by Jane Kindred
A bountiful breakfast of a thick egg bread, fried and dipped in sugar with preserves of every description, soft-boiled eggs in silver cups dabbed with sweet clotted cream, and piles of steaming curls of bacon, was followed by a kind of bittersweet hot cocoa. As we sat sipping our drinks, we heard a small commotion in the outer rooms of the house. Sarael excused himself and went to investigate. When he returned, he apologized for the interruption but said my presence was needed.
Puzzled, I set down my drink and followed him through the manor. In the vestibule, the heavy doors were open and sheets of ice were battering the tiles. A handful of anxious servants were standing about as if uncertain of their roles, and two heavily wrapped Virtues stood in the doorway. Between them, they gripped a kneeling man who could barely hold himself up on his own, a soaked and ice-crusted black coat upon his back and his bare head bowed. He raised his head and stared at me out of a red, watery eye beside his leather mask.
“Kae.” I looked to the Virtues. “What are you doing? Let him in!”
“He will not come in, Your Supernal Highness.”
“I’ve come to surrender myself.” His rasping voice paused as he gasped for breath in the cold. “To the rightful queen of Heaven.”
I put my hand to my throat, shocked by the sound of him. “Please, Kae. Just come inside.” I reached down to him, but he refused.
“Wherever the Sar keeps his prisoners. Take me there.”
Sarael frowned beside me. “I do not keep prisoners. If you will come in, we will arrange a room for you—”
“The stables, then.” It seemed he was using the last of his voice before he lost it.
Sarael looked at me. “If he will not go anywhere else…”
“All right.” I pulled my robe close. “Please, just get him somewhere dry.” As the Virtues led him away, staggering between them, I hurried upstairs to change into my outdoor clothes.
When I returned, Sarael was waiting with a bundle of warm clothes and blankets. “There’s a passage from the house to the stables. You won’t need to go out into the ice.” He led the way through a subterranean tunnel, lit by oil lamps, to the large covered buildings at the other end of his estate. As he opened the door into the main stable, he handed me the bundle and gave me a key. “Just use this when you want to come back. I’ll leave you alone with him.”
The building was also lit with lamps along the stalls, as though the servants came through to check and fill them at all hours. I found Kae huddled in an empty stall at the far end, where the Virtues waited with him.
“I’ll take care of him, thank you.” I nodded to them, and they bowed and went out. “Take this off,” I ordered, crouching down to unbutton the frozen coat and pull it from his limbs. He was soaked to the skin, and he shivered uncontrollably as he allowed me to take off his shirt and wrap him in a blanket. My eyes lingered on the scarring that followed the knotted flesh on his face down the side of his neck and over his shoulders. “When you’ve warmed up, I want you to put these on.” I set the clothes beside him on a bale of hay. “But I wish you’d come inside the house. Sarael has a soothing bath—”
“No,” he croaked. “Not a guest. Your prisoner.”
I shivered. “I don’t understand.”
He looked at me piercingly with his single eye. “You do.” He mustered his resources to force his voice through his larynx. “I am a traitor to the throne of the Firmament of Shehaqim and the House of Arkhangel’sk. I am a murderer. I have struck down His Supernal Majesty the Principality Helison Alimielovich of the House of Arkhangel’sk and Her Supernal Majesty the queen Sefira Huzievna, as well as His Supernal Highness the Grand Duke Azel Helisonovich, the heir to the throne.”
“Stop it.” I backed away from him.
“I have murdered in cold blood Their Supernal Highnesses the Grand Duchesses Maia and Tatia Helisonovna.”
“Stop it!”
“I have murdered—my Ola!” His voice cracked and broke as he said her name. He threw himself at my feet, and I couldn’t bear to look at him a moment longer. I couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t grab a pitchfork from the wall and run him through with it. I turned in a manner as unlike the rightful queen of Heaven as could be, and fled.
