Quatrain (6 page)

“Do I think what?” Hope prompted me when I had been silent too long.

I dragged my gaze back to the interior of the carriage, though it was a moment before I could focus again on her face. “I’ve forgotten what I was going to ask,” I said blankly.

She ducked her head to see what had caught my attention outside. Three more angels were circling overhead, canting their wings in preparation for a landing. She looked back at me with a slight smile. “Do I think we will have an interesting time of it in Laban?” she said. “Oh yes. I think we might.”

The wagon carrying Sheba and the others had already arrived at the inn where I had booked us a room, and Sheba was waiting primly outside, a small pile of luggage at her feet. The expression on her face was cherubic; it was clear she wanted me to think she was going to behave with the utmost maturity for this visit.

“David and the others have already left for the fair, but I said I had to wait for you,” she said.

“How very wise,” I said dryly. “Let me pay for our room and freshen up, and then we can go find your friends.”

“Shall we plan to meet back here for dinner?” Hope asked.

“An excellent idea. I’m sure I’ll need the company of an adult by then.”

A few minutes later, Sheba and I were hurrying off to see the fair. I have to confess that even I was quickly infected with the festive atmosphere that energized all of Laban, normally a rather sedate town where sober individuals engaged in ordinary commerce. But today the streets were thronged with small boys and harried mothers, flirtatious young girls and well-dressed young men. Flags and banners flew from every home and small shop; the scents of spicy cooking made the slightest breeze tantalizing. The air was filled with excited conversation, trills of song, bursts of laughter, and the random noisy bustle of people having a good time.

The bulk of the fair was set up in the center of town, spilling along one main avenue and four cross streets.
“Oh!”
Sheba exclaimed as we rounded a corner to see it all laid out before us. There were the broad, colorful tents of the Jansai traders selling any item you might desire, from food to jewelry. There were the clusters of smiling, dark-haired Edori who seemed to be equally divided among those who had goods to sell and those who merely wanted to visit with their friends. I noticed that the Jansai and the Edori had set up wagons as far from each other as possible—there was no love lost between those two groups, and indeed a great deal of hatred and suspicion.

Farmers had driven their carts to the middle of the fair and were selling big, fat tomatoes and bushels of peaches. Merchants from Luminaux offered the finest crafts imaginable, from delicate silver flutes to porcelain dishes painted with gold. Bakers were handing out pastries; vintners were pouring glasses of wine. Everything held an instant, exotic appeal.

“I don’t even know where to begin looking,” Sheba said.

I laughed and couldn’t keep from patting her shoulder. This was nothing—this was a tawdry little street fair—compared to the opulence you might expect to see on a daily basis in Semorrah or Luminaux or even Velora. But Sheba was a country girl whose pleasures had always been simple ones. I had made certain of that.

“I know you have your own money, but I’ll buy you a present today—anything you pick out,” I said. I knew I didn’t have to give her a price limit; Sheba was much too sensible to ask for something she knew I couldn’t afford, and too canny to sulk about it.

She gave me a swift sideways smile. “You should buy a present for yourself, too,” she said. “You never indulge yourself with anything.”

“Maybe I will, then, today. Let’s start shopping.”

We began with food, of course, and we munched on fried bread and baked apples while we wandered down the haphazard aisles. I was drawn to the bright scarves and bolts of cloth laid out at the Edori tents, and I couldn’t resist buying a length of red fabric shot through with streaks of gold and purple. Sheba held a fold of it against my face before the vendor wrapped it up for me.

“These are the perfect colors for your skin,” she said. “You should wear bright clothes more often.”

She was lured by the trays of jewelry laid out in the Jansai booths, though she didn’t like the traders themselves, and she actually pressed a little more closely to me while we picked through the heavy gold chains and the thin gold bracelets. I don’t much like Jansai men, either—most of them are loud and overbearing and feel such contempt for women that the scorn practically rises off of them like a smell. Their own women cower unseen in tents and wagons, though sometimes you can glimpse their veiled faces peering out as if they long to take in more of the world.

