The Alleluia Files (33 page)

“Well, not clever enough to make heads nor tails out of half the stuff in here,” he said briskly. He bent over to retrieve the two books on Delilah (even though no one at Monteverde really wanted to read them, he may as well pretend so, and take them back).

“You didn’t find what you were looking for?”

“Not exactly. How soon is dinner? Do I have time to clean myself up beforehand? I’m a little dirty.”

Unexpectedly, for she was generally a demure girl, she came a few steps closer. “I don’t think so. Here, let me dust you off a little.”

And she proceeded to brush her hands lightly across the front of his shirt, down the smooth hips of his leather pants, and across the very tips of his wings. Despite himself, as her soft fingers touched his feathers, he felt himself shiver and almost flinch away. He was astonished. Angels hated to be fondled, could not abide any except the most intimate touch on their sensitive wings. More than one mortal had discovered this to his rue as an angel had reacted violently to some invasive contact. Annalee had grown up among angels—she knew this—and yet here she was, intently stroking the edge feathers of his wings with a slower and more deliberate motion. Each fingertip left a trail of fire; his whole body leaped with unwilling response. She touched a finger to her tongue and reached for him again as if to smooth down a wayward quill.

Jared took a deep breath and stepped backward, out of reach. “I think not,” he said.

Again, she gave him that upswept look, a world of heavy meaning in her eyes. “I think I’ve improved you as best I can.”

Jared tilted his head back, eyeing her haughtily, but she gave him no time to reply. “We must hurry,” she said in her breathless
voice, and turned for the door. “I believe Mariah is waiting.”

And so he followed her from the room into the tunnels of the Eyrie, and wondered if he had misread the whole incident. Had she meant something by it or not? She seemed too childlike to be attempting to seduce him (and she had certainly chosen a bad time for it if they were expected at dinner in five minutes), but no mortal familiar with angels
ever
initiated such casual contact.

Unless she meant something by it. And there was no reason to think Annalee Stephalo wasn’t on the lookout for a liaison with a well-known and potentially powerful angel. Her father had planted her here in the Eyrie, after all, a place where ambitious parents often sent their daughters for extended visits. Even if these girls did not succeed in marrying an angel, it was no disgrace to take an angel for a lover, especially if the union produced an angel child. Such good fortune could settle a young girl for life, for she and her child then became the responsibility of the hold; and the honor of being an angel’s mother was one that profited her entire family.

Still, Richard Stephalo had position and wealth enough of his own; he didn’t need angel grandchildren to secure his status in life.

And perhaps she had only been trying to be helpful, making him look presentable for Mariah’s little dinner. He was too suspicious, he disliked too many people; and he was too irritable at being stuck here in the Eyrie. He should not be attributing manipulative motives to a simple act of kindness. He sighed again, silently, and caught up with Annalee as she preceded him down the hall.

Dinner was formal but not as much of an ordeal as Jared had anticipated (
that
would come in two nights, when all the landowners of Bethel were gathered for their annual banquet). As ranking guest of honor, he was seated by Mariah, but she spent most of her time talking to the young man on her left. Jared was too far from Bael to be forced to converse with the Archangel, but of course it was impossible to miss any word uttered in those silver, gorgeous tones. Jared tried not to listen, but he took in some impression of the conversation—something about wheat tariffs and land taxes. He’d had the same discussions
himself over dinner at Monteverde. He sighed again, and signaled the servant for another glass of wine.

Two more tedious days to go. He did not see how he could possibly bear it.

He escaped into Velora the next morning before anyone could find him. Velora was the small town situated at the bottom of the Velo Mountain; it had served the Eyrie since the hold was founded. The grand stairway, that conduit of commerce, connected the hold with this bustling, merry little city, but Velora was much to be preferred as a place to do business or enjoy an afternoon’s shopping. Jared spent most of the day sitting at outdoor tables of sidewalk cafes, thumbing through his histories of Delilah, and wishing he had better reading material. He did walk through the bazaars, just for something to do, and bought a handful of shirts and gloves simply to have something to show for his day.

In the afternoon he returned to the Eyrie and found himself in an unexpected tête-à-tête with the Archangel.

He had decided it would do him no actual harm to see if the Alleluia Files could be found on one of the disks left in plain sight in the Eyrie’s music rooms, and so he was on the lower level of the compound, looking for an empty chamber. Bael opened the door to leave the very last one just as Jared had lifted his hand to knock.

“Oh! Sorry. Thought it might be empty,” Jared said, stepping back a pace. Although Bael was considerably shorter than he was, the Archangel’s pure physical presence was so forceful that he exuded an air of power even in the most casual situation.

“Nonsense! Don’t apologize. I’m quite through,” Bael said, beaming up at him. “In fact, wait. I’m not. I’m glad you’re here. I’ve a new piece of music I’d like you to listen to, if you’ve got a moment. Perhaps you’re in a hurry?”

“No, no hurry,” Jared said, and the two men stepped inside. Bael shut the door. The room was small, acoustically perfect, and barely furnished; the singer, or the listener, was supposed to concentrate all his attention on the music, not the decor. Still, there were two stools, and Bael gestured for Jared to take one. Jared sat while Bael fiddled with the controls on the cabinet in the wall.

“There! Isn’t that nice, now?” the Archangel said, coming
over to sit by Jared. The music issuing from the hidden speakers was a duet, male voice over flute, and Jared listened critically a moment. Dark music, melancholy and brooding. Not quite Jared’s style. “He does have a talent, does he not?”

“Omar’s new piece?” Jared guessed. Bael nodded.

“He brought it to me this morning. I told him I would critique it with my usual harshness, but I find it hard to judge my own son. I think he’s a maestro.”

“He’s very good,” Jared said. “I take it he’s come in for your dinner party a day early? That must make you happy.”

