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

by JC Andrijeski

  “I lead the Adhipan,” he said. “The infiltrators assigned to protecting the Council.” His eyebrows drew together as he glanced back at her. “That includes protecting the Bridge. In fact, protecting your friend Alyson is our primary responsibility.”

  Cass adjusted her body in the chair. “Cool.”

  She waited, still surprised a seer had any interest in her.

  Maybe it was sexual. If so, he wasn’t doing it like the others had. Subtlety wasn’t generally a defining trait for most seers when it came to sex, she’d noticed.

  Balidor smiled faintly. “I could use your help. Or your advice, perhaps.”

  She hid her surprise. “Sure.”

  “I know you helped Dehgoies prepare for their…” His eyebrows scrunched faintly, as if he were looking for the right word in English. “…For his time with Alyson,” he finished.

  He paused, glancing at her with those light gray eyes.

  “I wondered,” he said, after another polite pause. “When you spoke to him, did he tell you what hurt him in the woods?”

  For a moment she just looked at him blankly.

  Then she raised an eyebrow, snorting.

  “Revik?” Relaxing in spite of herself, she folded her arms. “You know him. Or, I assume you do. He was vague. He was also a little preoccupied. I asked him about it, sure. He said you…” She gestured towards Balidor, seer-fashion. “The Adhipan… had reason to believe Terian or someone else might be ‘engineering’ something. He didn’t say what. He also didn’t say what that had to do with his face.”

  She paused, giving him the chance to fill in the blanks.

  When he didn’t, she cleared her throat.

  “Well? Is it true?” she said.

  Balidor hesitated. He made a “more or less” sign with his hand.

  “Is it some kind of weapon?”

  “No.” Balidor’s brows drew together. “Not exactly.”

  He hesitated again, and Cass found herself studying those gray eyes.

  “I have noticed a tendency,” he said next. “Of Dehgoies Revik’s. He seems to not, well… share things. With his wife.” He studied Cass's expression. “Do you know what I mean?”

  Cass looked at his serious face, and realized he wasn’t reading her. He was waiting for her to tell him. Something about the unspoken politeness of that gesture disarmed her completely. She dropped the guardedness of her tone.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I do. So does Allie. It drives her crazy, actually.”

  “So… do you think it unlikely he would have told her what happened to him?”

  Cass thought about that for a moment. Again, she felt the Adhipan leader waiting. If he was reading her, he was really damned good at hiding it.

  “I don’t know.” She picked up her tea, propping her elbow on her crossed arm. “Honestly, I don’t think he hides things from her on purpose. He just avoids telling people things that might upset them… and he worries about upsetting Allie more than anyone. He also doesn’t seem to think it’s important a lot of the time… sort of an unspoken ‘need to know’ rule. He’s not the chattiest guy in the first place, if you hadn’t noticed.” She smiled, putting down the tea. “He can give a lecture like nobody’s business, though.”

  Balidor nodded, his face respectful. “You think it unlikely he told her, then?”

  She frowned. “I didn’t say that. She’s his wife.” Remembering his face when she’d last seen him, she snorted, letting it turn into more of a laugh. “…Although, to be honest, I think he had other things on his mind when he left here.”

  Balidor gazed out over the rain-filled valley.

  He looked up then and smiled, accepting a cup of tea from the old man who owned the restaurant. He bowed before speaking a few polite words to the human in Tibetan. The human smiled in return, speaking back with a nearly toothless mouth.

  Cass watched the hunched, white-haired human disappear back through the cloth-covered doorway.

  Cass said, “Whatever it is… do you want Revik to tell her about it? Or not?”

  Balidor gave her a sideways glance, sipping his tea.

  “I will be honest,” he said, clicking softly. “I wish for them to enjoy this time together. And yet, it is imperative that she understand the current risks. I also do not want to find myself in the unhappy position of being forced to tell her things about which her mate did not see fit to inform her.”

  He paused, giving Cass a serious look with those light gray eyes.

