he Oldsmobile was ancient, which I liked. But the open windows were no help against the insane heat rising from the road after the sun had been scorching it all day long. It needed an air-conditioner.

Ilya was probably thinking the same thing. He was driving with one hand on the steering wheel, glancing around all the time and chatting with everyone. I knew a magician of his level could spot probabilities ten minutes in advance and there wasn't going to be any crash, but I was still feeling a bit uneasy.

"I was thinking about putting in an air-conditioner," he told Yulia in a guilty voice. The young girl was suffering worse than anyone else from the heat; she had a blotchy rash on her face and her eyes looked glazed. I was just hoping she wasn't going to be sick. "But it would have ruined the entire car; it wasn't meant to have one! No air-conditioner, no cell phones, no onboard computers."

"Uh-huh," said Yulia, with a feeble smile. We'd all been working late the day before. No one had gone to bed at all; we'd been stuck in the office until five in the morning and then stayed the rest of the night there. I suppose it's pretty mean to make a thirteen-year-old girl slave away with the grown-ups. But it was what she'd wanted; no one had forced her.

From her seat in the front, Svetlana shot Yulia an anxious look.

Then she shot Semyon a look of extreme disapproval. The imperturbable magician almost choked on his Yava cigarette. He breathed in and all the cigarette smoke drifting around inside the car was drawn into his lungs. He flicked the butt out the window. The Yava was already a concession to popular opinion¡ªuntil just recently Semyon had preferred to smoke Flight and other repulsive tobacco products.

"Close the windows," said Semyon.

A moment later it suddenly started getting cold. A subtle, salty smell of the sea filled the air. I could even tell that it was the sea at night, and quite close¡ªthe typical smell of the Crimean shoreline. Iodine, seaweed, a subtle hint of wormwood. The Black Sea. Koktebel.

"Koktebel?" I asked.

"Yalta," Semyon replied. "September tenth, nineteen seventy-two, about three a.m. After a small storm."

Ilya clicked his tongue enviously.

"Pretty good! How come you haven't used up a set of sensations like that in all this time?"

Yulia gave Semyon a guilty look. Climate conservation wasn't something every magician found easy, and the sensations Semyon had just used would have been a hit at any party.

"Thank you, Semyon Pavlovich," she said. For some reason Yulia was as shy of Semyon as she was of the boss, and she always called him by his first name and patronymic.

"Oh, that's nothing," Semyon replied calmly. "My collection includes rain in the taiga in nineteen thirteen, and I've got the nineteen forty typhoon, a spring morning in Jurmaala in fifty-six, and I think I've got a winter evening in Gagry."

Ilya laughed:

"Forget the winter evening in Gagry. But rain in the taiga..."

"I won't swap," Semyon warned him. "I know your collection; you haven't got anything nearly that good."

"What about two, no, three for one..."

"I could give you it as a present," Semyon suggested.

"Go take a hike," said Ilya, jerking on the steering wheel. "What could I give you that would match that?"

"Then I'll invite you when I unseal it."

"I suppose I should be grateful for that."

He started sulking, naturally. I always thought of them as more or less equal in their powers, maybe Ilya was even a bit stronger. But Semyon had a flair for spotting the moment that was worth recording with magic. And he didn't waste his collection without good reason.

Of course, some people might have thought what he'd just done was a waste: brightening up the last half hour of our journey with such a precious set of sensations.

"Nectar like that should be breathed in the evening, with kebabs on the barbecue," said Ilya. He could be incredibly thick-skinned sometimes. Yulia went tense.

"I remember one time in Yemen," Semyon said unexpectedly. "Our helicopter... anyway, never mind that... we set out on foot. Our communications equipment had been destroyed, and using magic would have been calling way too much attention to ourselves. We set out on foot, across the Hadramawt desert. We had hardly any distance left to go to get to our regional agent, maybe a hundred kilometers. But we were all exhausted. And we had no water. And then Alyoshka¡ªhe's a nice young guy who works in the Maritime Region now¡ªsaid: 'I can't take any more, Semyon Pavlovich; I've got a wife and two children at home, I want to get back alive.' He lay down on the sand and unsealed his special stash. He had rain in it. A cloudburst, twenty minutes of it. We drank all we needed, and filled our canteens, and recovered our strength. I felt like punching him in the face for not telling us sooner, but I took pity on him."

