Angel-Seeker (34 page)

It was a complete month after his last rendezvous with Rebekah that Nathan—as exhausted and sleepless as the rest of the Cedar Hills angels—finally decreed that Obadiah could go back to work on
his foremost mission. “For winter is here, and we've done what we can to ease its passage into our lives,” Nathan said. “I don't care if it snows from now until the Gloria next spring. The farmers can do without our interference for a few days.”

“Then I'll be off to Breven in the morning,” Obadiah said, trying to sound nonchalant.

“And maybe you'll have better luck with Uriah this time. Somehow convince him that we're not such a bad lot.”

“And if not Uriah,” Obadiah said with a smile, “maybe I'll find someone else who's disposed to look favorably on the angels.”

He set out at first light so that he would make it before the early dark of the season, and he headed straight for the house in the wealthy district of the city. The tricky part, of course, was getting close enough to that house to leave a memento in the garden without being seen. This time he and Rebekah had planned ahead. She had given him her embroidered scarf, the one that had been a gift from her cousin; anyone who found it lying about would know it was hers and make sure it was returned to her instantly. He would not need to worry about whether or not she would receive his message. No, he would only have to worry about whether or not she would be able to slip from the house, and whether or not she would be able to navigate the streets in safety.

There—the garden was empty. He made one quick pass overhead and let the flimsy scarf fall from his hand, unwrapping from around a quartz stone as it dropped. Then he canted seaward, toward the city center, and headed directly for the Hotel Verde.

“Good evening, Zoe,” he greeted the Manadavvi woman at her desk. “I'll be staying here for two nights at least. And I believe I'm expecting company quite late.”

I
t was the longest month of Rebekah's life. The angel had warned her, though, that he might not be back for weeks, and it never even occurred to her that she might never see him again. Not until Martha mentioned it.

The conversation about failed love had started off as a conversation about failed contraception. One of Martha's cousins, who lived with her husband in Ezra's house, had become pregnant for the third time in three years. “And I heard my mother scolding her. ‘Don't you know about kalaleaf? Don't you understand how the medicine works?' ”

Rebekah looked up. “What's kalaleaf?”

Martha looked around as if to make sure no one was listening. But they were alone in the fabric room of Hector's house, hemming sheets. It was a tedious task, but if they agreed to do it, Jerusha left them alone for the day, and sometimes it was worth it to have the chance to talk in privacy. “See?” Martha said. “They don't tell girls about things like that until they're married. But it's a medicine that prevents you from conceiving.”

“Well, if no one told you about it—” Rebekah began.

Martha looked smug. “I know about it. I know about a lot of things that haven't been told to me.” Her voice dropped. “I've been using it.”

“Martha!” Rebekah exclaimed, and then almost immediately
had a change of heart.
“Martha,”
she said, almost breathing the name this time. “Do I—should I—”

Martha flicked her hair back. “Oh no. You can't have a baby with an angel.”

Rebekah felt doubtful. “You can't? But then where do all the angels come from?”

“They're all born at the angel holds, and girls drink special potions that help them conceive. And still it almost never happens. It's almost impossible to have an angel baby. Don't you worry.”

Rebekah sighed. “Well, I won't have to worry, if I never see him again. It's been so long.”

Martha sewed a few moments in silence. “Do you ever think he was lying to you?” she said at last.

“Do I ever think
what?
”

“That he was lying to you. Your angel. When he said he loved you.”

Rebekah took a few more stitches. “No.”

“Men always say they love you. It means nothing.”

At that, Rebekah looked up. Perhaps they weren't talking about Obadiah at all. “Do you mean—your Manadavvi friend—”

Martha shrugged with elaborate carelessness. “Oh, he was in town last week. I know because Ephram was in the market and bought goods from Chesed's caravan, but I didn't see him. He had told me they wouldn't return for another two weeks. I guess their plans changed.”

“But why do you think—”

“I don't think anything!”

“Martha,” Rebekah said patiently. “Has something gone wrong between you and Chesed?”

