Trickster

by J. C. Andrijeski

  “Stop playing games. You know damned well what I mean.”

  “Do I?” Terian’s stare turned to etched glass. “What do I care that you’re still trying to fuck the cunt, Revi’? What do I care that she’s mated? Pregnant? That she blatantly infiltrated you, used your hard-on for her light to manipulate you into betraying all of your friends? That she somehow then coerced you to come out here yet again to protect and defend her from all that’s evil in the world? Why should I care that you’re still sniffing around her ass like a drunk adolescent? How is that my problem, Revi’? Shouldn’t that be her mate’s concern?”

  Dehgoies clenched his jaw, his hands balling into fists.

  Terian’s smile crept slowly back.

  “You really are blushing again.” Shaking his head, Terian clicked his tongue, his smile widening. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I couldn’t see it with my own eyes. Gaos. It’s almost giving me a hard on now, Revi’––”

  “Damn it, Terry,” Dehgoies growled, his voice openly angry. “You’re breaking treaty. Moreover, you know you are, and so does Galaith. What the fuck do you want? Do you really plan to gun us down over a pregnant seer?”

  “What makes you think Galaith would stop me, if I did?” Terian stared at him, his voice and eyes ice. “…Or were you really under the impression, Revi’, that I was the only one to hold a grudge over you leaving?”

  Dehgoies’ frown deepened.

  After a pause, he turned, glancing again at the gray-eyed seer.

  That time, I thought I saw the older male give him a perceptible nod.

  “It’s part of the other treaty, Terry,” Dehgoies said, turning back to face Terian. “The one he made personally with Vash. After the war. Tell Galaith that.”

  There was a silence.

  I found myself watching Terian’s face, seeing a reaction flicker across those pale, yellow irises. I couldn’t tell for certain whether Terian knew the specifics to which Dehgoies referred; for that matter, I couldn’t tell for certain if Dehgoies himself did.

  Obviously, however, the idea of a secret treaty between Vash and Galaith meant something to both of them.

  It occurred to me in the same few seconds that silence had fallen over the clearing.

  Every seer on both sides, apart from the two of them, stood without moving, silent as we followed the back and forth between them. Not a one of us had spoken, on either side, since they first appeared. Our presence there struck me as wholly incidental.

  “And what ‘other treaty’ would that be, Revi’?” Terian said, cocking an eyebrow.

  He rearranged his arms on the modified gun, perhaps to call attention to it.

  Whatever his reasoning, I saw Dehgoies’ gaze rest there briefly. I even imagined I saw a glimmer of covetousness, right before the crystal-colored irises shifted away.

  Terian’s voice held a tenser note when he next spoke.

  “Revi’? What bullshit is this, old friend?”

  “I don’t know the specifics. I’m just an emissary, too, brother.”

  Terian’s eyes narrowed.

  I couldn’t help thinking it was from Dehgoies’ use of the word “brother.”

  It was the first time Dehgoies had said it, and I couldn’t fail to hear how differently it sounded coming from his lips, compared to how we used that word in the Org.

  Dehgoies somehow managed to take all the punch out of the word, turning it into a near-religious expression, which made my lip curl, too, in spite of myself.

  The fucker might as well have gone down on a knee when he said it.

  “Ask Galaith,” Dehgoies said, as if feeling the tension his words caused. He shifted his weight, once more looking wary, ready for a fight. “Just fucking ask him, Terry. Why are you prolonging this?”

  “An emissary. Is that what you are, Revi’?”

  Dehgois’s eyes narrowed. “Terry.”

  “…How incredibly formal and official it all sounds. ‘Emissary.’” Terian’s lip curled, but I felt the genuine anger coming off his light. “Do you really think––”

  “Terry.” Dehgoies’s growl grew openly warning. “Ask him, or end this. We’ll find another way to talk to your boss, if you’re not capable of passing on a simple fucking message.”

  Terian’s eyes grew cold as ice.

  I felt the fury in the other male’s light, and flinched.

  I also took a half-step back, gripping my gun tighter in my hands.

