by Jane Kindred
The survivors of Kae’s wrath had been devoted to Belphagor since their imprisonment at Gehenna. Love and I referred to them as “Beli’s Boys”—out of his presence, of course. That Vasily’s intimate name for him had somehow become part of Ola’s vocabulary amused us to no end, and we applied it wherever we could.
“I’d be glad to have them. Though I’m not sure how I feel about Loquel being in combat.” Particularly devoted to Belphagor, the fragile-looking Virtue seemed barely more than a boy, though Virtues, more than any other order of angels, had a perpetually youthful look, and I knew he was actually several years my senior. I looked to Kae, to whom I deferred all strategic decisions.
He considered only a moment. “Virtuous soldiers are fiercely loyal to their platoons. And in the case of these particular soldiers, I believe splitting them up is unwise. Loquel will do more good with you than he will here, separated from his comrades.”
I nodded. “All right, then. Sar Haniel’s Virtues ride with us. Thank you, Kae.” I knew speaking of Loquel was uncomfortable for him after how he’d abused the young angel at Gehenna. I rose and signaled dismissal. “We leave at dusk.”
Love followed me, looking anxious. “May I have a word with you, Nazkia?”
“Of course.” I pressed her hand. “What is it?”
“I know I asked to stay at Pyr Amaravati when you wanted me to return to Arkhangel’sk.” She lowered her gaze. “But I think…I’d like to go home.”
I resisted the tears that prickled behind my eyes and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “I can’t blame you, Love. If we fail, it will be dangerous for you and Kirill here.”
“Yes. Kirill.” She sounded more certain. “This place isn’t good for him. Not Pyr Amaravati, I mean. Sarael and his staff have been wonderful—and bozhe moi, how I’ll miss the baths! But a Heaven without a God… I don’t think Kirill can bear it. I need to take him home.”
“Of course. But I’m going to miss you terribly.” I’d been shy around Love for a long time, feeling inadequate as Ola’s mother next to her natural instincts, but she’d become like one of the sisters I’d lost.
“It’s not that I’ve given up on finding Ola.” She looked stricken at the thought. “I want you to know that. I know she’ll come home to you soon.”
I clasped her hands in reassurance. “Of course. As soon as things are settled—afterward—we’ll come visit.”
Love hugged me tightly, unable to say anything more, and again I fought tears, knowing what I’d just said was a lie, and she must know it. If I became the queen of Heaven, I would no longer be able to fall to the world of Man as I pleased. Even if I could have, it would be too risky for Ola. And if I didn’t succeed, it would mean both our heads.
Through the colonnade of the atrium, I noticed Margarita waiting. “This isn’t good-bye yet.” I stepped out of Love’s embrace. “The safest way for you to get home is by traveling with us to Elysium and then heading to the portals in Raqia from outside the city. Can you and Kirill be ready to go by dusk?”
Love wiped her eyes and nodded, looking relieved. She moved aside as Margarita took her opportunity and approached.
“Your Supernal Highness.” She bowed respectfully, but as she straightened, I couldn’t help noticing her fidget with the ring that marked her loyalty to the Grigori. It was one all Nephilim wore. “I hope it’s not out of line for me to say, but I think you need me with you. If you’re going to engage the enemy yourself, I’d like to serve as your personal guard. The Fallen will be armed, and if you’ll forgive my saying so, sword work is not your strong suit.”
I sighed, both relieved she hadn’t come to say she was withdrawing her support, and irritated with myself for having been such a poor student. “I know, Margarita. You’ve been very patient with me. And Heaven knows I could use you by my side. But I’m worried about leaving Kae on his own.”
“You think he’ll desert?”
“No, not exactly. But Aeval called his blood once and controlled him completely. I think he’s beyond her influence now, but I can’t be sure. She was fully capable of controlling the Seraphim’s element from a distance.”
