—GODSOURCE—

words & art: Alexander Ruegg

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CHAPTER ONE (v1.02)

BEFORE GOD

Above the French countryside hung the great red moon, filling nearly a quarter of the cloudless sky, now that she was full. Her crystalline halo girdled the celestial body in a calm orbit.

Three figures knee-deep in fen mist made haste across the earth below. The two on horseback kept their mounts at a canter. The third held pace on foot with her eye on Monaco’s glow just past the horizon, kissing the darkness, unmistakable, even at a distance. The lead rider raised a finger to the halo around the moon, sighting something.

They halted. The second rider rifled through the baggage weighing down his wheezing horse to pass the runner a collapsed gold and limestone device. She drew alongside the first rider, his arm still raised.

“If my mother only knew what I was spending her loans on,” she said to him. He grunted. She sighted the gold and limestone instrument. Her fingers laid on the gears and made small touches to the focus. She set beside his aim, feeling the earthy heat coming off him from the long ride.

She put her eye against the skyglass’s small end. What she saw was bright, and blurry, and deep red. She made a delicate adjustment to the largest lens while the first rider held his arm steady so she could see.

The skyglass focused. Out there in the moon’s rings, among the masonry fragments, shattered archways, hovering cathedral steeples, and jagged ice were angels. The first rider squinted, straining to see something he never could.

“I continue to compliment your estimations,” the runner said to him. “Your sights were trained on them. Almost perfectly. Not bad for a man.”

The second rider laughed.

The first rider’s voice was a fumble of syllables when he spoke. The first few words he formed were an animal’s mumble and he didn’t craft a human sentence until he asked a question. “What do the angels look like, Kaikesi?”

“Like men,” Kaikesi explained what she observed through the scope. Angels’ bodies fluttered at their edges like vapor rising from water to meet morning, matter mid-transition. “They look like unfocused men. Like when one wakes to the dawn and the earth is misshapen by shadow. But they remain a gentle fire, just unguided. Lovely, and light. Hah! Amazing.”

The first rider grunted in understanding. He closed his eyes as he listened to her description.

“They are countless in number. As many as there are stars in the sky,” Kaikesi said. “Simply—flying out there. Hmm. They’re taking the broken masonry from what's left of the Children’s Wall and working it into something. Are—a-are they making clothes for themselves? Out of stone?”

She exhaled in alarm.

“Angels are innocent,” the second rider said in a gentle voice, dismounting and walking his horse beside them. “They wouldn’t make clothes, would they, Akhet?”

“Not of any sort, Zachary,” Akhet said. His eyes swung open, stabbing ahead before shifting to his companions in concern and confusion. “Angels are industrious beings, much more than you or I could ever dream. Incapable of destruction. They—it’s likely nothing. They are tidying up the moon’s rings. The place remains a mess since the Fall.”

“Yea?” Kaikesi asked. “When do you imagine they’ll finish their labor?”

“Not in my lifetime. Likely not in yours. Not even in your grandchildren’s.”

“Will they ever finish, then?”

“Not without God’s help. And we can’t help them, either.” He squeezed her hand to get her attention. “Let’s stay here.”

“Hmm?”

“For a while. Away from the rest of things.”

“Away? Away from a chance to make money?” Akhet shook his head. Kaikesi held his fingers tighter in hers. “Away from God, then?”

He took a moment to meet her awaiting look. She had messed hair from the run and she was beautiful.

“Need we take any action?” she encouraged, nodding at the moon. “Get your rifle. I can spot the angels for you!”

“No, they’re in low orbit. They’re harmless up there. Come, to business.”

 

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After a few more miles on horseback, Akhet sat at an ovular cherry table to the left of the Prince of Monaco. In thirty-six hours, the Prince would be married.

Kaikesi held her place behind Akhet, back to the wall, next to the other pages. They were all women, all rail-straight at attention with eyes forward, uniformed in cool blue, trimmed with green in emphatic obedience. The Prince surrounded himself with the best Vocalists in Europe. His bride-to-be rested at his right hand, presenting her concerned expression as motivation.

“Royalty is confronted with threats each day,” the Prince stated to those gathered. “Corporeal and ethereal in equal measure. Christendom has blossomed for eleven hundred years out of those African bogs of shit and piss into a kingdom spanning all three of earth’s continents and each language ever babbled. The kingdom of man is in an era of blessed peace. A peace I shall maintain.”

