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

by JC Andrijeski

  “They are my people now,” she says, indignant.

  “Which is why you would be a traitor for helping me!” he returns angrily.

  “Ewald…” Seeing his face, she smiles, amending, “…Nenzi. Come here. Please. I have not seen my friend in so long. Please, just let me talk to you. Please.”

  Seeing the clear look in her eyes, the genuine affection in her light, he cannot refuse her. Sighing in frustration, as much at himself as at her, he walks over to her, and sits beside her.

  “They cannot know how I know you. They do not know me, Kuchta.”

  “The French soldiers? How would they?”

  “No,” he says, shaking his head. “Not them. The ones with me. They know me differently, as someone else. Someone you would not like.”

  She frowns, studying his eyes. “The foreigner down there. The big one, with the paint on his arms. He is like you, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he thinks you are someone else?”

  He sighs, still drinking in her face in a kind of wonder. “Yes.”

  “And why is that?” she says. Seeing him frown, she laughs, but there is a bitter edge to it. “I know… you cannot tell me. You have not changed at all, Ewald.” She clutches his hand impulsively, kissing his fingers. “And you are still with him, too? Your uncle?”

  He feels his jaw harden, right before he looks away. “Yes. You know I am.”

  She hesitates a moment, then her voice grows more pointed.

  “And you know of this being they talk about?” she says. “The one they call Syrimne? Syrimne d’Gaos? Is he with your uncle, too?”

  He turns, staring at her. Feeling his heart pound in his chest, he can only look at her for a moment, doubting his ears.

  “Kuchta,” he says then. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  She snorts. “Sure you don’t.” Shaking her head, she shoves at his shoulder again with her hand. “Do you know, Ewald, that you were always the most terrible liar? I’ve meant to tell you that for years, but I never had the heart to do it. You are positively the worst liar I know.”

  “Kuchta…” he begins.

  “Don’t. I know. You can’t talk about it.” She looks at him again, and he is shocked to see more of her tears. “Is he treating you better, at least?”

  He stares at her eyes, at a loss. “He treats me fine.”

  “Sure he does,” she says, wiping her face. She gives a short laugh, but there is no humor in it. “By fine, I assume you mean he no longer beats you until you can’t walk.”

  He reaches for her arms, tugging on them. “Stop, Kuchta. Stop. That is all over now. I’m not a child anymore.”

  “No, but you are still his. I can see it on you. I can see it in your face.”

  He frowns at this, but doesn’t argue with her. He is trying to decide if he should push her, if he should just blank out her mind and free the others from the cellar, when she speaks up again, wiping her eyes with her fingers.

  “Did you get married, Ewald? Like you said you would?”

  He swallows, looking at her. Then he shakes his head.

  “No,” he says.

  “Why not?”

  “She is not here,” he says. “My wife. She has not come yet.”

  She laughs again at this, looking up at him. “What kind of wife is this?” she says. “An arranged marriage?”

  He smiles at her attempt at humor, still worried at the grief he feels in her light, that seems to emanate from all over her.

  “Something like that,” he says, shrugging.

  “Something like that?” She tugs on his hair. “You need a haircut.”

  He watches her distract herself with his hair, but he can feel the grief on her still.

  “And you?” he says finally, smiling when she turns. “You are happy here? With your farmer?”

  She smiles, and he is relieved that it is a real smile, one with warmth.

  “You are happy,” he says.

  She nods. “Yes. He is a good man.”

  “So no Paris, then?”

  She laughs, wiping her eyes. “No. I never made it to Paris, not back then. I stopped here, first, and never really left.”

  “You made it later?”

  “For my honeymoon,” she smiled, pushing at his shoulder. “If you really must know.”

  “Did you see the dancing girls?” he asks, smiling back. “And the Eiffel Tower?”

  “And the cafés and the river and Notre Dame and the Louvre… yes, I saw it all.”

