Free Archangel by Sharon Shinn

voice almost a whisper. “But I have not been there … for years and years.”
    “I have been to that place,” he said abruptly. “It appeared to have been destroyed. What happened to it?”
    She shook her head. “I was very young. I have few memories of that time and place.”
    “Then what happened to you? How did you get from there— to here?”
    “I was adopted by the Manderra clan of the Edori people,” she said, her voice taking on a certain proud lilt; so the Edori always identified themselves to each other. “They found me when I was a child. I was with them until I was twenty.”
    “And then?”
    Her expression became ironic. “And then what do you think? How do Edori women usually become allali slave girls?”
    She deliberately used the contemptuous Edori word that once meant merely “city dweller” but had come to mean also money-grubber, cheat, slave trader, whoremonger and anyone engaged in unsavory commerce. She saw with satisfaction that he knew the word and did not like it.
    But he managed to reply in an even voice. “I imagine, through the intervention of a Jansai war band,” he said. “And that’s what happened?”
    “Yes.”
    “When?”
    “Five years ago.”
    “Who was taken? Everyone from your clan? The other Edori I have spoken to said the Manderras were dispersed.”
    “Dispersed or dead,” she said in a hard voice. “There were maybe ten Manderras in the slave train that brought me into Semorrah. There were also Edori from other clans, some that I knew, some I did not. What happened to the rest of the Manderras I do not know.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. She did not reply. He spoke more briskly. “You can tell me more of your story once we are at the Eyrie.”
    She realized she was staring again. “At the Eyrie?”
    “Yes. We will leave today—now—as soon as you are ready and I have told Lord Jethro that I am taking”—he paused, and eyed her somewhat unfavorably—”one of the members of his household with me.”
    “But I don’t want to go with you,” she said.
    He stared at her as if she had spoken in tongues. “Don’t want to? Are you mad? Don’t want to come to the Eyrie with me—to be
angelica
? You’d rather—” His voice took on great sarcastic energy. “You’d rather stay here, in Semorrah, as a slave to Lord Jethro, when you could be a free woman in Bethel—a free woman, sweet Jovah, an angelica! What kind of choice is that? That isn’t a choice!”
    “I don’t want to go with you,” she repeated. “And I’m not a slave.”
    He swept her with one comprehensive glance. She felt her face flush. “I’m not,” she said defiantly. “Or I won’t be. Lady Mary has requested that I be given to her as a bride gift, and she has already promised to free me.”
    He was still incredulous. “To do what? Serve her the rest of your days? Braid her hair and fetch her drinks and listen to her inane chatter about her husband and her children and her pets?”
    Rachel lifted her chin. “She’s going to pay me.”
    “Trust me,” he said grimly, “no salary would be high enough.”
    “I’d rather go work for her than be your angelica,” she said.
    “You don’t even know what an angelica does,” he said with some heat.
    “No? I know what allali wives do, and a lot of it’s worse than listening to inane chatter about husbands and dogs.”
    He was utterly furious, and he looked like a man who did not always successfully throttle his rage. She edged back just a little. “The angelica,” he said, through tight lips, “holds the position of highest honor on Samaria. She sings beside the Archangel at the Gloria. She hears petitions that men and women fear to put before the Archangel himself. She can, if she chooses, be a great force for good among mortals, among angels. Many angelicas have had special relationships with Jovah, asking from him boons and favors which have been divinely granted. The angelica is one step from the