Rook (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #1): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  “Thank you,” he said.

  I bit my lip, then shrugged, feeling my face warm. “Sorry I didn’t say it sooner.”

  He didn’t answer. I watched him stare straight ahead, his eyes showing him to be thinking.

  After another pause, he looked at me, his mouth set in a faint frown.

  “I want to tell you something, too,” he said.

  I nodded, tensing a little. “Okay.”

  He looked up the cement walls of the lighthouse. I saw his eyes cloud, then focus, as if he were practicing more than one way of saying it. Turning, he seemed to give up.

  “I didn’t fuck her,” he said. “Not even that morning.”

  I winced. “Jesus, Revik.”

  “I wanted to,” he said. “But I didn’t.”

  “Great,” I said, fighting anger. “Good for you.”

  He studied my face, then rubbed his own with a hand. His accent grew stronger. “There is no reason to be embarrassed. Seers are naturally possessive. I gave you cause. I didn’t mean to.” Thinking, he reconsidered. “Well. Yes, I did.”

  I stared at the floor as I sorted through his words. Finally, I shook my head.

  “Yep. Still not asking, Revik.”

  He stuffed the remains of the plant burrito he’d been eating into the backpack. He looked tired, and now, angry. I shouldn’t care. Why did I care about this? Taking off my jacket, I bunched it up for a makeshift pillow, stuffing it under my head.

  I felt him staring as I dragged half of the blanket over my body.

  “Allie,” he said. “You cannot sleep.”

  “I know.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe.”

  I sank my head into the jacket. I was angry, too. I couldn’t bring myself to shove it aside, even after I felt him notice, even when he continued to stare at me.

  It didn’t help that at least half of my rage came from confusion, an almost cloying inability to understand him. Why had he told me that stuff about his childhood? Why the chess, for that matter? And why had he been so sure I’d want to know about him and Kat?

  What had he even meant by it, anyway? Did him saying he hadn’t fucked her mean intercourse only? Because that left a pretty wide range of inbetweens my imagination was more than happy to supply with images––especially since he hadn’t minded getting a dick massage and shoving his tongue down her throat right in front of me.

  And why in the hell did I care about this again?

  I heard a snap and sigh of plastic and air, then the sound of him drinking. The backpack rustled, followed by his leather-covered shoulders meeting the cement wall. I closed my eyes, opening them when I remembered I couldn’t sleep.

  “Can I go outside?” I said.

  He shook his head, clicking softly. “No.”

  “Then talk. Tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “Anything,” I said. “Who was your real father?”

  He sighed, moving so that the leather crinkled again. “My biological parents were killed by humans when I was very young. I do not remember them.”

  I closed my eyes, cursing myself silently, then turned to look at him.

  “Revik. I’m sorry—”

  “I raised the subject,” he said, waving me off. “It’s fine, Allie.”

  I watched his face as his mind seemed to go somewhere else.

  “Were you really a Nazi?” I said.

  His eyes turned slowly in my direction.

  “Yes,” he said. “Well. In the way you mean it, I was. In the strictest sense, meaning politically… no.”

  I wasn’t sure how to follow on that.

  “So,” I said. “How did you end up leaving them? The Rooks, I mean. What made you—”

  “I don’t want to talk about that.” Averting his eyes, he shrugged. “I don’t remember most of that time, anyway.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t remember?”

  He sighed, clicking his tongue. “It was a condition of my coming back. A portion of my memory was forfeit.” At my silence, he shrugged. “I believe it was partly mechanical. I lost some simply by being separated from the network. Some was a bargain Vash made for my life. With Galaith, the Rooks’ leader.” His eyes remained on his laced fingers. “I imagine I knew things. Things the Rooks needed me to forget.”

  Realizing I was staring at him, I blinked, firming my lips.

  “Forfeit?” I said. “How much is gone?”

