Angelica (21 page)

“If I don't banish him before I have a chance to listen to him,” Gaaron said.

“You can't really send him to Breven,” Ahio said, though there was a faint questioning lilt in his voice.

“About a dozen people I'd pack off to Breven if I really thought it would do any good,” Gaaron said with a sigh. “But, no, I can't. For one thing, he wouldn't stay. For another—” He paused and considered. “For another, I don't entirely trust the Jansai. I can't really say why.”

“ 'Cause they're a bunch of calculating and lying cheats,” Ahio said without heat. He was fiddling with the chrome controls of the machine. “Susannah doesn't like them, either. And Susannah pretty much seems to like everybody.”

“She said you and Miriam were teaching her some masses.”

Ahio touched a button and the music that had been playing noticeably slowed, the singers' voices becoming low and elongated, as if their tongues had been stretched out and their throats had been choked. “What did you do?” Gaaron exclaimed.

Ahio grinned at him over his shoulder. “Cut the tempo. Way too much, but I'm trying to get the pitch to change.”

Gaaron came a step closer. “I didn't even know you could do that. How did you figure that out?”

Ahio shrugged. “I spend a lot of time down here. Fool with the machines a lot. Did you know there are a couple of masses that you can play simultaneously? Note for note, beat for beat, they match up. You wouldn't believe the harmony you can get—eight-part, twelve-part—and these amazing fugues, interweaving between the two pieces. I've never heard anything like it.”

“No,” said Gaaron blankly. “I didn't know that. Could they be sung that way live?”

“Sure. Take a lot of rehearsal, but I bet you'd bring down the mountain if you tried that at a Gloria.”

Gaaron smiled faintly. “It's the angelica's task to choose a mass for the Gloria.”

Ahio nodded. “She knows. I'm helping her pick one out.”

It was something the angelica was supposed to do on her own—by tradition, in great secrecy—choose the mass that would set the tone for the entire Gloria. In practice, of course, the angelica often announced her selection in advance so she and the Archangel could practice the piece well enough to make a creditable presentation.

“That's good,” Gaaron says. “I'm sure she doesn't know the sacred music.”

Ahio fiddled with the controls again, and the tempo picked up a little, though not to concert speed. “And she's an alto
and
she doesn't like to sing solos,” the younger angel
said. “We're going to have to adapt something for her.”

“But—all the masses open with a solo. Male part or female part.
All
of them,” Gaaron said.

Ahio gave him a swift, sweet smile. “That's why we're going to have to adapt. Think you'll be opening on a duet for your first Gloria.”

Gaaron didn't have much to say in response to that, so he left, thinking it all over. Well, why not? There were only two unbreakable rules of the Gloria. One was that it be performed every year, on the Plain of Sharon, on the morning of the spring equinox. The other was that it feature representatives of all the peoples in Samaria—angels, Jansai, Manadavvi, Edori, and ordinary mortals. The Gloria was meant to be proof to the god that all these individuals were living together in harmony, that they had not—as the races on their home world had—begun to war on one another with a ferocity that would someday end in total destruction. As long as the Gloria was sung, the god trusted that they were living their lives in some kind of peace. If it was not sung, so the Librera told them, the god would send a thunderbolt to strike Mount Galo, the hulking peak that guarded the southern edge of the plain. If, within three more days, the Gloria was not sung, he would destroy the river Galilee that flowed down the middle of Samaria. If it was not sung three days after that, he would destroy the world.

Naturally, since the time Samaria had been colonized two hundred and forty years ago, the Gloria had never been overlooked.

In fact, as Gaaron had told Susannah, he had never even seen the god unleash a thunderbolt, though he did indeed know the prayers that would call one down. And he absolutely, in every sinew and tissue of his body, believed that the god would smite them if they failed to sing at the determined hour. But he didn't think the god would be offended if the opening mass consisted of a duet. He thought the god might indeed be pleased by that, more evidence of harmony between races, between sexes, between Archangel and angelica.

He thought of Susannah's smooth, sumptuous voice, and
realized that he was looking forward to his first chance to sing in harmony with his chosen bride.

