The two prongs at the top of his spine unwound.
Then the mechanism clunked open entirely.
Wincing, Revik pulled it out of the holes in his neck, letting it drop to the dirt. For a moment, he only rubbed his neck, nodding again in thanks to the other seers, unable to speak. The world gained dimension around him as he flexed his light.
He could see the seers now, and relaxed a little.
He still couldn’t feel her.
He forced it out of his mind, even as the pain worsened briefly, making it hard to see at all. He looked up at the broad-faced seer. His outline appeared less flat, but if anything, the three of them looked even more intimidating.
“Thank you,” he said, nodding again. Gratitude briefly closed his throat. “Will you take me as far as Seertown? I will pay you. Well. Very well.”
At their puzzled looks, he looked around at each face.
“I will pay you very well,” he repeated in Mandarin. “I will pay each one of you, for even the loan of a horse, if you cannot take me. Simply tell me how best to make arrangements with you.”
The leader glanced at the other two.
The man in the saddle shrugged, gesturing vaguely, nodding towards Revik.
The leader sighed, facing him.
Seertown is gone, little one, he sent, speaking directly into Revik’s mind. They bombed it into the ground. Just this past night.
Revik halted in mid-motion, about to take another clump of greens into his mouth. He could only stare at the hulking seer. His mind tried to reject the information, then to make sense of it. He couldn’t get his mind off Allie, even for this; he couldn’t help but think about this in terms of her.
It explained why Balidor hadn’t come at least.
“Who?” he said finally. “American?” He made the correct motion in sign language. “The planes? Were they American?”
The giant seer smiled, but his eyes grew flat.
Who cares which worm flag they fly? They came in their dead machines and they bombed the town until every seer in it was run away or murdered.
Taking his canteen from Revik’s hand, he took a long drink, gesturing up towards the house.
We are here for you, brother. We come seeking the Bridge and her mate.
Revik fought the pain in his chest. He clutched at the cotton shirt, forcing more food in his mouth, if only to distract himself.
Did Balidor send you? he sent finally.
The giant seer smiled, but Revik once again saw him exchange looks with the others. They still weren’t telling him something.
He kept his nerves out of his light.
“Does any of you have a smoke?” he said, to dispel the tension. “Hiri?”
The one on the horse threw him a stick. Revik put it to his lips. He inhaled on the end while the one who’d shot at his chains leaned close, cupping his rough hand around a flame housed in a silver lighter.
We were sent by friends, the leader sent. We will take you there now. Smiling, he gestured towards the wooden bowl. “Eat!” he said. We ride soon.
Where are we going? Revik sent. He kept his thoughts neutral.
The larger seer made a vague gesture.
To base camp first. We will get supplies, fix your leg. He smiled, his dark eyes flat, doll-like. Then we go looking for her, yes?
Revik smiled, bowing politely in gratitude, but he felt his mind growing sharper as he scanned around the giant’s light.
The youngest of the Wvercians motioned for him to hold out his arms. Using the same cutting tool that broke the collar, he cracked the bracelets of the handcuffs, one by one. Revik continued to focus his light on the other two, rubbing his wrists.
The thing about Seertown appeared to be true.
He got glimpses of burning buildings, the town’s evacuation sirens going off while planes screamed overhead. He’d felt something earlier, anyway. When Terian’s guards were kicking the crap out of him on the steps. Whatever it had been, it made the Wvercians’ story ring true, even apart from what he felt in their minds.
None of the three seemed to be trained as infiltrators, but he was extremely careful as he scanned their light. He couldn’t afford to anger them.
For now, it was better to pretend he believed everything they told him.
In any case, he was reasonably sure they weren’t taking him to Balidor.
THE RIDE ACROSS the field and down through a narrow, rock-filled canyon via a winding goat trail wasn’t comfortable.
Even when they reached the green meadow at the other side of the canyon, every step of the horse jostled his leg, sending harsh stabs up to his hip. He’d broken at least one major bone.
On his instructions, they’d brought him the roan with the red face, and saddled him with a few of the sheepskin blankets, thinking a regular saddle would be too rigid. They were likely right, but having to grip with his legs to stay on was its own kind of torture. He felt sick within an hour from pain.
He was having a harder time not thinking about Allie.
Away from the house, it seemed to worsen.
The worse the physical pain got, the more it confused him, blending in with wanting her. A part of his light scanned for her compulsively, even as he fought out the images that wanted to play out in the forefront of his mind with her and Terian. Or, conversely, her and the boy. He tried to get the three Wvercians to talk. He tried to learn more about Seertown, where they were taking him––anything to feel he was using the time, not just wasting it while she got further away.
They didn’t avoid his questions entirely, but they circumvented them in odd tangents, giving vague answers whenever he tried to pin them down on details.
After multiple queries, he finally learned that the Americans had, indeed, been involved in the bombing of Seertown.
Revik always assumed most seers knew of the infighting in the seer community between the Rooks and the Seven, and that the Rooks had heavily infiltrated the United States government, as well as SCARB and the World Court.
