“Fuck.” Looking between the two of them, he exhaled, unfolding his arms. “Fine. Tell me.”
Balidor let out another low chuckle.
So did the male seer sitting on the floor.
Even so, Balidor’s voice bordered on grim when he answered Revik’s words.
“You have been requested, my brother. By name. By one with more pull than me.”
“Requested?” Revik felt his shoulders stiffen again. “By who? Vash?”
“By sister Kali,” Balidor said, his eyes still carefully watching Revik’s. “Since it is the only message she sent to us before she disappeared, we thought it wise to follow what she prescribed before they––”
“Disappeared?” Revik cut in. “What the fuck does that mean?”
He stared at the other man, feeling his light charge up around his physical form. He felt the other notice that, too, and those gray eyes turned shrewd.
“Yes, brother,” Balidor said simply. He held his gaze, without so much as a twitch in the muscles of his face. “She was taken from her home in the middle of the night.”
Revik felt his pulse speed up. “What about her mate?” he said. “Where is he?”
“He is looking for her, of course.”
“Then why would you want me?” Revik said.
His voice came out harsher than he intended.
He didn’t lower his gaze, though, and neither did Balidor, who stood there, unflinching despite Revik’s tone.
Revik subdued his words anyway.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do?” he said.
“Help us,” Balidor said merely, his gray eyes still fixed on Revik’s.
Revik just looked at him for a moment, then exhaled again. Shaking his head, he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, a seer’s expression of regret, disagreement, sometimes of annoyance or even anger. In Revik’s case, it felt like all three.
“I can’t,” he said, shaking his head again.
“Why not, brother?”
Revik stared at him, incredulous. “I can’t. I can’t leave here.” He gestured vaguely around the cell-like cave of his room, pausing on the male seer who still watched the two of them from his cross-legged position on the floor. Staring briefly into those light green eyes, Revik felt his jaw harden, but he said it anyway, even as he broke the stare, swiveling his gaze back to Balidor.
“I’m not ready for this,” he said, feeling his face tighten more. “Clearly, I’m not. Ask anyone here, if you don’t––”
“I did ask,” Balidor said. “As you can likely imagine, I was somewhat thorough.”
Revik’s jaw hardened more. “Clearly you didn’t speak to the right people, then, brother. Do you think I’m making this up? If you don’t believe me, then––”
“––I disagree,” Balidor interjected gently, holding up a hand. “Although I do believe you, brother. You understand that these are not equivalent?”
Revik stared at him. Then he felt his embarrassment slide abruptly into anger.
“Well, you’re wrong––” he began.
“––So does father Vash,” Balidor cut in, interrupting him a third time, again holding up a hand. “...Disagree with you, that is. And the monks here seem to disagree, too, brother, since they have acceded to my request already. So perhaps we do not see your condition as being quite so dire as you imagine?” Balidor smiled, still studying Revik’s eyes, that shrewder, more appraising look apparent in his gaze. “Vash left the final decision up to them, actually. The monks,” Balidor added. “...And ultimately, to you, of course. But he has full confidence in you.”
The words stumped Revik briefly.
Dropping his gaze to the stone floor, he refolded his arms, tighter, as if trying to squeeze the air out of his chest. He could feel the green-eyed seer on the floor staring at him again, too, and somehow, the weight of that gaze caused his skin to flush more, without him really thinking about why.
He fought with the idea of going because Kali asked for him.
But could he really refuse her, given what she’d risked to help him in the past? He thought about what his life had been like before, those last few months in Vietnam... the years that stretched before that, how they had felt. How different he had been. When images tried to accompany the thoughts, he winced, pushing them away.
A flicker of disgust wound through his light, but he pushed that way, too.
“Her husband won’t like it,” Revik grunted, speaking aloud without meaning to.
From the floor, the green-eyed seer laughed.
When Revik looked up, annoyed, he saw the same seer smiling at him, warmth in his eyes and light, enough in both to startle Revik, causing him to stare at the male again. He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the way the other seer seemed to be looking at him, almost like a friend... or a comrade, at the very least, possibly even an ally... and nothing like Revik himself would have expected, particularly given the conversation he’d just had with the seer’s boss.
Glancing back at Balidor, he saw the older seer smiling at him, too.
The warmth in his eyes may not have been quite so prominent, but that time, Revik saw it.
He spoke almost before he knew he intended to.
“Fine... fuck.” He shook his head, clicking as he exhaled. “When do we go?”
Even he heard the surrender in his voice.
3
BODYGUARD
THEY BRIEFED HIM on the way down the mountain.
Through that whole trip, Revik sat crammed, knee-to-knee and shoulder-to-shoulder between the male seer with the green eyes on one side and Balidor on the other, as well as four other seers on the same and facing benches. Revik didn’t recognize any of the others, but assumed they must be Adhipan, as well.
He couldn’t help noticing that all of them were male, however.
He couldn’t fail to take that as a message, either.
It also crossed his mind to mention that gender might not make a hell of a lot of difference to him at that particular moment in time... then decided to keep his sarcastic comments to himself, at least until he’d had time to assess more about these seers and his position among them.
