Angel-Seeker

by Sharon Shinn

  Food arrived almost at once, but he was too tense to eat. He was tired from the earlier effort spent at the troubled homestead, not to mention the long flight and the hours spent circling over Rebekah’s house, but he could not throw himself on the bed and attempt to rest. He could merely pace, and stop to try a bite of cheese, and stand at the window and stare out, wondering if anyone he loved walked these streets this night.

  When the knock came shortly before midnight, he flung himself from the window and tore open the door. The image of Rebekah was so strong in his head that for a moment he did not recognize the slim boyish figure standing there, face bare, chin raised, shapeless clothes adding to the androgynous look. Then he felt his own face remolded by happiness, joy springing from him like a source of light.

  “Rebekah!” he exclaimed, catching her arms and pulling her into the room. “You’re here!”

  She had so much to tell him, in her serious, unself-conscious way, and they lay in bed talking for at least an hour after lovemaking. There had been a fever sickness in the house, but everyone was better now; the date for the wedding had been set, exactly five months from now; her cousin Martha had grown quite reckless of late and had begun to leave the house in broad daylight to make assignations with her lover.

  “How does she manage that?” he asked, having more than a little interest in this trick if it was one that another young woman could replicate.

  “She just goes down to the garden in her jeska and veil, and when no one is watching, she steps out of the gate! And then she puts on a different veil, the most disreputable thing, something no woman of respect or status would wear, and she walks to the market like a beggar woman. No one troubles her, no one speaks to her, of course, all of them assuming she is the most desperate of women, whose husband and sons must be sick. So she goes where she wants.”

  “How does she get back home?”

  “That’s the real danger, of course. She creeps back and stands outside the gate, and listens to hear if anyone else is in the garden. And if she hears no voices, she slips back inside. But anyone could be standing there—anyone! Her mother or her aunts or even Uncle Ezra—anyone could see her stealing back inside!”

  “And what will she say then?”

  “Oh, she has it all worked out. She is so devious you cannot believe it. She has a little handkerchief that I embroidered for her years ago and she carries it with her everywhere. Everyone knows she has it, just as everyone knows I carry a scarf she embroidered for me. She says that if anyone sees her coming back in, she will just claim that the handkerchief got blown over the wall and she went scrambling after it. She will get in trouble, but it won’t be so bad. That will be seen as a little transgression.”

  “But what if someone has been sitting in the garden for an hour or two, and that someone knows very well that Martha did not just dash out of the gate a moment ago?”

  “I know! Or what if her father or her brother come upon her from behind while she is lurking outside the gate, listening for voices on the inside? Then her little excuse will fool nobody, and she will be in very big trouble indeed.”

  “I don’t think you should try to leave the garden during the day,” he said reluctantly.

  “No,” she said. “I’ve thought it through, and I can’t see how it would work.”

  “But you were very clever to know to come here tonight.”

  She smiled at him. She was curled next to his body, sheltered under his wing, and she looked utterly content. “I almost didn’t get your message! Jordan found it this afternoon and brought it to me. ‘Look what I found out in the garden. Isn’t this the most curious thing? What kind of bird could this have fallen from?’ Well, first, don’t be silly, that feather’s much too long to have fallen from a bird, and what bird ties rocks to its feathers when they fall? I didn’t say that, of course! I just told him he should put it in his box of treasures, or save it to give Jonah on his naming day—”

  “Jonah?”

  “Yes,” she said happily. “The baby’s finally got a name. We’re going to have quite a celebration next week on his naming day.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d want to miss that,” he said ruefully.

  “Miss it? Why would I?”

  He kissed her quickly on the mouth. “If you came back with me to Cedar Hills. Tomorrow morning—or even now. We could leave this instant.”

  She looked as grave and unprepared as if he had never made the proposal before. “But I can’t leave Breven,” she said.

  “I wish you would think about it. You always say no, but you never stop to even consider it.”

  “Because I—it’s just that—you’re right. I don’t even consider it. I can’t leave Breven.”

  He sat up, so she sat up, too, drawing the covers around her for warmth when his wing fell away. “You don’t think you can leave this life behind, but don’t you see?” he said gently. “You’ve already left part of this life behind, just by knowing me. You’re no longer the girl you were when I met you in the desert six weeks ago.”

  “No,” she said, her face troubled. “But I have not changed so much that I have considered leaving my home.”

  “You think you can marry Isaac and live in his father’s house and raise his children—and not wonder? All your life? Where I am, what happened to me, who I might be loving? You think you can love somebody and then walk away into another man’s arms? Or do you think—do you honestly think—you can continue to see me after you are wed? Or have you even considered that at all?”

  “I have,” she said in a small voice. “At least, I’ve tried to. I can’t imagine what it will be like—to be married. What that will feel like. But I can’t imagine what it will feel like to know I’ll never see you again. And if you say, ‘Once you are married, I am done with you,’ then I’ll understand that, I am even expecting that, but—”

  He looked over at her, knowing his helplessness was evident on his face. “The god save me, I will want to see you even when you are another man’s wife,” he said in a low voice. “I would want to see you if the god himself forbade it. I see you now, even though I know how much it puts you at risk, because I cannot help myself. Because I want you so much that I can’t give you up. But I am not so sure you will be able to carry such a thing off—meeting a lover while you act out the duties of a wife.”