“I don't know,” Martha said, keeping her head down over her hem and taking very large stitches. Hepzibah, who inspected the linens, would not be pleased. “He has been so affectionate! Has told me—oh, a hundred times—that he loved me. A thousand times. But then the last few days we were together, he has seemed—not as pleased with me. He did not tell me I was beautiful, did not beg me to run away with him. I said something—something like, ‘Someday I'll see those orchards in Gaza,' and he just shrugged and said,
‘Maybe.' Like he didn't care. And then now, he comes to town, but he doesn't tell me he's going to be here and I think—” She paused and took a deep breath. “I think he doesn't really love me after all.”

Rebekah was at a loss. Jansai women didn't often deal in love and betrayal. Dissatisfaction, resentment, and fear, yes; those were often the lot of a Jansai wife, but none of them married for love, so they had no experience in handling it. “I don't—surely he did love you,” she said, stumbling over the bleak comfort. “Surely he wouldn't have said something if he didn't mean it.”

“All men lie,” Martha said with a little sniff. “That's what my aunt says.”

“And what does she know about men? She was married once to a husband who died three years later, and she has spent the rest of her life in her brother's house.”

“I don't know how she knows. It's what she says. She says a man is no more faithful than a desert cat, even to his wife.”

“And how does she know
that?
”

“I believe her, though. Men lie about everything else. They lie when they barter with merchants in Luminaux. They lie when they meet other travelers on the road. They lie about money. They lie about the weather! Why wouldn't they lie about love?”

“Jansai men, maybe. Not all men.”

“All men,” Martha said firmly. “Even your angel.”

“Obadiah doesn't lie.”

“Oh, so he's gone back to his hold and told all his friends, all those other angels, how he's taken up with a Jansai girl?”

“No. He said he's told no one.”

“So he's lied to the people he's known all his life. Why wouldn't he lie to a girl he just met a couple of months ago?”

Rebekah sewed faster, her stitches hardly any neater than Martha's. “Why would he?”

Martha leaned closer. “Maybe to trick you into loving him.”

“He didn't trick me into anything. Everything I did, I did because I wanted to.”

“Everything you did, you did because an angel said he loved you. And now he's gone, and you don't know when you'll see him again, and I'm wondering if you haven't just been made a fool of.”

Rebekah abruptly laid down her cloth and stood up. Not saying another word, she left the room and went down to the lower level to see if her mother needed help with the baby.

“Here—he's yours if you want him,” Jerusha said, handing over the squirming, scowling bundle of irritation. “He's been fussing all day, and I'm about to set him out on the street for the baby-stealers to take.”

Rebekah held Jonah up so her eyes peered right into his and her nose brushed against his tiny round one. “No, she wouldn't do that, would she, your mama?” she crooned into his little face. His frown turned into a laugh. “Mama wouldn't give you to the baby-stealers, not my sweet Jonah.”

“Keep him the rest of the day, if you would,” Jerusha said. “I'm going to sleep for a bit.”

So Rebekah took him out to the garden, where it was really too cold to be outside for very long, and sat beside him on the rocky sand. He was just beginning to crawl with any real purpose, and he made his way with great determination from the corvine plant to the dera shrubs. “Gooha!” he exclaimed at her, a word with absolutely no meaning that she could discern, but she scooped him up and kissed him anyway.

“Gooha yourself!” she whispered into his ear. “Aren't you the most precious thing in the world.”

And even though she stayed out in the garden until the baby's nose started running and her own fingers grew numb with chill, there was no shadow of angel wings overhead. No mysterious feather came drifting down, full of portent and promises; her missing scarf did not miraculously reappear. The angel was not in town—or, if he was, he had not bothered to contact her.

She avoided Martha the rest of the day and wouldn't talk to her that night when they were alone in Rebekah's bedroom. She was awake, dressed, and out the door before Martha woke the next morning, and she was seated by Hepzibah in the dining hall when Martha came down for breakfast. Martha watched her with the mournful expression that meant she was truly sorry, but Rebekah gave her no chance to apologize. Shortly thereafter, Ephram arrived to take his sister home, and Martha left without Rebekah allowing her a chance to speak.

There was always the possibility that Martha was right. That would make it even more impossible to forgive her.

