A Plague of Angels

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Am I what?”

  “Going somewhere?”

  “I’d just as soon not. For a while. Unless they come after me.” He sat up with some difficulty, plumped up the wadded pillow, and lay back down again with a sigh.

  “Misery me, boy, what are they coming after you for? What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything. Not of my own free will. I may have done something under—coercion, sort of. Not that the Purples will pay any attention to that. If you’re sensible, you’re supposed to be able to avoid all that.”

  “If you’re sensible,” said the old man heavily.

  “Which I wasn’t,” Abasio admitted.

  The old man frowned. “So now they’re after you. Did you take some precautions? Or did you just come straight home, trolling trouble behind you?”

  “I made them think I’d gone north,” Abasio mumbled, trying to get angry. Grandpa always had made him furious, which was one reason he’d left, but just now he didn’t seem to have the strength to argue, much less be angry.

  “You had some wits left, then. Well, no point wearying the day with things past, as the philosopher says. Looks to me like you’ll be good for nothing for several days yet.”

  Though Abasio hated to admit it, the old man was right. He toddled when he tried to walk, he fumbled when he tried to handle anything; he decided to shave his head but cut himself several times in the process. He had to warn Olly, but he couldn’t manage it, not yet.

  It was her voice that awoke him from a nap several afternoons later, her voice coming from outside somewhere. He struggled awake, got himself to his feet and into the kitchen where he made shift to wash the crustiness from around lips and eyes and make a turban for his bald head. There was nothing he could do about the tattoos. No point in trying to hide them.

  “Abasio, come greet our visitors,” the old man said when Abasio staggered from the house into the shaded yard where they sat. Grandpa Farmwife Suttle. And her, Olly.

  “We met a few days back,” said the Farmwife. “It was he who told Olly you knew of the thrones, as a matter of fact.”

  “You didn’t mention he’d been at your place,” Cermit said stiffly. “What was he doing at Wise Rocks Farm?”

  “I quite forgot,” Originee lied gently. “He was passing through, and he had time for only a few words with us, on the fly, so to speak.”

  “I was not very nice to him,” said Olly, her voice sounding weak and wounded, even to her own ears. He looked sick! He looked sick unto death! All his lovely sparkle dimmed, like embers, hidden under ashes. What had happened to him? She reached up a finger to tickle the neck of the angel on her shoulder, discarding one comment and another. “I took him for a cityman,” she said at last.

  “Which he is,” said the old man heavily. “As his hands will tell you. A ganger. A street brawler Possibly a killer of innocent bystanders. A slaughterer of children.”

  “No,” said Abasio, too weak to be really angry. “I never did. There’s no rep—honor in that!”

  “There’s no honor in any of it,” the old man said wearily.

  “Hush,” Originee rebuked him, leaning forward to pat his shoulder. “Hush, Cermit. The boy was young. He ran away. Now he’s back. Shall we drive him away again, blaming him for what he’s been?”

  Cermit shook his head. “I know. I know, Originee. I’m not angry at him, not really. But if there’s a chance somebody hunting him can find out where he is, if there’s a chance they’ll even come looking, then he’ll have to go away again, no matter what I want. Otherwise the whole valley could be wiped clean.”

  “Farmers are taboo,” muttered Abasio. “Gangers don’t bother farmers. Or water-men. Or power-men.” The providers of life’s necessities were not interfered with, so the doctrine ran.

  His grandfather turned on him in irritation. “They say they don’t bother farmers, that’s true. But if they’re looking for escapees, then they bother farmers, and farmwives, and the children and the animals as well! Men on the hunt don’t care who they kill.”

  “Killers, dillers!” cried the guardian-angel “Watch out.”

  “Hush, my angel,” said Olly, scratching its neck as she considered Abasio’s dilemma. “Why are they after you?”

  “I don’t know that they are!” Abasio cried. “I got into a situation that could be trouble, that’s all. I left before anyone found out about it. If I’d stayed until someone found out, it would have been too late.”

  The Farmwife inspected him closely. “Your grandpa’s right in one respect, boy. Those hands betray you.” She took his hands in her own, tracing with her thumb the symbols on the backs of his hands. “If you go to the village, someone will notice. If you wear gloves, someone will notice that.”

