Angel-Seeker

by Sharon Shinn

  She had thought she would be dazzled by the heat and poetry of an angel’s body, brought to ecstasy by the teasing touch of those deliciously impertinent feathers. Instead, it had been nothing more than a series of drunken lunges and some brutish grunting, body to body, the heavy wings trailing over either shoulder like a winter quilt that hadn’t been fully aired out. She had closed her eyes and willed herself to be in delirious awe, an angel making love to her, an angel with his mouth pressed against hers and his hand groping across her breast. But she had not been able to achieve the trick. She had felt no more delight or radiance than she had felt during those stolen trysts at James’s farm. Truth to tell, she had been rather relieved when David had caught his breath and then released it on a long, choked gasp.

  “Ah, Elizabeth,” he breathed, and collapsed on top of her, pressing all the air from her lungs. “Little laundry girl, I am so very glad you waited.”

  She waited again, for him to say something else—give her permission to leave, beg her to stay the night, ask her to return tomorrow evening or the day after that—but he said nothing. He did shift a little, collecting his own arms and legs and gathering them to one side of the bed, freeing her from his weight, though one of his wings still lay across her like a spill of down. In a moment or two, she heard his breathing change. He was sleeping.

  She slipped out from under the disappointing wing, dressed in her inadequate clothes, and hurried into the clean, disinterested night. She had never walked these streets before at such a late hour, and it occurred to her that she should be afraid, because all classes of people came to Cedar Hills and not all of them were trustworthy, but she couldn’t summon the energy. She actually felt she was trudging as she took the final few yards down the alley that led to the boardinghouse. No one stirred as she made her way silently through the sleeping building, not even Faith, who had promised to lie awake no matter how late the hour.

  Elizabeth undressed and cleaned herself as quietly as she could. A faint moonlight came in through the shuttered window, and by it Elizabeth inspected the souvenirs of her evening. She had thought—she had so desperately hoped—that when she lay with an angel for the first time, the Kiss in her arm would light with gaudy blushes, Jovah’s signal that true lovers had met at last. But the Kiss was crystalline and clear, untroubled by iridescence. The only colors on her arm were the dark and scattered bruises left by David’s careless hand.

  Chapter Twelve

  Rebekah paced the garden wall and listened to the words of her betrothed.

  “I don’t think grain is the commodity to invest in, not if you are making only one investment,” Isaac said. He spoke solemnly and with great self-assurance, as though his audience were grander than a fourteen-year-old boy and an old man, strolling beside him on the other side of the wall from where Rebekah walked. “It is the luxuries where you should put your money and your attention. Crops fail, tastes change, the wheat farmer you dealt with last year may decide to sow corn this year, who knows? The market for grain and produce is always unreliable. But rich people will always want their baubles. And the price of gold never goes down.”

  “Where do you buy your gold?” the old man asked.

  Isaac answered, but Rebekah didn’t pay as much attention to the words as to the voice of the speaker. He was remarkably easy to hear, even through the thick stone that divided the inner garden from the outer one. Or perhaps he was deliberately pitching his voice to carry through the rock and mortar, knowing someone listened on the other side. He was supposed to pretend he did not know, of course. It was Hector’s uncle, the old man who now joined Isaac on his tour of the grounds, who had proposed that the two of them take a walk after the satisfaction of a bountiful meal.

  “Let’s take Jordan with us, too,” the old man had said. “And go by the garden. The evening is fine, and I would like to hear your thoughts about the markets.”

  So the men had put on their sandals and made their leisurely way to the outer wall, and Rebekah had scrambled into her own shoes and joined them, invisible, on the other side. In such a way affianced brides always grew to learn the tone of their husbands’ voices and their public views on the world. The women did not respond with their own thoughts and hopes and aspirations—oh no—the fiction was that the groom was not aware that any hidden observer overheard him. The charade was all to benefit the woman, who might be expected to be nervous and shy at the thought of going to the arms of a total stranger. In this artful way could she become accustomed to the voice of the man who would be her master and learn how wise and thoughtful he could be.

