The Alleluia Files (67 page)

Now everyone in the room was looking at Lucinda. Her eyes had widened with disbelief; shock had blanked her face. Before she could speak, Conran muttered, “Yes, well, she’s the only one of the lot with a soul, so you may as well have her if you’ve got to have someone,” and Ben Harm had said, “Acceptable, but barely.”

“Jecoliah?” Christian asked, still watching Lucinda. “Do you think you could propose Lucinda’s name to
Jehovah
and receive a coherent reply?”

“Actually,” Jecoliah said, “I asked him the day before I left for this conference if he had yet determined the name of the next Archangel.”

“And he said?”

“That Lucinda should be given the office in one year’s time.”

“But—” Lucinda said, but other voices drowned her out. “One year!” “We cannot wait so long!” “And in the meantime?” Christian raised his hands to call for silence.

“So we must find an interim Archangel to finish out Bael’s term, is that what
Jehovah
has suggested?”

“Not a bad idea,” Mercy said. “That will give us time to train Lucinda in the ways of Samaria—for you may want her innocent, but you don’t want her ignorant, or there will be no end of trouble!”

“But,” Lucinda said.

“And for interim Archangel,” Jared said with a smile, “there can be only one choice. I think we are all agreed on that.”

“Yes,” Christian said softly. “Mercy? Are you prepared to move to Semorrah for a year? I will gladly house you here, or help you find whatever accommodations suit you better.”

Now Mercy looked as startled and uncertain as Lucinda.
“Me?”
she exclaimed. “Well, I’ll serve any way I can, of course, but I don’t think I—”

“You’re the only one,” Jared told her. “We have a rough year ahead of us, and we will need someone with bottomless resources of civility and grace. You are our old order. Lucinda”—and he stretched a hand across the table toward the other angel—”is our new. If you cannot keep us all in harmony for the next year, then no one can, and we will have no world to turn over to Lucinda for safekeeping.”

“But I—well, certainly you can put it up for a vote, and if this is what the grand council wants—and I’ll do what I can—but—”

“But I don’t know why you think I should be the Archangel after Mercy,” Lucinda finally managed to say. “I know nothing about your politics or your way of life. And I have no interest in power, religious or temporal. I’ve never given it a thought in my life.”

“Yes, and that’s why it must be you,” Jared said gravely. “For nearly twenty years Samaria has been in the hands of a man who
did
care greatly for power. And now we need someone who does not. Someone who can see clearly, eyes unclouded by prejudice, and mind unfettered by fear. If there is something you are afraid of, I have yet to see it. And if there is someone you cannot tolerate, I have not met that man. You are our fresh hope, Lucinda, as we enter a perilous new course. Won’t you agree to help us? We will all be there to help you.”

There was another moment of taut silence, which Conran broke with a snort and a scowl. “Well,
I
won’t be,” he said. “You just damn well better count me out.”

And this time Tamar could not help herself. That tense and respectful silence was broken by the sound of her smothered laughter, which she could not restrain and could not entirely muffle. At first everyone around the table tried to quell her with looks of reproof and indignation, but one by one they gradually succumbed to the contagion of her merriment. First Jared, then Christian, then Mercy began to smile, and soon everyone else grinned or chuckled along. Lucinda was the last to give in, for she still seemed more stupefied than gratified, but finally she, too, began to smile shyly. The room seemed full of it, Tamar thought a few minutes later as she finally managed to choke down her last giggles—not laughter, after all, but hope.

It was late that evening before Tamar had a chance to apologize for that outburst to anyone, and when she did, it was to Jared. He had pried himself free from the formal dinner much later than he had promised he would (but she had expected that; she had refused to accompany him to the meal, since she simply could not bear another discussion on the future of Samaria) and joined her on Christian Avalone’s rooftop garden. They stood with their arms crossed on the brick wall that formed the outer boundary of the building, and looked down at the fantastical lights of the city.

“Sorry,” she said, though she did not, even now, feel particularly sorry. “About laughing like that. But it was funny, you know, everyone so serious about the fate of the world and Con-ran, as usual, thinking only of himself—”

Jared patted her absently on the back as if to accept her apology. “I like Conran, though,” the angel said. “Old bastard that he is.”

