Balidor hesitated, but only for an instant.
"I think she has information for the Sword, yes," he said carefully. "Whether or not that information is truthful, I have no idea."
The calculated neutrality of his words made me stare at him again, even as I felt my shoulders stiffen. He definitely knew something...or suspected something, anyway. If he wasn't lying to me outright, he was playing fast and loose with that line. Seeing the warning in his eyes, I looked away, stripping the thoughts once more from my light. That warning held the promise of more information, but I had no idea when that would be, either.
I glanced at Revik again. Whatever 'Dori was referring to, from Revik's expression, I could tell he had no clue either.
After another exchanged look with him, I nodded at Balidor.
"She's still here, I take it?"
"Downstairs, yes."
"Then set it up." I gave him a hard look. "There is no precaution too paranoid, okay? I don't want her in a position to so much as spit on him..." I glanced at Wreg. "I want you there, too. With a boot on her neck, if necessary..."
Balidor gave me a faint eye-roll at that, but Wreg smiled.
"Of course, Esteemed Bridge," the rebel leader said, bowing his head.
"So let's start there," I said. Realizing that this meeting had gone as far as it would go, at least with all of us in the same room, I rose to my feet. "And I want to see those lists..." I added, to no one in particular. I glanced at Revik, before looking back at Balidor.
"...All three of them."
"Of course, Esteemed Bridge," Balidor murmured, bowing subtly.
But something in the way he glanced at Vash, an eyebrow raised, made me wonder if he was lying about that, too. Everyone was standing though, including him...everyone but Vash and Jon, who were busy talking at the other end of the table like old school chums. Given the spread of ex-rebels and Adhipan in the room, I decided to wait on pulling Balidor aside until it would be less obvious...like maybe in the restaurant downstairs, or in his own room later.
Or at the very least, when Wreg wasn't in hearing range.
I leaned over the table to grab the water pitcher, and ended up meeting Revik somewhere in the middle when he leaned over it, too. He caught my wrist as soon as I was close enough, and I looked up, startled.
"I want to talk to you," he said, his eyes holding a sharper meaning.
I lowered my voice. "Can we do it downstairs? We both need to eat...and I should catch Vash before he goes back into meditation, or –– "
"It's important, Allie. I have an idea I want to run by you...about South America."
I met his gaze, studying his eyes more closely. "Now?"
"Yes. As soon as they're gone." He hesitated. "I want us to agree first. Before we bring it to the rest of them..."
Without thinking, I touched his face. For a moment, with the way he was looking at me, it was hard to pull my mind back to the others in the room.
I did though, and nodded again.
I was about to answer him in actual words, when my eyes were pulled to someone else entering the room. Normally I might not have noticed, given all the movement around us, but something in the energy of his entrance twanged my light...not quite in warning, but in...something. I watched as the seer squeezed in through the middle set of doors, even as the others were mostly leaving. A few paused to clap him on the back and rib him about being late.
Balidor was already gone, probably slipped out when he saw me distracted with Revik, to avoid me cornering him. Wreg was speaking into his headset by the door, likely trying to find out where they had Raven stashed downstairs.
So when Dorje appeared at the conference room's double doors, looking flustered, his face pale above a dark leather jacket, I think I was the only one to really look at him at first...at least long enough to notice something might be off.
I remember being startled by how he'd appeared. I'd never seen him like that before, I guess...he was usually so calm. This time, he'd been breathing hard, his skin both too pale and too flushed on different parts of his face and neck. His eyes shone brightly under the overhead lights, both wider and more dilated than usual...he almost looked drained of light, like maybe he'd been hit hard by something in the Barrier.
I was about to speak up, to ask him what was wrong...
But Jon noticed him before I could.
The instant he laid eyes on Dorje's face, he must have seen the same thing I had.
Immediately, he straightened up from where he'd been bent over with Vash.
"Dorj," Jon said. His voice sounded caught in that strange wasteland between concern, confusion and irritation. "Where were you, man? The meeting's already over..." He looked at his old-fashioned watch, frowning. "You're over an hour late. I tried to reach you...multiple times. Did you turn your headset off...?"
Dorje just stood there, still seeming to be out of breath. Despite his panting, I really couldn't tell if he'd actually been exerting himself, or if he was in shock or something.
"Dorj?" I said. "You okay? What's wrong?"
He looked at me, but didn't seem to see me.
Jon's voice pulled his eyes back to the front of the room.
"Where'd you go?" Jon said. I could see worry winning out over the other emotions. "I know you didn't forget. You're the one who told me to be here at one..."
Dorje just stared at him, still seeming to be fighting breaths in his chest.
I felt Revik stiffen next to me, but I was already reacting to something jangling in my own internal spidey sense. Warning bells were starting to go off in my light, and I found myself grabbing Revik's arm, almost protectively, even as he started to pull away from me. Everything moved too slow and too fast, barely seconds between when I first saw the Tibetan-looking seer at the door and when I could comprehend that whatever I was feeling on him was actually happening. Before I could say anything, or even put words in my mind to what I suddenly knew...Dorje was holding a gun.
"I'm sorry, cousin," he told Jon.
