by Sharon Shinn
“See, it has something to do with thrust. Liftoff. You don’t have power—and you don’t have the fuel source to supply you with power if you do figure out how much power you need.”
“Power—why are you so insane about a power source? Birds don’t have any special thrust engine, angels don’t—they have wings, they get lift. Why should I need some outside boost?”
“They have wings that have more strength, flexibility and rapidity than your poor little mortal arms can generate—and it has something to do with body weight, I’m convinced. Birds have those light bones.”
“Well, angels weigh as much as mortals do—more, most of them, because of that muscle mass—and it doesn’t seem to slow them down.”
“I know. There’s just something to the formula we haven’t worked out yet.”
“But we will.”
“Hell, yes. If not us, nobody.”
A soft-footed waitress startled them both by materializing out of the inky darkness. “Would you like something to drink?”
Caleb glanced at Noah’s glass. “Wine? The house drink. Whatever. And can I get something to eat? I’m starving.”
She took his order and as silently disappeared. “So was it wonderful?” Noah demanded. “This pseudo-flight. This almost-flying.”
“It was—” Caleb spread his hands. “Someday I’m going to meet an angel that I actually trust, and I’m going to have the nerve to ask him to carry me from Luminaux to the Eyrie or somewhere, and I’m going to know what it’s actually like—but this came as close to fabulous as anything I’ve ever experienced. Like drifting down a river, except there’s nothing, not even water under you. Like levitating. Except you can feel the air. It is like the river; it pushes and gives with an actual pressure. I felt—” He laughed. Caleb was not a religious man, paid no respects to the god, but it was truly how he had felt. “I felt like I was in Jovah’s hands. And they were ghostly but substantial.”
“You’ll let me try them, of course.”
“Of course. If you’ll take me for a ride in your monster machine.”
Noah laughed, with an edge of rue. He had, for as many years as Caleb had labored over his wings, struggled to build a self-propelled land vehicle. He had succeeded, more or less, but even he admitted that his large, awkward, noisy, smelly result was not an ideal means of transportation.
“We’ll take a trip,” he promised. “I need to see how it holds up over distance. We can go out to Breven or maybe up to Semorrah. Make it a vacation.”
“Pick your day,” Caleb said. “Sounds like fun.”
The waitress brought Caleb’s food and a bottle of wine, and he ate quickly. He was famished, the day’s exertions having taken a physical toll. “So tell me,” he said around mouthfuls, “this is the place you’ve been raving about? With the singer?”
“You’ll rave, too, when you hear her.”
“I’m not much of a connoisseur.”
“You don’t need to be. And once you meet her—”
“Oho! This has progressed, then.”
“A few nights ago I introduced myself. I didn’t realize—but wait till you see her for yourself. Anyway, she’s been fairly friendly. More than I would have expected.”
“Tired of all that fawning from the elite Luminauzi intellectual circle, she falls for the simple good-heartedness of the earnest Edori boy.”
Noah laughed self-consciously. “Something like that. She’s been knocked around a bit, is the impression I get. Acts sort of tough and worldly, but—oh, you know. Everyone longs for a place of quiet and ease. Anyway, that’s how I read it. If you stay long enough, you’ll get to meet her. She’ll come over to the table after her last set. At least, she has the past couple nights. Well, this week.”
“I’ll stay,” Caleb said, inwardly marveling. Noah was usually so offhand and cheerful about his numerous affairs, as all the Edori were. It was unlike him to seem so serious about a woman. “What’s her name?”
There was, or seemed to be, a moment of hesitation before Noah answered. “Lilah.”
“And I take it she’s not Edori?”
The faintest laugh. “No.”
“I can hardly wait, then.”
He did not have to. Even as he spoke, the dulcimer player finished his piece and rose to his feet. An odd sound ran through the crowd—more truly, it seemed as though an excited silence fell over the audience, creating a static charge. Wineglasses stopped clinking. Rustling ceased. Every listener faced the front of the room. A heightened light seemed suddenly to focus on the stage.
