“What kind of present?” he said.
Terian clicked at him softly, still exuding calm from his light. “Galaith wants to talk to you.”
“What?” Dehgoies stared at him. “What the fuck kind of present is that?”
“That’s not the present. Endruk et dugra… you complete and utter dugra d’aros.” Raven rolled her eyes, clicking at him in open annoyance. “Galaith called. Just now. He wanted to wait for you, so we kept the line open.”
Dehgoies felt something in his chest clench.
He looked between the two of them, then snapped his fingers, growling at them.
“And?” he said. “Is he still waiting?”
“Yes,” Raven said. “He’s on the transmitter in the other room.”
Silence fell a second time. In it, Dehgoies looked between the two of them, feeling that rage continue to heat his chest when neither of them spoke.
“Well?” he said angrily. “Are you going to give me the goddamned line?”
His words seemed to jar them back into the present.
Terian laughed, making an affirmative gesture with one hand.
“Yes, brother,” he said, still smiling. “Of course.”
Raven took a step away from both of them, folding her arms and clicking under her breath as she continued to angrily study Dehgoies’ face, along with the state of his body and clothes.
Terian already appeared to be going for the transmitter though, so Dehgoies scarcely gave her a glance. The auburn-haired seer broke into a smile when he turned for the bedroom door, however, and something about the look there made Dehgoies pause again.
It was one of those smiles he’d never quite been able to read, but that usually meant Terian was either about to, or had already done, something deeply crazy.
That, or else he expected someone else to.
“Right back, brother,” Terian said, still murmuring under his breath. “Right back, right back. I’ll bring the machine in here…”
Dehgoies watched, frowning, as the seer walked around the table covered in drugs.
Terian still had that odd smile tugging at his lips when he exited through the bedroom door, the same room where Dehgoies had woken him up prior to their meet with the Viet Cong smuggler. That felt like weeks, even months ago now.
Revik knew it hadn’t been that long, but it felt like an eternity.
That had been the morning after the bombing, when Terian had those two pretty worms in here still, from the Grand Hotel poolside bar.
It had also been the day he’d killed that seer out in Bảo Lộc.
Remembering that much gave Dehgoies some semblance of a framework to mark the passage of time, even as he avoided thinking about what Galaith might want with him.
He didn’t like the timing of it, but he pushed that from his mind, too.
Terian had kept those two male humans for a few days, violating them whenever he had the urge, sometimes right in front of Dehgoies and Raven, and once in front of the hotel staff. He’d encouraged Dehgoies and Raven to take liberties with them, as well, and Dehgoies had a vague memory of watching Terian and Raven playing some kind of one-upmanship game with the two of them, after they’d all smoked way too much hash and Dehgoies himself was barely conscious.
After those few days, however, Terian had cut them loose, not bothering to erase either of them before he left them in the riverfront park.
He’d given them each a handful of Vietnamese dong notes for tuk-tuk fare and food before going out to look for something new to amuse himself.
So far, nothing he’d brought back since that day had tickled his fancy long enough for him to let it sleep in the room with him overnight.
A few, Terian pushed out the door within a few hours, and more than one left without their clothes, including one army journalist who couldn’t have been more than eighteen, which meant he’d probably lied on his enlistment papers to get some action over here before the war ended.
Looking around the room while he waited for Terian to return, Dehgoies noticed only then that Terry and Raven managed to get the bar re-stocked, too.
Really, is was a miracle they hadn’t been thrown out.
He knew the only reason they hadn’t was that they continued to throw money at the hotel staff whenever they got a complaint.
Staring at the bar a second longer, Dehgoies decided he needed a drink.
His head still throbbed like a motherfuck… like someone was still slamming it from behind with a glass-covered mallet.
It was enough to get his legs moving, and to get him out of where he’d stood, frozen, by the door to the suite. Walking over to the mirrored tray without a word, he picked up the nearest clean glass, wiping off the edge with his shirt before he plunked it down on the polished but now scratched surface.
He opened the cooler, looking for ice, but barely skipped a beat when he didn’t find any, cracking open a new bottle of scotch and pouring it, neat, into the thick glass tumbler.
He didn’t trust himself to look at Raven, not then anyway, but he could feel her eyes boring into his back, as if she was studying him as part of some kind of science experiment.
Whatever this so-called “present” was that she and Terry had gotten him, Dehgoies already knew he didn’t want it.
He didn’t even want to be here.
In fact, he fully intended to leave if that “present” involved watching Ray and Terry torture more humans. Just thinking about it made him feel sick, especially now.
Especially after his morning’s interaction with that green-eyed seer.
The sick feeling in his chest worsened as he remembered the pity in her eyes, the fleeting thoughts he’d caught that included vague tastes of her perceptions of him.
She’d felt sorry for him.
She’d seen him like a child.
Dehgoies couldn’t remember the last time another seer had looked at him in such a way. She hadn’t seen him as a lieutenant of the Org. She hadn’t even seen him as someone to be feared, much less someone to be respected. She’d seen him as a youngster, a broken child, one for whom she could feel nothing but compassion and a kind of helpless pity.
