“Well, this has been the best part of the trip so far,” a young woman named Mira told Jared afterward. She and a much older escort had been seated at the captain’s table with him; she was slim, chic, bored, and beautiful. She had smiled at him covertly all during dinner whenever her friend had become engrossed in conversation with someone else. Jared suspected she was not an angel-seeker in the classic sense, but a woman who had no qualms about trading her youth and beauty for status and acquisitions. “The rest of the entertainment has been quite dull by comparison.”
“Thank you,” Jared replied gravely. “I am so rarely able to outperform wealthy amateurs and the retired Luminaux musicians who sign on with cruise ships such as this.”
Mira narrowed her eyes at him, trying to decide if he was jesting or chastising her, but the captain interrupted them before she could reply. “Everyone has been raving about your singing,” the man said. “And those who couldn’t cram themselves into the theater are complaining loudly about what they’ve missed. Would you be willing to stay on board another day and sing again tomorrow night?”
Jared thought quickly. The ship cruised at a rate much slower than he could fly, yet it did go forward toward their destination. And the rest could not hurt Tamar, even if she insisted on staying cooped up in their cabin for the next whole day. And they were in absolutely no danger from Jansai, here on a pleasure boat in the middle of the ocean. “I hate to impose,” he said, just to make sure the offer was sincere.
“No imposition! An honor! A favor to me and my guests.”
“Then we’ll be glad to stay another day.”
After that, it was impossible to leave without tarrying for a drink or two, so all in all it was much later than Jared had planned before he returned to his stateroom. He crept in quietly, thinking Tamar must be asleep already, and she was. She had considerately left a small sidewall light on for him.
He trod silently to the bed and gazed down at her still form. Now he could study her with an intentness he was not rude enough to attempt while she was awake. Asleep, she was relaxed and unguarded, her face open and serene; there was none of that fierce suspicion that colored her every waking expression. She looked so young.
She looked so familiar.
The first time he had seen her, back in Ileah, he had thought hers was a face he should know, though he had put the thought down to a wayward fancy. Now he frowned, studying her more closely, running his eyes over the angle of her cheekbones and the shape of her closed eyes. She looked like someone he should remember, but he could not place the features. He watched her till she turned restlessly in her sleep, almost as if embarrassed by the continued scrutiny, and then he shrugged and moved away.
There was a plush curved-back chaise lounge and a couple of armchairs in the attached sitting room, but neither of these would accommodate a sleeping angel. With a sigh of resignation, Jared plundered the pillows from the chairs and arranged himself as best he could on the carpeted floor, gathering his wings close about him for a blanket. He did not expect to sleep well but, drugged by exhaustion, he did; and it was full morning before he even stirred.
To find Tamar standing over him, arms akimbo, fully dressed. “That can’t be very comfortable,” she said. “Why didn’t you wake me up last night and tell me to sleep on this little curvy couch thing?”
“I didn’t want to wake you,” he murmured, rubbing his eyes and stifling a yawn. “You looked so peaceful.”
“Well, I bet you have a horrible ache in your neck from sleeping like that all night.”
Jared sat up. Shoulders and arms a little stiff but the hard floor had done him no harm. “No, I’m all right. How are you? How’s your headache?”
“I feel fine, thank you for asking,” she said very precisely, as if, by pronouncing the words very clearly, she could impress the answer on his brain and prevent him from asking again. “How was your little concert last night?”
“Everyone loved me,” he said, hauling himself to his feet. He felt unkempt; he needed a quick shave and shower. “So much so that they invited me—us—to stay over another day.”
She gave him a darkling look. “And you said?”
“We’d stay. No reason not to.”
Tamar grimaced and shook her head. “Great. So we’re stuck here another whole day?”
“Are you in any particular hurry to get to Ysral?”
“No, but—”
“Then stop complaining. Try stepping outside of the cabin for a couple hours. You might enjoy yourself.”
She glanced down at her tunic and leggings, now wrinkled from a day of travel. “I don’t feel like I really fit in.”
Jared grinned. This was the first time he had seen her show an interest in her appearance. “I’ve no doubt,” he said solemnly, “that there is a boutique on board that will be able to satisfy your every fashion requirement.”
She scowled. “Well, I don’t have enough money to spend on such silly things and I refuse to let you spend any more of yours.”
“Trust me,” he said. “It will be free, and given with delight. A small price for the shipowners to pay for the privilege of having an angel aboard as a special guest. Give me twenty minutes to make myself presentable and I will prove it to you.”
Tamar made a small sound of contempt but said nothing as Jared slipped inside the luxurious bathing room. Breakfast first, the angel decided as he shaved, and then they would see how the Luminaux merchants would outfit this vagabond girl.
The day that followed was one of the most pleasant Jared could remember spending in the recent months of his life. While Tamar commented in a constant, sarcastic undervoice on the superficial wasteful life of the Luminauzi elite, she could not help but enjoy some of the pleasures wealth could bring. She thought the food was marvelous, for instance, and ate heartily; Jared suspected that at many times in her life she had not had enough to eat, which explained both her slender figure and her appetite now. She was vociferously disdainful when they found not one but three boutiques on the lower levels of the cruise ship (although one catered exclusively to men). That didn’t stop her from going in and trying on fifty different outfits, by Jared’s count. The clerk at the second store tried to convince her to buy two complete ensembles—one for day wear, one for evening— but she resisted mightily until the woman came over for a whispered conference with Jared.
