“Okay. But can I ask a few questions?”
“Of course.” He spread his glowing arms expansively, but with the kind of grace that reminds you why angels are angels. “You’ve earned it.”
“What about my trial?”
“It will be as if it never happened. We’ve announced that the whole thing was Anaita’s deliberate attempt to confuse and mislead.”
“Wow. Thanks. That’s a huge load off my mind. And Anaita herself?”
Karael went a little bit cloudy for a moment. He might have been shaking his head in sadness, not in anger. If he’d had a head instead of just a vaguely head-shaped glow, that is. “She will be punished, don’t you worry about that.”
“Yes, but did she explain why she did some of those things? Because a lot of what happened doesn’t really make sense.”
For a moment he seemed oddly still. “Like what, son?”
“Well, I don’t want to waste your time. I know you must be very busy. Are you in charge of my part of Earth now that Anaita’s out of the picture?”
“The division of duties in the Third Sphere is a great deal more complicated than that, but I suppose the simple answer is yes.” A thin beam of sunshine. “I suppose I’m your boss now. But of course the hierarchy remains the same. You’ll still report to—”
“Temuel,” I said, cutting him off. “Right?”
“Right.” He hadn’t liked being interrupted. “So, if there’s nothing more, Doloriel, then I will send you back and get on with some of that new business waiting for me.”
“If you have another moment, sir, I didn’t finish telling you some of the things that didn’t make sense. See, it was all weird from the very beginning. Like when the souls first began disappearing—the ones we found out later went to Kainos? Edward Walker was the very first one, and I was there right after he killed himself. I was with Hell’s prosecutor, Grasswax.”
“Grasswax. The one who was butchered by Eligor over the feather.”
It was very strange sitting with a powerful angel, discussing secrets that only a few days ago had still been getting people ripped to pieces or sent to Hell—or both. “Yes, that’s the one, sir. But the weird thing was, when the first soul went missing, Grasswax and I weren’t the only folks from our two sides who showed up. In fact, it was like someone pulled a fire alarm. Almost as soon as we noticed that the soul was missing, angels and demons were all over the place.”
The airiness and light got a little roiled. “Hmmm. Interesting point. Why would Anaita do that? Why risk her entire plan by bringing in extra scrutiny and more witnesses so soon?”
“Exactly.”
“I imagine it was Eligor,” Karael said after a moment. “Just because he had a bargain with her doesn’t mean he wouldn’t try to make things difficult for her. He is a Grand Duke of Hell, after all.”
“Good point, sir. Which leads me to the next question. I spent a lot of time thinking about how the bargain worked, Anaita’s feather for Eligor’s horn, and how Anaita kept it hidden, and what she wanted to do.”
“Which was to be worshipped, to be simplistic about it.” Karael’s voice took on a tone of disapproval. “She never got past her origins. She didn’t truly appreciate the Divine Plan.”
“Clearly. But here’s a question I’ve never been able to answer. What about Eligor? What did he get out of it?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s quite simple, my Lo . . . Karael. Sir. A powerful angel and a powerful demon made a bargain and went to great lengths to keep it secret. For instance, Anaita sent Walter Sanders to Hell and brought a serial killer back from the dead—two kinds of dead—and sent him after me, all to keep the lid on what she’d done.”
“And what do you know about angels in Hell, Doloriel?” The cloudiness threatened a storm. I swallowed, or would have if I’d been on Earth.
“I think you know, sir. I think you know where I’ve been and a lot of what I’ve done. Anaita wouldn’t have a reason to keep quiet about it, not once she was really in Heaven’s power for good. And also I told Pathiel-Sa, the Angel of Conciliation, pretty much everything while I was imprisoned.”
A long silence, and it was a silence. We might have been in outer space for all the background noise that wasn’t. “Let’s assume that you’re right,” the Angel Militant said. “That I know more about what you’ve been doing than is going to be officially admitted, Doloriel. And yet I’m still willing to let you go back to your normal job and even give you a few perks.”
I had the distinct sense of a shiny lure bobbing in front of me, but I wasn’t in the mood. “I hear you. And I’ll be happy to do that once I’ve had a chance to finish talking to you about all this.”
“You really are a very determined fellow,” said Karael.
“So everyone tells me.” I took an imaginary breath, the kind you take before jumping into the deep end. “Okay, so let’s put aside the question about what was in this for Grand Duke Eligor, although I think that’s probably pretty important. Help me out with one last thing. You know all about my partner Clarence by now, right?”
“Clarence?”
“Sorry, kind of a private joke. Haraheliel. Earth-name Harrison Ely. Sent in at first to keep an eye on Advocate Sammariel on behalf of management, then he later decided Sam was getting a bum deal and sort of threw in his lot with me. He was one of the souls picked up when you guys raided Kainos, but someone’s put him back on the street again, kind of like you’re offering to do with me if I stop asking questions.”
“Ah,” he said. “That Clarence.”
“Right. Well, apparently instead of going through the normal training like Sam and I had when we joined Counterstrike, when Clarence was being prepared for his undercover assignment for the big bosses, he was sent somewhere different. Somewhere I’d never heard about before. Got schooled on guns there and all kinds of stuff.”
