by Sharon Shinn
“Oh. Oh, that one. I didn’t know she had a name.”
“Yes, and it’s pretty, isn’t it? Zoe.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone having a name like that,” she said coldly.
“She’s lived here almost a year. Can you imagine that? So far from her friends and her familiar places and her customs. The only people she can really speak to are the travelers who stay here, since the merchants and the Jansai men treat her like sin incarnate, and naturally she hasn’t been allowed to meet any Jansai women. I imagine she must feel like a prisoner here sometimes, but she’s always polite and helpful. Always friendly. You’d never know it if she was unhappy. That’s one of the reasons I think Manadavvi women keep secrets.”
“All women keep secrets,” Rebekah said shortly. “I’m sure this Zoe is not so special.”
Obadiah laughed out loud. “What, you can’t be jealous!”
Was that the name of this feeling? This sense of cold rage mixed with a hot urge toward murder? “It is just that if I had known you preferred Manadavvi women—”
He leaned forward and kissed her quickly on the mouth. “I have only one preference,” he said. “I prefer you.”
It mollified her, but only a little. “Still, if you talk to this Zoe person every time you are here—”
“You might consider talking to her sometime as well,” he interrupted. “Next time you arrive.”
Rebekah arched her eyebrows in disbelief. “And what would I say to her?”
“She is—she might—she could be a friend to you sometime, perhaps,” he said, uncharacteristically awkward. And then, all in a rush, “Rebekah, she knows you are a girl.”
She jerked back so hard that the fine ribs of the chair bruised her back. “She what? How does she—did you tell her?”
“No, no, I would never do that. One night I told her I was expecting company, and she said, ‘The same young lady who has been here before?’ and so I realized that she knew. I thought that—”
Rebekah covered her face with her hands (too late to be hiding her face now, she thought savagely), and felt more unnerved than she had since beginning this charade. “Jovah’s bleeding bones,” she said through her fingers. “Then if she knows—if she could guess—anyone could tell. Anyone might know me.”
He was reaching for her, pulling her tense body over onto his lap and cradling her against him. “No, no, she saw you under strong light, and she is trained to assess whoever steps through that door,” he soothed her. “No one else has noticed, no one else has known. You know that women are much more clever than men. They see things that men do not.”
She laughed through her panic. “That’s certainly true!”
“And she swore to tell no one. I believe her. Manadavvi women and their secrets, remember? But I thought—I asked her—”
She lifted her head then to glare at him. “You asked her what?”
He offered a tentative smile. “If she would stand friend to you if you were ever in need.”
Her scowl grew even fiercer. “And what might I ever need from a Manadavvi stranger that I could not get from my own friends and family?”
“I don’t know. A safe place to stay for the night?”
“In a Manadavvi tavern!”
“It’s a hotel, and a very luxurious one.”
“I would never run from my family’s house to this place.”
“You never know when you might need succor.”
“I never know when an angel might say crazy things.”
He shrugged and kissed her on the cheek. “So. Anyway. She knows, and now you know she knows, and if you ever have a need that she can fill, you can go to her.”
“Nobody does favors for free,” Rebekah said suspiciously.
“News to you, but outside the Jansai world of barter and payment, many people do perform favors for no cost,” he retorted. “But if a fee is involved, I will pay it. So you may ask her with a light heart.”
“I don’t think my heart can ever be light now that strangers know my identity,” she grumbled. It was bad enough that someone had unmasked her; worse still that it was the beautiful Zoe whom Obadiah already admired so much. She did not actually feel that threatened by the exposure. She just was not happy with how the entire conversation had gone. Manadavvi women and their secrets, indeed.
He tightened his arms around her and brushed his lips along her cheekbone and around the curve of her eye. “What can I do to lighten your heart?” he whispered. “I am prepared to make any sacrifice.”