  “And you came back here,” he says, looking around the room.

  “Yes,” she sighs, following his eyes around the same space. “I came back here.”

  “It is very nice,” he says, giving a nod of approval. “Very nice. Do you have children?”

  “Yes,” she smiles again, wider that time. “Two. They are with their grandparents. The front was getting too close to us here. We will join them probably in a few days. My husband wanted to get most of the harvest in first, if he could.”

  “I understand,” he says, gives another nod of approval. Her husband is not a coward, either. And he is providing for them, even in wartime.

  Watching him look at her, she hesitates again, then tugs at his hair.

  “And you, Ewald? Are you still as lonely as I remember?”

  “Lonely?” He frowns at her, genuinely surprised. Then he thinks about her words, and a kind of heaviness settles on him. “I am fine, Kuchta. Busy.”

  “Yeah.” She snorts. “I’ll bet.”

  For a moment she only watches his face, as if assessing him all over again. Again, he wonders if she sees through his skin somehow to his mind, if she sees more of him on the other side than he ever seems to credit her.

  Even as he thinks it, she moves back on the bed, indicating for him to follow her.

  At first he is alarmed, thinking she wants something of him, that the look in her eyes means something else. Then he reads her, and realizes he understands.

  “No, Kuchta,” he says anyway.

  “Come on,” she coaxes. “Let me be an old married woman. I can do this, now, and it doesn’t mean the same. It doesn’t mean you have to bewitch me.”

  “And if your husband comes in?” he retorts. “Will he see it the same?”

  “He will not come in,” she says, rolling her eyes. “And anyway, he trusts me, Ewald. He knows all about who you are. He already wondered, and asked me if you were one of the men under the house. He offered to take the wagons, to give us time to talk.”

  He frowns at her, clicking softly. “He is a good husband. But you should not have told him, Kuchta. They have our kind, too. The French. Not many, but some.”

  She only rolls her eyes again, holding out an arm to him.

  “Come here,” she says. “Or I will make a fuss, Ewald. I will yell and yell until my husband hears, or the soldiers come running… or your friends burst out of the cellar.”

  “You are a brat still, too,” he grumbles.

  “I still get my way, if that’s what you mean.” Her voice and hand gestures grow impatient. “What? Are you afraid of girls altogether now?”

  He hesitates, still wanting to refuse her, but wanting more not to.

  After a bare pause, he does what he always did with her, and doesn’t let himself think. Without meeting her gaze directly, he rolls to his side, and lays next to her on the narrow bed. Her arm circles him in a tight hug, holding him against her body. He lets himself relax into her arms as she starts stroking his hair.

  After another moment, he feels his light open, and it is a relief.

  It hasn’t been open in a long time, longer than he lets himself think about.

  Hers is open, too, as open as he remembers it, maybe more so from having a family and children now. He lets her hold him in her light and he pulls impressions off her, feeling her husband, her two girls. He sees smiles and honey-colored eyes and bow-shaped lips stained with berries.

  It is a good feelin
g, this family.

  He finds himself relaxing more, even as he leans into her.

  “You don’t know how badly I wanted to do this for you,” she says, as he closes his eyes against her arm. “The whole time I knew you, I’ve never met anyone who needed affection more than you, Ewald. It was hard not to touch you sometimes.”

  “So why didn’t you?” he says.

  “Because I couldn’t then, Ewald,” she says. “You know that.”

  He feels her words catch in her throat, so he does not answer.

  Letting his weight fall even more deeply into hers, he closes his eyes. Her fingers in his hair are lulling, even without the arm she has around his chest, caressing his shoulder. He lays there, and realizes it is all right. There is nothing wrong with what he is doing.

  Something about that simple thought is a tremendous relief.

  “You used sex for this, didn’t you?” she says then. “To be touched?”

  He nods against her arm, feeling the truth of her words. Feeling another layer in his chest relax, he nods again, squeezing her arm.

