Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  Even so, in terms of strategy, Jon had been leaning towards Balidor’s take on things.

  Sincere or no, Revik still seemed heavily deluded in terms of what he thought the “problems” were between Allie and himself. Moreover, Jon knew Revik might believe every single word he’d written to Allie in that letter, but still, in essence, be doing exactly what Balidor accused him of doing. Revik didn’t see himself clearly. That, in itself, was a problem.

  If he really was affecting Allie’s light to the degree Balidor suggested, then she could start to fall into his warped view of the world, too. Hell, Jon had seen that happen with human couples, much less with seers. She could be affected by the Dreng directly, sure, but more likely, she might just find herself naturally sympathetic to Revik’s point of view.

  That, and she loved him, of course.

  So Balidor’s argument made sense, and didn’t strike Jon as particularly surprising. She and Balidor had never exactly seen eye-to-eye when it came to Revik, anyway.

  Then, somewhere in that, Allie got well and truly pissed off.

  Maybe she’d just made up her mind, and decided she was done arguing about it.

  It was one of the few times he’d really seen her throw her weight around as Bridge, and he couldn’t really blame her for that. She’d always been more than a little restrained in that regard, letting Balidor and Vash handle most of the big strategy decisions. Balidor had gotten pretty nasty towards the end, too, so maybe he just crossed a line with her. Maybe the crack about the collar had been the last straw, or maybe he’d just gone too far with his constant hammering about her being manipulated by Revik and the Dreng.

  Either way, at one point, it sounded like she’d actually fired Balidor as head of the Adhipan.

  It also sounded like she was going back to Revik.

  Then Balidor had a gun in his hand.

  Before any of them could move, before Jon fully comprehended that the gun was real, that it wasn’t some kind of joke, or even a threat to get Allie to cooperate––the Adhipan leader shot Allie in the chest.

  She’d gone down hard.

  So hard, in fact, she cracked her head on the hardwood stairs.

  That, more than anything, had worried Jon horribly in those first few seconds. Not the hole in her chest that turned red within two of her heartbeats. Not the pool of blood that spread over the front of the cotton Chinese shirt she wore.

  No, he’d worried she might have a concussion.

  Standing over her, he’d watched her bleed out, until it finally occurred to him he was watching his sister die.

  He didn’t have time to think about that for long, either.

  Balidor and Dorje shuffled him out of the way before his mind caught up. They moved Allie out of there so quickly, Jon couldn’t comprehend what happened there, either.

  He still didn’t know if they’d taken her somewhere to try and save her life––or if they’d buried her in the garden under those white-skinned trees.

  All he knew was, when they came back, they said she was dead.

  Tenzi told him what Balidor had done was legal according to the bylaws of the Seven and Adhipan. The contingency for keeping the Bridge out of the hands of the Dreng was simple, but harsh. If it looked like she might go over, whether via capture or conversion, the party or parties responsible for her welfare were charged with killing her. In the logic of the Seven and the Adhipan, it was far more important to protect her light than it was to protect her body. The fact that they believed intermediaries like Allie reincarnated on Earth to aid the other races made it doubly important that her light remain free from negative influences.

  According to Tenzi, Revik had been given that same contingency for Allie when he’d been assigned as her bodyguard. Which meant, technically-speaking, Revik might have been legally obligated to shoot her when Terian took her during their honeymoon.

  There was a strict no-tolerance rule when it came to intermediary beings going to the dark side. Which was funny, in a non-funny kind of way, since from what Jon could tell, it happened rather a lot.

  Either way, no one did anything to Balidor for shooting her.

  Someone led Jon out of the basement catacombs by the arm.

  Minutes later, he was in a truck, bouncing along a mountain road leading out of Seertown. Jon’s good hand gripped a metal bench in the back, and he’d been staring around at the rest of them, trying to see in their faces if they understood better than he did what just happened. He looked between Cass and six other infiltrators and that giant, albino-looking boyfriend of hers, and he felt like someone had cut a string that held him to the ground.

