by Jane Kindred
Lively surprised him by kissing his cheek. Both outcasts and mistrusted at Pyr Amaravati, they had formed a sort of friendship over the last few months.
“You take care,” he told her huskily, hoping she would attribute the strangeness in his voice to his damaged larynx. Oddly, now that he knew what had happened before he’d killed Ola in his madness, it was no longer so painful to see the signs of Lively’s healthy pregnancy. He only hoped it would remain so.
Margarita seemed to have been assigned as Lively’s escort. He nodded to her as she took Lively’s arm and headed out to the road. He noticed the baby’s father carefully avoiding them as he and his demon lover set out on foot as well. Kae suppressed a smile of grim satisfaction at the picture of obvious awkwardness these traveling arrangements created. Anazakia would have her hands full before she was anywhere near civilization.
He was surprised by a hand on his shoulder, and even more surprised when he saw it belonged to Belphagor. He glanced past the demon and saw the half-Seraph glaring daggers at him from across the drive.
Belphagor gave him a calculating smile. “Vasily’s advised me against this, as you can see. But after all we’ve been through together, in light of the loyal service you’ve given to Anazakia, I thought we ought to part amicably, if it’s possible.”
Kae had no idea how to react to the hand the demon extended. When he shook it awkwardly, Belphagor gripped his fingers and leaned in close. “If you’ve steered her wrong in any way, you can bet your last breath I’ll be back to make you pay for it.” The demon didn’t let go, his grip becoming painful. “And one other thing. I know I declined when you first arrived at Pyr Amaravati aching for a beating. Normally, I have a policy of reserving such intimacy for those I care about. But in your case, considering the similar intimacies we’ve already shared, I must confess I would dearly love to beat the devil out of you—if you’ll pardon a terrestrial expression.” He gave Kae a deceptively placid smile. “So when this is all over, if you’re ever in Raqia, do look me up.” With a final squeeze of his hand that Kae thought might actually break the bones, Belphagor released him. “Good luck in your endeavor. And I mean that sincerely.”
Outwardly, Kae gave the demon no more reaction than a mildly raised eyebrow as he returned to his companion. Behind them, Anazakia approached on her mount and he raised his hand in salute to her.
She ignored the gesture. “The forces have been deployed for the Empyrean?” When he confirmed it, she gave him a brusque nod. “Then may the wind be at your wings.” It was the traditional celestial expression of luck.
He flinched at the unpleasant memory this evoked, one forgotten until now, from the night of the Solstice Conflagration when he’d been badly burned. Aeval had used him to stave off the flames overtaking the palace, tearing his element from him in the form of literal wings he hadn’t known he possessed. They’d been made of a sort of rushing but self-contained water, towering behind him and over them both in an arc of indescribable agony as she stretched them back. She’d given him the cold kiss that controlled his blood and the wings had frozen in place as the advancing flames rushed at him, dispelled only when they touched his ice.
He awoke from that pain her consort no more, but the scarred and mutilated man he was now, her field marshal, with no memory of his former service to her. And he’d remained in that blissful amnesia until Anazakia had released him from Aeval’s control, unleashing all his unhappy memories in a violent cataract.
He called after her as she turned her horse about toward the road.
She looked back, and he nearly gasped at the image she struck in the low evening light. The bright curls hanging over her shoulder looked dark, like the golden molasses that had been Omeliea’s. She was so like her sister, yet her own woman now, grown into an elegant grace he’d somehow failed to notice in his self-absorption and self-loathing.
“I wanted to thank you.” He took hold of the horse’s bridle so she couldn’t pull away until he’d had his say. “You’ve never asked for it, but it must be said: you saved my life. One I don’t want, perhaps, but you did an amazing thing for me just the same, giving back mine after I’d destroyed nearly everything of yours. What I’ve done can never be forgiven, nor would I want it to be, but you’ve been kind to me, which I don’t deserve, and I don’t know how to thank you.”
She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind, and perhaps he had.
