The Defector

by J. C. Andrijeski

  Revik felt his jaw harden more.

  He found himself remembering his interaction with Dalejem that first day, out in the field with the guns, and the pain in his chest worsened.

  “Why?” Balidor said, exasperated. “Why did you not ask, brother?”

  Revik looked back at the fire.

  For a moment he actually tried to think about the other’s question.

  But he couldn’t clear his mind enough to do that, either, certainly not long enough to come up with any kind of real answer.

  Anger coursed through his light, but it was more than that.

  Or maybe it wasn’t anger at all.

  He felt his aleimi sparking around him in waves, and realized they were being overheard. It felt like every fucking seer in this part of the construct was listening to them now, and the scrutiny sent Revik’s light into another sparking flare, causing Balidor’s hand to tighten on his arm.

  “Revik. Do you need help to deal with this?” he said, lower.

  “Are you offering, brother?” Revik asked humorlessly.

  Balidor flinched. “That is not the kind of help that I––”

  “Then no,” Revik said, giving him a harder stare.

  Returning that look, Balidor frowned.

  “You know I cannot––” he began.

  When Revik let out a harsh laugh, clicking as he shook his head, the Adhipan leader sent out a wave of denser light, gripped his arm harder.

  “Dehgoies, you are not thinking clearly. You are not… or you would not question this!”

  Revik only shook his head.

  His vision blurred and he realized tears had come to his eyes.

  Embarrassment touched him, but he was almost beyond the point of caring about that, either. What the fuck did it matter out here? He didn’t know these seers. He never would know them. Even so, he didn’t reach up to wipe the tears away. Pride, maybe. Or maybe he just couldn’t make himself move enough to do it. Maybe he didn’t trust himself not to punch the Adhipan seer in the face once he’d moved even that much.

  Even so, he knew the other seer was right.

  He was losing control over his light.

  He couldn’t even force himself to try. Maybe he couldn’t even force himself to want to try by then. But he couldn’t bring himself to act either, at least not the way Balidor seemed to want him to. Who the fuck was he going to ask? Seriously?

  With Dalejem gone, and clearly avoiding him, and the rest of them sitting here, listening to this, who the hell could he possibly ask?

  Next to him, Balidor clicked softly, although if it was in regret, sympathy, disbelief or irritation, Revik didn’t let himself think about.

  “You know I cannot,” Balidor said again, his voice gentle that time. “Even if that was a serious question… and I strongly suspect it was not… we do not permit sex between subordinates and their commanding officers in the Adhipan. Which is what I am to you right now, brother, whether you want to acknowledge that fact or not.”

  Revik nodded, wiping his face in spite of himself.

  When he didn’t speak, Balidor shook his arm.

  “Is there no one you would ask?” he said, his voice frustrated. “I am serious, Dehgoies. You have to deal with this. Tonight.”

  “Is that an order?” Revik asked, not hiding the bitterness in his words.

  “Yes,” Balidor said, his voice holding a thread of his own anger. “It is an order, by the gods. And if you won’t adhere to it, then I’ll have some of my people take you twenty miles down the mountain to a human brothel. You can deal with it there, if you’re too much of a coward to ask anyone here. But you will deal with it, Dehgoies. Tonight.”

  Revik felt his jaw harden more.

  Balidor wasn’t finished, though.

  “I am perfectly serious about the threat,” he said, sharper. “You know the stakes out here. I cannot have you losing control… not any more than you have already. Not with Kali less than a mile away, and her husband with her. You are on the verge of losing control in a way that endangers things now, and I don’t think any amount of masturbation is going to fix it at this point, brother,” he added, his words brutally precise.

  “You need another’s light. I would prefer if you asked a seer for that reason, versus the human brothel option… and not only for the logistical nightmare of losing three of my best assets for two days while they risk their lives, interacting with human locals simply to get one of their brothers laid.”

  Revik felt those words hit at him, too.

  He didn’t answer, though.

  As if feeling some flicker of his thoughts, Balidor gripped him again, harder.

  “They won’t ask you, brother,” he said, his voice still hard. “You need to hear me on this. I won’t let them ask you. Not when you are in this state. You need to ask one of them yourself. I will not rescind that order, so don’t even bother hoping for that occurrence.”

  There was a silence.

  Then Revik nodded again.

  When he still didn’t speak, Balidor let out an irritated-sounding sigh.

  Releasing Revik’s arm abruptly, he rose to his feet.

  Revik felt the pulse of defeat in the other’s removal of himself.

  He expected the Adhipan seer to leave right away, but he didn’t; Balidor only stood there instead, looking down at him. When Revik finally realized that Balidor would wait here, perhaps indefinitely, until Revik acknowledged him in some way, he looked up.

  Balidor locked gazes with him once he had.

  “I mean it, Revik.” His words bordered on cold, once more sounding like a command. Firelight reflected in those gray eyes, turning them orange, even as a faint frown touched the seer’s mouth. “I will give you one hour to ask someone. If you have not by then, you might as well gear up. I will have Gar and Vikram take you to the nearest human city this very night, with enough local currency to handle the problem. If you are thinking this threat is just me being theatrical, brother, you would be wrong.”

