Jovah's Angel (43 page)

“You forget how nice candlelight can be,” she said. “At the Eyrie, of course, everything is gaslight.”

“And in the cities, it's all becoming electricity,” Caleb said. “But I like a little candlelight now and then. More romantic.”

It had been a calculated remark. She threw him a warning look, but then her face softened to a smile.

“Now if we only had wine and soft music,” she said.

“I've got the wine,” he said. “And you could sing.”

“I'm not singing,” she said automatically. “You brought
wine
? All the way from Luminaux?”

“I thought we might need it.”

Another one of those looks, followed by a laugh. “Well, we might
enjoy
it,” she said primly. “But we won't need it.”

It was, all in all, one of the pleasantest evenings Caleb had ever spent. They sat at the small table in the gaily lit kitchen, eating off dishes supplied by some long-ago angelica, sipping their wine without noticing it, eating their food without tasting it. They talked. Caleb recounted in more detail the tale of his trip to Breven and back. Alleya told him about her visit with her mother and then, naturally segueing to the topic, about growing up in Chahiela. That prompted Caleb to reminisce about his own childhood, learning scientific theory at his father's side, learning simple human courtesies from his frail but determined mother. Their conversation was thoughtful, unhurried, built half of memories and half of observations, and Caleb had never felt so completely in tune with himself or another human being.

It was obvious that Alleya felt it, too, that she gave herself up to the pleasure of that conversation, but only for a couple of hours. He could tell when she realized that she must halt this intimacy or lose herself in it completely, for she gave him a bright smile and seemed to draw a polite veil across her face.

“Well! This has been delightful, I know, but after all we didn't come here just to talk about our parents,” she said, rising to her feet and beginning to gather up the dishes. “I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted. Why don't I clean up in here, and you see if you can pick out some clean blankets to make up the beds?”

He wanted to protest, but he didn't want to alarm her. They would be here much of tomorrow, most likely; he might even have another evening like this in store for him. A plea now would only put her more on guard for the duration of the visit.

“Very well,” he said instead. “Which bedroom do you want?”

“Oh, the one with the blue wall hanging, I think.”

“I'll take the one with the big wooden bedstead. I'll see what I can find for us to sleep on.”

In another thirty minutes or so, they were settling themselves in for the night and promising to wake early in the morning. Caleb waited for the sound of her door closing, then stretched himself out on his bed, wondering what odd sequence of events had led him to this place, this evening, this company. Not that he was complaining. At the moment he could not think of a place he'd rather be, a person he'd rather be with. He turned on his side, prepared to spend a wakeful night wishing he was closer to that same person, and fell instantly asleep.

Alleya was awake before he was in the morning, and he scrambled to catch up, eating and dressing as quickly as he could. When he joined her outside a few minutes later, he found her prowling through the ruined gardens. She straightened as he approached her and wrinkled her nose in a fatalistic smile.

“No listening device here,” she said. “I didn't think there would be.”

“Where do you think we should begin looking?” Caleb asked.

She hesitated, and did one slow pivot, inspecting the grounds. It was a rare, glorious day; the sun, looking big and lazy, made just enough effort to spin a silken cocoon of warmth around them. Every rocky outcrop, every mossy log, looked rich with possibility.

“Well, we didn't find anything in the house,” she said. “I'd say we start in the near gardens and work our way outward. See how far we get.”

“Has it occurred to you,” he asked, “that this listening device might be hidden or buried? Or someplace completely inaccessible?”

“Oh, it's occurred to me,” she said wryly. “But all we can do is look.”

Look they did for the rest of the morning, moving in ever-widening circles around the perimeter of the grounds. Caleb had given some thought to what they were seeking, and he considered it unlikely that it had, in fact, been buried (because why stop up your artificial ears with rock and dirt?), though he assumed it must be in some protected place. And if it had been here since the founding of Samaria, some 650 years ago, it was unlikely to have been snugged under the protruding roots of even the most ancient tree (where Alleya persisted in looking). No, it was hidden in a small cave or installed in some stone housing, if it was here at all, and so Caleb turned his attention to rocky outcrops and tumbles of boulders.

