“I am Reuben sia Havita. I hope he is with us as we sail.”
And then casually, so as not to seem too eager or too afraid, they parted, the Edori heading purposefully toward the wharf, Tamar crossing the street and meandering forward a block until she caught up with Zeke.
“Well?” he asked urgently, his voice low.
“He’s willing, but he has to check with his master. We need to be at the harbor in a little more than an hour. They’ll signal from the ship.”
“What’s the cost?”
“He quoted none.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Zeke replied, his voice rising. “No one would do such a service for free!”
Tamar glanced around, but no one appeared to be eavesdropping. “Sshh,” she hissed. “I told them you’d be willing to work for your passage. And it wouldn’t hurt you to bring your own food.”
“We don’t have much left.”
“We have some time. Let’s see what we can find in the market.”
Accordingly, they made their way to the open-air bazaars that could be found in any sizable Samarian city, and began shopping. It was spring, so there were few fresh fruits to be found, but they wanted dried food anyway, rations that could be packed and carried and eaten at leisure. Zeke, preparing for a longer trip, bought more than Tamar did, but she, too, was looking at a journey. They had little money left between them—they had started out with very little, except Tamar’s secret cache—so they bartered with the merchants and bought as dearly as they could.
“It’s time to head toward the dock,” Zeke said for the hundredth time, when there were still plenty of minutes to spare, but Tamar could not entirely blame him for being nervous. So she said, “All right,” and stowed a package of wrapped apricots in her backpack, and they headed toward the southern edge of town on streets that paralleled the sea. Not until they had glimpsed the Varnet Building did they cut east toward the wharf. Just in case anyone was watching them. Just in case anyone was curious.
They took a roundabout route through the shops and office buildings that were just now, at about nine in the morning, opening their doors for business. Tamar could not resist casting a longing eye at some of the fashions on display in the broad windows—though she had seen things just as fine in Luminaux—and anyway, she had neither the money nor the idle vanity to see herself attired in such frivolous shoes and gowns. No self-respecting Jacobite did.
When Zeke got distracted, it was at the doorway leading into an electronics shop, and what stopped him was the sound of singing pouring from some hidden source. He was not the only one to be swayed by the music. A crowd of perhaps twenty people had come to an almost absentminded halt in the street and on the sidewalks immediately outside the store, and they were all listening with rapt, bemused expressions.
“What is it?” Tamar whispered, but Zeke shook his head without replying. She stood still and listened more intently. There were two singers performing in matchless harmony, a man and a woman whose voices rose and fell in a complex, shifting pattern of melody and descant. Their voices were passionate beyond description, beyond the ability of their bodies to contain them; it seemed as if their notes must shatter their hearts and then explode the wiring of whatever fabulous circuitry had carried the music so improbably to this street corner in Breven.
It was the climax of the song, of course; within moments the duet reached its conclusion to the sound of thundering applause, likewise broadcast over the shop speakers to the spellbound audience in the street. It was a moment before Tamar thought to draw breath. She noticed others near her similarly gathering their wits and inhaling long drafts of air.
“What was that?” she demanded quietly of Zeke. “One of those new recordings?”
He shook his head. “The Gloria,” he said. “They seem to be carrying a live broadcast. You have just heard the angels singing, probably for the first time in your life.”
Tamar stiffened. There was no skill, no superiority she was willing to cede to the angels. “It was not so fine,” she lied. “But why are they still singing the Gloria? I thought it began at dawn.”
“A little after,” he said. “And continues all day, or so I’ve heard. What incredible music.”
“Was that Bael that we just heard singing? Bael and the angelica?”
Zeke shrugged. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t recognize his voice if he stopped me on the street and called my name. But they all have voices like that. Voices to turn you into a believer.”
She would have scolded him furiously for such a heretical remark, except that any of twenty people could have overheard her—and she herself had just witnessed the music that had so moved him. “Well, I’m glad you got a chance to listen to a few notes,” she said briskly. “But we can’t stand here loitering.”
“We’ve got time,” he said. “Just a few more minutes.”
