Sun

by J. C. Andrijeski

  Chandre came close to killing Raddi, too. She’d left Jorag with a broken leg and a concussion––the latter serious enough, he’d gone into the seer stasis. He might not come out of that for days, if not weeks, so he was out of commission for the foreseeable future.

  Kat got shot in the abdomen, ripping apart one kidney, her intestines, her liver and her stomach. From what Declan told us, things didn’t look good for her at all. They’d managed to get her a blood transfusion but it took too long and she’d already been on the verge of death by the time they found a suitable donor.

  Declan now said she probably wouldn’t see tomorrow.

  That would bring the total dead by Chandre’s hand to six.

  Six seers. Somehow that number felt more real to me than all of those lost in Beijing.

  We hadn’t lost that many all at once since New York, during the tsunami.

  On that roof in Tokyo, Balidor muttered something about funeral rites and I told him and Yumi to handle it without asking for particulars or wanting them. I’m pretty sure Balidor felt that. After giving me a longer, more shrewd look, he simply nodded and didn’t offer anything else.

  Certain things were immediate priorities.

  I needed to know if President Brooks was alive.

  I couldn’t abandon her, not after everything. Anyway, we still had people in the United States. Most were looking for Chandre already.

  I couldn’t make myself think yet, what to do about Chandre herself.

  I knew Declan might kill her, regardless of what orders I gave.

  I understood why, but I couldn’t make myself feel the same. We’d let Dorje’s betrayal be an enigma and dark question mark that still hung over our group. We’d never really recovered from what he’d done, and I didn’t want the same thing all over again with Chan.

  Too many of us loved Chandre.

  I loved her. Even now, I loved her.

  Pushing the image of her face from my mind, I refocused on the man who was the only father I had left down here. I saw him watching me as I did, as if some part of him had followed the winding course of my thoughts, letting them wind down on their own.

  Even after they had, we both just stood there, silent, watching one another. Then his eyes drifted down. I saw him looking at the bandage on my leg, my bare feet, the cuts and scrapes that covered most of my exposed skin.

  Then he met my gaze with those shocking blue eyes of his.

  The emotion coming off him didn’t lessen after his appraisal of my condition.

  It grew perceptibly worse.

  I swallowed, seeing that emotion reach the stillness of his eyes. I had an overwhelming urge to touch him, something that hadn’t happened since my first reunion with him and my biological mother on that beach in Sri Lanka.

  Truthfully, I’d mostly been angry at them.

  Now, looking at him, that whole thing struck me as childish.

  “Are you all right?” I asked him.

  His blue eyes clicked into a harder focus. He met my gaze, then exhaled. His expression softened, but only really towards me.

  “No,” he said.

  He shifted his weight, then met my gaze again.

  “You weren’t raised seer, daughter,” he said.

  There was a silence after he said it. I felt him wanting me to acknowledge his words in some way, maybe to agree with them or to refute them.

  I nodded, once, seer-fashion.

  “I was not,” I confirmed, speaking Prexci.

  I don’t know why I answered him so formally. Maybe I was reacting to some cue I read off him. Or maybe it was pride, showing him I could seer with the best of them. I didn’t really feel pride, though. I think I was just trying to follow his lead.

  When he said nothing else for a few seconds more, I had to restrain myself from touching him again.

  “What is it…” I hesitated, realizing I had no idea what to call him. Then, realizing that was stupid, I sighed. “Father, are you upset with me? Because I would like to talk to you. I would. And Mother, too. But there’s a lot going on, and––”

  His energy flushed outward, catching me off guard.

  When I looked at his face that time, his eyes had turned bright.

  I swallowed, feeling a flush of alarm––maybe fear––as he wiped tears from his eyes. I caught hold of his arm, not thinking that time, even as I made my voice more subdued. I opened my light more.

  “What is it?” I said, soft. “Can you tell me?”

  He clicked under his breath, wiping his eyes with his hands. I felt embarrassment on him now, but also resolve.

  “I thought I should tell you. I intervened with your mate.” His voice came out harder, holding a near-anger, but also a denser pain. “…As your father. I asserted my rights, under the old ways. He offered me his penance as part of that, and an acceptance of my counsel. I would like your permission to continue to offer him that counsel, daughter.”

  I felt my throat close.

  Following his eyes, I realized he was staring at Revik, who still stood by the railing, looking out over the ocean. Watching my husband’s long black hair whip around his face and neck, I felt another surge of emotion.

  When I looked back at Uye, his expression was stern, his eyes still focused on Revik.

  Caution stole over my light.

  “Is he all right with that, Dad?” I said.

  Again, I said it without thinking. I felt my heart catch at the flare of heat off him when I used that name. He was holding my arms now too, and so much warmth came off him, I realized it was affecting me. I knew my being pregnant probably wasn’t helping.

  “He agreed to it,” he said, his voice gruff. “Would he lie?”

  I thought about that, glancing back at Revik.

  “No,” I said after a pause. Turning back, I met Uye’s gaze, searching his face, still trying to read what I could see there. “If he agreed to it, then it’s really between the two of you. It’s not for me to say anything about it.”

  I watched that tension in my father’s eyes relax.

