by Sharon Shinn
He gestured at his shirt, clumsily settled over his shoulders and completely undone in front. “I can’t—my fingers are so clumsy in these splints—I can’t get the buttons done. I got my trousers on, but that was a feat, I can tell you.”
He sounded so indignant that she couldn’t help laughing a little. “Well, I can help you with your shirt.”
But he turned his back to her before she could take a step forward. “It’s not on right. Can you see? It feels all bunched up over my wings.”
It had never occurred to her before that angels must have special seamstresses to design their clothes, but naturally some accommodation must be made for the magnificent appendages springing from their backs. As much out of curiosity as a desire to help, she came close enough to study the construction of the shirt. Yes—that was efficient—there was a central panel of cloth that unrolled down the spine between the two great feathered joints and buttoned underneath the surge of sinew and feather. Not only was the back of Obadiah’s shirt not buttoned, that center panel had hooked itself over one of the belled wings and refused to fall properly in place.
“Here, stand still,” she said, and carefully tugged all the fabric into alignment. She made some effort to avoid touching his feathers, since she had learned that angels hated to endure casual contact with their wings. Still, it was impossible not to be aware of them, spilling down on either side of her to pool on the wood floor. They emitted a faint odor, and she sniffed cautiously, trying to identify it, but she could not name the scent. Starlight, maybe, or the fragrance carried by the wind shortly before the arrival of rain. Something elemental.
“There,” she said. “That’s all done. Now turn around.”
He made one elegant pirouette, moving with such perfect understanding of spatial relationships that not a single quill edge touched her as he turned. “I cannot tell you how annoying I find it not to be able to care for myself,” he told her. His voice was light, but she suspected the emotion was sincere. “I have never been sick a day in my life! I am the one who has called down plague medicines for fevered farmers who were convinced they were about to die. I am the one who has brought comfort and ease to hurt children and crying mothers. I promise you, I will be much more patient with them in the future.”
She smiled and concentrated on the shirt. His chest beneath the fabric looked too lean, the chest of a fit man who could ill afford to go a week or so on a starvation diet. It was a matter of a minute or two to thread all the ornate buttons through their proper slits, and then fasten the cuffs as well. She did not have the nerve to suggest that she tuck the ends of the shirt into his trousers, so she stepped back once her task was completed.
“There you are,” she said with a smile. “Fit to go out in public.”
“And once more I’m thanking you for your kindness,” he said. “Now I know what they mean by the term godsend. You have been so good to me these past few days.”
She allowed herself to look up into his face. Yes, quite handsome, but more kind than handsome; he had a smile that made you want to confide in him. Not that she would, of course. “I did very little,” she said. “Let me know if you need me to do anything else.”
“No, I’ll be completely well by tomorrow, you’ll see. I’ll even figure out how to work these stupid fingers so I can dress myself like an adult. But I do thank you for your help.”
“You’re welcome, angelo.”
He stood there for a moment longer, smiling down on her like the first noon of springtime, and then widened his eyes with consternation. “Damn! I’m late. Come check on me again from time to time.”
And he leaned in, kissed her quickly on the cheek, and blew out the door like a flock of summer birds. Elizabeth stood there with her hand pressed against her face, feeling like the god himself had laid his palm against her skin with a touch like fire and fate. Oddly, she felt less like an angel-seeker at that moment than she had since the day she had first set foot in Cedar Hills.
Later she was to wonder if that kiss marked her like some kind of brand visible only to other angels. For she had just stepped into the hallway, dazed and unsteady, when Calah poked her head out of her own doorway down the hall.
“Is that—aren’t you one of the laundresses?” Calah demanded.
“Yes, angela.”
“Step in here a moment, could you? My dress has a tear, and I’m very clumsy with a needle. You can sew, can’t you? As well as wash?”
“Yes, angela.”
