The Armies of Heaven

by Jane Kindred

  This next series seemed to assume Lively was back in the fold: Departing the coast. How near are you? How many Virtues? How the hell had Helga discovered she was traveling with Anazakia’s troops? Lively wished for all the Heavens not to answer, but Helga had become so strong somehow in recent months. Her belly ached in an ominous, low place, and the longer she held out, the more alarming the pain became, squeezing at her like a band of tightening cord, until she knew she had no choice but to obey.

  With beads of sweat dotting her brow, she shuffled the cards and laid them out: Dominion of spindles—six days’ travel. Archangel of knives—a pair of companies. And Principality of tricks—I will obey. She brushed angrily at the tear that escaped as she turned over the last card. This baby had made her soft. It was all she’d ever been good for, anyway—obeying Master Apothecary, obeying Auntie Helga. She’d been born a demoness. It was her lot in life to be quiet, keep still, and take whatever her betters wanted to put inside her.

  §

  The light hurt his head. Azel hid his face against his mother’s arm and at first she allowed this, but after a few hours on the road, she insisted he sit up straight. He was to be a great ruler, she said, and could not be seen sniveling like a baby.

  “It’s too bright, Mama.”

  To his surprise, she slapped him, though she was immediately contrite. “I’m sorry, darling.” She stroked his hair as his cheek throbbed. “But I’ve told you, you mustn’t call me that anymore. Remember the words I taught you. Madam Regent.”

  He was even more surprised when she gave him a sweet from her pocket. He couldn’t remember ever having had one, not in his brief years, but as he unwrapped it and put it into his mouth, he knew the other boy in his head had tasted sweets many times before. He looked up sharply at Helga—Helga—when had he ever called her by her given name? He wasn’t even sure he’d heard it before.

  “Yes, Madam Regent.”

  “Very good, Master Azel.” She smiled and gave him another sweet.

  This one he tucked away in his pocket. He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes against the sun, and when he opened them again, it was dark and the carriage had stopped.

  “This way, Your Supernal Highness.”

  He looked up at the sound of the distinctly unpleasant voice to see one of the golden-white Cherubim glowing beside the carriage. The Cherub helped him down and led him across a red carpet stretched over the muddy ground to the cheery entry hall of an inn. Helga was speaking with a man in a funny suit—Helga again. It seemed he could no longer think of her as his mother now the name had lodged itself in his head. Had she ever been his mother? Mothers were young, like the pretty lady in the picture he’d folded over and over into a tiny, thick square in his pocket to keep Helga from seeing it. Anazakia.

  “Did we leave the little girl in the other place?” he asked the Cherub to drown out the odd name that had sprung to mind.

  “Quiet, boy!” the Cherub snarled at him, and bent down to his level. “You must not speak of the girl,” he said in a low growl, turning his lion aspect to Azel for a moment before his head swiveled once more and looked only like a man. The Cherub glanced at Helga, busily conferring with the innkeeper. “Perhaps you’ll see her again.” An odd grin crossed his face. “But do not speak of her.”

  “You shall have your own bed, Master Azel,” Helga announced as she came over to him. “I’ve explained to the innkeeper that you are the Grand Duke Azel Kaeyevich, and they’ve made up their finest appointments for you.”

  He had no idea what “appointments” were, nor why there were suddenly so many extra words about his name, but he’d never had his own bed before and he found this quite exciting.

  Helga apparently had her own “appointments,” and she left him in the care of the Cherub to take him to his room. He was dumbfounded at first when he saw it—an entire room the size of the little house he’d first lived in before they’d begun to travel, with a bed as big as the room with the oubliette, and it was all for him—but as the Cherub helped him off with his traveling coat, it suddenly seemed ordinary. He stood patiently, holding out his arms, while the Cherub undressed him from his day clothes and placed a sleeping gown over his head. Though he’d taken care of himself since he could remember, it seemed the most ordinary thing in the world for a servant to dress him.

  The Cherub went out, leaving Azel sitting in the middle of the big bed, and then returned shortly with a large trunk. There were small holes in the top and sides. Azel had seen it before.

