Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Flight
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Blood
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Gold
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Flame
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Ace Books by Sharon Shinn
MYSTIC AND RIDER
THE THIRTEENTH HOUSE
DARK MOON DEFENDER
READER AND RAELYNX
FORTUNE AND FATE
ARCHANGEL
JOVAH’S ANGEL
THE ALLELUIA FILES
ANGELICA
ANGEL-SEEKER
WRAPT IN CRYSTAL
THE SHAPE-CHANGER’S WIFE
HEART OF GOLD
SUMMERS AT CASTLE AUBURN
JENNA STARBORN
QUATRAIN
Viking / Firebird Books by Sharon Shinn
THE SAFE-KEEPER’S SECRET
THE TRUTH-TELLER’S TALE
THE DREAM-MAKER’S MAGIC
GENERAL WINSTON’S DAUGHTER
GATEWAY
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
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Copyright © 2009 by Sharon Shinn.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
eISBN : 978-1-101-14860-0
I. Title.
PS3569.H499Q38 2009
813’.54—dc22 2009022435
http://us.penguingroup.com
For my readers, who have asked for more stories in these worlds,
and for Lesley, who named Orlain for me
Flight
One
Finally the rain stopped. We had gone three full weeks without seeing the sun, and, in fact, the past two months had been damp and dreary almost without interruption. The oldest hands on the farm had wearied the rest of us with endless stories about past summers in which rain had flooded the land, or drought had seared it. But within the last few days even they had seemed so sick of storms that they had given up talking about the weather.
There was great rejoicing all through the compound when the clouds parted and a sickly, apologetic sun made its first appearance. The children went running through the sodden gardens, kicking up sticky sprays of mud. The men hurried out to check the crops and see if there was anything to salvage. In the kitchen, the women talked together as they churned the butter and kneaded the bread, beginning the long preparations for dinner with more animation than they had shown in weeks. It would have to be a particularly sumptuous meal, everyone agreed, not only to celebrate the return of the sun but also to honor the guests who had arrived that morning specifically to chase away the rain.
Angels. Three of them, all from Windy Point, the angel hold a good three days’ ride away. Thaddeus had left the compound nearly a week ago to beg for a weather intercession, but I had not really expected to see any angels materialize in answer to his pleas. I’m not sure why—everyone knows that one of the things angels do best is fly high above Samaria and lift their gorgeous voices to Jovah, praying for sun or storm or medicines or grain. Everyone knows that the god listens to them. Everyone knows that angels exist to mediate between mortals and the divine.
I suppose it was just that I had hoped I would never in my life see an angel again.
“The Archangel is so handsome!” Neri was saying to Ruth as they sat together at the table, chopping vegetables. “I never would have expected that, because he’s so old, but he smiled at me and I almost fainted.”
Standing at the stove stirring a pot of gravy, I smiled to myself. Raphael would hate knowing that a twenty-year-old girl thought him an old man. He was in his mid-fifties and still a spectacularly beautiful creature—tall and muscled, with flowing gold hair, tawny eyes, and those magnificent gilded wings. In the nearly eighteen years that he had been Archangel of Samaria, he had not lost an ounce of his charisma, either. He still had a smile that could melt your bones or charm you into his bed, where so many women had spent so much time.
If Neri showed him the least hint that she found him attractive, she could sleep with him tonight and perhaps be the lucky mother of an angel baby nine months from now.
I hoped she would not be so stupid.
“Oh, yes, Raphael is simply gorgeous,” Ruth replied. “But I thought the other one seemed more—approachable. What was his name?”
“Saul?” Neri replied. “I thought he seemed a little intense, actually. Although I like that in a man sometimes.”
“No, no, not Saul. The other one.”
“Oh, Hiram! Yes, he had a very nice face. Did he talk to you?”
“No, but I’m sure I saw him look my way this morning when I was serving breakfast.”
“I wonder how long they will stay after dinner,” Neri said. “I wonder if they will spend the night. I wonder where they will spend the night.”
“Neri!” Ruth hissed, then the two of them dissolved into giggles.
I was fairly certain that Thaddeus and Eve expected the angels to be their overnight guests. Rooms had been prepared for them, at any rate, and it would only make sense for the angels to stay. Neighbors from all the nearby farms had been invited to join the fifty or so souls who lived on Thaddeus’s property, and the planned celebration would no doubt go on long into the night. I supposed it must be a four- or five-hour flight to Windy Point from here—rather a distance to cover if the angelic visitors got a late start or consumed to
o much wine.
