by Jane Kindred
With his eye closed and his head against the trunk as if he were waiting to die, Kae moaned something Belphagor couldn’t understand and didn’t think he was meant to. Belphagor had given him ten brutal blows, probably as much as the virgin flesh could stand, but in his head, he heard the words the former Principality had once forced him to say after far worse beatings at his own hand: I am His Supernal Majesty’s eternal slave. It had been the echo of what Aeval had compelled the angel himself to say when under her power.
“I am,” he prompted as he brought down the pleti once more.
Kae didn’t need an explanation. “I am,” he gasped from his damaged throat.
“Her Supernal Majesty’s,” said Belphagor with the next blow.
“Her Supernal Majesty’s!” Kae cried out.
“Eternal slave,” growled Belphagor with a vicious strike.
Kae’s body shuddered and twisted in pain and Belphagor thought the angel might scream before he breathed out at last and whispered in a tone of utter defeat, “Eternal slave.”
“No longer.”
The angel seemed to be waiting for another blow, but Belphagor didn’t deliver it.
“Say it.”
“No longer.” The words choked out of him and his body began to shudder, wracked with silent sobs.
Belphagor watched him with pity as he put the flogger away. Blood skittered down the sides of the angel’s torso from the speckled impact marks of the leaded balls knotted into the pleti’s leather thongs.
“Forgive me,” Kae pleaded.
Belphagor shook his head. “That wasn’t even the knut.”
The angel choked back a strangled sob. “Then use the knut!”
“And then what? Nazkia runs you through with a sword so you can earn her forgiveness?”
What was visible of Kae’s face twisted with anguish. “I can never be forgiven for that.” His white knuckles still grasped the edges of the trunk as if he were adrift, yearning for another blow.
“Of course not. Any more than you can be forgiven for gleefully tearing the flesh from my back with the tools Aeval gave you. But they were tools Aeval gave you, and you, in turn, were her tool, used against your own loved ones to serve her aims. As insufferable as you are, I cannot believe you’re the sort of man who enjoys causing others pain—not even in the prurient way that I enjoy it. Which is precisely why you were the tool she wanted for the job—just as I was the one she chose to do the job that went most against my nature.”
Startled when Belphagor uncurled his tight fingers from the leather trunk, Kae opened his rheumy eye to stare up at him.
“But maybe you can be forgiven for being such a tool,” said Belphagor, enjoying the pun, though it was clearly lost on the angel. “You have the rest of your life to prove yourself to Nazkia, to serve your sovereign unfailingly—provided you stop being a coward and begging people to kill you. Because she really would find that unforgivable.”
Kae looked away from him. “I don’t deserve a life.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake. Do you expect me to beat you again? I have better things to do. Just stop feeling sorry for yourself.” Belphagor observed the angel a moment, admiring his work. He followed the path of the blood from one of Kae’s welts with his thumb along the sublimely smooth skin that would now bear permanent marks of him, then curled his fingers in the loose blond hair that had lost its tie and pulled Kae up onto his knees. “Though I must admit.” He shook his head with a wry smile. “I really would love to have fucked you.”
He left the field marshal kneeling, stunned and speechless, as he opened the tent flap, and then spoke over his shoulder. “She doesn’t hate you, you know.”
§
Belphagor was here. Vasily simply knew—felt his energy in some way—and it made him hungry for him. He was sick of being cooped up in this room not knowing what was going on outside, not being part of it. He knew Lively had gotten Anazakia out several days ago, but this much he’d only discovered when he heard the demons discussing it in the hallway as the night guard came on duty and the other’s shift ended.
Some hours after he’d gone to sleep, he startled awake to find Lively sitting on the edge of his bed. While he fumbled for his spectacles, she put her finger to her lips and reached over him to place a small censer of powder on his nightstand and light it with a match.
When the smoke began to curl slowly into the air, her posture relaxed. “They shouldn’t hear anything now. It’s masking powder.”
“How did you get in here?”
