“Allie,” Revik’s voice held a touch of warning that time.
I killed the thought, erasing it entirely from my mind.
“Sorry,” I muttered, folding my arms tighter.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “It’s fine. Really.”
I knew he was being a good sport, though, and that pissed me off, too.
“I want to see Lily, too,” he said, his voice warmer that time. “Why don’t we talk about this later? We can have lunch with her...then we’ll go to that meeting on Dubai. I think we should still have it,” he added, pulling a long-sleeve shirt off the chair where he’d hung it, and shoving an arm into one sleeve. “It’ll just be a planning meeting now. The first of many, like you said.”
I felt his light de-charge, even as he said it.
That worsened my pain, too, but that time, I only nodded.
Even as I did, it occurred to me that we’d just survived our first marital fight.
The first real one, anyway.
16
PARENTS
I HAD PRETTY mixed feelings about hitting Dubai, truthfully, despite how adamant I’d been about it. We hadn’t hit a Shadow city before.
More to the point, I wasn’t really sure we were up to it, even though I’d given the team a lot longer to prepare this time.
I couldn’t tell what Revik thought, exactly. He’d been surprisingly quiet about the whole thing since we’d solidified our compromise, maybe because he’d already gotten the bigger things he wanted. Meaning, I gave him sole discretion when it came to determining the safety precautions for me and Lily––both on the ship and for the op itself.
Revik didn’t get everything he wanted, though.
The Council ruled against him, regarding his request to execute Cass.
I admit, their decision surprised me. I’d been expecting to hear them come back with the opposite verdict, especially after the case Revik and Balidor laid out with the Council itself, two days after me and Revik’s big blowout.
Listening to Revik make his case, I found myself simultaneously impressed and a little resigned when I realized I didn’t have anywhere near as good of an argument to keep Cass alive. Really all I had was a gut feeling that we shouldn’t kill her. Revik, on the other hand, argued like a lawyer. He also shared a lot of sight imprints and memories of Menlim’s specific threats against me and Lily to back himself up. He made a pretty convincing case, even to me, that letting Cass live posed a direct threat to me, and indirectly, to Lily.
Moreover, Balidor backed him up, as did Wreg, if to a lesser degree.
Jon remained uncharacteristically quiet.
Chan gave a brief statement supporting my stance, although her points appealed more to Cass’s religious significance, so I’m not sure if it helped, even given her audience.
My arguments were definitely the most nebulous, though, even to my own ears.
After the verdict came back to keep Cass alive, I thought at first that Chan had been the one on the money, that the Council’s decision was some religious thing, either because of who I was, or their unwillingness to kill Cass as a member of the Four.
According to Balidor, though, that wasn’t true, either.
He said they used their collective sight in the end, and what they perceived as the more beneficial outcome from the perspective of the Ancestors, a collective entity I still understood only in the vaguest sense.
Either way, they said no to Revik.
Even Tarsi said no.
Oh, and as a part of that whole thing, I found out Balidor had been named as the newest member of the Council of Seven, too.
I hadn’t been thrilled by that news, honestly.
“No,” I’d said, when he informed me of the honor they’d extended him. “I appreciate that they’ve offered it,” I said. “But no. You’re the head of the Adhipan, ‘Dori. I absolutely cannot spare you. They’ll have to pull someone out of meditation or something, if they’re short a body.”
Balidor gave me one of those smiles of his, clicking at me softly. “It is a very great honor you would deprive me of, Esteemed Bridge. You know that, yes?”
His words flustered me, making me ashamed and angry at the same time. I didn’t catch that he was teasing me until a few seconds later.
“Damn you,” I said.
“We worked out a compromise...” he began, smiling wider.
“You knew I’d freak out,” I said, rolling my eyes and clicking at him. “You knew, and you let me do it anyway. Jerk.”
“I can do both, Esteemed Bridge,” he said, making a graceful gesture with one hand as he leaned on the edge of his small, metal desk. “I just wanted to see your reaction, I confess. They promised to only pull me into sessions where my Adhipan duties will not conflict.” Smiling at me faintly, he let his gray eyes turn more serious before he added, “It is a great honor, though. I am a bit insulted you do not think so.”
Giving an involuntary laugh, I threw my arms around him, giving him a hug. My voice came out half in laughter and half in that lingering embarrassment.
“You really are a jerk,” I told him.
“It’s been mentioned, Esteemed Bridge,” he said, smiling back. “Mostly by your husband, incidentally.”
Despite his newfound status, Balidor recused himself from the decision about what to do with Cass since he’d also offered testimony. Even so, he sat in on the deliberations. He didn’t give me a lot of details in terms of either their reasoning or what they’d seen, but he did tell me they had looked at various permutations of possible timelines. He told me those timelines that turned out the most promising all had Cass playing some kind of role.
Of course, Balidor added, making one of those difficult-to-read facial expressions of his, some of the very worst of those scenarios featured Cass, as well.