  I glanced at Gregor and Dayvan, in part to assess who else had noticed the shift, and found myself overly aware of the plasma rifle I held. I glanced at Karenti, right before I let my eyes shift to Varlan, who gave me a bare glance, what might have been a warning look.

  Do not escalate this, brother, a voice whispered.

  I turned, staring at Varlan more intently.

  Do not let your light get charged enough to escalate this, he sent, his eyes still flickering between Terian and Dehgoies. Whatever your feelings, brother… this would get ugly, fast, if it turned violent. Those aren’t contractors with him, I assure you. They are the reason you cannot see brother Dehgoies’ light at all, even though he stands in the middle of our construct and shares a resonance with us still.

  They are all Ahdipan? I sent. Not only the one you ID’d for us?

  There was a silence before Varlan answered.

  They are… formidable, he sent cryptically.

  After he said it, his mind fell utterly silent.

  Taking a breath, I nodded, more to myself.

  I glanced at the seer standing to the right of Dehgoies and slightly behind him, that same, middle-aged seer with the gray eyes.

  I took more time to look at him that time, noting the chestnut-colored hair with small streaks of gray at his temples. He looked to be somewhere in the area of four-hundred-years-old, now that I was assessing him more closely. With those stunning gray eyes and nearly human features, he carried a somehow timeless quality, however, one which made me question whether anything I could see about him was true.

  I glanced at the other five seers flanking Dehgoies, two of whom now stood outside the light of the organic torches. I wondered about them, as well.

  Could I really be looking at Ahdipan infiltrators? All of them?

  Terian gave me a hard look, and a frown.

  Rather than angering him that time, my thoughts seemed to pull him back from whatever emotional abyss he’d been circling with Dehgoies.

  I saw Terian’s full lips frown, right before those amber eyes grew shrewd, predatory. He, too, gave a glance around at Dehgoies’ companions.

  “I have relayed your message,” Terian said then, his voice business-like as he focused back on Dehgoies. “It probably doesn’t surprise you that he requires proof?”

  Terian lifted an eyebrow, staring at the taller seer.

  Dehgoies seemed to have expected his words.

  He gave a seer’s nod without hesitation.

  “Yes,” he said. “Only him, though,” he added, his voice holding a faint warning.

  A silence fell after he spoke.

  In it, it felt like all of us held our breaths.

  Sixteen

  Extracting A Toll

  I don’t know, precisely, when I realized something was happening to Dehgoies’ light.

  I don’t know that I felt anything in Dehgoies at all.

  At some point, the whole space of the construct changed.

  Hard, silver particles of light cascaded down––barely discernable at first, then gradually strengthening until those drips turned to a stream, then a wall of near-physical light. They sped up the vibration of my aleimi, acting on me like a jolt of light-infused adrenaline.

  In seconds, I felt the new frequency take over the construct totally, infusing it, and me, like a curtain of sparking, mercury rain.

  I’d never felt anything so pure.

  I’d never felt so much power in any frequency of light in my life.

  I saw Dehgoies flinch when it started, then w
ince openly as it went on, right before he grimaced, like he’d been hit with some harder pain.

  Watching him, I wondered if a resonance with the Org actually hurt someone in the camp of the kneelers, like Dehgoies was now.

  The possibility bewildered me.

  Looking at him, I couldn’t decide for certain what he might be experiencing, though. The expression on his face could have been pain––or it might have been more akin to a bad smell, something familiar but unwelcome, from which his light and body recoiled.

  Either way, his reaction was baffling.

  I glanced at Terian, wondered how he interpreted his friend’s odd demeanor.

  When I did, I realized Terian wasn’t focused on his friend’s emotional reactions or flinches at all. Rather, his aleimi coiled around Dehgoies’ with intention, fighting to penetrate that hard bubble of light, and the interaction from which he was obviously excluded.

  He was trying to see what was happening between Dehgoies and Galaith, I realized.

  Despite Dehgoies’ warning, Terian was using the distraction to try and break that shield, to see past the wall that hid Dehgoies’ light.