She couldn’t help herself; she laughed. She slipped her arms around his back, marveling as always at the silky heat of his skin and the cool dazzle of his feathers. “Well, I am very sad,” she said in a mournful voice, hard to manage through her smile. “I think you will have to work very hard to make me cheerful again.”
He rose to his feet, holding her in his arms. His wings flowed behind him like a robe thrown open. “I shall not rest,” he declared, “until you are radiant again with gladness.”
The radiant gladness was relatively quickly achieved, and then they both found themselves almost too drowsy to talk. Obadiah actually fell asleep with his head pillowed on Rebekah’s shoulder. She toyed with the edges of his wing feathers, brushing her fingers back and forth against the wispy edges, and listened to the slow, steady rhythm of his breathing.
It was a sound that woke her up—which made her realize that she, too, had fallen asleep.
The sound came again—a knock on the door. “Angelo?” A woman’s voice. “Angelo? It is quite late—it is almost early—”
Rebekah scrambled from the bed, fired by a choking sense of panic. “Dear Jovah, sweet Jovah, what time is it? My lord, my god, sweet Jovah—”
She was throwing on her clothes and bending to tie her sandals before Obadiah had even shaken the sleep from his eyes. “What’s wrong? Who’s knocking?”
“Angelo?” came the woman’s voice again.
And then he realized. “Zoe! Yes! Thank you! We were just leaving!” he called, jumping up and hopping into his own clothes. “Merciful god, how long were we sleeping? Rebekah, I’m so sorry—”
She was tying the sash around her boy’s tunic, adjusting the cap upon her head. It was still full dark outside the windows, but she could hear the slap and rattle of carts going down the roads. In maybe an hour, Hector’s household would be awake. She had so little time, almost no time, to make her way across town and sneak inside the garden.
Obadiah’s shirt was misbuttoned and his blond hair stood up all over his head, but he looked ready to go. “I’ll take you back,” he said. “It’ll be much faster.”
She merely brushed by him and stepped into the hall. “No. Someone will see you.”
“I’ll put you down a block away. You can go the rest of the way on foot.”
She hurried down the corridor, out into the atrium, the angel at her heels. “I can make it. I have just enough time.”
“Rebekah, it will be light in less than an hour!”
“It doesn’t take me an hour to get from my house to here.”
“I want to take you.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“Rebekah—”
“Stop arguing with me, you’ll only make me late.”
The Manadavvi woman sat at the desk with her head down, pretending not to hear them. Obadiah nodded at her, mouthing a quick thank-you, but Rebekah just hurried on by, furious. At Obadiah, at herself, at everybody. Furious and terrified. The cooks usually weren’t up before dawn, but Jerusha might be awake already, roused by a crying baby. Hepzibah was often up at three or four in the morning to use the water room, and sometimes she never fell back asleep. One of the curses of old age, she would say.
Anyone could be awake. Anyone at all.
Her feet hit the street and she almost fell into a run. Obadiah was beside her for a few steps, pulling at her arm, attempting to reason with her, but she ignored him and kept on trotting forward. Soon enough he must have realized that h
e put her in even more danger by racing along beside her, an angel opportuning a Jansai boy, so he halted and fell behind as she kept striding on. And then—she was waiting for the sounds—a rush and a ruffle and the sensation of a private wind swirling about her, and she knew he was aloft, following her from overhead.
She didn’t look up. She didn’t slow down. She just hurried forward, head drawn in a little, eyes on her feet, heart pounding, breath trading painfully in and out of her lungs. A cart passed her, the horse’s hooves making a steady clopping on the cobblestone road. Strangers walked by on the other side of the street, quarreling in low voices. The darkness felt thin, insubstantial, ready to rip and give way. Two more carts passed, heading toward the market.
She rounded a corner, crossed another street, and was almost in the residential district. Another block, another street crossed, no more carts or pedestrians. These were the neighborhoods where the wealthy Jansai lived, in big multistory houses behind high walls and sere gardens. She could catch the minty scent of the dera leaves, green all winter. She was fifty yards from her own gate.
