by Sharon Shinn
“I can deal with Raphael,” I said. “Get some sleep now, and pack your things in the morning. We’ll leave as soon as I’ve had a chance to talk to him.”
Now some of her unnatural calm began to crack. I saw her eyes shine with tears, and her hands clench together, though she tried to hold on to her composed expression. “I wish that was true,” she said, her voice hardly above a whisper. “But—”
In a single step, I was close enough to gather her into an embrace. She rested her head against my shoulder and began sobbing in my arms, something she had not done since she was eleven or twelve years old. “Don’t worry, baby. Don’t worry,” I murmured into her ear. “Aunt Salome will save you from the angels.”
It was important to look good. To scrub off the grime of travel and wash my hair and put on the one clean dress that I had managed to save all during the trip from Laban. I didn’t want to be attractive for Raphael—that wasn’t it—but I did not want to seem strained and desperate. I needed the advantage of self-confidence, and I had always secured that by appearing my best.
I found I remembered precisely how to get to Raphael’s private quarters.
I waited until nearly noon to seek him out. He was a notoriously late sleeper and he snarled through the early hours of the day. But once he had had a shave and a meal, he regained his urbanity and his self-possession. I wanted him to listen to me, and for that I needed him awake, alert, and sane.
There was the main door to his suite, of course, accessed from the front hallway. Depending on his mood or his activities, he sometimes declined to open this door, no matter how long a visitor knocked or called. But there was a secondary entrance, reached through a warren of back corridors, that fed directly to his bedroom. That door had rarely been locked back when I lived at Windy Point, and it was not locked this morning.
I stepped in and looked quickly around. A tangle of blankets on the bed, a confusion of clothing on the floor. Raphael wasn’t immediately visible, but through the open door that connected to a small sitting room, I heard someone moving. I took a deep breath and strode through.
Raphael was standing in the middle of the room, scanning a piece of paper. He was half dressed and barefoot, but his well-muscled body glistened as if he had just stepped from a bath. His damp golden hair was just beginning to regain its curl; his wings were fluffed up behind him as if they had been newly washed and hung out in the sunshine to dry. It was hard for me to imagine a more beautiful man.
“Good morning, Raphael,” I said.
He spun around to see who had addressed him, but the instant he recognized me, his expression changed from astonishment to delight.
“Salome!” he exclaimed. “But I have been expecting you for days!”
“I apologize for arriving so late,” I said. “But I wasted time at the base of the mountain, waiting for angel transport.”
He made a dismissive gesture. “Really, there is so much activity going on within the hold that it’s hard to remember about the petitioners gathered below,” he said.
“And you have so little interest in them.”
He grinned. “Because other people are so much more interesting.”
I wouldn’t let him goad me. “Yes, indeed, Sheba is a fascinating girl,” I said in a calm voice, “but it’s time for her to leave Windy Point.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” he said. His face was filled with merriment. “I am very much enjoying her company.”
“How odd,” I said. “She has not enjoyed yours at all.”
He laughed. “Oh, but the longer she stays here, the more accustomed to me she will become,” he said. “It always takes a little time to understand someone else’s habits and preferences.”
“She’s leaving today,” I said. “And so am I. You or one of your angels will fly us off the mountaintop within the hour.”
“No, you see, you’re wrong about that,” he said, his voice quite genial. “I like Sheba. And I rather like you. I say you shall both stay—until I am tired of you—which I think will not be for quite some time.”
I watched him a moment in silence. My heart was beating very fast, but I still felt remarkably calm. I had known back in Laban that our conversation would go something like this. What kind of man holds a woman against her will? How could the Archangel be that kind of man? We must all hope Gabriel was nothing like Raphael or the whole of Samaria could fall to ruin in the next twenty years.
“The last time I was in Windy Point,” I said, “you were a few short months away from your wedding day.”
I had caught his attention. A sharp, arrested expression edged the laughter from his face. “Indeed I was.”
I strolled deeper into the room, still not close enough for him to touch me. “The god had selected a Jansai girl named Leah to be your bride. You had met her briefly, but you didn’t even know what she looked like, because of course her face was heavily veiled, as is the face of every Jansai woman.”
“Yet her father had assured me she was beautiful, and if you’ve met her, you know he spoke the truth.”
“Oh, I’ve met the woman you married,” I said.
There was a short silence.
“She has been a fine angelica,” he said at last. His eyes were narrowed. I wouldn’t say he was worried, but he wasn’t pleased.
“And yet you were not looking forward to your marriage,” I said. “In fact, you told me you wished you could marry me instead.”
He forced a laugh. “All angel-seekers pray that their angel lovers will offer to marry them. Are you sure you didn’t dream such a conversation?”
I went on as if he had not spoken. “In fact,” I said, “you told me you would marry me. If I was willing to make a few sacrifices. Give up my family. Give up my friends. Change my name to Leah. Pretend to be another woman altogether.”
Now his expression was ugly. “As I recall, you expressed a certain contempt for my generous offer.”
“I didn’t mind the part about giving up every other aspect of my life. I’d have done it, and gladly, to be your bride. But the part where you would have to murder Leah so I could take her place—I admit, that bothered me a little.”
