Shadow (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #4): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  “You know, I probably don’t have to be the one to do this anymore, Revik,” I said. “Not now that we’re this far in. If you want Vash to do it… or Tarsi… I think the connection is strong enough now. It doesn’t have to be me.”

  There was another silence.

  In it, he only stared at me.

  I saw his expression change as my words sank in, as surprise filtered deeper into his light. Then he was looking at me again, his focus flicking forward as he studied my face.

  “No,” he said, startling me. “No, I want it to be you, Allie.”

  “Why?”

  “Does it matter why?”

  “Yes.”

  Settling his face back on the organic floor, he closed his eyes.

  “I just want it to be you.”

  I struggled through my own confusion at his answer, not letting myself read anything into his words as I studied his face. I almost thought he might be going to sleep, when he spoke up again, his eyes still closed.

  “Don’t worry, love,” he said, softer. “It’s not a present.” Clearing his throat, he resettled his shoulder on the ground. “If you don’t hate me now… you will by the time we finish this.”

  I bit my lip, looking at him, but he didn’t open his eyes.

  “You’re so sure about that?” I said, fighting my voice.

  “I’m sure.”

  I nodded, feeling my anger turn into something heavier, a feeling that slid briefly into real depression.

  “Then you’re stupid, too, Revik,” I said.

  Before he could answer, I rolled to my back, exhaling shortly as I resettled on the thin blanket. Tugging it around me, I closed my eyes.

  He didn’t look up, or speak to me before either of us slipped off to another uneasy bout of sleeping and dreaming. Before I drifted away, though, I felt another coil of confusion leave his light, whispering through mine right before he pulled it back again.

  25

  EMISSARY

  CASS STOOD UNDER a leafless cherry tree that grew partway inside a red-painted pagoda. She and Baguen had been left there to wait, over an hour earlier.

  The tree’s dark branches extended jointed arms towards a gray and low-hanging sky. The contrast somehow managed to make the sky look even bleaker than it did already.

  Winter had completely transformed the City Cass remembered.

  She may not have recognized where she was at all, if it weren’t for the high walls and the few buildings that stood out against the leafless trees. The trees themselves, which had all been in bloom when she last stood in this place, now had sticks for arms and twigs for fingers. They stood in muddy slots surrounded by yellowed grass, cropped low to the ground and covered in dark moss and, in some cases, a thin layer of ice.

  Most of the warmer-weather bushes had been covered, or moved into one of the long greenhouses that took up most of the space directly below the walls between the Tian’anmen and Meridian Gates. Movement around their lit doors and walls told Cass that work continued inside the greenhouses themselves, even at this time of night.

  The ponds and wells were covered.

  Bird cages had been moved indoors, and many of the trees were wrapped at their bases, to keep them warm and cushioned from the worst of the snow and ice. Livestock had all been moved to indoor stables as well; Cass saw only a few horses huddled together under trees in one of the paddocks, their outlines dark against the glowing lights from squat hot houses.

  It felt like the City had gone into hibernation.

  Exhaling a cloud of steam, she shivered in the November chill, wishing she’d forgone the elaborate silk outfit for a decent fur coat and one of those Russian-style hats.

  Cass blew on her hands, then blew her choppy bangs out of her eyes. Her hair, though still red at the ends, had begun to fade over the past few months, and her naturally straight, black hair had grown out so much that the colored tips only took up a small fraction of it.

  She knew to the Chinese seers, it wouldn’t make any difference how she looked. Unlike a lot of seers, the Chinese ones didn’t disparage her because she was human, but because she was from one of the “lesser races” of Asians, and muddied further by European and African blood.

  She hadn’t figured that out on her own.

  Baguen told her, in his choppy and heavily accented Prexci-English.

  One of the servants who’d led them to the pagoda told her it was supposed to snow in two days. Glancing around the empty courtyard, Cass wondered if it would snow before the leader of the Lao Hu agreed to grant them an audience.