That peaceful era’s ongoing maintenance was an open secret. The Ark had completed its long campaign into the Orient against the Song Empire and the lineage of Asoka in the subcontinent. Fujiwara on the island of Nippon had surrendered without a fight. The power of God had brought unity to all people it touched. The Ark had indeed felled heathen elephants in India, but it was carried on the legs of man. A man’s soul is immortal, his flesh can, and must, grow weak, lest he tread in the company of angels.

The Ark traveled up the Nile to its source at Lake Solomon. It carried clarity and calm, transforming the African jungles into luscious farmland fit for God's churches.

At last, the divine warchest returned to the Vatican, where Akhet had openly witnessed the Pope use it for a footstool in the evenings and as a coffee tray in the mornings. Another open secret: the Pope loved coffee from Arabia. That sympathy was less contentious as the years passed. Most in the kingdom of man awaited the day when the papacy might reveal this affectation and the citizens could enjoy the drink freely.

“Rebel angels have threatened the life of the woman who will be my wife,” the Prince said. “They haunt her, appearing to her day and night. I cannot protect her from what I cannot see. Tomorrow we will be married. Tomorrow, we WILL be married, gentlemen. Need I elaborate further?”

“Majesty, your coin is all the necessary elaboration,” Akhet said.

Kaikesi laughed in stillness while the rest of the room gaped. She tried to share in the humor with the other pages lined beside her. They were already bristling and raising their chins to match their stiff arms, scoffing at Kaikesi looks and her patchwork uniform.

Like Akhet, her clothes were crisscrossed with abundant battlefield mending. Her wool sleeves were replaced with Egyptian alligator skins, gifted to Kaikesi by Fatimah herself. Her boots were laced with Bactrian camel gut. Kaikesi had learned survivalist hand-to-hand martial arts during their lengthy stays in Jerusalem, much more vicious than what the Swiss Guard practiced.

Japanese Fujiwara steel reinforced the Vatican-issued gladius Akhet kept on his hip.

Their worldliness left them standing out. While Egyptians such as Akhet were becoming a more common sight so close to Rome, Kaikesi’s brown Indian skin was inescapable, exotic, and unnerving at each stop since crossing into Europe at Constantinople. Together, they raised terrific commotion everywhere they went.

The Prince lowered the room’s temperature with an easy sweep from his white-gloved hand. “Speak, Vocalist, that’s why you’re here,” the Prince said to Akhet. “I attempt you to maintain a measure of reverence, considering the circumstances.”

Akhet eased forward in his chair. He clasped his fingers together. He gathered attention in a passing glance from the surrounding the table, absorbing raised eyebrows and quickened pulses from his young and old peers alike.

“The angels are not here for your bride,” Akhet said with rough assertion. He addressed the only woman at the table. “Apologies, Princess. But it is true. Women may be able to see angels, and they may be able to speak with them, but it is not a fair exchange to the angels. Angels listen to a woman who speaks with the same amount of interest as, perhaps, a woman listens to a dog who speaks. It’s an interesting trick, but truthfully, their earthly words are of little consequence to the divine. No, the angel is here for a different reason entirely. The angel is here because the Prince wanted to perform his wedding rites before the holiest of holies.” Akhet, expressionless in the mouth and demanding an answer only with his gold-gray eyes, asked the amazed Prince, “Your Majesty, did you intend for the Ark’s presence to be a big surprise to all your wedding guests?”

 

 

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The other Vocalists cleared the room. A young Japanese man entered on thin legs. A large wooden trunk was bound by heavy leather to his back, supported by well-placed straps to rest the weight on his narrow hips. He strode in confidence to Akhet’s side where he and Kaikesi had gathered to speak with the Prince and his bride.

“Majesty, this is Zachary, my Fuser,” Akhet introduced the younger man. “He makes the machines and weaponry I require to do my job, and someday, he’ll be a better Vocalist than I.”

“This is your entire class?” the Prince asked, indicating to Kaikesi and Zachary.

“Surprise,” Zachary said in a light voice to match his frame. “Minimizes redundancy in opinions and talents.”

“Kaikesi?” Akhet prefaced. “Would you explain the landscape to the man?”

