Angelica

by Sharon Shinn

  After the meal, Nicholas called for a musical game, and about half the residents of the Eyrie spilled out onto the plateau to play. It was a warm late-summer evening, the air as heavy as a shawl thrown across a woman’s shoulders; the clean, spicy scent of mountain herbs flavored the breeze. It was not yet dark, but the sun had dipped below the horizon line, and the gold of the sky was tarnishing into black. It was a perfect night to stand outside and lift your voice to the heavens.

  Nicholas was organizing the players into teams, to sing competing melodies that their opponents would have to then repeat in harmony, but Gaaron shook his head when invited to join. “Not right now,” he said, and Nicholas nodded and went off to find other players.

  Gaaron glanced around to find Susannah standing a few feet away, watching him. He smiled and joined her, and they strolled slowly around the perimeter of the plateau, between the mass of people and the rough rise of stone.

  “You saw Miriam already, I take it,” Susannah said. “Your face is lined with new worries.”

  “Jovah save us all,” he said. “From her story, I was not sure—was she really in danger?”

  “I wasn’t sure, either, but I decided to act as if she was,” Susannah replied. “We were lucky we were in the market, with so many people around.”

  Gaaron gave her a quick smile. “Did you really hit one of her attackers with a rock?”

  “I did,” she said calmly. “I’ve got a pretty good aim, too. I can hit a wolf at twenty yards nine times out of ten. I’ve even killed a rabbit or two, but that’s been more luck than skill.”

  He shook his head. “You astonish me.”

  “You’d be surprised what you can do when you’re driven by fear or hunger. Not that I think you’ve ever experienced much of either.”

  He thought that over. “Maybe not the kind you’re talking about, but I admit to some fear over my sister. I absolutely do not know what to do with her.”

  “I think you were right the other day,” Susannah said. “Send her away. Not to Breven, though. Luminaux, maybe.”

  “Luminaux?” he said, examining the idea. “What could she do there?”

  Susannah laughed. “Almost anything she wanted, I would think. Luminaux has even more distractions than Velora.”

  “Then why would I want to send her there?” he demanded.

  “Because you could apprentice her to one of the artisans there. Ask her if she wants to learn—I don’t know—jewelry-making or shirt-dying or harp-building. She’ll have to work hard or the craft master won’t keep her—but I think she’ll love Luminaux. She’ll want to stay. So she’ll work hard and try to do well. I think that’s one of the things wrong with Miriam. She doesn’t have anything to occupy her time or her thoughts. Learning a craft might fill those hours.”

  “Maybe,” he said uncertainly. “But what if she said she would go, and be good, and then she got there and decided not to be good? Who would take care of her?”

  “Maybe she’d just have to take care of herself.”

  He stared at her in the gathering dark. “She never has.”

  “She’s nineteen. It might be time.”

  “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  She nodded and made no more arguments. They walked on for a few minutes without speaking, listening appreciatively to the volley of music passing between the two lines of singers. Nicholas’ team, which featured Ahio, Chloe, and Zibiah, among others, appeared to be more energetic—and louder—but the opposing team of older and more seasoned singers was more adept at catching each new melody and fashioning a reasonable harmony before batting it back. Most of the musical lines sounded as if they were being made up on the spot, though now and then Gaaron caught a few measures that sounded familiar. Tavern ditties and folk songs, of course; no one would play games with the sacred masses.

  “You’d be good at this game,” he remarked to Susannah.

  “Maybe next time I’ll join in,” she said. “Or is it considered beneath the angelica’s dignity?”

  He laughed. “Not at all. But once it becomes clear to all the opposing players how good you are, they probably won’t let you play again.”

  She smiled. “I see they didn’t let you play. Is that because your voice is so good you shame all the others?”

  He glanced down in surprise. “You have heard me sing?”

  She shook her head. “The other night when a group of us came back late, Miriam said you’d joined the harmonics. But I couldn’t pick your voice out.”

  “Well, then,” he said. “Later tonight.”

