by Jane Kindred
“What about Vasily? Were you able to get him out before me? And Margarita?”
Nebo threw me an apologetic glance in the dark. “We figured we would only have one opportunity. And you were the priority.”
I nodded, swallowing a lump in my throat. “So now what? We find the commander of the Virtues?”
“Well, I thought you might want help with that. Lively’s done some divination, it seems, and she found out a few things she couldn’t communicate to you.”
“What things?”
“Let’s see if I can remember it all.” His voice held a hint of mischievousness as we crossed the street and ducked into another alley. “Love and Belphagor have restored the alliance between the Travelers and the terrestrial Fallen.”
“Restored it? When was it lost?” And then the rest of it registered. Love? This took me completely by surprise. From Belphagor’s mysteriousness about his trip, I’d assumed he was keeping something from me about our terrestrial connections, but it never occurred to me Love was involved. I’d believed she only wanted to go home.
Nebo shrugged. “I’m just delivering the message. Lively says the exact words were ‘the Travelers have severed misguided ties with the Messengers, and communications have been restored, though the Fallen remain for the Fallen.’ Not sure what the first bit means, but I’m assuming the second means the Exiles are siding with Helga. I’d heard as much in the camp.”
I sighed. Since I hadn’t expected any of this, I ought to be glad of what they’d accomplished—if the alliance had been threatened by the influence of the Malakim, Love and Belphagor had worked wonders, indeed. But it was still disappointing to hear my former allies supported Helga’s rule.
“And better news.” Nebo smiled. “That monk, Kirill, has Ola safe, somewhere in Raqia.”
“Kirill?” I exclaimed, almost giddy. My companions were all surprising me. I hugged Nebo again, and this time he didn’t shy away from it. “Did Lively say he had both children?”
“She thought so. So there really is a grand duke?”
My eyes welled with tears of happiness. “Yes,” I said. “There really is.” We’d reached the north end of the palace district and the streets we passed were becoming emptier.
Nebo nodded toward a working-class tavern at the end of the alley. “Are you thirsty?”
I shrugged. Having a drink hadn’t crossed my mind, but it wouldn’t hurt to sit and work out our next move. I pulled up my hood and followed him into the tavern. It was the sort of dingy, unornamented place men went to drink without being bothered. Nebo ordered us two pints of ale and led me to a booth in the shadows where we could strategize without fear of being overheard.
In the next booth, someone stirred and peered out. As I ducked my head to keep from being recognized, I couldn’t help but notice the profile of a leather mask.
“Kae?”
He slipped into our booth. “Nazkia.” For the first time since my seventeenth birthday when Aeval had appeared to him as the white steed, he smiled an almost genuine smile. The unexpected warmth of his greeting was infectious and I smiled back, startled to realize I’d genuinely missed him—not the friend I’d lost, but the man he’d become, moody and difficult as he was.
“Lively said he’d be here,” said Nebo. “Though I confess I was a little surprised to hear he was your field marshal now. I haven’t made a mistake, have I?”
“No, you haven’t.” I was still smiling at Kae like a giddy child. “But how did you know to come here?” I glanced at Nebo. “You couldn’t have had time to get a message to him.”
“Lively got a message to me.” Beneath Kae’s scars, I thought he blushed. He busied himself with removing his gloves. “She gave me a charmstone that glowed when she had news, and a Chora deck to receive the messages.”
I nearly choked on my ale. “When did she teach you to read the Chora?” An irrational prick of jealousy needled me at the idea of Lively and Kae sharing some kind of bond. “I thought you didn’t put much store in peasant magic.”
Kae shrugged without answering, something he did as a matter of course to spare his voice. He folded the gloves and tucked them away, and I realized it was the first time I’d seen him without them. “You did say to use every tool at our disposal. So what’s the plan? Lively’s message said Helga had tricked Vasily into some kind of alliance?”
I sighed. “She promised him Ola, but she doesn’t have Ola.”
His cloudy eye narrowed in puzzlement. “Doesn’t have her? Then who does?”
