by Jane Kindred
Recovering from their surprise, the Malakim were quick to release their own radiance as the Virtues leapt from their bunks, slipping through the hands of the Virtues like water. The angels charged at one another, wings tight at their shoulders; extended, the wings of either pair would have torn the roof and the walls from the tiny compartment. Love wished she’d had a chance to see them fly.
Loquel managed to land one solid blow against his opponent, connecting with the Malak’s jaw just as the angel re-solidified, and once he had, the Malak seemed too stunned to defend himself. Love couldn’t understand why he continued to stumble back, taking blow after blow from the smaller angel, until one of Loquel’s fists struck the washroom door and went right through it, just missing her. It seemed the ability to turn to marble could be concentrated within a single limb. She nearly suffered an inopportune and inappropriate fit of giggles at the thought.
Gereimon soon subdued the other Malak in a similar fashion and the Virtues dragged their stunned visitors into the corridor. Love opened the ruined door and peered out while they escorted the Malakim to the rear of the car to kick them from the train.
As they headed back, the Virtues from the adjoining compartment emerged with their defeated opponents, but one of the Malakim managed to break away and bolted for the door to the next car toward the train’s interior. Loquel and Gereimon joined the Virtue he’d given the slip and darted after the Malak, and when he saw he was outnumbered, he turned and slipped back through them and jumped from the car himself.
The Virtues hauled the last of them to the door and tossed him out the back after his comrades. The four Malakim picked themselves up and stared after the train from the tracks as it began to move away.
The Malakim sent to ambush them at Omsk and Novosibirsk were no more successful, and by the time the train reached Lake Baikal, they had apparently given up. In the meantime, Loquel had heard from Belphagor, who told them to go on without him. It was some comfort that it was indeed the Grigori’s change of heart that had kept him, but it didn’t make the climb up the “Hell Staircase” without him any easier.
The most difficult part was finding the portal itself. Belphagor had assured them that because they’d come down through this portal, they should be able to recognize it when they came to it. But they almost went right past it, and when they realized they’d overstepped it, the infernal thing moved. They spent a few harrowing hours going in what must surely have been circles before it suddenly opened before them and they tumbled into the back room of the apothecary’s shop.
The apothecary was as gruff and rude as Love remembered, and she felt a twinge of sympathy for Lively, who’d grown up here as his apprentice and a virtual slave. They paid him his fee—Belphagor had railed at him for it when they’d fallen, since he’d shown the apothecary the portal himself, but paying was easier than arguing—and filed out into the back alley.
The safest way to Elysium, he claimed, was down this same alley. It could be taken all the way to the Acheron. With Anazakia a prisoner, Love had no idea what they’d do when they got there, but without Belphagor’s guidance, they had little choice but to head for Elysium and try to blend in with the allied troops.
§
As the angel promised, Kirill’s bonds were loosed and the doors were opened. He’d only just received his morning dose of firedust. It had become a pleasant ritual and he felt quite awful whenever the shopkeeper forgot him. The demon had unbound his feet and led him to the washroom before his daily meal, as had also become ritual—his days here were really not so different from being in seclusion at Solovetsky—and had returned him to the storeroom with his hands unbound so he could eat. Before Kirill had even taken a bite of his bread, however, the latch popped on his storeroom prison and the door hung open, with no shopkeeper on the other side.
He sat and stared at it. He didn’t much feel like moving. Truth be told, he felt more like lying down and listening to the dust. He hadn’t even noticed he’d closed his eyes until he heard a soft voice.
“Ki’ill.” The sound was tentative and familiar.
He raised his eyelids with effort and saw Ola standing before him.
“Ki’ill,” she said with more certainty. The little boy stood holding her hand, peculiarly solemn.
“Ola!” Kirill reached out to her. “Allo, devochka.”
She let go of the boy’s hand and climbed into his lap, and Kirill gathered her up and kissed her dirty cheek. He closed his eyes again and the firedust crackled. There was something he was supposed to do. You will find your bonds loosed and the doors opened. You will take the children and flee from here, and you will receive a sign.
