Sun

by J. C. Andrijeski

  “There’s a Barrier field there,” Holo told me quietly, jerking his chin towards the box. “Like what we saw on the docks of New York.”

  “Why all the seers, then?” I said, equally quiet. “They there for show?”

  Holo frowned. “Not for show. But they’re not there simply to shield either. I almost wonder if they’re scanning the crowd from behind that shield. Looking for spies. Unbelievers.” He gave me a humorless smile, eyes hard. “…Infidels. Blasphemers. You know.”

  “He’s right,” Cass said, equally low, leaning in from my other side. “That field is strong. It works on the telekinesis, too. I did a bit of a push, just to test it. It must be that weird seer tech Dante told us about. The same as what they use to shield the city gates.”

  I glanced at her, frowning faintly, but nodded.

  We’d known there might be parts of Rome where our telekinesis wouldn’t work. Dante warned us about that, during our last intelligence transmission from her and Vik.

  “Do you have access to the Lister profiles?” I asked Holo, leaning towards his ear. “In your headset. The stuff Dante compiled.”

  Holo shook his head.

  He never took his eyes off the sand-covered arena floor.

  Exhaling, I nodded. We’d been forced to leave most of our real intel behind, on Atwar’s boats. My frown deepened as I thought about that, and about the intel we’d already shared with his people in Croatia.

  Copying Cass’s pose by leaning back on my elbows on the wide stone bench, I adjusted my sunglasses and focused on the arena floor, trying my damnedest to look like a normal human spectator. Right now, we were being treated to hand-to-hand combat featuring seers killing other seers. While it was probably the last thing I wanted to be watching right then, I was relieved to be out of those downstairs corridors with their thick, meat-smelling smoke, burning plastic and faint smell of piss.

  Under the shade of the awning, hit occasionally by a light breeze, the stands felt positively heavenly in comparison. I alternated between sipping an iced berry drink and chewing on dried meat, trying to act interested as four pairs of seers below attacked one another with weapons and shields that looked a few hundred years old, if not a few thousand.

  Of course, everything about the fights was wrong.

  The seers all wore those bloody collars above their Ancient Rome-style armor.

  More disturbing than the collars themselves was the blank look in their eyes and faces as they swung heavy swords at one another––or sometimes axes, or sometimes more elaborate, older-looking weapons made of iron and covered in spikes. In the last round of fights, we’d seen two seers fighting with flaming spears. They fought mindlessly, seemingly bent on killing one another without really caring if they themselves won or lost.

  They also fought slowly, their feet moving in measured, shuffling steps.

  It looked nothing like the mulei fights I’d been watching between seers for the last however-many years. In mulei, skilled fighters often moved so quickly my eyes couldn’t track them. Their eyes were sharp, their lights were sharp, their expressions concentrated.

  This was like watching zombies fight.

  I’d gone back to studying the monks in the box seats from behind my sunglasses, when the crowd around us let out a delighted roar, humans on either side rising to their feet.

  Glancing up at a heavyset Italian man in his fifties pumping his fist into the air on the other side of Feigran, I grimaced a little at the huge smile on his face. I saw Feigran looking at him as well, his lip curled as if he were a particularly ugly type of animal.

  When Feigran didn’t look away, I flicked my light at him.

  The last thing we needed was Feigran getting into a fist fight with a drunk Italian.

  The prescient blinked, then turned his head, looking at me.

  This is quite odd, he remarked in my mind. Is it not, beautiful sister? It is a circus of blood. They should all be naked… covered in it. Fucking and eating in it.

  Frowning faintly, I clicked under my breath.

  I decided to ignore the last few things he’d said.

  It is odd, Fig, I murmured, using the higher areas of my light to speak to the parts of him that lived in the same place. And yes, the people here are acting strangely. But don’t talk to me like that in here, okay? We need to keep a low profile. That means in the Barrier, too.

  He blinked at me, his expression blank.

  From his face, I couldn’t tell if he’d comprehended a word I’d said.

