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

by JC Andrijeski

  I focus on the woman’s opaque eyes. They no longer look wise.

  They look dead to me. Cold.

  My vision clicks into focus.

  …and I found myself staring at Ivy.

  Ivy. The young girl in Seattle who bandaged Revik’s shoulder, who laughed while she dyed my hair, who arranged for all of my IDs and passports along with Yarli. But instead of the young, happy person I remembered, Ivy looked gaunt to me now, her skin too thin, her head and face too large and skull-like. Her platinum-blond hair stuck up on her head, making her look more like a goblin than an elf. She also looked older.

  She smiled at me, her eyes studying my face as she touched my arm.

  Sister. Do not be afraid. Do not doubt that we are your friends.

  I looked around at the physical world.

  The casino, the crowds, none of that had been real, either. I stood on a deserted piece of the ship’s top deck, buffeted by cutting wind. My hair whipped my cheeks as I looked up, where a rock face cut into the sky. It passed the port side of the ship, dark and still.

  Ivy and I were alone. The entrance to the metal stairs to my right hung with signs showing it off-limits to any but crew.

  You work for him, I manage. Terian.

  She smiles. The smile is cryptic, but cold. No, she says, surprising me. I work for someone far older than he. Far more knowledgeable than he.

  Galaith? I ask.

  No, she says, her eyes still on mine. Not him, either.

  Who, then? I say.

  Your husband knows. He knows us quite well, Alyson.

  I frown, feeling anger heat my chest. What the fuck do you want with him? With either of us?

  She only smiles, but I feel somehow, that she would like to tell me.

  By then, I decide I don’t care.

  Clutching the handrail, I look down. The sheer, white hull stretches below to where a row of lifeboats hang over the water. Jumping is not an option.

  A whisper-thin thread still holds me out of the Pyramid, but I feel Ivy chipping at it, trying to distract me from it, to convince me it lives somewhere else, inside the silver waves. A part of me has already started looking at the patterns, finding them fascinating again.

  It’s too late. Revik is gone. Just like mom. Just like dad.

  Allie, a voice whispers. No.

  It sounds so much like him it stops my heart. But it also snaps me out of that place of no hope. I haven’t used up all my options. I still have one left.

  I force my way out of the Barrier…

  …and pivoted my body in a fast, hard arc.

  My hips snapped with my shoulder. Before I’d let out a breath, my fist hit Ivy in the sternum with a satisfying jar, exactly as Jon and then Eliah had taught me. I followed through on the punch, using my whole body.

  Ivy slammed into the guardrail, nearly fell––then recovered faster than I would have imagined possible.

  Grabbing the top rail with both hands, she aimed a kick at my head.

  I avoided it, barely, but it was misdirection; she caught me with a lower, sharper heel to the knee, knocking me into the opposite guardrail by a circular vent. Pain bloomed sharply up from my knee to my groin, making me gasp. I grabbed slats in the round opening of the vent, managed to regain my balance right before the Rook’s fist came down on the small of my back, half-crumpling me to the deck.

  The second shock of pain brought a sharp, white moment of clarity.

  I’d reconnected Revik to the Rooks.

  I’d just fed him to them.

  Pain rose in me, a darker grief that turned into rage.

  A scream ripped out of my throat.

  Ivy hissed at me like an animal as I turned, back-fisting her face. I broke something. Without stopping, I kicked down, aiming hard for her femur. A satisfying sound brought my other fist around, hitting the Sark in the temple, driving her to the deck.

  A sharp stab of pain lit up around my face and neck.

  She was going after my light. I threw myself at her as she tried to crawl away, putting all my momentum and weight into a kick to the face.

  The seer’s nose exploded in a spray of blood.

  I grabbed her hair as her light faltered, slamming the back of her skull into the guardrail. Her eyes rolled up and the pain around my face and head receded. Before she could recover, I grabbed hold of her long jacket.

  Regaining my balance against the railing, I hoisted her up to the top rail.

