by Jane Kindred
I found my cousin still asleep, sprawled prone upon his bedroll with an empty bottle of spirits beside him. He’d never been one for drink—not even, so far as I knew, during his enchantment. He’d picked a hell of a time to start.
“Kae.” I crouched to shake him with a hand on his shoulder.
He surged awake with a wild shout, flinging me off. I feared for a moment he was under the influence of more than drink, but he gripped his head and moaned the ordinary misery of a man who’d over-imbibed.
I rebuked him as I picked myself up. “What are you thinking, getting drunk at a time like this? I need you sober, with your wits sharp. This is no time for complacency.”
“Please don’t shout.” He rose stiffly to his knees. “I assure you, Your Supernal Highness, I am the least complacent man you’ve ever known.” He straightened his mask, which had become askew, and I saw for an instant the perfectly unblemished flesh he fully believed was grotesquely scarred and disfigured. I wanted to stop him, to order him to leave it off for once—to see him as he was—but I suppressed the sentimental urge.
“Your generals need guidance.” I held open the tent flap impatiently as he moved with infuriating slowness.
“They are your generals.” He pulled on his frock coat awkwardly, as if in pain.
“And they need your guidance.” I watched him button the double-breasted frock with care while he ducked through the entrance. “Are you all right?”
“Maybe,” he said absently.
As we crossed the camp, Belphagor hailed us from outside the infirmary. I headed toward him and Kae followed with obvious reluctance.
I gave Belphagor a disapproving look. “Where have you been? I thought you were going to talk to Kae about the plans for the breach.”
“Oh, Kae and I talked.” He gave my cousin a peculiar look that cast his behavior this morning in a new light. “Besides, the breach has been accomplished.” He smiled. “I have it on good authority Elysium is fairly overrun with friendly forces. I wouldn’t be surprised if Helga sent a messenger with terms of her surrender within the hour.” He ushered us into the infirmary. “But right now, there’s something I thought you might want to hear.”
I had no opportunity to express my astonishment at this news as we passed rows of pallets lining the wall of the tent where Virtues and terrestrial Fallen lay wounded, most of them too drugged with laudanum to notice us.
I paused beside a Virtue who watched us with alert, shining eyes, his arm bandaged at the wrist where it ended in a stump, and thanked him for his bravery.
He grabbed my hand with his whole one. “It’s an honor to fight for you, Your Supernal Majesty.”
I smiled, touched by his devotion. “I’m not the queen of Heaven yet.”
“You are to us.”
I pressed his hand and turned away to keep from being overcome with emotion.
Belphagor led us into a private section screened off from the rest, where Kirill lay on a cot. The monk looked terrible, his skin pale and clammy and his eyes tinged red in both the iris and the whites as if he’d taken ruby oil—something I’d often done as a girl to try to disguise myself as one of the Fallen for a trip to Raqia. There was spittle in his beard and dried bile on his clothing from having vomited even the water they’d given him.
“What is it?” I bent down and took his hand. It was ice cold and I nearly shuddered, remembering how Kae’s skin had felt while Aeval called his blood.
Instead of Kirill’s response, a disembodied voice came from beside me: “He’s seen what he calls an angel of light.”
Kirill cried out in Russian. “There! Do you not hear it? Am I the only one?”
“Misha?” I looked around at the empty air.
“At your service, Your Supernal Highness.”
“Apparently, he’s an Ardor,” said Belphagor, and then hissed, “Stop it!” under his breath, jumping as though someone had pinched him, and his cheeks turned a rare pink. He tried to recover his dignity. “The leshi and the syla. They’re the missing First Choir.”
I was dumbfounded. “The First Choir of the Host?” I managed stupidly.
“Most of them,” said Misha. “As you can see, we haven’t the same substance here we do below, so it stands to reason there may be some still residing in Heaven of which we are unaware. And it seems your monk has found one of the elusive Tafsarim.”
“You hear the spirit?” Kirill tossed on his pallet. “I’m not mad?”
I put my hand on his damp forehead to calm him. “You’re not mad, Kirill.”
