The Alleluia Files (30 page)

“I think I’ll be heading on now,” she said as politely as she could. “All I have to do is find my way to the bridge and I’m in Semorrah, right? So I don’t think I’ll wait.”

“Oh, I was hoping you—but I know you’re in a hurry to see your cousin,” Gena said. “Remember, we’ll be at the Greystone for three days if you want us for anything.”

“I think my cousin can get me everything I need,” Tamar said.

“And maybe next time we come to town, we’ll stay at the Berman House, and we can visit you,” Gena said a little more happily. “That might not be for a few more months, but look for us, all right?”

Tamar could not imagine how, in less than twenty-four hours, this woman could have formed enough of an attachment to her
to care if she ever saw Tamar again. “Certainly,” she said. “Enjoy your visit to the city!”

And she finally escaped, quickly walking out of the warehouse and not once looking back. It was sunny outside, and this close to the river, everything had a haloed, misty appearance. Although even that asset did little to make Eastgate attractive. The district reminded Tamar of the grimiest parts of Breven, all blocky buildings, oily cobblestones, and noxiously fumed air. Trucks lurched down every street or rumbled at idle before every warehouse door. Men dashed from doorway to doorway or shouted orders down from unwashed windows. Everything was a productive, graceless bustle.

Tamar wove her way down the sidewalks and streets, aiming for the river edge of town. It was impossible to mistake her direction. From every point of Eastgate, she could see the two bridges that spanned the Galilee River—the broad, serviceable, unadorned bridge that carried the majority of traffic, and the slim, elegant bridge that was the city’s most famous link to the Jordana coastline. It was to this second structure that Tamar made her way through the cluttered streets of Eastgate. White, lacy, and spider-thin, it was the first thing of true beauty that the traveler to Semorrah encountered, and it was impressive indeed.

She remembered this bridge. She had been here once with Conran and two others, maybe ten years ago. She couldn’t remember why; she thought Conran had had some contact in the city he had wanted to meet with, and he had brought the others as camouflage. Yes, Elinor and Dawn had traveled with him, posing as his wife and sister; Tamar had been his daughter, and they were a farming family in town for a holiday. Conran had never said much about the actual meeting with his friend, but in their free time, they had done a lot of sightseeing. It had been fun.

But instructive, of course. Conran had made several points about the idleness of the rich and the contrast between the wealthy and the poor, and he had shown them the abandoned slave markets where, centuries before, Jansai had sold their captured Edori. She had always suspected that Conran was part Edori, for he knew every detail of the tribe’s history and often made references to Edori values or lifestyles. She had never had the nerve to ask outright.

So she had a collection of visual memories in her head, of the fabulous bridge, of the delicate, marvelous, impossible architecture that made the whole city one extended fairy-tale castle. And now, as she crossed into Semorrah, the memories came clearer, snapped into sharper focus. She paused as she reached the center point of the bridge so she could gaze down at the water foaming below her, and then look up at the milk-white spires and dainty towers of the city itself. She knew it was an evil place, everyone said so; but certainly it was magnificent.

She spent her first hour in Semorrah merely wandering around. She paused at a street vendor’s to buy a meat pie and ate it as she walked. Not only the city, but the people in it seemed steeped in a gorgeous opulence; their clothes, their scents, their conversation seemed rich with useless but beautiful adornments. She had been feeling fairly unkempt before; now she felt positively filthy.

Although she had cleaned herself thoroughly back at the little inn, she found the public baths and paid the fee to spend an hour in a private room. If she was going to get a job at a fairly high-class establishment, she needed to look a little less like an urchin. Once she had washed herself vigorously, she checked herself in the mirror. The brown coloring was fading from her spiky hair, leaving it streaked with gold, but she decided that wasn’t particularly bad. She could dye it again before she left Semorrah. Her face looked weary and pinched, and her clothes were definitely motley. Those details she would have to attend to.