  “Luminaux,” Isaac was saying now. “Any trader who does not stop there is a fool, for he could make his fortune twice over by buying and selling goods in the Blue City.”

  “You might buy your bride a wedding gift there,” suggested the old man.

  “So I might!” Isaac agreed cordially. “Jordan, does your sister like jewels? And if so, what kinds?”

  “All kinds,” Jordan said. “The brighter the better.”

  “Then I know just where to shop on my next trip to the city.”

  Rebekah actually lost a step, pausing on the well-worn path to twist the bracelets on her wrist. She wore up to a dozen on any given day, most of them gifts from her father or her uncle or her brother or Hector. All of them, in fact, except the silver one set with sapphires, and that one the most recently acquired.

  She tried not to wear it every day. She tried to leave it in a box at the bottom of her wooden chest, under her outgrown linens and outdated jeskas. But every morning as she prepared to step from the room—on her way to breakfast or to her mother’s room to watch the baby or to the fabric room to look over a new roll of cloth Hector had purchased in the market—she paused at the door and looked back. And every day—for two weeks now, she had counted every day—she had turned back into her room and knelt before the chest and pulled out the flat, inlaid box. And slipped that silver bracelet over her wrist.

  She could only hope her new husband never had occasion to ask her where such a trinket had come from. But he never would. Every Jansai woman wore so many chains and rings and necklets that not even the most careful one could catalog the history of each piece. Only a few were so special that she wore them every day of her life: her father’s parting gift, her husband’s wedding remembrance, a piece she took with her from her mother’s collection. The rest were so many ounces of gold and amethyst, loved for their beauty and nothing more.

  When she was married, Rebekah promised herself, she would take off the silver bracelet and never look at it again. When she was married, she would not be dreaming of other men.

  “Well, young Isaac, it’s clear you’ve studied your roads and markets,” Hector’s uncle was saying in an approving voice. “You will be a fine provider for your lucky bride. And speaking of fine, didn’t I see a spice cake waiting on the sideboard? I’ve walked far enough for an old man. Now I want sweets to finish off my day.”

  All four of them returned, by two different routes, to the feast halls set up inside the house. Hector had organized a banquet to celebrate the joining of his house with Simon’s, and there were close to a hundred people present. The men, of course, were gathered in the great hall with its domed roof and wide windows open to the sun, but the women had been making merry in the closed adjoining room, where the view was not quite so splendid but the food was just as good. All of Isaac’s female relatives were there—his mother, his aunts, his grandmother—and Rebekah had sat with them during the meal, trying to pass herself off as a docile, soft-spoken girl who would be welcomed into any household. But after the interlude in the garden, she headed straight toward the table where her own relatives sat.

  Martha was already on her feet and crossing the room to intercept her. “Well?” her cousin demanded. “What did he say?”

  Rebekah shrugged. “Grain and markets and trading routes—boring stuff. He has a pretty voice, though, deep and slow. I like to hear the words coming from his mouth
.”

  Martha pouted. “He didn’t talk about you at all? About how eager he is to get married?”

  “No, not that I heard, anyway. He did say he’d buy me a bride-gift in Luminaux. Jordan told him I like jewels. So that ought to be something rich, I think.”

  Martha tossed her hair back. She had the deep olive skin tone of most full-blooded Jansai, but thick honey-colored hair that made a startling halo of light around her face. She was a striking woman—unforgettable—and the force and energy of her personality made her even more impossible to ignore, no matter what the company.

  “I think no jewels will seem as rich and special to you as the one you came home with from Castelana,” she said in a low voice.

  “Hush. Someone will hear.”

  “You’re wearing it again.”

  “I know. I couldn’t help it.”

  “It will be hard to take a Jansai husband when you have an angel’s face imprinted on your heart.”

