The Fallen Queen

by Jane Kindred

  the pupil like a reflection of a distant blaze. “Khrystos. Are you being blinded by the precious little thing? Do you fancy yourself her knight protector?”

  Belphagor was taken aback by his vehemence. “Are you jealous?”

  He’d meant it sincerely, the words propelled from him by sheer surprise, but they came out snide and terse, a lifetime of self-preservation

  covering any hint of vulnerability. The fire in Vasily’s eyes went out in an instant, as if Belphagor had doused it with a bucket of ice water.

  They followed the crowds to Dvortsevaya Ploshchad, the square

  before the dead tsars’ Winter Palace. A live band surrounded by giant

  video screens played on a raised stage in the midst of what seemed to

  be the whole of St. Petersburg’s youth and more besides, drinking and

  dancing and hooting in the square. Red pennants hung everywhere

  in honor of the city’s young graduates for Alye Parusa, the day of the Scarlet Sails.

  The red granite Alexander Column, topped with a bronze statue

  of an angel, soared like the mast of a drowning ship above the masses, a reminder of how even in the world of Man, the myth of the righteous

  angel persisted.

  Belphagor rubbed his chin. “I didn’t realize it was such a big party.”

  Vasily jerked his head at the towering monument in the center of

  the throng. “Oh, but it’s tall, Belphagor. How can she miss it?”

  Hours passed while the music played and the crowd became ever

  more inebriated, until Belphagor began to fear the angel wouldn’t

  make it through the rowdy assemblage even if she did see the

  landmark. It took them some time to fight their way through to the

  56 JANE KINDRED

  Column themselves, and Belphagor had to assuage a group of youths

  they displaced by producing a bottle of vodka from within his jacket

  to share.

  Around midnight a frigate appeared on the river beyond the

  square, lit from stem to stern with floodlights illuminating billowing sails of scarlet. Behind the ship, the sun languished on the horizon, as if the sky had caught fire from the flaming sails, while a loud and rousing orchestral rendition of the “1812 Overture” ushered in the frigate.

  With each crescendo, pyrotechnics whistled into the air above the

  river, exploding over the island city like the bombs of the Blockade.

  The cheering and carousing that ensued almost overwhelmed

  the music, and the square, too, was becoming overwhelmed on a scale

  to rival Soviet spectacle. If the angel had made it to the site, they’d never find her in this mess. On the plus side, if she was in this crowd, the Seraphim would never dare attack. It was to their advantage to

  avoid exposure; maintaining a mythical aura around Heaven and its

  inhabitants was beneficial to Host and Fallen alike.

  Belphagor tried not to contemplate the possibility that the angel

  might have been caught before she’d gotten anywhere near the crowds

  at Dvortsevaya Ploshchad.

  With the passing of the ship and the fading of the fireworks, the

  square began to clear at last. Amid an impressive population of plastic cups, aluminum cans, and empty bottles, the great column with its

  pristine angel stood in stark relief. It could not be missed. But there was still no Malchik.

  “Brilliant strategy.” Vasily fumbled over the words, his tongue

  undoubtedly numbed with more than a fair bit of the vodka they’d

  shared. “What do you suggest we do now? Put an ad in Pravda?”

  Belphagor scowled at him. “All right. You win, Vasya. I’m an idiot.”

  He fingered a flame-colored lock at Vasily’s shoulder. “You always

  win.” It was a testament to the amount of vodka Vasily had consumed

  that he didn’t immediately pull away. Belphagor let his fingers slip to the spiked embellishments at the firespirit’s neck, and Vasily shivered, filling him with a rush of gratification.

  He was taller than Belphagor now, but he had once been a scrawny

  hooligan—no older than the Alye Parusa graduates—caught picking

  THE FALLEN QUEEN 57

  Belphagor’s pocket. Though they would age as Men if they remained

  here long, in the celestial state of grace, aging stopped upon reaching adulthood and differences in years were immaterial. Nevertheless, in

  stark numbers, Belphagor was many more years Vasily’s senior than

  he cared to recall.

  He had taken the young Vasily under his wing, so to speak, after

  discovering him living on the streets of Raqia. Like Belphagor, Vasily had been abandoned at an early age by the demon whore who’d borne

  him.

  Belphagor harbored no malice toward the unfortunate girl who’d

  given birth to him—felt nothing at all for her, in fact. There were

  only so many ways to earn one’s supper in Raqia, and a whore with a

  screaming brat was a hungry whore. It was a matter of practicality. He no longer remembered when or where his mother had left him, but he

  wished her well. Vasily, on the other hand, had nothing but bitterness and hatred for the one who’d abandoned him, and he’d come to

  Belphagor with a chip on his shoulder the size of the Firmament itself.

  “Taking him under his wing” was a generous expression. He had

  let the young demon channel his rage through a willing subjugation

  to Belphagor’s desires. It hadn’t been Belphagor’s design. He’d only

  meant to teach the skinny thief a lesson by hauling him off to his

  room at The Brimstone for a thrashing. Vasily’s defiance, however,

  and the fire in his eyes when Belphagor brought out the strop, had

  changed the tone of the beating. Vasily had dropped to his knees

  weeping and repentant and serviced Belphagor without prompting,

  a wholly unexpected compensation for the facets he’d stolen. Of

  course, Belphagor hadn’t exactly pushed him away. Vasily had been

  old enough to offer himself of his own free will and was obviously no

  novice to it.

