by Jane Kindred
being detained indefinitely with Belphagor in a cell designed for four, all awaiting trial. The prisoners ranged from a mere boy accused of
petty theft to a police officer who’d beheaded an alcoholic mother and son and dissolved their bodies in lye in their bathtub to obtain their apartment. The officer had considered it a service to eliminate such
drains on the system.
Many of the prisoners’ crimes were written on their bodies in the
tattoo code of the unrepentant, elaborate designs of religious icons
and cathedrals, skulls and spider webs, crosses and stars—and closest
to Belphagor’s heart: the four suits of the playing cards used in the
world of Man. There was no hiding who you were here, or where you
belonged in the hierarchy.
Men and demons were on equal footing in this system. The usual
tricks never seemed to work in the zona, perhaps because the inmates were well-versed themselves in misdirection and sleight of hand.
Belphagor had managed to last nearly three months with only
minor incidents, but had recently earned the ire of a new arrival to
whom he’d not given proper deference. Nikolai Stepanovich was a
career thief who’d spent more of his life in prison than out of it. He’d taken an instant dislike to Belphagor, even before seeing the crown of hearts tattooed on his lower back. Belphagor had failed to offer him a
144 JANE KINDRED
smoke before lighting up.
In the shower the following day, Nikolai Stepanovich publicly
called him out on his status. Blocking the way to the outer room, he
demanded to know to whom Belphagor belonged.
Belphagor made the mistake of replying scornfully, “No one,” just
before he noticed the absence of the guards at the door. Behind the
thug stood a small crew of fully-dressed men.
Nikolai Stepanovich opened the towel wrapped around his waist.
“Suck my cock.” It was almost casual, like a demand for a cigarette. He wasn’t hard, but arousal wasn’t the point of this power play. Belphagor refused. Nikolai Stepanovich moved aside, and two of the men waiting
behind him stepped forward. Belphagor swung at the first, but the slick shower floor was a poor arena for a fistfight, particularly while the
others had the advantage of boots. His swing fell short. The other man grabbed his arm and twisted it behind him, and something popped in
Belphagor’s shoulder as he slipped and hit the floor.
He picked himself up, but his arm hung awkwardly, making it
difficult to fight back when the first two shoved him against the wall of the shower while the others took turns beating him. When he hit the
floor again, he stayed down. Curling into a fetal position to protect his internal organs from their boots, he covered his head with his arms,
but he took half a dozen kicks to the back and groin and a few to the
head before Nikolai Stepanovich called off his goons.
Belphagor pushed himself up with his good arm and vomited
into the shower, watching it circle with his blood down the drain. The veteran thief stood over him, half aroused by the beating, and uttered the command once more. Belphagor spat blood at his feet.
Had he performed the requested service voluntarily, Nikolai
Stepanovich might have left it at that, but Belphagor had long since
ceased to be the frightened boy who would lie still for a little abuse to avoid a great deal of it—though in retrospect, he supposed it would have been a wiser course of action to have simply offered the bastard
the cigarette in the first place.
Nikolai Stepanovich showered casually beside him when he’d
finished with him. “I let you off easy this time. Perhaps now you’ll
remember your place.” He toweled off, and spat on Belphagor for
THE FALLEN QUEEN 145
good measure. “You have no business wearing that vor ink. Next time I’ll carve it out so you don’t forget.”
As if miraculously, the guards reappeared as Belphagor’s
tormentors took their leave, berating him for exceeding his time limit while he pulled himself along the wall to his clothes after discovering he couldn’t stand without great pain. Unwilling to wait for him to
crawl down the corridor once he’d managed to dress, they dragged
him to his cell and deposited him on the floor. Nikolai Stepanovich
didn’t bother to look up from his poker hand, blowing smoke in
Belphagor’s direction. Beside him on the bed lay the pack he’d taken
from Belphagor’s pocket.
No one paid Belphagor any attention. He crawled to the only
corner of the cell not currently occupied—the floor next to the
toilet—and curled into as tight a ball as he could manage, trying not to vomit again while he popped the dislocated shoulder back into place.
Mercifully, the guards left him alone during dinner, and he managed
to catch a few minutes of rest on one of the rarely empty bunks. He
couldn’t have eaten if he’d wanted to.
By morning, he could only open one eye partway, and discovered
after he managed to pull himself up to the toilet that he was pissing
blood. When he couldn’t walk to breakfast, the guards admitted him
to the infirmary, where he received a bed all to himself for an entire night and an armful of morphine. How Kresty had improved since his
last stay here in 1982.
§
The charges were dropped at last, as the Seraphim had promised.
Belphagor took his leave of Nikolai Stepanovich with an obscene
gesture and an insult to the bastard’s mother.
Dressed in what he’d worn to the prison in August, Belphagor
found the sleet and snow of late November an unwelcome surprise.
