by Jane Kindred
as though folding emptiness, and produced a crystal facet between his
thumb and forefinger. He brought his fingers together like the closing petals of a flower and then let them blossom with a flourish. The
facet vanished. “What happened in Elysium, however, changes that
perspective considerably.” He met my eyes again without kindness.
“What happened in Elysium?” The question held no lift of uncertainty,
anticipating the answer.
The images sprang to the fore, images I was determined not to see,
and my feet and hands went cold. “They’re all dead.” I echoed Helga.
“All dead?” The demon looked startled. “The entire House of
Arkhangel’sk?”
I nodded, unwilling to say more.
“The Seraphim?”
I shook my head.
“Who, then?”
“Kae,” I blurted, but I hadn’t meant to. The demon seemed to pull
the words from deep inside me. “The grand duke. He killed them all.”
Instinct told me to leave off “my cousin,” though it tingled on the end of my tongue.
“The grand duke killed the principality?” Vasily appeared in the
doorway, his gruff voice astonished. “And the heirs?” He didn’t need
my answer.
A look passed between the two demons, greed tempered with
fear.
“She’s one of them,” Vasily said. “A murdered heir to the House
of Arkhangel’sk.”
“But not dead,” said Belphagor.
I wasn’t certain of the last.
§
48 JANE KINDRED
In the cusp between days, the light was kindest. If you were careful,
you might walk through it without waking it, letting it languish with
half-shuttered eyes while you stepped lightly in your tapochki. If you were very careful, you might step through it without waking anyone
at all.
Though it was some time before anyone slept, I found my moment.
Sleep seemed to be an optional activity in this perpetual daylight, as if the city’s residents meant to pack as much living as they could into the weeks of unending sun to offset the bleak months of winter for which
they must have traded it. But the demons slept at last, and I simply
slipped out.
I found myself standing before the great river—the Neva, the
demons called it, so similar to the Neba in Heaven. The underground
train traveled deep below the riverbed, and I had not seen the river up close until now.
Lights from the bridges and the buildings on the bank sparkled on
the water in defiance of the half-waking sun behind me, while before
me, a waxing moon cast its platinum ghost across the river’s surface.
The darkness of the Neva stood in for the night, a palette for lesser
lights than the sun.
There were bridges all along the water, and I walked until I
came to one and crossed to the center to look out on the unfinished
watercolor reflections. The situation could not be redeemed. I was a
job gone wrong. Belphagor and Vasily were going to kill me.
I had died once, and the pain had been indescribable. I would not
wait for what the demons had planned. They might do worse than kill
me before it was over. I leaned over the stone railing. It was not as far to the water as I’d hoped, but I believed I could let myself sink if I just kept the picture of Ola, burst open like red melon against the drawing room carpet, firmly in my mind.
I climbed atop the railing, spread my arms wide, and closed my
eyes. As I dropped forward, I heard a shout, eclipsed by my own
shriek of surprise. Instead of striking the water, I hovered above it
as if time had stopped, the river suddenly illuminated. I had only an
instant to puzzle over this circumstance before a tearing sensation at my shoulder blades overwhelmed everything else.
THE FALLEN QUEEN 49
I jerked back with a scream, my feet in the river and my body
suspended upright. At the same moment, twin spans of water seemed
to shoot up over me like fountains. I braced for the crash of water
over my head, yet it did not fall, held in place somehow in towering
columns of iridescent, moving liquid, as though a solid membrane kept
it inside. I stared up at them. The columns had the shape of wings.
A heavy object struck the water. “Don’t move!” Belphagor spoke
behind me, alarmingly close, his voice full of anger, and closed his
rough arms around me. When I resisted, a sharp wind struck at me,
deliberately aimed. “I said, don’t move!”
“Go to hell!”
A bark of surprised laughter escaped him and his grip loosened. I
kicked away from him, and when he caught me again, I spun around to
face him and then gaped in surprise. A pair of translucent, black wings spread at his back with the span of a magnificent eagle. They seemed
to be made of the air itself swirling in bands of color like a slick of oil, or the moonlight on the river that had not taken me.
“Our wings. I suppose I should have warned you.” Belphagor let
me go, and I realized the captive liquid wings hovering above me were
my own.
I stretched them and the air moved with them, lifting me out of
the water. When I looked to the bridge, I rose into the air, and with
a stepping motion, I found myself standing on the rail. Belphagor
followed, and when he tucked his wings against his back like a bird on its perch, they vanished.
The demon hopped down onto the walkway and reached for my
hand, his expression stern. “What were you doing out here?”
“Finishing what my cousin started.” Stepping down, I tried to affect
defiance, but failed when tears began to streak my face. I shrugged
my wings into place as he had done, and I could no longer feel them,
though the points where they sprang from my flesh still burned. “I
don’t understand.” I turned about. “Where did the wings come from?”