Shame tried to crawl under his skin and into his light, wanting to make a home there.
Maybe it just wanted to remind him that it had never left.
Forcing his mind off of her, and off what he’d felt in her light for those fleeting moments, he stared out the double doors leading to the balcony.
The slanted louvres of the wooden blinds tilted downward in the morning sun, casting odd patterns of sun and shadow on the hardwood floor and the throw rugs on that side of the room. The rugs themselves were a mess of food and coke, spilled alcohol and burns from hiri and human cigarettes.
The whole place stank, making his headache worse.
Fucking animals.
They were living like fucking animals here, whatever they told themselves.
They weren’t acting like seers.
They weren’t even acting like human beings.
The door opened to the bedroom even as the thought solidified, reminding Revik how long Terian had been gone. He’d drained the first glass of scotch and refilled the glass before Terian even made it across the room.
Even so, Dehgoies watched the other male seer warily as he closed the bedroom door behind him. He didn’t miss the oddity of that, of that closed door, but he didn’t comment on it, either. Terian was holding out a black hand-held, about the size of a fist, only flat on one side, a replica of the device that woke Dehgoies up every morning.
“He’s here,” Terian said, unnecessarily.
He handed the device to Dehgoies, even as the latter raised his new glass to his lips, taking a long drink before he put the transmitter to one ear.
Turning his back on Terian without thinking about why, Dehgoies walked in the direction of the balcony, taking another long drink before he dropped the glass on the table not far from the cracked mirror covered in drugs. He swallowed befo
re he spoke, not looking at either of the two seers he could still feel staring at his back.
“Dehgoies,” he said, blunt.
Stepping out on the balcony, he shut the double doors behind him.
Exhaling in spite of himself once he was away from the other two seers, he focused over a view of the river, watching the boats just like she had done that morning.
He felt a jump in his light when the man on the other end of the line answered.
“My friend,” he said. Concern and warmth filled the older male’s voice. “How are you, my dearest brother? How are you doing there?”
Galaith’s voice managed to bring that shame back in a dense cloud, before Dehgoies could shield it fully from his light.
He glanced back through the glass of the balcony doors at Terian and then Raven. He looked at them even as he swallowed, biting his tongue in that pause while he fought to control himself. Again, he couldn’t really make himself think about why he would look at them at all, but a part of him knew why, already.
Because they were children, like him.
He’d been spending his time with children here––doing drugs, soiling his living quarters, abusing other living beings.
Doing the selfish, inane, stupidly cruel things children did.
The thought turned his shame into something closer to anger.
Forcing an exhale, he combed his free hand through his sweat-damp hair, feeling his jaw harden as he tried to think through what he could feel off the aleimi of his boss.
Concern. Compassion. Worry.
Was it really concern, though?
Did Galaith really give a shit about him?
Sinking his weight down into one of the wooden chairs sitting by the balcony’s French doors, Dehgoies draped an arm over the round back, taking a breath before he attempted to answer, wishing he’d done a few lines before he’d accepted the transmission.
He heard the wariness in his own voice when he finally spoke.
He heard the curtness of his words, too.
“I’m fine,” he said. “How are you, sir?”
There was a pause.
That pause was longer than normal.
“I am good,” Galaith said, after that stuttered breath. “Very good, my friend. Thank you for asking. Things are quite well here.” Galaith paused again, that concern still showing through his structured light, still audible in his sonorous words. “I am sorry to bother you,” he said. “Truly, I am. I know how busy you are. But I hoped we could talk for a few minutes, Dehgoies.”
“We can,” Dehgoies said. “Of course, sir.”
He set the transmitter down on the balcony’s wrought-iron table, knowing that Terian and Raven would eavesdrop through the glass doors, regardless of what he did.
Positioning it near enough that he wouldn’t have to raise his voice, he made the affirmative gesture with his hand unconsciously, forgetting that the other seer would not see it through the audio-only line.
“Was there something in particular you wished to speak with me about, sir?” he said. “Or did you just want a more detailed update on the situation here?”
“You shot your contact,” Galaith said, his voice careful, still holding no overt accusation. “In Bảo Lộc. You killed our new trading partner.”
Galaith hesitated, as if unsure how to ask what he wanted to ask next.
“…I wondered if you would be willing to talk to me about that, my friend. I wondered if I might hear from you why you felt this needed to occur.”
“Why?” Dehgoies felt his anger flare, heating his chest as he glared through the glass doors at Raven. She only stared back at him defiantly, her arms folded over her chest. “There is no why, sir. Not like you mean. The dugra hulte ridvak needed killing, sir.”
“And why is that, my friend?” Galaith said.
“We can find someone better,” Dehgoies said.
“Better how, brother?”
“Just… better,” Revik said. He made a vague gesture over the table, a brief wave of his fingers as his voice turned dismissive. “We can find someone smarter. Someone who fulfills the shipments they promise us in full. Someone who doesn’t lose a third of the inventory along the way due to his own incompetence.”
Revik’s jaw tightened.