He’d promised to retrieve the ring from where he’d buried it: in
a lockbox at the bottom of the Neva, chained to a support of the
Liteiny Bridge. He’d gambled that even if the Seraphim determined
its location, they would be unable to endure the baptism required to
retrieve it. He hadn’t even planned on the frozen surface that would
have made it impossible for them.
146 JANE KINDRED
As it was, still stiff and bruised from his beating, diving under the
ice was the last thing he wanted to do, but there was no way around it.
He crossed the Neva and walked along the Robespierre Embankment
until he was out of view of the OMON loitering near the bridge. A pair of stone sphinxes with half-skeletal faces graced the bank opposite
Kresty; a fitting spot to dive in.
After finding a break in the Neva’s ice-slushed surface, Belphagor
peeled off his clothes and boots and steeled himself for the bracing
cold. Once under water, he released his wings, wrapped himself in
them as a partial barrier against the cold, and swam as quickly as he
could. With the additional insulation, he might have twenty minutes
before hypothermia set in.
When he reached the Liteiny, he came up for air beneath the span
and clung to the stone support. His limbs had begun to feel thick, as if they were freezing from the inside out and had become blocks of ice
beneath his skin. He couldn’t stay in this water much longer. His plan began to seem less clever.
He forced himself to dive below once more, propelling himself
toward the bottom. He could barely see the chain wrapped around
the support, but he found it with his fingers and followed it until
he found the steel box. Belphagor began to work his magic on the
lock, but w
ith his fingers so numb he could barely move them, it took
longer than usual. His lungs burned, and the urge to breathe became
overwhelming.
At last, he tripped the lock with a paperclip purloined from the
release desk on his way out of Kresty, but when he reached inside
the box, he fumbled in the cold and the gold chain that held the ring
slipped from his grasp. Belphagor surged toward the surface and
came up swearing. He gulped in air and hung onto the bridge support
surrounded by chunks of ice.
When he’d caught his breath, he swore again in a long bellow of
frustration before making another dive. If he found the ring, it would be a miracle. If he didn’t, it would mean a return to Kresty if the
Seraphim caught him—where he would be at the mercy of Nikolai
Stepanovich.
At the bottom, Belphagor slid his hand to the support and
THE FALLEN QUEEN 147
searched outward on the stones of the riverbed. His only hope was
that the gold chain had caught on the rocks and not been carried off
by the current.
With one hand and both feet, he scoured the rocks while he held
onto the steel chain to keep from being pulled into the current himself, but he found nothing. He’d lost this gamble for certain.
In despair, he considered letting go and allowing the Neva to take
him—far preferable to the fate that awaited him. And then a surge of
rage overwhelmed him that someone like Nikolai Stepanovich could
make him so pathetic he’d happily take his own life.
A burst of pure hatred spurred Belphagor to renewed
determination. In the clarity of that hatred, his foot struck a length of chain wrapped around a rock he’d scoured a dozen times. He clutched
the chain with his freezing toes, and then grasped it in his hand. Letting go of the links of steel, he bolted upward.
Belphagor broke the surface gasping. Too weak to swim to the
embankment, he found himself being pulled downriver. He put the
chain around his neck and scrambled for the icy stone bank, but his
limbs were not cooperating. Only a stretch of ice spanning several
feet kept him from being swept away. Belphagor felt his body slowing.
He’d been in the water just a few minutes too long. He didn’t even
have enough strength to spread his wings and lift himself out of the
water, which he was more than willing to do, despite the commotion
it might cause.
He was clinging to the ice barge as if it were a raft and beginning
to slip into the freezing depths when two pairs of boots appeared
before him. A strange hallucination, he thought, before he was pulled
from the water and dragged onto the ice. The OMON officers he’d
avoided were now his rescuers. Two of them hauled him over the
snowy bank while another shouted orders. Someone wrapped a coat
around Belphagor’s shivering body. The officer must be new.
Nearby, a man spoke in broken Russian. “My friend has a little too
much vodka. Other friend bets he cannot walk across Neva in—how is
to say? With no clothes.” Bless that boy. The OMON turned Belphagor over to Knud, who carried Belphagor’s clothes and a warm blanket.
The officer took back the coat. He eyed the tattoos while the
148 JANE KINDRED
gypsy wrapped Belphagor in the blanket and helped him to his feet,
bare against the snow. “You sure it wasn’t breaking out of Kresty that put him in the river?”
“No, no, no. He was release earlier this day. Look, I have in his
clothes papers of release.”
The officer looked the documents over and then demanded a
“review fee” before handing them back to Knud. “Tell your friend not
to start drinking before three.”
The gypsy helped Belphagor over the snow. The clothes were
too damp and chilled to be of any use, so Knud wrapped the blanket
tightly around Belphagor and led him onto the bridge.
“Why didn’t you wait for me?” the young man chided.
“Because. Idiot.” His frozen mouth couldn’t quite form a sentence.
