

  “Of course,” he replied. “It would be my pleasure.”

  If I’d had my way, I would have logged out right there, but I couldn’t leave the fairy alone. Who knows what she’ll do?

  ***

  The village, which had been quiet and peaceful just the day before, looked like a Gypsy camp.

  The view from the hill we were standing on was practically apocalyptic: bonfires burned, people ran to and fro, the inquisitors mingled with my gelts, and it was, in a word, one big Babylon.

  “Tired?” the fairy asked from next to me.

  “You have no idea.” I rubbed my face. “We need to find Kro and tell her to make sure she’s here tomorrow.”

  “What about you?” Tren-Bren asked with a look of surprise on her face.

  “I don’t know,” I sighed. “I may log in tomorrow morning, though I definitely won’t be here in the evening. There’s a big corporate party going on, complete with singing and dancing.”

  “Forget it. I’m not going out with my classmates, either—screw them.”

  I looked at the fairy tenderly. “Ah, if I only could, believe me, I’d be only too happy to do just that.”

  “Well, if you have to go, you have to go. It just isn’t the best time for it.”

  She was being oddly serious.

  “There’s never a good time,” I told her. “If everything happened right on time, we’d be living in a different world.”

  “You’re probably right.” The fairy was clearly too young to have put much thought into the deeper questions of life. “Things are great with me as it is, though. A week ago, I didn’t think anybody needed me, and now I have friends, a clan, and a fascinating life to live. What else could you need?”

  A little restraint when it comes to your emotions, and some tact when you’re talking to other people. I didn’t say that aloud, though. I was probably the same way, maybe, even worse.

  “I’m going to head down there, okay?” The fairy had apparently gotten bored hanging around me and wanted to go see what was going on in the village.

  The nod I gave her set off a new round of pains in my head and noise in my ears, and she whistled off.

  I pushed away the urge to log out and was about to start gingerly down the hill when someone tapped me delicately on the back.

  Turning around, I found myself face-to-face with a grinning skull atop a short skeleton.

  “Whoa!” I exhaled sharply, shocked both by the sight and by the fact that he was so polite.

  “Master Hagen?” the skeleton asked with a raspy
voice. Huh, they didn’t used to talk. Something’s changing in the land of the dead. Either that or they’d just not wanted to talk—when there’s as wide a difference in worldviews between you as there are between the living and dead worlds, you sometimes just give up on talking.

  I looked around. The last thing I needed was someone to see who’d dropped by because there was no explaining him away. And if news got around to the inquisitors or the order…

  “Yes?” I asked, doing my best to repress the reflex telling me to kill the bony undead.

  “My master sends his regards. Great Lord of the Dead Baron Semadi asked me to invite you to the housewarming party he’s throwing tomorrow at midnight near his new palace. He’ll be throwing out the old owner, and he’d like to thank you for finding him such a great spot.”

  “I can’t do it tomorrow.” Seriously, I’m going to start living in here. “Tell him that we’ll go the day after tomorrow at the same time to free up his new home.”

  “Okay, Master Hagen.” The skeleton scraped bone on bone as he gave me something like a half-bow. “I’ll pass that on.”

  He turned and disappeared into the darkness.

  You unlocked Everyone Needs a Home.

  Task: Help Baron Semadi capture the palace in Al Albain, where Ffarg the Wicked is currently living.

  Reward:

  4000 experience

  3000 gold

  Three items from Ffarg the Wicked’s storehouses

  You may receive additional bonus rewards from Baron Semadi as you complete the quest and meet certain conditions.

  Warning! This quest will be very difficult to complete alone, so you should think about taking 15-20 friends with you.

  Warning! If you complete this quest without the help of friends but with the help of Baron Semadi and his skeleton guard, there is a risk you will be deeply touched by the magic of the night. That would have an unpredictable effect on your future.

  Warning! If you are successful in helping Baron Semadi gain control of the palace in Al Albain, his power and forces will grow substantially.

  Accept?

  I didn’t have much of a choice.

  ***

  Krolina took one quick look at me.

  “I’ll be here tomorrow, don’t worry. Time for you to log out.”

  “Something—” I started, wanting to give the girl the news, though she just waved me off.

  “Forget it. Go home before you start getting hit with penalties!”

  Wait a second. We’d logged into the game at around the same time, though she looked fine. How is that? I wondered if the system factored in additional loads placed on your nervous system—the bog had done a number on me. And what are those penalties? I needed to read up on them.

  On the other hand, someone from Raidion could have been just giving me a hint to get out so I’d be rested for the ball the next day. I wouldn’t put that past them.

  ***

  With a sigh, I crawled out of the capsule. God, it’s good to be home.

  Chapter Sixteen

  In which the ceiling gets shot up.

  “Are you ever going to wake up?” I was being shaken, my nose was being held, my ears were being pulled, and someone was even burying their fists in my side. “It’s almost one, and we need to go soon.”

  “What do you mean?” I muttered. “It starts at seven.”

  “Well, what about getting ready? And driving there?” Vika crawled off the bed and pattered around the room. “There’s our makeup, too—we’ll miss the beginning!”

  “We’re going to miss it either way,” I said, pulling my eyelids open. My head ached a bit, and my throat was parched. Damn, was I playing or drinking yesterday? The sensation was exactly the same as a hangover. “We’ll show up after it starts.”

