Angelica

  Once they had both cleaned up and climbed into the too-soft bed, Susannah would tell her stories. Mostly she spoke in the ordinary tongue that all the Samarian people shared, but once in a while she told a tale in the Edori language, so she didn’t forget it. Her kinsmen felt so far away; her familiar, happy Edori existence seemed something she had dreamed of. She told Edori tales and tried to remember.

  Kaski did not seem to care one way or the other what words Susannah employed. She gave no sign of understanding either of the languages.

  Yet she stayed with Susannah night after night, and Susannah was heartened by that. She had given up any hope of persuading Kaski to talk, but she did feel the little girl was beginning to trust her. For instance, she had actually allowed Susannah to take off her veils and see her pale, pinched little face. She had permitted Susannah to comb out her hair and rub cream on her dry skin. At bedtime, she would edge her small body next to Susannah’s and lie there all night as if finally safe.

  Meeting with the Jansai from Breven, however, had been a real setback.

  At first Susannah had been encouraged—amazed—at Kaski’s swift, impassioned speech as she told the older Jansai woman her story. She spoke so quickly and in such heavily accented language that Susannah could not catch every word, though the gist of the horrific tale was clear. And the fact that Kaski would talk, could talk, was proof that she could heal if given enough time and attention.

  And then she had been tossed out of the wagon and rejected by her people, and Susannah had thought the little girl would literally cry herself to death.

  But no. Kaski had silenced herself with a visible effort, had donned even darker and more opaque robes, and had locked herself in Susannah’s room and refused to come out, even for meals.

  Susannah didn’t know what to do. So a week later, she did what everyone in the Eyrie did when confronted with an insoluble problem. She went to Gaaron.

  He listened to her over breakfast in his room, a ritual they had fallen into enjoying once or twice a week. Susannah suspected that Esther resented these private meals between them—less because of the extra work it caused her than because it kept Gaaron away from the public eye for another two hours—but she had come to count on them as segments of rationality and peace in what were sometimes hectic days.

  “And she still does not talk to you?” Gaaron asked. “Even after you heard her speaking at the Jansai camp?”

  “Not a word. She’ll nod. Once in a while, she’ll smile. Hardly ever, now. After—you know.”

  He nodded. “But she listens to you?”

  “Oh, yes. And I’m sure she understands me. But—she’s so hard on herself. If I don’t pay attention, sometimes she will go a whole day without eating. I’ve caught her—punishing herself. Hitting herself with a leather strap or—I watched her cut herself with a knife once. On purpose. When she saw me watching her, she put it down and let me bind the cut. But then I saw her do it again a few days later. And—there are bruises on her body. I don’t know how she gets them. I’m afraid she does something to herself when I can’t see her.”

  “You think she will try to kill herself?”

  Susannah nodded. “I think she may have already tried, but she can’t figure out how.”

  He sipped his juice meditatively. “This is beyond my experience,” he said at last. “But all I can think is that she mustn’t be left alone. What does she do during the day when you’re not in your room?”

  “I think she just stays there. Sits there. She never leaves. She never goes to Zibiah anymore.”

  “Not even at night?”

  Susannah smiled. “I think Zibiah has found a more interesting companion for her nights.”

  “Huh.” He sipped his juice again. “Well, this is entirely too great a responsibility for you to take on all by yourself. Clearly, she needs constant supervision, and clearly she needs more than one person to look after her. And I would guess she needs interaction as well. Something to concentrate on besides her terrors and her woes. All the children at the Eyrie attend classes. We might enroll her in some of those.”

  Susannah shook her head. “Not any classes with boys. She is terrified of all men. And someone like Zack—”

  “Good point.” He thought a moment. “Well. We will just have to organize. We will make up a schedule of her days. Perhaps she can spend a couple of hours every morning in the kitchen with Esther. At the moment, all our kitchen workers are women. We will ask the teachers to divide a couple of their classrooms into boys and girls, and she will take classes—mathematics and history classes, perhaps. Maybe an art class. Music? Does she like music?”