  He nodded at me, but didn’t release my arms.

  “I won’t hurt him,” he said, gruff. “I might want to, now and then.”

  I laughed at that. I couldn’t help it; it burst out of me the same way the words, tears, emotions and the rest of it had been bursting out of me since I’d seen them all alive.

  Then, without thinking, I threw my arms around him, giving him a hug.

  It was the first hug I’d given either of my biological parents.

  His muscular arms wrapped around me, hugging me back, so tightly they nearly cut my breath. Even so, I managed to let out another laugh.

  When he released me, I laughed again, looking up at his face.

  He smiled back, once more wiping tears from his cheeks.

  “There’s one more thing, daughter dearest.”

  I smiled. “What? Are you going to ground him, too?”

  Uye grunted, as if unable to help himself. Smiling faintly, he shook his head, but his blue eyes remained still, and serious.

  “It’s your mother,” he said, blunt.

  Studying my eyes briefly for a reaction, he went on when I didn’t speak.

  “She had a vision. It’s one you need to see, daughter. You, and your mate.” He glanced at Revik, his mouth curling in a slight frown, but not really in anger. “Perhaps we could meet with you later today? I think I am trying the patience of your mate at the moment.”

  I frowned. “But it’s important, right? Like, life or death important––”

  “So is this,” Uye said, his voice firm. “Talk to your mate. Then tell us where to meet you. There is time for both. Perhaps we can all eat dinner together?”

  I blinked, startled in spite of myself.

  Then I nodded, slowly. “Okay. Sure.”

  For a bare instant, his blue eyes looked too bright again.

  “I love you,” he said.

  There was a fierceness in his voice that closed my thro
at.

  I thought he might say more, but he didn’t.

  Instead he turned on his heel and began walking away.

  I saw him heading directly for Revik and stood there for a few seconds longer, watching him go, feeling my heart hammer loudly in my chest.

  I couldn’t untangle all the emotions there though, the good ones or the bad ones.

  I was still staring after them when Wreg and Jon walked up to me, basically enveloping me in their light. I hadn’t even seen them on that part of the deck, so it threw me out of my own head for those few beats, and forced my eyes off where Uye had stopped to say something to Revik, maybe just to tell him what we’d agreed.

  Wreg and Jon caught hold of me on both sides, insisting with their words and light that I go with them to see the medical techs about my leg.

  My leg hurt by then. It felt like fire all along that side of my body.

  I also knew Wreg and Jon hadn’t come up to me because of my leg.

  I saw Wreg follow my eyes to where Uye still stood by Revik, saying something I couldn’t catch, either with my eyes or my light.

  I saw Revik bow politely, his eyes attentive.

  His demeanor wasn’t submissive, but I definitely felt that agreement between them, whatever it was.

  Wreg looked back at my face when he felt me watching them. He gave me a reassuring smile, kissing me on the cheek.

  “It’s okay, princess. Poresh told me about this.”

  He slung an arm easily around my shoulders, warming me with his light. The ease and affection with which he did it startled me, even as it made me want to lean into his comforting bulk. It hit me again how tired I was, and on how many levels.

  If Wreg noticed, he didn’t react, other than to open his light more.

  “It is seer tradition, this sort of thing,” he said reassuringly. “Uye approached it in the proper way. He asked permission of Tarsi––and of your mother. He even talked to Jon before he did it, calling him while we were on the way to come pick you up.”

  Seeing my surprised look, Wreg grunted.

  Glancing at Jon, he scowled at something I couldn’t see, right before he met Jon’s gaze and his eyes softened. Without letting go of me, he reached out, massaging his mate’s shoulder with a muscular hand, almost without seeming to notice himself doing it.

  Jon just watched his face, his own expressionless, yet somehow holding a lot anyway.

  “…It’s long fucking overdue, if you ask me,” Wreg muttered to me, still massaging Jon.

  I looked at Wreg, studying his nearly-black eyes.

  I looked at him, and some part of me wanted to ask.

  But I didn’t.

  7

  A NEW RELIGION

  LOKI GAZED DOWN from a cement roof onto the square below, watching as they led out the humans he’d come here to find, one by one. His frown deepened as he checked their lights against the imprints he’d stored in his aleimi to find them.

  All so far were human.

  All but two were young––below or around twenty years of age.

  All were on the List. All were his responsibility to find, to protect, to bring back to his superior officers so they could join the others on the List.

  Yet, as he looked out over the human and seer army standing up against the outer walls of the mosque across from where he stood, a heavy sense of powerlessness washed over him.

  The uniforms they wore were strange, unlike anything Loki had ever seen.

  Instead of khaki or beige, or something that blended into the desert landscape, they wore stark white pants and long-sleeved shirts, covered over in black armored plates over their shoulders, arms, elbows, thighs, knees and feet. Black and white helmets adorned their heads.

  On their armored chest plates shone the white, three-spiral symbol of the triskele.

  That symbol, Loki knew.

  Moreover, the square where they’d gathered for this event was one with which Loki was familiar, as well.

