Tamar was not in the habit of adopting strangers; she was not used to making room for newcomers in her heart. But this woman, this stranger … All Tamar’s habitual wariness deserted her. All her defenses undid themselves of their own accord. “I don’t know that I could leave you behind even if I wanted to,” she replied slowly. “Even if I crushed this Kiss in my arm, I think I would still hear your voice. I have become attuned to you. Jehovah woke the bond, but I think it is a bond past breaking. I am afraid, too, but not of losing you. I am afraid of what it means to have found you.”
Lucinda flowed to her feet and threw her arms around her sister. Neither was Tamar used to indiscriminate hugs from chance-met acquaintances, but she did not draw back. This felt familiar, this felt right. Even when those delicate wings came curving around her shoulders, wrapping her in a texture that was half lace and half sinew, she did not pull away. It was as if she was embraced by her own soul, insubstantial but indestructible. She felt her bones give up their accustomed fight and her blood go dancing backward in her veins.
The sisters talked without pause for the next two hours. It was not until a voice outside the door offered the enticement of food that they were willing to allow a third party to disturb their long reminiscing. They had been right to keep the door closed so long, Tamar thought with disfavor as the room was suddenly filled with an army of well-wishers: not only Conran and Jared, but Reuben and what must be half the Jacobites living in Sahala. Two of them swept her off the bed into energetic embraces, then began to interrogate her about the details of her last three months. Tamar sighed, smiled, and submitted.
She caught Jared’s eyes on her from across the room, but could do no more than nod when he raised his eyebrows at her in a questioning look. Yes; much better. To prove it, she ate more food than she had managed in the past forty-eight hours, and for the first time in twice as long did not feel nauseated when she had finished her meal. Some wonder drug in Conran’s potion, but that was hardly a surprise. If there were such a medicine available, Conran would know about it and have some at his disposal. Conran knew everything.
Except the location of the Alleluia Files. None of them knew that.
It was another hour before Tamar was able to convince them all to leave the room so she could bathe and dress herself. Of course, no one left until Conran ordered a general exodus, and even then two or three of the Jacobite women were indignant to learn that he had included them in the general retreat. The two angels also left the room, both with regretful backward glances, and Tamar luxuriated in the first solitude she had known for what seemed like months.
But she was back among her people, ready to take up the fight again. She cleaned herself and put on fresh clothes and rejoined them, feeling lighthearted and happy as she had not felt since she left Luminaux for Ileah.
The instant she descended the steps she was caught up in their fervor again. “Tamar, Duncan says the Edori engineers have found a way to communicate over long distances with a simple transmitter device. It works over a thousand miles, can you imagine?” “Tamar, Horace says there is a merchant in Semorrah who is sympathetic to the cause. Christian Avalone, have you heard of him? They say he is a very powerful ally.” “Tamar, how many were killed at Ileah? Jani wants to record the names.”
This was the community she remembered, urgent and speculative and knocked about by dreams. Whatever kindness she had been shown by well-meaning strangers in Jordana, in Semorrah, in Bethel, these were the only friends she could remember. She answered their rapid-fire questions when she knew the answers and shot back questions of her own when she did not; she laughed when the remarks were outrageous and grew sad when the news was grim. She knew the cadence of every voice and the history of every last soul, and she rejoiced to be among them again.
But as she talked with one eager group and waved to another, her attention was caught by a still, waiting figure in the back corner of Conran’s living room. It was Jared. He watched her without intruding, without reaching out a hand to separate her from her comrades, without questioning their doctrine or railing against their heresy. And she thought, almost at the same time, He has returned me, against his deepest principles, to the circle of my friends and I would leave them all for him. And the thought made her shudder and turn away from him, because she could no longer withstand his grave and searching look, and she did not want to go to him before all her friends and take his hand in hers.
