A male seer stood by Revik, too, also holding his arm.
It took Jon a second to recognize Jorag, and then it was mostly by his size. Instead of his usual black, cat-suit type outfit with heavy motorcycle boots, Jorag also wore an expensive-looking suit and another of those ceremonial hats. Somehow, it looked almost comically small on him, even though his head wasn't particularly large despite his great height, and his short-cropped black hair clung to his head. The scar on his face was the only part of him that looked the same; even his jewelry was understated, in that all he seemed to be wearing was a diamond post in one ear, rather than the hoops and assortment of hard, silver rings he normally wore.
When Tarsi saw Wreg and Jon approach, she shook her head, clicking at them and rolling her eyes dramatically in obvious disapproval. Even so, Jon saw the glint of humor in her eyes. She motioned them up to stand near her, with Wreg on Revik's side and Jon on Allie's.
The two other seers remained standing on Allie and Revik's opposite sides, so that the two intermediaries were sandwiched between them.
Tarsi held up a hand, calling for silence. Even though she didn't speak a word aloud, and the din was pretty loud by then, especially nearer to the stage, the entire room hushed within a matter of seconds. Jon found himself growing suddenly self-conscious as every eye on the place aimed towards the seven people on the stage, of which he was the only human.
But Tarsi looked only at Allie and Revik, pausing to give them each a kind of warning stare.
"You are done with this nonsense between you?" she said then, in a voice that seemed to carry across the room, despite the lack of a microphone. She gave Revik and Allie each a level stare in turn. "...You are publicly committing to this thing? Without reservation?"
Allie looked a bit startled, but she glanced at Revik. He smiled at her, then gestured a 'yes' in seer, looking up at Tarsi.
"I am," he said.
Allie seemed to relax a little, looking back at Tarsi. "I am, too," she said.
Tarsi gave them each another hard stare. "Without any more infidelities, threats of infidelities, leaving one another, threats of leaving one another, physical intimidation, emotional intimidation, or other such childishness...?"
Both of them nodded.
"I am," Revik said.
"I am," Allie said as well.
"No more selling yourself...at least not willingly?" Tarsi gave Allie a particularly hard stare.
Allie's face turned red, but she nodded without lowering her eyes.
"Absolutely not," she said.
"And you, as well?" Tarsi said, looking at Revik.
He rolled his eyes, but had a faint smile on his lips. "I vow it," he said.
Jon was beginning to think this thing was pretty unscripted, which made him smile, given their choice for officiating seer. Tarsi didn't tend to pull any punches. But that just made him think about how different it would have been if Vash had been overseeing the event with her, and that pain returned briefly to his heart. As soon as he felt it, he saw Tarsi's eyes on him. They softened once they met his, enough that he had to look away. He felt a pulse of warmth in his light before she spoke next, however.
"...No more lying?" she said, her patois becoming more prominent again as she looked between the two of them again. "No more working against one another...?"
"I vow it," Allie said in Prexci.
"I, as well," Revik affirmed.
"You've agreed on living arrangements? Children?" Tarsi said then.
Jon started a little, looking between the two of them. Children? That hadn't even occurred to him, even with the whole scandal about Raven and Maygar. The idea of Allie and Revik having kids threw him, and not only because the world was falling apart.
"Yes," Allie said.
Revik gestured in the affirmative as well. "We have."
Jon found himself thinking he'd have to hit Allie up to find out what that little agreement entailed. Obviously they'd decided to live together. Revik moved them both into that penthouse less than 24 hours after they woke up from that eight day nap they took together following the bank job...even with Vash being murdered.
"You've agreed to not slight any previous or current kin?" Tarsi said.
Revik laughed, glancing up at her, but Tarsi looked between them once more, her voice almost warning.
"...Including his son, Maygar?"
Revik's smile faded. He glanced at Allie. "Not formally..." he began.
"Not exactly..." Allie added at roughly the same time, also glancing at him.
