Krystof arrived back in the city around lunch time. He flashed his credentials at the Raderi checkpoint and made his way to the Cave, otherwise known as Vanguard headquarters in the northern Rodniya suburb of the city.
The Cave, so named because the headquarters was inside a defunct mining facility built into the side of the mountain, was an imposing place to Krystof even now, almost a year into his recruitment.
It was remarkable to him to think that a little over thirteen months ago, Krystof had never heard of the Vanguard. He’d been a newly minted Adherent with no idea that his gift for magical healing was anything other than a perfectly normal quirk of magical talent. Yes, he’d known he had more natural aptitude than most Initiates, his soul recovered energy faster and he could give more of himself before exhaustion set in, but he’d seen no reason to wonder why. It was a good thing after all that he had a gift for healing, it simply proved he’d made the right choice dedicating himself to Dalleon.
And yes, it was true that Krystof felt his connection to the Seraph as a visceral, tangible thing. It was true that on occasion he felt Dalleon’s touch upon him, an instinct that he must go somewhere at a particular time because some needed his help, but what difference did that make? He was a disciple of the seraph of salvation, surely all his brethren in the Dalleon seminary felt the same connection?
It wasn’t until a call to administer aid to an elderly parishioner went very wrong that Krystof had the slightest inkling that his spiritual connection to Dalleon was of a less abstract and more absolute nature.
Several of his Brethren had refused the call to travel to the Snacks –so named because it was a district in town often beset by phantom and feeder outbreaks. Acolyte Leminov had advised Krystof against going, warning him that often these calls were malicious attempts to lure adherents into traps where they would be set upon by those with soul sickness, or other maladies of the soul and spirit. Krystof, young and assured of Dalleon’s protection had insisted that even psychic vampires deserved Dalleon’s mercy. He would go and he would help, whomsoever needed him.
It was a trap. He’d been set upon as soon as he left his car. His assailants had been little more than children. Krystof himself was barely twenty-two, but he’d been shocked into stupor when a thirteen year old girl had run at him, an energy whip in her hand and blood splattered over her face.
She’d been missing her left eye, the socket a swollen and reddened scabrous wound. Her skin had been grey and slick with stinking sweat. Her lips split and spattered with bloody froth. The two slightly older boys with her had been no better.
Krystof had thought they were feeders, the risen dead, until his innate sense of their souls told him they were still alive, just so thoroughly corrupted they were no better than ghouls.
They’d beat him with energy whips and every time the magic constructs had struck him he’d felt the deep bite of their soul hungry transmitted through their magic into his skin. They’d flayed his soul with every lash, intent on rendering him unconscious so they could devour his soul.
Krystof had thought he would die that day, but even above his fear for his own safety what he’d felt was a deep, agonising horror, a sympathy that had twisted like barbed wire in his heart for the kids attacking him. How, he’d wondered, how could this happen to children? Did the Voisera have no limits? Was street magic so vicious that it would corrupt children?
At the time Krystof wasn’t sure what saved him. He’d been on the ground, arms up over his head, curled into a ball as the three teenagers lashed and kicked him snarling like junkyard dogs the entire time, and then suddenly his body had been diffused with a warmth that burned his vision white. The pain and the sadness had galvanised into something hot and directed, bursting free of his soul like a concentrated beam of white light.
The next thing he knew the girl was screaming on the ground, writhing, engulfed in white light that lit up every tear and ravaged hole in her soul. Krystof had rolled to his hands and knees and gone to her. He’d reached for her hand, not thinking so much as acting on the imperative to ease her suffering.
The moment he’d touched her the white light had flowed into him, painlessly. That was when Krystof realised that somehow he’d done this. The power of his soul had engulfed his attackers like a flashfire, burning the corruption away and leaving only a shred of soul for the girl to survive and not even that for the boys.
Krystof wasn’t sure how long he’d sat there, holding the girl’s hand, willing her to keep breathing, the bodies of the two boys cooling on the ground beside his car. It was all a blur. He remembered Acolyte Leminov sitting with him in the hospital and then sometime later, back in his room at the seminary, two strangers coming to visit him. A man who had introduced himself as Dmitri –Dima --Aschenko and a foreign woman, a Kitviker, with burnished red hair and a penetrating blue-green gaze who had introduced herself as Reniah Delaney.
