Corvus landed on the arrival dais of the International Portkey Office and let the pull ease and the sense of the world to settle. Frosted glass screens hummed. A clerk slid a ledger across polished birch, tapped a date rune, and pressed a wax seal to his entry record. Another desk waited under the two headed eagle of the Russian Ministry of Magic. A young witch in a grey collar asked for his wand and registered it.
He stepped into Magical Moscow and breathed in crisp, snowy, and spicy air. The Ministry rose like a fortress monastery. White stone. Deep red eaves. Copper domes that held sigils. The halls bore mosaics of Volkhvs bending storm and soil. A statue of a cloaked man stood with a palm raised to a forked thunderbolt. The plaque read Perun. Another showed a calm, broad cheeked Wizard beside a river of silver coins with cattle behind him. Veles. The third was a stern woman whose fingers pressed dark earth that flowered at her touch. Mokosh. Muggles had called them gods. Wizards here called them what they were. Elementalists and Ritualists of the old times, the ones who shaped rivers and treaties at the same time.
Outside, the city was split into districts that took those names without apology. In Perun Ward, the lamps hissed with stormglass and threw blue arcs. In Veles Ward, the funeral houses hid behind carved oak doors marked with ward knots. In Mokosh Ward, yellow light warmed market stalls where dried roots hung beside charmed jars. Every so often, a domovoi peered from a lintel, small and bearded, muttering at muddy boots as if the house itself had a mouth. A canal slid through a park, and something pale watched from under the ice. Rusalka, the guide sheet called them, river daughters who drew breath like a sigh and sang the unwary to sleep. A Leshy's shape flickered deeper in the wood edging the ward. The frost curled on bark, tall as a tree and twice as moody as a cat. A poster near a watch post carried a familiar name in Cyrillic. Baba Yaga. Wanted for ritual violations and predation, local dark lords and ladies naming themselves with funny names. Muggle folklore made her a story. Here she was, a line item with a bounty.
Corvus kept moving and crossed to the Muggle side of Moscow. Every two hours, he shifted his form. He worked the underground, not the tunnels, but what threaded them. Casinos that did not close. Bathhouses that took cash in envelopes. Repair yards that never asked for papers. He watched door men and drivers, men who stood with their backs to the steam and their palms to coin. Memory Mapping slipped in and came out with routes, drop points, and names. Before noon, the same name surfaced three times with the same stink. Solntsevskaya Bratva.
The Bratva here did not stack itself into a tidy pyramid. It broke into brigades. Each brigade answered to a brigadier who answered to a council. Protection, oil skims, arms, and heroin that crossed borders in trucks and on trains. Their yearly take rivalled the wizarding world as a whole. They were careful. They were greedy.
By evening, he had faces for two local brigadiers. Through them, he reached the council leaders. Their minds, contrary to their trade, were clear as crystal. Schedules, routes, time of the next shipment from the southern border. The one thing worth anything that sat behind every leader of localised cells like a shadow was the name Viktor Averin. A man living in a small manor in the Solntsevo District. One mistress in town. Dealings and meetings in Hungary for Central and Eastern Europe's drug routes. Some other meetings in Spain with men across the Ocean, and some others from the south of the Mediterranean. Arms through the Balkans. Powder through the east. Accounts brushed clean in Vienna and Zurich. He got everything about Averin from them and went to meet this exemplary gentleman of society.
Corvus watched the manor from afar. Snow took the light and pushed it back at the windows. The criminal mind leaned on locks and men. He read the minds of the outer guards. Fourteen guards awake. Six asleep. One cook who liked to hum in the kitchen. A study with thick leather and a globe that hid nothing. A man on the phone most of the time. Short hair, calm breath. That would be Averin. Second in command of a multinational mafia group.
A couple turned the corner, and a large raven took flight from the spot where a man had been standing.
He went in to cast only one spell. He wanted Averin to settle for a week. No meetings abroad, no travel out of the city. A flick of a wand and intent convinced the criminal to do so. Nothing crude. The urge to check Spain dulled. Calls he would have made would feel less urgent. The trip book stayed on the shelf. The lines of force attached themselves to a calendar tick and looked like a coincidence from every angle but his.
He slipped out of Solntsevo and back through the wards of Magical Moscow. Perun Ward flashed again. He took a side street that hung with charms against snow spirits and turned in under an arch set with river stones. He found a shop and wrote a small note to be delivered to his dear Uncle Grigori.
When the clerk asked to be clear, "Which Grigori? There are hundreds of them." Corvus smiled and answered. "Grigori Volkov, head of House Volkov."
Corvus was still chuckling about the clerk's reaction. "This is the fastest falcon I have." The man was sweating in this cold weather. The reaction explained more about the Volkovs than anything else. Grigori would send someone to him soon.
Corvus needed Squibs. He was more relaxed than during his time in London doing the same. There were no ICW threats anymore, at least for a while. If he had anything to say about it, for a long, long time. Corvus had given instructions after his birthday. He just hoped Grigori followed them and did the preliminary preparation.
What he was looking for were simple qualities. Clean records, no taste for drugs, no love for uniforms. He hoped his uncle had moved with the same speed he expected from everyone else.
