The berserker squatted down and started to singe the bee’s antennae with a cigarette lighter. “Tenacious trash! Look, jerks away!” he said triumphantly.

“Don’t touch it!” the youth in the sweatshirt rushed and again got the back of a hand. It hurt more this time because the hit came with the signet ring.

“Leave the insect alone!” moustached said, frowning. “You won’t do anything to it this way! It’ll perish by itself as mine once did.” The youth in the sweatshirt quickly looked at him and lowered his eyes. The bee took off and, after landing on his hood, trustingly crawled under the collar. He with melancholy felt how heavy it was, as if cast.

They started to come across lamps more often in the centre of the platform. The berserker who had trampled on the bee switched off his flashlight. A chair with the back to them was already very visible even without the light. Antique, with decadent curved legs. It would look much more appropriate in the out-of-town palace of a palm-tree dictator but not here in a deserted Moscow subway station. Guy was sitting in the chair, elbows on the back. His security did not form the usual chain but a spacious quadrangle.

Occasionally someone with a flashlight gave a sign into the depths of the station and he was answered in the same way, with the brief winking of a flashlight. Moreover, each time the flash was from a new place. “Eight teams of four here!” the youth in the sweatshirt estimated.

They led him to the chair. The cloth of the back was brighter than Guy’s face and the youth continually shifted his gaze involuntarily to it. Of Guy, he saw only sharp elbows and a soft face lowered a little. Guy waited.

“The bees became agitated. They’re swarming, flying everywhere. Sometimes you’re simply wrapped in a cloud – they’re everywhere,” the youth said indecisively.

“It means, already soon,” Guy commented indifferently.

“Within the next few days,” the youth began to nod in a hurry.

Guy, gnawing his fingers, listened to him. “If that’s all, you’ve wasted my time! The bees always fly for novices in September. It wasn’t worthwhile to drag me to Volokolamskaya for this.”

One of the guards, dark-complexioned with a fresh pink scar on the cheekbone, raised his arbalest. The berserkers holding the fellow in the sweatshirt moved aside. They did not want to be splattered.

The youth began to fret. “DON’T! I forgot! Four bees departed!”

Guy stopped the arbalesters with a look. “To whom? Managed to trace?” he asked quickly.

“Seems so to me,” the youth began.

“I need names, not hallucinations!” Guy cut him off.

The youth froze. To betray straight away was difficult. He wanted to do it piece by piece, choosing the least disloyal of them. But there was no turning back. After lingering, the youth squatted down, unlaced a boot, and took out from the top of the boot a folded sheet of notepaper.

“Pity it’s only four, but also good!” muttered Guy. “Where did you get this?”

“Kavaleria’s office. I copied while she searched for books on horse breeding,” the hdiver said dejectedly.

Guy narrowed his eyes. “But why didn’t you say so immediately? Ah yes! Always it, the unquelled inner voice!” The youth turned away.

“Now about something else. Did you do what I asked?” Guy asked insinuatingly.

“Sweatshirt” began to nod in a hurry. “I tried! At night with a crowbar I tore the roof off the beehive and tried to steal the queen bee. It was difficult because Gorshenya was stomping beside me. It tried to hamper me. It mumbled, muttered, pushed me away, shielded the beehive! I was risking my life!”

Guy yawned. “You were risking nothing. Gorshenya swallows only those it likes. It’s absolutely harmless to others! Did you do everything I ordered?”

“Yes. I fumigated the bees with that gunk you gave me so that they wouldn’t protect the queen. I almost puked!”

Guy frowned. “Now-now, young man! Choose your words more carefully! What gunk can there be in the hair of a witch buried alive exactly ninety-nine years and nine months ago? Well, possibly Beldo mixed it in too much hydrogen sulphide. But he wanted it better!”

“Please forgive me!”

“To forgive is not my department. The bees did not protect it?”

The youth shook his head. “No. But I couldn’t take the queen! Radiance surrounds it. I touched it and it burnt my hand. I was barely able to discard the crowbar. It melted.”

Guy was saddened. “This is bad. Although I assumed something similar… So, my dear, today you came with empty hands. Didn’t reach the queen bee. You can only steal up a few steps to the marker in the Green Labyrinth… On the whole, either you’ll make me happy with something special right away or you’ll be left without a reward.”

The youth was frightened. “In June… or at the end May… a newbie appeared in the guild. Without a bee!” the youth blurted out and looked pleadingly at him.

“This is interesting,” Guy generously admitted. “And who’s the newbie? Got a name?”

“Rina… She brought a hyeon!”

The corner of Guy’s mouth trembled. “Good start! Can’t bring a bee, bring a hyeon… Where did she get it?”

“They say an adult hyeon whelped right by the fence of HDive, and the warlo… oh…” the youth stopped short, after feeling how the hands of those holding him hardened. The word “warlock” is exclusively hdiver. It was necessary to find another urgently as a replacement, but his thoughts got tangled up from fear.

“The courageous rider of the hyeon. This is what you wanted to say?” Guy prompted with understanding. “He was obligated to either shoot the young or take it with him. But not to discard it… Arnaud, tell Till! Let him sort it out.”

The secretary made a note. An ideal secretary. Obliging, forgetting nothing, surprised by nothing. Ordered to kiss, he will kiss. Ordered to cut the throat, he will cut the throat. Ordered to kiss and cut the throat as well, he will do even this, moreover without a reminder and in the time indicated. Smoothed-over forelocks, a timely smile. He was a person surprising even for Guy, who was a good judge of scoundrels.

Once, not being able to resist and having taken the marker at his first dive, Arnaud cut heaven off himself, and so successfully that not even a scar remained. Now everything outside of the scope of his own body, his safety, comfort, and pleasures, was for Arnaud nonexistent. To obtain the maximum happiness, including happiness from juggling the fates of others, and to become clay. But he considered this period non-essential.

Where is Queen Cleopatra now? Did her beautiful body not become brick in some Egyptian cow shed? Is the French king Louis not eaten by worms, pecked by a bird, eaten by a fox, into which flies lay their larvae? On the whole, live in style, and your fly will come flying after you… Only one thing did not give Arnaud peace – Duoka. Why is this world empty? For whom?

“Bring the berserker’s head?” Arnaud clarified.

“Why?”

“Well, what do you mean why? Till for sure will propose it.”

“Work situation. Let Till sort it out himself,” Guy made a face.

“It’s still not grown, a pup. But lets itself be held. True, only by the owner. The others, no,” the young person in the sweatshirt continued ingratiatingly.

Guy frowned. “You yourself saw this? That it allows being held? Without a muzzle? Without something attached to the neck? Without electric shock?”

“Haven’t seen it myself. Our people described it. Unable to bring the hyeon onto the grounds of HDive. They hide it somewhere.”

“Who are they?”

“Rina, Athanasius, Ul, well and all the others with them,” the hdiver instantly responded.

Guy winked at him with a deathly pale eye, in which the reflection of a lamp was floating like the moon in a puddle. “Others with them? Broadly said. So, you’re not with them?” he said merrily.