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

by JC Andrijeski

  “Are you reading me now?”

  “No,” he said, smiling.

  “Do you want to?”

  “Yes,” he said truthfully.

  When she didn’t move away, he slid down further in his seat, glancing for the bartender. The woman looked down at him, reacting to his mind’s nudge, and reddened. Giving a nervous laugh, she brought her martini glass to her lips.

  “I see. How much?” She hesitated. “You charge, right?”

  “Yes.” He thought fast. “Five hundred.”

  “Five hundred? Are you worth that?”

  He dipped lightly into her mind. She waited, as if she knew what he was doing. He pulled out a moment later, shifting slightly on the stool.

  “For you, yeah,” he said.

  She smiled wanly. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

  He smiled politely.

  “This is crazy,” she muttered, taking another swallow of her drink. “I’ve never even talked to one of you before.” She switched her purse to her other hand, looking down the bar to buy herself time.

  Revik didn’t answer. He’d learned more than he wanted in his brief tour. She was lonely. Her husband was on the cruise, too, but with someone else, likely someone he’d arranged to have come on the ship so he could slip away from his wife every chance he got. This woman knew, obviously, but for some reason wasn’t ready to leave him.

  Human sexual relationships depressed the hell out of him.

  He was about to tell her to forget it, when she nodded decisively.

  “Okay.” She downed the rest of the martini, her eyes bright. “What the hell. Do you have a place, or—”

  He shook his head. “Not yet.”

  She pursed her lips. “Really? Then when?”

  Revik hesitated. He hadn’t thought this through. Now that he had an actual person to react to, he realized he wasn’t worth anything close to the price he’d quoted. He needed an appetizer first, even if it was just his hand. He nodded towards the fireplace.

  “In an hour? There’s something I have to do first.”

  She looked doubtful, and he shook his head.

  “Not that,” he assured her.

  She nodded, but clearly didn’t believe him.

  Hesitating another beat, he got up from the barstool, realized he still had an erection and paused, willing it to subside. When it wouldn’t, he felt his face warm. Instead of walking away, she lingered by him, shielding him from the rest of the room. His pain worsened briefly.

  “Thanks,” he said after a moment.

  She glanced down, a faint smile on her lips. “So the rumors are true, then? Is your kind always this… enthusiastic?” She waited for his answer, then added, “It’s good to know I don’t repel you, at least.”

  Bitterness colored the last of her words.

  Impulsively, he touched her hand that held the glass, letting his fingers linger on her skin. She shivered as it turned into a caress, and for another instant, he hesitated. He would lose her if he left now, he realized. He made up his mind as he felt her blush under his stare. He circled her wrist with his fingers.

  “Forget the money,” he said. “And the hour.”

  She blinked at him, and for the first time, he noticed her eyes were green. His cock hardened painfully again, even as nausea slid through his chest, making it hard to breathe.

  “We’re not always like this,” he said, watching her look at him. “It won’t be as good.”

  She studied his eyes. “It’ll be good enough.”

  “Now,” he said, to be clear. “Are you ready?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Okay.” She balanced her martini glass on the edge of the bar, following the insistent tug of his fingers. He unhooked the clip from his collar, shoving it in his pocket as he led her out of the room.

  27

  REVELATIONS

  BARRIER CLOUDS APPEAR, eclipsing the cabin.

  A wolf runs across the tundra, tongue flicking over black lips in a blood-stained grin, body elongating…

  But I don’t want to see that again. I fight to change my light, to resonate with something else. Slowly, the view around me alters.

  Clouds hang bright and sharp, still against liquid black.

  The Barrier enfolds me in dark and light waves. I can see it now, easily, whenever I close my eyes. More importantly, I can feel when I am inside it, not just looking at it from without, or glimpsing the places where the physical world and the Barrier world overlap.

  I’m not supposed to be here.

  Even without Revik’s warnings, my gut tells me so.