"Will you agree to deal with this in a mature fashion, as well as any interactions with the son's mother, as appropriate?" Tarsi snorted.
Allie nodded. "Okay. Yeah, that makes sense."
Revik hesitated a little longer. Then he gestured a 'yes'. At Tarsi's prompting, he verbalized it, as well. "I agree."
"Is there anything the two of you would like to hear from one another as a part of this?" Tarsi said, her voice firm once more.
Allie glanced at Revik again, and he at her. After a few seconds, her face reddened again. "Only that..." She hesitated again, then seemed to resolve herself to speak. "...Don't stay because of the bond. If you want to go, tell me."
Revik nodded, smiling at her. "Agreed." Watching her for another few seconds, he asked, "Is that all?"
She nodded, still a little red in the face. "I think so."
"Okay," he said. "Well, I just wanted to reiterate what we said before."
"What was that?" Tarsi said, her voice sharp.
"No separations," he said, glancing at his aunt, then back at Allie. "Only by mutual agreement, meaning a cause or reason we both agree with and support. I don't mean short term, recreational things, I mean..."
"I know what you mean," Allie assured him, looking relieved. "I agree."
"And no keeping important information from one another," Revik added.
Jon laughed aloud at that, he couldn't help it. Revik glanced at him, a somewhat sharp look in his eyes, but Allie was grinning and even Tarsi had an amused quirk on her lips. Jon also saw Balidor standing not far away in the crowd, looking somewhat stiff where he clutched a handful of those star-like flowers, a smile touching his lips, too, as he met Jon's gaze.
"...Especially anything that might impact one another," Revik finished, giving Jon another hard stare before he glanced back at Allie.
"Agreed," Allie said, doing her best to suppress the smile on her face. "...I think our witness agrees, too. And the officiating seer..."
Revik clicked at her, shaking his head, but smiled a little too, as if in spite of himself.
"I said it, didn't I?" he said finally, looking around, as if in a challenge.
Allie, Balidor and even Wreg laughed aloud that time. Jon did too, if nothing else at the somewhat put-upon look on Revik's face. The majority of the others standing nearby mostly looked confused, including Aunt Carol. But this whole ceremony was probably a bit baffling to her really...she and Uncle James had really been good sports about the whole thing, especially about coming here in the first place, given what it risked them.
"Anything else?" Tarsi prompted as the laughter wound down. Her voice sounded impatient now, as if under those robes, she was tapping her foot.
"I can't think of anything," Allie said, still smiling at Revik.
He shook his head, once, making a negative gesture with one hand. "No."
"Hold out your hands then."
Jorag and Yumi prodded them both forward. Once they were standing next to one another again, Revik's eyes were back on Allie, and the humor had leached out of his eyes. Allie was looking up at him too, and the expression on her face made Jon feel like he was intruding just by looking at them.
They clasped each other's hands and wrists, not looking away from one another's faces.
Wreg grabbed Jon's arm, pulling him out of his reverie.
Tugging him down to where Allie and Revik stood, he pulled a golden, silk-feeling coil of heavy thread out of his tuxed
o jacket pocket, and handed one end to Jon. They'd practiced this, of course, using Neela and Holo as their stand-ins in one of the conference rooms while everyone was busy down below. Even so, Jon found himself fumbling a bit as he started winding the coil around Allie's arms from his end, working towards the center along with Wreg, who started doing to the same on Revik's side.
Doing it with Neela and Holo that day had been mostly funny. Everyone had been in a pretty up mood about the whole thing, and Neela and Holo themselves each did pretty accurate impersonations of Allie and Revik, separately and together...accurate enough that at one point, Jon was crying he was laughing so hard, and barely able to see what he was doing. That had been before the Vash and Dorje thing of course...in fact Dorje had been there, making jokes along with the rest of them and giving Jon hell for mishandling the thread.
Still, even with everything that had changed since that day, Jon couldn't help noting how different it felt to be doing this for real.
