This is a fan translation of School Oversight (Школьный надзор) by Sergei Lukyanenko and Arkady Shushpanov. The novel is a spin-off of the Night Watch series by Sergei Lukyanenko.

I claim no rights to the contents herein.


Epilogue

The Inquisition didn't have a separate room for internal Tribunals. Everything happened in the same place where Treaty violators were judged and mutual grievances of the Watches were settled.

The literature teacher had been here once before, while on a tour during his time in Prague, and he'd remembered these walls very well. A vaulted ceiling, like in some gothic temple. Lined with dark and light marble that cut the space into two irreconcilable halves, and an acute triangle of gray marble between them. An iron chandelier with candles that never burned out, which had been lit even during the time of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler.

Now Dmitry was standing in the central circle. The darkness of the well grinned at him predatorily through the grating underfoot. Long ago, back when the secular authorities used to execute witches on town squares, the Other Inquisition had also liked showmanship. After the verdict was announced, the grating would turn, dropping the accused into an abyss. Although, as explained during the tour, there hadn't been any sharp stakes and skeletons for centuries, just trash that kept accumulating there and no one got around to cleaning up. Plus the grating's turning mechanism had broken down in the eighteenth century.

If one ignored the ancient grating and the candles, the hall looked like the auditorium of some old European university. The rows of empty seats rose in amphitheater fashion. Neither the Dark nor the Light ones had been invited to the hearing. Nearly everyone gathered was seated in the gray triangle, the fiefdom of the Inquisitors.

This triangle, the tip of which was aimed straight at Dmitry, somehow reminded him of the shades of marble on the Palladian bridge at the Catherine Park.

Dmitry knew the coming sentence perfectly well.

Then again, despite the frequent accusations of the Inquisition of sticking to medieval customs, for centuries, executions had been performed painlessly and quickly, by simply consigning one to the Twilight. Although… no one would be able to tell how easy such death was. Some claimed that it could actually be compared to a long, hopeless, slow fall into a cold, damp well. Perhaps the abyss under his feet, separated by a rusty grating, was meant to symbolize that. But even there, at the bottom of the Twilight, even the worst kind of villain also wasn't awaited by sharpened stakes. Maybe just trash.

Except Dmitry wasn't an Other anymore. It was impossible to deflesh a living human. They could be killed with a spell. They could dragged onto the first layer and kept there long enough for the Twilight to drain their life force. But even in that case the human would be thrown out into their native environment and would die of hypoglycemia, like an unskilled Other.

Although, if the lower layers of the Twilight were closed to Dmitry now, there was still the human afterlife. The Inquisition could very well decide send him there with the aid of a simple rope. Again, due to their medieval prejudices, the Inquisition had never employed the enlightened guillotine. For a powerful sorcerer, defleshing was far more reliable than decapitation.

Edgar presided over the hearing as the one responsible for the Eastern European sector. Dmitry knew that the Inquisitor was speaking at the Tribunal hall for the first time since the death of his mentor Vítězslav. It was obvious that he was a little nervous, causing him to speak deliberately slowly, with pauses. According to procedure, speeches had to be uttered only through the Twilight, but then Dmitry wouldn't have heard anything, so they were making an exception in his case by speaking aloud.

Maxim, Edgar's deputy, the same former "Maverick", translated everything into Russian. Maxim was standing behind a special desk with a microphone, and that attribute of civilization looked utterly alien here.

It wasn't Dmitry who was in need of the translation. The Dead Poets sat on two benches in the first row. That was because officially they couldn't be considered Whites ones, lacking in Light and Darkness. That was why most of them were sat in the half of the hall made of dark marble, with Golubeva alone sitting in the lighter half. Two women were watching the teenagers. Inquisitor Tamara, who now looked like a strict school director, and Iva Mashkova.

Dmitry turned out to be right in his calculations. The Poets' minds hadn't even been probed deeply, only employing questioning under hypnosis with the use of permitted anti-lie spells like the Big Mouth. This was largely due to their deinitiation and the voluntary surrender, which Dreher had insisted on being taken into account. Beyond the offices of the Inquisition, the teenagers were charmed to believe themselves as visitors in Prague for winning a reading competition in Saint Petersburg.

The former teacher wasn't kept in gray dungeons either, instead being put up in a decent four-star hotel under house arrest. No one had employed third- or fourth-degree interrogations on him either. Not that Dmitry had any intention of concealing anything, telling them everything willingly.

