Angelica Read online

  That had been three years ago. She had left with the Lohora tribe and had followed them ever since. A few times, the erratic and easygoing travel pattern of the Lohoras had brought them in contact with the Tachitas, and then she would spend a few happy days with her father, her brothers, and her two new nephews. But most often, her visits with her family were restricted to the times of the Gathering, when all the Edori clans came together for a brief period of celebration. There, they all shared news, and recited events of the past year, and lifted their voices in joyous worship of the great god Yovah. Those days were too short, those days with her family and the members of her clan, but Susannah was not prepared to mourn the life gone by. She was too happy in this one.

  The river was breathtakingly cold. Susannah flung herself into it before she could think about it too long, and surfaced, gasping for air. How could a southern river be this chilly this late in the season? Still, once she was used to it, Susannah did not mind so much, for the summer afternoon was hot and the contrast of temperatures felt good against her skin. She dove under the water again, soaping her body, soaping her hair, and rinsing herself off in the cold, clear water.

  Once she was both clean and dry, she turned to the task of washing out the soiled clothes from the past few days. A few of Dathan’s were mixed in with hers, which made her frown a little, but she went ahead and washed them. He had, after all, been hunting three times this week with the other men of the clan. He may have been too busy to attend to his own washing. Often, Susannah found Tirza washing out some of Eleazar’s shirts, and when Susannah taxed her with it, Tirza merely smiled.

  “Oh, I do not mind a few other pieces of clothing in my pile,” Dathan’s sister said. “When I was a young girl, and my mother was sickly, I washed for the whole tent! Ten of us! But it’s an easy enough chore, and I make up songs while I’m soaping the clothes, and when I get back to the camp, someone else has always made dinner. And you know I am just as happy if I do not have to cook! So the arrangement suits me fine.”

  And Dathan is Dathan, Susannah thought to herself now as she scrubbed the dirt off of a particularly fine blue shirt that belonged to her lover. As well scold the crows for scavenging as to scold Dathan for skimping on his duties.

  It was late afternoon by the time she finally returned to the campsite, a bundle of wet clothes in her arms. She pegged these out to dry behind the tent, then went to investigate the status of dinner.

  Anna and Keren, Eleazar’s sisters and two of the others who slept in his tent, were stirring a pot over the fire. “That smells good!” Susannah exclaimed. “How lucky I am to live with women who are such excellent cooks!”

  It was something she said often, but her words always made the other two smile. Anna was a good ten years older than Susannah, a shy and quiet woman who had lost a lover five years ago and never taken another. She had followed him to his clan, but returned to Eleazar’s tent upon her lover’s death. Keren was the only flighty member of Eleazar’s family, a small-boned and pretty girl who never forgot how lovely she was and who had broken many hearts at the Gathering and on the road. Tirza could not wait for her to fall deeply in love and follow some other man’s clan, but so far she had shown no signs of wanting to leave the comforts of her own family. Still, she did her share of the work and was generous with possessions, when she had any, so Susannah could not help loving her.

  “Yovah’s hand guiding you,” said Anna, who was so pious that even a mock-serious question would elicit a religious response. “But we were fortunate also to have him bring you to our tent.”

  Keren ignored all this. “Susannah! Are you coming to Luminaux tomorrow? It will be so much fun.”

  Susannah stole a piece from a loaf of bread cooling beside the fire. “I have nothing to sell or barter,” she said. “And I promised Amram I would go berry-picking with him tomorrow.”

  “You can take Amram berry-picking any day,” Keren scoffed. “Besides, he will want to go to Luminaux. Everyone is going. You do not need to have anything to sell! You just need to have eyes that want to look around and see how beautiful the city is.”

  “I do love Luminaux,” Susannah agreed.

  “And you could sell something,” Anna said. “You have finished that embroidered shirt you were working on all winter. That would fetch a nice price in the marketplace.”

  “Yes, but I made that shirt for me!” Susannah exclaimed, laughing. “I wanted something beautiful to wear at the next Gathering.”

