Angelica

by Sharon Shinn

  The bodies of the dead men had been dragged somewhere out of sight, and no trace of blood remained in the snow.

  Gaaron approached a woman who looked familiar, though he could not recall her name. “May I help you in any way?” he asked formally. “I am Gaaron, you know. I met your tribe once before.”

  She looked up from her pot and gave him a ready smile. Her face was broad and peaceful, though it was hard to guess her age. She looked like she had lived a life in which every day was crammed tightly with event. “When you came for Susannah. Yes, I remember,” she said. “I’m Tirza. Susannah shared my tent.”

  He nodded, not sure what to say to that. He did not particularly want to be asked about Susannah’s whereabouts again, so he turned the subject. “Is there anything I can do to help?” he repeated.

  She held up a spoon, dripping with broth. “You could taste that and tell me if it’s any good. We just threw everything we had into the pot. We might be sorry.”

  This was not at all what he had meant by making the offer, but he carefully sipped the liquid from the spoon. “Very tasty,” he said. “You will not be ashamed to serve that tonight.”

  She laughed out loud and returned to her stirring. “So, Gaaron, why have you come here? Is it to take Miriam away? I am surprised you let her linger with us so long, though we have come to love her dearly. I will be sorry to see her go.”

  “She is in danger here,” he said quietly. “You all are. If you would take my advice, you would retreat to Castelana or Monteverde and shelter with the crowds until the invaders are gone.”

  She shrugged. “How can you be sure the invaders will ever be gone? I do not understand them and I don’t know why they’re here, but what makes you think they will leave?”

  “They must,” he said. “We will have to drive them away.”

  Her expression was full of polite disbelief. “And I hope you do,” she said. “But we are not going to change our lives because of them. We will stay here until the winter ends and it is time to move on.”

  “Miriam will not,” he said flatly.

  She nodded. “No, I can understand that you would want to take her to safety. But I will be surprised if she is willing to go.”

  “I do not much care if she is willing or not.”

  Now her expression was carefully neutral. “That is the allali way, I suppose,” she said. “If she was my sister, I would let her make her own decision.”

  “I am used to making decisions for people who do not choose well on their own.”

  “Perhaps that is why they choose badly,” she said.

  He flung up a hand. No point in arguing. “And I will take this Jossis with me as well,” he added.

  Now Tirza looked troubled. “He seems to be a good man,” she said. “I know it would be hard for you to trust him. But we have lived with him for several weeks now, and he is—we have all come to care for him. If you could, please treat him kindly.”

  “I will take him to the oracle,” he said stiffly. He was growing a little tired of being urged to kindness and tolerance. Was he so unkind and intolerant in general? And was everyone else too stupid to see when ruthless action was required? “There we will decide what to do with him.”

  “You will stay for dinner first, surely,” she said. “And we would be happy to have you spend the night with us. The tents will be crowded, because we lost two, but there will be room for you—”

  “I appreciate the hospitality,” he said. “And indeed, I must stay until someone responds to my signal. I cannot take both my sister and her new friend with me at once.”

  “Then while you are awaiting another angel, perhaps you would like to take the time to get to know Jossis,” she said. “I think you might be surprised.”

  He glanced to the side of the mountain again, where Miriam had given up the attempt to pull down his flag. Jossis and Miriam were standing very close, almost embraced. His hands were upon her shoulders and her face was tilted up to his, dramatic intensity in every line of her body. What in the world could she be telling him? What words could she possibly be using? “And to think I believed that Miriam could no longer surprise me,” he said wearily.

  Tirza smiled again. “Would it surprise you to learn that she can build a fire, skin fresh meat, cook a meal from scratch, care for a sick friend, and, indeed, willingly learn any new task that would be helpful to her clan?”

  Gaaron looked at her a long time. “It would not surprise me to learn that she could do these things,” he said at last. “Miriam has always been extremely capable, when she chose to be. It surprises me that she would do them. And willingly.”

