Angels of Darkness (39 page)

His voice came from the eastern side of the road along a stretch that had mostly shaken off the sand of the desert and arrayed itself in stunted trees, prickly bushes, and a hardy vine that covered soil, stone, shrub, or tree with an utter lack of discrimination. Not the worst place for an angel to come down in an uncontrolled fall, though I tripped a half dozen times on a leafy runner or a tree root. “Corban!”

It was five minutes before I found him, huddled in the stippled shade of a squat tree just now unfurling its pale green leaves. His wings drooped behind him, so flat you could mistake them for a cloak thrown behind his shoulders, and his legs were thrust straight out on the grass. Not until I was close enough to see his face could I make out the scratches and bruises on his skin. But I didn't see any gouts of blood, any sticks of bone protruding through the flesh. He'd made a rough landing, maybe, but not a disastrous one.

I skidded to my knees beside him, grabbing his shoulders in a shaking grip. “Corban, are you all right?” I demanded.

His hands came up to lock over my wrists. “Moriah, you found me,” he said in a whisper. And then he burst into tears.

I had never in my life seen a man cry.

No one has ever come completely undone in front of me; no one has ever been willing to display, before my cynical eyes, ungovernable weakness or need. I had seen this angel hurt and angry, I had spied on him in his despair, but I had not realized he could be so vulnerable as to weep in my presence.

Without another word, I took him in my arms and drew his head against my breast, comforting him as best I could with the soothing words I had never before had cause to use.

It was a moment before his own words came, halting and disjointed, muffled against my jacket. “—But I couldn't find it—and then the wind came—and I was lost and I didn't
kno
w—but I thought I could get back—but there was no sound, it was gone. And I was afraid—Moriah, so afraid—”

“Sshhh,” I said, patting his head, where the long curls were knotted from a rough wind and a night in the open. “Here. Have some water before you tell the rest.”

He took a ragged breath. “I'm so thirsty. Thank you, thank you—”

I didn't speak again until he had practically emptied the flask with quick, greedy swallows. “You must try to compose yourself,” I said, my voice more brisk. “Tell me how badly you're hurt. Alma and I came in a wagon and we can—”

“Alma's here?” he demanded, sitting up straighter and actually wiping his sleeve across his nose. I had never seen him make such an inelegant gesture. “Where?”

“I left her with the horses. She's the one who let me know you were missing, so you must be properly grateful to her. But the road is a little distance that way. Can you walk?”

He took another shaky breath. I could see him trying to impose an iron calm. I wondered how much practice he'd had doing that during the darkest days after his blinding, how often he had let himself give in to grief before pulling himself back together. Not often, I guessed. “I don't think anything is broken,” he said. “I came down hard, but I didn't crash. But I didn't have any idea where I was—or how to get back—” He pressed his lips together.

“The windmill has fallen over completely—that's why you couldn't hear it,” I said. “Even so, you're not too far away. You did a good job navigating with absolutely no clues.”

“I didn't think you'd be able to find me.”

“Well, I did,” I said. He was still holding on to me with one hand, so now I stood and drew him up beside me. He was unsteady for a moment, but didn't cry out in pain and fold back to the ground, which I took as a good sign.

“What about your wings?” I said, for they still hung behind him, limp as laundry. “Were they injured?”

He shook his head and spread them out to their fullest extent. I saw a few bent quills, a couple of patches where the feathers might have been scratched off by an overeager branch, but from what I could tell, he was remarkably unscathed. If he'd been able to figure out which way to go, he could have made his way home.

“We brought the wagon in case you were hurt,” I said. “But if you want, we'll just drive it back to the school, singing the whole way. You can take flight and follow us home.”

He gathered his wings tightly behind him and shook his head. “I'll ride,” he said in a quiet voice. “I'm never flying again.”

 

 

I
t was, of course, a cause for goggling eyes and disbelieving cries when Alma and I returned to the Gabriel School with the angel hunched in the back of the wagon. He had accepted the food we'd brought and gratefully finished off a second flask of water, but once we had gotten under way, he had refused to speak in anything but monosyllables. It was a return to the depressed, despairing Corban I had met two weeks before, and I was not sure I would be able to jolt him out of his melancholy a second time.

And obviously, this was not the day to try.

I pulled over when the school was just around the next bend. “It's broad daylight, and people will be watching for our return,” I said. “Would you like us to leave you somewhere safe until nightfall, when I'll come back for you?”

His arms rested on his updrawn knees, and his face tilted downward as if he were staring at the floorboards. He shrugged. “I don't care.”

I glanced at Alma. “You don't care if everyone sees you being helped from the wagon? If everyone knows that there's an angel living in the Great House, and that he's broken?”

I used the word deliberately, but he barely flinched. “No.”

“Corban, are you sure? It's no trouble to come back for you after sundown.”

“I'm sure,” he said, and slumped back against the side of the wagon. He didn't speak another word for the rest of the drive.

I stopped again at the front of the Great House and let Alma help him up the shallow stairs. I kept my hands lax on the reins and most of my attention on the school grounds, where an afternoon break meant dozens of students and ten or twelve teachers were milling around outside, playing games, enjoying the spring sunshine, and watching the angel stumble into the house. Most of them looked from me to the angel and back at me.

I sighed and tsked at the horses, guiding them downhill toward the stable. I didn't feel up to the exclamations and the demands for information and the repeated protestations of amazement. Despite the fact that I was unspeakably relieved that Corban's adventure had been no worse than it was, I felt as listless and exhausted as the angel himself.