  “He is likely to be… touchy. When they return.”

  “Yeah,” Cass said, grinning. “I can understand that.”

  He met her gaze. Then he smiled in return. “Yes. I see that you do.”

  “So what happened in Sikkim?” Cass said. “Can you tell me?”

  There was a short pause.

  Then Balidor sighed again, his eyes concerned as he stirred his tea.

  “It is difficult,” he said. “You are human.”

  Cass’s smile grew stiff. “I’m aware of that.”

  “I believe you are a trustworthy person,” Balidor said. “But any hunter could read you for information if they wished. In addition, you were already targeted once by our enemies, due to your closeness to the Bridge.”

  After a pause, she shrugged. “I appreciate the honesty. I guess.”

  There was a silence while she looked out over the rooftop. Her eyes scanned the increasingly limited view of the town now that a thick mist had begun to pervade the valley. Watching it slide around a group of trees standing below the restaurant’s roof, she focused on a monkey climbing down a string of prayer flags, its dark eyes concentrated.

  After a pause, Balidor smiled.

  “You likely have not witnessed this yet with seers? This bonding?”

  “You mean Revik and Allie?” Cass shook her head. “No, but I’ve heard people joking about it. Are they both going to come back crazy?”

  Balidor clicked humorously even as he gestured in the negative.

  “They will be different. Some of this is biology.” He gave her a sideways smile. “Also, I think you are right. Sharing information about his time in Sikkim is unlikely to be his priority, given the circumstances. If Dehgoies did not tell her what happened when he first saw her, it is unlikely she will know anything before they return.”

  Cass shifted in her chair. “What do you mean?” she said. “They’ll have to talk for part of the time, right? Go for walks. Play backgammon.”

  He made a line in the air with a finger, a seer’s “no.”

  “That is unlikely,” he said. “Not for a few weeks, at least. Given the amount of time they waited, it could be longer.” He gave her another faint smile. “They will talk, yes. But not in the way you mean.”

  “A few weeks?” she said. “Seriously?”

  He shrugged, stirring his tea. He laid his spoon on the rickety table.

  When his eyes met hers next, they were serious again, almost somber.

  “And you, Cassandra?” he said. “How are you doing… with all that has happened to you?”

  Interest returned to his gray eyes, and it was more than polite.

  She hesitated at the look there, then shrugged, letting her eyes return to the rain sheeting down over the valley.

  “I don’t sleep well,” she said.

  He clicked sympathetically, a near purr. When she glanced at him a second time, she caught him staring at her. The stare didn’t make her nervous though, or seem to require anything from her in answer.

  After another moment, she felt herself starting to relax. Copying his pose, she stretched out her legs, crossing her ankles. He took another sip of tea before his eyes flickered back to the valley.

  They sank into a companionable silence. The sky had just begun to darken, the clouds to turn scarlet and paler shades of pink.

  Together, they watched the sun set over the mountains.

  28

  HONEYMOON

  IN THE DISTANCE, windows shatter in an old an
d rusted warehouse. I see a boy with black hair laughing, screaming into the sky…

  I lifted my head, squinting to see through the pitch dark of the room.

  I could still hear the sound of breaking glass.

  We’d made it to the bed somehow.

  I didn’t know how or when. Revik lay wrapped around me, my legs curled around and between his. He held me tightly, rearranging his long form, and…

  I hear voices, as if from far away.

  The clearing lay in darkness but for a few lights swinging in a half-ring, obscuring shadowy forms. The sun has already disappeared. I don’t remember it leaving and the rain hasn’t stopped, but it has grown colder. I try to move…

  …and let out a short gasp.

  My whole body hurt, seemingly from my scalp down to my feet, but my light wound into his as soon as he responded to my body’s jerk. The pulling started again, somewhere in the area of my navel.

