He knew this wasn't his first life. Alexiel's occasional references to his previous identity proved that, but he'd known before she claimed him, even before cowering angels chained him under the mountain.
He knew because he didn't have hands. He couldn't touch anything except to cut it, or lie unyielding against another surface, but he knew how things ought to feel, knew the sensation of skin yielding to soft pressure as it touched the world.
"Are you sure you aren't simply imagining things, Nanatsusaya, creating a past to fill the void where your memories should be?" Alexiel asked, picking up the thread of his unguarded thoughts as she spun him through intricate kata, practicing motion upon motion until their momentum and magic began to alloy.
I know, he thought to her. My memories are stolen or blocked, but whoever imprisoned me didn't think to take kinesthetic knowledge. I had hands. I knew how to wield a sword. I knew the sensation of wind and sun upon my face. I have nothing else to guide me, but those things I remember.
"Interesting," Alexiel said. "Did you drink blood and hate angels then, too?"
Nanatsusaya refused to dignify that with an answer. Instead, he concentrated on the weave of Alexiel's astral power, channeled it through his blade, melded her strength with his own. He saw through her eyes, heard through her ears, instead of simply perceiving the world as a pattern of astral power and figured space-time. This was the only way he could touch her, always once removed from true sensation.
"My hair?" Alexiel said, abruptly switching forms to a subtler style, one that saved breath and concentrated on defense and minimal motions. "You want to touch my hair, Nanatsusaya? How sweet, and how impossible. One impossible dream is enough between us, and I already have more than that. You should dream of something within our reach. Carnage seems more--"
In her hands, Nanatsusaya twisted; his hilt drove her hands apart and his edge caught her fingers. Blood fell from her left hand, collected in her palm and dropped onto his blade. Reflexively, he drank.
Alexiel tasted like lightning. An undercurrent of pain -- physical and spiritual -- ran beneath the raw power, but there was no fear, no anger or outraged denial that a mere sword could turn on his supposed master.
"That wasn't what I meant, Nanatsusaya," Alexiel said, resting her wounded hand on the flat of his blade. The rush of blood and power nearly drowned coherent thought. "I'm touched that you think so much of me, but we should broaden your horizons before this turns to obsession."
Too late, he thought, very quietly, shielding the words within the tempest of bloodlust and hatred that sang through his soul and had overwhelmed all his previous wielders. It had been too late since she'd first drawn him from his prison, since her voice and power had shocked loose the certainty that he had known her before his current incarnation. Three months in her presence had only confirmed that.
"I think it's time to introduce you to one of my friends," Alexiel continued. "I tread cautiously in heaven these days -- if my brother or the elders found me alone, I would be captured and tried as a fallen angel -- but there are always neutral and opposition factions to shelter me, and it's useful to know my enemies' plans. So clean yourself, Nanatsusaya, and if you can't be friendly, at least be polite." She plunged him into the stone of their practice ground -- a tiny island of reality floating in the primal chaos out of which God had created heaven and hell -- and cut the flow of her astral power.
He had no mouth, or he would have smiled. He had drunk her blood; he knew the taste of her soul. She could break the battle link as many times as she wanted, but now only he could say when their bond would end.
Nanatsusaya absorbed the last traces of Alexiel's blood, leaving his blade crystalline clear, and waited for her to bind her hand and check the wards around her gate anchor. She was thorough, careful, and precise in her use of power. He approved.
"Time to go, Nanatsusaya," Alexiel said, drawing him from the stone and tying him across her back. He blunted his edge, allowing the silk to bind him; constraint was unpleasant, but silk was better than a sheath and vastly preferable to chains and spells. Alexiel met his wordless inquiry halfway. "You may borrow my eyes for now," she told him. "This will be the first time you've seen heaven in centuries, unless you stole vision from your would-be masters before you killed them. Perhaps the sight will shake loose some memories."
He doubted that, but he let his anticipation flavor their link.
Alexiel laid her hand on the gate anchor and triggered the portal. Dimensions warped in a synaesthetic maelstrom -- screaming knife-edged colors burning acid sour, sandpaper music flaring in prismatic darkness, sweet splinters of ice whispering blue -- that she sliced through with the ease of long practice, bending nothingness to her will.
Nanatsusaya enjoyed the chaos. It had been all too rare in his experience; his erstwhile masters had tended to rely on technological guideposts, or had simply ridden in merkabas rather than trust their own astral strength. He savored the mangled bursts of sense-perception that assaulted him during these journeys, but most angels seemed uneasy with the raw guts of the universe.
They breached heaven's barrier over a snow-crowned mountain with only a flash of light to mark their arrival. Alexiel immediately spread her wings and leapt into the air, gliding down the slopes toward forests and cultivated lands. Her attention was tuned to potential watchers, wards, and traps. After a moment's consideration, Nanatsusaya left their defense in her hands. He found that he trusted her not to overlook anything.
"Your faith is touching, Nanatsusaya," Alexiel murmured, dropping to skim the forest canopy. "This is Mathey, the fifth level of heaven; we're in the mountains that ring the great central plains. My friend keeps a house here as a refuge from the politics of Briah. Aside from the prison complexes over the acid lakes, Mathey is mostly wilderness and farmland. Only Atziluth, where God lives, is more pristine."
No people? he asked. Good.
"No people means no battles," Alexiel pointed out as she landed near a gorge. Far below, a stream tumbled in a series of shimmering cascades. She drew him from the silk bindings and he sharpened his edge reflexively.
No people means no liars, no hypocrites, and no idiots who think they can master me, he answered.
Alexiel laughed. "That's true. We'll wait here. Jibril's wards recognize me, but they'd treat you as a threat. I'm sure you'd survive, Nanatsusaya, but it's better not to start out on the wrong foot, don't you think?"