“This angel of light, then,” said Kae. “You mean to say it was an Aeon?”
“I do mean to say so, yes.” A breeze lifted Kae’s untidy hair about his face, and he brushed at it as at cobwebs. “Oh, I see what you mean, Belyi,” Misha fairly purred. “Truly divine.”
“Enough,” Belphagor fumed. “This is serious.”
“Of course it is. As I said, I am always serious.”
Kae ignored the banter. “The monk claimed the angel told him to kill Her Supernal Highness’s nephew.”
“God tells me.” Kirill spoke mournfully in angelic, raising his eyes to Kae. “He sends angel to redeem.” He began to shiver uncontrollably and he grabbed my arm. “Please tell the demon I must have devil dust. Ya umrayu!”
Belphagor took the monk’s hand from my arm. “You will not die. You will sleep.” He held Kirill’s hand and drew the pale aquamarine eyes to his own, placing the black-lacquered nail of his thumb against Kirill’s forehead. “Vy budite spat.”
Kirill’s eyes flickered shut.
When we left him, I spoke with the intention of addressing Misha, hoping he’d left with us. “What does this mean? Why would an Aeon want him to kill Azel?”
“Because the boy doesn’t belong here,” said Misha. “He belongs in Irkalla.”
This was a name I’d never heard before. I looked to Belphagor to interpret.
“It’s the Realm of the Dead,” said Belphagor. “Misha, I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“You haven’t told him,” Misha said next to me and I shook my head. “The boy’s spirit is hopelessly entwined with that of Azel Helisonovich.”
“Your brother?” Belphagor looked at me, aghast.
I appealed to Misha as if he could do something. “Please, it’s not hopeless, is it? Can’t he be released?”
“It’s a unique situation. But I don’t see how, without the boy’s death. And if the captive spirit isn’t released, there’s bound to be more trouble with the Aeons. They are the guardians of the gates of Irkalla. I suppose you’d call it Gehenna.”
“You don’t mean the Citadel?”
“In a manner of speaking. The First Choir placed the gates within the Pyriphlegethon and built the Citadel around them to protect them. Regardless, as long as your brother’s shade isn’t allowed to leave the world of the living, the spheres will be out of harmony.”
“No.” Kae spoke up suddenly, with more force than his voice usually had. “No one else is going to the Realm of the Dead.” He turned swiftly and walked toward the pavilion.
While Belphagor stayed where he was, having an argument with the air, I hurried after Kae. “What are you doing?”
He answered without turning around. “I’m going to take Azel where he cannot be reached by Aeons. I’m going to fall.”
“Kae, you can’t.” I reached out to slow him with a hand on his shoulder and he gasped with pain and twisted out from under my grip. “What’s the matter? What’s happened?”
“Nothing.” He continued toward the pavilion, but when I touched his back, he twisted in pain once more.
Anger welled up in me, with an unexpected instinct of protectiveness. “It was Belphagor, wasn’t it?”
“So what if it was? What are a few stripes to the hours of torture I meted out to him?”
“You weren’t yourself.” I echoed the words I’d thrown back in my sister’s face, but this time I believed them.
“Then who in the name of Heaven was I?” He strained the limits of his voice. “Who am I now? Just leave me alone, Nazkia. Some things are not about you.”
I swallowed my retort. The words stung, but he was right. There was nothing I could do to get him through the pain and guilt he carried. They were his and he had earned them. Yet the confusing urge to protect him persisted. With disquietude, I recalled the dream I’d had in Iriy of comforting him as he wept.
I opened my mouth to say something else, but a tremendous crack of thunder stopped me. I looked up, but there were no clouds. Across the field of our encampment, however, a peculiar light glowed from within my pavilion, illuminating two golden pairs of wings through the opening of the tent.
I left Kae there, forgetting his misery as I ran, not knowing if he ran behind me or stood still in the dirt.
Inside the tent, Love struggled in the arms of a Cherub and Loquel lay on the ground beside another, as if the Cherub had stunned him with its wings. With a fist wrapped around the locket at her bosom, Helga crouched before Ola, her other hand outstretched.