Not until late that evening did Tamar have a chance to speak to Jared privately. As she had expected, Conran had turned her homecoming into an occasion for a celebration, and so the whole Jacobite population of the village turned out that evening for a bonfire. Horace had gone hunting with some of the Edori and brought back two deer and the carcass of an unidentified beast whose cooked flesh tasted much like rabbit. These were roasted over the fire (“specifically,” Tamar overhead someone say, “so that half will be burned and half will be raw and the whole will be inedible”). The meat was supplemented with a marvelous array of fruits, potatoes, breads, and sweets, and Tamar ate to the point of pain. Some of the food was wholly unfamiliar to her—raised, she supposed, in this strange and fertile terrain. It all tasted wonderful.
As darkness fell and spirits rose Tamar was able to slip away from the close attention of her Jacobite friends. Over on one end of the campground, Conran was telling stories by the magical yellow light of the fire; a few yards away, others were standing in a group, gossiping. It was not hard to spot the angels, their wings making distinctive silhouettes and menacing shadows against the uneven illumination of the fire.
“So odd,” Jared was saying to Lucinda as Tamar strolled over. “At any other gathering I’ve ever been to, this would be the point at which someone would come up to me and ask for the favor of a song.”
“Yes! I was just thinking that!” Lucinda exclaimed. “Even on Angel Rock, everyone considered it such a treat to hear an angel sing.”
Jared laughed softly. “Well,” he said, “I think we must concede that we are out of favor here.”
“Not entirely true,” Tamar said, and they both turned to welcome her. “They are pleased to have me back among them, and they thank you for that. But no one really knows what you want with the Jacobites or how long you plan on staying.”
“That’s a question I’ve pondered myself,” Lucinda said with a sigh. “Not that everyone hasn’t been extremely kind to me, but I cannot hide in Sahala the rest of my life. And I doubt that the Jacobites would want me.”
“They probably don’t want me, either, but I’m staying,” Jared said. “I came here to learn about the Alleluia Files, and I’m not leaving until I learn where they are and what they say.”
Tamar laughed. “Nobody knows that,” she said.
“Then I suppose I’ll be staying for a very long time.”
Tamar laughed again, but Lucinda’s attention had wandered. “There’s Reuben,” she said. “I’ll catch up with you two later.”
“Edori angelico,” Tamar murmured, for they had had time, in that long afternoon discussion, to cover such topics of interest as handsome angels and Edori lovers. Lucinda appeared flustered, then she laughed, and then she slipped away.
“Well, she seems happy,” Jared said.
Tamar looked at him curiously by the shifting light. “How well do you know her?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I’d only met her a couple of times till this week. She lived a very sequestered life, as she may have told you—”
“Yes, on Angel Rock.”
“In fact, until she came to the Gloria, I’d never met her or heard her story. Why?”
“I just wondered. If you’d known Lucinda, it seems you should have recognized me immediately. Reuben did.”
“Reuben appears to have known Lucinda much better than I did,” Jared replied dryly. “And Bael must have memorized her features as well, for he seems to have instantly connected the two of you once he saw your portrait.”
“That still makes
no sense to me,” she said, shaking her head. “Even the fact that I am Rinalda’s daughter—Lucinda’s twin—makes me no more dangerous to Bael than any other Jacobite. I cannot imagine why he would want to hunt me down.”
“I’m sure he has his reasons,” Jared said with a smile. “I’ll ask him next time I see him.”
Tamar smiled, but quickly grew serious again. She said, with some difficulty, for she was not trained in gratitude, “I never got a chance to thank you.”
“For what?” Jared said flippantly. “For hounding you all over Samaria and stealing you from your home?”
“For saving me from death at the hands of Jansai,” she said soberly. “Or the hands of Bael.”
“It was self-interest, of course,” he said. “I thought the Jacobites would be more pleased to see me if I had you in my arms.”
She was irrationally disappointed; she felt all that splendid food turn to spiky granite in her stomach. “Well,” she said shortly. “You did save my life. And I appreciate it.”