The Wvercians seemed to find such details unimportant, however.
To them, the source of the problem was clean, straightforward, and could be encompassed in a single, all-inclusive word: humans.
Revik wondered if there’d ever been a time when the world seemed so simple to him.
He was unable to find out from them if the Council of Seven escaped intact, or even if Vash had lived. They were able to tell him that the compound suffered multiple and direct hits, and that the old House on the Hill had been hit as well. The stone structure predated first contact with the humans, and was one of the oldest known seer-built structures standing in nearly its original form. The catacombs underneath the stone mansion housed irreplaceable artifacts, even bodies of the first race prior to their extinction.
It was also home to an extensive archive that housed original scriptures and other documents brought from the Pamir.
Revik had never been invited down there, but the place was considered sacred.
He tried to think if he had any other contacts living nearby.
His mind drifted to Tarsi.
She wasn’t exactly a soldier these days, but he didn’t have a lot of options.
The reality was, Revik didn’t have many friends in India or China anymore. He hadn’t spent much time in Asia at all since his “rehabilitation.” What little time he had spent in Asia after leaving the Rooks, he’d spent in caves with reclusive monks, in a kind of hell of his mind and light, with only monthly visits from Vash to monitor his progress.
He certainly hadn’t made any friends.
Those years consisted of meditation and light restructuring, mostly under the guarded eye of a sect of monks who, with only a few exceptions, rarely spoke to him.
When that phase of his penance ended, Vash relocated him immediately, initially to Russia, where Revik spent more years alone. At the time, Vash made it sound like that was part of his penance, too, so Revik hadn’t felt like he could exactly refuse. He�
�d been out of the Pamir’s caves for less than a week before he was handed a new passport and a bus ticket to Delhi, followed by a flight to Berlin and then on to Moscow where housing for him had already been arranged.
After Russia, he didn’t return to Asia, either, but flew straight from Moscow to the United Kingdom. At that point, his surveillance of Allie required more on-the-ground work, which meant he needed to be accessible––but not so close that the Rooks might use him to find her. The Seven found him a paid position in London, working for humans.
He hadn’t been back to Asia since, not until now.
Galaith never had him working in Asia much, either, at least from what he could remember. Well, apart from Vietnam, but even that was a short tour, and he’d spent most of it underground, conducting interrogations.
Not long after he’d left those caves, he’d been formally tasked with protecting Allie, so that was part of it. They didn’t want it to seem he was doing anything important––much less working for the Vash himself. They encouraged him to keep up a facade of a more “normal” seer life, one unaffiliated with either the Seven or the Rooks. That life primarily involved paid sex, his job for the humans, the odd infiltrator job, occasional recreational travel, and some socializing with other seers.
Nothing that would call attention to him, in other words.
Vash didn’t explicitly forbid him to return to Asia, but it was strongly implied that he wasn’t welcome there. He definitely wasn’t welcome in Seertown, but he was also strongly discouraged from visiting any other part of India, China or Southeast Asia.
Eventually, Vash didn’t want him in Russia, either, or even Eastern Europe, not even for visits.
When necessary, Revik met Vash in the Barrier, inside one of Vash’s many constructs.
When Revik got restless, he headed west, not east.
He’d tried not to take it personally.
It had to have been a controversial decision to allow him back at all, given who he was. He knew he was chosen to guard Allie partly because no one would have believed Vash would give him such an important responsibility. And there was Allie herself. Her security had to be a priority, as well as the necessity of keeping her, and therefore her protection, anonymous. He couldn’t be a regular fixture in Vash’s circle, or someone might decide he was worth monitoring a little more closely.
The cover had worked well. No one came near him in those years. He’d worked for the humans dutifully, and that felt appropriate, too.
He woke up when the roan splashed into a stream.
Jerking his head, he looked around in some alarm, realizing he’d dozed off. From the horse walking beside the roan, the seer with the scar on his face was watching him, curiosity in his dark eyes.
After a pause, the man grinned, pointing vaguely at Revik’s crotch.
“Married?” he said, leering. “Good, eh? The Bridge?”
Revik stared blankly at the seer. Biting back what he would have liked to say, he pulled the canteen off his belt, taking a long drink of water. He was a little feverish. He couldn’t afford to get sick, not for any reason.
How long? he asked the leader.
Not long, Small. Not long now.
Where are we going?
Not far. They are waiting for you already.
Waiting for me? Revik felt a brief flicker of hope. Who? Adhipan?
The man made a “more or less” gesture with his hand. Some Adhipan. We save who we can. Of the worthy.
“The worthy?” Revik said aloud. He fought his voice neutral. “Aren’t we all worthy… friend?”
The leader smiled. Can’t save everyone, little brother. Victory without quarter, yes? Have to keep your eyes on the end point.
Revik didn’t answer, but his nerves rose. Something in the wording of that response hit a less-often accessed part of his mind. The energetic after-tone of the words also resonated in his light in a way he didn’t much like.
He glanced down at his leg, wincing as the horse jostled it again. Blood was starting to seep through the organic bandages.
