Chapter Text
Circa 1571 B.C.
Goshen, Egypt
And to think, getting out of Canaan had seemed like such a grand idea at the time.
On paper,[1] it all made perfect sense. The descendants of Abraham hadn’t been in Canaan for years. And while that meant there were plenty of opportunities for mischief … well, that was the problem. There were plenty of opportunities for mischief. And somehow, in the course of that mischief, the locals had come to mix up Dagon-the-Lord-of-the-Files with Dagon-the-God-of-Grain, and … to say that Dagon-the-God had not been happy about that would be a massive understatement.
So no one could blame Crawly for wanting to get the Somewhere out of Jericho while the getting was good. Her request to decamp for Egypt had even been granted – by the very lowest levels! Hastur hadn’t liked it much, but Hastur couldn’t very well argue with a mission from Himself, now, could he?
And fine, Crawly technically had a mission – figuring out what the descendants of Jacob (or was it Israel? Crawly could never keep the name straight) had been up to since the one with the gaudy coat had become Pharaoh’s right-hand man. And Crawly would find that out. Probably wouldn’t take long, either, but she’d make the mission last as long as she could. And if during her reconnaissance, she happened to meet up with a certain angel …
Well, she could hardly be blamed for that. It was only natural that they’d run into each other, each seeking out a familiar face when a stranger in a strange land. And surely it had been long enough that they could afford to see each other again. Two hundred and seventy-one years since Moriah, not that Crawly was counting.[2]
These were the thoughts ran through Crawly’s head as she stood on the hill overlooking Goshen, the place where her nose and her sources had told her that the Hebrews were to be found. A mental review had seemed rather necessary at the time. Because when she had plotted how she would get out of Canaan, when she had put in her request for a transfer, when she had trekked through the desert that separated the kingdom along the Nile’s banks from the land of milk and honey …
She hadn’t expected for her arrival to be heralded by the sounds of screaming. Wailing too. And the scent of blood, copper-rich and so thick even the humans could probably smell it—
That was all Crawly had time to think before she was gathering her robes in her fist and running down the hill.
She spilled into the streets of the settlement, and—oh, this was bad, this was very bad. Not quite as bad as a city gone to fire and smoke and/or divine wrath, but close. The streets were narrow and twisting; the mud-huts tiny and pressed close together. Everywhere there were signs of neglect, doors not hung properly, curtains in the tiny windows that hadn’t been washed in ages. And underneath, the smells of fear, exhaustion, despair.
There was only one type of humans that lived like this, and that type was slaves.
Why in Heaven’s name, wondered the part of Crawly’s mind that could wonder things, even as she ducked through the streets and tried to figure out what on earth was causing the screaming, are the children of Abraham living as SLAVES? Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised; these were the Chosen People of the deity whose response to being in a foul mood was to send a flood to wipe out a significant chunk of Her creation. More fool Crawly, expecting better out of Her.
Come to think about it, they were probably gloating about this up in Heaven, weren’t they? All part of the ineffable bloody plan, for sure—well, Crawly would see about that—
She skidded to a halt.
Soldiers!
Soldiers—Egyptian ones—descending on one of the mud-huts—Crawly ducked into an alley before they could see her. If nearly twenty-five hundred years on this mudball had taught her anything, it was that soldiers marching through a settlement where there was screaming and the smell of blood in the air were never a good sign.
The hut the soldiers were converging on wasn’t empty—there was a woman in the doorway, literally in the doorway, arms braced against the doorposts and blocking as much of it with her body as she could. Was she insane? She was wasting valuable running-away time—
The woman shouted something at the advancing soldiers; it sounded like begging but Crawly was too far away to catch the words—
The soldiers didn’t care. The lead two grabbed her, shoved her down. She fell to the side and the soldiers swarmed the house.
A thin, high cry pierced the din, hitting Crawly like a punch to the gut. That—there was a baby in there—
And the cry stopped.
Crawly’s heart may have stopped with it.
That—they hadn’t—but why would they—a baby? They couldn’t have; Crawly must be misinterpreting—
The blood-stench grew thicker.
The woman, still crumbled in the dust, screamed.
What. The. Fuck?!?
“Aaron!”
A small weight collided with the back of Crawly’s legs—she whipped around, a hiss leaping to her throat, eyes becoming yellower and sclera disappearing—
And stopped.
Before her stood a woman. And two children. The elder one, maybe six or seven, a girl, holding a tight-woven reed basket. The younger, barely out of toddlerhood, a boy, his mother’s hand on his shoulder, pulling him back. And in the mother’s other arm—
A small bundle. Wrapped in blankets.
No. No, no, no, no, no—
“That the last one?” came a call from behind Crawly, one of the soldiers, only audible because the first woman’s—mother’s—screams had quieted to sobs.
“Still a few houses to check. Come on, the sooner we get Sobek’s dinner, the sooner we get our own!” And because there really was no end to the evil found in the human soul, that remark drew laughter.
Sobek—Crawly knew that name, that was the name of one of the gods in these parts—the crocodile god—
“Please,” came a small, broken voice from in front of her, and Crawly turned back.
It was the mother—the other mother, the one who still had a baby to cradle and two other children to force behind her. “Please,” she said again, “please, my lady—”
“What are you staring at me for?” Crawly hissed, but softly, so the soldiers wouldn’t hear. “Go!”
