by Jane Kindred
All the fuss the Grigori had been making in the world of Man, accusing her Malakim of abducting Anazakia’s daughter, had been a ruse meant to throw Aeval off the scent of what they were actually planning; the child was most likely hidden away by Anazakia’s own cohorts. She hadn’t believed the self-absorbed little princess had it in her.
Aeval was not about to lose everything she’d worked for. The grand duchess was unfit, as her progenitors had been. She would only be a figurehead for the treasonous demon riffraff. Like the Bolsheviks before them, they were incapable of comprehending the natural order. Aeval’s Heaven would be a pure Heaven whose authority in the world of Man would once again be felt.
It was time to call her field marshal to her side. He excelled at hunting things down.
…
By all accounts, a journey to the Empyrean in the midst of winter was madness, but they were clearly being led by someone mad enough to pull it off. Without question, the field marshal knew his celestial terrain. Instead of due north through the impassable mountains of Aravoth, he took the eastern road that led on a slow but steady northerly incline into Ma’on, through Zevul, and terminated at the northern border city of Makhon, where the icy plains of the Empyrean began. Once they had crossed into the Empyrean, the road to the Citadel of Gehenna would be little more than a path over the ice, but for now, the route was a broad, well-traveled highway.
The company, with its odd collection of prisoners, reached the Zevulian capital of Araphel in twenty days. It was a city almost entirely devoted to the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge. Ancient towers and halls of stone dominated the landscape, their soaring spires and bell towers seemingly aspiring to a Heaven already attained. Belphagor found the symbolism a bit heavy handed.
With the university students on winter break, the queen’s field marshal commandeered the mostly empty dormitories on the vast campus of the Academy of Celestial Philosophy. This was a world Belphagor had never seen before—though Vasily had come here without him. Imagining his malchik in this scholarly capital as a plaything for angels was a painful kick in the gut.
The field marshal’s entourage wound through streets heavy with slush, while frigid sleet poured down onto the winter’s accumulation of snow, melting as it reached the ground. It was a testament to Aeval’s expanded influence throughout the Heavens that the presence of the Queen’s Army in the streets among these learned halls attracted little attention. Of course, with the students away, the population of the city automatically decreased by nearly sixty percent. The one thing that did attract attention was the presence of the bound and gagged Holy Fool.
Vashti had admitted to knowing who he was; she’d sent Brother Kirill from the monastery with Love and Ola for some reason she wouldn’t explain. There was little opportunity for speaking privately, so Belphagor had to be content with this information for now, but he intended to get the full story out of her. She’d done enough damage; he wouldn’t allow her to do more with sins of omission.
At least, if this Kirill spoke the truth, they were one step closer to Ola with every passing day. What they would do when they got there, he wasn’t sure. He only hoped Vasily and Anazakia were aware that the company had changed course instead of taking their prisoners to the Relocation Camp. If they’d met up with Nebo and followed at a distance, there might be some hope of an escape before the company reached the Citadel of Gehenna, and an attempt could be made to reach it ahead of the queen’s men.
Belphagor planned to take the monk along with them if the opportunity arose, even if they had to keep him bound. He was the key to finding out what they were up against with regard to the Cherubim—though getting lucid answers out of Kirill would certainly be challenging. The air of Heaven seemed to have driven him completely mad.
By the luck of the draw, Belphagor was garrisoned with the monk. It was the first time they’d been given actual beds to sleep in, and Belphagor was grateful to be out of the cold, if only for a night. The inns where they’d stayed along the road barely accommodated the soldiers, even with the company occupying every inn in the vicinity, and the prisoners had been forced to sleep in the stables, while the Ophanim, who needed no sleep, stood guard.
Such lodging was in fact the sort of opportunity Belphagor hoped to exploit to make their escape, but not yet. It was prudent to take advantage of the resources of the Queen’s Army for as long as possible. The last inn would likely be just outside Makhon before they entered the Empyrean.
