The Armies of Heaven (23 page)

“Half?” I was torn between amazement that they’d done so well and sorrow for the half who had perished.

“Your army still stands at nearly five thousand men.”

So Lively had told him of our losses. I wondered if she’d told him her part in it.

“And if I might suggest a very un-Virtuous tactic.” He spoke slowly, as if formulating a plan as he sat before me. “It may prove expedient to allow the appearance of a demonic alliance to stand for the time being.”

Nebo looked thoughtful. “Use Helga’s forces to diminish the queen’s.”

I frowned. “Double-cross them?”

“It does seem to be Helga’s favored mode of operation,” said Kae.

“And how can we hope to win them to our side after turning on them?”

“We appeal to them then and there, as if the turning tide necessitates it. We spread the word of Helga’s actions in this drama and say we can support her no further.”

The cravenness of it troubled me, and in being troubled, I recognized in myself the same moral hesitancy I lamented in our Virtues. Still, I couldn’t see myself taking the throne out of deceit and trickery of my own citizens. It might be Helga’s method of operation, and it was certainly Aeval’s, but I could not have it be mine.

I shook my head. “I cannot use men so. If we remain allied with Helga’s army, we must tell them it’s only temporary and for the sake of expediency, that they’ll be our foes once Aeval is defeated. We’ll tell them Helga lied about the alliance and offer our new terms.”

Kae looked angry, but unexpectedly, he touched my hand on the table, and for once I didn’t flinch from him. “You’re maddening. Never change.” Though his voice had been stronger a moment before, his rasp was barely audible.

I noticed then how warm his touch was. “Kae.” I turned his maimed hand over, his palm as dry as an autumn leaf. “Are you feverish?” I pressed the back of my hand to his forehead and he jumped at my touch. Beneath my hand, his skin was warm and flushed.

“I’m fine.”

“He needs water,” I said to Nebo, and the Nephil slipped out of the booth without question. “You are not fine. How long have you been running a temperature?”

He looked away. “It began to rise as soon as I set foot in Elysium.”

I looked down at the stump of his little finger. Aeval had warned me his equilibrium wouldn’t last. She claimed she let his blood to “soothe” him when he was out of sorts.
Can you do that?
she’d taunted, showing me the finger she’d taken.
Can you cut your precious cousin?

I frowned. “You’re still under her influence.”

“I will not turn on you,” he promised vehemently. “I would kill myself first. I know what her power…tastes like.” Kae gritted his teeth. “As if I’ve swallowed something sweet and overripe. And if I taste it again, even a hint of it, I will fall on my own sword.”

“I’m not afraid you’re going to betray me. I’m afraid you’re going to die on me.”

“Before I’ve served my purpose?” he said gruffly.

“Oh, damn you, Kae! Yes, all right, before you’ve served your purpose. If that’s the way you’d have it, then so be it, but you’ll not die on me so long as I need you.”

Nebo brought the jug of water and I insisted Kae drink. I wasn’t sure how we’d keep his temperature from boiling over in the midst of an Elysian summer, but keeping him from becoming dehydrated was a start.

We skirted the city as he advised, and by the time we reached the east end, Kae’s fever had spiked out of control. He stopped to rest among the trees lining a secluded lane of a public park, leaning against one of the trunks, and swayed unsteadily on his feet.

Nebo took hold of him and made a quiet noise of exclamation. “He’s burning up.” Kae went limp in his arms.

I grabbed Kae’s canteen and tried to get him to drink while Nebo lowered him to the ground, but he was unresponsive, and splashing his face with the remaining water didn’t seem to help.

Opening the high collar of his coat to give him air, I revealed a scar at his throat that ran the length of his jaw—a remembrance from Aeval of the night he’d murdered my family. After he’d done her bidding, she’d meant to get rid of him before deciding he’d be more useful alive. I traced the white line on his skin, and a pale lilac flicker of aetheric radiance followed for an instant in my finger’s wake—the radiance that had been mine and Vasily’s alone until I’d taken the drop of my daughter’s blood. But with Kae, the aether wasn’t enough to heal.

