Jovah's Angel

by Sharon Shinn

  Because she had seemed to enjoy spending time with him. That could not have been his imagination; she had laughed and talked and told him secrets about her life, and she was clearly a woman who did not do so lightly. They had nothing in common, of course—neither interests, nor attitudes, nor desires, and certainly not faith—but something about her appealed to him so mightily that he could not force her from his mind.

  So he would find something urgent to do in Velora as soon as he returned from Breven, and after that, well, he would see.

  He had gone straight to the Edori camp upon his return—not just to return the horse, which he had borrowed from Thomas, but to check in with Noah about the trip to Breven. And to talk about the wondrous systems inside the angels’ music machines.

  Or not, as it turned out.

  He made it to the outskirts of Luminaux just as the natural light began to fade and the far more magical, artificial light of the city began to work its azure charm. The woman who ran the bakery had collected a pile of mail for him—three commissions from Luminaux merchants, an inquiry from a large farming conglomerate just across the river, a note from his mother, a sealed packet containing the final payment on a very expensive wiring job he’d done two months ago.

  “Here,” he said with a smile, handing most of the money over to his landlady. “I never seem to keep it long.”

  She took it, but wistfully tried to hand it back. “You’re paid up through this month,” she said.

  “For next month. I’ll be traveling, and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  “You’re always good for your rent,” she said, but she accepted the money this time. “I’ve had many who weren’t nearly as reliable.”

  “Ah, you love me while I’m solvent,” he said, heading out the door. “You won’t say such kind things about me when I’ve lost all my commissions.” Her laughter followed him out.

  Upstairs, he spent a few minutes sorting out clean clothes from dirty and deciding which of the offered projects he cared to accept. Tomorrow he needed to check back with a couple of his most recent clients to see if they had any questions or problems with their installations. He also needed to lay in more groceries, take in a pair of boots to be resoled and gather up supplies for the trip to Breven.

  And, sometime tomorrow or the next day, he needed to find an hour to have a private conversation with the angel Delilah. He had made a promise to another angel, and whether or not she had been serious when she made the request, the promise was one he intended to keep.

  At the Grammercy House, the specialty of the day was a grilled fish concoction that looked inedible but was, in fact, delicious. Caleb, who was not a connoisseur, wondered what was in the sauce and the seasonings, but decided to ask neither the waiter nor Delilah, both of whom could probably tell him. Some things, he had learned, lost their appeal when investigated too closely.

  “Nice place,” he said, looking around. The white velvet curtains had been drawn against the midafternoon sun and the whole room exuded an air of hushed, dark calm. All the patrons spoke in low, indistinguishable voices; the servers moved soundlessly between tables.

  “You haven’t been here before?” Delilah asked.

  He shook his head. “I’m more of the beer-and-sausage type of guy. Tavern food. This is a little upscale for me. I’m not entirely sure how I’m supposed to behave.”

  “But you fake it so well.”

  Delilah had agreed to meet him for a late lunch (“What I consider breakfast,” she had drawled) without hesitation. Perhaps she thought he was interested, at last, in flirting with her. Perhaps men were always asking her out for meals. She was dressed in somewhat unflattering black, which richened the shadows of her hair but drained the color from her face. She looked as if she’d been sleeping until a few minutes ago. Caleb, who liked to be up with the dawn, could not imagine such slothfulness.

  “I would guess you’ve tried every restaurant in Luminaux,” he said.

  “Well,” she replied, “the classier ones.”

  “Where do you rank Seraph?” he asked.

  She laughed. “Oh, at the lower end. Not the sort of place I would frequent if I didn’t have a job there.”

  He studied her. “It can’t be that you’re singing for the money.”

  “Well, the so-refined Joseph does pay me. But I’m not there for the financial advantage—I go for the entertainment value.”

  “But you’re the entertainment.”

  “Let me rephrase. I go there for its value in distracting me. You can’t, after all, sleep all day, every day. It’s a way to fill the hours.”

