by Juliet Kemp
They sighed, then sat back and stretched their arms out above their head, their vest rising to show a stripe of brown stomach and the curve of their hipbones, then rubbed their fingers on their trousers, scrubbing off the traces of charcoal from the day’s messages.
“Long day?” he asked. “What did you do instead of that booking this afternoon?”
“All the way up the Hill and back, half a dozen times,” they said, grimacing. “Carrying messages from some grumpy merchant to some equally grumpy noble, right up at the top.” They waved upwards. “Stairs, too, even to the back door.”
“Worth it?”
“Not bad,” Asa admitted. “Dunno what they were dealing, but they both cheered right up in the end, tipped me too. I earnt it, though, can’t say I didn’t.”
Their short dark hair, spiky with sweat, showed the truth of their claim. “Few years back,” they said, with a sigh, “I could have spent some of it on a nice charm to soothe my feet, but I guess I got out of the habit, after the plague. Just her out the Old Market left now, and it’s not like I want to be traipsing across town again after a long day. Ah well. Times change, I guess. Look, there’s Tam.”
They nodded at the door. Tam was making his way over to their table. Just behind him was a tall person, moving slightly oddly, just ducking under the low doorjamb. Jonas swallowed against sudden nausea. His flicker, that morning. This was what he’d seen.
“Evening,” Tam said breezily as he reached the table. “This is – what did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t,” the person standing beside him said. They – Jonas was pretty sure that ‘they’ would be correct, from everything about them – were staring, head slightly tipped to one side.
Tam shrugged very slightly, and carried on. “We had a race yesterday morning. Not sure who won, eh, but it was good fun. Saw them down the way, thought hey, they should come for a drink with us. And look, two beers here already! Ta. Sit down,” he nodded at his friend.
Jonas opened his mouth to claim one of the beers as his, then thought better of it and nudged the mug towards the stranger.
After a moment of standing awkwardly, Tam’s friend sat down and stared at Jonas and Asa.
The newcomer had pale skin, much paler than anyone Jonas had seen before, and they were nearly bald, with a fine white fuzz all over their head, as though their hair was just growing in from some accident. They were tall, and angular, and held themself rigidly upright on the wooden bench. They were dishevelled, with the look of someone who hadn’t been sleeping indoors or eating properly.
And – storm and fire – they weren’t human.
After Reb’s reference to the cityangel this afternoon, Jonas wasn’t sure any more what they knew here about spirits. For a people who didn’t go in for sorcery, the Salinas were surprisingly familiar with spirits, although close encounters were frowned upon. Still, you couldn’t spend that long on the sea without coming across the odd elemental or sea-being. Once Jonas had seen a demon, from a distance, flickering red and green and gold in the middle of a waterspout. They’d taken the ship the very long way around that one, sweating the whole time that the demon would move in their direction. But Tam hadn’t said anything to suggest that his friend was spirit, and it looked a lot like they were trying to pass.
Flicker or no flicker, it was none of his business, Jonas told himself. If Tam chose to pick up randoms off the street, that was Tam’s affair, and up to Tam to manage it.
The decision didn’t last. A little while later, while Asa was trying to talk to the spirit – who still hadn’t admitted to a name, and who didn’t seem particularly well-versed in human communication – Tam leant over, looking worried, and whispered to Jonas.
“I’m a bit worried about them, mate. Yesterday, they were a bit wild-eyed, sure, but not like this. Dunno what to do, though. You can’t just –” he waved an arm, and Jonas wasn’t sure what he’d meant. Leave someone out on the street, maybe? “Reckon they could do with a roof over their head, right, but you know there’s no space in my gaff.” He looked hopefully at Jonas, and the implied request might as well have been written over his head in letters of fire.
“Not much in mine either,” Jonas said, slowly, reluctantly, wishing that he could ignore the whole thing, “but – yeah, alright. For a night, just, right.” It was warm tonight. He could sleep up on the roof; he wasn’t about to share a room with a spirit. But Tam had helped him out when he first got here, and had been a good friend ever since. He owed Tam a favour or two.