So she slipped inside the young angel’s room (as untidy as all their rooms were; who had raised these people?) and set a few stitches in an impossibly delicate silver gauze gown. Just as she was finishing this task, three other young angels—two female and one male—tumbled into the room, talking and laughing together with so much energy that Elizabeth felt her skin prickle with borrowed excitement.
“What—now you’ve got servants waiting on you? How do you rate so high?”
“No, I just grabbed her as she was walking down the hall. She works in the laundry room.”
“Well, I have a stack of clothes that need mending.”
“Don’t be silly, the poor girl’s just trying to do her job. She wasn’t sent here to keep your wardrobe in order.”
“Well, she’s keeping Calah’s wardrobe in order!”
Elizabeth glanced up, wondering if she was supposed to be taking part in this conversation, but they were all happily bickering with each other, ignoring her. She carefully folded the gossamer gown and stood up, laying it on her chair.
“All done, angela,” she said.
“What? Oh—thanks. You’re very good,” Calah said distractedly, and put out her hand. She was holding half a dozen coppers—a nice tip for such a small job—and Elizabeth gave a little bob and accepted them. Faith had said that angels could be generous from time to time, and that it was rude to refuse their gifts, or Elizabeth wouldn’t have known quite how to behave at this moment. She was still unused to being paid for her services, let alone receiving a thank you that came in spoken or monetary form.
“Thank you, angela,” she said, and left the room.
And then, on her way down to the laundry room, she encountered three more angels in the hallways. All of them bid her hello in an absent but courteous fashion, when she didn’t remember a single angel ever even noticing her presence before when she passed one in the corridor. Perhaps Obadiah’s kiss had held some magic in it, lifting her across an imaginary border from the invisible to the visible world. Perhaps once one angel acknowledged you, they all would.
Or perhaps the magic would only last a day.
At any rate, the spell was still in effect that evening as Elizabeth left the laundry room and stepped outside to go home. She paused a moment to take deep breaths of the clean, cool air, feeling half smothered by a day of inhaling steam and starch. No more pretending that it was still late summer; true autumn was firmly entrenched in southern Jordana. The days could still be delightfully warm, but the nights held a whispered promise of chill to come.
“Well!” came a voice behind her, and she nearly jumped off the stairs. She hadn’t heard anyone come out of the door. “If it isn’t the elusive little laundry girl.”
Elizabeth spun around in astonishment to find herself staring up at the angel David, two steps above her. She had a moment’s quick impression of darkness, for he stood in the overhanging shadow of the building, and his hair was dark, and his eyes, and his wings. That notion quickly evaporated in her blinding happiness at seeing him again. “Good evening, angelo,” she said a little breathlessly.
He came slowly down the last two steps so he stood very close to her on the edge of the cobblestone street. There it was again, that aroma of starlight or moonlight or distance—the god’s own scent, perhaps, divine and mysterious. He was so close she could see the individual scars across his olive skin, each separate lash around his intent eyes. “I have not seen you around these past few days,” he drawled. “But I have heard word of yo
u—the laundry girl who joins the healers in saving the lives of angels.”
“I—I was asked to help, and I helped,” she said, stammering slightly. “I did very little.”
“But you have been preoccupied,” he said in a low voice. “And nowhere to be found when I looked for you.”
She almost could not form the words. “You—looked for me?”
He nodded. A small smile was warming the blackness of his eyes, causing the full mouth to curve. “Of course I did. We had an assignation, you and I.”
“You—I could not find you that day,” she said.
“Yes, but there have been other days since then,” he said. “And you did not find me those days either.”
She did not even try to reply to that.
He put a hand up to her cheek—the very cheek that Obadiah had kissed, had marked with an angel’s approval—and stared down at her. “I am expected elsewhere just now,” he said in a slow voice, “but I will be back before midnight, if you wished to return and wait for me then. Unless there are other duties you have? Other friends you have made while I have been waiting so patiently?”
