Юлия Авилкина The Bodiless Shadow

In the back of the shop, behind a heavy curtain of yellowed beads, something was rhythmically dripping. The sound was too heavy, too thick for simple water. She slowly drew her revolver, feeling the familiar weight of the grip steady her pulse. The beads clinked softly as she pushed them aside with the barrel of her weapon.

Einar Larsen was in the small workshop. He sat in his work chair, slumped over the workbench as if he had fallen asleep while repairing a complex clockwork mechanism. Kaira stepped closer, and a chill crawled up the nape of her neck. Larsen was dead. Around the scavenger's body hung that same familiar, terrifying pattern. His magical threads—the dim, barely perceptible strands of an ordinary man—hadn't been torn; they had been neatly excised from his chest.

Death had been instantaneous. The killer had worked just as cleanly as in the Archive: no signs of a struggle, not a single shattered lens on the table.

But there was one detail that hadn't been present with Councilor Vael. On the workbench, directly in front of the dead man's face, lay an open brass box. Inside, nestled in a bed of red velvet, shimmered a tiny needle no larger than a fingernail. It was forged from a strange black metal that didn't reflect light, but seemed to swallow it.

The old man’s gray head rested upon splayed blueprints. Kaira peered cautiously over his shoulder. It was a resonance map. Three points were marked with red crosses on the port’s layout. One was Pumping Station No. 4. The second was the Cathedral cellars. The third was heavily smeared with Larsen’s blood.

Suddenly, the sharp shriek of an Inquisition steam whistle erupted from the street, followed by the heavy clatter of hobnailed boots on the wooden footbridges. Someone had called a patrol before she arrived. She couldn’t afford to be caught here next to a second corpse—the Inquisition didn't believe in coincidences.

Kaira shot a quick glance at the workbench, yanked a yellowed slip of paper from under the dead man's elbow, and lunged for the narrow back door leading to the cutter's stern. She slipped into the gray fog a split second before the guards kicked in the front door with a crash.

Chapter 4: Magnus Under Suspicion

The rain came after all. It brought no freshness, only beating the coal dust into the cobblestones and turning the familiar harbor fog into a gray, sticky suspension. Water poured from the sky in a solid sheet, washing the grime from the warehouse roofs straight into the overflowing canals.

Kaira stood in the deep shadow of a rusted harbor crane, wedged between two abandoned crates, and watched. The forces of the Inquisition were converging on Einar Larsen's barge. Blue and toxic-white reflections of magical lanterns darted across the filthy, trash-strewn water, snatching the scurrying guards from the darkness. Their heavy, iron-shod boots thudded hollowly against the wooden footbridges. The air trembled from an overabundance of raw, poorly controlled magic—the patrolmen were nervous, generously casting search nets around the barge.

She instinctively pulled her coat tighter, even though it was already soaked through. In her inner pocket, closer to her body, lay the quarter-folded sheet of paper she had managed to pull from under the dead man's elbow mere seconds before the Inquisition appeared.

Kaira knew what was written there by heart. It wasn't a blueprint or a sewer schematic. It was a promissory note—old, brittle, yellowed at the edges from time and dampness. The sum indicated was staggering even by Upper City standards, but it wasn't the number of zeroes that had Kaira's attention deadlocked.

At the very bottom of the document, where the paper had already begun to peel apart, sat the seal of a personal guarantor. Three intertwined swords enclosed in a perfect circle. The personal heraldic mark of Magnus Trey. Date of issue: exactly ten years ago.

Kaira adjusted her collar, peeled herself away from the cold steel support of the crane, and strode away from the cordon. Water squelched in her boots with every step, icy drops sliding down her neck, but she paid it no mind. A single thought ticked in her head, rhythmic as a pendulum.

A Handler of the Inquisition. The embodiment of the law. A man whose golden aura suppressed anyone within a ten-meter radius. Magnus Trey was connected to a fence and the murdered Councilor Vael by a shared, carefully concealed financial secret. And this secret traced its roots back to the year of the "Great Rift"—a time when Avrin nearly choked on its own magic due to massive riots in the lower districts.