  “I will never see that angel’s face again, so a Jansai husband is just what I need, I think.”

  “When is the wedding going to be?”

  “In six months, Hector says. Or maybe nine. My mother is pressing for a spring wedding, but I don’t care. I will be ready whenever the date is set.”

  Isaac’s mother approached them then, so they were forced to make polite, pointless conversation, and Rebekah eventually lost track of Martha in the general press of people. She was just as glad when the banquet ended, when the women donned their veils and joined their men at the narrow door at the back of the house, where they could slip out without fear of being seen by chance passersby. She was exhausted by the effort of smiling so much, of making herself seem demure and biddable. She stopped by the baby’s room, just to kiss his smooth cheeks, and then headed for her own room to lie on her mat and brood.

  Everyone seemed most pleased with the idea of her marriage to Isaac. For quite some time, Hector and Simon had been discussing the idea of formally going into business together, buying up new wagons with their pooled resources, and making semi-regular trips on the great merchant road between Luminaux and Manadavvi country. The wedding would cement those plans, entailing, as it would, settlements to work out, property exchanges to be made between the households, the forging of monetary bonds that were not easily broken. There were dozens of preparations to complete, but many details could be finalized as the wedding drew nearer. The important decision was already made; the union would benefit them all.

  Rebekah had not been consulted on the matter, but apparently her mother had, and very proud of that fact she was, too. “Your father asked me what I knew of young Isaac,” Jerusha said on the day she informed Rebekah that she was betrothed. “And I told him how well his mother speaks of him, what a good son he has been to her. And I told your father that this was the kind of man I would want for my daughter.”

  “He’s not my father,” Rebekah said automatically, but her heart wasn’t really in it. She was too busy wondering what it would be like to be married to Isaac. To anyone. To leave this admittedly dull but relatively safe home and seek out the unreliable benevolence of strangers.

  “He acts as your father and wants only the best for you,” Jerusha said, lifting a hand in warning. Another word against that good man Hector and I’ll strike you! “You could not have married half so well anywhere inside of Breven.”

  “I don’t care if I’m married or not.”

  “No? You want to be a burden on Jordan your whole life, a useless, unwanted woman with no man to watch over her?”

  “I’ll do that. I’ll live with Jordan and his wife, and I’ll help take care of their children. And I won’t eat anything, so they’ll hardly notice I’m there, and I’ll sleep on a mat in the hallway. No one will mind.”

  “You’ll marry Isaac, and you won’t give me any more trouble.”

  In truth, Rebekah was not opposed to marrying Isaac. She knew nothing bad about him; she knew little good about him either, except that his mother called him a kind man. But mothers tended to be blind to the faults of their sons—that Rebekah knew from firsthand observation—so a mother’s word was essentially worthless. Still, Rebekah had to admit to a flutter of excitement at the thought of marrying, of giving her body and her care over into the keeping of a handsome young man, of moving into another house in another part of the city. Of becoming, by any measure, a woman. And she would as soon marry Isaac, she supposed, as anyone else.

  Since she could not possibly marry an angel.

  She twisted the silver bracelet on her wrist again, realizing that she had not taken it off before she lay on her mat, realizing further that she probably would not, not this night and not for many nights to come. She would sleep with that cool metal against her pulse and feel those sweet-cut sapphires resonate inside her heart. She would take it off the day she got married; she would lock it away and give Jordan the key and tell him to never return the key to her no matter how hard she begged. But until that day she would wear it like a shackle, chained to memory as she was.

  It was Martha who insisted that they attend the harvest fair, though Rebekah claimed she did not have the nerve. “We were almost caught sneaking out the corridor last time. Your father was so close,” Rebekah protested. “If we were seen—”

  “We won’t be seen! We’ll leave from your house this time.”

  “My house!”

  “Hector is much more lax than my father. We won’t have any trouble.”