Kaikesi stepped forward to speak to the Prince. “You’ve brought a hex upon your house, taking the Ark under this roof as your wedding trophy.”

“No, actually, hexes have since been erased from Europe, darling.”

Kaikesi shook her head no. “The angel Chemos, a servant of Lucifer, has made several attempts to seize the Ark since its return from Africa. It’s my determination—”

“How do you know this?”

“Because I’ve seen Chemos, Majesty. When I saw him, he spoke. And when he spoke, he told me he was a servant of Lucifer. This was—”

“How do you know Chemos has been trying to steal the Ark?”

“—please don’t interrupt. I was explaining that we have prevented Chemos from stealing the Ark for the last two years while in Africa.”

The Princess perked up, her jewelry tinkling against itself before the Prince could raise his voice again. “You’ve been to Africa?” she asked Kaikesi.

“I have. I’ve nearly been south of the horizon.”

The Prince stammered.

“Gah—!” He batted at the air in disgust. “How can I be sure this is true? She spoke with the angel Chemos? How can you trust her, Vocalist? This could be a deceit! She said herself Chemos was a servant of Lucifer.”

Kaikesi folded her arms over her chest.

“If you’d like to gamble this woman’s life against another woman’s God-given ability to talk to angels, then I’m not sure you are taking your wedding vows as seriously as Christ meant you to.”

The Princess squeezed her betrothed’s dangling hand with pleading urgency.

 

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Kaikesi sat with the Princess. They excused themselves from the men, side by side at the far end of the cherry table. The Princess explained in as much detail as she could what she had seen.

An angel, tall, made of luminous dust. This did nothing to raise Kaikesi attention until she mentioned what the angel wore.

“Is that important?” the Princess asked.

“Have you ever seen an angel wear clothes before?” Kaikesi answered.

She went into detail.

Angels were harmless. When they came to earth, they are likely lost. They would not hurt a soul. The worst they might do before blowing away on a light breeze is mend a fence between two neighbors’ property. If the angel the Princess saw, Chemos, was crafting clothing—out of stone, in particular—that was terrible. That was dangerous. It meant Chemos was no longer innocent. He might as well have been a morningstar. He might as well have been human. Or worse.

Angels that became as confused as Chemos were mouths for misinformation. Women, being the only souls on earth that could fathom their unearthly language, were vulnerable to influence.

“He said the strangest things,” the Princess said. She would not meet Kaikesi’s eyes. Her voice cracked. “He said I was t-t-trapping myself. In my life. In my very existence. Wha—? My life—”

“This creature is compromised of his reason for being. Believe nothing.”

Kaikesi stood. In the same motion, she urged the Princess to remain seated. She obeyed. The Prince approached. Kaikesi attempted to halt him. He refused. “Majesty—”

The Prince put his arm around his Princess.

Kaikesi made a move for the Prince, closing her fist, when she realized Akhet and Zachary were already going for the door. She paused, then followed.

“Chemos has poured poison in the Princess’ ear,” Akhet said at full stride in the corridor. “And the Prince’s pride will prevent any true measures to guard the Ark. He could never appear so weak.”

“We floated thousands of miles of African river,” Zachary said. “The Ark was never so exposed as this.”

“We will have little time to mount a defense,” Kaikesi said to Akhet.

"It shall be done," Akhet answered.

“Have we the tools?” she asked Zachary.

Zachary patted his pack.

“Plenty. Quicksilver for the kunai. A mouth organ. A Retiarius. Even powdered angel skin and tinctures of holy water, as you requested, Akhet. Fabulous selection in this city.”

Akhet’s face split with a smile at Zachary’s words. “Inches and seconds will separate us from the devil’s errand boy stealing the only thing of actual value in all of known Christendom. Hell of a fucking way to make a day’s pay.”

 

 

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Akhet operated in any climate. Africa, Asia, Europe, all were lands within sight of Heaven. As long as he found himself between earth and sky, he spoke truth on behalf of the Lord as a Vocalist of Christendom. All souls prayed, nearly the same on that day in 1030 anno domini as they did when Christ Himself walked barefoot from Jerusalem to Rome and sat upon the rock Peter presented to him. All souls prayed, but without Christ, they could not be simply answered. Jesus had no children. The conduit to God was left a frayed wire when Christ died. It was not broken, though. The prayers, of course, did not cease because mankind loved God, and God loved his children.