  The construct should keep me safe, or so I tell myself. I’m in a big fishbowl of protected space, cut off from the Barrier proper. But even I know the construct’s not foolproof. I also suspect that what I’m doing right now might actually put some part of me outside of the construct’s protective shield.

  The shiver of nerves that hits me isn’t enough to stop me, though.

  Not now, and not the countless times I’ve done it before, when Revik wandered out of the room late at night or in the early morning. He thought I didn’t know he roamed the halls while I slept, but I did. I’d wait for him to leave, and then I’d sit like this. I’d even snuck in a few jumps after he’d passed out on the bed.

  Those were a lot riskier though. He was a light sleeper.

  I no longer need to pause at the edge of the sharp clouds. I’ve eliminated a lot of the preliminaries, and even the intermediary steps. I’ve learned to make my jumps economical, due to the time constraints.

  Even though I have time now, I do the same.

  I don’t screw around, or stop to look at the scenery. I don’t play in any of the currents that flow in swift rivers above or below where I float in the clouds. I don’t visit nebulae, or stare up at the multicolored stars like I did the first few times I came here on my own. I don’t bother with vortices, either.

  I aim directly at the gray wall around the spot at the top of the Pyramid.

  Images hit me at once.

  Most center on the keys I turned to get this far. The faceless man is elusive, hiding behind door after door. Sometimes, I use Terian to try and get close to him.

  This time, I have something closer than Terian.

  I focus on the bearded man, the one I know as Haldren.

  I don’t know how I know him, but I do. I also know what he is.

  Haldren is the faceless man. He is the same man who approached Revik in that prison during World War II, offering him a job with the Rooks. He is the man who sits on top of the Pyramid now. He is the apex of that Pyramid, its mind––its Head.

  In some sense, he is the Rooks.

  Both are Haldren, both Galaith.

  Somehow.

  I don’t understand, but I also don’t care.

  Haldren whispers over an old man’s battered body.

  Liego… Liego… why did you do it?

  Liego Kardek. Haldren called him the Bridge.

  Revik blames Kardek for the war that killed the Elaerian, but I know better. I know Liego better, too. Liego and Haldren go way back, sharing a timeline of lives I don’t understand, but that I’m forced to accept on some level, at least enough to use that information.

  I see Liego with Haldren when he is a child. Haldren is a squalling, sickly child wearing rags, alone and abandoned. Liego rocks him to sleep, sings songs when the orphanage comes late to pick him up from the school where Liego teaches.

  Liego pities the boy. Eventually, that compassion becomes a deeper love.

  The boy moves in with him and a man named Massani after no one claims him from the first set of wars. I watch Liego feed the four-year-old. I see him talk to an angry, confused adolescent, hold him as he cries at some disappointment or rejection.

  I see Liego teach him in his private laboratory, ready him for exams, introduce him to a society that accepts him because of who Liego is.

  Hatred wells up in me, mixed with a love that hurts more.

 
; It is not my life, not my problem, but I take it personally. I take him personally. I crash through wall after wall, following the thread of that gaunt child.

  He still exists. Somewhere.

  Haldren. His name is Haldren.

  A recklessness lives in me. I decide I am tired of the slow way, the seer game of hide and seek, step by step, mapping and remapping of lines, all the cloak and dagger bullshit I’ve tried my best to follow as Revik taught me. I don’t need to understand all the threads that tie me to this place and time. I am looking for the monster who killed my mother. I don’t care that he was once a child in some other version of Earth, except that it might help me find him now.

  Dropping the pretense, I envision the child in the front of my mind.

  I call to him.

  I yell his name through the faceless shadows of a distant Pyramid, and most of the beings tied to that prison do not hear.

  I think it is futile, that I am wasting my time, when…

  I am with him.

  Abruptly, I am there, at the top of all those chafing lines.

  I float over the apex of the Pyramid.

