by Jane Kindred
certain he had in him.
Belphagor booked his train trip back to Irkutsk in platzcart,
THE FALLEN QUEEN 151
where the berths were in open groups with dozens to a car. In case
the Seraphim planned to change the terms of their arrangement and
simply take the ring and dispose of him, he wanted plenty of humans
around to make it logistically difficult.
Except for the audience with the queen, things were progressing
more or less as he’d expected. Chances had been slim that the
Seraphim would agree to the deal he’d presented; even slimmer that
they’d honor the deal and leave them all in peace. He’d planned for the contingent that he would have to go straight to the top. He only hoped he could convince this queen that his proposal was in the interest of
the Firmament.
§
The demon Belphagor was a fool. He was in no position to make
demands.
Aeval didn’t care to be trifled with. That she was forced to humor
his little performance was galling, and he would pay for it. But she was also patient, and content to let the game play out since the advantage was hers. He had no idea whom he was playing with.
The Seraphim, on the other hand, could barely contain their
outrage. It was almost amusing that they took the demon’s temporary
victory so personally. Of course, it was no surprise they were upset.
She’d threatened them with exile to their birthplace, the most hated
fate a Seraph could imagine, if they failed to find the grand duchess.
They had wasted her time, dawdling with the demon, and she had half
a mind to return them to the Empyrean regardless. But now that the
arrogant Belphagor was delivering himself straight to her, it was only a matter of time before they could clean up the principality’s mess and put an end to this unfortunate chapter in Heaven’s history.
Being ordered to play along and leave the demon be until he
presented himself to her had sat hard with the Seraphim’s pride. To
mollify them, she gave them free reign to enforce her authority in the Raqia ghetto however they saw fit.
Before turning them loose on the Demon District, however, Aeval
summoned the Seraphim to assign them one final task in preparation
for Belphagor’s arrival. “Our Fallen friend wishes to surrender himself on his own terms,” she said, “entering Heaven as he pleases. Let him
152 JANE KINDRED
come. He will be yours to deal with soon enough. But he believes We
are unaware of his little smuggler’s portal. Make it clear to him that We are not.”
§
Belphagor disembarked at Irkutsk and took the local line around
Lake Baikal. The old train track led through a series of snow-capped
brick tunnels that in the warmer months were green and laced with
delicate wildflowers. Through one of these unused tunnels, where
tourists were allowed to get out and explore on foot, the gate to
Raqia’s ancient staircase could be found if one knew where to look.
The inhabitants of the world of Man most often chose not to see that
which disturbed their sense of how the world worked, and so a demon
passing through a solid stone wall was blinked away as a mistake seen
in the shadows of peripheral vision.
Without Vasily’s inborn illumination, Belphagor had to rely on
senses other than vision. He followed the stone staircase with one
hand against the spiraling wall and counted steps to keep track of how far he’d come. If he wasn’t careful, the place’s disorienting magic could make him forget whether he was ascending or descending until he
became lost in an infinite loop.
By the time he reached the trap door of his Brimstone room,
his bones and muscles were screaming with agony. He might have
sustained greater injuries than he’d previously thought.
Belphagor moved his fingers across the solid wood ceiling, tripping
the magical locks, until a distinct shape appeared in the wood. Years
ago, he’d won the room in a round of wingcasting from a desperate
player who’d let slip that the room sat over a portal to the world of
Man. Since then, Belphagor had made a pretty facet charging demons
who wanted to travel below discreetly.
He pushed the trap door upward, meeting resistance against what
he assumed was the heavy carpet hiding it, and forced the door open.
For a moment, he thought he’d come up the wrong passage. Where his
meager belongings had been was a gaping, blackened hole beneath the
sooty skies of Raqia. He hauled himself up and stood in the wreckage
of The Brimstone.
Cinders still smoldered in the piles of debris; this devastation
THE FALLEN QUEEN 153
had happened within the last day. Belphagor was too shocked to feel
outrage. It was the work of the Seraphim—a message to him that he
might have won the round of the game in the world of Man, but he was
in their territory now, and they didn’t like to lose.
He picked through the rubble, unable to recognize anything but
the bar. There was no sign of any dead, so perhaps they had evacuated
the place before torching it. The buildings on either side, a tinsmith’s and a whorehouse, were untouched.
Belphagor made his way to the street. No one was about. A light,
celestial snow was falling, dusting the soot and char with a white
luminescence in the settling twilight, but the weather wasn’t cold
enough to account for the absence of commerce or traffic of any kind.
He did not like the looks of this.
At last, he saw a woman, head down and covered in a cloak,
hurrying up the opposite side of the street. He crossed the street and stepped in front of her, and she jumped, looking up from her keen
concentration on her own footsteps. He apologized for startling
her before asking if she knew the whereabouts of the owner of The
Brimstone.
