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The Verge Of An Empire 31
On the second floor of Incival's house, there seemed to be a large-scale battle and, at the same time, a fire. Burnt memories remain from the furniture, the ceiling and walls are sooty, traces of burning, cracks, and dents are visible everywhere. Three baked corpses in different parts of the floor, two of them human and one lups. Extensive scorched wounds and damage from iron shards embedded in flesh. In lups, the body is cut in half in the same ideal way. At the magical laboratory, I found a wide puddle of black viscous slurry of unknown origin with a pungent smell of reagents. Pieces of metal and fragments of a wooden object float in a puddle, in which it is difficult, but possible to recognize a fire wand. Fragments of cobra decorations survived, but the sphere was broken. The laboratory itself was almost not damaged, it was not affected by the fire, but some items of magical use are lying on the floor, and along one of the walls stretched a gleaming trail of the silver blood of te
The Verge Of An Empire 32
“You know, Zinkara, I can't help feeling that I saw you once. Perhaps you, like the rest of the palace servants, huddled against the walls, begging for mercy, as I led the soldiers through the corridors to finally end this stupid kicking of your undercountry, which you called the struggle for sovereignty. It is possible that this is a figment of my imagination and we do not know each other, although you know me for sure. Anyway, I can't get rid of this stupid feeling. And I can't remember your creepy face. But I know for sure that you are a bone in the throat of my country, and I will rot you in prison.The tongueless Maldese stroked his beard sedately, holding my gaze, and I could swear I heard his clear and intelligible speech:“Sankarishma will judge us, Thane el'Moria, his punishment is inevitable. You sowed the wind, and the growing hurricane will swallow everything that is dear to you. I swear.I did not call someone to witness and force the ambassador to speak. He will only onc
The Verge Of An Empire 33
For her, my tone is like a blow of a whip, because usually I am extremely polite with all the girls of the Rosebud, but now I am not in the mood for pleasantries! I feel that I am ready to break loose on anyone, just to get rid of the heavy evil fear and anger that it generates! If I came in vain, then I will not have a single lead left to look for Incival.“The mistress will be here in a minute,” Inresh squeaked, looking fearfully at Sebastina. - Settle down!I sank into a huge easy chair, took off my glasses, closed my eyelids and began to massage my eyes.“Would you like some egg liqueur, master?”- No.- Guilt?- No.- Cognac?- I do not want anything. Just get close. Your presence calms me a little.Inhaling the smell of peonies fragrant from the floor vase, and listening to the ticking of the clock, I waited for the hostess for several minutes, during which I calmed down a little. Fortunately, she does not like to test my patience, although she knows that I am ready to forgive h
The Verge Of An Empire 33
I lie in bed among hot blankets, and sleep is afraid to come to me, because I am afraid to fall asleep. This happens in patients with fever or poisoned by bad food, who are tormented by great heat and nausea. Any attempts to fall asleep are futile, because crazy pictures, fragments of some melodies, slurred phrases are dancing in the inflamed mind. Every now and then the disfigured muzzle of the late Wolfeld flickers, the family of coal miners dances among the nameless tombstones, and people whom I did not personally see, but who have disappeared, lie in a heap on the sidelines. Customs officials, most of them never found, none of the ones de Moranjac suspected of taking bribes. Speaking of him, the high accuser is also here, in my head, in the midst of the excruciating heat. He and his whole family dine at a large table, not noticing the dancing dead and the lups prowling between the graves.“Monsieur de Moranjac,” I said as I approached, “forgive me for disturbing your meal. I don't
The Verge Of An Empire 34
We left the mansion and with great difficulty again overcame the green obstacle course. Escaped from the garden, we walked freely across the snow-covered wasteland. Frankly, I hate to meddle in this realm of warlike vegetation, and to stand on ceremony with every flower is somehow stupid! Not that Dargul would have burst into tears from such a loss or would have treated me worse, but he certainly would not have experienced joy. For example, I would not sympathize with someone who would dare to hit my Gladstone if the dog did nothing.Ook always obey an instinct that tells them to create the most comfortable environment around them. And the best thing for them is a dense wild forest. Their association with lower, non-sentient plants is very similar to magic, but it is not. Rather, it is an impeccable training using the forces of nature, which are available to everyone. Terrible power, great power. These creatures, as is commonly believed, have always existed, but they were not always a
The Verge Of An Empire 35
Excited exclamations of passengers were heard. I hurried to the side and leaned over the railing to see what the noise was. From the muddy waters of Estra appeared the bumpy, overgrown with silt, like wool, the shell of the Clastanos violinist. A giant crab with a primitive mind took up a vertical position, showing a huge right claw, and began to gurgle. Judging by the way its mouthparts trembled, the klastanos was about to release a long jet of stinking water at the passengers for fun.“Be careful, master. Sebastina snatched a kitchen hatchet from under her hem and threw it at the violinist.Hissing through the air, the weapon slammed into the carapace and knocked off the outermost of the six horn growths above the muzzle. Hissing viciously, the river dweller sank under the water.- In vain you are.“This lower being allowed himself the unacceptable. I intended to drive the ax between the eyes, but did not take into account the movement of water and ferry.“The Clastanos are vindicti
The Verge Of An Empire 36
- I believe you. I even roughly imagine what kind of soldiers accompanied the cargo. But where did they take him?- Don't know. I was tasked with transporting weapons across the Estra and then hiding them in one of our warehouses.“Western part of Little Zankog?”- Yes. Warehouse lot number six, room number seventeen just above the canal. Where the boxes then disappeared, I do not know.Did they disappear?“No one carried them outside, tan el'Moria. My people simply put their weapons in the indicated place and locked the warehouse. When they got there a day later, the warehouse was empty. And so time after time ... Hmm, the tea has cooled down, and we have not touched it.- This is all?“Anything I can offer for an investigation. And now I ask you to forgive me. It's time.The girl, who had been dozing all this time on the sofa, whose head Dan Kao was stroking as if she were a cat, sat down, flexibly stretched and stood up. She rolled out a wheelchair from behind the sofa, and then, s
The Verge Of An Empire 37
Sebastina helped me sit up and piled plates around me, interspersed with documents. I ate something without looking, sorting through the results of examinations, the conclusions of the coroner, the reports of alchemists and forensic magicians. Perhaps the most interesting was the description of the black substance found in Incival's house. Neither magicians nor alchemists had any idea what it was. More precisely, the alchemists knew what they had found, but they did not understand how it got there and what it was used for. The guys from Kalkstein University even sent us a list of the elements that make up that mass: water, carbon, ammonia, lime, phosphorus, salt, saltpeter, and so on, some other number of substances that could say something to Inchival, and not for me.- Some kind of nonsense. They say that this mixture is not particularly flammable, therefore, it is not a fuel, it cannot be consumed, which means that it is not a medicine. Not vegetable, not organic. Not acid, not… An