Готовый перевод Житие Мое / Life of Mine: Глава 4

Chapter 4
* * *

The island did not welcome us. This was clear from the first minute we were there.

We reached our destination when the fog cleared. The sun never showed, but instead, a translucent, pearly grey haze filled the sky. It's a common sight in Krowhard. As the monotony of the landscape grew tiresome, the coastal cliffs parted to reveal the entrance to a deep cove, whose ancient name was long forgotten and reliably so, for the past three hundred years, it had been simply known as Prison Cove. On the far shore were buildings of the more familiar Ingenika appearance: rough masonry of local stone, barred windows, and rusty stains on the walls.

The buildings were somehow subtly submerged in the landscape, as if they were mirages, with only the red tile roofs showing up as colored spots against the grey cliffs. There were no outer walls - the place had never been a fortress. And who would think of guarding King's Island? From the outset, the complex was built as a prison, a name that had become a household name. It was the first of its kind, if memory serves me correctly, and there was no compromise before punishments were inflicted in the square or beheaded. Of course, given their peculiarities, there were more blacks in the place than any other, which gave rise to all sorts of silly beliefs. The building was founded on a slab of dark gray material, like a cement monolith, which had not been able made three hundred years before.

Passing the line of natural breakwaters, the boat signaled. Then once more. And again. The noise of the engine changed: the crew started to back up - apparently, the captain did not dare to approach the jetty just like that. After some deliberation, a dinghy was launched, and Mr. Smith and one of the guards went ashore. After about two hours, they returned, and after another deliberation, the boat moved on. The crocodile lady took charge of the unloading as if nothing had happened.

Two conclusions could be drawn from what had happened: firstly, something had gone wrong, and secondly, what it was that mere mortals were not supposed to know.

"Keep your ears open," my uncle whispered to me.

The work put the anxiety aside for a while. The students scolded, dragging a trolley full of expedition supplies to the building (they were swearing for nothing, as such a mountain of junk could be carried by hand for the rest of the summer). Uncle Gordon and I, armed with poles, were busy rolling barrels of fuel for the generator up the hill (not a very difficult task, but from the outside, it looked very difficult). The white one was working with the dynamo in the annex. They found someone to do it with... After my uncle and I had delivered the third barrel, I started to wonder - what was that white one doing there so long? After the fourth, I decided to find out.

There was a strong smell of oil in the annex. The white one had managed to fill the tank with fuel. There were blown fuses on the floor - it was an emergency stop for the generator, but there was no external damage to the diesel or the winding. The student was busy draining the starter battery for nothing by pulling the starter knob. The poor guy was in a trance - the machine wouldn't run. We had to save the guy and save ourselves. And literally: whites have one unpleasant trait - if something seriously upsets them, they can cry about it for weeks. I have more than once witnessed the funeral of a broken teacup, not to mention mice and birds. The most unforgettable sight: is a man carefully carrying a captured cockroach outside. Just think about it to catch the insect and then carry it out of the house without accidentally crushing it. In short, spending four weeks in the company of a mentally disturbed white one did not appeal to me at all. And on an island. Ha!

"Hear ye, here comes the alchemist!"

The boy pouted angrily and looked a bit like Lucik.

"Don't be a sourpuss!" I patted him on the shoulder indulgently. "I'll make it up in a minute."

The problem was as simple as a stone and had to do not with alchemy but with the science of bad contacts: the installer was too shy to make the fuses click into place, so the alternator would not turn on. When the engine rumbled, the student was genuinely happy.

"If anything else happens," I offered in a friendly way, "call me. Anything I can do to help!"

He nodded and smiled.

"Tangor! What are you doing there?!" Mr. Smith barked from somewhere.

"Taking out the rubbish!" I shouted the first thing I could think of, winked at the student, and was off.

As it turned out, Smith was yelling for a reason - the weather had changed dramatically. Even though it was still a long way to evening, there was a thick line of fog creeping in from the sea. It looked very suspicious. Our bosses were in a huff, and we were ordered to grab and carry into the house anything that could be affected by the damp and leave the rest on the spot. The boat started backing up again to anchor somewhere in the middle of the bay, just in case. By the time the shivering white curtain of mist reached the shore, the doors of the prison's only living quarters were tightly closed, and the members of the expedition were making their living arrangements as best they could.

