And even if it's nothing about her, it's for sure, even if she is for sure… And there's little chance… There's little chance. This unambiguity is strange… It doesn't fit… There could be someone else. And we could have found her, too.

— And you didn't find it?

— No, we didn't find her. Somebody saw her once. On the other side of the river. Maybe they imagined it. Well, how do you look for her? Walk through the woods and fields and yell, "M-a-r-iya…" Is that it?

— Maria? Her name is Maria?

— Yeah…

Misha looked at her and tried to figure out what else he could have said wrong, since she had such a change in her look, and couldn't figure it out.

— It's her! She's the one asking me to find that ghost in my dream!

— All right, all right, all right. I'm not even gonna argue… He's asking me to find her. All right. What are you gonna do now? I'm gonna raise our units and look for some chick? Who am I gonna tell that makes as much sense as you say it does? That you need her to understand the secret of the Black Stone. They won't even let me finish, they'll say that you're all drunk and crazy with grief. That's what they'll tell me.

— So you remind her that the Mountain needs her.

Misha froze. He didn't even know what to say to that. Woe, because she was really needed then. Needed then, needed now. And, if they have a hunch that he started to play not on their side, so she will be very useful. It does make sense, regardless of what Natasha was dreaming about.

He put his arms around her and kissed her hard:

— You're smart… You should be a chief commander…

Inquisitor

The room was disgusting. It was just plain disgusting. Not dirty, not damp, not small. Just disgusting. The stench of the S.S.C. stank everywhere. It was as if they went and wiped the walls and the floor with themselves, and then climbed up on stepladders and climbed on the ceiling.

Samoh looked at this room and burned with hatred for everything around him. Someone had dared to choose this room for him. Someone had dared to put his own sentries outside this room.

And someone dared to decide for him when he could leave this room.

Ananhr. That vile creature. The sister of a member of the Central Committee of the Empire. A colonel of the SCC. A woman. Yes for any of those words combined with what was done to him should be tortured and executed. Torture and execution. And put on paper how it was done. How it was done precisely, coherently and in a timely manner. By all rules, standards and canons. So that no other creature, no other sister, no other colonel, no other woman would dare to even think that she could dispose of the Metropolitan's time.

And yet there was a window. Not a wide one with bars. But still a window. And now it seemed to be the most important thing in the room.

It was the fourth floor and quite high to the ground. Every now and then, a patrolman from the SCK security drill passed by below and looked around. Not once, no matter how many times they looked out, there was no sight of a plague from the punitive drill of the unspoken resource. It was already the second day, and not a single one of them had passed by, there were no sounds of them outside the door, and in general they did not appear anywhere.

Samoh was beginning to worry. Of course, his drill without a command shouldn't do anything, but seeing that their leader was gone, they should at least engage in searching for him, find him and get orders for further action. Especially the last order they were given was to keep control of the sector's administrative building. And where is it, this control?

One could imagine that together with the novices, the SSchekists one or two by one also interrupted a few chums of the tacit resource, but to imagine that they were all interrupted like that. No. It's impossible. There is something wrong here. It's all beyond comprehension… Shots would have been heard, explosions. Even if we imagine they lost, it couldn't have happened so meekly and silently. It's impossible.

Samoh looked out of the window into the distance. From here he could see the road he'd had to take three days ago stretching off into the distance, and judging by the way the trains went back and forth from time to time, it was more than workable. He'd been sitting like that watching those tracks all day, hoping to find something that might help him get out of this shit. And the whole time he was thinking, one central thought flashed across his mind — how did he even get into all of this in the first place. I mean, everything was going according to plan. His masterful victory in the Corsa sector over Bazankhre. And his sudden appearance here. Everything was going his way… And in a moment he didn't understand, all his achievements had been undone….

No. It's not quite no, though. It's not the accomplishments that have been undone. He was derailed. And solely because of his overconfidence. That's what he allowed himself to do in this game. And it was that, and nothing else, that had brought him to this situation… Everything had gone too smoothly on the Corsa sector, too much as it should. But also the opportunities there were all hands on deck unlike what he had here… What did he have here? Surprise effect? Any other trump cards? No. Well, why did he get so careless? He knew that bitch had something to lose and that she