by Sharon Shinn
I moved away from Adriel and came to a halt in front of Ruth. “But you do. You land at Windy Point and you collect your thoughts and you look around. This is an angel hold! It must be a place of wealth and luxury and comfort and ease! But no one comes to greet you or show you to a room. No one tells you where the kitchens are or when the meals might be served. You’re an angel-seeker and everyone here despises you.” I smoothed Ruth’s cheeks as if I was applying rouge; I straightened her shirt as if helping her dress. “You must fend for yourself. You must try to find a protector among the angels or a friend among the mortals. You must try to please the cooks, so they will be willing to feed you, and work in the laundry so that you have a way to clean your clothes. You must learn how to live among these people.”
I spun around to point at Hara. “But you’re thinking, ‘I’m a pretty young girl! There will be plenty of angels who like me, who want to take me to their beds.’ And maybe that will be true.” I bent over to murmur in Hara’s ear, though I spoke loudly enough for everyone else to hear. She sat frozen in her pink-and-blond state, clearly unnerved by my performance. “But perhaps you’ve never slept with a man before, and you’re not sure how it goes,” I said, my mouth so close to her hair I was practically kissing it. “Perhaps your angel lover might ask you to perform an act that you find degrading—or painful—or frightening. Can you refuse him? Are you strong enough to push him away if he insists? Will anybody help you if you free yourself from his arms and go running out into the hold in the middle of the night?”
I straightened up and glanced around the room again. All the women were staring at me with varying degrees of horror, depending on how good their own imaginations were—or how comprehensive their memories.
“Don’t think the angelica will give you aid,” I said. “They say that Raphael’s wife is rarely seen in the halls of Windy Point these days. Long ago she withdrew to her own suites, as far from the Archangel as she could manage. Was she revolted by the acts he asked her to commit? Did she feel betrayed when he began importing angel-seekers the very week that he married her and brought her home? Does she hate him? Fear him? Love him still? No one knows. Leah never comes out.”
I spread my hands. “But you are thinking, ‘I do not need the angelica’s help. I will give any angel my body, any way he wants to take it. I can be happy at Windy Point.’ And maybe you can. If you can learn to endure the wind.” Now I flung my hands in the air. “All day, all night, there is never a silent moment at the hold. It seems like the rocks are groaning or sobbing or begging for mercy. In a storm, the whole place howls as if it holds the soul of every creature that has died in Samaria, and each last one is in unending torment. Some people have gone mad before they have been there a week. Some people will do anything to escape those voices. Now and then desperate men and women have flung themselves off the top of the mountain, just to escape the sound of the wind.”
I started and looked behind me, as if someone had asked me a question. “Why did they jump? Because there’s no other way off the mountain—unless an angel will take you. And sometimes, I’m sorry to say, the angels of Windy Point find they have more interesting ways to occupy their time than ferrying weeping young girls to and from the hold.”
I took three steps and I was standing right where I had been heading this whole time—in front of Sheba. She watched me with a carefully neutral expression, but I could read her face and its subtle blend of humor and irony. She knew, maybe all of them knew, that this entire performance had been for her benefit. I put my hands on either side of her face and tilted her head up so we could stare at each other.
“‘But Salome,’ I can hear you thinking,” I went on. “‘All of these hazards, all of these travails, will surely be worth it if only I can bear an angel child. And then I shall live in comfort and ease for the rest of my life, honored everywhere I go by angels and mortals alike.’”
“I should like to have an angel baby,” Sheba said, her face utterly calm, her voice serene.
I dropped my hands and glanced around the room, but I stayed where I was. “Do any of you know a woman who has had an angel child?” I asked. I could tell by the startled expressions on their faces that none of them did. “Do you know what happens to girls who get pregnant by angel lovers? A very high percentage of them miscarry, because angel blood mixes badly with ours. Nine times out of ten, if the pregnancy goes full term, the child that is born will be mortal—of no use to anyone, or no more use than any other child. And, believe me, your angel lover will have no interest in helping you figure out what to do with the baby who is suddenly demanding all your time.”
I did one slow, complete pivot, making sure I met the eyes of every young girl in the room—each one still young enough to be fertile, stupid enough to dream. “And if the child in your womb is angelic? If you have been fortunate enough to conceive the most precious bit of life there is? Why, you have won the prize. You have achieved the pinnacle. You are the among the luckiest women in Samaria.” I glanced down at Sheba. “You are also likely to be dead soon. At least one out of three women die giving birth to angel babies. And if the healers have to choose between saving the baby’s life and saving the mother’s—well, you ought to be able to guess which one will live through the night.”
I took off my apron and laid it across the back of the empty chair next to Sheba. “You’ll pardon me if I don’t spend my energy hoping there will be angels at the festival,” I said. “It wouldn’t make me unhappy if I never saw an angel again for the rest of my life.”
As it happened, of course, Laban was full of angels. I spotted the first one when we were still a few miles out from town, riding in the Danfrees’ comfortable carriage. I paused in the middle of a question I was asking Hope, and I stared out the window at the lyrically beautiful sight of an angel swooping out of the sky like a messenger from Jovah himself.
