King of Thieves

by Jane Kindred

  “I’m sorry about what they took from you, Tabris. It wasn’t theirs to take. It was yours to give, when you wanted to. Or even to keep to yourself if you liked. And I want to stop them from doing it to anyone else.” Belphagor paused a moment to make sure he hadn’t unduly upset her, but she gave him a little nod to go on. “What I need to know is whether you remember how the transactions were handled when—when you were sold there, and when Ouestucati bought you back. Do you remember who handled that part?”

  “Transactions?” Tabris looked as if she didn’t know this word.

  “The facets, Tabi,” said Natalya. “Who gave the facets to the demons at the Fletchery?”

  Tabris shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “What about after?” asked Belphagor. “Was there someone, a go-between, who brought you to your sister?”

  “You mean the drovers?”

  “Drovers?”

  “Demon smugglers. Sometimes angel smugglers. They smuggle whoever they’re not supposed to have.”

  Belphagor had done his share of smuggling through the portal in his possession, but never anyone he wasn’t supposed to have. The portal—could it be that the reason the children from the Fletchery were disappearing was that they were being taken out of Heaven itself? It would explain why the angels had asked Anzhela about Masha’s portal. And if that were true, this was an even greater conspiracy than he’d realized.

  A cold dread settled in Belphagor’s stomach. If it were true, not only was the virtue of defenseless young demons available for a price in Raqia, but they were being shipped to the lower sphere to be used for the entertainment of Men. His jaw tightened. Or perhaps by Malakim.

  “I need to know how to find one of these drovers.”

  Tabris shrugged. “Then I suppose you need to have something you want smuggled.”

  “Or something I want that’s been smuggled.” Too many people knew him in Raqia, besmirched reputation or not. It was probably why Balam had skipped out on him; someone had tipped him off about the Prince of Tricks. He could try working glamoured again, but it was exhausting, even as his own sex, to be someone else, and he was getting too old to be messing with his genetic material. If he wanted to set a convincing trap, he was going to have to go where he was virtually no one. He was going to have to fall.

  Though he might be able to use just one more glamour to do a little snooping here in Heaven before he did.

  “Thank you, Tabris. You’ve been a great help.”

  “You can call me Tabi, sweetmeat.” She’d said it in her working persona, as if she’d forgotten she was no longer a working girl. “You just ask for Tabi next time you come. I’ll take good care of you.”

  Belphagor cupped her cheek and kissed her on the forehead without comment before he rose and went out with Natalya.

  “She has good days and bad days,” Natalya said quietly. “Sometimes on the same day.”

  As they re-entered the front of the house, Vasily was just emerging, looking flushed and a bit disheveled, but no longer flustered by the attentions of the two barely clad women on his arms. When he saw Belphagor, he extricated himself and thanked them politely, making them giggle, and came to meet him.

  “Learn anything?”

  “I may have.” Belphagor smirked at the damp, swollen appearance of Vasily’s lips; it seemed they’d been put to good use. “How about you?” The flash of fire in the hazel eyes said there would be words about this later. He wished it would be more than words. He took Natalya’s hand and kissed it, with a proper bow. “It’s been a pleasure, Natalya.”

  “Anything for you, B,” she said with a wink.

  The silence between them crackled with an undertone of firespirit radiance on the way home, but once they’d arrived at their room, the fire ignited.

  “Did you enjoy yourself?” Belphagor asked as he removed his coat.

  Vasily slammed the door shut behind him. “You complete and utter son of a whore.” Belphagor’s raised eyebrow didn’t seem to help matters much. “Don’t you stand there looking at me with that amused eyebrow twitch. You can’t just keep acting like you own me, like I’m your boy you can give away for your own entertainment!”

  “I paid for your entertainment, actually. You were perfectly welcome to decline. Since I don’t own you. Perhaps it’s you who are having difficulty with the concept.”

  The ring of flame danced inside Vasily’s pupils. Not the heat of desire, but the warning of a wild animal about to attack. “You’re going to just stand there and tell me you didn’t use me just now, didn’t manipulate me to your own ends like I’m your little suka?”