The day before the court, Iva and Maelgwn visited his comfortable prison. The woman hadn't had time to leave the area of effect of Golubeva's spell, but she was one of the first to be re-initiated afterwards. She'd have to raise her level again, but Iva was the most capable of the three. Plus she now knew everything about Čapek's Mirror.

"What have you done?.." Giving Dmitry a quick embrace, Iva said that in Russian, with her barely noticeable accent, which only served to decorate her speech.

Dreher felt himself even guiltier.

Maelgwn was fidgeting at the door behind Iva. He'd been the on-staff healer who took care of the hostages freed by the Inquisitors headed by Mashkova from the Western Guardhouse of Saint Michael's Castle. He'd also restored Artyom after Dreher's unskilled Excalibur strike.

Now Maelgwn and their entire graduating class was present in full, in the gray triangle of the Inquisition. Dmitry decided that this move had been made up by Owl Head. It seemed he wanted to provide a great educational experience by forcing the students watching their teacher and the colleagues at their comrade-in-arms at a Tribunal.

During the hearing, all the trances and illusions were temporarily removed from the Dead Poets. Although not all memories were unblocked. Anything that had to do with the nature of the Twilight remained untouched.

The Treaty was recited. They declared, "The case before us…" Junior Inquisitor Dreher was being charged with abuse of authority, knowingly violating regulations, failure to comply with an order, assaulting Inquisition officers. Dmitry also mentally added harming witness Komarov to that list. But, unfortunately, the Inquisition didn't punish for that.

There were no accusers and defenders at internal Tribunals. And now—an unprecedented case—the judges were also the witnesses to the events, as their number included Ludwig Hieronymus Maria Kuhbauer, Hena, and even Maurice, Leonard, and Bolesław, the ones who'd talked to Dmitry via Tamara in the Summer Garden. It was impossible to invite others or to send the case up to a higher authority, as no such authority existed.

Dreher was fully certain that Alexander was also watching the proceedings from somewhere outside the room.

At that moment, in front of the six judges (Edgar himself was number seven) on the table lay scattered crystals, small carved figurines, and glass marbles as if they were dice. Each trinket had a tiny white tag with an inventory number on it. These were artifacts with the memory imprints taken during the investigation.

Then again, there were still things that could neither be explained nor attached to an artifact.

Edgar began calling witnesses. Gritting his teeth and flushing in embarrassment, Dmitry watched Inquisitors come out and testify that they'd been certain they were receiving assistance at the park only to be hit with a Web and bit with a Bureaucratic Rat.

Then the accused heard, "The Tribunal calls Artyom Komarov."

The ex-vampire looked around in confusion but rose and stood before the judges.

"What did teacher Dreher tells you before the operation began?"

"Well…" Artyom tried not to look in Dmitry's direction. "That he was staying with us. That he wasn't going anywhere. He was also talking with his inner voice… Meaning, to someone through the Twilight. We thought he'd betrayed us and opened the portal."

"What about now?"

"He was the one betrayed, not us. Sorry, Mr. Dreher…" Artyom finally looked at him.

Dmitry nodded.

"Young man, that's not what we're talking about at the moment," Edgar said. "In your opinion, what would teacher Dreher have done if the assault hadn't begun?"

"I don't know," Artyom replied. "He would've thought of something. He always does."

"You may sit. The Tribunal has no more question for you."

Artyom reluctantly returned to the other Dead Poets, and Dmitry saw that his gait was now very different as if the ex-vampire was no longer carrying a heavy load, having tossed it down through the grating.

"Does the accused have anything to add?" Edgar asked.

"No." Dmitry barely kept himself from adding "Your Honor." His human instincts were still too strong.

"The Tribunal calls first-rank senior Inquisitor Konstantin Strigal," Edgar announced.

Strigal separated from the group of gray robes and pulled down his hood. That was when Dmitry realized he'd also been present.

That fateful night, Dmitry had found the wet Strigal on the shore of the Great Pond. As expected, the Inquisitor was snapping his fingers and muttering spells, intermixed with curse words. He couldn't accept that he was no longer a mage. Not that he ended up spending too long without his abilities.

Strigal answered all the questions properly, and, strangely enough, all his answers were in Dmitry's favor.

"How made the decision to storm the area?"

"I did. Of all the unfavorable options, the assault was the lesser evil."

"You made the accused's word 'no' the trigger for the spell. For what purpose?"

