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In the arms of an Archangel, below an endless blue sky, above an infinite stretch of cities and plains and water and gardens and spires, Luna could no longer tell what she felt. She had gone through terror into something that was, and was not, exactly the same thing.
"Do you trust me?" asked the Archangel.
The right answer was yes and it was almost, almost the truth, and Luna said, "I don't know," because that was also true.
"That's fair," said the Archangel. "Do you trust Vaina?"
"Entirely," Luna said.
"Good. Then let go, and believe."
She let go, and fell, air so clean and cold it almost hurt sweeping past her. A memory of the journey to that Domain, and she had been falling then, no idea of what would be on the other end except that she must reach it because there was no choice, no way out, nothing to do but follow.
Two hands caught her, and two feet. A Cherub spread his wings wide, tawny feathers stretching out against the blue sky above her. She did not recognize him in this form, until she saw the monkey's tail, and knew who he was.
"Nothing here will hurt you," Vaina said. (There were nuances to hurt when he said it, in this new language where every word was perfectly true and perfectly complex. She could still be hurt in Heaven, but none of those hurts would force themselves into her mind or flesh.)
She spread her wings, and held to her Cherub. She believed.
#
Vaina brought his attuned into his room, because he did not have to be an Elohite to see how the world outside overwhelmed her. He drew the curtains on the windows, and sat her down in the chair up on the dry stretch of floor before his pool.
"It's so quiet," she said, and stared at her hands on her knees. "Outside."
"We're at the very edge of the Bazaar," Vaina said. "It will be a bit noisier if we walk inside. Would you like to?" He had thought the location terribly loud when they gave him the room there. Not unpleasantly so, merely...well-trafficked. The walls shut out the sound of a thousand voices passing on the nearest streets, perhaps too well. There was a tidal rushing to conversation heard from a distance, as meaningful as waves falling onto sand.
"No, I mean..." She looked up from her hands to meet his gaze. In her true form, she was as small as she'd been in that ethereal image, more clearly frail. Not merely the idea of an adolescent human, but a Mercurian a few Forces shy of where an angel usually began. "It's so quiet. They're only talking. No one's screaming."
"There is not much screaming in Heaven," Vaina said.
"Which is not the same as none."
"No," he said. "But I suspect it is almost entirely from different causes than those you were familiar with."
"I didn't mind it," she said. "Hearing it meant that it wasn't me. Because you can't hear them anymore if you're doing the screaming. Not being able to hear that is like--being in her office."
"You're not," Vaina said, and watched her hands shake. He offered her a hand of his own. "Being in here isn't good for you right now. Where would you like to go?"
"I don't know my options," she said, but she stood and took his hand. (Every time one he was attuned to reached for him, he remembered the first time, the first one who held his hand, and it almost didn't hurt, this last year. He was almost able to think of that again in peace.) "I should--maybe we should talk to Trade. Since they're here. Since I belong to them."
"You belong to God," Vaina said, "and to Heaven, and to your Archangel as you have one, and to your friends and allies, in that order. But you also belong to yourself. We are not slaves."
"There are worse things to be than a slave," Luna said, and he could not follow what she meant by that.
#
A Mercurian (which was a strange and feathery thing, and Luna could not stop staring at the white wings, at knowing ones almost like them spread behind her where the little leather ones marked up with Althea's decorations had once been) met them in an office with an enormous glass wall looking out over a...place. Some green square of trees and paths and people (she could not get over the number of people who walked and flew and drifted about as if they might as well go where they liked) which the classes about work among humans said meant park and her mind could still not process entirely.
"We'd like to try this contract," the Mercurian was saying to Vaina, who reviewed a stream of words on a glossy rectangle, its back emblazoned with a blue lightning bolt. "Month to month, same terms as before minus the hazard pay. Now, since you've already fulfilled the terms of the last contract, the replacement vessel is waiting for you when you want it, but we thought you might be interested in a few upgrades, classes for relevant corporeal work, that sort of thing."
"A vessel upgrade might be useful," Vaina said, "depending on how other matters progress. It certainly never hurts. What's the ratio looking like on that, assuming I'm not interested in other payment beyond the defaults?"
Luna clasped her hands behind her back and stared out the window. A creature that could not be a Shedite, all eyes and mouths and fingers in a misty golden cloud of self holding them together, drifted past with a trailing pack of...not demonlings. Relievers. The infant angels, like tiny golden Impudites, holding hands in a line that connected to the larger angel's fingers. No sound passed through the window, but the view was clear enough. The larger angel gesturing down to the park, to the building they passed, and the little ones staring about to follow its gestures. Like...a classroom, on the move.