She stared at him in true irritation, but before she could remonstrate, the voice of a new singer came lilting over the speakers. It quite literally turned Tamar in her tracks to face the open doorway, as if by such a minute adjustment in her stance she could more closely audit the music being performed five hundred miles away on the Plain of Sharon. This performer was a young woman singing completely a cappella, and her voice was so sweet and so true that it seemed elemental, unrehearsed, like starlight or autumn or sea. The verses melted into each other, wealth poured into wealth; the very air Tamar breathed seemed gilded by the singer’s richness. When the liquid silken outpouring of song came to a wistful conclusion, the silence was so empty that Tamar almost staggered forward into it. She put her hand out to steady herself against the wall of the shop. Her blood pounded suddenly into the back of her head; her eyes shut against a momentary dizziness. Suddenly her arm ached with a sharp and fire-edged pain.
“Zeke,” she said brusquely. “We must go. Now.”
“I know,” he said, and reluctantly started forward again, threading his way through the unmoving crowd. Tamar had to force her feet to follow him, for they had turned heavy and difficult. She still trailed one hand along the marble wall of the building to aid her balance. She closed her eyes briefly and shook her head. She must have lost more blood last night than she had realized; shame on Ezra for not warning her about the aftereffects this morning.
“That’s odd,” Zeke said, a few paces later, by which time she had more or less recovered.
“What? That they broadcast the Gloria like that? I didn’t know it was possible.”
“It’s the first year they’ve tried it. But that’s not what I meant. Your arm. Look at it.”
“What about my—” she began, and then faltered. The Kiss, which had seemed more alive this morning, now positively blazed with an iridescent flame. Colors sparked in its nacreous depths, faded, and grew calm as she watched. “Jovah guard me,” she said faintly.
“He won’t,” Zeke replied automatically. “What was that all about? It’s almost completely dull again now.”
“I have no idea,” she said. “Maybe it’s some part of that-bonding process Ezra talked about last night.”
“It looks like it would be hot. Is it hot?”
“No,” she said, but she touched it anyway, to find a fugitive warmth just now fading from the glass surface. Perhaps that surge of heat she had felt moments ago was not her imagination after all. “No,” she said again.
“Strange,” he said. “Maybe you should ask someone what it means.”
“Certainly. The first angel I come across, perhaps—or, no, a Jansai warrior. There are plenty of them here. ‘Excuse me, kind sir, but I’m a Jacobite in hiding and I’ve just had a Kiss installed in my arm, and I wondered if you could explain to me—’”
“Well, you could ask somebody less suspicious. Someday.”
“I’ll do that. Meanwhile, you have a ship to board.”
By now, they were only a block over from the wharf, and in the spaces between buildings, they could spot the array of ships clustered along the harbor. The smalle
r vessels—the sailboats, the fishing boats, the shuttles—were crowded up to the wooden dock, masts and sails and banners creating a tangle of shapes and colors against the sky. Farther out, stately and patient, were the big ships too heavy for the shallow waters at the harbor’s edge.
“What’s this ship’s name? Do you see her?” Zeke asked anxiously. Once clear of the bewildering effect of angel song, he had reverted to his normal fretful personality.
“The Wayward. I think she’s a midsized ship, because the Edori don’t have huge cargo boats, but he said he’d have to send the dinghy in. So she must be out a ways…. Yes, I think that’s her. Straight out through those two buildings, do you see?”
“No, I—oh, yes. Yes, I do. But there’s no red rug on the railing.”
“Be patient. I think we have a few more minutes to wait. He didn’t want to come to shore until the last possible moment.”
The Edori ships were all easy to spot, for they were smaller, sleeker, and in general less showy than the Jansai vessels. Tamar had heard that they were also faster, usually outrunning the Jansai, who practiced piracy on the high seas. The Wayward had little decoration to distinguish it, except the name painted in flowing red letters on the bow and the flag of the Edori nation flying from its mast. Like the Jansai, the Edori had made a bird their mascot, but theirs was a white falcon winging its way diagonally across an onyx background. Freedom. All the Edori had ever wanted.