My uncle and I were allocated a corner room overlooking the prison yard (conditionally because there was nothing to see). In the daylight, the room looked cozy, only a little dusty. Uncle checked the repellent spells on the bindings of the windows, clucked his tongue, and touched nothing. There was a thick mist outside as if milk had been poured into the water, the sunlight shining through, and the air seemed to glow faintly. It was an infernal spectacle, not the sort of thing you see in Krowhard.

"Uncle, don't you think it's a bit weird here?"

"The otherworldly," he nodded with an expert look. "It's getting so close to the edge of reality that it's getting on the nerves. Actually, this whole expedition looks like crap."

"Well, they must have known where they were going."

"Are you sure?" My uncle sniggered. "The situation could change very quickly. They were expecting to be met. Did you notice? Who was supposed to do that, and where is he now?"

I shuddered; I'd never encountered anything that could take a man's life. The only visitors from the other side of the world in our valley were the chariks, flickers of light that wandered in the fog, quite harmless if you didn't grab them with your hands.

There was a polite knock on the door.

"Come in," the uncle suggested.

A white student (they keep getting sent him to the wrong place) looked timidly into the room and said:

"Mrs. Clements asks everyone to gather downstairs."

"Come on, let's go!" I tried to remember where I had put my shoes.

"What did she want?" He grumbled and pulled out a pair of felt flip-flops, which I hadn't thought of taking.

"He wants to say goodbye?" I giggled hysterically.

Once upon a time, the prison authorities must have lived in this building: there were no narrow corridors with many doors, the rooms were spacious, and just beyond the front door was a capacious hallway. It was there, among the piles of unpacked things, Mrs. Clements assembled her people. As there were no chairs, everyone sat on the things. The atmosphere at the meeting was unclear: on the one hand, there seemed to be no immediate danger, but on the other hand, something strange was undoubtedly going on. The matter was complicated by the fact that the people of the capital tended to regard the threat of the otherworldly as greatly exaggerated (an attitude one can afford when one lives in a salt marsh) and the idea that even rats were absent from King's Island for a reason was not on their minds. My intuition told me that Krowhard would not forgive such treatment.

The two students were talking in a low voice, and the white one (I remembered his name now: Aleh) sat closer to us (that's right, mages are supposed to stick together) and seemed depressed. Uncle was the only one who appeared at the meeting in his house shoes. Mr. Smith looked as if he had just come out of some tunnel, and he smelled musty. Only Mrs. Clements was cheerful and unperturbed. I thought they would be given a lecture on safety on the island, but instead, the crocodile lady gave a speech about the need to work and work again:

"The timing of the expedition is extremely limited, and the successful completion of the task requires everyone to be thoughtful and responsible in their work. Dull diligence will not be encouraged. Remuneration may be increased if the project is successfully completed."

"What are we looking for?" I couldn't help myself.

She measured me with an annoyed look:

If you'll excuse me, Mr. Tangor, I'll get to that in a minute.

The students chuckled eagerly. I shrugged - three years at Redstone had taught me not to get heated for a trifle.

"This island holds intact the mysteries of the world's oldest civilization!" Mrs. Clements announced pathetically and launched into a lengthy description of someone else's work, referring to authors and reporting the results of the dig. The students concentrated on taking notes.

I disengaged from the conversation because history had never been part of my sphere of interest. The point of collecting a thousand unnecessary objects eluded me. The idea that I could extract a picture of the life of a bygone generation from these shards seemed ridiculous (don't you agree? Try assembling an ordinary alarm clock from disparate parts). I couldn't see the aesthetic value in the shards and rubble. It's a costly fad based on unquenchable human curiosity.

"...and appreciate the level of technomagic development of that era," Mrs. Clements finished another passage.

It took me out of my prostration:

"Alchemy?"

Mrs. Clements gave me a scornful look.

"Technomagic," she repeated, almost syllabically, "differs from alchemy in its ability to manipulate very fine structures of matter and allows these operations to be performed thousands, hundreds of thousands of times without the slightest deviation from the original."

I pulled out a box of fuses from the pile of stuff that had survived the conversation with Aleh.

"Like this?" I clarified. And let whoever thinks they deviate from the original throw a stone at me.

She almost shrank back:

"No! On a much more subtle level, on a level commensurate with the effects of magic!"

