Jovah's Angel (8 page)

“Angela, it is an honor to be asked to do a service for the Archangel, even among the Edori,” he said. “He will not need coaxing.”

She could not help another answering smile. “I keep forgetting.”

“Better a little vain than too modest,” he admonished. “I said
there were repairmen as good as me. I did not say my talents were only passable.”

“I said nothing derogatory about my talents.”

“Name them for me!” he exclaimed. “List your great charms and mightiest strengths!”

No angel would have talked to Alleya this way, and no common mortal either; still, it was hard to be offended when he seemed so earnest. “I remember things—details, books I've read—I can put them all together and get a good picture,” she said a little haltingly. “That's really it, except for ordinary angel things like flying and singing.”

“You can stop the rain,” he said. “You can blow away the storms.”

“Again, any angel can.”

“Not so well as you. Yovah has never failed to hear you. Is that not something you should lay proud claim to?”

It terrified Alleya when people continued to say that; for, in this crazy climate, with thunder and gale piling up across the continent, how long could she be sure the god would be pleased by her voice? “He hears me now,” she said, her voice low. “Once he heard every angel. He may not listen to me much longer.”

“He will,” Daniel said solemnly. “Do not doubt him.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“He must hear one of you. Or we will all be lost.”

Caleb had spent most of the day running copper pipes through the four stories of Vincent Hammad's house. It was a job any laborer could do, and so he had told the silversmith, but Hammad had said he knew the difference between an item handcrafted from start to finish by the master and an inferior piece in which a student had sloppily followed his teacher's design. Besides, Hammad could afford to pay the price for Caleb's services, whether the task was menial or inventive, and anyway, Caleb didn't mind a little simple honest toil now and then. So he took care with the pipes, and laid them exactly where they should go, and soldered them at the joints with slow precision. When he finally got to constructing the housing for the steam unit, he would be able to rest secure in the knowledge that none of the pipes would blow under the whoosh of sudden pressure.

By the time he left at sunset, he was tired with the self-satisfied weariness that comes after hard work on a worthwhile project. Walking unhurriedly home, he paused at a street vendor's to buy a paper cup of hot chocolate, and he had finished it by the time he passed a meat-seller's fire on the next corner. He dropped the cup into the flames, exchanged nods with the vendor, and continued on his way home.

He lived in three rooms over a bakery, a small apartment filled with light and the luscious scent of rising yeast. In the three years he had lived there, he didn't think a single day had gone by that he had not paused, morning or night, to buy a loaf or a pastry from the proprietor or one of her five daughters. “If you sleep by water, you dream of water” his mother had used to say (for she had grown up a stone's throw from the Galilee River). If you
slept by a bakery, you ate bread, and never tired of it.

Tonight the friendly, gray-haired woman wrapped his rolls for him with a knowing smile. “You've got company upstairs,” she said. “I told her you usually came back about this time, but that sometimes you don't, but she said she would wait. I left her on the landing outside your door.”

Since the landing was really a lacework iron balcony, the waiting quarters were not especially cramped; but Caleb was expecting no visitors. “Company?” he repeated. “Who?”

“She didn't give her name.” The baker leaned forward to whisper. “But she's an angel.”

He knew only one angel. “Dark-haired? Beautiful?”

“That would be her.”

“Hunh. Wonder what—How long has she been here? Did you feed her? Maybe I should get a couple extra rolls.”

“Twenty minutes or so. And she bought her own rolls.”

He grinned and left the bakery, taking the sturdy metal stairs two at a time. At the top of the landing, leaning against the railing with her folded wings toward him, Lilah waited. She must have heard his feet clattering on the stairs, but she did not face him until he spoke.

“Ah, the beautiful, mysterious stranger that has long been foretold,” Caleb greeted her. “Great messenger of light, how may I serve you?”

Now she slowly turned around to survey him. “And I thought I was sarcastic,” she observed. “But you outdo me.”

“I doubt that,” he said, unlocking the door. He had, more as an experiment than from any fear that someone would steal his meager belongings, outfitted the door with a complex mechanical baffle that even Noah had been unable to untangle. “Come right in. If I'd known you were going to be here, I would have brought you some beer.”

“I've already refreshed myself, thank you very much,” she said, following him inside. “I drink very lightly before a performance.” She met his quizzical look with a bland smile. “And sometimes more heavily than I ought to afterward, but only sometimes.”

“I've never seen you in a drunken stupor,” he said. “So I believe you. Are you hungry? I have rolls and I believe I have some shrunken oranges. I wasn't expecting company, you see.”

“Not hungry, thanks. Though I'll sit down if that's all right.”

“Please do.”

She looked cautiously around the big open room as if she was not sure where it was safe to sit. Caleb tended to be tidier than most men he knew, though by no means fanatical about it, so the room was clean enough but a little cluttered. Scattered everywhere were bits of engines, partial valves, ripped sketches of electrical diagrams, and models of possible projects. The furniture was functional but not particularly decorative and relatively sparse. None of it was designed to accommodate angel wings. After a moment's consideration, Lilah settled herself on a wide, low stool and continued surveying the apartment.

“But how utterly cozy,” she said. “How can you drag yourself away every morning?”

He grinned and sat down on a chair nearby. “Ah, I'm a busy man. Many clients, many projects. No temptation at all to loll around in my perfect surroundings.”

“Well, they certainly suit you.”

