The echo of water splashing against the fiberglass tub drowned out his voice as I turned up the faucet. He spoke louder, but I still missed a few words.
“…Most of our females won’t touch him, truth be told. There’s rumors about what he did when working for those Rooks, some of it to women…”
“Eliah,” I called out. “I can’t hear you. Can it wait?”
He raised his voice. “I could see it, if you just wanted a roll. Hell, he sells it, so he’s got to be competent at least…”
Wishing I hadn’t heard that part, I bit my lip, but his voice rose again above the water.
“…But gods almighty beyond the Barrier, Alyson. How in the realms of hell did he talk you into marrying him? Was there coercion involved? Because, love, if so, you have grounds for severance. Even apart from what he’s done since.”
I’d been about to flip on the shower nozzle when I froze, hearing his words even as they replayed in my mind. I just stood there for a few seconds, half bent over, wearing only my underwear. I watched water flow out of the silver tap.
“Allie?” He paused. “You know he’s got no social status to speak of, right? Hell, I think he’s officially still in penance. You’ve basically elevated him about ten ranks, just by agreeing to the bastard. And I really don’t see anything in it for you. Then he treats you like this…”
The linoleum blurred.
My mind pieced together words, fragments of conversations, references. I remembered the look on Ivy and Ullysa’s faces in the kitchen when I wouldn’t go to him that morning, his half-assed apology about Kat, the constant, oblique references to whatever happened between us that first night we spent in Seattle.
“You know it’s illegal for seers, right?” Eliah said.
“Illegal?” I repeated numbly.
“Infidelity. You need permission. I’m assuming you didn’t give him that?”
I stood there, unable to answer. Thinking about Jaden, my parole, the look on Kat’s face when she thought I’d offered her Revik…
Tugging my shirt back over my head, I turned off the water.
After standing by the door a second more, I opened it, and found myself meeting the serious eyes of Eliah, one blue and the other nearly black. He started a bit, to find himself facing me so suddenly. For a moment we just looked at each other.
Then my jaw hardened.
“Okay,” I said. “Order food. I have questions.”
Eliah grinned, looking about to speak.
Before he could, I shut the bathroom door in his face.
I CURLED UP in one of the round-backed chairs that passed for comfortable, a half-eaten plate of oysters on the counter next to me. I wasn’t hungry any more, but food and alcohol seemed to be the way to get Eliah to talk, just like it was with most humans.
My hair was still wet from the shower, but I wasn’t cold. Unlike Revik, Eliah liked the doors closed, the heat cranked up. He sprawled on an identical chair to my left, drinking a beer as both of us faced the glass doors leading to the sea.
Turning, he grinned at me, eyes glassy from alcohol.
“So then I just picked myself up,” he said, his accent stronger with the beer. “…Dusted m’self off. Then I pretended I’d meant to stick my hand in that letter box.” He returned my grin, seeing me shake my head. “Those poor worms.”
I stiffened and he added apologetically,
“…Humans. We end up acting fairly idiotic around them sometimes, just to avoid the hassle of an exposure threat. It’s a real bitch to get your license back once it’s been yanked.” Grunting, he took another swallow of the beer. “It’s one thing to move undetected by humans. When you’ve got SCARB on your arse, it’s a whole ‘nother story.”
He gestured around us, pointing to the television and the stocked bar.
“But hell. This is my home. Living in caves, chanting… not the life for me. I don’t much fancy being sold at auction to some rich dickhead, either. Clan tattoos get burned off, y’know.” He motioned at the race-cat tattoo on his arm. “Overambitious Sweeps who want a bit o’ extra dosh get bought off by traders. O’ course, being in the Guard protects me from most o’ that. Even SCARB won’t mess with the Seven too much. They don’t want to risk the Adhipan on their arses, either.
