Dave Duncan - West of January

For once, Heaven was enjoying fine weather. The sun stood clear of the horizon; snow was melting and dribbling from skeleton branches. Open ground was slushy and the sky was actually blue.

“I have to go by Nightmare and pick up a couple of things,” I said as I settled onto the sled.

And this time it was Quetti who said, “Sure.” He was driving the sled himself, and I should have been suspicious right there. Still as innocent as a raw egg, I collected my bow and arrows, my tiny bundle of possessions. We went racing off again over the snow, with the bellows of snortoises rising among the trees on all sides.

Leaving Heaven? I still did not believe I could be such an idiot. And I would vanish with no farewells and be long gone before Michael realized. Strange, I thought, how all my departures had been like that. My family on the grasslands, the seafolk, even my fellow slaves in the mine—each time I had just disappeared without a word of goodbye.

“It wasn’t easy!” Quetti yelled in my ear.

Enjoying the exhilaration of my last dogsled ride, I didn’t pay much attention at first. “What wasn’t?” I shouted over my shoulder.

“Gabriel said you’re worth any six saints he’s got.”

“He’s an idiot, and he always was,” I remarked absently.

“Sariel said you’re the only man in Heaven who can get a fair deal from the traders.”

Then I twisted around on the sled and stared up in horror at Quetti standing behind me, cracking his whip in high spirits. He was flushed by the wind and grinning. He had told Sariel?

“And Uriel—Uriel insists that Heaven is now training angels in half the time it used to take, and all because of you. A cripple drives the cherubim to gibbering frenzy, he says.”

“Quetti! You didn’t…”

“And Raphael says much the same about the seraphim.”

“Quetti! You didn’t—”

But he had. Openmouthed with horror, I was swept into a wide and sunny clearing. In the center, in splendid isolation, stood a bright red chariot that I had never seen before, while the entire population of Heaven seemed to be assembled around the perimeter. Quetti drove the dogs at a fiendish pace all around, whirling his whip overhead and howling, while a ghastly, unbearable cheer arose from the crowd. I wanted to melt away like the icicles.

The dogs came to a panting halt alongside a patch of bare mud, and there stood the five archangels, distinguishable by the colors of their furs.

Quetti stepped down and held out a hand, grinning like a crocodile. I let him haul me to my feet. I was speechless, tongue-tied. What sort of joke was he playing?

He waved a hand at the archangels. “They all agreed that nobody ever deserved his wheels more than you do.”

“Michael?” I whispered.

Quetti chuckled. “Together they can overrule him.”

So he meant four archangels, not the one who was already tottering in my direction, unsteady on the muddy footing. He was tiny, even in his bulky white furs, and I could not remember when I had last seen him out of doors. He was carrying a buckskin jacket. There were ribbons on its sleeve.

“But…you’ve ruined him!” I said, aghast. “Shamed him! They’ll turn on him now!”

Quetti discarded the grin and dropped his voice. “About time! He’s too old, Roo—past it! You’ve been propping him up too long.”

Me, propping…? Then Quetti tactfully strode off, heading for the other four. I watched the handshakes and smiles of satisfaction. Uriel, Sariel, Gabriel, Raphael—they had voted me an angel, and now they would depose Michael for violating the Compact. Here was one conspiracy I had not been able to warn him of in time.

Then Michael came to a halt in front of me, and the cheering and chattering died away as everyone waited for speeches. But he spoke too softly for any ears but mine, and the real message was the reproach and hurt in the watery blue-blue eyes.

“You never told me you wanted to be an angel! You could have asked, couldn’t you? At least you might have asked!”

“I don’t want that! Quetti misunderstood something I said.”

He blinked in surprise, and then his familiar smile returned. He chuckled with relief. “Then how do we get out of this mess, son?”

Why should he ask me? He was the wizard, wasn’t he? But I had not realized how he had aged. Maybe Quetti was right. Maybe I had been propping him up—advising, informing, troubleshooting. I was the loner, the all-rounder, the man nobody questioned.

“I just wanted to go,” I said unhappily. “To slip away unseen.”

He recoiled as if I had struck him. “Leave me?”

“Go home to the grasslands.”

He shook his head angrily “And who do I get to do my reading for me? Huh? Tell me that! Who can I trust when I want to talk out a problem?” He glared at me.

I had no answer for him. The audience had gone very quiet, seeing that something was wrong, but not knowing what.

Michael’s eyes narrowed. I could read him now. I saw the sly calculations underway. “You never did tell me why you wanted to go back there, son…?”

“It’s my homeland.”

He shook his head. “I think there’s more to it than that! I don’t remember you ever taking the oath, Knobil, do I?”

I should have known he’d have a few tricks left. “No. I never did.”

Scanty yellow teeth showed in a leer. “And they won’t let you be an angel unless you do! Probably they won’t even let you leave! What happens if I tell them that you haven’t taken the oath, huh?”

Knowledge is dangerous. Every man swore the oath against violence when he was admitted to Heaven, even a pimply new seraph. I had never been formally admitted, so I never had—and Michael alone had remembered. He had guessed that I still yearned for revenge, and he must have been close to guessing how I planned to achieve it. The angel oath would make it impossible.

He saw my hesitation, and triumph flickered in those bright blue eyes, the eyes of my earliest memories.

But there were no gods in Heaven. The oath was sworn “by my soul, by my honor, by my worth and self-respect.” I, of all men, should have no trouble with those words. “I’ll swear,” I said with a shrug. Was I bluffing? I’m not sure.

“You’ll leave me?” he said. Tears welled up. “I saved you from Uriel when you first arrived, remember? You’ll leave your own father? They’ll haul me down now, son. The wolves will tear me down. I need you!”

I glanced over at Quetti and the other four archangels—obviously concerned now, and impatient. The sunlight was fading; the onlookers becoming restless, shuffling feet. With Michael deposed, the other four would elect Uriel in his stead. He was the obvious choice.

“Go back and live among those stinking savages?” Michael said.

It is amazing how easily a man can convince himself of something he really wants to believe. Uriel would be a much better leader than this decrepit old ruin, I decided. And perhaps Quetti was right—I had been propping Michael up, meddling in Heaven’s affairs and thereby only increasing its usual inefficiency.

“Give me the damned jacket!” I said, and I grabbed it.

The awful cheering broke out again at once, louder than ever. If Michael tried to tell them that I’d never taken the oath, then no one noticed, for he was swept aside in the rush of people surging forward to congratulate me. That was a horrible ordeal, but better than watching the old man’s distress.

Add that to my list of crimes, then. I betrayed my mother and, when I got the chance, I betrayed my father also.

THE HARDEST PARTS OF ANY JOURNEY were always the beginning and the end, because Dusk is full of deadfall. Three-blue told me the best route out, but he insisted that I drive. When we stopped for our first camp he let me do all the work, and I began to suspect more knavery. Yet to lounge by a campfire with Quetti was a reminder of long ago, of our trek together and of a certain lost innocence. We slipped back into calling each other by our real names, and we reminisced until our eyelids drooped.