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The Northern Bank had not closed even on the occasion of its director's engagement — Pantalone found this symbolic and was pleased by it.
Choosing one's environment is always a responsible task, requiring the talent to adequately assess a candidate's abilities and calculate the possible advantages of cooperating with them. Only seven months had passed since Feofan assumed his exceptionally lofty position, yet he was already thoroughly familiar with these rules, as befitted a born banker and millionaire.
Interviews and personal achievements in the labor field are so important to the heads of large firms that they always want to achieve more and earn unprecedented profit in their sphere. Who could augment the glory and status of an extremely self-loving, proud, and calculating man if not a similarly young woman at his side?
The announcement was made in the morning — brief and businesslike, entirely in the style of the Fatui: the Ninth of the Eleven, the Merchant, Feofan Sergeyevich Veksel, was taking as his wife Aglaya Miroslavovna Voron, daughter of one of the holders of the largest blocks of shares in the fur syndicate. The wedding would be in spring, when the snow thawed at least a little. The engagement — as of today.
Aglaya was a woman who, like a well-drafted contract, had no weak clauses. A straight back, a cold gaze, impeccable upper-class Russian, and not a gram of sentimentality. Everything that was required of an ideal wife, the mother of future children, and... no, perhaps a keeper of the hearth she most certainly would not have become. She shook Pantalone's hand — like a man concluding a business dialogue — and said, "I believe we can do without foolishness like vows of eternal love."
Pantalone smiled at her the way he smiled at everyone: "You are saying exactly what I hoped to hear."
This was the pure truth. And it was the only reason why, by the evening of the same day, Pantalone felt as though he had successfully pulled off a deal rather than begun a new life.
He was just pouring himself some tea when the door of his office opened without a knock.
***
The one who entered did not bother to announce himself with a title. There was no need: in Snezhnaya, there existed only one person capable of entering the Ninth Harbinger's quarters without report and without consequences.
"Zandik," Pantalone greeted him amiably, without rising. "I take it you have already heard the news."
"The whole mansion heard the news. As far as I can judge, even those who are supposed to be deaf to gossip out of respect for rank heard it," Dottore's voice lacked its usual insinuation with a touch of mockery. Pantalone knew why, but saying it aloud would have meant humiliating him, and the Doctor already looked to be in less than the best of moods.
"And so," Pantalone finally opened his eyes, "have you come to congratulate me?"
"I have come to ask," Dottore folded his hands behind his back, his mask tilting slightly to one side, "would you have told me at all if I had not been curious enough to come myself?"
"I would have told you. By official letter. As one informs all the other Harbingers."
"All the other ones."
"Exactly so."
The pause after these words was brief, but over the years of their acquaintance, Pantalone had learned to measure Zandik's pauses with the precision of a chronometer. This one weighed more than usual.
"You are behaving as though nothing ever happened between us," Zandik said at last, his voice quieter, and even so its hoarseness cut a little deeper.
"Nothing happened between us that would have significance beyond these walls," Pantalone replied evenly, with a thin smile. "You know this no worse than I do. Perhaps even better — you are our specialist, after all."
"How convenient it is to file everything away under separate headings, Feofan."
Pantalone heard his real name extremely rarely — and almost always from one and the same person, who pronounced it as though it were the key to a lock that others were not permitted to pick. But now Dottore's tone was unusual and full of some hidden venom that was corroding him from within.
"Twenty-six years ago, I was shot in the shoulder," Pantalone said more quietly. "You stitched it up. We both remember what that did not end with. But many winters have passed since then, Zandik. I am a banker at a court where a man is judged by how much he weighs on the political scales. Do you know what the difference is between Snezhnaya and, say, Sumeru?"
"Enlighten me," Zandik suggested dryly.
"Here," Pantalone set his cup on the saucer with an almost inaudible clink, "such things are not forgiven. It is frivolous. Dangerous. You love risks, but right now I have no use for them."
"You are reasoning about this as though it were a crime."
"Because it is."
Zandik fell silent. He did not like that answer: Pantalone saw how his pale brows furrowed and how a small crease settled on his forehead. It was time to stop examining other men's faces so closely. When he spoke again, irony returned to his voice, but reluctantly, as though he were pulling it on like a mask — one always removed within the walls of this office.
