Angelica

by Sharon Shinn

  The table was set for two. They separated to sit down. “And good to see you,” she replied formally. “But you look tired.”

  He nodded and began serving himself. On the table were bowls of fruit and a cooked cereal and some spicy meats. His hunger was evident; he put a lot on his plate. “Exhausted and—uncertain. Not a good combination.”

  She waited a moment but he did not volunteer more. “Come,” she prompted. “What have you learned in your long sojourn at Adriel’s?”

  He handed the serving spoons to her and waited while she put smaller portions on her plate. But he did not eat, even when they both were ready. “I don’t know what’s happening,” he said at last. “Perhaps you’ve heard—I haven’t had a chance to tell you—a couple of weeks ago, we came across a burned campsite down by the Corinni Mountains—”

  “Miriam told me,” she interrupted. “And I’ve spent some time with the little Jansai girl.”

  He showed a quick interest. “Has she told you anything?”

  “No. She doesn’t talk.”

  “Right. So we don’t know what happened at the campsite, to destroy it so utterly. And then Adriel told me of another place, south of the Caitanas—also burned beyond recognition. Not Jansai this time, but—”

  “Edori?” Susannah asked on a swiftly indrawn breath.

  He shook his head. “No. A small farm settlement. A house, a barn, a dairy—each one completely leveled, charred to cinders. How, Adriel had no idea.” He took one quick bite, but not as if he noticed what he put into his mouth. “I must get in touch with Neri at Monteverde and ask if she has come across any such devastation.”

  “I saw one,” Susannah said in a small voice. “Down by Luminaux. We saw it—oh, a week or so before you came to our camp.”

  “Describe it to me,” he said grimly, but he only nodded when she gave him the bleak details. “It sounds like the same site Solomon mentioned to me,” he said. “But how can that be? What can cause such destruction?”

  “And why?” Susannah asked. “I do not like to think it, but it sounds as if—as if a person—someone—had acquired the power to destroy other people. To destroy campsites and buildings this way—so precisely—it is not a random, unthinking act.”

  “It is not as if a lightning bolt came down and torched the earth,” Gaaron said. “I know. I thought of that.”

  “Although . . .” Susannah let her words trail off as her mind started racing. “Although, angels can call lightning bolts, can they not? Or so I have always been told.”

  He looked at her sharply. “You think an angel did these things?”

  “I was just—”

  “No angel in the three holds would think to cause such destruction! Most angels never in their lives call down a thunderbolt, not for any reason! We know the prayers, yes, we are taught them, but these are not prayers we offer to the god! Don’t say such things!”

  “I did not mean to make you angry,” she said quietly. “I just wondered if—if the type of destruction we saw is the kind of destruction that can be caused by a lightning strike from Yovah’s hand.”

  He played with his cereal, now starting to grow cold. “I don’t know,” he admitted at last. “I’ve never called down a thunderbolt. I don’t know if it burns cleanly or if it slices right down to the exact inch of ground you wish it to strike. I have always assumed it was a power not to be toyed with—that it might not be so precise as you might like and that you would have to be desperate to chance it.”

  “Maybe someone was that desperate.”

  Anger flashed in his eyes again. “I told you that no angel—”

  “Perhaps it wasn’t an angel,” she said.

  “Then who?”

  She shrugged. “Angels are not the only ones who can pray to the god,” she said. “The Edori lift their voices to Yovah every day, and he hears us and answers us. Perhaps some other mortal has learned these prayers that call down thunderbolts.”

  “Impossible,” Gaaron said flatly.

  “And why?”

  “Because an angel would have to teach him those prayers! He could not learn them on his own!”

  “I am learning masses sung by angels long dead, on machines that I did not even know existed,” Susannah said. “Perhaps such machines exist elsewhere, in places you do not know of, and they contain more songs. More prayers. You don’t know this isn’t true.”

  “I don’t know it,” he admitted. “But it’s a fanciful theory.”

