And she could not think that was it, because he seemed as fond of Keren as everyone else in the hold was.
Which only served to remind Susannah how, when Gaaron had first told her he was looking for an Edori bride, she had thought Keren must be the one he was seeking.
She could not help but wonder if Gaaron remembered the same thing.
At any rate, included in Gaaron’s counsels these days or not, Susannah had had plenty to keep her occupied since her return from Luminaux. First, of course, there was Kaski, the wretched little waif who had tried to starve herself to death while Susannah was gone. Susannah made the girl her first priority, feeding her, petting her, trying to reconnect her to the will to live. For several days, she spent every minute of her day, waking and sleeping, with Kaski, trying to reintegrate her into the regime they had devised before Susannah had left. So the Jansai girl and the Edori woman had gone together to the kitchen to work with Esther and her helpers, had attended classes together with the other hold children, and had received instruction on how to handle a small harp from Lydia. With Susannah beside her, Kaski was perfectly willing to take up these activities again—and gradually, as long as Susannah was still in the hold, Kaski was willing to pursue these exercises on her own.
So that was a victory, of a sort, but Susannah could not persuade herself that all would continue to be well.
As a result of bestowing so much attention on Kaski, she hadn’t watched Keren quite as closely as she should have. So when the shipments of fabrics and dresses were delivered to her room at the hold, Susannah was speechless at the quantity and variety that were unfolded.
“Keren—Yovah bless me—child, how much did you buy in Velora?”
“As much as I could,” Keren said happily, pulling bundles out of boxes and bags. “Oh, look, Susannah, is this not the most beautiful shade of gold? See, it is woven of threads all dyed different colors, but how lovely they look together.”
“Yes, but how did you pay for all this? Did you persuade Chloe or Zibiah or Sela—”
“Well, Chloe bought me this dress—no, this one—and Sela bought me this one—with her bracelets, you know. And then one day Nicholas told me I could have whatever I wanted, and so the next time I was down with Ahio I asked him—”
“Sweet Yovah’s mercy. So each of them has gotten you something, not knowing that the others—”
“Yes, and Enoch bought me the sweetest little gloves, they’re red, they match my ribbons—”
“Enoch? But he—”
“And when I saw Esther down there one day getting vegetables at the market, she said why didn’t we just walk by some of the jewelry stalls, and she got me this little ring—isn’t it pretty?”
“Esther?”
“Everyone has been so kind to me,” Keren said earnestly. “Truly, Susannah, I did not ask more than once or twice, and I didn’t even ask Esther. Well, I thought she would say no, so wasn’t it nice of her to offer?”
“Mikala—Keren—I—this is so much merchandise. I don’t think—for one person—you might need to return some of it.”
Keren glanced up from her spoils, spread around her like a Jansai’s treasure, and looked stricken. “Oh, no, Susannah, do you think so? Because I can’t bear to part with it! Any of it! I love this gold fabric so much—and the green dress—oh, and this white gown, see, it’s all lace on the top but silk underneath . . .”
Appalled and embarrassed, Susannah did not know what to do. Not wanting to, but seeing no other choice, she went to Gaaron.
He was deep in conversation with Enoch when she knocked on his open door, but the look of inquiry on his face turned quickly from surprise to a sort of guarded welcome. “Come on in,” he invited. “We’re almost done here.”
Susannah crossed to the small table where, as always, there was a tray of food set out. Somewhat spitefully, she thought, Well, at least Esther hasn’t been so wrapped up in spoiling Keren that she’s forgetting to spoil Gaaron as well. But that was mean-spirited. She sat in one of the more normally designed chairs and poured herself a glass of juice. And then, because why should it go to waste, she began nibbling on some of the sweet bread. It was quite good.
Gaaron joined her in a few moments. “You’ve been busy lately,” was his greeting.
“Yes—I suppose,” she said. “I love these pastries.”