  When he went back to staring at the grinning Italian man, Cass let out an annoyed sigh.

  She was more direct than I’d been. When he didn’t stop staring, she smacked his thigh with the flat of her hand, hard.

  He jumped, looking over.

  “Yes, my beautiful friend?”

  “Don’t be rude, Tony,” she warned, speaking Italian. “Leave the nice man alone.”

  I blinked a little, surprised. I remembered suddenly that she’d studied Italian in high school. I’d taken Spanish. Truthfully, I thought Italian was an odd choice in California, but she’d always wanted to come here.

  Thinking about that now made me frown all over again.

  I didn’t bother to look down at the arena to see why the crowd roared and booed. We’d been here long enough that I knew what the screams and the catcalls likely meant. Someone had suffered a serious blow––likely a fatal one.

  That, or the tide had turned on a fight.

  In either case, I didn’t need to know the details.

  “Fucking piece of shit fuckers,” Holo muttered from next to me, his mouth hard as he stared down through his mirrored blue sunglasses.

  “Hey,” I murmured, leaning in to his ear. “Don’t let it get to you, brother. We need to remain inconspicuous.”

  “None of these ridvak worms can feel me.” He grunted in disgust, glancing around. “They’re too busy jerking off in their popcorn to notice anything I say, either. I could likely shout it and they wouldn’t notice.”

  I hadn’t heard him use words like that in a while. Back when Revik worked for Salinse and the Dreng, and Holo worked for Revik, I heard that kind of thing all the time.

  “They can see your face,” I said, taking his hand in mind. Sending a faint pulse of warmth to his chest, I tried to calm his anger down. “Hey. You’ve got sunglasses on. Don’t watch it, if you can’t handle it. I’m not.”

  Holo scowled. “I’ll still be able to hear it. I’ll still be able to feel it.”

  “We can’t save all of them,” I said, softer, my voice a touch warning. “A little faith, brother. You know brother Sword. He’ll do what he can.”

  I felt Holo hear that.

  As the words sank in, I also felt him make an effort to calm his light.

  A few seconds later, he nodded, clasping my hand in return.

  He tore his gaze off whatever fight he was watching, focusing on me instead, his eyes invisible through the blue mirrored shades.

  “Do you think Jax is okay, Sister Allie?” he said.

  I blinked.

  Jax was in the United States, with Declan.

  I’d kind of forgotten about that, with everything else going on. Holo and Jax had been close for as long as I’d known either of them. I’d thought of them almost as a unit at times, not as two separate beings. I still didn’t know the exact nature of the relationship there, but I knew they’d been lovers on and off, in addition to being more or less inseparable as friends.

  “I’m sure he’s fine, brother,” I said, after that too-long pause. “Last I heard, Declan said they were in New Mexico somewhere. He hadn’t lost anyone, not since Virginia. Including Jax.”

  “There were only a few of them left,” Holo muttered, only half-hearing me. “That covic jurekil’a bitch killed most of them, so there were only a few left to go after her.”

  I clicked softly, only wincing a little at his reference to Chandre.

  I didn’t speak, though.

  Still
frowning, Holo glanced back at the arena floor.

  “She nearly killed Jorag,” he added, still speaking low. “Gaos d’lanlente. Jor’s a fucking mountain. A better than good fighter. I would’ve thought only the boss or you could have killed Jor. Maybe Wreg.” He turned, looking at me. “Jax is small for a seer.”

  “They were surprised,” I reminded him, gripping his hand tighter. “He’s with Declan. And Torek. They’ll look out for him.”

  Remembering what I’d discovered about Torek through Revik’s memory-sharing of the past few weeks, I frowned.

  “Anyway,” I said, pushing Torek from my mind. “Wreg, Jon, Maygar and many others will be meeting up with them soon. They might be with Jax and the others already.”

  After another pause, Holo sighed.

  “I hope so.” Leaning back on his elbows on the stone bench, he released my hand, giving me another look through the blue sunglasses. “He’s not been doing so well. Jax. You know. Since New York.”