  In any case, she knew it was likely a lot warmer inside, where their host presumably waited, likely smirking at them from behind the walls of the Inner City while she drank hot, imported rice wine. Meanwhile, Cass and Baguen remained locked outside the Meridian Gate, freezing their respective asses off in this stupid ceremonial pagoda.

  Of course, Voi Pai hadn’t refused them outright.

  In fact, every message they received was polite to the point of sheer mockery.

  As emissaries of the Bridge, they’d been given a tour of the entire outer premises. They'd been taken to several different gardens, greenhouses and tea houses. They were given presents of hothouse flowers and embroidered sashes. They were recited poetry, sung songs and given a demonstration in ancient sword fighting by seers in traditional costumes.

  At one point, there’d been puppets.

  Voi Pai stretched out the ceremonial honorifics to the point of teeth-grinding madness––ironically, Cass suspected, to make them feel as disrespected as possible.

  After hours of bowing and poem-reciting and pointless gift-giving, Cass was seriously losing her calm. A part of her wondered if she should just take the letter from Allie and shove it into one of the guard’s hands before flipping them off collectively and making her own way back to Tian’ammen Square.

  Instead she sat in the cold, looking at Baguen, the Bridge’s letter to the leader of the Lao Hu rolled up inside her brocaded jacket.

  Why Allie sent her, of all people, on this little job, was beyond her.

  She supposed it didn’t matter. She didn’t have to be seer––or Chinese––to know when she was getting the raspberry.

  Baguen seemed to agree. He looked at her with his dark eyes, shrugging with one hand. It was almost a human shrug, and she couldn’t help smiling when he did it, tugging on his sleeve.

  “This sucks,” she said, clutching his muscular hand.

  “Not going to see us,” he said in his accented Prexci.

  “You think she’ll blow us off altogether?” Cass frowned. She gestured at him, using seer sign language. I thought she would see us because of Balidor, at least.

  He shrugged, noncommittal, but she saw his subtle eye roll.

  She knew it wasn’t aimed at her.

  He didn’t like Voi Pai. In addition to historical issues between the Lao Hu and Wvercians, he thought her actions repeatedly disrespectful to the intermediaries––Revik and Allie both. He felt the same way about Balidor, more or less.

  Cass didn’t exactly disagree.

  What should we do? she signed at him.

  Send her a warning, he signed back.

  She smiled, laughing a little. With what to back it up?

  He gave her a puzzled frown, even as he signed a response. With the Bridge to back it up. With the Sword… Syrimne d’Gaos.

  Thinking about this, Cass nodded.

  Caressing his broad cheek with a hand, she kissed his full mouth when his eyes closed. Sighing then, she motioned at the guard who stood at the bottom of the steps, his back to them.

  “Can you talk to him?” she said in English, knowing it was less likely to be overheard. “Just to start out, I mean. Get him to come over here. You’re a bit more… impressive than me, Bags. I can do the actual threatening, if you want.”

  He gave her a sideways smile. “No,” he said. “I threaten.”

  Grinning, she watched him straighten to his full height. H
e pulled the long, Chinese-style shirt back on his shoulders so it lined up with his broad frame, then cracked the knuckles in his massive hands. Winking at her, he glided easily to the edge of the pagoda.

  Cass watched him go, shaking her head with a chuckle.

  He took the stairs with a grace that always surprised her a little, landing with a crunch in the cut, frozen grass. Walking closer to the seer in ceremonial garb, Baguen stepped in front of him, fixing the significantly smaller male with a hard stare once he stood right in his face. Glaring down at him with his black eyes, he slid a few inches closer, emphasizing the gap in height between the two of them, which was maybe as much as two feet.

  Cass grinned wider when the sentry paled.

  She kind of had to love Baguen’s sense of humor.

  Staring up at the broad, wind-burned face, the yellowish braids that cascaded down the Wvercian’s back, woven through with leather thongs and even some feathers, the Lao Hu sentry bowed, using the sign of the Bridge to indicate respect.

  Cass laughed a little again.

  She teased Baguen that he was her Viking, but she was never quire sure if he got the reference. Anyway, he looked too Chinese for the comparison to be wholly apt.