The woman shook her head. “Please let me pass. I’ll miss curfew. I
had to get medicine for my son.”
“Curfew?”
She stared at him as if he were deficient. “Have you been drinking,
sir?”
Belphagor smiled ruefully. “Sadly, no, madam. I’ve been away in
the southern lands.” It was a euphemism for falling to the world of
Man.
“Should have stayed there. The new queen is hell bent on cleaning
up Raqia. We aren’t supposed to be out on the streets past dusk.” She
glanced behind her and pulled her hood closer. “Not just her ‘Urban
Renewal,’ of course, but all those assassinations. The Fallen aren’t
trusted.”
“Assassinations?” He feigned ignorance, grateful for an
opportunity to get the official story.
The woman looked shocked. “You have been away, haven’t you?
First there was the Grand Duke Lebes last spring, and then the entire
154 JANE KINDRED
supernal family a few months later. Some madman broke into the
palace and slaughtered them all.”
Belphagor frowned. “Some madman? No one saw who did it?”
“Only poor Lebes’ son, Grand Duke Kae. He was so traumatized,
he couldn’t tell a soul what happened. By then, of course, he’d had the crown thrust upon him. Poor fellow. It’s only thanks to the queen that we have any sort of order at all in the Firmament
.”
“How do you mean?”
“She came from Aravoth to investigate the murders. She’s one of
those Virtues. Apparently, she nursed the grand duke back to health,
and he fell in love with her. Seems he made an exception to the rule
against mixing pure blood.” The woman looked over her shoulder. “I
really must be on my way, sir. If you’re wise, you’ll do the same and get yourself home before you’re seen.”
Belphagor tipped his head toward the smoldering pile of rubble
across the street. “Unfortunately, madam, my home seems to have
burned to the ground.”
Her eyes widened and she backed up a step. “The Brimstone?”
“Why? What do you know about it?”
“The dens have been shut down for weeks,” she whispered. “At
least officially. But The Brimstone… the Seraphim… they came back
and burned them all.”
He wanted to ask her more, but she stepped into the gutter to go
around him and hurried on her way.
Where the precipitation hit piles of smoldering cinder, it sizzled
and turned to slush. Light snow now covered the ash of what had been
the most thriving den of iniquity in Raqia. Here Belphagor had caught
the hand of a young demon on his purse and found a companion out of
a century of solitude. And here he’d spent the last dozen years nursing the wounds of his own stupidity until the angel had landed in his lap
and brought Vasily once more into his sphere.
Belphagor had known The Brimstone’s players and staff for many
years and had shared the comforts and conflicts of the most ordinary
of dysfunctional families. For the past decade, he’d operated his
business from the small back room, providing discipline for the many
lost souls of Raqia who couldn’t otherwise acquire the firm hand of
THE FALLEN QUEEN 155
correction they desired. More than a few of the Host had purchased
what he offered.
Belphagor turned away. There was no time to indulge in rage or
grief. He must stand before the queen of Heaven and make his case.
No one else would pay for his audacity to challenge the powers of the
Firmament.
§
An armed regiment of Ophanim stood before the gates of the
palace. Like the Seraphim, they glowed with a fiery radiance, but theirs was a cooler fire, a whiteness that didn’t hurt to look upon. Instead, they were difficult to bring into focus, seeming to shift in and out of phase with the Heaven around them. The edges of their forms were
always moving, always slightly blurred. They also had the proverbial
“eyes in the back of the head” that demoness mothers who claimed
such power metaphorically to keep their broods in line would have
envied. Of course, the back of the head was as difficult to pin down
as the rest of the Ophan’s form; more properly, they seemed to have
an endlessly shifting array of eyes that saw three hundred and sixty
degrees around them at all times. And when the Ophanim moved,
smoothly and swiftly, their flux effect gave the impression they were
on wheels.
When Belphagor approached, they closed ranks, moving so
rapidly he had to look down at the snow to avoid becoming ill.
“Who approaches the palace of the principality?” an Ophan
demanded.
A charge ran through Belphagor like a bolt of lightning in his
skull. He tried to find his tongue, lost for the moment in the vibration and heat. “Belphagor of Raqia,” he managed.
The Ophanim swept aside, making a space for him to walk
between. Behind them, the wings of the gilded gates swung inward.
The Ophan beside him raised his sword across his chest, the brightness of the metal making it once more too difficult to look at him straight on.
“Enter, Belphagor of Raqia.”
Belphagor dug his nails into his palms to keep from pissing himself
and hurried through the undulating line of Ophanim before any of
156 JANE KINDRED
them spoke again. He passed through the courtyard and mounted the
pearly steps, lined with another row of Ophanim. He kept his head
down and went through the doors as they, too, swung open, and then
waited in the grand entryway on the shining tiles of onyx and opal.