Or found other inducements to stay.
“What do you think? Shall I wear my red dress?” Neri was asking. “Or is it too fine for a simple summer dinner?”
“Oh, it’s too fine! What about your green dress, the one with the flowers? I think I’ll wear the blue dress that matches my eyes.”
“I’ll lend you my sapphire earrings.”
I didn’t waste any time wondering what I might wear to the banquet, since I didn’t plan to attend. Thaddeus was quite egalitarian in his approach to management. He expected every employee to call him by his first name, sit with him at the table, and work wholeheartedly to keep the farm profitable. While the family—Thaddeus, Eve, and their three children—sometimes dined in a more elegant state when they were entertaining company, for the most part Thaddeus didn’t recognize much division between classes. And he surely knew that every man, woman, and child in the compound was dying to get a closer look at these most fabulous and exotic visitors.
But I had seen angels before. All my curiosity had been satisfied long ago.
I had even seen two of these particular angels, though it had been nearly two decades, and it seemed unlikely that Saul would recognize me after all this time. I had gained a little weight and I wore my dark hair in a much shorter style—and anyway, I had never done anything particularly memorable when Saul was around.
Raphael, of course, would know me the instant he saw my face.
Neri and Ruth continued their chattering, joined from time to time by other girls who passed through the kitchens, their arms full of cheese or bread or freshly picked vegetables. Some of the older women joined in the speculation about what might please the angels, and a few of them touched their hands to their hair or their hips as if contemplating what they might do to draw the attention of the visitors.
But no one asked me which angel I found more attractive. No one asked me what I planned to wear to dinner. The other workers liked me well enough, but they didn’t consider me a frivolous woman.
In fact, these days I was about as far from frivolous as it was possible to be.
During all the talk and all the work, I kept half my attention on the door, waiting for the sound of wagon wheels. My niece, Sheba, had been sent to the nearest ranch to barter for a pig that we could serve with the evening meal. Not a very glamorous commission, and the other girls her age had begged to stay home, where they might manage to throw themselves into an angel’s path. But Sheba had laughed, and flipped back her thick dark hair, and told Thaddeus she didn’t mind picking out pigs and sharing a cart with livestock. I supposed that one of the reasons she was so willing to go was that David was driving the wagon, and David was madly in love with her. Sheba was too much of a flirt to let David know how much she liked him—her primary purpose in life appeared to be to keep the young man in a state of hopeful agony—but she certainly wouldn’t mind spending a few hours basking in his worshipful adoration as they traveled through a countryside made newly agreeable by the cessation of rain.
As soon as I heard the creak of the wagon and the clop of the horses’ hooves, I made an excuse to leave the stove and move to the back door so I could watch their arrival. David pulled the cart up close to the door so that Sheba wouldn’t have to dirty her shoes in the mud that covered every inch of the property that wasn’t actually sown with crops. I assumed he would then take the luckless pig down to the slaughterhouse where it would be readied for the meal. I saw it snorting and nosing about in the back of the wagon. It was big and mottled and fat, and I was sure it would be tasty.
David drew the wagon to a halt and clearly intended to climb out to help Sheba down, but she was too quick for him. With a smile and a wave, she hopped to the ground, her skirts swinging and her dark hair fluttering around her face.
“That was fun!” she called carelessly to David.
“Will you sit with me at dinner?” he called back.
She only laughed and did not answer, just ducked through the door and let it fall shut behind her. Once inside, she glanced around to see who was present and what chores might be left to do. She was the most beautiful girl in the entire compound, but she was also the hardest working. Some of the other young women resented her, but the older ones loved her.
I loved her and I resented her. I would have given my life to keep her safe—in fact, I had practically done so. If I had not had her to care for all this time, oh, how different my last fourteen years would have been.
She loved me and resented me, too, though these days the resentment was winning out more often over the affection. She thought I was too strict, too watchful, too suspicious of her time. She wanted to travel to Luminaux or Semorrah, the most mysterious and beautiful cities of Samaria. She wanted to wear tight-fitting dresses with low necklines and highlight her eyes with liner and shadow. She wanted to be a desirable girl.
