Angel-Seeker

  Now she looked troubled. “I would have put you in the central complex with us, but there are only a few rooms there, and they’re all taken. I could have Daniel moved, though—he wouldn’t mind, I’m sure, and you could take his room—”

  “Don’t you dare! I’m not displacing anyone for my comfort. I think I’d rather be here, anyway, away from your watchful eye. So I can consort with angel-seekers and other low company,” he explained.

  She smiled. “Well, you’ll find plenty of them here. Or they’ll find you. But I would hope you would hold to your usual high standards.”

  He made her a graceful bow. “Angela,” he said gravely, “I shall live by your direction.”

  After Maga left, Obadiah showered and changed into his last remaining set of clean clothes, and wondered how long it would be before his belongings arrived. But he discovered, to his relief, that the dormitory featured a laundry room where he could drop off his soiled clothes to be washed and returned to him. The girl working in the steamy room blushed when his hand accidentally brushed against hers. Angel-seeker, he thought immediately, but he smiled at her anyway and thanked her for her help.

  Then he strolled through Cedar Hills for about an hour, killing time till he needed to join Maga and the others for dinner. The three or four main streets that intersected at the town center were, he had to admit, lined with a lively variety of shops and restaurants. If he hadn’t been promised to Maga, he might have been tempted to step inside one of the little cafes to sample a meat pie or a roasted chicken, and see if the local wine was as good here as it had been in the river town where he stopped the night before. He came across three clothing stores that appeared to cater to a mix of angelic and mortal clientele, for the samples in the window included flying leathers and backless shirts that would accommodate angel wings as well as formal jackets and gowns that humans would be more interested in wearing. On one corner, a cheese shop sat next to a bakery, while across the street were a jeweler and a cobbler. Everything a man might need.

  Obadiah was in need of some jewelry himself. He hesitated a moment before going in, but there was no need to delay due to sentimental attachment to his Bethel roots. He pushed open the door, which chimed merrily with the motion, and greeted the friendly proprietor with his own ready smile.

  Chapter Four

  Nathan welcomed him with as much enthusiasm as Magdalena had, though he seemed more relaxed and satisfied than his edgy wife. “Obadiah! Gabriel had mentioned that he might be sending reinforcements, but I hadn’t dared to hope for anything so good. How long are you staying? Forever, I hope.”

  Obadiah smiled and leaned back carefully in his chair. So far, he had only spotted two chairs in this small dining room that were conventionally built, intended to hold mortals. All the rest were constructed like this one, with a thin cutaway back designed to support the spine but not interfere with angel wings. He had often seen mortals, invited to important hold conferences, squirming awkwardly in such seats; and it was true, some were ill-made and uncomfortable even for angels. But not the ones at Cedar Hills. These had been built to the highest standards and the most complete specifications. Maga must have chosen the furniture maker.

  “Forever it may very well be,” Obadiah agreed. “At any rate, Gabriel seems to want me here for the foreseeable future. Or at least until the crisis with the Jansai is over.”

  “Which means you’ll be here forever,” Nathan grumbled. “Has there ever been a time in the history of Samaria when the Jansai weren’t causing trouble for someone?”

  “Raphael seemed to get along with them well enough,” Obadiah pointed out.

  “Which is only added proof that he was an evil man.”

  “But you haven’t been spending all your time wrangling with the Jansai,” Obadiah said, changing the subject. “Tell me what’s been happening in Jordana.”

  Nathan talked with great animation for the rest of the meal. Obadiah watched his face—so like Gabriel’s, though his features were warmer and his eyes were brown—and had to agree with Maga. Nathan had been energized by his daunting commission. He thrived on the long hours, the constant demands, and the unbroken series of challenges.

  “And in the Caitanas, as you can imagine, they are all reeling still. For with Windy Point so close at hand, they had supplied much produce—and many young women—to the angels, and considered themselves sort of a de facto support system for the hold. And then to find so much treachery on Raphael’s part—and so many of their people dead on Mount Galo or poisoned at Windy Point—well, there are families that might never recover. So I spend much of my energy in negotiations with them, trying to prove that I am an honorable man and that angels are trustworthy creatures. I don’t know that I will ever convince them, though.”