There was something disconcertingly intimate about wrapping the golden coil around Allie and then Revik's hands and arms when it was the real ceremony. Jon found himself reluctant to touch either of them as he did it, again feeling like he was intruding as he stood close enough to feel things passing between them as they looked at one another. When he glanced at Wreg, the seer winked at him, but he got the sense he was shielding his light a bit too, and also working faster than maybe was necessary. Between the two of them, they got the thread wrapped around them and tied in the middle, somewhere over where their fingers and wrists joined and locked.
Then the two of them stood back.
Even so, according to how they'd done it in the rehearsal, Jon and Wreg remained near to Revik and Allie instead of returning to their places next to the older seer. Standing next to Allie, Jon felt her nerves as if they vibrated through his skin. He realized again that doing this in front of all of these people would probably completely freak her out. He'd been one of the ones to advise Revik that maybe he shouldn't warn her in advance, that everything might go smoother if he caught Allie off guard. Getting up in front of a roomful of strangers to give a political speech was one thing...surprisingly, Allie seemed to be able to do that that kind of thing, even though it made her nervous. But doing anything overly personal in full view of a hundred or more people was completely different.
Still, looking at her now, he wondered if the surprise thing had really helped all that much.
When Tarsi spoke next, she raised her voice, and once more, the crowd around them hushed.
"As most of you here know, the bond is already done, in literal terms at least...but you are all here to witness them both committing to this thing. This time, they vow this, not only to one another, but to all of you. This event is now witnessed by all of those near, and by those further away, too...those who could not be here, and those who have already crossed over..."
Tarsi glanced briefly at Jon, and he felt his throat tighten.
"...Even their enemies now know of this, and others who would wish them apart. This binding can be seen from all of those quarters, as well as by the Ancestors themselves..."
Jon glanced at Revik and then Allie again. He was a little unnerved to see that Revik's eyes were overly bright, even as Allie smiled up at him, still gripping his wrists in her hands, tightly enough now that his skin was whiter around her fingers. She still felt about to vibrate out of her skin, but she felt happy again, too.
"...And nothing more on this subject need ever be questioned or said," Tarsi said, clapping her hands with a flourish.
At her hand clap, Jon lurched back to the present.
Fumbling the silver organic coil lighter he'd been given before the ceremony, he ignited it with a flick of his thumb. At Wreg's look, they both lit the ends of the golden thread at the same time from opposite ends as Tarsi watched from the podium above.
The threads caught at once, and burned with a flash of powder that freaked Jon out a little, even though, again, they'd rehearsed this, and he'd known what to expect. He'd still half-figured on lighting the two of them on fire accidentally, so he was relieved when they were just standing there after the after-effect of the flash dimmed, and he could see again. They both were breathing at bit harder, as if startled, but neither moved, or unclasped each other's wrists. The burning path of the thread left light, criss-crossing lines on the skin of each of their arms, but they already seemed to be fading, maybe partly from the dimmer light of the room.
Then everyone was cheering and Jon found himself being clapped on the back, dragged back into the main throng of guests along with Wreg and Allie and Revik and everyone else. Drinks were thrust in his hand, first a shot, which he was prompted to down on the spot...then something that looked like dark, red wine but that tasted more like hard alcohol. When Jon made a half-choking sound after sipping it, Wreg laughed, pounding him on the back yet again.
"Sarhacienne wine, brother," he said, half-shouting over the noise. "You'd best get used to it...I hear there's a growing market in the States..."
Jon nodded, and sipped again, wondering vaguely if he'd end up hallucinating on the stuff like the feeds said. The bulk of commentary on the wine seemed to be that it would eventually be made illegal, but it currently lived in that odd, in between zone of alcohol and illicit drug, so no one had done anything to regulate it yet. Also, it remained exceedingly rare outside of Asia. He wondered who even produced it these days, given that Seertown no longer existed.
He glanced around and found Allie and Revik next to Aunt Carol and Uncle James. He choked down another sip, half-laughing when he saw Aunt Carol give Revik a hug, tears in her eyes. Revik shook Uncle James' hand a moment later, while Allie got her own hug.
