The Armies of Heaven (6 page)

“Everything all right?” Margarita eyed Love. “You’ve been gone a while.”

“I was just going to throw some cards for Love. Neither of us can sleep.” Lively ducked down as if to crawl into the tent, but Margarita stopped her.

“I’ll get them.” She retreated inside and returned with Lively’s bag and a large blanket, which she laid out on the ground near the dwindling fire, giving Lively her arm to help her sit.

Love sat across from them both, wondering how she was supposed to get a message to her contact with Margarita sitting there. She couldn’t very well discuss her plans in front of Anazakia’s second-in-command. Not that she was doing something that would harm the mission, but she wanted to keep it to herself in case she failed—and because, as Belphagor had said, Anazakia might lose heart if she knew how badly things were turning against her below. Perhaps she could just send a simple message to possessed85 saying she was on her way home and hoped to speak with him soon.

After setting out the candles, Lively gave her the cards to cut and then laid them on the blanket. Instead of reading the spread like a message, however, she read it as if telling Love’s fortune.

“I see a brave man who opposes evil. A just and generous man. And with him, you share a partnership of harmony and accomplishment, with poignant memories. The world is at your feet, but it isn’t a world you recognize, and all about, you’re surrounded by the aspects of the Cherubim. The man has recently faced disappointment, sorrow, and loss, leaving everything he has known, but he’s retained an unquenchable belief in hope and the heart. Events are unfolding quickly, and help and communication will come from below, but the future isn’t set. Before you is your heart’s desire, and spirits of the earth will hear the messenger from above. The man will face a test of strength he alone can overcome, not through might but through truth, and together, you’ll achieve completion of the heart and home.”

Love’s mouth parted in surprise. Lively seemed to see inside her, though these weren’t the things she’d been thinking about. How much did Lively know of Kirill? She’d described him as if she’d been there in Love’s head from the beginning, seeing a Kirill no one else knew. The description of being in a world they didn’t recognize, surrounded by the aspects of the Cherubim, could have been taken from the moment they found themselves in Heaven—though of course Lively had probably known about that.

What puzzled her most, however, was the prediction of achieving things together. Surely, she’d never see Kirill again once she left him below. She planned to return to Heaven after she made her case to try to restore the terrestrial alliance. She could never abandon Ola, and Kirill could never be happy in Heaven, nor could he truly be happy with Love anywhere, when loving her distracted him from his duty to God.

She decided to focus on the elements that seemed pertinent to the query she’d wanted to pose: help and communication from below, and spirits of the earth hearing the messenger from above. She had to believe this meant her quest would be successful.

“Thank you, Lively.” The nature of the reading still puzzled her, but Lively had given her something special and unexpected. “That was kind of amazing.”

At a sudden
click
behind them, Love turned to see Belphagor standing before his tent with a cigarette in his mouth, lighting it with a metal Zippo from the world of Man.

“Now that’s just a crime,” he said with the cigarette between his teeth. He shook his head as the tip began to glow, snapped the lighter shut, and dropped it into his pocket. “Turning a perfectly good deck of cards into a parlor game. If I only had a wingcasting die, I’d show you how to read a real fortune.” He grinned and took a long, satisfied drag on the cigarette.

Margarita frowned at him. “You shouldn’t be smoking around Lively.”

Belphagor held the cigarette at his side, looking guilty. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

As he glanced at the ground, about to drop it and stomp it out, Love sprang to her feet. “Oh, don’t, Bel! I’ll share it with you. We can go smoke where Lively won’t have to breathe it.”

Belphagor shrugged, and the two of them set off for the other end of the camp while Lively and Margarita went back to bed.

“I’ve been dying for a smoke.” Love took the cigarette gratefully when Belphagor passed it to her.

“You should have told me.” He gave her a sly grin as she handed it back. “I have sources for all of Heaven’s vices.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette case. “In fact, I have plenty, so you can smoke one of your own.”

Love wondered if he’d had the cigarette case a moment ago. Sleight-of-hand was his specialty; back in the dacha days, it had never occurred to her it could be actual magic. Even now, she didn’t know for sure if he could pull things from the air or just made it look as if he could, but it was, after all, his element. She took one from the case and lit it on his, and they stood enjoying their smokes in the pre-dawn stillness.

“We’re going to miss you, Vasily and I,” he said after a moment.

Love hesitated. For some reason, she had no trouble lying to Kirill or Anazakia, feeling it was in their best interests, but with Belphagor it felt like lying to a teacher or an authority figure of some kind, and she’d never been very good at that.

He narrowed his eyes, already onto her. “What?”