There the back curtains parted as if swept back by invisible hands, revealing the silhouette of a single figure standing mostly in the shadows. Little could be seen of her face, though in the uncertain light she appeared young; her pale oval face was framed by a mass of dark curls. She had her arms crossed high upon her chest, each hand resting on the opposite shoulder in an almost suppliant attitude. She was dressed in flowing robes that, because of her unmoving stance, fell around her like the marble gown of a statue. Behind her, folded tightly back, angel wings made their peculiar and beautiful rise and curve. She looked like nothing so much as an effigy upon a tomb, an eternal prayer to Jovah for mercy.
Caleb glanced sharply at his friend. “She’s an angel? Or is that just an affectation for this place?”
Noah motioned him to silence, not answering, not taking his eyes off the performer. Caleb swung his attention back to the stage. Lilah had taken a step forward and swept her arms before her, palms upward, in another gesture of entreaty. From somewhere out of sight came the plaintive, disembodied sound of a single flute playing a melancholy scale.
It was hard to tell exactly when the singer joined her voice to the flute’s, for surely they exhaled two or five or seven notes in flawless unison, till the woman’s voice broke free of the pipe’s and climbed above it in a series of minor intervals. Her song was wordless, her voice as pure and uninflected as the silver flute, and the overall effect was absolutely unearthly. Caleb felt his heart twist with an inexplicable malaise, and he was swept by a wave of deep and unutterable regret for all the missed opportunities of his life, all the friends lost and years too easily wasted. It was a gentle sadness without the slightest hint of bitterness, but he was shocked at its thoroughness. As the eerie voice soared higher, its sweetness thinning till it almost faded, he took a long, unsteady breath. So might a man feel who had spent the night sobbing over vanished love.
Simultaneously, both voices trailed to a breathless silence. There was no motion, no sound, from the stricken crowd. The singer, who had bowed her head as she finished her song, raised her chin and took a step forward to the edge of the stage. She surveyed the audience for a moment—and, unbelievably, laughed.
“Welcome once again to the unique entertainment you have come to expect here at Seraph,” she said, and in the dulcet voice was the unmistakable taint of sarcasm. She tossed her hair back and flicked her eyes around the room, assessing the expressions of her audience. Many, Caleb guessed, surely looked as he did—like coma victims coming to in a much stranger world than they remembered leaving. This was not the persona one would have expected of a woman with such a celestial voice. “I’m Lilah, I’m the one you came to hear, even if you don’t know it yet. Don’t bother writing down your requests, I just sing whatever I feel like. If I don’t sing what you came to hear—well, feel free to come back tomorrow night and every other night until I’ve satisfied you all.
“Boys?” she added, without a pause or change of tone, and suddenly a hidden band broke into a fast-paced melody that Caleb found vaguely familiar. Some popular tune of the day; no doubt he’d heard it on some street corner or in a crowded tavern. When Lilah’s voice came swooping down on the opening words of the first verse, he suddenly remembered that he liked the song immensely—it was his favorite; he had never heard anything he liked better. Not until he felt the sting in his palms did he realize he was clapping with the rhythm, as was everyone in the room. Had he
known the lyrics, he would have been singing along.
“Who is she?” he found time to whisper to Noah between the end of this song and the start of the next, but Noah merely waved at him again and did not trouble to answer. And it did not matter. Lilah had begun singing again, something a little slower this time but just as upbeat, and actually, nothing at all mattered. Caleb grinned foolishly and let his heart be uplifted.
The concert continued well into the night, the mood of the crowd shifting as rapidly as the tone of Lilah’s songs—although, after her opening number she stayed mostly in the cheerful range of emotions. In fact, from time to time she dipped straight into rowdy, not to say risqué, and more than once her listeners were on their feet, stamping their heels, pounding their hands together, and echoing choruses back at her as she teased them from the stage. It was an exhausting performance, even for the audience; when she at last bowed good night after her third riotous encore, Caleb finally noticed that he was sore, tired, and filmed with sweat all the way to his hairline.
