The Alleluia Files (5 page)

He was gazing at a confection of lace and satin, a woman’s garment that Tamar would never have expected to see in a Breven market, and she nodded at Zeke to let him know she could handle the opening conversational gambit. Accordingly, she came to a halt beside the spellbound traveler and let loose a lilting laugh of complicity.

“I’m not sure what I’d say to a man who brought that home to
me
,” she observed. “But at least I’d know what was on his mind!”

The Edori turned to her instantly, his waist-length braid whipping over his shoulder. A quick grin lightened his dark face. “Well, if a man wanted to bring a woman a gift he’d be sure she’d like, this might not be the one,” he replied. “Is what I was thinking.”

“Are you shopping for a wife—a lover?” she asked, remembering belatedly that the Edori were said to never marry. “Or merely courting?”

Still smiling, he put both hands before him, palms outward, as if pushing away trouble. “A man like me’s got no business courting,” he said.

“And why would that be?”

“I’m a wanderer by nature. The ocean is my lover, or so the women say.”

“Oh, a sailor,” she said, nodding sagely. “And how long will you be in port?”

He glanced up at the sun, measuring time, and laughed. “Another two hours, it looks like. I should be back on board already. But facing two weeks of nothing but wave and wind, a man likes to take a few more minutes to feel his feet on solid ground.”

“Cargo boat?” she asked. “Or merely pleasure?”

He laughed again. “Well, despite what you’ll hear any sailor say, there’s a pleasure merely to be on board ship, crossing the ocean again and again. But we’re a cargo boat. We trade mostly in spices, gold, and electronics.”

“Passengers?” she asked, and suddenly her voice was very low.

His face immediately grew sober, but not a muscle in his body changed position. Anyone watching them would have noticed
nothing tense in either of their postures. “From time to time,” he said. “But it’s a rarity.”

“Would it be possible,” she said slowly, “for you to tell me the conditions?”

“Are you the one who desires passage?”

“No. My friend. The man across the street who’s eating the tangerine. He wishes to set sail for Ysral immediately.”

“It’s not my decision,” the Edori said regretfully. “My captain’s on board already, and it’s his boat. His choice. I’d be willing to ask him. One man isn’t much of a burden.”

“He can pay a little, though not much,” Tamar said. “But he can work to help pay his way.”

“It’s not the gold. It’s the getting out of Breven harbor. Let me ask. I’ll see what the captain says.”

“You said you’re sailing in two hours. Will you come meet us somewhere? What shall we do?”

The Edori thought swiftly. “The ship’s called
The Wayward.
She’s docked on the southern edge of the port, facing the Varnet Building. Do you know it?”

She shook her head. “Describe it.”

“White marble. Sixteen stories. Everything else around it is squat and dark, so you cannot miss it.”

“All right.”

“If the captain has agreed to take your friend, an hour and a half from now we’ll throw a red blanket over the railing that you can see from shore. I’ll bring the dinghy to the dock and pick him up. He must be watching for the blanket, for that will be the moment I leave the ship, and it will only take me ten minutes to make it to shore. I will only stay dockside long enough to pick up a passenger. If he is not there, I will return to my ship immediately. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly clear. I know thanks are inadequate—”

Now he smiled again, the rich, happy smile of the Edori. “We, too, know what it is like to be persecuted by the Jansai,” he said. “We are all brothers under the skin. We will help anyone who asks. No thanks are needed.”

“But I am glad to give them. And my friend will be profuse in his gratitude.”

“Your friend—his name is?”

“Zeke. Ezekiel.”

“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 smaller 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?”