"Reassurance. I'd been the avatar for the honorable Grandmaster Kuhbauer for his dialog with teacher Dreher. I am unaware of the subject of the conversation, and yet it was clear that the situation was critical, and teacher Dreher was hesitant. Then I decided to enact the plan in both cases: if he agrees to open the portal, and if he doesn't. That was why I set the start for an unequivocal negative answer in any form."

"Do you believe that the start of the operation may have provoked junior Inquisitor Dreher to commit inappropriate actions?"

"Undoubtedly," Strigal replied. "Just like the consequences of getting hit in the head by the tail of that girl…"

He pointed at Masha Danilov. She flushed. Ivan, who was sitting next to her, flared his nostrils and nearly hissed.

"The Tribunal has no more questions for you," Edgar declared.

"May I say a few words?" Strigal asked

"Speak," Edgar allowed.

"In my opinion, teacher Dreher is first and foremost not an Inquisitor. And not even an educator. To reference a certain novel, he's a catcher in the rye—"

"Please get to the point," Edgar interrupted him.

"Then I'd like to have my opinion on record." Strigal glanced in the direction of an empty desk. A lone goose quill was running across the pages of a thick folio on its own without any in, quickly and clearly writing down the proceedings the way a stenographer would. The spell was called Autowriter. "Teacher Dreher should be released from custody, given a memory block, and allowed to continue teaching without an initiation."

Thanks for that, Dmitry thought.

"It's on record," Edgar said. "You may return to your place. Are there any Others present who wish to add anything to what has already been said or object to it?"

"Yes," a voice rang out.

Anna Golubeva jumped to her feet.

"It's not Mr. Dreher's fault!" she shouted, and the echo spread that news under the vaulted ceiling. It even seemed to shaken the age-old calm of the candle flames. "You should be judging us, not him. We started it all!"

"Your opinion has been noted," Edgar said, and Dmitry thought he saw a slight indulgent smile.

"Yes," another voice said, this one rough and deep.

The disheveled Bureyev rose from his seat.

"We… well… Anyway, it wasn't Mr. Dreher who messed everything up, it was us. We're the guilty ones. Put us in jail, not him. Or wherever you're going to put us, into the Twilight or something…"

It seemed that Gogi was ready to leap over the bench and stand next to Dreher. Maybe even spit through he grating underfoot for bravery.

"He's not guilty," Artyom Komarov stood as well. "I was the one who thought it all up."

"And I took part in it!" Anatoly Klyushkin leapt to his feet. He was smiling with his smile, which was incorrigible and indelible by any nightmarish consequences.

"He's not guilty," the Danilov twins said as one, rising.

"Not guilty!" Stas Alekseyenko echoed the ex-nagas, getting up as well.

"Wow, guys…" Dmitry turned to them.

"Noted," Edgar said. "You may sit."

The goose quill was a blur over the book.

"The accused will stand! Do you have anything to add?"

"No," Dmitry replied.

"Do you accept your guilt?"

"I accept that I acted knowingly and in sound mind."

"Do you believe that the start of the operation pushed you towards your actions?"

"If not for the operation, I probably wouldn't have figured out what to do that quickly. That's all I can say."

"It is time for the Tribunal to make a decision," the chairman declared.

Silence fell for several seconds, only the self-writing quill squeaked a few more times, entering the latest comment into record.

Tribunal judges didn't need to leave the room to deliberate. They could speak inaudibly, and the communication was closed to anyone, even a mage beyond categorization.

"Hear now the verdict in the case of junior Inquisitor Dmitry Dreher," Edgar began. "The guilt of junior Inquisitor Dreher has been deemed proven. In accordance with the regulations, Inquisitor Dreher is to be immediately consigned to the Twilight, although in this particular case the equivalent would be a physical death."

"No!" Anna shrieked.

"You can't do that, you bast—" Bureyev jerked forward.

"Silence!" Edgar barked suddenly. "The verdict is being delivered! Curators! If a single sound is uttered from that section, freeze everyone's vocal cords! And so…" He returned to his measured speaking manner without a transition. "The Tribunal also takes into account extenuating circumstances. The deactivation of a dangerous artifact and the removal of a potential threat to the Others of at least all of Eastern and Western Europe. The lack of serious consequences to all Inquisitors besides the temporary loss of abilities and level. Convincing the entire group of violators to surrender. Handing over valuable items to the Inquisition…"

Dmitry couldn't keep himself from chuckling at that. He'd given the vial with Anna's Shadow to Dunkel personally. Everyone knew that anything that ended up in Owl Head's hands would never leave them. It was difficult to imagine a more reliable place to store a genie in a bottle. This vessel might not have even been the first in the European artifact vault, which Dunkel officially ran.

