The Armies of Heaven (20 page)

“You did very well, Lyosha.” Belphagor smoothed back a plait of his hair.

Micah picked himself up, his dark wings flaring defiantly for a moment before he shrugged them back into place. He eyed Loquel and sneered at Belphagor. “What a paragon of virtue you are.”

“Virtues, actually. But you flatter me.”

Micah let out a raucous laugh. “The Prince of Tricks has Virtues that come to his rescue. How perverse Heaven has become.”

Belphagor shrugged with a mild lift of his eyebrow. “Heaven, sir, has always been perverse.” He glanced at Love, slumped in the chair. Despite having warned him when Tyr charged, she seemed to be barely holding onto consciousness. From the blood caked above her temple, it was clear she’d taken a serious blow to the head. His chest surged with anger. “And just what was it you wanted to know so damned badly you had to beat up my girl?”

“Ola,” murmured Love. “Azel.” She shook her head with her eyes closed. “Don’t know where they are.”

“Of course she doesn’t know where they are.” Belphagor rounded on Micah. “You’re the ones who took Ola from us!”

“And then someone took her back, just as you and your Virtuous henchmen were skulking out of Raqia. Are you going to tell me you know nothing about it?”

Belphagor felt his face go almost as pale as the Virtues. “Took her back? Who took her back? Took her back where?”

Micah folded his arms. “Well, this is fascinating. I thought your little gypsy girl was just a very good liar, and loyal to the point of absurdity. But you are not a good liar. You’re a two-bit hustler. I’m well acquainted with your kind; you can’t possibly lie this well. Which begs the question: who would want to abscond with the supernal children if it wasn’t either of us?”

The Nephil knelt before Love and turned her head toward him before Belphagor could react. “Just a moment. I only want to ask her one other question. It’s about what we discussed in the car, Love, with regard to your name.” His voice was surprisingly gentle. “Just tell me whether the number was one or two. By way of apology for our misunderstanding here, when I go back to the Romani community, I plan to take care of it.”

Love burst into tears.

Belphagor shoved the Nephil aside and helped her to her feet. “If any of your clan come anywhere near Love again—or anyone else in my family—I will kill you,” he promised Micah, holding Love close to him as she wept. “And I don’t mean just one of you. The
Angliski
Nephilim will be so thoroughly obliterated, the world of Man will forget you ever existed.”

“Our clan has its own
vory v zakone
.” Micah stood and brushed himself off. “There are certain things we don’t tolerate. I can’t make any promises with regard to the rest of your family—in particular, I’d have no qualms about beating your skinny little ass, given the opportunity. But you have my word no one is going to bother Love again.”

“And you have my word that I’ll kill you if they do.” Belphagor led Love out, but she turned back as they reached the door.

She looked at Micah for a long moment and then wiped her eyes and said, “Two.”

Back at the inn, Belphagor took Love to her room and helped her undress, reminding her when she seemed shy about it that he wasn’t the least inclined toward women. He cleaned and bandaged her cuts, trying to keep his anger in check when he saw the extent of her bruises, and wrapped her in a soft hotel robe. Giving her some painkillers and a sleeping pill, he put her to bed and pulled up a chair beside it.

“I’m going to stay right here next to you. You just get some sleep.”

“What about the Night Travelers?” She struggled to keep her eyes open as the drugs began to take effect.

“We already met with them. They’re going to vote on whether to restore the alliance.” He didn’t mention the fact that with the Exiles firmly against Anazakia, an alliance likely wouldn’t matter.

“You called me your girl,” she murmured as her eyes closed.

“Sorry. That was sexist of me.”

“No, it was sweet. My father left when I was a kid. I’ve never been anybody’s girl.”

Belphagor smoothed her hair across her brow, somewhat chagrined that she saw him as a father figure. Not that he wasn’t old enough. Technically, he was old enough to be her great-grandfather.

Love sighed after a moment. “I miss…” Her voice trailed off and she began to breathe deeply.

“I know you do, sweetheart. I’m sure he misses you, too.”

§

Kirill had spent two days and nights roaming the streets of the nest of demons. The first night, he’d nearly been arrested by the Ophanim Guard, rescued by an altruistic demon who ran a soup kitchen and pretended Kirill was merely demented and had wandered away. The demon led him to a room in a doss-house upstairs. When Kirill tried to thank him, the older man cut him off.

“You don’t belong here.” He spoke in Russian.

Kirill eyed him suspiciously, answering back in his native tongue. “How do you know where I belong?”

“I’ve done my share of falling. I know a human when I see one. Not that you were all that hard to spot.” He glanced at Kirill’s garments. “We don’t have many churches in the hell district.”

