I’m getting better at this. I can do this now.
Lom-in-mudjhik let his awareness run wider, yard by yard, out across the ice. The sky was a widening bowl of grey cloud, filling now with iron day. Blades of wind sifted the surface crystals, moving them into new patterns. Florian was there, tense and watching, crouched ready to run or fight. Florian his ally. Florian his friend.
And there was someone else coming up behind him, moving fast. It was Chazia.
Lom-in-mudjhik knew the taste of Chazia’s mind well enough. All too well. He remembered… But this was Chazia different. Chazia something else. Chazia, like a mudjhik but not, with a size and energy not her own. She stank of angel mind and angel flesh. She was coming across the ice with more than human strength, bearing down on Lom’s abandoned and defenceless human body and his Florian-friend.
Chazia on fire with angels and coming to kill.
Florian sensed her racing towards him, swung round and leaped at her, rising high and coming down on her shoulders, scrabbling at the crude covering that masked her face. She shook him off. He fell to the ground and twisted and jumped to his feet, snarling, changing, more wolf than man, but hampered by his human clothes and struggling to get a purchase on the snow. Chazia picked him up by the scruff of his neck with one hand and punched his body with the other. Florian felt his body snap and jerk. He kicked at her desperately with both feet. The collar and back of his coat tore in her grip. He twisted free and collapsed to the ground again, panting with pain, moving awkwardly, smearing blood across the snow. His ribs were badly smashed. He needed to get clear and repair the damage.
Lom-in-mudjhik watched the strange half-human, half-angel contraption that Lavrentina Chazia had become as she turned towards Lom’s inert abandoned human body. Felt the surge of anticipation as Chazia prepared to destroy him.
I am not there, said Lom-in-mudjhik, forcing the thought with ease into Chazia’s angel-cased head. I am behind you. Look at me. I am here.
Chazia jerked round and stared at the mudjhik.
Lom?
I have been coming for you. I told you that I would.
So you came, said Chazia. I’m glad you are here. I will enjoy your death. And then the Pollandore will die. Maroussia will be released from illusion and taste the bitterness of truth and then she will die. And the living angel will see it all and know that I am strong and deserving of acceptance.
A part of Lom that was only Lom, not Lom-in-mudjhik, lurched in pain when it heard Maroussia’s name, and Chazia felt the hurt. It was an advantage and she drove it home.
I have spent much time with Maroussia, Lom, she said. We got to know each other very thoroughly. You should have been there. You should have come sooner.
I am here now.
Chazia was edging away towards a space of flat open snow where she would have room to move. She thinks there is going to be a fight. She thinks she is going to fight a mudjhik.
It was time to kill her.
Lom-in-mudjhik drove swiftly forward, sure-footed across the ice. He swept his fist forward and crashed it into the side of Chazia’s head inside the angel carapace. Always the head is best. Heads are fragile. Heads are weak.
Lom-in-mudjhik felt Chazia’s sharp, sickening explosion of pain and confusion. Her world skidding sideways. Lom-in-mudjhik felt triumph and joy. He knew that this human was weak inside her angel shell. She did not know how to wear it: she was in it but she was not it. She was Chazia and Suit, not Chazia-in-suit, and it protected her no more than a skin of tin. Lom-in-mudjhik could kill her inside it. No problem. Don’t damage the suit. I need the suit. She doesn’t know how to use it. But I do.
Lom-in-mudjhik stepped round in front of Chazia. She was on her hands and knees, crawling away. He could feel her pain and fear. She had realised the truth of what was going to happen to her. Commander of killers, torturer, trespasser-invader of lives and minds, Lavrentina Chazia knew she was going to die, and Lom-in-mudjhik was glad she knew. He stepped forward and leaned over her scrabbling form. With precise and delicate fingers–fingers that could separate a snowflake unbroken from the rest and pluck its star points one by one–Lom-in-mudjhik unbuckled the headpiece and removed it from Chazia’s head. Then he took hold of her body with one hand under her arm and lifted her up until she was level with him. Bloodshot, panicking and helpless. she stared into his rough-shaped blank and eyeless face.
Lom-in-mudjhik brought Chazia closer and closer to him. His free hand was behind her head, cupping it in his palm. He tangled his mudjhik fingers in her hair and brought her face close against his face, touching her brow against his face of angel rock, touching her mouth to where his mouth should have been if a mudjhik had a mouth.
It was like a kiss.
Sweet kiss.
She was the torturer, the killer, the Vlast, and this was revenge.
With his hand that was behind her head, Lom-in-mudjhik pressed Chazia’s face into his. And pressed. And pressed.
Until her head broke against his like a warm, spilling egg.
Lom withdrew himself from the mudjhik more easily than before and left it contemplating snow. Back in his own human form–none too soon, he had begun to feel it slipping away and beginning to die–he crouched beside Chazia’s body and began to remove the angel skin. It was heavy, awkward work. He felt empty and sick. He wanted to think the mudjhik had done the thing like that, not him. But he knew differently.
Florian limped up beside him, pale and drawing shallow rasping breaths, wincing as he worked at his chest with his fingers. He looked and said nothing. There was no need.
Lom had no time to think about what he had done. Something else to do.
‘Help me,’ said Lom. ‘Help me get this on. Quickly, for fuck’s sake. It can take me nearer the bomb. Chazia knew that; I felt her think it.’
Piece by piece they removed the angel casing from Chazia and wiped it clean in the snow, leaving churned-up places smeared with blood and brain and fragments of bone. Lom was afraid it would be too small for him, but he felt each element adjust itself to him. It was as if the suit wanted him to put it on. He felt it sliding along his skin, stretching and folding itself around him, becoming warm. It felt natural, like sliding into water at body heat. He knew how to do it. What am I doing? What’s happening to me? What is this thing I am becoming? He pushed the thought aside. Later.
92
Maroussia was so cold she no longer felt cold. She had no feeling at all. She wanted to lie down in the warm soft welcoming snow and sleep. She wanted to swim in the comforting snow and float in its amniotic warmth. Wash away the marks and stains and stickiness of what Chazia and the lieutenant had done to her. She wanted to still her memory for ever.
Soon she would do this. Soon, but not yet.
Inside its carapace of angel flesh, Vissarion Lom’s human body ran, and the strength of angels carried him over snow and ice. Racing lightly across the surface, scarcely breaking the crust, he moved faster than he had ever moved before. His senses were angel senses and human senses too. The wind was in his face and every crystal of snow on North Zima Island was sharp and crisp and distinct.
Lom ran.
Somewhere ahead of him in the distance, beyond the horizon, he was aware of something waiting. A point of impossibility. Present in the world but not of it. The Pollandore. It pulsed like a heart beating. It knew he was there and called him on. It had location but no shape and no certain size. Sometimes it was a tiny particle, one more grain of snow. Sometimes it swelled to absorb the sky. It was alive and changing. But he could not find Maroussia. He could not do that.