  “I didn’t plan to go into the village.”

  “You plan to hide out forever?” the Farmwife asked.

  “I didn’t plan!” he yelped, tired of all of them, of himself “I haven’t had time!”

  “He’s not well,” said Olly, trying to keep her voice impersonal, as though noticing the condition of some farm animal. “Look at his yellow eyes.” They worried her, those eyes. Was it possible he could have something fatal? Abasio. Surely not. It wouldn’t be fair.

  But when, Oracle had asked, had life ever been fair? Abasio felt himself growing red.

  The Farmwife patted him. “There, boy. We’re trying to help, really. Trying to think of ways to protect you. You remember us farm folk, plainspoken and meddlesome. Some might say, rude. But if you remember that, you’ll remember there’s little harm in us. I’ll send over some of my good cheese. Olly will bring it. Meantime, I’ll put my mind to what might be done about those hands.”

  “I’m not the only one being looked for,” he mumbled.

  “Who else?” asked the Farmwife, suddenly alert.

  “I think they’re looking for her,” he said, nodding at Olly. “Walkers were asking about her In Fantis.”

  Olly nodded soberly and said in a level voice, “Oddmen. That’s what I call them. I know no reason they should be looking for me, but I know they are.”

  She refused to panic. She had been driven from her home in the village, but she would not be driven from this haven. Not yet, at any rate. Not with him here, so sick, so in need of—of what?

  Abasio subsided. If she didn’t regard the matter as immediately threatening, perhaps it wasn’t. In any case, he felt as impotent to help her as he had been to help Elrick-Ann. What could he do? He could barely stagger on his own!

  When. Originee and Olly were homeward bound, they rode for a time silently, each of them thinking her own thoughts.

  “He could be a dyer,” said Originee at last. “Indigo to the elbows. You could be a dyer as well. Nobody looks beyond the splotches, and it does wear off in time.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Olly.

  “Your thrones, of course.” The Farmwife gave her a sharp look. “You want to find your thrones, and if my experience teaches me anything, it is that both you and Abasio should get out of the area as soon as possible.”

  “Surely you don’t think of him as protection!” she cried through teary merriment. “He may not recover! He looks like a soggy dishrag!”

  The guardian-angel cried, “A soggy-doggy. He does!”

  The Farmwife thought about it. “I don’t think of him as protection at this moment, no, but he will recover. He’s already much improved from when he came home. Cermit says he has appetite, his lassitude is passing. When he’s well, and he will be well, he’ll be strong once more. He’s probably well schooled in survival. Few gang members live to reach his age. One in four, perhaps.”

  “You’re eager to have me gone,” accused Olly, somewhat illogically, her mind on Abasio’s recovery.

  “No. I’m not. I’d as lief have you stay, if you would, but I’m not such a fool as to think you can hide here in the valley without being found eventually. People watch, people notice, people talk. Sooner or later, someone wil
l say something to bring the hunters down on us, if they haven’t already.”

  “You sound very sure.”

  “I don’t know about your oddmen, but gangers have come before, looking for runaway slaves, fugitive conks. Abasio was right to say that normally we’re immune from their riots, but if they’re looking for someone in particular, they begin going from farm to farm, working their way out into the countryside, beating on people to make them talk. I know one farm now vacant where a couple tried to hide their own son. He’d run off to the city, been a ganger, got captured in a war, been enslaved, then run away. When the hunters came, they raped the woman and her daughter, then killed her husband when he tried to interfere. The daughter died, as did the slave boy. The woman lived.”

  “Farmwife Chyne?” whispered Olly.

  Farmwife Suttle nodded. “And three graves on the hill above the old deserted farm. Cermit may be angry at Abasio, but he doesn’t want the boy dead.”

  “He’d rather miss him than mourn him,” said Olly, quoting the Oracle.

  “Indeed,” said the Farmwife. “As I would you.”

  Olly found herself apprenticed to the dyer before she had time to think about it. On the third day after their meeting with Abasio and Cermit, Farmwife Suttle had seized her up and taken her into Whitherby without so much as a by-your-leave. That night she found herself and her belongings in a loft behind the dyer’s yard with the guardian-angel shifting from foot to foot on an unfamiliar bedpost.

