by Sharon Shinn
She almost laughed at that. “Oh, Obadiah, you kind man,” she said, and kissed him again. “I have been so afraid for so long that there is no more fear left in me. Well, yes, a little bit! I am afraid of what your angel friends think of me, and I am afraid to walk out on your strange streets with my face uncovered, and have everyone look at me, and know who I am, and know my story. I am afraid I won’t be a good mother. I’m afraid someday you may no longer love me. I’m—”
“That at least won’t happen,” he interrupted.
“I’m afraid of all the small terrors that life holds. But only a little afraid. Worried about them. But not very much. My child and I almost died, and yet we have survived. The god wrapped his hands around us and kept us safe. After that, I don’t think much of anything will frighten me too deeply. When Jovah puts his finger to your cheek and bids you live, you change a little, that’s all.”
He put his own finger to her cheek and traced the line of the bone. All healed now, the outer skin. All the bruises gone from the flesh. The bruises to the spirit would last far longer, he thought, than even she might realize. “Don’t change too much,” he teased. “For I was very fond of you the way you were.”
She turned her head to plant a kiss upon his hand. “And I,” she whispered against his palm, “am so very fond of you.”
They set out around noon the next day, a battalion of angels, and advanced on Breven. They were accompanied by Ariel, down from Monteverde to visit her newborn nephew, and three of the other angels from Gaza. As well as half the angels of the Eyrie and all but two angels from Cedar Hills. The only time angels usually gathered in such numbers was to sing at the Gloria, and Obadiah had to admit it was an impressive sight. A flock of great feathered creatures flying swiftly and purposefully on a mission of justice.
They spent one night on the road and arrived in Breven around noon the next day. As they came closer to the city, Obadiah moved to the head of the phalanx to lead the way to Uriah’s. Gabriel, with his majestic wingspan and absolutely unvarying focus on the goal, had led them this far, but Obadiah was the one who best understood the layout and politics of Breven. So he guided them to the gaudy red tent in the commercial district, where Uriah was most likely to be at this time of day, and came to a graceful landing. One by one, the other angels touched down behind him. Nearly seventy angels, wings spread out behind them, hands clasped before them, faces set and serious.
Gabriel nodded to Obadiah, and the two of them strode forward. Half a dozen of Uriah’s disciples had rushed out of the tent as the angels began to arrive and now stood staring silently at the intruders. Merchants and their young sons, standing in the shelter of neighboring tents, watched and whispered among themselves. No one stepped up to challenge them. No one asked why they had come.
Obadiah held back the tent flap for Gabriel, and the Archangel stepped inside, ducking his head and folding back his wings to fit through the narrow slot. Obadiah followed, assessing the situation inside with a quick glance. Yes, there was Uriah, on his feet and looking both apprehensive and calculating. There were two of his sons and about ten of his cohorts. All on their feet, all staring. All wondering.
“Good afternoon, Uriah,” Obadiah said quietly, nodding at the Jansai leader. “I believe you know the Archangel Gabriel.”
Neither of the men stepped forward or offered to shake hands. “We’re familiar with each other,” Uriah said.
“Good. Then let’s not waste time,” Gabriel said. The Archangel looked like the very incarnation of divine justice, with his stark face, his black hair, and his icy blue eyes. Every line of his body bespoke righteous anger. “You and your fellow Jansai citizens have recently sent two women into the desert to die. You will stop this practice. While I am Archangel, it will not occur again.”
There was a moment of silence and then a disbelieving laugh from Uriah. Around the tent, the other men uttered low growls of anger. “I don’t believe it’s within your purview to tell the Jansai how to observe their customs. By our laws, these women sinned—”
“I believe it’s not only within my purview to tell you, but within my ability to enforce my directives,” Gabriel interrupted coldly. “You will not again, while I am Archangel, send a woman into the desert to die.”
“I don’t think you—”
“There will be a place set up,” Gabriel continued, “within the limits of Breven itself, where Jansai women can go when they are endangered. It will be a sanctuary, and once they are there, you cannot touch them. Any woman will be able to go there at any time. This news will be spread to every house and tent in Breven.”
