Blessed Monsters

by Emily A Duncan

  Something slumbered beneath this church.

  Something that stirred at Nadya’s presence.

  “Naden’ka?”

  Anna’s fingers slid through hers again, jolting her. She was standing in the foyer, staring at the high ceiling. Icons lined the walls, crowded so thick there was no space between them. So many saints. So many martyrs. So many dead. It was too colorful and too loud. Every inch of the interior was painted with icons and lined with gold. The colors were beautiful. They were agony.

  “Give me a second,” Nadya said, her voice strained. It was all so heavy. She was feeling something she never would have were she only a cleric. It was innate within her, calling down to the darkness. A well of churning water. A storm in girl’s flesh.

  She might get answers here, after all.

  “What’s happening?”

  Nadya shook her head. Heard Anna’s little gasp, surely meaning nothing good. She must control this; she heard footsteps on the tiled floor—she noted absently that they made a mosaic—and she had only moments before an acolyte asked if they needed help.

  Anna’s hands were on her shoulders, turning her away. Before she knew it, Anna had wrapped a scarf around her hair and was firmly tying a headband around her forehead. The temple rings on the band were heavy. She closed her eyes, something tearing through her, pain making her hiss through her teeth. Something inside her was changing.

  “Dozleyena,” Anna said cheerfully. “My apologies, my friend has been in the forests a long time and has forgotten how civilized folk dress.”

  Nadya swallowed, opening her eyes. Anna squeezed her hand.

  Her insides were twisting even as she turned to the boy. Five years or so younger than Nadya, he was approaching without caution. He had messy brown hair and dark eyes. He greeted Anna and asked her business, then blinked.

  “Oh, apologies, Sister Vadimovna, I didn’t recognize you. Do you need any help?” He glanced curiously at Nadya and Parijahan.

  “No, thank you, Andrei, we’re just going to the library.”

  He smiled. “Sister Belovicha was asking where you’d run off to, but I told her you were taking a walk in the forest. I know how you enjoy a walk.”

  Anna looked disconcerted, but then smiled, all relief. “Thank you for that, as well.”

  Nadya was glad they weren’t going into the sanctuary. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what would happen there if the foyer was enough to turn her inside out.

  Anna’s hand was clammy against Nadya’s, but she didn’t let go as the boy turned and led them through an eastern corridor and into a vast library. Nadya let out a long breath, something unlatching from her heart. She had moved out of sight of whatever had her.

  The library was enormous. Multiple levels with rickety ladders attaching them together and an ornate spiral staircase in the center that led up to the second level, housing books all the way to the vaulted ceiling.

  “How do you even reach those?” Nadya asked Andrei. Books on questionable topics would definitely be found at unreachable heights.

  “Ladders and hooks. I can help if you let me know what you’re searching for!” he chirped.

  Nadya opened her mouth but Anna replied before she was able.

  “That’s all right, Andrei! It’s lineage work, very boring.”

  He looked disappointed. “Well, let me know if you need anything,” he said before bounding away.

  Nadya took in the room, overwhelmed. “Where do we start?”

  Anna chewed on her lower lip. “By avoiding the head librarian and praying we come upon something quickly.”

  “Ah, just like home.”

  Anna grinned. For a moment, Nadya forgot that they were at the heart of Kalyazin and the world was falling down around them.

  “Well,” Parijahan said, staring wide-eyed, before heading for the stairs. “What I wouldn’t give to have our reticent academic here.”

  “He would find what we’re looking for in a matter of seconds and then be wildly condescending about it for months,” Nadya replied. “We’ll be fine without him. Just … look for apocrypha.”

  interlude iv

  RASHID KHAJOUTI

  “I know a little of Akolan magic,” Ostyia said, “but explain to me how it’s manifested in your family line. Magic isn’t generally hereditary, but it can be.”

  It was a difficult question, one Rashid was glad Ostyia asked after Parijahan had left to meet Nadya. The things she had been keeping from him weighed too heavy between them.