She could not believe it. He knew she had been called in to aid with Obadiah, and he was—he was not jealous, no, that was ridiculous, angels weren’t jealous of the attentions of mortals—but he had been reminded of her existence. Just as Faith had promised. She had become memorable.
“No, angelo, my time is completely at your disposal.”
He dropped his hand and immediately assumed an air of briskness. “Good! Then I will expect you to be waiting for me when I return. Sometime before midnight.”
“And I should be—?”
“In my room, of course. You know where it is.” A small grin as he said that.
She blushed. “Yes, angelo.”
“You may call me David, you know.”
“Yes, David.”
“And I should call you—?”
“Elizabeth.”
“Elizabeth. Good. A pretty name. I will see you in a few hours, Elizabeth,” he said, and took off jauntily down the street.
Elizabeth stared after him, her heart pounding, her face prickling with receding heat. To meet an angel in his room at midnight! What did it mean, what else could it mean than that she was to take her first angel lover? She must go home and bathe and cover herself with scented creams and braid her hair and put on that new green dress. She must tell Faith, because this was not a secret it would be possible to keep, but she must let no one else know, in case the tryst turned out badly.
But surely it would not. Not this time. Surely David would be there as promised, would take her in his arms and make love to her with his fevered angel body? She shivered as she hurried home, trying to imagine what that act would be like, how much different it would be from love with a mortal man. This would be better; she knew it. This would be a union with an angel.
She tried not to let it bother her that, until five minutes ago, her angel lover had not even known her name.
It was cold in David’s room.
After three hours of waiting, cold was all Elizabeth was really experiencing anymore. Excitement had worn off after the first dull hour passed, and eager speculation had carried her only another thirty minutes or so. Boredom had crept up and curled around her toes as she sat, stiff and uncomfortable, in one of those narrow-backed chairs designed to accommodate angel wings. Disappointment had circled the ceiling like a nervous carrion bird till she finally lost the energy to glare it away, and then it had come to perch on her shoulder and squawk hoarsely in her ear. He lied, he forgot, he does not plan to see you tonight. You were a fool to believe that the angel David would ever take you in his arms.
But he had to come back sometime, she thought, drunk or sober, alone or in the company of friends. And he had told her to be here. And if she was not here, and he did remember, would he not be angry with her for failing him a second time? Would he not refuse to offer her a third chance, and would he not whisper to his angel friends, “She cannot be relied on. Do not waste your time with her”?
So she waited, and she shivered, because the green dress was thin, and the room temperature was set to suit an angel’s blood. And she wished she had brought some sewing with her, or even a book, and certainly a shawl.
And she wondered if she should leave.
And she wondered if David was laughing at her, even now, in a tavern with some friends who all despised angel-seekers and loved to relate tales of the tricks they had played on those unfortunate women.
And she stayed.
It was perhaps two hours after midnight when a curse and fumble at the door jerked Elizabeth from an uneasy sleep. She came to her feet with a gasp, feeling her heart pound and her hands clench into cold fists at her sides. She had no time to do more than take two steps from the chair before the door shuddered open, and David lurched in. The hall lights were on behind him so it was impossible to see his face, just the great, dark shape of his winged body.
She tried to say his name, but a finger of fear pressed against her throat, so all that came out of her mouth was a muffled squeak. His head swung in her direction, clumsy as a bear’s, and it was clear his eyes were having trouble penetrating the shadows of the room.
“Who’s that? Who’s there?” he demanded in an overloud voice.
“It’s—Elizabeth, angelo.”
“Elizabeth?” he repeated in amazement. She could not tell if he did not recognize her name or was astonished that she was still awaiting him.
“Yes, Elizabeth. The laundress,” she added, feeling like a fool. “You told me—when you saw me this evening—you asked me to wait for you in your room.”
“Elizabeth!” he exclaimed, his voice suddenly jovial. “Yes! The pretty red-haired girl. You’re here tonight? A gift from the god himself.”
