Allie's War Season Three

by JC Andrijeski

  "Revik didn't do it," Jon clarified. His eyes still looked so flat I barely recognized him. "...He didn't kill Dorje. Dorje killed himself."

  I nodded, not answering. I straightened his shirt collar, still watching his face as he chewed mindlessly on the food.

  "...Some kind of hollow tooth," Jon said dully. "They tried to wake him up, and he was already gone..."

  I nodded again, not bothering to tell Jon that I knew that, too...or remind him that I'd been standing there, next to him, when the techs explained how Dorje died. He needed to say it. He wanted to hear it all aloud again, to make it marginally more real to himself. Even so, I couldn't help noticing how exhausted he looked, or how completely wrung-out his light felt.

  "Do you want me to get you a drink, Jon?" I said. "Something to help you sleep some more?"

  He shook his head, then looked at me, as if realizing for the first time that I was there. "Shouldn't you go? You're a newlywed again, right? Isn't Revik going to freak if you spend another night here with me...?"

  I shook my head, clicking at him softly. "I highly doubt it."

  "You sure about that?" He tried to smile. "I heard you guys made a stir the other day...before the meeting..." I saw him frown as the memory surfaced, right before he took another bite of food. "Anyway," he said. "That's what I heard..."

  What might have embarrassed me a few days ago was nothing but a welcome distraction now. I rolled my eyes, seer-fashion, forcing a smile to reach my lips.

  "Well," I said, rubbing Jon's shoulder. "That's their own fault, isn't it? Maybe if there weren't so many peeping toms in the construct, they wouldn't have to get all hysterical when Revik and I finally get a chance to be alone without armed guards. Bunch of old women..."

  Jon snorted an involuntary laugh, taking another bite of the sandwich.

  I could see more of him in his eyes again. I saw enough, in fact, that I wanted to keep him there, for a few minutes longer at least.

  "Did they really freak out about us?" I said. "I'm amazed anyone would even be surprised at this point...but Revik said something was going on."

  Jon glanced at me, his hazel eyes gleaming in the firelight. After another pause, he shrugged, as if pulling his mind back to our conversation.

  "They joked about it mostly," he said. "But I could tell it made a few of them uncomfortable. Probably more in frustration than squeamishness, though. I think comparing them to a bunch of hormonally-challenged teenagers might be more apt..." Hesitating after trying to force another smile and failing, he added, "...'Dori had trouble with it. He hid it well...but, you know. It's going to be harder on him. At least until he gets used to it."

  I shook my head, snorting in spite of myself.

  "I highly doubt that had anything to do with me." Remembering our last argument, I gave another short laugh, clicking softly. "...He's been more mad at me lately than jealous. You should have heard him chew me out when I showed up in Revik's room in the first place. If anything, he's probably relieved to not have to babysit the two of us anymore...and it's not like he didn't know. He's known for months now, even before I got back from Beijing..."

  When I glanced over, still smiling, Jon's face was serious.

  "Yeah, he knew," Jon said. "Sure he did. But knowing and knowing are two different things. Anyway, however mad he's gotten at you, and however much he's yelled at you to justify it, I don't think it's all about protecting Revik. I think he's been mad about the Lao Hu thing, and the you leaving him thing...and just the you wanting Revik thing...a lot more than he's letting on. Even to himself maybe. It all got very real to him that morning, sis..."

  Uncomfortable at the look on his face, I shrugged at his words.

  "Well, that's good, right?" I said lamely.

  "Yes," Jon agreed, nodding. He clasped my hand. "It is good. But maybe go a little easy on him. I think he's really trying to be a good sport about the whole thing..."

  I nodded, unable to think of what to say.

  I fought to hold onto the humor that had been there, however briefly. "Maybe you need to set him up, Jon. Find him a good woman...or man. I don't think most of those older seers have strong preferences about gender, do they? And you're a lot better at that than I am..."

  Jon grunted, clasping my hand tighter. "I hate to break it to you, Al, but everyone is better at that than you are."

  I smiled back, gripping his hand in return.