“Come, Ola.” He stood with her in his arms and held his hand out to the older child.
“I’m going to Elysium.” The boy’s statement was almost defiant, so clear and precise for such a young child.
“We’ll go there, too,” said Kirill, though he vaguely recalled the angel had said something about keeping the boy from the city.
The boy took his hand as if the matter were settled and Kirill walked with them into the hall. The shopkeeper was nowhere about and a back door stood open. They went through it and into the alley with no pursuit.
There ought to be a sign, Kirill remembered. A burning bush. He looked about but saw nothing. “Which way?” he asked the boy.
The child pointed and he went in that direction. They walked for some time, with Kirill having to be prodded forward by the boy every so often when his mind wandered and he stopped still, thinking of nothing.
As they came to the end of the alley, a demon stepped out of one of the shops for a smoke, nodding to Kirill absently as they passed. When he tossed his match away, it landed near Kirill’s feet in a patch of scrub. Though the ground was damp from a recent rain, the scrub suddenly caught fire. The demon ran to stamp it out, glaring at Kirill for standing there staring. The burning bush, thought Kirill. It was the sign.
§
The demonic alliance had fallen through; Helga had declared it null and void. Kae was hardly surprised. Her army still numbered three times Anazakia’s. She was clearly counting on the fact that Anazakia would have no choice but to fight Aeval’s forces, alliance or not, so that either way, it went in Helga’s favor.
The Virtues—and the Iriyans, who’d remained loyal, bless them—had been pushed back toward the lower end of Elysium, camping on the banks of the Acheron. Kae had considered it a strategic blunder to let the Liberation forces push them toward Raqia where rogue demon fighters might cross the Acheron at any time and mount sneak attacks on them, but Anazakia had been unwilling to lose more men to Aeval by pressing forward. Let Helga’s men expend their resources fighting Aeval’s army, she’d argued, and weaken Aeval’s in the process.
Kae found it increasingly difficult to be near her—not Aeval, but Anazakia. Her prior coldness had been bearable, but the kindness she’d begun to show him since that night in the rain was more than he could take. She thought he was her friend, her cousin Kae whom she’d known as a girl. That Kae had been dead a long time and he couldn’t make her see it.
She didn’t understand that her insistence on believing in him made him relive those terrible hours when he’d destroyed everything he loved. If he was the Kae before that night, then he was the Kae of that night as well, and the night would never end. Every kind look or word from her made him that much more certain he must end it all, for her sake as well as his own, as soon as the war was decided.
§
When he reached the bridge, the angel of light appeared once more before Kirill, but the children didn’t seem to see or hear it. Was he touched by God or was he finally, truly mad?
“Man of God,” it said to him. “Are you prepared to make your sacrifice?”
“I am.” Kirill squinted at the apparition. “But where is it? You said one would be provided.”
“You misunderstand, Man of God. Of what use is a sacrifice if it is provided for you? You cannot sacrifice th
at which means nothing to you. By its very definition, that is no sacrifice.” It wasn’t his imagination. The being was becoming short with him. He must have displeased God in some way. “What you must sacrifice is what has already been provided. The child was delivered unto you.”
Kirill blanched. “No! God cannot ask this!”
The boy stared at him shrewdly, as if he’d seen madness before. Kirill closed his eyes to shut the vision out, praying he was dreaming, while his head swam and sparked with firedust.
The angel snarled with naked anger. “You are just like all the rest. You are called, and yet you only obey what you choose to. You are no man of God. You are a man of sin.”
“Please,” he begged. “Let the Lord ask something else of me. Take my own life instead!”
“You have been corrupted by temptation. You are impure. Your life is of no value.”
The words stung him. It was true he’d fallen to temptation. He had allowed his base desires for Love to control him instead of controlling them, and in truth he hadn’t tried particularly hard to do so. And God had seen. Of course God had seen. Nothing could be hidden from God.
“What must I do to repent?” he whispered.
“Take the child and bind him.”
