Page 68 of The Devils

Unacceptable Behaviour

‘You took Lady Severa’s body …’ whispered Balthazar.

‘Mine was, frankly, dying,’ said Eudoxia, or Severa, or the soul of one in the body of the other, ‘while hers is, frankly, superb.’ And she calmly smoothed her dress. ‘And she had been betraying me to my brother for years. She died in my withered corpse. Having thought all along I was mad.’

‘I have no doubt you are,’ murmured Balthazar. ‘ Gloriously so.’

No agreement was made and no flag of parley offered but, without their eyes leaving one another, they both, with the greatest caution, straightened from their ready crouches.

‘Only you have had the vision to realise the truth,’ she said. ‘Not one of those narrow-minded ants I tried to teach could even conceive of my success. Not my self-serving courtiers, not my self-interested subjects, not those preening vultures my so-called sons.’ She gave a snort of disgust. ‘My own treacherous dunce of a brother was so blissfully unaware of what soul occupied this flesh that he asked me to marry him.’

‘A proposal which you …’ Balthazar delicately cleared his throat, ‘accepted?’

She gave a twitch of one shoulder. Barely even a shrug. ‘It seemed the smoothest path back to the throne.’ He supposed once you have usurped an Empire, fused humans with animals, and capped it off by stealing the body of your lady-in-waiting in a heretical crime against God, a little light incest does seem rather a paltry misdemeanour.

‘For so many years, all I thought about was taking power. Holding power.’ She slowly approached, while Balthazar kept every sense sharpened for another attack. ‘It became a habit. An addiction. But now … I begin to wonder if I even want it.’ She reached out, gently touched the burned padding on one of the benches. ‘I have had the unique opportunity to see the world after my death, and it is fair to say I was not mourned. My sons wasted no time tearing into my metaphorical carcass. The literal one, incidentally, was incinerated without ceremony.’ She blinked, as though coming to the realisation for the first time. ‘The Serpent Throne did me no good. And I certainly did it no good.’

‘You would let Alexia have it, then?’

Eudoxia looked up at him. ‘Now you suggest it, why not? I have always appreciated an underdog. And no doubt Troy has had worse leaders. The throne room for me was a place of endless frustration and disappointment. My true victories were won here !’ She threw up her arms and Balthazar took an involuntary step back, hands twitching to repel her.

There was a brittle silence, and she narrowed her eyes at him. ‘If we continue this duel, one of us will likely not survive.’

Balthazar managed a scornful toss of his head. ‘This time your death will be permanent.’

Eudoxia did the same and, having stolen one of the best necks in Europe, vanquished him utterly, at least as far as head-tossing was concerned. ‘I beg to differ. But even if you were the victor, what will you have won? Fame? Wealth? Freedom? Knowledge?’

Balthazar gave careful thought to that. ‘None of the above,’ he conceded.

‘You were bound to see Alexia made Empress.’

‘I was.’

‘You are not bound to duel with me.’

‘I am not.’ He was bound to return to the Holy City with all dispatch, indeed, his gorge had been rising ever since he dived from the ship.

‘So there is nothing to stop us simply … letting each other go.’

‘You could have made such an offer before doing your level best to incinerate me,’ observed Balthazar.

‘It is in demonstrating yourself equal to my level best that you have proved your value.’

She made a strong argument. He had never felt so alive as in their struggle to the death, never felt so powerful as when stretching his powers beyond their limits to counter hers. The blinding after-image of her lightning was fading. Her dress was scorched, ripped at the shoulder. Her hair was pinned on one side, hanging tangled about the other. Her lip was split, bright blood smeared across her jaw. Her stolen body was as battered by their struggle as he was.

And it had never looked better.

‘How can one achieve greatness,’ he murmured, ‘without great adversaries against whom to test oneself?’

‘You make a formidable rival.’ Did her eyes flicker from his face for a moment, down towards his feet, and back? ‘I cannot help but think you would make an even more formidable ally.’

‘Do you propose …’ He cleared his throat, voice ever so slightly hoarse. The suggestion of such a beauty being attracted to him was intoxicating, but paled in comparison to the suggestion of such a genius admiring his arcane talents. ‘That I join you?’