"I have long ceased to be frightened by whom I wish to see beside me," he stretched a smile across his cracked lips. Pantalone's gaze darted about, searching for the true thought, the hidden expression of pain on Dottore's face, but met there only a slightly aggressive irony. "I fear I was mistaken about you, Feofan, if you so easily give yourself over to the first advantageous deal that comes along."
"She is not the first that came along," Pantalone said more quietly. "This is calculation. Like everything I do well."
"Then I suppose I have nothing more to do here."
He left the same way he had come — without unnecessary farewells, only this time he closed the door a little louder than a man of his composure usually allowed himself. Pantalone remained alone with his cooling tea and a very clear sensation that the conversation was by no means over — merely temporarily referred to other authorities for consideration.
He did not suspect how literally.
***
The first conversation with Dottore over the past three days occurred without the participation of the real Zandik.
The boy was lying on the windowsill of the library, in that wing where Pantalone rarely went and only on business, since the works on Fontaine law stored there had long been outdated, but getting rid of them was economically unprofitable, his legs dangling, too small to reach the floor: though the older versions sometimes did a fine job of driving Pantalone out of his mind with their insufferability, Feofan could not help but acknowledge that finding no place in one's heart for this charming child would be too cruel. Amusing, really, for Pantalone had never been known for any particular love of children: perhaps he was simply easy to bribe with this impartiality and detachment. All the problems created by little Zandik fell exclusively on the shoulders of other segments.
Pantalone discovered him when he was about to return a book he had borrowed a couple of days earlier. Something about love between a doctor and a secretary, though the man from Snezhnaya felt no more sympathy for romance novels either. He caught the child doing something with concentration, his little fingers busy behind the book's cover, but as soon as he smiled amiably and waved, the child flinched and pressed his creation sharply to his chest.
"Ah, it's you," he said, relaxing.
"Good morning," Pantalone smiled sincerely.
"I was told I should congratulate you."
"Who told you?"
"The Twenty-Fifth," the boy answered, closing the book to sit on the windowsill. He was still clutching a small fist around something he so did not want to show Feofan. "He always tells me what to do," the boy added with a touch of resentment: each of the doubles possessed his own character, and each was beyond control. The Eighth had been the least fortunate of all, being lowest in the hierarchy.
Pantalone sat down beside him — as much as his suit allowed — and prepared himself for the fact that a polite conversation with this particular segment would end in nothing good: the younger segments were never kind merely because they were young, and Pantalone had learned this long ago, watching an eight-year-old boy disembowel living creatures with absolutely childish curiosity.
"And how will you congratulate me?"
The boy finally raised his gaze to him — the same red eyes as all the others, only in this face they seemed especially otherworldly. The Eighth hesitated. For a couple of moments, an expression of embarrassed uncertainty flickered across the young face, as though he did not know whether he should do this.
"Here," he raised his little palm and finally opened it. In it lay a small wreath, a weaving of several thin flowers forming a ring, slightly thick for an elegant man's fingers. Pantalone raised his brows in surprise for a moment, but immediately hid it behind a smile when the boy frowned even more in embarrassment.
"Why are you giving it to me?"
"I don't know," the boy lowered his gaze, looking at his own handiwork in his palm. The green circlet of several thin stems was surrounded by lilac flowers, still fresh and not yet withered. "I just thought it would suit you better than me."
Pantalone looked with gratitude into the eyes of the young Dottore and took the gift. It was impeccably simple, and because of that it seemed especially meaningful.
"Thank you," he said cautiously.
"You're welcome," the boy had already returned to his book, pulling it onto his knees and opening it to the page where he had stopped. "Just don't tell the others. Or they'll think..."
Pantalone left the library with a distinct feeling that he had just been outplayed by a child — and with a thick, fragile little ring on his thumb, resting there unexpectedly heavy for such a small and delicate object.
***
The second attempt was far less accidental — and far more presumptuous, which was hardly surprising when it came to such a young version of Zandik, more prone to emotion than the others by virtue of his age.
They met in Zandik's office. Pantalone knew that formally it belonged to all his copies as well, but he was still slightly taken aback when, instead of the no-longer-young man, he encountered a youth in someone else's clothes. The segment, settled at the far desk with an open book, raised his head before Pantalone could retreat silently.