“Kirill.” I grinned. “According to Nebo, he’s found Ola and Azel and stolen them out from under Helga’s nose.”
Nebo nodded. “That’s what Lively saw in the cards. Kirill’s with the children somewhere in Raqia.”
The relief was visible on my cousin’s face; despite his protestations to the contrary, he clearly harbored a father’s longing for his lost child. “So. Will you look for Kirill, or…?”
“I think we must do what we came for first,” I said reluctantly. “They’re probably safer in Raqia for now, wherever Kirill’s hidden them.”
Kae nodded. “Then I suggest we find a way to get you to your men to disabuse them of the notion of an alliance.”
“They could use your command as well,” I said. “Margarita is still captive in the palace, and Belphagor’s fallen to the world of Man to try to restore our alliance with the Exiles. What I saw of the Virtues’ performance in the square when Aeval’s forces arrived wasn’t encouraging.”
He nodded. “Then we should head east around the city and try to locate the commander of the Virtuous brigade from the cover of Aeval’s House of Correction. It’s being used as an armory, so if the demons are still holding the palace against Aeval, this should be friendly territory—or at least as friendly as it’s going to get. We’ll need Nebo to go in and get a message to the commander once we’ve found him. I think you and I will be too easily recognized to get close.”
“What about your men? How many…” I paused, unable to ask the question I’d begun. “How many came with you from Aravoth?”
“All of them,” he said with a look of pride. “Nearly fifteen hundred survived Gihon, and not a man among them chose to remain behind when I gave them the opportunity before we set out in pursuit of Aeval.”
“Half?” I was torn between amazement that they’d done so well and sorrow for the half who had perished.
“Your army still stands at nearly five thousand men.”
So Lively had told him of our losses. I wondered if she’d told him her part in it.
“And if I might suggest a very un-Virtuous tactic.” He spoke slowly, as if formulating a plan as he sat before me. “It may prove expedient to allow the appearance of a demonic alliance to stand for the time being.”
Nebo looked thoughtful. “Use Helga’s forces to diminish the queen’s.”
I frowned. “Double-cross them?”
“It does seem to be Helga’s favored mode of operation,” said Kae.
“And how can we hope to win them to our side after turning on them?”
“We appeal to them then and there, as if the turning tide necessitates it. We spread the word of Helga’s actions in this drama and say we can support her no further.”
The cravenness of it troubled me, and in being troubled, I recognized in myself the same moral hesitancy I lamented in our Virtues. Still, I couldn’t see myself taking the throne out of deceit and trickery of my own citizens. It might be Helga’s method of operation, and it was certainly Aeval’s, but I could not have it be mine.
I shook my head. “I cannot use men so. If we remain allied with Helga’s army, we must tell them it’s only temporary and for the sake of expediency, that they’ll be our foes once Aeval is defeated. We’ll tell them Helga lied about the alliance and offer our new terms.”
Kae looked angry, but unexpectedly, he touched my hand on the table, and for once I didn’t flinch from him. “You’re maddening. Never change.” Though his voic
e had been stronger a moment before, his rasp was barely audible.
I noticed then how warm his touch was. “Kae.” I turned his maimed hand over, his palm as dry as an autumn leaf. “Are you feverish?” I pressed the back of my hand to his forehead and he jumped at my touch. Beneath my hand, his skin was warm and flushed.
“I’m fine.”
“He needs water,” I said to Nebo, and the Nephil slipped out of the booth without question. “You are not fine. How long have you been running a temperature?”
He looked away. “It began to rise as soon as I set foot in Elysium.”
I looked down at the stump of his little finger. Aeval had warned me his equilibrium wouldn’t last. She claimed she let his blood to “soothe” him when he was out of sorts. Can you do that? she’d taunted, showing me the finger she’d taken. Can you cut your precious cousin?
I frowned. “You’re still under her influence.”
“I will not turn on you,” he promised vehemently. “I would kill myself first. I know what her power…tastes like.” Kae gritted his teeth. “As if I’ve swallowed something sweet and overripe. And if I taste it again, even a hint of it, I will fall on my own sword.”