“How many more minutes?” Zeke wanted to know.
“I don’t know. Ten, maybe. Fifteen. How quickly can you get to the dock from here? He said it would take him ten minutes to reach the dock from the ship.”
“I could make it in three.”
“Walking casually, so you would not draw attention?”
“Well, five, then. It’s only a hundred yards away.”
“Do you want me to stay here or come with you? Which would be less noticeable?”
“Come with me. No, stay here. It would look odd if someone saw us walking together and then I boarded the boat and you did not. And you’d better take off that Jansai disguise as soon as I’m gone.”
“I know. I will. Is there anything else you need? Anything else I can tell you? Any messages I can carry back for you when I meet the others again in Ileah?”
“Tell them I’m in Ysral, and to look for me if they ever go there. Tell them I’m safe and happy. That it’s what I wanted.”
There had been a girl in Luminaux whom Zeke had been involved with—a pretty girl with red-blond hair and a mild disposition. As far as Tamar knew, she had escaped the Jansai depredations. “Anyone in particular I should tell?”
“No. Conran. Anyone who asks.”
She had lost so many friends in the past few months that it was hard to lose one more, even one as unrewarding as Zeke. She was finding it difficult to say good-bye. He was one of hers, part of her circle; and that circle grew smaller every day. “Take care of yourself,” she said, putting her hand on his arm. “Find new friends, and safety. Don’t lose your faith. Never forget us.”
“There’s the signal,” he said, and unexpectedly bent down to kiss her on the mouth. “Good luck to you, too. Watch me to the ship, and I’ll wave as we pull away to freedom. I won’t forget. We’ll meet each other again.”
“Till then,” she said. “Till we find the Alleluia Files.”
He gave her a smile of rare, genuine excitement, and turned to hike at a brisk but reasonable pace toward the dock. She faded back into the shadow of the Varnet Building, watching as she had promised. She almost lost him once or twice in the press of people on the wharf, but then she caught sight of his tall, thin figure again, weaving through the crowd. And—the waters of the harbor were crowded, of course—but surely that was the dinghy that had cast off from The Wayward the instant the red blanket billowed over the rail? It picked its way past the sailboats and the outbound barges, taking a quiet, determined course for the dock.
“Free and safe,” she murmured, still watching. Zeke was on the dock; the shuttle craft was twenty yards away. “As you always wanted.”
And then four idle men in close conversation at the edge of the water turned with one motion and formed a phalanx around Zeke. Even from this distance, Tamar could see the astonishment on his face, succeeded quickly by comprehension and terror. Two of them grabbed his arms; one of them spoke to him in measured tones, informing him of his crimes; the fourth one pointed toward the water and shouted. But the dinghy had already reversed itself, heading rapidly back toward its mother ship, and there didn’t seem to be a patrol boat in the waters. The Edori appeared to be safe.
Not so Zeke. As she slumped against the wall, dizzier now than she had been at the angels’ singing, Tamar watched him struggle and protest and grow frantic with fear. One of the Jansai hit him, and he fell backward, kept upright only by the men who held his arms. Two of the other Jansai laughed. On their jackets, Tamar could see the sapphire crescent moon that was the badge of the Archangel Bael.
“Zeke,” she whispered. She had pressed one hand against her mouth, one against her stomach; she was afraid she would either start screaming or retching. She felt like a traitor, allowing him to go alone to an undetermined hell, but there was nothing she could do now to succor him. If Ezra had betrayed them, there was nothing she could do to save herself. She pressed her back as tightly as it would go against the cool white surface of the Varnet Building, and felt herself shiver in the meandering, dispassionate spring air.
CHAPTER THREE
Jared tilted his head toward the sun and shut his eyes, hoping that if he merely concentrated on the music, and did not look at the performers, he would be able to appreciate the singing as he should. Both Bael and his angelica, Mariah, had exceptional voices, and their duets at the Gloria were generally considered outstanding; but Jared couldn’t stand either of them, and so it was hard to like their music. And at two hours for a standard mass, he had a long, hard wait ahead of him if he didn’t find some way to make the time pass pleasantly.