"You are rarely here," he said, snapping the book shut with noticeable embarrassment, as though he had been caught doing something indecent, though his occupation was the most innocent of all the things Doctor's segments occupied themselves with. "I thought I could finish the chapter unnoticed."
"I did not expect to find anyone here either," Pantalone approached, glancing at the cover — a treatise on the anatomy of crystallization, apparently stolen or begged from one of the academies. "The Twenty-Fifth usually does not let the younger segments go about alone."
"I didn't ask permission," the youth blushed slightly — another detail that made him unlike the other versions of the Doctor: the ability to blush from something other than restrained fury. "He generally thinks I need to lead a more active social life," he added quietly, burying himself in the book.
"How considerate of him."
"He does not care for me the way you think," the youth corrected himself hastily, seeing Pantalone's brow rise. "He cares about keeping me functional. It is not the same thing."
"The difference is indeed substantial," Pantalone agreed more softly than he had intended.
A pause followed, an awkward silence.
"I was told to give you something," the youth said at last, producing from inside his coat a small bundle of dark fabric, at which Pantalone looked without hiding his interest. "They did not explain why me specifically. Probably because they decided I would tell you less foolishness than the Twenty-Fifth would have," the youth snorted, not raising his gaze to the elder even when the latter carefully took the gift, feeling something small and hard through the fabric.
Inside the bundle was a ring — thin and with a massive ornament of four rhomboid purple stones, cut by hand: Feofan deduced this from the neatness that concealed rather a bookish knowledge of technique than practice. He turned the ring in his hands with interest, like an amusing toy, feeling even through his gloves the warmth the iron had absorbed from the youth's hands. His gaze was particularly drawn to an unfamiliar formula on the inner side of the ring.
"What does this mean?" Pantalone asked, bringing the ring closer to the light and squinting to make out the engraving more precisely.
"The formula for the alloy's stability," the segment looked away, blushing slightly again. "I wanted the ring not to tarnish. It is the only thing I know how to put into things — precision. Not... not what you are probably thinking."
"And what do you think I am thinking?" Pantalone glanced at the Eighteenth, suppressing a smile. He, of all people, had not expected to encounter the habit inherent to all adolescents of investing everything with symbolism from such a detached-from-life Dottore.
The youth did not answer — instead he rose, pressing the book to his chest like a shield, and, passing by, when Pantalone had already decided he had been brazenly ignored, said quietly, almost in a rush, as though afraid he might change his mind mid-sentence:
"I read about you in the House's reports. About how you started. It seemed to me... worthy of respect. More than anything I managed to read about the other Harbingers."
"How flattering," Pantalone remarked, though without censure in his voice. "I would not have managed without your ambitious original."
"That is an observation," the youth corrected with sudden firmness returning to him. "And observations, unlike flattery, I make for free."
He left, leaving Pantalone alone among the dusty Fontainian tomes, with the ring in his hand and a growing, extremely unpleasant suspicion that behind this series of visits stood something far more coordinated than the random whims of individual segments.
***
The ring with several rhomboid stones had been gleaming proudly on his middle finger from the very moment it was given.
The conversation with the Twenty-Fifth turned out quite different in nature — quieter and shorter than Pantalone had expected from a segment famed as an especially desperate youth. He found him in the greenhouse that same day, in complete solitude and with an expression of weariness on his face, dressed rather lightly for a place that was warm though the path to it ran through winter frost.
"Are you not curious why I am sitting here alone?" he asked without turning around. Perhaps he had noticed by the smell of tobacco when the door opened and a guest entered the spacious area.
"Hello," Pantalone grinned. Why did all the Zandiks have a habit of ignoring the concept of greeting? "I thought you did not like company."
"I do not like company that imposes itself on me," he answered with slight offense, glancing back. The snow on Pantalone's shoulders had not yet melted, and he removed his enormous coat, acclimating to the warmth. "I heard about your quarrel with Zandik," he added without waiting for a question.
"I suppose the whole house heard," Pantalone chuckled with annoyance, pulling back a chair at the same table where the Twenty-Fifth sat. The latter cast an appraising glance but said nothing.