They stopped once for a quick lunch, then resumed their search. They were now about a mile from the house and could choose either to go up toward the stony peak or down the overgrown mountain.

“What do you think?” Alleya asked.

“Up,” Caleb replied without hesitation.

She seemed willing to trust him, but asked, “Why?”

He smiled. “Closer to Jovah,” he said.

She smiled back. “As good a reason as any.”

So they made their way slowly up the mountain, where the greenery grew more and more sparse and the little stone caverns grew more and more numerous. Twenty men diligently searching for a week could not have looked inside all the possible hiding sites, Caleb thought in some disgruntlement. If they were to find anything, it would be through sheer luck.

He heard Alleya, a few yards away from him, give a tired laugh. “She even thought angels might try to land here,” Alleya said.

Caleb glanced over at her with a frown. “What? Who?”

Alleya pointed to a slim metal spike protruding from a cluster of rocks about twenty yards above them. “See? Another one of the pointed rods. All the way out here.”

Caleb glanced behind them, trying to remember where he had last seen one of Hagar's lethal angel deterrents. Yards away, maybe half a mile. “I don't think she's the one who placed that,” he said slowly. “It doesn't look like the others.”

Alleya shaded her eyes. “You're right. It's thinner. Shorter.
Not so sharp-looking.” She looked back at Caleb. “What do you think it is, then?”

He moved toward it cautiously, since the rocky slope did not offer easy footing. “Flag, maybe. Tell people where something was buried. Or maybe—”

“What?”

He sought a better handhold and shook his head. “We don't know much about noise and how it travels,” he said. “Maybe it's something that facilitates the transmission of sound.”

She caught her breath. “The listening device.”

“Well, let's see.”

Once they arrived at their destination, they had more work ahead of them, for the root of the thin metal rod was buried deep under a pile of heavy stone. Working together, the man and the angel lifted and laid aside twelve or fifteen boulders which had obviously been carefully selected and arranged to create a small, well-protected cairn. Caleb considered himself a fit man, but the angel's strength was greater than his own; she could carry heavy rocks that his own muscles could not have supported. She worked beside him tirelessly for the full hour it took to open the crypt.

“I see something,” she said once, breathlessly, when about half the rocks had been removed.

“You have been gifted with special vision as well?” he panted.

“What? No, look, can't you see it? It looks like something silver. And it's—I can see a blue light glowing on top of it—”

So could Caleb, now that he peered more determinedly into the little cave. They redoubled their efforts to move the rocks and free the object inside.

At last, it was clear of all rubble and they both came to their knees to examine it as closely as they could. As Alleya had said, they had discovered a silver metal box encrusted with black knobs and a single glowing sapphire light. It was no bigger than the basket a woman would carry to market, but more square, and the thin rod they had spotted was embedded firmly into its back.

Cautiously, in case it gave off a violent heat, Caleb reached a hand out and placed his fingertips along the unmarked surface. Cool as water, and just as smooth. He touched each knob without adjusting it, ran his fingers down the back of the rod to see how it connected with the box. Then, frowning, he flattened his palm along the top plane of the device.

“What?” Alleya asked quickly.

“It feels like—there's the slightest tremor inside.”

“Like it's alive?” she demanded.

“No—like it has a motor running. A more finely tuned motor than I've ever encountered, but—there's that electric vibration.”

“Let me feel.”

She laid her own hand along the top of the box, then moved it experimentally to the sides and the front. She nodded. “I can feel it, but barely. What does that mean?”

Caleb took a deep breath. “Well. That, and the blue light, would seem to indicate that it's switched on. That it's working.”

At first, she seemed excited. “It's working? You mean, it's listening to our words and sending them to Jovah?”