Probably it wouldn't eat any of them, so long as they minded their manners. Heaven seemed full of that kind of order, like a smooth glass sphere she could hold in her hands. Which would not shatter and cut her, if she did not drop it first. Follow the rules and no one would harm you just for standing there, being convenient, looking like something they wanted to hurt.
(And hadn't Althea protected her from some of that? Yes. She had delivered messages to terrifying demons and walked away unscathed, because of the protection of her supervisor. What a place this was, to give such power privilege to everyone. Or perhaps it was only that Archangels took a protective interest in all of those beneath them, and so no one...got in the habit. Of hurting each other. Althea used to say, A bad habit you never start is one I don't have to break you of, and that was true too.)
Vaina touched her shoulder, and of course it was only him, it was exactly the person she wanted standing there, and she hated to see his expression when she flinched. Which. She was not supposed to do, not around anyone, and yet all her training was slipping off her. As if becoming an angel had peeled back months and months of work at the same time, leaving her with the memory of it but not the control.
There was hurt, and then there was hurt. She had hurt him, without even meaning to. Even in Heaven. But all he did was say, "If you feel up to looking over a contract, Trade has an offer for you."
Which was odd. As if it was safe to hurt people stronger than her, at least by accident. There was no retribution waiting at all.
#
Vaina led her down into the pool of his office, to show her his workspace there. She picked up his carving in progress, each of his woodworking tools in turn, and set them back down out of order. The movement of her wings sent currents through the water that tilted the few ornaments on his table and shelves, and her hair drifted about her face, mingling with the glow of her halo.
He wrapped a tail about a ring in the wall to anchor himself, took up his carving, and got back to work. The curves within the wood had begin to express themselves under the knife. Another few hours of work, and he might even know what that expression meant.
"I shouldn't touch your tools," Luna said.
He looked over his shoulder, and found that she was floating with arms spread and legs crossed, staring up at the lights of the office above. Not looking at him, and he was beginning to understand what that meant.
"I don't mind," he said.
"I don't know what you would mind," she said. "I don't know what would make you angry or sad or happy or...anything." She dragged her fingers through the water, and a wood shaving spiraled itself about her hand.
"I would be very angry," Vaina said, "if anyone tried to hurt you."
"What if they succeeded?"
"I don't intend to let that happen," he said. He turned back to his work. "Though the world does not always behave as we intend."
#
She had asked which was the cruelest Word in Heaven, which caused a certain amount of confusion. Not least of which because angelic was a language that kept tangling her up, lending weight and precision to what she said in ways that--were true, entirely true, even if they weren't what she had meant. But after some discussion the Cherub had said, with a simian spin through the water of his office, "I suppose we could start with War."
"Not Judgment?" she asked, following him into the air above. She left damp footprints behind her on the floor, and wondered if she ought to acquire shoes. Except no one seemed to mind that she was barefoot--she wasn't sure if they would mind if she were naked, though she might mind that herself--and there was no knowing what any request might cost. Except for information. Vaina would answer any question she asked, as best he could.
"Judgment," he said mildly, "will not punish any infraction unfairly." They stepped out the door, and the buzz of conversation, travel, even music rose all around them, and yet there was no need for Vaina to raise his voice as he continued. "Some might say that Stone is harsher than War, but I believe the resolution of Stone to never begin fights, only end them, renders them less so. Once upon a time I would have taken you to Purity, for this request."
"Then why not Purity?" she asked. She could not remember hearing of that one, in the Djinn's classes back in Sheol, but the teacher had said there were Words of Heaven too inconsequential to waste time on. Little things, trivial matters, ones that could do no harm. But when Vaina spoke the Word, it did not sound like anything trivial.
"Because Purity is gone," Vaina said. "After razing the Marches in his crusade, the Archangel Uriel was recalled to the Higher Heavens. Opinions on what this mean remain mixed. The truth of the matter is ineffable."
The stones of the path beneath her feet were warm. Not hot. Only warm and dependable, entirely solid and entirely harmless. "Has that happened to anyone else?"
"No one else," Vaina said. "No one else has been so monstrous as to require it, since the First Fall."
Which clarified his opinion on the matter perfectly, right there. She rolled that clarity around in her mouth like a drink of water, and considered what to do with it. What that might mean. "But when the Lightbringer led the way to Hell, God didn't recall him."