“Yes? So? That was Anaita’s play, son.” He really did sound like a military officer. Just his serious tone of voice made you want to get up and salute. “She needed information about the Magians and wanted a source she could control, so she could stay quiet about them—or, if things went bad, she could manufacture an excuse that she’d been investigating them all along. But I never trusted her.”
“That sounds exactly right, sir. And it makes a lot of sense. But the problem is, it’s not true.”
A very long pause this time. “What?”
“You heard me. It’s not true. Do you want to know what is true? Clarence’s training, that whole little mini-spy-camp of Anaita’s, a kind of under-the-table Counterstrike unit not answerable to the heavenly hierarchy, was arranged by an archangel named Samkiel. And Samkiel’s one of your oldest allies, I found out. Now why would he do that for Anaita? Unless you asked him to.”
“Son, this is getting dangerously close to—”
“We both know what this is getting dangerously close to, Karael. Sir. And you can silence me any one of a thousand ways. But since we’re both here, you might as well hear me out first.” Yes, I knew this was ridiculously dangerous—I’m not that kind of stupid—but I couldn’t stop now. I’d been waiting too long to put it all together. “See, the only arrangement where everything makes sense is that Anaita wasn’t working alone—that she was never working alone. Somebody else must have known exactly when the first soul-snatch was going to take place, because only the folks involved would have been able to put out the alert so quickly and have angels and demons swarming all over Edward Walker’s house like that.”
“Eligor—”
“Didn’t really have a reason to screw things up for Anaita when her plan was going to do Heaven more harm than it would Hell. Doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“But why would some partner of hers want to ‘screw things up,’ as you so eloquently put it, son?”
/> “I’m not sure. A warning? Or just to get some things into the public records as quickly as possible—insurance that could be used later on? We may never know.”
The silence hung thickly. “And?”
“And then the thing with Samkiel. Why would you approve him doing that for Anaita unless you were helping her out—or pretending to? Because if she wanted the protection of being able to claim she’d been investigating it herself in case things went bad, well, then her partner would want the same thing. And what better protection than being able to say, ‘I sent her to my old ally Samkiel precisely so I could keep an eye on what she was doing. If I’d known she was involved in a crime against Heaven, of course, I would have acted immediately’ and blah blah blah.”
Karael’s voice was even flatter than usual, and usually you could balance a full drink on it without spilling a drop. “You know that proves nothing, son. It’s just speculation.”
“This is all speculation, of course, sir. It’s kind of what I do.” I tried to sound more confident than I felt, but it’s hard to be really brave when you know the person you’re accusing of high crimes can extinguish you as easily as a birthday candle on a cupcake. “But it leads to the most critical unanswered question—what did Eligor want? Why would the Horseman risk his own standing in Hell, give his enemies the means to destroy him if they found out, just to make a deal with Anaita? Who we already know was a bit unstable, not as careful as she should be, prone to silencing allies, and not generally beloved in Heaven?”
“Tell me.”
“Because he didn’t really want a deal with Anaita—he wanted to make contact with someone else. Someone he could make a long-term alliance with. Someone who didn’t make the kind of mistakes that Anaita made, and who would almost certainly become even more powerful after she was gone. Somebody like you, Lord Karael.”
It was a magnificent silence, which gave me plenty of time to wonder what it would feel like to be erased from reality.
“So you’re suggesting that I was involved with Anaita’s madness from the beginning?” Karael said finally. “That she thought I was her partner, but in truth I manipulated things from behind the scenes all along the way, and then left her to hang when the time was right?”
“In a word, sir—amen.”
“Then it’s your turn to answer a question, Doloriel. If all this was true, why haven’t I destroyed you, too? Why would I leave a loose end like you dangling?” The air of good-old-boy, drill-sergeant familiarity that always colored Karael’s speech in my presence had abruptly disappeared. He was clipped, precise, and as calm as a deep, deep pond, but I could see the darkness roll through his glowing presence like a storm. “In short, why do you still exist?”
“That’s the one thing I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t believe bumping off witnesses is really your style, but I doubt that’s the most important reason. It might have something to do with what Anaita said about knowing me when I was alive, but maybe that’s not even true, or if it is true, it’s irrelevant to the bigger picture.” I had run out of tricks and revelations. I suddenly realized the next words might be the last I ever spoke. “I can only guess that for some reason, sir, you think you might need me someday.”
The roil of darkness coagulated, and for a moment I was facing something from which no light gleamed, as though Heaven had tipped sideways, and I was looking down into a hole full of ultimate nothingness. Then, as suddenly as an eyeblink, it dispersed, and I was looking at Karael’s misty but luminous shape again.
“An interesting guess, Doloriel. You will never know if it’s right—in fact, you’ll never know if any of this is right—but you will definitely know when I do want something from you. I’ll tell you one thing now, and one thing only. I have ambitions. Ambitions that you couldn’t begin to understand.”
I couldn’t help myself. “But why would you want to change anything? It’s Heaven, right? Heaven is perfect.”
