She gave him another flat look. “Lay off him, Jon. He’s holding it together reasonably well under the circumstances.”
“Sure he is.”
“He’s fine, Jon.”
“He wakes up crying every night! He’s fucking drunk, Chan… or haven’t you been paying attention?”
She waved this off dismissively. “You don’t understand.”
“What?” Jon felt his anger rise. “Let me guess, because I’m human?”
“He’ll get us inside! His plan is good, Jon… better than what any of us came up with when we ran scenarios on the plane. It may even work without this turning into a war.”
“And if he goes back to how he was?” Jon said in a fierce whisper. “You know… when he was a Rook. Do you think Allie will thank him for that? Or thank us for standing by and letting it happen?”
When Chandre turned back to the map, clicking her tongue, Jon caught her arm with his good hand, forcing her to turn.
“Come on, Chan! I’m not the only one who’s noticed. I’ve watched him threaten at least four people today alone with either torture or death and I don’t think in any way he was bluffing.” When she clicked at him again, rolling her eyes dismissively, he clutched her tighter. “He flat-out doesn’t care how many he kills, human or seer. He’s planning on killing people, Chan. Not as unavoidable collateral damage… as part of his strategy! Does that sound like the Revik you know? He doesn’t care if he starts a war––”
“Code won’t save us in this, Jon!” she said, her voice warning. “Weren’t you at least watching the news feeds when Seertown was bombed into rubble?”
“I was there too, Chan,” Jon said, genuinely angry that time. “Don’t fucking go there with me, all right? I was right in the middle of that with you.”
“Fine. Well, how many deaths do you suppose they worked into the game plan for that little operation?” Her jaw hardened again, even as she gestured shortly with one hand, flipping her braids back with a jerk of her head.
“He had her dressed up like a fucking whore. His whore. Terian is laughing at us, Jon! He deserves whatever he gets from Dehgoies and I’ll do whatever I can to see to it that he receives it.”
Jerking her arm out of his grasp, she closed up the map, giving him another hard look before walking back towards the staging room.
Jon just looked after her.
There was no point chasing her down. She couldn’t hear him.
Chandre was like the rest of them now.
The longer they stayed with this group of tattooed seers from the mountains, the more angry and anti-human they all got. Jon glanced around himself again, wondering if that came from Revik, too. It hadn’t escaped his notice that his friend had a streak of racism a mile wide at times. Allie grumbled about it. Even Yerin mentioned it once.
Lately, it had been worse.
There was something wrong. Jon knew it had something to do with the rebel seers and their creepy leader, Salinse. Revik seemed to know it too; he just didn’t care.
Knowing him, this was his idea of a compromise.
There was something unnerving about the fact that this whole army of strangers just handed over operations to Revik, no questions asked. No matter who his wife was, or what had happened to her, it just felt off to Jon. All of them, even that monster, Wreg, who seemed to hate Revik less the more he turned into a complete bastard, did whatever Revik told them without question.
Sitting down on one of the plush chairs that probably had stains all over it if anyone ever shone a black light on it, Jon closed his eyes, trying to calm the worry twisting his gut.
Something about the look on Revik’s face…
Whatever Chan said, Revik wasn’t handling this well at all.
Jon hadn’t given himself much time to think about what Allie might be going through right now. He just couldn’t go there, not yet.
He knew Revik probably wouldn’t be able to block those thoughts out, though, not totally. He’d be making connections to everything he, Jon and Cass experienced under Terian. He’d be imagining things with the boy. He was clearly off-balance from the whole sex-marriage thing he and Allie were in the middle of.
So yeah, Jon got why he might be losing his mind on some level.
Still, it scared him, seeing Revik like this.
Part of him thought if he couldn’t do anything for his sister, he could at least keep her husband from imploding while he tried to save her life. He’d even considered trying to contact Vash––or maybe Balidor––but Revik made it pretty clear he didn’t want to talk to them, either, at least not until this thing was finished.
He wished like hell Cass was there.
Cass had an odd knack of getting under Revik’s defenses. Revik would listen to her. He might yell at her, too, but he’d hear her out at least.
Jon had no idea where Cass was, though.
Anyway, she’d been acting pretty damned weird the last time he saw her, too.
BALIDOR PAUSED ON the rocky trail, hands on his hips.
He gazed up the side of the nearly sheer cliff, to where Cass and the mountainous Wvercian edged along a hairline path hugging the striated rock wall. Veins of red and black twisted through the mostly-gray cliff face, making it look like cut flesh.
Despite the altitude and the fact of her human biology, Cass seemed to be able to walk for hours without showing any sign of tiring.
Balidor was beginning to wonder how he’d let himself get talked into this. When Dehgoies refused his help, he should have joined his Adhipan brothers and sisters, escorting refugees back to the Pamir and to Vash.
“Cass!” he shouted up. “Are you all right?”
“Yep,” she called back, somewhere between talking loud and shouting. “I think we’re pretty close now. This looks exactly like the drawing in the book. Baguen thinks so too.”
“Do you have any idea of the odds against that?” Balidor said in some exasperation. “And anyway, that book could be a decoy, Cass, or––”
“No,” Cass shouted back. “This is right.”