  "True," I murmured.

  I couldn't decide if Jon trying to comfort me was because it was easier for him to focus on me than on himself, or if we just slid back into these roles out of habit. The first thought was slightly more reassuring than the second, but both left me unsure if I should try to flip the dynamic back, or leave it where he was obviously more at ease.

  After another pause, I saw that other look return to his face.

  Instead of trying to talk, that time I just moved closer to him on the couch. I wrapped my arms around him, pulling him against me when he let me. I held him almost too tight, as if to compensate for the fact that I had absolutely nothing to say to him that could possibly help. I wasn't sure if I should even be trying to take his mind off things, at least not this soon. I didn't know if I should let him go too far into it, either, when he was still obviously in shock. I didn't want to fall into the easy trap of finding things to say that would have helped me feel useful without doing jack-all for him.

  He wiped his face again with a hand, and I hugged him tighter.

  That time, he smiled faintly, but I could tell he made himself do it.

  "It's okay," he said, almost like a seer might have, like he'd heard some portion of my thoughts. "I'm just glad you're here, Allie."

  Again, I found myself staring at that grief in his eyes. He didn't seem to be able to deal with me looking at it, though, at least not for very long. Wiping his face again, he pushed out of my arms, his expression blank.

  "You should eat," he prodded, pointing at the unopened silver tray with the third finger on his mutilated hand. "Before it gets weird, Allie."

  More because he'd asked, I did as he suggested.

  I knew my body, at least, should be hungry. I couldn't remember eating anything since coming out of that hibernation with Revik, although I figured I must have at some point, or I'd be a lot weaker than I was now. Even before the meeting with Vash and the others, Revik and I talked about being starved as we shoved our bodies back into clothes. We'd talked about where we'd go eat, too, once we finished facing the firing squad. Vash getting killed and Dorje killing himself really blew the hell out of our lunch plans, though.

  Lifting the top of the tray, I found myself looking down at a BLT sandwich and soggy-looking french fries.

  I couldn't help wondering again how long the food had been sitting there.

  "You used to like those," Jon said, his voice flat. He gestured vaguely at the exposed tray. "I didn't know what else to get...I looked all over the menu, Allie, but I couldn't remember anything else you liked. I wasn't even sure if you ate meat still...and I know being married to Revik really changed your whole eating thing in general..."

  My mind slid and turned over when he could have ordered this. Then I realized that didn't matter, either.

  "It's great, Jon," I assured him. "Is there any ketchup?"

  Jon gave a kind of laugh, still wiping his face.

  "Yeah." He pushed over the bottle.

  Watching me glug some onto the plate with sharp jerks of my wrist, he rested his arms on his thighs, his expression still close to lost.

  "I know more about what Revik likes to eat these days than I do you..." he said as I popped a cold fry in my mouth. Even though the soggy potato wasn't great, my appetite roared a response, demanding more. Jon watched as I continued to eat. Looking back at the fire, he shook his head, clicking almost to himself.

  "...I didn't think you'd want me to get you curry," he said. "Now that you two are married again, you'll probably get stuck eating that stuff more than you can stand..."
<
br />   "Jon, it's really good." I laid a hand on his leg, a french fry gripped in the fingers of my other one. "Thanks. I mean it. I needed this."

  For a moment we just sat there. He watched me as I picked up half of the sandwich, taking a bite. The sandwich was a lot better than the fries.

  He didn't seem to know what to do while I ate.

  He watched me, then looked around at other objects in the room, as if killing time until I finished. I saw his eyes focus on the remote for the wall monitor, but he didn't pick it up. I had my doubts somehow, that watching a movie together would be enough of a distraction for him. It would probably just push him back into that dream-like place he'd occupied before.

  He really needed to get some sleep...some real sleep, not on the couch drifting in and out of death rituals, no matter how filled with light. I considered getting him a drink again, something strong, like Revik would drink.

  Then another thought hit me.

  "What if I made you sleep for awhile," I asked him, swallowing the last bite of the BLT. Wiping crumbs off my hands onto the plate, I reached for a napkin. "No hangover that way," I added, forcing a smile.