  “What about the weather patterns?” Obadiah asked. They had learned, late in Raphael’s tenure, that he had ignored his people’s requests for weather intercessions, so that parts of Jordana had been in danger of flooding, and parts of it in danger of drought.

  “The Caitanas never suffered quite as much as southern Jordana—because, of course, Raphael was so close to hand. But the harvests are still thin and disappointing in the southern regions, and I have had to send angels out every week to make sure the rains fall just as they should—”

  They talked crops and storm systems for a while then, till Maga interrupted and demanded “more interesting conversation, for the love of Jovah!” When asked what that might be, she answered, “Gossip,” so Obadiah filled them in on all the personal stories he could remember from his last month or two at the Eyrie.

  “And Rachel’s not pregnant yet?” Maga asked.

  “If she is, she hasn’t informed me.”

  “She wants children, I know it,” Maga said.

  Obadiah had never heard Rachel voice this particular desire, but he said lightly, “All the angel holds are looking to their residents to reproduce, and as speedily as possible.”

  Nathan shook his head. “It’s crass, I know, but there are days I want to call a general convocation here and shout, ‘None of you are doing your duty! Go forth and multiply! We need babies—lots and lots of angel babies!’ We lost more than fifty angels last year. We will not recover from that in less than a generation.”

  “It would be such a simple thing if we could be sure all those children would be born angels,” Maga said in a tight voice. “But even when the angels do mate—well—we can’t know what will result.”

  Nathan didn’t seem to notice anything strange in her voice, but Obadiah found himself wondering. Had Nathan been taking his own advice extremely seriously, and helping to sow the next generation of angels? Hard to credit, considering how devoted he was to Maga, but fidelity had never been the forte of the angels. Indeed, most of them were a promiscuous lot, encouraged by the structure of their society to mate often and diversely.

  If trouble lay between Nathan and Magdalena, Obadiah would never trust romance again.

  “Well, I stand ready to do my part,” Obadiah said cheerfully, hoping to change the mood. “Both Rachel and Maga have promised to find me a nice suitable girl. Perhaps I can install one in each hold and travel between provinces as the mood strikes me, populating both Bethel and Jordana with my offspring. And if Ariel is willing to set me up with a third consort in Monteverde, well, I think I can colonize Gaza as well.”

  The silliness had its effect. Nathan grinned, and Maga laughed aloud. “Shame on you!” she cried. “And I always held you in such high esteem—”

  “Not for nothing do all my friends say I am the most charming man of their acquaintance—”

  “I used to, but not anymore!”

  “Well, we’d better schedule that party, then,” Nathan said, “to introduce you to the first of your prospective partners. How quickly can such a thing be planned?”

  “I need three weeks, at least,” Maga said. “And a little help with the guest list. I know the lowlanders well enough, but I haven’t been up around the Caitanas
as much as you have.”

  “We’ll work on it tonight,” Nathan promised. “It’s time Obadiah started doing his duty for his hold and his province.”

  In the morning, Obadiah flew out with Nathan toward the southern edge of Jordana to perform one of the weather intercessions that was required so frequently. He was giving himself a day or two to orient to the province—and to allow his formal clothes to arrive by wagon—before heading into Breven and setting up a meeting with Uriah. But there was no reason he couldn’t make himself useful before he undertook his primary task.

  So he joined Nathan on a three-hour flight through the green and gentle countryside of southern Jordana. It was rain that was wanted now, Nathan had informed him, although earlier in the season they had had to offer the prayers that held off precipitation, and later still they would have to fend off winter storms. The angels’ prayers forced the cycle of wind and weather into a pattern favorable to certain crops; without divine intervention, this corner of Samaria failed to yield any appreciable harvest at all.

