Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  Balidor watched, getting glimmers of feeling off the two of them as Dehgoies confirmed to himself it really was her. He kept his light as still as possible as the seconds ticked by. He knew any false move––anything to make him visible in the Barrier––and he was likely dead before he took his next breath.

  He watched the two Elaerian coil around one another.

  He saw her face begin to smooth, the relief in her expression so profound, it made his throat clench as he looked at her. He watched her fingers open, her head sink into the pillow that he’d lain under her head. Her light expanded more, sliding deeper into the presence that hovered around hers. The interaction went from desperate to relieved to increasingly intimate––until Allie turned halfway to her back, tears in her eyes.

  She was crying even as Balidor saw her nod, her lips moving in a slow murmur.

  Balidor remembered she wasn’t wearing a collar anymore, either.

  She was talking to the son of a bitch, he realized.

  Reassuring him.

  Pain crossed her features, bringing tears welling higher in her eyes, until they made thin trails down her hollow cheeks. Frowning, she bit her lip as she listened to something he said in return––right before her expression relaxed even more, flooded with a curl of his light as he wrapped himself around her.

  Her expression grew so open that time, Balidor found himself wanting to look away.

  It crossed his mind that they might get even more intimate if he didn’t make some attempt to separate them, at least a little.

  Still, he stood there, watching without trying to intervene.

  After what felt like a long time where they spoke to one another, Balidor felt the male coil into her, then hold her there, as if to hide her from whoever else might be in the room. He hovered over her, scanning her surroundings.

  Balidor felt the protectiveness of the gesture, and found himself reacting a little, in spite of himself.

  He tried to decide what to do. He wondered whether he could risk collaring her so soon after she’d nearly died from separation, or if he should just let this little reunion play out, despite what it risked. A collar wouldn’t keep them apart entirely, but it would block Dehgoies enough to keep her from being completely immersed in his light.

  For the same reason, it would infuriate him. It might even unhinge him entirely, given what they’d just been through.

  Hell, it could do the same to her.

  He was still thinking about this when Syrimne dropped the pretense and began to openly scan the surrounding Barrier space.

  The space where Balidor stood.

  For the first time, he panicked. It crossed his mind in a flash that he was likely dead, that the seer would see him. Despite Dehgoies’ weakened state, he had no doubt the seer would try to kill him where he stood.

  But the presence grew entirely still, as if listening.

  For a long time, it didn’t seem to move at all. It coiled around Alyson, still deepening its connection to her light, entwining their strands, reassuring her in a way Balidor could almost feel.

  He also felt the other male’s fear, the terror underlying that protectiveness. It was strong enough that it seemed to paralyze the Elaerian, and split his attention in a way that almost fragmented it. He would focus on her… then shift his attention outside of her again, looking for threats… then return to her in a panic… then flip back.

  Watching this play out, Balidor decided the male hadn’t seen him after all.

  Even so, the scare convinced him.

  He needed to get a collar on her. Now. Or all of them were dead. He was about to hit his VR link to request that Dorje bring one down from the upper floor––

  When a voice rose in the Barrier space.

  Balidor… it said.

  The voice spoke softly, in almost a whisper.

  Balidor froze, his hand halfway to his ear. The word came through as clear as metal striking glass, despite the construct’s walls.

  Balidor, the voice said, softer. I know you’re there, somewhere.

  The infiltrator held his breath, fighting to keep his light invisible. He lowered his vibration until it felt like crouching inside a shell of thick glass.

  Balidor, Dehgoies said. I know you brought her out, because I know you put her there. You’re watching us right now… possibly even listening to us, although I doubt even you’d be that bold.

  He paused. Balidor felt a surge of emotion off the Elaerian, violent enough that he flinched.

  I may not be able to see you, Dehgoies said. But rest assured, old friend… I will find you.

  Another pause, another pulse of feeling off that sun-bright light.

  If you hurt my wife again… if you touch so much as a single hair on her head… you have no idea the kind of hell I will unleash. Not just on you, but on all of yours. I will take down every stone of this civilization if I have to…

  Fire sparked out of the aleimic coil as it hovered protectively over Allie.

  I am coming, you son of a bitch, it told him.

  …I am coming.

  The memory burned bright in Balidor’s light, even now.

  He’d dreamed about that voice.

  Hearing it again, after all those years, was like a shadowed nightmare come to life, whispering out from the ashes of the fires that burned all through that endless-seeming war. Syrimne changed everything––everything. He destroyed any chance for seers and humans to leave together in peace. When it happened, Balidor remembered thinking it had to be the Displacement itself arriving. Even now, with all that had occurred, he had not yet felt the darkness of those first decades of the last century.

  He had never forgotten it. He would never forget it.

  Balidor heard that same voice while tracking the Elaerian in WWI. He’d heard it off and on in some of his most vivid nightmares ever since. He had truly thought they’d killed him in those fields in Bavaria. He had looked at a corpse, thinking he looked at Syrimne’s dead body.

  But it had been a trick of Galaith’s, one Vash presumably knew about, as well.

  They had decided to “neutralize” him, rather than kill him outright.