So close to her goal, she quickened her pace so that she was actually running by the time she reached her destination. She put one hand on her heart to slow its beating and the other one to the gate latch, to pull it open.
But it would not budge. She jerked again, harder, but it would not respond. The gate was locked.
Chapter Twenty
Rebekah stood there a moment, so stunned she couldn’t think. Locked out? Who would have been up, roaming the house and gardens, after she had left? Certainly Hector and the other men were often gone from home till quite late, but they entered through the front door or the gate of the outer garden. Which of the women had been abroad later than Rebekah herself?
And how would she get back inside? Back to safety, back to secrecy, back to her own secure room? She tugged on the handle more frantically, causing the wood to rattle against the iron, but the lock didn’t give. Sweet Jovah singing, she couldn’t climb the wall—it was nearly twelve feet high, and made of smoothly planed wood—and there was no other way in.
But she couldn’t stand here all night, waiting for the cooks to stir and the house door to open, waiting to call someone over. It’s Rebekah, I’ve been out all night, let me in. She had to get inside. She would have to try the wall.
She had taken a step back to gaze up and gauge her chances when she felt the soft stir and swirl of wind around her. Turning quickly, she found Obadiah had landed noiselessly on the street behind her.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” he demanded, coming close enough to whisper.
She gestured helplessly. “The gate, it’s locked.”
“You don’t have a key?”
She shook her head. “From the inside.”
“I’ll lift you over,” he said.
She stared at him a moment, not comprehending.
“I’ll carry you over,” he repeated. “Set you down in the garden and then take off again.”
“Someone will see you,” she said.
“Well, someone will certainly see you if you’re out here much longer.”
“And the garden—it’s not very big—I don’t know if you’ll be able to take off again from inside—”
The sky was lightening just enough for her to see the faint smile on his face. “Well, then, I’ll unlock the gate and walk out.”
“Oh—yes! But I still think you—”
A noise on the other side of the gate caused them both to freeze, then move deeper in the shadow of the wall.
“What was that?” Obadiah breathed.
“One of the cooks, I think. Usually they’re not up this early. But she might be going out to pick marrowroot or spices. You can’t carry me over.”
He stepped back into the street and gazed up, scanning the flat, bare surfaces of the house. “What about the roof?” he said. “Can you get in from there?”
She looked from his face to the house and back again. “The roof? I don’t—well—yes. Maybe. There’s the winter stairwell.”
“The what?”
She shook her head. “In the winter. When it rains. We put pans and buckets on the roof to catch the rainwater. Everybody does, all the houses on the street—”
He nodded impatiently. “And can you get to this winter stair?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know if it’s locked. I haven’t been up on the roof since I was a child. I think Jordan and Ephram still go up there sometimes.”
“I’ll take you to the roof,” he said. “And I’ll wait to see if that door, too, is locked.”
She was seized with terror. “And if it is?”
“And if it is . . . then you’ll have to come back with me.”
“I can’t do that!”
“Or you’ll have to wait outside until someone lets you in, and only you can tell me what kind of story might keep you out of trouble.”
She shook her head. “No story. I can’t think of anything. I—I have to get in. That’s all. I have to.”
He stepped closer. “Put your arms around my neck.”
Unthinking, she did. She was not quite prepared for what happened next. She felt his whole body collect itself, then explode in one clean burst of energy. A little cry escaped her; she clung to him, her face against his chest. The world swung madly around her for maybe a minute, though she couldn’t see any of it; she had her eyes shut tight. Then a little bump and a couple of quick steps, and all motion stopped. Cautiously, she opened her eyes.
“We’re on the roof!” she exclaimed in a low voice.
He kissed the top of her head and set her on her feet. “Where’s this stairwell?”