"Not the whole house. The Thirty-Fifth tells nothing. God knows what is on his mind," he snorted, and Pantalone allowed himself to smile — sincerely, for the first time in three days.
"And what is it you want to tell me?"
"Nothing," the Twenty-Fifth fished from the pocket of his robe a thin silver ring, this time without stones — judging by the wear, possibly worn once by Zandik himself during one of the periods of his endlessly long life. "It was just lying around unused. Take it."
"You will not tell me why either?" Pantalone grinned, but took the ring without argument, this time unburdened by beating around the bush. The man turned it in his fingers, examining it, and then, with a chuckle, put it on his index finger, beside the previous one. The ring looked inexpensive — but at least he could take it off at any moment.
"Why is a question for those who know how to answer honestly," the Twenty-Fifth looked anywhere but at Pantalone's face, laconic and exceedingly blunt. Evidently the clones had worn him out — or he had handled it himself, preoccupied with the latest news more than was apparent.
Pantalone chuckled. He glanced first at the youth so avoiding his gaze, then at the ring on his finger. Well, he did not need to guess what the reaction of the other clones would probably be.
***
Pantalone would be grossly lying if he said that this kind of attention did not flatter him. On the contrary: he felt like walking luxury, adorned with two rings made by the segments of the Second Harbinger himself. He had not seen Prime since their last direct conversation, but every time he crossed paths with his copies, none of them left the ornaments on his slender fingers without attention, lingering on them with their gaze.
But, sadly, medical examinations did not favor excessive adornment. Once every two weeks, especially in the last couple of months, Pantalone appeared for his checkup: verification of the elixir's state in his blood, pulse measurement, sometimes a new diagnosis, sometimes a simple conversation under the guise of a procedure. The Forty-Fifth almost never attended official receptions and did not show himself to Pierro and Pulcinella, preferring the laboratory to ballrooms; he had inherited the more introversion-prone side of Zandik, and therefore knew well not the ceremonial version of the Merchant, but the man who grimaced during blood transfusions and fell asleep on the examination table from exhaustion, entrusting his preservation to only seven people in all of Snezhnaya.
"Won't you even congratulate me?" Pantalone asked with a chuckle as he removed his outer clothing to proceed deeper into the office.
"There is nothing to congratulate," the man in response bared his teeth in a smile, waiting. And with that, the conversation on the sensitive topic between them ended.
During that visit, he took him by the wrist as usual — to count the pulse — and Pantalone did not immediately realize that instead of the familiar grip of cold fingers, something else had remained on his skin when the doctor let go, turning his back.
"You—" he began, looking at his own bare hand, given without gloves or ornaments.
"The reading is normal," the Forty-Fifth said evenly, not raising his eyes from the record journal, as though it had not been he who had just slid a ring onto the patient's finger instead of the usual pulse clamp. "Wear it constantly. It is part of the observation protocol," he clearly did not try to hide the mocking smile as he turned his back.
"The protocol, then."
"Exactly."
"You could have said it more simply," Pantalone said quietly, examining the thin band on his hand — without a stone this time, without an inscription, but turned with the same scrupulous precision with which the Forty-Fifth had kept his medical history for all these centuries.
"I do not understand what you mean," the man deflected.
He said nothing more, returned to his notes, and the next twenty minutes passed in the familiar silence of the laboratory — only now that silence weighed differently, as though something had finally sounded within it that they had not dared to say aloud across two hundred some examinations in a row.
***
The eldest of the segments did not wait long.
With each guest, Pantalone liked this pattern more and more.
The Sixty-Fifth found the man in his own office, where he had appeared without invitation — though an invitation was required of Zandik's segments in this house less than of anyone else, including the office's own owner. Pantalone sat slightly hunched, and, clamping a cigarette between his lips, was diligently reading through the document before his eyes. The letters swam and the sentences merged. He ought to rest — it was precisely on this thought that the tall door quietly opened, drawing Pantalone's attention.
He would not admit that, though the appearance of the last segment was the most logical, he had been waiting for a different figure — a younger one.
"Feofan," Pantalone smiled professionally at the low voice, straightening his back. "I take it you have already assembled a decent collection."
"So they reported to you as well."
"They do not report to me," the old man smiled faintly. "But somehow I found out anyway. I know what it is like to be certain that you are smarter than your own old age."