“Do I think what?” Hope prompted me when I had been silent too long.
I dragged my gaze back to the interior of the carriage, though it was a moment before I could focus again on her face. “I’ve forgotten what I was going to ask,” I said blankly.
She ducked her head to see what had caught my attention outside. Three more angels were circling overhead, canting their wings in preparation for a landing. She looked back at me with a slight smile. “Do I think we will have an interesting time of it in Laban?” she said. “Oh yes. I think we might.”
The wagon carrying Sheba and the others had already arrived at the inn where I had booked us a room, and Sheba was waiting primly outside, a small pile of luggage at her feet. The expression on her face was cherubic; it was clear she wanted me to think she was going to behave with the utmost maturity for this visit.
“David and the others have already left for the fair, but I said I had to wait for you,” she said.
“How very wise,” I said dryly. “Let me pay for our room and freshen up, and then we can go find your friends.”
“Shall we plan to meet back here for dinner?” Hope asked.
“An excellent idea. I’m sure I’ll need the company of an adult by then.”
A few minutes later, Sheba and I were hurrying off to see the fair. I have to confess that even I was quickly infected with the festive atmosphere that energized all of Laban, normally a rather sedate town where sober individuals engaged in ordinary commerce. But today the streets were thronged with small boys and harried mothers, flirtatious young girls and well-dressed young men. Flags and banners flew from every home and small shop; the scents of spicy cooking made the slightest breeze tantalizing. The air was filled with excited conversation, trills of song, bursts of laughter, and the random noisy bustle of people having a good time.
The bulk of the fair was set up in the center of town, spilling along one main avenue and four cross streets. “Oh!” Sheba exclaimed as we rounded a corner to see it all laid out before us. There were the broad, colorful tents of the Jansai traders selling any item you might desire, from food to jewelry
. There were the clusters of smiling, dark-haired Edori who seemed to be equally divided among those who had goods to sell and those who merely wanted to visit with their friends. I noticed that the Jansai and the Edori had set up wagons as far from each other as possible—there was no love lost between those two groups, and indeed a great deal of hatred and suspicion.
Farmers had driven their carts to the middle of the fair and were selling big, fat tomatoes and bushels of peaches. Merchants from Luminaux offered the finest crafts imaginable, from delicate silver flutes to porcelain dishes painted with gold. Bakers were handing out pastries; vintners were pouring glasses of wine. Everything held an instant, exotic appeal.
“I don’t even know where to begin looking,” Sheba said.
I laughed and couldn’t keep from patting her shoulder. This was nothing—this was a tawdry little street fair—compared to the opulence you might expect to see on a daily basis in Semorrah or Luminaux or even Velora. But Sheba was a country girl whose pleasures had always been simple ones. I had made certain of that.
“I know you have your own money, but I’ll buy you a present today—anything you pick out,” I said. I knew I didn’t have to give her a price limit; Sheba was much too sensible to ask for something she knew I couldn’t afford, and too canny to sulk about it.
She gave me a swift sideways smile. “You should buy a present for yourself, too,” she said. “You never indulge yourself with anything.”
“Maybe I will, then, today. Let’s start shopping.”
We began with food, of course, and we munched on fried bread and baked apples while we wandered down the haphazard aisles. I was drawn to the bright scarves and bolts of cloth laid out at the Edori tents, and I couldn’t resist buying a length of red fabric shot through with streaks of gold and purple. Sheba held a fold of it against my face before the vendor wrapped it up for me.
“These are the perfect colors for your skin,” she said. “You should wear bright clothes more often.”
She was lured by the trays of jewelry laid out in the Jansai booths, though she didn’t like the traders themselves, and she actually pressed a little more closely to me while we picked through the heavy gold chains and the thin gold bracelets. I don’t much like Jansai men, either—most of them are loud and overbearing and feel such contempt for women that the scorn practically rises off of them like a smell. Their own women cower unseen in tents and wagons, though sometimes you can glimpse their veiled faces peering out as if they long to take in more of the world.
“I want a bracelet, but I don’t want to buy it from him,” Sheba whispered, after we had considered and rejected a number of baubles.
“Then let’s go see what the Semorran merchants have to offer,” I said. The wares tended to be more expensive when they came from Semorrah, but the buying experience was much more enjoyable, and she ended up with a lovely gold bracelet hung with clattering charms. Ruth and Hara were at a booth nearby, and I did not object when Sheba wanted to run over and show them her new acquisition—and I did not refuse when she turned back and asked if she could spend the next few hours wandering the fair with them. She had been so good, and goodness is so often not rewarded. I waved and let her go.
And then I was alone at the fair.
I glanced at the sun. It was mid-afternoon, and I had plenty of time before I was to meet Hope for dinner. I found I was hungry again—something about roaming through the open air of the festival stirred up my appetite, or maybe it was just the sheer luxury of being able to eat a meal that I had not had to prepare with my own hands. I stopped at every booth selling any kind of food and took samples of everything, from meat to bread to sweets. It was all delicious.
I was near the northern edge of the fair, at the last cross street that held any booths, when I heard the singing. My hands resting on a pile of apples that I had been sorting through, I turned my head to listen to the effortless harmonies drifting down the alley.
