Shield (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #2): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  Chandre nodded, her eyes and mouth pinched.

  Biting my lip, I hesitated, then said it anyway.

  “I also feel pretty shaky about my standing as ‘leader’ when I’m subject to some legal loophole that says I can be gang-raped whenever my husband’s not in the mood.”

  “No.” She gestured vehemently in the negative. “It is only because you haven’t consummated. Once you have, no one can touch you, Allie.”

  “Great.” I snorted. “So I’ll be privately owned then. What a relief that will be.” Kicking at the dirt with my toe, I added, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I was hoping you were him. It’s not as fun to yell at you about this.”

  She didn’t smile. Instead she nodded, looking dejected.

  For a moment we just sat there. I watched a scattering of birds chase one another from one cluster of trees to the next.

  Then I sighed, realizing I had to let this go. The last thing I needed was to encourage the aggressively protective impulse in Revik. Punishing my friends wouldn’t make me feel any better, either. Chandre didn’t make the rules any more than I did.

  I dug a hand into my pocket.

  After a moment’s pause where I located it tucked in a section of creased cloth, I pulled out the ring I’d been carrying with me since I got it back from Jon. I held it out to Chandre, feeling my face warm.

  “Hey,” I said. “Do me a favor, okay?”

  Chandre’s dark red eyes showed a whisper of surprise. The eagerness there made me feel guilty again, but I ignored it, holding out my hand more insistently. She put her palm under my closed fingers and I dropped the ring in it.

  I waited for her to look at it.

  “Could you give him that for me?” I said. “It’s a present. He can do whatever he wants with it. Adjust it for his finger size, toss it into the woods, put it in a drawer, whatever.”

  “Which finger should I tell him he can wear it?” she said, examining the ring. “If he asks, Bridge? Any?”

  I shrugged, gesturing vaguely. “I have no idea what that means. Are there seer finger-codes I should be aware of?” I quirked an eyebrow. “You know, like this one means, ‘you’re my love bunny,’ but that one means, ‘I’m going to stab you in your sleep one night’?”

  She gave me a wan smile, but it was still tentative. Still very un-Chandre.

  “Is this a marriage present?” she said.

  I ran my fingers through my hair, uncomfortable with the question. “Sort of.” I tugged at the chain around my neck, pulling it out of my shirt. Fingering the silver ring that hung on it, I showed it to her with a sigh.

  “He gave me this,” I said. “I know it’s not like a human marriage, where rings are exchanged and I wear a white dress and he wears a tux, and all that. I’m not even sure what he meant by giving his ring to me. But I wanted to give him something, too. Something that mattered to me.”

  I motioned towards the ring in her hand, feeling my face warm a little more.

  “That was my father’s. He was human, and he meant a hell of a lot to me. You can tell him that, too. He’ll understand.”

  Studying my eyes, she gestured in affirmative. I noticed she used the formal version, as if I’d asked her to lead an army into battle.

  She put the ring carefully in a front pocket.

  “I know what to do. Do not worry, Bridge.” She smiled wider, looking almost like her old self. “You are a tolerant mate,” she said. “Very tolerant. Dehgoies is a lucky man.”

  I wasn’t sure if I liked that much.

  “I’m a doormat, you mean,” I muttered, kicking the ground once more.

  She clicked at me, but softly.

  “No. No, I wouldn’t say that. Not at all, Bridge.”

  Touching my arm with a pulse of warmth, she surprised me by kissing me affectionately on the cheek. I was still recovering from that as she rose to her feet. Without looking back, she walked directly into the woods, back through the shadowed opening where I’d first seen her.

  Seemingly the instant she was gone, Tarsi pulled at my light.

  She wanted me back inside.

  Sighing, I tugged the cow skin off my shoulders. It was too warm now to wear it.

  Despite the insistence of Tarsi’s pull, I stalled a few seconds longer, letting the sun warm my face, eyes closed as I listened to the birds, facing east over the valley.

  I had a feeling it was the last I’d see of the sun for a few days at least.