Knud seemed to understand. “If you can make it to Finlyandsky
Vokzal, we can warm you up inside. Just a few hundred meters.”
“F-few to you, maybe.” Belphagor slowed. “I had b-boots.”
“Someone stole them.” Knud led him onward. “I was heading for
the bridge to meet you, and I saw your clothes at the Metaphysical Sphinxes. No boots.”
“Meta-what?” Belphagor’s teeth were chattering so hard, speech
was difficult.
“The sphinxes on Naberezhnaya Robespyera. By Shemyakin.” He
seemed astounded at Belphagor’s blank stare. “You’ve never heard of
Shemyakin? Bozhe moi. It’s your country, Belphagor. I seem to know it better than you do.”
“Not my country.”
“Sure it is. Why else do you come here?”
“Where the portal comes out.”
“There are other portals.”
“Didn’t fall through them.” Belphagor wanted to lie down. He
slowed on the sidewalk and attempted to do so.
“No you don’t.” Knud pulled him up. “Look, we’re almost there.”
They had already crossed the bridge and were a block away from the
station. Knud’s characteristically rambling talk was nearly as effective a distraction as Belphagor’s own airspirit influence.
The gypsy led Belphagor through Finland Station into the Lenin
THE FALLEN QUEEN 149
Square metro station and sat him down, holding his arms around him
to warm his core. It garnered a lot of odd looks, but Belphagor was
used to that.
“We’ll warm you up and then get you dressed properly,” Knud
promised. “I think I saw a boot kiosk in the vendor stalls under the
street when I crossed earlier. And they have winter coats.” He took off his own boots while he talked and peeled off his socks to put them on
Belphagor’s numb feet.
“You speak fluent Russian,” said Belphagor, remembering the
foreigner act Knud had pulled with the OMON and on the train when
he’d first met the young man.
“When it’s useful.” Knud grinned and put his boots back on his
bare feet. “And when it’s not? What is word? I play game.” He pulled
Belphagor up and held out the warmed jeans for him to step into.
Belphagor steadied himself against Knud’s shoulder while the
gypsy tugged them on. “This looks a little strange.”
“It’s Russia.” Knud slid the pants up and buttoned them from
inside the blanket with no one the wiser. “Strange is expected.” He
tucked the blanket tightly around Belphagor once more. “What size
boots?” Belphagor told him, and Knud headed off to the kiosks
beneath the street.
A short while later, he returned with a coat, a sweater, boots,
gloves, and a fur ushanka with earflaps to keep Belphagor’s head warm. And from somewhere in his hands he produced a hot coffee in
a paper cup.
“Where did you get the money for all this?” Belphagor protested
when Knud handed him the coffee and began to wrap him in layers. “I
can’t pay you back right now.”
“Don’t ask a gypsy where he gets his money.” When Knud seemed
satisfied Belphagor was warming up and getting hot liquid into his
sys
tem, he switched into the role of negotiator, speaking in the angelic tongue. “So you have the ring.” He nodded at the chain. “I’ve been
instructed to take you to the rendezvous point—”
“No.”
Knud stared at Belphagor as if the cold had damaged his brain.
“I will meet the damned Seraphim in front of the Winter Palace
150 JANE KINDRED
in Elysium when I’m good and ready. I have no intention of delivering
myself into their hands just to have them take the ring from me. The
deal is they leave me the fuck alone until I bring the ring to the queen.
Nothing else.”
Knud continued to stare at him, trying to suss out whether he was
serious. “If you don’t show, the principality releases them to do what they want with us.”
“I’m well aware of that, Knud. I haven’t come this far to walk
away.”
Knud nodded, contemplating him. “All right. I’ll talk to the
Seraphim if I can.”
“If I even suspect they’re waiting for me at Baikal, I stay on the
train and I take this ring with me. Make certain they understand. I will not go above with an escort.”
The young man nodded. “I’ll relay your message that they’re
to return above and wait. Though to tell you the truth, they seemed
pretty eager to get back.” He grinned. “I don’t think they care for this weather.”
Belphagor managed to laugh while Knud helped him to his feet.
He’d calculated that the Seraphim would be unwilling to prolong the
negotiation as it got colder and wetter. He hadn’t expected them to
hold out this long.
“One last thing,” said Belphagor. “I meant to send word through
the underground to Vasily and my nephew when I had any news.
Since you already know their whereabouts, I thought you might take
a message yourself.”
“I’d be glad to, as long as I don’t feel any heat. I wouldn’t want to
lead the Seraphim straight to them after all this.”
“Absolutely. In fact, give it a week or two. If all goes as planned,
things should be quiet by then.”
Knud agreed and wished him luck before slipping a wad of rubles
into Belphagor’s coat pocket for which he would take no argument.
Belphagor thanked him with a silent press of his arm. The money
would save him having to influence the ticket agent—energy he wasn’t