The mother didn’t need to be told twice. She turned and ran, her children holding onto her robes to keep up.
And Crawly …
Crawly really had no sense of self-preservation, because she spared one glance over her shoulder at the soldiers, shifted into snake-form, and followed. The snake form – especially this larger one she hadn’t trotted out since Eden – could slither faster than she could run. And she’d learned from experience that soldiers tended to dismiss female-shaped beings.[3] But a gigantic snake? That would make anyone think twice about tailing her.
And if they weren’t tailing the snake … then they wouldn’t try to follow the woman or the kids, either.
The little family scurried through the mazelike streets, Crawly doing her best to keep up. She kept her eyes and ears and nose open for trouble, though in this form it was harder. The scents of hunger and exhaustion and despair were so much stronger. If Crawly and the Almighty were still on speaking terms, Crawly would be having words with Her.
They finally reached the outskirts of the city, and if Crawly had had hackles, they would have risen. There was no cover out here – no buildings, no trees, nothing but sand and in the distance, the river—
The river that they were running toward.
In another form Crawly’s eyebrows would have risen; in this one she slithered faster and strained to see what their plan was. Maybe they had a boat? The rushes growing on the banks might be able to conceal one. And a boat—well, it would get them away and clearly away was the place to be right now—
Except—
They weren’t running toward a boat. Not that Crawly could see.
She slithered into the rushes for camouflage and slowly, slowly nosed her way to a good viewing spot.
The woman had knelt on the ground, and the little girl had put the basket in front of her, taking the lid off. The woman cuddled the blanket-wrapped bundle, singing a soft, lullaby-like tune. And she put it in the basket.
What?
Still singing, the woman put the lid on the basket, sealing it quickly.
… What.
And then she picked it back up, waded into the river, and—
WHAT?!?!?!
The woman let the basket go, and the river took it.
ARE. YOU. OUT. OF. YOUR. MIND?!?!
The river? The river? That was this woman’s plan? Drop the baby in the river? There were crocodiles in the river! And worse—hippopotami! And Egyptians—the ones killing the babies on purpose!
And even as Crawly thought all this—even as every scale on her body trembled with the sheer rage of what do you think you’re DOING—she slipped into the river and swam after the basket.
She didn’t think about it. Didn’t have to. Because the truth was simple. She’d be damned – again – if she just stood by and watched another mother lose her baby.
She caught up to the basket quickly; the river was fast, but Crawly was faster. As soon as her snout touched the basket, she sent a ripple of demonic leave-me-the-fuck-alone energy into the water. That would be enough to keep animals and boats away. And in the unlikely event that her miracles got audited, she could just say that she’d fancied a swim and hadn’t wanted to bother with discorporation-by-crocodile.[4]
And if Sobek or some other Nile deity took issue with it, Crawly would … think of something.
But Sobek must have had better things to do, because no crocodiles pierced Crawly’s little bubble. The basket floated serenely down the river, Crawly behind it, until the smells of blood and despair faded, replaced by the smells of good food, expensive perfume, greed, and pride.
Crawly craned her head just far enough above the basket to get a sense of where she was.
Well, THIS is interesting …
A large marble-clad building stood before her, its pillars jutting into the river. Gauzy linen curtains hung between the pillars and floated in the breeze, dipping into the water. And from beyond the curtains came the sounds of soft women’s voices and a child’s laughter.
Crawly cast another glance at the basket.
A wealthy household could be a safe enough place to deposit the baby … perhaps sending a little influence to make sure this baby was raised right, not treated as a slave … and if all else failed, a gigantic snake could burst out of the water, scare the living daylights out of everyone present, and spirit the baby away to safety.
It was as good a plan as any. Crawly pushed the basket toward the pillars and past the curtains. Then she ducked into the shadows to watch, coiled and ready to strike if necessary.
There were three women, two attendants and one really important one if the size of her wig was anything to go by. Wig-lady was in the water, just a few feet away from the steps leading into the river, a toddler perched on her hip. The little one was laughing, a good sign.
The basket floated until it bumped into wig-lady’s thigh. Wig-lady looked down and blinked. Tilting her head to the side, she passed the toddler to one of the attendants and took the lid off the basket.
Crawly coiled, and tensed, and waited.
A small, delighted burble came from the basket – a happy baby, one who might not have had much, but who had always had love and nothing but love.
And wig-lady—
Melted.
Not literally, that would be messy. But her face broke out in a smile; every line of her body relaxed, and when she pulled the baby from the basket, it was with a coo and an immediate nuzzle of the belly. The baby laughed and kicked.
“Look,” she said to her attendants, “it seems the gods have sent us a gift.”
“M-Majesty,” said one of the attendants, “that—that blanket—it looks like—”
“Yes, I’m aware. Pharaoh’s orders were for the Hebrew babes to be thrown into the river. Pharaoh said nothing about what was to happen afterward – and clearly the gods had another fate in mind for this one. So hush,” wig-lady said, and then, to the baby, “No, not you, baby boy. You’re fine. Hmm …” Her fingers danced on the baby’s stomach, eliciting another delighted giggle, and her smile – somehow – grew wider. “What shall we call you? Ah! I know.”
Wig-lady shifted the baby to both hands, lifted him and nuzzled him, nose-to-nose. “Moses. How do you like that name, sweetheart?”
The baby seemed to like it just fine, if the laughing and kicking were any indication, and Crawly …
Crawly let out a breath of relief that she didn’t need, and more pertinently, hadn’t realized she was holding.
