Revik agreed with him.
At the same time, he found himself only half-listening as the human rambled.
His eyes remained riveted out the window, staring at the river that still wound up north to their right, a different river than the one they’d started on. Rather than the smaller Saigon River, this was the wider, bluer Mekong, which cut the region in two, twisting all the way up through Cambodia and into Laos and Thailand to the north.
Revik watched as the boats he saw began to change, transforming from pleasure boats to American military to commercial fishing boats to the smaller, local variety.
After a few more clicks up the dusty road, Revik asked the driver to let them off. He helped Kali out from the back, noticing that time that she was shaky, and that her movements were stiff. It hit him suddenly that she was physically hurt from whatever Terian and, even more likely, Ray, had done to her.
Cursing himself when he realized that, he held her more tightly, supporting her with his arm. He didn’t really look at her as he did it, nor really ask permission, but she leaned up against him in an obvious relief.
“You should have said something,” he muttered at her, after waving off the captain and his driver without letting go of her.
She let out an amused grunt. “You were saving our lives. It seemed that should be the priority.”
Clicking under his breath, he only frowned, not speaking.
He still didn’t look at her.
His light had calmed, though––around hers, at least––which was more than a small relief.
Seemingly from the moment he made up his mind, some distance had been inserted between himself and this Kali, who claimed to be the future mother of the Bridge. Some part of him almost seemed to understand what he felt from her now, enough to make his light’s strange reactions less about her.
He didn’t bother to tell her that, though.
Instead, he stared out over the water as they walked, swiftly, towards the local docks.
He continued to support her, even as his mind clicked over the best way he could help her now.
They were far enough away from Saigon.
He knew he would be the priority for the Rooks, not her.
“We’re going to part company now, sister,” he said, his voice low, almost gruff. “You have a few options from here, in terms of where you go next… just stay away from Phnom Penh.”
“Why?” she said, gripping his arm and wincing where he supported her. “What is in Phnom Penh?”
“I will be,” he said, grunting. “And I’ll make sure the Org knows that. At least after I make sure I can get out.”
She looked up at him, frowning openly.
He could feel it, even if he couldn’t see it.
“Don’t tell me where you’re going,” he said, his voice a near growl. “If you can, stay away from anywhere with Americans. That means Manila. Bangkok. Singapore. Smaller cities are probably better. If you can make yourself look more local, that would be better… but really, just find a small airport and get the fuck out of here. Go home. To your mate.”
She gestured her understanding, her mouth tight with concentration.
He felt the physical pain on her too, and winced.
He didn’t like leaving her like this.
At the same time, he knew he risked her life if he stayed with her much longer.
“Do you have any friends here?” he said. “Anyone who can help you?”
She shook her head. “No.” Looking up, so that her green eyes caught the sun, she gave him a sideways smile. “Do you?”
He let out a half laugh. “After today?” he said. “No, sister. I suspect I don’t have any friends anywhere after today.”
She gripped his waist tighter, giving him a squeeze before she let him go.
“You will,” she said, her words low, but certain. “And you do, Revik. One friend, at least, although I don’t know what good I can do you. Nor do I know when we will see one another again.”
“Hopefully not for a good long time, sister,” he grunted. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”
They stood on the dock now.
He had released her, but she just stood there, hesitating, as if she would say more to him. When she continued to stand there, he frowned, motioning towards the water.
“You should go,” he said. “Go ahead of me. I’ll take the road a while longer, see if I can hitch another ride to the airport.”
She nodded.
Still, she did not move.
“Sister,” he growled. “Go.”
Sighing, she only nodded again.
“I understand,” she said. When he turned to go that time, she caught hold of his arm, forcing him to look down at her. “Brother Revik. I would ask you a favor.”
He blinked, staring down at her.
“What?” He let out a half-humorous laugh. “Another favor, sister? You might overestimate your appeal to me at this point.”
He meant it as a joke, but she didn’t smile.
When she looked up that time, her green eyes were serious.
They also looked significantly older.
“Do not tell her about me,” she said.
Her words came out hard, dense, a near-command.
Revik could only stare at her, seeing a density, heat and power in her light he had not seen until then.
“When you meet her, Revik,” she said, gripping his arm tighter. “Do not tell her of this. Do not tell her we met. Do not tell her anything about me at all.”
Revik frowned, staring at that harder light in her eyes. “Why would I need to tell her anything?” he said. “You’re her mother, right?”
“Just promise me that you won’t,” she said, her voice firm.
After a pause where he just looked at her, he nodded, making the gesture for a formal promise with one hand.
“I vow it,” he said.
“Where will you go?” she asked him.
“You don’t need to know that, sister. It won’t help either of us.” Seeing a faint frown touch her lips, he hesitated, then met her gaze again. “I have a feeling you already know anyway, sister. Really, as you said… where else would I go? Who else would take me in?”
