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some of the fashions on display in the broadwindows—though she had seen things just as fine in Luminaux—and anyway, she had neither the money nor the idle vanity to see herself attired in such frivolous shoes and gowns. No self-respecting Jacobite did.
    When Zeke got distracted, it was at the doorway leading into an electronics shop, and what stopped him was the sound of singing pouring from some hidden source. He was not the only one to be swayed by the music. A crowd of perhaps twenty people had come to an almost absentminded halt in the street and on the sidewalks immediately outside the store, and they were all listening with rapt, bemused expressions.
    “What is it?” Tamar whispered, but Zeke shook his head without replying. She stood still and listened more intently. There were two singers performing in matchless harmony, a man and a woman whose voices rose and fell in a complex, shifting pattern of melody and descant. Their voices were passionate beyond description, beyond the ability of their bodies to contain them; it seemed as if their notes must shatter their hearts and then explode the wiring of whatever fabulous circuitry had carried the music so improbably to this street corner in Breven.
    It was the climax of the song, of course; within moments the duet reached its conclusion to the sound of thundering applause, likewise broadcast over the shop speakers to the spellbound audience in the street. It was a moment before Tamar thought to draw breath. She noticed others near her similarly gathering their wits and inhaling long drafts of air.
    “What was that?” she demanded quietly of Zeke. “One of those new recordings?”
    He shook his head. “The Gloria,” he said. “They seem to be carrying a live broadcast. You have just heard the angels singing, probably for the first time in your life.”
    Tamar stiffened. There was no skill, no superiority she was willing to cede to the angels. “It was not so fine,” she lied. “But why are they still singing the Gloria? I thought it began at dawn.”
    “A little after,” he said. “And continues all day, or so I’ve heard. What incredible music.”
    “Was that Bael that we just heard singing? Bael and the angelica?”
    Zeke shrugged. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t recognize his voice if he stopped me on the street and called my name. But they allhave voices like that. Voices to turn you into a believer.”
    She would have scolded him furiously for such a heretical remark, except that any of twenty people could have overheard her—and she herself had just witnessed the music that had so moved him. “Well, I’m glad you got a chance to listen to a few notes,” she said briskly. “But we can’t stand here loitering.”
    “We’ve got time,” he said. “Just a few more minutes.”
    She stared at him in true irritation, but before she could remonstrate, the voice of a new singer came lilting over the speakers. It quite literally turned Tamar in her tracks to face the open doorway, as if by such a minute adjustment in her stance she could more closely audit the music being performed five hundred miles away on the Plain of Sharon. This performer was a young woman singing completely a cappella, and her voice was so sweet and so true that it seemed elemental, unrehearsed, like starlight or autumn or sea. The verses melted into each other, wealth poured into wealth; the very air Tamar breathed seemed gilded by the singer’s richness. When the liquid silken outpouring of song came to a wistful conclusion, the silence was so empty that Tamar almost staggered forward into it. She put her hand out to steady herself against the wall of the shop. Her blood pounded suddenly into the back of her head; her eyes shut against a momentary dizziness. Suddenly her arm ached with a sharp and fire-edged pain.
    “Zeke,” she said brusquely. “We must go. Now.”
    “I know,” he said, and reluctantly started forward again, threading his way through the unmoving