  The words were bitter but the tone was light. Self-mockery on display at an early hour. This would be no easier than any conversation with Delilah ever was.

  “Well, there’s the trip to Breven,” he remarked. “That should fill a few days. A couple weeks, actually, between the trip there and back. Though it’s likely to become tedious in its own way.”

  “I like a little variety in my tedium. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Have you seen Noah’s Beast?”

  “His what?”

  “The Beast. The—vehicle he’s built to take us to Breven.”

  “No, but I’m sure it’s awful. From what he’s said. He’s very proud of it, though, so I’m going to try not to laugh at it.”

  “It’s more than awful. It’s noisy and it smells like a factory, and it’ll take two strong men to guide it all the way to Breven.”

  “Good thing you’re coming with us, then.”

  “Oh, I’m sure Noah could find one of his Edori brethren who’d be just as useful as I would.”

  “He doesn’t seem to think so. It’s always Caleb-this and Caleb-that, and ‘Anything I can’t handle, Caleb can.’ Really, it makes me see you in quite a different light. Up till now, I’d always thought you were rather ordinary.”

  “Well, it’s gratifying to be so highly thought of.”

  “I don’t think he’d make the trip without you.”

  “And of course we’re both counting on your help, as well,” Caleb added with a grin. “We thought you might like to help steer from time to time, and maybe gather firewood at the rest stops.”

  Delilah smiled beatifically. “Clearly you were amusing yourselves with idle chatter. No one would bring me along to perform manual labor. It’s obvious I’m too delicate.”

  “My private opinion is that you could wrestle yourself free from a pack of wild dogs, but it’s true that we figure you’ll be mostly decorative,” Caleb said. “I, in fact, have a hard time believing you’re really going to come with us.”

  “Of course I am. The appeal of the novel, you know.”

  “It’ll be uncomfortable,” he warned. “Cramped quarters. Lousy food. And that constant smell.”

  “Are you afraid I’ll be complaining all the time?” she asked. “I’ll be so stoic, you’ll hardly know me.”

  Caleb gave an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Well, that’s the promise I was hoping for.”

  “And is that why you invited me to lunch?”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I had a question to ask you.”

  “I’m all agog.”

  He took another bite of his fish before continuing. “Tell me,” he said. “If someone wanted a favor from you which you would probably refuse, how should he approach you?”

  Sudden interest brightened her eyes. “First, he should take me to a fabulously expensive restaurant and ply me with exotic wines.”

  Caleb smiled. “It’s too early in the day for wine. For me. You, of course, can drink when you like.”

  “No, I try not to drink before a performance,” she said regretfully. “My voice is my one remaining vanity, so I try not to abuse it.”

  “So how can I win you over, then? They have some tempting desserts on the menu—”

  She laughed. “We’ll see how hungry I am when I finish my meal. What is this favor you want from me?”

  “It would be a favor tome
,” he said seriously, leaning across the table to make his pitch. “I’m like a kid who can’t rest till he’s tasted every kind of candy in the store. I see a scientific challenge, and I have to try to solve it. I can’t think of anything else. I have to know if I can fix it, or design it, or improve it. It’s like a fever.”

  “Well, I don’t have many scientific challenges lying around awaiting solutions,” she said. “So I can’t guess—”

  “Your wing,” he said. “I’d like a chance to look at it and see if I can come up with a way to repair it.”

  She grew statue-still, statue-silent. It was as if the hollows and planes of her face were instantly recarved, recast into lines of suffering and grief. He imagined that even her heartbeat, for a moment, squeezed to a stop.

  “Maybe I can’t do anything to help you,” he went on, when it was clear she would say nothing. “But I’ve built a lot of electrical systems—and the body is, in its way, an electrical circuit, with energy running along the muscles and the nerves. Maybe I can—”

  “No,” she said, and the word was said in the ugliest tone he had ever heard her use.