The baby would be all right. Whatever—whatever else happened—the baby would be all right.
“… and after you assign one, let me repeat that, just one angel to the biggest bunch of Abraham’s descendants, you recall him to Heaven just as the midden is about to hit the windmill for—I cannot believe I am about to say this—a performance review!” Samael shouted.
“It’s protocol,” Gabriel replied.
“A performance. REVIEW!”
“Look, Samael, it’s Earth. Something is always going wrong. If we were to put off performance reviews every time there was a plague or a famine or some kid getting sold into slavery, we’d never get around to them.”
“Oh, so a wholesale massacre of the Chosen People’s infants is all in a day’s work?”
“I didn’t say that—”
Judging that no one was looking at him, Aziraphale took a moment – just a moment – to close his eyes and take a deep breath, trying to ground himself.
He was being quite foolish, of course. He was an angel, in Heaven. Nothing bad could happen to him here. The queasy, miserable feeling in the pit of his stomach was just his corporation acting up – doubtless he’d been eating too much again. The sweat on his palms was—was—well, an archangel was shouting; that was never a good sign. And the way his corporation wanted to breathe quickly, the pounding of its heart … those would go away soon enough. Deep, calming breaths were just the thing to quiet a wayward corporation.
Aziraphale carefully did not consider the other feeling—the heartsick one that made his eyes want to water and the breath want to catch in his throat when he thought of those poor babies and their poor parents. As Sandalphon had helpfully pointed out when Aziraphale had frantically alerted Heaven of the problem[5] – they were only human infants. Human infants were terribly fragile. Many of them would not have seen the end of their first year even without Pharaoh’s intervention.
And the only reason why that thought didn’t also make Aziraphale heartsick was because he wasn’t thinking about it.
“Archangels,” came a cold, clear voice dousing the argument like a wave of water on a fire – Michael. She stood between Gabriel and Samael, in her rightful place as the first of the archangels, the one who had cast Lucifer down. “I think we’ve put this circular argument through its paces one time too many. And we still have more to get through. Uriel, what did you find out from the Earth Observation files? Did any of the infants survive?”
Now Aziraphale looked up, and instantly kicked himself. By rights he shouldn’t still be here; he’d given his report[6] and should have been told to return to his duties. Except, well, Samael had started shouting at Gabriel in the middle of it, and everyone seemed to have forgotten he was still around, so he had never been officially dismissed.
“One did,” Uriel answered. If Aziraphale’s control had been any less, all the archangels would have heard his sharp intake of breath. As it was, he only stifled it by reminding himself he didn’t have to breathe at all. “But … well, have a look.”
Uriel made a complicated gesture with one hand, and an image formed between all of them. It showed a body of water – the Nile, probably – a basket floating on the surface, and behind the basket—
Aziraphale’s corporation forgot that it wasn’t supposed to breathe and gasped.
“Crawly.”
What was Crawly doing in Egypt? They hadn’t seen each other since—since Moriah. Two hundred and seventy-one years ago.[7] Aziraphale had been certain that Crawly had still been in Canaan when he left.
This—this couldn’t be his demonic work, could it? No, surely not. Crawly—Crawly would never countenance the killing of children—
“Er—yes,” Uriel said, drawing Aziraphale out of his reverie. It was a miracle, perhaps literal, that he didn’t visibly startle or jump when she did. “The Serpent of Eden. She was spotted—”
“She?” Sandalphon asked. “I thought the Serpent was male.”
“She switches,” Aziraphale said—and knew that was a mistake as soon as every eye in the room turned to him. “That—that is—she has unfortunately been a, a most wily adversary, quite the thorn in my side, so, I, er, couldn’t help but notice that she tends to go from man-shaped to woman-shaped with—”
“We get it,” Samael interrupted. She turned back to Uriel. “You were saying?”
“Right. As I was saying …” The image began to move, backwards, until it found itself at the Nile banks. A woman was bending over the basket, a baby in her arms, crooning to it. Then she put the baby into the basket and set the basket afloat. From the rushes a black-and-red snake swam out.
Aziraphale narrowed his eyes, trying to understand. Why was Crawly there? Why would she—
Oh.
OH.
Aziraphale knew why.
His gaze darted to the assembled archangels, all staring rapt at the moving image. They didn’t know. No, they couldn’t know. They didn’t understand, and they wouldn’t understand, because—because he wouldn’t let them understand.
Even if—even if there hadn’t been any other reasons at play, the archangels weren’t allowed to know that Crawly had a spark of goodness in her, however small, when Crawly refused to acknowledge it herself.
So Aziraphale took a deep breath and tried very hard to think.
“What’s Hell’s game in all of this?” Gabriel asked as they watched the serpent deliver the baby to Pharaoh’s—was that his sister? Daughter? Newest wife?
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.” Uriel waved her hand, and the image disappeared. “We were able to retrace the demon’s steps back to Canaan, but she must have gone to Hell to get her instructions. Or some other place that’s warded against our looking.”
“Well, doesn’t matter,” Sandalphon chuckled. Aziraphale felt a quite un-angelic shiver snake down his spine. “No matter what the plan is, doubt it’ll survive if the kid doesn’t.”
What??
“We could smite the whole palace,” Samael said, eyes grim. “Serve Pharaoh right.”