Two days later, Jordan came down with a stomach disorder that made him weak for three days. He was really too old to be nursed by his sister, but Hector was gone, and Jerusha was busy with the baby, who had also begun to vomit and cough. So Rebekah moved Jordan into her room and cared for him all three days, bringing him soup broth from the kitchen and reading him stories when he was able to concentrate. On the third day, he was feeling well enough to play board games and tease his sister, and on the fourth day he was out of her room.

On the fifth day,
she
got sick.

No one was really available to nurse her, though, so she just suffered through more or less alone. One night she just dragged herself to the water room and lay on the cold tile all night, lifting her head enough to throw up every few hours. She slept for the entire following day. Hepzibah brought her soup that afternoon, and Jerusha checked on her in the evening, but she didn't wish for any more attention than that; she didn't care much for hovering solicitousness when she was feeling bad.

She was sick the next morning, and the next—and even when, by every reasonable standard, the sickness should have been gone, she felt nauseated and a little weepy every morning for the next week or so. She didn't share this news with her mother, who truly couldn't abide illness and considered it a mark of laziness. Since she felt more or less normal by the time lunch arrived each day, she figured she wasn't actually dying, and she just got used to the morning queasiness.

Two weeks after she had made unpardonable comments, Martha was back for the day, deposited at Hector's gate by her brother. The dark blonde didn't look any too sure of her welcome, though Jerusha greeted her with a kiss and Hepzibah observed dryly that she must have remembered where her
true
home lay, since they hadn't had the privilege of her company for so many days.

It was well past dinner—and an informal social hour sparked when the women of the house across the street were escorted over by their men—before the two girls had a chance to talk. They were
heading up the stairway, on their way to bed, and Hepzibah and Gabbatha were close behind them.

“Rebekah,” Martha said in a low, urgent voice. “I wish you wouldn't—I'm so sorry for what I said—”

“I know,” Rebekah said in a flat voice.

“Please don't be mad at me anymore.”

“I'm not,” she said in the same tone.

“You girls go straight on to bed!” Hepzibah called up in her cranky voice. “Don't be staying up talking all night.”

“We won't,
awrie,
” Rebekah said over her shoulder.

“Bekah—”

But Rebekah didn't say anything till they were safely in her room, the door shut, the low gaslight on. Martha stood by the door, as if, once she determined for certain that she was not welcome, she intended to slip down to the kitchen and sleep on the hearth all night. Rebekah stood facing the opposite wall, hung with a brightly patterned tapestry that her father's mother had given her on her sixteenth birthday.

“I haven't heard from him,” Rebekah said, speaking directly to the wall hanging.

“Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry.”

“I think I will. He said it might be a long time before he could come back. He said it might be weeks, and I shouldn't worry.”

“Yes. He might just be really busy,” Martha said encouragingly.

“But I do worry, a little,” Rebekah said, her voice faltering. “I thought—I didn't think it would be so long—”

“Bekah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—”

Rebekah whirled to face her. “Don't you say that,” she said fiercely. “Don't you ever say anything about him that's—that's mean or distrustful or uncertain. Don't ever tell me he might not love me. Don't ever say that. Even if it's true.”

Martha shook her head. She had taken one step away from the door, and her eyes were wide as winter moons. “I won't,” she said. “I'm sure he loves you.”

“Yes,” said Rebekah.

And then they both moved forward at once, falling into each other's arms and sobbing. Despite Hepzibah's warning, they did stay up most of the night, talking.

It turned out that Martha's Manadavvi lover had reappeared, claiming he had never slighted her. Yes, his family had been in Breven a few weeks ago, but he had not been with them, having been left behind to make deals in Luminaux. Successful deals, it turned out, because, look, here was a silver hair clip banded with straps of bronze, a delicate piece that looked demure and expensive when set in Martha's deep blond hair.

“At first I wasn't sure I believed him, but he spoke so prettily that I had to pretend to,” Martha prattled on. “He even gave me their schedule for the next two months, but
I
know how travel goes. Anything can delay you on the road, so I can't count on him arriving exactly when he says he will. But he promised to get in touch with me next time they arrive.”

“Get in—how will he do that?”

“I told him about you and Obadiah—”

“You
told
him? No, sweet Jovah, no, please swear to me that you didn't tell this Manadavvi boy about me and the angel.”