The Midnight Court

by Jane Kindred

  Vasily continued to stare at him, as if Belphagor himself had beaten the young man.

  Belphagor sighed. “He doesn’t know what you want,” he said loudly when Loquel’s breathing started to come in ragged moans.

  The field marshal turned around and fixed him with his unnerving, clouded eye. “Are you telling me how to do my job?” His voice was dangerously flat.

  “No, sir.” Belphagor met his eye. “I’m simply telling you that this Virtue you’re beating the hell out of will probably die before he answers you, and not out of pride or valor, but because he simply doesn’t understand what you’re asking him. I’m certain he would have told you after the second blow if he had.”

  Kae sneered. “I think I’ve made myself perfectly clear. Sar Sarael cannot be mobilizing forces against the queen and committing treason on his own. The Virtue knows who is behind this.”

  “He might.” Belphagor shuffled the wingcasting deck. “But his head isn’t clear enough to make that connection with what you’ve offered him, and I think he’s beyond answering now.” He gave the field marshal another even stare. “Perhaps one of the others.” He hated the idea of watching another man beaten, but he knew this one couldn’t take another stroke.

  Kae regarded him with mistrust, flicking his wrist in a figure-eight motion with his flogger as he practiced his stroke. Returning the handle to its hook on his belt, he lifted Loquel’s shackles from the peg. The young Virtue groaned as Kae opened the cell and shoved him inside. Two of the other Virtues caught Loquel with their shackled arms before he collapsed.

  “Who’s next? Or will you all just watch as I beat you one by one?”

  A more seasoned-looking Virtue stepped forward, his eyes defiant. “Gereimon.”

  “Is that your name or are you giving me one of the names I’ve asked for?”

  “That is my name,” said the Virtue. This one wasn’t likely to give the field marshal the answer he wanted either, and not because he didn’t know it.

  Kae led Gereimon out and hooked his shackles to the peg. This time, he pulled the man’s jacket up over his head. This kept both the fabric and the long Virtuous hair out of the path of his flogger. Ripping a man’s clothes off before beating him might be satisfying, but as Belphagor knew well, it wasn’t always practical.

  As the field marshal pulled back his arm and raised the pleti, Vasily jumped to his feet. “The Elohim,” he said loudly. “They’re the ones you want. They’re the ones behind the Aravothan rebellion.”

  “What are you doing?” Belphagor tried to pull him back.

  Vasily gave him a dark look. “I’m trying to keep a score of Virtues from being beaten to death in front of our eyes. I suppose it’s easy enough for you to watch such brutality, but not for the rest of us.” He was still in the defiant mode that so often led to their intimacy. Belphagor was beginning to wish he hadn’t provoked him.

  The field marshal approached their cell, leaving Gereimon in suspense. “The Virtuous Court has participated in this mutiny?”

  “It’s not a mutiny; it’s a damned revolution.” Vasily stared him down with fire in his eyes. “The Elohim belong to the Party of the Socialist Host. Maybe the queen had better start taking notice, because they’re not the only ones in it.”

  …

  Vasily supposed it should have come as no surprise that his confession hadn’t earned him any points with the sonofawhore. The field marshal had demanded intricate details about the revolutionary party, though Vasily hadn’t bothered to tell him there was more than one. Was it only the Elohim who were behind it? Had it spread beyond Aravoth and this small pocket of demon riffraff? Whom besides Sar Sarael could Vasily confirm was a member of the Elohim?

  When Vasily couldn’t answer, Kae, in a rage, had struck him with his flogger through the bars of the cell, catching him with the leaded thongs on the side of his cheek, and turned to beat Gereimon after all. This Virtue, at least, seemed better able to withstand it—or at least had been better prepared.

  The field marshal returned to the dungeon day after day, promising to beat another man each time they refused to give him more information on the Elohim and the Party of the Socialist Host. He worked his way through the Virtues, targeting young Loquel twice more out of spite, and then started on the monk, who of course knew nothing. Kirill ranted and recited strange scripture and the repetitions of his prayer, reaching a kind of trancelike, ecstatic state. Perhaps, like Vasily, he was a natural masochist.

