by Sharon Shinn
“No head for business—” Samuel choked out once, and that set her off again. She was blinded by laughing; she didn’t see him approach, and so his hug of congratulations caught her completely by surprise. But she welcomed it. She thought she deserved it. Her second victory of the day, and this one actually worth recording.
But there were still setbacks to contend with—namely, the failure of the music machine. Late in the afternoon, Alleya set out for Velora to see if, by chance, anyone there could give her advice.
Velora was a bustling, happy, cosmopolitan town nestled up to the foot of the imposing Velo mountain from which the Eyrie had been carved. The city had sprung up centuries ago specifically to accommodate the angels and the petitioners who visited them there, so it possessed a welcome, friendly air and a multitude of amenities. It was often compared to Luminaux (though it had no real hope of eclipsing that fabled city), and everyone who visited Velora fell in love with it.
Years past, the only drawback to Velora was that there was no easy way to ascend from the city to the angel hold on the mountaintop, for the steep cliffs were impassable. Angels habitually ferried petitioners up to the hold—or, more often, glided down to the city limits to hear what their visitors had to say.
But no longer. Nearly seventy-five years ago, the angels had approved a project to cut a massive series of shelves into the face of the mountain—steps shallow enough for a child to climb, but broad enough for a man to lie on comfortably with his head pillowed on the next stair up. The project was wildly popular with the merchants and the common folk of Bethel, who turned to the Eyrie when they sought divine intervention. The angels also were overwhelmingly in favor of the change, because for more than seventy years the Eyrie had been the only one of the three angel holds that was almost completely inaccessible.
Before that, only Monteverde in Gaza had been in easy reach of any petitioner who wished to speak directly to an angel. Windy Point, the hold that served Jordana, had been clawed from an inhospitable mountain range so bleak that no small community could gain a foothold close enough to cater to the hold’s inhabitants. But the Archangel Gabriel had destroyed Windy Point 150 years ago—or asked Jovah to do so, and the god had complied. When the new angel hold, Cedar Hills, had been laid out in milder southern Jordana, its architects had followed the Monteverde plan. Thus a mortal merely had to walk up to the angel compound, request in hand, to receive a hearing.
Not wanting to appear so much more aloof than their brethren, the Eyrie angels backed the plan to terrace the mountain with a stairway to their doors. Velora merchants, always quick to capitalize on an opportunity, instantly set up carts and tiny storefronts along the serried rise, the result being that the climb up the mountain was a colorful adventure. Sweet hot cinnamon rolls, bright red headscarves, flashing jewelry bearing exotic designs edged in sapphires—these, anything, could be purchased on the slow ascent. It was the most sought-after real estate in Velora.
Although she could fly from the mountaintop to the city proper in about a minute, Alleya almost always chose to walk down. Back in her (so often rued) days of anonymity, she had derived a childlike pleasure from shopping through the splendid array of finery. Now that she was Archangel, and owed to her constituents some attentions, Alleya had found that her frequent treks down the great stairway gave her an opportunity to talk informally with the merchants, the petitioners, the buyers and the artisans, who thronged up and down the steps. Everyone always seemed pleased to see her—which, genuine or not, was a rare enough occurrence that she always enjoyed it. Her pleasures were not so great that she could afford to throw the simplest ones away.
So, right after the sun slipped past its highest point, Alleya headed for the great stairway and made a roundabout descent. Though the weather was cold, the terraced marketplace was as busy as ever. “Angela! Angela!” voices called to her, pitched to carry above the murmuring of the crowd. Sometimes all that was required was a wave of recognition in return; sometimes nothing would do but that she must stop at some gaily striped booth and sample a new batch of candy or try on the finest lace gloves. Invariably, gifts were pressed upon her, which she had learned to graciously accept. Every broker wanted to be able to brag to his customer, “Well, the Archangel has a set of these, and she loves them.” The advantages to them outweighed their slight cost, and her embarrassment.
