by Sharon Shinn
Elizabeth felt her face flame. “I haven’t—”
Doris shrugged and waved her toward the door. “I meant the hurt one. Obadiah. The healer’s back this morning and stopped by to ask if you could be spared to help her with the rebinding. Well, I knew you had your heart set on soaking the shirts this morning, but I said to myself, just this once, she can tear herself away from her true calling to help out a soul in need.”
It was the most humorous speech Elizabeth had ever heard the dry Doris utter, and she couldn’t help giggling. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said. “I’ll be back as soon as they’re done with me.”
She flew up the stairs and knocked only perfunctorily before entering Obadiah’s room. He was sitting up on the bed, his wings spread out behind him like some kind of grand robe of royalty. He looked remarkably improved, even cheerful, though he was wincing away from the healer even as Elizabeth walked in. “Ouch! Do you have any idea how much that hurts?”
“A little,” said the woman, who was bent over his wounded leg and slowly peeling back the bandages. “But I’ve never had the bad fortune of getting caught in the crossfire of some scorching weapon, so I can only speculate.”
“It’s not like I did it on purpose,” he said indignantly. “But if I—Elizabeth! Good morning! Mary says I am much better today.”
Mary must be the healer’s name. The woman glanced briefly in Elizabeth’s direction. “Good. I need to rewrap all the wounds this morning. I was going to leave them for a day or two, but I want to try a new salve.”
Elizabeth stepped up to the bed and smiled shyly down at the patient. “You look better,” she said. “How’s the pain?”
“The pain comes and goes,” he said. “But the fever has waned. I told Mary how good you were to me.”
Elizabeth shrugged. “I only handed you a pill.”
Mary smiled at her. She appeared to be somewhere in her mid-fifties, though thin blond hair and a fair complexion gave her a look of sustained youth. “Sometimes it’s just knowing someone is there to hand you that pill that makes all the difference. How long can you be spared from your duties?”
“As long as you need me.”
“Good. Let’s get started.”
But they had barely finished unwrapping the bandage on Obadiah’s leg before two more angelic forms came marching in. Elizabeth had only seen Nathan a few times before, and never close up, so she watched him covertly a few moments. He was a well-built, dark-haired, serious-looking angel with quite a magnificent wingspan. Magdalena swept in beside him.
“Oh, so you’ve finally deigned to come visit me, miserable creature that I am,” Obadiah greeted the host of Cedar Hills. “I’ve only been here—let’s see, one whole day—and not a word of comfort or condolence do I hear from you. I think I’ll pack my bags and head back to the Eyrie. I’m sure they would not leave a wounded angel to rot by himself in agony.”
Nathan had reached the side of the bed and was smiling down at Obadiah. Elizabeth could see why Faith was so infatuated with him. His brown eyes added seriousness to a clear-cut and somewhat haughty face, but the shape of his mouth was kind, and there was a general air of pleasantness about him. “I came by last night—twice—but you were sleeping. Probably pretending to sleep,” the leader added. “I had been told not to wake you, since sleep would do you more good than a rambling, inconsequential conversation with me. But had I known I would be abused for neglect, I’d have shouted in your ear and shaken you from whatever dreams you were enjoying, just for the pleasure of my company.”
“You look better,” Magdalena said. “How are you feeling?”
They discussed the state of his health for a few moments, while Mary and Elizabeth continued to work on the wounded leg. Elizabeth had glanced over at the healer, expecting that the two of them would remove themselves while the angels visited, but Mary just kept on working, cleanly and methodically, and Elizabeth said nothing. It wasn’t as if she wanted to leave.
Nathan glanced around the room, then hauled two narrow-backed chairs to the bedside. “Now. Tell us what happened. Maga says you were secretive last night.”
Obadiah shrugged. “With a roomful of gossips, it seemed the best course. But I think this is news Gabriel needs to hear.”
Elizabeth concentrated on making herself invisible so she would not be dismissed at this interesting juncture.
