Angel-Seeker (58 page)

A
t first Obadiah said he would not go. He would not leave Rebekah. But Gabriel had turned those pure blue eyes on him and said, “You can rescue ten of her or twenty or a hundred, if you come with me.” And, as always, there was no gainsaying Gabriel.

He wasn't sure how much to tell Rebekah, still frail and a little disoriented from her week of delirium and her physical ordeal. But Rachel, meddling as always, had been before him, smoothing the way or forcing his hand, it was hard to tell. Always hard to tell with Rachel.

“I hear you're going to Breven,” Rebekah said to him, once he had greeted her with a kiss and interrogated her on her own health and the status of the baby. He came to see her maybe six times a day, and every time he asked her the same questions. She endured this with remarkable serenity, as she seemed to endure everything. She did not seem to be suffering at all.

“I—well, Gabriel wants me to go. I haven't decided yet if I will.”

“What does he plan to do there?”

Obadiah shrugged. He was playing with Rebekah's fingers, so thin and fragile. She had lost weight and strength during her recovery period, and it would be a long time before she was sturdy again. She was trying to increase her physical durability by taking slow, extended journeys every day through the mazelike hallway of the
building. Mary had not yet let her outside to try her balance on the open streets of Cedar Hills.

“Gabriel wants to meet with Uriah, I suppose,” Obadiah said. “Express his outrage at what happened to you and to Martha. Bring the full disapproval of the Archangel to bear on the Jansai community. Not that the Jansai community will care, but Gabriel believes in the value of the deliberate gesture. So that everyone knows where he stands and what he will tolerate.” He looked up from their entwined fingers and smiled at her. “I don't imagine his censure will change anything, though.”

She smiled back, though even that did not alter the seriousness of her sharp, pointed face—even sharper and more keenly angled than before. “Could you do something for me while you're in Breven?”

She had never asked him for anything, not during their courtship, not since she had recovered her senses in Cedar Hills. “Of course! Anything!”

“Will you go to my stepfather's house and tell my family I'm alive?”

He stared at her a long time, trying to read the turmoil that must lie behind the composed face. “Your family members are the ones who tried to kill you.”

She shook her head. “Not my mother. Not Jordan. If you could let them know.”

He nodded and shrugged, trying to convey that it did not matter how unorthodox it would be—an angel approaching a Jansai house, and bearing such news—that he did not care what kind of chaos he might create with his arrival. “Certainly. I will tell them. Any other messages I can deliver?”

She smiled and leaned forward to kiss him, her mouth lingering against his. “That I am well, and happy, and cared for.”

He returned the kiss with some enthusiasm but looked at her with rising doubt. “But—but are you?” he burst out. “You seem so—so ethereal, almost. So calm and so quiet. And after all you have been through. I have been so afraid for you. So worried that you would come back to me terrified and cowering, or not come back to me at all. And here you are—relaxed and tranquil—and I am so afraid. Of what horrors still lurk beneath that calm exterior. I am afraid that
you are still stumbling and that I will not be able to catch you when you fall again.”

She almost laughed at that. “Oh, Obadiah, you kind man,” she said, and kissed him again. “I have been so afraid for so long that there is no more fear left in me. Well, yes, a little bit! I am afraid of what your angel friends think of me, and I am afraid to walk out on your strange streets with my face uncovered, and have everyone look at me, and know who I am, and know my story. I am afraid I won't be a good mother. I'm afraid someday you may no longer love me. I'm—”

“That at least won't happen,” he interrupted.

“I'm afraid of all the small terrors that life holds. But only a little afraid. Worried about them. But not very much. My child and I almost died, and yet we have survived. The god wrapped his hands around us and kept us safe. After that, I don't think much of anything will frighten me too deeply. When Jovah puts his finger to your cheek and bids you live, you change a little, that's all.”

He put his own finger to her cheek and traced the line of the bone. All healed now, the outer skin. All the bruises gone from the flesh. The bruises to the spirit would last far longer, he thought, than even she might realize. “Don't change too much,” he teased. “For I was very fond of you the way you were.”

She turned her head to plant a kiss upon his hand. “And I,” she whispered against his palm, “am so very fond of you.”

They set out around noon the next day, a battalion of angels, and advanced on Breven. They were accompanied by Ariel, down from Monteverde to visit her newborn nephew, and three of the other angels from Gaza. As well as half the angels of the Eyrie and all but two angels from Cedar Hills. The only time angels usually gathered in such numbers was to sing at the Gloria, and Obadiah had to admit it was an impressive sight. A flock of great feathered creatures flying swiftly and purposefully on a mission of justice.

They spent one night on the road and arrived in Breven around noon the next day. As they came closer to the city, Obadiah moved to the head of the phalanx to lead the way to Uriah's. Gabriel, with his majestic wingspan and absolutely unvarying focus on the goal, had led
them this far, but Obadiah was the one who best understood the layout and politics of Breven. So he guided them to the gaudy red tent in the commercial district, where Uriah was most likely to be at this time of day, and came to a graceful landing. One by one, the other angels touched down behind him. Nearly seventy angels, wings spread out behind them, hands clasped before them, faces set and serious.

Gabriel nodded to Obadiah, and the two of them strode forward. Half a dozen of Uriah's disciples had rushed out of the tent as the angels began to arrive and now stood staring silently at the intruders. Merchants and their young sons, standing in the shelter of neighboring tents, watched and whispered among themselves. No one stepped up to challenge them. No one asked why they had come.

Obadiah held back the tent flap for Gabriel, and the Archangel stepped inside, ducking his head and folding back his wings to fit through the narrow slot. Obadiah followed, assessing the situation inside with a quick glance. Yes, there was Uriah, on his feet and looking both apprehensive and calculating. There were two of his sons and about ten of his cohorts. All on their feet, all staring. All wondering.

