Green stones and pale, shimmering links fell to the floor below the table with a low clatter.
“Gods...sorry, wife,” Revik murmured, caressing the back of my neck with his fingers. “Clumsy.” Kissing my cheek, he started to reach down, but I touched his arm.
“Let me,” I murmured. “It’s right by my feet...”
Still smiling at him, I bent at the waist, lowering my face and eyes below the black glass table. I picked up the necklace at once, sending a brief impulse to the organic metal while holding it in shadow under the upper part of the table itself. At that angle, I could only hope none of the seers standing above could see my hand, or the necklace itself.
With my other hand, I continued to feel around on the floor, as if looking for the fallen chain links. From above, I heard Dulgar cluck his tongue, as if in dismay at the loss of my necklace, although I could feel his eyes on me where I was bent over, even now.
Luckily it was dark enough under the table, and the table was low enough, that I had a few seconds. Once the organic reconfigured in my hand, I quickly lifted my other wrist and slid the twin blades around the organic bracelet, feeling for when the loop of band fell into the notch. Without hesitating, I squeezed sharply, using the cutters to sever the bracelet link in a single cut.
I winced a little, in spite of myself, as the organic died.
“Ah, got it!” I said brightly, sending an impulse to convert the cutting implement back into the shape of a necklace.
Sitting up, I kept the remnants of the telekinetic-restraint bracelet around my wrist, placing that hand on the leather seat to hide the cut. I pretended to look at the necklace itself for a moment, holding it to my eyes with my other hand.
Clicking softly, I glanced at Revik, smiling at him.
“I think it’s broken, husband,” I said apologetically.
He clicked, too, the sound exuding regret.
I held out the necklace to him. “Would you mind putting it in your pocket?” I said. “I think only the clasp is broken...we can fix it later?”
“My people could do it for you now, of course...” Dulgar offered, giving me a thin smile when I glanced in his direction.
I laughed, still pressing the organic into Revik’s hands.
“That is surely not necessary, brother,” I said, smiling. “I was thinking I would take you up on that offer of a swim anyway. Knowing me, I would only lose it in the pool, and then you’d have to fish it out of your filter...”
Dulgar smiled indulgently, his eyes sliding down my body once more.
“Of course,” he murmured. “...Whatever pleases you, Esteemed Bridge.”
Revik smiled at me, too, when I glanced back at him. He took the necklace easily from my fingers, making an apologetic gesture with one hand.
“Sorry, love,” he murmured, kissing my cheek. “I’ll fix it. Promise.”
Impulsively, I kissed him back, for real that time.
I didn’t plan to do it, but when I opened my light, even the smallest bit, Revik did the same, deepening the kiss as he slid his fingers into my hair. He gripped me tighter when I didn’t end it, and I felt pain pulse off him as he parted his lips, kissing me briefly with his tongue, caressing my face with the fingers of his other hand. Seconds later, he ended it himself, drawing away from my mouth as he released my face. As he did, his light exuded reluctance.
Somehow, I doubted that was all act, either.
For a long moment, I only looked at him, seeing that heat still coursing through his light.
Both of us jumped a little when Dulgar spoke.
“Ah,” he said smiling. “Young love.”
I found those gold eyes staring at me when I turned. Something about the look there made me flinch, then instinctively hide my wrist deeper in the leather cushion. I felt strangely exposed, and realized I had been...for those few seconds, at least. Being inside the construct here meant that when I’d opened my light to Revik, they’d felt it, too.
Dulgar’s eyes held an open heat now.
Along with something else. Something I realized was...
Envy.
For the first time, it occurred to me that Revik might be in more danger here than I was. Or maybe just in danger in a different way. I wondered suddenly, if I should be leaving him alone with this man, even for a short time.
As I thought it, Dulgar spoke again.
“Love of whatever kind is always so touching, is it not?” he said, watching me. “One always feels like a voyeur, to witness it...even when it is so generously displayed.” Dulgar gave Revik and I another indulgent smile, one that never touched those gold irises. The predatory glint, if anything, hardened more. “...That is true, I’m afraid, even for one as old and jaded as me. For we are all romantics at heart...whether we will admit it, or not.”
Startled by a second pulse of real-feeling envy, I glanced at Revik, even as Revik stuffed the green-stone necklace into the pocket of his suit coat.
I think you’re right... I told him suddenly. I don’t want to leave you.
Then don’t, Revik replied, equally soft.
From looking at his eyes, I could tell he meant the words.
“Are you ready to say goodbye to her, brother?” Dulgar asked, making a more subtle motion to the four female seers, who now all looked expectantly at me. “...It will only be for a short while, my brother...I promise you. We should let our sisters pamper her, and perhaps give her an excuse to go for that swim...”
I glanced at Revik again, feeling him watching me.
Making another decision, I looked at Dulgar directly.
“Would it be possible for me to see the seers, brother?” I asked politely. “My husband and I are most anxious to examine your current inventory. Perhaps your sisters would be kind enough to take me to them, first, before I have my swim?” Shrugging with one hand, I smiled. “I could do this one thing for my husband, at least, so I don’t feel entirely useless...and save you both some time in the process?”
Dulgar smiled.
That harder look vanished once more from his eyes, even as he turned his head, making eye-contact with the largest of the five male seers who still stood like sentries around our low table and the white-leather booth.
Once he had the male seer’s attention, Dulgar clicked his fingers in a rapid series that sounded almost like morse code, ending on a set of graceful motions with his hands and fingers. The latter struck me as subtly complicated, and didn’t match any seer sign langauge I knew, either from the rebels, the common variety, or any of the variants I’d learned in Beijing.
When Dulgar looked back at me, he was smiling again.
“A most helpful suggestion, Esteemed Bridge,” he purred. “I am always happy to facilitate a more efficient business transaction.” He raised his glass in a subtle toast. “Further, I believe it is always better to conduct business when the commodity is transparently available for examination...is it not, my lovely sister?”
Firming his mouth, he glanced at Revik before leaning closer to me.
“You can certainly see our recent crop of infiltrators...if your husband does not object to our using you as a proxy in this?” At Revik’s casual negative gesture, Dulgar smiled wider, looking back at me. “Excellent. Then you can inspect them personally, Esteemed sister, and communicate your findings to your husband, when we reunite the two of you in a few hours.”
Letting his smile turn oily again, Dulgar tilted his head in a dismissive manner.
“I very much hope you will be pleased,” he said. “...We did try our best to meet all of your husband’s specifications in terms of skill sets and temperament. I assume you are aware of those requirements of his?”
I glanced at Revik, who lifted an eyebrow at me, then back at Dulgar.
“Of course,” I said, smiling.
“Ah. Excellent. Then we can...save time, as you so rightly suggested...by more efficiently using our resources together. It will further give us all more time to get to know one another tonight,
yes? To explore all of the ways in which we might find mutual benefit...?”
I leaned back, letting a warmer smile reach my lips.
“Thank you so much, my brother,” I murmured. “I am certain your inventory will be most impressive. And I very much look forward to our dinner this evening.”
Dulgar raised an eyebrow in return, smiling in that slimy way he had.
Then he turned his gold eyes back to Revik.
“You will stay the night with us?” he inquired politely. “I insist. Dinner, though we had planned for that with great relish, of course, will never give you an adequate view of the scope of our operations here, brother...not alone. We have facilities here that will charm even a seer of your stature. I feel certain that we can provide you and your wife with comforts you have likely missed in your long time of strife over the past months.”
He smiled again, his gold eyes sliding briefly down Revik’s body, enough that I caught the suggestion there, too.
“...Allow us to indulge you, brother,” Dulgar added, that suggestion even more prominent in his voice. “...in the ways in which we excel at such things.”
Revik gave him a polite concessionary gesture. He did not speak, however, and his eyes returned to me as I rose casually to my feet. I felt Revik’s eyes on me still as I smiled at the three female seers in front of me.
“Shall we go then, sisters?” I asked them with a slight bow.
I felt that tension vibrate higher in Revik’s light.
I’m not leaving you, I told him again. You okay with that?
Yes, he whispered at me softly.
“...yes, Esteemed Bridge,” the seers in front of me murmured with small smiles.
Still facing in their direction, I took a breath.
Then I reached up, sliding my awareness into the Barrier...
...and into the highest structures I can access in my light.
These are the ones that live in the spaces of silence, floating higher than the rest. They twist in the darkness, as bright as stars, connected to a pure, white and blue light that I love if only because it instantly feels like Revik to me...
Time stops in this place. It feels like I have already left the room, that I float somewhere above the awareness of all of them, even Revik, who still has the organic binding coil wrapped, alive, around his wrist.
I can see that from here, too.
I can even see where they got it, what it does, how it was made, the seers who died for the technology behind it...and I realize that the Legion of Fire is trading with Shadow’s people after all, at least for some, difficult-to-acquire objects.
Up here, it’s hard to be angry about that, though, or about any of the lies that Revik and I heard from Dulgar’s lips. There is no anger in this place, but I feel compassion from areas of my light I can barely glimpse...compassion for beings who stubbornly believe that cleverness and lies will save them, that they can live in a lightless place, invulnerable, and that their illusion of invulnerability might save them, too. I felt how that could be me, could be Revik...and I felt a denser understanding of how hard it is down here, illusion or not. I feel the ways these pains and sufferings serve a larger tapestry...and yet I feel how hard it all is, too.
And yeah, up here, where I am, time doesn’t matter.
But down there, where Revik is, it does.
I know I am now invisible to the construct of the Legion of Fire, just as those structures in me are invisible to every seer who wasn’t born an intermediary, unless they are hooked to the Dreng or to the Ancestors in a way that exceeds their vision’s true ability. I know there are tricks to being able to operate in those higher spaces, the spaces linking this world to the next...but that’s all they are. Tricks.
They are mirrors stacked on mirrors stacked on mirrors...like Shadow riding on Revik’s light to see spaces he will never comprehend. He views them in terms of functionality only, something to covet and control...but it is all beyond him, really.