“You will be a great queen, Nazkia. You already are. May the wind be at your wings.” He turned away before he could see whether her eyes held scorn or pity. He couldn’t bear either.
§
Love put her arm through Kirill’s as they followed Vasily and Belphagor. The atmosphere as the battalion headed into the mountains was almost festive. The strangeness of the hour and the initial silence of the procession soon gave way to a kind of giddy, nervous whispering, and as they turned off the main road to Aravoth onto the one that wound through the mountain, it became an animated banter. After all the planning and waiting, something was finally happening. Within a few short weeks, the troops would be in Elysium, claiming it for the House of Arkhangel’sk.
Lanterns were lit once they left the pass visible from below and filed up the narrow road—those on foot, two abreast, followed by those on horseback in single file—dotting the mountainside with pale, phantom orbs of light.
Love smiled as Belphagor teased Vasily into giving him a piggyback ride for a few meters. Vasily outweighed the shorter demon by at least fifty pounds, and Belphagor clearly enjoyed it when the man he affectionately called “boy” demonstrated his far greater strength.
The battalion marched until an hour or so after midnight, finally setting up camp in a wooded glen deep in from the narrow mountain road. In these heights, the wind was fierce, and she and Kirill took shelter in a small tent together, bringing to mind the journey they’d made across the frozen Empyrean when the Cherubim had taken them to Gehenna. Kirill’s cloistered existence at Solovetsky hadn’t prepared him for creatures whose faces shifted into different, monstrous aspects and spoke with four voices at once, who could fling a man from one end of the world to another with a flap of their wings, or for a Heaven with an eternally circling river of fire at its crown.
Love lay staring at the canopy over their heads, unable to let her mind rest. Kirill was fast asleep, seeming much more at peace since she’d told him they were going home. She wished she hadn’t had to lie to him. She meant to go with him, but not to stay. Kirill might never forgive her for abandoning him, but he would forget her in time, and he’d be happy again in the world he understood. He could return to a life of service and purpose, and his belief in a sacred, loving God, no longer tempted by her to sin.
Once in Russia, she intended to contact the Romani underground and try to persuade them of what she’d seen with her own eyes. The Malakim might have impressed her people with their talk of Heaven, but she’d been here herself. If she could just make them understand the stakes involved, and what the Malakim really offered.
After nearly an hour of sleeplessness, Love gave up and decided to get some air. She climbed out and stood hugging her arms under the thick blanket of stars. There were far more here than she’d ever seen back home, though strangely the constellations seemed the same; she would have expected a sky completely alien to reign over Heaven.
Love sighed. She’d give anything for a cigarette.
A crunch on the pine carpet startled her. She peered into the darkness as Lively emerged from the woods.
The demoness paused before coming forward. “Baby’s pressing on my bladder all the time now. I wish he’d move.”
“It’s a boy? You can tell by magic?”
Lively shrugged. “Not by magic. I just can.” She pressed her hand to her lower back and groaned. “All this walking. I hope I get used to it.”
“I was surprised you were part of the contingent. You’re due in a couple of months, aren’t you?”
“Three. But I have work to do
for Anazakia.”
Though mad with curiosity over what kind of work Lively could be doing, Love didn’t pry. If Anazakia wanted her to know, she’d have told her about it herself. Still, the idea that Anazakia was enlisting magical aid in overthrowing the queen was intriguing. “I don’t suppose you brought your cards with you?”
“I did, actually. I always take them with me.” She regarded Love curiously. “Did you want another reading?”
Love glanced back at the tent to be sure Kirill was still sleeping. “Well…it would be good to keep in touch with my friend.”
“Let me get them.” Lively turned toward her tent, but the flap opened and Margarita climbed out.
“Everything all right?” Margarita eyed Love. “You’ve been gone a while.”
“I was just going to throw some cards for Love. Neither of us can sleep.” Lively ducked down as if to crawl into the tent, but Margarita stopped her.