  It was Belphagor who noticed the marks in his flesh when Kae tossed him back into the cell, throwing his robes in after him. Around the monk’s right thigh were recent scars from something that had pierced his flesh—four rows of marks too regular to be anything but deliberately inflicted.

  “This is from a cilice,” said Belphagor, crouching down to inspect them. He eyed the monk shrewdly. “My cilice.”

  Vasily grew warm as he remembered it. Belphagor had tied the belt of barbed chain lovingly onto his thigh when they were first together, telling him the constant irritant of the little hooks would remind Vasily whom he belonged to. Vasily wore it while they sat at the wingcasting tables, quietly fuming as Belphagor utterly ignored him for hours. Whenever he tried to speak, Belphagor silenced him scornfully, much to the amusement of the other players, dismissing him when he lost his temper at last with a curt command to wait for him in their room while Belphagor finished his round of wingcasting.

  He was gone far longer than a round, and had come back smelling of absinthe.

  Vasily had been furious and humiliated, demanding to know what Belphagor had been doing at the tables so long, hurt that he’d been forgotten. Belphagor had caned him for his attitude and then wound Vasily’s locks viciously in his fist as he had his way with him. Railing and cursing him, Vasily had borne it bitterly as the hooks of the cilice jabbed into his thigh with Belphagor’s rough motions, only to have Belphagor whisper to him at last that he’d followed him straight back to the room a few moments later and had been sitting outside the door for three hours with a bottle of absinthe, thinking how lovely Vasily had looked when he’d tied the cilice in place. Three hours, Belphagor had whispered, was all he could stand before he had to have him.

  As Belphagor untied the cord at his thigh, Vasily, somewhat subdued but still hurt at Belphagor’s treatment of him at the table, had asked why he’d ignored and humiliated him. Belphagor replied that he’d made him wear the cilice so Vasily could feel his love with every moment of discomfort, that no matter how unfeeling Belphagor seemed to be toward him outwardly, he could take secret pleasure, as Belphagor had, in knowing he was Belphagor’s.

  “How did you get these marks?” Belphagor asked the monk as he helped him pull on his robes.

  “Mortification of the flesh.” Kirill hissed against the pain of the stripes on his back as he pulled the rough wool garment into place.

  “You wore a cilice?”

  The monk nodded and told him God had placed it in a drawer in “Sister Lyubov’s dacha,” leaving it for him to find.

  Belphagor murmured in Vasily’s ear as the monk resumed his bobbing and bowing recitation, “I’ve never been called God before. We’ll have to remember that one.”

  Kae slammed the door of the cell and locked it. “Perhaps you’d do better to remember the members of the Elohim the next time you see me.”

  When the field marshal returned, however, he made the mistake of choosing Belphagor as the next to be flogged. Vasily wouldn’t have it. Belphagor tried to calm him down, but he was through being the “good boy” to Belphagor’s bad. The soldiers waiting in the corridor were called in to drag Vasily out, and he went kicking and screaming. It took four of them to subdue him and they had to beat him to keep him down.

  The field marshal snapped his fingers at Belphagor, who went all too willingly for Vasily’s taste. He even did the bastard the favor of removing his own shirt and laying it neatly aside before he left the cell. Vasily cringed as he always did at the sight of the scarred
flesh while Belphagor helpfully leaned forward against the bars and grasped them high and wide. Kae paused as his eye fell on the one clear tattoo that still remained, the tips of the red crown that marked Belphagor as “the king of bitches” in the language of thieves.

  “What’s the matter?” Belphagor turned his head. “Surely you’ve seen your own work before?”

  “What work?”

  “You don’t remember, Your Supernal Majesty?”

  Kae swung the flogger with a swift, vindictive stroke, and Belphagor took it without so much as a flinch of his skin. “Whatever you’re playing at, you will soon be sorry.”

  “I wonder what you’re playing at. Do you really not remember me? Is it possible you truly can’t recall all those intimate moments we shared?”

  “There were no intimate moments!” Kae swung the flogger again. “I’ve never seen you before.”

