Blessed Monsters

by Emily A Duncan

  “I gave you the last pieces—”

  “Of?”

  “My soul,” he ground out through his teeth. “What did you do with them?”

  Her onyx black eyes regarded him for a long, drawn out moment. “What did I tell you, when I took it?”

  “Is this a test?”

  She shrugged.

  He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember most things, but especially not a conversation that he’d had when he was not wholly there.

  “What a thing to throw away so frivolously. Was it worth it?”

  “It was at the time.”

  “Ah, what a thing, hindsight.”

  “Pelageya, what do you want from me? Why are you doing this?”

  “Have you ever once admitted you were wrong?” she asked, pointing the knife right back at him. Talking to her was like running in circles.

  “Is that what you want? You want me to admit I was wrong?” he asked incredulously.

  “It’s very difficult for you.”

  He leaned back in his chair and eyed her. It was very rare that he was wrong, about anything. But he knew he had made mistakes. He had done things he shouldn’t have in his reckless pursuit of fixing something.

  “I shouldn’t have given you that power over me,” he said with a shrug. “It was … not well thought out.”

  “Not very good and not a true admittance, but I suppose it will do. Are you strong enough, I wonder? Will you ask for the help you will need or take the burden on your own shoulders and surely fail?”

  He frowned.

  “I don’t have the pieces anymore, dear boy. You’ll have to get them yourself and I doubt you’ll enjoy what will be asked of you.”

  “Spare me, I haven’t liked any of this. Whatever is required of me will be nothing new.”

  Pelageya smiled at that, which was rather alarming.

  “You’re going to spin me around in circles and push me out the door and expect me to stop the destruction of the world when I don’t know how,” he said wearily.

  Pelageya stood. Malachiasz tensed, ready to bolt.

  “This world has been turning for so very long. There have always been people like you in it, ones who reach too far. People who want to change and burn and ruin and save the world. What do you think that gets them? Nothing and nothing and nothing. What do you think makes you so different that you can succeed where all who came before have failed? Why are you special? Why should you, a boy who sold the only pieces of humanity he had left for a few paltry shreds of power, be given a second chance? I may care little for the lines drawn between the Kalyazi and Tranavians, but I am Kalyazi, boy, and I do know what you’ve done to the people of this country.”

  “So, you would rather I die for my transgressions?”

  “Do you think you can stay the course? Do you want to?”

  “I want to try,” he said quietly.

  She stared at him. He fidgeted. He didn’t like being seen. He was a monster. He had eyes opening on his skin. He was aware of his own horror. But even before this, even when he was a boy among the Vultures, he didn’t like being known, standing out. It had changed some, when he’d realized how much he could affect if he took Łucja off the throne, and it had changed when he realized how good he was at getting people to listen when he was on that throne. But his quiet anxiety never went away. It lingered, torn open anytime he found himself under Nadya’s quietly focused gaze. She had always seen so much of him—too much. Even at the beginning, when he was doing his best to hide things, he could never shake the feeling that she was seeing it all anyway. That she had known he was trying to manipulate her and yet did it all anyway.

  “Will that be enough, I wonder?” she mused.

  It had to be.

  “He knows you’re here, of course. There’s no hiding from him. And you’re right, with a few fragments of your shattered soul you might bind him back into the earth, but you cannot do it alone, and my time of telling you what you need to hear is over. I gave you warnings. I gave that brother of yours and that cleric warnings. You all ignored them.”

  Malachiasz’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do with it?”

  “Hid it away. Can’t say I remember where.”

  “Of course not.” Malachiasz tilted his head back with a groan as Pelageya started digging through the ephemera in her cluttered hut.

  “It’s not here here, souls are too messy, they demand too much. I like to put them out of sight, out of mind. Yes, yes, somewhere else, a different place than here. You need four, you know. I told one of you this, a lifetime ago, but I can’t remember which.” She counted on her fingers to herself. “Yes, four, there were four before and there have to be four now.”