  She gave him a small smile. “And your theory is—?”

  “I don’t have one,” he said. “I can’t even credit what is happening.”

  “There was another story,” she said. “Nicholas told me. About a disappearing man.”

  Gaaron took another bite of his cereal and swallowed before speaking again. “An even harder one to believe! At least the circles of fire I saw with my own eyes.”

  “Has anyone else seen something like that? Did the Archangel say?”

  “I did ask her. She hadn’t heard it. Again, I’ll ask Neri. Though a man would have to be very sure of himself to start telling such a tale. Most people would rather believe they’d been dreaming than that they really saw a man disappear.”

  “I think you should call down a thunderbolt,” she said.

  He gave her a quick look. “Just to see how it burns?” She nodded, but he shook his head. “A dangerous tactic. I would rather have Mahalah ask the god for information.”

  Susannah shrugged and addressed herself more attentively to her food. The meat was wonderful, better than anything she’d been served at the formal meals while Gaaron was gone. Like everyone else in the hold, Esther revered Gaaron; she would reserve any special treats for his return.

  “So that is the tale of my last week,” Gaaron said, trying to make his voice sound conversational. It still sounded strained. “How have you amused yourself since I’ve been gone?”

  Susannah glanced up at him, a little smile on her mouth. “Surely you’ve heard that tale by now.”

  He smiled reluctantly in return. “You are said to have made friends with the all the youngest and wildest angels of my hold. As well as my sister, the youngest and wildest of all.”

  “She is a challenge,” Susannah admitted. “But I love her already. I don’t see how anyone can help it.”

  Gaaron lifted a glass of juice but did not sip from it, just sat there looking distracted. “I don’t know what to do with her,” he said. “She is, as you say, easy to love—but I fear for her, I fear where her inner devils will lead her. I don’t think there is anything she would not try, just to try it—anything, no matter how bad it is. Just to see.”

  “If that is really true,” Susannah said, “I don’t know that you’ll be able to stop her.”

  “I could lock her up in the Eyrie,” he said. “Put out an interdiction that no angel can carry her off the mountaintop. That would curb some of her wildness.”

  “I don’t think so,” Susannah said, alarmed. “She would find a way down if she had to crawl through the rocks till her hands and feet were bloody. Even if the angels heeded your embargo—”

  “They would,” he said stiffly.

  “She would elude you. And she’d hate you for it.”

  He ticked off experiences on his fingertips. “I’ve tried sending her to Adriel. Disastrous. I’ve tried sending her to the Manadavvi. She and some pampered heiress ran away—disappeared—for three weeks, and the Manadavvi girl has never been quite right since then. I’ve tried sending her to one of the river merchants in Castelana. She stole a valuable shipment—she swears she didn’t, but I know she did—and caused an actual duel between two merchant partners, who are now sworn enemies. I have thought of sending her to Solomon—in Breven, you know—the Jansai know how to tame the spirit of the most rebellious woman.”

  “I think Miriam would lead a rebellion among the Jansai women instead,” Susannah said. “Which, come to think of it, would not be so bad. Let’s do that! Tell her why, and s
he’ll go happily.”

  Gaaron smiled reluctantly. “And then she would be on the loose again. No, it does not seem like a permanent solution.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to be able to solve her,” Susannah said softly. “I think Miriam is—Miriam is going to have to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. It is very hard to live up to a brother like you. She has to be a little outrageous to get any attention at all.”

  He grunted—an expression of surprise or acknowledgment, she could not tell—and finally sipped from his juice. “So! Aside from watching over Miriam, how have you spent your time while I’ve been gone?”

  “By getting to know your young and wild angels, of course,” she said immediately. “I know what you are thinking—these do not seem like the kinds of friends Susannah would make—”

  Suddenly his eyes focused on hers, dark and intense. “I don’t know you well enough to make that assessment,” he said slowly. “You seem earnest and well-reasoned. You have been very calm in all your dealings with me. But somehow—I am not convinced that is who you are. You are like a Jansai woman—you wear a lot of veils and hide your true self.”

