“A blessing? It’s cold in the mornings and hot enough to make me sweat in the afternoon, and we’ve seen nothing but ugly clouds for three days in a row.”
“Yes, but trust me, you’d rather not be traveling in straight sunlight. You’re both hot and half-blind by the time you arrive at your destination. And if you’d ever traveled in rain, well, all I can say is, you wouldn’t be complaining now.”
She had taken off her jacket well before lunchtime, and now, in the full heat of late afternoon, she was rolling up her shirtsleeves. “You’re right. I wouldn’t want to travel in rain,” she said.
He handed her the reins. “Here, just hold to these a moment. That looks good,” he said, and proceeded to roll up his own sleeves all the way to the shoulders of his shirt. “Thank you, lady,” he said, taking back the reins.
She couldn’t help glancing over at him, at the crystal knob in his right arm that had been exposed by the elimination of the sleeve. On the seedy Bennie, even the divine crystal looked rakish and unkempt.
“You’ve got a Kiss,” she observed.
He glanced down at the implant as if he’d never noticed it before. “I do, at that. I suppose you’ve got one as well?”
She turned slightly on the seat, so he could see the identical feature set into her own right arm. Even in the spare sunlight, the glasslike node took on a certain luminescence, sparkling with refraction. “Yes. My mother says I wasn’t even a day old before they took me to the priest to have it installed. I never thought it did me much good, though.”
Bennie grinned. “What good is it supposed to do you? They say that Jovah uses it to track your movements, so I suppose it means he’s watched over me all these years, but I have to say I haven’t really been aware of him looking down at me at any particular moment.”
“Yes, but that’s not all a Kiss does,” Elizabeth said.
He looked down at her again, his face amused. “Ah. Some secret romantic ability, I’m guessing.”
She flushed in irritation and answered a little sulkily. “It’s not a secret. They say when you meet your true love for the first time, the Kiss in your arm flares with light. That’s how you know you’re meant to be together.”
Bennie eyed the acorn-sized nodule nestled in his flesh. “That I did not know,” he said. “So all these years I’ve been wasting my time with women who didn’t cause my Kiss to light up like a wedding celebration? Although, I have to say, I’ve enjoyed some of those liaisons, Kiss or no, and I’m not so sure I would have been willing to pass them up.”
She looked away. “I’m sure you made the choices that were right for you.”
“And has this phenomenon ever happened to you?” he asked.
“Of course not,” she said with dignity. “Or I would still be with the man the god had selected for me.”
He laughed. “You know, I consider myself a god-fearing man. I try to live a good life. I try to be harmless. I try to do a kind deed from time to time. I say a prayer to Jovah when I’m afraid or grateful. I’ve even traveled out to see the Gloria once or twice, because it’s a fine thing to watch all the angels of Samaria gather together and sing to their god. But I can’t say that I believe Jovah is all that interested in what goes on in my life on a daily basis. I don’t think he cares who I love. I don’t think it matters to him at all.”
“You’re wrong,” Elizabeth said. “Jovah cares about all of us.”
He glanced down at her, and for a moment she could read the words trembling in his mouth: Then why hasn’t he taken better care of you? But he did not say them. He just clucked to the horses and urged them to move at a little faster pace. “Glad to hear it,” he said at last. “We could all use a little extra care.”
They arrived at Cedar Hills late on that third day. Elizabeth had been dozing in the wagon but woke up when they pulled within sight of the angel hold laid out on one of the open plains of central Jordana.
At first she was disappointed. Cedar Hills looked like nothing so much as an extremely prosperous market town. Its collection of buildings appeared to encompass schools and shops and expensive homes spread over a dozen acres of unexceptional lowland. It was pretty enough, with patches of green scattered throughout the central area, and a few quite detailed fountains creating a sense of light and motion, but it did not look extraordinary. It did not look like a place angels would view from their great soaring heights and choose to settle in.
“Are you sure this is it?” Elizabeth asked.
Bennie laughed. “What were you expecting?”
She waved her hands. “Something more—magnificent. Something high and remote, on a great mountain.”