“…Someone who doesn’t sell our sisters to sociopathic worms,” he growled, in spite of himself. “Someone who doesn’t kill male seers for doing what any of us would have done, if we found ourselves in their position.”
Revik’s jaw tightened, briefly worsening his headache.
“…Someone who doesn’t trade our children’s bodies to line his pockets, sir, simply because it’s more convenient for him to do so. He was garbage. He was a coward. Ridvak carrion like him do us more harm than good, sir.”
“Do you think so, my friend?” Galaith said.
Revik nodded, wincing when it brought a shooting pain to his temple.
“I do, sir,” he said. “I’d rather not be a hypocrite, sir.”
“A hypocrite, Dehgoies?” the other man questioned.
Dehgoies dismissed his own words with a few flicks of his fingers, shaking his head as he clicked softly under his breath.
“Word of such things will get out in a short time, sir,” he said, his voice curt. “Seers talk, sir, both within the network and without. Seers talk in the camps. They talk in the settlements. They talk in the schools where the Seven raise their young. The seers in Seertown talk. So do the nomads who live in the mountains and plateaus. We do not want our work to be associated with such practices, sir. It will not help with recruitment to make them hate us… it will hinder it. Moreover, it will make our cause seem insincere. It will make us seem like hypocrites, sir, as I said. It is short-sighted, to use such a being––”
“You will replace him, then?” Galaith said. His words held an edge of warning for the first time since the conversation had begun. “You, personally, Dehgoies? You will see to it that he is replaced by a more worthy and competent candidate in your eyes?”
“I will,” Dehgoies said. “I vow it, sir.”
He felt the man on the other end of the line exhale.
It felt more like a sigh than a held breath.
As Revik felt whispers of the other male’s presence retreat, the dense, silver light that had pressed in on Dehgoies while he spoke began to lift.
“Very well,” Galaith said. His tone made it clear he was satisfied with Dehgoies’ words, and moreover that the subject was now closed. “Then we will speak no more of this, beloved friend. I defer to your judgment entirely on the matter… and will await word of our new trading partner in Southeast Asia prior to our next scheduled shipment.”
Dehgoies gave a short nod. “I will have it within a week, sir.”
“I know that you will.”
Silence fell once more between them.
Even so, Revik could tell from the faint breath of static on the open line that the conversation had not ended.
“Was there something else you wished to speak with me about, sir?” he said politely.
As soon as he said it, he found himself wishing he hadn’t.
It didn’t occur to him until that moment that the other seer had wanted him to ask that precise question.
“Yes, my friend,” Galaith said, letting out another sigh. His voice sounded concerned again, but softer. “Tell me about the female, Dehgoies. Tell me about the seer who has been tracking you. The one with the green eyes.”
Revik felt his breath stop.
Again, before he could stop himself, he turned to stare at the other two seers, only to catch both of them watching him carefully from where they stood, on the opposite side of those glass and wood French doors.
Terian held a glass of beer in one hand, and smoked what looked like a hiri, but what Revik guessed was more likely to be hashish, or perhaps some blend of the two. Raven only stood there, staring at him, her muscular arms wrapped around her silk, Vietnamese-style white blouse. Dehgoies foun
d himself noticing a splash of dark red by her collar, pausing his eyes long enough to bring a frown to his lips.
He glanced back at her face, but if she’d noticed where his eyes had gone, or knew about the blood on her clothes, he saw no hint of it in her stare.
The two of them continued to watch him unapologetically as he assessed them, their eyes and faces holding different expressions, but roughly equal amounts of scrutiny.
Dehgoies felt suddenly like a kid who had been called onto the carpet at school, after two of his classmates decided to tattle on him.
“What about her, sir?” Dehgoies said, his eyes again flickering away from that bloodstain on Raven’s blouse.
He heard the defensiveness in his own voice.
“I would like you to tell me about your reactions to her, Dehgoies,” Galaith said.
“Why?” Dehgoies said, blunt.
“I am concerned.”
“Concerned with what, sir, exactly?” Dehgoies said, frowning at Raven again. His voice grew colder through the transmitter, although he hadn’t consciously decided to go there. “…Concerned that I have an infatuation? That I want to fuck a female seer? Or concerned that it’s someone you haven’t personally approved for me to fuck?”
Dehgoies paused, deliberately ignoring the weight of silence his words produced.
He felt Terian and Raven react as well, enough that he knew they were listening to every word of this, on his side of the conversation, at least.
He knew Galaith didn’t approve of crude language.
He knew this without ever having been told so in so many words, and without ever having tested that knowing in the past. Dehgoies had never spoken to Galaith in such a way before, or with so little respect, not since their first meeting.
Even so, he found himself saying more, his voice just as cold.
“…If that really is the source of your ‘concern,’ sir, I would have to ask you why,” he said. “And, respectfully, sir… why is my sex life any of your goddamned business?”
The silence altered somewhat.
So did the light Revik felt shifting over his head.
Galaith waited another leaden beat before he spoke.
“If that is all this is,” Galaith said smoothly. “Then I have no concern whatsoever, my friend.”
Revik Page 16
