Angel-Seeker (40 page)

She hadn't thought David had a heart.

Or perhaps he did, and the manna root had worked its magic well enough after all. It had just delayed the release of its enzymes until Elizabeth was out of the room, until his eyes had fallen on this wispy beauty instead, the next morning or sometime later in the day. And he had capitulated instantly to infatuation as he usually succumbed to alcohol. Look, he wasn't even touching his wine. He was subject to a completely different sort of intoxication tonight.

Elizabeth forced her eyes away and snatched up her own glass of wine, downing the contents in a swallow. So much for potions. So much for love. So much for angels, or men, or friends, or
anything
.

“Can somebody pass me the wine?” she said, and Marah obligingly handed the bottle down. She didn't care if she had the worst headache of her life in the morning. Tonight she was going to drink so much that she wouldn't even be able to feel her feet as she made the long, dreary walk back home.

Still, impossible as it seemed, the rest of the evening was convivial enough, and Elizabeth found herself laughing more than once at the outrageous things Ruth said. She only looked twice more in David's direction; the second time, he was gone. That was worth another glass of wine, or at least half of one. She was actually not nearly so drunk as she'd planned to be by the time they paid their bill and
headed back home. The air was sharp with a winter bite, and Marah squealed with cold when they first stepped outside.

“I wish I'd worn a warmer coat,” Shiloh complained. “I don't want the baby to take a chill.”

Elizabeth, walking directly behind the new mother, eyed Shiloh's back consideringly. It would be easy to give her a little shove, knock her into a puddle, perhaps. The air was not so cold that the muddy wheel ruts along the construction sites had entirely frozen over.

Beside her, Ruth gave a muffled laugh. “Don't do it,” the other girl warned. “She's vengeful, and she's vicious. If something causes her to lose this baby—”

“Better that than all of us losing our minds,” Elizabeth grumbled. But she kept her hands down loosely at her sides.

“I'm glad you came out with us,” Ruth said. “You and Faith are such good friends that the rest of us don't see you much.”

“I'm glad you invited me,” Elizabeth said.

“So why didn't Faith come? Seeing Jason?”

Elizabeth nodded. “So I expect it'll be one of two things by the time I get back to my room. She'll be home already, sobbing because he'll be gone in two days, or she'll still be out with him, spending the night at his place.”

“Because he'll be gone in two days,” Ruth repeated.

Elizabeth nodded. “And for her sake, I hope she's still out.”

Faith was home, though, as Elizabeth saw the instant she stepped through her own door. Home and lying quietly on her bed as if too exhausted even to lift her head when Elizabeth arrived. She was still dressed in her long black gown, which she thought was elegant and which Elizabeth thought made her look sickly, and she didn't say a word in response to Elizabeth's hello. But her eyes were open, and she blinked when Elizabeth crossed the room to stand beside her.

“So? I guess it didn't go so well if you're back this early,” Elizabeth said in a gentle voice. “You look like you don't feel so good. Do you want me to get you something?”

Faith opened her mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out except a small bubble of saliva.

Elizabeth dropped to her knees beside the bed. “Faith? Are you all right?”

The head moved jerkily on the pillow, and the dark eyes grew wider as Faith tried again to speak. This time, a drop of spittle formed at the corner of her mouth and traced a slow line down her chin.

“Faith?” Elizabeth said more sharply. She quickly put her hands out, checking for fever, checking for pulse. Faith's skin was cold to the touch, her heartbeat sluggish. “Damn it, I wish you could tell me what happened.”

A wound? A rash? What? Elizabeth unbuttoned the front of the dress, in case Faith was having trouble breathing, then dropped her hands to the skirt to tug the whole thing off. But the skirt was damp, as if Faith had run through those same muddy pockets of water that Shiloh had not been unlucky enough to fall into. When Elizabeth lifted her hands, they came away smeared with blood.

