The Alleluia Files (19 page)

“Of course not,” Jared murmured. “But I don’t know that a transmitter is something we would absolutely require—”

“It would put you right at the forefront of the new technology,” Solomon said. “People would come from all over Gaza to hear the concerts. At least, we think they would. It would give you an incentive to draw visitors to the hold. And it would be good for us, too,” he added as an afterthought.

Jared considered telling the young man that he had often wished for a way to
discourage
visitors from flocking to Monteverde, the most accessible of the angel domains, but he let it slide. It might be no bad thing to know exactly what the technorevolutionaries were building next. Bael might squawk when he found out what Jared had invited into Monteverde, but he could explain it away, he thought. Or dismantle it, if it became all that troublesome.

“I appreciate your offer,” he said. “I’d be glad to accept one of your receivers. Come have dinner with me and tell me where we should set it up and what’s required. And what sorts of events we can expect to hear!”

So that had taken up most of the evening, and he had not
been able to avoid spending half an hour having drinks with a few of the Manadavvi who had, apparently, camped out in Monteverde for the season. It was late before he escaped them and pointless to take off at midnight looking for a plot of ground he wasn’t sure he’d recognize by daylight, so he spent the night in his own room for a change. And in the morning, before anyone could stop him or inquire into his itinerary, he departed for central Jordana.

It was six hundred miles, more or less, to Ileah, too much terrain to cover in a day, so he broke his trip at a small town in northern Bethel. He’d had the forethought to consult a map before he left the Monteverde archives, so he had a fairly clear idea where Ileah should be. Accordingly, about ninety minutes east of Castelana, he sheered downward from flying altitude and continued at a low, cruising speed about a hundred feet over the land. Nothing much out here—not surprising, because a hundred years ago no one wanted to waste prime territory on an Edori sanctuary. But surely that was a cluster of stone buildings about two hundred yards ahead of him, and wasn’t that smoke coming from one of them? He dropped lower and circled for a landing.

A few moments later he spotted a solitary figure standing before one of the tumbledown huts. A woman, apparently. He raised a hand in a friendly wave but she stood frozen, staring at him in something like terror. Seconds after his feet touched the ground, she took off in a frenzied run, clearly bent on escaping him. Jared drove his wings down hard to regain momentum, and followed in pursuit.

H
e had never seen anyone run so fast. With the slow, awkward downbeats required by lowterrain flying, Jared came after her, and he admired her speed. Just in case she had confused him with someone else, he called out to her a few times—“Hello, there! Don’t be afraid! Wait for me!”—but as he had expected, she didn’t even falter. Either she was afraid of angels, or she was afraid of everyone, because she kept racing away from him as fast as her feet would take her.

It wasn’t fast enough. Several times Jared closed with her, coming near enough to touch, and he felt the faint shock spark from his wing tips to his shoulders as his feathers brushed her skin. The sensation jolted her, too; each time she redoubled her efforts, straining ahead with desperate determination. It was hopeless, of course. Angels had incredible strength and unmatched endurance, and even the fleetest human could not expect to outrun a flying angel. She either didn’t know that, or could not rationally accept it. She ran. She ran.

“I’m Jared!” he called to her, catching up again. “From Monteverde. Don’t be afraid of me! I don’t want to hurt you!”

Once she looked over her shoulder, and the expression on her face was of such stark panic that he actually missed a beat and lost a few inches’ altitude. But he recovered quickly and came alongside her again. This was difficult, trying to match his pace to a human’s stride; he either overshot his mark or fell back every time he tried to draw even.

“I need to talk to you!” he shouted down at her. “Stand still for a moment and let me ask you—”

Now she veered abruptly to one side; effortlessly, he followed.
Their new course placed the sun behind him and threw the shadow of his wings over her fleeing form. He heard a single great sob escape her before she expended all her strength in one last burst of speed, and then she fell to the ground, gasping.

He landed lightly a few feet away and stepped toward her. “I’m Jared,” he said again. “Please don’t be afraid of me. I want—”

Instantly, she was on her feet again, stumbling forward. He was aloft again in seconds, but she had managed to gain a few yards. He was upon her again in minutes, of course, but he was beginning to get severely annoyed.

