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

by JC Andrijeski

  Allie nodded, but Jon saw a shadow pass over her eyes.

  “How many infiltrators?” she said.

  “Only about forty of a rank above four or five,” Garensche said reassuringly, rubbing her shoulder from where he held her against his side.

  “And on our side?” she said.

  He shrugged, smiling down at her. “You’re looking at them. Well, and those in the other cars. We pretty much all came along when the Sword told us where he was going. There are a few deployed in the States, and in Europe. Another half-dozen in South America.”

  Nodding, she smiled back, glancing around at all of their faces.

  Jon wondered if she was counting as her eyes passed over each one.

  He’d already counted the same.

  It was maybe fourteen total, of the Rebels who were with them in Asia. Maybe they had Chan with them now, in America, plus the six Revik spoke to in Brazil. So around twenty infiltrators. Twenty-five if they were lucky. Either way, it was about half of what opted to go back to Salinse, and who knew how many of those were working both sides of the fence.

  The numbers hadn’t seemed to bother Revik though.

  Jon got the impression he’d been so relieved at Wreg’s answer that anyone after him was just an added bonus.

  He was still thinking when Loki fished a tool out of the side pocket in the car door. Jon had seen one like it before, the last time they were in China. Thick organic metal blades stood on either side of a heavy handle with dark grips. It reminded Jon of a nutcracker, or heavy wire cutters. After showing the tool to Allie, Loki asked a question with one hand.

  She answered with a returning flick of her fingers, and he fit the grooved edges of the blade around the collar at her neck.

  He squeezed the handles and she gave a short gasp as the ring around her neck opened with a faint sucking sound. Jon knew the coils of organic material were likely unraveling from around her spine. She was pulling it off when Loki caught hold of her other wrist, making another questioning motion with his hand.

  She nodded that time, instead of using seer hand-language. Jon and the others watched as he fit the tool under the chains around her wrist, cutting through the metal in a series of three or four squeezes of the thick handles.

  He moved immediately to the one at her ankle.

  Then to her other wrist… then her other ankle.

  Another seer’s hands reached out, pulling the chains off her, tossing them to the floor on the other side of the car, by the opposite door.

  Jon watched the chains disappear, swallowing. He didn’t look away from her bare wrists and ankles until he felt Allie’s eyes on his face.

  He saw embarrassment in her eyes, but her jaw hardened while he watched, as if she was daring him to say something about it.

  “What about Chan, Jon?” she said. “Has anyone talked to her recently?”

  Jon hesitated.

  For a moment, he wondered how much he should say about that before she’d recovered from the rest of it, especially given the high spirits of everyone in the car. Finally, he just shrugged, smiling at her with as much cheerfulness as he could muster.

  “She’s fine.” He checked his watch, glancing at Dorje as he fought the worry from his voice. “She should be on a plane to South America about now.”

  “South America?” Allie said, dumbfounded.

  Jon nodded, again looking at Dorje, maybe for help.

  “She’s gone to Argentina, Esteemed Bridge,” Dorje said reassuringly. “A reconnaissance mission. She is working with a few other seers, under the command of the Sword.”

  “A few other seers?” Allie said, still bewildered. “Who?”

  For a second, Jon and Dorje only looked at one another, hesitating again.

  62

  UNUSUAL ALLIANCE

  “THEY HAVE HER,” Chandre confirmed, speaking loud above the plane’s intercom system and the voices still talking in her headset. “…She is all right.”

  She glanced around at the three seers who sat next to her in the middle row of commercial seats on the plane. Padded on either side with two empty seats, they had the row to themselves. They had only just left the air conditioned confines of the Albuquerque International Airport and been seated in the first class compartment of the Boeing 747-8.

  “Any news on Eddard?” Varlan asked her.

  Chandre, still listening on the other end, shook her head.

  “…Nothing on Maygar, either.” She glanced at Varlan, then past him, to Rex and Stanley on his other side. “They haven’t told them yet about Maygar. The Bridge. Or the Sword.”

  Varlan didn’t answer, but his indigo eyes narrowed slightly.

  Chandre didn’t bother to try and figure out what that meant.

  They’d headed south and east by car, not risking any of the Bay Area airports since they were too close to the lab and electrical substation they’d blown up near Hayward, California.

  They finally settled on Albuquerque, as it was one of the smaller international airports in the area, far smaller than Denver or Phoenix.

  The op at the substation had gone fine, more or less, despite the early alarms.

  They thought it had, anyway, up until the very end.

  They managed to place all of the explosives, find samples of the disease and its cure, find the data drives where all of the lab information was stored. They found the exit through the ventilation shafts, just like Eddard showed them. They also managed to round up and identify all of the head scientists for the project. It had been necessary, of course, to make sure any of those who had a prayer of reconstructing the formula went up with the equipment.

  That hadn’t been Chandre’s favorite part of the job, but she recognized the necessity for it. Memory erasures were never 100% foolproof; they could also be undone by skilled seers.

  Therefore, she didn't argue when Varlan gave the order.