  He wasn’t having much success.

  I knew that, if only from the sheer level of frustration pulsing and sparking off Terian’s light. I was still watching him struggle, when the construct’s tenor altered again.

  I felt that sharp, power-infused light begin to lift.

  Dehgoies’ expression flashed with relief as the silver curtain around him began to dissipate. The bright, silver light withdrew from his, leaving only the much fainter and duller glow of kneeler light in its wake.

  In the same set of seconds, Terian frowned.

  “And how was it, Revi’?” he said, cold. “Did you show daddy your favorite bitch? Does he still love you, after all this time?”

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself, Terry?” Dehgoies retorted.

  Deghoies’ voice came out hard.

  His words reflected vestiges of that relief, along with an edge of tension that vibrated the construct around my light. Something in the latter caused me to frown, then to stare at Dehgoies more closely. Once I had, I could feel only disbelief.

  His hands were shaking.

  Gaos d’lalente… his hands were actually fucking shaking from his interaction with Galaith.

  The mighty Dehgoies was trembling like a child.

  If Terian noticed, I couldn’t tell.

  I felt him recede into the Barrier, into the higher reaches of the network, and found myself thinking he had taken Dehgoies at his word, and was now seeking to speak to Galaith. Terian had gone to his boss directly to learn the outcome of their interaction.

  When Terian clicked out, I felt the anger in his light twist into a colder rage.

  He stared at Dehgoies, that rage and disbelief reaching his voice.

  “So, you got what you wanted,” he said, his amber eyes hard. “How nice for you, Revi’. Galaith says we are to let you and your friends go.”

  His words sounded strangely loud.

  Some of that could have been the otherwise quiet of the clearing.

  I could hear the buzz of insects, when I let my mind focus there, and the call of an occasional bird or monkey from the higher branches of the trees. None of the seers standing there made a sound, however. I couldn’t hear their breaths, much less their hearts.

  Fury continued to emanate from Terian’s light.

  “…Galaith didn’t say, however, that we couldn’t extract a toll before you go, Revi’.”

  As he spoke, he glided closer to the other male, moving in a strange, sideways, sidling and stalking movement that confounded my eyes. He closed the gap between himself and the other with a disconcerting grace that I’d never seen on anyone, human or seer.

  Before I could so much as blink, a knife was in Terian’s hand.

  He held it to Dehgoies’ throat, moving so fast that I didn’t see it until the steel pressed against the pale skin, denting it in a curved line.

  The other seer froze, holding his neck at a strange angle from where he’d pulled his head back in reflex. Now he stared at Terian’s eyes, his own narrowed to slits.

  For the first time, I really saw it; I saw the predator that lived there, the one Terian had told me about.

  “Maybe I want to extract a toll from you, Revi’, before you go.”

  Dehgoies glanced swiftly around at the faces of the other seers in the clearing.

  The glance was instantaneous, sharp. I practically felt him gauge our distances from one another, from where he stood, from the seers with him.

  It was a fighter’s glance, I realized––a swift, strategic and purely information-gathering glance––and once more, I found myself rearranging my hands on my gun, feeling suddenly as if I needed to reassess the other male yet again.

  Muscles taut, I looked around the same broken circle of bodies and faces, much slower than Dehgoies had done, but trying to see them as he had seen them. I felt a dense charge course through the construct as I did, as if the shields had been hit with a few thousand watts of voltage that now seethed a few millimeters above my skin.

  “Don’t do this, Terry,” Dehgoies said.

  His voice grew soft.

  “…You kill me, and the Org and the Seven break treaty,” Dehgoies said. “The Seven might be peaceful at base, but they won’t stand for that. You know it. So does Galaith. You know what’s behind me in those hills. They’ll hunt you down like a rabid dog, Terry, just to make the point. And just like that, you and me are dead, and this cold war of ours… this relative truce… it all turns hot overnight. And then our people don’t have a chance in hell, Terry. None of us do. We won’t have to wait for the humans to kill us. We’ll do it to ourselves.”