  “Is it for you?”

  She nodded. “A family business.”

  “My grandfather and uncle had magic. If my parents had it, I never knew.”

  “What did that mean for them, though?” Ostyia asked.

  They were in Viktor’s sitting room, and Rashid had Ostyia’s spell book in his lap while she paced in front of the fireplace.

  But he didn’t really know what his uncle could do—he was gone before Rashid could know him. His grandfather had dealt in minor prophecies.

  Ostyia made a frustrated sound. “That won’t help us. Seer magic is easy to figure out. You’d be having weird dreams and it would be a matter of accessing them consciously. That’s not what’s going on. The flowers are weird. Can you manifest power?”

  “I can manifest weird flowers.”

  She snorted softly. “It should be, well, there are many metaphors for how it can feel. A thread, a river, a song, a simple feeling of something different off in a cornered part of your brain. For people with power like, well, Malachiasz, it would be a storm. Do you have that?”

  “What’s it like for you?”

  “A blade—sharp on all sides—and if I reach for it the wrong way, it can cut me. It’s always there. Even now, the magic hasn’t gone anywhere.”

  “If you had ignored it, what would have happened?”

  “Repression is dangerous.”

  He shrugged, closing his eyes. The thread metaphor made the most sense, and there was something there that he had been avoiding. A place within himself he’d always forced away. He reached for it and pulled, feeling the bright spark of long ignored power.

  When he opened his eyes, his breath caught. There was a pile of flowers in his lap. Ostyia’s eyes narrowed. She leaned down and picked one up. It was red, the petals curling outward.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” she murmured. “I wonder…”

  Ostyia spun a szitelka between her fingers. She unsheathed it in one fast motion and slashed her forearm. He didn’t react, used to Tranavians openly cutting themselves for little reason. She fluidly dropped to the ground in front of him and held out her bleeding arm.

  “Heal that.”

  “What?”

  She lifted her eyebrows.

  “Even I know how rare healing magic is.”

  “Incredibly so. Blood magic can’t do it. From what I understand, there have only been a handful of Kalyazi clerics who have been healers. Magic can do strange and wonderful things, but there are tempers on it and healing is one of them.”

  Rashid laughed. “You can sidestep right into Kalyazi theology with that.”

  “It’s all different ideologies explaining the same inexplicable conundrums. Nadya has used healing magic, yes?”

  “Nadya can commune with the Kalyazi goddess of health, so yes. How do Tranavians handle wounds?”

  “Medicine. Plants and science. How you would, yes? Nadya said you’re the one patching everyone up in your mad little band.”

  He nodded. He had seen Nadya and Malachiasz survive impossible things and the only explanation he’d had was that their particular magics were keeping them alive against all odds. But if what Ostyia was suggesting was true, he might have had a hand in it.

  “Blood magic is, well, messy. It’s very easy for it to go sideways. We’re destructive; we’re not healers,” she said with a slightly wistful smile.

  “I feel like you and I are dancing around something.”

  “If you can
heal this, you have something every one of these blasted countries wants,” Ostyia said seriously. “And it would explain why Parijahan has been dancing around things, as well.”

  He inhaled sharply.

  “And it might mean you can do a whole lot more.”

  But it didn’t explain everything. “Nadya broke Malachiasz’s jaw once and he was talking within hours.”

  “The Vultures heal remarkably fast. The Vultures are, for all intents and purposes, indestructible.”

  “Why hasn’t Tranavia figured out that magic for everyone then?”

  She stared. “We have. It’s the Vultures. It’s what’s done to them that makes them that way.”

  Oh. The torture. Metal and bone. Skin and salt and darkness. Malachiasz never talked about it except obliquely; had claimed he couldn’t remember in a way that suggested every torment at the hands of his cult was always vividly present.

  He slowly reached over, taking her pale forearm in his hands. He glanced up. Her eye was trained very intently on his face. He reached into that dormant, slumbering part of himself and yanked. His hands grew hot and he carefully placed one over the cut. A small, black flower sprouted between his fingertips.

