by Sharon Shinn
She teased out the last sliver of wood and then set the needle into the fabric of her skirt so she wouldn’t lose it. “Salve now,” she said, “and I think we’re done.”
That night as she got ready for bed, Elizabeth reflected that only the first few hours of the day had gone as she’d expected. Once she left the dorm to accompany Mary to the construction site, she was deep in unfamiliar territory, and the rest of the day held nothing but surprises.
They had returned to the center of town, where Rufus had pointed out a sidewalk cafe and Mary had looked amused. Then the healer had towed her new pupil off to a series of appointments, to check up on a pregnant woman, to visit a sick child, and to doctor an angel with a sore throat. “Angels are never sick, so I’m sure she doesn’t have an infection, but they’re all just singing themselves hoarse,” Mary observed as they left the unfamiliar dorm. “A little honey and a little tea—you’ll find that’s almost as good as the god’s drugs, sometimes, when it’s nothing serious.”
They also paused briefly in the suite that Mary occupied in the central building. The front room was almost an apothecary’s shop, lined with shelves of drying herbs and colored jars and smelling of sage and lemon. The back room, Elizabeth supposed, held a bedroom and perhaps a water room.
“Why don’t you just come here in the morning?” Mary said. “We’ve got a handful of patients to check on tomorrow, but I’d like to show you a few things here. We might have time to mix up a bit more manna root. I noticed I was running low. Oh, there’s lots to do here if there was only a free minute!”
“What time do you want me?”
“How early do you rise?”
Elizabeth shrugged. On the farm, she’d been up before dawn. At Tola’s, she’d gotten accustomed to sleeping in, but it still felt like a sinful luxury. “As early as you want.”
Mary nodded approvingly. “I knew I liked you. Let’s say two hours past sunrise. I’ll have breakfast ready. We can get a lot done before the first emergency comes calling.”
“I’ll be here.”
And she was looking forward to it, too, oddly enough—and, even more strange, looking forward to the evening with Rufus. The occasion didn’t seem grand enough to call for her green gown again—and anyway, it was really getting too cold for such flimsy material—but she had a nice burgundy dress she used to wear when she was serving fancy meals at James’s, and she could accessorize it with a black shawl and a braided black belt. Faith cooed over her appearance when she pirouetted before the closet door. There was only a small mirror tacked high on one wall, so she couldn’t really judge how she looked.
“That’s a nice color for you. You look so pretty! So what’s this Rufus like, anyway?”
Elizabeth shrugged and checked her hair in the mirror. She hadn’t had time to wash it again, and after the day’s travails, it was both limp and a little dirty, so she’d pulled it back into a smooth auburn bun. She always thought the style made her look elegant, though she didn’t think Rufus particularly cared if his companion was elegant or not.
“He’s an Edori,” she said. “He seemed very friendly. It’s just dinner. There’s nothing more to it than that.”
“I’ve met some Edori men,” Faith said in a dreamy voice. “Very nice, all of them.”
“I’m sure,” Elizabeth said, a little sarcastically.
“I’ll wait up for you,” Faith said, as she always said, as she never did. “I want to hear all the details.”
Rufus was waiting for her on the green, sitting on the ground with his back against a tree, his whole attitude one of loose relaxation. Elizabeth frowned a little. He didn’t seem to have much energy—much gumption, as Angeletta would say. She didn’t like to be quoting Angeletta, but she had to admit she preferred a man with a certain amount of drive.
He saw her from some distance off, though, and was on his feet and smiling by the time she drew near. He smelled of soap and clean linen, so he had obviously had time to freshen up since they parted.
“Don’t you look nice,” he said in an admiring voice.
She smiled. “It’s just an old dress.”
“It’s not the dress that looks so good. It’s you.”
She shook her head, but she was still smiling. “You shouldn’t give me such compliments. It’ll make me conceited.”
“One or two kind words? I doubt it. I bet it would take years of compliments to make you vain.”
“My roommate said this was the nicest cafe in Cedar Hills,” Elizabeth said. “Is it very expensive?”
He laughed. “I don’t know. I haven’t been there yet. But I’ve been working for three months straight, and I’ve spent hardly a copper, so I can afford our meals, no matter how much they cost.”
She was a little embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply—”
He gave her a shrewd look. “When you start worrying about money, it becomes a habit,” he said. “It’s what you start to think of first. Before happiness, before home.”
She made a little gesture with her hands. “If you don’t have money, sometimes you can’t have happiness or a home,” she said.
He shrugged. “It’s not the Edori way to think too much about possessions. What to wear or where to sleep. We’ve usually thought the god would provide—and generally he does.”
“And yet you’ve been taking a salary for three months,” she said, not entirely kindly.
He grinned. “That’s laziness,” he said. “I haven’t been sure what else to do.”
“You work because you’re lazy?” she demanded.
He took her elbow with an unself-conscious gesture and turned her in the direction of the restaurant. “Well, now, if we’re going to get to the story of my life, we’d best be comfortable and eating,” he said. “Let’s go find a table.”
