The Armies of Heaven (12 page)

“Most angels refer to Raqia itself as hell. And demons like to call the world of Man hell, purely out of affection. But the concept is an entirely invented one. The Host would have liked nothing more than to relegate the Fallen to another world altogether. As the next best thing, they scare their children with stories of sending them there if they don’t eat their turnips.”

“That’s not quite true,” said Loquel. The quiet Virtue had become much more at ease over the past few days of traveling as a small group, and he seemed particularly animated when Belphagor paid him attention. He grinned. “We don’t eat turnips in Aravoth.”

“Fair enough, fair Loquel,” said Belphagor with a wink.

Love felt a little annoyed for Vasily’s sake. Belphagor was an incorrigible flirt.

The stairs were awkward and exhausting after traveling so many miles on horseback. Just as soon as she’d gotten used to one set of unused muscles, another had come into play. It didn’t help that the gloom seemed barely penetrated by the torch Belphagor carried, as if it had substance beyond the absence of light, like a fog of darkness that actually consumed it. She was relieved when they reached the bottom after several hours, and surprised when she discovered a train platform in the far east of Russia waited at the end.

No one questioned them as they boarded, and Love suspected Belphagor was using his charm in some literal way to prevent the
provodnik
from bothering them for tickets. The Virtues, however, drew wide stares from the passengers as they made their way to the compartments Belphagor had booked.

“They’re with the circus,” he told the curious.

She’d never come this far east, and under different circumstances, Love would have spent all day staring at the landscape rushing past them, but with the exception of the room at Iriy, the tiny compartment bed was the first she’d had in weeks, and she fell into it, instantly asleep.

§

The first week at Gihon Falls had been a bloodbath—no more than Kae had expected, but disheartening nonetheless. Despite the advantage of having knowledge Aeval’s troops didn’t possess, the first company had been easily overcome within a day. The Supernal Army had quickly abandoned its horses as the first dozens fell to the caltrops his men had laid, and Kae’s men hadn’t been adaptable enough, hesitant to charge unmounted soldiers.

The tide hadn’t begun to be stemmed until Kae convinced the Virtues to behave like cowards. Calling them cowardly for their failures was having no effect other than to further demoralize them. He changed his tactic and began to praise their heroic efforts despite the continued losses, and told them that to be truly brave, they must be willing to be seen as cowards, knowing they were not. They had to appear to flee from the attacks of the Supernal Army, thus drawing the offensive line deeper into the ravine.

The rallying cry of “cowardice” proved effective, and by the end of the second week, they’d turned the tables, reducing the queen’s forces by nearly twice as many as they’d lost. To be fair, some forty percent of that number they’d taken alive, but Kae wasn’t particular. If the Virtues could maintain some sense of honor without getting themselves slaughtered, all the better. An empty granary served as a makeshift prison. He would decide what to do with their prisoners when Aeval had enough.

He could sense her across the valley, seething as he continued to thwart her. To Aeval, every encounter was a game of chess. He made a move, and she countered it, attempting to bring his most valuable assets into play. By drawing her men into his trap instead, he’d forced her to play on his terms. She countered his tactics with increasing aggression, proving she had a greater number of expendable pawns and wasn’t afraid to sacrifice them.

He had clearly so engaged her ego she hadn’t yet realized the defense of Gihon Falls was actually a double threat: keeping her occupied while Anazakia advanced on Elysium, and thinning and tiring her ranks so Anazakia’s brigade would stand a better chance against them when Aeval at last discovered his deceptive maneuver.

The Virtues managed to hold Gihon Falls for twenty-three days before the sheer numbers the queen was willing to expend simply overwhelmed them, though their honor proved their ultimate undoing. The ranks taken alive had swelled, until, like the Gihon River in spring thaw, they were impossible to contain.

In retrospect, he’d been too soft, and he cursed himself for it when the prisoners stormed the granary walls and broke out to swarm across the escarpment, causing chaos. The Virtues inside the pass were forced to abandon their posts to defend against a rear attack. With the company defending the pass at the Falls now on their own, when Aeval ordered a charge, they were overcome.