“Is she afraid of the cost?” the salesclerk asked the angel. “For the captain has assured me this is his gift to you in recompense for your wonderful conceit last night.”
“They’re free, Tamar,” Jared called out to her. The word felt peculiar and delicious on his tongue. Tamar. He had only addressed her by name once or twice before. “The captain’s gift to you. You’ll offend him if you do not accept at least two outfits.”
“I am not so greedy,” she shot back at him, but as she spoke she stood in front of a tall mirror, admiring herself in a gown of dark green. She had already chosen an embroidered silver tunic and trousers (for casual wear, of course), but she seemed to be having difficulty parting with this number.
“We’ll take them both,” Jared told the salesclerk. “She’ll wear the silver now, and you can have the gown sent to our cabin.” He gave her the stateroom number while the saleswoman beamed with pride.
“We’re taking advantage of these kind people,” Tamar told him a few minutes later as they strolled around the upper deck and watched the ocean unroll beneath them.
“The only payment they want is a little graciousness from you,” Jared replied. “Do you think you can manage that?”
“Well, I’m not sure,” she growled. “I don’t think it’s in my repertoire.”
“Shall we practice before dinner? I’ll be the captain and you can be—well, you can be yourself. Can you give me a big smile and say thank you?”
She instead gave him a black scowl but was unable to hold the frown in place. Instead, an infectious laugh broke through. “Why, Captain! I do so much adore the beautiful n
ew clothes! How can I ever thank you enough? Shall I come to your cabin in the middle of the night and show you the depths of my appreciation?”
“I don’t think you need to go quite that far.”
“No? Good thing we’re rehearsing this in advance or I would have committed a terrible social error.”
They were interrupted frequently by passengers coming up to thank the angel again for his concert and ask for an introduction to his lovely friend. Tamar never did more than smile and murmur a quick thank you, but that was good enough since the visitors really wanted to talk to the angel. She could not contain her edged remarks as soon as they’d drifted out of earshot, however, and her acid observations had Jared laughing helplessly more than once.
When Mira and her companion paused to say a few words, Tamar dutifully engaged the older man in conversation while Mira delicately flirted with the angel. As soon as the two had moved off, hand in hand, Tamar gave Jared a wicked sideways glance.
“I just had the best idea,” she said. “If you’re too uncomfortable sleeping on the floor tonight, I can think of a bed on this ship that would give you a very warm welcome.”
“I think there’s already two in that bed,” he said.
“How much would you like to bet,” she said softly, “that if you wanted a place on her pillow, she’d be the only one in that bed?”
“You’d lose,” Jared replied. “He paid for the cabin.”
“She’d still find a way. I’ll wager if you will.”
“You don’t have a dollar to bet with. Besides, the only way to find out is for me to try to seduce her, and I don’t want to.”
“Don’t let me hold you back,” she said, a trace of malice in her voice. “I’d rather sleep in the room alone, anyway.”
“I can’t think of circumstances,” he said in clearly enunciated words, “under which she would be my type.”
“But I know so little about you,” she purred, and she had gotten Mira’s inflection exactly. “What exactly is your type?”
Lost souls with the courage of heroines, he wanted to say, but did not. “Why, Tamar, I didn’t know you were so interested,” he said softly instead, as much for the pleasure of using her name as for the chance of provoking her. “You’ve never seemed too fond of angels, so I’d abandoned hope long ago, but if you think you’d like to please me—”
“It would please me to see you dumped into the ocean,” she snapped, but then she burst out laughing about two seconds after he did. The laughter changed her face utterly, made her glow with an unsuspected radiance. This was Tamar as she was meant to be, he thought; how many times in her life had she had the chance?
After they strolled around the deck, Jared took her below to show her the theater, and then they investigated the game rooms nearby. These were half-full with passengers pursuing every imaginable entertainment. There were card games, board games, and athletic contests, and two harpsichords had been set up in a corner for those who wished to practice their music. There was a library for the readers, a buffet for the eaters, and a guided tour for the curious.
“What’s your pleasure?” Jared asked.
“I’ve never played any of these,” she said, eyeing the board games and their array of chips, marbles, and counters. “Are they hard to learn?”
“Oh, for dull, silly girls like you, they might be,” Jared said offhandedly.
“Fine! Then I won’t ask to learn!”
“No, no, only joking. Here, Devil’s Hand is one of my favorites. You start with ten colored marbles lined up on each end of the board—”
It was a game simple to learn, though nuanced with complex strategies, and Tamar delighted him by learning it rapidly. He had thought she might take to a game like this, for it required quick wits, a lively sense of self-preservation, and a streak of pure though theoretical ruthlessness which he’d had no doubt she’d be able to muster. On the fourth game, she almost defeated him; on the fifth one, she did.
“Oh, I like this,” she exclaimed. “Let’s play again.”