He felt a ripple of sadness on her at that, and flinched.
Hardening his voice, he added,
“Go now. It’s time. I’m hoping they follow me… they should follow me… but for the love of the gods, don’t be stupid, sister Kali. Do not let yourself sleep until you are back safe in your home. Stay out of the Barrier until you’re well away from here. And do nothing to call attention to yourself. Don’t get me killed by your mate when he finds out I left you here.”
She smiled at him. A pulse of warmth left her light, enveloping his, so strong it briefly stopped his breath, fluttering his heart in his throat.
He pushed it aside, focusing on the muddy banks, on the boat people he could see, washing clothes at the edge of the river.
He managed to swallow it, but he felt it rattle him.
That time, he could have sworn he felt that other presence there.
That presence that was her but not her.
Somehow, he could feel them as separate entities now.
Somehow, he could see that other face through her, and know it wasn’t her.
“I understand, brother,” Kali murmured, still watching his face.
Smiling at him a second time, she surprised him then, leaning up to kiss him on the cheek.
The gesture was simple, not laden with anything but a warm affection and that deeper feeling that had briefly heated his chest.
That time, he accepted her affection without question… and without feeling resentful that she hadn’t offered more.
She began to walk away finally, aiming her feet towards the greenish-brown river bank, calling out a greeting and waving down a Vietnamese boatman. The man she hailed was even older than the one who’d taken them up the river before, with a completely gray head of hair and wrinkled ski
n.
Revik found himself approving her choice. He liked something about the man’s light, and realized that was why Kali had chosen him.
The man waved back at her when he caught sight of them standing on the short, wooden pier, and Kali called out to him in Vietnamese, letting go of Revik’s hand.
Watching her, he felt his jaw harden.
“Hey, wait.”
When she turned to look at him in surprise, maybe that he was still standing there at all, he dug a hand into his jacket pocket, looking for the wad of cash he’d taken out of the safe he and Terian had shared in the Majestic.
Flipping through a chunk of it, he peeled off half, holding them out to her as she gave him an astonished look.
“I’m not calling you ‘mom,’” he said, placing the bills in her hand when she didn’t reach out to take them, pressing her fingers to grip them before he let her go. “…So you can just get that idea out of your head.”
Seeing the faint smile tugging at his lips, Kali laughed out loud.
The sound was cheerful, delighted, melodious.
It warmed something in his heart that maybe hadn’t been warm in quite a long time.
Seventeen
The Defector
HE RAN, all-out, ignoring branches as they slapped at his face and arms, even when they cut at his skin, forcing a gasp from his lips.
It felt like he’d been running for days.
His lungs ached, partly from the altitude, partly from the cold––but mostly because he was running out of wind. He’d hit his very breaking point, and he knew it, even as he pushed his body harder, feeling his heart hammer painfully in his chest.
He didn’t have much time.
His body was shutting down.
Not only from the lack of water, although that was certainly a factor. Not from the gunshot wound in his shoulder, or even the one in his leg.
Not from the lack of food, or even the enforced detox he’d endured over his month-long flight across five countries and what now had to be thousands of miles––
He felt the exact instant when he crossed over the line.
He knew precisely when he entered that other construct.
He felt it, and didn’t know if he should scream in relief, or leave out the other side, the same way he had come.
Pain hit him.
Excruciating, heart-wrenching pain.
He realized it was from being cut off from that silver, complex light of the Org.
That same silver light had been hunting him for days, weeks. Those hours and minutes had blurred together in his mind, turning into months, years, an endless stretch of time.
Images flashed in the background of his mind.
His best friend, Terian, who got off both of the lucky shots that actually hit him, trying to drop him without killing him, on the streets of Calcutta.
He’d seen Raven running beside him, her mouth set in anger, the traces of a limp in her stride, likely from the gunshot wound he’d given her.
They’d sent everything they had after him.
There was that fucking helicopter in Burma, the one that tried to drug him from the skies. The nights where he’d had to sleep in swamps, trying to avoid humans the Org hunters might be pushing to help them look for him with their eyes.
Friends of his, from all over North America and Europe, hunting him.
Young seers he’d recruited, trained with his own hands and light.
He’d felt them all in his head, for days now.
Yelling at him. Whispering to him.
Reasoning with him.
Threatening him.
Now, for the first time since he’d run from the Majestic Hotel…
It was silent.
Not completely silent. But almost.
He had been noticed.
It made sense. Of course they would feel him here. He was forbidden here, like anyone who carried the mark of the Org. The treaty was unambiguous.
He continued to stumble through the trees, but slower now, more to get closer to some kind of help, someone who might throw him in a prison and feed him at least.