Kirill looked down and realized the ropes of his own bonds still dangled from one wrist and an ankle. He untied them with shaking hands and knelt down beside the boy.
“You must stand still.” Tears obscured his vision as he drew the little hands behind the child’s back. “It is God’s will.”
“Who is God?” asked the boy, apparently used to doing as he was told.
Who, indeed? Who was God that he should demand such a terrible thing?
§
Kae had ridden out this morning along the Acheron as the sun came up, avoiding the breakfast strategy session with which Anazakia liked to start the day. Despite his misgivings, her plan seemed to be working. With the demons now paying her troops little attention as they fought to retake the ground they were losing to the Supernal Army, he wasn’t terribly concerned about missing this meeting.
The waters of the Acheron, though quite polluted, looked pristine and beautiful in the pale colors of dawn as he reached the bridge, like a ribbon of silver slipping through Elysium. It was a view he’d once shared with his Ola in their Camaeline Palace.
He had to stop for a moment, unable to see from his damned watery eye, and when his vision cleared, he saw someone standing on the opposite bank. Beside a kneeling peasant stood a golden-haired boy. Kae’s heart nearly stopped. He would have known the child anywhere. It was Azel. His Ola’s Azel. It was his son.
§
“Now,” the angel instructed. “You must throw the child into the river.”
“Please, gospodin.” Kirill pleaded with the angel. “I cannot do this. Set some other task before me, I beg of you!”
“Are you talking to God?” asked the boy.
“Man of God! Prove your faith and do as you are bidden!”
Kirill lifted the little boy in his arms and nearly stumbled, the being’s light and the still-combusting firedust making him dizzy. He hugged the boy to him and wept against his golden hair. “I’m so sorry.” He stood to do the angel’s bidding, but he wavered. If he did this, even if it was God’s will, he couldn’t live with himself. But he couldn’t fail God after all the wrong he’d done.
He stepped up onto the bridge. “Stay there,” he ordered Ola. In his confusion and grief, he never considered what would become of her once he jumped. He crossed to the highest point, where he sat the boy on the stone railing and started to climb over.
“We’re not going to Elysium, are we?” The boy seemed resigned. On the riverbank, Ola began to cry.
As Kirill swung his leg over the railing, a sudden, steel grip seized him, and he thought, Thank God! The angel has spared me! The hand dragged him back and spun him around, and the masked field marshal struck him so hard his brain seemed to burst into a shower of light.
§
Love couldn’t believe her eyes. On the bank of the Acheron as they emerged from the alley, Ola stood crying. She was dirty and unkempt and seemed near starved, but it was Ola.
Love ran to her, oblivious to the drama unfolding on the bridge. Ola cried harder as Love swept her up, the kind of desperate crying of a child who realizes through the fear of her elders that she’s been in terrible danger.
“Oh, sweet baby,” Love whispered. “I’m here. Love’s here. You’re okay now. I’m not going to let you go again.”
“Ki’ill,” sobbed Ola, pointing at the bridge.
Love turned to see Anazakia’s cousin drawing his sword as he stood over a demon peasant. Only it wasn’t a demon—it was Kirill. Kae raised the sword to plunge it into Kirill’s chest and Love screamed. As Kae halted at the sound and stared up at her, Gereimon ran past her onto the bridge and grabbed his sword hand.
Kae shoved him away. “Get back, damn you!” His voice was raw with pain and anger as he forced himself to be heard. “He was going to kill my boy!”
On the railing, a small boy with beautiful golden curls like Anazakia’s sat watching the scene. His hands and feet had been bound, but he seemed unmoved by it all except for an unnerving, knowing look in his eyes that didn’t seem to belong to a child.
Love turned to Loquel as the rest of the Virtues caught up with her. “Take Ola. It’s okay, sweetie,” she promised as Ola clung to her. “You go with Loquel. He’s our friend. I’ll be right here.” It broke her heart to leave Ola crying, but Gereimon wasn’t having any luck deterring Kae. She ran onto the bridge and threw herself in front of his sword on her knees beside Kirill, and Kae swore as he stopped short.
