The Fallen Queen

by Jane Kindred

  me and thrust a pocket kerchief into my hand. “Clean yourself up.”

  He nudged his foot against the boot of the traveler across from us.

  “Vasily.”

  “I suppose you expect me to fetch the porter.”

  My eyes darted up at the rusty growl. A demon with impossibly red

  locks regarded me with disgust. Built like one of the brawny sentries

  of the Seraphim Guard, he had a feral quality nearly as unnerving,

  enhanced by the wolfish scruff of beard that left his chiseled chin bare.

  Only in the cloud of fugue that gripped me could he have failed to

  catch my notice before now.

  “Unless you’d prefer to leave the mess lie,” said the demon beside

  me.

  Vasily gave a grunt of irritation. “Oh, aye, Belphagor. Leave the

  dirty work to me. As always.” He slid from the coach seat and stepped

  into the aisle.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, shame compounding a host of wretched

  feelings I could not name. Though I hated him for it then, the demon

  took the wisest course of action in his cruelty. It would not have done for me to give way to grief or misery in those hours. They were luxuries, and I had been stripped of luxury in the setting twilight of Elysium.

  The fire-haired demon returned with an unhappy porter, who

  cleaned my mess while I hung my head. As the porter left us, my

  THE FALLEN QUEEN 31

  whole being began to tremble and I could not make it stop. The

  demon Belphagor startled me by reaching out and pressing the dark

  lacquered nail of his thumb against my forehead. A peculiar coolness

  passed from him into me, calming my trembling in an instant.

  “Sleep,” he said, and though I meant to fight it, I was drowned in

  emptiness and silence.

  §

  I woke to find the carriage stopped and the demons prodding me

  to my feet. We stepped out onto a platform and waited while the whole

  length of the magnificent, iron coach pulled away from the station. It moved of its own volition with a loud, hooting wail that echoed across the unfamiliar mountains. We had traveled the length of the great,

  glittering lake, and this was the end of the line.

  I later learned this was the path from which the portals of Heaven

  could be opened and into which the portals of Heaven fell. Legend

  said the crescent bed of the deepest lake in the world had formed

  when the Grigori plunged from Heaven to become the first Fallen—

  cast out of the Order of Powers into permanent exile for lusting after the children of Men.

  We boarded another of these conveyances, this one even bigger

  than the last, with private compartments enclosing berths that

  served as seats during the day and beds at night. I said nothing to my companions and they said nothing to me, and little to each other. I

  did not ask where we were going, or who they were and why I was

  entrusted to their care. They in turn volunteered no details. None of it seemed to matter in the heavy cloak of cerebral lethargy that draped

  me.

  My reflection in the window when darkness fell over the landscape

  puzzled me, for I did not at once recognize it as myself. I touched my hand to the glass version of the cap upon my head and then to the cap

  itself. I had been shorn like a spring ewe. Another luxury, taken.

  What was one more to Helga’s unbearable words? They

  whispered now in the silence, bits of gathered wool filling my head

  with meaningless sound. I could make no more sense of them than the

  empty syllables of the foreign languages around me. I only knew they

  destroyed me, and I wept silently against the glass where my cheek

  32 JANE KINDRED

  rested.

  Shadows eventually took shape in the paling darkness. Hills

  and valleys fell behind in our wake, rhythmic undulations on a vast,

  colorless plain. I watched the palette of light, tainted by our shadow, my mind as empty and arid as the unsettled expanse, marking time

  and distance by the turn of shades.

  I recognized none of the countryside we crossed. Blurs of marshy

  grasses and tangled brush were followed by scenes of mystifying

  industry dissected here and there by unexpected, sparkling rivers

  and endless green banks of scrub. Occasionally, we passed a village of wooden houses, or a town full of damp streets and crowded buildings

  where the metal carriage stopped for a few minutes before charging

  on. Bleak, colorless grasses weighted down by rain, or sun-dappled

  forests of birch trees—it mattered little to me. From conversation

  between the demons, I knew we were not among the Princedom of

  the Firmament of Shehaqim any longer, but in the drab, irredeemable

  land of the Fallen: the ignoble world of Man.

  “Taiga.” The demon startled me with the sound of speech, and I

  recoiled from the window where my head drooped. “It’s what you’re

  passing by.” Belphagor gave me a reluctant nod, perhaps realizing he’d spoken aloud and hadn’t meant to. “Yesterday it was the steppe.”

  I turned back to the window without responding.

  “If you wondered. Or didn’t they teach terrestrial geography in

  your angel schools?”

  “My nurse… ”

  “Nurse.” Vasily made a derisive sound. “Might’ve known.”

  “Helga—” The word was cut short by a swift blow from the back

  of Belphagor’s hand.

  “No names, I told you. Or can’t you follow simple direction?”

  I nodded, my eyes dry but stinging. No one had ever touched

  me in this manner. I had seen my father strike a stable boy once for

  impudence, but he had never raised a hand to any of his children. I

  pressed my hand to my cheek, longing for Helga’s comforting arms.