  He’d seen Cass crying.

  She’d been in shock, too, when suddenly it broke.

  From her face, it was as if something just occurred to her, or she finally understood what it all meant. Her face crinkled under the scar that crossed it in a diagonal line, and she burst into a sob. Jon watched, numb, as Cass curled up in the lap of the giant seer with the big yellow braid and the brand of the sword and the sun on his shoulder. She cried for hours while he held her. He rocked her with one massive, thick-fingered hand, speaking softly in that pidgin Mandarin he spoke and stroking her hair.

  She cried all the way to Hardiwar. Then, just as quickly, she fell asleep.

  Jon suspected the giant Wvercian had done that, too.

  He didn’t cry himself. He just watched them through it, and wondered what Balidor had done with the body.

  As Jon’s truck pulled out of the muddy lot above the Old Mansion, two other trucks had remained in the parking area overlooking the gardens and what remained of Seertown. When Jon asked, he was told that Balidor and a few of the others stayed behind to finish whatever had to be done. Dorje came with them as far as Dharamsala, then he returned to Balidor, too.

  Jon had seen tears in Dorje’s eyes when he said goodbye. Everything about that remained a blur to him, too, but he remembered a promise in there somewhere, some words about coming to find him when it was done.

  Or not. Maybe Jon imagined that, too.

  It occurred to him, well before the time when the truck finally stopped, that he might never see Balidor or Dorje again. When the truck did stop, and that roll-door opened, Jon found himself gazing up at blue skies and a different view of snow-covered mountains, whitewashed houses and slate tile roofs. He’d climbed out, dazed.

  Someone told him he was in Kathmandu, Nepal.

  They’d been here for almost two weeks. There’d been no word whatsoever on Balidor or the rest of those who stayed behind in Seertown.

  Looking out over the tile rooftops, Jon glanced up the mountain, focusing on the white walls and red roofs of the monastery.

  Feeling his jaw tighten, he made up his mind.

  He left the deck, walking past potted trees and scattered plastic chairs, a stretch of astroturf that covered one portion of the whitewashed patio. Heading for the narrow landing in the far corner, he took the cement stairs two at a time once he’d reached it, wrapping the thick coat he wore tighter around the thermals and T-shirt he had on underneath.

  He had good boots at least. After being warned over and over about winters in the Pamir, Dorje talked him into getting a real set from Delhi, but he still didn’t quite layer up enough for their colder weather.

  It was February now, Jon thought. Maybe March? It was so hard to care out here, to even keep track more than a few weeks at a time.

  Trudging across ground that crunched under his feet with ice, Jon crossed the small field to the dirt path leading up to the monastery, shivering as he shoved his hands in his pockets.

  They’d stayed on the edge of the city to avoid crowds, but with everything going on in the seer and human worlds, tourists were few and far between.

  Jon got some stares as he walked past.

  Still, he’d been pretty blown away at the size of the city. Somehow, he’d pictured something a hell of a lot smaller than a million people. He’d ridden down a few times with Cass and Bag
uen to check out the markets and the temples, and wander through the main plaza at Durbar Square. He’d been a little overwhelmed by the sheer numbers wandering around the Royal Palace and in and out of bazaar stores. He’d gotten a decent coat there, along with a number of books in English, the latter being somewhat difficult to come by in Seertown.

  Baguen, being nearly seven feet tall, with his near-albino coloring, barrel chest and black eyes, got a lot more stares than the rest of them.

  Nepalese humans saw seers all the time, of course, a fair number of them in fact, but Wvercians like Baguen didn’t tend to wander this far south. Wvercians tended to avoid humans altogether, from what Jon could tell, sticking to remote, nomadic regions in China and Tibet and avoiding cities. Although some had been sold for work in the West––mainly as athletes and bodyguards and occasionally as curiosities due to their coloring and exaggerated height and size––they were even less common sights there, in that they were one of the few types of seers that couldn’t pass at all, even with facial surgery and blood patches.