No, no, no, no—they couldn’t kill this child. Not when Crawly had saved it. Not when the baby meant so much to Crawly.
So Aziraphale thought, and reached, and grasped, until somehow—he had it. He hoped.
“But what—what about the deliverer?” he asked.
By the surprised looks the archangels turned to him, it was clear they’d once again forgotten Aziraphale was still there. “Deliverer? What deliverer?” Uriel asked.
“The—the one who’s to be sent to free the Hebrews from bondage,” Aziraphale stammered. “To lead them back into Canaan. All the humans already know about him!”
That wasn’t precisely true. Oh, the humans talked about a deliverer; they yearned for a deliverer; they prayed for a deliverer; but they didn’t know there would be a deliverer. But with luck … the tiniest bit of luck … the archangels would believe that perhaps there was something that the Almighty had shared with the humans that She hadn’t shared with them. After all—
The archangels were looking sidelong at each other, brief flashes of nervousness on every face. If it weren’t wicked and sinful, Aziraphale might have allowed himself a brief burst of pride at that result.
But he still had convincing to do. “And—and when you think about it—this is the sort of thing that would make sense, wouldn’t it? A—a child, delivered from certain death, who will grow up to—to deliver his people out of slavery. It’s quite Her style, don’t you think?”
Now the archangels were shooting another set of glances at each other, these ones speculative, knowing. They were almost there—but Aziraphale couldn’t push.
“Of course,” he said, throwing in as much humility as he could manage, “I—I could be very wrong. It’s all part of the Ineffable Plan, and one mustn’t—”
“What you say makes a certain amount of sense, Principality,” Michael interrupted.
“But a demon?” asked Sandalphon, face contorted in disgust. “A demon saves the kid?”
“But—but—but—isn’t that the beauty of it?” Aziraphale stammered. “The—the Lord moves in mysterious ways; we all know that. And—and as for a demon—well—we didn’t know about Job until afterward, either!”
Uriel winced, and the bottom dropped out of Aziraphale’s stomach. Maybe—maybe that was wrong; maybe he shouldn’t have said that; Job was a bit of a sore spot among the archangels who hadn’t learned about that little bet until after the Almighty had collected Her winnings—
“Before we make any final decisions, we should gather more intelligence. Uriel? Would you mind going back to Earth Observation and seeing what you can find? It’s possible that more about the demon’s motives might come up with a deeper search,” Michael said.
“Of course,” Uriel replied with a serene nod. She left, presumably back to Earth Observation – and Aziraphale told himself, quite strenuously, that he wasn’t to worry over what she might find, because he hadn’t seen Crawly in over two hundred years, and—well.
“And we should consult the Metatron and confirm that this is the Almighty’s plan,” Michael continued. “Sandalphon, if you would …?”
Sandalphon nodded once and hurried away, nearly bowling Aziraphale over as he made his exit.
And now Aziraphale had to fight down panic, because—because if the Almighty did give a clear answer, then—then—
Oh Lord, he caught himself praying, please, please don’t—whatever You do, whatever You say, please don’t bring the child into it—he’s just a baby, and—and this isn’t about me; I understand You won’t talk to me because You’re still upset about the sword and the ram and all the rest of it, but Crawly—she saved this child; please, let the child stay saved—
“And I … need to send a message,” Michael concluded, for some reason not meeting anyone’s eyes as she said it. “I trust you two can handle preliminary preparations from here?” she asked Gabriel and Samael.
“Of course,” Gabriel said, and Samael nodded.
With that, Michael nodded once and took her leave of them. Leaving Aziraphale alone with Gabriel and Samael. Not that that was a cause for alarm, of course not!
Gabriel turned to Aziraphale with a tight smile, and the stomach of Aziraphale’s corporation had absolutely no business dropping the way it did. “Well, buddy,” he said with a long-suffering sigh, “I think, in light of this debacle, we really ought to have another chat about your performance, don’t you? I think some of those reports you sent before this all went down could have been a little clearer.”
Aziraphale blinked once, but—of course. If his reports had been clearer … all those children might still be alive … He swallowed once, and nodded, and tried to smile, because there was no reason to feel so crushed over what was merely going to be a well-earned reprimand and some gentle suggestions about how to do better in the future. “Certainly, Gabriel. Shall we—”
“Oh, HELL no, you don’t!” Samael said. “You’re not distracting the one set of eyes you put on the ground with bloody performance issues when I need intelligence. Principality!”
Aziraphale jumped and stood at attention, ignoring how the sudden movement made his old war wound ache. “Y-yes, ma’am!”
“You’re coming with me,” she said, grabbing him by the arm and all-but-dragging him off. “I need to know everything you know about the Egyptians, got that? Their gods, their customs, how the kingdom runs—even their bloody mealtimes. Everything, understand?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Good.” Samael continued to march him off, eyes locked on the middle distance and a storm in every step. “The Egyptians,” she said in a low, menacing tone, “are going to pay for what they did.”
And Aziraphale could only nod, but as he did so, he sent one last desperate plea to an Almighty who might or might not have been listening.
Please, Lord, whatever happens – whatever Samael plans – whatever Uriel and Sandalphon find out – please, just keep the child safe.
For Crawly.
All in all, Crawly was fairly pleased with how Operation: Save the Baby had gone down. As soon as wig-lady had taken the little one into the palace, Crawly had spotted the baby’s sister lurking just outside the curtains, watching. And while wig-lady browbeat the Pharaoh into letting her keep the little mite, Crawly had hatched a cunning plan that led to the baby’s actual mother serving as his wet-nurse. So that was the baby sorted.