  When he pulled his hand away, the cut was healed.

  Ostyia let out a short laugh. “Rashid, I think we have a lot more to figure out.”

  He nodded. “You know something?”

  “Hm?” They were both staring at her healed forearm with the same kind of hopeless awe.

  “This is much better than discovering that I’m very good at, I don’t know, blowing people up.”

  She looked up at him sadly. “But all the more dangerous for you.”

  30

  NADEZHDA LAPTEVA

  Peloyin ruled the gods with a hand that was not benevolent.

  —The Books of Innokentiy

  It wasn’t an entirely useless venture, the library. Now Nadya had more names of more old gods to worry about: Rohzlav, Nyrokosha, Valyashreva, Morokosh, and Chyrnog. A delightful prospect, to know that even stopping one might mean there were merely more on the horizon. That they were considered the purest of the gods. The oldest. A few thrown out during the last divine war. Some buried under the earth, bound in chains, waiting to be set free. Some killed, but, as Nadya read, nothing divine stays dead for long.

  They returned to the palace, finding Katya, who extricated herself from a pack of boyar when they stumbled upon her in a wide hall and promptly ferried them into her rooms. Her dogs were fast at her heels. She looked ill and had a piece of paper clutched in her hand that she thrust at Nadya.

  Nadya took it, her heart falling as she read. It was a long and angry screed about her. Again, how Kalyazin could no longer look to their clerics to save them. That she was in bed with the Vultures—her face heated—and only ever a false cleric.

  A mad girl hearing the voices of devils, not our gods. A girl, deluded and broken.

  A screed to turn to the Church, the only thing that would save them. That the heretics were being fought back but would return in their murderous quest for Kalyazi blood.

  “What is it?” Anna asked. Nadya shifted the paper slightly so Anna could read. She paled. “Nadya.”

  “I know,” Nadya snapped.

  “It has the Church’s seal on it,” Katya said flatly.

  “I know. How did they find out about him?” Nadya asked.

  Katya shrugged. “You were traveling openly through Kalyazin. Didn’t you stop at a monastery?”

  Nadya felt the blood drain from her face. “And that’s it?”

  Katya chewed on her lip. “Together with everything else, yes. I’ve been accosted by too many boyar, here from their territories because of what’s happening out there.”

  The monster attacks, the strange things happening with religious iconography, it was all going to spiral steadily into chaos until the final arresting moment when Chyrnog struck.

  Nadya blinked back tears. She could feel the dark thing from before pushing at her thoughts. Maybe the propaganda was right.

  Just a girl who talks with monsters.

  What dwelled here, beneath the city, that recognized her? What dwelled in the swamps?

  “You didn’t know about these?” Parijahan asked Anna.

  Anna shook her head vehemently. “I knew the Church had sent out edicts. And I—I knew there were whispers about the cleric, but—Nadya, please.”

  Nadya sat down heavily. All her irrational fears had come horribly true.

  “A few boyar brought me others. As well as my father’s favorite pet, a holy man named Dimitry.” Distaste colored her voice. “They’ve been circulating for a while now,” Katya said softly. “They want someone to blame.”

  There was a knock at the door and Katya called for them to enter. A servant came in, handing Katya a slip of paper. A slow smile broke across her face as she read.

  “Go find Viktor Artamonov. Tell him I need to speak to the girl with one eye, then send her to the eastern courtyard.”

  Nadya perked up at that.

  Katya clapped her hands together. “New crisis! We’ve got to hide a king before word gets out and I’ve got a real mess on my hands.” Abruptly she got up and left the room.

  Silence stretched out, Nadya, Parijahan, and Anna staring at each other in shock.

  “What?” Nadya said incredulously, her mind reeling. “Katya, what?” She ran after her.