He shrugged. “I still think it would have been an excellent plan! No one but a few of her sisters had ever seen her face. Who would know the difference?” He shrugged again. “But you refused and fled the hold, so I married my Jansai bride after all.”
“That’s the thing,” I said. “You didn’t. That woman who calls herself Leah and pretends to be your wife—her name was Sarah. She was an angel-seeker in Velora when I met her twenty years ago. Greatly changed by now, after a lifetime suffering at your side, but I know her. You killed that Jansai girl, after all.”
“She was strong-willed and uncooperative and imagined she could tame me,” Raphael said. “I knew I could not endure a month of her company, let alone twenty years. Putting her aside was the best decision I ever made.”
“I think Gabriel would be very interested in knowing that the Archangel is a murderer.”
Now his tawny eyes narrowed with menace. He came nearer and his golden wings began a nervous sweeping, back and forth, coming close enough to brush my toes before folding back. “I think you will never be the one to tell Gabriel such a story,” he said in a dulcet voice. “Silly Salome, don’t you realize you have just given me another reason to never set you free of Windy Point?”
“A letter is even now on its way to the Eyrie,” I said. “In the care of a friend. If I’m not there in—I think it is two days now—he will hand it over to the Archangel-elect. You may keep me here if you like, but Gabriel will arrive very soon, asking questions.”
Now his handsome face was suffused with fury. He grabbed my shoulders in a grip so painful I had to swallow a cry. “You’re lying,” he said.
I stared up at him, letting all my hatred show. “I’m not,” I said. “I have waited years to tell this story. I’m glad the time has finally come.”
His hands tighten
ed; he shook me, hard, and his angry face blurred before my eyes. For a moment, I thought my life was in real danger, but then he flung me from him so roughly that I stumbled against a chair and almost fell to the floor. I grabbed the back of the chair and steadied myself, taking a long breath.
He had his back to me now, but his wings quivered with indignation. “If I let you and your pathetic niece leave the hold,” he said in a cold voice, “will you keep your silence?”
“Yes,” I said.
He glanced at me over his shoulder. “I have no reason to trust you.”
“I have kept silence so far,” I said.
“And I have always wondered why.”
“Perhaps I didn’t think people would believe me.”
“Somehow, I doubt that was your reason.”
I shrugged. “I thought such knowledge would do more harm than good if it was loose in the world. The Archangel is a murderer! The man the god has raised up to the highest post is the man to be despised above all others! I thought it would cause such turmoil and chaos that Samaria might never recover.”
He sneered. “And yet, when it serves your purposes, you are willing to expose me.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “To protect Sheba, I would beg the god for thunderbolts. I would bring the mountains down. I would destroy you—or anyone who tried to harm her.”
“Too bad your own child died,” he said. “What a mother you would have been.”
“Thank the sweet god that my own son was born dead,” I replied in a steady voice. “So that I don’t have to live with the knowledge that I brought a child of yours into the world.”
Maybe I had gone too far. He whipped around and took a hasty step toward me, as if he wanted to seize me again and this time do real damage, but there was a sudden urgent pounding at the door.
“Raphael!” a man called furiously. “Raphael, let me in!”
We both recognized the newcomer’s voice at the same time. I gasped; Raphael looked first angry and then amused. “And how did you ensnare Stephen in your net a second time?” he demanded.
I didn’t answer. It now sounded like Stephen was kicking at the door in an attempt to break it down, and he continued to call Raphael’s name. The Archangel crossed the room in three strides and threw the door open. Stephen practically tumbled inside.
“Enough!” Raphael thundered. “She is here, she is unharmed, and you will please me greatly if you remove her from my sight with all speed.”
Stephen caught his balance and whirled around to locate me. “Are you all right? Has he hurt you?”
“How did you get here so quickly?” I demanded, running across the room to fling my arms around him. His skin was warm and slick with sweat. He must have flown at a blistering pace, mad with fear the whole time.
His arms squeezed me close, and his wings ruffled around me, betraying his agitation. “I didn’t have to go all the way to Monteverde. I stopped for the night at Semorrah and Ariel was there. I arrived at the farm this morning—but you weren’t there—”
“And they told you I had come to Windy Point, and you thought the very worst of me—”
He lifted his head to glare at Raphael. “They told me you had gone after your niece, and I thought the very worst of him,” he said.
“How touching,” Raphael said with a sneer. “I am moved by your affection for each other and mortified by your contempt for me. I shall repent my sins and pray to the god for forgiveness—if only you will leave. Both of you. All of you. Grab your niece and go.”
Stephen released me and pivoted to face Raphael. He had pushed me behind him and made a little cage for me out of his wings, to protect me, I think. I could read his fury in the tension of his back. “You shall answer for the harm you have done to Salome,” he said coldly.
“Actually, if you’d only been here five minutes earlier, you’d have learned she could inflict a great deal more harm on me than I could on her,” Raphael said. “I believe you’ll find that she doesn’t want to be avenged. She just wants to leave this place.”
I put both my hands on Stephen’s waist and urged him gently toward the door. “Yes,” I said. “I just want to find Sheba and go.”