“Well, I have to be honest,” said Margarita, as if being blunt and forthright were ever difficult for her. “That woman gave me the chills. I don’t think I’d be much help in stopping her. But if you want my opinion, those Virtues will turn against your cousin faster than he can blink that lame eye if he so much as looks like he’s being swayed to her side. I think he’s done what he needed to do, and it’s up to them now to follow through.”
“I suppose you’re right.” I nodded. “All right. Be ready by dusk.”
Margarita pressed my arm with her firm grip and headed off to make her preparations.
Love fell into step with me once more as I headed toward our wing. “You know that isn’t why she wants to go with you.”
“What do you mean?”
Her voice fell to a whisper. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it. She’s hot over Lively.”
I pushed her slightly in disbelief, as if she were one of my sisters and we were gossiping over a visiting duchess. “No, she is not. Really?” I gazed after Margarita as she disappeared down the corridor, her red ponytail swinging confidently, and glanced back at Love with my eyes wide.
“Your angelic innocence is really cute.” Love gave me a wink and headed off to her room.
There was one more person I needed to talk to before we departed, and he’d already left the manor. I steeled myself to deal with Kae’s moods and went down to the stables. Sitting on the bunk provided by Sarael’s staff after he’d refused to enter Pyr Amaravati, Kae looked up from making notes in a little leather-bound book.
I wasted no time on pleasantries. “I want to go over the plan once more before I leave. How many troops do we have all together?”
“Seven thousand,” he answered without hesitation, setting his book aside. “And Aeval has nearly four times that. I presume she’ll bring the bulk of it to bear on Aravoth, not because she needs them, but because she’s furious. Even so, as I said, I think we can hold them off at the Falls because of the terrain and the river conditions. With that in mind, I’m sending four thousand with you.”
“Four thousand?” I frowned. “You’ll be outnumbered almost ten to one.”
“And yet all we need to do is keep those ten from getting through a space meant for one.”
“A lot of angels are going to die.”
I knew his answer before he gave it. “Such is war, Cousin.”
From the road Kae and I had taken yesterday, our troops would head up into the mountains instead of following it straight on to Aravoth City. It was the same path by which I’d entered Aravoth six months ago fleeing the queen’s men, but there had only been three of us then, not a brigade of four thousand.
Rather than turning west toward the Summer Palace and the Queen’s Highway when we neared the base of the mountains, we would head east and descend near Lake Superna some seven leagues farther to connect with the old highway. Before the Firmament had annexed the Princedom of Raqia, this road had led all the way from Aravoth City to Aden in the southernmost tip of the Princedom of Vilon.
I pondered his plan. “Do you think four thousand men and horses can safely navigate the mountain?”
“Safely? If you mean can they make it to the other side alive, certainly. It’s two to three days through the mountain; you’ll be able to carry enough feed for the horses for at least that long, and the horses are bred for the heights. After that, there’s nothing much but farms and peasant villages until you get to Iriy. It will be up to our Virtues to commandeer supplies and lodging along the road. That will test their sense of fairness and honor. Once you reach Iriy, you will doubtless meet resistance from militias loyal to the queen, and the fighting will begin, but you should be able to make it to Elysium with minimal losses to engage whatever forces Aeval has left behind.” He looked piercingly at me. “Was that what you meant?”
I nodded, biting my lip, and Kae sighed. “Are you up to this, Nazkia? These men are counting on you. It’s time for you to grow up and act like a queen if you intend to be one.”
Anger flared in me at his rebuke. “Don’t you speak to me as if I were still your baby cousin. I know what my responsibilities are. I know what I’m asking of these men. It’s what I have to do and I will, but I don’t have to like the idea of good men dying for me.”
“That’s good to hear.”
Was it my imagination, or was he smirking behind that mask? It was almost as if he were deliberately ribbing me, which seemed so unlike the Kae of the present I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
He picked up his notebook again. “My experience with command has taught me that well-trained soldiers can be relied upon to do anything asked of them, even extraordinary things, as long as they feel their contributions matter, as men. If you treat them like nothing more than means to an end, you’ll wind up with a weak, dispirited force, and a high number of deserters.”