  With that, Balidor finally walked away.

  Eighteen

  Offer

  Revik knew from the silence that the other seers around the campfire heard every word.

  He felt flickers of curiosity again, as the seers sitting on the far side of the fire watched him. He could feel them wondering, almost on the surface of their lights and minds, what he would do. He even felt some wondering specifically if he would really walk twenty miles down a hill just to avoid humiliating himself in front of them again.

  Feeling those pulses and flickers, Revik felt his jaw harden.

  Before he knew he meant to, he spoke aloud.

  He didn’t even bother with the Barrier.

  “You heard him,” he said. “You know what I am asking of you.”

  The silence deepened.

  When Revik continued to turn over words, Ontari smiled, blowing warmth through the Barrier space.

  Was there a question in that, brother? he sent softly.

  Revik heard the teasing there, and felt the pain in his chest worsen.

  He stared at the fire, knowing tears likely ran down his face from the way the flickering flames blurred and clicked back into focus.

  He didn’t care anymore.

  He couldn’t think well enough to care.

  “Do you need a formal question?” he said finally.

  He could feel all of their attention on him now.

  Clearing his throat, he wiped his face with the heel of his hand.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” he said, clicking softly as he shook his head.

  He said it quietly, but he could feel that most of them heard him.

  “We need a question, brother,” Poresh said carefully. His voice was less flippant than Ontari’s had been, his eyes more serious. “It doesn’t have to be formal. But Adhipan Balidor was pretty specific with us. Very specific, I would say.”

  Others murmured agreement as Revik listened.

  He thought about that.
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br />   After another moment, he shoved it from his mind, clicking to himself again, sharper that time, and in more irritation. He combed his fingers through his hair, giving up in the same set of seconds. He wouldn’t handle this gracefully.

  He never had handled this gracefully.

  Usually he was drunk when he approached strangers.

  When he looked up next, he sighed openly, letting them feel his frustration.

  “How about an offer, instead of a question?” he said, meeting Poresh’s gaze.

  He glanced around at other faces, hearing the silence deepen, past the crackling of the fire, which overpowered the sounds of the jungle. He didn’t know how to read that silence. He couldn’t read any of them, really, although they could clearly read him.

  “You know I need…” He hesitated on the word, turning it over on his tongue, then walking past it with his mind. “…I don’t have anything to offer in return,” he added. “It would be a favor. I am asking for a favor, from one of you. I would accept that favor from any of you. With gratitude.”

  The silence continued.

  Revik cleared his throat, gesturing vaguely with one hand.

  “I have no money,” he added, still staring into the fire.

  He knew he was repeating himself, but couldn’t seem to shut up, maybe so he wouldn’t have to listen to their collective non-answer.

  “…I have nothing to trade. I am asking… offering. To whoever is willing.”

  He fought with what else he could say, then fell silent, shaking his head.

  He’d asked the question.

  He’d done it, more or less coherently.

  What the hell else did they want from him?

  Wasn’t that what Balidor wanted of him? To offer himself?

  Or would the Adhipan leader still make him walk twenty miles through the jungle in the middle of the night, looking for some mountain shithole where he could buy sex from an impoverished human? Would he force Revik to do it even after he’d asked, simply for getting a resounding silence in response?

  Revik honestly didn’t know.

  For all he knew, Balidor would order one of his people to take him up on it. Treat it as hardship duty, offer them some kind of perk for jerking off the ex-Rook for a few hours.

  Revik wasn’t even sure which thing he would prefer at that point.

  Or which thing he wanted less.

  He clicked again, softly, but didn’t look up at any of them.

  He considered leaving.

  He considered just walking out, fuck what Balidor said, but Vikram spoke up before Revik could put that thought into action, either.

  “Male?” Vikram said cautiously. “Female?”

  Revik shook his head, once. “I do not care.”

  “What about one of each?” Dalai said, her voice teasing.

  Revik met her gaze. “I do not care about that, either, sister.”

  The silence deepened again.

  “You do realize what you just did?” Ontari said, breaking the silence with a near-laugh. “You just offered yourself to the entire camp, brother. All of us in hearing, anyway. What will you do if we all take you up on it?”

  A few of the other seers sitting around him smiled.

  Then someone stood up from a log on the other end of the fire.

  Revik glanced over in time to see Dalejem’s back as he left.

  He hadn’t known he was there, hadn’t seen him sitting there in the dark, behind Poresh and Garensche and a few others, still wearing the armored vest from the walk through the jungle. Revik hadn’t felt his light, presumably because Dalejem hadn’t wanted him to feel it.

  Now that he saw him, Revik felt his face flush, realizing all that he’d heard.

  But he knew he needn’t have bothered with that.

  Dalejem heard and saw everything with Terian, in that clearing.

  He’d obviously made up his mind about him then.

