by Jane Kindred
The meal was held in the central hall of the citadel, a vast room with sweeping ribbed vaults built to accommodate the high windows that in daytime would capture the cold northern light. It was lit now by numerous candelabra and torches held in iron sconces in the shapes of the elemental firespirits of Heaven. At an ancient oak table that must have been cut from a single massive trunk, the Virtue Haniel sat with a handful of his men, along with a dozen of Helga’s advisers. Lively sat smugly beside her aunt.
“Nenny.” Helga greeted me with my childhood pet name as we sat, and then corrected herself. “Anazakia Helisonovna. You look more yourself.” She directed a pointed glance at Ola’s bandaged finger as if she knew precisely how it had been accomplished, and I reddened. “And you.” She greeted Vasily less cordially. “I must say I was a bit surprised to hear of a man of your nature taking such an interest in his get.”
“And what nature would that be?” growled Vasily.
“A Raqia street rat, of course.”
“Don’t you mean polovina-d’yavol?” I spat the word at her. “Isn’t that what you told me? That he was a half-devil?”
She raised an eyebrow at my tone. “I believed he was. I have come to realize I was mistaken about his paternity.”
“Is that why you kidnapped Ola? For her paternity?”
Helga sighed. “This is neither the place nor the time for this discussion. You are guests at our table, and we are here to partake of the fine meal our staff has provided while we all get acquainted.” She began to eat her dinner and then waved her fork at us as we sat motionless. “Eat,” she ordered in the practiced voice of the palace nurse, and like chastised children, we ate.
It was a plain but satisfying meal of smoked mutton and boiled potatoes—a welcome change from the endless meals of beans and hardtack we’d been eating for days.
Helga glanced with curiosity at Nebo. “I’ve not been introduced to your friend.”
I gave her a cool glance. “This is Nebo. I believe you know his sister, Vashti.”
“Ah.” Helga frowned. “What a disappointment that one turned out to be.” She turned toward Love before Nebo could say a word. “And Love, I trust your meal is satisfactory?”
Love glared at her as she cut Ola’s meat. “You mean is it better than stale bread and water in my cell? Why yes, in that case, it’s quite satisfactory.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” Helga said in a tone I remembered all too well. “You haven’t been kept on bread and water, and you and the child have only been here under our protection.”
I set my fork down with a snap reminiscent of her own signature mark of irritation. “Then I suppose we’re all free to go.”
Helga gave me a stern look. “I really hoped we could have a nice meal, but I see you’re still the rude, spoiled girl you’ve always been. You are under our protection. It would be inadvisable for any of you to leave. If the queen were to discover little Ola’s whereabouts, the revolution would be over before it began.”
“Why?” I wasn’t about to make this easy for her. “What does Ola have to do with your revolution? And since when are you a revolutionary, let alone the leader of a Party?”
Helga frowned. “I told you to take those herbs, Nenny, but you’ve never listened to anyone but yourself. I realized as soon as you told me you were carrying his child that I must have been wrong about Vasily’s father.”
I was still fuming at her reference to aborting Ola. “I don’t understand. How could that have changed your mind?”
“Male firespirits of mixed blood are very rarely fertile, my dear. All that heat seems to burn up the diluted seed. As a consequence, it’s only those with the highest concentrations of fire in their makeup who seem to overcome the other elements within them enough to reproduce.” Helga took a sip of her wine as if we all understood this. “It puzzled me when Vasily was born and we saw he was firespirit. I couldn’t imagine who among the young men we knew could have been so powerful.”
“But what made you think it was an actual Seraph? Why not some firespirit demon you weren’t acquainted with?”
“Because Vasily’s mother was pure waterspirit,” Helga said pointedly. “If her offspring was not only firespirit but fertile, well, Vasily certainly couldn’t have been less than half fire. And there was only one way for that to happen.” Helga set down her glass. “I also had other reasons to believe it.”
“You knew the Seraph,” said Vasily. “You know exactly who my father was.”
“This isn’t really a conversation for the dinner table. I doubt you want to dredge up such unpleasantness in front of strangers.”