He choked on the words.
"I'm so very, very sorry..."
I saw the tears in his eyes, heard the deadened sound of grief in his voice. The warning in my light exploded into a four-alarm bell.
I felt Revik hear it or feel it on me too...felt a bright pulse of light expand off his aleimi, sliding up to the structures above his head...
But neither of us was fast enough.
Dorje didn't wait.
Aiming the gun, he fired four 9mm rounds in rapid succession.
The last two veered off course, impacting into the wall...coinciding with a hard pulse of light off Revik, one that felt nearly physical to me since I leaned so close to him.
I flinched, ducking instinctively even as Revik's fingers clamped down on my arm. He grabbed hold of me less than a second after the first shot was fired, gripping me as if he intended to drag me across the table to him. I let out a gasp, realizing I wasn't hit even as I turned to look to Revik in a kind of panic. But I didn't see any blood on him, either.
Dorje hadn't been looking at either of us, and suddenly, my eyes found the real target...even as Jon let out a horrified yell.
"Oh my God!" His voice grew hoarse, holding a kind of slow-motion disbelief. "Vash! Gods...someone do something! Do something! Vash!"
He stood up, his voice helpless even as he caught hold of Vash's shoulders, as if not sure what to do himself.
Fleetingly, my mind told Jon to get down, to pull Vash under the table with him, out of the way of the gun...but most of me knew it wouldn't matter now, that it was already too late.
Whatever had been about to happen had already happened.
My eyes found the aged seer.
Vash had been knocked backwards by the first two shots. His body hung there, almost straight from the force of the hits...as if pinned there by the metal as it ripped and tore through him. Blood darkened his throat, trailing down to stain the sand-colored robes he'd worn since the first time I met him i
n that compound in Seertown.
I could only stare, feeling the floor drop out from under me...even as another coil of light snapped out of Revik in a sharp wave, dropping Dorje to the carpet like a puppet with cut strings. Revik was still holding my arm, still pulling me towards him over the table, but I couldn't tear my eyes off the ancient seer sitting across from us, even as I let Revik drag me out of range of the door.
I watched the light dim in Vash's eyes. I saw it, even as I refused to believe it...even as the faint smile remained on his lips, coupled with a faintly puzzled expression as the last of him left his body, and then the room.
I don't think I knew I was screaming until Revik already had me all the way across the table. He crushed me in his arms once I reached the other side, his light a thick shield around both of us, holding me as if trying to contain what fought to explode out of my light.
I couldn't do anything but stand there, staring at the broken doll that had been Vash's body, the only form I could remember ever knowing him in...although he'd once told me there had been others, that we'd known each other in histories besides this one.
I was still screaming as I watched Vash finish dying right in front of me.
11
REVELATIONS
I FOUND MYSELF in Jon's room, hours later.
I wasn't sure how long I'd been there. I couldn't quite remember what had happened between Dorje dropping to the carpet and now, not without concentrating, and I wasn't ready for that, so I didn't. It seemed like an endless stretch of time where I sat with Jon on the couch in his and Dorje's suite, coiling as much light around my brother as I could, doing anything I could for him...which admittedly, wasn't much.
Dorje was dead.
Revik hadn't done it. Dorje took something...some kind of poison, like he'd been a Russian spy in some novel about the Cold War. The techs told me afterwards that he'd probably already been dying when Revik knocked him out.
In any case, he never woke up.
I don't know how much of that Jon even heard to be honest.
I only half-heard it myself, still trying to pull my mind off Vash and the hole I felt with him gone, even now. I was trying to feign competence while I stood there, maybe even hiding in that military facade I sometimes tried to emulate in Revik. Basically, I was doing whatever I could just so I could be there for Jon, at least as much as anyone possibly could be. I hadn't been there for him when mom died, or when he'd gone through that hell in the mountains with Terian, so I figured the least I could do was be here for this.
After all, because of me he'd already lost pretty much everyone he'd ever cared about.
More than that, he'd lost a whole life. He'd lost his hand...a job he loved, all his friends. He'd left behind a guy he'd been falling in love with in San Francisco. Unlike me, he'd been a pretty well-integrated person before his sister was outed as a seer and later a kind of over-hyped terrorist-slash-mythological figure. He'd gotten tagged as a terrorist, too.
So yeah, the least I could do was be there for him for this.
Still, someone must have helped me.
I know this, because the lines blurred for me, too.
I wasn't sure how I'd gotten to Jon's room, for example. I don't know if I went there on my own, or if Jon led me there, Revik...or one of the other seers. I remember Balidor being there, ushering me out of the conference room as he offered to handle the details regarding both bodies. I remember them talking about why Dorje might have done it, even as they all stood, grim-faced, trying to decide whether and how to get Vash's body back to the Pamir...or maybe to Seertown, where his son, Yerin, was buried.
I heard Loki say something about Dorje's family being missing, meaning his biological one. Theories got thrown around, like maybe whoever ordered Dorje to do this might have taken his family as collateral...but all they had were speculations.