She turned away, back to the fire, back to her friends, but Jared stopped her with a hand on her arm. “I was only joking,” he said quietly. “Had I arrived a minute later—too late to save you—I don’t know what I would have done to those Jansai. Called down lightning bolts, I think, that would have burned all of Azolay to ashes. I don’t remember the last time I’ve been so frightened. I suppose I’ve never before seen someone I cared about in danger.”
But that was worse; now the stone in her stomach had erupted into flames. She felt heat rise in the unlikeliest places, up her elbows, across her brow. “Well,” she said, and she could hear that her voice was grooved with panic. “Well, I don’t suppose—I guess the Jansai don’t usually go around attacking your friends. You wouldn’t have those kinds of friends, I mean.”
Now he was smiling, and even by this light she could see the mischief in his face. “Jacobite angelica,” he murmured. “You do know that, in some quarters, I am considered the odds-on favorite to be the next Archangel?”
“I can think of no one more ill-suited,” she snapped, and he laughed out loud.
“No, neither can I,” he agreed. “But the field of candidates is woefully thin.”
The dangerous moment seemed to have passed. Tamar was both relieved and sorry. “Won’t your friends miss you if you stay too long in Ysral?” she asked. “Won’t they wonder where you’ve gone?”
“Some of them know. Most of them wouldn’t worry. I have a reputation for being a little irresponsible, you know. A little undependable.”
“Oh, yes, an excellent Archangel,” she murmured.
“So, anyway, no one guards my whereabouts too closely, and people are quite resigned to doing without my valuable presence. Even at Monteverde, where I am supposed to be in charge of everything, my mother and my sister have accustomed themselves to taking over my tasks. I don’t think anyone will miss me.”
She tilted her head to one side and regarded him. “So what do you care about?” she asked. “You blithely abandon your duties at your own hold, and it’s obvious you don’t want to be Archangel, and apparently nothing can keep your attention for more than a day or two. Don’t you have any passions? Any convictions? Anything you would risk your life for?”
“You said that to me once,” he said suddenly. “In Ileah.”
“Did I? I don’t remember.”
“I’m not sure I know too many people who would risk their lives—for anything,” he said.
She gestured broadly with both hands. “Everyone at this campfire tonight,” she said. “For their ideals. For the chance to express their beliefs. For their friends. All of us would hazard our lives—all of us have already done so. I don’t think you can truly say you’ve lived until you know what you’d die for.”
“You’re too young to talk about dying a martyr.”
“And you’re too old not to have found a cause.”
He smiled a little bitterly. “Why is it that every time I talk to you, I end up feeling like a wastrel and a rogue? Most people like me, you know. I wish you did.”
“I do,” she said quickly, too quickly. She liked him too much, and that was a tendre that would come to no good. Jacobite angelica, indeed. “And I did not come here to censure you. I came to thank you for saving my life.”
He nodded majestically. “It was an honor,” he said, his voice grave. “I would say that I would gladly do so again, except that I would not gladly see you in danger again. But you worry me. You do not seem like the kind of woman who sees much value in keeping herself safe.”
“I am cautious enough most of the time,” she said. “You don’t need to be anxious on my account.”
He smiled again but looked wholly unconvinced. “Something tells me,” he said, “that I shall live to see you made a liar.”
She laughed. “Then I hope you will be with me,” she said, “so you can rescue me from my folly.”
“So do I,” he said, not laughing at all. She could not hear the words he added under his breath, but she thought they were, “And I plan to be.”
Even if she had had an answer to that (which she did not), she had no chance to make it. A group of Jacobites suddenly swirled around her, enveloping both Tamar and Jared in an enthusiastic eddy. “Back to Conran’s—he’s got some Edori wine!” someone called out as the crowd swept by, and Tamar allowed herself to be caught up in the general merriment.