  Shocked by my success, I see him. He sits alone, in a structured room. Lines of silver and hard metallic white stick to his head and heart.

  The child is one of a thousand whispering masks.

  He looks like a machine. The Pyramid has disappeared––it occurs to me that it disappeared because I am inside it. Haldren doesn’t move, doesn’t seem to see me at all. He rests inside a dream. A flat, pleasant emptiness.

  Watching him exist in this state, I find I almost understand.

  He is safe here. He is protected, in a way that the old man couldn’t protect him when he was alive. He is protected from feeling, from vulnerability, from caring about anything that might hurt him, or make him feel pain. He can sit in this empty space, untouchable, because the silver light ensures that he doesn’t have to feel any of it. He can give orders, and tell himself he is the cause of none of it. He can be the king of ghosts, of wasted machines.

  He can kill my mom.

  Or he can let it happen, and not care about that, either.

  Anger flares my light. A white arc leaves me, utterly different from the seething strands eclipsing Haldren on his metal throne. The flame sparks as it comes in contact with the Pyramid’s trembling strands. It finds one of the connecting points.

  There is a strange silence.

  Then a tangled, silver ball explodes.

  I hear the crack below that single pearl of flame. Something totters, begins to fall. I hear voices scream, awakened from their collective dream. I watch that piece of the Pyramid tumble into a void-like abyss. Everything disappears below the connecting point I have broken. I watch lights disappear, erased from the network mind like branches cut from a dying plant.

  Haldren disappears.

  I fall. I fall for a long, long time.

  Until I see only one face, one being.

  A narrow, wasted mask looks at me, its eyes like poisoned urine. The face holds a dense knowing, a mirrored depth. The being smiles. I’m not looking at a person anymore. I am looking at one of the Rooks.

  I see you, Bridge, it whispers.

  I see where you are…

  …I SAT up, gasping, batting at my head with my hands.

  Just like that afternoon, I found myself lying on my back on the carpet, but instead of virtual stars, I see the low, white-painted ceiling of the stateroom.

  My head hurts. There is sharp pain, but also a feeling of despair.

  I realize I am still partway in the Barrier and dig my nails into my arm, trying to force myself the rest of the way out.

  My eyes clicked back into focus once I’d succeeded.

  The silver light still clung to my head in some undefinable way, so I sparked outwards with my aleimi, trying to get it off me.

  All I felt was amusement, laughter as the being left.

  I was still sitting there, gasping, when a sharp knock rattled the cabin door. I turned to stare at it, fighting to breathe, fighting the fear that wanted to throw me back into the Barrier.

  Revik wouldn’t knock.

  “Allie?”

  I recognized the Irish accent. Eliah. My mulei teacher.

  “What the hell’s on in there, love? What’re you doin’?”

  Only minutes had passed. Seconds, maybe.

  White hands on green mirrors. Blood with water.

  He was thirsty. So fucking thirsty. Everything hurt, and…

  Pain whispered through my fingers. I held my head, biting my tongue as hard as I could. I fought to keep my light inside my body.

  “Yeah,” I managed. “Okay. What do you want?”

  I don’t remember saying he could come in, but the door opened. Eliah crossed the threshold into the room and stopped, looking around as if startled by a strange smell. Closing the door behind him, he studied me with cocked head.

  “What’ve you been doin’ in here, love?”

  I pulled myself shakily to my feet, wincing at the bruises from our earlier fight in the ring.

  “Feeling sorry for myself, for sucking so hard at mulei,” I said, forcing a smile. I clenched my hands, more to keep them from shaking. “Why? Do you want to kick my ass again?”

  He smiled wanly, but his eyes didn’t leave my face. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine. What’s up?”

  “Orders.” He hesitated, then glanced at the bed, seemingly involuntarily. “To hear tell it, your other half will be out for awhile. I’m supposed to keep you company until he gets back.” Trailing, he watched me rub my temples. “Allie-bird? Seriously. You don’t look so good.”