He nodded. “If that's what it's intended for.”

“Of course it is! And that means—” Suddenly the excitement faded from her face; now she appeared anxious. “But if it's been working all along—if it's been relaying our prayers to Jovah—”

“Well, I don't know how great its range is, but I would assume pretty far—”

“Then he has been hearing our prayers and choosing to ignore them,” she finished quietly.

Caleb turned a hand palm-up in a gesture empty of comfort. “It's only a guess,” he said. “Perhaps this thing isn't working after all. Or perhaps—something else is blocking the songs of the angels.”

She shook her head. “Perhaps,” she said, but she did not sound convinced. “But I think he just has chosen not to listen.”

Caleb was fingering the foreign silver box again. He was dying to take it apart and examine every minute detail, but he knew there was no justification for such an action if it really was still functioning. “Sing for me,” he said suddenly. “Let's see if that has any effect on the box. Maybe we'll be able to tell if it's really transmitting.”

She sat back on her heels, too discouraged to make her usual protest against performing. “What should I sing?” she asked helplessly.

“Anything. A prayer for sunshine.”

She did smile at that. “We already have sunshine.”

“Well, you must know more prayers than I do.”

She nodded abstractedly and thought for a moment. Then she folded her hands together and began a soft, musical incantation—so soft that neither Caleb nor the machine registered the beginning of her song. But her voice grew stronger, sweeter, rich with its own peculiar cadences, and for a moment Caleb suspended his
breath to listen. Almost on the instant, a ripple of green lights played down the left edge of the silver box, and a blinking light, also green, set up a fluttering pattern next to the steady blue one. Alleya faltered briefly, then recovered, her voice soaring in a high, pure loop that seemed to brighten each individual bulb to a point of ecstatic radiance.

Caleb understood their frenzy. As soon as Alleya hit her first gorgeous trill, he felt a pulse of fever in the black Kiss on his arm. As the intensity of her song built, so did the heat in his Kiss, till he felt as if a brand were being pressed against his skin. He made no protest, though he glanced down once to see the scarlet light filtering through the charred nodule on his arm. He merely clenched one fist and listened intently to the heavenly sweep and circle of the angel's song.

He had kept his eyes mostly on the antics of the machine; he did not feel capable of looking at Alleya while she sang so close beside him. So when she abruptly fell silent, he swung his eyes over in surprise, to find her staring at him with something like panic. Her eyes flicked from his burning Kiss to his face and back to his Kiss, and she put a hand across her mouth as if to hold back unspeakable words.

“What is it? What's wrong?” he demanded, relieved to feel the heat beginning to fade from his arm.

She shook her head. “I think the machine is working,” she said in a whisper.

“No question,” he answered. “At least on this end. So what do we do now, angela?”

She was still shaken by some unexpected anxiety, but she was recovering fast, and she clearly was not going to offer him an explanation. “We bury the device again, and we leave it alone,” she said. “And we find some other way to reach Jovah.”

A few hours later, they were back at the cottage, making unenthusiastic plans for leaving in the morning. They had said very little on the way back down the mountain, leaving Caleb to wonder what exactly had caused Alleya's perturbation. Soon enough, he thought it might be physical pain, for he caught her favoring her injured ankle more and more.

“Would it be easier if I carried you?” he asked once, stopping her with a hand on her shoulder.

She shook her head. “Hard to carry an angel,” she said with
an attempt at humor. “The wings get in the way.”

“Then fly back down,” he said.

“Nowhere to land safely,” she answered briefly. “I'll be fine.”

But she looked haggard and worn when they finally made it to the door of Hagar's cabin, and Caleb ordered her to rest while he prepared a meal. She slept longer than he expected, for it was well past nightfall by the time she reappeared. The food had been ready for an hour; he had kept it warming by the fire.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Better. I don't think I'll enjoy the climb down the mountain tomorrow, but after that I shouldn't have to walk much till my foot is healed.”