  “Make another one,” Keren said. She, of course, had no idea of how many hours went into such a project, since she would never sit still long enough to attempt such a thing. “The next Gathering is more than six months away.”

  “Well, perhaps I’ll bring it with me, and see if there is anything in Luminaux so precious that it makes me want to trade my shirt,” Susannah decided. “Is everyone really going?”

  “No, of course not,” Anna said with a repressive look at her sister. “I think there are ten or eleven who said they wanted to go. Bartholomew and all of his tent. Dathan and Keren. Thaddeus and Shua. And a few of the children. I, for one, am not up to the long journey there and back in a single day, and I know Claudia is not, either. We will make a feast dinner so that you can eat heartily and tell us of all the wonders you have seen in the Blue City.”

  “I will wear my emerald dress,” Keren said dreamily. “And my long gold earrings. I will look quite beautiful as I wander between all the blue buildings of Luminaux.”

  Anna looked over at her sister in sharp irritation, but Susannah burst out laughing. “That is the true beauty for you,” Susannah said, her voice admiring. “One who judges how she will look as she stands in a green meadow or beside a gray mountain. What dress to put on and how to style her hair. . . .”

  Anna was frowning still, but Keren smiled, completely unoffended. “One has to be aware of these things,” she said.

  “One has to be aware of when she’s making a fool of herself,” Anna said. “Be glad it is only Susannah here to hear you say such ridiculous things.”

  “Only Susannah,” Susannah repeated, but she laughed again. “Do not mind her for my sake,” she said to Anna. “I will be happy to go to Luminaux and see how beautiful she looks there.”

  Susannah stayed near the campfire, helping the sisters cook and filling the remaining hours of the afternoon with idle chatter. Claudia came over to borrow some spices and agreed with Anna that Susannah should sell her embroidered shirt. Bartholomew dropped by on some pretext, though Susannah suspected it was merely to speak to Anna. He was a big man, strongest of all the Lohora tribe, and not given to much laughter. But they all looked up to him, and took their problems to him, and if there was a quarrel in the clan, he was the one most likely to solve it. His lover had left him two years ago, following a man of another tribe, and he had grown even quieter since that defection. Though all the Lohoras privately agreed that he was better off without her, since she had been as mercurial and unreliable as Keren, without Keren’s ready smile and willing hands. Susannah hoped that he had noticed that Anna was fashioned the way a woman should be for a serious man. Or rather, she was pretty sure Bartholomew had realized it, and that he was waiting for Anna to make the same discovery.

  “What time do you leave for the Blue City in the morning?” Susannah asked him, after he had tasted the stew and pronounced it very good. “My tentmates have persuaded me I should join your party.”

  “Excellent! We will be glad to have you,” Bartholomew said. “I had hoped to leave early, for it will take us two or three hours to get there, and I would like to have a little time to shop and buy.”

  “Early?” Keren said innocently. “But—Susannah—could you rise with the sun, do you think? This morning you lay abed till almost noon.”

  “Yes, and Dathan—wasn’t he sleeping late as well?” Anna asked, her eyes wide and guileless. “Maybe neither of you will be able to rise in time to join Bartholomew’s party.”

  Bartholomew wa
s grinning, but Susannah blushed furiously. “Yes! I am sure! I am quite rested from all of my sleeping and will be ready to join you as soon as dawn breaks!” she said. “And as for Dathan—well, I will kick him a few times when I rise, and if that does not wake him, he can stay behind.”

  They were all laughing at this. “Bartholomew, I am sure there are delicious stews brewing over your own fire, but we would be happy to have you here at ours,” Keren said. “You know my sister is a very good cook.”

  That was generous of her, Susannah thought. But then, Keren had sharp eyes for love, and she had no doubt seen what Susannah and Claudia and many of the other Lohoras had seen. Bartholomew shook his head regretfully. “No, my sisters have already finished the evening meal, and I know they are expecting me,” he said. “But perhaps in the morning—a nice hearty meal to fortify me against the day’s journey—”

  “We would be happy to feed you in the morning,” Anna said. “I don’t want to go on this trip into the city, but I’ll make sure you set off well fed.”

