“You let her go, Adhipan,” she said, hammering each word with her accented Prexci. “You knew exactly what you were doing, letting her go to her mate. Did you think it would have no affect on her, being with him?”
Rolling her eyes, seer fashion, she gave him a scornful look.
“...She is probably so far into his light by now, she can’t see the difference between her own mind and his. I’m sure she went into this willingly, Balidor...I would bet my home on it...”
Balidor barely seemed to hear her.
To Cass, he didn’t look like he was in his right mind.
“We’re pulling her,” he muttered. “We’re fucking pulling her...”
“It’s too late!” Voi Pai said. “Are you not listening to me? What do you think he will do now, if you take his wife from him again? Do you think he will let you walk away unmarked this time, Adhipan? He knows what you did. And you shot her on top of it! He will want blood if you go near her, if you so much as speak to her...”
“I don’t give a damn!” Balidor said. “What is the option? Do you want me to kill her, is that it?”
All of them flinched a little, staring at him.
Then Voi Pai clicked softly, tapping her manicured nails against the tea cup she held. She draped an arm over the carved wooden back to the couch.
“You gave her to him, Balidor,” she said, again enunciating each word. “It is too late to second-guess this decision. You have no one to blame but yourself...”
The Adhipan leader’s eyes brightened once more.
Voi Pai’s voice grew almost cruel.
“You cannot simply take her back, and say, ‘I am sorry, Syrimne. I made a mistake in returning your wife to you...I would like her back now, please.’” She tapped her nails again, clicking impatiently. “And what do you suppose she will have to say about this? Do you think she will come back to you willingly, Balidor?”
Her hard voice grew colder still, almost openly derisive.
“...What do you suppose they have been doing together...all of these months? Or did you think she would remain celibate with him, too?”
Cass watched in disbelief as Balidor wiped his eyes. It occurred to her that he’d looked like hell for weeks now, ever since Allie left. He looked like he’d lost weight, too, she realized, noticing his clothes.
Jesus. Jon was right. They’d been involved somehow, him and Allie. She was blind to not have seen it. It was written all over him.
In the background, the voice of a female news commentator rose from the feed station, which had continued to play while they spoke.
“...It is now believed that the terrorist cell led by Alyson Taylor, or ‘The Bridge,’ as seers call her, went there to dismantle the international humanitarian aid society, Black Arrow...which creates genetically-modified super crops to feed people around the globe, particularly in the drought-stricken third world. Her husband, who claims to be the original seer terrorist Syrimne or ‘Sword’ from World War I, is taking credit for having masterminded the attack, hoping to cut off food supplies to these nations, thus creating desperation and counter-terror in some of the most deprived human populations in the world...”
Cass glanced at Balidor, feeling her throat close.
“‘Dori,” she said. “You can’t possibly believe that was her motive...or even his. Revik wouldn’t do that, not even if—”
“I said to turn that fucking thing off!” he snapped.
He curled his hands into fists as she watched. They didn’t loosen even after one of Voi Pai’s servants did as he had asked and turned off the main monitor, right on a picture of Allie’s face.
For a long moment, no one seemed to move. The room appeared darker without the light from the feeds.
“Can we talk to her?” Jon said then, his voice filling the silence. “What if we tried to get a message to her? Would he let us, do you think?”
Balidor turned, looking at him. His jaw remained hard.
“What good would that do?” he said.
Jon’s eyes grew angry. “We could get her side of it, for one thing,” he said. “We’d know if she’d been coerced...what happened in there. The feeds were pretty vague about what they were doing in that building. Maybe it’s not what we think. Maybe they got trapped somehow, and she panicked...”
“She panicked?” Balidor gave him an incredulous look, arms folded. “If she’s doing ops with them, Jon, then she’s been converted...”
“Maybe,” Jon said. “...Or maybe not. Maybe she’s just trying to understand his motives...to see it from the inside...”
“See it from the inside?” Balidor said, his voice emotional again. “Gods, Jon! You of all people! Do you think she needed to kill with her telekinesis to understand Dehgoies’ motives...?”
“No,” Jon said, frustrated. “That’s not what I mean.” Looking around at the others, he clenched his hands. “Just let me see if I can talk to her, okay?”
“You?” Voi Pai said contemptuously. “Why would Syrimne let a worm speak to his wife? A worm from the camp of his enemy?”
At the last part, she looked directly at Balidor.
Jon gave her an equally contemptuous look.
“You don’t know Revik,” he said. “He has funny ideas about family...he might let me talk to her. He thinks...” Jon gave a short laugh, shaking his head as he glanced at the others. “...He thinks I’m some kind of hybrid. Like a partially-evolved human. He credits Allie with it, of course, but he called me an ‘honorary seer’ the last time I talked to him, and referred to me as his brother-in-law. He was definitely weird about me and Allie, but I still think I’m your best chance of reaching her while she’s with him...me or maybe Cass...”
“Jon is right,” another voice said, this time from behind them.
Cass turned, a little surprised when she saw Vash standing there, the old seer from the mountains. He’d been so quiet, she wondered how long he’d been in the room.