So she shopped the street bazaars till she found a stall of cheap but fashionable clothes, and she bought an embroidered emerald dress that made her eyes look painted on by a wide brush. She also bought a handful of inexpensive cosmetics and applied them as she stood before the mirror in the vendor’s booth. She didn’t know how it was she had acquired this skill, but she had always been good at making herself up, enhancing the features she wanted to emphasize, downplaying the others.

“Well, now, you don’t look half so much the starved rat you did as you walked in,” the vendor said approvingly when Tamar turned away from his mirror. She supposed that was a compliment. “My wife can do the same thing. Look like death one moment, take a little rouge and mascara, and look like an angel
of mercy the next minute. I admire a woman who knows her assets, that I do.”

Tamar practiced a smile on him. “Would you hire me?” she asked.

“If I had need for a worker, I would,” he said promptly.

She nodded. “Good. Thanks for the mirror.” And she left.

She’d already walked past the Berman House once, just to make sure it was the kind of place she had described to Arthur and his wife. But from the outside, it looked perfect: respectable, a little old-fashioned, in good repair. Not the kind of place to attract wild young men out for a good time, or the haughtiest of clientele always looking for fault with the hotel staff. Or Jansai. Or angels.

Now she returned to the Berman House and made her way to the back. The man who answered her knock was older, stately, uniformed, and authoritative; she knew at once he was the steward who oversaw the whole staff.

“I’m looking for work,” she said. “Are you hiring?”

He examined her for a moment in silence, and she endured the scrutiny without flinching. She had worked at enough big establishments, encountered enough housekeepers and butlers like this man to know they prized their talent at judging human nature above almost everything else. A fidgety woman looked untrustworthy. A slouching woman looked slovenly. A young girl looked flirtatious. An old woman looked weary. It was best to be neutral, indeterminate, and serene.

“We have a few positions available,” he said at last. “What are your skills?”

He didn’t look like he would favor a jack-of-all-trades, so she skipped all mention of horses and detailed her experience in the kitchen and bedchambers. She mentioned a few of the places in Luminaux where she had held jobs, giving the names of the people she had worked under; he nodded twice, which was a good sign.

“Can you serve?” he asked when she was done. “Wait tables?”

“I haven’t done it often,” she said promptly. “Only at taverns, where there was not much need for formality. But I didn’t spill anything and I didn’t mix up my orders.”

It was the right answer; it showed a willingness to work but didn’t claim skills above her ability. He nodded again.

“We have housing available to the employees who wish it,” he said next. “It is not required that you stay there, but it is preferred, so that you can be instantly called upon if there is a need. Would this suit you, or would you be looking for other lodgings?”

It would, in fact, be perfect. She had only worked one other place that offered this arrangement, and she hadn’t dared hope the Berman House would provide the same amenities. “I’d like to see the room,” she said, so she didn’t sound too eager.

That pleased him, too; she had a little discrimination. “Certainly,” he said. “When would you be willing to start?”

“Tonight, if you need me,” she said. “Later in the week if that is more convenient for you.”

“Tomorrow morning,” he said. “You may move in tonight, if you wish. Let me show you the room.”

And as easily as that, she found employment in Semorrah.

The next month was as close to contentment as Tamar had come in a long time. Until this year she had enjoyed her life in Luminaux, but the last few months had been so marked with terror and grief that she had forgotten what those easier days were like. The trip to Breven and back—the horror in Ileah—all had been brutal, bloody, awful episodes. She felt like she had been running, hiding, and fending off fear for so long that she might never remember how to unclench her stomach and relax again.

But life in Semorrah, life at the Berman House, was easy, easy, easy. Oh, certainly, she worked hard every day, and the hours were long, and the physical demands were severe. Jasper, the steward, saw to it that she was trained in every aspect of cooking and serving, so every day she was lifting heavy pots, stirring thick stews, carrying laden trays into the dining area. He also came to quickly trust her to go to market, so he sent her every other day to purchase potatoes, vegetables, spices, fruit, bread, and other staples. (He himself oversaw the selection of wines, while only the head cook was permitted to buy meat.) She loved the responsibility, loved the diversity of duty; she had never minded menial work, and she liked to stay busy. She knew that he liked her, and it pleased her more than she had thought possible. She had not realized that anyone’s good opinion mattered to her, especially the good opinion of someone she doubted she would know more than a few months.