  Bartholomew turned to look at her. “You won’t come with us? Is there anything I can pick up for you in the Blue City while I am there?”

  Anna frowned and stirred the pot. She was blushing a little. “I am sure you have plenty of commissions to carry out for your sisters. No need to worry about me,” she said.

  “Nonsense. One can never have too many friends for whom to be doing favors,” Bartholomew said.

  “Purple dye. Didn’t you say you wanted some of that?” Keren asked. “The other day, when you were sorting your threads.”

  “Yes, some purple dye would be welcome,” Anna admitted, a little embarrassed by the attention. “But not if it is any trouble to track down! Only if you come across it in the market.”

  “I will find it if I can,” Bartholomew promised. “And I will be happy to sit at your fire tomorrow morning and eat.”

  When he left, Keren and Susannah exchanged meaningful glances, but Anna busied herself with the meal. There was no time to talk of women’s idle concerns anyway, because Dathan and Amram and Eleazar were back from their day’s excursions. Tirza was close behind them, fresh buckets of water in her hands. The night was suddenly filled with much talk and merriment, as a night should be. Susannah sat next to Dathan in the circle of light created by the fire, and ate her excellent stew, and smiled in the dark for happiness.

  Early the next morning, a party of twelve left the Lohora campsite, heading south to Luminaux. There were few enough taking the short journey into town that there were sufficient horses to go around, and so they all rode. Amram’s yearling behaved so badly that Bartholomew offered to exchange mounts with him, but Amram was too vain to be seen on a ten-year-old who was too placid to start at the sound of a boy’s high-pitched yell. So they made it rather haphazardly into the city, two or three of the men throwing a watchful circle around the youngest member of their tribe as he rode in on the restive animal.

  They left all the horses at one of the stables on the edge of town and walked into Luminaux. It was the bright lapis gem of Samaria, this small city on the southernmost edge of Bethel. It had not been part of the original settlements that had been founded, a little more than two centuries ago, when Yovah first brought the angels and the Edori and the other mortals to this world of Samaria. No, most of the colonists had clustered together on the plains of Bethel and in the gentle slopes of the Velo Mountains. The Edori, of course, had been wanderers right from the start, and they had investigated every hill and valley, every riverbed and coastline of the small continent that had become their new home. Soon enough, the Jansai and the Manadavvi and the more adventurous of the farmers had also spread out into the other regions of the country, into the provinces they named Jordana and Gaza.

  But Luminaux had been founded by none of these. It had been settled early on by the artisans of the new community, who had found a rich trove of treasures in the earth nearby: stunning and variegated blue marble, mineral veins under the ground bristling with gems and metals, everything an artist might need to create items of great style and beauty. First the quarries were set up, then the town, in a welcoming little triangle on the western bank of the Galilee River. Long after the mines were exhausted, the city continued to thrive, itself a work of art and a treasure of fragile beauty.

  It was named Luminaux but called the Blue City because of that gorgeous stone cut from the ground and set into the shapes of buildings and monuments and fountains. All the earliest structures had been made of that turquoise or cobalt or azure stone; and even now, most new buildings had a lintel or a walkway or a front porch carved from a piece of some elegant marble. Anything in the city that didn’t come naturally blue achieved that status artificially, as residents painted and dyed and stained their surfaces to achieve a lustrous skyline glow. Fountains seemed to run with blue water; blue flames appeared to burn in the street torches at night. It was a conceit, but a joyous one, and no one ever came to Luminaux without falling in love with the city.

  “How long shall we stay?” Bartholomew asked, as they quickly covered the half mile that led them from the outskirts of town to the heart of the city. Everyone had acquired an itchy restlessness; it was clear this group would not cohere for long. “Where shall we meet when all our shopping is done?”