All these conversations occupied Gaaron for the first few days of his return, and the succeeding days were taken up with the ordinary tasks of running the hold—flying off to the four corners of Bethel to ask for rain or check out a report of plague. He returned from one of these missions to find Miriam pouting in his room.

“I don't think it's my fault if I always get in trouble,” she greeted him, her face stormy. “When you're
never
here to help me.”

He stripped off his flying leathers and waited for doom to fall. “What happened?” he asked briefly.

She shrugged elaborately. “There were some men in Velora. I got to talking with them. I was just playing. Flirting a little. Usually when I mention your name, it makes them leave me alone. It's like a game. Only this time—well, either they didn't believe me or they liked the idea of making you mad. I don't know. And I think they were going to—going to—well, one of them grabbed my arm and he was pulling me along and I couldn't get free, I really tried, so I started screaming—”

He was standing in the center of the room, staring at her in pure horror. “What
happened
?” he said again.

“Well, I hoped that Nicholas or Ahio would be around, but they'd gone back up to the Eyrie after they dropped us off, but Susannah heard me and she came over—”

Making his blood run even colder. “Sweet Jovah singing. Did she get help?”

“No. She hit him with a rock,” Miriam said with great satisfaction. “Right on the head. And he dropped my arm. There was kind of a crowd gathered by then, too, so the men just ran off.”

“No one stopped them? Did anyone know who they were?”

“I didn't ask,” Miriam said. “And Susannah was only paying attention to me. I don't know if anyone knew them.”

Gaaron passed a hand over his eyes. “The god protect
me,” he said under his breath. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Well, if you were
here
ever,
you
could protect me,” Miriam said. “Like you're supposed to. As my big brother.”

He dropped his hand to stare at her. “If you would behave like a well-brought-up young lady, you wouldn't get in situations where you need protecting. Miriam! Do you realize what kind of danger you were in? Do you realize what those men could have done to you? Do you realize—do you know—what am I supposed to do with you? How in the world
can
I protect you? You don't want my protection. You want—” He stalked away from her to stare blindly out the window, where it was dark and there was nothing much to see. “I don't know what you want,” he ended in a tired voice. “Maybe just my attention. Though when you have that, you behave even worse.”

“I just want—I'm just trying to make the days more interesting,” she said in a small voice. “Just trying to—just trying to figure it all out.”

He whirled around so quickly that his wings flared up behind him, belling out and flattening down like a skirt caught in a breeze. “So what do I do now? Confine you to the Eyrie for a month? I think I have to. You know that all your angel friends will refuse to take you down to Velora if I tell them to.”

She scowled. “Don't do that. I'll be good.”

He shook his head. “You will
not
be good. You have
never
been good. I am out of ideas concerning you.”

“I don't want to be cooped up in the Eyrie for a month,” she said, her voice pleading. “Don't, Gaaron. I only told you the story because I knew someone else would. I thought you wouldn't be as mad if I told you myself.”

“Well, you thought wrong.”

“Don't lock me up here! I swear I'll jump out the window and kill myself.”

He shrugged. “Solve your problems as well as mine.”

“Don't, Gaaron,” she coaxed. “Let me—I know! I'll stay in the Eyrie for a whole month—except for the times I go with you.”

“I don't go down to Velora for fun,” he said stiffly. “I
only go out to make weather intercessions and offer other prayers.”

“Yes, I know,” she said eagerly. “Take me with you! I won't be any trouble. You carried Susannah for hundreds of miles when you brought her from Jordana. You can carry me anywhere in Bethel.”

He frowned at her. This suggestion had come from nowhere. “Take you with me! To pray for rain or sun?”

“Yes, why not? I know all the music. I can sing harmony with you, and the god will respond twice as fast.”

“You will be a distraction, and you will probably sing the wrong harmony on purpose just because it amuses you.”

“I won't,” she said. “I want to come with you. If I'm very good for the next week, and I don't leave the Eyrie at all, can I come? The next time you're called out on an intercession?”