  “You knew that,” he says.

  “Yes, I knew. I wonder if some of them did, too.”

  Remembering Gisele, the last time he saw her face, he closes his eyes. Forcing the image out of his mind, he clears his throat, shaking his head.

  “I don’t know,” he lies. “I did not know any of them.”

  “Do you now? Know any of them?”

  He feels his throat tighten, and tries to smile.

  “Why do you always want to talk about my sex life, Kuchta?” he says, glancing up at her. “Does your husband know what a pervert you are?”

  She pulls at his hair again, laughing. “He knows.”

  “That is good,” he says, leaning back into the curve of her body. He feels a reaction in his light, but ignores it, forcing himself to relax. “You married the right man, then.”

  “I married the right man.”

  He smiles, unable to help it.

  It is the last thing he remembers, before he falls asleep.

  30

  DARK SCREAMS

  DARKNESS FINDS HIM, a blank terror that holds him against a wall, half broken with chains. He feels pain in his body, pain in his back, in his legs.

  He fights to get free––

  ––and chokes, forced awake by a pitcher of water to the face.

  His head hurts, swollen out of proportion on his neck. For a long moment, he can’t move, not even to open his eyes. But he does get them open, eventually.

  The face of Wreg hangs over him.

  The older seer is frowning, staring down at him as if trying to decide if he should kick him, or throw more water over his head.

  “What happened?” Nenzi manages in Prexci. “Where am I?”

  “We are in the woods. Two miles from your precious farm wife.”

  “Where is she?”

  He looks around, already half in a panic, despite his groggy head, feeling a dread in his body that is physical, that makes it hard to breathe. He grabs the other seer by the front of his shirt.

  “Where is she, Wreg?”

  “The wench?” Wreg looks surprised, taking in the expression on the younger face. “I left the boys to take care of her. Stami seemed to have a particular wanting. He clocked you pretty good when he saw you in her bed… I thought he’d killed you, honestly. I figured it was payback for what you did to him in that cellar.”

  Nenzi stumbles to his feet, lurching in the direction Wreg indicated with his light. Wreg gets in his way, blocking him easily, but Nenzi fights the other seer, tries to force his way past his broad body. He still can’t move right, and the other forces him to stop, gripping him tightly with strong hands.

  “Where are you going?” he says in bewilderment. “The girl is dead, Nenz… Stami and the others had their way with her, then they cut her throat.”

  For a moment, the words hang in the air, broken, like so many pieces of light.

  Then he sees her face, watches her look at him, and something in him breaks open.

  He fights out a sob, choking on it.

  The other seer stares up at him, as if he can’t believe his eyes.

  “Nenz…”

  He screams into the night, unable to hold it back. He screams again, even as the larger seer wrestles him to the ground, clamping a hand over his mouth.

  “Nenzi… gods… what is the matter with you? There are still French fucks out there!”

  But he can’t stop screaming. He can’t.

  “Nenz… Nenz… what is the matter with you? Brother… calm yourself!”

  The Chinese seer sounds almost afraid, his voice trembling even as he tries to comfort the other with his light, to calm him down. But the younger seer is inconsolable. He screams again, behind the other man’s hands, unable to stop the feeling sliding through his light, the dread and black emptiness that breaks something, somewhere inside his mind.

  He is still screaming when the other uncaps a syringe of something, sliding it into his neck with a practiced jerk of his wrist. Wreg is trembling as he does it, shaking with adrenaline from holding the other down, from keeping his hand over his mouth. He pushes the stopper all the way down, and pins him to the forest floor while he waits for it to work.

  Nenzi is still sobbing when the drug takes effect.

  He can only hold the shirt of the other, crying as he lies under him on the grass, unable to stop. He wants more than anything to be dead.

  He fights to get the words out, to ask the other seer to do it, to just shoot him, but he can’t speak, can’t get anything past his throat.