But what with crossing the road, picking out a table, looking over the menu, placing their orders, and trying their first glasses of wine, it was some time before they got back to the subject of Rufus’s life. Which was fine with Elizabeth. She was not all that interested in the story of a rambling Edori’s undirected wanderings.
She did like the restaurant, though. It looked expensive, built of a fine-quality brick and hung with thick-woven curtains. The tables were highly polished wood inlaid with an inch of darker material at the rim, and the wine was better than anything she’d stolen from Angeletta’s cellars. And there were angels here, two she recognized from the dorm, and two she hadn’t seen before. Visiting, perhaps. Her eyes kept going to their exquisite, graceful forms as Rufus studied the menu and theorized about what he might want to eat.
“How about you?” he asked, though she had scarcely glanced at the selections. “What are you hungry for?”
“Oh, I haven’t decided.”
So she had to take a moment to peruse the offerings, consider whether Rufus really had as much money as he claimed, and decide on a moderately priced item just in case. Their server was a sleek young man with a haughty, beautiful face. Elizabeth, inexplicably, was seized by the notion that he was an angel-seeker’s mortal son, left to fend for himself when he proved to be a disappointment to his mother. She brushed the thought aside.
“More wine?” the server asked.
“Of course,” Rufus replied. The Edori smiled at Elizabeth as their server glided away. “I haven’t had wine in a year,” he said. “Maybe more. Good thing I don’t have far to walk home.”
Elizabeth took a sip from her own glass and held it on her tongue a moment before swallowing. “I love it,” she said. “But I’ve never had more than a glass or two at a time.”
“It gives you a headache?”
“It—it never came my way that often, or in much quantity.”
He nodded. “Right. On your cousin’s farm.”
She had forgotten she had mentioned that to him earlier. “Exactly.”
“So why did you leave the farm for Cedar Hills?”
She glanced around expressively. “Why not? Who’d pick a
farm over this?”
“And your cousin doesn’t worry about a young woman being all alone here in the city?”
“I’m not so young.”
“But you’re all alone.”
“I have friends.”
He tilted his head to one side. “Maybe. It’s not the same as family, though.”
She gave a short laugh. “Better than my family.”
“So that’s all you have? Your cousin?”
“And his wife. Neither of them—well, I don’t think they’ve missed me or worried about me much since I’ve been gone.”
“So you’re an orphan.”
She nodded. She wasn’t particularly interested in his life, but she certainly didn’t feel like talking about her own. So she turned the subject. “What about you?” she asked. “What’s your family like?”
He gave her that effortless smile again. “Ah, you know what my people say. All Edori are family.”
Which was an evasive answer, she thought. He might not want to talk about his past much more than she did. Perversely, that made her more interested. “And why did you come to Cedar Hills?”
“I heard they were building, and I had some skill with my hands. And I was tired of Semorrah.”
“I don’t think I’d ever get tired of Semorrah,” she said frankly.
He laughed. “It’s a beautiful city,” he said. “And absolutely soulless. I was happy to go.”
“How long did you live there?”
“Seven years.”
She arched her eyebrows. “So long in a place you hated?”
“And five years in Castelana before that. A city I also did not love so much.”
“So why stay?”
The waiter arrived just then with their food, which smelled divine. “I’m starving,” she said as soon as the young man had left the table.
“So am I,” he said, and picked up his fork.
She had eaten three mouthfuls and given herself up to the sheer rapture of taste before she realized he hadn’t answered her last question. “I thought Edori didn’t like cities,” she said.
“They don’t.”
“Then why did you spend so long in Castelana and Semorrah?”
He gave her another smile, this one laced with hurt. “Why did any Edori of the last twenty years live in places with people they despised?”
She lifted her fork again, then set it down without tasting the food. “You were a slave,” she breathed.
He nodded. He did not look eager to talk about it, but he did not look entirely unwilling, either. “Almost half my life,” he said.
“But you—but they—but how did that happen?”
“As it happened with so many Edori. The Jansai came upon us by night and raided our camp. Most of the grown men were killed. The women and the boys my age were kept. Taken to the city and sold.”
“But how did they—you can’t just kill people!” she exclaimed. “Even Jansai. Jovah doesn’t allow it!”
“Yovah allowed it for nearly twenty years,” he said with a certain grimness. “Or, rather, Raphael. It was a great day for the Edori when Yovah chose an Edori girl for the Archangel Gabriel’s bride. Although from everything I know of Gabriel, he would have freed the Edori even without Rachel’s intercession.”
“Rachel isn’t really an Edori.”
“Raised by them. She understands the people.”
“So when Gabriel became Archangel—”
Rufus gestured with both hands, shaping the world. “All the Edori were released, most often reluctantly, from their merchant and Jansai masters. Hundreds of us. Thousands. Many, many, many had died in captivity, because Edori require freedom the way you require food. But some of us—the younger ones, the ones who didn’t know any better—we survived all those years. Till we were set free.”
She was fascinated now. “And then what?”