“Move aside,” he growled, but he looked startled by her appearance. The bruises hadn’t much faded since she’d left St. Petersburg.
“It’s Kirill. You can’t.”
“I know who it is, damn you! He was going to kill Azel!”
The boy observed them silently.
“Then you should get him down from there before he falls into the river,” Love snapped. “Stop waving that sword around like a maniac!”
Kae stared at her in surprise and then looked at the curious, golden-haired boy. He sheathed his sword and backed away, shaking his head. “Gereimon, you take him.”
Love raised Kirill’s head onto her lap as Gereimon untied the little boy and lifted him off the railing. Kirill didn’t respond, not quite unconscious, but expressing no awareness of anything around him. He’d traded his robes for the garments of a local, and a sweet, peculiar scent clung to him.
“Dear Kirill,” she whispered, touching his cheek. “What were you doing?” Two of the Virtues stepped in and Love moved aside as they lifted him to his feet.
Ola quieted immediately when Love took her back from Loquel, and when little Azel looked up at them, Ola patted Love’s arm and said “Lub!” with an air of triumph.
Devyatnadtsataya: The Least of These
from the memoirs of the Grand Duchess Anazakia Helisonovna of the House of Arkhangel’sk
Kae had made himself scarce at breakfast and when I heard him ride into camp, I took my tea and stepped from my tent to express my displeasure. A small platoon of Virtues walked behind him in the early morning mist, dragging a prisoner between them. I delayed my rebuke, puzzled by the strange appearance of the group. One of them led a small boy, and I couldn’t imagine why they would have taken a child prisoner. Perhaps he’d been orphaned and they hadn’t known what to do with him.
From behind this Virtue, however, another person stepped out. My cup dropped forgotten from my hand and shattered on the ground.
“Mama!” Ola squirmed in Love’s arms, and Love let her down to run to me. I swept her off the ground, unable to speak for the torrent of emotion that threatened to overwhelm me, and held her so tightly she protested. I’d stopped dreaming of her a week past, and I’d been too frightened of what it might mean to tell anyone. And somehow here she was—ragged
and dirty, but to me she was beautiful. To me, she still smelled like an Arkhangel’sk wildflower.
“Oh, my darling girl,” I whispered at last. “Where have you been?”
“With Azly.” Ola pointed proudly at the little boy.
I’d forgotten Azel. I looked up into my sister’s deep celestine eyes in a smaller version of Kae’s face. He was an astonishingly beautiful child. And inside his gaze was a haunted look of recognition.
“Stop it!” he yelled suddenly, startling us all, and pressed his hands against his ears as if he stood in an incredible din.
Because Kae wouldn’t go near him, Gereimon became Azel’s temporary caretaker, bringing him to wash up and get something to eat while I retreated with Ola and Love to my pavilion. With so much to absorb at once, Love’s appearance hadn’t registered until we were alone.
“What kind of monster would do this to you?” I inspected her bruised face after she’d told me about her interrogation by the Angliski Nephilim.
She lowered her eyes, embarrassed. “Zeus’s brother.”
“Oh, sweetie.”
Love waved away my concern. “Belphagor and his ‘boys’ literally flew to my rescue. It was pretty impressive. I didn’t realize you all had wings.”
I smiled as I remembered how I’d once been tempted to display mine for her back in the world of Man when she’d been innocent of Heaven and its inhabitants. Part of me wished she could still be innocent of us, but I was so pleased to have her back. I’d missed my friend.
“And where’s Belphagor? Lively passed on a message from you, but it was a bit vague.”
Love frowned. “Well, the thing is, we’re not sure exactly. He missed the train, and then he called Loquel to tell him we were to go on without him, but he didn’t explain. Loquel kept trying to get through to him, but the cell phone Belphagor bought for him ran out of juice and I guess Bel must have the charger.”
“Beli,” said Ola, sitting contentedly in Love’s lap. “We go see Beli now?”