  “That’s mine.” He’d ridden in it to protect him from the sun when they traveled. Only…he’d sat in the carriage with sun shining down on him today and nothing had happened to him.

  “It is yours to watch.” The Cherub set it down and the box made a tiny whimper.

  Azel slipped off the bed and crouched to peer through the holes. The little girl lay inside, apparently asleep. As he walked away, the Cherub gave him an unnerving wink with his eagle aspect swiveling about to the back and bid him good night.

  Azel stared into the box. She didn’t just look asleep, in fact; she looked dead. But he’d heard the noise when the Cherub set the box down, so she must be alive. He was surprised at how little she was after all. Her hair, though tangled and dull, was the color of a summer sunset. He had no idea where he’d ever seen a summer sunset before, but he knew this was the color.

  “Ola,” he whispered, but she didn’t stir. After a bit, he crawled under the covers of the big bed and went to sleep.

  He woke some hours later to the sound of crying. Azel jumped from the bed and hurried to the box. He knew Helga wouldn’t like it if anyone heard the girl. It was still dark and he couldn’t see inside.

  “Ola, stop that!”

  She only cried harder.

  “Your mama will be angry with you,” he told her sternly. “You have to be a good girl if you want her to come.”

  Ola choked on her tears, coughing and hiccupping as she tried to obey. Azel went to the chair where his clothes had been draped neatly by the Cherub and fished in the pocket of his pants for the sweet Helga had given him. He found the little square of paper as well. He poked the foil packet through one of the holes and pushed the paper through after it, and felt Ola’s small fingers reaching for it as her crying stopped. After a moment, he heard her unfolding the sheet carefully, though she certainly couldn’t have been able to see anything on it in the dark.

  “Ola’s mama?” she sniffled.

  “That’s your paper. The painting of your mama and those other people.”

  “Ola’s papa. Ola’s mama. Baby Ola. Beli.” She recited words she must have learned by rote.

  Azel crawled back into bed. “Go to sleep, Ola.” He could hear her whispering the names to herself as he drifted off to sleep.

  In the morning, the Cherub came and dressed him, and Azel thought to himself, This is not a Cherub’s job. He ought to have a valet, an ordinary angel of the servant class. Azel felt sick to his stomach, and he put his hands over his ears as if he could stop the thoughts that didn’t belong to him.

  The Cherub went out again and when he returned, he brought a large tray of food, which he set before Azel on the bed. Azel had never seen so much food in one place, or so many kinds of food. This couldn’t be for him.

  “Sit. Eat,” ordered the Cherub.

  Azel sat, too overwhelmed to know where to begin. The Cherub fitted a metal spout over a glass bottle containing a brownish liquid and then unlocked the top of Ola’s box. Azel watched carefully to see how the latch worked. He’d never been able to figure it out from inside—the holes were too small to get his fingers far enough out to reach—but he saw now it didn’t require a key. Ola turned her head away from the bottle as the Cherub offered it to her, but he pulled her by the hair and pushed it into her mouth, not letting go until she held it for herself and began to drink.

  “You drink it all,” the Cherub growled at her.

  Azel realized the eagle face was staring
at him from the back of the Cherub’s head, and he ducked his own head and began to eat from the bowl of sliced peaches in cream. The Cherub waited until Ola had emptied the bottle before taking it back and latching the box once more.

  After the Cherub left him, Azel took a sweet bun from the tray and slipped down from the bed. When he’d gotten the latch unhooked, he opened the box and reached in to give the sweet bun to Ola, but she lay on the bottom of the box with her eyes half closed.

  “Don’t you want to eat?” he asked. “Aren’t you hungry?”

  “Lub,” she said, as her eyes fluttered shut. “Want Lub.”

  He didn’t recognize this word. Azel shrugged and closed the box and ate the sweet bun himself.

  §

  They had gone at a dizzying pace from Iriy, pushing the horses to their limits; Love could tell Belphagor was anxious about leaving Anazakia on her own. They arrived in Raqia on the fourth day out, and slipped through a portal in the back of an apteka to descend what Belphagor called the Hell Staircase. When Love asked if it actually led to hell, he laughed.