  “She is made of pure gold, that one,” Tirza said softly. “If I were a Luminaux craftsman, and I had made her mold, I would cast it over and over again. No matter the trouble she caused me and the burns I received when the liquid metal leaked onto my fingers. I would know that I would never again make a product quite so fine.”

  “Miriam has been lucky,” he said quietly, “to fall in with friends as good as you.”

  “No,” said Tirza. “We were the lucky ones.”

  Dinner was quiet, at least during the actual meal. Afterward, there was a great deal of informal singing. Most of the songs were in the Edori language, so Gaaron was not sure what the prayers meant, but he was certain they included words of thanksgiving and praise. Because he, too, was feeling overwhelming gratitude to the god, when there was a little break in the music, he rose to his feet and offered his own prayer. He kept it simple, for this did not seem the venue for one of the complex sacred pieces, but it was heartfelt nonetheless. Thank you, Jovah, for protecting my sister—for leading me to her side in time—for responding to my urgent entreaty. Thank you, Jovah, for watching over us all.

  When he sat down again, Tirza regarded him with eyes so wide her expression was almost comical. “Yovah bless me,” she said. “You do have the most beautiful voice in the three provinces. I have never heard anything like it.”

  He smiled in the dark. Miriam had refused to sit anywhere near him, taking her place between Jossis and some pole-thin young boy who had talked to her restlessly all night. But Tirza had plopped herself right next to him with every appearance of friendliness. He could not help but like her. “It is why the god has named me Archangel,” he said gravely. “For my voice.”

  “And perhaps your temperament?”

  “There are days I am not as sure of that as I once was.”

  She smiled a little, but her expression was serious. She was watching him as closely as the unreliable flames would allow. “Susannah has great faith in you and your ability to lead men,” she said.

  “Does she?” he said, and even he could hear the wistfulness in his voice. “That is kind of her.”

  “Why haven’t you once mentioned her name to me?” she asked softly. “Didn’t you come here to find her?”

  He looked at her quickly. Had she guessed that, or had Miriam repeated that choice bit of gossip? “I did not want to worry you with news that I was uncertain of her whereabouts,” he admitted.

  “Why would she have left you uncertain about that? Would she have had any reason for not wanting you to know?”

  Every reason. No reason. Gaaron turned his gaze across the fire, where the gorgeous young man named Dathan had just risen to his feet to begin a song. His voice was supple and beautiful, and even when he sang he seemed to laugh. Where could Susannah have run to if not to this woman, this man, these people? “We do not always get along as well as we could,” he said at last. “I am sure that is my fault, but the god made a difficult choice this time. We are not much alike, Susannah and I. I had hoped to bridge our differences better than this. I had hoped we could be friends.”

  “Friends!” she exclaimed. Her voice was so low that he was sure no one else could hear it, but the disdain in it was impossible for him, at least, to miss. “I do not think Susannah is interested in being friends with you.”

  “Indeed, that is how it appears,”
he said dryly.

  She leaned forward and whispered in his ear. “I think she would prefer that you love her.”

  The night was cold and uncomfortable, as Gaaron politely refused the invitation to share a tent with fourteen other people. He did not see where Jossis bedded down, but Miriam disappeared inside the tent that held Eleazar and Tirza and what could have been a dozen others. Every time he woke in the night—which was often—Gaaron built up the fire again, but it did little good. Even he was chilled straight through by the time the sullen sun came up.

  Its welcome arrival was followed within the hour by a second, even more welcome visitor: Nicholas, circling down in response to the red shirt. He seemed bemused to see Gaaron among the Edori, and even more bewildered when Miriam came tearing up from the river’s edge to fling herself into his arms. Automatically wrapping her in a brotherly embrace, Nicholas looked over at Gaaron with a question in his eyes.

  “What’s going on? Why didn’t you pull down the plague flag once you arrived?”

  “He put the stupid flag up,” came Miriam’s voice, muffled against Nicky’s chest.

  Nicholas raised his eyebrows at Gaaron, who nodded. “I needed another angel, and I wasn’t about to leave her alone here while I went to fetch help,” he said. “I need you to take her back to the Eyrie while I go on to Mount Sinai.

