Prophet: Bridge & Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  Either way, I doubted I could have pulled off pretending I didn’t know English.

  “Regarding the dancing,” the orange-eyed seer said, circling back to his first question as his eyes drifted down my body. “I mean sexually, of course. Could you entice a man in this way?”

  I felt my mouth firm, but only shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You have never done this?”

  “Only for boyfriends,” I said, giving him a harder look.

  A faint smile touched his lips, reaching his eyes. “We will try this with you, yes? I suspect you will be quite good at it, sister.”

  I fought not to roll my eyes.

  I also refrained from pointing out that him calling me “sister” when he’d just purchased me and stuck a sight-restraint collar around my neck was about as disingenuous as one could get.

  He must have picked up a smattering of my thoughts that time, because from next to me, he clicked softly under his breath, giving me a sadder-looking smile.

  “We must all sometimes make sacrifices, my beautiful sister,” he murmured. “Is that not true? For the longer game?”

  “Spoken like one who defers all those sacrifices to others,” I muttered back in Prexci. “But it is a lovely sentiment, my fortunate brother. Truly.”

  He surprised me by laughing, then by looping his arm through mine.

  “Indeed,” he said, smiling when I glanced up. “You are most correct, of course.”

  I refrained from rolling my eyes a second time.

  “I am Alrick,” he told me, still watching my face, although I no longer returned his lingering stare. “I am very pleased to meet you, sister Ralla.”

  I bowed my head, making my indifference clear.

  “And your employer?” I said. “What is his name, brother?”

  Smiling, Alrick made a noncommittal gesture with one hand. “I will let him introduce himself,” he said cryptically. “I will say, I very strongly suspect that he will be even more pleased with you than I am, my beautiful sister.”

  I didn’t answer, but again had to suppress an eye-roll.

  I was starting to feel like I was back in Beijing, surrounded by flatterers and fools. It should make them easy to manipulate, at least.

  “…If he is not,” Alrick added, still smiling. “I may just purchase you for myself.”

  “Are you flirting with me, brother?” I said scornfully. “Really?”

  “Most certainly, I am.”

  I clicked in open disbelief, but my contempt didn’t seem to faze him at all.

  I wished he didn’t have to be cute about the name of my new owner. Given that I supposedly just got here on a slaver’s ship, I couldn’t ask about Dontan outright, but I needed to find out the guy’s name as soon as possible. If this joker wasn’t Dontan, I was just wasting time here.

  If it was Dontan, I needed to focus on finding some way to get a signal out to the others, so they could track me.

  I still hadn’t looked over my shoulder at Kat, or at the three seers walking with her, two of them there presumably keeping her and the other male from jumping head-first into one of those pools and trying to swim away.

  There was a good chance I’d just fucked up, though.

  If she recognized my voice, Kat might not keep that information to herself. She wasn’t all that fond of me, either, in addition to wanting to fuck my husband pretty much whenever she saw him. Moreover, she had her own reasons for needing leverage right now.

  She might try to use the information to barter her way to freedom. Or, at the very least, to receive some kind of special accommodation.

  Or, they might just read it off her.

  I kept those thoughts a lot further back, in the deepest cracks of my mind, where I still managed to partition off at least a tiny portion of my light.

  It was too late to do anything about it now, anyway.

  52

  DOPPELGÄNGER

  WE DIDN’T SO much as pause in the lobby.

  The orange-eyed seer led us straight through those glass doors and directly across the high-ceilinged space to the nearest elevator bank.

  I barely had time to take in the basic layout.

  I focused on the relevant details first: surveillance cameras over the doors, another inside focused on the lobby, a third set over the elevator bank. Some kind of secondary scanner in the lobby itself––could be a high-res MRI to check for seers masquerading as humans, or just facial/gait-rec on a separate scanner than the image capture. I felt myself pass through a tangible secondary construct that started just outside the lobby doors.