He continued frowning at her, not sure how to answer. She sounded sincere, but Miriam could always be convincing. And why did she want to come with him? She had always been intrigued by the sacred music, it was true, and she had learned the pieces right along with him, even though, technically, only angels expected their voices to reach Jovah's ears. But that was because only angels could fly high above the world, close to Jovah, crooning their music directly to the god. If he carried Miriam in his arms, why could she not sing, too?

“I'll consider it,” he said neutrally. “But if, in the intervening week, you do a
single thing
to make me angry or mistrustful—”

“I won't!” She jumped to her feet and came across the room to kiss him on the cheek. He was still disturbed enough by her revelations that he almost did not stand still for the kiss—but that much he had learned from his mother, who had had almost nothing to teach. Never turn away from a gesture of affection from someone you love, for you never know when that might be the last kiss you are ever offered. Miriam crossed the room, blew him another kiss from the door, and left with a jaunty toss of her hair.

He thought,
No wonder both of our parents died so young.

I
t was impossible to speak to Susannah over dinner, for Enoch and Esther joined them and talked of mundane matters the whole time. Naturally everyone else in the hold also dropped by their table for a few minutes just to say hello. But Gaaron gave Susannah a meaningful look, and she smiled and nodded; she knew he wanted to talk, and she could guess the topic.

After the meal, Nicholas called for a musical game, and about half the residents of the Eyrie spilled out onto the plateau to play. It was a warm late-summer evening, the air as heavy as a shawl thrown across a woman's shoulders; the clean, spicy scent of mountain herbs flavored the breeze. It was not yet dark, but the sun had dipped below the horizon line, and the gold of the sky was tarnishing into black. It was a perfect night to stand outside and lift your voice to the heavens.

Nicholas was organizing the players into teams, to sing competing melodies that their opponents would have to then repeat in harmony, but Gaaron shook his head when invited to join. “Not right now,” he said, and Nicholas nodded and went off to find other players.

Gaaron glanced around to find Susannah standing a few
feet away, watching him. He smiled and joined her, and they strolled slowly around the perimeter of the plateau, between the mass of people and the rough rise of stone.

“You saw Miriam already, I take it,” Susannah said. “Your face is lined with new worries.”

“Jovah save us all,” he said. “From her story, I was not sure—was she really in danger?”

“I wasn't sure, either, but I decided to act as if she was,” Susannah replied. “We were lucky we were in the market, with so many people around.”

Gaaron gave her a quick smile. “Did you really hit one of her attackers with a rock?”

“I did,” she said calmly. “I've got a pretty good aim, too. I can hit a wolf at twenty yards nine times out of ten. I've even killed a rabbit or two, but that's been more luck than skill.”

He shook his head. “You astonish me.”

“You'd be surprised what you can do when you're driven by fear or hunger. Not that I think you've ever experienced much of either.”

He thought that over. “Maybe not the kind you're talking about, but I admit to some fear over my sister. I absolutely do not know what to do with her.”

“I think you were right the other day,” Susannah said. “Send her away. Not to Breven, though. Luminaux, maybe.”

“Luminaux?” he said, examining the idea. “What could she do there?”

Susannah laughed. “Almost anything she wanted, I would think. Luminaux has even more distractions than Velora.”

“Then why would I want to send her there?” he demanded.

“Because you could apprentice her to one of the artisans there. Ask her if she wants to learn—I don't know—jewelry-making or shirt-dying or harp-building. She'll have to work hard or the craft master won't keep her—but I think she'll love Luminaux. She'll want to stay. So she'll work hard and try to do well. I think that's one of the things wrong with Miriam. She doesn't have anything to occupy her time or her thoughts. Learning a craft might fill those hours.”

“Maybe,” he said uncertainly. “But what if she said she
would go, and be good, and then she got there and decided not to be good? Who would take care of her?”

“Maybe she'd just have to take care of herself.”

He stared at her in the gathering dark. “She never has.”

“She's nineteen. It might be time.”

“I'll think about it,” he said.