  Before … That was it. This god had been locked away once; he could be locked away again. His hand brushed the book in his pocket.

  “Was it not the other gods who locked away Chyrnog?” he asked.

  “Other gods? No, no, a fairy tale, a story, the truth forgotten. They can’t touch the mortal world without a mortal to work through. This has not changed.”

  “But if I kill like Chyrnog wants me to…”

  “Then, yes, it would be the endpoint of that particular disaster.”

  Malachiasz shivered.

  “You would be destroyed. He would become you, and you him. It’s already started.”

  He picked up a skull from the table beside his chair. He couldn’t tell what it was, some kind of small animal. He turned it in his fingers.

  “Who are you, Pelageya?”

  He didn’t expect her to respond, let alone answer. He was surprised when she winked at him.

  “No one important.”

  That left something to be desired.

  “Maybe if you gather those you need, you’ll be able to accomplish this.”

  “But what about—”

  “The soul business? Well, maybe they can help with that, too.”

  Malachiasz was quiet. Who were the other three? “Is one of them my brother?”

  Pelageya grinned. “You better get a move on.”

  28

  SEREFIN MELESKI

  When she sang, stars fell from Svoyatova Evgenia Grafova’s eyes and lips.

  —Vasiliev’s Book of Saints

  “We have to talk about this.”

  Serefin squinted up at where Kacper stood, the setting sun at his back. They had camped for the evening and he and the others were back under guard. He glanced pointedly at a nearby soldier.

  The soldier who wasn’t remotely paying attention. Kacper dryly returned the look. Serefin sighed.

  “Very well, sit down at least.”

  Serefin leaned on his hands as Kacper sat. He knew where this was headed. “Are you going to undermine my decision?” he asked.

  Kacper blanched, clearly remembering the argument he’d had with Ostyia that had spiraled much further out of control than any of them could have known.

  “I’m worried the decision that you’re making is going to get you killed. Is that a problem? We have no protection. We have nothing as leverage. There is literally nothing stopping the tsar from killing you—covertly or otherwise—if you do this.”

  Serefin nodded mildly, but said nothing, sensing Kacper wasn’t finished.

  “It was uncanny, the situation with Yekaterina, but not something that we can assume will ever be replicated. They have no reason for keeping you alive. No reason for courting talks of a peace treaty since the last I heard the front isn’t going so great for us because our magic is gone.”

  Serefin flinched. How many had died that day? Or had a ceasefire been called as the Tranavians were forced to regroup? It was killing him, the not knowing.

  “I’ve thought about all of this, Kacper.”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  He straightened and reached out to take Kacper’s hands. Kacper softened, as if forgetting that he was supposed to be upset with Serefin.

  “I’m not saying that you need to go along with everythi
ng I do. You’re not my underling, I want us to be equals.”

  “Sznecz.”

  Serefin rolled his eye. “All right, fine, as much as we can be considering the circumstances.”

  “You are the king.”

  “But that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  Serefin glanced over. The soldier had wandered farther away. Milomir eyed them from afar but didn’t seem inclined to come closer. They had established that they weren’t going anywhere—and weren’t going to fight back—so the Kalyazi hadn’t taken drastic measures. He thought they should be taking drastic measures against Ruslan, but they hadn’t so far. He couldn’t shake the feeling that bringing the boy into the capital would be bad news for them all.

  “Kacper, I know how I’ve acted in the past. Half of Tranavia thinks I don’t want this.”

  “More than half.”

  “Not helping,” he said. “I do, though. I didn’t, that’s fair, but I do now and I’m doing my best and sometimes I’m going to make decisions that seem off-the-wall and foolhardy and you’ll have to trust me.”

  Kacper managed to appear both heartened and distressed. Serefin sighed ruefully.

  “Can I at least know why you think this will work? Or are you asking for complete and total blind acceptance?” Kacper asked.