An hour later, sporting a gauzy new scarf worked in gold and silver, and munching a pastry from a bagful of goodies, Alleya stepped off the last stair and into the quieter region of Velora proper. Here, the real business of the town was done; merchants counted the inventory in their warehouses, and musicians taught students in a hundred schools. Brokers made deals, restaurateurs laid out their plates, and jewelers held dignified consultations with their most discriminating clients.
Alleya moved much more quickly once she had gained level ground, making her way to a small, crowded shop on the south edge of town. Hanging unevenly over the seamed wooden door, a worn sign simply offered “Repairs.” Alleya peeked through the glass, but no one appeared to be at work in the shop. She opened the door and went inside, anyway.
The place was a marvel of odd scents and unfamiliar objects, all jumbled together—metal, leather, oil, grease, and the hot smell and bursting spark of untamed electricity. Alleya stood in the center of the small, crowded space and did a slow pirouette, but she could not have described a use for any of the devices hanging on the walls or scattered across the floor. Some of the great mysteries of progress.
She had rung a small doorbell when she entered, and it was only a matter of moments before she was joined by the owner of the shop. “Angela!” he greeted her, bounding out from an uncovered doorway and hurrying over to shake her hand. “It has been some time since I have seen you here.”
“Hello, Daniel,” she said, smiling up at him. He was a big, strongly built Edori, with the characteristic dark coloring in eyes, skin and hair. Like most Edori she had met, he was outgoing, eager to please, prone to digression and fascinated by anything mechanical. He was known as the man to go to if you needed a watch fixed or a newfangled piece of equipment fine-tuned, but his shop had never been particularly successful, financially speaking. Alleluia repressed a smile. No head for business. “How has everything been with you?”
“Good, good, couldn’t ask for a better year.” Daniel beamed. “You’ve heard of the new steam-powered water systems that all the mighty-mighties have to install in their homes these days? Regular well water is not good enough for them—it has to be free-flowing water, it has to be hot, it has to be available in half the rooms of the house. So! Wonderful for me! Half the steam valves stick after two months, and if the hoses aren’t connected just right—I can’t tell you the tiny, tiny things that go wrong with these little contraptions, and the allali customers don’t have the first idea how to fix them.” He glanced at her guiltily after using the uncomplimentary Edori term for rich, idle city dweller, then went on with his story.
“And of course, once they’ve had the advantages of hot, ready water they simply can’t go back to their old lives, so the steam systems have to be fixed right now. It takes me, believe it, five minutes to put everything in order again. I can charge them what I like! I have fixed every steam system in Velora at least once, and I’ve been called as far away as Semorrah—although that one was a little more complicated, a big system and it had a number of flaws. But I fixed it. I showed one of their houseboys how it was done, so they’ll never need to bother me again. I don’t understand how something so easy can seem so impossible.”
Alleya smiled at him again. “It seems impossible to me,” she said. “I’d be bathing in cold water my whole life if someone didn’t install these things for me.”
He laughed and threw his hands apart. “But then, you find it easy to fly—and me? I couldn’t fly if the fate of the Edori rested on my back. So Yovah put us all here to accomplish different things, yes? And fixing little valves and engines is my task.”
It always gave her a start to hear the Edori call the god by their version of his name. It was so easy for her to forget that not everyone viewed Jovah exactly as she did. And what she had heard of the Edori religion shocked her enough to keep her from investigating more closely.
“I have something I wish you could fix for me, but I don’t think you can,” she said. “I’ve asked you about it before.”
“Ah, yes—those ancient machines that play music from Hagar’s time,” Daniel said instantly. His failures were rare enough that he remembered them all. “I looked, but—”
“Now another one has broken. Only one is left,” Alleya said sadly. “I came to ask you—if you cannot help me, do you know someone who might? In Luminaux, perhaps, or even Breven. Although I have always thought you were the best.”
He laughed; no competitive spirit here. “There is always someone better, no matter what your skill,” he said comfortably. “Think! What are your great talents? There is someone else just as good somewhere in Samaria. It does not pay to be too vain.”