Then again, perhaps she would stay in Semorrah forever. She could not return to Ileah, she was afraid to return to Luminaux, and she had no idea where to look for the rest of the scattered Jacobites. They must be somewhere, and someday she
would
seek them out again. But for now, Semorrah would take her in, give her shelter, peace, and purpose. For now, Semorrah was a haven.

On her free afternoons, she strolled through the city. It offered any number of diversions. She most often went to the concert halls and live theater productions (there were cheap seats in the back, good enough for her) and watched and listened in amazement. There were three art museums in the city and one historical museum, and she wandered through each of these slowly, gazing intently at every painting and sculpture, reading every word of each descriptive card. She went once to the science museum, but it confused her, all the electrical wires and generators and demonstrations of light, sound, and motion. She preferred the gentler contributions of humankind.

She also found the book fairs and the student exchanges where books on almost any topic could be purchased for pennies. She could have borrowed books for free at any of the city’s four libraries, but she did not want to put down her name and address on any application and so leave behind a record of her existence. But she did make herself go back to the main branch, at least one day a week, and ask for admittance to the old manuscripts room. Here, in carefully controlled cases, were a few of the documents left behind by the original settlers, composed in the old language that had died out six centuries ago. No one could read it anymore, except the oracles, a few learned angels, some of the engineers who studied the ancient texts—and the odd, natural linguist like Tamar.

One of her schoolteachers in Luminaux had discovered Tamar’s aptitude for language and mentioned it to Conran, who had thereafter insisted she spend an hour a day learning the settlers’ difficult, archaic phrases. She had hated it, aptitude or no, but she had learned it to please Conran. It had been five years or more since she had had a chance to look at any of those old texts, and every now and then she had wondered if she had forgotten the language. But here in Semorrah, as she puzzled over the words of the first Samarian visitors, she was reassured. She remembered enough of the language to understand their
references to weather, plague, and planting; and so all Conran’s insistence had not been in vain.

Though she still could not understand what value such a skill could have.

Although she went to the Semorran library every week, she much preferred the hours she spent reading other material— mostly badly written novels about unlikely lovers. Tamar had never had much time for reading in the past, though Conran was a great book lover and sometimes would entertain them all for hours by reading out loud from his favorite authors. Now she found entertainment and company in the historical romances he would have despised.

She herself was a little horrified to learn that her taste was so low; she could not stop herself from reading an entire series of love stories built around mortal women who had won the affections of angels. There was something so fantastical, so unreal, about the events depicted in these novels, that they took her completely away from her own dull, circumscribed life. And there was so much detail about daily life in the angel holds, an existence which heretofore she had not wasted a minute trying to imagine. After she had read the first six or so, she was sure she could behave with the correct etiquette at a dinner party at the Eyrie or sing the angelica’s part at the next Gloria.

One day, as she sat reading in the small garden behind the Berman House during her break, she was accosted by a young girl named Jenny who worked beside her in the kitchen. She didn’t think to close the book and hide the cover in time, and Jenny exclaimed aloud at the title.

“Oh, that’s my favorite!
Susannah the Stolen
. It’s so romantic! And it’s based on a true story, you know, which most of them aren’t. But I have to say, I never thought
you
were the type to read books like this.”

Tamar liked Jenny. She was a farmer’s daughter who had come to the city to escape the advances of a neighbor boy and “learn more about the world at large.” She was buxom, brunette, worldly, but unspoiled, and Jasper was training her to become assistant to the housekeeper. At times Tamar thought Jasper had a secret desire for the lively Jenny, though she doubted he would ever indulge it since she was at least thirty years his junior and he seemed far too proper. Still, it had crossed her mind that the match might be good for both of them.