“Does she sing like that every night?” he asked, dropping into his seat with a sigh of exhaustion. “How does she have the strength?”
“Every night that I’ve been here,” Noah replied, sinking down beside his friend. “And I think it’s harder on us than on her. She doesn’t even seem tired at the end. Like she could do the whole set over and not notice the effort.”
Caleb drained his wine (forgotten for this hour or two) and then his goblet of water. “So tell me,” he said, “who is this woman? She can manipulate a crowd of Luminauzi socialites as easily as a child can charm his uncle. I consider myself pretty immune to persuasion, but I was dancing in my chair along with the rest of them.”
“Well…” Noah said hesitantly, “she’s an angel.”
Caleb nodded. “So I gathered. No one but an angel could sing like that. What’s she doing here? Kicked out of Cedar Hills for inappropriate behavior? Because you have to admit she crossed the line once or twice.”
“Didn’t seem to bother you at the time,” Noah said sharply.
Caleb’s eyes widened at the swift partisanship. “All right, then, let’s just say I’ve never heard an angel sing the one about the woman with the three lovers. And I can’t imagine that Micah would be happy to know that one of his host is performing tavern songs for the masses down in the Blue City.”
“She’s not from Cedar Hills,” Noah said almost grudgingly. “Anyway—if that’s what she wants to sing—it must get tiresome, doing all those endless masses and those dreary requiems.”
“You still haven’t answered the question.”
“So what was the question?”
“Who is she? And why is she here?”
“Ask her.”
“You don’t know?”
“I think you’ll figure it out when you meet her.”
Caleb took a breath, let it go on a sigh instead of another question. “Right. Well, then. Another bottle of wine? Looks like we’ll be here for the evening.”
But the crowd began emptying out sooner than he expected, and within twenty minutes of Lilah’s last number, Seraph was almost empty. Checking the time, Caleb realized that it was later than he had thought; she had sung for nearly two hours, and the time had just melted away. Noah took advantage of the unoccupied tables to snag an extra chair, and asked the waitress for another wineglass and a plate of cheese and fruit.
“She’ll be hungry,” he said to Caleb.
“I would be.”
Despite these preparations, Caleb harbored a secret doubt that Lilah would actually join them. She seemed too rarefied to settle even briefly among the ranks of men; it would be like holding a conversation with a fire. Or with an angel, more accurately. Something he had never done.
But there she was, a graceful shape against the patchy darkness of the bar. She wended her way through the clustered tables and pushed-back chairs as delicately as if she were stepping a path in a rose garden. Still she carried her great wings tightly behind her, as if they were bound back; their feathered edges trailed on the floor behind her, and she seemed not to care that they swept through spilled ale and scattered crumbs.
“Food and wine—I knew I could count on you,” she said by way of greeting, dropping into the empty chair with a deliberate crumpling motion. “Those fools think I can cavort up there all night without rest or sustenance. I’m utterly famished.”
“You were marvelous, of course,” Noah said.
She laughed and quickly ate a bite of cheese. “Bar songs,” she said mockingly. “A child could sing them and bring the house down.”
“You don’t have to sing bar songs,” Caleb said. “I think they’d listen to serious music even more happily. For myself, I preferred the first piece you did, though it nearly broke my heart.”
She turned wide, black, marveling eyes on him—as if astonished that he had dared to speak, or possibly as if she had not realized until this moment that there was someone else at the table. Up close she had a rich, dark beauty, white skin laid hauntingly against velvet black hair. Her wings repeated the same chiaroscuro motif, each blindingly white feather edged in shadow-black. “And what are your credentials for determining the proper musical mix to provide for the discriminating Luminauzi audience?” she asked. “You own a music hall, perhaps? You are yourself a musician? You have another venue to offer me where songs of spirituality and mysticism will be greeted with sober acclaim?”
