by Jane Kindred
The Midnight Court
House of Arkhangel’sk
Book Two
Jane Kindred
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Jane Kindred. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
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First Edition August 2012
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For Elena Volfovna.
Hierarchy of the Spheres
The First Sphere
The Heavens (“Heaven”)
First Heaven: The Empyrean
Capital: Gehenna
once populated by the the Host of the First Choir, now abandoned
Second Heaven: Aravoth
Capital: Aravoth City
populated by the Order of Virtues
Third Heaven: Shehaqim (“The Firmament”)
Capital: Elysium
populated by the Host of the Fourth Choir
Fourth Heaven: Ma’on
Capital: Asphodel
populated by the Order of Powers and Fourth Choir military recruits
Fifth Heaven: Zevul
Capital: Araphel
populated by the Order of Dominions and Fourth Choir scholars
Raqia
(formerly the Sixth Heaven, now annexed as a district of Elysium)
Capital: None (formerly Arcadia)
currently populated by the Fallen
Seventh Heaven: Vilon
Capital: Arcadia (formerly Aden)
populated by the Host of the Fourth Choir
The Host (angels)
First Choir: Spirits of Air
Orders: Tafsarim (“the Aeons”), Elim (“the Ardors”),
Erelim (“the Splendors”)
mysterious beings none living have seen
Second Choir: Spirits of Fire
Orders: Seraphim, Cherubim, Ophanim
elemental beings of fire who are able to manifest wings in
Heaven—bodyguards, brute squads, and palace guards of the
reigning principalities
Third Choir: Spirits of Earth
Orders: Dominions, Virtues, Powers
philosophers and administrators; scientists & investigators;
military officers
Fourth Choir: Spirits of Water
Orders: Principalities, Archangels, Angels
nobility, merchants, and commoners
Supernal House of Arkhangel’sk: Heaven’s imperial family, it takes its name from an earthly city named for the monastery of the Archangel Mikhail, founding principality of the House
Malakim: Messengers to the world of Man from the
Order of Archangels
Elohim: An elite sect and ruling body of princes (sars) of the
Order of Virtues (Aravoth is the only princedom ruled by a governing body rather than a principality)
Hashmallim: Elite warriors of the Supernal Army from
the Order of Powers
The Fallen (Demons)
Common demons: angels of mixed blood—
the serfs, demimondes, and outlaws of Heaven
The Second Sphere
The World of Man
Terrestrial Fallen: demons who permanently reside
in the world of Man
Grigori: Watchers from the Order of Powers sent to
observe the world of Man; the first Fallen
Nephilim: hybrid offspring of Grigori and Man
The race of Man: humans
Night Travelers: a secret society of gypsies who act as liaisons
between the world of Man, the celestial militsiya, and terrestrial Fallen
The Third Sphere
Nezrimyi Mir (The Unseen World)
the realm of the Unseen, located in the Russian
forest in the world of Man
The Unseen
Syla: bereginyi: spring syla; mavki: summer syla;
samodivi: autumn syla; snegurochki: winter syla
female nature spirits
Leshi: male nature spirits
Rusalki: female water spirits
The Fourth Sphere
Irkalla and the Realm of the Dead (“Hell”)
Nehemoth: servants and gatekeepers of Irkalla
The dead: formerly living souls of the First and Second Spheres, now permanent residents of the Realm of the Dead
Pervoe: Summer Fires
from the memoirs of the Grand Duchess Anazakia Helisonovna of the House of Arkhangel’sk
She is the daughter of a demon, this child of mine. Her birthright as the last scion of the House of Arkhangel’sk ought to be the throne of Heaven, but we are Fallen now and live as demons in the world of Man. In this ice-bound Russian port, this land of sullen winters of perpetual dusk to balance months of midnight sun, we have found a home with the demons who once sought ransom for my life.
I was a fool to think it could last forever.
On the eve of Ivan Kupala, the tranquility of our dacha at Arkhangel’sk began to crumble like brittle autumn leaves. Amid the bonfires of midsummer, a more malicious blaze was kindling. I took it at first for the glint of wishing candles winking in the brief twilight between one northern summer day and the next. It was on such a night I had first met the creatures who called themselves syla, the dainty wood spirits who came to me when I thought I might die of misery after my family fell to my cousin’s sword. The company of my demon protectors was little comfort to me then.
Despite the occasional flickering glow that danced like fireflies in the trees beyond, the garden this evening remained still and empty. I pressed my lips to my daughter’s sun-kissed head. The syla were not to grace us tonight.
As I lifted Ola, heavy with sleep, something flitted on the periphery of my vision. The flat, silvery leaves of the birches moved like the scales of a serpent in a wave across the yard. It wasn’t the nature of the syla I had seen before, yet there was no wind that could have caused it.