"Mm. No. There is that ineffability again." The crowd grew around them, and yet there were no collisions, no bouts of shoving, nothing but throngs of angels and souls--so many souls, an unimaginable number--walking past as if this was...normal. And Vaina walking about them. With her. As if you simply did that, like the stories she'd heard of Shal-Mari, walking from one place to the next in the crowds where you might look like anyone else and not be marked out for stepping outside of the safe paths between the fires.
There was a cart to her left, with the faint smell of smoke hung around it, and two relievers wielding pans over a grill. A human soul sat behind it, leaning a drowsy head against the shoulder of an enormous Cherub (Luna could not imagine what animal it came from, she didn't know the names of them, something vast and gray-brown with no fur and two enormous tusks), and all four of them, relievers soul Cherub, had no fear of the little fire. A contained thing. A tool. Though surely it was different near the volcano, the home of divine Fire and its mad angels who would burn you alive for crossing the invisible lines they drew. If Vaina had said those were the cruelest, she would have believed him, and asked to meet the Word next down the list instead.
They walked through crowds, and nothing harmed them. Nothing harmed anyone, that she could see. It was so far from sense and reason and memory that when the enormous trees drew near and she heard the clash of metal on metal, a shout, Luna could have nearly wept from relief. For not having to wait in endless anticipation for the moment when everything shattered. It was like waiting for the needle and the iron and the knife, when Althea was at her back and she could only look ahead. Until the touch, the pain, was a relief.
Even in Heaven, people could fight with each other. Knowing meant she could plan.
She stepped into grass, cool strands between her toes, and the face of a Balseraph--no, a Seraph, dropped down before her, six eyes rippling open. Its scales were a shining black, marked with enormous red diamonds, and its wings spread out like feathered shields.
"Hello," said the Seraph. "You don't look like locals. Looking for anything in particular? M'name's Riccarda, and, kid, you look like you've been through a rough time. Jumped by demons? Come to learn how to bite back?"
Vaina glanced at her. Luna knew this look, now. It was the one asking if he should step in front, explain, speak for her. Be a shield against what might harm her. (And he had said no harm would come to her, not the sort she could really fear.) She shook her head at him, and said to the Seraph, "My name is Luna, and I want to know about War."
"Huh," the Seraph said. "That's big. Come on up, and I'll give you a chat, hm? Don't worry, Guardian, I don't bite anyone around here. Especially the small fry."
"I know," Vaina murmured, but the statement did seem to...help. As if maybe he was waiting for something too, and no longer had to. His wings took him up to sit beside the Seraph in a few quick beats. So of course she followed.
The branch was enormous, as wide as the dry portion of Vaina's office, and the Seraph, Riccarda, had her body wrapped about it twice and a coil to spare for pillowing her head up above. "So what happened to you? Forces ripped off by something on the corporeal?"
"No," Luna said. She sat down and tucked her knees up to her chest. Which Althea would never let her do, called it a ridiculous cringing habit, but she liked it, she liked being able to wrap arms around her own legs and rest her chin there, and none of them told her to stop. "I've always been this size. The Dark Lord Belial made me so."
Riccarda's head drew up, wings fanning out. "He didn't make you quite so," she said, and sounded enormously pleased on this point. "Some Archangel got you through that. Nice work. Congratulations. Not a lot of you make it out of there, and when you're so small? I'm impressed! Tell me the story some time, if you feel up to it. No rush. What did you want to know about War?"
Luna leaned back against her Cherub. Now that they held it out to her, go ahead and ask questions, she had to make them. Work out the right question to ask, which was even harder than the right answer. "How do you decide who to destroy?"
Riccarda settled down in her top coil, humming a bit. "You aren't asking about the small stuff, are you. Okay. Give me a minute on this one."
"I'm not in a hurry," Luna said. Airily. Like. She could just tell someone whether or not they needed to hurry for her.
And no one held it against her.
She wondered what would happen if she were rude to someone. Maybe that was too far to press. Too soon.