“Angels,” said the woman running the fruit stand. “They’ve been singing all day. I feel drunk with the music, and I’m not one who’s ever cared much for singing. I guess I never heard angels before.”
“I’ve heard them,” I murmured. “But it’s a fresh shock every time.”
“Do you want that apple?” she asked.
I shook my head and put my empty hands in my pockets. “Maybe later,” I said. “I’m going to listen to the singing.”
It was easy to guess which building held the performers, since a crowd of people had spilled out of the door and into the street, listening raptly to the heavenly sounds. As gently as I could, I pushed my way through the mob till I was almost at the door—close enough to hear every note, not close enough to see inside. And then I stood there, jammed hip to shoulder with complete strangers, and let myself be claimed by music.
Right now, two women were offering a complicated duet—not holy music, not something that would be presented at the annual Gloria, but something serious and sublime nonetheless. The soprano line arched and ached over the dark, melancholy alto like lightning over a louring sky. It would not have surprised me if the air had darkened to storm just from the passion of their voices. But after a frenzied twining arpeggio of minor harmonies, their voices suddenly resolved into a triumphant major third, and everyone in the crowd around me gasped. I opened my eyes—it seemed I had shut them—fully expecting to see the street around me washed with brilliant sunshine. It took a moment for me to reorient myself to an ordinary sky and my place in the middle of a crowd. It was some comfort to see similar looks of confusion on the faces of the people around me.
The audience inside burst into deafening applause; those of us out in the street merely shifted our feet and tried to find more comfortable positions. No one made any move to leave. I imagined the two women making their way off of a temporary stage and new performers climbing a shaky set of steps. Inside the building, the quiet grew intense, and those of us outside fell silent as well, filled with greedy anticipation. I noticed that my face and shoulders strained toward the doorway and that my whole body was clenched with readiness. Everyone around me had much the same pose.
When the new voice rose in song, I gasped so hard you would have thought someone had punched me in the stomach.
That was Stephen singing.
His voice was a rich baritone, silky smooth; he held each note as if it could be weighed in carats. The first piece I had ever heard him sing was a requiem at the funeral of a woman I had not met, and I had sobbed through the entire number as if I had lost all hope of the god. For a long time, I had not wanted to hear him sing again because I didn’t think I could bear the sadness, but then I heard him deliver a love song. I realized that his voice was meant to express deep emotion—any emotion—as long as it was passionate and heartfelt. In all the time I knew him, I never heard him sing a playful melody or a tavern ditty, but when he performed a sacred mass, you would fall to the ground praying, and your soul would make a trembling obeisance.
This afternoon he offered a song of thanksgiving, a gorgeous expression of contentment and well-being. I could see the people around me nodding their heads and smiling at each other. I could tell his voice was infusing them with a sense of serenity and hope, a belief that the world was wondrous and all dreams were within reach. Even I—who believed neither of these things, as a general rule—felt my spirits lift and my burdens lighten. Laban was a very good place and I was having a very good day. Nothing impossible awaited me. Life was a treasure trove of joys.
When his voice reached its dramatic conclusion and abruptly ceased, I felt as if I’d been slapped. My head snapped back and my bright mood vanished. Once again, I saw my own emotions mirrored in the expressions of the people around me. But I doubted any of them felt a sense of letdown and betrayal as keen as my own.
I had to see Stephen’s face.
Apologizing in an undervoice, but moving with a great deal of determination, I started elbowing through the throng, pushing my way into the crowded buil
ding. A few people elbowed back, and some refused to give way, but I managed to inch up the stairs and through the dense cluster of people packed into the back of the room. “Excuse me—please let me through—I’m sorry. Please let me get by,” I murmured.
I had made it a few feet into the interior of the building, and I was deep in a knot of unyielding strangers, when Stephen began singing again. This time his deep, steady voice anchored a quartet of performers. I heard the pale-oak tenor, the black-satin alto, and the crystalline soprano lay their individual architectures over his flawlessly planed foundation. I found myself smiling again. Suddenly good-natured, the people around me agreeably made room when I pressed forward, trying to get closer. I pushed through one more tangle of people and found myself standing behind the back row of chairs, with a clear, unobstructed view of the stage.
My eyes went instantly to Stephen. His tall, slender body was so familiar; those narrow white wings made a compact silhouette behind his body as if they had been folded down to the smallest possible shape. There had always been such intensity to Stephen. It had always seemed as though his muscles were corded, his hands were clenched, his wings were quivering with readiness. He had always appeared to be on the verge of—something. Speech. Flight. Anger. Laughter. Declaration. Renunciation. Whenever I was with him, I always found myself leaning forward just a little. Just as everyone in this crowd leaned forward, listening to the angels sing.
My first thought was that he looked no different than he had when I’d met him twenty years ago. But as I stood there, hungrily staring, I gradually realized that that wasn’t true. His curly brown hair still fell almost to his shoulders, but it was a little thinner, a little darker. He was still slim, but he had filled out more; his body had a man’s weight now, not a boy’s. His expression was more set, more severe. If I were closer, I was sure I would see a few permanent lines carved down his cheeks or edging his eyes.