After a long speech like that, nobody in the car said anything for a minute, Semyon had presented the facts of his stormy biography so eloquently.

Ilya was the first to gather his wits.

"Why didn't you use your rain in the taiga?"

"What a comparison," Semyon snorted. "A collector's item from nineteen-thirteen and a standard spring cloudburst collected in Moscow. It smelled of gasoline, would you believe!"

"I believe it."

"Well, there you are. There's a time and place for everything. The evening I just recalled was pleasant enough, but not really outstanding. Just about right for your old jalopy."

Svetlana laughed quietly. The faint air of tension in the car was dispelled.

The Night Watch had been working feverishly all week long. Not that there'd been anything unusual happening in Moscow; it was just routine. The city was in the grip of a heat wave unprecedented for June, and reports of incidents had dropped to an all-time low. Neither the Light Ones nor the Dark Ones were enjoying it too much.

Our analysts spent about twenty-four hours working on the theory that the unexpectedly hot weather had been caused by some move the Dark Ones were planning. No doubt at the same time the Day Watch was investigating whether the Light Magicians had interfered with the climate. When both sides became convinced the anomalous weather was due to natural causes, they were left with absolutely nothing to do.

The Dark Ones had turned as quiet as flies pinned down by rain. Despite all the doctors' forecasts, the number of accidents and natural deaths across the city fell. The Light Ones didn't feel much like working either; the magicians quarreled over unimportant trivia; it took half the day to get the simplest documents out of the archives; and when the analysts were asked to forecast the weather they replied spitefully with some eighteenth-century gibberish like: "The water is dark in the clouds." Boris Ignatievich wandered around the office in a total stupor: Even with his oriental origins and rich experience of the East, he was floored by the heat, Moscow style. The previous morning, on Thursday, he'd called all the staff together, appointed two volunteers from the Watch to assist him and told everyone else to clear out of the city. To go anywhere, to the Maldives or Greece if they wanted, down to the devil's kitchen in hell if they liked¡ªeven that would be more comfortable. Or just to a summerhouse outside town. We were told not to show up in the office again until lunchtime on Monday.

The boss waited for exactly a minute, until the happy smiles had spread across all the faces there, then added that it would be only fair to earn this unexpected bounty with a burst of intensive work. That way we wouldn't end up feeling ashamed of wasting away the days. The title of the old literary classic was true, he said¡ª"Monday starts on Saturday." So having been granted three extra days of vacation, we had to get through all the routine work in the time we had left.

And that's what we'd been doing¡ªgetting through it, some of us almost until the morning. We'd checked on the Dark Ones who were still in town and under special observation: vampires, werewolves, incubuses and succubuses, active witches, all sorts of troublesome riffraff from the lower levels. Everything was in order. What the vampires wanted right now wasn't hot blood but cold beer. Instead of trying to cast bad spells on their neighbors, the witches were all trying to summon up a little rain over Moscow.

But now we were on our way to relax. Not as far as the Maldives, of course¡ªthe boss had been too optimistic about the finance office's generosity. But even two or three days out of town would be great. We felt sorry for the poor volunteers who'd stayed behind in the capital to keep watch with the boss.

"I've got to call home," said Yulia. She'd really livened up after Semyon swapped the damp heat in the car for cool sea air. "Sveta, lend me your cell."

I was enjoying the coolness too. I glanced into the cars we were overtaking: in most of them the windows were rolled down, and the people glared at us with envy, assuming, of course, our ancient automobile had a powerful air-conditioning system.

"The turn's coming up soon," I said to Ilya.

"I remember. I drove here once before."

