Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  I never missed sleeping with other people when I was with Jaden, either. Truthfully, the thought never crossed my mind.

  But it was more than that, and I knew it.

  I never thought I’d sleep with another person again, not after Revik. And okay, he was someone else now, but it only helped a little, remembering that.

  Remembering D.C. helped a little more, but not in what I’d call a “good” way.

  When I glanced up, it occurred to me that Balidor probably heard at least some of what passed through my mind just then. Remembering my thoughts around the D.C., and what I’d been thinking about Revik himself, I felt my jaw tighten a little.

  “All right,” I said. “So when? Do we do it tonight?”

  He blinked.

  It was the closest to a real reaction I’d gotten off him.

  “What? Too forward?” I quirked an eyebrow. “Want me to buy you dinner first?”

  I saw his eyes change again, right before they flickered briefly to my mouth. He looked away a second later, but I saw him shift his weight slightly where he sat on the floor.

  So he was male, after all.

  I remembered then, that I was in pain, and might have been affecting him before all this. I didn’t know much about the virility of seers as they got older. Vash seemed to have a sexual relationship with Tarsi still, so I figured all systems were go. Vash had to be pushing seven hundred years, minimum, so ‘Dori must be in working order… although maybe the sex-pain thing wouldn’t get to him the same way it would a younger seer.

  He gave me a thin smile, clicking softly.

  “I am decrepit now?” he said.

  I laughed, snorting out the reaction before I could hold it back.

  “Sorry,” I said to his raised eyebrow. “I’m a nervous thinker.”

  “Are you sure you are all right with this?” he said.

  “Am I all right with you risking your life for an experiment? Especially since it might not even work?” I pursed my lips. “No. I told you I wasn’t.”

  “I don’t mean with me. I mean in general.” He met my gaze. “Are you all right with being unfaithful to your mate, Allie?”

  A pain hit my chest. I knew he said it that way on purpose, to try and flush a reaction out of me. I even knew why. But I couldn’t go there with him, not now. Talking about it wouldn’t make it any easier. Nor would psychoanalyzing my own feelings before we’d even done anything.

  Maybe it would be good for me.

  Maybe it would help with the denial that clung to my light and mind, even now.

  Leaning back, I slid my thumb under the organic collar.

  “Any chance I can get rid of this?” I asked him.

  He didn’t move at first.

  I realized, looking at him, that he might have his own feelings about this. I had no idea what those feelings might be, but it stood to reason he would have some. Being who he was, he had to be about a million times better at compartmentalizing the emotional stuff than I was, so maybe to him this really was just another operational exercise. In that case, helping me with my little problem would just be part of his sacred duty under the Adhipan.

  The thought made me smile a little.

  When I glanced at him again, I saw his eyes on mine.

  For a moment, he looked like he might speak.

  Something touched his expression then, right before he motioned for me to turn around.

  Pulling my weight off the stone wall, I did as his fingers indicated, tugging my hair over one shoulder to expose the back of my neck. I didn’t move as he leaned over me, flipping open the thumbnail switch, then activating the retinal scanner holding the two ends of the collar together. Since he’d been the one to put it on me, his retinal imprint was the one needed to open it.

  I winced as the collar’s tendrils retracted from around my spine.

  The lock opened with a click.

  He pulled it off me, gently, caressing the skin there with his fingers. I watched him toss it to the rug, not far from the bag of clothes I’d lugged in a few days earlier.

  He didn’t move away when I turned to look at him, but remained close to where I sat, his face only a few inches from mine. I saw his eyes flicker once more to my mouth.

  “So what now?” I said.

  The gray eyes narrowed. I saw a faint emotion in them now.

  Or maybe I could just feel him more, with the collar gone.

  “Can you really shield us?” he said. “This will be a test, Allie. A test to see if you can do it. I could help you at first, and then let go, if I find no holes.”

  “So more than once then?”

  His expression tightened.

  I realized I was needling him too much. He didn’t like it.

  “Sorry.” I touched his arm. “I’m nervous. That’s all it is.”

  He looked away, as if second-guessing the whole thing. I saw conflict on his eyes, and realized I could feel his light again, despite his shields. It had crept back around me once the collar was removed. I’d barely noticed because of who he was.

  “Do you still want to do it?” I said.

  “Yes.” His eyes remained hard. “Can you shield without my help?”

  “I guess we’ll know pretty quick if I can’t.” I hesitated again, still studying his face, worried at the look I saw there. “Are you sure you want it to be you, ‘Dori? I could ask someone else. Someone a bit more… expendable.”

  There was a pause.

  Then I felt pain waft off him, along with something I never thought I’d feel on him––at least not aimed at me. Truthfully, I never thought I’d feel it from anyone who wasn’t Revik. It took me another few seconds to feel the answer that came with it.

  I swallowed, feeling his light flicker once more around mine.

  “So not someone else,” I said, quieter. “Is that it?”

  “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t, Esteemed Bridge.”

  “You’d appreciate it?” I said.

  His pain sharpened, sliding deeper into my light.