“I want a bracelet, but I don’t want to buy it from
him
,” Sheba whispered, after we had considered and rejected a number of baubles.

“Then let’s go see what the Semorran merchants have to offer,” I said. The wares tended to be more expensive when they came from Semorrah, but the buying experience was much more enjoyable, and she ended up with a lovely gold bracelet hung with clattering charms. Ruth and Hara were at a booth nearby, and I did not object when Sheba wanted to run over and show them her new acquisition—and I did not refuse when she turned back and asked if she could spend the next few hours wandering the fair with them. She had been so good, and goodness is so often not rewarded. I waved and let her go.

And then I was alone at the fair.

I glanced at the sun. It was mid-afternoon, and I had plenty of time before I was to meet Hope for dinner. I found I was hungry again—something about roaming through the open air of the festival stirred up my appetite, or maybe it was just the sheer luxury of being able to eat a meal that I had not had to prepare with my own hands. I stopped at every booth selling any kind of food and took samples of everything, from meat to bread to sweets. It was all delicious.

I was near the northern edge of the fair, at the last cross street that held any booths, when I heard the singing. My hands resting on a pile of apples that I had been sorting through, I turned my head to listen to the effortless harmonies drifting down the alley.

“Angels,” said the woman running the fruit stand. “They’ve been singing all day. I feel drunk with the music, and I’m not one who’s ever cared much for singing. I guess I never heard angels before.”

“I’ve heard them,” I murmured. “But it’s a fresh shock every time.”

“Do you want that apple?” she asked.

I shook my head and put my empty hands in my pockets. “Maybe later,” I said. “I’m going to listen to the singing.”

It was easy to guess which building held the performers, since a crowd of people had spilled out of the door and into the street, listening raptly to the heavenly sounds. As gently as I could, I pushed my way through the mob till I was almost at the door—close enough to hear every note, not close enough to see inside. And then I stood there, jammed hip to shoulder with complete strangers, and let myself be claimed by music.

Right now, two women were offering a complicated duet—not holy music, not something that would be presented at the annual Gloria, but something serious and sublime nonetheless. The soprano line arched and ached over the dark, melancholy alto like lightning over a louring sky. It would not have surprised me if the air had darkened to storm just from the passion of their voices. But after a frenzied twining arpeggio of minor harmonies, their voices suddenly resolved into a triumphant major third, and everyone in the crowd around me gasped. I opened my eyes—it seemed I had shut them—fully expecting to see the street around me washed with brilliant sunshine. It took a moment for me to reorient myself to an ordinary sky and my place in the middle of a crowd. It was some comfort to see similar looks of confusion on the faces of the people around me.

The audience inside burst into deafening applause; those of us out in the street merely shifted our feet and tried to find more comfortable positions. No one made any move to leave. I imagined the two women making their way off of a temporary stage and new performers climbing a shaky set of steps. Inside the building, the quiet grew intense, and those of us outside fell silent as well, filled with greedy anticipation. I noticed that my face and shoulders strained toward the doorway and that my whole body was clenched with readiness. Everyone around me had much the same pose.

When the new voice rose in song, I gasped so hard you would have thought someone had punched me in the stomach.

That was Stephen singing.

His voice was a rich baritone, silky smooth; he held each note as if it could be weighed in carats. The first piece I had ever heard him sing was a requiem at the funeral of a woman I had not met, and I had sobbed through the entire number as if I had lost all hope of the god. For a long time, I had not wanted to hear him sing again because I didn’t think I could bear the sadness, but then I heard him deliver a love song. I realized that his voice was meant to express deep emotion—any emotion—as long as it was passionate and heartfelt. In all the time I knew him, I never heard him sing a playful melody or a tavern ditty, but when he performed a sacred mass, you would fall to the ground praying, and your soul would make a trembling obeisance.

