Archangel

by Sharon Shinn

  “Then tell me something else,” she said.

  “I can hardly wait to hear the question.”

  “Why don’t angels like their wings to be touched?”

  He laughed again. “Before I answer, let me say that you’re the first mortal I’ve ever met who learned that fact through observation rather than experience.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, most mortals carelessly walk up to an angel and run their hands down his feathers as if they’re petting a cat—and practically get their fingers broken for it. Not you. You’d as soon think of touching an angel’s wings uninvited as you would— well—kissing him on the mouth.”

  “Well, that’s almost what it seems like,” she remarked. “I mean, it seems like a very intimate thing.”

  “It is. Actually, kissing isn’t a bad analogy to how intimate it is.”

  “Does it feel bad?”

  “Does kissing feel bad?”

  “No, I mean—”

  “To have your wings touched? No, on the contrary. But they’re very sensitive. Very—I don’t know—personal. To have your wings touched is like being embraced—or touched on the tongue—or stroked on the breast. Something like that. Not something you want a stranger to do.”

  She was thoroughly intrigued. She leaned closer. “What do they feel like?” she asked. “They look like feathers.”

  “They are feathers. The outer ones are much smoother and harder. The inner ones soft, fuzzier. See.” And he unfurled one of his ivory-lace wings, there in the dark room, and let her examine it by candlelight. She studied the intricate interlocking of quill and branch over the translucent webbed membrane. The resulting mesh looked softer than washed silk, stronger than braided leather. She looked up at Obadiah wordlessly, a question in her eyes.

  He laughed lightly. “Yes,” he said. “But very, very gently.”

  So she reached out with one tentative finger and traced a line from right under his armpit to the very edge of his wingspan, noting how the texture toughened and thickened as she moved from the smallest feathers to the greatest. He had caught his breath the minute she touched him and did not exhale until her hand reluctantly dropped away.

  “What? Did I hurt you?” she asked.

  “You tickled.”

  “I’m sorry.” A small smile grew in her eyes. “Did it feel good, though?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall I do it again?”

  He slowly refolded his wing, regarding her somewhat thoughtfully as he did. “I think not,” he said slowly.

  She should have been abashed, but he was not trying to reprove her. She put her head to one side and returned his steady gaze. “Why not?” she asked.

  He smiled very slightly. “You are the angelica, lovely, and wedded to a man I greatly respect. I have no wish to add to your already considerable marital woes, at least not so early in your life together.”

  She flushed, but answered defensively. “I did not mean—”

  “Oh yes, you did. Perhaps you are not cold-bloodedly planning to seduce me, but you know that my being here with you troubles your husband, and that is one of the reasons you like to be with me. And let us not rule out seduction altogether. We are not children, and both of us are experienced. And you do not, by my observation at least, have much of a marriage with your husband at present.”

  Her chin went up. “I have no wish to discuss my husband.”

  He laughed. “Nor do I, but he is there, nonetheless, and he is a difficult man to ignore. And I—to my praise or my blame, I cannot really decide—find you also difficult to overlook. I shall not encourage you to toy with me, because I have no wish to break my heart over you. I imagine it is something I could do.”

  If this was rejection, it was phrased as beautifully as she had ever heard it. She scanned his face, trying to read behind the rueful smile. “Are you angry with me?” she asked directly.

  “Not at all. Flattered, a little. Sorry, a little. Not angry.”

  “Because I really cannot bear to lose all my friends, one after another.”

  He stretched his hand out to her across the table, and she took it, though she did briefly wonder if this could be construed as encouragement. “Friends for life, lovely. And if—ah, but that’s a foolish thing to say.”

  “Well, say it, though.”

  “Give Gabriel a year,” he said. “Give yourselves a year, before you start looking around for consolation. By that time you will know if Jovah chose wisely or ill. I will still be at the Eyrie in a year’s time. Who knows what will have changed by then?”

  She could not help squeezing his hand tightly before she drew hers away. “Now you’re toying with me,” she said, but she was smiling.