Balidor noticed the Wvercian didn’t seem to care one way or the other.
But then, it was pretty clear he was following Cass like she was some kind of human prophet, maybe because of her relationship to the Bridge. Balidor still didn’t know his name, although she called him some form of “Baguen” which Balidor suspected was a pidgin word in Wvercian she’d misheard.
They’d been hiking for days, with only the provisions the three of them carried on their backs, and the equipment Balidor had on him when he'd left Seertown with the Rebels, including his gun.
He’d managed to hunt on two of those days.
Water hadn’t been an issue, so far at least, but he grew increasingly uncomfortable with his diminishing ammunition stores and anxious about what they were doing out here, exactly. Cass seemed determined that this was the best way to help Dehgoies and the Bridge, but his faith in her was beginning to falter, given everything.
Whatever she’d intended to accomplish, he couldn’t get a read on it with his sight. For him, that was more faith than his rational mind could allow.
Yet, he had to admit, for the first time in several decades, if not centuries, he couldn’t say there was anything directly pressing for him to be doing.
Seertown was deserted. The Adhipan had scattered.
Those who hadn’t gone after Dehgoies and the Bridge were leading caravans of refugees to the Pamir, Sikkim or Ladakh to assemble and determine their losses. Some of those groups would be en route for weeks, if not months. Balidor could be helping them, of course, but again… his presence was not strictly needed.
The seer government was in shambles, but Balidor himself couldn’t do much about that. It would fall to Vash to reorganize the Council with whoever remained.
He’d heard directly from the remnants of the Seven right before he, Cass and the Wvercian left that dugout in Southwestern China. The vast majority of the news was bad. Yerin had been kill
ed by the Americans––or possibly accidentally by the Rebellion. The Americans still denied their involvement, and the Rebels maintained they’d only appeared following the assault, but in Yerin’s case, the end result remained the same.
Vash was in mourning for his son, which would slow the government rebuilding.
Likely as a result of his absence, and that of the Bridge, the Council had effectively gone on hiatus for now. Balidor didn’t yet want to think about what they would do if that hiatus ended up being permanent.
Balidor received a list of the dead.
He could keep it all in his aleimi because he was a seer. He could have recited it, if such a thing were required, but it was bad enough just to know the names himself. He had known many of the dead personally.
Beyond that, the sheer number of them was devastating. If not the end, Balidor knew he might be seeing the beginning of the end of his race.
He should have gone with Dehgoies.
He knew why Dehgoies didn’t want him along; that had been clear when he made his excuses, even before he hooked into that network of Dreng filth just because it might save him a few days in recovering his mate.
Vash had warned him that Revik retained some attachment issues still. When Balidor asked what Vash thought about the Adhipan recruiting the ex-Rook, it had been Vash’s only misgiving. Revik had spent too much of his life alone, Vash said. He retained a vulnerability in that lack, and would until his mate helped him to heal it.
So Balidor should have gone with him to America, but he hadn’t, and now they might have a problem greater than the Bridge being owned by a lunatic like Terian.
If Dehgoies turned again, with his relationship to the Bridge, he became a serious liability. In fact, they might have to find a way to kill him without harming her––or worse, killing them both to prevent the harm they could inflict together, which far outweighed her ability to help the humans in the coming Displacement.
He didn’t know what to do about that right then, either.
Chances were, the issue couldn’t even be addressed until Allie was out of Terian’s custody. As much as Balidor hated to admit it, Dehgoies, dark or light, was their best chance to accomplish that without getting her killed.
She couldn’t be allowed to stay with the boy, no matter what occurred. A dark Dehgoies, daunting though that prospect was, they could handle. It was nothing compared to a dark Syrimne-in-training with the Bridge at his side.
So Balidor continued to follow Cass and her Wvercian giant, all the while trying to decide how long he could continue his stalling tactic before he turned and walked the long road back to Dharamsala or Delhi for a plane to North America.
He was approaching his limit, he’d decided that morning.
He was still staring up at Cass, watching her feel her way along the face of the sheer, ribboned rock wall, when her arm abruptly disappeared.
Balidor blinked, looking again.
Her arm still appeared to end at the elbow, the rest stuck inside the smooth, featureless stone. He saw a grin break out over her face, distorting the thick scar that bisected her countenance. She flipped back her dyed, black and red hair.
Then, seemingly in front of his very eyes, she disappeared.
“Hey!” Balidor yelled up the cliff in Prexci. “Baguen! What happened?”
The giant grunted, looking down at him. He touched the rock wall where Cass had been, seconds before. Balidor saw his fingers disappear. Then, while he watched, the Wvercian disappeared too.
Balidor shouted up again. “Cass! Goddamn it!”
Neither of them answered.
Frustrated, and now a little afraid, he vaulted up the path to reach the ledge.
He slid his body and feet along the narrow edge. Fumbling to keep a good grip on the wall, he made his way to the sheer drop where the two of them had been standing. He lost his footing a few times, spraying gravel with his organic-tipped boots in his haste to reach the last point he’d seen her on the path. It was hardly a path at all, really. Instead, it looked more like a trail for goats, a narrow, pebbled ledge with only intermittent foot-holds.
