Blessed Monsters

by Emily A Duncan

  Oh, no. Serefin vaulted over the dead soldier, slamming into Malachiasz before he could do something there would be no explaining to the Kalyazi. He ground one knee down on Malachiasz’s chest, the dagger at his throat, aware that it would do nothing to stop him, but it might give him pause.

  “Malachiasz, I need you to snap out of this. I’m trying my hardest to protect you and I don’t know how much farther I can take it.”

  A low growl spread from Malachiasz’s chest. Serefin slammed his elbow down across the other boy’s face.

  “I’m not your precious cleric. I’m not going to bring you out of this gently.” He struck his elbow across Malachiasz’s face again, the hiss of pain cutting through Malachiasz’s teeth the only spare indication that he felt anything. “You sold your fucking soul for a scrap of power. You killed a god and made this bad situation worse. If the Kalyazi want to hang you, I can’t stop them, Malachiasz.”

  Malachiasz’s expression shifted. His eyes cleared to a strange grayish murk.

  “Serefin.”

  “Czijow, brother of mine.”

  Malachiasz squirmed, dislodging his arm and pressing the strange disc of metal against Serefin’s chest.

  “Let me go,” he whispered. “You have to trust me.”

  Serefin’s hand closed around the disc. Milomir hadn’t asked for it back and it was hot in his hands. He could figure out how to make it work. He let out a breath in resignation.

  “Trust me,” Malachiasz repeated.

  “You bastard,” Serefin muttered. He hit him again, less hard this time, for good measure.

  Malachiasz’s eyes flickered to onyx and he bared his teeth at Serefin, spitting out a mouthful of blood and throwing him off. He kicked Serefin hard in the ribs and was gone, using those powerful black wings to escape into the distance.

  Serefin lay on the ground as things settled around him. He pressed his hand against his eye and swore softly. Someone nudged him with the toe of their boot, and he opened his eye to see Kacper. He held out his hand for Serefin, sympathetic. Serefin let Kacper haul him to his feet.

  “I don’t want to end up on a battlefield with him on the other side,” Serefin said.

  Kacper nodded.

  “Might be inevitable,” Serefin continued, eyeing the spot where Malachiasz had disappeared.

  He had chosen to trust his brother. He hoped he wouldn’t regret it. Serefin touched the metal disc as it cooled underneath his fingers, Malachiasz drawing farther away. Malachiasz wouldn’t have given him the means to find him if he didn’t want to be found.

  Serefin braced himself as he turned around. One soldier was dead and any goodwill from the Kalyazi gone. Milomir’s face was ashen.

  “We ride harder now,” he said simply.

  “I suppose that answers those questions I had before,” Serefin said weakly. He got no response but glares.

  “What about Timur?” a soldier asked.

  “We’ll stay here until morning,” Milomir said. “We bury him. We remember why we’re fighting.” He leveled a glare at Serefin. “And who.”

  Serefin had to fight the urge to reach for Kacper’s hand.

  They were sequestered off and guarded as the Kalyazi made camp and buried the dead soldier. Kacper sat heavily on the ground next to Serefin, who had taken off the eye patch and was massaging his eye socket.

  Ruslan was shoved over to them. Serefin didn’t have the energy to confront him. His side hurt from where Malachiasz had kicked him, absolutely harder than necessary, but he hadn’t needed to give that third elbow to the face. He tilted back onto the ground and pressed his hand over his eye. Kacper’s fingers twined between his, thumb gently rubbing circles on his wrist.

  The journey to Komyazalov was going to be miserable.

  26

  NADEZHDA LAPTEVA

  Svoyatova Yulka Lokteva was led by a Vulture into their foul Salt Mines, hoping to sway just one. No one saw her again.

  —Vasiliev’s Book of Saints

  It wasn’t complete understanding. There was fear, confusion, bewilderment. Ultimately, though, there was quiet. Nadya didn’t cry as she told her story, she didn’t know if she could. She was far past feeling.

