With one step, he came between her and the chair. "I helped to deliver a Jana’ata baby a few days ago," he told her conversationally, blocking her way. "Cesarean section. I did what I could. It wasn’t enough. The mother died. I want her baby to live, Sofia. There is very damned little that I am certain of these days, but I’m sure of this one thing: I want that kid to live."
"Get out of my way," she whispered, "or I’ll call my guards."
He didn’t move. "Shall I tell you what the baby’s older sister is called?" he asked lightly. "Sofi’ala. Pretty name, isn’t it?" He watched her react, her head jerking as though recoiling from a blow, and he pressed on mercilessly. "The child’s mother was named Ha’anala. Her last words were of you. She said, ’Take the children to my mother.’ She wanted us to march them to Gayjur! A sort of children’s crusade, I suppose. I didn’t do it. I refused her dying wish because I am afraid to be responsible for the lives of any more children, Sofia. But she was right—those kids have never murdered or enslaved anyone. They are every bit as innocent as the VaKashani children we saw slaughtered."
The rain was beginning—heavy drops as warm as tears—wind whipping the fabric of the shelter noisily, almost drowning out his words. "I will stand surety for those kids and their parents, Sofia. Please. Let them live and all the good they do—all the music, the poetry, everything decent they are capable of—all that is to your credit," he told her, desperate now, taking her stillness for refusal. "If they kill again, I’ll be the goat. Their sins on my head, okay? I’ll stay here and if they kill again, then execute me and let them have one more chance."
"Ha’anala’s dead?"
He nodded, ashamed to weep when Sofia should have mourned. "You taught her well, Sofia," he said, voice fraying. "She was, by all accounts, a remarkable woman. She founded a sort of utopian society up in the mountains. It’s probably doomed—like all utopias. But she tried! All three of our species live together up there, Sofia—Runa, Jana’ata, even Isaac. She taught them that every soul is a small reflection of God, and that it is wicked to murder because when a life is taken, we lose that unique revelation of God’s nature."
He stopped again, hardly able to utter the words. "Sofia, one of the priests I came with—he thinks your foster daughter was a sort of Moses for her people! It took forty years to burn the slavery out of the Israelites. Well, maybe the Jana’ata need forty years to burn the mastery out of them!"
He shrugged helplessly at her stricken glare. "I don’t know, Sofia. Sean’s probably full of shit. Maybe Abraham was psychotic and schizophrenia ran in his family. Maybe Jesus was just another crazy Jew who heard voices. Or maybe God is real, but He’s evil or stupid, and that’s why so much seems so insane and unfair! It doesn’t matter," he shouted, trying to make himself heard through the roar of the rain. "It really doesn’t matter. I don’t give a damn about God anymore, Sofia. All I know for certain is I want Ha’anala’s baby to live—"
She walked out into the rain, its relentless noise drowning all other sound. For a long time, she simply stood in the downpour, listening to its hissing crash, feeling it beat down on her twisted shoulders, work its way through her hair, wash over the ruins of her face.
When she came back from where she had been in memory, Emilio was waiting for her. Soaked and chilled, she walked slowly to her chair, accepting his offer of an arm to steady her climb. When she reached the platform, she sat as heavily as a tiny woman could.
The first violence of the storm was passing, the rain now a steady drumming, and for a time they simply gazed out at the drowning landscape. She touched his shoulder and he turned to her. Reaching up, she placed her hand gently over the mark she’d laid there, minutes before, and then lifted a lock of his hair. "You’ve gotten gray, old man," she said. "You look even worse than I do, and I look awful."
His reply was starchy, but the red-rimmed eyes were amused. "Vanity is not among my failings, madam, but I’m damned if I’ll stand here and be insulted." He made no move to go.
"I loved you once," she said.
"I know. I loved you, too. Don’t change the subject."
"You were to marry?"
"Yes. I left the priesthood, Sofia. I was done with God."
"But He wasn’t done with you."
"Evidently not," Emilio said wearily. "Either that, or this has been a run of bad luck of historic proportions." He walked to the edge of the awning to stare out at the rain. "Even now, I think maybe it’s all a bad joke, you know? This baby I’m so worried about? He could turn out to be such an evil bastard that everyone will wish he’d died in his mother’s womb, and I’ll go down in Rakhati history as Sandoz the Idiot, who saved his life!" Braced hands limp at his sides, he snorted at his own absurd grandiosity. "Probably he’ll just be another poor clown doing the best he can, trying to get things right more often than not."
Then, without warning, his posture shifted. He became, somehow, taller, rangier, and Sofia Mendes heard once more the beloved Texas twang of D. W. Yarbrough, the long-dead priest who’d taught them both so much. "Miz Mendes," Emilio drawled, defeated but not without humor, "the whole damn thing beats the livin’ shit outta me."
TALKED OUT, EMILIO SAT ON THE GROUND NEXT TO HER, AND TOGETHER they watched rain turn the world to mud. Before long, she realized he had fallen asleep, propped against the supports of her chair, the crippled hands lax in his lap. Mind empty, she listened to his soft snore and might have slept herself if she had not been disturbed by a huge and sodden young man, clutching a cloth cap and stooping to peer under the awning.
"Signora? Is everything going to be all right now?" he asked anxiously.
"And who are you?" she asked very quietly, glancing significantly at Emilio.
"My name is Niccolo d’Angeli. ’D’Angeli’ means from the angels," the young giant whispered. "That’s where I came from, before the home. The angels left me there." She smiled, and he took that for a good sign. "So everything will be all right?" he asked again coming in, out of the rain. "The Jana people can live up there, if they don’t bother anyone, right?" She didn’t answer so he said, "That would be fair, I think. Is Don Emilio all right? Why is he sitting there like that?"
"He’s asleep. He must have been very tired."
"He has nightmares. He’s afraid to sleep."
"Are you a friend of his?"
"I’m his bodyguard. I think his friends are all dead." Nico gave this some consideration, but looked unhappy. Then, visibly struck by a thought, he brightened. "You’re his friend, and you’re not dead."
"Not yet," Sofia confirmed.
Nico stepped to the edge of the shelter and watched the lightning play for a while. "I like the storms here," he remarked. "They remind me of the last act of Rigoletto." She had been thinking, He is retarded. But this gave her pause. "We found your son, signora," said Nico, facing her again. "He wants you to visit him, but I think he should put some clothes on first. Did I say something wrong?"
She wiped one eye. "No." She smiled then and confided, "Isaac has never liked clothes."
"He likes songs," Nico reported.
"Yes. Yes, indeed. Isaac has always liked music." She sat as straight as her contorted body would allow. "Signor d’Angeli, did my son appear well?"
"He’s skinny, but they all are up there," said Nico, warming to his topic. "There was a lady who died having a baby before we left. Joseba thinks she was too skinny and that’s why she died—because she wasn’t strong enough. We brought food, but a lot of people were so hungry, they threw up from eating too fast." He saw the signora’s distress but didn’t know how to interpret it. Turning the brim of his hat around and around, he shifted his substantial weight from one foot to the other, and squinted a little. "What should we do now?" he asked, after a little while.