A Glint of Light

by J. C. Andrijeski

All it means is that neither of them can hide.

  Neither of them is fixable. Neither of them is even able to see just how and why they are as broken as they are, despite others helping them. Neither of them can just let it go, move past it, allow themselves the freedom to just forget.

  He finds himself speaking in the same pidgin bastardization of Mandarin and Prexci his father uses.

  It is the same language most seers in the village speak.

  “It is almost ready,” he gasps, knowing he’s said it before, that all he can do is act out his part, recite his lines. “It is almost ready. I came in here only to light the candles––”

  “Lying fuck! You’ve burnt it! You’ve burnt our only food!”

  His father’s side of the exchange is scripted, too.

  The words never alter.

  They never change.

  The past is the past. It is frozen. Immutable.

  Balidor knows this.

  And yet, it feels different while it is happening every time. Here, it feels like anything can happen. Here, it feels like this might be the time his father finally kills him.

  As the thought crosses his mind, the transformation becomes complete.

  He is Bali again.

  Just Bali.

  He is nothing. Dirt blood. Son of a drunk.

  Living in a cheap hovel where they sell off anything they find of value.

  He is old enough to know what that means, but not much older.

  His people come from the lower caste of seers, those given no clan names.

  He is enough himself––meaning who he is now, Adhipan Balidor, trained infiltrator of the Pamir––to remember that the caste tradition stretches very far back for seers.

  That tradition long predates the Adhipan, predates the Council, stretching back to before the time of the Pamir. It strikes him as so strange, so arbitrary, that the castes are set in stone for his people so many years ago. Back then, seers stratified their ranks to keep from killing one another, to establish order in chaos after their own Displacement.

  If the story is true, Bali’s fate was carved by ancients in stone.

  All those thousands of years before Balidor is born, he and his father and his entire family were assigned their worth.

  Many seers believe in this system still.

  They believe in it significantly more during this time, meaning where Balidor finds himself now, while his father still lives, while Bali himself lives in a small, run-down house on the outskirts of a seer settlement in the Asian mountains.

  The villagers, they all believe his blood is less.

  They believe he is less.

  Not only a lesser seer––they believe he is somehow less seer than they.

  The kids at school tell him so.

  The village adults tell him too, if only with their eyes.

  Balidor’s human-like features only make this worse.

  The kids at school find his face funny. They make jokes that he is a half-breed––his blood so impure, his family can reproduce with humans. They call him pig-blood and ridvak, worm and animal-fucker, even when he is too young to understand what they mean.

  One day an older boy fills his cabinet in the one-room schoolhouse with pig shit and the rest of them laugh. The next day, one throws a human amulet at him, one scrounged from the trails of nomads in the flatlands below.

  The seer and his friends jeer at him–-they tell him that he will need the amulet when he rejoins “his people” on the plains.

  Balidor fights with himself, fights to remember not all seers are like this.

  He fights to remember where he is now.

  He does everything in his power to remember who he fought to become.

  Who he is.

  But who is that, really?

  Is he really so changed?

  He feels the same.

  The core of him, the part of him that matters––it is still the same.

  Here, he is only Bali.

  Just Bali, only son of the town drunk.

  His father is mocked even among other dirt bloods. He drinks. He contributes nothing to the village––nothing but gambling debt, piss, and tavern fights. He cannot care for his child. He is a dirt blood who makes other dirt bloods look bad. He is a dirt blood whose own mate had left him. His mate left him, and left her own child just to get away from him.

  His father pretends not to hear them.

  Bali knows that’s not true, either.

  He grieves for his father.

  He grieves for him, far more than he does for himself.

  His father’s voice grows louder, more bear-like.

  “Don’t crawl away from me!” he growls. “Lazy, worthless… coward. What…” he slurs, his words incoherent. “…some rat who scuttles under floorboards to hide? You think whimpering will help you? You must toughen or die, Bali. If I have to kill you to teach you that, by the gods, I will break every gods-damned bone in your body to teach it…”

  The sound fades, even as Bali chokes, fighting not to yell at the old man with the sour breath whose pain and grief nearly black out Balidor’s mind.

  He cannot feel anything but the dark clouds around his father’s light, cannot see anything but the sadness of this man, a crushing weight in his heart and aleimi, more than Balidor can comprehend at that age much less find any way to lessen.

  He loves him.

  He loves him not.

  He remembers a different version of him.

  Laughing. A rumbling, deep laugh in his chest.

  There is a field filled with flowers.

  Balidor’s mother is there––

  But he cannot hold onto it.

  He cannot stay there. He cannot stay.

  Not even with her.

  Even with her, he cannot bear to remember his mother’s face––

  Six

  Caught

  ––Balidor opened his eyes.

  Fighting to breathe, he stared up at a curved, green ceiling.

  He was no longer sitting cross-legged on the organic metal.

  He was lying on the green metal floor instead. He stared up, unsure how he came to be lying down at all.

  His vision blurred, tilting. Tears were running down his face.

  Raising a hand, he wiped them with his palm and fingers, uncomfortable with the shame that wanted to creep over him for having such a simple reaction to something so… well, so worthy of it.

