Angel-Seeker

by Sharon Shinn

  She should leave now, before he looked again, but she could not. She could not walk away from him, deliberately put more distance between his smile and her ability to see it. She would wait here, trying to transform herself into shadow, until he and the Jansai left together. And then she would shake herself back into reality, knead some feeling into her numb cheeks and fingers, and return to the crowd in front of the stage to search for the familiar pieces of her life.

  “Jovah’s blood and balls!” Uriah growled, slapping his son with a sudden fierceness. “Do you mean to tell me—Joshua! Abe! We’ve got to get back now. Angelo, my apologies. I have urgent business.”

  “No apology necessary. I can find my way back to my hotel on my own.”

  “In the morning, though—”

  “In the morning,” the angel agreed with a friendly nod. “I shall come see you again. We have much to talk about.”

  “Damn you, boy,” Uriah muttered, cuffing his son again, and then gave the angel another quick look. “I want to hear all the details.”

  And with a swirl of his colorful cloak, Uriah spun on his heel and strode away. His son and his companions followed in silence.

  Rebekah and the angel were left completely alone in the deserted, half-lit clearing behind the stage.

  “You can come out and talk to me now, if you like,” Obadiah said to her in the low, gentle voice a man might use to soothe a wild pony or reassure a hurt dog. “There’s no one to see you disgrace yourself by talking to an angel.”

  Rebekah could not move or speak.

  “Of course, if you’ve brought a few rocks to stone me with, I’d just as soon you stay where you are and give me a few minutes to fly someplace safer,” he said in a whimsical voice. “I know that Jansai don’t like angels much. I’m perfectly willing to leave, if you want me gone.”

  “Nnn—” she choked out, but she could not form the words. Didn’t want to form the words. Didn’t want to be here, alone with the angel, telling him how much she had thought about him these past few weeks. She put a hand to her mouth as though to keep the words inside through brute regulatory action.

  “Did you like the singing? Did you want to ask me about Cedar Hills? Or is there someone in your family who’s sick, who needs plague medicines? I’m perfectly willing to help or talk. But you have to step out here where I can see you.”

  This time she merely shook her head, not even chancing articulation.

  “Well, then. I’ll go if you want me to. My name’s Obadiah, by the way. They didn’t bother to introduce me properly when they sent me up to the stage.”

  She nodded. She knew his name.

  His smile grew a little wider. Even by broken torchlight, his face looked both handsome and compassionate. “And your name? Can young Jansai men share that information?”

  She shook her head again, more violently, her hand still pressed against her mouth. The bracelets clinked on her wrist as her sleeve fell back from the contagious motion. She could feel the feathers of her mask against her fingers, and she could feel the tingling of her fingers as they itched to rip off the mask.

  But she would not have to. She would not have to throw off her disguises in order to engineer her own betrayal. The angel’s eyes had been drawn to the musical tinkling of her jewelry, and now his gaze lingered on the circlets around her wrist. She did not even have to look down to know what the fickle torchlight showed him: sapphire and silver, arranged in his own design.

  When he lifted his eyes to her face again, he was no longer smiling.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Obadiah felt that he had flown to Breven on a breeze of half-truths and outright lies, and he was perfectly comfortable with that.

  He had returned to Breven sooner than almost anyone wanted, from Nathan to Magdalena to the brisk healer called Mary. “Yes, yes, angels heal more quickly than children, but you were weaker than you realized, and I would hate to see your fever come back,” she said to him sternly.

  He had laughed at her. He liked her, and he rather liked being fussed over, though Maga’s overdramatic protectiveness was beginning to wear on him. “I haven’t had a fever in ten days. I don’t expect to have a fever again for ten years. But I thank you for your concern.”

  She had been easy enough to fob off, but Maga was a different story altogether. He had gone to visit her the day before he planned to leave for the desert city, and had found her alone in the handsome suite she shared with Nathan, sulking. There was no other word for it.