“You’ve got to go to the Eyrie for that,” Bennie replied, unimpressed. “It’s high on a mountain, and you can’t get to it unless an angel carries you up from Velora. Used to be, Windy Point was even worse, but it’s gone now. Sheered away from the mountain when Gabriel called down a thunderbolt.”
“Yes, I know. . . .” she said absently, still looking around her. Well, of course Windy Point was gone. That was why Cedar Hills had been built in the first place, because Gabriel had destroyed the hold of the evil Archangel Raphael. Elizabeth remembered how shocked Angeletta had been when they heard the news about the annihilation of Windy Point. It had been Angeletta’s dream to be invited to that remote, inhospitable mountain stronghold, and now it had disappeared from the earth.
And in its place we have this? Elizabeth thought with some disappointment. Each of the three provinces had to have its own angel compound, so Gabriel and his brother, Nathan, had chosen this location to build a new hold in Jordana. Gone the majesty and the mystery of a mountain retreat! Anyone could get to Cedar Hills, any carter with a load of produce, any farmer with a complaint about his taxes.
Any angel-seeker with no dowry but hope and audacity.
“But where do the angels live?” she demanded. “I don’t see any place grand enough for them.”
“I don’t know where they live, precisely,” Bennie murmured, pointing upward, “but I see one flying even now.”
Elizabeth quickly lifted her head to see, and her breath caught in her throat. Above them, but lazily descending, an angel shape made a fantastical pattern against the sky. The heretofore disobliging sun chose this moment to shine a little more brightly, outlining the graceful, impossible wings, the straight, muscular body, the halo of yellow hair. The angel lifted his wings with a slow, effortless motion, then lowered them as nonchalantly as a girl would lower her comb after unsnarling her tangled hair. He spiraled down like the embodiment of grace. The instant his feet touched the ground, he paused a moment, as if remembering what it felt like to be earthbound again, then strode forward a few paces. Within moments, he had disappeared inside a dark brick building and was lost to their sight.
Elizabeth turned to Bennie, her eyes so wide she thought she might be able to see the whole world at once. “An angel,” she breathed.
“That’s the major product here in Cedar Hills,” he agreed.
“I’m so glad I came here.”
Chapter Three
Obadiah flew from the Eyrie to Cedar Hills in two days, cursing himself the whole way.
He had been glad enough to accept this commission from Gabriel, glad enough to leave the Eyrie, but he had been stupid enough to want to say good-bye to Rachel. And he was not sure he could fly fast enough or far enough to outdistance his regrets.
He had managed to be gone from the Eyrie much of the time over the past eighteen months, a time of slow rebuilding throughout Samaria. Everything had changed since that terrible and wonderful Gloria, when power had shifted from Raphael to Gabriel and the god had brought down Mount Galo in a ferocious display of power. Nearly a third of the angels in all Samaria had been destroyed that day—as well as dozens of merchants, Jansai, landholders, and power mongers of the three provinces—and help was needed everywhere. Obadiah had always been the first one to volunteer to join the task force in Semorrah, the angel council
at Monteverde, the merchants’ convocation in Luminaux. He had made himself useful. He had kept himself occupied.
It still had been hard to overlook how deeply Rachel had fallen in love with her husband, after all those months of seeming to despise him. And Obadiah was glad of that, truly he was. He admired the Archangel Gabriel more than he admired any man living or dead. Gabriel deserved a strong and passionate wife. It was just that Obadiah had this tendre for the angelica, a tenderness and an affection that couldn’t be subdued and wouldn’t go away. It was hard for Obadiah not to hate Gabriel just a little when he felt such longing for Rachel.
And Rachel, damn her, knew it.
Gabriel, Obadiah supposed, did not.
The Archangel had called Obadiah to his room a week ago to talk over the troubles in Breven. Even sitting relaxed in a specially fashioned chair, Gabriel appeared to be standing bolt upright on some high mountaintop, watching the landscape below him with an unwavering attention. The events of the past two years showed on Gabriel’s austere face. His black hair had silvered at the temples; his fierce blue eyes were accented with lines at the far corners. But there was no weariness in Gabriel. There was no abatement of intensity. He still had the force and conviction of a righteous man who had become the personal confidante of the god.