She took a moment to gaze around her at the unfamiliar perspective on a familiar world. From here she could see down into the gardens of the houses on either side. One of them was crammed with a variety of skinny shrubs, naked and shivering in the winter cold but no doubt quite green and inviting in the summer. The other garden showed very little plant life, but it had been set with stone benches and an ornamental screen that probably shielded the worst of the sun in the hottest months. She had not been inside either of these gardens, because Hector was not friendly with the men who owned the houses. She had often been in the garden of the house across the street, but she could not see into it from this vantage point.
“Rebekah?” Obadiah murmured. “I think we’d best hurry.”
She nodded and shook herself from her reverie. The trapdoor to the winter stair was on the women’s side of the house, toward the back. “See that? That’s the skylight to the fabric room,” Rebekah said. “We work in there all winter, just to see the sunlight.”
“I’ll fly above it from time to time and look down on you. Maybe you’ll glance up just as I’m going over, and you’ll see me and wave.”
“And have Hepzibah and Gabbatha and everyone wonder if I’m crazy enough to be waving at birds. Here it is,” she said, falling abruptly to her knees. Obadiah crouched down beside her.
“I hope it doesn’t creak when it’s pulled open,” he said.
“No one should be awake on this level. Not now, anyway. The bedrooms are all on the second floor.”
He put his hand out to the carved wooden knob and pulled hard. Protesting only a little, the door swung back on its hinges to reveal absolute blackness inside.
“Can you find your way from here?” Obadiah asked, peering in. His voice sounded worried.
Rebekah had already dangled her feet over the open edge and felt for the first stair with her toes. “Yes. I know exactly where the stairwell comes out. Now the only danger will be running into anyone in the hallway—dressed as I am.”
“I wish I knew that you would be all right,” Obadiah said.
She kissed him swiftly. “I will be. I am. Thank you for rescuing me.”
“I won’t look for you tonight,” he said. “But I’ll be back in a week or two.”
“You’ll be here again tonight?”
He put his hands on either side of her face. “Please don’t come,” he said, his voice very low. “I am so afraid for you.”
“We’ll see,” she said, and kissed him again. Then she let her feet take the full weight of her body and stood on the stairwell, only her head and shoulders above the roofline. “I’ll be fine,” she added and began her descent.
Another ten steps down into total blackness and her feet found solid floor. Above her, she heard Obadiah fit the door back in place. She listened till she caught the sound of three running footfalls on the roof above, then the quick swoosh of wingbeats. Her imagination, surely. She stood for a moment at the door leading into the hallway, listening. But there seemed to be no one astir. She pulled the door open and stepped into the empty corridor.
It was a matter of three minutes to glide through the hall, creep down the next stairwell, and hurry the last hundred yards to her own room. Once inside, she stood there a few moments, panting, her back against the door. The sweet god of heaven must love her above all creatures. She could not believe she had successfully negotiated the hazards of this night.
Exhausted and weak with nerves, she wanted nothing but to fall onto her mattress and sleep for a hundred hours. But she had learned already the dangers of unguarded sleep. First she quickly changed into bed clothes, then hid her boy’s attire in the bottom of her dresser. She wet an old cloth with water from her nightstand pitcher and scrubbed off any faint traces of charcoal that might remain on her face. Only then did she allow herself to lie on her bed and give herself up to dreaming.
Her eyes opened only a few hours later. She would have liked to sleep till noon, but there were consequences for such foolish behavior. They would think she was sick, and dose her, or think she was lazy, and assign her all the least pleasant tasks of the day. So she forced herself up, promising herself a nap later, and dragged herself down to the water room to wash and dress. She could hear voices the length of the hall as the other women headed downstairs for breakfast. Everything was silent by the time she emerged newly clean, dressed in a fresh jeska, and absolutely starving.
She hurried down the stairs, following the scent of food and the sound of light laughter. It would be dangerous, of course, but if the angel was going to be here another night—he might not return for weeks, she could not wait so long to see him again—and now that she had a second way into the house, a secret way—