  “Why, lovely, you look so sad,” he greeted her, dropping an affectionate kiss on her dark hair. In fact, she looked surly, but he opted for the gentler word. “Do you want to share your troubles?”

  She gestured at the open window, which revealed a perfect day of windless sunshine. By this time, at the Eyrie, winter would have been well and truly entrenched, and a slow dreary rain would have settled in to sour all their moods. “It’s just—look at it,” she said crossly. “Nothing but sunshine. Perfect weather all the time.”

  He settled down in the chair across from her and smiled. “Yes, I can see why you’d find that discouraging.”

  “No, but why must Nathan be gone, then? No one’s come asking for a weather intercession for three days! Yet there are some farmers up by the Caitanas who need his help, and he flew off this morning and won’t be back for two or three days, and I can’t stand it. He’s always gone.”

  “So is Gabriel. So is Ariel. You know that, lovely. The leaders of every hold are in high demand.”

  “Yes, but I need him,” she said, and burst into tears.

  Obadiah promptly crossed to her side, knelt beside her, and enwrapped her in both flesh and feathers. “Now then,” he murmured into her ear, “this isn’t like you. You have something on your mind besides Nathan and his absences.”

  “Oh, I feel so stupid,” she sobbed, turning in his arms and clinging to him. He felt her tears wet the front of his linen shirt, freshly washed by the pretty little laundress. “I’ve just—it’s been—never mind me, Obadiah. Just go away.”

  He laughed at that and gave her a little hug. “No, I won’t go away, but I’d like you to tell me what’s the matter. You can trust me, you know. Whatever it is.”

  “I can trust you. I can trust everybody,” she answered somewhat wildly. “Everyone will know soon enough.”

  “Well, then—please. Just tell me now.”

  She sniffed and wiped her face with a very expensive sleeve, and straightened in his arms. He sat back on his heels, his wings spread on the carpet behind him. “I’m pregnant,” she said.

  He threw his hands in the air, then leaned forward to kiss her cheek. “But this is delightful news!” he exclaimed. “Cause for celebration, not despair! Though I know women in your condition are prey to all sorts of emotional excesses—”

  She stared at him, her face so bleak he stopped speaking. “I’m so afraid,” she whispered.

  He was at a loss. Yes, there were inherent dangers in childbirth, and to bear an angelic child was risky in the extreme, but he was convinced every healer in the city would attend her delivery, if she wanted. “I know there is some reason to be frightened, but—”

  She clutched his arm. “There has never—every time an angel has mated with an angel—there have never been anything but monster children born as a result,” she said in a low, urgent voice. “Obadiah! What if the child I am carrying is a horror of some kind—a lucifer? I do not want to bring such a child into the world, then watch it scream and die.”

  Now he understood. He leaned forward and wrapped his arm protectively around her again. “Yes, that is true, but Jovah has made allowances this time,” he said. “He brought you and Nathan together, don’t you know? He made your Kisses light when you were in the room together. He must have meant for you to wed and bear children.”

  “I’m not sure Jovah had all that much to do with it.” She sighed. “Nathan and I are together because Gabriel no longer had the energy to try to keep us apart.
”

  “Gabriel always has the energy to continue to do what he thinks is right,” Obadiah said with a touch of humor. “If you cannot trust your Kiss, you can trust the Archangel.”

  “He doesn’t know,” she said, still in that low, despondent voice. “No one knows. Until this child is born—”

  “Well, and until then, there is nothing you can do, and fretting will not make things any easier,” Obadiah said practically. “You must wait and see what the god sends you.”

  She looked up at him with some desperation in her eyes. “And if he sends me something—too awful to contemplate?”

  “Then Nathan and I and all your friends will be right beside you. But I do not think Jovah will be so cruel.”

  “Jovah is as stern as Gabriel when he wants to be,” she said, making her own attempt to joke.

  Obadiah smiled and sat back on his heels again. “So! When is the event to occur? And why hasn’t Nathan told me the great news?”

  “I haven’t told Nathan,” she said.