He washed the city from his hands and turned to his memory. A week would be enough to implement his men within this huge body. It will be enough to gut a network and steal its arteries. A week to fold mortal sins into magical currency.
"Sergei Mikhailov, also known as Mikhas and Viktor Averin. Such a productive member of society," he murmured.
--
Grigori Volkov sat in his study with the ledgers open and the candles burning low. Ink bled through the last page where the totals lived. Seven hundred and twelve squibs, counted and housed. Seven hundred and twelve mouths plus their families. Bread, meat, blankets. The column for weekly outlay looked like a curse.
He initialled an expense chit and slid it aside. Another, another. The quill scratched like a saw on bone. He paused only to rub the bridge of his nose and glance at the clock. Still evening. Moscow's wards hummed faintly under the winter wind.
It was easier now. No ICW inspector at the ports and ministry posts. No officious clerk with stamped parchment and a smug face. The last one who tried to posture at Ladoga found himself staring at a rune etched cell and wondering why his badge did not open doors anymore. Defanged was the right word. A declawed cat with a loud voice.
He thought of Gellert then, the old storm bottled behind Nurmengard stone. In the bright years, they rode ideas like broomsticks and did not ask who paid for wood, bristles, and polish. Gellert spoke to Vinda about power, to Arcturus about strategy, and to Krafft about structure. To Grigori, he spoke about fire. Never about ledgers. Never about bread. Corvus did. The boy set the board before the first move and stocked the pantry besides. It was annoying to witness this kind of competence.
His gaze climbed to the wall where a moving photograph of Albus Dumbledore hung on a pin. Lightning took the old fool in the chest in one frame, yanked him back in the next, over and over. Grigori huffed. Corvus had driven the man to burn his bridges and leap into a pit. That took talent. Or malice. Possibly both.
He signed another order: three dozen cots for the Syktyvkar hall, four crates of wool cloaks, and two shipments of dried fish. Coins bled from the family vaults. He pictured his son's face when those vault doors groaned open and nearly smiled. Then he pictured Arcturus' face at breakfast. Younger. Fewer lines. The old peacock struts in a quieter way now that his back stopped aching and his hair stopped falling. Grigori's hand tightened on the quill until the nib squealed.
"Smug bastard," he muttered to the empty room, already hearing Arcturus snap back in that lazy drawl of his. He loved the man like a brother and wanted to grind his teeth into powder.
Vinda looked younger as well. Of course she did. She always looked like a blade. Now the blade gleamed. He would ask Corvus for the same treatment when he crossed his threshold. He would ask pleasantly. He would even say please. Then he would drink Arcturus under the table and make him admit who looked better. A man needed a goal.
The ledgers waited. He bent to them and turned a page. The squib tally held. Seven hundred and twelve. The numbers were cross checked... twice. The list carried names and trades, and family notes. A cobbler from Novgorod who could not coax a spark but could silence a crying infant in three seconds and make boots that walked dry through slush. A seamstress from Tambov with a memory like a Pensieve. A fisherman from Murmansk who knew the ice by sound. Useful people. All of them. Wizardkin's blood without Mother Magic's blessings. Corvus wanted them. Corvus wanted everyone who could work.
He tipped a vial and let a drop of restorative fall into his tea. The taste was ghastly. He drank it anyway and kept reading. The plan was impossible until it wasn't. The young man had taken England's rats by the tail and shaken galleons out of them. Now he wanted Moscow's. Grigori did not know if the sums would work. He knew he would try.
He caught his reflection in the dark window, hair more white than black now. He scowled at it. Vasily's face floated up next, that anxious, pinched look his son wore when a strong wind dared to blow. Fearful, spineless. The heir to Volkov, who hid from thunder. If the boy could win a duel against a butter knife, Grigori would commission a statue. He snorted and pushed the thought away before it soured the room.
A runner's packet lay under his elbow. He broke the wax, scanned the notes. Patrols reported no ICW presence on any rail terminus from Pskov to Nizhny, official or otherwise, good. The Norse wards were knitting to the Russian web without strain, better. Krafft had posted coin and men on his line, the best news he got the whole week. The map on the far wall glowed faintly where ward stones pulsed. Svalbard was a bright seam. Arkhangelsk, brighter. The web fattened with every settlement and every greenhouse that lit under snow.
He closed the folder and leaned back. The chair creaked. "When do we fetch Gellert?" he asked the ceiling, "and what happens when the old seer walks free?" He did not fear conflict. He feared friction. Acolytes had their pride. Alliances had their seams. Corvus stood in the middle, cutting and tying, and somehow no one bled to death. Yet.
He signed for another consignment of grain. The nib snapped. He stared at the broken tip, then at the total. That number would bleach a man's hair. He raked a hand through his own and found a few new white strands for his trouble.
A sharp rap hit the glass. Again. He looked up. A falcon hung outside the pane, feathers ruffed by the wind, eyes like hammered steel. The leather jess at its leg carried the Black crest.
"Of course," he said, and rose. The latch clicked. Cold air slid in, and the bird swept past him to the perch by the stove as if it paid taxes here. The falcon had excellent manners for a predator.
Grigori untied the tube and rolled the parchment out with his thumbs. His smile came back, thin and sharp.