“I’m not going to hurt you, damn it!” he shouted. “Just stop! You can’t outrun me! Just stop and talk to me!”

Once more she fell to the ground, fighting for breath, shuddering with exhaustion or terror. Once again, Jared landed a few feet away, and this time he made no move to come closer.

“Please don’t be afraid of me,” he said in as coaxing a voice as he could manage. “My name is Jared. I’m from the angel hold of Monteverde. I have no reason to hurt you.”

From her hands and knees she stared over at him, and he noted that despite everything, she did not look a bit defeated. He had never seen such naked hostility on any face before. Certainly, he had never done anything to earn such a look in his life.

“Can you stand?” he asked, because he was tired of telling her not to be afraid. “Do you need help?”

“I can stand,” she said in a voice full of loathing, and pushed herself upright. She continued to glare at him, completely unrepentant.

“I’m Jared,” he tried again. “What’s your name?”

She merely scowled and did not reply.

He gestured behind him. “And this place is Ileah, is it not?”

Again, silence.

It appeared he had nothing to lose by full disclosure. “I was told I might find an encampment of Jacobites here,” he said, watching her closely to see if that startled her. “Is that true?”

“You’re too late,” she said flatly. He noted idly that—despite her distress, despite her hatred—her voice was musical and sweet. Probably a singer of some sort. You could always tell. “They’re all dead.”

The harsh words landed against his ears like three separate
blows. From his automatic assessment of this new person, he was knocked into a state of grave disquiet. “All dead?” he repeated stupidly. “Are you sure?”

“I buried them myself,” she said. “Do you want to dig up the grave?”

“No, I—how many? When were they killed?”

“Twelve dead. Maybe three days ago. It happened before I arrived.”

“Do you know who did it?”

For the first time her expression changed. Her brows arched over her eyes with mocking dislike. “Angels?” she suggested.

Again, he had the sense of having been punched, this time in the stomach. “No,” he said sharply. “Not possible.”

She shrugged. “Then Jansai, I suppose.”

“Do you have any guess as to why?”

“You’re the one who named us Jacobites,” she said. “Wouldn’t you consider that reason enough?”

“No,” he said again, just as quickly. “Even if you were.”

“Isn’t that why you’re here,” she asked, “looking for Jacobites?”

He passed a hand over his face. Suddenly he felt old, betrayed, inadequate, and unprepared. Was it really true? Had Jansai really murdered twelve Jacobites at this camp—and if so, had they acted on their own or at the Archangel’s behest? Jansai, yes, he could believe them murderers, but not Bael, surely not the Archangel…. “In a manner of speaking,” he said at last. “I came looking for information. I guess you’ve supplied it.”

“Then you’ll be going,” she said. “Good-bye.”

Now he was the one to feel a wave of hostility, and he glared right back at her. He couldn’t help noticing a few physical details. Such as despite the fact that she had clearly lived a hard life, her features were as delicate and porcelain white as a Manadavvi’s. And that the short, tousled hair was several shades darker than the pale blond brows, still raised questioningly over her green eyes. And that she had a Kiss in her right arm. And that she looked familiar to him, in the strangest way—not as if he had seen her before, but as if he would see her again, so often and so intimately that he would not be able to remember a time when she had been a stranger.

“Why do you have a Kiss?” he asked, the superfluous
question edging out all the other more important ones. “I thought Jacobites didn’t believe in Jovah.”

She glanced down at her arm as if surprised to find what she was wearing there. “It was part of my disguise,” she said, looking back up at him. “I thought it would make me pass for one of you.”

“An angel?” he asked incredulously.

“No, a believer. I thought it would save me from persecution. But apparently I was wrong.”

“I’m not going to persecute you,” he said automatically. “But I wouldn’t be counting on that disguise, if I were you. It appears as if someone has betrayed you.”

She nodded. “And I know who, I think. A man in Breven to whom I went for help.”

Jared frowned. “I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “I think it was one of your own. Someone who got arrested in Breven trying to escape to Ysral.”