His expression was ironic. “Yes, and then what? That’s been the question for a lot of us. We don’t belong anywhere. We hate the cities where we’ve lived so long, but we’ve forgotten how to live as true Edori, wandering the world and living in harmony with the earth. I know a few who have tried to be farmers, but they’re not used to coaxing a living from the land. Most of us have ended up back in cities of one sort or another, doing the kind of work we did before. Getting paid for it, this time, but not loving it any more.”
“Have you tried to go back?” she asked. “Back to your people?”
“My whole tribe is dead.”
“But you said all Edori are family.”
A slight smile for that. “True. And any branch of that family would welcome me. Or so I tell myself. Maybe I don’t want to find out if that’s really true. Maybe I want to believe the Edori are exactly as a thirteen-year-old remembers them, loving and kind and welcoming. Maybe it is easier to hold on to that belief while living in Cedar Hills.”
She took a mouthful of her food and chewed and swallowed while she thought that over. “I think you should find out,” she said.
“Oh, I’ve gotten used to the comforts of the city by now,” he said. “I’m used to a roof over my head when it rains, and food available when I want it. I’m used to buying my clothes instead of making them, and used to sleeping by myself in a big room instead of sharing my small tent with ten others. I don’t see myself traveling with a clan from storm to drought, from summer to winter, and smiling through it all like it’s Yovah’s great adventure.”
“I’d go back,” she said. “If I could return to my childhood? I’d do it. Without a second thought.”
“Oh? And this was a childhood before you moved to the farm?”
“Yes. We were rich. Or it seemed rich to me then. I had beautiful clothes and everything I wanted, and my mother loved me more than she loved anything else in the world. I’ll never feel that safe and happy again. Never.”
“You may find someone else who loves you more than the world itself. Then you won’t miss the riches.”
She thought about her joyless trysts with David, the stolen embraces with rich lordlings at James’s farm. “I think money lasts longer than love,” she said.
“And that’s what you came to Cedar Hills for?” he asked. “Money? I wouldn’t think you’d get rich apprenticing with a healer.”
She just stared at him and did not try to answer. She didn’t have to. It would never have occurred to her that she could be so deep in conversation with a mortal that she would fail to notice the approach of an angel, but that was exactly what happened. A laugh, a footfall, the coolness of a shadow falling over her, and she looked up to find David standing beside their table. He was dressed in formal black and white, and his dark hair fell picturesquely over his eyebrows. He did not look like he had had his full quota of liquor yet this night, for his eyes were alert and his pocked skin not yet flushed from wine.
“My little laundress,” he said in that low, delighted voice. “How electrifying to see you in another setting! I didn’t know you ever left the confines of the dormitory.”
“David,” she said, her voice betraying both her pleasure at seeing him and her embarrassment at being placed in just this position. She did not expect him to linger long to chat, however; two of his dorm mates stood a few feet away, looking bored and impatient. “Hello.”
“Out for an evening of fun? You certainly deserve it,” he said. “But it seems so long since I’ve had a chance to visit with you.”
“Well, I’m—I’d like to see you again sometime—when you’ve got an evening free,” she said, stammering. She couldn’t look over in Rufus’s direction.
“Tomorrow, then,” he said gaily. “I’ll look forward to it.”
And with no more discussion than that, he spun around, his dark wings adding more shadows to the room, and strode off with his friends. Elizabeth dropped her gaze to her plate and thought how unappetizing the expensive meal suddenly looked.
“Ah,” said Rufus. “That’s why you came to Cedar Hills.”
Chapter Ei
ghteen
Obadiah spent the entire week he was in Cedar Hills wishing he was in Breven.
It wasn’t that there was nothing to do in Cedar Hills. He was busier there than he had been during his whole three days in the desert city, when all he did was wait on Uriah’s convenience and think about Rebekah. It was just that his heart wasn’t in any of his activities. His heart was in the hands of a Jansai girl whom he might never see again.
Impossible to believe that.
She had managed to win her way free that second night and spend a few hours with him, though she brushed off his attempts to seriously examine what risks she was running. “But if you get caught,” he said more than once. “If your father finds out—”
“He’s not my father.”
“The man who acts as your father. Or your betrothed. If they discover you have been roaming the city on your own—let alone if they discover what you have been doing—what happens to you?”
“Nothing very good, I imagine,” she answered, shrugging. She wouldn’t outline possible punishments for him, and her lack of concern made him think, perhaps, it would not be so very awful if she was found out. A brutal beating, perhaps, confinement to her room forever—he wasn’t able to make his mind come up with worse penalties.
And yet he knew, they all knew, how harsh and unforgiving the Jansai could be. Rachel, who was pretty good at hating, reserved her fiercest animosity for the Jansai, and Gabriel admitted that he disliked them too much to deal with them. But they could not be so awful as that, not if they had produced a creature like Rebekah and she was content to live among them.
“I wish you would return to Cedar Hills with me,” he said to her again that second night, and again she told him no.
“This is my life.”
“You are toying with your life by seeing me.”
“Well, perhaps I won’t toy with you very much longer.” Said with a kiss and a smile. She had learned lovers’ ways so quickly.
