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

by JC Andrijeski

  He donned it like a vest, velcroing it tight, checking the gun in obvious rote before shouldering on his jacket over it. She was still staring when he turned his back to her, aiming his feet for the door.

  The light blinded her as he opened it onto the corridor.

  It wasn’t open long.

  Following the click of the latch, she lay back on the bed with a sigh. All she could feel was relief that he was gone, that she’d likely never see him again.

  WHEN ELIAH FINISHED speaking, Chandre remained silent.

  Eliah shared the construct with her, so he knew she was thinking to herself how ridiculous this was. Further, that it went beyond her job description as infiltrator to the Seven’s Guard to babysit two full-grown seers who, in her mind, should be alone in a cabin somewhere, getting acquainted in the carnal sense for at least a month before they were allowed to talk about their relationship in anything but monosyllables.

  That was the traditional way it was done. The old forms existed for a reason.

  Eliah kept the smile out of his light with an effort.

  These two-hundred-year-old seers always groused about the past.

  Is she all right? Chandre sent finally.

  Well enough, yeah. He let her feel his frown. Threw up when she came to, and she won’t talk about it. Physically she’s fine. She’s out on the balcony—

  Get her back inside. Now.

  Pardon my saying, sir, but no. She wants to look at the water, let her bloody well look at the water. It’s dark. No one’ll see her. He paused. Has he checked in?

  No. She exhaled a Barrier sigh. Vash said it’s up to us to determine what’s needed to keep the situation under control. You said she won’t press charges. Do we discipline him for breaking vow? She could be waiting for him to come back. To stab him, try to hurt him, whatever.

  Eliah gave a humorless laugh.

  I don’t think so, he sent. She still thinks too much like a human to let herself go on that kind of thing.

  Feeling Chandre’s skepticism, he added,

  …And if by disciplining him, you mean shooting him in the head, I’m all for it. His thoughts leaked anger. He didn’t shield it from her at all. If I had to guess, I’d say he pulled her into it deliberately.

  Recommendation, Eliah? Chandre sent dryly. Beyond the firing squad for Dehgoies for the crime of wanting his wife?

  Separate them, he returned promptly. Keep him away from her. When she’s up to it, I’ll ask her what she thinks.

  Fine. I leave them to you. She clicked to herself in irritation, folding her light arms. Watch her, Eliah. And no taking advantage of the situation to try and talk her into your bed. We still don’t know why he did it.

  He grunted. Why he did it? Are you serious?

  You’re damned right I’m serious. Her red eyes flashed brighter in the Barrier space. Something strange is going on with the two of them, and you know it. Half the males on this ship are looking at the Bridge, and you’re going to tell me her own mate isn’t? Yet he won’t touch her, and now he’s openly strayed. Don’t tell me you know why he did this.

  I’d say it’s more’n half. Eliah gave her a wolfish smile. And it ain’t only us that’ve been looking, either, chief. I’ve seen you staring at her ass on more than one occasion.

  Chan gritted her teeth. My point is, don’t go there. Tell the others, too. You get Dehgoies coming up here in a jealous rage and we’re going to have ourselves a real problem. That is one piece of bullshit I don’t intend to deal with tonight.

  Understood, he sent.

  You’d better. Or so help me I’ll let him shoot you.

  Eliah was still laughing a little as he clicked out of the Barrier, feeling his legs against the hard padding of a stateroom chair.

  He waited for his eyes to clear, then faced the window out to the balcony where he’d last seen her and startled, jumping to his feet.

  The balcony––the entire cabin in fact––was empty.

  29

  EXIT

  THE ELEVATOR CAR came to rest on the higher of two main floors, dumping me and seven other passengers into a wide foyer carpeted in red and gold patterns.

  The foyer was full of people. From the sheer number of human minds milling around mine, I surmised I’d arrived during the later of the two dinner meals served for general passengers, a stroke of luck in that it provided visual cover at least.

