Jovah's Angel (4 page)

“Didn't seem to bother you at the time,” Noah said sharply.

Caleb's eyes widened at the swift partisanship. “All right, then, let's just say I've never heard an angel sing the one about the woman with the three lovers. And I can't imagine that Micah would be happy to know that one of his host is performing tavern songs for the masses down in the Blue City.”

“She's not from Cedar Hills,” Noah said almost grudgingly. “Anyway—if that's what she wants to sing—it must get tiresome, doing all those endless masses and those dreary requiems.”

“You still haven't answered the question.”

“So what was the question?”

“Who is she? And why is she here?”

“Ask her.”

“You don't know?”

“I think you'll figure it out when you meet her.”

Caleb took a breath, let it go on a sigh instead of another
question. “Right. Well, then. Another bottle of wine? Looks like we'll be here for the evening.”

But the crowd began emptying out sooner than he expected, and within twenty minutes of Lilah's last number, Seraph was almost empty. Checking the time, Caleb realized that it was later than he had thought; she had sung for nearly two hours, and the time had just melted away. Noah took advantage of the unoccupied tables to snag an extra chair, and asked the waitress for another wineglass and a plate of cheese and fruit.

“She'll be hungry,” he said to Caleb.

“I would be.”

Despite these preparations, Caleb harbored a secret doubt that Lilah would actually join them. She seemed too rarefied to settle even briefly among the ranks of men; it would be like holding a conversation with a fire. Or with an angel, more accurately. Something he had never done.

But there she was, a graceful shape against the patchy darkness of the bar. She wended her way through the clustered tables and pushed-back chairs as delicately as if she were stepping a path in a rose garden. Still she carried her great wings tightly behind her, as if they were bound back; their feathered edges trailed on the floor behind her, and she seemed not to care that they swept through spilled ale and scattered crumbs.

“Food and wine—I knew I could count on you,” she said by way of greeting, dropping into the empty chair with a deliberate crumpling motion. “Those fools think I can cavort up there all night without rest or sustenance. I'm utterly famished.”

“You were marvelous, of course,” Noah said.

She laughed and quickly ate a bite of cheese. “Bar songs,” she said mockingly. “A child could sing them and bring the house down.”

“You don't have to sing bar songs,” Caleb said. “I think they'd listen to serious music even more happily. For myself, I preferred the first piece you did, though it nearly broke my heart.”

She turned wide, black, marveling eyes on him—as if astonished that he had dared to speak, or possibly as if she had not realized until this moment that there was someone else at the table. Up close she had a rich, dark beauty, white skin laid hauntingly against velvet black hair. Her wings repeated the same chiaroscuro motif, each blindingly white feather edged in shadow-black. “And what are
your
credentials for determining the proper musical mix to provide for the discriminating Luminauzi
audience?” she asked. “You own a music hall, perhaps? You are yourself a musician? You have another venue to offer me where songs of spirituality and mysticism will be greeted with sober acclaim?”

Amazing; she could do with her speaking voice what she could do when she sang, and that was whip up any emotion she wanted in anyone who listened. But Caleb was stubborn, and on guard against her now. He would not allow himself to be derided. “You must have been to Giordano's and La Breva,” he said coolly. “They offer music on the classical scale, and they're always packed to overflowing. Anyway, I think you could sing anything you chose to here, and people would come to listen. You have an awesome voice.”

“Thank you,” she said, still taunting him. “And I sing what I choose to sing, anyway. So don't pity me for my song selection. I choose what makes me happy.”

Clearly untrue; anyone less happy than Lilah, even on brief acquaintance, would be hard to locate. The full red mouth fell of its own accord into a pout more sad than sullen; there was a troubled weariness deep in her dark eyes that even the mockery could not disguise. “Well, what you sing seems to please your audience, at any rate,” Caleb said quietly. “I have never enjoyed a concert more.”

“Thank you,” she said again. “Do please return sometime.”

It was at this point that Noah intervened to make introductions. “Lilah, this is my friend Caleb. The engineer I told you about.”