“So do I,” Tamar replied. They observed a brief moment of silence before she ventured a cautious question. “And do you mind?”

“Mind what?”

“Being left out like that. Not being named Archangel. I know it’s something you wanted.”

Eyes still fixed on the lights below, Jared said slowly, “No, I never did want to be Archangel. My name was brought up often enough as a possibility, though, and I was never sure why. Oh, I’m the right age and I look the part, I suppose, and people like me, but—Archangel? I’ve always been something of a dilettante. I’ve never even carried out the duties at my own hold with much fervor. I would have made a very bad Archangel.”

“So what do you do now?”

“Now … I think I will start to become the sort of man who
would
have made a good Archangel. Pay more attention to Monteverde and Gaza. Take up my responsibilities. Become an ally to Mercy, and then to Lucinda—a smart, well-informed, cunning ally. I need to be more deeply involved in the changing world around me, and to do that, I need to be more anchored to my own home.”

His words took him farther and farther from a vagabond Jacobite who, suddenly, had no purpose in her own world. Tamar
felt an unaccountable depression steal over her, a hopelessness she hadn’t felt since that day in the Jansai truck when this very same angel lifted his voice to pray to the god for rain.

No god, of course; but there had been rain. And since that day, she had felt secure in the belief that the angel loved her. But that was on the verge of death and in the euphoria of reprieve. She could not imagine there was a place for her back in his very real world. Not a place for her anywhere. To prevent him from asking the question she had no idea how to answer—
And what do you plan to do now
?—she spoke quickly and almost at random.

“Home. That’s something I haven’t ever had. Maybe now that all the Jacobites are safe, I can return to Luminaux. Or maybe go back to Ysral. I suppose that’s where Conran’s going.”

But now Jared had turned to look at her, had shifted his body so that his hip rested against the brick wall and he had a hand free to hold out to her. As he did.

“You have a home with me, Tamar,” he said quietly. “Even if the walls of my hold tumbled down around us and all the other angels turned me out, you would still have a home with me. In my heart. Anywhere I happened to be. I love you. Come to Monteverde with me and be my wife.”

Her ears were ringing; her blood was shouting; this was delirium, or this was joy. But through the pandemonium, she managed to reply with a sort of calm derision. “Your angels and your family certainly would turn you out of Monteverde if you came home With me as your bride. A Jacobite? A heathen? I don’t think I would be very welcome.”

“Nonsense,” Jared replied, and a teasing note crept into his voice. “You come from very honorable angel stock, after all. And do you forget that your sister will be Archangel in less than a year’s time? A fancy enough pedigree for anyone, I should think.”

“That’s my sister,” she argued. “I’m much less presentable.”

“Well, it’s true that you’re evil-tempered and unpredictable,” Jared said thoughtfully. “And if I had to entertain your aunt Gretchen more than once every six months, I’d consider gruesome forms of murder. And when your sister comes to visit, she’ll no doubt bring along her outlandish Edori lover, who’s
far less presentable than you. But I think I can bear all those trials. Far more easily than I could bear losing you.”

He had dropped his hand on her shoulder and now he drew her nearer, though she stubbornly resisted falling into his arms. One more time in that winged embrace and she would never be able to wrench herself free. “Well,” she said, her eyes on her feet and her voice very low, “I could come for a while. Stay for a little bit. See how I liked it. And leave if you—when you— if you got tired of having me around—”

“Splendid!” Jared exclaimed, and pulled her emphatically against his chest. Her heart bounced against her ribs like a ball thrown down a stairwell. “Then you’ll stay forever! We’ll set the wedding date as soon as you’ve had a chance to meet my mother.”

“But—” she said, but, like Lucinda, got no chance to finish her protest. Jared closed her mouth with a kiss and all her racing thoughts, all her jumbled arguments, grew tame and docile with that pressure. Everything ended here, or everything began; the world was made new. She put her hands tentatively up to his shoulders, felt the marvelous interplay of muscle and bone, resiliency and strength. His wings settled around her like so much tangible starlight, ice-white and glowing in the dark, and for her, for the rest of her life, those would always be the colors and textures of home.