He could feel others coming for him now, from the other side of that invisible line. Invisible to humans, at any rate, and to anyone who couldn’t see the edges of that dense construct with their aleimi.
To Revik it was a bright light circle illuminating the trees and snow.
When he shoved his way through the last grove of trees, crashing through branches in the not-trail he’d forged through the woods, his breath came out in plumes that turned rapidly to crystals in the frozen air, and there was even more snow on the ground, and ice where a small creek used to run. He came to a staggering halt when they raised their guns, putting his hands up in the air, panting so hard he couldn’t speak at first.
He could barely hold himself upright.
“Sanctuary…” he gasped, lungs straining, as soon as he could force out the word. “I request sanctuary…”
“You are trespassing, Rook.” The seer who spoke raised his weapon, a modified but old model gun, aiming it at Revik’s head. “You are breaking our agreement. Slaves of the Pyramid are not welcome here. Go home––”
“Sanctuary…” Revik gasped. “Sanctuary… please…”
“Did he say ‘sanctuary’?” another muttered, looking at the first one that had spoken.
Revik gestured affirmative, nodding as well.
“Yes. Yes… I request sanctuary…”
He took a few more steps forward, then slid in the ice-covered leaves at the base of the nearest tree. He fell to one knee, and couldn’t quite muster the strength or will to pull himself back up.
He remained there, in the mud and ice and snow, feeling water seep through the knees of his pants as he fought to catch his breath, to slow his heart in his chest.
The strange seers stared at him, wide-eyed.
None of them lowered their guns.
“Gaos… is that who I think it is?” one of them muttered, the second one who had spoken.
He looked to an older seer, one who hadn’t yet spoken, but who Revik pegged as their leader. The younger seer’s voice held wonder now.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” he said. “The second?”
“It is,” the older one said.
That seer had a narrow, smooth face and black hair tied in a ponytail that hung down his back. He wore a kind of robe, even in the cold, with a coat over it that had a fur-lined hood. He, alone among all of them, did not seem to carry a gun.
“That is Dehgoies Revik,” the seer said, matter of fact.
His Prexci was textbook perfect, spoken in a near purr.
His words washed over Revik’s aleimi like liquid light.
“D’Gaos,” a third seer amongst them muttered.
“It can’t be,” the first breathed.
“It is,” the older one said.
“He really said sanctuary?” the third muttered again.
“I believe so, yes,” the older one confirmed.
The first seer who had spoken reinforced his grip on the gun, still pointing it at Revik’s face. He and the other youngish seer approached him cautiously, following the older one with the ponytail and the musical voice and those jet-black eyes.
The guards fell silently into flanking positions as they walked behind their leader, watching Revik minutely, as if looking for some kind of ambush or trap.
The older one, their leader, walked directly up to Revik, however.
He looked down at him calmly, without any change in his overall expression, or the simple peace he exuded from his light. Revik could tell the robed seer was looking at him with more than just his eyes, but he didn’t get any impressions beyond that one thing.
The male’s face looked familiar somehow.
“Yerin?” Revik said, his voice doubtful.
The seer nodded, smiling. “Yes. I am Yerin.”
Revik blinked. “You know me?” he said.
“I do,” Yerin affirmed.
“Greetings, brother Revik. My father mentioned to me you might be visiting us today.”
Revik blinked again, looking between them, but he didn’t speak.
He honestly had no idea what to say to that.
The other seers looked at Yerin as Revik did, eyebrows raised. Clearly, his words came as a surprise to all of them, too.
None of them spoke, though.
Revik didn’t speak either.
He just remained there, on his knees, half-sprawled in the leaves and snow. He continued to fight for breath as he felt his body start to let go, each lungful of oxygen cutting into his throat and chest as his legs started to shake violently from exertion.
“Sanctuary,” he said again, his hands still in the air. That time, he managed to get the words out stronger. “Please. Sanctuary. They’ll kill me…”
The seers in the back looked at one another again, doubt in their eyes as they took a step nearer.
None of them lowered their guns.
REVIK COULD HEAR them talking about him, even before he got inside the room.
He could barely bring himself to care at that point, although he knew he should.
He couldn’t get away from their voices, in any case, so he had little choice but to listen to most of what they thought of him, whether he wanted to hear it or not.
The longer he listened, the worse he felt.
Even now, he couldn’t bring himself to focus on anything they were saying with more than a small part of his conscious mind.
Detoxing from some kind of chemical––
––clearly some kind of drug addiction. Malnourished from days, if not weeks of––
––multiple gunshot wounds. Most serious one was in the leg, but he didn’t seem to––
––still connected to them. We have to deal with that first, before the rest––
Well, what makes you think he will agree to––
––Either he agrees, or he goes. It’s that simple.
Revik closed his eyes, swallowing as he fought to block it out.
He felt sick. Sicker than he could remember feeling.
Revik Page 20