"Lost alchemical techniques," Uncle Gordon concluded knowingly.

I shrugged my shoulders and did not continue the argument. There are some people who have an irrational aversion to alchemy. They tend to be white, but you can find them among ordinary people, too, and their demonstrative dislike of the artificial is matched by their love of the products of white magic, all those refined horses and rabbits and cows. Although, in my opinion, there is no difference. Mrs. Clements belonged to exactly this category of 'hogwash'. Redstone's experience suggested that bickering with such individuals was pointless and unproductive.

After a lengthy lecture on the greatness and uniqueness of technomagic, we finally found out what we were looking for - the audience was shown drawings, diagrams, and reconstructions of ancient objects. These were such small angular bugs of different sizes and with different numbers of legs, and it was not clear where the front and back were. This last fact amused me, but I managed to contain the amusement until I returned to our room.

"You shouldn't be laughing," my uncle remarked, watching me convulse. "If they could find at least a dozen of them, it would more than pay for the expedition. These things used to be called Sand Nits, the fact that they were artificial having come to light not so long ago. Since then, nits have been dramatically needed by everyone - military, scientists, and private developers. What they are, no one knows, but everyone wants them. I hear an intact nest was sold for a million and a half crowns."

"A million and a half..." The exhilaration left me in a jiffy.

"Don't you dare!" my uncle warned seriously. - Why don't you think the privateers have dug the island upside down, ignoring the law? Remember the castle! It's pitch black. It hasn't had light for hundreds if not thousands of years. Do you get it?"

I get it. What's more, the thought made me feel sick to my stomach. I remembered a theory that existed: the longer the otherworldly phenomenon existed, the stronger, more complex, and unpredictable it became. No wonder there is such a magical background! Over the course of thousands of years, even a primitive charik could turn into a fiery phantom, much less a more complex undead. Such a fairytale island...

"What a mess we're in..." I began.

"Ah, I've got it at last!" Uncle was delighted. "Don't worry! You just have to look around. There's not much hope for this company. The two oafs are just like the King's cronies, and there's no other way to describe the woman."

In Crowhard's mythology, the term 'King's cronies meant 'marked with the seal of imminent death, doomed'. In this case, the nickname matched reality, too much so. Unthinkable! Why would NZAMIPS have us, a bunch of civilians, escorted by one official black mage? I've been taught since childhood that stealth is a weapon of choice when confronted with otherworldly powers. But the invasion of an island by a large expedition could only go unnoticed by sheer coincidence. There could only be one conclusion: they decided to destroy us.

I'm young. It's too early for me to go to the King!

"Uncle, why don't we get out of here..."

"Study, kid!" he sternly proclaimed. "Your power may be needed very soon."

You have made me happy. Sure.

We agreed to get up early, before breakfast, and start training, the necessity of which has put me in so much shit.

"Isn't it early?" I clarified.

"Then it will be too late."

I remembered how annoyed I had been by Uncle Gordon's "comforting" manner as a child - first, he would say there was nothing wrong with torn trousers, and then he would add: "Well, you'll get a whipping for order, and that's the end of it." I wonder if he realizes that his nephew has grown up a bit.

Breakfast was set for eight, and we went ashore at seven - grabbed our towels and pretended we were going for a swim. Why not? The water in the coves warms up well in summer, and there was no need to worry about its cleanliness on King's Island. There was no trace of yesterday's fog, the day promised to be sunny and warm, and flocks of fry flashed in the waves, out of reach of the black curses.

"Climb up!" He said, pointing to a lonely rock sticking out of the sea.

"Wouldn't it be better to be ashore?"

"Well, if you're willing to summon all the undead in the neighborhood..."

I sighed, undressed, and got into the water. The water was warm, by the way. It wasn't easy to climb up the slippery boulder; as I balanced on top of it, I wondered:

"What's next?" And then he gets a little pebble up my butt. "Hey! What are you doing?"

"Summon the Sorce!" commanded my uncle.

"How?!"

"Like you did the first time."

The next pebble hit my buttock.

"Summon the Sorce!"

"Just give me a minute!"

I tried to remember the circumstances surrounding Acquisition. Should I be angry or frightened? The stone again!

"Get it over with! Are you out of your mind?"

"Do what I said."