"Quiet!" Yulia hissed fiercely and started jabbering into the cell phone. "Mom, it's me! Yes, I'm here already. Of course, it's great! There's a lake here. No, it's shallow. Mom, I can't talk for long, Sveta's dad lent me his cell. No, there's no one else. Sveta? Just a moment."

Svetlana sighed and took the phone from the young girl. She gave me a dark look and I tried to put on a serious expression.

"Hello, aunty Natasha," Svetlana said in a squeaky child's voice. "Yes, very pleased. Yes. No, with the grown-ups. Mom's a long way off, shall I call her? Okay, I'll tell her. Definitely. Goodbye."

She switched off the phone and spoke into empty space:

"So tell me, my girl, what's going to happen when your mom asks the real Sveta how the vacation went?"

"Sveta will tell her we had a great time."

Svetlana sighed and glanced at Semyon as if she were looking for support.

"Using magical powers for personal goals leads to unexpected consequences," Semyon declared in a dry, official voice. "I remember one time..."

"What magical powers?" Yulia asked, genuinely surprised. "I told my friend Sveta I was going off for a party with some guys and asked her to cover for me. She was staggered, but of course she agreed."

Ilya giggled in the driving seat.

"What would I want with a party like that?" Yulia asked indignantly, clearly not understanding what was so funny. "That's the way the human kids amuse themselves. So what are you laughing at?"

For every member of our Watch, work takes up the greater part of our lives. Not because we're wild workaholics¡ªwho in his right mind wouldn't rather relax than work? And not because the work is so very interesting¡ªwe spend most of our time on boring patrol duty or polishing the seats of our pants in our offices. It's simply that there aren't enough of us. It's much easier to keep the Day Watch up to strength; any Dark One is only too keen for a chance to wield power. But our situation's quite different.

Outside work, though, every one of us has his own little piece of life that we won't give up to anyone: not to the Light and not to the Darkness. It's all ours... A little piece of life that we don't hide, but we don't put it out on display either. What's left of our original, basic human nature.

Some travel every time they get a chance. Ilya, for instance, prefers standard tour packages, but Semyon likes basic hitchhiking. He once traveled from Moscow to Vladivostok without a single kopeck in record time, but he didn't register his achievement with the League of Free Travelers, because he used his magical powers twice on the way.

For Ignat¡ªand he's not the only one¡ªvacation always means sexual adventures. It's a stage almost everyone goes through, because life offers Others far more opportunities than it does to human beings. It's a well-known fact that people feel a powerful attraction to Others, even though they may not realize it.

There are plenty of collectors among us too. From modest collectors of penknives, key rings, stamps, and cigarette lighters to collectors of weather, smells, auras, and spells. I used to collect model automobiles, paying really big money on rare models that only had any value for a few thousand idiots. I dumped the entire collection into two cardboard boxes ages ago. I ought to take them out in the yard and tip them into the sandbox for the little kids to enjoy.

The number of hunters and fishermen is pretty high. Igor and Garik enjoy extreme parachute jumping. Our useless programmer Galya, a sweet girl, grows bonsai trees. I guess we cover pretty much the entire range of amusements that the human race has invented.

But what Tiger Cub did for amusement, I had no idea, although we were on our way to her place. I was almost as eager to find out as I had been to escape the scorching heat in town. When you spend a bit of time at someone's place, it doesn't take too long to find out what their special little quirk is.

"Are we almost there yet?" Yulia asked in a whining voice. We'd already turned off the main highway and traveled about five kilometers along a dirt road, past a little summerhouse settlement and over a little river.

"Yes, we're almost there," I answered, checking the image of the route that Tiger Club had left us.

"In fact, we are there already," said Ilya, swerving the car off the road, straight at the trees. Yulia gasped out loud and covered her face with her hands. Svetlana reacted more calmly, but even she put her hands out, expecting a crash.