It fell to Man to find their way back to the Lord. They achieved this through the Ark, rediscovered in a forgotten antechamber outside Memphis. Into the Ark, any soul could speak to God, and God could answer His truth. To bring the voice of His truth to every pocket of humanity, the Vatican anointed Vocalists, men such as Akhet, to deliver prayers to and from God.

Kaikesi touched a golden bauble to hear ear, a prayer, a hushed voice crackling to her from between strands of wind.

“ ‘I wish I was taller,’ ” Kaikesi repeated the whispered prayer aloud. She took another bauble from the box, each a sphere with golden strings stitched so tight, it might be fused solid. Kaikesi breathed through the prayer’s strands. It dawned at its center. She felt her own breath on her palm. “It says, ‘Dear Lord, undo this leprosy.’ Skin lesions. Classic. What else? This one. ‘Please, God, give me the strength to keep running.’ Sounds local—hmm. ‘Good Lord, help me teach this woman some Goddamn respect.’ ” She recoiled. “No, go burn yourself, heathen.”

Kaikesi put the bauble back. There was no time for them now.

She read one last prayer before giving up. “ ‘God, let this work.’ ” She squinted at the western horizon, toward the edge of the world. “You ready, Zach?”

She helped Zachary bind a Retiarius into place over a stained glass window beside the cathedral’s main entryway. Each fine thread in its netting was spun from linen blessed in the Jordan, and transparent in direct sunlight.

Work completed, they rendezvoused with Akhet.

Akhet had his hand to his mouth in contemplation while his eyes studied the cathedral’s roof—countless angles and concealed pockets. Countless hiding places. The pavement beneath them bobbed in the Mediterranean harbor. The triangular spires a mile above swayed like tropical trees in the sea breeze.

The buoyant cathedral was not made of stone like the houses of God in Westminster and Canterbury. Instead, the Prince commissioned an architect named Zafadola from the recently-annexed Zaragoza regions of Moorish Spain to weave his prized cathedral out of angel hair. The silvery-blue fibers were so fine that it was impossible to tell the material by touch, woven into glassy, mirrored prisms, climbing to the clouds. A sharp blade with decent strength could penetrate the weaving, though none had succeeded.

This lightness left the structure seaworthy, just as the Prince had requested, moored in the bay by three stone anchors. The cathedral’s threadwork focused light so finely that it was self-illuminating during daylight hours. It was also required constant repairs. Angel hair was imported from all across Europe and Asia to maintain the structure.

Akhet snapped his fingers at Zachary, eyes still trained on the swaying steeples and the deep valleys between them. The young man placed a glass tincture in Akhet’s palm.

Akhet fought back trembling excitement as he raised the dropper over his eye. Gray liquid shook loose from the tincture. He blinked the holy water away. His whites became whiter. The redness receded. His irises rose from medium brown to amber-gold.

He bent to one knee. His body shuddered. He pounded his fist to the stones. “Yes, yes,” he hissed through clenched teeth and a growing smile. “Fuck, yes, I’m here!”

With that, he was off with a belt of ecstasy. The other two stayed in pursuit. Akhet sprinted the cathedral’s perimeter. When he noticed something with those golden eyes, he pointed, and each time, Zachary flung a kunai dart at the target. Upon impact, the dart released a gentle quicksilver spray. They had adapted their fashion from the Oriental heathens during the Asian campaign. Their edges pierced any weavings. Zachary shook his head at himself each time Akhet spotted a weakness in the cathedral—arrow-slit windows, tiny stained glass fixtures, or any opening.

Their trace of the perimeter complete, they canvassed the main hall, fixing alarms to each door. There were certain portals too wide to be covered with a Retiarius or a Quicksilver kunai. Zachary left those to Kaikesi. Stepping between florists doing their own wedding preparation, she took a few minutes with each exposed opening. She carried a Hun’s accordion. At each place, she pressed and expanding the accordion while uttering prayers through a French mouth organ pressed to her lips.

The prayer was rendered almost instantly from Heaven, stretching angel hair out of the walls to cover the flimsy wooden doors and sealing the potential entry point.

Akhet emptied a line of powdered bone onto the podium at the cathedral’s head. He lowered his nose and snorted the powder through his nostril.