I took my
navaja
from my pocket. I’d injured Aeval with it once and I kept it on me, hoping to have the opportunity to do so again. It was also the knife I’d stabbed Kae with at Gehenna. The cracking sound was loud in the empty park when I released the blade.

Nebo eyed the knife. “What are you going to do with that?”

“I’m not sure.” I stared at it. “Possibly something mad. Hold him.”

As the Nephil closed his large hands over Kae’s arms, I placed the blade of my knife against the scar and drew it in a shallow line through the skin. Kae howled and struggled in Nebo’s grip and I clasped my cousin’s hand and drew his attention to me.

“Listen to me, Kae. It’s Nenny. Focus on me.”

He opened his eye and fixed his wild gaze on me as his chest rose with frantic breath. A thin ribbon of blood welled up from the cut. The
navaja
, Lively had determined, inscribed with a gypsy witch’s wards, had loosed Aeval’s hold on Kae by disrupting the magical control she’d exerted on his blood. I was banking on it dispelling what remained.

Aeval had bragged of using the focusing elements of ice and fire to enslave him. His waterspirit blood, frozen by her kiss, had served as the ice. But ice hadn’t freed him permanently. What I needed now was fire.

The key to elemental magic, Lively said, was in utilizing a bit of one’s own element to effect the transmutation of it in the surrounding air. If I had some of Ola’s fire in my blood, perhaps I could call that element to me.

Placing the blade of the
navaja
against my forearm, I made a shallow incision. With my blood on the knife, I stretched out my arm and murmured the words of a spell Lively had taught me to invoke the proper directional element—south was the symbolic domain of fire.

I pressed my other hand against the stripe of blood at Kae’s throat to complete our connection. With a sharp shock, the pale aether sparked and shot up my arm. I felt the fleeting tug of my wings as it passed my shoulder, and then my hair seemed to stand on end.

With a deafening crack above our heads, a blue-white flash as bright as daylight illuminated the park for an instant. A sudden downpour struck out of the clear night sky and doused the radiance completely. But beneath the cool rain, Kae’s fever began to drop.

His temperature was normal within a minute. I raised my face into the falling water, laughing with relief.

Nebo touched Kae’s skin and then looked up at me—laughing at the sky as if I were simple—and grinned. “That’s a hell of a talent, Your Supernal Highness. Bet you could make a bloody fortune as a rainmaker.”

I laughed with chagrin. “I wasn’t trying to make rain. I was trying to make fire.” And it seemed I had; I’d called lightning.

Kae blinked up at the deluge in surprise, touching his fingers to the shallow cut at his throat with a look of perplexity. “What happened?” He sat up somewhat unsteadily. “What are we doing in the mud?” I laughed harder at that, and Nebo laughed with me, baffling poor Kae. The rain and the laughter felt wonderful. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d enjoyed either.

“My dear field marshal.” I offered a hand to help him up. “I just thought I’d cool you off a bit.” At the look on his face, I laughed harder, recognizing a tinge of hysteria in it, and slipped and fell beside him in the mud.

Soaked to the skin, we arrived at the alley behind the House of Correction, where Kae and I waited together while Nebo dashed through the rain and mud into the fray to find our brigadier general.

“I can still feel her.” Kae gave a small shudder as we pressed our backs against the wall beneath the eaves. “I just want you to be aware of that, Nazkia. The closer I get to her, the more my skin prickles with unease.”

The disappointment must have been visible on my face.

“I will
not
let her take me again. I promise you that.” He closed his eye, and his rough voice lowered to a near-whisper. “But if it seems to you I cannot keep that promise, if you believe I’m no longer myself—there’s a promise you must also make to me.”

I waited, though I knew what he was about to say.

“You must put me down, like a rabid dog. I cannot be her fool again. And I cannot be responsible for doing further harm to you.”