“Good afternoon, Uriah,” Obadiah said quietly, nodding at the Jansai leader. “I believe you know the Archangel Gabriel.”

Neither of the men stepped forward or offered to shake hands. “We're familiar with each other,” Uriah said.

“Good. Then let's not waste time,” Gabriel said. The Archangel looked like the very incarnation of divine justice, with his stark face, his black hair, and his icy blue eyes. Every line of his body bespoke righteous anger. “You and your fellow Jansai citizens have recently sent two women into the desert to die. You will stop this practice. While I am Archangel, it will not occur again.”

There was a moment of silence and then a disbelieving laugh from Uriah. Around the tent, the other men uttered low growls of anger. “I don't believe it's within your purview to tell the Jansai how to observe their customs. By our laws, these women sinned—”

“I believe it's not only within my purview to tell you, but within my ability to enforce my directives,” Gabriel interrupted coldly. “You will not again, while I am Archangel, send a woman into the desert to die.”

“I don't think you—”

“There will be a place set up,” Gabriel continued, “within the limits of Breven itself, where Jansai women can go when they are endangered. It will be a sanctuary, and once they are there, you cannot touch them. Any woman will be able to go there at any time. This news will be spread to every house and tent in Breven.”

The muttering behind them grew louder, but Uriah only laughed. “And who will run this sanctuary for you? What Jansai woman would be so bold?”

“I will install a Manadavvi woman, or a mortal from one of the cities,” Gabriel said. Obadiah had high hopes that Zoe would eagerly take this commission, but they had not paused to ask her. “Or a whole contingent of men and women whom I trust to run this place.”

“You can pitch your own tent and run the place yourself, but no Jansai woman will use it,” Uriah spat at him. “We will keep our women locked in our houses forever before we will bow to some ridiculous mandate from an angel—from
you.
There will be no sanctuaries. There will be no change in the Jansai laws. We will continue to run our lives and the lives of our families as we have for generations.”

“You will do as I say,” Gabriel said.

Now Uriah did take a step toward the Archangel, fury in every line of his portly body. “Or you will do what, Gabriel? Call down the god's thunderbolts on us—as you did at Windy Point, as you threatened to do when you last treated with Malachi? Or will you instead call down rainstorms, turn the sand of Breven into a wretched bog? That, too, you threatened in the past. Well, bring down your god's wrath. Make your fiery little speeches. The Jansai are not afraid of you. We will not do your bidding.”

Gabriel shrugged, the motion causing his taut white wings to tremble and settle back. “Then your city will slowly die,” he said in a flat, unemotional voice. “I will spread the word to the Harths and the Vashirs in Gaza: Do not trade with the Jansai. I will call a council of merchants in Semorrah and Castelana and every town along the Galilee River, and I will tell them: Do not trade with the Jansai. I will send angels to every farm and homestead in the three provinces. I will walk through the azure streets of the Blue City myself. I will raise my voice—and my voice can be heard across Samaria—and I will say one thing only: Do not trade with the Jansai. I will ruin you with
commerce, Uriah, more slowly and more certainly than I could ruin you with weather. Don't think I will not do what I say.”

Uriah's eyes snapped to Obadiah's. “He cannot mean any of this,” Uriah grated out.

Obadiah spread his hands in a complicated, temporizing gesture.
We have been such good friends, you and I; I would spare you the bad news now if I could.
“I have known Gabriel forever,” Obadiah said quietly. “He never promises what he is not willing to ensure.”

“But he can't be serious!”

“I assure you, I am.”

“I assure you, he is,” Obadiah said with gentle regret. When he wanted to jump up and down, howl in satisfaction, point his fingers, and level all sorts of accusations at the men in the tent. But Gabriel had told him to continue to play the part of mediator, to act as if he would do what he could to see that reason prevailed. Gabriel might be righteous, but he was not rash; he liked to keep an ally or two in position. “I told you before, the angels are willing to see the Edori become the commercial conduit of the country. In the face of this fresh scandal—” Obadiah shrugged, his wings, like Gabriel's, fluttering with the motion. “The Archangel is more than ever determined to see such an alternate plan come to fruition. You do not have much to bargain with, I am afraid.”

“But this is our life! Our culture! Our ways! We do not interfere with angel ways! We do not ride into the cities and proclaim their customs wrong—though we think them sinful and appalling. We do not attempt to force our beliefs on anyone outside of our own people—”

“The difference is, your own people are put to death for your beliefs,” Gabriel said shortly. “Unacceptable.”

Uriah was in a rage now, pacing closer to the angels and then farther away. The men in the tent had bunched together behind him and were muttering furiously among themselves. “Unacceptable? Tell me if
this
is unacceptable to you!” the Jansai leader shot at them, still pacing. “You think your god requires a member of every race to be present on the Plain of Sharon when you sing your precious Gloria. You think he will punish us all if you do not come together in harmony. Well, you have just knocked harmony from the world! There is discord now and forever between angels and Jansai! There
will be no Jansai on that plain when you go to sing in a few weeks, and you will see then whether the god hears your voices! You will see then whom he strikes down!”

“There will be at least one Jansai present when we go to sing,” Gabriel said with infinite calm.

“We will stay in Breven—every one,” Uriah snarled.

“Oh no,” Gabriel said. “Didn't I tell you? The woman Rebekah whom you expelled two weeks ago. She survived, and she is in the hands of the angels now. She will be happy to come sing with us and thank the god for her deliverance.”

Uriah gaped, and the men behind him gawked. Gabriel added, “You have until tomorrow morning to think about my terms. We stay at the Hotel Verde, and we leave with the dawn.”