Tam beamed cheerfully. “You’re a star, mate.”
He squinted over at the spirit, and his eyebrows creased together a little.
“I’ve got to say, though, mate,” he confided to Jonas, “they kind of give me the creeps a bit, you know what I mean? I’m sure they’re sound enough, and they sure run well, but…” His voice trailed off and he shrugged. “Still, we’ve all been there, right, not at our best, you know what I mean? You gotta help each other out, right?”
He nodded, as though he’d settled something to his satisfaction, and raised his glass to clink it against Jonas’. Jonas tried to ignore the sinking of his stomach as he downed the last of his beer.
A little later, as Jonas watched Tam and Asa walk off down the road towards Tam’s gaff, he suppressed the thought that the real reason Tam hadn’t wanted to help out his new ‘friend’ was the hope that Asa would be coming back with him. Lucky Tam. Though perhaps it wasn’t like that; he shouldn’t assume. He sighed, and turned to the spirit. They were staring down the road too, their features even more angular in profile. It was something about the nose, Jonas decided, something almost beaklike. Somehow he expected at any moment to see wings erupt from the being’s back, spread themselves across the street…
It was like being punched in the stomach. He tasted bile in his mouth. This was no mermaid or elemental or even a land-beastie like the sea-beasties he knew. It was an angel. Storm and fire. What was an angel doing, down in a squat pub in Marek? And how could it be that none of them had recognised it? You shouldn’t be able to miss an angel, unless they wanted you to miss them. You shouldn’t be able to have a beer with an angel, an angel who had even drunk the beer, though they’d looked more than a bit confused about the whole business, without… Without…
He swallowed, and did his best to keep his knees steady. The angel had turned back and was studying him with those wide, black, confused eyes.
“You are … unwell?” they asked, doubtfully.
“I am…” Jonas stopped, and took a deep breath. “You’re an angel. Aren’t you.” He meant it to be a question, but it came out flat; he already knew the answer.
The angel dropped their gaze and looked down at their hand, spreading the fingers and turning the hand this way and that. They seemed uncertain, although Jonas couldn’t imagine what an angel was uncertain of.
“I was,” they said eventually. “I do not know what I am now.”
Jonas blinked, and the pieces fell a bit further into place.
“A fallen angel?” he said, and the line sounded somewhere between trite and archaic as he spoke it.
“Fallen?” they said. “I was the cityangel, and I walked among the city as I pleased, and I made things as they should be. And now I am here in this body, and people like you,” their gaze on Jonas was neither judging nor otherwise, “can see me whether I wish it or no, and I can do nothing.” They blinked, and let their hand drop. “I do not even know how I take care of this body. Or if I need to.”
“You’re Marek’s angel?” Jonas asked, scrabbling for understanding.
The angel nodded. “Or I was. Or I still am. But… not.”
“You could – do you want to be on this plane, then?” Jonas asked hesitantly. Spirits could be in their own plane or on this one, but most of them spent the main part of their time on their own one. “Couldn’t you step through to the other one?”
“I can do nothing,” the angel said. “I cannot – I am here and I
cannot be elsewhere. I do not know why.”
They looked almost as if they would cry, if that strange angular face could cry.
Jonas didn’t know that much about angels. An angel belonged to something, took care of that thing. Lore had it that you could see an angel only if the angel wanted it so, and you would know what you were looking at if they did. (Although Jonas had always thought: surely, if the angel wanted, they could just look like nothing much? If it was useful to do that?) They were powerful, and they didn’t really understand humans even when they looked after human things, and they were highly unpredictable from a human point of view. But they didn’t live on the sea, and so the Salinas only knew of them from stories.
So Jonas didn’t know much about angels, and he knew even less about angels who might not be angels any more. Which would explain why it had taken him so long to realise what and who he was looking at. But he didn’t, he really didn’t want to take it back to his place now.