It was cool this year, this far north, and the weak spring sunlight did little to warm his cheeks, but it was still a welcome sunlight for all that. Gaza had experienced a long, bleak winter, and no matter how often Jared flew aloft to pray for sunshine, the clouds had always returned, full-bodied and sullen as a rejected mistress. But the Gloria signaled the start of true spring, the promise of gentle days, budding greenery, clear skies. It could not come soon enough for Jared.
Mariah’s thin soprano broke free of Bael’s powerful bass, and Jared opened his eyes again, his concentration broken. The years had been kinder to the Archangel than to his wife; every now and then on the highest notes, her voice showed the strain of age, a tendency to grow sharp, almost screechy. Nobody else had commented on it, at least in Jared’s hearing, but surely they had noticed. Well, she had been angelica for nineteen years, and she had been past thirty when she assumed that role, so perhaps he should not judge too harshly. It was a difficult task, this annual performance of the Gloria on the Plain of Sharon. Mariah still accomplished it with adequate grace.
For a moment Jared studied the singer and the angel waiting motionlessly beside her. As always, they looked to him like prophets culled from the ancient pages of the Librera. Bael— with his pewter hair, full beard, flowing blue robes, and broad silver wings—looked as if at any moment he would fling out his arms and speak pronouncements handed to him directly from Jovah. Mariah seemed no less possessed. Reed-thin, black-haired, dramatically dressed in a slim red sheath, she delivered her solo with passionate, writhing conviction. Her eyes were shut tightly, her hands were clenched and drawn up to her heart, and she produced every note as if it were the word of the god himself.
Jared sighed infinitesimally and looked away. He should not mock them, not even silently and to himself, but their blind zeal had stirred up no end of trouble during the past two decades, and he for one would be glad to see their tenure ended next year. But who was to follow them? That was a troubl
ing question indeed. Even when the oracles asked Jovah that question directly, the god did not reply. No successor had been named, so no successor had been groomed, and for the first time in more than seven centuries, Samarians blankly faced a future in which they had no idea who would be their spiritual and political leader.
Jared had no doubt that Bael was willing to continue his rule for another twenty years, and it worried him that some of the other angels might agree to such a solution. Surely a council of angels, river merchants, Jansai, and Manadavvi would be convened to consider their alternatives if such an eventuality arose—if Jovah never spoke—but Bael was a powerful man with a horde of influential friends. If he wanted to keep the job, failing divine intervention, it might be impossible to wrest it away from him.
Jared’s eyes wandered from Mariah’s contortions to the face of the young man standing just behind her. Well, not so young as all that—at thirty-five, three years older than Jared and far more ambitious. Bael’s son by a liaison outside his marriage, Omar was an intense, intelligent, and highly focused individual. It had been the tragedy of Bael’s life that his only child had been born human, not angelic. Omar’s tragedy, too. For nobody doubted that Omar would have been willing to take his father’s place as Archangel if mortals had been allowed to ascend to that position. As it was, Omar would appear to be out of luck.
Even had Omar been angelic, such a bequest would have been unprecedented. In the annals of Samarian history, the title of Archangel had never gone from parent to child. In fact, most often it rotated between the three angel holds in Gaza, Bethel, and Jordana—Jovah’s way, most likely, of making sure no one family consolidated power too great even for the god to balance. But then, it was unprecedented that Jovah had waited so long to choose his next Archangel.
Jared knew that he himself was considered a contender for the post of Archangel. As leader of the host in Monteverde, the angel hold in Gaza, he held a position of some authority and respect. And the Archangel before Bael had come from Cedar Hills, the hold in Jordana. Bael himself was from the Eyrie in Bethel. Thus, it was Monteverde’s turn to produce the next leader. But Jared felt he was unlikely material. He lacked the single-minded dedication to power that Bael had evinced for all nineteen years of his reign; he lacked the desire to bend others to his will. It was hard for him to work up a real rage, or even an unshakable conviction. And, at least to judge by Bael, an Archangel must be able to do all that and more.