Right around that same time, Balidor informed me that he’d heard back from his mysterious leader of the Children of the Bridge, too. He didn’t tell me much, other than to say that she preferred to introduce herself to me in person. Apparently, she also wanted to explain to me who she was in person, too, and why she had not revealed herself before now.
I found it kind of irritating and pretentious, honestly.
Since she also offered to lend us infiltrators for the upcoming op in Dubai, though, and to help us to find more humans and seers on the Lists, I agreed to her terms.
We found a midway point to meet, after discarding a number of possibles.
We had to go around Singapore, since Singapore was a Shadow city, too, although one of the smaller ones...and of course we didn’t want to get too close to Dubai itself, or any of the surrounding waters, not until we were ready to make our move. As Dubai was one of the most well-fortified of Shadow’s quarantine zones, and well as one of the few boasting a full-fledged military presence including naval and air, that meant we had to give it a wide berth.
We were warned off Jakarta and really anywhere in Indonesia due to extreme violence reported on Drahk, and Timor wasn’t much better, supposedly. Extreme flooding still plagued the Philippines and New Guinea, so we decided against those, mostly because we didn’t want to risk grounding the ship. We considered Australia, except that the Children of the Bridge folks said it would be too difficult for them to get to the more isolated areas where we would need to go...and the cities of Australia had banned seers entirely at that point, and would have shot us on sight if they figured out who we were.
The Maldives were entirely underwater after their fields crashed, which I admit, disappointed me, since I’d really wanted to see them.
Balidor suggested the southeastern coast of Sri Lanka, where apparently most of the human population had already fled and/or stabilized. Reportedly, Sri Lanka in general had handled the virus reasonably well, and while they’d been hit with a fair few refugees from southern India, none of the Sri Lankan cities had been specifically targeted via their water supplies, so they’d managed to maintain somewhat of a protected zone.
Anyway, we wouldn’t be there for long.
Because we needed to minimize stops, we would be picking Loki and his team up at Sri Lanka, too. Apparently they’d already worked out a route that would allow them to hop and refuel the Chinook once they took to the air again, stopping in Pakistan and a few other places en route to get down to a small airstrip just north of Yala National Park, which was partly flooded but still had a few open beach areas. Once the carrier got within range, they’d land the Chinook on the deck, of course, but at least we’d know where to look for them if anything went wrong.
But yeah, I really didn’t intend to stay long. In and out.
Now that Balidor was more or less cooperating with my demand that we minimize secrets among the core group in the leadership team, I didn’t much care about the Children of the Bridge, to be honest. I figured they were a bunch of religious fanatics, and I still didn’t really want to use people like that.
Not when it came to long-term planning, anyway.
Basically, I figured I would meet this person, we would agree to some kind of alliance or treaty, I would borrow some of her infiltrators, since Balidor claimed a few of them had recent knowledge of Dubai and its security protocols...and that would be that.
I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
And yeah, maybe I did know, in the deeper levels of my light, but I had too much else going on with the prep work for an extraction in Dubai and Revik changing all of the security protocols around me and Lily...as well as Lily herself, and dealing with Revik my husband and trying to keep our team on track...for me to even go there, at least at the time.
Yeah, I can be dumb like that.
I SAT IN a squashy couch, smiling as I watched Lily bug Revik to color with her. She wanted me to color with her, too, of course, but I was a little too entertained watching the two of them, so my paper and crayons sat on the couch next to me, pretty much untouched.
Something about watching the two of them argue about what color a rabbit should be brought my mind back to the first time Revik and I had walked into this room.
We’d both been so damned nervous.
It was weeks before they let us in to see her in person, and even then I pretty much had to throw a fit...and then Revik had to throw a fit...before Balidor and the other Adhipan seers cleared us. They still didn’t know everything Menlim had done to her light, although she had high-ranked seers looking at it pretty much every day. Revik and I had spent long hours looking at it, too, even if they only let us do it via transcripts and recordings at first.
So did Tarsi and Balidor and whoever else.
Either way, by the time they finally let us in there, we’d both been going a bit stir-crazy.
Revik and I stood outside that room together like a couple of dorks, truthfully.
Neither one of us moved, while Chinja and Tenzi opened the outside door, and I clutched Revik’s hand tightly enough that it had probably hurt him.
Per security protocols, the whole shift watching over her cell changed every twenty-four hours, even back then...along with all of the codes...which meant it took around four minutes to get all the way through the doors, even with five people monitoring that console of the security station. Since Revik had taken over security for this area, too, all of that had gotten even more complicated, and now getting in here took closer to ten minutes.
But back then, yeah, more like four, maybe five minutes.
They’d given us the rundown on our own restrictions, too, while we stood out there. Two hour stretches inside Lily’s tank for either of us, maximum. Nothing invasive with our lights, at least in terms of her higher aleimic structures. Four hour gaps between the two hour stints in the tank. No sleeping in there. No letting her resonate too much with Revik’s higher column, or even mine, although they were mostly worried about the Menlim thing.
We stood out there, listening to all of this crap, but only half-listening, too.
Revik had held my fingers firmly back, despite me gripping him so tightly, but I remember feeling every ounce of his attention focused on what waited for us on the other side of that door. I also remember thinking I was probably distracting myself by touching him as much as reassuring either of us.