  Terian gave him a bare smile. “Still the politician, aren’t you, Revi’?”

  “You know I’m right.”

  “Do I? So why am I so confused by all of this, old friend?” He pressed the blade tighter to his throat and Dehgoies flinched, closing his eyes longer than a blink.

  “What are you confused about, Terry?” Dehgoies said, his voice toneless.

  “You, Revi’,” Terian said promptly. “I’m confused about you, old friend. Why are you doing this? Why would you work for them? What’s in it for you, Revi’? Really?”

  “She’s an intermediary, Terry,” Dehgoies said. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know––”

  Terian let out a hard laugh, what sounded more like anger than humor.

  “You can’t kill her,” Dehgoies said, raising his voice despite the knife at his throat. “You sure as fuck can’t kill her child. You know what it might mean.”

  When Terian jabbed the blade deeper against his throat, actually cutting him that time, drawing a thin trickle of dark blood, Dehgoies let out a gasp of pain, right before his voice grew harder.

  “…Gods damn it, Terry! Grow up! This isn’t about me. Or us. And it isn’t about her and me. There is no her and me. She’s married, remember? Like you said, she’s having another seer’s child. She and I… I’ve never touched her, Terry.”

  When Terian let out another angry laugh, Dehgoies snapped,

  “…and if you think she’s the real reason I left, you don’t know me at all!” His voice turned back to that harder growl. “I didn’t want to fucking be there anymore, Terry! I didn’t want any of it. I hadn’t been happy for years. I hated everything about what we were doing, how much worse we were making the world. Which you would have known, if you knew me even half as well as you like to pretend. Just let it go, for fuck’s sake! It’s over!”

  But Terian was already shaking his head.

  “No, brother,” he said. “No, no, no… it’s not over. It will never be over, because I can’t just let you live a lie. I can’t. You wouldn’t let me, if our positions were reversed––”

  “Live a lie?” Dehgoies snorted in open contempt.

  For the first time, I glimpsed more of the real man, underneath the ven
eer.

  “Jesus, Terry. What the fuck do you think I did under Galaith for all those years? You’re so convinced that was the real me, and this is some illusion… that I’ve been brainwashed or tricked or somehow got lost between Vietnam and India. You really think I’ve been snowed by the Seven? By the Adhipan? By fucking Kali, who only ever tried to help me? Who’s never been anything but a friend to me…?”

  Dehgoies’ jaw hardened, the muscle briefly pushing out his cheek when Terian pressed the blade harder against his skin.

  “She’s having a child right now, Terry,” Dehgoies snapped, his voice holding real anger. “Right now, as we speak. A child all of us should be trying to protect, not sell into slavery. Or use in some kind of juvenile pissing match with me.”

  Dehgoies fell silent, his jaw hardening.

  Looking at him, though, I didn’t get the sense he regretted his words, or feared making Terian angry, despite the knife pressed to his throat. Rather, I found myself thinking he had merely remembered that his words would have little meaning to Terian.

  To him, speaking to us was nothing but a waste of his time.

  Just like we felt with him––with all kneelers.

  Clicking under his breath, Dehgoies stared at the auburn-haired seer. Suddenly, those clear eyes looked diamond-like, almost intimidatingly intense.

  “Did it ever occur to you that maybe it was the reverse, Terry?” he said. “That maybe you’re the one living the lie? That I’m the one who finally woke up?”

  “No,” Terian said, pressing into him again with the knife. “No, it didn’t, Revi’.”

  Dehgoies held up his hands, moving as much of his throat out of the way as he could without taking more than a half-step back, which Terian made up with a full one.

  His throat was bleeding steadily now.

  “Put the fucking knife down, Terry,” Dehgoies said, his voice cold.

  “I want my toll, first.”

  “Your toll?”

  Dehgoies stared down at him, his colorless eyes holding a thin veneer of incredulity. I found myself thinking Terian was deliberately provoking him with the total irrationality of his demand, but something about it made me uncomfortable, too, as if I was seeing more of Terian than I really wanted to, rather than the reverse.