Archangel (32 page)

She shook her head. “No, I’ll be in Luminaux by then. Or actually, outside of Luminaux a few miles.”

“What are you
talking
about?” he demanded in an impatient voice.

“The Gathering. I’m going with Matthew.”

“But you can’t,” he said. “I need you here. I just told you—all my enemies will be arriving at the same time.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But it will take us a week or more to travel there—longer, actually, because I’m going to stop at Mount Sinai for a day or two—and I’ll be gone days before your guests arrive.”

He was starting to get seriously angry. “Rachel, you can’t leave,” he said. “You must see how important this meeting is—
all
the merchants, half the Jansai, half the Manadavvi—it’s as much a matter of social entertaining as it is a political maneuver, and I need you with me.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Gabriel, but you didn’t tell me you were planning it.”

“Well, you didn’t mention that you were leaving for—what is it, a month?—to go to this Gathering—which, among other things, falls too close to the Gloria for you to go.”

“You said I didn’t need your permission to do things. You said I had my own privileges.”

“And so you do, but the joint responsibilities come first! I can understand that you wish to attend the Gathering—”

“I’m
going
to attend it. It’s been five years since I’ve been to one, five years since I’ve seen any of my people.”

“They aren’t your people! They were kind to you, but—”

“They
are
my people! My family! I have no one but the Edori.”

“You have the angels,” he said stiffly. “You have me.”

“You! You can’t even understand why this is so important to me!”

“And you are making no attempt to understand what is
important to
me
! Rachel, don’t you see what I am trying to do here? Among other things, I’m fighting for the survival of the Edori. I am trying to force three powerful, wealthy factions to overhaul their lucrative trading agreements, to restructure the very basis of their wealth—and they don’t like it, they don’t want to do it, and I need every weapon I have in hand to fight them.”

“Some other time, then! Change the day of your great meeting. Make it after the Gloria. I will be here then.”

“Too many people are involved for me to do that. If you would just be reasonable—”

“Be
reasonable
—”

“Yes! How can you expect to prepare for the Gloria if you are gone for weeks and weeks beforehand? When will you practice? What will you sing? You have no idea how exhausting the performance will be—if you trek all the way to Luminaux and back—”

“What is it you are really afraid of, Gabriel? That if I go to the Edori, I will be so happy there that I won’t come back?”

“Well, it wouldn’t surprise me all that greatly,” he said. “Since you have made it abundantly clear that you prefer your life with them to your life among the angels.”

“If the angels were more agreeable,” she said softly, “perhaps I could learn to love them.”

He sprang to his feet and began pacing around the room. She stood too, unwilling to sit tamely while he strode about. “Yes! I can see why you would say the angels have given you no care at all! It was only angels who rescued you from slavery—angels who brought you to a position of power and honor—angels who have tried to befriend you: Magdalena, Obadiah, myself. But what do you give back to any of us? Me you delight in deceiving—you will not tell me your troubles, you will not tell me your plans—and now when, for the first time, I ask something of you, you refuse, and you are not even sorry that you cannot oblige me!”

“And that’s exactly the difference between the angels and the Edori!” she retorted furiously. “The Edori took me in and asked nothing of me at all. Nothing! Except that I be happy among them, and I was. But the angels—! From the beginning, it was expected that I look a certain way, behave a certain way. I did not ask for the role you have tried to thrust on me. I did not ask to be brought here. I did not ask to be your bride. I have done
as well as I can among people who are strange to me, people who do not like me, but Gabriel, I would gladly leave at any time and not come back again.”

“You can’t do that,” he said flatly. “I won’t let you.”

“You won’t
let
me? You won’t
let
me leave here? How can you stop me?”

“Who gave you the means to leave this place, anyway, if it wasn’t me? When you were afraid to be taken down the mountain in an angel’s arms, who gave you the way out? Who said, ‘You are not a prisoner here’? Well, I did—and I can just as easily revoke that. I can take away your escape route—”

“You can take away from me any privilege you wish,” she said coldly. “And you can lose any hold on me you ever had.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“How do you think you can
make
me sing? In your precious Gloria. Can you slap me? Beat me? Chain me up? You may take me to your stupid Plain, you may have all your angels and all your friends gathered around, but if I don’t want to open my mouth, no power on this whole world can make me sing. And you know it. Take away from me whatever you want. I can take away more from you.”