“I overheard you talking to Sarael this morning…or yesterday… Whatever day it is now.” She sucked on her cigarette nervously while he waited. “And I think I might be able to reestablish the lines of communication. I had Lively send a message with her cards to my Romani contact in the network. I think there are a lot of my people who are still believers, who still want to honor the alliance with your kind, but they’re afraid of the Malakim. I think if I could get a bunch of them together, tell them what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen, they’d be behind Anazakia again in a heartbeat. And then maybe we could get through to the rest of the Fallen to let them know what Helga’s done in the name of their liberation.”

Belphagor regarded her when she finally paused to take another drag. “So that’s why you’re going home.”

Love nodded, picking a fleck of tobacco from her tongue. “And I want to come back, if it works out.”

“What about your monk?”

“I haven’t told him. But he’ll be better off in Russia without me.” She exhaled smoke with a sigh, trying not to think about how much that was going to hurt. “Do you think I’ll be able to come back? I can’t stand the thought of not being here when Ola comes home.”

“I don’t see why not. Though there’s only one other human I ever heard of who got in, and that was Knud.”

Love hadn’t thought of Knud in months. The realization made her feel sad, as though she’d left her friend waiting for her somewhere and forgotten him. It was Knud who’d first brought her to the dacha in Arkhangel’sk. He’d been a key member of the gypsy underground, though she hadn’t even known it. But he was gone, killed rescuing Anazakia and Ola from Aeval. He’d died in Heaven, in fact—something she once would have thought impossible, even if she’d believed in Heaven.

Belphagor exhaled slowly as if hiding his own sadness. “But he got in through a breach.”

“What’s a breach?”

“Essentially, Dmitri and the Exiles used the elements to punch a hole through the spheres.” Belphagor finished his cigarette and ground it out under his boot. “Then they just flew in, right in the middle of Palace Square. You missed a hell of a party that time. Not that I remember much of it myself, just what I saw from Vasily’s back as we jumped into the breach to fly home.”

Love shook her head in wonder. She hadn’t thought about the fact that they must have wings. She peered at Belphagor’s back, but there was no sign of them.

“If you’re serious about going on this little mission of yours…” Belphagor hooked his thumbs in the back pockets of his leather pants. “I think you’re going to need help.”

Pyataya
: The Unseen

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

Despite the stunning news of a nephew I hadn’t known I had, and the daunting task that lay ahead of me, it was the visitation from the syla that dominated my thoughts from the moment we set out. How could they expect me to go to the Midnight Court? I had to remind myself they only spoke of what they saw. Perhaps it meant they’d already seen me fail at defeating Aeval, and I would return to the world of Man. A part of me secretly hoped for it. But as the moment in the cherry orchard receded into the distance, I began to wonder whether I might have hallucinated it out of anxiety. Had I only heard the voice because I’d been wishing to hear it?

We made camp on the second night near the base of what had once been named Arkhangel’sk Mountain, at the glade where Kae had first been lost to us. We’d stopped for the night in this same spot on the way to Aravoth to meet with the Elohim, and my dreams then had been fitful and disturbing. Once again, I wished we could camp anywhere but here, but it was the most accommodating space.

While the cook prepared our meal, I took a walk in the settling dusk to clear my head. Tomorrow we’d begin traveling on the open road, and this might be the last moment of solitude I would have for some time. I followed the overgrown path where Kae’s horse had once come tearing past me through the snow without its rider as if something had spooked it. I hadn’t gone so far into the glade before, and I was surprised when I rounded a bend and stepped out of the trees at the edge of a cliff.

Far below, I could see the tip of Lake Superna sparkling cobalt blue in the dying light. The last hint of sunlight was disappearing beyond it, which meant I faced west and we’d come nearly full circle around the lake through the mountain path. I sat on the rocks and tried to imagine what had happened to my cousin here. He’d only been missing a moment in the fog, and then had reappeared in his changed demeanor, swearing with certainty he’d seen the white steed. Aeval’s eventual deadly hold on him, Kae told me once, she attained with a kiss, but the mere vision of the horse had captured his heart, and there was no doubt in my mind it had been Aeval who’d somehow changed herself into that creature.

I thought I heard leaves rustling then, but there was no wind. When I turned on my perch, thinking someone had followed me, the path lay empty in the blue twilight. No voices came on the wind, no piles of leaves or petals danced in the air to speak to me of the Unseen World. This time it had been purely my imagination
.

Back at the camp, I focused on the plan for tomorrow’s descent to the shores of Lake Superna, and south toward Iriy. I’d never felt more isolated than I did in the midst of these five hundred men who listened attentively to my every word. Vasily and Belphagor sat apart from the tactical planning. Though Belphagor excelled at keeping order, neither he nor Vasily were soldiers, and they preferred to leave strategy to men who were familiar with it. I envied them. I would have preferred to do the same.

