Bridge

by JC Andrijeski

  For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

  Such silences weren’t really unusual between the two of them. In this case, however, that silence contained a certain amount of irony, given they’d mutually agreed to meet privately so they could talk freely and alone.

  So far, neither of them had spoken a word.

  Neither of them had done anything, really, but stare at those four monitors.

  Occasionally, Tarsi would stand. She would walk to the sink, use the dead metal spigot on the wall to add more boiling water to the mug that now stood on the table by her elbow. The old woman still wore combat-type clothes from when she first left her cabin on the port bow of the carrier

  Those clothes still looked appropriate on her, even though it had been years since she’d worn them in any kind of official capacity.

  As if she’d heard him, the old woman sighed, clicking a bit louder.

  Balidor ended up being the first to speak actual words.

  Maybe he did it because he could feel she wanted him to––or maybe he simply lacked her patience. Either way, he caved first.

  “There is no doubt then?” he said simply.

  Unlike their usual means of communication, Balidor spoke aloud.

  That had purpose, too.

  Namely, it would keep their conversation not only shielded between them, and inside the construct of the ship, but out of the Barrier entirely. Even if Balidor hadn’t felt the need to keep this particular subject matter private from the others, with Varlan on board, another minimum rank-eleven seer in actual, he couldn’t afford to take chances.

  Anyway, it wasn’t solely his own people he feared might be eavesdropping.

  “You are certain?” he added. “Absolutely certain, my friend?”

  Tarsi raised a smooth, but very thin-skinned hand, turning it sideways in a seer’s subtle affirmation. The gesture was older than the usual seer’s yes, and had its origins in the caves of the Pamir.

  She met his gaze, her clear eyes flickering between his.

  “Why you ask me?” she said. “You head of Adhipan.”

  She spoke in that thickly accented mountain patois she often fell back on for English. Of course, Balidor had heard her speak that same language like a British-trained scholar when it suited her. The patois was part of her schtick, he supposed, one small panel in her infiltrator’s mask and yet another means of disarming those who didn’t hear past it.

  As if she wasn’t difficult enough to read already.

  She chuckled, hearing him.

  Her face smoothed into seriousness a few seconds later.

  “You have any doubts?” she said.

  “I was going to ask you that,” he muttered, sliding a hand through his hair. “Do you know for certain there is no way to take it out of him? Without killing him, that is?”

  Tarsi stared up thoughtfully for a moment, possibly even searching for answers in the Barrier. Then she blinked, making a negative gesture with one hand.

  “I do not know that,” she admitted. “But I have serious doubts you or I could do such a thing. Maybe something like the Bridge did. Maybe something like that could heal it… something with the Four.”

  “Him dying, you mean?” Balidor grunted. “Somehow I don’t think that plan will thrill his wife.”

  A faint smile touched the old seer’s clear eyes. “Menlim was going to use the Four for this, too, you know. He was going to use the Four to keep my nephew alive after the death of his bond-mate. Irony, really. That Dreng filth wants to use this to kill her… meanwhile, the Bridge uses this same thing to heal the breaks in her light. To come back from the dead. A bad day for our Dreng friend. All his plans backfire. All his weapons get turned against him.”

  She shrugged, her expression unchanging. “Still, like the Bridge say, these things only work once. Won’t be so easy, next time. Next time, he’ll know. He’ll be smarter.”

  “Did Vash know?” Balidor said. “About Nenzi? About the network?”

  Tarsi let out a heavy sigh, clicking in real-sounding irritation.

  “Don’t know,” she said. “Who knows what that man did or didn’t know? Or his reasons for not telling us?” Giving Balidor a sharper look, she asked, “Did you try contacting Elephant? You know. The other one.”

  Balidor clicked to himself, sighing as he ran the same hand through his hair, pausing to scratch the base of his skull with his fingertips. His eyes went back to that blacked out screen, right before they shifted to the one showing a small child lying on her stomach in an oversized crib. The little one still lay deep in sleep, clutching the stuffed animal he’d given her.

  Her expression had smoothed since he’d last seen it. She lay there, sucking on one finger, her whole body exuding peace.

  Something in Balidor’s chest softened as he saw that small nose wrinkle. Maybe from a dream, he saw her make a tiny frown, clutching the elephant tighter to her small chest.

  “Thank the gods we got her away from them,” he said, instead of answering.

  Tarsi’s eyes followed his to the crib.

  Reaching over, she surprised Balidor then, squeezing his arm with surprisingly strong fingers. She didn’t speak for a moment after she’d done it. The two of them just sat there, watching the child sleep. The Bridge and Sword’s daughter looked frighteningly small and fragile inside that round-edged crib with the blue whales all over the blankets.

  “Will you tell him?” Tarsi said.

  Balidor let out a disbelieving laugh.

  There wasn’t a lot of humor in it.

  “Tell him?” he said, raising an eyebrow in her direction. “What choice do we have? Would you actually consider keeping such a thing from him? From either of them?”

  Tarsi didn’t take her hand off his arm, but sighed.

  “No,” she said. “I suppose not.” Looking at Balidor directly, she firmed her mouth, only loosening it to add, “You know what he is likely to do.”