She was still trying to think of her most promising abilities. A mind for detail. An abiding faith in her god. These did not seem to make her unique. “I’m not vain,” she said, smiling.
“No, you’re modest” was Daniel’s unexpected rejoinder. “But that’s not so bad, either. Angela, I may have a name that will help you. There is a man in Luminaux, another Edori, but he might not be the one, either. He has a friend whose name escapes me—they are said to be the best engineers in the country, though—how do I put it?—somewhat erratic. They are inventors, not good solid repairmen like me.” His laugh boomed out again. “They were both involved in the Gabriel Dam project—in fact, I think this friend was the chief engineer who took over when things were beginning to look like they would not go so well. He is credited with saving the project, if I’m thinking of the right man. Were I you, he is the one I would contact.”
“But you don’t know his name?” she said gently.
Daniel grinned. “Well, Noah’s the name of his Edori friend, and you can find any Edori in Luminaux by going down to the campsite.”
“Will he know your name? Can I tell him you sent me?”
“Angela, it is an honor to be asked to do a service for the Archangel, even among the Edori,” he said. “He will not need coaxing.”
She could not help another answering smile. “I keep forgetting.”
“Better a little vain than too modest,” he admonished. “I said there were repairmen as good as me. I did not say my talents were only passable.”
“I said nothing derogatory about my talents.”
“Name them for me!” he exclaimed. “List your great charms and mightiest strengths!”
No angel would have talked to Alleya this way, and no common mortal either; still, it was hard to be offended when he seemed so earnest. “I remember things—details, books I’ve read—I can put them all together and get a good picture,” she said a little haltingly. “That’s really it, except for ordinary angel things like flying and singing.”
“You can stop the rain,” he said. “You can blow away the storms.”
“Again, any angel can.”
“Not so well as you. Yovah has never failed to hear you. Is that not something you should lay proud claim to?”
It terrified Alleya when people continued to say that; for, in this crazy climate, with thunder and gale piling up across the continent, how long could she be sure the god would be pleased by her voice? “He hears me now,” she said, her voice low. “Once he heard every angel. He may not listen to me much longer.”
“He will,” Daniel said solemnly. “Do not doubt him.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“He must hear one of you. Or we will all be lost.”
Caleb had spent most of the day running copper pipes through the four stories of Vincent Hammad’s house. It was a job any laborer could do, and so he had told the silversmith, but Hammad had said he knew the difference between an item handcrafted from start to finish by the master and an inferior piece in which a student had sloppily followed his teacher’s design. Besides, Hammad could afford to pay the price for Caleb’s services, whether the task was menial or inventive, and anyway, Caleb didn’t mind a little simple honest toil now and then. So he took care with the pipes, and laid them exactly where they should go, and soldered them at the joints with slow precision. When he finally got to constructing the housing for the steam unit, he would be able to rest secure in the knowledge that none of the pipes would blow under the whoosh of sudden pressure.
By the time he left at sunset, he was tired with the self-satisfied weariness that comes after hard work on a worthwhile project. Walking unhurriedly home, he paused at a street vendor’s to buy a paper cup of hot chocolate, and he had finished it by the time he passed a meat-seller’s fire on the next corner. He dropped the cup into the flames, exchanged nods with the vendor, and continued on his way home.
He lived in three rooms over a bakery, a small apartment filled with light and the luscious scent of rising yeast. In the three years he had lived there, he didn’t think a single day had gone by that he had not paused, morning or night, to buy a loaf or a pastry from the proprietor or one of her five daughters. “If you sleep by water, you dream of water” his mother had used to say (for she had grown up a stone’s throw from the Galilee River). If you slept by a bakery, you ate bread, and never tired of it.
Tonight the friendly, gray-haired woman wrapped his rolls for him with a knowing smile. “You’ve got company upstairs,” she said. “I told her you usually came back about this time, but that sometimes you don’t, but she said she would wait. I left her on the landing outside your door.”