And Crawly? Crawly had gotten herself a plum set of rooms at the palace and a terribly important if conveniently vague position as a diplomat from Canaan. She might have been the wrong gender for diplomacy, but miraculously, no one had noticed that.
Now all she had to do was sit back, lie (relatively) low, keep an eye on the baby, figure out what on earth was going on with the Hebrews, and maybe … in her spare time … seek out a certain angel.
With such an agreeable vista on the horizon, it really shouldn’t have surprised Crawly that everything swiftly went pear-shaped.
She was in the marketplace, sizing up a lovely snake-themed bangle and trying to decide if she deserved a treat[8] when a very distinctive scent hit her nostrils like a club to the solar plexus. The hair on the back of her neck barely had time to stand up before a low voice said in her ear, “Hullo, Crawly.”
Oh, fuck me sideways. She hadn’t smelled that. But still, she turned to the voice, careful smirk firmly in place. “Duke Ligur. What an unpleasant surprise.”
“Innit?” Ligur grinned, and that smile did things to her stomach that made her glad she didn’t make a habit of eating. “His Lowliness is requesting an audience.”
“By which we mean, His Lowliness is ordering you to get your arse back down to Hell.” And there was the source of the stench—Hastur, on Crawly’s other side.
“Is that so?” Crawly said, trying to take a step back so she could keep an eye on both of them at the same time. “Well, just tell me where and when, and I’ll be sure to—”
“Lowest Throne,” said Hastur.
“And now,” said Ligur.
And with that, both of them grabbed her arms and forced her down.
It took every ounce of self-control Crawly possessed not to kick and scream as she was shoved into the ground and through it. Hastur and Ligur dragged her through the boundary between planes, past the point where Earth ended and Hell began. Down, and down, and down they went, until they crashed through the ceiling of Hell, a shower of sand falling around them.
Crawly ended up – somehow – on her hands and knees, coughing and sputtering even though she thought she had turned off breathing the second she was up to her knees in dirt. Meanwhile, Hastur and Ligur had landed on their feet, bless them. Ligur was dusting his hands off so that every last grain of sand landed on Crawly’s back. “Got the snake for you, sir.”
“Yes. I see that,” a voice rumbled – and then the depth of Crawly’s predicament caught up to her.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh SHIT!
Satan wanted to see her. In the Lowest Throne. Which meant she was, to put it charitably, utterly fucked.
SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!
Crawly dared one swift glance up. First there was Dagon, to the right hand of the throne – Beelzebub on the left hand – and on the throne itself, a massive male-shaped being with black hair, a black beard, and dark blue skin with white pinpricks like stars picked out on it. Lucifer, the Light-Bringer, darkened. He had no wings (for the moment), and his only concession to modesty was a loincloth.[9]
Satan Himself.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!
At the moment, by some miracle, he wasn’t looking at Crawly. Instead, he was looking at the ceiling, still leaking sand. With a sigh, he snapped his fingers, closing the hole.
Then he looked at Crawly.
Crawly’s gaze snapped to the ground, and she stayed on her hands and knees. “Y-Your Lowliness,” she said (stammered). “To what do I owe this—displeasure?”
A sudden weight collided with Crawly’s side—Hastur’s foot—Crawly swallowed her cry. “You’ll speak when you’re spoken to, snake!”
“Hastur.” Satan’s voice carried only the lightest of reproofs, but it was enough to freeze every drop of blood in Crawly’s body – and she wasn’t even the one being reprimanded. “Please remember that you are not to assault the lesser demons in my presence until and unless I tell you do to so. Have I told you to do so?”
“She—she was sassing you, Your Lowliness—”
“Have I. Told you. To do so?”
“No, Your Lowliness.”
“Then step out of assaulting range.”
Hastur shuffled away. Crawly didn’t look up.
“Now. Crawly. To answer your question. We’ve heard some … troubling reports. Ligur? If you would?”
“It would be my greatest dishonor, sir. Crawly, you are hereby accused—”
“She is not accused of anything—yet—we’ve merely heard reports. Ligur, the substance of those reports, if you please.”
Crawly didn’t move. Didn’t react. Just stared at the blood-red stone that made up the floor and forced herself to breathe.
“As—as you will, Your Lowliness. Crawly—we’ve had reports that you’ve been acting under orders of the Almighty.”
Whatever Crawly had been expecting—it hadn’t been that.
“What?” Crawly shouted, looking up.
“Yes, that was rather what I thought,” Satan replied. “Ligur, please continue.”
“We have reports that you saved the deliverer of the Hebrew people from certain death and, uh, delivered him to Pharaoh’s palace. That, needless to say, is the sort of thing that comes with a sentence of extinction—”
“Ligur, enough,” Satan said—and though he didn’t raise his voice one iota, somehow, he managed to drown out every other sound. “Crawly. Is this true?”
Crawly didn’t answer. She had to—she had figure a way out of this; she had to think; she had to—
“Crawly,” said Satan in a tone that made it quite clear that Crawly would regret it if he had to say her name a third time.
“And don’t even think of lying, snake,” Ligur said, “or His Lowliness will—”
And she had it.