"…as well as the accused's motives. Overseer Dreher's duties called him to not only ensure the integrity of the Treaty but also to keep his wards safe. Because of that, the Tribunal believes the sentence can be reduced to probation and certain administrative and magical measures. Inquisitor Dreher's rights are to be restricted for a period of twenty years. His will be permitted to use magic only in the course of his professional responsibilities. Does the accused understand the Tribunal's decision?"

"I do," Dmitry said.

Anna looked at Dreher with moist but utterly happy eyes.

"Hear now the decision in the case of the group of students of the united boarding school under the purview of the Night and Day Watches of the Russian Federation and the patronage of the European Bureau of the Inquisition," Edgar declared again.

Dmitry tensed.

"The guilt of these individuals is not in any doubt. However, due to their surrender… voluntary confession… as well as youth and physical state… Because of the total loss of all magical abilities… The Tribunal has decided to limit the punishment to a lifetime ban on the use of magic! Considering their age and as a mitigating measure, a memory block about the Others will be imposed until their coming of age. The students will be transferred from the united boarding to school to ordinary human schools. Their European education will be paid out of the Inquisition's treasury."

Dmitry had known that decision would be the end of it. Yes, it would be difficult for them to part ways… until their memories were wiped. It wasn't a bad anesthesia. They could meet up later, of course. Anna and Komarov might even get married when they got older. All of them would be drawn towards one another, but no spell could erase that.

It would be a lot more difficult for their families. Easier for Anna's mother, and Anatoly had no one at all.

The Dead Poets were sitting with stony expressions, making them look like the statues at the Catherine Park.

"The Inquisition also takes into account the lack of selfish goals of these individuals. That is why the Tribunal will convene a special council in ten years to review their magical parole. Until that moment, the students will remain under the Inquisition's oversight. The oversight will be conducted by junior Inquisitor Dmitry Dreher."

One phrase made Dmitry truly happy. Far more than the chance for the Dead Poets to become Others again as adults.

"The students will be transferred from the united boarding to school to ordinary human schools." Why do that? After all, those first violators from the Lyceum hadn't been transferred anywhere. They kept getting together for the rest of their lives, even placing a stone for Pushkin, revealing their desire to create artifacts. This means that the boarding school wouldn't be turned into an ordinary human school. It wouldn't be closed up.

"Do you understand the Tribunal's decision?" Edgar gave the Dead Poets a stern look.

Then Anna rose to her feet.

"Can I… keep my memories?"

Edgar exchanged a quick glance with Dunkel.

"It's possible. But for your own good—"

"I can handle it," the girl said firmly.

Dmitry shook his head.

Did that foolish girl know what it was like to feel herself disabled for ten years while remembering how things had been different?

"Very well," Edgar said. "Noted."

"Me too then," Komarov rose.

"And me… and me…" the Dead Poets all stood as one.

Dreher's Inquisitor classmates began whispering in the gallery.

"The voluntary refusal of a mental block has been accepted," Edgar declared. "In the name of the Treaty. Apply the seals!"

The judges, who also acted as executors, also rose. Only Dunkel and Hena remained seated. The Inquisitors extended their hands towards the teenagers. While Dmitry couldn't see the flying lumps of energy at the moment, he remembered the mechanics very well.

"The hearing is hereby closed," Edgar said. "You may all leave the room. Curators! Escort the minors out and ensure that they are sent home on the next train."

"I will perform teacher Dreher's initiation myself," Owl Head stated quietly, rising.

He was clearly pleased by the well-orchestrated performance.

"Grandmaster, may I… say goodbye to the children?" Dreher asked.

"Goodbye?" Carmadon looked surprised. "But you're going to see them often. All right, you have five minutes."

"Thank you, Grandmaster!" Dmitry bowed his head.

But Dunkel had already turned away from him and threw his Inquisitorial robes with a casual, practiced movement. The judges were leaving silently. If they were speaking with one another, it was only through the Twilight, but more likely they were silent there as well.

Heading for the exit, Strigal gave Dmitry a slight nod. Edgar was wiping the sweat off his brow. Maxim walked up to the self-writing quill, neatly placed it inside the book, shut the tome, and carefully carried it out of the room.

Dreher turned to the students. But suddenly he forgot everything he'd wanted to tell them. At the exact wrong moment, as it always happened. So Dmitry uttered the first thing that came to his mind, "Well, hello, humans…"