‘Only think of it! A magician of your calibre, a sorcerer of mine? The princes of Europe, the cardinals of the Church, even the elves themselves would tremble before us! The world would lie at our feet!’

He had been unable to think of anything else since she stopped trying to annihilate him. ‘Your offer is not without its … considerable attractions. I will admit I am – or at the very least was – an ambitious man—’ Balthazar was obliged to swallow a burp. ‘But there is the troublesome matter of the Papal binding.’

‘Applied by a child?’

‘I witnessed the procedure and laughed.’

‘But it is effective?’

‘Ever since, I have laughed rarely if at all.’

‘Perhaps between us we can find a way to break it, and the last laugh will be ours.’

Balthazar licked his lips. ‘Shaxep herself could not do it.’

‘You bound a Duke of Hell to the purpose?’ He declined to mention that he had not so much bound the demon as called then asked very politely, but he was deriving far too much satisfaction from the spark of Eudoxia’s respect in Severa’s stolen eyes. ‘You are a more audacious practitioner than I dared imagine.’

‘From a practitioner as audacious as you, those are words I will treasure. There was a time I would have clutched at your proposal with eager hands, but … the truth is …’ Balthazar realised something he would never have thought possible. ‘I no longer wish to be freed.’

‘You choose … to remain a slave ?’

‘I have … by a roundabout and, admittedly, exceedingly unpleasant route … found myself in the service of the Second Coming of the Saviour herself.’

‘You truly believe that?’

‘I am a man of science. I have reviewed the evidence.’ Balthazar shrugged. ‘What more important place could an ambitious magician find?’

It did lurk rather at the back of his mind that the men with whom Eudoxia had previously associated herself – four husbands and four sons – had not exactly prospered. But there was, even if he would never admit it to her, even if he could hardly admit it to himself, one other compelling reason to remain with the Chapel of the Holy Expediency: the sense of almost choking disappointment at the thought of never getting to rub Baptiste’s face in that day’s stupendous triumphs.

He would not have particularly blamed her had Eudoxia blasted him with lightning a second time, but she only pressed her lips thoughtfully together. ‘You have done three things men almost never do. Impressed me, interested me … and turned me down.’

‘I hope I have caused no offence.’ Without taking his eyes off her, he bowed. ‘And that we may still part on good terms.’

‘Good terms might be too much to ask.’ She backed towards the far doorway, torn hem of her dress swishing against the runes her past self had inscribed. ‘But alive? By all means.’

She paused in the shadows and, for an instant, Balthazar was sure the air was about to explode into flame.

‘We should do this again,’ she said.

He smiled. ‘I shall count the hours.’

‘Our Saviour …’ breathed Brother Diaz.

The Hanging Gardens before the Athenaeum, whose beauty had put him in mind of paradise a few weeks before, had been rendered into a scene from hell that even the master painters of the Holy City would not have dared imagine. Had a tornado ripped through a burning slaughterhouse it could have left behind no greater carnage, malformed limbs, dead guards, and unknowable innards scattered thickly as leaves in autumn, glistening in the flickering flames of burning vegetation.

Merciful Saviour, one of the stately palms was festooned with dripping guts.

‘… at God’s right hand …’ he whispered.

The back part of the horror: a decapitated snake the size of a longship, a harlequin monstrosity patched together from every gaudy skin that must once have been on show in the Imperial Menagerie, was still wedged between two trees, writhing like a worm cut in half, spraying gore. It was, without doubt, the worst abomination ever visited upon creation. Until one’s dumbstruck gaze had the misfortune to fall upon the front part: a torn and leaking spider-like sack of horned flesh with a thicket of wriggling, misshapen limbs surrounding the arse-mouth that had just swallowed Vigga whole.

‘Though death’s breath is upon us …’ whispered Brother Diaz, ‘I will not fear.’

The thing rolled, burped, lurched towards him and Baptiste, unspooling a great welter of misshapen guts in its wake, dragging its ruined body at shocking speed with its lower arms while the upper ones reached out, its maw peeling open to reveal a well of bloody teeth.

Brother Diaz dragged Baptiste back, stepping past her, pulling Saint Beatrix’s vial from inside his collar and closing his fist around it. He had no better ideas.

‘I know I am but a weak vessel,’ he hissed, not mouthing now by rote but putting all his soul into the words, ‘but fill me with your light.’