  Why had she sent me with these common brutes? She could not have

  known where they were taking me. As an angel of the supernal house,

  even losing my virtue in a backroom of The Brimstone would have

  THE FALLEN QUEEN 33

  been preferable to a fall from Heaven.

  “And your name from now on, while we’re on the subject, is

  Malchik.”

  I did not question him. I later learned this word meant “boy.”

  Beside me, Vasily gave a low growl of disgust, his glowering eyes

  on Belphagor’s. “Do you think you’ve run your mouth enough for one

  day?” The demons traded barbs in some peasant tongue, and then

  Vasily folded his arms and sat back in the seat. “Less conversation, the better,” he snapped.

  “She needs grounding, or she’ll be more obvious than a swan in a

  sewer.” Belphagor pulled a paper booklet from his pocket. “Look here.”

  He unfolded the map on the table before me and pointed at one of the

  blotches beneath a long crescent of blue. “Slyudyanka. Lake Baikal.

  That’s where we boarded. Now we’re here, near Yekaterinburg.” The

  demon looked at me, awaiting a response to these outlandish words,

  and I nodded, afraid he would hit me again. His scowl said he thought

  I was thick. “We’re headed here.” His fingertip jabbed a spot high on

  the map near a greater expanse of blue. “Leningrad.”

  “St. Petersburg,” Vasily corrected. “Don’t forget the passage of

  time. The others won’t.”

  “Point taken,” said Belphagor. “Y kagda v Sankt Peterburge, my

  gavarim
po-russki.”

  Vasily smirked at my expression. “They don’t speak the language

  of Heaven here, girl. And no one will understand you if you do.”

  “This particular language is Russian,” Belphagor added.

  Vasily snorted. “Barely.”

  “Zamolchi zhe.” Belphagor flashed him an irritated look. “But

  there are hundreds of languages. Each land has its own.”

  I thought this preposterous and didn’t believe him. It was akin

  to each princedom of Heaven speaking a language none other could

  understand. How could commerce and diplomacy be conducted? The

  demon told me other things about this alien land, some of which I

  absorbed and tucked away, others I dismissed as nonsense meant to

  mock me.

  Vasily, however, seemed displeased with Belphagor’s instruction

  of me. “Perhaps it’s time for her medication.”

  34 JANE KINDRED

  Belphagor stopped in the midst of an explanation of the

  mechanisms of the conveyance that carried us, which he called a

  train—or poezd, in the language of Men. He considered, and then sighed and took a vial from his pocket.

  “Your nurse gave me a draught. In case you became overexcited.”

  I shrank back against the seat. “I’m not overexcited.”

  “No use resisting. It’s for your own good.” He stood and stepped

  aside, waiting for the larger demon to take hold of me.

  I shook my head, but the demon Vasily pinned me against his

  chest. He held me with his broad hand across my forehead, his other

  at my jaw to force it open. My heart raced at this scandalous intimacy.

  No man had ever touched me this closely, and certainly not a peasant.

  This constraint turned out to be unnecessary. The instant Belphagor

  worked the cork from the vial, a bluish-grey mist burst forth, twisting and convulsing in search of the way out of this small room. From the

  look on the demon’s face, this was not what he’d expected. The vial did not contain a draught at all. This was the bottled essence of my shade.

  “Shit,” said Belphagor.

  It seemed the air had been sucked from the room, and I gasped

  sharply. The shade hied to me with a violent tremor, racing in with

  my breath with a force that would have knocked me to the floor had

  the other demon not held me. Large as he was, he still stumbled back

  against the seat. Instead of air, my lungs now filled with fluid, and I tried to expel it, convulsing and clawing at the demon’s forearms.

  A terrible pain stabbed my chest. Something thick and wet was

  spilling from it. When I pressed my fingers to the shirt, a dark pool of blood poured over them. I tried to speak, but blood was spilling from

  my mouth as well, and I choked on it.

  Belphagor cursed. “The washroom,” he said. “Get her to the

  washroom.”

  I sagged against Vasily, too weak to struggle while he dragged me

  into the water closet we shared with the next compartment. Belphagor

  squeezed into the tiny space beside us and locked the adjoining door.

  Spitting up blood, I tried to cough, and my lungs heaved for air.

  The room around me wavered and blurred. I was drowning.

  “Do it,” Belphagor urged. “We have no choice.”

  THE FALLEN QUEEN 35

  Vasily clutched my blood-soaked hand against my chest, and a

  brilliant flare sparked from his fingertips and bled over both of us.

  The scarlet flame rose in a line from the wound beneath our clasped

  hands to the tips of our heads, drawn like a wick in paraffin oil. Then the demonic fire poured down over us in a shower of red quicksilver,

  engulfing us.

  I felt it consuming me, though instead of burning, it seemed to

  draw the pain out into its nimbus. It absorbed the fluid in my lungs,

  surging into them as the shade had done and filling every fiber of my

  being with a radiating heat. And then, like an exhalation, it spilled

  from me once more, hit the tile beneath us, and dissipated. I stared up at Belphagor, my flesh now whole, but my spirit screaming with agony.