They glared at each other for a full minute, both of them too angry to speak. Rachel’s hands were balled so hard at her sides that her whole body was cramped to sustain the pressure. Gabriel, before her, looked like the incarnation of divine vengeance. His pale face was all angular, angry bone; his great wings quivered and hummed with tension. His eyes were so blue that they colored the air; they scorched her with a lapis lazuli fire.

“I cannot believe you mean that,” he said finally, in a
voice
so tightly controlled that it trembled, though just a little.

“Well, I do,” was her instant response.

He shook his head. “What was Jovah thinking of,” he said, almost whispering, “when he chose you for this part? You will destroy me—you will destroy all of us.”

And without giving her a chance to say another word, he spun around on his heel and strode out. The feather edge of his wing brushed her as he swept by, but she stood unmoving, her hands still clenched, waiting a moment to breathe so that the heat of his passage would have cooled and the air would be safe to take into her lungs. And then she flung herself on her bed and cried again, and hated him with ail her heart.

* * *

They did not speak again for the next week, and studiously avoided each other, which was not hard. The Eyrie was big enough for a careful man and woman to keep out of each other’s way.

She had informed her students that she would be gone for a few weeks, and left them detailed projects to complete in her absence. Peter told her he could foresee no problems arising that he would not be able to deal with.

“And if I do have any questions, I’ll send Obadiah to Gabriel,” he added.

“Yes, I’m sure Gabriel can solve any crisis that comes up,” she replied coolly.

The students were sorrier to see Matthew leave than they were to see Rachel go, but he promised to bring them back treats from Luminaux, so they were resigned to it. “We’ll only have a day or two at Josiah’s, now,” Matthew warned her. “That is, if you’re still planning to shop in Luminaux before the Gathering. We could go afterward, of course.”

“That’s cutting it very close,” she said. “We have to be here at least a few days before the Gloria.”

“Well, then, it’s tomorrow we should be leaving.”

“Yes. I’m ready.”

She was used to taking her evening meal at the school with Peter and the children, but for this last day, Obadiah invited her out to dinner. He took her to a small cafe she had not been to before, and ordered from the exotic menu.

“You may hate this food,” he remarked. “It’s very strange.”

She smiled. “Then why did you bring me here?”

“Scheming. Hoping you’ll get so violently ill you can’t leave in the morning.”

“Why, Obadiah. I didn’t know you would miss me that much.”

“I don’t think I’m going to be happy with you gone,” he said lightly. “I’ll probably mope around the Eyrie, languishing, until you return.”

“You could come with me.”

“An angel at the Gathering? I don’t think so.”

“There are often non-Edori there, though I don’t remember ever seeing an angel before, I have to admit.”

“You should bring Gabriel, if you’re going to bring any angel.” She was surprised, and kept silent.

“You’re wrong, you know,” he said, very gently. “To leave him this way.”

“You don’t know anything about it.”

“I know that you fought, and that you haven’t spoken since, and that you will be gone three weeks or more. I don’t know what was said, but—”

“Unforgivable things,” she interrupted.

“You really should be here for his meeting,” Obadiah persisted. “I understand how much you want to go to this Gathering, but what Gabriel is trying to do is so important—”

“Oh, so now you’re on Gabriel’s side, are you?”

“I’ve always admired Gabriel,” the angel said seriously. “I may jest about him, and laugh at him to his face, but I’m really very much in awe of him. He’s a good man, Rachel. And he’s trying to do good things. Sometimes I don’t think you give him enough credit.”

She was flustered and upset, but it was impossible to be angry at Obadiah. “Yes—no, I do, but—Obadiah, he doesn’t make way for anyone else. He doesn’t accept anyone else’s reasons, he’s so sure he’s right.”

“Well, many times he is.”

