“Do I? Now?” Terian said, his voice openly amused, but Dehgoies went on as if he hadn’t spoken.
“...The prisoner we took,” he cut in. “It is legal for us to have her... by the old laws, at least. Anyway, it was a mistake you made, bringing her here. It violated your own laws...”
“Our own laws, Revi’?”
“Yes,” Dehgoies said, his voice a lower growl that time. “She’s pregnant. Don’t pretend you didn’t know... or that to take a pregnant female captive in a human-run work camp doesn’t go against about a dozen laws of our people, yours and mine. To imprison one who carries a child of our race is unpardonable, and you know it. She should never have been there.”
Terian laughed, breaking into the other’s words.
Dehgoies fell silent, his mouth hardening into a deeper frown.
“She shouldn’t have been in Saigon, either, Revi’...” Terian said, his voice holding a colder edge, just under the humor. “...and yes, I know who the cunt is, and I know why you’re so hellbent on protecting her, brother... it’s the same reason you protected her then. Which is a bit rich, Revi’, given that she’s about to give birth to another man’s pup... or do you plan to take the child, too? Bring her back to Asia with you, so the three of you can play house in the Pamir?”
“It’s not like that,” Dehgoies growled.
“Ah, hit a nerve have I?” Terian said.
“Stop making this about me!”
“About you?” Terian raised an eyebrow, his voice shifting to a mock innocence. “Whatever do you mean, Revi’?”
“You know damned well what I mean.”
“Do I?” Terian’s eyes turned to etched glass. “What do I care that you’re still trying to fuck that 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... and then somehow coerced you into coming out here to defend her yet again? 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... not mine?”
Dehgoies clenched his jaw, his hands balling into fists at his sides.
Terian’s smile crept slowly back.
“You really are blushing again.” Shaking his head, Terian clicked once more, 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 said, his voice openly angry that time. “You’re breaking treaty... 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 paused. His voice grew colder when he added, “...Or were you under the impression, Revi’, that I was the only one to hold a grudge over your 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 that time, seeing a reaction flicker across those light yellow irises. I couldn’t tell for sure if Terian knew the specifics to which Dehgoies referred; for that matter, I couldn’t tell for sure if Dehgoies himself did, but obviously, 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 more generally since Dehgoies first appeared.
Every seer in the clearing was following the same ping-pong match back and forth between the two seers, including Varlan himself. It almost felt like all of us were simply eavesdropping on a private conversation, present as witnesses, but not particularly significant ones.
“And what ‘other treaty’ would that be, Revi’?” Terian said, cocking an eyebrow.
Leaning forward, he rested his arms on the modified gun once more, perhaps to call attention to it. At any rate, I saw Dehgoies’ gaze rest there briefly. I even imagined I saw a glimmer of covetousness there, right before the crystal-colored irises shifted away.
Terian’s voice held a tenser note when he next spoke, and his irises looked cold.
“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 partly 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 managed somehow to take all of punch out of the word, turning it almost into a 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 on his feet, 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 now. “Do you really think––”
“Terry,” Dehgoies cut in, his voice openly warning now. “Ask him, or end this conversation. 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 then, as if to assess who else had noticed the shift... and found myself overly aware of the plasma rifle I held a second time. 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.
Don’t escalate this, brother, a voice said to me softly.
I turned, staring at Varlan more intently.
... Do not let your light get charged enough to escalate this, the voice continued. ... whatever your feelings, brother. This would get ugly, fast, if it turned violent... those aren’t contractors with him, I assure you. In fact, they are the reason you cannot see brother Dehgoies’ light at all, despite the fact that he is standing right in the middle of our construct and shares a resonance with us still...
They are all Ahdipan? I sent, unthinking. Not only the one you ID’d for us?
There was a silence before Varlan answered.
They are... formidable, Varlan sent cryptically.
After he said it, his mind fell utterly silent.
Taking a breath, I found myself nodding, almost to myself.
I glanced at the seer standing just to the right of Dehgoies and again slightly behind him, that same, middle-aged seer with the gray eyes that Dehgoies had been looking at before.
I looked at him more closely that time, too, 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 specifically. With those stunning gray eyes and nearly human features, he carried a somehow timeless quality, though, which made me wonder about any decisions I might make about his light or body.
I glanced at the other five seers flanking Dehgoies, two of whom now stood outside the light of the organic torches, and wondered about them, as well.
Could I really be looking at Ahdipan infiltrators? All of them?