  I’d heard that, but I didn’t know specifics.

  I hadn’t been with them in New York––not for that part of things.

  Frowning, I couldn’t help thinking Jax got the crap end of the stick when it came to live ops over the last year, though. First by accompanying Revik in New York, then the D.C. run with Loki, where they got ambushed and Ontari died. Then he got stuck with me in Denver, only to move on to that mess at Langley, where Chandre butchered more than half of our team.

  Holo must have heard some of that. He exhaled.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I mean.”

  Glancing at him, I nodded. “I get it. But unfortunately, we don’t have a safe place to let brother Jax relax right now.” Thinking about that, I grunted. “Honestly, he’s probably in the best place he could be right now… given everything.”

  Holo nodded.

  Exhaling slowly, he nodded again.

  For a long time after, we just sat there, pretending to watch seer fights while we scoped out the coliseum, the Listers, and the monks in the box seats.

  I made myself watch part of the actual fighting, too. I knew eventually someone would notice if I didn’t watch at all. I even made myself stand up and cheer a few times along with the rest of the people in the stands.

  “How much longer?” Holo muttered, when I’d just sat down from one of those times.

  “I don’t know. Are they behind on the fights? It feels like they’re behind.”

  I waited for him to scan the list of fights.

  “Maybe twenty minutes,” he admitted after a pause. “Maybe a bit more. I’m guessing on the names, and I don’t know exactly which fight they were on when we came in. They haven’t put the final pairings for the seers up yet, so I’m assuming…”

  His words trailed.

  Sitting up, he lifted his sunglasses, displaying the shocking blue contacts and gold and blue eye makeup he wore under them.

  Staring down at the sand-covered arena, he muttered under his breath in Prexci.

  “Gaos,” he said. “What the fuck is he doing?”

  I followed his eyes.

  Fear ran through me when I saw the man standing there.

  I had images of it being Revik, of him growing impatient with the blood and decadence of the coliseum entertainment and walking out to put an end to it all… but it wasn’t Revik who’d appeared in front of the emperor’s box.

  It was Balidor.

  Next to me, Cass sucked in a breath.

  He must have come through one of the trap doors in the stadium’s floor.

  He wore full combat armor, in the old Roman style, like the other seers on the arena floor. There, the similarities between him and those other seers ended, though. He wore no collar, and his gray eyes were clear, his steps sure and graceful. He ignored the fighting seers, making his way between them, straight for the emperor’s box and the monks that sat inside.

  I watched, my mouth probably hanging open, as he walked with grim determination towards a clear patch of sand directly below the box. I watched the monks react, stopping their lounging and talking amongst themselves to sit upright, their eyes trained on Balidor’s form.

  They watched him approach, clearly intrigued, alarmed and curious to see an un-collared seer before them. I couldn’t tell if they knew who he was.

  I couldn’t help noticing the box itself as I scanned through those human faces.

  The structure was beautiful in a timeless kind of way.

  Made entirely of dark wood and white limestone, it was cut off from the surrounding stands by the wooden roof, guards holding spears, tapestries, marble walls, tall vases and fountains. Sheer white curtains fluttered in the breeze on either side, along with blood-red flags carrying the three-spiral symbol. The flags hung from black poles held by guards who stood at attention on the front end of the box, the part facing the arena floor.

  Balidor walked towards them without hesitation, a sword clutched in his hand.

  He looked strangely at home in both the clothes and with the old weapon. He also looked strangely kinglike, in that Balidor way of his.

  Next to me, Cass didn’t feel at home with this new development at all.

  I felt her light react in a confused mass of emotions, hardening and sparking into mine, exuding a dense, unstable tension that gritted my teeth. I could practically feel her holding her breath, even as she balled her hands into fists, biting her lip as if to force herself silent. Like Holo and the monks in the box, she sat up and forward now, staring down at the male seer as he strode gracefully across the sand.

  Looking at her, it hit me––really hit me, for the first time.