  They’d believed the damned prophecies. They’d believed he’d be redeemable one day––that the Bridge would save him, turn him back into some force for good.

  Balidor himself wept no tears at the death of that monster.

  He had seen him set entire cities on fire. He’d seen him destroy water mains and infrastructure that left populations starving for months, exploding ships and airplanes filled with soldiers and even civilians.

  He’d been a death machine.

  Syrimne was a blunt instrument of the Dreng, nothing more. No good came of those years. Its main byproduct was to instill fear in an entire generation of humans and their offspring, fear that rebounded back onto the rest of the seer population in the form of race-wide brutality, enslavement, and the codification of their oppression in law.

  Presumably, Dehgoies remembered him now, too––assuming his love letter to his wife had been telling the truth about that, as well.

  Jon’s voice jerked Balidor out of his own head, like water being splashed on his face. Even so, he missed the first part of what the human said.

  “…has she been talking?” he said. “Has she been conscious?”

  Balidor paused, collecting his thoughts.

  Frowning, he made a negative gesture with his fingers. “No,” he said, then amended, “Well. Very little, at least to us. But that’s mostly been our doing, Jon. We’ve had to drug her.”

  “Drug her? Why?” the human demanded.

  “Why?” Balidor choked on a laugh, in spite of himself. “Because her mate will fucking kill us when he finds us, Jon,” he said in accented English.

  “You’ve got a collar on her already––” Jon began, angry.

  “Jon.” Balidor stared at him, at a loss. “Do you really not have any idea of the danger we are in? All of us, Jon. Even you.” Seeing the human�
��s eyes grow colder, he bit his lip, gesturing with the same hand as before. “You should go. Back to the States… or to Europe. She would want you to go. She would want you far away from all this.”

  “I’m not leaving her, ‘Dori!”

  “Why not?” he said, exasperated. “They are brave words, Jon, but not very practical. What possible use are you to her, anyway? How can you help her with—”

  “What use am I?” Jon took a step closer, his light sparking with real anger. “Balidor, Allie isn’t just some pawn in your war against Syrimne. She needs people around her she can trust. Whether we are deemed ‘useful’ according to your holy fucking credo or not.”

  Balidor’s face hardened. “You’re saying she can’t trust me, Jon?”

  “I’m saying I think you would kill her,” Jon said. “For real. If you decided it was your sacred fucking duty to do it, I think you would have shot her right in the heart, Balidor.”

  “And?” Balidor said, his jaw hardening. “I would hope you would do the same yourself, Jon, if the greater good demanded it!”

  “Wow,” Jon said, gesturing in an exaggerated backwards wave. “…and you just made my point for me.”

  When Balidor clicked at him, Jon raised his voice.

  “Jesus, ‘Dor! Greater good? You sound just like him, you know that? That’s something the new and improved Revik would say. Except even he wouldn’t sacrifice Allie for some stupid ideal.” His hands clenched into fists by his sides. “Are you really such a fanatic that you’d shoot your friends, ‘Dor? Really?”

  Balidor started to answer that, then didn’t.

  He found himself looking at the wasted form on the bed. When he next spoke, his voice came out cold. Colder than he’d intended.

  “She’s not my friend, Jon. She’s my job.” He met the human’s gaze, clenching his jaw. “And you should think hard about what your ‘friend’ would really want… and what would serve her higher interests. She knows we need to defeat Syrimne. She knows this. She understands how dangerous he is. She knows this despite her personal feelings. She will make the hard choices with him, if need be. Make no mistake about that.”

  Jon just stared at him. “You think she wanted Revik tortured like this? She wants him back, ‘Dori, not ‘neutralized.’ What part of you isn’t getting that? This is all about what she’s willing to do for the people she loves.” His expression contorted in anger. “Jesus. Just because you want her free of him doesn’t mean she wants that. She’s trying to save the guy! She’d kill herself to save him, don’t you get that? Are you really so dense that you don’t see how much he means to her, even as Syrimne?”

  Balidor hadn’t really a good reply for that. Mostly because, as much as he hated to admit it, he agreed with the human, at least in part.

  As he admitted that much to himself, that sick, deadened feeling came back, making it close to impossible to think through his own motives in all of this, or even to see hers clearly.

  He was letting his judgment get blurred. He was losing perspective, and therefore his ability to do his job effectively.

  He’d promised her he wouldn’t. He’d promised her.

  But he didn’t have a lot of time to think about that, either.

  The train was beginning to slow, and the next station was their final stop. It was the final stop in many respects, being their last true option for refuge, at least in the world of seers.

  Balidor would need to focus all his diplomatic and negotiation skill to gain them entrance to its inner sanctum. He still entertained fears that they might simply say no, even after they had verified Allie’s identity. If they did, Balidor was out of options.

  This was their last real hope of surviving this thing––any of them, really.

  But, Balidor thought wryly, himself more than the rest.

  23

  BEIJING

  I CAME BACK to consciousness slowly.

  It felt like wading through a wide, lost space, a sea of warmth and light with no markers or reference points. My body felt far away. I felt sick from the drugs. My neck hurt.

  I felt him there, too.

  He never left me, not through any of it.