The muttering behind them grew louder, but Uriah only laughed. “And who will run this sanctuary for you? What Jansai woman would be so bold?”
“I will install a Manadavvi woman, or a mortal from one of the cities,” Gabriel said. Obadiah had high hopes that Zoe would eagerly take this commission, but they had not paused to ask her. “Or a whole contingent of men and women whom I trust to run this place.”
“You can pitch your own tent and run the place yourself, but no Jansai woman will use it,” Uriah spat at him. “We will keep our women locked in our houses forever before we will bow to some ridiculous mandate from an angel—from you. There will be no sanctuaries. There will be no change in the Jansai laws. We will continue to run our lives and the lives of our families as we have for generations.”
“You will do as I say,” Gabriel said.
Now Uriah did take a step toward the Archangel, fury in every line of his portly body. “Or you will do what, Gabriel? Call down the god’s thunderbolts on us—as you did at Windy Point, as you threatened to do when you last treated with Malachi? Or will you instead call down rainstorms, turn the sand of Breven into a wretched bog? That, too, you threatened in the past. Well, bring down your god’s wrath. Make your fiery little speeches. The Jansai are not afraid of you. We will not do your bidding.”
Gabriel shrugged, the motion causing his taut white wings to tremble and settle back. “Then your city will slowly die,” he said in a flat, unemotional voice. “I will spread the word to the Harths and the Vashirs in Gaza: Do not trade with the Jansai. I will call a council of merchants in Semorrah and Castelana and every town along the Galilee River, and I will tell them: Do not trade with the Jansai. I will send angels to every farm and homestead in the three provinces. I will walk through the azure streets of the Blue City myself. I will raise my voice—and my voice can be heard across Samaria—and I will say one thing only: Do not trade with the Jansai. I will ruin you with commerce, Uriah, more slowly and more certainly than I could ruin you with weather. Don’t think I will not do what I say.”
Uriah’s eyes snapped to Obadiah’s. “He cannot mean any of this,” Uriah grated out.
Obadiah spread his hands in a complicated, temporizing gesture. We have been such good friends, you and I; I would spare you the bad news now if I could. “I have known Gabriel forever,” Obadiah said quietly. “He never promises what he is not willing to ensure.”
“But he can’t be serious!”
“I assure you, I am.”
“I assure you, he is,” Obadiah said with gentle regret. When he wanted to jump up and down, howl in satisfaction, point his fingers, and level all sorts of accusations at the men in the tent. But Gabriel had told him to continue to play the part of mediator, to act as if he would do what he could to see that reason prevailed. Gabriel might be righteous, but he was not rash; he liked to keep an ally or two in position. “I told you before, the angels are willing to see the Edori become the commercial conduit of the country. In the face of this fresh scandal—” Obadiah shrugged, his wings, like Gabriel’s, fluttering with the motion. “The Archangel is more than ever determined to see such an alternate plan come to fruition. You do not have much to bargain with, I am afraid.”
“But this is our life! Our culture! Our ways! We do not interfere with angel ways! We do not ride into the cities and proclaim their customs wrong—though we think
them sinful and appalling. We do not attempt to force our beliefs on anyone outside of our own people—”
“The difference is, your own people are put to death for your beliefs,” Gabriel said shortly. “Unacceptable.”
Uriah was in a rage now, pacing closer to the angels and then farther away. The men in the tent had bunched together behind him and were muttering furiously among themselves. “Unacceptable? Tell me if this is unacceptable to you!” the Jansai leader shot at them, still pacing. “You think your god requires a member of every race to be present on the Plain of Sharon when you sing your precious Gloria. You think he will punish us all if you do not come together in harmony. Well, you have just knocked harmony from the world! There is discord now and forever between angels and Jansai! There will be no Jansai on that plain when you go to sing in a few weeks, and you will see then whether the god hears your voices! You will see then whom he strikes down!”
“There will be at least one Jansai present when we go to sing,” Gabriel said with infinite calm.