  “What are you talking about?” Vika stopped and looked at me with lowered brows. “What about the best part? The guy with the big stick yelling ‘Harriton Nikiforov and his wife,’ the boom, the shout, the waltz playing?”

  “Yeah, right, a waltz,” I rasped. I need some water fast. “This is the post-revolutionary period—what stewards in livery do you think there were back then? There’ll be an old song, maybe some drunk sailors, and that’s it. Believe me, you won’t be missing anything.”

  Vika plopped down on the edge of the bed. “It’s always like this with you. I’m going to miss the beginning.”

  “Big deal,” I replied, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed with a groan. Everything hurt. That made sense, though—I’d spent the whole previous day in the capsule. “It’s just a ball.”

  “Right, because I’ve been to so many of them.”

  “What about your graduation? Plus, school…”

  “I went to school in Kasimov, and I still have no idea how they all managed to find their way to the stage.”

  “Hey, easy, that’s your town you’re talking about.”

  “Sure, it’s fine. Everyone drinks, though.”

  “That’s a folk tradition that goes back a long way,” I replied. “And hey, who doesn’t drink? Where do people not drink? Seriously. You should have seen me five years ago, after my first divorce, especially. Well, before it, too. And I won’t even discuss my graduation—I don’t remember the whole thing.”

  Vika didn’t say anything, mostly because there wasn’t anything to say.

  “Still, it’s a shame,” she responded eventually.

  “Not in the least. It doesn’t matter when you get to the ball; it matters how you get there. We’re going to make an impression because we are? Right—individuals. Everyone else will come as a crowd and stay as a crowd. Well, except the bosses, of course.”

  Vika hadn’t looked at things that way, so I decided to use the time her pause bought me and head for the facilities.

  Feeling better after some water therapy and hot tea, I grabbed my phone. I needed to make sure everything was good with our makeup artist. She had everything in her head, from cobwebs to oddities, but not nearly enough memory. And if she wasn’t in on the plan, we were done.

  “Hey, Natasha,” I said with a sigh of relief when I heard her slow “Hello?” on the other end of the line. “Were you sleeping?”

  “Yep. And by myself, too.”

  “I guess, that happens,” I replied sympathetically. “At least, you didn’t have anyone to keep you awake.”

  “Idiot,” she snorted. “What do you need?”

  “Well, you’re supposed to do makeup for me and my guys today. Tonight, I mean.”

  “I remember,” Natasha yawned. “Your friend called yesterday, and I got a friend to help, so it’ll go faster. The money’s decent, and we could definitely use some with the holidays coming up.”

  Azov, probably. It was a good move on his part.

  “Excellent,” I replied, calming down. “Did you talk about a car? How you’ll be getting there?”

  “Yes, we’re being picked up at the theater, don’t worry. Hey, can we come to the party with you guys? If you’re paying that kind of money, it’s probably going to be great. They’ll probably have all kinds of food—caviar, oysters, lobster… Have you ever had lobster?”

  “Nope.” There was no point lying about it, especially since there aren’t any lobsters in the water around Moscow.

  “The guys will probably be something, too,” Natasha said, getting to the point. “Who knows what could happen?”

  “No, my friend, there’s no getting in for you. Sorry about that.”

  “We’ll see,” she replied dubiously. “You never know.”

  “You never do.” I immediately thought of the time, four years before, when my old friend Pasha from the Moscow Paper and her ex-husband had to get her out of a Moscow dacha. Three rough nuts from the Caucasus had taken her there from the nightclub where they’d been dancing. One of them gave me a nice shiner, and I didn’t leave the house without sunglasses for two weeks—I didn’t want to scare all the impressionable girls and little children. “Don’t go looking for
trouble like you always do.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Natasha snorted and hung up.

  Turning the phone around in my hand, I figured I needed to let Azov know what she was gunning for. If he didn’t mind her going, that was fine, but nobody would be asking me any questions later. I wouldn’t have anything to prove when she got up on a table and started stripping, something the crazy girl definitely would have done. After all, I didn’t bring her.

  “Who was that?” Vika asked as she walked into the kitchen.

  “The makeup artist,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure she gets you nice and pretty first before she gets tired.”

  “You’re sweet sometimes,” she said, giving me a kiss on the top of my head. “You need a haircut—you’re starting to look like a cave man. There’s a barber in the next building over, so why don’t you head over right now?”

  “Come on,” I said lazily, “that means I have to call Alexey. Why bother him for that?”

  “What do you think they pay him for? Go, go, go—look, I can’t even see your ears. What are you, a hippy?”

  “How do you know about everything?” I said, trying a bit of flattery. “Smart girl!”

  Not bothering to stoop to my level, Vika just took my phone and dialed the bodyguard’s number.

  ***

  After the barber, I headed to the store, since Vika figured we’d be in no mood for that the next day. Everything flew by like it usually does on weekends in the winter, in a word. The sun spends practically no time in the sky, with morning barely having time to peak before it’s time to get dark. All you have to pick between is evening and nighttime…

  “How long will you be at the event?” Alexey asked when we got into the car. “Approximately.”

  “I have no idea,” I replied, settling into the back seat. “Three hours, at least.”

  “We’ll be there until the end,” Vika announced. “Until the very end, and that’s final.”

  I could tell by her tone that she wasn’t brooking any disagreement. Not that time. There are occasions when women get what they want by wearing you down, others where they pull out their femininity, and still more where they simply put an end to the conversation. That’s the trick she pulled out of her hat that time.