  I hadn’t had much time while Eliah had been in the Barrier, talking to Chan or whoever else about me. As soon as I saw him shift out of his body, I ran for the wardrobe.

  In seconds, I’d yanked on jeans and a tight-fitting tee from a band I’d seen years ago in Oakland. I donned my boots and a sweatshirt to deal with the cold, throwing the hood up to cover my head and putting in the brown contacts I’d fished out of the trash and washed. I projected some of my consciousness out on the balcony while I dressed behind the wardrobe door, just in case Eliah looked for me at any point in his conversation with Chandre.

  That was another trick Revik taught me.

  Grabbing a pair of mirrored sunglasses I’d found in one of the drawers, I stuffed them in my pocket and headed out the door.

  I’d come up with a whole story for the guards at the end of the row of staterooms, but hadn’t needed to use it, because, well… the guards weren’t there.

  Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, I walked to the elevators as fast as I could, donning the sunglasses clumsily as I hit the call button.

  That had been at least fifteen minutes ago.

  I got off on a few random floors, ran into several different groups of humans before I decided to head for the lobby and look for a place where I might hide out in public. I figured my best chance of getting even an hour out from under the Guard would be to find a place where no one would be looking at me.

  Of course, the Guard might be looking for me already.

  It crossed my mind that I also might run into Revik if he went out trolling again, maybe going for round two.

  When my light reacted to my own bleak attempt at humor, I shoved it aside, but not before the image of me collapsing on the atrium floor flickered through my thoughts, along with a taste of what it had felt like the first time.

  Maybe coming out here was stupid.

  I wasn’t even sure what the hell I wanted.

  Just to push back, I guess. To not be sitting in that room, waiting for Revik to return. The thought of waiting there under armed guard, just to play normal when Revik strolled back through that door––the whole thing made me physically sick.

  Clearly, he’d wanted me to take his divorce request seriously.

  I got the memo. I still had zero illusions he’d really talk to me about it when he returned.

  In the meantime, I needed space. From all of them.

  I knew my little jailbreak wouldn’t last long. Hell, I’d go back on my own eventually, assuming the Guard didn’t find me first and drag me back to the room by my hair. But I couldn’t just fucking sit in there for the next however-many hours, waiting for Revik to come back.

  I couldn’t do it.

  Truthfully, more than anything, I was probably doing it because I knew it would make Revik completely nuts when he found out.

  And yeah, okay, I was pretty buzzed. I definitely drank too much with Eliah.

  Keeping my mind carefully blank, I focused on my surroundings.

  The decor hovered somewhere between Vegas, which I’d visited once with Jaden, and a suburban shopping mall. Except here, only about half the signs and VR projections were speaking English. Most switched languages as they scanned room keys, following customers with higher credit limits and adjusting products until the person waved them off or stopped to listen to their pitch. Corridors twisted off in all directions, making it hard to track which side of the ship I was on until I stood still long enough to feel the whole thing moving.

  Even then, it was easy to get turned around.

  After the near-silence of the past few weeks
, both here and in Seattle, the voices echoing up and down the five stories of glass and metal were both comforting and a kind of psychic attack. A feeling of almost paralyzing aloneness tried to creep back around me, as well. The groups of laughing, shopping and even bickering humans somehow reminded me just how completely isolated from everyone around me I really was.

  That aloneness shed some light on something else, too.

  It was no wonder, really, that the thing with Revik screwed me up so badly. In the past month or so, I’d let him become my whole world.

  I needed to be around other people, even if I couldn’t talk to any of them––even if all I could do was watch them be normal from a distance.

  I had my doubts the humans on board would be on the lookout for a seer terrorist in their midst, even if they weren’t on vacation. Half the people around me were drunk, or focused solely on free food and gambling in the ship’s casino. Anyway, I looked pretty different from the photos of me plastered all over the feeds. My hair had changed color and length. My face had thinned. My eyes were a different color. And I just looked… different. I couldn’t really pinpoint in what way, but I could see it, whenever I looked in the mirror.