  Flying high enough to stay comfortably cool but low enough to watch the terrain, the angels arrived at their destination around noon. Nathan signaled to Obadiah and then angled his body for an upward climb, cutting through the harsher currents here at the higher altitudes to position himself closer to the god. Obadiah followed, feeling the cold air wash over his skin like delicious icy silk. When they were so high that the thin air began to trouble their lungs, Nathan slowed to a hover, and Obadiah circled around to face him. Nathan gave two beats with his right hand, and they begin to sing simultaneously.

  They were both tenors, and their ranges were identical, so their harmony was close and inventive. Nathan let Obadiah take the melody and borrowed snatches of harmony from the bass and alto lines. Their voices were both strong, rich from years of practice, angel voices designed to build stairways to the god’s house, and Obadiah was pleased with the well-polished seamlessness of their carpentry. They had not sung more than twenty minutes before the air around them tensed and shifted, growing saturated with moisture that would soon be released. Still they sang another verse or two, just to be sure—and just because they enjoyed the sound of their well-matched voices. But when the air grew suddenly and sharply frigid, and the atmospheric winds brushed them both off course, Nathan abruptly closed his mouth.

  “I think we’re done here!” Obadiah shouted, and Nathan nodded. Diving to more hospitable levels, they stayed long enough to watch the first raindrops fall, and then set their course back toward Cedar Hills.

  Two days later, Obadiah’s belongings arrived. Two days after that, dressed in formal black and white and wearing a new gold-and-ruby bracelet on his wrist, he headed out toward Breven.

  Of the three provinces, Jordana was the most geographically diverse. The lowlands were farm country, though a few stony peaks broke the skyline and provided some interest to the southern portion of the land. The Caitana foothills nestled against a curving, spiny ridge of mountains that ran north and south through the middle of the province, creating farmland on the west and desert on the east. The long coastline offered a softer climate to farmers who had settled on the northern border, and an abundance of fishing opportunities to villagers on the southern edge, but there was pretty much nothing but desert in the middle region between the Caitanas and the coast. And that strip of sere, barren desert was precisely where the Jansai had chosen to set up their sloppy, half-formed, dirty, unwelcoming city.

  Obadiah left early in morning, for it was an all-day flight to Breven, and he wanted to arrive while there was still some daylight left. At first he traveled so high he was above the cloud layer, unable to see the land below except in bits and patches, but after an hour or so, he dropped to a more accessible altitude. He was an angel of Cedar Hills now. It was one of his responsibilities to pay attention to the terrain any time he passed over it, to note floods or droughts or snarling rivers or curious falls of rock. It was his duty to check for plague flags, raised by some desperate traveler or isolated farmer to signal that someone below was in dire need. An angel could pray for the god to send down medicines, if someone was sick; an angel could carry a mortal to safety, if someone was injured. Obadiah should not fly so high that he might miss these pleas for attention.

  It was an hour or so before sunset when he arrived in Breven, cruising at an altitude that was lower still. After the prosperity of Velora and the bustling new energy of Cedar Hills, Breven was hard to view with anything but disdain. On the outskirts of the city was a deep ring of tents and wagons—Jansai gypsies encamped for the week or the season. There did not appear to be enough room to accommodate them all or enough sanitation to keep them disease-free. Obadiah always imagined a miasma of foul odors drifting up to him from this section of the town, though he was not really close enough to the ground to catch such a smell—if there was one.

  Inside the ring of tents was another roughly circular arrangement of living quarters grouped around the city center, more permanent but nearly as unattractive. The houses of the wealthier Jansai were built of gray stone in unadorned, uninviting blocklike shapes; there appeared to be minimal gardens, very few fountains, almost nothing to soften the sharp edges of life here. Even more disturbing was the fact that every house was constructed so that there were only windows on one half, or one floor. The sections where the men lived. In the portions of the houses were the women dwelled, there were no windows at all. No way to look out upon the world.