"Then perhaps you will explain to me what is happening here," Pantalone said with a thin smile, "because I confess I am beginning to lose myself in this quantity of rings."
"I have no right to," the man answered, pulling the mask from his face. He could not say that the smell of cigarettes in the room particularly pleased him, but looking at the man through thick glass in such an intimate atmosphere was wrong. He walked unhurriedly from the door to the man himself, stepping across the burgundy carpet and lazily glancing at the objects of new things. Despite the fact that the Merchant would be married very soon, nothing in his house betrayed the imminent appearance of a spouse.
"Do you have some business here?" the man suggested, breaking the silence.
"Oh, I am not here for long," the Sixty-Fifth laughed with a rolling chuckle, leaning his hand on the writing desk when he came close. Despite the fact that outer clothing was supposed to be removed indoors, the segment did not care, and in his garments he looked much larger than he actually was.
"Have you come to hinder my work?" Pantalone grinned. Every joke had a grain of truth.
"I have come to find out whether it is true," his old gaze had clearly not missed the new ornaments on the long fingers. Three silver rings — one from each segment, not counting the youngest and... "I am convinced."
Feofan played with his fingers, the dim light reflecting off the metal, slightly blinding in the darkness — the Merchant clearly kept them in clean order. Something told him that each giver wished to see his ring on anything but the finger where Pantalone had left them, but that did not matter.
"I really do not understand the idea," he chuckled, running a finger over one of the rings — the one given by the Forty-Fifth. "I hope I can count on this not being another sinister experiment?"
"Oh, no, you understand everything perfectly," the man laughed with a rolling chuckle. "In any case, I am not interested in the nature of these gifts' origin. Far more interesting is finding out whether the Thirty-Fifth truly chickened out," Pantalone raised his brows in surprise.
There was indeed no Omega among the givers. And the longer this absence lasted, the clearer it became to Pantalone that it was no accident, but a calculation far more finely tuned than all the other offerings combined. Only, however much Pantalone racked his brain, he could not figure out what was in the mind of the maddest of all six, and if he truly intended to support this endeavor — and he did — then it threatened to be something grandiose.
"Unfortunately, I did not think of a more... original engagement gift," Dottore broke the silence, gently taking Pantalone's hand, on which the rings gleamed in a row. "After all, as you said, we share one brain among all of us," the man elegantly raised the Merchant's palm, and then, with a flash of a thick signet ring, unhurriedly slid it onto Feofan's thumb on his right hand — the only free one, not counting the ring finger.
This time Pantalone could examine the gift without hiding. He extended his hand when the Sixty-Fifth released him: the segment had rewarded him with a thick, uneven signet ring with a purple pattern. The ring was warm, warmed in Dottore's enormous garments, despite the fact that he had walked through a snowstorm.
"Do you like what you see?" the latter smiled smugly.
For the first time, Pantalone did not know what to answer.
***
The ball in honor of the engagement was arranged with all the magnificence one could expect from a banker for whom economy existed as a tool rather than a virtue. Live music, enormous spaces, a feast: Pantalone was deeply exhausted already after the first restrained dance with his chosen one. He smiled at the guests, delivered toasts, accepted congratulations from people half of whom were right now calculating how this event would affect the share price of the Northern Bank, and was worn out in the shortest possible time.
He slipped away from the ball as quietly as propriety allowed — onto the second-floor gallery, where tall windows looked out onto the snow-covered garden and from where the music reached him as a muffled, almost unreal echo. On the balcony, he was doused with such frost that he had to wrap himself more tightly in his enormous coat, and to light his lighter required several minutes of useless clicking.
The guest caught up with him just as he finally pressed his lips to the thin cigarette. Dottore coughed restrainedly behind his back.
"Is that any way to ruin one's lungs?" Pantalone smiled sincerely. It was the voice of the Omega, the Thirty-Fifth segment, who had arrived very late.
"You have been avoiding me all week," he turned slightly to see the man at full height, but Dottore beat him to it, standing beside him and leaning his hands on the cold railing of the windowsill, and Pantalone chuckled, recalling that even through warm clothing they had seemed too icy to him — let alone through a single pair of gloves.
