by Sharon Shinn
Rachel was considering. “And there have been no manna blossoms since Hagar’s time? These roots must be extremely old, then.”
“Oh, there were flowers for hundreds of years after that—but fewer and fewer every year, since young girls would harvest them before the seed could fall. I remember manna blooming when I was a little girl, but I haven’t seen any for years.”
“So why don’t the angels pray to Jovah and ask for more?”
“Some have tried. I think Ariel did, one summer, but no manna fell. Perhaps they did not know the right prayers. Perhaps there is no more.”
“Too bad,” Rachel said. “I like the stories.”
At dinner a few nights later, she taxed Gabriel with the tale. “And Hannah said no manna fell for Ariel,” she finished up. “Did you ask Jovah for it? Perhaps he would answer your prayers.”
Gabriel had listened, smiling, but he shook his head. “I think that’s a prayer only a woman can make to Jovah.”
“But why?”
“Well, women are the ones who use the manna seeds, after all.”
“Men benefit from it,” Nathan said with a laugh. “At least some men would consider it a benefit.”
Gabriel grinned. “Men may enjoy the consummation of desire, but women are calculating beyond that physical moment,” he said. “Women seduce with a purpose in mind, more often than not. They’re thinking about marriage and children and the next generation. Men usually don’t think that far ahead.”
“What about angel-seekers?” Hannah wanted to know. “The women who pursue angels in all the towns and villages.”
“They more than anyone have a purpose in mind,” Gabriel said seriously. “They know that to have an angel child will change their lives completely.”
“Well, there are men who are angel-seekers, too—Ariel and Maga could tell you stories,” Nathan said.
“Certainly. And they may be interested in siring angel babies, though I think glamour is more their aim. But that’s a side issue! We’re talking about the manna seed. When Hagar first prayed to Jovah for the manna to fall to earth, Samaria had only been settled a short time. There had been great hardships—famine, plague, flood—and hundreds of people had died in each separate disaster. She knew that if the settlement was not quickly repopulated, the whole race could die out, mortals and angels alike. And she prayed to Jovah for help, and manna is what he gave her. It was god and angelica working in concert to produce a whole new generation as quickly as possible. Uriel doesn’t seem to have grasped the urgency quite as quickly as his wife. And that’s why I say manna is a woman’s prayer. Because women think most deeply about the next generation—and that is almost all that Jovah thinks about.”
“You strip the romance from everything,” Nathan complained.
“Well, I am not much of a romantic,” Gabriel replied.
Nathan glanced sideways at Rachel, who was thinking over Gabriel’s words with an air of complete absorption. “Give you time,” Nathan said softly. “Give you time.”
That kind of discussion had not been uncommon in the past two weeks—there had been disagreements, of course, but nothing acrimonious—but then, they were both trying hard to get along. Which was why the next serious argument caught them both by surprise.
Gabriel had stopped by Rachel’s room late one afternoon, something he rarely did. She invited him in with an unaccountable sense of shyness, but he was not in the least loverlike. He seemed somewhat abstracted, wrestling with some problem. He had been gone for the past few days, and she was not even sure when he had returned.
“I need your advice,” he said abruptly, after sitting silently for a good three minutes on her newest floor cushion. “More than that. I need your help.”
She sank to the rug before him. “Well, of course. What is it?”
“Lord Jethro of Semorrah. What is he afraid of?”
She raised her eyebrows. “You mean, like spiders and rats?”
“No—much bigger. Is he afraid of losing his only son? Afraid his wife will leave him? Is money all he thinks of? Is he afraid he will lose his fortune and his standing among the other merchants?”
Why did he want to know? Rachel put the question aside and spoke thoughtfully. “Well, all the merchants are afraid of that. They’re very jealous of each other. Lord Jethro used to sit with his son for hours and speculate on how much money some of the other Semorrah families had, calculating rent sums and tariffs and income from all their little businesses. He’s obsessed by money, but they all are, I think.”
“So—if I could find a believable way to threaten to take his money away, I could get his attention.”
“Well, but you’d also make him hate you.”
“He already hates me.”
“What are you trying to prove to him?”
He sighed and ran a hand over his face. He looked very tired. “I have spent some time in the past couple of months trying to convince the merchants and the Manadavvi and the Jansai that the inequities of our current system must be righted. I have been spectacularly unsuccessful so far. I’d like to find a way to make them take notice—of me, and of the god as well.”
“I know one thing Jethro is really afraid of,” Rachel commented. “And that’s water.”
“Water?”
“He’s terrified of drowning. He owns a pleasure craft, but he never uses it—Daniel does, sometimes, but Jethro never. He hates to take the ferry into Bethel, which is one of the reasons he trades with Jordana so much—because he can use the bridge to get to land. It’s strange that a man who is so afraid of drowning lives in the middle of a river.”
Gabriel frowned at her, brooding. “Well, that’s something to think about. Perhaps I could cause the river to rise. On his way over here—or maybe he would be more impressed if it happened on his way back. Because I think, if I could sway one of them—”
“He’s coming here?” Rachel interrupted. “When? And why?”