Kae saw the end at hand when the first wave of the enemy broke through, and he abandoned the position that had so frustrated him for days. He’d necessarily kept himself from the fighting in order to direct it from behind the lines. Now he threw himself into the fight almost gleefully, though he felt sick at the thought of what would happen to the citizens of Aravoth once the last of his soldiers were slain. At least he’d take as many of Aeval’s with him as he could before he was finally released from his burden. He’d served Anazakia as best he could, though it couldn’t come close to atonement. If only he’d lived to see her take the throne; that would have been worth prolonging his miserable existence.

As he kicked the body of his latest kill from his sword, he noted a tall rider watching over the action astride a white stallion on a ridge above the mouth of the ravine. Her silvery hair fluttered behind her in the wind, unfettered by the knot it had slipped from, as she gazed down on him in triumph. He’d allowed himself to be distracted a moment too long, taking a fierce blow to the shoulder before he sliced his attacker through.

When he next looked up, a runner was approaching her, beating a desperate path through the oncoming troops. The youth reached Aeval and fell onto his knees to deliver his message. She turned and looked straight at Kae as though she knew exactly where he was among the melee, and he could feel the fury in her gaze. She pulled her horse about and faced her troops, and Kae heard her cry out in a tremendous, booming voice of outrage, “Fall back!”

§

His mind became more confused the closer they got to Elysium. But they weren’t going to Elysium. Helga had said they were going to Arcadia. Except he knew quite well they
were
going to Elysium. He was the heir to the throne of Heaven, and the throne of Heaven was in Elysium.

“Be quiet!” Azel said aloud.

Helga looked down with a startled, disapproving frown from the carriage seat beside him. “Master Azel, that is very impolite. A grand duke does not snap at his servants.”

“A grand duke!” he cried, as if his mouth were now saying words without his permission. He had a terrible image in his head, and a terrible pain in his stomach. He thought he tasted blood. He had
never
tasted blood. Helga handed him a sweet and he tore it open anxiously and popped it into his mouth as if it could make the blood taste go away. Strangely, it seemed to calm him and he forgot about the things he shouldn’t know.

“My poor little darling,” Helga whispered, and kissed his head. “Just take a nap. We should be in Arcadia when you wake.”

He didn’t remember going to sleep, but as Helga had predicted, he woke just as the carriage entered Vilon’s bustling capital. Throngs of people lined the wide boulevards, bowing and tossing flowers with shouts of “Long live the principality of all the Heavens!”

Others, however, didn’t seem so happy to see him.

“Liberation!” cried one, raising his fist. “Liberation for the Fallen!” He was more poorly dressed than the ones throwing flowers. “Death to the little prince!” As the carriage drew near, he spat at Azel. The Cherubim running alongside quickly accosted him and dragged him away through the crowd. This quieted the other malcontents, though a few still raised their fists as the carriage passed them.

At last they reached the Arcadian Palace of Penemue, and the carriage passed through the shining gates, leaving the onlookers outside. Penemue was grander than the palace at Aden, though Azel preferred the latter. Sweeping white colonnades striped with gold were framed by a great, green lawn that stretched around it in all directions. When the carriage arrived at the entrance, another red carpet was laid out for Azel to walk on as Helga led him up the white marble steps into a grand hall lined with statues of angels.

Rows and rows of servants bowed to him as he passed, and then at the opening of a receiving room a herald announced him as the Grand Duke Azel Kaeyevich of the House of Arkhangel’sk. A tall woman in a beautiful, pale pink dress and dark golden curls piled on her head stood and approached him. She bent down with a smile and offered her hand, and Azel took it and kissed it as if he’d been doing so all his life.

The woman laughed. “Isn’t he delightful! And so like his mother.” She pressed a fancy embroidered handkerchief to the corners of her eyes as they filled with tears. “The House of Arcadia welcomes you to the Palace of Penemue, Your Supernal Highness. The principality will be so pleased to see you.”

Azel had a bath in a large room dedicated to the purpose, with a full tub of warm water in which to soak himself, and servants to scrub him. He thought it fantastic, and at the same time, recalled a thousand uneventful baths that had come before it—which was absurd, for he was hardly more than a thousand days old. That he suddenly knew how many days were in a year and how to multiply them, he tried not to notice.

