Jovah's Angel (17 page)

“If you have any suggestions for dealing with them—”

It was the wrong thing to say. Delilah, who had for a few moments seemed natural and engrossed, instantly grew affected and indifferent. “I! I have no interest in these political squabbles.
I am the deposed Archangel, my dear. I don't have much wisdom to offer.”

“I know that's not true,” Alleya said softly. “It would help me a great deal to know that if I needed advice, I could come to you.”

Delilah laughed. “Well, yes, and it would help me a great deal to know that if I prayed hard enough, Jovah would give me my life back. But he won't and you can't and so there's not much else we can do for each other.” She came fluidly to her feet, her black-edged wingtips making a graceful sweep across the floor as she stood. “It's always a treat to see you, of course, and I do hope you'll come back and visit, but don't be asking me questions about troubles in the realm. And I won't expect you to sing ‘The Ballad of Hairy Mary' with me. Do we have a bargain?”

Alleluia looked up at her gravely. “I didn't come here to make you unhappy,” she said. “I wanted to see if you were all right, if you—”

“All right! I'm fine! I'm well! I'm delighted to be here! Life could not be better for me in any respect! Does that satisfy you? Go back to the Eyrie, angela, and sing your heart out in praises to the glorious god. Don't trouble yourself over me, and I won't worry about you. Thanks so much for coming to my concert. And I'll talk to you some other time.”

And giving them a mocking half-curtsey, she spun on her heel and stalked away. Even angry and flustered, she moved with unconscious grace, and they were not the only two who watched her till she disappeared.

Then Caleb turned back to Alleluia, whose gaze was bent to her folded hands. “That didn't go so well,” he commented.

Alleluia moved her head indecisively from side to side. “About as well as I expected,” she said. “Better, maybe. I wasn't sure she'd talk to me at all.”

“I've never seen her like that,” Caleb said. “Sarcastic and flippant, yes, but never so—”

Alleluia looked up. “Hurt.”

“I was going to say ‘angry.”'

She nodded. “But mostly hurt. I don't know how you mend someone who is so badly broken.”

“Is it just that she can't fly?” he asked.

She smiled briefly. “You're the one who wants to invent wings,” she said. “How would you feel if you once could fly and then those wings were taken away from you?”

“Devastated,” he admitted. “But I don't think it would make me bitter enough to hate myself.”

She nodded. “Probably not. You'd invent something else to occupy your time. But with Delilah… it's not just the flying. It's the fact that, unable to fly, she is unable to be Archangel. She is—ordinary. Not even an angel. Mortal. Delilah has a kind of brilliance that can't be turned down. And if it doesn't shine outward, it glares inward and burns everything else away.”

“So what will happen to her?” he asked.

Alleluia smiled sadly. “You're the one who's supposed to be so talented,” she said. “Why don't you try to fix her wing?”

Clearly she wasn't serious, but Caleb said, “I've thought about it. I've been afraid to bring it up, because—well—”

“Because she makes everything hard. Do you think you could really help her?”

“I don't know. Probably not. I'd be willing to try.”

“I'd be grateful for that much—just trying.”

He smiled at Alleluia, more warmly than he intended. “Then I'll see if I can convince her to let me examine her wing,” he said. “I would like to earn your gratitude.”

She may have flushed; it may have been a shadow from a passing waitress. “You'll earn it soon enough if you repair my music machines,” she said.

“I'll be in Velora by the end of next week.”

Five days later, Caleb left Luminaux and headed northwest toward the Eyrie. Although the days had been busy and the nights full of companionship, the hours had seemed to crawl by. He could not remember the last time he had been so impatient to begin a trip—or see again someone he had just met.

When Noah returned, Caleb told him of his new commission, and the two engineers theorized about possible problems in the equipment, although Noah did not seem to be giving his full attention to the discussion. Abruptly he asked, “What was she like? I can't believe you're going off so quickly to help her.”

Caleb was completely astonished. “Why not? I can't believe you aren't begging me to let you come along.”

“To help the
Archangel
? How could I be so disloyal?”

“Disloyal—” And only then did Caleb realize that Noah was angry on Delilah's account, and could accept no other angel in her place. “She was very nice,” he said, which immediately
seemed inadequate. “She was serious and she seemed kind and she doesn't particularly want to be Archangel. She appeared genuinely worried about Delilah. And she wasn't offended by any of Delilah's songs.”

Noah tossed him an indignant look, and Caleb realized his attempts to describe Alleluia were woefully weak. “She's a usurper,” the Edori said. “And I cannot believe you are so interested in currying favor among the allali that you would take on a commission like this.”

Caleb waited a moment to let his flash of anger die. “If Delilah cannot be Archangel, someone must be,” he said gently. “I don't believe this girl wants the job. It's a hard one, and she's not suited for it, but she was chosen, and she's doing the best she can. It's unfair of you to hate her for something that is not her fault. I don't think Delilah hates her. Why don't you ask her?”

Noah's answer was defiant. “I will.”

But Delilah, when questioned about Alleluia that night after her concert, merely threw her hands in the air and laughed gaily. All her passion of the other evening was gone; this night she seemed as lighthearted as a child.

“Alleya,” she said. “Such an odd girl. Most angels are pretty sure of themselves—arrogant, even—but Alleya would always hang back, let others talk, completely trample her. She always hated to be singled out for any attention, and I never saw her volunteer a word in groups of more than five people. But you couldn't help but like her. She would do anything in the world you asked of her, and she knows things—facts and stories and details nobody else remembers. She's kind of come into her own lately, gotten a little more poise—which is good. She'll need every ounce of self-possession she can muster up.”

