by Jane Kindred
“No.” My last visit there had seemed like a day but had turned out to be weeks. “I have to get back. I can’t linger here.”
“I understand. You won’t stay any longer than you wish.” He turned toward one of the mirrored panels and pushed it open. “Perhaps if we sit here. You can keep an eye on the time.”
I looked through the door and realized it was no hall, but the shore of a lake in the early evening. It was, in fact, the shore of Lake Superna. I could even see our camp at the end of the point.
“Are we in Heaven?” I stepped through after him. “Am I back?”
Misha closed the door. “Not precisely.” The wall with the carved golden frame in it remained visible, though it appeared to float on the shore. “But we can observe it.” He smiled mischievously. “Sometimes I watch Belyi and his Vasily.” He used the Russian name for Belphagor that had irritated Vasily so in its likeness to his private name for him.
He sat down on the mossy beach and I sat next to him. “The oubliette is being guarded by your nephew, as I think you saw. It’s your nephew the syla are concerned about. Ola will weather this. She’s very strong. But the boy…” Misha regarded me with apprehension. “The boy is not well. It seems someone has placed the spirit of another angel within him.”
“I don’t understand. What spirit? How could that be done?”
“I believe you’re familiar with the magic. That you once separated yourself from your own spirit.”
“My shade.” On the night my family died, I’d used shade magic to sneak out of the palace, storing my essence in a magical vial until I could take it back and reunite my spirit with my true physical form. “You mean…he’s swallowed someone else’s shade?”
What Misha said next was too terrible to be a lie. “Azel Kaeyevich,” he said carefully, “contains the spirit of your brother, Azel Helisonovich.”
Shestaya: Her Steps Go in as Far as Hell
The girl was too quiet. Azel felt certain she’d taken ill, but when he told his mother there was something wrong, she merely left him to his supper, telling him to give the girl her food as usual. But the strange memories and knowledge awakening inside him wouldn’t let him ignore his conviction.
Azel dragged the plank aside and tugged on the rope tied to the bucket. He could tell she hadn’t touched her food since yesterday, not even to take the bowl. It still weighed the same. He pulled the bucket up, and sure enough, the stale bread and cold bowl of gruel were still in it. When he lowered the new bowl and cup, he felt it hit the bottom, but no sound or movement came from below. Azel got on his stomach and peered inside. It was no use. He could see nothing.
“Eat your food!” he called down to her but got no response. “I’ll tell Mama.” He wasn’t sure what kind of threat this might be to her, but it seemed worth a try.
A quiet mewl rose from the pit. “Mama.”
“You miss your mama?” He hoped this wouldn’t start her crying again; she’d only recently stopped. There was silence below, and after a bit, he rose to get the plank, thinking she wouldn’t speak again, but then he heard her small voice.
“Ola’s mama.” So that was her name. It sounded familiar.
“Eat your food, Ola. Your mama won’t come if you don’t.”
This seemed to have the desired effect. Shuffling sounds came from below as if she’d taken the bowl and cup. He left the plank off the hole as he ate his dinner, in case she found sitting in the dark with her food too scary. Since he’d lived in little rooms like this one most of his life, darkness didn’t bother him, but she’d come from the sunlit world, and with the plank over the hole, it must be even darker at the bottom than up here. It couldn’t hurt to leave the hole uncovered. Even if it was for her protection, no one could see her down there with the upstairs door closed.
He didn’t put the plank back until the next evening when his mother came with supper, only covering it for a few minutes before she entered. She took the crusty, untouched bowl along with his empty one but didn’t say a word. When she’d gone, Azel pulled the plank aside again and dragged the bucket up the side of the oubliette. The empty vessels were in it this time, and underneath the bowl, he found something unexpected: a piece of paper folded in quarters and worn, as though it had been carried about in a pocket for some time.