There were too many of them to fit comfortably into Conran’s small parlor, but they managed it anyway, women perching on men’s laps, children sitting cross-legged on the floor, a few restless souls lurking in the doorway or pacing back and forth between the kitchen and the living room. Tamar found herself wedged into an oversized armchair next to Jani, with Horace balancing himself on the padded arm. He had one hand braced against the wall, one arm wrapped around her shoulders.
“So when do we go back to Samaria?” someone asked, and everyone in the room raised their glasses to toast that venture.
“Can’t stay here the rest of our lives like whining dogs run out of the house,” someone else called out. “Our place is in Samaria. That’s where our mission is.”
“Yes, but if we all die trying to accomplish this mission, who’s left to tell the truth about Jehovah?” Conran asked reasonably. “Everyone in this room has had a narrow escape from death in the past three months. Shouldn’t we wait till the furor dies down?”
There was a general outcry at that, most of it vehemently opposed. “I say, let’s go right back at them!” Duncan said very loudly, and half a dozen of the other young hotheads cheered. “Head straight to Breven and take out a few Jansai to pay them back for the Jacobites they’ve murdered.”
“I’m on the first boat back!” Horace cried, jumping to his feet. On the instant ten more followed suit.
Conran stood patient and inflexible at the front of the room, and waited for the uproar to calm down. “Go to Breven, and most certainly it will not be the Jansai who end up dead,” he said when the noise had faded enough for him to be heard. “I say again, why not wait? I am not talking forever, you understand, but a few months, less than a year—”
“Why wait?” a woman called out, and a few others echoed her. “Wait for what?” someone else asked.
“Wait till the next Gloria, perhaps,” Conran said. “When the new Archangel is chosen.”
“The Archangel—” Twenty voices spoke in stupefied unison. “Why do we care who the Archangel is?” Jani wanted to know.
“Because we don’t know who the Archangel will be,” Conran said calmly. “And it may be someone who is—not favorable toward us, perhaps, but more tolerant. More open-minded. Someone who might rein in the Jansai and allow us to live in peace. Is not that a possibility that merits the wait of a few unimportant months, mikele? Is it not?”
As always, his use of an Edori word (this one meaning “children” or “young boys”) brought a rippling laugh from his fellow Jacobites. “But what shall we do in Ysral for n
ine months or more?” someone demanded. “Farm? Raise cattle? I don’t think so!”
“And why not?” Conran said. “Are you too good to work with your hands, doing honest labor?”
“I would rather carry the truth to the unbelievers than dig holes in the ground for corn to grow, yes!”
“Well, whether you are preaching or whether you are merely biding your time, you have to eat, so you will work and I will work and everyone in this room will work, and I don’t want to hear a single word of complaint from any of you.”
That would shut them up for a minute, Tamar thought with a private smile, but of course it didn’t. Duncan flung out a new question almost before the words were out of Conran’s mouth. Tamar let her attention stray as she looked around the room. Again, against her will, she was counting heads and tallying up the losses. She could not entirely sympathize with the fanatics who were so eager to rush back to Samaria and engage in a hand-to-hand struggle with death. She would not mind a few weeks, or a few months, to recover from her own encounters with that dark and powerful warrior.
Her eyes wandered to Jared, who was leaning against one wall with his wings held as compactly to his body as possible. She wondered what he thought of all this, if he secretly despised the passionate but aimless Jacobites, if he envied them for their conviction—or if, as she had thought long ago, he was really here as a spy and a traitor, and was even now gathering evidence against them.
But she did not believe that. It could not be true. Even if her own heart could not be trusted, Conran was not a man easily deceived, and Conran seemed to have no quarrel with the angel. It was a small comfort, but she would take whatever portion she was served.
Talk had turned now, as it always did, to the elusive object of their obsessive quest. “But what of the Alleluia Files?” a woman asked, and again the crowd was unanimous in its murmuring response. “Yes, we must keep looking.” “Dawn had no luck breaching Mount Sinai, did she? I thought not.” “But if they are really at the angel holds, as we all believe, how shall we find them? I don’t think there is a disguise good enough to get one of us into the Eyrie.”