  “Rude.”

  Kacper glanced at Serefin’s left eye and winced. “Sorry.”

  Serefin waved him off. “No. Obviously not. I just…”

  “I’m not going to undermine you in public, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ve been to court, Serefin, I know how this works. But I am going to ask you to explain yourself in private.”

  “This is hardly private, Kacper.”

  “You know what I mean, don’t be difficult.”

  “All I know how to be is difficult.”

  “That is very true. Regardless, I’ll trust you—of course I trust you—but I want you to trust me enough to tell me what you’re planning.”

  There was one fatal flaw with that perfectly reasonable sentiment. “And if I don’t have a plan?”

  “Serefin.”

  “Great talk!”

  Kacper groaned.

  “They’re listening, you know,” Serefin pointed out.

  Kacper didn’t bother glancing over his shoulder. “I know.”

  “Talking of plans at all will make them nervous.”

  “It does,” Milomir called.

  “Eavesdropping is rude!” Serefin called back.

  Kacper was giving him a look, and he knew why. They were effectively prisoners. Kacper was right. There was nothing in place that would stop the tsar from executing Serefin the second he stepped into Komyazalov. He should be worried. He should be terrified.

  But he … wasn’t.

  Was it sheer exhaustion? Was it something else? It certainly wasn’t hope. But Katya—outside of carving open his chest—had never really given any indications of hostility toward Serefin. She had been honest that if it were up to her, she would have drawn up a peace treaty, damn what their respective courts had to say. But it wasn’t up to her. It was up to her father.

  And the tsar was a variable he did not know how to plan for. He knew surprisingly little about Yulian Vodyanov. He’d known more about Katya, all things considered. She was the one that he might meet on a battlefield. He knew only that Yulian was deeply devout, to the point where he would never bend to heretics. That worried him, but such a deeply devout man had ended up with a daughter like Katya, so maybe there was hope for the world yet.

  There weren’t many wartime stories about the current tsar. He was more content to hole himself up with his priests in his church than focus on what was happening at the front.

  “It’s not that I have a plan and it’s not that I trust them,” Serefin said, his voice soft. “It’s that if we go there and they kill me, so what? We’re going to die. It’s no longer a chance, it’s inevitable.”

  “Because of your brother.”

  “Because of Chyrnog,” Serefin clarified, though Kacper didn’t seem to appreciate it. He was still holding Kacper’s hands and he didn’t want to let them go, ever.

  Ruslan was off whispering with one of the soldiers, which concerned Serefin. How persuasive could Ruslan be? He reminded Serefin of Malachiasz, but without the anxious earnestness that Malachiasz used to win people over so effortlessly. Ruslan was more obviously conniving.

  What would happen if he convinced these soldiers that an ancient god had awoken and needed worship? What could he twist them into doing?

  Serefin really wished Malachiasz hadn’t left. Milomir had contemplated sending someone after him until Serefin pointed out that Malachiasz could kill literally everyone in the company without much thought or effort. He’d received a poisonous look in return—it was, admittedly, a little on the callous side—and Milomir had decided to let him go. Serefin hoped it wasn’t to their detriment.

  He wanted to trust Malachiasz so badly.

  Kacper had been quietly toying with his fingers. “Thank you,” he said softly.

  Serefin tilted his head. “For giving you no answers to your questions and telling you we were doomed instead of reassuring you?”

  Kacper shrugged. “You let me in. You don’t do that, usually.”

  It hurt to hear that and realize Kacper was absolutely right. He didn’t try to be like this. He didn’t know how to not be like this.

  “Oh,” he said, his voice small.

  Kacper squeezed his hand. “It’s not like it’s a surprise.”

  Serefin frowned.

  “You’ve spent a good part of your life watching everyone around you die.”

  “You have, too.”

  “I don’t have anyone dropping the weight of a country on my shoulders. Actually, literally no one cares what I do with my life, which is very freeing.”