They had told him he was a scion, born with an innate connection to Dalleon, that his destiny was greater than he could know and that they were here to offer him a place in the Vanguard; a chance to help protect the world from the horrors that had turned three children into monsters.
It wasn’t a hard decision to make. All Krystof had ever wanted to do was help and he never wanted to lash out and hurt someone like he’d hurt those kids again.
Krystof paused in the doorway to the cafeteria, taking a breath to settle his nerves. He was out of sorts and feeling foolish, letting his mind wander. He’d been unsettled since leaving the prison. It was a relief to spot Dima and Ren sitting at one of the long tables.
Just barely remembering to load up a tray with today’s special he hurried over to their table, offering up a brief smile in passing to the people he knew at the other tables.
A good number of adherents and Cloisterers of all stripes worked with the Vanguard. Some were scions who moonlighted as Krystof did because their talents were better utilised in civilian pursuits and others were administrators, clerks and the like who had been sworn in after years of loyal service to the Cloister. It had been a strange thing meeting many people he already had working relationships with in the Cave and being struck all over again by what a huge, open secret the Vanguard really was even within the Cloister.
There was no uniform for Vanguard agents, but both Dima and Reniah were in the tight dark clothing he associated with “work attire”. The sort of outfits that did not impede physical activity and could be worn easily under body armour. Reniah’s sword sat in its sheath on the table beside her empty plate. Dima’s sigil etched gauntlets sat folded one atop the other in front of him.
‘How’d it go?’ Dima asked him, a slight smile playing over his lips.
Dima Aschenko was technically his superior officer but unlike even Acolyte Leminov who had always treated him graciously, Krystof had a hard time remembering rank and place. He mostly just saw Dima as a friend. For Krystof this made things awkward and he found himself desperately scrambling for professional barriers, the sort that existed between Initiates and Adherents even as they all lived cheek by jowl in the seminary.
It didn’t work, mostly because neither Dima nor Reniah were prepared to let him hide behind perceived rank. They forced him to be just Krystof Heugar, man and colleague, in a way he just wasn’t used to.
Of course, just being Krystof meant he didn’t have to worry about appearances when he grimaced, slumped into the chair and muttered, ‘It went,’ in about as sour a tone as Krystof ever managed to say anything.
Reniah’s eyebrows shot up. ‘As bad as that?’ she asked smiling a little, amused by Krystof’s downcast expression but not in a cruel way. As always, her foreign accent tickled Krystof’s ears. He liked the way her Kitviker heritage rounded out her vowels, pulling on syllables in a way a native never would.
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted smiling back at her. ‘I don’t think I handled things well. In fact, I’m pretty sure I came across as a total idiot.’
Reniah frowned. ‘What happened?’
At the same time Dima asked, ‘Did you find out if he’s a scion candidate?’
Krystof had learned that Dima could be impatient like this sometimes, jumping in to get to what he thought was the real meat of an issue, and etiquette could go hang. He’d been in the army, Krystof knew, until his scion nature and innate impetuousness had made his tenure impossible. Recognising that Dima didn’t mean offence but that he’d keep pushing until he got his answer, Krystof answered him first. The one question would answer the other anyway.
‘Alukov resisted my seal. I could feel his soul’s resistance. He should have been weakened by the prison brand and he wasn’t, not in the least. Actually,’ Krystof added thoughtfully, ‘the only way I could get him to take my seal at all was when I asked him if he was resisting on purpose. It was definitely deliberate. I couldn’t get a sense of whether he was in contact with a seraph, but he definitely has the potential.’
‘That was clever, getting him to reveal himself without revealing anything in return,’ Dima commended.
‘It really wasn’t all that revealing,’ Krystof corrected. ‘Although, I did discover he thinks everyone in the Cloister sells their soul to the Seraphim.’
Dima shared his surprise if his expression was any indication. ‘Interesting,’ he said after a moment. ‘I suppose it’s not too shocking that a street practitioner would think that. No one keeps their soul on the street.’
‘Alukov has,’ Krystof said with confidence. ‘Even if we accept that a year in prison would give his soul time to heal and maybe erase marks of low level taint, I’d still be able to tell and he’s clean.’
‘His records never gave any indication he used illegal necromancy,’ Reniah said with careful stress on the word illegal. ‘Selling charms doesn’t mean he made them.’
‘Doesn’t mean he didn’t either,’ Dima shot back. ‘Or that he wasn’t a party to their making.’