  Jon walked faster, rubbing his hands together as he entered the wooden gate to the seers’ monastery. He needed to remember to buy gloves the next time he went to town.

  Four of the twenty or so infiltrators they’d had with them at Seertown were gone: Balidor, Dorje, Tenzi and Illeg. The ones who remained at the monastery in Nepal, Jon didn’t know quite as well. The one he’d probably spoken to the most, Unge, had been a bit cold since they’d arrived, and his invitation to come visit felt perfunctory only.

  They’d been Balidor’s people, mostly, although a few, like Tenzi and Anale, had been members of the Seven’s guard. Since the attack on Seertown, the two groups essentially collapsed into one, at least in terms of operational hierarchy.

  No one had seen Chandre since Delhi. Or Garensche.

  Everyone, including Allie, assumed Chandre had gone over to Revik’s side.

  That, or she’d been killed in the bombing.

  Allie seemed pretty convinced she wasn’t dead, though––and, now that he pondered it, Jon agreed with her. He remembered watching Chan start to change, even as far back as when they planned the op in D.C. She’d sided with Revik’s views on means and ends, even then.

  Hell, Jon wasn’t even sure what he thought at this point.

  After seeing the burned out remains of Seertown again, along with headlines of the hysteria going on in the human world, he got angry sometimes, too. He regularly heard human commentators on the feeds calling for mass exterminations of seers, shooting uncollared seers on sight, or callously advocating collaring and enslaving all of them at birth.

  Jon also knew more now, so that was part of it.

  Dorje told him about seer slave camps, where he, Chandre and the vast majority of seers spent their childhoods. Dorje had known Chan a little back then, and had some idea of what she’d been forced to endure while they grew up. Dorje seemed to think females had it worse where they’d been, although he said it really depended on the specific camp.

  Dorje shared his own experiences as a child in some detail, too. Honestly, he’d told Jon more than he really wanted to know in some respects, especially about what they did with the seers who mentally broke from the strain.

  Hell, given all that, he was surprised more seers didn’t kill humans.

  Who was he, really, to tell Revik he was wrong?

  All of that got wiped away when he remembered Delhi, though. Those memories still burned behind his eyes, too: humans shot like cattle as they stumbled out of the bombed out hotel doors, bodies burning, more bodies lying broken on the pavement or under chunks of debris, people wandering around in a daze, covered in blood and ash. He remembered their terror, the shock on their faces, like something inside them had broken, never to be fixed.

  No one deserved that. No one.

  He reached the top of the stairs and entered the monastery through the converted temple, passing a number of seers kneeling and sitting on the floor. They looked at him, and he could feel frowns as they realized what he was. He tried to keep his thoughts respectful, so as not to disturb whatever praying they seemed to be doing, but he could tell it didn’t really help.

  Ignoring their angry looks as best he could, he headed for the east wing of the building, where he knew Unge and the others stayed.

  It wasn’t them he’d come to see, though. Not really.

  He ran into Yumi first, a female seer with a dark blue and black tattoo over one side of her face. The thick marks almost looked like writing, but could have been a religious symbol of some kind. Jon had trouble not staring at it whenever he talked to her.

  He fumbled with his request, watching her dark eyes narrow at him on a face that looked like an odd mishmash of Asian humanity: Tibetan, Nepalese, Chinese, maybe.

  Seer, really––just Asian seer.

  The woman finally held up a hand, interrupting him.

  “What do you want with him?” she asked in Prexci, the same language Jon had just been butchering. Most Asian seers didn’t speak English.

  “Just let me see him, Yumi,” he said. “I won’t do anything.”

  For a moment she only scanned him.

  Then, clicking out, she glanced backwards down the long hallway behind her. In the pause, Jon found himself staring at the religious tapestries lining the dark stone walls, noting the elaborate depictions of Gods and Goddesses standing in clouds above the earth. Again, he recognized most as seer, but they reminded him somewhat of Chinese images he’d seen.

