by Sharon Shinn
Caleb actually caught his breath. In Samaria, where musical ability was almost universal, it was the rudest question that could be asked of anyone, most particularly an angel. Joseph apparently did not intend it as an insult, however; he waited eagerly for an answer.
“I sing as well as any angel, I suppose,” was Alleluia’s dry reply. “Why do you ask?”
He gestured toward the stage. “I’m the only club owner in Luminaux who has an angel singing for him full-time. So far, I haven’t encouraged the appearance of guest artists, because who could compete with an angel? But when I saw you here, I thought—Ah! Another angel! That’s who! What a coup for Seraph to have two angels singing. Even better, she’s dark and you’re fair—”
“I really don’t think so,” Alleluia interrupted with some force. “Thank you all the same.”
“It wouldn’t have to be for more than a few nights,” Joseph persisted. “And not tonight—I’d like to have a little time to advertise it—but day after tomorrow, say, for three nights running.”
“I’m not interested in performing for you, sir.”
“The pay is good,” he coaxed. “And the exposure—After this, you could get a job wherever you liked.”
She stared at him helplessly for a moment. Caleb struggled to contain a laugh. Clearly the Jansai had no idea who he was soliciting. “The job that I have takes all my time as it is,” Alleluia finally managed to reply. “I’m not looking for more work.”
“One night?” he asked. “Sing for me one night?”
“Alleya never sings in public except to pray,” said a cool, rich voice behind them, and Delilah’s dark shadow fell over their small table. Alleya. Caleb quickly committed the name to memory. “Don’t importune her, Joseph. You’ll only make her nervous.”
“Think about it,” he urged Alleluia one more time. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
Alleluia spread her hands, but before she could answer, he had left. The Archangel shook her head. “Well, I have to admire his ambition, but he is a little overbearing.”
“Still, I like the idea of you standing on stage beside me, singing your sweet prayers and calming down the crowd once I’ve riled them up,” said Delilah, collapsing into one of the empty chairs at their table. “People would think they’d sinned and been forgiven once they came to one of our concerts.”
“Oh, I think they’re much happier just having sinned,” said Alleluia. Her eyes were fixed on Delilah’s face and her whole posture was wary. “But I can see why they’d enjoy your performance.”
“Can you now?” Delilah said lightly. “I must say, I was shocked when I saw you in the audience. I didn’t think you’d stoop this low just to indulge your vulgar curiosity.”
“Maybe all of us have vulgar tendencies,” Alleluia responded. “Under the right circumstances.”
Delilah laughed out loud. “Well! Not quite the meek, self-effacing Alleya I left behind—has it been a lifetime ago? How do you flourish in your new role, angela? Are you enjoying yourself?”
Alleya chose to take the question seriously. “Not at all,” she said. “Not a day goes by that I don’t wish it was you there instead of me—I and everyone who is forced to deal with me, I might add, though no one has been rude enough to say it to my face.”
“Just flatter them and pretend to listen to their ideas,” Delilah advised her airily. “It’s all they want, a chance to say what’s on their minds. Then go on doing what you were doing before.”
“They seem to want more than that,” Alleya said quietly. “The Manadavvi want to eliminate the Edori sanctuaries—or at least relocate them. And the Jansai—”
A quick frown pulled Delilah’s brows down. “The sanctuaries! That’s impossible. It took months—”
“Well, they have withdrawn their proposal for the moment, but I expect them to come back with another.”
“Which sanctuary? Ah, the one at the Galo, right? They fought that one from the beginning.”
“They’re complaining about portage costs, but I told them they could pay the Edori for passage rights, and they didn’t like that any better.”
Delilah grinned. “A good answer, though. Don’t let them harass you. The Manadavvi will exploit every weakness, but they’re too cowardly to disobey you outright. They have too much respect for authority.”