  “I know it is difficult to contemplate hope again,” he went on. “I know you have been looked at by almost every doctor and surgeon in Samaria. But I’m not—”

  “No,” she said again, and her voice was a little stronger.

  “But I’m not a doctor. I’m an engineer,” he finished. “And I would be approaching the problem from a whole different angle.”

  “No,” she said. “How many times do I have to say it? No, no, no. I have been through that too often to endure it again.”

  “If I can help you,” he said, “how can you refuse me?”

  “Because you can’t help me! No one can help me! I am broken beyond repair, don’t you see that? Jovah realized it instantly! He cast me aside because I could no longer serve him. He knew long before the doctors and the surgeons and the other angels were willing to give up hope. He knew, and he abandoned me—”

  She stopped abruptly, made a visible effort to control her unsteady voice. She shook her head and put her hands up before her as if to fend off accusations. “I know it is not your intention,” she said clearly, “to be cruel. But it is cruel to ask me to try again. I cannot do it.”

  “I hope you don’t expect me to travel all the way to Breven with you, eyeing you and wondering.”

  “If you must. Add it to the tribulations of the trip.”

  Caleb shook his head and played his trump card. He had figured the conversation would go roughly this way. It was why he had, earlier, allowed her to rhapsodize about his value to Noah. “I won’t make the trip unless you’ll agree to the examination.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. It means that much to me. If you won’t let me examine your wing, I won’t go to Breven with you and Noah.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she snapped. “One thing has nothing to do with the other. Besides, you have to go. Noah needs you.”

  “He’ll find somebody else.”

  “You know that’s not true. You’re the only one he trusts. You’re the only one who can actually help him.”

  “I won’t go unless you consent to the examination.”

  She rose to her feet. Even with her wings folded tightly back, she was an impressive sight, all flashing dark eyes and divine indignation. “Then we will go without you,” she said. “And may Jovah forget your name.”

  She swept from the restaurant, nearly trampling a few unwary souls who happened to be in her way. Caleb calmly watched her go; he had more or less expected their meeting to end this way. He liked the curse, though; it was not one he had heard before. He rubbed the shattered black Kiss on his arm, and murmured, “But he already has.”

  Noah was distressed to learn that his two closest friends had quarreled “and at such a time! Couldn’t you have waited till we got back from Breven?”

  “You told me weeks ago you wanted me to look at her wing. And now you’re saying that I brought it up?”

  “Well, no, but—well, yes, right at this time. What if she decides not to come with us? Because of what you said?”

  “The trip will be easier, then,” Caleb said callously. “But she’ll come. She’s too desperate to get away. And she’ll let us look at her wing, too.”

  “Because you’ve put her in a dreadful position—”

  “She’ll survive the examination. And maybe we’ll do her some good.”

  Noah muttered but stopped arguing, although he still seemed unhappy with Caleb’s timing and his methods. But three days before they were scheduled to leave for Breven, the two men were admitted to Delilah’s opulent apartment (paid for, Caleb surmised, by the oily Joseph) to see if they had the skills to repair the broken wing of the fallen Archangel. Noah had negotiated the permission; Caleb didn’t ask what he bargained with.

  Caleb brought every tool, wire and recharger he possessed, so he was loaded down with baggage. Noah carried almost as much. Delilah herself admitted them at the door, cool and wordless, and gestured for them to follow her down a gilded hallway. There appeared to be no servants in the place, though Caleb supposed that was just for this occasion; he pictured Delilah surrounded by maids, hairstylists, footmen and cooks. Today, however, she would want privacy.

  The room they were shown to seemed to be a music salon, for it was furnished with a few delicate chairs, a long wooden bench covered with a quilted cushion, a harp, a dulcimer and a painted metal stand holding a variety of flutes. Caleb wondered which of these instruments, if any, Delilah played. Except for its luxurious appointments, which seemed very much in character, the apartment held no traces of Delilah at all. It looked like a lovingly designed cage built to hold an exotic butterfly—crafted with her in mind, but taking into account none of her true desires.