“You sent for me?” Obadiah asked, stepping inside the room.
Gabriel nodded. “Please. Sit down. I’m facing a problem.”
He had faced nothing but problems since becoming Archangel, Obadiah reflected, but none of them had proved stronger than his will. “Well, if it’s something you can’t handle without my help, it must be dreadful indeed,” Obadiah joked, settling himself in an opposite chair.
Gabriel smiled only faintly at that. “It’s Breven,” he said without preamble. “Or, actually, all the Jansai, but Breven is where the discontent is the greatest.”
Obadiah nodded, waiting for more information. The Jansai were a nomadic, opportunistic people who traveled the length and breadth of Samaria, selling goods and services. They were the lifeblood of Samarian commerce, but they were not entirely trustworthy, and Gabriel had always had an uneasy relationship with them. Raphael had made friends with the Jansai, had turned his back on their misdeeds, and encouraged them as they began a systematic enslavement of the Edori people.
Several Jansai leaders had perished with Raphael when Jovah leveled Mount Galo, but that wasn’t the only hardship to occur among the Jansai since Gabriel had taken over as Archangel. By freeing all the Edori, Gabriel had completely destroyed the Jansai’s most lucrative source of income. Breven, the haphazard and ramshackle city in eastern Jordana that all the wandering Jansai occasionally called home, was in deep financial distress. The Jansai caravans that had always crisscrossed Samaria, selling every staple and luxury produced in the three provinces, had grown tattered and unreliable. It was no wonder, thought Obadiah, that the Jansai were exhibiting discontent.
“Do you know Uriah? He stepped forward to take Malachi’s place when Malachi was lost at Galo,” Gabriel said.
“Middle-aged, heavyset, small eyes, snarling manner,” Obadiah said lightly. “I know him.”
Gabriel snorted. “You have just described the whole Jansai race,” the Archangel said caustically. “But that’s him. He has sent me a letter full of threats.”
Obadiah’s brows rose. “Threatening you? With what? What does he think he could do to harm you?”
Gabriel shook his head. “Not me personally. The welfare of the realm. He is offering to withhold the caravans from all commerce, to prove to me—and, I suppose, everyone—how necessary the Jansai are to our survival. Worse than that, he is threatening to turn the Jansai into vandals, sending the caravans out, but with malicious intent, to small country farms and isolated holdings.”
Obadiah pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. “Vicious, but ultimately unproductive,” he decided. “How will that solve the Jansai woes? It will just make people hate them more.”
Gabriel gave him a wintry smile. “He feels no tactic is too desperate to gain attention for the Jansai plight,” he said. “Though I agree with you that this particular ploy would seem to be counterproductive.”
“Well, he must want a concession from you that would prompt him to stay his hand,” Obadiah said.
Gabriel nodded. “Oh yes. Freighting privileges and exclusive rights to ferry certain products. Tax incentives. The basic negotiating tools of business.”
Obadiah grinned. “He must have found himself a Manadavvi advisor.” The Manadavvi, wealthiest of all the Samarian people, lived on fertile land in northern Gaza and were constantly badgering the sitting Archangel for economic privileges.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Gabriel said. “The problem is, most of their demands are impossible.”
“Can you give in on one or two of them?” Obadiah asked. “Just to avert calamity?”
“I hope so,” Gabriel said. “That’s what I need you for.”
“Me? I’ll help in any way I can, angelo, you know that, but I don’t particularly have a head for business negotiations.”
“No, but I’m not sure that’s what’s required,” Gabriel said. “I think what is required more than anything is a knack for appearing interested in what the other man is saying. Even when you are not, in fact, interested. It is a skill I do not possess in the slightest.”
