While a part of her wanted to, she did not leave.
She felt strongly that, at some point, they would speak to one another again.
She wanted to be here when he was ready.
Kali had not forgotten how easily Dehgoies managed to track her, even when Kali thought he had not noticed her following him. She had been living under the radar for so long with Uye, she had forgotten what it meant to be noticed by others of her own kind.
Her skills at concealment had grown dangerously soft in the past one hundred years.
Uye had said that to her, too.
Uye warned her she may not be up to this.
Unlike him, she was not a trained infiltrator. Unlike her mate, she didn’t fully understand what she was up against in one like Dehgoies Revik, or the Rooks in general. Uye hammered that at her, telling her again and again she must not underestimate him.
Remembering his words now, her nerves rose.
Even so, she didn’t turn around to head back to the Caravelle, as much as some part of her wanted to. Rather, she continued to walk along the quiet Saigon streets, moving forward without fully knowing why, or even her precise destination. As she walked, she marked where she was, glancing around at the French-style buildings painted white and yellow as she made her way down a narrow road she knew would eventually bring her back to the river.
Eventually, she walked by the Grand.
It was the first time she’d been anywhere near there since her talk with Dehgoies by the pool. It was early yet, barely pre-dawn when she passed by the front of the French-colonial style building. For the same reason, no one came or went through those glass doors as she walked by.
The only living things she saw in the street were a couple of black and white stray cats.
She had left the Caravelle while the sky was still dark, but it still surprised her that so little time had passed.
By then, it felt like she’d been wandering the streets of Saigon for hours.
Even in the dim and flickering streetlights, she could see that they had cleaned up most of the mess from the car bomb. All of the debris on the dusty road and in front of the hotel had been taken away, and even the glass replaced in the front doors and the long glass windows on either side of the hotel’s entrance.
When she got closer, she saw that those doors were now guarded, even at this time of morning, by what looked like local security.
Other hints of what occurred remained as well.
The elaborate, white-painted planters that stood on either side of the doors remained scorched and cracked, their contents blackened in parts from the blast. Additional scorch marks darkened the white paint up the Grand Hotel’s facade and formed a starfish-like pattern in the cobblestone walk that led down to the river’s shore.
Staring at those marks, remembering the turquoise-eyed seer trying to hit and shoot Dehgoies Revik with her gun, Kali found herself thinking she should return indoors before the sun got too high in the sky.
Despite those likely wiser thoughts, Kali found herself walking on towards the river anyway. Just as she’d left her hotel room in the first place without thinking about it clearly, she continued on her path without consciously deciding to do so, as well.
Despite her worsening nerves, she couldn’t help but enjoy looking at the city at such a quiet, pristine time of day. She walked soundlessly down the cobblestone streets, past darkened storefronts, shut churches, Buddhist temples and French cafés with their lights off and their windows shuttered. Apart from the occasional car, or radio, or distant moped, she heard nothing but birds, and sometimes quiet sounds indoors, like when she passed by a bakery that was up early to make the bread.
She’d always liked walking at night.
She especially liked walking in the hours leading up to dawn.
Unlike in California, however, it never got fully cool here, even in those early morning hours. Instead, the air remained humid and vaguely stifling, although considerably less-so in the time right before the sun came up, when cool breezes moved the air around her body and brought out the bats and other night creatures to diminish the insect population.
Now that she’d been walking for some time, however, she could already feel hints of the impending heat of the day.
Her silk dress, cut in the style of the locals––again in the hopes of minimizing stares if she happened to be noticed at this early hour––was already damp with sweat and darker with dust by the time she made it to the shores of the river.
By then, the sun was just peering above the horizon.
Kali felt better somehow when she stopped to look at the water, maybe because the river had been her destination all along, or maybe just from stretching her legs, working muscles that weren’t accustomed to long periods of disuse from her life in California.
There, it seemed like she and Uye were always busy doing something, whether gardening or hunting or walking to town––or simply going for long strolls in the near-silent woods that teemed with birds and plant life even right where they lived.
She had been fixing the roof with him, preparing for winter, right before she left.
Thinking about that now, she sighed a little.
Uye would have completed that job already.
By the time she got home, he likely would have fixed the shutters and replaced the old storm windows, too.
She stood by the river for what felt like a long time, enjoying the early morning quiet.
She watched the sun rise higher over the mountains past the Saigon River, and smiled, observed the fishing boats as they started to grow visible and busy over the gold-splashed water. She lingered right at the muddy banks as the river gradually came back to life, her arms hugging her chest as she shivered under the first heated rays of the sun.
She spent probably an hour watching the swiftly-moving current, and the boats, including the military ships on the south side of the city and the local steamers that ferried passengers from one side of the river to the other.
