Anton shoved his hands into his pockets, took out the little round earphones, and set them in his ears. He clicked the button on the player. The band Picnic came up.

The city’s fierce lights

And harsh neon brightness

Shove from behind and jostle me on,

But I stroll along,

Breathe it all in,

And what is mine it cannot take from me.

One minute more lingering in this breeze,

In this Crooked Kingdom I feel at my ease.

Here money won’t wait

Until it gets burned,

Its power brings happiness, takes it away.

But that’s not for me,

I’m wandering free

And the dark streets are calling my name.

He’s playing his game,

It’s always the same,

And one out of two people pauses to see.

But I’m not that one,

I’m drunk, having fun,

And I’m only just beginning to breathe . . .

The gap in the clouds closed up. Anton raised his hand—and then lowered it again.

It would close over anyway.

He walked through into the kitchen, opened a small cupboard, and took out a bottle of cognac that had already been started. He glanced round stealthily, poured a little into a paunchy glass, and downed it barbarously, in a single gulp.

The bottle gave a despairing sigh. Anton screwed up his eyes and looked at it, trying to determine who had cast that spell.

Svetlana.

Anton poured a second dose, put the sighing bottle away in the cupboard, and walked through into the sitting room. He stood in front of a cupboard with glass doors, studying the wooden chalice standing on one of the shelves.

Of course, artifacts of that kind really ought to be kept in the Watch office. But after studying it for a week, none of the analysts had been able to discover how to read the prophecy concealed in the chalice (or even if it was really there) and the apartment of two Higher Others (actually three, if you counted Nadya) was effectively defended against any kind of intrusion.

And so, on Gesar’s suggestion, Erasmus’s chalice had been returned to Gorodetsky. It was returned without enthusiasm—the Inquisition was very displeased that Anton had not tried to summon them to detain Arina. But Gesar had come up with a convincing argument: Erasmus might have tuned the chalice in some way so that the prophecy could only be revealed to Gorodetsky.

Gesar could always come up with a convincing argument if he really wanted to.

Anton looked at the chalice for a while, then opened the cupboard and picked it up. He held it to one ear, then the other. Then he walked into the kitchen, splashed some cognac into the chalice, and drank it.

Naturally, the prophecy was not revealed.

“Daddy?”

Anton was standing by the window with the chalice, lost in thought, and he hadn’t noticed that Nadya had come back from school.

“What, my love?”