Gaaron glanced down at his plate and laughed. “Esther’s newest ambition. To become a baker. Apparently Keren saw something of this sort in a Velora pastry shop and begged Esther to learn to make it. So now we are going to be treated to a succession of cakes and stollens.” He took a bite of one of the sweet breads. “I have to say, I rather admire Keren’s taste in food.”
“I am hoping you admire Keren’s taste in clothing, too,” Susannah said despairingly.
His eyebrows rose. “Something unsuitable?”
“Not exactly. Gaaron, first let me impress upon you how little she is used to having. The Edori travel six days out of seven, and they can bring almost nothing with them. A few dresses, one or two pairs of shoes, maybe an embroidered blouse that they’ve made for special days. And Keren, as must be obvious, loves things. Beautiful things. And she has—and, you see, everyone seems to be indulging her, because she is really quite sweet and so beautiful—”
“Too many gifts from Velora?” he interrupted. “All my angels are buying her presents?”
“Gaaron, my room almost cannot hold the packages that have begun to arrive. Dresses and shoes and gloves and hats and scarves and—I didn’t even stay to see them all opened. I know she must send some of them back, but she—and I know the hold pays for all the charges accrued to it, but I don’t perfectly understand the system. What must I tell her? And how can we stop the others from buying for her everything her mercenary little heart desires?”
He was, thank the god, smiling—but then, of course, he hadn’t seen quite how many bundles were being unwrapped on the floor of Susannah’s room. “The Eyrie is rich enough to pay for a few pretty things for a pretty girl,” he said. “None of the angels—or mortals—no one who lives here would spend so rashly that we could not cover the expenses. I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure they have given her more than she should expect. But it won’t hurt her to be indulged for once in her life. I’ll put the word out quietly that Keren will be quite adequately clothed for the next few weeks, and perhaps you can explain to her that there are spending limits. But you don’t have to send anything back. I would hate to see her made unhappy.”
Susannah’s mouth almost dropped open from the surprise, but she clamped her jaws shut and swallowed instead. “That’s very kind of you, Gaaron,” she said. “I will tell her how generous you are.”
He laughed. “And it would not be inappropriate for you to spend a little on yourself now and then,” he said almost gaily. “Perhaps you could accompany Keren on her next trip into Velora, and she could pick out a few gowns for you as well.”
How mortifying. He disliked her dark colors, her sensible though highly appropriate skirts and blouses. He wanted her to be more vivid, more colorful . . . more like Keren. “Perhaps I’ll do that,” she said quietly, coming to her feet. “Thank you, Gaaron. Keren will be quite happy.”
Now he frowned up at her, as if aware that she had taken something amiss, but not at all sure what. “I hope that you are happy, too, Susannah,” he said gravely.
She nodded. “I’m sure the purchase of a few new outfits will have the desired effect,” she said, something of an edge in her voice. Before he could offer up a reply to that, she turned and headed for the door. She didn’t say good-bye as she passed into the hallway, and he made no other remark before she left.
But she hadn’t taken him up on the suggestion right away. It would seem too odd if, after that uncomfortable conversation, she rushed right down to Velora and began designing a new wardrobe. She did start to wear, with more frequency, the more colorful items in her closet—a fuschia blouse, a flame-and-yellow dress, a scarle
t vest that looked rather nice over a black skirt. Once or twice she thought she saw an approving look in Gaaron’s eyes, but he said nothing.
When she could free herself from Kaski and Keren and her other responsibilities, she spent some time in the music rooms. Ahio had put together a selection of masses for her—all of them, he said, adaptable to harmony and relatively easy to transpose—and she was intent on listening to each one over and over until she found the piece that lingered in her mind and became a part of her mental repertoire. They were all so complicated; that was part of the problem. They were not like little folk songs that she could learn after two verses. They were instead composed of distinct and individual melodies—Ahio called them movements—each with its own tone, rhythm, and complex lines of music. She had been intrigued to learn, however, that every mass consisted of the same choral responses sung at approximately the same place in the piece. No matter what mass the angelica chose, the angels and the mortals and all the others attending the Gloria would be sure to know their parts.