“I’m not afraid you’re going to betray me. I’m afraid you’re going to die on me.”
“Before I’ve served my purpose?” he said gruffly.
“Oh, damn you, Kae! Yes, all right, before you’ve served your purpose. If that’s the way you’d have it, then so be it, but you’ll not die on me so long as I need you.”
Nebo brought the jug of water and I insisted Kae drink. I wasn’t sure how we’d keep his temperature from boiling over in the midst of an Elysian summer, but keeping him from becoming dehydrated was a start.
We skirted the city as he advised, and by the time we reached the east end, Kae’s fever had spiked out of control. He stopped to rest among the trees lining a secluded lane of a public park, leaning against one of the trunks, and swayed unsteadily on his feet.
Nebo took hold of him and made a quiet noise of exclamation. “He’s burning up.” Kae went limp in his arms.
I grabbed Kae’s canteen and tried to get him to drink while Nebo lowered him to the ground, but he was unresponsive, and splashing his face with the remaining water didn’t seem to help.
Opening the high collar of his coat to give him air, I revealed a scar at his throat that ran the length of his jaw—a remembrance from Aeval of the night he’d murdered my family. After he’d done her bidding, she’d meant to get rid of him before deciding he’d be more useful alive. I traced the white line on his skin, and a pale lilac flicker of aetheric radiance followed for an instant in my finger’s wake—the radiance that had been mine and Vasily’s alone until I’d taken the drop of my daughter’s blood. But with Kae, the aether wasn’t enough to heal.
I took my navaja from my pocket. I’d injured Aeval with it once and I kept it on me, hoping to have the opportunity to do so again. It was also the knife I’d stabbed Kae with at Gehenna. The cracking sound was loud in the empty park when I released the blade.
Nebo eyed the knife. “What are you going to do with that?”
“I’m not sure.” I stared at it. “Possibly something mad. Hold him.”
As the Nephil closed his large hands over Kae’s arms, I placed the blade of my knife against the scar and drew it in a shallow line through the skin. Kae howled and struggled in Nebo’s grip and I clasped my cousin’s hand and drew his attention to me.
“Listen to me, Kae. It’s Nenny. Focus on me.”
He opened his eye and fixed his wild gaze on me as his chest rose with frantic breath. A thin ribbon of blood welled up from the cut. The navaja, Lively had determined, inscribed with a gypsy witch’s wards, had loosed Aeval’s hold on Kae by disrupting the magical control she’d exerted on his blood. I was banking on it dispelling what remained.
Aeval had bragged of using the focusing elements of ice and fire to enslave him. His waterspirit blood, frozen by her kiss, had served as the ice. But ice hadn’t freed him permanently. What I needed now was fire.
The key to elemental magic, Lively said, was in utilizing a bit of one’s own element to effect the transmutation of it in the surrounding air. If I had some of Ola’s fire in my blood, perhaps I could call that element to me.
Placing the blade of the navaja against my forearm, I made a shallow incision. With my blood on the knife, I stretched out my arm and murmured the words of a spell Lively had taught me to invoke the proper directional element—south was the symbolic domain of fire.
I pressed my other hand against the stripe of blood at Kae’s throat to complete our connection. With a sharp shock, the pale aether sparked and shot up my arm. I felt the fleeting tug of my wings as it passed my shoulder, and then my hair seemed to stand on end.
With a deafening crack above our heads, a blue-white flash as bright as daylight illuminated the park for an instant. A sudden downpour struck out of the clear night sky and doused the radiance completely. But beneath the cool rain, Kae’s fever began to drop.
His temperature was normal within a minute. I raised my face into the falling water, laughing with relief.
Nebo touched Kae’s skin and then looked up at me—laughing at the sky as if I were simple—and grinned. “That’s a hell of a talent, Your Supernal Highness. Bet you could make a bloody fortune as a rainmaker.”
I laughed with chagrin. “I wasn’t trying to make rain. I was trying to make fire.” And it seemed I had; I’d called lightning.