If he had possessed arms, he might have shrugged.
Alexiel sat on the edge of the gorge, her legs dangling among tendrils of ivy and patches of moss. Nanatsusaya rested across her lap, watched through her eyes, listened with her ears. The forest was far from silent -- water crashed and gurgled below, accompanied by the shush of wind through leaves, the chirping cries of birds, and the rustle of small animals moving among dead leaves on the forest floor. None of the sounds woke any familiarity, but he appreciated the way they worked together, building the sense of a land breathing and dreaming to its own deep, slow heartbeat.
Wing beats stirred the air, but gently, flowing into the forest's rhythm, not the quick staccato of pursuit. Alexiel turned, unworried, and smiled at the short, blue-haired angel landing behind her. "Jibril," she said.
"Alexiel," Jibril said, pulling in her wings. "This is unexpected. Do you need sanctuary?"
"Not at the moment. Rosiel's attention is turned elsewhere and nobody has noticed my latest defiance... yet." Alexiel's hand closed around his hilt. He tasted remnants of her blood through the bandage.
Jibril stared. "That's Nanatsusaya, the forbidden sword! What are you doing with that blade? It drives its wielders to madness -- bloodthirsty, suicidal, or both."
"Look more closely, water guardian," Alexiel said, "and you'll see why I'm sure he won't treat me like his would-be masters." She balanced him on her palms, holding him out for Jibril's inspection.
Nanatsusaya felt a questioning tendril of astral power curl around him. Reflexively, he severed it; only those he chose could touch him. This Jibril might be Alexiel's ally, but she had done nothing to prove herself to him.
Jibril's astral touch recoiled, ebbing like tidal water. Through Alexiel's eyes, he saw shock cross her face, chased by horror and pity. "No! Tell me they didn't. Not to him."
Alexiel plunged him into soil and stone, and stood to rest a hand on Jibril's shoulder. "God did. Consider it a reincarnation -- he has no memory of his previous existence -- and don't dwell on lost opportunities."
"But surely the two of you, together, could--"
"--could fight against God?" Alexiel said, interrupting whatever Jibril might have intended to say. "I think Nanatsusaya and I will make excellent partners in the coming war -- and war is coming, without question. The upper levels of hell are vulnerable, and heaven's population is growing and restless. I expect God, Rosiel, or the council of elders to send out the army any year now."
"Hell is vulnerable," Jibril repeated, and shook her head, sending ripples through her cascade of hair. "No wonder. Who else knows the truth behind this?"
"God, naturally, along with Rosiel, the Zodiac guardians, and the council of elders. Zaphkiel may well have discovered their secrets -- he's clever when he bothers to pay attention -- but I think God has otherwise managed to restrict the information." Alexiel's hand tightened on Jibril's shoulder for a moment -- Nanatsusaya felt a tangled burst of emotions, too quickly stifled for him to decode -- and then Alexiel stepped back, wrapping herself in a shield of diamond-hard purpose. "I'm sure you'll use the knowledge wisely."
Jibril tilted her head just a tiny bit to the side, an oddly familiar gesture, and smiled. "You are so like him," she said, "always standing alone. I'm not your brother, Alexiel. I'm not part of your bargain with God. You don't need to be strong for me."
"What do you mean, I don't need--?" Alexiel began, only to freeze as Jibril leaned forward and wrapped her arms around her waist and shoulders. Tension coiled like electricity gathering in a thunderhead, ready to carve bright destruction through the sky -- Nanatsusaya readied himself to strike -- and then Alexiel's arms rose and she clung to Jibril, as if she were drowning and the other angel were her only source of air.
Nanatsusaya wanted to hack out the interloper's heart.
He started to shake loose from the stone, but a wave of emotions stopped him cold. Normally Alexiel pinched their link, only letting sense-perception and deliberate thoughts out past her barriers, but now despair and fury poured from her like a flood and shook his resolve. Endless sorrow, vicious anger... and underneath the storm, a desperate longing for touch, for the comfort of a gentle hand.
He had no hands. Jibril did. It was a simple calculation.
A thought brushed against him, soft and somehow familiar. Don't worry; I respect your claim. But I don't like to see her in pain either. Please keep her safe. Please don't leave her, no matter what she tells you.
Alexiel didn't need a bodyguard; she was born for battle, just as he was. But not all wounds were physical. He couldn't touch her, couldn't hold her. But he could stay by her side so she would never be alone.
She can't leave me, Nanatsusaya told Jibril. I know the taste of her soul, and I can follow it through all the realms. I've sworn to fight by her side.
Good! Jibril's thought rang like shattered ice, echoing and reechoing between them.
"I'm sorry," Alexiel said, straightening and stepping back from her friend. "You have enough troubles of your own; you don't need my burdens as well."
Jibril smiled. "I don't mind. When a burden is too heavy for one person to carry, you share it. That's what friendship means." She walked over to Nanatsusaya and drew him from the stone, her small hand wrapped awkwardly around his hilt. Shall we be friends, Nanatsusaya? Shall we share our burden?
Her free hand slid down his blade, grazed one of his tines, and pressed the bloody tip of her finger to his main blade. She tasted of water: bright, bubbling laughter; mirror-smooth serenity; sorrowful rain; and, tucked away where almost no one could see, chill and hungry depths, relentless in their patience. Do we have a bargain?
Yes, he said.
As Jibril handed him back to Alexiel, he added another note to his picture of his previous life. He had known Alexiel then, back when he had experienced weather on his face and held a sword in his hands.
He had also known Jibril.
It would be interesting to work with them both again.