  “You haven’t—Maga!” he protested.

  “I’ve been so afraid! And I knew he would be worried, too, and he has so much already to worry about, without me clinging to him every day. It’s just that I—I’m so afraid and so lonely. I try to keep busy, and I see all the petitioners who come to Cedar Hills, but they’re beginning to think I’m lunatic, because I start crying as soon as they tell me the story of the slightest privation—”

  He could not help laughing at that. “You must tell Nathan, though,” he said. “And a midwife. You must have someone to watch over you. Aren’t there special foods you should be eating now? More sleep you should be getting? I don’t know much about these things—”

  “Yes, I suppose,” she said listlessly. “Someone to calm me when I get irrational—” She smiled over at him with an effort. “I’m glad you’re around,” she added.

  “I leave for Breven tomorrow,” he said before he could stop himself.

  “Obadiah! No!”

  “I must! Truly! Gabriel sent me here to spy on the Jansai, and spy on the Jansai I will.”

  “But you’re not even healed yet! I can still see the marks on your body.”

  “Show me,” he said, extending his wing. She scowled and bent closer, but there was no scar to be found. He knew, because he had searched for it himself the day before and could not locate, by sight or tenderness, where the wound had been. “See?” he said, when she straightened up, still frowning. “Not even a memory of an injury.”

  “I don’t want you to go,” she said. “And after what I just told you—”

  “I have to go,” he said gently. “Perhaps you can find another companion who is more reliable than I am.”

  “Who?” she demanded.

  A month ago, he would not have believed the words would come out of his mouth. “Why don’t you send for Rachel?”

  So, even though he should have felt guilty about it, he left Cedar Hills with a sense of relief. And excitement. He had learned his lesson about flying in the vicinity of Breven, oh yes; he brought a leather satchel strapped over one shoulder, and inside was an assortment of dried food and potent medicines. He could not really expect to be shot down twice, he thought, but he now knew to respect the treachery of the desert.

  He arrived in Breven a day before the harvest fair was scheduled to begin, and found the whole city bustling with activity and anticipation. The only hotel rooms available were the most expensive, but he did not think either Nathan or Gabriel would begrudge him the expense. The Verde Hotel was run by enterprising Manadavvi who wanted to offer the highest-quality accommodations to other Manadavvi coming to the city to trade. Every room was sumptuously decorated with gorgeous furnishings and plush mattresses, and each chamber boasted its own water room, a luxury itself in this desert city. The young man who handed the angel his key had the patrician features and haughty bearing of every Manadavvi Obadiah had ever met.

  “It’s a dreadful city,” he told Obadiah in an up-country drawl. “Barbaric and violent. You can’t trust the Jansai to tell you the same story two days running. But you can make a fortune here, if you can stand the company.”

  “Shall I show you to your room, angelo?” asked a pretty voice behind him.

  Obadiah turned quickly, trying to cover his surprise. He found himself facing a slim woman who looked to be in her early twenties, dressed in clothes of simple and expensive elegance. “I thought—I have never seen an unveiled woman in Breven,” he excused himself when he had stared for a moment or two.

  “My sister,” said the man who had taken his registration. “She doesn’t leave the hotel unless I go with her, or my father does. But she refuses to cover her face, even in the market.”

  “That sounds a little dangerous,” Obadiah commented.

  “They despise me, but they’ll take my money if I’m buying,” she said, a hint of iron in that soft, gentle voice. “The Jansai are primitive and judgmental, but you can always count on their greed.”

  “Anyway, they don’t care about our women,” her brother said. “It’s only their own poor, miserable creatures that they want to keep locked away from the eyes of men like you and me. Never saw any people treated so badly in my life.”

  “The Edori,” she said.

  Her brother snorted. “Oh, yes, the Edori! Another tale of Jansai greed and cruelty. What I want to know is why Jovah has not struck them all dead any time these past five hundred years.”