Her eyes followed the occasional barge that went by, surrounded by wooden fishing boats with their cylindrical shades like minnows swarming after deep-sea tuna. The scene was strangely peaceful, yet not, the harder, jagged light of the military overhanging everything, even as the fishermen called out to one another, making jokes and sharing steaming drinks.
When she finally let herself feel her silent shadow, she turned.
Her eyes scanned briefly over the street. When they connected with the silent form watching her, they came to an abrupt stop.
Dehgoies Revik stood not twenty feet away from her, motionless under the trees.
She wondered how long he had been standing there.
Then, looking him over, she wondered how long he had been following her, too.
From the dust on his pant legs and shoes, and the light sweat dampening his shirt’s off-white collar, she assumed he’d been following her for some time. Noting his stillness and the quiet of his gaze, she could not help feeling caught in a predator’s sights.
She forced herself to relax as she continued to look at him.
For his part, Dehgoies did not attempt to step out of her view.
He didn’t hide his presence from her in any way, or even his light.
He didn’t seem to mind her knowing he had been following her, and he didn’t shield from her when she scanned him cautiously for intent.
He also didn’t come any closer.
When he caught her returning stare, he averted his, but that was all.
He must have followed her all the way from her hotel.
If that was the case, he had already known she remained in Saigon––meaning, beyond that more subconscious awareness in the higher areas of his light, he’d had concrete, physical knowledge that she’d remained. That meant he’d clearly continued to follow her in some sense, and not only in the Barrier. It also meant he likely had specific knowledge as to Kali’s doings since they’d last seen one another.
Depending
on when he’d first gone looking for her after the bombing, he might have been spying on her all of this time, waiting for her to leave the Caravelle.
Either that, or he simply liked walking in the early morning light, before the heat of the day set in, and had seen her, purely by coincidence.
Kali found the latter possibility seriously strained her credulity.
She glanced back at him a few times as he stood, lingering by a cluster of trees growing closer to the street, watching her almost brazenly.
She felt shyness on him, too.
Most of the riverside park had been allowed to go to seed and ruin since the war started, and now it kicked up as much dust as any part of the city, and most of the trees and grass had disappeared. Even so, in the areas beside the largest of the hotels, including the Majestic and the Riverside, planted trees remained, as well as flower beds and small lawns, park benches and lamp posts. She even saw what looked like pleasure ferries out over the river itself, perhaps to view the war with a cocktail in one’s hand, or simply to glimpse the edges of death without being dropped into a combat zone or being shot at by the local Viet Cong.
Kali glanced back at Dehgoies yet again.
He was smoking now, probably hiri, the preferred smoke of most seers.
Again, he made no attempt to hide that fact from her, nor to hide himself.
He also made no attempt to approach her. He simply watched her stand by the river, his face as blank as it had been in that meeting hall that day, before Kali had known he was aware she’d been following him.
She wasn’t entirely fooled by that lack of expression on his face, not anymore, nor did she believe the indifference it attempted to project.
She felt something else off him, too.
He didn’t want her out here.
Her standing there openly, right at the banks of the river, was causing him anxiety. He felt she was too visible, standing on the river’s shore, the sun highlighting her form.
The thought might have amused her, under different circumstances. As it was, she wondered if, in his own way, he might be seeking to protect her.
Perhaps it was the thought of Terian finding her that concerned him.
Or perhaps it was the other one, that female seer who clearly wanted more claims on him and his body than Dehgoies was willing to give.
Frowning from where she stood, Kali watched him linger by those trees, feeling his anxiety worsen. He wasn’t only anxious. He was also indecisive.
Clearly, he wished to speak to her again, whatever he told himself.
Kali wanted to oblige him, but found herself distrusting the compulsion she could feel behind his light, the near-obsessive quality that grew more prominent there, as she scanned him cautiously with her own aleimi. He pulled at her in flickering darts, strongly at times, even as she felt him trying to convince her that her presence there did not affect him.
She felt the instability she’d noted in him from a distance, as well.
The truth hit her then, even as she remembered Uye’s warning words.
Dehgoies was fixating on her. He might not be all the way there yet, but the beginning signs were starting to manifest.
Uye had warned her of this, too.
He understood how psychology worked for most male seers.
He understood their needs, both the more refined ones and those that lived in a baser, more subconscious form, somewhere in the oldest areas of their brain stems. Uye seemed to think some of these more base tendencies would be worsened by close affiliation with the Rooks. Rooks rarely had the opportunity to interact with other seers normally, at least according to Uye… at least not as seers were meant to interact.
They also rarely encountered female or male seers with open light, who didn’t protect their aleimi as a matter of course. Uye warned her that this would likely affect Dehgoies Revik, just like it would any other seer.
Uye seemed to think it might especially affect someone like him.
