Angel-Seeker (20 page)

Martha shrugged. “Fine. Then I'll go by myself.”

Rebekah gave her a sharp look. “By yourself with Ephram and Jordan, you mean.”

Martha shook her head, sending the heavy honey tresses back over her shoulder. “I was only bringing them along to protect
you
. I'm not afraid of the streets of Breven. I'll go alone.”

“You can't do that!” Rebekah exclaimed.

Martha shrugged again. “I can. I don't see why not. It will be better this way, actually, since I won't have someone tugging on my sleeve telling me it's midnight, it's one, I have to come home now. I can stay till the very end and come home at dawn, and then tell my mother I was vomiting all night and can't get out of bed in the morning.”

“Please don't,” Rebekah said.

“I won't,” Martha said. “If you'll come with me.”

For a moment they stared at each other, the two cousins who had known each other their whole lives. Almost, Rebekah balked at that moment; almost, she believed it was a bluff, that even Martha could not summon the courage to take so great a risk. But she knew Martha well enough by now. Even if the thought terrified her, even if she feared she would lose her life on the rowdy streets of Breven at the height of a drunken celebration, she would walk out that door unaccompanied, just to prove to Rebekah that she never made an empty promise.

“If I die of this,” Rebekah said slowly, “you must tend my grave.”

A wide smile lit Martha's dark face, and she threw her hands in the air with a whoop. “I will be buried beside you, so it will be up to our brothers to bring us greenery and desert roses,” Martha said.

“They will be too ashamed to honor us. The sand will cover our bones, and everyone will forget our names.”

“I don't think so,” Martha said. “The scandalous names live longest.”

Rebekah was too agitated to sit still another moment. She came to her feet and circled twice around the room. She and Jerusha were visiting Ezra's house the day after the betrothal party, and the two young women had retired to Martha's room to scheme and gossip. Martha's mother didn't have the fanatical standards of cleanliness that Jerusha did, and so there were clothes piled sloppily in corners and shoes scattered everywhere, tripping Rebekah up as she paced.

“He will be there at the fair,” she said at last, still walking, not looking at Martha. “The angel. He will be there.”

“I know,” Martha said in a smug voice. “You told me.”

Rebekah glanced over once, quickly. “I thought you might have forgotten.”

“Oh, no. I remembered. He will be there, and that is why you must go as well.”

Rebekah stopped and stared at her, but Martha rocked back on her mat, laughing. All this on purpose, to snare Rebekah and punish her heart. At that moment, Rebekah didn't know if she hated her cousin with all her might, or loved her more than anyone else in the world.

Two days later, the cousins were together again, this time in Rebekah's room, slipping into their forbidden clothes. They giggled as they
helped each other with unfamiliar buttons and strode around the room, enjoying the unaccustomed freedom of silk trousers instead of long, heavy skirts. Even though they were to go masked, they darkened their chins with a charcoal-colored powder and braided their hair tightly to their heads so that it would lie quietly under a boy's loose-wrapped headpiece. Just in case the mask slipped, just in case the torches were too bright, just in case someone looked too closely.

Rebekah was slim and flat-chested, so a billowing man's shirt covered her figure fairly well, but Martha was more amply endowed. They fitted her with a quilted vest and added more padding at the shoulders to make her whole torso look muscular. She stood with arms akimbo, legs planted wide, a snarling look of arrogance on her face, and faced Rebekah.

“Well?” she demanded. “Do I look like a Jansai boy?”

“Like the greatest bully in the market,” Rebekah said. “What about me?” And she tried to summon her own expression of careless insolence.

“You look like you're about fourteen,” Martha said with a snort. “And are pretending to look twenty.”

Rebekah shrugged. “That's not so bad, though. There are probably hundreds of twelve- and fourteen-year-old boys headed out to the fair tonight, trying to pass as their older brothers.”

Once they were satisfied with their appearances, they quickly donned their loosest jeskas and veils over their boys' clothing. They were unlikely to encounter Jerusha or any of Hector's aunts in the hallway, but it didn't pay to take chances. If
anyone
saw unfamiliar young men wandering the hallways of the women's quarters, there would be an instant outcry, and the deception would be speedily uncovered. Rebekah did not like to even speculate about what the consequences might be.

But they glided through the empty hallways without incident. They had brought candles with them in case the gaslight failed—as it sometimes did—but even though it had been dialed down to the lowest for the evening, they could still see well enough to navigate without bumping into things. They passed the bedroom doors where Hector's aunts and sisters slept, then the empty guest rooms, and
crept down the stairway toward the kitchen. And past the cold iron ovens and the cabinets of spices, out through the women's door and into the garden.

Here, they stripped off their jeskas and hid them behind a stone bench. Now they moved with even greater caution, sticking to the shadows of the tall, spindly corvine plant and threading through the maze of marrowroot and dera shrubs. If Hector was out tonight and coming back home, he would enter through the door at the front of the house, not the gate at the back; but you never knew who might be watching from the windows above. Twenty people all told lived in Hector's house, and Hector could certainly identify all of them by sight. If he saw two unknown young boys sneaking through his back garden, he would have every reason to be suspicious and sound the alarm.

But no one saw them. They made it to the garden gate, and Martha knocked twice on the solid wood. Three knocks sounded on the other side. Martha grinned at Rebekah and lifted the latch.

“There you are. You're late,” Ephram said in a low, complaining voice. “We've been waiting here forever.”

“Just ten minutes,” Jordan said.

Martha spread her arms in silent invitation. “Well? Do we pass? Would you take us for boys?”

“Yes, you're fine, no one's going to look at
you,
” Ephram said impatiently, but Jordan paused to make a more critical appraisal.