None of the male seers around him seemed likely to trust Revik anytime soon, anyway, from what he could tell of their demeanor and their light. Unlike the green-eyed seer and their leader, Balidor, most of the seers crammed into the back of that jeep appraised Revik like he was some kind of animal, one that might bite them at any moment, given the opportunity, if not try to kill them outright.
Revik supposed that shouldn’t have surprised him, either.
They all clearly knew who he was.
Balidor appeared to ignore their stares, so Revik did his best to do the same. He didn’t miss the off-and-on flickers and probes of their light, however, or the wariness that came off the snaking trails of their aleimi. He caught them exchanging words with one another where he couldn’t hear them, too, only catching the vaguest flavor of what had been said.
Revik focused on what Balidor told him, instead, wincing a little as the jeep jostled and jumped over the uneven road down the side of the mountain.
“...Her mate, Uye, got picked up by SCARB when he went after her,” Balidor explained, his hands clasped between his jostling knees, likely in part to keep them from knocking together. “He’s been delayed as a result, but we’re negotiating with our contacts there to get him out. They have him in a holding cell in Los Angeles...”
Revik frowned. “That can’t be a coincidence,” he said.
“Well, he got in a fight when they tried to stop him from going after her,” Balidor said, his voice holding a matter-of-fact tone. “...So no, it is not. However, we no longer think that the two events were coordinated, if that is what you are implying.” Balidor glanced up at him, his mouth set in a grim expression. “There are a number of agents of the Org fighting to hold on to him, of course. We think in an attempt to pull intelligence off him. But we also think now, bas
ed on intel that we’ve received from the inside, that it’s because of his sight rank, which is quite high, not because they know who he is, specifically.”
“Which is... ?” Revik began, trailing as he glanced surreptitiously at a particularly large male sitting on the bench across from him. The other seer, looking somewhat less hostile than most of the seers in the back of the jeep, appeared to be eyeing Revik with an open curiosity instead. He had one of the Nazi scars from the concentration camps cutting across his face.
“...Who?” Revik finished belatedly, looking back at Balidor’s face. “Who is he, precisely? This Uye?”
“He is Kali’s mate,” Balidor said, as if that explained everything. “We think they’ve got him targeted for recruitment, which is why they won’t let him go. His potential is statistically rare, and he’s got a fair bit of training... including some military, which they managed to discern even though he’d been attempting to hide that fact from them. He’s also unreg’d with any of the agencies and has been for his entire life, so I imagine they are curious about him, too. He’s had to stay off the grid because of his mate, too, of course...”
Revik nodded, swallowing his questions that time, even though he still didn’t really know what the “of course” meant exactly.
“So where are we going?” he said finally.
“South America,” Balidor replied. “They have taken her to Manaus.”
“Manaus?” Revik said. “Why? Was she sold?”
Balidor cocked an eyebrow at him. “No, brother. They didn’t take her to the human city.”
There was a silence.
“Guoreum?” Revik frowned. “That’s pretty extreme. What did she do?”
“She didn’t do anything, brother.”
“I mean... what are they saying she did?”
“As far as I know, they have not charged her with any crime. Which is why this worries us, brother... even beyond the conditions in Guoreum itself.”
Revik just stared at those unreadable gray eyes, fighting the conflicting emotions warring inside his light. He knew what lived outside of the human city of Manaus. Hell, he’d been there, on the ground, while it was being built. Maybe he couldn’t remember all the details of those days anymore, but he hadn’t forgotten the bare bones.
There was only one work camp outside of Manaus.
Named Guoreum in some weird flight of fancy of Terian’s––after a mythological eagle that acted as a symbol of immovable will in the face of adversity in the old myths––the camp outside Manaus was generally considered one of the worst created by the Org. It had been designed for particularly hardened criminals in the seer world, and had some of the most extreme measures of deprivation and isolation of any since the Org first started building camps in the post-war period. The Org reserved the cells of Guoreum almost exclusively for terrorists and political prisoners of some rank, as well as other criminal threats to their “New Order.”
Revik had sent people there himself, not all that long ago.
The thought brought his nausea back in a dense wave.
“What do you mean, she didn’t do anything?” Revik said after the pause.
Balidor sighed that time, running a hand through his chestnut-colored hair.
“I do not know why they took her there, brother,” he said, his voice heavy. He looked up then, his gray eyes holding a more difficult-to-read emotion. “You must be aware that sometimes the reasons for these things are more personal in nature?”
Revik returned his look, unblinking.
Then, swallowing, he nodded, averting his gaze. “Yes.”
Something in Balidor’s eyes had relaxed when Revik looked at him next. His tone also grew quieter, almost gentle.
“You should know another thing, too, brother.”
Revik stiffened, seeing the hesitation in the other man’s eyes.
“She is pregnant,” Balidor said.
Revik flinched again, feeling his chest constrict.
Sighing, Balidor made another of those conciliatory gestures with his hand.
“...More than pregnant,” he added, lower. “She is close to term. According to her husband, she could have her child any day now.”