To prevent their escape from inside the dormitory, the prisoners were fitted with ankle manacles and shackled to the masonry. The Ophanim only needed to occupy the corridor outside the dormitory rooms; the bars on the windows would do the rest. Unless the students were kept here under duress, it seemed housing prisoners in the empty dorms was not a novel event.
Belphagor fell onto his bed. He was exhausted enough from a full day’s slog through the snow to sleep immediately, but the monk was kneeling on the floor making strangled noises against his gag as if trying to recite a prayer, crossing himself awkwardly with his bound hands.
Sighing, Belphagor got up and dragged his chain across the floor to where the bearded man rocked back and forth in his attempt at devotion. When he put his hand on Kirill’s shoulder, the monk scrambled back with terror in his eyes.
“Ne bespokoites, Brat Kirill.” Belphagor spoke in Russian, as it seemed the monk’s angelic was only rudimentary. “No worries. I only want to help you.”
The monk calmed at the sound of his own tongue and the mention of his name. Belphagor reached around him to release the leather strap that stretched between his lips, which were parched and chapped from being forced open in the cold. The monk spat out the handkerchief, coughing wretchedly, and Belphagor brought him a glass of water from the pitcher on a table near the door.
“Why are you helping me?” Kirill demanded after slaking his thirst. “You are a demon like the rest, yes?”
Belphagor regarded the monk still kneeling on the floor. “I am a demon, yes. As for the rest, the ones who’ve been abusing you and who’ve taken you prisoner, they are angels. They regard your kind as little more than demon, in point of fact.” He gestured to his manacle. “You may have noticed I’m shackled just as you are.”
“Yet you do not untie my hands.”
“I’ve no wish to be strangled in my sleep.”
Kirill studied him for a moment more and then resumed his awkward, two-handed genuflection, murmuring the words of an Orthodox prayer as he rocked forward.
“You were the one who guarded my daughter when she was imprisoned on Solovetsky.”
At Belphagor’s words, the monk stopped and stared at the ground without straightening.
“Not my daughter,” Belphagor amended. “Not exactly, but she means as much to me.”
Kirill looked up, his wild blue eyes stricken. “And now I am punished for my sins! I have put my faith in the false prophet. I am taken down into the bowels of hell.”
“This is Heaven, actually.” Belphagor sat on the edge of his bed. “Not exactly what you envisioned, eh, Brother? One does not get into Heaven through any sort of good works or divine grace, I’m afraid to say. It’s as full of despicable people as the world of Man.”
Kirill was giving him a doubtful look. He was a demon, after all. To the monk, he supposed, it was just as likely that Belphagor was a minion of the Father of Lies sent to tempt him from the path of righteousness.
“At any rate, I’m not interested in your crisis of faith. I want to know about Ola. Was she well when you saw her last? Is she still with the gypsy girl?”
The monk stood and stared down at his bound hands. “The child was very well. She is too young to understand she is a prisoner. She is happy. Bright.” He seemed to choke back tears. “She misses her mother.”
Belphagor swallowed roughly before he could speak. “You cannot imagine how her mother misses her. Or her father. This has nearly destroyed him.” He fixed his gaze on the monk, who kept
his eyes lowered. “And the gypsy?”
“Sister Lyubov?” Kirill raised his head, and there was a hint of redness in his cheeks, as if the mere mention of her name were a transgression. “She was with the child when I was sent away by the demon of light. Sister Lyubov has cared for her with great devotion, despite…” He paused and looked down again. “Despite adversity.”
Belphagor didn’t like the way the monk said this word. “What sort of adversity?”
“Ola has not been harmed. She has been safe.”
“What adversity, then?”
Kirill’s face had gone white as the winter fields. “The false prophet. The one called Zey-us.”
“What about him?”
Kirill shook his head as if he wouldn’t say, but then answered anyway. “He abused Sister Lyubov.” Kirill’s eyes went dark with passion. “And so I killed him.”
…
The Elohim had granted Anazakia conditional asylum. They were satisfied of her innocence of the crimes of which she’d been accused, but they were still uncertain about her mental state. Until they ruled on her claim of communication with the syla, they were reserving judgment.