  “Most angels refer to Raqia itself as hell. And demons like to call the world of Man hell, purely out of affection. But the concept is an entirely invented one. The Host would have liked nothing more than to relegate the Fallen to another world altogether. As the next best thing, they scare their children with stories of sending them there if they don’t eat their turnips.”

  “That’s not quite true,” said Loquel. The quiet Virtue had become much more at ease over the past few days of traveling as a small group, and he seemed particularly animated when Belphagor paid him attention. He grinned. “We don’t eat turnips in Aravoth.”

  “Fair enough, fair Loquel,” said Belphagor with a wink.

  Love felt a little annoyed for Vasily’s sake. Belphagor was an incorrigible flirt.

  The stairs were awkward and exhausting after traveling so many miles on horseback. Just as soon as she’d gotten used to one set of unused muscles, another had come into play. It didn’t help that the gloom seemed barely penetrated by the torch Belphagor carried, as if it had substance beyond the absence of light, like a fog of darkness that actually consumed it. She was relieved when they reached the bottom after several hours, and surprised when she discovered a train platform in the far east of Russia waited at the end.

  No one questioned them as they boarded, and Love suspected Belphagor was using his charm in some literal way to prevent the provodnik from bothering them for tickets. The Virtues, however, drew wide stares from the passengers as they made their way to the compartments Belphagor had booked.

  “They’re with the circus,” he told the curious.

  She’d never come this far east, and under different circumstances, Love would have spent all day staring at the landscape rushing past them, but with the exception of the room at Iriy, the tiny compartment bed was the first she’d had in weeks, and she fell into it, instantly asleep.

  §

  The first week at Gihon Falls had been a bloodbath—no more than Kae had expected, but disheartening nonetheless. Despite the advantage of having knowledge Aeval’s troops didn’t possess, the first company had been easily overcome within a day. The Supernal Army had quickly abandoned its horses as the first dozens fell to the caltrops his men had laid, and Kae’s men hadn’t been adaptable enough, hesitant to charge unmounted soldiers.

  The tide hadn’t begun to be stemmed until Kae convinced the Virtues to behave like cowards. Calling them cowardly for their failures was having no effect other than to further demoralize them. He changed his tactic and began to praise their heroic efforts despite the continued losses, and told them that to be truly brave, they must be willing to be seen as cowards, knowing they were not. They had to appear to flee from the attacks of the Supernal Army, thus drawing the offensive line deeper into the ravine.

  The rallying cry of “cowardice” proved effective, and by the end of the second week, they’d turned the tables, reducing the queen’s forces by nearly twice as many as they’d lost. To be fair, some forty percent of that number they’d taken alive, but Kae wasn’t particular. If the Virtues could maintain some sense of honor without getting themselves slaughtered, all the better. An empty granary served as a makeshift prison. He would decide what to do with their prisoners when Aeval had enough.

  He could sense her across the valley, seething as he continued to thwart her. To Aeval, every encounter was a game of chess. He made a move, and she countered it, attempting to bring his most valuable assets into play. By drawing her men into his trap instead, he’d forced her to play on his terms. She countered his tactics with increasing aggression, proving she had a greater number of expendable pawns and wasn’t afraid to sacrifice them.

  He had clearly so engaged her ego she hadn’t yet realized the defense of Gihon Falls was actually a double threat: keeping her occupied while Anazakia advanced on Elysium, and thinning and tiring her ranks so Anazakia’s brigade would stand a better chance against them when Aeval at last discovered his deceptive maneuver.

  The Virtues managed to hold Gihon Falls for twenty-three days before the sheer numbers the queen was willing to expend simply overwhelmed them, though their honor proved their ultimate undoing. The ranks taken alive had swelled, until, like the Gihon River in spring thaw, they were impossible to contain.

  In retrospect, he’d been too soft, and he cursed himself for it when the prisoners stormed the granary walls and broke out to swarm across the escarpment, causing chaos. The Virtues inside the pass were forced to abandon their posts to defend against a rear attack. With the company defending the pass at the Falls now on their own, when Aeval ordered a charge, they were overcome.