  He laughed and sipped from his wine. He looked very much at ease, but she sensed he was just a little ruffled under his charming exterior. Which pleased her. “We are all toys in the game between men and women, lovely,” he said. “But sometimes the game is a little more enjoyable than others.”

  The time with Matthew, of course, was safer, and Matthew too was an instructor at Peter’s school. Leather-working had become one of the more well-attended classes; so had a sort of undefined “mechanicals” course in which Matthew took objects apart and put them back together again to show his students how things worked. Actually, there was very little Matthew didn’t know (at least in Rachel’s opinion)—from weather forecasting to animal husbandry to voice training—so that he could have taught half the scheduled classes and done right by the children. He was far more favored by the students than Peter or the merchants or any of the angels. He seemed baffled by his popularity, but Rachel was proud.

  Matthew frequently went with her when she canvased the streets of Velora, looking for new recruits. By now, most of the children of the city had heard about the school, whether or not they decided to attend; but new children arrived in town every few days with their itinerant parents, or slinking in from the uncivilized rough country, or in the trains of traveling peddlers. Or in Jansai caravans.

  Rachel knew she should not look for students among the Jansai. Even if her own common sense had not told her she could not deal rationally with the mercenary nomads, Peter had told her bluntly that they were to be avoided. “They camp on the outskirts and trade, and Gabriel tolerates it, but they are not encouraged to linger,” the ex-priest had said. “They have a few goods that the merchants want, but they are not well-liked in Velora. They’re dirty, and they cheat, and they eye the women in a way that no one appreciates.”

  “But if they have slave children in their wagons—”

  “Not in Bethel,” Peter said firmly. “The Jansai don’t go slaving in this realm. Any children in the caravan are freeborn—they might be urchins, overworked little wretches maybe, but not slaves. Not in Bethel.”

  But “overworked little wretch” sounded almost as unendurable to Rachel as “slave,” and so she kept an eye out for the Jansai visitors. And when, a few weeks after the school expanded, a Jansai cortege made camp outside the city, she and Matthew strolled down to the wagons to see what they could find.

  “Although you shouldn’t be going with me,” she told him, when they were close enough to make out the faces. “You know how fond the Jansai are of Edori.”

  “Well, and you’re an Edori yourself, angela.”

  “Yes, but I don’t look like one. You, now—”

  He displayed his right forearm for her. Like the angels, he wore a sleeveless vest and no jacket, despite the freezing weather. “And haven’t I been dedicated like a good son of Yovah?” he demanded. “Isn’t that the Kiss you see there on my arm? They’ll make no slave of me.”

  “A Kiss won’t stop them,” she said with some bitterness.

  “Ah, Raheli, we’re safe in Bethel.”

  They slipped unnoticed into the camp, which was disorganized and overrun with people. It was midday, and most of the Jansai men were in the city drumming up business, although buyers and sellers could be spotted
concluding transactions before campfires and just inside the low tents. The white winter sunlight glanced off the gold jewelry and bald heads of the men, but could not penetrate the dark cloaks and cowled faces of the Jansai women. Glimpses were all that visitors got of the women, who ducked inside their, tents whenever they felt alien eyes upon them. Matthew glanced over at Rachel.

  “Aye, and there’s the people you should be liberating next, once you’ve saved all the children of Samaria,” he commented.

  She could not help grinning, though she felt a little grim. “I think—by the horses?” she said, heading toward the far edge of the camp. “Surely that’s a task that would fall to children.”

  And she was right. Three incredibly grubby boys were squatting on the ground outside a makeshift corral, fascinated by some drama unfolding at their feet and occasionally loosing shouts of triumphant laughter.

  “There’s a pack up to no good,” Matthew remarked.

  “Probably torturing small animals,” Rachel replied.

  Indeed, when Matthew hailed them in his burred voice, the three whirled guiltily around to face the newcomers, and a small furry shape instantly sped away in the opposite direction.

  “I can see you’ve been having a pleasant afternoon, now,” Matthew said conversationally.