  “Shame on you to say such a thing, Your Supernal Majesty.” Belphagor breathed into the pain, the way he’d taught Vasily. “After I spent so much time letting you cheat at cards.”

  Kae struck him again.

  “I did let you win, you know,” said Belphagor when he’d steadied his breath. “Aeval told me your tempers needed to be indulged. I must say, I was surprised at how delicately she treated you.”

  Kae exploded with fury, slamming Belphagor’s head into the bars. “What in hell’s name are you talking about?”

  Vasily struggled, but the soldiers held him tight.

  “You were her pride, Your Supernal Majesty.” Belphagor spoke casually. “Did she toss you out because you lost your looks, or is she the one who took them?”

  The field marshal stood deadly still for several seconds. What little expression the mask afforded, Vasily couldn’t see from his position.

  Then Kae took three deliberate steps back. “Take all of them to the yard.”

  “All of them, sir?” asked one of his men.

  “ALL OF THEM!” The shout seemed to tear his throat with its rage. It wasn’t loud, but it carried the weight of a much stronger voice.

  …

  In the cold yard of the inner ward, the field marshal lined up the prisoners on their knees with their hands bound before them. He was through being mocked by these petty upstarts. He would take the company to Aravoth and deal with the Elohim himself. Any Virtue who refused to cooperate in identifying the traitors would meet the same fate as these: a swift and merciless execution.

  He sent Captain Jusguarin to bring the female prisoners down from the tower room as well, leaving only the child and her nurse, along with the matronly demoness; that one would be publicly executed in Elysium as an example to the rest of her followers.

  The field marshal ordered the Virtue Loquel to be brought to him first. The angel moved awkwardly, not having taken his beatings well at all. The young Virtue—almost a boy, really—knelt before him and looked up to meet his eye, his face sad but resolved, as if a bit relieved to be joining his fallen comrades. An instant of compassion struck the field marshal, and then he shook himself out of it, more furious than ever, and raised his sword while Loquel was pushed forward. One of the soldiers yanked Loquel’s silvery queue to the front to bare his neck.

  The demon Belphagor called out from in front of him before he took his swing. “Why not just execute me? I’m the one you want dead.”

  The field marshal stared at the miserable little demon. He ought to make him watch every last execution before he had his turn. And then the field marshal had a better idea.

  He spoke quietly to the soldiers who’d brought Loquel. “Bring me the red demon. I’ll deal with this one later.”

  Loquel looked stunned as he was pulled to his feet and returned to the row of Virtues. The demon Vasily was brought forward, and the field marshal was pleased with the effect this had on Belphagor, who leapt to his feet and struggled as the field marshal’s men restrained him.

  The larger demon stared at the field marshal, his eyes red with defiance, and had to be forced to his knees. As the thick red tangles of hair were pulled out of the way, the field marshal paused momentarily, noting the metal spikes protruding through the flesh on either side of the demon’s neck like rows of cravat pins.

  “Do those come out?”

  One of the soldiers pulled on one of the spikes, and the demon thrashed and nearly bit him. Several men had to hold the demon down before his man could determine that the spiked caps unscrewed.

  “Take them out,” he ordered.

  “Don’t you dare!” the demon roared. “Get your fucking hands off me!”

  Several of the men jumped back as the firespirit’s flesh grew suddenly hot, and it took another minute for them to get hold of him once more without touching bare skin.

  The field marshal stood over the demon when they’d subdued him. “Unless you want my blade catching in them halfway through your neck, you had better hold still.”

  “I don’t give a damn what the blade does,” the demon growled.

  The field marshal shrugged. “Earthly damnation is immaterial. But I’ve seen a man’s spinal cord severed by a blade while his head was still attached. It was extraordinarily unpleasant for all involved.”

  The soldiers held the demon securely, though he hissed breath hot as steam through his teeth, while they unscrewed his decorations and tossed them on the ground. The demon’s bare neck was positioned for the blow.

  Belphagor appealed to the field marshal once more as they readied his paramour. “Spare him, and I can guarantee he’ll tell you anything you want to know about the Elohim. He’s bound to me and has to obey.”