"Right," said the Seraph, after another minute or so of the humming. "Here we go. Partial answer, because I can only give an overview, trying to speak for the whole Word, here. We decide to destroy what stands in the way of our goals, and by extension, what stands in the way of the cause of Heaven as we best understand it. Destroy can mean a lot of things. Up against demons, that's usually vessel death, unless someone forces the issue. Humans, well, they only get one shot, reincarnation aside, so that's more serious, but it certainly happens. And there are accidents. Collateral damage, civilian casualties, even friendly fire. When we decide to get violent--which is pretty often--that means taking responsibility for the possibility of those accidents. Enough possibility turns into certainty, after a while. We fight the cleanest War we can, but we do make mistakes. When we know we've gone wrong, we try to fix it as best we can, though sometimes the only fix we have available is to back off and let someone else take care of the mess."
Silence hung for a moment between them.
The Seraph preened down a line of feathers along a wing, and peered at Luna. "Does that answer your question?"
"I don't know," Luna said. "Yes. Sort of. In places. So you don't save anyone."
Riccarda hummed again. "And by 'anyone', little Mercurian, you mean 'demons', don't you?" She huffed out a sigh at Luna's nod. "Truth be told, and this one should, you're not too far from wrong, speaking as a total percentage of met versus saved. We've surely destroyed some who could have been saved, over the millennia. That's how the numbers run. But don't get me wrong, kid, Michael has redeemed demons before. He will again. Usually they need to come running to us first. Fall down and ask for mercy, and sometimes, you'll get it."
"But not always," Luna said.
"Not always," said the Seraph.
"Thank you," Luna said. "Who's your opposite in Heaven?"
"The opposite to War?" Riccarda leaned in, eyes keen, and it was all Luna could do not to tumble over the edge of the branch and flee. "Go talk to Flowers. But come back if you want to learn to defend yourself. Talk to the Sword, even, or Stone, any of them can help you there. Nice folks, the Flowerchildren. They mean well. But in my opinion, they risk too much in commitment to the do-no-harm thing. If you want to hang around them, no one's going to stop you, maybe your Archangel aside in some situations, but don't take their word for everything. You're a tiny one. Learn how to fight. Defend yourself."
"I will defend her," Vaina said, "if the need arises."
"Good," said the Seraph. "But as I said? Accidents happen. Walk strong, kid."
#
Grass everywhere, under her feet and coating the sides of the two small hills they walked between. Luna held Vaina's hand, and tried to track the music. So many strains from so many directions, until she was sure it ought to all be overlapping into noise, and it...was not. What she paid attention to played through clear and sweet, and what she gave no attention to was merely a tiny whisper at the edge of her awareness.
They rounded a hill, and found an open structure, all wooden poles and a bright red roof, with eight sides and no true walls to be seen. Five human souls and a Kyriotate waved brassy instruments about, though the Kyriotate played at something dark brown and stringed as well.
"What kind of music is this?" Luna whispered to Vaina. A few dozen souls, angels, and relievers watched the performance, though none seemed rapt. They were only there because the music was there, a moment of performance in the midst of whatever else they were doing. A handful of relievers fluttered away, others came in, and it was so...meaningless. Useless. You could listen or not listen and it didn't matter.
"Jazz? I think. I've been focusing more on language acquisition and modern cultural norms for my next corporeal Role, not so much the entertainment." Vaina drew her forward, though she did not quite like to walk into that loose cluster of watchers, dancers, talkers. There was no sense of purpose to anything but the playing, which had no further purpose beyond its own creation. "You could ask one of the musicians, when they finish."
Everyone was so happy.
She couldn't spot the catch.
The musicians finished with some sort of flourish. A few people applauded, among those listening. Most drifted away. All that work, and it was gone. Meant nothing. Had meant nothing at all, except that people put in the effort for it. No one was even recording it, no Media to watch and collect and carve things into memory or take them away for others to appreciate.
Vaina led her up to the edge of the building, waved to the musicians, and she couldn't think of how to say I do not want to go. She couldn't. She didn't say that sort of thing, the answer was never stop or don't do that once someone else began, and there was a human soul who approached, an instrument in hand, and he smiled at her. As if she was neither worrisome nor fearsome nor pitiable. "How did you like the show?" he asked.
The right answer was It was very nice or maybe I'm glad I saw it, and she opened her mouth and said, "I didn't. I don't understand it. I don't see what the point is, why you're here, why you're doing this, and it's not good for anything at all."
The blessed soul took a half step back, his expression falling, and it hurt like he had slapped her, to see that. She didn't mean it. She meant every word of it. She meant the action but not the reaction, and that was wrong, that was not what she learned, because she was responsible for every reaction. To choose an action was to choose its consequences. And Vaina said, at her shoulder, "Luna," nothing more than that, in a tone she didn't recognize, and she burst into tears.