The monstrous conglomeration of leftovers clawed its way towards him, its bulging remains weeping at the stitches, eyes rolling, ears twitching, limbs dancing.

‘Deliver me from evil, that I may live by your virtues! That I may do your work!’

He could feel the thing’s rancid breath. His nose was full of the charnel stink of it. Here was death, and it was an utterly horrible death, and there was nothing left to lose.

‘Deliver me from evil!’ he snarled, narrowing his eyes, gripping Saint Beatrix’s vial so tightly it dug into his palm. ‘Now or fucking never!’

As if repelled by an invisible wall, the thing jerked to a halt.

It shuddered, all its fingers fluttering, and recoiled.

It tilted its mouth towards the sky and made a ghostly whine, every limb flailing.

Brother Diaz stared, hardly able to believe his prayers had at last been answered. ‘It’s a mirac—’

The thing burst open, showering him with gore, the patchwork sack of its body tearing at the seams and something digging from inside. Claws, like black glass, and then a snarling snout, and the Vigga-Wolf was birthed from the shredded horror in a flood of blood, howling and gurgling, fur matted with ooze, dragging itself into the glistering firelight.

‘Oh yes!’ breathed Brother Diaz.

The wolf’s eye flicked towards him. A devil’s eye, burning with wounded hatred for all that lives. It gave a great snort, blowing a mist of blood, and shook itself with a flurry of trembles. It squirmed from the still-twitching wreckage of Eudoxia’s creation, jaws dropping open and its great steaming tongue flopping out to feather the grass.

‘Oh no,’ breathed Brother Diaz. He took a helpless, weak-kneed step back as the great wolf stalked towards him, one bent back leg dragging, matted hackles twisting as its great shoulders shifted, huge paws like human hands clutching at grass glistening with bloody dew.

He felt a hand on his arm, pushing him aside, and Baptiste stepped in front of him.

‘Vigga …’ she growled, fists clenched. She strained forwards, sticking her neck out, and screamed at the top of her lungs. ‘This behaviour is unacceptable !’

The monstrous wolf shifted back. Away from Baptiste and – thank the Saviour – away from Brother Diaz. Did it seem less a thing, more a person? Did he see, for a moment, behind the tangle of hair, less muzzle, more face?

There was a strange silence, with only the last death throes of the rear half of Eudoxia’s most obscene experiment in the background.

Then the Vigga-Wolf curled black lips from teeth big as daggers and let go a growl to make the earth throb, bloody slobber dripping from its jaws to spatter the bloody mud as it eased towards them.

Not Vigga. Still very much the wolf.

‘Oh no,’ whispered Brother Diaz, again.

‘Should’ve quit …’ Baptiste swallowed. ‘ Before Barcelona …’

‘Can you walk?’ asked Alex.

‘Can I not?’ Sunny let her head drop back against the broken parapet, showing bloody teeth. ‘Might just … lie down here.’

‘No.’ Alex dragged Sunny’s limp arm across her shoulders. ‘I’m issuing an imperial decree.’

‘Thought the one good thing about being an elf … is I don’t have to obey those …’ They both groaned as Alex stood, pulling Sunny up with her. It was lucky she weighed about as much as a mid-sized cat because Alex doubted she could’ve lifted anything heavier. They hobbled together towards the steps, night sky showing through the rents in the dome, the chips of mirror covering the rest of it stained red as Saint Natalia’s Flame burned low. Baron Rikard lay crumpled against the wall like a heap of ancient rags, eyes shut, arms cooked. ‘Our vampire’s looked better.’

‘And worse,’ grunted Sunny.

‘Worse than that?’ Alex picked her way between Cleofa’s still-smoking corpse and the wide pool of blood that had spread from Athenais’s throat.

‘He spent forty years as bones. He’ll get over this.’

‘Not sure I will,’ muttered Alex. She was battered and scoured and aching all over, her torn arm stinging from wrist to shoulder under her dead husband’s tunic. She heaved Sunny into a better position and started to wobble down the steps. ‘This has been the worst fucking night—’

‘And it’s not over,’ said Duke Michael, coming up the other way.

