Day Watch

If we'd gone by metro, we would have got there a lot sooner. But as it was, half an hour later we were still crawling along jam-packed Ostozhenka Street toward Vernadsky Prospect. The traffic jam was getting bigger, sprouting a tail that reached back toward the center of Moscow.

"Hell's bells," Shagron hissed angrily. "We could get stuck in this."

"Let's open a portal," I said with a shrug.

Shagron gave me a strange look. "Vitaly! We're on our way to a session of the Tribunal under the patronage of the Inquisition! Your portal would collapse two kilometers away from where we're going!"

"Ah, yes," I said light-heartedly. "That's right. I forgot." Actually, I could easily have guessed that for myself. Magical interventions and any use of magic were forbidden while the ribunal was at work. The Other-I inside me helpfully informed me that there had been violations in the past, but only during times of violent upheaval that was the direct cause of the violations themselves.

But then, this was a time of change too. The end of the mille

Only, of course, in surviving we'd become slightly different. All of us, Others and people, especially people.

"Shi-it!" Shagron yelled, jolting me out of my reverie.

I didn't even have time to glance out through the windshield. There was a deafening crash, and in the same instant I was thrown forward and my ribs were squeezed together painfully as the safety belt bit into my chest; with a repulsive, shrill squeak, a fat, round cushion sprouted from the driving wheel, and Shagron's face and chest slid up around it until he crashed into the spot where the windscreen met the roof. There was an unpleasant sort of jangling sound outside the car and a fine shower of crumbs of glass shot up in the air, falling silently on the snow, but drumming an irregular tattoo against the bodywork of the cars around us. Then, to add insult to injury, we were rammed from behind. Someone had run straight into our trunk.

There were two or three seconds that felt like the launch of a space shuttle, and then I stopped being twisted and tossed about. The blissful moment of dynamic equilibrium had arrived.

Shagron slid back down off the steering wheel into his seat, leaving a trail of blood on the balloon. I thought his arm was broken too. The fool hadn't fastened his belt… How long would he be regenerating now?

All around us there were car horns blaring.

With mixed feelings, I unclasped my belt, pushed the door open, and got out onto the road covered in compressed snow and sprinkled with broken glass.

The hood of our car had been rammed at a slight angle by a red Niva. The trunk had been crumpled so it looked as if someone had taken a bite out of it; there was the front end of a well cared for Japanese jeep sticking into it. Well, it had been well cared for. In fact, the jeep hadn't suffered all that badly: One headlight on the impact bar had been broken, and the bar itself was bent a bit. He'd obviously had enough time to brake.

"You stupid or something, jerk?" someone from the jeep yelled as he dashed at me. He seemed to consist of dark glasses, a shaved head, a barrel-like torso squeezed into something crimson and black, and stylish shoes that were size forty-something plus. This individual's eyes were as pale as the aura of a young infant… or the aura of that kid Egor in the metro.

Couldn't he see that the Niva had rammed us?

And then the crimson outfit of this barrel-shaped individual suddenly flared up in a dull bluish flame, and the individual squealed like a hog under the knife.

I recognized a transatlantic spell popularly known as Spider Flame. And then, before I could recover my wits from the attack by the scarlet-clad individual, someone took me by the collar and swung me around.

If there was one person I hadn't expected to see, it was him. The Light magician and music lover Anton Gorodetsky.

"Who are you?" he whispered furiously. "Who are you, may the Darkness take you? Only don't lie!"

His eyes were even paler than the eyes of the individual from the jeep, who was now furiously dancing something like a jig.

Something seemed to click inside my head. And my lips whispered the words of their own accord: "The mirror of the world…"

"The mirror…" the Light One echoed. "Damn you! Damn everything!"

I felt like replying that curses were the province of the Dark Ones, but I restrained myself. And I was right. Anton's aura was a blaze of crimson and purple. I was certainly more powerful than Gorodetsky… but just then he seemed to be supported by some incomprehensible force that was neither Light nor Darkness, but no less powerful. And if there had been a duel, I couldn't have told you which way it would go.

Anton let go of the collar of my jacket, swung around, and wandered off blindly, squeezing his way between the cars, ignoring the horns and the curses hurled at him through the wound-down windows. Traffic police sirens began howling somewhere quite close. The traffic jam had completely blocked Ostozhenka Street, except for a narrow cha

I looked at my watch. I had fifteen-no, now it was fourteen minutes left to get to the university. And I knew for sure that I couldn't use any transport magic.

But first things first-how was Shagron?

I walked round the Niva with its door hanging open and approached the BMW from the driver's side. Shagron was unconscious, but in the first instant of danger his immediate reflex response had been to set up a protective membrane and slip into the Twilight. And now he was regenerating, like a pupa, and the greedy Twilight could do nothing to him.

He would survive. He'd recover, and fairly quickly too. Most likely in the ambulance, if it could get here through the traffic jam. Shagron was too powerful a magician to be seriously hurt by something as minor as a traffic accident.

All right then, till we meet again, Shagron. I don't think the Inquisition will charge you with anything. It was force majeure, after all.

And just then I saw my salvation. A young guy deftly maneuvering his way along the very edge of the road on a feeble little orange motorbike. There was someone who didn't have to worry about traffic jams…

Of course, it was the wrong season for that kind of transport. But even so…

I slid into the Twilight.

In the Twilight the mini-motorbike looked a bit like the little hump-backed horse in the fairy tale. A small animal with handlebars for horns and one big headlight-eye.

"Get off," I told the young guy.

He obediently got off the saddle and stood there.

Leaping over the hood of a beige-colored Opel, I took hold of the handlebars. The mini-motorbike's engine was idling and snorting devotedly.

Okay then, forward. The young guy was standing there frozen like a dummy on the sidewalk, clutching the dollars I'd stuffed in his hand. I twisted the grip that controlled the gas toward me and just avoided scraping the polished side of the nearest car as I set off, squeezing my way through the traffic toward the edge of the jam and the Garden Ring Road. It was fairly simple to get the hang of the tiny Honda, even though it was meant for the warm asphalt of Japan, and not the icy roads of Moscow. And I managed to maneuver between all the cars pretty smartly too. But the bike couldn't give me any real speed- thirty kilometers an hour at most. I realized I still wouldn't get there in time, even if I abandoned the laboring Honda and dived into the nearest metro station-it was still a long way from the University metro station to the spire-topped central building of the university itself. Of course, I could take over any driver's mind on the way, but what guarantee was there that we'd escape the morning traffic jams? I remembered vaguely that in the area of the university the main roads were immensely wide, but I still wasn't certain. If I rode the Honda farther, I would retain my mobility almost all the way to my destination. But on the other hand, I only had a very general idea of the route. I was no Muscovite, unfortunately. Maybe I should just rely on the i