She nodded and made no more arguments. They walked on for a few minutes without speaking, listening appreciatively to the volley of music passing between the two lines of singers. Nicholas' team, which featured Ahio, Chloe, and Zibiah, among others, appeared to be more energetic—and louder—but the opposing team of older and more seasoned singers was more adept at catching each new melody and fashioning a reasonable harmony before batting it back. Most of the musical lines sounded as if they were being made up on the spot, though now and then Gaaron caught a few measures that sounded familiar. Tavern ditties and folk songs, of course; no one would play games with the sacred masses.

“You'd be good at this game,” he remarked to Susannah.

“Maybe next time I'll join in,” she said. “Or is it considered beneath the angelica's dignity?”

He laughed. “Not at all. But once it becomes clear to all the opposing players how good you are, they probably won't let you play again.”

She smiled. “I see they didn't let you play. Is that because your voice is so good you shame all the others?”

He glanced down in surprise. “You have heard me sing?”

She shook her head. “The other night when a group of us came back late, Miriam said you'd joined the harmonics. But I couldn't pick your voice out.”

“Well, then,” he said. “Later tonight.”

“What happens then?”

“You'll see.”

They did not have long to wait before the melody game was over, and popular vote declared the older singers to be the winners. Then Sela stepped forward from the group and said, “I've been practicing this. Tell me what you think.”

She sang a lovely ballad that drew light applause, and then Chloe joined her on a second song. Nicholas and Ahio
performed a quick, demanding duet as soon as the women had finished.

Susannah turned to Gaaron with a smile. They had stepped forward to stand on the fringes of the group that had formed a circle around the singers. “It's like an Edori campfire,” she said. “Anyone who wants to can sing.”

He nodded. “Happens every once in a while. High spirits or good wine or, sometimes, a day of mourning, and suddenly everyone in the hold wants to gather together and sing. It's best on summer nights, like this one, but even in the winter we'll gather like this. Set up braziers around the whole plateau and stand out here till midnight, singing. It's probably what I love best about the Eyrie. About living with angels.”

She gave him a sideways smile. “About living with music,” she amended. “You do not need angels to sing.”

He inclined his head in a stately nod. “My apologies, angelica,” he said. “Indeed, you do not.”

They listened perhaps another half hour before someone in the crowd called out Gaaron's name. Then the call was taken up by others, and someone from behind pushed him into the open circle at the center of the singers. He laughed and stepped forward, shaking his wings back and settling himself on the balls of his feet.

“No need for violence, I am happy to sing for you,” he said. “Is there anything you'd especially like to hear?”

“The
Requiem
,” someone called, but a chorus of boos led him to believe this was considered too maudlin for the time and place.

“One of the Grindel pieces,” Ahio suggested, naming a composer whose upbeat and lively music was considered classical, though hardly sacred. “Oh, yes, sing Grindel,” a few other voices concurred. Gaaron nodded and took a moment to review the music in his head. He looked for Susannah in the crowd but he had lost her somehow. He did not think she had left.

Tapping his left forefinger against his thigh to help him keep to the beat, he launched into the Grindel
Alleluia
. It was a fast and demanding number; if you once failed to catch enough breath on the rare quarter rests, you would never be able to make it through the rest of the piece. The timing was
tricky, too, full of accented backbeats and unexpected sixteenth notes, but the whole thing was so headlong and triumphant that, even if you made a mistake, you found yourself carried along irresistibly to the highly ornamented conclusion. The applause broke out before he'd even made it through the final measure, a signal that he'd done the piece pretty well for not having practiced it in recent memory. He flung his hands out in a theatrical gesture as he held the last note for an extra few beats, then he dropped his head in a sweeping bow that made his wingtips brush the feet of the people standing behind him.

“Sing something else!” Nicholas called out.

“Sing a love song,” Zibiah requested.

“Oh, Gaaron, sing that pretty one that you did last winter,” Sela said, though he had no idea what piece she might be referring to.

