Prophet: Bridge & Sword

by JC Andrijeski

The sheik-guy only smiled, again exuding sympathy, and even some humor now.

  “How was she?” he said, his voice holding more of a friendly tone. “Can I ask top dollar for this one, do you think, my brothers? What is your expert opinion?”

  Dalejem gave the barest of glances at Revik.

  In that look, for the first time, I saw an infinitesimal break in the infiltrator’s mask he wore. It was there and gone, flashing so quickly across his eyes, I almost questioned if I’d seen it.

  His answering smirk met the sheik’s.

  “Definitely,” he said, winking at me. “She was… quite talented, brother. A mouth like an angel, and a velvet cunt to match. We were just considering taking her again, when you came.”

  Clicking softly, Dalejem clapped the robed man on the shoulder, giving him another knowing smile. “…If you want my advice, I would accept nothing less than the very highest price for this one, my brother. Perhaps, if they argue with you, you should remind your buyers that training them in manners is half the fun?”

  I felt something off Revik’s light at that, too, but he muted it at once.

  Even with our connection, it barely lasted long enough for me to feel it, and most of that reached me through the bond structure we shared.

  The sheik didn’t spare Revik so much as a glance.

  Instead he laughed at Dalejem’s words, tilting his head in acknowledgment. He gave both of them a polite bow, making a respectful sign with his hands in seer sign language, even as he straightened.

  “Very good,” he said, still smiling. “I will do exactly as you say, my brother.”

  He clicked his fingers.

  Before he’d even turned to follow, his guards were already leading me away.

  I wasn’t wearing shoes, but I guess that wasn’t a priority for them.

  It didn’t occur to me until I’d already rounded the corner that I hadn’t gotten a chance to grab the earpiece I’d brought, either. Or my gun.

  Then again, given where I was going now, maybe that was for the best.

  49

  UNREQUITED

  REVIK FOUGHT TO control his light.

  He fought to remain silent, too, knowing they were still under surveillance, particularly while they remained in the area of the docks. As long as he could feel those lines humming around his form and recording his light, he focused solely on his physicality, ignoring the aleimic cloak woven over his light.

  He focused on keeping his legs walking outside their normal rhythms, on holding his body differently, on keeping his mannerisms and the way he used his light in relation to his body less… harmonious… than usual.

  He hunched more, too, patterning his gait after a civilian, versus how he normally walked, which had more of a military and mulei bent to it, at least when he wasn’t trying to make it otherwise.

  Even so, he had to fight to control his light.

  He kept his cloak tightly around his body as they left the main area of customs, watching as Dalejem flashed badges for both of them to get them through the access gate.

  The guard waved them through once they’d gone through several scans and a blood test to ensure they weren’t carrying C2-77. Through all of it Revik stood there, feigning boredom and tiredness as if coming off a shift.

  Even with the added distraction, his light struggled.

  He followed Dalejem’s lead as they exited through the transit portal used by dock workers, then walked a tunnel-like corridor to the train station. Clicking back and forth from his memory of the specs, Revik noted their progression towards the employee-only platform. He knew passengers and ship’s crew not directly affiliated with the Dubai docks got out via a different line, one that fed into a second set of customs and quarantine protocols on the city side, which is why they’d gotten him and Allie worker IDs, instead of transit ones.

  Once they hit the dry, cool, night air of the desert––or what Revik could feel of it from the aboveground platform––he could no longer remain silent.

  He didn’t lose his head totally.

  He knew this part of the platform had minimal surveillance, from the specs he’d studied on the carrier. Even so, his eyes searched for additional surveillance briefly, any changes to the landscape from the specs he had memorized.

  Then he looked for bodies, human or seer.

  Once he knew the area was clear, he grabbed the other seer’s arm. He stopped him in mid-stride, even as Dalejem had been aiming his feet to bring them closer to the yellow line warning them off the train’s tracks, and back into the line of the cameras.

  Revik lowered his mouth, until he was speaking directly into the other’s ear.

  “What the fuck did you just do?” He ground his jaw to fall silent, barely keeping his light under control, or his voice. “What if they knock her out? Or drug her?”

  He didn’t add the rest of what he was thinking.

  Meaning the list of other things they might do to his wife.

  Dalejem looked up at him, his light exuding calm. He held up a cautioning hand, even as his eyes did a perfunctory scan of the platform, as well.

  “Relax, brother. Your light will be protected. Relax––”

  “Maybe you’d better not fucking call me that right now, brother,” Revik said, lower, glancing around their immediate environment. “And I don’t give a damn about my light! Do you really think that’s my primary concern right now?”

  He paused in his words, seeing a small group of workers descending onto the platform in the distance, walking down a recessed set of stairs. They were far away from where Revik and Dalejem stood––too far to hear any of their words, or even see what they were doing clearly. They definitely wouldn’t be able to make out their facial expressions with any accuracy, especially if they were human, but Revik fought to control himself anyway.

  Luckily, it was early enough yet––or late enough––that any major shift changes remained a few hours off. Revik and Dalejem stood more or less alone on the north end of the platform. Even so, Revik released the other male’s arm, right before he stepped closer to him.

  “You just let them take my wife to a slave auction, brother,” he said, cold. “I’ve killed people for less than that.”

  Dalejem barely flinched. His light remained reassuring, calming. “Brother, we are going there now. Do not worry. I beg you.”

  At Revik’s silence, Dalejem looked up. He winced as he took in Revik’s expression, watching his eyes cautiously.

  Revik stepped back from the green-eyed seer as an effort of will.

  He ignored the flush of pain he felt there, too.

  “…The auction is where our target will be,” Dalejem added, his voice even more subdued. “Surli tells me Dontan never misses the auctions, brother. Never. And he never fails to bid on the interesting merchandise, if any happens to be available. With any luck, he will buy her, and we will have a means of tracking him… as well as locating his List seers… when we follow him to extract your wife.”

  Hesitating, Dalejem continued to gauge Revik’s face.

  Ignoring the worry he felt whisper around the other male’s aleimi, Revik muttered, “With any luck, the guy who probably works for Shadow will buy my wife.” He glared at the other male. “Perfect. That’s a flawless plan, Dalejem. What could possibly fucking go wrong?”

  “Brother, you must calm yourself,” Dalejem said. “Please.”

  “He wants my wife dead. What part of that don’t you understand?”

  Dalejem winced, but shook his head.

  “I must remind you, brother,” he said. “We do not know this Dontan’s precise affiliations. All we know is that he’s kept the List seers alive so far, which is the opposite of what Shadow’s other agents have been doing.” Speaking slightly louder to be heard over Revik’s angry clicking, Dalejem added, “It also points to a potentially different motive than what you fear. In theory.”

  Revik’s scowl only deepened more.

  When he didn’t speak, Dalejem clicked again
, softer.

  “Brother, this is not outside the parameters of this exercise. We can adjust to this. We will adjust to this. It might even simplify things for us, to have one of our own on the auction block. At the very least, it will save us time in tracking this person.”

  At Revik’s colder look, Dalejem shook his head.

  “She knew this was a possibility,” he said, quieter. “You saw how she dressed. She brought it up in several of the planning meetings, that she might need to visit the slave auctions first hand. Or did you suppose she meant those words in some other way?”

  Revik bit his tongue, but again didn’t answer.

  Dalejem sighed. “It will let us know how well this person sees, at the very least, will it not? If he is unable to identify her?”

  Revik growled, “We have no reason to think he will buy her at all, Jem.”

  Dalejem’s jaw hardened. It struck Revik that it was because he’d used the seer’s nickname. Dalejem hadn’t liked that, when they’d been together.

  The realization brought a hard coil of fury to Revik’s light.

  They weren’t together now. Fucking bullshit drama here, more than thirty years after everything was over between them, in the middle of an op, with both of them in a Shadow city––when the fucker just put his wife’s life in danger.

  When Dalejem next spoke, his voice was toneless, businesslike.

  “Precisely my point,” he said. “If he buys your wife, despite her operating under an alias, it might give us some idea of his motivation and, perhaps even more importantly, his abilities.”

  The seer’s mouth hardened in a frown as his gaze grew more penetrating.

  “Brother,” he said, sharper. “You need to calm yourself. You assured us––you both assured us––that you could handle this, despite the difficulties you are both experiencing with your light. If you cannot, you need to tell me––now––so that I and the others can adjust for that fact. Or pull you, if that ends up being necessary.”

  Revik’s jaw hardened more. “I’d love to see you fucking try,” he muttered, staring out over the desert.

  “Oh, I have no doubt at all that you would not love that,” Dalejem said. “I work for your wife, brother. If I have to drug you and drag you out of here to keep you safe on her behalf––rest assured, I will. Without a second’s hesitation.” He paused, his stare colder. “Or would you really jeopardize this entire operation by using your light in inappropriate ways, brother––putting her in real danger––just to thwart me?”

  Revik fought to control his light again, not answering.

  His eyes picked up a glimmer of brighter illumination from the skyline, now heading swiftly towards them in a straight line.

  The train.

  The sharp light continued to aim directly for the platform as he watched, leaving the long row of skyscrapers and speeding high above shadowy sand dunes between the city and the pier. Revik focused on the city backdrop, taking in the rows of skyscrapers that cut dramatic spikes and towers into the night sky. The sharply colorful buildings and their holographic decorations lit up the darkness of the desert and ocean like something out of a virtual painting.

  It all looked strangely silent from this distance.

  “So what if this fucker can’t see?” he said finally, his voice still holding too much charge. “What if she’s bought by someone else?”

  “Then we extract her, of course,” Dalejem said. “Without delay.”

  Revik’s scowl returned.

  Dalejem frowned back. “Brother,” he said, catching hold of his arm. “Trust me when I say this to you: neither I nor any of my people will allow anything to happen to your wife. Not if there is anything whatsoever we can do to keep her out of harm’s way. Do you understand me? We are willing to die to keep her safe. I was not lying to her, when I said my loyalty is entirely with her… and only by extension to you.”

  Revik nodded. He fought to relax, to hear the other male’s words, but he couldn’t get the harder knot in his chest to unclench.

  He trusted Dalejem.

  He trusted Kali, too.

  Neither of those things were enough to remove the impulse in his light that wanted to punch Dalejem in the face right then. Not only for handing Allie over. Not even for speaking about her like she was high-priced cattle to that vile specter of a seer on the dock.

  Dalejem had his fucking hands on his wife.

  He had his light in hers, enough to turn her on––and she’d been pulling on him with those damned Lao Hu structures of hers.

  Revik understood the reasons. He knew Allie had her part to play, and that they hadn’t given her a lot of options. But he didn’t like it. He knew it was irrational, that his reactions stemmed at least partly from the problem he was still having with his light, and with hers.

  He didn’t care.

  “You should have let me do it,” he said, not looking over.

  “You would not have been capable of it.”

  At Revik’s angry look, Dalejem held up a hand in a peace gesture.

  “…Not in the way it needed to be done,” Dalejem clarified. “I do not mean that as an insult, my brother, believe me. I have been around enough of these traders by now to understand their rationalizations, as well as the easiest ways to distract them from what is rapidly evolving into a brutal culture, one that might have killed us, if we said too many of the wrong things. I have witnessed the evolution of their thinking towards their brothers and sisters, as well––the ones they consider ‘foreigners,’ at least. Trust me when I tell you, I was as gentle as I could be, without raising suspicion.”

  Thinking about his words, Revik nodded.

  He still couldn’t make himself feel it, though.

