Chapter Eight
RECIPE FOR DECEIVING TELEPATHS
“He looked very upset,” Dina observed as we crossed the street opposite the University of Magic, moving away from it towards the center.
“Zingaru have probably captured Pars,” I explained. “Their brain center seems to be tracking my movements from two days ago. Strangely, they haven’t declared me wanted through their channels in the ammaratia yet. Probably still planning to use me. Wouldn’t be surprised if they’re tracking us right now. Do you feel anything?”
Dina shrugged in response:
“No. I don’t feel anything, Bossi.”
“Stop calling me ‘Bossi’. That’s odd. If Pars cracked and told them everything I said to him and Rufus, they should have been here long ago.”
“I’m hungry.”
“What?”
“I want to eat.”
I stopped, looked around, and noticed we were standing in front of a small restaurant with a sign reading ‘Miska-tag’. A well-known brand of budget restaurants in Bridgeport.
“Alright, let’s go,” I said and pushed open the glass door.
The restaurant was small. About ten tables. A handful of patrons: an elderly lady with an umbrella, two guys in worn leather gloves, an old man in a checked jacket with a beard and a pipe, and a girl with a cloak bearing the symbol of the University of Magic, clearly a student. A slightly elevated area in the semi-darkness with tables for the more affluent class and the general hall.
Dina immediately sat down in the vacant elevated area, seemingly unconcerned about the extra charge for the spot.
“Don’t worry,” she unexpectedly said to me, perhaps sensing my dissatisfaction. “I’ll pay.”
“Where did you get money?” I asked skeptically.
“Borrowed it from Auda,” she said with a smile.
“A looter. And you said you were scared of me there. Even searched the corpses!”
“Well, Boss, it’s like the saying goes, ‘Eyes are afraid, hands do the work.’ Money never hurts.”
I fell silent, pondering my next move. I didn’t feel like eating. Dina ordered something from the waiter who hurried over, with a royal attitude. More accurately, baronial, which, was her birthright. I waved her off when she offered me a choice. ‘Don’t distract me, I don’t want to eat now.’
About ten minutes of silence passed before the order was brought.
Dina immediately started eating with a good deal of appetite. I delved deeper into my thoughts. The ability to completely immerse myself inward came with my job. As an instructor in long-range sniping, I had learned to detach from the world. Like an electronic device in standby mode, waiting for the target to appear, ready to snap out of inertia and pull the trigger in an instant.
The USSR never trained long-range snipers. There was no need. No jungles, drug barons, or secret CIA operations in South America. Soviet snipers were purely conventional. Combat marksmen armed with SWD. Afforded the luxury of sighting shots at hundreds of meters. Designed for blunt warfare. Or for special services, to neutralize terrorists during hostage situations at distances of two to three hundred meters in the city environment. The West, on the other hand, trained theirs to make only one shot, maximizing information on weather conditions, laser rangefinders, and sniper calculators. Bearing the whole set of high-tech sniper gear. One shot from afar away. Right in the head of some uppity drug baron or rebel revolutionary leader. No second chance was given. In the USSR, nothing like this was required. It was only after that superpower collapsed and chaos ensued, that I was sent to the USA as part of an exchange program, for long-range shooting courses. Then I worked for several years as an instructor. Two years in the police, in the detective division in Ukraine, before I ended up here. In this damn place, God only knows a place. And seemingly rolling towards a grand, disastrous showdown. But that’s for later. Right now, the priority is to save Shani. My guardian angel. The blue-skinned fairy to whom I had grown so accustomed. My sole benefactor, who out of the blue helped me – a stranger and an alien – to survive and adapt to this world...
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“Why are you smiling?”
Dina paused, a spoonful of food raised to her mouth, waiting for my answer to her question. I had smiled, recalling Shani.
“Nothing,” I lied, wiping the silly grin off my face.
“So, what do you think?” I asked her a minute later, as she resumed her meal. “Any ideas on how to protect against telepathic influence?”
“No. There’s no protection from us. Give it up already, will you?”
“Don’t brag. There must be a way. You just don’t want to reveal your secret?”
“There’s no secret, dear Bossi.”
“Stop calling me that. Told you. What if I swim up to that damn restaurant underwater? There’s an internal pool there, through which the sirens swim up. What’s to stop me?”
“Ha. They’ll already be waiting for you at the pool. You emerge and get a bullet in your stupid head. Besides, you can’t stay underwater that long.”
“I can. Wanna bet? Jacques Cousteau and Emile Gagnan only invented the scuba in 1943. Your engineers from the ‘30s got here. Maybe even from the late ‘20s. So, this device is unknown to you. But I have all the components. Valves, tanks. Just need to make a regulator. Quite a simple thing. I could manage it in a week in the workshop of Lame Saadi. With his little help, of course.”
Dina stopped eating again, listening to my enthusiastic speech with a shocked and puzzled expression.
“What is that ‘scuba’ Boss?” she asked, her lower lip dropping in astonishment.
“Nothing,” I waved it off. “Keep eating. I was just joking. We don’t have a week anyway.”
‘What should I do?’ I thought, rubbing my temples fiercely. My head ached from trying to accomplish the impossible. To approach unnoticed where it’s impossible to approach unnoticed. Impossible! In principle. But maybe Zingaru are found elsewhere? Only unlikely the Hariyans. I can’t tell one from another, let alone differentiate Hariyans from the Lantred clan, for instance.
“Excuse me!”
I turned around. It was a tall waiter in a black, long apron, dark-haired and yellow-eyed. A mix of Ronka and Drawers. Unlike humans, they could interbreed, resulting in curious hybrids. A veritable elephant guy, skinny as a skeleton.
“What do you want?” I asked, a bit brusquely.
“My apologies, master. But the elderly master who was sitting at that table over there,” the waiter pointed to a table where an old man in a checked suit had sat a few minutes earlier, “asked me to give this to you, then he leaves.”
Slightly taken aback, I took the folded note. Dina looked at me curiously, craning her neck trying to peek at the letter as I read:
“Dear Max, you cannot protect yourself from the influence of telepaths. Do not waste your time searching for what does not exist and what even the highest-ranking professional mages have not been able to invent over thousands of years. However, there is one weakness in telepath-sensitives. And that’s ‘sincerity’. They cannot identify you as a threat if you aren’t! Until a certain moment. That moment will decide everything. Do not miss it. An unknown spell from my time is in this letter. Ask Rufus to perform the ritual. If, of course, you are prepared for the consequences. Before using the spell, describe in detail everything that happened to you. Down to the smallest details. Unfortunately, there is no turning back with this spell. You’ll lose the memories of the past week.
P.S. Yes, and one more thing. The demon’s name is Malgib. One of the fiercest from their kind. I would still advise against using the above spell. Even to save a fairy. It could disrupt Ita’s enchantment and accelerate the time granted to you. Sorry for the not-so-joyful news.
Sincerely yours Kulu-Kulu, Archmage and Archmage of the First Rank, Master of the Military Council of Silveyden, Advisor to the Red Table, Dragan of the Order of Roses, and so on and so forth...”
After reading the letter, I sprang up and dashed out onto the street.
Apart from a few cars and pedestrians – nothing. The old man had vanished. Damn it! Why all this mystery? Couldn’t he have just sat at our table and talked? I hate these wizards’ mannerisms. Good thing he didn’t write the letter in riddles. In poetic form, as was their custom a hundred years ago. I had heard, peripherally, that rhymes enhance the power of a verbal spell. Not sure whether it’s true or not.
Dina followed me out.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. Have you finished eating?”
“Yes.”