Read The Alleluia Files Online
Authors: Sharon Shinn
I
t was full dark when Tamar and Zeke entered the city, and still they moved with the caution of thieves. They had arrived within view of Breven at about noon and camped out far from the main road till dusk brought a welcome coolness and a measure of safety. Even so, it was worth their lives to cross the city line. But it had seemed, on balance, even more dangerous to stay in Luminaux.
They had assumed the guise of a young Jansai merchant’s son and his submissive sister. This allowed Tamar, at least, to layer her face and body in the traditional scarves without which no respectable Jansai woman left her house. Zeke—pretending to be one of the arrogant gypsy traders—could not cover his face without arousing suspicion, but he had wrapped his head in one of the flowing white cloths the Jansai used to protect themselves from the unrelenting desert sun. And he had made sure its long edges draped themselves over his shoulders and halfway down his bare arms. Just glancing at the two of them, no stranger would notice that these travelers bore no glowing Kiss in their right arms. No one would halt them in the road, demanding their names, their identities, their suspect affiliations.
“What street are we on? Did you see?” Zeke murmured to Tamar as they passed yet another unmarked intersection. They had entered Breven from the west and had to pass through the less savory parts of town before they reached their destination in the business district close to the port.
“There are no signs till we’re near the wharf. We just keep walking toward the ocean.”
“But what if we’re walking in the wrong direction?”
Tamar throttled a moment’s extreme irritation. They had been
on the road more than a week, moving by night from town to city, dodging Jansai, angels, and the merely curious. Zeke’s company, never exactly to her taste, had grated on her more and more as the days dragged by. There was nothing he was not afraid of, no worry he failed to articulate.
A fine revolutionary
, she thought scornfully. Though perhaps she did him an injustice. She had not witnessed her parents’ slaughter at the hands of religious zealots, as he had; her mother and father had perished the same way, years earlier, but she had been weeks old, not an impressionable fifteen. Perhaps she, too, would be fearful and nervous if she had seen what Zeke had.
“Conran told us,” she said, lifting her hand in its billowing sleeve to gesture at the glowing horizon. “Most of the city business is done on the streets nearest the water. Ahead of us, there? You see lights? He told us that things are easier to find once you’re in the business district.”
“But it’s so dark,” he complained.
“You’ll wish it was this dark when we get to the port,” she said. “Once we’re under a streetlight, it’ll be that much easier to tell who we are. Or who we aren’t.”
“No one can see
your
face,” he said.
She almost stopped dead in the street, but the last thing she wanted was to start an argument with Zeke, do anything that might attract attention. “What does that mean?” she demanded, keeping her voice low. There appeared to be few others abroad at this hour, in this neighborhood, but still. No need to create a scene. “We’ve only traveled five hundred miles in the past seven days to get here, to this city this night, but if you’re afraid—if you don’t think you can go through with it—”
“I didn’t
say
that!” he responded sharply, his voice as quiet and intense as hers. “I think I have a right to be afraid. I think you’re a fool not to be. If anybody in this city—
anybody
— recognizes us, we’re dead, both of us, no questions asked, no news returned to our friends, no prayers said for our souls—”
“Since you have no use for the god, I don’t see why you’d care if some priest prayed over you—”
“Well, when I’m dead I want someone to know it, even if it’s just Conran and the others.”
“They’d figure it out soon enough,” was her grim reply. “Those who are still alive themselves.”
It was such a shocking thing to say that she was not surprised
when he did not answer, and they kept on their uncertain course toward the city lights. Well, but it was true. Luminaux, for so long the haven of the Jacobites, had become in the past few months no safer than any other city in Samaria. Since Archangel Bael had loosed his Jansai fanatics on the Blue City, not one of the cultists was safe. Oh, the Luminauzi had tried to protect the Jacobites, offering them shelter in secret rooms and false cellars, while formally protesting the invasion of the Archangel’s soldiers. But the Luminauzi were a civil, not a military force; they were the artists and intellectuals and politicians of Samaria. They didn’t know how to repel armed Jansai bursting through their doors at three in the morning. They couldn’t save the screaming men and women dragged from their attics and hidden passageways by the Archangel’s warriors. The Jacobites who could, fought back (and, trained to terrorism, sometimes won these brief desperate skirmishes). Those who could not perished. Those who could run scattered from the city in all directions.