  “You mean kill himself?” Balidor said, his voice openly bitter. He pulled at a loose thread on the sleeve of his shirt, breaking it off with a sharp jerk. “Commit suicide in his quest to rid himself of the old man? To rid the world of that scary old bastard? The thought had occurred to me, yes, sister.”

  “Do you think she could talk him out of such a thing?” Tarsi said, her voice softer, more cautious. “…For the child? For the sake of their family?”

  Balidor exhaled, letting his shoulders unclench.

  He fought to think past the pain in his heart, a stone that had crept there, as soon as he’d finished his preliminary scans of Dehgoies’s light, and confirmed what Tarsi found. That pain hadn’t left in the time since, but seemed only to ebb and flow, throbbing coldly in his chest.

  “She might,” he said. “She probably will. I just do not know at what cost. I do not know what that will mean in the long term… or whether it will satisfy her as a solution, either. Especially since there is a good chance their daughter already suffers from the same affliction.”

  Frowning down at his sleeve, and the button that now hung half off it, Balidor shook his head, clicking.

  “Hell, she might already know,” he said, frustrated. “Both of them are so damned oblique when it comes to the other… and she’s more aware than any of us how fragile his psychology can be, given the abuse he suffered in his youth. Anyway…”

  He gestured dismissively towards the row of monitors.

  “…You heard what the others said about the Bridge. At the Tower. She wouldn’t let him go after Menlim. She flat-out refused to let him do it. So she might already know why Nenzi can’t go after Menlim, even if she hasn’t told him. Hell. Even if she hasn’t admitted it to herself.”

  Tarsi seemed to think about that, too.

  “It is possible, yes,” she conceded.

  Sighing, she removed her hand from Balidor’s arm, leaning her body back to rest on the upper edge of the plush chair.

  Balidor watched the old woman’s fingers curl around her mug. Like
a lot of Asian seers, she often drank steaming water without anything else in it, something Balidor had lost the habit of doing since he’d developed a taste for tea, somewhere around the early 1700s.

  He flavored his hot water now, when he bothered to drink it at all.

  “What do we tell him?” Balidor said. “And when?”

  Tarsi let out a low snort, setting the mug down on the metal table.

  She regained her feet, joints creaking. Once she’d straightened fully, using her hands and arms as leverage on the table, she walked over to the where someone had left an open box of tea bags spilled over part of the counter, probably when the last shift had turned over.

  Balidor couldn’t help smiling when he saw Tarsi pluck a tea bag out of the box and dunk it in her mug, right before she topped it off with more boiling water from the spigot. Clicking softly, he rolled his eyes at her, unable to escape the fact that, yet again, she’d overheard everything he’d been thinking, even when he’d thought himself to be thinking quietly.

  “We should talk to the other, first,” Tarsi said, grunting as she rested her weight against the counter. “The one you haven’t called yet. Elephant. See if she’s alive.”

  “Yes,” Balidor said, a little impatiently. “And what then?”

  Tarsi gave him a faintly humorous look, her clear eyes shining a faint, steely gray.

  “I’m no prescient, am I?” she mocked. “Why you think I say we talk to her?”

  “You know what I mean,” Balidor said, clicking at the older seer.

  Tarsi only shrugged, unapologetic.

  “He might listen to her,” she said. “He always liked her, didn’t he?” She continued dunking the tea bag by the string. Leveling her eyes at him, she grunted. “Bridge might not like that, though. You thought of that?”

  Balidor sighed. Looking at her, he noticed she had her hair wound around her head in a long braid, rather than hanging straight down her back, as usual.

  “You said the truth, right?” she added. “So we tell him the truth. We tell him what Menlim did to him, and that we can’t fix it. Then he decides.”

  “He’ll want to do something crazy,” Balidor muttered. “Even if he doesn’t go suicidal, he’ll want to do something crazy. For the child, if nothing else. For the Bridge.”

  “Will she stop him?” Tarsi said. “Or help him do it? She crazy too, you know. Bridge.”

  Balidor frowned down at the table. Clicking softly, he shook his head, sidestepping her question even as he frowned.

  “He already knows he’s the structural head of their construct,” he muttered. “Maybe he’s already figured it out. Maybe he knows. Maybe he just didn’t care before, thinking he was dead anyway, with his wife gone?”

  “What you think he do?” Tarsi said again. “When he knows? If he knows?”

  Balidor ground his teeth, but forced himself to shrug.

  “I think he’ll want to get rid of Menlim,” Balidor said, making a defeated gesture with one hand. “I don’t see how that’ll change. He’ll be afraid for his family, if nothing else.” Giving Tarsi a harder look, he reminded her, “He still fears him, you know… Menlim. He fears the power he had over him, what he did to his mind. More than that, he fears what Menlim made him do. Especially to women. He asked me to kill him once, remember? He asked me to kill him, because he feared what Menlim might make him do to his wife. Now he’s got a child to worry about… a daughter, no less. I don’t think he’ll be able to stand leaving his old guardian alive. Not now that he knows he’s out there.”

  “Even if it kills him?” Tarsi said, still looking at him narrowly.

  Balidor sighed.