“If you have any suggestions for dealing with them—”
It was the wrong thing to say. Delilah, who had for a few moments seemed natural and engrossed, instantly grew affected and indifferent. “I! I have no interest in these political squabbles. I am the deposed Archangel, my dear. I don’t have much wisdom to offer.”
“I know that’s not true,” Alleya said softly. “It would help me a great deal to know that if I needed advice, I could come to you.”
Delilah laughed. “Well, yes, and it would help me a great deal to know that if I prayed hard enough, Jovah would give me my life back. But he won’t and you can’t and so there’s not much else we can do for each other.” She came fluidly to her feet, her black-edged wingtips making a graceful sweep across the floor as she stood. “It’s always a treat to see you, of course, and I do hope you’ll come back and visit, but don’t be asking me questions about troubles in the realm. And I won’t expect you to sing ‘The Ballad of Hairy Mary’ with me. Do we have a bargain?”
Alleluia looked up at her gravely. “I didn’t come here to make you unhappy,” she said. “I wanted to see if you were all right, if you—”
“All right! I’m fine! I’m well! I’m delighted to be here! Life could not be better for me in any respect! Does that satisfy you? Go back to the Eyrie, angela, and sing your heart out in praises to the glorious god. Don’t trouble yourself over me, and I won’t worry about you. Thanks so much for coming to my concert. And I’ll talk to you some other time.”
And giving them a mocking half-curtsey, she spun on her heel and stalked away. Even angry and flustered, she moved with unconscious grace, and they were not the only two who watched her till she disappeared.
Then Caleb turned back to Alleluia, whose gaze was bent to her folded hands. “That didn’t go so well,” he commented.
Alleluia moved her head indecisively from side to side. “About as well as I expected,” she said. “Better, maybe. I wasn’t sure she’d talk to me at all.”
“I’ve never seen her like that,” Caleb said. “Sarcastic and flippant, yes, but never so—”
Alleluia looked up. “Hurt.”
“I was going to say ‘angry.”’
She nodded. “But mostly hurt. I don’t know how you mend someone who is so badly broken.”
“Is it just that she can’t fly?” he asked.
She smiled briefly. “You’re the one who wants to invent wings,” she said. “How would you feel if you once could fly and then those wings were taken away from you?”
“Devastated,” he admitted. “But I don’t think it would make me bitter enough to hate myself.”
She nodded. “Probably not. You’d invent something else to occupy your time. But with Delilah… it’s not just the flying. It’s the fact that, unable to fly, she is unable to be Archangel. She is—ordinary. Not even an angel. Mortal. Delilah has a kind of brilliance that can’t be turned down. And if it doesn’t shine outward, it glares inward and burns everything else away.”
“So what will happen to her?” he asked.
Alleluia smiled sadly. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be so talented,” she said. “Why don’t you try to fix her wing?”
Clearly she wasn’t serious, but Caleb said, “I’ve thought about it. I’ve been afraid to bring it up, because—well—”
“Because she makes everything hard. Do you think you could really help her?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. I’d be willing to try.”
“I’d be grateful for that much—just trying.”
He smiled at Alleluia, more warmly than he intended. “Then I’ll see if I can convince her to let me
examine her wing,” he said. “I would like to earn your gratitude.”
She may have flushed; it may have been a shadow from a passing waitress. “You’ll earn it soon enough if you repair my music machines,” she said.
“I’ll be in Velora by the end of next week.”
Five days later, Caleb left Luminaux and headed northwest toward the Eyrie. Although the days had been busy and the nights full of companionship, the hours had seemed to crawl by. He could not remember the last time he had been so impatient to begin a trip—or see again someone he had just met.
When Noah returned, Caleb told him of his new commission, and the two engineers theorized about possible problems in the equipment, although Noah did not seem to be giving his full attention to the discussion. Abruptly he asked, “What was she like? I can’t believe you’re going off so quickly to help her.”
Caleb was completely astonished. “Why not? I can’t believe you aren’t begging me to let you come along.”
“To help the Archangel? How could I be so disloyal?”
