Master of the Game

by Jane Kindred

  He’d felt like shit when he returned after leaving the angel alone for almost an hour, but instead of raging at Silk when he removed the gag from his mouth, Phaleg had begged forgiveness. Silk had despised him just a little for that. Deep down, he knew it was spite for himself, for what he’d done, for losing his temper and mistreating Phaleg. He’d tried to ignore the unkind thoughts he was having and untied Phaleg and held him, but when Phaleg wept in his arms, he couldn’t control himself any longer.

  He told the angel to get up and get dressed, and Phaleg’s defeated look had made him angrier. The last thing he’d said to him had been pure spite. “Don’t forget to leave your crystal on the bureau. This isn’t charity work.” Phaleg, no longer a trembling submissive once he was in uniform, had dropped his entire purse on the bureau without expression and walked out.

  Silk’s face burned as he thought of it now. He hadn’t been charging Phaleg when they were together. It had been mutual desire between them. He still didn’t understand why he’d reacted so strongly to Phaleg’s perceived weakness. Phaleg had groveled at his feet and begged to be used. He’d submitted to every sort of torment Silk had chosen to mete out, let himself be thoroughly debased and humiliated, and all of it had made Silk want him more. Why had this one moment incensed him so?

  Again, a hazy memory tugged at him. Something he’d done. Or let be done to him. Something pathetic. The demon Kezef, who’d broken him in during his early years at the Fletchery had reduced him at times to little more than an animal. The brothel management allowed Kezef to do what he liked so long as he caused no permanent damage to the unfortunate boy who’d earned his attentions, and so long as he left the boy technically a virgin so they could offer that prize to the right buyer when Kezef tired of him. But it wasn’t that. He hated Kezef for those moments, not himself. Trying to pinpoint what bothered him made his heart beat too fast and tightened a sick knot in his stomach. So he was going to stop that. Right now.

  “Ruby.” It was the alias Vasily had been assigned at the Fletchery while glamoured as a boy as part of Belphagor’s scheme to entrap its patrons. Silk thought the name suited him. He murmured it in the firespirit’s ear and nipped Vasily’s earlobe. The hunky demon stirred. He almost always woke with an erection, and this morning was no exception. Silk slipped his hand into Vasily’s unbuttoned pants and curled his hand around it. Or as around it as his hand could get. “Would you like some help with that?”

  Vasily breathed deeply, a smile curving his lips between the ruddy sideburns, though his eyes weren’t yet open—like a newborn kitten or a pup. Silk wanted to eat him up. Vasily’s hips tilted up, his cock gliding through Silk’s purposefully loose grip, and he moaned appreciatively before his eyes flew open and his sleepy, content expression changed to one of worry.

  “Belphagor,” he growled.

  Silk let his hand slip away. Belphagor. Of course, Belphagor. It seemed everyone who desired him wanted Belphagor more.

  The last he’d seen of Vasily had been beneath the fists and boots of the gendarmes as they took him down. When Belphagor didn’t find him at home after being released from the Conciliary, he began to worry. He didn’t bother to check the game room or the bar. Vasily wasn’t quite the social butterfly Belphagor was and rarely patronized the rest of the Brimstone on his own. At any rate, the bed clearly hadn’t been slept in. Vasily hadn’t been here.

  He hurried through the early morning bustle of Raqia merchants and shopkeepers setting up for the day, wishing he hadn’t purchased the flat for Silk and Anzhela and the boys so far from the Brimstone. But he’d wanted to keep the boys away from the less savory aspects of Raqia life—the Stone Horse notwithstanding. The atmosphere there was more like a private gentleman’s club—he’d deliberately set it up that way—and didn’t attract the sort of drunken, rowdy revelers and ne’er-do-wells common in the busy streets closer to the bank of the Acheron.

