Sergei Lukyanenko - The New Watch

‘No.’

‘Me neither. I’ve never even heard of such a thing. It seems like he developed this ability after his encounter with me. In that case, there’s a chance it could be a consequence of the spell I put on him.’

‘And you’re afraid that a new spell will take away his ability…’ Las said, with a nod. ‘I get it. Well, you’re the Higher One, it’s for you to decide.’

‘It’s for Gesar to decide,’ I said. ‘But I don’t want to hurry things. Pastukhov won’t tell anyone. And if he does, he’ll end up in an asylum.’

‘And that “tiger”?’

‘What about the tiger?’

‘Who do you think he is? A Higher Magician?’

‘Pastukhov didn’t call me a tiger…’

‘Logical… But who is he, then? An Inquisitor?’

‘No,’ I said regretfully. ‘I don’t think so. Inquisitors remain Light Ones or Dark Ones – whichever they were before.’

‘But their aura turns grey.’

I sighed, wondering if I ought to reveal the real facts.

‘Actually it doesn’t. Their aura is just covered over with grey. A powerful magician can look through the disguise – underneath it’s the same as it was before. Either Light or Dark. They don’t change their essential nature.’

‘So that’s the way of it,’ said Las, raising one eyebrow. ‘So why couldn’t it be an Inquisitor, then?’

‘An Other with a grey, obscure aura – a tiger? Just doesn’t tally, does it? Bearing in mind how precisely Pastukhov characterised us.’

‘Then who is he?’ asked Las, bemused.

‘Gesar can decide that one too,’ I replied. ‘He’s got a big brain in his head. He’s lived in this world for a long time. Let him think about it.’

‘Yes, that’s the right approach, definitely!’ Las said approvingly. ‘Listen, I was just thinking… this polizei lied to his partner about wanting to go to the can…’

‘Right…’ I agreed, nodding. We’d just driven into the yard of a tall building and Las was looking for a parking place.

‘He lied about it first. And then he really did mess himself.’

‘Out of fright,’ I concluded.

‘All the same, it’s an unusual coincidence.’

I didn’t say anything. There was a grain of good sense in what Las had said. When there are strange things going on all around, every coincidence should be considered very carefully.

‘Let’s go,’ I said, climbing out of the car. ‘We’ll have a word with this Bisat – and then we’ll do some thinking.’

More out of habit than in the expectation of seeing anything unusual, in the entrance hall I shifted into the Twilight. The policeman lived on the first floor – public-service accommodation isn’t often allocated on the prestigious upper floors. There was nothing unusual on the ground floor here. Blue moss, the parasite of the Twilight, covered all the walls in an even layer, flourishing especially thickly in the corner beside the radiator and in front of the door of the lift. It was all predictable: young couples kiss beside the radiator before the girl straightens out her clothes and runs back home to mum and dad… or to her husband and children. And people swear in front of the lift doors when they discover that the lift’s broken and they have to walk up to the twelfth floor, or they rejoice quietly in anticipation of getting back home… I cast fire in all directions with habitual gestures, incinerating the parasite. It can’t be exterminated completely, of course, but for any Other this is the same as wiping his feet when he walks into someone’s home.

The first floor gave me something to think about, though. The blue moss was everywhere except around one door, from which it seemed to have crept away. And quite recently too, only a few hours ago. Fine blue threads were slowly retracting into the dense blue carpet – the same way an amoeba shrinks back when it runs into a grain of salt.

‘He lives here,’ I said, coming back to reality.

‘Did you see something?’ Las asked.

‘No, nothing really.’

I rang the bell.

Almost half a minute went by before the door opened. Without any questions being asked and also, it seemed to me, without even the glance through the peephole that is an obligatory ritual for anyone who lives in Moscow.

The woman in the doorway was short and plump. A Muscovite’s image of ‘a typical middle-aged eastern type of woman’ – obviously a beauty when she was young but not so lovely now, with a really calm-looking face, as if she was very self-absorbed.

‘Hello,’ I said, edging forward slightly. ‘We’re from the department. Is Bisat at home?’

‘The department’ is a very handy little phrase. Somehow no one ever asks which particular department it is that you’re from. The woman didn’t bother to check either.

‘Come in,’ she said, moving aside. ‘He’s in the bedroom…’

We seemed to be expected. Well, it wasn’t us, but they were expecting someone.

As I walked in, I glanced at her aura. Nothing special, of course. A human being.

The flat had three rooms, but it was small, and the hallway was really narrow and cramped. Loud rock music – something unfamiliar – was pouring out through the sitting-room door.

Las pricked up his ears – he adored little-known rock bands – then shook his head regretfully and clicked his tongue.

Without speaking, the woman gave me slippers, choosing one of the larger pairs out of a drove of them loitering around the door. Las didn’t bother to take his shoes off – and she didn’t react to that either.

Strange. Such simple habits are usually the most stable of all. She should either have asked both of us to change our shoes or not bothered to offer me any slippers, in keeping with the fashionable European traditions that are so slow to take hold in Moscow, with its wet climate and its mud.

There was a skinny kid sitting on the sofa in the sitting room with a laptop on his knees. From the laptop a wire snaked across the floor to a pair of speakers. The young lad looked at us and turned down the volume of the speakers but he didn’t even say hello, which was really strange for an eastern boy. I scanned his aura too. Human.

‘This way…’

We followed the woman through to the bedroom. She opened the door to let us go on in and, without speaking, closed it behind us, staying out in the hallway.

Oh, something bad was going on around here…

Bisat Iskenderov was lying on the made-up bed in just his shorts and singlet, watching the TV hanging on the wall facing the bed. Everything in the place was in average Moscow style, with almost no national character at all, absolutely no personal touch: furniture from IKEA, a carpet at the head of the bed (I thought they didn’t hang them up like that any longer, that the tradition had died out with the old, stagnant Brezhnev days), a women’s magazine on one of the night tables, an anthology of detective stories on the other. A bedroom like that could have been in any Russian town or city. The man lying on the bed could have been Ivan the manager or Rinat the builder.

I don’t like flats that don’t bear the stamp of their owner.

‘Hello, Bisat,’ I said. ‘We’re from the department. What happened to you? Are you ill?’

Bisat looked at me and shifted his gaze back to the screen. It was showing a popular programme – a young female doctor with kind eyes was telling people about periproctitis. ‘And now we’ll ask someone wearing a T-shirt or a shirt without a collar to come up on stage from the audience…’