Letting his contempt grow more audible, he shrugged.
“The Sword has his own groupies, after all. It is not exactly a new experience for either of them, to have to tolerate hangers-on as a part of their reincarnation status. Perhaps you’d rather if he pretended it bothers him, out of compassion for a lesser being?”
Ditrini’s gaze grew cunning.
“So he doesn’t mind, then?” A thin smile ghosted his lips. “How magnanimous of him. I hadn’t realized the Sword would be so generous with his things.”
Balidor rolled his eyes, clicking. “He is not pleased with the abuse. But being angry at a rabid dog for biting a loved one doesn’t equate to viewing that rabid dog as a rival. He knows you had to rape her to pleasure yourself.”
Ditrini’s smile grew colder. “Whatever happy stories you tell yourselves, little brother. I’m sure she’s told him over and over how little she enjoyed it.”
Balidor clicked in annoyance. “Do you ever tire of these fictions you tell yourself?”
“Does he like the tricks I taught her, at least?” Ditrini’s lips thinned in another cold smile. “I would think he’d be grateful for all the years of experience I imparted… the dedication I showed to the task of improving his wife. She is so very young, after all. It would have taken her years to learn so much on her own. You should ask him, Balidor. Ask him if he will let his wife show you the wonderful things she learned––”
Balidor folded his arms, his face unmoving.
Gauging his expression, Ditrini smiled. “Do you not believe me, my brother? You should have heard my infiltrators rave about the way she took to her lessons…”
Catching images from the thoughts Ditrini deliberately aimed his way, Balidor flinched in spite of himself, already regaining his feet.
“You are out of time, brother,” he said, his voice cold. “I have told you how long you have. It is time to decide if you want to be a permanent fixture here.”
“Do you mean like when I bonded my precious girl to my infiltrator team, the most Esteemed and holy of Bridges?” Ditrini smiled wider, his silver eyes shining. “Since he cares so little about our time together, I’ll be sure and tell the Sword how thoroughly we accomplished that connection, she and I… with the help of all of my brothers and sisters of the Lao Hu.”
Anger rose in Balidor’s light, so quickly he had trouble controlling himself.
For a few seconds, he didn’t move, but only stood there, staring at the silver-eyed seer, shunting aside the images the other continued to fling at him.
In that silence, he hesitated, trying to decide.
He thought about it.
He really thought about just putting a bullet in that fucker’s head, right now.
It wasn’t a difficult impulse to rationalize. On more than one level, Balidor truly believed Ditrini might be too dangerous to leave alive. Moreover, he found it increasingly unlikely they would get much useful intelligence from him, even with the wires.
For a few more seconds, Balidor weighed the pros and cons of either and both, trying to decide, telling himself that spending any more time with this monster was an unacceptable waste of their valuable resources.
He knew Tenzi was right, too.
If he killed him right now––just shot him in the head, even without permission––Dehgoies would likely only clap him on the back and buy him a drink.
But Allie had been the one to make the call to keep him alive.
Balidor couldn’t bring himself to disobey her in this, especially given what she’d likely gone through at the hands of this jurekil’a mak rik’ali.
Vash told Balidor, more than once while he’d still been alive, to trust the Bridge.
“Tell my precious girl that I miss her.” Ditrini’s eyes held sex-pain when Balidor’s eyes met them next. “I miss her so terribly…”
Balidor’s jaw hardened to stone.
That time, when he spoke, it was with full awareness of what he said.
“They're all dead,” he told Ditrini. “The Bridge saw it in one of her prescient dreams. I saw it on her as plain as I see you right now.” Balidor’s voice grew colder. “Your venerable mistress. Your human masters. Down to the last child of the Lao Hu. They’re all dead, my brother. Nothing but a dark smudge of smoke where Beijing and your City used to live.”
He glanced at the organic clock, then back at the older seer. “It won't be long now, brother. Hours. Perhaps days, if they are lucky.”
Ditrini’s thick lips curled into an expressive frown.
Briefly, though, Balidor saw something else touch those silver eyes.
“You know this,” he said, frowning back. “You don’t care.”
The frown altered, even as the sharper light rose to those silver eyes. His superficial frown turned into a smirk, even as more pain coiled off his light.
“One queen takes her from me,” he said, smiling. “Another promises her to me… tells me she is mine forever. Which queen do you choose, brother? Which? The queen who gives you your heart? Or the one who tears it away?”
Balidor frowned. “Queen? What queen? Who makes this promise, brother?”
Ditrini’s harder look devolved back into the smirk, right before he sent another flicker of images Balidor’s way.
Balidor stepped back without thought, grimacing again.
Once more, he had to fight anger, along with a cloud of darker disgust.
“Enjoy your games, brother,” he said coldly. “Spend your last few hours, if you wish, coming up with more riddles, more ways to disgust us. Clearly you want these last few hours to pretend you’re in control, so enjoy them. They will slip by faster than you can imagine.”
He tapped his own temple.
“Remember––when your Lao Hu family dies, none will be left of those you bonded to the Bridge. Soon you will be gone too, my brother.”