  Watching him now, she couldn’t suppress a rush of feeling for the big lug.

  She knew Allie thought it was weird, the thing with her and Baguen. Jon didn’t say much, but she got the impression he thought it was mostly about sex.

  And, okay, maybe that had been a lot of it, especially at first.

  Remembering what Chandre said about the whole thing during their last, for-real conversation, Cass winced. The East Indian seer hadn’t pulled any punches, telling Cass she was a shallow, lying, narcissistic child, who cared only for herself and was too emotionally damaged to be a faithful partner to anyone. She didn’t stop there. She went after Cass for playing with her feelings because she was female, told her she had a “dick complex” from her father that made her overly deferential to males… and on and on.

  The whole thing was harsh. It was especially harsh since she could tell Chandre meant every word. Then again, Chan had never been one for mincing words.

  Balidor warned her, not long after she and Baguen first met.

  He told her Chandre didn’t get involved very often, especially for a seer of her age, and wouldn’t take infidelity well, that Cass should settle things with her before acting on anything with Baguen. He also said, at a later point, that she should assume that unless it was explicitly stated that the arrangement was sexual only, that any seer might expect at least a head’s up before she took other sexual partners.

  She should have listened to him.

  Not like it would have done much good. By the time Cass ran into Chandre at that Rebel base in the mountains, Chandre was already furious with her.

  There’d been some weird tension with her and Balidor, anyway, enough that Chandre had already bitched at her about that, too. Cass herself noticed it enough that she hadn’t fully trusted Balidor’s “warning” about Baguen. She could tell the Adhipan leader didn’t approve of her and Baguen for his own reasons.

  That tension between Balidor and Baguen only got worse after Revik turned. On more than one occasion, Balidor accused Baguen outright of being a spy. He accused Cass of being some kind of Rebel/Revik sympathizer, too.

  And yeah, he managed to hurt her feelings with that b.s.

  She’d thought she and Balidor were friends––or becoming friends at least. Then Revik turned back into Syrimne, and Balidor kind of went nuts. Part of that seemed to be him turning on Cass, maybe because she and Revik were close.

  Him sleeping with Allie didn’t help.

  Thinking about that, she fought a harder flush of anger. What kind of dick did that? He gives her some big lecture on “fidelity” and the sensitivity of seers, then goes and sleeps with a married woman? Revik had been his friend.

  Fucking hypocrite.

  Chandre and Balidor could both stuff it, as far as Cass was concerned.

  Balidor, especially, could take his judgment around Bags and shove it right up his ass. It hadn’t escaped Cass’s notice that Balidor hadn’t turned on Jon––only her. So it wasn’t all about who’d been friends with Revik and who wasn’t. Balidor had some kind of stick up his ass about her, specifically, maybe because he saw her as a cheater and a liar, just like Chan.

  Clenching her jaw harder, she shoved the Adhipan leader from her mind.

  Folding her arms, she tried to refocus on Baguen and the Lao Hu guard instead. Baguen was speaking still, his voice so low and deep, she couldn’t make out his words.

  She did catch a few from the sentry.

  “…most honorable…” (she missed some of what came after this) “…of course. Of course, yes, she will. I will of course relay the message that…” (again, Cass lost some of it) “…will be most dismayed that the reception was not to your…”

  Cass folded her arms tighter, smiling involuntarily.

  “…right away… yes, honorable brother… yes…”

  Cass watched the sentry bow, right before he motioned to another of the Royal Guard. After a short exchange in sign language, which Cass noted was a bit different from what she’d learned from Baguen and Chandre, the second guard ran off, aiming his feet for the Meridian Gate.

  Cass wondered again why they bothered doing everything by foot, when they could just use the construct.

  “For show,” Baguen said, walking back to her after vaulting up the stairs. “More time.”

  Cass nodded, shivering against the cold. “So I guess you did the threatening?”

  He smiled, shrugging with one hand as he reached her. “I like to threaten.”

  She snorted a laugh. “Are they going to let us in?”