The car hurtled through the thick bushes and over the fallen branches, and crashed into the solid wall of trees. But, of course, there was no impact. We leapt straight through the magical mirage and landed upon a well-surfaced road. Straight ahead there was a little lake glinting like a bright mirror in the sun, with a two-story brick house standing by the shore, surrounded by a tall fence.

"What always amazes me about shape-shifters," said Svetlana, "is how devoted they are to secrecy. Not only does she hide behind a mirage, she has a fence too."

"Tiger Cub's not a shape-shifter!" young Yulia objected. "She's a transformer magician."

"That's the same thing," Sveta said gently.

Yulia looked at Semyon, clearly expecting him to back her up.

"In essential terms, Sveta's right. Highly specialized combat magicians are like any other shape-shifters. But with a plus sign instead of a minus. If Tiger Cub had been in a slightly different mood when she first entered the Twilight, she'd have turned into a Dark shape-shifter. There are very few people whose path is completely determined in advance. There's usually a struggle during the preparation for initiation."

"And how did it go with me?" asked Yulia.

"I've told you before," Semyon growled. "It was pretty easy."

"A mild remoralization of your teachers and parents," Ilya said with a laugh as he stopped the car in front of the gates. "And the little girl was immediately filled with love and kindness for the whole world."

"Ilya!" Semyon said sharply. He was Yulia's mentor, a rather lazy mentor who almost never got involved in the young sorceress's development, but he obviously didn't like Ilya's wisecracks.

Yulia was a talented young girl, and the Watch had high hopes for her. But not so high that she had to be driven through the tortuous labyrinth of moral logic at the same speed as Svetlana, a future Great Sorceress.

Sveta and I must have had the same thought at the same time¡ªwe looked at each other. And after we looked, we turned our eyes away.

We could feel an invisible pressure bearing down on us, forcing us apart. I'd be a grade-three magician forever. Any moment now Sveta would outgrow me, and in a short while¡ªa very short while, because the Watch's management thought it necessary¡ªshe would become a sorceress beyond classification.

And then all we'd have left would be friendly handshakes when we met and an exchange of greeting cards for birthdays and Christmas.

"Are they asleep in there, or what?" Ilya asked indignantly. His mind wasn't distracted by the kind of problems we had. He stuck his head out the window, and the car immediately filled up with hot air, but at least it was clean. He waved his hand, staring into the TV camera attached to the gates. He sounded his horn.

The gates started opening slowly.

"That's a bit better," the magician snorted as he drove the car into the yard.

It was a large plot of land, thickly planted with trees. The amazing thing was that they'd managed to build the house without damaging the giant pines and firs. Apart from a small flowerbed beside a little fountain that wasn't working, there were no other signs of cultivation. There were five cars already standing on the concrete apron in front of the house. I recognized the old Niva that Danila used out of a stubborn sense of patriotism, and Olga's sports model¡ªhow had she managed to drive over the dirt road in that? Standing between them was the battered station wagon that Tolik drove about in and two other cars I'd seen at the office, but I didn't know whose they were.

"They didn't bother to wait for us," Ilya said indignantly. "They're already partying, getting it on while the best people in the Watch are still bouncing over the country roads."

He switched off the motor and Yulia immediately screeched in delight:

"Tiger Cub!"

She scrambled straight over me, opened the door, and jumped out of the car.

Semyon swore and followed her out, moving incredibly fast. Just in time.

I don't know where those dogs had been hiding. In any case, they were still camouflaged until the moment Yulia got out of the car. But the moment her feet touched the ground, the light-brown shadows closed in on her from all sides.

The young girl shrieked. She was more than powerful enough to deal with a pack of wolves, never mind five or six dogs, but she'd never actually been in a genuine fight, and she lost her head. To be quite honest, even I hadn't been expecting an attack¡ªnot here. And especially not this kind. Dogs never attack Others. They're afraid of the Dark Ones. They like the Light Ones. You have to train an animal really long and hard in order to suppress its natural fear of a walking source of magic.