  Even so, Revik found himself watching as the tall seer with the streaked black and brown hair walked away from the fire pit with measured steps, without so much as a backwards glance. They might have been talking about the weather and he’d simply gotten bored… or decided it was time for him to go to bed.

  Revik watched his outline recede, at least until the darkness of the night and overhanging trees swallowed him. He felt nothing off the other male’s light. He felt not a ripple of reaction, much less a thought aimed in Revik’s direction.

  From his light, he might not have heard Revik’s offer at all.

  Ontari glanced over his shoulder in the same pause, following Dalejem’s retreat with his eyes before he looked back at Revik, quirking an eyebrow.

  Revik felt the pain in his chest worsen.

  By then, he had to fight to keep it off his face.

  Eventually he could only stare at the fire again, not seeing it.

  The pain pooled somewhere in his chest as the silence stretched.

  It sharpened the longer he sat there, until it began to slide back into the forward areas of his light, to tug at different segments of his aleimi, to cloud his mind. He remembered what Terian had said, about Council-approved whores and his pain worsened, even as he considered leaving again… just walking the fuck out.

  Maybe a human would be better.

  Anything would be better than this.

  He was contemplating getting up––

  When someone stood in front of him, blocking the firelight from his view.

  Revik looked up at the shadowy outline, and saw Dalai standing there, with her boyfriend, the muscular seer named Nurek. They were holding hands.

  When Revik glanced up, she smiled at him, holding out a hand to him, too.

  “I think we got here first, brother,” she said, her voice soft. “Is that all right?”

  He stared at her hand.

  Briefly, that heavier feeling of defeat swam over him, something like surrender mixed with the knowledge that, even if this was pure charity, he wasn’t in a position to refuse.

  He barely hesitated before he nodded.

  He slid his fingers into hers when she offered them again.

  He was standing an instant later, letting her lead him towards the row of tents on the other side of the fire––the opposite side of the jungle into which Dalejem had disappeared.

  Maybe it should have told him something, that he noted that.

  Maybe it should have told him something, that he was thinking about Dalejem right then, even after the older seer left the campfire without giving him so much as a glance.

  But Revik couldn’t deal with that right then, either.

  Nineteen

  Opened And Half-Willing

  Revik barely entered the tent with them before they started undressing him.

  He just stood there as they did it, unsure if he should try to help.

  They seemed to know what they were doing, what they wanted.

  Dalai stood in front of him, unhooking the vest he wore, only to have Nurek pull it off his shoulders from behind. Dalai grinned up at him then, sliding her fingers into his hair and tugging his mouth gently down to hers.

  They kissed.

  The kiss lasted for what felt like a long time, but through most of it, Revik found himself struggling, unable to relax.

  He felt himself holding back, too, trying to even get his bearings in this.

  He supposed it was stupid, really, to try and think about it at all.

  His mind told him that, but feeling the truth of it didn’t really help.

  It didn’t really allow him to relax, either, not enough to know what to do.

  Dalai was unfastening the front of his shirt then, and the male seer tugged that off his back as well, yanking it and the armored shirt under it out from his belt as he removed it. Not waiting, Nurek yanked up the armored shirt, pulling it up over Revik’s head and off his arms, forcing Dalai to break off their kiss long enough for her boyfriend to get the stretchy material off of Revik’s shoulders and head.

/>   Then Nurek sucked in a breath.

  “Gaos,” he murmured. He spoke louder then, directing his words and light to his girlfriend. “Holy d’lanlente a guete… Dalai! Come here, ilya. Look at this poor brother’s back.”

  He traced scars with his fingertips, cursing under his breath, in a different language that time, what sounded like a dialect of Mandarin.

  “Gaos,” he murmured, softer. “Did you know about this, baby?”

  Revik tensed, feeling the male’s fingers running along more of the marks on his back, as if making sense of them by touch. When Dalai slid around behind him, her arm coiled around Revik’s bare waist, she let out an even more shocked gasp than Nurek had.

  “Holy fuck!” she said. “What the hell happened to you, brother?”

  Revik gritted his teeth, not answering.

  He just stood there while the two of them looked at him, not turning his head.

  Both of them caressed the scars, touching him from his shoulders to his belt, and Revik just stood there, enduring it. He didn’t mind them touching him there. It was the staring he couldn’t figure out how to manage, or how to stop.

  When the other male slid an arm around him, clasping his chest, Revik tensed, closing his eyes as he tried to force himself to relax, to not care about this.

  It was normal for seers to react to this.

  It was normal; he didn’t need to make a big deal about it.

  He fought with what to say, but nothing came.

  There was nothing he could say, really. He didn’t remember. He didn’t remember how he got them, or what they meant. He didn’t want to remember. He didn’t even want to tell them he didn’t remember, because he knew how that sounded, too. He also knew that confessing that would likely only generate even more questions.

  Seers had photographic memories. To say he “didn’t remember” was as strange as having the scars in the first place.

  “It’s all right brother,” Nurek said from behind him. He massaged Revik’s chest, kissing his back. When Revik let out a half-gasp, the male held him tighter. “It’s all right, brother,” he said again. “We won’t ask.”