  “This time, I think… yes,” he said. “I tell them we leave otherwise. Come back with the Bridge. And the Sword. Come back with more of us.”

  She smiled, clutching his fingers briefly. “Thanks, Bags.”

  “You talk to Lao Hu? The female?”

  “Yeah,” Cass sighed, clicking a little to herself. “Don’t worry, Bags. I’ll talk to the scary old bitch. You won’t have to.”

  He chuckled and she smiled back at him. Refolding her arms in an effort to keep warm, she gritted her teeth against another gust of freezing wind.

  Smiling, he wrapped his thick arms around her, pulling her up against his warm bulk. As she snuggled up against him, her eyes never left the trail of footprints in the half-frozen ground left by the runner who’d disappeared through the Meridian Gate.

  Still, she’d nearly dozed off by the time he came crunching back over the lawn.

  He yelled out something in Mandarin to the other sentry, who immediately motioned politely for Cass and Baguen.

  “Come,” he said. “You will come now.”

  He smiled, showing all of his teeth, but Cass didn’t smile back.

  Giving Baguen a look and an exaggerated eye roll, she climbed out from between his arms and made her way down the wooden stairs.

  Baguen followed. A low grunt left his lips as he did, letting her know in the simplest way imaginable that he felt exactly the same way.

  26

  AUDIENCE

  “I APOLOGIZE IF you feel your greeting was overly… traditional,” the seer purred, lying sideways on a low couch embroidered with red and gold silk.

  Her mouth was a perfect red, with precise lines delineating her lips from her pale white skin. Cass couldn’t see a single flaw in the Lao Hu leader’s make-up, or her porcelain-like face.

  “I am not accustomed to unannounced visitors,” she added, ashing a dark-skinned hiri in a long, ivory holder. “Even those as auspicious as emissaries of our Esteemed Bridge.”

  Cass forced herself to smile back.

  She suspected she looked more like she was baring her teeth.

  Voi Pai, leader of the Lao Hu, looked pretty much exactly as Cass remembered her. She still wore her raven black hair in a high bun wit
h hand-painted wooden clips. Artistic and symmetric chunks of that hair hung down in perfect arcs, accenting her high cheekbones and white skin. Her traditional hanfu dress was elegant and deceptively simple, dyed a bright yellow to match her eyes, the black sash of the Lao Hu knotted precisely around her thin waist.

  It was her eyes, however, that always forced Cass to stare.

  Those eyes made it utterly impossible to forget she wasn’t human, unlike many of the seers. Vertical, cat-like pupils gave them a distinctly predatory glint, narrowing and widening seemingly at the will of their owner, not due to any changes in the light.

  She looked like an animal with those eyes.

  At the very least, she looked like some kind of freaky hybrid.

  Further, those eyes didn’t reflect emotion the way most human and seer eyes did. They mirrored a flat emptiness instead, a mask-like impenetrability that went beyond that of a normal infiltrator, even a highly ranked one.

  She truly looked alien, like a whole different species.

  “Yeah,” Cass said after a pause. “I’m sure that’s true. Except we weren’t unannounced. Allie told you we were coming. Days ago. So did Balidor.”

  “I am sure I received no such message,” the seer said innocently, raising an eyebrow and looking to her left, where a male and a female seer stood by the sliding wooden door to outside. “Yunes? Maiwan? Did you see any such message?”

  “No, Lady.”

  “You are quite sure?”

  “Quite sure, Lady.”

  The two seers standing there also wore the badge of the Lao Hu, but Cass couldn’t help but roll her eyes at their response.

  “You see.” Voi Pai turned, smiling sweetly at Cass. “Your Esteemed Master’s message seems to have been missed. Can I please offer you some more tea?”

  Cass glanced at Baguen, arching an eyebrow.

  Master? That had to be a dig.

  Baguen frowned, his large hands hanging at his sides. His eyes flickered towards Voi Pai, then towards the two seers by the door. She could tell from his posture he wanted to fight. Sighing, Cass turned back to Voi Pai.