They were to meet again in Ileah in two months’ time, those who were alive, who could make it that far, who escaped the notice of the mercenary Jansai and ordinary Samarian citizens who didn’t mind turning in a Jacobite for a tidy reward. Meet again and decide, then, how to carry On their mission.
“Have you ever thought,” Zeke asked unexpectedly, breaking the long silence, “of setting sail for Ysral instead?”
“Instead of fighting here? Instead of bringing the truth to a whole world that does not want to see and can only blindly believe in lies so old and impossible that only a child could fall for them? Instead of doing what I know is right—what my parents died for—what
your
parents died for? Instead of—”
“I suppose not,” he said on a sigh.
“No,” she said. “Never.”
“Well, I have.”
“Now’s your chance,” she said. “Breven’s your port. Catch an Edori boat tonight, be in Ysral in two weeks. You’ll never be in danger again.”
“Well, I’ve thought of it,” he said defiantly. “I’m tired of running, and hiding, and always being afraid. And if we’re all killed—if all the Jacobites are dead—who will be left to carry on the fight? Maybe in a generation or two, when the whole world is wiser, Samaria will be willing to listen to us—”
Under her layers of loose cloth, Tamar hunched her shoulders
as if to shrug off his touch. The same old tired argument.
We cannot reason with them; we cannot make a difference; let us withdraw and try again next year, next decade, next century.
Cowardice, she called it, and usually to the person’s face, but it still was not the time to be starting spectacular arguments with Zeke.
“Do what you want,” she said. “There must be an Edori ship in port. You’ll never have a better chance.”
“And what about you?” he said.
“What about me?” she said, but she knew the answer. This whole venture had been her idea—destination, date, and disguise—and she absolutely could not complete it without his help. It was rare enough for a Jansai woman to be out on the streets at night, even properly attired and accompanied by a male member of her family; not one would be out alone. Without Zeke’s protection, nominal as it was, Tamar could not pretend to this role. And if she was not a Jansai woman here in Breven … well, she would have to be an ordinary Samarian. Farewell, veils; good-bye, flowing garments that covered her from throat to toe. Only Jansai women dressed this way in the desert, where, even in early spring, the temperature could ascend to astonishing degrees of heat.
It was not her face that was so recognizable; indeed, there might be only half a dozen people, besides her immediate friends, who would know her on sight. But the fact that she bore no Kiss in her right arm—that would set her apart instantly. That would identify her at once for who she was. Jacobite. Cultist. Anarchist. The breed singled out by Bael for his special vengeance.
“I can’t leave you alone in Breven,” he said.
She wondered if, all along, this had been his plan; if this was why he had agreed to accompany her in the first place. She had spoken truly: he would never have a better chance to get to Ysral, for the Edori ships docked there every day, and the Edori were famous for taking on Jacobite refugees. Of course, boarding a ship from that well-patrolled dock was even more dangerous than crossing the desert on foot.
“You can,” she said, “if you wait till we leave the priest’s house.”
“Won’t you be afraid? If you’re by yourself?”
She smiled in the dark. Zeke wasn’t a half-bad fighter, and if
they were ever unlucky enough to fall into hand-to-hand combat here on the Breven streets, he would no doubt make a handy battle partner. But if they were that unlucky, they were completely doomed, because they would never escape these streets alive after engaging in a brawl like that. She wouldn’t miss his company, that was certain; and her survival skills were no doubt good enough to see her back across the desert alone.