  Nicholas nodded, but Miriam wrenched free of his ab-sentminded hold and whirled on Gaaron. “No! I won’t go back to the Eyrie! I’m going to Sinai with you and Jossis!”

  “Who?” Nicholas said.

  “You’re going home,” Gaaron said, calm but unyielding.

  Miriam stamped her foot, though the gesture wasn’t too impressive in the dirty snow. “I won’t! And if you make me, I’ll just leave again. You can’t ever keep me away from Jossis.”

  “Who’s Jossis?” Nicholas asked.

  “Jossis?” Gaaron repeated, his voice so reasonable it was a parody of reason. “Jossis is Miriam’s new friend. One of the invaders who’s been attacking Samaria for the past few months. Miriam has formed an attachment to him.”

  Nicky turned to survey Miriam with some misgiving. “He’s teasing me, right?”

  She looked like she wanted to stamp her foot again, but remembered the snow, so instead she crossed her arms on her chest and scowled at both of them. “He’s my friend, and nothing you say can change that, and if you would only listen you might learn something from him—”

  “Why are you taking this guy to Mount Sinai?” Nicholas asked next.

  “So he can keep me away from him!”

  “So Jossis can talk to Mahalah. If he can,” Gaaron answered. “Miriam seems to think that some of this man’s words are the same as our words. And if so—Mahalah might be able to interpret.”

  Nicholas nodded, that quickly accepting the whole unlikely situation. “Sounds good. When do you want me to take Miriam back?”

  Miriam took three quick steps over and clasped her brother’s arm. “Gaaron, please,” she begged. “Let me go with you to Mount Sinai. He will be so alone and so afraid. I can help you, I can help him—don’t make him go away alone with strangers.”

  Gaaron opened his mouth to refuse her again—and then something made him hesitate. Involuntarily, he looked away from her pleading face, over to the circle of Edori eating breakfast around the fire. Most of them showed their usual indifference and lack of curiosity, but Tirza was watching them with no attempt to disguise her interest. She was too far away to hear what was being said, but something in her expression made Gaaron think she had read their faces and gestures clearly enough. She did not nod or shake her head or show any change in her expression, but Gaaron knew she was sending him some kind of message. Or watching him to see if he had learned anything at all from Miriam’s flight and sudden, dramatic reappearance.

  “Very well,” he said abruptly. “You can go with us to Mount Sinai, as long as you promise not to leave there until I return for you.”

  Her face was transformed. She squealed and jumped up to kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you! Thank you thank you thank you! I will be packed and ready to go in five minutes.”

  She tumbled away from them, and Gaaron was left staring at the other angel. “What’s going on here?” Nicholas asked again. “Why isn’t Miriam in Luminaux?”

  “Because Luminaux is where I wanted her to be.” Gaaron sighed. “So naturally, that is where she is not.”

  “And who’s this—Jossis? Why is she so crazy about him?”

  Gaaron shrugged. “That I have yet to discover. But we’ll have a couple days on the road. Maybe we’ll find out.”

  But there was little to learn from the dark-skinned, jewel-eyed stranger. He appeared to be afraid of Gaaron—and of Nicholas—awed by their impressive wingspans and not exactly keen on flying. Gaaron carried him as neutrally as he would have carried a sack of clothing, but Jossis never relaxed in his arms. The angel could feel the stranger’s taut-strung muscles for every mile of that long flight.

  They had to sneak Jossis into the inn they’d chosen in the small town where they stopped for the night. Everyone in Samaria knew by now the description of danger, and Jossis matched it. They could not risk him being mobbed. Nicholas went and fetched food for all of them once they were safely ensconced in their rooms, and they ate in relative silence. Miriam, who could out talk any of them, stayed focused on Jossis, who seemed withdrawn and ill at ease. He answered her when she addressed him—he even smiled at her once, as if in reassurance—but there was none of this vaunted conversation of which she had bragged. Jossis said hardly a word the whole time Gaaron watched him.