Svetlana, Ilya, and I scrambled out of the car. But Semyon beat us all to the punch. He grabbed hold of the girl with one hand and made a pass in the air with the other. I thought he would use fright magic, or withdraw into the twilight, or reduce the dogs to dust on the spot. A reflex response usually relies on the simplest spells.

But Semyon used the temporal freeze. He caught two of the dogs in the air: Their bodies were left hanging there, enveloped in a blue glow, with their narrow, snarling muzzles reaching forward, the drops of saliva falling from their fangs like gleaming blue hail.

The three dogs who'd been frozen on the ground weren't quite so impressive.

Tiger Cub came running over to us. Her face was white and her eyes were wide open. She looked at Yulia for a moment. The girl was still whining, but she was getting quieter, through sheer inertia.

"Everyone okay?" she asked eventually.

"Fortunately," mumbled Ilya, lowering his wand. "What kind of animals are you keeping here?"

"They wouldn't have done anything," Tiger Cub said guiltily.

"Oh yeah?" Semyon took Yulia out from under his arm and set her down on the ground. He ran one finger thoughtfully over the bared fang of a dog hanging in mid-air. The film of the time freeze was springy and elastic under his hand.

"I swear!" said Tiger Cub, pressing her hand to her heart. "Guys, Sveta, Yulia, I'm sorry. I didn't have a chance to stop them. The dogs are trained to knock strangers down and restrain them."

"Even Others?"

"Yes."

"Even Light Ones?" There was a note of dubious admiration in Semyon's voice.

Tiger Cub dropped her eyes and nodded.

Yulia went over, snuggled up to her, and said in a more or less calm voice:

"I wasn't frightened. Just taken by surprise, that's all."

"It's a good thing I was slow to react too," Ilya commented gloomily, putting his weapon away. "Roast dog's too exotic a dish for me. But your dogs know me, Tiger Cub!"

"They wouldn't have touched you."

The tension slowly eased. Of course, nothing too serious would have happened; we know how to heal each other, but it would have put a damper on the picnic.

"I'm sorry," Tiger Cub repeated. She looked at us all imploringly.

"But listen, why do you need all this?" asked Sveta, with a glance at the dogs. "Can you explain that to me? Your powers are strong enough to beat off a platoon of Green Berets. What do you need rotweilers for?"

"They're not rotweilers; they're Staffordshire bull terriers."

"What difference does that make?"

"They caught a burglar once. I'm only here two days a week, I can't go back and forth to town all the time."

The explanation wasn't all that convincing. A simple frightening spell would have kept any normal people from coming anywhere near the place. But no one got a chance to say it¡ªTiger Cub got in first:

"It's just the way I am, okay."

"How long are the dogs going to stay hanging there like that?" asked Yulia, snuggling up against Tiger Cub again. "I want to make friends with them. Otherwise I'll be left with a latent psychological complex that's bound to have an effect on my personality and my sexual preferences."

Semyon snorted. Yulia's crack had finally defused the conflict¡ªbut it was anybody's guess how spontaneous or how calculated it had been.

"They'll start moving again before the evening. Well, hostess, are you going to invite us in?"

We left the dogs hanging and standing around the car and walked toward the house.

"What a great place you have, Tiger Cub!" said Yulia. She was ignoring the rest of us completely now, clinging to the young woman. As if the sorceress were her idol and she could be forgiven for anything, even over-vigilant guard dogs.

Why is it that the powers we can't develop are always the ones that obsess us?

Yulia's a magnificent analytical sorceress. She can untangle the threads of reality and reveal the concealed magical causes of events that seem ordinary. She's really smart, and everyone in the department loves her, not just as a cute little girl, but as a comrade-in-arms, a valued and sometimes quite irreplaceable colleague. But her idol is Tiger Cub, a shape-shifting sorceress, a combat magician. Why couldn't she decide to imitate good-hearted old Polina Vasilievna, who worked in the analytical department half-time, or fall in love with the head of the department, the impressive, middle-aged lady-killer Edik.

But no, she'd chosen Tiger Cub as her idol.

