Angel-Seeker by Sharon Shinn

look like in twenty years. But the older men remained engrossed in their conversation.
    She turned her attention back to the young men. Isaac’s brother had leapt up and was holding the thin stick up like a club, brandishingit in the air. That got everyone’s attention. Simon jumped to his feet and snatched it away from him.
    â€œGive that back to me! Who told you that you could play with weapons as dangerous as this?” the older man demanded, swatting his son with some force.
    â€œI’m the one who got it out,” Isaac said swiftly. That was good; he was quick to take responsibility for his own actions. “They wanted to see it.”
    Simon made a sudden move in Isaac’s direction, as if to strike this son, too, but merely growled and stepped back toward his place before the fire. “You boys leave this alone. It’s a man’s weapon, not to be put in hands like yours.”
    Reuben and Hector had come to their feet in a more leisurely fashion and stepped forward to look at the stick in Simon’s hands. Rebekah inched forward a little to try to see more, but it still just looked like a long, straight staff of wood. Or maybe metal. It was hard to tell.
    â€œWhat is that?” Reuben asked. “Doesn’t look like any weapon I ever saw.”
    â€œFirestick,” Simon said with some pride. “It can shoot a bolt a couple hundred yards and hit whatever it’s aimed at.”
    Hector grunted and bent over to look at it without getting near enough to touch it. “Where’d you get it?”
    Simon stroked the sleek barrel. “Belonged to my brother.”
    Reuben looked over at him. “The one who died on Mount Galo?”
    Simon nodded. “He got this from Raphael.” Simon shrugged. “Told me he wasn’t supposed to have it, but that the Archangel had a handful of them and wouldn’t miss just one. We were going to try to sell it, down in Luminaux maybe. After the Gloria.”
    There was a moment of silence. At the Gloria, Raphael had challenged the god, and Jovah had brought the mountain down. The mountain and everybody standing on it, which had included Raphael, and some of his angels, and dozens of Jansai and other followers. Simon didn’t have to explain that his brother was dead.
    He shrugged again. “So after that, I decided to keep it. Use it for myself, if I felt like it. It’s not really good for hunting game, though, because it rips too big a hole in a small creature, and it’s too bright ifyou’re hunting herd beasts. You might bring down one animal, but the others’ll run off as soon as you use it. A bow’s still better.”
    â€œWhy’d you bring it, then?” Hector asked in his usual blunt, nasal voice. Rebekah just hated to hear him talk.
    Simon lifted it to his eye as if to sight down the long, smooth stick. “Might find me something else to shoot someday,” he said, and his voice was calm and deadly. “Say the Archangel Gabriel flew into town some afternoon. I might try to set his wings on fire.”
    â€œGabriel,” Reuben said, and spat to one side of the fire.
    â€œKill an Archangel, and the god might kill you,” Hector suggested, and for once Rebekah had to agree with him.
    â€œI think I’d die happy enough,” Simon said. He glanced down at the weapon another moment, then said, “I think this goes back in the wagon.” He strode off to his own tent and the others redisposed themselves around the fire.
    Rebekah returned her attention to the younger set, but they had their heads bent over a game of chakki. The only expressions she could see on Isaac’s face were greed and calculation, and those weren’t designed to make him more attractive, she thought. Anyway, just then the baby gave out a hesitant, irritable cry, and she turned around and crept back to his side.
    â€œYes, aren’t you the sweetest thing?” she crooned, holding