I stared at Feigran’s downturned head.
When he didn’t go on, I exhaled, fighting to untangle his words. I was mostly lost on this thread so far. However good I’d gotten in learning to decipher Feigran-speak, it always seemed to break down at the critical moment.
“In through the out door?” I said. “Like with Revik?”
Feigran shook his head, clicking, but I honestly couldn’t tell if that was a no or not.
I pressed him again.
“Feigran. Are you talking about Revik?”
“The Sword, yes. It is always about the Sword. And the Bridge.”
“What is?” Hesitating at his blank look, I bit back my reaction as well as I could. “This seer. Does he have something to do with Revik, Feigran?”
“He is the anchor.” Feigran looked up at me, still leaning his head against my chest as he enunciated carefully. “He keeps it alive, sister. It is most important to him. Most important. His children create the doors. His beautiful children. He is the anchor.”
I frowned, my mind scanning through the various threads.
“What does he keep alive, Feigran?” I said finally.
“The world.” Feigran looked up at me. “The world, sister Bridge. The doors between worlds. The life. He is Dragon. He is life.”
I fought to make sense of that too, couldn’t.
So I tried a different tack.
“Is he in Beijing?” I said. “This Dragon. Is he in China now?”
“No.” Feigran shook his head, his eyes distant. “No, no. He is under the rocks. Later, he will come for his brother. Not before. After he is free.”
I could only stare at him.
I hoped like hell he’d elaborate. He didn’t.
“Feigran.” I bit back frustration. “What does any of that mean?”
The seer only gave me one of those infuriatingly conspiratorial smiles of his. I was still looking at him when he raised a charcoal-smudged finger to his lips, still smiling at me when he reached past the sight restraint collar and the tank and directly into my mind.
Shhhhhh…
I have no memory of an image being sent, or any thoughts, but somehow, meaning reached me from Feigran’s light.
Feigran wasn’t warning me to keep this secret from just anyone.
He was warning me to keep it from Revik.
The seer smiled wider, looking almost comically relieved that I understood. He clasped my hand with his charcoal-coated fingers, leaning into my chest. I knew I wasn’t really touching him, but it felt like I was. I felt the warmth of his skin, the slight scratchiness of the layer of charcoal on his fingers, the softness of his hair and pajama top.
I barely noticed.
I frowned, trying to decide why Feigran wouldn’t want me to talk to Revik about this “Dragon.” It clearly had something to do with the line Menlim had to Revik’s light, but I didn’t get the sense he feared for me, or for Revik––or that he had fear of Revik. Feigran rarely seemed to think of his own life in anything but abstract terms, anyway.
It was a pretty big difference with Terian, actually. His alter-ego Terian was equipped with an almost preternaturally fine-tuned survival instinct.
I was about to release him, to rise back to my feet––when the auburn-haired seer gripped my hand tighter.
Look for the book, he whispered in my mind. The book is his. It belongs to him.
When his amber eyes met mine, they looked almost clear. I could see a man behind them, an actual person. The difference shocked me more than his actual words.
I knew what book he meant.
There could only be one book, the same one from the bank security deposit box where we got the Displacement Lists. I’d found out relatively recently the book disappeared at some point during the first big tsunami in New York––when Cass kidnapped me.
We assumed Shadow had it.
I’d asked Kali about the book, but she hadn’t been able to tell me much. She admitted she’d put it there along with the data key holding the Displacement Lists, but told me she’d only done it because her dreams told her she should.
Which yeah, not super helpful.
When I asked where she got the book in the first place, she said one of her agents found it in the mountain caves that Syrimne’s rebellion used during WWI.
Apparently, Kali got that from her dreams, too.
We’d never been able to learn anything at all of significance from that damned book, regardless. It was full of symbols and writing no one could read, or even identify. According to Kali, no one in her group could interpret any of it, either.
Looking at Feigran, I formed thoughts in my own mind.
Is it Dragon’s book? I asked, barely thinking the words. At his bare nod, I frowned. How do I look for it, Feigran? Who has it?
There was another lingering pause before he answered.
She knows, he whispered, the words lingering as if floating on a faraway breeze. The red-eyed one. The hunter. She knows.
I knew who he meant that time, too.
Even so, I wasn’t Feigran. I couldn’t reach my light past sight-restraint collars, or military grade constructs. I couldn’t reach past Barrier containment tank walls, either.
Hell, I couldn’t even hide most things from my own husband.
For the same reason, I knew I’d be pressing my luck if I tried to pursue this any further, at least here and now, with Balidor and Revik in the control room.
Anyway, he’d given me a place to start.
7
KISS
CHANDRE STOOD ON a high wall, looking southwest.
Clicking out briefly from her work in the Barrier, she grew conscious of the sunlight turning more orange, deepening and coloring the clouds.
She hadn’t been monitoring the time very well. A few hours remained in the day, but not so many as she would have liked. She had intended to pull together her small squad for one more planning session that day.
The Sword wanted her to leave soon. Within the next few days.
Out of the city, north and west to Bangladesh, then into India. Then she planned to arrange for a plane if she could––a boat if she couldn’t––out of Kolkata or Mumbai to North America.
