Jovah's Angel (19 page)

Nothing about the continent being uninhabitable without intercessions by the angels.

Nothing about men of science practicing their diabolical magic. In fact, the Librera only mentioned technology in the most scornful of passages, leading the modern reader to assume that all the colonists had abhorred science and all its gifts and trappings.

And yet scientists, under the guidance of the god, had made men into angels.

She continued reading, although her brain felt disordered and she was not sure she would make much sense of the next few pages.

“Then Jovah took the angels aside and said to them, ‘These are the prayers I will teach you. You will sing these words when you wish for storm, these words when you wish for sunshine, these words when your crops fail and you need <
freeze-dried? frozen
?> seed grain. My supplies are virtually limitless; they will be available for centuries, so ask for what you need.'

“Then Jovah said to the angels, ‘Here are more prayers that I
will teach you. When your people are swept with plague, sing these prayers and I will send you <
anti-something? medicines?
word unclear> to heal them. When the women miscarry and the men turn to sport instead of love, I will send you manna to make the wives again seem attractive to their husbands, if you will sing these words.'

“Then Jovah said to the angels, ‘I have set my <
satellites
? word unclear—maybe means
ears
> above you close to the earth so that I can hear you any time you pray. But if my <
satellites
> ever fail, I have set <
ears
???> in the Corinni Mountains and in the Plain of Sharon and in Arrand
? not a place on any maps>, and these shall carry your words to me instead.”'

Alleya read the last paragraph three times, hoping it might make more sense, but it did not. If these satellites were devices that amplified the angels' voices and helped carry them to Jovah's ears, perhaps they had failed; perhaps that was why Jovah was having so much trouble hearing them now. But what had he put in the Corinni Mountains and at the Plain of Sharon that would facilitate the angels' prayers—and where exactly (for these were both fairly broad geographical areas) were these mysterious objects located? And how in the world would she recognize them even if she came across them?

She read a bit farther, but the history offered no new revelations, at least in this chapter. Just as well, she thought, laying the book aside and massaging the back of her head. What little she had learned so far had clarified nothing and shaken some of her profoundest beliefs; and she was not sure she had the strength right now to endure any more surprises.

Samuel returned grim-faced and weary; Asher seemed even more fired up than he had been about the Manadavvi situation.

“They blame the angels for the storms,” the older man said. “They think it is some plot to bring them to heel, and they are very angry.”

Asher struck a pose, imitating Gideon Fairwen. “‘What have we done to earn the anger of the angels? We live as we have always lived, do business with the men we have always dealt with. Why would the angels turn against us?' The man makes me sick.”

“Did they believe what they were saying, or do you think this
is a conspiracy with the Manadavvi to give them an excuse to flout us?” Alleya asked Samuel.

“Hard to tell. But they did seem angry.”

“But surely they noticed that the rains had stopped.”

“Yes, after a week of rain. And the river had already risen.”

“So what did they want from us? An apology? A concession? Why did they call us there?”

“To tell us not to think they can be controlled by such tactics,” Asher said scornfully. “To warn us that they will rebel if we continue tampering with the weather.”

“To remind us that mortals and angels agree to work in harmony, and once the harmony has been disrupted, it is impossible to restore,” Samuel said more soberly.

“Yes, well, very effective if we were in fact trying to punish them,” Alleya said sharply. “But since we are not—a vexing complication. I cannot afford to have the merchants and the Manadavvi in mutiny. What has Jerusha said about any of this?” she continued, turning to Asher. Jerusha was the leader of the angel host in Monteverde. “You were in Gaza recently. Did you see her?”

“We did not stop by Monteverde. I could go now—”

Alleya shook her head. “I'll go. Maybe she'll have some advice.”

But Jerusha, when consulted on the following day, gestured in her characteristic short, dismissive way and shook her head. “I know there is unrest among the Manadavvi,” she said. “There always is. It irks them that, powerful as they are, they are not all-powerful. They are always seeking the rift in the fabric of Samaria.”

Jerusha was small, dark and unemotional; her movements were precise and her mind analytical. Still, Alleya thought, the situation called for a little more worry. “Have they complained to you?”

“Incessantly. Since the rains started. We have done what we could. We have been able to shift some of the smaller storms. But none of our prayers seems to have a lasting effect.”

“Why?” Alleya demanded in frustration. “Why can Jovah not hear us?”

Jerusha shrugged. “Or why does he choose not to? There is a purpose in everything he does.”

“He says,” Alleya responded slowly, “that he is not punishing us. That he answers us when he is able.”

“When did he say this?” Jerusha asked.

Alleya waved a hand to denote a southerly direction. “I saw Job a while ago. We asked the god questions that he answered in the most circuitous manner.”

Jerusha smiled faintly. “As he answers everything. And did he tell you how to stop the storms and the flooding?”

“He told us to seek help from the son of Jeremiah,” Alleya said dryly. “Which was not at all illuminating.”

“Who is Jeremiah?”

“Precisely.”

“It was the name of the Archangel Gabriel's father,” Jerusha said. “But he lived hundreds of years ago.”

Alleya lifted her head consideringly. “Job said it might be a reference to a historical figure,” she said. “And did not Gabriel have three sons?”

“Yes, all dead for a century or more.”

“Well, their sons or their sons… The records must be somewhere. In the Eyrie, no doubt.”