“Hard to lie, isn’t it, when you’re not really sure what the truth is,” she said, looking up – but at Ligur, not at the throne and the being on it. “I did keep a kid alive, sure, brought him to Pharaoh’s palace, even—but this is the first I’m hearing of a ‘deliverer,’ so, maybe you have the wrong kid …?”
“So you don’t deny that you did preserve a child?” Satan asked.
“Nope,” Crawly said, popping the final p with a desperate bravado she didn’t in any way feel.
“And why would you do such a thing?” Dagon asked.
“Not very demonic, izzz it?” asked Beelzebub.
Oh, great, just great, now she was being tag-teamed. “Well,” Crawly said, drawling out every syllable to give herself more time to think, “the way I saw it—keeping the kid alive was a no-lose situation for us.”
For a second – a precious second that could be filled with many thoughts – there was silence.
Then the voice from the throne said, slowly, “Explain.”
“Gladly,” Crawly said, and that wasn’t—entirely—a lie. “So, you have to understand, I roll into town, barely shake the dust off m’sandals, and the first thing I see is a bunch of babies being slaughtered. Now, obviously we’re not behind it, or else I wouldn’t have been sent to Egypt to do some fact-finding, so one of two things is going on here. One, Heaven’s behind it. Two, Heaven isn’t behind it, but Heaven either doesn’t have the power or doesn’t care enough to stop it. So, we save one kid, and—well, either we’re going directly against Heaven’s will, always a bad thing that we ought to be doing, or we’re doing what Heaven couldn’t.
“And that’s just the beginning, just now. Let’s skip ahead, oh, thirty, forty years, shall we? What we have, on our side, is a genuine prince of Egypt, right? And princes, generally, know all kinds of useful things, like, let’s say, how to give a speech, how to work the levers of power, how to lead an army … you see where I’m going with this? We play our cards right, and we’re the ones who get the Hebrews out of Egypt and back into Canaan. Which, to me, sounds like the little covenant You-Know-Who had with Abraham can get thrown in the dung heap. Because what’s the point of a covenant like that if the other party can’t deliver when it counts?”
“So you’re saying that we’d replace the covenant God had with Abraham with a covenant of our own with the sons of Israel,” Satan said, leaning back in his throne and steepling his fingers before him.
Crawly reviewed what she’d said and replied, “Basically, yeah,” hoping those words wouldn’t be her last.
“Interesting,” Satan answered. His face was inscrutable, although a quick glance around the room showed that Hastur was squinting his way through the logic, Ligur was scowling, Beelzebub was sneering, and Dagon looked reluctantly impressed. “So that’s how we win. But tell me, Crawly—how do we not lose?”
“Ah. Well, I’m glad you asked that,” Crawly lied to give herself a few precious seconds to figure out what should come next. “That, that idea I just laid out? That’s plan—Plan Alef, let’s say. Now, Plan Bet—we still have ourselves a genuine prince of Egypt, but he’s not terribly keen to lead a slave revolt and destabilize his country’s economy. That’s fine, we can work with that. All we have to do is insinuate ourselves into the Hebrews and say, see that kid? That’s the arsehole Upstairs chose to be your deliverer. Bit shit, ain’t he? Now you could stick with him and see what happens … or you could side with us … basically, we could end up with a new covenant that way, or, if that doesn’t work out, we keep picking up souls along the margins, pad our numbers and keep them away from Heaven and the Egyptians. So, call that Plan Bet and Plan Gimel, depending on how things work out.
“Now that brings us to Plan Dalet, which, I will grant you, is not much of a victory for our side, no indeed. Plan Dalet, well, Heaven gets its act together, decides to make use of the kid that I went and delivered for them, thank you very much, turns that kid into the deliverer of Egypt, probably with some song and dance number and, I don’t know, some smiting of the Egyptians. Which, hey, never ideal when Heaven goes on a smiting spree, but better the Egyptians than us, right? And speaking of better … Plan Dalet, for all that we don’t win much, is still better than Plan He, which goes as follows.”
Now Crawly looked up, now she knelt back instead of cowering on the ground, now she dared to really look at her audience and force them to hear what she said.
“Plan He: we do fuck-all. The Hebrews, not being utterly stupid, give us all up as a bad job – Heaven, Hell, all of us – and throw in their lot with the Egyptian gods, who might actually be paying attention to them. And the biggest group of Abraham’s descendants? Like that,” she snapped her fingers, “they don’t belong to us anymore. And sure, there’s the other two groups of descendants – the ones from, uh, the first one, the slave’s kid, and the other one, the elder twin, the goat-man – but there aren’t as many of them, they’re a bit intermarried, and what happens if they go poof? Specifically, what happens to us?”
As Crawly had hoped, none of them had an answer to that.
She didn’t smile. She knew better. “So, yeah,” she said, “like I said – saving the kid, for us? No-lose situation. The only way to lose is not to play. So I played. You’re welcome.”
It was only when the last two words tripped from her mouth that she realized that they might have been the wrong things to say.
Not that Satan reacted. Dagon breathed in sharply; Beelzebub’s eyes went wide; Ligur chuckled; Hastur grinned. But Satan? Didn’t blink.
“Indeed. Your logic is, as always, impeccable, Crawly. And your imagination … unique. Unfortunately, given the interest Heaven has now – or always had – in the child, it seems likely that we will be forced to stick with Plan Dalet. But, I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities for further improvisation, and perhaps even an actual victory, down the line. So, badly done, Crawly.”