  Anna had taken off her headscarf as the story went on. Her straight black hair had been chopped off just above her collarbones. She ran a hand through it before taking Nadya’s hand between hers, fingers tracking over the stained skin, the claws of her fingernails.

  “Oh, Naden’ka,” she said, voice soft.

  “It’s me,” Nadya said blankly. “I don’t know what I am, but…” She drew her hand back, flexing her fingers. An eye opened on the center of her palm. Anna gasped. Nadya swiftly pulled her glove back on.

  “Does the tsarevna know?”

  “Yes. But no one else can. The Matriarch cannot know. If she never learns I was here, it would be for the best.”

  Anna nodded. “Those in the Church talk in whispers. There are omens everywhere. Signs of the end. Icons crying—”

  “Mm,” Nadya assented. She dragged her chair to the doorway, standing on it to take the icon over the door off the wall. She carried it to Anna, her chair scraping behind her. It was Svoyatovi Viktoria Kholodova, and her icon was weeping tears of blood.

  Anna reached for the icon, horror flickering over her face.

  “The fallen gods have risen, and we cannot look to our gods for help,” Nadya said. “We’re on our own.”

  “Not only the fallen gods,” Anna said.

  Nadya straightened. She took the icon from Anna, setting it on the side table. Dread was a feeling that had settled deep in her bones, almost ordinary, but it spiked at Anna’s words.

  Nadya pressed out tentatively, slowly, searching for what she had been ignoring since the mountains. The thing that had bled all the color out of the world and was eating at the trees like black decay. She couldn’t live from day to day with that feeling, even though it existed at the edges of her awareness.

  A hunger that wanted to devour the world. To feed and feed and feed until there was nothing left. That would bleed out the sun and plunge the world in darkness.

  “There have been whispers,” Anna continued, “of his followers rising out of the shadows. There are … people with magic, power, but not like yours, and not like blood magic. It’s something else, different, and those people have two fates before them: be captured by the Church or be Chyrnog’s followers.”

  Nadya’s eyes opened. Anna’s expression was gray.

  “People who … wake with magic. They’re called the Quiet Sinners. I—the Church—I…” Anna closed her eyes. “They are executed. Quickly. Better for them to die in sin than be taken by Chyrnog’s followers.”

  “To what end? Why do Chyrnog’s followers want them?”

  Anna shook her head. “I don’t know. But the way their power manifests is … strange.”

  Nadya thought of flowers sprouting from Rashid’s arms. He already had magic but what if the flowers were something else? He’d said that was new.

  The bleakness in Anna’s voice was telling, though. It sounded like her friend had found the same disillusionment that had struck Nadya.

  “The church leaders are frightened,” Anna said. “This isn’t a threat they know how to face because it’s the thing we were supposed to be staying with our faith. If we remained faithful, magic would never become tainted. Haven’t we done right by the gods? Haven’t we fought this war for them? What have we done wrong that they allow one who would destroy the world to rise? There were prophecies, once, about how the end of the world would come, but they were never like this. The end of the world in the Divine Codex is nothing like this. What did we do?”

  Nadya stared at her friend, the blood draining from her face. It was her. She had set this into motion.

  And she couldn’t let anyone know.

  * * *

  It was presumptuous, and she’d received an odd look when she’d flagged down a servant and asked, but the next morning Katya flounce
d into Nadya’s rooms dressed in leggings and a fine crimson kosovortka. Her black hair was in unbrushed wild curls and one of her dogs was with her, Nadya had no idea which, though it was much calmer this time, curling up at the foot of Katya’s chair as she sat down.

  “You’ve avoided talking to me since the mountains, so I assume this is important,” Katya said.

  There was another knock on Nadya’s door. She frowned.

  “Oh, I had Nina fetch us some tea, that’s all.”

  Nadya let in the girl, who set the tray of cups and samovar on the table and departed.

  “Seems a little light for you,” she noted.

  “The sun just came up,” Katya replied. “Give me a few hours before I get into my cups.”

  “You are much like Serefin in that way.”

  Katya lifted an eyebrow. She sighed and tilted her head.