Jon couldn't help smiling, watching that, but something about it also struck him as vaguely surreal. He found that he understood though, why it had been so important to Revik that Allie's family be represented here. He couldn't stand the Sark family that adopted him after he'd been Syrimne. From what he told Jon, they'd treated him like garbage, and Vash had pretty much filled that gap for most of his years after being Syrimne. With Vash gone, Revik must have felt that left Allie's human family as the only option open to either of them.
Well, apart from Tarsi herself, who was sort of a unique case, being Revik's only real living relative...and for that matter, the only biological relative between them, at least so far as either of them knew. Allie's real family remained a complete mystery, so no one knew whether they were alive or dead, or whether they were even aware of her existence.
"Come with me, cousin!" Holo practically yelled into Jon's ear, making Jon jump even as the seer slung an arm around his shoulder and began steering him back towards the main stage and the door to the kitchen. "We're going to get the food Tarsi prepared for everyone!" he said, equally loud. "It's sure to be something special...there's a whole deal with it being the highlight of the night...!"
Jon had already figured out the seer was drunk, but he couldn't help wincing when Wreg grabbed him from the other side.
"See, brother," Wreg said, his voice a more normal volume. "Most seers don't get to experience weddings very often...unlike humans, they happen only every few decades in any one community, so we tend to go all out." He grinned a little, tugging Jon closer. "Even you might like this, with your worm-ruined palate..."
Jon shook his head, feeling his stomach flip, and not only from Holo's breath.
"None for me," he said, making the negative gesture with his hand to make sure they understood. "I've eaten too much already...between that and all the alcohol, I really will puke if you make me eat another seer dish..."
"Nonsense!" Wreg thundered, his voice holding no compromise. "You must eat it!"
"It's tradition!" Holo seconded, still managing to yell right in Jon's ear. "No choice, brother. Wreg's right..."
"Your funeral," Jon said, looking between them. "I will feel zero guilt if I throw up on either or both of you...and I do mean zero guilt..."
/> Wreg only laughed, but Holo looked faintly offended, even through the drunken slowness of his expression. By then, Wreg had pushed open the kitchen doors, and led him into a wash of bright lights where a few hundred small, colorful cakes sat on identical white trays. Each of the cakes had a name on it, Jon noticed, with the exception of the largest one, which had two names on it, ALYSON and REVIK.
"They made individual cakes for each of us?" Jon said, realizing even as he spoke that he was slurring a bit. "Seriously? Who had time for this?"
"The old woman did it," Wreg said, clapping him on the back again. "She was very specific about ingredients for each one...even did separate light rituals over all of them. It's probably why she looked so damned tired..."
"You mean they're all different?" Jon said, still somewhat aghast. He shut his mouth, seeing a cake on one of the nearby trays labeled JON SEBASTIAN. "That's me," he said, pointing. "You're telling me they really are all different?"
Wreg shrugged, one-handed. "It's the primary job of the officiating seer. It's why she came in a week early, and didn't want Allie to know she was here...she knew she'd be spending most of her time coming up with recipes for each of these..." He glanced at Jon, grinning. "You still want to say no to the food, brother?"
Jon shook his head, unable to tear his eyes off all of the different-colored cakes.
"No," he said.
"Good." Wreg clapped him on the back again. "Now let's figure out how we're going to distribute them...that part's our job..." He glanced around him again, then waved at Jax. "Go get more of those idiots. Jorag and Neela can help too...and ask Yumi and Vikram, we need more Seven and Adhipan eyes. Hell," he snorted. "Get Adhipan himself in here. He could lend a hand, too..." At Holo's nervous look, Wreg rolled his eyes.
"Fine," he said, laughing. "Don't ask him. Jon and I will start now. Get the others in here, the ones I said...and explain to them what's up. We won't wait, all right?"
Allie's War Season Three Page 50