“We put her in your bed,” Jon said simply.
Revik felt something in his chest relax.
“Okay,” he said. “Good.”
He didn’t know why he’d wanted to know, or why Jon’s answer filled him with relief. It did, though. He could almost see her there, lying peacefully on the blankets. He knew she wasn’t there, not really, but somehow, the image brought him a vague kind of peace.
“Good,” he said again, his jaw clenching. “Thank you.”
He felt the others exchange glances.
Jon, however, only dismissed his words with a shrug. “Balidor did it,” he explained.
“Good,” Revik said again.
He felt a few of them continue to stare at him. He could feel sadness on them, too, especially Garensche, who hadn’t stopped crying since they’d left through the front doors of the hotel. Jon mostly felt blank, probably how Revik himself felt to the rest of them. A kind of collective insanity they could all share together, maybe...or maybe something darker.
Revik couldn’t care about that, either.
Frankly, it was too late.
He felt the shield of light around him from Jon, who managed to hold it together with what Balidor reconstructed out of the structures of Allie’s light. Revik hadn’t tried to understand that part of what they did to help him. He didn’t try to delve too far into predictions about how well or how long that reconstituted shield might hold, or where the weak points would be. He let the others take care of that part, and take care of him.
He trusted Balidor. He trusted Jon.
He trusted Tarsi, too, who he could also feel in his light in the background. He knew Loki served as yet another backup on the ground. He might have to use Maygar more this time, but the younger Elaerian seemed more than willing for that to happen, too.
Revik had to trust all of them. He had no choice. Whatever the outcome of this, he knew he couldn’t do it alone, and finishing this had become the tantamount thing. Not his feelings, not who lived or died, but the simple mechanics of making this work.
His mind drifted to Maygar, anyway, at least for a few more steps across that dark grass.
Revik knew he should be approaching his son with something more than this blank functionality, but he didn’t have the capacity for that at the moment, either.
He’d done what little he could...what little his limited emotional capacity allowed.
Before they left the hotel, Revik had grabbed Maygar by his armored vest, pulling him aside roughly when all of the other seers had been saying their goodbyes and leaving final instructions with friends and loved ones. Revik knew he couldn’t do much, especially then, but he told Maygar he was proud of him. He’d said other things, too. Regrets, mainly...but also feelings, hopes he had for the other man. Revik doubted whether much of what he’d said penetrated, but he told Maygar that he’d seen how hard he worked, both in San Francisco and on the airfield that day. He told him that Chandre described to him in detail how much he’d helped her on the ground at that facility in California...and how sorry he was for what he’d endured under Shadow in Argentina.
Revik told him he was sorry for having been absent for so much of his life. He told him he was sorry they wouldn’t have more time to get to know one another. He said he was sorry Maygar had to endure so much of his childhood alone. He said he was sorry he hadn’t been more understanding about Maygar’s feelings for Allie.
Revik knew he’d handled it poorly, like he handled most emotional confessions poorly, as Allie used to like to remind him humorously. He knew whatever he’d said, it hadn’t been enough, that his words had likely been ill-chosen or easy to misunderstand. He knew he could have said more, told him more in those months in San Francisco.
He knew all of that, but it was all he’d been able to give the other man.
He’d ended it even more clumsily, with a wish for Maygar’s continued good health...that he would survive this, and go on to have a life he could be proud of, whatever the difficulties of the world his elders had left him. He told him he hoped to be reunited with him behind the Barrier, and that their next incarnations together would be filled with more love.
When he’d run out of words, he’d hugged him.
Maygar even let him.
Of course, that could have been emotional exhaustion, too.
By then, Maygar knew Allie was dead.
Revik knew Maygar had loved his wife, even if elements of that love consisted more of infatuation or fixation or jealousy and whatever else. Maygar hadn’t come out and confessed to Revik that he loved her, but Revik could feel it, even before he’d spent so much time in his son’s light in San Francisco.
Maygar could have felt pity for Revik, as well. He must know his biological father wouldn’t be alive much longer. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to refuse a dead man walking, even if that dead man happened to be Revik.
Whatever his reasons, he’d embraced Revik in return. He hadn’t moved away when Revik touched his forehead to his, either, the gesture coming more of memory than the conscious thought that his own father had done the same to him as a child. When Maygar finally pulled away, the younger seer had tears in his eyes, but Revik didn’t know what those meant, either.
He suspected Maygar, like the rest of them, barely knew where he was at this point.
Revik had no idea if his words or that brief affection did anything at all for the other seer...if anything about him ever would mean anything to Maygar, after his death or at any point in the future. He didn’t know if Maygar still hated him, for having been a Rook, for leaving Maygar’s mother, Raven...for marrying Allie.
Revik didn’t know anything, really. He didn’t know his son.
But he felt he owed him that one small effort, at least.
It was dark out now.
With the street lamps in the park no longer working, the paths had very little light. Even with the city buildings looming over the green on either side, the light remained scarce, since most of those no longer had power, either.