Kae blinked up at the deluge in surprise, touching his fingers to the shallow cut at his throat with a look of perplexity. “What happened?” He sat up somewhat unsteadily. “What are we doing in the mud?” I laughed harder at that, and Nebo laughed with me, baffling poor Kae. The rain and the laughter felt wonderful. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d enjoyed either.
“My dear field marshal.” I offered a hand to help him up. “I just thought I’d cool you off a bit.” At the look on his face, I laughed harder, recognizing a tinge of hysteria in it, and slipped and fell beside him in the mud.
Soaked to the skin, we arrived at the alley behind the House of Correction, where Kae and I waited together while Nebo dashed through the rain and mud into the fray to find our brigadier general.
“I can still feel her.” Kae gave a small shudder as we pressed our backs against the wall beneath the eaves. “I just want you to be aware of that, Nazkia. The closer I get to her, the more my skin prickles with unease.”
The disappointment must have been visible on my face.
“I will not let her take me again. I promise you that.” He closed his eye, and his rough voice lowered to a near-whisper. “But if it seems to you I cannot keep that promise, if you believe I’m no longer myself—there’s a promise you must also make to me.”
I waited, though I knew what he was about to say.
“You must put me down, like a rabid dog. I cannot be her fool again. And I cannot be responsible for doing further harm to you.”
“Kae…”
“I’m begging you, Nazkia.” He opened his watery eye and fixed it on me. “Do you want me on my knees?” He dropped onto them. “Surely it cannot be that difficult to kill the murderer of your family.”
“Stop it!” The words burst out of me too loud and I glanced around to be sure I hadn’t drawn attention from the road. I narrowed my eyes. “Stand up.” When he didn’t move, I added, “That is an order from your sovereign.”
Kae rose with a look of defiant anger rather than humble supplication.
“You are a fool,” I said. “A complete and utter, miserable fool.”
He blinked at me in surprise.
“And you are all that is left of my family. No, don’t you say a word! I have been sick, and filled with rage, and broken-hearted at what you’ve done every moment of every day since that terrible night. And I probably shall be for the rest of my life, but you were my friend and my brother, taken from me as surely as the others
were. And now I’ve taken you back. If you think I would so easily let her steal you from me again, you’re simply mad of your own doing.”
Rain dripped down his face as he stared at me, and his rheumy eye was watering.
“You stand there and tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you are not my friend, that you’re not the Kae I adored and emulated as a girl, whom I raced horses with and built forts with in the snow against Tatia and Maia and Ola. Tell me you do not love me, cousin.”
His face blazed with sudden fury and he grabbed my arms and shook me. “I am not him. Can’t you understand that, damn you?”
I gazed at him, my heart racing with something unfamiliar as I stood closer to him than I’d been since the day I’d tried to kill him and set him free instead. “Then who are you, Kae Lebesovich?” I asked softly.
He let go and backed away. “How can I be anything other than a monster? A monster, and a joke.”
Behind him, Nebo had arrived with a platoon of mounted Virtues and the commander of the Empyrean brigade. My answer would have to wait.
The Virtues were amazed to see me alive. Apparently, the story was spreading that I’d been killed along with my battalion. The brigadier general dismounted, bowed to me, and saluted Kae. “What are your orders, Your Supernal Highness?” He looked at me when he said it, but I could sense his deference to the man who’d earned his grudging respect.
“Well? Tell them the plan, field marshal.” I spoke with a supernal tone that dispelled the familiarity of the last few minutes.
“The plan,” said Kae with his usual gruffness, “is to maintain our alliance with the Liberationists until it is no longer expedient.”
“And to make that contingency perfectly clear to them,” I added, knowing Kae wouldn’t. “We inform them they’ve been deceived by Helga as to the nature of our alliance, that it’s a temporary measure to defeat our common enemy.”
Kae sighed but didn’t contradict me. “And second,” he continued in a tone of disgust, “to stop dancing about on the battlefield like a gaggle of fainthearted schoolgirls!”
As we rode toward the front on the mounts the Virtues provided, I brought my horse up next to Kae’s. “Field marshal.”