  Obadiah had to admit that he felt some sympathy for this point of view, but it seemed impolitic to say so aloud. “Jovah loves all his people,” the angel reminded them, speaking in platitudes. “On the morning of the Gloria, he requires the presence of all of us on the Plain of Sharon. Perhaps they have been brought to this world simply to teach us the principles of harmony, because they create so much dissonance. Jovah has his reasons for all things.”

  The young man looked skeptical but not prepared to argue theology with an angel. “In any case, we’re here in Breven, and we have learned how to deal with them,” he said. “I suppose that’s why you’re here, too.”

  Obadiah smiled. “Yes,” he said. “I am here to get closer to an understanding of the Jansai.”

  He had gone to his room, changed clothes, stepped back onto the streets of Breven, and wandered through the markets for twenty minutes before he fully realized the futility of his mission. He would not be able to find Rebekah here. The fact that she was physically within reach made no difference. She was as far away from him now as she would be if he were in Gaza and she across the ocean in Ysral.

  He had strolled through the Breven markets before, but never with such a sense of strangeness. He had realized—of course he had realized—that virtually every face on both sides of every stall was male. To walk the streets of Breven was to believe that Jansai women did not exist, that the men reproduced themselves and raised themselves and existed entirely without the touch and attention of women. And indeed, some of their coarseness and roughness, Obadiah thought, might be attributed to the fact that all their transactions were male-on-male, that they had no broad understanding of the whims and softnesses and unbelievable strengths that a woman could possess.

  To be sure, here and there was some degraded creature, wrapped in five layers of tattered cloth, buying bread or fruit at a market booth and treated by the merchant as if she were a walking pillar of filth. And every once in a while Obadiah spotted a barefaced woman, clearly a landowner of some kind, or a Luminaux craftswoman, or the wife or daughter of a trader from one of the three provinces. But these women were never alone, and none of them looked entirely easy, even when they appeared defiant. He didn’t blame them. He felt none too safe himself in the Breven market.

  Yet many of the people on the streets—a good number of the buyers and sellers themselves—were not Jansai. Breven was such a rich trading center that anyone with goods to barter would eventually make his way here, think what he may of the city’s politics. Obadiah spotted Sem
orran merchants and Bethel farmers, as well as the ubiquitous Manadavvi. What was strange was to see no Edori, for Edori were as itinerant as the Jansai and could be found in every other city, big or small, across the three provinces. But the Jansai had terrorized the Edori for years, allowed to do their worst under the negligent reign of the Archangel Raphael. Today there was not a single Edori who would willingly set foot inside Breven.

  Angels were almost as scarce. In fact, Obadiah was the only one. Another strange facet of a strange city.

  But the strangest was: He was here, no more than a mile or two from the woman he was determined to see again, and he had not the faintest idea how he could go about contacting her. She might as well be dead and curled sleeping in Jovah’s arms for all the good it would do him to be here and trying to find a way to see her.

  Uriah affected to be suitably shocked at the news that Obadiah had suffered harm the last time he had left Breven. “And what was this weapon that brought you down?” he asked for the second time. “A—a missile of fire? That’s extraordinary.”

  “Extraordinarily painful, too,” Obadiah said serenely. They were drinking a very good wine in Uriah’s pavilion, and all of the Jansai’s disciples and sycophants had been ordered from the tent. Obadiah wouldn’t have minded speaking in front of a handful of listeners, but he thought Uriah liked the cachet of special knowledge and extra privileges. “I have never felt anything quite like it.”

  “What could such a weapon be made of?” Uriah asked in a marveling voice. “And who might have such a thing?”

  “Both excellent questions,” Obadiah said. “Although there was talk, a year or two ago, that Raphael and some of his allies possessed sticks that could throw fire.”

  “Aaahhhh,” Uriah said. “So at one time such a weapon was in the hands of the angels! How curious.”

  “In the hands of the angels,” Obadiah agreed, “and in the hands of the Jansai. For Malachi of Breven was seen with such a firestick in his possession.”

  “Have you any enemies among the angels?” Uriah asked innocently.