  He didn’t usually feel shame for his emotions.

  He didn’t usually feel shame for his past, not anymore.

  He wasn’t a child anymore.

  Only a child attempted to hide who they really were.

  Only a child balked from feeling––particularly when that feeling was wholly warranted. Only a child pretended they did not need to be a complete person, a fallible person, a person who could be hurt and heartbroken, a person who could be weak as well as strong.

  Still, scolding himself now, silently or not, didn’t diminish the shame he felt.

  Fighting to shake off the memory of his father’s face, he sat up.

  Once he had, he found himself seeking her with his eyes.

  Cass leaned against the dark green metal wall, more or less where he had left her.

  That hard, blackened structure in her heart remained, taunting him with its cold, metallic-looking coils, strangling her light.

  Her eyes looked different, though.

  Her face looked different.

  He couldn’t discern at first what the differences meant, but he could see them. He saw them, and reached for her with his light, unthinking.

  She winced when he did, but did not close to him.

  He saw her eyes close, her face grow taut, but the pain in her expression looked real, and not solely from the contact with him.

  It wasn’t disgust he saw there. It wasn’t anger, either.

  She looked genuinely sad.

  More than that, what he felt in her light told him that sadness wasn’t only for
herself.

  Looking at her, his heart opened more.

  That wasn’t calculated, either.

  “Cass––” His voice came out quiet, in almost a murmur.

  He didn’t know what he would have said next.

  He never got a chance to find out what would have come next to his lips, instinctively or not, honestly or not.

  A voice rose before he got there.

  It echoed from the other side of the room, so loud after the silence between him and Cass, it nearly made him jump out of his skin.

  “‘Dori!” it said.

  The voice wasn’t just loud.

  It was also harsh.

  It was colder and harsher than Balidor had ever heard from that particular person.

  “Balidor! Can you hear me? Look at me. We need to talk. Now.”

  Balidor turned his head, forcing his eyes off Cass’s with a reluctance he could tangibly feel. He gazed in the direction of the voice with a nearly open resentment.

  Once he’d met the other male’s gaze, Balidor saw the other’s anger falter.

  “‘Dori,” the other man said, now sounding almost at a loss, despite the anger that still vibrated his words. “What the fuck? What are you doing in here? What in God’s name are you doing, man?”

  Balidor refocused on the other male’s face, knowing something approximating guilt, or shame, or possibly defensiveness likely colored his face.

  Before he could answer, Cass spoke up from where she leaned against the wall.

  Balidor flinched when he heard the cold cynicism behind that voice, the hard wall that fell over her light and pulsed out of her.

  “No hello for me, Jon?” she said, her voice artificially sweet. “Aww. I’m offended. Truly. Where’s the love, big brother?”

  Balidor turned his head, looking at her.

  The dominant emotion on him from Cassandra’s words was more disbelief than anything. After what he’d just felt from her––what he’d just experienced in her light, seen in her eyes, and seen in the softness of her face––the change completely threw him.

  It threw him enough to disorient him.

  It threw him enough to bring up a flood of grief, of near-despair at what seemed to be a complete and total reversion back to the person he remembered from the first time he’d entered this cell, the first time he’d tried to engage with her.

  She didn’t return his look.

  She stared up at Jon instead, arms folded, a smirk twisting that beautiful mouth.

  She didn’t even look like the same person.

  It was disconcerting enough that Balidor frowned, then followed her gaze back up to Jon, who still stood in the middle of the cell’s floor.

  The other male barely spared Cassandra a glance.

  “Shut up, Cass.”

  “Hey, don’t be like that, Jonny-Boy––”

  “I said shut the fuck up, Cass.”

  “If anyone should be mad, it’s me. I mean, when’s the last time you visited, Jon? And now you’re only here for your precious, moral, perfect Balidor?”

  Her voice was a pout that time, but Balidor heard a glimmer of the underlying meaning that time. He felt the nod towards his light, towards what she’d seen in him.

  When Balidor turned, looking at her, still incredulous at the transformation in her, her eyes flickered towards him, but only for half a breath. Even so, he saw her cheeks flush, enough that he wondered if it was from what she’d just said.

  Before he could decide, she was wholly focused back on Jon. She stared up at the tall, muscular male, jutting her lip and chin up at her childhood friend.

  Despite her coy tone, her eyes now held nothing but cold indifference.

  “Don’t suppose you have anything to smoke, big brother?” she said, her voice as flat as her eyes. “On you, I mean? Something you’d be willing to share? I know how Wreg likes his hiri. He’s as bad as Revik with that seer weed––”

  “No, Cass,” Jon said, his voice cold. “I don’t.”

  “You don’t have any?” she pressed. “Or none you’re willing to share?”

  He still wouldn’t look at her.

  “Either,” he growled. “Both. What difference does it make?”

  Again, he didn’t spare her a glance.

  Jon’s light hazel eyes remained fixed on Balidor, who still sat on the floor, fighting his equilibrium back as he looked between the two of them, like watching a tennis match. Feeling Jon’s stare intensify, Balidor rubbed the back of his head with a hand.

