by Jane Kindred
Belphagor circled around to the front, but there were more demon bouncers on duty here now as well. He’d put Elyon on his guard. There was no way he was sneaking back into the villa, glamour or no glamour. He hadn’t even had the opportunity to mobilize his backup. They were probably enjoying themselves inside with Sefi and Tabris, none the wiser that he’d been made and ejected from the duke’s domicile. He’d have to formulate a Plan B.
Inside the pantry, Vasily couldn’t believe his ears. Someone had entered the kitchen, making a fuss about being thrown out of the villa, and he was certain it was Belphagor. He’d stood up and strained at the end of his bonds, shouting to Belphagor that he was here, but there was no indication anyone outside the room could hear him. It seemed impossible with Belphagor so close that he couldn’t hear Vasily shouting behind the door. Elyon must have acquired a spell from the Demon Market that hid the scullery completely from outside perception.
It gave him some comfort as he huddled among the ice after the altercation had died down that Belphagor had come looking for him. And the fact that Belphagor was being thrown out said he wasn’t buying whatever story Elyon had given him, and hopefully hadn’t bought the message Vasily was supposed to have sent him either. The latter, however, would be immaterial to Belphagor. He would still come for him even if he thought Vasily had left him. Belphagor was fiercely possessive and would feel honor bound to challenge anyone who took what he deemed to be his.
He had to admit, the idea of Belphagor coming to drag him away from anyone else to whom he might stray gave him a thrill of pleasure. He ought to be outraged, he supposed, knowing Belphagor treated him as a possession, but it was one more facet of the inexplicable rightness he felt in the dynamic of their relationship. What he’d never have tolerated in anyone else, with Belphagor raised both his ire and his cock.
The door opened unexpectedly, and Vasily jumped to his feet, thinking Belphagor had found his way past the duke’s men, but it was Duke Elyon himself, smirking at him. Vasily wanted to put his hands around the bastard’s throat and squeeze until he smelled angelic flesh burning. The duke had been wise to restrain him.
“Seems our timetable has moved up.” From behind Elyon, the Cherub lackey stepped forward, his radiance hidden in a cloak. “Arzal will be preparing you for your role in bringing about a glorious new Heaven.”
That didn’t sound at all ominous.
“Just what is this role I’m supposed to play?” Vasily demanded as Arzal approached him.
The Cherub seized his throat in a crushing grip and lifted Vasily off his feet. A paralyzing jolt of power ran through him that wasn’t the electrified pain described by those who’d been accosted by Ophanim, but something beyond it that seemed to scramble every impulse in his nervous system and short out every coherent thought. The Cherub seemed not to be in the same plane as the rest of Heaven, shifting through the space it occupied as though a different reality existed for each metamorphosis of its changing aspects.
Before Vasily’s senses ceased to function entirely, he heard Duke Elyon as if from a great distance.
“You’re going to be famous,” he said. “You’re going to be the demon who assassinated the principality of the Firmament of Shehaqim and set the Fallen free.”
Belphagor killed time in the gaming room of The Brimstone while waiting for his hired entourage to return. As far as he was concerned, they still owed him, since all they’d done so far was enjoy the delightful company he’d paid for and the entertainment of a swanky angelic affair. He hadn’t quite formulated Plan B yet, but what he was contemplating would take all the demons he could gather.
He’d just about given up waiting for them, assuming they were sleeping it off with their companions of choice at the villa. As he prepared to head to his room after taking another naïve demon for all he was worth at the wingcasting table, a commotion rose at the door to the den.
“Leave her be!” one of the barmaids yelled. “Can’t you see she’s had a fright?”
Belphagor raised his head and saw Tabris being harassed by the dregs of the clientele, too drunk by this hour to keep their jackassery in check. He pushed his way through to the front of the den, stunned to see her lovely clothes torn and her face bruised, her hair a tangled mess with a bit of blood crusted in it at the side of her head.