“Same way I get in everywhere. I seem to have been born with a natural ability to fade into the woodwork.”
Vasily doubted it was quite that simple, but she’d often come and gone at Pyr Amaravati without anyone being able to recall whether she’d been there or exactly when she’d left. He and Belphagor had joked she was like a cat that could quietly appear on your lap and be sitting there for some time before you noticed. A really irritating cat.
“The Exiles have breached Heaven,” she informed him, but before he could express his delight at this news, she added, “I sealed the breach.”
“You what?”
“Helga ordered me to. But I’ve been monitoring the terrestrial underground and they’re going to try again.”
“Well, that’s good news, then.” Vasily sensed this wasn’t all there was to it.
“I have to tell Helga everything I hear.” She looked down at her hand where a blackened ring encircled one of her fingers. He’d seen it before on Margarita’s hand. All of the Nephilim wore them, presented to them by the Grigori when they came of age.
“So why are you telling me? And what are you doing with that?”
“Margarita gave it to me.” Her voice was miserable. “She said she believed in me and wanted me to think of that every time I saw it. And I used it to close the breach.” Lively burst into tears and Vasily had no idea how to respond, but she stopped as soon as she’d started, angrily brushing them away. “Do you know who ‘Misha’ is?”
He narrowed his eyes. “What do you know about Misha?”
“He’s sent me a message. I can’t read it, because if I do, I’ll have to tell Helga what it says.” She pulled a handful of wingcasting cards from her pocket and handed them to him.
“What is this?”
“It’s the message. They’re Chora.” Lively lit his lamp and turned the wick low so he could just make out the images on the cards if he held them up.
“I don’t know how to read Chora.” He shuffled through them by the lamp.
“Don’t get them out of order,” she snapped. “And don’t show them to me. I threw the Chora spread facedown so I couldn’t see the cards, and I stacked them in reverse. The first card facing up is the end of the message.” She took a pad of paper from her pocket with a stub of pencil and handed it to him. “I’ve written down the positions. You just need to fill in what the cards are, starting with the first position, which is the card on the bottom of the stack. Then I’ll walk you through the general meaning of the cards, but after that you’re on your own. You’ll have to interpret it yourself.”
Vasily looked at her doubtfully. “And then what am I supposed to do? Assuming I can make heads or tails out of it.”
“Whatever you like. Just don’t tell me.”
Vasily sighed and looked at the card for the querent position as Lively turned her head away from him, and he almost burst out laughing. It was the Succubus. If the querent stood for the person sending the message, it couldn’t have been more accurate. The painting on the card, though depicting a female, even looked like Misha, with a pale turquoise-hued complexion.
When he’d finished filling in the rest of the positions, he handed the cards back to Lively and she shuffled them rapidly several times before looking at them. Vasily was impressed; she’d make a good wingcasting croupier.
She read out the suit and order of each card and then gave him the meaning so he could note it by the appropriate card. What resulted wa
s baffling and he couldn’t ask her what it meant. The Succubus, of course, she translated as “one who makes mischief”; he had no trouble there. But what she called the “heart of the matter” consisted of a collection of cards so jumbled he had no hope of understanding.
The Power of spindles had been at the center, surrounded by the Aeon of facets, the Ardor of tricks, the Ardor of spindles, and the Splendor of facets. As Vasily put her translations together, that part read successful or triumphant work; Heavenly light; Heavenly sweetness; hidden work/hidden magic; all is not what it seems.
The cards comprising the body of the message (the self, the home, what might be, and what would be, according to Lively) were the Dominion, Splendor, and Ophan, all in the suit of tricks, followed by the Ophan of knives. The best Vasily could cobble together from Lively’s disjoined interpretations was great numbers are hidden; what is hidden is revealed; guard what is hidden; guard to the death.
He shook his head. “I don’t know what to make of any of this.”
Lively put the cards back into her pocket. “I can’t help you.”
“Not even a hint?” he asked with an apologetic smile. “Nothing came to mind when you looked at the cards?”