I started whistling a tune, as I walked along at the back of the procession. I caught Svetlana's eye and gave her a quick nod. Everything was fine. We had whole days of doing nothing ahead of us. No Dark Ones or Light Ones, no intrigues and plots, no confrontations. Just swimming in the lake, sunbathing, eating kebabs from the barbecue, and washing them down with red wine. And in the evening¡ªthe bathhouse. A big house like this had to have a good bathhouse. And then Semyon and I could take a couple of bottles of vodka and a jar of pickled mushrooms, get as far away as possible from the rest of the crowd, and drink ourselves stupid, gazing up at the stars and making philosophical conversation.

Great.

I want to be a human being. For at least twenty-four hours.

Semyon stopped and nodded to me.

"Let's take two bottles. Three, even. Someone else might decide to join us."

"It's a deal," I said with a nod. He hadn't been reading my thoughts, it was just that he had so much more experience of life than I did.

"It's easier for you," Semyon added. "I almost never get the chance to be a human being."

"Do you need to?" Tiger Cub asked, halting by the door.

Semyon shrugged:

"Of course not. But I kind of like the idea."

We went into the house.

Twenty guests were a bit too much even for this house. If we'd been ordinary people, it would have been different. But we made too much noise. Try bringing together twenty kids who've been studying hard for months, give them the free run of a well-stocked toy shop, let them do anything they like, and see what you end up with.

Sveta and I were just about the only ones not really caught up in the noisy fun and games. We grabbed a glass of wine each off the buffet table and settled down on a leather couch in the corner of the living room.

Semyon and Ilya locked horns in a duel of magic. Very cultured, peaceful, and amusing for the others who were watching¡ªat first, that is. Semyon must have wounded his friend's vanity in the car: Now they were taking turns changing the climate in the living room. We'd already had winter in the forest outside Moscow, and autumn mist, and summer in Spain. Tiger Cub had categorically forbidden any kind of rain, but the magicians weren't trying to summon up a violent display of the elements. They'd obviously imposed some restrictions of their own on the extent of climatic change, and the competition was less about who could produce the most unusual moment of nature ever recorded than who could deliver something that suited the mood of the moment.

Garik, Farid, and Danila were playing cards. A perfectly ordinary game, with no frills, but the air above the table was sparkling with magic. They were using magical means for cheating and protecting themselves against it. It made no real difference what cards they were holding in their hands.

Ignat stood by the open doors, surrounded by all the women from the research department, with our useless programmers in tow. Our sexual giant must have suffered some kind of romantic reversal, and now he was seeking comfort from a close circle of friends.

"Anton," Sveta asked in a low voice, "what do you think¡ªis all this for real?"

"What exactly?"

"The happy mood. You remember what Semyon said, don't you?"

I shrugged:

"Can we come back to this when we get to be a hundred? I'm feeling good. It's that simple. I don't have to go running off anywhere; I don't have to do any calculations. The Watches are lying low in the shade with their tongues hanging out."

"I feel good too," Svetlana agreed. "But there are only four of us here who are young, or almost young. Yulia, Tiger Cub, you, and me. What are we going to be like after a hundred years? Or after three hundred?"

"We'll have to wait and see."

"Anton, listen to me," Sveta said, touching my cheek lightly with her hand. "I'm very proud that I joined the Watch. I'm happy that my mother's well again. My life's better now, no doubt about it. I can even understand why the boss put you through that ordeal..."

"Don't, Sveta." I took hold of her hand. "Even I understood that, and I got the worst of it. Don't talk about it."

"I wasn't going to." Sveta drained her glass of wine and put it down. "Anton, what I'm trying to say is¡ªI can't see any real joy."

"Where?" Sometimes I must seem incredibly thick-headed.

"Here. In the . In our close, friendly team. After all, every day is just one more battle for us. A big one or a little one. With a crazed werewolf, with a Dark Magician, with all the powers of Darkness at once. Summon up those sinews, jut out those chins, prepare to block that gun port with your bare chest, or squat on a hedgehog with your bare ass."