“It is all hell,” Kirill replied. “God has abandoned heaven.”

The soup kitchen demon gave Kirill some ordinary clothes, complete with a coat bearing the demonic patch on its arm, and told him he’d better get rid of the robes unless he wanted to spend the rest of his life in a prison camp.

With all that had befallen him since he’d found himself here, taking off his robes was perhaps the hardest thing he’d done. He’d put on the
podryasnik
six years ago as a sign of his commitment to the monastic life and had received the outer
ryasa
at his tonsure two years later, and hadn’t taken them off since except to bathe—and to sin with Love. But God had given him a task, and if his robes would hinder him in that task, he must put them aside. He bundled them into a cloth bag when he set out again for the demon market, trading his
skufia
for a black cap with a bill in front. His beard, he couldn’t bring himself to cut, and so it stayed.

The first two days turned up nothing. He’d wandered through the stalls of the market, asking people if they’d seen the children, and most simply ignored him. This morning, however, dressed like a local in khaki work pants and a loose, belted cotton shirt like a Russian
kosovorotka
, he blended in, and demons approached him trying to sell their wares. When he asked one of the vendors if he’d seen two small children, the man appraised him and nodded.

“Come with me. But be discreet.”

Kirill followed, mystified by the instruction. He glanced at stalls along the way as if he were interested in purchasing some of the produce or textiles, and the vendor led him eventually into a curtained area where a portly older gentleman greeted him.

“He’s looking for some children,” said his companion, adding something else in the angelic tongue Kirill couldn’t make out with his limited vocabulary.

The portly gentleman gave the other man a coin and he went on his way. “So.” The demon observed him. “What is it you seek? A girl? A boy?”

“Both. The boy is older.”

“I see.” The man nodded. “And the girl—how young?”

Kirill realized he didn’t know the words for giving ages in angelic and he hesitated.

“Like so?” The man put his hand at waist height.

Kirill shook his head. “Younger. Very small.” He lowered his hand to just above his knee.

The man eyed him peculiarly. “That’s quite young. The young are very dear, of course. But I may know of such a girl who in fact has a boy with her.” He wrote something on a piece of paper and folded it in half. “The address is a general store. Tell the shopkeeper Osip sent you.”

“Thank you, sir.” Kirill took his hand and pressed it gratefully. “I ask everywhere and you are the first person who helps me.”

Osip smiled. “It’s all a matter of coming to the right place.”

Unable to read the angelic script, Kirill asked passersby until someone read the address to him and pointed the way. He found the shop in a narrow street in a somewhat seedier section of the demonic district, though it all seemed seedy to him. It was, he supposed, a symptom of their poverty. Inside, he told the shopkeeper Osip had sent him, seeking two children.

The shopkeeper frowned at him. “I don’t do business in front. Come around back to my apartments.” He opened a door behind the counter.

Kirill followed anxiously into the shopkeeper’s living quarters. “You have the children? They are here?”

“You’re awfully eager.” The shopkeeper gave him a disapproving look. “I’m sure it’s none of my business, and a crystal facet from one man is as good as the next, but you do realize they are very
young
children.”

“Of course.” Kirill was puzzled by the man’s demeanor.

“And it hasn’t escaped my notice you’re not from around here. I must say I find it a bit distasteful someone from the world of Man would come to Raqia to do such business. We are not a playground, sir.”

Kirill was having trouble understanding this demon, but he blushed at being caught out as a human once more. His accent was still very poor.

The shopkeeper turned a key in the lock of a door at the back of the apartments, but didn’t yet open it. He scrutinized Kirill from top to bottom. “These two will come dear,” he said firmly. “With such fine skin and eyes, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the issue of some slumming noble. Are you sure you can afford them?”

“Afford? I do not know what this means.”

The shopkeeper lowered his voice to an angry whisper. “It means, you stupid human, I expect to be paid handsomely for your perversion!”

“For my what?” Kirill shook his head, confused by this whole exchange.

“Perversia!”

Kirill gaped, suddenly seeing the conversations at the market in an entirely different light—a garish and grotesque light of abomination. Except for the madness that had overtaken him when he’d found the Nephil Zeus attacking Love, he’d never raised a hand in violence to anyone, but he couldn’t contain the fury building at what he’d been mistaken for.

He grabbed the shopkeeper by the collar and swung him around, slamming him into the wall with an angry roar. “You
sell
them? You sell children for the pleasures of evil men?”

The shopkeeper’s eyes bulged as Kirill pressed his fingers to his throat, and he tried to pry the hands away, but an unholy rage had possessed Kirill, giving him a surge of violent strength. He wanted to dash the shopkeeper’s head against the plaster until his skull cracked. He wanted to see his brains splattered against the wall.