She remembered Miriam’s suggestion that Susannah learn the Lochevsky Magnificat, and so she sought it out when it did not appear among Ahio’s selections, but the very first few minutes of listening convinced her that this was a piece well beyond her ability to learn. Still, she loved Hagar’s breathtaking swoops and leaps of sound, particularly the three-and-a-half octave jump that occurred in the first soprano solo. Susannah was not a soprano—but she found herself, from time to time as she went about her daily business in the hold, humming that particular measure of music. In her own key, of course. About one entire octave below Hagar.
But she would fail at the Magnificat if she tried to perform it, so she dutifully turned back to Ahio’s suggestions. She found herself drawn more and more often to a much simpler Eleison, sung, at least on this recording, by a light tenor voice of great clarity and sweetness. She didn’t know who the singer was, but she had become familiar enough with Uriel’s voice to know it wasn’t the Archangel, and the woman who joined her solos to his was not Hagar. Two anonymous angels from the founding of Samaria, serenading Susannah as she sat, rapt and motionless, on the floor of the room they had probably helped construct. It seemed strange to her that it did not seem stranger, what she was hearing and how she was hearing it. Perhaps her whole life had become so unfamiliar that she couldn’t pick out the truly miraculous events anymore.
Gradually, she stopped playing the other possibilities and instead played the Eleison over and over, sometimes twice a day if she could spare the four hours. It became the music in her head almost constantly, though as a rule almost any tune could be jostling about in there, ready to come out in a snatch of song when she was preoccupied by something else. Now, there was no room for anything but the Eleison—the tenor solo, the soprano solo, any part of it from supplication to amen. Sometimes it even served as the background music to her dreams, accompanying her through the chrome-and-white corridors of her nighttime visitation.
And even that, when she woke at night and considered it, did not seem so odd.
Without even making the conscious attempt, she began creating her own harmonies to the Eleison, for a while experimenting as the mood struck her, but gradually settling on a more permanent score. On the opening movement, her harmonic line matched the solo one note for note, though some of the intervals were creative and not a few were dissonant, just for a beat or two. On the first soprano solo, she crafted a descant that was so radically different in tempo and mood that it sounded like an entirely separate song, though it was quite hauntingly beautiful when sung against the main melody. With the two duets she was obedient, tamely accepting the harmonies of the composer, but on the final tenor solo, she played with the music a little, embroidering a little here, echoing a little there. She liked the way it sounded.
She was not, however, confident enough of her own musical ability that she would even consider performing her own versions without first getting Ahio’s approval. So one afternoon, she invited him to join her down in the music rooms to hear what she’d accomplished.
“You’ve already written the harmony?” he asked, amused. “I thought I was going to do that for you once you’d picked the piece.”
“Oh—that’s right—well, you can probably come up with something even better than I have,” she said in a rush, because she greatly respected Ahio’s abilities and she truly had forgotten.
He was grinning. “Probably not,” he said. “At any rate, I can’t wait to hear what you’ve dreamed up. I’ll come down this afternoon. I have to finish this for Enoch first, though.”
“I’ll leave the door open for you,” she said.
Which was how it happened that she was sitting on the floor in the music room, out of sight of the hallway, and momentarily in silence as she hunted for a new disk to insert in the machine, when Gaaron came down the hall with Zack and Jude in tow. Normally, of course, anyone using a music room would shut the door to perfect the acoustics, so it was entirely natural that Gaaron would assume the entire hall was empty.
“I see both of you boys are none the worse for wear from your three weeks helping Enoch,” Gaaron said, his voice pleasant.
Zack growled something unintelligible and Susannah frowned, trying to remember what exactly had happened. Oh yes—a dreadful thing. Zack and Jude carrying mortal boys up into the air and then dropping them, taking care to catch them before putting them nonchalantly on the ground. It had been the talk of the hold until Susannah arrived with Keren, happening during both her absence and Gaaron’s. Gaaron had told Enoch to have the boys labor in the storerooms until he came up with a suitable punishment, a word that caused Susannah to shiver.