  Susannah smiled a little wryly at that. “There have been times in my life I have been so sober you would not have recognized my face with a smile on it. I am at heart a serious woman. But I am drawn to wildness, I will admit. Miriam—Keren—others in my life—” She faltered, but she would not name Dathan, she would not. “I am happiest when I am surrounded by that energy and that joy. It lifts me up. Without it, I sometimes find life—a little dreary. But I am not so unpredictable myself.”

  “There is not an ounce of wildness in me,” Gaaron said. “I am the most practical of men.”

  “I know,” Susannah said quietly.

  There was a little silence.

  “That does not mean,” he said, “that we cannot forge a strong alliance between us. I find—I have an inclination to trust you. Your judgment is sound. I like to hear what you say in response to what I say. I realize that is not a—not an exciting relationship. I have not been accused by many women of being exciting.”

  She desperately wanted to ask him if he’d ever been in love, but she was too embarrassed. She would ask Miriam later, or the indiscreet Chloe. “I did not come here for excitement, as Keren would have,” she said in a low voice.

  “No, you came because your heart was breaking,” he said unexpectedly. “I understand that. And I understand—perhaps I should explain—” He broke off, embarrassed himself. “If you find a search for excitement takes you elsewhere, among other men—angels do not find this—angels often sample the attractions of many,” he ended in a rush. Then he became all formal again. “I do not know what conventions of fidelity govern the behavior of the Edori, but among angels no such conventions apply.”

  She had already been depressed by his earlier speech about forging an alliance. Now she thought her lungs would close up from a disinclination to breathe. “For the most part, Edori are faithful to each other as long as they love each other,” she said quietly. “How much a brief infidelity matters to an Edori varies with the individual. I have never been the type of woman to love more than one man at a time.” She made a helpless gesture. “But then, I have only really loved one man.”

  “And may not ever love again,” he said. “Yes. But we can be friends, you and I, don’t you think? Allies?”

  Drearier and drearier, but what had she expected? She made herself look him straight in the eye. “Yes. Most excellent allies,” she said firmly.

  He held his hand out across the table and she laid hers in it. His hand was huge; it engulfed hers. He closed his fingers over hers with just enough pressure to make her think he could break every bone in her body without even meaning to. Edori men were strong, used to physical exercise and hard labor, but this man’s strength was so implicit in every joint and muscle that it was almost frightening.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Susannah,” he said.

  She could not bring herself to say the reciprocal sentiments out loud. “Thank you,” she replied.

  It was a relief when the meal was finally over and she could escape to her room. Not knowing what she intended until she shut the door behind her, she leaned her head against the wall and started sobbing.

  C hapter N ine

  Gaaron had been shocked at the look on Adriel’s face when he told her of the devastated campsite. A handsome woman in her mid-fifties, Adriel had always seemed to Gaaron the embodiment of reason and calm. He had greatly admired her when, as a teenager, he was sent to live with her for five years; she had been his model far more than his angry father or his timid mother had been. Then, of course, she had been in her prime, a strongly built, no-nonsense woman whose physical endurance was legendary. She could sing for hours, praying away rain or drought or plague, and never evince a moment’s weariness. She was not the sympathetic, comforting sort, but everyone in the hold brought her their problems and told her their dreams, and trusted her completely to take care of them.

  Gaaron had wanted to be that kind of leader. But he hoped he was never so shaken and at a loss as Adriel looked when he told her about the burned camp.

  “Another one,” she said, and told him her own tale of a ruined farm. As she spoke, she leaned her head against her hand. The black hair was graying already. The full, confident features looked thinner, as the features of a statue might look worn by the constant assault of time and weather. “Then, if there are two, there will be more. It cannot be accidental.”

  “There are three,” he said, and he repeated Solomon’s story. “But what can it be?”