He opened his book and began making notes in it once more. “I suggest you put Belphagor in charge of discipline, with Margarita as tactical commander. And while you could take four thousand men over the top of the Mountains of Aravoth, I wouldn’t recommend it. My plan was to send five hundred through the mountain with you, and the other thirty-five hundred northeast along the Empyrean border to the Central Rift to follow the Acheron from its source and meet up with you at Elysium. It will take them another week, maybe longer, but they’ll be in much better condition, and the losses will be fewer. You’ll have to seize and hold the palace until they arrive, but I’m betting the queen has left no more than the usual two hundred Ophanim to guard it.” He glanced up, with his pencil poised over the page. “Was there anything else?”
I regarded him for a long moment, anger fading into an inexpressible confusion of admiration and regret. Just as I was taking my leave, I seemed to be seeing a different side to him.
“There is one other thing. Thank you for all you’ve done here,” I said sincerely. “It means a great deal to me.” I left him staring after me.
As I headed back to the manor, the soft pink haze of the cherry orchard caught my eye and I cut across the lawn to see it one last time. The thaw had come late, and the trees were still laced with blossoms above the thick carpet of petals. I sat in the shade and spread my skirt beneath me, imagining for a moment I was still just Nenny, hiding from my sisters in a game of hide and seek. When I was very young, Kae had played these games with us, spending his summers in Elysium after Aunt Tsirya’s death.
I’d never felt more conflicted about my cousin—torn, as always, between bitterness and sorrow. I’d believed his suffering over what he’d done could never compare to that of the people he’d done it to, but seeing his reaction to the news about his child, I was no longer certain I could make such a claim. Perhaps he suffered more than all of us. He said he remembered every moment of it, locked within his own blood by Aeval’s calling, watching himself in horror. What must it be like to carry that memory? Far worse, I feared, than carrying my own.
A light breeze picked up the blossoms around me for an instant, stirring the scent of spring, and then scattered them along the dirt path. I sighed, wishing it had been the delicate dance of the syla. Today was Midsummer’s Day. If I were in the world of Man, I would see the ethereal creatures of the Unseen World if I looked closely enough.
“I wish you were here,” I whispered, not knowing whether I meant the syla, or my sisters, or my own Ola. “This task is too hard,” I told them all. “I don’t want to be queen. Why have you left me to do this alone?”
Padshaya Koroleva.
I swore I heard it on the fluttering petals: Fallen Queen, the syla’s name for me. I stood and scanned the orchard, straining to see what might otherwise be unseen.
Cannot see.
This I heard quite clearly. “Where are you?” I cried.
Cannot see, the wind repeated, and then I heard distinctly, “Padshaya Koroleva will come to Polnochnoi Sud.”
“The Midnight Court? How can I go to the Midnight Court?” I was a world away from the magnificent halls of the syla beneath the fairy mound at Tsarskoe Selo, and I was needed in Elysium. “Please. Where are you? I don’t understand.”
The sweet, heady breeze lifted every petal around me, every decaying blossom cast off by the greening twigs. They floated and swayed, rising as if by some puppeteer’s string, until the breeze dissipated and the petals floated down from the frosted canopy above like pale pink flakes of snow.
Chetvertaya: Signs and Wonders
He heard the voice before he saw the vision. Brother Kirill knelt on the floor, deep in his morning devotion, when someone or something whispered in his ear.
Man of God, it whispered. Kirill thought someone stood behind him, and he turned, but he saw no one in the doorway. He went back to his prayer and then heard it again: Man of God.
Trembling, he replied, “I hear you, Lord.”
“Open your eyes, man of God.”
He’d squeezed his eyes shut as soon as he determined the voice was real. He opened them cautiously and saw a shining, silver light before him, pulsing as if it breathed. The shape, though vaguely man-like, didn’t coalesce into anything solid. Kirill crossed himself and murmured the Prayer of the Heart.