“Let’s make it more interesting,” he said. “Let’s play doubles.”
There were two older, unalarming men sitting nearby, playing their own round of Devil’s Hand. Invited to join the angel and his friend, they assented with alacrity, though they refused to play on the same team.
“I’ll take the young lady, though, if she’ll have me,” said one, smiling over at Tamar in a friendly way. Jared was relieved to see her smile back. “I’ve been watching you. You learn fast.”
“Well, I’ve never said no to an angel before,” said his friend. “I think we’re all set.”
So they played four more matches, splitting the victories evenly. Tamar was jubilant when they finally left the room, though Jared cautioned her not to be an unbearable winner.
“I will be if I want to be,” was her instant response. “Let’s go back and play tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow we’ll be on our way to Ysral.”
“Even better.”
Dinner was a little more of a strain. Mira and Tamar had a hard time covering their dislike of each other, though Mira made no ill-natured remarks and Tamar said almost nothing at all. But it fell to the men to make most of the conversation, a task they were not used to with pretty women at the table, so talk was disjointed and frequently clumsy. Everyone was just as glad when the meal was over and it was time for the angel’s performance.
The concert went well again this night. With Tamar in the audience, Jared didn’t mind singing a little longer, so he took the time to perform all the requests that listeners called out to him. He enjoyed singing, and he felt a strange, liquid elation at the knowledge that Tamar was listening to every note, every word. It did not escape his notice that while he sang his Kiss hazed over with a muted golden light. He would have given a lot to be close enough to see if Tamar’s Kiss also reacted to the stimulus of his singing.
But, “You have quite an impressive range” was all she said as they finally headed back to their cabin.
“You liked the concert?” he couldn’t help asking.
She unlocked the door and preceded him inside. “I imagine everyone did,” she said.
This night, she insisted he take the bed while she slept on the chaise lounge, where, as she pointed out, her body was more likely to fit. He agreed only when she told him she would sleep there whether or not he lay on the floor, and he knew she was stubborn enough to do so. So he got a good night’s sleep, and she claimed that she did, and the next morning they resumed their interrupted trip to Ysral.
It was somehow more awkward and more intimate, this flight over the eastern half of the ocean. Jared had carried this particular bundle from Azolay to the Samarian coast, and from Marquet to the middle of the ocean without feeling quite this degree of self-consciousness. Maybe because, during those first legs of the journey, Tamar had been half-sick and fainting, almost oblivious to her surroundings—and now she was alert, interested, and very animated. It was hard to overlook or ignore her.
Not that he wanted to. But they were suspended over the ocean, by the god’s great grace, and she was completely helpless to free herself from him. It did not seem like the courteous time to begin a campaign of flirtation.
So he took her in his arms, cradled her against his chest, asked civilly if she was comfortable, and did not give in to the impulse to hold her tighter than necessary. And flew across the great, variegated sea with as much speed as he could generate.
She wanted to see everything; she Wanted everything explained. “Where’s that boat from? Why is the water different colors? Why is it so much colder up here? How fast can you fly? How many miles can you cover in a day? How fast do the boats go? Is that an island? Could we land there if we had to? When will we be in Ysral?”
She did not seem to be nearly as self-conscious as he was, so by and by his initial awkwardness wore off. And yet, despite the brisk ocean breeze, despite the mingled odors of salt and fish and seaweed that laced the heavy
air, he never lost the fresh-washed smell of her hair or the sweet, unidentifiable scent that he thought must be the natural perfume of Tamar’s skin.
After an hour or two she fell mostly silent, speaking only at rare intervals, and eventually she began dozing with her head propped against his chest. Jared flew on more rapidly now that he could concentrate on the task, and he watched the miles melt away below them. The ship captain had told him they were only three hundred miles from Ysral; it would be an effort, but they could probably make it that far by early nightfall.
And then they must seek out the Jacobites and then … well, Jared had not thought beyond that. Getting Tamar to safety had become his only concern.
They were possibly another hundred miles from the coast (two or three hours’ flying time) when Jared became aware of Tamar growing limp and heavy in his arms. It was like she had crossed from sleep into coma, and her bones increased their weight and her muscles lapsed into elasticity. It reminded him of how she had felt on the first part of the flight, between Bethel and Marquet, and he was instantly alarmed.
“Tamar,” he called to her over the noise of the wind and his own wingbeats. “Tamar? Are you awake? Is your headache back?”
She did not answer, did not stir. Her mouth had fallen open and bruises seemed to have appeared, magically, under her eyes. Quickly, Jared dropped down, losing altitude, hoping the thicker air closer to the water would revive her, but she did not shift position. He tightened his grip, shaking her a little, but nothing made her respond.
Now in a virtual panic, he cruised as close to the water as he dared. He continued speaking her name in low urgent tones, hoping the sound of his voice would penetrate her guarded dreaming. He wished there was someplace he could land—the smallest rock, a mere foothold—so he could throw cold ocean water across her face and shock her awake. But there was nothing.
He must find a ship, and quickly. Jovah guide them, now as never before, for this must be a safe ship, a place he could land with the sleeping Jacobite.