  I had begun my life in Heaven, but I was now in hell. What my

  shade imparted to me in an instant seemed an eternity of inconceivable torment. I had taken the twinning spirits and released my essence with a breath into the holding vial at ten o’clock, and there my corporeal

  projection remained in my stead while my true self took its leave. I

  now knew two pasts. In one, I had played at cards in Raqia and then

  found myself being whisked away in a stupor with these demons onto

  this train. In the other, I had danced the last waltz of the pageant with Papa, played a game of charades with Tatia and Maia before the guests

  departed, looked in on the convalescing Azel and told him a humorous

  tale, and run down to the kitchens for a midnight snack. I’d returned

  upstairs through the enfilade of the great halls to the Malachite

  Drawing Room to find the polished wood parquet slick with blood.

  This version of me stopped at the threshold, puzzled. I stared at

  the dark substance, swift and viscous as volcanic lead, traversing the floor before me from the edge of the carpet. My mother lay in the

  crossway.

  “Mama,” I said. Why would she lie down here?

  A gurgling sound came from her left. Blood leeched from a wide

  hole at the center of Tatia’s bodice where she lay in a crumpled heap

  before the fireplace. Maia slumped motionless on the settee, and

  my father’s corpse draped her lap, eyes and mouth open in genuine,

  stupefied surprise.

  “Nazkia, run!” Ola stumbled to her feet from behind the curtains

  36 JANE KINDRED

  where she’d been hiding, her hands clutched over her belly—neatly

  vivisected and soaked in scarlet. Someone had cut the baby from her

  womb.

  I stared, struck dumb. Cousin Kae stepped forward from the

  corner by the door.

  “Kae,” I said. “Help… ” At the swift plunge of Kae’s sword, Ola

  collapsed at my feet. I reached for her arms and missed, watching her

  fold delicately onto the carpet. “What?” I breathed, too astonished to register what was happening.

  Kae’s face was unrecognizable, his eyes wild and thrilled. I took

  three measured steps backward into the enfilade before I turned to flee.

  Only then did I wonder where the Seraphim Guard had disappeared.

  My senses returned too late. Kae caught me easily when I darted

  across the dance floor, gripping my hair and yanking the coiled locks

  down from their pile. He spun me about and brought me up on the tips

  of my toes to meet him. We were still dancing.

  “Why?” I gasped, inches from his face.

  “Because I can.” He thrust the sword into my ribs, and I fell

  against him with a cry, drawn into a perverse embrace to the hilt of his blade, my cheek against his lips. He met my eyes. “Because I will rule the Heavens,” he whispered, and yanked the sword from my chest.

  I tried to take a breath and felt thick fluid in my throat. Kae

  smiled. He still held my hand. Blood bubbled from my mouth, and I

  succumbed to the convulsive desire to breathe.

  I heard a high-pitched, keening sound, and white-hot light erased

  the vision. And then I found myself breathing in the sweet air of an

  earthly train car in the arms of a demon.

  “Water,” gasped Vasily.
<
br />   Belphagor stepped in toward the metal basin beside us and

  dispensed water from an automatic tap into a cup made of paper. He

  handed it down, not to me but to Vasily, who drank it in one draught.

  I staggered to my feet, and neither man stopped me. I made it to

  the basin and fell against it, vomiting nothing. On the wall above the basin hung a small mirror, and I stared into it, holding onto the basin’s rim while the washroom rocked with the motion of the train. It was

  not I in the mirror. There was no Anazakia.

  THE FALLEN QUEEN 37

  I tugged the woolen cap from my head and ran my hand over my

  soft stubble. It was oddly comforting to see and feel nothing familiar.

  If I had seen my old self in a corseted bodice and dangling curls, it

  would have cut me like Kae’s ravening sword. I would have seen them

  all in me: Mama and Papa, Tatia and Maia, Azel and—I closed my eyes

  against the vision of Ola clutching her gaping, empty womb. Nazkia, run! Her last words had been to save me from her husband’s sword.

  And I had run, though only chance had given me the opportunity

  and delivered me from the fate for which I’d been meant.

  Chance, and Helga. She had protected my shade, taking the vial

  I’d left on my dressing table, though how she’d recognized the magic, I had no idea. The solid tissue of my shade-self must have decayed, for

  the illusion remained complete until the bottled essence returned to

  its origin. In Elysium, a tomb now lay empty. For Helga’s sake—and

  for my own—I could only hope no one cared to visit it. Better we were

  all forgotten.

  Kae ruled the Firmament now, full of malice and evil. Let him

  have it. I wished never to see any of it again.

  38 JANE KINDRED

  Chetvertoe: The Underground

  The scions of the House of Arkhangel’sk lay wrapped in

  cerements of scarlet linen. Beside the aging corpses in the Supernal

  Mausoleum, seven marble shelves held the last, much fresher than the

  rest: the principality, the queen, and their five children, cut down in the prime of life. Kae’s father and mother were here also, but he felt curiously detached from them all. Images of each played in his head,

  but they were pretty paper dolls, turning and posing for an audience

  of memory, and not his memories at all. It hardly mattered. Heaven

  belonged to him—him and his queen.

  Why had he come to this dreary place? He could not recall. He