Well, I knew all about what happened to desirable girls, particularly when they were barely seventeen.
It didn’t help that she resembled me so closely—as if I, and not my sister, Ann, had been her mother. Like I once did, she wore her thick, dark-brown hair past her shoulders; its lustrous waves provided the ideal frame for her flawless olive skin and brought attention to her huge hazel eyes. She affected simple styles, which just played up her perfect features and full figure. David was not the only man at the compound who couldn’t keep his eyes off her; she looked luscious and unspoiled, yet rich with promise.
Pretty much exactly the way I had looked when I was seventeen.
“How was your trip to Benjamin’s farm?” I asked her. “Were the roads bad?”
She pushed her hair behind her ears. “Covered in mud. We didn’t have any trouble on the way out, but we got stuck twice on the way back. David said it was because the pig was so heavy.”
I glanced down at the hem of her dress, which showed only the faintest smears of dirt. “It doesn’t look like you had to get out and push the wheels free.”
She smiled—a wicked look. “David didn’t want me to get muddy. I guided the horses while he pushed.”
“And how were Benjamin and his family?” I asked.
“Very excited about coming over tonight for dinner! And very happy to see the sunshine. He says he’s lost everything in the southern field, because it lies so low the water would never drain.”
That was the sort of detail it would never occur to Ruth or Neri to ask about, or to retain if it was offered to them. That was what made Sheba so exceptional. She was not just beautiful. She understood what was important—or at least, what mattered to other people. She had probably inquired after Benjamin’s crops, her lovely face serious, her attention wholly focused on his replies. He was short and bald and old and married, but Sheba would still want him to admire her, to be pleased with himself because a pretty girl gave him a genuine smile. It was reflexive with her to figure out how to make a man like her.
“Well, I hope you got a good pig,” said Lazarene, the head cook, who had lived at the compound for forty years. “I’m hungry for some pork.”
Sheba laughed. “He looked like the best of the lot.”
Sheba and I had a little argument shortly before dinner was served.
The kitchen staff had gone upstairs in shifts to change their clothes and style their hair and otherwise prepare themselves for the grand meal. Sheba and I no longer shared a room—two years ago, she and a girl named Hara had taken quarters together, while I inherited Lazarene as a roommate. I understood that this was a necessary step for Sheba’s independence, and it was a relief to move in with someone as quiet and reasonable as Lazarene, but I couldn’t help fretting. Hara was a particularly silly sixteen, a pink-cheeked blonde with an annoying giggle; she wouldn’t be the one to hold Sheba in check if my niece ever decided to be wayward. I was not above rising in the middle of the night and stalking the corridors, checking to see if any of the girls were out of their beds and engaged in illicit activities.
Although I knew well enough
that if Sheba wanted to misbehave, no amount of vigilance on my part would stop her.
We headed to our rooms separately, and I went through the motions of improving my appearance just so no one would wonder why I was not dressing up for the angels. I even threaded a ribbon through my hair—still as dark as Sheba’s—and put on a gold necklace to brighten my dull blue gown. I paused for a moment to study my reflection.
Tiny wrinkles around my eyes. A certain softness to my skin. I was forty now, and no mistaking. But my figure was still good—fuller than it had been when I was a girl—and my eyes were still an unusual shade of green. I remembered how it felt to turn heads when I walked into a room. Now and then, when I wanted to, I still could.
But tonight I didn’t want to.
I waited in the hallway until Sheba came out of her room. She had put on a deep rose-colored dress with big pearl buttons all the way up the bodice, and she had left the last two buttons unfastened. The pendant on her silver necklace dangled just above her breasts, and the five silver bracelets she wore on her left wrist chimed together to wreathe her in music.
“You’re not going to dinner looking like that,” I said flatly.
She gave me a mutinous look. “Why not? I thought you liked this dress.”
“I like it when it’s on properly.”
“You know Neri will wear that red gown that makes her bosom look huge.”
“She’s wearing her green dress. She said so this afternoon. Anyway, I don’t care what Neri wears. I don’t care if she parades around the house absolutely naked and the Archangel eats his dinner off her stomach. You are going to button up your dress, or you’re going to change clothes.”
I sometimes think how hard Ann would laugh to hear how I lecture her daughter.
I always wish that it was Ann delivering these lectures instead of me.