#
Vaina found his attuned a quiet place to sit. A stone bench beneath an arch woven with roses, surrounded by high hedges. A place that could not be any more clear about meaning privacy without a sign posted outside, and there were not many places in the Glade that had such signs. He pulled together the image of the vessel Trade had given him, something more human for her to cling to, and held her while she cried.
He didn't understand. He didn't like not understanding, but he was a Cherub, and sometimes understanding wasn't necessary. Protection. Loyalty. Stability.
"It doesn't make any sense," she said, her forehead pressed against his chest. "I can't tell what they want."
"What they want?" He knew he was doing this wrong, but wrong was better than not at all. Better to try and fail than not to try. "From you?"
"From themselves. From this place." She pulled back, and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "Who makes them play the music?"
"They play," Vaina said, "because they want to."
"What for?"
"Because they want to," Vaina said helplessly, and wished he had an Elohite at hand. Surely Trade could send one along if he sent in a request. "I'm sorry, Luna, I don't understand your question."
"And I don't understand the answer," she said, "so I guess that's okay." She drew in a deep, shaky breath. "Everything smells so strange here. It's like--the opposite of smoke."
"Would you like to go talk to other Words? Or go back to my room? Or...talk to someone who might understand your questions better?"
"Back to your room," she said, and summoned up a tiny smile for him. Which was enough to make everything fine, everything in the world, for a moment. "I like the water there. I wish--"
She didn't finish that sentence, and he knew what would have gone there.
He wished she had, though he would never say so to her. That she had cared a little less about hurting him, and more about saying what was true. I wish I could be part of Waters.
#
Luna was floating, a perfect suspended eternity of water all around her, when a light flashed. "That's the door," Vaina said, setting down his tools.
"Oh, keep on working. I'll get it." Luna spun about, and kicked upwards. She fought back the rise of terror, the meaningless noise of what had gone before. She could open a door for her Cherub. She could be useful, a proper assistant, even if she wasn't exactly that.
She set her feet on the ground at the last moment, and walked from water to air, warm and surrounded to cool and dripping. Another light shone by the door, warm blue.
"Hello," Luna said, on opening the door. She stopped at that, wings shivering damply behind her. She did not have the proper phrases for introductions, or greetings, or whatever a door-opener was supposed to say next.
"Hello," said the reliever, and tucked a neat little bow at her over the clipboard he carried. Reliever, she was sure, because of the golden butterfly wings and his size, though otherwise she might have taken him for a Mercurian even smaller than she was. Or the soul of a child, twelve years in human aging and dressed in a tidy white tunic. "My name is Johannes. Would you be Luna?"
"Yes," she said. That was an easy one. She stepped out of the way, and let him inside. "Why are you here?"
"Community service," he said, holding up the clipboard. "I'm putting in my hours for the pre-fledging sequence. Once I have all my badges, I can turn them in for a new Force, assuming I don't pick one up on my own first. This is the part where I help new angels use their resonances."
"Oh." She sat down on the floor inside, and he sat down across from her, ignoring the chair. Which was...good. She didn't quite like chairs, and there was no way to explain that without it sounding ridiculous. "How?"
Johannes sat on his feet, hands on his knees. Back straight, eyes clear, he had good posture and--Althea would have approved. He did not look like he was afraid of anything, unprepared for anything.
Althea would never get him. Not ever.
"You look into the Symphony," said the reliever, "and find the chord there that resonates with the sort of angel you are. Since you're a Mercurian, you can focus it on me, or on both of us. If it doesn't work the first time, that's fine. Sometimes it takes a while to learn how to use it properly, and it's always a challenge."
"An act of will," Luna said. "To make it play the right notes."
Johannes shook his head rapidly. "An act of hearing. Or seeing, if you like that way of looking at it better. The information is already there in the Symphony. You're trying to access it. Impudites change the social net of a person, shoving their own personal symphony into a place it hasn't earned. Mercurians see what the social net is, and then back through that lens to a person's history, if they look deep."
"I've never tried," Luna said.
"Yes," Johannes said, "they told me that was probably the case. That's why I'm here. There's nothing you could see me in that would hurt." He held out his hands, exactly as her Cherub would. "You can try to see even deeper, if you want. To see everything this resonance could tell you."
She took his small hands within hers, and looked.