I snorted with laughter.

"Sveta, what's so bad about all that? Yes, we're soldiers. Every last one of us, from Yulia to Gesar. Sure, it's no great fun being at war. But if we pull back, then..."

"Then what?" Sveta asked. "Will the Apocalypse arrive? The forces of Good and Evil have been fighting each other for a thousand years. Tearing at each other's throats, setting armies of human beings against each other¡ªand all for their loftiest goals. But tell me, Anton, have people really not become any better in all that time?"

"Yes, they have."

"And what about since the Watches were set up? Anton, my darling, you've told me so many things, and not just you. That the most important battle is for people's souls, that we're preventing mass slaughter. But are we? People still kill people. Far more than they used to do two hundred years ago."

"Are you trying to tell me that the work we do is actually harmful?"

"No," said Sveta, with a weary shake of her head. "No, I'm not. I'm not that conceited. I was just trying to say that maybe we're simply the Light, and that's all there is to it... You know, they've started selling fake New Year Tree decorations in Moscow. They look just like the real thing, but they don't bring people any joy at all."

She told the short joke with an absolutely straight face, without even changing her tone of voice. She looked in my eyes.

"Do you understand what I mean?"

"I understand."

"Maybe you do. The Dark Ones have started doing less Evil," said Svetlana. "These mutual concessions of ours, good deed for bad deed, licenses for murder and healing, that can all be justified, I'm sure. The Dark Ones do less Evil than they used to, and we don't do Evil by definition. But what about the people?"

"What have people got to do with it?"

"What do you mean? It's them we're defending. Tirelessly, self-sacrificingly. So why aren't their lives getting any better? They do the work of Darkness themselves. Why? Maybe it's because we've lost something, Anton? The faith the Light Magicians used to have when they sent entire armies to their death, and marched in the front ranks themselves? The ability not just to defend people, but to bring them joy? What good are secure walls if they're the walls of a prison? People have forgotten about genuine magic; people don't believe in the Darkness, but they don't believe in the Light either! Yes, Anton, we are soldiers! But people only love the army when there's a war going on!"

"There is a war going on."

"Who knows about it?"

"We're not just plain soldiers, I suppose," I said. It never feels good to retreat from old, familiar positions, but there was no other way out. "More like hussars. Taram, taram, taram..."

"The hussars knew how to smile. But we hardly ever do."

"Then tell me what I ought to do," I said, realizing that what had promised to be a beautiful 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 living room had fallen silent; nobody was listening to anything but us. But 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 Darkness, 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 trembling. 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 absolutely 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 around Svetlana's shoulders and led her out of the living 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 without making a single sound. She pushed me forward and opened the door, looking at me with a mixture of reproach and unexpected understanding. Then she left us alone.

We stood there for a moment without even 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, a counter-attack, complaints, anything but that.

Svetlana took one hand away from her wet face. She shook her head and smiled.

"You're right, Antoshka. 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 cut loose like that in front of the others, of course. 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 top bosses.

The wall that time would build between us. That day I'd laid a few rows of cold crystal bricks in it 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 finally looked around.

"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 a tissue and began dabbing the tears off her face. "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 quarreling."

"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 every day."

Svetlana smiled, a bit 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 lounge.

The atmosphere wasn't totally funereal, but it was close enough.

Either Semyon or Ilya had made a supreme effort and filled the room with a damp, marshy smell. Ignat was standing with his arms around Lena and gazing miserably at everyone else. He preferred fun, in absolutely any form; any quarreling 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, it twitched about, changing its suit and its value. Yulia looked sulky. She was asking Olga about something in a quiet voice.

"Will someone pour me a drink?" Sveta asked, holding me by the hand. "Didn't you known the best medicine for hysterical women is a shot 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 argument?

Sveta and I took a glass of cognac each, clinked glasses demonstratively and kissed each other. I caught Olga's glance: not delighted, not saddened, 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 when I came out I saw only the entrance to the next set of catacombs.