  I wondered how much of that was private-sec versus standard for buildings of this kind.

  Most of this segment of lobby was taken up by a giant waterfall, which gave me a brief pang as it reminded me of the House on the Hill in New York.

  Of course, this place felt nothing like the hotel where we’d lived all of those months, and not only because of the vast differences between the two constructs. Instead of the man-made island of boulders and plants living among koi ponds in the atrium of the hotel in New York, the lobby of the Burj Kalifa contained a sterile modern-art sculpture, what looked like big metal buttons falling down on glittery gold tile.

  The effect came across more like expensive but soulless corporate art.

  Alrick led us to a bank of elevators with gold and white doors.

  The instant the orange-eyed seer positioned himself in front of the first of these, the elevator pinged and the doors opened smoothly.

  I frowned at the understated security. Either the mechanism had a secondary facial-rec trigger, or the orange-eyed seer accessed it via a code through his headset––or both.

  Either way, these clearly weren’t public elevators.

  When we got inside, I saw that the number panel contained only six buttons: the lobby, what must be the parking structure under the building, the gym, the pool, the restaurant (or maybe a floor of restaurants?) and a button displaying a symbol I’d never seen before.

  The orange-eyed seer smiled at me as he pressed the button with the strange symbol, like he’d tasted some element of my thoughts. Clearly, he enjoyed withholding information as part of his little power game. The wealth-porn surrounding us played a part in that game, too.

  As the elevator rose, I glanced at Kat, trying to assess her mood.

  I caught her looking me over, her eyes rising in increments from the wraparound shoes on my feet up my bare legs to my butt. Her eyes held a harder scrutiny, which I ignored, even as I avoided returning her gaze when it lifted back to my eyes.

  She didn’t speak, which was fine by me.

  The car moved faster than I realized, suggesting it was equipped with motion stabilizers, since I didn’t feel the dip in my gut. It seemed only a handful of seconds ticked by after that first smooth rise before I felt us begin to slow.

  When it glided to a stop, the orange-eyed seer smiled at me, offering his arm.

  I considered not taking it, then decided it was a small, pointless battle to fight.

  Sliding my hand through the opening between his body and arm, I held him through his suit jacket lightly with my fingers.

  I followed him out of the elevator and into a high-ceilinged foyer. My eyes glanced down at the click of my heels on stone––and I nearly tripped over my own feet when I saw a mosaic of semi-precious stones formed in the symbol of the sword and sun. It covered most of the marble tile directly under a spherical skylight.

  Then the stone ended, and a thick, sky-blue carpet took its place. Even that particular shade of blue made me pause, since it, too, was associated with the Sword.

  This guy was clearly a fan of my husband’s.

  Maybe him and Kat would get along just fine.

  Lifting my eyes with an effort, I focused forward, distracted by the enormous window overlooking the city and, in the distance, the Persian Gulf. Sunlight glimmered on the water at the base of the hotel, as well as on the Gulf itself, and on the metal and gl
ass structures that clustered around downtown Dubai like the Burj Khalifa’s children.

  I didn’t stop walking as I gazed out that window, although I flinched as it dimmed in front of me, changing tint dramatically from some kind of virtual, sun-shielding effect.

  The view didn’t disappear, but it grew significantly more muted.

  I could still see sun sparkles out on the water, but now those starbursts looked dark gold instead of white. The shielding significantly cut the glare in the room, but I found the effect gloomy, making the colors less dramatic without the real rays of the sun.

  By then, I’d stopped walking.

  I stood not far from a fireplace that danced incongruously in a stone grate to my right.

  To the left of that fireplace, and more or less in front of me, a ring of white leather couches coiled around the edges of a sunken living room. The walls and decorative tables of the room were filled with what looked like expensive art, both the sculpture and painting variety. A giant copper and crystal water-sculpture of the sword and sun covered the wall nearest to the foyer.

  Unsurprisingly, the furnishings looked expensive––and modern.

