Prince of Tricks Read online

  Tabris started to answer, but Sefi interrupted. “Maybe he does and maybe he doesn’t.” She glanced pointedly at his purse, tucked behind his hip.

  Belphagor narrowed his eyes. “You’ve taken half my wages already.”

  “Wages.” Sefi lifted his hand from his knee, startling him. “I heard about you,” she said as she held up his tattooed fingers. “You’re the Prince of Tricks.”

  Tabris laughed, taking his other hand and examining it. “Well, that explains a lot. Where’d you get these? Did they hurt?”

  Belphagor pulled his hands away. “I got them in the world of Man. And anything worth doing hurts at first.”

  Tabris’s eyes widened. “You’ve fallen? What’s it like?”

  Sefi hushed her. “Never mind that, Tabi. He’s the Prince of Tricks and he can afford to pay if he wants anything more out of us.”

  “I think you’ve told me just about everything I needed to know.” Belphagor moved to stand, but Sefi climbed over him so that he’d have to push her roughly if he wanted to get up.

  She moved her hand up his thigh toward his purse, closing her fingers over his when he grabbed it. “Give us the rest and I’ll tell you where Duke Elyon’s little palace is.”

  “I’m sure I can find it myself.”

  “You’re the one who jumped him at The Brimstone last night.” Sefi smiled knowingly. “It was about his rent boy, wasn’t it? I saw your face when I mentioned him. What was his name, Tabi? Valentin?” She licked her lips. “You might be interested to know that I had the pleasure of being his first. He was absolutely adorable. Didn’t last very long, but Tabi helped work him up again, and I let him have another go when he was ready. Took to it like a pro.”

  Tabris grinned at him, making a lewd gesture with her tongue. Belphagor had no idea how to react. He certainly wasn’t going to come to blows with a woman for touching his boy, and he wasn’t sure he was even upset about it. As long as Vasily hadn’t been coerced by the angel into doing something he wasn’t comfortable with, Belphagor had agreed he could do what he liked. It had simply never occurred to him that he might like…this.

  He pushed the demoness aside as firmly as he could without manhandling her. “That’s all very interesting, but not really anything I need to know.” As he rose, Tabris scooted out of the way, but Sefi stood with him.

  “Perhaps you’d be interested in what else I know about him.”

  “Not likely.”

  “For instance, where I saw him headed this morning.”

  Belphagor paused at the door of the cupboard-like room. “And where was that?”

  The demoness made another pointed glance at his purse.

  He sighed and untied the purse but held it away as she reached for it. “This is all I have, so why don’t you tell me what you know first and then I’ll give it to you.”

  She tucked her arms under her bare breasts, almost fluffing them upward in a huff. “Fine. I saw him crossing the Acheron and heading for the Left Bank in the direction of Duke Elyon’s villa. He was wearing his fancy duds from last night, but not the coat I saw him wearing when he came here.” Her eyelids lowered in a provocative smile. “Heat he puts off, I guess he didn’t need it.”

  Her account confirmed she’d actually seen him, but it was troubling news that he’d been headed for the villa. Belphagor had assumed the angel and his cronies must have accosted Vasily when he’d gone to the market. Why would he have gone voluntarily?

  “Was anyone with him?”

  “Nope. All by his lonesome. I offered him some company from the window, and he thanked me, all polite with that demure little growl of his, and said he had business to attend to.”

  Belphagor’s jaw tightened. Vasily definitely hadn’t been taken against his will, at least not up to that point. “Anything else you recall?”

  “That’s the last I saw of him. If you want to know where the villa is, it’s about a mile north of the Palace Bridge, just past the cafés and galleries.”

  Belphagor hung on to the purse a moment longer, suspecting she knew more than she was telling.

  “There is one other thing,” she offered with her eyes on the purse. “Those angels were all full of anarchy talk when they were here, saying they were demon-sympathizers and thought the principality should be overthrown and the power given to the people. Full of horse shit, of course. All of ’em are. But I’d wager my snatch they’re planning something up there at that fancy villa. Elyon’s no fan of the House of Arkhangel’sk.”