“Oh, yes, the one who builds flying machines,” she said, turning her gaze back to Caleb. “Tell me, how does the project go?”

Caleb was suddenly acutely aware of her own folded wings, held rigidly behind her as if they were not part of her. Most angels he had observed carried their wings like bequests handed to them personally by the god; they could not lavish them with enough attention.

“Not as well as I would like,” he said with a smile. “Noah tells me I am only gliding, not truly flying. He's right, I need some sort of engine, but then you have all sorts of fuel problems—which could be dangerous, especially combustible fuel, and I can't see how you'd get electricity if you're airborne. But I enjoyed the gliding.”

“That's all we talk about,” Noah said, and Caleb sensed in him an eagerness to change the subject. “Motors. Fuel. Propulsion.
Locomotion. I've told you about my land vehicle, of course—”

“I believe I could build it myself,” Lilah murmured.

“Caleb and I want to take it for a long drive to see how well it holds up. We're thinking about Semorrah. Or Breven. Actually, I may have business in Breven fairly soon.”

“What business?” Caleb asked.

“Mmm, it's pretty speculative. Shipbuilding.”

“You don't know a damn thing about boats!”

“Motorized. Or part-motorized. Get them through the windless days. For long voyages.”

“I'd have thought that problem was worked out long ago.”

“New project. Well, as I say, it's iffy right now. But if I need to go to Breven, that would be the perfect test.”

“Sure, get us stranded somewhere in the Jordana deserts, no water, no food, no horses to carry us to anything resembling civilization—”

“We can have followers. I'll have some of the kids from the campsite come behind us on horseback. If we break down, they'll be along in a day or two to rescue us. Would that make you feel safer?”

“Infinitely.”

“Sounds like fun,” Lilah said. “When do we go?”

Noah's successive emotions of shock, delight and cautious disbelief were easy to read. “You'd like to come? Really? Caleb's right, it could be a horrific trip.”

“With not much to show for it at journey's end,” Caleb added. “Breven's a smelly, squalid, miserable city. Ever been there?”

“Oh, yes,” Lilah said with a secret smile.

Noah addressed Caleb. “Well, you can blame the likes of you and me for Breven's nastiness today,” he said. “If it weren't for the engineers and the scientists and the relentless inventors experimenting with power and coal—”

“Truly. We made the engines, we made the factories, we made the Jansai into the happy little industrialists they are today. And I still say, on with progress. But that doesn't erase the fact that Breven's an ugly place with no charm to recommend it, and if it wasn't for the sake of the journey I wouldn't agree to go at all.”

“You didn't answer me,” Lilah said, and her wonderful voice was plaintive. “Will you take me?”

Noah looked at her helplessly. “If you want to go, we'd be
overjoyed to have you,” he said. “But I don't imagine the trip will be much fun.”

She shrugged. The hunched bells of her wings rose and settled with her shoulders. “It's a change,” she said. “I can't tell you how I crave—something different.”

“What about your job?” Caleb asked. “Will they let you leave? I imagine a trip to Breven would take five days at least, each way.”

She smiled at him. The first smile she'd bestowed on him. Even resisting her, he felt the brilliance of that smile scissor through him, slitting his flesh from brow to heel. “I'm not worried about finding employment,” she said very gently. “I'm worried about finding entertainment. I think this would be fun.”

Caleb spread his hands. “Then you're invited.”

“If we go,” Noah amended. “I won't know for a while.”

“We'll go, anyway. We'll find a reason.”

“Well, we'll see. If it's not Breven, we'll go somewhere. We can vote.”

“Semorrah,” Caleb suggested.

“Gaza,” Noah said.

“Somewhere in Bethel. I know—Velora,” Caleb said. “It's supposed to be a little Luminaux.”

But Lilah had turned her face away and Noah looked suddenly grave. “Not Velora,” the Edori said gently. “We'll think of something.”

So the fallen angel had ties to Velora, and not happy ones, either. Not that Caleb hadn't already figured that out. Not that he hadn't realized, very early into the conversation, just who this angel was.