  It used to house an outdoor market filled with tables covered in fruit, fish, pastries, teas, elaborate blown-glass lamps, hand-painted plates, elaborate local human jewelry, simpler seer jewelry and hair clips. Egyptian rugs, trinkets, postcards, stolen organics, paintings of the great Egyptian Gods and Goddesses, photographs and paintings of the great pyramids, statues in bronze and iron and copper, scarves and carpets, snake charmers, spices from different areas across Asia and the Middle East––all of these were sold here once, too.

  A lot of it was garbage, of course.

  In the modern era especially, much of it was mass produced: cheap, machine-made products sold to tourists as authentic relics and handmade art.

  Even so, looking down at the burnt stumps of palm trees, staring at the bombed and burnt remains of the Al-Hussein Mosque, Loki felt a stab of pain.

  History was passing before his eyes.

  A whole civilization was passing before his eyes.

  He could only stand here, watching it disintegrate and fade, documenting its passing in the memories housed in his seer’s light.

  “Kneel!” a man said to the first of those they’d brought out.

  The human in the black robes held a sword in one fist.

  Loki had already felt him to be the leader here.

  Unlike the black and white clad soldiers, he wore local garb. Black robes adorned his tall body, with a white and gold symbol of the triskele in front.

  Something about his clothes, the leather boots and belt around his waist, the way he wore and carried the sword, despite all of his nods to local clothing traditions, evoked a medieval knight more than one who followed Muhammad.

  Loki saw the boy––and he was a boy––dark of skin, dark of hair, wearing the clothes of a peasant, kneel at once in the dirt.

  The man with the sword pointed to the next of them.

  That one, a girl with dark hair and large eyes, wearing Western clothes and a defiant expression, sank to her knees without being asked.

  Loki had a very bad feeling about this.

  His eyes scanned the crowd filling the square directly below him. They also faced the black-clad knight and his dirt clearing filled with prisoners. They also faced the army outside the mosque with its automatic weapons and black and white uniforms.

  Thousands stood there, under the hot Egyptian sun. From their clothing, most were human, but Loki suspected seers passing as human were scattered among them. In any case, there were far too many for how quiet it was.

  There were definitely too many for what Loki had come here to do.

  He turned to Anale, who stood to his left, then to Mika, Preela, Mansk and Rex, who stood to the right of him on the cement wall.

  They weren’t entirely alone up here, but they were mostly inconspicuous––so far, at least.

  Wrapped in traditional, human, Middle Eastern garb of sand-stained white robes and leather belts, wearing contact lenses and carrying assault rifles, they were definitely noticed, but not in a relevant way, and no one got too close.

  The humans had come up here to witness the same scene as them, so Loki and his people were only of secondary interest anyway. The humans clustered on other parts of the roof, speaking to one another in low voices in Arabic and watching the man with the sword and the all black robes as he paced on the packed dirt.

  From what Loki picked off the nearby minds, they all assumed Loki’s people were members of the security team working for the humans running the show down below.

  For the same reason, no one wanted to screw with them.

  The Mythers had already made a strong impression here, in only three days.

  The army below was only a portion of the one they’d used to invade the city, and to conquer Cairo as their own. They’d been killing for days, but most of it had been in the regular course of battle as they took on the Egyptian soldiers and local crime lords.

  This, whatever this was––this was something new.

  Frowning down at the market square, Loki saw that most
of those in the line of humans were now on their knees. Another human was binding their wrists and ankles together with rope. All but one, Loki noticed. That one, the oldest of the bunch, was a man with curly, graying hair, maybe in his mid-forties. He wore old-fashioned looking western clothes, wire-rimmed glasses, and had large brown eyes, a kind and likable face.

  Loki watched warily as they shoved and dragged him over to a wooden X rack sticking out of the dirt, and began lashing him to it, also with twine.

  Loki flinched when they began cutting his clothes off him with a curved knife.

  “What the fuck is this?” Rex muttered from next to him.

  Loki gave him a bare glance, not answering.

  Folding his arms across the robes he wore, above the gun slung around his shoulders, he stared down and tried to decide what options were still open to them, if any.

  To say they were outnumbered was a laughable understatement.

  The man wearing all black turned towards the crowd facing him from outside the dirt circle they’d cleared. Loki remembered an earlier time––a much earlier time––when he’d sat down not far from there, on a grassy lawn with a human friend of his, shaded by a row of palm trees.

  They’d had a picnic down there, watched people walk by and haggle at the various booths. They talked for hours, ate dates and meat, breads, grains and vegetable pastes he liked from the markets. Then he’d taken her back to his hotel with him, and they’d had sex.

  It had been a good day––or as good of one as can be had during wartime.

  That had been during his first major human war fought in this part of the world. He’d been on leave from the British Army.

  Pushing the memory from his mind, Loki watched the man in the black robes.

  He couldn’t penetrate the shield his brother and sister seers wrapped around his light, but he knew him definitely to be human. Most of those down there were human, distinguishable from the seers not only by their light, but even by their clothes.

  The Myther seers wore all black, with blood red badges on their shoulder-armor, making them stand out, even from a considerable difference. They also stood in their own rows within the greater military force, mostly at the edges of the sea of human soldiers.

  The black knight’s private seer guard dressed differently.