  Some part of him still felt bruised from his encounter with his father.

  “I need to talk to you, brother Balidor,” Jon said through gritted teeth. “I need to talk to you right now. Right fucking now.”

  “Jon––” Balidor began with a sigh.

  “Now,” Jon said. “Or I’ll call Allie and Revik and we can have this conversation the four of us. I’m guessing brother Wreg would be interested in that discussion as well. Possibly Tarsi, too. And Torek. And Yumi. And Chan. And Vik. We could have a goddamned town hall meeting if you prefer, brother Balidor.”

  Balidor hesitated.

  He glanced at Cass.

  Like before, for the barest instant, he saw something there.

  Rather than a full look, much less the open, vulnerable look she’d aimed at him when he first came out of the session, this was a flicker, a bare glimpse of that more open version of her he’d seen and felt when he first left the Barrier.

  Or maybe it was something else altogether.

  Maybe the rest of it was just wishful thinking on his part.

  Grasping at shadows, at smoke––at dreams.

  Whatever it was, it was gone as soon as he glimpsed it.

  Then she was looking at Jon again, that smirk toying at her full lips.

  “I’m trying to talk ‘Dori here into fucking me, Jon,” she said conversationally. “Allie tells me he’s got a nice, thick cock. I’d like to take it for a test drive… but he won’t let me.”

  She made another mock pouty face, twining her cuffed hands together between her bent knees.

  “Why won’t he let me, Jon? Can you talk to him for me? Man to man? A girl’s got needs. Maybe you could talk to Yarli for me, too. See if she’ll help a sister out––”

  “Shut up, Cass,” Jon growled, still not looking at her.

  “But Jonny––”

  “I said shut the fuck up!”

  Jon was breathing harder now, avoiding looking at her seemingly with an effort now.

  Cass jutted her lower lip, but a smile teased her voice.

  “You’re so mean now, Jonny,” she pouted. “I’m not sure if I approve of this whole marriage-Wreg thing, if it’s going to make you like this. I’m beginning to think all this seer cock is going to your head, big brother…”

  Jon winced visibly.

  Balidor found himself thinking it wasn’t only from what Cass had said.

  It was more like he could barely stand to listen to her voice.

  Even as Balidor thought it, the other male turned on his heel.

  Without another glance in Cass’s direction, he began stalking angrily back towards the tank’s two-foot-thick octagonal door.

  “Now, Balidor,” he said without looking back. “Right the fuck now.”

  Exhaling in a sigh, Balidor pulled himself ungracefully to his feet.

  He fought with whether to look at Cass before he left, to say anything to her.

  In the end he only followed Jon out of the cell.

  He felt the silence behind him as he left.

  Seven

  That’s A Black Hole, Man

  “The fucking cameras were off,” Jon snapped, staring down at where Balidor sat.

  Hands on his hips, Jon went on even louder when the Adhipan leader didn’t speak.

  “Why were the cameras off, Balidor? That goes against every single goddamned protocol that you yourself put in place!”

  Balidor sighed from where he sat in the bolted deck cha
ir.

  He hadn’t slept much the night before.

  He’d been staying with Vikram for over a week now.

  He knew he needed to talk to Torek about new quarters. He knew it was only a matter of time before people started talking. It was only a matter of time before other seers started whispering about why he hadn’t gone to Torek already, why he was hiding his break-up with Yarli, why he and Vik were sharing a room.

  For all he knew, they already thought he was sleeping with Vikram.

  For all he knew, they believed that’s why he and Yarli had ended.

  He had no idea what Yarli was telling others on the ship, assuming she was telling them anything at all, but by now, at least a few people must have noticed something amiss.

  Truly, he had no idea why he was reluctant to tell anyone himself.

  His mind on the subject remained firm from that last night, when he and Yarli fought and he lost control over his light. He regretted how he’d spoken to her. He regretted even more how he’d used his light, but he still felt the outcome was the best one for both of them.

  He wasn’t ashamed that they had broken up.

  So why had he asked Vikram to tell no one they were sharing his quarters?

  Why had he told no one, not even Neela or Allie, that he and Yarli had finished?

  He avoided the question in his mind.

  He avoided it, but he honestly wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t know the answer, or because he did know the answer and simply didn’t want to look at it.

  Pushing all of that from his mind, Balidor looked up at Jon.

  They were in a space that had recently been repurposed into a conference room.

  Since this particular chamber lived on the same segment of deck as the Barrier-containment tank that housed Cass, it had initially been used for military and infiltrator purposes, primarily interrogations and debriefs.

  Technically, it was a segment of the storage bay of the aircraft carrier, but they’d carved this side up and erected partitions for their own needs.

  Balidor had been the one to make the recommendation to put high-security prisoners down here, in a modified segment of the cargo hold. It was an area of the ship they could lock down, if need be, so that was much of it. The location was far enough away from most heavily-trafficked areas of the ship, including the most crowded residential areas, that they could reasonably protect it from the general population.