  “I am already two people,” she said, her voice just as quiet as his. “I am the person who goes around every day, living in her stepfather’s house, eating with her mother, caring for her brothers, laughing with her aunts. I am the person everybody sees. And I am, at the same time, the woman who is here with you. She is inside me every day. She watches that other me, and sometimes she laughs, and sometimes she’s sad, and sometimes she marvels at how innocently I can talk or move or behave. But she never goes away. She sleeps beside me on my mat at night, and she puts her jeska on right over mine. Don’t think I don’t know how to live with deception. She is my closest friend.”

  He put his arms around her then, drawing her tightly to his chest. His wing wrapped all the way around her body and brushed against his opposite shoulder. “I am so worried about you,” he whispered into her dark hair. “You are not safe. I am destroying your world—I am destroying you. And yet I cannot bring myself to say good-bye to you, as I should—as someday, I know, I will have to.”

  She turned in his arms and kissed him deliberately on the mouth. “But not now,” she said. “Not tonight.”

  “No,” he said, drawing her even tighter. “Not tonight.”

  “And will you be here tomorrow as well?”

  He shook his head. “I must go back in the morning. I have delayed so long already—well, I should not even be here at all tonight.”

  She giggled and came to her knees within the circle of his arms so that she could kiss him with a little more intention. “No,” she whispered against his mouth, “neither should I.”

  Back in Cedar Hills the next evening, Obadiah found himself, like Reb
ekah, split in two. Or perhaps not even split—perhaps multiplied. He was his ordinary self, joking pleasantly with the angels in his dorm or friends he encountered on the green, promising Nathan he’d come by for dinner the next night and give him a full accounting of his travels. And he was his secret self, his obsessed self, the one who could not move or observe or think without considering how Rebekah might react. Would she approve of the shirt Obadiah changed into? Would she think Nathan was amusing? Would she find Cedar Hills attractive, with its scattering of pretty buildings and its well-planned streets? Would she be happy if she chose to live there?

  Would she ever choose to live there?

  He spent that first night back dining out with friends, carrying on conversations that seemed friendly but unimportant. He slept well, though, exhausted from the long trip and the lack of sleep the night before. The following day he checked in with Magdalena, who was acting as chief interviewer for the day, and she sent him off to do a quick weather intercession over a farm village not two hours’ flight away. This time the plea was for rain, not sunshine. Every once in a while Obadiah found himself wondering if Jovah ever got the mix right all on his own.

  That night, he joined about a dozen other of Magdalena’s favorites in a boisterous and happy meal held in the private dining room adjoining Nathan’s suite. Most of those present were angels, but there were three mortal women in the room as well, friends of Maga’s from Monteverde and the nominal reason for the celebration. Obadiah had been seated between two of them. Not so far gone with her own megrims and malaise that she had failed to keep her promises. Maga was out to find him a suitable mate.

  “Obadiah! So good to see you again!” the woman on his left greeted him, giving him a casual kiss on the cheek. She had straight black hair and delicate skin, and the classical features of a Manadavvi heiress. Her name was Deborah, and she had lived in Monteverde half her life. “I’ve been here two days and not laid eyes on you.”

  “I’ve been traveling. There’s much to do at the angel holds these days, as you know.”

  She grimaced, but even that expression was pretty on her pretty face. “I know. Ariel is always gone, and so are the rest of them.” She laughed. “I keep thinking this must be a lean period for angel-seekers.”

  “Oh, and we’ve got scores of them here in Cedar Hills,” said the angel on Deborah’s other side. “An angel wouldn’t have to spend a single night alone, and if he was the kind of man to value variety, he could spend each of those nights with a different woman.”

  “But of course your scruples prevent you from indulging in such behavior,” Deborah said.

  He laughed. “Not my scruples, my stamina.”

  She turned her shoulder to him and smiled more widely at Obadiah. “So tell me about these travels. Whom did you rescue and what kind of prayers did you offer the god?”

  Light, meaningless conversation; he’d spoken versions of the same dialogue hundreds of times over the past ten years. Flirtation and response, jest and rebuttal, and all of it overlaid with the unspoken questions: Do I please you? Are you the one for me? Deborah was classy about it, though; she wouldn’t ask outright. So he wouldn’t have to refuse her outright.

  Nobody pleased him except the one woman he could not have.

  The evening was tedious and interminable, though Obadiah was pretty sure he was the only one not having a grand time. Deborah gave up on him after a while and managed to charm more intelligent conversation from the angel on her left. Obadiah and his other dinner partner, a quiet blond mortal born of an angel mother, made stilted but well-meaning conversation the rest of the night, discussing the probable severity of winter, the new fashions out of Luminaux, and the new bridge just completed between Jordana and the river city of Semorrah.

  Once the meal was over, Nathan shepherded everyone toward the spacious front room of the suite. “Entertainment now! Angels together, must be singing!” the host declared. He paused to clap Obadiah on the shoulder, leaning in to whisper in his ear.