  Turns out, I was right about that.

  17

  FIRST JUMP

  TARSI BEGAN FORMALLY. She even told me where to sit.

  Accommodating her wishes, I plunked myself down cross-legged on a prayer rug that covered the stone tiles in front of her fireplace. I waited for her to sink to her own prayer mat, accepting a cup from “the girl” and watching fire eat through a pine log one of them had shoved into the grate.

  I am old, Bridge, Tarsi sent. I can see some things because I remember them. When I said last night that this thing with the children bothers me, it is partly because it feels the same. The imprints in the Barrier are similar.

  “Similar?” I said. “To the last Displacement, you mean?”

  She chuckled. “I am not that old, Bridge.”

  I flushed, but she only smiled.

  There was another attempt to begin the human Displacement, she sent. In this cycle, I mean. That time, the attempt was thwarted. The rise of Syrimne during World War I could very well have precipitated the Displacement early. The danger was averted––mainly by the being himself. It is fortunate that he did.

  It took me a few seconds to process her words.

  “You mean Syrimne? He stopped it?”

  In part, yes.

  Relief infused me. “So then we can stop it this time.”

  “No.” Tarsi mirrored her words with a finger. It is dangerous to assume that, Bridge Alyson. The Displacement cannot be kept off forever.

  I felt my mouth pull into a frown. “Look. That’s crap, if you don’t mind my saying––”

  It is possible to stop it, Bridge Alyson… in the way that anything is always possible. But I do not see signs that indicate any likelihood of that outcome. It is best to prepare to play your usual role in the coming events.

  She was starting to remind me of my grandmother a little.

  My grams had that edge when she was annoyed, too. When I was younger, it always surprised me because of the sweetness of her little old lady exterior. But that contrast was less fascinating to me now, sitting in the dark in the middle of the day, talking about the world ending.

  I clenched my hands, looking at my fingers.

  “I should tell you,” I said, still looking down. “I don’t believe in prophecies. I’m sorry, but I don’t. Vash convinced me it was better not to argue with you all about this, but that doesn’t change how I feel.”

  Seeing the old woman’s smile, I let my anger seep through my voice.

  “I’m also not just going to roll over and plan for the end of the world like one of those people who see it all as a big party. I may have been raised among ‘worms,’ but I’ve seen enough vids to know war is an ugly, pointless horror-show most of the time. If I can prevent that happening, I will. I resent like hell the implication that whatever I do is ‘inevitably’ going to bring the end that much faster.”

  Grunting, I added, “Truthfully, I wish more of you seers would help by advising me on how to avoid war instead of reciting prophecies from however-long ago––”

  I understand. Tarsi broke into my mind easily, with no discernible reaction. I am not here to persuade you… or to advise you. Only to educate you as best I can.

  “But why?” I said. “I’ve told you. I don’t believe in your myths. Why not help me in what I really want to do? Or hell, just let me be a figurehead?”

  Her eyes grew shrewd, and a little impatient.

  Alyson, you have been leading. For months now. The time to ‘play figurehead’ is long since past. Do no
t play little girl with me, and I will not play ‘old woman’ with you. Fair?

  Feeling my face tighten, I nodded. “Fair.”

  She followed my eyes to the fire. If you truly wish to thwart the prophecies outlined in the Myth, you must first know what it entails. The Bridge is not believed to be evil. No more than Syrimne. In your case, we got to you in time, before you could be made into something truly dark by Galaith or whoever else. Syrimne was not so lucky.

  She shrugged a little with one hand.

  The Sword is often delegated the hard path.

  I glanced at the girl, wondering what she thought of our bickering. I motioned with my mug, silently asking for a refill of the dark drink. As she began preparing to make more in the clay teapot, I turned back to Tarsi.

  “It’s still a little hard for me to hear good about Syrimne,” I said. “It’s like someone saying Hitler was an okay guy, he just had a rough childhood.”

  “No.” Tarsi made a line in the air with one finger, frowning. He was not a good human at all. Not at all. It is not a good comparison, Alyson.