Terian gave me a hard look, and a f
rown.
Rather than angering him that time, however, my thoughts seemed to pull the other seer back from whatever emotional abyss he’d been circling in his argument with Dehgoies.
I saw Terian’s full lips frown, right before those amber eyes grew shrewd once more, nearly predatory. He, too, gave a glance around at Dehgoies’ companions, but his eyes didn’t linger on any one of them long enough for me to learn much.
“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.
That time, Dehgoies seemed to have expected his words, however, because he gave a single nod, a seer’s nod, without a second’s hesitation.
“Yes,” he said. “He can get it off my light. Only him, though,” he added, his voice holding a faint warning again.
There was another silence after he spoke.
In it, I could feel something happening to Dehgoies’ light.
Moreover, I saw Dehgoies flinch openly that time, right before he grimaced, almost as if he’d been hit with some harder pain. I wondered if a resonance with the Org itself actually hurt someone in the camp of the kneelers, like Dehgoies was now, but I couldn’t decide that for certain, either. The expression on Dehgoies’ face could have been pain, but it also might have been something more akin to a bad smell, something familiar but unwelcome, from which other parts of his light and body recoiled.
I saw Terian’s light coiled around that interaction, too.
In the next set of seconds, I realized Terian was trying to see whatever was happening between Dehgoies and Galaith. Despite Dehgoies’ warning, Terian fought to use the distraction to break through that shield, to see past the wall that hid every light in that foreign seers’ negotiation party.
Clearly, Terian didn’t much care about Dehgoies’ words.
I could feel that Terian wasn’t having much success in his efforts, though, if only from the frustration that emanated off the other male’s light... tangibly that time.
A few seconds later, I felt another shift inside the construct.
Dehgoies’ expression held a a near-relief as whatever tension that had flared around him began to dissipate. The brighter, 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, staring at Dehgoies with a look that held something closer to anger again.
“Did you show daddy your favorite bitch, Revi’?” he said coldly.
“Why don’t you ask him yourself, Terry?” Dehgoies said.
His voice held an edge as well that time.
Still, Terian seemed to take his words to heart.
There was a silence where I felt Terian recede deeper into the Barrier, and into the network itself, as if he was talking to Galaith, after all. When he clicked out, a handful of seconds later, I felt that anger in Terian’s light grow closer to fury.
He stared up at Dehgoies, not hiding his reaction.
“So, you got what you wanted,” he said. “How nice for you, Revi’... Galaith says we are to let you go your way, to discontinue our little search.”
His words had turned cold yet somehow distant, nearly soft in the relative silence of the clearing. I could hear the buzz of insects still, when I let my mind focus there, and the call of an occasional bird or monkey from the higher branches of the trees, but none of the seers standing there made a sound, not even by breathing heavily.
That fury continued to emanate from Terian’s light.
“...Galaith didn’t say, however, that we couldn’t extract a toll before you go, Revi’,” Terian added, walking closer to the other man, or perhaps stalking or sidling would be more accurate, given how smoothly and silently he closed that gap.
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 slightly.
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 been talking 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... almost as if gauging our distances from one another... and from where he stood.
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 bloodshed was likely imminent. I held myself with muscles clenched as I looked around the same broken circle of bodies and faces, slower than Dehgoies had done, but trying to see them as the taller seer had seen them. I felt a denser charge course through the construct, even as I did it, as if the entire shield 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 had turned soft, to nearly a murmur.
“...You kill me, and the Org and the Seven break treaty,” Dehgoies said in that same measured tone. “The Seven might be peaceful at base, but they won’t stand for that, and you know it. You know what’s behind me in those hills... they’ll hunt you down like a rabid dog, just to make the point. And just like that, you and me are dead, and the cold war... this relative truce... it 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 still 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 only reason I left, then you don’t know me at all, Terry!” he said angrily. “You say you know me so well? Well, I didn’t want to be there anymore, Terry. I hadn’t been happy for years... which you would have known, if you knew me 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 veneer.
“...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 I 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... ?”
His 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 that time. “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 once more.
Looking at him, though, I didn’t get the sense he regretted his words, or even feared making Terian angry, despite the knife pressed to his throat. Instead, from the look on Dehgoies’ face and light, I found myself thinking that he had merely remembered that his words would have little meaning to Terian.
Clicking under his breath, Dehgoies stared at the red-haired seer, and 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, and 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 that Terian was deliberately provoking him with the total irrationality of his words, 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.
Allie's War Early Years Page 38