“Tabris!” Out of fear for her, his voice dropped into the harsh tone he used during discipline, projecting loudly, and the demons who were taunting and grabbing at her started at the sound and parted to make way for him automatically.
Tabris burst into tears and fell into his arms as he reached her.
He glared at the group of rowdy demons. “I think you’ve all drunk your fill. I suggest you head back to your beds alone and sleep it off before I have to take each of you out separately and teach you a lesson about respecting a lady.”
“She’s no lady,” said one. “So I guess the lady must be you.”
The laughter this spawned died down swiftly as Belphagor pressed Tabris into the barmaid’s arms.
“I beg your pardon?”
The demon looked uncomfortable, glancing about at his companions as if to see whether anyone would defend him. Apparently deciding they wouldn’t, he shrugged and lowered his head to his drink. “Must’ve been mistaken.”
Belphagor eyed him a moment longer before putting an arm around Tabris’s shoulder once more and leading her back to his room.
“Well, that’s a fucking first,” someone muttered under his breath to a rumble of nervous laughter.
Belphagor sat her down on his cot and closed the door, bringing a damp cloth from the basin as he came to sit beside her. “What happened?” He dabbed gently at the smeared blood on her face while she continued to weep. “Who did this to you?”
“Angels,” she sobbed. “They’ve got Ouestucati.”
“Ouestu—?”
“Sefi!” she burst out miserably. “They’ve got Sefi. We decided to head back to The Cat when we couldn’t find you. She was nervous about something she’d overheard, and she said you’d want to know. Your friends were occupied, and she didn’t want to wait, so we left.” Tabris tried to dry her eyes on her torn sleeve. “We were crossing the bridge when they came out of nowhere—a group of angels from the villa.” She started to sob harder, the sleeve useless against the onslaught of tears. “They grabbed her, and I tried to fight them, but they knocked me to the ground and took her.”
Belphagor pulled her against his shoulder and let her cry, fairly certain that whatever had befallen Sefi was his fault. “We’ll get her back,” he promised.
She nodded against him after a moment and sat up, sniffling and wiping at her eyes with her dirty gloves. “You’re very sweet, Prince of Tricks. But this isn’t your problem. I shouldn’t have bothered you with it. I was just so shaken up, and I wasn’t thinking. We have people at The Cat who take care of us.”
He shook his head. “Listen, Tabris. This is my problem. I got you and Sefi into this, and I’m going to figure something out. The duke has my boy. I wasn’t sure if he’d gone willingly or had been taken, but what I discovered before I was escorted off the property this evening convinced me he’s being held there against his will.”
“Your boy,” Tabris repeated. “You mean the fire demon. He…belongs to you?”
“That’s right.” It made him feel warm inside to hear it said. “And I don’t tolerate angels taking what’s mine.”
She studied his face. “But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”
Belphagor’s mouth turned up in a wry smile. “It’s always more than that, my dear. But that’s enough.”
“It’s more than that with me and Ouestucati, too. That’s her real name. She uses Sefira for work.” She cast him a sidelong look, almost embarrassed. “We’re sisters.”
Belphagor tried to keep his eyes from widening comically, recalling the act they’d been mutually engaged in on top of him earlier in the day.
Tabris shrugged somewhat defensively.
“We do what we need to for the job. Sometimes we tell people and sometimes we don’t. You can pretty much tell when a client is going to like it more if he knows. You’d be surprised how many do.” He’d been surprised at the disclosure that they were sisters, but nothing surprised him about men’s desires. He’d been paid to do all kinds of things in his time and—mostly—didn’t judge.
“Well, we’re going to get Ouestucati and Vasily back, but we’ll have to act quickly. I think they took your sister because of whatever she overheard, and I’d be willing to bet good facets it was about the act of sedition the duke is encouraging against the crown tomorrow.”
“So you don’t think they took her to—to hurt her.”