Karael squeezed out the gleam that indicated a smile. I honestly could not tell you what kind of smile it was, amused or angry. He’d stopped pretending to be my bluff, gruff commanding officer and was now something much more distant and difficult to read. “We all have choices, Advocate Doloriel, whether we are angel or mortal. We make our own path by those choices. And since we are all different, it stands to reason that some of us make better decisions than others. Those who make the best decisions should be allowed to do so for the good of all. Do you understand?”
I couldn’t tell whether I was hearing the plain, unvarnished truth or just another excuse for a fascist takeover. I came extremely close to pointing that out, but there was no question Karael was different from Anaita, and I really had no idea what he planned. Maybe he was right. Certainly the Highest couldn’t be too pleased about how things had been running lately. So for once I kept my mouth shut.
He seemed satisfied with my silence. “Exactly. As for your being useful, well, you had better hope so, Doloriel. Leaving aside all this conspiracy talk, you are an angel who was a single tick of the great Paslogion away from utter destruction. I’d suggest that in the future you do what you’re told. At least when I’m the one telling you.”
And just like that, Heaven vanished and I was back in a hospital bed, full of hurt and stitches, but also—and quite remarkably—still alive and still in possession of my very own soul, however ragged around the edges it might be.
forty-nine
the station
I SPOTTED HIM from about a block away, on the corner of Broadway and Spring, last-minute Christmas shoppers flowing around him like a tall, sharp rock in the middle of a stream. Of course, in that long coat and Dickensian top hat he was hard to miss. My pale friend was doing a funny little two-step, of course, scarf fluttering in the brisk wind. Everything seemed back to normal.
“Mister Dollar Bob!” he said when he spotted me. He tipped his hat. “Such a pleasant thing to see! So happy to notice you are all attached, body-parts and such.”
“Yeah, Foxy, same to you, I guess.” My body parts were intact and connected, all right, but my knees were still wobbly from the previous day’s interview Upstairs. “How’s business?”
He performed a little samba-move, one hand pressed against his belly—step, step, spin, stop. “Very good now. Was a little worried. Foxy Foxy is not in the munitions field. He does not make bang-bang guns like your other friend Mister Orban. War is bad for business.” He smiled, his teeth impressively white considering they had to compete with his albino complexion. “But now—no war! All happiness, all good things. So now Mister Fox is happy, happy!”
“War? You talking about Heaven?”
“Of course! When the folks Upstairs or Downstairs have a really big fight, all of us mousies hide in the grass.” He laughed. He really did sound relaxed.
I wished I felt the same, but the cold, gray day really fitted my mood. I’d survived my face-to-face with Karael, but that, I felt sure, had been only because I was no threat to him whatsoever. In fact, I was totally irrelevant. I’d been through Hell, literally, lost everything I cared about, all to get some answers, but the only real answer seemed to be, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” And I wasn’t even going to receive that last consolation of the stubborn idealist, a hero’s death. I was walking around alive only because I didn’t really know how to do anything else. And because I needed to leave the apartment occasionally to buy more booze.
“Yeah, well, I’m happy for you,” I said. “Enjoy the holidays.”
“Hold on, Mr. Dollar B. I have a message for you.”
“Message?”
“A friend is waiting in the square. You might want to drop by.”
I could think of a couple of possibilities, none of which I liked much. “I’m relieved to hear my enemies are now willing to wait politely to kill me, instead of pushing and shoving to get to the front of the line.” Just thinking about it made
me feel sour. It was one thing living in a self-induced alcoholic coma, another getting taken down like a punk in the middle of the Pioneer District, in front of God and everyone. I took a quick look around to make sure Pumbaa the Nazi wasn’t crouching somewhere nearby, waiting to avenge his beloved Timon.
“You have a very unique humor, Bobby Money Man,” said my dancing friend. “Everyone knows. It’s fun! I wait breathlessly for the chance to do business with you again someday.”
“I hope not too breathlessly,” I said, but when I turned around again he was nowhere to be seen, gone like a white fox into snow.
I walked into Beeger Square carefully, eyes open and a hand in my pocket. The bench looked so cold and windblown that I almost felt sorry for the figure sitting there, but I’d seen that small, hunched shape before.
I walked slowly across the square toward her. Yes, “her.” Temuel was wearing his little-old-Latina-lady body again. A battered shopping bag sat beside him, threatening to tip over and blow away any moment. I stared, not quite willing to sit.
“Well,” I said. “Merry Christmas. Or close enough. What’s a couple of days to an immortal?”
“You’re still angry.”
“Wow, good guess.”
“Please, won’t you sit down?”
I wasn’t clutching my gun any more, but I wasn’t feeling particularly friendly, either. “No, thanks. So you’re working for Karael now?”
Temuel shook his head. Because of the body he wore, Fellini Peasant Lady Type A, I half-expected him to make the sign against the evil eye. “I can’t talk about it—any of it. I told you it was complicated. Well, it is complicated.”
“You know, hearing that isn’t as enjoyable as it was the first two dozen times.”
He pulled a thermos out of the shopping bag, unscrewed the top. “I’m sure it isn’t. But what would you say if someone asked you the same questions?”