Reniah shrugged acceding the point. Krystof shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think he has anything to do with illegal necromancy.' he said. 'I know he had dealings with the Voisera, but I really don’t think he was ever one of them. His reaction to the idea of selling one’s soul was a little too real.’
‘Alright,’ Dima said, not convinced but willing to accept Krystof’s word for now. ‘What’s your read on Alukov? Is he a threat or a potential asset?’
Krystof looked down at his untouched lunch. That was the question, wasn’t it? Everything was riding on Alukov and whether he was the sort of man to help a madman unleash chaos on the city, or the sort to risk everything to stop it. Krystof wished he had an answer.
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted reluctantly.
Going into the assignment he’d had misgivings. The parole arrangement was legal, but Krystof had worried about the ethics of the Vanguard hijacking the man’s rehabilitation for their own ends. On the other hand they had no choice; Matriev would go after Alukov no matter what the Vanguard. Which was the only reason he’d said yes, when Commander Ghorki had pushed him to take Alukov’s case, despite the fact that he was far too junior an Adherent to make a good parole officer. Krystof had consoled himself that whatever duplicity he had to engage in it was at least helping keep the man safe. His seal would protect Alukov from the danger he didn’t know he was in.
‘I think he’ll break parole, or try to,’ he said thinking back on the man he’d met in that tiny room in Meznow prison.
He’d gone into the prison expecting to find a callous, hardened criminal, or someone with a soul as maligned as the girl who’d attacked him. He hadn’t found either. Instead underneath a thick skin of veiled hostility and entrenched cynicism the overwhelming impression he’d received from Alukov was that of a man who spent every waking moment metaphorically looking over his shoulder, distrusting everything and everyone until he was less a man than a trapped animal, biting the fingers of anyone who approached.
‘Go on,’ Dima encouraged, ‘tell me what you’re thinking.’
He met Dima’s patient gaze. ‘I don’t know anything,’ he admitted. ‘The man was defensive from the moment I walked in and wasn’t who he expected. He was suspicious and a lot angrier about his parole than he let on, and it wasn’t like he was hiding being angry that well to begin with.’ Krystof sighed, shoulders slumping. ‘Honestly? I felt sorry for him. He served his time and then finds out he’s not as free as he thought. I think I’d be bitter too, if I was in his position.’
‘Really?’ Reniah sounded interested, stretching out a hand to run her fingers over the flat of her blade. She smiled when she saw Krystof watching and waiting for her to go on. ‘You are not a bitter person,’ she told him. ‘And you are not the sort to end up in prison.’
‘Well,’ Krystof conceded. ‘There but for the grace of Seraph go I, and all that.’ He shrugged a little awkwardly. ‘I try to keep an open mind. It’s not like we really know that much about Alukov. Maybe he has his reasons for ending up the way he did.’
Reniah’s smile widened. ‘That is why you were the best man for this job. You see the best in everyone.’
‘Just don’t let it get the better of you,’ Dima warned. ‘Alukov’s a street practitioner. Street magic is all about power, he’s probably playing you –or he’ll try to. Did you confirm if his Cantor-Levere scores were falsified?’
‘Oh definitely,’ Krystof gestured with his fork, a little drop of salad dressing flying off the piece of lettuce. ‘Frankly I can’t believe no one flagged it when they branded him. Those numbers were way too low and you only had to be around the man a moment to realise it.’
‘You only had to be with a moment,’ Reniah corrected. ‘Not everyone has your senses, Krys.’
‘What matters,’ Dima said tapping his fingers on the table, ‘is that we still don’t have a firm handle on who this guy is or what he’s capable of.’ He looked up. ‘That’s a problem.’
Krystof dropped his gaze, feeling the censure even if none was meant.
‘I read the file on Alukov,' Reniah said. 'He turned up in the city about four years ago. Gained a reputation as thief and smuggler but refused to join a gang. He seems to have kept to working street conjugation, deliberately staying under the radar.’ She glanced pointedly at Dima. ‘That doesn’t seem like someone interested in power at all costs.’
‘Our sources say he was behind the Orandir Insurance heist,’ Dima pointed out. ‘Which makes him exactly the sort of criminal Matriev wants. And,’ he said in a low dark tone, ‘no ordinary conjuror could’ve broken into Orandir’s vault. If he’s not a scion then he’s a summoner and that makes him dangerous.’