Dvadtsat Vtoroe: Crime and Punishment
The wretched grand duchess had proven a much greater thorn in Aeval’s side than she’d ever dreamed. She had stolen Aeval’s angel.
The queen had woken in the middle of the night to the field marshal’s Second pounding on her door. She hated to be disturbed after such complete satisfaction, and she’d nearly dashed his head into the stone walls of Gehenna’s ancient corridor before waking enough to realize Kae was gone.
When Captain Jusguarin informed her of the breach of the citadel by a regiment of mere Virtues, she stormed down the stairs of the tower. She needed her field marshal to keep these fools in line. But he was nowhere to be found.
From the dungeon, the guards assigned to watch it were brought to Aeval, having been found locked in the very cell they were charged with guarding. She had them beaten, and while they pleaded in vain for mercy, they told her the field marshal himself had locked them in and had released the prisoners.
She’d doubted his loyalty when he failed to follow her wishes with regard to that foul monk. She hadn’t been able to stand the sight of that breed since the miserable Rasputin had ruined her plans, and the presence of one in her Heaven was like the presence of a cockroach.
But Kae had fucked her when she’d ordered it, and she was thrilled by his willing submission. As with her demon Belphagor when she’d possessed him, she’d believed she now owned Kae fully. It was something she’d long dreamed of, but it hadn’t been practical: to see him fully cognizant of what he did, fully debased, her willing slave. And unlike with the demon, there was no need to call his blood to even one part of his body to obtain his compliance. He serviced her with consent. But all the while, he’d been planning to betray her.
Facing no resistance to their occupation of Heaven’s princedoms, her troops had grown lazy and indolent, and though they outnumbered the Virtues overrunning the citadel by three to two, what should have been a rout became a draw. The Virtues eventually retreated to Aravoth, but not before annihilating nearly a third of her forces. She had half a mind to annihilate the rest herself.
Gehenna was worthless to her as a stronghold. It was a place where angels of old had fled conflict and hidden like cowards. She gathered what remained of her regiment and returned south toward Zevul. Their number was inadequate for an assault on Aravoth, but when she assembled her army in Elysium after the spring thaw, they would head north to the Aravoth Pass and Aeval would make certain there was not a Virtue left in Heaven.
…
It wasn’t until Belphagor ran into the Virtue Loquel that he discovered what had called Anazakia away. Hoping to distract his mind from the hopeless impotence of being unable to do anything to find Ola, he’d gone to Sarael’s impressive library in search of something to read. The young Virtue was alone when he arrived, and he stood with a slight bow toward Belphagor.
“Your Supernal Highness.”
Belphagor laughed, and the Virtue gave him a look that was slightly surprised and slightly wounded. “I’m not anybody’s highness. Just Belphagor of Raqia—demon, cardsharp, and common thief, at your service.” He gave the Virtue his own impish bow.
“I apologize. I knew one of you was the grand duke; I just assumed it was you. I wanted to thank you for your kindness at Gehenna.”
He shrugged. “It was only common decency. I really didn’t do much—and I might have done nothing had Vasily not chastised me.” He started to ask whom the Virtue meant by “the grand duke,” but Loquel went on, seeming anxious to speak.
“My brother-blades and I would like to offer ourselves in your service. It is our custom to die together if our troop is disgraced…and we have been much disgraced. But the feeling of the troop is that we are in your debt, and we would like to repay it.”
Belphagor was baffled by this entire exchange, as if he’d somehow walked in on the middle of it.
“If our offer doesn’t please you, we’re prepared to dispatch ourselves as planned with no ill feelings toward you.”
“I’m not sure I understand you.” Belphagor blanched at what he thought he understood.
Loquel looked down at his feet. “I am not the best elocutionist. The others thought it ought to be me who presented our offer, as your kindness to me was great, and my failure as a soldier greater.” He colored, an impressive thing in a Virtue, whose skin was like the surface of a pearl.
“Loquel.” Belphagor rebuked him kindly. “You did nothing to disgrace yourself.”