  “Learn,” Originee had said, after introducing her to the dyer, Wilfer Ponde. “This man is my friend, and we’ve spoken together about your needs. Learn as quickly as you may. You will have to teach Abasio, so learn well.”

  What Abasio thought about it, Olly had no idea, and she was too bemused by the Farmwife’s decisiveness to object on her own behalf. Why not learn dyeing, after all? According to the Farmwife, dyers were among the craftsmen and skilled workers who could cross borders with little difficulty.

  Though Wilfer Ponde showed no signs of ever having crossed a border. He was a taciturn individual, bent from long hours stooped over his kettles; his sheds and yard were a lifelong accumulation of vats, sacks, boxes, and smelly pools of this or that. He worked in indigo and safflower and cochineal, as well as in a host of less penetrating colors distilled from barks and roots and the skins or husks of both familiar and unfamiliar plants. His arms were colored halfway to the shoulder, as was his neck, where he habitually put up a wet hand to scratch away his puzzlement at the oddities of life.

  Olly was one such, and he abused his neck mightily as he took her around the place, beginning with the fabric shed. “Cotton,” he told her. “That comes from southern Artemisia Linen from the flax fields northeast of manland. Wool from the sheep raised around here on the farms. Silk, imported from the western people, those by the Faulty Sea, and little enough of it, for it takes a lot of hand labor to make. That’s the basic four fabrics, plus leather: cow, sheep, goat, pig, horse, each of which has its own problems. This is all fabric in here. Thread and yarn are in the shed across the yard.”

  “You don’t travel?”

  His fingers went to his neck as he considered this. “I couldn’t carry a tenth of this with me, and it takes all of it to turn out proper products. Each fiber responds differently to dye. Different dyes take different mordants—that’s the rinse you use to set the color—to give varying hues. The herbs and barks and roots come to me from all around. Not like in the old days, when dyestuff came from around the world—across the oceans, even—but still, some of it comes from a considerable distance. How would my suppliers find me if I traveled?” He shook his head slowly. “No, the only dyers who travel are those who do custom work, perhaps coloring thread for local weavers or printing patterns on fabric. It’s the patterning that Originee thinks may be of value to you. I’ll teach you some simple things: one or two kinds of fabric, a handful of colors. The rest is called art.”

  “Art?” Olly laughed. “I have no claim to being an artist.”

  Scratch, scratch once more. “Well, as to that, we can take it. Care and copy can pretend at inspiration.” He gave her a penetrating look.

  “Why’re you doing this?” Olly asked. “Why’re you spending this time on me?”

  Scratch, scratch. “Originee and I, as I’ve said, are old friends. We were close in childhood.” Scratch again. “People working together, it’s part of the pattern of all life.” He knotted his hands before him and gave her a frank, determined look. “Why not?”

  “And this specially patterned fabric? There’s a market for it?”

  “Wherever folks want their names or symbols put on the stuff they wear or the banners they wave. In Artemisia, men dress according to society and women according to clan. There’s a town west of there that orders a lot of printed silk for fancy silk sleeves and pays me bonuses for it! East of there, men dress according to tribe. South of there, things get festive and ornamental.

  “I’ll teach you to make dyes of local stuff, safflower and indigo, walnut hull and onion skin and jumper berry. All that grows around here or near enough. If you travel south, you’ll find rabbit bush and snake bush for yellow, and cactus fruits to make a rosy red. Farther still, and you’ll come to the place cochineal bugs grow, feeding on other cactuses. I’ll teach you how to make dye of them as well, and how to print on cloth with pattern blocks.” He scratched and beckoned. “Come.”

  They went back across the yard and into another building, this one more solid, with a tight roof and screens on the windows, most of the floor taken up with a long, low table spread with a length of creamy cloth bordered with blue figures, half the center decorated in flowers and leaves in yellow and red and green, the other half still blank.