He lowered Ola’s supper and opened the paper. It was a picture, so realistic he turned it over in amazement as if he might see the back of the image there, like a magical world through the wrong side of a mirror. He looked again at the image, studying it carefully. Two men stood smiling beside a pretty lady holding a baby girl. The two men he didn’t know, and the baby he assumed was Ola. But he’d seen the pretty lady before. He’d seen her in a dream—or many dreams, perhaps. He felt as if he knew her.
“Pretty lady,” he said aloud, as if that would make him remember.
Ola’s voice, quiet but firm, rose from the oubliette. “Ola’s mama.”
§
The Supernal Army had been sighted south of the pass. Kae was meeting with the Virtuous Court of the Elohim at the Hekhaloth in Aravoth City when a runner came from Gihon Falls with the news shortly after breakfast. He rose and took his leave. Fool’s mission or not, he would be there beside his men when Aeval came for Aravoth.
As he left the walled city and pounded over the stone bridge above the Gihon, the heavy iron gate beyond the decorative platinum pair lowered behind him, barred from within. The Virtuous Army was now on its own against the might of the Firmament. They had a chance, though a slim one, if their numbers weren’t known. Aeval had left these details to her field marshal, exercising such control over his thinking it was as if his mind were merely an extra repository for the facts she had no room for, or interest in, within her own. Having a head for numbers and details, Kae hadn’t kept any logs, and though it tormented him in other contexts, he also had a nearly eidetic memory.
His troops were camped along the escarpment on the Aravothan side of the Gihon Valley ravine, hiding them from view except for the single company that would ride out with him to close off the pass at the Falls. As he reached the camp, he gave the signal to mount up, and the waiting Virtues leapt into their saddles to fall in behind him. He was pleased to see a sense of excitement about them. They were ready for battle after such a long wait.
Kae observed them with a nod of approval, lined up on the scarp. They were in every way the equals of the troops he’d once commanded, the same they were now about to face, and in some ways these troops were superior. He was counting on Aeval’s arrogance and on her underestimation of the Virtues, based on the battle at Gehenna. It could not be considered chivalrous for men to hide in the hills, and the Virtuous Army was nothing if not chivalrous.
This first company would ride out ahead of the ravine to meet Aeval as if to negotiate the terms of battle and with their ranks visible at the mouth of the pass, they would dispatch a messenger to meet the queen’s herald on the road to give her false terms. Aeval would expect it over in an instant, but as her troops advanced, they would find the ground more treacherous than they expected. Kae’s men had spent the last week littering the road with the spikes of iron caltrops. Kae smiled grimly. If only he could see her face when she discovered they were being ambushed.
“Remember,” he exhorted his men in as loud a voice as he could muster, “today you are not Virtuous. Today you are as cunning and coarse as the demons of Raqia. But what you sacrifice today, whether it is merely your pride and dignity among the Host or your life itself, you give for Aravoth and Anazakia, that a more virtuous Heaven may emerge. Aeval must at all costs be deposed.”
§
They’d searched Lake Superna all night, sending divers as deep as they could go—even Vasily had braved the lake, despite his element’s natural distaste for being submerged in water. But Anazakia’s body was nowhere to be found. Belphagor came up from his latest dive unable to face Vasily’s eyes.
Love was devastated, again blaming herself for something beyond
her control, having been the only one with Anazakia when she’d been overcome by a sudden wave upon the lake. For once, Belphagor was glad of the monk Kirill’s presence to comfort her. He was barely capable of comforting Vasily himself. Fear and grief were not things Vasily did well. He channeled it into anger as usual, raging at everyone within earshot that Anazakia ought to have been accompanied by two members of her Guard at all times, and that at the very least, Margarita should have been with her.
Dripping and breathing hard from her last dive, Margarita stood taking it stoically. Whenever Vasily stopped to demand a response, she merely agreed with his rebuke and accepted full responsibility, infuriating him further. Vasily wanted a fight, and the Nephil wasn’t going to give it to him. Belphagor knew full well what that meant, and he was far too tired for the part he knew he would have to play. But there was nothing he wouldn’t do for his malchik.