  “She won’t sing.”

  “Will she listen?”

  “Yes, she seems to like that.”

  “Or—perhaps—she would like to learn an instrument,” Gaaron mused. “A lap-harp, perhaps. Lydia could teach her that. She’s a gentle lady.”

  “It seems like a lot of trouble to make everyone go to for one little girl,” Susannah ventured. “They might not be so interested in rearranging so much of their lives for a stranger—and a Jansai—”

  “The Librera teaches us that Jovah watches over every soul, even those who have not been dedicated,” Gaaron reminded her. “We should do as much.”

  “We should, but so often we don’t,” she retorted with a smile. “Truly, I do not mind that she has become my responsibility. But I—”

  “But you have other tasks to perform as well, and I believe that she will be best served by being exposed to as much activity as possible,” Gaaron replied. “I believe this may pull her out of herself, return her to the world a bit.”

  “I think it is a good plan,” Susannah admitted. She smiled, a teasing expression on her face. “No wonder everyone thinks you are so wise.”

  “Do they?” he said dryly. “I doubt everyone does. Not my sister.”

  “Your sister has been remarkably circumspect since you came back from the plague site with tales of illness and wonder.”

  He nodded. “She was really afraid. Not that I blame her. I am afraid—I think we should all be terrified. And yet I feel so helpless. Except for sending angels out to inform the farmers, the Edori, and the Jansai, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to guard against these marauders. I don’t know who they are or what they want. It seems they do not attack large clusters of people—there have been no sightings in Breven or Semorrah or Luminaux—so I think we are safe in the cities and the holds. But so far I have had no luck convincing the Edori and the Jansai to stop their travels and stay someplace out of danger.”

  Susannah laughed at him. “Easier to convince Yovah to forget all of our names,” she said, “than to convince the Edori to settle in one place forever.”

  He smiled somewhat crookedly. “You have consented to do it,” he pointed out. “But at what cost to yourself, I cannot guess.”

  She looked away. She was never prepared for the few times he turned the conversation to personal matters. His occasional questions and observations were unexpected and shrewdly on target. “I admit to some loneliness,” she said. “And—a great sense of strangeness. Sometimes as I am just—walking down a hallway or—sitting in the music chamber or—or standing on the plateau hearing the angels sing, I think, ‘How has my life brought me here? Why am I so far from my people?’ And I miss my friends and my family more than I can say.”

  “You could go back to visit them,” Gaaron suggested. “I could take you to find them—or Nicholas, or any of the angels—and you could spend a week with them. Anytime you wanted.”

  She tried to smile. “I couldn’t. That would make it too hard.”

  “But I don’t want your life here to be one of strangeness and loneliness,” he persisted. “I don’t want you to have given up everything. For me.”

  “For the god,” she corrected.

  “Yes, but the god is remote and I am the one you see every day and think, ‘For him I made sacrifices,’ ” Gaaron said with unwonted aspe
rity. “It concerns me to be the author of such upheaval in your life. And I would do anything to keep you from being unhappy.”

  An interesting way to phrase it, Susannah thought. Not “I would do anything to make you happy.” “That is kind of you,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what I’ve done to make you think I am unhappy.”

  “Something Miriam said.”

  She made herself smile. “Ah, Miriam! Well, but, Gaaron, Miriam is a mischief-maker and a romantic. Surely the least trustworthy combination you could find.”

  “Miriam is good at reading people’s hearts. It is one of the things that makes her dangerous, that she knows what matters to you—and will either protect it or menace it, depending on her mood.”

  “I am not unhappy. And I do not think it would do me so much good to go off and spend time with any of my clansmen. I am doing my best to settle into my life here, Gaaron, to do what the god asked of me and whatever you continue to ask of me. It is not what I expected my life to hold. It is not what I would have chosen. But the life is new to me still. I think it will have rich rewards. I am prepared to give myself over to this new life and wait to see what it then gives back to me.”