  “The pattern,” he said, indicating a series of blocks lying on a side table. “Sixteen blocks in all. One for the border corner, three for the border sides. One for the center panel corners, three for the center panel sides. Eight more for the panel itself. Three dyes. And a week’s work!”

  “I’d be afraid to touch it!” she cried. It was true, she would, and yet her eyes followed the pattern eagerly, seeming to understand it before her mind did. This block went there, and that one there, and this one was turned so to make the pattern match. It was rather like poetry! Interesting!

  “The money I’m getting from an Edger family for this tablecloth, I’d be a fool to let you touch it.” He laughed “And don’t let that angel of yours poop on it, either. No, you’ll start as any apprentice does, on handkerchiefs and neckpieces, and you’ll make the blocks yourself.”

  The blocks were of wood with a tightly glued-on layer of hard felt that Wilfer said was made of hammered wool. The felt had to be cut cleanly, with a very sharp straight knife, and the parts that were not in the pattern carved out with a sharp, scoopy little chisel. Orphan copied a pattern. Wilfer gave her, a blossom and bud with leaves, a pattern in which a leaf or stem intersected each side of the square at its center. No matter which way the print block was turned, the pattern went on into the next block, and the next. The felt absorbed the dye when dipped into it, pressure on the wooden block forced it into the slightly dampened fabric.

  “It looks so easy!” she cried in frustration, regarding her fifteenth attempt to make the pattern line up cleanly, the dye to be evenly dark or light. “I’m just not artistic.” And yet her mind saw how it should look. How it could look, if only her hands would do it rightly.

  Wilfer took the block from her hand, dipped it, slapped it onto the dampened fabric, pulled it away, repeated the motion eight times more, three rows of three. A solid block of pattern glowed up from the center of the fabric square. “Practice,” he said. “That part has nothing to do with inspiration or art or any of that. Simple practice.”

  She practiced with the blocks in the morning. In the afternoons, she ground roots or berries or fruits, she mixed dyes or prepared fabric. Merely getting a piece of fabric evenly damp but not wet required endless care. Came Sixth
-day evening, Farmwife Suttle came for her and took her and her angel home, the angel talking all the way, Olly silent and weary.

  “Are you learning, Olly?”

  Olly took a folded square from her pocket and presented it. Unfolded, it was a kerchief of two colors, rosy flowers among green leaves.

  “I did the pattern myself, but it needs to be hemmed,” Olly said. “I’ll do that tomorrow.”

  “No.” The Farmwife shook her head firmly. “It’s a lovely gift, but I can hem it myself. Tomorrow you must teach Abasio everything you’ve learned this week.”

  Olly kicked the bag at her feet where several uncut dye blocks rested, along with cotton squares and little sacks of dyestuff. “He’ll hate it,” she said. “Nothing but the same thing, over and over. He’ll think it’s dull.”

  “Do you think it’s dull?”

  “Now, maybe a little. I think—I think after a while it won’t be dull anymore because I’ll be able to do things.

  I have all these ideas for patterns! The way things fit together!”

  She did not realize how eager her voice sounded.

  The Farmwife smiled to herself.

  Abasio, now clear of eye and reasonably clear of mind, did think dyeing was dull, but no duller than other things essential to his survival. Also, it was an excuse to be with Olly. He found her no less enchanting now than the first time he had seen her. He could not be with her enough. Though he now knew very well that he had been with. Sybbis during his lost days, his intention had been to make love to Olly, and that was how he remembered it. What he had done, he had done with her. They two had been lovers. He remembered them as lovers, even though he knew it wasn’t factual. The worst part was being unable to talk with her about it. He wanted to say, “Remember? Remember when I did this, when you did that.” All of this consisted of far more emotion than good sense, but he found the irrationality of it comforting, one of few comforting things in his life at the moment.

  So he copied the designs she gave him and cut his blocks neatly—for he had always been good with his hands—and figured out his own system for lining them up to make a continuous pattern, all the time watching Olly, listening to her, touching her fingers with his as though accidentally, soaking her up. When she recited the recipes for the dyes and mordants, he dutifully wrote them down and memorized them. He mixed the indigo she brought, obediently dipped his hands and wrists into the stuff, and watched as his skin turned blue, hiding the gang tattoos.