Archangel (36 page)

Rachel and Naomi were greeted with such extravagant applause when their song was ended that it was clear they would not be allowed to yield the stage without an encore. Rachel blushed but Naomi was triumphant. “What do you remember from the old days?” she shouted in Rachel’s ear while the applause went on and on around them.

“That one song that we sang two years running,” Rachel shouted back. “About the roses on the Gaza mountains.”

“Oh, yes! I remember it. Give me the note—you start it.”

So they sang a second piece and then, when the crowd still would not be quiet, a third. Rachel resolutely shook her head when voices called out demanding a solo, and she had to laughingly push her way through the throng to make her exit. She was flushed but exultant; it was no paltry thing, after all, to please the Edori at the Gathering. Hands touched her arm, voices cried out to her, gestures of approval, words of admiration. She smiled and nodded and made her thanks graciously, all the time edging for the far end of the camp to try for a moment of peace.

She finally broke through the second ring of fire and stood there a moment, relatively solitary, letting the fresh afternoon air cool her hot cheeks. Well, that had been a success. Yovah willing, her next performance would receive such acclaim.

“Ah, and that’s the voice the angels think may shame them on the Plain of Sharon,” said a burred murmur behind her. “Were any of them here today, you would have no more doubters among the divine ones.”

She turned to smile a little self-consciously at Matthew, who had followed her through the double ring. “I wondered if you were listening,” she said.

“You knew I would be.”

“I am nervous about it still,” she said seriously. “The Gloria. But I begin to think I can manage it.”

“You’ve a voice to make even your husband’s sound dull,” he said.

But Rachel shook her head. “No,” she said. “No one can sing like the angel Gabriel.”

F
or practically the first time in his life, the angel Gabriel was experiencing remorse. He did not care much for the feeling. It was not often that he felt he had been in the wrong—indeed, he would not even now say that he had erred—but perhaps things could have been handled better. Rachel had behaved abominably, of course—but then she often did—and it had been unkind of him to let her leave for Jovah knew how weeks without even a polite farewell.

Although there was no telling but that she had been glad to escape the Eyrie without being forced to lay eyes on him again. She could have come to his door the morning that she left; he was not the only one who had spoken hastily; she could have been the first to make apologies. No, not apologies—overtures. And she had chosen to leave without a word. Just as well he had not humbled himself to seek her out.

Josiah had promised him that his bride would humble him, but so far it had not happened. There was, after all, a bitter sort of satisfaction in that.

And yet, he should have said something… .

Between pride, regret, uncertainty, a nagging fear that she really might not come back and—well, there it was, may as well say it—a wholly unexpected sensation of missing her, Gabriel was not having a very comfortable time of it during Rachel’s absence.

He was kept busy enough planning his conference and recruiting the Eyrie angels to make sure the powermongers of
Samaria knew that he was in earnest. He sent teams of angels to Gaza, Breven and the river cities to create some serious havoc with the local weather patterns two weeks in advance of the scheduled meeting. This should make Malachi and Elijah and Jethro think twice about the existence of the god—and Gabriel’s willingness to invoke his power.

He had sent Nathan to Jordana and Obadiah to Gaza—or so he thought. To Judith he owed the knowledge that the angels had switched assignments.

She had wasted no time, during Rachel’s absence, in trying to insinuate herself into his daily routine. She synchronized her meal times with his; she made a point of bringing him new music or bits of news that she thought might interest him; she commented often on how tired he looked, offering to rub his neck or fetch soothing incense for him to burn. As always, he was torn between a wish she would go away and a desire to avoid hurting her. Then again, at times her soft, insistent concern did ease him a little. It was a nice thing, now and then, to be treated well by a solicitous woman.

This evening, she had brought him a glass of wine and a plate of cold food, since he had skipped dinner. He had been in Velora, discussing travel arrangements with merchants who offered transportation services between cities. At every Gloria there were mortals who needed to be conveyed from the Eyrie to the Plain of Sharon, and not all of them could be carried in an angel’s arms. This year, Gabriel estimated that he would have twice the usual number of travelers to accommodate, and he wanted to make sure there would be room for them all. Rachel, of course, would need a carriage of some sort. Peter had informed him that all the urchins of her school had also expressed a desire to come to the festival, and there were any number of others for whom Gabriel would be responsible.