Sunny’s breath whooped in. She blinked out of sight but Michael’s fist was already swinging. She blinked back when it caught her jaw and flung her sideways, head cracking against the wall. She crumpled and Alex was dragged down with her, twisting free to scramble back up the steps as Sunny flopped the other way, out cold.

‘The state of this place.’ Duke Michael shook out his fingers as he stepped into the ruined gallery, watching Alex wriggle across the floor with far from imperial dignity, her backside leaving a worming trail through the scattered plaster and gravel and broken chips of mirror. ‘You’ve let our blessed beacon burn low .’ Fat sputtered in the guttering brazier. The one recognisable bit of Placidia’s corpse was a leg hanging over the side, largely unburned from the knee down and still sporting a very fine shoe. ‘Poor choice of fuel, perhaps.’ He tapped that dangling leg with the side of his boot and it broke off, dropping in a shower of sparks and ash.

‘I had to improvise,’ muttered Alex, which was what she’d been doing for years. She clambered up, looking for anything to fight with, anywhere to run to. But Duke Michael had an easy confidence as he stepped over to the neatly stacked logs. There was no way around him, and they both knew it.

‘The people look to Saint Natalia’s Flame for guidance,’ he said, heaping new wood on the embers. ‘They expect to see it always above them – constant, pure, radiant. Just as they expect to look up and see their Empress.’

‘Or … don’t tell me … their Emperor?’

Duke Michael grinned at her. ‘You’re learning.’ He took a flask, sloshed oil over the wood, and stood back as fire surged up hungrily, shining bright and white from the mirrors and casting that unforgiving glare across the gallery once again. ‘The flame rekindled … as Troy will be renewed, under my guidance.’ He slapped his palms clean as he stepped over Cleofa’s roasted corpse. ‘It is so hard to find good help. I warned Eudoxia’s idiotic harpies to wait until your devils were well over the horizon.’

Alex edged back, but she was fast running out of floor. ‘Guess they couldn’t stand me a moment longer.’

‘They should’ve waited for this as long as I have. A day or two then would’ve made no difference.’ He gazed out of the ragged hole in the side of the gallery. The one Athenais had made. The one Zenonis had fallen through. The one he was herding Alex towards. The side of the lighthouse blasted away, without pillars or parapets, to show a great rent of night sky, the stars ablaze over the dark country. ‘But sometimes we have to lose everything … so we can win everything.’

‘So you can steal everything, you mean.’

‘Well, you’d know. You’re the thief. Though I have to admit one wouldn’t see it now. I was expecting the same sullen street rat I found in the Holy City. Imagine my shock when quite the little princess stepped off the boat. I never expected you to find some dignity .’ He stepped closer, looking her up and down as she edged back. ‘You actually start to remind me of your mother, you know. She had precisely that expression when she realised I’d poisoned her.’

Alex blinked. ‘When you … what?’

‘Then I blamed Eudoxia, and of course everyone despised the twisted witch, so they believed me.’

Alex hadn’t thought her opinion of him could drop much lower but the bastard had found a way. ‘You started the civil war … in the first place …’

Duke Michael gave a bored wince. ‘ Must we really dig away at who did what so many years ago? All that really matters …’ He took a satisfied breath through his nose, and let it puff away. ‘Is that I’ve won . Afraid I left my sword in your friend Jakob, but I could strangle you easily enough. It’s a fine tradition with Empresses. Or beat your brains out?’

Alex was not loving either choice. She kept edging back, but another couple of paces would have her heels over the void.

‘Or you could always jump.’ Duke Michael shrugged, as if this was all a sad necessity they had to help each other through. ‘Then you’d get a few more moments on the way down. I’ve found when it comes to it, people will do anything for a few more moments. Especially … well …’ And he smiled. A smile with a hint of lazy contempt. As though a hint was all she deserved. ‘A piece of shit like you.’

God knew how many times she’d said it about herself. But for him to say it?

This smug fucking puffed-up traitor, a prince born in the Imperial Bedchamber, whining about how hard he’d had it.

This self-pitying sack of lying slime, who’d been given everything anyone could want, then killed one sister, blamed the other, and started a war so he could steal more.

All her life, there’d always been some bastard wanting to put their foot on her neck. But this piece of shit? He was the worst.

Alex had always been able to cry on cue, and now she crushed her face up and let the tears flow. Just the way Jakob once told her to.