“I don’t. I think they took her to keep her quiet.” Not that it would stop them from hurting her as well if it struck their fancy, but Belphagor considered it best not to speculate on what might strike the angels’ fancy—for either of them. What worried him more, however, was how important it might be to keep Sefi quiet and to what lengths the duke would go to do it. Hopefully, they only intended to keep her out of the way until their plans had come to fruition. Vasily, Belphagor feared, might be more deeply involved.
He took the pamphlet from his pocket that he’d managed to pilfer from Elyon’s storeroom in plain view of the angel. “I found this—hundreds of them, actually, printed and waiting to be distributed—in the villa.”
Tabris pushed it back at him with an embarrassed shrug when he tried to hand it to her. “My eyes are terrible,” she said. “Read it to me?”
He chastised himself mentally. Illiteracy was widespread among the Fallen population, particularly so among those in his former profession, many of whom, like himself, had grown up on the streets. It wasn’t as if they had governesses who taught them letters in the nursery, or were eligible to attend the celestial halls of learning. He’d been lucky enough to learn to read and write in the language of Men—the only benefit that had come of his youthful incarceration—and then had taught himself the angelic alphabet when he’d returned to Raqia.
He read her the notice about the demonstration in Council Square, noting that tomorrow’s date—now today’s, he supposed—featured on it prominently. “Elyon caught me in the storeroom reading one of these. Before he tossed me out on my ass, he claimed the action wasn’t certain to happen, but I find it doubtful they’d go to the trouble and expense of printing them only to change their minds.” What he hadn’t figured out was what Vasily had to do with it, or what he and Sefi might have learned that had gotten them into trouble. Belphagor’s knowledge of the existence of the pamphlets and the connection to the duke hadn’t been enough to warrant trying to keep him quiet.
Tabris looked puzzled. “But there’s always talk like that about. And everyone knows there are angels who support it. Even if the rest of the angels don’t know, who’d believe a demon if they told?”
“Precisely my thought,” said Belphagor. “Which is why I believe Ouestucati must have learned something more. Just as my boy must have.” He put the pamphlet away. “Since it advertises the event at dusk, I think whatever else is going on will coincide with it, which gives us perhaps twelve hours to figure out exactly what the duke is up to and where he’s holding Ouestucati and Vasily. And to round up enough demons to get my back when I spoil the duke’s fun.”
Tabris’s anxious look said she was losing faith in his offer to help. “How do you intend to do that? Who’s going to go up against a duke and risk being executed for treason just to rescue a couple of whores?” She swallowed nervously. “I mean…no offense…but your Vasily—”
Belphagor waved away her concern. “That isn’t a term that offends me. Both Vasily and I have done our share of whoring. Vasily just happens to be a damned talented one.” He smiled at her surprised expression. “As for whether any demon would be willing to risk an assault on an angelic villa, let’s just say I make a better gambler than a whore. There’s hardly a man in Raqia who hasn’t lost to me at the wingcasting table, and half of those still owe me. The rest I have other things on,” he added with a wink.
He walked Tabris home and told her to get some rest, promising to let her know as soon as he’d amassed his recruits and had formulated his plan. What he needed more than muscle, however, was information. He needed to find out exactly what Duke Elyon was planning. The action had to be a cover for something else. If Elyon was fomenting a demon rebellion, what exactly would it get him? As a duke, he wasn’t in line for the throne himself, and even if a rebellion managed to topple the current rule, it was unlikely to be replaced by another monarchy. What did he have to gain by either unrest or a complete replacement of the old guard? It had to be something that would put the angel in a position of power. Perhaps by betraying the very demons he was professing to support.
The first order of business was to determine whether anyone else knew of the call to assembly. While Belphagor wasn’t big on politics himself, he sometimes did business on the periphery of it. Where there was money to be made off the zeal of others by providing to such groups the services at his disposal, he was happy to make it.
Belphagor went back to The Brimstone and found Oza on duty at the bar once more, just arrived for his early morning shift. Some hours at The Brimstone were slower than others, but there was nothing that could really be considered downtime, and those who gambled at all hours wanted drink at all hours. Gambling was thirsty business.