I also would have preferred to fall asleep in Vasily’s arms each night as Belphagor did. There were no obvious demonstrations of intimacy between them on the march—they were really being quite well behaved—but it was clear even in the way they sat next to each other, not even touching, how right things were with them now. I had to be glad of it after all they’d been through, even if it left me feeling a bit sorry for myself.

While Margarita sat beside me as my second-in-command contributing her expertise, I noticed Lively and Love by the fire, engaged in conversation. These two days on the march had certainly changed Love’s disposition toward the demoness. From where I sat, they almost appeared to be friends.

A sudden, gut-wrenching envy struck me—not of Love’s friendship, but of her freedom. She didn’t have to concern herself with the commandeering of supplies from country peasants, or the taking of a city, or the rule of an entire world. At this moment, I felt no more qualified to speak or think of these things than Love. Within a few weeks’ time, she would be home, sitting in the garden of the dacha under the endless light of an Arkhangel’sk summer. Her only thoughts now must be of how much longer until she was there, and what she might miss in Heaven.

When I finally retreated to my tent to rest, as with the last time I’d slept in this place, I had dreams of foreboding. On that trip, I’d dreamt of Kae chasing my sister Ola and me on horseback through the snow. His horse had killed Ola with a strike of its hoof as it reared over her, and I’d thrust Kae’s sword into his gut. Tonight I dreamt again of Kae and Ola, and the rest of the family besides—the Elysium Day pageant, the very night on which Kae and I had been plunged into our separate nightmares from which we could never wake.

I was dancing with Kae and rebuking him for his treatment of Ola as I’d done on that night, and as he’d been then, he was shaken briefly by my words and went to his pregnant wife where she sat watching from a bench. He kissed her gloved hand and knelt on one knee before her and rested his head against her round belly in sincerest devotion.

I hadn’t seen him again until the moment I found him standing over the bodies of my family with his dripping sword and watched him plunge it emotionlessly into Ola before he turned it on me. But now I seemed to follow him through the palace, invisible.

As we left the great hall and went down the grand staircase to the garden, I knew with a certainty I couldn’t explain: this was no dream, but a glimpse of a moment I hadn’t been privy to. Something about this spot within the mountain seemed to tap into what Lively called the Nightworld.

I gasped as Aeval stepped out from among the roses before us, her ethereal beauty plainly adorned with a simple white linen gown and a garland of petals about her neck. I wanted to warn Kae, to stop her, but I had no voice or substance.

He looked startled at first, and his eyes were leery as he took a step back from her, but she touched his arm and he calmed instantly.

“Come, my angel,” she purred. “It is time to give me what I’ve asked for.”

I raged silently as he knelt before her, and she bent and whispered something in his ear. Her words alarmed him and he tried to leap up, but she grabbed his face between her hands and kissed him, and he went limp in her grasp. Aeval sat on the stone bench beside him and he laid his head in her lap as he’d done with Ola.

She stroked his hair and murmured in his ear. “Remember, my angel. Your uncle Helison has hated you since your birth—a fine, healthy boy who might have been heir to the throne after his cold wife had given him two stillborn sons in a row. And it was your aunt Sefira who cursed your mother with demon magic when she saw her sister-in-law was to give birth to another son after she herself had only succeeded in birthing three daughters. Your aunt cursed her and caused your mother to bleed to death during childbirth.”

Kae’s face twisted with emotion. Pain and disbelief were etched on it while Aeval smoothed her hand across his forehead and continued.

“Your uncle pretended to care for you afterward only to keep you close to his side so he could dispose of you quietly, but you were far too clever for that, so he poisoned your father to punish you. Helison and Sefira took your family from you out of jealousy and spite.”

He nodded against her lap; his tears had begun to stain the white linen.

“And your cousins have hated you every moment of your childhood, intruding on their idyllic lives, wishing you would simply drown or fall from a horse and break your neck.”

I realized he saw these scenes play out before his eyes as he stared blankly across the garden. She was weaving an alternate history for him, and he was remembering it as if lived.

Her melodic voice soothed like a lullaby, belying the terrible words. “Omeliea hates you most of all. She lies beneath you with her head turned aside in disgust when you bed her, enduring you as if she were being fucked by a filthy peasant. In fact, she hates you so much she has indeed carried on with peasants, taking demons to her bed when you’re away, and laughing while they despoil her in your marriage bed—writhing and moaning like a bitch in heat as she takes them one after another on her hands and knees. She’s bearing a demon in her belly now, to cuckold you before the entire kingdom, to let you know who shall reign when your weak little cousin Azel dies.”