  From wall maps, I got the basic layout of the ship.

  I located the main casino, two dining areas and five bars on the lobby floor alone, along with a full-sized theater and an indoor swimming pool. Thinking about the last of these, I seriously contemplated going for a swim, although I’d need to figure out what to wear.

  I didn’t have any credits to buy a suit, or even a room key.

  I wondered if I could push a clerk well enough to get one anyway. Thinking about this, I abandoned the idea. I’d save pushes for if I really needed them. Anyway, I had to figure the construct would find me the second I went into the Barrier.

  Photography stands flashed virtual backdrops of Alaskan coastlines next to people dressed in VR-paneled costumes. Those costumes used computer-generated images to make the wearers look like everything from bald eagles to caribou to penguins. I even saw a few polar bears, and as far as I knew, they’d been extinct for years outside of zoos.

  A piano bar stood next to the long lines of people waiting to be seated for a five course, sit-down dinner. It was flanked on both sides by gilded waterfall balconies. Lining the guardrail above the sunken bar stood kiosks that sold everything from jewelry to shore excursions, pedicures and massages, dance classes and raffle tickets, tax-free wires, hiri and tobacco cigarettes, perfume, alcohol and handbags.

  I saw a woman holding a brochure on seer services that could be purchased in Anchorage, including a trip to what Revik referred to as an “unwilling” bar, and what every human I knew called a whorehouse.

  Another surge of sickness hit, that time bad enough to make me stop.

  I took a breath, leaning a palm against the corridor wall in a shadowed observation area outside the piano bar. Only a few tables stood there, populated by couples sipping drinks and looking through large windows to the ocean.

  Jesus. Whatever the hell was wrong with me, I had to get it under control. I was sweating too much, and I could see in the reflective glass that I was deathly pale.

  Maybe I should just go back.

  Allie?

  I stopped breathing, mid-exhale. Scanning faces to my left, I paused on the bay windows overlooking the ocean.

  Allie? Will you answer me?

  I swallowed, keeping my eyes on the rolling waves. The sky was dark, but a rim of reddish-purple remained by the water. My eyes returned to the dim lounge with its few tables. I didn’t recognize anyone, didn’t feel him nearby.

  He wasn’t there, I realized.

  I’d been thinking about him, and he’d heard me.

  Allie. Please… I need to see you.

  I stood motionless by a men’s bathroom. I didn’t move, even when a man smiled at me as he left the swinging doors.

  Allie, I’m sorry. I’m really—

  I don’t want to talk about this, my mind blurted.

  At his silence, I forced my thoughts back to neutral. I breathed in and out, once, forcing myself to be logical about this.

  Revik, I thought at him. I took another breath, and my mind leveled more. Revik… you really don’t need to explain anything.

  Allie, I do. I do need to––

  No, I sent. You don’t. I understand. You can have a divorce or whatever you want—

  Not like this, he broke in. I don’t want to talk to you like this. I want to actually sit down and talk to you. Please.

  I felt him trying to think how to persuade me.

  Please, Allie…

  He reached for me with his light and I jerked back, pulling away from him without thought. When he came close to me again, I threw up a wall.

  He ran into it… then withdrew all at once.

  It happened so fast, I barely understood what I’d done.

  The silence went longer. I could tell it shocked him, my forcing him away. I felt pain on him, cloying, hard to keep out of my light. He was still hiding something from me, but I was trying to hide how I felt, too. It never seemed to end with us.

  Revik, I sent. Really, I’m not just saying it. You don’t need to do this. I’m cool with us being friends. You maybe didn’t have to go to such extremes to make your point, but––

  Allie… no. It wasn’t like that––

  Eliah told me, I sent, cutting him off. So I get it now. I get what happened in Seattle. I get why you think I was pushing you. I didn’t mean to, but––

  Eliah? His thoughts grew still. What did he tell you, Allie?