When that door had finally opened, a lurch of nerves hit my stomach hard enough that I think my throat must have closed entirely. I remember I got dizzy, which threw me, until I realized that I’d probably been suppressing just about every real feeling I’d had about that whole thing––about losing Lily and what Cass had done and being cut off from our daughter for most of her life––until it hit me that it might finally be ending.
More than any of that, though, I remember being terrified.
In the mother department, I mean.
I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the fact that I even was a mother.
In some ways I’d still felt like I hadn’t earned any part of that title. I mean, sure, I’d knocked the person my daughter thought of as her mother on her ass when I went to save her...but, really? I wasn’t positive that counted.
Revik must have been nervous too, but he’d been the rock in all of that, far more than me.
He’d been reassuring me on the motherhood thing for weeks, even though we rarely talked about the actual logistics of what it would be like, being parents.
I’d tried to convince myself, even then, that it was only because Revik had been alive longer, and had more confidence in his ability to parent a child without completely screwing them up.
Of course, a quieter, more nagging voice in the back of my head told me he was only less nervous because he’d never spent any time with small kids.
Letting out a faintly-amused snort, he’d looked at me when I thought that, gripping my hand harder.
Stop being such a baby, he’d chided me.
I’d knocked into him with my arm, without letting go of his hand. Tell me that in ten years, when our daughter’s in therapy because her biological mom beat up her fake, kidnapping mom right in front of her...
Revik had only clicked at me, though, giving me a wan smile.
Should one of us go in first? I’d asked him nervously, watching as Chinja and Tenzi pulled the thick, organic-metal door open. Try not to overwhelm her too soon?
No, Revik had said. He hadn’t look away from the opening door. Instead, he’d only gripped my hand tighter. No, we go in together, he’d said.
He’d sounded so sure, I’d found myself relaxing a little.
Feeling his eyes on me then, I’d glanced up, and saw his mouth pursed in a faint frown, amusement in his eyes.
I think you really are more nervous than me, he’d said.
Or you’re hiding it better, I’d retorted.
Maybe.
I remember feeling my stomach knot and clench again as we’d walked towards that open door. I don’t know what I’d been feeling exactly, but it had felt a lot like terror. In fact, it had felt like an almost debilitating terror, like nothing I’d ever felt before, definitely not in actual, life-threatening situations. Even then, I could see how ridiculous that was, but I didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it.
I remember I kept thinking about little Lily crying after I’d knocked Cass out, and how she’d watched me suspiciously the whole time back on the helicopter.
Probably not, I’d admitted to Revik, quieter. Hiding it better, I mean.
Pulling me closer to him, he’d smiled and sent a warm pulse to somewhere in the middle of my chest. He’d been really affectionate with me that day...I remember that, too. He’d also sent a thread of heat at me, one that I felt all the way down to my feet. Closing my eyes briefly, even in mid-step towards the door, I’d thunked my shoulder into him, smacking the forearm connected to the hand of his I’d held in both of mine.
Stop it, I’d sent sternly. Not in front of the baby.
That made him laugh aloud, causing Tenzi, Chinja and Deklan to aim puzzled looks in our direction. When I glanced back, only Balidor had looked amused
. Catching my glance, he’d made a motion with his fingers towards the open door, that half smile still on his lips.
“Stop stalling, Esteemed Bridge,” he said, his voice joking.
But I’d already looked away from him.
I remember seeing Tarsi there, too, who must have entered the security enclosure when I hadn’t been looking. She was like a light-ninja anyway. I’d never come across any seer who could enter a room like her, so that no one noticed her at all, at least, not until they saw her with their physical eyes. She’d shooed me towards the door, too.
“Stop being such a baby,” she’d said, in her heavily-accented English, mirroring Revik. “Won’t get any easier with you hiding out here...just putting off the inevitable.”
Nodding, I’d swallowed, not quite able to smile in return.
“We need to visit Maygar, too,” I’d reminded Revik.
He’d nodded to my words.
Of course, I only found out later that he’d been visiting Maygar pretty much every day since we got back to the ship. I remember being kind of off-balance from that at first, too, meaning the fact that Revik and his son had an actual relationship now, one I knew absolutely zero about. Truthfully, I still felt pretty out of step with a lot of things, just from being out of commission for so long. Even now, months later.
“He wants to talk to you,” Revik said, looking up from where he was still making his rabbit bright blue, despite Lily’s scolding. “About Dubai. About how you want to use him there. He thinks I’m sidelining him after what happened in Macau.” Rolling his eyes a little, he smiled at me. “He’s still blaming himself. For Jon getting stabbed.”
I smiled, clicking softly. “You’d never know it, with how he grumbles at Jon.”
Revik lifted an eyebrow at me humorously. “He’s a complex person.”
I laughed aloud at that. “Wait. Could you say that again? I might need proof you said that...I also want to make sure it got recorded.”
Revik grunted, but gave me another smile.
Allie's War Season Four Page 96