All at once he was overcome with horror at his own violent urges and he threw the demon from him. The shopkeeper sprawled on the floor, choking and coughing, and scrambled back when Kirill took another step toward him.

“They’re runners!” the shopkeeper gasped. “Escaped slaves caught stealing! I have a right to a fair price for them. What the buyer does with them isn’t my responsibility.”

Kirill reached down and dragged the startled demon to his feet. “They are the heirs to the throne of Heaven!” he whispered fiercely.

The demon stared at him aghast a moment before pulling his collar from Kirill’s grip. “In the name of Heaven! Why didn’t you say so?” He put his hand on the latch and pushed the door open onto a small room that was little more than a closet.

Kirill caught a quick glimpse of two disheveled children huddled on the floor in the corner—a flash of golden hair and a tangle of dull and matted reddish curls. Before he could take a step toward them, the demon blew something from his palm into Kirill’s face. He coughed violently and his lungs felt on fire. Then the room seemed to melt like a painting with a solvent thrown onto its canvas, and he wanted very much to sleep.

Pyatnadtsataya
: The Price of Magic

from the memoirs of the Grand Duchess Anazakia Helisonovna of the House of Arkhangel’sk

In my dream, I was asleep on my horse and someone was shaking me, telling me that despite having ridden for miles, I still had many more to go. My mind had finally quieted after breakfast, allowing me to sleep, but the insistent shaking jarred me from it, and I opened my eyes to see Margarita standing over me with a look of panic on her face. It was a look I’d never seen on that self-assured countenance. The shackles dangled from one wrist as if she’d been in such a hurry to remove them she hadn’t bothered with the second.

“It’s Early,” she said.

In my muddled state I almost snapped, “I know it’s early! Now let me sleep!” until the events of the morning came back to me.

“What’s wrong?” I threw my feet over the side of the bed. “What’s happened?”

“He’s not breathing. And he’s so small… I don’t know how to do CPR on someone so small.”

I didn’t know what CPR was, but I knew Early was in trouble.

Still in my undergarments, I followed her through the cupboard panel into the other room to find Lively sobbing in the bed with Early in her arms. The tiny body was lifeless, and I knew there was no hope.

“He won’t wake up. I tried to wake him for a feeding because he needs to nurse to get his strength up, and he just won’t wake up.” When she raised her eyes to me, even the hardest heart would have melted at such anguish. “Please. You can help him. I saw you heal Kae.”

“Oh, Lively.” My heart was heavy as I sat on the bed beside her. “I can only heal a magical wound, and even then it takes both Vasily’s and my radiance to do it.”

“Please, Nazkia.” She clung to my arm. “I know I don’t deserve any kindness from you. I don’t blame you for hating me. I’m a wretched, wicked woman who deserves nothing but contempt. But he’s only a baby. Please don’t let him die!”

“Lively…”

“I’ll do any kind of spell you want.” Sobbing, she pulled my hand down to the tiny, lifeless bundle in her arms. “I don’t care what Helga does to me now.”

Early’s cheek was cool to the touch. The tiny infant had been dead a while.

“Lively.” I choked back my own tears. “He’s gone. I’m so sorry.”

“No.” She shook her head desperately. “Please.”

Margarita climbed into the bed beside her and pulled Lively and Early into her arms, and Lively sobbed with such grief I thought it would break my heart.

Something tickled against my leg, and as I looked down, a tiny rivulet of red slid toward me from the center of the bed. I stood and pulled back the covers. Lively was lying in a pool of blood, her gown soaked with it.

Margarita gasped, and in her arms, Lively seemed to slowly wind down like a mechanical doll, her weeping fading to a moan, and her eyes closing as Margarita took Early’s body from her slackening grip.

I ran to the door and pounded on it, not caring who knew of the secret passage. “We need help! Open the door!”

The demon guard unlocked the door and entered, taken aback by my presence, but he only noticed me for an instant before seeing the pool of blood now dripping onto the rosebud carpet and the white-stained floor. He sent the other guard for the doctor, and when he arrived, I recognized him as an angelic physician who’d occasionally treated Azel’s fevers. Like many of the working-class angels, it seemed he was now a supporter of the revolution.

He examined Lively and said her womb wasn’t contracting as it should to stop the normal flow of blood from the separation of the afterbirth. He was able to slow the bleeding by stimulating contractions with his hands, but she’d lost so much already he wasn’t hopeful. He took the tiny body of poor Early with him to embalm, and left us to “make her comfortable.”