  “But there’s still ten streets to cross—”

  “Jordan will come with us. And Ephram.” Ephram was Martha’s brother, thirteen years old and wilder than she was. More than once Ezra had threatened to kick the boy out of the house, let him fend for himself in the streets, but no one, least of all Ephram, feared this fate would befall him. Ezra doted on the high-spirited boy, who got into fights with men twice his age, who pulled tricks on the bazaar merchants and stole coins from the beggars in the square. He reflected the arrogance of youth back onto Ezra, who basked in it.

  He would not be much protection for two Jansai girls stepping out into the Breven streets in disguise.

  “Truly, Martha, I have a premonition that such an adventure would not turn out well.”

  “But it will! What could go wrong? It’s a masked fair, so half the people in the streets will be wearing disguises. And with our brothers with us—”

  “But what if Jordan and Ephram don’t want to go?”

  “They do. I’ve already asked them. Ephram said they would meet us at the back gate two hours before midnight. And Jordan said you could wear his clothes. You’re practically the same size, you know.”

  “But if we’re caught,” Rebekah said desperately. “I am a betrothed woman now. I don’t just disgrace Hector’s house, but Isaac’s as well.”

  Martha stared at her. “Since when did you care about disgracing anyone? You hate Hector! And you scarcely know Isaac.”

  “I don’t want to go,” Rebekah said.

  The truth was, of course, she did want to go. The angel would be there. He had promised he would be. He had said it often enough that she had been forced to believe him. The angel would be there, and she would see him—because, in the company of Jansai, he would be impossible to miss—and it would take every ounce of strength she possessed for her to stay away from him. There was calamity, there was madness—going to the fall festival disguised as a boy, hoping to catch the attention of the man who would be the most hated individual in the city. No, better by far to stay in her room both nights of the fair, lying on her mat, straining her whole body till she believed she could just catch the faint sounds of revelry. She was an affianced woman. She had to recognize some of the sober realities of her new life.

  Martha shrugged. “Fine. Then I’ll go by myself.”

  Rebekah gave her a sharp look. “By yourself with Ephram and Jordan, you mean.”

  Martha shook her head, sending the heavy honey tresses back over her shoulder. “I was only bri
nging them along to protect you. I’m not afraid of the streets of Breven. I’ll go alone.”

  “You can’t do that!” Rebekah exclaimed.

  Martha shrugged again. “I can. I don’t see why not. It will be better this way, actually, since I won’t have someone tugging on my sleeve telling me it’s midnight, it’s one, I have to come home now. I can stay till the very end and come home at dawn, and then tell my mother I was vomiting all night and can’t get out of bed in the morning.”

  “Please don’t,” Rebekah said.

  “I won’t,” Martha said. “If you’ll come with me.”

  For a moment they stared at each other, the two cousins who had known each other their whole lives. Almost, Rebekah balked at that moment; almost, she believed it was a bluff, that even Martha could not summon the courage to take so great a risk. But she knew Martha well enough by now. Even if the thought terrified her, even if she feared she would lose her life on the rowdy streets of Breven at the height of a drunken celebration, she would walk out that door unaccompanied, just to prove to Rebekah that she never made an empty promise.

  “If I die of this,” Rebekah said slowly, “you must tend my grave.”

  A wide smile lit Martha’s dark face, and she threw her hands in the air with a whoop. “I will be buried beside you, so it will be up to our brothers to bring us greenery and desert roses,” Martha said.

  “They will be too ashamed to honor us. The sand will cover our bones, and everyone will forget our names.”

  “I don’t think so,” Martha said. “The scandalous names live longest.”

  Rebekah was too agitated to sit still another moment. She came to her feet and circled twice around the room. She and Jerusha were visiting Ezra’s house the day after the betrothal party, and the two young women had retired to Martha’s room to scheme and gossip. Martha’s mother didn’t have the fanatical standards of cleanliness that Jerusha did, and so there were clothes piled sloppily in corners and shoes scattered everywhere, tripping Rebekah up as she paced.