She glanced around again, and he studied her. In the three weeks since he had met her, he'd had only a few conversations with Lilah, and all of them had been slightly edgy, lightly ironic. It was impossible not to be drawn to the former Archangel, for she had a challenging charm, but Caleb always felt wary in her presence. As if there was more going on behind her smiles and her teasing than he could fathom.

“So tell me,” he said. “No doubt you've been perishing of curiosity this past month, wondering how I live, but surely that wasn't a lure strong enough to draw you here tonight. So why have you come?”

She glanced at him with those night-dark eyes, and gave him a sidelong smile. “Perhaps I thought you would invite me to dinner.”

He raised his brows. “I never eat dinner” was his automatic response. “Just bread and fruit. Of course I'm willing to share.”

Now she laughed. “That's almost certainly a lie,” she observed, “but I won't take offense since that's not why I'm here.”

“Well?”

Again the coy look, assessing him. “Joseph wanted me to ask you if you'd be willing to take on a job at Seraph. Something about sound. Improving the acoustics, I think, though perhaps he was talking about some kind of system to amplify the music. I didn't entirely understand it. I find all this mechanical talk appallingly boring.”

“Sound isn't really my field—I'm more into motion,” Caleb
said. “But I know a little about acoustics. As for amplifying music, there are a few men working on it, but they haven't quite figured it out yet. There's not much we know about sound—it travels, of course, and it can be conducted, but not easily broadened—”

“Really,” she interrupted. “I don't have much interest. Talk to Joseph, see exactly what he wants.”

He watched her a minute, trying to see behind the perfect skin that lay so luminously over the bones of her face. “And why ask me?” he said.

“You're supposed to be the resident genius.”

“I mean, as opposed to Noah. His reputation equals mine.”

“Ah, well, Noah,” she said, casting her eyes toward the ceiling with a small smile. “I think perhaps Joseph might be a little jealous if Noah spent all his days
and
all his nights at Seraph. He thinks that Noah distracts me, you see.”

It had been a subject of much speculation between Caleb and his far more interested Edori friend: Exactly what was the relationship between the angel and the owner of the bar? She could not be attracted to him; Joseph was the sort of man who grew only less appetizing on greater acquaintance. Noah favored the dark idea that Joseph had some kind of malevolent hold on Lilah, refusing to release her from unwary promises given in the past. Caleb's own theory was that she was seeking a life as wretched as she could stand, to divert her from an interior pain that he would guess was nearly unbearable. He had chosen not to voice this opinion to Noah.

“And does Noah distract you?” he asked pleasantly.

She smiled. “I find him quite endearing. So sweet, you know. I didn't believe such purity really existed.”

Caleb snorted. “He's not quite an innocent, you know. The Edori—”

She waved a hand impatiently. “Oh, spare me the tales of Edori promiscuity. That's not what I'm talking about. He has an un-corrupted heart. So few people do. And they're never men.”

“Thank you on behalf of my sex.”

She laughed at him. “I don't think you're corrupt, exactly,” she said. “But you're not pure-hearted. You're a little cynical about people in general. The worst never surprises you, though you're always delighted by the best. You take what comes, enjoy what you can and shrug off the rest.”

It was an eerily accurate reading from someone who was virtually
a stranger—and a self-absorbed stranger at that. But he remembered hearing, somewhere, in some forgotten conversation, that Delilah had been the best ever at reading other people, identifying their motives and using their foibles against them. The new Archangel apparently did not have this skill.

“And won't Joseph be jealous of me if I'm there all day and all night?” he asked abruptly. “I come to hear you almost as often as Noah.”

“Oh, no. You don't worry him. I told him you don't like me.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Did you? For the sake of expediency, or because you think it's true?”

She was smiling that covert smile again. “Oh, it's true. You think I'm—untrustworthy. You think I'm merely flirting with your friend. You think I have a capacity for wounding people—and that I like to do it.”

He replied just as candidly. “I think you've been hurt enough to figure other people deserve a little pain. Spread it around a little.”

“You see what I mean? Noah would never say a thing like that to me. He's not cruel enough.”

“Would Joseph?”

“He's not clever enough.”

“I don't pretend to be clever and don't wish to be cruel. I don't dislike you. I don't entirely trust you. I do wonder how you deal with all that misery unless you can find ways to channel it someplace.”

Her dark eyes mocked him. “Misery?” she repeated.

“If my hands and eyes failed me and I could no longer do the work I love—yet my mind remained active, inventing things I could never actually put together—I think it might make me a wretched man. I know who you are, Delilah. Noah knows. I would imagine everyone who sees you knows. It's a hard secret to keep.”

She sat up straighter, a little flare of anger washing color across her face. “If I had wanted to be secretive, I would have hidden myself in Hagar's retreat and shunned the company of mortals,” she said haughtily. “I would not have climbed on stage to sing with a voice that everyone in Samaria recognizes. Naturally people know me. But few of them choose to taunt me with my past.”

“I wasn't taunting you,” he said softly. “And you know it. You read me right, but I believe I understand you well enough. I have no wish to make my best friend jealous merely to provide
you diversion. If Joseph is so interested in having me wire up something in his place, tell him I'll see what I can do—as long as Noah does the job with me. Would that satisfy him, do you think? Would it satisfy you?”

She stared at him a long moment, flags of fury flying across her cheeks. But, give her credit, she did not refute the accusation. He thought that, as a change from Joseph's oiliness and Noah's purity, she might find his forthright astringency a refreshing change. He couldn't help it; a warm smile escaped him, and he shook his head.