  Wreg continues to stare at him, the shock deepening in his near-black eyes, reflected in the features of his high-cheekboned face. He stares at the other seer like he doesn’t know him, like he can’t believe he’s the same person.

  It is the last thing he sees before he sees nothing at all.

  31

  OPENING

  I WOKE UP and didn’t know where I was.

  I lay on a bed I didn’t recognize, in a room I didn’t know.

  As soon as I moved, I felt presences around me, faces I only just recognized in the fog behind my eyes. One of them remained over me, seemingly for a long time, until I couldn’t help but focus on it, try to make sense of it.

  I finally realized I knew who it was.

  Jon sat by me on the bed. He wiped my forehead with a damp cloth while I blinked harder, fighting to pull my mind out of what felt like cement.

  Gradually, it got better.

  My thoughts still felt mired, stuck in quicksand, but I could almost––

  Memory hit me, cutting my breath.

  I found myself gasping, in a state of full-blown panic. I sat up, hard enough and fast enough that I nearly blacked out. I still managed to grab the front of Jon’s shirt. My balance wasn’t right, but I didn’t let go. I pulled on him with my fingers, nearly falling into his chest when he let me tug him closer to where I sat.

  “Where is he?” I said.

  “What?” Jon stared at me, his eyes showing his concern, and a kind of frustrated bewilderment. “Allie,” he said, looking from one of my eyes to the other. “Jesus, Al. Are you all right? You look like hell––”

  “Where is he, Jon?”

  His frown deepened. “We had to take you out. We had to, Al. You were practically in a coma. You hadn’t eaten in days, either of you. It took us hours to even decide what to––”

  “Is he still in there? In the tank?”

  “Well, yeah. Of course. What else would we do with him?” Seeing something in my face, he took my free hand, clasping it in his. “Allie, the doctors have been in there for hours. They’re taking good care of him. They’ve been feeding him, trying to clean him up. No one is hurting him, okay? Revik’s fine.”

  I bit my lip, hard enough to taste blood. My fingers tightened to fists in Jon’s shirt.

  “You left him in there? Alone?”

  “He’s not alone, A
l. People are checking on him.”

  I gripped Jon harder, fighting not to cry. “Gods, Jon. Take me back to him. Please.”

  “Allie.” His voice grew openly alarmed. “Jesus, Al… calm down. He’s all right!”

  “Please, Jon… please bring me back to him. Please!” I couldn’t seem to stop, or stop the tears that were running down my face. “Please, Jon…” I whispered. “Please… please…”

  He just looked at me, holding my hand against his chest. Then I felt him exhale a long breath, and it felt like worry. Something softened in his light at the same moment. He touched my face, pulling me into the curve of his body in a hug.

  For a long moment I just clung to him, letting him hold me as I fought to breathe out the rest of it, to feel anything but that desolate hole under my feet. I couldn’t quite get there. I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him alone with that feeling. I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him alone at all. As I clung to Jon, another thought whispered through me, one I couldn’t make sense of, not at first.

  It was over. If not the end, then maybe the beginning of it.

  But I was terrified it would kill him.

  “Please, Jon.” I fought back more tears, clinging to him. “Please…”

  “All right,” Jon said, holding me tighter. “Okay, Allie. I’ll take you.”

  HE LAY ON the floor, curled on his side, much like how I’d found him when I woke up the last time. But his light felt different. The difference hit me, as tangible as a physical blow, the second I entered the tank with enough of my light to feel him at all.

  He opened his eyes as the door closed behind me.

  When he saw me, I saw relief and pain in his face, both in such quantities it made me pause, but only for a second.

  I walked straight up to him, ignoring the line drawn around him on the floor, and the lecture Balidor had given me just minutes before entering the room.

  Sliding under and around him so that his head and most of his upper body were in my lap, I sat on the floor, leaning my back against the wall. I was caressing his hair and face even as he lifted his hand, pushing at my thigh with his fingers.