  Images rose from before we’d passed out on the bed. My fingers coiling his wrist. I’d lain below him, on my stomach, both of our bodies slick with sweat and he’d been reading me, fighting not to lose it as I got close. I looked back, and for a moment, we were somewhere else, and the trees closed in around us.

  Open, his eyes glowed a brilliant, emerald green in the dark.

  It had taken him longer than me to really let go.

  He was a lot stronger than me, for one thing. He’d been afraid he’d hurt me, he said. What he didn’t say was, he’d still been afraid I wouldn’t react well to him, if he really let himself go. He’d worked as a pro; he worried I’d think he was perverted, that I’d be unfamiliar with the inherent kinks in seer sex… his sexuality in particular, which he seemed to think might be weirder than most, for reasons I couldn’t quite discern from his fleeting thoughts, but had something to do with others’ reactions to him.

  The virgin thing turned him on. It touched him, too, more than he seemed to feel comfortable admitting to me, at least at first––something about seers leaving imprints during sex, and him only feeling me there.

  It also made him nervous.

  When I finally got him there, it didn’t result in kink, per se.

  I saw it in his eyes.

  It slid away from him, tumbling faster until his whole face changed, growing younger than I’d ever seen it, nearly unrecognizable just before he rolled me to my back. His pain wrapped into me, thick and almost desperate. He felt lost inside it, an aloneness that bordered on self-hate, a wanting that felt old, yet somehow still specific to me. He made love to me like he was trying to break something in himself, his arms wrapped around me so that I could barely move, his eyes on my face, going so deep I cried out at each thrust.

  His fear paralyzed me. Fear that I would leave him… that someone would take me, that we would be separated again, that he would drive me off. It grew nearly violent by the time he came, until he bit my shoulder, fighting his way deeper inside me, asking me over and over with his light if I loved him.

  We’d been in front of the fireplace.

  I’d just given him head for the first time, and somehow, that seemed to affect him more than intercourse––at that point, at least.

  He’d wanted to fuck again almost before we’d even finished.

  Instead he held me down, returning the favor until I couldn’t form coherent words.

  He used his light to hold me on the edge for hours. By the end, both of us were crying, and I was begging him. He got me to make promises, to admit to things I’d never told anyone, to open my light and heart until I could barely tell us apart. He wanted me to tell him about everyone I’d ever loved before him.

  When I was half out of my head, at the point where I’d do anything he asked, he pinned me down and fucked me with his cock. He brought me to climax after climax before he came himself.

  His body wracked with something that might have been a sob, that seemed to break him in half toward the end. I couldn’t hold everything he sent, everything he wanted of me. Guilt wrapped into the pain he sent, guilt around what he’d done… and around a kind of mind-numbing possessiveness he couldn’t seem to control.

  He said a lot. During, and after.

  One thing he told me explained a few things.

  Apparently, Maygar went to Cairo to tell Revik that we’d fallen in love.

  He’d claimed I wanted a divorce. He even tried to pay Revik off to bring severance proceedings against me. When Revik refused to do anything until he heard it directly from me, Maygar taunted him about our supposed sex life, giving out enough detail to be pretty convincing.

  Eventually, Revik lost his cool.

  He’d believed Maygar, though.

  He’d gone back to Seertown believing that, until I told him I loved him and seemed confused about his references to my screwing other men. He’d still more than half-believed we’d had sex––pretty much up until the instant he was fully inside me.

  He’d been ashamed of that, but it more bewildered me.

  When I asked him why in god’s name Maygar would do any of that, Revik looked at me like I was the crazy one.

  “He’s in love with you, Alyson! D’ gaos. Don’t tell me you didn’t know? Half the fucking compound knew… even before that stunt he pulled. Or do you think he wanted you as a wife just to hurt me? That he’d risk his life just for that?”

  I didn’t have an answer for that, either.

  He wasn’t the only one who acted less than rational. I found myself crying at one point, even apart from what he’d done. I hit him, too, right in the face… so angry about Kat and the woman on the ship that I didn’t actually feel sane. He held me down when I swung at him again. Then he cried, too, when I told him I’d never forgiven him.