  His wingcasting face was firmly in place by the time he arrived at the flat. He’d hoped to have a longer interlude to ponder Phaleg’s request before facing Silk, but it couldn’t be helped. When it came right down to it, if Silk was bringing unwanted attention to his club, Belphagor needed to know. He’d made a career of not bringing himself unwanted attention, his skill at influence honed and perfected in his early days after his first fall to the world of Man. Personal loyalties aside, his first duty was to protect what was his—and in particular, his boy. Even if he wasn’t at the moment technically his boy. The firespirit’s popularity was no small component of the Stone Horse’s allure. For Vasily’s safety, if for no other reason, Belphagor had to be certain the Horse remained untainted by angelic politics. As with the imperial intrigue Belphagor had become embroiled in when he’d fallen those many years ago, its supernal counterpart was dangerous to demons. Regardless of what had become of his long-dead Russian prince.

  The delicious scents of warm sugar and yeast followed him up the stairs from the bakery on the ground floor. If Vasily was here safe and sound, he’d have to head back down and get some breakfast for the boys.

  When he knocked, Anzhela greeted him.

  “Is that him?” Vasily’s gravelly rumble carried from the kitchen, and he popped his head out, looking only a bit worse for wear. Anzhela had obviously been tending to him, judging by the bandages tied around his arm and on his forehead.

  Before Belphagor could enter, Anzhela insisted he remove his shoes, as if they were in a Russian household in the world of Man, and presented him with a pair of tapochki she’d obviously knitted herself.

  Vasily practically bowled him over once he had them on, and Belphagor had to cover his compromised dignity by pulling the firespirit’s hair hard enough to elicit a sort of undignified squeak as he kissed him.

  Belphagor smirked when he released him. “Missed me, I see. But not too much. You slept with Silk, I take it.”

  Vasily blanched. “I didn’t sleep with him, I—”

  “Relax, dear boy. It’s all right if you did.”

  “But I didn’t—”

  “Though I’d have to punish you, of course. If you had.”

  Vasily closed his mouth on the rest of his protest, delightfully confounded.

  Silk, coming down the stairs from the attic, paused at the sight of him. “Belphagor! What a relief. I was just about to call in a favor from… But they let you go?”

  “Just kept us overnight to ‘teach us a lesson’. Trumped-up charges. Somebody must be jealous of our success.”

  Silk searched his eyes but seemed to take this at face value. “Well, I’m sure the boys would love it if you’d come upstairs and let them know you’re okay. They’re doing their lessons, and Anzhela insists they treat it like a real angel school and stay in their seats until they’ve finished their assignments.”

  “I’ve finished mine,” Ruslan called down with a tone of frustration. Belphagor laughed. The youngest of them, Ruslan was also the brightest student and easily bored.

  “I just have a quick errand to run,” he called upstairs. It was definitely pastry time. “Vasya, you’ll have to help me out. It may require extra hands.”

  As they headed downstairs, Vasily spoke quietly behind him. “I really didn’t do anything with Silk—after the three of us, I mean.”

  Belphagor smiled. “I know, dear boy. I’d have known if you were lying. You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met. Which is why I don’t let you join me at the wingcasting table very often or agree to play doubles with you. You’d drive me to penury in a single evening. Plus, I’d have smelled him on your breath and tasted him on your tongue. You never pass up an opportunity for a mouthful of come.”

  He’d reached the bottom of the stairs, and Vasily nearly stumbled down the last few after him, so that Belphagor had to catch and steady him. Unnerving Vasily was his favorite game.

  “Are you calling me…?” Vasily’s voice seemed to grind to a gruff, airless halt in his throat, as though outrage had rendered him mute.

  “A whore?” Belpha
gor offered. He slid his hand between Vasily’s legs and cupped him. “You’re my whore. My sweet come-whore. I’m thinking of taking you back to the Horse tonight after I have Anzhela paint up your eyes in that seductive barbarian kohl and selling you to the highest bidder.” He ran his hand up over the curve of Vasily’s inevitable erection as the firespirit sucked in his breath, his eyes blazing. “And we’ll deal with this”—he squeezed his fingers around the heat in his hand—“when we get home.” He released his grip and turned to open the door to the bakery. “But right now, it’s a tad inappropriate.”