"I do."

"You are doing the wrong thing. Emotions make the call easier, but they are not part of it. What you need is not anger, not anger, but Power! Show it to me!"

"Just a minute!" I frantically tried to think of what to do. Punch my uncle in the face? He was older and still stronger.

"That's better. Keep going!"

What did I do? The stone again!

"Don't relax."

I squirmed again, so dark in the eyes, and started pushing as hard as I could until my brain seemed to come out.

"Keep going, with confidence!"

Keeping my sense of pressure, I ventured to open my eyes - a black ripple was swinging before me, the same flames that had blinded me during the Acquisition. And then my breath ran out, my eyes actually blurred, and I flew off the rock. My uncle pulled me out of the water.

"Enough for the first time," he concluded. "You have a rest. And remember, trying to suppress the black Source means ceasing to feel the difference between the presence and absence of the Power and therefore losing control over it. Trying to forget one's essence for a black mage always ends in madness. Acquiring the Power is a one-way road. You have no choice. You must call upon the Power again and again until it is no longer associated with a particular emotion and does not reveal itself fully. You must learn to perceive it as an arm or a leg. This can only be achieved by continuous practice by repetition. Understand?"

"Got it, Master!" Lying on the pebbles, I tried to catch my breath. Multicolored circles floated before my eyes.

"You're wasting too much energy on the call, but that's just from getting used to it. It will pass."

I certainly hope so! The nausea was gone, replaced by weakness and trembling in my muscles. It was only seven in the morning, and we still had a whole day's work to do!

"Get up!" Uncle kicked me in the side. "Break stereotypes. Physically you're not tired at all. It's a mental illusion."

A very realistic illusion.

We went out for breakfast. I walked wet and angry, and my uncle was also wet, but filled with a sense of accomplishment. Fucking mentor! If I had a choice, would I let him do this to me?

Life got more interesting at breakfast as Aleh joined us. The black power was still in me, and I could barely keep from shouting at him (which was fraught with danger for white ones).

"So, what is the case?"

Aleh hesitated:

"May I live in your room?"

This statement surprised me so much that I even forgot to be angry.

"Why would that be?"

"I... Never mind, forget it!" He made an attempt to leave.

And there's nothing to explain? It wouldn't work! I was in a hurry to tone it down, to let the tone of trust and irony into my voice. White ones are almost all empaths, so they can involuntarily perceive the mood of their interlocutors. In short, they mirror it, and the younger the mage, the less control he has over the process.

"Take your time! We don't mind, do we?" I glanced at my uncle, who shrugged. "It's just a little unexpected."

Aleh, not sensing what kind of manipulator he was in the clutches of, relaxed a little but was in no hurry to talk. He looked a little shaky, and White's health depended heavily on the general emotional background.

"Are they scaring you?" I guessed.

He nodded silently.

What did I tell you? These ordinary people can be worse than any black mage. This was the time and place to get on their mate's nerves! If we leave it at that, he'll freak out, snap, and pay with his blood for the experience of these jerks. My nostrils flared with indignation, and I wanted to beat someone up.

"Uncle?"

He shrugged again.

"Let him live! Just tell you what - brief him so there are no surprises."

In the time remaining after breakfast, we moved Aleh's things, accompanied by thoughtful glances from Mr. Smith. I tutored a new acquaintance:

"There is no need to be frightened! You can sense it's not right yourself, but there are simple rules to follow. If you follow them, the risk is minimal. Trust me! I grew up in Krowhard."

"Do you think there are undead here?" The white one asked with morbid interest as he put all the little things he had put away the day before into the bag.

"I guarantee it! It's King's Island. Remember, don't go where it's dark, even with a lantern. Especially in places where the sunlight never reaches. You know, caves, basements. You shouldn't be curious, especially if you're alone. You notice any strange noises, any rustling, any movement, and you get out of there and go straight to Smith. And don't be shy - he's black, he'll understand. If things get tough, remember: the sea is your salvation. No creature can get to you through the salt water. Another rule: if you see a man, call him. If he doesn't answer - run. The dumb don't live in Krowhard, they are killed by the otherworld phenomena when they are still children here. Of course, don't open locked doors, don't break any protection signs, and if you mess something up, just call Smith. He's paid to do it. Let him handle it. Did you get it?"