But the conversations had taken time, and he had missed dinner, and now here was Judith to make it up to him.

“Thank you,” he said, smiling slightly as he allowed her into his room. “You always anticipate my needs.”

“Well, I try,” she said, giving him a smile and a sidelong look. “The beans are cold now, but they’re delicious. And the cream sauce on the carrots—it’s very good.”

“Didn’t you bring anything for yourself?”

“Oh, I ate hours ago.
I
wasn’t down in the village, working hard.”

“Oh, it wasn’t hard work,” he said, settling himself on a low stool and balancing the plate on his knees. “Just time-consuming. I’m so used to just taking off and going directly anywhere I want to go that I don’t think much about the logistics of getting somewhere. The road conditions, the hours of travel time—for Rachel and the others to arrive on the Plain by the appointed day, they will need to leave at least four days in advance, maybe five. Five days! I can cover that distance in a few hours.”

Judith had settled on the floor beside him like a docile puppy. “What would happen,” she said, “if she was late?”

What would happen, indeed? “If Rachel was late to the Gloria?” he said a little sharply. “Why would she be?”

Judith gestured with her small hands. “Oh, suppose her carriage overturned or the horses grew lame and all the other carriages had gone on ahead and she started walking but she didn’t get to the Plain until the day after she was supposed to—”

“Well,” Gabriel said, “the Librera says that Jovah would show his displeasure in no uncertain terms.”

Judith’s guileless eyes grew quite big. “You mean—he would send down thunderbolts and destroy us all? If she was one day late?”

Gabriel toyed with a half-eaten chunk of bread. “She has a little more time than one day,” he said. “The Librera says that if the Gloria is not sung on the scheduled morning, at sunset of that day Jovah will smite the Galo mountain from which the river springs. Three days later, if the Gloria still has not been sung, he will send lightning bolts to the middle of the River Galilee. Three days later—he will destroy the entire world.” Gabriel smiled faintly. “Jovah works on the principle of threes, you see,” he added. “Three chances, and three days between each chance. But after that—vengeance is absolute.”

“But—” Judith leaned closer, her wide eyes fixed on his face. Her perfume was subtle and troubling; he could not help noting, as he always noted, the absolute perfection of her face. “But would he
really
destroy the world? The angels, the mortals—all of us? Would he really do it?”

Gabriel laid his plate aside and linked his hands around one knee. “Well, he hasn’t done it yet,” he admitted. “And the only
way to test the theory is to one day maliciously hold off the performance of the Gloria. Yet the fear of Jovah’s power to annihilate us all is the only thing that enforces the tenuous harmonies that exist in Samaria today.”

She gave her girlish laugh. “Sometimes I don’t think it’s so very harmonious even now,” she said.

“No,” he agreed. “I feel that we daily slip farther and farther from the ideal of fraternity and interdependence that Jovah expects of us. There are factions among the Manadavvi, among the Jansai—and yet, how much worse would it be, do you think, if there were no fear of the god-at all? What would keep the Jansai from ravaging all of us? What would keep the Manadavvi from raiding each other, stealing land and serfs and gold from their neighbors? What would keep the angels from turning on each other or from using their powers to selfish ends? If I did not believe in Jovah’s wrath, could I not even now fly to Semorrah and tell Lord Jethro that I wanted all his gold and all his bolts of silk and linen, and the hand of his daughter in marriage, and that if he did not do my bidding, I would cause the river to rise and flood him and everyone who lived there? There will always be powerful men who are tempted to misuse their power, and the threat of a divinity with even greater strength is all that keeps them in check.”

Her fine brows had drawn together as she attempted to follow his argument. “But you already have a wife,” she pointed out. “You could not marry Lord Jethro’s daughter. Although I didn’t know he had a daughter.”

He couldn’t help himself. He grinned. Metaphorical and ethical speculation was wasted on the literal-minded Judith. “In any case,” he said, “I do believe in Jovah’s power, and so I try not to misdirect my own.”

She smiled at him sweetly. “Oh, you,” she said with great affection. “You could never do anything bad.”