  She was in love with Balidor.

  Like, really in love with him.

  Spun by the realization for some reason, I bit my own lip, trying not to react. My eyes returned to the arena floor, even as a frown hardened the edges of my mouth.

  Whatever the fuck this was––whatever Balidor was doing right now––it wasn’t part of the plan. It wasn’t part of our plan, at least, the one we all agreed on before splitting up.

  As more and more people noticed the lone seer walking towards the box, the crowd around us gradually grew silent.

  They watched, unmoving, as Balidor stalked across the sand, his movements unmistakably seer-like, even feral, borderline predatory. Without Revik or Varlan standing next to him, the Adhipan leader looked strangely tall, taller than any human in that box. It wasn’t quite how Revik walked, but close enough that I remembered how well Balidor could fight.

  The seers in the arena stopped fighting one another to watch him.

  They followed his progress with their eyes, as if bewildered.

  Something about seeing a real seer there, one who walked like a seer, wore his hair like a seer, looked like a seer, whose light was unbroken, seemed to short-circuit the other seers’ programming. They stopped trying to kill one another long enough to stare, watching Balidor like they recognized in him a ghost of their former selves.

  Before he would have walked into range of the gaunt lions and their chains, Balidor came to a stop.

  Staring up at the monks, he cleared his throat.

  He must have been wearing some kind of amplification device, since we heard it when he did. The sound of it echoed throughout the Coliseum.

  “I would like to speak to your leader,” he said.

  He spoke English, his voice formally polite.

  While he spoke, and after, his gray eyes scanned faces in the box. He never loosened his grip on the hilt of the heavy sword. His expression remained calm, but stern.

  “I am Balidor of the Adhipan,” he said, after a pause where no one came forward, and no one spoke. “I have a message for whoever leads this band of murderers, torturers, heretics and enslavers currently squatting in what was once the noble and holy city of Rome… from my beloved intermediary and brother to the Dragon, the Illustrious Sword.”

  37

  ULTIMATUMS AND REQUESTS

  THE SILENCE DEE
PENED when he finished speaking.

  It was as if every person in the coliseum held their breath.

  Then, I swear I heard the shift of clothes, bones, muscle and skin as every head turned, eyes swiveling towards that dark wood and limestone box, and the rows of monks sitting inside, waiting to see how the Myther leaders would respond.

  My gaze followed theirs.

  Using the virtual binoculars, I scanned every face in that box.

  My heart was already hammering harder in my chest, my breath shortening.

  I knew some of that was a reaction to Cass’s light freaking the fuck out next to mine, but most of it was purely from the apparent scrapping of our original plan by my husband and hers, without having any idea of what now replaced it.

  Originally, Balidor, Revik, Illeg, Stanley and Dalai were going to infiltrate the lower levels, take out enough guards to clear a path, and come for the Listers once they were readying to begin the executions. The idea was to wait until they had an excuse to unlock the cages, to give them a jump start on getting them out––which they would do once Cass and I distracted everyone with a telekinetic light show.

  Revik and his team were then supposed to bring the prisoners out through the trap doors. Revik would play offense while Balidor played defense, in part by using his sight to control the larger animals and use them to fend off the human guards.

  Cass, Holo, Feigran and I would get out with the fleeing crowd.

  We’d set up a rendezvous point in an abandoned house not far from here.

  It wasn’t exactly our best plan, but we’d gone with simple.

  Our only real advantage lay in surprising them, since our coming here had to be the last thing they’d expect, given how foolhardy it was.

  I’d been a lot more worried about getting all of us out of the city.

  We’d heard a lot of chatter on the radios about the gates of the city, and how many resources the Mythers were throwing at the security teams there, presumably in an effort to keep us inside. Our last transmissions from Dante detailed OBE fields, seer infiltrators, human soldiers, armed flyers, sight-restraint fields that might make it impossible to use the telekinesis, mine fields that could be activated either on land or in the waterways, motion detectors, body scans, along with a passcode system that could lock down all of the walls.