“I’ve been the demon bastard of a street whore all my life,” Vasily scoffed. “Everyone knew it. They could see it by looking at me. And now suddenly you tell me I’m not. Whatever you know about it, I doubt it could be worse than what I’ve always believed.”
Helga turned to her advisers and the Virtues. “Would you excuse us?”
They rose and filed awkwardly from the hall while the rest of us stared at her. Lively had stayed, as if what Helga was about to say was something she knew already.
Helga eyed Vasily. “Are you sure you want all of your companions here?”
“I’m sure.” His growl was low and threatening, but she was unmoved.
“Well, I suppose the child won’t understand.” She sighed and addressed him resolutely. “Ysael was disowned by the House of Arcadia when it was discovered she was pregnant. Few of us wanted anything to do with the sort of trouble a girl like her would bring in Raqia, and since she wouldn’t say who the demon was she’d been with, and he didn’t come forward, she had to make her own way on the streets until her confinement. That much I suppose Anazakia has told you.”
Vasily looked at me, his eyes unreadable. I’d spared him the details of how his mother had been forced to make her way. “Not all of it. But enough. Go on.”
“Ysael confided in me shortly before you were born. I saw her on the street and gave her some food to eat. She looked very hungry, and no matter how disgraced she was, I didn’t think it was right that an expectant mother should go hungry.” Helga paused, and for a moment she almost looked sorry for Vasily—or perhaps it was only for Ysael. “She told me it wasn’t for the pregnancy she was disowned. She hadn’t even known about it yet. Her disgrace was allowing a Seraph to defile her.”
“And who was the Seraph?” Vasily demanded with disgust. “Her personal guard, I suppose?”
Helga acknowledged this with a curt nod. “She said whenever she snuck away to play in Raqia, she tricked him into thinking she was in the library of her family’s manor. He caught her, apparently, the last time she’d come, as she was sneaking back in through the window. He told her he’d followed her and saw a demon touching her, and it outraged his seraphic sensibilities.” Helga hesitated and looked at Vasily as if to see if she needed to go on. My stomach clenched and I reached for my glass of water.
Vasily was still puzzled. “So he told her family because he was jealous? Because she cheated on him?”
“She wasn’t having an affair with him, Vasily.”
I looked away. How easily Ysael’s fate might have been my own. Love pulled Ola toward her, as if to protect her from the ugliness of the world, and I wished I could as well.
Helga saw Vasily was stubbornly refusing to understand. “He wanted to teach her a lesson about what ought to be allowed to touch an angel,” she said finally, a bit terse, as if annoyed at having to spell it out. “He raped her.”
Vasily stood up as if he meant to strike her, the deep fire in his eyes throwing sparks of reflection from the lenses of his spectacles, but Helga went on.
“The House of Arcadia, in their infinite angelic grace, didn’t believe she’d been unwilling. She had her ring, after all—the ring he threw at her afterward, having found it where she’d left it behind for safekeeping when she went to Raqia. Still, despite what happened to her, we never thought for a minute he could be the father. We didn’t
think it was possible to conceive after such…damage—”
“No.” Vasily interrupted her. “No. No, that isn’t true. You’re a despicable creature.”
“Vasily.” I put my hand on his arm, but he shook me off and shoved back his wooden chair, knocking it to the floor as he left the table.
Nebo stood and pressed a reassuring hand to my shoulder as I started to rise. “I’ll talk to him. The Nephilim are well acquainted with the shame of birthright.” He bowed and went out after Vasily.
Love whispered to me while Ola fussed to be released. “The Seraphim…didn’t you guys tell me they’re made of fire?”
“It doesn’t burn in Heaven. Not exactly.” Love was no longer the naive skeptic she’d once been, though it was little wonder.
“It’s hot enough.” Helga was merciless now that Vasily was gone. “You can hardly look at them. They’ve been the punishers of law-breaking Fallen for thousands of years, and they can cause a great deal of pain if they wish to. And this one wished to.”
I didn’t want to think about Seraphim anymore. “What does any of this have to do with the revolution? What does Ola have to do with it?”