  His eyes grew a touch colder. “I don’t know. I can guess, by piecing together dates with what I remember.” His face smoothed to neutral as he cleared his throat. “It is very strange that you saw any of that time. No one else ever has. Perhaps it has something to do with who you are.” He glanced at me, his eyes and voice casual.

  “May I ask… how much did you see?”

  Great. I’d just walked into another potential minefield.

  I’d assumed he knew everything I saw.

  “Not much. You and your wife—”

  He flinched visibly.

  Swallowing, I shrugged, backpedaling. “I saw you in jail, and that guy, Terian. I also saw you in Russia, I think. Something about tanks being stuck in the mud. You seemed unhappy about the way the war was going…” I trailed, figuring that last part was safe, at least. “You and some guy talked about who would lead that part of the front.”

  His eyes grew calm as he rested his chin on his hands.

  “How old are you?” I said, when he didn’t break the silence. “You and that guy Terian––you both look exactly the same.”

  He laced his fingers together. For a moment, I saw him thinking again, as if considering possible responses. Finally, he shrugged.

  “I am young for a seer,” he said.

  After a lengthier pause, he leaned his head against the wall.

  It wasn’t until another minute passed that I realized that was all the answer I was going to get.

  20

  MURDER

  THE DATE WAS May 12th.

  I recycled that piece of information from a dropped comment by Revik about our flights, when we would arrive in Tai Pei versus when we left the airport in Vancouver, BC. I didn’t really hear him when he said it. The detail hit me right as I was about to push on the white, triangle-shaped skirt of the woman symbol on the bathroom door of the diner where we’d stopped to eat breakfast.

  I stood there, frozen.

  My eyes lit on a pay phone bolted inside a shadowed alcove to my right. I blinked at it, nearly hallucinating with fatigue, then glanced behind me, watching Revik’s back as he slumped into a red vinyl booth.

  Completing the motion of my hand, I entered the restroom.

  On my way out, minutes later, I spotted a black plastic tray covered in Canadian coins on an empty table. Scooping it up, I dumped the change into my palm and left the tray on the bar without breaking stride.

  I slid into the creaking booth across from Revik.

  “You got me coffee?” I said.

  He nodded.

  Over breakfast, I drank coffee and he used his to warm his hands. Our waitress came back, topped off both of our cups, then lingered, smiling at Revik.

  “Want anything more to eat, honey?”

  He frowned, looking up from the menu. “No. Go away.”

  The woman froze, her mouth open. I stared at him too, equally surprised, but more amused than our waitress. Snapping her mouth shut, she turned and walked away, taking her coffee pot with her. I watched her go, then noted Revik’s eyes on mine.

  I followed his gaze to my hands, which were methodically shredding a paper napkin. I pushed the napkin away.

  “They can’t help it,” he said. He seemed to mean his words to be reassuring. “We’ll both distract people for awhile. Humans, too.”

  “Distract people?” I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged, lifting his coffee mug to his lips. He took a sip of the dark brown fluid, then grimaced, lowering the mug back to the table.

  I
smiled. “What? Did you forget you didn’t like it?”

  He fingered the mug’s ceramic handle, frowning at me slightly.

  Glancing back at the bar counter, I said, “Well, you’d better not order anything more now. They spit in the food sometimes, you know.” When he didn’t look over, I tried again. “How will we know Ullysa’s people? At the airport?”

  “They’ll know me. I’ll likely know some of them.”

  I nodded, reacting slightly to his words. I didn’t know what triggered my reaction at first. Then my eyes followed a man outside, watching him stare at a woman in a skin-tight miniskirt standing across the street. She smiled at him, her mouth a dark red slash, and I found my thoughts drifting to Seattle.

  “So we just get on the plane?” I said evenly.

  “Yes.” Watching my face, he added, softer, “There is nothing to worry about, Allie.”

  Hearing the second meaning under his words, I pretended I hadn’t.

  I fought to think instead about myself, about where I’d be in a few days.

