Quatrain (11 page)

It can’t be said often enough: Windy Point isn’t like the other holds. Not just because it is in such an inhospitable spot—the Eyrie is also in a remote location—but because it seems to thrive on its inaccessibility. There is no friendly, bustling town like Velora nestled at the foot of the mountain, ready to accommodate travelers and provide services to the angels. Oh, people do congregate there at the foothills. There are a few impermanent-looking shacks where you can find shelter for the night and buy necessary goods, but it’s not like there’s a thriving independent city where any reasonable person would want to spend any time. A few Jansai caravans are usually drawn up at the base of the mountains—petitioners from across the region are usually camped out, waiting for an angel to appear and address their concerns—and young women are always there by the dozens. Pretty, polished, determined, and foolish young women.

Angel-seekers, hoping someone will fly them up to the hold.

What you don’t see all that often, here at the base of the mountain, is angels. Raphael has always been a little cavalier about his duties to the people of Jordana, the province for which, theoretically, Windy Point is responsible. Petitioners from all over Jordana come to the hold with one request or another. Sometimes they have disputes they want the angels to adjudicate, but more often they are looking for the kind of assistance only angels can provide. They want angels to come to their homesteads and pray for rain, or for the cessation of rain; they want angels to pray for seeds or medicines, which—when the appropriate song is performed—come pelting to the ground with the force of hail. In other words, they want the angels to intercede with the god on their behalf.

The angels from Monteverde and the Eyrie constantly fly out to ask the god for weather or drugs or grain. On any given day, those holds might be half empty. And at the Eyrie, or so I have been told, Gabriel encourages his angels to routinely fly over the open land, peering down from above, looking out for signs of trouble both subtle and overt. Is there flooding? Is there fire? Have residents of some small farming community raised a plague flag, which is the sign that the mortals below are in dire need of assistance? I would guess Ariel sends the Monteverde angels out quite often in such a manner as well.

But not Raphael. The god alone knows how he spends his time, since he gives so little of it to his people.

“We need to find a place to stay or a place to camp,” I said to David as we arrived at the windswept and barren excuse for a town. “We might be here a few days before I am able to get to the hold.”

He surveyed the collection of carts and carriages and buildings huddled in the shadow of the mountain. “Camping might be the better option, though I suppose you’ll find that uncomfortable.”

I gave him a grim smile. “You’ll find that my standards are flexible.”

We found a spot on fairly level ground, a stone’s throw from a few Edori tents. I knew from past experience that there were public wells in the middle of the “town,” so I fetched water while David unhitched the horses and looked for firewood.

I took a circuitous route through the pitched tents and the makeshift buildings, and I strolled down the muddy road that served as the main street for this disreputable place, and I looked hard at every girl I saw. I may have passed a dozen of them, all very attractive, some fair, some dark, some who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, others camped on the outskirts of thirty. Most were buxom, but a few were slim as baby birches and wore their fragility like dyed exotic clothing.

What kinds of girls would the angels find most appealing?

My eye was caught by a young woman who might have been three or four years older than Sheba. She had rich auburn hair, thick and curly and falling past her waist. Her eyes were dark green, and her pale face was beautiful in an elegant, icy way. Among the blondes and brunettes she was strikingly different; I thought she would catch any angel’s eye.

I filled our water bottles at one of the wells, then retraced my steps. The redhead was standing outside the doorway of one of the few existing structures, gazing moodily up at the mountaintop. It seemed she had enough money, or enough charm, to secure herself a room here in a place where there were very few rooms to rent. Another point in her favor. She was willing to invest resources to obtain her desired result.

I stopped right in front of her and said, “I can help you get an angel lover.”

She instantly transferred her attention to me, assessing me for lunacy or genuine useful potential. No pretense about her—no shocked protestation that she had no interest in such a thing. She just said, “How?”

I waved in the general direction of David’s cart. “I have manna seed among my possessions.”

Her eyes sharpened, but her expression became skeptical. Everyone—or, at least, every angel-seeker—knew that ground-up manna seed was an aphrodisiac. If you fed it to the man you desired, he would instantly become smitten with you. But manna seed was extremely rare these days, so much of it gone to making love potions that none was left to sow new plants. I supposed in time there would be no manna left at all.

“Where did you get it?” she asked. “And how much would it cost me?”

“I bought it years ago in Luminaux when I thought I might have use for it. And it would cost you only a favor.”

“What favor?”

I gestured at the mountain hulking over us, jagged and unfriendly and just now darkening with the onset of night. “I want to go to Windy Point.”

She made a little sound, halfway between a laugh and a sneer. “So do we all. But I have been here four days, waiting for an angel to fly me up to the hold, and not one has come down off the mountain.”

Four days. Even by Raphael’s standards, that was lax. “Then surely an angel will appear in a day or two,” I said. “You want to be ready.”

“How do I know that you really have the seed?”

“I’ll show it to you. Will you recognize it?”

She nodded. Of course she would. “When will you give it to me?”

“When we are both inside Windy Point.”

She made an impatient motion. “Not intending any rudeness, but what would persuade any angels to welcome
you
to a hold?”

I tried not to laugh. It was a fair question. “Tell them I did you a kindness on the road. Tell them I am an accomplished cook. Tell them I will work hard for no wages, that all I care about is being around angels. Make up any story you like. But I have manna seed, and if you want it, you have to get me into Windy Point.”