Revik felt that slow burn grow in his chest, gradually shifting into a harder pain, until he found it difficult to breathe. It wasn’t separation pain that time, either, but something else.
Without meaning to almost, he found himself thinking of Kali’s husband. He thought about if it had been him, stuck in a SCARB holding cell on the other side of the world from his blind, pregnant, kidnapped wife.
For the first time since he’d met Kali, Revik found himself glad he wasn’t her mate.
“Brother.”
Revik turned his head, meeting that steel-colored gaze.
Seeing the knowing in the other man’s eyes, Revik swallowed.
“I have been given a message. From her husband. To you.” As if seeing something in Revik’s face, Balidor hesitated, then made another of those nearly-apologetic hand waves. “...We told him we were pulling you. And what his wife had said. We felt obligated to inform him of this development, if not necessarily to ask him permission. He had a right to know.”
Revik nodded, agreeing with that, too.
He didn’t really want the details of that conversation, however.
As if realizing he would not ask, Balidor sighed a beat later, clicking softly.
“He said to tell you that your role constituted one word. One word alone. He said that if you deviated from that role, if you tried to surpass it or expand it in any way, with either his daughter or his wife, he would hunt you down.” Balidor hesitated, his eyes still holding that faint apology. “...He said he would kill you, brother Dehgoies. Even if his family was unharmed.”
Revik only nodded.
He couldn’t say the words surprised him, but some part of his light retracted anyway, feeling the threat more deeply than he would have before.
Or maybe simply more deeply considering where it came from.
Kali would have told her husband about him.
Of course she would have. She would have told him everything.
Revik nodded to himself, feeling his chest tighten more.
“What was the word?” he said, realizing Balidor wouldn’t speak until he did.
He turned his head, and that time, sympathy shone from those blue-gray eyes. Balidor laid a hand on his arm, in reassurance that time, maybe, or maybe simply because he thought Revik needed the contact. Hell, maybe he even did.
“Bodyguard,” Balidor said, simply. “The word he used was ‘bodyguard,’ brother. In fact, he said, Hul-tare, the ancient guard of the light.”
Thinking about this, Revik nodded again.
He knew the myth about Hul-tare.
He couldn’t help but think that the part about that particular mythic guard being celibate, asexual and willing to die for his charges could have been unintended, either.
“I understand,” is all he said.
Clasping his hands between his knees in an unconscious imitation of Balidor’s own pose, he stared out through the window at the passing scenery, without really seeing any of it. Even so, in some part of his mind, he catalogued pine trees, the distant flash of blue sky, of white clouds intervening along with sunlight, the sharper edges of the Pamir range as they descended down the steep slopes. He noted in that same part of his mind that they were heading south, so probably towards Kabul in Afghanistan, rather than Dushanbe in Tajikistan.
He supposed that made sense, too.
Ticking, ticking in the background.
The tactical part of his mind endlessly clicked on its own tracks, regardless of whatever emotions tugged at him on the surface.
Some days, it bothered Revik, made him feel like some kind of machine.
Other days, it was a relief.
When Balidor said nothing else, Revik only nodded again.
“Okay,” he repeated. “I understand.”
He did
, too.
When he glanced back towards the window that time, he paused on the green-eyed male sitting next to him, the same one who had been in his room with Balidor and the female seer, Mara. He realized only then that the other male was staring at him again, a thin veneer of puzzlement coloring those jade-colored eyes.
Something else lived there, too.
Something Revik discarded almost as soon as it flickered past his awareness, if only because he didn’t quite know what to do with it.
THE IDEA THAT they would be landing in São Paulo in about thirty seconds and entering the airport approximately twelve minutes after that had Revik in a state bordering on what he realized may have been an anxiety attack.
He’d already reacted badly to Kabul.
On the first long, plane ride, seated with a bunch of infiltrators whose light exuded more silence than noise, even when they spoke, had calmed him down some since they’d left the airport in Afghanistan, but he knew São Paulo would be even more crowded, even more intense and even more lacking in boundaries around his personal space.
He also knew he had a better chance of being recognized there.
Under the Org, with only a few exceptions, Galaith kept him stationed in the West. That meant primarily North and South America, with some time spent in Europe and even less in Russia. Revik’s time in Russia had been not long after the end of the war, anyway, so near the beginning of his time with the Org. It had more to do with operational priorities at the time, anyway, and the stint in Moscow only lasted a few years.
Without coming out and saying it explicitly, Galaith wanted Revik out of Asia.
Revik always assumed he’d been trying to put some distance between Revik and his family, an idea that Revik himself found quite funny, actually. There was no love lost between Revik and his adoptive family. He wouldn’t have sought them out for regular visits, even if he lived next door.
He didn’t try to voice any of his concerns about São Paulo to his new companions, however. He followed along with them without speaking much at all, really.
He noticed that Balidor rarely left his side. He didn’t know if that was for his protection or to ensure he didn’t split at the earliest opportunity, but Revik found he appreciated the proximity of the other seer. He noticed the green-eyed seer with the streaked brown and black hair didn’t stray very far, either, which Revik also found strangely comforting.
Allie's War Early Years Page 49