  During part of our night of not-sleeping, Revik told me a bit about where we’d land in Russia, and where he intended to take me in India. He made Russia sound interesting. According to him, that part of the country remained wild, practically untouched. We were likely to see wild animals as we traveled over land by train: bears, eagles, wolves, foxes. I thought about my mom’s fascination with wolves and smiled… then frowned, glancing over my shoulder at the bathroom door.

  “Okay.” I looked at him. “I have to go again. I think it’s the coffee.”

  I watched his eyes focus out the window, coming to rest on the same woman I’d been looking at seconds before. His gaze sharpened and flickered down, appraising her.

  “Okay,” I repeated. I planted my hands on the table and stood. “I’ll be back.”

  He didn’t look over as I left.

  When I glanced back, he was still looking out the window. He took another sip of lukewarm coffee as I watched, and grimaced.

  I SLID ONTO the wooden bench under the pay phone and lifted the receiver, throwing all the coins I had into the slot. I found myself relieved they even had public phones in Canada; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one in SF, much less one that took hard currency.

  I punched in the familiar number, shifting so my back faced the corridor.

  The phone rang.

  After a pause, it rang again.

  “Come on,” I murmured. “Pick up.”

  A click startled my ears. My heart lifted…

  But only in the pause before my mother’s antique answering machine switched on, playing a message so old I’d memorized it before high school.

  “We’re not at home right now.” Mom’s voice sang out the words like small bells. “So pleeease leave a message after the tone… BEEP!” She laughed. “Ha ha, just kidding! Here it comes!”

  “Dork,” I muttered, out of habit.

  The message machine beeped.

  TERIAN GAZED IN fascination at the metallic box on the tile counter.

  He hadn’t known such machines still existed.

  It was like looking at an old linotype machine, or a working trebuchet and its pile of stones, waiting to be flung over a castle wall. The phone stopped its high-pitched trill and shuddered to life. Silence wafted after the initial message, but from the static, Terian knew it hadn’t finished.

  “Ha ha, just kidding! Here it comes…”

  The machine let out a loud, atonal beep.

  Terian’s new body, still unfamiliar in passing glimpses on reflective surfaces, tensed in excitement.

  After all, he knew who wasn’t calling.

  The background sound of children’s voices rose, and he glanced at the television monitor. Small faces pressed close to the likely-illegal camera, laughing and screaming in delight as that cheerful tune began to sing-song out of bow-shaped lips smeared with white and blue frosting.

  “Happy biiiiirthday to you! Happy biiiirthday to you! Happy biiiirthday, dear Al—”

  “Mom?” A voice emerged, panicked but low. “Mom, are you there? Pick up! Please pick up! I don’t have much time!”

  Terian blinked.

  Voices came to him in this body sometimes. They sang to him, like the children on the other side of that cracked wall monitor. This voice sounded real, however.

  Could it be real?

  A little girl ran into the room even as Terian thought it, this one neither trapped behind glass nor a hallucination. Paint covered her small hands, and matted her dark hair in clumps. Her bare feet poked out from under a tattered purple dress, scratched and stained from play. A stuffed white rabbit dangled from her sticky fingers.

  Red had bled into the velvet fur.

  Terian waved at her to be silent as he pointed at the machine.

  “Mom?” the voice from the machine said.

  The girl froze, staring at the box on the counter.

  Excitement slid through Terian’s skin, a liquid heat, shared between himself and the girl. He wasn’t hallucinating the voice. She was right there, on the other side of the line. He could simply lift the receiver, speak with her.

  “Mom! Please… pick up!”

  A symphony lived in that voice. Physical imprints could be so endlessly fascinating, like motes of dust, each containing a singular world. Terian winked at the little girl, who took another step towards the machine.

  He held up a hand, warning her.

  “Crap,” the voice said dully. “Of all the times for you to actually be out of your cave.” Another silence came and went. “Mom, listen. I can’t tell you where I am. I’m not dead or in a ditch. And I’m not a freaking terrorist, okay? I’m with a friend. He’s helping me figure things out…”

  Terian’s smile widened.