The thought of returning to that place, to what had been called the United States, made Chandre uneasy. The thought of leaving her people behind was not a welcome one––nor was the thought of once more being separated from the Bridge and Sword.
Their current situation did not ease her mind on either point. Right now, the Bridge and Sword needed all the protection they could get. It did not comfort her to be too far away to aid either of them, in the event they needed it.
Because of that, the distraction with the Thais was perversely welcome.
She’d been using her light skill more than her skill with conventional weaponry since she arrived on the wall, mainly to help them push back the horde fighting to overrun the newly-created opening in the wall. She wasn’t working at the task alone. Jorag had come to assist in crowd control in person, while Declan, Oli and Anale assisted remotely.
It should have been an easy task for just one seer, but the raging mob had help. Seers worked the crowd from the opposite side, pushing them to attack the wall, even if it cost them their lives.
As a result, using the chaotic light of the mob itself only worked in short bursts.
Chandre felt at least six seers working the Mythers from the other side. They systematically unraveled any calm she, Jorag, Declan, Oli and Anale managed to descend over the humans. Chandre would get a portion of the crowd to snap out of their frenzy only to have to return to that same section of wall moments later as the Myther seers injected jolts of fear, anger and violence back into the group light.
A few dozen Thai soldiers stood just outside of the broken part of the wall, guarding the engineers as they struggled frantically to repair the hole and the corresponding semi-organic containment fields. They would get there eventually Chandre knew, but she wondered
how many would die before that occurred.
She’d stopped flinching at the gunfire at least an hour ago.
The automatic gunfire continued, unabated, nearly steady in the background as she did her best to save lives in the only way she knew how.
Most of the gunfire came from the Thai soldiers, who had little choice but to mow down the crowd every time it surged violently for the opening.
The people trying to get in weren’t only Thai, Chan noticed.
She saw humans and seers who appeared to be from other parts of Southeast Asia, as well as humans of European descent, some of African descent, many of East Indian and Chinese descent. Grimacing as she watched another line of running bodies ripped apart by automatic rifle fire, she focused back on her work in the Barrier––
Then jumped when someone laid a hand on her shoulder.
Chandre jerked around.
She already gripped her sidearm.
Staring at the woman standing there, she released her gun at once.
“Esteemed Bridge.”
After a bare hesitation, she bowed, making the respectful sign for her intermediary. As per custom, she only raised her head after Allie made the counter-sign.
Chandre looked up and down the length of the upper wall only then.
They felt alone.
The Barrier held no other seers nearby. Jorag remained down below, near the physical wall breach so he could assist the engineers in addition to providing light coverage.
Chandre hoped the Sword accompanied the Bridge out here and was simply occupied with the Thais and Jorag downstairs. The thought that the Bridge might have walked out here alone, where she might have been recognized and ID’d, made her grit her teeth.
It also made her wonder if she should ping the Sword with her light.
Still seeing no one and feeling no one with her light, Chandre swallowed, her nerves worsening. She grew conscious of the Bridge’s light focused on hers. Meeting the steel behind Alyson’s gaze, Chandre decided it wouldn’t be a good time to question the Bridge’s judgment in coming out here unaccompanied.
“Is there something I can do for you, Esteemed Sister?” Chandre said, using the polite form of Prexci. “I was not aware you intended to witness this.”
Allie’s scrutiny sharpened.
Then it faded.
A small smile touched her lips, right before she shrugged with one hand, seer-fashion.
“I wouldn’t mention it to Revik or Balidor if I were you,” she said, giving Chandre another of those quirky, wry smiles. “I suspect I’ll hear about it, if you do.”
Chandre could no longer feel herself being scanned by the Bridge.
Even so, her light felt charged, on high alert, in a way she couldn’t explain, even in the more finely honed areas of her aleimi.
Something about that unconscious alertness was… unnerving.
She met the Bridge’s gaze. That harder edge had returned to those light green irises. The Bridge stared unapologetically, and Chandre fought not to react.
“Is something wrong, Esteemed Sister?” she said, trying again.
Allie lifted one eyebrow, then let her eyes shift away.
Taking a step closer to the edge of the wall, she leaned out over it to look down.
Her visibility and proximity to that one hundred-plus meter drop caused Chandre’s heart to clench in her chest. She bit her lip to remain silent, watching Allie’s eyes scan the mob at the base of the wall and the crowd of humans massing just out of range of the Thai guns.
Chandre forced herself to remain silent, unmoving.
Still staring down, Allie’s eyes narrowed as another section of crowd rushed the opening, causing the Thai soldiers to open fire.
With her consciousness split, Chan continued to help Jorag and Anale attempt to calm the crowd as she watched the Bridge warily. It struck her that the Bridge was working that crowd as well, with a deftness and subtlety that took Chandre aback. She did it via the proxy of Jorag and Chandre’s aleimi so her own light wouldn’t be noticed by the Myther seers.
In the process, she seemed to be in Chandre’s light far more than Chan had realized.