“Gah! Urgh, the return of the thin white duke! Alright, the doors are barred, the alarms are armed, our prize is safe. But if God—urgh—if God had meant for us to feel safe at all times, he would not have invented stink.” Akhet patted his nose. “Something is rotten. Like glitter with no gold, this is a sty with no pig.”

“Well,” Kaikesi said. “I suppose this means we must wade through shit to lock this damnable place down.”

Akhet clapped his hands in an echo.

“While I’m off finding a metaphorical hog,” Zachary asked Kaikesi with a gentle wave at Akhet’s glee. “Put a tent on this circus, would you?”

 

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The wedding commenced with tremendous grace the following afternoon. Lords and Cardinals processioned in twos across the luminous bridge to the cathedral, dressed in as much Roman fashion as their station could afford them. They held gentle conversation. A few Lords had ladies entwining themselves to the crook of their arms, occasionally nodding to one another from under elegant, wide-brimmed hats that Zachary recognized from a certain Spanish designer.

The Cardinals walked shoulder to shoulder, chatting all the while. The Vocalists followed the Cardinals, changed out of their usual regional uniforms into less functional, beige dress robes. Behind the Vocalists walked their pages. The pages were a mixture of men and women. They already spilled with suppressed shrieks of excitement. They had cracked wine casks before sun up.

Akhet, Kaikesi, and Zachary were the first into the cathedral. They watched every body enter. They watched the seventy-foot cherry wood doors grind shut. Akhet barred the doors himself.

The Prince found his place at the head of the church. Beside him rested the Ark. It stood just taller than his knee. A light, yet thickly-woven shroud the color of sky draped over the box, hiding its true form from sight. But it was there.

Moses and his followers crafted it more than two thousand years before the birth of Jesus during the Jews’ exodus from Egypt. All prayer to God, no matter how faint, touched briefly with the Ark before ascending to Heaven.

The congregation rose. The Princess entered. She and her train proceeded down the aisle with help from four girls dressed with porcelain wings hitched to their backs with Florentine leather straps.

Kaikesi felt Akhet’s hand on her shoulder. She caught a look at him. His skin was pale, except around his eyes, and nose, and mouth, where it had turned a little pink. He had not slept all night.

“Let’s leave,” he said to her in an ashen-toned warning. “I can’t be here, so near to God, hmm? These places leave me rotted and hollow. Let’s go back to France. Let’s go north. No,” he paused. “South!”

Kaikesi felt her mouth go dry. She licked her lips just a little to help her get the words out. “You’re in a church,” Kaikesi said.

“Yea.”

“In a church, one hundred feet from the Ark of the Covenant. A cricket could giggle and He’d hear.”

“God has better things to do than oversee a matrimonial puppet show,” Akhet dismissed with a throaty whisper, beginning to sway and dance on soft feet and exposed nerves. “For two certain reasons. First, his eye is drawn to love, and hate. Whatever is up there at the altar? Yea, that is mere passionless masturbation.”

“He doesn’t keep an eye on the Ark?”

Akhet kept up his small, quiet dance in-place.

“He does not, for the second reason: He won’t spare a glance, because He knows I’m here.”

Kaikesi shifted him into the foyer out of sight while the wedding went on.

“It’s here,” she whispered, eyes off him toward something else. Akhet put his hand to the hilt of his gladius. “On the chandelier. Over your shoulder. You’re going to have to trap it for me. Ready?”

He laughed, nodding. Kaikesi did not.

“Akhet, how much coin has gone up your nose in the last—?”

“Do not expect to judge me for—”

He couldn’t finish his sentence. He snapped his head aside as Kaikesi reached for a kunai fastened to her leg. Time held. She caught Zachary’s eye. He had already responded with extra-sensory speed, just as Akhet had. The trio inhaled together. Kaikesi spotted the angel and flung the dagger. It grazed Akhet’s cheek, a shared will and half a hair making the difference. Not a heartbeat later, Zachary traced where she had targeted. He threw his blade, too. Though he could not see his prey, his aim was true.

A stone fixture toppled from the golden chandelier. It resembled a fountain cherub come to life, spouting water from extra exposures in its stonework. In its fall, Akhet felt the angel’s eyes upon him. Then it struck the red carpet between the pews. Its stone armor fissured and fell away. The audience shrieked. The chandelier crashed to the floor behind the angel.