Whoever they really were, it didn’t matter.
He didn’t much care whose side he played on, not anymore.
31
MEN
THE EXPLOSION FLARED up out of the darkness under the trees.
Cass watched it go, feeling a part of her go silent inside.
She’d never been in a bombing before. If someone had told her a year ago that she would be in the mountains of Asia one day, living among seers and running from bombs dropped by American planes, she would have laughed.
She wasn’t laughing now.
The explosion seemed to originate from the area of town Balidor called the 8th District. Cass had seen bombs fall on the 8th earlier, so the fires must have found something larger and more flammable. It looked like half the district was on fire now.
Chandre had been going there.
She would have heard the planes, though, Cass reasoned. She was an infiltrator, so she’d probably been in lots of things like this.
Well, maybe not lots, but she hardly compared to members of the barista and musician slacker crowds Cass hung with back home. Anyway, Chandre had her seer powers. She could sidestep an explosion, just like Balidor had steered Cass away from that castle-like building right before the upper windows blew out from heat and flame.
Cass’s bigger worry was Jon.
He’d been asleep in the compound like the rest of them when the bombs first started to fall, but he took off somewhere before the groups started to check in, and Balidor hadn’t been able to locate him. Knowing Jon, he was probably pulling babies out of burning buildings or something. She just hoped the idiot didn’t get himself killed.
Even as she thought it, a formation of planes came around for another pass, veering lower to aim missiles at the town of Seertown proper. Cass winced as rockets screamed towards the main market, leaving white trails. They connected with brick and tile buildings in precise, symmetrical patterns, and explosions mushroomed out of the walls and roofs, collapsing whole stories, trembling the ground.
The rumbling concussions echoed throughout the small valley.
The whole thing felt unreal, but for the smell, the screaming and the people she saw––like the monk now running down the street below them, his robes on fire, his dark face covered in blood.
Swallowing, she looked away, up to the sky as another formation flashed overhead. Gripping her gun tighter, she blinked sweat and smoke out of her eyes, fighting to block out the screams. It was light out now, so these could be different planes, for all she knew.
It already felt like this had been going on for days.
The planes themselves still looked American to Cass, but she’d heard the seers arguing back and forth about that too, on the virtual network. The one advantage to being in a firefight; Cass could actually hear what was going on as seers dropped out of the Barrier to hide from other seers. They relied on regular old human technology to communicate instead, ironically because they were less likely to be overheard.
The castle-like structure seers called simply “The Old House” or “The House on the Hill,” burned high above Seertown itself. The castle’s ancient, symmetrical gardens burned as well, including the bare white trees with their animalistic-looking branches. They decorated the manicured lawn along a spiral path, interspersed with moss-covered statues and benches made of white stone.
It had been one of Cass's favorite places in Seertown. Now the main castle building and its grounds looked like something out of an Apocalyptic fairytale.
She watched fire blow out more windows on the upper floors, ribboning tapestries. It climbed higher when a breeze caught hold of the flames, jumping them to the next set of rooms. Ashes thrown by the wind joined black smoke clouds in the sky, twisting into cyclone-like shapes.
The scream of planes back to the far end of the valley snapped her out of her trance. Down the hill from where she and Balidor stood, a second, significantly hea
vier explosion trembled the ridge, shaking the ground under their legs.
Then a third.
That wasn’t from missiles; they must be back to dropping bombs. It had been dark when they started, and now the sun had passed the zenith in the sky.
They were trying to annihilate them––to kill off the seers for good.
“Maybe,” Balidor said quietly, looking out over the same scene.
Cass jumped. He’d been so still beside her, she’d forgotten how close he was.
She looked back at the 8th District. Plumes of fire rose, staining the black smoke and clouds briefly to red and gold. She saw a second burst of flame follow the first, blinked in the sudden radiance as it lit the disjointed array of brick buildings.
“It ignited something,” she said, unnecessarily. “Just how much ammo and fuel do you guys have stored up here?”
He focused on the same area of the 8th, his face granite.
Cass studied his expression. “Allie. Have you heard anything from––”
“No,” he said.
Cass was still watching Balidor’s face when the shots came.
Two of the nearby Adhipan dropped at once, ducking behind cover to return fire. Balidor grabbed Cass's wrist before she could turn her head.
He dragged her into a small grove of trees, pushing her up against a wide trunk. He held his gun but did not fire, shielding her with his arm and holding her against the thickest part of the tree. She touched her own gun, but he gave her a warning look.
Sighing, she took her hand off the holster.
More protection. He didn’t want to be responsible for killing the Bridge’s human.
It occurred to her also that he might be not-firing himself to help disguise their numbers. She’d heard infiltrators talk about how they often tried to obscure their forces in one direction or the other during military engagements.
Either way, she just stood there, wincing whenever bullets struck near enough to throw up chunks of wood. She watched Balidor’s face. He still held her against the trunk with one arm, using hand-signals to communicate with the other seers.
Shield (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #2): Bridge & Sword World Page 33