  “You’re unbelievable,” Vasily hissed behind him as they entered.

  “I know.”

  As they headed back, armed with enough baked goods to feed the Supernal Army, Belphagor paused at the foot of the stairs. “Something else happened this morning that I wanted to talk to you about privately.”

  Vasily turned, juggling a paper-and-twine-wrapped packet of pastries, two pies, and a loaf of warm bread. “Something happened?”

  “The arrests weren’t just for harassment.” He juggled his own armful of packets with a sigh of reluctance. “There have been accusations of anti-supernal activities being conducted at the Stone Horse under the cover of solicitation. And that Silk is facilitating them.”

  Vasily scowled. “That’s ridiculous. Silk doesn’t give a rat’s ass about celestial politics.”

  “Which is why he would have no problem taking money from subversives.” Vasily’s silence said he couldn’t refute this logic. “And there were confessions from the angelic patrons they arrested.”

  “Confessions. We all know how they get confessions, Belphagor. They use the Ophanim Guard to—” He broke off abruptly, the slight kindling of heat in his eyes immediately dissipating. “Beli…did they…?”

  “No, I’m fine. There were no Ophanim, and I was only questioned by an angelic officer. No one tortured me. But then this morning—don’t look alarmed, there was no torture this morning either. No torture at any time. Stop worrying. This morning, they brought me before Major Phaleg. It was apparently at his behest I was arrested.”

  Vasily’s expression gave away the jealousy he couldn’t quite shake when it came to Phaleg. And Belphagor had certainly given him good reason in the past. His relationship with Phaleg had commenced just after he and Vasily had fallen in love. It had been conducted in the process of trying to rescue Vasily, and later to clear Vasily’s name of treason, but it had happened nonetheless.

  “Why? What did he want?”

  Belphagor lowered his voice, though there was no way they could be heard from down here. The stairwell of the flat had given him another moment of déjà vu. He hadn’t realized until now how similar the flat was to a certain Petrograd apartment. “He wants me to spy on Silk.”

  “He what? What the hell happened between them?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me, but I don’t think it had anything to do with this. He’s as loyal as they come.”

  “Yes, I’ve noticed.”

  “Vasya. His feelings for me are entirely one-sided.”

  “Horseshit.”

  Belphagor reddened slightly. “I’m not saying I don’t care for him at all. I just don’t have any desire to be intimate with him.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Bel. You have a desire to be intimate with anyone with a penis who shows the slightest submissive tendencies.”

  He glared at Vasily for a long moment and then conceded the point. “Yes, all right. I find him desirable. He’s lovely, and deeply masochistic. But there’s desire and then there’s yearning. I have no yearning for anyone but you. You should know that by now.”

  Vasily shrugged his shoulders in a gesture that said he should but nevertheless didn’t.

  “At any rate, whether I desire him or not has nothing to do with this. His loyalty in this case is to his principality. There’s more to it than that, of course, but I don’t have time to go into it now. I just wanted you to be aware. I might need you to help.”

  “To help do what, exactly?”

  “Gather information. I thought you might have more rapport with some of the talent. You could express an interest in the revolutionary cause.”

  “I have more rapport? You hired most of them—and hired most of them, if you recall, those first few weeks after the opening when you were trying to establish your reputation as a rake.” They both knew Belphagor had been trying to establish that he’d broken up with Vasily and had moved on, as part of the scheme he’d concocted to lay his trap for the fletchers, but he knew it still stung. It was why he was atoning by not claiming Vasily yet as his boy.

  “They believe I hired them on Silk’s behalf. As far as they know, I’m only a patron—and a patron who paid them well to do nothing. They’re far more likely to open up to you as a fellow working boy than to me.”

  Vasily was looking at him strangely and nearly dropped one of his pies. “You paid them to do nothing?”

  “I’ve told you this before. It was all for appearances. You know that. Why are we rehashing this conversation?”

  “You told me you didn’t sleep with Khai while he pretended to be your—” Vasily stumbled on the word—“boy. And you told me everything you did was for appearances, but…I thought you must have at least… Nothing?”