  Everything had gone as smoothly as could be expected, considering they’d tripped the construct alarms a good thirty minutes before they’d planned. Yet somewhere in the course of that op, while Chandre had been working with Stanley, Rex and Varlan to lay the charges in the main lab, Eddard and Maygar vanished.

  Varlan, his people, and Chandre spent months looking for them in California.

  They searched all over the Bay Area, then widened that search to include most of the west coast. Chandre wondered why Varlan was helping her, until Varlan told her he had “concerns” about Eddard and the samples he’d taken of the virus.

  It hadn’t occurred to her until then that Varlan likely hadn’t intended the human to succeed in that goal, as it directly violated the terms of his contract with his client, which had been to destroy the disease in totality.

  In fact, Chandre realized, Varlan had likely intended to put a few well-placed bullets in Eddard’s skull before that job was done, probably the instant he’d ceased to be useful.

  None of that occurred to her until the op was finished, of course.

  They hadn’t waited to find Maygar and Eddard to detonate the lab; they couldn't afford to, no matter what the odds that the human and young seer remained inside.

  Even in the wake of the attack, they hadn’t found any evidence that the two remained underground, however. Nor, really, had they found any evidence that they’d escaped. They did search the entire lab before they left, and saw no sign of either of them.

  Eddard disappeared to collect his samples of the disease and the antidote. Maygar left to look for the exit through the cooling and ventilation shafts. While Chandre and the others were still halfway through setting the charges, Maygar pinged them all to let them know he’d found the way out.

  Then nothing.

  Neither of them had been heard from since.

  Varlan, however, had been relatively certain he could sense imprints from the two of them, leaving out the ventilation shafts ahead of them. Chandre knew it was possible he’d only said that to get the rest of them out before the clock ran down, but for som
e reason, she believed him.

  Of course, with an infiltrator of Varlan’s rank, she couldn’t trust that feeling.

  It bothered her more than she wanted to admit, that Maygar, little shit that he was, could have been trapped and killed down there. She knew it was still a strong possibility, that he had been missed somehow in their sweep and died in the explosions and cave-ins that followed.

  Pulling her mind off Maygar and Eddard, she shook her braids, clicking.

  “The Bridge is already out of the main city,” she said, focusing back on Varlan. “They seem to have gotten away cleanly.”

  Varlan’s expression remained unchanged at Chandre’s news, but something in the dark-skinned seer, Stanley’s, visibly relaxed. He adjusted his narrow body in the cloth seat, looking off to the side to peer through the nearest of the oval windows.

  Chandre noted the male seer’s expression with some relief. Whoever he worked for, he didn’t entirely hate the Bridge. The thought comforted her.

  Balidor was footing the bill for this little venture, which was strange enough.

  Stranger still, Varlan accepted his offer, despite the clear conflict of interest it posed with his current client.

  Chandre didn’t know how the Adhipan leader talked Varlan into it precisely, but she suspected it hadn’t only been with money. Chandre also couldn’t help wondering if Balidor had other things on his mind, in asking the ex-Rook to help them. Like perhaps recruitment––which wasn’t so much of a stretch these days really, especially given the rank of the seer sitting beside her.

  Given that it looked like Dehgoies now led military operations, as well as the shit storm they’d just started by picking a fight with the Lao Hu, they would need all the infiltrators they could get.

  In any case, when Chandre told Balidor about the mysterious client of Varlan’s, Balidor jumped at the chance. He offered Varlan and his people twice their usual rate to allow Chandre to accompany them to their meeting with Shadow. Varlan balked at first, for predictable reasons, claiming he couldn’t afford to misuse his contacts or his clients in such a way, but Balidor managed to persuade him somewhere in the course of their back and forth.

  Chandre found it interesting that Balidor hadn’t yet told Dehgoies about Maygar’s involvement in this, or his disappearance, but maybe the Sword had enough on his mind, given what Allie had been up to for the past few months.

  That whole story, with Allie and the Lao Hu, was something Chandre still had trouble believing.

  As if reading her thoughts, Rex, the mammoth seer who sat between Varlan and Stanley, leaned around the older seer to look at her.

  “Did they really sell her through the Rynak?” He kept his voice low, even as he darted a look at an airline stewardess as she passed in the aisle.

  Chandre nodded, aiming it in two directions at once when she caught the eye of a second airline steward, who frowned at her, tapping the side of his head to indicate her headset. Pulling the device from around her ear, Chandre clicked it off, giving the human an apologetic smile as she shoved it into her bag underneath the seat in front of her.

  She glanced up at Rex as she straightened, and found Stanley looking at her, too.

  “They say she is fine,” she repeated. “They say she is changed, though.”

  “Changed?” Varlan raised a questioning eyebrow.

  Chandre shrugged, her eyes shifting to the window where Stanley’s had been focused.

  “Changed how, sister Chandre?”

  Considering for a moment, Chandre turned. There was no reason she could think of to withhold this information. She gave the older seer a humorless smile.

  “How do you think? They trained her… in several different arts. Her light is changed, brother.” She looked away at his frown, fighting her own expression still. “Apparently they trained her in more than simply those things which one might expect. Something to do with the transfer of rights over her person… an agreement made with her new owners. They say they may have to give her a number now.”