“Stop yelling at Margarita,” he said, and waited for the explosion.
Vasily stared at him for a full five seconds before it came. “And where the hell were you? You’ve been her self-appointed protector since the day you stripped her and shaved her head!”
Belphagor cringed inwardly at the way this must sound to the Virtues, who were most likely unaware of the disguise he’d devised for Anazakia when she’d first fled Heaven. “I was right next to you, love. As I’ve been through all of this.”
“And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Vasily’s eyes were full of fire. “Nobody forced you to come! You could have stayed with that little suka, your precious Misha, rubbing you down with oil for all eternity.”
Belphagor took a deep breath to still his response to that word. Vasily knew he didn’t care for the connotations of the Russian term. Had he said “bitch” in angelic, it wouldn’t have had the sting, and Vasily was trying desperately to sting.
“Yes, I could have. But I didn’t, did I?”
Vasily fixed him with the glare of seraphic rage burning deep within his pupils, turning the irises red. “Fuck you, Belphagor.” He turned on his heel and headed into a tangle of trees along the shore.
§
Love was inconsolable. Kirill sat with her in their tent and tried to calm her, but he couldn’t stop her crying. He wanted to tell her what he’d seen in the night, that the strange being had come to him once more and told him to go to a place called Arcadia to find the children, but he was terrified of appearing mad to her. He knew his behavior seemed strange to the unbelievers, that they suspected him of madness and looked at him with pity. He couldn’t bear to see that look in Love’s sable eyes.
Something the angel had said to him, however, made him believe Anazakia would be found alive and unharmed, and he wished he could convince Love of it. The angel had spoken of the “rightful queen” and how she would be restored to the throne if Kirill could save the boy from demons.
Love at last fell asleep in his arms, and when the pregnant girl came to offer them something to eat near suppertime, Kirill shook his head silently, and she left them in peace. He dared to brush Love’s dark curls from her face as she lay sleeping beside him, and his heart ached at what she’d endured, and his part in it. All that time he’d kept her and the child at the monastery, though she’d begged him to release her, he’d believed in the righteousness of his calling. He thought he’d been visited by an angel then as well, but Zeus had been no angel. Love called him one of the Nephilim, and this Kirill believed—though he thought she must be mistaken when she claimed Margarita was one of his kin.
He clenched his fist in mid-air at the thought of Zeus touching Love. Kirill might have damned himself by killing the Nephil, but he couldn’t truly regret it. Love was something to be cherished, not abused, and when Kirill had seen that devil raise his hand to her, knowing how he’d violated her, he’d acted out of reflex. In a way, though it had forever stained his soul, he had come to feel he’d done God’s work that night. That he loved her could not be wrong. How could he not love her? It was only the temptation of the flesh he must abjure.
She woke him in the night, fretting in a dream, and he soothed her with a kiss on her brow. Love turned and clung to him, her misery returning to her as she awakened, and he couldn’t help but kiss her again. He kissed her tears, as he felt God must do when his children suffered, and then he held her face in his hands and kissed her again with less godly intentions. Shocked at himself, he pulled away, but she grasped his arms and kissed him urgently, pleadingly, as if his mouth were her lifeline. He couldn’t refuse her.
He whispered her name into her hair, careful not to call her by her given name, Lyubov, although the word in his language held more meaning for him than the English version she preferred; for some reason, the name upset her. But it was how he thought of her, his Lyuba. He felt a most ungodly passion rising within him, and by the way she pressed against him, he could tell she felt it too. He blushed to his roots as he realized she must feel his passion literally, but he had no time for shame as she franticly unbuttoned his robes.
“Please touch me, Kirill.” The desperate entreaty was a warm breath against his ear, and he shivered with need for her. He couldn’t refuse her this any longer. He couldn’t refuse himself.
She wriggled out of her pants and lifted her shirt over her head, and he nearly cried out when she pressed her naked breasts against his bare flesh. If this was damnation, he was going to be damned thoroughly. Throwing his vows into a heap with his robes, he pulled her body against his and rolled her onto her back as her legs wrapped around him. Her soft hands guided him and he muffled a gasp against her throat as he entered her, his flesh electrified by the touch of her skin.