  He tried to count to ten in his head. He tried to breathe the anger out and to remind himself that Vasily didn’t know what he was saying, but the bottled-up frustration and hurt of the past few days ignited with the kindling of that word like a Molotov cocktail. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d crossed the room in three swift strides and, with a fist in Vasily’s hair, had taken him down to his knees so hard the walls rattled.

  He hated that he’d done it as soon as he had. This wasn’t an act meant for spite and vitriol between them. He’d only ever done it in love or passion. Belphagor let go of Vasily’s hair and took a step back, and his lovely boy who was not his boy stared up at him with a look of shock, as if Belphagor had knocked the wind from his lungs instead of bringing him down to size.

  “I don’t know any other way to be, Vasya.” His words were rough and hard to hide the deep sorrow behind them. “But let me make one thing clear to you right now. If you ever refer to yourself or me or anyone else as a suka, there will be nothing erotic about the beating I’ll give you. And if you ever ask me about my tattoos again or bring attention to them in front of anyone else, I will thrash you where you stand. If you can’t be with me as the man I am, if you can’t respect my boundaries as you ask me to respect yours…don’t be here when I get back.”

  He turned and went out, his head horrified at the words his mouth had uttered and his heart shouting at him to turn around and take them back, and closed the door between them. His hand clutched the door handle convulsively, refusing to let go, all his parts rebelling against him, and he stood still and pressed his forehead to the wood, feeling broken beyond repair and knowing he’d done this himself. Vasily would never forgive him. He’d go. Belphagor couldn’t step away from the door or it would open and his boy would leave him for good.

  Vasily, however, must have thought Belphagor had already gone. From the other side of the door, his gravelly voice, full of despair, was just barely audible as he whispered, “Beli.” And with that mournful whisper, heat rose upward through the wood, warming Belphagor’s forehead. Vasily’s hand must have been pressed against the door, the firespirit still on his knees where Belphagor had left him.

  Rather than fall to his own, Belphagor backed away from the door and ran.

  Sedmaya

  A rush of desire had flooded him that had nothing to do with sex when Belphagor dropped him to the ground. It was as though his entire being responded to a silent command. Da, ser! Da, ser! Da, ser! I’m yours. This is where I belong. Vasily leaned against the unyielding wood of the door through which Belphagor had disappeared.

  What had he said? What had he done? He’d wounded Belphagor with his fool fiery tongue in some way that had been unthinkable. Belphagor had hurt him, yes, but only out of that clueless ineptitude he seemed to have when it came to reading people’s emotions—or considering them, at any rate, when he thought he knew them already. But Vasily had pushed the buttons he knew he wasn’t meant to touch. He’d let his temper get the best of him. As always.

  The word “suka” meant something more to Belphagor than Vasily understood—just as the tattoos meant more than he could ever hope to understand. It was a place inside Belphagor he was shut out of. Belphagor had warned him before not to say the word. The angelic equivalent was “bitch”, but that wasn’t a word that bothered demons. They tossed it back and forth amongs
t each other, lobbed it back at the angels who used it to demean them by equating their entire race with animals. Go ahead and call us animals, it said. We all know you’re the same breed as we are.

  Although it had always bothered Vasily that the word was gendered. As if the worst thing anyone could be were female. Perhaps there was something of that in the Russian term that upset Belphagor so. It didn’t matter. It bothered him. Vasily knew better. Saying it deliberately was like Belphagor calling him stupid, knowing it was the one thing that cut Vasily to the core. And he’d never said it. Not once. Vasily just kept waiting for him to, treating him as if he thought it was forever on the tip of Belphagor’s tongue.

  He really was stupid.

  Belphagor didn’t return until late. Vasily had stayed up reading Demons with a lantern by the bed, trying not to worry about what Belphagor might be doing. Or whom. Belphagor said nothing, just took a pair of extra blankets and set up his bed on the floor, climbing between them fully clothed.

  Vasily closed his book. “You’re sleeping on the floor?” Stupid question. What else did he think Belphagor was doing, testing the temperature of the wood?