“In a couple of weeks. They all are—Jethro, Samuel, Elijah Harth, Abel Vashir, half a dozen of the Jansai leaders. I thought, if I saw them all together, I could get a better sense of who was allied with whom—and maybe make a few of my own points, though I’m beginning to think those points are going to have to be made in a drastic fashion, and not in my own hold—”
“Then maybe you should flood the river before he gets here so he’s a little shaken up. Better yet, flood all of Semorrah. That will get his attention.”
He gave her an absent smile. “I know you don’t like him,” he said, “but maybe you could spend some time convincing him that I’m capable of doing it. Fill his mind with fears. So that when he goes back on the ferry, even if the river is smooth as glass, he’ll spend his whole time looking over the sides uneasily.”
“I would,” she said, “but I won’t be here.”
He stared at her blankly. “Won’t be here? Surely you can miss a day or two of teaching—”
She shook her head. “No, I’ll be in Luminaux by then. Or actually, outside of Luminaux a few miles.”
“What are you talking about?” he demanded in an impatient voice.
“The Gathering. I’m going with Matthew.”
“But you can’t,” he said. “I need you here. I just told you—all my enemies will be arriving at the same time.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But it will take us a week or more to travel there—longer, actually, because I’m going to stop at Mount Sinai for a day or two—and I’ll be gone days before your guests arrive.”
He was starting to get seriously angry. “Rachel, you can’t leave,” he said. “You must see how important this meeting is—all the merchants, half the Jansai, half the Manadavvi—it’s as much a matter of social entertaining as it is a political maneuver, and I need you with me.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Gabriel, but you didn’t tell me you were planning it.”
“Well, you didn’t mention that you were leaving for—what is it, a month?—to go to this Gathering—whic
h, among other things, falls too close to the Gloria for you to go.”
“You said I didn’t need your permission to do things. You said I had my own privileges.”
“And so you do, but the joint responsibilities come first! I can understand that you wish to attend the Gathering—”
“I’m going to attend it. It’s been five years since I’ve been to one, five years since I’ve seen any of my people.”
“They aren’t your people! They were kind to you, but—”
“They are my people! My family! I have no one but the Edori.”
“You have the angels,” he said stiffly. “You have me.”
“You! You can’t even understand why this is so important to me!”
“And you are making no attempt to understand what is important to me! Rachel, don’t you see what I am trying to do here? Among other things, I’m fighting for the survival of the Edori. I am trying to force three powerful, wealthy factions to overhaul their lucrative trading agreements, to restructure the very basis of their wealth—and they don’t like it, they don’t want to do it, and I need every weapon I have in hand to fight them.”
“Some other time, then! Change the day of your great meeting. Make it after the Gloria. I will be here then.”
“Too many people are involved for me to do that. If you would just be reasonable—”
“Be reasonable—”
“Yes! How can you expect to prepare for the Gloria if you are gone for weeks and weeks beforehand? When will you practice? What will you sing? You have no idea how exhausting the performance will be—if you trek all the way to Luminaux and back—”
“What is it you are really afraid of, Gabriel? That if I go to the Edori, I will be so happy there that I won’t come back?”
“Well, it wouldn’t surprise me all that greatly,” he said. “Since you have made it abundantly clear that you prefer your life with them to your life among the angels.”
“If the angels were more agreeable,” she said softly, “perhaps I could learn to love them.”
He sprang to his feet and began pacing around the room. She stood too, unwilling to sit tamely while he strode about. “Yes! I can see why you would say the angels have given you no care at all! It was only angels who rescued you from slavery—angels who brought you to a position of power and honor—angels who have tried to befriend you: Magdalena, Obadiah, myself. But what do you give back to any of us? Me you delight in deceiving—you will not tell me your troubles, you will not tell me your plans—and now when, for the first time, I ask something of you, you refuse, and you are not even sorry that you cannot oblige me!”
“And that’s exactly the difference between the angels and the Edori!” she retorted furiously. “The Edori took me in and asked nothing of me at all. Nothing! Except that I be happy among them, and I was. But the angels—! From the beginning, it was expected that I look a certain way, behave a certain way. I did not ask for the role you have tried to thrust on me. I did not ask to be brought here. I did not ask to be your bride. I have done as well as I can among people who are strange to me, people who do not like me, but Gabriel, I would gladly leave at any time and not come back again.”
“You can’t do that,” he said flatly. “I won’t let you.”
“You won’t let me? You won’t let me leave here? How can you stop me?”
“Who gave you the means to leave this place, anyway, if it wasn’t me? When you were afraid to be taken down the mountain in an angel’s arms, who gave you the way out? Who said, ‘You are not a prisoner here’? Well, I did—and I can just as easily revoke that. I can take away your escape route—”
“You can take away from me any privilege you wish,” she said coldly. “And you can lose any hold on me you ever had.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“How do you think you can make me sing? In your precious Gloria. Can you slap me? Beat me? Chain me up? You may take me to your stupid Plain, you may have all your angels and all your friends gathered around, but if I don’t want to open my mouth, no power on this whole world can make me sing. And you know it. Take away from me whatever you want. I can take away more from you.”