“Sweet Jovah singing,” Elizabeth whispered, and ripped the entire dress from Faith's thin body. Blood everywhere, invisible on the black gown but staining the white petticoat, the white sheets. What—what? A miscarriage, an eruption of the bowels? Elizabeth could see no wound, no external sign of damage. This must be a malady grown from within, hard to locate, harder still to treat.

“I'll be right back,” she said fiercely to the still form on the bed, and dashed from the room, leaving red fingerprints on the wood frame of the door. “Ruth! Shiloh! Marah!” she called, running up and down the hall and pounding on doors. Heads popped out into the hallway and everyone asked the same jumbled question.

“Somebody go get Mary,” Elizabeth panted. “Faith is dying.”

A
t first, the color in his Kiss was so faint that Obadiah could convince himself it was not there. A streak of sunlight, a rogue refraction in the crystal, nothing more significant. And, indeed, in some lights, the twist and flare of opal fire disappeared entirely. He was sure he was imagining it, late at night or in complete darkness, when the Kiss set its sweet and gentle glow against his arm.

He would have liked to get somebody else's opinion on this. Oh, he knew the tales that the young girls told, about how their Kisses would light the first time they laid eyes on their true lovers. And he knew that Gabriel and Rachel, Nathan and Maga, would admit (the women more readily than the men) that their Kisses had indeed performed pyrotechnics when they were first drawn together. Indeed, Nathan had told him once that he had begun to favor long-sleeved shirts whenever he and Maga were in formal company, because his Kiss still had a tendency to spark and glitter when his wife was nearby, and he didn't think such a thing was quite appropriate for a man of his standing.

But Obadiah had not heard of a Kiss turning ecstatic at random, when lover was far from beloved, when days or weeks might pass before the two were reunited. What would cause a Kiss to ignite on so little fuel, and to burn on without replenishment or renewal? That was what Obadiah would have liked to find out. But he couldn't
think of whom to ask. Maga? Rachel? Oh, no. He had not even told them he had fallen in love, and he certainly wasn't prepared to detail for them the situation of his heart. Nathan was not much of one for confidences, and Obadiah, though friendly with all the other angels at Cedar Hills, didn't really feel close enough to any of them to initiate this discussion.

He thought about flying up to Mount Sinai, to pose the question to the oracle there.
Why would my Kiss suddenly produce a faint light, that time does not extinguish and circumstances do not warrant?
The Kiss was, of course, Jovah's most direct link with all his subjects, and it was possible the god was trying to send a message of some sort to Obadiah. In which case the oracle, who communicated with the god on a regular basis, would be the person to ask.

But Obadiah did not fly to Mount Sinai to make inquiries of the wise man. He didn't even make the much shorter trip to Mount Egypt to confer with the oracle there. He was not prepared yet to ask the question aloud. He was not prepared yet to learn the answer.

That it had something to do with Rebekah he had no doubt. Every time he saw her during the next few weeks—which was not as often as he would have liked—the flames in the Kiss grew stronger, steadier, less apt to flicker out. Not necessarily while he was in her presence, but later, as he lay solitary and miserable in Cedar Hills, he would notice that the colors of the Kiss burned at a brighter intensity. At this rate, he reflected, if he continued to see Rebekah for another year, the Kiss would eventually catch fire in his arm, explode in a frenzy of passion, and send Obadiah himself up in a tower of rapturous flame.

He resigned himself to this fate, because he could not imagine
not
continuing to see Rebekah—for another year, another ten years, the rest of his life.

Though in his heart, he knew that the affair would someday come to an end—soon, perhaps, maybe even sooner than her wedding. He could not think about it. He didn't even like to talk about it with Rebekah, and he found himself quickly changing the subject any time she brought up the name of her betrothed or the approaching date of her marriage. He was trying to concentrate only on the joy at hand, and not the rue to follow, though he found that harder
to do with each passing week. Strange. In the past it had always been so simple for him to embrace the daily pleasures and disengage from the melancholy regrets. He had found it so easy to be happy that people commented always on his good nature and his ready smile. Now, his days were so rich that at times he felt his very blood was saturated with sensation, but he would not call himself happy.