I remember seeing Revik holding Jon, rubbing his back as he gripped him tightly in his arms, rocking him gently. I remember stepping back to give them space, wondering if I should leave when Jon started crying...silently at first, but almost like he was suffocating, fighting out these kind of shuddering, back-wrenching sobs that were hard to even watch. Revik held him in a cocoon of warmth and light and love...enough that I could only stand there watching dumbly, more grateful to him than I knew how to express.
Jon cried with me, too. He waited until we were back in his room, on this same couch. There was something younger about it, more vulnerable, when he did it with me. Maybe because we went through the thing with Dad together, and although that felt like a million years ago in some ways, it also felt strangely recent, too.
Maybe it was just because I'd known him when he really was a kid.
I don't know how long we sat there, in that fog of his emotion and mine. I don't remember doing much but sitting there, rubbing his back through his shirt as he curled up with his head on my lap. I knew we were alone again, that Revik had left.
Otherwise, everything around us just seemed to stop.
I tried to think about Dorje himself, who'd been my friend, too. I couldn't connect the person who'd held that gun to the guy I'd known, though. I couldn't make sense of any of it, so it didn't really help me believe it had actually happened.
I wondered how Revik was, too.
Vash had been like a father to him...probably the closest he'd had since his real father had been murdered. He'd known the old seer for decades...close to a hundred years of his life. When I tried to find out how he was doing, however, he just pushed me gently away. He told me they would be doing rituals for a number of days, that he would participate in those. I knew the rituals were normally about helping the dead person cross the Barrier to the places beyond; however, in Vash's case, since he'd been such a high master, he wouldn't really need that. So for Vash, the rituals would be more for the living...a means of mourning, and also of receiving whatever Vash wanted to give those remaining behind before he truly left.
Revik told me he would come get me for some of that, if it felt appropriate...but for now I should focus on Jon, that Jon needed me more, at least right then.
So I did that.
I don't know how long I did that, but in the time that passed, it got dark outside the windows of Jon's room...and then light again. I felt pieces of the first set of rituals, probably through Revik. Barrier light shone on us, too, and Jon slept...I found myself sleeping too, or waking up, anyway, what must have been hours later. I dreamt about Vash, about golden oceans and red-gold clouds. I saw flashes of the world, not all of them good, but I remember sitting there, too, talking to the old seer for what felt like hours, although I couldn't remember anything about what we said.
I remember seeing a white sword, too...and a dying sun.
At some point after that, it got dark again, then light, until time just seemed to blur, and there were more rituals, more light...and I felt Vash a few times more, and later, Dorje, too. I heard chanting in my head so often that I couldn't tell if it came from inside or outside of the Barrier. I couldn't distinguish whether the conduit came from Revik's mind or mine, or even Vash's. Jon slept through most of the rituals themselves, but at times he had so much light on him that I wondered if I should wake him up, if he might be upset that he missed it...and missed his last chance to speak to Vash, maybe to Dorje, too.
Let him sleep, a voice told me quietly, the one time I verged on waking him.
I don't know whose voice it was, but for some reason, I obeyed it.
Jon and I weren't alone the whole time, not even in the physical.
People came and went, some staying longer than others. I remembered Tenzi being there, who had probably been Dorje's best friend apart from Jon. They'd worked together in the Seven's Guard, signing up together after emigrating to Seertown together by trekking across the mountains from southern China. They'd met in some kind of work camp over there, and even escaped together.
I remembered answering questions, too, although I couldn't really remember about
what. I remembered 'Dori being there at several points, his hand on my shoulder as he spoke to me and Jon about rituals and arrangements.
They were doing rituals for Dorje, of course, too, he promised Jon.
Most of that was a blur.
All I know for absolute certain is that at some point, it occurred to me that I couldn't afford to just sit there anymore. I couldn't afford to be as lost as Jon...I needed to try and integrate the events of that day in the conference room back into reality.
I needed to be the grown-up for once. I needed to be the one who helped ground him in the world...not the other way around. I couldn't afford to encourage him to drift away, to get lost in some space halfway between acceptance and denial.
I needed to be present, if only for him.
Once that much penetrated the fog of my mind, something in me kind of pulled it together. The puzzle pieces fitted back into a reasonably-coherent, single image, and suddenly I was there, in the room, looking at the two of us on that couch...looking at Jon, who still leaned most of his weight on mine. My eyes found a room service trolley and a set of trays sitting on the lower coffee table in front of us. One of those trays had been opened, which confused me at first...until I saw Jon holding a sandwich with one bite taken out of it. He chewed on some part of it still, staring into the fire, but I couldn't help wondering if he had any idea what he was doing...or how old the sandwich might be, or how long it had been sitting in the open air.
When he took another bite, it was like electrical signals reaching his brain from somewhere far away, telling him how to execute all the correct motor functions. I didn't see anything of Jon in his eyes, even as he swallowed.
Watching him eat, however, my stomach growled.
"Where's Revik?" I said, unthinking.
"He said he'd be back."
I nodded, caressing Jon's hair. I hadn't really meant the question like that. I more wondered if he'd wanted to be here, too, helping me take care of Jon.
Knowing him, he probably thought he'd get in the way.
Allie's War Season Three Page 26