“Weren’t you awake yesterday morning?” Oza eyed him suspiciously as he sat at the bar. “I don’t know what the Heavens are coming to if you’re starting to make a habit of being up before noon.”
Belphagor laughed. “Don’t start questioning the nature of reality yet. I’m not ‘up’ before noon. I just haven’t gone to bed.”
“Well, that’s a relief. What can I get for you on this fine winter morning? I don’t imagine you need a hot toddy.” Oza grinned. “I expect you’ve got one in your bed.”
“Vasily and I aren’t—” Belphagor stopped himself mid-protest. He’d been somewhat defensively making a point of letting people know he wasn’t having sex with Vasily, worried it might seem he was taking advantage of the firespirit’s youth. But the protest was no longer true.
Oza raised his brows. “Finally remembered what it is you demons get up to in that room, have you? That room, I might add, that has very thin walls.”
“Bozhe moi,” said Belphagor, using the earthly invocation of the Orthodox God. Russian language permeated Raqia culture from the centuries of demons falling to and returning from that nearest of earthly realms, and it had become like a second language to the Fallen.
Oza laughed. “I picked ‘one year’ in the pool. Thank you, my friend. That’s going to pay off nicely.”
Belphagor gaped at him. “There’s been a betting pool over when I’d finally—?” He stopped and buried his head in his crossed arms on the bar. “Bozhe moi. I’d like an absinthe,” he added into his arms.
“Coming right up.” Oza sounded eminently pleased with himself.
Belphagor lifted his head to watch him pour as Oza set up the glass. “Since you’re obviously going to be sharing this juicy tidbit—”
“For those who didn’t already hear it for themselves.” Oza gave him a wicked grin as he put the cube of sugar on top of the slotted spoon.
“So glad to have provided so much entertainment for so many,” said Belphagor. “But I’m wondering if you have any other juicy tidbits you’d care to throw my way—seeing as I’ve obviously made you a rich man.”
Oza poured the water over the cube and pushed the glass toward him. “What sort of juicy tidbits?”
Belphagor took the pamphlet from his pocket and set it on the bar. “Heard anything about this?”
Oza perused it and gave him a somewhat ambiguous nod. Though he kept a tab for his drinks like everyone else who roomed at The Brimstone, Belphagor set a facet on the bar.
Oza tucked it into his pocket. “Heard some drunken boasting about
it.”
“Any demons I might know?”
The bartender shook his head. “Not demons. Angels.” He glanced about the relatively empty bar. At this hour, most of the patrons were doggedly gambling their last facets at the tables, certain this one last game would turn their fortunes. “Military.”
“Military?” Belphagor kept his voice low. “A rebellion among the ranks?” When Oza busied himself with wiping down the bar, Belphagor dropped another facet.
“Officers,” Oza said, and swept up the facet. “Some secret society bent on liberating the Fallen. That’s all I can tell you. They don’t confide in me, they just brag to one another.” Most of the information Belphagor got from Oza he was actually happy to give. The facets he earned for it were mere perks. But this time, he seemed genuinely concerned that someone would retaliate if they knew he’d talked about them.
This was much bigger than Belphagor had thought. Just rounding up a few demons to take on the angels at Elyon’s villa wasn’t going to be enough. But he was running out of time.
“Thank you, tovarishch,” he said, hoping the Russian word would have the desired effect. Meaning “comrade”, in the world of Man, it had associations with violent revolution and repressive regimes. It was also a reminder that he and Oza had spent time together in that world, in the most repressive regime of all: the Russian prison system known as the Zona. “I don’t suppose you remember who any of these angels were?”
Oza frowned, obviously feeling unfairly pressured by the reminder. “How would I know angels’ names?” He turned to wash out some glasses behind the bar in a basin of gray water.
When Belphagor finished his drink and got up to leave, Oza murmured one other bit of information before turning away to his stockroom. “The Union of Liberation.”