  This last bit of news confirmed what he’d been thinking about the duke’s probable identity. Belphagor just hadn’t gone the step further and speculated on what a young, ambitious relative of the supernal house without a chance of ascending to the throne might be up to, spending his days among Left Bank poets and upstarts and his nights with fancy ladies and rent boys in Raqia.

  This wasn’t merely about slumming or sowing wild oats. Duke Elyon, whether actually interested in demons’ rights or not—and Belphagor guessed not—was sowing discord.

  Elysium, of course, was no stranger to unrest. As long as there had been a celestial seat, one faction or another had been vying for it. The current principality himself had come to power after the assassination of the previous ruler by an avowed anarchist. Principality Rifion had been the patriarch of the House of Arkhangel’sk for over a century, and the throne had come to his grandson Helison only because Rifion’s son Alimiel had died an untimely death himself in a hunting accident.

  A conspiracy theorist might surmise that Helison himself was the author of both deaths, but there had never been a less ambitious principality in Heaven. He was, in fact, remarkably like the last emperor of Russia in the world of Man. In mannerisms as well as in appearance, Helison could have been taken for Tsar Nikolai II himself. Belphagor ought to know. He’d met the man.

  It was during the tsar’s final days in Petrograd that Belphagor had been the darling of the party circuit of imperial hangers-on, and afterward, after madness had overtaken his adopted country and the imperial family had been imprisoned by Bolshevik thugs, Belphagor had found himself face-to-face with the disgraced tsar only weeks before the gentle man and his beautiful family had been murdered in a Yekaterinburg basement.

  Like many in Russia then and afterward, Belphagor had been doing anything he must to survive, and a temporary impersonation of a guard at the Governor’s Mansion in Tobol’sk had gotten him a warm bed for the night and a full belly, something that was then in scarce supply. Because “Belphagor” was not a name that could be overlooked, he’d been using the one earthly name that meant something to him then—Feliks—and it was his luck that a young Bolshevik soldier named Feliks had been murdered for a handful of rubles coming back from the local bar. Hiding in an alleyway, Belphagor had seen the boy fall, and the muzhik who’d knifed him hadn’t seen Belphagor.

  There had been a time when he would have rushed to help, but not then. By then, he knew that no one in any sphere looked out for anyone else but himself, and he had no intention of dying for a stranger. He’d waited until the young soldier was staring glassy-eyed into the dark Siberian night, and then scrambled out of hiding to take his clothes before someone else did. The name “Feliks” on his uniform had given Belphagor pause. He knew these letters of the earthly alphabet intimately. He’d practiced writing them out, waiting foolishly for a man who’d never come for him after Petrograd had fallen apart. Feliks must be his family name, unusual in Russia, but it seemed to Belphagor at the moment to be some kind of sign.

  The heavy coat and scarf that were part of the uniform were a welcome find, but even better, the body was warm still, and the clothes took some of the chill out of Belphagor’s bones as soon as he’d put them on. He left the unfortunate corpse completely naked. He’d needed the undergarments and boots as well, and the corpse certainly wasn’t going to.

  Hurrying down the lane afterward to find a better hiding place to sleep, he’d been caught by another soldier. For a moment, he’
d felt for Feliks’s gun, prepared to kill before he’d go back to a Russian jail, but the soldier didn’t know Feliks well enough to realize Belphagor wasn’t him. And so he’d gone to work for the night, guarding the fallen imperial family.

  The young former Tsarevich Alexei had taken a bad turn with his poor health, and Belphagor was stationed outside his room. The imperial family was of no interest to Belphagor. Princes and Grand Dukes, he’d learned, were liars and cheats. But that night, he’d heard Alexei’s suffering, cries of genuine pain that brought to mind similar sounds he’d heard in a prison cell—sounds he’d only later understood to be his own. Their lives were utterly different; they were even from literally different worlds, but the boy was only three years younger than Belphagor, and though its cause was as different as the two of them, he’d felt an inexplicable kinship with Alexei in that sound. Agony was universal.