  The three miscreants instantly recovered their poise. “And what’s it to you?” the biggest one asked in a sneering voice. “Look, fellas, it’s one of them Edoris. Slave-bait.”

  Rachel was instantly affronted, but Matthew merely grinned. He shook back his long black hair. “Slave-bait, is it,” he said. “I’m not the one who’s been set out to guard the horses here on such a fine afternoon.”

  The big one scowled. “I like to watch the horses,” he said defiantly. “A horse is a Jansai’s life. Better than a woman. A horse will get you everything you need.” His comrades supported this speech with a couple of heartfelt “yeahs” and some emphatic nods.

  Matthew nodded. “Sure, now. A horse is a good thing. Take you across the mountain, take you across the desert. Of course, if you’re always too poor to own your own horses, won’t do you much good to love them.”

  “Who says I’m too poor?”

  “Well, you’re sitting here watching another man’s beasts, now, aren’t you?”

  “Now I am, maybe. But I get paid for it. Paid plenty. I’ll buy my own horse any day now, and then I’ll pay some kid to look after him.”

  “Is that right, now? And how much do you think a horse costs, mikele?” Matthew asked, using the Edori term for young boy.

  The mikele scowled even more darkly. “I don’t know. Not so much.”

  “A hundred gold pieces, I’m thinking. Maybe more. How many gold pieces do you have saved up? Is it five? Is it one? Are your kind masters paying you in gold, after all, or is it perhaps silver? Maybe they’re paying you in food and gear—”

  Rachel had just begun to relax into the familiar, persuasive cadence of Matthew’s argument for education when rough voices behind them abruptly interrupted.

  “Hey, what’s that damned Edori doing here? Chit, Brido, get away from the filthy Edori—”

  The boys scrambled back toward the corral as Rachel and Matthew whirled around to see who had spoken. Two good-sized Jansai males were approaching them on the run, snarls on then-faces and sharp-edged weapons coming to life in their hands. Involuntarily, Rachel stiffened at the sight of those long-handled knives threaded through with sinuous leather straps. She remembered those well enough—

  But she would not give in to fear or panic. She made herself step ahead of Matthew, and haughtily stared down the half-naked Jansai. “We’ve come from the Eyrie to inspect conditions at your camp, and we’d appreciate a little civility,” she said in an icy voice. “You are only here on sufferance, after all.”

  The tone surprised them; so did the clothes, the face, the whole package. Not the troublesome merchant’s wife they had expected. They came to a halt a few yards away and inspected her, some of the menace dying away from their lean faces and bunched muscles.

  “Pardon, mistress,” said one, suddenly flashing her that wide white smile that she also very clearly remembered. “We don’t like strangers meddling in our campgrounds.”

  “We weren’t meddling,” she said very coldly.

  The second Jansai jerked his knife-hand at Matthew. “Who’s he? Edori stay out of our camps.”

  “He’s with me. For protection.”

  This second man was less easily cowed by a tone of voice. He stared back at her insolently. “And who are you?”

  “I am Rachel, wife to Gabriel,” she said with heavy emphasis. “I assume you will allow that I have the right to be anywhere in Velora I choose?”

  She had expected the name to mean something to them—she had learned, in Velora, it always did—but she hadn’t expected the sudden interest that leapt to both Jansai faces. Inexplicably, she felt she had made a mistake. The second man gave a small laugh; the first one kissed his fist to her, the only gesture of respect known to the Jansai, but the expression on his face was mocking.

  “Two Edori, after all,” the first Jansai said, smiling that white smile again. “So you still remember our camps with fondness.”

  Instinct warned her against explaining her real motive. “Just curious,” she said, still in that frigid voice. “I see they haven’t improved any.”

  “Maybe they have,” the second man said. “You’re welcome to stay and look around. I’ll be glad to show you where I pitch my tent.”

  “Thank you, no. I believe I’ve seen enough to remind me just what an unpleasant place the camp can be.”

