Юлия Авилкина – The Bodiless Shadow (страница 6)

Balthazar drew in a sharp breath.

"The Inquisition killed him. No trial, no questions, not the slightest chance. They just lured him into a trap and put him down like a rabid dog at the slaughterhouse. And then they paid generously in silver to everyone who agreed to look away and keep their mouths shut. Larsen sold his route. Vael paid for the blood. Magnus struck the blow."

"Einar..." Kaira echoed, her voice quiet, almost soundless.

The name lashed her from within, resonating with a sudden, sharp pain in the darkest corners of her own memory. Before her mind's eye, something dark flashed for a split second—a jagged, icy image from a time she had long buried under a layer of years and false names. Cold, a straining, snapping sound, and the sensation of a sticky weight she still sometimes felt in her dreams. Kaira blinked, forcing the shadow back into the black abyss of her subconscious with a sharp effort of will. Not the time. Not here.

"Did he have followers?" she asked, striving to keep her voice level. "Family? Someone who could have sworn revenge and waited for the right moment all these years?"

"We were all his followers," Balthazar replied bitterly, pushing away the empty mug. "But after Einar died, the order shattered into pieces. Most gave up, drank themselves to death, or fled Avrin for the continent forever. The scraps that remain... look around, Vellen. We’re just trying to survive in this filth. If someone is avenging Einar now, they are doing it in absolute solitude. And they are simply using our name and old symbols to hide their true trail from the Inquisition."

Kaira nodded slowly. There was a harsh, flawless logic in this. Vael's killer wasn't a public fanatic with a placard. They were a calculating, icy surgeon who masterfully used the old mythology of a defeated order as a convenient screen.

She rose, adjusted her hat, and buttoned her collar. The coins remained on the sticky table.

"Be very careful, Balthazar. If Magnus finally decides this is the work of a reborn Carvers, he won't bother with the nuances. He’ll just unleash his hounds on Nutra again. And this time, they won't leave anyone alive."

"Let him," Balthazar muttered indifferently, turning toward the wall. "We’ve been at the bottom for a long time. There’s nowhere left to fall."

Kaira stepped out of the tavern and back into the rainy, wind-howling gloom.

The meeting hadn't given her the killer's name, but it had given her something much more important: a motive. Ten years ago, Magnus and Vael had cold-bloodedly eliminated a man who had tried to reason with them. And now someone very patient, possessing terrifying magical power, had begun to collect old, overdue debts.

She walked along the slippery wooden footbridges, her tired feet moving mechanically. Dozens of questions swarmed in her head. Where were Einar’s own old reports? Who had access to them? And how did the quiet archivist Soaren Darr—who had so conveniently slipped her the right papers—fit into all this?

Kaira was angry at Magnus, irritated by the weather, and exhausted by insomnia. She stubbornly told herself she needed to get back to her office, dry her boots, and map out a new investigation scheme on the slate board. She replayed Balthazar's words in her head, planning the next day, and only after twenty minutes did she suddenly realize the fog around her had thinned, and under her feet, instead of Nutra's rickety boards, smooth cobblestones thudded evenly.

She lifted her head.

Ahead, through the veil of rain, the gas lanterns of the bridge leading to the granite mass of the Main Archive glowed softly. Her feet, bypassing iron logic and fatigue, had led her to the Upper City. To the man with gray eyes, whose workshop smelled of old paper and warm tea.

Kaira froze in the middle of the street. The rain drummed against the brim of her hat. She stared at the glowing windows of the Archive for a long, long time. Then she pressed her lips together, spun sharply on her heels, and strode back into the darkness of the Lower City, feeling something very fragile and frighteningly unfamiliar stir inside her, against her will.

Chapter 6: Resonance of Silence

Evening Avrin didn't sleep; it simply shed its skin. The fog in the Upper City turned pearlescent, illuminated by the golden lights of the mansions, while in Nutra, it congealed into heavy lead. Kaira stood on the border of the districts, feeling the cold moisture soaking even through the thick leather of her boots.

