He looked around the campfire, then his eyes lit on the mug in Revik’s hand.
“Ooh! Coffee!” He swiped the mug out of Revik’s hands while he was in the process of taking another sip.
Revik scowled, grabbing for him, but Feigran twisted away, huddling around the mug and walking over to stand behind the couch, putting Balidor and Cass between him and us.
Revik looked at me, his eyebrow quirked, and I laughed, handing him my mug.
“I’ll share,” I told him.
“No. You sit,” he said, pointing down to the stump where I’d been sitting before. “I’ll put on prosthetics. You drink.”
Clicking in annoyance, I rolled my eyes.
Even so, I did as he said.
I sat there for the next five or so minutes, sipping coffee periodically while he applied prosthetic skins carefully to my face. I gave him a handful of sips too, but he waved me off more than once, scowling at Feigran instead, who seemed to be drinking his coffee as fast as he could, probably so Revik wouldn’t steal it back.
“Don’t whine, Fig,” Cass said, looking over her shoulder at him. “No one offered us any coffee either.”
“We’re not driving,” Balidor reminded her softly.
“Neither is she,” Cass grumbled.
Revik gave me a flat look, probably seeing me grit my teeth.
Still pursing his lips, he handed me the contact lens case last, and I put those in on my own.
While I did, Revik stalked over to Feigran, snatching the cup of coffee out of the seer’s hand as soon as he was close enough. I heard him cursing out Feigran for the empty mug as I put the contacts case away in the bag where I’d been keeping the prosthetics.
Shoving the case back in my duffel, I pulled out a brush and brushed out my hair.
By the time I was done, Revik was starting up the engine on the truck.
Tossing my brush in the bag, I hefted the duffel’s strap over my shoulder and walked it to the truck. Balidor stood there, next to a pile of bags by his feet. He tossed in one that must have been his or Cass’s, then held out a hand, offering to take mine.
I pushed past him, throwing my own bag into the back of the truck.
I felt a ripple of annoyance off Balidor.
“Are you ever going to let this go?” he grumbled at my back.
I turned, looking at him.
“No, ‘Dor. I’m not ever going to let this go.”
Turning away from him, I grabbed a bag from the ground, one I recognized as Feigran’s, and threw that into the back of the truck, too.
“You’re being really fucking childish,” he said, folding his arms. “You’re one of my closest friends, Allie. I’ve been loyal to you since I’ve known you. We’ve fought, yes. Friends fight. But I’ve never given you any reason to––”
“Yeah,” I said, giving him a colder look. “Neither had she. Not until she tried to kill me.”
Turning away, I threw in Revik’s bag, my jaw clenched.
There was a silence while he watched me do it.
When I glanced at him next, his mouth twisted into an angry frown.
“So, it’s guilt by association, then?” he said. “You and I, our history together, our friendship, all of it? It’s all nothing to you now? Everything we went through in the past few years is all erased? All because of who I happened to fall in love with?”
I grimaced at him openly, giving him an incredulous look as I swung one of the metal doors to the back of the truck shut. Keeping my back to him, I dropped the L-bar into the hole at the back, then locked it in place with the organic key.
I didn’t look back at him as I answered.
“Balidor, the fact that you could say that to me, like it’s not going to make me want to throw up on your shoes, just tells me you have no clue what that psychotic bitch did to me.”
Turning, I gave him a hard look, swinging the second door shut.
Looking away from his scowl, I grunted, locking the second door in place.
“…That, or you’re engaging in delusional thinking in the extreme,” I said, shaking my head and clicking at him. “Jesus, ‘Dor. Wake up, will you? Cass has been manipulating men by their dicks since we were both in junior high. If you think for a second she’s not just using you, to get a foot back in the door with the rest of us––”
“Oh, that’s lovely, Alyson. Thank you so much for that. And for your flattering vote of confidence in my intelligence.” His face hardened in real anger. “You haven’t even looked at her light, Allie. You refuse to even acknowledge that it’s changed. You don’t know a damned thing about where she’s at, or what she went through to get to where she is now––”
“I have no idea what Cass went through?” I turned on him, for the first time fighting real rage. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
“Syrimne was a mass murderer,” Balidor shot back, his voice hardening. “You expect redemption for him, but for no one else? Why? Because it was personal?” His voice lowered to a growl. “Syrimne was damned personal for me, Esteemed Bridge. I got over it.”
“After spending more than a year trying to convince me to kill him?” I snapped.
“Yes!” he said. “But then I got over it, goddamn it.” His jaw hardened. “Moreover, I got over it for you, Allie.”
Revik poked his head around the back of the truck and frowned, looking between us.
“Hey. You two ready to go?”
At our silence and mutual glares at one another, he exhaled.
“You can fight in the truck,” he said, pounding on the metal briefly with his fist and smiling. “We need to get on the road. Varlan’s got everyone loaded. They’re waiting.”
Exhaling in anger, I turned, walking away from both of them and towards the passenger side of our vehicle. Without looking back, or seeing if Balidor had followed me, I opened the door and climbed in, shutting it and locking it behind me.
I don’t think anyone spoke a word for the next two hours of driving.
Well, no one apart from Feigran, who chatted incessantly about how bad the coffee had tasted and how much he wanted more of it, and whether I might make it for him.
He then proceeded to tell us about much better coffee he’d had in other places.
I think Revik’s the only one who laughed.
23
DUBROVNIK
WE DECIDED TO try and find a way over the water in Croatia.
Dubrovnik was an old, Medieval city, still more or less intact, even after purges following the C2-77 outbreak. Most of the wall remained around the center of town, and the main port still more or less functioned, if primarily as a shipping point for the local mafia, and those operating out of Eastern Europe, Turkey, and parts of the Middle East.
We’d been told the local crime bosses lived inside the walled part of the old city, along with most of the Dubrovnik wine, a surplus of its food, a good portion of their younger, female population, and a lot of slaves culled from both the locals and neighboring communities.
We avoided the walled part of the city.
Instead, we drove the trucks around and past the southern part of town, where the old, walled city lived, ending up in Babin Kuk, a northern peninsula and suburb with a series of what used to be luxury hotels and small docks for private boats and yachts.
Varlan took one of the trucks to trade. He and Illeg went to find us a boat.
I wanted to look for a market, see if I could trade the second truck for some decent food, but Revik wasn’t enthusiastic about that plan. It also raised the question of what we would do with Cass and Feigran––and if we could really risk leaving them without at least one telekinetic seer to act as guard.
Revik, of course, refused to leave me alone, even to guard Cass.
In the end, we all went. Everyone but Dalai, who stayed behind to keep an eye on our clothes and weapons at the burnt out luxury hotel on the water, which we were using as our meeting point.
Instead of Revik, I drove. In additi
on to the prosthetics and contacts, I wore a dark scarf around my head over a cotton shawl Illeg found for me. Combat body armor covered my torso, arms and thighs under the long shawl.
Needless to say, the armor was Revik’s idea. He turned the thermal controls on in the organics before I climbed into the driver’s side of the truck, in the hopes it might disrupt any flyers trying to ID my organs, skeleton or heartbeat.
Holo and Stanley rode in the back of the truck, both of them carrying sniper weapons and enough ammunition for several firefights.
Everyone else––meaning, me, Revik, Balidor, Cass and Feigran––crammed into the front seats of the smaller truck.
I tried to ignore the fact that Cass leaned on the back of my seat, peering around it to look out the windows with Balidor, who sat in the middle, and Feigran, who sat to his right, directly behind Revik in the passenger seat and halfway in Balidor’s lap as he tried to look around the seat and through the bug-splattered windshield.
I drove us around the newer part of the city.
The others stared out the windows, looking for any sign of a market, and reading humans for the same whenever we came across them.
“There!” Revik said finally. “Those people. They just came from something.”
He jerked his chin towards a group of six old women in shawls not unlike the one I wore. Two pushed shopping carts over the cobblestones. The carts were half-filled with vegetables, bread, dried seeds or beans, empty water bottles, cloth, cooking oil, used tennis shoes, yarn, candles, and what looked like freshly-killed rabbits wrapped in leaves.
“You get a location off them?” I said, glancing at Revik after we passed their group.
The old women stopped in the street, gaping at the truck as we passed.
“One sec,” he muttered.
Balidor spoke up from behind my elbow, right as I downshifted to accommodate a steeper section of the narrow, cobblestone street.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “It’s by the marina. South of here… back towards the mainland.”
He sent me a snapshot, showing me a long, sprawling outdoor market next to what remained of a recreational park by the water. He showed it to me in a packed cluster of images, from several different angles, including from above, so that I could see it almost like a map.
“Got it. Thanks.”
Revik gave him an annoyed look.
Seeing his genuinely piqued expression, Balidor rolled his eyes.
“So sorry, your Illustrious Royal-ness,” he grunted under his breath. “Next time, I’ll be sure and let you play hero to your blushing bride.”
Revik turned slowly, giving him an incredulous look… then burst out in a real laugh.
I think I was more surprised than Balidor. I jumped at the sound, jerking the wheel before I recovered, looking at Revik in amazement.
He grinned back at me.
It hit me suddenly, in a dense pulse of understanding.
He was really happy today. He’d been happy since we got up that morning.
Really, when I thought about it, he’d been happy since we came out of our session last night.
He had no right to be this happy, given everything that was going on––given where we were going after this, and the fact we might not even make it to the shore of Italy, much less inside Vatican City. I couldn’t possibly be annoyed with him, though.
I couldn’t be annoyed with much of anything really, not when he was this happy.
He must have heard me. His grin widened.
He slid over on the seat and wrapped his arms around me as I drove. When I laughed in surprise, wriggling in his grasp, he only squeezed me tighter, kissing my neck.
“Hey, hey,” Cass said. “Don’t make her crash! I don’t want to end up with a broken leg just because you’re both crazy.”
Balidor burst out in a laugh, surprising me again.
Revik didn’t let go of me, but leaned down, sinking his teeth into my neck, making me shriek. Fighting to work the gear shift around his arms and hands, I threw the truck into a higher gear as we hit the straightaway again.