“Disloyal—” And only then did Caleb realize that Noah was angry on Delilah’s account, and could accept no other angel in her place. “She was very nice,” he said, which immediately seemed inadequate. “She was serious and she seemed kind and she doesn’t particularly want to be Archangel. She appeared genuinely worried about Delilah. And she wasn’t offended by any of Delilah’s songs.”
Noah tossed him an indignant look, and Caleb realized his attempts to describe Alleluia were woefully weak. “She’s a usurper,” the Edori said. “And I cannot believe you are so interested in currying favor among the allali that you would take on a commission like this.”
Caleb waited a moment to let his flash of anger die. “If Delilah cannot be Archangel, someone must be,” he said gently. “I don’t believe this girl wants the job. It’s a hard one, and she’s not suited for it, but she was chosen, and she’s doing the best she can. It’s unfair of you to hate her for something that is not her fault. I don’t think Delilah hates her. Why don’t you ask her?”
Noah’s answer was defiant. “I will.”
But Delilah, when questioned about Alleluia that night after her concert, merely threw her hands in the air and laughed gaily. All her passion of the other evening was gone; this night she seemed as lighthearted as a child.
“Alleya,” she said. “Such an odd girl. Most angels are pretty sure of themselves—arrogant, even—but Alleya would always hang back, let others talk, completely trample her. She always hated to be singled out for any attention, and I never saw her volunteer a word in groups of more than five people. But you couldn’t help but like her. She would do anything in the world you asked of her, and she knows things—facts and stories and details nobody else remembers. She’s kind of come into her own lately, gotten a little more poise—which is good. She’ll need every ounce of self-possession she can muster up.”
She shook her head, still thinking, then turned to Caleb and laughed. “Remember the other night when Joseph was trying to convince her to sing? It was ludicrous. She hates to perform. She doesn’t mind singing in front of people if it’s a mass or one of the sacred rituals, but anything else—forget it. She can’t do it. I don’t know how she’ll lead the Gloria in front of thousands of people, although maybe she won’t find that so hard since it is, after all, sung to Jovah. But I promise you this: She won’t find it easy.”
“You sound like you know her pretty well,” Caleb said, although Alleluia had said that was not the case.
Delilah shrugged. “Well, any time you live among a small group of people in a place no larger than the Eyrie, you form an opinion of everybody. But I don’t know her well. I don’t know that anyone does. Maybe it’s hard to make friends among people who’ve known each other from birth unless you were born there, too.”
“What?” said Caleb.
“She was born in some godless little town in southern Bethel and didn’t come to the Eyrie for years and years. I don’t think her mother was an angel-seeker, but she—”
“A what?” Noah interrupted.
Caleb grinned. Even he had heard this term. “An angel-seeker,” he repeated. “A woman who purposely—ah—dallies with angels in order to become pregnant with a little cherub.”
“What’s so wonderful about having an angel child?”
Delilah gave him a mock scandalized look. “The status—the prestige—the thought of living in a hold for the rest of your life without having to do another day’s work. Believe me, more than one woman has made it her life’s goal to seduce an angel and bear his child.”
“But not all an angel’s offspring are also angels,” Caleb said.
“Oh no. Not by a lot. Which is why there are so many unclaimed children in the cities by the holds, because the mothers will sometimes abandon their mortal children. We try to curb the practice, but—well, since we want the angel children, too, we aren’t on any particularly high moral ground.”
“So most angel-seekers instantly bring their little winged infants to the holds,” Caleb prompted. “But in Alleluia’s case—”
“Alleya’s mother didn’t bring her to the Eyrie till she was, I don’t know, ten or twelve years old.”
“Why not?”
“Who knows? I never asked Alleya. She’s five or six years older than me and, as I’ve said, we were never close. But I think it must have been hard on her, coming in at ten years of age to such a strange environment. She never really did fit in.”
“And how do you think she’ll fit in now that she’s Archangel?” Caleb asked.