Except for those few hours in Rebekah's arms, and then he was as content as a man could ever be.

Ever since their adventure on the roof, they had adopted a new system that worked extraordinarily well and that had the advantage, besides, of calming some of Obadiah's fears for Rebekah's safety. When he arrived in Breven, he would leave a feather on the skylight that looked into the fabric room of Hector's house. On the days that Rebekah saw that signal in place, she would climb to the roof at night, where he would be waiting for her. He would scoop her up in his arms and fling himself into the star-spattered night, so giddy at the chance to hold her again that he felt as unsteady and euphoric as he had felt so long ago when he had first been learning how to fly.

Rebekah loved these aerial journeys high above the shadowed architecture of Breven. Some mortals, Obadiah knew, were petrified at the great height or unexpected speed of an angel flight, and would agree to be carried through the air only if there was no other alternative, but Rebekah could not get enough of such experiences. One night, Obadiah spent hours aloft with Rebekah in his arms, flying low over the rippled, mysterious expanse of the ocean. The moonless night was lit by uncountable acres of stars, scattered across the sky by Jovah's careless, profligate hand. The sky was so dense with stars that they seemed in danger of spilling from the heavens into the sea—and the sea itself seemed so black and so endless that it appeared it could contain every one of those surplus coins of light.

Obadiah flew so low to the water that he could feel its scent and moisture rise up to him on tricky, salt-laced breezes, so far from the shore at last that they lost the lights of Breven entirely. This far from land, there was almost no sound at all—no lapping of waves against the rocky beaches, no cry of night birds, no interplay of human voices. It was possible to imagine that they were alone in the universe, first man, first woman, in the undifferentiated ether of space, that Jovah
had not yet considered how to mold the world into continents and oceans and how to wrap its terrain with breathable air. They were suspended in some primeval fluid, the god's unborn children, awaiting his signal to emerge into a world fashioned especially for them.

Obadiah knew what that world would hold, if he was the one designing it. Much of what he was holding in his arms right now.

They did not speak at all during that long, slow flight, and it was only because they could sense the unwelcome arrival of dawn that they turned back at last for the shore. They returned to the roof of Hector's house and parted with a kiss and very few words. They had not made it to the hotel at all that night, yet there was no sense of loss or lack. What they had shared was profound enough to feed even their hungry souls.

Besides, there was still tomorrow night. Obadiah would come back for Rebekah then.

At times Obadiah believed his relationship with the Jansai Uriah would last as long and be, ultimately, even more frustrating than his relationship with Rebekah. Since he had resumed his regular visits with the Jansai chieftain two weeks ago, they had made no progress at all on negotiations.

“Let us begin by acknowledging that we speak in good faith,” Uriah said each time they began serious discussions. He would nod to a corner of the tent, where he kept a most interesting display in a tall wooden frame: a contraband firestick. He had allowed Obadiah to handle it—finding an empty Breven alley and producing a rather frightening bolt of fire from the metal barrel—but he would not let Obadiah take the weapon back to Cedar Hills. And he would not disclose where he had gotten it or what tactics he had used to force the firestick's owner into relinquishing it. Obadiah could not even be certain that this was the weapon that had brought him down.

But he always responded, “Indeed, I have complete confidence in you.”

“And I in you.”

“So let us begin.”

“Let us talk about the Edori,” Uriah would say next.

“The Edori are a closed subject,” Obadiah always replied, and
that would be the end of it. Wine would be called for and food would be brought in, but all negotiations would be over.

“Can't we start with some other concessions and work our way back to the Edori?” Obadiah asked the day after his flight over the ocean with Rebekah. “Can't we see if there might be
something
we can agree on?”

Uriah shrugged and sipped from his wine. “What's the point? We can hammer out a contract that pleases us on every detail, but once we get to the question of the Edori, we will again fail to find agreement. And the whole of the contract will be void.”