Helga gave me a disapproving look. “Don’t be disingenuous—it’s unbecoming. I’m well aware of what the Virtues told you about the element you and Vasily produce; you forget that Lively was there. Vashti told us what the child could do; the Virtues have only confirmed how.” She gave me a satisfied look when I said nothing, and then handed Lively the bottle of wine to refill our glasses. “The Queen has certainly guessed it, which is why she instructed her Malakim to fetch the child from the world of Man. She may not have guessed precisely what Ola is—I wasn’t sure myself what would result from your union, but I knew the child would be powerful, and I’m sure so did she. Controlling Ola’s element would give the queen unstoppable power. And that cannot happen.”
“So you wanted her for yourself.” I felt bitterly betrayed. Helga had once been family to me, the only family I’d had left.
“I wanted to keep her out of the queen’s clutches.” Helga took up her glass. “Something you were woefully unprepared to do—as became painfully obvious, given how simple it was to take her from you.” The truth of this stung like a physical blow. “As for wanting her power myself…” She sipped her wine. “I don’t need it.” Her fingers rested on the locket that hung at her breast. It was the locket she’d taken from me, the one that held the flower of the fern.
Lying beside Vasily later, I couldn’t help but think of all the mistakes I’d made that had brought us to this pass. When Helga had taken the locket from me on that afternoon in Raqia, I’d given her the means to control the Heavens. Somehow I’d let her take it from my hand, though even now I couldn’t remember that moment clearly. Had she already been working the flower’s influence against me? Even if she had, I ought to have guarded it more carefully. I hadn’t taken the responsibility the syla gave me seriously enough. Nor had I taken the threat to Ola seriously enough, playing house in Arkhangel’sk and pretending I wasn’t the last heir to the throne of the Firmament of Shehaqim.
In the heady afterglow of our escape from Heaven, I’d told Belphagor I was its rightful queen; the Grigori and Nephilim had treated me as such, and even the syla had called me one. But if I was a queen, I was surely the worst in Heaven’s history. Every step I took simply endangered everyone I loved and anyone I came into contact with—from my childish whim to go riding in the snow on my seventeenth birthday, to the moment I’d taken the apothecary’s elixir without weighing the consequences.
Vasily whispered beside me from the darkness. “Whatever you’re thinking about, stop it.” The edges of his pupils glowed softly, like a predator in the moonlight. “I can hear you sighing. It’s like having a small storm lying beside me.”
“I didn’t know you were awake.”
“I have a lot on my mind, too.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Nazkia, about Lively… She pretended to be you.” He stroked a finger along my wrist and watched the lavender luminescence. “I swear to you, I would never have taken her to my bed.”
“Did her skin glow like that when you touched her?”
Vasily paused. “No, I…I don’t think it did.”
“And yet you thought she was me.”
He was silent, and I rolled onto my side and pulled up the covers, not wanting to argue about it, not wanting this between us. We’d found Ola at last, even if we were prisoners here. That was what was important.
We spent the next few weeks getting to know the child Ola had become. It wasn’t the worst existence. She remained with Love in the tower room at night at Helga’s insistence—for her own safety, Helga claimed—but was allowed to share her meals with the rest of us and to run and play about the citadel, which Love told me hadn’t been the case before we came. She was more comfortable with Love, as was only natural after so much time, so she wasn’t the least bothered by going to sleep at night without us. It was Vasily and I who missed her when she slept.
Helga’s Party believed in egalitarianism, and every inhabitant of the citadel shared chores equally. I found it pleasant to partake in the daily workings of a communal household, and I began to believe Helga’s Heaven might not be so bad. The only part of the citadel that wasn’t in our routine was the main tower of the keep itself, where the Cherubim stayed, and I was more than happy to stay clear of them.
“I hate them,” Love confided to me one afternoon. One of the large, glittering angels had crossed the doorway of the laundry while we sat on the floor folding the washing. She looked around to see that Ola was occupied with Vasily, who was teaching her to put socks into pairs, and lowered her voice to a whisper. “They murdered Kirill.”