"Uh-huh." Aleh put his bag in the corner of our room and looked around with interest.

"The main thing is to follow these rules at all times, regardless of the circumstances. Imagine it is a law of nature, and you cannot physically break it, no matter who asks."

"And call for Smith straight away," the lad smiled.

"Well done, you got it!"

We worked hard that day. The work, from my point of view, was moronic. We were picking up stones by hand from the rubbish dump. In clearing the site for the prison and erecting the walls, the ancient builders produced a whole mountain of construction rubble, which was dumped here on the beach before we had a chance to think about it. Before raiding the interior of the island, Mrs. Clements wished to see if anything of interest had been dug up for her earlier and discarded for lack of use. Several areas were chosen to assess the rubbish treasure in the dump, and we were to go over pebble by pebble to the level of the base rock, carefully logging the finds. The two students dug together. Aleh was paired with me while my uncle and the guards continued unloading the boat. Guess which one of us worked harder?

White was again cheerful and enthusiastic - fortunately, his worries had not affected his well-being. He enlightened me on the intricacies of archaeological research (without asking whether I needed it or not):

"The stones in these parts of the rubble vary in color and size, clearly carried from different places. If we find something, we can figure out where to focus our attention. We're running out of time!"

I nodded earnestly and carefully moved the stones into the basket, one at a time. So far, there were rocks, rocks, and nothing but rocks in front of me.

"There!" Aleh showed me a splinter with jagged scars on the edge. "The material had clearly been worked with a chisel. I think our site is a waste of stonecutters. There's hardly anything here."

Who could have doubted it? I'm sure Mrs. Clements would never have trusted me with a responsible assignment, for I was skeptical about technomagic. The pile of soil moved on, and Aleh had time to tell me where he was studying, what he was interested in, why he was going on this expedition, and how great it was to be an archaeologist. I was saved by my habit of skipping over the idle chatter I had practiced on the younger ones. White burbled and rustled like rain and wind, occasionally dropping meaningful phrases. He implied that Mrs. Clements was a rising star in archaeology who had managed to interest the wealthy and the military in her research. But I had understood that already.

The subject of her scientific interest was the oldest known civilization, presumably based at Kapetower (that iron fortress), but understandably little studied. Among the understandable reasons was the antiquity of the culture under study, as well as its undoubted association with manifestations of the otherworldly: most of the excavations archaeologists were able to visit once, at most twice, at serious risk to their lives. How a white one could have chosen such an occupation was completely incomprehensible.

At a depth of two feet, the ground suddenly changed properties: instead of coarse stone fragments, there was dense sand with colored scales and coarse debris and a fish skeleton whitened among the mineral crumbs. Good heavens, a roach that had been eaten three hundred years ago! I have found a treasure unequivocally. Aleh jumped around the hole enthusiastically:

"This is it. This is it! That was taken out of the ancient ruins before construction began! Now we find out what it all looked like before!"

Optimist. Mrs. Clements came over, complimented Alech (what about me?), and began to explain to him how to describe what was happening. The configuration of the dig had been changed, and now the jealous students had to dig not far from us. The time flew by in such a fuss.

King's Island lay low. Nothing strange was happening, the fog had not returned, and the days were sunny and warm as usual. My uncle and I went for a "swim" every morning, and I was forced to admit that my skills had improved markedly. The food was good (Mr. Mermer turned out to be an excellent cook), the work was not hard, and entertainment was also present: Uncle Gordon started bickering with Mr. Smith. I knew it would happen as soon as I saw them around, but I didn't expect them to take up the cause with such zeal.

It all started on the third day, when I, having once again staggered off a rock, was recovering on the beach. I was sunbathing, in short.

"What a cheeky face..." my uncle muttered unexpectedly.

I leaned on my elbow and looked down at the rocky beach - Pierre Aclérand was approaching us through the boulders.

"Smith is looking for you!" the student reported gloatingly.

"It's a quarter of an hour to breakfast," his uncle cut off.

"So you tell him!"

There was no hurry: we had to rinse off the salt (we brought a bucket of fresh water for that), wipe our faces and get dressed. So we made it in time for breakfast tick to tick.

Smith met us on the path leading from the beach to the prison blocks. His eyes flashed with lightning:

"Don't leave the camp anymore!"