Then again, she had flown in an angel’s arms, and she knew just how petrifying it was to look down and realize that only chancy luck and unshakable goodwill were keeping her from plunging headfirst onto the ground. She could not imagine being the mortal boys terrorized by the angels in such a way.
But she hated to think of Gaaron being unmerciful.
“I’ve given some thought to what I can do to impress upon you that what you did was not only wrong and dangerous, it was harmful to you and Jude as well,” Gaaron said.
There was a sharp crack of laughter from Zack. “Didn’t hurt me any,” he said scornfully. “Didn’t hurt them, either. Stupid babies. Afraid to fly.”
“There are many things I’m afraid of,” Gaaron said. “Flying doesn’t happen to be one of them. I’d hate to be dropped in the middle of the ocean, though, trying to find my way to shore. I think my wings would drag me down and I’d drown. I think you would, too,” he added thoughtfully. “If you were set down in the ocean, I’d think you’d find the water as unfamiliar an element to survive in as Silas and Mark found the air.”
There was a moment of dreadful silence. “You’re going to drop us in the ocean?” Jude demanded in a squeaky voice. “To drown?”
“You can’t do that,” Zack said quickly, but not as if he entirely believed it. “You can’t.”
“No, I can’t,” Gaaron said. “But I know I have to do something to teach both of you how serious your actions were—and how fragile and precious life is. Even the life of someone unlike you. Even the life of someone you do not like.”
“Silas isn’t precious,” Zack muttered.
“He is to someone,” Gaaron said.
“Well, so what is it that you’re going to do?” Zack demanded.
“I’m sending you on a journey.”
Susannah felt a certain dismay shiver through her. He had threatened once to do that, to send Zack and Jude to Breven—and, after all, she had put the thought in his head when she suggested he send Miriam to Luminaux. But Breven was so far away, and full of such unreliable citizens. She was not sure she would turn anyone over to the Jansai.
Zack made a little offhand grunt, accompanied, she was sure, by a characteristic careless toss of his unkempt black hair. “Yeah, Breven,” he said. “You said that before.”
?
??Manadavvi country,” Gaaron corrected.
Everyone within hearing distance was surprised, including Susannah, who should not have been listening.
“What would we want to go there for?” Jude asked.
“You’ll be accompanying two women and two babies who are taking a trip from the Eyrie to Constantine Lesh’s estate,” Gaaron said. “I can provide you with maps, but I believe the women know the way. They were born there, though both of them have lived at the Eyrie for many years. They’ll be coming back after their visit home.”
“I can’t carry a woman and a baby,” Jude protested. He was taller than most mortal boys his age, but skinny; he probably didn’t have Susannah’s body mass, and she certainly couldn’t have carried a mother and a child anywhere.
“I can,” Zack said.
“Oh, you won’t be flying,” Gaaron said. “You’ll be walking alongside them. Or riding, if you can find a horse to carry you, but generally they shy at our wings. You’d be thrown five times a day. Walking’s probably safer. More comfortable.”
There was another short silence. “You want us to walk from here to northern Gaza?” Zack said. “It’ll take—weeks! We’ll—why would we do that? Someone else can fly them there. You could do it.”
“I could, but I’m too busy,” Gaaron said. His voice was perfectly calm, perfectly reasonable, but absolutely unyielding. “They need to bring a cart with them, full of possessions to return to Constantine. Something about a piece of furniture that has been in the Lesh family for generations. That really needs to be transported over land.”
“So? Why does it have to be me and Jude?” Zack wanted to know.
“Because as leader of the hold I am asking you to perform a task for me. As you grow older and more responsible, I will often have missions that I will send you on—to pray for rain, to pray for plague medicines. I have to know now if you can be entrusted with those important duties, that will determine if the people of Bethel live or die. If you cannot be, of course, then you cannot be useful members of the hold, and you will not be permitted to live here.”