Obadiah grinned again. “I would not contradict the Archangel,” he said. “But Nathan—he’s always been something of a diplomat—”
“Nathan has all he can do to oversee the building of Cedar Hills and the general well-being of Jordana,” Gabriel said. “We are stretched too thin—all the angel holds—there are not enough of us to sing the basic prayers for rain and sun. I need Nathan to do the job he has been doing so well for the past year and a half. I need him to be leading the host at Cedar Hills. I do not need him mired in fruitless negotiations with the Jansai and leaving the rest of the province to languish.”
“I’ll be happy to go, Gabriel, but I don’t know that I can promise exceptional results. If Uriah won’t listen to reason—”
“I don’t think he wants to listen to you at all,” Gabriel interrupted. “He wants us to listen to him. I’m sure you’ll have any number of conferences with him and his slimy friends, and they’ll want you to drink some evil-tasting, badly made wine, and sympathize with their troubles, and tell them I am the most hard-hearted, intractable person you’ve ever met, man or angel, and make them feel as if they are not being overlooked in the great scheme of Samarian life. I think that may be all that is called for. At any rate, if any real negotiating is to be done, you know I will want to approve the terms. I will authorize you to make certain deals, but if anything develops outside those parameters, you will have to consult with me before agreeing to anything. So your negotiating skills do not need to be particularly developed. Only your charm. And everyone knows you have an abundance of that.”
“My poor talents are yours to command,” Obadiah murmured.
Gabriel raised his hands with an abrupt, decisive motion. “So when can you leave? What must you take with you?”
Obadiah straightened in his chair, raising his eyebrows a little at the tone. “I can be packed in a few moments, if you want me to be on my way immediately,” he said.
Gabriel nodded, but he was frowning. “I do not think—going into this task you must realize—this is not something that will be accomplished overnight,” the Archangel said, seeming to have an unaccustomed inability to find the right words. “It is not merely a matter of packing an overnight bag.”
Now Obadiah was frowning, too, trying to get at whatever lay behind Gabriel’s words. “No, I understand that,” he said. “But you think it will take me longer than a few weeks? I should pack for a stay of some months?”
“It could very well be a lifetime commission,” Gabriel said.
“Dealing with the Jansai?” Obadiah said, startled.
“Relocating to Cedar Hills,” Gabriel
amended. The Archangel hesitated, then shook his head. “Or perhaps not a lifetime assignment. But one that may last more than a year or so. All the holds are under great strain, but the situation is worst in Cedar Hills. At least in Monteverde, and here, Ariel and I have loyal supporters among the landed gentry. We have lived with our angels our whole lives, we know who can be trusted to carry out a petition, and who might bear a little extra watching. We have our systems in place. Poor Nathan is trying to learn it all at once—how to be a leader, how to deploy his forces, who his allies might be among the landowners of Jordana—and all the while he’s trying to finish construction of the hold. I have complete confidence that Nathan can handle all these daunting tasks at once, but I would like to give him all the help I can.” Gabriel’s blue eyes stabbed in Obadiah’s direction. “I would like to give him you. Not just for your help in the Breven matter. But for a long time. Because I trust you almost as much as I trust my brother.”
“High praise, Gabriel. Thank you,” Obadiah said.
Gabriel was still watching him. “It is a lot to ask, I know. And I will not command or insist. But if you would be willing to do this for me—”
“Happy to do it,” Obadiah interrupted, leaning forward. “Gabriel, I will always do any task you place before me. And I will gladly undertake this one. But I may need a day or so to pack.”
“And make your farewells,” Gabriel said. “Though of course we will expect to see you often back at the Eyrie.”
So perhaps Gabriel did know, after all.
It took Obadiah three days to arrange to move his life from the Eyrie to Cedar Hills. He had not thought of himself as a particularly acquisitive man, but when he looked around his bedchamber, it seemed overfull of items he would just as soon not leave behind. His casual clothes, his formal clothes, his flying leathers—summer shoes, winter boots—a favorite chair, some artwork, a rug that Rachel had helped him pick out in the Velora market, and a tapestry that Rachel had woven for him with her own hands. His books, his music, his jewelry . . .