  For an instant I felt the Sark’s light, beyond that of the Rooks.

  Looking into the eyes of the girl who’d sent me a pulse of warmth that night in Seattle, I saw a flicker of fear, a deeper understanding.

  A half-beat of hesitation made me pause.

  Then Revik’s face swam before mine.

  My heart clenched into a hard fist in my chest.

  I threw Ivy over the railing, nearly going over with her. She snatched at and grabbed my arm, screaming a terrible sound, like a giant bird.

  Silver light exploded around my head, and I felt those other beings, beyond the Pyramid itself, something larger, more frightening, like massive clouds of metallic light. I felt them screaming at me, fighting with me, trying to save Ivy from me by threatening me and slamming pain through my light. Agony ripped apart my mind as they beat against my aleimi, fighting for her… or maybe through her.

  They told me I’d be dead. They told me they’d kill me.

  Panting, bleeding on her hands, I wedged my legs against the guardrail. I fought my way free of her attempts to save herself, disentangling her slippery fingers.

  A half-second later, the hands were gone.

  I watched her fall.

  Ivy receded into darkness as the ship slid forward on the water. I saw her body hit the edge of a lifeboat on its way down. No screams echoed up as she broke the surface foam. Darkness swallowed the splash and I fell to a crouch by the guardrail, gasping.

  The whisper and pound of the ship’s wake was deafening.

  They were coming for me.

  I feel it now. I feel all of them.

  They fight alone, held together by silver threads. They fight one another, even, but it doesn’t matter. It all serves their greater purpose.

  I grasp for him, blind.

  Darkness spreads over the ship, breathes into my skin. I look up as the Pyramid descends, blotting out the sky. Wire-like strands snake out from all sides. I call to him…

  …and find myself alone, in a green, glass-tile room.

  It is silent. My clothes are gone. A flat metal collar rings my neck. Against the back wall, three metal cages stand.

  The image shimmers, breaks apart.

  Red water runs on green glass, pools in dimples by the drains, dries in spots and smears on the ceiling. Hooks have instruments attached to them as wires spark close to the wet floor.

  I scream, and I can’t stop screaming.

  Barrier winds shriek and tear; I clamp my hands over my ears, but it’s not enough. It’s not outside of me at all, I realize, as the Pyramid fills the sky.

  7, 10, 9, 33, 1099, 20, 41, 9883, 231, 87, 284, 2, 23, 66, 66, 994, 1, 1, 1…

  I scream at the sky, feeling Revik and the man with no face.

  The faceless man smiles, and I…

  …opened my eyes.

  I found myself hunched in a ball on the wet top deck, freezing in a raw, cutting wind, gripping the handrail, wearing a spray-wet hoodie and jeans and combat boots. I could now feel them all around me now. I could feel them closing in on both of us.

  Even as I think it, fear exploded in my chest.

  It wasn’t for myself.

  The realization got me to my feet, got me stumbling, then running for the stairwell.

  REVIK RIPPED A light fixture off the wall with his fingers. He laid his palm on the bare bulb, biting back a scream as hot glass seared his flesh. Mashing the hand against his side, he cooled it reflexively in his own blood.

  The trick worked, briefly. His mind cleared.

 
Sliding up the wall on his good side, he regained his feet.

  They’d trapped him in a floor of staterooms. He could no longer remember which floor. He’d counted twelve more infiltrators in the Barrier, plus the four he’d seen, but they could be obscuring their numbers in either direction to confuse him, and to make him hesitate.

  He hadn’t seen any humans since that first volley of shots. He may have inadvertently cleared this section of the ship for them by pulling the fire alarm.

  Something had happened.

  Whatever it was, it blew out the overhead lights.

  It almost felt like he’d done it––but he couldn’t remember how or even why. The dart made it difficult to think in straight lines, to put the pieces together.

  He’d felt Allie. For a moment, the briefest instant, she’d freed him.

  She carried him high on wings of light. He’d been alone with her, out of this nightmare.

  She’d forgiven him.