  “What happens then?”

  “You’ll see.”

  They did not have long to wait before the melody game was over, and popular vote declared the older singers to be the winners. Then Sela stepped forward from the group and said, “I’ve been practicing this. Tell me what you think.”

  She sang a lovely ballad that drew light applause, and then Chloe joined her on a second song. Nicholas and Ahio performed a quick, demanding duet as soon as the women had finished.

  Susannah turned to Gaaron with a smile. They had stepped forward to stand on the fringes of the group that had formed a circle around the singers. “It’s like an Edori campfire,” she said. “Anyone who wants to can sing.”

  He nodded. “Happens every once in a while. High spirits or good wine or, sometimes, a day of mourning, and suddenly everyone in the hold wants to gather together and sing. It’s best on summer nights, like this one, but even in the winter we’ll gather like this. Set up braziers around the whole plateau and stand out here till midnight, singing. It’s probably what I love best about the Eyrie. About living with angels.”

  She gave him a sideways smile. “About living with music,” she amended. “You do not need angels to sing.”

  He inclined his head in a stately nod. “My apologies, angelica,” he said. “Indeed, you do not.”

  They listened perhaps another half hour before someone in the crowd called out Gaaron’s name. Then the call was taken up by others, and someone from behind pushed him into the open circle at the center of the singers. He laughed and stepped forward, shaking his wings back and settling himself on the balls of his feet.

  “No need for violence, I am happy to sing for you,” he said. “Is there anything you’d especially like to hear?”

  “The Requiem,” someone called, but a chorus of boos led him to believe this was considered too maudlin for the time and place.

  “One of the Grindel pieces,” Ahio suggested, naming a composer whose upbeat and lively music was considered classical, though hardly sacred. “Oh, yes, sing Grindel,” a few other voices concurred. Gaaron nodded and took a moment to review the music in his head. He looked for Susannah in the crowd but he had lost her somehow. He did not think she had left.

  Tapping his left forefinger against his thigh to help him keep to the beat, he launched into the Grindel Alleluia. It was a fast and demanding number; if you once failed to catch enough breath on the rare quarter rests, you would never be able to make it through the rest of the piece. The timing was tricky, too, full of accented backbeats and unexpected sixteenth notes, but the whole thing was so headlong and triumphant that, even if you made a mistake, you found yourself carried along irresistibly to the highly ornamented conclusion. The applause broke out before he’d even made it through the final measure, a signal that he’d done the piece pretty well for not having practiced it in recent memory. He flung his hands out in a theatrical gesture as he held the last note for an extra few beats, then he dropped his head in a sweeping bow that made his wingtips brush the feet of the people standing behind him.

  “Sing something else!” Nicholas called out.

  “Sing a love song,” Zibiah requested.

  “Oh, Gaaron, sing that pretty one that you did last winter,” Sela said, though he had no idea what piece she might be referring to.

  “Sing one of the southern Bethel ballads,” Miriam said. She had had no trouble locating Susannah among t
he onlookers, for she had the Edori by the arm and was pushing her into the inner circle next to Gaaron. “Susannah knows all of them. She’ll sing harmony with you.”

  The crowd murmured its approval of this scheme, though Gaaron shot Susannah a quick questioning look. The newcomer might not feel so at ease singing in front of angels and other critical listeners. But Susannah merely grinned at him, shrugging a little as if to indicate that it was impossible to gainsay Miriam, and stepped close enough to speak to him in a low voice.

  “Do you know ‘Misty Valley Morning’?” she asked. “It’s simple enough, we should be able to make it through without any rehearsal.”

  He nodded. “You don’t have to do this,” he said.

  She laughed at him. “I’ll enjoy it. You start. Sing the first verse, and I’ll come in on the chorus.”