  Belphagor let his lips trace where his finger had stroked, thrilled by the touch of steel against his tongue. He had placed these himself, one piercing of the flesh for every year of devotion. The number remained

  odd: four on the left and three on the right. They’d quarreled shortly before the eighth, and Vasily left him to make his own way. Belphagor

  took it as an encouraging sign that Vasily had never removed the

  jewelry.

  58 JANE KINDRED

  “Stop it,” said Vasily, but the sincerity of his protest was flimsy

  against the testament of his body to the contrary.

  Belphagor nipped at the ring in his ear when Vasily turned his

  head away. “Say ‘pozhaluista.’”

  “Ostanovite chto vy delaete! ” The order rang out across the square: Stop what you’re doing! It was an order Belphagor was conditioned to obey, and he recoiled as if he’d touched a live wire. The bright

  gold letters “OMON” identifying the Otryad Militsii Osobovo

  Naznacheniya—the Special Purpose Police Unit—was visible on the uniforms from across the square. The militsiya, however, were not looking at Belphagor and Vasily, but at a boy lurking in the shadow of the Triumphal Arch—a boy in a woolen cap.

  The OMON officers ran toward the angel when she turned to flee,

  and she was cornered by another pair approaching from the street.

  She cowered, throwing her arms over her head, and in that instant, a

  brilliant, blue-white light struck the square with the crack of thunder.

  The wings of water surg
ed up from the shoulders of the petrified angel, and with their unfurling, a blinding torrent was released from Heaven.

  “Fucking Christ,” said Vasily.

  The OMON regiment gave up their chase in the face of the deluge

  and dashed for cover, and the angel took wing, a flash of blue brilliance in the downpour. Belphagor pulled Vasily through the pounding rain

  in futile pursuit, chasing a fleeting afterimage. The rain was coming

  down too heavily, making it impossible to see what had become of her.

  They stumbled through the downpour, Vasily no more sober for

  the drenching, and took shelter at last in an alleyway beneath a flimsy awning.

  Eyes shut, Vasily leaned back against the wall to catch his breath,

  water beading off his locks and beard. “That was Malchik,” he said,

  half statement of fact, half incredulity. Vasily’s firespirit radiance was one of the most vivid Belphagor had ever seen, but the radiance of a

  pureblood seemed to be something else altogether. The Grigori were

  the only other Fallen purebloods he knew, but they kept to themselves

  and they were cagey about the extent of their terrestrial power.

  “Indeed it was.” Belphagor watched the water drip over Vasily’s

  taut throat above the thin, soaked T-shirt, regretting that the moment

  THE FALLEN QUEEN 59

  had slipped away from him. “Apparently, I’m not as stupid as I look.”

  “You don’t look that stupid.” A smile crinkled at the corners of Vasily’s closed eyelids. He rubbed his face with his hands, trying to

  sober up. “What now? Did you see which way she went?”

  Belphagor looked out at the grey alley. “No. But she saw us.” He

  didn’t add what the angel must have seen. “She’ll be staying close.

  We’ll check the streets around the palace when the rain lets up.”

  “Or she’ll head back to the flat.” Vasily opened his eyes. “If she

  didn’t hear us talking about the Seraphim, she doesn’t know.”

  Belphagor shook his head slowly. Had she not heard them? He

  couldn’t remember. She seemed so often to tune them out. They might

  even have been speaking Russian; it came easier the longer they were

  here.

  “I’ll check the flat.” Vasily pushed away from the wall, apparently

  intending to do it immediately.

  “No.” Belphagor caught him by the arm, but Vasily shook him off.

  “If she’s caught there, she’s dead,” said Vasily.

  “If you’re caught there, you’re dead.”

  “If she’s caught there, Bel, we’re all dead. We can’t let them

  interrogate her.”

  Belphagor couldn’t argue. They were marked men now, no matter

  what happened. Their only bargaining chip for staying alive was the

  angel—if they could stay ahead of the Seraphim long enough to make

  contact with the Grigori, or to make the ransom demand of the nurse.

  “Be back at the column in two hours—with or without her. If I

  find her, we’ll be there waiting.”

  “And if neither of us finds her,” said Vasily, stepping out into the

  rain, “we meet there to kiss our asses good-bye.”

  §

  Two hours turned out to be far too optimistic a plan.

  Vasily arrived at the metro station to discover it closed until

  morning, and after a brisk walk through the rain to the Liteiny Bridge, he realized he was stranded on the island. The movable wings of the

  bridge were raised to let ships pass through, lights sparkling on the

  grey, rain-pocked surface of the Neva. All the bridges he could see

  from here were similarly open to the wet sky. There was no crossing

  60 JANE KINDRED

  over to the Lesnoy District flat, and would not be for some time

  unless Vasily raised wings himself and flew. He laughed at the idea

  of the reception that wings of flame over the Neva would draw. His

  only other option was to swim, and deliberately submerging himself in

  water was something a firespirit would not do.