  Then she was gone, and all of his attempts to find her since only made him sick. He couldn’t feel Chandre, Eliah, or even Vash, who always seemed to have a thread to him, no matter where he was.

  He walked faster, holding the wall.

  Images flashed, turned the blackened tunnel to a stone cave with rough walls. Silver lights dripped from moss-covered boulders. His neck was swollen, heavy with chains. He could smell death. All around him, death. He rotted there, alone.

  It was like being buried alive.

  Depression tried to steal over him, to blank out his mind. He couldn’t breathe. The space closed, thick and heavy. A man’s voice whispers in his mind.

  Uncle.

  Wasted hands, holding a red-tipped dart.

  This is your enemy, Nenzi. Not the guns, this.

  Merenje stands over him, mashing the gun to his temple, an old revolver from the early colonials. The human clicks through chambers, telling him to disarm, yelling at him to disarm.

  You little fuck. You think he’ll let you live if you don’t? What about your girlfriend? How many of us do you think it would take to break her?

  A sob came to Revik’s throat, a sick, dying feeling.

  He is there again, trapped. Faces swim past, fear washing through his skin like a tangible force. He remembers getting so hungry he ate dirt, hands locked to his feet so he stank of his own urine, woke to insects and animals crawling on him, screaming at first, eventually so hungry he tried to trap them.

  This is what humans do. What I teach you can save you.

  The gun clicks by his ear, louder with each turn.

  Disarm, you fuck! Disarm or I’ll blow your head off…!

  A bright light flared behind him. He remembered Allie and a part of him fought back. The Rooks were fucking with him, trying to break his mind.

  He’d fix it. Allie would help him. Allie would find a way.

  Irrational, the thought repeated.

  He felt an opening in the corridor ahead, and a faint hope reached him.

  They weren’t desperate enough to gun him down in a crowd of human tourists. No matter how many they pushed, they couldn’t be that desperate to bring him down. Besides, if they wanted him dead, they could have done it by now.

  They were trying to bring him in.

  He would have put the gun in his mouth already if it wasn’t for his wife.

  The thought echoes, paralyzing him.

  He feels another sting, this one on his chest. He yanks at the source and stares at the dart, half-blind with pain as he understands.

  He’d been wrong. They did want him dead. They were going to kill him quietly, where the tourists wouldn’t see him collapse. Then they could explain it any way they liked. Blood-drenched seer with a gun, terrorism threat averted, SCARB coming to the rescue…

  The helicopter that takes off in the night, holding Allie. Taking her.

  They didn’t want him.

  They’d find her another mate.

  The world tilts into darkness as he fights to focus his eyes, and once more he finds himself in the cave, alone. Silver clouds mass overhead, metallic wardens to his prison in the dark. They watch, biding their time.

  They left him there. They left him to die.

  Sound jerks him out. It slams him briefly back into his own body, into another darkened corridor that moves lightly beneath his feet. He feels them behind him, stalking him.

  But it is the rumbling sound that gets his feet moving.

  When a flash lights up the pastel walls, Revik breaks into a run.

  31

  COMPROMISED

  I AIMED FOR the seer segment of the ship.

  I couldn’t reach Chandre, Revik or Eliah through the private channels they drilled me on.

  I considered a public kiosk, but a fire alarm had gone off on deck five and I heard disjointed thoughts about gunshots in the crew. Given that no announcements had gone out, damage control on one or both sides must already be in play. Anyway, since no one in the Seven would likely be hanging out in their cabin, watching pay-per-view, a public kiosk would be useless.

  I considered heading for the fire alarm.

  Even if Revik was there, though, I wasn’t sure what I could do. I was alone and unarmed. I couldn’t control the telekinesis, not even well enough to scare them.

  My other option was to find someone in the Seven on foot. That, or go to the humans for help. Since the latter would probably get me tranked and stowed in the brig, I chose the former. The Rooks were likely controlling the human crew by now, anyway.

  I rounded a corner on a family of humans, half-jogging down the corridor.