“Kae…”

“I’m begging you, Nazkia.” He opened his watery eye and fixed it on me. “Do you want me on my knees?” He dropped onto them. “Surely it cannot be that difficult to kill the murderer of your family.”

“Stop it!” The words burst out of me too loud and I glanced around to be sure I hadn’t drawn attention from the road. I narrowed my eyes. “Stand up.” When he didn’t move, I added, “That is an order from your sovereign.”

Kae rose with a look of defiant anger rather than humble supplication.

“You are a
fool
,” I said. “A complete and utter, miserable fool.”

He blinked at me in surprise.

“And you are all that is left of my family. No, don’t you say a word! I have been sick, and filled with rage, and broken-hearted at what you’ve done every moment of every day since that terrible night. And I probably shall be for the rest of my life, but you were my friend and my brother, taken from me as surely as the others were. And now I’ve taken you back. If you think I would so easily let her steal you from me again, you’re simply mad of your own doing.”

Rain dripped down his face as he stared at me, and his rheumy eye was watering.

“You stand there and tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you are not my friend, that you’re not the Kae I adored and emulated as a girl, whom I raced horses with and built forts with in the snow against Tatia and Maia and Ola. Tell me you do not love me, cousin.”

His face blazed with sudden fury and he grabbed my arms and shook me. “I am
not
him. Can’t you understand that, damn you?”

I gazed at him, my heart racing with something unfamiliar as I stood closer to him than I’d been since the day I’d tried to kill him and set him free instead. “Then who are you, Kae Lebesovich?” I asked softly.

He let go and backed away. “How can I be anything other than a monster? A monster, and a joke.”

Behind him, Nebo had arrived with a platoon of mounted Virtues and the commander of the Empyrean brigade. My answer would have to wait.

The Virtues were amazed to see me alive. Apparently, the story was spreading that I’d been killed along with my battalion. The brigadier general dismounted, bowed to me, and saluted Kae. “What are your orders, Your Supernal Highness?” He looked at me when he said it, but I could sense his deference to the man who’d earned his grudging respect.

“Well? Tell them the plan, field marshal.” I spoke with a supernal tone that dispelled the familiarity of the last few minutes.

“The plan,” said Kae with his usual gruffness, “is to maintain our alliance with the Liberationists until it is no longer expedient.”

“And to make that contingency perfectly clear to them,” I added, knowing Kae wouldn’t. “We inform them they’ve been deceived by Helga as to the nature of our alliance, that it’s a temporary measure to defeat our common enemy.”

Kae sighed but didn’t contradict me. “And second,” he continued in a tone of disgust, “to stop dancing about on the battlefield like a gaggle of fainthearted schoolgirls!”

As we rode toward the front on the mounts the Virtues provided, I brought my horse up next to Kae’s. “Field marshal.”

He leaned in to hear my instructions.

“This former schoolgirl,” I told him, “can kick your ass.”

Vosemnadtsataya
: Spirits of the Air

Dear old Kresty prison embraced him once again. Belphagor had reacted instinctively to the insult at Finlyandsky Vokzal, knocking the son of a bitch onto his ass. Unfortunately, it had been just what the Malakim hoped he’d do; they’d sent one of their own to provoke him. The police had arrived within seconds to arrest him for “disturbing the public order,” as if they’d been called in advance.

In the holding cell—in which one could expect to be held for anywhere from three hours to three years—he’d been treated to the usual hostility engendered by his contradictory tattoos. Although the symbolic language of the
vory v zakone
had been diluted by the current fad among youths who’d never been in prison tattooing themselves for fashion, there was no mistaking the older tattoos Belphagor wore. Career criminals wanted to know how someone apparently only in his early thirties could possibly have earned the number and status of his tattoos.

He heard the same accusations every time. He couldn’t have earned them; who had tattooed him? With whom did he work? What business did he think he had wearing symbols from the Stalinist era? Did he think he was funny? They were questions he hadn’t had to consider decades ago when he’d first done time.