This afternoon he offered a song of thanksgiving, a gorgeous expression of contentment and well-being. I could see the people around me nodding their heads and smiling at each other. I could tell his voice was infusing them with a sense of serenity and hope, a belief that the world was wondrous and all dreams were within reach. Even I—who believed neither of these things, as a general rule—felt my spirits lift and my burdens lighten. Laban was a very good place and I was having a very good day. Nothing impossible awaited me. Life was a treasure trove of joys.

When his voice reached its dramatic conclusion and abruptly ceased, I felt as if I’d been slapped. My head snapped back and my bright mood vanished. Once again, I saw my own emotions mirrored in the expressions of the people around me. But I doubted any of them felt a sense of letdown and betrayal as keen as my own.

I had to see Stephen’s face.

Apologizing in an undervoice, but moving with a great deal of determination, I started elbowing through the throng, pushing my way into the crowded building. A few people elbowed back, and some refused to give way, but I managed to inch up the stairs and through the dense cluster of people packed into the back of the room. “Excuse me—please let me through—I’m sorry. Please let me get by,” I murmured.

I had made it a few feet into the interior of the building, and I was deep in a knot of unyielding strangers, when Stephen began singing again. This time his deep, steady voice anchored a quartet of performers. I heard the pale-oak tenor, the black-satin alto, and the crystalline soprano lay their individual architectures over his flawlessly planed foundation. I found myself smiling again. Suddenly good-natured, the people around me agreeably made room when I pressed forward, trying to get closer. I pushed through one more tangle of people and found myself standing behind the back row of chairs, with a clear, unobstructed view of the stage.

My eyes went instantly to Stephen. His tall, slender body was so familiar; those narrow white wings made a compact silhouette behind his body as if they had been folded down to the smallest possible shape. There had always been such intensity to Stephen. It had always seemed as though his muscles were corded, his hands were clenched, his wings were quivering with readiness. He had always appeared to be on the verge of—something. Speech. Flight. Anger. Laughter. Declaration. Renunciation. Whenever I was with him, I always found myself leaning forward just a little. Just as everyone in this crowd leaned forward, listening to the angels sing.

My first thought was that he looked no different than he had when I’d met him twenty years ago. But as I stood there, hungrily staring, I gradually realized that that wasn’t true. His curly brown hair still fell almost to his shoulders, but it was a little thinner, a little darker. He was still slim, but he had filled out more; his body had a man’s weight now, not a boy’s. His expression was more set, more severe. If I were closer, I was sure I would see a few permanent lines carved down his cheeks or edging his eyes.

He was my age, of course, or close to it—a year my junior, which I had never let him forget. I was the sophisticated young woman who could estimate the worth of a jewel merely by cupping it in her hand; I had bedded my first angel when I was sixteen. His father had sent him from Monteverde to Windy Point so he could gain a little sophistication of his own by serving with the Archangel-elect. He wasn’t a virgin when he arrived, but he might as well have been. He understood so little about the games between men and women.

He learned them all rapidly and very well.

I wondered how many women he had loved in the years since I had seen him last. I wondered how quickly he had lost his soulfulness, his sweetness, his sincerity. Was he by now as jaded as Raphael, as insensitive as Saul? Would I recognize his heart as instantly as I had recognized his face?

I studied him as he sang. He stood a little apart from the other performers, all of whom looked to be Sheba’s age or even younger. He seemed to be watching them, as if they were children climbing the branches of a tree and he was afraid they would fall. As if he was standing directly beneath them, his hands already half lifted to catch them when they tumbled down. Perhaps this was their first public performance and he was guiding them through it.

Perhaps one of them was a son or a daughter, and what he was showing was not concern, but love.

I put a hand to my throat as if to hold back the sound of weeping.

It was impossible that such a small movement across such a large room filled with so many people could have caught his attention. And yet something turned his gaze my way. I saw him recognize me and then freeze immobile. His eyes bored into mine; he actually missed a note of the music. The soprano sent him one quick, expressive glance of astonishment, while the tenor faltered and then manfully caught up. The alto, rapt in her own luscious melody line, didn’t seem to notice.