"I was not avoiding. I was observing," he justified himself without much spark.
"Observing what?"
"Observing how you accept gifts from the segments and do not understand what is happening," the Thirty-Fifth turned his head, and in the light of the distant candles his mask flashed with cold gold. "Though I suspect you understood long ago. You are clever, Feofan, you simply prefer to pretend that you do not understand. Am I right?"
Pantalone found this amusing, but he only shook his head from side to side. Slowly, turning another's blue eyes to himself by the chin. His smile contained a magnificent subtlety of lines; such softness ran counter to the tense shoulders of Zandik beside him, yet Feofan was a collection of contradictions, quite contentedly purring nearby.
"Enlighten me, then. Since all the others preferred to stay silent or speak in riddles," he tilted his head to one side with interest, studying the profile of the man visible from under the mask.
"I am not them," in the Thirty-Fifth's voice, for the first time that evening, something remotely resembling irritation broke through. But he erased that cynical emotion, suddenly laughing and leaning back. Pantalone decided not even to bother his head with thoughts about what might have occupied the mind of his mad scientist. "You made the right choice, Pantalone. You do not need this selfish old man. The woman will die — she is not immortal — but we will remain," he sharply turned his head to Pantalone, and then turned his body toward the man as well, unintentionally shielding him from the gusts of cold wind with his back.
"And what does the one who will remain with me wish to tell me?"
The Thirty-Fifth pulled away from the railing, and in that movement there was not a drop of the hesitation that glimmered in the other segments — only a perfectly calm, years-honed directness of a man accustomed to getting his way without unnecessary words.
"I know how this court is structured well enough not to believe in romantic gestures against political necessity. Aglaya Voron will get her husband, and the Northern Bank — the connections it needs. This is reasonable, and I am not so sentimental as to demand otherwise of you." He crossed the small distance that had appeared between them and took Pantalone's pale cheek with a cold hand, provoking an instant desire to pull away from the frost that washed over him. But Feofan endured it, only drawing on his cigarette with disapproval. "The old man does not want you a hundredth as much as I do. No one does."
"Then why all of this?" Pantalone gestured at the space between them, covering the gap beneath the coat thrown over his shoulders with his other hand.
"Because the reasonableness of your marriage says nothing about what is happening between us," the Thirty-Fifth caught Feofan's palm with his own, without any haste, as though the man had by right belonged to him for a very long time. Pantalone narrowed his eyes — whether from this gesture or from the wind striking his face together with invisible snowflakes, it was unclear. "Waiting for the end of a simple woman is easier than for Prime's, is it not? After all, if things do not work out, I can..." Dottore broke off. Pantalone could only hope that he did not mean what came to Feofan's mind first.
The Omega smoothly lowered his palm from his cheek, and only then did Pantalone realize how quickly it had warmed, no longer bringing its former discomfort. Smoothly, the Thirty-Fifth removed his own ring from his finger — the same simple silver that every segment had already given, only this one was real, with an elaborate lilac stone in the center that had cost a great deal, and neatly adorned with an iron rhombus around it. Under Pantalone's intent gaze, studying it, the Omega placed it on the ring finger of the man's left hand — the one that would remain free of the wedding gold of his future wife.
"This is not a claim to marriage," the Thirty-Fifth bared his teeth in a smile, looking contentedly at how, in such snowy frost, the Merchant's cheeks turned red and his gaze lost its confidence. "Admit at least to yourself that a choice exists at all."
Pantalone pressed his lips together. Strange that the weather had suddenly become warmer, and that the sensation of Dottore's hands remained even when he gently released Feofan's palm.
"You have always been the worst of all the Zandiks," he said at last, and in his voice there was almost tenderness. Pantalone shook his head and smiled, finally pulling the cigarette from his lips to exhale the acrid smoke.
"How cruel," the Thirty-Fifth looked proud as he said it. "That is precisely why, of all the segments, only I came to you. The others are unworthy of you. We would look magnificent together."
A step echoes a step, and a gaze echoes a gaze. This applies to words as well. An interweaving of thoughts, an interweaving of the joy of meeting. And warmth from it — warmer than the hottest summer, whose sun looks upon every traveler with a murderously scorching glare. Perhaps they are both such travelers in each other's lives. Perhaps...