 

 

I
didn't see Corban for four more days. I did try. I took supplies up to the Great House once a day, paused to speak briefly to Alma, then headed up the stairs to knock on the angel's door. Then I kept knocking, sometimes for ten minutes or more, until he called, “Go away!” By that, and the fact that he continued to swap the breakfast and dinner trays Alma left on a table outside his door, I knew he was still alive.

I had managed to give the thinnest possible explanation to Deborah and my fellow cooks.
I knew there was a sick man in the house, but I didn't know it was an angel. Yes, I suppose he must have been there for weeks. No, I don't know what's wrong with him. No, I don't know what happened when he tried to fly. Yes, it certainly is a tragedy.

They kept asking questions, but I never volunteered more information. Besides, I didn't see the other workers too often, because I was back on the solitary overnight shift. Most of the staff and students had recovered from the first wave of the stomach sickness, but now the disease was making the rounds for a second time, and Rhesa was among those who succumbed. I didn't mind resuming the night duties while she lay on her bed, fevered and miserable. The schedule suited me well enough—and afforded me the greatest freedom.

On that fourth night, all my chores done and the bread prematurely mixed and kneaded, I took off my apron, crept out of the school, climbed the hill, and quietly let myself into the Great House. The door to Alma's room was closed, though I wouldn't have put it past her to be lying awake, listening for my footsteps.
You should come back some night,
she had said just the day before.
Make him talk to you.
She hadn't gone so far as to say she would leave the door unlocked, but she had left the chain off. It had been simple to get inside.

The harder task would be making it through the door at the top of the stairs. I knocked for a few minutes, not expecting an answer, and I didn't get one. So I set the lamp on the table and picked the lock, which yielded without a fight. Then I retrieved the lamp and stepped into the room.

Corban stood in the center, his body tense, his wings quivering behind him in visible indignation. He looked wretched—his clothes disarrayed, his hair unkempt, even his face unshaven. The room was a mess, with clothes littered across the floor, a few plates stacked on a corner table, the cello on its side as if it had been kicked over. All that was missing was the smell of alcohol and vomit, and he would have been entirely dissolute.

It was clear he was not going to speak first. I took a moment to survey the room. “Well,” I drawled finally, “I see you managed to control your frustration with your usual genteel restrain.”

His hands balled into fists and he took a step forward. “Yes, your mockery is all that's been missing during my week of agony.”

“It hasn't been a week,” I said. “It's been four days. Have you lost your sense of time along with your pride?”

The anger on his face deepened. I could see he was fighting the urge to respond. My guess was he had promised himself he wouldn't speak at all, and he hated me for goading him into one unwary reply already. Oh, but I had just begun.

“I swear, I've never met anyone worse than you at coping with adversity,” I said. “The slightest setback, and you instantly stop trying.”

“The slightest setback?” he demanded. “I
fell
from the
sky!
I could have broken my neck—been paralyzed—even killed! It was
catastrophe,
not—not inconvenience.”

“As far as I'm concerned, if you're not dead, you have no excuse for giving up,” I said.

“Oh—that's right. I want to take advice about moral courage from the woman who
tried to murder a man
and then spent the next four years running from the crime.”

I had expected him to throw that in my face; I was braced for it. So I laughed, which only infuriated him more. “Well, at least my instincts for survival are well honed,” I said. “Unlike yours.”

“You don't understand—you've never understood,” he exclaimed, losing a little more of his self-control. He gestured broadly. “Flying was my
life.
If I cannot fly, I cannot be any of the things I was meant to be! I'm
useless!
I don't care about survival because there's nothing to survive
for.”

“Well, I've never had much use for angels, but surely you could find some constructive way to pass your time,” I said unsympathetically. “There are plenty of blind people who make lace or throw pots or weave fabric or sort objects or do any number of valuable tasks.”

He gaped at me as if he could not believe even I could be so insensitive. I grinned and went on. “But surely you have some more specialized skills! You're a musician. Can't you teach singing or playing? There's a whole school of young people just down the hill. Start a class. You might discover a prodigy.”

“I have little aptitude for teaching,” he ground out.

I remembered that he had been blinded while teaching a young angel how to sing the prayer for thunderbolts, so I abandoned this tack. “Well, then,” I said in a considering voice, “what else could you—I know! Aren't angels desperate to populate the world with more little angels? Couldn't you hire yourself out as a sort of stud service?”

It was the most outrageous thing I could think to say. His face went slack with shock, but he was too affronted to answer.

“We could bring girls in from the holds,” I said in an inspired tone. “Cedar Hills is the closest, of course, but angel-seekers would come from the Eyrie and Monteverde, too, if they knew they didn't actually have to vie for your attention. You'd just give them each an appointment—an hour, a half hour, whatever you were comfortable with—then send them on their way.”

“That's the crudest thing I've ever heard anyone say.”

“Really? But it seems so practical! You have a—well, I won't exactly call it a talent—you have a
commodity,
and many people desire it, and you could find some worthwhile purpose in your life by exploiting it. I don't see the drawbacks.”

“You're so vulgar,” he said and turned away.

I came close enough to put a hand on his arm, but he kept his back to me. “Are you shy? Is that it? Out of practice? There are a couple of workers down at the school who used to be angel-seekers, unless I miss my guess. I'm sure one of them would be glad to help you through the awkward parts.”

Now he swung around to face me again. “And who else at the Gabriel School used to be an angel-seeker?” he flung at me. He was angry enough now that he wanted to hit back, and hit back hard. “You? Did you try bedding angels when it turned out your friend was the only one who could catch the attention of a Manadavvi lord?”

I gasped, and then I slapped him so fast I wasn't even aware of forming the intention. He grabbed my wrist before I could strike him a second time. He twisted me closer, my arm bent against his chest so I could not get leverage to punch him with my other hand; his grip was astonishingly strong.