  I recognized one of the paintings. The artist was seer, and used to live in New York. A few of her paintings hung in the House on the Hill hotel when I lived there. I looked away from the painting, glancing again at the sword and sun sculpture on the wall, then around at a few other pieces, noting the location of the doors, and the security cameras.

  I was still looking around, when I heard a pale cough from the vicinity of the couch.

  I’d known we weren’t alone in the room. Even so, I’d avoided looking that way––partly because I wanted the rough layout of the apartment first, and partly because I knew it would annoy the crap out of this joker, whoever he was.

  Now, however, I looked down.

  My eyes landed on the nearest end of the white leather couch, and the profile of a lanky, young, handsome seer with black hair. He stretched as if waking up, rubbing his face with one hand and yawning as he looked back at me. He stretched enough to pull his black T-shirt up to where his stomach showed, but I barely noticed the flash of skin and muscle, or the rest of his dark clothes. I stared at his pale, gray-tinted eyes instead, thrown briefly by his features, by the familiarity of them––

  When someone cleared their throat more pointedly from the other end of that same piece of U-shaped furniture.

  I shifted my gaze, turning my head to the right to compensate for the length of the couch and the size of the room.

  Once I had, shock rippled my light.

  I managed to control it before one of them might see the shock in my features, but in looking at that face, and the bright blue eyes that gazed back at me, I realized I needn’t have bothered.

  He knew who I was.

  The recognition there was overpowering, even without the emotion I saw woven into his expression. His words removed any trace of doubt.

  “Dearest.” He rose smoothly to his feet. “You are even more gorgeous than I remember… even with all of that crap on your face.”

  I followed him with my eyes, swallowing as I remembered how tall he was, even taller than Revik, which always threw me when I’d known him before. I watched his blue eyes in stunned disbelief. My gaze drifted down when he held out his arms, as if to embrace me from where he stood. When I didn’t move, or speak, he moved rapidly to close the distance between us.

  I fought to think, to decide what to do, if it was too late to pretend he was mistaken about who I was. That recognition was overpowering though, as was the affection I saw in his eyes.

  “I am so very happy to see you, dear sister,” he said, now grinning like a loon. “I feared you would not come. I feared I would have scared you away, with my attempt to speak with you. I cannot tell you how relieved I am to have been mistaken in this…”

  My jaw dropped even more.

  I closed my mouth as soon as I realized how I must look, but the shock continued to reverberate and recoil through my light.

  By then, he had reached where I stood.

  “Allie!” he said, catching hold of my bare arms on either side of the beaded dress. He kissed me on either cheek. “Darling! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me!”

  The wheel tilted even more, back to the voice I associated with this particular body, the one I thought I knew when I lived with him for a time in the Forbidden City.

  But I also hadn’t been wrong about the other thing he’d said. I’d seen the expression in those blue eyes shift. I’d seen the difference in him, heard his words when he first walked towards me.

  I stared up at him, mute.

  “Alyson! Do not pretend not to know me! After all of our time together in Beijing!”

  Confused, doubting what I saw and heard, even though I understood all too well, I stared up at him, fighting to decide what to say, whether I could deny any of it, even now.

  “It is me!” Terian said, shaking me lightly with his hands. “Ulai! Do not say you have forgotten me, Allie! I will be heartbroken!”

  From the couch, the younger, black-haired seer snickered.

  I looked at him, and that time, even with the collar, I knew.

  Something in his facial expression maybe, or the way he stared at my bare legs below where the edges of the beaded dress ended.

  “Terian,” I muttered, feeling my throat close. I looked up at Ulai. “Gods. Terry? Are you Terry, too? Were you even then? When I knew you in Beijing?”

  The man I’d known as Ulai beamed at me. But it was too much. I could see the person I knew then, and the understanding hit me even harder.