“Radiance,” he said. “We all have wings according to our elements,
not just the Seraphim. The radiance of the lower orders is only visible once we’ve fallen to the world of Man.” With a little twitch, he released his once more, stretching them over his head in the dominant display
50 JANE KINDRED
of a bird confined to a cage before retracting them with a sigh and a
look of resignation. “Not that we can use them here, of course. It would be imprudent.” Belphagor winked. “But the elements are another
matter.” He wiped a thumb against the tears on my cheek in an oddly
tender gesture. “Terrestrial magic, little Malchik. It’s why we fall.”
We walked back to the cinderblock apartment house in silence,
the sky a dull lead canopy brushing everything with its lack of color
so that we might both have been made of mist. I made no attempt to
flee, and Belphagor did not restrain me. An unfamiliar ache filled my
chest. No one had touched me in kindness since my fall. No one, until
tonight.
By the time we reached the flat, white was already filtering back
into the sky on the silver reins of the indomitable summer sun. From
the dim foyer and its border of closed doors, the kitchen window
overlooking the courtyard seemed to glow with its own luminescence.
Belphagor switched on the electric samovar to boil water for
tea and set out two chipped and mismatched porcelain
cups, then
unwrapped a foil of cakes and placed them before me.
“I know you’ve no cause to trust me.” He poured the water over
the concentrated tea. “Nor ought you. But you’d best stay close.” The
demon set out the sugar pot and pulled up a stool. “Your nurse paid
me for a service I intend to provide.”
I laughed, but he placed his hand over his heart as if making a
pledge.
“I am a demon and a grifter, and when the occasion calls for it, an
outright thief. But I give the service I’m paid for.”
I sprinkled a spoonful of sugar into my tea and stirred, the tinkling
of silver to china evoking delicate bells in the unnatural stillness. The illumination from the window was taking on the deeper, bluish hue of
a snow-cast sky in heaven.
“Helga didn’t know she was paying my ransom.”
Belphagor smirked over the rim of his teacup. “She’s not paid
dearly enough for a ransom. Her purse was a retainer in exchange for
my promise to hide you. What other business might transpire has no
impact upon that bargain.”
I stared at my cup, willing down the heat in my cheeks. “She’ll not
THE FALLEN QUEEN 51
sell my virtue.”
The demon sputtered on his tea. “For the love of Heaven! I’m not
going to rape you, Malchik.”
I raised my eyes. “Why?”
“You’re too skinny.” He drank the rest of his tea without dropping
his gaze. When I continued to stare, he shoved my half of the snack
toward me. “Don’t waste it. Food is precious here.”
A door creaked open down the hall, and the padding sound of
tapochki ushered Vasily into the doorway of the kitchen. He looked me up and down with his usual impudence and raised a bushy red
eyebrow.
“Why is she wet?”
“Malchik nashel yevo krila.”
I shrugged and ate my cake. Let them speak in their secret tongue. I
understood nothing anyone said anymore. What did language matter?
The wild-haired demon scratched at his scruffy sideburns with a
yawn and sat beside us. “Every time a bell rings.”
Belphagor winked. “That’s right, Zuzu.”
The two dissolved into mirth, sharing some private joke. I hadn’t
seen the demons smile before, not genuinely, and the warmth in
Belphagor’s dark eyes sparked just the smallest bit of jealousy. Their camaraderie also released a swift and aching memory of the friendship
I had shared with my cousin. We’d once been so close that we would
break into laughter over our own private jokes without either of us
having to speak a word.
I hadn’t thought of Kae since my shade returned to me, having
banished him from my head entirely except as the agent of my misery.
The memory was a fresh blade between my ribs.
52 JANE KINDRED
Shestoe: Scarlet Sails
The scent of celestine was nearly overpowering now. They were
drawn to it like sharks to blood in open water, its essence in the
medium they breathed riling them to a righteous frenzy—though
water was the opposite of their hallowed element.
Like the cold angels to which it belonged, celestine had none of
Heaven’s fire in it; the signature stone of the House of Arkhangel’sk
was forged of elemental ice. The antithesis of the pure celestial fire of which they themselves were composed, it was easy to track—a
blot of darkness in the perfection of light—a spot upon the sun.
Their perception of this offensive lack of brightness was a kind of
synesthesia; they had only to follow its pungent signature through the element they breathed. It smelled and tasted of “cold.”
Where they found the celestine, they would find the one who’d
escaped. And the Seraphim had found it in the world of Man.
§
The bad news came from the gypsy underground.
Having dropped hints among the usual suspects to hedge his bets,
he’d ensured that the interested parties would have to come to him to
make an offer on his information. With nothing to do but wait, he and
Vasily had taken their ward to Gostiny Dvor, a grand house of vendors
on Nevsky Prospekt. Though established long before Belphagor’s
time, it hadn’t been such a citadel of capitalism the last time he visited.