  “Stop playing games, Allie. Make up your mind.”

  I could only stare at him after he said it. Realizing I could feel him opening his light to me already, it hit me that I’d been kidding myself.

  No way would this be clean, not for either of us.

  In the same instant, I realized I wanted him.

  He looked at me directly. His pain worsened. “Allie, gaos––”

  “I love him, ‘Dori,” I said. “You must know that.”

  His expression didn’t move, but I felt his light retract slightly.

  “I do know that… yes.”

  When he didn’t say anything more, I nodded, feeling my throat close.

  I felt him waiting. I knew enough about seers by then to know he likely expected me to initiate, that he probably wouldn’t do anything until I did. That would be true even if I wasn’t the Bridge. It was a seer thing, for males to offer like that, then wait.

  Revik told me once he’d had to learn how to be the aggressor with humans, because he’d found the females often expected it.

  I couldn’t think about him right now, though, or I really would lose it.

  I watched Balidor study my face, waiting for me.

  As I did, I realized why I was really hesitating. I recognized the emotion that lived behind it, even as it cut off my breath.

  It wasn’t fear, although it probably should have been.

  It was guilt.

  12

  MISGIVING

  REVIK STARED AT the three-dimensional map, letting his eyes blur as he slid most of his mind into the Barrier. He was having trouble focusing.

  He tried to push past it, to force his mind back on the task at hand.

  A few minutes later, he realized he’d been staring at the same section of map for minutes, without absorbing any of it.

  They’d been working for months on this job. It was the primary reason he’d been delayed, going to find Allie.

  That, and
he’d wanted to wait… well, for his own reasons.

  He’d wanted her to see him whole, when he saw her next. Physically. Mentally. He’d been worried about how she might react to him, especially after the thing in D.C. He didn’t want to complicate any interactions between them by being confused himself.

  Things had been difficult for him, those first few months after D.C.

  He’d known, of course, they would’ve been difficult for her, as well. He was beginning to realize he’d underestimated just how much.

  He’d waited too long.

  Pushing the thought away, he forced his mind back on the job.

  He couldn’t afford to put off the Registry hit, whatever his personal problems.

  His team had stumbled across a window. It wasn’t a very long window, and when it closed, the records facilities would be implementing a number of major upgrades to their security. After he’d analyzed the changes planned, he was forced to concede they weren’t insignificant. There was a real risk they wouldn’t be able to get around them, at least not anytime soon––not with their current resources.

  In all probability, they were doing it largely because of him, and the sharp increase in seer-related terrorism since the attack on D.C. He knew the worms were still in a panic that their carefully built system of control seemed to be breaking down.

  Whatever their reasons, he couldn’t afford to wait a few years while his people found another way in. As a target, the Registry formed the cornerstone of everything that would come after.

  He needed it.

  Seer containment, or “SCARB” as it was generally known, controlled not only international law around the use of seers, but also enforcement of the Human Protection Act, including the image ban, the ban on realtime recordings for live subjects, the registration of young seers at birth, the oversight of legal Clan affiliations, movement and travel passes for seers, and “punishment” for seer-related transgressions, both humans and seer.

  SCARB also had jurisdiction over the Sweeps, the more bureaucratic arm of Human Protection Services, or HPS, which acted as on-the-ground law enforcement. The Sweeps conducted most of the local “bagging and tagging” operations that occurred globally.

  The Interracial Peacekeeping Forces, or IPF, the military arm of the Bureau, dealt mainly in clandestine work, protection of nation states, anti-terrorism, and human-directed infiltration. In other words, they handled SCARB’s original charter: the use and deployment of seers as biological weapons by nation states. That had expanded over the years to also include organized crime, along with terrorist groups and other insurgent forces.

  They also had jurisdiction over labs, breeding centers and work camps.

  Hitting SCARB’s Registry would disable aspects of all three branches making up Seer Containment. Wiping the Registry was really hitting at the mainline of institutionalized human control over seers.

  It was the biggest op Revik had attempted since Salinse put him in charge of military strategy for the Rebels, and the most critical to their goals.

  He keyed in another set of instructions, telling the computer nonverbally that he wanted a comparison done of all IPF strongholds in reaction distance to the main Registry offices in São Paulo, Brazil.

  While he waited, his mind wandered back to the other.

  Pain seeped into his skin as it did, tightening his shoulders.

  For a long moment, he hung over the flat console, his palms on either edge. He forced himself to breathe, to move past it.

  The feeling didn’t ebb.

  It had been worse lately. He couldn’t find a specific cause, but it worried him. It worried him more than he was fully prepared to admit, even to himself.

  She’d said she would sever them.

  She said she no longer intended to honor their monogamy.

  His jaw clenched. He clicked into virtual before the thought fully formed.

  He didn’t bother with a greeting.

  “Anything? On finding Vash? The rest of the Council?”

  A brief silence met him on the other end.

  “Hello?” he growled. “Am I talking to myself?”