The angel raised his head, and the depth of pain in his eyes stunned Belphagor. He took Loquel’s hand and sat down in the armchair he’d been occupying, pulling Loquel gently onto his lap. He hoped this wouldn’t be further humiliation for him, but the young man seemed to be crying out for it.
“It is no failure to be unused to pain. I can tell you this because I’ve been a master at it.” He lifted Loquel’s chin. “I’ve broken one like you before, and I didn’t start so crudely. Young flesh requires conditioning.” He smiled. “And even an old dog like myself can be pushed beyond his limits, especially when taken by surprise.” He was gratified to see his instincts were still good. Loquel had calmed at his touch instead of expressing discomfort. “That very tool was used on me once,” he admitted. “And though it took a few more blows, I was screaming and begging for mercy before it ended. When I was beaten again on top of those same wounds, I was willing to debase myself, to do anything to make it stop. Compared to what I did—what I was made to say—you behaved more than admirably.”
“Those scars on your back.” Loquel spoke with awe.
“From that implement and another I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.” As he said the last, he realized it wasn’t quite true. He had dreams of using it on Kae.
“But when the field marshal struck you, you hardly seemed to notice it.”
“Because I knew what was coming. I used my breath to transform the pain, dispersing it, like oxygen through the blood.”
Loquel lowered his voice. “Could you teach me that?”
Belphagor smiled. “I would love to. To be able to,” he amended. “I’m not certain I can any longer.” It occurred to him he was contradicting within himself the very thing he was telling Loquel. He was unwilling to be as kind to himself as he was to this Virtue he hardly knew, refusing to forgive himself for having broken under Kae’s knut. He drew Loquel forward by the hand, subtly guiding him to his feet, and stood to relinquish the chair to him.
“This offer,” he said. “You’re not telling me the entire unit will…kill yourselves…if I don’t accept?”
“Not because you don’t accept. But yes. That is our wish, to join our fallen brothers. We only mean to defer it out of a debt to you and the grand duke.”
Belphagor was still baffled. “And whom do you mean by the ’grand duke’?”
“His Supernal Highness, of course. Grand Duke Vasily of the House of Arcadia.”
Belphagor gaped at him.
“I thought that you and he—are you not—?” Loquel began to blush again.
“We are,” Belphagor assured him. “But Grand Duke—the House of Arcadia…I’m not sure where you heard that.”
“From Sar Sarael. I asked him your names. Was he mistaken?”
Belphagor shook his head ruefully. “It seems I may have missed more than one thing while I was on the march with the Queen’s Army.”
Though he’d admitted with great embarrassment how Lively had come to be carrying his second child, Vasily had seemed reluctant to discuss his first trip to Aravoth, and conversation had been difficult enough on the Empyrean plains that Belphagor hadn’t pressed.
He supposed it was time he and Vasily had a talk. “Tell your brothers we accept your offer. I’m not sure I understand what it means yet, but absolutely, we accept it.” He paused. “And I’ll give serious thought to tutoring you.” An old familiar warmth spread through him at the thought.
Loquel smiled. “I’d like that. Especially with that—unpleasant man here.”
“What unpleasant man?”
Loquel gave a slight shudder. “The field marshal. He followed us through the ice storm. He arrived this morning.”
…
Love stretched her arms against the tile of the Virtuous bath and closed her eyes, breathing in the scented steam. It was the smoothest water she’d ever felt, like bathing in baby oil—but the comparison brought to mind the baths she’d given Ola and the sweet scent on her afterward.
Tears rolled down Love’s cheeks in the steam. The arduousness of the journey across the frozen Empyrean had occupied her mind until now, but here at Pyr Amaravati there was nothing but time and quiet. She could barely look at Anazakia—at any of them. Everyone was haunted. It was a bitter irony that after all this time as a prisoner, all she wanted now was to be with Ola, wherever that miserable Helga had taken her.