Having determined how I’d entered and realizing there was little point in trying to keep me out, the guards allowed me to remain with her. Lively roused briefly a short time later, asking in confusion for Early, and then slipped back into a semi-conscious state. Margarita sat and held her hand while I monitored the bleeding and tried the massage technique the doctor had recommended a few more times. Just a day ago, I’d wanted to kill her myself, and now I was doing anything I could to keep her alive. After seeing her through such a difficult birth and nursing her tiny boy—I found myself filled with sorrow at the prospect of her death.

Late in the afternoon, we heard the sound of horses in the square; Helga and her army had arrived. My chest was heavy with dread as I wondered what this meant for Vasily and the Iriyans. I could only hope they’d retreated and fallen back to wait for our remaining troops.

Apparently informed of Lively’s condition, Helga came to see her straightaway. Lively became more alert as she entered, struggling to sit up in Margarita’s arms.

Helga perched on the edge of the bed and patted her hand. “My poor dear. You’ve had a very trying time. I heard about your little boy.” She shook her head. “So terribly unfortunate.”

Lively seemed to quail as Helga picked up her hand from the coverlet.

“Perhaps if his father had been a firespirit,” Helga said deliberately, “he might have been a bit more sturdy.”

I couldn’t believe she would chastise Lively for this now.

“I’m sorry,” Lively moaned.

“You have kept a number of things from me, Lively Ivovna. One would almost think you were working against me.”

“She was hardly working against you when she betrayed me and had all of my men slaughtered,” I objected from my corner of the room.

Helga regarded me as if just noticing my presence. “Why must you make everything about yourself? Spoiled to the end.”

“Don’t get too excited about the end yet.”

“And why not, Miss High and Mighty? Are you expecting a brigade of Virtues to come galloping down from the north by way of the Central Rift?”

I couldn’t hide my surprise. This had been our one advantage, that no one knew they were coming. “Damn it, Lively,” I couldn’t help murmuring.

“Oh, I wouldn’t blame Lively for that, my dear. That was one of the things she deliberately kept from me.” She turned back to Lively, holding her hand in a viselike grip. “You see the consequences of holding things in? They come out when you least expect them. I am very disappointed in you, Lively.”

“Please, Auntie Helga.” There was terror in her small, weak voice. “Please don’t.” She made a high gasp of pain, and Helga let go of her hand and rose as Lively fell back against the pillow.

“What did you do to her?” Margarita demanded.

“I have shown her the consequences. She will hold nothing else in.”

Lively moaned, and blood spread through the coverlet.

“You did this to her!” I accused.

“Lively has done this to herself,” said Helga tersely.

Margarita cried out as she saw the spreading stain. “Stop it! Stop whatever you’re doing to her!” She made a move toward Helga, who stroked her locket. Margarita stopped in her tracks as if she could go no farther.

“Come,” Helga said to me. “We have business to discuss.”

There was nothing I could do. I gave Margarita a sorrowful look and followed Helga out with reluctance, realizing belatedly I was dressed only in a cotton camisole and the men’s shorts I’d worn under my uniform, splattered with blood. Helga behaved as if nothing were amiss, leading me to the Malachite Drawing Room.

I stopped on the threshold. “I don’t care for this room.” It was here I’d found the bodies of my family and watched Kae plunge his sword into Omeliea before he’d buried it in me.

“It has the best view of the river.” Helga sat in one of the velvet-covered chairs. “I plan to set up my office here as regent to the young principality.”

“I understood you’d lost the young principality,” I said bitingly, still standing in the doorway. “Along with my daughter.”

Helga clucked her tongue. “That willful girl. Lively seems determined to let loose what she should withhold, and withhold what she should divulge.” She punctuated this with an angry press of her thumb against her locket.

“Don’t. Why can’t you let her be?”

“Lively isn’t your concern. What I wish to discuss with you is the terms of our alliance.”

“Alliance?” I laughed at her. “You really are completely mad.”

“And you are completely short-sighted, you spoiled little angel.” Helga sighed. “Take a look at the embankment.”

I went to the window and gasped at the sight of Helga’s army spilling out around the palace onto Celestial Boulevard along the Palace Embankment. Demon peasants stood beside officers of the Arcadian army—and among them were the red-plumed helmets of the Iriyan Mounted Guard.

“What have you done?” I whirled to face her. “How did you get them to join your revolution? They were reluctant even to help us for fear of angering Aeval.”

“And that, my dear, is why an alliance is so sensible.” She gave me an infuriating smile. “We all want the same thing: Aeval ejected from Heaven. With our forces combined, we stand a far greater chance against her. And you cannot tell me you truly wish to rule Heaven. Let Omeliea’s child take the throne as he was meant to.”