Lively put her hands over her eyes as if trying not to see the images. “Yes, of course it did. I already know too much about this message, even out of order.” She looked up again. “The more I tell you, the more I will tell her,” she said, and then sighed. “I think you can safely assume the message is about the breach. All those tricks in the spread are about things hidden, so my guess is they’ll conceal it somehow.”
“Could hidden also mean ‘unseen’?”
Lively nodded. “I suppose it could, but please don’t tell me what that means to you. I’m serious, Vasily. I can’t know any more.” She started to get up, but Vasily stopped her with a hand on her arm and she jumped at his touch.
“Lively, I wanted to tell you something.” He took off his spectacles to make the telling easier. “When Nazkia told me little Early had died, I didn’t know yet he wasn’t mine and I was devastated. I hadn’t realized until that moment I was… Well, I mean to say…I realized…I wanted him. I wanted the baby. I just thought you ought to know that. I wanted it to be mine.”
Though he couldn’t focus on her, he could feel Lively’s shocked stare. “I treated you poorly for the mother of my unborn child. And I’m very sorry. Regardless of how it happened, you were carrying my child—at least, I believed you were—and I should have taken care of you.”
Lively looked down at her hands. “No. No, I deserved what I got. But thank you for telling me you wanted him.” She stood, obviously uncomfortable with his frankness. Before she left, she gave him one more reluctant hint about the cards. “Heavenly sweetness is flowers, and Heavenly light is daybreak.”
Those two words seemed to act as keys that unlocked the rest of the message for Vasily. It took him some hours as he sat cross-legged on the bed in the dim light of the oil lamp going over the paper, but at last he felt he understood it as well as he was going to. The successful or triumphant work was the opening of the breach and the Heavenly light and flowers meant it would be at daybreak in the garden. Because the Unseen were involved, he had to assume all the references to “hidden” things meant unseen, and the breach would be invisible as they came through.
The “great numbers” had to be the army of Grigori and Nephilim. He wasn’t sure how the hidden would be revealed, but he could certainly follow the simple directions of “guard what is hidden; guard to the death.” He had to make certain the breach stayed open, which meant he would have to stop Lively—with whatever force necessary.
Lively hadn’t seen the order of the cards, but with the knowledge of “Heavenly light and Heavenly sweetness” she must know the gist of the message herself. Whether simply knowing would force her to tell all to Helga, he couldn’t be sure. But she must also know she’d just delivered a message to Vasily instructing him to kill her if need be. How he was supposed to get out of this room to do so, he had no idea.
That problem, however, was taken out of his hands.
His window looked onto the courtyard garden where he assumed the breach would be opened. He wasn’t disappointed. As the garden began to glow with dawn’s light, another light far brighter burst into the center of the courtyard. For an instant, he saw the silvery threads of a spinning vortex and he swore he could see straight through it into the world of Man—and then it vanished. He worried it might have been Lively already and not the work of the Unseen, but in a moment, a wild burst of wind struck the glass and seemed to rush through it, though the window remained closed. It surged into the room and blew the lock right off his door, throwing it wide open.
The demon guard stationed outside the room jumped to attention and drew his knife, but the blade flew from his hand and spun across the floor to land at Vasily’s feet. He picked it up and approached the demon, who backed away from him and fled as Vasily flashed fire in his eyes.
He had no idea which way to go, but the Unseen wind began to blow through the corridor, knocking pictures about on the walls, first close to him and then farther away as if leading him. Vasily ran after it to the study at the end of the corridor, where a fire blazed on the hearth in the otherwise darkened room. Lively stood before the fireplace holding a burning candle, which she tossed into the fire; three other candles were already melting in the blaze.
She glanced up, unsurprised by his presence. “The Chora was too insistent. Once you gave me the word ‘unseen,’ I could hear it all, even without knowing the order.” Lively closed her eyes and recited. “From one who makes mischief: The breach will be opened. Look to the dawn in the courtyard of flowers. The Unseen will enter and the breach will be unseen. Ten thousand will enter unseen, but the unseen will be seen beyond the garden. You must not allow the breach to be closed.” She opened her eyes as she spoke the last of it. “Do whatever you must to stop her from closing it.”
