“What for?” asked Pavel, glancing round at the other students, as if looking for support. “We’re much stronger than the Day Watch.”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to talk about,” Anton said, nodding. He walked round the classroom, running his eye over the students: ten Others, ten future magicians and enchantresses. Six adults, four children and juveniles. The usual balance—the age at which a person is identified as an Other can vary greatly. The youngest student, the Prophet Innokentii Tolkov, was ten and a half, and the oldest, the enchantress Galina Stanislavovna, was fifty-two. Some of them would join the Watch, and some would decide to carry on living a human life . . . or almost human.

“How many students do you think there are in the Day Watch?”

“Ten,” said Pavel.

“Afraid not,” said Gorodetsky, shaking his head.

“A hundred,” answered Nadya.

“That answer doesn’t count. You heard about it at home.”

“So what?” Nadya asked indignantly. “What difference does it make where I heard it?”

“Well, you got it wrong anyway,” said Anton, shrugging. “That was a long time ago.”

“A hundred and fifty-three,” muttered Innokentii.

“That answer’s acceptable,” said Gorodetsky, nodding. “Although I thought they had a hundred and fifty-one students, but I won’t argue with a Prophet. What does this imbalance tell us?”

“That there are more bad people in the world than good ones?” Galina asked in a quiet voice. Before being initiated she had been a teacher of Russian language and literature for senior-school classes in a small town outside Moscow. So Anton supposed she had a right to an assumption like that.

“Not people, Others!” Denis corrected her. He was thirty-something, a former soldier who had been discharged from the army during the reforms. Strangely enough, his human profession and his specialization as an Other coincided—he promised to make a rather good Battle Magician.

“Sorry, Denis, but people is right,” Galina Stanislavovna said quietly, but firmly. “Others aren’t born bad or good . . . and neither are people, by the way. Others take the side of the Light or the Darkness depending on their state of mind at the time of initiation . . .”

“One comment,” said Anton. “Who wants to correct that?”

Several students raised their hands. Anton nodded at Farhad, a former manager from an oil company in Kazan. A self-made man with a successful career in business—people like that didn’t often become Light Others.

“The terms Light Ones and Dark Ones don’t mean good and bad, or good and evil,” said Farhad. “If we divide them using human yardsticks, they are altruists and egotists. Those who want the best for everyone around them and those who want the best for themselves.”