Free Jovah's Angel by Sharon Shinn

held dignified consultations with their most discriminating clients.
    Alleya moved much more quickly once she had gained level ground, making her way to a small, crowded shop on the south edge of town. Hanging unevenly over the seamed wooden door, a worn sign simply offered “Repairs.” Alleya peeked through the glass, but no one appeared to be at work in the shop. She opened the door and went inside, anyway.
    The place was a marvel of odd scents and unfamiliar objects, all jumbled together—metal, leather, oil, grease, and the hot smell and bursting spark of untamed electricity. Alleya stood in the center of the small, crowded space and did a slow pirouette, but she could not have described a use for any of the devices hanging on the walls or scattered across the floor. Some of the great mysteries of progress.
    She had rung a small doorbell when she entered, and it was only a matter of moments before she was joined by the owner of the shop. “Angela!” he greeted her, bounding out from an uncovered doorway and hurrying over to shake her hand. “It has been some time since I have seen you here.”
    â€œHello, Daniel,” she said, smiling up at him. He was a big, strongly built Edori, with the characteristic dark coloring in eyes, skin and hair. Like most Edori she had met, he was outgoing, eager to please, prone to digression and fascinated by anything mechanical. He was known as
the
man to go to if you needed a watch fixed or a newfangled piece of equipment fine-tuned, but his shop had never been particularly successful, financially speaking. Alleluia repressed a smile. No head for business. “How has everything been with you?”
    â€œGood, good, couldn’t ask for a better year.” Daniel beamed. “You’ve heard of the new steam-powered water systems that all the mighty-mighties have to install in their homes these days? Regular well water is not good enough for them—it has to be free-flowing water, it has to be hot, it has to be available in half the rooms of the house. So! Wonderful for me! Half the steam valves stick after two months, and if the hoses aren’t connected just right—I can’t tell you the tiny,
tiny
things that go wrong with these little contraptions, and the allali customers don’t have the first idea how to fix them.” He glanced at her guiltily after using the uncomplimentary Edori term for rich, idle city dweller, then went on with his story.
    â€œAnd of course, once they’ve had the advantages of hot, ready water they simply can’t go back to their old lives, so the steam systems have to be fixed
right now
. It takes me, believe it, five minutes to put everything in order again. I can charge them what I like! I have fixed every steam system in Velora at least once, and I’ve been called as far away as Semorrah—although that one was a little more complicated, a big system and it had a number of flaws. But I fixed it. I showed one of their houseboys how it was done, so they’ll never need to bother me again. I don’t understand how something so easy can seem so impossible.”
    Alleya smiled at him again. “It seems impossible to me,” she said. “I’d be bathing in cold water my whole life if someone didn’t install these things for me.”
    He laughed and threw his hands apart. “But then, you find it easy to fly—and me? I couldn’t fly if the fate of the Edori rested on my back. So Yovah put us all here to accomplish different things, yes? And fixing little valves and engines is my task.”
    It always gave her a start to hear the Edori call the god by their version of his name. It was so easy for her to forget that not everyone viewed Jovah exactly as she did. And what she hadheard of the Edori religion shocked her enough to keep her from investigating more closely.
    â€œI have something I wish you could fix for me, but I don’t think you can,”