  I smiled at this, in spite of myself.

  “Okay,” I said. “So what’s the difference? Did Syrimne have a change of heart at the end?”

  No. Her eyes remained flat. He did not have, as you say, ‘a change of heart.’ His handler, a seer named Menlim, warped the development of his mind and his aleimi to such an extent that we found it nearly impossible to communicate with him. We were the enemy in his eyes. Not credible. Syrimne, you see, believed that he was saving the world.

  “Great,” I said. “What whack-job doesn’t?”

  Alyson. The old woman’s thoughts grew flint-like. You have no idea of the reality of seers’ lives back then. We watched hundreds of thousands of our people butchered practically overnight. Our children stolen and experimented on. Our most respected artists and religious scholars enslaved as sideshow entertainment. Our females systematically raped and sold away from their mates. Do you know that even now, rape of any seer, male or female, is not considered a crime in the human world?

  Briefly, I contemplated reminding her that her own people had a pretty liberal view of “consent,” then decided I was being pointlessly argumentative.

  Rising to my feet, I stood by the stone mantle.

  “So what now?” I said, my voice subdued. “How do we investigate who did that to the kids in the camp? That’s what we’ve been tasked to do, right?”

  She shrugged with one hand. It is ironic, given your aversion. Her eyes flickered up. I thought we would start with the last critical incident. See if we could map comparisons to what happened in Sikkim.

  “The last critical incident?” I thought about her words, then felt the blood leave my face. “You mean Syrimne? We’re going to look at Syrimne?”

  She gestured to the right and up, a seer’s yes.

  “But what would that prove?” I said. “Syrimne died almost a century ago.”

  Tarsi slurped her tea. Think of it in terms of strategy––which the Dreng have, in abundance. This is a strategic moment for them. It is good to look at their first attempt to alter the game in their favor, even if it failed.

  The idea made me sick––sick enough to wonder why I was taking all of this so personally. But I did take it personally, and not only the death of those kids. Symbols of the sword and sun decorated half the walls in Seertown. I’d always wondered why this, the symbol for Syrimne––who had personally murdered thousands of humans and suspected “traitor” seers––decorated an entire wall in Vash’s temple.

  To me, it was like painting swastikas all over your living room.

  Maybe Tarsi was right. Maybe being raised human caused the reaction, and having that symbol beaten into my head as a proxy for death and fanaticism. Even so, it still struck me as more than a little morbid.

  Maygar had the same mark tattooed in blue and white ink on his left bicep. He’d called it the mark of a “real” terrorist.

  “He is alive, that one?” Tarsi said politely. “You did not kill him?”

  It took me a second to understand what she was talking about. Then I frowned.

  “He’s alive,” I acknowledged.

  “You must be relieved.”

  I didn’t answer, but found myself thinking about Maygar anyway.

  Was I relieved? I guessed I was. I couldn’t exactly wish for his death, even apart from my being responsible for it. Besides, I still wanted to know why he’d done it. I couldn’t believe he’d rape me just to jab at Revik.

  Despite all his barbs, he’d been almost protective of me when it came to Revik. He acted like he didn’t think Revik was good enough to be married to me, especially after he learned of his infidelity.

  What was it he’d said? Something about how he’d be a good husband to me.

  Or at least, better than Revik.

  A sudden, sharp pain slid through my chest, strong enough to make me gasp. It felt like anger, but enough lay behind it that I stopped breathing.

  When I recovered, I realized I knew the presence.

  Christ. How long had he been there? And why hadn’t he said anything?

  Even as I thought it, he evaporated from my light.

  Turning when the girl offered me a steaming mug, I took it from her more abruptly than I should have, biting my lip.

  It is easier to show you, Tarsi sent, causing me to turn.

  She had gotten up so quietly I hadn’t heard her, and now she stood behind me. If she’d noticed anything, no hint was discernible in her clear eyes.

  May I? she sent.

  I hesitated only a second. “Sure.”