A stupider Crawly might have sighed with relief. But a stupider Crawly would have been dead a long time ago, so this Crawly kept her mouth shut.
“And with that being said … I do believe we are done here. Dismissed,” Satan said, waving a hand.
“But, sir—” Hastur began.
“I said, DISMISSED!”
And like that—everyone was dismissed.
Except Satan.
And Crawly.
Crawly didn’t dare to breathe.
But Satan didn’t seem inclined to do anything. Not right away. No, have to draw it out first. Until he sighed. “Crawly, Crawly, Crawly … what am I to do with you?”
Crawly spent so long trying to figure out if she had better odds leaving this encounter alive by answering him or staying silent that Satan ran out of patience and kept speaking.
“I won’t deny, your actions with the young deliverer were … I suppose they were the only thing you could do at the time. But all the same, they’ve put me in quite the difficult position with Heaven. Because now those archangels seem to have the idea that we answer to them. Doing their bidding. Cleaning up their messes. And that … that just won’t do.”
Satan went silent, gaze mutely inquiring, an invitation for Crawly to plead her case. But even if Crawly had had words to say, she couldn’t have said them if someone had threatened to dump a pitcher of Holy Water on her as a penalty for staying silent.
Satan sighed. “Crawly … oh. I suppose I can still call you Crawly? You wouldn’t prefer I revert to an earlier name?”
“It’s Crawly!” Crawly shouted before she could stop herself, because what Satan was threatening was—was—“It’s Crawly, Crawly! Always Crawly!”
“Oh, good. I’d hate to see my clever, inventive Crawly revert to being that silly little angel who only knew how to ask questions, not to answer them. But, Crawly … don’t forget one thing.”
He rose, descended the obsidian steps that led to the throne, and stood in front of Crawly, hands on hips. “That silly little angel who only knew how to ask questions? They Fell, Crawly. And when they did—I caught them. I turned that broken-winged creature into my clever Crawly. My clever Crawly. Mine.”
“Y-y-yes, s-s-sir—”
“And my clever Crawly knows better than to do anything that could ever be construed as being in league with Heaven, or any of Heaven’s angels, because if she didn’t …”
Satan—
What Satan did next was not the sort of thing that could be described using words in any human language. If Crawly were forced to explain by, say, someone threatening to upend a pitcher of Holy Water on her head if she didn’t, she might say that what Satan did was put her soul into a vise and squeezed. Squeezed until her insides became her outsides, until she was a breath away from popping like a crushed grape, until there was nothing left but sick and ooze and pain.
So.
Much.
Pain.
What Satan did wasn’t anything like that, of course. But if that was what he had done, Crawly probably would have ended it in a heap at Satan’s feet, throat raw from screaming in a register no human could hear, eyes dry from crying enough tears to flood the Nile, breath coming in pants from too long spent not being able to breathe at all.
Since that was exactly how Crawly ended up after Satan did—what he did, Crawly would say, had she been asked, that the description was close enough.
And somehow, despite the eons Satan had spent doing that, he hadn’t forgotten what he’d been saying to her. “Well. If she didn’t …” He bent and stroked the snake tattoo by her ear; Crawley tried not to whimper. “She wouldn’t be my clever Crawly, now, would she?”
Crawly shut her eyes.
“But enough of that.” Satan’s loincloth rustled as he straightened; his bare feet padded toward the door. “You won’t be allowed near the child now that Heaven’s taken an interest in it, but I still need a pair of eyes on the ground. You’re to report back to the surface as soon as you’re able. Hurry, now. The game is, as they say, afoot.”
And Satan left. Leaving Crawly a crumpled heap on the blood-red floor.
But the first thing she thought – when she was capable of linear thought again – wasn’t about Satan, or her pain, or even her mission.
It was about the child.
Well … at least Heaven and Hell both want the kid alive now …
Circa 1491 B.C.
Sinai Peninsula
When Lot and his family fled Sodom, they were commanded not to look back, but Lot’s wife disobeyed and was turned into a pillar of salt. When the Hebrews fled Egypt, running between the walls of water that held back the Red Sea, no one commanded them not to look back. There was no need. The Hebrews had freedom ahead, slavery behind, so why would they look back?
Aziraphale, though.
Aziraphale had spent too many long years in Egypt not to look back.
So he did. And he saw the walls of water crash down on Pharaoh’s army. Heard the screams of the horses, the groan and crack of splintering wood, the shouts of terrified men. Saw the flotsam and jetsam rise to the surface and tried not to be heartsick over the fates of so many more Egyptians who, while not precisely innocent, had certainly not earned this treatment on top of everything else.
But that was not all he saw.
He saw a woman standing on the banks of the sea, as still as Lot’s wife after that fateful transformation. But she was no salt pillar. Her black robes fluttered in the breeze coming off the water, and somehow Aziraphale knew who she was even before the wind teased a red curl loose and began to play with it.
“Crawly,” he breathed. And of their own volition, his feet picked their way down the sandy shore and past the last of the fleeing Hebrews, so he could stand by her side.
He hadn’t seen her since Moriah. Even though he’d known she was in Egypt, he hadn’t dared to seek her out. Heaven already had their eye on her after her role in delivering Moses to Pharaoh’s palace. He couldn’t—he couldn’t bear to put her at any greater risk.
But now? Now, he supposed, was safe enough. The Hebrews were marching toward their great destiny – surely no one would notice one angel and one demon tarrying just a little bit behind.