  He took a few steps over and turned to face her so that he could catch any bodily cues she might send—if she intended to hold a note an extra beat or two, if she wanted to slow the tempo. Then he began singing the first lines of the ballad. It was a pretty piece—simple, as she had said, but with a haunting, minor melody line that showed off the voice of any singer clever enough to pitch the song in his proper range. He saw Susannah smile with pleasure as he hit the high tenor notes, and he felt unreasonably pleased with himself. He began showing off a little, drawing out the notes more than they needed, adding little grace notes to the descending melody, making the music even more mournful. Someone behind him sighed, and he knew he was overdoing it but that nobody minded.

  Susannah’s voice joined his on the chorus, coming in with absolute precision a major third above his. Instantly, it was as if his own voice brightened, deepened, grew more resonant as it chimed against hers. He had sung with a hundred different singers, and no one had caught his timing and his tone as perfectly as she was doing. He remembered how her harmony had improved every singer she had sung with at that Edori campfire, how she had paired her voice with each of theirs and made both of them seem rich as treasure. It was as if her voice was absolutely pure, an undifferentiated well of virgin music, and it took on the characteristics of the singers around it. Yet it was better than that. More beautiful than that. He sang that simple song with all his strength, feeling the breath pour out of him from every inch of his body, feeling his toes curl and his shoulders lift and even his wingtips vibrate with the flood of music. And she matched him, note for note, never losing him, never overshadowing him, never letting him fall.

  When the ballad came to its sad, riveting conclusion, there was a moment’s silence. Gaaron actually had to catch his breath, something that usually only happened after one of the more demanding masses, and Susannah had time to glance around her as if to read the expressions on the nearest faces. And then the applause came, and Nicholas’ whooping approval, and Miriam’s high, excited laugh, and the cries for “Encore!” and “Another piece! Jovah demands it!” Susannah was laughing and smiling while the young, wild ones gathered around her to pat her on the back and exclaim over her first public performance.

  “You’ve picked a fine one there,” Enoch said, coming to stand beside Gaaron. “I wasn’t too sure when you first brought her back, for an Edori angelica—? Well. But she can sing, can’t she? That must have been what Jovah saw in her. Heard in her, more likely.”

  The condescending tone annoyed Gaaron, but he merely nodded. “I am certain Jovah listens to and approves of her voice,” he said in a repressive tone.

  He was more pleased when Ahio broke away from the group around Susannah and came over to give Gaaron a friendly slap on the shoulder. The younger angel was grinning. “I told you,” Ahio said. “Give her harmony, and she’ll bring the mountain down.”

  “We don’t want the mountain to come down,” Gaaron said with a little smile.

  Ahio glanced back at Susannah. “It might come down anyway,” he said, and laughed out loud.

  Not for the first time, Gaaron found himself relatively happy with the woman Jovah had chosen to be his bride.

  Two days later, the Jansai came.

  Nicholas flew up from Velora to tell Gaaron that there was a delegation in the city looking for him. “Told me to say they were from Solomon,” Nicholas said doubtfully. “And that you were expecting them.”

  “I am,” Gaaron said. “Why didn’t you bring them up here?”

  Nicholas shook his head. “Because they wouldn’t come. They said—the one man said—no Jansai goes anywhere under another man’s power unless he’s already dead. Plus there’s a woman with them, and I don’t think they would have wanted me to take her in my arms.”

  “No doubt,” Gaaron said. “Where are they staying? What did you tell them?”

  “They’re camped out a little south of the city. I said I’d bring you as soon as I could.”

  Gaaron nodded. “Get Zibiah. Tell her I need her. Meet me on the plateau as soon as you can.”

  Gaaron went off in search of Susannah and found her with Ahio in the music rooms. For a moment he paused, just enjoying the sound of her singing along with a recording of Hagar, making even that fabulous voice sound warmer and more alluring. When the piece ended, she came to stand beside him near the doorway. Ahio glanced at them, then crossed to the controls to play with the tempo of the recording.

  “The Jansai are in Velora to talk to the little girl,” Gaaron said. “Do you want to come?”

  “I certainly do,” she said. “Now?”