Instantly, Delilah’s face grew impassive. She picked up her drink and took a long swallow. “Now,” she said deliberately, “I have no interest in her at all.”
Traveling on a borrowed horse, it took Caleb seven days to cross southern Bethel from Luminaux to Velora. Winter made the countryside seem shadowy and drab, especially around the mining towns, where even from miles away the burnt-metal residue of the refineries thickened and grayed the air. And this is progress, and I have wrought it, he thought. Still, he could not be entirely sorry. In fact, he couldn’t help thinking how much faster and better his journey to Breven would be when he and Noah (and perhaps Delilah) rode in the Edori’s powered vehicle across the tedious desert.
He liked Velora, though; he had never been to the cheerful little town crowded up against the Velo Mountains. No Luminaux, of course, but by no means shabby. He wondered if it would be acceptable to bring a gift to the Archangel, and once the idea was in his head, he couldn’t shake it loose. So he spent an hour or so on the chilly ascent to the Eyrie, dawdling at merchants’ shops and wondering what might be appropriate. In the end he settled on a hair clip of gold filigree that she, with her tangled yellow hair, could probably use. It was not so expensive as to embarrass her; another point in its favor.
He completed the climb and found himself on a wide stone walkway that led to a broad plateau. There were dozens of people ahead of him, either waiting in patient boredom or stating their cases to two angels and one mortal who appeared to be prioritizing petitions. Caleb was tempted to push his way to the head of the line and announce, “I was invited here, take me immediately to the Archangel,” but his innate courtesy prevailed. He waited his turn, listening in untutored appreciation to the breathtaking voices singing somewhere nearby in flawless harmony. If the machines were broken, it must be live music—and why would you want machines if you had singers like that to listen to?
When he finally had a chance to give his name, he was gratified to see quick interest light the face of the older male angel who was helping him. “She’ll be glad to see you,” was the instant response. “I can’t get free here for a moment or two, but if you don’t mind finding your own way, I can tell you where she is.”
“That suits me,” Caleb said, and listened closely to the directions. From what he could see of the tunnels opening off the plateau, the Eyrie was a maze and easy to get lost in. But the instructions se
emed clear. He thanked the angel and ducked into the warmth of the nearest corridor.
A few turns, a few steps down, another corridor, a row of identical doors. Caleb went to the one that had been specified and knocked loudly. There was no answer, but the angel had warned him there might not be (“If she has the music loud enough, she won’t hear you. Just go on in. She never locks the door”). So he knocked a second time and, without waiting for a response, turned the handle and entered.
To find the angel Alleluia sitting in a heap in the middle of the floor, her arms wrapped around her updrawn legs, her great wings bowed around her shoulders, crying as if her heart were broken.
Alleya had returned to the Eyrie to find that she had been missed—which was not quite as pleasant as it might have been. Reports had come in from northern Jordana the day she left: Residents were concerned about continuous heavy snowfalls that had made all the roads impassable. Meanwhile, rain was the problem over the lower half of the Plain of Sharon, causing the Galilee River to rise, the Edori sanctuary to flood, the river cities to feel imperiled and the farmers along both borders to worry about damage to their crops.
“But that’s not the worst of it,” she was told. (The worst of it, she had already privately decided, was the fact that three of the younger angels had chosen to convey all this information to her within minutes of her return, having clearly formed a concerned committee in her absence.) The speaker just now was the impetuous and dramatic-looking Asher, a dark-haired, sloe-eyed angel whom all the mortal girls were mad for.
“What could possibly be worse?” she asked.
He missed the irony. “The Manadavvi think it is happening on purpose—that you, that we, that somehow angels have engineered all this rain, to punish them for daring to question you about the Edori sanctuary.”
Now her attention sharpened; that indeed was pretty bad. “How do you know this?” she demanded. She did not think Aaron or Emmanuel had had time to return to the Eyrie with complaints during the time she’d been away.