I felt Stephen’s muscles bunch in protest; he planted his feet and would not budge. “I want to go now,” I said.
“He is cruel and destructive, and it is wrong that he is never called to account,” Stephen said.
“Someday the god will strike him down, but I don’t want to be lingering still at Windy Point when that day comes,” I said gently. “Stephen. Please take me away from here.”
A moment longer he resisted, and then I felt his whole body loosen. Not speaking another word to the Archangel, Stephen stalked out the door and I followed him. Once we were in the hallway, I ducked out of the shelter of his wings and hurried to catch up with him, grabbing his hand and holding it tightly to my chest.
He glanced down at me. “What do you need to gather up before you can leave?”
“Sheba. And my clothes, I suppose, though I don’t really care about them.”
“Where is she?”
“In her room, I hope.”
Now I took the lead and he followed. Over my shoulder I asked, “When did you get to Thaddeus’s farm? What did you think when you found I was here? I was so afraid that you would be too angry with me to understand why I had to come.”
“I arrived there this morning, very early. The moment I touched down, two girls came running out of the house asking, ‘Are you Stephen? Are you Stephen?’ I found it hard to believe you had been telling all your friends about me during the few days we had been separated, so I instantly suspected you had been called away and forced to leave a message for me.” He touched me on the back, either to reassure me or to prove to himself that I was real. “Not for a second did I believe you had come to Windy Point to pursue a relationship with the Archangel.”
I sighed with relief. “I was so worried about what you might think. I was more worried about what to say to you than what to say to Raphael.”
“And what did you say to him?”
I shook my head. “I promised I would not repeat it if he would let us go.”
There was a short silence. We continued winding through the hallways as fast as I could remember the turns. “Then I will not ask again,” Stephen said at last.
In another five minutes, we were in the cramped corridor where the angel-seekers lived. Five or six girls clustered in the hallway outside Sheba’s door, murmuring in excitement. One of them caught sight of me and exclaimed, “There she is!” It was a moment before I recognized her.
“Neri!” I said. She was so changed! Her straight brown hair had been cut and curled; her plain face had been artfully made up. She was wearing a dress so low-cut that Lazarene would have ordered her out of the kitchen—or off the farm altogether. “We have been so concerned about you! Are you all right?”
She laughed. “Oh, quite all right! I have become particularly close to half a dozen angels, and even the Archangel knows my name.”
Sheba stepped out of her room, all our luggage in her hands. Her eyes went from me to Stephen. “Can we go? Who’s this? He’s not a Windy Point angel.”
“I used to be. My name is Stephen,” he introduced himself.
Neri took a step closer to him. “Hello, Stephen,” she cooed. All the other girls smiled or waved or batted their eyes at him. He did not even appear to notice.
“He’s a friend of mine from quite some time ago,” I said. “He’s going to take us off the mountain.”
“Now?” Sheba demanded.
“If you’re ready.”
“Let’s go.”
I turned to follow her down the hall, hesitated, and looked back at Neri. “You can come with us, if you like,” I said. “Stephen will return for you. You don’t have to stay.”
She laughed. “I want to stay, Salome, I assure you. Even more so once Sheba is gone! The Archangel will have time for other girls now.”
&nb
sp; I tried to hide my shudder. Glancing around at the other women in the hall, I said, “Any of you? Stephen will be happy to come back for everyone who wants to leave.” He hadn’t actually said so, of course, but I knew he would. Any angel-seeker torn from Raphael’s arms would be a slap in the Archangel’s face, and Stephen really wanted to administer a blow or two.
But the other girls all shook their heads. One or two looked wistful, I thought, as if thinking about the lives they used to lead before they came to Windy Point. The others looked determined, even eager. Like Neri, they saw Sheba’s departure as a fresh opportunity for themselves.
“None of them will want to leave,” Sheba said. “Come on. Let’s go.” She started moving forward again, but glanced back once at Stephen, who was behind me. His height and his wingspan made it a little tricky for him to pass through the narrow hallway, but he wasn’t letting this slow him down any. Sheba asked him, “Can you carry both of us all the way back to the farm?”
“Yes,” he said.
“But he doesn’t have to,” I said. “David is on the ground below with a wagon, waiting for you.”
Sheba came to a dead stop and both Stephen and I nearly crashed into her. “David. Oh, no, no—I can’t bear to face him,” she said. She looked like she was about to start crying again. “He must think the worst of me—I deserve to have him think the worst of me—”
This reminded me so much of what I had said to Stephen a few short days ago! In a quiet voice, I said, “He deserves to hear your apologies. He deserves your thanks. He brought me here. He made it possible for me to rescue you. You owe him a chance to tell you how he feels.”
“But, Aunt Salome—”
“And, anyway, I’m not going back to the farm, not just yet,” I added. “I have to be in Velora as soon as possible, and I want Stephen to take me there.”
“Velora! But I need you!” Sheba wailed.
“And I will be back with you as soon as I can,” I said. “But I made a promise and I have to keep it, and it must be kept in Velora.” I glanced back at Stephen. “At least—will you take me there? Today?”