“And even if he is right, I’m not staying,” she finished up mutinously. “You think I’m being selfish, I know, but I can’t—I have had nothing for so long. I have had everything taken away from me, and what the angels have given back to me is not what I want. I want—I need—to be among people I love again. I want—how can I explain this? I have never been as devout as Gabriel, as most of the angels,” she said, her voice changing, calming, as she tried to make him understand. “And while I lived in Semorrah, there were times I hated Yovah, hated what he had done to me, and to the Edori, and to people I loved. But while I lived with the Edori … They are very religious people, you know. They pray directly to the god, much as the angels do. And while I lived with the Edori, I felt close to Yovah. I heard him whisper in my ear. I believed—I
knew
—that my words went directly to his heart.

“And if—” she said, her voice slowing still more, “if I am to
go to the Plain of Sharon and sing to Yovah, ask his blessing on all peoples of Samaria, I must feel close to him again. And I think I must go to the Gathering, and listen to the Edori singing, to understand again how a simple woman can call directly on the god. I must be renewed myself before I can give what the angels want me to give. Do you understand that? Perhaps I am being selfish, but not completely.”

“You could still go to the Gathering,” he said persuasively. “Stay here for the first day of Gabriel’s meeting, then let me fly you to Luminaux.”

She jerked backward from him as if he had struck her. “No.”

“You are afraid of heights, I know—”

“No. I can’t. No.”

He gave her a cajoling smile. “Do you think I would drop you? I have never dropped anyone, you know.”

“Obadiah, I can’t,” she said, a trace of panic in her voice. “I won’t—don’t ask me. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “All right,” he said. “But it would solve so many things.”

Their food came, and they ate for a few moments in silence. Rachel looked up to find him watching her expectantly. “What?” she said.

“Do you like it?”

“Actually, I do,” she said, smiling a little. “Is it grilled horse manure or something?”

“No. Perfectly respectable food. But no one else will eat here with me.”

Her smile broadened. “This shall become our special place, then. We’ll come here again when I return.”

“Agreed,” he said instantly. “I’ll reserve a table now.”

The rest of the meal passed companionably, and Obadiah did not again bring up painful topics. When they had finished eating, they walked slowly back to the mountain, and the angel escorted the angelica to the tunnel car. It was full dark by this time, and the air was chilly, but it was clear that spring was on the way. The wind which had been so wicked all during the winter seemed merely playful now; the hard ground gave just a little beneath their feet.

“When do you leave?” Obadiah asked as she opened the cage door and stepped inside.

“Tomorrow. First light.”

“Matthew has hired horses?” She nodded. “You know how to ride, of course.”

She laughed. “Of course. It’s been five years—almost six—since I have ridden, but I’m sure I haven’t forgotten.”

“I was on a horse once. I’d gotten extremely ill, oh, a day’s flight outside of Luminaux. They tied me to a horse and escorted me back to the Eyrie. It was awful. He was afraid of my wings and kept leaping forward every time a feather would brush him. I was sore from my ankles to my—well, sore all the way up. I’d rather have died of fever, I think.”

“I like to ride,” she said. She had fastened the grille, but reached out a hand to him between the bars. “Don’t be so sad. I’ll be back in a few weeks.”

His hand closed on hers. “I thought I was covering it up so well,” he said. “I really wish you weren’t going.” He put her hand against his heart and held it there. “I’ll sing for you each night,” he said softly. “Jovah keep you safe.”

She kissed the fingers of her free hand, then laid them against his lips. “And you also,” she said.

He took her hand from his lips and clasped it against his chest beside the other one. “Now I’ve got you and you can’t get free,” he said. “Trapped in a little cage inside the mountain.”

“With an angel holding me down,” she finished. “Yes, that is how I feel much of the time.”

Instantly he released her. “Truly, Rachel, take care,” he said.

She rang the bell and activated the lever. “I will,” she said. “Dinner again in a few weeks, my friend. The time will go very fast.”

The car began its slow, lumbering ascent. “I don’t think so,” she thought he said, but the noise of the car made it hard to catch his words. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself and wondered why the night air suddenly seemed so cold.