  Three huge gauze-draped windows provided abundant sunlight, one of Noah’s requirements. All the furniture except the quilted bench had been pushed flush against the walls; the bench had been placed squarely in the middle of the open space. Another requirement, room to work.

  “Is this the way you wanted it?” Delilah asked in a neutral voice.

  “Yes, it’s perfect,” Noah said quickly. “Thank you.”

  She gave him a heavy, unreadable look which made his face tighten, then looked away. She perched on the bench as lightly as that butterfly, as if she might, when startled, burst instantly into flight. Her face was turned toward the nearest window and her eyes were half-closed, as if she were, for the last time in her life, enjoying the caress of sunlight upon her cheek.

  Well, enough of this. “Everything’s fine,” Caleb said briskly. “Noah, could you draw those curtains back all the way? Delilah, we need you to lie facedown on the bench and spread your wings as far as they will go.”

  Now she gave Caleb the look, weighty and unfathomable, but he merely nodded to confirm his instructions. Without another word, she rolled gracefully into position, pillowing her chin on her clasped hands and unfurling her wings. Her left wing unfolded like a cloud teased open by the wind, but her right wing fell awkwardly from her shoulder to the floor, and lay there, bent and motionless.

  Caleb moved to her left side and Noah joined him. The broad wing appeared to spring from a narrow band of cartilage set just in from the shoulder blade. Inches from the joint, the cartilage branched into a wide, springy web of tissue and sinew, the framework of the entire wing. Feathers were overlaid in a careful, interlaced pattern on both sides of this network, hiding the complex weave of muscle, tendon and vein.

  “Can you operate your wings independently?” Caleb asked.

  “Yes,” was the terse reply.

  “Flex your left wing for me. Slowly. Just a little bit.”

  The great wing lifted a few inches, settled, lifted again. Caleb watched the faint ripple run along the length of the framework. He placed his fingers lightly along the thickest cords at her shoulder blade. She shivered but did not protest.

  “Ag
ain,” he said. “More slowly.”

  This time he felt it as the muscle bunched and responded, sending its signals through three main branches that led to the upper edge of the wing’s framework, the lower edge, and a middle line. He carefully pushed away the feathers along this central pathway, tracing the route by feel, by eye, as it arched and straightened and tapered out only at the ragged edge of the feathered wingtip.

  “See it?” he said to Noah. “I think that’s the main operative muscle. It carries the most weight and the bulk of the energy.”

  “What about the top and bottom muscles?” Noah asked. “Peripheral wing control? Auxiliary power?”

  “A little of both. Maybe the wing’s too heavy to be moved by one muscle alone.”

  Caleb slowly traced the route of the main muscle again with his index finger. The extended wing was so long he could not stand in one place and reach from end to end, but had to walk a few paces as he followed his path. “You can feel that, can’t you?” he asked Delilah.

  “Of course I can.”

  “All the way? Everywhere my finger touches?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about this?” And he traced a similar path along the top edge of her wing.

  “Yes. Not as distinctly.”

  “And this?” The bottom edge.

  “Yes.”

  Caleb glanced at Noah and nodded. The men repositioned themselves on the right side of Delilah’s body, over the broken wing. The downy mass was just as broad, just as delicate as the left wing, but there was a curious, lifeless quality to the spill of feathers on this side of the angel’s body. There was no jagged rip in the muscles or the tissue, no improper joint where the wing appeared to have been folded roughly back, no way to tell by looking just where the problem lay. But clearly no will of the angel’s animated the wing; it lay there like something apart from her, responsive to no touch and no instruction.

  “You still have some control over this wing, don’t you?” Caleb asked. “For instance, you can fold it back, move it out of your way.”

  “Yes.”

  “Show me.”