“We will stay in Breven—every one,” Uriah snarled.
“Oh no,” Gabriel said. “Didn’t I tell you? The woman Rebekah whom you expelled two weeks ago. She survived, and she is in the hands of the angels now. She will be happy to come sing with us and thank the god for her deliverance.”
Uriah gaped, and the men behind him gawked. Gabriel added, “You have until tomorrow morning to think about my terms. We stay at the Hotel Verde, and we leave with the dawn.”
The Archangel spun around with a whirl of white feathers and headed for the door of the tent. Then he paused, turned back, and fixed his gaze on an object to his left. “And I believe I will take that with me as I go,” he announced. In three long strides he had crossed to the firestick Uriah kept in his tent, lifted it from its box, and stalked back to the doorway. “Thank you,” he said, and walked out. Even stooping to duck through the canvas door did not detract from his dignity.
Obadiah paused to give the Jansai leader a sorrowful glance. “It is a new day, Uriah,” he said. “Gabriel will not relent.” And then he, too, slipped through the tent, narrowing his wings behind him so that he could ease through the constricted door.
Outside, he found Gabriel giving orders and dividing the host of angels into sections. “Every house,” the Archangel was saying, carelessly leaning on the firestick as if it were a cane. “Every tent. I will go to the Hotel Verde and prepare them for company.”
In minutes, the residential streets of Breven were alive with angels. They went in pairs from gate to gate, door to door, raising their beautiful voices and commanding the residents of each house to come forward.
“Bring us your women!” cried Daniel, Obadiah’s partner in this enterprise, every time the homeowner threw open his door and stared out.
“What? I will not—what?” was the typical response as the blustery Jansai merchant and two or three of his sons stared at their angelic visitors.
“Then we will go to them,” would be Daniel’s response, and the two angels would brush past them and into the houses.
After they had entered three or four mansions, Obadiah’s impressions became somewhat confused. There were similarities to each: the great dividing wall between the men’s quarters and the women’s, the smooth, heat-absorbing stone of the walls and floors, the lush rugs and tapestries and gorgeous baubles strewn carelessly about as arrogant symbols of wealth. In each house, there were crowds of young men and teenage boys, alarmed and questioning; there were one or two older men, angry but a little afraid.
And there were the women, a few of them shrieking, all of them covering their faces with hastily grabbed garments, shrinking back against the walls. They could be found in the kitchens, in the separate dining areas, and sometimes—because Obadiah and Daniel did not stop looking through the house until they had found a cluster of them—a few stories up in the sewing rooms. They all looked terrified, their big eyes darting around the room, glancing from their husbands’ faces to the faces of the avenging angels.
“We have come to tell you of a new day in Breven,” Daniel said to each audience. “No longer will you be forced to cower in your houses, subject to the whims of the men who are supposed to love you. The angels are setting up a place of safety in the city of Breven itself. Any woman, of any age, who wants to leave her husband’s protection, or her brother’s, or her father’s, may come to this place and be free.”
“Any woman who wants to leave now, with us, may do so,” Obadiah always added in a quiet voice. “We will take you to Cedar Hills and give you tools to start your life over.”
They had been in more houses than Obadiah could count—fifteen, twenty—before a young woman actually broke free of her mother’s protective embrace and scrambled across the room toward them. “Take me,” she begged, falling on her knees before Daniel. “Take me with you.”
Her mother screamed and her father bullied his way forward, face contorted with fury and fist upraised to strike. Daniel blocked his blow and shoved the man backward with so much force that he crashed into a table on the other side of the room.
“She comes with us,” Daniel said, “and any other who so chooses.”
It took hours for the troops of angels to canvass the city, moving slowly from the inner circles of wealth to the outer circles of poverty. Twice Obadiah and Daniel made visits to the Hotel Verde, flying low over the streets so that anyone who wished to look up could see that angels had invaded Breven and were present still. Each time they brought back with them a woman who had stepped forward and asked to be given shelter. Each time they found, back at the hotel, a growing cadre of rebel women who had similarly taken this remarkable chance. Not as many as Obadiah would have expected—frankly, he would have thought the whole gender would have risen up and fled the city limits—but a good number, thirty or forty. Enough to send the Jansai men fuming into the streets. To create a backlash, perhaps, to make conditions even worse for the women left behind.