  And she nodded regally and stepped forward, brushing past them with an odd sense of unease. Matthew was close on her other side, close enough for her to feel the heat of his bare arm against her woolen sleeve, but that did not make her feel any safer. There had been more Edori than Jansai in camp that night on the Heldora plains, and it had not been Edori who prevailed… .

  But the two mercenaries drew aside to let them pass. “Angela,” one of them murmured as she drew away, but she did not look back to acknowledge the word. Only willpower kept her from breaking into a run when they were a few yards away. She kept walking in a fast but measured pace, and within minutes they were safely back inside the city limits, and unharmed.

  “So I guess the Jansai mikele survive without us,” Matthew said finally, when the camp was far enough behind she couldn’t even imagine that she still smelled it. The words surprised a laugh out of her; she clutched his arm and kept laughing, knowing she was a touch hysterical. He laughed, too, and patted her arm in a comforting way, and that was all they said about the adventure.

  It was the next day before she realized that there might be repercussions. She was back in Velora, this time alone, walking through one of the sunless alleys that connected the bazaar to the business district. Having just purchased a sackful of blue yarn, and calculating how long it would last and which of her students would be asking for a different color, she was paying very little attention to the noises around her. Not that there was much noise. She heard a footfall—the small clink of knife against metal sheath—and then she was enveloped in darkness.

  For a split second, she was too astonished to be afraid or even to understand what had happened. But when darkness was followed by sudden violent motion, she knew, and she started to scream and fight. Her voice was muffled by the heavy blanket over her head, and her hands were trapped inside it as well, but terror lent her amazing strength. She writhed and shrieked, kicking out ferociously at invisible shapes around her, clawing at her prison from the inside. She heard low voices swearing, and someone struck her a mighty blow on the head. Other hands grabbed her around her shoulders and flung her back against a wall. There were at least two of them.

  One of them clouted her again; her skull cracked against the brick so hard she was dizzied. She kicked out frenziedly and an answering boot crashed into her thigh so brutally that she f
elt her flesh tear and her bones buckle. Unable to stop herself from falling, she pitched headlong onto the cobblestones, rolled, and slammed again into the wall. There was a laugh, a flurry of Jansai words, and another foot catching her unexpectedly in the stomach. She tried to scrabble up, but rough hands pushed her back down. She felt a length of rope pass around her neck and shoulders, and tighten as if a noose were abruptly shortened.

  Her cry of despair was swallowed up by unexpected sounds— high yipping calls and a rattle of stones and bottles ricocheting off the alley walls. Her captors swore again, shoved her facedown into the street and took off running. Rachel lay where they left her, tangled and bruised, too stunned to even pull off the blanket and see who had rescued her.

  In a matter of seconds, someone else performed this task for her. She found herself struggling for air and staring up into a most unexpected trio of faces. Three of her students—Katie, Nate and Sal—were crouched beside her, surveying Rachel with worried expressions.

  “Angela—you all right?” asked Katie, the oldest and largest of the group. “Was they grabbing you?”

  Rachel pushed herself slowly to a more vertical position, though she was incapable of standing just yet. “I think so,” she said shakily. “Was it the Jansai?”

  Nate nodded solemnly. He was the youngest student in the school, affectionate and intelligent; Peter had high hopes for him. “Two of ‘em. We saw another one coming this way, but he run off when he saw us.”

  Rachel gingerly put a hand to her right leg, where the kick had gone home with some force. It was bleeding but not, apparently, broken. “How did you know it was me?” she asked.

  “Seen your hair,” Nate said.

  “Katie said, They’ve got angela! We’ve gotta help her!”’ Sal related. “And I was scared, but Katie got her a handful of rocks and we started coming at them real fast, and they run off.”

  “Well, you were very brave. All of you. I think you saved me.

  “They was grabbing you?” Katie asked a second time. “Did they want you for their slave again?”

  No secrets among the students, it seemed. “I don’t know. Maybe. I think they were mad at me because I was in their camp yesterday.”