  The field marshal raised his eyebrow at this.

  “Not anymore,” said the fire demon, his voice dull. “My bonds are lying in the snow.”

  “Was that the only thing that bound you to me, Vasya?” The smaller demon spoke quietly. “Just pieces of metal? Was our bond so weak?”

  “No.” The demon sighed. “But it doesn’t matter. I don’t know anything about this stupid revolution. All I wanted was Ola.”

  For no reason at all, the field marshal felt ill. His blood was pounding in his ears, he felt as if his gut were being torn in two, and he’d broken out in a sweat.

  The smaller demon was staring at him shrewdly. “Ola. That’s the child’s name. I thought you knew your cousin had named the baby after your wife.”

  The field marshal staggered back, resisting the vertigo that pulled at him. “Stop speaking nonsense! There is no cousin! There is no wife!” He put one hand to his throat as his voice strained muscles that still felt as if black smoke were coursing through them.

  “Anazakia is your cousin. You delivered the baby yourself at the Winter Palace.”

  The field marshal reeled. In his head, he saw three things at once that he couldn’t make sense of. He was in the Winter Palace carrying a newborn baby away from the sobbing grand duchess as she lay shackled to a wooden camp bed. He was a young boy standing over a beautiful blond woman whose eyes were closed and whose dressing gown was soaked in blood, while in his arms he held a stillborn infant. He was a man holding a gore-soaked sword before a woman with azure eyes whose rich honey curls were spattered in blood, her stomach laid open like the abdomen of an autopsied corpse.

  He dropped the sword and covered his ears as a chorus of voices he couldn’t understand overwhelmed his head, screaming at once. “It’s not me!” he cried. “It’s not me!” He spun around as if someone had touched him. “Where’s the baby?”

  Jusguarin was just arriving from the keep with the four female prisoners, and he stopped and stared at him. “You told me not to bring the baby. She’s upstairs with the nurse and the old maid.”

  “The nurse,” the field marshal gasped. “The old maid is the nurse.”

  The captain gave him a peculiar look. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know what you mean. The nurse is a young woman, no older than these two.” He nodded his head toward the demon girl and the grand duchess.

  Bloody An
azakia. She was staring at him as if she knew more about him than he knew himself. In her azurite eyes, a couple danced: the grand duchess in a ball gown with her hair swept up in ringlets about her head and a gaily dressed young man with hair like his own, but a face the field marshal didn’t recognize.

  “Who is that man?” he asked, transfixed.

  She gave him a puzzled look. “What man?”

  “The one in your eyes! The one you danced with!”

  Her face went pale and he remembered that he hated her—hated her!—and wanted her dead. “You’re next!” he shouted. He grabbed her by the arm and swung her around to retrieve his sword. They were dancing, forever dancing, and he meant to put an end to it.

  Devatnadtsatoe: Tears and a Kiss

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

  He had once been my cousin, my brother-in-law, and my friend. The man who looked at me now through a single watery eye full of rage and hate was none of these. He threw me to the frozen ground as he took up his sword, and I was vaguely aware that Vasily knelt in the snow beside me, held fast by Ophanim.

  “On your knees!” Kae ordered hoarsely.

  As I drew myself up, I felt something hard inside my coat against my thigh. Knud’s knife. The soldiers had never bothered to search me for weapons. I let my coat fall open and moved my hand up to my pocket. Behind me, Kae grabbed the hair at my forehead and jerked my head back, bringing his blade in front of my throat as if he meant to slit it instead of beheading me.

  There was a scuffle in the snow beside us as Vasily sprang forward, his hands suddenly free, and I could smell burning rope. It was a futile effort, however, as the Ophanim yanked him back.

  “Son of a whore!” Vasily growled. “Let her go!”

  “From what I understand, it was your mother who was the whore.” Kae ignored Vasily’s further curses and crouched behind me to speak in my ear almost intimately. “Is there anything you wish to say before I cut you open?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. The sound of the folding knife ratcheting open seemed horribly loud and I was certain he must have heard it, but he took no notice. “I’m sorry.” I drove the blade back with my fist, fighting tears as it sank into flesh.