  Her voice lowered still more as a steward passed on the aisle next to Stanley.

  “…A real rank,” she added, soft. “Actual, instead of simply a guess at her potential.”

  Varlan stared at her, his dark eyes holding nothing as he processed her words.

  “They had avoided that before,” he said finally.

  She nodded, using the human version.

  Despite the contacts she wore, she’d already received a number of stares from other passengers, particularly in the boarding areas for the plane, so she wasn’t sure how many people she was actually fooling. Still, to make them at least pause, to question whether she was one thing or the other, was all they really required for this trip.

  The place where they were going did not exclude her people, so to obscure her race was more of a convenience than a necessity.

  “They may have no choice now,” she answered.

  “Will they register her? Formally, I mean?”

  Chandre shrugged. “I do not know. He said they will determine that later… after they have done a more systematic assessment of what it is about her that has changed.”

  “Who said this?”

  “Adhipan Balidor.”

  Varlan blinked. “Did you speak to any others?”

  She shook her head, knowing what he was asking.

  Like the rest of them, he wanted information about the Sword, what the Sword was thinking, what he would do next. Chandre couldn’t have told them that, even if she wanted. In the same set of heartbeats, it occurred to her that using Revik’s name likely had a lot to do with why Varlan agreed to their arrangement in the first place.

  Tucking a stray braid behind her ear, she blew out her cheeks before she glanced at him. “Right now, they are still questioning the woman they brought with them from the City. They only have a few more minutes with her, before they must depart.”

  “To go where?”

  Chandre gave him a warning look, glancing around them pointedly.

  “That will be determined, brother.”

  Varlan nodded at her words, but the slight frown never left his face.

  Chandre had gone back to rummaging in her bag, trying to remember if she’d brought a portable monitor, when Rex spoke up from Varlan’s other side, his voice holding a low humor.

  “The Sword is a lucky man,” he said, whistling softly.

  Chandre tensed, even as she’d been about to grab a magazine from the rack in front of her. She almost didn’t ask it. Then, after biting her lip, she did.

  “Why do you say that?” she said stiffly.

  When she glanced up, Rex’s brown eyes smiled along with his lips, but she felt the pulse of arousal there, a faint flare off his light.

  “The Lao Hu consorts are famous,” he said, winking. “You have no idea what I’d give to have a wife trained in those arts… but maybe an arm.”

  He nudged Stanley, who only grunted, his eyes still focused out the window.

  Rex laughed, adding, “…Maybe a foot. I bet he doesn’t let her out of their room for a month. Assuming he doesn’t just chain her to his bed.” His smile turned into a leer. “Are you sure it was an accident she ended up there, sister Chandre?”

  Chan felt her mouth and jaw turn to granite.

  She stared at him, fighting the urge to punch him in the face, using the knuckles of the stronger of her two hands, maybe blinding him in one eye with her fingers. Instead she forced her gaze sideways, looking out the window to her left.

  She was still staring out, unseeing, when Varlan spoke from her other side.

  “Could he tell us anything?” he said.

  When Chandre turned, the anger still warring in her light, Varlan clarified, “Balidor. Did he say anything else? Anything that will help us, where we are going?”

  Biting her lip, she gave a one-handed shrug, forgetting to use the human version.

  “He said whoever they are, our friends in the East appear to have sworn allegiance to t
hem, as well.” She gave Rex a hard look, but the muscular seer appeared unfazed. “Our Esteemed Sister had been sold to them, to pay for her crime against one of theirs––someone they sent to assess her progress in those areas they wished to see her grow.”

  “Crime?” Stanley jerked out of his silence, turning. “What crime was that?”

  Chandre met his gaze, biting her lip. “She killed him. The messenger.”

  “Why?”

  “That, I do not know… precisely. Balidor implied it was something personal.”

  “Personal?” Rex grunted. “Doesn’t her line of work preclude the personal?”

  She gave him a cold look. “Something to do with her husband.”

  Rex stared at her, his eyes holding an open surprise.

  Before he could speak, Varlan’s voice rose from his left, and Chandre felt the calming influence he threw lightly over both of them.

  “How do they know it is the same person?” he said. “How do they know it was my client they sold her to?”

  Chandre shrugged. “They use the same call sign. It was the only real ID they could get off our friend from the East.” At Varlan’s raised eyebrow, she said, “Shadow. She, too, referred to their leader as Shadow. No other name.”

  “Any other news from our friends in the East?” Varlan queried. “Anything relevant to the meeting we will be attending down there?”

  She shook her head, but her hand gesture was more noncommittal. “They are still not finished with her. He said he would contact me again, once we land. They will be in transit themselves, by then.” She looked at her watch. “He says it is not Salinse, though.”

  “Not Salinse?”

  “Not on his own.”

  “Meaning… what?”

  “Meaning there are indications of a larger group behind this,” she said, lowering her voice as another stewardess walked by. Watching the human’s dark navy dress brush the sides of the aisle as her hips swayed, Chandre waited for her to disappear, then spoke again.

  “It seems our friends in the East,” she added, making the symbol of the Lao Hu with one hand. “Also received news of the destruction of this disease. They thought it was I who took the samples Eddard claimed.”