He thought of the cadres of angels singing for rain, singing for drought, over scattered locations in Samaria. “Could I not?” he murmured. “I may be engaging in questionable practices even as we speak.”

She asked the rare insightful question. “Really? Something to do with why you sent Obadiah to Breven?”

“To Gaza,” he corrected. “Yes.”

She shook her head. “No, Nathan went to Gaza,” she said.
“Obadiah is in Jordana. I know because I asked him to bring me back a mother-of-pearl comb from Breven, and he said he would if he had time, but he didn’t think he would.”

Gabriel was frowning blackly. “So. That’s why Nathan didn’t bother telling me he was leaving—This has got to stop.”

“What has to stop? Nathan going to Gaza? He was just there for a month and you didn’t mind.”

He shook his head impatiently. Impossible to believe she didn’t know the situation, since everyone did, but he was not up to explaining it to her if she really didn’t. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll deal with him later, when he’s back. It’s one more thing …” He let his voice trail off and stared somewhat morosely before him. One more damn thing to trouble him. First Rachel leaving without a farewell, then Nathan sneaking off to conduct his desperate, doomed romance… .

Judith had dropped to her knees and crept suddenly closer to the angel’s stool. She laid one hand on his knee and with the other hesitantly smoothed back his hair. “I hate to see you so sad,” she said in a low, anxious voice. “Don’t they all know how much you have on your mind? Nathan, Rachel—all they do is make things harder for you, when you’ve got so much worrying you already.”

“Judith—” he said, half-raising his hand to brush hers aside. But now she had lifted both hands to his temples and was rubbing the bones of his forehead and cheeks. He was too tired to fight her, and the massage felt so good. He shut his eyes and let her smooth away his tension, let her fingers work their way slowly back across the rounded planes of his skull. She had edged even nearer; he could feel the heat of her stomach where it rested against his outer thigh. The smell of her perfume was stronger now and even more disturbing.

When she kissed him, he was not entirely surprised. He even shut his eyes more tightly, knowing that the minute he opened them he would have to push her away, end all this. Her mouth was persuasive on his, incredibly soft; she nibbled his thin lips with her own full ones, brushing her mouth from side to side over his. Her fingers had traveled back to his face and now lay insistently against his cheekbones. He felt his clenched jaw muscles loosen, felt his mouth open under hers.

And he pulled away, suddenly and completely, snatching her hands in his before she could fall forward or back, before she
could grab for his shoulders or his face. Her eyes were huge with desire; she stared at him with naked want.

“Gabriel,” she whispered, and tried to free her hands.

“No,” he said. He made his voice as decisive as he could, though he did not feel as if he could infuse it with any moral indignation. “Judith, this must stop here.”

“I love you,” she said, still whispering. “I always have.”

“I feel great affection for you, Judith,” he said, still in that firm tone, “but there can be nothing more than that between us. None of—this.”

She didn’t ask him why not. She knew. “But you don’t love her,” she said in that breathless voice. “She doesn’t love you. It wouldn’t be wrong for you to love me—”

“It would be,” he said gently, “and we both know it.”

Unexpectedly, she wrenched her hands free. She sat back on her heels and grew animated. “But I
love
you!” she cried. “I would do anything for you! I would not leave you when you asked me to stay—I would not shame you before your visitors—I would comfort you when you were hurt and feed you when you were hungry and love you every day—And what does
she
do for you? She flouts you, she laughs at you, she cares for nothing that you care about. Look at us, Gabriel!” She flung her arms wide, raised her chin so that he could better admire her sweet, even features. “I come from angel stock, I understand angel ways, I would be whatever you wanted me to be—and I love you. Think of her—half-slave, half-Edori, and all hateful. Which of us suits you best? Which would you rather come home to? Which of us could you truly love?”

True, it was all true; and yet, as she had bidden him do, he conjured up a picture of the rebellious, furious, unpredictable woman he had married at the direction of the god. Judith was willing to give him everything, and Rachel had never indicated that she wanted to give him anything, and yet—and yet—Since the day he had met her, ragged and shackled and defiant, he had been unable to put her out of his mind for more than a few minutes at a time.