Reniah sighed. ‘We still have no proof,’ she pointed out.
‘Except that Jaroslav viewed him as enough of a threat to inform on him and then brag about it,’ Dima contended. ‘It’s not proof, no, but its strong circumstantial evidence that Alukov is more of a player than he appears to be. He’s just good at hiding his power.’
Reniah sighed. ‘You are probably right. Still, given the enmity between Jaroslav and Alukov, is it likely he’ll reach out to him?’
‘He will if Matriev orders him too. We know that Matriev wants every practitioner with any real power working for him.’
Reniah’s mouth twisted in a grimace. ‘He’ll test him to see if he has the power.’
Dima nodded. ‘And if Alukov survives he’ll be forced to work for Matriev or die. Djemys doesn’t let anyone escape him.’ He turned to Krystof, ‘Which is why we need to watch Alukov. One way or the other, he’ll lead us to Matriev.’
Krystof winced. ‘It just feels…dishonest,’ he admitted, eyes on the table. ‘We know Alukov’s in danger. Shouldn’t we warn him?’ He looked up.
‘You were there in the briefing, Krys. He’s a criminal with unknown abilities. We can’t trust him with the truth. You’re under orders not to tell him anything with permission.’ Dima replied flatly.
‘I know,’ Krystof objected, cheeks heating. ‘I just…’
‘He took the seal which means you can track him if he’s trouble,’ Dima said, tone softening a little. He sighed. ‘Look, if he cooperates with the terms of his parole then we can see about reading him in, if he really is a Leleon scion he’d make a great asset, but the simple fact is, we don’t need his cooperation to use him as bait for Matriev and that should be your priority.’
Krystof bit his lip and glared down at the table top. He knew that Dima wasn’t being callous, he was just being pragmatic. Keeping his mind on the mission. Matriev was a threat and they had to use whatever resources they had to take him down, but Krystof wasn’t sure he could do it. Viewing a human being as a tool –an asset, let alone as bait -- was, well, it was just wrong.
Fingers lightly brushed his knuckles and he looked up sharply. Reniah smiled at him withdrawing her hand.
‘It’s alright,’ she promised, ‘we protect lives; we won’t put him at risk.’
‘I—I know that,’ Krystof stammered. He shot a look at Dima, worried that he’d let too much show on his face. He hadn’t meant to imply he didn’t trust his superior officer.
Dima sighed. ‘I spoke out of turn,’ he said tiredly. ‘Matriev is a sore spot for me. I want him and I want him badly, but Ren’s right, I’m not going to put people in danger to get what I want.’ He scowled, expression darkening. ‘That’s Matriev’s game. Not mine.’
Reniah pushed back her chair. ‘Let’s go,’ she said to Krystof. ‘You’ve done nothing but stab at that poor salad. We’ll go to Danika’s and get dumplings.’ She smiled at Krystof. ‘My treat.’
‘You just ate,’ Dima said, ‘Surely you can’t still be hungry?’
Reniah looked down her nose at him. ‘I can be anything I want to be,’ she replied haughtily, ‘and you are not invited.’
Dima grinned. ‘You’re a harsh woman.’
Reniah clucked her tongue. ‘Harsh nothing. You have a meeting with Ghorki in fifteen minutes.’ She smirked. ‘Which you have not prepared for.’
‘Sh---‘ Dima bit off the curse, glancing swiftly at his wristwatch. ‘You’re right. I’ve gotta go.’
Reniah was smug. ‘I’m always right.’
Grabbing up his gauntlets Dima stood, grabbed his tray and bustled toward waste disposal, calling over his shoulder to Krystof, ‘I’ll let the Commander know about Alukov. He’ll still expect a written report though, so consider yourself warned.’
Krystof sighed. ‘I know.’ He had no idea what he was going to write. The meeting and sealing had been mostly uneventful and he hadn’t learned anything concrete. In fact he’d come away with more questions than answers.
‘Come,’ Reniah touched his elbow. ‘Dumplings now, report later.’
Krystof smiled. ‘I’m pretty sure, as my senior teammate, you shouldn’t be encouraging me to neglect paperwork.’
Reniah beamed at him, revealing the small gap between her front teeth. ‘Paperwork is for lesser mortals,’ she scoffed. ‘Dumplings are for the gods and their chosen.’