  The crowds gathering at the riverbank to view the bridge raising

  were nearly as raucous as those at the festival, and about an hour more inebriated, but the wait gave him the chance to sober up. The bridge

  opened before the metro did, so Vasily crossed the river and headed

  for the flat on foot. He wouldn’t make it back to the square by the

  agreed time, but it was beyond his control. Belphagor would just have

  to wait.

  The rain had stopped on this side of the Neva, revealing the pale

  sky by the time Vasily reached the flat. Pausing out of habit in the

  entryway to remove his boots, he felt the prickle of heat at the back of his neck. He snapped to attention too late to evade the blow from the

  white-hot hand of the Seraph.

  THE FALLEN QUEEN 61

  Sedmaya: Reflections

  from the memoirs of the Grand Duchess Anazakia

  Helisonovna of the House of Arkhangel’sk

  Fear and instinct propelled me to flight. If not for the violent

  downpour, I might have lost myself in the glorious feeling of riding the wind, but the rain beat down against me with tiny fists. I sought shelter on a nearby rooftop, huddled against the gabled slope of a decorative

  overhang with my wings folded around me, and stared out at the wet

  city below, watching my demon companions blunder through the

  torrent.

  I had not even considered doing other than the demon said. I’d

  asked after the Aleksandrovskaya Kolonna after fighting my way off the crowded car and followed where strangers pointed. They’d shaken

  their heads at me, thinking me feebleminded when I didn’t understand

  their words. And there the demons had been, conspiring together at

  the column, the dark one whispering to the red—perhaps debating

  whether it was worth it after all to demand ransom from Helga. But

  then I had found myself aloft in the eye of the storm, and the idea

  of doing as I was bidden suddenly seemed to me a fool’s bet at the

  wingcasting table. I had never done as I was bidden.

  That the storm came precisely the moment I released my wings both

  troubled and intrigued me. The demon Belphagor could manipulate

  the element of air, and Vasily seemed to have some power over the

  element of fire. Could I have brought down water from the Heavens?

  I had imagined the demons’ power was simple peasant magic, to be

  62 JANE KINDRED

  effected by a muttered spell and a packet of herbs, such as I had seen in Raqia. But there was nothing simple in calling down a rainstorm. If it was in the nature of a waterspirit, anyone in my bloodline ought to have the ability, but I had never heard of such a thing. Perhaps it was terrestrial magic, as the demon said. I was the first of my line to fall.

  I hugged my knees to my chest, my spine prickling with the odd

  sensation of having new limbs that were unaffected by this action.

  Regardless of the storm’s origin, I could see no means of stopping

  it. I sighed and rested my head on my knees. Magic or not, it hardly

  seemed a practical skill to be able to call water to myself at will.

  When the rain eventually slowed and the clouds thinned, the

  sprawling rooftop began to seem familiar. I lifted my head and

  surveyed it with a shiver of misgiving. The roof crowned a building that stretched the length of the square around a broad courtyard, its green-shingled peaks and valleys dotted with a small village of chimney
s. On its perimeter it seemed giants stood guard, as motionless as marble.

  I scrambled to my feet, staring at the statues. They were not marble,

  they were bronze, and they were the very same that decorated the

  roof of Elysium’s Winter Palace. I knew this rooftop like the streets of Heaven’s capital. I had traversed these peaks and valleys a thousand

  times.

  No longer caring about the rain, I tucked my wings away and

  perched at the edge, just another solemn statue looking down at the

  façade. It was impossible, yet here it stood: a near-perfect copy of the palace in which I’d spent my idle childhood. I straightened and turned about to get my bearings, comparing the architecture of Heaven to

  its replica. To my right lay the wing in which my room ought to sit. I picked my way across the slick tiles, fighting the tug of vertigo from the feeling I was only heading back after a late night in Raqia.

  Peering over the edge of the balustrade, I saw “my” window. The

  garden lay below, just where it ought to be, though it was a younger

  garden than ours. I had used our trees on many occasions to sneak

  in and rejoin my shade, but these were not close or tall enough for

  scaling the building.

  When Maia had locked me out, I had also used the roof to sneak

  in, climbing through a small attic window left open for the cats.

  THE FALLEN QUEEN 63

  There seemed little chance the same circumstance would exist in this

  alternate Winter Palace, but I could not resist investigating.

  I was surprised to find the same little window left ajar. I hesitated

  at the roof’s edge. If I dropped down into that so-familiar portal, what would I find inside? Whose palace was this?

  I couldn’t walk away.

  Glad of the freedom of boys’ clothing, I climbed over the rim

  of the ventilation shaft with a careful step, swung my legs into the

  opening, and squeezed through the tight space. My first thought was

  that the room had the sterile emptiness of an unoccupied place. My

  second was that I’d made a terrible mistake. Bright light blazed in

  my direction, accompanied by the chirping of an alarm, apparently

  activated by my presence.

  I scrambled for the window, but something leapt at me from the

  sill, and I stumbled back against an empty crate. The damp shape hit

  the ground, and I let out my breath. Only a cat.