  He nodded. “Zibiah will carry her down. Nicholas will come with us, too, to give us some consequence.”

  She smiled. “As if the Archangel needed any consequence.”

  “You’d be surprised. Dealing with Jansai, you need any edge you can get.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” she said dryly.

  Ahio clicked off the music. “I’ll come, too, if you want more wings around you,” he offered.

  Gaaron nodded. “Be on the plateau in a few minutes, then.”

  In about fifteen minutes, they had all assembled, Gaaron and Susannah taking a few minutes to change their attire. Gaaron had put on a white shirt and black pants, clothes that the Jansai recognized as formal. Susannah had changed into a bright blue shirt and a long black skirt with an embroidered hem—Edori clothes, Gaaron realized, which the Jansai would also recognize. She was making her own statement, he surmised, one that said, I know you and you know me. Do not try any Jansai tricks.

  Or perhaps she just liked the colors, which flattered her dark skin and caused her black hair to flare with luster.

  Zibiah was holding the hand of the young Jansai girl, who looked taller and thinner than Gaaron remembered. She peered out from under her veil with darting, suspicious eyes, and pressed closer to Zibiah.

  “Does she know where we’re going?” Gaaron asked.

  Zibiah nodded. “I told her that her people had come to ask her some questions. She didn’t say anything. She never does.”

  “Is she afraid?” he asked.

  “I think she always is,” Zibiah replied.

  Gaaron glanced around at his group. Four angels, an Edori, and a little girl; perhaps the Jansai would not be impressed, but it was the best he could do on short notice. “Let’s go,” he said, and took Susannah in his arms.

  The flight down the mountain and across Velora was short, but not so short that Gaaron did not notice how pleasant it felt to hold Susannah against him as he flew. Her long hair kept whipping into his face, tickling across his mouth and tangling with his eyelashes. “Sorry,” she cried into the wind, a laugh in her voice as she tried to catch the wayward hair in one hand. But it was hopeless, the hair too long and the wind too wild. “Next time I’ll braid it!”

  They landed just outside the Jansai camp. There were two wagons, shaded by ribbed canvas coverings, and about ten horses. Gaaron counted four men crouched around the small campfire and guessed that one or two more might have gone into Velora for the day. Solomon had sent a show of force as well.

  He set Susannah on
her feet and strode forward. “I’m Gabriel,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Covel,” one of the Jansai said, standing to meet the angel. Not for the first time, Gaaron wondered where the Jansai got their names, since almost none of them seemed to be culled from the Librera. Perhaps they made them up out of euphonious syllables. His companions did not come to their feet, and Covel did not introduce them.

  “I have brought the young girl who witnessed an attack on a Jansai camp,” Gaaron said. “She will not talk to us, but Solomon graciously agreed to send a Jansai woman to ask her what occurred.”

  “My wife is in the wagon,” Covel said. “She will ask the girl your questions. What do you want to know?”

  So, pretty sure that Solomon had told Covel this whole story already, Gaaron patiently repeated the details of the burned campsite. What had caused it? Had the travelers been attacked? Had there been a strike of lightning? How had she escaped?

  “And any other details she might remember,” Gaaron finished up. “Though it has been more than two weeks now. She might not recall much.”

  “We shall find out,” Covel said.

  The Jansai turned to motion the young girl forward, either unwilling to speak to a female child or proscribed by Jansai law. But she buried her face in Zibiah’s clothes and would not step forward.

  Covel looked at Gaaron in irritation. “I can learn nothing from her if she will not talk to my wife.”

  Susannah stepped forward and bent over the little girl, murmuring something in her ear. The child looked up and allowed Susannah to detach her from the angel and take her hand. The two of them approached Covel, who had moved to the front of his wagon.

  “I’ll go in with her,” Susannah said.

  Covel turned his head and spit into the dirt. Then he looked at Gaaron. “She can’t come in the wagon.”

  “I will go in with her,” Susannah repeated. “We will learn nothing unless she is willing to talk, and she is not willing to go in there without me.”