She didn’t say anything, not at first, and Aziraphale didn’t know what to say either. But finally she turned to him. The wind caught her veil and covered half her face with it, but not so much that Aziraphale couldn’t see the hint of a tear track under one eye.
“Crawly—” he said, and his hand moved toward her of its own accord.
She turned away.
Aziraphale’s hand dropped to his side.
“So,” she said finally, her voice as clear and steady as if he hadn’t just spotted her crying. “I suppose this was all part of the Great Plan? Not just this,” she gestured to the tossing waves of the Red Sea and the remains of Pharaoh’s army scattered on the surface and swallowed by the deep, “but the river of blood, plague of locusts, boils, all the rest of it?”
Aziraphale knew he ought to announce that it was, that as an angel, it was his duty to endorse the Great Plan at every turn and see that it came to pass. Unfortunately, he had spent far too long telling Samael everything he knew about the Egyptians – and being briefed on what was to come, so he could prepare the Hebrews – to not know exactly where this plan, in all of its gory detail, came from. “Well—it was someone’s plan.”
Both of Crawly’s eyebrows rose, but she didn’t press for more details. “I suppose, as far as Heaven’s concerned, that the Egyptians had it coming.”
“Well, you have to admit, my dear, that—that incident would hardly endear the Egyptians to, er, anyone Upstairs—”
“All the Egyptians who did that are long dead,” Crowley fired back. “It’s been eighty yearsss, angel; why should their great-grandchildren have to sssuffer for what they did? And if what happened to those kidssss is ssssuch a crime in Heaven’s eyessss, why didn’t they ssssstop it?”
Aziraphale really should have had better control of himself, because try though he might, some small part of the flinch slipped through.
It was enough for Crawly to notice, and the fight left her like air from a popped balloon. “Angel?” One of her hands came up, hovering, almost touching his shoulder; Aziraphale watched it, wondering if he dared to hope—
The hand dropped back to her side. Aziraphale told himself he had absolutely no business being disappointed, so whatever that distinctly unpleasant feeling churning through his gut was, it wasn’t that.
So he wrung his hands together and stared at the waves and the smashed-up chariots bobbing on the surface. “I’m—I’m sure there were—other priorities.”
He was half-hoping, half-dreading that Crawly would ask, Like what? Half-dreading because, well, a question like that deserved an answer, and somehow Aziraphale had never managed to ferret one out for himself. And half-hoping, because … because …
He really shouldn’t be hoping at all.
Still, he wasn’t nearly relieved enough when Crawly didn’t ask. Instead, she said, “I suppose Water Boy’s,” she nodded her head back in an offhand gesture to Moses, presumably, “mother’s plan to keep him alive came from your lot, then?”
“W-what?” Aziraphale asked, as startled by the change of subject as he was by the question.
“Oh, come on,” Crawly laughed. “Stick the baby in a basket and float it down the river? It’s exactly the sort of daft thing your Head Office would suggest to the poor woman in a dream.”
“We didn’t—that is, as far as I know—it wasn’t our idea. And it wasn’t daft,” Aziraphale protested.
Crawly’s eyebrows rose, mocking. “Then what was it?”
Desperate, Aziraphale thought, terrified, absolutely out of ideas, seizing on the first likely chance and praying—
But he couldn’t say that, not out loud, not where someone might hear. So he grabbed the first halfway plausible adjective he could find. “Faithful.”
Crawly blinked. Slowly enough for Aziraphale to remark it. And then she did it again, to make damn sure he saw. “Faithful.”
“Well, yes,” Aziraphale replied, stung. “I mean—her plan was—well—it certainly wasn’t foolproof, but she hoped, and presumably prayed, that it would all work out for the best, and—well, it did. I mean, you were—”
And here Aziraphale had to stop, because Crawly was not listening anymore. Her hands had clenched into fists at her sides, and she was staring at Aziraphale and taking short, panting breaths.
“Ssso let me get thisss ssstraight,” she said. “You think it’sss perfectly fine to put a baby in a basssket and float it down the river, as long as you hope and pray that it all turnsss out all right.”
“Well, it did, didn’t it?” Aziraphale said mildly, not sure why Crawly was so upset.
“You—” Crawly started—and without another word, turned, flipped the trailing ends of her veil over her shoulder, and stomped up the hill.
“Well, really,” Aziraphale said to her retreating back – though not loudly enough that she might hear. “What’s gotten into—”
Then he gasped. Because he knew what had gotten into her.
And still standing on the shore, all he could do was watch her stomp away.
There was no way to tell her that what she feared wasn’t true. That though Aziraphale might be every bit as daft as Moses’s poor mother …
At the end of the day? He just didn’t have that kind of faith.
[1] Or clay tablets, technically, since paper hadn’t been invented yet.
[2] Crawly was definitely counting.
[3] Unless, of course, they were thinking with the brain they kept between their legs.
[4] Or hippopotamus – which would be much more likely and infinitely more embarrassing.
[5] After he got back to Earth and found what Pharaoh’s soldiers had done to Goshen and, God help them, those poor babies.
[6] Or at least, all of it that the archangels were likely to be interested in hearing.
[7] Not that Aziraphale was counting, because he most certainly was not.
[8] She did.
[9] And Crawly was grateful. Really. She was no prude, but she really didn’t want to know what was under that loincloth.