Nearly twenty-four hours passed before he had the opportunity to post bail. While Belphagor waited for Dmitri’s money to be processed, a pair of Heaven’s Messengers visited him, dressed in dark grey Italian suits. They were either going for the gangster look or the gangster’s counsel—not that there was much difference. For millennia, the Seraphim had enjoyed a privileged arrangement with the prisons of the world of Man, ensuring the incarceration of Fallen celestial subjects Heaven didn’t particularly want back. Evidently, the Malakim also had friends in bureaucratic low places.

The flashier of the two addressed him, while the rougher-looking Malak stood back with arms folded—Beauty and the Beast. “We know who you are,
suka
.”

“Congratulations.” Belphagor blew smoke at him through the bars from a cigarette he’d produced from his pocket, lit with a matchbook another prisoner had traded him. It never hurt to have a little something to barter when inside the
Zona
, and sharing his cigarettes had deflected much of the more vocal suspicion.

“You would do well to heed our advice.”

“And what advice would that be?” he asked without interest.

“Stay out of angelic disputes. The rule of Heaven is of no concern to petty thieves and con men.”

“Really. Then how do you explain your interest in it?”

The angel frowned at him and Belphagor couldn’t resist a further dig. “The Malakim are such masters in the art of flimflam that we have a special holiday set aside for you in Raqia.” He blew another exhalation of smoke their way. “It’s called Christmas.”

The silent angel moved as if to reach through the bars, but the other waved him back, giving Belphagor an oleaginous smile. “We merely spread Heaven’s glory among the world of Man. We can’t help how Men interpret it.”

Belphagor snorted. “Not a whole lot of wiggle room for interpretation in a pregnant virgin.”

“Laugh if you like, demon, but that one wasn’t our doing. Just keep your forked tongue out of our business.”

“
Poshol na khui
.” Belphagor cupped his groin.

The guard arrived to release him and Belphagor dropped his cigarette butt on the floor and ground it under his boot as he stepped past the Malakim to collect his belongings. They followed him out and the talkative Malak leaned casually against the end of the desk as he signed for his things. “I wouldn’t bother with that train ticket if I were you.”

“You wouldn’t do a lot of things I’d do.” Belphagor passed the paperwork back to be stamped and put on his duster, slipping the ticket into his pocket.

“Your
tsigane
friend and those Aravothan traitors will never make it to Irkutsk.”

Belphagor turned slowly. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Ah, now he’s listening.” The Malak smirked. “We’ve sent our brethren to deal with them. They’ll be waiting for your pets when they get to Yekaterinburg.”

Belphagor swept his cell phone from the counter and hit the speed dial. “Lyosha. There are Malakim waiting to ambush you at Yekaterinburg. Remember what we discussed.” He snapped the phone shut and smiled at the flustered Malak. “Heaven’s Messengers, and you don’t know how to use the telephone? How sad is that?”

When the guard buzzed him through, he looked about for Dmitri, but the Grigori was nowhere in sight. Instead, his gaze met with a pair of brilliant green eyes.

Misha gave him a wide grin. “
Privet
, Belyi.”

§

Beneath the cloth bag, Kirill was now aware enough of his surroundings to struggle against the bonds at his wrists, but his hands were too numb to make any progress. Whatever the demon had thrown in his face, its euphoric effect had finally worn off. He was left instead with a gnawing hunger compounded by nausea and a headache.

His legs were also bound, but he managed to roll over onto his side and stretch them out. They struck against something solid and Kirill felt about with his feet to try to identify it. Determining it to be a chest of drawers, he scooted himself in front of it and began to kick the drawers with both feet.

“Let me out of here, you devil!”

His efforts were soon rewarded and the door swung open. “Here, now!” The shopkeeper admonished him in Kirill’s own tongue. “What’s all this ruckus?” He pulled the bag from Kirill’s head and Kirill blinked and squinted in the light. “How did you like your little adventure, eh? First time with firedust?”