His name was Johannes, named after a human long dead and loved by the Kyriotate who shed Forces to make him, made him as a tiny golden creature in the hands of an Archangel who held him over the wide spread of the tents, skyscrapers, plazas of Trade's world, and said, "Look at all of them." A blur of that Kyriotate again, a Mercurian standing before a class, other relievers with a series of names and natures she couldn't remember, the first time he dropped away from a game of catch to ask an Elohite, "What do you see?" Classes and study groups and badges and spreadsheets scrolling past his eyes, second place in a debate contest. That intense moment of longing and pride in what his parent could be, when the Kyriotate returned to Earth. A sparkling web of name-and-face-and-nature stretching out around him like another set of wings, as much a part of him as his body before her.
She dropped his hands, and fell backward onto her wings.
"I'm sorry," Johannes gasped, and sprang upward via wings, legs unfolding as an afterthought. "Are you okay?"
"Yes," Luna said. Though there was her Cherub springing out of the water, there to sit beside her and ask the exact same question as the reliever. "I'm fine," she said. "It's only. It's so big. It's beautiful. Why did no one tell me? And it almost makes sense."
The reliever drifted back to the ground, and picked up his fallen clipboard. "What part doesn't make sense?" he asked, and made a sort of apologetic gesture towards Vaina. "I'm sorry, I would've called you up first if I knew it would--go like this. No one else did this, but I should've realized."
"With the Kyriotate," she said. "They're so important to you, as much as your Archangel, but I didn't understand at all."
"That," Johannes said, straight-backed and shoulders set back, "is my Forceparent. They donated two Forces to have me made, and Marc gave another two."
This was true, because everyone spoke the truth here. And it still made no sense. "Why?"
"Because they wanted to make a reliever," Johannes said, with a quick look to Vaina. Who was not interrupting, and Luna appreciated that. She wanted this conversation to be with--not another Word, exactly, but another way of looking at things.
"But why?" Luna asked. "Does that mean you work for them, next?"
"It's--people do that," Johannes said, and bit the corner of his lip as he thought. "Lots of people do that, not everyone. Haven't you ever heard of it before? Being made from the Forces of someone else?"
"That only happens in Hell if you do something so terrible that they kill you," Luna said. "And make a different person out of your Forces, someone who might--behave better. My supervisor told me about it. That it happened. That she'd had it done, for assistants who didn't behave."
Johannes stared at her with wide eyes. "That's terrible," he said. "There's no...wanting to make someone else? Not ever? Just a few Forces, to help start a new person, someone who's from you but their own person..."
"I heard once," Luna said, "of a very powerful demon who did...something wrong. Something very wrong. Our Prince tore her apart and made her into two small demons, and gave them to the person who replaced her. Because it was. Fitting. That's what Althea said. So that even after she was dead, she could still be useful."
Johannes pressed his hands to his mouth, clipboard sliding off his knees. "Why? Why would anyone do that?"
"I don't know," Luna said. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, don't cry, I didn't mean it. I keep saying the wrong thing." She reached for him before she thought about it, and he did not run away. He did not think she was terrible.
She held him the way her Cherub had, and the reliever held her back. He didn't even cry so long as she had, in the Glade.
And Vaina was there, his wings over both of them.
#
When the reliever had gone, Vaina sat there on the dry floor with Luna, and watched her think. He was sorry for the tears, sorry for the pain, and yet he was not sorry to watch the way her face moved as she thought about what this meant.
"Do they ever?" she asked. "Take people apart. Here in Heaven."
"Only in the rarest circumstances," Vaina said. "For the worst crimes. The dispersal of Forces can only occur as punishment for a crime so great that this is justice. I have heard that it occurs. I do not know of any one instance of such a punishment."
She nodded slowly, wings lifting and lowering behind her in turn. "What crime?"
"Nothing you could even commit, in Heaven," Vaina said.
"But I need to know," she said. "I need to know where I could go wrong. I can't go right unless I know what wrong is."
"I think," he said, "that it's nearly the other way around. Learn how to do right, and you won't do wrong." But she was not convinced, and he hesitated a long moment, trying to find a way. Where it wouldn't hurt.
There was sometimes no way to talk about terrible things without even the discussion bringing pain. He knew that firsthand.
"Imagine," he said at last, "that you were on the corporeal, in some duty there. With that reliever."
"Johannes," she said. "They let relievers on the corporeal?"
"If he's nearly fledged, then he probably has more Forces than you do, Luna. But some relievers go down as well, either to do small jobs about Tethers in their true forms, or to take on vessels and perform safe work there. Suppose that you and Johannes were on the corporeal together. Suppose you met Althea, or someone like her. And suppose you betrayed Johannes. Handed him over to her, to drag into Hell and take your place, for some payment."