  “Good night, Vasya.” Belphagor turned away, and Vasily snuffed the lantern and sat in the dark, his head back against the wall, full of turmoil and a tight churning in his stomach. He hated this, and he’d started it. How did he end it? Fear that there was no way to end it, that he’d screwed things up to the point of no return, kept him from taking action. He couldn’t stand the idea that if he went to Belphagor to try to make things right, Belphagor would stay silent and turn toward the wall. And if he did talk…it would be a long talk. Vasily would have to try to express what he was unhappy with, not just cave and say he was sorry and wanted to be his boy again.

  But he wanted with all his heart to do just that. He wanted to crawl to Belphagor on the floor and beg forgiveness and punishment. To be whipped and caned and held down while Belphagor had his way with him, possessing him utterly. To know he was still loved.

  He woke in the morning stiff from having fallen asleep sitting up. Belphagor was packing a bag.

  Vasily sat forward with alarm. “Where are you going?”

  Belphagor started at the sound of his voice and turned his head toward him, slinging the bag over his shoulder. “I have to pursue a lead.”

  “What lead? Where?”

  Belphagor’s expression was closed. “South.”

  “South? You don’t mean the world of Man?” Vasily rose, heat behind his eyes making it hard for him to see, like a debilitating headache. “Were you just going to leave without saying good-bye?”

  “Vasya—you asked me for space. I need some too.”

  Vasily moved toward him, feeling sluggish and feverish, like he’d been when he’d fallen to the world of Man with Belphagor for the first time and caught an earthly “bug”. Belphagor had his hand on the doorknob, but the world of Man was below them. A portal was hidden right here in Belphagor’s own room.

  He could barely form breath enough to speak. “Please don’t leave me,” he managed.

  “I’m not leaving you, my—” Belphagor slumped against the door, pressing his head to it and staring up at the ceiling. “You see? I can’t even talk to you. I don’t know how to talk to you.”

  “I’m sorry.” Vasily abandoned his determination and fell on his knees in front of Belphagor. “I’m sorry, Beli. Forget it,” he pleaded. “I’ll be what you want.”

  “I don’t want you to be what I want.” He looked down at Vasily, and his expression hardened. “Don’t do that. Get up.”

  “Beli—”

  “Get up!” The angry shout stunned him, and Vasily rose, his limbs shaking. Something irrevocable had happened between them. This wasn’t how they were. Why the fuck couldn’t he have just sucked it up and not made trouble between them? Everything was falling apart.

  Belphagor closed his eyes, doing his counting breath. “I don’t want you to be what I want,” he repeated once he’d calmed. “I want to be what you want.”

  “You are what I want.”

  Belphagor opened his eyes and shook his head. “Not right now. Right now I’m angry with you, and I have no right to be, and that makes me angry with myself. I don’t want to fight with you, because this isn’t a fight. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “I was rude to you yesterday, saying that word you hate, needling you about your tattoos.”

  Unexpectedly, Belphagor smiled. “Vasya. You’re always rude to me. And under ordinary circumstances, to be perfectly frank, I relish your surly, belligerent, adorable tantrums, because…” Belphagor didn’t need to finish the sentence. Under ordinary circumstances, Vasily’s hot temper was Belphagor’s aphrodisiac. “But I can’t be this angry with you right now. I want to give you the space you asked for, and in order to do that, I need some space of my own.” He glanced around, lifting his hands at his sides and dropping them again in a gesture of futility. “This is an absurdly tiny room. I think it’s best if we aren’t in it together for a while.”

  Vasily tried to bury the despair these words instilled in him under the weight of anger. “And what do you expect me to do in here by myself while you’re gone for Heaven knows how long? Masturbate and read Dostoevsky?”

  He tried to maintain a furious expression, but Belphagor, struggling with his own, clearly couldn’t keep a straight face a moment longer. He broke down into a wheeze of mostly silent laughter, unable to get enough breath, and watching him made Vasily lose his own fight.

  “Thank Heaven you didn’t say them in the reverse order,” Belphagor managed while Vasily choked back gasps of laughter, and then tilted his head with a lift of his eyebrow that completely undid him. “Or is that what you’ve been doing?”