  She looked over at him and shook her head. “I have no idea.”

  The story of the disappearing man she found easier to dismiss, possibly because Gaaron did as well. So easy to write that off to too much wine or the power of imagination.

  “But keep me apprised,” she said. “Of any odd happenings that you observe. Perhaps if we see a pattern emerging . . .”

  She shrugged and did not finish the sentence. We can take care of it or We can ask for the god’s help or We will know what to do. She did not say any of those things. Clearly she could not think of what she, what any of the angels, might do to solve a problem so out of their experience.

  For the first time, Gaaron realized that when he became Archangel, in less than a year’s time, all these burdens would be his and his alone. Not even Adriel would be able to help him. Adriel was exhausted from her own twenty years of trouble.

  Pray god Jovah had chosen wisely for him, then, when he named Susannah as his angelica, for he would need someone with whom he could confer and from whom he could solicit advice.

  As if she had read his mind, Adriel changed the subject. “So I hear you have found your bride,” she said, straightening in her chair and essaying a smile. “An Edori, no less. An unusual choice, but who can tell the mind of Jovah? What is she like?”

  “I have only spent a few days with her,” Gaaron said ruefully. “She seems—she seems to be a reasonable woman. Not given to emotional outbursts, at least so far. I think maybe she misses her Edori family. I hope she’ll make friends at the Eyrie.”

  Adriel smiled more freely. “Reasonable and unemotional! What very dull words to use to describe the woman you will marry.”

  He smiled back. “They sound soothing to me. Someone passionate and unmanageable—like my sister—would be impossible to deal with. I will take placid and cool any day.”

  “I could kill your father,” were Adriel’s next unexpected words, but Gaaron could read the story behind the statement well enough. Adriel blamed Michael for every one of Miriam’s misdeeds and now, apparently, for Gaaron’s own stoicism.

  “He is already dead,” Gaaron said. “No need.”

  “He has much to answer for.”

  “Perhaps, but Jovah is the one who will review that with him,” Gaaron said, rising to his feet. “I must go. It has been good to see you, Adriel. I would say th
at I look forward to seeing you again soon, except that I’m afraid such a meeting would mean more bad news from one of us at least.”

  “Perhaps not,” she said. “Perhaps we will next come together to celebrate your wedding, and that will be a happy time. When is the event to occur?”

  He looked at her blankly. “I don’t know. We haven’t discussed it. I suppose Susannah will have some thoughts on that.”

  Adriel drew his head down so she could kiss him on the cheek. “Yes, your calm, unemotional bride will probably have more thoughts on that topic than you would suspect.”

  He had left and set off, leaving Windy Point behind. It was situated in a high, lonely peak just north of the Caitanas, in the most inhospitable stretch of land in all of Samaria. Its sole geographical advantage was its nearness to the Plain of Sharon, the broad, open land where the people of Samaria gathered every year to sing the Gloria. But that was not enough of an advantage, Gaaron thought, to make cold, gray, inaccessible Windy Point an inviting place. Give him the Eyrie any day, with its warm walls and its constant music and its happy placement in the middle of Bethel.

  It took him nearly two days to get back to his hold, during which time his last conversation with Adriel played through his mind more than once. Mahalah, too, had as good as accused him of insensitivity to the charms of women, but he supposed he could not help that. A man either responded to flighty, melodramatic, and flirtatious women, or he did not. He had to admit, he had had grave doubts about Susannah back there when they were at the Edori campsite, for every time he saw her, she was arguing with her lover. But she had been so quiet since he brought her to the Eyrie, so attentive when she listened to him, so thoughtful when she spoke. It seemed the god had indeed set out to find just the right match for the Archangel-to-be.

  So it was something of a jolt to arrive at the Eyrie late one night and be told his chosen bride was not home, had not been all day, was probably still down in Velora carousing with the most high-spirited and aimless of the souls under Gaaron’s care.