“Once I’ve got the Kiss,” she said, “I won’t be afraid. If you’ll stay with me that long you can go, and luck to you.”
“Well, I haven’t decided for sure,” he said, but his voice was rushed with relief. “But I’ve been thinking about it.”
“You’ve got to go where your heart dictates,” she said. “Mine will take me to Ileah. If yours says Ysral, then go. I won’t stop you.”
He did not immediately reply, and she let the silence lengthen between them. In any case, the less talking now, the better. They had moved past the huts of the poor on the outer perimeter of the city through the wealthy, quiet neighborhoods where the streets were lined with massive, shuttered, secretive homes. Now, nearing the wharf, they entered the busy nighttime world of Breven’s business district. Glowing circles of light puddled at the base of the streetlights on every corner; the occasional truck growled by, clanking with its metal cargo. Voices muttered from behind shut doors or called to each other across the width of the pavement. Footfalls produced by invisible travelers sounded staccato and menacing in the dark. From farther away came ocean sounds: the groaning of ships pulling against anchor, the slap and trickle of waves against the wooden dock. The air was heavy with the damp, scented exhalation of the sea.
“We’re getting closer,” Tamar breathed, and laid her hand on Zeke’s arm. Not that she was afraid, certainly not; but any Jansai woman would cling to her brother if she was abroad on a night like this.
“What was the street again?” he murmured.
“Saturlin. We’re supposed to find the Exchange Building and turn right, and Saturlin is a few blocks off that.”
“The Exchange Building? What’s that?”
“The tall one with the eagle on top. You must have seen it in picture books.”
“Oh. That one. If we—”
But “Ssh,” she whispered, and pulled him back to the shelter
of the brick building they were passing. They could just fit into the narrow niche provided by the glass door; the awning over the lintel covered both of them in shadow. Zeke mouthed a word at her—“What?”—but she shook her head, and in a few moments he heard it, too. First the rumble of the motor (big transport, from that sound alone), then the laughter carrying eerily far over the city streets. Minutes later the vehicle passed them, a huge, open truck carrying a load of Jansai soldiers in its cargo space. There was a jumble of talk and laughter, indistinguishable words, then the sudden splintering crash of glass as one of the Jansai threw a bottle over the side. Tamar felt Zeke flinch beside her, but the truck was gone. No one had seen them.
“Wonder what they’re doing here,” Zeke whispered.
“Looking for Jacobites. If you try to find an Edori boat tonight, be especially careful.”
“There might be more.”
“I’d count on it.”
With renewed caution, they continued forward, crossing streets in the middle of the block to avoid the lamplights, sticking as close to the buildings as their bones allowed, communicating with hand signals so they could more closely monitor the sounds around them. They saw no more transport trucks. The few foot travelers they passed walked as stealthily as they did, on the other side of the street, and did not accost them.
The Exchange Building was not hard to find, for it was one of the newest and tallest in the business district of Breven. Even in the unreliable street lighting, it was a glittering black, for it had been hewn from a cold, dense granite alive with crushed quartz crystals. On the edge of the roof, twenty stories up, perched a ferocious bird of prey, carved from the same black rock. Its wings were half-extended and its face was twisted in a perpetual snarl; it clutched a strand of beads in one claw and a round globe in the other. The Jansai motto, Tamar remembered now, meant to signify trade and barter around the world. For at one time the Jansai were Samaria’s most legendary merchants. Now they were the continent’s most fearsome soldiers.
Well, they had always been fearsome, always had a history of violence and brutality. But not until the past twenty years had their savagery been yoked and bent to the will of the Archangel.
Tamar touched Zeke on the shoulder and pointed to the right.
He nodded and followed her. Across the street, two men were engaged in a heated argument that was punctuated unexpectedly by harsh laughter. This whole block was lit with a ring of lamps, so that it was almost impossible to slink back into welcome darkness. Tamar kept her hand in the crook of Zeke’s arm and tried not to look like she was hurrying.