Obadiah continued slowly. “I was only a couple of hours outside of Breven when I felt a sudden pain in my wing, and then a second one on my leg.”
“You were airborne?” Nathan interrupted.
“Yes. Flying relatively low. I didn’t see where the shots came from, but there were definitely weapons of some sort and aimed deliberately at me. And, Nathan, they felt like fire.”
“The wounds they’ve left behind certainly look as if they could have been made by flames,” Magdalena said.
“Did you see any projectile—an arrow, a rock wrapped with some kind of flammable material?” Nathan asked.
“No. I saw nothing. I just felt fire. I managed to land and make it to an oasis, where I stayed for a couple of days until I had recovered enough to attempt the trip back.”
“Which you were obviously not well enough to make,” Magdalena said.
He smiled over at her. “No, but I was fortunate to fall in with friends. Fall in—a joke, you see.”
“Not funny,” she murmured.
A little silence settled over the room. Nathan appeared to be thinking something over, and the other two angels were lost in their own thoughts. Mary had finished retying the bandage on the wounded leg—much improved, Elizabeth thought—and had now turned her attention to the broken fingers. Elizabeth doubted these really needed to be rewrapped at this point, but she could appreciate Mary’s motives; neither of them wanted to leave the room and miss a word of the conversation. The cloth came away oh so slowly from first one finger and then another.
“This weapon,” Nathan said at last. “It just shot bolts of fire?”
“So it seemed,” Obadiah said apologetically. “I know it sounds impossible.”
“There was a weapon like that,” Nathan said, “in Raphael’s hands. Shortly before the mountain came down.”
“I don’t remember that,” Magdalena said.
“No, I don’t either,” Obadiah said.
“But there was. Raphael and a few of his followers had these—sticks of fire—and they brought these with them to the Plain of Sharon on the day we were supposed to sing the Gloria. They were fairly powerful weapons. They could be aimed from a hundred yards away or more, and send a tree or a bush up in flames. Everyone was afraid of them.”
“Where would they have gotten weapons like that?” Obadiah demanded.
Nathan shrugged. “Left behind when the first settlers came to Samaria five hundred years ago?”
“The settlers brought no weapons with them at all,” Magdalena said. “They wanted to leave war and violence behind.”
“So we’ve been taught,” Nathan said. “Who knows what one or two of them may have smuggled to a new land along with their clothes and their copy of the Librera?”
“And you say Raphael had these weapons?” Obadiah said. When Nathan nodded, he continued, “Then perhaps he left some of them behind with his Jansai allies. Malachi, perhaps.”
“Malachi perished on the mountain along with Raphael.”
“He might have bequeathed his—his firesticks to a nephew or a son.”
“So then you think it was Jansai who shot you from the sky?” Nathan asked.
“I was not two hours from Breven. Who else travels that desert and bears a great hatred for angels? But I didn’t see them. I can’t prove anything.”
“Jansai would be my first thought, too,” Nathan said.
“But the question would be,” Obadiah said softly, “why did they not come after me to make sure I was dead? If I had wounded an enemy, I would follow through on my spite.”
“They thought you were dead,” Magdalena
said. “If you fell some distance, hurt and alone in the desert, they would not have expected you to survive. They don’t realize how great an angel’s regenerative powers are.”
“Even so, I should have died,” Obadiah said. “It was sheer luck I was close enough to water to drag myself there.”
“Gabriel has to know,” Nathan said.
“Yes,” Obadiah said, “but then what? We are already at odds with the Jansai. Who can we accuse, and what good would it do? I don’t believe Uriah set any of his cohorts after me. Though it was clear from my visit there that any number of the Jansai would like to bring the three holds down, not just one random angel.”
“So the mood in Breven was unfriendly.”
“To put it mildly.”
“And Uriah was hostile?”