Aeval twirled his hair about her finger. “It will never be you, though you’re the rightful male heir. You will be the laughingstock of Heaven as you raise the offspring of one of the dozen nameless peasants who had her on the night she conceived.” Her voice changed, now dripping with venom. “As soon as she’s queen, she’ll take them openly, right in front of you, their filthy, common hands groping her, putting her mouth on the ones who stand eagerly in front of her while she lets the others take her in turns from behind.”

“No.” He moaned, becoming restless, but she calmed him once more with a brush of her lips against his forehead.

“Do you see her there?” She pointed in the distance as she stroked his hair. “Look! She’s doing it even now! See how she laughs at you while they have her? And there, behind her, her sisters are laughing at you, too! She’s done nothing but tell them how you disgust her since the first time you touched her, and they whisper about it every time you enter a room. She tells them you’re impotent and hung like a child. Every time you’ve ever heard them giggling, with their insufferable honey curls together, falling about one another, they were laughing at you. Do you see it?”

“Yes.” His face twisted with pain and anger. “Yes!”

“That’s right, my angel. And they laughed when your poor mother bled to death in your arms. The principality could have sent someone to help, but he simply waited until she hemorrhaged to death, with you the only one there to care for her. Do you think it was mere coincidence he sent your father off on that diplomatic errand with your mother so close to her time? In fact, the real reason he wanted her dead, and your aunt orchestrated it, was that your uncle himself had impregnated her. Every time he sent your father on a mission for the throne of the Firmament, he forced your mother to service him. He did it while you watched. Do you remember? You were only a little boy, and he made you watch while he hurt and degraded your beautiful mother.”

Kae was weeping again, his face wracked with anguish and rage. “How could he?” he choked. “I’ll kill him!”

“Yes,” Aeval purred with a pleased smile. “You kill him. You punish him for what he did to your mother. Punish them all. Defend your mother’s honor and your own if you’re a man. And when you’re done with them, you kill that smug little heir who thinks he can take the throne from you. You can tell by his infirmity and weakness Sefira conceived him of a common demon just as your Ola has conceived her get by one. Like mother, like daughter. Will you allow the spawn of a demon to sit on the throne of Heaven?”

“Never!” He sat up, his eyes blazing and ardent with conviction. “They have to be stopped! I must defend Heaven!”

“Yes, angel. Defend Heaven. In the name of the Firmament and all the Heavens, cut down these morally decrepit impostors. Take your sword and clean the filth out of this palace. Can you hear them? They’re all groping one another in an incestuous orgy—the father with the daughters, the brother with his sisters—and all of them laughing at you, laughing at Heaven, fornicating with demons in the palace of the Host!”

Kae jumped to his feet, drawing his knife, his eyes now wild as I’d seen them when I found my family dead by his hand. “They are wicked! Vile! I will not suffer such a thing in the palace of the Host!”

Aeval stood also, his sword suddenly in her hand. “Take this, my love, and run them all through. And when they plead and snivel, feigning innocence, laugh and tell them you don’t care what they say or how desperately they beg for mercy—you will rule the Heavens.”

Another voice suddenly eclipsed these, seeming more present, more ordinary, and more real. “There you are, Nazkia. What have you been doing?”

I turned and found my sister Maia regarding me with gentle disapproval. When I glanced back at the bench among the roses, Kae and Aeval had disappeared, and the light was different in the night garden, as though time had moved forward to another place.

“Ola’s been calling for you,” Maia chided. She tucked my arm into hers and walked with me through the garden to the courtyard beyond. The outer courtyard led into an open inner court spanned by wide columns of solid, polished seraphinite, its silvery green patterns catching the moonlight like the bright feathers of outstretched wings. This was not the Winter Palace.

“Where are we?”

Maia didn’t seem to hear me as we passed between a pair of columns onto soft, terra cotta tile. My feet were bare and we were dressed in light, wispy garments that drooped from our shoulders, instead of the tight corsets and bustles in voluminous layers of velvet and satin we were accustomed to. A sweet-smelling breeze fluttered the fabric and a soft, rhythmic sound whispered in the distance: the sound of waves on a beach.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” said Maia. “Ola’s been disconsolate, waiting for you to come. The three of us have been trying to entertain her, but she’s quite homesick.”

“The three of you? What three?”

“Whom do you think? Your sisters, of course.” She pinched my arm and then kissed me on the cheek, and I could smell her lilac perfume as if she were truly with me.

“But I thought it was Ola you were entertaining.”

“Yes,
Ola
.” Maia regarded me peculiarly. “Your daughter. What’s the matter with you?”

“She’s here?” I pulled away from her and ran forward into the palace. “Where is she?” When I looked back, Maia was gone. I heard Ola’s voice then, faint and sad, calling for me, and I ran through the corridors, searching and finding nothing but empty rooms painted with the soft glow of moonlight.

“Where are you, sweetheart?” I pleaded. “Mama’s here!”