The formless specter flung off its remaining stone clothing and vanished from Akhet’s sight.

“Chemos!” Akhet shouted. He held a heavy gladius at attention overhead with both his hands, sight darting through the debris and cathedral’s unfurling chaos.

An invisible fist thrust into his stomach. A second strike landed on his jaw.

Akhet flailed with his weapon at his untraceable foe. Men in the congregation pressed against the sides of the building, shouting in blind panic. As if possessed, a few men were lifted into the air by nothingness. Chemos’ unseen might hurled them aside, flinging a few in Akhet’s direction as makeshift projectiles.

Catching the flailing bodies that he could, Akhet yelled for calm so he could hear the women’s voices rise over the din.

“Show me!” he shouted, easing an aged Cardinal into a pew after a brief flight. He could hear Chemos nearby. Its thirsty metallic breath creaked like a kinked brass horn. “Ladies of Christ, you can see the angel. Point and show me!”

The women jabbed their fingers at something he could not see. Their cries of caution could not come quickly enough as more attacks met Akhet’s jaw unprepared. He swung wildly with the two-handed gladius, never connecting.

Losing breath, he began to panic, suffering more attacks from Chemos, drawing blood from his cheek, his neck, and from somewhere on his scalp, running down through his hair into his eyes, and Akhet lunged without direction, gasping and desperate, until he saw Kaikesi step out from behind the wreckage of the chandelier.

She pointed to the emptiness between them. She raised her fists.

“Akhet, get in close on him,” she commanded. He struggled to breathe. He couldn’t lift his sword. “Christ, man! Put your fist to his head, and rattle the fucking China!”

Akhet spat and breathed through clenched teeth. He discarded the sword and raised his fists to her. They stepped cautiously toward one another.

Ten feet from him, Kaikesi threw a hook. Akhet blocked at nothingness. The angel’s identical hook landed against his guard. He instantly countered, punishing the attack with one, two, three strikes against Chemos. Kaikesi backpedaled in mimicry. She stutter-stepped, and lunged back forward with a hero’s jab. Akhet bobbed his head to the side in a dodge.

He grunted, eyes widening in hunger. He and Kaikesi held their distance as she raised and lowered her fists. Akhet took the offensive. He and the invisible creature traded blows. He felt the angel with each punch. He inched closer. He took more hits. He laid out punishment in return. The gathered crowd raised in excitement at the shadowboxing. The men bellowed. The women shouted in encouragement.

Akhet took Chemos by the throat, spun him around, and flung him back down the aisle. There was a dull, metallic thud when the Retiarius released, snaring the angel. Lighting his long pipe with his hands and stomping spikes into the cathedral floor to bind the prey in place, Zachary completed the capture.

Pipe clenched between his teeth, he clapped Akhet on the back. “Well done,” he said in his light voice. “You fight like a woman.”

 

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“You have done Christendom a great service,” the Prince said to Akhet once they were alone in the tower.

At the Prince’s bidding, two men in uniforms set a chest heavy with coins at the side of the room and departed. They returned two more times with additional chests to complete the payment.

Chemos wheezed in his instrumental voice under the net. Every few minutes, Zachary pumped quicksilver vapor on the angel, exposing its form to he, the Prince, and Akhet, so they could see what Kaikesi saw plainly.

“Sorry about the mess,” Akhet said, wiping blood from his forehead. The color returning to his face could not hide his complete exhaustion. “If I don’t deliver this coin to Led Píl the Druid of Scapa Flow in the next fortnight, underpaid men will scrape me off the walls with a bucket and brush.”

The Prince stepped past Akhet. He motioned Zachary away from Chemos. He keyed on the eyes of the formless angel. He punched him squarely. Satisfied, he hit him again and again.

“Majesty,” Zachary said, trying to back the Prince away. “The Ark is safe. Your bride is safe. I promise you, he is secure and can do no further harm.”

“Take your hand off me, sodomite!” the Prince batted Zachary’s hand away.

He nearly said something more when Chemos began to speak. It was a flinty, pitched noise, like an intentional wind through a tiny pipe organ. Kaikesi knelt beside the angel and listened. The men remained quiet to let her hear.

Kaikesi translated.