"I don't think so," his uncle grinned quietly. "Or do you think the prison is still open?"

"These places..." Mr. Smith began.

"...my homeland," Uncle finished for him. "I've lived here twice as long as you exist. I don't need to be taught to be careful; you'd better lecture your students - they walk through the ruins with a simple lantern."

An oil lamp is nothing. You have to have a special, blue-light-enchanted lamp to feel confident in our surroundings. Mr. Smith played with his cheeks and went off to clean the brains of the capital's oafs. It's fun to have three black magicians in one purse!

I had hardly followed the conflict that day; my mind was occupied with other things. To put it bluntly, the problem was unusual: the night before, Aleh had informed me that the boat would be making a voyage to the mainland tomorrow and asked me if I wanted to send word to my relatives.

"Why?" I have never written a letter yet. Even my return home was announced by telegram.

"What do you mean, why?" Aleh wondered in turn. "They must be worried."

Mum was definitely worried. Yesterday I had simply shrugged in response to Aleh's words, but today the thought of the letter came to me with an obsessive consistency. //"If you want to maintain a good relationship with someone, repeat after the white mage," was a good saying among blacks. Let's just say my mother knew me like the back of her hand, and if she still loved me, nothing could change that.

I'd been pestered with the question for half a day, watching in annoyance as Smith picked on my uncle over nothing and the old grump loudly criticized the security measures. The two fools were beginning to draw attention to themselves, but neither was willing to concede - that would mean admitting another's superiority. Their fur stood on end, their eyes sparkling. It's good they didn't curse. That's why, in fairy tales, black magicians live in towers one by one and never enter the service. I wonder how the military manages to train its contingent. Judging by Smith, they don't.

Aleh tried to draw my attention to the conflict, but I brushed him off and advised him to give it a rest. They would sort it out themselves. I had a more serious problem: deciding what to do with the letter. To write or not to write? After all, it was worth at least trying. During my lunch break, I got an inkwell and a piece of paper from Aleh, sat down on the steps of the living quarters, and tried the most unnatural thing I had ever done in my life: I tried to write a letter.

I found out right away that I had no idea what a letter was supposed to look like. I mean, the envelope with the address was clear. But inside? I vaguely remembered the contents of the official invitation I had received from Redstone.

==="Hello, everyone," I wrote at the top of the sheet and thought again.

Basically, the starting point of my action was that my mother is worried. What should I write to make her stop worrying?

===It's good here.

Where - here? I crossed out the last words thickly and wrote differently:

==="Arrived on the island without adventure. At the first opportunity, I send a letter. The conditions are good. The food is excellent. Every morning I bathe in the sea. I
I'm not sick.

I looked around with satisfaction at the result of my efforts. Short, informative, and literate. Intelligible. We could have stopped there, but I had developed a taste for it. What else could I write?

=="You're probably wondering why I left here."

Suddenly she was offended: just three days at home and off to the island. It was worth adding a little frankness:

=="Joe's new hobby took me by surprise."

That's an understatement!

==Don't get me wrong, I don't want to interfere with his self-expression. I just need time to prepare myself mentally for it.

And physically, too, by the way, if the black Source can be considered a physical phenomenon.

==I am sure that by the end of the expedition, I will have mastered myself enough.

And with my power as well. At least, my uncle assures me that's exactly what will happen.

==I probably should have warned you earlier that I was coming."

But some things, unfortunately, you realize in hindsight. Good thing it didn't occur to me to ask them for money by telegram! Mum would have sold everything and left the little ones without sweets. How would their big brother look?

Deciding that duty was done, I signed the letter and went to look for Mrs. Clements. Smith was in no condition to play postman. The rest was easy: in the letterbox, there was already a stack of letters, signed in Aleh's neat handwriting. The white one had probably written to all the acquaintances whose addresses he could remember. I added my humble message to his titanic work and, with a clear heart, went to rummage through the garbage.

Meanwhile, the war of the mages was heating up. In the evening my uncle tried to recruit me into his army but was sent away. In the morning, Smith dragged us to the beach, and instead of having class, we were forced to take a dutiful swim. In the afternoon Uncle caught the students trying to get into the basement of the water tower and had a long rant about how Smith wasn't watching them. In the evening the security expert came to check the integrity of the protective spells on our window. At twelve o'clock. With his lamp.