“Come, now, child,” she snapped. “Just take my hand.”
“Don’t you touch her!” I rushed toward them, but a third Cherub standing on the opposite side of the entrance grabbed me before I could reach her. There was no electrifying pain as with the touch of an Ophan, but like the not-quite-in-phase shifting of the fourfold image, his physical being seemed to shimmer in and out of this plane, tugging and pulling me with him through his constant metamorphoses. It left me too disoriented to speak.
Ola began to cry and Helga cursed at her with language that shocked me. She was obviously too frightened of my daughter fulfilling the prophesy of taking the accursed flower to dare to grab her, still trying to persuade Ola to take her hand so she could keep the locket out of reach and yet exercise its power.
When Kae appeared in the entrance, neither Love nor I could speak to warn him, and the Cherub with the outstretched wings whipped one toward Kae and knocked him to the ground. The room seemed to quake, and with another loud crack, the fourth of the Cherubim appeared. Gripped within his fierce hands was Lively, looking ill.
“What took you so long?” snapped Helga.
The Cherub thrust Lively forward and she stumbled as she joined the solid world outside his touch. Her left hand was wrapped loosely in gauze, fluid oozing from her skin into the bandage.
“Take the girl,” Helga ordered as she stood up. When Lively hesitated, Helga grabbed her by the ear and twisted it, pushing her toward Ola. Lively shrieked, holding her bandaged hand in front of her as if afraid Helga might grab it instead, and wrapped her right arm around Ola’s waist to lift her onto her hip.
“Mama.” Ola called to me plaintively, her little lip protruding, and it tore at my heart that I couldn’t respond.
Loquel had roused and tried to stand, but the Cherub struck him once more with a single wing, and the Virtue tumbled back to the ground. As the fourth Cherub reached for Lively’s arm, a violet spark shot from Ola to his hand, making him pull back with a roar of surprise from his leonine face. A column of flame rose around Ola and Lively—the fire I’d seen in my dreams.
Instead of the glow of elemental radiance, it burned white like the core of a molten metal, and though Ola was wailing, terrified, it didn’t consume them. Holding fast to Ola, Lively cried out and fell to her knees, her eyes wide with fear and her hair standing out as though electrified.
Helga cursed again and whirled about. Azel stood behind her. She grabbed his hand and with a deafening clap of sound as all four Cherubim flapped their wings, a brilliant light flashed and they were gone, taking Helga and Azel with them. Love and I collapsed onto the ground.
The column of flame dissolved, and I scrambled to Ola, who clung to me sobbing while Lively trembled with shock. Beside me, holding Loquel in his arms, my cousin began to weep. Only then did I see the blood pulsing from the Virtue’s throat where the Cherub’s wing had struck him.
Throwing the tent flap wide, Belphagor burst in and nearly tripped over them. After a moment of horrible stillness, he knelt down and lifted Loquel from Kae’s arms with such care that I was ashamed not to have noticed this dimension of his relationship with his “boys.”
“Gospodin,” Loquel gasped, his eyes like quicksilver staring up at him.
Belphagor put his hand over the cut at Loquel’s throat and the blood pumped through his fingers like water through a hose.
“Prostite mnya,” the Virtue said.
“No,” whispered Belphagor. “No, you’ve done nothing wrong, malchik milochki.”
“But the boy.” Loquel looked to Kae, still on his knees beside them. “They took his boy.”
Kae shook his head, wiping his sleeve against his watery eye as if to see more clearly, and grasped Loquel’s hand. His voice came out in a jagged whisper. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Loquel smiled weakly at him. “No need. You were not yourself.”
Kae burst into wretched sobs and dropped the white hand as Loquel gazed up at Belphagor once more.
“Spasibo, gospodin,” he sputtered, “for showing me my wings.” He closed his eyes and Belphagor grasped his head in both hands and kissed the pale eyelids, blood from his hand staining the silver hair. Loquel’s head dropped against his chest. Silently, Belphagor lifted him and stood, cradling the body as the soft, shimmering luminosity faded from it, and carried him from the tent.