“The Ark must be unmade,” Kaikesi whispered. She listened further. “...Lucifer is amassing an army across the western ocean.” Chemos spoke more. “He will not relent. Armageddon…” Chemos struggled to go on. “We must unmake the world... Armageddon…”

“They—they mean us harm!” the Prince urged.

“No shit,” Zachary scoffed with one eyebrow raised. “Even the most minor Armageddons do some harm, in my experience.”

“You misunderstand, Majesty,” Kaikesi said. “Chemos used the word, ‘we,’ meaning us. Mankind, ‘we.’ We must unmake the world?”

“Enough. Vocalist, kill the thing.”

Akhet flicked a coin at Chemos. It passed straight through the bound angel’s body. He shrugged.

“And how shall I kill him? Do you suggest I draw and quarter him between horses? He’s ethereal, Majesty. It’s as if you ask me to ‘kill’ a handful of spun sugar, or to kill ‘jealousy,’ hmm? You don't ‘kill’ angels.”

He lifted his chest of coins onto his shoulder and headed toward the exit.

“Then imprison him!”

“No longer my concern.”

In Akhet’s refusal, the Prince flew into a rage. He battered Chemos with his fists. His exertions echoed down the corridor.

The angel cried out under the assault. Its wheezes became weeping honks. The noise grew. Then, they became too pained, falling quieter. The Prince would not cease until he was alone with his own racket, panting and drained.

It was a simple maneuver to throw the Prince off the bound angel. Akhet held him against the wall with a look and a pointed finger.

“Stop,” he commanded in the same steady, ashen voice. The Prince tried to breathe. He hiccuped instead. “This angel is a living thing that has enough spit and soul to feel fear, and confusion, and it communicates that through pain. You’re incapable of seeing him, so you lay your hands upon him? You hit him but you don’t feel him.” Akhet expanded his fingers and touched them gently to the Prince’s chest. “You are a smug man. Do you know what that implies? That you are feel terror in your soul. In time, you will make yourself vulnerable because you feel this earthly plane will eventually be pleased to meet you, hmm? That you can manipulate it until you are entirely safe. A smug, powerful man that teases his environment for entertainment longs to share his private self, but cannot, because he remains afraid. A smug man attempts to force the world. You cannot keep up the act. No man can.”

Akhet chopped the Prince in the throat. He gagged.

“Coward.”

Mind made up, Kaikesi lowered her reward beside Akhet’s discarded chest. He dragged the limp angel from the tower.

“No,” he said to Zachary as the Fuser lowered his box, too. “We take what’s fair. We did the job.”

“True, we did do the job,” Zachary reasoned, hefting the box again, jostling with coins. “You make more sense when you’re sober, Akhet.”

“Greed is simpler than God,” Akhet answered.

“You’re setting him free?” Kaikesi asked of the angel.

“I’m sending him home.”

 

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The Prince rediscovered the rebellious Vocalist and his proteges at the end of the cathedral bridge. Akhet already had a balloon bound to the angel’s net, hovering in place from a green flame’s encouragement. Chemos had regained strength and was protesting in his language.

“What—what’s he saying?” the Prince demanded. “More about Arma—”

“He’s unrepentant,” Kaikesi said.

“He’s unrepentant,” Akhet repeated. Taking a kunai, he pinned a scroll to the angel, ignoring its cry of pain.

“I have already sent a dove to Pope Theodora,” the Prince said. “She will—”

“ ‘To the soul who relieves Hannibal Akhet-Rea of his manhood,” Akhet interrupted, reading a scroll. “The reward shall be their weight in gold. With honor, Her Holiness, Pope Theodora.’ ” He shot a short, stinging breath from his nostrils. “How much do you weigh, Majesty? In my estimation, you’ll fit snugly in the middle echelon of man, beast, and choral creature out for my blood.”

Zachary made the final fastening to the net. He cranked the fuel dial. Green flame sent the balloon and the netted angel out of sight, skyward.

“I can’t kill an angel,” Akhet said. “But I can kill you, Majesty.”

Kaikesi and Zachary already had their packs loaded while Akhet and the Prince held in their silence. The calm was too welcoming, and Akhet followed his students toward the countryside.

“Think sensibly,” the Prince said. At last, his voice had steadied, and that paused Akhet. “That angel, Chemos, he is an agent of evil.”

Akhet shook his head. He parted without an answer.

 

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