There’s stories about the cityangel, mind, Reb’s voice said in his head.
Reb. That was it. Whatever she might have said about the cityangel, sorcerers surely knew about spirits. He would find her, and turn the angel over to her, and then he’d be done with the whole sorry problem. He could get back to messaging, and hanging out in bars. And trying to sort out the problem of his flickers, he reminded himself, and paused for a moment.
Or… Maybe he could ask the angel some questions, himself. If his flickers were magic, and the angel was magic, and the things Reb had said about visions…
He looked at the angel, standing silent and remote, and thought of them standing in his, Jonas’, tiny room. His stomach clenched.
Or he could take them to Reb, and get her to deal with them, and he could come back and ask his questions some other time. Yes. That was clearly a better plan.
“Um,” he said, to the angel. “I’m not sure what I can do. I mean, I don’t think I can do anything much.”
The angel didn’t react.
“But I might know someone who can.”
The angel still didn’t react.
“Will you come with me?” Jonas asked. “To – well, she’s not a friend, but she’s someone I know, and I think she might be able to help you.”
“She cannot help me,” the angel said, categorically.
But they nevertheless followed Jonas as he turned to go back down the street, away from his nice cosy room in the nice cosy squats, and down towards the bridge to Reb’s rooms. He just hoped that she was in; and that she’d be prepared to take his unwanted guest off his hands.
k k
It took a minute or so of knocking, during which time it suddenly occurred to Jonas to wonder nervously what sort of hours sorcerers kept, before Reb opened her door. She was dressed, but she looked as if they were a very unwelcome interruption.
“Oh,” she said, after staring at him for a moment. “It’s you. Did I… ?” She frowned, blinking slowly, her eyes not on him at all for a moment, then they snapped back. “No. I didn’t. I’m sorry if you thought I needed you, but I’ve no more messages to run today. Is it even still today? Do you normally work this late?”
Messengers worked any hours there was work to be done, for the right money, but she was right enough that this was very late to be out. Jonas shook his head. “It’s not that. Not work. I have – well, it’s not a problem exactly, and it’s not me either…”
The crease between Reb’s eyebrows deepened, and she was shaking her head slightly, already beginning to turn away, as Jonas scrambled for words.
“She cannot help me,” the angel said from behind his shoulder.
Reb’s eyes snapped over to the angel, and her eyebrows shot up. She blinked a couple of times, rubbed the bridge of her nose, then pulled the door a bit wider.
“You’d better come in. Both of you. Before you wake the whole neighbourhood.” She didn’t sound, or look, enthusiastic.
Jonas wondered for a moment whether he could just shove the angel inside in front of him and then run for it. But no, he had to make some attempt at an explanation first. It wasn’t like the angel seemed particularly competent to manage on their own; and then, if the angel might have answers for Jonas, he needed to keep an eye on where they went.
Inside Reb’s cramped front room there were a handful of chairs to one side, cooking equipment against another wall, and two doors side by side at the back. One of them was firmly bolted, the other stood a little open, and Jonas could see the corner of a bed beyond it. The three of them stood in the middle of the front room for a moment, all looking at one another. No one seemed willing to speak. Then Reb sighed, and sat down heavily on a battered armchair.
“Sit,” she gestured at the other chairs. “You are welcome here,” she added, formally. “Not entirely within my good judgement, but you are nevertheless welcome.”
The angel seemed to lose a little tension, but they didn’t sit down.
“Sit,” Reb said irritably. “Both of you. You make me tense just looking at you.”
Jonas perched on the edge of the furthest wooden chair from Reb’s armchair. His skin felt itchy with nerves. The angel folded its legs and dropped untidily to the floor.
“Humans sit on chairs, usually,” Reb said to the angel. “If you’re trying to play human.”
“Not always,” Jonas said, feeling suddenly argumentative. “Plenty of people where I live got no chairs. Not that many chairs shipboard, either.”