He also warned Kali that it might make him dangerous.
Of course, Uye’s precise words had been “more dangerous.”
Kali found she understood more of this than she perhaps wanted to understand it. She perhaps even understood some of the less obvious feelings coiling and connecting behind that base level of want she could feel on Dehgoies now.
She could even sympathize, to a degree.
She could not bring herself to trust what he might do because of those pulls, however.
Kali knew Uye would be yelling and cursing in her ears at this very moment, if he were aware of her precise circumstances right now, and the fact that the Rook had started following her openly.
If she wasn’t careful, Uye would feel her worry through the bonding structure they shared, and try to discern what she was doing, where she was, and with whom.
Then Kali would have her mate’s fears to contend with, along with her own.
She wondered, too, that Dehgoies could afford to follow her at all right now.
Was he not busy, with his work here? Where were his friends?
Where was Terian?
She knew the Org kept him busy, as it did all of its loyal servants. How was it he could afford to stand out here for hours, watching her stare at boats?
She hadn’t been sure how he would react to her attempts to speak to him that first day, but she had expected him to be too occupied by his work here to bother with her for a while, at least a few weeks while he mulled over her words and tried to decide if she could be telling the truth. She’d expected him to conduct his own Barrier incursions to try and verify her words, possibly even to solicit the help of friends who had talents in the far-seeing arts, like Terian, or possibly his girlfriend, assuming she had such gifts.
Kali didn’t know the Rooks’ precise goals in the region, nor did she want to know, truthfully, since she could do nothing to impact or alter those goals herself. She knew they had goals, however, and that Dehgoies likely had a key role in implementing them. She could also guess at the broad brushstrokes of what those goals might be.
She couldn’t help but notice the shift in the light blanketing the city, too, and the shifts in the constructs that organized that living light.
Something was coming.
Some change was in the air, heading their way.
She could feel the Rooks behind that in part, altering the light around the city itself, but she felt more than one player manipulating things behind the scenes. Still, the Rooks Kali glimpsed from behind the Barrier––and even, at times, from the windows of her hotel––had been more busy of late, seemingly in preparation for something big coming.
It wasn’t only the seers who seemed more tense.
She’d picked up murmurs from human locals as well, both from their minds and their lips, and from foreigners who’d spent some time in Saigon. Yesterday, those murmurs centered around a large political protest rumored to be happening soon.
Kali didn’t know if the increased activity of the Rooks was connected in any way, but it felt as though it easily could be.
She had to assume that Dehgoies was involved in some way, if that was the case, since he and Terian were relatively high up in the Rooks’ organizational hierarchy. Kali had to assume the blue-eyed female was involved too, since from what she could feel, Elan Raven either worked closely with, or directly for, one or both of the two males.
Kali didn’t know whether the Rooks had organized the Saigon protest themselves.
She tried not to care about most of what they did, apart from wishing to soften the harm they inflicted on those of her kind, as well as on innocent humans who had the misfortune to cross their paths. Kali had learned to stay out of the Org’s machinations, both from practicality and due to her own unusual circumstances and person.
The Rooks were many.
She was only one.
After all, Kali herself was not the Bridge.
She was only a vessel to bring that impulse forth.
Therefore, un
less the harm was obvious and immediate and she was in a position to act against them with some success, she forced herself to look the other way, as did most seers when it came to the Org. Most seers did the same with humans as well, meaning those humans who worked actively against seers: enslaving them, torturing them in labs, stealing and selling their children, conscripting them into their wars.
Most felt as though they had no choice.
Most felt all they could do was protect their own families, as best they could.
Kali understood that, and not only in terms of rationalizing her own actions, and her own inaction. Truly, it was the only logical thing to do for the vast majority of seers, most of whom were impoverished, and who lacked access to power in the human world.
She also knew looking away had its own karma attached.
It made all of them responsible, in one way or form.
She told herself that, despite that truth, given who she was, she did not have the luxury to be reckless, or to engage in idealistic attempts to discourage the Rooks and their minions from their ego and fear-driven crusades. She could not afford to give them access to any intermediary, even one of relatively low stature, like herself––even apart from her possible future role as mother to the Bridge.
She also could not let them gain control over, or access to, her prophetic visions.
She knew that.
It had been drilled into her since she was a child in South America.
Yet the rationalization sounded hollow, even to her.
Kali knew that human political affiliations and ideologies meant nothing to the Rooks. They had their own agenda here, one that had little to do with the specific outcome of the war, or which human ideology won out in the end.
As always, their central aim was the enslavement of all humans.
But the Rooks had many, many smaller steps along the way.
One of those steps, she suspected, was to put Dehgoies Revik in charge of gaining control over the black market trade routes in Southeast Asia––particularly when it came to the increasingly heavy traffic in seers.
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