  Revik. I’m trying to say I’m sorry. Can’t we just—

  No, he sent. Pain wafted off his light. Please… gods. Don’t make me talk to you like this… please, Allie…

  I felt the vulnerability on his light again, and couldn’t answer.

  His thoughts grew quiet, almost a murmur. Please, Allie. Please let me see you… please.

  I stared out at the night sky, watching the horizon dip gently up and down.

  Okay, I sent, reluctant. But jesus, Revik. We don’t have to do this—

  You’re in the room? Is Eliah with you?

  No. I hesitated long enough to find it odd he’d mentioned Eliah again. …no to both, actually. I’m on the other side of the ship. Near that big piano, with all the shops. We could meet out here, or—

  What? His light changed. How did you get there?

  I walked. His pain worsened again and I clutched my belly, trying my damnedest not to feel anything more from his light. Revik… I’m being careful. Eliah was all pissed off. I didn’t see anyone in the corridor, so—

  Allie! Gods, baby, what are you doing? His pain worsened, along with a guilt I winced away from, clenching my jaw. Wait right where you are. Wait there. I’ll be there. I’ll find you…

  “Sister?”

  I jumped, turning at the new voice.

  I was distracted, sick from being so close to his light, distracted by what he’d just called me, unsure if I’d even heard him correctly, much less if someone really just spoke to me outside of the Barrier. In any case, I expected it to be one of the guards, Eliah or Chandre or someone else they’d sent to find me.

  Revik’s presence faded, but I didn’t feel him pull away.

  Instead it felt like I walked into a dense wall and the wall entangled me, pushing him out. Beacon-like eyes met mine, glowing in the VR projections by the nearest kiosk. The flickering images there distracted me. I saw a woman gyrating in a tall monitor, wearing a sequined evening gown. The real person whose image it projected watched the transformed version of herself as if mesmerized.

  “Are you lost, sister?”

  I blinked. A woman held my arm. I watched her long fingers tighten on my skin. They looked blue in the light of the VR images. I struggled to focus on her face, couldn’t.

  I will help you, she sent softly. You look very fatigued, sister.

  Relief washed over me. I was tired.


  I couldn’t believe how tired I was.

  The woman with the opaque eyes purred a lulling sound…

  …and I fell into a complicated strand of light.

  The world phased.

  It reemerged altered before I could catch my breath.

  On the other side, everything looked different, if only in the smallest, most subtle of ways. It was as if my lenses reflected light from a slightly different angle. Inside that new frequency, objects and people grew complex, multidimensional. Their lights expanded, sharpening from blurry outlines into a series of mathematical equations.

  Snatches of music and light harmonized that perfect structure.

  A blueprint emerged from harsh outlines––walls, floors, fixtures, furniture, potted trees, even people. The overhead chandelier exploded in a glitter of lit strands. Physical light broke down into particles, matter and energy, an achievement of base mechanical beauty that literally stopped my breath in its tracks.

  I and the other seer walked back through the crowded causeway.

  All I could do was stare around me, lost in the complexity and beauty.

  Even those banal VR projections grew fascinating. I could see now, how they were made, the technology infused with nonphysical light, framing each message like the projection screen behind a movie’s shifting frames. I saw the images shift, connecting to every bit of data they had on the human walking by, the light altering to pull at theirs.

  The interaction of minds, the way they formed building blocks into more and more personalized messages––all of it grew visible to me.

  A group of humans pass us, pulling my attention.

  I hear their harsh laughter as if from far away.

  They feel like children, puppets caught in lit strands, surrounded by a complexity that dictates their every move, while remaining wholly invisible to them.

  Yes, the blue-skinned woman sends. You feel it, don’t you? Even you. You feel how wrong they are. How… incomplete.

  I watch atoms dance among the beams of the causeway ceiling, light shower down in fractal rainbows as the lit strands cross and change overhead.