The spectators were the first to lose their temper.

"Why are they doing this?" Aleh asked. The white one was in no hurry to leave our room.

I sighed mournfully:

"They black one."

"But you don't behave like that!"

"I'm not just a black one. I'm a smart one." And if I do, I won't be embarrassed in front of the audience.

What is the point of making a free circus, confirming the scandalous reputation of black mages? Not to mention how much the case suffered from it (the hell with it!), but they deprived themselves of maneuverability by bumping into each other like a pair of merinos. Now there was no other way for them to settle the matter than a commonplace scuffle. The only question was how soon they would get over the principle, which every black magician had been taught, that violence was evil. I was betting on Smith: he was military, after all. They taught them differently, and in strength, he could give Uncle Gordon a decent head start, both physically and magically. But so far, they both remembered that fighting was wrong. So they got angry and were getting on their own and others' nerves."

The return of the boat had separated the brawlers for a while, but it didn't change the fact that someone's blood was going to be spilled. I had never seen big men fight, much less initiated mages. Would they risk using sorcery? And how would the island react to it? I should push the dinghy ashore, just in case...

And so the day came which promised to be "the one". I noticed the signs, so I quietly took Aleh aside and asked him not to talk to my uncle, not even to say hello. I didn't have to warn him, in principle, because Uncle was off somewhere early, and at breakfast, both mages had such faces that even the meanest of the students, Pierre, didn't dare to grimace. In the afternoon, Uncle Gordon was digging fiercely, muttering indistinctly to himself (probably counting the grievances). Smith was on the beach, staring out to sea (probably doing the same thing, but silently). For the final confrontation, they needed to be brought closer together. Aleh wanted me to help them, didn't he?

As Mrs. Clements called Smith over to look at some finds, I casually put my basket down beside them, as if in passing, and asked:

"And if we find the bones, can we find out what killed the man?"

"No," muttered Smith over his shoulder.

The uncle snorted deafeningly:

"They can't do anything now, but in my day, it was easy."

"How?" I wondered because I didn't know the answer to that question either.

"They would rise up a dead man and ask who killed him and why! There are no unmarked graves in Krowhard."

"Shut your mouth!" Smith jumped up and down. "Teach the kid about necromancy, you old gallows man!" And to me: "Forget about it. It's an indictment!"

The old sorcerer grinned cheekily:

"Oh, sorry, I forgot! The capital's fools are so clever. Make up their own rules. They are now like castrates - they understand everything but can't do anything about it."

Mr. Smith tried to pull himself together:

"One more word and you'll be making further speeches in front of your supervising officer."

Дядю эта угроза не смутила:

"You know them intimately. You are the same office! They were right to tell me, black ones shouldn't serve in Watchdogs. It's a brain twister, all the steam coming out through the arse."

Mrs. Clements, who was watching the altercation with some bewilderment, could not understand this attitude toward her superiors.

"What's with the tone?" she resented.

I sighed miserably. That's all we need here! The question is, where does one go?

"Let them bark, Mrs. Clements! It's such a blackmagic sport. As they say, nature's stupid."

And black nature is twice as stupid.

The crocodile lady seemed to know what I was talking about. She snorted disdainfully and walked away, swaying her hips meaningfully. Mr. Smith was embarrassed, coughed, gave me a gloomy look, and hurried after her.

As soon as he was out of sight, my uncle began to croak too:

"You know... don't do that to mages!"

"What did I do?" I was genuinely surprised.

"You know... you know."

Oh, for fuck's sake! Both adults, both initiated. What can I tell them about black magic that they don't know without me?

After that, the conflict came to an abrupt end, as if a bucket of water had been poured over the cats. I don't know whether it was my words or whether Mrs. Clements was able to have a heart-to-heart talk with her subordinate, but suddenly reason prevailed over magic. They began to address each other in a very formal way ("Mr. Ferro," "Mr. Smith"), phrasing in a chiseled, literary style. I furtively sighed; the other members of the expedition, remembering whom they were dealing with, did not dare to giggle. Yes, that's how it is when the number of black mages per square meter is off the charts! Am I going to grow up to be like that? How sad that is.

* * *

Внимание! Этот перевод, возможно, ещё не готов.
Его статус: идёт перевод

Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/85505/549524

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP