Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  “But what does that mean? That I can’t consult with Vash or the others?”

  Revik shook his head. “I didn’t say that—”

  “So what, then?” I said, hearing my voice tense. “I’d need to defer to Salinse?”

  “No,” he growled. “I just told you, no. If he really has a problem with you, I’m leaving.” He hesitated. “But I honestly don’t think he does, Allie.”

  I shook my head again, gripping his arm. “That’s not what I meant… not exactly.” I met his gaze directly. “What about the Dreng, Revik?”

  There was a silence. Then his expression tightened.

  I saw him looking between my eyes, as if trying to think around my words.

  Finally he sighed, clicking a little. He stepped back, running his fingers through his black hair. I watched as he pulled the velcro end of the strap from his wrist, unwrapping one of the long, cotton wraps from around his hand.

  He didn’t look up as he spoke. He didn’t meet my gaze.

  “Allie, they’re providing a lot of resources,” he said. “Resources we frankly wouldn’t have, if we refused their help. They haven’t interfered—”

  “Interfered?” I gave a short laugh. “Why would they? You’ve done everything they’ve asked you to do… and more, really.”

  He glanced up from where he’d started unwrapping his other hand.

  His jaw tightened more. Then he shrugged again.

  “You didn’t use them for your shield,” he said. Seeing my blank look, he elaborated. “In São Paulo, Allie. During the Registry job. You disengaged the Dreng’s shield. You used your own. They didn’t interfere.”

  I gave another humorless laugh.

  “Of course they didn’t,” I said. “They’re trying to woo me right now… as much if not more than you are. They won’t refuse me anything right now.” My jaw hardened. “Except you. That’s one thing they won’t give me. Right, husband? I can’t have you.”

  “Alyson…” he said.

  “What, do you think I’m an idiot?” I heard emotion thicken my voice. I went on anyway, before I could slow myself down. “Or do you really not get how this works? So you’d be my second in command, right? And you know damned well I’m going to try and help other seers, especially after what I saw in Brazil.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing, Allie,” he said.

  My jaw hardened, even as I felt another sharp wave of pain.

  “So how long, Revik?” I said. “How long before I hear, ‘well, they’ve improved this shield, Allie, we’ll just try it this one time, for this one op.’ And then you’ll want me hooked into their construct, drinking the same damned Kool-Aid so it all seems fine. There’ll always be some tactical reason, of course. Some reason I have to do it their way, for my safety. Or, better yet, for the safety of some poor innocent who’ll die if I don’t… or get beaten, or tortured, or killed. There’ll always be some reason I can’t just do it myself. There’ll always be some reason we have to cut corners––”

  “Allie!” he growled.

  “You’ve known all along, it would come to this! Damn it, Revik… you’ve known! You want to know what you need to do to get me to stay? Swear off the fucking Dreng! Try helping your people without a crutch for once. Without some fucked up ‘patron’ that’s only using you for their own twisted agenda…”

  He stared at me.

  I found myself swallowing a little, and realized I hadn’t been holding back anything when I’d said that. I’d spoken to him like I would have spoken to the old Revik.

  For the first time in months, I could hear the difference in my voice.

  I felt him hear the difference too. I felt him thinking about it then, putting it together with how I’d sounded at other times.

  “Why haven’t you said this before?” he said finally.

  “I didn’t think I had to!”

  “You didn’t?” His jaw hardened further. “What the fuck do you think I’m doing here, Allie? What did you think I wanted to happen at the end of the six months? I’m trying to build a goddamned marriage! I’m trying to make things work with us!”

  His lips pressed together, as if stopping him from saying something else.

  I felt him struggle for a moment before he turned away, gesturing vaguely.

  “You tell me now, after all this time, that this is what matters to you?”

  “You’ve known this mattered to me!”

  “Bullshit!” Pain rippled off him.

  I stared at him. Seeing the look in his eyes, I felt a whisper of fear. Understanding deepened around him, even as I felt him fighting it, fighting what he was seeing now as he looked at me.

  “You’ve been lying to me!” he said. “How much, Allie? How big has the lie been? You didn’t mean to say that just now… did you?”

  I could only stare at him, feeling my heart beating harder in my chest.

  “I never meant to lie to you, Revik.”

  “But you didn’t mean to tell me everything, either, did you, wife? You didn’t mean to tell me what you said just now.” His voice turned harsh over the emotion I heard under it. “I can see it on your face, Alyson… you were going to go along with whatever I said, weren’t you? What was going to be the next thing? Where we lived? If your friends could come to stay here, too? What was the next step in yanking me around?”

  I felt my stomach go cold, looking at him.

  How had I not seen it? Salinse had said something to him.

  He’d noticed something, planted some seed in Revik’s mind. Gods. How had I not seen it? He’d been so different since that morning. I’d known, but I hadn’t wanted to know.

  Silver light flickered around his, turning his aleimi hard. Looking at him now, I remembered him in Delhi, and his heart felt just as far away from me now as it had then. He felt lost to me suddenly, unreachable. As I looked at his face, I felt my throat close, even as I saw understanding reach his eyes, as I felt it filter down into his light from the Dreng’s construct above.

  “Gods,” he said. “I’m a fool.”

  “Revik, no,” I said. “Jesus. What are you saying right now? Do you really think, with everything that’s happened—”

  “Did you ever intend for things to work with us, Allie? Or was this just a way to distract me for a few months? Are you fucking infiltrating me right now, wife? Collecting data for your boyfriend in the Adhipan?”

  I felt my chest tighten. “Revik—”

  “And whose fucking ideology is this anyway, Allie? Is it yours? Really?”

  He was breathing harder. I saw the light in his eyes flicker into a pale life.

  I felt pain on him, and flinched back, without taking my eyes off his face. He loomed over me before I could step away. I saw him fight to control himself, just before he folded his arms, staring down at me, his breath coming faster.

  “You said you were confused about the ideology, Allie… about the religion. The Myths. I believed you, I really did.” His throat moved again. “Was that a lie, too? Are you as brainwashed as you accuse me of being? Because I wasn’t lying to you.”

  “Revik, no. I wasn’t lying to you––”

  “Is this more Seven bullshit? What Vash and my aunt told you to believe?”

  His eyes turned to glass, even as his pain hit at me again.

  “Or is this what your precious Balidor taught you, while you were fucking him in that cave?” he said. “Because I thought you had your own mind, Allie. I thought you wouldn’t be so easy to manipulate…”

  “You taught me this!” I hit him in the chest, hard, with the palm of my hand. “You did, goddamn it!”

  Revik stumbled back a step, staring at me.

  His eyes looked openly startled.

  I felt others in the room turn at my raised voice, but I no longer cared.

  “I learned this from you, Revik! Or had you forgotten that you weren’t always a spineless pawn of the Dreng?” I hit him again, harder, fighting tears. He stepped back, but didn’t
get out of my way. “What is it really, Revik? Is it the money? The fancy organic equipment? The hordes of followers? Are you afraid you might lose the war without all of your toys and your private fucking jet?”

  He stared at me, his eyes stunned.

  I felt my chest tighten, like a block of ice sitting there had started to melt, for the first time in months. But instead of warmth there, I felt heat, an anger I could barely see past––and more pain than I could swallow.

  “You fucking left me!” I snarled. “You left me for the goddamned Dreng! You put me through that… shit… in D.C., and then you disappeared! I didn’t even know if you were alive afterwards! I didn’t know if you got out of there before they bombed it, or if you died with Terian in that bunker. I waited for you outside the White House until they drugged me and forced me to leave, and I still didn’t know what happened to you! Not until you showed up in the Pamir, wanting sex, of course…”

  Tears spilled down my cheeks, but my voice came out harsh.

  “…Then you leave again. For months that time. Only to show up in Delhi, like all’s okay, like you’re the same guy, like we’re having ‘political differences.’ Meanwhile, half the reason you seduced me that time was so I wouldn’t get in the way of your revenge fantasy bullshit.”

  I fought to breathe, feeling that thing in my chest burn, like it might rip me apart. I bit my tongue so hard I tasted blood.

  “Gods, Revik! What the hell did you think? Did you think you could switch sides and I’d just jump over the line with you? I fell in love with you when you were fighting the Dreng! When you hated everything they stood for! Do you remember what you told me, when I first asked you who the Rooks were? You said they were the enemy! Those were your exact words! Now you’re fucking working for them? Tell me, how does that happen? Explain that to me!”

  I fought to breathe, tears still running down my face.

  I tried stop them, to hold back what had been sitting in me for months now, ever since that nightmare in D.C. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even make myself want to.

  Words came out of me before I could stop them.

  “You asked me if I loved Balidor,” I said.

  “No.” He held up a hand. His eyes met mine, and I saw a heat there, more pain than I could take in. “Alyson. Don’t. Don’t fucking say it—”

  “I do love him,” I said, my voice breaking. “You know what I loved about him? He reminded me of you, goddamn it! He reminded me of who you used to be! It was the closest I could get to being with you… at least how you were before.”

  His pain rippled out at me. For an instant, it nearly crushed me.

  I bit my lip, but couldn’t avert my gaze.

  “I love you more, Revik,” I said. “Even now, with you under the Dreng’s boot, I love you more. More than I could ever love him or anyone else. More than I can possibly tell you… more than you’ll ever believe, especially now. I want things to work with us so badly it hurts. So much, I couldn’t stay away from you, even when the rest of them told me I was completely deluded, when they said I was nuts for trying to get you out of here…”

  I swallowed, feeling another hard pulse off his light.

  “…away from these fucking assholes who tortured you as a kid.”

  He stared at me, still putting things together as I spoke.

  “So much that I was willing to lie to you,” I said. “For months, Revik. Just to get close enough to you to see if you might remember who you used to be.”

  I fought back another wave of pain, shaking my head.

  “But I can’t be with you like this,” I said. “I can’t. The old Revik would have known. The old Revik would have killed me before letting me come back to you, the way you are now.”

  I felt my throat close, but I held his gaze.

  “…Just like Balidor said he would,” I finished.

  Revik’s face was a mask. He stared at the floor, his eyes glowing points in a countenance that looked like marble.

  I felt pain there. But it wasn’t just pain.

  The boy lived there… and the man, too. I felt every betrayal, every person he’d loved who’d ever turned on him, who’d been someone other than who he’d told himself they were. I felt everyone to whom he’d ever given his trust.

  Menlim. His wife, Elise. Galaith. Vash. Tarsi. Balidor.

  Light pulsed off him. It expanded over me like heat, like the dry air from a hotly burning fire. It crackled over my skin, vibrating the blood in my veins. I felt so much emotion off that single pulse, I couldn’t let most of it in. Hatred, but more than that. A kind of despairing grief, like I’d died––like I’d become someone else to him.

  It crossed my mind for that split second that I was dead.

  Revik’s eyes met mine, more devoid of feeling than I’d ever seen them.

  Then, right as I felt the heat around him brighten, he turned.

  Dropping the hand wraps on the mat, he walked out of the ring. He didn’t stop walking, aiming his feet for the metal door in the wall before I could move, before I could utter a single sound. The door opened, and closed with a hollow clang.

  I found myself standing there, alone, breathing so hard I was nearly hyperventilating. I clutched my chest with one hand as I fought to breathe, to control my mind.

  I felt the other seers in the hangar staring at me, their minds and aleimi totally still, almost invisible… but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even see them.

  It felt like something in me had broken.

  It felt like something in me had died.