“Yes, it’s always a treat to see my son. As you will know, when you yourself marry and produce children.”

“The day seems far away,” Jared said, amused.

“You’re not so young that you can afford to be putting off the inevitable for long,” Bael said with a quick frown. “It is good for any angel to breed, but for one in your position, it is essential. I tell you this not only as your friend, but as your Archangel. It is well past time for you to marry. May I suggest a proper girl such as Annalee Stephalo, who is even now visiting at the Eyrie? She has attractive manners and a desirable background. You could do worse than turn your eyes her way.”

So that answered that question. Not the girl’s father, but her Archangel, had encouraged her to dally with the visitor from Monteverde. “I do not find my affections leaning in her direction,” Jared said softly.

Bael nodded. “Fine. Then some other girl. There must be plenty of eligible young women among the Manadavvi who would not look upon your suit with disgust.”

“Thank you,” Jared said faintly. “I will bear your advice in mind. I assume you give the same to your son—who is my age and older, and unmarried himself?”

“He is not angelic, so his responsibility to reproduce is not as high as yours—but yes, we have had this discussion,” Bael said seriously. “It is the duty of every righteous, intelligent, and devout man to marry, and marry wisely. I have a special interest in Omar, of course, and am keenly desirous of seeing him settled well. And I have ideas on that score, and he is not loath to entertain them. But his case is entirely different from yours.”

Jared was conscious of a sudden overpowering desire to fly to Cedar Hills and repeat every word of this conversation to Mercy. He could hardly wait to hear her caustic comments on
Bael’s attempts to pair off the world to his own specifications. But. He was by now ruffled enough to let some of his own ire show. “Marry him off to an angel,” he said flippantly. “Then she can be named Archangel, and he’ll still have the power, if not the position.”

He was shocked when Bael turned those wild prophet’s eyes on him with a fanatic intentness. “Such a plan might please Jovah,” the Archangel agreed. “And my son is such a man as could be expected to appeal to any woman, even an angel girl who has her pick of suitors.”

I was not serious
, Jared wanted to say, but Bael clearly was. It was a wholly new thought to Jared, but he realized instantly it had been a scheme long gestating in the Archangel’s mind. And why not? From Bael’s perspective, it made a great deal of sense. It put his son in power; it kept him deeply connected to the rule of Samaria. It allowed him to continue whatever political and religious policies he had instituted over the past nineteen years….

“Tell me,” Jared said slowly, “does Omar feel as you do on most topics that concern the realm?”

“We discuss most of my important decisions before I make them,” Bael said. “I have found my son to be a clear-eyed adviser. At times we disagree, but he has most often conceded later that I have been correct. At other times I have allowed his opinion to sway me and have not been sorry. He has gifts for statesmanship that are very great, and which many do not appreciate because he stands in my shadow.”

Not an entirely straightforward reply, though clearly the Archangel had answered Jared’s question in the affirmative. “On the Jacobite issue, for instance,” Jared said, very quietly, “he concurs with you?”

“Anyone who holds dear the safety of Samaria and its continued existence must concur with me on the Jacobite issue,” Bael said sharply. “The Jacobites are extremely dangerous. They are seditious both politically and theologically, and those who believe in them court destruction by the hand of Jovah.”

“I have heard,” Jared said, still softly, “that you have been at some pains lately to—drive the Jacobites from the shores of Samaria. I confess I had not realized you were so passionately against them. But perhaps I have heard wrong, and you do not direct violence against the rebels?”

He was not sure Bael would answer, for it was an accusatory question, but the Archangel nodded his silver head. “I wish them gone from Samaria, yes,” he said. “Think about it, Jared! Do you not see the risk they pose? To be telling people that the god does not exist—! The god who nurtures us, watches over us, saves us from flood, delivers us from famine—the god who, with a single thunderbolt, can destroy our entire world! Is it not dangerous—is it not terrifying—to anger such a god? Do you not realize that no one in Samaria is safe if a single Jacobite remains to preach of heresy?”

Sweet Jovah singing, then everything Christian had told him had been true. This was a zealot speaking, a man who felt his goal was so just that he could not envision setting any limits to attain it. And yet, and yet … “I agree, the hazard is great,” Jared said cautiously. “But I do wonder how you plan to usher them from Samaria. I suppose you could shepherd them all to Edori boats and ship them off to Ysral—”

“Jovah hears every whisper uttered in Ysral as clearly as he hears every word spoken here,” Bael said sternly. “We are no safer if they emigrate. They must be eliminated—or converted.”

“Eliminated?” Jared repeated. Surely Bael would not admit …

The Archangel turned his mad eyes to his visitor. His face burned with a righteous fever; he lifted his hands as if to invoke the will of the god. From the speakers around them, Omar’s voice suddenly burst free of the flute in a dark and portentous solo lament. “They must be executed,” Bael proclaimed. “They must be cleansed from the face of Samaria. Their blood must be spilled so that the blood of innocents is not shed. They have betrayed their god, and they must die.”

Jared stared at him, too stunned to say another word. Bael stared back, his face alight with passion, and stabbed his finger suddenly in Jared’s direction.

“And all who do not agree with me must be questioned. And all who do not see the truth must be enlightened,” the Archangel continued. “Who knows how far the heresy has spread? Who knows how many the poison has tainted? Look to your devotions, Jared. Jovah sees all, and judges all, and avenges all. And no one is safe until we are all back in Jovah’s arms.”

After that, the visit to the Eyrie ceased to be merely tedious and began to seem almost dangerous instead. Jared was miles from embracing the Jacobite theories—though he did concede they had a certain logic to them—but by Bael’s criteria, he was most certainly a heretic. Which made him suspect. Which put him at risk.