The older seer’s eyes narrowed as he stared up at Balidor, as if he were trying to read him again through the collar. Feeling another coil of separation pain in his light, Balidor stepped back, suddenly wanting nothing more than to get out of the Lao Hu seer’s cell, as far away from his light as possible.
Even so, he’d gotten the answer he wanted. One of them, anyway.
He was about to leave for real, when Ditrini abruptly spoke.
“Remind my precious girl it’s not me they’ll be coming for,” he said. “It won’t be her husband, either. It’s her they want. It’s always been her.”
His voice held a thread of pain, even as the smile returned to his lips.
“…But my queen promised,” he said. “She promised. In the end, my precious girl will be mine, and mine alone.”
Balidor felt another flicker of disgust. “You know what they say of promises in wartime, brother,” he retorted. “Easy to make. Easier to break.”
Ditrini’s eyes didn’t waver. “That may have been true of her husband, brother. But I’m afraid you’ll find it’s never been true of me.”
Balidor’s fingers coiled back into fists.
He didn’t fully get the reference about Dehgoies.
Not for the first time, however, he suspected Allie would, if he repeated the words to her––which he had absolutely no intention of doing. He suspected a lot of Ditrini’s words were lobbed at him in the hopes that Allie would hear them at some point; it was one of the many reasons he remained grateful she had no interest in being involved.
Even without knowing the details, Balidor picked up enough of the flavor to question again, whether he should borrow Tenzi’s gun.
Reminding himself where his orders came from, he shook it off.
“Enjoy your fantasies, brother,” he said. “We will have more words soon.”
Ditrini laughed.
Ignoring him as best he could, Balidor opened his mind to the wider construct, specifically the station by the door.
Care to let me out, brothers and sisters? he sent.
The door opened before he’d finished thinking it.
Balidor walked directly toward the opening and to Tenzi, who stood there, a darker fury coloring his normally light-skinned face. His fingers touched the handle of his sidearm, as if he’d heard Balidor’s last thoughts and was preparing to offer it to him.
Even with Tenzi standing there, armed and with his fingers on the manual release for the gas, Balidor didn’t turn his back on Ditrini as he exited the cell.
“You’re right to be afraid of me, brother,” Ditrini called after him, his silver eyes strangely vacant. “She is, too. First order of business when I get out will be that tattoo on her back, the one her husband likes so much. I haven’t forgotten my promise to my precious girl about that. Carving his mark off her skin with my knife will only be the beginning…”
Ditrini’s eyes turned colder, into the killer’s eyes Balidor had first seen in Wreg’s mind.
“…Tell her husband that, honorable brother of the Adhipan. And tell him I’d be happy to give him a full tour of his wife’s training, once I’ve disciplined her properly. I’ll even demonstrate some of the finer points, in case he’s missed anything from what he’s sampled so far. He seems to be fairly detail-oriented, if our intelligence on him is at all correct. He’d likely appreciate some of the… nuances. Don’t you agree?”
Balidor did his best not to give the older seer a reaction, but he doubted he succeeded.
Ditrini included Tenzi in a sideways glance of those shimmering, mercury-colored eyes.
“…One should not be in possession of such a rare property without a detailed instruction manual. Do you not agree, my brothers?”
Right then, it was probably a good thing Tenzi shut the door.
It cut off the older seer’s voice, connecting with the wall with a hollow clang.
Once it had, Balidor gave Tenzi a grim look, opening his mind to the wider construct as he patted the younger seer reassuringly on the back, seeing the fury shimmering in his dark eyes.
We might have a problem, Balidor told them, once the channel opened.
Yumi spoke up first. Other than that sick fuck still being alive?
Feeling the rage pulsing off her light, Balidor sent warmth to her heart.
Different, yes, he replied, sighing into the Barrier.
Feeling that he had all of their attention, he went on.
Ditrini already knew about China. He wasn’t surprised at all when I told him what is occurring in Beijing. Nor did this information distress him.
Pausing a beat to let that sink in, Balidor exhaled again, resting his hands on his waist.
I am thinking now that Ditrini works directly for Shadow. I don’t know when the switch occurred, or if this has always been the case, but his allegiance appears to be to Shadow alone, with little concern for the fate of the Lao Hu.
Fighting back an emotional reaction, he made a vague gesture, adding more reluctantly, That second queen he spoke of… it is possible he means Cass.
Silence fell over the construct.
I also suspect he believes they will come for him, Balidor added. His confidence in his position, which I think is genuine, could mean a number of things, but I think he truly believes he will not be our prisoner long enough for us to break his mind.
He concluded more grimly,
I think we need to warn the Bridge and the Sword that we should be prepared for an attack on our facility here, and soon.
Feeling the deeper silence this produced, he added in a more subdued flicker,
We also need to warn them there is a good chance Shadow is in Manhattan.
21
EARTHQUAKE
JON COULDN’T FIND Wreg.
He’d asked around in a casual way, once he’d finally gotten through quarantine, and entered the main lobby of the hotel.
He heard a large group of seers, including Revik and Allie, ate breakfast together in the Third Jewel not long after they landed. They’d all scattered by the time Jon poked his head inside the restaurant, though. He didn’t see anyone from their party as he wandered around the main lobby or in the atrium, either.