If they deemed her fit, they pledged they would fully commit the Virtues, the Princedom of Aravoth, and the Party of the Socialist Host to restoring Anazakia to the throne of the Firmament. Though she hadn’t accepted this offer, they were of one mind about Ola’s legitimacy, and they promised to expend all their resources to extract her from the Social Liberationist forces.
Ola, the Virtues informed them, had been taken by the Cherubim into the Empyrean. The leader of the Social Liberation Party had issued orders to deliver her to the northernmost settlement of the celestial realm: the Citadel of Gehenna.
Sar Sarael, whose estate lay beyond the mountainous terrain on the northern boundary of Aravoth, agreed to outfit Anazakia and her companions with all they needed for the expedition into the Empyrean. Because it would take a day to reach his manor over treacherous ground, the four of them were given rooms at the Hekhaloth for the night. Vasily, to his dismay, was treated like a prince.
He couldn’t reconcile himself with the revelations about his nature that the Virtues had thrust upon him. They were the second to insist he’d been fathered by a Seraph. Vashti he could have dismissed, but there was no motive for the Virtues to invent such an allegation, nor did they seem prone to flights of fancy.
If it was true, it made his already complicated feelings about his parentage more complicated still. He’d grown up on the streets of Raqia believing his mother was a demon whore who’d thrown him away at the earliest opportunity. He’d been stunned to learn she’d been of noble birth. Ysael, by Helga’s account, had been indiscreet with one of the Raqia players. Like Anazakia, she’d apparently been the adventurous sort who sought the thrill of hobnobbing with the hoi polloi.
If his father had been a Seraph, however, this put Ysael in a different light. Anazakia had told him members of the angelic royalty were often assigned a personal Seraph guard. She herself had been obliged to give her bodyguard the slip on the night she’d come to Raqia and unwittingly escaped assassination.
From his own experience, he knew that outside of their unfailing loyalty to their royal charges, Seraphim were not particularly intelligent and were possessed of a rather sadistic nature. Such unappealing personalities, combined with the off-putting nature of their physical form, wouldn’t seem to make them attractive choices for intimacy. As hurtful as his thoughts had been about a demon mother who sold her body on the street, the idea of an angel mother lying with a brutish Seraph slave was hardly more comforting. Could she have done it out of the same rebellious compulsion that made her sneak about in the underbelly of Heaven? He was compelled to assume she had. Any other possibility was too unpleasant to contemplate.
Whatever the truth of his history, he had suddenly become “His Supernal Highness the Grand Duke Vasily of the House of Arcadia.” He had no idea what to make of the personal attendant the Virtues sent to him. The youth was exceedingly beautiful in the chilly manner of the Virtues, and so deferential and unfazed by his unlikely “superior” that when Vasily burst into nervous laughter at the suggestion that the attendant take his clothes, the young Virtue had simply bowed and stepped aside to wait patiently for Vasily to undress himself. The long woolen gown he held draped over his arm was apparently something Vasily was expected to wear for sleeping.
“I’m a firespirit,” Vasily said gruffly. “I sleep in my skin. I don’t think I’ll be needing your assistance.” He paused and added, “Thank you,” having no idea what the expected interaction was between them. That seemed to have done the trick, and the servant bowed and went out.
He undressed in the glow of firelight before the unrelenting mirrored glass that spanned the walls on either side of the room. The spike-capped piercings above his collarbone caught and bent the light, and Vasily touched his hand automatically to the uneven right side where there were three instead of four. They were mementos of his time with Belphagor before their argument and long estrangement, one for every year, placed there by Belphagor on each anniversary. Bel had promised him the long-missing eighth when Vasily had rescued him from Aeval’s prison, but once he was well, he hadn’t mentioned it again.
The heavy oak door opened a crack, and Vasily thought the servant had returned to offer him some other service, but it was Anazakia peering around the door, the long gown she’d been given trailing behind her. Vasily pulled her inside and closed the door, pushing her back against the wood to kiss her hungrily.