  Belphagor set his packets down on the step, took Vasily’s from him, and placed them beside the others before sliding his arms around Vasily’s waist and looking up into his puzzled eyes. “Nothing, sweet boy. Nothing with anyone but you since we returned from the world of Man. You’ve enslaved me. Do you not know that?”

  Vasily’s arms encircled his shoulders, and Belphagor laid his head against the warm, hard chest. It was an odd stance for the two of them, a reversal of what some might see as their obvious roles. But there was only so much symbolic—and literal—dragging a firespirit down to his level Belphagor could manage. Sometimes being encircled in his boy’s arms was perfect.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way.” The rumble and crackle of Vasily’s breath in his chest as he spoke reminded him of the sound of firedust smoke in one’s head after a deep and satisfying hit on a pipe. “But you’re a master at the gaming table for the opposite reason of why you won’t let me play at it. No one can ever tell when you’re lying. I’m not accusing you of anything, but how can you expect me to know you’ve told me the truth when you’re so adept at bending it?”

  Belphagor’s heart hurt just a little at the uncertainty in Vasily’s voice. He lifted his head and looked up. “Because, love. You’re the one demon in all the spheres I will never lie to.” He pulled away and picked up their purchases once more. “But I see we still have trust issues to work through, which confirms it’s not yet time for you to be my boy.”

  Vasily snatched up his pies. “So you’re going to punish me because I doubt you.”

  “No, love. I’m going to punish you because I’ve made you doubt me and haven’t earned back your full trust. You’ve agreed all my punishments are to be yours. Perhaps you didn’t understand that I am always hardest on myself.”

  Vasily tried not to think about the implications of any part of their discussion while Belphagor disrupted lessons with the angelic tutor to share their bounty from the bakery. Anzhela disapproved of indulging the boys, but Belphagor insisted that since he was old enough to be their grandfather, his role was to spoil them. Vasily doubted Belphagor was quite that old, but he’d always evaded the question of age. He’d spent enough time in the world of man over several falls to get a multitude of tattoos, but he couldn’t have had more than a decade in which to do it. The aetherless air of the world of Man caused rapid aging, and Belphagor looked only a few years older than the average celestial. There were no telltale lines on his face or white hairs on his head.

  Though age was a difficult thing for celestials to gauge. Angels remained in the State of Grace from early adulthood until they neared the end of life some two centuries later, with aging only visible in the last few decades. But
in Raqia, so many demons fell and returned from the world of Man over differing spans of time that a great deal of variety existed in how old a demon of any particular age might appear.

  Annoyed with Belphagor, Anzhela headed downstairs.

  “Take Vasya with you,” he called after her. “I want him painted up for tonight.”

  Vasily gaped at him. He’d assumed the talk about selling him to the highest bidder at the Horse had merely been meant to get him hot.

  Belphagor smiled innocently, unwrapping a hot bun. “Well? Go on. Give the girl something to do while she’s mad at me.”

  “The girl can still hear you,” said Anzhela loudly from the parlor, which set the boys laughing with mouths stuffed full of cakes and pies.

  Belphagor gave them an indulgent frown. “Tut-tut, boys. You don’t want to end up with extra schoolwork. Anzhela’s only looking out for your welfare.”

  Vasily headed down, shaking his head. Belphagor really did seem to play everyone. It was instinct, most likely. Or habit. He wondered if Belphagor was even aware of it.

  Silk beamed at him, following as Anzhela led him to the extra room Silk had designated as the dressing room. “Painted up, is it?” He perched on his hip on the fainting couch with his knees drawn up beside him. “He’s bringing you out to the Horse again tonight?”

  “Seems that way,” Vasily grunted sullenly. He sat at the dressing table while Anzhela took out the cosmetics box.

  “And why are we grumpy about this, my ruby plum?”

  “Because he says he’s going to sell me to the highest bidder.”

  “He’s going to sell you?” Anzhela exclaimed, at the same moment Silk made a squeal of delight.