  I traced scars on his skin, letting myself really see them, and see how many he’d collected while he was young––really young, long before he’d been a soldier or infiltrator. White with age, they stretched and changed shape as his back and shoulders broadened.

  He’d been small as a kid, he said, even for a seer.

  Under me, he made a sound, coiling an arm around my shoulders. He pulled me against him, kissing my neck, and I bit my lip to keep my mind focused.

  I need the bathroom, I told him.

  It took him another second of thought to let me go.

  I separated us with an effort, then climbed to my feet, stumbling to the bathroom door. I walked like I was drunk. It felt like something inside me had been smashed and was slowly knitting itself back together into a different shape.

  Closing the door, I sat on the toilet.

  After wincing my way through that experience, I pulled the flush chain and stood. I found myself staring at the bamboo-enclosed shower, fighting to think as I did, knowing only that I wanted something. After another moment of concentration, I figured out how to run the water. I had just put my hand into the stream when I heard a creak and turned.

  He stood there, eyes unfocused, dark hair sticking up around his head. He glanced around the small space, as if not quite sure what he wanted.

  I found myself looking at him. I’d never seen him naked in full light.

  “Are you okay?” I said.

  Thinking, he nodded. He saw me looking at him then and moved closer, sliding his arms around me where I stood. For a moment we just stood there, and I felt him prodding me to keep looking while he kissed my shoulder.

  I glanced up after a moment, almost shyly.

  “Is that another tattoo?” I said.

  Clan mark. He kissed my mouth, tugging my hand to the blue and black series of curved lines. I watched his cock harden as I stroked them.

  “Do you have any others?” I said.

  Thinking, he turned around, pointing to his shoulder.

  Sword and Sun. A fairly elaborate one. He wore Syrimne’s mark.

  “When did you get that?” I said, touching it. “It looks different from the ones I’ve seen other seers wear. A different design.”

  I don’t know. Before. Sometim
e before the memory wipe.

  Like the arm band?

  Yes. He tugged my fingers back to the clan mark. I let him pull me closer. I was still caressing the tattoo on his groin when he kissed me again.

  For a long moment, we stood there, kissing. He brought me to the floor.

  …until he raised his head, looking back over his shoulder.

  I heard running water, loud in my ears, and blinked around at where we lay, confused by the murkiness of the room. I was astride him, immersed in clouds of steam. He looked up at me, gesturing towards the shower, using seer sign language, probably out of habit since I still only knew about half of the words.

  Even so, I understood. Sliding up and off him, I gasped, standing shakily. I took his hand when he reached up, leaning backwards to help him to his feet. I brought him with me into the bamboo stall.

  The water was still warm, since it was the Asian style of heater, one that heated water right before it came through the nozzle. I wondered how long it had been running.

  It was hard to care.

  Once inside, we left each other alone.

  …until he shampooed my hair, which led to my back, then the rest of me.

  When I started to return the favor, we ended up against the back wall, and he supported me with his arms while we made love again. He started slow… we both did… but like every other time since that time in front of the fire, something kicked in, and by the end I was holding onto him and the wall, asking him for…

  …I closed my eyes, falling backwards into a sprawl on the bed.

  My hair was still wet from the shower. The sheets were cool on my back and legs.

  Intensely comfortable, I felt myself starting to drift off.

  Then he left the room.

  I sat up, alarmed. Anxiety made it difficult to think, about its cause or even where I was… where I’d been for what felt like an odd blank stretch in the dark, a timelessness that confused me only when I tried to pin it down.

  I’d just made up my mind to go look for him when he reappeared in the doorway.

  His arms and hands held a pitcher of water, a bowl of something, and what looked like a glass with utensils stuck inside. He set the pitcher on a night table near the headboard and dumped the rest of it on the bed, crawling in next to me. I kissed him, and he returned my affection as though weeks had separated us, instead of minutes.