  “That is generous. That is the most I could ask of you,” he said formally. But she fancied she heard a note of dissatisfaction in his voice, as if he could think of other things he might ask for. She held her breath a moment, to see if he would name them, but he did not. “We are agreed, then, on the little Jansai girl? I will go to Esther and the others today, and work out some kind of schedule.”

  “Yes. We are perfectly agreed,” she said. “I think the new program will be good for all of us.”

  Predictably, Gaaron was as good as his word, and by noon the next day, Kaski’s life had been ordered into an entirely new routine. She was bundled off to the kitchens, to chop vegetables and clean silver under Esther’s stern eye, and then she was passed between classrooms to study music and arithmetic and history. Susannah could not tell, at first, if the new regime and the constant distractions were good for the little girl or merely bewildering. But she did notice that Kaski slept better these nights, sometimes even falling asleep before Susannah did, and not waking till later in the morning. These were good signs, Susannah thought.

  And there were fewer bruises and no more incidents with a knife. No time for Kaski to do harm to herself, Susannah supposed, and that, too, had to be a good thing.

  Naturally, Kaski did not tell her what she thought.

  Predictable, also, was the fact that the next disruption in Susannah’s new life was caused by Gaaron’s sister. Miriam had been altogether too well-behaved in the two weeks following her outing with Gaaron. She had stayed mostly in the Eyrie, even though Gaaron had lifted his interdiction aimed to keep her in the hold, and she had been good to everyone, even Esther. She had spent less time with Chloe and more time with Ahio, a trade Susannah approved of, and she had spent almost every night in Susannah’s room, which even Kaski had seemed to enjoy. But Miriam’s natural state was not one of calm, and Susannah found herself awaiting the next squall in the stormy story of Miriam’s life.

  The first round of thunder came very late one night, after Susannah and Kaski had already fallen asleep. Susannah was used to going to bed without Miriam in the room, and waking up with the blond girl sleeping beside her, so she did not fret when she turned out the lights and kissed Kaski on the cheek. But she felt an immediate sense of alarm when she was woken from a sound sleep by a hand on her shoulder and a whisper in her ear.

  “Susannah! Susannah! Are you awake? I’m really in trouble this time.”

  Susannah woke completely and soundlessly, a trick she had learned years ago sleeping in a crowded Edori tent. “Miriam,” she whispered back. “What’s wrong?”

  “I was in Velora and—oh, it’s such a long story—”

  Motioning to Miriam to be quiet for a moment, Susannah got out of bed carefully, to avoid jarring Kaski, and ushered Miriam to the far side of the room. She lit a couple of candles and then sank onto a pile of pillows on the floor, Miriam following suit.

  “Quietly,” Susannah commanded. “What happened?”

  Miriam had her arms wrapped around her knees and was rocking back and forth as if to generate heat. Susannah shook out a little embroidered blanket and threw it around the girl’s shoulders.

  “I think someone’s dead,” Miriam said at last.

  “What?” Susannah hissed. “Miriam, you cannot be serious.”

  Miriam nodded. “I am, though. I think it’s my fault, but, Susannah, I didn’t mean for it to happen. It didn’t occur to me—I was just—and then things got out of hand—”

  “Start from the beginning,” Susannah said. “What happened?”

  “I was in Velora. I asked Ahio to take me down in the morning, and he did, but he said he couldn’t come back and get me, and I said that was fine. And I did some shopping and I had some lunch, and then in the evening I went to see Elias, even though I knew I shouldn’t.”

  “Who’s Elias?”

  Miriam shrugged. “This man. He runs a freighting business. He’s really nice and he has a lot of money and he doesn’t lecture me all the time. I just like to be around him. But I’ve only see him once or twice because his wife usually doesn’t—”

  “His wife? He’s married?”

  “Yes. But he doesn’t love her. And his daughters are almost old enough to get married themselves, so he—”

  “Wait. How old is he?”