  "You can go if you want, Allie. Really. It's okay."

  I shook my head. "I'm not going anywhere, Jon," I said. "But you need to rest. You can't keep going like this...you can't. You need to shut down for awhile."

  He didn't answer me for a long moment, but I saw the tiredness return to his eyes, right before he wiped his face again with his hand.

  "Okay," he said finally.

  He sounded resigned, but I couldn't decide if that was a bad thing, either. It probably didn't matter. Jon glanced up at me, and that time, I set down the glass of water I'd already half-drained. Wiping my mouth a last time with the cloth napkin, I cleared my throat, regaining my feet.

  "Come," I said, holding out a hand.

  Nodding, he took hold of my fingers.

  He let me lead him through the door next to the bathroom, into the bedroom he'd shared with Dorje for the last three months. I tried to remember how long they'd been living together in total, and realized I didn't know precisely. They'd kept their relationship pretty quiet at first. They hadn't said anything to me anyway, for I wasn't sure how long, but I suspected since we all lived together in the Pamir, after that mess in D.C.

  I do know that by the time I noticed, they were pretty well immersed in one another's light. That had been the first time we'd all been to the Forbidden City, when Revik was still Syrimne and I was still recovering from being shot.

  Pushing that from my mind, too, I sat on the bedspread, waiting for Jon to finish in the bathroom. When he came back out, I watched him kick off his shoes, even as I noticed he still wore all of the same clothes he had on for the meeting itself. He shed his jacket, socks and jeans before he laid down on the bed. Wearing only boxers and what looked like one of Dorje's shirts, he slid under the blankets and laid down, closing his eyes as if waiting for a death sentence.

  I thought about talking to him more, but I didn't.

  Instead I waited for him to be settled under the covers, stroking his hair once it was on the pillow. Only after he seemed to be well and truly down, did I knock him out with my light.

  I did it as gently as I could without prolonging things.

  For another long stretch of time, I just sat there on the edge of the bed, watching him sleep.

  REVIK STOOD IN the organic booth, his arms clasped around his ribs.

  Frowning slightly, he stared at the female seer on the other side of the wall. Her shackled wrists kept getting in the way as she read a book on a portable monitor someone in the Adhipan must have lent her. Her black hair fell in a straight curtain, obscuring most of her face. One of her turquoise blue eyes remained visible, however...focused on the text in front of her with that strangely intense concentration he remembered. She always read as if she weren't just absorbing the meaning of the words, but trying to imprint them forever into her light.

  He'd been trying to read her, to catch some glimpse of why she'd come here, what she wanted with him. So far, he'd come up blank. With Allie upstairs with her brother, doing whatever she could to help him deal with his boyfriend not only killing Vash and betraying all of them...but also committing suicide in the minutes that followed...Revik figured he could use the distraction posed by the puzzle of Elan Raven being here.

  It had been almost two weeks since Vash had been shot. Revik spent most of those two weeks in ritual with Balidor and the Adhipan and Seven, along with the majority of the ex-rebels. They'd left Allie with Jon, partly because she didn't know the rituals yet, and partly because Jon needed her more...which meant Revik had been tagged the senior soul, and asked to officiate. What would have been a long process anyway, particularly with a soul like Vash's, which required offering him the opportunity to audience individually with any of his students, friends, fellow Council members and family (the list was long with Vash, given that he'd been nearly 800 years old), had become something much longer and more complex once Revik became the officiate. The work pretty much wiped out the last twelve days, taking most of the daylight hours to prepare for each nightly ritual and offering, as well as to hear petitions by those who had known Vash.

  Dorje's rituals, which had been done over the same stretch of days and nights, had been simpler in some ways, but also a lot sadder. His soul had been difficult to locate in the Barrier. Even after they found it, there hadn't been a lot Revik and the Council could do for him, given that he seemed to have strong ties to some other group of souls, one that reminded Revik a little too much of what he remembered of the Dreng.

