Pandora's Genes (40 page)

He left her at the entrance to the Great Hall where the ceremony was to be held, then, feeling more self-conscious than ever, walked to the front of the room where Will and the Minister of Ceremonies were waiting.

The hall was lined with new draperies in the blue and gold colors of the Principal; blue and gold flowers echoed the theme in large vases on each side of the dais. Will, like Zach, was dressed in a new blue tunic, loose trousers, and soft boots; over his shoulders hung a dark cloak edged in yellow. He looked so frightened that Zach almost laughed, forgetting his own nervousness.

Together they stood in front of the nearly two hundred waiting guests. On one side sat a number of women from the Garden, including a tall, handsome blonde who once fixed Will with such a look of hatred that Zach, watching, felt his throat close. She was dressed in the sacred white robe of the Garden, so she could not conceivably be a Trader spy, but Zach kept glancing at her uneasily just the same.

A serving boy handed Zach his feathered lyre, and at a signal, he began to stroke it. He did not play nearly so well as he had before his years of imprisonment, but both Will and Evvy had insisted that nothing else would do for their wedding. The haunting sounds filled the room, and it became hushed until he had finished. He put the instrument down and turned, as did everyone, while Evvy seemed to float among the guests, toward her waiting groom. She looked, Zach thought, like pictures of brides in the ancient paintings. She had pulled the veil over her face, but even so, in her bearing and from the glossy, dark hair that spilled behind the veil, all present could see that she was perhaps the most beautiful woman in a world where all women possessed beauty by virtue of their scarcity.

She handed the bunch of flowers she was carrying to a young girl from the Garden, then held out her hands to Will. They turned to listen as the Minister of Ceremonies began to read the civil and sacred words. Zach could sense Evvy trembling next to him and realized that his own knees were shaking.

He scarcely heard a word, remembering a similar ceremony nearly twenty years ago, when he had been thus joined to Leya, with Will there beside him as an invisible presence.

The Minister lifted Evvy’s veil to reveal her face, flushed and smiling, her plum-colored eyes sparkling. Will looked across at her like a young boy who has just discovered love. It remained only to say the final words, binding them forever, when the room erupted in flame.

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