“…in trade for the snake’s skin, and used it to haul the chariot through the swamp. He knows all about horses, and later he sold it off to some sandmen. I tell you, Knobil could talk an anteater out of his sandals!”
“Quetti!” I yelled. “You needn’t go into all this!” It was intolerable.
“…treemen and hawkers and beekeepers…mends clothes—”
“I do birdsong imitations too!”
“…best shot with a bow I have ever—”
“You sound like Jat Lon selling a horse!”
“…catch fish without—”
“I also sing and dance!” I shouted. “Now will you shut up!”
“He’s the finest, bravest man I’ve ever met!” With that final outrageous untruth, Quetti stopped and sat back to leer at me.
Silence followed, broken by another roar from the snortoise.
“Obviously one of you is lying,” Uriel said acidly. “And I know Knobil is an expert at that, at least.”
Everyone else laughed. I choked between several angry retorts and eventually used none of them.
“Where did you learn all this?” Kettle asked me.
I shrugged grumpily. “I’d seen Violet-indigo-red drive a chariot on land and Red-yellow do it in the water. I’d watched Violet use a gun. Brown-yellow-white taught me a little about maps, so I could use Red’s. Black, here, told me about geography, and I had a few trader tricks. Quetti knew that Heaven was somewhere in Dusk, north of the deserts. As for the rest… Well, I’ve been a herdman, a seaman, a miner, an all-purpose slave, a trader—I just picked it up here and there.”
The three men opposite me all looked up as the watcher in the corner chuckled wryly. He spoke up for the first time. “I always told you gentlemen that wetlanders make the best angels.”
Two of the three laughed enthusiastically, and I twisted around to stare at this cryptic onlooker. He was a small, slight man, well muffled in a white gown. He was sitting at an angle to the light and had pulled his hood forward to conceal his face, although I was sure he had been watching us earlier.
“Quetti’s a wetlander,” I said. “I’m a herdman.”
“I can tell.” He was old, his voice thin as a lark’s ankle. He did not turn toward me.
“The purpose of this meeting…” Uriel’s voice had fallen into yet a lower, sadder range, and I was uneasily aware that the proceedings were not the forgone formality I had been expecting. “…is to investigate the death of Red-yellow-green. Obviously we should have questioned these two vagabonds separately Does anyone believe their nonsensical tale about a snake? Kettle?”
“Certainly!” the plump man said. “I vote for acquittal.”
“What?” Outraged, Uriel turned to the angel on his other side. “Two-green? I can rely on you, surely?”
Two-green avoided his eye, glancing unhappily at the cryptic onlooker in white. Getting crosswise between two archangels was a Heavenly nightmare, but in this case one of the two was Michael, and that made his decision easy. “I lean toward acquittal also, Uriel,” he said miserably.
Kettle beamed. “Then shall I record the death as due to snake attack?”
Uriel uttered a growl that was almost a roar. “Michael! Red was a friend of yours! He was murdered!”
“It’s your inquiry. But I think you’re outvoted.”
Uriel sprang up, tall and black against the window, and also furious. “Do it, then, Saint! And may your ink freeze!” He leaned big fists on the table and stared menacingly down at Quetti and me. “We can discuss your future at a later time—”
“Let’s do that now,” said the quiet voice from behind my shoulder. The man in the white gown rose and walked around to the far side of the table. The angel jumped off his chair, and he ended up without one as Michael took the middle spot and Uriel angrily settled where Two-green had been, leaving him to lean back against the wall, fold his arms, and glower. The face of the little man in white—Michael, of course—was now against the light and no more visible than it had been earlier.
He looked up at Uriel. “Well? There are two pilgrims here. Have you no questions to ask the candidates?”
I was about to interject that I was no pilgrim. I might even have been rash enough to spit out a few of my opinions about angels in general as hypocritical, lecherous posers and of Heaven itself as callous and ineffectual, but I needed transportation back to the grasslands, so I would probably have managed to restrain myself. As it was, I caught sight of Michael’s hands on the table, and my thoughts suddenly began to jump in all other directions like a pack of roos.
Uriel was furious, his fists so tightly clenched that pale spots showed on the big black knuckles. “Very well, Holiness, although I’ve had no chance to interview them in private, as is the custom.”
“It is hardly the custom for pilgrims to arrive in their own chariot.” Michael was making no effort to soothe the tall man; indeed, he seemed to be trying to provoke him.
Five archangels rule Heaven. Gabriel tends the records and the ancient lore. Uriel trains the cherubim. Raphael builds and maintains the chariots and all the other equipment the angels need. Sariel attends to the housekeeping of Heaven itself—the feeding and housing of so many people, the welfare of the dog teams and the snortoises. Michael gives orders to angels.
The hierarchy is clearly defined. At the bottom are the seraphim, who do manual labor for Sariel and Raphael. They are mostly youngsters of the twilight ghoulfolk, who work off their adolescence in Heaven and then head home with a farewell gift of Heaven’s unique manufactures, such as nails and steel blades and certain medicines. With those, they can buy first-class wives.
Above the seraphim come the cherubim, future angels, followed by the learned saints who report to Gabriel—at least in theory they do; some saints have been lost in obscure research for so long that they have forgotten their own names, let alone his.
Above the saints come the angels, and the five archangels.
All archangels are former angels, accustomed to obeying Michael, and Michael appoints other archangels whenever there is a vacancy. In Heaven’s long history, there have been few instances of a Michael who could not get his own way in the Council of Five.
There was no question that pilgrims seeking admission as cherubim must be first approved by Uriel. The former Black-white-red was new to the post. He had not interviewed many candidates before Quetti and I arrived, but it was certainly his privilege to do so. His anger at Michael’s intervention was understandable, even if Michael’s own motives were not. And my own mind was already reeling at what it was beginning to suspect.
“How do you feel about the spinster now, pilgrim?” Uriel asked.
“I worship her memory,” Quetti said very quietly. “Could she be restored to life, I would gladly pasture silkworms for her until nothing remained but my bones. Not for anyone else by choice, though.”
Uriel shuddered. “You claimed you had a token…?”
I was still staring at the shrouded figure of Michael and especially at those small pale hands. Wetlander hands. His face was a pale blur within cowled shadow.
“I had one,” Quetti said. “But I left the spinster’s web with nothing, not even a whole skin, as you know. Knobil had three!”
“Three?” Two archangels, one saint, and one angel all echoed the word in astonishment, or perhaps disbelief.
“Three! But he lost them in an ants’ nest.”
“Very convenient,” said Uriel.
Michael intervened sharply. “Tokens are not important! They are not necessary for admission and they do not guarantee it. Tokens help in recruiting, but they are mostly of value to us as a means of learning where the donors were. The marks on the back of a token back tell us that. If an angel is lost, we like to know how far he got… That’s all. What counts is not the token, but the man who brings it.”