The journey to the Upper City took about an hour. Kaira had to use the funicular: rising through the layers of fog, she watched the dirty drizzle of Nutra gradually give way to the clean, almost crystalline rain of the aristocratic quarters. Here, climate shields were active, diverting excess moisture and soot.

In the Main Archive, it was just as dry, quiet, and smelling of eternity. Kaira's footsteps sank into the thick carpet runners. The guards at the entrance gave her disdainful looks—dirty water was dripping from the hem of her coat onto the flawlessly polished parquet—but the sealed mandate forced them to keep their mouths shut.

Soaren Darr was found not in the reading room, but in the restoration workshop on the first subterranean level. The light was softer here, and the air was warmer. The archivist sat at a wide oak table beneath a low-hanging lamp. Armed with fine surgical tweezers and a massive magnifying glass on a brass stand, he was painstakingly, millimeter by millimeter, gluing together a torn page of some ancient folio.

The smell of bone glue, beeswax, and old leather was so thick here it felt tangible. On the edge of his table, among jars of solvents and brushes, Kaira noticed a simple ceramic cup. A barely visible trail of steam curled above it, and the familiar, tart aroma of thyme and dried ginger hung in the air. That exact same blend. He was drinking the same thing he had sent her.

"You returned surprisingly quickly," Soaren said quietly, not even lifting his gaze from the magnifying glass. His hand holding the tweezers didn't waver. "I hope you made it home before the fog turned into this monstrous downpour?"

"As you can see, no," Kaira stepped closer, stopping a few paces from the table so as not to drip water onto the papers. "I need a case file from ten years ago. A joint project between the Inquisition and the Ministry of Communications. The reconstruction of the magical nodes in the 'Rusty Belt.'"

Soaren slowly set down the tweezers, carefully removed the magnifying glass from the stand, and only then looked up at her. The yellow light of the lamp reflected in his glasses, making his eyes invisible for a moment.

"Reconstruction of the nodes? That is a very deep clearance level, Kaira. Category 'A' documents. Even with your civilian consultant mandate, I will have to file an official request through the chancellery. And that means—across Handler Trey's desk."

"No need to go through Magnus," she reached inside her coat, pulled out the folded note, and placed it on the table, covering it with her hand. "Look at this off the record."

Soaren frowned slightly. He leaned forward, and Kaira removed her hand. The archivist carefully studied the yellowed document. His face, as always, remained impassive, but Kaira, accustomed to reading people by their involuntary reactions, noticed how his fingers, stained with dry glue, twitched barely perceptibly before clenching into a fist.

"Handler Trey's mark," he stated in a level voice. "The sum is... extraordinary. You found this at Larsen's on the barge?"

"Yes. Under the desk where he was killed. And before he died, he was scared to death of something he was looking for in the old sewers. Listen, Darr... If Magnus was taking bribes or paying for Larsen and Vael's silence ten years ago, and now they are both dead within twenty-four hours..."

"Then Handler Magnus Trey is the most logical candidate for the role of someone urgently covering his tracks," Soaren finished for her quietly.

He sighed heavily, took off his glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Without the lenses, he suddenly looked like a very tired man to Kaira.

"Wait here," he stood up, walked around the table, and headed toward a massive filing cabinet built right into the wall. "I will try to find the necessary records bypassing the main registry. The storage system during the year of the Rift was... chaotic. Perhaps something remains in the draft archives."

While he vanished into the labyrinth of the adjacent vault, Kaira remained alone in the workshop. The ticking of the antique grandfather clock in the corner seemed deafening. She warmed her chilled hands in her pockets and examined the tools on Soaren's table: scalpels, wooden spatulas, jars of pigments—everything was arranged by size, by degree of wear, with a manic yet cozy neatness.

"Have you always been like this?" his voice rang out right beside her.

Kaira flinched and turned around. Soaren stood in the doorway, holding a thin folder with a gray, unmarked cover. His footsteps on the carpet had been absolutely soundless.

"Like what?"

"Wary," he approached the table and set the folder down, but was in no rush to open it. "You stand as if you're expecting a stab in the back even in an empty room. As if the whole world is an ambush that's about to snap shut. How did you even decide to become a seeker, Kaira? A girl with... your gift. Usually, the 'mutes' become acolytes to the priests. Or they work at customs as living detectors, sorting contraband."