  “I don’t think you’re being social enough. Maga expects you to form at least one alliance after tonight’s little party.”

  Obadiah grinned and fell back, letting the rest of the group precede them into the front room. “Maga can just stop trying to orchestrate my life.”

  Nathan grinned back. “Still, you have a duty to your Archangel and your nation. The holds must be repopulated. You shouldn’t let matters of personal taste stand in the way of your responsibilities.”

  “Maybe I’m holding out for a wife like yours—an angel. Until Jovah gives me special dispensation, too, I don’t want to marry.”

  Nathan looked suddenly and unexpectedly serious. They were briefly alone, as the dining hall emptied and the other members of the party disposed themselves around the sitting room. “Whatever you do, you shouldn’t hold out for a wife like Gabriel’s,” he said quietly.

  “What?” Obadiah exclaimed.

  Nathan shrugged, lifting and dropping his great white wings. “I’m hoping it will do you some good to be away from the Eyrie for a while. Remind you how many other difficult, fascinating, and beautiful women there are in the world.”

  “Oh, please don’t tell me this is about Rachel. Don’t tell me that I was brought here just to remove me from her dangerous influence.”

  “Gabriel sent you here to deal with the Jansai. But it didn’t hurt you to get away from Rachel.”

  Obadiah shook his head and strode away. “I can think of a lot of other ways to ruin my life than to mope over the angelica for the rest of my days,” he shot over his shoulder.

  Nathan hurried to catch up, not at all discomposed by Obadiah’s obvious irritation. “That’s all we ask—a little creativity in your path to self-destruction,” he said cheerfully.

  Obadiah was annoyed enough to seriously consider walking out right then and there, but Deborah motioned him over to a seat she’d saved for him, and it was clear that nobody else was ready to call it a night. So he throttled his displeasure and smiled at her, sweeping his wings back to take his seat.

  “How could it be otherwise?” he said. “First food, now singing.”

  “It is how the angels spend their days,” she said, smiling back.

  At first he was in no mood to sit there and be entertained by voices, but gradually, as always, the music insinuated itself into his heart and put him at peace. Three of the Cedar Hills angels stood together and sang a rapturously beautiful rendition of the Lochevsky Requiem, all minor triads and woeful harmonies until the granting of absolution offered in a major chord at the end. Deborah and Magdalena sang a sweet country ballad that Obadiah would have sworn was not in Maga’s repertoire, since she generally stuck with the sacred music, and then Maga performed a solo that left them all dumb and breathless. She had always had a vibrant mezzo soprano, darker and richer than her sister Ariel’s high voice, but on this piece she sang with such depth and range that one or two people in the audience actually appeared to be crying. It was one of the prayers of thanksgiving, usually performed after great trials or particularly expressive displays of the god’s affection. Obadiah could not help wondering: Was this her way of thanking Jovah for the gift of the child that she was still terrified to be carrying?

  Yes, he was to conclude in the very next moment, as Nathan came to his feet to address the group. He looked flushed and happy; Maga, standing beside him, looked equally flushed and a little nervous. “Friends,” Nathan said, taking his wife’s hand and holding it possessively, “we didn’t just gather you all here to have a pleasant meal with us. We have news—the best news, the most exciting news—and we wanted to share it with our closest friends and staunchest supporters.”

  “Jovah rejoicing, you’re going to have a baby!” the blond mortal girl shrieked, and the room was suddenly alive with cries of wonder and congratulations. Everyone swarmed around the mother-to-be and her beaming husband, offering hearty hugs and best wishes. Nathan laughed and shook hands all around and let the girls kiss him.
Magdalena accepted all the cautious embraces and stroked her stomach and tried not to look frightened. Obadiah blew her a kiss from across the room, and she smiled at him, too deep in well-wishers to even try to get closer.

  “Now,” Nathan said in a loud voice to wrest attention back from his wife, “we want to celebrate this great news as angels celebrate everything—with a song. Deborah? Matthew? Lael? If you’ll come stand here with me . . .”

  Magdalena looked as surprised as everybody else did, so Obadiah guessed this particular number had been written and rehearsed in secret. Nathan was a composer of moderate renown; he had scored pieces that had been performed at the Gloria and his own wedding, among other notable occasions. Obadiah wondered what kind of music he would have considered appropriate to commemorate such a momentous occasion in his life.

  It was, as it turned out, a plaintive melody that traded a cascading series of notes with the restless alto line. Its question-and-response format required there to be two sets of singers, each singing in harmony, so Deborah and Lael posed the questions while Nathan and Matthew responded. Obadiah listened with real appreciation as the simple, haunting song unfolded.

  Who will you love who comes as a stranger,

  Love long before that first knock on the door?

  I will love no one who’s wrapped in a mystery.

  Yes, this is one you’ll completely adore.

  Am I expecting a man or a woman?

  It could be either or it could be both.

  Might I mistake him for some stray wayfarer?

  This is a face you will instantly know.

  Then tell me this: Are his eyes blue or hazel?

  Will he be dark or will he be fair?

  Is he of sullen or sweet disposition?