Your bitterness is an affront to God, Elazael. You have been given a great gift. How many of our ancestors perished without seeing the holy faces of our kin, and yet you can find it in you to laugh? Will you choose to stay and be devoured with the sinners when the rest of us rise to take our place in the
Morgan never got a chance to finish reading the message, let alone fire off another response.
Is that Elizas phone?
Gabriel. Morgan whirled around. How had the neuroscientist managed to sneak up on him? Had he forgotten to lock the door?
Jesus, it is, said Gabriel, looking stunned and disgusted. Morgan did wonder about the stun. Edinger despised him. Why should this come as a surprise? And what could he say? Caught in the act. Nothing to do but lie.
She gets a new text message every thirty seconds. Someones obviously desperate to find her. I was just going to reply to whoever it is that shes not here
Give it to me.
No.
Gabriel didnt ask again. He just kicked the leg of the stool Morgan was sitting on hard enough to swipe it right out from under him. Morgan windmilled and fell hard. What with all the impact and pain and fury, he didnt even realize hed relinquished the phone until he was back on his feet, batting his bangs out of his eyes.
Damn. Edinger held the phone. His looked of stunned disgust had only deepened.
It was you, wasnt it? Gabriel said, suddenly realizing. It was all you. Jesus Christ, and I gave you the means. I gave you her phone.
Morgans fury turned to fear. It was like antiseptic hitting pus: the seethe, the bubbling, the burn. What are you talking about? he asked, feigning ignorance, and feigning it poorly.
Edinger slowly shook his head. It was a game to you, and youve probably ruined her life.
I didnt do anything, Morgan said, but he was unprepared to defend himself. He hadnt thought He hadnt thought about getting caught.
How could he not have thought?
Well. I cant promise Ill ruin your life, Gabriel replied. Honestly, thats a bit of a commitment. But I can promise you this. I will make sure everyone knows what youve done. He held up the phone. And if it does ruin your life, I wont be sorry about it.
Another letter. The third. The same servant brought it, and Razgut knew by the envelope that it was from the same sender as the previous two. This time, he didnt bother playing any games with Jael. As soon as the servantSpivetti was his namewas gone, he seized it and ripped it open.
He had taken special care crafting his last two replies. They had almost felt like love letters. Not that Razgut had ever written a love letter, mind. Well, no, that wasnt strictly true. He had, but that was in the Long Ago, and it may as well have been a different being entirely who had penned a sweet farewell to a honey-colored girl. He had looked like a different being, that was sure. He had still looked like a seraph, and his mind had still been a diamond without flaw, uncrackedand the pressure it takes to crack a diamond!and unfurred by the molds and filths that claimed it now. It was so very long ago, but he remembered writing that letter. The girls name was lost to him, and her face, too. She was just a golden blur of no consequence, a hint of a life that might have been, had he not been Chosen.
If I dont return , he had penned in a fine but eager script, forward-tilting, before leaving for the capital, know that I will carry the memory of you with me through every veil, into the darkness of every tomorrow, and beyond the shadow of every horizon.
Something like that. Razgut remembered the feeling that went into it, if not the precise words, and it wasnt love, or even the most surface-skimming truth. Hed simply been hedging his bets. If he wasnt chosenand what were the chances that he would be, out of so
many?then he could have gone home and pretended relief, and the honey-colored girl would have consoled him in her silkiness, and maybe they even would have married and borne children and lived some kind of drab-happy life in the undertow of his failure.
But he had been chosen.
O glorious day. Razgut was one of twelve in the Long Ago, and glory had been his. The day of the Naming: such glory. So much light in the city as had dazed the night sky, and they couldnt see the godstars but the godstars could see them, and that was what matteredthat the gods see them and know: They were chosen.
The openers of doors, the lights in the darkness.
Razgut never went back home, and he never saw the girl again, but look. He hadnt lied to her, had he? He was remembering her now, beyond the shadow of a horizon, in the darkness of a tomorrow he could never have imagined.
What does she say?
She.
Jaels voice broke into Razguts reverie. This letter, it was from no silken girl but a woman whom he had never seenthough her name was not unknown to himand there was no sweetness in her, none at all, and that was all right. Razguts tastes had matured. Sweetness was insipid. Let the butterflies and hummingbirds have it. Like a carrion beetle, he was called to sharper scents.