  “I don’t know. Fifty, maybe. But he—”

  “Miriam are you—have you been—”

  “Yes,” Miriam said defiantly. “I have been. And it’s not like he’s the first man I’ve been with. First man or angel. Don’t be so shocked. I’m nineteen years old!”

  Susannah took a deep breath. She was so stunned by this revelation that for a moment she lost sight of the first, more horrific confession. “I was not that young myself, but many girls are, I know. But, Miriam, you’ve been seeing a married man who’s thirty years older than you are and has children in the house—there is so much wrong with that. Do you know how hurtful that is to everyone involved—the wife, the children, yourself? Do you know what a knife you are wielding, and how many scars you are making?”

  “I do now,” Miriam whispered. “But they’re not the kind of scars you’re talking about.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I went to see Elias. He told me his wife would be gone all week. She had taken their daughters and gone somewhere. Castelana, maybe. One of the river cities. She wasn’t supposed to be back yet.”

  “And she came home . . .”

  Miriam nodded. “And she came home, and she saw me, and she started screaming at him. The girls ran out of the house, I don’t know where they went, and I tried to back out of the room. They weren’t paying any attention to me. She was screaming and screaming, and he was angry, too, but he was calmer than she was, and I just thought it was going to be a lot of shouting. And then—I don’t know—she had a knife in her hand and she stabbed him. And he started bleeding and he stopped shouting and he just looked at her. And then he crumpled over onto the floor and—and he didn’t say anything else.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She started shrieking again, kneeling on the floor by him and calling out his name.”

  “What did you do?”

  Miriam shook her head. Her eyes were wide and haunted. They flicked all around the room, as she looked at the walls, the furniture, the sleeping girl, anywhere but at Susannah. “I just left.”

  “Did you tell anyone?”

  Miriam shook her head again. “I just ran out in the street. Back toward the bazaar, where I knew people would be. I didn’t even think any angels would be out that late, but then I saw Enoch and he said he’d bring me back. Lectured me the whole way, too, but I didn’t tell him anything.”

  “So you left a dying man and a hysterical woman all alone in a house and ran away?” Susannah repe
ated. “Without going for help, without doing anything?”

  Miriam started crying. “I was afraid,” she sobbed. “It was my fault and I was so afraid. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “It’s not your fault. You didn’t drive the knife home,” Susannah said steadily. “But you should have gone for help. You are to blame for making a bad situation disastrous. You are to blame for a lot.”

  Miriam sobbed even harder. “Don’t tell Gaaron,” she begged. “Please. He’ll never forgive me.”

  Susannah rose to her feet. She had never felt more wretched for someone else—or more steely with resolve. “I have to,” she said. “I’m going to tell him right now.”

  When Gaaron opened his door—tousled, yawning, and dull with sleep—Susannah couldn’t stop a stray, totally frivolous thought from crossing her mind. What would it be like to sleep next to that big, warm body? All he was wearing was a pair of loose cotton pants that appeared to have been hastily pulled on once the door chime sounded. Never had his chest appeared so broad or his wings so spectacular. For just a moment, Susannah wanted to step close enough to lay her head upon his shoulder, feel those cool, edged feathers settle around her; for just a moment, she wanted to surrender her own strength to someone who was clearly designed to carry burdens.

  When he recognized her, his expression instantly sharpened to combat readiness. “Susannah!” he exclaimed. “What—is it Miriam?”

  She nodded and stepped inside, pushing the door closed behind her. She did not know how far word of this escapade would spread; a little privacy now might save embarrassment later. It was late, but others were still astir. Even now, three voices rose and fell in a sweet melody from two stories up. Who else might be prowling about, looking for trouble?

  “She’s been seeing a married man in Velora,” Susannah started out baldly. “Tonight, his wife came home and found them together. There was a scene. The wife pulled a blade and attacked her husband. Miriam left, but she thinks he might be dead.”

  With each sentence she spoke, Gaaron’s face grew harder, more stony. “She didn’t stop to send for help?”