His long, smooth-skinned face wore a faint smile, which made Cass smile a little in return. Nothing seemed to faze that old guy. No matter how dire things were, he seemed to find everything to be, at base, a-okay.
She wondered if that meant he was going a little senile.
“Jon is our best hope of determining the truth of her right now,” Vash repeated. “Make a request to Dehgoies. He will not refuse it.”
“And? Why are you smiling, Clan Elder Vashentarenbuul?” Balidor said, his voice angry. “Is there something here that amuses you? If so, please share...for I could use a laugh.”
Vash appeared undaunted by the infiltrator’s anger. His smile widened.
“I am seeing some very favorable signs, yes,” he said, his voice calm.
“Favorable signs of what?” Balidor said, his voice less respectful. “Of this foolishness you convinced her of? That she might affect his light as well? I think we can see the effects of that little experiment, Vash...”
“Oh, I think there is little doubt of that,” Vash said. “I believe she is affecting his light a great deal, Adhipan Leader Balidor.” His smile widened, matching the amusement in his eyes. “Very much indeed...”
Cass saw Jon and Balidor exchange looks, their eyes openly skeptical.
She didn’t have to be a seer to know they were wondering if the old man had gone a bit senile, too.
I GLANCED UP from where I curled up against Revik’s chest, hearing another cheer go up from the group in the front of the room.
When I looked back at him, Revik smiled.
I saw that glimmer of pride in his eyes, just before he tugged on my arm, pulling me back to him so he could give me a kiss.
“Are they going to do that every time they show that damned clip?” I asked him once he had. I felt a glimmer of pain again, right before I looked back at the images of me on the feeds. “...It’s not exactly making me feel better about this whole...” I gestured around at the room. “...Operation, you know? The screams of joy at my murder spree?”
He
clicked at me softly, shaking his head. He kissed my palm, then my wrist, caressing my arm with his light as he looked up. He was pulling on me again, and it distracted me, in spite of everything.
“I think you’re misunderstanding it, wife,” he said softly. “They’re not cheering out of bloodlust. It’s because we’re alive. It’s because we destroyed the mainframe.” He kissed me again, glancing up. “...Most of them have family in the camps, Allie,” he said. “Most of the seers following me are the strays. The ones who got pulled as kids...sold or stolen.”
Looking at him, I felt my jaw tighten a little.
“How do you do that?” I said. “How do you manage to make me feel guilty because I’m not happier about this?”
He looked genuinely surprised.
“You think I want you to be happy about this?”
Sighing a little, I ruffled his hair. “No.”
He slid an arm around me, bringing me against him once more. I felt that pull on him again, strong enough that I closed my eyes, trying to think past it. Something was going on with us again. We weren’t talking about it, but it was making it really hard to think straight around him...which hadn’t been easy at the best of times. I’d even wondered if it was the telekinesis, but it started before we’d left for South America.
He kissed my throat deliberately, pulling on my light. I glanced over my shoulder. When I did, I saw eyes averted as a number of seers looked away.
Great. We were affecting the others again, too.
“Allie,” he said softly. “You would not have killed if it wasn’t for me. That makes me twice responsible. For hurting your soul...and for the deaths themselves.”
At my frown, he clicked at me.
“I know you do not think of soul like this...”
I shook my head. “It’s not that. You aren’t responsible for me, Revik.”
“It was my operation. I invited you along.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, glancing back at the screen. “But you’re not ‘telekinetic, erratic,’” I said. “You wouldn’t have killed them.”
“Exactly.” He turned my chin with his fingers so that I faced him. “I wrote that description. I knew exactly where you were with your telekinesis. That makes it even more my fault...I don’t understand how you don’t see that.” His eyes hardened a little. “I really thought you’d be angry with me. You probably should be angry with me, Allie...”
He glanced over my shoulder at the group sitting in front of the monitor.
“But try not to judge them,” he said. “...especially the younger seers. This feels like winning to them. For some, for the first time in their lives. I would not take that away from them.”
I looked over at the same cluster of seers, most of whom sat crammed together on a number of couches and on the floor.
We were in the largest of the common rooms, back in the main compound in Asia. There were maybe fifteen other seers in the room, including most of the team that had been with me in the Black Arrow building. We’d gotten back the day before, and I still felt jet-lagged, despite how much I slept on the plane ride over...most of it curled up in Revik’s lap, in the last row of seats in the main cabin.
I realized he was right. Most of the seers sitting in front were the young ones. Most of them had been slaves. The older seers were, on the whole, a lot quieter as they watched the feeds.
They muted it around me, of course, but they all knew. There would be retaliation for this.
The humans would strike back, and soon.
Pulling my mind off that before it could drift into more depressing waters, I caressed his arm, focusing on the tattoo on his bicep.
“What does that mean?” I asked him. “Are you ever going to tell me?”
I touched the band of black text highlighted by a paler blue that didn’t seem to have faded much with time on his skin. It made it difficult to tell when he’d gotten it. He told me once it was long ago...but that was back when we were still on the ship and he couldn’t remember the specifics as to what it was or why he had it.