They glared at each other for a full minute, both of them too angry to speak. Rachel’s hands were balled so hard at her sides that her whole body was cramped to sustain the pressure. Gabriel, before her, looked like the incarnation of divine vengeance. His pale face was all angular, angry bone; his great wings quivered and hummed with tension. His eyes were so blue that they colored the air; they scorched her with a lapis lazuli fire.
“I cannot believe you mean that,” he said finally, in a voice so tightly controlled that it trembled, though just a little.
“Well, I do,” was her instant response.
He shook his head. “What was Jovah thinking of,” he said, almost whispering, “when he chose you for this part? You will destroy me—you will destroy all of us.”
And without giving her a chance to say another word, he spun around on his heel and strode out. The feather edge of his wing brushed her as he swept by, but she stood unmoving, her hands still clenched, waiting a moment to breathe so that the heat of his passage would have cooled and the air would be safe to take into her lungs. And then she flung herself on her bed and cried again, and hated him with ail her heart.
* * *
They did not speak again for the next week, and studiously avoided each other, which was not hard. The Eyrie was big enough for a careful man and woman to keep out of each other’s way.
She had informed her students that she would be gone for a few weeks, and left them detailed projects to complete in her absence. Peter told her he could foresee no problems arising that he would not be able to deal with.
“And if I do have any questions, I’ll send Obadiah to Gabriel,” he added.
“Yes, I’m sure Gabriel can solve any crisis that comes up,” she replied coolly.
The students were sorrier to see Matthew leave than they were to see Rachel go, but he promised to bring them back treats from Luminaux, so they were resigned to it. “We’ll only have a day or two at Josiah’s, now,” Matthew warned her. “That is, if you’re still planning to shop in Luminaux before the Gathering. We could go afterward, of course.”
“That’s cutting it very close,” she said. “We have to be here at least a few days before the Gloria.”
“Well, then, it’s tomorrow we should be leaving.”
“Yes. I’m ready.”
She was used to taking her evening meal at the school with Peter and the children, but for this last day, Obadiah invited her out to dinner. He took her to a small cafe she had not been to before, and ordered from the exotic menu.
“You may hate this food,” he remarked. “It’s very strange.”
She smiled. “Then why did you bring me here?”
“Scheming. Hoping you’ll get so violently ill you can’t leave in the morning.”
“Why, Obadiah. I didn’t know you would miss me that much.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be happy with you gone,” he said lightly. “I’ll probably mope around the Eyrie, languishing, until you return.”
“You could come with me.”
“An angel at the Gathering? I don’t think so.”
“There are often non-Edori there, though I don’t remember ever seeing an angel before, I have to admit.”
“You should bring Gabriel, if you’re going to bring any angel.” She was surprised, and kept silent.
“You’re wrong, you know,” he said, very gently. “To leave him this way.”
“You don’t know anything about it.”
“I know that you fought, and that you haven’t spoken since, and that you will be gone three weeks or more. I don’t know what was said, but—”
“Unforgivable things,” she interrupted.
“You really should be here for his meeting,” Obadiah persisted. “I understand how much you want to go to this Gathering,
but what Gabriel is trying to do is so important—”
“Oh, so now you’re on Gabriel’s side, are you?”
“I’ve always admired Gabriel,” the angel said seriously. “I may jest about him, and laugh at him to his face, but I’m really very much in awe of him. He’s a good man, Rachel. And he’s trying to do good things. Sometimes I don’t think you give him enough credit.”
She was flustered and upset, but it was impossible to be angry at Obadiah. “Yes—no, I do, but—Obadiah, he doesn’t make way for anyone else. He doesn’t accept anyone else’s reasons, he’s so sure he’s right.”
“Well, many times he is.”
“And even if he is right, I’m not staying,” she finished up mutinously. “You think I’m being selfish, I know, but I can’t—I have had nothing for so long. I have had everything taken away from me, and what the angels have given back to me is not what I want. I want—I need—to be among people I love again. I want—how can I explain this? I have never been as devout as Gabriel, as most of the angels,” she said, her voice changing, calming, as she tried to make him understand. “And while I lived in Semorrah, there were times I hated Yovah, hated what he had done to me, and to the Edori, and to people I loved. But while I lived with the Edori … They are very religious people, you know. They pray directly to the god, much as the angels do. And while I lived with the Edori, I felt close to Yovah. I heard him whisper in my ear. I believed—I knew—that my words went directly to his heart.
“And if—” she said, her voice slowing still more, “if I am to go to the Plain of Sharon and sing to Yovah, ask his blessing on all peoples of Samaria, I must feel close to him again. And I think I must go to the Gathering, and listen to the Edori singing, to understand again how a simple woman can call directly on the god. I must be renewed myself before I can give what the angels want me to give. Do you understand that? Perhaps I am being selfish, but not completely.”
“You could still go to the Gathering,” he said persuasively. “Stay here for the first day of Gabriel’s meeting, then let me fly you to Luminaux.”