“I have come to set a task before you.” The voice clearly emanated from the shining shape, though it had no mouth as such to move. The light sparkled like the facets of a jewel struck by the glow of fire. “I would appoint you the child’s protector,” said the angel—for Kirill was certain now he was seeing a real angel, not the deceivers who’d lied to him on Solovetsky, and not the devils who claimed to be Cherubim. In the depths of hell, he’d been sent an angel of light. God had heard his prayers at last.
“I am your servant.” Kirill bowed low over his knees. “But I don’t know where the child is.”
“I will lead you to him.”
“Him?” Kirill looked up, confused. “Not the girl? Not Ola?”
“The girl is strong, but the boy is weak. The girl remembers love, but the boy has known none.”
Kirill wondered whether the angel meant care and affection, or Love herself. He was beginning to feel a bit disoriented in the being’s presence, as if the angel’s light sucked oxygen from the room.
“When you find one, you shall find the other.”
Again, Kirill pondered the meaning. Did the angel speak of the children, or of Love, and affection?
“I will come to you again,” said the angel. “Keep watch in the night.”
For a moment, Kirill thought the angel’s appearance wavered and stretched before him, but it was his own perception. The room behind the angel, which he could see through its light, wavered the same as he collapsed onto the floor.
“Kirill!” Love knelt beside him, shaking him. As always, his heart quickened at her proximity. She clutched his hand when he stirred and blinked. “Bozhe moi! You scared the life out of me.”
“I’ve seen the angel of the Lord,” he said as Love helped him up. “It spoke to me, sparkling like a being of light.”
Love frowned. “There are plenty of angels here. I don’t think any of them are from the Lord.” She regarded him dubiously, as if she thought he was becoming unhinged. Perhaps it was best if he kept this to himself. “When did you last eat?”
He shrugged and shook his head.
Her frown turned to one of disapproval. “You need to attend to your body, Kirill, not just your soul.” She joined him as he sat on the bed. “Listen. I’ve just spoken to Nazkia, and she’s moving out at dusk with her troops for Heaven’s capital. I told her I thought it would be best if you and I went home.”
Kirill studied her lovely eyes of deepest brown. Moments ago, he would have rejoiced at this news. He wanted nothing more than to escape this godless land, and the prospects for finding little Ola were growing slimmer with every passing day. But with the angel
’s words, he had a renewed sense of purpose. God had sent him to this dark place for a reason, to protect not only Ola but this other child who needed him as well. He couldn’t ignore this calling.
“What about Ola? We pledged to stay and find her.”
The deep brown eyes were sad. “I just don’t know what good we’re doing here. And Nazkia says it’s dangerous for us to stay.”
He didn’t want to disappoint her, so he said nothing, and she seemed to take this as agreement. “If we leave with the troops, we’ll have safe passage to the place where we can return below. I’ve told her we’ll go.”
Kirill nodded and smiled, putting his other hand over hers. “Of course. You’re right.” He would say anything to see the warm light in her eyes. Even a lie. Might God have mercy on his soul.
§
Four thousand Virtues waited on the road beyond Pyr Amaravati while the shortest night began to fall over the green highlands of Aravoth. Kae had chosen those most capable of adapting and thinking on their feet. He didn’t know them all individually, of course, but he was well acquainted with the captains of each company. He’d assembled all the troops and run them through exercises to give any spies the impression it was an ordinary drill, and the rest had fallen back as if to re-drill when the Empyrean brigade prepared to depart.
With his parting orders, he sent the Elysium-bound troops on their way on the northern road toward the wasteland of the Empyrean, keeping behind two elite companies in whom he placed absolute faith—the escorts for Anazakia and her party.
Kae waited near the stables as her party mounted up, frowning at the sight of Lively approaching from the manor in her traveling clothes, her belly now quite prominent in front of her. At least Anazakia wasn’t foolish enough to expect her to ride. He’d provided a platoon of infantry to walk with the girl and watch out for her, but it was madness for Anazakia to insist on her inclusion.