  “…I’ll be home as soon as I can. Tell Jon and Cass… well, tell them I’m okay. And I miss them. I love you, Mom. Tell them I love them, too.”

  Terian grinned, hearing the ups and downs in her voice as her moods shifted from reassurance to fear and back again. She’d called to reassure her mother, but she’d also hoped to reassure herself. Terian chuckled again.

  Dehgoies didn’t know where she was. He was sure of it. Perhaps by now she’d learned more effective means of distracting him, too.

  From the wall, a moan redirected both Terians’ focus.

  Red lines and small handprints snaked across sun-faded wallpaper, running in places, like rusting metal. Whenever two of Terian’s bodies shared physical proximity they tended to share traits. The doc had said this personality configuration would be creative, and she hadn’t been wrong. At the foot of the same wall, another groan grew audible, meeting the voice still coming out of the answering machine.

  “…and Mom?” The voice hesitated. “Don’t let any strangers in the house, okay?”

  The little girl giggled. The stuffed white bunny bounced against her chest.

  “There are some people after me, and… well, it would be better if you could just go to Grandma’s for awhile. Or Aunt Carol’s. Please? Just do what I—”

  There was a click. The voice abruptly cut off.

  Raising his eyebrows, Terian looked at the little girl.

  Seeing the blank look in her eyes, he smiled.

  “Are you finished?” he asked her kindly.

  She held up her hands, pinning the bunny to her chest with one short arm. He understood her without words.

  “No more paint?” he said sympathetically.

  She shook her head, bouncing her dark curls.

  Terian clucked his tongue, rising easily to his feet. Following her back into the other room, he lifted a paint brush from the edge of the television stand, using his fingers to wipe away stray hairs. He handed it to the little girl.

  “Let’s see what we can do about that,” he murmured.

  Squatting fluidly, he examined the woman. No sound came from the area by his feet, but a single eye stared up, almost childlike in its attentiveness. The wom
an whimpered as Terian touched her skin. The eye closed, leaving the face featureless under hair and paint.

  He checked the belt he’d been using as a tourniquet.

  He considered loosening it, then pulled a flip knife from his back pocket instead, scanning options on the marred skin. Both arms had tourniquets already, both legs. The obvious choices had been tapped; to overuse any one would bring an end within heartbeats. He clasped a handful of her hair, speaking to her softly.

  She had already given so much.

  The little girl fidgeted. “Paint!” she shrieked. “Paint!”

  “Relax, dearest,” he murmured.

  The woman groaned when he sliced into her scalp. The eye flickered open and she fought to breathe as paint ran past her eyelashes, making her blink and gasp like a panicking child.

  “Shhhh,” he said. “Shhh…”

  The little girl jumped up and down.

  He straightened, watching as she pushed the metal brush into the fresh pool, using one chubby hand to balance on the woman’s forehead and then scraping the brush back and forth on the wall, leaving behind an sweep of broken red lines. Occasionally, she would look back at him, showing him one part of the drawing or another.

  “Good,” he said, approvingly. “Yes, very nice work… very nice. Looks just like your bunny… yes.”

  The little girl beamed back at him, her eyes shining.

  I CLUTCHED THE receiver. Something was wrong.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  This pain wasn’t like what I’d felt in Seattle. This was something else.

  Cold sweat broke out on my skin. A kind of liquid dread made it difficult to breathe. I felt sick, repulsed. It was like watching someone tread in circles over a rotting corpse.

  “…and Mom?” I fought to swallow. “Don't let any strangers in the house, okay? There are some people after me, and… well, it would be better if you could go to Grandma’s for awhile. Or Aunt Carol’s. Please? Just do what I—”

  A hand reached in front of my face, depressing the phone’s silver tongue.

  I glanced up and back, still holding the receiver.

  Revik stood there. His face looked blank––until I saw his eyes.