“No, Uriah was welcoming. I think he liked the idea that I would bargain with him, though I can’t say we got very far. The first word out of his mouth was ‘Edori,’ and that’s not negotiable. But we might be able to strike a deal. I don’t know. At any rate, he seemed to like the thought that I would return to Breven and discuss alliances. That was the only real outcome of our conversation.”
“I can’t send you back there in this condition.”
Obadiah laughed. “No, but I’ll be well in a day or so. A week at the longest.”
“But if someone in Breven has a grudge against you—”
“What I think? Some bad-tempered, vengeful Jansai traveler had his hands on an exotic weapon, and he saw the shape of an angel flying overhead. More in a gesture of hatred than in any real attempt to do harm, he lifted the stick and aimed. He was probably as surprised as I was when the bolt struck home.”
“Two bolts,” Nathan said. “That argues intent to harm.”
“I still think it was—fortuitous, if you will. He got lucky. I got unlucky. I don’t think he knows my face or was particularly hoping to bring me down.”
“But don’t you think,” Magdalena said in a soft voice, “that he might start to worry once he thinks things over? A dead angel—surely that’s something we would notice. Surely that’s something we would avenge. He must be starting to dread the consequences, no matter how lucky he felt at the time.”
“Maga has a point,” Obadiah acknowledged. “And I don’t think Gabriel’s the only one who needs to know about this. If Uriah really does want an alliance with us, he won’t be condoning—what would you call it?—angicide.”
Magdalena said, “That’s not funny,” but Nathan burst out laughing. The leader of the host said, “Good point. Whether or not he’s been informed of the incident, he needs to know what we suspect. Though you must tell him of our suspicions very gently.”
“I will,” Obadiah said.
“So you plan to go back there?” Magdalena asked in some alarm.
“Of course. In a few weeks. There’s supposed to be—a festival of some kind? Someone mentioned it, but I didn’t catch all the details.”
“Yes, it’s a harvest fair,” Nathan said. “They bring in singers and winemakers and performers and have contests in the streets. A few of the Cedar Hills shopkeepers went last year and said it was something of a brawl, but it appears to be a main event in Breven. It would be good if you were well enough to attend that.”
“I’ll plan on it, then.”
Nathan gestured at Obadiah’s hand, which Mary was now, with infinite care and patience, finally finished rewrapping. “How does that feel? It looked like hell when she uncovered it.”
“It feels like hell,” Obadiah said with a laugh. “But that salve you just put on—whatever it was—that’s good. That makes the pain go away.”
“Manna root salve, angelo,” Mary said. “It’s truly an astonishing ointment. I am so glad it’s available to us again.”
Nathan looked over, clearly attempting to feign an interest he did not feel. “Oh? The manna root stopped growing for a time, did it?”
“All the seeds were gone, gathered up by silly girls to make love potions,” Mary said. “So of course we could grow no more plants, and we could make no more salve. It was very distressing to all the healers.”
Elizabeth didn’t know this story. She’d never heard of manna root before, though she liked the sound of love potions. She didn’t want to seem stupid in front of the angels, though, so she didn’t ask what miracle had occurred to revive the plants that bore the seeds.
But Nathan, still attempting to be courteous, asked for her. “So how did you bring the plants back?”
Magdalena laughed. “You know that story, Nat. Rachel found an old song of Hagar’s and prayed to the god, and all those seeds came raining down, sent by Jovah.”
“Yes, and no doubt the lovesick girls gathered up bucketfuls of them, but the healers harvested their share, too,” Mary said. “So we’ve had manna root again ever since Rachel became angelica, and we’ve all been grateful to her for it.”
“That’s my Rachel,” Obadiah said in an admiring voice, but Elizabeth thought he was laughing a little, too. “Determined to bring love and joy into the world wherever she goes.”
Mary patted him lightly on his newly bandaged arm. “We’re all done here, angelo. I’ll leave drugs for you again, but I don’t think you’ll need many. You’re healing nicely.”
“Can I eat?” he demanded.
“Yes. Whatever you like.”
“Good. Because I’m starving.”