  He glanced at one of a boy beside a sword and sun image, holding the hand of a girl wearing all white and carrying lightning in her hand. Swallowing as he stared at the image of the girl, he couldn’t help notice that the depiction looked a lot like Allie.

  After another pause, Yumi sighed, clicking softly.

  “Can I see him?” Jon said.

  She gestured affirmative, but her eyes retained the wary look.

  “No funny business,” she said in broken English.

  Jon smiled; he couldn’t help it.

  “No funny business,” he promised. “Trust me. We’re old friends.”

  The female didn’t smile.

  Her eyes continued to look at his, slightly off-focus, which told him she was still scanning his light. Unlike Balidor, she didn’t bother to be subtle about it.

  Even as he thought it, the reality hit him again.

  Balidor had killed his sister.

  He shot her, right in front of him.

  When he looked up next, the female’s eyes had softened. She touched his arm, her fingers warm. He felt sympathy in the touch.

  “You can go,” she said. She motioned with her head, her dark eyes still sharp, but less hostile. “He is at the end of the hall. Tell Poresh I said it is okay.”

  Jon bowed to her, holding up a hand in a gesture of respect.

  “Thank you,” he said, using the formal version in Prexci.

  Her eyes lit up in a pleased surprise.

  “You are polite, human,” she remarked. She touched his face with the back of her fingers. “Come see me after… if you want.”

  Jon flushed. He felt the pull from the female seer’s light.

  Allie had explained to him how to identify things like that, and apparently he was pretty sensitive for a human. Still, he hadn’t quite gotten used to being hit on by sexually aggressive female seers. He managed to handle it poorly, every time.

  She must have been reading his thoughts still, because she frowned.

  “No females?” she said.

  Jon shrugged. “Sorry, cousin. I have a predisposition.”

  Clicking at him regretfully, she shrugged with one hand, seer fashion, and walked away.

  “Okay.”

  Shaking off the last tendrils of her light, Jon snorted a faint laugh and followed the direction in which she’d originally pointed him.

  He walked the stone slab floor, feeling like his boots made a lot of noise on the polished surface. When he reached the
end of the second hall, he found the male seer named Poresh, or “Pori,” as Allie had called him, sitting on a folding chair.

  He barely gave Jon a glance before waving him inside.

  He caught Jon’s wrist, though, as he was about to pass, speaking in Prexci.

  “Think loud if you need me,” he said, pointing at his temple, his eyes liquid and serious. “I’ll stay in that part of the construct.”

  His teeth looked shockingly white in the dim space by the end of the hall. Looking down, Jon noticed that the seer was sewing with a needle and thread, repairing a shirt with a tear along one seam.

  Jon gestured affirmative, and smiled.

  “Thanks.”

  Sometimes the seer thing definitely made things easier. He didn’t have to repeat himself all the time, the way he did with humans.

  Pushing through the metal door after Poresh leaned back to unlock it, Jon entered the monk’s cell warily, glancing around in the dark. After the door closed with a loud click behind him, he stood next to it for a few minutes without moving.

  He jumped violently when he saw the seer staring at him.

  Crouched in a corner of the six by eight cell, Feigran gazed up at him, his hands held out, open-palmed, on his knees. He looked like he was praying.

  Or maybe taking a shit.

  The seer giggled.

  In a single, smooth movement, he rose to his feet. Turning around in awkward circles a few times, despite the chains, he knelt on the floor, patting his palms against his thighs.

  He smiled up at Jon, his face eager.

  “Talky-talky… yes?”

  Jon found himself wondering what he was doing.

  Still, he’d come this far.

  Sighing a little, he approached the owl-eyed seer, watching him prod at the paving stones with his fingers, as if he expected them to jump out of the mortar and attack him. Terian mumbled something to himself as he continued to prod and poke, something that sounded like he was quoting something, or maybe singing something.