Straining to see, I stepped toward the rippling leaves. The wave flowed onward past the gate, moving swiftly and now touched with flame. Ola remained asleep against my shoulder while I ran barefoot along the path of crushed flowers. Outside the gate, a figure poised for a moment, spun away from me, and was gone.
I called out for her to wait. The lone syla winked into the waning light for an instant and once more vanished, but not before I saw her look of anguish. A wind-devil picked up the leaves at my feet. I ran after it as quickly as I could, and followed the fluttering leaves into a bower of thicket. Branches scored my calves beneath the short pants Belphagor called pedal pushers—so much more suitable for mischief than the corsets and gowns I’d worn as a grand duchess in Heaven—as I climbed through into the little hollow among the trees. I paused to catch my breath while the leaves settled to the ground.
The wind wailed through the trees around us like a woman in pain. Then I saw as clearly as Ola in my arms a naked woman with dark hair whipping about her face as if lifted by heated air. She
burned from the center of her body outward until all of her had been engulfed in flames. I watched in horror as the vision disintegrated into bits of red-rimmed ash that blew away on the wind like remnants of burning paper.
Another woman’s face appeared within the trees, half formed of leaves and burned away on one side. “The flower.” She gasped out the words. “The queen shall take—” And then she, too, disintegrated.
I held Ola to me and reached out with one hand, as if I could stop whatever terrible thing was happening. Another voice whispered on the wind. I couldn’t make it out, until I heard one word clearly: Seraphim. I turned in a swift circle, afraid the Seraphim who’d pursued me when I’d first fled Heaven had found us once more. But there was no radiating heat or burning, white-hot light.
Ola woke and began to cry. The wind had stilled and there were no more rustling leaves, no half-heard voices. I tried to soothe her, bouncing her on my hip as I climbed back out of the bower. Under the pale blue light that marked summer’s darkest hour, we made our way through the thicket until I stumbled over something on the path near the gate. A pile of leaves seemed to cover a charred tree limb. When I set Ola down beside me, I saw the limb move.
Afraid it was a snake, I snatched Ola up again, but a moan from within the leaves gave me pause. I brushed them aside. Beneath lay one of the syla, pieces of her red tatting dress burned away across her torso, and below that—I pulled Ola’s head into my bosom so she wouldn’t see.
The syla was barely alive. Her shallow breaths seemed little more than the random sounds of the forest, but she opened her eyes and reached for me.
I took her hand, tears obstructing my vision. “What’s happened?”
“The queen.” Her voice was tight with pain. “She knows.”
The words sent a chill up my spine, along with a spark of anger. So Aeval had survived. She called herself the queen of Heaven, but the woman who’d turned my cousin’s head and put him in her thrall was the former queen of the Unseen World. I’d wounded her in my escape from Elysium, and while it may have been naïve to hope the wound was fatal, in a year, we’d heard nothing from Heaven. With each passing day of celestial silence, I’d let myself believe we were safe.
“She knows what? What has she done to you?”
“The flower. The Seraphim punish…” Her breath caught and she twisted in the leaves.
“She knows I had it,” I said.
The syla had enraged their former queen by withholding the coveted flower of the fern—and its attendant power—for more than a century before giving it to me.
“The fiery ones want secret but we do not tell.” She clutched my hand against a wave of pain etched on her delicate features. “They take us one by one. Each syla feels others.”
Shocked tears spilled over my cheeks as I realized what she meant. In the earthly realm, the touch of the Seraphim burned away flesh. From the pattern of her burns, and from the way the others had disintegrated, it was clear where the Seraphim had touched.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. It was foolishly inadequate.
She shook her head. “Syla fail Fallen Queen.”
“No.” I was adamant. “You haven’t failed me; I’ve failed you. This is my fault. If I hadn’t lost the flower—”
“This the syla do not tell. We tell only what we see.” She closed her eyes and was quiet a moment, and I was afraid she was gone before she took another labored breath. “We see Little Queen. Little Queen shall take the flower of the fern.” It was their name for Ola, and they’d seen that she’d take the flower back someday.
The syla’s eyes opened once more, focused on me with sorrow and shame. “We tell what we see.” Her hand slipped from mine and she stared sightlessly into the cerulean light.
Ola fussed, unhappy with how tightly I was holding her. I tried to cover the syla’s body once more, but each leaf that touched her seemed to consume her form, and soon I could no longer see its shape.
When I lifted Ola and straightened, I wasn’t alone. Inside the gate, with chestnut eyes wide and her mouth half open, stood Ola’s young nanny, the gypsy who called herself Love.
Love didn’t believe in the unseen. We had engaged her as both a nanny and an agent of intelligence, for despite her skepticism, she had her finger on the pulse of the gypsies’ underground network in a way no demon could ever hope to. Love used the technology of the world of Man to monitor communications from faraway ports I couldn’t even pronounce, aware almost instantly when credible talk of celestials surfaced. How she managed to sift the credible from the profoundly absurd so abundant in what I’d seen on the glass of her devices, I couldn’t guess—particularly since she thought it all an elaborate game.