“To hell with your devil’s dust. Release me!”

The demon clucked his tongue. “Now, now. Watch your mouth or no one will want to bother with you. You’re a good, strong man, and I ought to be able to find a buyer for you faster than for the children, but we can’t have you abusing the customers.”

“I will be no one’s slave! I am a servant of God!”

“God, is it?” The demon bent down and tugged on Kirill’s beard, and Kirill jerked his head away. “Is this a priest’s beard? Well, I’m sure you can call your master whatever you like as long as it’s respectful.” He pulled a pipe from his pocket and began to pack the bowl with a powdery substance. As he lit it and puffed, Kirill smelled the same sweet, marine fragrance he’d smelled before. “What you need is a little more relaxation.” The demon took the pipe from his mouth and held it out to Kirill, but Kirill spat at him and the demon struck him. “That’s very rude. Now open up or I’ll shove this pipe up some other orifice and deliver it to you that way.”

Kirill resisted, and the demon climbed on top of him and held his jaw, shoving the pipe between his lips though Kirill clenched his teeth. The demon held his hand over Kirill’s nose and Kirill tried to shake him away, but he breathed in involuntarily and the warm sensation swam into his head almost immediately. A few more breaths and he’d forgotten why it had seemed so important to leave. He closed his eyes and lay back, listening to the strange crackle of the dust in his head. He wondered if the sound was an actual combustion of the warm substance inside him or whether it was some kind of auditory hallucination brought on by the properties of the drug.

He couldn’t recall when the shopkeeper left.

Sometime later, the angel of light appeared to him, and he wondered if this, too, were a hallucination. Perhaps it had always been. Perhaps he
was
a little mad.

“Man of God.” The amorphous shape pulsed before him. “Remember what I say to you now, though it seem as dreaming.”

Kirill nodded to the creature and closed his eyes against its brightness. The firedust seemed to enhance everything around him and the light hurt his eyes.

“I will deliver you and the child.”

“Children,” Kirill murmured.

“Yes, the children.” The angel seemed annoyed with him. “When I come to you again, you will not see me, but you will find your bonds loosed and the doors open. You will take the children and flee from here, and you will receive a sign.”

“What sign?” Kirill slurred, listening to the crackle of the sweet fragrance in his brain.

The spirit hesitated for a moment. “A burning bush. When you receive the sign, you must go to the Acheron and make a sacrifice in thanks.”

“A sacrifice?” Kirill opened his eyes and squinted at the angel. “I have nothing to sacrifice.”

“One will be provided, Man of God.”

§

“Misha, what are you doing here?” Belphagor scrutinized the leshi as they rode away from Kresty in a taxi. “Where’s Dmitri?”

“He called me and said he needed someone the Malakim wouldn’t recognize to post bail. The word isn’t out yet on the underground that the Exiles are backing Anazakia and he thought it would be safer if we kept it that way for now.”

“And whom are you backing?” Belphagor lifted his eyebrow. “Are the Unseen suddenly taking an interest in celestial affairs?”

“Belyi.” Misha laughed and took his hand. His touch was always soothing, and Belphagor couldn’t help relaxing beside him. “We have always had an interest in celestial affairs. A fundamental interest, you might say.”

“How so?”

“Have you ever seen an Ardor? A Second-Order angel, I mean. One of the Elim.”

Belphagor shrugged. “No. I don’t think anybody in Heaven can claim to have seen any of the angels of the First Choir. I suspect they’re extinct.”

“Oh, we’re not extinct. We just got sick of Heaven’s shit.”

“Come again?”

Misha answered in angelic. “I’m an Ardor.”

Belphagor was dumbstruck. It couldn’t possibly be true, but he couldn’t imagine why Misha would make up such a thing.

“Yes, I know it’s hard to believe. But the leshi are all Ardors. And the syla are Splendors, the Erelim. We’re incorporeal in Heaven, but as we discovered when we fell, we have bodies here much like those of Men and angels.”