Magdalena rose. “I brought a basket of food and I left it in the hall. Can I stay and eat with you?”
“I’d be happy if you did.”
She stepped past them and went out the door. Mary put a hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder, and they both stood up. “We’ll be going now. I’ll check on you in the morning, and I’ll make sure this one comes by at least once more today to see if you need anything.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Obadiah said, giving them each a friendly smile. There was something about him that seemed both warm and genuine, as if he was quite happy to have landed in their circle of friendship and would call them by name if he ever encountered them again, no matter what exalted company he might be in at the time. So it seemed to Elizabeth, anyway. “You can’t have too many friends when you’re a sick man.”
“You,” Nathan said in a scoffing voice. “You don’t think you can have too many friends when you’re well. I never saw a man who collected people the way you do.”
“I collect friends so nobody realizes how uninteresting I am on my own,” Obadiah said lightly. “Mary. Elizabeth. Thank you so much for your ministrations.”
“You’re welcome, angelo,” Mary said sedately, and Elizabeth repeated her words, though in a rather more breathless voice. Magdalena stepped back into the room, a huge picnic basket in her hands.
“All your favorite foods!” Magdalena exclaimed. “I was in the kitchen all day nagging the cooks—”
The mortals were across the threshold before they could hear the rest of her sentence, and Mary closed the door behind them. Then the healer turned to give Elizabeth one long, serious look.
“Don’t think I wasn’t as curious as you were,” the fair woman said. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll be repeating a word I heard in there, and you shouldn’t either. That story will get around in a day or two—impossible to keep such a tale a secret—but it shouldn’t be you or me who repeats it. We hold positions of trust, and we shouldn’t abuse that trust by gossiping.”
“I won’t,” said Elizabeth earnestly. “Not a word to anyone.”
Mary’s face relaxed into a smile. “You’re a good girl,” she said. “If you ever get tired of working in the laundry, come see me. I could teach you a thing or two about healing and see how you liked it. Might be a better career for you than soaking and scrubbing, who knows?”
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said. “But I—right now—I’m promised to Doris at the moment—”
Mary grimaced a little. “You have friends in the angel dorm, I take it. That’s all right. I wish you luck. But come se
e me someday if things don’t turn out so well here. I’ll find work for a good pair of hands like yours.”
And that compliment warmed her almost as much as Obadiah’s smile, almost as much as the consciousness of knowing a secret that everyone else would be agog to hear. Elizabeth was humming as she returned to the laundry room, and not even the foulest-smelling detergent or the hottest splash of water could turn her mood from sunny to sour.
Chapter Eleven
The following day was also alive with angels. Elizabeth was starting to think she’d caught the trick of it, had learned how to draw the great winged creatures into her sphere through the sheer power of her desire. Though that was silly, she knew in her heart. Like Obadiah, flying over the desert, she had been marked by fortune, either good or ill. None of her own actions had had the least bearing on shaping the patterns of her days.
In the morning, after making an appearance in the laundry room, she headed upstairs to do a brief check on Obadiah, as the healer had asked her to do. It was not presumptuous at all. Her tentative knock on the door was followed by a quick, “Please come in,” and she entered to find Obadiah standing half-dressed in the middle of the room.
“Oh!” she said involuntarily, because the angel on his feet was quite a different proposition from the helpless creature sprawled in a sickbed. He was taller than she had thought, for one thing, with an air of such negligent grace that he might have been posing for Jovah’s concept of an angel the first time the god decided to fashion one from the materials of the universe. And his wings, which had drooped so miserably the past few days, were arranged behind him like a proud retinue, polished, gleaming, and poised for action.
Even the angel’s face seemed different, sharper, more handsome, though it retained its general expression of sweetness—and, at the moment, a comical look of dismay. “Elizabeth,” he said. “Thank the god you’re here.”
“What’s wrong?” she said, immediately trying to cover up the fact that she was staring at him and attempting to seem professional and helpful instead.
