For words, said Razgut, in Seraphic this time, and sweetly. Without my words, my lord, what are you but a pretty face? He snickered, and Jael kicked him.
It wasnt a dramatic kick. There was no showmanship in it, only brutal efficiency. A quick, hard jerk, and the steel-enforced toe of his slipper spiked into Razguts side, deep into the misshapen bloat of flesh. Razgut cried out. The pain was sharp and bright, precise. He curled around it.
Laughing.
There was a crack in the shell of Razguts mind. It had been, once, a very fine mind, and the crack was as a flaw in a diamond, a seam in a crystal globe. It spidered. It snaked. It subverted every ordinary feeling into some mutant cousin of itself: recognizable, but gone oh so very wrong. When he looked back up at Jael, hatred mingled with mirth in his eyes.
It was his eyes that marked him as what he was. To stand back and look at him in the company of his kin, it seemed impossible that they were of the same race. Seraphim were all symmetry and grace, power and magnificenceeven Jael, as long as the center margin of his face stayed coveredwhere Razgut was a blighted, crawling thing, a corruption of flesh more goblin than angel. He had been beautiful once, oh yes, but now only his eyes told that tale. The almond shape of them stood out as fine in his swollen, bruise-colored face.
The other tell of his ancestry was more dreadful: the spikes of splintered bone that jutted from his shoulder blades. His wings had been torn off. Not even cut, but ripped away. The pain was a thousand years old, but he would never forget it.
When there are weapons in my soldiers hands, said Jael, looming over him, when humanity is on its knees before me, then perhaps Ill value your words.
Razgut knew better. He knew that he was destined to become a bloodstain the instant Jael got his weapons, which put him in an interesting position, being the one charged with getting them for him.
If he was to become a bloodstain whether he failed or succeeded, the question was: Would he prefer to be a quivering and obedient bloodstain, or a willful and infuriating bloodstain who brought an emperors ambitions crashing down around him?
It seemed an easy decision on the face of it. How simple it would be to humiliate and destroy Jael. It had amused Razgut, in the meeting of great gravity and importance theyd just come from, to think up absurd lines he might feed him. The fool was so certain of Razguts groveling servility that he would repeat anything. It was a rich temptation, and several times Razgut had chuckled, imagining it.
There is no god, you fools , he might have made him say . There are only monsters, and I am the worst of them.
It was fun, holding the cards. For his part, Razgut understood perfectly well that if Jael had come here without him, and addressed Earth in his
native tongue, their hosts would have put all their considerable human ingenuity to work coding a translation program and would probably have been able to understand them perfectly well within a week, and even speak back by way of a computer-generated voice.
As one may imagine, he had not explained this to Jael. Better to intercept every syllable, control every phrase. To the Russian ambassador: Does anyone have gum? My breath is unbelievable.
Or possibly, to the American Secretary of State: Let us seal our communion with a kiss. Come to me, my dear, and take off my helmet.
Now wouldnt that be fun?
But he had held himself back, because the decisionto ruin Jael or help himhad profound and far-reaching ramifications quite beyond anything the emperor himself imagined.
Oh. Quite beyond.
You will have your weapons, Razgut told him. But we must go carefully, my lord. This is a free world and not your army to command. We must make them want to give us what we need.
Give me what I need, corrected Jael.
Oh yes, you, Razgut amended. All for you, my lord. Your weapons, your war, and the untouchable Stelians, groveling before you.
The Stelians. They were to be Jaels first target, and this was rich. Razgut didnt know what had sparked the emperors especial hatred of them, but the reason didnt matter, only the result. How sweet will be the day. He simpered, he fawned. He hid his laughter, and it felt good inside him, because oh, he knew things, yes, and yes, it was good to be the one who knows things. The only one who knows.
Razgut had told his secrets once and only once, to the one whose wish for knowledge had made him a broken angels mule. Izîl. It surprised Razgut how much he missed the old beggar. He had been bright and good, and Razgut had destroyed him. Well, and what had the human expected: Something for nothing? From scholar to madman, doctor to graverobber, that had been his fate, but hed gotten what he wanted, hadnt he? Knowledge beyond even what Brimstone could have told him, because not even the old devil had known this . Razgut remembered what no one else did.
The Cataclysm.
Terrible and terrible and terrible forever.