She shook her head, still thinking, then turned to Caleb and laughed. “Remember the other night when Joseph was trying to convince her to sing? It was ludicrous. She hates to perform. She doesn't mind singing in front of people if it's a mass or one of the sacred rituals, but anything else—forget it. She can't do it. I don't know how she'll lead the Gloria in front of thousands of people, although maybe she won't find that so hard since it is, after all, sung to Jovah. But I promise you this: She won't find it easy.”

“You sound like you know her pretty well,” Caleb said, although Alleluia had said that was not the case.

Delilah shrugged. “Well, any time you live among a small
group of people in a place no larger than the Eyrie, you form an opinion of everybody. But I don't know her well. I don't know that anyone does. Maybe it's hard to make friends among people who've known each other from birth unless you were born there, too.”

“What?” said Caleb.

“She was born in some godless little town in southern Bethel and didn't come to the Eyrie for years and years. I don't think her mother was an angel-seeker, but she—”

“A what?” Noah interrupted.

Caleb grinned. Even he had heard this term. “An angel-seeker,” he repeated. “A woman who purposely—ah—dallies with angels in order to become pregnant with a little cherub.”

“What's so wonderful about having an angel child?”

Delilah gave him a mock scandalized look. “The status—the prestige—the thought of living in a hold for the rest of your life without having to do another day's work. Believe me, more than one woman has made it her life's goal to seduce an angel and bear his child.”

“But not all an angel's offspring are also angels,” Caleb said.

“Oh no. Not by a lot. Which is why there are so many unclaimed children in the cities by the holds, because the mothers will sometimes abandon their mortal children. We try to curb the practice, but—well, since we want the angel children, too, we aren't on any particularly high moral ground.”

“So most angel-seekers instantly bring their little winged infants to the holds,” Caleb prompted. “But in Alleluia's case—”

“Alleya's mother didn't bring her to the Eyrie till she was, I don't know, ten or twelve years old.”

“Why not?”

“Who knows? I never asked Alleya. She's five or six years older than me and, as I've said, we were never close. But I think it must have been hard on her, coming in at ten years of age to such a strange environment. She never really did fit in.”

“And how do you think she'll fit in now that she's Archangel?” Caleb asked.

Instantly, Delilah's face grew impassive. She picked up her drink and took a long swallow. “Now,” she said deliberately, “I have no interest in her at all.”

Traveling on a borrowed horse, it took Caleb seven days to cross southern Bethel from Luminaux to Velora. Winter made the countryside seem shadowy and drab, especially around the mining towns, where even from miles away the burnt-metal residue of the refineries thickened and grayed the air.
And this is progress, and I have wrought it
, he thought. Still, he could not be entirely sorry. In fact, he couldn't help thinking how much faster and better his journey to Breven would be when he and Noah (and perhaps Delilah) rode in the Edori's powered vehicle across the tedious desert.

He liked Velora, though; he had never been to the cheerful little town crowded up against the Velo Mountains. No Luminaux, of course, but by no means shabby. He wondered if it would be acceptable to bring a gift to the Archangel, and once the idea was in his head, he couldn't shake it loose. So he spent an hour or so on the chilly ascent to the Eyrie, dawdling at merchants' shops and wondering what might be appropriate. In the end he settled on a hair clip of gold filigree that she, with her tangled yellow hair, could probably use. It was not so expensive as to embarrass her; another point in its favor.

He completed the climb and found himself on a wide stone walkway that led to a broad plateau. There were dozens of people ahead of him, either waiting in patient boredom or stating their cases to two angels and one mortal who appeared to be prioritizing petitions. Caleb was tempted to push his way to the head of the line and announce, “I was
invited
here, take me immediately to the Archangel,” but his innate courtesy prevailed. He waited his turn, listening in untutored appreciation to the breathtaking voices singing somewhere nearby in flawless harmony. If the machines were broken, it must be live music—and why would you want machines if you had singers like that to listen to?

When he finally had a chance to give his name, he was gratified to see quick interest light the face of the older male angel who was helping him. “She'll be glad to see
you
,” was the instant response. “I can't get free here for a moment or two, but if you don't mind finding your own way, I can tell you where she is.”

“That suits me,” Caleb said, and listened closely to the directions. From what he could see of the tunnels opening off the plateau, the Eyrie was a maze and easy to get lost in. But the instructions seemed clear. He thanked the angel and ducked into the warmth of the nearest corridor.

A few turns, a few steps down, another corridor, a row of
identical doors. Caleb went to the one that had been specified and knocked loudly. There was no answer, but the angel had warned him there might not be (“If she has the music loud enough, she won't hear you. Just go on in. She never locks the door”). So he knocked a second time and, without waiting for a response, turned the handle and entered.

To find the angel Alleluia sitting in a heap in the middle of the floor, her arms wrapped around her updrawn legs, her great wings bowed around her shoulders, crying as if her heart were broken.

Alleya had returned to the Eyrie to find that she had been missed—which was not quite as pleasant as it might have been. Reports had come in from northern Jordana the day she left: Residents were concerned about continuous heavy snowfalls that had made all the roads impassable. Meanwhile, rain was the problem over the lower half of the Plain of Sharon, causing the Galilee River to rise, the Edori sanctuary to flood, the river cities to feel imperiled and the farmers along both borders to worry about damage to their crops.