“…Thank Christ,” he added, leaning over the arm of the chair and swigging more beer. “But there’s the flip side o’ that, too. If I don’t make the effort to act a bit human-ish, the Sweeps would have me living out in the middle of Mongolia somewhere, milking oxen. Not much of an improvement, really.”
“The Sweeps?” I said, puzzled. “But they’re human, right?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’thir li’dare… that bastard Dags doesn’t tell you anything, does he? No. The Sweeps is part of the World Court, yeah. But they’re culled from the clans. They’re the police. Couldn’t rightly be human, could they?”
“You have your own police,” I repeated, a little dumbfounded.
In the human media, the Sweeps were always portrayed as a kind of global Homeland Security. They worked under SCARB, sure, or maybe adjacent to SCARB, tracking renegade seers, but it had never occurred to me they weren’t human.
He flicked his fingers to the right and up, a gesture I recognized as “yes.”
“The Rooks have a heavy presence on SCARB as a whole, of course,” Eliah said. “They’re sort of a competing nation with the Seven, you could say. But it’s more a philosophical difference, really. The other nations tolerate ‘em because whatever else they may be, the Rooks’re good at concealment. Ironic really, as they were the first to advocate dominance over isolationism.”
He leaned back on his elbows.
“Containment’s a real controversial issue with seers these days, love,” he added. “Before, humans were seen more as animals…” He gave me an apologetic glance. “Most of us didn’t even want to interact with them, truth be told. The world was bigger back then, and it was easy to talk about non-interference, live and let live, will o’ the gods an’ all that. Now humans fly everywhere, go everywhere, want to see everything. Even our most isolated clans are stuck having to deal with them in one form or another… and there’s sex and mixed marriage and all kinds of nonsense on our side, too.”
He winked at me. “We’ve got nasty libidos, we seers.”
I rolled my eyes, but grinned slightly.
“Damn, that’s cute,” he said, leaning back over the arm of the chair. “Fuck. How can he keep his hands off you?”
Feeling myself stiffen, I receded into the chair, cushioning my head on my arm against the rounded back. “Okay,” I said. “I’m just going to ask. Do you really believe all of this Bridge stuff? About me killing everyone, ending the world?”
He broke into a laugh, spilling his beer.
“Trust Dags to put a positive spin on it. What a morose bastard.”
“Eliah,” I said, sighing. “What do you think? Honestly. If it’s true, I think it must have something to do with the Rooks. I’ve been studying their network, but until today, I never really—”
“You’ve been what?”
Eliah raised his head, staring at me. The sharpness of his voice took me aback.
“Studying their network,” I repeated.. “I’m interested in how it works. The way the whole top part seems to shift—”
“The succession order?”
It was my turn to stare. When I glimpsed images in his mind however, watching the different pieces of the Pyramid move up and down, trading places with one another under the top spot at the apex of the Pyramid, I found myself nodding. It was oddly reassuring that the thing I’d been looking at had a name.
“That’s right,” I said. “The succession order.”
“Why on earth would you be interested in that?” he said.
His voice remained sharp under his disbelief, and I saw what might have been wariness under that. For the first time in our conversation, I remembered he was an infiltrator, like Revik.
&nb
sp; “We’ve never been able to see into that, love,” he said, shaking his head. “Why would you even look there? What do you expect to find, exactly?”
I smiled, but had to fight to keep the anger out of my voice.
“I know,” I said. “It’s practically Revik’s mantra. It’s way over my head. I’m just a beginner… I get it. You don’t need to go there, Eli.”
“That’s not exactly what I meant, love.”
“So you don’t understand why I might be interested in the people who killed my mother?” At his silence, I bit my lip. When he still didn’t say anything, I asked again, “So what do you think, Eli? Really. About the Bridge stuff, I mean.”
The hard look faded from his eyes, leaving the lighter one a clear blue.
“Love, I know you’re worried about reincarnation an’ all that,” he said, sighing. “But I don’t think that’s the point, really.”
“Then what is the point?”