“Who’s Kirill?”
She’d barely spoken of the time she and Ola had spent in captivity before we came, sharing only Ola’s developmental milestones we’d missed.
“He watched over us at Solovetsky.” Her eyes misted with tears. “He was the kindest, gentlest man.”
“Solovetsky.” I remembered with a pang the day I’d spent on the island, when I’d dismissed the certainty that my daughter was near. Love and Ola had been only yards away from me within the monastery walls. How much had I missed of Ola’s life because of that mistake? “I went to Solovetsky,” I confessed as I focused on my folding. “I wanted to see the last place Ola had been seen. I thought I heard her crying and I thought I must be going mad.”
Love’s face twisted with emotion when I looked up. “In September? Just after the equinox?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
Love began to cry. “She said you were there, and I didn’t believe her. We were outside—Kirill let us take a walk—and she suddenly pointed toward the sea and demanded to go to you. It was her first real sentence. I said she was wrong and took her inside. She cried for hours.” Love took a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped at her eyes and nose, trying to keep Ola from seeing her cry, and I wondered how many times she’d put on a brave face for Ola in the past several months. “I’m so sorry, Anazakia.”
“Don’t.” I took her hand, trying not to cry myself. “Don’t torture yourself. It wasn’t your fault; you couldn’t have known. I should have listened to my instincts. It’s my fault you had to stay there longer. It’s my fault you’re here.”
Love laughed weakly, blowing her nose. “Now you’re doing it. I guess we should both stop it.”
We’d drawn Ola’s attention, and she came over to me and held out a sock she’d been folding. “Here, Mama.” She smiled and tried to wipe a tear from my face with it. “Don’t cry.”
I laughed and gathered her in my arms, smelling the sweet scent of her. I didn’t care how long we stayed here or what the Social Liberation Party or Aeval did in their battle over Heaven. As long as we were together. That was all that mattered.
Shestnadtsatoe: Chain of Command
The monk was falling behind, and the company’s captain had n
o sympathy for weakness. Belphagor tried to keep him moving, but the soldiers didn’t care for them “fraternizing,” and with his hands bound and his feet becoming frostbitten, the monk simply couldn’t keep up. The leather strap cutting into his cheeks from the gag didn’t help matters any, but he refused to keep quiet without it.
Belphagor had hoped to make a break for it when they garrisoned at Makhon, but the dreary little burg turned out to be a stronghold of the Social Liberation Party, and its inns were mysteriously dark when the Queen’s Army arrived.
There were no more warm beds or damp stables once they struck out into the Empyrean, only a caravan of tents with layers of rough blankets for padding and cover. They were nearly four weeks on the flat, frozen plains. The first five days there’d been nothing at all on the horizon, and then the Pyriphlegethon with its shocking red fire appeared and they’d followed it ever since, using it to light the kindling they carried and huddling beside it for warmth when they stopped for the night. They lost two horses along the way, and there had been fresh meat on those occasions.
The soldiers had begun to harass Margarita and Vashti as they got farther from civilization, and Belphagor feared for them until Margarita challenged one of the soldiers to hand-to-hand combat and wiped the Empyrean ice with him. Vashti’s leg had healed, and she made it clear that she, too, could handle herself in a fight. Dmitri and Lev just tried to lie low, refraining from any signs of intimacy—though now that the four of them shared a tent at night, they were allowing themselves the comfort of snuggling together until just before dawn.
Kirill saw this and doubled his strangled attempts to recite his prayer. Belphagor had tried to unbind him at night again and had gotten a black eye from one of the soldiers for his effort when Kirill was heard chanting early in the morning.
He hadn’t had a chance to find out more about the monk from Vashti, and Kirill hadn’t elaborated on his claim that it was he who’d murdered Zeus, but it seemed highly unlikely. For a human of such slight build—taller than Belphagor, but even thinner—to have taken down a Nephil of Zeus’s size would have required years of specialized combat training—or a very large gun. Neither was likely to have been in great supply in a Russian monastery. More likely the monk was being gallant. Or was simply mad.