If only she’d had some of that magical fire. Love had seen it on Anazakia’s skin when Vasily touched her, back at the dacha before all this, but it was one of the many things she told herself was just a trick of the light or the power of suggestion. She wished she could go back to that simple denial.
But Kirill was having much more trouble, for the very fact that he believed. Love ached to be able to help him. He was so lost. She’d long since stopped feeling any sort of satisfaction at his anxiety, any feeling that he was reaping what he’d sown. He had the purest heart and the most guileless of motives. Zeus had violated Kirill’s innocence as surely as he’d violated Love. She couldn’t be anything but glad the bastard was dead, but his killing was the irreversible step that had damaged Kirill beyond repair. He was so certain everything that had happened since was his punishment, that God had rightly abandoned him.
Love had always been a bit derisive of religious faith. Every believer she’d ever known had been betrayed in some sense by the arbitrary nature of the world, holding out faith as if it could make them immune to life’s cruelties, and when it didn’t, finding themselves shocked and appalled. But Kirill didn’t deserve this rude awakening.
She went looking for him after her bath as the manor began to quiet for the evening and found him in his room. In the grip of the storm, Pyr Amaravati felt like Arkhangel’sk in winter, where the daylight hours seemed dreamlike and evening came not long after midday. He was praying, as usual.
She said his name softly from the doorway, reluctant to interrupt him, but pained at the futility of his devotion.
Kirill looked up and dropped his chotki into his pocket. “Sister Lyubov.” His face lit up in a smile. “Please come in.”
“It’s Love, if you don’t mind.” She sat beside him on the bed. “No one has ever called me that but my family—and Zeus.”
Kirill’s blue eyes looked stricken. “I apologize. Of course.” He observed her. “Your family. They must be worried about you.”
Love sighed. “No, not really.” She’d left home when she was fourteen, preferring life on the streets to dealing with an alcoholic stepfather and a mother who thought he could do no wrong. Her brothers and sisters had always seemed like strangers. “Anazakia and Vasily and Belphagor…they’re my family.”
“And little Ola.”
Love nodded, not trusting her voice to talk about Ola. “I wanted to check and see how your shoulder was healing.” She touched the collar of his robe. “May I?”
He shrugged and she unbuttoned it enough to reveal his bandage, lifting it to see that the flesh looked pink and healthy beneath it.
“I don’t think you need this anymore.” She began to unwrap his shoulder. “There’s a lovely bath just at the end of this hall. You should take a soak in it. It will do you good.”
“Sister Love.” He placed his hand over hers against the bandage.
“Just Love.” She t
ried to continue, but he stopped her.
“Love.” His expression was earnest. “You mustn’t touch me like this.”
“Why? I’m just taking off the bandage.”
“Because.” He looked pained. “Because—when your fingers touch my skin, I desire it.”
Love studied him for a moment. “And desire is wrong?”
“I have taken a vow before God.”
“Kirill.” She wasn’t certain if what she was about to say to him was kindness or cruelty. “Where is God if he isn’t in Heaven?”
Kirill jumped up from the bed and went to the door, holding it in an invitation for her to leave. “You don’t know what you’re saying.” His aquamarine eyes flashed with anger.
“I know exactly what I’m saying. Was God at Solovetsky when he allowed a demon to trick you into imprisoning an innocent child? Where was he, Kirill? Was he there watching when Zeus hurt me?”
“Men—sin!”
Love had made a mistake. He’d never been angry with her before. He had been her friend, and she was being cruel to him, taking the only thing he had left.
“I’m sorry, Kirill.” She stood up. “I’m very sorry.” Though she tried not to, she was crying as she hurried past him, and he caught her by the arm.
“No.” He shook his head when she looked up, his sea-blue eyes also full of tears. He closed the door. “No, I’m sorry. I have wronged you. That is why God has abandoned me, because of what I let happen to you in His house.” Kirill sank to his knees before her and held her hand in both of his. “Please forgive me.” He wept openly. “God cannot forgive me for what I’ve done.”