“You only play this game,” Obadiah said, “because winter is upon us and most of your caravans are off the road. There is no urgency for you now, for there are no crops to haul and no produce to barter in the northern markets.”

Uriah laughed. “Yes, exactly! And you play the game for the same reason. But who will be more worried when spring comes, tell me that? The Jansai, who are lazy men who would prefer to sit around in their tents all day sleeping, or the far-flung residents of the three provinces, who are waiting for the Jansai caravans to arrive?”

“Very well, then,” Obadiah said with a sleepy smile. “Let us talk about the Edori.”

“Ha!” said Uriah, and poured the angel another glass of wine.

“Let us ask ourselves if the Edori, who wander as far if not quite as purposefully as the Jansai, might become traders in their own right,” Obadiah said pleasantly. “If the Jansai are not to bring produce and trade goods from Monteverde to Luminaux, well, then, perhaps the Edori shall provide that service for us.”

Uriah's face blackened into a scowl. “The Edori are so unreliable that you would not get this summer's harvest till sometime late next winter, and you and all your merchant friends would starve or go broke awaiting their arrival.”

Obadiah shrugged. “I am not so sure. I think we might find a few enterprising Edori who like the idea of a life a little more structured and who wouldn't mind striking a blow at their old enemies while they were about their new ventures.”

“You would never pursue such a foolhardy plan,” Uriah said, his breath sounding heavy and damaged in his lungs.

“Such a plan is already being considered in angel holds and Edori camps across Samaria,” Obadiah said mildly. “Indeed, I find myself wondering if you won't find yourself with a few eager Edori competitors even if you do take to the roads again this spring—as, of course, we hope you do.”

Not much to Obadiah's surprise, Uriah chose to cut short the conversation a few minutes later, adding an ominous observation that he thought his business associates would be happy to know the angel did not plan to be in Breven again any time soon. Obadiah nodded at the warning, bade a pleasant good-bye, and retreated to his hotel room.

“I won't be back for a while, love,” he told Rebekah that night. “The volatile Uriah must have time to think over some unpleasant things I've said to him, and I won't be welcome here for a few weeks at least.”

“Then I won't expect you,” she said, as always seeming to be much more serene about the prospect of a long separation than he was. “But it has been so good to see you these two days.”

“I might come back anyway. Some night when he's unlikely to know I'm in town. Look for me.”

“I always do.”

Nathan laughed out loud when Obadiah reported his most recent conversation with the Jansai leader. “Edori merchant peddlers—that's very good,” he approved. “Surely Uriah didn't believe you?”

“He's a jealous and suspicious man. Of course he didn't believe me, but he couldn't quite get the idea out of his head once I'd introduced it. I think he might be more amenable to discussion when he sees me next.”

“Which won't be for a while,” Nathan said.

“Oh, I don't know,” Obadiah said casually. “I might go back next week to see how my poisonous suggestion has eaten away at his confidence.”

“I don't think you should,” Nathan said. “Wait until he sends for you again. Let him know that if he doesn't want to deal, we don't need to deal. We're looking at other options. I don't think you should go back to Breven for a long time.”

And that was the worst sentence of all.

But Obadiah didn't despair all at once. Who knew, Uriah might send for him right away, having been made so angry by Obadiah's careless comments that he couldn't stand the uncertainty of the future. And even if Uriah failed to summon him back, well, Obadiah had dropped into Breven uninvited before. All it took was a carefully planned late-night arrival and some discretion during the daytime. Even an angel could be invisible, even in Breven, if that was the prime consideration.

Still, he hated to disregard one of Nathan's outright injunctions, at least immediately, so he resigned himself to at least a fortnight of longing and loneliness. He accepted every dinner invitation issued by Nathan and Magdalena, a fellow dorm mate, or the most chance-met acquaintance. He was willing to fly messages to Semorrah, perform weather intercessions over the Plain of Sharon, pray for plague medicines over small towns on the very southern tip of the Galilee River. Anything to keep busy. Anything to distract his memory and redirect the energies of his body.