  “He was at the front far longer than me, and at a much younger age. I was mostly kept from harm, but I did a few months out there, and what you see … never really goes away. The drinking dulls the memories, some.”

  “Do you like him?”

  Katya took a moment to consider. “I’m fond of Serefin.”

  “But you like Ostyia.” Nadya wasn’t one to tease Katya, so it came out of nowhere, and Katya blushed.

  “This is absolutely not why you called me here at the crack of dawn,” she said, her voice strained.

  “I need someone to talk to who will know about this,” Nadya said with a sigh, tugging off her glove. She showed Katya the eye at the center.

  Katya’s face paled. “The Matriarch—”

  “Not the Matriarch.”

  The tsarevna took a long sip of her tea, eyeing Nadya’s hand. It was quiet in the room for a long time. Nadya could hear the palace slowly coming to life outside her window. Katya stared up at the ceiling, clearly puzzling through things.

  “Gods. He was right, wasn’t he?”

  “I have found Malachiasz did not make a habit of being wrong.”

  Katya tapped the arm of her chair.

  “Katya. I know we don’t see eye to eye. You find me suspicious. Though, frankly, me traveling with the Black Vulture was about as weird as you traveling with the King of Tranavia. I’m not the cleric that was promised, and for that, I’m sorry, but this is bigger than the war and you know it.”

  “It’s not that I find you suspicious, darling, it’s that you’re so damn stubborn and unwilling to work with me,” Katya said, with the light drawl of someone avoiding Nadya’s point. “And I don’t think you’re going to turn Kalyazin over to the Tranavians you love so much; you certainly proved your loyalties on that mountain.”

  Nadya flinched. “Anna told me about the Quiet Sinners.”

  Katya groaned.

  “Katya…”

  “I’m not going to defend the Church.”

  “I know. Just, please, tell Viktor to keep an eye on Rashid.”

  Nadya didn’t miss the way the tsarevna’s eyes widened. “Oh.” She was quiet before continuing. “Viktor isn’t nearly as devout as he wanted you to believe. He’ll be trustworthy.”

  Trustworthy. That was what this was now. They had to figure out who they could trust. Because it wasn’t the Church she had once loved so much. If they knew what she was, they would kill her.

  “How did you learn about the fallen gods? And the old gods? I know you know, Katya. What the decay means, what the forests moving past their borders means. It’s all going to end. Everything is going to end. Who can we talk to?”

  “Pelageya.”

  “Someone else,” Nadya groaned. “We don’t have the time to hunt her down.” Nadya picked the icon up off the table and handed it to Katya, who took it with a frown. “How long until the other icons in this palace are the same? The longer I’m here, the more likely it is to happen, and then no number of lies will hide what I am.”

  “You’re a monster,” Katya whispered. She wasn’t leveling an accusation; it was a statement of the truth.

  “It depends how you look at it, I suppose.”

  “But you didn’t set the old god free.”

  “No, but someone did. I don’t know if it was Serefin, or Malachiasz, or someone else entirely.”

  “Even the old gods cannot work without a vessel.”

  “How do we know he doesn’t have one? The cultists, the sects dedicated to these gods, how do we know that he hasn’t claimed one of them? Or someone who has had power awakened in them? Katya. I need to know what I am. I cannot stop him if I don’t get answers.”

  “I don’t know if you can stop him at all.”

  27

  MALACHIASZ CZECHOWICZ

  Don’t wake him up. Don’t wake him up. Don’t wake him up. Don’t wake him up. Don’t wake him up. Don’t wake him up. Don’t wake him up. Don’t wake him up.

  —Passage from the personal journals of Innokentiy Tamarkin

  He hadn’t meant to lose control. Well, he had. He had and he hadn’t. A well-timed admonishment by Chyrnog gave him the means to escape. He had quickly figured out the rudimentary Kalyazi tracking spell—Serefin could find him if he needed to, and he had a plan.

  No. No, he didn’t. He didn’t have a plan. He needed help. Help that his brother couldn’t give him, not yet. No one could. He had gotten himself into this mess and he had to get himself out of it.