Since the landing was really a lacework iron balcony, the waiting quarters were not especially cramped; but Caleb was expecting no visitors. “Company?” he repeated. “Who?”
“She didn’t give her name.” The baker leaned forward to whisper. “But she’s an angel.”
He knew only one angel. “Dark-haired? Beautiful?”
“That would be her.”
“Hunh. Wonder what—How long has she been here? Did you feed her? Maybe I should get a couple extra rolls.”
“Twenty minutes or so. And she bought her own rolls.”
He grinned and left the bakery, taking the sturdy metal stairs two at a time. At the top of the landing, leaning against the railing with her folded wings toward him, Lilah waited. She must have heard his feet clattering on the stairs, but she did not face him until he spoke.
“Ah, the beautiful, mysterious stranger that has long been foretold,” Caleb greeted her. “Great messenger of light, how may I serve you?”
Now she slowly turned around to survey him. “And I thought I was sarcastic,” she observed. “But you outdo me.”
“I doubt that,” he said, unlocking the door. He had, more as an experiment than from any fear that someone would steal his meager belongings, outfitted the door with a complex mechanical baffle that even Noah had been unable to untangle. “Come right in. If I’d known you were going to be here, I would have brought you some beer.”
“I’ve already refreshed myself, thank you very much,” she said, following him inside. “I drink very lightly before a performance.” She met his quizzical look with a bland smile. “And sometimes more heavily than I ought to afterward, but only sometimes.”
“I’ve never seen you in a drunken stupor,” he said. “So I believe you. Are you hungry? I have rolls and I believe I have some shrunken oranges. I wasn’t expecting company, you see.”
“Not hungry, thanks. Though I’ll sit down if that’s all right.”
“Please do.”
She looked cautiously around the big open room as if she was not sure where it was safe to sit. Caleb tended to be tidier than most men he knew, though by no means fanatical about it, so the room was clean enough but a little cluttered. Scattered everywhere were bits of engines, partial valves, ripped sketches o
f electrical diagrams, and models of possible projects. The furniture was functional but not particularly decorative and relatively sparse. None of it was designed to accommodate angel wings. After a moment’s consideration, Lilah settled herself on a wide, low stool and continued surveying the apartment.
“But how utterly cozy,” she said. “How can you drag yourself away every morning?”
He grinned and sat down on a chair nearby. “Ah, I’m a busy man. Many clients, many projects. No temptation at all to loll around in my perfect surroundings.”
“Well, they certainly suit you.”
She glanced around again, and he studied her. In the three weeks since he had met her, he’d had only a few conversations with Lilah, and all of them had been slightly edgy, lightly ironic. It was impossible not to be drawn to the former Archangel, for she had a challenging charm, but Caleb always felt wary in her presence. As if there was more going on behind her smiles and her teasing than he could fathom.
“So tell me,” he said. “No doubt you’ve been perishing of curiosity this past month, wondering how I live, but surely that wasn’t a lure strong enough to draw you here tonight. So why have you come?”
She glanced at him with those night-dark eyes, and gave him a sidelong smile. “Perhaps I thought you would invite me to dinner.”
He raised his brows. “I never eat dinner” was his automatic response. “Just bread and fruit. Of course I’m willing to share.”
Now she laughed. “That’s almost certainly a lie,” she observed, “but I won’t take offense since that’s not why I’m here.”
“Well?”
Again the coy look, assessing him. “Joseph wanted me to ask you if you’d be willing to take on a job at Seraph. Something about sound. Improving the acoustics, I think, though perhaps he was talking about some kind of system to amplify the music. I didn’t entirely understand it. I find all this mechanical talk appallingly boring.”
“Sound isn’t really my field—I’m more into motion,” Caleb said. “But I know a little about acoustics. As for amplifying music, there are a few men working on it, but they haven’t quite figured it out yet. There’s not much we know about sound—it travels, of course, and it can be conducted, but not easily broadened—”