She stared at him, eyes wide. Knuckles white with her arms wrapped about her knees.
"That," Vaina said, "might be such a crime. I cannot imagine you ever doing such a thing."
"Never," she said. "Never and ever, not for eternity and a day. I wouldn't hurt him. I would never." She took a deep breath, and then met his eyes directly. "And if someone else should do that to him, I would want Judgment to treat them that way."
"Then perhaps," Vaina said, "you're beginning to understand the justice of Heaven."
#
When the triad of Judgment arrived, Luna met them at the door. "I'm sorry," she said, "but there are only two chairs. Do you mind the floor?"
"No," said the Seraph. It coiled itself up neatly, and the two that accompanied it, Mercurian and Cherub, accepted the two chairs, while making their introductions. Luna sat on the floor in front of them, as she had seen Johannes do. Hands on her knees, and looking up at them.
"Would you like your Cherub to sit through this with you?" asked the Mercurian. She was a tall woman, narrow in frame and dark in color. Her clothes were all formality, straight lines of black bordered in gold.
"No, thank you," Luna said. "If I'm upset, he'll come to help me. He's just down in the water. You're with Judgment, right?"
"We are," said the Seraph, while the Cherub, another creature she couldn't name--two-legged like humans with peculiar short arms, and a thick tail resting behind her--attempted to fit herself discreetly into a chair shaped for more human-shaped bodies. "We have some questions for you."
"I would like to assure you," said the Mercurian, "that this is a normal part of checking in on someone who has redeemed recently. You are not, to our knowledge, in any trouble. Do you have any questions before we begin?"
"Yes," Luna said. "I need to know the rules for Heaven. For being an angel. For being a Mercurian. I need to know all of them."
There was a small, awkward silence during which the members of the triad looked at each other significantly.
"We'll see what we can do," the Mercurian said. "I have some paperwork you can fill out to request books on the topic, and we can send an instructor by to speak with you about Heavenly law. Your interest in the topic does you credit. Luna, how do you feel about being part of Trade?"
"I'm not," she said. "I'm contracting."
There was another awkward silence, which suggested she had said something wrong, though she wasn't sure what.
"I mean," she said, "I'm contracting for Trade. I signed the contract they gave me. It's more than fair. But Marc said that I didn't belong to--him, them, to the Word, not unless I asked to be. That I could ask for service anywhere, even if not everyone would say yes. And I haven't decided yet! I've barely talked to a handful of Words, and I still don't even know how the basics of Heaven work. What being an angel is about. So I'm not part of Trade, even if I might be, and no one can make me."
The Cherub flipped through a small notebook briskly. The Seraph's wings went fluffy along the edges. But the Mercurian only nodded to her slowly, and said, "Let's start with our questions. Unless you have any more."
Which she didn't, not just then. So long as they were clear on that point.
#
The first time she resonated Vaina, she realized why they had sent her the reliever first. Because the place where Oannes had once waited, the place where all his Wordmates had shone out as intersections in that net, all of it was gone, a terrifying space that spun him about in a world of tatters and loss. Loss that she could not repair.
She might have started crying again, just to see it, except that she saw herself in there. That point of light. An anchor drawing thin strands out that could not be easily broken.
Luna didn't tell him what she saw. He already knew his own background. She only thought about it.
#
Luna had meant to send a message to the Seraph of Trade, once she knew how to word it. Once she knew what she wanted to ask, or how to ask it, or if she should ask those questions at all. She spent days--weeks? certainly months, Vaina had gone to Trade for a contract renewal in the time, or maybe twice--without coming up with the right words. But instead the message came for her, and Johannes carried it.
"My Forceparent worked with him once," the reliever said, as he presented Luna with the envelope. "Something secret. He works on a lot of secret projects, for a Seraph. I would think that would be hard to do."
She opened the envelope to read the card, while Vaina came up from the water to watch from a polite distance. Then she handed the card to him to read in turn. "Do you know what you'll be when you're older?" she asked the reliever. The child angel, who was older than her, had more Forces than she did, and looked up to her when they stood side by side.
"I haven't decided," Johannes said, "though probably not Seraph. It doesn't seem likely. When the decision comes, I'll become whatever it's right for me to be."
"Elohite," murmured Vaina, setting the card aside on a table. Which was only opinion, but Luna suspected he was right. "Shall we go speak with this Seraph, Luna?"