He did not have time either to apologize or pretend ignorance. They were joined at that moment by a slim, sleek, well-dressed man who dripped all over with gold and arrogance. He was attired with Luminaux elegance, but Caleb sized him up instantly as transplanted Jansai—one of the cutthroat, capitalistic ex-slavers from Breven who had flourished in the young industrial age of Samaria.

“I see you gentlemen are enjoying yourselves,” the man said civilly enough, but something in the smooth voice instantly roused Caleb's antagonism. “Something more I can get you before you leave? I'm afraid Lilah won't be able to visit with you much longer. She needs her rest to maintain her voice.”

The man stood directly behind the angel, and so he did not see
the scornful smile that crossed her face; but she did not contradict him or even appear annoyed. Noah, on the other hand, contained his irritation only with an obvious effort.

“I wouldn't want to keep her if she's ready to go,” the Edori said.

But she was already on her feet. “Oh, I must. Joseph—this is Joseph, by the way, he owns this delightful establishment—is kind enough to look after me, and he knows I would stay out all night carousing if someone didn't fetch me at the proper time.”

“Carousing seems a little strong,” Caleb remarked.

She smiled maliciously. “But I do like it.”

Joseph had draped his arm across the angel's shoulders, carelessly brushing his elbow against the heavy feathers of her wings. She seemed, but perhaps it was Caleb's imagination, to shudder ever so slightly as he touched her, squeezing the ball of her shoulder with his thick, well-manicured hands. Caleb remembered suddenly, information gleaned from some source he could not recall now, that angels hated having their wings touched, except in the most intimate circumstances, and sometimes not even then. Perhaps that was all her momentary distaste signified.

“Will you be singing tomorrow night?” Noah asked, coming to his feet. Caleb stood also.

“No reason not to,” she said. “It's what I live for, after all.”

“Then I'll probably be here tomorrow night. To see you.”

“Good,” she said, but over her shoulder; Joseph had turned the angel and begun walking her away. “I'll come by afterward to share a drink with you. Caleb—it was divine meeting you. I'm sure we'll become best friends on our journey.”

The two men stood silently for a few moments, watching the entwined figures fade into the room's shadows. Caleb glanced at Noah. “I don't suppose you want another drink,” he said.

Noah nodded. “I do, but not here. Let's go.”

So it was to be a late night, after all. They left, then spent ten minutes walking the glowing streets of Luminaux, trying to agree on a tavern. They settled finally on Blue Sky, one of the few places with good food, no music, and service around the clock. They sat, and Noah ordered more wine. Caleb settled for coffee.

“You're fishing in troubled waters,” he observed, after a long moment in which neither spoke. “Be careful you don't go tumbling in headlong and drown.”

Noah laughed shortly. “Wouldn't be hard to do,” he said. “She's a siren. She could lure any man to his doom.”

“You know who she is, of course,” Caleb said.

Noah nodded. “The Archangel. She doesn't answer to her name, though. Won't talk about it at all.”

“Former Archangel,” Caleb corrected gently. “And I don't know that I blame her.”

“I keep thinking—I keep wondering—what exactly got broken. How the injury happened. Why it hasn't been fixed.”

“Well, she fell from the sky—”

“I mean, there's so many things that we know now that we didn't know ten or even five years ago. Look at the Gabriel Dam. Ten years ago, people would have said it couldn't be built. Now it supplies power to half the towns in southern Bethel and Jordana.”

“What does that have to do with Delilah?”

“There must be a way to fix her wing. What is it that's broken? Can't it be replaced? I know every medical expert in the country went to her after she fell, but maybe she should go to the scientists instead. They would look at the problem differently.”

“Suggest it to her,” Caleb said, though he didn't think she'd be particularly receptive. “You're a scientist.”

Noah raised his dark eyes to his friend's face. “I thought maybe you could help her,” he said.

“Me? Why me?”

“You're the specialist in building new wings.”

That caught Caleb totally by surprise, although, adding it up swiftly, he realized that Noah had been pointed toward this proposal the whole night. It actually made sense, if he wasn't the one expected to produce miracles.