“It’s about roles, see. Some are too important, and affect too many people to leave to chance. The Bridge is like that. There needs to be someone overseeing things, when something as heavy as a Displacement goes down.”
For a moment, I could only look at him, replaying what he’d said.
“You really believe all that stuff?” I said.
He grinned, resting his head on the chair’s back. “You sound surprised.”
“For a seer, you’re almost… normal. I had my hopes.”
Leaning forward, he placed his free hand, the one not gripping his beer, lightly on my thigh. “Does that mean you’re warming to me, love?”
Smiling, I shook my head, moving my legs out of reach of his fingers. “There’s a serious shortage of female seers on this ship, am I right?”
“Brutally small,” he agreed cheerfully. “And Chandre’s as likely to try for you as I am. But you’d be a peach anywhere, love. And that pain coming off you is simply… maddening. I don’t know how he can fucking stand it…”
I felt my jaw harden again. Thinking about his words, I folded my arms.
“Revik said that seer relationships were ‘complicated’… and largely biological. He said I shouldn’t take it personally. Is that true, too?”
Eliah snorted. “Bloody romantic.”
“Is it true, Eliah?”
He shrugged. “It’d be true in a way, I suppose. We’re a bit more biologically wired for monogamy than humans. But that’s not exactly the same thing, if you don’t mind my saying… and doesn’t have anything at all to do with who we choose as mates. In fact, you could say the reverse is true.”
At my puzzled look, he shrugged with one hand, seer-fashion.
“The biological symptoms could be unsettling, I suppose. Especially if you didn’t know what was happening. Someone like you, who thought they were human, it’s got to be that much harder…” He frowned, studying my face. Leaning forward, he looked at my eyes. “Gods. You’re not in love with him, are you, Allie-girl?”
I shook my head, but felt my chest clench a little anyway.
“I barely know him,” I said.
“That’s not what I asked.” Still studying my eyes, he added more cautiously, “The rest of us, we assumed you chose him for protection. Or, frankly, because he was the first male seer you met, and bad luck on you for that.”
He hesitated, laying a hand on my arm.
“But if you are in love with him, well… that changes things. Won’t be so easy to pull out of this thing with him then, pet. And I’m sorry for that.” He gripped my arm. “I truly am.”
I focused on his eyes. They seemed to brighten strangely in the dim light of the cabin.
As they did, his words faded, as if someone twisted the dial on a radio.
Every other sound in the room seemed to amplify. Ambient noises grew deafening: the sound of the ocean through the closed door, the wind lightly whistling past the glass, the ticking of the old-fashioned clock on the wall. I heard an odd hitch in Eliah’s breath as he watched my face, his heart beating through his rib cage, slowing as he listened for my answer.
I got the chance to think the timing was ironic.
Then everything in the room dimmed.
I should have known I’d feel it when it happened. From everything Eliah told me, everything that happened with Jaden in San Francisco… even from what little Revik himself had said… I really should have known.
I should have known a lot of things, but they still always managed to surprise me.
28
BREAK DOWN
I STAND ON a rock bluff, above a valley riddled with spider-web cracks. Wind tunnels between chasms. Everything is gone. All trees, animals, plants are dust, blown away.
I’m alone. But not really. Not really alone.
…He raises himself up on his arms, sweating, reading her, watching her eyes as he brings her to the edge. I see the tattooed writing on his arm, sweat sticking black hair to his neck and forehead as he moves over her, arms tensed as he adjusts the angle of his body. He holds her still, fingers clenched in blond hair as he arches deeper… deep enough to pause when she cries out, holding some part of himself back, going in with his mind so he can feel it when…
She climaxes, gripping his arms. Pain ripples off him as he watches.
Then it worsens.
Red sunlight shines behind my lids, but that pale, bird-less sky fades.
I feel him fighting. With himself, with me. He loses control and then he groans aloud, asking me, winding some part of himself deeper into my light.