  Katya walked swiftly through the palace and into a wing that Nadya hadn’t seen yet. She would get lost if she didn’t keep up. Eventually they spilled out into a back courtyard inaccessible from the outside.

  A small company of Kalyazi soldiers waited there. Among them Nadya recognized Milomir.

  It was deeply weird, to be searching for him. After what he’d done, after everything. But nevertheless, she pressed past the others to where the king of Tranavia stood.

  It had only been a few months, but the gashes on his face had healed to scars and were more plentiful, and he wore an eye patch. His brown hair was tied back, making him look more like Malachiasz than Nadya remembered. It was silly they hadn’t known they were brothers. The two had the same knife-sharp cheekbones and ice-pale eyes—though Serefin’s single eye was a dark pupilless blue now. He tensed when he saw her, hand reaching reflexively for a spell book he didn’t have.

  Before she realized what she was doing, she slammed into him. He let out a startled breath before he laughed, returning the embrace.

  “I didn’t know we were friends like this,” Serefin said.

  She buried her face against the furs on his collar. She hadn’t either, frankly. But she couldn’t fault him for what had happened on that mountain. “You’re an idiot.”

  “True.” She felt him kiss the side of her head.

  “I didn’t realize we were friends like this,” Nadya said wryly.

  “Nadya, I can’t stand you.” He was quiet before murmuring, “I’m sorry.”

  Her arms tightened around his neck. Then she leaned back, taking his face between her hands. She ran her thumb down a scar the length of his face and touched the eye patch.

  “It’s bad, huh?” he asked.

  “What happened?” The scars on his face were uncomfortably spaced, like they were made with human fingernails.

  “I got Chyrnog out.”

  It hit her all at once that he wasn’t wearing the eye patch because of his notoriously bad vision. “Oh,” she whispered.

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t doing much for me anyway.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at Katya. “I have a good sense of who’s responsible for you being here.”

  “The one and only. I’m hoping to make an escape attempt before her father knows. Do you think it will work?”

  “I love the thought of the king of Tranavia bolting in the night to avoid an uncomfortable meeting.”

  “That was the exact reason I left Tranavia, what are you talking about? I want to discuss terms and treaties and it will be awful.”


  Something grasped Nadya’s insides. “Really?”

  Serefin was eyeing the activity around them as the soldiers started to disperse. “Hm?”

  “Serefin, a peace treaty?”

  He hesitated. “If he’ll agree. I’m led to believe he won’t. And it could take … years for it to be finalized.”

  “But you’re going to try?” She grabbed his hand fiercely.

  He lifted his eyebrows at her. She didn’t drop his hand.

  “I’m going to try.”

  She threw her arms around him.

  “All right, you’ve expended your quota. Enough with the hugs,” he said with a laugh.

  “You like it. You like anyone who’ll remind you that you’re just Serefin.”

  He went very still against her before hugging her back. Warm and tight and earnest.

  “I still can’t stand you.”

  “The feeling is mutual.”

  He stepped back, finally meeting Katya’s gaze. “You,” he said.

  “Me!” She grinned. She turned to Milomir. “How did you get into the city?”

  “Covertly,” Milomir assured her. “I don’t think we were seen, but there are no guarantees.”

  “No, we should assume someone saw, it’s safer that way. There’s no real way to keep this from getting out.”

  “Serefin!”

  Serefin was promptly bowled over by a short girl with a bad haircut.

  “Blood and bone, your face!” Ostyia said, her arms around Serefin’s neck.

  Serefin’s expression wearied briefly, but he grinned, hugging her. “I was so worried.”

  “About me?” Ostyia asked.

  “Shut up.”

  She left him to throw herself at Kacper, also knocking him over. Nadya eyed a wiry boy with black hair and a twitchy look to him, still under guard.

  “Who’s he?” she asked Milomir.

  He shifted uncomfortably. “It’s hard to explain. Also,” he glanced at Serefin, “we had the brother, but lost him.”

  “What?” Katya’s voice cracked hard over the single word.