“Ten thousand?” he gasped despite himself as he stepped closer.
“If I let them.” She looked down at the smoke-stained ring on her finger. “Helga got the message out of me.” She turned the back of her hand toward him as she met his eyes and the ring sparkled in the firelight. “This is the last piece of the spell. Because it was given to Rita by Dmitri, it ‘remembers’ his energy. If I throw it into the fire, the breach closes.”
“So don’t throw it,” Vasily growled. “How hard is that?”
“You have no idea,” she whispered. She began to draw it from her finger as she turned toward the fire, but he leapt at her and knocked her to the ground before the hearth. Lively made a sharp gasp of pain beneath him and he realized he’d just tackled a woman who had almost died in childbirth not a week ago. He scrambled off her, but she shook her head violently.
“No, Vasily. You can’t let me.” Tears were pouring down her cheeks. “Do what you must.” When he hesitated, looking down at the knife in his hand, she rolled toward the fireplace and reached out her fingers.
“Don’t!” he cried. She’d stuck her own hand into the fire, and the flames were licking about it as if trying to decide where to bite. He tried to pull her hand out, but she was suddenly resisting him with more strength than she ought to have. The skin on her hand was turning black as she reached farther, trying to get the ring deep into the flame, sobbing as he pulled at her arm.
“Do what you must!” she begged.
Sick at heart, Vasily lifted the knife to plunge it into her, but something struck him from behind and knocked it from his hand. He stumbled to his knees.
His assailant tossed a pitcher of water over them both, dousing the part of the flames where Lively had thrust her hand, then kicked Vasily aside and fell upon her. The red-haired Nephil enveloped Lively in her arms and swung her body with her as she rolled away from the hearth, and the three of them lay gasping in shock.
In a moment, Lively began to whimper. “She’ll bleed me, Rita. Why didn’t y
ou let him do it?”
“Hush,” said Margarita against her hair. “She won’t. I won’t let her.”
“Not quite the way I’d have handled it.” The disembodied voice had a cadence Vasily knew all too well. Misha was somewhere in the room with them. “But it seems to have done the trick. The breach will stay open.” A breeze blew past Vasily almost smugly. “I should have known you were the wrong person to send that message to. She must weigh all of fifty kilos.”
“Poshol na khui, you son of a succubus.” Vasily scrambled to his feet. “Some magic was holding her there.”
“Stooping to insults to my mother.” Misha clucked his tongue from somewhere behind him. “It’s a good thing I found Red, here. The two of you took the Chora far too literally. There’s no need to bring knives into it just because the suit is knives.”
“Why the hell didn’t you just tell me yourself, then, you bastard? You can obviously speak.”
“It took me a few minutes to get used to breathing the aether. And it was rather fun to watch you stumbling about.” A light breeze ruffled Lively’s hair as Margarita rocked her. “Poor girl,” said Misha in a more serious tone. “Vasya, don’t you have some kind of healing power?”
“Healing fire,” Vasily corrected ruefully. “I’m afraid fire’s no good on a burn, magical or not. If Nazkia were here, the aether might do it.”
A loud commotion broke out in the foyer below and the sound of fighting rose from the marble hall.
“Ah,” said Misha, and Vasily could almost hear him smiling. “The hidden are revealed.”
Dvadtsat Pervaya: A Flower in Heaven’s High Bower
from the memoirs of the Grand Duchess Anazakia Helisonovna of the House of Arkhangel’sk
There was no sign of Kae again this morning. He avoided seeing Azel, I knew, but I couldn’t face the day’s battle without my field marshal and I was growing impatient with his moods. According to Belphagor, thousands of troops waited to join us as soon as the breach reopened, but we needed a plan to make sure we used them effectively. Both Aeval and Helga had at least as many men as we had, so the outcome was far from certain.