Though well practiced in self-denial, he could barely hold back his completion when she made soft sounds beneath him, almost mournful yet clearly expressions of her pleasure. The idea that he was pleasing her drove him to press on, gathering her against him with more certainty and stamina. That this same flesh had been insulted by Zeus’s brutality under Kirill’s own watch drew mournful sounds of his own from him. This union was divine and the body that admitted him to this divine mystery was sacred.
Love clutched him suddenly, arching beneath him, and made a sound like a mewling kitten as she closed her lips tight as if holding in a much louder cry. For a terrible moment, he thought he’d hurt her, and then she grabbed the back of his neck and pressed her mouth to his, prodding him open with her tongue just as he had opened her, and sighing into him in obvious delight. Tasting that sound on her tongue, he relinquished control and spilled his seed into her, shivering with an ecstatic fervor with which the quiet bliss of communion with God could not compare. He was thoroughly damned, and he didn’t seem to care.
Still tingling with his release as they curled together, he didn’t realize he’d begun to murmur the Prayer of the Heart until she quieted him with her lips against his mouth.
§
Belphagor sat sharing a smoke by the fire with a number of Virtues to whom he’d introduced this vice. The small bonfire had been burning since last night to illuminate the beach as they searched, and no one had the heart yet to extinguish it. Neither had anyone yet spoken the obvious: the war had ended before it began.
But Ola still needed to be brought home, and he intended to do it. Belphagor was working up the nerve to take command of the battalion and employ them on a full frontal assault against Helga’s demons, but he supposed he ought to talk to Margarita first.
As he set another cigarette between his lips and pulled out his lighter, one hand cupped around the flame against the wind, something down the beach caught his eye. The cigarette dropped from his open mouth. He glanced at the Virtues to see if he was imagining what he saw, but they were all transfixed on the vision: Anazakia, walking toward them nonchalantly from the secluded northern shore of the lake as if she’d just gone for a swim.
He swore at the flame burning his hand and dropped the lighter in the dirt as he jumped up. Several Virtues were already running toward her, and she looked
startled when they converged on her.
“Your Supernal Highness.” The smile on his face as he reached her felt as if it were the biggest, most foolish grin he’d ever worn.
Anazakia glanced about in dismay. “What’s going on? Why is everyone staring at me as if they’d seen a ghost?”
“Perhaps because they have, Your Supernal Highness.” He threw protocol to the wind and embraced her, which startled her more. “We were sure you’d drowned,” he told her as he let her go.
Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh! Love! I completely forgot how it must have looked to her. Where is she? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare anyone.”
Belphagor lifted his pierced brow. “You forgot for a day and a half?”
“A day and a half?” Her expression grew vexed. “Damn that Misha! He said it would only be a moment.”
“Misha?”
“I spoke with him in the Midnight Court. The syla brought me under. I didn’t even know they could.”
“Nor did I.” As Vasily emerged from the woods behind her and stood stupefied at the edge of the trees, Belphagor murmured under his breath, “Maybe keep the part about Misha to yourself.”
Recovering from his shock in an instant, Vasily barreled down the slope of the beach and lifted Anazakia off the ground, making her squeal in surprise. Belphagor lowered his head to hide his smile at the thought of how he might correct Vasily for the insolence he’d displayed earlier. Now that it was no longer tinged with grief, it would be pure pleasure to give him exactly what he needed.
“Nazkia, where have you been?” Vasily’s voice was gruff with emotion. “What happened?”
She answered breathlessly, held tight in his arms. “The syla sent the rusalki to bring me to the Midnight Court. I thought I was only there for a few minutes, but you know how time goes there.”
Belphagor cleared his throat as the angel made a small sound of distress. “Malchik. You’re squeezing the air out of her.” Vasily set her down, but seemed reluctant to let go of her.