  They looked almost unreal to me in their tennis shoes and baseball hats, holding shopping bags and soft drinks. Glitter speckled the hair of one of the little boys. His father brushed it off absently, still talking to the woman, who laughed at something he said.

  Then I saw them.

  Five men whose faces fit together like differently shaped puzzle pieces were coming up fast behind the family of humans. The men all looked young, late twenties to early thirties, yet their expressions were older, their eyes sharper.

  One saw me. Within a heartbeat, all five were staring.

  Turning so fast I wrenched my back, I bolted down the hall, back the way I’d come.

  I hit a fork and turned. I turned again. And again.

  I began trying doors. They all needed card keys. I pounded on one. When I turned, I found myself face to face with two humans.

  The man blinked at me with watery blue eyes, clutching a woman’s hand tight enough that her skin dimpled around his tan fingers. In his other hand, he held a card key.

  “What are you doing?” he sputtered. “That’s our room!”

  His wife gaped at me, looking me over as if expecting me to launch into a speech from one of the reality show feeds about cheating husbands.

  My mind flickered, phased. I felt a whisper of the seers hunting me. I couldn’t tell where they were exactly, but I felt them looking for me. They were close.

  I raised my hand to a gun-like position.

  The woman’s eyes bugged out further. The man grew very still and pale, his eyes on what he saw as a black muzzle.

  I showed him an image of Ivy’s Baby Eagle.

  “Open the door,” I said, motioning towards the door.

  Both pairs of eyes went blank.

  “I’m not here,” I said. “Open the door.”

  The man’s face calmed. He smiled at his wife, waggling his eyebrows at her suggestively. She laughed, squeezing his hand. They kissed, then he slid the key card into the lock to the right of the door handle.

  It opened with a click.

  I followed them inside, walking to the middle of the cabin while they shut the stateroom door. I pushed the man to flip the dead bolt lock. Stepping around the woman as the man trundled over to turn on the wall monitor, I walked to the balcony, drawing back the curtains with a sharp yank as the woman disappeared into the bathroom. I glanced back as the man straightened his crotch,
adjusting his seat in the round-backed chair.

  Another ripple of warning touched my light.

  They were coming.

  Pushing my way through the opening in the glass door, I ran to the balcony railing, peering around the etched-glass partitions on either side. A line of lit windows greeted me on one side as I looked out past the wind barriers that sandwiched the balcony where I stood.

  No balcony.

  I turned my head. On the other side, a twenty foot span separated me from the next set of balconies.

  Damn. I’d assumed it would be like our section of staterooms on the eighth deck, where all the balconies were attached.

  I felt my breath start to come in short pants. They must know where I was, after my stunt with those humans in the corridor. Now it turned out I’d picked the wrong couple to hijack.

  Gripping the railing, I swung myself up on top of it. Even in the dark, I could make out white balconies stretched below me in a long row, separated by those glass dividing walls. The balcony directly below me was ten or twelve feet down. If I hung from this one, the railing itself would only be about six or seven more feet to my toes—but there was no way to jump and not kill myself when I tried to land.

  I would have to swing inward enough to land on the balcony itself.

  Something pushed at my light, bringing a fresh shot of adrenaline.

  Realizing the heavy sweatshirt restricted my movement, I ripped it off my arms and threw it over the rail. It flew sideways with the motion of the ship and got stuck on one of the lifeboats. It remained there, flapping in the wind.

  Fuck.

  Nothing I could do about it now. Before I let myself think, I climbed down to the lower balcony rail and dropped my weight so I was hanging from my hands.

  Almost immediately, this felt like a mistake.

  My hand slipped, barely holding on. The other throbbed, bruised and bloodied from the fight with Ivy. I stared down between my combat boots at the railing below. If I let go right now, I’d probably hit my head and end up in the water. I would have to get some momentum first, before I jumped––and try to remember to tuck my head.

  This was starting to feel like a really stupid plan.

  I’d just negated all my other options, though.