  He was busy again. The focus behind it was a little overwhelming, even a little unnerving. Unlike my drugged state, his mind seemed razor-sharp, even through the lingering tiredness I felt on him. I couldn’t get any specifics. Those were too clouded by the collar and the drugs.

  I felt the promise behind it, though. I knew what it meant, at least for me.

  He was coming for me.

  I couldn’t even pretend the knowledge didn’t fill me with relief.

  THEY’D BROUGHT ME somewhere.

  Since the soft, warm place where I lay no longer vibrated, jerked, jostled or hummed, I had to believe we’d stopped somewhere, at least for a time. The view behind my eyes no longer spun or dipped periodically, either, so the drugs were wearing off, too.

  That had to mean some kind of construct.

  Knowing Balidor, it meant the Fort Knox of constructs, to use another of my dad’s out-of-date expressions.

  I fought to sit up.

  I got as far as propping my shoulders up under my elbows. Then I had to stop, mostly because it felt like something evil pounded at the back of my head with a mallet covered in glass shards. I couldn’t remember a time where I’d ever felt quite so badly.

  Well, excluding that blank stretch of hell in the tank.

  The collar hurt my throat. My light refused to leave it alone, to stay behind the artificial boundaries it erected, so a constant, throbbing pain remained with me from the second I opened my eyes.

  I could feel him there, in faint whispers, beyond it.

  By then, I knew exactly what Balidor had done. He’d tested the bond, and it held. In fact, his little “test” nearly killed me.

  It only occurred to me afterwards that I’d known it would.

  Gripping the thick mattress, then the wooden wall behind me, I tried to pull myself up to a sitting position. My arms felt as weak and tentative as a child’s. The painted wooden walls on four sides confused me, along with the feather mattress that sank under my hands. The bed’s walls seemed to sit inside a larger space, but I felt like I’d been squirreled away inside a cubbyhole that felt too much like the tank right then.

  Surrounded by a heavy, ornately-carved wooden frame and thick curtains, the bed felt like the inside of a blanket fort, like the kind Jon, Cass and I made when we were kids, using couch cushions and kitchen chairs.

  The walls beyond the wooden box felt very far away.

  Briefly, I felt trapped. My breath grew short––

  Revik surrounded me.

  He materialized in seconds, coiling into my light as much as the collar would allow.

  Pain arced through me as he tried to understand where I was, what happened to make me afraid. I found myself reassuring him that no one was hurting me, or shooting me in the chest.

  He relaxed slightly. I still felt him trying to determine where I was.

  I looked around, unsure myself. As I did, I felt myself calming down, and him along with me. He calmed more slowly, his light remaining wary.

  It crossed my mind that the last time I remembered being awake, I’d been on a train. Or it felt like a train anyway. I remembered the rhythmic thrumming under my body as it clicked and clacked at each connecting rail.

  I remembered Jon being there, and Cass, although for less of the time. Balidor had been there, too. I couldn’t look at him for long though, even inside my mind, not without feeling Revik’s rage rise to a near heat behind my eyes.

  I’d never felt him angry like that before.

  I could feel at least part of it stemmed from the fear I felt around his light. I was vulnerable from his perspective, still in the camp of the enemy.

  I avoided thinking about Balidor after that.

  I pushed open the drapes.

  Blinking in surprise, I gazed around at a view I hadn’t expected at all, one that
bewildered me. I gripped the curtain in one bony hand, letting Revik see pieces of the same view through me.

  The room was so richly furnished I felt like I’d been locked inside an ancient temple. Wooden walls formed the boundaries of a wide open space, stretching around the fort-like bed and decorated with more of those detailed carvings. One of those walls had been cut into a circular door, and stood directly across from where I lay. In the light from the parted curtains, I saw silk sheets wrapped around my legs, which still looked way too thin, even to me. The long, round pillows looked distinctly Asian, especially with the elaborate silk covers and tassels. I leaned on square pillows too, also covered in embroidered silk.

  Outside the bed, curved swords hung on one wall above a shrine with incense burning. Delicately painted vases and silk paintings lined the walls on either side.

  It all looked very, very Chinese.

  Like Ancient China, Chinese.

  When I peered up, a stained and carved wooden ceiling met my eyes, mainly consisting of dark, reddish-tinted wood squares cut and placed in segments, each painted with a similar pattern, almost like wooden tiles. Lanterns hung down with silk tassels, tiered so that they looked like bird cages, or silk kites. Thick drapes stood corded on either side of the circular door. Jade figurines and ivory carvings decorated low, lacquered tables inlaid with abalone and different-colored stones. I saw a game board as well, placed on one of those delicate tables between two antique-looking wooden chairs.

  The doorway itself, made of a darker wood than the red of the ceiling, had been carved intricately so that its patterns jutted out into the room. The carvings made it look as if the branches of two trees intertwined in the door’s center arch.

  Overall, the whole setting looked like something from a kung fu movie.

  I half expected a fight to break out in the middle of the room, or someone to jump down from the ceiling to steal a sacred scroll.

  Or maybe I’d just watched way, way too many kung fu movies with Jon, staying up late in his apartment in San Francisco.