“You’re serious.”

“I’m always serious.” Misha’s grin seemed to belie his words.

Belphagor removed his hand from Misha’s, suspecting his touch might be mesmerizing in more than the figurative sense. “And when did you do this ‘falling’? The First Choir has been missing in action for centuries, as I understand it. Perhaps millennia.”

Misha laughed. “You know, you’re no spring chicken either, my dear.”

“Are you saying you’re hundreds of years old?” Belphagor scoffed. “I thought Yulya was human.”

“Oh, my heart.” Misha clutched his chest. “Bringing Mother into it!”

Belphagor sighed. “Now I know you’re joking. Very amusing. You had me going for a moment.”

“No, really, Belyi.” Misha’s mischievous twinkle was absent now. “You’re just too much fun to tease, but I’m completely serious. We’re not ageless or immortal exactly. I’m no more than the thirty-one years you know me to be. But we…reincarnate, you might say. Or we’re omni-carnate. We’re aware of the full consciousness of the Ardent body, present and past. We made a bargain with the Splendors when we fell that we would perpetuate one another’s races. Splendors are of a feminine nature and Ardors are of a masculine, so it’s worked out quite well for us.”

They pulled up in front of Dmitri’s Soviet deco apartment building and Belphagor paid the driver as they got out. “And the Aeons?” he asked as he rang Dmitri’s flat. “Where are they in this?”

“The Tafsarim are still in Heaven, so far as we know.” Misha shrugged. “As I said, our choir is incorporeal there, so you might pass them all the time and never know it, but for an unusual trick of light or an errant breeze.”

“Or,” said Belphagor as Dmitri came down to let them in, “being incorporeal, all of the First Choir is still there floating about and you’re pulling my leg.”

Dmitri held the door open. “Who’s pulling your leg?”

“Oh, Misha, haven’t you shared this little joke with dear Dmitri?” Belphagor preceded Dmitri up the stairs. “Misha thinks he’s an eternal Ardent spirit.”

Misha made an exaggerated sigh behind him. “It wasn’t exactly common knowledge. But I suppose it’s all right if Dmitri knows. You might want to keep your voice down about it, though.”

Upstairs, Dmitri looked from Belphagor to Misha in confusion while they removed their shoes and put on the indoor
tapochki
he’d provided. “You’re what, now?”

“That’s exactly what I said.” Belphagor sat on the couch. “Thank you for posting bail, by the way. I ran into a few of our Malak friends as I was leaving. They were terribly smug about having kept me out of action for a day while their comrades headed to Yekaterinburg to ambush Love and the Virtues—until I picked up my phone and told Loquel to expect them.” He grinned at Dmitri. “You’d have thought they’d never seen a cell phone before.”

“The angels always did sneer at magic. Whether elemental or technological.”

“Well, part of that is our doing.” Misha sat in the plush chair that had been Lev’s, ignoring the look Belphagor gave him to encourage him to choose another. “We may have neutralized a number of things in Heaven through the manipulation of the aether.”

“We?” Dmitri repeated.

“The First Choir.”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Misha!” Belphagor burst out. “You’re really taking this too far.”

Misha ignored him. “Take firepower, for instance. Do you think it’s merely angelic decree that keeps it out? Why wouldn’t one of the Fallen have simply imported it from the world of Man?” He smiled. “Well, they have, of course, and it’s completely inert. It’s the same reason elements are much harder to manipulate within Heaven and that most angels can’t manifest their wings. The aetheric content of the air dampens most radiance.”

“All right, then, speaking of wings, let’s see yours.”

“Not in the house!” Dmitri exclaimed. “I just had the cleaning
devushka
in.”

Belphagor arched an eyebrow. “Well, you’re not off the hook, Misha. You can show me outside.”

“The Elim do not have wings,” said Misha patiently. “As I mentioned, the change in our elemental makeup when we fall is corporeality, not wings.”