The text coiled his upper arm like a snake bracelet, circling his bicep almost three times, with six lines of script separated by some kind of pattern. He wore ident tats too, of course, including the barcode on his arm and the “H” designation he still had from working among humans, along with a clan tat and the sword and sun.
But he didn’t wear a whole lot of ink, compared to most of his seers.
I caressed the text again, unable to let it go. It wound into the pulling until I found myself kissing his arm. I could tell it came from one of the older seer texts, but it wasn’t Prexci.
“It’s ironic, you know,” I said. “You’re the only one on your team that doesn’t wear the Sword and Sun...”
“I do,” he said. He tapped his shoulder with his finger.
“But not in the same place.” I caressed the text again, kissing his throat. “It’s not Prexci. Will you tell me what language it is, at least?”
“It’s older than Prexci,” he said, propping his jaw on his hand. He smiled at me, twisting my hair into his fingers. “Your hair is really long...” he said, tugging on it gently. “Even longer than in Delhi.”
“What does it mean?”
He smiled at me, tugging my hair again.
“You really aren’t going to tell me?” I said. “It’s on your body, Revik. Are you really going to make me do this the hard way...where I take an image of it while you sleep...have one of your people look it up for me?”
“You could ask Wreg,” he said, still smiling a little. “He knows.”
I glanced over my shoulder at where Wreg sat on the couch next to the younger seers. His eyes shone dully, still tired from the trip. I looked back at Revik.
“I’m asking you.”
Revik’s eyes grew predatory again, even as his fingers tightened on my skin. He started kissing my shoulder, pulling on my light with each touch of his mouth. Sighing in exasperation, I rolled onto my stomach, resting my face on my arm. His fingers kept touching my skin, moving aside clothing to reach more of it.
I said, “You’re impossible, you know that? The king of diversion...”
When I glanced up, his smile widened, but I saw that look there again.
“Allie, it’s just embarrassing.”
“Why?” I turned to look at him. “It’s a tattoo. Who cares? You’ve had it a long time, right?”
“Since my late 20s.”
“So...what does it mean?”
Letting his head slide down to his bicep, he just looked up at me for a moment, still caressing my back with one hand.
“There’s a story behind it,” he said.
“I figured,” I smiled.
“You may not like all of it,” he said.
I felt my smile grow stiff. I tried to think of a good answer and couldn’t. Finally, I shrugged, feeling his eyes studying mine.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said.
He exhaled in a sigh. “No, I do,” he said. “Now I do.”
Tugging on my hair again, he averted his gaze, looking out over the other seers in the room. I saw his gaze recede just before he sighed again, still tugging absently at my hair.
“There was a girl I liked,” he said, his voice low. Glancing at me, he must have seen something in my expression, because he tugged on my hair harder, kissing my mouth. “...It wasn’t anything, Allie...just a crush. I was young.”
I nodded, but didn’t really meet his gaze. Without my willing it, my eyes glanced at the cluster of young female seers at the front of the room.
I’d never gotten a tattoo for anyone. Not even Jaden.
“I was fighting for extra money then,” he said. “...and she got off on it, I think. She liked me when I was all bloodied up from a fight...”
I nodded, doing my best to keep my mind blank.
“...I got sick of it after awhile. She and I didn’t have much in common other than that...”
“Other than sex, you me
an,” I supplied helpfully.
His eyes narrowed. “Yeah.” Hesitating, he shrugged with one hand. “I told her I didn’t want to see her anymore, and she got pissed off. She had her brothers jump me...revenge, I guess. They got me after a night of fighting, and a day spent training in the hills with Menlim. They worked me over pretty good...”
Wincing a little as I picked up flashes of this, I caressed his hand. For a moment, it felt like we were alone again. He studied my eyes.
“I think she felt she’d lowered herself, Allie, sleeping with me. She was human...she knew what I was. I think it pissed her off, that I could break things off so easily with her.” He shrugged. “She got her brothers to teach me a lesson...”
His voice turned bitter towards the end.
“I got the tattoo to remind myself...” he said.
“That humans are jerks?” I said, only half-kidding.
“No, Allie,” he said. His eyes grew serious. “To remind me what real love is. That all of the other things people do to one another...it doesn’t matter.”
I bit my lip, but didn’t let my eyes wander back to the front of the room.
I wondered if he was trying to make me jealous, or if he was just being oblivious.
He kissed my mouth, his voice soft. “Neither, darling,” he said. “Because this is really about you.” He kissed me again. “Allie, the script reads, They shall never be complete without the other / At one in their inmost hearts / Understanding in their deepest light / It cannot be broken, even in strife, a lover’s quarrel / Their words are sweet and strong / The fragrance of fire...”
I thought about that for a moment, replaying the words in my head.
Still propped up on my elbows, I found myself looking at him, really seeing him for a moment. Seeing him back then, when he hid out in his uncle’s army, fighting on the street at night, ostensibly for money, but also to work through...whatever he needed to work through. Wreg had laughingly told me Revik was a little shit back then, that I wouldn’t have recognized him. Looking at him now, I wondered.
Allie's War Season Two Page 46