But so many of them had stayed, wedded to their accustomed lives and the families they loved. Had she not been pregnant, Obadiah wondered, would Rebekah ever have chosen to abandon the life she knew for a terrifyingly unfamiliar place and people? He did not think so. He thought only great fear, and the fierce love she bore for her endangered child, had driven her out at the end—almost too late, even so. He had to wonder what compelling pressures these refugees were under, how dire their own lives had become, that they, like Rebekah, would make the bitter decision to break away.
“I think we have covered the city,” Gabriel said, coming up to Obadiah as he surveyed the crowded atrium of the Hotel Verde. Zoe and her brother were bringing out pillows and blankets and helping the women create makeshift bedrooms by the pillars and plants. “Eva and Ariel are back from the outer tents. We have carried the word everywhere.”
“And returned with quite a haul,” Obadiah said.
Gabriel’s glance flickered over the crowd. “We may find ourselves with one or two more before the night is ended,” the Archangel predicted. “Women who were not willing to walk away while their whole families were watching may find a way to slip out under cover of darkness.”
“And Zoe?” Obadiah asked. “Has she agreed to turn this hotel into a safe zone for Jansai women?”
A wintry smile lightened Gabriel’s stern features. “The young lady was most willing,” Gabriel said. “Her brother and father, however, would like to work out a system of monetary compensation. This hotel is a commercial establishment, after all, and cannot support a whole range of charitable endeavors.”
Obadiah could not help smiling. “Jovah bless the Manadavvi and their mercenary hearts,” he said. “But you have come to an agreement?”
“Not yet,” Gabriel said, “but we will. I think I will leave a few angels here for a day or so yet, and we will probably need to have a permanent presence in Breven for a while. But I believe we have made our point and shaken Uriah to the core.”
“He will agree t
o the terms,” Obadiah said.
Gabriel shrugged, utterly indifferent. “He will have to.”
Obadiah nodded. “Then, if you are done with me—”
Gabriel gave him a swift look of amusement. “Back to Cedar Hills tonight? You are that impatient?”
Obadiah shook his head. “No. I will leave with the rest of you in the morning. But I have another visit to make while I am here.”
It was true night by the time Obadiah came to a hover above Hector’s house. His first impulse was to go to the front door and pound on it, demanding admittance, as he had done all day. But then he spotted two figures below him in the sere inner garden. From the air they appeared to be two older women, sitting on a stone bench in the cold dark, their faces fairly well-illuminated by the light of a half moon. Obadiah wondered if they had come outside to discuss secrets in privacy, or if they were so weary of the echoes of trouble that still sounded inside this house that they sought an escape by sitting out in the chilly night air.
“Do not be afraid,” he called out in a low voice, and drifted down to join them. Both women came to their feet as he touched down and folded his wings back, but neither of them looked alarmed. One of them automatically covered her face with her hand, so the stranger could not see it, but the other one looked too weary and too sad to make even that much effort.
“The angels have already been here,” said the bare-faced woman in a tired voice. She looked old enough to be Rebekah’s grandmother. One of Hector’s aunts, perhaps. “You do not need to tell us again how the city of Breven is now flung open.”
“No, I have other news,” Obadiah said. “Bring the boy Jordan to me. I have a message.”
“A message?” the old woman said sharply, and then turned to her companion. “Go get Jordan.”
She hurried off, and Obadiah was left alone with the woman who had spoken. “It will do no good, you know,” she said. “Rounding up women and pretending the Jansai must live as the rest of you do. For hundreds of years, the Jansai have followed their own laws and customs. No matter what your Gabriel manages to do while he is in charge, everything will change back the minute his laws are lifted. The Jansai traditions are stronger than the Archangel’s will.”