“Sing one of the southern Bethel ballads,” Miriam said.
She
had had no trouble locating Susannah among the onlookers, for she had the Edori by the arm and was pushing her into the inner circle next to Gaaron. “Susannah knows all of them. She'll sing harmony with you.”

The crowd murmured its approval of this scheme, though Gaaron shot Susannah a quick questioning look. The newcomer might not feel so at ease singing in front of angels and other critical listeners. But Susannah merely grinned at him, shrugging a little as if to indicate that it was impossible to gainsay Miriam, and stepped close enough to speak to him in a low voice.

“Do you know ‘Misty Valley Morning'?” she asked. “It's simple enough, we should be able to make it through without any rehearsal.”

He nodded. “You don't have to do this,” he said.

She laughed at him. “I'll enjoy it. You start. Sing the first verse, and I'll come in on the chorus.”

He took a few steps over and turned to face her so that he could catch any bodily cues she might send—if she intended to hold a note an extra beat or two, if she wanted to slow the tempo. Then he began singing the first lines of the ballad. It was a pretty piece—simple, as she had said, but with a haunting, minor melody line that showed off the voice
of any singer clever enough to pitch the song in his proper range. He saw Susannah smile with pleasure as he hit the high tenor notes, and he felt unreasonably pleased with himself. He began showing off a little, drawing out the notes more than they needed, adding little grace notes to the descending melody, making the music even more mournful. Someone behind him sighed, and he knew he was overdoing it but that nobody minded.

Susannah's voice joined his on the chorus, coming in with absolute precision a major third above his. Instantly, it was as if his own voice brightened, deepened, grew more resonant as it chimed against hers. He had sung with a hundred different singers, and no one had caught his timing and his tone as perfectly as she was doing. He remembered how her harmony had improved every singer she had sung with at that Edori campfire, how she had paired her voice with each of theirs and made both of them seem rich as treasure. It was as if her voice was absolutely pure, an undifferentiated well of virgin music, and it took on the characteristics of the singers around it. Yet it was better than that. More beautiful than that. He sang that simple song with all his strength, feeling the breath pour out of him from every inch of his body, feeling his toes curl and his shoulders lift and even his wingtips vibrate with the flood of music. And she matched him, note for note, never losing him, never overshadowing him, never letting him fall.

When the ballad came to its sad, riveting conclusion, there was a moment's silence. Gaaron actually had to catch his breath, something that usually only happened after one of the more demanding masses, and Susannah had time to glance around her as if to read the expressions on the nearest faces. And then the applause came, and Nicholas' whooping approval, and Miriam's high, excited laugh, and the cries for “Encore!” and “Another piece! Jovah demands it!” Susannah was laughing and smiling while the young, wild ones gathered around her to pat her on the back and exclaim over her first public performance.

“You've picked a fine one there,” Enoch said, coming to stand beside Gaaron. “I wasn't too sure when you first brought her back, for an Edori angelica—? Well. But she can
sing, can't she? That must have been what Jovah saw in her. Heard in her, more likely.”

The condescending tone annoyed Gaaron, but he merely nodded. “I am certain Jovah listens to and approves of her voice,” he said in a repressive tone.

He was more pleased when Ahio broke away from the group around Susannah and came over to give Gaaron a friendly slap on the shoulder. The younger angel was grinning. “I told you,” Ahio said. “Give her harmony, and she'll bring the mountain down.”

“We don't want the mountain to come down,” Gaaron said with a little smile.

Ahio glanced back at Susannah. “It might come down anyway,” he said, and laughed out loud.

Not for the first time, Gaaron found himself relatively happy with the woman Jovah had chosen to be his bride.

Two days later, the Jansai came.

Nicholas flew up from Velora to tell Gaaron that there was a delegation in the city looking for him. “Told me to say they were from Solomon,” Nicholas said doubtfully. “And that you were expecting them.”

“I am,” Gaaron said. “Why didn't you bring them up here?”

Nicholas shook his head. “Because they wouldn't come. They said—the one man said—no Jansai goes anywhere under another man's power unless he's already dead. Plus there's a woman with them, and I don't think they would have wanted me to take her in my arms.”