Once Revik and the others got out of the immediate range of the hotel, stretches of the asphalt path leading into the deeper reaches of the park lay in near total darkness, almost as dark as Revik remembered from before the days of electricity, despite the higher lights he could see in the distance, on the occasional building rimming the park.
The city was quiet.
Revik felt from Deklan and a few others that it had been that way for months now, despite occasional attacks on the hotel and skirmishes they witnessed from lookout posts on the roof and the higher windows. Most clashes took place between local militias and the remaining armed law enforcement tasked with policing the island.
From what Deklan told him, a number of the less-privileged locals seemed to have discerned that their lives were more or less expendable in the new world order, no matter what they did, and that if they wanted to survive, they needed to create armies of their own. Some of those militias had gotten pretty well organized, apparently, and increasingly bold...as well as being increasingly better armed.
Revik had even talked briefly to Tarsi about the possibility of going to other quarantine cities, once they’d dealt with Cassandra. That had been right after the fight on the airfield, when he’d been feeling his most optimistic...not just about their chances of stopping Shadow, but about his chances of getting his wife back, and maybe even his daughter.
It was amazing how quickly all of that could change.
He’d worked out succession plans, of course, back in San Francisco.
He knew those plans remained largely meaningless, given the current environment around the globe, but he also knew that the longer they could keep some semblance of civilization around whoever remained alive, the better their chances for survival. He knew Balidor and Wreg, assuming either or both of them survived this, would do the same. Meaning, they would do their best to provide the others with some semblance of structure, preferably one that felt familiar. No one harbored an
y delusions that things would go back to what they had been, no matter how many survived. Even so, the next manifestation of physical life would be easier to take with even a small ghost of the social, political, military and religious structures from the last one.
Tarsi seemed to agree with Revik on that point, too.
Revik didn’t know what Allie would have said.
He tried to think about these things, the future, the way she might have approached it...but he knew he probably hadn’t succeeded. His background had been almost entirely seer, hers almost entirely human. They simply didn’t see things the same, and he knew he’d probably missed things she would have caught, as a result.
He could only hope Jon would fill in the gaps.
Revik glanced at Jon as he thought it, measuring him briefly with his light.
He had the pain under control. Seeing his sister collapse dead on the carpet of the suite seemed to have quenched that fire between him and Wreg...temporarily, at least. Revik could still feel the bare edges of that pull on both of them, but it shouldn’t get in the way. Looking at them now, in the strangely more objective distance bred through the last few hours, it made sense to him that they would complete the bond if they survived this.
They were right together, somehow.
Really, looking at them now, he realized he already saw them as mates, despite all the problems they’d suffered together over the last few months.
Despite what he’d done to Jon in San Francisco.
For the first time, he sent up a prayer specific to them, hoping they would get that time together. Hoping they would survive this, for the benefit of all those who came after.
Revik even questioned briefly whether he should have allowed the man who held the ‘command’ position for all of humanity to come along with him on this suicide run in the first place. No one had argued the point, not even Balidor, and Revik wondered about that, too.
He couldn’t force himself to want to change it, though, not as much as he should.
Not as much as Allie would have.
Pushing her out of his mind, he forced his thoughts back to this, to the present. Even as he did, Wreg pinged his light. Revik’s head turned in reflex, though he still couldn’t see more than the other man’s faint outline, a few bodies to his right and slightly behind him.
What? he sent.
They are scanning us. Do you feel it?
Revik paused, realizing he’d let his mind drift too much in the past few minutes. He did feel it now, a faint, directional thread cruising around the edges of their construct.
It focused particularly on the shield over Revik himself.
They may pretend to be unafraid, Wreg added, softer. But I suspect that shield vexes them somewhat, boss.
What do they want? Revik sent. His words came out blunt, unthinking. What do they want from me, Wreg? What do you think?
Wreg just looked at him through the dark, his light still.
Revik persisted, Why didn’t they just leave with our child? Is this about having more Elaerian children? They must know I am dead soon.
How should I know that, laoban? Wreg sent.
What does your light tell you? Revik sent, unwilling to drop it.
Wreg made a noncommittal gesture, his thoughts coming through blank.
She wants to win, another voice sent, entering their conversation seamlessly.
Revik turned, seeing Jon’s paler face in the dark, above a black uniform and only at a slightly lesser height than Wreg’s.
Cass? Revik sent. Feeling the other man’s affirmation, he frowned. What does that mean? he asked Jon. Win what? Does she want to kill me personally?
I suspect she wants to take you from Allie personally, Jon said, his thoughts still utterly emotionless. I suspect it’s not enough for her, to have you both just die. She wants to know she beat you. That she won.
Revik’s frown deepened.
He continued to walk, one part of his light monitoring the scan of their construct, pinging Balidor to keep an eye on it, too, even as he turned over Jon’s words. Something about those words felt intrinsically true, but he couldn’t make sense of how, or whether it should change anything in their approach. Revik didn’t feel connected to Cass at all, or to Menlim...or even Terian. He couldn’t make sense of what Jon said in light of what he knew about Menlim, either, or the reasons Menlim might have for wanting Revik to come.
Why would they risk a confrontation with him now, when they’d already won?