“You saw the syla?”
“The what?” Love shook her head as if she thought she might be dreaming. “Why are you outside with the baby at this hour?” She came through the gate and took Ola brusquely from my arms as if I were a naughty child, though Love and I were close in age and she was not yet twenty. Ola wrapped her sleepy arms around Love’s neck. “What were you doing with the leaves?”
“Burying the syla. You saw her.” I turned back, but there was nothing left where the body had been.
“Burying the force?” She translated the Russian word into angelic. Though she didn’t believe in Heaven, she’d humored us in the year she’d spent with us by learning what she called our “code language.”
“No, the syla.” I reached in vain within my knowledge of the language. My grasp of the local tongue would never be quite as good as that of my companions Belphagor and Vasily, who had many more years’ practice in its usage; I could understand it far better than I could speak it.
“Spirit,” I said. It was the closest angelic word I could come up with, but it was inadequate. Though spirit in angelic did mean force in some sense, neither term did the syla justice. I tried the Russian word for the spirit-creatures of the stories in my little brother Azel’s favorite books. “Feya.”
Love regarded me doubtfully. “You buried a fairy.”
It was close enough. “She died. You must have seen her.”
Love turned toward the dacha with a yawning Ola. “The night sun can make you see strange things, Nazkia. You should get some sleep.”
I was tempted to show her some strange things, to release my wings and display the radiance of my cardinal element—towering pennons of water that moved like living crystal. It was, as Belphagor had referred to it once, the terrestrial magic for which the Fallen fell, unavailable to us in the rarefied air of Heaven.
Instead, I made a face at her back like a child.
As we headed in, there was no further sign of the syla. They seemed to materialize from the trees, but I had never known where their true realm lay. Wherever the Seraphim had waylaid them, it wasn’t here. The brilliance of seraphic radiance couldn’t be missed.
Though it was barely an hour past midnight, dawn was already creeping toward the horizon. I paused in the kitchen for a cup of tea while Love took Ola up to bed, the ruby highlights in my daughter’s hair touched off by the unearthly light as they climbed the stairs. She had the honeyed curls of the House of Arkhangel’sk, kissed with the color of fire from her father, with his intense eyes. Fire or water—we had yet to see whose element she would favor. I had never known anyone who had mixed them, though of course the Fallen must do it all the time.
That the dominant element of a demon might be from any one of the four celestial choirs was a testament to the mixing of blood that marked their peasant origins. As an airspirit, Belphagor must have had a First Choir angel—a Splendor, perhaps, or an Ardor, or even an Aeon—far back in his ancestral line. It seemed nearly as inconceivable to me as the Second Choir ancestor who must have once mixed Vasily’s firespirit blood. I shuddered at the thought of being touched intimately by a being of pure, elemental fire. Within the air of Heaven, the Seraphim’s fire was merely an intensely radiating heat, but even standing close to one could be uncomfortable.
Generations removed from those origins, Vasily could temper the heat of his body in ways I’d never imagined. I had certainly never imagined I would relinquish my angelic virtue to a demon of fire, though no one had been more surprised than he when I’d climbed into his bed. Though our opposing elements came together in an unexpected spark of potent radiance, the most astonishing effect of that union had been Ola.
The wooden stairs creaked. I looked up to see Vasily descending, dressed in the white ribbed undershirt and boxers he slept in no matter the time of year. He yawned and rubbed the bridge of his nose beneath the black wire frames of his spectacles, a gesture very like his daughter’s when she was awakened after a few hours’ sleep. I smiled as I turned away from the samovar and stirred sugar into my tea.
With the build and demeanor of a Cossack warrior, he did his best to look fierce. Long, tangled locks in the color of burning embers made him even more imposing—as did the rows of sharp metal bars decorating the flesh on both sides of his neck. But beneath his rough exterior, he had a tender heart, and as Ola grew, I saw more of her in him than I saw of him in her.
“I just heard Love putting the baby to bed.” His rough voice always sounded as if he’d smoked one cigarette too many. He padded down the stairs, his footsteps muffled by the ever-present tapochki, the slippers we wore indoors. “Were you out in the garden at this hour?”
I lowered my head over my cup, wondering what I should tell him. The syla were my secret. But they were in danger, and it was I who’d put them there. “It’s Tvorila Night. Ivan Kupala tomorrow.”
“Ah, your midnight tradition.” He poured himself a cup of tea. “But where’s your garland crown? Didn’t you make one this year?”
I set my cup aside and considered the answer. I had guarded my secret jealously, as if telling it might take this special thing away, and I had lost much. But this was no longer my confidence to keep. “I don’t make them, Vasily.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re given to me.”
He scratched at the rusty sideburns that lined his jaw. “Given to you? By whom?”
I braced myself for ridicule or disapproval. “By…spirits.”