He pulls me inside of him, even with her lying between us.
Fuck. Allie. Fuck…
He tries to stop himself, fights to pull away.
Come here. His voice yanks on me harder in that space. It is demanding, harsh, but lost, too, out of control. Come here… gaos, come here. Let me in. Let me do this, goddamn it…
…and he’s inside both of us now. I feel his relief mixed with frustration, a kind of horror at what he’s doing even as he arches into her harder, trying to reach me. He wants me. I feel it, that want, although he won’t tell me, even now. He wants me more than I can stand, more than I can let myself feel. It hurts, that want, but I’m lost inside the conflict on him, too. Fear hovers behind desire, masked in anger at me for forcing him to revisit that place, to remember.
I would turn him back. I would make him over into that thing he hates.
He is sure of it. He feels it with every part of his being.
I would turn him back, if he let me.
Above, the Pyramid rotates. There is more to see.
For now, alone… further back, below.
He would remember.
“HEY.” THE WOMAN fought to slow her breathing. She realized she’d never gotten his name. “Hey… are you okay?”
His pale skin wore the same sheen that matted her blond hair to her neck and shoulders, stuck the cotton sheet to her legs. She clutched at him, unable to help it. Her whole body still vibrated from what he’d done to her, seemingly again and again and again.
He’d been unnervingly focused as he brought her to orgasm, but by the end, he’d surprised her by being verbal, too––a lot more verbal than she would have guessed from their brief conversation in the bar.
He’d warned her it would be fast, and yet, there’d been something vulnerable about him once he let himself go. That vulnerability edged into a near-violence at times, but he hadn’t hurt her. He’d removed her clothes before they were all the way in the room, and she could tell he’d been holding back even then, using his mouth to buy them time, pushing her to talk to him.
Once he’d really started, she doubted he’d been aware of her at all.
When he finally came, he’d been nearly begging her.
Or begging someone, perhaps, to do… something.
Now he just lay there, like a dead person.
She wondered how she’d let him talk her into coming here.
Her husband got them separate cabins—his idea, of course, to
give them “more space” and because he claimed he couldn’t sleep with her snoring—but he had no compunction about stopping by when the mood struck him, or if he and the dance instructor had one of their spats. She cringed at the thought that she might have to explain a naked, male seer in her bed.
Although, really, it would serve him right.
“Hey.” She laid a hand on his chest. His skin felt cold. She kept her voice light, trying to smile. “Who’s Allie?”
She saw his expression change, just before he closed his eyes. She couldn’t help wondering though. A girlfriend? Did they even date?
Looking away, he shifted his weight on the mattress.
She caressed his hair. “Are you sick?”
He raised a hand, pushing hers off. She watched in disbelief as he wiped his face, doubting what she’d seen. Then his breathing changed, and she couldn’t deny what she heard. He was crying. He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.
“Hey,” she said, a little alarmed. “What’s going on?”
When he spoke, his voice made her jump. She’d forgotten the accent.
“I’m married,” he said.
A surprised laugh caught in her throat. She tried to keep it out of her voice.
“So am I,” she said. “I thought that was the point.”
He looked at her. His pale eyes reflected light shining from under the door, almost like a cat’s eyes. Again, she remembered he wasn’t human. He stared back as if she were just as alien to him. Then he sat up. She watched him feel around on the floor for his pants, pulling them up over his legs and looping then hooking his belt. Standing, he found his shirt and drew it over his head, and now she felt emotion waver off him, clear as a scent. It was self-loathing.
She pulled the damp sheet tighter around herself. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He shook his head. “It’s not your fault.”
“Do you want money?” She recoiled in spite of herself, afraid of him once she saw the look in his eyes.
“No,” he said flatly. He didn’t look at her again.
Before she could think what to say next, he bent down, picking up the shoulder harness that had shocked her so much when she’d first seen it.
Rook (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #1): Bridge & Sword World Page 27