How Cass managed to get up here in the first place…
He paused, concentrating as he reached the place in the cliff wall where the two of them disappeared. He felt over the rock with his fingers, looking for openings, any place where the sediment gave. Taking a breath, he pressed harder, focusing on the area where he could still feel the imprints of her hands.
…and suddenly, he found himself inside the mountain.
There was no warning, no transition. If he didn’t know better, Balidor would have thought he was absorbed by the rock itself. Or perhaps teleported.
Blinking to adjust his eyes, he glanced briefly at the rock wall behind him.
He’d examine that later. He needed to find Cass.
He stretched out his aleimic light, looking around the cave in which he found himself. Instead of being entirely dark, it was dimly lit with phosphorescence on the walls, a living paste. He touched it briefly with his gloved fingers, inhaling the wet, rotted smell before making a face and moving deeper into the cave.
“Cass?” He kept his voice low.
Using his light, he followed the traces of her aleimi deeper into the cave. Reaching what he thought had been the end, he realized it merely constituted a bend in a longer corridor. He followed the curve of rock. He’d barely walked ten paces when he found himself faced with another dead end.
This one appeared to be made of solid volcanic glass, a deep black in color. It looked like a flat, black mirror.
“D’gaos,” he muttered. “Where is that human?”
Extending his light, he realized there was a larger space on the other side of the rock, and reached out with a hand. He felt over the surface, until again…
…he found himself someplace else.
For a moment he could only stand there, blinking in the sharp increase in illumination. Glancing around, he focused on the wall of organic machines, staring at them in a kind of disbelief before Cass's voice jerked him back to the present.
“Hey, ‘Dori.”
Balidor turned, found himself staring into the elfin face of Cass.
She motioned him over impatiently, her hands hovering over what appeared to be the main console for at least a portion of the organic machines.
“Do you recognize any of these controls?” she asked, pointing at the array of keys. “I can’t read the language.”
Approaching warily, Balidor stared down at the console, then around at the larger bank of machinery. The row of organics slid deeper into the rock walls than he’d first realized.
“Where the fuck is this?” he said in English.
Cass looked up, grinning. Her eyes shone with a light he hadn’t seen in them in all the months he’d known her. There was an easy joy there, a kind of happy sense of triumph that reassured him somehow.
“See that?” she said, pointing to a monitor.
Balidor followed her finger, staring at the virtual, or VR projection. His brow furrowed as he tried to make out the image on the screen, to make sense of it.
“What is it?” he said finally.
“Space,” she said, laughing. “Can you believe it?”
“Space?” He looked at her blankly. “Who is in space?”
Her grin widened, filled with so much joy Balidor couldn’t help but smile back, bewildered by the depth of emotion there.
“Feigran is,” she said. “But we’re going to bring him home.”
41
BROKEN
I SAT CRUMPLED in the corner of the cell. I couldn’t move.
My mind displayed flat static. I worried I’d been broken. That I’d never work right again. I fingered parts of myself, but couldn’t quite bring myself to look.
I couldn’t move. I really couldn’t move.
I knew I was being punished… had been punished… would be again soon.
Threats blurred in my mind with memories of phys
ical pain. I couldn’t see very well. I waited for him. I waited for…
My mind slid back into static, then returned to its slow loop.
I’d been punished. Punished for being bad. I couldn’t remember. Nothing moved right. All the muscles in my body… everything felt somehow paralyzed. It was a blessing. I never wanted it to wear off. For the moment…
I obsessed on a single detail. I was drooling. I fought to keep my mouth closed. I rested my chin on my knees. I turned my head sideways, but neither thing worked. I’d been propped there, like a broken doll.
Blood covered the floor. Quietly.
The patch didn’t seem bigger than it had been before, but I couldn’t be sure when that was. I might be dying. I couldn’t feel anything, but I might be. I wanted to care. I wanted desperately to have an opinion about that, but I couldn’t find one.
He’d taken me to another of those green, tile rooms.
I felt pieces of this, but blissfully absent of my light. No hordes of human guards. Just him. I’d done something––something to make him angry. Or scare him, maybe. I couldn’t remember what. I let my mind hum to a flat, toneless line, and wished more than anything I could fall asleep, just be not there for awhile longer.
He’d liked it, a lot. He’d wanted my light. He wanted…
When I heard the voice, I was sure I was dreaming.
“Hey! Bridge!”
I knew the voice, even in a loud whisper.
I dragged my head up, once more resting my chin on my knees. I was still drooling. I couldn’t move my hands to wipe it off. My fingers lay splayed at my sides, palms open. I stared at the broad, Asian face.
For some reason, the tears in his eyes were what surprised me the most.
“Bridge.” He knelt down, so that we were close to the same level. He held out a hand, eyes bright, tears running down his face. “Come here. Can you?”
I fought to keep my eyes open, looking at Maygar’s face.
I had to be dreaming. I had to be.
“ALLIE!”
The voice pierced my awareness, jerking my eyes open.
His panic frightened me, made me cringe.
Shield (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #2): Bridge & Sword World Page 45