  Except he still didn’t know if he wanted to get out of it, only that he found the idea of enacting the will of a god so detestable that he would rather fight back on spite alone.

  When Nadya had leveled the—entirely true at the time—accusation that he would always choose his Vultures and Tranavia over her, it had shifted something in him. He could choose his order and his country, but it meant nothing if he never chose her, too. And she was dead.

  His face hurt. Serefin was uncomfortably strong in a way that Malachiasz sensed meant he was always holding back, but he had tried. No one ever tried to get Malachiasz back when his control snapped. He’d had a lifetime of other Vultures telling him to embrace the part of him that he had no control over. But other Vultures didn’t have the problems he did. Other Vultures were perfectly capable of maintaining control. He had always been different. He was too volatile.

  Thus, everyone ignored him as he fell apart. Until Nadya, descending into hell to throttle him back to himself. Until Serefin, weight on his chest and elbow against his face trying his level best to get him to snap back to himself.

  “You can run from them; do you think it so easy to run from me?”

  He ignored Chyrnog. The god was weak. As long as Malachiasz stayed away from any other awakened ones, he would remain so.

  “You think it is that easy? You think you’ll be able to stay away? You underestimate how many have woken. How few I need to consume before I can shatter you.”

  But until then, you need me. What happens when you’ve consumed all you need? What happens after you feed off their power?

  He didn’t know why he was asking when he knew. The end of the sun. The end of everything.

  Malachiasz didn’t want to end everything. End a few dynasties, destroy a few empires, sure, but burn the world to ash? He refused to be a king of charred bones and ashes. Chyrnog didn’t respond, which was good. He didn’t really want to talk to him.

  It felt like giving up, turning to the witch.

  * * *

  “You should be able to fix this yourself. Do you expect me to clean up all your messes for you?”

  It was going about as well as Malachiasz had expected.

  “What’s happening to me?” he asked, deciding that he would take the high road and not bite back even though he desperately wanted to. He missed Nadya.

  It had happened very suddenly, finding Pelageya’s strange hut. Then he’d struggled to get past the gate, and he had a feeling the witch was toying with him simply because she could. He didn’t have time for her nonsense.

  Malachiasz had stepped into her sitting room, noting it was more erratic than the
last time. Bones piled in corners, the furs covering the floors matted with blood. Something other than herbs hung from the ceiling, something that Malachiasz didn’t really want to investigate.

  “Each moment of surrender binds you closer to him. Little by little he becomes more you and you become him.”

  “I don’t want that,” Malachiasz said quickly.

  “Don’t you? Haven’t you always been driven by the pursuit of power? Now you can have it. You and he are already so alike; it’s why he chose you.”

  “I destroyed one of them. The … whatever you called them.”

  “Bovilgy?” Pelageya arched an eyebrow. “You’re well on your way to destroying the world, then.”

  “That’s not what I want,” he groaned.

  “No?”

  He threw himself down in a chair and dropped his head into his hands. “No.”

  She made a vaguely disbelieving sound. “And what about your vast plans for destroying gods? It all leads into itself, you realize. It’s a snake devouring its own tail, eternally linked. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot have the destruction of one without the destruction of all. I know, I know, you’ve been burned by this fire you toy with and now you panic because you don’t know how to keep it from spreading.”

  Malachiasz closed his eyes. He’d known coming here would mean being berated by Pelageya, but he hated it all the same.

  “I can’t fix this, can I?” His eyes flickered open to stare at her.

  “Can you?”

  He sighed.

  “How much further must I lead you by the hand, Chelvyanik Sterevyani? How much longer until you realize the pieces you need are before you, if only you looked for them?”

  Malachiasz toyed with the bones in his hair, unwrapping one and rolling it between his fingers. Her head tilted, a slow smile spreading across her mouth.

  “What did you do with it?”

  “With what?” she asked innocently.

  He didn’t want to say it and he hated that she was making him. Hated that she was forcing him to acknowledge his mistake, that he was at her mercy.