She sucked her breath in on a gasp of pain. She whispered something—it may have been a name—but said nothing else. “In any case,” Jared went on, “if someone is looking for you, he’ll be looking for the Kiss, too.”

She looked down at it again, this time with the same loathing she had directed at the angel earlier. “Too late to try to get rid of it now,” she said. “I understand that once it’s installed, it’s with you for life. But no one told me how sick it would make me.”

“Sick?” he repeated.

“Dizzy,” she said. “Ever since I got it. Sometimes I feel like I’m floating or falling. No one ever told me that would happen.”

“Well, it doesn’t, to most people,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t have a fever? You look very pale.”

He had come a step closer but she stopped him with her eyes. “I’m not sick,” she said clearly. “I don’t have time for it.”

“Well, maybe we can talk somewhere else,” he Mid. “Can we go back to Ileah?”

“What else did you want to talk about?” she asked. “The Jacobites were here. The Jansai killed them—either for sport or because someone told them to. Doesn’t that about cover it?”

“But—are they
all
dead? All the Jacobites?”

Now her face showed scorn. “No, of course not! Do you think there are only twelve Jacobites in the whole country? They
will find each other again, don’t you worry, and they will once more strive to bring the message of truth to all men and women of Samaria.”

“I would think the message of truth is looking a little sorrier these days,” he said grimly. “I might rethink my proselytizing if I were you.”

“If we were weaker men and women, we might,” she conceded. “But only cowards allow themselves to be defeated by violence and fear. If Bael is afraid of us, we must be making some progress. Now is not the time to lay down our arms.”

“So you’d rather be a dead martyr than a live plotter?” he demanded. Fanatics made him furious. “Seems pretty shortsighted to me.”

“That’s because there’s nothing you believe in enough to die for,” she shot back.

He froze where he stood, anger battling with dismay—that it was true, that she had thought to say it. Well, no, there was nothing he could think of offhand for which he would lay down his life, but he had always thought that made him sane, not pitiful. “You could at least expend some effort guarding your life while you can,” he said at last. “If the Jansai are patrolling this area looking for Jacobites, why don’t you get as far away as possible?”

“I will, once Peter is well enough to travel.”

“Peter?” he repeated quickly. He could see she instantly regretted the careless slip. “Who’s Peter?” When she didn’t answer, he began guessing. “Someone who survived the Jansai attack? Where is he—back at the camp? How badly is he hurt?”

“Why are you asking?” she flung at him. “Why do you care?”

He turned on his heel, back toward the cluster of huts that was Ileah. He didn’t want to leave her here a few hundred yards down the road to Stockton, but something told him she wouldn’t abandon her friend to an angel’s questionable mercies. “Maybe I can help him,” he said. “Let’s go have a look.”

He risked it; he took wing and returned to Ileah, hoping she would follow. He didn’t even look back to make sure. Within a few minutes he had landed in the little village and stepped inside the only cabin with smoke coming from the roof. Yes, there was a sick man lying on a rough bed. Jared waited till his
eyes adjusted, then knelt by the patient and did a quick examination.

His skin was hot, his color was high, and the bright eyes that crossed and reerossed the angel’s face showed no signs of either fear or recognition. Jared inspected the bandage across the man’s chest but didn’t disturb it. This woman seemed competent and levelheaded enough to clean a wound and bind it properly. But the man definitely had a fever, and if he had had it for three days or more…

Running footsteps and then someone plunged through the door behind him. “Don’t touch him,” the girl panted. “He’s sleeping.”

Jared turned to face her. “He’s got a high fever,” he said bluntly. “Have you been able to feed him? Give him water?”

“A little. He doesn’t have much appetite, but whatever he swallows he keeps down. He’s getting better.”

“Maybe,” Jared said ominously. “But I don’t think he’ll make it without my help.”

Again, she gave him that fixed scowl, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say she would sacrifice her friend to avoid accepting the angel’s assistance. “How can
you
help him?” she asked at last.

“I can pray to the god for medicines that will heal him.”

She surprised him with a harsh, forced laugh. “The god! The god that does not exist? Why would I want to accept any medicines from his imaginary hand?”