“Nevertheless,” Uriel insisted, “I am going to ask. Tell us about yours, Pilgrim Quetti.”
“I was quite small,” Quetti said cheerfully, “paddling along in my kayak. I chanced upon an angel about to be eaten by a pack of ice frogs. He seemed to appreciate my help.”
“His name?” Uriel queried suspiciously.
“Orange-lime-orange.”
“I have his report here, Archangels.” Kettle was fumbling with his papers. “He has just returned from the Thursday venture, so we can easily call him in as a witness if you wish. He described the incident as ‘terrifying’ and an ‘extremely narrow escape’.”
Quetti returned Uriel’s glare with a smirk. “You gotta know where to hit ’em, that’s all.”
Uriel grunted, as if impressed despite himself. “Michael, this man is obviously a survivor. I recommend that we accept Candidate Quetti.”
“Agreed. Welcome, Cherub.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“As I said,” Michael continued, “I believe that wetlanders make the finest angels of all. We are loners by nature, yet our background has taught us to cooperate. We are not frightened by open spaces. Is this not so?” He laughed quietly, in an old man’s dry, cynical chuckle. “And we also have a streak of ruthlessness that can be very convenient at times—true?”
“Er…yes sir,” Quetti said, turning red.
I thumped him on the shoulder. “Congratulations!”
Uriel said, “The other candidate—”
“I am not a candidate, Archangel.”
Quetti spun around on his chair. “Knobil!”
Uriel sighed. “Then I am saved the duty of refusing you. You are about twice the age we require, and a cripple. And a herdman!” He hesitated. “But I admit I would like to hear how a man collects three tokens in one lifetime.”
I saw Michael’s hands clench.
“Violet-indigo-red gave me one…” For a moment I recalled my old, old dream of marching triumphantly into Heaven, and of Violet coming forth to welcome me and declare me a cherub. Nothing remained of that dream, nothing at all.
“Why?”
“He saw me running from a tyrant—perhaps it was a reward for intelligence? He was a little crazy. The second I got from Brown-yellow-white, because I rode a great one up the Great River. But hundreds of others did the same right after. The third…the third was only a promise, not an actual token. From Orange-brown-white—”
Quetti shot me a startled glance but said nothing. Michael’s fingers unfolded slowly.
“Orange-brown-white?” Saint Kettle sat up eagerly. “Where? How long ago? Why only a promise?”
“A promise because he had no tokens to give me. He had nothing left but his skin, and not as much of that as feels good. He promised me a token if we escaped. It was humor—not very funny humor, but then we had very little to laugh about.”
The audience exchanged glances, and Uriel leaned across the table as if he wanted to bite me. “Orange was a slave? You are saying that those ants had the audacity to enslave an angel?”
“Is that worse than enslaving a herdman?”
“Well, if—no, I suppose not.” He obviously thought that it was, though. “We shall need a detailed report. He’s dead now?”
“Very.” I outlined how Orange had died soon after my capture, long, long ago. It had been about then that I had lost all hope that Heaven would ever, or could ever, do anything about the ants, but now suddenly I realized that in this case they might at least try, inspired by my tale of the captured angel. My mouth began to water at the thought of Hrarrh dying at my feet, slowly and painfully.
Uriel looked over Michael’s head at Kettle. “Is there a mine recorded near the Gates of the Andes?”
The fat man nodded. “I believe so. I’d have to check, but it seems to me it is one of the poor ones, not exploited in every cycle.”
The snortoise took another giant lurch forward. The room rocked and creaked. Then came the bellow.
When silence returned, Michael was already speaking, or thinking aloud. “…a Friday Freeze due, but latest word is that the seafolk are already on the move… I could free up more men there, at least until the ice actually closes… The Thursday party’s back—Have we the equipment, though? That’s the problem!” He rose and the others followed, the angel straightening up from the wall.
I was astonished by the little man’s authority, by the way he could make larger men than he behave like herdwomen around their master. How did he do that? I saw that there might yet be things I could learn in Heaven—things that would assist me in my planned revenge. Even if nothing came of this proposed attack on the ants’ nest, I might want to stay around for a while and observe.
Michael was not done yet. “Kettle, tell Gabriel I want a full report on that location. Two-green, you get one from Raphael on ordnance—and check it yourself. Uriel, you’ll administer the oath to Cherub Quetti? I want to hear more details from Knobil.”
The others scuttled around like beetles. I stayed safely in my chair, not yet trusting my balance on so uncertain a flooring.
As the door closed behind the others, the tiny man in the bulky white robe came around the table and turned to face me. By coincidence, the clouds were clearing on the skyline, and a smoky yellow light began to brighten the casement. Michael threw back his hood, and for a while the two of us just stared at each other.
His hair was silver, yet thick for his age. He was not as pale as Quetti had become in the spinster’s lair, but still unusually light, his skin roughened by long weathering. And his eyes were brilliant flecks of sky.
Then he smiled. “The promise from Orange made four,” he said, stepping close. “There was already a third token.”
I just nodded, gazing stupidly at him. Could I really remember? He was certainly much smaller than I would have imagined.
He held out two hands, as if expecting me to take them. “I never dreamed! They told me two wetlanders. When I heard your dialect, I knew you were never from Dawn… Then I realized that I had heard your name before… Knobil! After all this time!” He blinked rapidly.
“I remember you.”
“You do? I find that hard to believe. You were very small.”
“But you frightened me. I was not accustomed to seeing my mother used so.”
The offered hands were withdrawn. Michael studied me now with a hard blue stare. Then he hooked a chair to him and sat down, his feet between my outstretched legs. I am sure that my own gaze was no softer than his.
“It was an accident,” he said. “I’d been sent to tell the wetlanders that it was safe to move south again. I was told to go by the grasslands and estimate the herdfolk population. On my way home, by mere chance, I arrived at a camp I had visited on the way out.”
“And you broke your own rules by tumbling the same woman again.”
He pursed his ancient lips, thin lips, turning them white. “I really wanted to play with you, but you wouldn’t come near me. Do you know why angels have that rule?”
He reminded me a little of Jat Lon—a smarter man than me, seeking to mold me to his own purposes, and certainly very devious. I wanted a favor, a ride to the grasslands, and now I knew who made decisions in Heaven.
“I don’t think I care. Nothing could so justify the demeaning manner in which angels use women.”
“Indeed? So Uriel was wrong when he surmised that two imposters had been accepting that sort of hospitality?”
I dropped my gaze to the hummocky, whorled floor of scuffed snortoiseshell. “Mostly I left that part to Quetti,” I muttered.