  But that there was a connection between his sister and the invader Gaaron had no doubt. She laid a hand upon his knee, he brushed his elbow against her arm—they sat as close as lovers when they ate their meal. Surely that could not be true, surely even Miriam could not have gone so far, merely to spite Gaaron, merely to hurt him? And yet the smile she directed at that closed, dark face was full of private meaning; the hand she lifted to brush through her hair came to rest, for just a moment, against the young man’s cheek.

  Sweet Jovah singing, she loves him, Gaaron thought, and the realization struck him so dumb that he could not summon another thought for the duration of the evening.

  Sinai was crowded with more petitioners than Gaaron had ever seen crammed into the small audience chamber. A result of the depredations of the invaders, Gaaron guessed, as people came to the god looking for answers, or looking for sanctuary. After some discussion, he and Miriam and Nicholas had decided to veil Jossis as heavily as a Jansai bride so that they could bring him into the chamber without alarming any penitents who might be present. They still drew their share of curious stares while they waited for the acolytes to announce them to Mahalah, but at least no one ran screaming down the stone hallways in terror.

  “Angelo. Please, will you and your guests follow me?” asked Mahalah’s young acolyte, reappearing in the doorway. “She will be very happy to see you immediately.”

  “Thank you,” Gaaron said, and led the small procession down the hall. Mahalah was sitting before her mysterious blue glass plate, but she wheeled around to face them as they entered.

  “Ah, Gaaron, I know why you are here,” she said with a smile. “I am surprised it has taken you so long to come.”

  He bent to take her frail hand in his and kiss her lightly on the cheek. “I am astonished that you have been expecting me,” he answered. “How did you know what I had to bring you?”

  But now her eyes went past the arch of his wings, and for the first time she saw his companions. “Miriam! What are you doing here? And Nicky—why, Gaaron, what is this? And who is your friend? Have you brought another Jansai girl to me for safekeeping?”

  “Something even more exotic, I think,” Gaaron said as soon as Nicholas and Miriam had murmured quick greetings. “Be calm, for I think he will surprise you.”

  “I am too old to feel much surprise,” she retorted. “What have you b
rought me?”

  Gaaron nodded at Miriam, who tugged the veils off of Jossis’ face. For a long moment, there was a profound silence in the room.

  “I see,” Mahalah said quietly. “You have captured one of our enemies. But why have you brought him to me?”

  “Miriam thinks he may know a language that you understand,” Gaaron said. “A language that our ancestors knew, at any rate.”

  Mahalah’s brows went up. “Indeed? That would mean . . .”

  “I know,” Gaaron said, as her words trailed off.

  “Let him speak to me, then,” she said.

  Gaaron looked over at Miriam, who put a hand on Jossis’ arm and urged him forward. She spoke a few words to him, so quietly that Gaaron could not understand what she said, and she stayed close beside him as he stepped up to the oracle’s chair.

  “Toteyosi,” Jossis said, or syllables that sounded something like that, and then he loosed a whole string of words that Gaaron could not divide into sounds or sentences.

  But Mahalah was nodding, her face drawn into a frown of concentration, her hand lifted to ask him to slow down. “Ska?” she said once, and then a few more unintelligible words.

  Jossis repeated something in a voice that sounded insistent.

  Mahalah replied in a long, careful sentence.

  A new voice sounded at the doorway. “Mahalah—” said a woman, and then she gasped. Gaaron looked over in irritation, not wanting this delicate interview to be interrupted by the hysterics of an acolyte.

  But it was no giggly young girl who stood framed in the door, staring at the unlikely tableau inside the chamber. It was Susannah.

  C hapter T wenty-nine

  Susannah had two shocks to withstand within fifteen seconds: the sight of Gaaron standing in the oracle’s chamber, and the force of Miriam’s body as the girl threw herself in the Edori’s arms.

  “Susannah! Oh, I’m so glad you’re here! Gaaron said he didn’t know where you were, but I have so much to tell you, and you have to meet Jossis and—can you imagine?—I have been with the Edori all this time. But Susannah, why are you here? Is something wrong?”