‘Really?’ sneered Duke Michael.

‘Please …’ she whimpered, cringing. She had no knife, but behind her back she squeezed her hand into a trembling fist. ‘I don’t want to die.’

‘For pity’s sake.’ He stepped closer. ‘You’re a crowned Empress, you could at least try to—’

Alex sprang, catching his shirt with her open hand and smashing her fist right into his mouth.

It was the best punch she’d ever thrown, catching him off guard, snapping his head up. She wasn’t a big woman, though, and he was a big man. He didn’t go down, only took one shocked step back. Alex had been an Empress for hours and a princess for months, but she’d been a street rat all her life, so she did what they do in the slums of the Holy City and jumped him.

‘Fuck!’ she screeched as she caught him around the shoulders, wrapping her legs around his waist. ‘ You … ’ turning to a mindless growl as she sank her teeth into his nose and bit down hard as she could.

He gave a great howl, clutched at her, dragged at her, scrabbling desperately to tear her off, and finally sank his fist into her side and made her gasp, jaws coming open, losing her grip.

She caught a glimpse of his fist coming, then she was crumpled against the parapet, head full of stars.

She tried to shake them away, groggy.

Up , Alex, get up.

God, her face was one great throb. Again.

She rolled over, sort of sitting. Big tunic twisted around her, so heavy.

They might put her down but she’d never stay down. She blinked, groaned, trying to focus. She floundered up to one knee. The lighthouse was made of jelly, wobbling all over the place.

Duke Michael stood over her, one bloody hand clutched to the shredded wreckage of his nose. ‘You bit me!’ he spat, not just hurt but outraged.

Surely she was going to lose, and likely she was going to die, but fuck this horrible bastard. ‘You’re the piethe of shit,’ she said, a bit slurred, but he got the gist, and she showed her teeth in a red smile, and laughed at him. ‘You’re the biggest piece of shit in Europe.’

‘You little bitch .’ And he caught her around the throat and heaved her up.

Couldn’t breathe. She twisted and clutched and kicked. Her toes brushed the gritty flagstones. His teeth were bared, like a wild animal. How could she ever have been pleased to see that awful fucking face?

Couldn’t breathe. She scratched at his hands, plucked at his shoulders. But her arms were nowhere near long enough. Always wanted to be taller. Blood leaked from his torn nose, ran into his beard.

Couldn’t breathe. Her throat squelched and glugged. Face throbbed. Lungs burst. In spite of the blaze, it was getting dark at the top of the Pharos.

Over the rushing of blood in her ears, she thought she heard a tapping. A scraping. Coming from the steps.

Duke Michael’s eye twitched. He glanced sideways. His grip loosened a fraction. Enough for Alex to get one foot on the ground. Enough for her to jerk the other up and knee him in the balls.

‘Ooof …’ he groaned, eyes bulging. His grip loosened more. Enough for her to twist closer, get her splinter-riddled, bloodstained arm inside his, and with her last strength dig her broken fingernail right into his eye.

‘Gah!’ He let her go, stumbling back, towards the broken parapet, towards that inky patch of night sky, just as something burst from the roaring column of Saint Natalia’s Flame.

Jakob of Thorn, bloody teeth set in a mad snarl. The hilt of a sword stuck from his stomach. The hilt of a dagger from his side.

Alex tottered back, dragging in a desperate, wheezing breath, tripping and falling as the old knight plunged through the flames like a devil from hell, his clothes on fire, his hair, his beard, even. He took a lurching step, one arm flailing while the other hung limp, more falling than charging.

Duke Michael tried to turn but Jakob hurtled into him first. He was a big man, but so was Jakob, and the old knight held nothing back.

They both left the ground, hanging in space for an instant, wreathed in fire, against the night sky.

Then they dropped.

Alex stared, mouth wide open, quick breaths whooping in her battered throat. Then she twisted onto her belly and wriggled to the brink.

‘Oh God …’ she whispered.

She saw the flaming speck, far below, tumbling down the side of the Pillar, dwindling as it plunged towards the sea.

Then it winked out.

‘God damn it,’ hissed Balthazar, heaving at the crank. He had never been proficient at manual labour and, further, was trembling with a bone-deep weariness following a magical duel with a body-stealing former-Empress. It was only the thought of rubbing Baptiste’s face in his glory that was keeping him upright.