Kaira felt the familiar, prickly sting of irritation. People loved to remind her of what she was deprived of. But there was no condescension or pity in Soaren's voice. Only genuine interest.

"The priests sing too much about the greater good, and customs stinks of rotten fish," she replied sharply, looking him in the eye. "I prefer the kind of dirt that can be washed off with hot water, not the kind covered in gold and holy texts."

She expected him to get flustered or apologize for his tactlessness, as many did. But Soaren didn't take offense. He simply nodded slowly, accepting her sharpness as a matter of course.

"I understand," he said softly. "Justice is generally a job for those who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty. It's a rare quality, Kaira. Most of my colleagues in this building prefer to think the world consists only of clean ink and white paper."

He opened the gray folder and turned it toward Kaira. Inside were blueprints, very similar to the ones she had seen on Larsen's blood-soaked table, but much older and more detailed. Yellowed reports were pinned to them.

"Here, take a look," Soaren pointed a long finger at a line of text. "Exactly ten years ago, Magnus Trey, then still a young captain, led a purge of the port's lower levels against so-called 'ethereal parasites.' Einar Larsen was listed in the reports as his civilian guide. Councilor Vael acted as the financial controller of the operation. It states here that during the work deep underground, an 'unauthorized altar' was discovered and destroyed. But there are no technical details or descriptions of what happened there."

Kaira traced the jagged line of the sewer on the map with her finger.

"An altar of the 'Carvers'? The order was just gaining power in the slums back then."

"Quite possibly," Soaren turned the page. "But look at the final expense report. The Inquisition paid Larsen a simply astronomical bonus. And the phrasing: 'for silence in the interest of public safety and the preservation of state secrets.'"

"Silence about what? About what they found there? Or about what they did there?"

"That isn't in the archive," Soaren closed the folder and looked straight into her eyes. A quiet, serious alarm read in the gaze of his gray eyes. "Kaira... be very careful with Magnus. He is a man of action. A man of power. If you come at him head-on with this promissory note, he won't play riddles with you."

"I know how to talk to him," Kaira took the folder and pressed it tightly to her chest. "Thank you, Soaren. For everything."

"Take care of yourself," he called after her as she was already stepping out into the corridor. "The city needs those who see the structure, even if they cannot hear the music."

The Inquisition headquarters, located in the adjacent wing of the complex, greeted Kaira with a ringing, oppressive tension. Guards gathered in small groups in the corridors, whispering quietly; the magical lamps beneath the vaulted ceilings hummed louder than usual, flickering from power surges. Larsen's death had already become public knowledge, and the atmosphere in the building was steeped in caustic paranoia.

Magnus was found in his office on the third floor. He stood by the massive window, hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the rain-drenched, twilight-drowning Avrin. His golden aura was currently blazing so fiercely that Kaira had to instinctively squint. The threads of power around the handler weren't smooth as usual, but ragged. They twitched and writhed, flaring with sharp bursts that looked like sparks from a welding torch.

"You're three hours late, Vellen," he rumbled, not even turning at the sound of the opening door. The reflection of his stern face trembled in the wet glass. "I already sent a patrol to your office. Where the hell have you been?"

"I was on Larsen's barge. In the Rusty Belt. Right before your boys came howling in and trampled all the evidence," Kaira walked up to his massive oak desk and slammed the folder and the promissory note down onto it. The papers slapped with a dry, sharp smack. "Shall we talk about old debts, Magnus? Or maybe about why your old friends have suddenly started dying one after another?"

Magnus slowly, very slowly, turned around. His face was ashen-pale, his eyes threaded with a red net of broken vessels from insomnia and nervous strain. He lowered his gaze to the note with his seal, then shifted it to Kaira. For one endless second, his mighty aura completely collapsed, vanishing as if blown out by the wind, and then exploded in a new, scorching wave of heat.

"You are meddling in things that don't concern you, girl," his voice dropped to a dangerous, growling whisper.