Even if Jon was right, even if some emotional payoff motivated Cass, what possible reason could Menlim have for taking such a risk? The Menlim Revik remembered wasn’t a risk taker. He was pretty much on the opposite end of the spectrum, in fact...so far on that other end, Revik had never met anyone, even Galaith, who liked outcomes mapped so tightly.
Maybe he’d gotten all he wanted from Cass now that he had the child. Maybe he wanted Revik to kill Cass. Maybe he wanted Revik to kill Terian, too. Maybe they were both too unstable for Menlim to want in his arsenal, especially now that Revik himself would soon be dead. Truthfully, though, Revik had serious doubts that Menlim would throw Cass away so easily. He would have no reason to dispose of Terian, either, not now that he’d clearly gotten him back under the control of the light of the Dreng.
Even as he thought it, something clicked.
You say Cass would be motivated to take me from Allie? Revik sent to Jon.
Jon nodded. Revik felt it through the link between them.
Even with Allie dead? Revik sent.
The words stuck briefly, somewhere in his mind, but came out regardless.
Yes, Jon sent, still sounding certain. I’ve felt this kind of angry jealousy thing on Cass since this whole thing started. Not so much about you. Just, you know...everything. Jon glanced over at him from the other side of Wreg, and Revik saw his eyes faintly, in some fragment of reflected light. I felt it even before we got to South America, Jon added, as if thinking aloud. ...Jealousy, only twisted into something darker. Maybe from the Terian thing...before, I mean. Being tortured. Maybe from stuff in her childhood. When I felt it in South America, it had this real no hope feeling to it, like being lost. It really worried me at the time. I don’t know, I could never really pin it down, not exactly. Not in terms of what it meant...
Can you feel it now? Revik sent. Can you feel her? Cass?
Jon sighed inside the Barrier, shaking his head.
No.
But you felt this before with her? Revik sent. At Jon’s assent through their link, he asked, When did it start? In Argentina?
Sort of, Jon said, then shook his head again. Well, no...not really. It’s hard to explain. I remember the feeling even from when we were kids. I didn’t know what it meant back then, much less what it would turn into, but she always had this in her. When her mom called or something, and she had to go back to her own family, after spending a lot of time in ours. Like this looking in from the outside, feeling like she... Trailing again, clearly remembering, Jon shook his head. I don’t know. Like she felt cheated. Like her life was stolen from her, and all she could do was live some corner of Allie’s. Allie’s family, Allie’s friends...
Revik nodded, thinking.
He found himself putting some piece of it together with Menlim, with what he remembered about the man who raised him. Menlim could use that. Moreover, Menlim would use it...Revik could even think of a number of different ways how.
Still watching his feet move in the dark, he nodded again.
I understand, he sent.
And in that moment, he almost did.
17
SECOND FRONT
TARSI SAT ON a padded, leather bench on one corner of the conference room.
The others had forgotten about her.
Tarsi didn’t mind. She only really noticed that fact insofar as it gave her the opportunity to watch the rest of them, and to think her own thoughts, with only the smallest monitoring of theirs with some less-engaged part of her aleimi
.
The seers in the room exuded stress, sadness, worry, fear.
Tarsi understood that, too. She watched them work under the three largest monitors on the virtually-equipped window overlooking the park. A young human girl with dark brown hair hunched over a number of hand-helds with secondary monitors, sitting with Vikram, who had come from the Pamir and the Adhipan training cells, as well as Anale, who also had been trained first under Tarsi herself.
The human girl had an interesting aleimic structure, Tarsi noted...but then, she had been named high up on the human Displacement list, her stats listed directly under Jon Taylor himself. Like Jon, she’d also been categorized with a rank of ‘1’––the only other 1-rank on the human list.
Dante was her name, Tarsi remembered.
Tarsi decided she might need her, too, before all of this was finished.
Her nephew was walking into a trap.
Tarsi knew it. So did her prodigy, Adhipan Balidor, who led this group of seers supporting the assault from the House on the Hill hotel. Tarsi strongly suspected that every seer in this room knew it, to one degree or another, whether they admitted it to themselves or not. Not a one of them knew the specifics of that trap, of course, including Tarsi herself. Tarsi could taste enough of Menlim’s construct, however––that same construct that strangled the entire of the island of Manhattan––to know that Shadow and his servants were not afraid of her nephew’s approach.
They welcomed it.
They welcomed the return of Syrimne d’ Gaos with open arms.
Whatever her nephew faced on the other side of those organic-paned doors leading into that seventy-plus story, park-side Tower building, on the corner of East 79th, it would be more than he could handle. It would be more than he could be protected from by these shields of Balidor’s and Jon’s, too. Tarsi strongly suspected her nephew knew this, however.
He just didn’t care.
Tarsi even understood why he might not care, given everything. He’d gone there to kill his child, she suspected, as much as to kill the being, War, and her accomplice, Rook, that broken-minded seer who had once been called Feigran. Her nephew had gone there to ensure his daughter wasn’t tortured as he had been as a child, or worse, turned into a willing pawn of the Dreng. Tarsi figured he probably expected to do that the hard way, too.
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