  The heaviness that had been in Belphagor’s eyes lessened as he watched the collapse of Vasily’s composure, and he stepped away from the door. Vasily’s laughter was cut short by the stroke of Belphagor’s palm against his cheek. He held his breath, thinking Belphagor might kiss him and everything would be okay, but Belphagor only shook his head.

  “I have to go, love. I have to follow this lead alone. But I’m coming back. And then we’ll work it out. I promise.” Belphagor was fond of making promises.

  Vasily brushed his hand away, the urge to laugh completely smothered. “What’s this lead, anyway?”

  “I’ve gotten the name of a contact in Leningrad on the Celestial Silk Road.”

  “The what?”

  “It’s what they call the smuggling ring.”

  “The smuggling ring?” Vasily’s eyes widened. “They’re smuggling them out of Heaven to…?”

  Belphagor nodded grimly. “To sell them in the world of Man.”

  “Sukiny syny.” The words were a guttural snarl in his throat. He only realized after he’d said them that he’d used the very word Belphagor had threatened to beat him over last night. Vasily took a step back. “Shit. I meant—”

  “No, it’s fine, Vasya.” Belphagor hoisted his pack again, his hand once more on the door latch. “‘Sons of bitches’ isn’t quite the same as calling someone a suka. Even if it does unnecessarily insult the women who bore them.”

  Vasily’s cheeks burned. Belphagor had been sensitive to the cultural denigration of women in both Heaven and the world of Man since his time as Beatrix. But the door was open, and Belphagor was leaving him—and still not through the portal.

  “If you’re going south, why are you using the door?”

  “Because demons are most likely watching my every move in Raqia at the moment. If I don’t exit the Brimstone, it will raise suspicion.”

  “Suspicion? Whose suspicion? What demons?”

  “Balam’s comrades.” Belphagor kissed his fingers and blew the kiss toward Vasily before stepping out and closing the door.

  From anyone else, it would have been a sweet but empty gesture, but from the accomplished airspirit that was Belphagor, it was a soft, tactile caress of air that lingered on Vasily’s
lips and made him ache. It was meant to distract him; he knew that. But it was still a kiss, still Belphagor’s touch. He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to his mouth. Despite the kiss, he hadn’t missed what Belphagor had meant to distract him from. Balam had smuggled Silk himself on the Celestial Silk Road. And Vasily wasn’t going to sit idly at home and wait for Belphagor to do something about it. They might be watching Belphagor’s moves, but they weren’t watching Vasily’s.

  The portal beneath Belphagor’s threadbare rug was hidden by a glamour, but there were ways to reveal what was hidden. Belphagor wasn’t the only one who bought his tricks in the Market.

  The train to St. Petersburg—Leningrad, as Belphagor had mistakenly called it, but that had been its name until a year ago—wasn’t as easy for Vasily to get a ticket on as it surely must have been for Belphagor. The airspirit’s skill at influence increased exponentially in the world of Man. As Vasily’s skills must also, he supposed, though other than his trick of lighting cigars with his tongue, he hadn’t had the opportunity to test them. But influence was not in his repertoire. The best he could manage was intimidation. That and a bribe of the provodnik with rubles he’d acquired at the lombard in Slyudyanka where he’d pawned his facets got him a platzkart ticket in the open-bunk car.

  The last time he’d traveled in the world of Man, it had been winter, and he’d spent the long hours of darkness in the private compartment being sexually teased and tormented by Belphagor, who’d forbidden him to come. This time, there was no such restriction, but as hard as the memories of that journey made him, he wasn’t about to jerk off in an open berth. There was also little darkness, and the heat was unbearable in his top bunk. It was torment of a different and far less pleasant kind.

  He felt as if he were racing over the Siberian steppe and taiga, and yet with every kilometer, though Vasily couldn’t have been far behind him, Belphagor seemed to be carried farther away. It was like he was chasing the memory of those happy days. Maybe he was fevering again. The last time he’d fallen, after all, he’d picked up the earthly bug right here on the train. And with the heat rising steadily in the car, it was hard to tell if it was his body temperature or the ambient temperature that was exceeding the comfortable range even for a firespirit.