“I’ll get them.” She retreated inside and returned with Lively’s bag and a large blanket, which she laid out on the ground near the dwindling fire, giving Lively her arm to help her sit.
Love sat across from them both, wondering how she was supposed to get a message to her contact with Margarita sitting there. She couldn’t very well discuss her plans in front of Anazakia’s second-in-command. Not that she was doing something that would harm the mission, but she wanted to keep it to herself in case she failed—and because, as Belphagor had said, Anazakia might lose heart if she knew how badly things were turning against her below. Perhaps she could just send a simple message to possessed85 saying she was on her way home and hoped to speak with him soon.
After setting out the candles, Lively gave her the cards to cut and then laid them on the blanket. Instead of reading the spread like a message, however, she read it as if telling Love’s fortune.
“I see a brave man who opposes evil. A just and generous man. And with him, you share a partnership of harmony and accomplishment, with poignant memories. The world is at your feet, but it isn’t a world you recognize, and all about, you’re surrounded by the aspects of the Cherubim. The man has recently faced disappointment, sorrow, and loss, leaving everything he has known, but he’s retained an unquenchable belief in hope and the heart. Events are unfolding quickly, and help and communication will come from below, but the future isn’t set. Before you is your heart’s desire, and spirits of the earth will hear the messenger from above. The man will face a test of strength he alone can overcome, not through might but through truth, and together, you’ll achieve completion of the heart and home.”
Love’s mouth parted in surprise. Lively seemed to see inside her, though these weren’t the things she’d been thinking about. How much did Lively know of Kirill? She’d described him as if she’d been there in Love’s head from the beginning, seeing a Kirill no one else knew. The description of being in a world they didn’t recognize, surrounded by the aspects of the Cherubim, could have been taken from the moment they found themselves in Heaven—though of course Lively had probably known about that.
What puzzled her most, however, was the prediction of achieving things together. Surely, she’d never see Kirill again once she left him below. She planned to return to Heaven after she made her case to try to restore the terrestrial alliance. She could never abandon Ola, and Kirill could never be happy in Heaven, nor could he truly be happy with Love anywhere, when loving her distracted him from his duty to God.
She decided to focus on the elements that seemed pertinent to the query she’d wanted to pose: help and communication from below, and spirits of the earth hearing the messenger from above. She had to believe this meant her quest would be successful.
“Thank you, Lively.” The nature of the reading still puzzled her, but Lively had given her something special and unexpected. “That was kind of amazing.”
At a sudden click behind them, Love turned to see Belphagor standing before his tent with a cigarette in his mouth, lighting it with a metal Zippo from the world of Man.
“Now that’s just a crime,” he said with the cigarette between his teeth. He shook his head as the tip began to glow, snapped the lighter shut, and dropped it into his pocket. “Turning a perfectly good deck of cards into a parlor game. If I only had a wingcasting die, I’d show you how to read a real fortune.” He grinned and took a long, satisfied drag on the cigarette.
Margarita frowned at him. “You shouldn’t be smoking around Lively.”
Belphagor held the cigarette at his side, looking guilty. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
As he glanced at the ground, about to drop it and stomp it out, Love sprang to her feet. “Oh, don’t, Bel! I’ll share it with you. We can go smoke where Lively won’t have to breathe it.”
Belphagor shrugged, and the two of them set off for the other end of the camp while Lively and Margarita went back to bed.
“I’ve been dying for a smoke.” Love took the cigarette gratefully when Belphagor passed it to her.
“You should have told me.” He gave her a sly grin as she handed it back. “I have sources for all of Heaven’s vices.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette case. “In fact, I have plenty, so you can smoke one of your own.”
Love wondered if he’d had the cigarette case a moment ago. Sleight-of-hand was his specialty; back in the dacha days, it had never occurred to her it could be actual magic. Even now, she didn’t know for sure if he could pull things from the air or just made it look as if he could, but it was, after all, his element. She took one from the case and lit it on his, and they stood enjoying their smokes in the pre-dawn stillness.