  For the Jansai kept their women locked away from curious eyes, covered in scarves and veils if they were out in public, and immured behind stone when they were home. Obadiah had seen Jansai women from time to time at the campsite of a traveling caravan, but they had always hidden their faces behind their draped cloaks or ducked inside their tents so that he could not see them.

  Strange life. Strange people. And he was here to treat with them.

  In the center of the city was where most of the commerce occurred. A colorful, transient market of canvas stalls and striped tents formed the very heart of Breven, and today this appeared to be thronged with people buying and selling goods. Not everyone in the market was Jansai, Obadiah could see from above, for peddlers and traders of all descriptions would come to Breven to seek the finest wares. Most of the buyers and sellers were men. A few heavily cloaked women worked in the fruit stands or the cloth merchants’ booths, and a few similarly clad women made their purchases from them. But these were the lower-class Jansai women, Obadiah knew. Anyone whose father or husband or son had any pretensions to wealth would not have the women of his family demeaned in such a public fashion.

  Obadiah glided in to land near the market. The closer he dropped to the ground, the hotter and more oppressive the air felt, and by the time his feet touched ground, his face had begun to glisten with a faint sheen of sweat. The very dirt felt hot beneath the soles of his leather boots. Breven was a city that simply exhaled discomfort.

  His appearance excited some commotion. Everyone in his immediate vicinity was staring over at him, frozen mid-barter, and a few of the wild young Jansai boys came running over. They were thin and tall, dressed in cool, colorful linen tunics and wearing, even at this young age, a ransom in gold around their throats and wrists.

  “Angelo! Angelo! Why are you here?” one of them cried.

  He smiled at them, for surely they could not be as duplicitous and scheming as their fathers and uncles. “I’ve come to make my fortune,” he said gaily. “To buy and sell in the market.”

  “Angels don’t buy and sell,” another one scoffed.

  “He might come for wine,” the first boy said.

  “Or jewels. He might want to buy jewels,” a third one guessed.

  “I know who has the best gold in Breven,” the first boy said. “I’ll take you to his tent right now.”

  “He’s not going to your grandfather’s stall! No angel wants to be cheated by that old man!”

  “My grandfather is not a cheat! Your father is a
cheat and a liar—”

  They were that quickly squabbling among themselves. So much for their status as uncorrupted youths. “Could you—excuse me a moment—before you get too deeply into a discussion of whose father is more despicable, could you possibly tell me where the merchant Uriah can be found?”

  “I’ll take you to see him,” one boy said promptly. “For a copper.”

  Obadiah had to laugh. Contentious and enterprising; yes, they had been bred up from the cradle to enact all the vices of their heritage. “Done,” he said before someone else could make a counteroffer. “Is it far?”

  “You’ll see,” the boy replied, and darted off into the makeshift alleys of the market. Ignoring the hoots and insults of the other boys, Obadiah followed his guide as best he could. It was hard to thread his way through the crowded pathways of the market, but he held his wings tightly behind him and hoped no one stepped clumsily on one of his trailing feathers. He murmured apologies as he brushed past bulky, impassive Jansai who did not bother to give way for him, and he nodded in a friendly way whenever he caught someone’s speculative eyes upon his face. Angels did not often come to Breven just to frolic for an afternoon. They all knew he had arrived with some purpose, and they were busy trying to deduce what it might be.

  “Angelo! Here we are! Where’s my copper?” his thieving little escort announced. “Here” was a fairly impressive booth consisting of a broad table covered by a bright red awning, which was attached to a roomy tent made of a similar red fabric. Three lean, dark, dangerous-looking Jansai men worked behind the table. A crowd of ten or fifteen gathered on the buyer’s side, picking through merchandise. Obadiah thought the items for sale looked like Luminaux weavings, but he didn’t pause to examine them too closely.

  “Thanks,” he said, flipping a coin to the boy, who plucked it neatly from the air. Then he turned to one of the young men working. “Is Uriah to be found here? My name is Obadiah, and I’ve come to speak with him.”