“I want it,” she said, “if that’s what you really have.”

She accompanied me back to our campsite, where David eyed her with silent disapproval. He had taken a couple of tarps and rigged a tent over the back of the wagon, and it actually looked rather inviting. He’d also started a fire and laid out the meat and bread we had bought at the inn we’d left this morning. I found myself hoping some enterprising Jansai or Edori had food items for sale, or pretty soon we were going to go hungry.

“Who’s she?” David asked.

I looked at the young woman, realizing I had never asked her name. “Demaris,” she supplied.

“She’s going to help me get into the hold,” I said.

He warmed up a little at that. “Is she having dinner with us?” he asked.

I looked at Demaris, a question in my eyes, but she shook her head. “I’ve already paid for room and board. I want to get my money’s worth.”

“Let me show you the seeds,” I said. I climbed into wagon, under the tarp, and rooted around in my luggage for the wooden box at the very bottom of the bag—one of those items I had never bothered to toss out, even once my traveling days were mostly behind me. Sweet Jovah singing, I could remember a day when I hoarded these hard white grains as if they were diamonds. I had baked them into breads; I had ground them up and sprinkled them like salt over steaming dinner plates. Some people doubt their efficacy, but I had always had good luck with manna seeds. Every angel I shared them with became my lover, at least for a night or two. More than that you couldn’t ask of a potion.

I had even given some to Raphael once, though it was at his request and he watched me stir the white dust into his glass of wine. He had been particularly ardent that night, and both of us remarked upon it, though we never tried the experiment again.

I had never fed the drugs to Stephen.

I shook a couple of grains into my hand and climbed out of the wagon to show Demaris. David stood to one side, frowning, as Demaris inspected the seeds, rolling them between her fingertips and sniffing at them delicately.

“How much do you have?” she asked.

“About a hundred grains,” I said. “Have you ever tried manna before?”

She shook her head.

“You shouldn’t use more than ten grains on any one person,” I said. “If a man doesn’t react to that amount, he won’t react at all, so don’t waste them trying to increase the dosage. Just try them on someone else.”

“How many will you give me?”

I shrugged. “All of them.”

“You don’t want to keep any for yourself?”

I couldn’t keep from laughing. “No. Jovah’s bones. I’ve had enough of trying to better my life through the man I could catch by whatever means necessary. Here’s a secret: It never made my life better. My life didn’t improve until
I
started making sure I got what I needed.”

She gave a faint, disdainful shrug. “Maybe you didn’t catch the right man.”

“And maybe the kind of man who can be caught isn’t the kind of man anyone with any sense would want.”

“If you see angels come down from the mountain,” she said, “come find me. I won’t have time to go looking for you.”

I nodded. “I’ll do that.”

She didn’t linger; she had no interest in us. David and I ate in near silence, until we began discussing the state of our provisions and the best way to restock them. I turned over some of my cash to him and told him to bargain with anyone who had food to sell. I wouldn’t need money while I was in the hold, but it would be a different story once I arrived at Velora.

If I made it to Velora.

First I had to make it to Windy Point.

It was two days before the angels came, and then there was a whole flock of them, fluttering down like great snowy birds. I snatched up my bag and ran for town. Everyone else was on the move, too, the dozens of us who had camped here patiently for days, everyone eager to secure an interview. I wove between clusters of farmers and groups of Jansai, detoured around the individual angel-seekers, and found Demaris pacing in front of the building where she had rented a room.

“Have you talked to any angels?” I panted.

“Not yet. But at least three of them saw me and made a point of smiling.”

“They’ll be back,” I said. “They’ll deal with the petitioners first and then start picking through the girls.”

She turned to face me, hands spread in a gesture that invited inspection. “What do you think? How do I look?”

I suggested she put on a bright scarf in purple or red—something flowing and colorful, something that would attract attention. I told her to wear her hair forward over her shoulders and muss it a little bit. Raphael had always liked long hair; most angels did. Other than that, not much needed enhancement. Demaris was a striking young woman.

We drifted toward the center of that little town—all the angel-seekers did—and soon there was a ring of pretty girls posing casually around a makeshift conference table set up right on the main dirt road. Angels sat in specially made chairs, with cutaway backs designed to support their spines without troubling their wings, while mortals took turns standing before them and airing their grievances. Twice while we watched, angels took wing, going off to handle some more immediate problem.

That still left about a dozen angels.

It took nearly the whole day for the angels to meet with all the petitioners. The sky was ever so faintly tinged with red when the last farmer nodded and stepped away. Almost as one, the angels came to their feet, joking and talking with each other. Almost as one, the angel-seekers surged forward, smiles on their lips, seduction in their hearts.

I wondered what Demaris would do to set herself apart, to catch an angel’s roving eye, but it seemed she had already done the trick. Two young angels whom I did not recognize—in their twenties, perhaps, both of them wickedly gorgeous—came straight toward her and laughingly competed for her attention.

“Do I have to pick just one of you?” she said, splitting a smile between them. “I don’t think I can choose.”

“
I’ll
share if
he’ll
share,” said the one who was taller and darker.

“I’ve always been considered a generous man,” said the other.

Demaris pouted. “But I have to ask a favor. I have a friend who wants nothing so much as to see an angel hold. She said she would work, she would clean, she would do
anything
, if only she could get inside Windy Point.”