Reb looked over at him. “Right enough,” she said. “Sit where you like, then.” She leaned back a bit and sighed again. “So. Is someone going to tell me what’s going on here? What is a spirit doing wandering around Marek, and what is a Salinas messenger doing with a spirit? I thought you didn’t hold with them.”
Jonas had to bite his tongue not to say that he didn’t hold with them, not one bit. If he wanted something from the angel, insulting them was hardly going to help.
“What sort of spirit even are you, come to that?” Reb continued, turning to the angel. “And what do you want? Spirits aren’t really my speciality.”
Well, at least Jonas had been partly right that she would recognise the angel. Obviously she hadn’t yet come to the whole of it.
“He said he’d take me to see you,” the angel said. They stared at Reb for a long moment. “I know you,” they said, sounding suddenly relieved. “I knew you well, before this happened.”
Reb was frowning deeply again, then she blinked, twice, and her eyes went wide.
“Took you long enough,” Jonas muttered. Reb glared at him.
“You’re Marek’s angel,” she said flatly, after a moment.
“I am,” the angel said, then, less certainly, “I was.”
“Shit. That explains, then, maybe…” Reb was chewing at one knuckle. “Well. What happened?”
The angel shrugged. Their angular face looked lost. “I do not know. I was, and then I was not. I am stuck in this,” they gestured down at themself, “and all my connections with my city, my people, my city, are gone. Gone. And I cannot even leave.”
“You can’t go back?” To the other plane, Jonas interpreted her as meaning. The same question he’d asked.
“I am here, am I not?” The angel sounded slightly irritable. “Believe me, if I could return I would.” They paused for a moment. “That is – I cannot go back within Marek. I will not go outside Marek and try. I belong here. I want my city back. I want to be myself again.” Their expression changed, grew more set. “I must be myself again.”
Reb had moved on to chewing at her thumbnail. “That’s – a bit of a tall ask, without knowing what happened. And if you can’t step back through… When did this happen?”
The angel looked at her blankly.
“Today?” Reb asked. “Yesterday? Last week?”
“Week?” the angel asked.
Reb sighed. “Can you count in days? In nighttimes?”
“There have been two nights since it happened, and then this night tonight
,” the angel said.
Reb frowned. “Two nights. Yes, that fits. But why? And how? Do you remember anything that might explain this?”
“I… cannot… No,” the angel said slowly, wonderingly. “So much time, and I cannot quite remember…”
There was a long silence. Jonas could hear the clock above the fireplace ticking and, outside, two pairs of feet passing and a murmured conversation.
“I think perhaps there was something,” the angel said. “I think perhaps that was why I was walking the streets, when it happened.”
Reb sighed. “At least I know now what’s happened to the damn magic. But it wasn’t – you might have known something was off before that, but it wasn’t, at least I didn’t notice…” She trailed off, chewing at her lip.
“Can you help?” the angel said, hopefully. “I want to go back. I want to be, I must be, myself again. I must be Marek again. Can you help?”
“Should I help?” Reb countered. “There must have been a reason why this has happened. Maybe you weren’t doing your job. Maybe what was going wrong, before, maybe that’s your fault and that’s why you’ve been kicked out.”
“No!” the angel said vehemently, coming to their feet in a tangle of arms and legs. “Never.”
“But how do I know?” Reb said, then sat back again. “I don’t and I can’t, is what. And as well as that, I don’t – I’m not who you need.”
The angel just stared at her. The air in the room seemed suddenly still and thick.
“But – you’re a sorcerer,” Jonas said. Neither Reb nor the angel broke their gaze to look at him. “It’s not like you’re on every street corner any more. If not you, who else?”
Reb took a sudden breath, and the angel dropped their eyes to study the floor. The pressure in the room lightened very slightly.
“Well,” she said with a grimace. “As it happens. There is one other left. Lad called Cato, lives over in the squats. You know him?”
Jonas shook his head. But this must be the one Asa had spoken of. The dodgy one.