  “At the stables,” Eleazar suggested. “In four hours.”

  There was much protest at this. “Five hours?” Bartholomew said.

  “Make it six,” said Keren. It was now a couple of hours before noon.

  “A very long day for very young ones,” Bartholomew warned.

  “It will be light until quite late,” Dathan said carelessly. “One of us can carry Amram before us if he falls asleep in the saddle.”

  “I won’t fall asleep! I never sleep!” Amram declared.

  “I can attest to that,” Susannah said.

  “Six hours, then,” Bartholomew said, and they all agreed. And in a few moments, everyone had scattered into the plentiful attractions of the city.

  Susannah at first had thought she and Dathan might walk together through the delights of Luminaux. But, “Eleazar and I have to go to the ironmonger’s and look for new braces,” Dathan had said in a very important voice. That particular tone always meant he was lying, though he did not seem to be aware others knew. Susannah guessed that they might spend half an hour at the ironmonger’s, and then the rest of the afternoon at some of the taverns, sampling the excellent wine of the Luminaux vintners.

  “Yovah guard you,” she said with a faint smile, and let them go on their way. She did sigh a little as she watched them go.

  As for herself, she had no real chores to accomplish, and no burning desire to sell her single item of some value, so she just wandered at random across the blue cobblestoned streets. She spent a great deal of time moving through the open-air market at the heart of the city, fingering the fine silk cloth and wondering how anyone could ever create garments so beautiful. She knew without a doubt that Bartholomew would purchase some purple coloring for Anna, but when she happened upon the dyemaker’s shop, she could not resist going in and seeing if there were any pink or cinnamon or cerulean color samples she could buy with the few coins she had in her pocket. She could not resist a very bright yellow dye that was being sold at a discount because of some flaking in the cake, and the shopkeeper gave her some hints on how to mix it with other colors to make garments of many hues.

  At lunchtime, she stopped at a bakery run by an Edori woman and her daughters. Frida refused to let Susannah pay for her meal—“Except in gossip,” the baker added. So they spent a wonderful hour talking about all the friends they had in common. Frida’s shop was busy, though, and Susannah did not want to take up too much of her time, so she did not linger long. Wandering back out into the streets, she continued her slow, happy tour of the city. When she grew tired, she rested in one of the many small parks lining the lovely boulevards, and when she grew thirsty, she drank some of the colored water spuming up from the f
ountains. It tasted like springwater, only bluer. She hoped it would not tint her mouth, and she bent down to take another swallow.

  The day passed slowly but in magical contentment, and Susannah could not believe it when the hour came around to meet the others at the stables. She hurried to arrive on time, but she was not the last one to put in an appearance. Eleazar and Dathan showed up a few minutes after she did, while Bartholomew grew impatient and the other women in the group showed one another their day’s purchases. The two latecomers were laughing and happy, and when Dathan kissed Susannah, she could taste the wine on his breath. But he was so cheerful and affectionate that she could not be angry at him, and so she smiled and kissed him back.

  “Good. We’re all together. Let’s waste no more time here,” Bartholomew said, and in a very few minutes they were back on the road.

  Susannah brought her playful mare alongside Dathan’s, and they rode next to each other for the first few miles. “And did you have a successful day?” she asked him. “Were the ironmongers helpful?”

  Dathan laughed. “Yes, indeed! You cannot imagine how much time it took us to barter for the best metal at the best price, and naturally we had to examine each link and joint for any sign of weakness, but I am sure that we came away with good material that will serve us well.”

  “And then, of course, you had to spend some time celebrating your new acquisitions,” she said.

  “A man must celebrate life’s simple joys,” he said.

  She tried asking him a few questions that were more serious, but the replies he gave were nonsensical or incomplete, and she gave up. He rarely drank while the Lohoras were on the road, though when they camped for a few days he would take wine with his evening meal. And at the Gatherings—well, there was many an Edori, male and female, who imbibed too much at that great festival. This was not such a gross transgression. She really did not mind.