Amazing; she could do with her speaking voice what she could do when she sang, and that was whip up any emotion she wanted in anyone who listened. But Caleb was stubborn, and on guard against her now. He would not allow himself to be derided. “You must have been to Giordano’s and La Breva,” he said coolly. “They offer music on the classical scale, and they’re always packed to overflowing. Anyway, I think you could sing anything you chose to here, and people would come to listen. You have an awesome voice.”
“Thank you,” she said, still taunting him. “And I sing what I choose to sing, anyway. So don’t pity me for my song selection. I choose what makes me happy.”
Clearly untrue; anyone less happy than Lilah, even on brief acquaintance, would be hard to locate. The full red mouth fell of its own accord into a pout more sad than sullen; there was a troubled weariness deep in her dark eyes that even the mockery could not disguise. “Well, what you sing seems to please your audience, at any rate,” Caleb said quietly. “I have never enjoyed a concert more.”
“Thank you,” she said again. “Do please return sometime.”
It was at this point that Noah intervened to make introductions. “Lilah, this is my friend Caleb. The engineer I told you about.”
“Oh, yes, the one who builds flying machines,” she said, turning her gaze back to Caleb. “Tell me, how does the project go?”
Caleb was suddenly acutely aware of her own folded wings, held rigidly behind her as if they were not part of her. Most angels he had observed carried their wings like bequests handed to them personally by the god; they could not lavish them with enough attention.
“Not as well as I would like,” he said with a smile. “Noah tells me I am only gliding, not truly flying. He’s right, I need some sort of engine, but then you have all sorts of fuel problems—which could be dangerous, especially combustible fuel, and I can’t see how you’d get electricity if you’re airborne. But I enjoyed the gliding.”
“That’s all we talk about,” Noah said, and Caleb sensed in him an eagerness to change the subject. “Motors. Fuel. Propulsion. Locomotion. I’ve told you about my land vehicle, of course—”
“I believe I could build it myself,” Lilah murmured.
“Caleb and I want to take it for a long drive to see how well it holds up. We’re thinking about Semorrah. Or Breven. Actually, I may have business in Breven fairly soon.”
“What business?” Caleb asked.
“Mmm, it’s pretty speculative. Shipbuilding.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about boats!
”
“Motorized. Or part-motorized. Get them through the windless days. For long voyages.”
“I’d have thought that problem was worked out long ago.”
“New project. Well, as I say, it’s iffy right now. But if I need to go to Breven, that would be the perfect test.”
“Sure, get us stranded somewhere in the Jordana deserts, no water, no food, no horses to carry us to anything resembling civilization—”
“We can have followers. I’ll have some of the kids from the campsite come behind us on horseback. If we break down, they’ll be along in a day or two to rescue us. Would that make you feel safer?”
“Infinitely.”
“Sounds like fun,” Lilah said. “When do we go?”
Noah’s successive emotions of shock, delight and cautious disbelief were easy to read. “You’d like to come? Really? Caleb’s right, it could be a horrific trip.”
“With not much to show for it at journey’s end,” Caleb added. “Breven’s a smelly, squalid, miserable city. Ever been there?”
“Oh, yes,” Lilah said with a secret smile.
Noah addressed Caleb. “Well, you can blame the likes of you and me for Breven’s nastiness today,” he said. “If it weren’t for the engineers and the scientists and the relentless inventors experimenting with power and coal—”
“Truly. We made the engines, we made the factories, we made the Jansai into the happy little industrialists they are today. And I still say, on with progress. But that doesn’t erase the fact that Breven’s an ugly place with no charm to recommend it, and if it wasn’t for the sake of the journey I wouldn’t agree to go at all.”
“You didn’t answer me,” Lilah said, and her wonderful voice was plaintive. “Will you take me?”
Noah looked at her helplessly. “If you want to go, we’d be overjoyed to have you,” he said. “But I don’t imagine the trip will be much fun.”
She shrugged. The hunched bells of her wings rose and settled with her shoulders. “It’s a change,” she said. “I can’t tell you how I crave—something different.”