  Rising to his feet, he walked to her in two strides, getting his own mug out of the overhead cupboard and holding it under the hot water spigot while he pressed the button. When he finished, he dunked his own tea bag, leaning against the counter next to her and biting his tongue as he thought over the woman’s question.

  He found himself thinking about Revik, about the man he knew and didn’t know.

  First as Syrimne d’ Gaos during World War I. Then as Vash’s pupil, as their recruit for the op in Germany and with Galaith. Then again as the Rook, then the ex-Rook… and Allie’s husband. Finally as Syrimne reborn, as Allie’s husband again, but as this new, different kind of Sword, born from the ashes of the Dreng.

  Balidor thought about all of these men, and what mattered to all of them, where the threads crossed, and where they broke.

  He thought about what they’d found in Sikkim, that boy who’d been chained in the cave.

  He thought about those sessions in the original Tank.

  Once more, he spoke from the heart.

  “Even if it kills him,” Balidor said, knowing it was true. “He won’t be able to leave it alone, sister. It’s simply not in his nature.” Still thinking, he grunted, adding, “Allie will help him. The two of them… they’ll want to do it together, if I know them at all.”

  Tarsi only looked at him for a moment, her clear eyes thoughtful as she took a sip of her tea. Those eyes were so like those of her blood nephew, Dehgoies Revik, it still startled Balidor at times, even though he’d known Tarsi centuries longer.

  He was still watching her when she nodded, rearranging her butt against the low counter.

  Balidor leaned on a section of counter next to hers, blowing on the steam of his own mug.

  For a long moment, the two of them just stood there.

  For an even longer stretch of time, they didn’t talk.

  Really, there wasn’t anything more to be said.

  * * *

  WANT TO READ THE NEXT ADVENTURE FOR ALLIE & REVIK?

  Check out the next installment in the BRIDGE & SWORD WORLD:

  PROPHET (Bridge & Sword Series #8)

  COMING SOON!

  “In through the out door… further down, below.”

  Allie and Revik race against the clock, looking for the remaining names on the Displacement List before Shadow can consolidate his hold over Earth. Meanwhile, a mysterious new player starts buying up List seers and humans on the black market faster than Revik and Allie can save them. Whoever they are, they seem to have their own copy of the Lists, and while they aren’t killing them, more and more Listers disappear into Dubai, the most heavily guarded of Shadow’s quarantine cities. Before Allie can decide her next move, another group appears, this time to offer a safe haven for her and her family. But as Allie finds out more about this new group, everything in her world starts to unravel. Worse, the people closest to her seem to be turning against her, including––maybe even especially––her own husband.

  ~ or ~

  WANT TO READ ABOUT SEERS IN A WORLD CLOSE TO OURS?

  Check out the Quentin Black World, starting with:

  BLACK IN WHITE (Quentin Black Mystery #1)

  Forensic psychologist Miri Fox has an uncanny sense about people. When police think they've nailed the "Wedding Killer," she agrees to check the guy out, but the suspect, Quentin R. Black, isn't at all what she expects. When he confronts Miri about the nature of her peculiar insight, she is drawn into Black's bizarre world and a game of cat and mouse with a deadly killer who just might be Black himself. Worse, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Black, a complication she doesn’t need with a best friend who’s a homicide cop and a boyfriend in intelligence.

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  THE BRIDGE & SWORD WORLD is a dark, unique and gritty apocalyptic world and alternate history of Earth. It features a young woman grappling with her role in bringing about the en
d of one world and the start of a new one. Follow Allie Taylor and her antihero partner in crime, Dehgoies Revik, as they fight terrifying enemies and one another in a passionate story spanning centuries, and filled with unpredictable twists, turns and betrayals.

  QUENTIN BLACK MYSTERY WORLD encompasses a number of dark, gritty paranormal mystery arcs with science fiction elements, starring brilliant and mysterious Quentin Black and forensic psychologist Miriam Fox. For fans of realistic paranormal mysteries with romantic elements, the series spans continents and dimensions as Black solves crimes, takes on other races and tries to keep his and Miri’s true identities secret to keep them both alive.

  THE ALIEN APOCALYPSE SERIES is a dystopian new adult romance about a tough girl named Jet Tetsuo who grew up on Earth following an alien invasion. Forced into living among her conquerors, she has to navigate a treacherous world full of enemies who pose as friends, even as she becomes their most famous fighter in the Rings, a modern day version of the coliseum.

  THE GATE SHIFTER SERIES is an unusual shifter romance centering on shifters from another world altogether, called morph. Earth humans remained blissfully ignorant of the existence of alternate dimensions until Nihkil Jamri tries to save private detective, Dakota Reyes, while he is surveying Earth. Part urban fantasy, part detective series, part paranormal romance, part science fiction adventure, the Gate Shifter series explores crime solving, interstellar warfare and alien romance with the least likely candidates imaginable.

  * * *

  Read More from JC Andrijeski

  http://jcandrijeski.com

  “Seeking Truth in Made-Up Worlds”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JC Andrijeski is a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author who writes paranormal mystery, along with apocalyptic and cyberpunk-y science fiction, often with a metaphysical bent.