  “I care,” Serefin murmured.

  Kacper grinned.

  * * *

  The rest of the journey was uneventful. The screams across the fields that came from nowhere and everywhere at once, benign. More than once Milomir had to send soldiers out to kill … something. They always returned haggard and traumatized. The monsters of Kalyazin were no longer sleeping.

  But it went quickly. Too quickly. He had never truly had to be a king and now everything hung in the balance and there was nothing to do but press forward. To Komyazalov. To the heart of his enemies.

  interlude iii

  RASHID KHAJOUTI

  Either Viktor was fabulously wealthy, or Kalyazi boyar could afford more than one home. Rashid suspected the former. And he did not like it here one bit.

  There was something deeply wrong with the air in Komyazalov. Not like in Grazyk … or maybe, possibly, exactly like in Grazyk.

  Rashid had never believed Nadya when she’d insisted the Kalyazi did not experiment with magic like the Tranavians. The tsarevna was proof enough that Nadya had been drastically misinformed.

  He flopped onto a chair in Viktor’s sitting room while Parijahan tossed a log onto the fire before someone could scold her. The servants didn’t like when the two Akolans did everyday tasks. Parijahan should have been used to it thanks to her position in Akola, but she liked being self-sufficient. Meanwhile Viktor kept getting dragged away by a seemingly constant stream of people requiring his attention.

  Parijahan watched him leave for what was possibly the fourth time before she said, “Why would anyone want that?”

  “Money to not starve,” Rashid said softly.

  Her expression twisted, like it always did at the reminder that she’d always had everything, and he had been effectively sold into her household as a boy. It wasn’t slavery, but it was close.

  “I don’t like it here,” he said.

  “No,” Parijahan replied, eyeing the fire. “I don’t, either. And I don’t like Nadya being on her own.”

  “If anyone can handle herself, it’s Nadya,” Ostyia said from where she was sitting on a lush rug, her back to a ch
air. Parijahan stepped over her to get to the chair. Ostyia was idly leafing through her spell book. “Also, she’s supposed to be on her way here. Viktor gave me a very panicked message from her that said something about being eaten by dogs and getting lost in a maze of icons.”

  “So, she’s doing fine?”

  Ostyia shrugged.

  “Even if she can handle herself,” Parijahan said, “she didn’t want to come here.”

  Ostyia tilted her head back to shoot Parijahan a quizzical look.

  Nadya appeared soon after, ushered in by one of Viktor’s servants and very frazzled by it. She yanked her scarf off the second the servant left, leaving her white-blond hair messy. She collapsed facedown on the rug next to Ostyia. She mumbled something unintelligible.

  “What was that, darling?” Ostyia asked.

  She flipped onto her back. “We’re in over our heads.”

  “True enough.”

  “Katya didn’t tell anyone who I am, though, so I live another day.”

  Rashid’s arms were itchy under his sleeves. The flowers came and went on their own now. It was wildly inconvenient. But Nadya had suggested he talk to Ostyia about it … He rubbed at them absently.

  Parijahan climbed back over her to sit on the arm of the chair Rashid was in. He leaned his head against her side.

  Nadya continued staring fixedly at the ceiling.

  “I hate feeling like this,” he whispered.

  “I know,” she replied, weaving a hand through his hair.

  Maybe if he hadn’t buried his power so deep, it wouldn’t have clawed its way to the surface, tearing him apart in its wake. Maybe they could still be in Akola and everything would be all right.

  But that wasn’t true. He’d known, the night Parijahan had stolen into his rooms and shaken him awake, whispering that they had to go, how she was going to get revenge and they had to leave, what he was getting into. He hadn’t realized she was saving him. He hadn’t thought he was important at all.

  “Don’t you ever want to go back?” he asked.

  She sighed, tilting her head against his. “Sometimes. I don’t think it would feel like home anymore, though.”