  I flinched at the nickname, but didn’t answer.

  My mother had called me that.

  Revik said a lot of our thoughts and memories would float around the construct, that it was part of sharing a construct with other seers. I knew it didn’t mean anything. I’d been thinking about my mom a lot, so yeah, it made sense.

  It still made me wince.

  Still casting around for something to keep me focused on the room, I dug my nails into my palm as Eliah sat down on the bed, glancing out at the balcony.

  When the pause went on too long, I forced myself to look at him.

  I’d never really seen him in street clothes before, apart from glimpses through the door when he guarded our stateroom. He had two different-colored eyes, one nearly black, the other blue, yet with his hair combed back and the blue sweater he wore, the combination worked well with his square jaw and salt-and-pepper hair. Sitting casually on the end of the bed, hands clasped between the knees of his dark-brown slacks, he looked like a cologne ad, or maybe a feed advertisement for high-end coffee.

  What was it with these seers, that all of them were good-looking? The men all looked like male models. Eliah had the air of a man who’d never bother with a midlife crisis. He’d be too busy scuba diving the Norwegian fjords or tackling K2.

  He smiled faintly. “Cheers, love. Although the ‘midlife’ crack stings a bit.”

  Hesitating, I decided the normal thing to do would be to sit. I let my weight sink into the plush armchair across from him.

  “So what now?” I said. “You’re on babysitting duty, is that it?”

  “I suppose so, yes.” He continued to study my eyes. “That all right with you, love?”

  I shrugged, keeping my voice casual. “Sure. Whatever. Not sure why it’s necessary, though. It’s not like this is the first time Revik’s gone on walkabout.”

  Eliah flushed.

  I couldn’t help but notice him glancing at the bed again.

  “Yeah, well.” He gestured vaguely. “I guess Chan was worried you might overreact this time. She doesn’t want anything happening. Not with a ship full of human witnesses.”

  “Overreact?” I frowned. “Overreact about what?”

  He gave me a shrewder look. “You know where he went this time, don’t you, love?”

  I hesitated, wanti
ng to ask, then didn’t.

  I shook my head, once. “No. And I really don’t see how it’s any of my business. Or yours.” I glanced up, my expression flat. “Hey, since you’re stuck here, do you mind helping me work on shielding? I need a shower, but then we could practice. I could stand to eat, too. Have you had any dinner?”

  “I want to ask you something, first,” he said.

  I tensed, gripping the chair arms. “Okay.”

  He smiled. “Don’t say yes too quick, love. It might offend you.”

  Thinking about his words, I nodded, my expression unmoving. “Go ahead. Ask. It seems to be my day for that kind of thing.”

  He laughed. When I didn’t say anything more, he made a vague gesture towards my body.

  “All right,” he said. “You and the walking corpse. What’s going on?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  “I hear his first wife strayed. Is he feeling bitter? Testing you, maybe?”

  There was a silence. I fought with how I might laugh off his words, or just avoid the question, or smack it down, like I had the first time he’d baited me.

  But the silence had stretched too long already.

  Regaining my feet, I made my way to the bathroom. Eliah got up to follow.

  “Allie… wait.”

  “It’s fine. I just really need a shower,” I said. “If you want to order food, go for it. Or you can leave, honestly. Unless Chan says you really have to stay.”

  “Allie…”

  I shut the door on him, not quite in his face, but close enough that I felt him flinch through the wood. I hoped like hell he’d take the hint and let me drop it when I went back out there. I knew it was probably too much to hope for, that he might take the real hint and leave.

  For now, I just wanted space. And a shower, like I told him.

  He didn’t give me space, though. As I tugged the stretchy tee I wore over my head, bending over the tub, I heard him lean against the door.

  “Didn’t want to ask it, love,” he said, his words slightly muffled through the wood. “But I’ve been hearing things. You know. Small ship. Even smaller construct.”