Quatrain by Sharon Shinn Page A

been considered a generous man,” said the other.
    Demaris pouted. “But I have to ask a favor. I have a friend who wants nothing so much as to see an angel hold. She said she would work, she would clean, she would do anything , if only she could get inside Windy Point.”
    The dark one glanced in my direction, wholly uninterested. “How important to you is this friend?”
    Demaris gave him a slow smile. “Well,” she purred, “she taught me some—skills—that I think might end up seeming very important to you . So I think you’re the one who owes her a favor.”
    Both men laughed raucously at that, eager and delighted. “Doesn’t matter to me,” said the shorter one. “I’ll carry her up to the mountain if you want to fly with Matthew.”
    Demaris picked up her flowered canvas bag and held out her other arm. “That sounds perfect.”
    And just like that, I was in an angel’s arms, flying up to Windy Point.

Six
    I wandered the corridors of Windy Point for an hour, trying to find Sheba.
    For the most part, the hold was exactly as I remembered. The gray stone walls seemed to have been hewn directly out of the bones of the mountain; here and there you could imagine you still saw the original fault lines carved by axe or chisel. The corridors, which were gloomy and dark, snaked and twisted around in no easily comprehensible plan. Newcomers invariably got lost, and there were stories of people who had starved to death trying to find their way back to a familiar room, though I had always suspected those tales were apocryphal.
    And the wind. Jovah defend me, the wind .
    It moaned up from the floors, hissed down from the ceilings. Even the big interior rooms of the hold seemed linked to narrow passageways that rattled and whined and screeched with wind. The sounds were inescapable, night or day. Some people claimed that, after they had lived at the hold long enough, they grew used to the wind—or stopped noticing it—or began to like its mistuned music. I always assumed those people were lying.
    Nonetheless, eighteen years ago, I had been familiar enough with these groaning passages to find my way easily from one part of the hold to another. I knew where the kitchens were located, where the laundry rooms could be found; I knew the hidden passageways that led to Raphael’s private chambers and the back stairwells that climbed to the small rooms where servants and angel-seekers slept. Every time I came to a key turning, I would pause, consider, and make a choice. So far, I had been right every time.
    But I still hadn’t found Sheba.
    I first tried the kitchen, where harassed cooks and sullen girls worked to clean away remnants of the evening meal. I snatched up some bread and cheese, which earned me a burning glance from the woman I took to be the head cook, and crammed it in my mouth while I looked around. But Sheba wasn’t there.
    She wasn’t in the laundry area, the huge steaming vat of a room where workers were busy around the clock washing clothes and linens for the residents of the hold.
    I made my way with some stealth to the common rooms, particularly the huge dining hall with its high chandeliers and endless array of tables. Dinner was long past, but at least twenty people remained, drinking wine, laughing immoderately, and nuzzling whatever partner they had picked out for the night. I stayed well back, clinging to the shadows along the walls, trying to determine if Sheba was one of the girls wrapped in the arms of a drunken angel. She wasn’t, and I was unutterably relieved.
    I moved on.
    Not until I reached the cramped upper corridors did I actually speak to anyone. I passed the open door of one of those tiny rooms and heard two women inside bitterly arguing about someone called Jacob.
    “Excuse me,” I said, peering in at their startled faces. “I’m looking for a girl named Sheba. Dark haired, about my height. Is she here?”
    “What do you want with her?” one of the girls asked.
    “I have a