“We’re going to miss you, Vasily and I,” he said after a moment.
Love hesitated. For some reason, she had no trouble lying to Kirill or Anazakia, feeling it was in their best interests, but with Belphagor it felt like lying to a teacher or an authority figure of some kind, and she’d never been very good at that.
He narrowed his eyes, already onto her. “What?”
“I overheard you talking to Sarael this morning…or yesterday… Whatever day it is now.” She sucked on her cigarette nervously while he waited. “And I think I might be able to reestablish the lines of communication. I had Lively send a message with her cards to my Romani contact in the network. I think there are a lot of my people who are still believers, who still want to honor the alliance with your kind, but they’re afraid of the Malakim. I think if I could get a bunch of them together, tell them what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen, they’d be behind Anazakia again in a heartbeat. And then maybe we could get through to the rest of the Fallen to let them know what Helga’s done in the name of their liberation.”
Belphagor regarded her when she finally paused to take another drag. “So that’s why you’re going home.”
Love nodded, picking a fleck of tobacco from her tongue. “And I want to come back, if it works out.”
“What about your monk?”
“I haven’t told him. But he’ll be better off in Russia without me.” She exhaled smoke with a sigh, trying not to think about how much that was going to hurt. “Do you think I’ll be able to come back? I can’t stand the thought of not being here when Ola comes home.”
“I don’t see why not. Though there’s only one other human I ever heard of who got in, and that was Knud.”
Love hadn’t thought of Knud in months. The realization made her feel sad, as though she’d left her friend waiting for her somewhere and forgotten him. It was Knud who’d first brought her to the dacha in Arkhangel’sk. He’d been a key member of the gypsy underground, though she hadn’t even known it. But he was gone, killed rescuing Anazakia and Ola from Aeval. He’d died in Heaven, in fact—something she once would have thought impossible, even if she’d believed in Heaven.
Belphagor exhaled slowly as if hiding his own sadness. “But he got in through a breach.”
“What’s a breach?”
“Essentially, Dmitri and the Exiles used the elements to punch
a hole through the spheres.” Belphagor finished his cigarette and ground it out under his boot. “Then they just flew in, right in the middle of Palace Square. You missed a hell of a party that time. Not that I remember much of it myself, just what I saw from Vasily’s back as we jumped into the breach to fly home.”
Love shook her head in wonder. She hadn’t thought about the fact that they must have wings. She peered at Belphagor’s back, but there was no sign of them.
“If you’re serious about going on this little mission of yours…” Belphagor hooked his thumbs in the back pockets of his leather pants. “I think you’re going to need help.”
Pyataya: The Unseen
from the memoirs of the Grand Duchess Anazakia Helisonovna of the House of Arkhangel’sk
Despite the stunning news of a nephew I hadn’t known I had, and the daunting task that lay ahead of me, it was the visitation from the syla that dominated my thoughts from the moment we set out. How could they expect me to go to the Midnight Court? I had to remind myself they only spoke of what they saw. Perhaps it meant they’d already seen me fail at defeating Aeval, and I would return to the world of Man. A part of me secretly hoped for it. But as the moment in the cherry orchard receded into the distance, I began to wonder whether I might have hallucinated it out of anxiety. Had I only heard the voice because I’d been wishing to hear it?
We made camp on the second night near the base of what had once been named Arkhangel’sk Mountain, at the glade where Kae had first been lost to us. We’d stopped for the night in this same spot on the way to Aravoth to meet with the Elohim, and my dreams then had been fitful and disturbing. Once again, I wished we could camp anywhere but here, but it was the most accommodating space.
While the cook prepared our meal, I took a walk in the settling dusk to clear my head. Tomorrow we’d begin traveling on the open road, and this might be the last moment of solitude I would have for some time. I followed the overgrown path where Kae’s horse had once come tearing past me through the snow without its rider as if something had spooked it. I hadn’t gone so far into the glade before, and I was surprised when I rounded a bend and stepped out of the trees at the edge of a cliff.