“Jovah keeps such records,” Jerusha reminded her. “The oracles record such information for him when they list the names of those who have been dedicated by the priests.” Unconsciously, her hand went to the Kiss in her right arm. “So Jovah knows the name of every man's son.”

“Yes, well, Jovah chose not to be more specific last time I asked him, so I think I would first try another set of records,” Alleya said with some asperity. “But I thank you for the thought. I will see what I can discover about Gabriel's progeny.”

So, back at the Eyrie, Alleya found her way to the archives and researched the lives of the children of Gabriel and Rachel. Indeed, they had had three sons, and each of those sons had had a number of children, but the records were vague about the family members who were not angelic or in some other way illustrious. For instance, very little was said about the second son's second daughter, who apparently eloped with some Edori nomad at a young age and could have had any number of children. The Edori as a rule did not dedicate their children, so Jovah was unlikely to have kept track of these particular offspring; and who knew how many of
them
had had children and which of them might be the very man Jovah desired?

Alleya rubbed a dusty hand across her forehead, leaving a track of dirt. Think clearly, she admonished herself.
Jovah would not
have singled out someone of whose existence he was unaware. He asked for the son of Jeremiah, thus he knows of such a man, thus the man has been dedicated. It does not matter if Gabriel had a hundred untracked Edori grandchildren or great-grandchildren; the designated son of Jeremiah would not be among them.

Although that still did not tell her who this mysterious man was, or where he could be found.

And could she really spend the next few weeks of her life trying to reconstruct Gabriel's family tree? Perhaps she indeed must return to one of the oracles and ask for guidance.

It was a day of petty frustrations, for a series of other annoying problems cropped up. No one had signed up to sing the harmonic for the noon hour, for instance, so at the last minute Alleya and Dinah scrambled to the open stone grotto at the top level of the compound and offered a few unrehearsed melodies. Their voices did not blend particularly well, especially when they had not practiced their numbers, so Alleya was unsatisfied with the result—and displeased that such a long-standing tradition had almost been so casually broken.

When Timothy and one of the mortal girls relieved them an hour later, to sing a much smoother requiem, Alleya instantly turned to Dinah. “As of this minute, I'm putting you in charge of this,” she said. “The singers for the harmonics are to be scheduled at least one day in advance from now on. And if no one has signed up for the shift, you have the authority to conscript anyone you choose and sing the other half of the duet yourself.”

Dinah looked as if she could not decide if the commission pleased or annoyed her. Alleya added, “Thank you,” somewhat abruptly, and the younger angel smiled. “I will not fail you, angela,” she said, and that seemed to take care of that.

But then one of the cooks complained about meat from a Velora vendor, and the vendor insisted on seeing the Archangel personally to defend himself, and a committee of farmers who had traveled all the way from middle Jordana wanted to discuss the encroachment of the Jansai traders onto property they had always considered theirs. The voices seemed to rise around her in an indecipherable babble; she felt a low grade of panic set in, and found herself deferring or delegating as many decisions as she could. The Jordana contingent she promised to meet with in the
morning; the cook she fobbed off on one of the older mortal women who had lived in the Eyrie for decades. Before one more person could catch her eye or tap on her shoulder, Alleya escaped down the lower tunnels to the last remaining music room.

Where she slipped in a recording of simple love songs performed by the divine Hagar, the single disc in the whole collection that did not feature sacred music. She stood in the middle of the room and closed her eyes, imagining all her stress and worry draining away, through her spread fingertips, through her toes, rising through the top of her head unimpeded by her tangled hair. She pictured herself growing lighter, translucent, weightless, insubstantial enough to be buoyed two feet above the floor by the music. She felt her wings shirr, and her muscles melted lovingly across her bones.

Then the music abruptly stopped.

As if she actually had been dropped from a low height onto the stone floor, Alleya felt her head snap backward and her spine jar into place. Fresh panic rose through her throat; her cheeks cooled with anxiety. She quickly crossed to the panel of knobs set into the wall and began twisting and turning the dials.
Not this machine, too, not the last one, not the only one
… When the soaring music suddenly erupted again, rescued by who knew what combination of prods and pushes, Alleya was so relieved that her whole body went slack. Her legs could not support the weight of her body, so she let herself crumble slowly to the floor. She drew her knees up for a place to rest her heavy head; she wrapped her wings around herself for comfort; and she gave in to the overmastering impulse to sob.

At which point the door opened and Caleb Augustus walked in, and stopped to stare at her in blank astonishment.

Alleya scrambled to her feet, catching her shoes in her pooled tunic and almost pitching headlong back to the floor. Caleb hurried forward to grab her arm but she jerked away, hot with mortification. She could feel the heat rising to her brows, the stickiness of tears drying down her face; she had never felt more completely at a disadvantage.

“Angela, are you—?” he began, but she interrupted before he could complete his sentence.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, running ineffectual hands through her hair, down her skirts. “How could you just walk in without knocking, without permission—?”

“The angel sent me here, he said you would be glad to see me—”

“
What
angel?”

A tentative grin crossed the visitor's face. “Well, he seemed to recognize my name and I didn't ask him his,” he said a little whimsically. “He said you would want to see me right away.”

She turned her back on him, endeavoring to compose herself. Her breath still caught raggedly in her throat. It would not take much to start her crying again, and she
would not
do it in front of this man. In front of anyone. “I wanted to see you, but under more controlled circumstances,” she said as levelly as she could. “Excuse me. I will be myself in a moment.”