After sorting through a huge pile of luggage to grab his rucksack, he spent a little longer wandering around, partly in the hopes he might see Wreg walking from one meeting to another. He knew Wreg. The seer wouldn’t sleep or even go back to his room until he’d checked to make sure all the contingencies he’d set up had been put in place.
That would be true even if it took hours.
Jon didn’t see him, and after a few more turns around the lower floors, he gave up. Not wanting to make a big deal, or interrupt Wreg if he was working, he decided to take a shower and sleep for a few hours before something else happened to put them all back on high alert.
He was most of the way to the fifty-seventh floor, when it hit him that he’d never changed rooms.
He’d shared Wreg’s bed pretty much every night after the wedding, finding himself there without either of them ever really talking about it––but he never officially moved out of the room he’d once shared with Dorje.
Fishing in his pocket for the keycard he’d found in the rucksack he’d dug out of the pile of luggage in the lobby, he wondered if it would even work.
He was still staring at it in his hand when the elevator doors pinged.
Sighing, he decided he might as well try it, before he rode the elevators all the way back down to the lobby and hassled with the registration desk.
He was heading towards his old door when he stopped short in the corridor, his brain fuzzing out a second time. His mind flashed him an image of the apparition he’d seen in Shadow’s house in Argentina––the image of his dead, traitor, ex-boyfriend.
He didn’t want to sleep in his old room.
He didn’t want to sleep in there at all.
Frowning, he wondered if he could talk the front desk into giving him a key card for a different room. He knew they were overcrowded, but there had to be something left, even if they were using it for storage. Maybe he could borrow somebody’s couch until he could find someone to switch rooms with him. Hell, at this point, he could sleep on the floor. No way could it be as hard or as cold as the ground in Patagonia.
He just stood there a moment, thinking through the logistics of how he might move his stuff, if they did have an alternate room for him––if he should do it now, or take a shower first, deal with the rest after he’d at least donned clean clothes.
He could feel he was stalling, though.
It struck him why, suddenly.
He knew where he wanted to sleep.
He knew the seer probably wouldn’t mind, but Jon found himself hesitating anyway, trying to sort through his own motives. After another moment of thinking, he decided he needed to chill out. It was too soon for him to start crashing at Wreg’s full time.
He needed to get a new room.
As soon as the decision solidified, he turned, aiming his feet back towards the elevators.
He’d just leaned over to press the “down” button to call back the elevators, when the corridor shuddered.
He froze, staring around him in disbelief as the floor stopped moving. He wondered if he’d hallucinated it. His heart beat louder in his chest, his hand still extended towards the button on the wall without touching it.
He took another breath, about to complete the motion, when a sudden, hard jerk nearly threw him off his feet.
That time, he fell into the elevator doors, then heavily to one knee.
“Jesus.” He stared around at the walls and ceiling, watching them shake.
Still kneeling there, he contemplated using his link to find out what the hell was going on, when another, stronger wave hit. He gripped the flat surface of the elevator doors, panting as he tried to decide if he should try to get back to his feet, make a run for the stairs. Another, harder jerk caused the lights to flicker, just before a low groan issued from some part of the steel girders inside the walls.
His mind went to the bomb in Delhi.
Panic hit
at the thought of an attack on the hotel, even as a more logical part of his mind tried to decide if that explanation made sense.
He thought about how many bombs would have to go off, to shake the foundations of a building this size for this long. His mind went to the outside storm, to aircraft carriers, bombers, underground gas lines––none of it made sense.
The floor continued moving under him in rolling, jerking waves.
A post-modern painting in an accent alcove fell off the wall.
Jon watched a glass vase vibrate off a delicate-looking table just below where the painting had hung, bouncing on the carpeted floor without breaking. Adrenaline trembled his limbs, even as some other part of him caught up, remembering an alternative explanation, one a lot simpler, that immediately felt true.
Earthquake. This was an earthquake.
The ground jerked sideways again.
Jon glanced at the nearest doorways, wondered if he should do the standard earthquake thing and try to shield himself under one of them. The elevator wasn’t a good option, or the stairs really, but he wasn’t sure if the doorframe would help in a building this size.
The shaking died down while he thought it.
Still holding the smooth panel of the elevator door, Jon crouched by the gold carpet, his heart hammering in his chest. That time, when the walls, floor and ceiling grew still, he waited a few seconds, listening to the silence.
No, not silence––he could hear the wind again.
He heard the rain, too, even through the reinforced glass, a soft staccato he shouldn’t hear at all, and wouldn’t, if the wind wasn’t blowing so hard around the building’s upper floors.
He focused through the organic pane at the near-black clouds, watching as wind drove the pouring rain in horizontal lines. The glass vibrated faintly with another shudder that could have been wind or another tremor, and it struck Jon suddenly that he’d never been in an earthquake while it was raining before.
He still crouched there, staring out the window, when his earpiece let out a tone.
“Jon?” a familiar voice said in his ear. “Jon! Are you all right? Where are you, brother?”
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