  You should sit down again, Bridge.

  I sank back to the prayer rug, scooting closer to the fire with my feet. The girl immediately knelt behind me, holding a hairbrush in one hand. She held it up, indicating shyly towards my hair. Sighing internally, mostly from the guilt I couldn’t quite shake at having her wait on me, I nodded. I’d slept on it wet, so now it probably looked like two cats were mating on my head.

  “Okay,” I told Tarsi, as the girl began carefully detangling my hair with her fingers and brushing it out. “I’m ready.”

  As soon as I said it, everything went dark.

  I had never before been brought into the Barrier so quickly, so completely without warning or transition…

  …AND I AM still trying to breathe as dark surrounds me.

  I hang motionless in the black of three a.m. on a moonless night in a pit. I stand, sit or fall––here, it is impossible to tell if any of these are true. No stars live here, no embers or remnants of fire. I can’t see myself, in my light form or in the flesh. I exist in the deepest, most silent nothing I’ve ever known.

  Light implodes, in the center of that dark.

  It paralyzes me.

  The shocking white ring draws inwards, then, after a moment where time stops… it explodes outward again. The fountain is so brilliant, so filled with teeming presence, I cannot look away. I watch it plume up and out in rising crescendos of light.

  Color pours into the black.

  It looks like a volcano from orbit, a high, shimmering fountain on a starless ocean.

  I glance to where Tarsi floats beside me.

  Her outline is vivid, filled with so many rotating geometries and thinner-than-hair structures that I have trouble not losing myself as I focus on her. I think at first that her appearance is part of the light show, too.

  Then I realize this is simply her aleimi, the way she looks inside the Barrier.

  The fountain spins outwards, expanding clouds of energy and form.

  After some time, molten chunks fly past us in the dark. I flinch as the cloud continues to grow, fed by whatever implodes at its core.

  Buffeted by giant expulsions of gas, we begin to spin outwards with all else, moving through space without breath. I see the sparks forming into denser pools. Spirals turn to smaller clocks, moving in distinct, individual rhythms. I watch hundreds of these spirals form
, thousands. A kind of wonder breaks through the events of the past days and weeks and months, and I know why Tarsi starts here.

  She starts with birth.

  It is the first thing.

  We are closer now, closer to one of those spirals of light, and I feel the familiarity of that grinding motion, as if it lives somewhere inside the code of my DNA. I watch stars form in pinpricks through windmilling arms of molten fire, and I know that I am home, or the vicinity of home at least, in the galaxy where everything and everyone I’ve ever known has lived.

  We slide deeper inside that place within a place.

  Wonder again washes over me, this time at the smallness of all that I know.

  That was neat, I tell her.

  She doesn’t answer in words, but I feel her smile.

  Here, watching light form inside that expanse of liquid black, I begin to understand, at the very least, what I will never understand.

  …THE CAVE MATERIALIZES.

  It happens quickly, before I recognize the fading of stars into embers.

  It isn’t her cave.

  Meaning, it’s not the same one where my physical body sits on an elaborately woven rug, where my hair is being patiently combed into straight lines by a woman who deserves better, a woman whose face is creased by wind and sun and whose opaque eyes are far-seeing and accustomed to snow.

  This new cave is exponentially larger.

  I see no furnishings apart from a fire pit and a dense, rectangular rug that covers most of the cave floor. I stare at the rug’s detailed designs, lost in fish, whales, anemone, octopi, horseshoe crabs, starfish.

  I don’t look up until Tarsi tugs my light hand, leading me deeper into the cave.

  The fire-lit walls open up to a cavern so large it would take my breath if I had any here. It is so high I cannot see the ceiling despite a ring of burning torches and a fire pit that reminds me of beach parties in high school.

  Where are we? I ask.

  The Pamir. The caves of our ancestors.

  I am impressed. I have never been to the Pamir, not even in the Barrier.

  Is this still here? I say, looking around me at the sheer magnitude of the space. Now, I mean? In the physical?