‘God damn it.’ Arms aching with effort, hands singed by lightning, sweat beading his forehead as the grate over the Athenaeum’s gate squeaked up by the most frustrating of gradual degrees.

He pictured her expression when he reminded her of the day’s events, something he would now be doing on an hourly basis. Remember that time I saved your life from a phrenomantically controlled werewolf? Then contended with one of the most powerful sorceresses in Europe and fought her to a draw? Or wait. And bested her utterly! Who would be there to correct the record, after all? And finally proved myself the one man capable of unmasking her as the reincarnation of the supposedly deceased Empress Eudoxia herself!

‘God damn it!’ he snarled as he hauled impatiently at the crank. Here was the final, crushing victory over his chief tormentor of which he had for so long dreamed. A defeat that, however slippery she might be, she would have no choice but to concede!

Balthazar Sham Ivam Draxi … she would say, pronouncing each syllable correctly, and then, with a delicious grimace of dismay, I was wrong about you all along. You are no figure of scorn but indeed rank among the finest magicians not only of the day but of all time. Not really her voice, he had to admit, but that would be the gist! Your powers are formidable, your insight unique, and your calves not unattractive!

She would look into his eyes. I was wrong about you all along.

You came back for us. For me. You are …

He paused, staring at nothing. ‘A good man,’ he whispered.

He let go the wheel, chains rattling, tearing his shirt on one of the spikes in his haste as he slipped under the gate.

‘You will never guess what happened!’ he cackled as he ducked out into the night. ‘Severa was—’

Few men indeed had witnessed more of the uncanny, eldritch, and obscene. But the unholy spectacle on the lawn before the Athenaeum was one that gave even Balthazar pause.

It was as if a giant sack of animals, people, and bodily fluids had dropped from an immense height and burst apart. Gore was showered everywhere, the columns of the Athenaeum spattered with blood, scraps of the hides of exotic species dangling from the broken trees, organs that defied identification flung widely across the beslimed grass.

In the midst of this charnel yard knelt Brother Diaz, Vigga on her hands and knees not far from him. The fact that she was largely naked, slathered in gore, and making a strange sobbing whine indicated that she had recently recovered from one of her transformations. That went a long way towards explaining the state of the place. She truly was incorrigible when it came to the generation of dead bodies.

Balthazar wrinkled his nose, clearing the steps of shredded meat with one shoe, kicking a horribly distorted severed arm aside with a grunt of disgust. Brother Diaz did not seem in a particularly receptive state of mind. He had not so much as looked over.

‘As I was saying …’ Balthazar edged gingerly around a revolting conglomeration of dead flesh, misshapen bone, warped arms, legs, teeth, horns. ‘You will never guess … what happened …’

He petered out as Vigga made a wailing sob, choking off into a sick gurgle. It was becoming clear that a not inconsiderable amount of the blood on her was coming out of her. There was a great oozing gash in her tattooed back. One of her legs was torn and twisted under her in a manner that did not look at all healthy, one of her arms and some of her fingers were far from straight. Was a flap of her face hanging off? That really looked as if it could use a bandage.

‘Where is Baptiste?’ asked Balthazar, glancing around. ‘Hiding, no doubt, that bloody woman never … sticks her neck … out …’

Brother Diaz slowly shook his head, blood-smeared face streaked with tears. Balthazar realised there was something stretched out between the werewolf and the monk. A carcass? Horribly twisted, missing much of its skull. Were those … knee boots, on its broken legs?

Balthazar’s mouth had turned suddenly dry. He looked at Vigga, shaking, blubbing, bleeding on all fours.

‘What did you do?’ he whispered.

She rocked forwards and was noisily sick, sobbing and retching at once, bringing up a stream of bloody offal. She coughed, shuddering as she dragged something out of her mouth. Something long and bloody, stuck in her teeth. Wads of black, curly hair.

‘What did you do ?’ he demanded.

She gave a wretched howl, lurched onto her hands, and was sick again, lumps of black meat splatting down into a widening bloody puddle. Something glinted there. Could it be … a gold tooth?

Vigga stared at it, whimpering with each hard breath, tears dripping from her face.

Balthazar leaned down over her and screamed it. ‘ What did you do? ’