“You don't exactly look like ordinary boys,” he said slowly, “but I don't think anyone would think anything was strange and look at you a second time, trying to figure out what's different about you.”

“Well, they'll look even less when you've got masks on,” Ephram said, lifting the flap of his own loose vest and pulling out two carefully folded masks. These were flimsy constructions of cloth and string, both of them marked by golden feathers attached at the brow line. Each brother helped his sister secure the mask in place, and then the four of them looked at each other for a moment or two.

“Well, I wouldn't recognize you,” Rebekah said to Martha.

“No, and you don't look like anybody to me,” Martha said.

“What if we get separated in the crowd? How will we know each other?” Rebekah demanded. “Half the people are going to look like this.”

Martha put her hand to her throat and tugged out a silver medallion that she almost always wore. “I'll play with my necklace. Or, if you want to make sure it's me, put your hand to your neck like you're reaching for your own pendant, and then I'll pull mine out.”

“That's good.”

“How will I recognize
you?
”

“Come
on,
” Ephram insisted.

“This is important,” Jordan said.

Rebekah hesitated a moment, then shook her hand out before her. She had stripped off her rings, which looked like they belonged to a woman, and only kept two bracelets on each wrist. All Jansai wore jewelry; it would have seemed stranger to leave the house with no adornments at all. But for her man's role tonight, she had chosen her simpler pieces: a wide gold band, a thin silver chain, a narrow gold rope—and the silver bracelet set with sapphires.

“Oh,” said Martha sardonically. “I'll know it's you.”

“Are you
done?
” Ephram demanded. “The festival will be over before we get there!”

“The festival will last another whole day,” Martha retorted. “But we're ready. Let's go.”

They stepped away from the wall and onto the street, heading toward the central bazaar district. Even from a mile or two away, they could see the haze of light that hovered over the fair, yellower than moonlight and half-enchanted against the velvet richness of the night. Skirls of music and faint sounds of laughter and argument drifted back to them, growing stronger as they hurried closer. Now and then they passed other groups of men, old and young, moving in the same direction.

Finally, they turned a corner and it was before them, all the color and motion and excitement of the harvest festival. Rebekah actually gasped and clutched at Martha's arm, forgetting, for a second, that they were insensitive young men who had seen plenty of marvels in their lives. Martha pulled away quickly and took an indifferent stance, but through the slits in her mask she, too, was staring.

The entire market was crammed with people dressed in colorful, flowing robes or the more form-fitting shirts and trousers. They pushed and laughed their way through crowded alleys formed by
booths and stalls and pavilions of every imaginable color and size. Breven on an ordinary day offered an impressive array of goods, but here were treasures hard to locate even in the streets of Luminaux: gold statuary, trays of rubies, folds of cloud-white silk piled higher than a man's head. At other stalls, the wares were more practical: barrels of wine from the Manadavvi vineyards, casks of ale from southern Bethel, fermented juices from northern Gaza and Jordana. The smell of spicy food filled their heads like intoxication, carrying the promise of everything from grilled onions to meats so exotic Rebekah could not name them. Everything was lit from overhead by huge, flaring torches and ropes of colored lights strung from stand to stand all the way across the market.

Two men shoved past Rebekah, laughing as they nudged her off her path and into the cloth barrier of a covered pavilion. “Keep your feet, boy!” one of them called out, careless but good-natured, and he waved a bottle of wine at her before taking another swig from it. His companion belched, said something, and laughed again.

“Be careful,” Jordan scolded, pulling her back on the path again. “You don't want anyone to get too close to you.”

“I was just
standing
here—”

“I'm hungry,” Ephram announced. “Let's get something to eat.”

“I want to hear the music,” Martha said.

“Well, we can hear the music after we've eaten.”

They stopped at the closest booth that was selling food, and Jordan bought them each meat pies and mugs of ale. Rebekah was not entirely sure what kind of meat was inside the golden crust, but it was heavily flavored and delicious, and she ate the whole thing in about four bites. She sipped the beverage more cautiously. She did not have a good head for wine, since Jerusha rarely let her sample it, and she was not sure how well she would fare with the bitter, foamy ale. Martha seemed to have no such reservations; she downed half her glass in one swallow, then gave all of them a big smile.

“This is
good,”
she said, and belched like a boy.

Rebekah was a little shocked, but Ephram and Jordan laughed.

They headed in the direction of the music, but there were so many distractions that they didn't make it very far very fast. Here and there were breaks in the long line of stalls, spaces that had been
cleared away for games or gambling events. In one small arena, surrounded by hordes of shouting observers, two young men had stripped to the waist and were engaged in a hand-to-hand fight that looked bloody and completely free of rules. In another clearing, cheering boys were kneeling down around a circular area, watching the forward progress of a handful of small, scuttling desert creatures that appeared to be racing. Ephram paused to watch this for a moment, adding his own shouts of encouragement to the ugly, sand-colored creature in the lead, but Jordan jerked on his arm and tugged him forward. They passed clumps of men laying bets on mysterious outcomes, groups of boys holding unprofessional fights, vendors pushing through the crowds bawling out details about their merchandise, and a few enclaves of people who appeared to be playing various games of chance for high-stakes wagers.

“Oh, a chakki game,” Ephram exclaimed, coming to a complete standstill. “Look, there's John and Marcus. They'd let me onto their team.”

“You can't play chakki,” Jordan hissed.

“Why not? I've got money. See, a whole row of coppers—”

Jordan jerked his head at the two women, a step behind the men and trying hard not to stare like farm boys at all the sights around them. They had snuck into this fair a year ago, and it had been exciting, but there were twice as many booths to see this time out.