  The former empress had been with him through the night until at last he slept, and she seemed to also, in a chair beside his bed. Her health, it seemed, was not much better than her son’s. In those few hours, Belphagor perceived that mother and son must have a bond so strong that she felt his pain quite literally.

  He tried to imagine what having a mother was like. He didn’t remember his. She’d left him before he was six years old, whether voluntarily or through some harm that had come to her, he would never know. He’d simply woken one morning to find her gone. She’d belonged to the same profession he would later take up, so it could easily have been either. But he wondered, as he watched the anguished mother, whether his own had in some way felt his pain from wherever she was now. The thought wasn’t comforting; it was chilling, and he found himself hoping for the first time that she was dead after all, just to spare her any such awareness. Even if she’d abandoned him, she didn’t deserve that.

  He’d been startled then by a hand on his shoulder. Tsar Nikolai himself—though no longer the tsar—stood behind him in the doorway, accompanied by a flank of guards who seemed reluctant to treat him as a prisoner. Belphagor and the tsar were of a similar height, and he met the prisoner’s eyes within his haggard face, surprised at the gentleness in them.

  “How is my son?” the tsar had asked in a soft, low voice. “Has there been much pain?”

  “He’s sleeping now,” was all Belphagor could think to say.

  The tsar had given his shoulder a squeeze in thanks. “You’re a kind boy,” he’d said incongruously and turned away to allow his escorts to lead him back to his room.

  Shortly afterward, the other guard inside the door had shaken the empress awake—unkindly, Belphagor thought—and insisted she return to her bed. She had to rely on a cane and moved with difficulty, her haunted eyes on her son as she was led away.

  Belphagor was momentarily alone with Alexei Nikolaevich. Curiosity got the best of him and he slipped silently into the room to peer at the sleeping prince. He had a beautiful face, though it seemed as drawn and thin as his own, as if the prince were starving too. Perhaps everyone in this country was starving.

  Alexei stirred and cried out in pain in his sleep, and Belphagor sat and took his hand to keep him from drawing the attention of the other soldiers who would find Belphagor away from his post at the door. At least he told himself at the time it was why he’d done it. The sleeping boy had squeezed his hand, perhaps believing it to be his mother’s, and Belphagor had found tears streaming down his own face, inexplicably. They were nothing like each other, a child of utmost privilege and a child of the most downcast society in all the spheres—the son of an empress and the son of a demon whore—and yet they were the same.

  It had affected him for years afterward, seeing the beautiful, suffering boy in his dreams and waking up crying at the knowledge of his cruel death.

  Sefi let out an impatient sigh. “Do I get the purse or not? That’s all I know.”

  Belphagor shook himself out of his reverie, annoyed that he’d allowed himself to become so completely absorbed in a past too distant to matter. Except, in recent days, he’d begun to think increasingly that it did.

  He’d started to hand her the purse, but he paused and closed his fist around it once more to her audible consternation. “There might be one other thing I’d like to buy,” he mused. “Let me think a moment.” He was formulating a plan.

  Heaven had become uncannily reminiscent of that other place and time, as if it were marching inexorably forward to repeat terrestrial history. The principality was similarly out of touch—not, it seemed, unconcerned with the plight of the least of his princedom, but unaware of how perception mattered. The Ophanim Guard dealt swiftly and harshly with dissent, while the principality gave speeches in Palace Square about how he wanted to listen to the voices of the common angel—and demon, one had to assume—which he believed were being suppressed by shiftless upstarts using incendiary language to no other purpose than inciting unrest. Belphagor wasn’t sure if the principality was simply obtuse or whether his advisors had him so misinformed that he couldn’t see what was right in front of him.