A uniformed steward came out to him and looked him over. This
one, like most in the Firmament, was merely an ordinary angel of the
Fourth Choir, and cast no terrible radiance or debilitating voice.
“Belphagor of Raqia.” The otherwise proper tone dripped with
scorn. “You are to follow me. Touch nothing.”
Belphagor ran his hand along the railing while he ascended the
grand staircase, making sure to leave his filthy demon germs on it.
The steward brought him to a small throne room on the second
floor and stopped him outside the doorway. “You will bow on the
threshold, a full genuflection, then approach the throne, taking only
five paces, and bow again. Wait until the queen summons you. Then
you will approach to within ten paces of Her Supernal Majesty and
bow once more until she bids you to address her. You will not look
at her unless she commands it. When she has dismissed you, you
will thank her for her graciousness in receiving you—addressing her
always as Her Supernal Majesty—and retreat in the same manner. Do
not insult her by showing your back to her.”
“I’ll try to resist the impulse.”
The steward sniffed with disdain and stepped aside. Belphagor
crossed the threshold and bowed as instructed—though judging by the
sound the steward made in his throat, not entirely to his satisfaction.
From his vantage point, he saw only the silver leaf and crystal
facets decorating the flowing train of her gown and the delicate pair of silken slippers poking from beneath it. It was enough to drive him mad with curiosity. Of the orders of the Third Choir, he was acquainted
with the earthly Grigori of the Order of Powers, and had known a
Dominion or two, but he’d never seen one of their Virtuous choral
cousins before. Silver and silk didn’t put him in mind of the Third
Choir element of earth.
He bowed again after five paces, uncertain whether he’d counted
correctly. She made him wait, making his stiff limbs ache and quiver
before she finally spoke.
THE FALLEN QUEEN 157
“Approach, Belphagor of Raqia.” She pronounced his name with
a peculiar, lyrical accent. It took immense effort not to look up after he came forward and bowed for the final time. “So you are the demon
who has confounded Our poor Seraphim so.” She sounded almost
amused.
He lifted his eyes with a brief, uncontrollable flicker before
lowering them again, uncertain whether she was giving him leave to
address her.
“You may stand before Us and speak,” she assured him.
Belphagor straightened and was struck dumb for a moment by the
way everything about her shimmered. In contrast to the unpleasant
fluxing of the Ophanim, she seemed to pulse and flicker like a star in a black night. It wasn’t radiance exactly; her skin, though milk white with a near absence of pigment, didn’t glow.
“We did not bid you look on Us.”
He dropped his gaze. “I beg your pardon, Your Supernal Maje
sty.”
“We did, however, bid you speak. Our time is precious. You have
wasted much of it already. Do you have Our property as you claim?”
“I do.” He removed the chain from around his neck. An attendant
took it to the queen for her inspection. “It was given to me by a girl in payment for providing her passage to the world of Man. I had no idea
why we were being pursued by the Seraphim until the girl displayed
her radiance in returning them to the Firmament.” He timed his
pause just so. “I now believe her to be the Grand Duchess Anazakia
Helisonovna of the House of Arkhangel’sk.”
The queen betrayed nothing. “That is quite a claim, as the grand
duchess currently occupies the supernal mausoleum.”
“Forgive me, Your Supernal Majesty, but the Seraphim would not
have been sent to scour the world of Man for a mere trinket.” He
sensed her frowning; the entire room seemed to have grown colder.
He had to tread carefully now for his gamble to pay off. “I can only
assume some other corpse was interred in her stead, and that when
the principality discovered it, he sent the Seraphim to find her. And I think it’s obvious who must have committed the terrible acts against
the supernal family.”
A collective gasp circled the room.
158 JANE KINDRED
“Look on Us,” said the queen. Her eyes of quicksilver regarded
him as prey. “You had best be careful, demon. You are accusing
supernal blood of treason.”
He had hooked her. “I don’t believe it was treason, Your Supernal
Majesty. Her mind is not sound. She doesn’t know who she is. I believe the grand duchess slaughtered her own family in a fit of madness.”
The queen leaned forward on her throne, her hand on her breast.
Her eyes sparkled with moisture. Belphagor had to admire her; she
was a master player.
“The principality will be heartbroken to hear such news of Our
cousin. But you must tell Us now where the grand duchess is so We
may care for her.”
Belphagor let his game face slide over his features, emptying them
of expression. He’d hoped to be able to lay the deal out plain, bargaining for a reward for his assurance that Anazakia would never threaten the
principality’s throne, but it was clear forthrightness wouldn’t do. The queen had crafted a more remarkable piece of fiction than his own.