Fury took hold of me. “Omeliea’s child! You violated my sister and left her to die, and you think you now have some right to the child you stole from her!”

“What nonsense. You’ve always had a ridiculously overactive imagination, and not the slightest grasp of logic. Of course I didn’t violate Omeliea. Your deranged field marshal did that.”

“You’re lying. Ola told me herself he had nothing to do with it.”

“Told you?” Helga toyed with her locket and I shook my head, trying to resist any influence she intended to send my way with the help of the stolen fern flower. “You mean she stopped to have a conversation with you as her husband chased her through the palace with a sword?”

“No,” I said angrily. “She came to me in a dream.”

Helga began to laugh and I blushed, realizing how foolish that sounded. “Oh, dear. My dear girl, sit down.”

I sat on the edge of the divan, though I’d had no intention of doing so.

“I understand how much you love your cousin, and how hard it is to accept what he’s done, but you mustn’t make up stories to excuse him. Kae Lebesovich murdered your entire family in cold blood—along with a number of palace servants of whom you probably weren’t even aware. I myself hid from him, and that is how I saw him carve Omeliea open and cut out his own child.”

“No.” I shook my head.

“I thought he was going to spear the infant on the end of his sword and I hid my head, but when I looked up, he and Omeliea were gone and the poor babe, not much older than Lively’s, lay there struggling to breathe.”

It seemed a very rational and logical explanation—far more believable than expecting Kae to have exercised any restraint in his madness. Still, my mind resisted. The surgical precision of the cuts that had taken my sister’s child were not the actions of a madman in a fit of passion, I reminded myself. Helga had the means and the motive—she’d already taken my brother Azel’s shade and needed a vessel for it. Even now, Helga tormented her own niece out of spite until she’d lost her child, and clearly meant to continue the torment. She wasn’t the sensible, caring woman she pretended to be. She was capable of terrible things.

I wanted to say all this, but I said nothing. Though the tug of my daughter’s element in my blood kept me from fully succumbing to her lies, I couldn’t keep it all straight in my head when I tried to voice it.

Helga gave me a patient smile. “It would be unjust to take the throne from Omeliea’s child after all he’s been through. He is the rightful heir. This alliance is best for everyone. Don’t you agree, Vasily?”

Confused, I followed her gaze. Vasily stood in the doorway. I blinked my eyes, trying to understand what he was doing here.

He came to sit beside me, taking my hand and kissing my temple. “I told her you’d understand.”

“Understand?”

“Why I agreed that we join forces.”

I stared, speechless, wanting to stand and shout at him, but so tired from the last hours with Lively. It seemed such an effort even to keep my eyes open.

He turned to Helga. “Where’s Ola? You promised I could see her as soon as we arrived. That was the arrangement.” He smiled at me. “Helga’s agreed to return Ola to us as soon as Aeval has been defeated. This will all work out for the best.”

“Vasily.”
I struggled through the mud in my head. I needed to tell him something. Something urgent.

“What happened to your clothes?” He’d finally noticed my state of undress. “Were you injured?”

I looked down at Lively’s blood on my camisole and my head cleared in an instant. I pulled my hand away from him and jumped up. “Vasily!” I interrupted as he started to speak again. “Helga doesn’t have Ola. She’s lost the children.”

Vasily glanced to Helga. “That’s not true. Is it? Where’s Ola?”

Helga simply shrugged.

“You surrendered to her and turned our allies over to her for nothing, Vasily!” My exhaustion gave way to angry tears. “For a lie! She does nothing but lie!”

Helga motioned to her guards in the doorway. “Escort them back to Her Supernal Highness’s room. I suspect they have much to talk about in private.”

Vasily sat on the edge of the bed in my old room, staring at the floor. “I don’t know what to say, Nazkia.” He had the raspy tenor in his voice most noticeable when expressing strong emotion. “How can I even tell you I’m sorry? I’ve ruined everything. I’m a traitor and a fool.”

Standing before him with my arms folded, I bit my tongue to keep from agreeing with him. Helga had manipulated him. He hadn’t done it with malice.

“I’ve even given her the thirty-five hundred.”

“Oh, Vasily,” I breathed. “You didn’t.”

“I should never have made any decisions without speaking to you. I don’t know what got into me. I would never have acted so recklessly. I know the chain of command.”

“Helga used the influence of the
tsvetok paporotnika
on you. That’s what got into you. She used it on me. I’d almost been lulled into her web of deceit myself when you arrived. She’s becoming stronger the more she uses it.”