  He was sure it was something to which few demons gave any thought. His was a unique perspective, given that most who fell remained in the world of Man, and thus his contemporaries from that bygone earthly era who had aged at the pace of Men while they were in it were no more. Only his fondness for the unique culture of Raqia—and the money to be made here—had kept him from living out a human lifespan in the lower sphere. He’d stayed long enough each time he fell to age a bit more than he cared to, but not long enough for most to tell unless they looked closely. Where most celestials, angelic and demonic alike, remained in the “state of grace” indefinitely after reaching adulthood, succumbing to the frailty and fading of age only at the end, Belphagor, having spent collectively perhaps a decade in the world of Man after he’d reached adulthood, resembled a human in his late twenties.

  And with that unique perspective, he’d seen the two worlds on remarkably similar paths of self-destruction over the span of almost a century. It remained to be seen whether Heaven’s supernal ruler would see the handwriting on the wall in time to prevent a similar disintegration. Belphagor was tempted to send him an anonymous gift of a volume of Russian history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But whether anyone but he were aware of the striking similarities or not, aristocratic malcontents and opportunists like Elyon could certainly see that Heaven was ripe for revolution.

  “I’d like to buy your services as escorts to a party,” he said at last.

  “You already promised the purse for what I gave you,” Sefi protested. “I’ll call in Masha if you’re trying to renege.”

  “I’ll do it.” Tabris had jumped to her feet, sensing an opportunity, no doubt, to undercut her “good friend’s” business.

  “I’m not reneging.” Belphagor held out the purse, and Sefi snatched it with a glare at Tabris, stuffing it into her corset beneath her ample tits. “But I’d like to hire you both, this evening.” Given the report of Vasily willingly heading for the villa on his own and the inclinations of the group of angels, Elyon’s interest in Vasily had become more complicated. In any event, he couldn’t just march into the villa and demand that the duke return him. Belphagor wouldn’t get a toe inside the door before the angels beat the tar out of him and tossed him in the river.

  Sefi eyed him with suspicion. “What party? I thought you said this was all the money you had.” Shrewd businesswoman, this one.

  Belphagor smiled. “It’s all I have on me. You don’t think I’d give you my last facet for such scant information? I’ll give each of you a ten-carat purse for your parts. What I need is to get into Duke Elyon’s villa without a big fuss. I assume as long as he’s in residence there must be some kind of merrymaking there every night, at least before they hit the brothels and dens of iniquity in our fair quarter. And I assume anyone from The Cat is a perpetual favorite on the guest list. Do I assume correctly?”

  “I suppose,” said Sefi. “But what do we have to do?”


  “Just be your usual entertaining selves. Whatever you’d normally do—just not with me. All I need is an in.”

  “Done,” said Tabris.

  She held out her hand to shake on the deal, but Sefi still looked dubious. “You just better not be making trouble for us. We have a reputation to protect.”

  “Any trouble I make will be well away from your lovely selves, I assure you.” He took Tabris’s hand and kissed it, making her giggle, and then offered his hand to Sefi, who rolled her eyes. “And now, if you don’t mind, I have some other business to attend to before this evening. I’ll return at dusk. I trust you know how to dress for the occasion.”

  Sefi waggled her breasts at him as he reached for the door. “Born dressed for it, sweetmeat.”

  He let himself out of the brothel while Sefi and Tabris found another victim—a willing one, no doubt. Belphagor shrugged. To each his own. He drew a breath of relief in the cold—and titless—air. At least the demonesses would have to be bundled up for the journey. He wasn’t sure how much more tit he could take.

  In the meantime, he had to scrounge up something to wear that wouldn’t immediately mark him as out of place, in addition to gathering an entourage of his own. It wouldn’t be wise to walk into Elyon’s territory without a little backup, but there were plenty of players about The Brimstone who owed him a favor. It was time to call in a marker or two.

  Tret’ya

  Showing off for the angels had been Vasily’s mistake. Duke Elyon had originally engaged his services after one of his companions hired him for a quick suck and bragged about it over a pint of mead. None of them had ever had a firespirit before, and when they heard about his unique abilities, Duke Elyon had offered to hire him for the weekend. The fee had been more crystal than Vasily had ever seen in his life outside of one of Belphagor’s wingcasting purses. Still nursing his outrage at the double standard of Belphagor’s terms, Vasily had happily accepted.