28

Bery went into the office and saw his brother at his desk. A wrinkle appeared on Aznar's forehead, and shadows lay under his eyes. The table was littered with papers, some kind of stones, ores, amulets, broken feathers and blocks of colored wax. There were also several empty mugs.

-Have you been on vacation for a long time? - Beria involuntarily escaped, although he wanted to ask something completely different. For example, to quip something about the mess. After all, my brother is always so scrupulous and accurate, but here they obviously haven’t been cleaned for several days.

Aznar looked up from his papers and smiled wryly. He nodded to the chair. Bery immediately sat down in it on a grand scale, making the furniture creak plaintively, and threw his legs up on the table. The older brother grimaced, but said nothing. Instead, he pulled one amulet out of a pile of amulets with a gray stone in the center: reddish-brown rusty streaks ran along it.

-Look, - Markat threw the amulet into