That reaction sent some of her deepest fears scuttling off into the darkness, but she still felt some misgivings as she saw him stumble across the floor. He did not look very steady on his feet, leading her to guess that he might have been drinking fairly heavily since he had left her earlier this evening. His hands slapped the wall, looking for a light switch, which it seemed he had forgotten how to locate. All the major buildings of Cedar Hills had been fitted for gaslight, Faith had informed Elizabeth; not even Luminaux and Semorrah could claim such a distinction. But it was only on the third or fourth try that David managed to find the knob that brought light springing into the room.
Both of them cowered back a bit, and he immediately dialed down the intensity to a dim but pleasant glow. Then he came a few steps nearer and peered down at her. “Elizabeth,” he said again, more slowly, savoring the syllables like a tasty wine. “I remember.”
Part of her wanted to run; part of her wanted to take complete advantage of this moment. “You told me to wait,” she said again.
In this light, it was hard to see the rough texture of his face, but his general air of mysterious darkness was very pronounced. “And I cannot tell you how glad I am that you did,” he said. “You are just the person I most wanted to see tonight.”
And taking two more quick strides, he was suddenly right upon her, and without another word, he snatched her into his arms. His kiss was heavy and painful on her mouth, sloppy and redolent of wine. His arms wrapped around her too tightly, and his wings folded over her from both sides. She thought she would not be able to breathe. She struggled in his arms, tried to pull her mouth free, but his grip only tightened. His wings drew down even closer over her head, suffocating her, blocking out all light. Panic ran silver through her veins and gave her a measure of strength. She got her hands up against his ribs and pushed hard, taking them both by surprise with the strength of her resistance. He dropped his arms and folded his wings down, stepping back to stare at her.
“Jovah’s hells and fountains, what’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “What did you come here for if not for that?”
She stared back at him, panting, poised on the balls of her fe
et to make a sudden dash for the door. Almost, almost, she ran for it. But ambition held her in place, ambition and desire. This was something she had dreamed of, schemed for, something for which she had been prepared to sacrifice a great deal. She could not dart away now; she could not let fear cost her this great achievement.
“I could not breathe,” she said at last. “You held me too close—and your wings—I was smothering.”
He bellowed with laughter and lay his arms loosely about her again. “Most women love the feel of angel wings draped around their bodies,” he said.
“Yes—I want to feel them—I do,” she stammered. “But just—I have to be able to breathe.”
Now he looked down at her with a mocking expression on his face. “You’re afraid.”
“No.”
“You’re cold. Your skin is like ice.”
“This room is chilly for mortal blood.”
“I can warm you up,” he suggested.
She hesitated just a moment. “Yes,” she said.
He laughed, gave her one more quick, hard kiss, and moved back another pace. “Then take off that dress—lovely as it is—and join me in my bed, Elizabeth the laundry girl.”
She had not quite imagined how awkward it would be to step out of her shoes and pull off her dress while the angel watched her, unnervingly absorbed. Perhaps she had thought they would progress to this stage after a few minutes of tender kissing, after cuddling on the bed for a while and whispering silly, meaningless endearments in each other’s ears. Instead, she stripped naked with a few economical movements, then stood there shivering before him, feeling neither attractive nor eager. He approved of what he saw, though; that was evident in the sudden tautness of his face and the sharp, reckless flickering of his eyes. He came close again, not pulling her into an embrace this time but closing his fingers tightly around her upper arms and drawing her against his chest. She felt the heat of his body flare against her skin the moment before his mouth covered hers again in a rough kiss. The scents of cloud and starlight were overpowered by the odors of wine and lust.
Less than half an hour later, Elizabeth was creeping down the deserted streets of Cedar Hills, making for the boardinghouse. She was trying hard not to think, not to catalog caresses or results, but it was difficult to overlook the various distresses of her body. Sore in a few very private places, bruised in half a dozen more; she felt less like she had been loved than mangled. She had expected more from a union with an angel, she really had.