  I could only stand there, clutching my chest, waiting for it to be over.

  It wouldn’t be long now, I knew.

  45

  END OF THE LINE

  JON WAITED ON the other end of the line.

  Holding the old-fashioned receiver to his ear, he cleared his throat, fidgeting with the twisting black cord and its rotary dial. He’d seen phones like this before, mainly in antique stores in San Francisco. For a few years it had been the vogue thing, to convert these dinosaurs so they could house a wireless queueing console inside the old-style receiver.

  San Francisco had always liked stylish remnants of the past.

  When the receiver got picked up on the other end, he nearly jumped. The voice alone was enough to throw him, even through the tinny connection.

  “Yes? Who is this?”

  Jon hesitated, though there was no question as to who’d spoken.

  “Revik?” he said. “Is that you, man?”

  There was a silence.

  “What do you want, Jon?”

  “I wondered if I could talk to Allie.” Jon hesitated again, thrown in spite of himself. He contemplated not saying it, then said it anyway. “Are you okay, man? What’s wrong?”

  For a second, he thought the seer might answer.

  Then his voice rose, colder than before.

  “Give me a minute to have someone find her.”

  “All right…”

  But Revik had already walked away from the line.

  Jon swallowed, suddenly nervous. Revik needed to have someone else find Allie? What the hell did that mean? Weren’t they attached at the hip these days?

  He felt the others staring at him, too, probably because he’d asked Revik if he was okay. He didn’t return any of their gazes, especially Balidor’s.

  He waited for what felt like a long time.

  Fidgeting with the phone cord, he unwrapped it from his fingers when he realized he might actually break it. He glanced back at the others finally, and found them all watching him impatiently, as if he, personally, was responsible for the delay.

  “He’s looking for her,” Jon said.

  “Looking for her?” Balidor said. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means he’s looking for her. Now shut up, or he’ll hear your voice.” Swallowing, he looked back at the phone. “Just give him a minute. He’ll find her.”

  Jon had no idea why he felt defensive, but he was openly
nervous by the time someone picked up the phone again.

  “Jon?” Her voice was tentative. “Jon?”

  Relief flooded him. So much so that his throat closed. He cleared it with an effort, giving Cass a brief grin.

  “Yeah, gorgeous. It’s me.”

  There was another silence.

  “You’re… calling me?”

  He felt her thinking then, as if remembering.

  “This is about Brazil, isn’t it? What happened at Black Arrow.”

  Jon shrugged. He glanced at Balidor, then wished he hadn’t when he saw the seer’s hard stare.

  “Not only that, little sis,” he said, as casually as he could. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I thought maybe Revik would let you talk to me. Me being nothing but a dumb worm and all.”

  She didn’t smile. He felt sure he would have felt it through the line if she had, and he didn’t. Instead, he felt her putting the pieces together, as if drawing a map between them. A few seconds later, she sighed, making that seer clicking sound.

  “Tell Balidor, he doesn’t have to kill me yet,” she said, her voice carrying an edge. “I’m not doing high fives with the Dreng just yet.”

  “Al, come on. We’re worried, is all.” He hesitated. “Revik. Is he treating you okay? He didn’t sound—”

  “I’m coming back,” she cut in. “I’ll be back in a few weeks. So everyone can relax. He’s letting me go.”

  “Letting you go?” Jon didn’t hide his puzzlement. “Were you a prisoner?”

  “––The only reason I’m not on a plane right now is that they had one of theirs in for repairs. The other one they use for regular transport is still in Eastern Europe. But I’m coming back. So relax.”

  “Yeah,” Jon said. “Okay, Al.”

  He glanced at Balidor and Cass. Both of them had frustration in their eyes, and it occurred to him that his half of the conversation hadn’t exactly been illuminating.

  “Yeah,” he said again. “I’ve been hearing about that. The Eastern Europe thing, I mean. The work camps got busted up? Did you guys have something to do with that?”