  “Sir,” Wreg said. “We got a hit. Now. Just now, in fact.” Feeling Revik’s reaction, he cut in quickly. “…It’s not the Bridge, sir. It’s Feigran.”

  “Feigran?” Revik slid into the Barrier, scanning. “Feigran can wait. Why aren’t you looking for my wife?”

  Even so, he took in the set of imprints Wreg referenced, comparing them to his stored knowledge of the other seer.

  “Where is that?” He squinted in reflex, even though he was looking with his aleimi, not his eyes. “Is that Seertown?” he said.

  “Yes, brother. The Old House on the Hill.”

  Revik focused on the Barrier layout inside the image.

  “When was this?” he said. “The time signature feels off.”

  “That’s the thing, brother Syrimne,” he said. “It was three weeks ago.”

  “And now?” Revik said. “Why didn’t you show me the imprint from now?”

  “Here’s a view of it. You’ll see why, laoban.”

  Revik took it in, confused at first as to what he was seeing.

  “There’s nothing there,” he said. “Did you track him? See where he went?”

  “He never left,” Wreg said, his voice grim. “There’s a construct there now. We found the trace entirely by accident, sir. I had Nikka looking for those artifacts you wanted. We thought maybe some of the old texts had been stored in the House on the Hill, that it might have been vandalized after the bombings––”

  “Someone built a construct around the Old Mansion?”

  “Yes, laoban. A new one. And Feigran’s imprints seem to have vanished. So we can only assume—”

  “Someone has him.” Revik straightened from the console, feeling a reaction in his light, strong enough that he heard it in his voice. “Allie.”

  “It’s a definite possibility, sir. We would never have found the construct at all if we hadn’t found the trace imprints of Feigran. The logic is sound. It is one of the last places we would have looked for the Bridge and her people, given that we weren’t looking in Asia at all at this point, based on your instructions, sir. The construct itself is of an unusually high quality. Those fucking Adhipan assholes could have made it, Nenz.”

  Revik felt his light reacting, coiling around his form. He realized he was having a sexual reaction too, and muted it reflexively.

  “When can we go?” he said.

  “Anytime you want, brother Syrimne.”

  “How about now?” he said.

  He was still staring at the Old Mansion inside the Barrier image Wreg had lent him. He wanted to go there himself. He weighed jumping right then, scouting the location from the Barrier before he threw clothes and supplies together to travel.

  No––he would do it in transit.

  Staring with his mind’s eye, he could just make out the edges of the construct ending at the lawn of the gardens that led down the hill.

  She might be in there. Even now, she might be there.

  He felt Wreg smile, even as he fought another ribbon of pain in his light, strong enough to make his hands hurt.

  “Why aren’t you getting the plane ready?” Revik said.

  “Doing it now,” Wreg said.

  “One hour. Two at most.”

  “I’ll tell the others.”

  13

  HOUSE ON THE HILL

  REVIK SLUMPED INTO a seat at the back of the plane.

  The Antonov An-32 had been retrofitted with organics for protected jumps in flight, so he immediately used the keypad to set up recording functions while he fit the headset around his two ears.

  It meant wearing electrodes, which didn’t really agree with his Elaerian light body, but he didn’t want to miss a damned thing. His seer memory, despite being nearly photographic, worked only for things he noticed. He wanted to record the details he didn’t notice, as well.

  The pain ha
d worsened in the past two hours while they were fueling the plane and mapping a flightpath.

  The trip would take a minimum of twenty hours. He’d been on the wrong side of the world, of course, when they found her. He’d been so sure she’d return to the States, where she’d spent most of her childhood and adult years.

  Again, he’d misread her. It was starting to piss him off, just how badly he’d fared at trying to predict her movements.

  She was his mate. He should know her better than this.

  A fear settled into the pit of his stomach as he remembered her words to him on that garage ramp in Delhi. She’d looked hot as hell, even then––eyes sparking with light, dark hair cascading down her back in thick ringlets, makeup blackening her eyes from their fucking earlier, the dress covered by a tuxedo jacket but still showing enough skin that he’d found it distracting even listening to her at first, as she yelled at him.

  But the look in her eyes. Gods. She’d looked at him like she hated him, like he was the vilest piece of excrement she’d ever laid eyes on.

  He shoved it from his mind, angrily.

  He should have listened to Wreg.

  He’d bring her in now, the hell with it.

  He couldn’t risk those Seven bastards indoctrinating her any further, poisoning her mind against him before he’d had a chance to explain things to her. He needed to show her what he was trying to do. If it was really the killing that bothered her, he’d find a way to compromise on that, too––conduct more ops where they captured instead of killed, find some other way of neutralizing those he needed out of the way.

  It infuriated him to think how much he’d contributed to her warped views himself. He’d been such a puppet of the Seven those years.

  He’d tried to shield her too, he supposed, to protect her from the worst aspects of the world she’d been forced into without warning or preparation. He’d planned to tell her, of course. He’d thought he would ease her into the truth, let her see things in stages, as she grew used to living as a seer. Maybe that had been a mistake, too.