  I found myself remembering what Cass said to me, the specific taunts she’d delivered the one and only time I’d spoken to her on the ship. I’d wondered how she knew so much about my time in Beijing. She’d known enough to taunt me about it––to taunt Revik.

  “Even then?” I repeated.

  That time, I heard the bitterness in my words. I already knew the answer.

  “Of course, darling,” he said, beaming wider. “I could not leave you in that terrible place, all alone. Someone had to keep an eye on you. For Revi’, you see.”

  Before I could come up with a response, he leaned down, kissing me on the mouth that time. The kiss was passionate, woven through with light, and I tried to pull away. He tried to kiss me again, but I jerked my mouth and face away for real that time, shoving at his chest. Unhooking my arm from the orange-eyed seer, I stepped back, panting, staring between them.

  I saw the same thing I’d finally recognized in Ulai in the orange-eyed seer. I also saw it in the black-haired seer on the couch. I saw Terian’s light shining out from each of them––from bright blue eyes, opaque orange ones, and those eerie light gray ones.

  Those light gray eyes that reminded me of––

  It clicked, and I found myself staring harder at the man on the couch.

  He looked like Revik.

  Like… a lot.

  If he’d been looking at me directly when I first saw him––and maybe if I didn’t know the real Revik’s face, body, hands, and light so well––I might have noticed the resemblance sooner. He rose to his feet and I gazed up at his height. I also got a better look at his narrow mouth, high cheekbones and light gray eyes.

  That time, the resemblance hit me a lot harder.

  “What the fuck is this?” I burst out.

  I turned and stared at Kat, wondering suddenly if she was in on this.

  She looked just as stunned as me, though.

  More so, maybe, since she really had no idea what was going on. She also stared at me, understanding bleeding into her light brown eyes. She looked from me back to the Revik lookalike, then back to me… almost like she couldn’t decide if she was looking at the real Revik or not, and expected me to confirm or deny who he was.

  Averting my gaze, I faced the Terian body I’d known as Ulai.

  Remembering he’d been the one to initially train me in sex fo
r the Lao Hu, on the orders of Voi Pai, I felt my face flush hot, even as my mind tried to wrap around this again, to make sense of it. I knew Revik would not like this at all, but I shoved that from my mind, too.

  I’d shared a bed with this fucker. For months.

  At the time, I hadn’t really cared who I slept with––not after Revik asked for a divorce and kicked me out of his life for the second time in less than two years.

  I fought with the timeline, too, with Ulai being in Beijing after Feigran was unified, when we thought no more Terian bodies existed.

  My mind tried to make sense of it, to piece things together in an order that made any kind of sense. When had he been created? Did Salinse do it?

  “No.” Ulai shook his head. The grin on his face grew. “No, no, precious girl. No. Father did it. Father had bodies for me. Waiting for me… for when I came back.”

  “Father?” I blinked, frowned, then clarified, “Menlim?”

  He nodded vigorously, looking so much like Feigran I could only swallow, nodding in return. I didn’t really understand, but I supposed that was a conversation for a different time.

  “Bins and bins of bodies,” Ulai/Feigran added cheerfully. “So many. But all tied together different now. Merging in and out… like liquid. Like goo.”

  He made a mushing together gesture with both palms, grimacing.

  Frowning slightly, I only nodded again. “Okay.”

  “All gooey. Even more gooey now.”

  My frown deepened. “How didn’t I know you, Terry? How didn’t I see it? I see you so clearly now––”

  But he cut me off.

  “No, no.” He shook his head, pursing his lips. “Different then. Dragon’s coming. Dragon’s coming, so it’s all different now. All the pieces are gooey.”

  I nodded, although I had no idea what any of that meant. Questions spun in my mind, fighting to be picked apart, to be understood… but I knew I wouldn’t get answers here.

  “Terry?” I stared at Ulai’s face, then at all three of them, feeling that sick feeling in my gut worsen. “Terry, what is this? Why am I here?”

  All three of the male seers laughed.