She should have gone home. Locked the door with all three bolts, cleaned her revolver, and lost herself in a heavy, dreamless sleep. But instead, she found her feet carrying her once again toward the wide staircase of the Main Archive. She was angry at herself, calling herself weak-willed, but the image of the dry warmth of Soaren’s workshop and the smell of thyme stood before her eyes as the only salvation from the encroaching darkness.

This time, the guards at the entrance didn’t even ask for her mandate. They simply stepped aside in silence, watching her pass with strange, almost wary looks. Rumors were already crawling through the Archive: the "mute" seeker was frequenting the archivist, and Handler Trey, it seemed, was in no hurry to lash her for it.

The door to the restoration workshop was ajar. A soft, steady light from magical lamps tuned to a warm spectrum spilled through the narrow crack—Soaren clearly disliked harsh lighting. Kaira stopped at the threshold, hesitating to knock.

He was there. He sat in the same posture, hunched over the table, but this time he wasn't wearing his frock coat—only a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His hands, usually hidden by cuffs, proved to be unexpectedly strong, with long fingers and thin scars on the knuckles—the marks of years of working with paper, chemicals, and sharp scalpels.

"You came after all," he said, without turning around.

Kaira flinched. "How do you know it's me? Do you have mirrors on the back of your head?"

Soaren finally set down his pen and turned. In the warm light, his face seemed softer, and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deeper.

"Every person has their own rhythm of footsteps, Kaira. Your gait is that of a predator trying to pass as prey. A very distinctive sound. Come in, I’ve just put the water on."

She entered, feeling the room envelop her in its stillness. There were no screaming Inquisition auras here, no stench of the sewers. Only the smell of old parchment and the faint aroma of fresh tea.

"I was at Balthazar's," she said, sitting on the edge of a heavy chair and laying the folder he had given her earlier on the table. "You were right. The Carvers have nothing to do with this. Or rather, someone very much wants us to think they do. Balthazar told me about Einar. About what happened ten years ago."

Soaren froze with the kettle in his hand. His gaze became vacant for a moment, as if he were turning the pages of an invisible book in his head.

"Balthazar... an old idealist. He still believes in a justice that can be forged from iron. And what did he say?"

"That the Inquisition killed Einar when he came to negotiate. And that Larsen and Vael were part of the deal."

Kaira pulled the blueprints she had managed to take from the dead scavenger from her pocket. She spread them on the table next to the documents from the Archive.

"Look at these red dots. Larsen marked them. These are resonance points. And one of them is right here, directly under the Cathedral. Но there’s a third point... it’s soaked in blood. I can’t make out the coordinates."

Soaren stepped closer. He didn’t take the map in his hands but simply leaned over it, his shoulder almost touching Kaira’s. He smelled of dust and something intangibly domestic, a scent Kaira never carried.

"Let me see," he pulled a magnifying glass in a silver frame from a desk drawer. "If we overlay this plan with the schematic of the old city sewers..."

They worked together for over two hours. A special kind of "working silence" settled in the workshop, the kind that only exists between people who understand each other without unnecessary words. Kaira dictated sparse data from the reports; Soaren cross-referenced them with ancient land registry books. Several times their hands accidentally brushed over the papers, and Kaira found herself no longer pulling her fingers away as she would have with Magnus or anyone else from the Inquisition.

She watched him surreptitiously. Soaren worked with the documents as if they were living beings. He touched the yellowed pages carefully, almost tenderly, smoothing out folded corners with his long, ink-stained fingers.

"Why are you helping me?" she asked suddenly, just as they finished verifying the fifth sector. "You realize that if Magnus finds out you’re digging through 'closed' funds without an order, your career as an archivist will end tonight. In the best-case scenario, you’ll just be thrown out."

Soaren set down the magnifying glass and looked at his hands. His face in the warm lamp light seemed calm, almost serene.