Each time he’d fallen, power had changed hands in the world of Man.
He cared little for politics, on Earth or in Heaven, but each faction had
THE FALLEN QUEEN 53
brought its own seeds of change: some good, some bad. And of course,
the old adage often held true that the more things changed, the more
the most useless things stayed the same.
The economy in St. Petersburg had turned toward the shining glow
of free enterprise, high-priced garments replacing the more practical
wear that was better suited to this climate. In Gostiny Dvor, tourists blended in easily. Except for the usual disapproving frowns, the three were left alone to purchase what they needed to fit the angel.
She seemed partial to the woolen cap, so Belphagor let her keep
that; it helped the illusion of boyishness. When it came time to pay
for her new clothes, he confounded the sales dyevushka while Vasily walked the angel out the front entrance in brand new dungarees and a
roomy white cotton tee, with a denim jacket slung over her shoulder.
Belphagor handed the dyevushka his old, worn pants and shirt on a hanger, and she smiled and placed them on a clothes rack. Half of his
spells were merely charm and misdirection.
After finding the girl a pair of boots, they headed back to the
metro station. In front of the entrance, a young gypsy couple with
gothic clothing and striped hair held out a concert flyer.
“We’re playing after dark,” said the girl.
Belphagor stopped and looked at the flyer, feigning interest in the
band. The name was Ognimyoti—The Flamethrowers. He looked up
sharply and the boy gave him a slight nod.
“Just in town for one night. For Alye Parusa, ” the youth said.
He thanked them and put the flyer in his pocket, and they went
their way.
“What is it?” asked Vasily.
“Seraphim.” It sent chills along his spine to voice the name.
“They’re here.” The Hounds of Heaven had come to sniff them out.
“Who sent them?” demanded Vasily, though Belphagor knew no
more than he did. “Who told them we were here?”
“Evidently someone who knew that we were.”
“Ilya and Gosha? I don’t believe it.”
“I’m not sticking around to find out.” Belphagor headed swiftly
through the passage beneath Nevsky Prospekt to the station on the
other side, dragging the angel with him, running to keep up with his
54 JANE KINDRED
wider step. It was too dangerous to take the metro back to the flat.
Rail terminals along this line could take them as far as Germany or
Bulgaria. Anywhere in the opposite direction, anywhere out of St.
Petersburg, would do.
He’d been foolish to think St. Petersburg was safe. He’d gotten
complacent, believing the angel wouldn’t be looked for with a dead
body standing in for her in the supernal crypt, and he hadn’t moved
quickly enough to secure a deal with the
Grigori. He was behaving as
if this were business as usual. But this was no ordinary fugitive, and the stakes were too high to leave anything to chance. They should have
gone deep underground the moment they arrived; instead, they’d left
themselves totally exposed.
Inside the station, a sea of bodies moved against one another on
the platform, two opposing waves of solid humanity. One moment, he
had the angel by the sleeve; the next, she had been swept into the press toward the wrong line. He couldn’t turn or pursue, only move forward
with the herd.
“Malchik!” He called out to her over the wave of heads, but he
might as well have shouted, “Hey, you.” Every boy in the vicinity
glanced his way.
Throwing him a panicked look, she tried to turn back.
“The tall monument!” Belphagor shouted. It was the first thing
he could think of. “The Aleksandrovskaya Kolonna! We’ll find you!”
The throng pressed her forward through the set of black doors
opening onto the car, and she cast him one last look before she was
swallowed into the crowd. The doors banged shut, concealing her
behind the brick wall of the subway tunnel as certainly as magic.
§
“Are you fucking kidding me?” growled Vasily. They stood pressed
between a wall of bodies in the aisle of their train. It was hardly
necessary to hold onto the metal bars overhead; there was nowhere
for them to fall if they lost their balance. “The Alexander Column?
You think she’s just going to show up there and we’ll go our merry
way? What makes you think she could find it even if she did have the
slightest intention of remaining in our ‘care’?”
“It’s tall,” said Belphagor, not wanting to discuss it.
THE FALLEN QUEEN 55
“It’s tall. That’s what you have to say to me? You drag me out of Raqia promising a sure thing. Now the Seraphim are coming for us.
We’re stuck in the middle of some provincial merrymaking festival full of drunken humans, and our meal ticket has just disappeared!”
“She’s not stupid. She can find it. We’ll get there. Eventually.”
“Indeed, she isn’t, Belphagor—not stupid enough to walk right
back into our arms.”
“She’s terrified and alone. I’m counting on that. We’re the only
people she knows in this world.”
Vasily glared at him, his hazel eyes burning with flame within
