The Alleluia Files (52 page)

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 nine 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.”

“The Alleluia Files are not in the Eyrie,” Jared said, speaking for the first time and drawing every eye. Most of the Jacobites viewed him with mistrust, Tamar saw, and a few watched him with actual dislike.

“And may I ask how you come by this information?” Duncan asked with sarcastic politeness.

Jared shrugged so slightly that his wings barely shifted. “I looked for them,” he said. “In the music rooms and the archives of the hold. I also searched for them at Monteverde. It’s possible
that I overlooked them somewhere, but the holds seem like unlikely hiding places, anyway.”

“And where would
you
have stored them, if they had been yours to hide?” Horace asked.

Jared regarded him coolly across the room. He might be accustomed only to open-armed welcomes, as he had told Tamar earlier, but he was not in the least cowed by snarling hostility.

“If I was the oracle, I would most likely have secreted them in Mount Sinai,” the angel replied. “I take it you’ve looked there and been unsuccessful?”

“We’ve never gotten past the outer rooms,” Conran said briefly. “Dawn tried to gain admittance to the inner chambers a few months back but was not able to manage it.”

“We need a young girl we can offer as an acolyte,” Jani said. “Or a young boy. One who can be sent to the oracles to be trained at Mount Sinai or Mount Egypt or Mount Sudan. Then we will have a sympathizer at the very heart of Samarian society. We will learn all the ‘holy’ secrets—and we will find the Alleluia Files, if they are there.”

“Not a bad plan,” Jared said. “But most of the acolytes are chosen from the gentry. How would you pass off one of your Jacobite children as a Manadavvi daughter or a river merchant’s heir?”

“We will think of a way,” Jani said, raising her chin defiantly. “And
without
the help of the angels.”

Jared laughed at her. “Lest you forget,” he said, “your precious Alleluia was an angel, too.”

Jani looked angry enough to toss back an unforgivable insult, but Conran intervened before she could speak. “Manners, mikele, manners,” he said. “If you would be better than the allali, you must start with your behavior. Besides, this angel has been a friend to us. Why would you want to abuse him?”

“I’ll see his friendship proved,” Horace muttered, but no one else dared to offer a retort.

“Back to the files,” said someone in the back of the room. Tamar thought it was Wyman. “What if they’re
not
at Mount Sinai or one of the other sanctuaries? What then? We must have an alternate plan. We must look in every possible hiding place.”

“I agree,” said Conran, but before he could continue, voices called out from around the room. “The ruins of the Augustine school!” “Luminaux!” “Hagar’s Tooth!” “Semorrah! Well,
why not? You can buy anything else you want there.” “The Plain of Sharon.” “Breven—it’s the last place anyone would look.”