When he continued to hug me, pulling me half into his lap and forcing me to strain for the pedals, I smacked at his hands, laughing in spite of myself.
Feigran poked his head out from between the seats, holding up a hand like he was in a classroom, waiting to be called on.
When none of us told him to speak, he cleared his throat.
“I vote that the Illustrious Sword and the Esteemed Bridge have sex soon,” he said seriously. “They are quite distracting like this.” He looked around at each of our faces, his amber eyes solemn. “Quite. Distracting.”
Cass burst out in a laugh, almost like she couldn’t help herself.
It sounded so much like the old Cass, I flinched, glancing over my shoulder at her in spite of myself. I looked back at Revik when he laughed too, kissing me a last time before he released me, moving back to his side of the front seat.
Clicking to myself, I worked the gear shift and the clutch yet again, taking us around a curve and towards a road heading south and towards the marina.
“NO.” I FROWNED, making a negative gesture with one hand at the seer with the dark blue eyes and the Nazi scar slashing a diagonal line across his deeply-tanned face. “That’s not enough, brother. The truck is in perfect shape. Nothing wrong with it.”
The seer clicked at me, tilting his head in theatrical regret.
“No matter with the truck, beautiful sister,” he said in heavily accented Prexci, making a negative gesture with both hands. “No gas. No gas, then truck is worth shit… pardon my speaking. Could be brand new truck, na? Same difference. What good is brand new shiny truck to me? This truck with no gas?”
I rolled my eyes. “Gaos di’lalente. Come off it, brother. We know what lives right down the street, in that Old City. You can sell this truck to your warlords here. You sure as hell know they have fuel. That, or they have people who can retrofit it for solar.”
“I know nothing about this, lovely sister. Nothing at all.” His dark eyes glanced down my figure then, right before he smiled. “Females get behind the wall just fine,” he said. “You could come there with me… we come up with price. Maybe there is bonus work for you there. They always like new faces. Pay lot of money. Money for both of us.”
Rolling my eyes for real that time, I backed off.
“No, thanks, brother. I’ll take my merchandise elsewhere.”
“Wait, sister! Wait––”
He grabbed my arm, when Revik appeared out of nowhere from where he’d been looking at guns, a few booths down. He caught hold of the blue-eyed seer’s arm, his mouth a scowl.
“Touch her again, brother,” he said through gritted teeth. “You’ll lose that fucking arm.”
The blue eyes turned hard, revealing the harder man beneath the smile.
I watched those eyes assess Revik.
Even disguised by prosthetics, something in Revik’s face seemed to reach the other seer. Hesitating for a beat, he backed off, all at once, holding up his hands.
The oily, insincere smile returned to his tanned face.
“Apologies, brother! Apologies! I simply did not want a misunderstanding to end a promising bargain with your beautiful friend, that is all––”
“I think she understood you just fine.”
Revik released his arm, but not until he practically threw it at the other man.
Coiling his arm around my waist, he pulled me against him then behind him. Still watching the other seer with some part of his light, he leaned down towards my ear, murmuring softly.
“There’s an arms dealer over by the livestock. We can trade with him.”
I rolled my eyes. “Baby, we don’t need more guns. That’s the one thing we have plenty of. We need some damned food.”
He smiled, his expression still taut from his interaction with the trader. Kissing my face, he gripped my back tighter.
“He has trading partners,” he said.
“I already asked him about food. He said it wasn’t a problem.”
“What kind of food?” I said, wary.
My eyes were following Balidor and Cass, who stood over a table covered in wooden objects, all of them obviously hand-carved. Cass was looking at a chess board painted with ivory and forest green squares, the pieces made of some kind of carved stone housed in red felt. She fingered one of the pieces, then glanced at me.
Catching me looking at her, she flushed, then moved away from the chess set, almost as if she’d been burnt by the piece she held.
I saw Balidor lean towards her then. He took her hand, saying something into her ear.
That time, it was me who looked away.
Revik tugged me tighter against his side.
“Are you listening to me at all?” he complained.
I clicked at him in amusement, looking up.
“Olives,” I said, repeating back what he’d just been saying to me, word for word. “Cooked potatoes. Bread. Dried rabbit, pork, and chicken meat. Some kind of local cake thing with berry frosting. Lamb stew for tonight… or maybe on the boat, depending on when we leave. We could also pick up some candles, and a few more scarves and shawls for me to wear in Italy.”
Looking up at him, I leaned into his chest.
“Did I miss anything?” I said innocently.
He gripped me tighter, about to answer, when suddenly, he yanked me backwards.
I gasped, stepping back and directly behind him as his hands and arms slammed upwards in a near X-shape, stopping and trapping a man’s arm. Before I could make sense of what happened, Revik slid his weight back and sideways, trapping the other man’s wrist against his right side.
I saw the knife glint in the sun behind Revik’s back, right before Revik slammed down with his other elbow, hitting the man in the face, probably to stun him, right before he grasped hold of the male’s neck, using his weight to force down his head and shoulder until the other squealed in pain.
Revik had him on the ground an instant later, his knee in his back, his wrist still trapped under his right arm, despite the unnatural angle he held the other man’s body.
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