He hates Revik and I for comprehending them, for the same reason.
Not that I am blind to the functionality in this place. I know there are parts of me that can drag the Barrier into the physical world...but this is only a detail, really, too. The most important aspects to this space are irrelevant to Shadow and his ilk. All they seek is what manifests in the material...which is the smallest power these spaces possess.
It’s also the only power they understand. It’s the only power the Legion of Fire seems to understand, too. But all of us are lost, in different ways.
All of us can be found, too...even a slave-trader like Dulgar.
Up here, there is no hurry...but up here, I also see no reason to waste time.
Time is precious, in the material plane. Time is all we have.
Grabbing hold of the construct at its highest point, I utilize four structures that rotate around me, in complex, geographical shapes. I slide into all four simultaneously, holding them in the exact configuration Revik has been training me on for the past two and a half weeks. It is easy, simplicity itself...as is the next thing I do, running through a sequence of awareness within the structures themselves, like tapping through a key pad, if that keypad were made entirely of light, and my fingers could tap all of the keys in the blink of an eye.
Liquid fire runs through that part of me, and I can see everything, briefly...
But once I am sure I have it, I take a deep breath, somewhere in those higher reaches of my living light...
...and crush a diamond-like structure that floats there, holding up the Legion of Fire construct.
I hear it, when it goes.
It sounds like water rushing in my ears at first. That white static flow is eclipsed by a high, tinkling sound, like broken glass. Both things briefly fill my awareness, wiping out the room with gold and red light, a silence deeper than any existing in the physical world, until...
A Barrier alarm explodes in my head.
I gasp...lose my hold...
And suddenly, I am in my body again.
Sound deafens me. I’ve always sucked at splitting my consciousness, at least compared to Revik, but I realize I am doing it now, that the sound I hear fills the Barrier, not my physical ears. Even so, I clamp my hands over my ears, clicking the rest of the way out of that space, feeling that same, brief sense of loss I always do when I lose my direct connection to that higher light. That same loss disorients me, briefly, as I remember the true depth of the difference between that higher place and the one down here.
I am in the world of the gray once more. Where pain lives, lack of understanding, disconnection, loss of hope. I am in the world of shadows and lies, where light must be dug out of the crevices, found behind the smoke and mirrors that fight to keep it out––
Allie! Revik yelled at me in the space. Get down!
It is the one voice that can always bring me back.
I dropped to my knees.
I stare up at the ceiling once I had, half in disbelief that I’d done it, even as the parts of me still in the Barrier watch crystalline fragments rain down in light as the construct of the Legion of Fire continues to dismantle itself around our heads.
As it does, I find I can breathe again.
I click out for real...
And I found myself panting.
The room had gone entirely dark, apart from the gentle flicker of low flames in the four fireplaces placed in the corners of the rectangular room. Even so, I can feel what Revik felt. Guns are aimed at us. They know exactly who went tinkering in their Barrier space, and none of the seers around me feel amused.
A siren wakes up in the distance, a physical one, that time.
Even with that distant wail, it’s strangely quiet still.
I realized only seconds have passed. Barely seconds. Maybe only one or two.
No one around the table had decided what to do with me yet.
No one had made a sound.
Then an explosion ripped through the outside terrace.
4<
br />
NUMBERS
WHEN THE FIRST rounds went off, I ducked, moving without thought.
When I next looked up, I was halfway under the table, and Revik was crouched next to me, gripping ahold of my wrist.
Are they shooting at us? I asked him, a little panicked.
He shook his head, once. No, they’re a little distracted at the moment.
He already had the cutting tool jammed around the organic bracelet on his wrist.
I stared down, watching as he squeezed the handles, severing it in one cut. He let out a light gasp as the blades killed the living thing inside the organic.
Then, shaking it off, he gave me a faint smile. Sending an impulse, he reconfigured the tool back into my green-stone necklace, and motioned for me to lean closer. Once I had, he started hooking the clasps so that it rested back on my neck.
Nicely done, wife... he said, kissing my cheek as he finished with the necklace. You’re definitely getting a cookie when we’re back at home... His eyes glanced down at me in the dress, even as pain slid back through his light. Maybe a whole box of them, actually...
I let out a low laugh, at least partly from nerves. My light darted around the room, taking in the layout of the seers, including the three females I’d been standing next to a few seconds ago. Most of them felt terrified to me, so definitely not sleeper assassins or anything.
Still, I could feel it. We didn’t have much time.
How much longer? I asked Revik, even as I thought it.
Before Menlim starts tracking me? Revik glanced at the old-fashioned watch he wore, the one they let through because it wasn’t organic. About fifty minutes.
I frowned, then flinched when another shell hit the front of the terrace. It sent in a dense cloud of black smoke, knocking pieces of plaster and wood off the ceiling.
Those guys know we’re in here, right? I sent. They’re still getting the GPS signal?
Revik grinned again, his clear eyes holding a faint glint. One can only hope.
I clicked at him, laughing. That’s not reassuring, husband.
You know Wreg. He likes big noises.
Allie's War Season Four Page 67