"My concern is finding Vael's killer," Kaira planted her hands on the edge of the desk, leaning forward. "And the killer is using the exact same technique, the exact same twisted surgery that was used ten years ago when you ran the port 'purge'. Larsen knew your secret. Vael knew this secret. You're the last one on the list, Magnus. And you have the strongest possible motive of all—to hide exactly what you've been paying the scavenger Inquisition money for all these years."

Magnus stepped toward her. Kaira physically felt the pressure of his magic—the air in the office instantly became dry and hot, smelling of thunderstorms and burnt dust.

"You think it's me?" he hissed through clenched teeth, looming over her. "Do you really think I would slaughter Vael like a sheep at the slaughterhouse in our own Archive?!"

"I think you're afraid," Kaira didn't back down a single millimeter, even though the skin on her arms broke out in goosebumps from the alien energy. "Afraid that someone is finally going to find out the truth about what really happened in those sewers."

Magnus swung abruptly, his hand clenching into a massive fist. For a split second, Kaira thought he was going to hit her, but at the last moment, the handler brought his fist down hard on the desktop. A heavy crystal inkwell jumped and overturned, flooding the fresh reports with a thick black stain.

"Get out, Vellen!" he barked, his voice rattling the glass in the windows. "Get out before I revoke your mandate and throw you into the dungeons with the 'Carvers' for aiding and sabotaging an investigation! You understand nothing. You see the bare threads, but you are absolutely blind to the weight they hold!"

"I see a frightened killer, Magnus," Kaira spun on her heels and marched toward the exit. "And right now, he's looking at me from your mirror."

She stepped into the corridor, forcefully slamming the heavy door behind her. Her heart was pounding somewhere in her throat, her hands betraying her with a tremor from the adrenaline overload, but inside boiled a dark, cold certainty. Magnus hadn't confessed. He hadn't answered a single question. But his reaction was more eloquent than any frank confession. He was backed into a corner. And he was definitely hiding something.

Returning late in the evening to her thoroughly frozen office in Nutra, Kaira slumped wearily onto the old sofa without turning on the lights. The silence of the empty room pressed against her temples, mingling with the sound of the rain outside the window. The cardboard box from the Archive still sat on the desk, and beside it—the small canvas pouch.

Sighing, she rubbed her stinging eyes and gave in. Kaira walked over to the stove, struck a match, and lit a fire under the soot-stained coffee pot, but instead of her usual bitter beans, she tossed a pinch of the archivist's blend into the boiling water.

When the tea had brewed, she sat at the desk, wrapping both chilled hands around the hot mug, and took a sip. The tart, spicy taste of thyme and ginger rolled down her throat, spreading a long-awaited warmth inside. Kaira watched the dancing shadows on the ceiling and thought about how Soaren Darr, with his glue, his glasses, and his quiet voice, currently remained the only island of normalcy in this city that was rapidly losing its mind.

Chapter 5: Blind Needle

The rain didn’t stop for two days. In times like these, Avrin seemed less like a city and more like an old, breached ship slowly but surely going to the bottom. The network of harbor canals overflowed with murky, foul-smelling water that now splashed onto Nutra’s cobblestones, bringing debris of rotten planks, dead fish, and oil slicks to the surface.

Kaira walked ankle-deep in icy mud, pulling the brim of her hat lower over her eyes to shield herself from the biting wind. Her path led to the "Blind Kettle"—the grimmest district of the Lower City, where Inquisition patrols didn’t venture even during the day. There were no glowing protective threads here, no magical lanterns or climate control units. Only the soot of factory chimneys, the desperate crampedness of leaning brick shacks, and people who had grown accustomed to surviving in spite of the system.

She knew: if Magnus Trey was doing everything in his power to hide the truth about the bloody purges of ten years ago, then the answers were to be sought not in the sterile offices of the Cathedral, but from those he had hunted back then. From the "Carvers."

The denizens of the Upper City called them mad fanatics and ruthless terrorists. But Kaira, having grown up on these streets, knew the underside. Most of the Carvers were simply broken, desperate people—those whom Avrin’s magic had bypassed since birth, whom the Inquisition had written off, leaving them to rot in the damp for the sake of maintaining the capital's "golden balance."