All of this thinking and unthinking was quite tiresome, and by the time he’d been presented to the principality of Vilon—who bowed to him instead of the other way around—and a grand feast had been prepared in his honor, he had to be carried off to bed. An ordinary valet came to dress him instead of the Cherub who’d attended him along the way to Arcadia, and outside his door, two Ophanim stood guard to protect him, their cold white illumination glowing under the door when he’d been left alone.

He’d forgotten all about Ola until a whimpering sound penetrated his consciousness as he lay in bed nearly asleep. He sat up, looking for the source, wondering if he’d dreamt it. The only furnishing in the huge room besides the big oak bed and a chamber pot cabinet holding a washbasin and pitcher was a massive wardrobe at the opposite end of the room. Azel got up and went to the wardrobe, and sure enough, the box was inside.

He forced his small palm against the hasp of the latch until it popped, and pushed open the lid of the trunk. Ola cowered in the corner, disoriented, as though under the effects of a sleeping draught. The contents of the glass bottle the Cherub gave her every morning and evening must be exactly that. The poor little thing had soiled herself.

Azel hoisted her out and set her on the floor. She was quite small and he’d grown rather large for his age, and this was easier than he expected. He brought the washbasin and pitcher and found a flannel in the cabinet drawer to bathe her with. The ragged gown couldn’t be salvaged, so he took off his sleeping gown and put it on her, and put his day clothes back on.

She was barely responsive. Azel pressed the back of his hand to her clammy cheek and forehead. Rather than running a fever, she felt cool to the touch. A surge of anger rose in him at Helga. What right had she to keep his niece with less care and dignity than one would keep an animal? No—
no
, not his niece. He didn’t care if the other boy in his head had recognized the pretty lady in the picture as his sister. He was not twelve years old, he was three. He was Azel Kaeyevich. He didn’t know what his mind was talking about.

He took Ola’s hand and led her to the bed, boosting her up until she climbed into it groggily and lay down.

“Move over, Ola,” he groused, and pushed her until she curled into a ball on her side and made room for him. He slept like a stone until her murmuring woke him some hours later. He thought she was talking in her sleep, but when he opened his eyes, he found her sitting wide awake on the end of the bed holding the ragged paper with the picture of her family, salvaged from the pocket of the cast-off gown.

She glanced up in the pale glow of pre-dawn through the shuttered window and began to point at the figures on the paper, though their images were smeared and dulled from wear.

“Papa. Mama. Ola. Beli.”

“Is that all you can say?” he grumbled, crabby from being woken.

“Where Lub?”

He crinkled his eyes at her in consternation. “What
is
that? What’s ‘Lub’?”

Ola pointed at the paper and he nearly snatched it from her as she went through her recitation once more: “Papa, Mama, Ola, Beli.” Then she pointed to the side of the paper as if beyond its margins, and said, “Lub” insistently. “Where Lub?” Apparently, someone from her family was missing.

“I don’t know. I’m Azel.”

Ola climbed across the bed and startled him by wrapping her arms around his neck. “Azly,” she said with an air of satisfaction.

“No, it’s Azel,” he repeated, but she didn’t seem to mind that she’d gotten it wrong.

She sat next to him and pulled the covers over the long sleeping gown and around them both as if they’d sleep that way. Ola liked him, he realized. No one had ever liked him before. Helga seemed alternately to find him bothersome and to treat him as if he were a prized possession, like the locket she cared about so much. When she acted kindly toward him, he felt it wasn’t him she was fond of, but the other boy, as if she wished he’d go away and leave the “real” Azel in his place.

In a few hours, the Cherub would come and put Ola back into her box and give her the drink that kept her quiet. Azel had a sudden surge of anxiety. He couldn’t let them put her in the box again. He couldn’t. She liked him, and it wasn’t nice. If it was for her protection, she was too young to understand, and it frightened her. If bad men were looking for her, then he’d hide her himself. He wouldn’t let them put her in the box.