  Forcing a breath out of his lungs, he combed his fingers through his hair, fighting again to pull his light under control. He took another step away from Dalejem as he did it, feeling the other male reacting to the pain in his light.

  The truth was, Revik was nearly panicking from the lack of proximity to his wife.

  Realizing that much as the seconds ticked past, he fought to breathe through it in some way. A part of him couldn’t stop wanting to look for her in the Barrier. He forced the impulse back, along with the one that still wanted to threaten Dalejem’s life for what he’d done to Allie.

  “Fine. Where is it?” He shifted his eyes back to watch the light of the approaching train. “Where’s the goddamned auction?”

  “We are going there now, brother,” Dalejem assured him. “It was never my intention that it be otherwise. This train will take us within walking distance, and within only a few minutes. The auction begins early here. Several of our people will be stationed in the audience as soon as the doors open, waiting to make contact with the buyer, if Dontan makes an appearance.”

  Revik nodded, still watching the train approach.

  He winced when he felt the other seer reacting to the pain in his light a second time, and took another half-step back. Neither of them looked at the other, but Revik felt something like regret on the other male.

  Shoving that out of his mind, he blanked his thoughts as best he could, if only to be more in line with the strategy they’d outlined for operating inside the construct. He knew an argument wouldn’t get picked up by Barrier security, but if he started obsessing too much on his wife it might, especially if they felt him thinking about the auction––or List seers––or any other combination of key words they might already scan for.

  He’d nearly succeeded in forcing all of that deeper into his light by the time he could make out the front engine car. The wind blew sand up from the dunes as the train approached, biting into his skin and peppering his clothes. He got another whiff of hot desert air, which smelled almost like burnt glass, even in the middle of the night.

  Staring at those tall buildings, some in the shape of pyramids and giant sails, he pulled the cloak more tightly over his light, managing to blank the more charged of his thoughts. He still felt sick, a
nd increasingly off-balance, but his mind was beginning to still.

  He felt Dalejem in his light again, and clenched his jaw.

  He knew why Allie reacted to the other seer.

  He understood her jealousy, whatever he might have told her to try and minimize her reactions. He knew why she didn’t trust Dalejem, and why she got angry when Revik downplayed the other male’s behavior.

  Really, Revik would have felt the same in her shoes.

  The situation with Dalejem needed to be handled, just like the Jaden situation needed to be handled––preferably before Revik ended up breaking the human’s neck. He’d already asked Allie to talk to Jaden. He brought it up a few days previous, during one of their late night, post-sex talks, which had been happening with increasing frequency.

  She hadn’t done it yet, but she promised she would once they got back from the op.

  Since then, Revik realized he wanted her to talk to Jorag, too.

  Before that, though, he needed to hear from her that she’d made things clear with her ex-boyfriend. Revik basically told her if she didn’t talk to Jaden, he would––and both of them knew that likely wouldn’t end well.

  Feeling what he did off Dalejem’s light as they stood together on that train platform outside of Dubai, Revik realized he needed to have a talk with Dalejem, as well.

  Now wasn’t the time for that, either, though.

  “I’m sorry, brother,” Dalejem said from next to him.

  Revik gave him a narrow look. Seeing the emotion on the other male’s face, he flinched, then fought back a wave of anger.

  What the fuck was this? A guilt trip? Seriously? After weeks of the weird crap he’d been feeling on Dalejem’s light?

  Revik continued to study the seer’s face, even as it occurred to him that maybe there wasn’t much to say to Dalejem, after all. Dalejem already knew. For reasons Revik didn’t understand, the other male just couldn’t seem to control his light.

  Maybe it wasn’t even specific to him, meaning Revik himself.

  Maybe Dalejem just needed to get laid.

  If so, Revik would foot the fucking bill personally, as soon as they got out of this mess. Anything, if it would get Dalejem to cut it out, and help Allie to start trusting him again. He didn’t need this shit now. He didn’t need one more thing to freak his wife out, not after everything they’d been through in the past weeks.