“I’ll make lagman noodles out of you,” I promised the waiter. “And feed them to your little brother. Is the chaikhana being watched?”
“I…I don’t know…” The waiter had realized that, despite the way I looked, he ought to speak Russian. “I don’t know. They ordered me to do it!”
“Get out!” I said, standing up. “There won’t be any tip.”
The waiter dashed for the door of the kitchen. And the customers started leaving the chaikhana, deciding to take the opportunity not to pay. What had frightened him so badly? What I said, or the way I said it?
“Anton, don’t burn a hole in your trousers,” said Alisher.
I looked down-there was a hissing Fireball spinning in my hand. I had gotten so furious that the spell had slipped off the tips of my fingers into the launch stage.
“I ought to burn down this nest of vipers, just to teach them a lesson,” I hissed through my teeth.
Alisher didn’t say anything. He smiled awkwardly and frowned by turns. I understood exactly what he wanted to say. That these people were not to blame. They had been ordered to do it, and they couldn’t refuse. That this modest chaikhana was all that they had. That it fed two or three large families with little children and old grandparents. But he didn’t say anything, because in this case I had a right to start a little fire. A man who tries to poison three Light Magicians deserves to be shown what’s what, to teach him and other people a lesson. We’re Light Ones, not saints…
“The shurpa was good…,” Alisher said quietly.
“Let’s leave via the Twilight,” I said, transforming the Fireball into a thin plume of flame and directing it at the dish of pilaf. The rice and meat were reduced to glowing ashes, together with the arsenic. “I don’t want to show myself in the doorway. These bastards work too quickly.”
Alisher nodded gratefully and got up, stamped on the embers in the dish, and emptied two teapots on it just to be sure.
“The green tea was good too,” I said. “Listen, the tea looks pretty ordinary. Pretty poor stuff, to be honest. But it tastes really good!”
“The important thing is to brew it right,” Alisher replied, relieved by the change of subject. “When a teapot is fifty years old and it hasn’t ever been washed…” He paused, but when he didn’t see an expression of disgust on my face, he went on. “That’s the ingenious part! This clever crust forms on the inside-tannins, essential oils, flavonoids…”
“Are there really flavonoids in tea?” I asked in surprise, hanging my bag over my shoulder again. I’d almost forgotten it. The underwear wouldn’t have mattered, but the bag also contained the selection of battle amulets that Gesar had given me, not to mention five thick wads of dollars!
“Well, maybe I’m confusing things…” Alisher admitted. “But it’s the crust that does it; it’s like brewing tea inside a shell of tea…”
Taking Afandi under the arms in the way that was already a habit, we entered the Twilight. The cunning old man didn’t argue. On the contrary, he pulled up his legs and dangled between us, giggling repulsively and crying out, “Hup! Hup!” I thought that if, despite what Gesar’s memories told me, Afandi really was Rustam, I wouldn’t let his age prevent me from giving him an earful of good old vernacular.
Chapter 5
TO BE QUITE HONEST, I WOULD HAVE PREFERRED A RUSSIAN UAZ OR Niva. Not out of patriotic considerations, but because the Toyota jeep was by no means the most common car in Uzbekistan, and disguising it with magic would have been like unfurling a flag over my head and howling, “Here we are! Come and get us!”
However, Afandi had told me very definitely that the road ahead was bad. Very bad. And the only Niva we came across near the chaikhana was in such terrible condition that it would have been shameful to subject the old lady to such mockery and humiliation.
But the Toyota was new, and tricked out with all the gear, the way they do things in Asia -if you can afford to buy an expensive car, then let it have the works! A sports silencer, a bicycle rack (although the potbellied owner hadn’t been on a bike since he was a child), a CD-changer, a tow-bar, and facings on the doorsills-pretty much all the glittering trash that the manufacturers invent to hike up the basic price by an extra fifty percent.
The owner of the car was apparently also the owner of the local market. He looked like a standard Uzbek bey, the way they’re always shown in the cartoons. In other words, about as credible as the fat capitalist with the eternal cigar clutched in his teeth. The irony of the situation was that this guy had probably derived all his ideas about how a rich man ought to look from children’s cartoons and fashionable European magazines. He was fat. He had an Uzbek skullcap embroidered with gold thread on his head. He was wearing a very expensive suit that was clearly too tight. And an equally expensive tie that had definitely been splattered with fatty food more than once and then run through the washing machine. He had a pair of polished shoes that were quite out of place in the dusty street. And gold rings with huge artificial gemstones or “dopealines” as the jewelry traders spitefully refer to them. The skullcap was supposed to symbolize his closeness to the people, and all the rest symbolized his European gloss. He was clutching a cell phone in one hand-an expensive one, but the kind that ought to belong to a rich young dope, not a respectable businessman.
“Will this car be OK for us?” I asked Afandi.
“It’s a good car,” Afandi said.
I glanced around once again-there were no Others to be seen anywhere nearby. No enemies, no allies, no ordinary Others living among the ordinary human beings. So that was fine.
I emerged from the Twilight and looked hard at the owner of the 4x4. I touched him gently with Power and then waited until he turned to face me, knitting his thick brows in bewilderment. I smiled and sent him two spells with names that are much too flowery to bother with here. They’re usually referred to as Haven’t Seen You for Ages and Bosom Buddies.
The modern-day bey’s face dissolved into a broad smile.
The two young guys accompanying him-either bodyguards or distant relatives-stared at me suspiciously. In the Twilight my hastily applied mask as Timur had fallen away, and this unfamiliar Russian who was walking toward their boss with his arms held out wide naturally made them wary.
“Ah, how long it’s been!” I shouted. “My father’s old friend!”
Unfortunately, he was about twenty years older than me. Otherwise I could have gotten away with the “old school friend” line, or “Remember our times in the army, brother!” But then, in recent years, the “times in the army” approach had worked less and less often: The mark was simply unable to figure out how he could possibly have served in the army with you when he had “honestly” bought his way out of military service with a bundle of greenbacks from the good old USA. Some people had even developed a serious neurosis as a result.
“Son of my old friend!” the man howled, opening his arms wide to embrace me. “Where have you been all this time?”
The important thing at this point is to give the other person just a little bit of information. He’ll invent the rest for himself.
“Me? I’ve been living in Mariupol with my grandmother!” I told him. “Oh, how glad I am to see you! You’re such a big man here now!”
We hugged each other. The man had a delicious smell of shashlik and eau de cologne. Except that there was rather too much eau de cologne.
“And what a fine car you have!” I added with a glance of approval at the Toyota jeep. “Is that the one you wanted to sell me?”
A melancholy expression appeared in the man’s eyes, but Bosom Buddies gave him no choice. Never mind, he ought to have been happy that Gesar had equipped us so generously for our journey. Otherwise I would have asked him to give me the Toyota.