“You don’t know how badly I wanted to see you.” He grinned, his body punctuating the statement as he pressed against her. “I don’t think you need this.” He unbuttoned the gown and let it fall onto the floor as he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the large bed piled high with luxurious blankets and topped with a wide, creamy fleece. Anazakia pulled off his glasses and set them on the side table as he crawled over her, her legs wrapping around his as he kissed her breasts.
He murmured against the soft flesh. “It’s a little strange seeing you in someone else’s skin.”
She moaned as he took one of the unfamiliar breasts into his mouth. “Does it matter?” she whispered, arching beneath him as he shook his head without taking his mouth from her.
He consumed her, desperate to anchor himself as the Vasily he’d always been, desperate to bury his fear and the persistent ache for Belphagor’s hard hand upon him. Anazakia seemed to understand his need and she received him more roughly than usual, driving herself against him as she rolled him onto his back.
He curled into her arms when they were spent, both exhausted from several days of long travel and nights of hard beds, and they slept immediately, a deep and satisfied sleep they’d sorely needed.
In the morning, Vasily was awakened by his personal attendant. He sat up swiftly to cover Anazakia—they’d gone to sleep on top of the covers, since Vasily’s heat had been enough for them—but she was gone.
When he arrived at breakfast, Nebo and Lively were already dressed for travel and Sarael was waiting, but Anazakia hadn’t come down. By the time she arrived, Sarael told her apologetically that they needed to leave at once, but he’d instructed the chef to pack something she could eat on the road.
Anazakia was gracious and formal among her element. “No need to apologize, Sar Sarael. I’m the one who’s tardy. I decided to take a bath last night because it smelled so wonderful when I passed it. It relaxed me so much I slept like a stone and your chambermaid couldn’t wake me.”
“A bath, eh?” Vasily grinned at her as they were heading out. He kissed her neck and smelled a delicate aroma of petals and resins. “You do smell like a bath. I suppose you slipped away this morning to take one.”
“No, I took one last night. I told you. I nearly fell asleep in it.”
“When?”
Anazakia eyed him peculiarly. “What do you mean, when? When I went upstairs for bed, of course. There’s a ti
led bath just beyond the room I slept in that’s kept constantly steaming with sweet herbs and oils. It was, if I may say it, heavenly.” She smiled. “How did you sleep?”
He expected her to wink, to let him know she was toying with him, but she was perfectly sincere. Vasily glanced at the others coming down the steps. Lively met his eyes indifferently, but he knew as soon as she looked at him. It had been Lively in his bed.
It took every ounce of restraint he possessed to keep his pupils from burning with anger as he answered casually, “Well enough.”
Lively rode beside Nebo, as cool as Aravothan ice, as they set out on the frozen path through the mountains. Vasily couldn’t imagine what her motivation could have been except sheer maliciousness. Or perhaps desperation. She wasn’t a homely girl, and wasn’t nearly as bland and expressionless as she’d seemed at the apothecary’s, but she was no great beauty. Perhaps she felt the only means she had for obtaining what she desired was trickery, but he doubted this was the case. She seemed too self-assured for that.
Whatever the reason, it was an unpleasant feeling to realize he’d let himself be so vulnerable, so fully himself, with a near-stranger under false pretenses. But worse, he couldn’t quite escape the nagging feeling he ought to have known. That perhaps on some level, he had known.
There was no time to dwell on this, however, as the narrow, winding path took all his concentration. The ravine that led into Aravoth had now become a steep canyon below them, and they were forced to travel single-file around the mountain. The horses were surefooted and well used to this precarious route, but it was painstaking and nerve wracking. Chunks of frozen rock broke off and plunged to the iced-over riverbed as they disturbed the untouched ground, and Vasily had no wish to join them.
He wasn’t the best of riders. No celestial demon was, he supposed, though Lively seemed to be fair enough at it. It wasn’t as if they grew up with their own personal stables and a professional trainer. Most demons, unless employed in such a capacity by the Host, learned to ride through thievery and necessity.