It alarmed Chandre, not only that invasiveness, but how it had crept up on her. She’d scarcely noticed the Bridge’s presence until it had more or less saturated her own light like water filling hairline cracks in sun-bleached rock.
“I’m going to ask you something, Chan,” the Bridge said, glancing back at her.
Chandre restrained an urge to tell the Bridge to move away from the edge. She knew they couldn’t be identified from the ground at this height, that the VR fields meant neither of them would be visible by flyers, but she could not calm the panic in her light.
“…I want an honest answer,” Allie said, staring down at the crowd.
Chandre nodded. She made the respectful sign of the Bridge a second time.
“Of course,” she said.
She heard nerves in her voice.
She knew the Bridge heard them, too.
“What happened to the book, Chan?” Allie said.
She turned her head, still leaned over the edge of the wall. That more penetrating scrutiny returned to her light green irises.
“Book?” Chan stared at her, not hiding her confusion. “What book, my sister––”
“The book we got in New York. The one from the vault,” Allie said. “The one we thought was Feigran’s… with all of the symbols. The one my mother left for us to find.”
“Esteemed Bridge, I––”
“I know you had it, Chan,” Allie said, her voice deceptively calm. “I’m not asking you that question. Nor do I want to debate that particular point. I want to know what you did with it. Who did you give it to?” She paused. “I’m assuming you don’t still have it yourself.”
Chan swallowed, feeling her muscles tense.
Images flashed behind her eyes.
Some part of her imagined going head-first off the wall––just being picked up and thrown by Alyson’s telekinesis. Even now, she felt the denser streams of light sparking off the aleimi of the Elaerian seer. Of course, she knew the fear was irrational.
Anyway, Alyson wouldn’t need to toss her off the edge.
She could simply snap Chandre’s neck.
“Sister.” Chandre’s voice turned gruff. Her vision blurred, disorienting her. She held up a hand. “I had to vow––”
“I am revoking that vow,” Alyson said, her voice openly warning. “I will answer to the gods for you, my sister. But I must know the truth. Now. Or I cannot let you anywhere near our command structure… or my family. No matter who you are to me. Or to my husband.”
Chandre swallowed.
Somehow, the thought of having her spine snapped hit her less hard than the threat the Bridge had just made.
“I did it for Sister Tarsi,” Chandre said, feeling her face heat in shame. Whether it was shame for breaking vow or for hiding the information from the Bridge, she could not say. “I gave the book to her, my beloved intermediary. She asked me to retrieve it for her just prior to the tsunami, so I did.”
Seeing Allie’s jaw harden, Chandre felt tears well up in her eyes.
They blinded her briefly, running down her dusty cheeks.
“I am sorry…” she began, her voice thickening.
The thought of being banished hurt her, in a place she thought she could no longer be hurt. She reached out, catching hold of the other’s arm, holding it in both of hers.
“…My dearest friend, I am so sorry. I trusted the old woman and Vash to keep you safe. Tarsi told me she had to protect you from the book. From what was inside. She said it was not safe. She said it was not safe for him to know… that he would know…”
She choked on the words, unable to get the rest out.
But understanding had already flickered through those light-green irises.
“…for the Sword. That’s it, isn’t it? It wasn’t safe for the Sword to know where it was.” Allie frowne
d, her brow creasing in thought. “You were hiding it from the Sword. So you couldn’t let me know where it was, either.”
Chandre let out a slight gasp, then nodded.
Relief flooded her light that the other understood.
She didn’t release Allie’s arm and Allie didn’t move away. They only stood there, neither looking at the other, but neither creating distance. It hit Chandre that the Bridge’s light was open to hers once more.
Also that the Bridge was crying.
Something about the second thing touched Chandre in a way few things had touched her, especially of late. Like the rest of them, Chandre had been forced to harden her heart, to steel the softer parts of her light to survive these past few years.
It also created a grief and affection warring in her light that overwhelmed her.
The Bridge had been fully prepared to kick Chandre off her team if she had to. At the same time, Chandre could feel how that idea hurt the Bridge, paining her nearly physically. Chandre felt more in the intermediary’s light, things about her husband that Chandre steered clear of, things about their child… about her fears of a mole in their leadership team.
Her fears of the future.
Chandre didn’t mean to do it.
Something in the emotion there overwhelmed her briefly.
She moved impulsively, which was not her usual way, not even for this––but the Bridge’s light was so soft, so yielding and enveloping that Chandre found herself wrapping her arms around the other female without thought. She pulled the Bridge into her body, wrapping her fingers into her dark hair, holding her against her chest and shoulder. She cradled her there, like she might a lover.
Like she might one in her family.
The Bridge was her family, Chandre realized.
She loved her more than she’d ever really let herself feel, more than she’d come close to admitting to herself. She loved her and would protect her to the end, no matter what that meant for Chandre herself.
Her arms tightened around the smaller female as she thought it.
Allie didn’t fight her. She leaned there, opening her light more.
After another few seconds, Allie let out a sigh, pressing her face deeper into the armor that covered Chandre’s shoulder. Looking up, she met Chandre’s gaze. Chan found herself lost in the brightness of those green eyes. She felt the relief that seethed off Allie’s light.
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