She stopped at the warped, bottom-rotted door of a semi-basement tavern. There was neither a sign nor a lantern above it—only a symbol roughly and hastily carved into the oak doorframe: a crossed-out spiral. The sign of the Severed Thread.

Kaira knocked twice with her knuckles, waited a second, and struck once more, harder. A small peephole creaked open. In the slit, a bloodshot, dull eye flickered. The invisible sentry grunted, rattled the bolts, and the door yielded heavily inward, admitting her into the thick gloom.

Inside, there was a heavy, stagnant stench of sour ale, wet wool, and cheap, acrid tobacco. At the farthest, darkest table, away from prying ears, sat a massive man with a thick beard touched by ashen gray. An old, hideous scar crossed his face diagonally, pulling his left cheek into a permanent, crooked smirk.

This was Balthazar—the unspoken leader of the few who still believed in the ideals of the Carvers and tried to preserve the remnants of the order in the Lower City.

Kaira approached his table, pulled off her wet gloves, and silently laid two heavy silver coins on the sticky, knife-scarred wood. Balthazar didn't even move. He continued to slowly sip beer from a clay mug.

"Inquisition hounds, even former ones, aren't served here, Vellen," his voice sounded like the scraping of a crowbar against granite.

"I’m not working for the Inquisition. I’m working for myself," Kaira pulled out a chair and sat opposite him, looking directly into his heavy, dark eyes. "Two bodies in two days, Balthazar. First Councilor Vael in his office, then the scavenger Larsen on the barge. And both were cut from the ether as cleanly as if they’d never existed. Magnus Trey is on the warpath. He’s certain it’s your work."

Balthazar gave a grim smirk, revealing an incomplete row of yellow teeth. The scar on his cheek twitched.

"Magnus Trey is a rabid watchdog barking at every shadow in the alleyway. We don’t cut people, Kaira. We cut artifacts. We sever the parasitic threads that drink the power from our land just to heat the mansions of the bloated pigs in the Upper City. But to take a life? No. That is their prerogative—to kill for the sake of a sham order."

"Someone left a black needle right on the workbench, next to Larsen’s body. A needle forged from metal that absorbs all light. That is your tool, Balthazar. An instrument of the Carvers."

The leader of the order tensed. His broad shoulders gave a barely perceptible lean forward, and the hand resting on the table clenched into a massive fist.

"A blind needle..." he repeated hollowly. "None of those have been forged in Avrin for ten years. Not since the Inquisition hounds burned our smithies and drove us into these rat holes."

"Ten years ago, Magnus led the port purge. Larsen was his personal guide. Vael paid the bills from the treasury," Kaira leaned closer, lowering her voice. "Who did you lose back then, Balthazar? Who among your people could have gone to ground, kept their needle, and returned now to take revenge?"

The old rebel remained silent for a long time, staring unblinkingly at the dimly glittering silver coins. The flickering flame of the single candle on the table reflected in his pupils.

"We lost more than just a man, Vellen. We lost our voice," he finally said, and a carefully hidden pain flickered in his rasping bass. "Einar. Our first leader. Our brother. He was the only one who believed we could make the Inquisition listen. He wanted to negotiate, to show them the maps, to prove how the fabric of the city was thinning because of their greed. He went to meet them, down there, in the sewers. Alone. Unarmed."

Balthazar drew in a sharp breath.

"The Inquisition killed him. No trial, no questions, not the slightest chance. They just lured him into a trap and put him down like a rabid dog at the slaughterhouse. And then they paid generously in silver to everyone who agreed to look away and keep their mouths shut. Larsen sold his route. Vael paid for the blood. Magnus struck the blow."

"Einar..." Kaira echoed, her voice quiet, almost soundless.

The name lashed her from within, resonating with a sudden, sharp pain in the darkest corners of her own memory. Before her mind's eye, something dark flashed for a split second—a jagged, icy image from a time she had long buried under a layer of years and false names. Cold, a straining, snapping sound, and the sensation of a sticky weight she still sometimes felt in her dreams. Kaira blinked, forcing the shadow back into the black abyss of her subconscious with a sharp effort of will. Not the time. Not here.

"Did he have followers?" she asked, striving to keep her voice level. "Family? Someone who could have sworn revenge and waited for the right moment all these years?"