  Still, they'd done what they could.

  He hoped Jon didn't ask him about it, though. There was some evidence that Dorje could have been a plant for some time...years, maybe, at least more than the past six months. How that was possible, and how the young-seeming, Tibetan-looking seer Revik got to know through Jon could have been an agent of the Dreng, Revik still didn't understand.

  Either way, it had been depressing. He would miss Vash more, of course, but the old seer left in such a fanfare of light and love it had been difficult to feel sad in any real way.

  The Dreng were far less kind to the souls they used down here.

  That all finished around twelve hours earlier, which was when Revik had finally been allowed to hang up the officiate hat and get some sleep. He'd checked in on Allie and Jon on his way up, and found her asleep on the reclining chair in his room. He hadn't wanted to wake her, so he left her some clean clothes on the bedside table, then left the two of them alone, too.

  When Revik woke up himself only a few hours later, he'd come downstairs rather than trying to drink himself back into unconsciousness, the way a lot of seers had been doing since the rituals finished. Wreg had been one of those seers, Revik knew. The ex-rebel took Vash's death harder than most would have imagined, given how he'd treated the old man when he was alive...but Revik knew Wreg better than most, and he wasn't particularly surprised. Wreg had always been a lot more complex than most realized. Allie got that, pretty much from the start with Wreg, but even rebels who'd worked with him for decades didn't always see it.

  Anyway...Wreg had his own issues lately, Revik knew.

  So did Revik, for that matter. So for more than one reason, the Raven thing felt like a logical distraction...at least until Allie reemerged from Jon's room.

  The fact that Raven had willingly submitted not only to a collar but to being locked up was puzzle enough. He couldn't help wondering if her presence here had anything to do with what Dorje had done, too.

  Someone obviously wanted all of them hurting...and off-balance.

  Whoever they were, they'd also been willing to sacrifice a long-term plant to get rid of Vash...which meant several things he and Wreg and Balidor had already discussed, albeit briefly. It meant that same person likely had more plants here. It also meant they'd seen Vash as a threat, which shouldn't have surprised any of them...especially not Revik hims
elf, who'd known Salinse viewed him the same way. The old man should have been better protected.

  Dorje, as Jon's boyfriend, had been privy to a lot. They must have really wanted Vash gone to use him. Either that, or the other plants they had inside were worth even more.

  Wreg and Balidor had done everything they could to pick apart Dorje's aleimi, looking for markers to trace so they could go through the aleimi of everyone at the hotel for yet another series of security scans, as well as the aleimi of all of their allies overseas, cleaning house.

  As it was, the inner circle would need to tighten...a lot, maybe.

  Revik tried again to think through what little they'd discussed in the wake of Vash's shooting. He couldn't totally tear his mind off the flashes of images and sensations he'd felt in those few seconds...Allie's screams of anguish when she saw Vash down, the look of complete shock on Jon's face when he realized what Dorje had done.

  For what seemed like minutes after Dorje dropped, none of them had moved.

  Of course, it hadn't been that long...not even close. Balidor reappeared at the conference room doors before Revik could decide if the danger was past, if he should be dragging Allie with him out of the room altogether. The Adhipan and Wreg's people had a perimeter set up on the floor before Revik fully made up his mind. Wreg dispatched security downstairs, upstairs, outside the hotel...even at different parts of the city...all within minutes.

  Whatever this had been, it appeared Dorje accomplished his primary goal.

  Vash was dead. With him went the last real link between the original Council and what remained of the Seven and the rebels. A few of the older monks could take on the teaching side of things back in Asia, even the transmission of the oral traditions. They could call the next in line down from whatever ice cave in which he or she was currently in retreat...if those seers hadn't already felt the ripples and were on their way down on their own. The religious forms would remain, probably past the Displacement itself.

  But the real, concrete, political power of the last truly peaceful segment among the seers from that earlier generation was gone. Other than Tarsi, there were none who could come close to wielding as much influence as Vash, and Tarsi originated from the warrior caste, not from that of the religious scholars, like Vash.