  Kae saw the end at hand when the first wave of the enemy broke through, and he abandoned the position that had so frustrated him for days. He’d necessarily kept himself from the fighting in order to direct it from behind the lines. Now he threw himself into the fight almost gleefully, though he felt sick at the thought of what would happen to the citizens of Aravoth once the last of his soldiers were slain. At least he’d take as many of Aeval’s with him as he could before he was finally released from his burden. He’d served Anazakia as best he could, though it couldn’t come close to atonement. If only he’d lived to see her take the throne; that would have been worth prolonging his miserable existence.

  As he kicked the body of his latest kill from his sword, he noted a tall rider watching over the action astride a white stallion on a ridge above the mouth of the ravine. Her silvery hair fluttered behind her in the wind, unfettered by the knot it had slipped from, as she gazed down on him in triumph. He’d allowed himself to be distracted a moment too long, taking a fierce blow to the shoulder before he sliced his attacker through.

  When he next looked up, a runner was approaching her, beating a desperate path through the oncoming troops. The youth reached Aeval and fell onto his knees to deliver his message. She turned and looked straight at Kae as though she knew exactly where he was among the melee, and he could feel the fury in her gaze. She pulled her horse about and faced her troops, and Kae heard her cry out in a tremendous, booming voice of outrage, “Fall back!”

  §

  His mind became more confused the closer they got to Elysium. But they weren’t going to Elysium. Helga had said they were going to Arcadia. Except he knew quite well they were going to Elysium. He was the heir to the throne of Heaven, and the throne of Heaven was in Elysium.

  “Be quiet!” Azel said aloud.

  Helga looked down with a startled, disapproving frown from the carriage seat beside him. “Master Azel, that is very impolite. A grand duke does not snap at his servants.”

  “A grand duke!” he cried, as if his mouth were now saying words without his permission. He had a terrible image in his head, and a terrible pain in his stomach. He thought he tasted blood. He had never tasted blood. Helga handed him a sweet and he tore it open anxiously and popped it into his mouth as if it could make the blood taste go
away. Strangely, it seemed to calm him and he forgot about the things he shouldn’t know.

  “My poor little darling,” Helga whispered, and kissed his head. “Just take a nap. We should be in Arcadia when you wake.”

  He didn’t remember going to sleep, but as Helga had predicted, he woke just as the carriage entered Vilon’s bustling capital. Throngs of people lined the wide boulevards, bowing and tossing flowers with shouts of “Long live the principality of all the Heavens!”

  Others, however, didn’t seem so happy to see him.

  “Liberation!” cried one, raising his fist. “Liberation for the Fallen!” He was more poorly dressed than the ones throwing flowers. “Death to the little prince!” As the carriage drew near, he spat at Azel. The Cherubim running alongside quickly accosted him and dragged him away through the crowd. This quieted the other malcontents, though a few still raised their fists as the carriage passed them.

  At last they reached the Arcadian Palace of Penemue, and the carriage passed through the shining gates, leaving the onlookers outside. Penemue was grander than the palace at Aden, though Azel preferred the latter. Sweeping white colonnades striped with gold were framed by a great, green lawn that stretched around it in all directions. When the carriage arrived at the entrance, another red carpet was laid out for Azel to walk on as Helga led him up the white marble steps into a grand hall lined with statues of angels.

  Rows and rows of servants bowed to him as he passed, and then at the opening of a receiving room a herald announced him as the Grand Duke Azel Kaeyevich of the House of Arkhangel’sk. A tall woman in a beautiful, pale pink dress and dark golden curls piled on her head stood and approached him. She bent down with a smile and offered her hand, and Azel took it and kissed it as if he’d been doing so all his life.

  The woman laughed. “Isn’t he delightful! And so like his mother.” She pressed a fancy embroidered handkerchief to the corners of her eyes as they filled with tears. “The House of Arcadia welcomes you to the Palace of Penemue, Your Supernal Highness. The principality will be so pleased to see you.”