"Let's," she said. "Johannes, will you show us the way?"
#
Penny was no longer terrifying. Luna had seen Seraphim upon Seraphim, and he was merely one more. His room looking over a small plaza was airy and high, avian in a way that Vaina's was aquatic, and she sat at a window seat with her Cherub. A breeze pushed linen curtains across her legs where they stretched out on the seat, and she wiggled bare toes in the wind. Shoes, maybe, one of these days. But no one had complained yet.
"Would you be willing to go over what happened?" the Seraph asked her, dusky golden coils glowing in the light filtered through the curtains. "In detail, as you can still remember."
And so she told the story again. It was stranger now, the further she got away from it. She could see herself, her own fear and hesitation and desperate decisions, on the other side of a pane of dusty glass. Yes, that was her, and yet it wasn't her, who said things like It doesn't matter what I want and then, almost in the same breath, that was how close it felt in her memory, Get me away from her and I'll owe you anything.
"I don't know," she said, at the end, "what she meant. I still don't know. I think of what Vaina told me once, about what sort of thing could be punished in Heaven the way almost anything can be in Hell. To hand someone over to the enemy, deliberately. Like that. Exactly like she did to me. But she wasn't betraying me. She asked. She said, 'Where do you want to go?'"
She held Vaina's hand, and watched the Seraph, who watched her right back, six eyes to her two. Seeing deep.
"I don't know," she said, and she was so used to that phrase that it didn't even bother her anymore, "what she wanted. What she was getting out of that. If they might destroy her, if they ever find out."
"Does it upset you," asked Penny, "that she made you part of a deal?"
Luna listened to the hum outside. All those people, doing what they liked. And none of them liked to hurt each other, not a one of them that she'd found, not one. "It could," she said, "if I thought it was a deal. But it wasn't. She never had to offer me. She never had to offer that artifact. We all saw her fall out of the water, and we didn't see that she had brought it with her, none of us did. She could have kept it hidden and walked away, with or without me."
"And she did not," Vaina said. He sounded puzzled again, as he always did when they spoke of what had happened, which they didn't often. It was too far to be ready on the tongue, too near to be comfortable still.
"And she did not," the Seraph echoed quietly.
"Of course she didn't," Luna said, suddenly angry, terribly angry, and not at anyone in the room. At that not-Lilim, at Althea, at everything in Hell, at reality for not behaving as it ought. For needing fixing, and needing fixing so badly that people she loved would hurt themselves in the attempt. "It wasn't about the deal at all. It was about the question. Maybe she wanted to know, or maybe she wanted me to know, but that was the point."
"Which question?" Penny asked.
"What Heaven would rather have," Luna said. "Why should I come here if I would only be owned by someone new? But the people who want to own other people, they would take what was more valuable. And what was more valuable, that wasn't me."
"I think you're more valuable," Vaina said.
Luna kissed him on the forehead. "Thank you," she said. "But you're biased. No one else thought that, not right then." She drew one knee to her chest to rest her chin there. "Penny, will they take her apart for that?"
"They haven't yet," said the Seraph. "Not as of today."
"But they might," Luna said.
Penny drew his wings in about himself. "They might," he said.
"Then you have to get her out," Luna said. "Someone has to."
"We can't pull anyone out," Penny said, so quietly she could barely hear him. "They have to leave."
"They have to let go," Luna said, and remembered the arms of the Archangel around her. "And trust someone else to catch them."
"True," Penny said.
Luna ran her fingers along the hem of the curtain. Simple and rough beneath her fingertips. Unnecessary, but beautiful. The sort of thing an angel might put up in his room because he liked the look, and need no more reason than that. Who would stop him?
Who could want to belong to somewhere that wasn't here?
"When she gets here," Luna said, "I need to yell at her. For not telling me enough, and upsetting everyone like that. Before I thank her, or maybe after, I'm not sure which."
"If," said Penny, so quiet still.
"No, Most Holy," Luna said, and stood up. "When. Or I will find those who held her back, and take their Forces apart." And because Vaina looked so startled, she added quickly, "Which would take me a long time to be able to do, so that's more a long-term goal than anything I mean to do this week. Probably it won't be necessary anyway. But she got me out, and she said I'd do fine here, and she said I was brave. I intend to prove her right. Because she was, you know. I'm here, and I'm fine, and I am brave enough to fix what's broken. Even if it takes a while for me to get there."