In the painful quiet, Lively spoke with a soft voice of amazement. “My hand.” She unwound the gauze, revealing whole, perfect flesh. “It was burnt. I mean truly burnt; there was nothing left of it.” She looked at me. “Ola healed it.”
Ola now sat serenely in my lap. Without any involvement of her conscious will, her element itself had healing power. I wondered if she might have possessed the power to heal Loquel if I’d realized in time. But not even aether could raise the dead.
“How did you burn it?”
Lively lifted a blackened ring from her bodice on a twist of embroidery thread hung about her neck—the ring Margarita had worn. “Auntie Helga. Oh, I hate her!” she cried, and burst into tears.
Beside her, Love put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Nazkia told me about Early. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
This kindness was too much for her and Lively collapsed, sobbing, in Love’s arms.
Ola grew concerned and when I let her down she stood before Lively and held out the tattered little stuffed dog. “Live’y sad,” she said, and Lively gulped back her tears in surprise as Ola placed the toy in her lap.
“Love.” I cast a significant look toward Kae, curled forward over his knees. “Can you and Lively take Ola to get some fresh air?”
Love nodded and took Ola’s hand. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s go for a little walk with Lively.”
Ola reached out and took Lively’s hand as well, and Lively stood with the toy dog in her other hand, looking bewildered. Happily, Ola drew them both forward with her, Helga and the terrible Cherubim already forgotten.
I watched Kae shaking with silent sobs. How I wished we could all forget our dark moments so easily.
“We’ll find Azel,” I promised. “Helga has nowhere to run.”
He went still. “Just put a blade through me.”
“Kae…”
“It never stops, Nazkia. I just keep killing. Every angel, every demon who has fallen in this war—I have murdered every one of them.”
“No,” I said firmly. “The revolution was set in motion long before. Do you have any idea how hated we all were?” When he looked up at me, I saw my words had shocked him, but I went further. “Many thought we had it coming.”
Anguish and anger warred on his ruined features, and I thought for a moment he might hit me.
I sighed, weary and wishing I could make him understand what I had finally come to. “They haven’t called me Bloody Anazakia simply because of Aeval’s lies. They were eager to hate me—riding in sleighs trimmed with gold, wear
ing a different magnificent gown every time they saw me, given everything I asked for, while their children wanted for bread.”
He jerked his head in negation, anger winning. “That was just—the way of things. It’s not your fault their children went hungry!”
I knelt down before him and placed my hand upon his mask. Kae flinched, his milky eye wide. “Dear cousin,” I said earnestly, “it was all the way of things. All of it. We were pieces in a game. None of it was anyone’s fault but those who sought to take advantage of it.”
At the flicker of radiance between us, he thrust my hand away and pulled his back in shock, horrified that I was on the verge of forgiving him. I hadn’t known until this moment that I was.
Before I could say anything else, a messenger arrived with a “summons” from the queen.
Perhaps if Belphagor had been there, he would have counseled me not to go, but he was not, and I wasn’t about to deliberate it with Kae. I left him in the pavilion without telling him who’d sent the message and rode out with two dozen Virtues to the Palace Avenue Bridge at the confluence of the Acheron with the Fountain River on their way to the Gulf of the Firmament.
She stood alone in the center of the bridge in her Virtuous glory and I felt a stab of anger that she would impersonate such a noble race. Her retinue, she’d left on the opposite bank as promised, no large amassment of troops in view. I dismounted and told my escorts to wait on the bank and take no action unless her troops moved and we were betrayed.
I’d forgotten how tall and alarmingly beautiful she was. Her snow-white garment, with its swirling, split-legged fabric that gave the appearance of a gown—immaculate, though she’d been on the road of battle for more than two months—made me acutely aware of my dirty, blood-stained uniform and scuffed boots and of the fact that I hadn’t had a proper bath in weeks. There wasn’t a smudge on her translucent, luminous skin, nor a silver hair out of place in her modified Virtue’s queue.
“Bloody Anazakia.” She took in my appearance with a mocking smile.