I glanced at him quickly and just managed to catch the brief instant before the stupid expression reappeared on his face.

“You’re not nearly as stupid as you pretend, Afandi,” I said quietly. “Why do you act like some senile old man?”

Afandi smiled for a few seconds, then grew more serious and said, “It’s best for a weak magician to appear like a fool, Anton. Only a powerful one can afford to be clever.”

“You’re not so very weak, Afandi. You entered the second level and stayed there for five minutes. Do you know some cunning trick?”

“Rustam had a lot of secrets, Anton.”

I carried on looking at Afandi for a long time, but the old man’s face remained absolutely impassive. Then I glanced at Alisher. He was looking thoughtful.

I wondered if he and I were thinking the same thing.

I was sure that we were.

Was Afandi Rustam? Was the simple-minded old man who had meekly cleaned a provincial Watch’s office for decades one of the oldest magicians in the world?

Anything was possible. Absolutely anything at all. They say that the passing years change every Other’s character and he becomes less complicated: A single dominant character trait overshadows everything else. The cunning Gesar had wanted intrigues, and he is still intriguing to this very day. Foma Lermont, who dreamed of a quiet and comfortable life, was now tending his garden and working as an entrepreneur. And if Rustam’s dominant character trait was secretiveness, after living so long he could quite easily have become totally paranoid and disguised himself as a weak and dimwitted old man…

But if that were true, he wouldn’t open up to us, even if I told him what I suspected. He would laugh in my face and sing an old song about his teacher… After all, he hadn’t actually said that Rustam initiated him! He had told the story in the third person: Rustam, a foolish old man, an initiation. We were the ones who had set Afandi in the role of the foolish old man!

I looked at Afandi again, with my inflamed imagination ready to see cunning and morbid secretiveness and even malice in his gaze.

“Afandi, I have to talk to Rustam,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “It’s very important. Gesar sent me to Samarkand, he asked me to seek out Rustam and ask for his advice, in the name of their old friendship. Advice and nothing more!”

“It’s a fine thing, old friendship,” Afandi said, nodding. “Very fine! When it exists. But I heard that Rustam and Gesar quarreled, that Rustam spat after Gesar as he walked away and said he never wanted to see him on Uzbek ground again. And Gesar laughed out loud and said that in that case, Rustam would have to put out his own eyes. At the bottom of a bottle of fine old wine there can be a bitter sediment, and the older the wine, the more bitter the sediment gets. In the same way an old friendship can produce very, very great pain and resentment!”

“You’re right, Afandi,” I said. “You’re right about everything. But Gesar said one other thing. He saved Rustam’s life. Seven times. And Rustam saved his life. Six times.”

The waiter brought our shurpa, and we stopped talking. But even after the young lad had gone away, Afandi sat there with his lips firmly clamped shut. And the expression on his face suggested that he was figuring something out in his head.

Alisher and I exchanged glances and he nodded very slightly.

“Tell me, Anton,” Afandi said eventually. “If your friend was distressed when the woman he loved left him…so distressed that he decided to leave this world…and you came to him and stayed with him for a month, drinking wine from morning until night, making him go to visit friends and telling him how many other beautiful women there are…is that saving his life?”

“I think that depends on whether the friend really was prepared to leave this life because of love,” I said cautiously. “Every man who has ever gone through something like that has felt that there was nothing left to live for. But only very, very rarely have they ever killed themselves. Unless, of course, they were foolish, beardless young boys.”

Afandi said nothing again for a while.

And then, as if it had been waiting for the pause, my phone rang.

I took it out, certain that the caller was either Gesar, who had been informed about what had happened, or Svetlana, who had sensed that something was wrong. But there was no number or name on the display. It was simply glowing with an even gray light.

“Hello,” I said.

“Anton?” It was a familiar voice, with a slight Baltic accent.

“Edgar?” I exclaimed in delight. No normal Other would ever be glad to get a call from an Inquisitor. Especially if that Inquisitor is a former Dark Magician. But this was a highly unusual situation. Better Edgar than someone I didn’t know, some zealous devotee of equilibrium hung from head to toe with amulets and ready to suspect anyone and everyone of being a criminal.

“Anton, you’re in Samarkand.” Edgar wasn’t asking, of course, he was stating a fact. “What’s going on there? Our people are putting up a portal from Amsterdam to Tashkent!”

“Why Tashkent?” I asked, puzzled.

“It’s easier. They’ve used that route at least once before,” Edgar explained. “So what’s up down there?”

“Do you know about Edinburgh?”

Edgar snorted derisively. Right, what a question to ask. There probably wasn’t even a single trainee in the Inquisition who hadn’t heard about the attempt to steal Merlin’s artifact. So what else should I expect from the experienced members of staff?

I continued, “Everything indicates that it’s the same team. Only in Scotland they used paid mercenaries, but here they mesmerized local soldiers and policemen. Loaded them up with amulets and spells, charmed bullets…”

“I can see this is the end of my vacation,” Edgar said gloomily. “I wish you hadn’t stuck your nose into this! They pulled me back in off the beach! Because I have experience working with you!”

“I’m very flattered,” I said acidly.

“Is all this very serious?” Edgar asked after a pause.

“A hundred men sent to attack both the local Watches. As we withdrew two Light Ones were killed. And then we were attacked by a deva, who bit a Dark One in half. It took me three minutes to beat it down!”

Edgar swore and asked, “What did you beat it down with?”

“Dust and Ashes. It was lucky I just happened to know it…”

“Tremendous!” Edgar said sarcastically. “By sheer chance a young Moscow magician happens to remember a spell against golems that hasn’t been used in a hundred years!”

“Are you trying to stitch me up already?” I laughed. “Come and join me, you’ll like it here. And by the way, gather up those spells against golems. The word is that there’s another one on the loose.”

“This is an absolute nightmare,” Edgar muttered. “I’m in Crete. Standing on the beach in my swimming trunks. My wife’s rubbing suntan lotion on my back. And they tell me to be in Amsterdam in three hours and set out immediately for Uzbekistan! What do you call that?”

“Globalization, sir,” I answered.

Edgar groaned into the phone. Then he said, “My wife will kill me. This is our honeymoon. She’s a witch, by the way! And they summon me to lousy Uzbekistan!”

“Edgar, it doesn’t become you to say ‘lousy’ like that,” I said, unable to resist another jibe. “After all, we all lived in the same state once upon a time. Consider it your deferred patriotic duty.”

But Edgar was obviously not in the mood for sarcasm or exchanging jibes. He heaved a sigh and asked, “How will I find you?”

“Call me,” I replied simply, and cut the connection.

“The Inquisition,” Alisher said with an understanding nod. “They’ve caught on at last. Well, they’ll certainly find a few things to do here.”

“They could start by cleaning out their own backyard,” I said. “They’ve got someone beavering away on the inside.”